Atlas of the Universe

Bad news for trees.

Hoi An at 135 West Broadway was fine, aint Vietnam, but is there anyplace in NYC to come anywhere close....I used to live at #135 WB and thats where Linda and I first hung out, Brooklyn has allowed me not to miss 135 WB...I very much miss the Slanted Door in SF, thats good Vietnamese, all whom have been long for more....Steve help me out, I saw a listing and a yummy looking photo about Pho Van in Portland (1012 NW Glisan), is it good??:>)

we take a car service to Queens on some road I remember being on only once before, we mill around Kew Gardens circling 83rd Ave looking for #120-35, we have mapquest so we tell the driver to drop us in front of this big beautiful house....one block away we find the sign Uzbekistan Cultural Center / Uzbekistan Tandoori Bread House / Kosher Restaurant, in my bag I have a 1968 Rioja and a 1930 Dulce Monastrell, and my pals are well equiped also...we enter to many onlooking eyes, sit down and dig in, the first round of food was fantastic (lamb noodle soup, lamb dumpling soup, salad of carrot/slaw/pickles, big lamb dumpling, rice pilaf w. boiled lamb, fried potato, glorious bread), room had murals and great paintings (one of which by the end of the nite I was asking the owners to buy, and we are still talking), soon the music began and people were dancing....the mains (griled meats shish kebob(sp?) were less good for only two correctable reasons, too much salt and overcooked...great nite!!

Ate at Washington Park last night. Beautiful room. Very good service. Extensive wine list. One app sparkled (pasta with crab and heirloom tomatoes) but the rest of the food, while good, didn't excite any of us. Desserts, on the other hand, were yummy. Nice night, but I'd need to hear something different to try again.

i was lucky enough to be at the museum today when a few people from the library got to go on a tour of the beetle collection, and i tagged along. the museum has about 17 million insect specimens and over a million are beetles. pretty amazing. the scientist who showed us around just finished a 2,000 page paper on one particular beetle. and back in his office we got to see one (with a microscope) which is the only known specimen of its kind.

back in the fifties (or sixties maybe) a very large african beetle was found in a shipment of bananas at one of the ports, and was sent over to the museum to be checked out. turned out to be harmles, so the entomology people kept him as a pet. when he died the times ran an obit -- with a photo.

did you know that fireflies are a type of beetle?

anybody needs to watch the first four episodes of the sopranos can download them with kazaa by searching for "Sopranos pre-air." not a broadcast quality picture but not terrible either.

quite enjoyed CQ, by roman coppola, son of francis.

remember the new york (and elsewhere) on $10.00s a day books ? how about a new york on $10.00 a day for wine post (one or two bottles for ten and under). i wont tell anyone.

raise the bar -- wine and dessert

Anybody know more about this:

The FBI insists there was no military plane in the area but at 9.22am a sonic boom - caused by a supersonic jet - was picked up by an earthquake monitor in southern Pennsylvania, 60 miles away from Shanksville.

This could be very big. It's certainly a verifiable claim (unlike almost every other claim.) And if it's true then either the administration is caught in a very big lie, or some extra governmental force has supersonic aircraft operating in our airspace. To put it mildly, the latter seems highly unlikely.

FWIW, I personally have always believed we shot down that plane. And it may well have been justified. I don't really have a problem with that. It's the lying about it afterwards. This points to a larger pattern of deceit that really needs to be uncovered.

Any more links on the sonic boom? Anybody remember mention of this before?

finally ate at Petrosino, and talked with the chef for a while....he gave me a tour of the new room being built and the cellar could be room #3....the four 1/2 dishes i ate at the bar we very good (great if you consider he charged me $10 for them all), would like to go back and really eat

go Al!!!

When John Lennon did it, it was an homage; now it's a crime.

pasta, pasta, cake....dinner tonight at al di la was purrfecto, tortelli with corn, summer truffle, and chanterelle's followed by tortelli of fava bean with chesse and mint followed by chocolate/pear torte...ROCKING

anyone know about these mutants?

While looking for info about Bruegel in Vienna, I found this Emory University collection of poetry inspired by paintings. You can have Bruegel by Auden or William Carlos Williams, or others. Not to mention O'Hara on Larry Rivers. Lots of fun stuff.

alex grey exhibit at tibet house

I booked the Austria trip on Expedia, and accepted a blind flight, based on the Wheel's sage advice. Here's a take on online travel from the Voice's tech column.

The Voice discovers Locanda Vini & Olii.

You're a real gem.

Flexcar's fleet of rent by the hour vehicles includes Toyota's gas-electric hybrid Prius. I rented one ($6.50 per hour, flexible rates) for a test spin. Cute, comfortable, quiet, clean and peppy off the line.
.

They're heeeere......er..almost..

Re-zoning?