Motorcity - (Operation Repo meets Star Wars) an animated series by Chris Prynoski of Titmouse, Inc. and it's delicious.

This kind of mood.

The Renaissance of Hahn-Bin

The Renaissance of Hahn-Bin on Nowness.com.

The Cherald - or Irish Pubs "Down Under"

My friend, Cheryl Kunis sent me her newsletter. She is in Auckland with her husband David for a few weeks. Whether you know them or not, this is hilarious and worthy of sharing if even a handful of you get a chuckle. Cheryl didn't send me a photo of her place on the waterfront but I was able to find O'Hagan's Irish Pub and a view that probably includes her gorgeous apartment.

THE WEEKLY WAITANGI HAURAKI HERALD - 2012 edition, #1

The Weekly Waitangi Hauraki Herald is presently being resurrected for its 2012 season, bringing you the latest news “down under”. We’re sure that you will want to renew your subscription after the award-winning years of 2010-2011.

Adventure, as always, starts immediately upon departure. No, this time we really did have tickets!!! But after landing in LA, I inquired which gate for the flight to Auckland. I was told that it was the same as our arrival gate which seemed strange since it was an international flight. Two hours later they announce that the flight to Austin was boarding at Gate 12. Oh no, Austin? I said Auckland! Believe it or not, we really did make it to Auckland and were fortunate enough to experience only 2 earthquakes in Christchurch.

We arrived back in Auckland on January 15 and decided to live on the harbor. So we moved into this beautiful huge apartment with glass windows from floor to ceiling on 3 sides, huge bathrooms with jacuzzis, 2 terraces, boats sailing by all day. Absolutely beautiful!!!!! UNTIL…………………………We tried to go to sleep!!!!!

First we hear the music from O’Hagan’s, the Irish Pub to the left of our apartment – good rock music, I must admit. But then the other 4 bars across from O’Hagan’s, including “the Cowboys” and “The Outlaws”, all get their music going. Since each bar wants to attract more customers, they keep turning up the volume to outdo each other. Before we knew it, we had 5 different music venues blasting different songs like a massive herd of elephants (??? sheep, that’s right, this is New Zealand) with reflux .

Well, at least our bedroom is on the right side of the apartment.

But no………Danny Doogan’s is the Irish Pub to the right of our apartment, known for having great live music every night, or shall I say ALL NIGHT. So when the other bars close, Danny’s really gets going. So it was “Sweet Home Alabama”, “Sweet Caroline”, and most memorably “It’s A Hard Day’s Night”, ALL NIGHT LONG!!!!

At this point I am desperate for a night’s sleep. Married to a world renowned sleep specialist is totally useless, especially in a country where there are more sheep than people so that you are still counting as the sun rises. So I head for “THE WAREHOUSE”, New Zealand’s answer to Home Depot and Bed, Bath and Beyond. I desperately go up and down hundreds of aisles looking for earplugs. I couldn’t find an “ear department” so I look in the “eye department”, believing that the ears are relatively close to the eyes (I think I learned that in medical school). No luck. I was sent to the travel section which made sense, but they only had suitcases, tents, mosquito nets, backpacks and antihistamines for motion sickness. Oh, I must be getting warmer, motion sickness involves the inner ear, so I must be really close to those precious earplugs!!!! No, failure struck again.

I was just about to get on an Air New ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZealand flight to Fiji, just for the earplugs, when I decide to try “TRADE ME”, the New Zealand e-bay which you can only use if you are a Kiwi. But I HAVE A KIWI PASSWORD. Looks like I’m in luck this time. Well no, they don’t have Georgio Armani earplugs, but they have the perfect apartment on the harbor far away from the bar scene. This apartment had just been placed on TRADE ME that morning by the owner who said “no real estate agents, no commissions”. She is obviously a woman after my own heart, knowing how I feel about real estate agents (for further details on that topic, please refer to the Weekly Waitangi Hauraki Herald, 2nd edition, 2010, page 2, paragraph 3). I leave a message on the owner’s cell phone. She calls back just as I am putting toothpaste and cold cream in my ears to clog them up (I decided to leave out the Elmer’s), a new kind of earplug that I figured I could successfully patent and market in New Zealand.

As I leave to check out the other apartment, I can’t find the keys/card to my present apartment. Is this an early sign of Alzheimer’s or did David take both sets of keys to work with him? He often picks up and throws into his briefcase anything that lies between him and the front door as he leaves for work. I try to reach him, but he is “off line”, he doesn’t have a NZ cell phone, and I don’t know his office number

yet. So I figure I will just run to the appointment, but when I get downstairs, I need to swipe my card to get out of the front door. I run to the garage, figuring I could be a car escaping. Once again, you have to swipe your card. So I was stranded in the building with no way out, “Sleepless in Auckland”, locked out of my apartment, late for the appointment, with a cell phone that couldn’t get reception in the hallways.

Was New Zealand all a dream and am I really back at Presbyterian Hospital???? Am I awake or am asleep? Sounds like I really need to get some sleep to find out!!!!

To learn more about sleep, dreams, and the harsh reality of life, you will have to eagerly await your next edition of THE WEEKLY WAITANGI HAURAKI HERALD.

Happy New Year!

Aerial Grand Central/Chrysler

Some research for the Christmas Map.

View from Chrysler Building

Jesus El Aka Zeus

OOOh...this is the way to jumpstart Monday. Alyce Conrad, my dear friend sent me this video of one of Shiz Hustle's dancers, Jesus El Aka Zeus.

Minskoff in 3D.

Divide and Conquer

Divide and conquer...has more than one meaning as you can see below. Find a sphere from a square. Find the slope of the ellipse, slide the protractor center over the center point of green rectangle (ellipse) to calculate degrees from the Equator or any ground plane. Become a cartographer in seconds. Navigate your way to personal GPS - totally free, Babe. You simply need a layout of the constellations and begin exploration. You'll need to, no one else will be doing it! The Space Shuttle Atlantis Final flight.

Kenneth Duane Snelson

Kenneth Duane Snelson was brought to my attention yesterday by Jennie P., a fellow usher who was his first wife for 15 years. She said he was brilliant but hard to live with. What else is new?

Diminishing July 4th Pancakes

Red White and Blue with Blackberry Jam.

Views

For my next assignment, I need lots of NY views especially from moving vehicles. This is a neat wrap up.

http://www.flickr.com//photos/arno-4m/sets/72157594163533142/show/

Housekeeping in June

Yesterday was a cleanup day, I looked at old drawings. This group goes back, did it for Peter Gelb for an animatic in the 90's. I'm going to send them off to him for a surprise. Looking back and going forward. Enjoy the day!

24 hours in NYC

Interiors

Charleston Gardens at B. Altman and Co.

A magical place I went to for lunch with Mom when I was small and we took Bus #167 from Teaneck to the Big City: Charleston Gardens restaurant where tea sandwiches were wheeled around on carts.
This postcard was sold at auction here. That's only part of the story. The restaurant was on an upper floor of B. Altman and Co. department store at 34th and Fifth Ave.

I was inspired to look up B. Altman and Co. when I literally bumped into beautiful college friend Andrea G. now V. on Park Ave a few days ago. We both remember the store.

From Ephemeral New York -
"B. Altman and Company was one of New York’s most fashionable department stores, starting out on Third Avenue and 10th Street in 1865, then moving to Ladies Mile on 19th Street and Sixth Avenue in the late 1800s. In 1906, Altman’s opened its famous block-long flagship building at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. "
History
The following is excerpted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._Altman_and_Company

Fifth Avenue store, now used by the CUNY Graduate Center.

"In 1906 the store relocated to the block-long structure on Fifth Avenue running from 34th to 35th Streets, which was later expanded to include the Madison Avenue block front. In the 1930s, Altman's made one of the early entries in the suburbs, with branches opening in East Orange (later relocated to Short Hills), White Plains and Manhasset. The foresight of the organization in geographical selection can be seen in that the Short Hills location is now The Mall at Short Hills, the White Plains location is now The Westchester shopping mall, and the Manhasset location is adjacent to the Americana Manhasset, which opened nine years after the Altman's store.

When Benjamin Altman died he left no heirs, and besides his art collection going to the Metropolitan Museum, his stock in the stores was placed in a foundation, the Altman Foundation. In 1985, due to changing IRS rulings, the Foundation sold the stores to an investor group that included members of the Gucci family and two principals from financial firm Deloitte & Touche.

In 1987 Australian real estate development company L.J. Hooker and its CEO, George Herscu, purchased the controlling interest in the B. Altman stores (as well as Bonwit Teller, Sakowitz and a majority of Parisian) to utilize these chains as anchors in poorly located, yet extravagant, new shopping centers across the country. Knowing virtually nothing about how to operate these various retailing chains, and then placing them in locations with no regard to demographics, the strategy failed miserably, and in August 1989 B. Altman filed for bankruptcy protection, with the last store closing in 1990.

Another less well-known but equally catastrophic venture included building two upstate New York stores that were part of a different expansion strategy that never materialized. The suburban Buffalo location at the huge Walden Galleria complex was, in fact, fully completed and fixtured but never occupied by Altman's. It would later be occupied in 1991 by local department store, AM&A's, and eventually a Bon-Ton, which vacated in 2006. This former never-opened Altman's location was demolished for a new cinema complex and mall expansion. The Carousel Center Mall location in Syracuse was under construction at the time and redesigned to house a succession of several discount anchors, one on each of the two floors.

The store has long had a reputation for gentility and conservatism.^[1] "Altman's program, as it starts its second century, is to retain its image as a carriage-trade store, safely conservative,"^[2]Two lost treasures from the store are the famous Christmas windows, which rivaled Lord & Taylor's, a few blocks up Fifth Avenue, as well as the Charleston Gardens restaurant, which housed a full-sized facade of a Tara-like Charleston home."

Country House

Style, good taste both in food and design at the home of Peter and Annette Musano, son Josh and pooch Casey, in Milford, PA last weekend. Peter and Louis (l to r) are twins. They are fun to be around, they both love beautiful things and look for the details. Louis and I took a 2 hour busride last Sunday, playing hookie from our theatre jobs to see Peter and family.

Annette made a warm sauteed shrimp salad and remembered the feta cheese in the nick of time. Another Annette (Haar) came for drinks and dinner, Peter's stuffed chicken breast (will find the recipe and post).

It rained and even snowed overnight. We watched Mildred Pierce (Joan Crawford plays a great martyr Academy Award role) and we laughed at the cliches. Peter and Louis are classical movie nuts, Peter sleep-deprived his brother, they revealed to me, forcing him to stay up til the wee hours as kids to watch movies. Peter hadn't changed his stripes and he had me engrossed in the Royal Ballet's 2007 final scene of Romeo and Juliet and the lavish costumes in the Dance of the Knights - while Louis was asleep in an over sized wing chair. He'd faded even before Mildred had reached her happy end!

The House - details
Peter is a master tailor and designed and sewed all the window treatments. He also reupholstered the armchair next to the fireplace, and he painted the Sponge Bob murals in Josh's bathroom. Josh is past the Sponge Bob phase and is now more interested in Picasso, his life and creative process. Hmmm. ....a Cubist bathroom in his future? We'll see.