If Manhattan is Gotham, Then Maybe Brooklyn Isn’t So Bad After All

I came to this rather disturbing conclusion after being reminded by my friend Hannah that if all those people in Gotham had lived on the other side of the bridge, in Gotham’s equivalent of Brooklyn, then their lives wouldn’t have been in as much danger.  She said this because it’s very obvious that The Dark Knight Rises, the final chapter of the Chris Nolan trilogy, turns the island of Manhattan into Gotham and I’ve been giving her grief about Brooklyn all summer because I feel it’s just not the same as actually living in Manhattan itself.  She loves it and can’t get enough of it.  Yet, for a brief moment Friday night after we left the theater, Brooklyn’s geographic location on the other side of the East River was looking like such a positive.  I stress that this was a very brief lapse of judgement.

As for the movie itself, here’s all y’all need to know: for the first time in at least five years, I went the entire two hour, forty-five minute long movie without looking at my BlackBerry at all!  I didn’t even make it through The Dark Knight four years ago without looking at the Berry, but I also snuck a three-course dinner with ice cream into that movie with another friend, also named Hannah (Yes, it’s not hard to do this.  You do take out from a great restaurant and then you go to a movie theatre in a shopping mall and put the food inside a bag from a store in the mall.  Then you place a jacket or some other article of clothing over the food so that they don’t assume you’re doing this.).  Come to think of it, I saw all three of these Batman movies with three different people all named Hannah.

Speaking of that first Batman movie, it’s kind of ironic that in the time it took for this trilogy to be completed, Katie Holmes, who starred in the first movie, Batman Begins, as Rachel Dawson, dated Tom Cruise, saw him go crazy on Oprah, decided he wasn’t crazy enough to marry, converted to Scientology, had a silent birth in order to bring a kid into the world who spends more a year on shoes than my mother and aunt combined , and then divorced Tom Cruise because she realized that HOLY BOBBY BROWN!  This Scientology business is more than a little meshuge!

Oh how times flies by quickly, and not just for Katie Holmes.  At the time of writing this, I have less than two weeks before moving out of Charlottesville, which, though I’m thrilled to finally get a break, is really sad because that means I’ve enjoyed being here so much and am going to miss this city more so than I’ve ever missed Winter Park.  But alas, we’ll save the melodramatic, tear-jerker for once I’m back home because for the last few months, it’s been well over 100° and as I love to say, we are no where near the Carribean Seas and there are no hot mommies screaming “Ay, Papi.”  (That song is Will Smith’s greatest contribution to society)

So it’s been a few weeks since we last spoke and while not a lot has happened, it hasn’t been all work and no play!  Hannah, my official taste tester of Summer 2012, and I have been spending the last few weeks getting to know ice cream’s less popular and “healthier” sibling: sorbet.  I love sorbets, especially homemade ones because you can actually taste the freshness of the fruit.  Plus, there’s no heavy cream or egg yolk that can lead to you having a horrible swimsuit season if you’re not careful.  I choose to ignore one step in nearly all the recipes I’ve used that insist I pour the mixture through a sieve before placing it in the refrigerator to chill before it can go into the machine.  I let skin and seeds stay in the mixture not just because I prefer the texture that they add to the sorbet, but mostly because my strainer and I have a no love, all hate relationship with each other and cleaning it makes torture seem tolerable.

The first sorbet, made as June drew to a close, was an obvious choice: strawberry.  As I ate it at the same feverish pace a person desperately in need of water consumes a bottle of water.  As Hannah and I celebrated the anniversary of our nation’s birth and Mr. Jefferson’s death by visiting Monticello (more on that later), frutti di bosco sorbet was to be found in my freezer.  The recipe, courtesy of my Sarabeth’s Bakery cookbook, created a sorbet so heavenly that I felt as though I had been transported to Lake Como with each bite.  It was so good, I took a photo of it:

Now y’all know that looks so good!  Well, because it was so hard to resist, that weekend brought about the only one Hannah didn’t get to try because someone just had to go to New York for the weekend.  She missed watermelon, which I ate at a pace the Roadrunner would approve of and was gone before the Federer-Murrary final match at Wimbledon was over.

Another week, another flavor.  The scorching temperatures in Charlottesville saw  raspberry rose sorbet, a recipe I actually found in the Fitness and Nutrition section of the Times, believe it or not.  That one might have been my second favorite, mostly because I wasn’t expecting it to taste the way it did.  Initially, I thought the rose water would completely over-power the raspberries, which it did at least in terms of scent (mostly because embraced my heavy pour mentality and doubled the amount of rose water I was supposed to add), but in terms of taste, I feel that the rose water only enhanced the taste of the raspberries.  It wasn’t decadent or overtly sophisticated at all, but instead surprisingly simple and comforting, much like chocolate mousse has that pretentiousness surrounding it despite remaining very simple at heart.

The fifth and final sorbet to be made in Charlottesville as the ice cream maker, mixer and 90% of my kitchen utensils were taken home this weekend, was rustic apricot.  It’s the most unusual one I’ve made and since I’d never had anything remotely like it before, I was actually almost afraid to try it when it was ready.  Yet, it tastes and smells like the freshest, ripest apricot you’ve ever had in your life.  With each bite, it’s like you’re taking another bite out of the fruit.  Each time I open the container in which I keep it, I feel like I’m standing on a ladder picking the fruit individually off the tree.  I’m truly at a loss of words that I can use to possibly convey how amazing this sorbet is!

I guess the only way to describe it is really to answer the question Andrew always poses each time I tell him I’ve made a new ice cream/sorbet.  The question he asks is simply, “Is it better than Grom?”  Grom, as y’all should know by now, is the upscale, insanely expensive Italian gelateria chain that has three fixed locations in New York, plus a new gelato cart on Fifth Avenue.  Usually, I respond to this question with an overly-egotistical yes, but this time, it’s not ego that’s driving my response, it actually is better than anything Grom has to offer!

While we’re on the subject of Andrew, a lot has happened to him in the last few weeks.  After realizing that it wasn’t worth working an eighteen hour day for five, sometimes seven days a week, Andrew quit his job and is taking a well deserved and much needed break.  He’s been rejoining the world after a brief hiatus and I must say that it’s nice to have him back.

Grace, meanwhile, celebrated her birthday many weeks ago, and even though she despises the idea of growing older and celebrating in any grand sort of way, she knew that wasn’t going to stop me from giving her yet another useless gift for her birthday.  So, I went home two weeks after her actual birthday to assemble what has to be the craziest gift I’ve ever purchased anyone.  I had found these wonderful red lighted carousel letters at the store Maison 140 in Chelsea, about two blocks from the Chelsea Market and after months of wondering whether I should get one for Grace, I came to the decision that this was perfect for her because Grace loves burlesque.  She thinks there’s something romantic and artistic about it.  It’s not stripping, but almost performance art.  Anyway, this carousal letter to me screamed Le Moulin Rouge and so with her sister Annie agreeing that she would absolutely love this, it was ordered.

The four hours I spent stringing the lights onto it in a way so well done that no one will even see a cord, save for the one that plugs into the wall itself taught me that no matter how nice it must be to have a Christmas tree and all the decorations, you couldn’t pay me to do anything that painful again!  I broke two lightbulbs and half came dead.  Once I’m home, I’m going to call and see if they can send me a new set of lightbulbs because none of the hardware stores have the required bulbs.  This gift proved that there are very few people for whom I would waste four hours of my life so I could assemble a gift!  Fortunately, she knows that if she doesn’t use this gift, my back, which was in pain from bending over for all that time, will kill her!

This is the back, which I think is even more impressive than the front:

A week after this extravaganza in Virginia Beach, we entered July, a month of pure insanity, packing, extreme heat, and one of only three, maybe five (if you include President’s Day and Veteran’s Day), days of the entire year in which you can wear red together with white and blue.

Naturally, I’m talking about the Fourth of July, which also happens to be the anniversary of Mr. Jefferson’s passing.  This year, instead of watching the entire eight-part HBO John Adams miniseries in order without bathroom breaks (I’ve done that more than once, unfortunately), Hannah and I decided to get all decked out in our most patriotic outfits (sadly, she doesn’t have one of those American flag shirts, but if she did, we probably wouldn’t be friends, so it’s probably for the best that she doesn’t) and headed up to Monticello for the day.  Though we spent most of the tour standing behind a man who had more hair on his back than on his head, it was kind of neat to be at the home of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence on the day he died.

In addition to posing for photos next to a wasp nest, waiting way too long for small children to finally leave the little pavilion along the garden so we could take a photo and braving triple-digit heat, Hannah pointed out that there’s this narrow line in between the trees so that you can actually see the Rotunda from Monticello because as he got older, it wasn’t as easy for Mr. Jefferson to get down to his university as he got older.  I’m told everyone already knew this fact, but apparently that wasn’t true since I didn’t.

Please note that I did not zoom in on myself in this photo because if I had done so, y’all would have been able to see the power plant currently operating inside my hair!  I swear, NASA should study me to see if they can capture the heat my hair produces and convert it to something useful!

The following Monday, Justin, someone not prone to do making incredibly stupid decisions because they sound like good ones at the time, left Winter Park to drive by car up to visit his bubbie in New Jersey (he’s well aware of my views on New Jersey) because, like the time he thought it was a good idea to take a Greyhound bus from Richmond to Manhattan, he wanted to see America.  Having done the drive more than once, I tried to use my experience to explain to him that aside from South of the Border, there’s nothing to see at all until you hit the DC beltway and can sort of see the Washington Monument in the distance and even the Rotunda of the Capital if you get close enough.

Justin, being Justin, didn’t heed my warning and spent the first night in Charleston, which is a great city where I almost went to school (the actual incentive for attending school there, aside from the food and the countless historical buildings saved by the city that set the standard for historical preservation in America (presumably after Fort Sumter was lost to the Union in the War of North Aggression) being that had I attend the College of Charleston, I could have gotten a part-time job at the Charleston Chew factory and therefore gotten free Charleston Chews for the entire time I would have worked there.  The saddest part is I still think about that).  Having had his fix of Southern hospitality in Charleston, Justin proceeded inland a bit as he made his way to Grandma’s by making a detour to Charlottesville!

This, in my opinion, was the only smart decision he made on this trip, especially since he didn’t even get me a Charleston Chew (fact: I haven’t had a Charleston Chew since I bought one in Charleston when I toured the College of Charleston in the Spring of 2008, yet for some reason, they remind me of summer camp, so I keep thinking about them).  He pulled into Charlottesville just in time for him to join Hannah and me for dinner at Whiskey Jar where he tried fried chicken for the first time in his life!

Frankly I’m appalled that it took him nearly 23 years to eat something so delicious and affordable that a man named Colonel Sanders managed to start a business that today is the second largest “restaurant” chain in the world after McDonald’s!  I know he’s from Cape Cod and everything, but don’t they  eat fried chicken up there?

As I try to figure out how Justin never ate fried chicken until he was nearly 23, I’m also quickly realizing that my time in Charlottesville is quickly coming to an end.  At the time of writing this, there are only nine days left until I leave this wonderful place for the last time as a student.  With that in mind, I’ve also realized in the last few days just how many things I have yet to do (I’m sorry, Grace, but streaking the lawn, or what’s left of it since it’s being resowed at the moment, is not on that list).  I guess I’ll have to move quickly to fit it all in!

Until next time…

-JD

PS: Last night, it was announced that Sherman Hemsley, the actor best known for playing the other Mr. Jefferson, passed away and so in his honor, I thought I’d include what is quite possibly one of the best theme songs to any television show.

Alright, I’ll Admit It: Brooklyn is not Siberia, Even Though It Took Forever To Reach

Just as the New York Times did earlier this year while I was in Italy, I decided that this year, I was finally going to go where I have never been before: Brooklyn.  You see, when I think of Brooklyn, I think of hipsters from Williamsburg with their plaid shirts, Brooklyn designer jeans, Converse sneakers, and for some reason, Dr. Dre headphones.  Part of this idea of Brooklyn stems from my internship last summer at New York, which I unexpectedly discovered has a large Brooklyn-based staff.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand entirely why they’d want to live there: it’s cheaper, more square-footage for your money, you get somewhat of an escape from the extreme gentrification of Manhattan that has been underway over the last two decades, and you have this whole identity that is not connected to the island of Manhattan.  Unfortunately, I love Manhattan; I’d rather go hungry just so I could afford the rent in a dump the size of my bathroom at home in Virginia Beach (which, for the record, just happened to fit in the space between the living room wall and my bedroom)!  There’s nothing that can ever replace Central Park or that majestic scene of towers of steel and brick that shoot up into the sky.  However, Andrew spent most of his life living in Brooklyn, and after years of making fun of the city he called home, I decided that it was finally time for me to swallow my pride and journey beneath the East River to see what’s so great about Brooklyn, but only if I had my official Brooklyn tour guide, Andrew to take me.  Amazingly, he agreed.

Andrew grew up and attended school in Brooklyn Heights, which is where our tour primarily took place and we began on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, a third-of-a-mile stretch that offers some of the most breathtaking views of lower Manhattan.  However, it was about ten-thousand degrees out on the Promenade and so we didn’t stay very long.

Those two cranes in the distance in the righthand corner are the future Freedom Tower.

After leaving the Promenade, Andrew and I proceeded to see where he lived for most of his life before walking over to the home of his grandparents, which was so stunning; the mural in their dining room still takes my breath away just thinking about it!  The rows and rows of townhouses are just incredible and thankfully, they’re all protected under the creation of the Brooklyn Heights Historic District in 1965.  Our tour then took us to see where Andrew had attended school, which was rather interesting for me because I would always talk to him while he walked back from school, and I refused to believe he could be home in only ten minutes.  I was wrong.  Right across from his old school is the Brooklyn Historical Society, which Andrew took me to so I learn a bit more about  the history of Brooklyn.  I think it’s so wonderful that this one neighborhood in the largest borough of New York has so much pride and that it fights so hard to preserve its past for future generations.

We didn’t stay at the Historical Society for very long and ventured over to the area of Brooklyn known as Dumbo (Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) where we stopped for ice cream at the Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory before walking (and by walking, I mean power walking because leisurely strolling is just not Andrew’s style) around the Brooklyn Bridge Park, which is a park constructed atop of the no longer used piers that line Brooklyn’s waterfront.

Due to an obscenely long line, we skipped Grimaldi’s Pizzeria and headed further into Dumbo along Water Street.  We went into Jacques Torres‘s chocolate factory (oh the temptation, and oh the restraint I showed) and the Almondine Bakery (more restraint, but only because they don’t take credit cards and I honestly had two dollars in my wallet because I didn’t want to pay a withdrawl fee).  However, it was at the corner of Water Street and Main Street that Andrew and I had the most entertaining part of our day.

We made our way into the powerHouseArena bookshop, which was hosting the launch party for Paul Frank’s Academy of Awesomeness Mobile Tour.  It turns out that powerHouse publishes the book, Take Ivy, which was recently reprinted in 2008 to the delight of preppies up and down the East Coast, and they had it on sale for $8.70, down from the $24.95 that Andrew paid, so of course I had to buy it!  While there, we made our way up into the VIP area (because Andrew, who doesn’t drink, saw the bar and decided we needed to go there) where we ran into the self-annoited Queen and Queen of Brooklyn, Alex McCord (who I actually like) and Simon Van Kampen, with their children, John and François.  Andrew asked why I wasn’t photographing them, but I didn’t want to because I said they had their kids with them, and while they are getting beat up when they’re older for being given those names, I feel that they’re too young at the moment to exploit.  However, I will say that while Simon was nowhere to be seen unless there was a camera pointed at him, Alex actually looks like a great mother.  So after I bought the book and we stalked Silex for a few minutes, we thought it was time to leave, but as we’re walking out the door, who shows up in a black Escalade?  None other than permanent psych-ward resident Kelly Killoren Bensimon!  Now, as avid watchers of guilty pleasure number one, Los Veramentes Housewives di Nueva York (yes, that is what I honestly call the show), then y’all know that “kellamity” Kelly and Silex don’t exactly like each other, so we had to go see this clashing of Bravo divas in person.  Simon was really nowhere to be seen when Kelly and Alex had their civil,but clearly fake meeting.

Knowing that the island of Manhattan was momentarily free of crazies, Andrew and decided it was safe to return, and when you’re visiting Brooklyn for the first time, there’s only one way to return to the island and that’s via the Brooklyn Bridge.  It’s here I should mention that I was breaking in a pair of shoes that day and amazingly only had two blisters, but oh did my feet hurt at this point!  Also, I had broken my toe just a week earlier, so I probably shouldn’t have done as much walking as we did, and yet, we trekked onward.  There’s no really way to describe walking on the Brooklyn Bridge for the first time; it was surreal and remarkable to stand on a structure that is so engrained in the American psyche and I found myself speechless for so much of the journey across.  Andrew only gave me about ten seconds to stand and just take it all in, but in that time, I just looked at the beauty of the bridge, because it is beautiful, despite its roughness; underneath the surface there is a great story of triumph and success.

To sum things up about Brooklyn, I really can’t believe I waited so long to visit and while I know that there is so much more of this massive city that I have yet to discover, I think I’ve made a pretty good start.  Also, I’d like to thank my tour guide for the day, Andrew, who gave up a weekend in the Hamptons to show me around!  Until next time…

-JD

The Paris I Saw Was Not The Same As The One In “Midnight in Paris”

Last week, I went to the Vinegar Hill Theater in Charlottesville to see Woody Allen’s new movie, “Midnight in Paris.”  I know the movie came out in late May, but it’s better late then never!  Okay, so I loved it, but probably for the wrong reasons because for me, it was more about seeing Paris and less about the story that Woody Allen created around what is probably the most beautiful city on earth.

In case y’all have been in the Sahara for the last year,”Midnight in Paris” follows Hollywood writer Gil (Owen Wilson) and his new money fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), on their freeloading trip to Paris with Inez’s parents (Mimi Kennedy and Kurt Fuller).  Inez and her parents remind me of the cast of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.  I say this because only people from Beverly Hills would check Goyard luggage and bring multiple Birkin bags on one trip.

Gil goes out for a walk and ends up going back in time to the Paris of the 1920s, meeting Hemingway, Picasso, the Fitzgeralds, Gertrude Stein, and Dalí.  It’s an era that Gil feels was Paris at its best.  It’s at this point in the movie when I began to question why he was engaged to Inez, a Malibu-loving label whore whose mother is one of those women who thinks she has great taste and has turned herself into a decorator because she hast too much free time and nothing to do!  Inez is the exact opposite of Gil and it becomes quite clear that they have little in common and she really just with him because he’s rich.

All of that said, I loved the movie!  I thought it was Woody Allen at his best.  No, it wasn’t “Manhattan” or “Annie Hall,” which will forever be his greatest movies, but it was really quite amazing.  The way Allen shows Paris is just as magical as the way he shows New York in “Manhattan” as a character on its own, and it was just so enchanting that I’m ready to go back tonight (no really, instead of driving back to Virginia Beach for the 4th, I can just go straight to Dulles to catch the 21h50 flight to De Gaulle)!

Now, in my last note about the movie, I have to say that I read last year in the Daily Mail that Mme. Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, the prettiest spouse of a Head of State anywhere in the world, required thirty-five retakes before finally getting her scene right.  I thought she did a great job playing a tour guide at the Rodin Museum, regardless of the number of takes that were required.

Moving back to reality, the pair of J Brand raw denim jeans I bought finally made it up here to Charlottesville, courtesy of Annie, just in time for Grace’s birthday bash.  Now, maybe it was the heat that was messing with my brain, maybe it was the fact that I bought them very quickly (I tried them on because they had to be shortened), maybe it was because I had just had an interview, or because I had eight blisters with two more on the way because I was wearing my new pair of Tod’s, but these jeans are very slim-fitting!

Now, I’m not complaining because I love them and I wanted a pair of jeans that doesn’t have a label on my tuchus!  I’ve gone nearly seven years with everyone knowing that I wear 7 for all Mankind or AG Jeans because you can tell by the logo.  Even though my new jeans have a leather label on the back, my belt will hide the J Brand logo (I always wear a belt and I don’t understand why people don’t wear belts, especially if there are belt loops on their pants), so I have nothing to worry about now!  Plus, I was talking with my favorite Rollins graduate/fellow French class survivor, Tasleem, and she said that she only wears J Brand because they’re “The only brand that fits me well.”  That’s all I needed to hear, because as much as I loved that first pair of 7’s, these feel right.

Now, everyone who knows me now knows that I’m obsessed beyond all belief with Twitter after a few years of me refusing to accept Twitter as a normal social media tool.  Now, I think it’s brilliant!  Well, among the now seventy-five Twitter accounts I follow as of right now is Joshua Kushner, the younger brother of Ivanka Trump‘s husband, soon to be father and owner of the New York Observer Jared Kushner.  Unlike Jared, Joshua Kushner actually tweets things and on June 28th, he tweeted this video, which I watched at about 3h30 because I couldn’t sleep and it rocked my world:

This has to be the neatest thing I’ve EVER seen in my life!  I just can’t get over how amazing this is and I have to try this “liquid mountaineering.”  Thank you, Joshua Kushner, and Twitter for this amazing moment that has captivated me for the last few days!

Finally today, I have a major announcement to make.  After years of refusing to visit, I’m finally going to go somewhere I’ve never been before, even though I’ve had the chance to go so many times!  That’s right, 2011 is the year that both the New York Times and I discover BROOKLYN!  Andrew used to live and go to school in Brooklyn Heights, but I still never saw a reason to go across that bridge to see it.  Well, that changes this summer because this time next week, I’ll be back in Virginia Beach packing to spend the last six weeks of this summer, my last as an undergraduate, in New York, interning at Departures Magazine, the American Express Platinum and Centurion card member only magazine!  I’m so excited because it’s a magazine that I love to read and find to be not just entertaining, but interesting(Andrew says it’s his favorite magazine), and I just can’t wait to get there to start because all of the people there seem to actually enjoy their jobs!  And as an added bonus, Andrew is working two blocks from where I’m working, so we can get lunch on a regular basis!  Last summer, my lunch consisted of me in a Starbucks for thirty minutes.  This summer, I have so many options that I won’t know where to begin!  This might actually be the first time in my life that I genuinely love Midtown Manhattan, even though it’s full of tourists who walk at a glacial pace!

Getting back to talking about Brooklyn, I figured that with this being a year of trying new things (after all, I stood on an active volcano on the island of Sicily, toured vineyards in Bordeaux, went to a museum dedicated solely to medals given to the Republic of France, and managed to get wine back from Italy without changing the color of my clothing in the process), so I figured that if Brooklyn is good enough for the Times to re-discover, then it’s sure as hell good enough for me to see for the first time!

I’m going to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, see where Andrew went to school (oh yeah, Andrew, you’re going with me on this little journey to Brooklyn) and then that’s all I’ve got so far, but I am going to visit the Brooklyn Slate Company because I think their slate place mates are kind of neat (and can double as great shields during food fights).  Well, that’s all for now, but I wish y’all a Happy Fourth of July and until next time…

-JD