This place was very good. I had the flank steak with potato purée. Jame had the olive/onion/tomato/caper salsa underneath striped bass with tail-fin to boot. She won, although both were delicious. Best part was the chocolate souffle with carmelized bananas. I could’ve eaten 3 of those. Also, top 5 mojito I’ve ever tasted. Garnished with sugar cane so you know that it’s made with the real stuff. One of the most pleasant qualities of the place is that it was very non pretentious. Grandpa tourists in shorts can feel just as welcome as a hipster art gallery owner. It was a little pricey, but no worse than any other restaurant of it’s caliber. The service was a little slow, but not due to the waitress. I think they were a little understaffed. If nothing else, I’d go back for the souffle alone.

_j

It was a kick to see Kermit and Rolf the Dog. Interesting to see all of the sketches and storyboards Henson produced while creating all of the characters. Couple things I didn’t know about him were that he was a legit cartoonist and graphic designer to say the least, he made a short art film that’s worth looking at, and his first Muppet-like characters appeared in TV commercials. I was a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see a real life Big Bird costume or Animal, the crazy drummer Muppet, but overall the exhibit exceeded my expectations.

Check and see if and when the tour stops in a town near you. It’s a quick exhibition, takes a little over an hour. If you go, I’d download the podcast audio tour first. It’s free and it definitely enhances the experience.

_j

My lovely fiancée, Jamie, had the daunting task of hauling our 2 cats across the country on a 7 hour plane ride. These cat’s don’t travel well. They freak out on a 4 minute car ride to the vet. Dealing with them on a 7 hour flight stuffed underneath an airplane seat was apparently nothing short of a nightmare. The sedatives started to wear off about 2 hours into the flight. What ensued was incessant yelping, writhing and thrashing like rabid hyenas, trying to rip their way out of their canvas carriers. To add to this creepy, exorcist-like behavior, the cats still had a heavy dosage of the tranquilizer pumping through them. So their 3rd eyelid would creep up, they would pant heavily and phase in and out of consciousness all the while trying to rip through canvas and mesh confining them. Luckily, Jamie’s wonderful friend Gretchen was with her for moral support. Gretchen did what she could to keep Jame calm and feed her champagne, but this did little to distract from the situation. Thankfully the 4 of them made it, but not without mental and physical bruises and scars for all parties involved. And now that they’ve had a couple of days to decompress from this traumatic event, that cats are back to their loving ways (see picture above).

_j

First of all, if you’re clostraphobic, I hope you’ve never gotten stuck in the herd that completely clogs the corridor before and after a sell out game. It’s obvious that the original architecture was not meant to hold 55,000 fans. The hallways are narrow, the ceiling is about six and a half feet tall, and everything around you is solid concrete. It feels like you’re in a cave. After fighting my way through the mosh pit in the corridor for 20 minutes, I make it to my seat. My over priced ticket is 20 rows from the field, but it seems like 60. As opposed to the modern ball parks, there seemed to be little regard for fan proximity to the players in the layout of the seats. Speaking of fans, they aren’t the friendliest of folks. They don’t seem to enjoy cheering for Yankees success as much as they do booing their team for it’s mishaps. I try to start a conversation with the disgruntled patron sitting to my right. He’s not much of a talker, except of coarse when Oakland gets a hit, at which point he stands and yells a string of expletives. His 8 year old son sits quietly in his seat looking scared to death. Luckily the ornery fan likes beer because he drinks 6 of them by the middle of the 4th and falls asleep in his seat before the 5th. His 8 year old son sits quietly in his seat looking scared to death.

So what do I think of Yankee Stadium? It’s stuffy and crowded. The seats sprawl far back from the field. The fans are scary. There’s no extraneous entertainment like you see at the new Disneyland baseball parks that they build today. There’s nothing glamorous about the place at all. In a word, it’s spectacular. As soon as you walk through the turnstile it’s evident that there’s no reason to be here unless you genuinely enjoy watching baseball. I love watching baseball. It’s a shame I only get to watch one game in Yankee Stadium.

_j