Mangu on my mind

A new restaurant has just opened in my neighborhood. Not that its big news; there are many that open every other month but are eventually doomed to failure. There was this one restaurant, a jamaican coffee shop type place which never even saw day one and the place was set to open, with furnishings and food. Next thing I know, the place has a for rent sign up front. The Korean restaurant which my wife and I were excited about at first, bombed after 3 months (in just the third month, a sign was put up declaring "under new management").

I don't want to make conclusions but I believe a big reason certain type of restaurants don't do as well is due to the make up of the community. We have a large jewish community where I live and I've noticed that many of the restaurants have made accomadations to jewish beliefs making the bigogi and jerk chicken kosher. Not that it helps any since no one patronized the places. We also had an Indian restaurant. It didn't do so well closing after a year in business. Guess what does well here? Bagel shops and kosher steak houses. Don't want to sound like Michael Richards or Mel Gibson here but its an unspoken truth here.

There was recently some flack that the community was insisting that we have a Starbucks added to the main street. They have been interested in opening a store in our community for some time. A store owner who had a corner spot refused to rent to Starbucks feeling that they weren't paying him enough for the spot so instead it was given to a kosher butcher shop (we have 2 other kosher butcher shops on our main strip already).

So now we have a new latino restaurant that opened about a month ago. Passing by I can smell the food and my mouth is watering. I won't have to drive across to Manhattan anymore for estafodo de carne, mofongo or habichuelas con arroz.

There isn't an mangu on the menu yet but I told the owner to make sure to add quezo frito as well. The only complaint he's gotten from customers was that the service was poor (due to lack of staff). Dude! Get some waiters in there!! I can't let this place close down on me as well otherwise its back to eating kosher take out.

Seperated at Birth?

It seems to me ever since Jessica Alba arrived on the scene that all these entertainment news correspodents started to look alike, have the letter "M" promiment in their names, and have similar features like Jessica. For some reason or another you can't place exactly what their nationality is. Here are three:

Maria Menounos from Access Hollywood, one of the first out there ethnic girls (from Greece)




Vanessa Minillo also from ET; known for making herself feel better for sympathazing with overweight people by being rejected by hot guys when wearing a fat suit.



Mayleen Ramey from Yahoo Talent Show; aspiring hard to place ethnicity anchorwoman.

Lovely Rita

I rented the Best of the Electric Company DVD from my library. I really enjoyed this show growing up as a kid. There weren't too many latin faces that people could relate to when you were a kid. Its not like today where you have Dora the Explorer but even that is watered down. There was always Maria and that Mexican guy who were on Sesame Street but I they were too white washed for me. I enjoyed watching Luis Avelo and of course Rita Moreno who loved to camp it up on the show. I used to also watch Carascolendas and Villa Alegre which sadly, there is no existence of on the Web.

Getting back to the Electric Company, it definetely brought back alot of memories watching those episodes seeing Easy Reader, J Arthur Crank, Letterman (as in "Letter Man") but to be quite honest with you, the real reason I took out the DVD was to watch Rita Moreno.

I had this huge crush on her when I was growing up as a kid. To me, she was the first puerto rican hottie I ever saw. Looking back when she played the goldilocks character named Pandora on the show, that was pretty kinky (I wonder if she ever dressed up that way for her husband???). There's this one part where she does a song and dance number as Tina Turner in a mini skirt with the Short Circus , remember them? Looking back now, I can imagine there were alot of dads who also tuned in to that show. "Joo know wadda mean?"

ET the 'tard

So what do you on a quiet Sunday night when you can't go anywhere and you're taking care of the kid?

You watch Robot Chicken on Youtube (my new buddy)of course!

CDs of the week

This is something I wanted to start waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay back when I first started this blog. Since I've been listening to so much music on a weekly basis, I was hoping to throw in my two cents on some of the stuff I've been listening to lately.

Here's a few of this weeks CDs:

Paul Weller, Illumination: Gave it a whirl while driving with my daughter. She was crying of course so couldn't really appreciate it. I was listening to his latest album at Borders which really had some kick ass tracks so I figured it couldn't hurt to pick this album up. For the most part, it was ok. He's more popular in the UK and I can see why since there are many UK related themes in his music (somewhat similar to Morrisey in my opinion). He gets good when he gets soulful but apart from that, I can only say I can only recommend two songs off this album to load to my Ipod.

Under the Influence of Giants: Again, at Borders happened to hear a few tracks. See the shit about Borders is that they prick tease you with a small snippet of a song and your immediately hooked. So after a few tracks I"m kinda noticing this album sounds way too "Scissor Sisterly" like for my taste. Not that I have anything against the Scissor Sisters. I think they're a pretty good group (anyone willing to do a discofied version of Comfortably Numb and pull it off gets a big plus in my book). The problem is that they're not as good. The opening track has a good hook but it sorta goes downhill from there. One song only going to the Ipod (actually not at all since the one song I actually liked was scratched on the #$#%^ CD!!)

Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Says I Am, That's What I'm Not: Heard alot about this group not knowing much about them and not sure what exactly to expect. I can only say they're a mix of Sex Pistols meets Ramones meets Oasis meets Nirvana which I guess doesn't help out much since punk is punk (ok don't jump down my throat for that oversimplification!!) I suppose if you're 15-18 and you've never heard any punk type music on the radio, you may be thinking this is the most original hardest shit in the world. I can't say I can add any of these songs to my Ipod. I think I'll add the real stuff instead. I think I'm started also to show my age...

Cat Power You Are Free: Kinda dissapointed in this CD. Heard people preaching about Cat Power aka Chan Marshall and found nothing appealing in any of the tracks. Guess not my style. Here's a performance of her with the Flaming Lips (one of my favorite new bands to date) doing Black Sabbath's War Pigs on Austin City Limits (one of the best shows still around).



As you can see, who in the hell would play acoustic guitar on War Pigs. So sad. She deserves no tracks on my Ipod.

The Allen Parsons Project, Best of: The only song I know of there's is Eye in The Sky. I was suprised to know that Allen Parson's doesn't even sing on any of the songs. He's kinda like a Mic Fleetwood who sits behind a drum kit but the band is named Fleetwood Mac. Some good 70s tunes like "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You," "Games People Play," and "Time." Definetly takes you back but for some reason, I'm resisting placing any of these songs on my Ipod. I guess I have feeling that one good listen is enough and will get tired of them quickly as I got tired of hearing the Best of War on my Ipod.

That's it for now. Guess not much is making to the pod unlike last week. I leave you with this lovely Snippet of Dr. Evil. Till next time.

Lazy Sunday off of Youtube

Sometimes you can't bite the hand that feeds it.

Apparentely the powers that be decided a "cease and desist" was in order when Lazy Sunday was forced to be removed from Youtube some while back. Here's a link to to other material that has been banned from the site. So dumb.

According to Boing Boing NBC has decided to show it exclusively on their own site which I check out. I guess the main problem is that unlike Youtube (and other sites that have popped recently to bank on the popularity) is that it doesn't provide you with code so you can actually have the video be viewable on your blog or to any other site.

For those few sheltered from the outside world who have never seen "Lazy Sunday", you can catch it here.

You can still of course go to YouTube and see lots of other "LS" take offs, some actually funnier than the original that spawned them.

Check this one out. I can't believe they actually got away with this one on primetime!

Sad daddy

So here I am in the Garden State Mall hanging in the Apple Store marveling over this MacBook. I so wish I wasn't so broke. I so miss working on my Imac. I've been subjugagted to working in a PC envorinment for close to a year working through arcane root directories, antiquated software, and system crashes that never end. I've been in left in charge of Julianna in exchange for being left to roam around the store ogling over items that I can't afford.

I'm kinda like the kid whose left in the toy store and refuses to break away from the latest action figure after stariing at it for the past hour.

Gotta tend to the baby, She started crying.

Laterz.

Julianna

So here is my daughter, Julianna. In this video she's about 1 month old. My wife was giving a play by play analysis as you can hear in the dialogue.

Bowie on SNL

I always wanted to view David Bowie's performance on SNL when he did TVC15. I always loved Station to Station. That album has so many great tracks on it. By luck I happened to stumble across this performance.

Two interesting things to note.

1. Klaus Nomi appears in this performance as one of Bowie's back up singers. Short synopsis: Klaus Nomi was a performance artists in Germany known for his operatic singing style and amazing falsetto. Some people may not take his singing seriously due to the choice of songs he's covered ("Ding, Dong, The Witch is Dead" from "The Wizard of Oz" for starters).

2. The other singer appearing in red was unknown to me till now. Taking a closer look, I was suprised to see that it was Joey Arias, a NYC-based performance artist who is for a better lack of term "been there done that" kinda of a person. I've seen him several times at Wigstock doing Billie Holiday. Pretty amazing stuff.

Enjoy.

Not even the beginning of summer and its freakin hot as heck. I never could understand why people stay in their homes in this heatwave. I guess most people have central air and don't have to worry if their lawns wilt or if their pets pass out while they're chained up barking at each car that passes by their property pleading perhaps in their own canine language to put them out of their misery.

I have a ceiling fan but hell if I know if I know how to use that thing. All it does is make a bunch of noise in this stifling heat.

I would go to the mall to stay cool but hey, guess what? Nothing is opened in Bergen County. So pretty much you're stuck in your house. Damn, I miss checking out the hotties in their short mid riff skirts and with all their piercings walking down the avenue in Queens dressed like their clubbing when they're actually doing their grocery shopping.

Another day in paradise.