Empire State Hurricane

Stay safe, everyone.
   

Serious Eats: Silk Rd Tavern

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Silk Rd Tavern, a new Asian-American comfort food spot in the Flatiron [read more].

Whoopie Pies from Oak Grove Plantation

Sure, you can get the freshest fruits and vegetables at the Union Square Greenmarket, but you can also get creamy, goopy, moist whoopie pies. Sorry, waistline, but you lose again.
   

CBS New York: Five Best Dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for CBS New York. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

After extensive renovations, the American Museum of Natural History reopens the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial and Hall of North American Mammals today. In celebration, here are five of our favorite dioramas [read more].
   

Michael C. Hall + Kevin Dutton at the Rubin

What do psychopaths have to do with expert Buddhist monks? Good question, and one of the points that came up for discussion at the Rubin Museum's Happy Talk on Wednesday. This ongoing series brings together "experts and personalities" to talk about happiness --- and a few nights ago that included Dr. Kevin Dutton, who wrote a book about mad folks called The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success, and Michael C. Hall, who plays one on TV.

Like so many psychopaths, Hall's Dexter demonstrates a shrewdness or sensitivity to weakness / vulnerability, as well as an ability to stay cool under pressure, one trait that Hall would like to steal from his fictional alter ego. But we all tend to envy psychopaths for their "don't care" attitude. They stay in the moment, demonstrating both a remarkable focus (just like Buddhists!) and ability to fixate on positive, rather than negative, outcomes. They are attuned to others (just like Buddhists!) They are decisive. They are goal-oriented. Super confident, they aren't interested in what others think about them or in manifesting social norms. One of the goals of Dutton's book is to help people understand that psychopathology exists on a spectrum --- and that not all psychopaths are crazy or own a henley-based kill suit.

Hall more than held his own, asking probing questions and thinking deeply about what it means to play a killer who's getting more human as the show goes on. He noted that the main reason Dexter has stubble isn't because Dexter hates the possibility of cutting himself, as Hall told the writers and producers, but because Hall was sick of shaving every day after years of being clean-shaven on Six Feet Under. And his best days on set? "I'm never more free or light than after I pretend to kill someone."

Photo: thanks
     
  

CBS New York: A Guide to NYC's 10 National Parks

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for CBS New York. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

Of the 22 national parks in New York State, 10 are in NYC. Here's a look at them [read more].
 

Autumn at Storm King

More here.

CBS New York: Iconic Drinks

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for CBS New York. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.
  

  
Bottoms up! At these five places, you'll drink fame and history and fizz [read more].
  

Serious Eats: Alice's Arbor

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Alice's Arbor, a locavore's destination in Bed-Stuy, where we found leftovers from Jim Henson's workshop [read more].
  
  

CBS New York: NYC's Five Best Places to Get Dessert for Dinner

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for CBS New York. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there. 

One of the great pleasures of adulthood has been discovering restaurants that serve dessert for dinner. Here are our five favorites [read more].
   

The American Scream at Nitehawk

Do you use "haunt" as a noun? You will after seeing The American Scream, playing this weekend at Nitehawk. The documentary follows three families in Fairhaven, Massachusetts, as they turn their homes and yards into elaborate haunted houses for Halloween. While the movie touches lightly on the thriving subculture of "home haunts," its real focus is on the significance of these haunted houses for the people building them --- one a perfectionist with professional haunting ambitions who is making up for a childhood deprived of Halloween, another a recent convert who sees it mostly as an amusing pastime, and a third a social misfit who uses it as a way of bonding with his father. More fascinating than frightening, it's a window into a world with dark and mysterious corners.
   

OHNY: GallopNYC

Until this year's Open House New York weekend, we'd never heard of therapeutic horseback riding, so our visit to GallopNYC was a mini-education. The mostly volunteer organization works with developmentally and physically disabled children and adults, advancing their cognitive, emotional, and physical abilities through horsemanship. This was GallopNYC's first year in OHNY, and the volunteers could not have been any nicer or more informative --- if you're near the south end of Prospect Park on the weekend, stop by.
 

CBS New York: Five Fun Ways to See Fall Foliage in NYC

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for CBS New York. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there. 

The easiest way to see leaves is to find a copse or thicket and look up. But where's the fun in that? Here  are five original ways to take in the fall foliage [read more].
  

Bottino

What do you think, readers? Do these sandwiches look good? For time has rendered them more ephemeral than they were one day a few weeks ago. Atop, bresaola and pecorino; at bottom, prosciutto and asiago. In the middle, we two, a sunny day in Hudson River Park, and takeaway from Bottino. And that's how memories are made. 

Nawa Kohei's PixCell-Deer #24 at the Met

Nawa Kohei begins with a taxidermied deer, then covers the animal in what he calls “PixCell” beads, a term that combines “cell” and “pixel.” On view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, this particular work reflects and refracts whatever comes near, while rendering a quiet, sensitive magical creature even more so.

Serious Eats: Vin et Fleurs

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for Serious Eats. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there.

This week's Date Night finds us at Vin et Fleurs, a guidebook-approved French restaurant in Soho [read more].
  

Mission Chinese

It's still early and, well, no one's asked us, but we're certain that the kung pao pastrami at Mission Chinese will rank high among our top bites of 2012. Maybe even the decade. Oh, yeah, it's that effin good, a complete and utter reinvention of the kung pao chicken so many of us grew up eating, a sweet, salty, spicy surprise, and an excellent example of what comes out of Danny Bowien's kooky kitchen.

Yes, the lines are long at Mission Chinese, but they're worth it. Totally, completely, can-we-please-come-back-tomorrow worth it. The Lower East Side restaurant specializes in what Bowien has termed "Americanized Oriental food." There's fried rice with salt cod, mapo tofu with pork shoulder, salt & pepper shrimp with fennel, the familiar rendered un- thanks to new ingredients. Going to a (overly) hyped restaurant and discovering that it deserves every lick of attention warms our jaded blogging hearts.

Buried beneath the scallions below were Sichuan pickles, and they were fine fine fine, but not as good as the dan dan noodles (bottom). At first, their coolness simply complimented the pastrami, providing a respite from the other dish's insane spice-a-thon. Over time, though, as the peanut sauce soaked into the meaty yuba (tofu skin), as the preserved mustard stems and pea leaves spread about the buckwheat noodles, this dish began elbowing the pastrami aside, demanding its share of the spotlight. We'll just stop off at Home Depot on the way home, and buy a few more bulbs. A massive spotlight, big enough for this and those and so much more, might make the world a happier place.

s[ace

CBS New York: NYC's Five Best Microtheaters

Hey everyone, we're also writing about New York for CBS New York. Periodically we'll link to content here that we produced there. 

Microtheaters are the off-off-off-off-Broadway of movie theaters. You won't find the latest Disney release or jumbo-sized sodas, but if you're looking for an edgy film (or a historic curiosity, like the nineteenth-century cat boxing movie above) in an intimate setting, check out these five great microtheaters [read more].