Compulsories

I have to post the link to the Vancouver Sun piece about how dressage is putting Olympic spectators to sleep, because it makes exactly the same comparison some of Sunflake's friends and I made this weekend (in a Chelsea cafe, over carafes of wine and a plate of cheese, if you want to get particular): that the dressage portion of three-day eventing is the moral equivalent of compulsory figures in ice skating. Remember when figures were part of the scoring? You'd see some fantastic short routine from Midori Ito, and then the commentators would croon that it was just too bad, she'd done such a good job on her axels but since she'd switched edges in a figure 8 the day before, she couldn't do better than fifth, and people would howl with disgust. Likewise dressage, an engrossing sport to practice but, for most non-horse people and even a generous share of the equine-inclined, a deathly boring one to watch. It lacks the sex appeal of cross-country or stadium jumping, although of the three days you're least likely to do yourself an injury on the first.

The NYC weekend o' skiving, somewhat shortened by traffic around the beach, Delaware, and the Virgin Festival, was good fun. The weather permitted my favorite sport, the 12-hour aimless saunter, so we wandered about chatting and visiting cafes, markets, monuments, shops, stalls, and resto-bars. Pinkberry seems to have paved the way for yogurt-flavored gelato to make it big in the city, and our stop at Cones, an Argentine-style gelateria in the Village, balanced out my disappointment that Rocco's was closed for the week. Mixed-berry and yogurt gelatos (gelati?) mushed together for the late-night-snack win.

Working out is good for your braaaaaains

"Bring a yoga mat and intestines." Cannot...resist...savasana...joke!

Just be sure to remember the basic hierarchy.

Same city, different day

How do I love thee, Manhattan? Well, to be frank I love thee a little less when it's warm and humid, because your perfume, she is not so fabulous. The fougere of hot dog water with a base of fermenting trash and exhaust, touched with pungent notes of exotic dried seafood...it's bold, don't get me wrong, but it's maybe a bit much, yes?

But olfactory issues aside, NYC remains my favorite place to meander around, finding things strange and wonderful (Munchies Paradise, Edge*nyNOHO), strange and disturbing (9/11 commemorative socks? bu yao), familiar and caloric (hail, Via Brasil, to your inky black beans and their symbiotic partner, a vicious caipirinha), and, of course, expensive and alluring. Oh, Tom SoHung's full-skirted black cashmere coat with the wicked vampy collar and zebra-print lining, ours is a forbidden love. We musn't, darling, it would be so wrong.

Perhaps the oddest thing we saw was a tour group being led into (and just as quickly out of) Rocco's Pastry. The place has been there since 1974, which you wouldn't think qualified it as a historical landmark, but it's evidently enough of a neighborhood institution to have made the bus lists. As La Mère, Seesterperson, and I were resting our tired feets and recharging with some of Rocco's finest on Sunday, we spotted a guide hectoring his ducklings just outside the door. He then brought them in, led them up and down the pastry counter, herded them away from the tables, handed each a miniature cannoli, and briskly fussed them out again. What the hell? What kind of fun is that? You take me into a famous bakery, just you git out the way and let me ogle the options before I pick summat my own self. Obviously not all of us can hack the tour.

Now that the temperature is dropping in DC, we're all breathing a sigh of relief. The speed with which it's falling makes me a little nervous, on account of Doc acts like a Sugar Smacked toddler when it gets cool, and while frisking around all colt-like is very fine in its place, he's a 1200-pound beast and his gambols carry some weight. We will have to talk about restraint, and, probably, will do some extra running around to let him feel his oats. It's nice to know what to expect, at least. Last night when I went in for dressage, he was being tacked up for a different lesson; his manners are too good for him to walk off while he's being groomed, but his head came up and his nostrils widened, so I patted him and promised him an apple after he got done. His affections can't necessarily be bought, but they can certainly be swayed.

Further nattering about the wonders of New York

I cannot do justice to the weekend's happy times in NYC in a coherent text post. Herewith the highlights instead.

• The Shanghai Joe's [ETA: D'oh, it's Joe's Shanghai] waitress who greeted every customer with the same question: "You need some dumpling for start off?" Oh, hon...always.
  
• The weather. September in New York is the city at some sort of platonic ideal.
  
• Street markets. Everywhere. With puppies! And a jewelry vendor who accused me of taking advantage of her mental exhaustion following Rosh Hashanah! And free samples of organic lavender shea butter from Brooklyn! And food that would have looked delicious had I not been full of dumplings and pastries from...
• Rocco's Bakery. I've gone there since I was a wee lil moppet, seeing three or four different redecorations, throughout which the counter crew of streetwise Sicilian kids and their realm of confectionery goodness have remained unchanged.
  
• Negotiating the East Village, with my usual quota of wrong turns (I swear, the place spins my mental compass like a ship's in the Triangle), to finally meet up with SerialKarma and her coterie of fangirls, for beers and a slice and very disturbing references to childhood books.
  
• Finally, after a lapse of 20 years, having yuk hwe again. Kunjip serves it with jicama (or maybe it's pears) and shreds of a deceptively innocent-looking green pepper that tried to remove my lips. Good thing there were panchan dishes and rice and pancakes and bulgogi and ginger tea.
• Pinkberry! Please export this chain to DC as soon as possible; I would sacrifice the city's half-assed creperies for access to Pinkberry's delicious sour-sweet frozen yogurt.
• Herr Professor's cooking. What that man does with tofu scramble and bean sprouts to make them taste so much like chorizo hashbrowns and french toast and perfect bacon must be black magic known only to the initiates.
• Finally, and not least by any stretch of the imagination, getting reacquainted with Herr Professor and Weebat. As glad as I am that the internets have allowed us to maintain a friendship through a set of unregulated tubes, it's a great pleasure to have real face time with them. Vote for Santa, you two; vote for Santa.
  

The streets are paved with diamonds

Honestly, if it weren't for (a) the reek in the summer, (b) the frigid winters, and (c) the incredible expense, New York would be the perfect city. I love it here when the weather is perfect and I'm not having to scramble for my daily bread. Infinite numbers of places to eat, random things to overhear ("I am the tai chi paper hander-outer, whoooosh!"), and stores to visit. I still can't figure out how exactly I found my way to the only all-Irish bar in Koreatown, but at least now I am up on the British position in the rankings of the rugby world championships. My next stop was a comic books store encountered a few storefronts down: I walked in, nearly keeled over from the boy energy, and grabbed a staffer to guide me to the Whedon section, after which it was easier to get my bearings. The hard part, as always, is getting out without deciding that you must have the Terry and the Pirates book or the 15 editions of Stardust ("Look, this one has Neil and Maddy in!") or a stack of Bunny Suicides postcards. I managed.

Seesterperson's bout last night drew a huge crowd, most of them noisy Bridge and Pummel supporters. The score was against them, so I hope that they were consoled somewhat by the WOWHOT New York Shock Exchange demo bout. Tall athletic lanky guys smacking into one another at high speeds, oh for teh win. We had a great time even before we spent 45 minutes in the Newark-Penn Station's tiny dark bar.

Off to hunt the wily dim sum brunch. Did I mention loving New York?

Tick tock, minions, TICK FRIGGIN TOCK

Don't mind me, we're just having a minor meltdown in the office and I'm trying to look as though it doesn't bother me at all, nope, just competently getting stuff done and it'll all be fine. Panic is contagious. It's disconcerting to realize that I have, at some undetermined point in the past, developed a reputation as the calm person, since inside my head it's the opposite. There's a Christopher Fry line I can't get quite right, about someday bursting the bud of sanity and blossoming into hysteria, that would be exquisitely appropriate if I could just remember it. Ah well.

Doc and I spent quality time on Monday, and now my entire lower back is a solid piece of pain. The erector spinae muscles are also not amused. Bareback work is fantastic for balance and communication, but it can be a workout and a half. A cantering horse, especially one like Doc, with his patented rocking lope, is moving around a lot, so you need to coordinate a bunch of body parts to stay in place; having no stirrups to help the endeavor makes it that much tricker. Perversely, riding's benefit as a workout declines as a rider improves, but clearly I have not reached that point. At dressage this evening, it will be a challenge not to grumble, "To hell with getting the horse supple; I need someone to supple me first."

Weebat, Seesterperson, and I are engaged in the delicate maneuvers involved in ensuring that multiple different groups can get to and from the bout this Friday. The rink is only a few blocks from a New Jersey subway stop, but packed into those blocks is a tremendous level of urban scary, plus there aren't many great dining options in the neighborhood (although I fell a little bit in love with the bar that hung a Mother's Day brunch sign next to its PBR neon), so we're working out the dance of the automobiles and other mass transit options. I am dreadful at this sort of thing and tend to get very dictatorial—"Everybody! Show up at X point at 0Whatever hours! Dissssss-MISS!"—which works only when there are sufficient transit options available to all parties. I am thrilled that so many people are planning to come out, though, and at hearing that the weather is supposed to be stupid gorgeous over the weekend. Strolling around Manhattan in glorious sunshine, absorbing UV rays and delicious high-calorie treats at roughly equal rates, is one of my favorite things to do ever. When I read the Idle Words line about Hong Kong—"I could easily imagine myself living there for good, puffing my way up and down the hills, slowly turning into a sphere of radius R, uniformly filled with dim sum"—I had to laugh, because that's exactly how I feel about New York.

Too much sameness is a fearsome thing

Apropos of Seesterperson's recent snugglings with a Seaside Heights lobstah lovah, and because everybody who has ever gone into a vague trance while listening to NPR ought to read it, I give you the wonderful, plausible, but as far as I know fictional account of events in one of New York's livelier districts. Ladies and generalmen, Paul Ford's "Chinatown."

Not convinced by that teaser? Fine, fine, you philistines and ingrates, take a sample paragraph.

"All we, the crowd, can see are kicking legs as the lobster holds her with his claw, eyestalks waving wildly. Men faint, knocking over stacks of cardboard boxes with a splash. Women scream. The daughter's mother runs to the lobster, but is thrown away. The father begs the lobster to relinquish his daughter. The lobster begins to scuttle to the river. The girl is screaming. Unless something happens, she will spend the rest of her life as a lobster-bride under the bridges. He will take her out to the bay and scuttle up to Maine, where he will rule as lobster king with her as his unwilling bride. It is a life of incredible suffering."

Everything looks beautiful

I sing the open market electric today, because my ticket to New York cost $20. Competition from the mysterious Chinatown bus system (where do they pick you up? where do they stop? will you be allowed to pay only once? answers hazy and variable) has evidently forced Greyhound/Peter Pan to match rates, and that's a good thing. Also excellent, and almost balancing out the DC bus station's inexcusable lack of coffee, was that the bus VCR rebelled at the thought of having to show a Robin Williams family comedy, so I was spared the bowdlerized "RV" and was able to catch some sleep on the way up.

The reason for the trip, of course, was to see Seesterperson in her team's first official bout. She was understandably nervous but said that she was focusing on her two goals: not puking, and not being obviously the worst person on the team. Everyone in her cheering section was pleased to see that she managed both of those, and the fact that the team won was icing on the cake. I was with one of her college friends and one of his acting friends, both of whom were good company and who cheered mightily for Seesterperson and the teams (we golf-clapped for the opposition, except that at the end we whooped for them too, because they skated their asses off even though they were severely short of players). College friend was completely thrilled with the event, swearing that it was like NASCAR except understandable and performed by tough chicks in miniskirts and/or short shorts, developments he favored. He's got a pretty good write-up of it, too.

Saturday morning I crassly abandoned Seesterperson and took the bus into the city to meet up with Serial Karma, who trekked allll the way in from Brooklyn just so that we could have brunch and I could realize that I forgot the picture of the hot tangoing guys I bought her in Buenos Aires. D'oh. We wandered around Chelsea/Hell's Kitchen for a bit and found a street table at Marseille, a French-Moroccan place that provided (a) excellent strange cocktails, (b) a phenomenal merguez-egg scramble with creme fraiche, and (c) a view of someone who might or might not have been Larry David across the street. I am surprisingly good at spotting people I know in New York and usually bad at spotting the famous, so kudos to her for being a sharp eye. She's also looking awesome and had gotten some catcalls on the way in. She gave high marks to the guy who simply said, "You're beautiful," because simple and sincere is best when you're complimenting a stranger. Take note, y'all.

Aaand in a little less than a week Doc and I are supposed to do a reining demo for the barn's amateur show. This will not be rodeo quality by any stretch of the imagination, because we can't do sliding stops, the boy is a little too old to be perfectly supple, and I'm not much of a trainer, but we should get to show off rollbacks and spins and, most fun of all, flying lead changes, which Doc seems to adore showing off. I will not be nervous. I won't. I...shit.