Intermission: Adventures outside the concert hall

TSR's New York Wrap-Up continues with some tranches de vie:

- How awesome is it that Mlle S- gets to introduce thousands of people every day to some of Picasso's and Lichtenstein's most noteworthy achievements, via her writings on the MoMA walls? Late one afternoon, after the crushing crowds had dispersed, I had the distinct pleasure of being led through the new MoMA by Mlle S-, who showed me some of her favorite spots and vistas. This was a very short visit, only an hour and a half or so, and barely enough time to walk through the 5th & 4th floors—the Painting & Sculpture permanent collection through the '60s—without dilly-dallying. (Click here for a detailed description of the P&S galleries, PDF.) As Felix Salmon has pointed out, the place requires a whole lotta time spread out over repeat visits. Knowing that, my desire this time was only to get a sense of the building, and to remind myself that those 2D images we see reprinted in books and digitized on the web have only the slightest of relationships to these works in real-life. Back when I worked in midtown, I could slip away to MoMA at lunchtime just to peer at some Callahan photos for a half-hour, or to listen to some Andriessen and look at Brawdway Boogie Woogie at the same time. People often ask, what do you miss most about New York? Well, there you have it in a nutshell.

- Recently I hit a point in my life where I decided, you know, I think it's time to make the investment and get some shirts that truly fit. No more of this "well, the sleeves are close enough if I sort of shove them up a bit" business; I'm sick of it. It's not even that I have to wear dress shirts all the time. It's just that when I do, I hate feeling like a misshapen schlub. So, while poking around the Web for custom shirtmakers, I came across this:

Brooks Brothers Digital Tailoring is a new technology that creats a three-dimensional map of your entire body. The map is created from a scan that captures over 200,000 data points, rendering your exact measurements--everything from the circumference of wrists, biceps, chest and neck, to the slope of shoulders and the curve of a seat. These measurements are sent by secure, encrypted digital code to the site where your clothing will be made.  The result is a great fitting custom-made garment, precisely tailored to your body's unique contours and specific proportions.

First, I should say that I'm decidedly not a Brooks Brothers sort of guy. But this was intriguing, in a sci-fi sort of way! (Fredösphere, are you listening?) So I tramped down to 44th & Madison (the only store where they have the DT equipment), went up to the 4th floor, and headed for the back corner where there was a large plasma screen showing a looped DT animation with a little digitized guy spinning around. After some inquiries to find someone who could explain the DT, I was sad to learn that I could only be digitized if I actually ordered something. But I was nonetheless able to convince the salesman to allow me entry into The Chamber.
    It all happened so fast I can't remember all the details, but I recall a dressing-room sized box with dark grey carpeting on the walls. I was told I would be given biking shorts, and was positioned on two footprints on the ground. Two handles with articulated extensions protruded from the grey walls, and I gripped them with my hands and arms slightly away from my body. There was a bright white pinpoint of light on the wall ahead of me at eye level, and I was told to stare at the light. If I had been digitized, I'm told there would have been 12 seconds of flashing lights—and I would have emerged back on the Enterprise! When I came out of The Chamber, the salesguy showed me the digitized image of his previous customer, a very lumpy man with 33.67" sleeves and a 15.43" collar. I'm no more inclined to shop at Brooks Brothers, but it certainly was good cheap fun.

- Mlle T-, my longtime partner in gustatory exploration, met up with me on 1st and 10th or so for some pork buns and ramen at Momofuku. I'll agree with this review: buns were tasty! Ramen broth was one-dimensional, though welcomed anyway as respite from the wet snow. But the real fun came around the corner on 10th btwn 1st and 2nd, where we desserted at Chikalicious, a "dessert bar." Our bouches were amused with lemon ice cream atop lemongrass jelly, which was followed by hot apple pudding with creme anglaise. We finished up with a plate of petits fours, including one wonderfully delicate marshmallow! The milk for our coffees came in adorable little cube-like one-serving pitchers on saucers. The whole experience was so damn precious that it would have been nauseating—if it hadn't tasted so good.

- Attention, Bloggers: BREAKING NEWS! Did you know that Alex Ross from the New Yorker has a web log?!? Let's just say that I witnessed a room full of performing arts professionals dutifully scribbling down double-u double-u double-u dot the rest is noise dot com as The Place the Young People Go to Learn about New Music. There was also much accompanying wonderment that Young People have heard of the New Yorker. I could go on at length about this, but I will make just one plea: I would like us all to re-evaluate what we mean when we use the term "Young People." Are we really talking about a specific demographic? Or are we maybe using that as an easy way to say, "People who are younger (and therefore less accomplished/knowledgeable/etc.) than I am"? Because perhaps that condescension is part of the problem.

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If you've gotten this far, you may be interested to know that I've added a new feature to TSR. Inspired by aworks and The Rambler, I have started a del.icio.us account—essentially a constantly updated collection of interesting links, but if you explore a bit you'll find it's much more flexible than just that. It's posted in the sidebar under Tasty Miscellany, but if you access TSR through an RSS feed reader, you can find my del.icio.us feed here. Enjoy!

UPDATE: Ugh. Though the del.icio.us feed is still working, there's a bug in the service that takes the feed and puts it in the sidebar. Sorry about that and the slow loading.

UPDATE 2: Tasty Miscellany is temporarily disabled.