Since Mexico

Somedays you wake up and realize you haven't blogged for a month and a half because you blogged so hard a month and a half ago. So let's start getting a little caught up on what's happened since Mexico.

I had a two day layover in Chicago on my way back to New York. Among other things, we celebrated Columbus Day, went to the Vienna Beef Hot Dog factory restaurant (a true museum of real Chicago culture), ate tacos and a torta right after that, and I booped the nose of a deer statue.

I got back to New York just in time to go to lunch with Eliza and Andrew, who both happened to be in town, and to sit in on an important business meeting Andrew had. And to take Andrew to spend $50 on next to nothing at Atla.

There was a church thing where I was supposed to take everyone's picture, but then the orders changed to "take a few pictures, whatever" more or less, so here's the results of that

One night I went out to Brooklyn to see Nicolas Jaar. It was good. He had a single neon tube for the occasional lighting effect. He just made bleeps and bloops on his consoles for the first 25 minutes before he played anything with a beat and it was 50 minutes before he played anything I recognized (and I consider myself a fan) but he played for over two hours, there was just a long warm up before he really started hitting us with the jams.

But as far as concerts go, the big deal thing was the Imagine Dragons organization, via Marilyn and the Reynolds brothers, hooked me up with tickets to their sold out show in Brooklyn. I took Arthur and Erick from tutoring. It was a little tricky figuring out our ticket situation, we spent some time at the VIP entrance (which smelled very nice) but eventually got in the show and we had some pretty nice seats but then Brandon hooked us up with passes to the GA area in front of the stage and, yep, those were even better!

There was a night of Chinese food out in Flushing. You can count on me not being late to dinner in Flushing.

And then another night I went to Fuku for their Chimek chicken feast with Jeff, Michael and Tessa. They helped me decide to go to California the next day.

So the next day I flew out to California. It happened to be Halloween. I went to Cher's Halloween party. I just wasn't very picture-takey on the trip, or in general, since my Mexico trip. I really wore out my picture finger on that trip. And my posting-finger.

The next day I had lunch at Mom's Tamales and Mariscos Jalisco, then I met up with Lucas at Kismet for snacks, and then I ran over to dinner at Night + Market Song, but here are just pictures of snacks with Lucas. If you're headed to LA, or perhaps live there, I certainly do recommend eating at Kismet.

The next day I went to the Gene Autry Cowboy Museum and I had a real good time learning about cowboys, California, Western art, and cowboy tv shows and movies. They also had a big exhibit about playing. You know, toys and games and stuff. Nice to see Guitar Hero made it into a museum!

Then I got lunch with our friend Collin at a Thai place near Disney he had been curious for me to try, and I'm glad he did, because it was quite good and quite charming.

Now, I'm pretty disappointed in myself for not having pictures of anyone or anything else (like, say, Grandma or her new car) but then the next morning I flew up to Utah and got lunch with Cindy and then she took me to the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum. Which was great. But I certainly would have been bored if I went there when I was, say, 11 or 12. I'm very glad I waited, it was worth it.

Then we went to the Salt Lake Cemetery to see this one crazy tombstone.

And you know I did a lot more stuff in Utah and ate at a lot of places but really I didn't take any photos, I guess I was having too much fun? But here's a picture of Andrew from when we went to Provo for Don Joaquin's and then went to the Provo Bakery.

Back to New York! One day I went to Christie's to see the DaVinci painting that was going to auction (and would fetch $450 million the next week) along with many other works of art soon to be auctioned. I really liked it there, it's my favorite museum now because everything has a price on it and that really helps me like them more.

There was a trip out to the Jersey Loews. No pics of the theater, but here I spy friends inside Boulevard Drinks enjoying hot dogs.

The next morning Carol was in town and we had lunch at Hart's in Brooklyn, just moments before it became very famous. Looks like I didn't get any pictures of Carol! But Carol took my picture in front of the Elvis/Smiths mural in Chinatown. Looks like the Elvis side of the mural is a smidge more popular than the Smiths side.

Visited Andy (no pic!), saw more art,

And get this: the Lymans live by me now, and sometimes we go to Harlem Shake! (it's happened more than once!)