March Showers Bring April Flowers

On this weekend of April, I took a stroll with mom to Central Park to soak in the beautiful sights of spring in bloom! If a picture is worth a thousand words, then I have nothing more to type! Take a look:

Halloween Leaves

Halloween has not been a fun holiday for me ever since the year I stopped trick-or-treating. But this one wasn't too bad. The parentals took me out to lunch at our little O-bento Japanese restaurant on 94th between Broadway and Amsterdam. Dad and I love that place. Yum-o! as Rachel Ray would say. After that, we went to Blockbuster because I wanted to get the movie Hocus Pocus to watch later! Hocus Pocus is my (only) Halloween tradition since forever. I was obsessed with that movie as a little kid. Bette Midler, as Winifred, was basically my idol, haha. You see? I've always been gay. Anyways, we lucked out and bought the last copy of Hocus Pocus from Blockbuster.

Then we walked to Central Park because I wanted to see all the pretty colors of the fall leaves and take photos. Dad headed back to the apartment early because he wasn't feeling very well, but Mom and I stuck around for the afternoon and had fun taking pictures of fall scenery and such. All the different colors of leaves were gorgeous. Mom insisted we go to her favorite part of the park, the Conservatory Garden, where recently-planted chrysanthemums were overflowing onto the pathway surrounding the fountain. Beautiful! Mom and I also managed to collect some pretty fall leaves, although they don't look so pretty now that they're all dried up. Sad face. Anyways, once again, it started to rain a little bit after a while so we walked hurriedly back home. Here's the photographic results of my stroll.

Our apartment building held a little Halloween party in the lobby in the evening--festive Halloween decor and all--so Mom and I popped in there and grabbed some free food. We didn't hang around though. Sickly ol' Dad was lonely up in the apartment. We watched the movie The Proposal, which was a pretty funny, entertaining romantic comedy but pretty damn conventional as well. Then we watched Hocus Pocus, of course! Good times. Meanwhile, we got just a handful of trick-or-treaters at our door. It's been so long since we've actually had the whole trick-or-treaters thing, since back in Tucson we got none in our boring neighborhood. So yeah. After Hocus Pocus... well, I guess that was pretty much it! Happy Halloween? Kind of. Yeah.

The Missed Adventures (Part 1)

Since the awesomeness of Billy Elliot the Musical seemed to overwhelm anything else remotely interesting in my life, you've missed out on some of my other recent adventures. If you can even call them that. Pictures speak louder than words (or something like that?), so I'll just let my photos tell the story. Plus it saves me the headache of trying to remember or describe exactly what happened weeks ago.

These photos of Central Park were taken when I went with Mom and Dad one sunny afternoon, shortly before they left on their trip to Wales around the latter part of July.

Wall Street, Pride Parade, and Such

My mind is all jumbled because this post is a little late, and I'm trying to work out how to organize a run-down of my recent adventures for you. *sigh* Okay.

Two weekends ago, I took the subway to Wall Street and joined Mom and Dad for a stroll around the financial district. There are lots of really cool buildings, both historical and modern, around that part of town.

We also went to Battery Park, where you can look over the river and see the Statue of Liberty in the distance. I've still never actually seen that thing up close!

On Sunday, June 28, I went over to 5th Avenue around noon to watch the Gay Pride Parade-- a celebration of GLBT self-expression, equality, truth, peace, and love. There were plenty of drag queens and hot guys to go around. Gotta love it. I took hundreds of pictures at the parade, so I've compiled a slideshow of a small selection of them. I also took several video clips (but I think I'll upload those on another post because Blogger is giving me a headache). There were a few notable people marching in the parade, including the governor of New York David Paterson, Oscar-winner Dustin Lance Black, activist Cleve Jones, and I'm pretty positive I also saw Jaslene Gonzalez from America's Next Top Model.

The parade was way longer than I expected, but I stuck around for most of it until I was basically starving to death. After a meal of pizza and breadsticks, I proceeded to take the subway over to the PrideFest Street Fair, which took place over in The Village (At least, I think that's what they call that area). There was lots of junk food and rainbow-themed gifts for sale, but I just bought a lemonade because, as I've noted before, I don't have much money. I did enjoy walking up and down the street fair checking out guys and stuff. By evening, I was exhausted, especially because I didn't sleep well the night before. Ah well, it was a fun, gay-filled day anyways.

In other news, I've been watching way too much baseball lately because there's a Yankee's game on 6 days a week and dad got me into it. Me? Watching sports? Crazy talk! I know, right? But as usual, I've also been diggin' lots of anime. Since I finished watching the intellectually stimulating series "Kino's Journey," I started on another great series I bought a while back, "Samurai 7," a futuristic rendition of Akira Kurosawa's legendary epic film Seven Samurai. Thus far, it's a fairly impressive series, with a diverse cast of characters, an engaging story, samurai action, and subtle romance. I also rented some great anime films recently: (1) Kiki's Delivery Service, a family-friendly coming-of-age story about a young witch, directed by the masterpiece factory himself Hayao Miyazaki; (2) The Sky Crawlers, a pensive, complex, and mysterious study of the human condition punctuated with stunning CG aerial action sequences, directed by Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell; and (3) Tokyo Godfathers, writer/director Satoshi Kon's quirky tale about three homeless people who discover an abandoned baby in a garbage dump and try to find out who her mother is in an adventure full of chance encounters and holiday miracles.

Over the past week, I also worked on making some curtains for my room out of cheap bedsheets. I did it with mom's help, of course, because I didn't really know how to sew before. They look pretty good now, except I think they just need one more finishing touch.

Last Friday, I went with the parentals to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where we admired all kinds of amazing art--what else? I took a lot of pictures of the incredible statues, which are probably my favorite kind of artwork to look at. The amount of skill that went into creating these realistic figures is astounding. The photos will have to come on a later post because this one's long enough already!

For July 4th, we had a picnic in the shade at Central Park. It was a gorgeous day! After we ate, we took a little nap on our picnic blanket and enjoyed the breeze blowing gently over us. Then we walked around the park and checked out the beautiful Conservatory Gardens, which feature fountains with bronze statues, topiaries, colorful flower beds, and lush ivy. I'm mad that I forgot to bring my camera that day! But of course, I can go back and take pictures any time I want. Because I live in New York City.

New York Living: Day Something or Other

Monday was an important day. That morning, I had my transfer student orientation at Hunter College, where I learned about registration, general ed requirements, and all of that exciting stuff. My preparation for my new college has just begun though; my list of things to do has greatly increased since I learned all the things I have to take care of before school starts. Ah, well. All part of being a student.

Hunter's facilities frankly aren't very attractive, except for the cool old building you see below. The quality of the education is supposed to be great, though. It sure as hell better be, haha. Their Film program seems promising but I have to say I'm dissappointed with their offerings of Japan-related classes. They have a whole program dedicated to China and the Chinese language, but Japanese is merely thrown into the "Classical and Oriental Studies" category. Apparently I won't be getting a minor in Japanese at Hunter. Honestly, it makes me have second thoughts about finishing school there; maybe I'll transfer yet again to another school in New York that has more Japanese offerings--if there is one.


Speaking of things Japanese, after orientation I checked out this beautiful shop nearby called Things Japanese. They had all kinds of genuine Japanese antiques, woodblock prints, paintings, decorations, dishes, and such. And I do mean genuine; this wasn't the cheap, touristy Asian gift shop I'm used to seeing. They had real, old Japanese stuff. That equals tres pricey, my friends. So, I couldn't afford anything, and I just gazed around and dreamt of the day when I'll be a wealthy film maker picking out all sorts of nifty decorations for my apartment on Central Park West. Or Riverside Drive. Or 76th Street.

On my way back home, I walked through Central Park because it was such a gorgeous sunny day. Here's some photos.




On Tuesday, my mom and I spent the afternoon shopping for groceries and other household necessities. It was actually kinda fun checking out our neighborhood. I also peeked in a store called Futonland, which had some nice futon furniture, shoji screens, and shoji lamps--which I loved because they're exactly the type of Japanese-style lamps I've always wanted to buy. But they were kind of overpriced.

On Wednesday, I headed to Pier 1 Imports, but before I found that, I stumbled upon a cool comic book shop called Time Machine. They didn't have much in the way of manga, though, so I didn't stay long. Anyways, after buying a cushion (for my desk chair) at Pier 1, and getting some good ol' New York style pizza, I walked to Forbidden Planet (near Union Square), a paradise for comic book and manga enthusiasts. They have lots of decently priced action figures from all the biggest franchises--mostly Western, some Japanese--but they didn't have much DragonBall stuff this time around. However, I spent the rest of my afternoon on the second floor, which is dedicated to manga and anime. Their selection is pretty fantastic, and of course my personal favorite thing about Forbidden Planet is their outstanding selection of yaoi manga. I have never seen another store with such a large section dedicated solely to the genre. For that matter, I've never seen another store with a yaoi section at all. Freakin' sweet. I bought some, not gonna lie.

But enough of my gayness. Thursday, the heavy rains came back and I just spent my day doing things around the house and writing up lists for college-related tasks. It's been quite a process getting our decorations up and it's still not even done. I've still got to figure out exactly where I'm hanging things in my room. But last night we did get my shoji screen up behind my bed to act as a decorative headboard. It looks pretty awesome. Today, I drove myself crazy working on arranging and rearranging my room again, and mom and I took a walk down Broadway.

No pictures of our place yet. Sorry. All in good time.