A summary of pictures from last week. I don't know if it was cruising into the holiday weekend on Friday with the most perfect weather and evening imaginable, but this past week has been excellent and photogenic.
My sister came down from Boston to perform at the Graham Avenue Fiesta with the Bryce Dance Company. I took pictures and ate corn, and there were happy chubby kids in strollers everywhere. A young guy tried to sell me a game of darts three times, and the last time he almost had me but Sunny said something to the effect of, "No, you don't need that", like a good older sister. We all went back to my apartment and drank beer and ate ice cream.
I was trying to find a particular photograph of a bed with sheets (which sounds boring when described, as most photographs sound boring when described), but I couldn't find it. I roamed the internet for a while and found some of my favorite photographs by Helen Levitt from her book, Crosstown.
She never makes children look small. She shot most of her photographs from the hip, looking down at her subjects through the viewfinder instead of shooting above them. Even though her images could be considered off-beat (they're not), they aren't focusing on the strangeness of kids playing in their own world or looking too old or simply out of sync with their age, as if it's unreal to not look exactly 6, or 7, or 30.
I also like the New York in these pictures. Most of them were shot in the 1930's.
In the coming days, my Queens-bred friend will post a thorough account of a very successful dinner party. Two of the finest dinner guests said this picture of him looks like a Vermeer painting.
My Vietnamese language skills can't decipher this really cool comic from 1966 (from BoingBoing, Batman in Vietnamese). I get some of the exclamations like, "Oi!" and when they talk about being friends and how far things are, but that's it.
In case you missed it, here's last year's Vietnam Idol finals. Phuong Vy singing her first song for the top prize:
Does anyone know what this song is? Is it a Vietnamese version of an American song? There's some really intense judging before the 5-minute mark and Phuong Vy ends up defending herself and then singing a verse of something to prove she's got the pipes. For a second I think she's talking back to the judge, but then I remember that that's how all of this works in pop culture - just because it's Vietnam doesn't mean the contestants will stand and take their criticism without a word. They still use the correct pronouns with each other, Vy referring to herself as "em" (younger sister), and referring to the judge with the older sister/respected elder pronoun, "co".
Where can I get good Vietnamese food in NYC? Nowhere? Somewhere? Matt Gross, I know you know someplace I can roll out of bed tomorrow and get a bowl of pho. Give it up.
Greenporno, starring Isabella Rossellini. Here's a clip from "If I Were":
The costumes are incredible and the shots are pitch-perfect, nevermind it's an elegant way of looking at sex and relationships through the natural world.
