hugh | mchuge - Part 34

Choice bits from this month’s Harper’s Index (these aren’t posted yet):

Percentage by which the $750 billion bailout exceeds the total U.S. GDP of a century ago, adjusted for inflation: 50

Percentage by which it exceeds the cost of the entire New Deal: 33

Factor by which it exceeds the cost of the 1990 savings-and-loan bailout: 3

Percentage of the Fortune 500 companies that own a Web address in which their name is followed by “sucks.com”: 26

Smurfs frolic here or they make smurfs here in vats of blueberries with lots of sky, ocean, space, and blue algae. There are aquariums with blue whales, bluefish, and aquatic murals on the walls with all kinds of fish.

I went for a ride today (to 71st and CPW and back if you must know) and my gloves weren’t cutting it. What does arthritis feel like?

Politics are on the backburner for the most part but Ken Silverstein lists the reasons Hillary Clinton should NOT be Secretary of State.

Hot Sauces on TV

Make crappy art with your crappy photos!

I hate receiving a Netflix disk, looking forward to a good movie with the cats and popcorn sprinkled with olive oil and parmesan and cayenne, only to open the red envelope and find a cracked disk. What, I have to read that totally awesome 600-page novel again? (Still finishing House of Leaves… I got caught up with magazines and the election.)

In the Sriracha hot sauce group on Facebook, some poor student recommended making soup with Ramen, Sriracha, and peanut butter. I won’t say it was delicious, but interesting and a fine junky belly-filler on a cold day. One of the anecdotes on the Frontline show about Lee Atwater was that he was crazy for hot sauce. He thought Tabasco was for wussies and I didn’t think I could agree about anything with Atwater except good blues. So what’s his favorite hot sauce? They don’t say but at least Tabasco got bitch-slapped. Who makes hot sauce concentrate?

Later, I rode my bike up to 138th and Edgecombe without gloves. It’s hard to ride a bike when your hands are in so much pain and on the verge of frostbite, you just want to chop them off.

The Bike Path Contraption

This is the Bike Path Contraption They’re using to finish building out the Hudson River Greenway bike path north of the 79th Street Boat Basin and right next to the Hudson River Parkway, a project to be finished in 2009. (This is shot from the detour portion of the path in Riverside Park.) Who knew this is the most-used bikeway in the United States? I was looking at the virtual tour of the path at nyc.gov and they should really redo it with some whooshing wind sound and witty commentary: “And on the left we have another City Ugly Project by Donald Trump…”

Olde New York(e)

I enjoy watching old movies shot in New York partly to see how much of it has changed and how much is still familiar. These are from Port of New York (1949) which is to the second season of The Wire, as Blue’s Clues is to A Scanner Darkly. There’s a long scene shot in the old Penn Station but the cinematographer chose not to do a decent set shot.