Pig Snout and other adventures (the met, pizza, forbidden broadway)

Since Wesley flies back to Mountain View on Tuesday and wanted to do the Met before he left, that's what we did. The Met was amazing. It was not that the quality of the art and artifacts there was better than elsewhere -that's not true-, but the sheer amount of stuff was incredible. Giant display cases filled with teeny tiny medallions and scarabs, all neatly arranged. Some rooms had paintings hanging on the wall over twenty feet high.. just simply running out of wall space. They didn't have one Stradivarius; they had three. They didn't have one Monet; they had three rooms full of them. Wesley tried to capture some pictures that showed the sheer magnitude of it all; I'll post a link here (in the comments) when he does (if I remember).

The most interesting thing I saw there was scrolls from the egyptian book of the dead. In the true met style, they ran them horizontally in two rows down the side of a 30+ foot room. And underneath they translated various parts: spells for breathing underwater, spells you do for yourself after you are dead to prevent your body from decomposing, spells for protection against poisonous bites, spells for fertility, etc. Various ones of these were carved on the inside of tombs just for insurance that if the dead man forgets the ones he needs, he can look them up.

Before heading to the Met, I convinced Wesley to stop by a bbq festival for lunch. There were only seven companies participating so it was smaller than I had hoped. As we walked down the block, we saw some counters had lines of ~100 people! (That was for a restaurant that specializes in ribs.) One line was extremely short (6 people) and a few were fairly short (~40). We settled on a shorter one that still served something we wanted (beef brisket) and got it and ate it and it was quite good. I'd call it great tasting if only the portion was bigger (as if that makes any sense). Still hungry, but in a hurry to go to the Met, I went back and got in the shortest line.

And they were serving pig snout. Yes, snout. Standing in line (very briefly) was quite a bonding experience. Some people got in line, saw the words on the sign, and left. Others got in, asked, "what do you mean by snout," and got a gesture that symbolizes the nose like area. Some of these left. Others gulped and stayed in line. One said, "why not, you only live once." Or, "I'll give it a shot."

Oh, how was the snout you ask? Crunchy. Yes, crunchy. This rather disturbed me. The bbq sauce it was covered in was quite good so I finished it. (Well, I also finished it just to say I did it.) But this'll probably be one of those items I don't eat again. (By the way, it wasn't that recognizable as a snout. But I do think Wesley got a picture of me eating it so you may get to see.)

After the Met, we headed down to get (discount, last-minute) tickets for Forbidden Broadway. It was a good show; the best way to describe it is simply: The Capitol Steps takes on Broadway. Some memorable songs: Good Riddance Les Mes -- apparently until Les Mes closed (very recently) the song that was at this place in the show was to the tune of "One Day More" (from Les Mes): "Ten More Years." A song in the style of Phantom of Opera that involved if the performer has mucus or is off key, just turn on the reverb. (If you've seen Phantom, you can guess why this cracked me up.) Another great song was about ruining times square and making it look like Vegas. (So true.) There were also good songs making fun of the Disneyfication of Broadway (they own three theaters); making fun of the fact that any show involving puppets makes it big; fiddler on the roof being horribly directed involving actors that look irish, including women that show a lot of skin, and making the kaddish look like upper-class sipping margueritas, with the title of "Direction" (set to tune of "Tradition" from fiddler); and a beautiful classic song "They'll Be No Leading Lady Tonight" commenting on the fact that you never know if the main performers you've come there to see are actually performing until after you've sat down. Kudos if you can tell what the tune to this song is simply given the title.

Oh, I almost forgot! We grabbed dinner at a place Wesley heard recommended a number of times with the oh-so-exciting name of John's Pizza. Was really really good. Cooked in a brick oven. The cheese -the quality and feel of the mozzarella- positively made the pizza.

Finally, the day ended meeting some other googlers (and a few non-googlers) in a bar down in the east village called d.b.a. (It can stand for a number of different things; I don't think there is an official expansion of the acronym.) The only notable thing about the bar is their amazingly extensive liquor and beer lists. We talked about the topics one normally covers in bar, gossiping about recent dates and possible future set-ups.