Muppets Take Manhattan!

When life hands you the opportunity to be immortalised as a Muppet, you can't say no.

Today we had Muppets made of ourselves (best thing I ever bought!), and while our Muppets were being assembled we saw Jemaine from Flight Of The Conchords sporting a pretty stringy beard. This, ladies and germs, is what Charlie Sheen would call "Winning".
EDIT (COLIN): I felt bad for all the kids we walked past, they're soo jealous. This is what means to be an adult kids, you can buy your own damn muppets.

                                                                                                      Potter Nerdz

We also went to the Jewish Museum today to see the Houdini exhibition. That guy was so great, first person to make a controlled powered flight in Australia. Kingsford-Smith drive would be called Harry Houdini drive if Colin had his way.

EDIT (COLIN): Houdini would be rolling in his grave if he saw the state of magicians today, jetting around the old people circuits. Not only that, John Edward would have never happened. The section on how he used to go around debunking spiritualists deserves a whole exhibit, but in the meantime we got to see a the straight jacket, water torture device, photos and a whole lot of handcuffs he used to break out of. I now completely regret the fact that I never finished reading kavalier and clay because it had too many pages and I have the attention span of an 8 year old.

Houdini: a short man?

Hipster Scum

                                            

Finally, we went to shake shack to get the famous Mohlwhey Shake (which is actually called a Shack Shake). I am reminded of it's greatness as I'm still burping it up now. Some people wouldn't drink a frozen chocolate shake outdoors in -3 degrees weather, but those people probably wouldn't have Muppets in their likeness either, so poo to them.

 Giant Apple store: Smugness +7


EDIT (COLIN): We've been out in the cold so long that by the time we come back, I'm going to look like this. every part of my body constantly itches after a day out.

Turtles Forever

This will mark the forth night of trying to watch the latest animated Ninja Turtles movie "Turtles Forever". We've walked around so much that by the time we get home we can sit through five minutes of Turtle power before passing out.

 Our indoor treehouse where Turtles are begun, but never finished. 

Yesterday we went to MoMA to look at aaaaaart, Colin's sister Polly gave us free guest passes so we  went right in and didn't have to wait to check our coats like the rest of those chumps.

Colin and a wall of bums

Art? Or floor repairs?

Then we went to buy tickets for Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Broadway musical The Book Of Mormon. They only had wednesday night tickets though, and that was when we were supposed to see Cults play in Brooklyn, but you can't say no to Mormons! Dum Dum Dum Dum Dum!


We also went to Nintendo World to play the new 3DS which was pretty mind blowing. Kinda makes you wanna puke a little, but then you get used to it, and then you want to buy one.

For Kim Lim

Gameboy melted in Gulf War still works! Yet Dad still managed to break my sister's one.

I took Colin to the big Toys R Us at Times Square after, and the Lego store. Toys R Us is amazing every time, AND I left without having to buy Colin any toys! No tantrums!

Look Ma! Thor merchandise is here. Thor merchandise is here today!

Jurassic Nerd

Regular Nerd

Heads, etc.

Heading home once again to attempt to watch Ninja Turtles

Miss most of you all of the time

and all of you most of the time

Brooke

**************************************

Wait wait! EDIT:

Uncanny

Gotham City Part 2

Hey all, I'm taking over from B Eagle tonight, so it's Project C (what? that's a perfectly legitimate nickname for myself). You may notice that I ramble a lot more than my other half, so if you don't like it too bad. I'm also jet lagged and often repeat myself. Did I mention that I always repeat myself? I bet you miss Brooke's short succinct paragraphs.

We neglected to mention that we were staying with our lovely friend Hillary for the last two days, she was kind enough to provide us with a room in her house in Brooklyn. However we are now in East Village bed and Coffee. Our room is like a treehouse within a warehouse. There's a dog named mango that sleeps on the floor below.

Today we went to the museum of comic and cartoon art which is currently exhibiting the work of Will Eisner, the guy responsible for the Spirit, and the Graphic Novel as we know it today. A lot of the drawings that were shown featured his drawings of New York, which was interesting because when you saw them you remember not too long ago New York was more like the Warriors, or Escape from New York (or that's how I imagined it would be).

It's sort of cleaner now, but here are a few weird things we've noticed about the people here besides the amazing buildings:

1. Nobody talks on the subway. (I think it's just in case homeless people approach them)
2. There's no such thing as public displays of affection, even among parents and their children. They sort of just roam free, and dangle themselves near the subway lines. Today at the subway station we saw this kid eating a banana silently, like the twins from the Shining. I hope he correctly disposed of the banana peel otherwise somebody could slip and fall onto the train tracks, with morbid and hilarious results.
3.  When you ask for the check all the waiters seem like they're ashamed to be paid because, they always fold the bill and place it upside down on the table. Does this happen anywhere else or are we just oblivious?

The rest of the day was spent shopping. We were supposed to goto Moma but it was the first nice day of sunshine we had despite snow lined streets and -1 degree Celsius weather.
After our failure at uniqlo we went back less jet lagged. New jeans, new shirts at low low prices!

Tonight we saw a live radio play version of HP Lovecrafts's The Music of Eric Zahn and the Dunwich Horror. While Brooke was enjoying this live rendition, she was also puppeteering me to make it look like I was awake during the whole show,  like in weekend at Bernies. I felt less bad after I heard one of the other audience members snore.


Quote of the night (from an arguing couple we passed)
Some Girl: Wait you have to let me make this point on philosophy...
Some Guy: Shut the f*ck up and make your point already!

Noo Yoik

Today it snowed! An unsuccessful trip to UniQlo meant we had no beanies/gloves so today was in indoors day. Also, my hair smelt like blue cheese all day after last night's blue cheese burger. That has nothing to do with the snow, it was just a bit gross.

 On Susie and Jason's recommendation we had breakfast at Egg in Williamsburg, and lo, it was good.

My glass of milk was served in a wine glass.

Then we went to the Natural History Museum

Dinosaurs and Space! If there is a better combination I don't wanna know about it!

Other exhibits were also good (and warm).

This one is for Dad:

This one from the Geology exhibition is for Mum:

And this one was my pick:

Look at that epic fight! WHALE V SQUID! WHO WILL BE THE VICTOR!?!

After that, we had dinner at Bouchon Bakery. It was so freakin' good, AND we got macarons to take-away. Big MoFo's. Size o' my fist. 

Brooke

Day one and two in LA

LA is as cold as a bastard. Countless Snoop songs had me geared up for sun(izzl) and fun(izzl), but alas, I we had was freezing cold rain(izzl?).

Lucky we were tired as heck, so we checked in early and slept most of the day.

Our sleep-a-thon was temporarily interrupted when we had to get out of bed to go to see Stuart Gordon's  Re-Animator: The musical! which was pretty much THE greatest thing ever (I realise I say that about a lot of things). I sometimes feel bad about dragging Colin to HP Lovecraft things, but this time I think he actually enjoyed it, the special effects were wonderful and the songs were hilarious. More plays should end with the front row being covered in fake blood.

We also had dinner at Umami Burger, which was pretty great.

Here is a Port fried onion and Stilton cheese burger I ate. Yum.

It also bears mentioning that it was raining icy windy rain and we were saturated for most of the night, yet it was still awesome.


The next day we killed some time walking around some of the nicer parts of Hollywood... I now have a greater understanding of why people hate Hipsters. Also, we saw Paul at the movies, it was pretty great. I ate this pumpkin pie:

We checked out our new house (which is heaps awesome) and met our new roommates Felicia and Carly who are also awesome. They took us to Swingers (which is a diner and not what you were thinking) and we drank a lot of Arnold Palmers.


That pretty much sums it up.

Flying High

Free beer on a plane is a wonderful idea.

V Australia was fairly good except for a painfully long check-in which meant my family goodbye was just short and sad. I didn't even get one last good coffee. Waaaah.

On the plane Colin watched all the lame chick-flicks I wouldn't see with him, and I watched A Streetcar Named Desire (which was quite similar to The Simpsons musical version). I also watched Eat, Pray, Love but I don't want to ever talk about that again.

No journey would be complete without the desert cube, and here it is:

I will add it to my page of airline desert cubes:

xoxo,  

Cube Girl

***

Edit:

For your information I watched Morning Glory (which was the best chick flick I've seen since forever) it was about a young woman who actually works hard at her job and there was not a single stupid complication with the boyfriend, Waiting for Superman (altitude + story about boys father dying from drug overdose = embarrassing tears on the plane), tangled (sort of overrated) which had an uncomfortable amount of jiggle for a disney movie, and Never Let me go, which was bloody amazing and probably deserved some sort of award, why was it ignored? 

Oh Packing Day, Oh Packing day! May God bestow His grace on thee...

Yesterday was Friday (Friday)
Today i-is Packing Day (Saturday)
We-We-We So excited

Today is a Madmen day! Not as in "it's cold and rainy, let's sit under a blanket and watch Madmen". No, it's more like "I have to wash and iron clothes for over six hours". Blergh.

Why didn't we start packing before today? This rain is making it hard to dry clothes.

Looking forward to farewell dinner with parents at Crosstown tonight and Shu's fundraiser for Japan after (which we may have to leave early in order to pack more... epic fail).

-Brooke