emzee

Ten days of traveling around Israel had left me feeling like all is calm over here. Security is still much tighter than anything you’ll see in the US or Europe - I got questioned by security staff at every airport check-in, they wanted to know why I was visiting the country, who I was staying with, where was I going, etc. Later on, driving through the West Bank, I could see the watchtowers and huge concrete walls… But most of the checkpoints weren’t active, and all the security people on duty looked pretty relaxed. Until last night.

We were coming back to Eilat from a day-trip into Jordan to see Petra, one of the “new seven wonders” (and well worth the trip). We got through the Jordanian passport control, walked the 200-yard barbed-wire enclosed no-mans land, and lined up inside the Israeli border station for the passport check and security screening.

The set-up was starting to feel familiar - the front line staff who actually talk to you are all pretty young, mostly women, and pretty mellow. There’s usually one or two older guys who get called in whenever the young ones encounter something unusual (which usually included me). Then there’s always one or two Intense Guys walking around the perimeter, sometimes with guns but often without, just watching.

So far, nothing unusual… then all of a sudden, all the walkie-talkies squawk something urgent-sounding but unintelligible and our local Intense Guy goes sprinting down the hall. The young ‘uns immediately herd us out of the building into the parking lot, and a minute later Intense Guy reappears holding a sniper rifle.

A few minutes later, Intense Guy #2 shows up, also with a sniper rifle. For the next 30 minutes they take turns patrolling, constantly glancing towards the border fence and talking to their jacket lapels. One of my fellow travelers tries to get some info out of one of the young ‘uns:

“What’s going on?”

“There was a security event and we needed to evacuate everyone from the building.”

“Thanks, I already knew that much. How long will we be out here?”

“It might take a while.”

“Shouldn’t you let people know what’s going on? Make some kind of announcement so they know what to expect?”

“I don’t think so. Why don’t you go back to your group?”

Not chosen for their people skills, these security types. They eventually herded us off to a warehouse when they noticed everyone was shivering violently - it was only slightly less cold inside, but being out of the wind was nice. I wondered if this is what it feels like to be a refugee, being led from one holding area to another without any idea when it’ll end.

But our particular ordeal only lasted another hour. The Intense Guys wandered off and put their guns away, the young ‘uns led us back into the building, and we went through immigration like nothing had happened.

Later we heard on the radio that there had been a suspicious vehicle in the road, they’d brought in the bomb-robot to blow it up and they had a couple of suspects in custody. We never found out if the car actually had a bomb in it, or if the suspects were actual terrorists, but they sure seemed to take everything pretty seriously.

Between that and the way that all the staff looked like they knew what they were doing, I got the distinct impression that this sort of thing isn’t exactly rare. Funny how having real terrorists living next door makes people less freaked out about threats, I guess you get desensitized after a while.

Two days in Tel Aviv and it feels like I’ve been eating almost nonstop.. each meal better than the last. Israeli food tastes like a mix of Arab, Turkish and Greek flavors, with eastern European bits snuck in here and there. Some dishes are really simple, others more elaborate, but the unifying characteristic is that they’re very filling.

Jewish tapas

You’ve probably heard the joke about Jewish food - tastes great, only problem is, 72 hours later you’re hungry again. But most Israelis you see on the street are surprisingly thin. Maybe they’re like the French - rich food, big meals, but no fat people.. do all those cigarettes really burn off the fat? Though now that they’ve begun enforcing the smoking ban in Tel Aviv, maybe they’ll start fattening up…

I’m on my first big international trip since getting my iPhone.. well there was Japan, but nobody’s phones work there, so that didn’t count.. so the voice service is fine, roaming costs a lot but whatever, I rarely actually talk to people on the phone anymore. But after all the horror stories I’d heard about people racking up thousands of dollars in international data roaming charges as their iPhones merrily checked email every 15 minutes, I turned the data roaming off before leaving the country.

And you thought buying the iPhone was expensive…

And that’s when I realized how much of the iPhone experience depends on the data connection.. no email, no web browsing, no weather, no google maps.. so for the next two weeks I’m stuck with an oversized cameraphone. My T-mobile Blackberry had unlimited international data roaming for 20 bucks a month.. iPhone’s been out 6 months now, and AT&T offers nada.

A good sushi dinner is one of those timeless pleasures.. or at least it feels timeless - according to the literature, raw-fish sushi’s a pretty recent invention. But no matter, maybe it took the Japanese a thousand years to get it right. I’m just glad I was born in the right century.

Worshipping at the altar

It’s a happy day when you finally find a good neighborhood sushi joint - the right combination of great fish, smooth service, unpretentious surroundings, and local crowd. No sushi snobs loudly debating the relative merits of Spanish vs Japanese mackerel, no tourists ordering salmon teriyaki.. just people eating raw fish and loving it.

Kanpai!

I stopped by Parsons today to check out an exhibition by the students in the Laboratory course of the first-year Foundation program. The course sends students out into the streets and spaces of New York for seven weeks to research and “map” some aspect of the city, and then they’re asked to create a project that engages that aspect of the city in some meaningful way. The exhibits cataloged the teams’ explorations and the ensuing creations.

Replicas of common street objects

What struck me was not just the incredible variety, but also the thoughtfulness of some of the projects. Some teams focused on the physicality of the city, with one project distilling the range of objects they found on sidewalks into a language of the streetscape. Others went the interactive route, with one team holding up signs saying “Friend 4 a day” and interviewing lonely New Yorkers in a variety of city parks to explore isolation and the desire to connect.

Elmo says follow! 

While some went for serious issues - youth smoking, pollution in the Gowanus canal - others took a more playful route. One team crossed ethnic diversity with local greenmarkets to create a range of ethnic dishes using only ingredients from the Union Square greenmarket, calculating the distance each ingredient had to travel to reach the plate. Another laid trails of colored tape and cute footprints in city playgrounds, watching how children interacted with them and rearranged them to suit their own play patterns.

After living in the city for many years and walking the streets every day, it’s easy to stop seeing a lot of the details that give the city its texture and richness. These students are not only seeing it for the first time (most just came to NY to attend Parsons), they’re being taught to keep looking at it with fresh eyes… very inspiring.

I had the good fortune to be invited to a soiree at Edon Manor, an ulra-luxe shoe store (handbags coming soon, I’m told) that just opened in Tribeca. It was a pretty exclusive little gig, co-hosted by supermodel Julia Stegner (who is very tall in person) and celeb-socialite Victoria Traina (daughter of Danielle Steele). The store was full of models, fashion writers, various fashion industry folk, and… me.

The shoe as art/fetish object

The event had its requisite moments of drama. Early on, one of the hosts’ friends arrived with her dog in tow, a skinny little whippet.. hold the jokes about dogs resembling their owners… no leash of course, and the dog proceeded to spend the next 2 hours scouring the room for food, begging for hors d’oeuvres from the waitstaff, and trying to sneak into the kitchen. Then a banquette-full of the socialistas decided to light up cigarettes en masse, perhaps thinking (correctly) that nobody would have the guts to tell all of them to butt out. After a flurry of delicate negotiation (remember, some of these people are the fashion writers who might be reviewing the store), they were allowed to finish their smokes, but no more.

In the end it didn’t feel that different from a gallery opening, complete with the shoes displayed as objets d’art on pedestals. More lavish for sure - Dom Perignon sponsored the event, sending a couple dozen bottles to keep us all well-lubricated… sure beats the cheap wine in plastic cups you usually get in west Chelsea.

I guess you could call me an art fair virgin - I’d never been to any large-scale affairs like Art Basel Miami before. It’s a very different scene from big expos like the Venice Biennale, which is huge but very much a curated affair. If the Biennale is like a university-campus version of an art gallery, Art Basel is more like a huge bazaar or souk, or like those huge malls with hundreds of tiny boutiques you find all over Asia.

Virtual rats in a virtual maze

We started off with Red Dot, one of the many side-fairs that set up camp in hotels all around the main show. Entire floors of the hotel are taken over by visiting galleries, each one hawking their wares out of a hotel room - in many of the rooms even the beds (yes, still in there) were covered with prints and paintings for sale. Then across the street to the Bridge Art fair, in the Catalina and Maxine hotels. Like any good market, they were a mix of mediocre, decent, and a few truly amazing gems in the mix.

Outdoor tribute to one of Miami’s heroes

The main show itself was a much more polished affair, taking up the entirety of the Miami convention center. The art was much more established (and expensive), with no shortage of pieces by Warhol, Basquiat, Murakami, Cornell, Rauschenberg, etc.. but whereas the side fairs were like an indie flea market, this was like a fashion show at Bryant Park - total scene, everyone knows everyone, with insider gossip flying in all directions. But still, you’ll run out of endurance long before you run out of interesting art to see, can’t complain about the portion sizes.

Just got back from a corporate offsite at the Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills. Never spent much time up there before, I think Newburgh was about the furthest I’d made it up the Hudson Valley.. very pretty landscape. But the real stunner was the “house” - more like a sprawling, eccentric resort.

Mohonk Mountain House

The building looks like a project given to an architecture class, with each team getting a different section to design. In reality it was built in 1869, during an era when rich Americans were a little more creative in their re-interpretation of European architecture.. words like sprawling, rambling, eclectic, quirky hardly begin to describe it. But the effect is amazing, you could spend days just exploring the building. I’d suggest going in the summer or autumn, when enjoying the grounds doesn’t involve risking frostbite.

The crowd at the opening “The Streets of Europe” at the Jonathan Levine gallery was not the usual Chelsea opening-night scene. Instead of bankers in wannabe-funky clothes and industry insiders with artsy eyewear, this one had grungy hipsters, dyed hair and facial piercings. I was surprised nobody was actually holding a skateboard, though some did look like they felt naked without one.

The highlight of the show for me was the latest work from Space Invader. A few years ago he moved beyond his tile-based pixel creations and made the jump into the third dimension - sort of. These pieces are made out of Rubik’s cubes, each one arranged to show just the right colors the artist wanted for each part of the piece.. or maybe he’s not that precise, and the scattered off-color dots are there because he didn’t have the time to finish each puzzle.

The effect is very cool, if I had $18k to spare I would have bought it on the spot. I guess I could make my own, though at $10 a pop, I’d still be shelling out $5-6k just to get the damn cubes..

I was reflecting on my first experience watching a virtual-world seminar, wondering why avatars enhance the experience of virtual interactions so much. You’re just staring at pictures that represent people that usually look nothing like their avatars anyway, so what’s the big deal?

Is he really pissed off?

It might have something to do with our desire to project our humanity on everything around us.. put a fake face on a robot and suddenly people will talk to it, tell it their hopes and fears. If people think of their car grills as “faces”, it’s not surprising that even a primitive Second Live humanoid avatar makes it feel more like you’re interacting with real people.