It’s really hot today. We were going to do something fun, like go over the Brooklyn bridge, but with it being over 90, with the heat advisory and the air quality advisory, we decided to just stay at home. I dragged our portable air conditioner out of the back of the closet and set it up, to take the edge off the heat. Now we’re watching a True Detective Marathon to catch up to the second season. It seems pretty good, so far.
Last Sunday, the weather wasn’t that bad, so after we visited FAO Schwarz for the last time, we sat in Central Park for a while, by that little pond (called “The Pond”) in the southeast corner by the Central Park Zoo, and had a mini-picnic. It was nice. There were a lot of people out there hanging out, relaxing. Smooth breeze, a lot of chatter, the sun shining on the water as it set. It was nice, sitting there, doing nothing for a while. I read for a bit. I picked up this book called Ready Player One, about a future where the world is suffering an energy crisis and most people retreat to an online 3D virtual simulation called the OASIS. I’m liking it so far.
The Pond, looking south towards 59th Street.A girl laying on the huge rock overlooking the Victoria Gardens Amusement Park.Southern Central ParkThe Sheep MeadowJust a cool light post.
After we’d sat for a while and it was starting to get dark, we packed up to leave. We walked across to the west side and exited by 70th street afterwards to catch the train. It was a really great way to spend a late afternoon and evening.
A neat looking building on the west side of Central Park, around 67th Street or so.
FAO Schwarz’s flagship store in New York City, on 5th Avenue near Central Park and the Apple Store, is closing on the 15th. We heard about it on the news, but you wouldn’t be able to tell otherwise. Their website doesn’t even mention that the store won’t be around anymore in a few days. There are no signs out front mentioning the fact. Nothing inside to show that they’re closing other than a lack of product and that the bottom floor is completely sealed off. I did talk to an employee that seemed depressed and annoyed with what was going on. I don’t blame her, considering she was basically losing her job. She said that display stands were being taken down right in front of customers and the floor sales people were trying to promote products that were sitting unceremoniously on plastic push carts.
I was hoping there would be sales to clear inventory, but that wasn’t the case. It’s as if they’re trying to keep up the facade that the store is temporarily embarrassed until they don’t open the doors again. The shelves were half empty, the store was dirty. The bathrooms were half flooded, quite literally. The air conditioning was nice, though, and walking past the mock toy soldiers at the front door, seeing the spinning FAO Schwartz sign above the troughs of candy, and the smell of sugar and baked treats was exciting. It reminded me of what I love about going to FAO. There are so many types of toys, so many different types of candy to look at and consider buying, and so many different and odd people to watch. The place is always packed with tourists and locals. Just being there and being part of the crowd is a fun experience, but we rarely walked out empty-handed.
Large floor piano.
I had been to FAO a few times as a kid and regularly as an adult, but usually just to pick up some candy or wander the aisles and see what sorts of toys were selling. I was disappointed when I heard the place was closing, but I mean, come on, when you’re selling 700 dollar stuffed dogs in 2015, what do you expect? One could argue that FAO was targeting a particular demographic, but most kids come from families that can’t afford a 700 dollar stuffed dog, and I’m pretty sure that even the ones that do would rather spend that 700 bucks on a PS4 or XBox 1, some accessories and some games. Making things even tougher, most games are bought as digital downloads now. Saves the trip of having to go up to the store. No travel fare, no gas money, no begging parents to give you rides. You just click a button and a while later you’re playing.
I’d rather have a video game than a 700 stuffed animal too. I’d also rather have a video game than 45 dollar doll house furniture. Walking into the top floor of FAO, thinking about business models and changing economies, I couldn’t help but look at the stuff they were selling and wonder what they were thinking. Are there really that many kids clambering to build model train sets these days? Isn’t there a 3D simulation for that now? I suppose toy stores are going the way of Blockbuster and Books-A-Million. Everything is going digital. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Things change, often for the better, and companies have to keep up with those changes to remain relevant. You can’t force people’s preferences to stay locked into a certain decade.
I suppose things won’t be the same anymore, not seeing FAO open when we walk by. I’m reminded of how much Union Square on 14th Street has changed since I was a teenager in the 90s. New York keeps changing. I’m already wondering where I’m going to get sacks of gummy candies from here on out.
Last weekend, my wife and I walked around downtown quite a bit. Saturday afternoon we decided to have dinner at Veselka’s on 2nd Avenue and since we were right there next to it, we walked across the street to have a look at the site of the gas explosion from last March. It was all over the news for a few weeks, but not so much now. The day the explosion happened, I saw it on the news before leaving to go to a graduate history class at City College. I had a classmate that lived in the area so I sent him a message to ask him how he was doing. He told me he was ok and that his building was not affected, but that it was crazy downtown.
Oddly enough, my wife and I had already made plans to meet my dad in that neighborhood that evening. He was visiting from out of town. We’d thought about going to Veselka’s but he was in the mood for Thai food, so we decided to go to Thai Terminal. I think it’s over on 1st and 11th or 12th, one block up from Veneiro’s. Anyway, the moment I got off the train at Union Square I could smell smoke in the air. It made me wonder how the city must have smelled in the days and weeks after the Trade Towers collapsed. My wife, dad and I all walked down 2nd Ave to try to get a look at what was going on but we couldn’t get any closer than 12th street, I think it was. There was a barricade and emergency services personnel everywhere.
So, Saturday, my wife and I went to satisfy our curiosity. It was a thoroughly depressing experience. There were signs attached to the fence and also to a blue plywood barricade set up inside the fence on the now empty lot. When I walked to one side, I could look around the blue barricade and see two graves outlined in stones. One had a cross made of rusted metal pipe stuck in the ground behind it, surrounded by deflated balloons. There were pictures of the two guys that died in the explosion on the fence surrounded by wilted flowers, links, political messages, and accusations of greed and stupidity needlessly resulting in death.
Maybe their deaths weren’t completely meaningless though. A week or so ago I saw a news report about a Dallas BBQ restaurant in the same neighborhood being closed temporarily after someone reported smelling gas. ConEd performed an inspection and found gas leaks and shut the restaurant down while repairs are made. Would that have happened without the tragedy at 2nd Ave. being so fresh in everyone’s minds? Maybe, maybe not.
Yesterday, my wife and I went to the Regal Crown 14 cinemas at Union Square to watch Jurassic World. We showed up at 3 PM for a 3:30 PM showing of the movie. Jurassic World had been showing for a week already, so we didn’t really expect there to be as much of a crowd as there was. There also weren’t that many kids in the audience, which I found strange. Wasn’t Jurassic World supposed to be a family summer flick? When I went into this film I was pretty hyped. I was thinking about the way the original film made me feel. The sequels were decent, but there was something magic about that first movie and I hoped that this follow-up would bring back that magic. In short, it didn’t. It was a different sort of movie from what I was expecting. It wasn’t a bad movie by any means and it’s totally worth seeing because it’s very entertaining, but it didn’t live up to the legacy of the first movie.
In retrospect, these two trailers tell you pretty much the whole plot of the movie and include most of the good scenes. The earlier trailer had more of the feel of the original movie, but the second trailer better reflects the overall tone of the movie itself: light comedy with thrills and a bit of action.
Jurassic World follows the basic formula of the original film: two kids visiting the park when something goes tragically wrong and dinosaurs get loose. There was even a “steal the embryos” scene like there was in the original, presumably to set the story up for another sequel. Someone is always trying to steal the embryos in Jurassic Park movies, though. The overall feel of the movie is less about the magic of dinosaurs, fear and human survival, but is rather more about the dangers of genetically modified organisms. It made me think of the fight against GMOs in food: “Look, this indomitasaurus thing is like the GMO corn you’re producing, Monsanto. It sounds great, but it’s destroying the environment and it’s going to destroy us too if we don’t stop it now.”
The movie is post-modern enough to reference itself and reference the audience watching the movie, which provides opportunities for a few laughs. There are also a lot of casually placed stereotypical characters. The guy in charge of the park comes to mind, as does the guy that tries to do a military takeover. The main adult characters are pretty cliche too, really. There is more fast thrill than fear, more special-effect wow than story development and tension. It is edgy and funny, but it doesn’t have the same wow factor as the original film, which this film comments on itself. It used to be enough to just see dinosaurs, but now, one character explains, kids (the audience) see dinosaurs the same way they see llamas in a petting zoo. Nothing special, move along. So, for the visitors in the park (and the theater), they create something new to try to catch our attention, but it doesn’t feel like Jurassic Park.
I didn’t want cheap thrills and laughs, or something that felt like the Austin Powers version of Jurassic Park; I wanted the same edge-of-my-seat excitement I felt when I watched the original. It’s like there’s a new formula in town for movie makers. If you can’t write a real plot and make your audience empathize with your characters, throw in some bad jokes and stereotypes, make your audience laugh at itself, self-criticize the movie within the movie to deflect criticism, and then maybe you’ll win. San Andreas used the same tactics, most notably with that whole American flag magically appearing on the bridge like the flag in the national anthem being “still there” even though bombs were bursting in air, and by golly we’re going to rebuild America because that’s what Americans do! It’s to prevent people from taking the film too seriously and essentially lowers ones expectations. How do you criticize a film that doesn’t take itself seriously?
GMO dinosaurs aren’t the same as the magic of the “real thing”. Having one giant dinosaur roaming around, mostly in unpopulated areas, mostly doing things off-screen, doesn’t create that same sense of fear and tension that a pack of deadly, primordial velociraptors stalking kids in a kitchen does. It’s GMO Cornasaurus (comes with moon roof, hybrid engine, and reduced calorie usage) vs the fear and terror of a primordial threat that is born and bred to kill. The nature of velociraptors as deadly killing machines acting on instinct is watered down in this film to the point they’re no longer seen as threats and then, instead, are turned into heroes in the story, along with another classic dinosaur. The feeling one is left with is that these velociraptors could have been replaced in the film by a pack of lions bred in captivity without losing much, if anything, in terms of plot and storyline. What was the purpose of that? Just to have a way to incorporate a critique of the US military industrial complex? Couldn’t that have been done more subtly, or better yet, been left out?
Also, the relationship between the kids in this new film, two brothers, was somehow unconvincing, but I don’t think it was the acting. It was more the storyline itself. There wasn’t enough time devoted to character development to make me care about anyone in the film and anything serious was always laughed off as a joke (“all my friends’ parents are divorced”). The only time I felt sad was in a scene with a dying brontosaurus, not because I felt emotionally connecting to the dinosaur per se, but because of the use of the scene as a commentary on killing for sport rather than necessity. It reminded me of the evils that man is capable of perpetrating and played into the movie’s overall theme of respecting nature.
Jurassic World is essentially an old story repackaged in contemporary issues, but I don’t know that it was really all necessary. Do we need a commentary on God and nature and the evils of man wrapped up in a classic story like Jurassic Park? Sure, there is some of that in the original, but that movie focuses more on the people. It is about tension and fear and survival. This movie instead focuses on cheap thrills, a few laughs, and a moral message.
Bottom line:
Was it worth seeing? Sure. I loved the cheap thrills and laughs and its a great way to be entertained for two hours. Don’t expect to be tense, or feel any fear, or connect to deeply with the characters. It is truly popcorn entertainment that will leave you laughing and feeling good about your afternoon. I have absolutely no regrets about watching it, but it doesn’t live up to the legacy of the original.
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