Let's Sightseeing!

As a gentleman of leisure, I realized I ought to start really enjoying this wonderful city that I live in, and not in the manner of stealing boomboxes from crazy people. What I mean is seeing all the unique sights that New York has to offer, so this weekend I did two such things.


The New York Aquarium
Friday! Coney Island! Birthday celebrations! Sounds like a sure-fire recipe for success, but our outdoor antics were thwarted by the rain. However, retreat was not an option (Coney Island is an hour-plus ride on the subway, and it's not a journey one takes lightly), and after enjoying several drinks, we weren't going to let a little rain spoil Ari's birthday.

What to do? Why, the New York Aquarium. Though I've been to Coney Island several times, I'd never been there, and I do love anything with animals. Doesn't everybody? It instantly turns me into a much younger version of myself, which isn't saying a lot.

The rain kept the crowds away, which made for prime viewing, and I had to remind myself that I was in mixed company, so I couldn't run around screaming constantly.

Though I love the Bronx Zoo, it can be overwhelming, and so I do appreciate the smaller New York animal things (like the Central Park Zoo or the Prospect Park Zoo). Here we got to see penguins eating (including one unwelcome visitor - see if you can spot him)...


Otters, jellyfish, seahorses, an octopus, seals (or "water dogs," as they are known in Korea), and a surprisingly big walrus (sadly, no masturbating walrus, which I was very much hoping to see).

I should elaborate on that last part. Betsy had told me there's a teenage male walrus who likes to do that deed constantly, while staring through the window at the human guests. It's some sort of weird dominance thing, and also he's going through that phase. So the kids find it funny because they don't know what he's doing, just moving his big flippers in some unusual way, but then all of a sudden there's a milky explosion, and that really disturbs the parents. I really wanted to see this, more for the people's reactions than for the actual sight, but that particular walrus wasn't out and about. Such is life.


The Cloisters
The perfect complement to wet animals is, of course, medieval art, and so the next day I visited the Cloisters. According to wiki, the Cloisters is a "branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to the art and architecture of the European Middle Ages." Whatever, it looks like the Scarlet Monastery from World of Warcraft, and that's enough for me.

Now I've been around the Cloisters a lot, because they hold the annual Medieval Festival in the same park, but I'd never gone inside. Just one of those many things you never get around to doing until you realize your time is short and you'd better get around to doing it before you're in another world, another life. So this weekend, we made it happen.

Why did I not go before?! It's full of amazing medieval stuff - unicorn tapestries (which I did not photograph, even without a flash, out of respect for the faded fabrics), crazy tomb effigies, reliquaries, statues of monsters and dogs, something that I am convinced was a magic wand, all sorts of stuff that comes straight out of an RPG and is right up my alley.

Usually art museums get me antsy (I don't really know how to appreciate art), but here I was in hog heaven, just taking close-up photos of all the creepy faces. It must've gotten annoying for my companions. But at least I kept my voice down.


Look at this face! Creepy, right? Imagine if it suddenly came to life. That's what I like to think about. I also like to imagine the history behind everything - some person made this, I believe it housed the skull of a saint (can you believe that?!) and now in another world, another life, it's freaking me out. I love it.

I took literally a million pictures at the Cloisters, and I can't publish them all (although here is a link to my flickr set), but there's one particular thing that bears sharing:


This is a stained glass window (there's probably a more accurate term) of three apes building a table. One of my favorite mysteries from history, we'll never know what compelled the artist to design such a scene - is it a folktale or an allegory that we've forgotten about in this modern world, or was he like me, simply a man who thought it would be funny to draw three apes building a table?