before i consecutively watched five episodes of the west wing...

i survived what seemed to be a too long, but was in fact too short, east coast excursion. it seemed too long in that by about midway through i'd run out of energy. but it was, in fact, too short because if i'd been given more time to space out all the activities, i wouldn't have been so tired.

reunion was whirlwindy and now seems like much of it happened eons ago. having not slept at all on the red-eye into JFK, the weekend began with me at a disadvantage. though amie, laurel, and i still managed to make a run to di fara (as seen in the previous post) before heading up to vassar. i stole some piecemeal shut-eye while riding the Q train and on the metro-north. i further slept through the first hour of brendan's bbq extravaganza.

the reunion highlight for me was being around mr. miller, listening to him, and basking in the bittersweet glow of his retirement. look up "mensch" in the dictionary and you'll see his bespeckled owl-eyes looking right back at you.

for those of you in nyc with $5 to burn, i recommend checking out the current MoCCA exhibit featuring the work of David Mazzuchelli. The nerdy types will recall him as the penciller/inker of Batman: Year One and one of the more memorable runs on Daredevil (both with Frank Miller as writer). what a lot of people don't know is that after that he went on to do a number of more artsy and experimental comics. the man knows how to juxtapose images. (as an aside: the museum's descriptions of his work, while probably accurate, are remarkably pretentious and wanky. they're trying too hard to make comics high art. one of the great things about comics is how accessible they are, why muck that up?)

i also dropped by MoMA for their free Friday. nothing really blew me away, but i was glad to see they finally rearranged the design exhibit (which may have been done years ago at this point, and maybe it had been rearranged already last june and i just don't recall). now showcased: the aluminum soda can with the pull-tab mouth. really, it's kind of a beautiful bit of design.

furthermore: Boxed Water.