Archive for April, 2007

April 5, 2007 | Filed under: videoblogging Week, NYC, good eatin'

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Or click here to play in Flash

Not pierogies, this time, but good ol’ Asian potstickers. Dumpling Man serves hot, fresh seared dumplings in pork, chicken, shrimp and veggie varieties, and even throws in some desert flavors, as well. At about 80 cents a dumpling, it doesn’t get cheaper than this. I was full after four (but then again, I had just eaten a plate of pierogis, a bowl of soup and a mozzarepa).

Dumplings: There is no substitute.

Toward the end of this video there is a glorious NYC moment. A Thank-God-I-Carry-a-Camera moment. The kind of whackiness you always hope to see downtown that is hard to come by these days. A little reminder of what New York City once was and, I’m afraid, may never be again.

Download “Finger Food” (mp3)
from “Shook-Russo Quartet Featuring Greg Gisbert”
by The Shook-Russo Quartet
Summit Records

• Buy at iTunes Music Store
• Buy at eMusic
• Buy at RealNetworks / Rhapsody

More On This Album

April 4, 2007 | Filed under: videoblogging Week, NYC, good eatin'

You Can Play in Flash

(but Quicktime looks better)

If I had to pick one style of food to eat for the rest of my life it would be dumplings. Any dumpling from any nation. Any golfball sized food stuffed into an edible wrapper qualifies. Today’s VBW07 features tasty little dumplingy morsels from the Ukraine: pierogi. On day 4, Brian and I head to my favorite palace of plump pierogis, Veselka (actually, we went last week, I only edited and uploaded on day 4). Now, there may be some controversy, but I will state clearly and without shame my preference for fried pierogi. I realize they are often enjoyed boiled. To this I say “Thanks, but no thanks.” it’s fried or nothing.

The utterly-non-CC music featured is by one of my favorite Ukrainian gypsy punk bands* Gogol Bordello because sometimes, you just want the music you want. So go buy it, it’s a hell of a fun record. Bet you never heard anything like it!

When making videos I do make an effort to either futz around with Garageband or comb through Podsafe or IODA or the archive for Creative Commons licensed or public domain music, and occasionally I have had success. But sometimes…well, sometimes you hear a song and think “What a perfect excuse to go eat pierogis at Veselka! Wouldn’t this song work great!?”. I love music–”love” doesn’t even cover it– I’m a complete and total music freak raised by complete and total music freaks. There are very few silent moments in my life because I have music playing constantly at home and away. There is music for every occasion and mood. Music inspires me, and sometimes it inspires a videoblog post. Hopefully, I’ll inspire someone to go buy this terrific album. You can find it here, here, and here.

* Like there’s another?

April 3, 2007 | Filed under: videoblogging Week, NYC, good eatin'

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Today’s “cheap eats” VBW07 treat? NYC street fairs. Gotta love ‘em. I’ve lived here my whole life and street fair food has remained basically unchanged: sausage & peppers, candy apples, gyro, funnel cake, lemonade, zeppoles and kabobs. A few food newbies have popped up over the last five years or so: curly fries, crepes, fried oreos and Mozzarepas have worked their way into NYC street snacker’s hearts. Now, if somebody would finally bring Dippin’ Dots to street fairs, I would be the happiest New Yorker in town.

Ah, Videoblogging Week. Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate even though you jam my Fireant so full of videos that I can barely keep up! Hats off to the blip.tv twitterfeed that allows me to just sit back and wait for videos as they post.

But the biggest news of the day? Josh Wolf is FINALLY going home. Right on.

April 2, 2007 | Filed under: videoblogging Week, NYC, good eatin'

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Click the tacos or here for Flash

Videoblogging Week marches on! Day two of my “cheap eats NYC” series brings us to beautiful Western Queens — Astoria to be exact. There are foods of all nations represented here in this diverse neighborhood: Greek, Italian, Croatian, Georgian, Japanese, Brazilian, Tibetan (!) and one Mexican restaurant whose tacos defy the imagination.

Seriously, they do. Go try a couple, but just because they are $2 apiece don’t get greedy and order three or four! You’d never be able to finish them. Two is plenty. I suggest the chicken and the roast pork. Mmmm…pork.

[videobloggingweek2007]

April 1, 2007 | Filed under: videoblogging Week, NYC, good eatin'

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Click for Flash

Happy Videoblogging Week, 2007! That whacky time of year when vloggers all over the world are encouraged to shoot and post every day for a week*, and encourage others to get join the Great Vloggy Family (some folks already post daily and should be specially recognized for their Herculean vlog efforts: Go Bev!). So why aren’t YOU vlogging? You text bloggers, you?! You know who you are! It’s sooooooo easy! You can learn to vlog in just one easy step:

Step 1. Visit Freevlog. There you will learn from the videoblog jedi masters. There are instructions for both Macs and PCs, so no excuses!

There were several ideas bandied about for this year’s theme, my favorite being The Seven Deadly Sins. But having no clear idea of how to capture “Avarice” in video form I decided to focus entirely on “Gluttony”, a sin I know a lot about (insert “Lust” joke here). My very favorite thing about New York city is the abundance of good, cheap food so follow me all week long as I profile my top seven “cheap eats” hot spots. Make sure you write them all down for your next NYC visit!

One of the fun things about videoblogging is that for me it’s a never-ending learning process; not just about technical things like tagging and codecs and compression, but real-life stuff, too. The biggest lesson I learned while prepping for VBW07? Most restaurants and food vendors are quite wary of video cameras. Hence, no falafel or Sicilian pizza video. Maybe next year.

*and in my case, experimenting with compression and viewing sizes…please play along.

Music:
“South China Sea”
Steve Doctor
Courtesy of Podsafe Music Network!

[videobloggingweek2007]