Jon Stetson and I after the show

Being a rational person, magic has always fascinated me because I always tend to want an explanation to everything that I don't understand but care about. The more magic shows I see, the more I am amazed by the magician's skills.

Today I went to a show called Monday Night Magic. It is the longest running off-broadway magic show in New York City. Tonight's line up of the magicians included Torkova, Rocco, and the featured magician Jon Stetson with whom I am pictured on the left. The show was hosted by Jamy Ian Swiss who also did couple of tricks as part of his introduction to the show. Torkova and Rocco were part of the first half of the show. All of their tricks were illusion based. Various objects appeard in their hands out of nowhere, they multiplied and transported from one hand to another. While watching Rocco I realized that most of his tricks are based on the stuff that he put in the sleeves of his jacket. I actually could see him slipping stuff in there and taking it out. Several times during his act I could already tell that a new object would appear in his hands before it actually did. Most of the props that Rocco used were cigarets and bottles of alcohol - the objects that suited his look.

Then there was a 15 minute intermisssion during which the spectators could see some closeup magic tricks by some other magicians that were scattered in various places in the theater. People gathered around the magicians and could see the tricks literally in front of their eyes.

The second part of the show consisted of Jon Stetson. His magic was not illusion based. Instead it was based on mind tricks. Basically he was able to guess what people where thinking. For example, he asked a random person from the audience to think of her first boyfriend and then he was able to guess his name. He did have one cool illusion trick where he borrowed rings from random members of the audience and was able to link them together inside of the palms of a volunteer on the stage. Jon was very entertaining. His numerous jokes seemlessly integrated with the audience responses to his acts. Many of his tricks were similar to the ones I saw at Chamber Magic show at the Waldorf Astoria.

I highly recommend Monday Night Magic to anyone. They have a show every Monday and each day they have different magicians. It's very likely that I will come back several times!

It was a very hot and humid day and I really had doubts I would even attempt to dance because I was sweating even before I got to the Tavern. But the music mix was great - lots of standard foxtrots which don't demand tremendous amount of energy, so dancing was great on an almost empty dancerloor - something I rarely see at the Tavern On The Green.

Allright!!! Finally in my mail box today I received the photos of Ludmila and I taken by a professional photographer at one of the dance events we went to in Brazil. Ludmila was nice enough to buy them from the photographer and send me a copy! Now I can't wait to see one of those photos on the front page of a Brazilian dance newspaper. This is what we were promised.

The individual photos taken at that event are here.

Now Ludmila, what about that photo that someone took of us playing the piano in the hotel hallway?

Today for the first time in my life I sampled the traditional Southern drink - Sweet Tea. My sweet Southern Belle friend Kerrie has introduced it to me when we went to lunch on this hot and humid day in New York City. She was quite excited when some time ago she had seen a street cart in Midtown Manhattan that offered Sweet Tea served in the traditional mason jar just like they do in the South. So today we went to that cart so I could try the drink that the Southerners drink by gallons on the hot days like this.

Sweet Tea is similar to sweetened Iced Tea, but the difference is that the sweetener is added while brewing the tea or post-brewing, but before the beverage is chilled and served. The oldest known recipe for sweet ice tea was published in 1879 in a community cookbook called Housekeeping in Old Virginia, by Marion Cabell Tyree. The Southerners pronounce "Sweet Tea" similarly to "Sweetie".

The jar in which the tea was served is made of real glass and is called mason jar, but not after masonry. It is named after John Landis Mason - the inventor of the screw-in lid which he patented on November 30, 1858. Antique mason jars are heavily saught by collectors. You can find many of them sold on ebay.

The cart that offered the Sweet Tea is located on 50th Street between 6th and 7th avenues. It belongs to the restaurant Daisy May's BBQ U.S.A.. We also had delicious meat sandwiches that they offered with a very tasty sauce.

By the way, the photo is taken with T-Mobile Sidekick II.

Finally, do you know how to tell if you're in the South? If you go into a restaurant and ask for sweet tea and the waiter has a puzzled look on his face, you're not in the South.

I sent my Casio Z750 back to Casio for repairs because it had some focus issues, so today I was walking around in Central Park with my Cell Phone as my camera device. There were quite a few things to take pictures of. First there was Central Park Swings event were several swing dancers were boogieing to the live band appropriately located in the Bandshell which did not protect them well from the blazing sun. Then I went to the Summer Stage 20th anniversary celebration and listened to a Heavy Metal band. I don't normally listen to Heavey Metal but with this free opportunity I actually enjoyed my 15 minutes of standing in the crowd of head-banging teenages. The music had good rhythm and the roaring guitar solos filled me with adrenaline. On the way back from the summer stage I saw quite an interesting scene depicted here. Where can you find a bride a bycicle and a man fallen on the ground? I did not exactly know what happend, but it was quite an interesting scene. In the end I ended up at the Tango in Central Park where I met quite a few familiar faces among the crowd of tango dancers. Amazingly I met my old friend from my DanceSport years Mitsuko who I have not seen for like 5 years!

Today Christine and I made a trip to my old neighborhood in New Jersey right accross the Hudson River from Manhattan. While running some errands we had dinner at Bertucci's restaurant on Washington Boulevard. This is one of the new restaurants that opened in the area after I moved to Manhattan over two years ago. As we were walking by several of these restaurants, I was pleasently surprised to see that they were actually quite busy which was contrary to what I expected because there are hardly any people on the streets. At Bertucci's I ate a huge 3-piece Chicken Portobello dish in a snap partly because it was very delicious and partly because I was starving!

Sunny is a great dancer that I met at the weekly hustle dance parties held at DanceSport every Monday. It is always fun to dance with her because she has lots of expression and creativity when dancing. Given the fact that she is such a great dance performer, I was not surprised to find out that she is also a singer. Several times she has given me fliers to come to see her sing at various concerts she gave, but I could not make it because of scheduling issues. This time, my friend Mihoko told me about Sunny's concert with a Brazilian theme. Given the fact that I just came back from Brazil a week ago, I decided to make an effort and leave work early to make it to her 7PM show today at the Triad Theatre. The show was called "Sunny In Brazil".

It was great to finally hear Sunny sing. She has a great voice and her performance on stage reminded me of her sensuous dance style. She performed the classic Brazilian songs like "Brazil", "Girl From Ipanema", "Dingi" and many others. She was accompanied by a great pianist and great guitarist. But those instruments unfortunately are not enough to make the music sounds like a real Brazilian samba. And trust me, I've heard a lot of live brazilian music during my stay there. You need percussion! And there was a conga player on the stage, but unfortunatly he only provided the visual presense. He played so softly that no one could hear him. So that being said, I could not really hear the real Brazilian rhythms, but the melodies were pleasant to listen to and have memories of Brazil flow through my mind as Sunny was mentioning Ipanema and Sugar Loaf.

Photos

Not only Sunny has been to Brazil, she has also been to Paris.

It was a perfect day for a barbeque - an American tradition on 4th of July. Click on the photo for more.

It all started at the outdoor deck of Max Soha restaurant where I had one of the most windy dining experiences which reminded me of the ones in Grand Canyon. They had one of the best tiramisus which were served in a cup, so we could do a nice desert toast. Sue has ordered one of those meals they have on the show "Fear Factor".

Then we adjourned to digest the food at Joanna's Health and Fitness Center with a sauna and rampoline.

After boosting our health, we went to Tavern On The Green to catch some stand-up comedy, but since we were hanging out at the Spa too long we missed it, but they still had dancing in the outdoor garden. It was actually better than yesterday since they had fewer people on the floor with much more room to dance. At the end of the night a security guard came up to us and said he had new names for some of us: James was "Dancing Danny", I was "Loose Lenny", Clayton was "Kool Aid" and Joanna was "Silky Sally".

After Tavern On The Green we decided to venture to through the Central Park's Dark Deep Forest to a lake.

Click on the photo for more.

Lincoln Center Midsummer Night Swing had a Country Western night. I was faking my Two-Step around the dancefloor among the folks dressed in cowboy hats and boots. It was fun walking around in a line of dance changing positions. My first time doing this dance was years ago in a place called Denim and Dimonds which I don't think exists anymore.

We then went to the Tavern On The Green for some freestyle dancing under the lanterns. The atmosphere was great. Everyone was going crazy:

We finished the night at Cafe Lalo with some great deserts.

The complete Tavern On The Green saga page by page is here.

The minute he walked in the joint
I could see he was a man of confusion.
A real big surprise we gave to him.
His birthday was the reason we came up with a whim...

Today I went to the Quadrille Alumni and Friends summer party held at a private residence in Riverdale. This was the second annual party that was organized to bring together the former dancers of the Quadrille Ball.

Yum! Today James showed his hidden cooking talent. He made us the Luisiana specials: Chicken and Sausage Gumbo and Shrimp Etouffee. Here is the chef himself talking about the delicacy: This was DELICIOUS!

Today at work we had a monthly birthday lunch for the April Birthdays. Got a bit delayed this time, but that's because indisposable Angela was on vacation.

James, Joanna and I had a nice trip to New Rochelle to visit our friend Angi. We took Metro North railroad from Grand Central and got there in half an hour. I have not been to Angi's place before and because of the fact that we had to take a train other than the subway to get there, I expected to see a house with a driveway and grass. But to my surprise we ended up going into a multi-story apartment building which in fact used to be Bloomingdales department store.

First we went to Angi's parents' apartment for dinner. They really made us feel at home. The highlight of the dinner was the Fatty Pork. Before I saw it I was very skeptical because I don't like to eat meat with lots of fat. But this one was so tender, it really melted in my mouth. It took 5 hours to cook it!

After having dinner at went to Angi's apartment for dessert. The modern look of her apartment was totally opposite to the old-fashioned style of her parents' apartment. Going for the desert was like a leap from the past into the future. As usual I found the most comfortable piece of furniture.

We finished off the night at a club called Zen Tango. Contrary to the name there was not tango dancing there at all. Shortly after we got there the DJ put on some cool 80's disco songs and we kicked off the dancing on the dancefloor. They were serving all kinds of drinks there including something called James. I was so inspired by the drinks that on the way back I got a bartender job in the bar car.

All Photos

Today I learned how to bake a cake and how to make a popular in New Zealand dessert called Pavlova. It was as a lot of work, but the cause justified it - my birthday party. Thanks to Joanna for bringing in the supplies and instructing me how to make the desserts. The Pavlova traditionally contains fruit on top, but since James does not like fruit on dessert, we put grated chocolate on top so the Pavlova ended up looking like this. The cake was a double-layered chocolate cake.

Photos
Videos:

Birthday Dance

Catching Coconuts