NFL

Today we went to an NFL game, the New York Jets and the Buffalo Bills were playing. The game was awful, horrible. Pictures are good though.

The best part has been to observe first-hand an interesting aspect of American culture: tailgating. Tailgating consists in going to the stadium like six hours early, open the car trunk, and get out all sort of picnic material as if you were in the middle of the country, instead of a football stadium. People have everything: barbecues, tables and chairs, tents, even TVs with satellite dishes (to watch other games and the pregame shows of their game). Supporting groups with buses full of stuff, food, booze... Inflatable dolls, flags, power generators, you name it. It's a great spectacle to walk around the parking lot of a stadium the morning before the game. Here are some pictures so you can see for yourselves.

Macy's

Macy's is a department store. But it's huuuge. It occupies a whole block (between Broadway and 7th Avenue, and 34th and 35th Street), and it's got like, 12 stories. You can imagine like 10 times the El Corte Inglés in Plaça Catalunya [one of the largest department stores in Barcelona]. It's unbelievable. It even has a Starbucks on level 3 and a McDonald's on level 7. And it specializes in clothes, complements, and housewares, unlike El Corte Inglés, which has books and electronics. Not in Macy's. It boasts the title of "the world largest store", and very likely it is. Macy's is always full of people.

Founded in 1858 by R.H. Macy, occupies the current location since 1902. The house on the corner of Broadway and 34th St. is a separate property, which Macy's rents from the owners, and covers it with red signs so as to look like it's Macy's too. It has one of the oldest escalators in the world, between the first floor and the lower level. It's made of wood. Looks weird.

The "other" New Yorkers

They say that in New York there are more rats than people. It's not difficult to see them on the subway tracks, and since the first day I saw one, I wanted to catch them in a picture. I finally did the other day, there was this big rat with a little mouse.

But the ultimate has been today, when I found one in my office! I threw my morning Dunkin Donuts coffee cup to the trash can, and then I hear this noise coming from the can. I looked and there it was, a little mouse, very tiny, but gross nonetheless.

Turns out that since the cleaning crew stole some computers, the offices simply aren't cleaned. If you want a clean office, you clean it yourself. Unbelievable.

Anyway. All things considered, I think New York, as famous and glamorous as it is, it is a tad dirty for my taste. I've seen cleaner places.

Gone, baby, gone

Last night Albert and I saw a movie. Gone, baby, gone is a thriller about a missing girl, and it deploys a fascinating moral dilemma over what's the right thing to do. See the spoilers below if you don't mind, but I recommend you see it, it's not the same if you know the ending. It's based on a book by one of my favorite authors, Dennis Lehane.

Lehane is the author of Mystic River, the book on which the movie with the same name was based, starring Sean Penn, Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins, and directed by Clint Eastwood. Besides Mystic River, Lehane is the author of a series of five novels based on a detective couple, Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro, who live and work in Dorchester, one of the worst Boston neighborhoods (and where Lehane was born and raised). Gone, baby, gone is the fourth book in the series. I highly recommend Lehane's books to everyone.

And as a side note, the premiere of this movie in the UK has been delayed due to the similarities with the case of Madeleine McCann, the missing English 4-year-old girl.

SPOILERS

(highlight with your mouse to read)

The movie is about a missing girl, but it's all a ploy by the chief policeman, who lost his own daughter a few years back. He arranges everything to keep the girl, planning her supposed death at the kidnappers' hands. The moral dilemma comes because the real mother is a drunk druggie, and Kenzie, when he uncovers the whole case, will have to decide whether he stays mum and lets the cop keep the girl, where she can live a normal, loving life, or he blows the whistle, probably sentencing the girl to a life of poverty, drugs, or prostitution. Moreover, Angela has clear and strong ideas about the subject, so he risks losing everything...

The Brooklyn bridge

Today I wanted to take a walk and the weather was good, so I thought I'd walk across the Brooklyn bridge. The Brooklyn bridge is 5,989 feet long, and is one of the oldest suspension bridges in the US. Built between 1870 and 1883, at the time of its construction it was the suspension bridge with a longest span in the world, and the two supporting towers were the tallest buildings in the Americas. The engineer who designed it planned for the structure to support six times more weight than it was needed, and that's the reason it is still standing today.

Besides the six lanes for cars, it has an elevated platform for pedestrians and bicycles. It takes almost exactly half an hour to walk across it. Here's a picture, taken from the middle of the bridge, where you can see its structure and the Manhattan skyline.

In this other Southbound picture, you can see a small Statue of Liberty. Also you can see Governor's Island, and at the back, Staten Island, the fifth borough of New York. You can also see the orange-colored Staten Island ferry. This ferry is free, and it goes by the Statue of Liberty, so it's become one more tourist attraction.

Bumper stickers

Here in the US there is this long-standing tradition of bumper stickers, that is, stickers you put in the back of your car to declare your opinions on something, politics, religion, or whatever. Here's an example:

Here, the owner of the car declares that he can't wait till January 20th, 2009, the last day of Bush in office. But this other one I think is fantastic:

If you are one of the four people in the world who still don't know, Voldemort is the ultimate evil guy in the Harry Potter books. So, first this sticker causes a smile, since it is using this fictional character in a political context. But the real message is that if Voldemort were real, he'd be a Republican, and this kind of means that all Republicans are evil. Can't do a much better job in just three words.

Peace Nobel Prize

I find out that they have awarded the Peace Nobel Prize to Al Gore. In my opinion, this is blatant proof that this prize is completely worthless and they give it to almost anyone.

Former winners of this prize are, among others, Henry Kissinger (puppet master of Latin American dictators), or Yassir Arafat, Menahem Begin or Shimon Peres, presumably for bringing peace to Middle East. You can take a look over there to see the peace they brought.

In Gore's case, he is just a rich boy who wanted to be president and lost (or rather, was robbed), and now dedicates his time to tell us gloomy tales about global warming. To do that, he gives inspirational speeches at $100,000 a pop, and produces commercial documentaries to cash in on people who are environmentally concerned.

I'm not saying that he is not doing anything interesting for the environment, he is, but he is not an altruist, and I believe the Nobel Prize should go to someone who has a longer history of fighting for humanity, and not to someone who a few years ago was just a politician. Had he won the election he would not have done anything for the environment (what did he do when he was vice president?)

Precisely the opposite to the Nobels in literature, physics, chemistry or medicine, which are quite impressive and really significant, the Peace one is weak. There's so few people fighting for peace that if one of them all but moves a pinkie, they give him the Nobel.

By the way, check out the contract for Gore's talk in San Diego, at the link above to The Smoking Gun. Airfare for Gore and a partner, $12,200. I will defend the climate, but I fly first class...

And while we are at it, mathematicians' legend has it that Nobel didn't make a mathematics Nobel prize because his wife cheated him with (or left him for) a mathematician, named Mittag-Leffler. Although it seems the legend is false.