Today is Saturday, February 8, 2025. Since it’s late here, I won’t meander here about the imperialistic ambitions expressed by the sitting president over Gaza, Greenland, and, maybe, even Canada in just about three weeks since taking the reins of power in Washington. I’m sure his MAGA supporters are not happy with his musings about expanding America’s breadth and reach by colonizing other areas. They only care about the price of eggs going down and they’re still not under the Dump administration. This is something the administration is definitely not addressing.

Yesterday, I did go to the Museum of Modern Art to see Christian Marclay’s The Clock on the second floor with my friend “Seth.” We met at the institution around 2:45 p.m. and went immediately upstairs to try to get into the auditorium showing the exhibit. At first, we stood for a short while, and before long, we were able to sit in the front row after some people got up. Now that I’ve seen what this special exhibit entails, I can wholeheartedly say it’s quite dazzling and fascinating. As I mentioned before, it’s synchronized to the exact time you enter the room. When we began to absorb what was unspooling on screen, we were able to see how the time on screen matched real time. For example, if we walked in at 2:50, a scene on screen showed a character possibly looking at a wall clock with that exact time depicted. The clips came at us in such rapid succession that it was somewhat of an ordeal to try to identify the movie or television show the clip was from. I certainly was able to identify some scenes from such television shows as The Twilight Zone in which Theodore Bikel was featured in one time-infused scene. The movies were harder to identify because the clip was sometimes so minute that if you didn’t recognize the film from such a small snippet of it, you wouldn’t get it. Then the clip would immediately meld into the next one. I did recognize some: there were scenes from various James Bond films because of the appearance of Sean Connery in them. There were scenes in black and white, in color – from the silent era to the 30s, other decades, and all the way to the present. All I can say about this exhibit – which is through May 11 – is that it is quite addictive. We sat for a total of 90 minutes, but I could see myself sitting for longer, but we wanted to view some of the other exhibits before walking to the Lincoln Center area where we had dinner reservations at 7. This is the best thing one can see here in New York at the time. Take my word for it! My friend and I have already discussed going a second time where we would have more time to spend sitting in the theater to follow The Clock.

After viewing this special exhibit, we just had enough time to see MoMA’s collection from the 1980s to the present on the second floor which had one colorful installation that brings together plush toys and scent-emitting forms called Deodorized Central Mass with Satellites by Mike Kelley. (I took some pictures of this interesting artwork and they appear below.)

We did try to see The Clock once more, but this time, I had to put my name on a list where I was No. 35; I had to leave my cell phone number, and we instinctively knew that we would not be able to enter the theater again. So we consider ourselves very fortunate in that we were able to see it some time earlier.

Before long, it was time to walk to Cafe Fiorello, located at 1900 Broadway. There we had a very traditional Italian dinner, starting with sharing an appetizer of calamari and plain loaf bread. We then shared a Margherita pizza which had a thin crust that Seth didn’t like. I took some slices home with me.

After dinner, Seth and I then moseyed on to two gay bars, VERS, located on 9th Avenue, and then, The Dickens, located on 8th Avenue. The first bar was hugely crowded and had no tables where we could sit, so we walked to the next one that is dedicated to the British author Charles Dickens, given the number of framed pictures on the wall depicting Dickens’ various masterpieces. This bar had another level which was better, and we eventually located an empty table where we could sit. Since both of us don’t drink, we had two nonalcoholic drinks. In a little while, we got up and then walked somewhere for dessert since we didn’t have coffee or pastry at Cafe Fiorello.

A place we found open was the Carnegie Diner & Cafe in which we sat at a high table and ordered tea for Seth and coffee for me. I also had to have some kind of dessert so I asked for the tiramisu. The cake was quite good; I even brought some home with me.

Now it was time to say good night since it was getting late and the weather was quite chilly. I walked to the 8th Avenue E train station and said goodbye to Seth who walked to the N train nearby.

We’re supposed to be getting snow tonight. Let’s hope this won’t create a real mess tomorrow. It looks like that we might have to stay in tomorrow which is Super Bowl Sunday.

Have a good Sunday and enjoy the game if you watch.

And so it went!

This is that exhibit on the second floor and that is not me standing in the corner. I don’t know who that is.

Here it is again! Isn’t it colorful and quite eye-catching?