JordanHoffman.com is where you go to learn about Jordan Hoffman. He is a filmmaker and a licensed New York City tour guide, and blogs about various mundane aspects of his life (oftentimes working in Mr. Spock.) He makes wages as the editor of UGO.com's movies channel and has a cat named Goober. Take a look around and tell us what you think.
I doubt there’s a day when I don’t smile and think “God bless Queens.”
I can’t imagine another place where you go to the supermarket and, under a display of fresh fruit, there are jars of minced garlic, saran wrapped figs and plastic containers of STP motor oil.
Where else will you call for a cab and a van shows up with a 20 year old dude driving with his girlfriend in the passenger seat and a karaoke DVD blasting ABBA and the Bee Gees at full volume?
Where else can you go to the bagel store and see a Gotti kid is full grey sweat suit (but with his ass still hangin’ out) yelling in to his cell phone online instead of paying his bill? Was this the same knucklehead I overheard the night before yelling into his phone: “I don’t got no beef with those guys? But if I go there and there’s beef….then there’s gonna be beef!”
I try to keep away from lashon hora, but I can’t hold it in anymore. The Cup is the worst restaurant in Astoria.
No - it isn’t just that the food is bad (actually there’s a Mexican place on 30th Ave and around 29th St that is far worse; and there’s a Chinese place on 23rd Ave also on 29th that, seriously, is serving poison) it is the WASTE. What a perfect location! Right across from the Moving Image Museum, right near the big-ass mainstream cinema, near the subway… And what a sizable place! And the food is just….awful!
Awful!
A good writer cites examples, but I don’t want to remember the dread of putting their food in my mouth. How do you fuck up french fries???! Ugh.
I know I’ll be going there again - the location is too perfect - but I’m only ordering toast and soda.
I’m always going on and on about the fabulous desserts you can get here in Astoria. But sometimes a for-the-masses treat equals perfection. If you’ve never had a Neapolitan Klondike Bar, you are missing out.
Jordan | E-motions | Saturday, November 24th, 2007
Yesterday Ann & I went out for tea and/or coffee on Steinway St. We went to the fun Egyptian place Eastern Nights that looks nothing like it did a few years back when the Village Voice or Queens Gazette reviewed it. I’m guessing ownership changed hands beacause the decor is straight up EPCOT Center (by which I mean, totally fantastic) in its faux Egyptology. There were a pack of English speaking local “of the Orient” kids and a quartet of fellow tourists in there ahead of us, all enjoying huffs on their hookahs. I passed (although I asked Ann if she thought they had an Albuterol blend) and drank, instead, the horrible clove-ridden mud that is Turkish Coffee. This is not my first time drinking it, nor is it my first time enjoying it. Indedd, of the latter, I am still waiting for that to happen.
Anyway, we noticed that the gang of four to our right were playing what looked like an old tyme Backgammon set. Oddly enough, just today Ann was cleaning out a closet and game upon many games of skill and chance that we’ve collected over the years. Including a Backgammon board. Neither of us know how to play.
“But it is a 2000 year old game! And it says Ages 7 & Up! How difficult could it be?”
Well, after reading the instructions three times I feel like the biggest idiot on the face of the Earth. I just - I just can’t make heads or tails of what the hell they are talking about. But children play this game! Not just children, but ANCIENT children? As they were dying of the Black Death they played this? Why can’t I make sense of the rules?
Yes I am now on the Face Book. I can not deny that it is a “user friendly app” as they say. I had been ignoring it because I figured it would be like the My Space and I absolutely hate the My Space. The My Space always makes my computer crash.
Facebook, however, is relatively clean and neat.
I was supposed to clean the apartment on Saturday, but instead I spent all day on Facebook. I have two categories of friends there. Old college chums that I haven’t really talked to in ten years and the clowns I see at work every day. And that’s it.
I was able to get in touch with an old professor I always thought was cool and one old friend that I am truly excited to be back in touch with, as all other roads to him had disappeared. So, yes, Facebook is cool. But I refuse to look at it anymore today. Because I have to do something old school, like write in my blog.
It may not be much of a surprise to learn that, as a general rule, I am hardly a fan of any product in its “reduced fat” or “reduced sodium” or in any sort of blanket “lite” version. It is often a decent enough facsimile of the original food, strained through a “suck-in-ator” device.
All except one: Reduced Fat Cheez-Its are a far superior version of their original progenitors.
Cheez-Its, of which I have long been a fan, are, let’s face it, a little gross. That slick, slimy feel that gets on your fingertips — that awful heartburn that inevitably comes after eating too many. This is all gone with the Reduced Fat version. They are dryer, less greasy, but equally flavorful. They are better in every way.
I’m not idiot enough to think that Reduced Fat Cheez-Its are health food, but, hey, opting for this iteration is better than nothing, right? Would that all snacking products could take a page out of the RFCI book.
Lastly, I don’t know who this psychopath is, but I agree with her on her Cheez-It policy. God bless the Internets.
I believe that when God invented the blog His primary reason was so that independent filmmakers could crow about their moderate success. To that end, I would like to congratulate Mr. Kerry Douglas Dye, Mr. Robert Gomes, Ms. Leslie Kendall, Mr. Raoul Germain and myself for being prized with the Audience Award for Best Feature at the Rhode Island International Film Festival.
I still think awards for films are a dumb idea. . .for established filmmakers. For we insurgents still struggling to get our voices heard, they are a blessing.
For those keeping score, this is award #5 at our third fest. The biggie is in 2 weeks, though — Montreal. We’re not in competish (dastardly French!) but we’re hoping we get reviewed. If anyone knows anybody we could bribe to make that happen, please get in touch.
You know, life is pretty good as it is. I have a place to sleep, a caring woman and feline waiting for me there, I have ten fingers and ten toes, I wear Klingon T-shirts to work and say things like “stop being a dick” to my boss when he’s being a dick — there isn’t much to complain about. I’m a happy guy! Who knew that just like THAT (I just snapped my fingers) my life was going to get exponentially better?
Today I had to go to the Rite Aid to pick up some crap & I called Ann to see if we needed anything around the house. “We’re running low on toothpaste.” The toothpaste aisle is overwhelming with choices - I usually get so flustered I go for the blandest, basest selection I can find. But today this one called out to me: Crest Whitening Expressions - Lemon Ice. I don’t want to sound like a freak or anything, but I can’t stop brushing my teeth!
“It’s like Lemon Marangue Pie!” Ann shouted, as we both hovered over the sink bowl. “Greatest toothpaste ever!” I countered.
I know my grampa used to clean plaque from his mouth by swishing a handfull of gravel in his mouth, and my purchase of this product makes me tout de wuss, but I can’t hide my feelings. O! You geniuses at Crest and parent company Proctor and Gamble — I love you from my molars to my incisors!!
I’ve made no reference at all to the passing of Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni. I’ve read a lot of good obits and remembrances out there in the usual places. I did, however, write something the day the news about Ingmar broke for UGO.com.
In a strange way I am very proud of the idiotic piece I wrote. You can look at it here. If I do say so myself, I think it manages to walk a nice line between intelligent respect and moronic lowbrow nonsense.
If you find this sort of thing entertaining, you should be popping over there once in a while. I’m writing at least one column every two days — and peppering much of the other movies content with jokes. If you really search hard, you can find video of me there, too. And that’s the last plug they’ll get out of me for a while.
I’m as interested in design as the next guy, but check out this article concerning the modest revisions to the Coke can. It isn’t the article so much as the pages and pages of impassioned commenting that is so striking.
