{"id":978,"date":"2006-06-05T18:45:37","date_gmt":"2006-06-05T23:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update-8\/"},"modified":"2006-06-05T18:45:37","modified_gmt":"2006-06-05T23:45:37","slug":"update-8","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update-8","title":{"rendered":"Update"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry I&#8217;ve been outta the loop, dear reader. I was just in one of those not-writing-so-much phases. I can&#8217;t afford to get caught in that for long, since I&#8217;ve gotta write profiles on the top 20 pharma &#038; top 10 biopharma companies this month.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also been reading that Robert Moses biography pretty devotedly. Since it&#8217;s insanely long, I&#8217;ve been a little afraid of putting it down for a few days and losing my steam. It&#8217;s a phenomenal story, and the author&#8217;s just reached the point where all of Moses&#8217; bridges and parkways are managing to create more traffic. The crux of the problem &#8212; Moses&#8217; power-thirstiness &#8212; appears to be explained as a function of RM&#8217;s domineering mother and grandmother, which just sounds kinda boring. I&#8217;m hoping that Caro&#8217;s interpretation of RM&#8217;s personality gets a little more intricate, otherwise I&#8217;m afraid that NYC really <em>is<\/em> just a twisted child&#8217;s vision.<\/p>\n<p>In other news, we went to a surprise 40th birthday party for my &#8220;big sister&#8221; (next-door neighbors who are more family to me than just about anyone beyond my immediate relations) on Saturday night. It was good to catch up with some of them, since we never get together, even though I still live next door to their house (where their mom lives). Just about all my &#8220;brothers and sisters&#8221; have kids now, so the evening was spent making sure they stayed out of trouble, got enough attention, and didn&#8217;t hear my gin-lubricated sailor-speaking mouth. It was good times.<\/p>\n<p>We also discovered a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.njdiningguide.com\/kailash.html\" target=\"_blank\">good restaurant<\/a> earlier in the day, while looking for a birthday present. It&#8217;s right across the street from one of the finest pizzerias in NJ, which I had to stare at while eating my rogan josh. It&#8217;s a tough life.<\/p>\n<p>On the plus side, official VM buddy (and nearly VM wedding-officiant) <a href=\"http:\/\/comicsreporter.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Tom Spurgeon<\/a> is coming to visit this week. We&#8217;ll watch the first game of the NBA finals Thursday night, maybe get to the Belmont (if he&#8217;s got an extra ticket for me) on Saturday, hit the <a href=\"http:\/\/moccany.org\/artfest-main.html\" target=\"_blank\">MoCCA Art Festival<\/a> on Sunday, and generally shoot the breeze, which I find to be a delightful and worthwhile pursuit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sorry I&#8217;ve been outta the loop, dear reader. I was just in one of those not-writing-so-much phases. I can&#8217;t afford to get caught in that for long, since I&#8217;ve gotta write profiles on the top 20 pharma &#038; top 10 biopharma companies this month. I&#8217;ve also been reading that Robert Moses biography pretty devotedly. Since &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/update-8\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Update&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pharmaceuticals","category-urban-issues"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-fM","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2530,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/under-the-sun","url_meta":{"origin":978,"position":0},"title":"Under the Sun","author":"Gil","date":"September 24, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Barring a major investor jumping in during a time of financial panic, it looks like the Official Newspaper of Gil Roth will be shutting down in a week. How's today's Arts+ section looking? Victor Davis Hanson reviews Martin Creveld's The Culture of War: \"he presents himself as a Thucydidean\"! Steven\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Architecture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1018,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/question-of-the-week-3","url_meta":{"origin":978,"position":1},"title":"Question of the Week","author":"Gil","date":"July 4, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Since finishing that Robert Moses book last week, it's been kinda tough for me to start another book. It's as if I'm caught in its wake. I spent the last few days catching up on some long-form comics, like Eddie Campbell's The Fate of the Artist, which I'm afraid left\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;literature&quot;","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2318,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lifes-work","url_meta":{"origin":978,"position":2},"title":"Life&#8217;s work","author":"Gil","date":"August 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Earlier this year, I had variations of the following e-mail exchange with several NYC literary figures I know: GIL: Just wondering: do you know Robert Caro? AUTHOR\/WRITER: By acquaintance. Why? GIL: Would you say he's in good health? A\/W: Not sure. What's up? Have you heard something? GIL: No. It's\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;literature&quot;","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0394720245","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":925,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/death-life-of-great-american-urban-theorists","url_meta":{"origin":978,"position":3},"title":"Death &#038; Life of Great American Urban Theorists","author":"Gil","date":"April 25, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Jane Jacobs died today. Which means that the next book I start will be Robert Caro's mammoth biography of Robert Moses, Power Broker. You've been warned.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Urban issues&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Urban issues","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/urban-issues"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1310,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/the-city-and-a-man","url_meta":{"origin":978,"position":4},"title":"The City and a Man","author":"Gil","date":"January 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"The links are going to go dead in a few days, so if you're interested in Robert Moses, historical revisionism and crypto-Oedipal conflicts, and the landscape of New York (and who isn't?), you need to check out these two articles from the NYObserver and the NYTimes. First, though, you should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Architecture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Architecture","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/architecture"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=%200394720245","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":927,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/more-on-jacobs","url_meta":{"origin":978,"position":5},"title":"More on Jacobs","author":"Gil","date":"April 27, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Witold Rybczynski at Slate has a brief appreciation of Jane Jacobs's work. He points out that Jacobs largely ignored the suburbs, which is putting it mildly. In her best-known book, she considers them solely as a negative, the way most urban theorists do. Which reminds me that I need to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;literature&quot;","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/978\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}