October 30, 2006
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bodies!
I woke up early on Sunday with a pretty bad hangover (damn you Sangria! so delicious, but always with the hangover!). My friend Sanjay came to NYC to interview with Albert Einstein medical school. We went to this awesome brunch place in Brooklyn, then we watched a competitive eating contest on ESPN.
It was an intense burger eating contest, sponsored by Krystal, which kind of looked like a White Castle type company. Kobayashi, the reigning champ went up against this other guy who was a major challenger. Kobayashi called him the future of the sport. It was funny because they were using sports language for eating. For example, they used the term, “burger management.” One of the announcers, after an apparently awe inspiring burger chomp by Kobayashi exclaimed, “I love this sport!” We were all in tears from laughing so hard.
We then went to the bodies exhibit down by the seaport. If you’re not familiar with this pretty major hit, it’s this exhibit where they have all these dissected bodies placed in different positions and educational information about the body. It was a lot less creepy than I thought it would be. The most fascinating part was where they somehow put a hardening agent though these dead people’s (they called them “specimens”) blood vessels and then removed everything else. So all that was left was the intricate web of blood vessels, down to the tiny delicate capillaries. I was still kind of disturbed by all the displays. Probably the most disturbing part was when I asked one of the staff members where the body came from. He said Northern China. I was hoping they were all people who donated their bodies. But then he said that a lot of them were unclaimed bodies. I really wish they had said that at the beginning of the exhibit, because I don’t think I would have paid for that. “Unclaimed bodies” in Northern China sounds like half of them are probably executed political or other prisoners.
After a lot of walking around lower Manhattan, I finally got that exhibit out of my mind, and we found this awesome Tibetan restaurant that Sanjay went to three years ago somehow. They had a lot of good and interesting food.
-Vikas
Comments (5)
Yep, Krystal is exactly like White Castle…. best consumed drunk and in large quantities
That’s some grim news about where the bodies in that exhibit came from… I’ve been interested in seeing that type of thing, but now I know I’ll have to check first.
wow, sounds really interesting and creepy, at the same time…
del tha funkee homosapien is my favorite rapper…he is hiphop at its finest
so that band i messaged you about was actually my bro’s band, check him out! http://www.myspace.com/adamello7
so i checked out that site you about the rock shows, and damn!! omg, vikas, are you trying to overwhelm me? i could’t get past 11/10, though i really wanted to… so this is what i think of what i’ve seen so far:
the decemberists are playing a free show on friday at the apple store…that will probably be a good
but you should check out cut chemist at the apple store for free 11/10 during the day, and if you can his show w/rapper lyrics born…i’ll be going to that show in chi-town on sat so i’ll let you know how it is…oh and read about cut chemist here: http://chicagoinnerview.com/archives/nov06_cutchemist.htm (this really cool chic wrote that
When I went to Bodies, I had my grandpa as a tour guide. He’s been through a series of upgrades (new hips, electrically-enhanced eardrums, partially new vascular system [6-bypass surgery], and of course the obligatory precious-metal teeth). He was also a biology professor. So, I was pretty
… well informed by the time I left. But also, the vascular system thing… did you see the factoid that all cells are within a few micrometers of a capillary? Just imagine how much must’ve been washed out with the water when they made those structures….
Whoa! You work at Xanga?! So cool!
And that exhibit sure sounds creepy!