mundane monday - # 25

what is in a name, indeed ?

From mundane monday

Sitcom trivia - 5 locations from 4 sitcoms based in New York City !

October so far has been dragging me here and there, leaving me with disrupted internet access and little control over my time. Most of the month has gone off like this, so am not in the best of spirits. i've ended up having my finger in many pies, so disrupted plans and schedules had left me very annoyed the past weeks... theres a lot of stuff that i need to be doing before the end of october (if i dont want to end up cussing myself and suffer another bout of self-hating), so hopefully i should redeem the last week of october and try to make up for whats lost.

Moving on to other (and better) things, heres something i had managed to compile in the past weeks - and finally managed to get past the draft stage. 

Are you a sitcom fan ? Love the all-time popular shows like Friends,Seinfeld, or How I Met Your Mother ? Then this one is for you.

I love sitcoms and can watch them anytime, all the time. (I dont watch TV regularly everyday, but i loved the convenience of a dvr and watching them any time i wanted to. In the absence of a dvr, I try to catch old episodes on youtube.)

I first stumbled on the location of the "Monk's Diner" that is a regular feature in Seinfeld. All the exterior shots of Monks are of a real restaurant in New York City called Toms. The sign which says just 'restaurant' was used on the show.

image source - Panoramio

Location - 2880 Broadway, New York, NY 10025 (near Columbia University)

Seeing that made me curious to google the locations of some of the other popular sitcoms, and i found these :

If you are a F.R.I.E.N.D.S fan (and its very hard not to be one), you'll be excited to see this building that was used for the exterior shots of Monica's apartment building.

                                                             image source - Flickr

Location - At the corner of Bedford & Grove Streets, Greenwich Village, New York, NY 10014

Love How I Met Your Mother ? Then you might be interested to see this pub in NYC called McGees, which was the inspiration for Maclarens pub in the show. The creators apparently spent many hours there before the show was created. (Keep in mind however that this was just the inspiration for Maclarens, and was not actually used for any of the shots nor does the interior look similar.)

                                                      image source - Mcgees, NYC

Location - 240 W 55th St (between Broadway & 8th Ave) ,New York, NY 10019

And lastly, from Will & Grace - here is the building which was used for Will & Grace's apartment - 

image source - Flickr

Location - 155 Riverside Drive, Manhattan, New York, NY

and this is the building which was used for Grace's Studio (Grace Adler Designs) - 

image source - Flickr

Location - Puck Building, 295-309 Lafayette Street, Manhattan, New York, NY

These buildings were all only used for the exterior shots - keep in mind that the real shooting happened on sets in studios in California. I hope to be adding at least some of these(esp the friends one !)  to my to-do list when i make it to NYC the next time. Do you like sitcoms ? Which ones are your favs, and would you be adding any of these to your to-do list if you get a chance to be in NYC ?

mundane monday - # 24

yet another mundane monday post today after a long gap !

today's pic is that of two traditional indian soapstone lamps. these are simple, beautiful in black and the designs on each piece hand-carved.

From mundane monday

soapstone pots were once commonly used for cooking in india, being heavy, sturdy and heat resistant. soapstone is called maakkal (maa-kal, kal meaning stone) in tamil. its a naturally occurring stone, and easy to carve, due to which it has been put to many uses - from temple sculptures to cooking pots and other decorative accessories.

these soapstone/maakkal lamps are meant to be lit with oil and a wick, but i dont intend to light them anytime soon - i got these just to use as eye-candy :) - as decor around the house... they are quite heavy too for their size.
i also have a mortar & pestle in the kitchen made from soapstone.

read more about soapstone here . the hoysala temples of karnataka also use soapstone extensively in their architecture, and you can read more on it here

this is another pic of the lamps that i took -

From idle time output !

an FCUK you didnt know - sherlock holmes's grandma !

hope you've all been doing fine while i once again managed to vanish for more than a month. august seemed to go by in a flash, and now so has half of september. whoosh. meanwhile been having some things in draft, which i thought were never going to see the light of the day. well, got around to making some progress finally, so here goes - a french connection UK from the most unlikely source you'd have imagined !

last month, i saw on the google art project's google+ page this post below -

i saw that the painting was by the french artist claude vernet, and the very mention of the name triggered thoughts of Sherlock Holmes in me. if you are as much of a holmes junkie as i am, you probably know the connection too. i could probably do a marathon of 'explain with reference to context' or 'who said to whom' type of questions from sherlock holmes stories.

anyway - the connection is that in the case of the greek interpreter, holmes says that his grandmother was the sister of the french artist vernet. 'art in the blood is liable to take the strangest forms', says holmes, speaking about his brother mycroft's powers of deduction, which he says are superior to his own.

coming back to vernet, a bit of wiki'ing around shows that there are four generations of vernets who have been artists, and holmes doesnt mention a first name as to which vernet was his grandmother's sibling. sherlock holmes is supposed to have been born in 1854, so assuming that any grandmother of his would have been around 40-50 at the time, the most likely candidate seems to be emile horace vernet, 1789-1863. - grandson of the aforementioned claude vernet.
(on a side note, this vernet was apparently born in the louvre. born inside the louvre ! lucky bloke, hmmm.)

why all this research into grandmothers, if you ask, i'm afraid i dont have any convincing answer except that as a holmes-o-phile, i was so caught up in it the moment i saw the word vernet.

and as a side-effect, here are a couple of sources if you want to read the complete sherlock holmes collections online - see here and here. i'm so happy to have found these, since my fat old book lies battered and tattered in my parents' home.

mundane monday - # 23

this week's pic is one from the archives, taken around the same time last year. i had been taking the monday pics intermittently since march-apr last year, but started posting them on the blog only much later. this is one of those from last year's album...

From mundane monday

as a bonus, here's a pic of some lovely vintage tennis ball cans that i found online on flickr -

mundane monday - # 22

i'm not sure why this one didnt make it to the monday series so far - considering its a favourite of mine, and is a very photogenic one as well :)

anyone who has owned a fossil watch will know about its unique packaging. for those who dont, fossil watches come in a beautiful tin box, which by itself is a collectible. the brand designed their packaging with the intention that it should have an enduring relationship with the customer, and they couldnt have been more right ! so many days i have seen pictures of fossil tins and wished i could just buy them, without the watches ! (of course one can endlessly spend time ebaying for them ...)

fossil tins have become iconic and their team produces new designs every season. they are simply eye-candy !

From mundane monday

ok, i know i rambled on so much about the tins, but pictured just the watch ! that is for another day.

meanwhile, you can see some awesome collections worth drooling over here, here and here... well, just do a google search or a pinterest search for 'fossil tins' and you could be occupied for hours !

i'm also so tempted to buy this book someday. 

and no, i wasnt paid by fossil :) i just love their tins :)

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

its been such a long time since the last time i ate pizza, i cant even remember when was the last time. *gasp*. 

hit an unsatiable craving last evening, but finally ended up having today.

supposedly, earth is an ideal place for life to thrive, owing to various different factors - water, temperature,etc etc...( i am not going into the details, i just assume you paid attention in geography class.) 

pizza ought to be added to that list. seriously, who would want to live in a planet without pizza ? or chocolate cake ? or ice-cream ? or chai ?  or ... well, you get the idea. if i make a list of the things which i count as blessings, these would probably top the charts.

Life is too short to stress over things other than coffee, pizza and sleep
— Indian Cartman (@ka_unplugged) July 12, 2013

this tweet which i saw some days back pretty much sums up my feelings.

have a good weekend, all of you, and indulge yourselves. guilty pleasures are the best pleasures of life. anyday. 

i know that pic looks quite unappetising. i realise i'm no good with a mobile phone camera whatsoever. i dont know how people use it all the time, i'm never happy with pictures from a phone camera.

(if, by now, you are wondering what the title means, or what it has to do with anything in here, i just chose it because i couldnt think of anything else. if you've never heard of it before, check out its origin and meaning in the wiki here :) )