April 28, 2006
MarkBernstein.org
 

The Trip To Manhattan as a Weblog Genre

Adrian Miles discovers Cathy Marshall's weblog:

Cathy is the hypertext elf. A computer scientist who can write with an élan that is, well, wonderful, and of course makes cool things...

Cathy, in turn, has a wonderful trip to Manhattan post:

My lumpy briefcase and I are back from Manhattan, having survived several embarrassing celebrity sightings, an overwhelming (and beautiful) six course dinner in a kaiseki-style Japanese restaurant, two American Airlines snack boxes, the apparent death of the whole concept of 'boutique hotel,' amazing insect-like swarms of tourists stirred by the first warm week of spring, and the usual taxi hi-jinx. In some sense, it was a typical trip to Manhattan, especially when one uses a 50lb briefcase as ballast and is wearing high heels with less aplomb and dignity than a 6'2 transvestite teetering dangerously down the Castro Street hill.

She stayed at the Paramount; when I walked into the Paramount last year, the lobby was filled with dark-suited Japanese businessmen and gorgeously-informal young French couples and I said to myself, 'This lobby is far too hip for me.'

Suggestion for further study: We've talked a lot about the cheese sandwich post (3 | 2 | 1). Other families of weblog posts could bear with scrutiny as well: now what we understand the way skilled bloggers find many uses for the cheese sandwich, we might learn a lot by studying some other families. The trip to Manhattan (or Paris, or London -- cf. Dick Whittington) would be a good starting place.