Saturday in the park

It doesn't get much better than a perfect spring Saturday at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Shooting good pictures here is like shooting them in the butterfly conservatory at the National History museum -- that is, too easy. Everything just looks amazing. It was clear, crisp, with the sun warm enough to make you want to take off your jacket -- followed by a cool breeze that made you want to put it back on again.



Of course, the downside to a perfect spring Saturday at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens -- particularly this Saturday -- is that every other fool in the world was on hand for Sakura Matsuri, or the annual Cherry Blossom festival. That meant a 20 minute wait to get inside, unless you a) knew about the side entrance and b) got there before every other fool in the world was lining up there.



My wise friend Scott and his companions smartly got there two minutes before noon, which meant they got in free, and without a line to boot. They wanted to check out the Taiko drumming, which began at noon and ran for an hour; Scott said they had to endure political speeches from local hacks first. (Hacks was not his word.)

I couldn't make that. I was occupied elsewhere:



Yes, the sometimes-Hitchcock of our generation was reading a children's book he'd written. It was part of the Tribeca Film Festival -- the reading, not the purpose of the book -- and also ties into his upcoming film, The Lady in the Water. He was delightful, and fielded questions after the reading from a young future reporter who kept asking him about the story, and noted that the pool reminded her of their pool in the Catskills. Shyamalan (who I can't help but always want to call Shamalamadingdong, in the nicest possible way) was very genial about the whole thing. He read from a copy of the book in his lap, but it was a copy that had no binding and I couldn't help but fear that someone had ordered an intern to rip up a copy of the book in order to facilitate the turning of pages. I'd like to think that wasn't the case.

The story is interesting, about a creature who lives under peoples' pools and inspires the ones who see her to do great things (but who is of course hunted by Something Awful In the Bushes) but I do feel Shamalama undercut himself by deciding to call the creature a Narf.

But you can't win them all. The man remains cool: His name is Night. How righteous is that?

But back to the park. Seeing Night meant I missed pancakes for breakfast, plus getting in early and free, but it also meant no drums, which in my opinion was worth the sacrifice. Scott and I roamed the park taking pictures (he also took some very nice ones of me I'm looking forward to seeing) and dodging the approximately 1.3 million others doing pretty much the same thing.



One thing I love about the pictures that come out of Botanic excursions is -- fresh wallpaper for the computer. Talk about reductionist. In any case, I'm going to try and put some of that up on Flickr in case someone wandering through wants to grab the shots. I have the hardest time finding wallpaper I want to use on my computer.

A lovely day out, complete with waterfall.