I had a few proud motherly moments during my trip to New York City this weekend.  Not that I’m in any way as cool as Mary’s own mom, but that we’d grown so close that it felt like my own little chickadee was spreading her wings, and that made me happy.

Mary is one of my closest friends and my roommate in college.  We were randomly assigned to the same dorm room for our freshman fall semester at UF and I couldn’t have been luckier to get such an awesome roommate. We lived together for three years in college and now she has thrown caution to the wind and moved to New York City to live out her big-city dreams, and her friends get to come spend a wistful weekend in the city with a free place to stay.

We ate some delectable food. In the East Village we had greasy but authentic savory Venezuelan arepas at Caracas, which tasted even better with a brown-bagged Corona to wash it down.  The place sat about six people total so we munched our dinner in the park.  The next day and right around the corner Colonel Sanders was put to shame by the fried chicken I had at The Pink Tea Cup. Soul food at its finest. What I was most looking forward to as far as pleasing my palate was concerned were the famous cupcakes of Magnolia Bakery.  They were good but a little dense and crumbly for my liking.  It’s hard to knock a bakery that cranks out fresh cupcakes until 12:30 at night.

Other than that we mostly just moseyed around, shopped and people-watched. The feelings of independence I gathered from living out Mary’s life in the city with her, even if it was only for three days, was just the motivation I needed and wanted to get out of my short trip.

If you’re a fellow-geek and you DON’T watch “Attack of the Show” on the G4 channel, then you might as well be surfing the net on a dial-up connection.  It’s a 60-minute news-style show that dishes on all things technology, computers, gadgets and video games, with a dash of wit,  a sprinkle of comedy and a couple of hot hosts to garnish it off.  It’s basically everything you’ve already read on the blogs today, compacted and humor-fied for TV.  Nonetheless, it’s a very entertaining show with a kick-ass Web site to boot, and I seem to always get some really surfable and share-worthy links after each episode.

After last night’s Blog Watch segment on street artists around the world, I looked them all up and found some awesome stuff I wanted to share.  So if you’re into stuff like grassroots artists making a statement by creating beautiful peices of art out in public for everyone to enjoy, or just appreciate utter coolness, check these out…

Banksy

A graffiti / stencil street artist from the UK who challenges society and politics using his artwork.

www.banksy.co.uk

Rinpa Eshidan

A group of performance artists from Japan who treat their paintings and pieces as ever-evolving living things.  They’re known for their time-lapse videos of themselves repainting a single space several times over.

http://rinpaeshidan.jp

Wooster Collective

A blog that collects the freshest street art from famed graffiti artists all over the world and delivers it speedily to you.

www.woostercollective.com