“Good Friday” Eats @ Pho Hoai Bay Ridge

We are smack dab in the middle of the Easter weekend and with this being a holiday that I celebrate as a card-carrying Catholic, I do my best to fast on Good Friday and have one meal only. It’s also stressed that no meat be involved so keeping it to fish is what I always try to do on this particular day. After my morning coffee, I did my best to distract myself from any noshing or bites of this and that by working on photos and such. When it came to finally getting something to eat, I had decided upon the nearby Pho Hoai Vietnamese restaurant in my Bay Ridge neighborhood and since I LOVE showcasing food here on The Chronicles, wanted to share my selections with you all.

Let’s start off with the appetizers of crispy calamari. They make a nice batch of the stuff but its not like the crispy squid in garlic sauce that I love to death from Nha Trang in Manhattan. They do serve it with a tasty gelatinous sort of dip but its not the same IMHO.

pho hai, vietnamese cuisine
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Scenes From The 2018 New York International Auto Show: Part 1

new york international auto show logo

Greetings friends and wayward travelers who’ve chanced upon this neck of the Internet woods. You’ve arrived at what I feel is going to be another awesome convention adventure as for the next few days, the New York International Auto Show will be taking over the Javits Center. In the past, I’ve attended this show a couple of times care of free tickets from the fine folks at Toyota but this time I will be exploring it all as a member of the media. It’s my first time attending this convention as a member of the Press and marks the fourth brand new convention I have attended this year with credentials. Tenured readers will remember that back in January I attended The New York Boat Show, The New York Times Travel Show and BroadwayCon all during the same week for the purposes of entertaining you here on “The Chronicles”. So let’s get right on down to it because there are a lot of photos to showcase for you. I’ll chime in from time to time across the chapter and will have numerous links for you to click through at the close. Gentlemen (and Ladies), Start Your Engines!

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new york international auto show, new york international auto show 2018, nyias, nyias 2018, photos from the new york international auto show 2018

Once I claimed my credentials, I took notice of several winners of some of the years awards.  Take a look.

new york international auto show, new york international auto show 2018, nyias, nyias 2018, photos from the new york international auto show 2018
Continue reading Scenes From The 2018 New York International Auto Show: Part 1

On Shelves: “Marvel Fan Girl” Fashion Dolls by Madame Alexander

Though I believe I am a little late in sharing news and visuals about these items, when I saw them on a recent visit to the local Toys ‘R Us store, I knew that I had to advise our fashion doll collector friends about them. As you know, I am a HUGE supporter of Comic Book and Toys based on the Pop Culture angles that are discussed on PiercingMetal.com – If you click the preceding italics you will be transported to that section of the website.

madame alexander logo

The “Marvel Fan Girl” line is perfect for those collectors who not only love high-quality fashion dolls, but also have a deep appreciation for the Marvel Comics Universe of characters. I don’t think that I need to outline the popularity of characters like Black Panther, Black Widow, Captain America, Iron Man and Spider-Gwen as their rep speaks for itself. Take a look.

madame alexander, fashion dolls, marvel fan girl, marvel fan girl dolls


Continue reading On Shelves: “Marvel Fan Girl” Fashion Dolls by Madame Alexander

Universal’s “The House with a Clock in Its Walls” Official Trailer 1

the house with a clock in its walls

I’m going to have to ask my mother why she never managed to let me read the novel that bears the same name as this film because she did let me read “Jaws” at a very young age and I still turned out fine…….hehehe, in a manner of speaking. Anyway, this trailer showcases the upcoming Universal Pictures film “The House With A Clock In Its Walls” so let’s go a visiting shall we?

The Plot:
In 1953, Lewis Barnavelt is a young orphan who helps his uncle Jonathan and a witch named Mrs. Zimmerman to find a magic clock that contains the power to bring about the end of the world.
Continue reading Universal’s “The House with a Clock in Its Walls” Official Trailer 1

It’s Been Nine Years Of Tweets; My Twitter Anniversary (2009-2018)

Hello my friends and social networking mavens of the readership; I am here to share the news with you all that today is my 9th Anniversary as a user of Twitter.  Please try to hold back all the excitement about this occasion for the time being as I reflect upon my first use of the medium.

The medium was slowly becoming all the rage among a group of friends and in the onset I was unsure on how I would even use it.  My first account was the PiercingMetal one and it was initially aimed at all activity that I was involved in for the music review website. Back in 2009 that is all that I was doing in terms of writing.  I felt that it was “okay at best” while those aforementioned friends were mavens for it.    Below is my very first tweet which as you can see is not really aimed at my music site.

A few short months after using the “PiercingMetal” account I would create a second account and use the ID “PiercingKen”. It was aimed at being my personal one and for connection with the other online networks that I was using like Foursquare, Yelp and maybe even my personal Facebook.  The funny thing about using “Piercing Ken” as an ID for this account was that the blog that bears its name was not even on my mind as a thing to do.  That would arrive the following May in 2010.   I am amused that the first tweet for that account actually would have been better served on the music account but oh well.  This might have been an accident at the time but I don’t remember.


first tweet piercingmetal, first tweet, piercingmetal twitter
According to my many of my more ardent user friends, I still don’t use Twitter properly.  I’ve tweeted with PK over 3K times and with PM over 5K times so I’ve been using it.  I’ve promised to use the service a lot more than I have been doing and I have.  I guess my doing it wrong means I am not talking to people in it as much as I am sharing posts on the two websites and yeah I admit that is a shortcoming of mine when it comes to this service.   Here’s to Year #10 for usage which is I guess the next time that I will bring this up.  If you do enjoy what either website is up to, then I encourage you to follow the respective Twitter account so you get the links when they go live.  We always post to our Facebook’s Official Pages but they keep changing the dynamic on small businesses so no one sees the content.   By the way, clicking either tweet up above will bring you to the account to follow which makes that easier to do.  Alright, that is all I have on this topic and now its back to other items.  Until we meet again my friends, keep on tweeting…

Follow PiercingKen on TwitterHERE
Follow PiercingMetal on TwitterHERE
Official Wikipedia for Twitter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter