Cats and Italian Food-Or, An Average Week

So last weekend I went with some pals to the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens, to see an exhibit called "How Cats Took Over the Internet." As someone who loves both cats and social media this sounded like an ideal afternoon.

The exhibit consisted of a short film series of cat videos taken from YouTube and a walk-through showing the history of cat photography, cat memes and statistics around the popularity of cats online. The films included an episode of "Henri, le Chat Noir" called "L'Haunting" and "The Internet is Made of Cats," a very catchy song by Rathergood.com, among other things. It was pretty fun. I was surprised to learn that in raw numbers, cats are not more popular than dogs online, but somehow cats and cat videos and memes have taken hold in the public consciousness in a way not reflected in those numbers.

Then yesterday my husband and I went to Soho to walk through the San Gennaro Festival, an annual Italian American saint's feast which culminates on Saturday when the statue of the saint is paraded through the streets of Little Italy. I don't think we'll make it to that, but we had fun eating corn dogs, gelato and arancini. And really it's all about the food.

But it's really about the religion, and I feel like there was a special buzz on the street with the impending visit of Pope Francis to New York City next week. There were pictures of him everywhere at the festival; I think NYC Catholics are really excited about this very charismatic and popular pontiff's visit. I know this Catholic is!

Unfortunately I was not lucky enough to receive tickets to his appearances, but that's OK. I'll watch from home in Queens along with most other New Yorkers. With cats by my side.