Most of the cruise ships don't come to Manhattan anymore. The cruise ship terminal in Red Hook's been open for months, and its, um, market share keeps expanding. But for some reason the Norwegian Dawn still docks here. This morning I was down at the river at high tide, and here it came, nosing around the pier south of me. It's a huge white ship, painted with red, blue and yellow ribbons on the sides and across the bow. It looks like it's smiling, which I assume is intentional. Dopey as it is, I love these massive ships. Especially on calm water, they always seem like an amateur animation. Like they're cut-and-pasted from somewhere else with no thought given to verisimilitude. Because nothing that huge -- I mean, this thing is skyscraper-sized -- could actually move that fast, smoothly, and silently. No engine noise, no bounding over the waves. It's like a ship in an opera production, pulled across the stage on a track. Also, this was the kind of morning when the clouds have arranged themselves so the shore's in shadow, while the sun shines on the middle of the river. So the seawall and the water were dark and muted, while this gigantic white ship glowed.

How could you not love that?