Weekend Shenanigans in Our 'Hood

Our neighborhood parking situation has recently reached the level best described as "fiasco" under normal circumstances. This weekend, apparently, we're hosting a huge music festival: Music Tastes Good.

I guess nobody asked us residences about taking up three-quarters of the parking spots for the entire weekend.

On the left in the picture below is our grocery store. It looks like nearly half-a-mile of Broadway is shut down to traffic:

One block north is our street, 3rd, and here you can see they've cut off left turns. You can still park on our street.

I can say that living at a place where people congregate for events is pretty cool. Sometimes these visitations royally screw over us peons, and the annoying thing is that no one really gives a shit. The city looks good; local businesses have a nice weekend; and so what if the working class residences can't put their car anyplace...

At least the sound coming from down the street is loud music and cheering, which does beat the loud and egregious whines of the Formula 1 cars during the Grand Prix every April. The Grand Prix, though, mostly doesn't ruin parking from Friday to Sunday...

JonBonet Ramsey Television Special

The dad's name is Jon Bennett Ramsey and he named his daughter "JonBenet?" And it's pronounced ""zhoun-buh-NAY"?

Norm was more knowledgeable on the players in this scandal back when it was unfolding on television live. The information above was about all I knew, and I did pretty well ignoring it all.

There was the very recent, two episode special on primetime. It was two episodes, right? From the thirty or so awkward minutes of the second episode I saw, I found myself confused. What was so difficult back in 1996 or whenever it was? This was a "Bones" episode, or any other number of police procedural.

This girl's older brother bashed her head in and the family covered it up. That's what the evidence they discussed in my abbreviated viewing said.

Of course I'm not an investigator or police detective. And, in a specific sense, I'm of one type of scientific disposition. I'm the type of scientist that will, when seeing a monkey elegantly and casually do an action, make note of it. When, in very quick succession, I see the monkey do the same elegant and casual action as part of their daily business, I then assume that this action is part of their normal routine, and try to envision the previous actions that lead to its development.

A different kind of scientific disposition would never make the intellectual leap from brief (even if repeated) witnessing of an event to that being a regular thing.

So when someone like me watches the interview with the older brother in the first days after the murder, it's striking how he responds to the various details. That footage is pretty wild, and I never knew it existed.

I also didn't know that the grand jury (whose records are usually to be sealed) recommended to indict both the father and mother for conspiracy to cover up, but not to indict either for murder. Well. It sounded like they had the evidence and pieces they needed to make their recommendation.

And while there is no statute of limitations on murder charges, there are Colorado laws regarding how young a person can be and be charged with felonious decision making: ten years old and up. The boy was only nine at the time, so even now he can't be charged.

But he sure is raising a stink about the specials. It sounds like he's planning on suing whatever channel upon which it aired.

Spa Day for the One with the Easy Job

At one of our baby showers a gift was bestowed upon us: a gift certificate for a Burke Williams day spa. The fact that I routinely mislabeled it as "Burke Sonoma" or "Williams & Burke" should shed light on the fact that I'm not a typical spa-going person.

I work.

I get up early and leave for work before 7 am. I'm home usually by 4 pm, when I take the Boy and spell Corrie for a few hours. Afterwards we switch again and I make dinner, then we eat, then I do the dishes, shave, and head to bed. And I consider myself and those days as "having the easy job."

Corrie spends all day with the boy, making sure he flourishes. It's her who wakes up at 3 am to soothe and nurse; it's her who spends sleepy mornings watching him smile---and nothing else, and it's her who gets only a few hours a day to keep her business afloat.

It was this confluence of forces that caused me surprise when she said that I should take the gift certificate and have a "spa day"...or maybe just get a massage.

I'm a regular person. I may travel to remote Earthly outposts and have legitimate literary aspirations and know my way around a kitchen more than most American men, but I work for a living. I don't lounge away the days at the spa or out golfing. (I do like to golf, though.)

Corrie set the whole thing up, which was both nice and necessary, as I lag at the best of times. It was to be a fifty minute massage, and, because the massage was north of a cost threshold, I would be able to use the facilities for the day.

After changing into a robe and their (sorta gross) little everyman-sandals, I headed down to the waiting/mustering area, trying to make sure my robe didn't flop open flashing the "kept" women also spending a Friday afternoon at the spa. (Thanks for the long weekend, public institution!)

They had tea on the offer. I would have preferred coffee, but that doesn't yield calm clients. I sat with the tea and read an article about the 50th anniversary of "Revolver" and how it was the Beatles first LSD album. The article talked about how John and George were spiked unknowingly for their first trip, and went on into details about how they got the other boys into the fold, and how it began to alter their music---I was enthralled. Which meant that they had to come for me.

I didn't get to finish the article. I'm sure I could find it...

The massage was nice, but seemed like it was over fast. It was a deep tissue Swedish deal. Maybe I didn't drink enough water afterwards, because my shoulder was killing me for the better part of a week, just returning to its normal tense recently.

From there I decided to take advantage of "the facilities." That meant either the steam room, the sauna, the jet pool/hot tub, and probably some other rooms I decided I didn't need to know about.

The sauna was very nice and very hot, even as it cooled down to the upper 160s as I kept opening the door, coming and going. At this point it was just me and I felt like ruining that robe. I spent a few minutes in the jets of the hot tub, in between stints in the sauna and steam room.

The sauna was super dry. I guess that afternoon was when I learned the difference between the sauna and the sphitz: the sauna is the hot-as-balls room with the wooden benching where you sit and sweat, but it's a dry heat. It was making me sleepy, and that was on the wall as a serious thing to pay attention to. The sphitz is the steam room, so foggy and humid visibility is barley feet, and inches when the steam valve does its emitting. It's very hot as well, but probably only in the 140s to 150s.

I turns out I like the steam room better. It got to the point where I felt like a space traveler on a new planet, one who's atmosphere is so dense and humid and hot that humans can survive without the helmet, but maybe for only a bit of time. Is this what a hot, humid, steam planet might be like?

Pretty soon I showered and rinsed the oils and sweat off my body and headed home.

I'd rather hold my kid any day, at least while I still can.

Saturday Red Box Night

For the first time since the Boy arrived Corrie brought home two Red Box movies for us to watch on a Saturday night. It was a regular "date night."

We've been trying to get to the cinema house for a while as the summer finishes up, but haven't made it yet. Red Box is as close as we've come.

Anyway, the two movies were "Zootopia" and "Deadpool." Fully enjoyable pair, it turns out. Not that I expected anything different.

I had heard very good things about Disney's "Zootopia" but had kept my expectations low. I had heard rather extravagant things about Pixar's "Inside Out" which had perked my attention, but after finishing it and having a long conversation with Corrie about it, our disappointment solidified. That movie seemed to be for parents of teenagers who want colorful ways to relate to those kids. In any case, Joy isn't the first feeling infants have---they take months to learn to smile.

Back to "Zootopia": any animated film that teaches kids that they can be anything with perseverance is a) a good thing; and b) rather unoriginal. What was pretty original and novel was the lesson that there is immense power in lies and pandering to people's fear.

Teaching kids what "using fear in a political way to consolidate power" looks like is always a good thing. Plus the way they broke the four sectors of Zootopia up I found more exciting than the way "Inside Out" broke up the realms of the human brain/psyche. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked the movie.

Then we watched "Deadpool".

I had had a post/comment-section conversation with Norm about the character Deadpool and his appeal and my not-understanding it.

I understand it now, of course.

The commercials made me want to see it---it looked cheeky in a way that had potential to be funny instead of annoying. Also, I like Ryan Reynolds.

Anyway, I wanted to go off on how much fun this movie was, how the action and storytelling and characters all hit the perfect notes, but I'm tired, and I kinda just said all I wanted too in far less words than I originally planned.

If you like R-rated comedies full of action and revenge and haven't seen "Deadpool", do yourself a favor and get to a Red Box this weekend.