I had an idea: present a new ongoing post series called WILT: What I Learned Today.
Technically this is closer to WILY, or What I Learned Yesterday, but still...
Anyway, the inaugural edition is this:
White men in Long Beach don't ride the bus.
At least, and probably more accurately: White men with steady jobs and graduate degrees don't ride the bus.
My guess is that most men in my position---time off and a car that needs work, so it gets left at the mechanic and the mechanic is currently out of loaners---would just use Uber or Lyft to get home from that mechanic.
Not me, yo, I use the bus. I imagine the cost isn't too much more to use one of the car share deals, but it turns out I'd rather wait for the bus.
Maybe it's the NY in my system that I can't shake, but public transportation is closer to my heart than the new-thing.
In any case, I was the only white person on the bus yesterday morning, and it got me thinking about the different worlds that people most places inhabit.
More on this concept later...
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
Old Books
We watched a documentary about the Doors the other night and I learned a few things. One of those things I starts a discussion that I want to have later about the speed with which Art is created (Mo Yan is also a part of that discussion).
Another thing was that Jim Morrison self-published three books of poetry between '69 and '70. Eventually the content was published together by a company as the Doors skyrocketed in popularity.
They were together for only 54 months, but the combination of talent and rookies was powerful and strange.
Anyway, I started looking for those books. I saw a collection of "lost" and "rare" content from Morrison online for sale starting at $2.15.
No effing way. I dug a little, and that obviously wasn't what I was looking for.
But this article talks about exactly what I was looking for.
It discusses the three books, their "limited" print runs, and the fact that many of the books ended up with a friend of Jim's who passed on in 2010. There would be a series of auctions to raise money for music in education groups.
Bidding started at $5k. That made more sense. And it was back in 2016.
I found an eBay exchange with a similar photo to the one above that must have been from a winner of one of the original bids. It looks like they turned around and put it onto eBay. Oddly enough, they were stationed in San Luis Obispo.
It sold for nearly eighteen grand.
Did you know Jim Morrison's dad was Admiral Morrison, commander of the Navy during the Vietnam Conflict and did not exactly see the talent in what his well-read and formerly shy son was doing?
This begs a different conversation: How many father/son combos who were not either both president or king or emperor could have had an effect on so many humans? Name another combo that affected/effected as many other people?
Another thing was that Jim Morrison self-published three books of poetry between '69 and '70. Eventually the content was published together by a company as the Doors skyrocketed in popularity.
They were together for only 54 months, but the combination of talent and rookies was powerful and strange.
Anyway, I started looking for those books. I saw a collection of "lost" and "rare" content from Morrison online for sale starting at $2.15.
No effing way. I dug a little, and that obviously wasn't what I was looking for.
But this article talks about exactly what I was looking for.
It discusses the three books, their "limited" print runs, and the fact that many of the books ended up with a friend of Jim's who passed on in 2010. There would be a series of auctions to raise money for music in education groups.
Bidding started at $5k. That made more sense. And it was back in 2016.
I found an eBay exchange with a similar photo to the one above that must have been from a winner of one of the original bids. It looks like they turned around and put it onto eBay. Oddly enough, they were stationed in San Luis Obispo.
It sold for nearly eighteen grand.
Did you know Jim Morrison's dad was Admiral Morrison, commander of the Navy during the Vietnam Conflict and did not exactly see the talent in what his well-read and formerly shy son was doing?
This begs a different conversation: How many father/son combos who were not either both president or king or emperor could have had an effect on so many humans? Name another combo that affected/effected as many other people?
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Kate's Boys and Disney Villain Names
One day I noticed that my name, Patrick, was something like number 35 on the list of popular boy names in America. Cool, I thought. Number 35 wasn't bad. Then I thought I'd check for my brother, Daniel's, name.
It was something like number 3. Maybe 4, but I'm sure it was top 5.
Awesome.
Then time passes and I forget about it until I was watching Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." I really enjoy the film, and find the villain in the movie to be one of my favorites. The design is so cool, the voice work by Keith David is amazing (loved you in Men at Work!), and his name: Dr. Patrick Facilier:
This reminded me of the very cool villain from Monster's Inc., Randall, which was what Norm was called for a while:
So, that's two of my mom's boys as seen through their Disney-ish villain names. And, sorry Dan, when I find a Disney villain for you, I'll amend this post. For the time being, you'll have to be comforted by the knowledge that your name is way more popular than either of ours.
It was something like number 3. Maybe 4, but I'm sure it was top 5.
Awesome.
Then time passes and I forget about it until I was watching Disney's "The Princess and the Frog." I really enjoy the film, and find the villain in the movie to be one of my favorites. The design is so cool, the voice work by Keith David is amazing (loved you in Men at Work!), and his name: Dr. Patrick Facilier:
This reminded me of the very cool villain from Monster's Inc., Randall, which was what Norm was called for a while:
So, that's two of my mom's boys as seen through their Disney-ish villain names. And, sorry Dan, when I find a Disney villain for you, I'll amend this post. For the time being, you'll have to be comforted by the knowledge that your name is way more popular than either of ours.
Monday, December 10, 2018
Paradise No More
My ties to Northern California are strong, and the foothills and mountains north of Sacramento on towards Oregon to the north and Nevada to the east occupy a space in the deepest portions of my heart.
When the city of Paradise was mostly wiped away from California by fire recently I found myself more rapt in a strange desire to dive into the stories and detritus of the natural disaster than I ever find myself otherwise.
The stories are harrowing and the photos are outrageous. But the following photo is one I couldn't ever dislodge from my shocked understanding, probably because it was taken by NASA, and space exploration lives in that same room in my heart, the combination of dry NorCal mountains and the desire to be an astronaut being two essential building blocks for who I am today:
I've driven 70 to the Cabin. I haven't spent nearly as much time in Chico as Norm or, obviously, another erstwhile Westwood Park alum Shannon, who lives in Chico, but still, I feel a connection.
And in this picture we can see the outline of small mountain hamlet completely swallowed up by fire, devoured in the course of a few hours one October morning.
The words...my words...will only flail around helplessly as families regroup in tents in parking lots...
When the city of Paradise was mostly wiped away from California by fire recently I found myself more rapt in a strange desire to dive into the stories and detritus of the natural disaster than I ever find myself otherwise.
The stories are harrowing and the photos are outrageous. But the following photo is one I couldn't ever dislodge from my shocked understanding, probably because it was taken by NASA, and space exploration lives in that same room in my heart, the combination of dry NorCal mountains and the desire to be an astronaut being two essential building blocks for who I am today:
I've driven 70 to the Cabin. I haven't spent nearly as much time in Chico as Norm or, obviously, another erstwhile Westwood Park alum Shannon, who lives in Chico, but still, I feel a connection.
And in this picture we can see the outline of small mountain hamlet completely swallowed up by fire, devoured in the course of a few hours one October morning.
The words...my words...will only flail around helplessly as families regroup in tents in parking lots...
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Earth Mascot Discussion Starter
I've been thinking about this for a while...which is weird, that this is something I've been spending thought energy on...
I was wondering what animal mascot would you use for our planet? Would it have to be an animal? Should it be an amoeba? The double helix of our DNA molecule (probably!)?
I have some finalists for my own list...see how you feel...
In no particular order:
The humpback whale:
The anteater:
The Komodo dragon:
The octopus:
The stegosaurus:
The Rosario:
Maybe it should be a plant...like...
The General Sherman Sequoia:
Protozoa? Fungi? Are fungi even from earth?
Orchids? Roses?
How about:
Lichen...
I was wondering what animal mascot would you use for our planet? Would it have to be an animal? Should it be an amoeba? The double helix of our DNA molecule (probably!)?
I have some finalists for my own list...see how you feel...
In no particular order:
The humpback whale:
The Komodo dragon:
The octopus:
The stegosaurus:
The Rosario:
Maybe it should be a plant...like...
The General Sherman Sequoia:
Protozoa? Fungi? Are fungi even from earth?
Orchids? Roses?
How about:
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Happy Birthday Berlow!
On the three-day weekend that just matriculated, we headed back to SLO for Jimmy B's big surprise birthday party, the big 4-0. Good for him.
We had to park around the corner and get there early and jump out and say SURPRISE! and everything, which oddly is both the second time this year and second time ever I've gotten to do that.
Tony even made it out on the sly, bringing his new lady Amber with him. They landed at LAX Saturday morning and met us at Griffith Observatory for a little LA sightseeing before we went on to San Luis and they went back to our apartment for one night in the Southland proper before heading north.
Amber had never been to LA, and the Observatory was close enough to both LAX and our exit from the Southland, and checked enough boxes for iconic LA stuff (nice views of the smog/smoke/basin; FREE, etc).
Because of the Woolsey fire that is eating Malibu and the western half of Simi Valley, Hwy 101 was closed through there, and we had to find some other routes, mostly through the outer reaches of the Grapevine into Ventura or, on the way home, from the Nipomo/Santa Maria border through the Grapevine itself.
We stayed with friends Ken and Christine who live in nearby Los Osos. "Nearby" is an LA relativity term; in San Luis Obispo terms Los Osos is the other side of the moon. But they have two kids and a dog and a backyard and a trampoline, so Cass was essentially at Disneyland on Christmas Day.
I was a groomsmen for Jimmy at his wedding, and this was a nice little reunion for that.
Also, anytime we get to see Tony is awesome; he hadn't seen Cass since before he could crawl.
The whole trip made us realize that we don't go to the SLO area enough, missing out on seeing Ryan and Jimmy far too much. Also, the majority of us are now parents, so that's pretty cool, getting the kids together for stuff to do. Outside stuff...backyard stuff...you know, the kid stuff we don't do because currently we're lacking in some of those things.
Love all of you and loved seeing you!
We had to park around the corner and get there early and jump out and say SURPRISE! and everything, which oddly is both the second time this year and second time ever I've gotten to do that.
Tony even made it out on the sly, bringing his new lady Amber with him. They landed at LAX Saturday morning and met us at Griffith Observatory for a little LA sightseeing before we went on to San Luis and they went back to our apartment for one night in the Southland proper before heading north.
Amber had never been to LA, and the Observatory was close enough to both LAX and our exit from the Southland, and checked enough boxes for iconic LA stuff (nice views of the smog/smoke/basin; FREE, etc).
Because of the Woolsey fire that is eating Malibu and the western half of Simi Valley, Hwy 101 was closed through there, and we had to find some other routes, mostly through the outer reaches of the Grapevine into Ventura or, on the way home, from the Nipomo/Santa Maria border through the Grapevine itself.
We stayed with friends Ken and Christine who live in nearby Los Osos. "Nearby" is an LA relativity term; in San Luis Obispo terms Los Osos is the other side of the moon. But they have two kids and a dog and a backyard and a trampoline, so Cass was essentially at Disneyland on Christmas Day.
I was a groomsmen for Jimmy at his wedding, and this was a nice little reunion for that.
Also, anytime we get to see Tony is awesome; he hadn't seen Cass since before he could crawl.
The whole trip made us realize that we don't go to the SLO area enough, missing out on seeing Ryan and Jimmy far too much. Also, the majority of us are now parents, so that's pretty cool, getting the kids together for stuff to do. Outside stuff...backyard stuff...you know, the kid stuff we don't do because currently we're lacking in some of those things.
Love all of you and loved seeing you!
Three Brief Movie Mentions
I've been sitting on many posts for this site for a while, and here I plan on quickly glossing over two movies and the impressions they left on me, while setting a third up for a deeper discussion later.
These are brief because I have forgotten planty about what I wanted to say, or too much has happened in the meantime and I lost interest to fully savage one of them.
1) Heat, 1995
I had heard so much about this movie in the 23 years since it came out that had turned it into a sacred cow of sorts. I hadn't ever watched it...until a few weeks ago.
I remember the bank heist and shootout in LA that was all over the news back in late '95 or early '96 and the repeated references to Heat. Damn, I gotta see that movie, I remember thinking. Years passed. Years turned to decades.
I own copies of Melville's classic Le Samourai and Kurosawa's Rashomon and Yojimbo, but it wasn't until Fall of 2018 that I got around to watching Heat.
I should change that to "...that I got around to trying to stay awake through Heat."
Holy shit this movie is slow. And every scene is melodrama turned up to eleven. When I read that Michael Mann made the movie off of a scrapped television series treatment, it started to make sense. I am an unabashed homer of HBO's The Wire, and I imagine that if David Simon tried to turn his complex and realistic series into a movie (or five?) that the chances that it could turn into a boring, melodramatic slog would be greater than zero, but my faith in Simon's ability to not up the stakes by resorting to melodrama maybe could fix that.
The only on-screen scene between Pacino and De Niro? All out action set pieces? That Pacino/De Niro scene was good, but unrealistic relative to the entirety of the preceding movie. And the action set pieces were all pretty badass. But do I give a shit about Val Kilmer-the-degenerate-gambler-and -awful-father? Or the creepy relationship De Niro cultivates with Amy Brenneman? Yay, Al Pacino saves his ex-step-daughterQueen Amidala Natalie Portman...
I felt exhausted by the time it was over. Also, THIS MOVIE DOESN'T NEED TO BE 10 MINUTES SHORT OF THREE HOURS LONG.
2) The Third Man, 1949
I JUST SAW THIS!!!! IT'S THE BEST MOVIE EVER!!!
If not the "Best Movie Ever," it has certainly busted into my pantheon list of Favorite Pieces of Cinema ever. My ziggurat/pantheon movie discussion is being worked on in my head all the time, and will be discussed later.
As will this incredible thing that I never heard of until a few months ago while reading some film essay.
3) The Neverending Story, 1984
Besides The Princess Bride, Cassius doesn't much care for live-action movies. We sat down and recently watched The Neverending Story to preview it for him should the time come for us to try him out on it.
The special effects were pretty good for 1984 (with the exception of Falcor's face close-ups) or anytime, really, and the idea of people not caring about something leading to its ruin is neat and something I can get behind.
It was okay. I can't say that I liked it two-thirds as much as The Princess Bride, but easily half as much. During the research phase I learned that the movie was based on the German fantasy book of the same (in German) name, about a kid who escapes bullies and ends up with a book that he reads and becomes sucked into, which was something I didn't know.
Not much to say...it was pretty vanilla, but that may be due to me not having the same emotional kid-attachment to it like other movies from the same era (Temple of Doom, Back to the Future, Return of the Jedi, et al). Even this "mention" is boring...
These are brief because I have forgotten planty about what I wanted to say, or too much has happened in the meantime and I lost interest to fully savage one of them.
1) Heat, 1995
I had heard so much about this movie in the 23 years since it came out that had turned it into a sacred cow of sorts. I hadn't ever watched it...until a few weeks ago.
I remember the bank heist and shootout in LA that was all over the news back in late '95 or early '96 and the repeated references to Heat. Damn, I gotta see that movie, I remember thinking. Years passed. Years turned to decades.
I own copies of Melville's classic Le Samourai and Kurosawa's Rashomon and Yojimbo, but it wasn't until Fall of 2018 that I got around to watching Heat.
I should change that to "...that I got around to trying to stay awake through Heat."
Holy shit this movie is slow. And every scene is melodrama turned up to eleven. When I read that Michael Mann made the movie off of a scrapped television series treatment, it started to make sense. I am an unabashed homer of HBO's The Wire, and I imagine that if David Simon tried to turn his complex and realistic series into a movie (or five?) that the chances that it could turn into a boring, melodramatic slog would be greater than zero, but my faith in Simon's ability to not up the stakes by resorting to melodrama maybe could fix that.
The only on-screen scene between Pacino and De Niro? All out action set pieces? That Pacino/De Niro scene was good, but unrealistic relative to the entirety of the preceding movie. And the action set pieces were all pretty badass. But do I give a shit about Val Kilmer-the-degenerate-gambler-and -awful-father? Or the creepy relationship De Niro cultivates with Amy Brenneman? Yay, Al Pacino saves his ex-step-daughter
I felt exhausted by the time it was over. Also, THIS MOVIE DOESN'T NEED TO BE 10 MINUTES SHORT OF THREE HOURS LONG.
2) The Third Man, 1949
I JUST SAW THIS!!!! IT'S THE BEST MOVIE EVER!!!
If not the "Best Movie Ever," it has certainly busted into my pantheon list of Favorite Pieces of Cinema ever. My ziggurat/pantheon movie discussion is being worked on in my head all the time, and will be discussed later.
As will this incredible thing that I never heard of until a few months ago while reading some film essay.
3) The Neverending Story, 1984
Besides The Princess Bride, Cassius doesn't much care for live-action movies. We sat down and recently watched The Neverending Story to preview it for him should the time come for us to try him out on it.
The special effects were pretty good for 1984 (with the exception of Falcor's face close-ups) or anytime, really, and the idea of people not caring about something leading to its ruin is neat and something I can get behind.
It was okay. I can't say that I liked it two-thirds as much as The Princess Bride, but easily half as much. During the research phase I learned that the movie was based on the German fantasy book of the same (in German) name, about a kid who escapes bullies and ends up with a book that he reads and becomes sucked into, which was something I didn't know.
Not much to say...it was pretty vanilla, but that may be due to me not having the same emotional kid-attachment to it like other movies from the same era (Temple of Doom, Back to the Future, Return of the Jedi, et al). Even this "mention" is boring...
Post-War Support for Artists in Japan
I heard about a town/village in Japan on PBS that warmed my heart.
I believe it was the town of Ono in Hyogo Prefecture. In the post-war years, many communities tried to return to a semblance of normalcy, and those attempts took on many forms.
In Ono, the people believed that art was imperative to the new world they needed to be a part of, and that meant that art was necessary. Instead of demand artists become anointed and declared important, which rarely does any good for a people or their beliefs, the people of Ono did something else.
They paid for it themselves.
The people felt that art was a worthy expenditure, and decided to devote nearly 35% of their salaries to supporting young "starving" artist types. They bought art, lots of it. The felt that if artists could live without fear of destitution or literal starvation, they could maintain a high level of output and growth.
None of these artists were living the high life, none were made wealthy in these first decades after WWII, but they were able to learn about and improve on their craft, whatever the medium.
That a town got together and said, "This is worthy," and everyone bought it, gives me hope in humanity.
I believe it was the town of Ono in Hyogo Prefecture. In the post-war years, many communities tried to return to a semblance of normalcy, and those attempts took on many forms.
In Ono, the people believed that art was imperative to the new world they needed to be a part of, and that meant that art was necessary. Instead of demand artists become anointed and declared important, which rarely does any good for a people or their beliefs, the people of Ono did something else.
They paid for it themselves.
The people felt that art was a worthy expenditure, and decided to devote nearly 35% of their salaries to supporting young "starving" artist types. They bought art, lots of it. The felt that if artists could live without fear of destitution or literal starvation, they could maintain a high level of output and growth.
None of these artists were living the high life, none were made wealthy in these first decades after WWII, but they were able to learn about and improve on their craft, whatever the medium.
That a town got together and said, "This is worthy," and everyone bought it, gives me hope in humanity.
I was having a thought...
...which is always dangerous, I know. But check it out:
I was reading a while back about Bob Bakker's (the "kk" isn't a typo) thoughts on guard animals. He posited that if you used a Kimodo dragon instead of a German shepherd as a guard animal for your house or yard, not only would intruders be generally obliterated, but the amount of food needed to sustain the animal (a large reptile) would by far pale in comparison to the amount needed to sustain a large mammal over the same fifteen year timespan.
This takes for granted that one could train dragons to be guard animals, and sure, Bakker is a reptile guy, but it reminded me a little of the old stories of Indian kings using cobras as guard animals, king cobras specifically. That always sounded kinda neat: an army of badass snakes guarding your palace...
Anyway, this leads me to the titular "thought" from above and a conversation I was having with Corrie, and helps frame a question.
If we're assuming that it would be possible to train Kimodo dragons and king cobras for this discussion's sake, then, why not assume we could train house-cats for the same purpose: guarding a house or property?
That's not the question I'm trying to pose, exactly. Let's assume you could. After watching Sargent Tibbs from 101 Dalmatians and, in a more direct vein, The Aristocats enough times recently, I got to thinking that cats could make pretty decent home defenders.
I asked Corrie during one viewing if she thought some cats were properly motivated and properly trained, did she think they could disarm or disable a home invader. She mulled it over before answering in the affirmative, which was my guess as well.
I know that a serious punch while wearing brass knuckles would mess a cat up, but what if four cats were determined to halt your progress upon arriving at a place, or inside a place? I love cats, and I play rough with them, and I've gotten them rather ornery during a play session, and sometimes that lead them to roll their ears back and start to chase me around the room. It was moments like that that are the foundation of my thinking.
So my actual question: How many house cats would be necessary to halt a pair of intruders if properly trained and motivated? Two? Six? Is this even a legitimate conversation?
Assault weapons being an equalizer and all, they may make swift work of dogs and dragons, so it would be silly to assume that cats should have to perform better under those circumstances.
This entire endeavor sounds way darker than I envisioned before I started writing it.
For the record let me reiterate: I love cats, I love dogs, I love raccoons, I love Kimodo dragons and king cobras, and generally enjoy all non-roach animals on this planet.
I was reading a while back about Bob Bakker's (the "kk" isn't a typo) thoughts on guard animals. He posited that if you used a Kimodo dragon instead of a German shepherd as a guard animal for your house or yard, not only would intruders be generally obliterated, but the amount of food needed to sustain the animal (a large reptile) would by far pale in comparison to the amount needed to sustain a large mammal over the same fifteen year timespan.
This takes for granted that one could train dragons to be guard animals, and sure, Bakker is a reptile guy, but it reminded me a little of the old stories of Indian kings using cobras as guard animals, king cobras specifically. That always sounded kinda neat: an army of badass snakes guarding your palace...
Anyway, this leads me to the titular "thought" from above and a conversation I was having with Corrie, and helps frame a question.
If we're assuming that it would be possible to train Kimodo dragons and king cobras for this discussion's sake, then, why not assume we could train house-cats for the same purpose: guarding a house or property?
That's not the question I'm trying to pose, exactly. Let's assume you could. After watching Sargent Tibbs from 101 Dalmatians and, in a more direct vein, The Aristocats enough times recently, I got to thinking that cats could make pretty decent home defenders.
I asked Corrie during one viewing if she thought some cats were properly motivated and properly trained, did she think they could disarm or disable a home invader. She mulled it over before answering in the affirmative, which was my guess as well.
I know that a serious punch while wearing brass knuckles would mess a cat up, but what if four cats were determined to halt your progress upon arriving at a place, or inside a place? I love cats, and I play rough with them, and I've gotten them rather ornery during a play session, and sometimes that lead them to roll their ears back and start to chase me around the room. It was moments like that that are the foundation of my thinking.
So my actual question: How many house cats would be necessary to halt a pair of intruders if properly trained and motivated? Two? Six? Is this even a legitimate conversation?
Assault weapons being an equalizer and all, they may make swift work of dogs and dragons, so it would be silly to assume that cats should have to perform better under those circumstances.
This entire endeavor sounds way darker than I envisioned before I started writing it.
For the record let me reiterate: I love cats, I love dogs, I love raccoons, I love Kimodo dragons and king cobras, and generally enjoy all non-roach animals on this planet.
Sunday, October 28, 2018
First Date Night in Twenty-Eight Months
Our plans were set, mostly. Our old pal Jules was set to get married on a Friday evening, the ceremony was to begin at 5pm.
If you live in LA and plan to be at a wedding at 5 pm on a Friday seven or eight miles outside of Grass Valley, CA, you need to plan accordingly. Like, better than we did.
Penn Valley was the scene of the ceremony and reception, specifically Lake Wildwood, which is the lake at the center of their (very white) planned community. As we drove around the place on the way to the reception hall, after making through the gate, I asked Corrie, "What do you think the over-under is on the number of black people who live here?"
"Oh, zero, honey, c'mon..."
Part of us wanted to leave Thursday night...pretty tough with a toddler. Then we thought about leaving at the crack of dawn Friday. Also, tough with a toddler.
Penn Valley is about seven miles from Grass Valley; Grass Valley is just under 30 miles from Auburn; Auburn is about 20 miles from Citrus Heights; and Citrus Heights is as far from the center of Sacramento as you can be and still be part of Sac, and is where I'm from; and Sac is six hours from LA with no traffic or stops.
When we leave Long Beach for Sacramento and my brother's, it takes an hour to get to the base of the Grapevine and an hour to get past the Grapevine. In two hours, we'll have just come down the final slopes and stick with I-5 when it breaks up into itself and Hwy 99. Depending on stops and average speeds, it will take about 3.5 to 4 hours to get to Stockton, and about another hour to get to Dan or Norm's, at the Northeast side of Sac.
On this trip, we dropped Cassius off at Norm and Holly's for an overnighter with his cousin Simon, changed clothes, and hit the road again.
Up the hill for a quick jaunt up I-80 to Auburn, then got on CA Route 49 and took it all the way up to Grass Valley. There, we hung a left, heading east along CA Route 20 the last seven or eight miles to Penn Valley and the Lake Wildwood gated community, and community house where the wedding was to take place.
We missed the entirety of the ceremony, arriving just as the party was starting. From 9:15 am until 5:45 pm, it was a harrowing and stressful run, from Long Beach through LA, up and down the Grapevine, up the gut of the state along I-5, through Stockton and Sac, dropping off the Boy, putting on nice clothes, trying to be strong for him (he was all good as we slipped out the door), and then up the grade to the mountains, and then up into the cut to Grass Valley, and then up into more of the cut to the sight of the ceremony.
It's amazing that we made it at all.
Finally able to relax, we had a good time. We'd decided to skip checking into our Grass Valley hotel until afterwards.
After the party, and after reacquainting ourselves with a long-lost pal Ryan Waldren, we all headed to Jules and her new hubby Brad's place in the community. We had a good time there as well, except that I was still dressed in my nice clothes. I had black slacks and my black tailored shirt, black dress shoes and super colorful tie, which I removed after arriving at the house. On one trip to the bathroom I noticed something particular: I looked like a Star Wars villain. Maybe a ranking officer on a star destroyer.
On the way back to Grass Valley to the hotel, it became apparent that because of some weird malfunction on Corrie's phone, our hotel was not, in fact, in Grass Valley, but it was located in Marysville, another thirty miles west along CA 20. A tenuous drive along 20 was completed easily.
It was our very first night where both of us were away from the Boy.
The next morning we walked around the historic Marysville downtown area before eating breakfast at a nifty bricktown coffee house. Did you know: Marysville is named for Mary Murphy Covillaurd, a survivor of the Donner Party expedition.
We took the scenic route back to Sac, a route that had a twenty minute patch that was unpaved; I spent the entire twenty minutes in second gear at about twenty mph. Nice.
We spent the next night at Dan and 'Pita's, and drove home Sunday.
Long drive, long drive...
Here's a shot of the route from Citrus Heights to Auburn, then due north to Grass Valley, then west to the wedding scene (the blip) then even more west to Marysville:
Corrie looked smashing, but I don't have any pictures. Crazy...no real pictures from a wedding party, but oh well. Life goes on.
If you live in LA and plan to be at a wedding at 5 pm on a Friday seven or eight miles outside of Grass Valley, CA, you need to plan accordingly. Like, better than we did.
Penn Valley was the scene of the ceremony and reception, specifically Lake Wildwood, which is the lake at the center of their (very white) planned community. As we drove around the place on the way to the reception hall, after making through the gate, I asked Corrie, "What do you think the over-under is on the number of black people who live here?"
"Oh, zero, honey, c'mon..."
Part of us wanted to leave Thursday night...pretty tough with a toddler. Then we thought about leaving at the crack of dawn Friday. Also, tough with a toddler.
Penn Valley is about seven miles from Grass Valley; Grass Valley is just under 30 miles from Auburn; Auburn is about 20 miles from Citrus Heights; and Citrus Heights is as far from the center of Sacramento as you can be and still be part of Sac, and is where I'm from; and Sac is six hours from LA with no traffic or stops.
When we leave Long Beach for Sacramento and my brother's, it takes an hour to get to the base of the Grapevine and an hour to get past the Grapevine. In two hours, we'll have just come down the final slopes and stick with I-5 when it breaks up into itself and Hwy 99. Depending on stops and average speeds, it will take about 3.5 to 4 hours to get to Stockton, and about another hour to get to Dan or Norm's, at the Northeast side of Sac.
On this trip, we dropped Cassius off at Norm and Holly's for an overnighter with his cousin Simon, changed clothes, and hit the road again.
Up the hill for a quick jaunt up I-80 to Auburn, then got on CA Route 49 and took it all the way up to Grass Valley. There, we hung a left, heading east along CA Route 20 the last seven or eight miles to Penn Valley and the Lake Wildwood gated community, and community house where the wedding was to take place.
We missed the entirety of the ceremony, arriving just as the party was starting. From 9:15 am until 5:45 pm, it was a harrowing and stressful run, from Long Beach through LA, up and down the Grapevine, up the gut of the state along I-5, through Stockton and Sac, dropping off the Boy, putting on nice clothes, trying to be strong for him (he was all good as we slipped out the door), and then up the grade to the mountains, and then up into the cut to Grass Valley, and then up into more of the cut to the sight of the ceremony.
It's amazing that we made it at all.
Finally able to relax, we had a good time. We'd decided to skip checking into our Grass Valley hotel until afterwards.
After the party, and after reacquainting ourselves with a long-lost pal Ryan Waldren, we all headed to Jules and her new hubby Brad's place in the community. We had a good time there as well, except that I was still dressed in my nice clothes. I had black slacks and my black tailored shirt, black dress shoes and super colorful tie, which I removed after arriving at the house. On one trip to the bathroom I noticed something particular: I looked like a Star Wars villain. Maybe a ranking officer on a star destroyer.
On the way back to Grass Valley to the hotel, it became apparent that because of some weird malfunction on Corrie's phone, our hotel was not, in fact, in Grass Valley, but it was located in Marysville, another thirty miles west along CA 20. A tenuous drive along 20 was completed easily.
It was our very first night where both of us were away from the Boy.
The next morning we walked around the historic Marysville downtown area before eating breakfast at a nifty bricktown coffee house. Did you know: Marysville is named for Mary Murphy Covillaurd, a survivor of the Donner Party expedition.
We took the scenic route back to Sac, a route that had a twenty minute patch that was unpaved; I spent the entire twenty minutes in second gear at about twenty mph. Nice.
We spent the next night at Dan and 'Pita's, and drove home Sunday.
Long drive, long drive...
Here's a shot of the route from Citrus Heights to Auburn, then due north to Grass Valley, then west to the wedding scene (the blip) then even more west to Marysville:
Corrie looked smashing, but I don't have any pictures. Crazy...no real pictures from a wedding party, but oh well. Life goes on.
World Series Note
I love the fact that the entire 1939 World Series, a four game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds by my New York Yankees, took about 7 hours and 5 minutes, WHICH TOOK LESS TIME THAN FRIDAY'S 18 INNING MARATHON BETWEEN THE RED SOX AND DODGERS.
That game, Game 3, the only game the Dodgers won, was effectively two games, and took 7 hours and 20 minutes.
We started watching it at the restaurant at 5 pm when it started. We left close to 7, got the Boy through his bath and into bed like normal, and kept watching. By 11:30, both of us were done and about to be out on the couch, and tha game was still on, the 16th inning maybe.
I turned it off and went to bed not knowing how it it would finish. Had it been the Yankees, NO WAY would I have gone to bed.
Anyway, it wasn't until the next morning that I learned the outcome.
Also, my condolences to my mom and and all my Dodger loving family and friends. This Red Sox team is just so good. And as a Yankee fan, it pains me to say that.
I do like Mookie Betts, though, and love the fact he's also a professional bowler. He's even rolled three recognized and sanctioned perfect games in his life.
In other random sports news, I caught a few plays between the Trojans of USC and Arizona State this past Saturday. I caught a tackle of the USC running back deep in the backfield, which was a loss of yards on the play.
The announcer said, "That was great penetration from Darien Butler there to cause such a loss of yards," and while Corrie made her usual jokes about how the rampant homophobia in American football battles the obviously gay dialogue by the commenters, I perked up.
Darien Butler was one of mine, from my first year. I had him and Ray Scott in the same period, and Ray plays defense for USC, so they must have been playing against each other.
That was one of the better periods that year, as those two didn't let shit happen that was obnoxious.
That game, Game 3, the only game the Dodgers won, was effectively two games, and took 7 hours and 20 minutes.
We started watching it at the restaurant at 5 pm when it started. We left close to 7, got the Boy through his bath and into bed like normal, and kept watching. By 11:30, both of us were done and about to be out on the couch, and tha game was still on, the 16th inning maybe.
I turned it off and went to bed not knowing how it it would finish. Had it been the Yankees, NO WAY would I have gone to bed.
Anyway, it wasn't until the next morning that I learned the outcome.
Also, my condolences to my mom and and all my Dodger loving family and friends. This Red Sox team is just so good. And as a Yankee fan, it pains me to say that.
I do like Mookie Betts, though, and love the fact he's also a professional bowler. He's even rolled three recognized and sanctioned perfect games in his life.
In other random sports news, I caught a few plays between the Trojans of USC and Arizona State this past Saturday. I caught a tackle of the USC running back deep in the backfield, which was a loss of yards on the play.
The announcer said, "That was great penetration from Darien Butler there to cause such a loss of yards," and while Corrie made her usual jokes about how the rampant homophobia in American football battles the obviously gay dialogue by the commenters, I perked up.
Darien Butler was one of mine, from my first year. I had him and Ray Scott in the same period, and Ray plays defense for USC, so they must have been playing against each other.
That was one of the better periods that year, as those two didn't let shit happen that was obnoxious.
Beachy Cliff Hike
It seems like month ago when in fact it was only a few weeks, but we went on a hike with our friend Lauren. We wanted to find a place that Cass could join on the hike itself instead of being carried (for the entirety), so it had to be mellow, but just enough nature that it was different from our normal neighborhood walks.
We settled on a nice easy walk along the beach bluffs on the Rancho Palos Verdes peninsula, technically the entrance is on the public land forced upon Orange Roughy at his golf course in RPV.
The Boy has his hat and walked the vast majority of it. Above is a picture of a backwoodsy spot, without the ocean in view. It, the ocean, was in view for most of the walk, seen below in Lauren's family picture of us:
And, the obligatory selfie, taken when neither me nor the Boy could see what was happening on my phone when I took the picture, but it turned out okay anyway:
Such an easy walk with a toddler, such a good use of a Sunday afternoon...
We settled on a nice easy walk along the beach bluffs on the Rancho Palos Verdes peninsula, technically the entrance is on the public land forced upon Orange Roughy at his golf course in RPV.
The Boy has his hat and walked the vast majority of it. Above is a picture of a backwoodsy spot, without the ocean in view. It, the ocean, was in view for most of the walk, seen below in Lauren's family picture of us:
And, the obligatory selfie, taken when neither me nor the Boy could see what was happening on my phone when I took the picture, but it turned out okay anyway:
Such an easy walk with a toddler, such a good use of a Sunday afternoon...
Apple Season Once Again
We have arrived at the glorious time of year when the apples are in season for our farm box deliveries. This past Thursday we had three different varieties delivered:
The wonderful thing was that each one of these examples were some of the best examples I've experienced of them.
The first one, on the left, is an Arkansas Black; the middle they called a Jazz Apple; and the third, the oddly shaped pale apple on the right, is the French classic Calville Blanc.
Both the Arkansas Black and Calville Blanc were quite dense, far denser than most apples available to the American public.
The Jazz apple was crisp and tart and juicy, reminiscent of the fantastic Honey Crisp.
The wonderful thing was that each one of these examples were some of the best examples I've experienced of them.
The first one, on the left, is an Arkansas Black; the middle they called a Jazz Apple; and the third, the oddly shaped pale apple on the right, is the French classic Calville Blanc.
Both the Arkansas Black and Calville Blanc were quite dense, far denser than most apples available to the American public.
The Jazz apple was crisp and tart and juicy, reminiscent of the fantastic Honey Crisp.
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Fire in the Sky, and Other Notes
We just returned from a long weekend of driving to get to the wedding of our friend Jules to her fella. There will be a brief mention of it before too long, but I've been saying as much for most of the summer.
I have some ideas that have been cooking for a while, like taking the Boy to the Farm and later to the Cabin, both times as a two-year-old. And a study of Friday, June 15ths...the last two Friday, June 15ths have been rough for us.
Back in 1993 a movie was released called "Fire in the Sky," and told the tale of purported alien-abduction from the POV of both those left aground during the event and the guy who was taken. It's based on the story of one Travis Walton, a man who claims to have been abducted.
Anyway, the other night there was a Space-X launch and we got a bit of an evening light show:
Our friend works at Space-X, and that's how we knew it was a launch of theirs.
I have some ideas that have been cooking for a while, like taking the Boy to the Farm and later to the Cabin, both times as a two-year-old. And a study of Friday, June 15ths...the last two Friday, June 15ths have been rough for us.
Back in 1993 a movie was released called "Fire in the Sky," and told the tale of purported alien-abduction from the POV of both those left aground during the event and the guy who was taken. It's based on the story of one Travis Walton, a man who claims to have been abducted.
Anyway, the other night there was a Space-X launch and we got a bit of an evening light show:
Our friend works at Space-X, and that's how we knew it was a launch of theirs.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Purple Nurple and the Phonics of the American "R"
A "purple nurple," for the luckily uninitiated, is when a buddy of yours grabs and twists your nipple until it turns purple with bruising. This is an extremely unpleasant thing guys do to each other. Ladies seem to be exempt from all but the most salacious of gentlemen.
I bring this up because it highlights nicely the R sound in American English.
The way the American (and often the Canadian) accent pronounces the letter R turns out to be rather unique in the collection of earthly languages. Father, mother, sister, brother, girl, and bird all showcase this particular sound. Try to imagine our closest language forbears, the Brits, and our their other offspring and our cousins, the Aussies.
They tend to take the and soften that R sound into "fath-ah," "muth-uh," and even "purh-ple."
Dialect coach Erik Singer mentions that the America R is so unique and so difficult of a tongue placement that it tends to be left out of constructed languages---fake languages created for artistic purposes like Elfish, Klingon, and Dothraki among others---because it sounds, well, just American.
This got me thinking about how the rules of each language and/or accent branch can be discovered by having lines of dialogue written in their languages and read by either non-native speakers or speakers with accents from different places.
I have a whole experiment brewing but not the time to explicate it here. I'll return to this...
One quick example: the word girl
American English: "grrl"
Scottish English: "gearl" or "gairl"
I bring this up because it highlights nicely the R sound in American English.
The way the American (and often the Canadian) accent pronounces the letter R turns out to be rather unique in the collection of earthly languages. Father, mother, sister, brother, girl, and bird all showcase this particular sound. Try to imagine our closest language forbears, the Brits, and our their other offspring and our cousins, the Aussies.
They tend to take the and soften that R sound into "fath-ah," "muth-uh," and even "purh-ple."
Dialect coach Erik Singer mentions that the America R is so unique and so difficult of a tongue placement that it tends to be left out of constructed languages---fake languages created for artistic purposes like Elfish, Klingon, and Dothraki among others---because it sounds, well, just American.
This got me thinking about how the rules of each language and/or accent branch can be discovered by having lines of dialogue written in their languages and read by either non-native speakers or speakers with accents from different places.
I have a whole experiment brewing but not the time to explicate it here. I'll return to this...
One quick example: the word girl
American English: "grrl"
Scottish English: "gearl" or "gairl"
Saturday, September 1, 2018
Not Enough Love for the Jurassic Park Sequels
I finally got around to watching Jurassic Park 3.
Sometime in July after Cass went to bed we put Jurassic Park on and tried watching it fresh, similar to our Star Wars experiment back in 2015. We meet the rich patron of the sciences, John Hammond, and marvel at the realistic representation of dinosaurs. The digital work is used sparingly and this adds to the power of the form---there are plenty of puppets and animatronics. Besides Hammond are his grand kids, a girl and a boy; a paleontologist, Dr. Alan Grant and his girlfriend, a paleobotanist, Dr. Elly Sattler; and the chaos-minded mathematician, Ian Malcolm. It even features Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Night, essentially playing his more famous character, Newman from Seinfeld.
Elly wants kids while Alan is not exactly into the idea at the beginning of the movie, but by saving the kids throughout the movie, he maybe warms up to the idea. At least he doesn't loathe the idea on the surface like earlier.
This was also the introduction of the velociraptor to the cultural consciousness.
Classic movie. Personal history alert: my mother promised to take me and my brother out of school on opening day to see the matinee showing of Jurassic Park as long as I finished the novel before that day. I did finish it in time, and it turned out to be the first time I was disappointed in a film adaptation of a book I loved. Not that I thought the movie was bad...
That was 1993. In 1997 the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released. John Hammond returns as does Ian Malcolm, and we et to see some of Ian's personal life. He goes from being the odd mix ingratiating and annoying thorn in Hammond's side to a fully fleshed out person. He's a father to a precocious tweener girl, who's black, and he has a girlfriend played by Julianne Moore. Vince Vaughn plays the photographer who rounds out the survivor list.
Four more years later in 2001 we get Jurassic Park 3, stylized as Jurassic Park III in the opening credits, with the "III" being dino claw marks tearing through the screen. In this movie it's Alan Grant who returns to action. We see that he and Elly drifted part and that she got married and has two kids. Grant and his hunky young sidekick Billy are tricked into helping search for a kid, William H. Macy and Tea Leoni's kid to be exact, a fifteen-year-old who's been on his own for 8 weeks. This one takes the chase scene from the first movie and stretches it out to an entire movie. It's solid action. It also features Michael Jeter; you may recognize him as the sniveling buddy from Evening Shade.
Taken as a trilogy, I find it surprisingly good.
The first movie introduces the main ideas---Isla Nublar, off the coast of Costa Rica, is a tropical island that has an amusement park built on it that is populated by engineered monsters. There are tour trams and fences and a paramilitary guard force. Kids are rescued by a savvy scientist type, and the truth of the world--chaos--wins the day. Two scientists, one from each gender, a chaotician (a mathematician focused on dynamic systems), two kids, and the billionaire owner are the only survivors.
The second movie opens with a wealthy family on a yacht cruise taking in an afternoon ashore on a random island, Isla Sorna, off the coast of Costa Rica. The daughter is attacked off-screen. The company that built the amusement park had set up a second location in the vicinity of Isla Nublar, one without any tours, or guards, or walls. The chaotician is asked to join an expeditionary force. He steadfastly refuses. He learns his girlfriend is already on the island, and enraged, he joins. His daughter stows-away and is the child in need of saving.
While I did see the movie "Nine Months," this might have been the first time I really saw Julianne Moore. It was definitely the first time I saw Vince Vaughn. I remember thinking he looked familiar after "Swingers" hit in big. Watching Lost World again the other day made me realize that I hadn't remembered he was in the cast. Same thing for Julianne Moore.
I also didn't rememebr Jeff Goldblum's daughter is black. One character says to another, "I'm not sure I see a resemblance," but that's the last it's mentioned at all. She's pretty much both kids from the first movie combined: the early-teenaged girl and the nerdy know-it-all boy. Vanessa Lee Chester plays a strong and positive role.
The daughter, the photographer, the scientist and the chaotician survive.
The third movie opens with two people parasailing off the coast of Isla Sorna, which is labeled RESTRICTED in big red letters. The two people are connected in a tandem set up. The boat towing them enters a fog, some stuff happens unseen to the viewer and when the boat exits the fog, the guys on the boat are missing. The boat is cruising top speed towards some rocks, so the older guy, the main guy on the parachute, unlatches them, using soothing language to the teenage boy he's tied to to keep him calm. They head towards the island.
The hero scientist from the first movie gets invited to come help with the rescue. It's been eight weeks, and one plot hole is that a fifteen year old has been able to survive. This movie is nearly all action. The parents of the missing kid are split up, and the adult on the parachute is the mother's new beau. The parents, played by Bill Macy and Tea Leoni, trick Sam Neill, not really able to hide his English accent for a second time, as Alan Grant, into joining the rescue. They of course didn't mention it was a rescue. When the plane makes to land, the scientist steadfastly argues against.
The action is nice, frenetic, and seemingly never-ending. This movie establishes both the pterodactyl as a crazy dangerous specimen, an idea brought to full splendor in the fourth installment, and the spinosaurus, a dinosaur I wrote about before, enters the dialogue. How did I not know about this movie when I wrote that post!? The spinosaurus is awesome, and there is even a T-Rex/spino fight. The relationship with the raptors even evolves. This movie is a sprint and nearly everybody dies.
The scientist, his sidekick, the parents and their kid survive.
Taken as a trio of movies, an entire crew gets fleshed out.
The fourth and fifth movie exist in the same universe, and are entries in a larger narrative. Jurassic World is paced far closer to Jurassic Park, and is essentially that movie updated for our times. The relationship with the raptors has evolved still.
This discussion can't be complete because I haven't seen the newest sequel, Fallen Kingdom, but I don't think the second two movies, and the third specifically, get enough love.
Sometime in July after Cass went to bed we put Jurassic Park on and tried watching it fresh, similar to our Star Wars experiment back in 2015. We meet the rich patron of the sciences, John Hammond, and marvel at the realistic representation of dinosaurs. The digital work is used sparingly and this adds to the power of the form---there are plenty of puppets and animatronics. Besides Hammond are his grand kids, a girl and a boy; a paleontologist, Dr. Alan Grant and his girlfriend, a paleobotanist, Dr. Elly Sattler; and the chaos-minded mathematician, Ian Malcolm. It even features Samuel L. Jackson and Wayne Night, essentially playing his more famous character, Newman from Seinfeld.
Elly wants kids while Alan is not exactly into the idea at the beginning of the movie, but by saving the kids throughout the movie, he maybe warms up to the idea. At least he doesn't loathe the idea on the surface like earlier.
This was also the introduction of the velociraptor to the cultural consciousness.
Classic movie. Personal history alert: my mother promised to take me and my brother out of school on opening day to see the matinee showing of Jurassic Park as long as I finished the novel before that day. I did finish it in time, and it turned out to be the first time I was disappointed in a film adaptation of a book I loved. Not that I thought the movie was bad...
That was 1993. In 1997 the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park was released. John Hammond returns as does Ian Malcolm, and we et to see some of Ian's personal life. He goes from being the odd mix ingratiating and annoying thorn in Hammond's side to a fully fleshed out person. He's a father to a precocious tweener girl, who's black, and he has a girlfriend played by Julianne Moore. Vince Vaughn plays the photographer who rounds out the survivor list.
Four more years later in 2001 we get Jurassic Park 3, stylized as Jurassic Park III in the opening credits, with the "III" being dino claw marks tearing through the screen. In this movie it's Alan Grant who returns to action. We see that he and Elly drifted part and that she got married and has two kids. Grant and his hunky young sidekick Billy are tricked into helping search for a kid, William H. Macy and Tea Leoni's kid to be exact, a fifteen-year-old who's been on his own for 8 weeks. This one takes the chase scene from the first movie and stretches it out to an entire movie. It's solid action. It also features Michael Jeter; you may recognize him as the sniveling buddy from Evening Shade.
Taken as a trilogy, I find it surprisingly good.
The first movie introduces the main ideas---Isla Nublar, off the coast of Costa Rica, is a tropical island that has an amusement park built on it that is populated by engineered monsters. There are tour trams and fences and a paramilitary guard force. Kids are rescued by a savvy scientist type, and the truth of the world--chaos--wins the day. Two scientists, one from each gender, a chaotician (a mathematician focused on dynamic systems), two kids, and the billionaire owner are the only survivors.
The second movie opens with a wealthy family on a yacht cruise taking in an afternoon ashore on a random island, Isla Sorna, off the coast of Costa Rica. The daughter is attacked off-screen. The company that built the amusement park had set up a second location in the vicinity of Isla Nublar, one without any tours, or guards, or walls. The chaotician is asked to join an expeditionary force. He steadfastly refuses. He learns his girlfriend is already on the island, and enraged, he joins. His daughter stows-away and is the child in need of saving.
While I did see the movie "Nine Months," this might have been the first time I really saw Julianne Moore. It was definitely the first time I saw Vince Vaughn. I remember thinking he looked familiar after "Swingers" hit in big. Watching Lost World again the other day made me realize that I hadn't remembered he was in the cast. Same thing for Julianne Moore.
I also didn't rememebr Jeff Goldblum's daughter is black. One character says to another, "I'm not sure I see a resemblance," but that's the last it's mentioned at all. She's pretty much both kids from the first movie combined: the early-teenaged girl and the nerdy know-it-all boy. Vanessa Lee Chester plays a strong and positive role.
The daughter, the photographer, the scientist and the chaotician survive.
The third movie opens with two people parasailing off the coast of Isla Sorna, which is labeled RESTRICTED in big red letters. The two people are connected in a tandem set up. The boat towing them enters a fog, some stuff happens unseen to the viewer and when the boat exits the fog, the guys on the boat are missing. The boat is cruising top speed towards some rocks, so the older guy, the main guy on the parachute, unlatches them, using soothing language to the teenage boy he's tied to to keep him calm. They head towards the island.
The hero scientist from the first movie gets invited to come help with the rescue. It's been eight weeks, and one plot hole is that a fifteen year old has been able to survive. This movie is nearly all action. The parents of the missing kid are split up, and the adult on the parachute is the mother's new beau. The parents, played by Bill Macy and Tea Leoni, trick Sam Neill, not really able to hide his English accent for a second time, as Alan Grant, into joining the rescue. They of course didn't mention it was a rescue. When the plane makes to land, the scientist steadfastly argues against.
The action is nice, frenetic, and seemingly never-ending. This movie establishes both the pterodactyl as a crazy dangerous specimen, an idea brought to full splendor in the fourth installment, and the spinosaurus, a dinosaur I wrote about before, enters the dialogue. How did I not know about this movie when I wrote that post!? The spinosaurus is awesome, and there is even a T-Rex/spino fight. The relationship with the raptors even evolves. This movie is a sprint and nearly everybody dies.
The scientist, his sidekick, the parents and their kid survive.
Taken as a trio of movies, an entire crew gets fleshed out.
The fourth and fifth movie exist in the same universe, and are entries in a larger narrative. Jurassic World is paced far closer to Jurassic Park, and is essentially that movie updated for our times. The relationship with the raptors has evolved still.
This discussion can't be complete because I haven't seen the newest sequel, Fallen Kingdom, but I don't think the second two movies, and the third specifically, get enough love.
August was Long
Today is September 1st, and the day after tomorrow is Labor Day Monday, and I've been invited to walk in the parade. The times are getting real for us laborers.
July ended with me at a conference in downtown LA while Cass sweated through a bad fever at home with Corrie, the fan the only respite for our oven apartment. While video-chatting, her phone got so hot she couldn't hold it anymore, and we were nervous it would explode.
That seems like so long ago, even though it was less than 35 days. Summer ended for us, work resumed, we had our authorization to strike vote, and even the initial evening meeting with the adults.
And Now the entire month of August went by and I put up just a sad, solitary note.
I even wrote up a proposal for the International Pynchon Week next year in Rome.
Anyway, August was long...
July ended with me at a conference in downtown LA while Cass sweated through a bad fever at home with Corrie, the fan the only respite for our oven apartment. While video-chatting, her phone got so hot she couldn't hold it anymore, and we were nervous it would explode.
That seems like so long ago, even though it was less than 35 days. Summer ended for us, work resumed, we had our authorization to strike vote, and even the initial evening meeting with the adults.
And Now the entire month of August went by and I put up just a sad, solitary note.
I even wrote up a proposal for the International Pynchon Week next year in Rome.
Anyway, August was long...
Wednesday, August 22, 2018
RIP Aretha
The other day I sat staring at my blog post editor page for a while trying to find something interesting for me to say about Aretha, or, rather, trying to find something a white kid (guy, and getting close to old guy) from the 'burbs could or should say about Aretha.
When I was a kid, I remember my mom's record, and later CD, of Carole King's classic album "Tapestry." I also remember a song on it that sounded beautiful, if not quite exactly correct to my ears, the classic "(You make me feel like a ) Natural Woman." Already the sound of Aretha Franklin's rendition of the song had made its way into my head and somehow it had already become the "official" version.
Likewise, most likely through cultural osmosis, I can't remember the first time I heard her version of Otis Redding's "Respect." But as classic an American song will be difficult to pinpoint.
I remember watching "The Blues Brothers" as a kid and in one of my favorite scenes, the diner, when the lady sings a song trying to convince her husband not to go off and join the band, leaving her and their diner behind, my dad came through the room saying, "So, that's Aretha Franklin," like I'd been mistaken before or something. I love it when the Jake and Elwood join the ensemble near the end of the dance routine.
In the course of trying to find something original to say about Aretha, I came by a list of 12 of her most "owning-it" performances, and spent nearly an hour transfixed. One of the most powerful was the last, and I'd implore anyone who hasn't seen it to check it out: the Kennedy Center honoring Carole King and Aretha surprises everyone when she decides to not only sing, but play on the piano, "Natural Woman." It brings even Obama to tears. Check it out here at the end of the list (but the others are pretty cool too).
Included in that list is siomething I only heard about during an eulogy on NPR, about the time she SUBSTITUTED FOR AN ILL PAVAROTTI and sang some opera.
What couldn't she do? Queen of soul indeed.
So, even if I couldn't say anything original about Aretha Franklin, I wanted to say something.
When I was a kid, I remember my mom's record, and later CD, of Carole King's classic album "Tapestry." I also remember a song on it that sounded beautiful, if not quite exactly correct to my ears, the classic "(You make me feel like a ) Natural Woman." Already the sound of Aretha Franklin's rendition of the song had made its way into my head and somehow it had already become the "official" version.
Likewise, most likely through cultural osmosis, I can't remember the first time I heard her version of Otis Redding's "Respect." But as classic an American song will be difficult to pinpoint.
I remember watching "The Blues Brothers" as a kid and in one of my favorite scenes, the diner, when the lady sings a song trying to convince her husband not to go off and join the band, leaving her and their diner behind, my dad came through the room saying, "So, that's Aretha Franklin," like I'd been mistaken before or something. I love it when the Jake and Elwood join the ensemble near the end of the dance routine.
In the course of trying to find something original to say about Aretha, I came by a list of 12 of her most "owning-it" performances, and spent nearly an hour transfixed. One of the most powerful was the last, and I'd implore anyone who hasn't seen it to check it out: the Kennedy Center honoring Carole King and Aretha surprises everyone when she decides to not only sing, but play on the piano, "Natural Woman." It brings even Obama to tears. Check it out here at the end of the list (but the others are pretty cool too).
Included in that list is siomething I only heard about during an eulogy on NPR, about the time she SUBSTITUTED FOR AN ILL PAVAROTTI and sang some opera.
What couldn't she do? Queen of soul indeed.
So, even if I couldn't say anything original about Aretha Franklin, I wanted to say something.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Population Densities and the Wilderness's Edge
Introduction to Cabin Trip, 2018
I have too many things to post about before work resumes, but maybe it feels like that because of the emotional weight the main projects hold. One is our trip to the Farm for Corrie's family reunion; one is Tuxedo's eulogy; and one is our recently finished trip the Cabin. Anyway...
I had an idea that I wanted to examine using Google Maps and some crude tools of my own.
It started with an idea about the edge of the wilderness and our Cabin up north near Mt. Lassen. Then I went back to find places where I, and then later, Corrie and I lived, and tried to compare population densities.
Here's my crude tool:
I would drop a pin in the location and set the Google Map zoom at essentially the same magnification, take a screenshot of my map, then go an image editor and tape that paper to my screen centered on the pin and crop the image to the rough outlines of the square above the black line.
The dimensions of the square were about 4400' x 4200', which, when calculated out gave squares that were about 2/3 of a square mile.
Seems like a strange number, right? The reason will become apparent with the first picture.
Where I grew up, on Basswood, in Citrus Heights, a suburban satellite city of Sacramento:
That pin in the center is essentially where I spent the bulk of my childhood. This is the first map I dealt with, and it is this size so I could capture Norm and Holly's house in it in the upper quadrant on the left-hand side. So is our elementary school, Lichen, and our Westwood Park stomping ground, and the freeway and the railroad tracks boxing in the neighborhood. Pretty neat.
Next I did the same thing for our Oceanaire place:
The lake on one side buttressing the mountain, and the farm on right hand corner. It's weird for me to think that Norm's place compared to Basswood is further than the old Albertson's.
Next up was our Palm St granny unit:
Old McCarthy's was closer to us than Norm's is to Basswood, but not New McCarthy's. Notice the density being tighter, but that makes sense considering the college-town nature of the city itself.
But speaking of density, check out the same square of Brooklyn's Bed-Stuy:
The A-train's Utica stop at the bottom, and the J-Z train's Gates stop in the upper right-hand side, frame what we could guess about our neighborhood back while we lived there.
Next I put our place on Dwyce, in Austin in the same setup. The rendering of the trees sucks, so it looks more blurry that the others, but you get the idea:
Still pretty dense, but that makes sense for an area that sprang up on what was then outskirts of downtown Austin as a suburbia of sorts.
How about now, in Long Beach:
As we guessed, the sand is closer to us than the A-train was in Bed-Stuy. There's the small park up by the MoLAA and even Beachwood Barbecue and Brewing, which is a phenomenal place.
Check the differences in density. Suburban Sac, the "other side" of San Luis, the outskirts of downtown San Luis, madly dense yet "provincial" Brooklyn, not-quite-suburban Austin, and urban beach-side southern California...they all have their own rhythms and feelings, and different amounts of people in those relatively similar squares.
Now here's the same view of the Cabin:
The edge of the wilderness? This looks like the wilderness proper. The Cabin is either the first settlement on the edge of civilization or the last cabin in the community of Mill Creek, depending on which way you're driving. The national forest starts on the other side of our "yard," right on a former meadow that has turned marsh, a green smear coming down and right from the pin.
Of course it's awesome there.
For good measure I included the same experiment with Corrie's family's Farm, outside Clarendon, Texas:
The farmhouse and surrounding buildings are discernible, as are the property lines on the west, north, and eastern sides, while the southern edge is out of sight.
This experiment has opened my eyes to a few things, and I may have plans to make something like this as assignment, but as the summer winds down (for me), I'm trying to wrap all of these ideas into a series of posts. This has helped with the other two things I mentioned earlier, about Tux and about the Farm, as well as the Cabin.
Wilderness...
Tuesday, July 10, 2018
Humidity Hits Southern California
Our weather has been brutal this past week.
It hasn't been hair-bursting-into-flames Phoenix hot, or even skin-melting Sac hot, nor even early-summer-oppressive-early-morning-heavy-air Austin miserable, but it has been a combo.
It's almost like it's been Manila outside. Or Bangkok. The air starts out not so bad, but by 10 am the sweat has begun to bead on my forehead and my neck feels like it's got a halo of heat production surrounding it.
Then it goes off.
Our apartment begins to warm, despite keeping the shades drawn to keep out the heat. We keep some fans blowing to help keep us cool by evaporative means. By 11 or 12 the apartment has started the severely-uncomfortable times, and it only gets worse, topping out by 3 or 4 pm. From about 5 until we go to bed around 11 or midnight, inside the apartment remains sweltering, between 85 and 95, and sticky.
Outside at 10 pm is glorious, but inside, at 87 degrees or so, is awful, and we can't get the air inside fast enough to cool it.
No AC! Makes for a steamy day. Today it seems like the heat has broken, but not the humidity, as I'm pouring sweat already. Yesterday I had some errands to run and saw something that made me want to snap a picture:
This is a random banana plant on the street, and because of the heat and humidity, it's begun to sprout bananas. The sky was the perfect combo of hazy heat clouds blacked by blue sky, and there isn't enough building to tell where it was taken, unless you're familiar with the structure and have been told which it is.
It's not usually like this, and because it's not usually like this, we in the Southland are ill-prepared for it.
It hasn't been hair-bursting-into-flames Phoenix hot, or even skin-melting Sac hot, nor even early-summer-oppressive-early-morning-heavy-air Austin miserable, but it has been a combo.
It's almost like it's been Manila outside. Or Bangkok. The air starts out not so bad, but by 10 am the sweat has begun to bead on my forehead and my neck feels like it's got a halo of heat production surrounding it.
Then it goes off.
Our apartment begins to warm, despite keeping the shades drawn to keep out the heat. We keep some fans blowing to help keep us cool by evaporative means. By 11 or 12 the apartment has started the severely-uncomfortable times, and it only gets worse, topping out by 3 or 4 pm. From about 5 until we go to bed around 11 or midnight, inside the apartment remains sweltering, between 85 and 95, and sticky.
Outside at 10 pm is glorious, but inside, at 87 degrees or so, is awful, and we can't get the air inside fast enough to cool it.
No AC! Makes for a steamy day. Today it seems like the heat has broken, but not the humidity, as I'm pouring sweat already. Yesterday I had some errands to run and saw something that made me want to snap a picture:
This is a random banana plant on the street, and because of the heat and humidity, it's begun to sprout bananas. The sky was the perfect combo of hazy heat clouds blacked by blue sky, and there isn't enough building to tell where it was taken, unless you're familiar with the structure and have been told which it is.
It's not usually like this, and because it's not usually like this, we in the Southland are ill-prepared for it.
Monday, July 9, 2018
Grandpa Visits for a Birthday Party
First birthdays are for parents, to celebrate the adults who care for an infant having made it a year. Second birthdays are similar, but the baby/toddler is starting to be a person. The days have melded together for over seven-hundred in a row, and now I have a son who can look over the table-top and grab things, who loves to climb up on the our bed and fall backwards in an impressive trust-fall onto the mattress only, who can loudly shout, "DAA-DEE! HELP!" in the mornings when he wants out of crib.
My dad visited, and Cass was funny with him. It seemed to me like Homer and Grandpa, like for Cass there was Daddy and there was old-Daddy. The Boy was very warm with him, taking him by the hand back to his room to play very early in his stay.
My cousin and his wife and their eight-month-old son made the trek from Santa Monica, and they got see their Uncle Luke---my dad. Dad got see both his grandson and grand-nephew.
My mom and Auntie Peg came as wqell, as did Cass's buddies, Ari and Vera, and their folks. Even a colleague from a career ago made the trip. It was fun and at a Park. It was too windy for the bubble machine, but fun was had.
On the way to breakfast:
On the day of, and we haven't fully come to grips with purchasing Mylar balloons:
My cousin Jake, in the yellow shirt, is a few weeks older than me. We grew up on opposite coasts as kids, but lived oddly close together over the years--he and his wife lived in Hoboken when we lived in Brooklyn, and they've lived in Santa Monica as we've been here in Long Beach. It will be so cool to watch Cass and Jackson (one of our boy names) grow up together:
Somehow, my boy doesn't care for frosting:
Family portrait:
My dad visited, and Cass was funny with him. It seemed to me like Homer and Grandpa, like for Cass there was Daddy and there was old-Daddy. The Boy was very warm with him, taking him by the hand back to his room to play very early in his stay.
My cousin and his wife and their eight-month-old son made the trek from Santa Monica, and they got see their Uncle Luke---my dad. Dad got see both his grandson and grand-nephew.
My mom and Auntie Peg came as wqell, as did Cass's buddies, Ari and Vera, and their folks. Even a colleague from a career ago made the trip. It was fun and at a Park. It was too windy for the bubble machine, but fun was had.
On the day of, and we haven't fully come to grips with purchasing Mylar balloons:
My cousin Jake, in the yellow shirt, is a few weeks older than me. We grew up on opposite coasts as kids, but lived oddly close together over the years--he and his wife lived in Hoboken when we lived in Brooklyn, and they've lived in Santa Monica as we've been here in Long Beach. It will be so cool to watch Cass and Jackson (one of our boy names) grow up together:
Somehow, my boy doesn't care for frosting:
Family portrait:
"Trading Places" Could Run for President
I'm not sure how I had never seen "Trading Places" before, the classic Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd comedy about commodity trading. Having come out in 1983, it's now old enough to run for president.
IT'S SO GOOD. First we follow Dan Aykroyd's character's morning, as he gets ready for work and how work goes for him. It's a pretty familiar world for the richest Americans. After meeting Eddie Murphy's character briefly, we get the first piece of action that sets in motion the events: a sadly familiar misunderstanding made by a rich white man at the expense of an innocent black man.
Eventually the extremely rich white brothers hatch their bet---that if they were to force the roles to be different, Eddie Murphy would do just as good at Aykroid's job as Aykroyd, while Dan would resort to crime if left for nothing on the street---and the rest is film history.
This is definitely a canon Eddie Murphy movie, especially when his Billy Ray starts to crush it as a commodities trader. The whole movie is executed with a grand precision that I found...invigorating?
I'm not sure how to describe it. We waited a while to watch it after finding it on Netflix, and that was probably my doing. I'm not sure if I was reluctant because I didn't want to be disappointed. I'd heard that it was fantastic, but lately things people say about movies aren't quite doing it for me...maybe it's the people I work with.
But IT'S SO GOOD.
Corrie and I were talking about how this movie, made thirty-five years ago, is a perfect movie for our time. It's got a pair of super-rich a-holes playing with commoners for their own amusement, and getting it in the end. Comeuppance in a stroke of complicated Wall St shenanigans.
Also, nobody ever told me that Jamie Lee Curtis, older than in Halloween (1978) yet younger than in Blue Steel (1989), got bare-chested multiple times in "Trading Places." Besides her natural ability to be funny, smart, sexy, and above all else, commanding of the camera, she showed off her body's natural gifts.
If you have never had the pleasure of seeing "Trading Spaces," make the time.
IT'S SO GOOD. First we follow Dan Aykroyd's character's morning, as he gets ready for work and how work goes for him. It's a pretty familiar world for the richest Americans. After meeting Eddie Murphy's character briefly, we get the first piece of action that sets in motion the events: a sadly familiar misunderstanding made by a rich white man at the expense of an innocent black man.
Eventually the extremely rich white brothers hatch their bet---that if they were to force the roles to be different, Eddie Murphy would do just as good at Aykroid's job as Aykroyd, while Dan would resort to crime if left for nothing on the street---and the rest is film history.
This is definitely a canon Eddie Murphy movie, especially when his Billy Ray starts to crush it as a commodities trader. The whole movie is executed with a grand precision that I found...invigorating?
I'm not sure how to describe it. We waited a while to watch it after finding it on Netflix, and that was probably my doing. I'm not sure if I was reluctant because I didn't want to be disappointed. I'd heard that it was fantastic, but lately things people say about movies aren't quite doing it for me...maybe it's the people I work with.
But IT'S SO GOOD.
Corrie and I were talking about how this movie, made thirty-five years ago, is a perfect movie for our time. It's got a pair of super-rich a-holes playing with commoners for their own amusement, and getting it in the end. Comeuppance in a stroke of complicated Wall St shenanigans.
Also, nobody ever told me that Jamie Lee Curtis, older than in Halloween (1978) yet younger than in Blue Steel (1989), got bare-chested multiple times in "Trading Places." Besides her natural ability to be funny, smart, sexy, and above all else, commanding of the camera, she showed off her body's natural gifts.
If you have never had the pleasure of seeing "Trading Spaces," make the time.
Monday, July 2, 2018
Lazy Monday Mornings of Summer
The Red Devils are taking on the Blue Samurai on channel 11 right now.
We have trips to plan, boxes to ready for a storage unit, safety bars to get for our second-story windows, but right now I'm chillin' watching a World Cup knock-out-stage game, Belgium vs Japan.
And I love the full color outfits: Red vs Blue. No white kits here; almost looks like a Crips vs Bloods match from afar.
I was thinking about soccer kits the other day instead of doing other chores. Every four years I end up down a rabbit hole of thoughts about laundry, it looks like.
I like international teams that I can recognize with the sound off from a distance. Like: canary yellow shirt and blue shorts = Brazil; sky-blue and white vertical stripes shirts and black shorts = Argentina; solid sky-blue shirts and black shorts = Uruguay; red shirts and blue shorts = Spain; solid red shirts and shorts with green socks = Portugal; solid blue shirts, shorts, and socks = Japan; solid red shirts and shorts and socks = Belgium...
And two of these teams are playing each other.
A whole bunch of my books arrived the other day, and I have a few more projects I should be working on...but...lazy days help recharge my batteries...
I need to make some changes to those proofs, like changing some cover issues and fixing a few typos, but it's still work.
Yesterday there was a crazy accident outside the apartment, which happens too often:
LeBron has signed with the Lakers, my Yankees beat their own record for team homers before the All Star break, Uruguay has reached the quarterfinals and will face a tough French team...
I sliced a hunk of meat from my left index finger, but it's growing back nicely.
Lazy summer Monday mornings...
We have trips to plan, boxes to ready for a storage unit, safety bars to get for our second-story windows, but right now I'm chillin' watching a World Cup knock-out-stage game, Belgium vs Japan.
And I love the full color outfits: Red vs Blue. No white kits here; almost looks like a Crips vs Bloods match from afar.
I was thinking about soccer kits the other day instead of doing other chores. Every four years I end up down a rabbit hole of thoughts about laundry, it looks like.
I like international teams that I can recognize with the sound off from a distance. Like: canary yellow shirt and blue shorts = Brazil; sky-blue and white vertical stripes shirts and black shorts = Argentina; solid sky-blue shirts and black shorts = Uruguay; red shirts and blue shorts = Spain; solid red shirts and shorts with green socks = Portugal; solid blue shirts, shorts, and socks = Japan; solid red shirts and shorts and socks = Belgium...
And two of these teams are playing each other.
A whole bunch of my books arrived the other day, and I have a few more projects I should be working on...but...lazy days help recharge my batteries...
I need to make some changes to those proofs, like changing some cover issues and fixing a few typos, but it's still work.
Yesterday there was a crazy accident outside the apartment, which happens too often:
LeBron has signed with the Lakers, my Yankees beat their own record for team homers before the All Star break, Uruguay has reached the quarterfinals and will face a tough French team...
I sliced a hunk of meat from my left index finger, but it's growing back nicely.
Lazy summer Monday mornings...
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
Two Upcoming Things
I've been working on Tuxedo's Eulogy and our trip to Corrie's family farm since returning from Clarendon.
Also, some books may finally be arriving from the printer...I've been busy of late as an artist who works in the medium of book.
Also, some books may finally be arriving from the printer...I've been busy of late as an artist who works in the medium of book.
Bad Dreams and Worse Realities
I was having a tough dream. It was likely the worst dream I may have ever had, but it changed in an instant, the last instant, and I was so overcome with positive emotion and relief that I awoke. I sat up in bed and looked around the room, trying to convince myself that everything had just been some kind of nightmare.
But the room, our living room in our studio+one apartment, was flashing red and blue. Cars were racing up our one-way street the wrong way, and they sounded like police interceptors. Sirens and police chirps were audible all around. The room itself kept alternating between red and blue light baths.
A conversation I'd had over the weekend in Texas was coming back to me as I tried to piece together those first two minutes after the nightmare. The conversation was more of me being a sounding board for my brother-in-law's fiance to discuss her comfort level with the possibility of shooting someone in the face. "For sure," I'd said, "mama bear with a gun. I get it. It's primal." It wasn't until later that I could put into words the shape of my reservations: that is, primarily, that I spend very little brain power on imagining what to do in case of home invasion where someone is attacking my kid. Home invasions are not a fear of mine, and thus, they take up very little of my attention.
But in the first hundred seconds of sitting up in bed in the red- and blue-lit room, I thought that maybe the cops knew something I didn't.
I got out of bed and checked the windows. The street was blocked off by police cars---that was the light bathing the living room. Cars zoomed up and down 3rd. Fire trucks were stationed up Lime and they'd already blocked off Atlantic down at 3rd.
In jut a few minutes the helicopter started buzzing directly overhead, and remained a constant sound effect in the zone for the next four hours, nearly all the way to 9 am. This was just after 4:30.
In the morning sun Corrie searched her phone for articles or notices or tweets or whatever about what could have happened.
And eventually the details came out.
Here's a link to the AP article.
A resident at the Covenant House, a high rise elder care facility I can look at right now, and the only place we've voted at in consecutive elections in the entire seven years living in this neighborhood, started a fire in his room and then shot at the firefighters as they busted the door down to make their rescue. A fire captain is dead, another had a graze wound, and a neighbor of the shooter is in critical, but stable, condition after surgery to fix his gunshot wound.
I'm guessing the shooter ran away and was needed to be found? That information is as yet not public.
I'm going to show the pictures that I found online from the various websites that chose to run the AP article, sine they're all different, with the exception of the picture with the above article. Many had that picture and one other, or just a different one. The one from the above article shows the firemen lined up as their captain is driven away in a hearse-like automobile.
I didn't take any of these pictures, just so we're clear.
This one above is taken from Atlantic, looking south as they rounded up evacuated elders and bused them to interview spots away from the fire. We live down the left of this picture down 3rd, and our grocery store's entrance is right there at Broadway and Atlantic, on the left.
This one is from earlier in the day, while it was still nighttime. In the upper right quadrant you can see the church's parking lot, the church right across the street from us.
The one above here is from Atlantic looking south from maybe 5th. All streets around the tower were blocked off.
Below is taken from the middle of the Atlantic and 3rd intersection:
This last one is from Lime St, looking north up to 4th:
That picture is close to home for us.
They apprehended the shooter, and a fire captain leaves two kids, aged 25 and 16, and his wife behind. Tragic...
And my dream has kept my imagination busy ever since yesterday morning...
But the room, our living room in our studio+one apartment, was flashing red and blue. Cars were racing up our one-way street the wrong way, and they sounded like police interceptors. Sirens and police chirps were audible all around. The room itself kept alternating between red and blue light baths.
A conversation I'd had over the weekend in Texas was coming back to me as I tried to piece together those first two minutes after the nightmare. The conversation was more of me being a sounding board for my brother-in-law's fiance to discuss her comfort level with the possibility of shooting someone in the face. "For sure," I'd said, "mama bear with a gun. I get it. It's primal." It wasn't until later that I could put into words the shape of my reservations: that is, primarily, that I spend very little brain power on imagining what to do in case of home invasion where someone is attacking my kid. Home invasions are not a fear of mine, and thus, they take up very little of my attention.
But in the first hundred seconds of sitting up in bed in the red- and blue-lit room, I thought that maybe the cops knew something I didn't.
I got out of bed and checked the windows. The street was blocked off by police cars---that was the light bathing the living room. Cars zoomed up and down 3rd. Fire trucks were stationed up Lime and they'd already blocked off Atlantic down at 3rd.
In jut a few minutes the helicopter started buzzing directly overhead, and remained a constant sound effect in the zone for the next four hours, nearly all the way to 9 am. This was just after 4:30.
In the morning sun Corrie searched her phone for articles or notices or tweets or whatever about what could have happened.
And eventually the details came out.
Here's a link to the AP article.
A resident at the Covenant House, a high rise elder care facility I can look at right now, and the only place we've voted at in consecutive elections in the entire seven years living in this neighborhood, started a fire in his room and then shot at the firefighters as they busted the door down to make their rescue. A fire captain is dead, another had a graze wound, and a neighbor of the shooter is in critical, but stable, condition after surgery to fix his gunshot wound.
I'm guessing the shooter ran away and was needed to be found? That information is as yet not public.
I'm going to show the pictures that I found online from the various websites that chose to run the AP article, sine they're all different, with the exception of the picture with the above article. Many had that picture and one other, or just a different one. The one from the above article shows the firemen lined up as their captain is driven away in a hearse-like automobile.
I didn't take any of these pictures, just so we're clear.
This one above is taken from Atlantic, looking south as they rounded up evacuated elders and bused them to interview spots away from the fire. We live down the left of this picture down 3rd, and our grocery store's entrance is right there at Broadway and Atlantic, on the left.
This one is from earlier in the day, while it was still nighttime. In the upper right quadrant you can see the church's parking lot, the church right across the street from us.
The one above here is from Atlantic looking south from maybe 5th. All streets around the tower were blocked off.
Below is taken from the middle of the Atlantic and 3rd intersection:
This last one is from Lime St, looking north up to 4th:
That picture is close to home for us.
They apprehended the shooter, and a fire captain leaves two kids, aged 25 and 16, and his wife behind. Tragic...
And my dream has kept my imagination busy ever since yesterday morning...
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Rooting Interest Part 2
I was pretty sure I had a post with the title "Rooting Interest," and it was found, so my memory was accurate. That post was about the 2014 Stanley Cup Finals between the LA Kings and the NY Rangers.
This post is about the World Cup.
With the Americans not making the final, who can we root for, if we're interested in rooting for a futbol team?
This is a funny year, with many powerhouses not making the World Cup finals in Russia. The Italians, winners of four cups, and the Netherlands, runners-up a few times and a historically important team, both failed to qualify. The South American power Chile also failed to make the tournament, which is also a little shocking.
So the Americans, the Dutch, the Italians, and the Chileans all failed to make it.
In the past I've stated that I tend to root for South American teams over European teams, but that I do like the Germans and the Italians. And occasionally the French. The Belgians are always fun. And while I don't have a ate on for the Brazilians, I focus my rooting interest in the South American teams on Uruguay first and foremost. I fell for them back in 2010 and haven't given up hope. (They won again today, mostly assuring themselves a trip to the knock-out stages.)
The feeling in America is split, though, on whether or not to root for Mexico. People who do (like me), feel that with the Yanks out, why not root for our southern neighbor? In fact, I root for them each World Cup season, because, it turns out, I'm not as vested emotionally in the international game.
The Americans who are aghast at the call to root for Mexico aren't necessarily Orange Roughy supporters, rather, they are emotionally invested in local international soccer, and Mexico is the biggest rival of ours, and things haven't been pretty over the years. In terms I can wrap my head around, it works like this: back in 2007 when the Red Sox played the Rockies in the World Series was I rooting for the Red Sox? Just because they were from the same division as my team? HELL NO. As a G-Men fan, would I ever root for the Cowboys in the Super Bowl? HELL NO.
The fact that I do root for Mexico shows that my emotional investment is absent.
Anyway...sports!
Let's take a minute to look at some of the kits (uniforms) from this tournament. One of my favorites, and an all-time great kit, are the Brazilian canary-and-blue:
They look so classic that the Swedes have tried to nab a conceptual design idea from them, taking their own blue-and-gold color scheme and "Brazil-izing" their outfits:
And then we get to my favorite, the home Uruguay, the solid (with a design seen here of the Inti, the sun-god on their flag) powder blue top and black shorts:
I'm biased for powder blue, and find this look more pleasing than the white and powder blue stripes of Argentina.
Also, I'm thinking about trying to find all teams that use the golden eagle in some form in their logo or identity. I thought of it during the Mexico-Germany game, since both use the golden eagle somewhere.
This post is about the World Cup.
With the Americans not making the final, who can we root for, if we're interested in rooting for a futbol team?
This is a funny year, with many powerhouses not making the World Cup finals in Russia. The Italians, winners of four cups, and the Netherlands, runners-up a few times and a historically important team, both failed to qualify. The South American power Chile also failed to make the tournament, which is also a little shocking.
So the Americans, the Dutch, the Italians, and the Chileans all failed to make it.
In the past I've stated that I tend to root for South American teams over European teams, but that I do like the Germans and the Italians. And occasionally the French. The Belgians are always fun. And while I don't have a ate on for the Brazilians, I focus my rooting interest in the South American teams on Uruguay first and foremost. I fell for them back in 2010 and haven't given up hope. (They won again today, mostly assuring themselves a trip to the knock-out stages.)
The feeling in America is split, though, on whether or not to root for Mexico. People who do (like me), feel that with the Yanks out, why not root for our southern neighbor? In fact, I root for them each World Cup season, because, it turns out, I'm not as vested emotionally in the international game.
The Americans who are aghast at the call to root for Mexico aren't necessarily Orange Roughy supporters, rather, they are emotionally invested in local international soccer, and Mexico is the biggest rival of ours, and things haven't been pretty over the years. In terms I can wrap my head around, it works like this: back in 2007 when the Red Sox played the Rockies in the World Series was I rooting for the Red Sox? Just because they were from the same division as my team? HELL NO. As a G-Men fan, would I ever root for the Cowboys in the Super Bowl? HELL NO.
The fact that I do root for Mexico shows that my emotional investment is absent.
Anyway...sports!
Let's take a minute to look at some of the kits (uniforms) from this tournament. One of my favorites, and an all-time great kit, are the Brazilian canary-and-blue:
They look so classic that the Swedes have tried to nab a conceptual design idea from them, taking their own blue-and-gold color scheme and "Brazil-izing" their outfits:
And then we get to my favorite, the home Uruguay, the solid (with a design seen here of the Inti, the sun-god on their flag) powder blue top and black shorts:
I'm biased for powder blue, and find this look more pleasing than the white and powder blue stripes of Argentina.
Also, I'm thinking about trying to find all teams that use the golden eagle in some form in their logo or identity. I thought of it during the Mexico-Germany game, since both use the golden eagle somewhere.
Monday, June 18, 2018
Fire in a Museum in Aberdeen
A museum in Aberdeen, Washington, burned so badly that the fire crew couldn't do much beyond evacuating and then waiting to make sue no one was badly injured. It looks like there weren't any injuries, so that's good.
Check it out here if you care to.
I only bring this up because one Kurt Cobain was from Aberdeen, and much of his original documents---notes, recordings, drawings, paintings, o.g. instruments, etc---were housed in this museum, and they were incinerated in this fire.
Bummer.
Check it out here if you care to.
I only bring this up because one Kurt Cobain was from Aberdeen, and much of his original documents---notes, recordings, drawings, paintings, o.g. instruments, etc---were housed in this museum, and they were incinerated in this fire.
Bummer.
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
The End is Nigh
This...
This is not a eulogy. That will come later.
Our cat Tuxedo has a gut full of cancer, and it's up to us to determine when the end actually is. How did we get here?
This is the end of the line, the full circle matriculating. This is the absolute single truth about being a pet owner. A pet will live an entire life with you. They grow up, and eventually grow old. And eventually die. And you get to have a say in that end.
I showed my mother, a former vet tech, this picture, and her response was more a professional's response and not a mom's, specifically my mom:
Her diagnosis was exactly the same as our vet, with the same winces and sympathetic eyes
The last two years were an entire lifetime in this apartment, and he finally reached a level of peace in his life. That I can bear witness to.
Tux is ready.
We're almost there.
This is not a eulogy. That will come later.
Our cat Tuxedo has a gut full of cancer, and it's up to us to determine when the end actually is. How did we get here?
This is the end of the line, the full circle matriculating. This is the absolute single truth about being a pet owner. A pet will live an entire life with you. They grow up, and eventually grow old. And eventually die. And you get to have a say in that end.
I showed my mother, a former vet tech, this picture, and her response was more a professional's response and not a mom's, specifically my mom:
Her diagnosis was exactly the same as our vet, with the same winces and sympathetic eyes
The last two years were an entire lifetime in this apartment, and he finally reached a level of peace in his life. That I can bear witness to.
Tux is ready.
We're almost there.
 |
| 6/12/2018 |
Monday, June 11, 2018
"Cinderella Team" Discussion
I've been thinking about this recently: How sports teams become recognized as Cinderella Teams.
A Cinderella Team is a team that has defied all expectations and found success. Expectations may be low because a team may be young and inexperienced, or it may be the case that the team's star player(s) have been injured. And success can be liberally defined as to capture the true surprise of the team's performance, usually in reference to its expectations.
In American team sports the final game or series is the championship game or series, and their are semifinals with different names in each of the four main sports.
In the baseball season that ended last October, and the basketball season that just ended, in the case of each those seasons started in 2017, one of the semifinalists in each could have been considered a Cinderella Team.
In baseball, one of the American League contenders for the World Series was full of rookies and young players and performing beyond their expectations. 'Ahead of schedule' they call it. In the future the expectations would be high, but not for that particular season.
In basketball, one of the Eastern Conference contenders lost their two best players to injury and were lead by young kids, rookies, and a grizzled veteran.
In each case the team pushed their opponent to a decisive game 7 in the best-of-seven series.
In baseball that team was the Yankees and in basketball that team was the Celtics.
NEITHER OF THOSE TEAMS SHOULD EVER BE CONSIDERED A CINDERELLA TEAM.
The Yankees and the Celtics each hold the record for most championships in their respective sports, and have had different stages of wild success over the years. Some of the most iconic players ever played for these teams.
And yet both seemed like Cinderella Teams going into their respective championship series, 'playing with house money' another cliche goes.
But, neither the Yanks nor the Celtics should ever really be considered a Cinderella...
A Cinderella Team is a team that has defied all expectations and found success. Expectations may be low because a team may be young and inexperienced, or it may be the case that the team's star player(s) have been injured. And success can be liberally defined as to capture the true surprise of the team's performance, usually in reference to its expectations.
In American team sports the final game or series is the championship game or series, and their are semifinals with different names in each of the four main sports.
In the baseball season that ended last October, and the basketball season that just ended, in the case of each those seasons started in 2017, one of the semifinalists in each could have been considered a Cinderella Team.
In baseball, one of the American League contenders for the World Series was full of rookies and young players and performing beyond their expectations. 'Ahead of schedule' they call it. In the future the expectations would be high, but not for that particular season.
In basketball, one of the Eastern Conference contenders lost their two best players to injury and were lead by young kids, rookies, and a grizzled veteran.
In each case the team pushed their opponent to a decisive game 7 in the best-of-seven series.
In baseball that team was the Yankees and in basketball that team was the Celtics.
NEITHER OF THOSE TEAMS SHOULD EVER BE CONSIDERED A CINDERELLA TEAM.
The Yankees and the Celtics each hold the record for most championships in their respective sports, and have had different stages of wild success over the years. Some of the most iconic players ever played for these teams.
And yet both seemed like Cinderella Teams going into their respective championship series, 'playing with house money' another cliche goes.
But, neither the Yanks nor the Celtics should ever really be considered a Cinderella...
Monday, May 28, 2018
Show-Biz History IS Rose Marie
This documentary showed up a few weeks back (thanks mom!):
This is the Rose Marie documentary.
The filmmaker wanted to make a documentary about the history of show-business, and after asking around, it became clear that his subject should just be Rose Marie, a performer who's own story essentially is the history of show-biz.
I remembered her from "The Dick van Dyke Show:"
Oh my goodness how much I didn't know!
She was the daughter of a goomara!
One of Al Capone's wet works guys had his girl on the side, and she was a nightclub singer. He knocked her up twice, and named those kids the same names he had with his wife. The daughter, Rosemarie, showed a knack for singing: as a kid she was called up on stage one evening and sang a duet with the lady performing that night. That started her nightclub career as "Baby Rose Marie."
She did the occasional voice work for Betty Boop and was sent out by her father on the last vestiges of what accounted for the vaudeville circuit. They had her performing all over the place. Her dad knew a cash-full opportunity when he saw one.
She'd perform for gangsters at their homes and newly opened casinos in the Vegas desert. They always treated her wonderfully, like a daughter rather than a sexual object.
She fell deeply in love to a well known and respected trumpet player, and they lived together until his death, something she still hadn't really gotten over decades later.
She never got the same shine that, say, Betty White has received, which hasn't been fair, but that's how things work out sometimes.
She passed last December, but had been concerned for work for as long as she wasn't working, as she was never satisfied unless on a gig.
For a look at the ever morphing world of American entertainment, check out this movie.
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