Weekend Collage

First of all, is anyone else having Blogger issues? I’m getting a delay between my typing and the letters showing up on the screen, and it’s so annoying that I am composing in Word instead and pasting over when I’m done. Is this happening to anyone else?

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I had bought these totally geeky-cool sunglasses at the start of biking season – ones that fit over my regular glasses, so I don't have to swap glasses when getting on the bike or the scooter. They really streamline getting on and off the bike. I wore them home from the Crest on Wednesday evening, and when I went to put them on Thursday, one lens was missing. I have no idea where it went, and can't find it in the house. I think polterguys took it, and it’s a bummer, man.

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After a quick but delicious chana masala dinner at home, Otis and I transported carless Johnbai up to the Oak Tree so we could meet Stella and all experience the banality that was Fantastic Four 2. Dingo was right (and let us know about it when she met us for afters): the movie was awful. But we had expected it, so the shock was not as great. Jessica Alba had transformed into some hideous Barbie-monster, but the rest of the flick was stunning in its mediocrity: acting, effects, everything. As a matter of fact, even writing about it is boring.

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Here's a deliberately messy flash game. It's poetry. It's art. Try it.

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Kudos to A-Wo and Kay-Kay: they were not as optimistic as I was about sidewalk space on the Solstice Parade route and showed up early; it was only through their offices that we got a good spot staked out. Stella and Sairey carpooled with us, and the group grew to include Sachet & her buddy, Dingo and New York Alex, Sylvio and his bro, and Kris-10 and Rye-N, so we needed the space, too. The parade seemed a little low-energy compared to last year: it was fine, but there was less music and political street drama than last year’s parade. There was no dearth of naked bikers and bared boobies, but some élan or brio was missing, and the delays seemed especially long. Maybe we were just tired.

Some of us walked after the parade to Wallingford for lunch and happened to meet up with JagGirl and Dvd lunching at Ma’s with a pal. There's always time for some tasty Thai.

The parade was exhausting. How can sitting and watching other people walk make you tired? Afternoon naps were the order of the day.

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Last evening, we went over to Cal and Merry’s to join them and their pal Canuck for the premiere Big Time Screening ™. We saw Duma, a sweet movie about a boy and his cheetah cub. It was full of good will and struggle and triumph and all that (as well as a motorcycle with a sidecar!), and we had a great time watching from the big seats in the little theater, and having some great conversation afterwards as well.

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We rode the scooter home in the rain last night. Chilly!

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I think this is my favorite political cartoon evar:

Homework sucks and I slept until noon today

Just kidding, of course. Go read An Unpublished Life and wish Yojimbo a happy blogoversary.

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I may not have slept until noon yesterday, but I might as well have, for all the "productive" work I got done. It was weekend without papers to grade, and I reveled in doing nothing. I have three more classes left this quarter, and one more stack of papers to read (which I will collect today), and then we're done. Here's to the last sprint toward the finish line and a lap around the infield!

Part of the doing nothing included watching The Patriot, the Mel Gibson vehicle about the American Revolution from a few years back. The characterizations were pretty flat and the acting pedestrian, and the art direction reminded me too much of a Disney version of Johnny Tremaine, and yet the movie was trying to grapple with some important and interesting themes: the pull of duty versus the responsibilities of family, the conflicting impulses of justice and mercy and vengeance, the possibility of honor and the brutal reality of war, the hope of redemption. Much of the investigation of these themes was undercut by cliched plot points and character development, but it' was there under the the surface. I was left with the feeling that this might have been a much better movie than it was.

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I got my first Utilikilt, a khaki neotraditional, right at the beginning of this millennium; I wore it that first weekend that I picked it up, to the Folklife festival and to a party. Even then, it didn't get too much notice or too many remarks here in Seattle.

I was living in Vancouver, Washington at the time, and I didn't wear it much down there. I did wear it to my graduation from a community leadership program in June of '02, and as part of my dress uniform in my last days as head of college security the following September. I picked up another neotrad before I moved to Spokane for grad school, but didn't wear them at all over there.

When I returned to live in Seattle in 2003, I didn't wear the kilts at work, either at the writing center or then teaching, but I often wore them at home or when going out. I remember in particular New Year's Eve '03 -'04, when it was pretty darn cold wandering around Cap Hill.

In the summer of '05, I decided to start wearing a kilt to work while teaching at Cascadia, because it was hot summer and they were comfortable. I continued the practice into the fall, at all the schools I taught at, and all of a sudden all I was wearing was kilts all the time. It became my trademark, in a way. Students knew me as "the teacher who wears a kilt"; I met people and made friends who wound up never seen me in anything else. I never had a really bad experience in Seattle or Portland wearing the kilt, and the many positive remarks and compliments overshadowed the few nasty remarks that I ran into. (Most women loved the kilt.)

It got to the point that I didn't even think about it much anymore; I still liked the gender-bending response it could evoke, particularly in children, and the signal hipness it carried in certain circles, but mostly it became just what I wore, like my Chuck Taylors or hooded sweatshirts. I knew it was still unusual and atypical, but really didn't think about it much. I picked up a heavier "workman" kilt for winter and a nylon "Spartan" sport kilt for summer, as well as more formal gray twill. I wore kilts grocery shopping and at weddings, playing badminton and hosting parties - pretty much all the time.

Now this year, I have picked up some three-quarter length pants - knickers, if you will. One thing that kilts aren't quite suited for is bike-riding, and since I want to do a lot of riding to school from here on in, and because I don't like teaching in shorts, I thought that knickers would be a nice alternative. But here's the funny thing: people seem disappointed that I am not wearing a kilt. I have gotten more remarks lately about my lack of a kilt than I think I got when I first started wearing one, from friends, casual acquaintances, students, and colleagues.

It's a bit odd. If my wearing a kilt was a statement of anything, it was that clothing choices should not be as restrictive as we (as a culture) have made them, but actually I wasn't really trying to make any statement at all - I just like kilts. Switching to knickers doesn't really matter, does it? I don't mind being associated with a trademark article of clothing - heck, the blog is named for three - but at the same time, I certainly hope it's not the only thing that defines me.

Soggy, with a shot of paprika

Here comes the rain again... falling on my head like a memory...

Who did that? Eurythmics? Anyway, it was appropriate yesterday, wasn't it? Luckily, Otis was swept up in an art fever, so she turned the kitchen into an encaustic and framing studio and passed her time away in a creative spree. I did some creative work of my own, but mostly on lesson plans and syllabi for the summer and fall and cleaning up my office.

We did take an afternoon break to meet Johnbai, fresh(?) from an in-the-rain softball game, for a showing of Paprika downtown. This anime about psychotherapists entering the dreams of patients (which, of course, Goes All Wrong) had some wonderful visuals, both clever and disturbing, but did not have the character development or narrative depth of Tokyo Godfathers, writer/director Satoshi Kon's previous offering. Too many threads were left unfollowed for the movie to be ultimately satisfying, although it was a pleasant enough way to spend an hour and a half. Put it on your Netflix queue for a double feature with this and wait for The Golden Compass.

After the movie, we stopped by at Cal and Merry's for a brief visit to the open house for their splendid new in-city digs. We may see moovie nights move to a whole new level! And then it was back to work. Maybe the sunnier skies will raw us outside more today.

Catch-up and link-farming

This is Walaka Hopsack, coming to you live from the Wallingford Tully's with this round-up of tit-bits and whatnot.

Teaching is winding down, blah-blah-blah. Oddly enough, I have no end-of-quarter crush this year; I have spaced out the assignments better and the final responding / grading / posting process is actually pretty light. I had the pleasure of lunching with O on Tuesday and having a little mutual work session at 3PB-R - it was an excellent diversion, and I got some papers done. Wednesday was the last day of the quarter at Cascadia and Antioch - it's all over but the shouting.

Other work-related stuff: the bad news is that even though my full-time contract doesn't start until September 14, I am required to attend some training and orientation sessions beginning September 6, so my "vacation" after summer quarter will be negligible. The good news is that since it is all pre-contract, I will get paid the community service rate ($34/hr) for all the sessions.

We did squeeze in a viewing of The Life and Death of Peter Sellers on Tuesday night. It was an interestingly-made biopic, but Sellers actually became a less sympathetic character as he moved through life - or at least through this movie - and there never seemed to be a point of redemption or enlightenment to cap off the narrative. John Lithgow turns in a bravura performance as Blake Edwards, and Emily Watson, who I had never heard of two weeks ago, and who I have now seen in three consecutive movies, was as enigmatically appealing as ever as the first Mrs. Sellers.

Otis is still feeling her cold - it has hit her harder than it did me. She was feeling so poorly that she ac canceled some appointments because of it; she did not, however, cancel Wednesday night out at the Tractor Tavern with Dingo, Johnbai, O and Soapy to celebrate Soapy's Birthday and to watch / listen to The Handsome Family (highly recommended by Dingo and Johnbai) and Rosyvelt (fronted by a pal of Johnbai and Soapy) and The Maldives (um, completely unknown to us). It was a swell, multivalent evening: we celebrated Soapy, we hung with pals, we heard good music, and we helped raise money for a good cause though Noise for the Needy. I have to admit that we didn't make it to the end of the show; Otis and I left shortly before midnight, but not because we weren't having a good time.
Today's highlight was huge grocery shopping, which we haven't done in weeks and weeks, after which we had leftovers for dinner, feeling all kinds of frugal. Otis even put together a menu for the week, not that we'll be any competition for the Full Belly project:

Le Menu d'Otis

L’Italian Vegetariana
You’ll never return to cow flesh again with Walaka’s savory tomato“veatball” ragu! Served on a tangled bed of whole-wheat linguini noodles. Enjoy a crisp garden salad with fresh tomatoes, carrots, and cucumbers, and a rustic vegetarian antipasto.

Down-to-Earth Split Pea Soup
Yellow split peas, russet potatoes, and carrots form the hearty base for this robust and creamy vegan soup. This soup is accompanied by an anchovy-free Caesar salad with home-style garlic-pepper croûtons.

“I’m So Sari” Supreme
Make up with your sweetheart with this semi-spicy northern-style chana masala made with the finest chickpeas, potatoes, and Indian spices. Served with herbed basmati rice and a side of sautéed peppery green beans and slivered almonds.

Middle Eastern Picnic
Take your falafel on the road with this summertime meal! Fill your whole-wheat pita pockets with savory falafel patties, sweet Vidalia onions, cucumbers, and tomatoes for a healthy sandwich in a flash. A side of cool quinoa salad with fresh cucumber and tomato provides a tasty flourish to your picnic.

Auntie Otie’s Peanutty Asian Bowlies
Pearly brown rice, steamed to perfection, serves as the base for these Asian peanutty bowls. Stir-fried tofu, carrots, pea pods, ginger, and secret spices are drizzled with Auntie Otie’s award-winning peanut sauce. Served with supple vegetarian pot stickers and soy-sesame dipping sauce.

Finger-Lickin’ Dogs
Vegetarian hot-dog-stand-style frankfurters are served with organic, humanely-treated tomato catsup and caramelized onion topping. Served with Boston-style vegetarian baked beans and Rising Sun Farms yellow corn on the cob. Kosher dill pickles garnish this finger lickin' meal.

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Now, some links:

I think this little French stop-action animation is just captivating.

Maybe if I followed these butterfly color schemes for my blog, I wouldn't get complaints. Dingo should use one when she re-activates Myrna. (I'm partial to the Mr. Green.)

Okay, I have only seen six of these movies - how about you?

For his birthday, I would like to get Soapy a turn on this, because someone has clearly seen into his soul.

For Yojimbo: It was 32 years ago today.

Bustin' out all over

Yesterday was splendid, an almost perfect summer day, which included a long walk through the park, a bike ride, a tasty student-sponsored barbecue on campus, an easy class, a scooter ride to Volunteer Park, (where we watched a soccer-playing dog) a nice dinner with Soapy and Johnbai, a nice evening working at a coffee shop, and a late night movie. Just swell!

Of course, no silver lining is without its cloud, so as I went to bed, my allergies / hat fever / whatever kicked in and Otis's back started aching, so it wasn't a very restful night. And the radio just told me a little while ago that a "Pacific Cold Front" is coming in at the beginning of the week, so we'd better make hay while the sun shines!

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The presidential candidate was asked if he had had premarital sex. His reply:

"My God. Let's see, did I?" he asked himself, then paused. "Oh, yeah, I had some. And you know something? It wasn't bad."

The candidate whose refreshing honesty came in stark contrast to Republican Mitt Romney's "family values" response to the same question is 76-year-old former Democratic senator from Alaska Mike Gravel. Although he is a fringe candidate, he's got some strong positions against the war and for universal health care and responses to global warming, as well as some more problematical proposals for the "Fair Tax" (a kind of VAT) and federal ballot initiatives. In any case, he's mixing it up pretty good in the early Democratic debates and might have a positive influence on the discourse. Go, Mike! Article, campaign website.

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Free-gratis giveaway!

If you've got T-Mobile service and want a new phone, here you go:



I have wound up with these two perfectly functional candy bar phones above and beyond the working phones in this house. The blue one on the left is an old school standard Nokia and has never been used and the shiny one on the right is two generations later and was used for about a year. The don't take pictures or surf the intartubes or anything, but if your buttons are sticky, they may be an easy solution for you.

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Otis and I have seen two movies this week, courtesy of the Red Envelopes. Who Killed the Electric Car? was an interesting documentary that imparted some not-so-surprising information but which did not have the weight to be a really substantial movie; it seemed more like an episode of Nova than anything else. The Luzhin Defence was a quirky but ultimately unsatisfying adaption of a Nabokov story about the romance of an eccentric chess master with a free-spirited young woman in the nineteen-thirties. While John Turtorro and Emily Watson did the best to sell their characters, and the plot did provide a few surprises, the film felt like an enactment of the Cliff Notes version of the book and the flashbacks to a troubled childhood felt formulaic and were more distracting than illuminating.

Thanks for the memory

So, since I bounce around so much from computer to computer (even more now with the laptop), I have been keeping all my school files on a flash drive / thumb drive / memory stick / whatever the heck we're supposed to call them. I have a 512 MB unit with my Excel spreadsheet grade books, lessons, assignment rubrics, graphics, and all that stuff on it. I back it up regularly, but it sure makes life easier.

Today, when I pulled it out of the classroom computer at NSCC, it looked like this:



The formerly straight USB plug was bent at almost a 45-degree angle. This might be a cool design feature, but it was actually an accidental bend, probably occurring while it was in my pocket.

Needless to say, this worried me. It seemed to work fine, but I would hate to lose that data unexpectedly. When I got home, I immediately backed everything up again, and then started to play with the unit. I straightened out the plug, but something started to rattle around inside. The unit seemed to be working, but did not recognize the 'eject' command; it would give me the Danger! warning when I would take it out. Thinking the rattley bit might have something to do with that, I popped open the red plastic housing. A tiny little metal piece, about the size of the ball in a ball-point pen, fell out, but I couldn't tell where it had come from. The funny part was that the naked circuit board worked just perfectly - and looked really cool, too! (The power light was a whole lot brighter).

I figured that leaving the circuit board naked probably wasn't a good idea, no matter how cool it looked, so I snapped the unit back together and wrapped some tape around it for good measure. It appears to be working fine.

I guess the moral of the story is that those things aren't as fragile as we think, or I'm really lucky.

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Yesterday was mostly work, but in the evening we did watch The Trouble with Harry, Alfred Hitchcock's black comedy about hiding a corpse, which stars John Forsythe as a flaky artist (?!) and marks Shirley MacLaine's screen debut. It was quite a change-of-pace for Hitchcock; I found it engaging, amusing, and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny.

There's still room for surprise

Last night, we had an impromptu Spectration; J-Force and Dingo swung by to help us finish off the remains of the salsa and chips and to watch what turned out to be a pretty decent movie: The Lake House. I had passed this by when it was it first came out, since the one-two punch of Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock just about kayoed any hope that this would be a well-acted film. And it's not, really; the principals give decent enough performances within their limitations (Bullock's lack of range, Reeves's lack of talent) but that's not what is appealing. The film deftly presents the idea of communication across time and considers the idea of what the past can give to the present, as well as what the future could. The not-quite-parallel realities are handled about as well as can be, reminding me of Sliding Doors in tone if not in structure, and some nifty visuals represent the deepening communication between the two principals. Only the Hollywood ending complicates the time-theory (and the plot), but it wasn't enough to ruin the film for me.

Tidbits: The film was based on a Korean movie, Siworae, which we now want to see. And J-Force got the DVD from the library; just the right price to pay for any Keanu flick! Thanks, J!

Other watching than a fun movie, yesterday was filled with responding and teaching a segment of a graduate class at Antioch, which was cool because I got to pilot part of the class about comics I will be teaching in a year. Otis was mostly working during the day, and I made a pretty good shepherdess pie for dinner. I had a chance to talk to JustJon on the phone, and it looks like he may have a partial solution to our computer memory problem.

Today I hope to get a decent bike ride in before diving back into responding. Where's that darn sun, anyway?

No foolin'

Wow, instead of a day of rest, this was a day of action!

First off, I met with Stella at Third Place Books Ravenna to do some work on the Access database for her PhD research (and to gripe about work at our common and separate institutions). We scooted home for Taco Del Mar with Otis, and then scurried down to the Neptune to meet Dingo and J-Force for the matinee showing of The Host.

The movie was wonderful, working as a monster flick, a comedy, and a drama - sometimes all at once. I just read a comment by Howard Waldrop (one of my favorite sci-fi writers) who called it the best monster movie since Tremors. I think he hit the nail on the head with that.



After the movie, we stopped at Trabant for tea and talkies. After a quick jumpstart for J's dead battery, we all headed home. Otis made some yummy tofu stir-fry for dinner, and I prepped for my classes. And look - there's even some evening left!

And we got through this whole post without a lame prank.

It's Billy de Wolfe time again

I am working my way through my list in anticipation of the end of the quarter and the upcoming trip to the Sandwich Isles Kingdom of Hawaii. Between school and house stuff, it looks like posting got squeezed out!

Sunday was sweet: shortly after my remote post, a wet and sweaty Stella showed up and we shared a coffee and some catch-up. Then we swung back to the RD to hook up with Otis and swing down to Thai-Ger to meet Dingo for lunch. There was a bit of a dicey moment when it seemed I might not get my corn fritters, but the incident passed without crisis and lunch was letter-perfect.

The great lunch was just a prelude to a great movie: Jean Renoir's 1939 The Rules of the Game, which managed to be both entertaining and funny as well as intellectually rich. The trailers quoted Robert Altman as saying this film was one of his influences; seeing it, you can discern Renoir's fingerprints all over Altman's Gosford Park.

We had a chance to ponder this (and many other things) at Cafe Trabant over tea and cider.

Monday was work all day, morning class and afternoon assessing, until Stella came for an appointment with Otis and stayed for dinner.

Tuesday was a long day again: morning class, then a meeting at Antioch, then afternoon class in Bothell, and then replacing the usual evening class with staying late in Bothell and prepping. I only made it home in time for a late dinner and later run to Target for some trip-related stuff. Good news: I got to have lunch with the Dollwoman, and it had been too long. Bad news: I managed to miss a conference call with Liam and my old HS gang.

Today holds morning classes and work-until-it's-done on my Antioch stuff - no split shift today! I hope to be done by dinner so I can have the evening for more house stuff.

I love getting ready for vacation!

Bonus link for all my linguistically-inclined buddies: A comprehensive look at the great U.S. pop-soda divide. (Check out the county-by-county map.)

What's the opposite of "under the gun"?

How can I feel anything but great on such a wonderful sunny afternoon?

Yesterday was the beginning of the good times. I got a slug of work done and even got a phone call to JustJon in, all before Otis was finished with her morning appointment.

The matinee on Friday was so much fun, we decided to do it again. We did the call-email-and-text thing, and wound up meeting Dingo at the Varsity for a screening of Tears of the Black Tiger. This film-festival-favorite was described as a Thai Western, and turned out to be an over-the-top crime story/romantic comedy/adventure/tragedy/epic/musical. If you took a little Sergio Leone, some Don Siegel, a bit of Peckinpaugh, a dash of Lynch, and just a pinch of Sirk, threw it in a blender with some psilocybin mushrooms, and then filmed it in technicolor, and you'd come pretty close to this movie. Cowboys in Bangkok: yee-ha!

After the film, we shared some coffee and cookies, feeling rather out of place among all the students in the coffee shop; we may have been the only ones not doing homework. That was waiting for me when we came home: I got the last of my grading and prep out of the way in plenty of time to have a relaxing evening.

Today, I taught morning classes, which went straightforwardly, and then came home to find I was pretty much caught up! I have a little prep to do, but really I'm pretty light in the do-list department. That will all change tomorrow, when final portfolios for Antioch start coming in, but overall this is a less burdensome week for me.

We took advantage of the lull and walked to the Wallingford post office to take care of some business. On the way, we got a positively chirpy phone call from Dingo, who was in her new position at the U and reveling in her private office and view; that added to the sunniness of the day. Later, we went the long way to the grocery store, via Golden Gardens Park, to rush the season with the first sunny beach walk. And photos:


The day made me so happy...


Don't be afraid to sweep the leg!


Bollywood on the beach


Sparkly


Ahrt: tracks


Some rusted metal for Johnbai

Now it's time for a little falafel, a little bit of work, and the evening can slide into night.

Wish me luck on my interview!

Still schtick

Friday was peer-review day in both of my classes, so the work day went pretty smoothly, but my cold was back so I was less than 100%. As the afternoon progressed, it didn't seem that the moovie nite was achieving critical mass; even stalwart Stella had hit her own personal wall (she's been working too hard lately) and most of the RSVPs were in the negatory. The combination of those elements - cold and small crowd - persuaded us to cancel the spectration.

Since Dingo, who had planed on coming, was just down the street getting off work, Otis and I met her for an early dinner instead. The restorative powers of pho were tremendous, but short-lived. We loaded up on vitamins and stuff at QFC and headed home. We wound up watching Joseph Cotten get totally creepy in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt, and then both fell asleep on the couch. Yep, that's life in the fast lane, eh?

Snakes on a blog

Yesterday would have been pretty much the usual teach-prep-teach Thursday split shift, except that we added some Samuel L. to the mix: Stella, Otis, and I caught a free showing of Snakes on a Plane up at Cascadia last night.

I have got to say up front that this is one of the worst movies I have ever seen. A gazillion CGI snakes couldn't eat all the cheese that made up this film. It felt like the abandoned love child of Quinn Martin and Irwin Allen, a misbegotten mash-up of an old Hawaii Five-O episode and some seventies disaster flick. It is not merely that the movie failed to live up to the incredible Internet buzz that it had generated: it is a genuinely bad movie, a film which, even if screened for members of an alien race with no knowledge of earth culture, would still be recognized as awful.

That said, we had a great time. The student leaders who put on the show were all dressed as members of an airline crew and greeted people as if we were coming on a plane; they even pushed a beverage cart down the aisle to hand out free pop (along with the free snacks). The crowd was in a good mood, and everyone screamed as snakes attached themselves to various body parts and cheered as FBI agent Samuel L. Jackson muscled his way through the film by pretending he was actually in a real movie. Our favorite line was not the much-quoted signature line, but Agent Flynn's response when told pheromones were making the snakes aggressive: "That's good news; snakes on crack." Maybe because the night was such good craic.

Aside: This isn't the first bad snakes-in-an-enclosed-place thriller. Check out Fer-de-Lance, a 1974 TV movie starring David Janssen and Hope Lange (!), about poisonous snakes menacing a submarine.

Upsan Downs

So, last night's movie group get-together was a bit of a seesaw.

Stranger than Fiction was great, unexpectedly good for what was advertised as a bit of a gimmick comedy. Will Ferrell was restrained and engaging as the surprisingly sympathetic IRS auditor coming to grips with his imminent demise when he finds out he's actually a character in a novel. Maggie Gyllenhaal is captivating as his new-found love interest and Emma Thompson steals the show as a twitchy, chain-smoking, eccentric, creatively-blocked writer who ultimately has to reconcile her art and her humanity. Dustin Hoffman (as a sort of slightly-saner Bernard from I Heart Huckabee's) and Queen Latifah (as a no-nonsense publisher's operative) round out the superb cast. The film was deeply affecting; as absurdist as the plot was, the characters, even the minor ones, were all real, complex, and important. The story never descended to cliche, and managed to present its resolution with honesty and respect.

For a while, Otis and I thought that we were going to see the movie alone. The Cap Hill crowd was not going to be represented, so Otis and I had dinner at the old Demetrio's (which is now a Romio's) by ourselves before heading to the Crest. The usually-early Stella was nowhere to be seen in the packed theater; she arrived during the trailers, shortly after JagGirl and dvd. Jimmy the K had called to say he was going to try to make it, but we never did see him. We had the pleasant surprise of being joined by Kris-10 and Rye-N, but we didn't see them in the back of the auditorium until after the movie had ended. So, there wasn't much time for pre-show socializing.

Well, this merry band started to caravan to the LFP Third Place Books, with the potential of seeing Jimmy and maybe even Soapy there, but Otis and I never made it. A little ways there, Otis felt nauseated, with a gurgling urgency in her innards. I changed course for home; I don't know if it was sympathy or proximity, but all of a sudden I wasn't feeling too well myself. We didn't make it home in one jump; a pit stop at a gas station became necessary. Suffice it to say that we both spent most of the late evening in some distress, often curled up, and frequently in the smallest room of the house. Otis seemed to have the worst time of it, but some peppermint tea at midnight helped a little.

I am up and feel normal this morning; I have even been out to the store already. Otis is still asleep, but she appears to be comfortable.

So, a shout out to all the gang: sorry we missed the afters! Hope you had a good time! And you might want to think twice before splitting a calzone at Romio's.

Sidewalk shuffle

Friday was an odd sort of day. Since NSCC had a "late start" day, my 9:00 class was cancelled, but my 10:00 was still on. Just for fun, Otis and I walked up to the college along the lake. It was cold, but clear and crisp. Some side streets were a bit messy, but we really didn't have any problems.

While Otis loitered in the cafeteria, I attended to my one fifty-minute meeting. A surprising sixty percent of the students showed up; I had expected much less. We had a productive (if informal) session, and then Otis and I walked back on the inland route, via Group Health. It was a fun and strange way to take of business; I hope things at work will be back to normal after this long weekend.

The afternoon was given over to hanging-around-the-house stuff until Dingo came by at 4:30 to start our moovie nite. We had a little time for tea and decompression before Yojimbo joined us and we all strolled down to Royal Thai for dinner and catching up. Jimbo had to head back to the island to ransom his puppy* and we three headed up to the Crest to meet Stella and sort-of meet Johnbai and Sachet. "Sort-of" because Stella, Dingo, Otis and I went to For Your Consideration, and Johnbai and Sachet chose to see History Boys. Ah, the joy of the multiplex.

Johnbai and Sachet might have made the better decision. While we all thought Christopher Guest's latest mockumentary brought the funny in certain places, it was a little disappointing overall. Otis said that it didn't push its situations quite far enough into the absurd; I think Guest is starting to care for his characters too much and its blunting his satire. On the other hand, Johnbai came out of History Boys genuinely moved and said that it was one of the best movies of the year. (Sachet said that she would have liked it but couldn't hack her way though the British accents.)

Stella headed back to the burbs while the rest of us repaired to Third Place Books in Ravenna for coffee and conversation. We closed the joint still going strong. And that's what I call a Friday.

Random photo of the day:

* doesn't "ransom the puppy" sound like a euphemism for something dirty?

Holiday season: the adventure continues

On Wednesday, Otis and I went up to Edmonds to meet The Angel and The Crocodile. Otis went to school with The Angel; she is now married to The Crocodile and living in Boston, so we only get to see them now and again when they come back for a visit, and we look forward to it every time. They made a walk-on ferry ride over from Port Ludlow (isn't that J-Force territory?) and we drove up to meet them for lunch. Great Thai food, a chilly walk around old Edmonds, and some Tenbucks coffee (courtesy Angel's gift card) followed, seasoned with cool conversation and lots of laughs. Brief visits, too far apart.


Click the pic for home-movie goodness!(?)

Wrapped around this celebratory episode was workish stuff: Otis is getting back into the swing after a brief hiatus from massage for the holidays and an overworked arm, and I'm hacking away at my syllabi and prep work. I did have a nice telephone chat with Yojimbo, and with JustJon, who clued me in to his recent developments (see what happens when you miss a blog post?).

Personal note: We visited Otis's grandmother in hospital: the good thoughts must have worked! She was very much improved and stronger; it was a remarkable recovery. Thanks.

Visiting baby

In the continuing series of seasonal socializing, Otis and I went down to Beacon Hill yesterday to visit Ms. Matcha and Surfer-T. The happy couple just recently had a baby; well, to be specific, Ms. Matcha did the work (and a heckuva lotta work it was, too: thirty hours of labor was just the beginning). At any rate, baby Koa is happy and thriving with momma and poppa.





Things are still a little rough around the edges, but we expect to see the happy couple and baby-makes-three back in circulation soon.

Later on in the evening, we went to the Crest to catch Shut Up & Sing, the film about the whole Dixie Chicks vs. Red America kerfuffle that's been going on the past few years, almost precisely as long as the Iraq war as a matter of fact. It's a rather straightforward and unexceptional documentary, but the subject is still of interest in this country where dissent has started to become synonymous with disloyalty. The entertainers are interesting and sympathetic; Natalie Mains, who uttered the eleven words* that rocked the world, comes off as prickly, opinionated, brash, and filled with a genuine integrity and honesty. At the end of the day, it's hard to deny that the group sacrificed popularity and money for principle, and that's pretty admirable in my book. Oh, the movie is full of great music, too.

*"We're embarrassed the President of the United States is from Texas."

Personal note: Otis's grandmother, after a happy holiday, has fallen ill and is currently in hospital. Please keep a good thought for her.

Check-check!

Hey, I got everything on my agenda done yesterday! Heh.

In addition to nothing, Otis and I also went to a matinee. We saw Curse of the Golden Flower, the latest offering from the Zhang Yimou, the director of Hero and House of Flying Daggers, two of our favorite movies. This film was a good watch, but not quite as exquisite as the two prior films.

After an opening that is structurally reminiscent of the opening of Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, but with a totally different mood and sensibility, the film jumps right into Shakespearean-level drama. The first half plays like The Lion in Winter if Henry II had had ninjas*. The second half plays like Long Day's Journey into Night, with pitched battles between thousands of armored warriors thrown in between conversations. Seriously - the movie really concerns relationships, lost love, incest, jealousy, and family ties, but since the family is the imperial family of 10th century China, the stakes are high and things get a little messy.

The movie is visually beautiful: the colors are breathtaking, and the costume and set design are stunning. Zhang has also added a new ingredient to his usual visual splendor: boobies. This film ought to have been called House of the Golden Cleavage:













QED.

The film is ultimately unsatisfying, never really deciding if it is a sweeping epic or an intense drama, and ending with symbolism whose meaning wasn't quite clear. But it is sure is good-looking.

*Yes, I know ninjas are Japanese, but I don't know what else to call black-clad assassins who throw grappling hooks and attack silently in the night with martial arts and funky weapons.