The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
Alison Crowe's website is here; I reviewed a couple of her CDs for GMR a while back, here and here. I like Ms. Crowe's work immensely, but I must admit that due to my own tendency to be forgetful about things I discover, I forgot about her -- and I've got an unlistened CD of hers sitting around here somewhere. I've got work to do....
Last month, when he was in town, I had dinner with Matt Yglesias, and when we were about done we got to talking about directions back to his hotel (this was a few minutes before I got lost taking him there). He noted that I, like other Californians, refer to freeways using the definite article: "the 5," "the 405," "the 10," etc. Back east, I guess, you don't do this, do you? It's — what? "Highway 5"? Or just no identifier at all, as in "Take 10 west until you fall into the ocean and you're there"?
Kevin's wondering why this is the case. Someone apparently speculates that maybe it came from some kind of Spanish usage, given California's history, but since we do that here too, could Orange County have been originally populated by ex-pat Buffalonians? And given the constant stampede of Buffalonians to North Carolina, are they talking that way in Charlotte now?
All I can say to people not living in Buffalo is this: Youse all sure do talk funny.
Yup, 'twas that time of year again yesterday: our kinda-sorta annual voyage to the Sterling Renaissance Festival. Much fun was had by all, even with a large rainstorm that came through at about 5:00. We ducked into an artisan's shop and perused the wares closely while the storm expended itself, which took about a half hour, but in the fifteen minutes before the storm, there was a mass exodus of less-than-hardy folk for the gates, owing to the thunder. This was nice in that it made the last hour, and our own departure from the Festival, much easier, with smaller crowds to navigate.
I'd say more, but well, just about everything I said two years ago still applies. I am happy to report that an entire day at the Festival transpired without me having to hear a single git quoting Monty Python and the Holy Grail; maybe that was because this weekend was "Pirate Weekend", so walking around going ARRRRR! was the order of the day. But hey, I do like me some pirates. We also watched more of the live entertainment than usual, with a highlight being this guy, whose fire-twirling and juggling act we literally lucked into, having chosen the seats in front of his stage to sit upon while we ate the food we'd just bought, not knowing that a show was minutes away from starting:
Yeah, always a big fan of fire. If I ever embark on a life of criminal activity, I'll definitely be some kind of pyromaniac. (I probably shouldn't say this kind of thing on the blog...I'll almost certainly be a Person of Interest in something soon.)
Here's the Knight, Sir William Something-or-other, who fought for our honor in the joust. (Our honor and that of everyone else standing on that particular corner of the jousting field.) The choreographed combat was actually enhanced by the downpour an hour earlier, which turned the middle of the combat field into a muddy quagmire.
Also, alert readers may recall my 100 Things I Love post from a couple of months ago, on which Number 38 was "Older woman with long hair". Here's a good example thereof:
There's just something about an older woman with long hair that always makes me wonder what kind of life she's lived to have opted to keep her hair long, and this woman was very lovely. Her companion was a big guy with long silver hair of his own, and matching thick beard and mustache; he was dressed in very fine period costume as well of black with gold and silver highlighting on the sleeves, massive brown leather boots, and a black leather hat. In truth, he looked the way I plan to look in five or ten years' time. (I didn't get his picture because he was never facing the right way when I came across these two, and frankly, he probably could have kicked my ass if I'd taken his picture when he didn't want it taken.)
But anyway, it was a day of fire-juggling, bawdy jokes, turkey legs, fried dough with maple syrup, rain, jousting, cinnamon almonds and cashews, watching glass-blowing, listening to pipers and drummers, watching people get dunked in the pond, and admiring busty women going to great effort to make themselves look even more busty. Yeah, a good day.
(Oh, for the person who came here an hour or so ago wanting to know if the Festival allows water bottles to be carried in, yes, they do. I carried in an entire cooler bag filled with them, as I've done each time we've gone.)
(BTW, I likely won't be posting again until Sunday at the earliest, owing to a full weekend lineup. Enjoy.)
1) Pick 5 blogs that you consider deserve this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and also for contributing to the blogging community, no matter what language.
2) Each award has to have the name of the author and also a link to his or her blog to be visited by everyone.
3) Each award winner has to show the award and put the name and link to the blog that has given her or him the award itself.
4) Award-winner and the one who has given the prize have to show the link of “Arte y Pico” blog, so everyone will know the origin of this award which is here: Arte y Pico.
So here are my nominees, a few of which I've awarded before for stuff like this, but you know, I'm a broken record on a great many topics....
1. Lynn Sislo over at Violins and Starships has a terrific handle on what blogging's all about. (And she should, since she's been blogging for an impressively long time.) Music, SF, life in the southern heartland, the occasional "Wow, are our politics ever screwed up" observation, and enough linkage to sink the Bismarck.
2. Nettl at Life in Shades of F-Major is all about the beautiful things (although she can uncork an impressive rant when she needs to, as well). She recently linked John Williams in her ongoing "World's Most Beautiful Music" series, which elevates her even more in my view. (Also from Oklahoma. Must be something in the water there.)
3. And then there's Nettl's significant other, Steph of Incurable Insomniac. Music, wine, all kinds of good stuff.
4. Judith HeartSong is all about living a life of beauty.
5. Well...I just don't know what to say about Jeff over at Psychosomatic Wit right now. I haven't spent as much time reading blogs lately, so I hadn't checked him out in a while, but I figured as soon as I started kicking this post around that I should give him this award. That, of course, meant that I should go see how things are going for him -- and I discover that his life has completely derailed since I last looked in. This is a guy who blogs with his heart on his sleeve, and he deserves better than what dominates his front page right now.
So there we are. And as always, I could do this again and nominate five completely different bloggers, so maybe if this thing comes my way again....
The Ewoks were over-used and certainly over-marketed, but they didn't ruin the movie in and of themselves. Return of the Jedi was the first Star Wars movie where spectacle started to overwhelm plot. It's the movie where the effects became more important than anything else. It's also the point at which Lucas seems to begin to believe his own press.
I hear this a lot, and I genuinely have no idea what it means. The whole "Ewoks were a cynical attempt to cash in by making plush toys" canard continues to be as silly as ever (anybody who thinks the Wookiees would have been less marketed had the film involved them instead of Ewoks is delusional), and I don't really see where the effects are overwhelming everything else. Story is always front and center in ROTJ; the plot is always crystal clear and easy to follow. The notion that somehow the film should have had less special effects in it is pretty silly, really; no Star Wars fan would have accepted a movie that didn't end with a titanic space battle, for instance. I've never understood this objection.
That problem became much more evident with the special edition re-releases in 1997 when George Lucas not only re-worked the special effects largely unnecessarily but also tweaked some plot points to the annoyance of many long time fans. This set the pattern for the next 10 years and the tweaking continued and special effects came to dominate even more.
What plot points were tweaked in the Special Editions? I don't remember the plots unfolding in any way other than they'd ever unfolded before. You can claim that Lucas tweaked a couple of character moments (although I've never believed that the whole "Han shot first!" thing represented an emasculation of Han Solo anyway), but not plot. The stories are still the same.
The culmination was of course Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith where we are subjected to an opening sequence which is both breathtaking in its CGI sophistication and completely impossible for the brain to actually follow. By this stage special effects seemed to have become a reason by themselves with no plot justification needed.
And here's a shibboleth that I've heard an awful lot over the last couple of years, and to be honest, I find it totally silly.
First off, I'm thinking of a movie that started with a long battle sequence that's so gigantic and filled with mayhem and destruction that it's "impossible for the brain to follow", and that sequence is uniformly hailed as filmmaking genius. I'm referring to Saving Private Ryan, of course. The Sith battle is, I think, equally ambitious.
The larger problem I have with this statement is that, unless you're afflicted with some kind of vision problem or mental malady, it just isn't true. Seriously, if you couldn't follow the opening space battle in Sith, I accuse you of just not trying very hard. Consider: I get up for work at 6:00 am, and I worked a full shift on the day that ended with me going to the theater to see Sith at a midnight showing. So, when the lights dimmed and the movie started, I'd been up for over eighteen hours, and I was able to follow that battle scene just fine.
It's because Lucas knew what he was doing. I know, we don't like to grant that anymore; our standard narrative now is that George Lucas is a bumbling twit who only manages to sporadically bumble into making something good by virtue of his accidental hiring of quality people. But for all the mayhem and madness that explodes across the screen in that space battle, Lucas specifically takes a large number of measures to make sure we can follow things.
First, there's a long tracking shot as we follow the two Jedi fighters into the battle, first following them over the hull of a Republic cruiser before they drop into the battle itself. Thus Lucas gives us about thirty seconds to look at these two ships and register them in our brains, which also helps when it turns out that with all the CGI hell breaking loose, those two Jedi fighters are the only ships of that type in the entire battle. They're patterned on TIE fighters, so they're familiar-looking to us on that score as well, and they're also the only ships in the entire battle whose thrusters fire blue flame instead of red. The action constantly brings us back to these two ships, focusing us not on the battle itself but on Anakin and Obi Wan's progress through the battle.
Maybe I'm speaking too strongly here, but the idea of any experienced film-goer, especially in this day and age of massive special effects battles throwing up their hands at Revenge of the Sith and yelping "I can't follow this!" doesn't wash. If you can follow any of the large battles in the Lord of the Rings movies (especially Helm's Deep, which takes place at night in rain), you have no excuse for not being able to follow Sith. I suspect people who claim otherwise of being deliberately obtuse in order to bitch about something in Star Wars.
If that wasn't bad enough Lucas grew increasingly insistent that the 6 part Star Wars saga we now have is what he envisaged from the beginning. Never mind plenty of documentary evidence that at one point a sequel trilogy was floated. Never mind the fact it's perfectly obvious that Leia was not Luke's sister in the original Star Wars movie. Never mind that the prequel trilogy does not mesh well with the original trilogy even after all the tinkering.
One bad assertion after another. I know that everybody is totally convinced that Lucas's "only six movies were intended" stance is revisionism, but the man said as much back in 1979, for God's sake: the whole idea was originally for six movies, with the notion of a "sequel trilogy" floated after the fact. (The recent book The Making of Star Wars reinforces this point as well: the concept of the series that Lucas finally settled on, after all the drafts he wrote, was of two trilogies: the one with Luke's story, and the one filling in the tale of Kenobi and the genesis of Darth Vader. Now, it didn't become immediately apparent that the overall saga is really Vader's tale until a bit later, but stories do evolve in the mind of their creators as they tell them. Witness Tolkien's oft-cited remark about The Lord of the Rings: "This tale grew in the telling."
It's also far from "perfectly obvious" that Leia was not Luke's sister in the original movie. Sure, Lucas could have gone the other way without contradicting anything in A New Hope, but that's not the same thing, is it? Nothing, not a single thing, in ANH is inconsistent with Luke and Leia later turning out to be brother and sister.
As for the Prequel Trilogy "not meshing well with the Original Trilogy", the writer just drops this assertion out there with no supporting statements at all, so I'm not sure what's bothering him. Maybe it's that there's some stuff from the OT that isn't adequately explained by the PT, but how big a deal is that, really? Do we really need a canonical explanation of why Dagobah seems familiar to Luke in TESB? Or Leia's incredibly vague memories of "her real mother"? (Seems to me that the latter could be explained by Leia's own gifts with The Force, which she's never been trained to use in any concrete way. Surely people with affinities to The Force aren't all skilled in the exact same ways.) If so, that's pretty weak tea – and anyway, how bad is it if the continuities don't line up exactly, anyway? I don't think that the PT had any real obligation to line up exactly with what the OT had to say about the events that took place in that time period, since in the OT we're dealing with the memories people have of terribly stressful times over two decades previous, memories which can be faulty and colored by people's own natural tendencies to inflate the importance of their points-of-view.
I suppose that's it. The rest of the article is just more silliness like that, in which the point constantly gets missed. The writer is apparently annoyed that Star Wars got away from its pulp origins, when anyone who gives a moment's thought to the matter can see that it's pure pulp all the way. I'd only note that just because you didn't have fun at the Prequel Trilogy doesn't imply that they weren't intended to be fun. Just because The Family Guy doesn't make me laugh doesn't give me the right to claim that it's not a comedy show.
Bourdain on drinking with Russians: In Russia people are not outgoing, or cheerful, or even particularly friendly. The women greet you with a look that says, "I could snap your collarbone without blinking. Why are you here?" And the men are equally gloomy – until you get halfway down the vodka bottle, that is. And you will. There's no way out. Each paint-peeling shot, inevitably from a whole bottle, plunked down on your table as automatically as the ketchup at a burger stand, is accompanied by a specific toast. To refuse the ninth toast of "To our mothers!" is to say, in effect, "F*** your mothers." Whatever relationship you might have had with the locals, it ended right there. Stick with it, however, and you are rewarded with a slow reveal of the beautiful Russian soul, a flowering of heartfelt declarations, poetry, song, and expressions of comradely affection. Centuries of Russian history and culture open up to you, make you a part. Soon you begin to understand the magic of the birch forests, the fierce Russian winters, the sad majesty of black crows on snow-covered fields. You vow to reread Tolstoy, to read Gogol – in Russian. The you throw up in your shoes.
On bathrooms in Japan: If you're comparing plumbing around the world, there's no contest. Japan wins. The Japanese like to be clean. Very clean. This is a nation of people who advocate showering – and scrubbing with a bristle brush – before getting into the bath.
On bathrooms in Uzbekistan: Fighting off carnivorous insects while squatting with one's pants around one's ankles, trying not to slip in the muck while at the same time nervously monitoring the unlocked "door" and tearing a piece out of the local newspaper – this is a skill set one must quickly master in the steppes of central Asia.
He doesn't say it as such, but here's Bourdain on why cooking is Art, as much as painting or music or poetry: When someone feeds you, they're saying something, they are telling you something about themselves. If you can't hear a voice, or if the voice is confused, chances are, you're eating at a "big box" faux-fusion restaurant – or a chain, or a hotel – where the menu and recipes were arrived at long ago, by consensus of committee. But when you hear a whisper in your ear with every plate that arrives at your table, or totilla wrapped personally by your host and placed directly in your hands, a bowl of pho, handed to you with a silent grin, then you feel...part of something...privy to a secret language, an ongoing, worldwide dialogue that's been going on since the very beginning.
From time to time, standing in an airport, some queasy fan will approach me and ask, "How do you eat all that stuff?" I think; So many people are trying to tell me things; why would I want to shut my ears to what they are saying? Particularly these days – when so much of what you hear coming out of people's mouths is bullshit? There is no lying with food. You either can or can't make an omelet. No amount of skill with words can conceal the truth of the matter. If you can cook, your soup is seasoned one of two ways: the way you like it, or the way your guests will like it. Both scenarios contain simple, inescapable truths.
Yeah, Anthony Bourdain rocks.
BARACK OBAMA: The surge has not worked. Everyone knows it has not worked. I intend to end the occupation of Iraq and have troops withdrawn within 16 months of assuming the presidency.
JOHN McCAIN: The surge is working! You'd know that if you went there for yourself and saw what was going on, you traitor! I dare you to go! This is not politically motivated!
LIBERAL BLOGGER: Bliss, bliss, attend Barack Obama and step into the light!
UNAFFILIATED BLOGGER: Inflation is the worst it's been in 27 years! The Euro is stronger than the dollar! GM is having another wholesale downsizing! Experts say more banks will fail in the coming year!
CONSERVATIVE BLOGGER: George W. Bush saved this country! Let me lie with statistics to show you how no one is poorer than they were 30 years ago without adjusting for inflation!
SUPPOSEDLY LIBERAL MEDIA: Hey, look how much money The Dark Knight has made!
Heh indeed, read the whole thing, etc. (Only I must not be reading the right liberal blogs, because while the ones I read most definitely support Obama, they don't believe he's the second coming of Klaatu, come to rescue us from Darkness or something.)
Anyway, the rest of the links await! Away we go....
:: I had to run up to Fargo the other night.
:: I saw WALL-E tonight. If you're hooked on dialogue, madly in love with the consume/dispose/pollute cycle, and vehemently angry at the [choice ignorant slur directed at robots] for taking jobs away from humans, then this movie is not for you. Otherwise, it's probably worth seeing. I don't mean to give anything away, but it has a Thomas Newman soundtrack and a Peter Gabriel song at the end. (I'm sold!)
:: That's the problem with satire. People for centuries have failed to "get it" - as Pitts points out when he mentions that people in 1729 took Jonathan Swift seriously when he suggested that starving people should eat babies - but these days, with the proliferation of media outlets and voices from the fringe being taken seriously, it's harder for people to see when someone is poking fun at the conceits. (I, personally, thought the New Yorker cover was really funny. I really did; it made me laugh. I particularly liked the "Heh heh heh" expression on Michelle Obama's face, and the way they have Barack Obama glancing backward, over his shoulder, at us, as if to say, "Suckers!")
:: And what drug was John Cougar Mellencamp on when he named his son Spec Wildhorse?
:: You can like both Chicago and NY pizza, just like you can like the Beatles and the Stones. (Not from the post itself, but from the comments thread, where lots of people sing the praises of Chicago deep dish pizza, only one or two people claim to prefer New York pizza, and neither of those try to argue to goofy notion that New York's pizza is what God intended when he said "Let there be pizza!", and not a single crack about the fatally erroneous notion that a Chicago deep dish pizza is a "casserole" -- and all this on one of the more heavily trafficked blogs out there. Wow!)
:: To the older gentleman three rows in front of us: dude, when your back hair is lush enough to have a part in it, you really shouldn't wear tanktops to public events. Especially ones that may involve the consumption of food. That's just wrong.
:: Think of this another way: if we don't help people understand how to protect themselves from spammers and phishers, how can we expect them to understand the importance of network neutrality?
:: So, what's a girl to do with a few hundred grams of hastenlingly overripe strawberries and a banana that needs to go to a better place? (What a great blog title, by the way! New blog to me.)
:: I recognized than either way I went I could be happy. Either way I went I could make a positive contribution. Both jobs had some very definite advantages. Both jobs had some not-so-shiny aspects to them. I could spend the next two days agonizing over the relative merits and then forever second guess myself over whether I had made the right decision. Or not. So I decided to just leave it up to the universe to choose which path for me to take. (Wow. See, I'd go the other way: I'd turn the whole thing into an episode of soul-searching existential crisis.)
:: When Indians' designated cutup Trot Nixon first channeled the ghost of Moe Howard and smooshed a plate of whip cream into the mug of a fellow Tribesman, he couldn't have known the cholesterol-rich history of pie tossing. (This one's for you, Belladonna! BTW, who cares how much cholesterol is in the things? Do you absorb cholesterol through your skin?)
All for this week....
Of course, this kind of thing was done definitively on Police Squad!:
I should figure out a way to end my posts with lame freeze-frames!
As part of my "Less of me in 2008" regimen, I've adopted quite a few healthier eating habits, one of which is leaner protein obtained from more diverse sources. So here are two of my newest loves, in one plate: two filets of tilapia (lightly floured and then pan-sauteed in herbed oil), served atop a bed of Quinoa. I'm really digging Quinoa: its texture is very close to that of couscous (which I adore), with a nuttier flavor that also soaks up sauces very well (like barbecue). Quinoa is also a good source of protein. Yay protein! (No, I'm not on any kind of Atkins diet, but I have upped my protein intake and lowered my carbohydrate intake accordingly.)
On another food note, I've been amused by the existence at Wendy's of a burger called the Baconator, which has two beef patties, two slices of cheese, and six slices of bacon. One of these burgers has 830 calories. Yeah, I want to have one someday. But only under very special circumstances -- such as, say, if I find myself on Death Row and I'm picking my last meal.
But I've despaired of having a Baconator, because a burger of that bacony magnitude can't be washed down with a mere large Coke, right? A burger like that cries out for a beverage also sent from the highest slopes of Mt. Olympus.
Well, such a drink exists. Behold, my friends, the Large Heath Shake from Baskin Robbins.
A large one of these, at 32 oz, contains 2,310 calories. Imagine that: there is a drink in existence at a prominent national chain that has almost three times the calories of the Wendy's Baconator.
That would be a meal to end all meals, wouldn't it? I mean, literally. If I'm ever on Death Row, this is my last meal: a Baconator and a large Heath shake. Of course, if I wanted to do this meal right now, the burger would be pretty easy, since there's a Wendy's a mile down the road. Unfortunately, my nearest Baskin Robbins is...hmmmm, it's only about 4 miles away...and there's another Wendy's right near there....
Gotta go.
