I've been telling everyone I can this evening to see Spirited Away. I didn't even know about it until Lisa saw it in the Onion and said we should go. It's by the same studio that did Princess Mononoke, which was another fabulous movie. I've never seen a movie that could pull off creepy and cute so successfully. It's pure joy.
Mary had mentioned something about this, which is a documentary on various laughing clubs all over India. Sounds like a good thing to me. I'd like to find this movie, which is probably not easy considering it's a 30 minute documentary from India. Someday.
I made a list of jam sessions listed in the Reader that I'll be checking out over the next couple of months. Fifteen in all, not including the Irish ones. The first late, late session I went to a couple weeks ago turned out to be mis-listed in every way: it wasn't really a jam session, it was not free, and it was 12:30 - 4:45am, not 1-4am. Other than that, it was great. Really. Still, I hope these other ones are a little more accurate. None of them takes place at such an insane hour, though, so I'll at least have that going for me.
That last Molly Ivins article I noted has been moved. This will keep happening, so you have to act fast to read the current material. She is pissed off. Her trademark humorous tone is basically gone in the recent columns, and I can't blame her. I'm glad there's someone with a strong voice sounding off about these things, and I hope even more that her words aren't falling on deaf ears.
Wow. This is amazing. I wish I thought it would make our so-called leaders take notice.
On the bright side, Joe and I made at least three lovely discoveries about our neighborhood. First is that my bank, which not only let me open an account with an out-of-state driver's license (an apparent rarity in these parts), is open on weekdays until 8 PM. And it opens at 7 AM. 7 AM to 8 PM!!! And, it's open until 4 PM on Saturdays. A bank with a longer workday than its clientele, so that it can actually serve them! (My local branch of PNC Bank in Pittsburgh was open from 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM, closed on Saturday.)
Second, more importantly, Andy's Deli on Milwaukee Ave., just half a mile north of us in the Polish district, sells about 7 varieties of pieorgie! In addition to the more traditional ones (like Mrs. T makes, ha ha, sauerkraut and potato and cheese), they have blueberry and plum. We got some plum ones and ate them with ice cream — delish!
Third, when those cold winter mornings arrive, there's at least three yummy-looking bakeries where we can find bready things to stuff ourselves...
Finally, I just want to say again how amused I am about the location we chose to live. Technically we are in Logan Square, a heavily Latino neighborhood. But we are only a couple blocks south of the Avondale neighborhood, which is heavily Eastern European. A grocery on our block has everything written in Spanish; two blocks north, everything is in Polish. And I have no concept of how to pronounce anything in Polish; it's got too many consonants. The general rule seems to be to add “i” to the end of the word, plus a lot of “w” and “z.” We need a Polish friend to help us out here.
I hate to get into this, but repeat after me. We do not want to go to war.
This article by Molly Ivins scares the shit out of me. The only president we have is trying like hell to send other people's kids off to fight a useless war, potentially many of them.
The United States of America is still run by its citizens. The government works for us. Rank imperialism and warmongering are not American traditions or values. We do not need to dominate the world. We want and need to work with other nations. We want to find solutions other than killing people. Not in our name, not with our money, not with our children's blood.
By broadcasting to the world this new imperial doctrine -- i.e., we will allow no nation to acquire the power we possess, and we reserve the right to strike hostile nations that build the kind of weapons we possess -- President Bush has drawn a line in the sand for every anti-American regime on earth and dared them to cross it. Either he is bluffing, or we are headed for endless confrontations and constant wars.
On a different note, a book my dad wrote on street design has been converted into a PDF and made available for download without his knowledge. It's a document he finished a few years ago, and just found out that some fool posted it online. Thanks a lot. I wonder how many people have been using it without having any idea where it came from, or to whom they can go for more information.
I read a book called Genius recently, and now you can see who the MacArthur Foundation has tapped for their so-called (although not by them) "genius" grants. Their areas of interest range from dance to physics to music. Apparently there is no application process; you have to be selected by their nominators, who are chosen anew each year.
I only recognize the name of one of this year's recipients, at least on first read. Nonetheless, this is pretty cool. Learn more by looking over their FAQ.
I'm going to make up for a lack of recent news with a nice long one. How's that?
Lisa's brother and I went out to lunch today down in the loop (for yinz non-Chicagoans, that's the downtown area). He works there, I took the train in. We were recommended a taqueria that was supposed to have the best taquitos anywhere. Cool. Only the person making the recommendation didn't know the cross-street or the name of the restaurant. He knew what corner of the street it was on, and about how far away it was. Or so he said.
We found a place eventually, but it was not in the promised location. Brian thought it might have been the right one, since it was supposed to have a bar, which this place appeared to have. Walking in, we saw a bar, but almost nothing else. A smattering of people, a pool table, but no food anywhere.
Brian asked the bartender if they were serving lunch. She kind of squirmed. Brian asked again, this time in Spanish. She brightened up a bit and said yes, but they only had tacos, burritos, and tortas. We came for tacos, so that was fine by us. We both speak some Spanish (I'm probably rustier than he is), and we did just fine, got our food and enjoyed it.
I'm still not sure whether we went to the intended restaurant, though. The tacos were good, but not that good.
Peter Gabriel's new album Up came out yesterday. I didn't think I was going to be one of those people who buys it so soon after it comes out, considering I didn't even know about it until a couple weeks ago. And yet, there I was at a store today, shopping for a when it started calling to me. I buckled and bought it, and I don't regret it at all.
I don't claim to know a lot about him or his music, but this is a very good record. It was ten years in the making (which went by without any attention paid by me) and the results are worth it.
You can read a little bit about the album on Salon and Pixelsurgeon.
Along with working on web projects lately, I've been messing around with Applescript. There are some things about MacOS 10.2, in particular about Mail, that kind of annoy me, and so I've been trying to take some steps in the direction of fixing them. Unlike many of Apple's recent software offerings, Applescript does have some documentation, but it's not fully up to date and is not always helpful (a problem that plagues most developer documentation, in my opinion). As a result, I'm plodding along kind of slowly, but making progress. I'm hoping to have something done in a week or two.
For now, I need to finish up something Lisa and I have done for the next issue of On A Whim. What are you submitting?
For the past two weeks there's been something in the air, and on the cars.
First it was the little Mexican flags attached to antennas on cars. This was soon followed by multiple small flags.
This week the intensity turned up. The flags got bigger (a lot bigger), and people started honking when they saw other people driving with flags unfurled. The flags were strapped to the hood, flying out the windows, off the roof, everywhere.
Tonight there are people hanging out of their car windows, honking, hooting, and hollering at each other. It seems like everyone is just happy and boisterous—there isn't any violence or anger that I can tell, thankfully.
Here's a blurry sample of what flies by every minute or two:
I sat outside with my camera for twenty minutes trying to get a decent picture. You'd think having a stop sign right outside would be helpful. No such luck. They almost never stopped long enough that my camera could grab them, if they stop at all. I have a lot of blurry shots where you can almost make a car or maybe a swirl of red, green, and white.
There are a great many places that will be talking about September 11, so I'll keep it brief. Suffice it to say we need to do our best to learn everything we can from what happened that day, and do all we can to see it never happens again.
I'll save my writeups on a couple books I've been reading until tomorrow.
The gig with Lis and Stolie tonight was great, except for the attendance. There were four people who came to see Lis, and one person whom Lisa and I invited. We were hoping for more, but it was still fun. We got to hear a good bit of Stolie's music, and she was great despite feeling congested. Lis and I played 30 or 40 minutes together, including a couple songs I'd never heard before. Playing jazz, I've had to develop an immunity to fear of playing new material on a gig. I don't know if it's fair to go so far as to say I prefer doing that, but I certainly like it. Lis and I have played together enough that it's not that hard.
26 states down, 24 to go. Her next stop is Anchorage, Alaska.
Stolie threatened to break Lis's record next year. We'll see. :-)
The city is spraying my neighborhood to combat west nile virus. I can think of lots of things I'd rather see the city spend its money on, but what the hell do I know?
Oh, I remember. I've read about natural selection. Anti-bacterial soaps and other things that supposedly combat these dangerous bacteria and diseases are not helpful. You can never kill them all, and the ones that survive are resistent and will pass their surviving genes to their offspring.
Getting rid of standing water, informing the public, and all that other stuff is a good idea. Certainly we don't want anyone else to die of this disease. However, how many of us will have our health compromised because of these sprayings? How safe can Anvil be if we're told to stay indoors with the windows closed while they drive up and down our streets and alleys spraying?
I hate to ask this, but why is it that the less affluent areas of town are the ones getting sprayed? Do they all have squeaky-clean gutters in Wrigleyville? Have no dead birds been found in the areas that aren't predominantly African-American, Puerto Rican, or other non-Anglos? If it's so safe and so important to protect the public, why not spray the whole city? I can only wonder.
A few weeks ago, Lisa and I organized all our photos (all our old prints that is—I haven't shot film since last November). I always used to get doubles when I developed a roll, thinking I'd give the doubles away. Well, I never did.
Until now.
I've been looking up people I haven't been in touch with recently so I can send them doubles from weddings, college gatherings, all sorts of things. I've been on a touching base binge right now. I've even been tracking down my cohorts from the MHCI program. In doing so, I've found out that one of them lives here (I'll be calling her soon, hopefully that information was right).
I also found out that a designer with whom I was a teaching assistant is going to be a professor starting in January!
I was the president of my senior class in high school (don't laugh), and I understand that the person who held that "office" is supposed to be the organizer of reunions. For a long time my response to that idea was "fugg dat". Still, finding out what people are doing now after a few years is kind of fun. The idea of a high school reunion is not quite so off-putting when I'm in this state of mind. I'm sure a little sleep will put me right again.
I haven't written much lately because we still don't have a halfway decent internet connection. I am certainly getting used to the 56k, but I look forward to not having to dial in anymore. Ameritech seems to have it in for me, but I'm not going to go into that here. My fingers would fall off.
What I really want to do is say Fun With Fonts is a nice web site, and if you're interested in typography for the web, you should check it out. I'm finding it very inspiring, and I hope you do too.