Man, it was all about the cicadas today -- hearing them buzzing in the trees, and seeing one at the bus stop, just sitting on the sidewalk. I nudged it with my shoe and off it flew. And then, later, on the bus, I saw this gal on there (who looked like a young Joan Cusack) wearing a brass (?) cicada ring! I saw it in passing, thought "Man, she's got some serious bling going on, there." and then when she went to get off the bus, she rested her hand on one of the seats, and I could see it in detail -- this cicada ring that covered about two knuckles' worth of finger, with three purple stones set on it, running along the cicada's back. Otherwise, she was professionally attired, but that ring was fierce!
The city's been plagued with mosquitoes and horseflies. Not sure what's up -- maybe all the rain we've been getting, but I've never seen the city so beset with bugs before, in all my years here. There are plenty of dragonflies, too, but not enough to keep up with the plagues of mosquitoes lurking about. And they're aggressive, too -- they just come diving at you. None of the usual meandering mosquito dance; no, they just fling themselves your way. If Americans are really lucky, malaria'll come back in a big way in the States (it's been on the upswing, anyway). As it is, we have West Nile Virus to contend with, already. Good times!
This week is shaping up to be a hot one. Storms every day, but they're doing nothing to lower the heat.
Monday, August 9, 2010
Symbolic
Interesting piece today on NPR about how symbolic thinking paved the way for human civilization.
Happy 65th Birthday, Fat Man.
Weird to think of the span of days between those two bombings, an eternity and an eyeblink, the changing of the world forever, in a bang and a whimper.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Worst Paintings
Oh, I love this...
15 Worst Paintings of All Time
The Museum of Bad Art! Bahah! Painting is one of those things that people think they can do, like anybody can do it. Until they actually try, and create something ghastly. There are some laughably bad paintings in that collection above.
15 Worst Paintings of All Time
The Museum of Bad Art! Bahah! Painting is one of those things that people think they can do, like anybody can do it. Until they actually try, and create something ghastly. There are some laughably bad paintings in that collection above.
Colonized and "The Aviator"
"The Colony" sounds like an intriguing show...
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/the_colony/index.html?story=/ent/tv/heather_havrilesky/2010/08/07/the_colony_apocalyptic_reality_show
Also, I watched "The Aviator" yesterday, and enjoyed it well enough. Scorcese's man-crush on DiCaprio continuing. How many movies has he directed Leo DiCaprio in, now? Anyway, I kept wondering why the Ava Gardner was so leaden in the movie, and then I realized it -- Kate Beckinsale. She's just not a good actress. She's so wooden that I am constantly forgetting who she is, any time she shows up in a movie -- she has a very generic kind of beauty to her and her performance chops aren't there, so she's just a flatliner -- and for her to be playing Ava Gardner, lordy. Cate Blanchett was great as Katharine Hepburn, however -- but Blanchett is a good actress, and you could tell she was enjoying that role. The cameo with Jude Law as Errol Flynn was well-chosen.
http://www.salon.com/entertainment/tv/the_colony/index.html?story=/ent/tv/heather_havrilesky/2010/08/07/the_colony_apocalyptic_reality_show
Also, I watched "The Aviator" yesterday, and enjoyed it well enough. Scorcese's man-crush on DiCaprio continuing. How many movies has he directed Leo DiCaprio in, now? Anyway, I kept wondering why the Ava Gardner was so leaden in the movie, and then I realized it -- Kate Beckinsale. She's just not a good actress. She's so wooden that I am constantly forgetting who she is, any time she shows up in a movie -- she has a very generic kind of beauty to her and her performance chops aren't there, so she's just a flatliner -- and for her to be playing Ava Gardner, lordy. Cate Blanchett was great as Katharine Hepburn, however -- but Blanchett is a good actress, and you could tell she was enjoying that role. The cameo with Jude Law as Errol Flynn was well-chosen.
"Look at me. I'm Ava Gardner. I'm ACTING. It says I'm Ava Gardner in the script, so there you have it." (WHAT emotion is Kate Beckinsale communicating in this still? Blankness? Vapidity?)
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Bike
I loaded about $130 worth of groceries on my bike (using the handlebars to carry a few extra bags). That's about right for the milk crate I have on the back. This old lady saw me loading it and said "Well, it looks like you know what you're doing." I told her it was fine so long as I didn't hit any potholes.
I had the boys to one of the playgrounds earlier today. They were having a blast. Now they're playing with trains. Terribly cute.
It's fucking humid today. Hot-n-humid. We're supposed to get storms all next week, but the temperatures will stay hot. Woo hoo!
There's a puppy pug in our building -- its name is "Gnocchi" -- that's very cute! The thing is so tiny. I'm no fan of pugs, but "Gnocchi" is a great name for a dog like that, somehow.
I had the boys to one of the playgrounds earlier today. They were having a blast. Now they're playing with trains. Terribly cute.
It's fucking humid today. Hot-n-humid. We're supposed to get storms all next week, but the temperatures will stay hot. Woo hoo!
There's a puppy pug in our building -- its name is "Gnocchi" -- that's very cute! The thing is so tiny. I'm no fan of pugs, but "Gnocchi" is a great name for a dog like that, somehow.
Winston Churchill and UFOs
This news story amused me...
Winston Churchill Ordered Cover-Up of UFO Sighting
Amusing that such a stalwart like Churchill was tied to something UFO-ish. Bahah! Whatever they'd seen, it had dismayed Churchill enough to put a 50-year delay on releasing the information. Lord knows what it was, but it's still funny.
Winston Churchill Ordered Cover-Up of UFO Sighting
Amusing that such a stalwart like Churchill was tied to something UFO-ish. Bahah! Whatever they'd seen, it had dismayed Churchill enough to put a 50-year delay on releasing the information. Lord knows what it was, but it's still funny.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Happy 65th Birthday, Little Boy.
We're all still in the shadow of that first blast. There are nearly 23,000 nuclear weapons out there these days. It's probably only a matter of time before another of these goes off, likely by a nonstate entity. Or perhaps tactical nukes used by a state against another state. Either way, it's going to be ugly. And more nations are still wanting to join the nuclear club, which only increases the likelihood of something happening.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Heath Ledger Junior?
Ledger (l) and Gordon-Leavitt (r).
One thing that weirded me out in "Inception" was how much Joseph Gordon-Leavitt resembles Heath Ledger. The guy's going to likely gobble up parts that would have gone to Ledger. I mean, what does it matter? Ledger's dead. But still, that they'd find a current actor who so closely resembles Ledger, and have him star in a Christopher Nolan movie, I couldn't help but wonder if Nolan had originally wanted Ledger for the part Gordon-Leavitt played.
Fauxbama and the Eightball
The commute home was interesting -- I caught the commuter rail downtown in an attempt to bypass the inevitable traffic that hits owing to Lollapalooza setting up, and the Obama motorcade. Well and good -- the Metra's always comfortable and quiet, a soothing ride downtown. I love train travel. I get downtown and am hoofing it through the underground station (amusingly enough, it's part of what they used in "The Dark Knight" -- the chase scene where Bats is driving his motorcycle-hybrid and crashing about, so I've got flashbacks of that in my head as I walk through it), and I get up to Randolph and Michigan, and come up into a Thin Blue Line of burly cops staring me in the face. I pause and look around, see a large motorcade there and crowds. Ah, Obama's in the building there.
Because he's in there, they have a huge security dragnet around the area, and public transit is effectively hobbled at that point, so I just go back underground and come up on the north side of the intersection, and hang out in the crowd, taking pix. There are snipers on the roof, cops all about, Elvis impersonators loping around (apparently there was an Elvis 5K in Grant Park, so between all the Obama gawkers and rush hour grinders, there were these Vegas Elvis folks milling through, too), Amish wending their way, and people repeatedly asking what all the crowds were there for. I hung out for about 45 minutes, since there was no way to get home at that point because the crowds were too big, the security kept traffic from going through, so it was a very "When in Rome..." kind of moment, and I just chilled. Plenty of false alarms, what I called "Fauxbamas" -- folks who looked like him, or crowd reactions to nothing. There were a couple of "Matrix"-like moments, too, when I saw a guy in a crazy paisley shirt walk through the crowd once (heading east), and then, later, I saw him heading east, through the crowd AGAIN. WTF? He looked a little scrawny to be Secret Service, but who knows? I looked sort of Secret Service-like in my shades and work clothes -- people kept glancing in my direction as they'd make their way through the crowd, and periodically asking me "Why are all of these people standing here?"
Finally, Obama's motorcade whisked by, and that was that. My favorite moment was when some grizzled guy asked "What, are they filming more 'Transformers' here or what?" and somebody said "No, Obama's in there." and the guy grumbled "Obama? I was hoping it would be Optimus Prime."
The crowds finally dispersed, and then they restarted the bus lines, and I was (eventually) able to get home, where apparently B1 was in a crisis because he'd lost this rubber eightball I'd given him (he liked pretending it was a black hole -- big shocker, right?) and Exene had either not understood what he'd said about it being lost, or didn't care (both?) and so I asked B1 where he'd lost it, and he told me, and I said "Well, let's go into the park and look for it. You can be our guide." and so he, B2 and I trekked over there and I began a zig-zag search for the ball, once B1 showed me where it had last been seen (apparently he let a kid throw it and the kid overthrew it and it got lost in the park). B1 found it about 30 seconds later, tucked in a shady nook on the ground. He was elated, and I was pleased that we got it back, since he was really upset about having lost it. Yay! A tiny victory, but a satisfying one!
Because he's in there, they have a huge security dragnet around the area, and public transit is effectively hobbled at that point, so I just go back underground and come up on the north side of the intersection, and hang out in the crowd, taking pix. There are snipers on the roof, cops all about, Elvis impersonators loping around (apparently there was an Elvis 5K in Grant Park, so between all the Obama gawkers and rush hour grinders, there were these Vegas Elvis folks milling through, too), Amish wending their way, and people repeatedly asking what all the crowds were there for. I hung out for about 45 minutes, since there was no way to get home at that point because the crowds were too big, the security kept traffic from going through, so it was a very "When in Rome..." kind of moment, and I just chilled. Plenty of false alarms, what I called "Fauxbamas" -- folks who looked like him, or crowd reactions to nothing. There were a couple of "Matrix"-like moments, too, when I saw a guy in a crazy paisley shirt walk through the crowd once (heading east), and then, later, I saw him heading east, through the crowd AGAIN. WTF? He looked a little scrawny to be Secret Service, but who knows? I looked sort of Secret Service-like in my shades and work clothes -- people kept glancing in my direction as they'd make their way through the crowd, and periodically asking me "Why are all of these people standing here?"
Finally, Obama's motorcade whisked by, and that was that. My favorite moment was when some grizzled guy asked "What, are they filming more 'Transformers' here or what?" and somebody said "No, Obama's in there." and the guy grumbled "Obama? I was hoping it would be Optimus Prime."
Obamamobile (at right).
The crowds finally dispersed, and then they restarted the bus lines, and I was (eventually) able to get home, where apparently B1 was in a crisis because he'd lost this rubber eightball I'd given him (he liked pretending it was a black hole -- big shocker, right?) and Exene had either not understood what he'd said about it being lost, or didn't care (both?) and so I asked B1 where he'd lost it, and he told me, and I said "Well, let's go into the park and look for it. You can be our guide." and so he, B2 and I trekked over there and I began a zig-zag search for the ball, once B1 showed me where it had last been seen (apparently he let a kid throw it and the kid overthrew it and it got lost in the park). B1 found it about 30 seconds later, tucked in a shady nook on the ground. He was elated, and I was pleased that we got it back, since he was really upset about having lost it. Yay! A tiny victory, but a satisfying one!
Radioactive Wild Boars!!
I heard this on NPR this afternoon.Here's a hot news story:
Radioactive Wild Boars Plaguing German Forests
I like the sound clip of a boar here, too.
Radioactive Wild Boars Plaguing German Forests
I like the sound clip of a boar here, too.
Weather Or Not
It's gorgeous outside today. Idyllic summer weather: sunny, warm breezes, that nice blend of sound and motion in the trees, the leaves, the interplay of light and shadow. Wonderful.
Saw a young couple walking their lil' baby in a carriage, saw their tired faces (the baby was happy, naturally), and I truly sympathized -- I know the Baby Boot Camp dance all too well. But to see that look of fatigued bewilderment on their faces (and furtively discussing "stress" as I passed them), I felt comic empathy with them. Kids are wonderful; I love kids, but I recognize the incredible work they represent. And this couple was young (I'm guessing early 20-something). No Lollapalooza for you guys. No sleep, either, is my guess.
Obama's in town, apparently, for his 49th birthday. Haven't heard the helicopters, but I'm sure they'll be about at some point. Maybe he's going to Lollapalooza. Ha! Yeah, right!
Saw a young couple walking their lil' baby in a carriage, saw their tired faces (the baby was happy, naturally), and I truly sympathized -- I know the Baby Boot Camp dance all too well. But to see that look of fatigued bewilderment on their faces (and furtively discussing "stress" as I passed them), I felt comic empathy with them. Kids are wonderful; I love kids, but I recognize the incredible work they represent. And this couple was young (I'm guessing early 20-something). No Lollapalooza for you guys. No sleep, either, is my guess.
Obama's in town, apparently, for his 49th birthday. Haven't heard the helicopters, but I'm sure they'll be about at some point. Maybe he's going to Lollapalooza. Ha! Yeah, right!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)