August, 28, 2004 archives

naturally, my group was called to report for jury duty on the first possible day. the worst part is the early report time (7:30am) that simply leads to two hours of listening to instructions (some delivered by video) about jury duty. there should be some way to get out of that part of the service, especially if you have served before. (maybe some sort of online quiz that you could take that would demonstrate you knew the information.)

two pieces that caught my eye in the la downtown news this week: a market shift: grand central struggles to balance history with changing demographics, and broadway buildings get $1 million facelift.

personally, i’m glad to see more (prepared) food vendors in the grand central market. the one thing they’re bringing is variety. it will be great to have a tortilla maker in the market again, and i’m looking forward to the hawaiian barbecue place. i’m not sure that mongolian barbecue is a great fit for the space (you have to point out what you want to the person loading the bowl through glass partition, which makes it nearly impossible to communicate), but the food is tasty. it will be interesting to see how the 99 cent store opening in the underground space does. perhaps it will help fill the gap left when the baked goods vendor closed a few months ago.

i’m not entirely sure about what variety the multitude of produce vendors really brings to the market. they all sell basically the same things at the same prices, and none of them appear to put much effort into distinguishing themselves from the others.

the broadway renovation projects sound great, although i’m less than thrilled about the use of taxpayer funds to pay for it. it is a shame that the building owners can’t justify spending their own money for the improvements.

oh, and i should probably mention the article about bringing wifi to pershing square. it’s a fine idea, although i’m really not a big fan of pershing square.

napoleon dynamite was the movie of choice this week — apparently it has been re-released, with an epilogue added (which i did not realize, and probably missed because i left during the credits).

it is a truly strange movie. it’s a very how-on-earth-did-that-get-made sort of movie. the plot sort of clumps together out of all of the odd little scenes and quirky behavior by the even more quirky characters. there are some laugh-out-loud moments, but most of the humor is so low-key, it is practically tragedy.