September, 29, 2005 archives
then and now
the first picture is of me with winnie the pooh when i was almost three weeks old. pooh went everywhere with me when i was little.
the second shot is of pooh today (he made the trip back with me) and he’s only a little worse for wear. he’s lost his shirt, and eyebrows, and been restuffed a couple of times. i can relate.
welcome to california, old friend!
reflections on minneapolis
while i was home, we took the light rail from the mall of america into downtown minneapolis, walked around, and had lunch at the foshay tower.
looking at the pictures i took, an obvious theme emerged. and it seemed highly appropriate for where my head has been at lately. (it’s that time of year.)
there’s also some less thematically tied pictures.
vacation reading roundup
i’m still on vacation, so if i make it to the library i may read another book or two this weekend, but i plowed through a number of books while i was away.
the plot against america by philip roth is an alternate-historic look at an america where charles lindbergh was elected president instead of fdr’s third term, preventing the entry of the united states into the second world war. it’s told from the point of view of a young jewish boy and mostly deals with the turmoil it causes to his family. it’s a great story, and really well written, but i was disappointed by the resolution.
the light fantastic by terry pratchett is the second of the discworld books, and it picks up where the colour of magic left off. unlike that book, it isn’t broken up into distinct stories that sort of stand on their own. it suffers a bit from having to wrap up the loose ends of the last book.
the snows of kilimanjaro and other short stories by ernest hemingway didn’t make me want to spend a month in cuba, but it does almost make me want to go on safari. (only that doesn’t turn out so good for any of the guys in the stories, so maybe that isn’t such a bright idea.)
equal rites by terry pratchett is the third discworld novel, and the first that really conforms to the structure that makes the series great — a standalone story that draws on the backstory of the world and previous novels, but that also talks about a more modern sort of issue through its fantasy-world lens. in this case, it’s opening up the world of wizardry to women, so it bears some extra kinship with the later monstrous regiment.
make love the bruce campbell way by bruce campbell is a fictional story about bruce campbell in a starring role in an a-list movie also featuring richard gere and renée zellweger. it’s very funny, and there are goofy little photoshop mash-ups and illustrations on almost every page. the typography is pretty awful, though. there’s a reason books aren’t normally published in a sans serif font.
mort by terry pratchett is the fourth discworld book (sensing a pattern here?), and tells the story of a boy who becomes the apprentice to death. like all of the discworld books, it is very funny, and the character of death is particularly great, but i thought the story was a bit lacking.
rebuilt: how becoming part computer made me more human by michael chorost is a fantastic book, and somehow i managed to save the best for last. it reminded me in a way of the myth of solid ground by david ulin in how it took the author’s experience and put a heavy philosophical spin on it, but also in the way in which it was not excruciatingly awful (as i found the myth of solid ground to be). chorost writes very frankly about his experience with a cochlear implant and the impact on his psyche, relationships, and approach to life.
you will be coming into a fortune.
in brief
before i went on vacation, i wrote myself a little note about a topic i wanted to write about. after thinking about it, i think the note covered it all: “credit. non-commercial use. bite me.”
so instead of trying to expand on that, i’m going to mop my apartment and do some laundry. and continue to listen to yoshimi battles the pink robots over and over again.
this hasn’t happened in a while: a movie i want to see, serenity, isn’t playing at the laemmle grande. for a small theater, they have generally been good at getting the movies i want to see. maybe next week. (but then that’s when the wallace & gromit film is supposed to open….)
speaking of films, i saw corpse bride while on vacation, and it is pretty much what you would expect from a tim burton animation project. great design, pretty good story, good voice acting from johnny depp and helena bonham carter and others, decent soundtrack from danny elfman, etc. it’s not quite as good as the nightmare before christmas was, and too short, but i’d still recommend it.
pattern matching gone wrong
i thought to myself that it’s odd that two people i know used the word synchronicity recently. what makes it less odd is that it didn’t happen. one of them used serendipity.
there is a strange dichotomy in how sometimes people act as if everyone in the world has the same general experiences and beliefs that they do, and at other times people act as if they are the only one facing some particular issue or thought some particular way.
i don’t know what it all means. draw your own connections.
free museums
twenty-four los angeles museums are free tomorrow, october 1. that includes moca and the japenese american national museum downtown. (spotted by art.blogging.la.)
also, there’s a screening tomorrow night of infamy, a documentary about graffiti artists by doug pray, director of hype! and scratch.