Dan still wants the mini-casinos

Dan Voepel has been a proponent of the Tacoma mini-casinos for a good long time. I've got no problem with that and--as I've mentioned--I've enjoyed Texas Hold 'Em at some of them from time to time.

Yesterday he asked the City Council to lift the ban on the casinos, which seems unlikely, but at least he made his plea. I totally agree with his argument that mini-casinos haven't damaged our city. Gambling is a vice, sure, but low among the list, I would say. I think the biggest problem with the ban is that Lakewood, the Tribe, and other communities will just get the tax revenue from Tacoma gamblers who have to drive farther to play cards.

In the same way the smoking ban wasn't effective or helpful when it was just Pierce County but needed the full state so that someone couldn't just find a bar across county lines where they could smoke. I see the mini-casino ban the same way: it doesn't do much good when its just Tacoma.

On the other hand, I wasn't such a fan of the initiative's sponsors putting up a tacitly illegal initiative (see Peter Callaghan, who has been a big opponent of the casinos).

Disappointed, yet eager

It would be hard to say anything about Moon Over Buffalo last night without getting past the difficult part: the play was very disappointing.

I feel very conflicted about posting negative comments because the Bellevue Civic Theater has been generous to TAG and Tacoma by helping it to reduce their debt and keep the doors open during an incredibly difficult two years. I am also conflicted because even though BCT was the producer (Moon Over Buffalo ran already in Bellevue) TAG's name is still indelibly associated (the show does, after all, kick off TAG's season).

But the truth is the shows I saw at TAG before their closure, No Exit, Forbidden Xmas (twice), and As You Like It, were superior. This was the first work I've seen of the Bellevue Civic Theater, and I was unprepared for the difference from TAG.

I think the biggest problem was that simply that Moon Over Buffalo was just a poor choice for a script. Light farces are fine, but the writer has got to be better than Ken Ludwig (Simon or Frayn are much better choices).

So I am eager. Eager for Proof in Februrary which is the first show since the doors closed in 2004 that will be put on by TAG and just TAG. And after that Charlotte Tiencken will direct Romeo & Juliet. I'm looking forward to seeing TAG stand on its own again.

The Caine Mutiny

Sometime last year, I heard a great piece of advice about leadership: if you want to be a good leader, don't bother with books on leadership; read biographies.

And so I did. The Kennedy Biography A Thousand Days by Schlesinger; Anwar Al Sadat's inspirational autobiography In Search of Identity, and pretty soon I'd like to pick up McCullough's 1776.

I would add to the advice above, by saying that it may be as equally rewarding to read about bad leaders, and at the top of that list would be the (fictional) Captain Queeg in Wouk's The Caine Mutiny. The book won the Pulitzer for Fiction in 1952 and after finishing it I am a real fan. Wouk is a fabulous writer (his Winds of War and War and Remembrance are essential if you want to learn about WWII if you didn't live through it) and The Caine Mutiny really is top-notch.

Queeg is a great character: petty, vindictive, surprising, pathetic, and yet I mainly felt sorry for him, as the characters eventually do as well. Queeg makes the book a great read and I'd like to check out Bogart in the role in the 1954 movie, especially since it seems like such an Un-Bogie part.

Tags ... someday?

If you're a regular blog reader, you may have noticed that some blogs have little descriptions of their subject matter beneath the blog. This isn't necessarily handy for the end-user (you, the reader) unless you want to see everything a blogger had to say about "Tacoma" or "TV." And that can be helpful when you're checking out a new site or trying to find a certain post that's been archived.

The tags are especially helpful, however, for management of a blog, as I am beginning to discover. Kevin (Happy Golden Birthday!) has been managing FeedTacoma.com which takes blog posts labeled "Tacoma" for a variety of local blogs and publishes the headline and first few lines there. That way the blog would show that I liked One Heart Cafe, but not Studio 60, which has no practical bearing on the local scene at all.

Well, this is not a feature that Blogger currently offers, which is too bad. But the change is in beta right now, so I hope to wait it out and enable it as soon as the revamped Blogger goes live. (Which could be 20 months from now for all I know. It's been that long since TiVo promised TiVo2Go for Macs and still nothing. Stupid TiVo, making me dependent on you and then being so callous with my feelings.)

There are some features of Blogger I do like, and I'm guessing that once Blogger is integrated with my Gmail account I'm going to be even more reliant on Blogger. But until then, you'll just have to read each post and figure out for yourself if you want to read the whole thing or not.

The One Heart Cafe

If you haven't been to the One Heart Cafe across from the Varsity Grill, it's a great place to get a cup of coffee. I was really impressed with the decor and the ambience, and being on Broadway is always nice. Check it out if you're interested.

(note: I didn't have my computer with me when I visited, so I don't know if they have wireless Internet available.)

Inherit the Wind

I've been blogging about wind power pretty regularly ever since Carleton installed a wind turbine on their campus. I find turbines fascinating to watch (they're not exactly windmills, as they don't mill anything, but I do think windmill is much better sounding than wind turbine). They also seem to have no downside. Even their biggest problem, that they tend to kill a lot of birds, has been solved by slowing the rotating speed of the blades.

Wind seems to be coming into its own right now. Washington is the 7th biggest state for generating power from wind. And this article in the NYT today pretty effectively argues that industrializing countries like India and China can choose wind and skip the pollution of coal.

I should mention how backward Sen. Kennedy is on the issue. He's opposing the Nantucket Sound wind farm, on the grounds that it hurts his view, I suppose. Both his Republican challengers for the Senate (not like they're likely to win) are in favor of the wind farm and the Democratic candidate for governor is also in favor. He also swept the primary on the Cape and on the Islands. Putting the wind farms at sea is even better than on land: the likelihood of killing birds is much smaller and the wind is much more regular.

(image of the Carleton wind turbine by David Dyer-Bennet, a Carl alum. Click to make it bigger)

TV ...

I hate to keep posting about television ... I do other things during the day, I swear! But I'm flying through "Arrested Development" on DVD and I have to say it's a real highlight. It's too bad the show got axed, but Fox really stuck with it for a long time. Check it out on DVD and after a disc (maybe two) you should be hooked on the Bluth family for sure.

UWT Class of 2010

I'm glad to see freshmen at UWT. Having a 4-year school in downtown Tacoma can only mean good things for the long run. I have been an advocate for a long time of basing downtown success on 4 pillars: business, housing, tourism, and education. By working to increase all four in downtown Tacoma, the reasons for coming downtown are diversified, and therefore downtown as a whole is vulnerable if one of the pillars should fall on some hard years.

I was honored last summer to be part of UWT's Curriculum Development Committee that helped put together recommendations for how to structure the first few years of under-class education at UWT. It was a great time and I learned a lot about the inner-workings of the school.

So here's hoping it all works out for the Class of 2010! And welcome to downtown. It'll be your home for the next 4 years.

Studio 60 Redux.

Again, totally worth it on a Monday night. Also, Sorkin arranged new lyrics to "I am the very model of a modern major general," (we'll be the very model of a modern network TV show) which is no small feat.

I tried it once. Let me tell you, it's damn hard to write in iambic octameter.

The Sea Grill's Northwest Currant ...

Since I have a martini on my blog, I thought I'd post a poor cell-phone pic of another martini, this one at the Sea Grill. The Northwest Currant was surprising because it was served with ... dry ice? Odd, but true. This bubbly martini looked like it was a schnapps and vodka volcano.

As I've said before, the Sea Grill burger on the bar menu is just $5 during happy hour and is probably the best in Tacoma. Well worth it!

68 Degrees and Still Summer

If you're not here, you might not believe that summer is. After a brief cold snap, it turns out the sun is back, and doesn't seem to be leaving anytime soon. A last few days, perhaps, before we get the rains again.

Although, I rather like waking up and going to bed to the sound of rain, so I'm not complaining exactly.

Stills for the Harry Junkies

I'm not saying I'm one of them, but if you are a Harry Potter junky, you might be interested to see the stills from "The Order of the Phoenix" on IMDb.

If you're not a Harry Potter junky, then pretend that you never saw this post. And don't judge me.

Around the Planet

Carleton College (my Minnesota alma mater)has launched an interesting online service called Planet Carleton. Carls--whether alum, student, or faculty--can get their blog's RSS feed onto the site (after a quick review by a staffer) who then adds the feed to their site.

It creates a hodge-podge of information that has no connection between the posts, except that its author is somehow tied to the school. This is one of the great joys of reading the page, of course. It's similar to reading the Top Stories of the Day on the NYT page on the Trib. It's a great way to get news and information that you otherwise probably never would have seen. Or notes about a freshman's new dorm.

This probably isn't that interesting if you're not a Carl. But if you're not, try to find something like it (like The Most E-mailed List on the Times, for example). It's a good way to learn a few new things every day.

The Hidden Side of Everything

About a month ago I read Stephen J. Dubner's and Steven D. Levitt's collaboration "Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything." It's a great read, even if you're not an economist. Actually, if you are an economist you may not like it. But for those of us who aren't, it's great fun.

The authors use economic theorgy to explore and then statistic prove whether sumo wrestling is rigged (it is), whether teachers cheat on behalf of their students (they do, and some got fired for it after the study), why drug dealers aren't rich, why crime "really" fell, etc, etc. It's one of those books like "The Tipping Point" and "Fast Food Nation" that is the It Book for awhile, but usually those books are It Books for a reason, and so is this one.

Since publishing, they've written two articles for the NYT together. One ran during the World Cup, that tried to figure out this puzzle:

If you were to examine the birth certificates of every soccer player in next month's World Cup tournament, you would most likely find a noteworthy quirk: elite soccer players are more likely to have been born in the earlier months of the year than in the later months. If you then examined the European national youth teams that feed the World Cup and professional ranks, you would find this quirk to be even more pronounced. On recent English teams, for instance, half of the elite teenage soccer players were born in January, February or March, with the other half spread out over the remaining 9 months. In Germany, 52 elite youth players were born in the first three months of the year, with just 4 players born in the last three.

And in yesterday's article, they take on a big question: why don't doctors wash their hands? And also, what will it take to make them do it?

If you like the two articles, then I highly recommend the book. Like "The Tipping Point," it'll give you a slightly different set of tools to try to make some sense of this crazy world.

Winthrop at 6:30 am

Big turnout this morning at Tully's on Broadway for the Winthrop meeting with Tim Quigg and his group of developers. Waaaay too early for me, but well worth being bleary-eyed.

Exit133.com and Kevin already posted on the meeting. What I found most interesting was the proposal to actually finish the Winthrop. Many may not know that a planned North Tower was never completed. Quigg & Company want to complete the tower with condos or perhaps more room. It's a fascinating piece of the project and a plan to not only renovate but expand the Winthrop is pretty awesome.

The other really great piece of the morning was the announcement that they want to create an additional 80 units of housing when the move the low-income housing out of the Winthrop. That would take 170 units and boost it to 250. The affordable housing advocates were well represented at the meeting, and I have great hope that the prospect of a new hotel (plus all the new jobs) plus the increase in affordable housing will make this project a winner.

My Newest Favorite Fake Preview ...

Tom Cruise in a "Bollywood-style" preview ... have fun guessing the movie. "In a land where people had given up hope ... he made their hearts sing."

New Life on Pac Ave

On a walk today I discovered that "The Matador," soon to open next to Meconi's is going to actually have two spaces connected together behind a spa. Check it out if you're in the neighborhood, but they have one space next to Meconi's and then an opening on the corner (pictured).

Just down the street in the Olympus Hotel, and next door to Vin Grotto, a liquor license was posted only a few days ago for a new Irish pub. Now if only someone will buy the Drake's space, we'll have something going!

More TVs than People

It's the big headline everywhere online: the average house has more TVs than people.

I'm amazed how big of a deal some are making about this. It's not a big deal, people! I live alone with two TVs. So sue me. I like 24 and Lost and Veronica Mars and tonight's Season 3 opener of The Office was just plain hilarious.

The thing that is actually worrisome is buried deep within the articles, "The average person watches four hours, 35 minutes of television each day, Nielsen said." Works out to be 31 hours of TV a week. And since the average American house has 2.55 people, that means that an average American house watches 80.325 hours of TV a week. Take that, and then you have a whole new headline:

"Average American Home Spends As Much Time Watching TV As Parents Spend At Work"

And then you mention in that article that since homes have an average of 2.73 televisions, that 80 hours is probably spent apart.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone who showed up at the Horatio meeting tonight. Small but interested crowd. If you were one of the many who said they were interested in attending but were rehearsing or performing, let me know by e-mailing erik@thehoratio.com and I'll let you know when I've scheduled an alternate meeting.

I've also updated www.thehoratio.com with the Artistic Vision and some more information for actors.

Bring your earplugs Sunday

A possible allegation into piping in crowd noise? Seems to bizarre to be real. But casinos pipe the sound of slot machines into their lobbies and exterior areas, so perhaps Seattle is actually trying it. Although it seems unlikely.

But as Dave Boling points out: it's certainly going to rev up the fans against the Giants this week. Kind of a "We'll show you what real fan noise is." So if you're going to the game, and you don't happen to be on the Giants offensive line, then let me suggest ear plugs. Cause it's going to be damn loud.

The Virtuous Winthrop Cycle

I worked for a few years in the tourism business here in Tacoma selling our city to tourists and conventioneers. And one of the interesting things that I learned is that the new Convention Center can accomodate much larger conventions than we have hotel rooms for. (Actually, to be specific, we don't have enough hotel rooms within walking distance or on the Link. The hotels on Hosmer can be filled by the Convention Center, but few convention planners want to have to ferry attendees back and forth.)

This is one of the reasons the Winthrop is so appealing as a new hotel: it's right on the Link which makes it easy to become part of the convention business. With more rooms nearby, we can allow bigger conventions which in turn fills more hotel rooms in the area.

The next 30 days are going to be very interesting!

Ta Ta Silver Dollar

It's official, the attempt to save the mini-casinos ended. According to the Pierce County Elections website, which says this is all final, Initiative 1 went down by 804 votes.

I'm not quite sure what I thought about the whole thing. I'm pretty indifferent to mini-casinos, and last year enjoyed playing Texas Hold'Em in a few. The big problem I had with the whole thing was that the casinos were staging a campaign through their employees by sponsoring an illegal bill.

So they're going to be gone from Tacoma. If I go down gamblin' again, it'll have to be in Lakewood.

Hood ornaments from America's Car Museum

To celebrate my grandpa's 88th birthday, we went to the LeMay collection at Marymount. If you're waiting for the museum at the Dome to open, don't. It's pretty awesome seeing them at the old school grounds. Incredible cars and a whole bunch of stories. Sign up for a guided tour with a docent and you won't be disappointed.

(The pictures below are from a Rolls Royce and a Packard).

Elks Temple Sale!

Good news! The Elks Temple sold! I have such high hopes for the building. Earlier this year I got a tour of the building and I saw how much potential for development there was (and how much cost there would be, too).

The picture above is of a light in the ceiling of the main ballroom. Very cool building!

Hat tip, Exit133.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Gotta say it. It was a really really good pilot. Major props to NBC and Aaron Sorkin, not to mention Matthew Perry, Amanda Peet, and Bradley Whitford. It's worth TiVo-ing. Or even watching when it actually airs, if you're in to that sort of thing.

Dan Brown in 24 Hours

I started "Angels & Demons" yesterday evening and finished it just recently. That makes two Dan Brown novels that I've read in 24 hours.

Let me say that the guy knows his formula and knows how to keep you hooked with cheap cliffhangers and (unintentionally) hilarious plot twists. And let me saw that even I can spot a good amount of errors in his books, which means that an expert probably can spot another 3 for each one I find. In fact, Brown has a whole bunch of problems beyond just errors, starting with his writing and ending with his theology ...

But the man can tell a yarn, and reading one of his books in 24 hours is just about right, since they all take place in about that amount of time.

So, regarding "Angels & Demons," if you liked "The Da Vinci Code," read this book. Honestly, it makes "Da Vinci Code" look like a slow-paced knock-off of this book. "Angels & Demons" does everything right (for a pot-boiler) and greatly surpasses Robert Langdon's "second adventure."

Some night soon we're going to have a big rain in town and all you're going to stay inside and never go out. That's the night to pick this book up. With any luck, you'll be up until 2, and finished by breakfast.

Bummer of a birthday present

Saw this car outside The Swiss earlier this morning. At least it'll be dry when he unwraps it.

From the Bowl, on the Centennial

A few quick pics from the evening. The cell phone cam doesn't take great pictures, but its lenses is certainly unique.

Winning the myspace war, one Bridge at a time

So I signed up for myspace.com awhile ago because I'm easily swayed by peer pressure. Now I think it's kind of annoying. It seems like almost everyone's page is impossible to read, I always get blaring music when I least expect it, and my inbox gets filled up by friend requests of pretty women, which I believe translates into "now you can check out my non-myspace website where you can pay to see me in my underwear!" Some friend.

Anyway, I pretty much don't take myspace seriously at all. But it is interesting that I got an invitation to be a friend of "The Tacoma Narrows Bridge" earlier today. I guess I never called her back after visiting last weekend ...

Actually, the myspace page for the Tacoma Narrows Bridge is not, as I had guessed, an attempt for the TNB project to try to be cool and get young people to sign up for the "good-to-go" promotion. Rather the page is put together by a 55 year old woman who asks, "Are you ready for traffic nightmares?" She writes, "I predict that when both bridges are opened up that the Puyallup river bridge which chokes traffic down to three lanes will gridlock hwy 16 all they way to Port Orchard."

Call me optimistic about my government, but I have been impressed with the creation of the new bridge, both aesthetically and as a tax-payer. They're doing just fine by my count. I predict that when both bridges open, traffic will get a lot better after a few weeks of adjustments (during which time it really will be a difficult transition).

A message to the real TNB project: your good name is being hijacked on myspace! Get on-line and spread your message! I'll be your friend, I promise.

Serious Literature

I've been struggling through Camus' The Plague for a few months. It's not that it's a bad read, it's just a struggle to be willing to pick it up. The book is about a town in North Africa that is suddenly inflicted with an outbreak of bubonic plague, that begins with the creepy and ominous sign of every rat in town coming out into the streets and dying.

From there, things get worse and worse, and the town is decimated. The book is about our different reactions to evil and the absurd. Interestingly, the extreme hardship of the plague brings out the best, whether atheist or faithful. And the argument is made that "life = plague" and that we can't shy away in our homes because there's plague, because that's shying away from life (if I am to understand Camus correctly).

It's hard to say that I liked the book. There's really a lot of relief that it's over. But I have a feeling it will stick with me for awhile.

Tacoma Event Costs

I'd like to second the Tribune's editorial today: police costs shouldn't stall the 2008 Tall Ships event. If the police cost for Bumbershoot was less than $100,000, than it is hard to understand why Tacoma's costs for Tall Ships in 2005 were more than $400,000.

I think it's worth pointing out that perhaps there is a bigger issue than just the Tall Ships event. Could Tacoma have a budget of, say, a million, to pay for police costs and city services that would allow regular civic-minded, quality-of-life-enhancing events? Sure, a lot of it might go to Freedom Fair or Tall Ships, but maybe the annual Tree Lighting ceremony, or First Night, or Art on the Ave, or other events that need to close streets could have a better chance of making it work. Instead of raising money to pay the City for these services, the City would do better, I feel to have them apply for a piece of the $1,000,000 pie available.

Maybe Tacoma would fund 100% of the police costs for Art on the Ave and 60% for Tall Ships and 80% for Freedom Fair ... based on whatever the metric turned out to be. But it seems like these events do so much for not only bringing tourists to Tacoma but for bringing Tacoma itself out and about that it would be worth the cost.

Thus concludes my rant on my newest soapbox.

The Horatio Theater: Update

Thanks for everyone who's sent e-mails and signed for the mailing list for The Horatio! (If you're interested in getting e-mails, here's a link directly to the sign up page.) I've received a lot of warm wishes and I'm glad to hear so many people are interested in the project.

Thanks to Cole at GritCity who plugged it earlier this week and cited my hope of Tacoma becoming an "urban Ashland." (I really think it can happen!)

Thanks too to the Volcano who published an article about the Horatio in Thursday's edition. I'd link to it, but it's not online. So instead I'll link to the Volcano blog post about a night of free theater in October at Tacoma Musical Playhouse with TMP, TAG, TLT, and the Lakewood Players all participating. That's a pretty cool cooperative idea! Well done.

For Profit Foundation?

Since I posted about Warren Buffett's big gift to the B&M Gates Foundation, I figured it's worth mentioning that Google is trying a different take with their new project www.google.org.

Google.org will be a for-profit foundation that will have much greater latitude to give where it wants. So if they want to invest in clear cars, or give money to an individual, etc, they can do that without having to have non-profit organizations involved. Not that non-profits are ruled out, but their goal is innovative giving. It's pretty cool. If you're interested, check out the NYT piece.

Thea Foss: now dolphin safe

The new development that Prium is building at the end of the Thea Foss is no longer called "Porpoise Landing." And let me be the second to say, "A damn good thing, too!" As Kevin rightly points out, no porpoise has probably ever seen the Thea Foss. And if one ever did we can probably assume he didn't land there.

In fact, is "Porpoise Landing" so much different than "Beached Whale Condos?" Marine mammals on land ... sounds about the same to me!

The new name will be "Nineteen Thirty-Three at Dock Street." Good choice. Even a dull name is better than "Porpoise Landing."

Bloggers, Unite!

I believe there were four Tacoma bloggers at last night's City Council meeting: myself, Derek at Exit133.com, Kevin Freitas, and Paul Ellis, who blogs for the BIA. By my count, that means that bloggers outnumbered the press 2-1.

Paul and Kevin both posted recaps of the meeting. Here's the Tribune's article. I'll just second what everyone else says: the City Council made the right choice to delay their vote by 1 week, and give AF Evans and Tim Quigg a chance to work together and provide both low-income housing and a 4 star hotel.

(The above picture was snapped today from the Bostwick Tully's across the street from the Winthrop.)

The Horatio Theater

As Derek at Exit133.com mentioned earlier today, I'm working on the creation of a black box theater in downtown Tacoma called The Horatio. (For those of you who don't know, a black box theater has minimal sets and focuses on the actors.)

While working at the Grand, I found more and more often that "the theater bug" was scratching, and I was missing the energy and creativity of live theater. I'm very excited that I have the opportunity to create a new space in Tacoma where I can work with great actors and directors to offer new plays not usually staged here.

Check out the site and sign up for my mailing list if you want to keep in touch with the theater. I am looking for people interested in investing in the project to make this happen, so if you like what you see on the site, please drop me a line at erik@thehoratio.com.

Exciting day!

The Winthrop Deal - Tonight

Tonight the City Council meets to discuss a deal about the Winthrop. There will be some interesting discussions, I imagine, because the Council effectively has the ability to kill a proposal to turn the building back into a hotel.

Tim Quigg wants to be able to turn it back into a hotel, and wants to partner with Evans to build the low-income housing elsewhere in Tacoma. It's an interesting deal, and one that could really benefit everyone involved. Here's the Tribune. Kevin's on the case as well.

The Lauer Interview

I wasn't sure I wanted to post this, but I think it's important: Matt Lauer interviewing President Bush in the Oval Office. I had a lot of respect for Matt after his interview with Tom Cruise and now it's multiplied 10 fold. It takes a lot of courage to stand in front of your President and ask him about torture, but Matt did it, respectfully, and also doggedly. Check out the video below.

The plaque's back

My precious got returned to Stadium and I didn't get it. Apparently, the person who returned the plaque decided not to go through me or Exit133.com, but instead returned it to the state Attorney General, Rob McKenna.

Right. Because it makes sense to ask the guy who could put you behind bars.

More on college admissions

I continue to post on the college experience and the college admissions process because going to college is becoming more and more common (now 27% of Americans have a Bachelors degree or higher). It is also is the easiest way to estimate how much money someone will earn later in life.

I had a Poli. Sci. professor in college who made this disturbing statement: when you buy a college degree, you are buying friends for life. First, the idea of buying a degree is difficult, although--as my parents will attest, I'm sure--quite accurate. And then there is the second implication, that it puts you into the social group for contacts, networking, and everything else ...

Anyway, colleges are aware of this. Carleton, my alma mater, is trying to fight the system by offering almost zero merit based financial aid and focusing everything on need based. And Harvard has just announced that they will drop "Early Admission" because it favors privileged students. Here's the quote:

“We think this will produce a fairer process, because the existing process has been shown to advantage those who are already advantaged,’’ Derek Bok, the interim president of Harvard, said yesterday in an interview.

Mr. Bok said students who were more affluent and sophisticated were the ones most likely to apply for early admission. More than a third of Harvard’s students are accepted through early admission. In addition, he said many early admissions programs require students to lock in without being able to compare financial aid offerings from various colleges.

Hats off to Harvard!

From the NYT 9/11 Editorial

I think the NYT really hit some key points in their editorial today:

The time when we felt drawn together, changed by the shock of what had occurred, lasted long beyond the funerals, ceremonies and promises never to forget. It was a time when the nation was waiting to find out what it was supposed to do, to be called to the task that would give special lasting meaning to the tragedy that it had endured.

But the call never came. Without ever having asked to be exempt from the demands of this new post-9/11 war, we were cut out. Everything would be paid for with the blood of other people’s children, and with money earned by the next generation. Our role appeared to be confined to waiting in longer lines at the airport. President Bush, searching the other day for an example of post-9/11 sacrifice, pointed out that everybody pays taxes.

Dave Barry on 9/11

Dave Barry posted the column he wrote on Septeber 13, 2001 on his blog. It's still pretty good stuff.

The College Term Paper for $9.95/page

I was facinated by this NYT feature on a new service for college students: outsourced papers.

The writer for the Times requested 3 papers: "1984" contrasted with "Brave New World;" Ophelia's madness, and the theme of colonialism in "Lord Jim."

The service asked for a 24-hour extension on their paper on "Lord Jim," which is just so familiar ... where have I heard that before?

And they produced a few great gems:

... Although many similarities exist between Aldous Huxley’s ‘A Brave New World’ and George Orwell’s ‘1984,’ the works books [sic] though they deal with similar topics, are more dissimilar than alike.

... Thus, in critical review of the play, Ophelia mentally suffers from the scars of unwanted love and exploitation rather than any singular or isolated cause.

... Many people consider this Huxley’s most important work: many others think it is his only work. This novel has been praised and condemned, vilified and glorified, a source of controversy, a subject for sermons, and required reading for many high school students and college undergraduates. This novel has had twenty-seven printings in the United States alone and will probably have twenty-seven more.

That's some good writing! Can you say, Trying to make your word count? At $9.95/page, you could probably do better spending that money to feed 1,000 monkeys for awhile and see what they pump out.

Another great game

I didn't want to, but Joel made me stay until the game was over. So a 3-2 win in the 13th felt pretty good by the time we got to it. It was particularly nice, too, that the game was at 6:05, so that by the time we got to the 13th it was still 10:15. The cell phone pic below is probably from the 6th inning or so.

Light Blogging

Probably light blogging this weekend, since Joel and Tanicia are in town from Palo Alto. Looks like a day of hanging out and another Mariners game tonight. Perhaps with another grand slam? We shall see!

Sexson Grand Slam

In other news, tonight's Mariners game was an awesome game. Best I've been to this season. The groundskeepers even danced! (I've missed out on their moves all year.)

The True Must-See at the Fair

So The Fair is still pretty much The Fair. Not much changes from year to year. The hypnotist was good and fun, as usual, and the cows were big and the baby pigs cute ...

But there was something new. Perhaps I'd just missed it before, but Mutton Bustin' was the best damn thing going there. What is Mutton Bustin' exactly? Well, it's a rodeo for kids under 6 (and under 60 lbs). But instead of horses or bulls, they ride ... sheep.

It really has to be seen to be believed, but I watched 12 very small children ride sheep. Kids who could stay on longer than 6 seconds will compete later.

It was pretty hilarious and, frankly, looked like a whole lot of fun. This really is a true highlight and everything you could want from a fair--bizarre, funny, weird, kitchy ... You've just really got to see it.

Do the Puyallup

I went to the fair today, which is the first time I've ever gone on opening day. It's still just as packed as other days.

But I did snap a couple cell phone pics, including everyone's favorite ride and a guy sleeping with his cows. Enjoy.

More cell phone pics from Tacoma

I rather appreciated these from my long walk today.

The suitcase art at UWT.

The new Stadium Theater.

And the restored school.

Who's excited for BS&T in the Bowl next week? This guy!

Big Screen on the Smallest Screen

After a major coup with music, then television, Apple is supposed to announce that they will allow movie downloads through iTunes next week. Details are sketchy and--let's face it--likely wrong anyway, but those are the rumors apparently.

More at AppleInsider, if you are a raving Apple Fan. (Like me).

Market Watch

The Tacoma Famers Market starts closing at 2:00 instead of 3, starting today. So be early if you're visiting. But you still have until October 19, too, so if you don't want to go in the hot sun you can wait a few weeks.

FYI: Tuesday is the last day for the Dome market. And the Proctor market goes through October 28, just long enough to get a fresh pumpkin for Halloween from a local farmer.

A homage much better than mine

From the New York Times (again), here's my favorite part:

For Mr. Irwin, wild nature was something to wonder at, and he did so with an enthusiasm indistinguishable from love. Animals — even deadly ones — are good, poachers are evil, and, crikey, that’s pretty much it.

Call that simple-minded, call it dumb, but it resonates. Future environmentalists and conservationists have to come from somewhere, and if the energetic wonderment of the Crocodile Hunter has seeped into the brains of significant numbers of children — as it did that of Sean, who went trick-or-treating as Mr. Irwin last year, who turned 6 with a crocodile cake, who wears khaki and boots and fills notebooks with meticulous drawings of reptiles — then Mr. Irwin used his 44 years remarkably well.

A cool thing for the arts

The Metropolitan Opera will begin broadcasting live operas into 100 - 300 movie theaters across the country. (see the NYT article for more)

Will people pay $18 for a movie of an opera? I suspect some might. It may be a less intimidating way to see an opera and might encourage more attendance and, dare I say it, an opera comeback? Especially since one of the operas will be directed by Julie Taymor, of "The Lion King" stage-show fame.

I'm interested to see if this could take off.

200 years of news

I didn't realize the full power of Google's news search until I read Mark Briggs' post at the Trib. 200 years of news articles seems pretty darn amazing. Mark points out that it's "not local, but still cool" but I beg to differ. Type in Winthrop Hotel Tacoma into the Google News Archive Search, and you'll find articles going back to the 20s. Type in "Point Defiance" Tacoma and you'll find interesting articles back to the 1880s.

Including an interesting paragraph from the Morning Oregonian, August 6, 1888:

The third bill grants the use of certain lands in Pierce county, Washington terri- tory, to the city of TACOMA. The land given by this bill embraces from seven to eight hundred acres of the military reservation, known as Point Defiance. The bill vesta the the title to the land in the United States and the government reserves the right at any time and under any circumstances to resume possession of the same for the purpose of public defense.

The misspellings and odd words are there because this is just text from a scanned image of the paper. If I logged into NewspaperArchive, I could view a .pdf of the paper. But still, thanks to the Google News Archive, I now know that if the federal government wanted the Point back, they could take it for any reason. Interesting stuff.

Universal Health Care

Malcolm Gladwell (of The Tipping Point and Blink fame) has a really interesting piece in a recent New Yorker advocating Universal Health Care as being good for business. If you're interested in such issues, it's well worth a read.

Rock of Ages

One of the best things happening in the South Sound this past week was on the radio. I might be weird to do so, but I really have to commend The Mountain and their "Rock of Ages" program.

"Rock of Ages" was one of the best-conceived radio programs I've heard in a long time. I'm not a fan of Rock A - Z, or the Top 1000 or many other ideas I've heard that encourages week-long radio listening. But "Rock of Ages" was inspired. 5 songs in a row, one from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and 00s. And then repeated over and over. It was incredibly addictive radio and my car was tuned in to 103.7 all week.

I actually heard a lot of people talking about it, too, which is a rarity for radio. Big Kudos to KMTT from Erik.

The First Fog

On a morning like this, you can definitely tell that autumn is here. Even if it's supposed to be 80 today, which it is, we've definitely hit the turn.

(The cellphone pic is taken out of my living room window looking at the construction of the Prium project at 6th & Fawcett.)

The Crocodile Hunter

1962 - 2006.

So it was a stingray, not a croc, but it's hard not to think that Steve Irwin's number was up. But he's not a Timothy Treadwell (last year's Grizzly Man was an incredible documentary about a very sad and misguided man) and he didn't have that same sad irony in his death. With Irwin, I kind of have a feeling that, "Well, he did what he loved, and he probably wouldn't have wanted to go any other way."

Varsity Blues

After many years of harrassment, my dad and sister finally got me to watch Varsity Blues. Why the holdout on my part? It's not because it's a football movie, it's because it looked like a bad football movie, where the hero starts out as an academic, can't-stand-football kinda guy who's only on the team because it's easier to put up with his dad that way, but ends up as The Hero of the town and the football team. In a word: bad.

But the movie was pretty good, mainly because the guy loves football, but hates what his coach, Jon Voight, has turned it into. In fact, it's really the supporting cast in the movie (Voight and Paul Walker and Ron Lester as Billy Bob) who make it work. Especially Jon Voight. It's an incredibly good performance from him, and really makes the rest of the movie work.

So I held out for a long time, and there really wasn't much reason to do so except that I can be stubborn about that kind of thing. But it's not a bad movie at all and really, actually, pretty darn good.

My Annexation Hot Button Pushed Again

Exit133.com asks, "If you could do one thing in Tacoma, regardless of money or politics, what would it be?" My answer goes right back to my favorite book, Rusk's "Cities Without Suburbs." See my response below and check out the rest of the ideas here.

It sounds droll, but I would annex Lakewood, UP, Fife, Ruston, Fircrest, and all unincorporated land as far south as 512 (if not beyond) into Tacoma proper. This would:

a) increase the Tacoma tax base by as much as 70% with a substantially smaller increase in the cost of services (new population would be above 300K), thus reducing each citizen’s individual share of the tax burden.
b) facilitate centralized planning and regional growth in terms of job centers, transportation networks, etc.
c) decrease suburban reliance on sales tax revenue (see Fircrest, Fed-Way, UP, etc) so that suburb cities (now neighborhoods) wouldn’t have to rely on building big box stores to bring in enough sales-tax revenue to avoid bankruptcy.
d) standardize regional business and building codes, thus saving businesses and developers money.
e) prevent economic and racial segregation of cities and schools.
f) and make Tacoma easily the 2nd largest city in the state, thus beating the pants of Spokane.

I’ve cribbed a lot of these arguments from David Rusk’s book “Cities Without Suburbs,” but … man, it makes a lot of sense (for Tacoma and the suburbs alike!).

I guess I will never pass up an opportunity to hammer away on annexation.

The Illusionist

A great cast makes this film a lot of fun. Edward Norton is good, as is Jessica Biel, but it is the supporting actors, Rufus Sewell and Paul Giamatti, that make it really fun. I liked it more and more as it went along, and even though the ending is pretty obvious from aways out, it's still a lot of fun getting there. Beautiful filmmaking, a fun plot, and enjoyable acting.

Good fun.

Oldboy

Wow.

I've been sitting on this Korean film for a couple months but finally decided to give it a chance last night. A projectionist at the Grand, Adam, has been raving about it for a good long time. And it turns out, he was totally right.

This movie was pretty incredible. Intense emotions, and one of the best "thrillers" I've seen in a very long time. It's pretty fundamentally a revenge movie. Oh Dae-su finds himself locked in a weird prison for 15 years; no contact with the outside world is allowed and no explanation for who put them there. And then one day he is released, and sets out to learn who imprisoned him, and then kill him. It is a brutal film at times, but I could not look away because it was just that good.

Big thumbs up.

"No time for jokes, Batgirl"

A very very fun YouTube video from 1974. Batgirl fights for equal pay. Apparently Robin makes more because he's a guy.

From Barcelona

A few pictures I snapped in Barcelona in 2003. The tram and gondola system is pretty elaborate, starting from the far side of the port across town and then a separate small system to ferry people to the top of Montjuic.

(Ignore the guy in the picture; that's just Phil).

Traveling The Friendly Skies

Dan Voepel is making his case for an aerial tram system in Tacoma again. And Don Meyer at the Foss Waterway Development Authority is doing some feasibility work to connect the waterway with Fireman's Park. Derek at Exit133.com seems skeptical. Or at least, his readers do.

I am a little skeptical because I think it misses a key goal that would make it successsful: moving people a substantial distance. The problem with the proposal is that it's just not far enough.

If you could connect the waterfront with, say, MLK St, you would not only get people to ride it between the waterfront and downtown but all through the urban core who don't want to make the climb. If you worked on Pacific Ave and wanted to have lunch at Le Le's on MLK, you might be willing to pay a buck to get up there.

This thing cracked me up

And it actually works! If you ever want people to think you're a crazy man, talk into this thing on a crowded street and see what kind of stares you get.

The Top 25

Time Magazine posted their Top 25 Web Sites they can't live without. They have separate lists for Best Entertainment sites, Best Time Wasters, etc.

Their Top 25 list, though, is pretty essential. Amazon, Blogger, Apple Movie Trailers, Craiglist, Ebay, Google, IMDb, Wikipedia ... but then there are a few that I've not used. Shopzilla.com, Lifehacker.com? You might find some interesting places that you didn't know where essential.

Posts II

Looking back over the last month of blogging (my first month with more than 1,000 hits, thanks readers!) I realize that I've been filtering in favor of Tacoma-based posts and I've dropped the random tirades against railroads or lengthy arguments for free-speech or links to funny pictures that just happen to make me laugh.

In June I posted a "Topics I Cover" list (for no discernible reason that I can remember two months later). To repeat, The Topics are: Tacoma; movie, theater, TV and book reviews; Technology and Space News; The Issues; Catholicism (also An Issue); funny things; travel (with cell-phone pics as available); and links to friends' blogs (Angela, you'd better blog from Cambridge; Joe, congrats on living in the second-drunkest city).

I also wrote that Tacoma is filling up more and more of my entries. Which is kind of funny because the reason I started blogging last year was to log my trip through all of the MetroParks (you can go through the Summer 2005 archives and find a lot of reviews, although they fall off eventually, as there were just too many parks and way too much blogging to do about them).

I'll try to keep my list in mind as I blog so I don't fill up everyone's plate too much with Tacoma stuff. It'll be good motivation to finish my book over the long weekend, just so I can post a review.