Yes. It's True. Vacations are awesome.

Exhibit 1.



What a beautiful night at Cannon Beach.

Oregon Weekend

Will be at Cannon Beach this weekend for some rainy walks on the beach looking at Haystack Rock. At least, that's what all my other experiences on Cannon Beach tell me it will be like.

Maybe we'll get lucky.

Laughing at dictators

Ahmadinejad got laughed at yesterday. Here's a good clip of student laughing at him for claiming that Iran does not have homosexuals.

Andrew Sullivan asks a good question. "If there are no gays in his country, why is he hanging so many of them?"

NYT on the Cupcake Phenomenon

The New York Times today has a great story on cupcakes. It's interesting reading about how cupcakes have risen to new heights recently (witness the tidal wave of support for Hello, Cupcake's opening). And did you know Texas passed a Cupcake Amendment a couple years ago?

The story also mentions the Magnolia Bakery, where one of the bakers at Corina learned her trade. After Mary and I went in August, we both left feeling like Corina did it better...

Some quick writing links

I try to put articles that I've written over in the "What's Erik Reading" list on the sidebar, but that's not exactly an accurate place for them, since--well--I'm not reading them.

So I'll take this time to update everyone on a few posts elsewhere.

Last week I reviewed Michael Chabon's new book, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, on the B Side. There are a couple short posts there about art and sidewalk dining from me too.

And this morning I got up at O Dark Thirty to catch a bus to Seattle, just so I could ride back to Tacoma on the inaugural "reverse commute" Sounder train, which I wrote up for Exit133. I got a cool luggage tag out of the deal. I also got 4 hours sleep out of it too. Which means early to bed tonight, despite the Season 2 premiere of Heroes. Unless I can stay up until 10, but that might be iffy at this point.

Sleepy Sunday in Tacoma

Always good fun to watch the Seahawks on a sleepy fall afternoon.

And it is most definitely fall. I wore sweaters to work three times last week! That's a sure sign fall is here. There are still nice days and some good sun; but step into the shade and it's very clear what season we're in.

Actually, it's been a very nice weekend. Mary and I were at the CityArts reception Friday night for their 1st Anniversary at the Broadway Center, followed by dinner with the folks at Primo Grill.

Yesterday was a little quiet, but highlighted by a nice jaunt up to Capitol Hill for a movie at the Egyptian. And today a quick IKEA trip wrapped up the errands, followed by a very nice Seahawks game on the couch.

The Telephone -- An Instrument of War?

It's great news that the New York Times company has opened up their od-ed columnists from behind the firewall of TimesSelect. It's also great that a huge portion of their archives are now free and available to the public.

So go search to see what the Times said about the Titanic (it sank) or the Spanish American War (it happened). Andrew Sullivan links to their first review of the World Wide Web. Which made me curious to see what they thought about other technology when it first came out. What did they make of ... the telephone?

Ah yes. Here's their editorial on the new contraption ... from March 22, 1876.

"Prof. Reuss, a distinguished German performer on telegraphic instruments, has recently made an invention which cannot fail to prove of great interest to musicians, and, indeed, to the general public. The telephone--for that is the name of the new instrument--is intended to convey sounds from one place to anotehr over the ordinary telegraph wires, and it can be used to transmit either the uproar of a Wagnerian orchestra or the gentle cooing of a female lecturer. In appearance, the telephone somewhat resembles a Morse instrument; but in addition to the usual quantity of magnets and polished brass, it is provided with an ear-trumpet and a curious collection of miscellaneous machinery, of small size, but of presumably enormous horse-power."

Kind of like the admiration David Pogue has for the iPhone; ie, "It's awesome!"

Then there's this. And I swear I cannot tell if they are being sincere or ironic. But the New York Times writes this about the telephone. (Since they hardly use paragraphs, I'll do you the service of breaking it up. But this is their closing paragraph as written in 1976):

"It is an unpleasant task to point out a possibly sinister purpose on the part of an inventor of conceded genius and ostensibly benevolent intentions. Nevertheless, a patriotic regard for the success of our approaching Centennial celebration renders it necessary to warn the managers of the Philadelphia Exhibition that the telephone may really be a device of the enemies of the Republic.

"Wagner is to write an overture for the exhibition, and it is assured that thousands of people will go to Philadelphia to hear it. Somebody is to make an oration, and somebody else is to deliver a poem after the roar of the overture has died away, and it is believe that there are persons who wish to listen to both. More over, the Declaration of Independence is to be read in connection with the opening of the Exhibition, and those who have never seen a copy of that document will, of course, be anxious to hear it read.

But what if Prof. Reuss, with deliberate malice, and at the instigation of the European despots, should distribute telephones to all the cities of America, and thus enable their citizens to listen to overture, oration, poem, and Declaration, without the trouble and expense of going to Philadelphia? What possible success would in such case attend an exhibition to which nobody but Philadelphians with free passes would come?

There is so far nothing to indicate that this is Prof. Reuss' dark design, but as all foreign despots, from the Queen, in the Tower of London, to the Prince of Monaco, in the backroom of his gambling palace, are notoriously and constantly tearing their hair as they hear of Belknap and Pendleton, and note the progress and prosperity of our nation, it is not impossible that they have suggested the infamous scheme of attacking the Centennial Celebration with telephones.

However, there is one comfort. If the Wagner overture is written in the author's characteristic style, no telephone made of weaker materials than sixteen-inch steel plates can successful report it. With the first grand crash of Wagner's brass and bass drums every telephone will fly into pieces, and an awful silence will settle over the land, except within the distance of say fifty miles from the centre of musical disturbance."

...

Wow. And I wonder what these same people would have made of TiVo?

Honorable Heroes

After trying out "Heroes" just a few weeks ago, Mary and I finished the Season Finale just last night. It was a really really good season of TV. The ending was a little weak (when people talk about fulfilling their destinies, and the climax shows them fulfilling their destinies, there's not a whole lot of surprise). But the characters were good throughout and the show had a lot of fun episodes along the way.

I do want to point out that Claire--the cute high school cheerleader--is very much a Veronica Mars character. Fans of both shows would see the comparison quite easily--the popular pretty girl who is shunned from the in-crowd and finds new friends ... the sass ... the worried and protective father ... the ability to heal wounds. Wait, scratch that last one, that's just Claire. But Claire is like a Veronica with special powers. (Which rocks, don't get me wrong.)

Anyway, it's a popcorn kind of show, but it's great popcorn. I'm looking forward to Season II.

Movies

Lord knows I love movies.

And there's a few I'm looking forward to now, including the next Batman movie, Dan in Real Life, and Feast of Love with Greg Kinnear and Morgan Freeman. There's a few others, including this film which looks funny ... and odd.

I want someone to eat cheese with.

Bestow, Brand, or Banish

Barry Bonds' 756 home-run ball was purchased at auction for more than $750,000. The new owner has start a website and is asking for votes on what to do with the ball. He's got three options:

Bestow it: Give it to the Hall of Fame.
Brand it: Brand a giant asterisk in to it and then give it the Hall of Fame.
Banish it: Launch it into space.

While banishing it is kind of cool, I voted for Branding it. You can vote on the website. The polling closes on the 25th of September so vote soon!

Take the Helm!

Two friends from the Grand, Peter Lynn and Sean Alexander, are opening an art gallery tomorrow on Broadway in the Bostwick. Actually, it's directly below my old apartment, which is kind of cool.

The gallery is called The Helm, and it's going to be on the cutting edge of art. They're opening is tomorrow as part of the Third Thursday Art Walk.

After Critical Line closed and ArtRod dissolved, some people have questioned whether a gallery with similar aspirations would survive. But I think they are on the right track. Critical Line opened new shows every three months, which left the gallery empty of patrons and without sales for months at a time. The Helm will be changing shows monthly. They'll also be offering residency to artists looking to work for two weeks in Tacoma, which is totally awesome.

Looking forward to another cool place!

Stop Iraqi Car Bombings By Taking Away Cars

I haven't gotten too much into political stuff recently, but there was some news over the weekend of some pretty bad car bombings in Iraq.

There are, of course, plenty of really bad things going on in Iraq right now. But here's what Wikipedia has to say about car bombings in Iraq:

Since August, 2003, suicide car bombs have been increasingly used as weapons by Sunni militants, primarily al Qaeda targeting crowds of Shi'ite civilians.

This leads me to an idea, from an--admittedly--non-military mind. Why not just make car-driving illegal in Baghdad? No cars. None. No one gets to drive, except military ad government cars.

We can import a lot more buses and start giving away bikes like they're going out of style. All cars are parked outside the city in huge parking lots and people would have to take the bus to their car if they were driving somewhere.

This way, if you see a car on a street in Baghdad, you know something's wrong and might be able to stop it before it gets to its target. Roadside IEDs might be easier to spot without a lot of traffic. And the problems with cars (you can pack a lot more explosives in them, and the car acts as its own shrapnel) is alleviated.

Does this make any sense? Would it help decrease the damage suicide bombers could do? Any thoughts?

See you, Joe!

I had a great time with Joe in town this weekend. We saw two movies--King of Kong at the Grand and Shoot 'Em Up--plus Steward of Christendom, put on by Studio 21 at Commencement Bay Coffee. Plus a Mariner's game.

We watched some TV, the Seahawks, and a DVD and then moved on to chess. We played a lot of chess. Like a lot. I think I lost to Joe 5 or 6 times. Plus we had at least two draws (maybe three). It was a lot of chess. But I learned a lot too. By the last two games, Joe said that I was annoyingly difficult to beat.

We visited some good restaurants, too. PSP for breakfast, Wild Orchid, and the Sea Grill.

It was very nice to hang out. And to have a 4 day weekend!

Technically, I'm on my 4th iPhone

So after a month of ownership or so, my first iPhone lost touch-screen sensitivity in the top left corner, which made some functions--like maps especially--inoperable.

I took it up to the Apple Store at Southcenter and got a loaner phone (iPhone number two) while my phone went in for servicing. The day before I left for New York, iPhone number three arrived in the mail, with a little note saying that they couldn't fix my first iPhone and here was a replacement. Free of charge.

All right then, so I got to have a brand new iPhone for my New York trip, which made travel quick and easy, most especially thanks to the maps, which now worked.

Everything was going along swimmingly until Friday night when suddenly the phone just stopped working. I couldn't restore it through iTunes, I couldn't even turn it on.

Joe, Mary, and I took a short jaunt back to Southcenter. I turned my phone over to them to check out and 10 minutes later they were handing me my 4th iPhone. Again, free of charge.

That's some pretty awesome customer service.

And it's nice to just bring the new iPhone home, plug it in to my iTunes and--whoosh!--all the settings, music, contacts, etc are back where they were before.

Minnesota Joe

My ol' college roommate Joe is in town. I expect we'll be seeing plenty of movies over the weekend, including King of Kong, which Todd Matthews reviewed for the B Side and which opens at the Grand today.

Shoot 'Em Up is probably on the list, too. We'll also do a good amount of hanging out in Tacoma too. We went to the Mariners game last night. It was painful. We left after the 5th when it was 7-1, Devil Rays. It was even more painful later to find out that somehow we'd won. Oy. Bad game to get disgusted by and walk out of.

Writing About Tacoma

As I mention fairly often, I've been living in downtown Tacoma for five years (as of last month, actually). Which has been pretty great, I must say.

I've seen a lot of changes in downtown in that time and I've touched on it here every so often, but not in a lot of detail. That's why I'm happy to tell you all that I'll be writing about living downtown and my Tacoma activities on a new page of Exit133, Exit133 B (AKA: The B Side).

The front page of Exit133 will keep its focus on development, urban issues, arts news, etc. But I'm going to be on a second page with more of a lighter look at Tacoma. One of the other writers is Kimberley Tibbert, who moved to town this summer and will have some first impressions of Tacoma posted.

There will also be reviews posted as well. Andrew Fry, who I've mentioned here a few times, has a review up of The Steward of Christendom. I posted a review of the art-house thriller "Sunshine" when I saw it at the Grand last month and threw it up on The B Side as a test post, but it's still there for your reading pleasure.

I'm excited to have a new sandbox to play in, so I hope you'll check out the B Side (if you like Tacoma you should already be reading Exit133 anyway).

I'll post links to any reviews I write plus the random post or two, as well.

Google Aims for the Moon

I wrote last week about a new prize being offered by the same people who put together the Ansari X Prize that SpaceShipOne won three years ago.

Today it was announced that Google is offering $25 million to whoever can land a rover on the moon and have it ... rove, I guess. It's got to get there by 2012 to get the prize; it's also got to take a picture of man-made remnants on the moon.

Super Awesome.

The T-Town Gnome

If you like garden gnomes travelling around the world (and who doesn't?) then you'll appreciate knowing that Tacoma has its very own travelling gnome who travels to all the cool landmarks in town.

Check him out at tacomagnome.blogspot.com.

Jon Stewart back for the Academy Awards?

The rumor is that Jon Stewart will be back as a host this year for the Oscars.

I was a big fan of him as a host. Of course, I liked Chris Rock before that. And I liked Ellen a lot the year after him (I think she was actually my favorite of the last three years). Maybe I just like the Oscars in general.

But I will be very pleased to see Jon back again.

Still Life: Redefined

An artist has figured out a way to drop clay statues and photograph them breaking so that they appear to be totally still right at the moment of impact. He leaves the shutter open in a dark room and then the vibration of the impact turns a strobe on for a brief instant. Even with a very good camera it would be impossible to take this kind of picture because too much would be blurry. But by just capturing the light during the strobe, it is a devastating effect.

Lots more cool pictures here.

Weekend TV Report

So I did more this weekend besides watch TV. We walked around Titlow Beach a bit, had drinks at E-9 Friday, lunch at Meconi's Saturday, happy hour burgers at the Sea Grill tonight ... it was a very nice Tacoma weekend.

But we watched some good TV, too.

Namely: Heroes. A whole bunch of people have been recommending this show. And they were right. It's awesome.

Speaking of Awesome. I think I saw the funniest South Park I've ever seen. If you ever have the desire, check out the episode called "Awesome-O" in Season 8 of South Park. It is Awesome-O.

Madeleine L'Engle 1918 - 2007

Children's lit author Madeleine L'Engle died yesterday.

Like many a child reader, I loved Madeleine L'Engle's books. "A Wrinkle in Time" was thrilling and exciting and by the time I got to "A Swiftly Tilting Planet" it felt like I was reading a more grown up book. These were wonderful books as a kid.

Who loves Law and Order?

Chickens do Law and Order.



If you like Law and Order, you'll like this short. Gotta love Robot Chicken (although Season 3 has not been great so far).

A New York State of Mind

I put this together using my small digital photo camera, whose memory card maxed after 15 minutes of filming the Empire State Building. It's 15 minutes of the Empire State Building from our hotel room at the Broadway Plaza hotel, sped up to 1 minute time.

Watch for the flash bulbs from the observation deck.



Even though I'm back home, it's fun to post a last travel blog post.

One Giant Leap

I love space. And Mars, especially, thanks to Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy, Ray Bradbury, and those wonderful rovers on Mars, Spirit and Opportunity (yeah, I know they're names; did you know after the dust storm cleared Opportunity is going into Victoria Crater?).

Anywho.

The fellows from the Ansari X Prize, which gave money to SpaceShipOne for suborbital flight are going to announce their next big prize on the 13th of September. Here's their teaser trailer.




According to the invitation to the event: "The challenge is extreme, the destination is extraordinary, the prize purse is exceptional."

It's pretty much going to be awesome.

From Wired.

Q&A with Al Gore

I thought this was a very interesting exchange:

Among the current crop of candidates, who has the strongest position on global warming?

Gore: I don’t think anyone has given it the emphasis that it should have. But [Connecticut senator] Chris Dodd deserves credit for proposing a CO2 tax—I’m convinced that we should eliminate the payroll tax and replace it dollar for dollar with a CO2 tax.

...

Are any Republican candidates good on the issue?

Gore: No. John McCain was strong on the climate crisis in the past, before he got swept up in the effort to court the base voters of his party. Mike Bloomberg has had a responsible position on the issue, but he’s no longer a Republican.

I was critical of Gore last summer for not advocating for a gas tax in his film An Inconvenient Truth. I am glad to see him take a stand on an even more comprehensive tax solution.

Downtown Working

I spent a few hours Saturday and Sunday down at Suite133 this weekend sprucing things up and moving furniture around. Suite133 is a new co-working space in downtown Tacoma that should be opening by October.

The idea of a co-working space starts with the assumption that small businesses and creative entrepreneurs are usually stuck working out of their homes and coffee shops. Coffee shops are great, but productivity goes down and caffeine intake goes up, because you feel guilty hanging out there without buying things. So the co-working model is to find a cool space, put in a lot of tables and chairs, and then add office necessities like wifi, printing, faxing, and 2 private conference rooms. A space like this would have been very helpful for me last year when I was having a million meetings in coffee shops about the Horatio.

Suite133 will be the first co-working space in Tacoma. Derek at Exit133, Seamus Holman (a local designer), and I are working to get it off the ground. We found a really cool space at 7th & Pacific, kitty corner from Old City Hall, overlooking a small pocket park, and with a slew of great restaurants around.

There's more in the Business Examiner Daily and at Exit133. Also at Suite133.com, of course.

And speaking of the Horatio, things haven't stopped, they've just been slowly moving. But they are moving! I have some good directors and some good plays. We're just looking for some good venues to go with those.

In the meantime, check out the new Studio 21 production, "The Steward of Christendom," which opens this Thursday in the theater at Commencement Bay. The Horatio co-produced "Molly Sweeney" with Studio 21 February so it's great to see them putting more theater up in the space we developed.

The Broadway LID, A Primer

To start, here's Erik's summary on what's happened to date.

A long time ago and in a City Hall not so far away, I heard a presentation at the Economic Development meeting for creating a Local Improvement District (LID) in Tacoma. Usually these are when a neighborhood bands together and levies themselves to raise money for repairs, streetscape beautification, better lighting, etc, in their area.

The LID was going to be the St. Helens LID an encompass St. Helens slope and Broadway, including my condo, which meant I was going to be ponying up some money. Shortly after the meeting, the Tribune ran a front page article about Darnell's, the auto mechanic in St. Helens, who felt he didn't need what the city was offering. In addition, he and a few other businesses that owned their own spaces felt that they would be put out of business if the LID passed.

It didn't. So the City narrowed the scope of the LID and made it focus mostly on Broadway and only the piece of St. Helens between 7th & 9th. This reduced the need to fix or create too many raised sidewalks (a problem in a city built on a hill) and also cut out most of the places of business that were strongly opposed to it.

The new LID was circled around, but did not "pass." Now that's a funny word, "Pass." Because the voting for the LID is tricky. It's not a "one owner/one vote" model, it's a "one sq. ft/one vote" model. A vote of a landowner with a lot of square footage within the property would have more sway than one with just a small condo. So an individual with a lot of property within a LID could alone account for 10% or 20% or 30% of a Yea or Nay vote.

So, by saying it didn't pass, I'm saying that the new Broadway LID had owners representing 52% of the property within its boundaries vote against it.

Interestingly, state law says you can pass an LID as long as that number isn't as high as 60%. So in a bold move, the Council voted 6-3 to move forward with the LID.

Things got very close to starting this summer when the City realized it had to update its numbers because the old numbers were 2004 estimates. They did, and the price went up a bunch. So they decided to poll the property owners again. They reported back that the number of owners who now opposed to the LID dropped to 50.48% of the property enclosed. It seemed like a small drop in opposition, although support was still not more than 50%.

All was moving ahead toward creating the LID for real until the surprise vote Tuesday night, where the Council voted against the LID 8-0 (Jake Fey was absent).

I discovered on Tacoma Chickadee's blog that the Council's meetings are available on-line so I tuned in to see what had happened. It makes for some interesting viewing. First, Tom Stenger addresses the camera directly like he's a news anchor. I thought that was kind of funny.

Second, it turns out the 50.48% was wrong, and the actual opposition number was about 52%, a number released at the meeting.

Third, some--especially Mike Lonergan and Tom Stenger--were upset that because a majority weren't in favor, we weren't following "democracy." This is actually not true.

The LID voting procedures were set up to give the richest landowners in the area enormous power over what happens in their district. If we want to talk about "democracy" the real question would be, by the numbers, how many property owners in the district oppose or are in favor of the LID? Yes, some owners will pay more than I will, but that's true in state and national politics, too. Votes affect different kinds of people differently, but it's still one person/one vote, regardless of what you own.

(To be nitpicky, if the LID were really a democracy, then non-owners who live within the LID boundaries should be able to vote too, in the same way that non-owners get to vote on whether property taxes of owners go up. If the voted for it, their rent would likely go up, but it's absurd to say even a non-owner has no stake in the debate).

So I think it's safe to say we can scratch the "will of the people are standing against the LID" argument. From what I understand, owners by the numbers were largely in favor of the project, and one or two large owners opposed it, causing it to fail.

There is still one big question I don't get. Owners of 52% of the property opposed the LID originally, but the Council decided to go forward. Then the City re-polled with much much higher cost numbers, and the number opposed did not change. For awhile, staff thought it had dropped to 50.5% who opposed, but at the meeting that was corrected to 52% again. So why kill it, if the number opposed didn't change?

That tells me one big things: those who oppose it, oppose it no matter how expensive; those in favor see the benefit no matter how expensive. Nothing changed at the meeting Tuesday, but the Council seemed (collectively, at least. Julie Anderson and Rick Talbert were asking very good questions, I thought) to act as if there was a big development. Nothing changed.

I really believe this project has got to go through. It's a major infrastructure upgrade, not even counting the streetscape improvement benefits. It's got to happen. Perhaps the $2 million the City wanted to get from local property owners they can get from the coffers of all Tacoma tax payers: it's certainly a project that will benefit all of Tacoma since we're talking about the Heart of Tacoma (as 9th & Broadway is often identified).

Some more information (and lots of discussion) at Exit133.

A few numbers for this post were pulled from the Tribune.

Puttin' on the Ritz

I approached "Young Frankenstein," the new big-budget music, with a little bit of trepidation. I had been disappointed by the musical version of "The Producers," even though everyone loved it. And Mary and I last week had just seen "Spring Awakening," which had just won a 2007 Tony.

Well after seeing "Young Frankenstein" at the Paramount in Seattle last night, I'm willing to say that it's got the 2008 Tony sewn up.

"The Producers" failed to get as many laughs as the movie did, and it tacked on a bizarre twist with a courtroom scene. "Young Frankenstein" just seems better suited to being a big musical than "The Producers" did.

Right from the start, the musical gets good solid laughs out of dialog, and out of very clever witty numbers. I can't say that music is necessarily that good, but it is serviceable. I can't think of a single song that would get stuck in my head (save "Putting on the Ritz," of course--the only song here whose music was not written by Mel Brooks). "Spring Awakening," on the other hand, still gets caught there more than a week later.

Unlike a bad experience at "Camelot," no song really dragged, and those that did were lightened up with some great spectacle. Actually, if there's anything that "Young Frankenstein" truly nailed, it was Spectacle. There are a lot of ways to make good theater. And awesome spectacle, when you can afford it, is definitely one of them. As in the movie, the "Puttin' on the Ritz" number was one of the best moments. Actually it was a series of great moments, all spectacular in their own way.

The cast was pretty strong. Megan Mullaly from Will & Grace was surprisingly not on stage that much. Frederick Frankenstein, Igor, Frau Blucher, and the Monster himself stole scenes from each other throughout. The four of them held everything together and were very very good. I must commend the Monster in particular for some incredible footwork in his big big shoes.

"Young Frankenstein" is big budget theater done right. Loud, bright, funny, and solid the whole way through. I'm glad I caught it at a 1/4 of the price (I'm guessing even a Row R seat would have been pretty expensive on Broadway). Great fun last night.