This week I watched Murder on the Orient Express from the 70s. Its been in my queue forever so I was glad I finally got to it.
So it was surprising to see it would be shown on the Amtrak train on our way to Portland (where I am now. Here's to mobile blogging!).
Despite how odd it is that the movie would come up again in the same week, I think its even odder to play this movie on a train. Isn't that a bit like showing a movie with a plane crash in flight?
... on Thursday night you have dinner on deck.
... on Friday morning you have breakfast on the deck.
... on Friday you walk to work.
... on Friday night you have happy hour on the deck of Paddy Coynes.
Oh yeah, it's crazy nice out!
Mary and I are going to spend Saturday in Portland. We'll be on the train in the morning and back by night, thanks to a 2-for-1 deal with Amtrak.
I'm expecting Travel Scrabble will probably make the journey with us. But we're definitely looking forward to a nice day in Portland (especially when it's supposed to be in the 70s if not 80s). Powell's here I come!
Also check out Peter Callaghan's article on the Seattle to Portland Amtrak trip. They expect to be able to cut Point Defiance out of the trip and save 6 minutes. Callaghan's right, it's a very nice 6 minutes, but it's part of an overall plan to cut the trip between Seattle and Portland by 1 hour. That's really fast and makes the trip shorter (just barely and depending on how fast you drive) than going by car. That's a good rail system.
For a couple laughs, check out Things Younger Than John McCain. Things like Alaska, Barack Obama's parents, the Hindenburg Disaster, Spam ... just to name a few.
With a new thermal coffee pot and grinder at home, we're going through a lot more coffee than we did before. I'm curious, where do people buy coffee beans?
Sometimes we do Starbucks beans, but we like the Blackwater or Commencement Bay Coffee route better we can swing it. Are there any coffee connoisseurs who know where we can get a really excellent pound of beans in town?
We had dinner at Maxwell's on Mothers Day. Having been there for drinks twice before, I was very excited for the chance to have a full dinner.
And I gotta say ... it was an incredible, incredible dinner. I think we ordered some form of steak all around, with sides of whipped potatoes, finger potatoes, and pasta shared between all of us. The wine (Maxwell's has introduced me to a great Washington red wine blend called Subduction, put out by Syncline), the beef, the wonderful potatoes, the atmosphere ...
One of the better dinners I've had in a long time. And it's just down the block!
When I was in New York City I was impressed by the effort they were putting out to plant more trees--1 million trees to be precise. Their goal is 1,000,000 trees in the next 10 years.
I mentioned the program in a comment thread over at Exit133 about a big tree that fell down over the weekend in the Stadium District and suggested that Tacoma should consider something similar. We've lost a lot of trees to age and development and storms and I think that we should have a systematic effort to replant.
Turns out, it's being looked in to. Fellow blogger Tacoma Chickadee let me know that Tacoma's Green Ribbon Committee has as a draft recommendation that the City plant 200,000 trees, among some other ideas.
According to the time line on the website, the final recommendations should be put in front of the City Council in June.
I'm on board. Go trees!
I only read a couple of film critics so I wasn't quite sure who Armond White was when I read his bizarre screed against movie critics. I found the link off if IMDb and I'm still scratching my head.
He really really doesn't like movie critics. He talks about their "fatted ranks" and how they have "diminished cultural discourse," etc.
He then goes on to attack my man Roger Ebert: "Ebert’s way of talking about movies as disconnected from social and moral issues, simply as entertainment, seemed to normalize film discourse—you didn’t have to strive toward it, any Average Joe American could do it. But criticism actually dumbed down. Ebert also made his method a road to celebrity—which destroyed any possibility for a heroic era of film criticism."
SayWA? Ebert is a pretty dang intelligent film critic. He's often made fun of for liking too many movies, but I would definitely not say he writes about movies in a way that is disconnected from social and moral issues. Far from it. Ebert has written off many movies because he doesn't like their morals.
Interestingly, White goes on to argue, "The most powerful, politically and morally engaged recent films (The Darjeeling Limited, Private Fears in Public Places, World Trade Center, The Promise, Shortbus, Ask the Dust, Akeelah and the Bee, Bobby, Running Scared, Munich, War of the Worlds, Vera Drake) were all ignored by journalists whose jobs are to bring the (cultural) news to the public."
Funny that, but a quick search of Ebert's website will show you positive reviews for 9 of those films, 2 negative reviews, and no reviews for two of them (due to Ebert's convalescence). In fact, at least two of them are high on Ebert's Top 10 films the year they came out.
So why White should go after Roger so badly is just odd.
I'd also like to add that Munich and War of the Worlds are bad films. Ebert loved Munich and didn't like War of the Worlds. War of the Worlds was poorly made and plotted, and I thought Munich had some really severe moral problems, right down to its closing shot.
There's another contradiction in White's argument. Precept 1) Ebert and film critics have ushered in an era of viewing movies simply as entertainment. But that contradicts his Precept 2) that Ebert and film critics have tried (and failed) to promote Indie movies that are "that are mendacious, pseudo-serious, sometimes immoral or socially retrograde and irresponsible" such as "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days, Army of Shadows, United 93, Marie Antoinette, Zodiac, Last Days, There Will Be Blood, American Gangster, Gone Baby Gone, Letters From Iwo Jima, A History of Violence, Tarnation, Elephant."
If you believe movies are more than just about entertainment, then you shouldn't like all of these films, but White tries to get both charges to stick.
Also, I've seen a couple of these films ... I'd be very interested to hear how Zodiac is immoral, socially retrograde, etc. The Romanian film 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days uses a horrific storyline to argue very emphatically that legalized abortion is a moral good. Agree with its message or not, it's a direct engagement with morals and can help inform the cultural discourse.
The whole essay just seems flat wrong.
I wasn't sure I'd really wanted to see this movie, but I'd heard enough good things to make me want to see it. I'm glad I did. It was a good monster movie with a couple very scary scenes and general fun elsewhere.
That said, there is absolutely no way I could have seen this in the theaters. I can get pretty motion sick in movies (City of God, for example, was killer) but this was extremely shaky. I did fine on the TV, but I couldn't have handled it on the big screen.
Good use of special effects to keep the monster seen only in small bits and pieces as you're going along. All the traditional creaky plot and character devices you would expect. But there are some real scares here. Good flick.
Anyone notice the latest weather reports for Tacoma? 77 high by Thursday? Heck, yeah! Here comes summer!
If you're a Democrat, this NYT map is a little scary. It's a map of solid Democratic states, solid Republican states, and the "Battleground States."
To win the Presidency, Obama would need to take all the states Kerry won in 2004, plus take 18 electoral college votes from John McCain. States that Bush won in 2004 that Obama will want to try to flip are Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia and Florida, while still maintaining Pennsylvania and Michigan in the blue column. Is that going to be hard for Obama? It's certainly not going to be easy.
I do think that, with this electoral layout in mind, there is one really good choice for an Obama VP--Bill Richardson.
He neutralizes any inroads McCain might make in Cali. He brings out the Hispanic vote in Colorado, Nevada, hopefully Florida and he guarantees New Mexico (not a big coup, it only has 5 electoral college votes). He might even be able to help with the Catholic vote, something Obama needs a bump in. He has foreign policy credentials, he has energy credentials ... and he broke early for Obama when it was still politically risky to do so.
I think Obama/Richardson could be the winning ticket.
There's an article in the New York Times about how high gas prices have pushed many from cars to mass transit. I know I should be all "rah rah, go mass transit" but I'm not exactly feeling it.
The high fuel prices might directly hurt our pocketbooks with gas prices, but it's also nickel and diming us, too, as pretty much every product we use now costs more to manufacture and ship. So while I like that more people are using mass transit, the high gas prices right now are not to be applauded.
Instead of getting us into a fix, I wish that we'd been able to make this work on our terms--I wish that on September 12, 2001, George W. Bush had called for a $1.00/gallon gas tax (phased in over at least 5 years). Now that I could have gotten behind. Slowly increasing the cost of gas before the market forced the increase on its own would have helped us out a lot.
First, oil-rich despots would not be flexing their muscles right now, they'd be hurting, because they wouldn't be getting the money off high gas prices, we--the US--would. That gas tax could have been a national security measure and I would bet that Americans had the political will to go for it after September 11. The easiest way to send a message to states we don't like is to weaken their biggest source of revenue.
Second, with a 5 year steady increase in gas prices, car manufacturers and consumers can plan ahead a little bit more. Knowing gas is going to be expensive in advance means that people start making decisions based on that knowledge, and they buy homes closer to bus lines, buy hybrids, etc. Those are decisions some will start making now, but more slowly.
It's those big choices that will actually influence how much gas an individual family uses--the location of the house, the car they will have at least 5 years. Switching to mass transit is all well and good, but it's small potatoes compared to these other choices.
Third, the price of gas would probably not be $1.00/gallon more than it is right now, despite the tax. I'm not an economist, but I'd wager that the slow shift in 7 years would mean that gas would be perhaps only $0.50/gallon than it is now, which means that $0.50 stays with the US instead of going to the countries and companies who own the fields.
... I think high gas prices will be with us for awhile. And it's going to hurt us all, which makes it hard to be excited about ridership gains on mass transit, even though that's something I really want. I just wish we had chosen the path rather than been forced in to it.
Sunday Update: Paul Krugman, not a man I normally agree with, makes the point that as of 2005 only 4.7% of Americans get to work using public transit. Figure then that if mass transit ridership went up across the board 10%, you're still only pulling about half a percent of drivers off the road.
He concludes: "The point isn’t that nothing can be done — it’s just that serious reductions in driving would require a lot of long-term rearrangement of the way we live. It will come — but not quickly."
Exactly.
Turns out Avenue Q is in Seattle next month. It was very cool to see on Broadway and the five of us who went really liked it. And it's far less likely I would have seen it in Seattle. But still ... I wish I'd learned that particular piece of information a little sooner.
Ah well. Here's where you can buy tickets for the show at the Paramount if you're interested.
I differ from my friends on certain superhero movies. For example, I found Daredevil much better than the original Spiderman, which I thought was really really bad (and Spiderman 3 was not so super either).
As far as I'm concerned, the best superhero movies have been Spiderman 2, X-Men 2, and Batman Begins. I'm not sure which order those three are in, but I'd probably put Iron Man at a solid 4th on that list. It avoids the pitfalls of an "origins" story, Robert Downey Jr. is danged good, and it's very fun. It's climactic scene is a little weak, but that's ok, because it's final moments are perfectly pitched.
I recommend the movie if you like summer blockbusters. It's one of the good ones.
I hung out at lunch today at Frost Park. Where's Frost Park you ask? It's the really ugly place on the corner of 9th & Commerce by the Park Plaza North garage. It's loud with lots of traffic ... so why was I there?
The Frost Park Chalk Challenge, of course!
Check it out here at the Tacoma Urbanist. Even if you weren't there you can still vote for your favorite chalk drawing of the set. This monster frog won my vote:
Cool event.
Last night Mary and I walked about 500 feet to have drinks with Marguerite, the Skydiving Agent, at Maxwell's. It was the first time I'd been there since the crazy packed opening night.
It looks incredible inside. The lighting is perfect, the decor is cool. As Mary put it, it looks like it could be in New York.
We had some meat and cheese on a plate to go with our drinks, and that was very good, too. Good service, good food, good atmosphere. And looking at the dinner menu, it looks surprisingly affordable.
We'll definitely be back. Again, welcome to the block, Maxwell's!
I read Leif Enger's latest book over the last few days.
So Brave, Young, and Handsome is set in 1915, and it is very centrally about the closing of the frontier. It is like Lonesome Dove in that respect, although you might say Larry McMurtry's book chronicles the last breaths of the frontier whereas this book is focused more on its death rattle.
There was much to appreciate about the book. Some set pieces and scenes will stick with me for awhile. The characters--Siringo and Glendon especially--will stick. And the story is most definitely a good one.
But I wasn't swept up like I was with Peace Like A River. I'm not sure what the difference was exactly. In so many ways they are similar--the journey across a nostalgic American landscape, the firm hand of the law on the trail as well--but So Brave didn't have the same purpose and drive as his first book. In So Brave the main character was along for the ride so much the moments when he consciously chose his destiny were hard to distinguish.
The book also touched two of my "literary hot buttons." I am growing more and more weary of writers in books/movies/plays. Especially when the writer at the end of the story thinks, "Maybe I should write this down." I could make a HUGE list of these stories, but off the top of my head I can think of: So Brave Young and Handsome, Wonder Boys (the film), Avenue Q (kind of), Stones in his Pockets, Elf (although fortunately he doesn't start as an author).
It's a tired conceit. Becket, in So Brave could have just as easily been a failed singer/songwriter who finally finds himself and begins to sing or write songs again, and it would have been that much better.
And I was also annoyed by the regular end-of-chapter foreshadowing. Foreshadowing is great when the character suddenly gets a sense of dread that he's never going to see his home again. It's more frustrating when the character knows that something in advance and just hints at us. A la: "It seems strange, looking back, that I ever believed I would soon be home again." or "How could I know he was indeed to take flight, and very soon, and that it would be I, and not Redstart, who went with him?"
Ending chapters like this is annoying. It works a shade better with a third-person omniscient narrator--"Little did he know, that this simple, seemingly innocuous act, would result in his imminent death." (That's from Stranger Than Fiction if you didn't recognize it.)
But when you are in a first-person story, you don't like your narrator consciously holding out on you like this. I'm all for dramatic chapter endings (my mystery novel is full of them), but I felt like Becket or Enger was breaking a compact with the reader.
I did enjoy the book, and it was fun to see Northfield's Cannon river at the beginning. It also made me interested in picking up Peace Like A River again. And it makes me look forward to his next book, which I hope comes sooner than 6 years (the space between his first and second books).
There's a volcano in Chile currently erupting (one of a few actually) that brings to mind the phrase "hell on Earth."
Here's a science-y article about it. And here's a site with 35 crazy pictures of the eruption.
Marc Ambinder has7 reasons why Clinton should stay in the race, despite the fact that Obama is pretty much the nominee at this point. It's a good list, I think.
UPDATE: I didn't see it earlier, but he also has 7 reasons why she should quit.
If you just can't get enough Erik Hanberg, I've been quoted in two stories this past week. Last week I talked to the Weekly Volcano about how the Grand started the 72-Hour Film Competition way back in 2005. I'm also in Dan Voelpel's article today about Suite133, the awesome office where I get to spend my days.
Very cool.
Whether she wins or loses in Indiana, Clinton is going to have to deal with a major perception issue that she's finished. Tim Russert, other major anchors, a huge swath of liberal bloggers, Pat Buchanan, and Erica C. Barnett (one of the Slog's adamant Clinton supporters) either called the race for Obama or threw in the towel and said that their favored candidate should step down.
I'm not entirely sure she will, although ...
Her speech tonight felt like the start of a concession speech. Marc Ambinder posted an e-mail from her fundraising team that reads to me like she's dropping out (save for this last line: "Thank you so much for making this campaign possible. Let's keep making history together" although even that could be read a variety of ways.) And Politico is reporting she just canceled morning show appearances.
I'm not willing to go out on a limb and say she's dropping out, but I do know she's going to be facing some tough questions from reporters very soon.
Update: the NYT and others is calling Indiana for Clinton by 1.9%. 22,000 votes.
Also Marc Ambinder has her schedule for tomorrow:
She'll spend time meeting with senior staff, with key supporters, and with undecided superdelegates. She may make a surprise visit to her campaign headquarters in Arlington. She'll attend a fundraiser in the evening that is open to the press.
I think she made a mis-step right from the start. It sounded like the victory speech for a primary she'd won instead of a primary that was still close to call. Someone needed to adjust the language a little bit to acknowledge what actually happened in Indiana. And then the quick mention of HillaryClinton.com and asking for money?
She just thanked the people of Indiana for their vote of confidence ... I know she still has a good chance to win, but it sounded to me like she was reading from the wrong speech.
Pat Buchanan is driving me crazy. He just said on MSNBC that on the night of the Pennsylvania primary, Obama was up by 7 in Indiana and now he might lose the state by double digits. I can't find anything close to that on Pollster, which tracks the polls. With the exception of a few outliers, he's been trailing in Indiana for awhile.
But Obama has won "decisively" according to MSNBC in North Carolina, a state Clinton apparently hoped to put in play. Indiana hasn't been called yet.
This raunchy puppet musical was surprisingly funny. I know a few "non-theater" types who greatly enjoyed it, so I was looking forward to it going in.
As we've done in the past, we bought the soundtrack before going. For a show like Spring Awakening, this helps make the show clearer. Sometimes the words get muddled on stage and it's better to know a little bit in advance. With Avenue Q, however, I actually wouldn't recommend it. Some of the joy of the show is its audacious lyrics, and I think maybe I knew too much going into it.
In general, the songs were very funny, the characters and puppets were surprisingly well crafted and acted (with a few notable exceptions). And the Sesame Street style interludes on the two TV monitors were handled well.
If anything really didn't work for me it was the character Christmas Eve, the Japanese therapist. I would even go so far as to call her a failed character. I understand what the creators were going for, but it just didn't work. There are good ways to poke fun at stereotypes, but Christmas Eve was no different that Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles, and even not so far apart from Mickey Rooney's horrendous Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany's. And it's bad when I reference a stereotype from 1961 (which was outdated even then).
It just didn't work. (And I don't think it's the actress. Her voice and songs didn't work on the soundtrack either, which was made by the original Broadway cast.)
But the show is very good and I definitely recommend it if you happen to be in NYC or London's West End. Although I hear now that it's closed at the Wynn in Vegas a national tour has started up too. Just be prepared for "full puppet nudity" and some dirty talk and you'll fine.
As you might be able to tell by the pictures below, we were all over New York today. Battery Park, Ground Zero (they're already starting to rebuild), Midtown, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Central Park, and a Yankees-Mariners game (which we lost 5-1).
Plenty more coming, including Avenue Q. tomorrow night. It's been pretty cool, and the Yankees game was downright chilly. But other than that we've managed to avoid the rain we got hit with last night.
Looking forward to a fun weekend ...
Looking toward right field from our seats at the Yankees game. This is the last year for the current Yankee Stadium. You can see the upper lip of the new stadium in the background.
Even though it looks like blue skies in the picture it was dark-ish and cloudy when I took this picture. I think that's a result of the lights. Judging by the fielders, the Mariners are up to bad. Not that we were able to do much. Although our 4 errors in the first three innings means we were worse in the field than we were on offensive. Not a great game.
This is from the roof garden at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Central Park is in the background.
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