Links a-plenty to ease you into the weekend, dear readers! Enjoy!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Aug. 3, 2007”
“I didn’t even have to use my AK”
In honor of Cal Ripken’s induction into baseball’s Hall of Fame, I’ve taken a couple of days off in the last week. Today’s theme was laziness, or my version of it.
Before the heat got too intense (mid-90s right now), I moved some lumber in the back yard, then settled in to listen to Howard Stern, take care of bills, clean up our recycling area, update the Books on My Nightstand picture, read the first chapter of a short book on architecture, and learn how to use the espresso/cappuccino maker we got as a wedding gift, 16 months ago! Now I’m watching the Yankees lose to the White Sox.
Time for an espresso.
Starcents
I think this article should’ve had the headline, “How much more will you morons pay for substandard coffee?”
(not that I’m willing to try that McDonald’s coffee; I’ll stick with DD until Tim Horton reaches NJ)
Otto… parts?
(Oh, just go to the slideshow.)
I took the day off yesterday, so you know what that means, dear readers! Yup: I hustled around in traffic, walked all over the place, and sweated like Patrick Ewing! (I swear: I’m taking tomorrow off and have no plans on leaving the house. I might go all John & Yoko and not even get outta bed.)
I’d have written about it sooner, but I stupidly checked my work e-mail last night instead of waiting till this morning. I discovered that one of the eight speakers at our conference (7 weeks from tomorrow) has to cancel, which means I need to scramble to find a replacement. And, being a neurotic, I began to fear that every single speaker who hasn’t sent back his or her confirmation letter is going to cancel.
Which is to say, it should’ve been a Xanax night, but I stupidly decided to play it straight. So, I woke up at 4am this morning and began formulating backup plans. This should explain some of the following disjointedness.
Anyway, I spent yesterday in NYC and, while it wasn’t very humid, the 90-degree temps really sapped me. I probably started out on the wrong foot by heading over to the Strand Bookstore, which never has good air circulation. Roaming downstairs to look through review copies and the philosophy section, I thought I was going to pass out. Fortunately, I stayed conscious long enough to snap this pic:
I’m lying about starting out at the Strand. I actually started at a parking lot on 17th St. and 5th Ave., around 11am. The attendant asked when I’d be back and I said, “Around 7 or 8,” figuring I’d take my wife out for dinner after she gets out of work. He proceeded to park the car, hand me the ticket, and then say to me, “We close at 7.” I stared for a moment, then just left for the bookstore.
Since I know you’re all dying to find out exactly what I bought at the bookstore, here’s the list:
- The Look of Architecture
- Looking Around: A Journey Through Architecture
- Seventy-nine Short Essays on Design
- Means of Ascent
- Buddy Does Jersey
From the Strand, I walked down to Otto, a restaurant just north of Washington Square and co-owned by Mario Batali, where I planned meet official VM buddy Elayne for lunch. Elayne was in charge of a pair of kids — early teenagers, I guess — who came down to NYC from Connecticut so they could see a concert at South Street Seaport by Korn. Elayne asked if I knew them. “Not really,” I said. “I think they did a cover of Word Up! by Cameo. And they spell their name with a K.”
“That would explain why I couldn’t find them online.”
On to lunch. It’s one of Elayne’s favorite places to eat. The menu had an amazing array of pizzas, and I felt bad about settling for the Quattro Formaggi, but I’m a boring man. With a camera:
Elayne was more daring, ordering a pizza with potatoes and anchovies. At one point, she left for a smoke break, asking me to entertain the kids with a story about the time Dad handed me a shotgun “in case anything happens” during a business deal he was making.
When she returned, she said, “Mario Batali’s here! He’s in the other room and he’ll take a picture with the kids!” So the four of us got up and hurried to the front of the restaurant, even though the kids had no idea who Mario Batali is. We tried explaining the celebrity chef phenomenon, but they didn’t seem to know much beyond Rachael Ray. I, meanwhile, was holding out hope that Anthony Bourdain would be on hand, too.
Elayne made quick introductions, and I snapped a pic of Mario with the boys:
I wanted to take a second one, just to show that he really does walk around in bright orange Crocs, but thought it’d be rude.
Back at the table, I said to the kids, “You guys don’t like REM, right?” They made faces and shook their heads. I mentioned that Batali’s good friends with Michael Stipe, and they laughed.
Elayne proceeded to tell the story of her very first NYC celebrity sighting: Carrot Top. “Pre-steroids?” I asked.
There’s not much more to tell about the day. I meandered with Elayne & the kids for a bit, then headed out to my wife’s office. It was good to finally see it, since I find it so difficult to visualize other people’s spaces. Now that I have some idea of what her workplace is like, I think I’ll find it easier to send goofy e-mails and IMs.
Anyway, I headed back into the city till her workday ended. Having left my books at her office, I needed to pick up something else to read for a bit. I stopped in at Shakespeare & Co. on 23rd St., only to find that the main floor is gutted and there’s just a small store downstairs while renovations are done. I picked up a copy of Winter’s Tale
As it turned out, we were both too stuffed from our lunches to want any dinner, so the parking lot situation worked out. We grabbed the car, made a surprisingly quick dash to the Lincoln Tunnel, and got home with plenty of time for me to worry about the conference!
(The photoset has a bunch more pictures that I didn’t post.)
Light
Ingmar Bergman’s death seemed like a good occasion for me to finally watch a movie I’d been saving for a while: Light Keeps Me Company
Anyway, following the standard model, the documentary consists of talking head interviews with people he knew professionally and personally, short clips of movies on which he worked, on-set footage, and “present-day” scenes of Nykvist in the Swedish countryside. Within that framework, Carl-Gustaf Nykvist assembles a glorious and sad portrait of his father’s life.
The movie’s a gem, and the array of reminiscences shows how many lives Nykvist touched during his career. Of course, the key moments are the interviews with Bergman, who implies that he and Nykvist were more perfectly attuned to what they were doing than any other two people have ever been:
Nobody, while practicing their profession, during our work on films together, has been as close to me as Sven. However, we have never ever had a private acquaintanceship. But the intimacy between us, our belonging together, the sense of parallel minds, of thinking, of feeling the same way, when it comes to practicing our craft, that feeling was total.
What’s interesting to me is that he doesn’t fall into condescension, doesn’t cast Nykvist as his “eyes” or any other tool to pursue his own vision. Near the end of the movie, there’s footage of the two men walking hand-in-hand through a garden, as Bergman’s voiceover recounts Bibi Andersson‘s plans for the men’s old age: they’ll give Sven an empty camera and reassemble the actors and let the men keep ‘filming’ away.
My introduction to Nykvist’s gorgeous work was Another Woman (1988), one of Woody Allen’s “Bergman-esque” dramas. It’s a movie I’ve gone back to many times over the years, and one that I try to foist off on friends so I’ll have people to discuss it with. Light Keeps Me Company offered a little revelation about his experience on that movie.
Following the heartbreaking segment about his son Johan’s suicide (c. 1977), Nykvist cryptically remarks, “Mia became very important to me. She helped me back to life,” as we see home-movie footage of a beautiful Mia Farrow in a tropical setting, playing peek-a-boo with a straw hat. (Okay, so maybe it’s not so cryptic. Still, it does come out of the blue, and doesn’t get mentioned again.)
Shortly, there’s a segment about working with Woody Allen, who says
All the crew love working with him. . . They’re never happier than when I tell ’em that Sven is going to be the cinematographer on the picture, because they know that he’s sensitive, and sweet, and they’re going to be able to do a high-quality visual picture, but without any personal or emotional cost.
Soon, we see various New York settings at night, and Nykvist says,
Despite the fun of working with Woody, I wanted to get away from New York. I was disturbed by Mia and Woody’s marital co-existence, even if my relationship with her had ended long ago. It was the first time that I’d felt really lonely on a shoot.
Woody Allen: king of missing the obvious.
It’s good to see, throughout the film, that Nykvist was regarded so highly within the industry. Stellan Skarsgard has a wonderful moment explaining how, whenever he tells anyone in movies that he’s from Sweden, they always ask him about working with Nykvist. They all want to know ‘how he does it.’ “Except for actors,” he says. “They want to know what Bergman’s like.” But the crews are more interested in Sven, because he’s the bringer of light.
It’s a wonderful film, even as it must portray Nykvist’s descent into dementia characterized as aphasia. Mercifully, the son doesn’t expose too much of the father’s decline, instead choosing a wonderful progression of scenes that illustrate Nykvist’s bonds with his family. (Given that they’re Swedish, there’s a certain distance/coldness by our standards, but it remains poignant.)
So do me a favor and put this in your Netflix queue. It’s an amazing portrait of a man who saw light as beautifully as Rembrandt did and brought some wonderful visions to the screen.
(He also shot Sleepless in Seattle.)
More with the getaway!
Time for another day off, dear readers! Although I have tons of vacation time remaining (14 more days, by official count), I can’t realistically take much time off till November (except for our mini-vacation around Labor Day weekend), because I self-centeredly believe the world will grind to a halt if I’m not in the office.
So I’ll take today and Thursday off before guilting myself into lots of office-time! Thursday will likely consist of yardwork, once I figure out how best to trim forsythia. There probably won’t be any chainsaw pix.
Today’s “vacation” will involve a drive into the busiest city in the world, as I roll into NYC to see friends, shop for books, comics and records, and take pix of whatever neighborhoods I visit.
Which means yet another slideshow. Put up with it.
Bad day for old white guys
I call bullshit if you say your deadpool included the trifecta of Ingmar Bergman, Tom Snyder and Bill Walsh.
And gin makes me virtually invulnerable (to criticism)
Caffeine can help fight skin cancer! I bet it makes the cells so hyperactive they just get tired and conk out.
Now I feel less bad about the monstrous caffeine addiction I’ve fostered over the last few years. Go, coffee!
VP Fight!
This op-ed by Walter Mondale on Cheney’s abuse of the authority of the vice president’s office is pretty entertaining:
The corollary to Cheney’s zealous embrace of secrecy is his near total aversion to the notion of accountability. I’ve never seen a former member of the House of Representatives demonstrate such contempt for Congress — even when it was controlled by his own party. His insistence on invoking executive privilege to block virtually every congressional request for information has been stupefying — it’s almost as if he denies the legitimacy of an equal branch of government. Nor does he exhibit much respect for public opinion, which amounts to indifference toward being held accountable by the people who elected him.
I think my favorite part is when he has to enlist Dan Quayle into the ranks of VPs who are
- not irrelevant and
- not evil.
Body and Soul
Every driving choice I made on yesterday’s trip to Philly turned out wrong. I avoided the Parkway by going to the Turnpike out by the Meadowlands. . . only to discover that there was a multi-mile backup forming on the Turnpike. Back to the Parkway. . . where more traffic awaited for the first 20 miles. Once I connected to the Turnpike, I followed standard operating procedures — just like I always 9-seed over the 8 in all 4 brackets, regardless of who’s playing — and took the bus and truck lane. . . and a semi rear-ended an 18-wheeler, creating a 25-minute backup. Getting into the city, I picked the wrong bridge and had to drive extra miles to get downtown. Then, instead of heading straight for the lot behind Drake’s building, I thought I’d overshoot it to look for street parking. . . and spent another 10 minutes waiting at lights to get back to the lot.
And then I greeted my buddy Robert Drake and realized that at least I’d made one correct decision that day. (For a little more on who Drake is, how he got queer-bashed nearly to death, and why I always feel like a heel for not visiting more, here’s an early post I wrote about him. Now you can check out his new site, too!)
We spent some time catching up. His life seems to be more about living and less about recovery (although he still does rehab, exercises, etc.). It’s sometimes hard to figure out everything he’s saying, but I don’t exactly make it easy for people either. Also, we repeats ourselves sometimes, but I don’t have any brain-injury to blame.
We had lunch and took a stroll through downtown Philadelphia. I was nervous that his wheelchair was going to tip back when we were going up the sidewalk, but he laughed. That thing’s pretty darn stable.
We went to a Borders and goofed on some of the lamer books. Being gay as can be, Drake checked out Tennesse Williams’ Notebooks. He also opined that this book
Anyway, we had a nice time for a few hours. I got him back to his apartment, then hit the road. Rather than go back via the Turnpike & Parkway, I thought I’d take the longer, but more scenic and less traffic laden path: 95 North to 206 through Princeton and on to 287. So I took 76 across town to 95. . . which was standing still for miles.
I was torn. Turn around and stay in Philly for the evening, or make one last stab at getting home by hitting the Ben Franklin and hooking up with the NJ Turnpike? For once, I made the right call, getting to NJ and rolling up the Turnpike in short order. I called Amy and headed to the train station to pick her up, so she wouldn’t have to take the bus back. . . and her train broke down and was delayed over an hour. Fortunately, I’d stopped at a nearby comic store and had the new Love & Rockets to keep me company for a while.
Ultimately, we made it back home. . . and discovered two cop cars and an ambulance blocking our street about a half-mile from home. A few minutes before 10, we walked in the door, and my “vacation” day was over. Enjoy the slideshow.
* * *
And that’s one side of the day. The other is the conversation running through my mind, the one between who we are and who we can be.
I look at Drake and I see a man who was viciously beaten, an emblem of the evil man can inflict on his fellow man.
But I talk to Drake and I find a man who’s capable of forgiving others for their trespasses against him, even a trespass that robbed him of nearly everything he had.