| Wednesday, November 19, 2008 |
| The urban juror |
Ha! I thought a couple weeks ago. Alameda County has finally decided that it doesn't need to summon me every single year for jury duty. After all, last year, I was summoned for Nov. 5, and that date came and went this year with no summons in sight!
Then, today, it came -- that all too familiar envelope from the Superior Court of California with JURY SUMMONS ENCLOSED in big red letters on the front. To my dismay, I've been summoned to the Hayward courthouse (a.k.a. the one that's completely inconvenient for me to get to) instead of the downtown Oakland one.
So on Dec. 17, chances are that I'll need to sit through "Ideals Made Real" again and, if I'm really unlucky, get to spend a few hours in voir dire. Sigh. |
posted by 125records @ 3:34 PM  |
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| Tuesday, November 18, 2008 |
| DWtS: Week 9 |
I realized last night that even though I've voted for him a bunch of times, I don't think Warren Sapp should win "Dancing With the Stars."
He is incredibly entertaining to watch, but after nine weeks, I don't really believe he's learned or grown much as a dancer. He gets by on his winning personality and charisma. Last night, he seemed a bit beaten down by his busy schedule (he flies to the East Coast every week to do analysis for TV's "Inside the NFL").
I hope li'l Cody goes home tonight, and that we get Warren, Brooke and Lance in the finals. The battle for the mirror ball trophy should be between Brooke and Lance -- Brooke, who obviously has a lot of natural talent, and Lance, who has battled his way to Week 9 despite the fact that head judge Len Goodman seems to dislike nearly everything Bass's partner, first-time "DWtS" pro Lacey Schwimmer, does. You could argue that Lance had an advantage coming in since he had to spend years doing boy-band choreography, but he has always stated that he was "the worst dancer in N'Sync," and there's obviously a big difference between doing Pips-like steps behind Justin Timberlake and ballroom dance with a partner.
ABC has been airing a recap show at 8 PM on Tuesdays, which I never TiVo because heaven knows there's enough filler on the 9 PM results show, but tonight's 8 PM hour will feature the Ballroom Kids showdown!
Next week's finale will feature "the return of all of our stars," which means -- yes -- Cloris! Be afraid... |
| posted by 125records @ 1:28 PM |
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| Monday, November 17, 2008 |
| Happy birthday to you, and you, and you |
One of my clients is really into astrology and makes sure that I only make changes to her web site on certain auspicious days. As a skeptic, I don't really put any stock in that stuff, but I try to be tolerant of others' beliefs.
Do the time and date of your birth determine your destiny? I certainly hope not, because I am convinced that my birthday has the worst lineup of celebrity birthdays of any day of the year. A couple days ago, I emailed a greeting to a friend of mine who is just famous enough to be listed in those celebrity birthday columns that appear in newspapers. His fellow birthmates include Anni-Frid "Frida" Lyngstad of ABBA, Oscar-nominated actress Tilda Swinton, Sam Waterston of "Law & Order," and Ed "Lou Grant" Asner -- pretty cool company!
Here, on the other hand, are the most famous folks who share my birthday: Jaleel "Urkel" White, parent-killer Eric Menendez, country singer Eddie Rabbitt, ex-Mrs. Mike Tyson Robin Givens, and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg was born on my birthday, and I do admire her. Jimi Hendrix and Bruce Lee were, too, but since they're dead, they don't show up in the newspaper birthday columns. It doesn't count if your fellow celebrants aren't alive to blow out the candles!
If only my appearance into the world had come one day later, I could have shared a birthday with my idol Jon Stewart, not to mention David Letterman's bandleader Paul Shaffer, novelist Rita Mae Brown, Sen. Gary Hart, and Oscar-winning musician Randy Newman. But I was already overdue and I'm sure my mom was ready for me to be born.
Blatant Comment Whoring (tm yellojkt): Does anyone have a less illustrious line-up of celebrity birthday-mates than I do? You can check here to find out. |
| posted by 125records @ 3:03 PM |
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| Sunday, November 16, 2008 |
| The last picture show |
Studio 28 is gone, which means that all the movie theaters of my youth -- the Movies at North Kent, the Quad, the Movies at Woodland, the Alpine Twin, the Northtown, and my favorite, the local art house, the Bijou -- have now closed. I found this great photo online. It just screams "urban sprawl." I'd forgotten all about the Beltline Drive-in next door, with its giant Bugs Bunny and Goofy staring down from the back of the screen. (Here's a better photo of the Beltline -- it's hard to believe Bugs and Goofy had been up there since the 1950s!)
I hadn't been to Studio 28 in probably 20-plus years, but I spent a lot of time there as a kid. The 28 referred not to the number of screens (it had 20 after a 1988 expansion), but to its address on 28th Street. It was on the opposite side of town from where my family lived and no bus line went there. I didn't start driving until I was in my mid-20s, long after I'd left Grand Rapids, so going to Studio 28 meant either having to get a ride from one of my parents or from my friend James, who probably drove me there a hundred times. We'd usually stop in at Believe in Music or Crazy Larry's, the nearby record stores, before or after the show.
Studio 28 was a multiplex of little architectural significance -- its first screen went up in the mid-1960s, long after the heyday of the movie palace. The "big" auditorium was cool, but hardly had the grandeur of, say, the Castro. Its closing just makes me kind of nostalgic for all those "places that are gone," to quote Tommy Keene.
When Joe and I were in Grand Rapids last June, we were walking downtown, on our way to meet friends at one of the many cool new eateries that have sprung up there over the past few years. I was pointing out local landmarks -- the public library I visited almost every day after school, the Civic Theater where I used to usher so I could see shows for free -- and I said, "And down this street was a weird old record store called Dodd's." Then I did a double take, because Dodd's was still there. I couldn't believe it. Local mini-chains like the aforementioned Believe in Music and Crazy Larry's had gone out of business years ago, and yet Dodd's somehow endured.
Even back in the 1980s, Dodd's seemed resolutely old-fashioned; it was run by a guy who seemed ancient to me then (turns out he's in his late 70s now, so he was hardly that old). It was a short walk from my high school so I used to go in every once in a while, though I don't recall buying very much there; I remember picking up the Police's Zenyatta Mondatta there, but it really wasn't the first place you'd look for current releases. It was more of a time warp, a place where you could always find LPs by the sorts of artists who fell out of fashion when the Beatles made it big -- Mitch Miller, the Longines Symphonette and the Platters. There was also a lot of mainstream rock and adult contemporary. I was usually looking for some obscure British import or the latest release by Thomas Dolby or INXS, which never seemed to make it to Dodd's.
I'm not quite sure who shops there now, but the fact that the store endures strikes me as tremendously reassuring. I guess urban renewal hasn't quite touched its block of Division Street, so presumably the rent is low. Because I have a very bad dust/mold allergy, I can't spend a lot of time in used book or record stores, but I couldn't resist stopping into Dodd's. They have quite an amazing selection of still-shrinkwrapped LPs from the 60s, 70s and 80s -- if you have been craving the entire Orleans back catalog on vinyl that has never been touched by human hands, Dodd's is the place to go. I'm not sure serious collectors would be too thrilled with this storage method:
Here's a corner of the store, which looks exactly the same as it did back in the 1980s. Yes, Dodd's carries CDs, but they make up a small fraction of its inventory.
Now that vinyl has come back into favor, maybe a new generation will discover Dodd's. |
| posted by 125records @ 9:59 PM |
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| Thursday, November 13, 2008 |
| The quality of shopping |
I made an offhand comment about hating to shop a few days ago, which caused some consternation among those whom I do occasionally shop for. It is true that I was born without the shopping gene, but what I really hate is (a) buying clothes for myself, which explains why I am fairly fashion-deficient and (b) malls. Here are some tips for places where even a non-shopper can love to shop:
1. Online. Well, duh. But shipping & handling charges add up, and I like to keep sales taxes in my community. Still, if you want to make shopping really easy this Xmas, why not just buy this for everyone on your list -- and be sure to use that link, because I'll get 84 cents in affiliate fees from Amazon!
2. Bookstores. If I tend to give a lot of books as gifts, well, it's because I love any excuse to visit a bookstore! Sometimes I even find "like-new" volumes at library sales, where you can score a $25 hardcover for one or two bucks.
3. Street fairs. My city loves nothing more than to close down its main street and let a whole bunch of food and crafts vendors set up shop for a day or two. You can buy gifts while eating funnel cake and listening to music!
4. Museum gift shops. They are always full of fun, innovative and beautiful things; whenever I visit a museum, I make sure to budget some time to check out the shop. If I had kids, I think I would buy their gifts exclusively at museum stores.
5. Grocery stores. I'm in them at least twice a week anyway, and this being the Bay Area, there are always tons of gourmet products on the shelves: fancy teas, nuts, preserves, etc. If your giftee doesn't have a Trader Joe's in his/her area, that store is a cornucopia of great gift ideas.
6. Tickets to plays, concerts and other cultural events make welcome gifts.
It's probably a good idea to give tickets to something fun, which would sort of rule out the current show at ACT, "The Quality of Life," because it's a colossal downer -- but it's also one of the most powerful pieces of theater I've seen in a long time. I'm finding that more and more, the ACT shows that are imported wholesale from other companies ("Life" was brought in from L.A. with 3/4 of its cast intact) tend to be better than the ones with its core acting company; maybe they need to rethink their casting strategy. "Life," written and directed by Jane Anderson, is the story of two couples: conservative Christians from Ohio, and a couple of freewheeling Bay Area aging-hippie types. The women are cousins, and the Ohio pair goes to visit the Californians after the latter's home is destroyed in a fire. The hippies, Neil and Jeannette, are living in a yurt on their property, with no plans to rebuild. The midwesterners, Bill and Dinah, think that's a bit, well, odd -- and that's just the beginning of the culture clash.
But what could easily have been a routine red state vs. blue state, Christians vs. secular humanist clash of the baby boomers turns out to have so much more depth. We find out early in the first act that Neil is dying of cancer and that Bill and Dinah's only daughter, a young woman in college, was brutally murdered. The two couples have very different coping mechanisms, and Bill heartily disapproves of Neil and Jeannette's methods. He seems harsh and judgmental, but we never forget that he is a man in great pain. Act One ends with a shocking revelation -- it reminded me of another theatrical drama, "Proof," which does the same thing, making you wish they'd rush back from intermission so you can find out what happens.
"The Quality of Life" is brilliantly acted by Broadway veteran Dennis Boutsikaris and a trio of actors best known for their TV and movie roles: Steven Culp ("Desperate Housewives"), Laurie Metcalf ("Roseanne") and JoBeth Williams (the "Poltergeist" films). They really make these characters come to life as believable people, not just one-dimensional mouthpieces for their points of view. "Quality" plays for another 10 days, and I highly recommend it to my local readers. |
| posted by 125records @ 1:54 PM |
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| Saturday, November 08, 2008 |
| Forward, march |
Joe and I went to San Francisco last night to take part in the anti-Prop. 8 demonstration. I am not someone who tends to get involved in these sorts of things -- the goal of the march was to shut down traffic on Market St., and I teased Joe that if we had been driving in the city (as we had been on Thursday night) he would have gone bananas -- but I figured it was important to send a message, since the protest was guaranteed to get lots of media coverage, so there should be as many people there as possible. We gathered at the Civic Center at 5:30 and marched down Market St. to Castro, and then finished up at Dolores Park. The Mercury News estimated that there were 2,000 people, while this morning's Chronicle simply said "several thousand." (I think there were definitely more than 2,000 people, but crowds are notoriously hard to count.) Local blog SFist.com puts the number somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000. Let's just say there were lots of people there, 'k?
The story was at the top of all the local newscasts last night -- you can watch some footage here.
The coolest thing about the march? When we wound up at Dolores Park, Joe actually ran into a lesbian couple whose wedding he had performed on Monday!! They hugged him and thanked him for coming to the protest. That was really neat.
I found this fantastic letter online, written by a Vermont mom about eight years ago. Here's an excerpt (though you should read the whole thing; it's enlightening):
At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won't get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don't know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.
If you want to tout your own morality, you'd best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I'm puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that's not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?
It's not a "choice" or a "lifestyle"; it just is. And those of us who are straight should accept it and move on. |
| posted by 125records @ 2:14 PM |
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| Friday, November 07, 2008 |
| The last laugh |
You can't tell a person in a restaurant not to eat, or ask someone in a library not to read. And you definitely can't order someone in a comedy club not to laugh.
So there was nothing we could do last night at Cobb's Comedy Club about the guy sitting in back of us -- the guy with THE MOST ANNOYING LAUGH IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD.
It was as high-pitched as a whistling tea kettle; as relentless as a car alarm. Listening to it was like being poked in the ear with a knitting needle for 90 minutes.
And it never stopped. Nothing was not hilarious, from the first word to the last. It was so annoying that the comedian actually commented on it. Of course, that just made him laugh more.
The Laugh from Hell ruined our evening. But what could we do? The place was packed; there was no place to run or hide.
I've been to many shows at Cobb's, which is usually set up with small tables and chairs. Last night, they had removed all of the tables and squeezed in about a zillion chairs. It was supremely uncomfortable. The only good thing about it was that there was no way to enforce their usual two-drink minimum, but I would rather spring for a couple overpriced beverages than be pinned into a chair all night. The long standby line of people waiting to get into the sold-out club made me wonder why Brand hadn't been booked into a larger venue, like the Warfield.
The performer last night was English comic Russell Brand, who, as he admitted, is hugely famous in the U.K. (a large portion of the audience cheered when he asked if there were any Brits in the house) but not particularly well known in the U.S. He is probably most famous for his stint hosting MTV's Video Music Awards a few months ago, when he got into hot water with the channel's tween audience for making a crack about the Jonas Brothers' virginity pledge. This, however, was nothing compared to the firestorm that ensued last month in Britain when some crank calls he made to an elderly actor were aired on his BBC Radio 2 program. This was such a big deal that he was actually denounced by Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Brand didn't really address the crank call controversy last night, though many in the audience were obviously aware of it. Maybe he'll work it into material for his next show. There was a ton of stuff about the MTV Awards, though, including the promo he cut with Britney Spears and an elephant, and he did a dramatic reading from some of the hate mail he'd received after the show. Most of his material, which he is working on for a forthcoming Comedy Central special, is about himself and his adventures in fame and infamy -- it could all come across as tiresomely self-absorbed, but he does it all with a nod and a wink and manages to come across as a likable chap, someone you'd like to sit down and have a beer with (were it not for the fact that he is clean & sober after years of addiction). With his tight trousers and long hair, he looks just like the rock star he played so memorably in "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." I enjoyed his highly verbal comedy stylings (the man has a real way with words), but I suspect I'll enjoy them even more on the TV special without the painful intrusion of Laughing Guy.
In "Dancing With the Stars" news, Susan was, as I predicted, the one to go. I was momentarily excited by the announcement of a new "DWtS" tour, featuring many of the pros and a handful of stars from the show, until Joe went online and found out that tickets cost $50 (for the nosebleed seats -- not even worth considering) to $225, not counting the Ticketmaster charges. I'm sorry, but for $225, I'd expect a personal lap dance from Cristian de la Fuente. I have a few contacts in the TV biz so maybe I'll try to get into a taping of the show someday. |
| posted by 125records @ 3:19 PM |
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Name: Sue
Home: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
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