WATCHING:
Up
Voices: Edward Asner, Jordan Nagai, John Ratzenberger

Similar to Wall-E, this is a two-part movie. Except in Up, the first part is very brief and very touching – describing how a married couple met (as children), lived their lives up through the death of the wife.

The husband (Asner) decides to take the adventure he and his wife had always wanted; this is complicated by the addition of a scout, a talking dog (long story) and a giant bird. Oh – and a flying house.

Brilliant animation (as usual for Pixar) and a good story. Not my favorite Pixar film (probably the first Toy Story), but I’ll probably pop the DVD in occasionally just to watch Part I.

All movies

Here in Illinois, we have a couple of really tight races: Governor and the Senate seat formerly held by President Barack Obama. Both are leaning Republican, but both are close to polling’s margin of error.

Needless to say, these two races – as well as all the other races – are saturating the airwaves (mainly negative ads, of course), clogging our snail mail box and accounting for the vast majority of the phone calls we’re receiving (robo-calls and pollsters).

I’ll be glad to see an end to this – for about a year or so, when the 2012 election starts cranking up.

Nationally, it’ll be interesting to see how the Tea Party fares – both in the 2010 elections, and if they continue to gain momentum, lose steam or become amalgamated with the standard Republican party.

No, there aren’t any significant Tea Party candidates in Illinois this year, but still – the Tea Party has been one of the biggest stories of this election cycle. Joe Miller in Alaska, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and more. Pretty wild.

It’ll be an interesting election night, both here in Illinois and across the country. There’s a lot of crazy stuff going on: elections that were safe no longer are, those that were lost causes suddenly are not. It sure seems like you would have needed an Ouija board to have predicted, a couple of months back, where things sit today, on the cusp of the election. Maybe that’s because of the 24-hour news cycle (i.e. it’s always this messy; we – and not just the wonks – now know this).

Hard for me – a non-wonk – to say if things were always this quirky, but politics has seemed to get a little stranger (to be generous) over the last two (2008/2010) elections.

One more day: Tuesday are the elections.

I watched most of the rally on TV today (I turned in in the middle of the Mythbuster guys doing their shtick, before Stewart came out), and, overall, I guess my first impression was that I was underwhelmed.

There really wasn’t anything I’ll be talking about at work – a , “did you see when XX did YY at the rally this weekend? It was crazy/awesome/whatever!”

I guess the reasons that this was – for the most part – just a “meh” for me are the following observations:

• While there was a lot of talk before the rally – and Stewart wasn’t biting – about what the rally would be about, I just watched the whole thing and I’m still not sure what the meaning of it was. It seemed just like the entertainment colleges have for the freshman on the last Friday of orientation week before the rest of the school comes back. Sure, fun, some good music, funny sketches, but…in no way did it match any of the hype (and I wasn’t even paying much attention to this aspect of the run-up-to-the rally).
   
• While the Sanity vs. Fear meme had its moments (the medals for each were nice counterpoints), overall, this competition marred some otherwise good performances (Cat Stevens [Yusef Islam]/Ozzie Osborne) and made – for me – poor theatre. And – since Colbert was in character (as he should be) it was a little tougher to clearly spell out how the politics of fear (one example: negative political ads) was shown for what it was (the Nixon quotation was good, however). To be fair, this wasn’t a political rally (see below).
   
• I think both Stewart and Colbert do best in small venues (stand-up) or controlled areas (i.e. each’s show). Ditto for the music – while good and diverse, when you’re playing in front of over 100k+ people stretching from the Capitol’s Reflecting Pool to the Washington Monument, you have to rock. Springsteen/U2 should have been there. And I like Jeff Tweedy, Sheryl Crow and other musical guests who performed.
   

All in all a good time, but little that was overtly remarkable. Plethora of guests from all over the place, however. Wow. Like a clown car where people kept spilling out. But not clowns. Father Guido Sarducci, Sam Waterston, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Tony Bennett, R2-D2…and they keep coming.

Yet there were a bunch of back-story parts/themes of the rally that were subtle yet compelling. More cerebral/memorable than visceral.

• Significantly, this really was in no way a political rally, which was one concern of the organizations, including NPR, which forbade employees from going to this event (*sigh*). (Honestly, I sometimes wonder if Stewart and, to a lesser degree, Colbert and Bill Maher are forming a 5th Estate. I joke, but not completely.) I don’t think there was a single call from any performer saying anything about voting/upcoming election. Remarkable.
   
• At the very end, Stewart got a bit more serious, and he commented that basically the only places where things are truly partisan are in the Capitol (he pointed over his shoulder at the building behind him) and on the cable news networks. He said the rest of us, essentially, play well with others and are not all-or-nothing. That was a good takeaway. And I think he’s right.
   
• Overall, Stewart’s final monologue, and the light (to not-so-light) skewering of the media over the course of the rally, almost saved it for me. Those are the moments I’ll remember: At the end when Stewart spoke honestly and frankly, and just as a person, not a personality; and when the (admittedly cherry-picked) video montages of our cable news folks just left me feeling like I needed a shower (or a cyanide capsule…).
   
• Also, the crowd – large, not sure what they were expecting/what they got – was a generous mix of America. As the cameras panned around during the show, mainly young whites, but a lot of older folks, minorities and kids. And they seemed to having fun. So that’s a plus.
   

That’s my take – the good and the bad – and remember, I saw this on TV; I wasn’t in the Mall watching it live.

It’ll be interesting to see what others say.

Jeff Jarvis liked it. Money quote (here we agree):

Stewart’s close was pitch-perfect, presenting optimism, perspective, honesty, and humor in exact proportion.

He brilliantly separated himself from media, politics, and government, setting him closer to us, the people. In other circumstances, that might sound like a populist’s positioning: Stewart as Evita (don’t laugh for me, New Jersey). But that’s why the apolitical nature of the event matters: He wasn’t selling an agenda or buying power. He was leading and inspiring. He was recognizing and supporting the best in us.

Stewart was raising a standard for how our alleged leaders should respect us so we could respect them in return.

First crowd estimate via HuffingtonPost.com:

CBS estimates that 215,000 people attended the Rally to Restore Sanity. That’s nearly two-and-a-half times the number estimated to have shown up for Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally in August.

WATCHING:
Up In the Air
Starring: Vera Farmiga, George Clooney, Anna Kendrick

I watched this – for the second time – this weekend, and I enjoyed as much as the first time.

Directed by Jason Reitman (“Thank You for Smoking,” “Juno”), this is a low-key funny film that’s not a comedy.

Clooney is a road-warrior who travels to fire people (how apropos in our current job market) and is not a “people person.” He meets his female equal – Farmiga – and things get interesting.

Without giving away much, he changes(?) over the course of the flick. But it’s not false – done well.

Very well done. The second time around was better than the first (I got the “loyalty” issue).

NOTE: Reitman actually cast some folks who had been fired to play the fired folks, and encouraged them to ad lib their responses. Interesting.

All movies

Chicago is getting hammered – as is much of the Central US – with windstorms. Youch.

Lots of branches (power outages) and fence sections down. Winds steady at 24mph; gusts up to 60mph.

According to CrunchGear, Sony is stopping production of the Walkman after selling 200m units over 30 years.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Walkman, this was, let’s say, the great-grandfather to the iPod. It made music portable for the first time in a (at the time) well-thought-out design with great headphones (foam ones, not ear buds). There were probably earlier players (Casio?), but this is the one that resonated with consumers.

It was barely larger than a cassette tape, and it really did much of what today’s iPods (sans shuffle) do: Allow you to make mix tapes, made music portable. Your “iTunes” store was your (your friends’, the library’s) albums that you “ripped” to the cassette tapes.

Before the Walkman, there were transistor radios that were, well, just radios, and had a single earpiece. The Walkman allowed the commuter, office worker etc to enjoy the music they had put on/purchased on tape in a private way (no boom box). Strap to your hip and skate/run and so on.

Today, of course, it looks ridiculous and…uh, what’s a cassette tape?…but at the time (1979 – yeah, Carter was still president!), it was revolutionary.

I’m not sure that I’m correct about this, but I seem to remember reading an article that said the Walkman – a HUGE success at the time – almost didn’t get made. The business ethos at Sony required consensus, and not everyone was on board. The president – or some product manager – took exception to this, and personally took ownership of the product: He would be the fall guy if it failed. He believed in it that much.

He was right.

I can’t even imagine the situation; I’m amazed by the (overall) response by the Chilean government. Put people before politics/nationality.

One miner up as I write this; hope all 33 are successfully extricated.

On a very cynical note (which I hate to mention but I just thought of same): When’s the book(s)/movies(s) about same coming out. Sad, but true.

UPDATE:

Excellent: More miners out.

Romy and I hit Chicago last Friday, Oct. 1. We went primarily because it was the last weekend of the Henri Cartier-Bresson exhibit – which I didn’t want to miss – but also just to noodle around. Some highlights (pictures don’t merit gallery; trust me):

Tour guide explaining one of the Institute’s treasures, Grant Wood’s American Gothic Art Insitute of Chicago First stop was the Art Institute of Chicago to see the photography exhibit. It did not disappoint. One of the nice things about photography is that there are multiple prints (yes, cheapens the same at the same time). So this was a very massive collection of Cartier-Bresson’s work. Hit all the big pictures he’s famous for, as well as a slew I’d never seen (some of his portraits [many famous] were great – Robert Capa, for example). Photog on photog. I enjoyed greatly – Although I wish more of the photos had more (any) description/backstory; the ones that did helped. (For example, Capa – see previous graph – was photographed in a crowd scene in a suit at a horse/car race. No indication that this is a famous war photographer/photojournalist.)

The Bean Millennium Park Yep, took too long to finish, cost too much. But it’s a great space with a lot packed into it. The “Bean” (Cloudscape) pictured at right became an instant icon, rivaling the Picasso in Daley Center. There’s a band shell, restaurant (skating rink in winter!), lots of plantings and more. Awesome addition to the Chicago lakefront. To a certain extent, an example of the ends justifying the means… The Millennium Grill is a good watering hole we’ve hit several times; this trip, perfecto weather, low crowds. And cold beer. We’re in!

Chicago Cultural Center Tiffany Dome Lamp under Tiffany Dome The Cultural Center – the former library – is one of my favorite Chicago buildings, and – in Chicago – that’s saying a lot. Whenever we go to Chicago I have to visit it, partly for the exhibits that may be there, but mainly for the architecture. It’s like I have Culture Center architecture Tourette’s Syndrome. I can’t not photograph the stuff I’ve shot every time we go to Chicago. I don’t apologize for this “weakness”! The only exhibit of note on this visit was a very impressive collection of photographs of Cuba by Sandro Miller. He had a lot of compelling pictures of Cuba – a tropical Detroit, essentially – but his portraits, blown large, were Avedon/Karsh in nature. Very impressive.

Coffee & Tea Exchange Best coffee in Chicago, in my book (bean, not “cup of coffee”). Can someone explain to me why I’ve never done shots of the barrels of coffee, the dark, oily beans in same? I’m an idiot! Next time…

El Nuevo – Lunch My second margarita… El Nuevo interior Duke of Perth I picked this restaurant off the internet; it was new to me. Crap – I’ve never eaten there, but it’s right across the street from The Duke of Perth – which I’ve been to many times over many years. El Nuevo – good food; not great. Service was excellent (but there were only three tables occupied). Sure, I’d go there again, but I’d try some other place first – just to see what I was missing and so on. Not unhappy with the choice. I’m not a big eater, and Romy pretty much said I wouldn’t kill the plate. I did. (Not sport eating; just very good – enchiladas with mole sauce – great taste.) Restaurant exterior:   Duke of Perth exterior (across the street):

OK – this has been a jumbled entry (pics on the side; below text about areas…).

For the most part worked; still work needed to make this more consistent and easier to post with my tools. My tools may need modification. After a decade; yeppers…

Note – I’ve nothing against the author (Versie Walker), but when one is touting a book called “Success” and subtitled “How I ended up here,” it just makes me wonder.

How I ended up signing books in an airport book stall? That’s “success”?

Hmm…

At Ronald Reagan National Airport, Sept. 17, 2010.

Hope he does well…(Some Amazon love)

Egret, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge.

US Capitol

Yesterday Romy and I returned home from a short trip to the East Coast.

Specifically, we hit the bucolic – the eastern coast of the Chesapeake Bay – and the crazy urban: Washington, D.C.

Quite a difference.

Before I begin with some overall impressions of the trip, I want to begin with how our trip began, especially the can of crazy contributed by Boy Genius (BG, i.e. me).

We booked an early flight Monday – out at 6:30am Chicago time – so we could maximize the day, especially considering the travel time and the lost hour going into the Eastern time zone.

OK, so we’re at the airport at 4:30am and BG finally realizes that, of all things he could have forgotten to bring – of all things – he has forgotten his camera.

For those who don’t know, my first career was as a photographer. Couple of careers later, I’ve been getting into digital photography as a (hardcore) hobby. A big part of any trips we take is – for me – photography. How the frick could I forget my camera? I had all the batteries, charger, backup charger, memory chips blah blah.

But no camera.

Short story: Quick (nerve-wracking) round trip via taxi to my house; made the baggage check with all of five minutes to spare. (Shout out to 303 Taxi; they made it happen.)

Disaster averted, but not a good start to things…

OK, the rest of the trip went well (because Romy planned it; no thanks to me!), and here are some reflections on the trip out East. (NOTE: I’m slowly getting pics into a gallery; it’s going to take some time to get if fully populated.)

The most important is that I don’t ever see going back to either area in a general tourist manner. If some big event happened in DC, sure, might go for a night/weekend. If we were to get access to some house on the bay for a week just to chill out or whatever – that might be nice.

But to go to either area as tourist attractions: Not going to happen. Well, not for some time, at least.

But that’s today – maybe the memories will be fonder as time goes by…

Maryland

We traveled to the east coast of the Chesapeake Bay, ultimately staying in Cambridge, MD. From there, we took trips: Everything is close to everything else; there’s not much to Maryland.

Here’s my thoughts on what we saw in Maryland:

• There really wasn’t much there. I expected – viewing the maps and all – to be able to hit the bay just about everywhere – the necks (peninsulas) that stick out into the bay are very narrow. But – even though the bay was a couple of hundred yards on each side of the road as we drove, there was no access to the bay. All private land. I guess that makes sense (in a way) – the Chesapeake area is a very old region of the US; by the time people thought it might be nice to preserve parts of the land, it was all private and farmed. Weird. With the exception of the water visible on both sides, driving down the necks felt like a drive through Indiana or Illionis farm country. Corn, soybeans and sorghum growing with pine/deciduous tree windbreaks on flat, flat land.
   
• The fishing industry – to my completely untrained eye – seems to be dying. Much less activity than I saw in Seattle or the Maine coast (Portland and smaller towns). That’s a shame, because the seafood was – to me – outstanding. Catfish, cobia (a whitefish), clams, oysters. Yum! But I didn’t see the activity, and the activity I did see was usually ships piloted by older men. The young just don’t seem to be following in their father’s footsteps. Caveat – again, an untrained eye reporting.
   
• The area of the Chesapeake we visited is still structured with an agrarian-type workplace/workforce. By that I mean that there seem to be roles for the men (fishing, farming, very physical work) and the women (retail, restaurants). With the exception of our hotel – a very-much-a-resort hotel – all the waitpersons at the restaurants we ate at were women. Cooks, bartenders, waiters. In the local places we ate, all the workers eating were men – the women I saw eating were not blue-collar workers; they might not have been workers at all (a fair amount of apparent mother/daughters – so not in the workforce per se) . When we visited Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, the two workers in the gift shop were women; the clutch of Rangers that poured out of a meeting were all men. Just an observation.
   
• What do people do for fun in this area? We’ve been in rural/remote areas, but there always seemed to be posters for this or that festival, a VFW or Elk Lodge. Here, not so much. The couple of times we spoke with people about things, they seemed to think Cambridge was the Big Town: Cambridge is a pit (they are trying, but it looks like years of neglect are going to make a comeback slow, if at all). There’s about three blocks downtown that are the downtown, and – while you can see efforts to restore – it’s not there yet, and the areas all around this small renaissance are brutally decrepit. House after house with “No Trespassing” signs in the windows. Not encouraging.
   
• Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge was what I expected a lot of the Chesapeake to be: Lots of wildlife; you can get to the rivers/bay shore. We saw (via an eagle cam and spotting scopes) an osprey eating in an (empty) eagle’s nest, turkey vultures, turtles, egrets, herons and so on. And lots of marsh grass, a view of the bay and so on. Very nice. Not spectacular, but recommended.
   
• The resort we stayed in – the Hyatt – seems to have been built on the Disney World model: Buy a huge chunk of land near – but not too near – a town (Cambridge/Orlando) for pennies on a dollar; build a big resort and watch the area around it spring up and help support this huge, largely undeveloped resort. Very nice hotel/resort, great view (we splurged, but it was nice on the balcony evening/morning to just watch the ships in the water; see the stars at night). But the Disney World effect hasn’t kicked in yet: Cambridge is trying but not there, and there’s nothing else near. I can see this resort in trouble if the economy doesn’t bounce back shortly.
   

Washington, D.C.

The Associated Press says to never abbreviate our nation’s capitol; it’s either Washington, D.C. or District of Columbia.

Whatever. DC it is.

And what a change of gears it was to go from the “there’s no there here” Chesapeake to the urban jungle that is DC. I grew up in suburban Chicago, so big cities don’t faze me, but there were elements of DC that were, let’s say, disquieting.

• I’ve been to DC before, but that was years ago. Today, the city is a virtual Police State. Seriously. Yesterday, I was walking by the Holocaust Museum. I took a picture from across the street of the entire facade, and then crossed the street to take a closer pic of the facade. Now, there were two uniformed officers in front of the building (which is set back a hundred feet or so from the sidewalk). One on the sidewalk, one right in front of the building. When I started to take the picture, the officer on the sidewalk said I couldn’t take a picture that included the officer near the building. What?? The officer near the building wouldn’t budge (I tried waving him to one side), so I took what I could, showed the pic to the sidewalk officer and was on my way. Crazy. I have dozens of pictures of monuments and so on in DC with security in the picture. It’s virtually impossible to take a wide-angle picture of any high-profile building in DC (from the White House down to the Department of Agriculture) without including one or more security personal. Everywhere you go in DC there are the white-shirted security personnel posted, well, everywhere. And that’s not counting the FBI and Secret Service agents I saw (and those I didn’t…).
   
• Where do people eat in this town? Both doing the Mall crawl and back near our hotel, there was a dearth of restaurants. The latter is due to a lack of research on my part, but the former? Do all tourists eat at the museums and all government workers eat at cafeterias in their department? Seems that way. Very bizarre, and I’ve been in many big cities.
   
• The DC monuments – almost trite yet iconic – are breathtaking. The Capitol, the Supreme Court, the White House, Jefferson Memorial and – especially – the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument are all sites one should see at least once.
   
• We were only in DC for about two days total. Obviously, there was stuff we missed. I would have liked to go to both the National Gallery and the U.S. Botanic Garden, but one of the things I decided before the trip was to maximize stuff we can’t see in Chicago: We have a great art institute and botanic gardens here. Can only see so much… Also, the National Air and Space Museum – I could have spent a half day there instead of the hour or so we were there. I think Romy would agree. But we did a lot with the limited time we had; my biggest regrets are those that I have no control over: Can’t get close to the White House’s southern exposure; can’t get into the Supreme Court build at all (not even the foyer); can’t take any pictures (even sans flash) in the National Archives. Things like that.
   

All in all, a great trip.

As I’ve mentioned, while these are two places I’ve no compelling desire to go back to (unlike Maine or Montana), I’m glad I went. Saw some fun stuff; ate some awesome food (fodder for another entry). Relaxing. A much-needed change of pace.

Do I really have to go back to work on Monday?

I’ve now been back home for about a day (arrived Friday evening; now Saturday evening).

Yet it seems like a week ago that I was in DC just wandering around – but that was only about 36 hours ago. Wild.

Credit: talkingpointsmemo.com

Today is the 9th Anniversary of the coordinated attacks on the US – the biggest attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor.

So it’s a little disquieting to see this solemn anniversary usurped by radical, anti-muslim groups.

On 9/11, was America attacked by Muslims?

No, we were attacked by terrorists who were Muslim.

Important distinction.

Lee Harvey Oswald shot President JFK with a rifle.

Obviously, all gun/rifle owners are against the US government; we should arrest, interrogate, deport same, right?

No.

Get the distinction?

It’s situations like this, where the US touts religious freedoms – but some say, well, not for Muslims…makes my head explode.

Money quote from TalkingPointsMemo.com (emphasis added):

One man who opposes Park 51, Lance Corey of Westchester, New York, carried a sign that said “Muhammad was the first radical Muslim. Osama bin Laden is following directions.” He described himself as a “militant progressive liberal’ who voted for Obama, and who “cannot tolerate intolerance.” But, he said, “I don’t think this is discrimination against Muslims. It’s discrimination against Islam.”

— Anti-Mosque Rally All About How It’s Not About Intolerance

Yeah, can’t tolerate intolerance, but discrimination against Islam is A-OK!

Embarrasses (and more) me.