Ars Gratia Auctore

I think it's stupid to take your own photos at an art museum (doubly so at a gallery where you ought to be coughing up actual money for your gawping) , since there's practically no chance you're going to get a better image than has already be made for a post card, coffee mug or calendar.

But there were two I couldn't resist.

One should be obvious to anyone reading this.

The other is for anyone who's ever seen me.

I was also delighted by a Giacametti sculpture of the type I particularly love, and a really engaging Matisse I'd never seen before, "Laurette with a Cup of Coffee"

Trip Debriefing III

As in St Louis, I didn't actually stay /in/ Chicago, I stayed away in Lisle, a pretty distant suburb, but closer to Union Station than my place in Brooklyn was to Manhattan (timewise, on an express train, anyway).

Now, I may never have mentioned here, but I'm a big ER fan. As in "I have all 9 DVD sets and have watched all of them twice". So my biggest treat in being in Chicago was going to nose around ER locations. Consequently, my first trip was to try to find the Michigan Ave bridge, just down from where Cook Country General Hospital is supposed to be. Of course, I got lost. But I did see the Sears tower and the Chicago Opera House (Which is right on the river. I don't envy their damp problems...)

I went back the next day and found it. And took spent most of the day wandering around, taking some pictures. (And giggled a lot to myself -- "Look at me, I'm Dr Greene jogging by the Lake" or frowning and thinking "Now I'm all serious and moody like Dr Benton*)

I also got a pizza. I was sat next to -- literally -- the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen. I use the word beautiful because it's more accurate than "hot" or even "cute". He was almost like a Botticelli youth, or a similar period cartoon** drawing to gage an artist's technical perfection rather than his talent at conveying actual appearance: his lips and eyes and colour were so perfect they had that look of being drawn on rather than have grown. His lips were literally pink. I've never seen that before on anyone, male or female, without make-up. I had trouble not looking at him. I hope I didn't come over as "creepy" rather than "interested" or, since I know what I can reasonably attain, "appreciative" since I know he caught me looking at him. And it's not like he was the best thing that happened to me there, so I don't know why he gets all these CIs. I guess it shows I've been swallowing the Twilight series virtually whole. In any event, this guy has Edward Cullen nailed better than Oliver-whatever-his-real-name-is-Wood.

I also went to the Art Institute of Chicago, on a Friday afternoon when it was free***. I enjoyed it. I also took a ride around the entire Loop, just to say I had written the El. One picture that I didn't post here was for the CCGH stop (Library-State/Van Buren). Yeah, it's pretty sad I know which one it is.

*Oh all right, Dr Luka probably is a better comparison. Not that chip-on-their-shoulder Docs are hard to come by on that show.

**Not that kind. This kind.

***Thank you, Target. A big box deal I can approve of.

Nerd Topicality: I Has It.

Yes, The Kings of Convenience were bump music on this week's rerun of This American Life.

Un-hunh. That's right: Jaylemurph has his finger on the pulse of Geek Life.

Dear Pastry Chef Mike from Charlotte on Chemistry.com

I'm sorry I'm too poor to actually afford to pay for things at the online dating service. You sound quite lovely, and I'm sorry if you think me ignoring your "nudges" is a personal insult. It isn't. Believe me, even if you were a hag -- and I'm not suggesting you are -- being a pastry chef makes you seem a lot sexier.

On a tangential note, I tried baking something calling itself "an old Southern recipe for Sundrop Pound Cake". If you don't know, Sundrop is a lemon soda from the Carolinas and Georgia, notorious for leading soft drinks in caffeine and cholesterol*. I like lemon pound cake, so I thought I might give it a spin. (I'm not going to shame the originator of the recipe with a link.)

It sucks. Even after a made up a lemon glaze for it, it still has no particular lemon taste and the texture is awful. Honestly, it was bad enough I thought I must have done something wrong, but if I did, I can't figure it out. At this point, I'm willing to concede that shitty soda makes shitty cakes. And besides, making soda pop-based baked goods is awfully 1957.

And on a note that's not even tangential: Dear Aaron, current Jeopardy! champion: I love you. You are hot, yet geeky; smart, yet awkward. And you're fooling no one into thinking you're straight by telling Alex stories about kites instead of significant others who are female. I would learn Japanese to please you.**

*For years, the single best thing from my hometown -- and yes, the point was debated all through high school and agreed upon buy Those Who Count(ed) -- was the appallingly-named but infinitely delicious Cherry Vanilla Sundrop at the local barbeque shack. Said shack created a controversy that rocked the town to its roots a few years after a left for college when it switched from Pepsi brands to Coke and had to eschew Sundrop (which is, after three or four removes, owned by PepsiCo***). People still spit on the ground rather than call it a "Cherry Vanilla Lemon Drink".

**And I loathe Japan and all it works and all its means.

***And that little reference, folks, was enough to get a mean virtual glare from the fine folks at PepsiCo. It wasn't even a mean reference to their crappy direct product. Pah. Pepsi. Fit only to be served hot to Turkish soldiers.****

****Very, very obscure reference to a Doctor Who work. Anyone (who is not the author) who recognizes it gets a prize!

Trip De-Briefing II

I was in St Louis for two days. Well, /near/ St Louis. All right, the St Louis airport. I did break out on Sunday to run over to the nearby Creve Coeur* park, the namesake for Tennessee Williams' late play A Lovely Sunday at Creve Coeur. Unfortunately the river was nigh-unapproachable.

My father wanted to go see the Gateway Arch, so as driver, I got to go too. It's located in an agreeable stretch of park surrounded by a disagreeable reconstruction of the "historic waterfront". For which read: scads of tacky tourist shops and tragic faux taverns in fake stone cladding.

If you didn't know it, you can ride to the top of the Arch. Alas, my fear of heights prevented that jaunt. There's also a museum under the Arch, complete with groovy (or creepy, take your pick) animitronic talking cowboys and indians. It's free to get in. I did go there.

I learned that the reverse image of the new(ish) nickel comes from the reverse of old Presidential medals given to Indian chiefs as a sign of "goodwill".

But my biggest occupation was gawking at the floodwater.

*My French isn't bad, so I've thought for years that it was pronounced "Crev" Coeur. It turns out -- and I have the assurance of Danni, the waitress at Pasta House, Inc. and the sales director of the St Louis Airport Hyatt -- that it's "Creeve" Coeur. Bah.

Trip De-Briefing I

I didn't take any pictures of Evansville, IN because there's just not that much picturesque there. They were busily involved with their annual (Ohio) Riverfront street fair called "Freedomfest" -- and yes, before you say it, a local told me it got changed to that after 9/11.

The third day, a local woman asked me to pay to get in (I walked in for free the first two). I wasn't trying to be insulting when I laughed and said "Really?" When she told me how much she wanted, I was trying to be insulting when I laughed and said "Really?"

Twenty bucks is a /lot/ to pay for the opportunity to pay to eat deep-fried fatty starches, get free samples of chewing tobacco or try to be recruited by all five of the armed forces.

Curiously, I did get to meet (one of) the people running for County Coroner. It suggests an odd and certainly creepy plethora of pathologists in your vicinity when there's at least enough for an election. To be fair, six people were murdered in the four days I was there, so maybe there isn't the overabundance of them I perceived.

I also stopped at the amusingly named Angel Mounds site, (fnur, fnur) the site of a Mississippian period city full of raised earth mounds. It was mildly interesting except for the ticket seller, who gave me a spiel at least ten minutes long about the State park. I suspect I was the only person she saw that day.

Po-Faced or Pie-Faced?

I'm a reasonably big fan of the Kings of Convenience -- of all the Bergen Wave movement, really* -- but it's been a while since I had a good listen to their Riot on an Empty Street album. And I had one today.

Is it just me, or does the song "I'd Rather Dance Than Talk to You" song sound uncannily like a Flight of the Conchords bit?

*Even if the bastards wouldn't let me into their country.
*shakes fist t Norway

Sigh.

I'm back. Unfortunately (and possibly unconnectedly, but I rather doubt it) I'm in a bit of a funk and don't feel like being awfully rakish or a la mode d'un raconteur.

That last, no doubt, stems from being right in the middle of Jane Eyre. Perhaps the rather Victorian bit of a funk is, too. That or being sucked out of the only culture I've been in for a while.

I also have pictures to post. Yes, I know. Whee and all that. Badly-made photographs. Fortunately, I'm not in any of them, so they aren't that hard to bear.

I'll end with this: I wasn't very, very impressed with Chicago. It was a nice city, but I think it's telling that long ago, Chicago self-selected to be America's Second City. It lacks a certain something*, a spark that New York has. There's a palpable feeling in New York that at any second something will happen -- good, bad, or awful. And it usually does. You don't feel that in Chicago.

Also, those fucking obnoxious Midwestern accents drove me out of my mind, in a way that never happened in New York, or even Durham.** I want to buy the entire state of Michigan elocution lessons.

*On further reflection, that something may just be New Jersey.

**I apologize to anyone who has such an accent. I don't think I know anyone who has one***, since I haven't hit anyone recently.

***Well, one girl I knew in college, who played Laura in The Glass Menagerie. As I recall, she seemed to spend at least some time fretting over her accent in the scene where Tom breaks some of the glass animals, but hers was never that bad, and I'm sure was even less noticeable by the time she graduated.

Yeah, I'm waiting for something interesting to happen, too.

I'll let you know when it happens. Sadly, the good folk of St Louis aren't nearly as happy in the Russian Velvet Mafia department, so to work off any abundance of what Natural Philosophers a century or three ago called Animal Spirits, I've spent a lot of time in hotel gyms. *

I may be the first person to come back from a vacation weighing less than when they left.

*My apologies to anyone reading this line a second time. I thought it was clever -- and true --enough to recycle.

...You are looking at the working week through the eyes of a gigolo

I'm a whore.

As I said before, I don't really want this to be a collection of tawdry tid-bits, as it were -- him over at Glitter for Brains will beat me out for that every time -- but I have been enjoying this sojourn to the Midwest a /lot/ more than I had anticipated.

It turns out (for some reason I can't even begin to fathom*) that there's a sizeable collection of Russians working in this hotel on short-term --4 to 6 month -- work visas. And my, uhh, conspirator** was about as subtle as I was about this morning.

So imagine my surprise and delight when a waiter from the hotel restaurant showed up at my door. Now, my sense of dignity rather impelled me to tell him to go, but quite frankly, he has the most incredible ass. I felt like it behooved me to entertain him at least for a while.

Now, I know you think this sort of activity is reprehensible, and very possibly stereotypical of Gentlemen That Can't Catch, but I think it's understandable. The past weekend aside, I've always been the model of if not strict monogamy, then monogamy as strict as my significant other at the time demanded (Ooh, that was a fun summer. And to think I spent /years/ with someone who thought getting a handjob while he was riding in a car was the wildest thing one could do...). And my one night stands have been few and far between.

The past few months have been literally no fun. And I've Turned Old within the past few weeks. And even though I've lost almost 30 pounds since March, I still have some measure to go before I feel more than sub-averagely attractive. So all this -- especially with no one coughing discretely and asking for cash when it's over -- has been a decent and probably-more-needed-than-I'd- like-to-admit boost to my ego. I am asserting my sexual identity, like a trashy women's studies professor from the late 1970s.***

And, guys being what they are, there's always a sign of a job well done, so I know I'm not being completely egotistical. It's almost a shame I have to leave for St Louis tomorrow.

*Well, the getting out of Russia bit I can fathom. The whole "picking Indiana out of the whole US to make money in" I don't.

**In the most literal sense. Look up the etymology.

***I'll take "Quotes I'll Regret in 10 Years", Alex.

It's All Go in Indiana.

While I clearly wouldn't like this blog to descend into nothing more than a tawdry report of my affairs de coeur, I am pleased to report that some scenes long cherished in the realms of porn may be true. Randy hotel maids /do/exist.

Well, whatever one calls male hotel housekeepers.

What makes it all the more sweeter -- for those of you conversant with gentlemen's films of a certain stripe -- was that the young gentleman referred to is, in fact, from Eastern Europe. I am now forced to conclude that all those Eurocreme movies are really documentaries, and that watching them constitutes a form of international studies.

You know what?

I'd almost forgotten how much fun boys in bands are. I'm happy to report they are still an amusing way to pass a few hours. And then they go away forever. Very tidy.

Wrap-Up, Day 1

Miles Driven: 520

Hours driven: 9

States crossed: 4

No.of times my father drove off the side of the road listening to his new cheap navigation system: 6

No. of times cheap navigation system gave wrong directions: 3

No. of times I found the right way with an atlas: 3

Average driving speed of father: 60 mph

Fastest driving speed of father: 60 mph

My average driving speed: 80

My fastest driving speed: 93

Arguments over content of "Tigermilk": 3

Arguments over content of "If You're Feeling Sinister": 2

Heart attacks at content of "Savage Lovecast"played in retribution: 1

So, this trip started off rather swimmingly, eh?

Fan-boy Wankery*

Rumors of Davros returning to the new Doctor Who have been floating around for a while now, so the pictures of him -- looking surprisingly like his old-series self -- are not, in fact, very surprising.

What *is* surprising are images of new, red Daleks.

Red... daleks. I love red. I love Daleks. The effect of the idea of Red Daleks on my person is shameful to admit. But not quite as shameful as admitting just how much my imported, 18 inch, radio-controlled movie-version red Dalek cost.

And I will hug him as I watch the up-coming series finale.

*Literally. By all that's holy, did you see Colin Morgan in "Midnight"? It's a singing testament to RTD's writing I even noticed /a/ plot, let alone the greatest plot in new Who. Forget Edward Cullen when there are actual people who look like that.

Breezes and Surf. But the Wrong Kind.

I just found out I'm going to the Midwest for 10 days, starting next week.

Do I know anyone in Chicago besides Ross "I'm working a fecking cruise ship in the Med and the Baltic and hence unavailable till Fall" Bryant?

Pour Emily

see more hipster robot webcomics and pixel t-shirts

You know, I've spent most of the past decade (or longer) thinking Rivers Cuomo is gay.

He's not -- although he does have an Asian girlfriend, so five years ago he could have been bi, since all those "bi-curious" hipster boys of a certain type have all moved on to Asian chicks. Although it is pretty generous to include Cuomo in the "hipster" category.

I'm trying to remember just what put it in my head he was gay, and for some reason I think I remember reading that in an interview in Abercrombie and Fitch catalog. But that makes no sense -- I never stopped to /read/ anything in one of those. I don't think anyone did.

All the Umbrellas of London

If I make it tonight, it'll be all right.
It'll make a good song or something
I've been trying to give myself reasons to live
But I really can't think of one thing

I drive around, I walk around in circles
'Cause I've got no sense of direction
And I guess I've got no sense at all

[chorus:]
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't stop this rain.
And all the dope in New York
Couldn't kill this pain.
And all the money in Tokyo
Couldn't make me stay.
All the umbrellas in London
Couldn't stop this rain.

I don't cry anymore, I go out the door
And I usually keep on walking
I will sit in the bar where the cocktails are
But I really don't feel like talking

I lie around and let the darkness fall
'Cause I've got a sense of perfection
And nothing makes much sense at all

I've been thinking a lot about the relationship of lyrics to music, and I've come to the conclusion that, at least, in pop music, there's something odd about them. I think most people would be hard pressed to describe -- to even think of -- lyrics in situ as poetry. But they are.

I think the upshot of this is that that fact hits home every once in a while and get you get struck by this new appreciation of a song you've heard a thousand times. This has happened to me several times recently, and did again tonight when I heard the above song. I don't really know where to go with that, but it seems odd to me that music can have such a masking quality.

(Brecht, of course, was aware of the phenomenon, and used it to his advantage, making happy, cheerful tunes out of black deeds. "Mack the Knife" is a jaunty little tunes about child rape, murder, theft, whores and burning down occupied orphanages.)

In other news, I had a dream about Billie Piper last night. Well not /about/ her but with her in. Which is oddly appropriate as her series The Secret Life of a Call Girl premieres in the US tonight.

We were in a van with several other members of my family, crossing the Rocky Mountains when the van wrecked. There was more to it, involving a kitsch 70s-style hotel, but I don't recall that in detail. I do remember thinking, "How odd to be dreaming of a Doctor Who girl instead of the Doctor himself." I've only done /that/ once, when I dreamt I was racing along in Bessie with the Third Doctor. Even if it was the Best. Dream. Ever., it was still yonks ago.

All in all, I was just pleased it wasn't a tooth dream after last night's Britain's Worst Teeth doc.

For When "Big Mouth Billy Bass" is just *too* classy.

America Has Failed.

Don't get me wrong: I love the system of American government. It is an elegant tribute to a generation of men with wisdom, foresight and dedication to their ideals. It is a testament to even more generations that their system has grown and developed with a fervent dedication to the Enlightenment ideas of liberal democracy.

But this isn't about America as a political entity. This is about America as cultural institution. We have failed. Miserably. It's time to up stakes, wash ourselves clean and try a completely new paradigm.

Jingle Jugs: The Jugs that Jiggle to a Jingle.

This is why the rest of the world hates us: Jingle Jugs and Justin Long.

Note to self:

The person who consistently dreams of his teeth falling out, and who constantly worries the chipped tooth he can't afford to have mended probably shouldn't have watched "Britain's Worst Teeth".

Big-Head Want Dolly!

So, I have this irrational hatred of Justin Long. And I'm not sure why, really -- most people I hate, I know /why/. But he fills me with an inexplicable loathing. I would love to see him forced to participate in the most disturbing, degrading sex acts, of the type that women justly use to condemn the worst excesses of pornography. With John Hodgman, as payback for those damn Mac ads, even if Hodgman did include a humorous picture of the Cybermen in The Areas of My Experise, under the caption "Typical Cyborg Mischief".

Sorry. I watched Waiting this weekend and my anti-Long feelings have been percolating around.

Other than that, it's been a reasonably good birthday weekend. There were some nice touches from on high -- Tivo recorded (out of the blue, as far as I can tell) my favourite episode ever of Gilmore Girls ("Emily in Wonderland", if you're interested) and there was a question about Faulkner's Snopes trilogy on Friday's Jeopardy!

I spent Saturday night watching a little Doctor Who marathon -- this series is the best yet, by far, so I watched the three latest episodes over again. Alex King was the guest star for the recent Steven Moffat two-parter, so I was a little confused by having Charlotte Corday from ER sniffing around David Tennant. (For a little present -- the only present I got except for Laura Llew's books -- I got myself the DVD of "Timelash". "Timelash" is without question the worst episode of the series original run and should only be watched under the influence. And so I did. It helped immensely.)

The real treat was my trip over to the local Human Society. My father underwent eye surgery recently, turning me into a chauffeur. Which is nice, because I don't have a car and, consequently, don't get about much. On one trip, I took us over to see a basset hound they had at the Humane Society's huge new complex.

His name is Stetson. He doesn't look very basset-y hound-y in the pictures, but he does in real life. I was able to take him outside and play with him for a few minutes -- he was very active for a basset hound. Meaning, you know, he was actually in motion for a few moments. Like most bassets, he didn't particularly care whom he was with, as long as he could smell things, so he wasn't very interested in me.