Cool as Ice

The whole "Ugly American" stereotype is unfortunate. It's unfortunate that a lot of people, particularly those in power, often live up to its worst expectations. It's also unfortunate that people in other countries use it as a basis for reflexive anti-American sentiment. For Americans with an ironic sense of humor, however, it can be a comedy goldmine. Check out this clip from last night's Daily Show for a case in point. I nearly lost it when Jason Jones changed the channel on the TV and it went to the Swedish Chef. The rest of the world is so much more familiar with America than we are with the rest of the world that I don't think it would be possible to make jokes like that in other countries.

On a similar note, I'm curious as to whether or not The Daily Show is popular in foreign countries. I visited the booth of an Australian software company at a software development conference that I attended last year. They had created a number of sample users for the application that they were demonstrating, and all of the sample users were past or present Daily Show correspondents. I thought about asking the developer if there were a lot of Daily Show fans in the land down under, but I forgot to. I could kind of see how it might have a loyal following in other English speaking countries, but I can't imagine a similar kind of show from Australia would have any success in the US.

Dutch Master

The Blueprint Project with Han Bennink
AS220 - Providence, RI
Tuesday, January 22nd

I was excited to learn that the legendary Dutch free jazz drummer Han Bennink was coming to town. I've gotten so used to not seeing much decent live music that I had nearly forgotten what it was like to so be excited for a concert. I had never seen Bennink play live before, and as I soon realized, I only have a couple of recordings that even feature his playing (Peter Bröztmann's Machine Gun and Alexander von Schilppenbach's The Living Music). Both of these records are nearly 40 years old, and while I'm sure I've heard examples of his modern work, nothing really sticks out in my mind.

Bennink was playing with a Boston-based group called The Blueprint Project that featured Jared Sims on reeds, Eric Hofbauer on guitar, and Tyson Rogers on keys. I had never heard of this band and wasn't familiar with any of its members. I felt that this group was at its best when it was playing relatively straight ahead. While I'm definitely more a fan of free playing, I didn't feel like they played as well free as they did in a more structured context.

It was hard to get a good read on Bennink's playing most of the night. Since the band played most of their numbers relatively straight, Bennink didn't have that much of an opportunity to really stretch out. He took a number of solos, all of which were pretty amazing. I was very impressed with the lyricism of his solo playing. I was also impressed with the way he was able to jump from loud to soft and/or free to swinging in an instant. His drumming is still as powerful as it was 40 years ago and he looks like he could have played all night.

I've always thought of Bennink as a "special effects" kind of drummer, a drummer who will bang together any two objects that might be able to make an interesting noise. Supposedly, he once set fire to his hi-hat on stage. There were no fires in this show, and other than splitting some drum sticks and playing with his feet a little bit, it was a pretty conventional performance. It was much more of a straight ahead performance than I had expected, but it was still a great joy to see Bennink play live.

The rest of the band put on a pretty good show as well. It wasn't an amazing show, but it wasn't bad either. One of my favorites tunes of the evening was a tribute to Herbie Nichols (called, surprisingly enough, Herbie Nichols). They played a really energetic Afro-Caribbean sounding number towards the end of the second set that really got the crowd going and included one of Bennink's best solos of the night. I was sure that they were going out on that note, until they went into another song. They definitely should have called it a night after that piece since there was nowhere to go from there, but all in all, it was a good show.

Whitest. Candidate. Ever.

I haven't said anything about the 2008 election yet, but after seeing this clip (courtesy of The Dose), I can no longer remain silent. It's a video of a Mitt Romney photo-op in Jacksonville where he, in an attempt to relate to the black urban youth of America, drops some lyrics from "Who Let the Dogs Out". Romney was definitely kicking it old school, since the oldest kids in the video couldn't have been more than 10 years old when the Baha Men were enjoying their 15 minutes of fame. Not to mention that I have serious doubts as to whether "Who Let the Dogs Out" was ever a very popular tune in the inner cities of America. In all seriousness though, it is mildly refreshing to see a Republican addressing a predominantly black audience.

Into the Wild

I finished reading Into the Wild today. It was a quick read and while it didn't shake me as much as Into Thin Air (also by Jon Krakauer), it was still a very moving story. Into the Wild is the story of Chis McCandless, a young man who turns his back on his family, friends, and society to live simple, nomadic life. His travels take him across the Western United States and finally, into the Alaskan interior, where he meets his demise. While I didn't necessarily identify with McCandless, I felt like I understood enough about where he was coming from and I think that most men (and perhaps most women) will find at least a few things in McCandless' story that will remind them of themselves at a certain age. I certainly shared his fascination with the American West and I too made my own solo trek across the country, albeit in a much more conventional manner. While I never sought out the ascetic lifestyle that he cultivated, I managed to approximate it on several occasions when my frequent moves between work, home, and school made the accumulation of basic home furnishings more trouble than it was worth.

I think that the book is a good read regardless of where you stand on McCandless' lifestyle, beliefs, or how you feel about his aptitude as an outdoorsman. I get upset by people who write angry letters to the editor after a publication does a feature about someone who has either gotten in trouble due to a string of bad decisions or has recently straightened their life back out after a string of bad choices. You have to have an astonishingly simple mind to believe that any writer who fails to condemn a man who has made some obviously bad choices is tacitly endorsing those choices. Furthermore, as Krakauer points out in the book, people take unreasonable risks all of the time, especially out in Alaska. It's only the ones who have the misfortune of dying that face the scrutiny of the public.

If you're illiterate or reading just isn't your thing, a film adaptation of the book came out last year. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds like it came out pretty well.

Zodiac

We watched Zodiac last night. I happen to be a big fan of true crime stories, period dramas, and the city of San Francisco, so I knew that I was going to enjoy this film even if it wasn't all that good. Since I've already disclosed my biases, I'll rely on Michelle's surprisingly positive assessment of the movie to confirm that it is, in fact, a great film. If I have anything bad to say about the movie, it's that I found all of the main characters so likable. All true crime dramas have a fairly obvious villain, but I felt that there was an unrealistic lack of tension between the "good guys", which made it hard to play favorites. Of course, it's possible that this was a realistic portrayal of the three main characters.

Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) is a political cartoonist who becomes obsessed with trying to find the killer. Graysmith is bookish and socially awkward and appears at first much too naive to be a political cartoonist, but his intelligence and earnestness prove to be valuable assets as he investigates the killings. Robert Downey Jr. plays Paul Avery, a crime reporter at the same newspaper as Greysmith who is as cynical and flamboyant as Greysmith is earnest and austere. The two men, however, form an unlikely bond over their search for the killer. The third character is David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), the San Francisco homicide detective who is investigating the case. He frequently crosses swords with Avery and Graysmith during the investigation, but the dust always settles pretty quickly.

The movie made me think about how the phenomenon of serial killing is a creation of mass media. Serial killers have probably been around forever, but without mass media to spread the news of their exploits, they don't really exist in the minds of the populace. It also made me think about how no serial killers that I know of have used new media to publicize themselves. A modern zodiac killer could have posted his ciphers to the internet directly instead of sending them to newspapers. All of this makes me think that our notion of how serial killers operate may be somewhat obsolete. In a world of blogging, camera phones, DNA forensics, and 24 hour news, can a killer really commit a string of murders while taunting the public with a string of threats, clues, and missives without getting captured fairly quickly?

The soundtrack was unremarkable, except for the opening scene which employed Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man in a way that will change forever the way I hear that song.

Get Out of Jail Free

They sent us home from work this afternoon due to this. Pretty freaky, and it could have been even more so had the projectile landed on a pedestrian or motorist. It hit the roof almost directly above me, and that was a little too close for my tastes, thank you very much. Note to self: Don't hire Cumberland Piping for next home improvement project.

More Great Moments in Blog Commenting History

When I saw that MDS wrote a post about the 20th anniversary of Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder's moronic statements about black athletes, I knew that some top-notch comments were going to come in. This post didn't generate the flood of comments that other posts that mention race, religion, or Heismann trophy voting have generated, but it did produce some comments that made Snyder's remarks look rational by comparison. You can check out the comments on the post if you want to get a better idea of the kind of bigotry and ignorance a post like this one attracts (warning: reading the comments may hurt your brain). Just as there are people who are quick to level the charge of racism against anyone who brings up the subject of race, there seems to be another group of people who are just as quick to dismiss any charges of racism regardless of how obviously racist the statements are. In general, intelligent discourse on anonymous blogs and message boards is the exception, not the rule, but even by those very low standards, the comments on this post were pretty bad.

A Streetcar Named Conspiracy

I was talking to a guy at tonight's Providence Geeks dinner who mentioned that he had pitched a project to General Motors a few years back that involved GM getting into the trolley business. The idea was that it would be a way for GM to show how innovative they are and how they can adapt and react to the changing world around them. Needless to say, GM didn't buy into this plan, but the person I was talking to said something that really caught my attention. He said that GM, in conjunction with Firestone and the Greyhound bus company, conspired to dismantle America's system of electric streetcars starting in the 1920s by buying the companies that operated streetcar lines, tearing up the tracks, and replacing them with dirty, unreliable bus service. This sounded a bit conspiracy-theoryish to me, so I did a little research when I got home. There's a fair number of lefty & environmentalists websites promoting this theory. Most of them seem to get their information from a PBS documentary from 1996 entitled Taken for a Ride.

I'd like to watch the documentary, but I'm fairly skeptical about the premise. For starters, streetcars really aren't a particularly great form of intra-city transportation. Boston still has several streetcar lines linked into its public transit system and everyone I've ever met who had to rely on one of those lines to get around town has had nothing but awful things to say about them. A streetcar is little more than a bus with a dedicated lane. There's no doubt that the arrival of affordable, mass-produced automobiles decreased American's desires to use public transit. We can debate whether or not that's a good thing, but it hardly represents a conspiracy. The most damning evidence I was able to find to counter this thesis comes from Cecil Adams.

While doing my crack online research, I also learned that the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit draws on this conspiracy theory. I saw the movie when it came out 20 years ago, but I had forgotten that part of the the story involved an unscrupulous highway company buying out a streetcar operator. I'm not surprised that I didn't pick up on this subplot as an 11 year old. Perhaps I should watch the movie again and see if there's anything else I missed.

Demetrius Ypsilanti

We've recently started playing pub quiz on Tuesday nights Ri Ra. There was a question about Michigan tonight, perhaps in honor of Michigan's presidential primary. The question was which Michigan city is named after a hero from Greece's war for independence against the Turks. We didn't get it, unfortunately. The answer, of course, is Ypsilanti, named for Demetrius Ypsilanti, which incidentally is one of the coolest names I've ever heard. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that we guessed Okemos, since it sounds kind of like a Greek name (it's actually Native American). I'm also ashamed to admit that I translated Turks into Trojans while thinking about the question, since I assume that all trivia about Greece refers to ancient Greece, so I wasn't even thinking in the right time period.

Superok

I finally got around to viewing the latest installment of the never-ending saga of teenage outcasts trying to score at the last big party before the end of high school, also known as last summer's box office hit Superbad. There's a lot to like about it. For one, it features Michael Cera playing essentially the same character that he did in Arrested Development. I don't know if he's being typecast, but even if he is, I think it will still be a while before I'm sick of George Michael Bluth. Like all of Judd Apatow's work, there's some great dialog. A good rule of thumb that I have for measuring the quality of dialog-driven comedy is the number of scenes where characters are having a conversation about something that I've never heard anyone discuss before but as soon the conversation starts, I want to jump into the scene and start discussing it with them. Great dialog-drive humor is constructed out of observations that seem incorrect or ridiculous at first glance but unearth a truth about some part of human existence, preferably in the most juvenile or profane way possible. I can't think of any great examples of this technique from Superbad off the top of my head. I would like to memorize the monologue that Jonah Hill's character rattles off to his home ec teacher in the beginning of the movie and try it out at a local open mic night, however.

Hill had some great lines and pulled off some good physical comedy, but I thought his character was a just a bit to manic. That's a fairly minor detail, but the thing that really bothered me about the movie was how much time was devoted to the police officers and McLovin subplot. The concept was excellent but it wound up being a distraction after a while. It didn't help that the cops were completely nuts from the start. The movie mined most of the humor out of their unorthodox approach to law enforcement early, so it wasn't too hard to be shocked as they upped the ante as the night went on. If you can only see one of Apatow's films from last summer, I'd recommend Knocked Up, but either one will easily satisfy any juvenile humor fix you might be craving.

NeoOffice

I've been using OpenOffice for a number of years to handle what little MS Word and Excel document editing and creation I've had to do at home. I installed it when I switched to Mac just over a year ago, and while the applications work fine, they aren't native Mac applications so they don't have the standard Mac OS look & feel and don't work with standard Mac OS keyboard shortcuts. I recently heard rumors that OpenOffice had finally been ported to Mac OS, but I found no evidence of this on OpenOffice's somewhat confusing website. I did, however, find another open source project called NeoOffice that delivers on this promise. I've been using NeoOffice for a month or so. I'm by no means an MS Office power user, but NeoOffice has done everything I've needed it to do and it's so much nicer to use than OpenOffice since it feels like a native Mac application. If you're a Mac user whose frustrated with the current selection of commercially available office suites, you should check it out.

The Boredoms

I've always thought that Japanese experimental music might be a good fit for my musical tastes, but I've never really been able to get into it. Japan's a pretty weird place, and their experimental musicians tend to be even weirder. I heard some really cool stuff from a band out of Osaka called The Boredoms last night on WRIU. It was a 20+ minute long jam called Seadrum that featured a lot of throat singing on top of droning jazz/rock beat. It was so cool that I altered my route home so I could hear the end of the song. They're on the Warner Music label in Japan, so I don't know if this can really be considered Japanese experimental music, but their #2 myspace friend is Sun Ra, so that definitely gives them some good experimental music virtual street cred.

Top of the World

As you have probably heard, Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to successfully summit Mt. Everest, had passed away. Anyone care to make a wager on who the subject of next week's Economist obituary is going to be? You can read some remembrances of the man here and here,. I never really gave Hillary or Everest much thought until a couple months ago, when I read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. The book is a first person account of a 1996 Mt. Everest expedition that went horribly wrong and resulted in the deaths of eight of the climbers. The story really got to me in a way that few stories ever have. I'm still not really sure why. It's easy to get drawn into any well-written story, but there's more to it than just that. It also changed my perception of Mt. Everest. Before reading the book, I was of the opinion that while Hillary's ascent of the mountain was an incredible feat, nowadays, anyone with enough money and time on their hands could hire enough Sherpas and guides to get them to the top and back down again. While it's true that people who probably have no business climbing Everest are able to reach the top with the help of the guides and outfitters who lead expeditions to the top each year, they are still putting their lives at risk with every step they take at high altitude and as the book clearly illustrates, only a few things have to go wrong before a "leisurely" hike to the summit becomes a disaster. I'd say that the book has convinced me that climbing Mt. Everest isn't worth the risk, but I never really had any desire to climb it or any other stupendously tall mountain before reading it. Still, I can't help but admire the people like Hillary who threw caution to the wind and climbed to the top of the world.

Death of a Salaryman

At the rate I've been going, I should probably rename this blog "I read the Economist so you don't have to", but I couldn't resist sharing this tidbit from last week's article about the demise of the Japanese salaryman. I always knew that Japanese male office workers were expected to sacrifice their free time, families, ambition, and what little individuality Japanese society tolerates in exchange for a job and pension for life, but I had no idea how firmly entrenched this system was in Japan. According to the article, Japanese firms own resort properties across Japan where their employees receive generous discounts in an attempt to encourage them to spend what little vacation they actually take at the company resorts.

Good Old Smithy

I can't believe I missed this while writing my ode to Economist obituaries a couple days ago. Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), passed away at the end of November. In case you've never heard of him, he was most famous (or infamous) for declaring independence from the crown in 1965 and turning his nation into a pariah state in an attempt to maintain white minority rule. I knew that Smith was getting up there in years and I was positive that he'd be memorialized in Economist upon his passing. I was correct, and his obituary is a masterpiece. Smith was one of the last remaining vestiges of the old British Empire, and his obituary pays homage to that while still condemning his misrule.

The obituary does not delve into speculation, nor should it, but it is interesting to think about how Zimbabwe would be today had it dismantled its de facto apartheid regime in 1965 as Britain wanted instead of waging a disastrous war in defense of a lost cause. Would it be like today's South Africa but with a one generation head start on democracy and racial and tribal reconciliation? Would it still be the basket case that it is today? The history of governance in post-colonial Africa is bleak enough that it's foolish to assume that Zimbabwe would definitely be in better shape today had Smith been willing to dismantle minority rule, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine how Zimbabwe could be in worse shape than it is today.

Bowling (for) Green

As I've mentioned before, I enter a friendly little college football bowl game betting pool every year. In my best finish in about 10 years, I managed to place third this year. I finished with an overall record of 26-6. I lost a 6 on UCLA and a 5 on Connecticut, two of my upset picks. My other four loses were on some relatively heavy favorites, a 28 on Boise State, a 16 on South Florida, a 26 on Florida and an 18 on Oklahoma. Still, that was good enough for 429 points overall, which actually put me in tie for second place that I lost due to the tiebreaker. I drastically underestimated the total number of points scored in the Rose Bowl. I actually computer my tiebreaker incorrectly, which I realized shortly after submitting my bracket. I thought that it was supposed to be the total points scored in the BCS championship game, not the Rose Bowl. As it turns out, my number (48) was way off the final scores of both games. Still, I think I would have put in a higher number had I read the instructions correctly. I figured it wouldn't matter since it had been so long since I finished in the money and I put very little effort into my picks this year that I was sure they couldn't be very good.

I'd spent the past few years trying to create some kind of formula that I could use to easily and accurately predict the outcomes of the bowl games. This year, I decided that I didn't want to put much effort into my picks, so I just went through the list of games and picked which team I thought would win based on my gut feeling. I then took that list and compared it to the current betting lines and adjusted some of my upset picks based on what the oddsmakers and ESPN had to say. I then put each pick into one of four groups based on my confidence and divided up the numbers. It probably took me an hour start to finish. I'll try the same thing next year and probably finish nowhere near the top 10, but for now, I can say it's a winning strategy.

Bug Off

Open source software is a concept that people have start getting familiar with over the past few years. Open source hardware is admittedly a more difficult proposition, but I've recently come across a couple of groups that are doing things with computer hardware that captures the spirit of open source software. The first is a local company called Modern Device Company, the brainchild of a RISD professor. They provide a simple and cheap microcontroller and development environment. I was unable to attend the recent Providence Geeks dinner where this technology was demoed, so I don't know much more about it. There's a short interview with the creator here as well as some links to related projects.

I read about a start-up called Bug Labs in the latest issue of Technology Review. They are doing a very similar thing, albeit in a more polished (and expensive) form. Their vision is a world where people are free to create their own purpose-built high-tech gadgets by stacking together a set of components and wiring them up using their software tools or by writing their own code.

It's all pretty interesting stuff. I don't have any insights to offer into what the first open source hardware killer app might by, but I think that this is something that is going to get bigger and I wouldn't be surprised if some forward-thinking gadget manufacturers start releasing versions of their products over the next few years that allow for end-user customization via a mixture of open source hardware and software components.

On Thin Ice

We went ice skating in Newport last night. It's been a couple years since I've last skated. It's good exercise and a fun time for a little while. After a half hour or so, skating around in circles get kind of boring. I think ice skating would be an ideal form of short-distance personal winter transportation, however. I'd definitely venture outside in the cold more often if I could glide to my destination. I believe that this was a fairly common practice in Amsterdam at some point in the past, but I'm not sure how common it is today. Perhaps I should go check it out.

Economist Obit Interview

Sorry to keep talking about the Economist, but I heard this piece on the radio yesterday morning and couldn't resist passing it along. It's an interview with Ann Wroe, the Economist's current obituary writer. It can be a real challenge to read an entire issue of the Economist cover-to-cover each week, but I always make sure I at least flip to the back and read the obituary. I find the form and subjects of the Economist's obits much more compelling than obituaries in other publications. They are long, at least by obituary standards, and they always manage to profile people who lived profoundly interesting lives. This week's subject is obviously Benazir Bhutto, but in weeks where no one's death is at the top of international headlines, they usually manage to find people who, to reuse a compliment from the world of art, were much more influential than well-known. Often times, I've either never heard of the person they are remembering or I have heard of the person but had no idea that he or she had passed away. Aviation pioneer Freddie Laker and avant garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen are two relatively recent examples of the latter. The Economist's obituary page is neither afraid to talk about the flaws of those who have passed away, nor is it afraid to eulogize people whose passing has probably made the world a better place. Non-subscribers can read the past year's worth of obits for free online. Check it out sometime.

Chairman Bill

Last week's issue of the Economist featured a picture of Chairman Mao in a santa hat on its cover. Last week's issue of Sports Illustrated featured a picture of Bill Belichick in a santa hat on its cover. Coincidence?

Crossing the Bridge

December 26, 2007 | 4:46 pm | Detroit, MI (from level 5 of the MGM Grand Casino parking garage)

Mall Rats

The Economist's year-end issue has an interesting story about the history (and future) of shopping malls in America. I don't know if I agree with their assessment that the film Mallrats was a seminal testament to America's growing angst towards indoor shopping centers, but it's a good read nonetheless. According to the story, none of the scheduled new shopping center construction in the US in 2008 includes an indoor mall. I don't know if this has more to do with the uncertain economic outlook or American's distaste for enclosed shopping malls, but it's a surprising statistic either way.

The Year of Living Simply

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. I usually make a couple generic ones, like exercise more or read more books. I never really give much though to how I might achieve my goals and often don't even write them down or tell anyone else about them, so it should come as no surprise that I don't really make good on my resolutions. Things were looking the same this year until I stumbled upon what I think is a good resolution. My resolution is to simplify. I tend to make a lot of things more difficult than they need to be and I'm also reluctant to invest any time in learning how to use things more efficiently. For example, most people would balk at having to use 10 keystrokes to save a file in a word processing program and search out some kind of shortcut. I would probably use the 10 keystroke method (while cursing it) for months before investing a couple of minutes to try and find a new way. My goal is to identify situations where I am wasting effort and see if I can find an easy way to make things easier. My first success came yesterday, when I finally decided to unsubscribe from all of the stupid e-mail lists that I've landed on by virtue of purchasing goods and services online. Instead of just deleting these unwanted e-mails, I spend the extra 30 seconds to click on the unsubscribe link. My biggest regrets at the end of each year are always the things that I never managed to get around to. By simplifying mundane, everyday tasks where possible, I should have more time and energy to devote to the things I really want to do.

Planet of the Legendary Soylent Omega Men

We saw I Am Legend yesterday. I was familiar with the premise going in, but I hadn't planned on seeing it at the theater, so I wasn't entirely sure what it was all about. None of us were too crazy about the film, but it did make me wonder how the storyline compares to other last-man-on-earth stories. The only other film I could think of was The Omega Man, which I have never seen despite having had it on my Netflix queue for about the past two years. As it turns out, The Omega Man was adapted from the same novel as I Am Legend. According to this post, I Am Legend takes numerous liberties with the original story, which is more of a Planet of the Apes kind of story than a traditional zombie movie. If you have a lot of free time on your hands, you may wish to view The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth and read the book before going to see I Am Legend and decide which version you like best. If you're going to do all of that, you might as well watch Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green while you're at it to complete the Charlton Heston dystopic science fiction trifecta.

'Sup Skinny?

Ever want to know how you stack up to all of your neighbors from a demographic standpoint? You can head over to ZIPskinny and plug in your zip code to get an idea of how your lifestyle choices are bringing the statistics for your neighborhood up or down. I learned about this site while wandering around the Freep's website looking for a holiday gift guide. I wouldn't recommend giving anyone this URL as a Christmas present, but it's at least worth a look.

Market Correction

Saturday, November 24: We headed for over to old town this morning to check out the markets and the Yu Gardens. From the moment we left the hotel, it was obvious that it was a weekend, as the streets were much more crowded than they had been our previous two mornings in Shanghai. As we approached old town, we came upon a run-down section of town where modern buildings gave way to garbage-strewn vacant lots and squalid apartment buildings. On the streets of this ghost slum, a crowded market that covered every square foot of street frontage in this several square block area was doing a brisk business in everything from live poultry and fowl to 1990s era personal electronics. None of the vendors were set up in stalls, they simply spread there wares out across blankets on the street. This market catered to locals, obviously, so we were spared from the fake designer watch and handbag sales pitches that await western tourists on nearly every street corner as
we strolled through this impromptu flea market. The market slowly blended into a food market located in the residential area abuting the vacant lots, which led into the antiques market.

The antiques market definitely caters to tourists. While there may be some bona fide antiques for sale, most of the stores sell replicas of Chinese art, clothing, and ceramics. Prices generally aren't marked, so haggling is the name of the game. I wound up only making a single purchase. I picked up a travel wallet for 45 Yuan (about 6 USD). It was at one of the stores that actually had prices marked on their items and it was in the discount bin, so I didn't wind up bargaining for it. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to make a deal, but I decided to put off the rest of my purchases until Beijing since I didn't find anything at the market that really caught my eye.

After making our purchases, we toured the Yu Gardens. The gardens were very similar to the gardens we toured in Suzhou yesterday. Like the garden in Suzhou, they hail from the Ming dynasty. It wasn't quite as nice, but it was still a relatively serene oasis in the heart of Shanghai.

We planned on sampling Shanghai's famous steamed buns and dumplings for lunch. As it turned out, this was a very popular lunch plan, and the line at the restaurant in the market was out the door and down the stairs. Fortunately, Chinese resturants are at least as efficient over here as they are back in the US, so we only had to wait for about half and hour to get a table and food started coming shortly thereafter. After throughly stuffing ourselves on delicious steamed dumplings, we walked back over to the Bund to take in the northern part of the road, which we had neglected on our first visit to the area on Thursday. We spotted the Goodyear Blimp flying up and down the river, which seemed odd to say the least. We stayed out until sunset to watch the buildings on the Bund and the skyscrapers across the river in Pudong light up the night sky. The light show in Pudong is somewhat disappointing, as a number of prominent buildings did not turn on their
lights until it was already completely dark. The iconic TV tower never got it lights fully going before we left shortly after 6 pm. We walked back to our hotel along East Nanjing Road, which turns into a pedestrian walkway lined with neon lights, stores, and masses of people that seems to run for mile until it ends at People's Park.

I think the reason it took me a while to warm up to Shanghai is I didn't really see the human face of it until today. I saw the architecture and the museums and the skyscapers, but it wasn't until today that I went into the market and saw people who weren't rushing to and from work. Shanghai is obviously much different than Hong Kong. It's a huge, sprawling city and I really only saw a small chunk of it. I was surprised by the relative lack of construction activity going on, at least in the areas that I saw. I was surprised to see vacant storefronts and vacant lots within spitting distance of shiny new skyscrapers. Not that the tourist areas of Shanghai are full of empty buildings or bereft of construction activity, but from the way China is portrayed in western media, I sometimes get the picture that the entire country is a construction site that stretches as far as the eye can see. We head up to Beijing tomorrow morning, so this may be my last blog
entry from China as I doubt that our hotel room in Beijing will have a computer.

Silk Road

We decided to take a day trip away from Shanghai today. So far, I've found Shanghai somewhat underwhelming so I was hoping that getting away from the city might help. We arrived at the Shanghai Rail Station around 9 am. The station did nothing to improve my opinion of Shanghai. It's a dilapadated example of typical soul-crushing socialist architecture. We purchased our tickets for the historic city of Suzhou in the equally depressing ticket office next door and waited for the train.

Suzhou is a city of 5.7 million people, so it's kind of small by Chinese standards. It prospered as a center of trade throughout most of Chinese Imperial history due to its strategic location on China's Grand Canal. It was at one time (and perhaps, still is) the center of China's silk industry. Marco Polo even visited Suzhou on his travels through Asia, so it's not exactly your typical provincial city.

The train ride out was interesting. The countryside between Shanghai and Suzhou, which is about 50 miles to the west, is sparse and comprised of open fields, dingy apartment blocks, factories, and brand new roadways completely devoid of traffic. The train station in Suzhou is much nicer than Shanghai's, but the surrounding area is not very attractive. Once we got to the main street, Remin Lu (People's Street), things started looking a little better.

While looking for the Silk Museum, we were approached by a man with barely serviceable English skills who was trying to get us to take a tour of a silk factory. I was going to pass on it, but Michelle was interested so we decided to check it out. Upon entering, we were met by a young man in a suit who spoke English well and gave us a tour of the factory. The tour was very interesting; we learned a little bit about the lifecycle of the silkworm, handled silkworm cocoons, watched the workers operate the machinery and learned about the two kinds of silk they processed in the factory. The tour was ultimately a sales pitch, as it wound up in their factory store, but it was a very informative and low pressure sales pitch, more like a tour of a Napa Valley vineyard than the street vendors waiting outside of every train station and tourist attraction to accost any white person they see. We wound up purchasing a silk quilt before leaving.

After touring the factory, we headed up the street for the Silk Museum. The museum, like most museums in China, was not very impressive or interesting. The highlight was the live silkworms munching on mulberry leaves that they had on display. After breezing through the museum, we were standing on the street contemplating where to get lunch when we were approached by two young women, presumably from Suzhou. One of them was holding a camera so we first though they wanted us to take a picture for them, but we quickly figured out that they wanted to have their picture taken with us. Alan and I posed for the photo while Michelle took a picture of the girl taking a picture of her friend with us. We definitely got a lot more looks from the locals walking the streets of Suzhou than we have gotten in Shanghai or Hong Kong. I'm sure most people in Suzhou have encountered westerns before, but it's probably still not that common to see us on the streets. We weren't
the only western tourists in town today, but there were very few tourists in town from the west or the east who weren't there with a tour group.

After lunch, we visited one of the many gardens for which Suzhou is famous. We went to the largest and, at least according to our guidebook, most impressive - The Humble Administrator's Garden. The garden was quite nice, albeit quite crowded. Still, it was large enough that we occasionally had a small corner of it to ourselves, which was a welcome respite from the crowds and noise that have pervaded nearly every moment of our trip so far.

We then trudged our way back to the train station. When we arrived at 5pm, it was jam packed. The area outside of the station had the aura of a concert or some sort of large outdoor festival, with people gathered into small groups eating, talking, and playing games. We boarded the fast train at 6pm and were back in Shanghai by 6:30. We enjoyed another night of excellent Shanghainese cuisine at a restaurant called 1221. Unlike Wednesday's restaurant, this place was packed, mostly with expats and western tourists, but the food was excellent. After dinner drinks at an expat bar were a fitting end to my favorite day in (and around) Shanghai so far.

Shanghai Nights

Wednesday, November 21, 2007: We left Hong Kong this morning. We took an express bus to the airport but we arrived a little later than we had planned due to heavy traffic. Still, we managed to check in, cash in the remaining balance on our Octopus cards (Hong Kong public transit cards), and exchange our leftover Hong Kong dollars for Chinese Yuan before boarding our flight. We weren't able to grab breakfast, but since we're in a part of the world where airlines still believe in serving meals on two-hour flights, that wasn't too big of a problem. Our two-hour flight wound up taking about three and a half hours. We were handed a slip of paper after boarding informing us that flights to China may be delayed without notice due to unexpected and unknowable Chinese ATC directives. Our flight wound up sitting on the ground for about 45 minutes due to one of these delays. Once we reached Shanghai, we were put into a holding pattern for about half and hour, and
then we had to taxi for what felt like at least 15 minutes. We finally parked on the apron and climbed down a flight of airstairs before boarding a bus to the terminal. This is apparently not usual at Pudong; there were at least 20 other airplanes parked on the airfield away from gates.

The differences between Hong Kong and mainland China are immediately visible upon arriving in Shanghai. There is a general drabness that pervaded the entire airport in Shanghai. Of course, few airports can compare to Hong Kong's, so that might not be a fair comparison. Pudong does feel a bit like old Detroit Metro in places. The bilingual signage that pervades in Hong Kong is nearly absent in Shanghai. This is understandable, of course, but I have still been a bit surprised. I have read that Beijing is pushing to get more bilingual singage in place for the Olympics, so perhaps it will be more like Hong Kong in that respect. The second obvious difference, which became visible on the eight-minute maglev train ride from the airport to the metro, is that mainland China is a lot larger than Hong Kong. Instead of high-rises as far as the eye can see, it's full of fields, forests, and modest apartment blocks until you reach the edge of the city, where the
buildings begin to rise, but the heights and densities never approach the scale of Hong Kong.

After checking into our hotel, we started walking over to the French Concession. Shanghai and Hong Kong are both fairly young cities in terms of their history and development, but Shanghai is the younger of the two. With the exception of the transit system, Shanghai's infrastructure definitely looks newer than Hong Kong's. Everything else, however, looks and feels older. The roads are jammed with people on bicycles and mopeds. Shanghai has its French Concession and art deco architecture while Hong Kong has demolished most of its historical structures.

We dined on some delicious Shanghainese food at the Restaurant Art Salon, a restaurant where all of the decorations and furiture are available for purchase. We were the only patrons in the restaurant, but the food was very good. We then headed over to the Blue Frog, a western-style chain of pub/club bars that caters to out-of-towners and ex-pats, I assume. After a couple pints of Tiger, we decided to call it a night and head back home.

Lonely Continent

If you've ever looked in the travel section at your local library or bookstore, you are probably familiar with Lonely Planet series of guidebooks. Unlike some travel guides that only focus on the most popular travel destinations, Lonely Planet tries to provide guidance to all travelers, perhaps to a fault. I remember flipping through their write-up of Kinshasa a while back, which offered many useful pieces of advice, such as how much to bribe the various characters you were likely to encounter on your way from the airport to the hotel and the hours of day during which it may be safe to leave the hotel. In spite of this, I was still somewhat shocked to find a copy of the Lonely Planet's guide to Antarctica when I was at the bookstore last week. According to this this article, Antarctic tourism is exploding, with an estimated 28,000 visitors in 2006. That's a lot more that I had figured, but unless a fairly large percentage of those visitors are buying a copy of the Lonely Planet's guide to Antarctica, I doubt it's a moneymaker. If nothing else, it cements their reputation as the go-to source for travel information for obscure destinations (at least, for Western, English-speaking travelers). I'm kind of surprised they haven't enlisted one of the Apollo astronauts to write a Lonely Planet guidebook for the Moon.

Links for People Who Enjoy Wasting Time

This post let me to this site. I scored a 78% on Cities of Rhode Island quiz, which is a decent score for a non-native, I think. I also tried the World Leaders quiz. I scored a 98%, but it took me about three minutes. The quiz is a bit out-of-date, showing the former Nigerian, British and French heads of state. They did manage to update Japan, whose Prime Minister has been on the job for just over a month.

I also found this site, which ranks the top 101 cities in the US according to all kinds of different criteria. Prepare to waste time.

Dog Eat Dog

I just watched Dog Day Afternoon for the first time. I'm not much of a film critic, but I know what I like, and I really liked this movie. I'm obviously not the first person to express this sentiment, but I felt it was worth mentioning since it's been a while since I was that impressed with a movie. I've watched a number of films from Hollywood's so-called second golden age, and while I've appreciated almost all of them, I don't think I've ever enjoyed one as thoroughly as I enjoyed "Dog Day Afternoon". Perhaps Taxi Driver, but I watched that one was back when I was an angry teenager, so it may have seemed more poignant.

I'm not going to review the movie, but I will offer one observation. I found the depiction of the crowd and media circus surrounding the standoff to be one of the most interesting aspects of the film, both in the way that it reflected the spirit of the times and how it made me think about a similar situation would be depicted in the media today.

Panorama-rama

Panoramic shots are one of my favorite features of digital photography. Here's a panorama I took on our hike up Mt. Monadnock. It wasn't a great day for photography, but the panorama still looks nice.



We visited Paine Field in Everett, WA while we were out in Seattle. Paine Field is home to one of the two factories in the Seattle area where Boeing manufactures commercial airliners. Paine Field is home to Boeing's widebody assembly lines. They are currently churning out 747s and 777s and will soon be building 787s there. The factory tour left a lot to be desired. It was fairly short and didn't really get into too much detail. We weren't able to get very close to any of the aircraft either. I did snap a pretty neat panoramic shot of the field, however. The composite image shown below is made up of eight separate photographs. The aircraft visible, from left to right, are an unmarked 777, the modified 747 DreamLifter that is used for ferrying parts for the 787 from various assembly lines around the world to the facility in Everett for final assembly, two Air India 777s, a Cathay Pacific 777, three more unmarked 777s, a 737 (I think), and a China Cargo 747 freighter.

Summer Reading

Astute readers will notice a new set of links on the right-hand side of the page. I dropped in a widget from Google Reader that includes links to stories from around the web that I have decided are worth reading.

Pumpkin Cutter

Kudos bar to Michelle for the great job she did on the jack-o-lantern yesterday. She usually sweet talks me into carving the gourd by praising my carving skills, but I think this picture shows where the real pumpkin carving talent lies in this household.

Buffalo Stance

Free exchange has been blogging about Buffalo, NY a lot this week. The posts are all interesting, and all related to an article written by Ed Glaser in the current issue of City Journal entitled: Can Buffalo Ever Come Back?. I'm not very familiar with Buffalo. I've driven through it many times and I once stopped at LaNova for dinner, but I am something of a armchair rust belt historian and urban planning wonk. I agree that cities like Buffalo and Detroit are probably not going to return to prominence any time soon. Still, I'm more bullish on the future of the rust belt than Glaser, if for no other reason than I'm not sure how things can get any worse. Glaser's argument is that federal, state, and local governments should stop throwing money at "prestige" economic development projects. I didn't realize that we were even still arguing about this; of course convention centers, unusable public transit systems, and other such boondoggles are bad ideas. Glaser's piece comes off sounding contrarian, but he's not really saying anything new. I agree that a lot of money has been wasted and that a more friendly tax and regulation climate could have helped, but is there really anything rust belt cities could have done to prevent their demises? Even if Buffalo had decided in 1960 that it needed to get into the knowledge economy in a big way, would it have even been possible? Even if all of the labor unions had disbanded, manufacturers would still have had to pay a higher hourly wage in Buffalo than in the south due to the higher cost of living, higher cost of land, etc.

The real tragedy of rust belt is not the blighted downtowns and shuttered mills and factories, it's the colossal amount of human capital that has gone to waste. If Buffalo can find a way to harness the power of the human capital that exists within its core and metropolitan area, it will be able to reclaim at least a little bit of its past glory. For another cautiously optimistic viewpoint, read Richard Florida's assessment of the greater Toronto-Buffalo-Rochester,NY region.

Stick that in your pipe and smoke it

I finally got around to checking out Yahoo! Pipes today. I was trying to figure out an easy way to create an RSS feed that would pull out all of the Fanhouse posts written by MDS. The default RSS feed that AOL publishes for all of the Fanhouse bloggers is the general feed for the entire site. I heard about Pipes whenever it came it (sometime last year, if memory serves) and I thought it could do stuff like this but I really wasn't sure. As luck would have it, this is exactly the kind of thing that Pipes was designed for. I have created a pipe called Fanhouse MDS and made it available as an RSS feed that mines the Fanhouse RSS feed for Michael David Smith's posts. It seems to be working correctly, but it only fetches the 20 most recent posts at a time. This doesn't seem to be a problem once you plug the feed into an RSS reader that keeps track of history, but if you're viewing the output of feed by itself, you might only see a couple of MDS posts (or possibly none), although I can't image it's too often that his Fanhouse colleagues manage to crank out 20 or more posts before he has a chance to publish at least a couple.

Georgia on my Mind

This year marked the first time Michelle and I didn't dress up in complementary Halloween costumes. None of the other Arrested Development characters were a good fit for her, so she put together sort of a generic vampire outfit. Perhaps this was why no one commented on my costume while we were out on Saturday night. I figured going in that my costume was going to be something that people would either find hilarious or not understand. I hadn't counted on a third possibility, which is what happened with the friends we went out with. All of them were somewhat familiar with the show, but none of them were big fans. They didn't get the costume at first, but after some prompting, they found it funny.

Part of the problem was we spent most of out night at Trinity Brewhouse. Since I was sitting at a table the whole time, my cutoffs were not visible. The rest of the time we were at Waterfire, which was sparsely attended due to the rain. Plus Waterfire never seems to draw much of a young crowd, so most of the people there were not in costume and presumably had never heard of Arrested Development. Still, I was a little disappointed that I didn't get any comments about my costume. The highlight of my night, from a costume standpoint, was when a middle-aged woman from Georgia (the country, not the state) came up to us before Waterfire and asked if she could get her picture taken with us. I'm not sure how popular Arrested Development and/or never nudism is in Georgia, but with any luck, these things may be getting a little more recognition over in that part of the world.

We shan’t be telling your mother this, shan’t we?

Happy Halloween.

Mountain Do

We did our annual fall hike this weekend. We climbed Mt. Monadnock, a 3165 foot peak in southern New Hampshire. According to signs I read at the park, it's the most climbed mountain on earth. Everything I've found on the web says it the second most climbed mountain (after Mt. Fuji). I'm not sure which one is true, but needless to say, it's a fairly popular climb. We visited Mt. Fuji on our trip to Japan a few years ago, but we didn't manage to make it to the top. Had we done so, climbing Monadnock would have made for an impressive 1-2 punch, but it was still an enjoyable hike.

The fall colors were at or near their peak. It was a little hazy and the sun was right on top of us since we reached the peak shortly after noon, so none of the pictures from the top came out very well. Michelle snapped this nice photo of the colors during the hike up the mountain.



We started on the White Dot trail, then took the Cascade Link over the the Spellman Trail. The White Dot and White Cross trails are the most popular routes up the mountain so they were quite crowded, but once we got onto the Cascade and the Spellman trails, we hardly saw anyone else. The Spellman is supposedly the hardest way up the mountain. It involved a lot of scampering over boulders on all fours, but it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. Once we reached the end of the Spellman, we took the Pumpelly trail up to the summit, where we had lunch. We then fought traffic all the way down the White Dot trail back to the parking lot.

All in all, it was about a five hour round trip. It wasn't as grueling as the hike we did up North Moat Mountain last year and views weren't quite as nice, but it was a very good hike and less than a two and half hour drive from home.

Great Moments in Blog Commenting History

According to MDS, Kevin Everett, the Buffalo Bills TE who suffered a severe spinal cord injury, is walking on his own and expected to make a full recovery. This is great news, of course. I couldn't help but notice the first comment on this post. It's from a reader who goes by the name of BrettFavre4, who says:

GOD BLESS....From a Packer fan....

First of all, I find it amusing that someone who uses the online persona BrettFarve4 feels the need to state that he's a Packers fan. The way he qualifies his comment with this information almost makes it sound like he thinks that in football, fans generally root for the opposing team's players to suffer life-threatening injuries at the hands of their favorite team. I guess there are probably a handful of people whose favorite part of professional football is watching players from teams they dislike getting hurt, but it can't be a very large group of people, even amongst the Eagles and the Raiders fanbases. I can't image that there are very many Packers fans who harbor any sort of resentment towards the Bills, nevermind bloodlust. The two teams have only faced each other ten times in their history, and never in the postseason.

Speaking of MDS, make sure you read Larry Brown's (not that Larry Brown) interview with him.

Road Food

One of the joys of travel is eating great food that you can't always find at home. When we were out in Seattle last month, we ate at a superb Chinese restaurant, the New Kowloon Seafood Restaurant. With the exception of a cold chicken dish that I didn't much care for, everything dish they served was outstanding. I'm sure there are a number of great places in Seattle for authentic Chinese food, but you definitely can't go wrong with New Kowloon.

If you find yourself about 800 miles down the Pacific coast from Seattle and you're in the mood for Spanish Tapas (and really, when are you not in the mood for Spanish Tapas?), check out a place I visited back in May when I was in San Francisco. It's a little place in the Mission called Picaro. I've only had Tapas a few times, but I've always enjoyed it thoroughly. The chorizo at Picaro was amazing. I also discovered a delicious Spanish cheese called Manchego, which is made from sheep's milk.

Used to it

A friend of mine has recently re-launched her used book online store. You can check it out here. I'm not sure how I feel about shopping for used books online. As I've said before, I'm a big fan of the used book store atmosphere. I generally don't go to a used book store looking for a specific book; perhaps a genre or even an author, but if you go in looking for a specific title, you're generally going to be disappointed. The website is a bit rough around the edges, but it looks like it will get the job done. Perhaps its lack of polish is intentional, a paean to the thrown together style of the used book store. If you love used books but avoid used books stores due to the weirdos who hang out in them, this website may be the answer for you.

Revved Up Like a Douche

I was astounded to learn recently that the song "Blinded by the Light", a long-time staple of classic rock radio, was written and originally performed by Bruce Spingsteen. I heard his version for the first time last week, and I like it a lot more than Manfred Mann's more famous rendition. I was never much of a fan of Springsteen but I've been warming up to at least some of his older stuff lately. My favorite Springsteen songs combine rock and roll with spoken word and even orchestral sensibilities, and "Blinded by the Light" is a great example of this style. You can listen to both version here.

You're Under Arrest

I finally finished watching Arrested Development. Every episode from every season from start to finish, in chronological order. Arrested Development is a show that either you've never heard of or you've seen every episode multiple times. I'm proud to consider myself a member of that second group. It's a little late in the game for me to declare the show's brilliance. I'm still not sure why I didn't get into this show when it was on the air. I do remember watching a few episodes early on and thinking that it was pretty good, but I never really gave it much of a chance. In all fairness, Arrested Development is a lot easier to enjoy on DVD. Still, I think that it has a lot to do with the fact that until very recently, I assumed that every show on TV was junk until presented with massive amounts of evidence to the contrary. I don't know if TV has gotten a lot better, or I've recently entered the sweet spot of the network's primary demographic target, but today I feel like there are more good shows on network/basic cable/premium cable TV than I could ever hope to watch on a regular basis, and I certainly didn't feel that way as recently as a year or two ago.

I enjoyed the first two seasons of Arrested Development more than the third, though I'm sure that the third season could have been as good if it was given a full run of episodes. Like most viewers, I was initially drawn to arguably the two most outrageous characters, Gob and Tobias, but I think that in the end, my favorite character was George Michael. What can I say, he reminds me of myself at that age, to a certain extent. The reason Arrested Development is so funny (and the reason it did so poorly in the ratings) is the continuous structure of its narrative. Unlike most sitcoms, which have an implicit reset back to normal at the end of every episode, Arrested Development continued every absurd plot detail from episode to episode (and from season to season). The writers not only made each episode of the show more ridiculous than a typical sitcom, they did so knowing that they were going to have to sustain nearly every single plotline throughout the life of the series. I'm sure that had the show continued on, it would've eventually collapsed under the weight of itself, so in some ways, it's good that it had an abbreviated life, but I think that it still could have continued at a very high level of quality and humor for one or two more seasons.

Extrême limite

If the world ended tomorrow, my one regret would be that I never got a chance to see Point Break Live! on stage. I'm being facetious here, but only a little bit. I learned about this absurdist reality-play today on Deadspin and I have been barely able to contain myself ever since. The saddest part of this story is that I've never even seen the movie Point Break. I saw the commercials for it hundreds of times back in 1991 when it came out. I remember thinking how ridiculous it looked, but at the same time, I must have had some desire to watch it and experience the absurdity firsthand. The show is out in LA right now so it doesn't look like I'm going to get a chance to catch it anytime soon. Here's a teaser from the YouTubes.



One more thing: the subject of this post is the title under which Point Break was release in Francophone markets, but you knew that already.

Garfield Gets Meta

As both I and other more astute readers of the funnies have noted, comic strips often go through impossibly strange and/or implausible set-ups in order to include aG punch line that the artist was unable to shoehorn into his strip through conventional means. This generally doesn't work very well because the punch line usually isn't even all that funny to begin with.



Today's installment of Get Fuzzy is essentially a joke about this shtick. It mixes a contrived set-up (Bucky's sudden interest in religion, or at least, religious hucksters) with a lame punch line (Garfield is a sell-out) and yet it's still funny. I'm not as big a fan of Get Fuzzy as some, but it's certainly one of the better comic strips out there.



In other comics-related news, thanks to the gross negligence of his "friend" Herb, Dagwood is now a quadriplegic.

Spare Change

Thursday, June 21st: We arrived in London on a beautiful sunny morning. This may be the first time that anyone has ever written that last sentence. After taking care of all of our travel related business, we hit the ATM to pick up some local currency. The notes are similar to Euros in that each denomination is a different size. I can understand how this might come in handy for blind people, but it's a mess for people like me who carry bills around in a money clip. If I ever relocate to Europe, I may have to invest in a new tri-fold wallet. Our withdrawal came out in a mixture of £10 and £20 notes. I was not surprised to see Queen Elizabeth II's face on the notes, but I was surprised to see another face on the back. The new £20 note features Adam Smith on the backside while £10 note depicts Charles Darwin. Think about that for a second. The guy on the back of England's £10 note is someone many Americans would rank somewhere between Satan and Hillary Clinton on a scale of pure evil. It's a small but poignant example of the little differences between the US and England.








I could do without a picture of the Queen on every government issued document, but I'm definitely a fan of decorating currency with the likenesses of great intellectuals. I don't know think that's going to happen anytime soon over here, but all in all, we could have done a lot worse. Ben Franklin adorning the $100 bill, which is arguably the most useful piece of money on the planet, is remarkably subversive, at least by American standards. Another thing that we won't be seeing over here anytime soon is a legitimate $1 or $2 coin. I've always viewed our failure to embrace a coin denomination worth more than $0.25 as an example of the dark side of American exceptionalism. On this trip, however, it dawned on me that high value coins are more useful on vacation than in day-to-day life. I find that I make small purchases and interact with vending machines more often when I'm on a trip than I do when I'm at home. These are the types of transactions where high value coins excel. Of course, once we switch to an entirely electronic currency system, this entire discussion becomes moot.

From the airport, we hopped on the Heathrow Express train and headed into London. Alan was waiting for us at home so he could give us the keys to his flat before heading off to work, so we went for the quickest ride into town. Fifteen minutes later, we pulled into Paddington Station. One of my favorite things about visiting a somewhere for the first time is the ride from the airport to wherever I'm going. It's a time to get a first impression of the city, state, or country you are visiting and start picking up on the similarities and differences between your destination and other places. It's a chance to turn a generally mundane or tiresome event like a train or taxi ride into an adventure. The strangest thing about the ride into London was how the view never really changed. The view alternated between industrial sites, farmland, and dingy apartment blocks the entire ride. The view become more residential the closer we got to Paddington, but it never felt like we were entering a great metropolis. The train ride was a preview one of the more surprising thing I learned on this trip, namely, that London doesn't really feel like a huge international city. Or, more precisely, it didn't fit my preconceived notion of how all big, international cities look and feel.



Alan's flat is only a 10 or 15 minute walk from Paddington station, and we managed to find it without too much trouble. I was a bit surprised to see how pedestrian unfriendly London is. After thinking about this some more, I realized that I was actually disappointed by how hostile it is to jaywalkers. We encountered numerous fences set up around sidewalks at intersections that forced pedestrians to use the crosswalks. As a lifelong jaywalker, this cramped my style, but it probably was better that way since it prevented me from walking into oncoming traffic after looking the wrong way. I did appreciate how most pedestrian crossings had markings indicate which way to look before crossing. As a kindergarten graduate, I know that one should always look both ways before crossing the street, but it's harder than one might expect to get used to traffic coming at you from the opposite direction. Any time you need to react to something quickly, you fall back on your instincts.



Despite getting a decent amount of rest on the flight, I was still a bit tired. We took an hour and half long nap at the flat, which only made me feel more groggy, but we we had places to go and people to see, so I pressed on. We grabbed lunch at a tiny lunch counter around the corner from the flat. I suppose that it would be wrong to visit Britain and not have at least one barely edible meal. We managed to get that one out of the way first. After finishing lunch, he headed over to Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens are part of a large, contiguous green space so it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. My favorite thing in either of the parks was the Prince Albert Memorial, which happens to fall on the Kensington Gardens side of the park. We first caught a glimpse of the top of the memorial over the tops of the trees lining the flower walk, and at first it appeared that we were looking at the spire of an ornate cathedral.



Imagine my surprise when we reached the end of the walk and discovered that it was not a cathedral, rather a massive, almost rococo memorial to the a 19th century prince. Prince Albert died of typhoid fever at the rather young age of 42 and his memorial is a testament to both the tragedy of his death and the grandeur of the British Empire, which reached its peak during the reign of his wife, Queen Victoria.



As soon as we reached the memorial, it began to rain. Fortunately, a temporary structure had been erected next to the memorial for the Royal College of Art's summer show. We ducked into the exhibit to dodge the rain and check out the art. Most of the works on display were industrial design pieces. There was some interesting stuff there. I was fairly disappointed with the automotive design pieces, but I guess no one should be surprised that the Brits can't put together a good car anymore.

The weather soon cleared and we were back on our way. We soon came upon a memorial to another royal, this time, it was the Princess Diana Memorial. The Princess Di Memorial is as subdued as the Prince Albert Memorial is ostentatious. It's a concrete ring on a gradual slope with a stream of water running around it. Michelle was very fond of the memorial. I enjoyed its simple elegance, but I was still more impressed with the Prince Albert Memorial. I suppose that it's hard for me to appreciate a memorial to a person who died in my own lifetime, especially in a city with as much history as London.



We headed back to Alan's flat, where we met up with him and went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant near Paddington Station. The food was nothing special, but it was much better than lunch. After dinner, we headed over to Alan's local watering hole, The Swan. It was there that I got my first taste of real cask conditioned English ale. I was really looking forward to drinking real English ale in a real English pub. My favorite beers in the States are English-style ales. I've found a few places over here that serve real cask conditioned ales and I've always enjoyed them. So it came as a surprise to me that I was initially not that impressed with real English ales. We visited a different pub each night we spent in London, and I always found the real English ales somewhat disappointing. My working theory is that while a flat and slightly warm pint of ale is a novelty in America, it's not all that exciting in England. I also think that American microbrewed ales, like American wines, have bolder flavors than their old world counterparts, and have desensitized the American drinker's palette to the subtleties of the original beverages. I have to stress that while the ale didn't meet my perhaps unrealistically high expectations, it was still beer. I can't think of a better way to spend the evening of the longest day of the year than sitting in an outdoor beer garden in the northernmost capital city of the English-speaking world with good friends and a couple of pints. Darkness finally fell around 10 pm, and we soon headed back to Alan's flat.

Iberia

I've been feasting on some treats from the Iberian peninsula recently that I felt inclined to write about. I'm by no means a wine connoisseur, but I was quite impressed with the bottle of Charamba that I just finished. Charamba is a red wine from Portugal. I don't know if it's a hard and fast rule that Californian wines tend to be fruitier than their old world counterparts, but Charamba definitely bucks this trend, if it is even an actual trend, with its bold and fruity taste. The bottle found its way into our house via a friend who brought it over for a get together last month. When I looked it up online, I discovered that in addition to being a great tasting wine, Charamba is also quite inexpensive ($5-$6, according to a couple websites). Look for it the next time you stop by the liquor store, though I'm not sure how widely available Portugese wine is in the States. I assume it's pretty easy to find in Rhode Island, beyond that, I'm not sure.

The other Iberian treat that I have recently rediscovered are Marcona almonds. Marcona almonds are only grown in the Mediterranean region of Spain. If you've never tried a Marcona, you really owe it to yourself to find some. I'm not a huge fan of regular almonds, so don't worry if you're not a big almond or nut person, Marconas are in a league of their own. We got a big can of them at a Costco in Seattle for a very reasonable price. Unfortunately, we don't have a Costco near here, so I don't know how I'm going to get my fix once I finish off the can.

Pollination Time

September 2 | 1:01 pm | Snohomish, WA

Fast Citizens

Keefe Jackson's Fast Citizens
Fraternal Order of Eagles Lodge - Hyde Park, MA
Thursday, September 6th

I finally made it up to Boston for one of the Music Workshop shows. The workshop is organized by at least some of the same people who ran the artists-at-large series a few years ago. I didn't know much about the Fast Citizens going into the concert. Being a Chicago-based group, I was familiar with a number of the musicians, but I had never even heard of the band leader and with the exception of cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, I had never seen any of the musicians play live in concert.

The first thing that struck me about this group was their age. Most of the guys in the band looked pretty young. With the exception of Lonberg-Holm, who has been on the scene in Chicago since before I started following it, all of these guys are part of the new generation. The "young lions" of the Chicago free improv scene, if you will.

I was very impressed with the rhythm section, especially the drummer, Frank Rosaly. I was most impressed with the way he accompanied the soloists during their improvisations. It was very subtle, but he seemed to have a real knack for working with the soloist. His ensemble playing was superb as well. His playing exuded an obvious enthusiasm that was immediately discernible to anyone listening to him or watching him. Anton Hatwich was a formidable presence on the bass. He takes a very aggressive approach to his playing, equally comfortable playing a bass line or a melodic line. Rounding out the rhythm section was the aforementioned Lonberg-Holm on cello, who played some incredible solos with some remarkable interplay with Rosaly and gave the sound a neat electronic edge with some of his sound effects.

I was also very impressed with the compositions that this band played. I tend not to pay as much attention to composition when listening to music like this since the majority of time is devoted to improvisation, but this band is more of an even mix of composition and improv. Keefe Jackson, the bandleader and tenor saxophonist, writes most of the tunes. This was my first exposure to Jackson and I was as impressed with his composition as I was disappointed with his improvisation. His solos primarily used short, clipped phrases that didn't really fit together and never went anywhere. I was disappointed with the entire horn section's solos to a certain degree. Most of the solos were lacking in direction. A number of solos simply trailed off instead of building to a conclusion. The horn section definitely sounded better in the second set, so perhaps it was just a matter of getting warmed up.

It seems odd that I would enjoy an improvised music show where the improvisation was only so-so, but I really did enjoy this show. It was my first exposure to a bunch of the newer faces on the Chicago scene and I really did enjoy the compositions and Frank Rosaly completely knocked me out on a couple of the numbers. If this group can stay together, I think it has the potential to become a really solid ensemble.

In a Silent Way

I heard about the passing of jazz/fusion pianist/composer Joe Zawinul yesterday. I wasn't a huge fan of his music. I never really got into Weather Report, though to be honest, I haven't listened to very much of their catalog. I found myself on the road last night and the radio happened to be tuned to WGBH. It was their evening jazz show, which I usually don't listen to, but they were playing In a Silent Way in memory of Zawinul so I kept listening. I had forgotten that Zawinul played the organ on In a Silent Way. As it turns out, he also composed the tune. I've listened to it plenty of times, but I had never been able to really get into it. I have always been disappointed by Miles Davis' electric and fusion work. Not because it's bad or because I'm some kind of jazz purist, but because it never really lives up to its potential. His electric tunes all show these brief flashes of brilliance, but they never manage to sustain it for an entire tune. Anyway, something happened last night, because for the first time, I just 'got' In a Silent Way. I was just overwhelmed by the beauty of the piece. I've always felt that In a Silent Way stands apart from the rest of the electric Miles songbook because of it's ethereal and ambient undertones. This sound is largely absent from the rock and funk infused music that followed In a Silent Way.

Dang Quesadillas

Since I seem to be having trouble keeping this thing going, I thought it might good to go back to my roots, poorly thought out food criticism. I'll start with tonight's meal. Obsessive readers of this blog will remember that we have pear trees in our backyard. Those blossoms have matured into a bumper crop of pears this year and we've been trying to figure out what to do with all of them. I found this recipe for pear and prosciutto quesadillas and gave it a try tonight. I have heard that prosciutto and fruit is considered a delicacy by some, but I had my doubts. After feasting on these quesadillas, all of my doubts have been erased. It's a pretty simple dish to put together, as well. I didn't even bother with the goat cheese that the recipe calls for and I baked them for 10 minutes at 350 instead of frying them in a pan.

On Sunday, I grilled up a great piece of salmon. I used a Goan Fish Curry spice packet that Michelle picked up at the grocery store. It's from Arora Creations, who sell a full line of Indian spice mixes. We've tried a number of their spice mixes, and they taste really good. It's the most authentic tasting Indian food I've ever been able to make at home. This was my first experience with the Goan Fish Curry. I marinated a sockeye salmon fillet in the spice mixture, lemon juice, and olive oil for about an hour and a half. The last time I grilled salmon, I left it on the grill for too long and it got too dry. I was determined not to let that happen this time. I fired up the grill and grilled some bell peppers on it. Though I didn't plan it this way, it turned out to be a great move because it gave the grill a chance to get nice and hot before I put the fish on it. Once the peppers were done, I put the fish onto it (face down) and let it cook for about six minutes. I flipped it over and brushed the top with some of the excess marinade, then let it cook for another three or four minutes, brushing marinade on it a couple of more times. The end result was delicious. It was cooked to perfection and the fish curry added a great flavor to an already delicious piece of fish. If I could change one thing, I would have let it marinate a while longer to soak up more of the flavor, but it was still a very tasty meal.