jamie lawrence-howard • highly absorbent redundant and superfluous verbiage • clogging tubes since 9.1.98
well, new to me.
it’s wp fancyzoom. it makes the thumbnails of all the pictures on the site zoom out in a fancy new way, much like the name implies. try it out:
very very cool. most of the pages listed to the right have pictures, and they all work this way now.
thanks, wp fancy zoom fancy dude.
update: and thanks to cabel sasser, who wrote the underlying javascript.
after all of the hype about the new iphone 2.0 software, and the app store, and all the goodies awaiting me, i went to work today having told kirk to update his iphone when itunes showed the update.
usually i’m pretty sensible about these things. if yesterday you had asked me what to do, i probably would have told you to wait to update. make sure everything is working properly. give it a day or two. but i got caught up in the hype. i figured that as important as this was to apple, and as much as they had advertised and flogged this new phone + new software, they would have their act together. i assumed that updating our original iphone to the new software would be seamless.
boy was i wrong. kirk sat all morning fiddling with this. the last email i got from him seemed to indicate that the phone was updated and activated, but still wouldn’t sync because itunes is still down. so i’d guess that he has a working phone, with no contact info etc. on it. which apparently is better than some people.
should i have obeyed my common sense and told kirk to wait? you bet.
should apple have hyped this new phone + new software to the moon and back, like they did? you bet.
should apple have been technically ready for this onslaught, the one they created? you bet.
will this be a non-issue tomorrow? i’d guess so. i certainly hope so.
look. it ain’t a pacemaker that we’re talking about. small children will not lose their lives because the iphones won’t update smoothly. but it irks me that, due to apple’s lack of preparation, kirk wasted the morning of his day off, and probably still hasn’t finished syncing the phone. lots of people are angry about this, and it’s because a) apple markets themselves as the easier technological alternative, which amplifies their missteps, and 2) people love their damn iphones and are pissed when they suddenly don’t work.
hopefully it will be fixed by tomorrow, because he’s leaving for reading, pa for sunday and monday, and it would be nice if he had a working phone to take with him.
update: took my 2:00PM afternoon constitutional, which just happens to take me right past the action. at the at&t store at 54th & 6th, there was a security guard at the door letting people in a few at a time, and ~50 people in line. said security guard was getting yelled at by an extremely old man clutching an iphone who couldn’t connect to itunes. security guard nonplussed. at the flagship apple store on 58th and 5th, a few hundred people in line, stretching around the corner and down 58th by fao schwartz. calm and orderly — i think the store may have been closed to all but iphone shoppers, but i’m not sure about that.
update 2: kirk just called. from his fully functioning iphone. that has all the contacts and info loaded on it. perfectly normal. what’s the big frigging hullabaloo?
more often than not (especially as i get older) my criteria for going to an actual movie theater to see a movie is: “is it something i must see on the big screen?”
“trumbo” the movie opened this past weekend. i saw the play several times, starting from workshop performances. kirk’s former boss at the westside is the director. and yet we’ve debated whether to go see it in a theater or wait for it to come out on dvd, because it’s a “netflix” movie.
on the other hand, i went to see “speed racer” in the theater. even paid extra to see it in imax. why? it’s something that you want to see writ large, on an enormous screen. the visuals are an attraction to me, and are often the defining factor.
the problem with that, as i forget each time i see a movie on that basis, is that the buzz only lasts so long; with some the buzz lasts longer than with others, but it always wanes. speed racer was stunning for the first fifteen minutes or so, and then i was completely inured to its visual charms. even the monkey couldn’t save the movie for me.
and i love monkeys. oh do i love monkeys.
which brings me to wall-e, which i saw last night. definitely a movie to see on a big screen.
but, for probably the first time ever, the buzz lasted for the whole movie. wall-e is an all-time classic movie if there ever was one. in retrospect, i think i now know what people felt at the turn of the last century, when they saw their first movie. it’s that arresting, that engaging, that challenging, and that different.
because there’s no dialogue for the first 1/3 of the movie or so, and large stretches of movie after that without dialogue as well, the filmmakers had to rely on the visuals to propel the story forward. wall-e the robot is buster keaton, directed by preston sturges. wall-e is gene kelly, directed by vincente minnelli. wall-e is marlon brando, directed by orson welles.
it’s easily in the top ten of movies i have seen thus far in my life. it’s that good. little did i know when i linked to the movie’s viral website months ago that i’d like it so much.
» versions of “gypsy” i have seen/heard prior to last night:
— the rosalind russell movie version
— the bette midler tv version
— the bernadette peters broadway version
— the ethel merman broadway cast recording
— the genesius theatre version in kirk’s boyhood home of reading, pa
kirk could add:
— the tyne daly broadway version
— the betty buckley and debbie gibson version at paper mill playhouse
i don’t think he saw angela lansbury as mama rose, but he can correct me if i’m wrong.
at any rate, to say we had “gypsy” burnout would be an understatement. we really didn’t want to see it this past spring at genesius, but kirk knew people in the cast and we had season tickets, so we went and it was good. even though patti lupone was getting raves in the latest broadway incarnation, we just decided to take a pass.
we were sung out, louise.
but then we saw the tonys, and she performed, and she won a tony, and boyd gaines won the tony as herbie, and laura benanti won the tony as louise, and they were all wonderful and we got chills and so forth, so we looked at each other and said “ok, get the tickets”. so we did, and got a decent deal, and went last night. house was packed — a good audience that we didn’t have to shush. amazingly, i think some of them were unfamiliar with the musical; there were lots of audible gasps when baby june took off at the end of act one.
we really enjoyed ourselves. the staging was good — there was a tattered proscenium onstage which symbolically lifted at the end, making it a “play within a play”. i especially loved the interplay between herbie and louise. the actors gave that relationship an added depth i’d never seen. june was alternately manically perky when “onstage” and bitterly cynical when “offstage” — great job. the most world-weary and ancient electra i’ve ever seen — hysterically funny.
and patti lupone was indeed a marvel. force of nature. complete presence. all the adjectives. two standing ovations — at the end of “rose’s turn” and at the end of the play.
even if you think you never want to see this warhorse (“gypsy”, not patti lupone!) on stage again, it’s worth the money.
» dinner before the show at bocca:
no silly, not the sandwich shop. the italian restaurant in gramercy. very nice experience. we had the prix fixe: for me, pomodori (fresh tomatoes, sliced onions, avocados, olive oil), trota (trout with roasted bell pepper salad and grilled potatoes), and frutta e zabaione (strawberries and bananas served with sabayon); for kirk, polpettine (veal meatballs served with melted truffle, pecorino cheese and veal jus), straccetti (pan seared oregano flavored shredded filet mignon served with roasted cherry tomatoes and wild rocket pesto), and the aforementioned frutta e zabaione. i had a glass of white, he had a glass of red. espresso after dessert (please don’t have your coffee with your dessert, says the food snob. so tacky!) we skipped the bread in deference to kirk, but it looked great from across the room.
everything was incredibly delicious because they did a great job of the one thing i love to see in restaurant food — each dish was just a few extremely high quality ingredients chosen and combined simply and well. not fussy, not cluttered, very clean yet surprisingly complex. good job.
they have a nice drinks menu as well and seem to get an after-work one-drink crowd; kirk started with a really yummy basil-infused gimlet.
total bill with tax and tip was $145 — a splurge for us but worth it.
» weekend update:
we’re going to reading for the second weekend in a row.
last weekend we went, borrowed kirk’s father’s truck and went camping at hickory run state park. we’d planned to hike a lot and be all active, but we lucked into choosing one of only eight campsites that were on the park’s babbling brook (out of 300+ campsites; what were the odds?). so we sat by said babbling brook and read, thursday through saturday. left early saturday afternoon due to impending thunderstorms and saw a production of “the women” in ephrata, pennsylvania. very fun.
this weekend, we’re taking an old steam train with kirk’s parents. it runs from somewhere to jim thorpe, pennsylvania and basically takes the whole day doing it. sounds like a relaxing time — looking forward to it.
next weekend, kirk makes the third consecutive trip to reading for sweeney todd auditions. i think my reading visit streak will end at two.
here’s a screengrab of the homepage of john mccain’s campaign website:
so — one of the most important topics to be discussed with america on john mccain’s campaign homepage is…golf gear?
really you can’t make these things up. this guy is so tone-deaf. or the people running his campaign are. flog some campaign yard signs, or some buttons, or something. anything relevant. but golf gear? jeebus.
combined with the speech he gave on tuesday, it’s clear that the lunatics are in charge of the asylum.
but i want to focus on one particular line that had kirk and me hooting with laughter.
and of course there’s a long hilarious discussion on digg.
hopefully by november this guy will, at a minimum, learn to read a teleprompter, a skill you think he would have acquired by now.
or, perhaps, i should hope that he won’t learn.
could tomorrow be the day that hillary clinton withdraws from the race?
i’m watching this closely. as one of her constituents, i’m looking to see how she gets out of the race, and how well and strongly and effectively she supports obama. she really needs to be graceful, and supportive, and needs to do her best to ensure his election. and she needs to do it sooner as in this week and preferably tuesday/wednesday, rather than later as in after this week. if she drags this out, i’ll be very upset.
if she doesn’t withdraw well, as i’ve said before, i’ll be looking to help her opponent in her next new york primary election, for senator or governor or whatever, should she be in a race.
oh, and a little thought butterfly to float over to mr. obama. promise her help with her debts. promise to bring her campaign workers on board with your team. promise to help the elected officials who are getting primary challenges via your supporters as a result of those officials’ support for her. promise to put lots of her supporters in white house positions.
but do not promise anything to hillary herself. the clintons need to be dispatched efficiently. i say this, not because i dislike hillary, but because i’ve come to really dislike bill, and i don’t want him anywhere near washington power again. and i don’t think that she is strong enough to keep him at bay should she be in an obama administration. she chose to keep him on her team, and use him, even after his odious behavior. that’s the price she should pay for making that choice.
and, mr. obama, you will lose more votes than you will gain if, before they actually vote for you, people know she’ll be in your administration.
walkscore.com — great idea for a google maps mashup site. you type in your address, and it gives an overall ranking of your living quarters on a scale from 1 to 100, in terms of walking distance to types of businesses.
here’s my walk score:
love it. i guess my distance from a movie theater drags my score down.
more accurately, it’s time for her to be made to go.
these latest remarks, citing robert kennedy’s assassination as a reason to stay in the race, are beyond the pale. you can’t tell me this was just a slip. nothing the clintons do is without purpose.
the superdelegates need to step up and end this thing officially, now. and that means i don’t want her on the ticket as vice-president. i say that partly because i don’t want her around, but mainly because i don’t want bill clinton anywhere near the white house again. my main problem with her isn’t what she does, but that she can’t seem to control what he does. he has undue influence over her. i don’t want the clintons tag-teaming and triangulating obama out of his presidency, or if he wins, out of his governance. which is exactly what they’d do, led by bill clinton. jeebus — to think i worked for his 1992 campaign.
i want them both out in the political wilderness for the duration of the presidential campaign, where they can do no harm. obama can win without her or her support. enough of her vaunted supporters will vote democratic in november anyway, with or without her. and especially without bill clinton around. and at this point, i’m not sure i want her as my senator, either. she’s frigging toxic.
peggy noonan had a great column about hillary clinton yesterday. it may be behind a paywall for you (come on, wall street journal!) so i’ll summarize: golda meir, indira gandhi, and margaret thatcher, three women who knew how to play tough politically, would be outraged at clinton’s week of claiming sexism as a principal reason for her loss. what a sorry endgame clinton has — blame society and the media. never once did you hear that from obama, even when he was far behind in the polls.
here’s my favorite quote from the noonan column:
It is prissy. Mrs. Clinton’s supporters are now complaining about the Hillary nutcrackers sold at every airport shop. Boo hoo. If Golda Meir, a woman of not only proclaimed but actual toughness, heard about Golda nutcrackers, she would have bought them by the case and given them away as party favors.
It is sissy. It is blame-gaming, whining, a way of not taking responsibility, of not seeing your flaws and addressing them. You want to say “Girl, butch up, you are playing in the leagues, they get bruised in the leagues, they break each other’s bones, they like to hit you low and hear the crack, it’s like that for the boys and for the girls.”
and this:
Meir and Gandhi and Mrs. Thatcher suffered through the political downside of their sex and made the most of the upside. Fair enough. As for this week’s Clinton complaints, I imagine Mrs. Thatcher would bop her on the head with her purse. Mrs. Gandhi would say “That is no way to play it.” Mrs. Meir? “They said I was the only woman in the cabinet and the only one with — well, you know. I loved it.”
got that right.
it’s going away, like mchales, cbgb’s, le madeleine, and any other of the long list of victims of gentrification and skyrocketing rents. much of what makes the city “new york” are these individual places, and each time we lose one we’re a step closer to being cleveland. i’ve been to florent a few times, and always enjoyed myself and had a great meal. the man, a true pioneer among restauranteurs, deserves better.
think about that the next time you hit a starbucks. and i’m sure cleveland is a wonderful place.
but it ain’t new york. at least not yet.
this is a must-watch video clip — ellen hands john mccain his head on a plate, logic-wise.
here’s my favorite part:
“Blacks and women did not have the right to vote. I mean, women just got the right to vote in 1920. Blacks didn’t have the right to vote until 1870. And it just feels like there is this old way of thinking that we are not all the same. We are all the same people, all of us. You’re no different than I am. Our love is the same. To me — to me, what it feels like — just, you know, I will speak for myself — it feels — when someone says, ‘You can have a contract, and you’ll still have insurance, and you’ll get all that,’ it sounds to me like saying, ‘Well, you can sit there; you just can’t sit there.’ That’s what it sounds like to me. It feels like — it doesn’t feel inclusive…It feels — it feels isolated. It feels like we are not — you know, we aren’t owed the same things and the same wording.”
and the end of the clip is wonderful as well. go ellen…you rock. i don’t want a frigging contract either.
kirk sent me an email that purported to give the schedule that the irs will follow when mailing out the stimulus checks this spring.
did i say spring? i did. more on that later.
so the email said that they would mail on a schedule according to the last two digits in your social security number. which would mean that, according to the provided schedule, that my check would be mailed on july 11th.
july frigging 11th! that’s not spring! that’s half the summer gone! some frigging stimulus. what a crock.
but wait. maybe it’s just an email hoax. so, off to check snopes.com. and you know what? it’s frigging true! i couldn’t believe it.
now, to be sure, i think that the entire stimulus check nonsense is, well, nonsense. i don’t think it will do a bit of good for the economy. but on the off chance it might do some good, perhaps it would make sense to, oh, i don’t know, have it enter the economy in a relative lump sum. at least then it would have a chance of having some effect.
jeebus. this is the best our government can do? if you are going to pander to me, at least halfway deliver on your promise. i can hardly wait for obama to get into the white house, and hopefully bring at least a bit of sanity to washington.
…so i can vote for steve novick, who opens a beer with his hook hand in his campaign commercial. now there’s a politician i can get excited about.
plus oregon has great weather, lots of organic vegetables, and is a great place as long as you don’t leave portland or eugene.
it’s been a while, so here are a few short takes:
» kirk was in the hospital overnight on wednesday for some tests. he’s had dizziness, general fatigue, and chest tightness for a few weeks now, and our doctor wanted to rule out the big stuff — heart problems, blood clots, lung problems, etc. thankfully all that big stuff checked out, but the symptoms remain. next stop — the inner ear. at least we have a baseline of good health for him. our doctor is good and persistent, so i’m hopeful that we’ll sort it all out.
» happy mother’s day, to my mom, kirk’s mom, and mothers in general. i sent a neck pillow/comforter thingy to my mom in florida, via red envelope. she loves the red box and the grosgrain ribbon. good thing — i can’t stand the company. she’s the only reason i still patronize them, and the only person i use them for. i think they have terrible customer service. the latest in a long line of gripes — a month ago they sent me an email reminder to buy something for mother’s day, with a 10% discount code. but when i used the code and made a purchase, they wouldn’t delay the shipping. so i could either send my mother’s day present directly to my mother a month in advance, or have it shipped to me and pay twice to have it shipped to arrive in a timely fashion. i chose the latter. what a crock. if you are going to ask me to buy early for mother’s day, then have the back office capabilities to ship the purchase to arrive on mother’s day. idiots.
» obama seems to have wrapped things up, defeating hillary clinton for the nomination. all the talk now is to have her for vice-president, but i think that’s a bad idea and i don’t think it will happen. two “liberal senators” on one ticket? the republicans would have a field day. we need to move on from the clintons. he needs to pick someone with foreign policy experience. sam nunn? too old — he would negate the mccain age argument. gen. wesley clark or gen. jim jones? we don’t need an inexperienced admiral stockdale type. joe biden? great choice but two senators isn’t a good idea. jim webb? perfect choice, but do you want to give up the senate seat in virginia? and he isn’t the best campaigner. bill richardson? sounds good to me. what sounds even better? wait out mccain and make him pick first.
» congratulations to the writers of iron man, one of whom is the husband of a good friend and former co-worker of mine. he struggled for years, has enormous talent, and is deserving of every bit of success he’s getting.
[flv:/movies/fiftypercent.flv 320 240]
the genesius theatre in reading, pa., where kirk first learned stagecraft, had a benefit at the end of february 2008. it was called “he sang…she sang” — men sang songs usually associated with women, and vice-versa. kirk performed in a few numbers, but this was his solo performance.
chills, i tell ya. i get chills.
the media has gotten obama to denounce the last uppity black man in his life. now maybe they’ll be satisfied and move on to things of consequence.
like, say, health care, the economy, the middle east, iraq, and iran.
In his harshest criticism yet of his former minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama said he was “outraged†by Wright’s comments at the National Press Club Monday, and “saddened by the spectacle.â€
personally, i’m guessing that wright chose to fall on his sword to a degree — to get out there and make comments so outrageous that obama would have an opportunity to really put some distance between them. obama has been less than forthcoming about all this, i think. and i have to admit that the people who can’t understand why he stuck with the church have somewhat of a point. i know that church does not equal pastor, and there’s a new pastor now, and you should be going to church for the institution more than the personalities involved.
still. maybe this will precipitate a clean break between the two. let’s hope so.
in any case, better sooner (now) than later (october). there’ll always be a percentage of people unable to separate the two in their minds. hopefully this will mitigate the damage that’s been done.
i want that small squidgy thought floating in the back of my mind — “perhaps hillary is more electable after all” — crushed mercilessly.
update: just remembered what this was — obama’s sister souljah moment.
from swampland, a blog at time.com, via the washington post, comes a story about the decision to torture detainees:
Nineteen of those documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration decided they are covered by a “presidential communications privilege,” according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan. Some were “authored or solicited and received by the President’s senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president.”
which raises the question: if they can do that stuff when everyone’s watching them like a hawk, what’s going on at the white house when everyone’s attention is on the election?
kirk and i spent three nights at ricketts glen state park in north central pennsylvania this past weekend through tuesday.
what an incredibly awesome place. we’ve been before, but this time we especially enjoyed every minute of the peace and quiet, especially on monday night, when we were the only campers in the park. and the cell phones don’t work there. love that.
we took advantage of the empty time to take a look at the campground, figure out the camping spots we liked, and picked a top 5. our positive criteria were seclusion, beauty, and space. negatives we looked for included being too near or (especially) at the end of a road (headlights in the tent — not good), being too close to the road in general, and close proximity to the bathrooms (too much noisy foot traffic). we labeled the ones we liked with “y” (for “yes”) and appended a “-” for a decent site with some problems, a “+” for great sites, and an “!” for the outstanding sites. our top five sites are all “y!” sites.
your criteria may differ from ours. if so, check out the details of the individual sites and plan accordingly. kirk took pictures of the sites we liked — they’re coming soon.
here’s a page where you can download a map of the campground, so you can play along at home.
there are two camping areas in ricketts glen: the big loop (sites 1-73) and the small loop (sites 74-120). the small loop sites are all knocked out of serious contention immediately. none of them border the water, some of them (sites 80-93) allow pets (no pets allowed in the big loop), and they are very crowded with no buffer zones to speak of. we gave three small loop sites a “y-” ranking: sites 101, 108, and 115. but they are strictly a fall-back position, in case the big loop is completely full. if the big loop is full, and these sites are gone, certainly there’s enough positive features at the park to still come. but it’s going to be packed with people, and you’re likely to have a less than optimal experience.
for the big loop, i’ll list only the sites that got “y-” or better. the sites not listed got knocked out for the aforementioned reasons.
big loop “y-” sites:
3, 5, 17, 23 (17 + 23 close to bathroom but big), 27, 33, 46 (27, 33, 46 at end of road, but on water), 49, 52, 54.
big loop “y” sites:
7, 9, 24, 26 (campground host site, near entrance), 34, 35, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 57, 71, 72, 73. all but 42, 44, and 71 are on or near water. 57 is at the end of a road but is so spectacular that it loses the minus.
big loop “y+” sites:
5, 20, 22, 29, 31, 56, 66. all but 5 on the water.
big loop “y!” sites:
21, 36, 37, 59, 61, 64, 65. there’s nothing wrong with any of these, in our estimation. site perfection.
and for the top five — again, culled from the “y!” sites:
#5 — site 64. at the end of a road, on the water, huge with no near neighbors.
#4 — site 59. secluded, on the water, huge surrounding area.
#3 — site 36. at the end of a road, on the water, huge, only site we saw with a constructed tent platform.
#2 — site 21. huge, on the water, secluded. the best part about this site is that the area behind the site drops down to the water, and then there’s a shelf right by the water. so you can sit by the water, and no one can see you. spectacular.
and the #1 site — #37. the huge site drops down from the road, so you are hidden from everyone else. and you have an enormous peninsula you share only with site 36, with water views on three sides.
there you go — our subjective opinions, explained. what do you think? leave a comment if you disagree, or have experiences to share.
had dinner at salvatores of soho on friday night. the name’s a bit misleading — the restaurant isn’t in soho. it’s in riverdale. maybe salvatore is from soho, and he came to riverdale to open a restaurant. not sure.
anyway.
they have excellent basic red-sauce italian food. great pizza. a well-planned menu with lots of variety. and they deliver it all. we’ve been a few times before, for basic stuff. so far, a solid neighborhood option, but perhaps not worthy of an unsolicited recommendation.
but we splurged a bit on friday night, taking a chance on some more expensive entree specials. three things shoved them over the edge, to the point where i’m flogging them on my blog:
» amazing specials. on friday i had a whole grilled bronzino with a rosemary sauce. i’d never had this mediterranean fish before, but man was it good. i like a fish roasted whole, head and skin on and bones in, because it keeps the fish moist and delicious like no other cooking method, if done correctly. and this was the best whole grilled fish i’d had in ages. it rivalled anything i’ve ever had at uncle nick’s on 9th avenue in midtown manhattan, which is mecca for a grilled fish. kirk had a broiled steak with mushroom sauce, which was equally as wonderful.
» great staff. welcoming, professional, prompt, every single person genuinely concerned with my total experience. they all enjoy what they are doing, and it shows.
» byob. they don’t have a liquor license, so you look at the menu, grab a bottle of wine from down the street, bring it back, and they serve it with no corkage fee.
total bill with tip was $50, which is about as much as you could possibly spend here. it’s a mixed crowd — half of the tables are families eating meals and bringing wine, like us, and the other half are tables of college students splitting pizzas. two could eat well and comfortably here for $20. but any money you spend here is well spent, and everything on the menu is an incredibly good value for the money, even the more expensive entrees. they definitely have kitchen staff that knows what they are doing.
we’ll be back.
a lot.
for the specials.