(via Deck Chairs on the Titanic) BookCrossing.com is kinda like Where’s George for books, but with more of the Diggers’ white bicycles.
As an inveterate book giver, I like the idea. Where are the umpteen friend-foisted copies of Delany’s Dhalgren, still America’s masterpiece of sf? Whatever happened to my first set of Zelazny’s Trumps books?
I realize that’s more George than Digger, but, um, like, YMMV.
My mom and dad are visiting so, um, some light posting is probable.
I will give them my best for you!
Today we drove all over lovely industrial south Seattle, and stopped by the Museum of Flight to gawk at the Blue Angels. My Dad told a story about working for Boeing as an aerospace engineer right after college, and a set of flight trials that I think he helped design. We looked at pretty airplanes designed to kill people and break things.
I think tomorrow is when the Angels start practicing for the shows this weekend – I think it’s kind of neat that my dad will be here for that. Unlike many denizens of my neighborhood, I love the jets.
They drove out here from North Carolina over that last week. I had hoped to travel with them, but the courtyard social scheduling conflicted with the trip, and so I chose to remain here.
Metafilter poster notes that PWC’s recent sale to IBM puts the kibosh on Monday.
jimfl has a modest proposal at his Everything Burns site.
It’s the return of Silent Movie Mondays at the Paramount in downtown Seattle!
About three years ago, I noticed that film-score preservationist and silent-film accompanist Dennis James was hosting a series of silent classics at the Paramount, including some films which I’d long heard of but never seen such as Douglas Fairbanks’ “The Sea Hawk”, if I recall correctly. I’ve tried to attend every single one since, with varying degrees of success. I still regret having missed Keaton’s “The General”.
James graduated from Indiana University in Bloomington when I was kid, sometime around 1980, and while he was attending IU would stage these elaborate presentations of classic silent horror films such as “Phantom of the Opera” or “Nosferatu”. These shows inevitably included a massive parade of cosumed adultas and children across the stage of the IU Auditorium (the one near Showalter Fountain), and the audience would applaud loudly for excellent costumes while a veritable blizzard of paper airplanes filled the air.
Combining these impressive events with the non-stop silent comedy super-8 loops at the pizza joint Noble Roman’s that my family ate at all the time meant that I have a lifelong love for and interest in silent movies.
To see them in the splendidly restored absurd opulence of the Paramount, a movie and vaudeville palace fortunate enough to have retained its Mighty Wurlitzer, is something I savor so greatly it’s difficult to convey.
A big thankee to Spencer Sundell for the heads up!
This poster was created as a tee-shirt design for the now defunct Seattle Morris team at the behest of former co-worker Rob Falk.
Rob possesses the female baby scutter which appeared in a first-season episode of Red Dwarf. Entertainingly, there appears to be a Red Dwarf trading card featuring Rimmer’s treasured issues of Morris Dancer Monthly.
On Saturday I organized a little get-together for everyone that lives in our apartment building. Our building is relatively small – seven units – and is a very pleasant place to live, so tenant turnover tends to be slow. One of our neighbors has always made it a point to be freindly with everyone in the building, if possible, and he’d been away for a good while housesitting.
Thanks to our housesitting neighbor, we’d met several of the other tenants and become friendly – which can be helpful when you’re chasing pot-smoking teenagers away from the dumpster or need your cats watched while you gallivant around the country.
While our neighbor was gone, two apartments rolled over, and I thought it would be a great opportunity to introduce the new tenants to everyone, as well as begin to build community with the other long-term tenants.
Well, as it turned out, most everyone showed up, we all had a great time, and there is talk of another before the end of the summer. Our courtyard is a very beautiful place to spend an afternoon. i had a great time, and it seemed like everyone else did too.
… and so as the sun sets gently in the west, Ken Goldstein draws his heartrending work of inordinate wit to a close, with Episode 15 of Guy Sterling: Skee-Ball Champion! Sadly for those of us with a long-standing interest in the sport of kings, Ken was unable, after heroic efforts toiling within the mighty bowels of google and ebay, to locate Episodes 14 and 15, and thus the story picks up at its’ conclusion.
It had been the busiest, craziest, most exciting week of his whole life, and one way or the other it would be all be over in a few minutes.
Then with the much-anticipated the Skee-Ball Week Theme Song, Ken rings down the curtain on his wildly acclaimed labor of love, salvaging the lost past of a slice of Americana the likes of which we’re sadly unlikely to ever see again.
It is hoped, however, that as the resulting lawsuits from the deeply offended descendants of Joey “Spats” Murphy wend their way thru the courts, Mr. Goldstein (“Steen”, to those in the know) will take time from his busy round of depositions, wholesale disavowals of responsibility, and press-ducking junkets to update the blogopulace upon his fortunes in fending away these ill-timed distractions.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled round of bankruptcy filings, stock market crashes, and assorted acts of death and destruction. Ah, Skee-Ball Week, we hardly knew ye.
Actually, which kings specifically?
OK, it’s like this.
About two weeks ago we decided to host a small wingding for just the people that live in our apartment building. That’s at one pm today. About half the tenants will be there to start but we expect more later.
About a week and a half ago, we arranged to get our apartment demolded (this last winter was particularly cold and wet and the black mold showed up, bags in hand, and moved in).
About a week ago, my parents called and told me they were driving out here from North Carolina. We expect them, um, sometime this afternoon.
The demolding is in process and will be continuing, also today. Our apartment is torn up (but the guest room is clean and ready)!
Everything in the house is in utter, move-in-style disarray.
So, like I said. No rain but the deluge.
B!x appears to be only the second individual to independently discover my International Organization of Cynics, Ne’er-do-Wells, and Misanthropes website. I’ve not tooted my own horn in the past concerning the site becasue it’s kind of a one trick pony – you join, and then you can see your name displayed on a cool certificate, suitable for printing – and I want it to be a bit more brawny.
But what the hell?
Come on down! Maybe some more action will stimulate me to address the site’s deficiencies and limitations.