This Sounds Like A Pretty Awesome Day in Tacoma …
The Sound Of Music Sing-Along, followed by the annual downtown Tacoma tree lighting, Sunday, Nov. 28, $9-$16 via weeklyvolcano.com Sign me up!
JUMP! Trampolining was pretty dang cool. Here’s a short video.
IMG_1013.MOV Watch on Posterous This is at a trampolining gym in Bellevue.
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
I enjoyed Gaiman's fantasy novel American Gods. It's a somewhat meandering novel (though why it meanders eventually makes sense) but with good characters and an interesting plot. The fantasy element assumes that America itself has no gods. Rather our immigrants, whether on a land bridge 14000 years ago or on a boat from Norway 100 years ago, brought their gods with them. And then forgot them. The land is filled with gods who used to be worshipped and feared but now wander the streets conning people into little acts of worship. And they are being challenged by the new gods–gods Read more…
Made me laugh
I asked Alexander – who actually co-owns the Villa Caffe & Imbibery on Market Street with Robyn Murphy – what the dinner special was for the night. He replied spaghetti, which was thrilling news. After he submitted the order to Murphy in the back kitchen, he reappeared to explain he was in big trouble. Apparently, earlier in the day when Alexander asked her what was for dinner, “spaghetti” was actually THEIR dinner they would eventually enjoy upstairs in their residence. “Oh, I’m in big trouble. She’s quickly making you spaghetti. It will be out a few minutes,” he explained. via Read more…
When China Rules the World by Martin Jacques
via amazon.com The World Trade Center, PLU, and City Club sponsored a lecture by Martin Jacques this morning. We were at the beautiful MOG theater and had a good-size crowd there. And the talk was fascinating. My first instinct when I heard the topic was “Isn’t that what everyone said about Japan 20 years ago?” But Jacques argument was rooted not in economic GDP data but history and other data that was fairly convincing. He touched on many themes including history, ethnicity, belief in the state, and others to suggest that as China modernizes they will not follow our model Read more…
Why call when you can telegraph your love?
via youtube.com I can’t believe this is becoming a trend. But I’m having a great time finding these old videos of pop songs you never hear any more. The songs are great. And the videos crack me up.
“Iron Man 2” was pretty good …
I enjoyed it, generally, but it didn’t have the freshness and greatness of the first Iron Man, I thought. It has triggered a lot of writing on the blogs I read. I thought one of the most interesting was from Ross Douthat at the New York Times, who is… “… wondering why we couldn’t have a movie about a Tony Stark-like figure — say, a screwball comedy about a billionaire’s romance with his omnicompetent assistant, which is basically the best thing about the “Iron Man” franchise anyway — in which he isn’t a superhero at all. And from there, it’s an even shorter leap Read more…
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