Kafka on the Shore (海辺のカフカ, Umibe no Kafuka) [wikipedia] by Haruki Murakami is the book for tonight.
I must remember to talk to Dennis about A Mighty Wind and Eugene Levy's incredible performance and to ask about the CD.
(written 9/10/2007; future-posted to 9/12/2007)
PCPL is starting up Book Discussion tonight after the summer break and the book is The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova. I've only read a dozen pages of this 650+ page tome (ha ha!)since I didn't get it until last week. I'll go to the dicussion, and I'll read the book, but I won't be able to talk about it until next month. I've also got to finish the book for the Dublin Book Discussion on Wednesday.
Through the traffic to the daughter's school to meet her third grade teacher. It would be so nice if the school had central air conditioning. It would also be great if the school didn't try and raise money by selling nuritionally void Market Day products. It's ironic when she brings home papers about the Food Pyramid and Market Day flyers for pre-processed food items.
(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 9/6/2007)
Turner Classic Movies ran Mr. Holland's Opus [imdb] at 8 in the evening. The wife and I watched this after putting the daughter to bed. I was certain I'd seen this before and I kept looking for Madeline Zima to make an appearence. It turns out that neither of us had seen this film, and I was thinking of The Sandy Bottom Ochestra [imdb] which which has Zima in it. It came out in 2000 and was a TV movie. Mr. Holland was from 1995. The film is excellent and the soundtrack (like Forest Gump, there are two albums out) is a wonderful mix of classical and contemporary music from the 1960s (and before) up to the then current 1995. Now I want to see Sandy Bottom Ochestra again. By a strange turn of events, Glenne Headly [imdb] has leading parts both films. As for Zima, in Sandy Bottom Ochestra she played a character named "Rachel Green". Friends [imdb] had been on for 6 years when this was made.
The next film up was To Sir, with Love [imdb] whichI've seen parts of several times, but never all at one sitting. The cinematography in the museum visit was very well done. Sidney Poitier's acting style is amazing. He was 40 the year that film was made. I was just born. He directed Stir Crazy [imdb]? I didn't know that. It seems that 1967 was a busy year for him with To Sir, In the Heat of the Night [imdb] and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner [imdb].
We went to sleep then, not watching Goodbye, Mr. Chips and Dead Poets Society.
(written 9/6/2007; back-dated to 9/5/2007)
While at the mall and waiting for the daughter's eyeglasses to be made, we had dinner. The wife and daughter shared Chinese food which they said was not as good as what they were used to over the summer. I wandered trying to see what looked good and opted for Subway.
After I was finished, I noticed that there was a place called Krr-Pop! The Popcorn Place and, that to my surprise, the sold not only popcorn, which I didn't want for dinner, but also Hot Dogs and other carnival fair, which would have been different. I went over and said the needed a bigger sign to show all they offered (this was printed too small) and I found that this shop is the only one of its kind. I'd thought it was a chain. Next time I'm over at the mall, I'll stop in. I wish them all the success they need.
(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/28/2007)
The daughter, wife and I went out to the mall and the daughter was fitted for eye glasses. She can use them on the computer and for reading and if she wants to, she can where them all the time. She loves the frames and I personally think she looks like a 25 year old fashion designer. We just need to get her a show on Bravo TV and all will be complete!
In the back of my mind, her having to get glasses was something that has worried me for years. I'm afraid it will just enforce the stereotype of the brainy child. Daughter, don't read this until you're much older, okay?
(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/28/2007)
The daughter had her first day of third grade today. Her BFF, who was in both first and second grade with her was not in her class and this was rough. But we think it will help her to grow.
(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/28/2007)
I still have money left on my onesuite.com account and after working on Errol Sitahal's website, I decided to call him on Sunday evening. His wife answered and then we talked for about 35 minutes. I admit, I was gushing like a fan-boy at first. We went over many of the items on his resume and he provided some much needed additions. He even added one other TV program he was on that I didn't have.
The greatest amount of content is the Biography and the Resume. I think I've got he resume much closer to chronological order. The biography was greatly expaned once I found his entry in The Cambirdge Guide to African and Carribean Theatre. I need to pick one thing and work on it with him. I'd say the resume as this should be accurate and can be send to his agent to update his professional resume. Then we should concentrate on the biography. I can send him the details as I found them in the guide book. It only runs to 1994, which is a good stopping point; his film career started in 1995. Still, it's out of date by 12 years now. So much we can be doing with it.
As for calling again, I think I will put that off for at least another month if not two since Errol and I have many things to do that we should be doing via email.
(written 9/10/2007; back-dated to 8/12/2007)
The wife and I went to go and see Live Free or Die Hard Tuesday night. Bruce Willis is looking old, or perhaps it was just John McClane looking old? The film was good, but could have been better. The theater was running their preview and advertisements show. Interesting things were:
Previews were:
(written 8/8/07; back-dated to 8/7/07)
Tonight, 62 years after the atomic bombing I read Hiroshima [wikipedia] by John Hersey [wikipedia]. It follows the lives of six survivors of the bombing. It was published, in its entirety, in the August 31, 1946 edition of The New Yorker magazine. This edition is from 1983 and there are later copies that have a 5th section in addition to the original 1946 essay that detail Hersey's travels to Japan to see what became of the six people profiled in the book. Hersey died in 1993, so I'm wondering what edition, since mine is the 18th. The story is sad and graphic in places. Every August I tend to think about the bombings.
I've not gone out to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum [Official site, wikipedia] in a long time, but as I remember, the Virtual Museum was very well done.
My wife and daughter are flying from Toronto to Columbus today.
(written 6/21/2007; forward-dated to 8/4/2007)
Today, my wife and daughter fly back to Toronto, Canada from Beijing, China. Since they have an 18 hour layover, they are staying in a hotel for the night.
(written 6/21/2007; forward-dated to 8/3/2007)
Last night I finished watching the 1989 film Why Has Bodhi Dharma Left for the East? [IMDB, Amazon], a film I've been wanting to watch since I glimpsed the cover in the library. It has comparisons to Ozu (whose films I've not seen) and Tarkovsky (who did Solaris [IMDB], which I love).
The Korean title is Dharmaga tongjoguro kan kkadalgun. Yong-Kyun Bae [IMDB] is the Director, Writer, Cinematographer & Editor, and took 7 years and his own funding for the film. Not entirely unlike Mike Jittlov.
Like Solaris, this needs multiple viewings.
Looking over Solaris, at the IMDB, it's soon going to be time to watch this again. I wish I had the VHS and DVD versions myself. Lots of subtile changes between them. I remember how the VHS version had both letterboxing bars at the bottom to allow a bigger area for subtitling. None of the titles were on the picture. It's funny to remember watching Return of the Jedi in the theater and seeing the subtitles over the picture. But when you watch it on DVD in widescreen, the subtitles are below the picture, in the black bar.
Methinks there is something wrong with blogger again. The photo is showing here in the edit of my post, but not on the view of the blog. Also, the bold is gone. At first, I thought that an issue with the template I'm using. Perhaps I should go back to my old tripod page after all. I've got better control there.
I met David at the camera club meeting and afterward were were discussing, among other things, a picture of Kathy Sullivan. I found some links out at GRIN (GReat Images in NASA). There are 50 photos specifically on women here. I put these pretty much in chronological order. Links for the photos in various sizes are at the bottom of the pages. The two I was talking about of Kathy are numbers 4 and 7:
I was listening to some small sample clips of Hope Vitellas and went out to see if she's added anyting new. Her official site is suspended for now. What the _? I checked and she does have a MySpace site here. I still need to get her CD from last year. She's got presence!
I'll go update my post in June 2006 and put the link there too.
I'm surprised I've not watched Kiki's Delivery Service (Majo no takkyûbin @ IMDB) since the wife and daughter have been in China. I do need to watch A Mighty Wind and return it tomorrow, so I shouldn't be posting now, but I am. Thinking about Kiki made me think of the new beginning and ending music for the Disney VHS release back on 1 September 1998. (That version was Pan and Scan. On 29 September they released the widescreen and I should have waited. Of course there was also the subtitled widescreen VHS that I didn't get either.)
The songs Soaring, used for the opening, and I'm Gonna Fly, used for the ending, were sung by Sydney Forest. I like the songs in the original Japanese but these are good too. One of the things Disney/Buena Vista did right. (Some of the other musical changes are good too.) Back in 2000, you could order a CD from her site called "Collected Film and Television Works" for $5 that had those two songs and three others by her. The CD is listed at here at nausicaa.net at the bottom.
I went out and using the mp3 search on AltaVista, you can find very good quality (192 k) versions of these two songs:
Up late last night, but up in time to talk with the wife on the phone. The daughter is not behaving as she should and so she's "in jail". That is, in her room, with nothing to do, except for meals and the bathroom.
The history channel ran "Beyond the War of the Worlds" about Mars. It featured Jeff Wayne's musical version of "The War of the Worlds" which is a 2006 computer animated movie.
Flipping channels and I see that Khaled Hosseini is on C-SPAN2's "Book TV" talking about "A Thousand Splendid Suns". It is from 5/24/07 recored in Philidelphia. He's reading the first chapter. But I've got things to do and I'm going to turn it off and either listen to the radio or to a movie that I've seen and don't need to watch. Maybe. I may just listen in, as it's not too distracting.
(Why can't I put in a title for this entry? That's weird. It's not letting me in the field with IE or Firefox.)
At the showing of Transformers there was a 7th trailer for an untitled movie produced by J.J. Abrams. There is an entry on IMDB simply called "Untitled J.J. Abrams Project". The working title or code name is "Cloverfield", "Clover" or "Parasite". The offical site seems to be http://www.1-18-08.com/, but there is only a photo there. And the "analysis" of the space between the two women in the picture is total conjecture. I say it's nothing at all of any significance.
Youtube.com has copies of the trailer but they are being taken down soon after being put up. In one comment, some pointed a much better copy here, but it has the beginning cut off. Keepvid.com won't download it. But it does look quite a bit better.
Here's my nutshell review:
Sixteens words. For me, that is amazing.Transformers is the movie I had hoped Independence Day was going to be
eleven years ago.
I'm still not too happy about blogger being so narrow. I finally dug around and found where in the template code to set to width for the page and this posting column. It's screwed up some of the images, but it gives me more than an index card's width to type.
I changed to a different template so that I could get dates to stand out more. I'm torn between wanting to blog everything for a given day under an entry named for the day, or post in pieces over the course of a day.
Tonight I found out that the longer version of Waterworld, the one that was on ABC years ago was on the SciFi Channel. Unfortunately, it was already an hour into the broadcast. It would be a good project to get that recorded and then to integrate it with the wide screen footage of the DVD. You could even make it so that the full screen parts were properly centered within the letter boxed area. It would look funny when it transitioned, but it would be cool.
Worked late getting things done so as to take Friday off. When I got home, watched some of Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmare on BBC America. I've never heard a show with so much bleeping. I don't get it. What's the fascination with such a huge level of crude language? It's childish and it gets old quickly with me. I saw this show years ago. Lenny Henry was in it, it was called Chef! and at that time it was enjoyable to watch.
(written 6/15/2007; back-dated to 6/14/2007)
Today gas was $3.49 at both the BP and Shell on the way to work. Yesterday it was $3.19 - the weekly day of when it goes up seems to be Wednesday.
Walter Marty "Wally" Schirra (March 12, 1923 - May 3, 2007) died today. He was one of the original seven Mercury astronauts and the only astronaut to fly in the Mercury (MA-8 "Sigma 7"), Gemini (6A) and Apollo (7) programs.
His death leaves only two Mercury astronauts still living: John H. Glenn and M. Scott Carpenter.
(Written 5/8/2007; back-dated to 5/3/2007)
Morgan Spurlock's Supersize Me was on MSNBC last night. The wife and I watched it a couple of weeks back on a Friday. I've still missed just the beginning. I'm still eating out from time to time, but I've kept my resolution about no McDonalds for all of 2007.
I just made a retro post about something I submitted to the IMDB and amazingly it was on the same day as my post about the Edwin J Hill Social Club Bash at Studio 35. I didn't see that coming.
I suppose I should see about using labels for my posts.
I spoke with Ken a few weeks back on a trip to Chillicothe. He told me about Face of the Screaming Werewolf ([Wikipedia] [Amazon]) that he had published recently through Xlibris - part of Randolm House.
Today I got an email from him (sent yesterday). There's a write about him in the Arlington Heights Post. He's having a book-signing on Saturday. Here's the link. Don't know how long it will be up there.
I worked on the story in the moring and did word counts periodically as I went along. The limit was 1,000 words minus the title and my contact info at the end. The last count I remember was around 670. With the deadline getting closer, I focused on just writing and when I finally was happy with the story, I was shocked to see I had 1,374 words and I would need to cut more than one-quarter of what I had.
Ultimately, I got it down to exactly 1,000 words and send it off. I was 5 minutes late and I knew it would not be accepted, but I wanted to complete it. Angela, from Writer's Weekly did send me a confirmation noting the time and letting me know it was a disqualified entry. After reading all of the tales in the rules about how people try and fool her, wrote back an honest reply: I knew it was late and I was editing like a mad-man to get down to the limit. I enjoyed it and I would definitely enter the next contest. I hope that she was surprised a bit by an email that was out of the usual.
As for my story, I've not worked on it all week - work has been too busy. I did send my submission to Darren to review and told him of my goals:
But when can I work on it? And book discussion is coming up again soon. Can I get it done?
"If he has the time, doctor. If he has the time." - Mr. Spock
(written 4/27/2007; back-dated 4/22/07)After speaking with Darren last week, lamenting my desire to write, I entered the Writer's Weekly Spring '07 24-Hour Short Story Contest, at his suggestion. Darren entered it back in Fall of '05 and posted his entry to his blog. We talked about the winning story in the Winter '06 contest. I thought it was too much like the Warner Bros. cartoons that parody Of Mice and Men.
The morning of the contest, The daughter went over to a friend's house while I went to an optometrist visit. I may get glasses for all the time wear - possibly no-line bi-focals. I'm glad I didn't have the OD dilate my eyes as it would take 6 hours to recover and I was driving alone. Plus I was going to write later in the day. I headed home to check my email and was going to pick up the daughter by 4:30 PM.
I didn't get the story stub in email, so I went out the site and found it. Here's the stub:
She could hear the buoy bell ringing in the distance but it was too dark to see anything beyond the receding foamy water. She shivered as the wind picked up, knowing a late-season Nor'easter would hit in the next few hours, and knowing this was her last chance. She raised her arm and threw the glass bottle into the darkness...
Today is the release date. And I've still not bought it. Target's got it on their website for $20, but I don't think they will match their prices in the store. I'm still watching the VCDs of it, but I want it for the better picture and the commentary. Can't wait until season 3. When the heck is "winter".
(It looks like you can set any date on the post time. Finally, I can post back before 1990.)
(written 4/27/2007; back-dated to 4/17/2007)
April 12, 1961 - Vostok I
Fourty-six years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to orbit the Earth. Six years Nearly seven years later, on March 27, 1968, Gagarin and his flight instructor, Seregin, died in a crash of their MiG-15.
(Photo from Russian Institute of Radionavigation and Time http://www.rirt.ru/ )
April 12, 1981 - STS-1
Twenty-six years ago today, John Young and Robert Crippen launched on the first shuttle flight aboard the shuttle Columbia. Nearly twenty-two years years later, on February 1, 2003, Columbia and her crew of seven would be lost during the retry of STS-107, her 28th mission and the 113th shuttle flight overall.
(Photo from NASA)
Got an email from Dennis, my friend at book discussion:From: Dennis (snip)
To: Michael (snip)
Subject: Kurt Vonnegut
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 07:42:01 -0700 (PDT)
Kurt Vonnegut died yesterday. So it goes.
And my reply to him:From : Michael (snip)
Sent : Thursday, April 12, 2007 11:06 AM
To : Dennis (snip)
Subject : RE: Kurt Vonnegut
"Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurts" - the tombstone from (I believe) Slaughterhouse Five.
(I'd not heard of this until I saw your email and I knew what happened just from the subject. Damn.)
- Mike
(written 7/31/2007; back-dated to 4/12/2007)
This morning, on the drive to work, I saw a second blue heron. I saw another one a couple of days back, on my way home from work. This one today was flying towards the north: a long, slender bird, high above the thining fog. There was a group of three other birds it was heading toward, but I don't think it was going to congregate. It was solitary and flying with a purpose someplace else.
Graceful and determined, it moved - its course set.
Just like my course.
But it didn't have to work. :)
No time now for a Heron Haiku - perhaps later.
The wife, daughter and I went to go see Bridge to Terebithia as part of our 7th annual Family Day. The film was good, but sad and made all the moreso by how cute AnnaSophia Robb looked as Leslie. We all want to read the book. (The daughter is a very good reader. She's in 2nd grade and reading at a 5.0 in the Accelerated Reader (AR) program. She's been reading the Harry Potter books and is more than half way through the fourth one.) As I said, it is very sad and I was surprised that the daughter didn't cry at a few places. I've told her that it is okay to cry and I'm thinking that she may talk about it a few days later.
There were four previews:
My daughter come into work for a bit in the early evening and did a little artwork in MS Paint. In art and technology her class was studying painters and so she worked up her own version of a Piet Mondrian. Here is her painting along side Mondrian's Composition with Yellow, Blue, and Red, public domain from Wikipedia.
(written 9/11/2007; back-dated to 1/18/2007)
