February 2005 Archives
elfintech posted a photo:
There are just so many pictures of The Gates, that nothing I took seemed interesting to me; I couldn't find my own voice there in the park. But this one, turned 90 degrees counter-clockwise from its original angle, reminded me of stock market graphs, or an EKG.
elfintech posted a photo:
a colorful trompe l'oeil mural on the side of a building just outside Penn Station.
New York to the World
Bruce McCall (thanks, Jeff, for the info)
elfintech posted a photo:
the swimming pool in the courtyard of my condo building, during yesterday's snow
Before the ballet Wednesday evening, Jeff and I had dinner in the Kennedy Center cafe. While eating, I noticed a male couple sitting a few tables away, one of whom seemed very familiar to me. However, I couldn't remember how I knew him, though I was pretty sure it was from years earlier... had he been a squaredancer, perhaps, or did I know him from the gay science-fiction club, or, even worse in the lack of recollection, might we ever have been intimate? Was it even here, in DC, or could it have been earlier, back when I lived in Boston? I couldn't remember his name, but I could recall a quality of voice, patterns of speech, so in whatever context we knew each other, we had spoken together, certainly.
Throughout dinner, I kept looking over, unable to help myself, trying to remember. Once or twice our eyes met, but there seemed to be no overt spark of recognition in his face. However, when he and his dinner companion finished, they walked over and he spoke first, saying that he was pretty sure we knew each other, but he couldn't recall where or how. I confessed I believed the same, but could not remember the connection either. He said, "car club"? I said, "No. Squaredancing?" He shook his head. "Do you know X?" "I know the name, but don't know him well; do you know Y and Z?" "No." We both shrugged. He gave me his name, I shared mine. Ah, yes, that sounded familiar... maybe it clicked. Yes? No, the connection yet remained elusive. Twenty-four hours later, it still does.
Wednesday evening we went to the Kennedy Center to see the Washington Ballet present their world premiere of Trey McIntyre's Rite of Spring, along with the Balanchine Stravinsky Violin Concerto and Christopher Wheeldon's There Where She Loved, the latter set to music by Chopin and Kurt Weill.
We were in the first row of the balcony, to one side, with a pretty good view of the stage. The first ballet was the Balanchine piece, which seemed pretty uninspiring and left me unimpressed; I ended up zoning out during much of it. After the first intermission, though, the company returned to perform the Wheeldon selection, which was accompanied by live pianist and two sopranos, one for the Chopin segments and one for the Weill, who alternated from segment to segment. This was an intensely moving piece about love, especially failed or misgiven love--I was actually brought to tears a couple of times--that sent me into the second intermission feeling extraordinarily energized (and with a determination to explore Weill's music in more depth).
It's unfortunate, then, that the world premiere of McIntyre's realization of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, while boldly provocative and with moments of great impact, as well as an intriguingly visualized setting in a (Venetian?) fancy-dress ball, overall came across as emotionless, confusing and not even particularly well-executed (with several falls and one missed entrance); moreover, the women's costumes--most often a sort of bustle--were visually distracting and seemed to be ill-conceived, as the dancers seemed almost to fight with them, or to be uncomfortable with their displaced centers of gravity.
On the other hand, any opportunity to see as much well-toned male flesh as the openly gay McIntyre's Rite offered can't be considered entirely a waste of time.
Oddly, the pictures and description offered on the Washington Ballet's web site to accompany the notice of McIntyre's Rite are nothing at all like the piece he actually offered; I think I'd have preferred the painted "Neanderthal tribe" to the decadent Borgia-esque treatment he ended up with.
elfintech posted a photo:
elfintech posted a photo:
elfintech posted a photo:
Still Life #30
Tom Wesselmann, April 1963.
Oil, enamel and synthetic polymer paint with collage.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
elfintech posted a photo:
The Spirit's Flight
Isamu Noguchi, 1969.
Green and pink serpentine.
94 x 5 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches.
Noguchi Museum, Queens, New York.
elfintech posted a photo:
elfintech posted a photo:
This bus-powered USB 2.0 enclosure is shaped like a 4" high tiki god, and comes in sizes ranging from 256MB to 4GB.
elfintech posted a photo:
On the way to the Kennedy Center for the ballet this evening, I was struck by the pink tint of the lights on the white stone structure, and the wonderful silhouettes of the trees.
elfintech posted a photo:
We were having dinner at Shirlington Thai last week, and I was struck by the unusual lighting fixtures in recessed alcoves. The effect in the final image was especially striking, with the ceiling seeming to disappear, making the vertical recess look almost like a fenced-in horizontal enclosure, and the vertical lamp more like a three-legged arc lamp. The whole scene almost looks to me like a nighttime archaeological dig, with the paint effect on the wall appearing like baked clay.
An exhibition comparing art by contemporary comic artists with drawings from when they were kids.
blog about Broadway musicals
A critique of so-called "intelligent design" (i.e., the new creationism).
elfintech posted a photo:
Three Women
Fernand Leger, 1921.
Oil on canvas.
Museum of Modern Art, New York.
elfintech posted a photo:
Downward Pulling #2
Isamu Noguchi, 1972.
Alicante and marquinia marble with white marble prop.
13 x 35 x 28 inches.
Noguchi Museum, Queens, New York.
elfintech posted a photo:
Downward Pulling #2
Isamu Noguchi, 1972.
Alicante and marquinia marble with white marble prop.
13 x 35 x 28 inches.
Noguchi Museum, Queens, New York.
elfintech posted a photo:
Downward Pulling #2
Isamu Noguchi, 1972.
Alicante and marquinia marble with white marble prop.
13 x 35 x 28 inches.
Noguchi Museum, Queens, New York.
elfintech posted a photo:
elfintech posted a photo:
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elfintech posted a photo:
Turnsole
Kenneth Noland, 1961.
Synthetic polymer paint on unprimed canvas.
Museum of Modern Art, New York
Photographers, know your rights: attorney and photographer advocate Bert P. Krages II has created The Photographer's Right, a PDF file meant to be printed, stowed in your camera bag and distributed in the event of a confrontation. ...
My high school English teacher always said, "If you don't know a word, look it up." A few quick ways to look up a word (say "virago") in your web browser:
- Firefox users: type dict virago in the address bar where web site addresses usually go. You'll be magically transported to dictionary.com's definition of the word.
- From a Google search box: type define:virago and you'll get definitions from various sources on the web.
Blogger Phillip Torrone at the previously-mentioned Make magazine weblog posts about how he customizes Firefox to post to his MovableType weblog. Using a combination of extensions - including spell-checker Spellbound and the Signature extension which can insert blocks of repeating...
A list from Typographica of favorite typefaces from those released in 2004.
Though still a finalist and strong contender for the title of most gay-unfriendly state, Virginia looks a little better today than it did yesterday. As the Washington Post reports today, "A Virginia Senate committee yesterday killed a bill [passed by the House of Delegates earlier this month by a vote of 71 to 24] that would have required state officials to report whether a person petitioning to adopt a child is 'currently engaged in voluntary homosexual activity.'" The original bill would have prohibited gay men and lesbians from becoming adoptive or foster parents outright, though before it moved to the Senate it had been amended merely to require that social service agencies report on the sexual orientation and activity of prospective adoptive parents; social service agencies already have broad latitude in determining parental suitability, so this seemed needlessly intrusive and bigoted.
Also, the delegate who had introduced a bill (also passed by the House) that would have created "Traditional Marriage" vanity license plates has asked the Senate to remove it from their docket, effectively killing it:
He said he wanted to strike the legislation because the General Assembly has already passed separate resolutions calling for a constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
"The passage of [the measures] better accomplishes the purpose of securing a clear definition of and support for traditional marriage than my bill could achieve," Lingamfelter said.
More likely, the decision to withdraw the bill was based on strong conjecture that it would be deemed unconstitutional, costing the state a lot of money and time to defend in the courts, and with the likely result (as has been mandated by courts elsewhere) that the state then would have to create a license plate presenting the opposing position of marriage equality.
Of course, the worst damage already has been done, with the House and Senate completing the first steps toward amending the Virginia Constitution to prohibit any legal relationships between same-sex couples, but at least there are a few tiny points of light.
When I was a kid, my dad--a Depression-era baby--used to caution me constantly about managing my money, urging me to save rather than spend any of my allowance. Among his favorite sayings were the classic "A fool and his money are soon parted" and "Money seems to burn a hole in your pocket". Along with other messages from my family, I internalized these to a degree I didn't fully understand until years later. I've managed to provide for myself financially: I've saved relatively well for my retirement, putting the maximum allowable amounts by law into my retirement annuities; with the exception of my mortgage (which will be paid off in 14 years), I'm debt-free; when I lost my job a few years back, I was able to continue to pay my mortgage and all my bills for the ten months it took me to find a new job; and I've even managed since then to build back up a reasonably comfortable cushion in my bank account. Yet I still feel a twinge of guilt, and hear my father's voice in my head when spending my money even on necessities, often making decisions (perhaps too much) about which foods to buy, or which brands, based purely on what's on sale that day.
Somewhat paradoxically, though, it's not all that uncommon for me to splurge and really treat myself on those things that are not necessities, but merely desires. I have lots of neat techie gadgets, for example, and I don't really even want to think about how many tens of thousands of dollars I've likely spent on CDs, DVDs, and computer games.
This weekend, I did my taxes, and it turns out that I'm getting a very healthy refund (thanks primarily to home ownership, my charitable donations and a $2,000 deduction for having bought a hybrid vehicle last year). No sooner had I completed the form, though, and seen the results, than I found myself wanting to go spend some of it right that minute, specifically on a new higher-end digital camera.
Yes, I just bought a new digital camera this past fall, as a self Christmas present. But then Jeff and I got crazy into photography, joined Flickr, and I began to feel that my point and click wasn't enough to satisfy my habit. So I've been researching digital SLRs and had finally decided on the Nikon D70. Over the weekend, not only did I determine the amount of my tax refund, but Best Buy was having a three-day sale--with a coupon for 10% off any purchase, including digital cameras--and Nikon is offering, through the end of March, a $200 rebate on the camera and lens combination. Normally I would buy online, since I can almost always find much better prices, but with the ten-percent discount I was excited about the idea of walking right out of Best Buy (despite the poor service I've consistently received from them in the past) with it rather than waiting a few days.
I got to Best Buy to discover, though, that I hadn't read the fine print on the coupon. While the front said that digital cameras were included, the back--in very small type exempting hundreds of items from the sale--noted that digital SLRs were not. So I decided not to buy the camera there, though I did walk out with three video and computer games.
Instead, then, I decided to buy the camera online. Late Monday I placed my order and selected overnight shipping; the camera (and all the accessories I ended up buying as well: a telephoto lens, filters, extra battery, memory card, carrying case; and now I realize I need to get a flash, too) was shipped yesterday and arrived today. I went home at lunch earlier today to pick it up from the concierge and to start charging the batteries.
So now I have a couple of days to learn how to use it, and then I'll have it with me for our last-minute New York trip this coming weekend. Woo-hoo, I'm excited.
So, it was an expensive purchase, even after the rebates, but this camera really should last me quite a while, and the lenses are an investment I'll be able to use with any future Nikon cameras I might buy. I'm getting a lot of enjoyment out of learning photography, and it's even more fun sharing the hobby with Jeff. So it's money well-spent, I think.
elfintech posted a photo:
Alex pretends to nap in the late afternoon sun. Almost looks as though he's smiling.
elfintech posted a photo:
My Christmas cactus had a few blooms last November, but then just in the past week has exploded with new blooms.
elfintech posted a photo:
My Christmas cactus had a few blooms last November, but then just in the past week has exploded with new blooms.
elfintech posted a photo:
My Christmas cactus had a few blooms last November, but then just in the past week has exploded with new blooms.
elfintech posted a photo:
My Christmas cactus had a few blooms last November, but then just in the past week has exploded with new blooms.
elfintech posted a photo:
My Christmas cactus had a few blooms last November, but then just in the past week has exploded with new blooms.
elfintech posted a photo:
My Christmas cactus had a few blooms last November, but then just in the past week has exploded with new blooms.
elfintech posted a photo:
My Christmas cactus had a few blooms last November, but then just in the past week has exploded with new blooms.
elfintech posted a photo:
While doing the dishes, I was cleaning out a can of fruit used for dessert, and the rim was very sharp. The cut actually was shallow and clean, so there was a lot of blood, but not really a very bad cut. The very first thing I did before even cleaning it was to grab the camera. Flickr is crack.
elfintech posted a photo:
While doing the dishes, I was cleaning out a can of fruit used for dessert, and the rim was very sharp. You can see that after I cleaned it off, the cut actually is very small, really not much more than a paper cut. The very first thing I did before even cleaning it was to grab the camera. Flickr is crack.
elfintech posted a photo:
While doing the dishes, I was cleaning out a can of fruit used for dessert, and the rim was very sharp. The cut actually was shallow and clean, so there was a lot of blood, but not really a very bad cut. Here it is after being washed off and with a bandaid on the boo-boo. The very first thing I did before even cleaning it was to grab the camera. Flickr is crack.
While most days I wear a dress shirt and tie to work, I rarely wear a suit jacket or sports coat. Today, however, because I'd been told that I might have to give a tour of our digital labs and demo of our distance learning products to some of Secretary Rice's staff, I took a jacket with me. When the staff finally were on their way to our office I threw on the jacket, at which point I noticed something in the pocket that felt like candy wrapped in plastic. I reached in and pulled out... a condom. I have no idea where I actually got it or, even more curiously, why I would have been wearing my suit jacket at the time.
humorous q and a about TiVo [via hitormiss]
elfintech posted a photo:
elfintech posted a photo:
Yesterday morning the odometer on the Prius hit 8888. At the first stoplight, I grabbed my camera out of my bag to capture it.
elfintech posted a photo:
The floor of the room in which this was the ceiling, and in which a bust of Benjamin Franklin was found at the center.
Interactive portrait of U.S. name choices, based on Social Security Administration database of baby names. [via rebelprince]
elfintech posted a photo:
Ceremonial Teahouse Sunkaraku ("fleeting joys") inside the Asian wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
elfintech posted a photo:
Roof detail at the Ceremonial Teahouse Sunkaraku ("fleeting joys") inside the Asian wing of the Philadelphia Museum of Art
A great interview with Flickr's Stewart Butterfield.
"Welcome to the key-worded universe." Salon looks at tagging.
Xeni Jardin: Google has launched Google Maps, a DHTML-driven, map-making engine that pans smoothly and zooms with ease. Other features: directions, business locator, and zero ads (for the time being, at least). Link. It does not suck at all. (Thanks, Greg Brown)
elfintech posted a photo:
Black Kites
Gabriel Orozco, 1997.
Human skull and graphite.
Philadelphia Museum of Art
elfintech posted a photo:
elfintech posted a photo:
Clothespin
Claes Oldenburg, 1976.
Cor-Ten and stainless steel. 45-feet tall, 10 tons.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, north side of Market Street at 15th.
elfintech posted a photo:
Milord la Chamarre ("My Lord of the Fancy Vest," also called "The Mummer")
Jean Dubuffet, 1973-74.
Stainless steel with black epoxy paint; granite platform on stainless steel column. 24-feet high (base height 10'2").
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, south side of Market Street between 15th and 16th, facing northwest.
elfintech posted a photo:
elfintech posted a photo:
Eagles fans, South Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania the afternoon before the Superbowl
elfintech posted a photo:
Next to the "Magic Garden" community sculpture garden on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
elfintech posted a photo:
The "Magic Garden" community sculpture garden on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
elfintech posted a photo:
The "Magic Garden" community sculpture garden on South Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
elfintech posted a photo:
Our quick weekend trip to Philadelphia was a great success, and overall we had a really nice time. We didn't head out until around noon on Saturday, arriving at the hotel about 2:30. After checking in, we went for a walk down to South Street and then up the Street to the waterfront, stopping along the way for a cheesesteak at Jim's Steaks (which is so insanely popular that we waited on line well over an hour). We made our way back to the hotel via Society Hill, taking a lot of photographs along the way (I've only put up a few so far, mostly just for the squared circle project) but more will be trickling in over the coming days), in time to change clothes and head over to the theater for the ballet, the primary raison d'etre for the trip.
The order of the three works on the evening's program were slightly changed Saturday night, possibly because of an earlier Philadelphia Inquirer review noting that the world premiere of 11:11--set to Rufus Wainwright's music, and our impetus for getting tickets in the first place--was by far the strongest of the pieces (though the New York Times disagreed; my own sentiments are much more in line with the Inquirer). Earlier performances had led with 11:11, followed by an intermission, Peter Martin's Waltz Project, another intermission, and ending with Twyla Tharp's 1982 piece, Nine Sinatra Songs. Saturday night the program started with Waltz Project, which I found to be a complete snoozer--quite literally, I kept falling asleep during the hypnotic (Cage, Glass, Gould, etc.) music and mostly uninspiring choreography.
11:11, though, was a sheer delight (though I'd have expected something with perhaps a little less mixed-gender pairing, and some stronger male-male pas de deux, given the obvious homoeroticism of Wainwright's music). Full of energy, it left me personally feeling more energized than when it had begun, and the dancers really seemed to enjoy it. I hope that the piece gets some broader attention.
Tharp's Nine Sinatra Songs was pleasant enough, with some particular standouts among the company, though on the whole I felt that the dancers sometimes seemed merely to be going through the motions and the piece a bit dated. All in all, though, I really enjoyed the evening; the Merriam Theater is a really beautiful venue, although the seats felt a little too narrow (and it's not like Jeff or I are of even average width), and the crowds a little too pushy (in that regard, in fact, the audiences seemed much more rude than crowds in either DC or New York, with even little old ladies unabashedly cutting ahead of us in the will call line, for example).
Yesterday morning we slept in and then had a late complimentary breakfast, and given the incredibly warm, friendly and sociable attitude of the staff at our hotel, the Alexander Inn, the adjective fits in more ways than one, after which we strolled around Center City some more, heading down Walnut Street to Rittenhouse Square and then back by City Hall.
Our final stop before heading back to Arlington was the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which blew my mind. Living in DC, perhaps we tend to be lulled into the frame of mind that the Smithsonian is all the museum(s) one needs. And being asked to pay to visit a museum sometimes feels like an absurd practical joke. After the time we spent in the Philadelphia Museum, though, I almost feel it was overly, perhaps unbecomingly modest of them to ask only a ten-dollar admission; I felt almost like I'd cheated them, or that I'd been the beneficiary of some charitable largesse.
First of all, the museum is itself a solidly and beautifully imposing piece of architecture, with commanding and ever-changing views of the city as you mount its steps (perhaps best-known for the backdrop they provided to Sylvester Stallone's Rocky Balboa). It was made even more dramatic by the golden afternoon light that spilled over the steps and landings, casting the beautiful frieze on the northern wing into sharp relief (pun intended). And inside the halls seem to go on for miles; it was only upon returning home, after having spent three hours inside, that I realized we'd nonetheless missed entire rooms (we didn't see the Vermeer currently there on loan, for example, or any of the Eakins for which it turns out the museum is famed. The museum is really amazing, though, for the number of rooms that recreate other places: one room, for example, contained three buildings from an eighteenth-century ceremonial Japanese teahouse, another the pillared hall from a sixteenth-century shrine to Vishnu, another the cloister of a thirteenth-century French abbey, along with many others recreating such diverse sites as a Pennsylvania German farmhouse kitchen, a Paris hotel salon, and the drawing room of a New York Fifth Avenue townhouse.
We had a fantastic weekend, and really want to spend some more time exploring Philadelphia. It's so close, really--just about a two-and-a-half-hour drive--and such a pedestrian-friendly city once there.
