In the Headlights

Crunchy. Tastes Like Chicken

When Stryder and L.C. set out to celebrate a birthday, they do it right.

Actually, it was L.C.'s sister's birthday, and they went to Raleigh, North Carolina to a BugFest, or should I say bug feast.  Held at the Museum of Natural Sciences, the annual festival has displays and tutorials, exhibits and activities.  And, last but not least, the Cafe Insecta.

Café Insecta Bugfest 2007 Menu Starters Buggy Bean Dip with Crackers Low Country Shrimp Dip Main Courses Hoppin’ Hunan Stir-fry Grasshoppers over Rice Mealworms Marinara Creole Crawfish over Rice Side Dishes Hush Grubbies Critter Fritters Waxworm and Watercress Salad Desserts Wormy Watermelon & Mint Bug Bite Cookies Ants in Amber Home What's New? Visitor Info Calendar Exhibits Education Research Museum Store Join Us! Search Fun Stuff Site Map Staff Directory Links North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources

Both Stryder and L.C. ate the bugs.  There is no mention of the large quantities of alcohol that would have been required as a condition of my participation.

The Secret Life of Shelf Liner

A few days ago, I was visiting my neighbor, Jan, and her chocolate labs gave me an effusive greeting. 

Unfortunately, I was wearing black.  By the time we were done hugging each other, I had a fair amount of lab on me.

Jan said not to worry, and handed me a piece of mesh rubberized shelf liner.  I wiped myself with it, and lo and behold, no more fur.

This was an eye-opening moment.  I had to try it on my cat Dandy's favorite black dining room chair.  After about a week, it looks like it is a fur seat.  I bought a rool of the shelf liner, more than I will use in a lifetime, at Target for about $2.98.

It did a great job on the chair.  Almost no hair was left after one pass.

In addition, Jan mentioned that I should cut a piece and keep it in the car.  If I want to toss my cell phone on the dash (and I do like to have it out, otherwise I'm fumbling for it driving down the highway), the mat will keep it there.  Indeed, it does.  I put it on the dash and tossed my pager and phone on it, and they didn't budge an inch.  It was great.  I do make a point of removing it and tossing it on the passenger-side floor when I'm not driving, though, because I imagine that a few days in the hot sun, and it will be permanently affixed to the dash.  It wouldn't be a pretty sight.

If you decide to get some shelf liner for this purpose, I'd suggest you get a darker color (it comes in brown).  The white does cause a bit of glare when the sunlight hits it.  Aside from that, it's a great use for an inexpensive product.

Tattoo Me?

I get a lot of hits from people searching google for tattoo sites.  While I'm not a big site, I find myself fascinated by body art.  And while I have none of my own, some of the new innovations make me think I might do it some day.

  One of the reasons I haven't gotten one is that they are so, well, permanent.  Like plastic surgery.  What if you don't like how it turns out?  Plus, if you worry about such things (and no, I don't), it is a permanent identifying mark.  You are basically hosed.  So I'm more drawn to the temporary tattoo type thing.

A new ink innovation from a company called Freedom-2 has developed an ink that makes it a bit easier to commit.  The ink is bound in a polymer that stays happily (and permanently) in the skin.  Until, one day, you might decide you want to remove "Billy Bob Forever" from a conspicuous spot on your body.  Then, when you hook up with Brad, the folks at Freedom-2 can laser your tattoo dissolving the ink (all colors) for absorption into your body where it becomes metabolized.  The lasering of the Freedom-2 tattoos is a fraction of the cost and pain of lasering a regular tattoo.

Billy Bob might think you are hedging your bets, getting an easily removable tattoo...sort of like asking for a pre-nup.  But I think it is a sign of maturity (hmmm...)that you consider that this has all the benefits (permanent if you so desire) of a regular tattoo with no apparent down side.

I'm a step closer to commiting.

The images are of a tattoo Freedom-2's owner, Martin Schmieg had placed then removed.  The photo on the right is after a single laser treatment.  The Freedom-2 website is full of information, photos, press releases and the like...the place to start if you want to know more.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

...is Bill Bryson's sweet memoir of growing up in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1950's.  It will resonate with anyone who grew up in the United States in those years, indeed with anyone who lived in that decade.  It will seem like science fiction to anyone who did not.

It examines the schizophrenia of the times, the innocence, even naivete of people living in the time paired with some of the great evils like rampant racism, governments playing nuclear chicken, and ham-handed (maybe ham-fisted) CIA involvement in the government of other countries. His description of our suppression of Guatemala's democratically elected government to further the interests of privately-owned United Fruit made my hair stand on end.

So it is a warm and fuzzy story of his early years, quirky family and friends, if you don't mind germs, teen alcoholism and larceny.  Kids pretty much did as they pleased, played together unsupervised, loosely governed by their parents and their friends' parents.

The Thunderbolt Kid is young Billy's avatar, complete with super powers, whom he invokes at times of helpless frustration.  He doesn't appear very often, just enough to justify the title of the book. 

Woven through the story of his youth is the story of the coming of age of our nation from a time when you hid under your desk to prepare for a nuclear strike, a time when automobile ownership and televisions spearheaded an era of rampant consumerism, where ownership was a goal in itself.  A time when people trusted their government and worried about alien invaders.

There is plenty of young lustful yearning, the truth about having a paper route (my brothers did this, and I had to sub a few times), and wild adventures.  Ultimately, he faces the demise of that life at the end of the decade and the beginning of the next.  He had, and I share, mixed feelings about it.

His friend Stephen Katz, is featured prominently in this book.  Katz is his hiking partner in his fine book A Walk in the Woods, about hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Bryson has written numberous books, many about travel.  Recently, he published an award-winning tome called A Short History of Nearly Everything, which explains many scientific principles and facts that he felt he needed to understand.  To me, it sounds reminiscent of Natalie Angier's  The Canon.  He has been a journalist, written about language, and become very involved in life in Britain, where he lives with his family.

Listen to an NPR interview with Bryson here.

Untitled #32

Untitled #32 is one of a series of dance photographs titled Dominican Moves by Mikhail Baryshnikov.  This particular print was one of many featured at the J. Johnson Gallery, a lovely spot where some friends and I went for a reception in his honor a couple of nights ago.  A couple dozen of his photos were featured;  all somewhat abstract, depicting motion...none were purely "photographic."  Nor were they what you might expect.  There were classical dancers, casual dancers, exotic dancers.  Many were wrapped in shadow.  You can browse some of them here at Artnet.

The proceeds from the tickets went to The Nature Conservancy;  those from sale of the print went to White Oak Conservation Center. 

My friend Kelly is also a photographer, and recently put opened her own website, featuring her nature and abstract photography.

   

This abstract is called Pixie Dancing.

As much as I like her abstract photos, I find her nature photos put me in a calm state immediately.  There is a Zen beauty and serenity to them that I find very pleasing.

 

This one is Water Colors.

Check out her site, Ekovisions to visit the whole gallery.

A Poet on Poetry

I very much enjoy the poetry of Billy Collins, former Poet Laureate of the United States.  But don't hold that against him.  He is an excellent, insightful and very funny writer (and reader) of his own works.

So how could I not print this poem, which is today's featured poem on NPR's The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor.

The poem is called "Sonnet", from Sailing Alone Around the Room.  I'm pretty sure he reads it on Billy Collins Live, A Performance at the Peter Norton Symphony Space which, to my mind, makes his perfect-pitch poetry even better.  This poem reminds me of having to write a 500-word, or a thousand or, heaven forbid, two-thousand-word essay, and using as much filler as possible, to fill the quota without actually doing much work.  Better yet, a two page essay, where you not only used filler, but wrote as large as you'd dare, skipped spaces between paragraphs, and generally had the same goal.  Collins's goal here is to get 12 lines of poetry done. 

Without futher ado, here's "Sonnet":

All we need is fourteen lines, well, thirteen now,
and after this one, just a dozen
to launch a little ship on love's storm-tossed seas,
then only ten more left like rows of beans.
How easily it goes unless you get Elizabethan
and insist iambic bongos must be played
and rhymes positioned at the ends of lines'
one for every station of the cross.
But hang on there while we make the turn
into the final six where all will be resolved,
where longing and heartache will find an end,
where Laura will tell Petrarch to put down his pen,
take off those crazy medieval tights,
blowout the lights, and come, at last, to bed.

  [Men in tights via the Very Merry Seamstress]

Oh, the Shame of it All!

There's a website dedicated to humiliating cats.  It's called Stuff on My Cat and it's photo after photo of cats in compromising positions, like the one with a mouse necktie.

And while some look content or just oblivious, it is obvious that some aren't so happy about the whole thing.

I know one thing for sure, my cats would never put up with it.

Check it out.  It's hilarious.

Art Imitates Life?

I watched White Nights last night, with Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines.  (The rest of the cast is illustrious too:  Isabella Rossellini, Helen Mirren, Geraldine Page).

It was a late night viewing, after the movie arrived from Amazon.  I'd tried to find it at Blockbuster and the local library, without any luck.  I ordered it online Sunday and it came in Wednesday's mail.

I had never seen it.  I had to see it.

Tomorrow, Baryshnikov will be in town at a reception in a local art gallery, featuring photographs of dance taken by Mischa himself.  It is for charity.  The money from the tickets will go to The Nature Conservancy, and revenue from twenty signed photos will go to my favorite place, White Oak Conservation Center.  Baryshnikov was a friend of Howard Gilman's (the founder of White Oak), and built a dance studio at White Oak.

I am taking some of the dance instructors at the studio where I take my lessons.  They're pretty excited, but were aghast to hear I had never seen Baryshnikov, except in some short clips on TV.  So White Nights was my crash course. 

I thought it was great.  The plot was quite good, the acting and cast were great (Helen Mirren, who is director Taylor Hackford's wife, as the Kirov ballerina Nikolai Redchenko left behind.  Did you know she's half Russian?)

I thought the plot was good.  Enough tension, but not prolonged misery or hyperbole.

Baryshnikov plays Nikolai Redchenko, a Russian ballet star who defected to the U.S.  The movie opens with him dancing Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.  Then it is off to Japan, but he and his agent never arrives...the plane develops engine trouble and lands in Siberia.  Redchenko sustains a head injury in the accident, and is taken by the Soviets, who want him, when he heals, to dance at the Kirov.

Hoping to convince/coerce him to stay, they board him with an American defector, Raymond Greenwood (Gregory Hines) and his wife Darya (Isabella Rossellini).  They also involve Galina Ivanova, the beautiful director of the Kirov, whom Redchenko left behind when he defected.

There is tension between Nikolai and, well, just about everyone.  But through their forced proximity, he and Ray gradually develop a bond based on their admiration of one another's dancing, which, by the way is phenomenal.  Each is featured in a few pieces, Hines's primarily tap, and Baryshnikov some athletic combination of ballet and modern dance.  The show stopper is a pas-de-deux they do, which is a combination of both and is jaw-dropping dancing.

Eventually, Ray and Darya agree to help Nikolai try to escape, and the rest of the plotting is very satisfying, and even believable. 

I saw the movie for the dancing, which was awesome.  It's a pleasure to report that the story was good too, making for a most agreeable evening.

The "white nights" of the title refers to the nocturnal sunshine that occurs at high latitudes.  The Russian equivalent of the "land of the midnight sun", a subject treated quite differently in Insomnia.

The movie was filmed in Europe, largely Finland.  A Finnish film crew was enlisted to do a "travelogue" of Russia, from which the street scenes were taken, but no filming was done in the Soviet Union, as Baryshnikov would not risk setting foot there.

On Cosmos and Rainbows

Last Saturday was bridge night.  Sandy, Kathie and I carpooled. We met at Sandy's, and Kathie drove.  As we headed east, it was raining and we saw a beautiful rainbow.  Once we hit the highway, we could see almost the whole thing. It was extraordinary.  I didn't have my camera, so I whipped out my trusty Cingular 8535 cellphone and took some shots.  It's 2 megapixels, so the resolution isn't as good as with the camera, but I think these turned out pretty well.  Kathie was kind enough to turn off the wipers.  After the fact, I realized that my phone has a panorama feature, and I probably could have gotten both ends of the rainbow as well as the middle.  Still and all, good luck to you.

 

At bridge, Dan and Karen were mixing up Cosmopolitan as the featured drink.  I usually don't like sweet drinks, but these were great.  Dan said he had tweaked the recipe a bit.  Here's his version:

1/4 ounce lime juice
1/3 ounce Cointreau or Grand Marnier
1/2 ounce vodka
2/3 ounce cranberry juice

Shake with ice, strain.

In this case, they were making them a couple of cups at a time.  So if you're entertaining, substitute "cup" for "ounce" and instead of making a single drink, you'll make eight at a time.

We still managed to play pretty good cards.

 

Enjoy!

Shadows in Bronze

is the second in the Marcus Didius Falco series, by Lindsey Davis.

While Davis says that her books are written so you can read them in pretty much any order, I must say I'm glad I didn't read this one before The Silver Pigs.  Even though  much care is taken to camouflage tracks from one to the other, developments in both the plot and in Falco's personal life flow from the first to the second book.  I imagine as one gets further in the series, the books may stand alone, not so at this level.

By the time we move into Shadows in Bronze, Falco is known to Emperor Vespasian, and is enlisted to do some more clandestine work into a plot to overthrow said Emperor.

A lot of the fun in reading these books is just that the settings are so cool.  So you roam the Aventine with Falco, then cross to the seamy side of town across the Aurelian Bridge to the Transtiberina, usually shadowed by various numbers of thugs.

Through it all, he is abetted or thwarted by Helena Justina, daughter of a well-respected senator.  By turns strongly attracted and spitting fire, the two work through the plot.  Meanwhile, they form a bond.  But is there any future for a senator's  daughter and a low-born informer?  Not as long as he manages to blow every opportunity for riches that comes his way.

Is there hypergamy in Falco's future?  I'll have to keep reading to find out.  On to Venus in Copper.

[Bust of Vespasian from thepaolas.com]