Wednesday, June 18, 2008

A Book and a Restaurant

We'll go with the good before the poor...



This was a book of which I read the majority for my class. As you can tell by the title, it's about the everyday life: the cooking, cleaning, and leisure time that takes up much of our time. For example, the section on food examines everything from the way we choose and prepare food, to the sensuality of food, and on to the historical cultural connections that influence what we consider edible.

And speaking of food.

I made the mistake of wandering into Seattle's oldest restaurant, The Merchant's Cafe, for lunch yesterday. The smell of barbecue Lays potato chips that came with my turkey melt has finally dissipated but was the inspiration for this post. I was lured in by the history but should have turned away when I saw only two occupied tables. I brushed off the lack of diners and remembered an interview with August Wilson that I read which supposedly took place over coffee here and thought, "if it's good enough for him, it should be good enough for me." Well, that wasn't the case on Tuesday: in addition to the chips and the strange-tasting sandwich, the diet coke was flat and even the pickle was bad.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Two-week Plan

The small plan that follows will bring me to my reading goal by the end of the month:

1) Finish The Practice of Everyday Life (20)

Then, in staying with the Death/New York theme that has randomly appeared (although the aforementioned book would be better classified as Life/Paris -- good enough though, as some sort of opposite) I'm planning on reading:

2) The Death of Ivan Ilyich (21)
3) Death of a Salesman (22)
4) Motherless Brooklyn (23)
5) Finish Plato's Five Dialogues (24) (account of Socrates' trial and execution)
6) My finale will be either to finish Jane Jacobs' The Death and Life of Great American Cities (NYC specifically) or Haruki Murakami's Underground (account of Tokyo subway gas attacks). (25)

Don't run and call the psychiatrists, I'm feeling just fine. This theme emerged as I was reading the past few books that were chosen, I think, at random: Ravelstein, New York Trilogy, Brooklyn Follies, and The Intuitionist.

Monday, June 16, 2008

Brooklyn Zoo


Actually it was Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies rather than ODB's Brooklyn Zoo that occupied most of my day (other than the eleven mile bike ride I took). That brings my total to nineteen. If I can keep up this pace for the next two weeks, I should get to twenty five by the end of the month, and thus be on track for fifty this year.

Friday, June 13, 2008

SIFF

Well I've been so wrapped up in other activities that SIFF has kind of fallen by the wayside this year. I've managed to see three movies so far:

1) Milky Way
2) American Teen
3) Mysteries of Pittsburgh

I had a ticket to see Choke but I missed it.

Milky Way was an experimental film from Hungary that played at the Northwest Film Forum. Many people were falling asleep and, at times, I was on the verge. However, as I understand it, this is part of the experience of some art forms like Opera and certain south pacific island folk performances -- I'm not joking. Whether or not Milky Way was meant to be enjoyed in a dreamy haze isn't for me to say. Did I enjoy it? Sort of.

American Teen was great. High school senior year documentary with the typical cast: jock, go-getter, nerd, artsy girl, etc. It sounds trite but was really well done, I thought.

Mysteries of Pittsburgh -- I just saw this about an hour ago. I had high hopes: I like what I've read by Michael Chabon and I liked Wonder Boys on screen. Unfortunately, this didn't really captivate me. I felt like it was trying to mimick True Romance and Fight Club, with the southern belle eating pie in the diner and Cleveland, the Tyler Durden-esque wildman. Oh and Goodfellas too: at one point Nick Nolte, playing the father of the main character said something like, "are you trying to embarass me?" and I immediately thought of Joe Pesci and his, "I'm funny, how am I funny?" spiel. It just plodded along and didn't really take me, or the people sitting near me, with it. Failure to launch would appropiately describe this movie.

There was a JFK documentary that I wanted to see but will have to wait. We're going to see Jolene tomorrow and I have one ticket left in my sixer; hopefully I can find something for Sunday, which is the last day of the festival.

On the reading scene, I started Plato's Five Dialogues last night and Paul Auster's Brooklyn Follies today (I knew I wouldn't be able to concentrate on Plato while waiting in line for a movie...).

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Development Updates


Saul Bellow's Ravelstein makes eighteen. I got my paper back with a bunch of positive feedback and nice "A". Awww yeah.

Tonight I'm either going to start on something new, maybe Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy or the last hundred pages of de Certeau, which Ravelstein would have hated; he had no interest in the study of society or the everyday. He was more into thought (Plato, Rousseau, and Celine, none of which have ever fallen into my gaze, but should, I suppose) and people's personalities and habits. He liked the wild ones, the gamblers, the addicts.

But first, dinner is in order. Chicken salad pitas will be served.

Monday, June 9, 2008

Interesting Developments

1) I just finished my research paper for my class. It's the longest paper I've ever written, weighing in at 21 pages (I'm an engineer remember, I never took those classes where long papers were required). Needless to say, I'm pretty excited about it. It's called "Webs of Consumption" and traces connections between various phenomena like religion, art, family, environment, architecture, etc. using consumerism as the common thread. Look for it in a fothcoming issue of Dissent...yeah, right. Anyway, it's an important accomplishment because it will determine my grade for my first course as a nonmatriculated student in the PhD in the Built Environment program at UW. Assuming I do well on this paper, and in the class I'm taking in the fall, I may have a chance to be admitted as a "real" student. We'll see about that. Meanwhile...

2) I managed to finish the third of Auster's New York Trilogy; that brings me to seventeen for the year (I need to be at twenty five by the end of this month to be on track). I'm planning on finishing two other books from my class of which we only read portions (The Production of Space by Lefebvre and The Practice of Everyday Life by Michel de Certau and friends). I've also started Saul Bellow's Ravelstein in order to get myself pumped up for my summer project: setting up an outline and reading list for the book I want to write about all the historical references in The Adventures of Augie March. I finished that book last summer on a train between Madrid and Granada and decided that not knowing what the hell Saul Bellow was referencing most of the time was annoying and made me feel like a yokel.

3) While this blog remains somewhat scattered, the real focused action is over at the Green Housing Collaborative. I actually don't post over there as much as I should but I'm still getting lots of hits. I just passed a thousand page views yesterday!

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Quickie

Finished Auster's Ghosts and am about halfway through The Locked Room. I'm doing what I can to keep up but my class paper and my other site are usurping all my time. I met Charles Mudede the same day that I wrote an email to him about his assessment of the new Four Seasons building (follow think to other site to see it). Plus, I just had to put my condo in Denver up for rent again because my tenant broke the lease and moved out. Oh, and my mom was in town this weekend. Ah, and her aunt has an orchard down in Oregon; want to go down there and pick some fruit? I was thinking that would be a good way to 'get back in touch with nature.' I'm trying to talk my brother into learning how to farm so we can provide the Portland farmer's markets with organic peaches, pears, cherries, and apples. A man can dream, can't he?