What is the world coming to?

http://www.savemoneylivebetter.com/

Eight hours

I walked into On The Boards around four this afternoon; I walked out just after midnight.

If you're tuned in to the theater scene in Seattle (not that I am, though I'd like to be), you probably know what I was doing there. If not, here it goes: I watched a troupe from NYC, known as Elevator Repair Service, read and act out The Great Gatsby, in its entirety. They call it Gatz and I thought it was really cool.

The voice of Nick Carraway started off the evening, or afternoon, rather, walking into the office with a cup of coffee in hand. He fiddled with an uncooperative computer and, while opening his rolodex, came across a tattered copy of the novel. Alone in the office, he looked at the clock then began reading...

...and he didn't stop, except for two intermissions and a dinner break. His coworkers came and went, playing the parts of Daisy, Gatsby, etc. at times while performing mundane office duties at others. They floated back and forth between fiction and reality and I glided along with them.

In an amazing feat of memorization, at the beginning of the final chapter, Nick started flipping the pages, back to front, but continued "reading" as he had been all night. This recitation continued to the penultimate sentence before he reopened the book to read, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." One got the feeling that he very well could have recited the entire book from memory. Rumor has it that he actually knows the whole thing.

In print

Click here to see my aforementioned article on the Seattle P-I website!

It's been a while

Where to start...a synopsis maybe:

We went to Spain and it was great. I can't begin to describe what it was like to visit a place that had some history. For instance, we went into the room in the Alhambra where Columbus asked Isabel and Ferdinand for financial support for his westward voyage to the Indies. We saw his tomb. We saw their tombs. There were paintings galore: Picasso, Dali, Miro, Velasquez, El Greco, Murillo, Goya. There were many Cathedrals, of course. We saw Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, under construction for another 50 years or so, as well as his apartment buildings and Park Guell. There was a pickpocket too that we met the first day.

The motherfucker slipped his hand into Risajoy's bag and pulled out her wallet on the metro, between the airport and our first hotel. He only got $11 and she cancelled her credit/debit cards. That was July 11th. Then, a few days ago, everything from her wallet showed up back here, in Seattle, via registered mail from the U.S. Embassy in Madrid. No wallet, no $11, but all the contents. Someone was nice enough to send it over there after they found it in a trashcan or wherever...

Then there was NYC, my first visit. We stayed a block behind the American Museum of Natural History, which we visited. I tried to go to MoMa on a Tuesday (MoMa, I learned, is closed Tuesday). I had my eye on the met but my blistered feet thought otherwise. We saw a Broadway show: Spring Awakening; we strolled through the east village, the Columbia campus, saw John Lennon's aprtment building, went in the library and Grand Central Station. Saw the Chelsea Hotel, went in Macy's, saw the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building, up close. We walked out of the way to see Frank Gehry's new building for IAC and came across the High Line park-to-be (I happened to read about this recently in the book, The World Without Us). Went to The Strand (I got Saul Bellow's Herzog and a shirt drawn by Art Spiegelman). We took the subway out to Brooklyn to hang with two of Risa's grad school friends and their little daughter. They were super-cool, as was "the city."

What else?
Read some books: Augie March, Herzog, Kafka on the Shore, Atonement, Saturday.
In the middle of other books: Don Quixote, The World Without Us, A reader in Environmental Anthropology.
Saw a band: Wilco
Wrote and essay that will be published in the Seattle P-I soon!
Bought some tickets: Young Frankenstein, the musical.
Thinking of skipping a music festival: Bumbershoot
Excited about another festival, which I am attending: Austin City Limits
Found a bunch of Town Hall events that I want to attend: Rick Steves, Naomi Klein, Robert Reich
Signed up to take the LEED exam
Going to UW later this week to talk about a really interesting PhD program

So much action, right? Right. Unfortunately all this action required funds, which requires that I wake up in about 7 hours. Damn.

Know your Food

Living across the street from the Madison Market rules. Its neighborhood feel, wide selection of produce, policy of encouraging customers to bring their own bags, and reasonable prices are several reasons that I shop their almost exclusively. Plus, it gives my hipness and credibility a boost, which is something that must never be underestimated. Oh, I almost forgot the fact that The New Yorker and Adbusters are some of the magazines on display at the checkout stands. I told you it was cool.

Despite all of these characterisics, my favorite is that it's a literal cornucopia of local food.

Ever since reading an article in The New Yorker about Whole Foods, I've done what I can to purchase local food when that option is available. I had never thought about the distance food travels, and thus the energy consumed, before reaching my plate. Of course I had heard of organic, thought it sounded swell, but didn't realize that was only part of issue, the part that was less important to me. This article cleared it right up and I would encourage any interested party to read it diligently!

Or, for those auditory leaners in the house, here is a talk by Michael Pollan which I heard on the radio a few nights ago. I actually just downloaded the mp3 myself and burned my mom a copy, which I'll be mailing her tomorrow.

SIFF Redux

I have successfully redeemed my six remaining vouchers! Borrowing a line from Big Rig, I have to say that "this ain't no bullshit." Twenty movies is a lot. Plus, we went to see 2 Days in Paris and were unable to use vouchers! I'm tired. Next week I'm going to have to start reading again...

Anyway, my schedule for the next week is as follows:

Sunday: The Paper Will be Blue
Tuesday: The Planet
Thursday: Falkenberg Farewell
Friday: Sex and Death 101
Sunday: Cthulhu

Then, like I said, I'll have to read again. I'm about eighty pages into Augie March but I'm considering temporarily abandoning it for a biography of William James.

Tengo que estudiar espanol tambien porque salimos por Espana en 4 semanas. Manana, vamos a asistir una grupa de conversacion en el bar "Barca." No he ido todavia pero mi profesor me dio que hay muchos hispanoblantes alla. Espanol y cervezas, Que divertido!

SIFF

SIFF rules, it's as simple as that.

So far I've seen an eclectic smattering of movies, listed here in chronological order:

Life in Loops (A Megacities RMX)
Knocked Up
Once
Manufactured Landscapes
Eagle vs. Shark
Big Rig
2 Days in Paris
Running on Empty
Dasepo Naughty Girls (pictured, in case it wasn't obvious)


Tonight's selection will be: Broken English
Next Tuesday: The Planet