Jan 26, 2004 2:42:55 PM
I was excited to read an article about Phillip Pullman's work in the New York Times today. It confirmed my thoughts on a lot of things about the His Dark Materials trilogy.
1) It kicks Harry Potter's ass from a literary standpont. I have deep thoughts about "The Golden Compass" frequently. Harry Potter books are forgotten quickly after being consumed.
2) Pullman is a very verbal atheist. I love his concept of the Republic of Heaven ... all we get is life on earth, so try to get all you can out of your time here.
3) Church leaders and others are freaked out by this aspect of his books. The company that's filming them is aware of this and has pathetically chosen to try to play down the anti-Christian tone, making it simply anti-authoritarianism. Boo hiss, except for the Christian leaders, to whom I say, the truth hurts!
I've attached the article for my later reading pleasure since it will go stale online in about a week ...
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Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 26, 2004 2:42:55 PM [Link]
Jan 25, 2004 5:25:17 PM
January
Scottish Baroque - Gallery Concerts - Town Hall
Winds of Time - Early Music Guild - Town Hall
Festival of Passive-Aggresion - Open Circle
"Dream of Zeus" - Consolidated Works
"Carmen" - Seattle Opera
"Chicago" - Paramount Theater
February
Asylum Street Spankers
Anonymous 4
"Dark Ride" (Open Circle Theater)
"1984" (Empty Space Theater)
"The Time of Your Life" - Seattle Rep
"Line 1" - Annex Theater
March
Netherlands Bach Society - Bach and his Musical Inheritance
Seattle Pro Musica - Music of the Spirit
The Adventures of Sinbad - NW Puppet Center
"I'm Sick of Love" - Music by John Dowland and his contemporaries - Terri Richter (soprano) and Gus Denhardt (Lute) Music Center of the Northwest
"The Romantics" - Pacific Northwest Ballet
"Antoine Brumel's Earthquake Mass" - Tudor Choir
April
"(L)imitations of Life" - Empty Space Theater
The Mystery of Attraction - Theater Schmeater
"How to Be Cool" - fundraiser for the Union Garage
May
"Flamingo Bar" - Figuren Theater Tubingen - Consolidated Works
Trisha Brown Dance Company - Meany Hall (World Dance Series)
Melancholy Play - Macha Monkey Productions at Hugo House
The Dragon of Wantley - Northwest Puppet Center
"Grand American Traveling Dime Museum" - Circus Contraption
(went three times!)
July
"The Play's the Thing" - Intiman Theater
"H.M.S. Pinafore" and Pinappple Poll (a ballet) - Seattle Gilbert and Sullivan Society at the Seattle Rep
"Julius Caesar" - Wooden O at Mural Amphitheater (couldn't hear half the play, darn it all)
Anything Goes - Royal Theater Drury Lane
Spartacus - The Bolshoi Ballet (at the Royal Opera Covent Garden)
August
Jerry Springer: the Opera - The Cambridge Theater
Democracy - The Wyndham's Theatre
Iphigenia in Aulis - National Theater (London)
"The Pharaoh's Daughter" - The Bolshoi Ballet
Old Times - The Donmar Warehouse
Red Noses - Open Circle Theater
The Singing Forest- Intiman
The Irresistable Rise of Arturo Ui - Capitol Hill Arts Center
September
Pinkk - Laura Curry (On The Boards)
Red Eye - Annex Theater
Lyon Opera Ballet - The Paramount Theater ("Second Detail" by William Forsythe, US premiere "twelvetwentyone" by Russell Maliphant, "Jardi Tancat" by Nacho Duato).
Romeo and Juliet - Pacific Northwest Ballet (Kent Stowell's choreography, which was pretty good in Act 1 but fell apart in Act 2, and skipped the "burying the hatchet" bit at the end altogether)
Akira Kasai's "Pollen Revolution" - On The Boards
October
"Basic Instinct" - Brown Derby at the Rebar
Fretwork with Emma Kirkby ("William Byrd: Consort Songs and Music") - Early Music Guild at Town Hall
"Requiem for a Heavyweight" - Theater Schmeater
Ballet Hispanico - World Dance series at Meany Hall
Ionesco's Rhinoceros - Capitol Hill Arts Center
"Ghosty" - Annex Theater
November
"Half-penny Opera" - Monkeywrench Puppet Lab (thank God I wasn't reviewing this as it was very bad)
December
Liber Unusualis - presented at Town Hall by the Early Music Guild
Seattle Pro Musica's "Northern Lights"
Stone Soup Theater's "Black Light 'Christmas Carol' "
Matthew Bourne's "Swan Lake" (at Sadler's Wells)
I really envy Joe Boling his ability to organize his theatrical excursions so encyclopedically. This year I will attempt to record all of the live performances I see, rock concerts excluded.
[more]
Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 25, 2004 5:25:17 PM [Link]
Jan 21, 2004 5:35:25 PM
Day in the Life of a tester
Jan 21, 2004
As an experiment to see just how much time I spend working a day (as a software quality assurance engineer), I took count on a typical day in January. This was a slow day by my standards, but it was the official anniversary of the day I did this last year, so I thought it was a valid tallying-up.
Time working: about 5 1/2 hours
Time not in office or eating: 45 minutes
Time otherwise goofing off: the rest of the time
See "more" for details ...
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Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 21, 2004 5:35:25 PM [Link]
Jan 20, 2004 10:14:01 AM
Last night we went to Consolidated Works to see Dream of Zeus, the new opera by local composer Garret Fisher. I've never been to any of his stuff before, even though I've heard a lot about his stuff and he seems to be quite the Seattle darling. My interest (aside from a general interest in What's New) was in the viola da gamba I saw included in the orchestra (in addition to taiko, harmonium, and oboe) and Cathy Hanson-Mack, my favorite local singer. I figured, toss these elements all together, and it would have to be a good night, right?
Well, I was quite surprised by the actual execution of these elements. Garret's local fame doubtlessly is heavily influenced by his taste for the most vile multi-culti hodgepodge I've been assaulted with in some time. He started out having his singers performing in Greek ... but why? No explanation can remove the fact that it didn't move the narrative forward. The costumes blended Japanese hapi coats with Greek-like folded sashes tossed over them - forming a painful dissonance. His orchestra never came together - they were a stew of different cultures that suffered from a lack of cooking time but were all forced to sing the same tune (specifically, western-style music). Sure, Zeus' oboe theme was quite good, and the taiko (and hand) drumming during the murder scene was excellent, but the viola da gamba was meaningless (and poorly played) and the electric guitar was grating. Of course, I imagine the Seattle audiences clapping their hands at his cleverness at pulling all of these elements together, but unless the result works, my thought is that he should pare it down to a seamless group and stop sticking other stuff in just for the sake of novelty.
To drive the knife in further, I was appalled by the bad modern Dances with Scarves routines, and the dialogue was puerile. "There must be a new justice... what can the new justice be?" At least the Greeks had stories to tell and exciting dialogue (and serious conflicts) to push them forward. Garret had one message: Let's Learn to Forgive. His story had no appreciation for the subtlety of the Greek storylines about the problems of ego and the conflicts of duty. At least he had some good singers, and there were two moments in the second act where I was actually impressed by what was going on on stage, but it seems like the story was arranged around creating these tableaus rather than having something interesting going on musically or dramatically. Eech. Perhaps if I'd bothered to read the review in the Seattle P-I before I went I could have been warned off - $22 is a steep price to pay for an evening so poorly spent.
[more]
Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 20, 2004 10:14:01 AM [Link]
Jan 18, 2004 11:18:09 PM
I started my Japanese class last Tuesday and it's a lot better than the first one I took at Seattle Central. Aside from the fact that I can walk to the Bellevue Community College campus easily from my office, there's also the advantage that the teacher is well organized and we have a really good book to work from. Of course, it helps that I have a bunch of people that I know to study with, although that hasn't happened yet. In our first week we learned how to say, "Who are you?" and "I am Smith" as well as "I am a Micorusoftu of Employeoo" (or something that sounded like that). A quarter of the class was from Microsoft - apparently they'll get reimbursed for their class fees. I'm not so lucky - but I'm excited to be in the class and I think it's really cheap so I don't really care.
I wasted a lot of tonight looking for a japanese name, and I think I've settled on Tonomi Wazawa. I found bunch of good sites with info on Japanese names though, and thought I'd stick them here for reference (at "more"). Fortunately, I also found some sites on studying hiragana (as well as an interesting one on dolls). I am bound and determined to get these Japanese characters crammed into my head this time - maybe I can get a little studying in on the bus this week.
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Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 18, 2004 11:18:09 PM [Link]
Jan 17, 2004 4:50:50 PM
Every year for the last six or so we've hosted a party called "Winterbrew: A Celebration of the Fine Ales of the Season." It's been quite a hit ... without any fussy religious stuff getting in the way, everyone seems ready to have a good time. So for some reason, I thought it might be fun to have Brew Carols, and during a concert I went to in November I made up a bunch of them. They are, however, also seasonal, with songs for spring, summer, autumn, and winter. (Note ironically that I myself do not drink beer, but I already have "Wasting away in Margaritaville" and "La Cucaracha" if I need a drinking song.)
Winter: to the tune of "Tannenbaum"
Oh Snowcap Ale, oh Snowcap Ale
A beer so rich and creamy
Oh Snowcap Ale, oh Snowcap Ale
I find your taste so dreamy.
Though days are short at wintertide
With tankard full I'm satisfied
Oh Snowcap Ale, oh Snowcap Ale
A beer so rich and creamy
(more at link)
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Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 17, 2004 4:50:50 PM [Link]
Jan 11, 2004 1:06:39 AM
Personal response to "The Station Agent"
So many people liked this movie that I hoped maybe my initial impressions about it, which kept me from going to see it for months, were wrong. Was it really a warm, quirky slice of humanity, with great acting and deep insights? Or was it ... some movie that was fairly inoffensive and (shudder) heartwarming that won people over because, well, it was inoffensive and heartwarming and had indie creds because it starred a dwarf?
Of course, the answer was #2. In its favor, I will say "The Station Agent" had three redeeming features. First, the acting was credible on almost all counts (child actress excluded). Second, it was the first movie I ever saw that really dealt with the day to day hassles of being a dwarf, and it did so very matter-of-factly. Third, it had an interesting exploration of train hobbyists. These items, however, were wrapped around an extremely thin core of a movie. As a character study, there wasn't enough there to make this the focus of the movie; as a tale of outcasts making a family out of each other, well, I just didn't care enough about any of them for this to matter to me. The indie production values brought it down just a little bit more. I'd say it might be worth watching for free on an international flight, but otherwise, rent something else.
[more]
Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 11, 2004 1:06:39 AM [Link]
Jan 10, 2004 6:13:59 PM
Although I only had one New Year's resolution (to read two more books by William Faulkner this year and, because that seems like such a small goal, to additionally read two more books by John Steinbeck), I did have New Year's goals ... resolutions that might actually be hard to do but that I'd really like to do, at least in part. These included going on three walks a week and writing one 400 word story a month. That's a very short story, but a length that I know I can reach, given that I write about one story of that length or more for Tablet every month. And, thanks to Neil Gaiman, I also know that that seemingly abbreviated length can result in a very good story. I figure, sure, I'll write a bunch that are pretty bad, but after a while, I may start writing a good one or two. And since I've never written a short story before, just writing even one would be a start. It's really the perfect thing to do in the blog format,too, so what should follow this entry is my first, very bad, short story. I'm going to call it "Sortathere."
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Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 10, 2004 6:13:59 PM [Link]
Jan 8, 2004 11:17:49 PM
Crap, I'm already getting behind on my movie reviews .. only January 8th and I've got two more to write! Thank goodness I don't have such a limitation for the books I'm reading ... all I have to do is write them down and forget about it.
At the end of "It Happened on Broadway," various people talk about how crappy Broadway is nowadays, how no one goes to shows anymore, how limited they are by how expensive they are to put on, and how people expect to see movie-like spectacle instead of anything that might make them think. This made me wonder: do we have a good theater scene in Seattle or not? We have a lot of people that go to the theater, or so it seems - but according to the "Market Research Theater" that happened this summer the audience penetration of fringe theater (which is where I think the exciting stuff is happening) is very thin. I got excited about our theater audiences here, but on reflection, I think we're not getting very deep into the populace. There's a core group that supports theater like the old New Yorkers did, going to see almost everything, giving the kind of support you need to produce enough shows to have some truly great ones rise to the top. But most of the people who go to the theater only want to see the tried and true, just like the people in New York of now do. That's sad.
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Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 8, 2004 11:17:49 PM [Link]
Jan 6, 2004 12:04:34 AM
I hope that the uptick in traffic expected because of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial celebrations doesn't ruin any of the nice towns on the Long Beach peninsula ... Astoria, just 18 miles away (and across the Columbia river), is already getting a little questionable, what with its Many Stores Full of Useless Crap Aimed at Rich Tourists. (The newly restored hotel in downtown Astoria was quite acceptable, though, as is the restoration of the Liberty Theater, but adding stores that deform the character of the town isn't good in my opinion.)
It's really hard to find good information online about Long Beach (Washington), so maybe that will help keep it laid-back and just a little bit tatty (just the way I like it). We go there on vacation a lot, and we usually stay at a cute place called The Old Sou'wester, run by a charming elderly couple from South Africa (technically it's in Seaview, not Long Beach, but they're only a mile apart so it's close enough for government work) who rent rooms in their grizzled lodge as well as pet-friendly vintage Airstream trailers. This time of the year, it's kind of cold and wet, and the days are really short, but I think it might be time to go back again. Just looking at the pictures we took makes my heart feel "all yearny."
Why do we keep going back there? Well, in part, it's because it's fun. Somehow, every single time we find something new to do, in addition to all the old favorites. There's the trip to Marsh's Free Museum to see Jake the Alligator Boy (and put a quarter in the "Drunkard's Dream" machine, reliving a key scene from American Gods); stops at Anna Lena's for cranberry fudge and the Cottage Bakery for chocolate crinkle cookies; and the ever-popular hourlong visit to "Double R Amusments," the Long Beach pinball arcade and shoot-em-up gallery.
Why an hour? Well, without a doubt, this arcade has the largest selection of pinball games I've seen in the state of Washinton. The narrow insides have about eight machines on the west wall and twelve on the south wall. In between is one of those old fashioned target games set in a western saloon. This makes a lot of racket when it's being used, but mostly it's easy to focus on getting your pinball yayas in. My favorite game is Theater of Magic, and I usually buy in at 5 games for $2 and just make myself comfortable for a while. This is the best tuned version of this game I've ever found, and I've reached a true synergy with it. (When it says, "You have the magic!" and "You can do it!" I say, "I know.").
The west wall is where I wind up spending most of my time. This is both the part that faces out on the Long Beach main street (Highway 101) and the part where the 25ยข pinball games live. The selection is broad enough that I can entertain myself quite easily here for a very long time. I'm especially fond of The Addams Family - it's worth about three or four games all on its own. Hunkered down with a piece of fudge from Anna Lena's and my dog forced to lay down under the machine (the owners don't care), I have been known to stay until I start getting cramps in my hands. My only complaint is that they've pretty much removed all of the old-fashioned pinball games and replaced them with newer tables. That critique aside - All hail the Double R!
What other things are entertaining? Well, I'm always pulled to the beach, which isn't really a laying on the sand kind of place due to the low local temperatures and frequently unfriendly breezes. It also isn't a swimming beach - pick your poison, hypothermia or cross-currents will both take you out. Instead, I go for long walks - it's fairly undeveloped, with about half a mile of dune grass separating most buildings from the shore - and do goofy things like play trackball and look for seashells. I also like going for walks up on the furthest northern end of the peninsula, where there's a state park and a bird refuge. It's a great place to find sand dollars and relive scenes from The Blair Witch Project.
I also like seeing the other towns nearby. The northern end of the Long Beach Peninsula has Oysterville, a cute old one-street town left over from the oyster "gold rush" days, with all sorts of historical buildings (and oysters if you like that kind of thing). At the far south end is Ilwaco, which I find notable mostly for its very cheap thrift stores and proximity to Cape Disappointment (and the Lewis and Clark interpretive center). Across the Columbia river is Astoria, with its good coffeeshops, ship museum, and proximity to the wreck of the Peter Iredale, which for some reason I continue to find intriguing after many visits.
I'll write more about Long Beach some day ... there has to be a good reason why after visiting for the last six years I keep going back.
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Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 6, 2004 12:04:34 AM [Link]
Jan 3, 2004 5:55:11 PM
If I'm willing to write down the movies I've seen and the books I've read, why not the books I've bought? I'm sure I buy far more than I read. This will be a good way to cross-reference.
As a side note, today I sold about 30 books, pretty much all of the books I'd collected during my master's degree studies in political philosophy. I thought I'd read them or refer to them again in my life after graduate school, but insofar as I failed to get a PhD my need for these books has been nonexistent. I'm really hoping that there's someone out there who really needs the complete edition of DeToqueville's Democracy in America or the political writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau and is able to get good use out of these books, as the money I received from them was less that the per-pound cost of mailing would have been.
On the other hand, I have had good luck putting democracy into action since I left school and it's possible I should have kept my hand on that copy of the Federalist Papers for writing screeds to the local papers and other all-purpose rabble rousing. Oh well, too late now.
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Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 3, 2004 5:55:11 PM [Link]
Jan 3, 2004 12:16:40 PM
I feel like I'm losing one of my good friends lately, and I don't know why it's going on. Have I just become boring to her? Has she decided I'm too pushy or emotionally demanding? Is she really so busy that she just never thinks of me any more? I don't want to get in her face about it and make her want to hang out with me even less, but I'm having a hard time figuring out how to handle the hole I feel has been left in my life. It's like I've been looking for a best friend for almost my entire life, and I had one for about four years when I lived in Tempe, and then I've never had one again. I suppose if I were a real adult I'd have kids by now and I wouldn't have time to worry about dumb things like this.
The Station Agent
The Station Agent was a film of forced charm. I felt we were meant to love the quirky short person and his quirky friends, the loud Cubano and the sad artist (as well as the slutty town librarian and the black schoolgirl). He was given an extra quirk, a love of trains, to make him even more "interesting," while the artist woman is given a son to mourn in an attempt to make her more deep. His desire to get away from the people who stare at him all the time is very believable, but his willingness to put up with his "friends" (or them, him) is not. When he finally "blows up at the world" it seems like it's supposed to be a big revelation, but it was just too hard to believe he hadn't worked through those issues long ago. It did, however, seem very likely that all of the pointing, snickering, and "Where's Snow White?" jokes are part of the life of any dwarf, and their depiction seemed the most realistic and original point of view the movie had to offer.
[more]
Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 3, 2004 12:16:40 PM [Link]
Jan 1, 2004 10:58:05 PM
2004 Movie List (2003 list here)
January
1. Sunrise (1927) 3
2. The Station Agent (2003) 2 1/2
3. Eyes without a Face (Les Yeux sans Visage) 2 1/2
February
4. Tokyo Godfathers (2003) 2 1/2 (so sad for an anime to be so pedestrian!)
5. The Company (2003) 3 1/2 (luminous, but even for Altman pretty loose with the plot)
6. Picadilly (1929) 3
March
7. Strange and Vicious War Cartoons
8. Jazz Jazz Jazz Cartoons
9. Rubber Hose Toons and other oddities
10. Starsky and Hutch 2 1/2 (mindless fun)
April
11. Rubin and Ed (1991) 3 (freakish but amusing)
12. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind 3 1/2
13. Big Fish (2003) 3 (not perfect but entertaining)
14. Balanchine on Film, First night (From Silence to Sound, 1994 -selections from 1951's "La Valse" and 1968's "La Source" - plus a French-filmed Western Symphony)
15. Dersu Uzala (1975) 2 1/2
May
16. Millennium Mambo (2001) 3
17. Kill Bill Volume I 2 (yes, I watched this in a theater after it came out on DVD)
18. In the Realms of the Unreal (2003) 3
19. Goddess (1935) 3
June
20. Bright Future (2003) 2
21. Cremaster 5 (1997) (unratable, freaky-assed art flick)
22. Hero (2002) 3 1/2
23. Darkness Bride (2003) 2 (boring unless you're fascinated by the picky details of modern Chinese life)
24. I Live in Fear (1955, Kurosawa) 3 1/2
25. Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring (Korea) 2 1/2
July
26. Spiderman II - 2 1/2
27. Mean Girls - 2 1/2
28. Shrek II - 2 (why am I seeing all this crap this month? At least next month I can see the Valentino movies.)
August
29. Blood and Sand (1922) - 2
30. Battlefield Baseball (2003, Japan) - 1 1/2 (totally corny and campy)
31. The Twilight Samurai (2002, Japan) - 3 1/2
32. The Weeping Camel - 2 1/2 (pretty but kind of dry)
September
33. Le Temps Du Loup (2003) - 3 (might be higher but I was too brutalized to realize it)
34. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - 2 (such a bad followup to Le Temps du Loup!)
35. THX 1138 - 1 (don't know if I can count this in my annual total as I walked out)
36. Silver City (2004, John Sayles) - 3 (not brilliant but certainly cutting and zeitgeisty)
37. Ghost in the Shell II: Innocence (2004) - 3 (absolutely amazing visuals but muddy philosophy and a kind of hacked together Deux Ex Machina (bad pun!) ending.
October
38. Bright Young Things (2004) - 3 (lovely to watch, but I wasn't drawn into the characters)
39. Last Life in the Universe (2003) - 3 (tempting to rate it higher, it was quite good)
40. Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) - 2 1/2 (it was interesting and pretty but maybe too quiet)
41. Shaun of the Dead (2004) - 2 1/2 (silly but worth watching)
42. Modern Times (1936) - 3 (I'm not sure why this is considered so great)
November
43. Since Otar Left (2003) - 3 1/2
44. The Incredibles - 3
45. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow - 2 1/2 (pretty but the acting was way too clunky for me to rate higher)
December
46. Il Posto (1961) - 3 (maybe 3 1/2 - great realist vision of the dehumanizing nature of office work)
47. Napoleon Dynamite - 1 (I walked out after an hour. Life is too short to bother with such crap.)
48. Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion (1970) - 3 (very relevant in today's political climate, also very interesting psychological portrait of a person going crazy)
49. Oceans 12 - 2 (taken to see it for free from work)
50. House of Flying Daggers - 3 (got schmaltzy at the end - too bad)
51. A Very Long Engagement - 3 (better than Amelie as it was not treacley)
52. Vera Drake - 3 1/2 (another awesome Mike Leigh film)
53. Mala Education/Bad Education - 3 (Pedro Almodovar rocks, does he read my mind?)
[more]
Posted by webcowgirl @ Jan 1, 2004 10:58:05 PM [Link]