Archive for September, 2007
Tuesday, September 11th, 2007
The Return of Sunshine to Philadelphia
Have I mentioned that I think this show is awesome? Yes. Awesome.
Thursday, September 6th, 2007
Summer Reading, Maybe Some Late Spring Reading, 2007
#1)Pete Dexter’s Paper Trails. A collection of newspaper columns by easily the best writer I have ever heard of writing for the Daily News. The guy is a master. The story about the guys who try to settle a bet about whether or not it is possible to throw a case of beer across Pine st is not to be missed.
#2)Licensed to Kill by Robert Pelton. Its kind of mind blowing how many mercs are in Iraq, and how rich the people that employ them are getting. Someone really needs to come up with a way to make it illegal to get rich off of war. Or at least recognizably, obviously shameful.
#3)The Unknown Tour De France. Lots of good stories. Stand out: the one where Greg Le Monde blows another US rider’s shot at winning the World Road Championships. nice.
#4)bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff. Great set up, a bunch of not so great twists, and then a most excellent ending.
Suggestions?
Thursday, September 6th, 2007
The Future in Plastic
#1)Becoming obsessed with plastic bag use. Ever read about how bad plastic bags are? Bad for the environment and take forever to break down. Every time I buy something at the convenience store, I have to tell the cashier ‘I Don’t need a bag.’ and then usually stuff things into my cargo pockets.
Also, related: became briefly obsessed with finding out the the name of the guy in the Wayne Wang movie ‘Blue in the Face‘ who built a tool to remove plastic bags from trees. His name is Ian Frazier. Here is a good story by him in Mother Jones.
More on plastic: Mrs. H and I had a bunch of discussions about alternatives to plastic water bottles for cycling. What she came up with for me (and my birthday): A Sigg aluminum water bottle, made in Switzerland. Behold their awesomeness.
Monday, September 3rd, 2007
Novels I’ve never written, Films I’ve never made
Today, I turned 34. My gift to myself involved cleaning my basement. I threw away some furniture that had turned bad in the damp air. I swept the floors. I organized and/or tossed a bunch of DVDrs and CDrs.
One thing that I wanted to be rid of was this foot locker. It was a cheap one purchased for me before college. Somehow it survived the selection process of moving around as much as I did before I came here. It would have been tossed once or twice since then, however, I stored 4 large notebooks, and about 6 sketch books all from 2000-2003.
Mostly, they contained journal entries, plots to novels I am never going to write and movies that I will never make, character sketches, to do lists, drawings, diagrams… All of it completely mashed together, Completely disorganized, completely in need of a purge by fire.
So I got a couple beers, and sat in front of the fire place and did just that. As the flames grew, Mrs. H noticed that the woog was rapt. We sat him in a boppy seat and he watched. He loved it.
I won’t lie. It felt great to be rid of that stuff.