The Week That Was

Last Wednesday, managed to catch the Design Made in Africa exhibit at the World Financial Center, co-sponsored by the Museum for African Art. Fantastic looking and very utilitarian pieces of furniture and other object des arts – modern Africa heading towards the 21st Century – at the Courtyard Gallery in the World Financial Center from April 12 to June 24.

Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D., Ore.) is trying out an experiment: can he live off of food stamps for a week? Apparently, he’s trying to raise awareness as to how not very good the food stamp program is to feed people in need. Part of it is indeed a question of when was the last time the governor actually did his own food shopping, but I’d still applaud him for trying – imagine if we made all the politicians perform this experiment. Perhaps it’d force them to really think about ways to really help people.

Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick on the oral arguments at the US Supreme Court on the whole question of campaign reform. The article was quite funny, in a sad way (sad, well, in terms of political thinking, and depending on where one is on the political spectrum…).

9/11/01 remnants for archivists’ subject material.

FC, P, and I saw “Hot Fuzz” on Saturday. In the movie, Sgt. Nicholas Angel, a cranberry juice drinker, is sent to the boondocks because he’s too good a cop for his superiors in London to accept (because, well, he makes them look bad). However, Angel finds out that there’s more to the boondocks than he would have thought. Much more.

Slate’s movie critic Dana Stevens says, “Hot Fuzz is like an Agatha Christie novel directed by Michael Bay and adapted for the screen by P.G. Wodehouse.” Well, I’d agree on the Michael Bay part; less so on the Agatha Christie (unless you’re thinking of Christie’s creation of Miss Marple and Miss Marple’s town of St. Mary Meade, where – you guessed it! – the town’s murder rate is kind of ridiculous and Miss Marple’s probably a closet psychopath); and really less so on P.G. Wodehouse (well, unless you’re citing Wodehouse as the source of wacky British humo(u)r; I’d say Monty Python would’ve been a better reference). Honestly, I’d expect good old Inspector Morse walking into “Hot Fuzz.” The whole beer thing would’ve been perfect for him; but not, say, the gun thing. No, that’d still be in the realm of Michael Bay.

All in all, thumbs up to the movie.

FC, P, and I later had afternoon tea at Sweet Melissa Patisserie, across from the movie theater. We managed not to give in to the sweets – but they looked soo good.

Daily News publishes Mario Cuomo’s thoughts on the recent Democratic debate – with his idea that there ought to be a permanent debating system to let the candidates talk about actual ideas. I thought there were some good thoughts. Personally, I kind of feel for the candidates who aren’t likely to make headway – Joe Biden actually does have real ideas on Iraq (not that I’ve read up on them enough, but he certainly knows what he’s talking about) and Bill Richardson has quite a resume – he’s now a governor and was a UN Ambassador and is Latino (although, his tenure as US Dept. of Energy Secretary included the debacle toward Wen Ho Lee – something APA’s aren’t going to quite forget – at least I haven’t). The candidates are many; the competition will be rough.

“Heroes” – a bit caught up. The episode of 4/30/07 will be interesting…

First Half of the Week

Felt like summer already today.

Must watch “Heroes”… am sadly behind… don’t watch spoilers… must resist…

First I saw the AP article on Yahoo, and I, of course, scoffed at it: the idea of a “potentially habitable planet”? And, notice the numerosity of “maybe’s” and “this theory may change upon further research,” as the scientists hedge it – just in case they may be wrong. Then, the NY Times also has coverage on this story? Oh well.

The passing of Boris Yeltsin.

This was quite the shock, when I got on the web and saw the breaking news – the sudden passing of journalist David Halberstam, in a car accident.

Uncertainty

Sorry I’ve been OL the last few days. Hay fever got the worst of me this weekend. I stayed home from work on Monday. Here’s lots of catchup:
Happy Bday to AS and MJ!

In random order, Taste of Chinatown was on Saturday. Peking Duck House gets their act together, and we were able to snag a 5-pack of those delectable Peking Duck rolls. Checked out H2 Cards – an East-West wedding invitation card store. Found my friend’s wedding invite in the catalog. Not a bad price either.

Last weekend’s Atlantic City trip was nice. We had a group of three carshare down from the city. We passed what we thought was the accident site of NJ Gov. Corzine – the troopers were still searching for the guy in a red pickup truck, which turned out to be a casino worker. Keynote speaker NYC Council Member John Liu pointed out that Sharpton used Liu’s playbook in the Hot 97 tsunami song protest , but Sharpton was much more effective sooner in putting on the pressure on Don Imus. (Liu got to put the plan in effect again this week with another incident with CBS radio.)

Where to begin with the VT massacre? It will take years to over-analyze how this happened, from every angle (Asian/foreigner thing? no – 2 asian and 5 foreign victims; video games? no- Cho didn’t really play video games; gun control? mental health? school security? instant messaging? magnitude – do you count it as 32 or 33 victims? worse mass shooting (at a school? ever in the U.S. since the Civil War? – but this level of carnage happens in Iraq every day.)

This is today’s information version of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle: either you muddle aimlessly through the fog of war, but can divine a guiding theory that explains all, or you have access to all knowledge, but there is so much detail that it is impossible to discern or learn.

The best that we can do is remember, and try to keep our connections to those that we love.

We drove back from Atlantic City last Sunday in the middle of the nor’easter. We were in the car together, watching this other guy trying to drive a three-wheeled motorcycle encased in a plastic poncho through the wall of water. A little faith goes a long way.