Culture

Totally off-topic, enjoy watching Uncle Jay explain the news below.  It’s the best year-end round-up evah!  I thank my friend Joell for sending it my way.

{ 4 comments }

Speaking of celebrities, architect Frank Gehry is as famous as architects can be.  Long known by his signature work, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, he’s still wowing the critics and public alike.  Witness L.A.’s Disney Concert Hall, completed in 2003.

Washington, sometimes described as the city that hires the world’s best architects to do their worst work, recently lost its chance at a stunning Gehry building - an addition to the Corcoran Gallery of Art.  The funding suddenly went away and we can only imagine the frustration of artists whose works are so difficult to realize.  Gardeners pretty much have it easy on that score.

{ 3 comments }

Now I wasn’t born yesterday and I like to think I’m reasonably cool around celebrities.  And by D.C. standards I totally AM cool - able to not-stare at the likes of Teddy Kennedy, John McCain, even Hillary and Barack!  But damn, on my short visit to family in Los Angeles the first thing we do is go out for brunch and there’s David Schwimmer in front of us in line for a table.  That’s right, Ross from "Friends" ($1 million per episode) has to wait in line with the rest of us.

Subsequent walks around town and meals at other trendy restaurants yielded no sightings, despite my very best rubber-necking.  But when a family connection landed us in the second row of the "Tonight Show," close enough to garner a handshake with Jay Leno himself, my ear-to-ear grinning was a dead giveaway: Out-of-towner right here!  Honestly, he was 6 feet in front of us giving his monoloque, looking just inches over our heads at the camera.  More silly grinning.  And I’m not even a particular fan of his - well, until now* - or of his guest, Bill Maher.  But to observe the whole production up-close, especially the during-commercial goings-on, was just fascinating.  My only complaint - and you bloggers out there will identify with this - photos weren’t allowed, except for the lucky, ballsy few who asked to have Polaroids taken with Jay himself.  Sorry!

Coming up next - outasight architecture, and even some garden photos.  (Yes, I’ve read online complaints lately about gardenbloggers going off-topic but it’s winter, for chrissake - cut us some slack!)

*No, he didn’t win me over with just the handshake.  It was seeing his preshow outfit (every night) of jeans and a workshirt, and hearing from people who work with him that he’s a good guy.

{ 2 comments }

Over on GardenRant I’ve been - well, ranting about design websites that are visually boring, hard to navigate, or fail to provide the necessary info in a readable way.  So my buddy Erik Anderson tells me to check out the site he and his company launched like two days ago; I did and I say WOW.  Now it wasn’t cheap ($6,000 for the site itself, $4,000 for the photos) but for an architectural firm or any other design-related or visual business, isn’t it worth it?  My only suggestion was that he add some info about their staff, including himself, coz if you’ve got great credentials, I say flaunt ‘em.  [His would include a degree in restoration from Columbia's School of Architecture, a bunch of experience, and his recent election to the board of Historic Takoma - lucky them!]

So congrats to local restoration leader Worcester Eisenbrandt, Inc. on their wowzer of a site, designed by Single Chair.   Landscape architects, listen up!

{ 2 comments }

I get pretty excited on the subject of Venus, especially Peter O’Toole’s mind-blowing performance.  And there’s lots more in this amazing movie from the writer of My Beautiful Launderette and a bunch of indie filmmakers doing terrific work across the pond.  I reviewed it for Ronni Bennett over on Time Goes By and here’s the link.

{ 0 comments }

That’s the error message I just received when trying to save this photograph.  It came with a large yellow warning triangle and a red exclamation point, of course.  Now don’t even try telling me what the hell it means because I DON’T CARE.  Have I mentioned that I hate Photoshop? 

[Photo:  I know it's more paperwhites and these stink, too, right in my living room.]

{ 5 comments }

Well, since Marv asked about my "technique," here’s one more shot (clickable to enlarge) and some details.

I used the Canon PowerShot SD550 on a tripod, with the flash turned off.  That’s it.  And that’s really all I know about how to use the damn camera that I bought a full year ago now.  Oh, I suppose I know how to adjust it for macro and for what they call "portrait," in order to make the background blur, but that’s really all. 

Back home on the computer I used PhotoShop Elements to lighten the shadows.  Again I know almost nothing about PhotoShop but lightening shadows is the one feature that’s a huge improvement over the Photo Deluxe Home Edition I used for many years, which only enabled overall lightening of the whole shot.  And in the case of night photos of Christmas lights, lightening the shadows made the shot look like what I saw through my own eyes that night.  Cool.

Now what other feature should I be using for night photography?  Someone suggested I prefocus on something completely black but honestly, that involved more finesse with the camera and tripod - in the dark - than I could muster.

{ 1 comment }

In the summer of 2005, as I was eagerly perusing the Internet for gardenblogs, an article in the Washington Post about "elderbloggers" led me to the unrivaled Queen of Elderbloggers, Ronni Bennett. That link outlines her long and illustrious career as a radio and television producer (think Barbara Walters, Matt Lauer, and Ronni’s own ex-husband, a "radio gadfly" over on Sirius, and more).  And this actual journalist is covering the increasingly hot topic of What It’s Really Like to Get Older. 

So what does that have to do with me?  Well, this very blog is listed on Ronni’s long blogroll of the over-50 set (and I didn’t exactly squeek by under the rules, but who’s to know?) and I’m one of her loyal readers and commenters.  Okay, maybe not when she gets all exact and well researched on Medicare Part B.  (I’ll read that stuff when I have to and not before.)  And after I was featured in a D.C. story about bloggers of a certain age, Ronni and I have chatted via email about story ideas. 

Which leads me to the moral of this story:  Don’t suggest a story idea to somebody unless you’re prepared to write about it yourself.  See, when I suggested she critique the new eldersex comedy movie "Boynton Beach Club," she told me she wouldn’t being seeing it til it was out on DVD and how would I like to review it myself?

Now who among us can resist the opportunity to be a guest blogger/reviewer/know-it-all?  Not me!  So my buddy Joell and I headed to the multiplex and the result is now up on Ronni’s outstanding site, Time Goes By.  Stop by and say hello, even if you’re too young to remember "Laugh-In."  (We like younger people just fine; it’s the young and stupid we eviscerate on a regular basis.)

{ 4 comments }

Sometimes even an extreme gardener like myself gets excited about something else, ya know, and might like to pass it on.  And I pay the rent here, so I can write about the World Cup if I want and who’s to stop me?  Or I can tell you about the rush I’ve gotten lately just hearing from some really smart thinkers.

I do thank the gods for Bill Moyers and wish there were more of him.  His "Faith and Reason" series is brilliant, I tell you.  They’re all here, transcripts and possibly videos, too, but my favorite is Margaret Atwood explaining the heresy of believing in the elected and the not elected, and lots more in a mental and verbal communion with Moyers that’s pretty trippy.  In the same episode Martin Amis takes us inside the mind of Muhammed Atta and Islamism itself.

Marion Nestle was introduced to me by "The Charlie Rose Show", which I tape religiously and watch when I’m on the treadmill.  Hey, whatever works.  Anyway, Nestle is a scholar in the field of nutrition who’s studied food politics, food safety, and the effects of food marketing on health.  Her new book is What to Eat and I want to read it because she’s an academic who knows how to write for the public, and because she’s so sensible.  Sensible people don’t make very good television, ya know.

But there’s more.

[click to continue…]

{ 2 comments }