The Last Picture Show

Last night I went to Lexington Green, the first movie theatre that I ever saw in Lexington . . . for the last time.

I remember it being really busy the first time I went there, but last night the same girl working the ticket stand was working concession. Don't get me wrong, they're not closing, but they're going to be a discount theatre and that's, well -- I don't fly coach if I can help it. I'm not ragging on them for doing what they need to do to survive, I just wish they were still going to be my source for obscure gems.

The Kentucky is another art house movie palace, it's downtown, and it's . . . great. It's a classic building, plus it has lots of interesting movies. I saw Priceless there. Lost in Translation. And the re-release of Blade Runner (and? By the way -- Deckard? Totally not a replicant.). I saw a few others at The Kentucky, too. Parking is a nightmare, although they make fun choices -- but, then, they only have two screens.

Lex Green is right in the middle of town so it's easy to get to, easy to park, etc., etc. Plus, I've seen a ton of great movies there. I saw Pan's Labyrinth, The Orphanage, The Visitor, When Did You Last See Your Father, and Mama Mia!, just to name a few.

We saw Bottle Shock there the other night (great!) with a pretty full house. Then we saw Henry Poole Is Here last night and we were the only ones in there (also great!).

Concession Girl said they are now going to be a dollar theatre (to be truthful, $1.50), she said it was a corporate decision, it came as a surprise to her, and she was kind of bummed about it because she really likes the movies they show.

She thinks they will still have the opera series.

William Shatner - Has Been - In Stores Now!

bk made a couple of mix CD's for me, and this was probably the funniest, most surprising piece of the whole thing. I can't link you to the song, but here's a video (from YouTube's gildersniff) that captures the essence. If you find the video distracting, just listen. ;-)

There is some obviously real and talented singing on the song -- that's Mr. Ben Folds, who arranged Has Been. [Edited to note that the singer is Joe Jackson, not Ben Folds. See the comment below for proper credits for everything. Oops.]

Also, interesting side note, you'll hear a crowd start to sing, and bk knows two of the singers (I know one). The crowd was recorded live at a Ben Folds concert.

Click.

Geo-caching

Go right ahead and get all of those jokes out of your system. The best I've heard? "Geo-caching is how geeks spend time outdoors."

Heh. And even that is a geek's interpretation of caching.

Ok, so imagine this: Geeks all over the world think to themselves, weeeell, what if I hide something of little pecuniary importance and tell other geeks about it using a code and suggest to them that they will be superior to other geeks if they get here sooner than later...

That's geo-caching in a nutshell.

I love it and I totally blame bk for this mess. Bastard! I want to cache everywhere!

Here's a picture of where I went caching recently. I don't know if you can see it ... not being -- I assume -- an official member of geocaching.com. OK, yeah, that is a really terrible pic! It was hot! What's your point!?

Hmmm... So...geocaching.com. Check it out.

Site Updates

I've made a few small updates to the site that I hope will make it easier to use.

Subscribing - Check out the new Subscribe to Me buttons at the top right. In the old days, I kept a list of favorite blogs and periodically I would go to each site looking for updates. Inevitably, though, some authors don't update for months so you stop tracking them rather than take the disappointment of seeing the same old post when you go to their site. By subscribing, your reader service monitors your list of blogs and automagically lets you know about any updates. That means that you can learn about my fondness for Rainier cherries and Peter Gabriel in the same feed and with the same gravitas as finding out about the latest news from Iraq. There are lots of different reader services, but I've only ever used one so it's the only one I can recommend: Google Reader. Follow that link to find out more. Basiljaz uses NewsGator, so I think that's a good option as well. Trust me, once you start subscribing to feeds, your internet reading becomes so much more productive.

My Blog List - I updated the format for my blog list so that in addition to the title of the blog, you can also see a link to the latest entry and when that entry was made. The list always sorts the most recently updated first, but this should make it a little more meaningful. For example, if my link to Pound ever jumps to the top, it's probably worth reading. I have actually read both of her books and I think she hasn't updated the blog in a while because she's working on Book the Third. Check out her other website Candyboots and click on the individual cards on the right. You'll thank me later. Be sure to note that each page has a separate title (look at the title page on your browser) and if she provides any links in the individual pages, click on them. She's a hoot.

Last thing -- this blog entry itself is an experiment because I'm trying to post from my email account. We'll see how it works. Posting via Twitter comes next!

Art & Artists

Speaking of Dale Chihuly (and we were), I love his work. I have always loved glass, either as beads, or a mosaic, or a solid piece (or a worked piece, or a formed piece or ... just anything). My favorite glass pieces are hung in windows so that sunlight comes through them and they always look different.

This is a piece from my house and obviously not a Dale Chihuly, but it's very pretty. About 12" in diameter, and about an inch thick. It's hollow.

If you follow this link, you can see some of the works of Dale Chihuly, and you can see all kinds of ways he's created with glass and light. The link is fun, because it has a bit of embedded video.

This link is nice too, but it's a specific (temporary) installation in Venice. My favorite piece is the Campiello Remer. The Squero di San Trovaso is nice too -- it reminds me of those glass balls Japanese fishers used to attach to their nets.

Also -- just so that I can get all of the art news out of my system -- I went to the art fair recently and got a couple more pieces by Vivienne Lee. She's a chinese painter and I now have three of her prints. Her prints come matted with (obviously) the print, and a small original painting in the same vein as the print. I love her stuff. She does a sort of non-sensical landscape as a background (the three I have include an impossible hill, impossible lights, and an impossible forest), and then populates it with happy working people. People running, people on bikes, ducks, pigs, and -- in a new favorite -- fireflies.

This detail is from the one with the impossible forest (it's called Banyan Trees). In the print I have, the people are about a quarter of an inch tall (not including bikes). The print itself is 22 x 28.

Las Vegas

Sorry, I've been inattentive. To make sure I get this done, I'll break it up into a couple of different entries.

First, I went to Vegas 8/7 through 8/10. I hadn't been in years -- so long that I'm not even sure I remember the last time I went, which I think was probably for work. Anyway, I've decided I haven't missed much.

In some ways, many things have changed and in some ways nothing is different. The crowds are still horrendous. I was talking to RAJwantsabirdie and he said, "Yeah, you have that thing --it's not a fear of crowds exactly -- it's ... just ... an unreasonable seething anger at crowds." I think that kind of sums it up. I was ready to brain somebody on the walk from the Flamingo to the Venetian. I'm not sure that Vegas understands that the train should be cheaper ($5 one way, but if you have two people...that's cab fare).

While there, I did enjoy myself. I got to see a friend I hadn't spent time with in years, I hung out at the pool at my mom's timeshare (which is spectacular), then hung out at the pool at the Luxor (not so spectacular), I spent entirely too much for dinner at the Venetian (ok, it was very good, and the waiter spoke Italian to the Italian party at the next table, but still), saw Cirque du Soleil's O, enjoyed the fountains at Wynn's, and went to see the Dale Chihuly piece at the Bellagio. Here's a little piece of that last one.



The funniest part was probably the first night when my mom kept getting me drinks and so I ended up quite tipsy, standing in Wynn's at 1:30 in the morning (4:30 for me) with my face up against the glass at the Chanel store saying, "Pretty!"

My favorite part was getting home. ;-)

Dr. Horrible is Back!

Yay! Hulu.com is carrying Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog! Previously I posted about how great it was and included a link to the (stale) website where you could only watch the teaser. Now you can check it out for free, with ads. Enjoy.

Dr. Horrible!

If you're not already on the bandwagon with watching video on-line, let me be the next to recommend it to you. The commercials are short, the quality is excellent, you can watch all kinds of stuff you never thought you'd find. Favorite sites for me are:

ABC.com (Watch Samantha Who? and Pushing Daisies! Or Lost, seasons 1 - 3!)
CBS.com (Survivor!)
Hulu.com (Most NBC shows, lots of FOX, and a whole lot of other really great content. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind -- what could be better than that?)