These are things I have done, just within the last 48 hours, that qualify my induction:

1. Joined Lifetime Fitness
2. Used my Lifetime Fitness membership to swim, play racquetball and go into the hot tub
3. Woke up stiff after two consecutive days of racquetball and proceeded to wear a neck warmer for a half hour
4. Talked about how I think I am generally dehydrated and will consciously try to drink more water
5. Drove a Suburban to Target
6. Bought school supplies at Target (for myself) and considered buying a purse/tote bag
7. Drove a Suburban to Blockbuster
8. Completed a three-point turnabout to get out of the parking lot at Blockbuster
9. Drove a Suburban to Starbucks, where the barista knew my drink by heart
10. Unloaded the dishwasher and lamented the diminishing amount of space for coffee cups and travel mugs
11. Took the dog to the vet and chatted with the young, tan doctor about heartworm prevention
12. Told a kid under the age of 14 that Weeds may be inappropriate viewing for him
13. Inquired into the housing status of soon-to-be college students
14. Discussed the violence on the show 24 with a friend
15. Discussed the possibility of putting in a backyard fence
16. Grilled chicken on an outside grill on a deck, basting included
17. Picked tomatoes from the garden
18. Drove a Suburban to the Post Office and watched the two older women working, both wearing American flag pins and matching pink lipstick, get into a tiff over the price of renewing a passport

Miranda July on The Sound of Young America right HERE!

In honor of my new obsession with racquetball, here is a cool photo essay that was created for the New York Times Magazine a little while back. It’s a nice change from the usual sports photography you see. The photographer, Vincent Laforet, distance, composition and especially depth of field to create some unique images. He uses selective focus as a way to not only guide a viewer’s attention, but also as a way to alter our perspective, make us see these events in a new way. The effect of messing with something as simple of depth of field can be pretty startling. Even sports stars look as small and insignificant as they really are — I don’t mean that in a demeaning way, just in the sense that the ocean and the natural world are huge compared to one human…and, stuck in our own brains, we can’t help but view our worlds in such a human, me-centric way. These photos set things straight. We look like we are little figurines in a little dollhouse-world (stadiums, streets, courts) that we created, which is essentially the truth.

The show was AWESOME. Full review to come.

Local opener Bear Country:

Scout Niblett:

St. Vincent:

This last photo was taken during the encore which consisted of Ms. Clark grabbing an acoustic guitar and sitting down at the end of the stage. The smallish crowd gathered around her in a circle, and with no microphone and the lights completely down, she played These Days. It was amazing. She was also super nice and stayed around talking to all these fans. I love her even more now.

So my family and I are planning our vacation plans. We are going to Baltimore, Charlottesville, VA, Arlington, VA and Washington D.C. We are leaving exactly one week from tomorrow. I am very, very excited. Thrilled, actually. I love vacations and I love history and monuments and things having to do with Lincoln, our Constitution, government, colonial reenactments and so on. I’ve never been to D.C. I can’t believe that in over a week I will be standing at the feet of the Lincoln Memorial, staring into Honest Abe’s (yes, I know, he didn’t like to be called that) eyes.

We have been working on our itinerary and I have been knee deep in all things D.C. I may have already elicited the advice of some of you, but if anyone has any suggestions for activities, bookstores, restaurants, museums, etc. please let me know.

Things we are pretty much for sure doing:
-Monticello
-Mount Vernon
-All the monuments, including: Washington, World War II Memorial, Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Veterans, Korean War, FDR, Jefferson, Grant, Garfield, Peace Monument
-Capitol Building (including tour) and Reflecting Pool
-National Air and Space Museum (of course), which at the moment includes an exhibition from the currently being renovated Museum of American History
-Holocaust Museum
-White House (no tour, unfortunately — 3 months advance booking required)
-Ford’s Theatre (no question)
-Georgetown
-Neighborhoods such as Adams-Morgan, Foggy Bottom, Dupont Circle (how great are the neighborhood names?)
-Eastern Market
-Ben’s Chili Bowl
-Arlington National Cemetery
-Iwo Jima Memorial in Arlington

Other Possibilities:
-National Archives (where you can see the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution and the Bill of Rights)
-United States Botanic Garden
-Bureau of Engraving and Printing
-International Spy Museum
-FBI Building and tour
-National Gallery
-National Portrait Gallery

The Democratic debate is on tonight. It airs on CNN at 7 pm Eastern time. I’ll be tuning in. Catch it if you can.

Also, I subscribed to the New York Times home delivery yesterday and I’m so excited. The Omaha World-Herald was just not cutting it as the only print source of news. The only weird thing is that there is no way for me to get the Saturday paper. My only options were Monday-Friday or Sunday only. I signed up for both, but that still excludes Saturday. I will have to designate this as my day to go out and get the paper, which is fine I guess since that is what I have been doing every day. I hope it starts coming soon!

I finally saw The Lives of Others and loved it. I was completely absorbed and engaged in the film. Nothing since 24 has held my rapturous attention like this film. It was amazing. Rich, complex characters that felt as if they were inhabiting a very real, very morally complex world. It was deep and resonant without being didactic or too obvious. It managed to be both restraintful and emotionally evocative. I really, really loved it.

I can’t wait until Film Streams opens this upcoming weekend. I am trying to decide if I should attend the opening on Friday night. Seven Samurai opens as one of Alexander Payne’s ten picks for the Film Streams series that he is curating. Although some may view this as sacrilege, especially as a movie lover and a film student, I must admit that I’m not a big Kurosawa fan. I’ve got nothing against the guy, but the films I’ve seen of his haven’t sparked anything within me. Basically, I was bored. I feel like I have seen Seven Samurai for a film class, but I’m not sure. Maybe I should give this movie a first or second chance. Maybe with the excitement of a hopefully packed theater on opening night, I will find something onscreen in that dark, new theater that I haven’t seen before. Payne has written this about the film:

“Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s grandly entertaining historical epic is an achievement like climbing Mount Everest. My vote for best movie ever made. It’s the film that most made me want to become a filmmaker.”

There’s more:
“I still can’t believe it now, fifty-odd viewings later, that a movie can be that good—that ferocious, that delicate, that historical, that timeless, that entertaining, that complete. It goes by quickly precisely because it is so economical, each frame measured and weighed for the story it tells.”

That’s pretty high praise. If you’re interested in seeing his other picks and notes on them, you can go here for an Omaha World-Herald article and/or on the Film Streams site. As more incentive, Payne himself is going to be on hand for some of the opening week events.

It seems to me, based on my own musings here, that I should go. Couldn’t McCabe and Mrs. Miller be the opening night? Or La Notte? Or The Last Detail? Or any other film that he has chosen?

I babysat last week for the Ava and Sam, two cute and precocious kids.

This is what happens when I babysit:

Then I had my introduction to the game Pretty Pretty Princess.

Can you tell who was having the most fun?

I’m babysitting them again tonight. It promises to be another action-packed, fun-filled, exhausting night. I am ready to wear that crown again!

I wish I could get your gravelly voice out of my head. Erase the image of your unnaturally tan face and hair coiffed just so from my mind.

How is 24 so addicting? I just finished Season 1 Disc 2. My days feel like an accumulation of aimless hours spent waiting until the time that I can justifiably watch the next disc. I’m thanking Blockbuster for their convoluted policy of their online system which allows you to return a movie you got in the mail in-store, allowing you to pick up another dvd right then and there (great), but not allowing you to return that in-store movie for another in-store movie. In my opinion, you should be able to have 3 movies out at any given time, regardless of whether you got them in store or through the mail. Despite this minor frustration, it ends up being healthier for myself (and my siblings who seem to be addicted as I am) by restricting us (those who don’t want to pay) thus far to only 1 dvd of 24 per day.

My qualm with being so taken with this series, besides the fact that I can’t decide if it’s really good or not — and I don’t think I really care if it is good or not — it’s fast paced, it keeps you guessing, it gets your heart racing (especially with the suspenseful score and ticking clock - literally and aurally), it leaves you wanting more and keeps you enough in the dark to want to keep watching to find out what’s going to happen — anyway, back to my point in this epic and grammatically incorrect sentence (note: where are the options of footnotes when I want them? can you tell I’m reading DFW?) is that not only are there obvious moral issues of torture, human and civil rights being broken left and right and not following the due process of the law (especially in this age of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, etc…and I haven’t even gotten to the real torture scenes yet…I’m in the domestic age of the show) but also the co-creator Joel Surnow is what he himself refers to as a, “right-wing nut job.”

I read an article awhile back in the L.A. Times about a show he was developing for Fox News, titled, The Half Hour News Hour. It’s kind of like a Conservative version of The Daily Show or The Colbert Report. I haven’t heard about it since then, but I’m not in the habit of watching Fox News either. Anyway, I came out of that article not being too fond of Surnow (despite the fact that he hails from Michigan). I had forgotten about his proud Conservative status until Laura reminded me yesterday. It is hard now at times not to view the show through that Conservative lens and it’s fairly easy to see things that would fit that worldview. Does this perhaps explain why North Hollywood is depicted as being one of the seediest places on Earth? However, I’ve tried to be objective, and there are things that could be seen as having a liberal slant. I’ve decided to try and not let this information ruin my enjoyment of the show. It does bring up an interesting point and/or minor moral issue. Should I really be supporting something that is made by someone I really, truly disagree with and whose politics may be infusing the show with the same laissez faire attitude towards human rights that some other hard-headed Republicans exhibit (e.g. those in the White House right now)? A show that, according to a very interesting New Yorker article, may actually be influencing those in real positions of power, such as those in the military, to use these same tactics of torture on suspects?

On the flipside, there are a number of very liberal people on the show as writers, directors and actors. So maybe it is more reflective of our country’s political attitudes than most shows. Or there is the argument that it is just entertainment; a show for thrills, for fun. It’s hard to argue that people would take it very seriously, especially given the outlandishness of the plots and drama (this guy’s day is really filled with that much excitement and serious life-threatening danger to himself, his family, and everyone he is close to? how would he not have a heart attack by hour 3?)…then again, George Bush is our President and he likely took his stance, attitude and some of his one liners from all those John Wayne movies he watched as a kid.

The real question is: Do I even have a choice to stop watching 24? Or rather, the will?

Consider the Lobster And Other Essays by David Foster Wallace is hilarious, informative, insightful, thoughtful and just all out really awesome. I’ve always been intrigued by Wallace and he’s one of those many authors that I’ve thought so much about reading, but just hadn’t really gotten around to. I did start to read Infinite Jest, found it funny and challenging and for some reason (perhaps due to its massive size or to the fact that I’m just realizing I may have lost it under the bed and just forgot about it) I stopped and haven’t returned to it.

I listened to a podcast of him reading a portion of “The View From Mrs. Thompson’s”, an essay on 9/11 included in Consider the Lobster. Then I listened to another podcast of him on Bookworm. Having my interest piqued even further (and having heard him read at a Downtown for Democracy awhile ago and loving it), I decided to pick up Consider the Lobster. I am really glad I did.

Luckily , I still have a few essays left, and I’m going to cherish them. Although he does have at least one other book of essays and a few other huge, complex novels, so I should get it through my head that I don’t really need to ration his words.

“Certainly the End of Something or Other, One Would Sort of Have to Think” is a biting, absolutely funny essay on John Updike and his novel Toward the End of Time. It is worth buying the novel just to read the last sentence of this essay.

Other subjects include the porn industry, Kafka’s humor, lexicography, lobsters and lobster cookers, sports memoirs, John McCain, talk radio and Dostoevsky. If none of those interest you, I don’t know what will.