This Side of Lost

I started this blog nearly five years ago. It was long enough ago that I refused to call it a blog. It was a weblog. The word blog still had that new and slightly condescending neologistic feel to it that I hated. Now my browser's spell-check accepts blog but balks at weblog. Strange.

I'm kind of over blogging, my friends. I wanted to use this to keep in touch with my far flung friends upon my exodus from Minnesota, and it was okay at that for a while. But that was before tools like my friends' private web forum and Facebook came along. And they seem to do the job much better.

So what's left? Posting weird stuff I find on the Internet? I'm certainly not the best person doing that. And when I do have something to share, it's not like a whole post is really necessary. Facebook (and Twitter) is better for that. Okay, so reviews of AFI 100 movies? Folks, we've been at it for four years and we're only just reached the 1/3rd mark. My backlog of reviews is probably what's been holding us back.

It's not just the dearth of content, though. My life wasn't terribly exciting in library school, so it's not like it's gotten even less so. But somehow, being married and having a job make it a lot tougher to find the time and brain-space to devote to this thing. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Just a change.

I don't know. I guess I'm saying that you shouldn't really have any more expectations for this space. If you're curious what's going on in my life, friend me on Facebook. Or pick up the phone, for heaven's sake. Don't we all have free long distance now? If you want more day-to-day stuff, follow me on Twitter (Twitter posts since my last blog post: 86). Whatever else I feel like posting here will get posted.

So I'll see you elsewhere? Good. Signing off.

In February, Samantha and I discussed the fact that we couldn't remember the last time we had a vacation that wasn't also a trip for some other reason, like visiting family for the holidays or going to a conference or a wedding. So we made plans to fix that. And two weeks ago we had a lovely mini-vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine, and Acadia National Park.

I didn't know the place existed before February and now it's one of my favorite places ever. The town and most of the park are located on Mt. Desert Island on the Atlantic Coast and it's just beautiful country. Apparently everyone already knows this, as the place has been the vacation spot for the rich and famous for decades and does quite a healthy tourist business in the summer months.

Lucky for us, it wasn't quite the summer months yet and we almost had the place entirely to ourselves. We showed up at our chosen lodgings, the Coach Stop Inn bed and breakfast after a quick seven hour drive to find that we are the only guests there. Acadia itself only opened fully the day before, and the carriage roads were still closed to biking due to the spring thaw. Venturing into town, we found many of the local merchants still closed for the winter.

However I can safely say that very little of this had any effect on our experience. True, we didn't get to do any biking or kayaking, but if we had, I might have missed out on my favorite part of the trip: our two hikes.

I had never gone hiking in any serious sense before, and I'm sorry I've been missing out for so long. Friday and Saturday morning were spent on the trails headed up and down Gorham and Beech Mountain, respectively. Admittedly, they're not so much mountains as much as overgrown hills (525 and 839 feet), but they're the only mountains I've ever climbed, so I'll stick with mountains. Anyway, I had a great time following the trails, scrambling over rocks and trekking through forests. The weather was absolutely perfect (in the low 60s most of the time) and we barely spotted another soul out on the trails. Very peaceful and yet an excellent workout.

The workout part we needed, especially, after the three course breakfasts we were served at our B&B. Which were completely amazing. I think they called this Eggs Napoleon. I didn't get a picture of the blueberry fritters, their signature dish and the first course of each breakfast. That's probably because we were wolfing them down so fast. Samantha picked the place partially because of the excellent breakfasts, and they didn't disappoint. Overall we highly recommend the Coach Stop Inn.

Hiking and breakfast were the highlights for me, but the whole weekend was a smash hit. The weather cooperated beautifully the entire time. We enjoyed some less strenuous touring of the park and the island, driving up Cadillac Mountain, walking along the shore and across the "bar" at low tide. We even got some culture at a local Native American museum and did a little shopping. We had delicious food all over the place, sampling among the open eating establishments in Bar Harbor and a couple of Yelp-approved spots in Portland on the way there and back.

All in all it was a great trip. We felt recharged heading back home. And I have a new hiking addiction to feed.

The current funniest thing on the Internet for me is Miranda Sings. Miranda is a singer from Tacoma, WA, who is just trying to make a name for herself using nothing but her talent, her drive for success, and some YouTube videos. Check out her rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner. You can even learn how to sing like her from her free voice lesson!

Before you click, though, I should warn you that her videos are not for the faint of heart. And by "heart" I mean "musical appreciation." Because Miranda is terrible. She can't sing on key, with or without accompaniment. Her vocal technique is cringe-worthy. Her musicianship is off the scale -- the low end, that is. My poor wife usually can't make it through 30 seconds of her videos.

But what isn't entirely clear (to many of the commenters on YouTube especially) is that Miranda is a joke: she's a character created and played, as best I can gather, by Colleen Ballinger, a recent Azusa Pacific University graduate in vocal performance. Colleen has some YouTube videos that display her interest in contemporary Broadway fare, and in them, she's just fine; she's even pretty good, if you like that sort of thing. But I'm somewhat sad to say that her future may be in comedy, because Miranda's lampoon of self-obsessed singers in the age of YouTube is spot on.

This hits my sweet spot for Internet weirdness for a number of reasons. First off, the videos in and of themselves are so bad you can't help but laugh. And once you understand it's satire, you add that level of humor (one that's particularly appealing to me, because I can't stand singers with an ego). But I love love love the reactions. The usual "OMG your terrible" ones are good, but there are people trying to correct her "advice" in the voice lesson, or telling her what she's doing wrong... they're all just so earnest in their criticism. And then there are the people who get the joke, who post the supportive comments! I love it. Plus, I have so many friends who really are professional musicians, and some of them are just as taken in as the broader public. Fantastic.

Go Miranda. And haters, back off. You're just jealous.

Yay, baseball is here! Here are some baseball related things.

• The Twins have a winning record so far. They're even leading the AL Central! I have to say this now in case it is not true for the rest of the year. Though honestly, I have no idea what will happen in the Central this year, as it is a pretty weak division currently.
• Where we live, Boston or in New York are the two easiest options for seeing the Twins live without traveling extreme distances. Unfortunately, we won't be seeing them at all, because all of the games at both locations are sold out of moderately priced tickets. And since it's basically legal to scalp tickets now, there were thousands of tickets available online, but I loathe and despise the ticket resale industry and refuse to support it by buying tickets from a third party. So in all likelihood we won't be seeing the Twins in person this year.
• Our fancy new flat screen TV has a VGA input, which means we can watch anything on the computer on it. Including Twins games via MLB.tv. We watched a bit of last night's game this way and the picture's not bad for our mediocre DSL bandwidth.
• This also means fantasy baseball has begun. I'm playing in my regular league, which is comprised of many friends from St. Olaf. It's an extremely competitive league and my draft didn't turn out as well as I would have hoped. I was feeling pretty down about this, so on a whim, I went and joined another league right before the season started. It's a rather shallow public league, and I anticipate that it will be a good antidote and confidence builder compared to the soul-crushing difficulty of my regular league.

And finally, my least favorite thing about baseball -- when a young player gets his chance at stardom snatched away before he's even had a chance to try. Rest in peace, Nick.

Yes, folks, it's another western (and not the last). This 1953 entry stars Alan Ladd as the titular character, a mysterious gunslinger who gets embroiled in a conflict between a homesteading family (played by Van Helfin and Jean Arthur) and a ruthless cattle baron. George Stevens directs.

Okay, okay, okay. I'm starting to come around on the westerns. I have disliked all of the westerns we've seen for this project, but I dislike this one less. I think the gap between viewing and reviewing this film (I saw it last May) actually helped because it seems better looking back. I gave it 2 stars on Netflix back then, but I changed that to a 3 while writing this review. How's that for growth?

Shane has many of the hallmarks of a good western: the simple story that never plays out as simple as it sounds, the universal moral conflicts of good vs. evil played out by people who aren't quite either, and the vast, breathtaking and imposing landscapes that frame it all. I have seen these now several times and am beginning to understand the subtleties of how they are used to good effect.

One thing that I think Shane has in abundance over other westerns are the characters. We've seen plenty of morally ambiguous characters, but everyone in this movie felt real instead of just needlessly complex. Shane himself is a hero, yes, but one who knows the same heroic qualities than enable him to save the day are the same qualities that mean he must not stay, leading to the heartbreaking and iconic final scene as the young boy who has idolized Shane implores him to come back as he rides away.

The relationships that develop between Shane and his adopted family members are natural, and the consequences that ensue due to the story make intuitive sense. I enjoyed the interplay between Shane and the family, between the family and the other homesteaders, between Shane and the ranchers. It seemed well constructed. We don't have to like the way the film turns out, but it is satisfying nonetheless.

The characters also appealed to me in a fashion that has been honed by many years of reading comic books and fantasy novels and playing computer games. I always enjoy seeing characters who are obviously powerhouses in their particular realm of existence match up against one another. If you rated every character in the movie on a gunslinging scale from 1 to 10, it's obvious that Shane gets a 10. Jack Wilson (played by a young and fantastic Jack Palance) gets a 9, which is plenty good enough to have him be a nigh-unstoppable force of evil in the movie. But Shane will get the best of him, and does. This is despite, or perhaps even because of, Shane's awareness of the Spider-Man Credo ("With great power comes great responsibility").

This curiously mechanical viewpoint on conflict is something I see and enjoy in a lot of media, so the fact that I get this feeling from this film isn't really unusual, but I figured it bore mentioning anyway.

So yeah. It's still a western, which means it is automatically hokey, backwards and artificial to me. The themes could have been easily explored in some other genre that I would have enjoyed watching more. But as far as westerns go, it was okay.

(See this post if you're confused why I'm reviewing movies.)

The older folks in my life have told me on occasion that life seems to move faster the longer you live it. That's kinda scary, because it already seems to go awfully fast. I last posted on February 11th? Sigh. Well, I did say you shouldn't expect me to ever get better at this blogging thing. So, in no particular order, here are some things.

We went into the city again for Valentine's Day. We spent the afternoon putzing around the Chelsea neighborhood, where we got awesome cupcakes, walked around a seminary (I have this weird thing for seminaries), visited a couple bookstores, checked out the Chelsea Market, saw two awesome exhibits at the Museum at FIT and had an absolutely fantastic meal at Cookshop (OMG so good, I had elk, it was freaking amazing). Oh, and we went in zero art galleries. Whee!

I like cookies. Did you know that?

Our cats are doing wonderfully. When we got back from our trip to Minnesota for the holidays, Oscar had pretty much repudiated his spot under the couch. I don't blame him -- it's pretty cramped under there. But Robert is no longer attacking him on the spot. I think Robert finally got tired of the novelty and gave up and started cuddling with him instead. So we have finally accomplished what we wanted to do with Robert: clean his teeth and give him another friend so that he's more comfortable in his old age. They both seem happy and they make us happy. Which is what pets are about, I guess.

I saw Watchmen and didn't really like it.

I am singing in another choir. ("Another choir, Andrew?") Yeah. I'm an addict, remember? This one's at the school I work at. It's a student group, but the conductor is always looking for a few good men ("I want the low notes!" "You can't handle the low notes!"), so there I am. They rehearse during a class time, and while it feels a little strange to leave my office in the middle of the day twice a week and go sing, my supervisor thought it would be a good way to do some networking.

The group exclusively does medieval and Renaissance repertoire, and this spring it's Victoria's Requiem. It's been a long time since I've sung with college-age voices. It's eye-opening and depressingly nostalgic to hear how effortlessly they blend and keep pitch. It's been fun so far, but I feel a little out of place and it kind of puts a hole in my day, so I doubt it will be a regular thing.

Baseball starts in a couple weeks! Yay! I don't have high hopes for the Twins this year, though I said that last year and they came within a game of the division title. The pitching is for real, but the offense was fueled by flukishly high hitting rates with runners in scoring position, something I don't expect to work again this year. No major upgrades at any position (ooh, diss, Joe Crede) means nothing else will really be changing.

I was in Seattle last weekend for the biennial ACRL conference. It's an awesome town and I had a good time seeing old friends from library school and California. And going to the conference, of course.

That's all for now...

Argh, blogging. How does this thing work again? I started this post two months ago with the intent of filling you in on some of the various cool media items I've consumed lately. I'm still going to do that, but first, an important "media" announcement.

I've joined Twitter. For those of you that don't know what that is, it's a micro-blogging tool, where your posts have to be 140 characters or less. It's very similar to the Facebook status update. So similar, in fact, that there's a Facebook app that mirrors your tweets (as Twitter posts are called) in your status update, which is what I've done. You can also find my tweets in a box on the right side of the homepage here. See? Right over there? What, can't you see me pointing?

Anyway, I've found that my desire to let the world know about something is better sated by Twitter than by blog posts. That's not to say that I won't continue blogging, but really, don't expect me to get any better at it anytime soon.

So! Onto the media.

Books

• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. I've started listening to books on CD during my commute sometimes, and this one was a good candidate. It's extremely long and long books are hard for me to get through these days, but with a book on CD, you just keep putting the next CD in, and before you know it, you're done. Anyway, I highly recommend this one, either audio or paper version. It's about the revival of English magic in the 19th century. Sort of fantasy/historical fiction. Neat.
• Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. Another book on CD. I basically picked it up because I liked Vowell in the TMBG documentary. She's just as funny and weird in this, except it's about people who shot presidents.
• Stormwatch/Authority by Warren Ellis. I was feeling a need for some good comics recently and ILL'ed some trade paperbacks of one of Ellis' landmark series. Ellis has long been a favorite comic book writer of mine and these didn't disappoint. Truly epic stuff.
• Supreme by Alan Moore. Same idea here. Also very good, in a more intellectually satisfying manner than Ellis. This is not necessarily a good or bad thing, just a difference.
• The Assault on Reason by Al Gore. Also book on CD. My summary: the book should have been titled George W. Bush is a Terrible President. It was interesting to be listening to this during the very end of the Bush administration. While listening to all the terrible things the Bush administration has done to our democracy, I was at alternating intervals ecstatic to think that it might be over, and depressed at the possibility that some of these things might not change with Obama in office. *shrug* I guess we'll see.

Movies/TV (I'm not going to spew my Netflix queue at you anymore, but here's some highlights)

• Battlestar Galactica. I'm addicted, what can I say. But don't talk to me about it! I'm still at the beginning of Season 4.
• Buckaroo Banzai. Here's another one that I somehow escaped high school/college without seeing. I'm glad I finally did though -- it was awesome.
• Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai. I have been meaning to experiment with some Bollywood films for a while now, and one finally came up on the queue. It was great fun to watch -- very colorful and the song & dance scenes live up to their reputations. It was rather long though, and, as is probably the case with a lot of foreign film, I always felt like something was missing in translation. But I'm excited to see more.
• We also managed to actually get out and see a couple of Oscar nominees: Slumdog Millionaire and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Both were very, very good and we are having a hard time deciding which we're rooting for for the Best Picture award.

Music

• Uncle Bonsai - The (In)Essential Uncle Bonsai. This is a clever but somewhat screechy folk/pop trio from the northwest. I enjoy them, of course, but I'm not sure many other people would.
• Mates of State - Re-Arrange Us. Indie pop with guy/girl harmonies. I find a lot of indie pop to be opaque and not very accessible but these guys are nice.
• Mother Mother - O My Heart. This is the clear winner of our latest Cheapo Records haul. A five piece from Canada that sings strange, sometimes creepy and sometimes totally head-bangingly-awesome-rocking pop with three part harmony. We're pretty obsessed currently. Take a listen to the title track and Hayloft.
• We picked up some other miscellany at Cheapo: Kubla Khan's Lowertown, Barenaked for the Holidays (Barenaked Ladies' holiday album, duh), and some other stuff I can't remember right now. But I got the important ones.

What media have you consumed lately, human??

This 1971 crime thriller features Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as police detectives on the trail of a narcotics trafficking scheme. Directed by William Friedkin.

Many of the films we've seen so far on this project are linked by a common theme -- portraying a world where morality is not black and white, but cast in infinite shades of gray. And I've commented before that, by dint of my viewpoint as a Gen X / Millenial generation member, movies with ambiguous morals are not that impressive or groundbreaking to me. But the list just keeps throwing them at me, so I'll keep repeating the same things.

So it's police drama this time around. And wow, look at that, there are cops that aren't sterling examples of humanity. And things don't always have a happy ending. Shocking.

Look, I don't like to trivialize the major aspect of why this movie is on the List, but there it is. It's realistic. Great. Why is this so amazing, by the way? It's not like reality is that awesome -- I mean, I'm watching a movie, here. You can safely assume that I'm looking for some sort of escape from everyday life. I guess the point is that no other police dramas really took an honest tack before this one. Which just makes me wish (as I've commented before) that I had watched other similar movies from the era that aren't as good in order to get a clear sense of why this movie is great.

Yes, the acting was good, the cinematography was excellent, and the famous chase scene was a show stopper. But the plot was quite complex and tough to follow, and the appropriately ambiguous ending left me unfulfilled.

Meh. That's it. I don't know what our next film with ambiguous morals is, but maybe by the time we get there, I'll be able to review it in some new and interesting way. Feel free to suggest one.

(See this post if you're confused why I'm reviewing movies.)

One of the weird parts about our current living and working situation is attempting to simultaneously settle in to three different towns. As you can imagine, it's hard to get to know anyone in the town you work in when you only work there, and similarly it's hard to meet anyone in the town you live in when all you do is sleep there.

Despite this, we've tried to venture out into the area in the months we've been in our adopted hometown. Admittedly we haven't done a lot, but here's the highlights of our local culture excursions:

• Keeler Tavern Museum, Ridgefield. We were looking for some highbrow entertainment on a rainy Saturday afternoon, which brought us to this cute little spot. We were shown around the old inn by a docent in period garb, and learned quite a bit about local history. Nothing earth shaking, but a pleasant visit.
• The Greenwich Choral Society's Christmas concert. I'm a sucker for choral concerts, especially during the holidays. I thought that this obviously well-organized group had promise. While the soloists and orchestra were all excellent, the program was pretty esoteric and the choir itself lacked definition, distinction or any other distinguishing characteristics. Forgettable, except for an unfortunate minor altercation with a fellow audience member (I'll direct you to Samantha for the details, if you're curious).
• The New England Chamber Choir's Christmas concert. Another local ensemble. Similarly disappointing, but in a different manner. Or maybe we're just insufferable elitists. *shrug*
• I would, of course, be remiss in not mentioning my own Christmas concerts. Not that there's much to say; we sang slightly under-rehearsed music with a modicum of technical proficiency and musicianship. I mean, the audience gave us a standing ovation! That's good, right?
• Enter the Haggis at The Towne Crier Cafe. Last Sunday night we enjoyed the Celtic-inspired rock musical stylings of one of my recent music discoveries. This is the sort of concert I really like -- an intimate setting with a band that's fun to see live. The excellent food was just an added bonus (though a little pricey -- maybe we'll just come for the show next time).

The longer I live away from my home state, the more I notice the accents when I go back. Minnesotans, I love you, but you do talk kinda funny.

We had a good time back in the Twin Cities for the holidays. Here's a run down of what kept us busy:

• The Candy Party. My college friend Maren and her dad host a party every December where lots of Christmas cookies are frosted, delicious taffy, caramel and peanut brittle are made, and lots of catching up with old college friends is done. I haven't been to this in five years and Samantha never has. But this year's was no exception. We even sang some Christmas carols. Oh, and the man has a pipe organ in his house. That's worth mentioning even out of context.
• The usual Christmas Eve and Day festivities. I even went and sang a solo at my old church.
• The Second Inaugural Boxing Day Skate-watdee. 'Nuff said.
• An excellent Saturday evening date planned by my mother (!), consisting of seeing the Brave New Workshop's Christmas comedy revue (freaking hilarious) and a night at the fancy new Marriott hotel in downtown Minneapolis. Thanks, Mom!
• A trip to Mankato to engage in a Wick family tradition -- making Swedish sausage. Also helped my aunt out with her computer and stayed in the Best Western -- a hotel I've stayed in with my family more times than I can count. Nostalgia-riffic.
• A very fun New Year's Eve at Mancini's Char House in St. Paul, dressed ridiculously with about 20 friends and friends of friends. It's been a while since I had a really fun New Year's Eve, and that qualified.
• Lunch with Gillian. Yay! Always great to catch up with her.
• A lot of sitting by the fire and reading. I read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson and American Nerd by Ben Nugent.
• Our Cheapo Records pilgrimage. More on this later.
• Going out to eat many times, to old favorites (Punch, French Meadow) and new favorites (Common Roots, Hell's Kitchen).

As far as Christmas swag, it was a lighter year because my mom was gracious enough to buy our airfare for the trip. But I still got a nice mix of thoughtful gifts from the family, including music, clothes and cash. Samantha and I got each other a couple small things, but also spent some money on something we sorely needed: a new television. So we now own a 26" LCD flat-screen, high definition, widescreen TV. Whee! We didn't really need all the fancy stuff (we're just excited this one has a remote and doesn't crackle ominously) but we wanted one that will last us through the next decade of TV technology innovation. Oh, and I should mention we don't have any sort of television service other than antenna, so we still only get one decent channel. But the DVD player sure looks nice on it.

So we're back in Connecticut and have been back to work for a week. Not a whole lot of big plans for the new year yet. But we'll keep you posted.