how now brownpau
I missed tonight’s (last night’s actually; I just noticed the time) baseball game as I was in bed, feebly nursing the beginnings of a neck-strain migraine, but I’m happy to see that the Nationals are still winning, despite having problems with the field at RFK Stadium.
I can’t believe I’m talking about baseball. Next thing you know I’ll be painting my face and banging Thunderstix together.
This dead bee fell out of my coleus today. I imagine he must have come in to suck nectar from a coleus flower on one of those rare days that my windows are open, then couldn’t find his way out, so he stayed in the coleus, where he literally shriveled up and died. Poor thing.
Just watched The French Connection. Admittedly, I rented it for the chase scene, and otherwise expected a dated, unremarkable cop drama, but this film delivers far more than I thought it would. It’s high-budget film noir, gritty and street-smart. The main character, played by Gene Hackman, was a shockingly violent, racist, misogynistic narc detective, whom I hated immediately, yet clever pacing and artful cinematography involved me in his life and work as closely as if I were sitting in the back seat of the police car.
And the soundtrack! I’m supposed to be a stodgy traditionalist; I normally hate abrupt, brassy dissonance; yet somehow, the atonal clangs, bangs, and growls of this film drew me into the gritty context. Even in its absence, the soundtrack is engaging: where Doyle chases the sniper towards the elevated trains, there is no music; just the sounds of running and breathing, which bring you right to the street — the work of director Bill Friedkin’s “documentary” effect.
New Yorkers will enjoy this one, especially: the whole film was shot in actual locations in the city, no sets or studios. As an added bonus for me, a Washingtonian, a single scene is set in DC, on the National Mall in front of the Capitol. With the exception of the missing American Indian Museum, DC in 1971 looks exactly the same as it always has. And you know how much Salvatore Capo paid for a ticket from La Guardia to Washington? $54. Yeah.
Co-star Roy Scheider calls this the standard to which the genre is held, and I think I agree with him. Three decades later, The French Connection still works. (Note: It’s not for everyone, though: Doyle uses just about every possible racial epithet I know, there’s a brief flash of female nudity — not counting the deleted bondage-whipping scene — and the whole thing is rather violent and bloody in places.)
So last night was the Washington Nationals’ Home Opener at RFK, and we won against the Arizona Diamondbacks, 5-3. Great pitching from Livan Hernandez, despite giving that three-run homer to Chad Tracey in the ninth. (Good batting, Arizona.) That ninth inning was close: they could have pushed us into a tenth or eleventh if they’d gotten a double play, but Chad Cordero pushed Tony Clark to a center field flyout — easy catch, on-time win, no need for Metro overtime.
And President Bush’s pitching? Pretty high; you can tell he didn’t want it to bounce. He walked into the Nationals’ clubhouse afterward to greet the team, and gave a special greeting to Joey Eischen: “Eischen, right?”
“He remembered trading me,” Eischen said, his eyes wide. “That was pretty cool. “I was some Single-A punk he got rid of to get a major-league pitcher. It was gratifying.”
Heh, Bush also visited the Diamondbacks’ clubhouse and wished them “Good luck.”
DCist review of the Christ Church Cathedral Choir. I watched that concert at the National Gallery last Sunday, and was quite enthralled. From “Zadok the Priest” to “God Bless Great Washington,” their performance was flawless — and a bit bouncy, too. Most of the choir consists of young boys, after all, so some of that youthful energetic playfulness came out in funny body language, but the whole time, not a single note was missed, and the timbre of every voice was utterly angelic.
The John Snetzler chamber organ was an interesting link to the “Gilbert Stuart” theme of the concert: wheeled in from the Musical Instruments exhibit at NMAH, it had originally been owned by George Washington’s surgeon. Stuart, having been an organist in his youth, may well have played — or at least listened to — a few pieces on this organ.
The Weather Identification Handbook, by Storm Dunlop. A book on weather science by a guy named Storm: how awesome is that, eh? This book is a comprehensive — but concise — visual guide to cloud forms, wind patterns, air masses, precipitation, and other meteorological phenomena, in an easily understood format with lots of pretty pictures. Thanks to Storm Dunlop, I can look up at the sky and tell cirrocumulus lenticularis from altostratus translucidus, turn my back to the wind to determine the position of a low pressure area in the northern hemisphere, and point out my heiligenschein on a dewy morning.
The Barbarian Conversion, by Richard Fletcher. Yup, I’m still on this. It’s such a huge and rich collection of tidbits of medieval history that I can’t absorb it all at one go; instead I’ve relegated it to background reading, taking in pieces of history at a time to occupy me between books. Right now I’m deep in the chapter on “Christian Consolidation,” about how the spreading church adapted its message and media to make the faith more palatable and more intelligible to the barbarian-descended cultures of medieval Europe.
Some notes of interest: St. Martin of Braga vigorously opposed the naming of days for Germanic pagan deities: Tiw’s Day, Woden’s Day, Thunor’s Day, and Frig’s Day — one possible reason that the modern Portuguese week simply counts days off from one to seven. And the Heliand is fascinating: an epic poem retelling the Bible as a Germanic saga, transforming church-speak into rephrased Saxon. For example, “Lord, teach us to pray” was interpreted as “reveal to us the runes.” And we thought the TNIV was bad.
NBC Dateline is showing “Secrets to the Code” right now, and it’s a laugh-a-minute marathon as they attempt to give some credence to The Da Vinci Code’s thin attempts at authority by sensationalizing tenuous historical fabrications with effects-laden eye candy, while giving prime interview airtime to fringe historians with limp-wristed ideas on manuscript evidence and strong sympathies to Gnostic writings of little factual value.
Most amusing moments so far:
– “The forms of Jesus and “Mary Magdalene” in Da Vinci’s painting form a letter M! Clearly a sign that they were Married!!!”
– “The scriptures are silent on whether Jesus was married or not. And silence is <pregnant pause> PREGNANT!!!”
– “Holy Blood, Holy Grail.” OMG LOL NO FURTHER COMMENT KTHXBI.
The documentary has pretty much only its conclusion to commend it, when it goes back on its entire sensational premise by showing the same interviewees refuting it.
More from The Narrow, and my Da Vinci Code Roundup has everything else I have to say on this laughable farce of overhyped historical fiction. And you can forward that to Stone Phillips.
For a few minutes there, the Washington Post weather page was telling us that the temperature through to next week would be 299°C below absolute zero. Just when all the winter coat clearance racks at Marshalls and Hechts are empty, too. (Quick catch via my coworker Keith.)
Everyone was gawking at this peregrine falcon red-tailed hawk perched in a tree near the Smithsonian Metro exit on the National Mall yesterday afternoon. Hanging from a nearby branch were the remains of its latest meal: half a squirrel.
Update: Turns out this was a red tailed hawk, not a peregrine falcon. I’ve updated the entry as needed.