how now brownpau
The Museum of Bad Art. It’s a real museum, up “Nawth” in Needham, MA. I’m quite amused to see that much of the “bad” art is impressionist in style: Lucy in the Field with Flowers, for example. (My own preference, of course, is for good, solid, representational art of the Old Master variety.)
(Found via Cloud King, which in turn was found via the Web Standards Awards. All worth checking out.)
PAU! Or Pao. It’s the snack that bears my name. Last Saturday, after reading Renee Kho’s extensive treatise on pao (found completely at random from here), I realized I had not eaten siopao for over two years, so Amy and I had an early Saturday brunch of dimsum, Yang Chow fried rice, and mini-siopao at China Doll Restaurant in tiny DC Chinatown.
Along the way, I was elated to find a Chinese grocery, Da Hua Market, in the Chinatown area. After months of having to take the subway to get to the nearest grocery (there are none in my immediate vicinity), the discovery of an Asian market just ten minutes’ walk from my apartment is a double bonus. The shelves were lined with all manner of Oriental foods, including some Filipino treats: rice crackers, ramen, banana ketchup, bagoong, soba noodles, edamame, sinigang mix, dried mangoes, and every possible kind of Chinese tea you could imagine. It was a happy, happy day for me, as Amy can attest.
Update: Sad news, I’ve just heard through the grapevine that Da Hua Market had to close down. :(
After one failed attempt, the Mars rover Opportunity has defeated a literal slippery slope and left its home crater. Now it is 9 meters from the rim, well and truly out on the red soily plains. NASA is having a press briefing today to announce another significant scientific finding from the rover.
Update: Over at Mainly Martian, Oliver Morton expects that the announcement concerns geolocic evidence pointing to proof that Mars once had open water, in the form of lakes or seas.
Update, 2pm: “Opportunity is parked on what was once the shoreline of a salty sea on Mars.” More on Slashdot, Metafilter, Bad Astronomy, and Mainly Martian.
Friday night, Amy came to DC, and we hopped over to E Street Theatre to watch Eternal Sunshine, Charlie Kaufman’s latest surrealist offering, directed by Michel Gondry.
(The original phrase “eternal sunshine of the spotless mind” is from Alexander Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard.)
Beautifully crafted film, with an absurd yet absurdly simple storyline. Classic Kaufman: the characters’ own deceptive ordinariness will inspire resonance rather than boredom.
In a nutshell, angsty yuppie Joel Barrish goes through the unusual procedure of having the memories of his wild ex-girlfriend Clementine erased from his brain, but begins to have second thoughts while in the midst of the procedure, and attempts to spirit her away into the deepest recesses of his mind. Much more happens, but I won’t spoil it.
The visualization of Joel’s jaunts through memory are haunting and dreamlike — literally dreamlike, as scenes from his recent and distant past are juxtaposed, intermingled, spotlighted, and demolished. Watch for the book covers at Barnes and Noble, the forced perspective of under-the-table childhood, the eternal crawl under the sheets, and the train ride through the mind.
This has to have been Jim Carrey’s most understated role yet; apparently he used no makeup for this film, and appears in all his stern, craggy, unshaven glory. Carrey barely reveals any of his trademark funny-faces except in two circumstances: as he delves into the Freudian recesses of childhood memory, and in a few cutesy-couple moments with Kate Winslet as his polar-opposite girlfriend. Other than that, most of his screen time is spent as quiet, reticent, brooding, average Joel, and he pulls off the portrayal perfectly.
[SPOILER] The only other Kaufman film I’ve seen is Being John Malkovich, and it’s my honest opinion that it was far exceeded by Eternal Sunshine for wit and meaning. One thing that bothered me about both movies, however, is that after developing a storyline along certain lines, Kaufman expands it unnecessarily with a sudden, peripheral, absurdly rationalistic twist — to the detriment of the original concept. In Malkovich it was the old man explaining to Cameron Diaz exactly how the tunnel into Malkovich worked, and in Sunshine I think it was Kirsten Dunst’s character sending the tapes to Lacuna patients. In both cases, the narrative stood alone well enough minus these added developments, without which the film could have progressed without even missing a beat. Malkovich could have stood even without the whole history of the tunnel being laid out point by scientific point, and an aura of mystery would have been preserved, thus decreasing distraction from the human conflict being played out. Sunshine could have skipped right over the entire segment of Joel and Clem listening to their respective tapes, cutting straight to the final scene of the couple together again at Montauk, and it might have still been a complete movie. Still, in Sunshine‘s case, when Joel and Clem are in the hall and they both realize that their rekindled relationship could be doomed as it was before, and Joel simply goes “Okay” and they begin to laugh, the nearly-doomed happy ending is preserved, with extra insight into the power of hopeful, sincere love. (That final shot of them in the snow at Montauk is a happy ending, right? Not just a flashback?)
Oh, and Elijah Wood, fresh out of Frodo, portrays an excellent jerk.
There’s a car on fire in Northeast DC, near the Red Line Metro rails between New York Ave. and Rhode Island Ave.
I had thought at first it was an electrical fire that had set the brush alight, when I first smelled smoke at Rhode Island Ave. NE Metro station, and saw the grass on fire about a hundred yards from the south end of the station. A large explosion in the midst of the flames changed my mind, however: it did not look electrical. After I had boarded the train and it had passed directly over the blaze, the burning frame of a car was clear (though not quite so clear in the photos I took, shown above).
I just got off the phone with DC Emergency Dispatch (i.e. 911), and they’ve received numerous tips. This should make for some minor headlines tomorrow, I suppose. (Monday now, no news about it.)
On today’s list of interesting things to look at, we have beautiful bugs, vintage television sets, Hello Kitty Bento Boxes, Yayoi Kusama’s Kusamatrix, and Digi Charat Cosplay. Enjoy.
Add to the list of subway systems I had no idea existed: Pyongyang, North Korea, and Ulan Bator, Mongolia.
Both systems are legacies of Soviet-era industry. The logo of the Ulan Bator Metro is a letter “M” superimposed over a camel’s humps. Pictures of the stations remind me faintly of the Baltimore Metro. Stations appear to have been named for cosmonauts and yurts.
Update: It’s come to my attention that the “Ulan Bator Metro” site is a joke. And if I’d just waited for the images to load, I’d have seen the satire, plain as day. Heh heh.
The Sayings of Eugene Ormandy.
(I linked famous Eugene Ormandy quotes previously, but I don’t mind linking to this larger collection. There’s more floating out there, and I have a feeling these quotes are fast gaining urban legend status; how many of those are still actual Ormandy quotes, I wonder?)
My current favorite: “You have to do two things. Watch it and me.”
A bonny Saint Patrick’s Day to ye, lads and lasses. Before you all break out the shamrocks and Guinness tonight, take a few minutes to read up on the history of Patricius, missionary to the Irish. Here’s Patrick in a nutshell from Ireland’s Eye, a more detailed history from the Roman Catholic Encyclopedia at New Advent, and CCEL has the translated text of Patrick’s Confession, one of only two preserved documents by the Saint, which includes the Celtic creed, “the Rule of Faith of the Trinity.”
Because there is no other God, nor ever was, nor will be, than God the Father unbegotten, without beginning, from whom is all beginning, the Lord of the universe, as we have been taught; and His son Jesus Christ, whom we declare to have always been with the Father, spiritually and ineffably begotten by the Father before the beginning of the world, before all beginning; and by Him are made all things visible and invisible. He was made man, and, having defeated death, was received into heaven by the Father; and He hath given Him all power over all names in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue shall confess to Him that Jesus Christ is Lord and God, in whom we believe, and whose advent we expect soon to be, judge of the living and of the dead, who will render to every man according to his deeds; and He has poured forth upon us abundantly the Holy Spirit, the gift and pledge of immortality, who makes those who believe and obey sons of God and joint heirs with Christ; and Him do we confess and adore, one God in the Trinity of the Holy Name.
(If someone has the Rule in its original pre-Jerome Latin, that would be totally awesome, because I can’t find it.)
Update: And how could I miss Young Russ’ Patrick page? Go see.
This comes rather late, considering that The Butterfly Effect was “hooted off the screen” weeks ago, but for those of you who are still unaware of the reference, the original “cumulative-effects” concept of time travel was first popularized in Ray Bradbury’s 1952 short story A Sound of Thunder. I hear that a Sound of Thunder film is in the works for later this year. (Of course, there was also Treehouse of Horror V with Homer and the Time Travel Toaster.) More on that from the Time Travel Reviews at Andy’s Anachronisms.