Blogging from Roseburg

We left Portland tonight after Iris's soccer game and made it to the Windmill Inn at Roseburg by around 10:15. Clear, dry roads, lots of freeway construction just south of Eugene.

Amy and I are in room 269 and the kids are in 271. Here in our room we watched the final episode of The Sopranos. Now Amy is asleep behind me and I'm about to read Ravens in Winter by Bernd Heinrich.

This computer is scheduled to shut down for the night in about two minutes (it's almost 1:00 a.m.). I'm letting it. Off to Medford tomorrow, after an early morning walk and breakfast.

Audbon Walk

It was pretty wet, but not too bad. We saw a Hairy Woodpecker in the forest, and at the visitors' center we saw a Great Horned Owl and a Spotted Owl.

Two Movies

Michael Clayton and No Country For Old Men were both good movies. Not great, but good. I wanted to have my socks knocked off. They weren't.

My Tribute to Hillary Clinton

Her nose, her mouth, my kitchen.

My Tribute to Michael Jackson

I'm sure I'm not the only one who wondered how I would look with Michael Jackson's nose and mouth.

Veterans' Day Parade

Click on the photos to see the large versions.

Amy and Iris, in front of the comic book store.


Because of budget cuts, the band can no longer spell the entire name of the school. Sad.


They're happy it's not raining. The crowd this year was bigger than last year. It didn't rain last year either, but it was wicked cold.



Here's the memorial horse from the police equestrian unit. Instead of a "pooper scooper" behind them, they had a "stool pigeon," some luckless volunteer in a cartoon jailhouse costume.


This truck was bringing up the rear. As it sat there on the street, burning fuel and going nowhere fast, it was hard to avoid seeing it as a symbol, but not the kind the driver intended (probably).

American Gangster

Saturday we went to see American Gangster, the Ridley Scott movie that stars Denzel Washington (the titular character) and Russell Crowe.

I mostly enjoyed it while I was watching it -- despited getting a little peeved that they show him working a hand-held electronic calculator in 1968 -- and it had its exciting moments and wild '70s-era costuming, etc. But it was a disappointment. Yesterday Amy and I waited for the Veterans' Day Parade to begin and talked about the movie, and I ended up liking it a lot less.

My complaint after seeing it was that we don't actually get to know much about the "american gangster" it pretends to be about. You never find out how Denzel's character went so swiftly from driver to crime boss -- sure, he has a direct connection in Thailand for heroin, but he gets that because he has boxes of cash already. And they make a big point out of how the streets are chaos and need order, but they never show you how he managed to get that order.

Instead of getting to know the main gangster, we get to know the white cop, and guess what? He's so dedicated to his job he's a lousy husband and father, and he's an outsider among the cops because he's TOO honest. Hey, wait... I think I've seen this before!

Mostly Denzel goes around scowling and occasionally spitting out that famous Denzel smile, but that's about it. Russell, bless his heart, looks so average-joe you actually start thinking "okay, enough reality -- if we're going to have a by-the-numbers New York cop drama, how about some eye candy?"

Of course, the nude girls who work in the heroin room are all buff and slim.

Women may as well not be in these NYC cop movies. All they do is cry or look worried and pained, maybe spit out an angry "I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THIS!" speech or two. In this movie there's thirty minutes of film wasted on Crowe's boring divorce story.

It's well made, sure... and has all six of the black actors Americans recognize in the movies. It's gritty. There's an exciting scene where the cops raid a drug room. If you want to really ponder it longer than necessary, you can make something out of the way the movie seems to be saying the real bad guys aren't the murderers and drug dealers, the real bad guys are the corrupt cops. Oh, and the US military -- or enterprising soldiers -- are complicit in the drug trade. So all law enforcement (but for Crowe) is behind all the badness. The american gangsters, however, are honorable men who believe in family and community. That's a theme about as fresh as the rest of this hundred million dollar teevee show.

Who2 Almanac

Just the basics.

Oh, That Than Thao Market!

Some of the nice things you can find up at the local Vietnamese grocery.

Humbled in Hollywood

Yesterday it was sunny, but I couldn't find my sunglasses when I went to buy coffee, so I walked up the street blinded, shading my watery eyes with my hand. A block away from the coffee place, I couldn't quite see but I could tell some other pedestrians were coming my way on the sidewalk. I quickly stepped to the side to make way, and I walked right into a telephone pole. I banged up my new glasses and my old forehead. Way to smooth!

Har!

From a program on The History Channel about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.:

“The FBI was very concerned that the FBI or someone connected to the FBI may have had something to do with King’s death. But an investigation by the FBI found no evidence of involvement.”

Iris PSA

Is This Suspicious or What?

I have a video camera on the front porch with a monitor in my office. I know this unnerves some people, even though the camera is in plain sight and it's not exactly a secret. I can understand their discomfort, but in the end I'm very glad to be able to see who's knocking on my door.

Or who isnt.

This afternoon I noticed some teenage boy on my front porch, just standing there by the door. Not knocking. Just standing there. School's not out for another half hour or so, and I'm just about to go investigate when he finally knocks on the door. So he's there without knocking for at least 50 or 60 seconds, I don't know, but it seemed a little weird.

I walked around the side door and asked what was up. He said, "do you know what time it is?"

I said, "You came to my house to ask what time it is?" He nodded yes.

I almost told him it was 8 a.m., but instead told the truth: "I don't know, it's two or two-thirty, maybe, I don't know."

He didn't seem in a big hurry to leave so I prompted him with a "get going" and a dismissive wave of the hand. I watched him walk down the street, which took FOREVER. I took note that there were other kids all over the place he could have asked.

The more I thought about it, the more suspicious it seemed.

Muscle Boy

Most people didn't realize how tuff I looked underneath my jammies and jumpsuits. That age is so tough on your body image, but I was one of the lucky ones.

Animation Experiment #354

A Classic

I'm really only trying out the feature on here that allows you to post movies NOT on YouTube.

Me 'n' Birdbrain