regarding narnia

another good one from SFGate.com's Mark Morford:

Keep Your Foul Paws...

I'm sure some of you geeks are thinking these same things...

baby girl Asch

baby Asch
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

less than two days old...

Daily Zeitgeist

Zach and Steve setting up for Zay's grandpa's birthday
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

Over on the right is a Flickr thing with photos from all of us whose Flickr IDs are known to me. If anyone else is uploading photos to Flickr, let me know so I can add you as a contact and your photos will go in there too. Cool, huh?

more from Destroy The Universe

more from Destroy The Universe
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

(see post below)

How To Destroy The Universe Part IV

A Picture Share!
Originally uploaded by Lorrimer.

Went to this crazy thing tonight. Weird art, weird music, nice people. Ran into two people from my past. I think the space is an artists' compound; it's a bunch of huge shipping containers all stacked and turned into living spaces. Fire spinning; one dude with a fire whip; a dancing dwarf; loud music; crazy contraptions; random naked dude in a hanging cage; vague political statements and gratuitous weirdness. I want to do a show there.

Link (scroll down a bit)

How Far Will You Go?

What would it cost to become a real-world Dark Knight?

Take The Pledge

Link

"Mrs. Jaworski, 8 has been suspended from school for one day." She wore an arctic blue power jacket over black slacks, and I self-consciously tried to pull my hooded sweatshirt further over my pink pajamas.

"It's Ms., please. And sorry for my attire, but I ran a marathon yesterday and I'm too sore to change this morning." I tried to infect her with my smile, but she wore a tight-lipped expression as frosty as her jacket. "So, anyway. What did he do?" I picked at the hem of my sweatshirt, looked just to the right of her face. I couldn't meet her eyes. I felt nervous. I felt underdressed. I wondered where 8 was.

So she told me what he did. And as she told me, I started to laugh. I didn't laugh a little, either, but I belly-laughed and grabbed my stomach. My son stood with his class this morning, put small right hand over heart, faced the American flag, and recited his own personal pledge of allegiance:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United Federation of Planets, and to the galaxy for which it stands, one universe, under everybody, with liberty and justice for all species.

"Mrs. Jaworski. This isn't humorous. The Pledge is an extremely important and patriotic moment each morning in the classroom. I am ashamed of your son's behavior, and I hope you are, too."

I Enjoyed Episode III

And now I can admit it because Neal Stephenson says it's ok.

Modern English has given us two terms we need to explain this phenomenon: "geeking out" and "vegging out." To geek out on something means to immerse yourself in its details to an extent that is distinctly abnormal - and to have a good time doing it. To veg out, by contrast, means to enter a passive state and allow sounds and images to wash over you without troubling yourself too much about what it all means.

in case you haven't been following this

Link to Rep. Conyer's letter to the Washington Post, blasting them for their coverage of the hearing on the Downing Street Memo. The tide seems, finally, to be turning against the war and the Bushies, and this memo could turn out to be the smoking gun that brings it all down.

Secret Identity

This sounds a bit like Josh. It's from here.

Origins

Link

In 'Batman Begins,' Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) is urged by his mysterious mentor - part spiritual adviser, part ninja master - to behead an enemy who is at his mercy. When Bruce refuses, he is on his way to becoming the heroic Batman, complete with a black mask and cape. In 'Revenge of the Sith,' Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen) is urged by his mysterious mentor to chop off the head of his enemy, Count Chocula - sorry, that's Count Dooku - and does. That is his crucial turn toward the dark side, and soon he's the villainous Darth Vader, complete with a black mask and cape to call his own. The films' conflicts are not simply about good guys and bad guys, or even good versus evil, always the elements of broadly framed fantasies. With spiritual overtones, and an emphasis on an eternal struggle between equally matched forces of darkness and light, the films suggest a kind of pop-culture Manichaeism. And as crowd-pleasing movies so often do, they reflect what's in the air, a climate in which the president speaks in terms of good and evil, and religion is increasingly part of the country's social and political conversation.
[Snip]
When "Night Watch" was released in Russia last year, it quickly became the highest-grossing film in that country's history. It's hard to predict how an action-fantasy with subtitles will do here, but its eternal battle between good and evil is simple to translate, and its language is familiar from statements like this: "We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name." Those words weren't spoken on the planet Tatooine, but by President Bush at West Point in 2002 (considering the lag time of movies, practically yesterday). By now, whether the real-life rhetoric of good and evil reminds us of the movies, or the other way around, is probably impossible to guess.

2nd time around

well I got my wish, I saw Ep3 at the corte madera. I have to say I liked it better the 2nd time, but that still doesn't make it good. "Not if anything to say about it I have" will forever piss me off. Maybe it was just that I was at the corte madera that made it better. Who knows. At least they remembered to wipe 3PO's memory.

Josh, when do you come up here? I'm assuming not by Sunday. Too bad. See you on thanksgiving I guess.

Howl's Moving Castle

Saw it tonight at Disney's "El Capitan" theater in Hollywood. Live organist before the show; the whole deal. It actually costs more to sit in the center section -- even if no one buys those tickets, they'll show the movie with the whole audience around the edges of the theater. This is Los Angeles.

Anyway. Like all his movies, there's a lot of great stuff in this one. Unfortunately, the plot completely falls apart about halfway through. Usually he's better about this. But the magic and the characters make it worthwhile. We saw it with the original Japanese dialogue and English subtitles, which we weren't expecting.

From the NY Times article on Miyazaki:

"But the route he chooses toward happiness can be troubling, perhaps especially to an American audience that expects sentimental affirmations based on clear demarcations between good and evil. The division of the world into heroes and villains is a habit Mr. Miyazaki regards with suspicion. "The concept of portraying evil and then destroying it - I know this is considered mainstream, but I think it's rotten," he said. "This idea that whenever something evil happens someone particular can be blamed and punished for it, in life and in politics, it's hopeless.""

OK, this is stupid, but

If you see Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I'm a fuzzy figure in the background in one scene. You can't tell its me. But it's me. There's one short scene about two-thirds of the way through the movie in a diner. Vince Vaughn is sitting on one side of the table, Brad Pitt on the other side, and Angelina Jolie is standing. In the shots of Brad Pitt (except for one shot from Angelina's POV), I'm one of the two people sitting at the counter (the one further away).

Angelina Jolie asked to make out with me on the set but I had to tell her no because of Mrs. Lorrimer.

fact of the day

when you see dead dogs in mexico, they are not usually dead, only melted. i found this out the hard way. scary dog.

video from my play

link