Thursday, June 15, 2006, 07:10 PM - Dancing
Last night was wonderful - it's easy to forget that a playful, connected fast-ish dance to live music is the purest joy I know (except maybe for 3 feet of fresh powder...).
;)
Thursday, June 15, 2006, 05:40 PM
;)
Got back in town in time to see Grendel - I was a little disappointed in the production. As you can see, it was visually pretty striking (although the problem child set wasn't as exciting as I expected). The piece was textually amazing (especially second half of first set), and a great performance by Grendel (Eric Owens).
;)
But it was a really self-indulgent and scattered production, with uninspiring
music, and crap choreography. There was beautiful costumery and too many puppets (yeah yeah, what else would I expect). It made me realize that I can still sing sections from St. Francis years later, and that Dr. Atomic last year was a treasure that I'm so glad I experienced.
Thursday, June 15, 2006, 05:12 PM - Sex
Yesterday, at the Santa Monica farmer's market (where I stopped on the way home from the airport).
"Hey. Nice braces."
Tuesday, June 13, 2006, 01:09 AM - Friends
was my favorite surprise in NYC. And of course the lovely Miss B. is charming as always....
Tuesday, June 13, 2006, 01:07 AM - George
There is no better check on my rampant ego than a trip home to Bridgeport. It’s impossible to believe I’m so damn fancy when I come home to a listing ’64 Fury up on blocks and rusting away under a tarp in the back yard. I had a relatively successful attempt to explain my current job to Dad the other morning – my favorite of his descriptives was “an actuary of the Twilight Zone” …trust me when I say this actually represented a breakthrough for us in him understanding what I do. Actuary= analyst, Twilight Zone= nebulous world of politics and political impact. He reiterated that real jobs include actually making things, so I tried to explain to him about the pretty new database I made for GCI – he wasn’t buying it. Of course the most fun part of the visit was getting paraded around in front of the crusty old golf course cronies, and spending an hour or so working on my putting. I got the abbreviated tour of the Bpt economic condition – there is actually some construction in the post-manufacturing wasteland along State St. – new tile and ice cream factories being built…and some of the neighborhood projects are being replaced by a Super Stop and Shop. No threat yet to the local pawn shops and strip clubs, though, so don’t worry too much about my neighborhood losing its ‘character’. And of course we’re now the proud home of the first-ever expansion of Pepe’s Pizza from New Haven, to which I made my dad drive me immediately from the train station. Not quite as good as the original, but easily takes any pizza in California.
Tuesday, June 13, 2006, 12:53 AM - Politics
I was at a meeting last week to examine the state of GOTV research and plot out coordinated efforts to answer the most pressing pending questions. Some of the people there were very impressive, and some seemed frighteningly dense. One of the more interesting proposed goals was developing metrics/ research protocols that would allow for true comparisons and more reliability across different experiments and programs… but the group shied away from discussing the really important outcome measurement: evaluating the movement as a whole. The right knows what’s on its scorecard, and has checked off a few boxes recently (supreme court). I suppose without a coherent ‘progressive’ agenda it’s difficult to determine shared hard benchmarks – but one would think we could come up with some numerical goals for the federal budget / economic indicators that would require the implementation of our priorities – a relative increase, for example, in education spending relative to military spending, a decrease in the % of medical care costs incurred because of lack of access to care, % increase in energy efficiency, reduction in poverty/ income inequality, etc. Even without those agreements, you’d think that we could come up with shared process outcomes that would be indicators of the movement’s growth – % of people who report that they’re civically engaged, % increase in voter turnout in primary and general elections, % of the Democratic party’s funding that comes from small donors, % of women holding elected office… but none of that large-scale evaluation is on the table – which is why you end up with hugely expensive enterprises like ACT that fail utterly to create a sustainable progressive infrastructure, or conferences with seemingly superficial impact. Changing the balance in Congress would be a nice start, but it's very far from what I hope are our ultimate goals.
Friday, June 9, 2006, 12:06 AM - Technology
If you haven't done anything yet on the Net Neutrality stuff, there's likely a vote tomorrow...get on it. Click HERE to get your name on the petition. And call your rep.
;)
Wednesday, June 7, 2006, 08:31 PM - Politics
Despite our earnest MoveOn member phone banking, Francine Busby could not build on her strong first-round showing to take 50th district in a runoff yesterday - in fact she barely improved on the April election results. (That said, she improved tremendously on her '04 numbers, so perhaps there's hope in the big picture - especially given the piles of cash the Republicans had to pour into the race). The last 5% she needed to pick up were an extreme long shot, given the huge R tilt to the district (even without her last-minute gaffes). I hope this makes people realize that corruption is not the core issue to build our messaging around - if it didn't work to turn moderate Republicans and keep the R base home in SD (with a full-on bribery, limos and prostitute scandal) it's certainly won't work with the subtleties of campaign finance irregularities. My sense (maybe from living in Argentina) is that most people have a ridiculously high tolerance for corruption, and politicians in the U.S. at their worst are better than those in many other countries at their best. Most of the venality in our political system is right on the table; the lobbyist/ campaign contribution thing is astonishingly blatant, and barely raises eyebrows. MoveOn's gotten some lift with 'caught red-handed' ads targeting vulnerable republicans, but only when they're on a specific issue that matters to people (Rx drug coverage). The general 'culture of corruption' message just tells people what they already know, I fear. We need to do better this fall.Wednesday, June 7, 2006, 08:16 PM
Last night I went to see my coworker Brandon's band (I am a terrible publicist since I cannot for the life of me remember what they're called)(UPDATE: it's Drums Like Machine Guns, I know you were wondering). It was at the Smell, an anarchy-breeding punk rock collective space in a fairly sketchy part of downtown. They really mean all ages (see small fan in the background of this picture) and it really was punk rock (lots of screaming, but much more fun than that terrible show at Spaceland I went to recently). The first band played entirely covered by a green tarp, their cute asses and red Xmas lights showing from underneath. The second band was astonishingly loud. Brandon's band didn't play for long enough at all, and then the last person (that I stayed for) created his pieces almost entirely out of guitar distortion pedals. It was great fun.
Monday, June 5, 2006, 02:59 PM - Travels
There was lots of Hollywood in my weekend - Adam was down to visit from SF, and in true oblivious Catherine style I walked right by Jake Gyllenhaal at the Farmer's Market Sunday morning. Adam is appalled at the thought of all the glamorous people I'm overlooking on a weekly basis...if Nick would just set up defamer/stalker perhaps I'd be more motivated to make a celebrity cheat sheet, or flashcards, or something, but I kind of doubt it. I was much more interested in the 14-year old Matt Dillon in Over the Edge - which we saw at Hollywood Forever in my first trip to what all my LA friends claim is the best open-air cemetery movie picnic in town.
But my favorite "I live in Los Angeles now. How did that happen?" moment was starting my Friday evening with a quick scenic jaunt on the 2 freeway...
Did I mention how much I love people on flickr who've taken pictures for me when I forget to? It facilitates my tenuous hold on this whole blogging form.
And did I mention how I think eggplant is the best possible color for a Chevy Malibu on the 2 at sunset?
;)
Back Next
