Not much going on, just a quiet Friday night at home. It’s been a busy week at work, so it’s nice to slow down. One thing on the to-do list this weekend is filing my tax returns. I think I have all the forms I need, so I’m ready to get it done.
Also I’ll be curling up with a good book: The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. Sonal recommended this book to me a while back, and I’m really liking what I’ve read so far.
Have a good weekend, kids.
Last night I dreamed I went to Hawaii… in a subway car that flew. And it was a rather nice subway car; as we were about to land, my mother was still in the lavatory, and I had to tell her that she needed to get back to her seat and fasten her seat belt. A further neat thing is that the train landed on rails. I was rather impressed.
This reminds me of a print I once saw of a flying train, but for the life of me, I can neither remember the name or artist nor find it online. And no, it’s not The Polar Express.
As I mentioned last week, we’re off to Philly this weekend. What spurred this getaway is Matthew Neenan’s new work for the Pennsylvania Ballet, set to six Rufus Wainwright songs. There was quite a positive review yesterday in the Philadelphia Inquirer. An excerpt:
If the new Pennsylvania Ballet triple bill, featuring works by Peter Martins, Matthew Neenan and Twyla Tharp, were a meal, Neenan’s 11:11 would be its sumptuous main dish. Its world premiere Wednesday night brought cheers from a euphoric public. There are so many fresh ideas in the work that it made the rest of the program look dusty and tired.
Dancing to Rufus Wainwright’s lush, yearning music must be a high because in 11:11, set to six Wainwright songs, the dancers are by far the fullest and most impassioned we see them all evening. The curtain opens on five duos in sheer, flowing, greenish-and-beige costumes, bathed in the first of John Hoey’s washes of colored light. To “Vibrate,” Neenan feathers the timing of the group’s jumps and dips for a multidirectional, eye-popping richness.
Neenan splays his cast of 20 into assorted groupings for the succeeding songs, transitioning between them with whimsical touches — one lady is literally thrown offstage! — and with swift waves of dancers reconfiguring. There’s a circling women’s quartet to “Natasha,” two separate, hurtling trios to “Poses,” a duo featuring a powerfully sultry Riolama Lorenzo to “Greek Song,” and more. The movement is energized but soft, allowing us to see the fullness of momentum and also pointing to a humanness replete with vulnerabilities, ecstasies and pranks.
With “Oh What a World,” Neenan pulls out all the stops, rendering garlands of fleeting geometries and finally constructing a giant carousel of dancers, the women rising and lowering like its horses. Breathtaking.
After that, it’s hard to focus on a lone duo before more dancers and more complexity filter back in. Just as the action begins to peak, a single black curtain slides swiftly across the stage. In one deft motion, dancers vanish behind it, leaving a pensive, solitary Meredith Rainey. It may be the strongest ending I’ve ever seen.
Seeing a work that’s so much of this moment, beautifully crafted, warm and accessible is a great and all-too-rare delight.
Yowza. I can’t wait.
Today in the case of Hernandez v. Robles, the Supreme Court of New York (not the highest court in the state, though) has ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. [Decision (PDF).] A step in the right direction, but, as we all know, not yet the end of the road (via Salon).
Related: case history from Lambda Legal, representing the plaintiffs.
Nice. I noticed today that the electronic signs on Metro platforms have gotten a little bit more helpful. Previously, the signs would show the time and status for the next two trains, alternately, so you had to wait around to see when your train was being shown, if at all. Now they show status for the next three trains, continuously all on one screen. So while I was waiting to change at Gallery Place this morning, it looked something like:
| Line | Dest | Min |
| Red | Grosvenor | 3 |
| Red | Shady Grv | 6 |
| Red | Grosvenor | 9 |
The minutes then turn to “AR” for approaching, and “BD” for boarding. Aside: one of the trains that pulled into the station had its horn blaring and apparently couldn’t be shut off. I decided to just wait for the next one. From Gallery Place I take the Red Line to Bethesda (nine stops), and I didn’t want to risk having my eardrums pounding that all that way.
So it turns out that my Deutsche Welle darling (now on BBC America these days), Alistair Appleton, has had a blog (entitled Do Buddhists Watch Telly?) since 2003, and I didn’t know! He also has some photo albums up on his .Mac site. Many thanks go out to Cat, who found my site while doing a web search and e-mailed me about the blog, pointing out an entry in which Alistair reveals himself to be a big Rufus fan. He writes,
But what really charmed me was his self assured personality. He’s so gloriously camp at a time when gay culture is atrophying into a dull and brainless Abercrombie & Fitchitated lump. I felt so proud to be a gay man listening to our Rufus up there. Brains and beauty. And when he introduced the song “Gay Messiah” with a pessimistic note of warning about the next 4 years in America, I suddenly realized how right he was to speak out. Like Pastor Niemoller cautioned, if you don’t make your voice heard, soon enough it’ll be too late.
Screw the “Moral” Majority, I want to be his husband and that’s that!
PS: It’s been pointed me out to me in response to this blog that Rufus is Canadian and that, therefore, in certain provinces North of the border, we could get married. Hurra!
Yeah, baby!
Previously: “Crushing all over again” (Nov. 20, 2003).
[Update (Aug. 16): Alastair’s blog has been re-designed and moved to his main website. Thank goodness. His old blog was a little clunky.]
It snowed a bit today, so I went out to the balcony to take some photos. That’s what I love about the balcony: I can just step outside for a bit without it being a whole production.
This is a tree in the corner of the pool area; as I was taking the photo, I remembered that I had another shot of it in its former autumnal glory. The first photo is from Nov. 6, 2004, and the second, from today:
Maybe I’ll make this into a complete series in the coming seasons.
Philip Anschutz, whose media holdings include the San Francisco Examiner (which we Bay Area folk remember as once a full-fledged newspaper, now a free, weekday tabloid), will launch a Washington, D.C., version on Feb. 1. It will be available in newsboxes in the area, and home delivery will be targeted to high-income neighborhoods. The Washingtonian reports:
The new venture’s success will depend in part on whether it can take the model of a free newspaper and make it a serious journalistic endeavor. Most free papers, including the Washington Post‘s Express tabloid and the Metro papers in Boston and Philadelphia, simply combine recycled wire copy, shortened news stories, and shopping and entertainment guides. Then they wrap advertising around the copy. The Washington Examiner will have a staff of 16 local reporters and veteran editors, including longtime newspaperman Nicholas Horrock, who has the Washington Post in his sights.
“I think the Post has a great franchise,” says Horrock, who will be the Examiner‘s managing editor. “But there’s room for a quick, well-edited newspaper. They will have to share.”
This’ll be an interesting story to follow. (Via newsdesigner.com.)
Related: “A Low Profile and a Large Footprint,” Washington Post (Nov. 21, 2004).