Stretching My Range

by on March 18, 2013 at 11:02 am
Posted In: Test

The new bike is beginning to pay off great dividends. While it isn’t that much faster than my old dirt bike (It seems to be cutting off about five minutes from my previous best times) It handles hills REALLY well which means I don’t have to pick my routes based on how flat they are.  But the best thing is being able to start extending my range once again.

Yesterday I had been invited to a memorial at the Elliot Bay Yacht Club. I figured it was roughly in my general range that I should at least try to Bike it. It wasn’t as easy as I had hoped. (mainly thanks to Google Maps it was one of those classic cases of where the program considers every kink in the road as a turn. I got very confused when it told me to turn left on a street that was running parallel with the road I was on.

But other than that brief frustration the trip planner introduced me to two good and safe bike trails that will make it easier for me to navigate in areas directly to the south of Ballard and get to Discovery Park safely and quickly (before I had been using 15th Ave NW one of those major arterials that always makes me feel mildly suicidal whenever I so much as think of using it)

Afterwords I used this new information to take the scenic route downtown to spend the rest of the day to break in my new sketchbook at the Rembrandt Show at the Seattle Art Museum,  the only downside was having to walk my bikes up the Harbor Steps to get from the waterfront to First Ave.

Unfortunately the Museum closed at five so I never really got into my grove and came out with one sketch. And then it was mostly straight home. But all and all a good next step on the bike everywhere thing. (I went over with a map and calculator later on the day’s total was 26.5 miles.)

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Friday Sketches

by on March 15, 2013 at 12:08 pm
Posted In: Art

CharlesToday we have the picture I finished off my last sketchbook with. This is a very brief portrait I did with someone I had a very good conversation with over at the Emerald City Comicon’s Drink and draw the night before the actual event. (Good tip when your muse is ignoring you just draw what is in front of you.) I think his name was Charles Smith formally a graphic designer for Starbucks currently working either at Amazon or Microsoft I hope he will forgive my bad memory.

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New Bike

by on March 13, 2013 at 6:14 am
Posted In: Test

Well I’m happy to say an inconvenience that I’ve endured since the new year is over.

My old mule of a dirt bike, which had been pretty much been held together by spit and prayer for over a year finally broke down for good. You know it’s a bad sign when you bring your bike to the shop and the first thing they ask you is “how much do you like your bike” As in the amount of work would cost as much as a new bike.

So I took it home feeling like it was another sign that my life was falling apart, and took to walking and busing and getting out of the office a lot less because of it. Maybe I was feeling a little bit paranoid but I was beginning to get the feeling I was beginning to gain weight again.

Finally I had had enough of it and started shopping around for a replacement bracing myself for something way too expensive. Happily I found out that once I stopped looking for anything fancy the price dropped down pretty fast. And I soon had myself settling on a nice gray Raleigh.

So far I’m happy with it. Perhaps it is a reflection on how bad my old bike was that I’m being impressed by the little things. For example this one is my size which means I can look behind me for oncoming traffic which I couldn’t do on the old one because I was leaning down too much. On the way home I went up a hill that I usually struggle with as if they were nothing and it is noticeably faster. (of course the old bike I used to believe could be passed by little kids on tricycles so I don’t know just how much of a big deal that one is.)

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Much Ado About Nothing

by on March 12, 2013 at 10:29 am
Posted In: Test

At the moment I’m not sure what I think of this. Make no mistake I am not one of those annoying purists who can’t stand any adoption that does not involve Elizabethan costume in fact my favorite version of Julius Ceasar remains a 1989 Trinity Repertory Company production directed by Oskar Eustis that did the whole thing as a metaphor for the Kennedy assassination in 60s dress (you can not know true horror until you’ve seen Mark Antony’s speech televised). So any imaginable angle on a Shakespeare play is okay by me even if it fails terribly.

So I have no problem with Much Ado About Nothing in modern dress involving what appears to be Hollywood yuppies. At the moment what stands out to me is the blatant use of the American dialect. Again I shouldn’t have a problem with this after all the Elizabethan English is a lot closer to American English than it is to British English. But the thing in most American productions, even when they are not affecting a British accent they speak the dialogue so formally you forget that they are not. What I’m seeing in this trailer has them speaking it so naturally that it almost sounds like a foreign language. Which should be fascinating.

Maybe my uncertainty is because Joss Whedon is the last person I would imagine attached to a project like this. Hopefully I’m being unfair. I’ll be looking forward to see what I think of it.

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Hotel Transylvania

by on March 11, 2013 at 10:03 am
Posted In: Test

Well I finally got my copy of Hotel Transylvania from the library which since I’d been getting constant tastes of it from the film section at the local Barnes and Noble I’d been looking forward to quite a bit.

I confess that when it first came out I had very mixed feelings about mainly due to Adam Sandler. Now to make things clear I do not share any of my friends’ extreme dislike to Adam Sandler’s work. In fact I think he’s very good at what he does. What he does I am not in any way shape or for the target audience for.

I am however a huge fan of Genndy Tartakovsky. So despite any misgivings I had about the film I wanted his first feature film to work for him.

And for the most part I think it did.

I don’t think I’ll call Hotel Transylvania any great masterpiece, but it was a lot of fun… For the most part I keep thinking it as a Cary Grant style screwball comedy with Adam Sandler’s Dracula as Cary Grant’s overprotective father figure desperately stumbling over his own dignity as his paradigm starts falling apart around him.

Like I said, fun.

Taratovsky put in some great Tex Avery inspired slapstick bits with the scene with floating ballroom tables and a chase scene involving the hotel’s chef and everyone else being my favorite.

Along with Adam Sandler the voice actors made up a solid ensemble cast with what was a comedy all star cast… my favorite being  Steve Buscemi as a put upon Wolf Man and Fran Drescher as Eunice the Wife of Frankenstein playing up her nails on the blackboard persona up to the nines.

So I think I’ll recommend this as an enjoyable piece of fluff and hopefully a useful springboard to even better projects for Mr. Tartakovsky.

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