i'm not sure why anybody would want to be married anyway...

....  but the main reason to be for same-sex marriage is that just the thought of it upsets its opponents so much.

today's baseball humor

Yeah, I know that it's April Fools Day, but the big joke going around downtown Minneapolis today is asking people whether they're going to the Twins home opener this afternoon over there at the outdoor Target Field.

Yes, fans, baseball season starts today, which usually gives warm feelings of spring being here, but, as I write this, the temperature is 27 degrees, and the game starts in two hours.

So I see lots of people walking through the skyways wearing Twins jerseys and I'm wondering how many of them will actually be shivering in the stands under their blankets and parkas.  At least the players will be warm playing the game.  Whoops, that's right, it's baseball --  Not a lot of moving around!

downtown vs. downton

My life from January to mid-April is pretty much confined to downtown Minneapolis, where I live and where I work.  And work.  And work.

My busy season, which includes insane office hours at times, brings out love/hate emotions in me, and each year I find ways to mentally escape.

Last year, for instance, I went home after long work days and over the months re-watched all the James Bond movies.

This year, expecting a more-stressful-than usual season, I've had several escape mechanisms.  I put the blog on hiatus -- and maybe you thought it was on life support -- but it will rise again.  And Jerry and I found a couple TV shows to distract us those late winter nights.  We got through three seasons of the addictive PBS series, Downton Abbey, in about a month.  We are almost through the second season of the HBO show, Girls, which is sort of the direct opposite of Downton Abbey.  I continued to try to master that Chopin piece (see my January 30 post, "It Might Drive Me Mad") and am near admitting defeat, but at least it was a distraction that kept my fingers pounding on something other than a computer keyboard.

And April arrives tomorrow and I will try to flip back into a normal routine in two weeks.  Meanwhile, the office is humming  this Sunday morning.  Somebody told me that this is Easter.... whatever that means.

criminals running loose

Ten years ago this week, the United States invaded Iraq, a country that had done us no harm other than having a nasty dictator, and usually the U.S. has had no problem tolerating nasty dictators:  quite often, they are our allies.

But bush and cheney, the theoretical heads of the free world at the time, needed to invade somebody.  After all, we had been terrorized on 9/11/01 and there was no winning to be had in Afghanistan, so let's invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and then sell it to the revenge-seeking American public as somehow connected.

It was a criminal act.  Many thousands of people, including more Americans than were killed on 9/11, died as a result of their lies.  These men, bush and cheney, as well as their accomplices, should still be held accountable for crimes against humanity.  Instead they roam the world in blissful retirement, seemingly oblivious to the destruction of their direct making.

no, not the Steinbeck novel...

.. or the Shakespeare play that the phrase comes from:  This is about the winter of 2013, a winter that, because of its length and severity, has people in certain parts of world just plain pissed off.  Not just here in Minnesota, where it's still cold and snowy in spite of the fact that tomorrow is the first day of spring (as well as my son Jon's birthday, as he reaches the age that Jack Benny claimed).  I see Facebook posts from friends in Pennsylvania, New York, etc., that complain, and my friend Elke in northern Germany is just fed up with winter too.  I don't remember hearing people express winter discontentment like this before.

Me, I work all the time, and I admit that it was harder to work last winter when it was 80 degrees than it is now with single-digit temperatures.  Jerry is somewhere in the Caribbean, spring-breaking with James, and having them gone makes it a little easier to work too.  But I'm getting restless....

marathon in white

Every day is a work day, and it seems like every day we get some snow.  I look out my office window, and I don't wish I were outdoors.  It's white everywhere.

Last week, I took three days off and left town for some recuperation.  Of course, to assuage my guilt, I made myself work 80 hours the week before in anticipation of that, so by the time I got on an airplane I was goofy.  While on the plane, I listened to iPod music on my headphones and had a gin-and-tonic next to me, and my mind was racing into weird fantasies of permanently disappearing somewhere, and I imagined finding a place where nobody would ever think to look for me (I came up with Rapid City, South Dakota).  But then I woke up in Las Vegas, which is probably the first place people would look for me.

And since getting back, I've been doing another work marathon, but the break was worth it.  And the snow comes down.  And the blog is back.

Howard ranks the Oscar nominees

It’s Oscar week, so here I am with my annual list.  This is one year when it turned out to be fairly easy to see all nine Academy Award Best Picture nominees.  They’re all pretty good – and when I say pretty good, that means they are movies that I like and/or admire, but what the heck do I know?

OK, here is how I rank them, from the ones I like best to the ones I like not as much.  Make your own list.  J

1.       Les Misérables.  OK, this isn’t going to win because there aren’t enough Academy voters who like film versions of Broadway musicals and there might be plenty who don’t like Les Miz music in particular, but I do and it’s my list, but, besides that, this is a great adaption from every aspect.  Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway deserve acting Oscars too.

2.       Silver Linings Playbook.  I loved everything about this movie, and maybe only a Philadelphia Eagles fan would say everything.  If Hugh Jackman doesn’t win Best Actor for Les Miz, then Bradley Cooper should win for his role in this film as a man with bipolar disorder, but of course neither one will win because Daniel Day-Lewis will for Lincoln and how much more room does that guy have on his mantle for statuettes?  Jennifer Lawrence should win the Best Actress Oscar.

3.       Django Unchained.  Hey, I’m not telling you to see this movie, because not all of you could handle it, but it’s sort of a work of brutal genius.  It’s a fantasy re-working of a time in the history of slavery in the U.S.  Christoph Waltz will probably win Best Supporting Actor for his part as a bounty hunter in this film (Although if Robert Deniro wins that Oscar for Silver Linings Playbook, I’ll probably stand up and cheer).

4.       Amour.  OK, you’re going to say, Isn’t it enough that this film will win the Best Foreign Film award?  And I know not many of you are going to go see a French movie with English subtitles, but this is an amazing film about aging and death and love.

5.       Life of Pi.  We saw Life of Pi in 3D, and I’m not sure if 3D is an addition or subtraction when comparing film quality.  Life of Pi is beautiful, though, and if David R. Russell doesn’t win Best Director for Silver Linings Playbook, then I’d like to see Ang Lee win for this movie (Although there is a case to be made for Michael Haneke for Amour)

6.       Argo.  This is another excellent film and is the odds-on favorite to win Best Picture, partly because Ben Affleck is so well liked in Hollywood. It just didn’t grab me the way my Top 5 did.  The scenes of the taking of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran feel very real.

7.       Lincoln.  Lincoln is great historical drama, and I can’t argue that Daniel Day-Lewis isn’t a perfect Abraham Lincoln.  The whole movie just feels awfully predictable to me, and I can’t stand the uplifting John Williams music.  As I’ve said before, that guy hasn’t written a creative soundtrack since the original Star Wars trilogy.

8.       Beasts of the Southern Wild.  A hard-to-describe film about people living in a very isolated swampland of southern Louisiana and, in particular, the interaction between a young girl and her father as they lose their homeland.  The actress playing the young girl is nominated for an Oscar.  The actor playing the dad should have been nominated for Best Supporting Actor, in my opinion.

9.       Zero Dark Thirty.  While this is a film to see – it’s about the hunt for Obama bin Laden, I find it disappointing too.  The CIA agents seem too stereotypical, and the torture scenes are overdone and misleading.

The Oscar telecast is this Sunday.  Watching the red-carpet interviews beforehand is optional.

news out of atlantic city

A big week for Atlantic City, New Jersey, and it's not often that Atlantic City has a big week during the month of February.

First, and most importantly, the Miss America Pageant is returning to Atlantic City, the city of the pageant's birth and most of its storied past.  It's kind of like the return of the Prodigal Daughter, and city promoters are probably tempted to kill a fatted calf in celebration.

And now Trump Plaza, one of the more prominent hotel casinos in Atlantic City, is being sold to new investors for a bargain-basement dollar amount, and the Trump name will come tumbling down.  Now you know that I have spent no money at Trump Plaza since Donald Trump became a political nutcase cartoon and so you might think that this just gives me a laugh.... and part of me does chuckle.

But I feel a sad nostalgia too.  Trump wasn't always this crazy, and back in the day (meaning the mid-'80's) I used to love taking my mom to Trump Plaza.  We had so much fun there, and I miss that.  Or maybe it's just my mom that I miss, and Trump Plaza is just one of the reminders.

he handed me a pink rose

As I drove into the parking garage at the office this morning, the parking attendant handed me a pink rose.  No, it wasn't personal:  he was doing it for everybody as they drove in.  It's apparently to show love between garage-ramp managers and us parkers on this Valentine's Day.  Isn't that nice?  Here I thought our relationship was purely physical!

benedict, hanging out at the senior citizens' center

Well, no, I didn't watch the State of the Union address last night.  Sure, I love Obama, but have you ever seen a State of the Union speech that wasn't annoying?

So instead, I'll talk about something else of which I know very little:  popes.

Admittedly, I'm not Catholic, and I really don't get the whole pope thing -- I mean, why there are such things as popes.  But, whatever, the pope always has a way of staying in the news.

Consider, in my lifetime, we've had some unusual pope events.  There was Pope John Paul I back in the late '70s, who died 33 days after becoming pope, followed by Pope John Paul II, who was shot in an assassination attempt.  Now we have the latest guy, Pope Benedict XVI, who just announced this week that he is resigning.  He is the first pope to resign since the year 1415.

Being pope is a lifetime appointment, so this is very unusual.  And what does he do now?  Watch The Price is Right every morning?  Buy an RV?  Or might you run into him as you have your grilled cheese sandwich for lunch at the Senior Citizens' Center?  He seems like a most unpleasant sort of fellow, so you better hope he doesn't sit next to you.  You're not going to want to hear his stories about the good ol' days.

'buzzer' at the guthrie

Photo by Michal Daniel for the Guthrie Theater.

The mark of a effective play is that you find yourself still thinking about it and relating to it two days later.

Buzzer, a play written by Tracey Scott Wilson, had its world premiere here in Minneapolis by the Pillsbury House Theater company in 2012 and this past Saturday night began a run, again staged by Pillsbury House, in the Dowling Studio at the Guthrie Theater.

The story deals with race, love, addiction, friendship.  The trio of actors are outstanding, especially Hugh Kennedy as the addict, Don, just out of rehab and needing a place to live.  He moves in with his very successful best friend, Jackson, an African-American who lives with his white girlfriend in a "hood" that is being gentrified.  They all have a past with each other that they deal with along with the neighborhood race issues that they try so hard to ignore -- until they can't.

This play may still be a work-in-progress -- I'm not sure the ending is quite right yet -- but it's an entertaining evening of theater that challenges.

I'm lost

OK, the Blackberry had to go.  The stupid thing was dying mid day, sometimes in the middle of  a phone call.

So I've made the leap to the iPhone5, and as I try to figure it out, I'm noticing that the Blackberry, lame as it may be, had its advantages.  Now I explore the iPhone magic.  Change isn't easy for me.

coffee at the A & P

I've been working late hours and needed a break, so I didn't set the alarm for this morning but woke up early  anyway and am having a leisurely, quiet little while alone at home before heading to the office.  Jerry is upstairs still asleep; otherwise, I'd probably be playing the piano instead of blogging.

The coffee this morning is extra good.  I've been buying Eight O'Clock coffee (and alternating with Wawa coffee, which we buy on line).  I recently discovered Eight O'Clock on the grocery shelves at Lund's, and seeing it there took me back in my memory to when I used to go to the grocery store with my mom.  At the A & P grocery store in downtown Millville, I'd walk along the coffee aisle, where they sold Eight O'Clock coffee, and I'd just stand there and sniff the coffee aroma.  I was too young to drink coffee, but I always remember what that part of the store felt like, just from how wonderful the coffee smelled.

In this Google world, I of course wondered whatever happened to the A & P grocery store chain.  Well, it's still out there, just under multiple names.  The Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company (hence, A & P) operates stores under various names.  There are still some A & Ps in part of the country, and Pathmark is one of their other store names.  You may know that one.  That's your retail education for the day.  Have a good one.

a sad commentary

I'm too busy to blog today!
*****
Later:  Never mind.  I found some time.

Did you ever notice how little it can take to wreck a day?  Do you ever have anybody say exactly the wrong thing and you spend the rest of the day thinking how you should have responded?  You finally come up with the words that you should have said, and you don't know whether to go back to that person and open up the subject again -- or stew for a while and then hope you can just forget?

reasons to like joe flacco

Sorry to be back to a Super Bowl topic, but I didn't know until after the game that Joe Flacco, Baltimore Ravens quarterback and Most Valuable Player of the game, is a South Jersey boy -- specifically, from Audubon, New Jersey.  So how can you not like him?

But here is some more silliness of 2013 America:  After the game, during the Ravens celebration, the CBS Sports microphones were on, and Joe Flacco was heard to yell "F---ing awesome!"

So what?  The guy was excited.  But now CBS might be fined for letting that word be heard live by innocent American ears.  Oh come on, guys!  Would you rather he was yelling "I'm going to Disney World!" ?  I wish the First Amendment had as many outspoken defenders as the Second Amendment has!

A is bombing

Things aren't going as well as I would like, dude.  I need a Plan B.

mid-winter sports update, part 2

The most exciting part of the Super Bowl so far: the 35-minute power outage.

Added later:  Up to the power outage, it looked like it was going to be a Ravens blowout, but it turned out to be a good game after all.  Final:  Baltimore 34, San Francisco 31.  For next year, let's hope for either the Eagles or the Vikings instead.  Ha ha, just kidding.

mid-winter sports update

Professional sports are not, for me this year, providing any respite from dreariness.  Consider:

My favorite team this time of year is the basketball Minnesota Timberwolves, and what started out as a promising season last fall turned deadly by December when the team's best player, Kevin Love, was injured, followed by almost the whole rest of the team.  The Wolves have once again sunk low in the standings, and attending the games has become a somewhat dismal experience.  Just once I would like to see how good this team might be if everyone could be playing at 100% capacity physically.

The National Hockey League, after a very late start due to another annoying owner lockout, is back on ice, and expectations for the Minnesota Wild were very high until they actually started playing games.  Now they look like their usual average selves.

End of football for a while:  Super Bowl tomorrow, in New Orleans.  Any guesses how many people by next month will remember who played in it?  If you happen to be looking at this post months from now, I'll remind you:  San Francisco 49ers vs. Baltimore Ravens.  The good thing to be said about that matchup is that it's better than the potential alternatives, the runners-up:  New England Patriots vs. Atlanta Falcons.

Skip all of the above and go to the gym.

uptown boys

Well, Jerry's orthopedic doctor gave him the okay to mostly go off the scooter.  His foot is still a ways from being healed, though, so he wears that boot and limps around like Chester on Gunsmoke.  My fear, of course, is that he will push himself too hard and give his recovery a setback.

Last night, we ventured to the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis, Jerry hobbling next to me on frozen sidewalks, and went to the recently renovated Uptown Theater, where we saw the French movie, Amour, which still has me pondering the meaning of aging and physical deterioration.  It's my eighth of the nine Oscar-nominated films this year, and I'm still struggling with how I want to rank them.  They're all good.  One to go.

reasons to look forward to february

1)  The Super Bowl.  Just kidding.  I probably won't even watch it.
2)  Baseball spring training starts, not that I'm looking forward to baseball itself.
3)  The Oscars, February 24th.
4)  February means that January is over.  As I write this, in the evening of January 31, 2013, the temperature here in Minneapolis is minus-4 degrees Fahrenheit, the wind chill is minus-25.  After January, the temperature might be just as bad, the snow might come, but it never seems as bad -- because we are past January -- Spring is within spitting distance -- we are over the hump!