Post Scrips II

Back in June 2011, I updated a few past posts. As I type this, it is Sunday morning and Carlos is still in bed - so I have a few minutes to update some other posts, which I have been meaning to do for awhile.

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Update to Gardening: Year Two
and
Gardening: Year Two, Week Three

The Summer 2011 here in New Orleans was very dry for about two months. Then we had tons of rain for about a month. This year's crop - green bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, jalapenos, and snap beans - shriveled up in the heat. And then were drowned out by the rain.

NOTHING grew this year. Next year, I'll try bell peppers, cucumbers, snap beans (which seemed to do the best this year) and onions - a new choice, that Monica, a friend of mine at work, tells me grows well.

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Update to Fun with Remodeling

At the end of the post, I wrote, "Once all this is completed, I’ll post before and after pictures". Well, I completed the office remodeling project in February 2008, but never got around to posting pictures. Thanks to a reader (Hey Iona!) for pointing that out. Here are before and after pictures of my office / guest room.

Back wall...

Front Wall...

 

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And an update to a very recent post...

Update to An Evening with Stephen King

 "The doors open at 6:30 pm." My plan was to pick up Carlos at 5 pm, eat at a restaurant about a block away from the event, and get in line at 6 pm. We altered our plans a bit and ended up getting there about 5:45 pm. This is what we saw:

The entrance was on the other side of the block - meaning that the line snaked around the front of the building, down the entire left side of the block, and back to near the middle of the next side of the block - where we joined it.

By the time, everyone was let in at 6:30 pm, the line almost joined back to itself at the front of the building. In the auditorium, we were in the middle - so the seating wasn't too bad.

We received a free book with our ticket. Only 250 out of 2000 were signed - randomly distributed. I got one!

Since I'm also in the Stephen King Book Club, I will also receive the book within the next month. I'll give that copy to charity.

Carlos and I ate at the newest location of New Orleans Hamburger & Seafood Company on St. Charles Avenue. New Orleans has many, many great restaurants so there is really no reason to eat at a chain. This chain is the only one I enjoy.

These Go To 11

Combining three of my favorite things:
the movie Spinal Tap
great music played loud
NPR

NPR's All Songs Considered had a story this morning - because of 11/11/11 - of...

These Go To 11: Songs Best Heard Extra-Loud

There's no denying certain songs are best experienced when played as loud as possible. Since this Friday, 11/11/11, is Nigel Tufnel Day — the unofficial holiday honoring the fictional Spinal Tap guitarist, who cranked his amplifiers past 10 — this week's episode is all about the songs that instantly make you want to turn the volume up.

Click the link above or here to read the entire article - and to hear all the music.

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Here is a short, partial list of songs that I turn to 11:


Renegades of Funk - Rage Against The Machine





Oh Yeah - The Subways



Think the drummer's cute? Watch the video for him shirtless. Think the singer's cute? Go to my other blog to a post from 2008.



Sabotage - The Beastie Boys





Recently Distressed - Phantom Planet




Phantom Planet is the band that also sang California and whose original drummer was the actor Jason Schwartzman. Here's an live version of the song, before Jason Schwatzman left the band in 2004.




Think the singer is cute? He's Alex Greenwald. He did some Gap commercials...




And appeared in one of my all-time favorite movies...






Vagabond - Wolfmother

The version of the song from the excellent movie (500) Days of Summer where I discovered the song...




The whole song...





A Life of Illusion - Joe Walsh





The Bucket - Kings of Leon





Inside Out - Eve 6





Dammit - Blink 182



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What are yours?

Jane Lynch

NPR's Morning Edition interviewed Jane Lynch this morning. Somewhere during that 7 minutes and 20 seconds, I went to Amazon and bought her new book.

Here's the short version of the interview.


It's a big week for Jane Lynch. Her memoir, Happy Accidents, was released on Tuesday, and this Sunday night, she'll be hosting the Primetime Emmy Awards. And she's a reasonably good bet to pick one up, too: her second in a row for playing the scheming cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester on Fox's Glee. On Friday's Morning Edition, she talks to David Greene about her career, her book, and the difficult process of telling her parents she was gay.

Lynch learned perseverance early after she quit a school play in which she'd been cast because she was afraid of making mistakes. Despite the fact that wanting to be an actress was her "first conscious memory," she became so afraid of failing that she walked away from the project. "That is the last time I walked away from anything," she says. "I've been a yes person now for a long time."

One person to whom she eagerly said yes was director Christopher Guest, whose work on so-called "mockumentaries" like This Is Spinal Tap and Waiting For Guffman she already admired when she met him when he directed her in a commercial for Frosted Flakes. Lynch and Guest ran into each other again later, and he cast her in his 2000 film Best In Show, where she played one-half of a dog-showing couple opposite Jennifer Coolidge. She went on to appear in Guest's A Mighty Wind and For Your Consideration, as well as Judd Apatow's wildly popular The 40 Year Old Virgin, where she played Steve Carell's sexually accommodating boss who sings him what she says is a Guatemalan love song. As Lynch explains, though, the words come from a Spanish textbook and in fact vow to blame her mother for cleaning her room.

But in spite of her many successes, Lynch says it wasn't easy for her when she told her parents she was gay. "I went to see a therapist," she says, "because I was just suffering so much over this alienation I felt from my family." The therapist convinced her to try writing her parents a letter, with the understanding that, of course, she didn't have to send it. But when she wrote it and the words came easily, she sent it after all — which, she says, was undoubtedly the point of the exercise.

As she cruises into her high-profile hosting gig this weekend, Lynch says she's learned a lot about how to approach her own limitations: "I think the most important thing is that it's not like I'm done growing and evolving, but I certainly have so much more compassion and kindness for myself, and I have cut myself some slack."

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For the long version - or if you'd rather listen than read - follow this link and click on Listen To The Story.

Playwright Albee Defends 'Gay Writer' Remarks

I heard this on NPR's Morning Edition earlier this week and really agreed with Edward Albee's position.

June 6, 2011

Edward Albee's recent remarks about being labeled a "gay writer" sparked controversy within the gay community, but the playwright insists such definitions are "prejudicial."

"Maybe I'm being a little troublesome about this," Albee tells NPR's Renee Montagne, "but so many writers who are gay are expected to behave like gay writers and I find that is such a limitation and such a prejudicial thing that I fight against it whenever I can."

Albee was recently criticized for a speech he gave while accepting an award at the 23rd annual Lambda Literary Awards. The ceremony, held May 26, honored work by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender authors. Albee — who is best known for plays such as Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Zoo Story and A Delicate Balance — was presented with the Pioneer Award, meant to honor those who have broken ground for LGBT literature and publishing.

In accepting the honor from Lambda, Albee told the audience, "A writer who happens to be gay or lesbian must be able to transcend self. I am not a gay writer. I am a writer who happens to be gay."

He continued by saying, "Any definition which limits us is deplorable."

Some artists in attendance felt Albee's tone was inappropriate for the event and have said that creating and supporting work that is specifically gay is important to the visibility of the gay community.

"The only part of the evening I truly found disappointing was the acceptance speech given by Edward Albee for his Pioneer award," attendee Sassafras Lowrey wrote on her blog. "He spent the majority of it talking about why writing from a queer experience was a lesser art form, how his 'sexual proclivities' have nothing to do with his art."

The Wall Street Journal's Speakasy blog and lesbian website Autostraddle also wrote about Albee's comments and the debate they have ignited about the future of gay writing and publishing.

Albee tells Montagne he has always fought for gay rights and points out that other artists are not put into such categories.

"Who goes around talking about abstract expressionist painters and making a definition or a distinction between those of them that were straight and those of them who were or are gay? Nobody does it," Albee says. "People only do it with writers and I find that so ridiculous."

Albee says he remembers being discriminated against by theater critics who knew about his sexuality early on in his career. He says when Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf — about a professor and his wife throwing a party for a new professor and his spouse — debuted in the early 1960s some critics wrote in their reviews that Albee was likely portraying two gay couples.

Now, at age 83, Albee says he's working on a new play. He isn't giving any details yet, but he says it explores various prejudices.

"None of which, oddly enough happens to concern being gay," he says, "but it concerns itself with prejudices that involve us a great deal more as a society."

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Here is the original NPR story, where there is also a seven-minute audio version of the story for those reading averse.