Last night we went out to dinner with a college chum we hadn’t seen in a while. We had a fine meal, and it was great to catch up,
I like going out to eat on Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays are the traditional top dine-out nights, when you expect the restaurants to be crowded–and fully staffed–and your fellow diners will give off that special “it’s the weekend” energy, but Thursday night is a pretty good option, too.
Thursday night dining has a vibe all its own. The restaurants aren’t quite as packed as a weekend night, but everyone at every table knows they’ve made it through most of the work week and there is only one more workday to go before the weekend–and there is a kind of deep, anticipatory glee at that prospect. I’m apparently not alone in my view that Thursday night is prime time for a meal out on the town, because the restaurant we went to last night was doing a brisk trade and people seemed to be having a really good time . . . including us.
It’s fun going out on Thursdays, but you also have to watch it and not overindulge–because there is, after all, a workday dawning bright and early the next morning. Experienced Thursday night diners have to know when to say when.
On our last night in Austin, we decided to check out a unique local form of entertainment: watching bats fly out from underneath the Congress Street bridge. The configuration of that bridge just happens to provide an ideal nesting spot for Mexican bats. Every night, at dusk or later–bats being nocturnal creatures–the bats emerge from their perches in those slots you see underneath the bridge and fly down the river to hunt insects.
And, because a swarm of bats flying out from under a bridge isn’t something you see every day, people started to come to view the spectacle. On Sunday night, bat enthusiasts lined the bridge, while we sat among a group of bat aficionados on a small hill facing the bridge. Boats on the river also gathered for a little bat viewing. It was a kind of carnival atmosphere, and as the designated time for sunset neared a great sense of anticipation took hold.
The sun fell and the skies darkened, and people around us kept predicting that the bats would emerge any moment–but instead it just got darker and darker, to the point where you couldn’t see much of anything, bats or otherwise. The Mexican bats aren’t huge creatures in any event, and they aren’t exactly designed by evolution to be highly noticeable at night. We saw a few bats flitting by on the other side of the bridge, framed against a lighted wall, but no large swarm.
It turns out that bats aren’t slaves to the clock, and will leave their roosts under the bridge at unpredictable times after sunset. In short, they come out when they’re good and ready. If they’re especially hungry, the swarm might fly out right after sunset, but if they’re not, they might cool their heels for an hour or two. And the bats don’t particularly care if the humans gathered to watch them are there are not. You’ve got to respect them for that.
When I was a kid, our family had the Monopoly game and played it regularly. (I preferred the race car token, but I also liked the shoe, the iron, and the little dog.) It was a fun game for my brother and sisters and me and a good way to while away a cold, rainy day.
Now I read that Hollywood is trying to make Monopoly into a movie. In fact, it has been working on the board game as a film property for more than a decade. The big news recently is that the same people who made the Barbie movie have signed on to the production team.
I had one reaction to the news that Monopoly might be made into a film: why?
The answer seems to be twofold, according to the Hollywood Reporter article linked above. First, a statement by the Barbie production company explained: “Like all of the best IP, this game has resonated worldwide for generations.”
In other words, Monopoly is a known commodity, and the movie can capitalize (Monopoly pun intended) on the fact that millions of people have played and enjoyed the game.
Second, another member of the production group referred to Monopoly as an “historic piece of popular culture” and added: “As one of the most iconic games in the world, Monopoly provides an incredible platform for storytelling opportunities.”
In other words, producers won’t have to work very hard, because the concept, at least some of the characters, and the basic story lines are sketched out already. With a simple script set in Atlantic City, a story involving the guy with the old-fashioned moustache wearing the top hat and at least one character’s trip to a jail, and the right actors, the moviemakers hope that they can pass Go and collect $200 from a family of four.
I’ve previously bemoaned the lack of creative energy in Hollywood, with its endless output of superhero movies, CGI-laden action movies, exhausted “franchises,” and ill-advised remakes of classic films of the past–but a Monopoly movie reaches a new low. Can’t anyone in the film industry do anything fresh and original any more?.
This week, Ford and Lincoln showed off the newly redesigned 2024 Lincoln Nautilus. You can read a Car and Driver article about it here. As the photo above shows, the car’s interior definitely has a cool, technology-laden vibe.
The remarkable thing about the new Nautilus, however, is that it has two display screens. There’s the screen on the center console, just to the right of the steering wheel, which is pretty standard these days. But if you look above the dashboard, hard up against the bottom of the windshield, you’ll see another screen–a 48-inch, panoramic “infotainment” display screen that extends the width of the vehicle.
As aPopular Science article on the vehicle explains, the panoramic screen has the highest resolution Lincoln, and its parent company Ford, have ever offered. What is displayed on the screen, and where it is displayed, is customizable, and when the vehicle is set in park the panoramic screen will allow the passengers in the car to engage in gaming activity or watch video-streaming apps. Later, Ford plans advances that would allow the panoramic screen to support video conferencing, too.
Interestingly, one impetus for the new technology is the desire to have a standard platform going forward for new Ford and Lincoln vehicles, including specifically electric vehicles. Ford recognizes that electric vehicles take longer to charge than internal combustion cars take to gas up, so the new dashboard array is intended to prevent the driver from getting bored while the charging process is underway. Rather than checking your watch and fretting about how long the charging is taking, you can pass the time playing a game or surf for the latest YouTube videos.
The Nautilus is the next step in the long-term trend to add more and more technology into motor vehicles–which presents a challenge to Luddites like me, who tend to be tech-averse and use only a tiny fraction of the tech on their current cars. I just want the car to deliver me safely from point A to point B and don’t want to wade through a thick owner’s manual trying to figure out how to program different functions. But obviously, there is a broad range of people who really like this new technology and will happily take whatever time is needed to create a panoramic display loaded with apps suited to their individual tastes.
With the new, customizable panoramic screen and programming options, the Nautilus nudges cars farther away from their roots as a simple mode of individual transportation to rolling entertainment centers. And it makes you wonder: how many screens and display items and lights and gizmos can one car’s interior hold?
When you come to Montana, you can easily see how the state got its name. Indeed, the area around Big Sky is positively lousy with mountains. Most of them are part of a distant range, like the mountainous array seen in the photo below, creating the spatial dynamics and perspectives that make the landscape look so vast and have led to the nickname Big Sky country. Other mountains, however, are more standoffish–like aptly monikered Lone Mountain, seen in the photo above.
Lone Mountain is a popular ski destination during the winter (which, incidentally, lasts a lot longer out here), and you can see the many ski trails striping down the mountainside in the first photo above. During the summer months, you can take a chair lift to a gathering area at the top of one of the ski slopes and hike down or take along your mountain bike and ride down. During our visit, there were lots of bikers out on the bike trails, including many teenage kids.
We took the “Ram Charger” lift and then hiked down the Thimbleberry trail, making a few wrong turns and keeping an eye out for the mountain bikers along the way. The Thimbleberry trail sounds like a dainty walk in the park, but it definitely provided some exercise as we stepped down the steep trail and dealt with the impact of thinner air. As we navigated the switchbacks, swigged water, and dodged raindrops while we made our way down the trail, Lone Mountain loomed ever above us.
There was a significant development in Blue Hill, Maine, about a year ago: a new bar and cocktail lounge opened. The Brick Block now occupies a spot that once housed a little breakfast food shop, in a historic brick building down by the waterfront.
The opening of a new bar doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but in this part of coastal Maine there aren’t many of them. And, in particular, places that stay open until the wee hours are rarer than hen’s teeth. The Brick Block serves people who want to wet their whistle until 1 a.m., which is long past closing time for the handful of other adult beverage establishments in the area. According to the bartender at The Brick Block, that makes it the go-to spot for the restaurant bartenders and servers and cooks after their workday is done, and makes for a pretty raucous crowd come the midnight time frame, too.
We visited The Brick Block last night–well before the party crowd rolled in–and in our view it is a very welcome addition to the Blue Hill community. It’s a cozy, quirky spot with a friendly bartender that serves a nice menu of drinks that includes Narragansett, a classic regional beer that I last enjoyed during the summer of 1976. (It still hits the spot.) We chatted up one of the locals as we checked out some of the interesting and humorous bar decorations, like the one below.
A new bar in Blue Hill, that keeps the kind of late-night hours that city folk have come to expect! Blue Hill is now officially a town on the move.
The last few nights we’ve been enjoying sitting outside, reveling in the clear desert skies, the cooling temperatures, the colorful sunsets, and the emergence of the stars after the glow on the western horizon fades. But the undisputed leader of the nighttime light show is Venus, also known this time of year as the Evening Star.
The past few days, Venus hasn’t even waited for the Sun to completely set before emerging, bright and gleaming and just above the western horizon. When the curtain of darkness finally falls, Venus is seen in its full brilliance. Other than the gibbous Moon, Venus is easily the brightest object in the night sky, far brighter than Polaris or any of the constellations. It’s as if Earth’s neighboring planet has its bright lights on for safety.
We’ve just emerged from the point in the year when Venus is at its brightest, and if you’ve got clear skies and a telescope you can get a good look at the planet. Even without a telescope, Venus is a visual treat for the nighttime sky watcher. We’ve enjoyed spending some time with the Evening Star.
The Austin airport is pretty darned cool, with some little touches that bored travelers who are walking around while waiting for their flights will appreciate–like this mock “Interimaginary Departures” board found at Gate 14. It changes just like your standard departures board, only the destinations are fictional locations from literature, film, TV, comic books, video games, and other elements of popular culture. The airlines are fictional too, of course, but very cleverly named. And all flights leave from Gate Infinity.
For example, you could catch a flight to Gotham City on DystopiAir, or head to Hogwarts on Spellbound Airlines, or visit the Hundred-Acre Wood on Wistful. I’d avoid the flight to Isla Nublar on GossAmerica, myself. On the other hand, I admit to being tempted by the chance to experience the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the known universe, so I would probably grab a seat on the 11:07 to Tattoine in order to check out the Mos Eisley spaceport.
I’ve included photos of two of the many boards with this post. Somebody obviously had a lot of fun with this great idea.
The destinations on the “Interimaginary Departures” board are a kind of litmus test of your awareness of different elements of popular culture, and I am sad to say that I am not aware of many of them. How many of the references do you recognize? And, like me, if you see a destination you haven’t experienced through books or movies or comics, are you motivated to check them out?
Oranjestad is the Aruban port where the big cruise ships dock. As we ate our dinner last night I marveled, once again, at just how huge some of the cruise ships are. This passing cruise liner was colossal, but it was dwarfed by an even bigger ship that left the port about a half hour earlier. I’ve never been on a ship of that size, but I imagine it carries thousands of passengers.
Whenever I see a cruise ship of that size, I think about what it would be like if The Poseidon Adventure were filmed on one of these modern, titanic vessels. Shelley Winters would have to do a lot more swimming, Gene Hackman would have even more perils to overcome, and it was take Ernest Borgnine a lot longer to get everyone to the propeller shaft.
Today we joined a loyal slice of Buckeye Nation at JT’s Pizza and Pub to watch the Buckeyes come back strong in the fourth quarter to top Penn State in Happy Valley. We cheered lustily, did “OH-IO” chants, marveled at the talent of Marvin Harrison, Jr., and tried to learn how to correctly pronounce the last name of the newest Buckeye hero, J.T. Tuimoloau. (It’s easier to just call him “number 44.”) it was a great game, a great win, and a lot of fun watching the game with a raucous crowd.
Bar owners in Columbus love the football season because they know people will turn out to root for the Bucks, eat, and down a few beers. Today’s noon start isn’t the preferred time slot, however. Pubs like the 3:30 slot best because people come early, enjoy the game, and then roll right into the slate of night games. When the Buckeyes play at noon, however, the crowd tends to head out after the game rather than making a full day of football and feeling guilty about it. Today, a full bar had emptied out about a half hour after the game ended and excited debriefing had occurred.
No worries, though—I’m betting another shift of Buckeye fans will fill the seats tonight, to see if Michigan State can knock Michigan out of the ranks of the unbeaten.
Yesterday, on a cool and lovely fall morning, we drove to the Christmas Rocks State Nature Preserve near Lancaster. It’s about a 45-minute drive from downtown Columbus that takes you on country roads that wind through the heart of some of the beautiful, rolling farmland found throughout the rural areas of central Ohio. The GPS finally deposits you at a small parking lot near the entrance to Oil Mill Road, which you follow back to the entrance to the preserve.
We were in the mood for a peaceful trek through the woods–and at Christmas Rocks that is exactly what we got. It was just over 50 degrees and dry when we started our ramble, which made for ideal hiking weather. We took the orange trail to the blue trail, which will give you several good miles of moderate hiking through very pretty woodland–although there were several uphill and downhill sections where we wished we hadn’t forgotten our walking sticks. (In our experience, at least, walking sticks are seemingly designed to be left behind and forgotten until you see another hiker using them and kick yourself for the oversight.)
There are a few interesting rock formations on the blue trail, like the one above, but for the most part Christmas Rocks is all about trees, glimpses of shimmering sunlight, blue sky, whispering green leaves, and the kind of refreshing, highly oxygenated air that you only get in a forested area. It’s a good place to amble slowly, quietly take in the scenery, cross a mossy wooden bridge over a small stream, and remember what it was like to go into the woods when you were a kid and wonder what you might find there.
We saw the first signs of the fall colors to come, with some leaves already down on the trail and a few sugar maples displaying their trademark scarlet autumnal finery. For the most part, though, the leaves were green on the towering trees. We heard some birdsong as we moved along, following switchbacks up and down and a winding trail that takes you through several gorges.
The blue trail at Christmas Rocks is a loop, and at one point you come to a juncture with Armey Run, a small brook that cuts through the bottom of one of the ravines. You can walk out onto the rocks in the middle of the stream and enjoy that gurgling sound of slowly moving water, which makes for a change from the silence that swallows you up on the rest of the trail. From that point, the trail moves upward, with Armey Run falling away to your left, as you complete the loop.
As we emerged from the tree cover and left the Christmas Rocks property, we were dazzled by the cloudless azure skies, the sparkling sunshine, and the bright green lawn surrounding an old barn positioned close to the entrance to the nature preserve. We agreed that, once again, a Saturday morning hike was a great way to kick off the weekend.
We went to the Ohio State-Notre Dame game last night. It was a great, hard-fought game between two of the most storied programs in college football. The Fighting Irish lived up to their name and put up a tough battle, leaving the game in doubt until the Ohio State offense finally found its footing in the second half, the Buckeye offensive line asserted itself, and the running game helped the team grind out a clutch, 90-yard drive that finally put the game away, leading to a 21-10 win. I’m an old school football fan, and any game where good defense and the rushing attack make the difference is just fine with me.
But, speaking of old school, this fan who went to his first Ohio State home game more than 50 years ago was struck by the atmosphere and the hoopla surrounding the game itself. If you haven’t been to a game at the Old Horseshoe recently, you might be surprised by the in-game experience. Some might call it a feast for the senses; others would say it has become a cluttered confusion geared for people with short attention spans, where the new stuff is threatening to crowd out the traditional elements of a college football game.
Don’t get me wrong, some of it was cool. Last night’s game began with a pinpoint Navy parachuting exhibition, where the parachutists dropped into Ohio Stadium at high speeds and landed flawlessly on the field to the cheers of a huge crowd. I particularly liked the member of the parachute squad who swept into the stadium and onto the field trailing an Ohio State flag, as shown in the first two photos above. I also liked the concept of the drone formations that accompanied the band’s halftime show–although we couldn’t see most of the drone stuff, from our seat in B Deck, which made me wonder how many of the fans outside of the closed end had an unobstructed view–and also the mass cellphone flashlight waving, which made the ‘Shoe look like it had been invaded by a million lightning bugs. The South Stands, in particular, embraced the flashlight waving with gusto, as shown in the bottom photo of this post.
I was also happy to see that some of the traditional elements of a home Buckeye football game remain. The band’s ramp entrance, seen above, remains a central focus, and it never fails to get the fans amped. Script Ohio and a Sousaphone player high-stepping and dotting the i will never get old. The team’s rush onto the field has been jazzed up, with fire blasts, billowing smoke, and fireworks, but at least the band and cheerleaders are still part of it. I like that they continue to use at least some of the breaks during the game to trot people out onto the field for recognition; yesterday’s game honored a 100-year-old World War II vet, the OSU women’s hockey national championship team, and Coach Jim Tressel and the 2002 Buckeye national championship football team, among others. And singing Carmen Ohio with the team and the band at the end of the game is a sweet way to celebrate a win.
But there are other things that this old codger found annoying. Ohio State has hired some loudmouth guy with a microphone who presumed to instruct those of us in the crowd about what to do–like barking out commands for fans to “show their Buckeye spirit” or trying to start O-H-I-O chants as t-shirts are hurled into the stands–as if we really need to be told to cheer and get loud during an exciting football game. Couple Mr. Loudmouth with blasting rock and rap music during some breaks in the action and a few dumb on-field activities, like a relay race between teams encased in large inflatable balls, and you feel like some master planner believes that the fans will become hopelessly bored unless something really loud is happening at every second. And, if you haven’t been at Ohio Stadium since beer sales became part of the experience, be ready to stand up constantly for the beer drinkers in your row to pass by for repeated replenishment and depletion. Some of the guzzlers in our section went by so often we wanted to install a turnstile and charge a fee to let them pass.
I don’t think an Ohio State home game, in one of the most storied venues in college football, needs all of this sideshow stuff. It crowds out the opportunities for the band to play and for the cheerleaders to do some of their routines in front of the fans–which are two of the key things that distinguish a college sporting event from the pros. All of the noise also interferes with another nice part of the Ohio State football experience, which is to talk to surrounding fans, who are typically pretty knowledgeable about football, about the game itself. What a novel concept: football fans wanting to talk about football during the game without being prompted to do something by a loud guy with a microphone! I’d vote to give Mr. Loudmouth his walking papers, ditch the inflatable ball races, and let the band play.
After an enjoyable, travel-related respite, I am back at work on the Shakespeare Project. In part one of the Project, where I’m reading the history plays, I’ve reached Henry VI, Part I in the chronological sequence It’s a play that squarely raises one of the questions that scholars have quarreled about for centuries: which parts, if any, of that play (and, for that matter, which parts of Henry VI, Parts II and III) did Shakespeare write?
It’s weird to think that there is a dispute about what the greatest writer in the history of the English language actually wrote, but the sketchy, incomplete nature of the historical record during Elizabethan times leaves lots of room for argument. My copy of The Yale Shakespeare, which provides an introduction and scholarly notes for each play, carefully lays out the competing views. They range from the theory that Shakespeare had nothing to do with the play, to Shakespeare revising an existing play, to Shakespeare working with collaborators to come up with the play, to Shakespeare writing the entire play. That’s a ridiculously broad spectrum that covers just about every possible reality.
The authors of The Yale Shakespeare come down in favor of the theory that there was an existing play called Henry the Sixth that Shakespeare revised. Why do they reach that conclusion? They, and other Shakespearean scholars that hold a similar opinion, point to parts of the play that they deem to be “master-strokes . . . which incontestably betray the workmanship of Shakespeare” while there are other parts of the play that are of a more pedestrian style. The scholars identify several scenes that feature “bold use of transferred adjectives” and “fanciful metaphors and similes” that are considered to be a kind of Shakespearean trademark, and emphasize that such brilliant flourishes are notably absent in other scenes in the play.
In short, Shakespeare is very much given the benefit of the doubt here. The scholars can’t accept the possibility that Shakespeare may have had days where he was just doing some basic playwriting, untouched by genius, to meet a deadline, so he gets credit for the great scenes while the less compelling, unremarkable parts get attributed to some anonymous hack (and the scholars dispute who that might have been, too).
I guess if you are the greatest writer in the history of the English language, you’re entitled to some deference. I’ll be sensitive to the authorship issue as I wade into Henry VI, Part I.
Friday night we paid a visit to the Citizens Trust cocktail lounge. Located in a refurbished bank lobby less than a block from High Street in the heart of downtown Columbus, it’s an old school place, with vaulted ceilings, plenty of different seating areas, a little gold-trimmed booklet of its standard high end cocktail offerings, and a corps of experienced mixologists ready to prepare whatever concoction you care to name. It’s the kind of place you’d come to with a visitor to our fair city, to help communicate that Columbus is pretty cool.
One of the coolest features of the Citizens Trust, in my book, is the little vinyl records used as coasters. They’re eye-catching, and remind those of us of a certain age of our 45s and albums. (Of course, you’d never put a cocktail or wine glass on one of your treasured platters!)
Quality places typically have these kinds of little features that add to the overall ambiance. They aren’t essential, of course, and simple coasters would perform the same function just fine. But they send the unmistakable message that somebody paid attention to detail and went the extra mile. When you see those kinds of signs, you can order that artisanal cocktail with confidence.
Friday night we paid a visit to the Citizens Trust cocktail lounge. Located in a refurbished bank lobby less than a block from High Street in the heart of downtown Columbus, it’s an old school place, with vaulted ceilings, plenty of different seating areas, a little gold-trimmed booklet of its standard high end cocktail offerings, and a corps of experienced mixologists ready to prepare whatever concoction you care to name. It’s the kind of place you’d come to with a visitor to our fair city, to help communicate that Columbus is pretty cool.
One of the coolest features of the Citizens Trust, in my book, is the little vinyl records used as coasters. They’re eye-catching, and remind those of us of a certain age of our 45s and albums. (Of course, you’d never put a cocktail or wine glass on one of your treasured platters!)
Quality places typically have these kinds of little features that add to the overall ambiance. They aren’t essential, of course, and simple coasters would perform the same function just fine. But they send the unmistakable message that somebody paid attention to detail and went the extra mile. When you see those kinds of signs, you can order that artisanal cocktail with confidence.
Webner House 