Reblogged.

From time to time I re-fall in love with life. I just had one of those profound moments of reflection.

Alfred Hitchcock said, “Drama is life with the dull parts taken out.”

Well I agree that 70 – 80% of life is tedium and monotony, but that other 30 – 20% is pure wonderfulness.

I realized that I have been to New York and Boston. I have been to London and St. Louis, Paris, Orlando, and I have eaten fried chicken in Philadelphia with my grandmother (whom I miss dearly). I have had sangria on the roof of the Met (one of my favorite places in the world) and I have watched the sky turn green in Ozark Missouri before a thunder storm. I’ve been to Branson and Las Vegas. I have stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower and at the top of the fake one at the Paris Casino. I have been thrown out of bars in San Francisco and loaned my jacket to a naked stripper in Fresno, who was trying to catch some ZZZs on the couch. I have been lucky enough to fall in love and unlucky enough to get stranded at Heathrow for two days. I’ve had fish thrown over my head at Pike’s Place Market in Seattle and I have stumbled ass backward into fist fights in Sun Valley. I personally discovered that the snow in Park City Utah is nature’s best beer cozy and also have experienced a couple of sublimely perfect days in Salt Lake City; there’s nothing quite as perfect as being in love in the cold. I have smoked cigarettes in San Diego while listening to Nada Surf live while landing jets passed overhead. I’ve driven a rented Vauxhall (on the wrong side of the road) all the way to Stonehenge and walked the world’s best museum in Shelburne Vermont. I have nearly died on a kayak off the coast of Catalina and I have been deliriously in love on 17-Mile-Drive around Pebble Beach. I have straddled the Prime Meridian and the US-Mexico border; for that matter I have flown a kite under a pier on a Mexican beach and personally haggled over the price of a lobster dinner. I have watched a Minute Man III missile launch from Vanderburgh before the sun had come up and I have stood on the flight deck of an operational aircraft carrier, with Tchaikovsky blaring in my headphones. I have known more amazing women than is fair and I have been lucky enough to love some of them and to be loved in return. I have unhooked corsets in dark rooms and made love on a bare stage (empty audience). I have been found guilty in court of a misdemeanor and I have cried in front of more than one therapist. I have fallen in love with the Brooklyn Bridge and been terrified by the Coronado Bridge. And next week I will go white water rafting on the Sacramento River and the week after I will hike into the Grand Canyon and then ride a helicopter out of it. There is no end to the things that I love about life, and while life never seems easy at the time, it is simply and always worth the effort.  

From time to time I re-fall in love with life.  

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Re-In Love with Life.

From time to time I re-fall in love with life. I just had one of those profound moments of reflection.

Alfred Hitchcock said, “Drama is life with the dull parts taken out.”

Well I agree that 70 – 80% of life is tedium and monotony, but that other 30 – 20% is pure wonderfulness.

I realized that I have been to New York and Boston. I have been to London and St. Louis, Paris, Orlando, and I have eaten fried chicken in Philadelphia with my grandmother (whom I miss dearly). I have had sangria on the roof of the Met (one of my favorite places in the world) and I have watched the sky turn green in Ozark Missouri before a thunder storm. I’ve been to Branson and Las Vegas. I have stood at the top of the Eiffel Tower and at the top of the fake one at the Paris Casino. I have been thrown out of bars in San Francisco and loaned my jacket to a naked stripper in Fresno, who was trying to catch some ZZZs on the couch. I have been lucky enough to fall in love and unlucky enough to get stranded at Heathrow for two days. I’ve had fish thrown over my head at Pike’s Place Market in Seattle and I have stumbled ass backward into fist fights in Sun Valley. I personally discovered that the snow in Park City Utah is nature’s best beer cozy and also have experienced a couple of sublimely perfect days in Salt Lake City; there’s nothing quite as perfect as being in love in the cold. I have smoked cigarettes in San Diego while listening to Nada Surf play live while landing jets passed overhead. I’ve driven a rented Vauxhall (on the wrong side of the road) all the way to Stonehenge and walked the world’s best museum in Shelburne Vermont. I have nearly died on a kayak off the coast of Catalina and I have been deliriously in love on 17-Mile-Drive around Pebble Beach. I have straddled the Prime Meridian and the US-Mexico border; for that matter I have flown a kite under a pier on a Mexican beach and personally haggled over the price of a lobster dinner. I have watched a Minute Man III missile launch from Vanderburgh before the sun had come up and I have stood on the flight deck of an operational aircraft carrier, with Tchaikovsky blaring in my headphones. I have known more amazing women than is fair and I have been lucky enough to love some of them and to be loved in return. I have unhooked corsets in dark rooms and made love on a bare stage (empty audience). I have been found guilty in court of a misdemeanor and I have cried in front of more than one therapist. I have fallen in love with the Brooklyn Bridge and been terrified by the Coronado Bridge. And next week I will go white water rafting on the American River and the week after I will hike into the Grand Canyon and then ride a helicopter out of it. There is no end to the things that I love about life, and while life never seems easy at the time, it is simply and always worth the effort.

From time to time I re-fall in love with life.

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Pictures of Places.

Violet has up some of the pictures from our trip to Boston and greater New England.

Here is a very long exposure of nighttime Boston as seen from our hotel near the Commons.



Here is a shot from inside the actually awe-some Trinity Church. This is actually a must-see-before-you-die kind of place. I was amazed by it, and I have been to Big Ben (boring!) and The Empire State Building (boring!) and the St. Louis Arch (boring!) and the Eiffel Tower in Paris (snore!) and the Eiffel Tower in Las Vegas (kind of awesome actually) and I have seen the world’s largest banjo and the world’s largest free-standing Taco Bell. My point is, if you have the chance, visit this place.



And below is a photo of your humble author, doing some small bit of writing in the Boston Public Library.



Check out these and more on Violet's Flickr.
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Mean and Awesome!

I totally forgot about this! When Val and I were in Boston, we got a bite to eat at this little café place on Charles Street in Beacon Hill and I picked up a copy of Boston’s free glossy magazine, The Improper Bostonian.

They have this movie critic working for them named Sean Burns and man is that guy a pretentious asshole! But in a good way!

First he did not really like much of anything, except for Hurt Locker (and even that, he was quick to point out, gets muddled in the second half). He even shrugged off 500 Days of Summer, which I disagree with (he made some good points and gave voice to a lot of the small complaints that curmudgeons like me have, but he missed the big picture, which is that it is a great movie).

However, he saved a special place in his tiny black heart for Transformers. His review spewed bile all over the movie, but I wrote down my favorite part of the review:

“… (Transformers is) nothing but the pulverizing fetishization of militaristic alpha-male privilege …”
Ouch.

Now I enjoyed the first movie, but I enjoyed it partly because it was crap. I have not seen the second one, but I bet it was just as craptacular!


*** I couldn’t find the review on their website, but the review was in The Improper Bostonian in the July 29-August 11 2009 issue on page 53 ******
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Stuff in Boston, like Giant Freaky Baby Heads.

So Violet and I are in spending a week bumming around New England and today was our only full day in Boston. I love Boston.

We slept through the rain this morning and then got up and went to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It is one of those museums that is basically just some dead rich person’s house. I love these kinds of places. It is apparently okay to be a horder as long as you horde Greek statuary.

Anyway, it was a wonderful and beautiful museum. Here is their website:gardnermuseum.org

One of the cool things about the museum is that it was built to look like a Venetian palazzo, so it has this tall and beautiful courtyard in the center. You’re not allowed to take pictures inside the museum, but Violet snuck this one on her camera phone (which she was supposed to have turned off, she's so bad):



One of the other interesting things about it, in 1990 thieves stole several paintings and sketches, including Rembrandt’s The Sea of Galilee. Well they still have the picture frames hanging on the walls, empty. In the spot where four Degas sketches were hanging, the nails are still there, waiting patiently. That's pretty cool.

This is The Sea of Galilee, if you see it, email that website I just posted!
If you show up with it on Antique Roadshow the FBI will be all over you.

The museum is down in an area of Boston called the Fenway, it is kinda pretty - Northeastern University is down there - and we wandered through the Kelleher Rose Garden (there are more kinds or roses in the world than are dreamt of in all of your philosophy) and then we stumbled across the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and while it might be a world class museum, it has creepy, giant baby heads in front of it! Here is a picture of one:


Freakish, right?

So then we went up to Trinity Church, which is just amazing. It really is something that you should see. A hundred years ago (or so the literature says) it was considered one of the ten most (architecturally) important buildings in America. It was still on the list ten years ago too. It is one of those places where that pictures can’t do justice to. Like this one:


It was too dark inside. Sorry about that. Here is a picture of the outside:


Then we walked around the Boston Public Library, which is a lot like the New York Public Library, but smaller (you could say this about Boston itself too).

Then we went on over to Harvard, it looks like Hogwarts, but with more brick. A lot more brick.

Then over to a fun and fancy part of Boston called the North End, it is the kind of place with a million Italian restaurants and dessert places with lines out onto the sidewalk.

Then back to the hotel (which I got on Hotwire for an outrageously awesome price).

Tomorrow we will ride the train down to Brown to bum around. Pray for good weather.
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