Springing Out

I'm going to be away for awhile--spring training St. Louis vs. Dodgers game (3rd row right behind St. Louis dugout, yea!), Bela Fleck and the Flecktones concert, and camping at some Florida springs as yet undiscovered by this clan.

Here's a couple of fun tidbits to chew on:

Wily Coyote found in Central Park in NYC. Amazing to me how he came down to the park, making it past 116th and Columbus without stopping at the Thai restaurant. I'm betting the roadrunner was at the Tavern on the Green.

Yogabeans. You don't have to be a yoga fan to laugh at the site of action figures doing yoga poses. Although, I am a huge fan, which is why I can say with confidence that I could kick that action figure's ass.

Have fun!

Top 100

Interesting section in the Premiere Mag-Rag this month: Top 100 Performances of All Time.
If you love film, you've got to have an opinion about this--I want to know! Either share what you consider to be the best, most profound and moving performance by an actor/actress and why, or list a few of your choices. Mine will be in the comments.

The Living Theater

How inspiring to see the world mobilized on year three of this madness. Locally, my fellow theatre friends and myself are wanting desperately to do this.

Which Greek Goddess/Greek God Are You?

Well, I don't have tons of kids, but yep, I can definitley identify with Gaia. Feel free to click above for the goddess test. Here's the link for you guys.

Tibet or not Tibet

Wow. This is the second time I've seen the mystical musicians of Tibet and it just gets better. This time, it was 2nd row center in a small, historical theater and the monks with the horns were aimed directly at me, 10 feet away. This is a good thing. I might as well have been in the Himalayas. The hills were alive, that's for sure.

As the multi-tonal chanting ended and it's final chords bounced around the room reverberating like a bell, we imagined the earth making that sound as it spins harmoniously with All That Is.

There Will Come Soft Rains

My youngest daughter told me this week that there is a girl at her middle school who is so obese, she can't fit through the doorway to get into the classroom. Used to be, this girl would go in sideways, but now that isn't working either. The teacher's solution? She put a desk in the hallway just outside the door so the girl can sit there and still at least hear what's going on.

Can you picture that?

My daughter has noticed more and more desks in the hallways to accomodate this poor kid in all of her classes. It makes me wonder why and how such a thing could happen. It's not like this girl is alone. The U.S. just keeps getting larger and larger as it gets more and more spiritually bereft. Not to mention how technology has made it perfectly feasible to almost never even go outside.

Which reminds me of something I learned from a friend last week--studies are showing that some kids with ADHD are going to be developmentally stunted forever and they are seeing a corelation between being indoors/watching tv/isolated from nature and ADHD. That means these kids will never develop the attention span on their own to even finish a book or be good for anything longer than a sound bite. I see this so much as part of a larger problem. To some extent, we all now have ADHD. If you spend any time in nature and know and feel the difference in rhythm, the calming effect on the mind, and shift in perspective, then you know what I mean. Nobody gets enough of that anymore.

And now that reminds me of a short story Bliss asked me to read this week. There Will Come Soft Rains by Ray Bradbury. It focuses on a techologically advanced house that basically runs itself--making breakfast, feeding the dog, turning on the sprinklers, waking up the members of the household. Only, the owners are gone--there has been some cataclysmic apocalypse and no humans have survived. But the house goes on as nothing has happened. It does not compute.

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pools singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
-- Sara Teasdale

We seem to be becoming collectively more and more like the house in the story--technology in a bubble--and if in all of our "advancement" and "progress" all we achieve is some kind of Bionic Man ( we can re-Build him, we can make him stronger, faster..) that isn't truly human (and by human I mean earth-friendly), what exactly have we really gained?

Castles in the Sand

I keep hearing it said how great the Oscar nominated movies were this year, how they dealt with serious issues and mature themes, and that's true--but the self-congratulatory nature of the awards show is so mastubatory. When are we collectively going to be mature enough not to need stupid awards shows? You know everyone really just wants to see all of the stars in one place, so why not just modernize the whole thing and get them all to come to a party, socialize and get drunk, and film it--reality-TV style?

That said, Robert Altman's Honorary Oscar acceptance speech was brillant to watch. Howl's Moving Castle should have won for Best Animated Feature, and Brokeback and Heath Ledger were robbed.

Free Association

• Why all this Ritalin for low attention span kids? Why not just more interesting teachers?

• I see a relation between how overcrowdedly we live and how rational we've become. Uncontrolled rationality might well be a mild state of panic when seen from a lookout in evolutionary time.

• Will we someday put our bulldozers in museums?

• My best friend and I have never done anything crazy to keep in shape. Sound diet and exercise has been the mantra, but now we are seriously thinking about starting the Chocolate Diet. There may already be one out there, but we'll be making up our own.

Spring is Here

• We await the college acceptance letters this month. It's an exciting time. In the meantime, Hermione wins a bid (again) to Internationals (science fair). This time it's in Indiana. Why can't it be somewhere a little more exotic? Do we really want people coming from all over the world to experience America Indianapolis-style? C'mon. I say Hawaii.

• Filling out an application for a dream job this week, I get the first question ever on a job application that made me laugh. It read: 'Are you, or should you be, taking any medication?'

• Bliss has to make up a slew of fantasy organisms for a school project. His creatures come from the planet Kreptonia and include a piranha looking creature called the "Bit-ahn-ya" and a surfer-looking monkey species named the "Flunky". He should look into a career in animation, is what I'm thinking.