Can I speak with the manager?

Here.  Here’s a little kid looking in my old helicopter.

More interestingly…NBC.

What.  The.  F__k.

How long can this monkey-business go on before management simply waves a white flag and asks for help?

It’s like watching a 20-car pile-up in slow motion.  Who is supposed to be at the wheel over there?  I don’t watch and have never really been interested in The Tonight Show.  That’s what happens when you’re not funny.  Conan O’Brien is not funny.  Jay Leno is hugely unfunny.  Who the hell cares which of these two clowns hosts this lame program?

The tasteless airing of the deadly luge run in the opening ceremony was minor, but a head-scratcher nevertheless.  The coverage has generated loads of well-deserved criticism about the personalities and the painfully obvious Team America bias.  My complaint has been the difficulty in finding the right channel.  I’ve done less research in local elections than I had to do to find the Canada-Norway hockey game.  But, the decision to dump the USA-Canada game to a standard def cable channel is just reckless.  Forget about the fact that I wasn’t able to enjoy the contest in high-resolution.  What about the old-schoolers who don’t have cable?  If there has ever been an American hockey game worth national television, this would be it.  How does NBC not know this?

NBC needs to take some of their eggs out of the ice dancing basket.  Ice dancing is only cool when nothing else is on.  Nothing else is on a lot.  There is plenty of time for ice dancing when hockey games are not on.

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Park art.

I stumbled upon some interesting art in Millennium Park this morning.  From my vantage point, these are looking an awful lot like desert-camouflage oil rigs.  Apparently, there is a back story that is different than the one I imagined.  Apparently, these are not the first three oil rigs we stole from Iraq after we decided to invade.  Apparently, a Chinese “installation-artist” thinks these are cool.  Someone at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs agrees.  The literature explains:  “By refitting the mechanical transmission, artist Shen Shaomin changes the pumps’ stable, uniform motions into twitching, convulsing gestures, struggling to complete the task.  The work forges a contemporary allegory for the dangerous dependence of modern society on oil production.”

Is that so?

Besides my difficulty in getting past the four commas in one sentence, I’m simply not seeing the artists intentions here.  They’re not moving.  They’re just sitting there, looking like the first three oil rigs we stole from Iraq after we decided to invade.  Which, in my opinion, would be kind of cool.  At the very least, we would have these crazy ‘things’ to show for years of effort.  We certainly didn’t get any oil out of it.  A friend reminded me of the hilarious Bill Maher observation:  “…the next time we go to war for oil, let’s get some oil!”
Further…what the fruck is an “installation-artist?”  I installed my kids’ swing set.  Can I qualify for a NEA grant?

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Freshies!

In my house, there have been two reliable constants.  Sue will always pick the slow line in the grocery, and it won’t snow the days I ski.  Guaranteed.

So, imagine my alarm at the proper dumping of pow that most of Colorado received this weekend while my daughter and I joined friends and family in Steamboat.  This rarity is welcome, no doubt.  However, Hawaii was the only state in the union not to get snow this weekend.  This makes me think my powder day was more a function of coincidence than a harbinger of good fortune.  Additionally, Sue has yet to report a checkout-line success.

The snow brought mad beauty (and low visibility) to the Routt National Forest.  I annoyed the ever-loving-hell out of my friend Tom by pausing every 3 minutes to try and make a cool picture.  That’s probably what it looked like to him, anyway.  In reality, my little point and shoot was used to give my burning thighs a break.  I swear I was 20 years old the other day.  Even worse, I have nothing to show for the many breaks.  All the shots I like were from the chair.

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Mind bender…

Maybe she’s a slave to fashion, or maybe she’s firing a warning shot.

It’s possible this confident woman wants to make it perfectly clear that she won’t be managed, undermined, belittled, manipulated, influenced, restrained or otherwise handled…by anyone.  She means business- starting right here, right now with a successful school drop-off.

I suppose it’s possible too that she simply likes the high-heel boots.  It’s just that footing has been largely compromised by the many inches of snow on the ground.  Those can’t possibly be the wise choice in this environment.  One wrong step and this house of cards is coming down hard.  This tall, proud and powerful being can be reduced to a yard sale before you can say the word: physics.

I can’t figure it out.  What is this woman trying to say?  Why is she risking so much?

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Bravo, Jane, bravo!

So, I’m watching the epic, 4-hour Masterpiece Theater presentation of Emma with Sue.  This was my idea, of course.  Always looking for new and exciting ways to ‘connect.’

As far as the movie itself, I have to say this is probably the best of the screen adaptations of this charming Austen novel.  Knowing Jane- as I do- I believe Romola Garai is about as close to the Emma that Austen imagined as could be.  Technically, her accent is a bit off and her gait isn’t even close.  But, if you are able to see past these petty details, you will no doubt embrace this irresistible heroine and delight in her journey to self-awareness.  I know I have.

Obviously, my embargo on period pieces or pictures over 120 minutes has been relaxed for the screening of this movie.

The picture above is a nod to the period in which this ray-of-sunshine-like film is based.

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River, parking lot…what’s the difference?

Here we go. The Chicago Police are playing reindeer games with our freedoms again.

I’ve been over the local ordinances 3 times now and have been unable to find any language prohibiting the upside-down parking of one’s motor vehicle in a public park. It’s even more difficult to locate the law that makes driving a car into the river a crime. Dumping and driving are too entirely different things, I think.

The idiot that pushed this stolen car in the Chicago River was nice enough to do it right outside the window of the studio- which is where the first shot below was snapped from.

Mad respect to the diver who agreed to jump into the 35 degree sewage water of the South Branch. If that dry suit was a heated submarine, I might consider it.

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Supermodel.

On Monday, Ferrari pulled the wraps off its 2010 entry into the Formula One World Championship.

Have I lost you already?

Elite tier motor racing is an activity that few Americans appreciate.  Sorry, NASCAR doesn’t qualify as elite.  While it is an activity, it’s a curious one that’s best left under-analyzed.  F1, however,  is where proper car constructors come to play.  It’s also where the best auto sports photographers in the world make their images.  These land-based airplanes photograph well even when they lay burning in 2 million pieces against the tire wall after a crash.  Carbon fiber cars are cool, period.

I have no images of competing Formula One cars.  I am looking for someone to blame for this.

I do have this, though.  It’s a picture of a 1:18 scale Ferrari F2008 shot on a table in the studio.  It is a terribly unsatisfying car, as I can only fit the end of my pinky finger in the drivers seat.  It also has no engine.

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