bloggie blog

From time to time, I feel pangs of missing Boston. Here’s an article that caused a pang! According to Thomas Garvey, a critic I follow online, a critic who is, among other things, very hard to please, “2010 was an extraordinary year.” In fact, 2010 was Boston’s best year for theater in his memory. I read the list of 20 (twenty!) great shows with sadness that I never got to see any of them, but at the same time I’m glad that I can hear about it. It’s great to hear about good work in a good theater scene that I’m glad I got to be a little part of. Go, Bean, go!

I joined Twitter 1,000 days ago in January of 2008. When did you join? Oh, I see — after I did. That’s okay, don’t feel badly. We couldn’t all be Livia’s co-workers back in the day.

Anyway, in honor of my longer-than-thou time on the Twitter, I post a few favorites, a handful of Tweets Gone By.

I like a nice, clean tweet.

Burgers and more!

When people encounter new information, facts may not be as important as beliefs.

I don’t #MM, #WW or #FF. But I might start doing #TT and #SS just for the ambiguity factor.

I hate them. They are ugly. They advertise garbage, including acting and VO resources for the stupid. They take up parking spaces, or — grrr — some drive during rush hour, worsening traffic. You hate them, too, all of you except for my readers who are soulless.

Well. All we need to do is follow San Francisco’s lead, but from Ban Billboard Blight we learn that it’s been 2 years and 17 days since it came up in LA City Council. See Mobile Billboards: Bringing More Air Pollution, Traffic Congestion, Parking Problems.

Let us pray for progress. In addition to problems of pollution and other inefficiencies, there’s the visual vexation of blight. I moved here from Boston and the better aesthetics of driving around most larger streets there is something I haven’t forgotten yet.

I had a brief lunch with an old friend from Boston today. This was good! (Also good: more and more, restaurants are happy to serve a bun-less burger with fruit on the side.)

But Linda, we didn’t take a picture! This was not a wise turn of events. I posed at the stop of the stairs. The street we met was lovely, as was the weather, as were we all. In other words, the conditions were oh so right! Oh, well. Next time. Next time we’ll snap a pic.

Nice seeing you!

It’s very hot today. Well over 100 in the hot spots. You walk outside and boom you just feel it. But it’s okay. It’s great. It’s so much better than the hot days back east. I’ve been missing a few things about New York and Boston, but the misery I experienced back there during heatwaves, that I do not miss!

Hikes in the hills — a regular thing in my life these days — are tough, tough, tough. But a stroll on the beach after dark is in store this weekend. Excellent for this weather. Excellent.

So it has come to this. My motivation for this entry is solely a desire to get in one more post for the month of July. I have 3 hours and 59 minutes to write this entry.

Tell you what? Let me link to a few friends slash bloggers I read pretty regularly. Lots of these people don’t live in Boston anymore, but that’s where I met them.

Erin Fast, Fran Betlyon, Jeremy and Rachel, Katie Clifford, Neil Jenkins, Marissa Turley Benson, Dave Evans.

There you go. Happy August, everybody!

Several years ago, my friends Doug and Sarah introduced me to The Setters of Catan. With beginner’s luck, I won that night. I played it many times in Boston after that, and also with my family. I’m pretty good, but usually don’t win. So many times I’m one card, one roll, one thingy — just “this much” — from victory. Good times!

It’s been popular amongst board-games people for a while. (My people are board-games people.) Now it’s really taken off, according to this article in Wired. If you’ve played “Catan,” you’ll enjoy the article.

The real question on my mind is not addressed in this article: How do you pronounce “settlers”?

The dictionary allows two pronunciations (settler |ˈsetl-ər; ˈsetlər|), but if you use the second pronunciation and are one of those people that have a very strong glottal stop between the two syllables, you are a rube and I will take you down, bitch!

I was standing on the street this morning as the delivery guy stocked up one of those little newspaper containers ¹ on the sidewalk. I saw it was The Onion, so I grabbed a copy and found a funny thing I read therein that I just gotta share, what with me being from Boston and also familiar with Shakespeare.

There’s an article about Stephon Marbury being new to the Celtics and engaging in a “Shakespearean intrigue” with the big trio of Garnett, Pierce and Allen. Shakespearean in language more than plot. I think it’s hilarious to imagine these guys going at it in iambic pentameter. Check out the soliloquy:

“I shall of these three fools now make my purse,” Marbury was heard to say after the game, although he appeared to be addressing no one and perhaps spoke only to himself. “These stars are of a free and open nature, / And think men honest that but seem to be so, / And will as tenderly be led by the nose / As asses are.”

Just read the whole thing. Thanks again, Onion. You brighten my day frequently with your fake news. Plus, your crosswords are excellent.