bloggie blog

My family has been working towards improving my sister Cynthia’s health. She has MS and has tried for many years to find treatments to relieve her symptoms. Last month we rented a hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) chamber for her. I was skeptical that this would help, but it made a difference. She is regaining lost vision, and is retaining more in her short-term memory. It’s fair to say that I can hear the improvements during our phone calls.

Taking a chance, I asked a bunch of friends if they could donate. Most didn’t donate, and that’s as I expected. Times are tough! There are so many worthy causes! I get it! But a few people have been able to donate and have been amazingly generous in their giving. I am blown away. Thank you, David. Thank you, Dossy. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Lewis. Thank you, Quincy, Mass! And the list goes on. Your generosity amazes me.

This morning my youngest sister Emily wrote with the news that the fundraising efforts have paid off to the point where the HBO chamber is being bought today.

Thank you, friends. My family thanks you. I thank you. Thank you.

(Donations are still accepted! Leave me a note if you’d like to help. There will be an ongoing trickle of ancillary costs that will add up.)

As mentioned previously, I downloaded a very fun iPhone app called iCaroler (iTunes link). It’s a great way to start the Christmas season! You play with carolers, muting or highlighting the Victorian singers in your choir while they sing very fun arrangements of some Christmas favorites. I don’t know why it’s fun, but it is!

It’s even better when multiple people play with your carolers. A friend squealed, “I love it!” after just a few seconds of setup between iPhones.

That was a few days ago. This morning she texted me: “I’m having serious iCaroler withdrawl!” Enough said — worth 99¢ right there!

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!

On Saturday night, I watched The Wizard of Oz at a new friend’s house. This guy has prints of old movies and shows them in his backyard, with an old-time popcorn maker and the works. Good times! The 16mm print was about 20 years old, he said.

I haven’t seen TWoO in a while, and I got misty a couple of times: During the end of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” with lovely simple camera work panning to capture more of the tractor as Judy does her simple lovely thing and Toto just sits there being brilliant. I could only find this image on the internet, but the better moments are soon thereafter.

I got misty again when we enter Oz and see color for the first time. The camera work is once again subtle and powerful. Loved that! You know what, I got misty a couple of other times, too, okay? Okay. Congrats to Judy, Victor, Burt, Harold, the whole creative gang.

(Also, there were a couple of very very cute and engaging women there … but that’s a different story for another time and place.)

During the 7:00 AM hike this morning with @actingkeith et al., there two German women, Natasha and Tanya. Since I couldn’t even remember the German word for “because,” I have decided to visit the LAPL for language CDs. Ich sprechen muß!

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!

With my sister Julia in town from Utah and our friend Alyson in town from Boston, I ended up going to the Getty Center and LACMA, a weekend of museums. LA has lots of museums, but I haven’t been to many, so this is good, even if it’s two museums I have visited before … about 10 years ago.

Yesterday, at the Getty Center I didn’t look at all at the art contained within the museum, but at the art of the museum: architecture designed by Richard Meier. (Observe to the right my self-portrait in shadow on Meier.) The building, the view, the gardens — all wonderful. Of note, this is the time of year to go the Getty if you want to experience sunset there. And you do want to experience sunset there. Sunset from a view above the ocean is good anhwhere, of course, but here the setting sun brings out new angles and details of Meier’s work. Go now, before summer comes and they kick you out well before the sun goes down.

Today’s outing to LACMA was free, thanks to Target, and I didn’t take a camera — it was more of a “be here now” moment not taking the camera. Highlights included Smoke by Tony Smith, Edward Steichen photos, Picasso paintings, and Brancusi adnd Giocametti statues. I post here a coupla gems from Steichen: Gloria Swanson and Louise Brooks. Years ago I learned about Steichen from my friend Matt. Thanks, Matt!

Just saw Pope Joan, a new musical, at the Stella Adler Theater in Hollywood. An unholy trinity of Catholicism, Dark Ages history and sex, and my limited familiarity with said trinity, left me a little lost in tonight’s viewing. But my friend Whitney Avalon plays the title role, and it was a pleasure to see her perform. Two other leads really stood out, so even if the story and the storytelling were mysterious to me, I enjoyed those performances.

The show is a mix of Rafiki from The Lion King, silly monks from Spamalot, Che and Evita from Evita, the masses from Les Misèrables, and a sentence of Sondheim, too. All very serious, except for the parade of dancing monks. So while the show was all over the map, at least there was Whitney. She and I were in a show once upon a time, and I helped her prepare the music to audition for this show. Many congratulations to you, Ms. Avalon!