I am intrigued

Two MIT architecture grad students propose building what they're calling a Crowd Farm that converts the energy of people walking through train stations and such into electricity. They think it'll be fun to have more activity feedback into, for instance, louder concerts. I already think crowds are annoying, and they're not really selling them by making them moreso. Still a funny idea.

Harry Potter, Harry Potter!

Despite having been 111th on the library's hold list, I have magically gotten the new Harry Potter at last!

In other news, thanks to Elizabeth, I found out that Katie has an album out and have been listening to some samples. A freaking amazing album. Everyone should check it out.

I am flabbergasted

Sticking your eyeball in a particle beam to tell if it's on or not is one thing, seeing the bones in your arm through your closed eyelids is a whole other story.

Warm, warmer, hot

Usually the summers around here aren't too bad. It's pretty dry, so it cools off at night and stays okay in the shade, and half the time it rains in the afternoon, squelching the hottest part of the day and accelerating evening cool-down. No such luck this year. It's been freaking ridiculous. And, of course, we have no A/C, so we spent the last two afternoons napping in the basement rather pathetically. Meanwhile Higgs is camped on the landing, whose tile is no match for this heat, because the basement is the kitty's domain.

I see Julius Caesar

Matt and I have been going to see the Colorado Shakespeare Festival again this season. (Although they replaced the Shakespeare improv group with two kid-friendly plays we're so skipping.) The first was Midsummer Night's Dream, which I think I've seen quite enough now. Their performance wasn't spectacular either, and the clown-like costumes on the fairy king and queen were very distracting. It was, however, the best version of the mechanicals' Pyramus and Thisbe, which made up for a lot. And then The Servant of Two Masters, one of their non-Shakespeare selections, was played a little too screwball. I'm also sure it probably had a lot of wordplay in the original Italian, none of which made it into the English. There was one stand-out performance in the part of Florindo. He carried this outlandish smile of naîve confindence throughout the play, and managed to strike such ridiculous poses in all seriousness. It really made the whole play actually stand up.

Turns out the same actor was in Julius Caesar as Mark Antony. Well now, this is a bit of an intriguing change. So we go to see the opening last night, and it was really well done. We were very impressed with The Tempest last year, particularly since it's a more difficult play, but I rather think this Julius Caesar was right up there. Matt, of course, prefers more traditional performances. They set it a few decades in the future, with all the familiar dystopian scenery and costume choices (a big pile of wrecked TVs; drab, utilitarian but rather ill-fitting clothes; a prophetess with strange cords connecting to her body and a screen over an eye). They also rather enjoyed all the blood in the play. They did intermission just as first blade is inches from Caesar, then began right up again there complete with techno music killing frenzy. It really did play like a movie version for the stage, right down to the servant putting Cassius out of "her" misery with a bullet to the head after she falls on her sword. Aside from all that, though, the performances by the leads were quite good, particularly Antony, who pulls off being more sympathetic than usual, which just makes you uneasy with both sides' choices. Also, they made Octavian a total spaz who stabs a beer can with a knife to drink it. It worked surprisingly well with the lines.

The kitty has us well-trained

There are several unique things about Matt's cat, Arthur (amongst them that he acts like he's really a dog most of the time). One of his quirks is that he doesn't meow so much as chirp. It's like his vocal cords are so unused to producing noise that he can just barely croak out a short little sound. Since the dog moved in he has learned to be louder, almost managing a soft quarter-meow on a regular basis, in order to compete for attention.

Last night, in the middle of a dream, I suddenly hear these two soft but real sustained meows coming from inside the room. Matt and I are immediately awake and looking for kitty, thinking he must be dying or something. Of course, he's actually just having a little kitty dream; that's why he made full meow sounds. This means that all four members of our house talk in their sleep.

In other news, last night Higgs finally discovered where I hide his old and surplus toys under the bed.

I bite off more than I can chew

So the other day I decided that one of my stories requires some alliterative verse poetry. Actually, I decided that it should have rather a significant amount of alliterative poetry. Problem: As much as I can't resist alliterating in prose, I've never written alliterative poetry. In fact, I haven't written any poetry at all in maybe eight years (and looking back at that, never any good poetry). I'm not really sure what I was thinking, but this has sort of fixed in my mind now. I rather think that I need to stop reading Germanic epics and Tolkien lectures.

I talk too much about German movies

I was rather surprised recently when I saw a preview for No Reservations, a new Catherine Zeta-Jones romantic comedy, and recognized it as a remake of the German movie Mostly Martha. Mostly Martha is the story of an obsessive, emotionally isolated chef at a top restaurant whose life changes when she finds herself caring for her orphaned niece while trying to deal with the easy-going Italian chef brought in to help at the restaurant. Martha is the kind of person who, when ordered by her boss to attend therapy, spends her appointments quietly discussing various methods for preparing pigeon. The problem is that I can't see Catherine Zeta-Jones playing this role as anything but outgoing, flirtatious Catherine Zeta-Jones, rather than the reserved, slightly awkward character that made the original work. This is a very bad omen for the remake, and I anticipate yet another horribly cookie cutter romanic comedy. I am hating Hollywood right now.

On the subject of German movies, I saw The Lives of Others when it was out in theaters and it was probably one of my favorite movies this year. It's about a German Stasi officer observing a playwright, eventually becoming drawn into his life. The AV Club bemoaned it's lack of cross-cutting and other distractions to "keep the audience wound up", but that's part of what I liked about it. The tone of the movie matched the quiet stoicism of the main character himself, and the whole thing came together to feel more real than most movies. Matt seems to have liked it a lot, too, although he's probably tired of me talking about it by now.

It's not German, but I also have to recommend the Norwegian comedy Kitchen Stories, about an efficiency expert in early 50s Sweden sent out to observe the habits an uncooperative Norewegian farmer. The study requires that he regularly sit in a high chair in the corner of the room without speaking to the subject for weeks, which leads to funny situations but also makes you painfully aware of their mutual isolation. I just randomly picked this up off the shelf without looking too closely, and was very pleasantly surprised. Being yet another movie on voyeurism, it is also rather quiet, but interspersed with both hilarious and touching moments.

Update 25.7.07: Sadly, the actor who played the Stasi officer so movingly in The Lives of Others has died.