danajohnhill.org | Hard Times Come Again No More

My local Fox affiliate shows an hour of The Simpsons each night at seven o’clock, and tonight were two astoundingly great episodes: the legendary “Brother from the Same Planet” and a forgotten gem, “The President Wore Pearls”.

“Brother from the Same Planet” was the 14th episode from Season 4 (1992-1993) – surely The Simpsons‘ golden age.  Among countless hilarious lines, I particularly like when Homer and Pepi (“I love you, too, Pepsi”) are star-gazing and Pepi asks Homer to name some of the constellations.  “…And that Big Dipper looking thing is Alex…the Cowboy”.

“The President Wore Pearls” is an against-the-odds masterpiece from the otherwise lackluster Season 15 (2003-2004).  Watching it tonight I was inclined to believe it was from Season 5, so strong is the writing.  In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say it’s in my Simpsons Top 10.  It even has several songs, which I contend are the zenith of entertainment.

On a similar topic, a few nights ago, they replayed another top drawer episode, “Homer’s Barbershop Quartet”, and it made me feel very old.   Towards the beginning, when Homer is explaining to the kids why they had never heard of his fame, he explains that it was eight years before, in 1985.  Now 1985 is 23 years ago!

Filed under: Comedy, Musings, Television on May 20th, 2008 | No Comments »

A three-panel painting by Francis Bacon (not the philosopher, unfortunately) entitled Tryptich, 1976, has sold at auction for over $86 million.  Although I certainly know what I like and what I don’t, I can’t claim to be an art expert by any means.  I’d love to hear from someone who is an expert who can defend such an astonishing price for what I consider a completely underwhelming painting. 

 Maybe I just need more education.  I recognize that the more you learn the more you can appreciate things that once appeared to make no sense.  And I am apt to defend abstract music that others may call noise.  Towards the end of the semester, as I was leaving a class in the Music Building, there were a hundred identical metronomes set up on a brick wall, all clicking away at different tempi.  It was György Ligeti’s Poème Symphonique.  There are no actual instruments, and, by its very nature the music has a huge degree of unpredictability and every “performance” will be different; the metronomes swing back and forth until they stop, at different times depending on how much they were wound.  I wouldn’t compare it to the Missa Solemnis, but for what it is it’s okay. 

Of course, nobody can put a price on a hundred clicking metronomes.  And if they could, it wouldn’t be $86 million.

Filed under: Art, Cost of Living, Music, Musings, School on May 15th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

As you may have read yesterday, Monday witnessed two significant technological catastrophes at home: a broken air conditioner and computer.  And, as you may have read, Kathleen helped solve the former on Tuesday afternoon. 

On Wednesday afternoon (her birthday!) she called me at work and told me she’d see if she could wrangle me a loaner computer to use until Miriam and I could get a new laptop.  And, sure enough, at 8:30 last night she and Steve came by with a computer and a CD-ROM of Windows XP with all the significant security updates and such.  It was incredible and entirely undeserved.  There’s kindness and generosity, and then there’s this.

So, Miriam and I will try perhaps this evening to shop for a laptop computer, and I am going to attempt to salvage the data from the hard disk of our deceased computer, but it isn’t looking good.  When I plugged it in to our loaner, it immediately recognized the drive, but 90% of the data was missing, including all of my pictures and MP3s.  I’m going to try and run some file-recovery software, but it’s a nerve-wracking process.  The only consolation I have is that I have made DVD backups of my images going back several years, so the only total losses will be the most recent images – those from March and April, perhaps.  Many of these have already been uploaded to Flickr, but many more haven’t, and they may be gone.  Also possibly lost are the outtakes of photoshoots with GRR girls Patsy Clothesline, Ms. Rebel, and Demonomia and the outtakes from their first bout, too, though the Flickr galleries are safe, of course.

Filed under: Friends, Photography, Technology on May 15th, 2008 | No Comments »

Monday evening was no fun at Château d’Oiseau. I rode home on my bicycle as usual, warmed up some left-over Hungry Howie’s, grabbed a cold Coke from the fridge, switched on the thermostat to enjoy some conditioned air and sat down on the couch. After a few minutes, however, I noticed I was hardly more comfortable. In fact, it was cooler outside, so I just opened the windows and turned on the fan and left it at that. But it was disturbing to me that the air conditioner was having no effect on the ambient room temperature later in the evening when I wanted to go to bed. I knew something was wrong. So I put on my shoes and went outside to find the fan on the compressor not running at all, which explained everything. It was too late then to do anything, obviously, and the thought of spending thousands of dollars on a new A/C gave me bad dreams.

So, too, did the other nightmare of the evening: the death of our computer. Granted, it was old and had worked hard all its life, but losing it is difficult, since it received constant use. There have been occasions earlier where we’d had serious problems, but with help we got through them. This, however, is it, since it no longer seems practical to struggle just to keep it going. I know we need another computer post-haste, but I don’t know when we can obtain one, so my posts may be infrequent for a while.

Many of you may be thinking, “man lived for almost 200,000 years without air conditioning or computers; you’ll survive”. To that I say, the God who created man 6,000 years ago wants me to have access to online smut in climate controlled comfort. Gah, read your Bible!

And I’m far closer to achieving that lofty goal thanks to Kathleen, who called me yesterday afternoon and offered her help with my A/C malady. She and Steve had recently had a similar problem, and she got some OJT replacing her own fan capacitor. Together we knelt down in leaves and reached into spider webs to pull out and inspect the small metal cylinder that controls the fan that draws air across the coils of the compressor unit on the side of the house. It was 4:50 before we could see the obvious damage to the old capacitor. Luckily, the appliance parts store is four blocks from my home. We made it with minutes to spare, and the part was only $5.99. By the time Miriam arrived home from work the house was a fierce cold.

And today is Kathleen’s birthday, so, huzzah, Kathleen!

Filed under: Friends, House, Rantings, Technology on May 14th, 2008 | 1 Comment »

My favorite chain pizza restaurant is Hungry Howie’s (spare me your mockery).  I’ve liked it since I was a kid and they had a franchise right outside the gates of our apartment complex.  By the time I was in high school their carry-out special–a large one-topping pie–was $3.99.  By this Spring the price had risen to $6.99.

Sunday afternoon I was amazed to see the price has been reduced–though perhaps only temporarily–to $5.88.

Filed under: Cost of Living, Food on May 12th, 2008 | No Comments »