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Saturday, May 03, 2003

Three New Dances at SF Ballet Margaret and I saw this program at the San Francisco Ballet the other night. As the review says, it was very entertaining, with a lot more humor than one normally finds in ballet. The review is fair, but I wish on the web site they had published the same photo that they ran in the paper: it showed my friend Greg's wife Leslie, who was lead dancer in the first piece, by Julia Adams. We had seats in the Dress Circle at the Opera House, which are fun because you're up high and can see the big picture. But I wish I'd taken my binocs so we could see the faces. Also, at the opera house the seats are very close together in Dress Circle, so if you are taller than about 5'7" or so, you're going to be uncomfortable. Orchestra seats are more comfortable. Before the show we had a terrific, unusual dinner at Millennium, an organic, vegetarian restaurant on Geary Street. Very expensive, and we needed a lot of translation of items on the menu (tempeh, seitan, farro), but the tastes were unusual and good. Organic gin in the martinis was good, too. 6:55:01 PM  Permalink  comment []

House G.O.P. Tax Cuts Outdo Bush Plan in Favoring Wealthy. A computer analysis showed that the tax-cut plan offered by House Republicans favors the richest taxpayers to a greater degree than the larger plan proposed by President Bush. By David E. Rosenbaum. [New York Times: Politics] And that takes some doing! Given the number of millionaires in the house, it's not very surprising. 6:02:44 PM  Permalink  comment []

Ride your bicycle on the water with an 'inflatable bicycle boat' that fits in a backpack, weighs 25 lbs., and installs in 10-15 minutes, allowing you to clock 6 mph in the water. [Follow Me Here...] One-up Jesus! 3:38:40 PM  Permalink  comment []

'Everyone in This Room Is a Suspect'. Nat Hentoff: Conservatives Rise for the Bill of Rights! "A significant development in the movement to resist the Ashcroft-Bush dismembering of the Bill of Rights is the growing coalition between conservative groups and such organizations as the American Civil Liberties Union and People for the American Way. This has been going on—with only marginal attention from the media—since the ACLU organized a broad-based, though unsuccessful, fight to defeat the first USA Patriot Act toward the end of 2001. And it was the conservative Republican libertarian, Dick Armey, then majority leader in the House, who stripped the Orwellian "Operation Tips" out of the Department of Homeland Security bill." Village Voice [Follow Me Here...] 3:32:13 PM  Permalink  comment []

Pynchon and Orwell There's a good piece in this morning's Chronicle (can't find it on the web site yet). about a new edition of Orwell's 1984 with an introduction by Thomas Pynchon. David Kipen makes a connection between 1984 and Vineland, which I don't remember noticing when I read the latter (except that it was set in 1984). I have Vineland on my desk to re-read; I've been meaning to do so, then heard it will be the book discussed on KQED's Forum on May 26. That should be a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to digging into Vineland again. 10:31:43 AM  Permalink  comment []

© Copyright 2004 Steve Michel.