Elizabeth Taylor

Elizabeth Taylor is #7 on the American Film Institute’s list of  Greatest Female Stars of All Time.  She is also Dame Commander (DBE) of the Most Excellent Order of the Brittish Empire. 

Whats most impressive though is that people impersonate her for a living. Earlier today I attended a Senior Exposition in Bryan, TX to recruit research participants. I couldn’t tell that the woman on stage retelling the biography of Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t actually Elizabeth Taylor until someone whispered she wasn’t.

Poker5000

Thats me playing poker online at the bottom of the screen, I’m the garden gnome. I entered a 90-player No Limit Texas Hold’em tournament last night for $6.50, the most expensive online tournament I’ve played. After 200 hands I won the tournament and earned the top prize of $144.00. I was pretty excited, but I think Meagan was more excited. I can tell we’re almost married, she’s already talking about getting a cut of my earnings… 

Online poker is fun and cheap. A player can enter a $2.00 tournament and play for two hours or more.

In contrast, playing a cash game in real-life at a casino is not fun or cheap. Over spring break, Mike came to visit TX and we roadtripped to Shreveport, LA to visit Rob Senska, a documentarian and auteur from South Dakota. We went to the Horseshoe Casino by the river and I sat down at a $2.00/4.00 blinds table with a $100.oo buy-in. I think I saw two or three flops and didn’t win a single hand. I was out of money in just over an hour.

As one player left the table, another commented that the player had won a WSOP bracelet a few years ago. I was definitely out of my league. Although if I played now I could hold my own a bit better. I’ve learned to play position and gamble.

me and obama play cribbage

On Race and Star Trek

Big thinkers in both print media and the blogosphere have referenced [Spock] in recent months, drawing parallels between the dependably logical half-Vulcan and another mixed-race icon: Barack Obama.

-Jeff Greenwald (Obama is Spock: It’s quite logical, 2009) 

The movie Star Trek open in theatres this Friday. In the quote above, Greenwald compares Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, to Spock, as played by Leonard Nimoy in the original series. In his comparison, Greenwald draws similiarties between Obama’s and Spock’s ears, logic, charisma, compusure, sardonic ire, and their heroism.

Ultimately Greenwald’s write-up is an ode to Obama, but still I’m struck by his phrase “mixed-race icon.” For me, it conjures up “half-breed,” “mutt,” and “mongrel.” Is it un-politically-correct to perseverate on race and say “mixed-race icon” or am I overreacting?

On a related note, I’m totally content with our president. I was gung-ho about his bid for presidency. I didn’t enjoy, but accepted the daily e-mails from Justin Ruben of Moveon.org and David Plouffe extolling the virtues of Obama. I even bought  an Obama t-shirt and was documented wearing it here and here. I also made calls to folks in swing states like Missouri. They gave me a phone script with Obama’s positions to talk about with call recipients. I’m not sure I convinced anyone to vote for him but I didn’t mind the work. I would have been sad if Obama wasn’t elected on 11/04/08

 

Van Gogh’s Ear

Interesting news about Van Gogh – he didn’t cut off his own ear? It seems most great artists have interesting biographies, Van Gogh is certainly one of them. The alternative account of Van Gogh’s mutilation makes the artist more respectable, albeit at the expense of the mad-man appeal his legacy now enjoys. The fact he presented the severed ear to a prostitute named Rachel is not disputed (i.e. he’s still a mad-man).  

Seeing Van Gogh’s Starlight Over the Rhone is a memorable art moment for me. Starry Night has nothing on Starlight over the Rhone. I saw them side-by-side at an exhibition in Chicago, Over the Rhone floored me as soon as I turned the corner and saw it. The reflected lights in the water are amazingly bright and seem to pop-off the canvas. The illusion of space created by the reflections is a nice juxtaposition of Van Gogh’s post-impressionistic style as exemplified by Starry Night. Over the Rhone lacks the freneticism of Starry Night and is full of nostalgic ambience (at least for me).

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of memorable art moments, visiting the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam I had another. Something about this twelfth century bronze bodhisattva continues to be appealing, perhaps its it’s association with Mahayana Buddhism.

Slow-Ride Foghat Concert

You might remember the English band Foghat from the 1970’s for songs like “Fool for the City,” their cover of Willie Dixon’s “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” or the classic “Slow Ride.” But you might not know they’ve had 21 different lineups since 1968. Meagan and I saw the current iteration of Foghat last night at the Wolf Pen Creek outdoor ampitheatre with one original member, Roger Earl on drums. 

The concert was mostly boring, songs about getting drunk and wanting to make love to people… The guitar solos were gratuitous and the singer was a failure. No surprise, their encore was “Slow Ride” which is featured prominently in the movie Dazed and Confused and is one of the easier songs on Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock. It started raining so Meagan and I starting making our way back to our bikes but stopped in front of the stage for a final listen. I was infinitely more impressed with the band once we were directly in front of them, they were all old and they played their instruments well. 

Their second album went gold, probably for the clever-clever album art.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earlier in the day, Meagan and I rode in our first organized bike ride of the year. It was a relatively short 18 miles on mostly flat country roads northeast of Bryan, TX. It was a benefit-ride for Junction 505, a group that provides assistant for individuals with disabilities. They also provided us with Blue Bell ice cream, Shipley’s doughnuts, and hot dogs.