Remains of the Day

Wally Zoolander

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-28T07:04:04Z

Sitting out Tuesday night's game after breaking three of his vertebrae in the previous game, Wally Szczerbiak looked like Derek Zoolander, wearing designer shades indoors.

Charles Barkley the broadcaster is a hoot. After the game ended, he fired some of his usual priceless commentary.

After the Nuggets failed to tie the game, Latrell Sprewell turned and started shouting at the Nuggets' bench, causing Jon Barry to go face to face with him to drop a dozen or so f-bombs. Charles: "Aww, why he got to go shoutin' at the bench. And who's that jackass with him [talking about some guy walking with Sprewell]?"

Some fans threw cups and drinks at Sprewell as he walked off the court. Charles: "See, that's my pet peeve. You should be able to go after one fan in the stands each game and beat the crap out of him."

Jayson Williams was quite the comedian as well, but his current situation is no laughing matter. That leaves Charles as the clown prince of the NBA.

Someone actually saw Casshern

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-27T19:29:27Z

Someone actually saw Casshern, and they cried three times while viewing it (in a good way).

The first time I saw the trailer, I thought the movie, "What a weird ass movie." Now I've heard the plot explained, and I still think the same.

HS students' ignorance of American history a myth

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-26T20:33:35Z

According to professor Sam Wineburg. Or perhaps the larger point is that multiple choice tests that rely purely on one's memory of facts is more a gauge of how well-read someone is than how intelligent they are.

Jason turns something north of 19

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-26T09:33:18Z

Jamie organized a surprise party for Jason's birthday Saturday. She invited North 19 to play on the deck, and they were awesome. I've got to admit, the electric banjo is pretty tight. Kenny and Shelly flew up to surprise Jason, and they brought along six week old Kevin Patrick and even graced us with a few tunes. The weather cooperated (what a mellow Seattle spring it's been, and I mean that in the best way).

Young and Kathy gave Jason a quesadilla maker, which is like handing a pack of Marlboro's to a chain smoker. Well, it's too late to rescue him from his culinary straitjacket, but there's still hope for Sadie.

Lang Lang, RiverRun, Petrouchka

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-26T09:02:32Z

Friday night, Lang Lang performed with the Seattle Symphony. He played Chopin's 1st Piano Concerto (really Chopin's second, as his first was named his second, but who's counting?).

Lang Lang is technically virtuostic, and he comes straight from the Yo Yo Ma school of demonstrative physical expressionism. My first encounter with him left me thinking that he plays the crowd better than he plays the piano. Some of his phrasings frustrated me, though there's no doubt he makes the extremely difficult look effortless.

The audience, as expected, ate him up and showered him with raucous applause, whistles, and shouts of "bravo!"

The opening piece was the opening movement of Stephen Albert's Symphony RiverRun, titled Rain Music. An older couple sitting behind me whispered during the performance, "That doesn't sound like rain to me." Do we lose our sense of metaphor as we age?

Albert won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Symphony RiverRun. Albert found inspiration for the symphony in James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake. I loved Rain Music and will have to find a copy of the full symphony to listen to.

The closing piece was Stravinsky's Petrouchka, a piece I played when I was in junior high or high school and have loved ever since. It's a piece that ends quietly, and when it concluded half the audience sat there quietly, not sure if the piece was over. The SSOs audience doesn't seem to enjoy modern music. They love their classics, the old favorites, and they love their virtuostic soloists. It's unfortunate they won't let their symphony grow up, but I suppose someday I'll actively wrap myself in the comforts of nostalgia as well.

Homework

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-24T21:30:15Z

With my newfound free time, I finally finished reading a Sunday NYTimes. It took me three weeks, but I finally made it through every section.

It's a full-time job just keeping up with magazines and newspapers. I have this strange compulsion to peruse every article of a magazine before throwing it out. A warped echo of my mother's admonition to finish every item on my dinner plate, perhaps. Do they sell patches for this condition? Just stick one under your ear and it feeds random news articles into your brain.

Testing the notion that "I don't care if I ever get back..."

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-23T09:13:00Z

Losing a massive post like this to a browser crash is brutal. Just brutal. Here goes again, with condensed text and more photos, since the picture to word information ratio is said to be 1000:1.

Monday night, Eric and Christina took me to the Mariners game. They scored Eric's manager's sweet seats, just a few rows behind the visiting A's dugout.

It afforded us a great view of the A's players...

...and the batter's box. I could admire Edgar's swing up close and personal, and it does share some qualities of some of my favorite swings in baseball (it's sad that I've learned more about the baseball swing studying books these past two years than I did in several years of Little League as a child).

Safeco offered its usual lineup of sights, including Ichiro, Freddy, Johnny O, and the ball-in-hat scoreboard game..

But this game had a few tricks up its sleeves, and long sleeves they were. 14 innings long.

For example, the concessions stand now offers low-carb pizza. What is that? Do they just hand you an empty cardboard box with a few dabs of spaghetti sauce and cheese in it?

We also got a view of new Mariners LOOGY Mike Myers. He is a novelty in that he throws both overhand and submarine with about equal frequency. If his arm doesn't fall off, he'll be making decent cash for years. Want your son to earn a good living? Teach him to throw lefty and sidearm. In about twenty years he'll be getting the call to come in to retire a 60 year old Barry Bonds.

Another momentous occurrence, courtesy of our advantageous positioning: Christina could run up to the railing between innings to plead for a ball from the A's coaches and players. Is there a more win-win form of charity than the donation of baseball from professional player to fan? Never has more happiness been created than when a pro baseball player discards a baseball by tossing it to a fan. I saw a grown adult dive over two seats to try and snag a foul ball, bloodying his nose on a seat back in the process. All this over a dirty sphere of leather and yarn that costs $5 in the pro shop.

Lo and behold, Christina finally received one from an A's coach, the ball the A's infielders had used to take grounders after taking the field in the bottom of an inning. Christina, usually underwhelmed and collected, jumped up and down screaming for a good two minutes. Compare her reaction to that of the young boy with a glove sitting in the front row. He received some seven or eight baseball purely by the virtue of his youth, yet he regarded each with the same jaded, gluttonous gleam in his eye. Not endearing in a nine year old, and I contemplated assaulting him outside the stadium and robbing him of his collection just to teach him to appreciate his bounty, but the game went on so long I forgot my plans.

New Mariners closer "Everyday" Eddie Guadardo came in in the 9th to preserve the 1-0 lead, promptly serving up a home run to Jermaine Dye to send us into extra frames.

Things got weird. A's CF Mark Kotsay got tossed for arguing balls and strikes, so the A's moved All-Star third baseman Eric Chavez to left field. The Mariners got men to third with less than two outs twice in extra frames, causing the A's to then bring Chavez back to third base to give the A's a five infielder, two outfielder alignment. The M's failed to capitalize.

Eric, Christina, and I made it onto the jumbo scoreboard three times. The one time I was able to get my camera pointed quickly enough to fire off one shot, I made the cardinal rookie mistake of looking up to see myself, causing me to move enough to cut off Christina's head. The dreaded digital camera shutter lag also caused me to take the one shot where all three of our faces were obscured. It takes skill to fire off a photo this poor.

By the 14th inning, Rich, who was sitting about ten rows in back of me with some clients of his, was struggling to stay interested.

Most seats had emptied out, but staying to the bitter end of an extra innings game is a matter of pride.

Finally, mercifully, pitcher Justin Duchscherer of the A's balked in the winning run in the bottom of the 14th inning. Some 4 hours, 47 minutes after the first pitch, perhaps Duchscherer simply needed to get some sleep. Maybe that Mexican lunch he had was knock knock knockin' on heaven's door.

The remaining fans, all seventeen of us, staggered out into the cold Seattle night.

Cool house, err, Koolhaas

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-23T07:11:11Z

An e-mail from Ken reminded me of the new Seattle Public Library downtown. As he notes, Chicago gets the new Trump Tower monstrosity while Seattle receives the latest Koolhaas...

I've driven by it a few times, and it's a massive improvement over the previous building.

I must go visit after it opens in late May, if nothing but to visit the reading room at the top floor, with views of Puget Sound.

Slide show here.

Love at first sight

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-22T08:16:14Z

I lost my compact digital camera, a Minolta, while down in Miami for James's bachelor party. I've begun searching for a replacement because a compact digital camera that fits in your pocket is just too precious to live without in this day and age.

My main pet peeve with digital cameras is lag time. Digital cameras can be slow to turn on, slow to focus, slow to snap. Not endearing when what you're seeking to capture is often a fleeting moment in time.

Then came the Casio Exilim Pro P600...

Fairly compact, the specs that caught my eye were the 1.5 second startup time and .01 second shutter release time. Throw in the ability to snap 3 frames per second in burst mode, decent battery life, 4X optical zoom, exposure bracketing, and up to 6 megapixels in resolution, and I'm out looking for the engagement ring.

Review: The Return

Eugene Wei — 2004-04-22T07:26:27Z

It's difficult to imagine Andrey Zvyagintsev's remarkable debut movie The Return springing from a country other than Russia. It contains that spare yet bewildering psychological and spiritual depth that is a hallmark of Russian mysticism and which uniquely identifies their literature (e.g. any novel by Dostoyevsky) and film.

After over eleven years, a father returns to his wife and two sons, Andrey and Vanya. He immediately takes his boys on a fishing trip, giving the boys the opportunity to meet the father figure they never had. The journey they take across the sparse Russian landscape is symbolic, of course, and the entire movie has a mythic feel, yet the performances by each actor create characters that feel specific and real. The long continuous shots and iconic framing of images such as the son's first view of their father asleep in bed bestows upon the movie the elusive and haunting quality of a Biblical fable rendered in human terms. The Russians have always found in their daily lives a spiritual significance foreign to those like myself who have grown up with a more secular worldview.

The movie is layered with mystery. On one level, his sons wonder why their father is taking them on this long fishing trip, and the intentions of his quest are hidden from the audience as well. At another level, Andrey and Vanya wonder why he left in the first place, why he returned, and whether he truly loves them. This is not a Hollywood movie, so the answers to each are not clear cut, though the ending is stunning.

I missed The Return at Sundance and was glad to catch it in its penultimate day on screen in Seattle. Recommended if it is available on a screen near you.

Footnote: Tragically, a few weeks after the movie wrapped filming, 15 year old actor Vladimir Garin, who plays Andrey, drowned while swimming across the lake where much of the movie was shot.