weekend in review
Feb. 28th, 2007 07:41 pm(Yeah, I know, it's Wednesday evening.)
I went up to Los Angeles and spent the weekend with my sister. We visited the newly renovated Griffith Observatory -- they've done all sorts of new nifty exhibits all of which (I would say) have something to do with trying to give a sense of the scale of the universe. I particularly liked the entire wall of deep-field image of the universe.
We briefly attended the 4th 2nd Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational which was a fun time, but owing to the way it was organized, not a successful substitute for dinner. To actually eat any grilled cheese sammiches you had to wait in a ridiculously long line, at the end of which you got a cold quarter-sammich — whichever one was up at the time, you had no control over this — and a ballot slip by which to judge it, and then if you wanted more you got to go through the line again, which we did not do. There were people doing neat stuff with Italian brie and other interesting cheeses, but the one quarter-sammich I got to eat had been made with processed cheese food slices. Blech. I think it would be better if there were a designated panel of judges who got to sample everything, and everyone else could get theirs hot off the grill from whichever chef they felt like. Also, the use of processed cheese food should be forbidden. Dara says some people's definition of grilled cheese sammich requires processed cheese food, but those people are wrong, and if they can't cope with real cheese that's just too bad.
After finding a real restaurant (Phillipe's) we then attended Dara's current play, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which is loosely based on the Blake text. The show is improvised anew every night, with the actors randomly assigned to Heaven's or Hell's side by coin toss at the beginning. (I wrote a little blurb for the program on the probabilities involved.) Almost all the meaning is conveyed by gesture and movement; the only spoken words are Blake's
On Sunday we met our parents for brunch, and then I got back on the train. Los Angeles' Union Station deserves mention - they've preserved the architecture since the thirties, which is to say, the place is built like train travel is the way to get around the country. Which, nowadays, makes it seem cavernous and disused, a modern-day abandoned castle. Rather sad really.
I got home and promptly came down with a cold.
I went up to Los Angeles and spent the weekend with my sister. We visited the newly renovated Griffith Observatory -- they've done all sorts of new nifty exhibits all of which (I would say) have something to do with trying to give a sense of the scale of the universe. I particularly liked the entire wall of deep-field image of the universe.
We briefly attended the 4th 2nd Annual Grilled Cheese Invitational which was a fun time, but owing to the way it was organized, not a successful substitute for dinner. To actually eat any grilled cheese sammiches you had to wait in a ridiculously long line, at the end of which you got a cold quarter-sammich — whichever one was up at the time, you had no control over this — and a ballot slip by which to judge it, and then if you wanted more you got to go through the line again, which we did not do. There were people doing neat stuff with Italian brie and other interesting cheeses, but the one quarter-sammich I got to eat had been made with processed cheese food slices. Blech. I think it would be better if there were a designated panel of judges who got to sample everything, and everyone else could get theirs hot off the grill from whichever chef they felt like. Also, the use of processed cheese food should be forbidden. Dara says some people's definition of grilled cheese sammich requires processed cheese food, but those people are wrong, and if they can't cope with real cheese that's just too bad.
After finding a real restaurant (Phillipe's) we then attended Dara's current play, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, which is loosely based on the Blake text. The show is improvised anew every night, with the actors randomly assigned to Heaven's or Hell's side by coin toss at the beginning. (I wrote a little blurb for the program on the probabilities involved.) Almost all the meaning is conveyed by gesture and movement; the only spoken words are Blake's
Proverbs of Hell,which the actors use as the occasion demands. All and all, it may not appeal to fans of Ibsen, but I think it was definitely worth seeing.
On Sunday we met our parents for brunch, and then I got back on the train. Los Angeles' Union Station deserves mention - they've preserved the architecture since the thirties, which is to say, the place is built like train travel is the way to get around the country. Which, nowadays, makes it seem cavernous and disused, a modern-day abandoned castle. Rather sad really.
I got home and promptly came down with a cold.
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