Day off is proceeding well.

New movie review should be up shortly on Mike D's site!

Graceland Field Trip

It was Saturday morning, and I woke up early, kind of refreshed, but not totally. The evening before had been blurred by post competition martinis and delightfully spicy scallops (with chow foon noodles!) at Memphis' P.F. Chang's, and I had fallen asleep late, hampered by a king sized bed in my Doubletree room. I have a really difficult time with king sized beds. They're just too big.

I began my day with a decidedly unhealthy breakfast:



and made it to Graceland by 10 AM. There weren't too many lines at this point; I tried to play up my random P.F. Chang's connection at the ticket window (I had met the director of Graceland by coincidence at the bar the previous evening!! And she gave me her card!) but no dice, I had to pay the full $27 to see everything. I had no idea what to expect, least of all intriguing decorating. Elvis had an eye!!! Or maybe I'm just into tacky seventies interiors.

My favorite room (the picture doesn't give justice to the navy/yellow contrast and doesn't show the bright yellow bar):



My second favorite, the fabric lined pool room:



Here's the first room you see upon entering:



The couch to the right is fifteen feet long. It was pretty amazing to see Elvis' piano. One of the things I learned at Graceland was that Elvis never wrote any of his music, but he produced everything. He chose every song he performed -- and I guess he was just a master of knowing the public's predilections.

The kitchen was pretty modest:



Hard to believe this is where meals for the entire estate were cooked. I was actually surprised at the small size of the mansion in general. I mean, I couldn't even afford to buy a room of it, but I had expected something more in the line of the Breakers or something.

Here's the dining room:



The upstairs was closed to the public. The audio guide explained that since it was Elvis' private space during his life, they kept it that way since his death. BUT there was a bed covered in white fur that he onced used which was on display:



Wow. Those are some of his costumes on the bed. A little wacky, this Elvis. Amazing that in the 50s he got away with gold lame suits. And that sequined capes lent to his appeal in the seventies. I have to say, though, that when I saw some videotapes of his TV performances in the 50s and 60s I realized why he had been such a huge phenomenon. Not only was he HOT in his youth, there was something about him that jumped from the screen at you. Perhaps other performers in the past were as charismatic and spiritual, but this was the first time TV was available to link someone to every living room in the country. His energy just hit me! It was pretty amazing. I spoke to a friend of mine who had lived in Memphis for a couple years, performing with the Memphis Symphony, and she said that she had become an Elvis fan while she lived there for exactly the same reasons. Elvis was a sublime performer, and being a performer myself, I truly admire what he was able to do. Of course, he took the fame and wealth in a sad direction, though Graceland didn't go too much into it. Here's the room where Elvis entertained friends the day he died:



Here's the famous jungle room. Ceilings and walls covered with green shag. Rock.



Lisa Marie's favorite chair is the one with the bear on it.

I also saw Elvis' car collection. Wow. Dad called it a "cadillac salad bar" which pretty much describes it. And, I saw his private jet. Elvis had a LOT of money. He was charitable, though, and gave a lot of money to local organizations; he also took very good care of his parents and grandmother. I did some research and discovered that he wasn't so great to Priscilla, his wife, however. Affairs and such. And of course his addiction to painkillers didn't help the marriage.

Rest in peace, Elvis:



Bye, Graceland:



Then I decided to drive to Arkansas. Hello, Arkansas:



Since the really was nothing in West Memphis, Arkansas, I left soon after and went back to Tennesse, got lost on my way to the Gibson factory, got cranky and hungry, tried to go to a nice steakhouse for some lunch, found it was closed, got very cranky, ate some pretty good tacos, went to the recital of Matej Grahek, played in a concert, came back to hotel and finally had some steak, fell hard asleep, then went back to Boston.

Goodbye, Volunteer State!
Next field trip: Missouri and the Ozarks, March 28 - 31, 2005.

Back from the South.

So, I'm back from my trip to Memphis and the side excursion to Graceland. The whole trip was a big success, especially the Elvis part. I'm taking a few days off from work right now, and that hasn't been very successful at ALL -- I keep trying to get stuff done! Granted, there are a lot of little things that I need to finish up, and it would be great for me to get them off of my list of things to do, but it's been very hard for me to sit down and watch a movie or take a walk. So, I'm going to make myself relax at Starbucks this morning, blog about Graceland and write some movie reviews while there. Here's a picture of the wild excitement at Graceland to tempt you to return to this site later today:



Warning: I may not post about Wittgenstein. Or actually, maybe I'll post about him now. Since my goal is to learn a few things about him, I'll limit myself to writing yea but a few things. And then I'm going to research Tennessee Williams.

So here's a few things about Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 - 1951):
Like me, he lived in a town called Cambridge, though his was in England. Unlike me, he studied mathematics and philosophy in Cambridge, and then entered the Austrian army during WWI. Also unlike me, he was the heir to much wealth. He gave it all away post war and wrote a bunch of long, heavy philosophical treatises which weren't published until his death.
Here's what he wrote:

Notebooks, 1914-1916
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Blue and Brown Books
Philosophical Investigations
On Certainty
Remarks on Colour

He also wrote "Remarks on the Foundation on Mathematics," but that didn't have a nice icon on Amazon, so I linked "Remarks on Colour" instead.

Last summer, I attempted to read "Philosophical Investigations" and didn't get too far. It piqued my interest in that it was about language (and I'm fascinated by the roots of language), but I found that Wittgenstein was very picky about any thought one might have about language or even any thought that uses language. As far as I can tell, LW was obsessed with the idea that we will always misunderstand one another since language cannot truly represent our feelings and thoughts. Language is a sort of intermediary between me, and say, David Bowie. David can't ever see exactly what's going on in my head while I listen to "Fame."

Anyway, that's about all I have on Wittgenstein. I can't bring myself to read the whole "Philosophical Investigations" right now and then comment upon it, but I found this little internet investigation regarding LW to be interesting. Most interesting were actually the Amazon reader comments. There are some smart people out there, folks!!!

Flight Baristas and Wittgenstein

Tree thought "Flight Barista" might be a cool new term for flight attendents. Imagine if there were actually chic coffee shop beverages available during flights? Maybe that will be the next step for swank-in-the-air JetBlue and Song. The last time I flew Song (2,000 of my 60,000+ miles on Delta, for which I received 0 (zero) party invitations), they were mixing martinis in the aisles and you could put together a personal mp3 list at your seat with some pretty cool music, including hipster indie rock. I've never flown JetBlue, but it seems from the website that they're big on leather seats and Direct TV. No martinis. If JetBlue made the coffee bar in the sky happen, I would never have to worry about finding a Starbucks in the airport anymore. Not like it's hard to find one or anything, it's just that sometimes I'm extremely late for flights and I can't stop for a mocha!! Gosh darn modern living!!

Philosopher of the Week: Wittgenstein! After the crazy Wittgenstein phone incident, and Nancy's intrepid internet search sans correct spelling, I've decided to write a little about the philosopher. First, here are some Wittgenstein googlisms (www.googlism.com):

wittgenstein is the result of modern capitalism
wittgenstein is important today
wittgenstein is not pruning or removing parasites
wittgenstein is the ideal location for the horse

And there you have it. And when pitted against Kant, Sartre and Camus in Googlefight (www.googlefight.com), poor Wittgenstein lost each time. So who is this philosopher, anyway? Well, since I'm going to Memphis now, I'll have to write more about him later. Sorry. So yeah, the next entry will be "Graceland and Wittgenstein." Yup. With photos and everything!

Also, check out Polly Paulusma (free track on iTunes this week). I like it!! Kind of a cross between PJ and Alanis.

Hey, I kind of like this new template.

Alriiiight!

Cool, so Mike fixed most of the photos for me, I finally got the last one to work, and the blogging begins. In other news: I'm tired.

Arrrrgh

I can't figure out how to make the picutes smaller!!! Also, I'm pretty sure I don't like this template.

Terminal A

A couple weeks ago, Mike K. got an email containing an invitation to a soiree thrown by the Atlantic Monthly and Delta Airlines. Here's the invite:

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY
PRESENTS
“BOSTON BANTER”

The Atlantic Monthly and Delta Airlines
invite you and a guest to join fellow Bostonians for
a night of “Boston Banter,”
a private reception to toast
the opening of the new
Delta Terminal A
at Logan Airport

Monday, March 14, 2005
7-9 p.m.
Terminal A
Logan Airport

COCKTAIL ATTIRE                                  
CURBSIDE VALET PARKING AT ARRIVAL LEVEL

Needless to day, I was pretty excited at the prospect of cocktail attire. And the whole idea of attending a party in Terminal A was, although bizarre, very interesting. So this evening, we got all dressed up and headed on over to Logan Airport!!

When we got there, we first drove to departures, probably not having read all the way to the bottom of the invitation. But. . . you know. . . the new terminal is "taking off," right? Well, apparently not. Apparently it's "arriving." Anyway, it was all very fancy when we got to the Arrival level; many valets were there, and a coat check. No one asked us our names, however, so ANY OF YOU COULD HAVE GONE. That's right. Anyone could have crashed the Terminal A party!



We headed up the escalator to the Check-in area, where we were handed little programs and booklets entitled "Boston Banter", which was a collection of writing about Boston from old issues of the Atlantic Monthly. We had arrived a little late, so we manuevered our way through the crowd of people who were definitely older than us and definitely owned homes (probably in Beacon Hill) and reached a small buffet table. (By the way, at this point we still had no idea why Mike was invited to the party.) The food was very good -- pork tenderloin, brown bread, a salad with cranberries and other delights -- but there was nowhere to sit since we had arrived late, so we sat on an air vent by the giant plate glass windows. We swiped some duck tenderloin from a server on our way to sit down. Mmmm. Duck tenderloin.



The publisher of the A.M. had started speaking at this point, only to be interrupted by a blaring security annoucement. "Attention!!! This is a security announcement!! Please keep all your belongings close to you!" That made the whole Cocktail-Party-in-An-Airport-Terminal scenario come alive, although funnier was the later announcement: "Attention! This is a non smoking area!!!" Anyway, the publisher probably sensed that no one really knew why they had been invited to an airport for free food and drink, so she revealed the secret behind the random Bostonian invitations: turns out that Mike was invited because he subscribes to the Atlanic Monthly. That's it. I guess it doesn't matter that I've racked up at least 60,000 miles on Delta -- I needed to subscribe to a magazine!

We unfortunately missed the drawing for free flights and hotel rooms, but we did get some free items (besides the food) - a cookbook on the wonders of slow food, and some big book on some historical figure (can you tell I didn't bother to pick that one up?). We also met the one other couple under the age of thirty, Emily and Andrew:



Here's the crazy part - after chatting for a bit, we discovered that Andrew works Saturday nights at Tsunami (finest sushi in town, by the way). I realized at that point that he had totally been our waiter back in November! And a fine waiter at that, recommending the yummy Alaskan Salmon. Oh, Alaskan Salmon, how I love thee!! Anyway, small world. Very small world. And I guess Emily randomly knew the drummer in the jazz trio, so all these odd connections were present.



Before we left, I channeled my inner flight attendant:


Mike: I'd like a ticket to Madagascar.
Me: I'm not sure if we fly there, but I'll check.

All in all, it was a really fun time, which was cool since we had no idea what to expect. We left with pork in our bellies, free books, and the knowledge that we partied in an airline terminal. Rock!!