January 24, 2011
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The Daily News1 So...Jack LaLanne walks into a barbell...2 Sorry. So evidently did Jay Cutler.
3 Couldn't resist.
4 About LaLanne: Fitness guru from the retro days. Arguably the first fitness guru of the twentieth century. He brought good diet and fitness to the masses after almost committing suicide as a portly child. He was a sugar addict, and even tried burning down his own house. He decided to turn to fitness and health.
5 He got old and died.
5 He was most recently spotted selling a contraption called the Power Juicer.
6 I avoided that topic for years for obvious reasons.
7 Actually, the ads for the Power Juicer were hilarious, because they were on at like 3 a.m. I thought of writing about them for a couple of years, but decided that good taste would dictate that I simply don't.
8 Anyway, another one bites the dust, yo.
9 Moving on, Part the First: Looks like the DN has won its first "blog" award. A couple of days ago I received an email from my good friend and confidante Rosi Hollinbeck stating that she chose the DN as a recipient of the Stylish Blogger Award that is set up by Blogspot.com.
10 Coming from Rosi, I stand humbled and honored. Rosi is a top-notch writer extraordinaire, and is on the brink of being published.
11 The only thing that might worry me about it is if people start having a look at old DN's and see the somewhat sloppy layouts and the occasional misspellings, usually the result of insomniacism, if there be such a word.
13 I couldn't care less about going back and correcting all that folderol, because quite often, this little guy is being written at around 4 a.m.
14 And weird things happen at 4 a.m. Like, this page just NOW disappeared, and a page with a cartoon pig replaced it at the exact same time that I heard cat paws scratching the bottom of the cat box.
15 That just happened. The very second I wrote about weird things happening. Okay, so it was 4:12 a.m. The harmonious convergence of the disappearance of type, the appearance of a cartoon pig, and scratching unnerved me.
16 What happened was that my cat came out, and the box was clean, but running low on litter. So the scratching happened, and then Mozilla decided to muscle into this morning's DN with some sort of upgrade that involves a cartoon pig.
17 I immediately thought I had hit some button or other and lost the DN.
18 That's the glamorous story of how the DN rolls.
19 Then the cat decided to moan with a word that sounds somewhat the human equivalent of "OW! OW! OW! It is always ridiculously loud, and he walked around for the next two hours doing that, because he always wants me to turn the bathroom sink faucet on, even when he has a fresh bowl of water. That's the glamor of the writing of the DN.
18 It's not unusual that stuff I write for two hours disappears, by the way, because one thing I am particularly bad at is remembering to save things as I go. Yesterday I spent two hours meticulously writing a vocabulary list for my students. When I write vocabulary lists, they are tailor-made to the literature I teach each week. I not only include the word, but I carefully write the pronunciation using the International Phonetic Alphabet, the one that has the immortal schwa.
19 I know, I KNOW. AnywayZ, I spent over two hours writing this vocabulary list, saved it, or I THOUGHT I had saved it, and it wasn't there. Poof. Just like Jack LaLanne. Gone in an instant. All that work. Never found it, and had to write the entire thing over again. Occupational hazard, like paper cuts.
20 A schwa by the way, is the upside-down e. I should be the 27th letter of the alphabet, if you ask me.
21 When I ask my students what sound it makes, I'll call on someone.
22 I will ask them if they know the sound that the schwa makes.
23 Around ninety per cent of the time they will say something close to, "Uhhh..."
24 And I will proudly smile and say, "YES!"
25 Corny teacher stuff. Yes, we ARE that nerdy.
26 Anyway, thanks for the accolades Rosi. I'm going to return the favor by throwing your link out there to the waiting world.
27 Rosi is a writer, folks, so have a look. It is this:
26 Moving on, Part the Second: One of the best kept secrets in town is a place called The Retro Dome, located at 1694 Saratoga Ave, in San Jose. It is at the corner of Saratoga Ave. and Prospect Rd.27 Although I haven't been there yet, Bonnie McGwire Carrera, another old friend and confidante, ran across it last week and wanted me to get the word out. They do nearly everything: old films, new films, live comedy shows, live theatre...the list is endless.
28 I don't have all my information in front of me, but they work with a virtual skeleton crew of volunteers who have managed to make this place a trending-up hot spot since
2009.29 They are San Jose's Newest and Grooviest Performing Arts Center. This weekend they are bringing in the first two Harry Potter films, live on a large screen.
30 They currently could use people with theatre knowledge, set-building skills, actors, jugglers, dancers, and counter people to offer some help to keep this hip place alive.
31 Here is their full contact information: The Retro Dome, 1694 Saratoga Avenue, San Jose, CA 95129. Email is theretrodome@guggyent.com. Here is their link:
32 I have been ridiculously busy lately, but I fully intend to go in the near future.I don't have it a my fingertips at 4:40 a.m. but Bonnie's email had the feature after the Harry Potters as a Sound of Music singalong. I don't share this with many people, but every now and again I am prone to busting out with Julie Andrews' tunes. Don't spread that around.33 Well, it's now 4:55 a.m. The dog originally woke up and I let her out, which prompted the cat to jump into the cat box causing the computer to jump to Mozilla's cartoon pig, which got the cat howling. The cat finally quieted down, which is a modern miracle, so I finally got up to close the sliding door, which condition-responsed the dog into re-awakening and eager for breakfast, which normally isn't for another hour...
34 And I wonder why I'm a hopeless insomniac.35 So I had a LOT more to share, but I think for the purposes of sanity and student safety, I had better try to get another hour of sleep before doing the coffee thing and going in.36 It's been fun, honestly. Thanks Rosie, for the props once more, and thanks Bonnie for steering a lot of us to a fun venue.37 And so this is Monday.38 Fly low.39 Peace.~H~
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