Some of the guys and myself ventured up to Stacy, MN today in blizzard conditions to chop down a couple of Christmas Trees. This is our second annual trip and we were happy to see the petting zoo make a return appearance this year, along with Santa!

Stuart wouldn’t come out of the car for the animals, claiming a sudden allergy to long-haired mammals.

In two days we’ve been to see Saunders and French at the Drury St Theatre for their farewell show. In fact, we saw it the night before closing. We had great seats in the front row of the balcony. The following night we saw Wicked at the Apollo Victoria Theatre – a fabulous show I’d most certainly see again!

We visited both the Tate Modern and the British Museum. I favored the latter a it had much more to see and seemingly more history (the Tate is a modern art museum, afterall). While at the British Museum we saw the Rosetta Stone, the Elgin (Parthenon) Marbles from Athens, dozens of ancient Egyptian artifacts – huge gates, entire walls all detailed with hieroglyphics, mummies, sarcophogas (sp?), and other artifacts. The enormity of the place and all of the history contained within could occupy me for weeks on end – it was truly a treat and a place I hope to visit again.

Today we may see The Queen, who will be making an anual Armistice Day appearance in honor of the ten million soldiers who died in World War II. Nearly everyone here wears a poppy in rememberence for the same reason – it’s quite near to everyone’s heart here, it seems – something you do not see as much of in the US.

We are staying at the Grovsenor House on Park Lane, across from Hyde Park. The building is beautiful, as is the room. Amenities leave nothing to want and the two restaurants on site provide the finest in dining experience. It’s quite fancy and I feel fortunate to have picked such a wonderful place from the Orbitz travel selections.

A view from the interior of the British Museum:

Update: I’ve created a London album in the gallery.

Girl is sitting at a table by herself in front of the opened french doors to 25th St. She has perfect posture and is holding her hands in a position around her coffee – one in front of the mug, and one above, as if meditating or drawing upon the energy contained within.

Most interesting, is the late-twenties homo sitting in the middle of the room with his Macbook Air. I am waiting for the bathroom and see him rise from his seat and take a very close look at himself in the mirror on the pillar near him. Checking for blemishes, straightening his shirt, and then he returns to a seated position. He too has good posture. With his Macbook Air, he has several accessories. A laptop stand that raises the monitor to a more eye-level height, consistent with his posture. A mouse. An external keyboard. This mystifies me, as the attraction of an Air is its compactness, and this man has an entire duffle bag for his accessories alone.

St. Germain is playing. The owner is studying his phone bill at the bar. Time to get working.

I complain about the road construction every summer but this year in particular seems to be worse than others. The I-35 bridge is down so there are all sorts of detours with that. The Twins Stadium is being built and they’ve got roads closed and dug up all over the city to reroute sewer and utilities. Lake Street seems to be continuously under redevelopment. Lyndale Ave has been closed at various points through the summer. Rail lines are going in and roads have been blocked for construction. Then there’s the Crosstown project that’s had major freeways closed, bridges torn down, and I-35 in one big perpetual clusterfuck.

However, there was one positive thing about being stuck in traffic today. This photo I snapped of the new Minneapolis Central Library as seen through my moonroof. It’s pretty spectacular.

The ability Apple has to develop highly functional products that are simitaneously simple to use never ceasescto amaze me. Applications built for the iPhone have to be intelligently planned out as you can only fit so much funtionality within one view.

Though I’m not seeing functionality that would allow me to upload photos to posts the Wordpress app seems to be quite extensive. You can administer multiple blogs, create categories, manage tags and many of the features a Wordpress user finds themselves using frequently.

I’m looking forward to using this app again and continuing my exploration of the iPhone universe!

(NOTE: I just found the photo function!)

Christian Bale is still the hottest Batman yet, so I was glad he reprised his role.

Had I not been told that Heath Ledger played the Joker, I never would have guessed. It doesn’t look like him at all, and his acting is so phenomenal, one would never recognize him based on gestures or voice alone.

Ironically, Batman, the 1989 film, aired on ABC Family last night. I caught a bit of it. I have always liked that film, but not having seen it in many years, seeing it again made me feel like I was watching Adam West in syndication on FOX during the mid-1980s. POW. WHAM. SMACK.

Back to Heath. I think his performance was worthy of an Oscar. Ironic that he died before the release, too. He does this thing with his tongue while he’s speaking that I couldn’t replicate in 100 years. Reminded me of Leonardo DiCaprio’s performance in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.

On my way to the cafe tonight, a new Audi A5 was in my rearview mirror and I couldn’t help but think that the grille appeared to be smiling at me. Those fancy new white LED lights looked an awful lot like the Joker’s grin.

I put this together today after fighting with iMovie trying to figure out how to make the playback speed faster and give a part of the video that “fast forward” effect. Turns out that it’s not possible in the newest version of iMovie – you have to download a two-year old version (v6) of iMovie to get that kind of editing functionality. Seriously – that’s what I said.

After the aforementioned finagling, I finally had something resembling a YouTube video. I uploaded it, waited about ten minutes for it to process, and viola – I’m a director, and a producer, and an editor, and a cinematographer!

Funny it only took YouTube three minutes after the ten minutes processing to inform me that I’d used copyrighted material (the soundtrack I added). They said I could either take the clip down, or agree to allow the owners of the material to advertise on the view page. Hmph. Oh, alright!

But in all honesty, the product looks very cool. NikePlus.com

4 PLACES I’VE BEEN

1. In the shower of the Presidential Suite at The Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Just don’t ask how many others were in it with me.
2. In Kevin Williamson’s backyard, watching Sade perform at the Hollywood Bowl from up on the hill. Best seats in the house, and they were free. Sans the HUGE spider that landed on my face. (Sade heard me scream. Which is ironic, considering the property owner’s film trilogy.)
3. In the Emergency Room, watching a friend get a spinal tap. Never again
4. The same rehab center, with fake plastic trees, as Augusten Burroughs wrote about in his memoir, Dry. Of course I was on the fast track and graduated in 21 days.

4 JOBS I’VE HAD

1. McDonalds Fry Boy, Birthday Host, Griller, and finally, Manager – 4 years of extreme acne during high school.
2. Data Entry, Customer Service, Gofer, Filer, Envelope Stuffer, Faxer, Copier, Collator. Grunt office work – you name it, and I probably did it. I have the paper cuts on my tongue to prove it.
3. Executive Assistant to the President. This lasted about one month. I was filling in for the previous EA while they sought out a replacement. I think the President said two words to me the entire month. He was either scared of the flaming homo sitting outside his office, or didn’t think I could do the job. Either way, I had one easy month of long lunches!
4. Extra on the X-Files, during it’s tenth season. Officially I was an alien-abductee, found along with Moulder, who had been missing for a number of episodes. I was on the set for 13 hours and got paid $86. At one point during the shoot I had my hands handcuffed behind my back and was manhandled by an actual LAPD SWAT Team Officer wearing a ski mask for twenty takes – the first of which had me all over Gillian Anderson’s chest (she missed her cue). The rest of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

4 OF MY FAVORITE FOODS

1. Tuna
2. Steak
3. Potatoes
4. Coffee (does this count?)

4 SCENES IN MOVIES I WISH I’D WRITTEN AND DIRECTED

1. The pot-smoking scene in Eyes Wide Shut, where Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are getting high, laughing, and she’s being brutally honest about an affair she had with a naval officer.
2. The campfire scene in Stand By Me with River Phoenix and Wil Wheaton. Quintessential coming of age story.
3. The courtroom scene in Legally Blonde, where Elle Woods drills the murder victim’s daughter and tricks her into admitting to the killing after getting all flustered about a hole in her alibi. She was supposedly in the shower, washing her hair, immediately after getting a perm. As if!
4. Any number of scenes in Magnolia.
   – Julianne Moore at the Pharmacy, flipping out at “You people!”
   – Journalist interviewing Tom Cruise and confronting him about his true identity.
   – Cracked out junky at home when her dying father visits her.
5. Do I have to be limited to four? There are so many others … What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Crash, Drop Dead Gorgeous …

… and I would love to see some others answer these. One of the Joshes? Marty. Brechi, except his blog seems to have disappeared again Aaron.