My Kind of Game

Last night’s game at Safeco Field is the kind of baseball game I truly enjoy. The seats were nice, club section behind home plate. It was very warm but not hot. The company was enjoyable. My hot dog was tasty, and for the first time ever I consumed a ballgame dog with more than just yellow mustard on it. And the game was decided in the tenth.

A matched game, the Mariners and Devil Rays entered extra innings 1-1. During the bottom of the tenth, the M’s loaded the bases (with to intentional walks) and with one out Richie Sexon ended the game with a grand slam to center field on a 1-0 pitch.

The Mariners may be stumbling this season, but it's always good to win one at home. And is there a better way to win a ballgame than with a grand slam at the bottom of the tenth?

Coming up:

• The Devil Rays are in town again tonight, third of three.
• Beckham comes to the Emerald City for a little exposition action as Real Madrid takes on DC United at Qwest Field.
• At Key Arena, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.
• And a don’t-miss: The Cindy Sheehan Show is coming to the University of Washington. Tickets are $225 per person – proceeds go toward the purchase of a vacant lot across from Dick Cheney’s hunting cabin.

End of the Dog Days

In villages in China, people are dying of rabies. Sixteen in one village as of Friday.

The response? Kill all the dogs. It's been pretty ugly. (In Seattle we do something similar with Canadian geese; not because they kill people, but because they are messy.)

Persons for the Ethical Treatment of Animals are putting s stop to this massacre in China, thank goodness. They are canceling $300 worth of orders for products made in China. This clever move - truly unexpected and crippling in its financial impact - will surely pressure the Chinese into ending this horrendous practice and force them to vaccinate their canine hordes against rabies. A campaign to spay and neuter will surely be next.

Without ludicrous and ineffective symbolic gestures, this animal rights organization would have no press at all.

Coming up next: the 2008 Olympics, 100% dog free. Stay tuned!

My Bag

I saw that my friend Rick recently came into possession of a new bag. The appropriate bag is an essential accoutrement for today's mobile man. To those that don't normally carry a bag with them as part of their daily routine might look upon a bag such as mine as impedimenta; but a reliable, well-constructed bag is an extension of the modern man, a constant friend and companion.

Rick's post inspired me to introduce to my three regular readers my own well-traveled laptop bag, pictured above in the passenger seat of my car.

• Age: 8 years
• Cities visited: Atlanta, Seattle, Chicago, Columbia SC, Dallas, Denver, Ft. Lauderdale, Irvine, Las Vegas, Miami, Nashville, New York, Palo Alto CA, Phoenix, Portland, San Jose, St. Louis, Tampa and Toronto
• Air miles: over 100,000
• Contents (today as of 4:30 PM PDT): one laptop computer, two Pentel pens, a mechanical pencil, two packs of Trident gum, ear buds, one DVD (Play it Again, Sam), a Palm TX, my Treo, eleven file folders, three current magazines (Newsweek, Premiere and Esquire), one book (Discovering Solutions to Everyday Challenges), twenty-three cents in change, one coffee club card, an outdated travel itinerary, a photo of my wife, two photos of my daughter, two drawings by my daughter of our family and two walleye fillets (since removed to the refrigerator)

The Dog Days of Summer

On a recent trip to Denny Creek in the Washington Cascade Mountains, it was our dog, Polly, who found the best way to cool off on a hot July day.

Targeting Jews in America

I left work at four o'clock today in the middle of a mess of sirens and people that I discovered, once I was in my car, was an attack at the Jewish Federation Building in Seattle. I managed to drive out of the area before the streets were shut down.

The news reports that a suspect of Pakistani descent has been arrested for murdering one person and woulding perhaps five others. The police suggest the gunman was targeting Jewish people.

My colleagues called me after I left to report that they have been asked by police to leave.

Film critic Michael Medved, who hosts a syndicated radio program out of Seattle, reported that many American Jews are having to take precautions against hatred and harm, even here in the United States. He said that some synagogues had been hiring security during their high holy days.

Tonight, as the Jewish Sabbath begins, police are being dispatched to protect worshippers at local synagogues.

My heart and prayers go out to those affected by this terrible event.

Beaming Up My Chief Engineer

I saw in the news yesterday that the remains of James Doohan, the actor who played Chief Engineer Scott in Star Trek, are being shot into space in October.

The actor lived in Redmond, Washington, near a business acquaintance of mine who used to run into him on occasion. I never liked hearing that the actor was a regular guy who spoke with an American accent.

To me, he will always be Scotty.

Aye.

Complaining About the Heat

The average temperature this time of year in Seattle is 76 degrees. Yesterday it was 95. One of these days I gotta get me an air conditioner...
Wait. Oh yeah. I have an air conditioner. I bought one from my friend Erik. 9,000 BTU's. Back in February. It's been in storage on the 11th floor of my building since. In fact, it has never been in my possession and I think I only looked at it once. (It's white.) I bought it on a whim before I realized I did not know how to install it.

I found out today that one of the guys took it home over the weekend to cool his family. He noticed it had been sitting in the storage room for months and figured...

I couldn't blame him. He has four kids. "I didn't know it was yours," he said. I pictured him and his family in the one room, gathered around the air conditioner, the mother-in-law lingering nearby. He apologized again and added, "I can pay you."

"Keep it," I said, and for a moment I coveted my own air conditioner. I don't know why I told him to keep it. It's been so hot that my family have not slept in our own beds for four nights.

"Keep it," I said. "Keep it."

It was probably the heat.

My New Favorite Actor

I had wanted to see Beyond the Sea, the Kevin Spacey film about Bobby Darin, when it was released in December 2004, but I never got around to it probably because I am not that familiar with Darin, only a small handful of his songs. My interest in the film was in seeing Spacey, an actor whose work continues to delight me in film after film. For my money, The Usual Suspects and L.A. Confidential would have suffered without his brilliant performances.

Beyond the Sea was less a biography in the tradition of Ray or Walk the Line, and more of a musical in the true sense of the term. Spacey takes a clever approach to telling Darin's story, stepping out of the narrative at times, framing his story with a dialogue between Darin as an adult and as a child. Spacey has a remarkable voice, more than held his own in the dance numbers, and he brought a passion for the subject matter that overrode my disinterest toward Darin and his career.

The reviews had been mixed: for every critic who praised Spacey and his achievement as an actor, director, producer and writer of the film, there was harsh criticism that the film and Spacey's performance were vainglorious. My take is this: it was a risk to make a film about Bobby Darin, and Spacey's approach was bold. He took the chance in performing Darin's songs and it paid off in spades.

We finished watching Beyond the Sea and my wife said, "I think Kevin Spacey's my new favorite actor." I could not disagree. He is a talented performer with an unusual but powerful screen presence.

When I turned off the DVD there was another Spacey movie on IFC, a little gem called The Big Kahuna. "The best movie ever made about evangelism" is how my friend Rick describes it. Yeah, Spacey was great in that one, too. He just might be my new favorite actor.

A Canine Affair

A reunion of sorts took place on Sunday, on a farm in a place called Eatonville, Washington.

My daughter and I took our Labrador retriever, Polly, back to the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm where she was bred and born three years ago September. There, Polly was reunited with her father, Scout, and her sister, CeCe. The rest of Polly's siblings are scattered abroad. Her mother, Sydney, was killed in a tragic encounter with an automobile just a few weeks ago, but Polly seemed nonplussed at the news when we told her, and furthermore seemed not to notice her absence on the farm.

My daughter and the other kids enjoyed riding Sprout, the pony, and I was proud of my daughter for finally riding around the paddock on her own, without Anna leading the pony.

The kids rode the pony, cooled off on the slip-n-slide and relaxed in the hot tub at the end of the long day.

The dogs ran amok, chased the horses and each other, rolled around in their kiddie pool and tried the slip-n-slide once or twice.

The grown-ups chased the kids, chased the dogs, tended to injuries (one of the kids dropped the baby, Polly blew out her knee, Anna's bare foot was stepped on by Sprout) and generally kept order amid the chaos.

It was a fine way to spend a warm, breezy Washingtonian Sunday.

Family Photo

On a recent trip to South Carolina I had the privilege of spending some time with my niece. My daughter had the opportunity to get to know her cousin. And everyone had a good time. We don't have too many opportunities for family photographs of this sort, so when they happen, it's special.

Presently I am trying to arrange a trip back to South Carolina to see my niece, as well as the rest of my family, whom I miss very much. Hopefully, we'll get something booked for a trip back east after Labor Day, giving me the opportunity for more family photos of this sort.

The Return of a Timeless Friend

Mission Impossible III opened around Memorial Day, but because I was so consumed with the Seattle Film Festival, the Tom Cruise movie was moved to the bottom of my list. My frequent movie buddy Mike and I had talked about seeing this one, and we finally got around to it last Saturday night.

Flashback now, many years, to a downtown Seattle cinema, as I am asking a question I would continue to ask time and time again to the mostly kids working the movie theater candy counters:

"Why don't you carry Goobers?"

I have been diligent in asking the question ever since, and have received a variety of responses. At the Cineplex Odeon on Pine Street (a favorite venue back in the day), I was told that Goobers was not very popular. "Nobody eats those anymore," the ticket-taker told me.

"I do," I responded. "They're crunchy peanuts coated in rich milk chocolate. Who wouldn't want a box of Goobers with their popcorn and ice-cold Diet Coke?" The kid stared at me like I had suggested eating escargot as a movie snack.

The folks at the Egyptian told me the same thing. A kid working the candy counter at the Big Valley told me back in the fall that he had never heard of them.

Fast forward to last Saturday night. Mike and I purchased tickets to MI:III at the Big Valley and enter the theater about ten o'clock.

As we were walking past the candy counter toward the auditoriums, debating whether or not to purchase any snacks, something in the candy display caught Mike's eye and he stopped in his tracks and exclaimed, "They have Goobers!"

"Come on!"

"Goobers! I'm serious!"

The kid working concessions told us they had just gotten Goobers in the day before, and that they seemed to be moving very well.

MI:III is nothing if not a popcorn movie, and as I have said in this space in the past, the combination of popcorn, Coca-Cola and Goobers is second to none as part of the movie-going experience. (I will at this juncture defer those who might substitute Raisinets for Goobers -- after all, Raisinets are the first cousins of Goobers, and both candies are made by Nestle).

I enjoyed MI:III in large part due to the box of Goobers nestled in my shirt pocket. I look forward to returning to the Big Valley with Mike tonight for another popcorn flick -- Pirates of the Caribbean II. And yes, I will enjoy that feature if only because of the familiar box of Goobers that will be open and waiting in my shirt pocket.

Corn Fed

My wife's guest blog:

Most people celebrated the 4th yesterday. And so did we... it's just that our daughter's biggest celebration was finishing off her 3rd piece of corn.

"Whoever loves corn so much they could blow their top, raise your hand!" she exclaimed.

In the picture you can see the flag-design placemats she made for the occasion. She also insisted that we sing "Happy Birthday" to America before eating. Wish y'all could have been here to taste my husband's prize BBQ ribs and my fresh-from-the-tree cherry cobbler! I couldn't resist sharing the photo!

My July 4th, 2006

What I'm drinking: Newman's Own Virgin Limeade

What I'm eating: Barbecue spare ribs

What I'm doing: Picking cherries in my back yard

What I'm watching: Twilight Zone marathon on the Sci-Fi channel

What I'm reading: Wisdom of Our Fathers, by Tim Russert

What I'm listening to: At This Time, Burt Bacharach

Who I'm Spending the 4th with: My wife and daughter

A Side Benefit of Travel

Brewers 8, Cubs 5

One of the great things about traveling for business is getting to spend the off-hours getting to know the city you're in. Chicago is quickly becoming one of my favorite cities, for many reasons I won't go into here. But when I am on the road, it's nice to try and enrich myself by meeting people, trying new restaurants, and seeing places I might normally not get to see.

Tonight after work my destination was Wrigley Field. Although I am not a Cubs fan, the ballpark is one of the nation's oldest, built in 1914 at a cost of $250,000. The 27-foot high scoreboard (which is 85 feet off the ground) was built in 1937, and, yes, the stats are still changed by hand. The park was packed, despite eight consecutive losses at home, and the fans here on Chicago's North side are die hard.

I enjoyed the game very much, even though I was in the company of a couple of natives from Chicago's South Side (read: White Sox fans). My friend Bill O. swallowed his pride and attended the game with me, marking not only my first ever Cubs game at Wrigley Field, but his also. This was not Bill's first trip to Wrigley, however; he attended Chicago Bears games at Wrigley prior to their move to Soldier Field in 1971.

Trivia: The 1906 Cubs had 116 wins that season, a record tied in 2001 by my beloved Seattle Mariners.

Complaining About the Heat

My good friend and fellow blogger Rick posted something about how hot it's been in Columbia, South Carolina, and made mention of the fact that he cranked up the A/C in his car and his home, his glass of cola "filled appropriately with ice."

(How would one fill a coke glass inappropriately?)

The National Weather Service has issued this bulletin for Western Washington state:

THE HOTTEST WEATHER SO FAR THIS YEAR IS EXPECTED OVER WESTERN WASHINGTON SUNDAY AND MONDAY....STRONG HIGH PRESSURE ALOFT COMBINED WITH LOW LEVEL OFFSHORE FLOW WILL RESULT IN RECORD OR NEAR RECORD TEMPERATURES AT A NUMBER OF PLACES ON SUNDAY AND AGAIN MONDAY. ALSO...STAGNANT CONDITIONS ARE ALSO EXPECTED TO DEVELOP EARLY NEXT WEEK AND THIS COULD LEAD TO A BUILD UP OF POLLUTION IN THE ATMOSPHERE.

My glass too will be appropriately filled with ice tomorrow, but I, like most others in the Puget Sound region, have no air conditioning in my home.

So Rick, thanks for gripe. I raise my iced cold Diet Coke to you and add my voice to yours as we complain about the heat. Oh - if you get the chance, could you email some extra cold air from your air vent? When it arrives I will open the file and cool the downstairs living room.

Got Milk? Check the Expiration Date

In planning my attendance at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, I chose, as always, to include several independent films among the movies I scheduled to attend. Film festivals such as SIFF are to a great degree about independent film, and many indies would never find an audience without the fests. I chose to screen a few indies based on how well they had been received at other festivals. I based my decision to see one indie purely on its premise, which I found both peculiar and amusing.

Shot on location in Seattle, Expiration Date is the story of Charlie Silvercloud. As he approaches his 25th birthday, he is burdened by the fact that all of the other men in his family died on their 25th birthdays, each punching out in a comically tragic incident involving a milk truck. But it is on the verge of his demise, as Charlie prepares for his own funeral, that he learns what it means to truly live.

Executing such a premise can be a dangerous thing for a filmmaker. But director Rick Stevenson fashions the nutty concept into a black comedy that is both funny and tender, a thing that works thanks in no small part to excellent casting. Robert A. Guthrie delivers a restrained comic performance as Silvercloud, and Dee Wallace Stone adds both heart and comedy as Silvercloud's mother, who desperately wants a grandchild before her son's fatal appointment with a milk truck.

Milkmen from Smith Brother's Farms provided milk to the entire audience at our June 17th screening. I had chocolate, which was cold, smooth, creamy and delicious! Expiration Date may very well be the most memorable experience for me at this year's Seattle Film Festival, and ranks as one of the few films I saw at the festival this year that I would be eager to soon see again.

Monster House

Gil Kenan described himself as lucky when his film school short ended up in the hands of Robert Zemickis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump). Zemickis and Steven Spielberg had been kicking around an idea to make a movie about a monster house, and tapped the film school grad to direct his first picture.

I don't know why I chose to see the film Monster House, from Sony's Columbia Pictures, which will be released everywhere July 21st. I typically take my five-year-old daughter to see the animated films when they arrive at our local cineplex, and I could have chosen to see a new documentary or indie flick instead. Perhaps it gave me an opportunity to screen the film for inappropriate content before taking my child, or perhaps I just liked the title. Whatever the reason, I was glad to be apart of the first U.S. audience to see this film, which stars Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jon Heder, Fred Willard, Kathleen Turner and a trio of terrific child actors.

The film was not animated traditionally; instead, the filmmakers spent 34 days shooting the film with live actors using motion capture technology. This is the same technology that brought King Kong and The Lord of the Rings' Gollum to life. The result is an animated style that is fluid and provides the characters with a resonance that rings true.

I found the film very imaginative and entertaining, and enjoyed it immensely. The characters are compelling and ring true. There are a number of very scary moments, and it features an on-screen animated death that is darkly comic. In my opinion, the film is better suited for the older kids.

There is a scene in the film where the monster house, played by Kathleen Turner, uproots itself and goes on a rampage through the neighborhood. Kenan said he was actually able to convince Turner to perform the scene as the house. If you see the film, remember that scene was created by one of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses flailing about and pulling herself around a tiny neighborhood set by her hands. Perhaps that footage will show up as an extra on the DVD.

Notes on a Couple of Movies

This past week I attended a session of "Talking Pictures," a program in which well-known creative-types introduce a favorite film and lead a post-screening discussion. Artist Dale Chihuly introduced one of his favorite films in an archival presentation of Lonely are the Brave. This 1962 film about a cowboy whose world is has been encroached upon by modern society was a delightful discovery. It stars Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau, and Gena Rowlands, and is Douglas's personal career favorite.

The following night was set aside for the French film, OSS 117: Nest of Spies. Although few on this side of the pond know much about the exploits of the Bond-esque Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, the character has been thrilling and amusing audiences in France since 1956 in both print and on film. In this comedy/adventure set in 1955, Hubert is assigned a mission to Cairo to protect the Suez Canal and to restore peace to the Middle East. The production is fist rate, well-produced and very funny. It plays like an odd combination of espionage thriller, satire and farce.

A Dose of Film Noir

I spent Sunday getting a dose of film noir at the Seattle Film Festival, screening a couple of rarely seen archival presentations at the Egyptian Theater. They were presented by Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to the preservation and restoration of this most American motion picture genre.

Muller pointed out that there are a number of movies which are in danger of vanishing or have disappeared altogether. Period negatives and prints from our film heritage have been misplaced or in some cases are simply disintegrating. Muller introduced two films that his organization has helped bring back from the brink of oblivion.

The first was a film that has not been screened in more than fifty years, the 1950 thriller The Man Who Cheated Himself starring Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt. Shot on location in San Francisco, this dark tale of a cop who protects his mistress after she murders her husband was taut and well received by our Seattle audience.

The Window, released in 1949, stars Disney regular Bobby Driscoll as the boy who cried wolf. In this case, the nine-year-old teller of tall tales cannot convince his parents or the police that he witnessed a murder through a window outside his New York apartment. The film received the Edgar Award for best picture, 1950, and was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award for best American drama. The screenplay was based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich. Coincidentally, Woolrich wrote a similarly themed story that became Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.

The Film Festival Adventure Continues

I continue to attend screenings at the ongoing Seattle International Film Festival, and the experience this year has been quite wonderful. There have been a couple of delightful cinematic surprises these past two weeks which I am not allowed to commit to print, a few enjoyable shorts, as well as the occasional unavoidable dud (among them, the overrated The Puffy Chair).

There was one oddly uncomfortable moment during the screening of an independent film where I was seated on the second row. Many of the films' directors, writers, and stars attend the screenings, particularly those films premiering at the festival. Prior to this one screening, the SIFF host introduced the director to the audience, who happened to be seated next to me. As one who appreciates film, particularly independent film, it was difficult for me to fully enjoy the screening knowing the director of the picture was at my elbow. Questions kept circling in my mind: What if I yawn? What if I laugh at the wrong place? What if, heaven forbid, I doze? It is rather late, after all.

In the end, while I appreciated the work of the filmmaker, the movie left me feeling a little underwhelmed. But I managed not to doze while sitting next to the director whose movie was being screened for a large audience for the first time.