The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
I feel that I should at least post something here just to show you folks that I’m still around (Lord why can’t we just be moved already this sucks why do we still live here GAHHHHH), so here are some cats sleeping on the beds belonging to their much-bigger canine housemates, and saying to those housemates, “And there’s shit you can do about it!”
More posting to follow, sometime….
On a lark I decided to drop by the FSM boards just now — why, I have no idea, as I have little functional interest in film music these days other than what I hear myself along the way, and certainly none at all in discussing it — and I saw a thread called something like “Daniel Craig’s message for Bond fans”. The lead post in thread is a photo of Craig offering an extended middle finger to the camera — he’s dressed in shorts, a t-shirt, and a ball cap, so I assume he was flipping off some intrusive photographer while he was on holiday — and then the thread turns into a big “We hate Daniel Craig” circle-jerk, with a few people who don’t hate Craig chiming in, but not taking it all that seriously.
This is a truly representative comment, cut-and-pasted verbatim from the site:
Daniel Craig gets to use the name, but he is not playing James Bond. He’s playing something else. If he read all the books, he couldn’t begin to tell you who and what James Bond is because he doesn’t get it. He is not Bond, and he will never be Bond. If he is reincarnated as a Sean Connery / George Lazenby / Roger Moore / Timothy Dalton / Pierce Brosnan look-alike, he will still not be James Bond. The deconstructed, politically-corrected, Mother-fixated, pug-ugly character played by Craig is a Mad Magazine version of Bond. When it’s all added up by historians and the fans in the near future, Craig’s films will have dated the fastest, and his performance will be recognized for the false ejaculation that it is. The franchise makes money no matter who plays the role, so don’t take the financial success of Craig’s films as some kind of endorsement. If a different actor had worn the suit in the same films they would have earned the same amount of money. Your idolatry for this pathetic actor and his pathetic Bond films tell us more about you than it does about the franchise. Your farting on this board is exactly what I would expect from a Daniel Craig fan. You have the same mentality in common: crass and with no class.
Yeah. And the funniest part is that a few posts prior to this, the same poster indicates that he isn’t all that personally invested in the topic. Not as much as others, you see.
In truth, this isn’t just film music fans. I don’t hang out on any fandom sites of any kind. Drill down far enough, and it gets really ugly. And yes, I hate things too, and I occasionally post about stuff I hate in this space, but at least this is my space.
I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a new project coming to Buffalo, Mercado Revolution, which is to be a marketplace and dining establishment featuring all things local and artisanal in Buffalo, as well as also featuring young and rising chefs who will be working to bring to Buffalo some of the new techniques and thought processes regarding food that have been thrilling the culinary world but have been oddly slow in coming here. The Mercado project is being funded by Kickstarter, and the funding window has just over two days left as of this writing, so if by chance you’re a local who hasn’t already heard of this project, please consider backing it!
In my earlier post I mentioned some questions I had about the project, questions which have now at least partially been answered. The Mercado folks have really done a masterful job at being able to make sure they have something new to get out, information-wise, nearly every day, mainly in terms of people and vendors who will be involved. There is a lot of exciting stuff slated for Mercado: a test kitchen for Lloyd’s Taco trucks (a food-truck business whose quality is so high that in just a handful of years it’s become an almost beloved feature in Buffalo and WNY food circles), a Lake Effect Ice Cream shop (this excites me, as their main location is in Lockport, which is just too far for normal trekking for us — it’s about 35 miles one way), and the Bavarian Nut Company (how nice to not have to wait until the County Fair to buy their products!). And many others.
The Mercado drivers have also been very much engaged in the social media scene, engaging people and answering questions almost immediately on Twitter or Facebook. Last Saturday afternoon I asked two questions and both were answered within minutes. (The first had to do with food allergies, as gluten is an issue at Casa Jaquandor — Mercado will be cognizant of food allergies and accommodating, although obviously they can’t make every single item comply — and the second was whether Mercado would be more geared to dining-in or carrying ingredients for home cooking. The focus will generally be on eating there, which makes sense.) There’s just so much about the way they’ve been going about this thing that feels right.
Another person asked why they are using Kickstarter, and it seems to me that doing it this way creates a sense of community ownership before the place ever chooses a location, breaks ground, or even opens. You can virtually guarantee that a person who has donated is going to visit, just to see what they were supporting; given that it’s a food place, they’re likely not coming alone; and then after that, the word-of-mouth will spread. It’s a unique approach that demonstrates that there’s hopefully a critical mass already in place in this region, waiting to support something like this. I’m no expert, but I imagine that would be a big factor in helping the Mercado founders to secure funding later on through more traditional means.
Anyway, I personally find this project deeply exciting. It’s interesting that it happens when my own family is on the cusp of moving into a home with a kitchen that is actually conducive to a lot more cooking than we’ve ever had before. I’m looking forward to being able to do more with food, and do it with higher-quality products and techniques that I haven’t been able to do for lack of decent space.
It’s time for Mercado. Please consider supporting!
UPDATE: Forgot this: local teevee station WGRZ did a feature on Mercado the other day; you can watch it here. Just ignore the fact that the anchor mispronounces “Mercado” at the beginning, and all the stock footage taken from the Taste of Buffalo festival, which I don’t entirely think is what Mercado is aiming for!
The big reason why posting will be more sporadic here than usual over the next six weeks is that we have made a decision that is going to greatly impact my family life.
We’re moving.
To one of those “house” things.
We’re not leaving out current town, but the physical location of Casa Jaquandor will be shifting a couple miles. Thus a great deal of time will be spent putting the stuff in boxes and schlepping it to the future location of Casa Jaquandor.
First…the interior needs to be painted. Badly. We briefly considered doing it ourselves, but the job is sufficiently large that we just don’t have time or, quite frankly, inclination. The best idea is to have the place painted before we move, as opposed to piece-mealing the job over a year or so, which will involve moving stuff out of rooms and generally making for disruptive living, as well as temporarily living with what might be the worst colors ever used in a house. Seriously. Look at this stuff:
See what I mean? Ugh!
We’re thrilled about this kitchen, though:
The master bedroom, which is less than ideal for bedroomy-stuff. I don’t want to live surrounded by walls the color of something I once vomited.
Blue Room, Green Room, Pukey Room, Creepy Room! (And that hallway…yipes.)
Back in the kitchen:
But when it’s all done, among other nice luxuries, I will have my very own book room! I get the Blue Room (soon to be the “After the Rain” room, which is a shade of light purple). I will be photodocumenting the eventual construction of my library, but here’s how the job is beginning:
Onward and upward! Zap! Pow!
Linkage!
:: But now I’m home, and it feels as though I never left. Did I just dream the entire thing?
When you travel, you are who you are in each exact moment; there isn’t time to question yourself. Everything is new. Survival instincts guide every decision… shelter, water, food. A lumpy bed, canned corn for dinner, and cold showers start to become natural, but so does swimming under a waterfall, visiting ancient ruins, and eating couscous in the Sahara Desert. It is a lifestyle of constant change and adaptation. At home, those instincts vanish and our biggest obsticale becomes ourselves. (You know, I think that’s what Tolkien was getting at when he ended The Lord of the Rings with Sam getting home, after everything that’s happened, after bidding farewell to Frodo and Bilbo and Gandalf and all the Elves, and saying, “Well, I’m back.” It’s the idea that the great experience of his life is over but life still looms ahead of him. I often feel that way after trips elsewhere, although my longest trips have never gone more than a single week. Returning always feels like a recalibration of the brain to its original level of smallness.)
:: It is nowhere written in the heavens that Pro Football shall always and ever be America’s most popular spectator sport. A hundred years ago the most popular sports in the US were horse racing and boxing, and those have faded almost completely from the scene. How much longer does football have at the top? (This is a good point, one which I argued with a friend at work a few months back. He utterly rejected the notion that football will ever lose popularity, to which I pointed out that even baseball is nowhere near the going concern it once was. He seem to deny this, too…but I remember when the World Series began on a Saturday night and when its ratings were high enough that networks simply didn’t schedule new episodes of anything while the Series was running. Now it starts in the middle of the week and networks don’t avoid it at all. None of which is to say that football will be forgotten in fifty years or whatever, but it’s worth noting that the sporting world changes too.)
More next week!
Oddities and Awesome abound!
:: I know I’ve blogged about this before, but it’s been years and it’s always stunning to look again. Here is the amazing forbidden “Stairway to Heaven” in Hawaii.
:: I’m going to link this rather than embed it here, because the image is massive. It’s an infographic depicting the work habits of some of history’s great geniuses, from various walks of life. Interesting that most seem to have been early risers….
More next week!
Today we come to the end of Hector Berlioz’s symphonic output, during which we’ve seen that Berlioz was one of the most unique of symphonists, refusing to adhere to the standards of the symphonic form. This work is no exception. Here we have the Symphonie funebre et triomphale, which was originally written for concert band or military band. Berlioz later added optional parts for strings and choir. Berlioz was commissioned to write this symphony by the French government for use at a ceremony honoring the tenth anniversary of the July Revolution, one of France’s numerous Revolutions in the 18th and 19th centuries. Berlioz wasn’t terribly enamored of the existing government of his day, but figuring that 10,000 francs was 10,000 francs, he dusted off some old, abandoned works of his and reconfigured them for this piece. Apparently the first performance — with an enormous ensemble that couldn’t be heard very well outdoors — was something of a fiasco, but this symphony became fairly popular during Berlioz’s lifetime.
The Symphonie funebre et triomphale is in three movements: The Funeral march, the Funeral oration, and the “apotheosis”. In this piece Berlioz looks backward to the state of French ceremonial music from the early 19th century, with the enormous funeral march to begin and the triumphal march to conclude. The central movement, with its beautiful melody for solo trombone, comes as a welcome respite between these two large, spectacle-filled movements.
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
