Typo of the Day

First, a little background for those who may not follow Salt Lake architectural and development news: A short distance from my office, there’s a 100-year-old building called Odd Fellows Hall, which stands right in the path of a planned extension to the federal court building. Rather than demolish Odd Fellows, somebody made the decision to move it to an empty lot right across the street from its original location. (For the record, another building on the same block, the Shubrick, wasn’t so lucky; it’s coming down now, several months after its primary tenant, a well-established and very popular nightclub called Port o’ Call, was forced out of business. Personally, I’d rather that the Shubrick and the Port had survived, or even better, that the new court complex simply be constructed around both of the older structures… but nobody ever listens to me.)
The engineering necessary to move a three-story brick building has been nothing short of astounding. Basically, the building was cut away from its foundation and jacked up so rollers could be slipped underneath it. Then the building was pushed into a nearby clear space and rotated 180 degrees; its former basement was filled in, and Odd Fellows was brought back to stand temporarily in its original lot. And there it’s been sitting for months, waiting to be moved across the street onto a new foundation.

Today, a brief article in the Salt Lake Tribune notes that it may finally make that last journey as soon as tomorrow. Which is very interesting in and of itself, but what really caught my eye was the article’s description of what’s been holding Odd Fellows Hall up all this time:

The Odd Fellows Hall was to be moved across Market Street in downtown Salt Lake City earlier this summer to make way for a new federal courthouse but a financial dispute between a contractor and subcontractor has stalled the relocation. The building is perched on doilies while the two sides negotiate.

Yes, friends, that massive pile of centenarian brick and mortar is being supported by nothing more than doilies. Because a little bit of lace makes everything nicer, I suppose…

Aug172009

Once-in-a-Lifetime Photo Op

Via Boing Boing, a delightful and unlikely vacation photo:

To see the full-size image and read the tale of how this couple ended up as impromptu nature photographers, go here.
Silly as it is, this story really made my afternoon…

[Update: Well, I suppose this will surprise no one, but the “Crasher Squirrel” has already become an Internet meme. As usual, I’m 20 minutes behind the curve…]

Aug162009

Something Else to Look at on a Sunday Afternoon

And just for the heck of it, here are a couple more images I find amusing, both ganked from Samurai Frog.

The first is Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce and Demi Moore, as she appears in Sorority Row, yet another remake of a movie from my early adolescence (admittedly not a very good movie, but I’m just getting sick of all the remakes on general principle):

I’m not any kind of fan of Rumer’s — as far as I know, I haven’t seen her in anything — but this pic struck my fancy because, well, the apple hasn’t fallen very far from the tree, has it? Click to enlarge, for the full effect, and tell me if you don’t see what I mean.

And now here’s one that’s kind of dumb but made me smile anyhow:
Stoned lemur

And with that, I guess I’m going to go find something to do outside for awhile… have a good one, everybody…

Aug162009

Something to Look at on a Sunday Afternoon

I had an email waiting this morning from my buddy Mike — who, incidentally, was up way too late last night — containing a pretty entertaining link that I thought I’d share with my Loyal Readers. It’s a cache of behind-the-scenes photos from the filming of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back.

You may have seen some of these before; that infamous shot of Chewie getting fresh is here, as is one of the “glamour-girl” publicity stills of Carrie Fisher from the first movie. Some of the other photos on the linked page appear to be simply alternates of better-known images, or outtakes from the same sessions. (Compare this one, for example, to the more-familiar picture that appears on trading cards, posters, and the magnet I’ve got on my fridge door.) However, there are several photos in this collection that are new to me, as unlikely as that sounds. After all these years of being a stark-raving fanboy and collector of crap, I thought I’d seen pretty much every frame of film that was ever shot in connection with these movies. Being proven wrong is curiously satisfying.

I’m especially fond of the pics where people are just horsing around on the set, like the one above in which Mark Hamill appears to be about two seconds from getting an elbow in the ribs. I like seeing just how damn young our heroes really were, as well as the suggestion that making the original trilogy was a fun experience for them. I think it’s both telling and sad that you don’t see images like this from the making of the prequel trilogy. At least, I haven’t seen any…

Aug152009

TV Title Sequences: Ally McBeal

I haven’t done one of these in a long time, and in light of the previous entry, this one seems appropriate:

So, you know what I was saying in the previous entry about not remembering Ally McBeal very well? I’d totally spaced that Courtney Thorne-Smith and Greg Germann were in this show. It all seems like a dream that’s evaporated before you make it from your bed to the bathroom for your morning rituals…

I really like that song, though, for whatever that’s worth…

Aug152009

Drawing a Blank

I’ve been working today on a little project that’s led to me rediscover some music from deep in my CD collection that I’ve not listened to in a very long while. One of those albums is Songs from Ally McBeal, a soundtrack comprising mostly covers of 1960s pop tunes, with a few original tracks, all performed by the lovely Vonda Shepard. I’m finding that I still enjoy this music as much, if not a little more, than I did when it was current; Vonda has a warm and powerful voice, and her arrangements of old chestnuts are interestingly different from the familiar versions. Also, the whole album has a kind of pleasantly melancholy feel that’s very agreeable to me as I putter around the house.

But here’s the weird thing: I cannot for the life of me recall any specifics about the TV show these songs are from. I used to watch Ally McBeal pretty regularly, too, and it seems like I was as emotionally invested in it as in any program I follow. But I’ll be damned if I can summon up the plot of a single episode, or any character names beyond Ally herself, or much of anything really, aside from a few faces and that spooky CG baby that popped up from time to time. How is it possible that I still remember specific scenes and even lines of dialogue from shows I saw once when I was 12, but a series that’s only 10 years or so old has become a complete blank for me? And does this phenomenon say more about my mental state or the series itself?

Aug142009

So Much for Progress

I just wasted an hour of a precious Friday off from work trying to buy concert tickets. Silly me, I thought ordering online would be quick and simple, not like those horrible old days when we had to actually leave the house and travel to some other physical location, whereupon we would conduct the transaction by the light of whale-oil lamps while we tried to ignore the woolly mammoths crashing around out in the parking lot.

Aug132009

My Sentiments Exactly

***IMAGE MISSING***

(So I’m still feeling a little sentimental about this one… sue me.)

Aug112009

New Memes

There have been a couple of memes floating around Facebook recently for which I’ve been repeatedly tagged, so I finally caved to the pressure and did them yesterday. I’m now republishing them here in a somewhat longer and embellished form. Why? Well, what else have I got to do on a Tuesday afternoon?

Aug092009

Teenage Wasteland

You may have encountered this already, but here’s a nifty little video clip that’s making the rounds. It’s a tribute to John Hughes comprising scenes from his best-loved movies set to The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly,” which many people think is called “Teenage Wasteland” because of the refrain. Whoever put it together did a fine job of editing, and I think it’s quite effective:

There’s a lot of memories and associations packed into that five minutes. Personally, every time I hear “Baba O’Reilly,” I find myself instantly transported back to the speech and debate room at good old Bingham High School. (FYI, I was on the debate team for a year.) Somewhere along the way, I’ve lost the context of this memory; I don’t know if the moment I recall so clearly occurred during the day or at one of our after-school prep sessions, or maybe it was in the wee hours after a tournament. I just have the moment of the song itself, the first time I remember hearing it, or at least the first time I paid attention to it. One of those moments when whatever’s playing on the radio seems to have been programmed specifically for you, like the soundtrack of your life. I remember I wasn’t especially happy at that moment. I didn’t really like being on the debate team; it was more work than I’d anticipated, and less fun. I was worried that I didn’t seem to have what it took to effectively compete. And of course I was swimming in all the usual adolescent angst, the insecurity poorly concealed by swagger, the constant preoccupation with the mysteries of sex, and the bigger mystery of why I couldn’t get any. But man, I must’ve looked cool, crashed on the worn-out thrift-store couch in the back of the room, wearing my cheap Ray Ban knockoffs and my ratty old trench coat. Teenage wasteland indeed. Just like a John Hughes movie.

Getting back to him, I’ve collected a few links that fans may find interesting. First up is a brief retrospective of the music in his movies, which was essentially a character in itself and always seemed to be utterly perfect for the mood of the scene. Following that, have a look at where Hughes’ teenage stars are now. I had a big crush on Molly Ringwald back in the day, and I think I kind of still do. Interestingly, the guy who played Jake Ryan in Sixteen Candles has completely dropped off the radar, as in reporters are unable to locate him. Rumor has it he’s a carpenter now. Finally, this blog post is a personal remembrance of John Hughes and what he meant to a young woman who became his pen pal. It’s a beautiful piece that gives you a good idea of what he must’ve really been like, and it even includes some insight into why he left Hollywood. (Here’s a big hint: it involved his sons and John Candy’s death.)

And just for a little treat after all that, here is something I never expected to stumble across, the original short story that inspired National Lampoon’s Vacation. The basic bones of the movie are all here, but the overall effect is quite different. It’s a fascinating comparison…

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