Last Weekend for April 13-15: The Mountain Goats, CIFF
I had another busy weekend. If the last weekend series has shown me anything, it is that I do not have a boring life.
1. On Friday night, The Mountain Goats had their second consecutive sold out show at the Beachland Ballroom after not appearing in this city for many, many years. As with their prior appearance in 2016, they touched the new album heavily (this time, Goths) and floated all over their earlier catalog, including a three song set of Darnielle playing his really old stuff solo. the crowd loved everything and sang along with most of it. Rob happily drove and bought me pizza at Citizen Pie in exchange for my spare ticket.
We actually made it in time to see the opener, Dead Rider. They were a weird quasi experimental rock band from Chicago. On the one hand, I admire people who actually try to do something different. On the other hand, the experiment was mostly failing. My total stands at 9 gigs and 13 band for the year.
2. Saturday morning M and I met my former radio cohost Colleen and her husband Kevin for breakfast at Grumpy's in Tremont for a hearty breakfast. I had not been there previously, and it provided an above meal at a decent price, and even had the luxury of a parking lot in Tremont. Then the four of us decamped for the CIFF.
M and I had tickets to see the documentary about Mr. Rogers, Won't You be My Neighbor. Much like the Ebert documentary last year, the formula of "beloved person" plus "competent documentary" was a winner. There was not a dry eye in the house when they the movie went silent for one minute and showed everyone they'd interviewed thinking about a loved one, as Mr. Rogers was known to ask people to do. Thankfully, Mr. Rogers had no skeletons in his closet. The closest thing to a negative was that in the 1980s he asked a gay cast member not to come publicly out so as not to endanger the sponsorship of the show. Said cast member said he was fully supportive of this stance given the time and the place and that at no time did he think that Mr. Rogers was even slightly homophobic. That's it. There's nothing else that was even vaguely worse. Apparently Mr. Rogers was the same in real life as he appeared on TV. I rated the film "EXCELLENT".
After running some errands and a pleasant afternoon at home, we were off to the Cinematheque where we met M's friends Mike & Katie for a screening of the documentary Antonio Gaudi, which promised shots of Gaudi's architecture throughout Barcelona and apparently elsewhere. I say apparently because unfortunately virtually all of the film had no voiceover, subtitles or even the slightest hint of what it was we were looking at, just light musical accompaniment. Fortunately, my trip to Barcelona gave me some knowledge of what was being shown, but on the whole the film was rather boring. Worse, most of the shots weren't particularly interesting, and for many of the places I had been I personally had taken better photos than the ones they used in the film. On the whole, it was disappointing.
After the film the four of us went to Washington Place Bistro in Little Italy for Mike's birthday, and that meal was far less disappointing than the movie was. It falls firmly into the category of "I'm not sure I would suggest going there, but I'd certainly eat there if someone else wanted to."
3. Sunday morning I rose somewhat early and donated platelets for the fifth time this year. While strapped down I made significant progress on Death's End, which is the third book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu. The first half of the book was similar in tone and content to first and second books. In the second half (which I finished Monday night), Liu takes us into the far future with increasingly improbable technology based on theoretical physics, like a weapon that takes things from the third dimension and converts them to being solely in two dimensions. The end of the book is not unlike the end 2001. Despite this escalation from the 2.5 books of the trilogy, I enjoyed it greatly and recommend the series as a whole to any serious science fiction fan. First contact stories have rarely been this interesting.
There was one entertaining anecdote from my radio show. I got a phone call from a 67 year old African-American man who clearly assumed that I was his age and ethnicity due to my obvious knowledge of the music I was playing. That was sort of entertaining and flattering at the same time.
1. On Friday night, The Mountain Goats had their second consecutive sold out show at the Beachland Ballroom after not appearing in this city for many, many years. As with their prior appearance in 2016, they touched the new album heavily (this time, Goths) and floated all over their earlier catalog, including a three song set of Darnielle playing his really old stuff solo. the crowd loved everything and sang along with most of it. Rob happily drove and bought me pizza at Citizen Pie in exchange for my spare ticket.
We actually made it in time to see the opener, Dead Rider. They were a weird quasi experimental rock band from Chicago. On the one hand, I admire people who actually try to do something different. On the other hand, the experiment was mostly failing. My total stands at 9 gigs and 13 band for the year.
2. Saturday morning M and I met my former radio cohost Colleen and her husband Kevin for breakfast at Grumpy's in Tremont for a hearty breakfast. I had not been there previously, and it provided an above meal at a decent price, and even had the luxury of a parking lot in Tremont. Then the four of us decamped for the CIFF.
M and I had tickets to see the documentary about Mr. Rogers, Won't You be My Neighbor. Much like the Ebert documentary last year, the formula of "beloved person" plus "competent documentary" was a winner. There was not a dry eye in the house when they the movie went silent for one minute and showed everyone they'd interviewed thinking about a loved one, as Mr. Rogers was known to ask people to do. Thankfully, Mr. Rogers had no skeletons in his closet. The closest thing to a negative was that in the 1980s he asked a gay cast member not to come publicly out so as not to endanger the sponsorship of the show. Said cast member said he was fully supportive of this stance given the time and the place and that at no time did he think that Mr. Rogers was even slightly homophobic. That's it. There's nothing else that was even vaguely worse. Apparently Mr. Rogers was the same in real life as he appeared on TV. I rated the film "EXCELLENT".
After running some errands and a pleasant afternoon at home, we were off to the Cinematheque where we met M's friends Mike & Katie for a screening of the documentary Antonio Gaudi, which promised shots of Gaudi's architecture throughout Barcelona and apparently elsewhere. I say apparently because unfortunately virtually all of the film had no voiceover, subtitles or even the slightest hint of what it was we were looking at, just light musical accompaniment. Fortunately, my trip to Barcelona gave me some knowledge of what was being shown, but on the whole the film was rather boring. Worse, most of the shots weren't particularly interesting, and for many of the places I had been I personally had taken better photos than the ones they used in the film. On the whole, it was disappointing.
After the film the four of us went to Washington Place Bistro in Little Italy for Mike's birthday, and that meal was far less disappointing than the movie was. It falls firmly into the category of "I'm not sure I would suggest going there, but I'd certainly eat there if someone else wanted to."
3. Sunday morning I rose somewhat early and donated platelets for the fifth time this year. While strapped down I made significant progress on Death's End, which is the third book in the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy by Cixin Liu. The first half of the book was similar in tone and content to first and second books. In the second half (which I finished Monday night), Liu takes us into the far future with increasingly improbable technology based on theoretical physics, like a weapon that takes things from the third dimension and converts them to being solely in two dimensions. The end of the book is not unlike the end 2001. Despite this escalation from the 2.5 books of the trilogy, I enjoyed it greatly and recommend the series as a whole to any serious science fiction fan. First contact stories have rarely been this interesting.
There was one entertaining anecdote from my radio show. I got a phone call from a 67 year old African-American man who clearly assumed that I was his age and ethnicity due to my obvious knowledge of the music I was playing. That was sort of entertaining and flattering at the same time.