Japan + Segway + chimp = awesome

Yes, we took the obligatory pumpkin patch pictures with Eden over the weekend. And yes, she was in a costume--an elephant, to be precise. Hope you like the pictures!

LAist: Elliot Smith and the Big Nothing

Five years ago today, on October 21, 2003, Elliott Smith died. The intentions behind his death still not been confirmed, but some time that day, Elliott met the Big Nothing.

I am still saddened to see that the facts surrounding Elliot's death are still sketchy. That has to be rough for his family. In honor of his memory, I've been listening to his posthumous release, New Moon, which gives a good retrospective of his work. Here's to you, Eliot.

Nerd that I am, I actually have a Wishlist search set up on my TiVo for Ginger Roger movies, which is why I come up with some odd ones people might not expect. Well, Roberta isn't so odd. In fact, it actually stars Fred Astaire as well, but the couple is somehow cast in this movie as the supporting cast. I guess this has happened before, but here it is a little more noticeable because the main story isn't as good. The story begins as Astaire's crew of musicians arrives to Paris only to find that the job they came for is no longer available because the club owner thought he was getting a group of (American) Indians to play music for him, and instead got Indianians. They seek help in two places. The first is at a dress shop, belonging to one of the Indianians' aunt. She's a famous designer of dresses. The second is to visit a friend (Rogers) of one of the bandmates (Astaire) who is posing as a foreigner named Comtesse Shwarenka so she comes across as more exotic and can book shows.

At the dress shop, our protagonist John's famous dressmaking aunt, Roberta, welcomes the band, and they meet up with the "Comtesse" who helps them book a job at a club. Meanwhile, John is falling in love with his aunt's assistant, Stephanie, played by Irene Dunne. Stephanie is actually a deposed Russian princess, although she never gets around to letting that information be known to John. When Aunt Roberta passes away and leaves the business in John's hands, he partners with Stephanie. All is well until John's old fiancee shows up, having heard of his recent financial success. Between both of their pasts, a lot of obstacles get in the way of the couple ending up happily ever after, but we all know that it will end happily ever after.

There are several musical pieces in the movie. A clever little performance shows Astaire's band posing with white gloves on as the keys of an organ, and Astaire plays the keys while they sing their respective notes. It's clever, but not amazing. Irene Dunne has a nice solo. Astaire and Rogers have a few dances together. The first couple are okay, but the final performance is the best, as it should be. The movie is also full of fashion, including an actual fashion show as things were done in the old days.

This movie was mostly underwhelming, but did find a certain sense of charm. I guess I thought it would be more flashy based on its description, but it actually moves slowly despite some of the expensive shows. Overall, I'm glad I saw it just so I can cross it off the Astaire/Rogers list, but probably wouldn't watch it again.

We woke up at 5am on Saturday with no idea of what was in store for us. We didn't know what our group would be like and we weren't even totally sure where we were visiting that day, except that we would end up in Leeds at the end of the day. We got down to our first breakfast at 6am. There was a choice of cereal, toast, rolls, and possibly a couple of other generic continental breakfast items, and of course we had coffee to get us going. We looked around the room and were relieved to see that there were actually more people our age than we had hoped for - a few couples and a set of friends. The rest seemed mostly older, except there was actually a family with two young girls, which surprised us. All of us gathered in the lobby, then ventured out into the cold morning, where I started to doubt my decision to only bring a light jacket on the trip.

We loaded into our bus, and I discovered that my carry-on was too fat to store in the overhead compartment (which is smaller than that of a plane, where it fit nicely) and had to store it under my seat, although it didn't fully fit there either, so I kind of had it under my feet. Yay. Here's a photo of what life was like in the bus:

We set off through London past Hyde park to pick up more fellow tourists at another location, and then we were off, out of London, north into the English countryside. An hour or two later, we made it to Stratford-Upon-Avon, the home of William Shakespeare. We were set free to roam the small town, which I found quite charming. We got a couple of items in the shops, had the photos in front of Shakespeare's house (thatched roof included), then ventured off the touristy shopping street to go to the river (that's what "Avon" means). Here's the little harbor, where we watched geese being fed, said hi to a dog on a boat, and admired some Shakespearean statues:

We found a quiet path alongside the river and passed by the old site where plays had been performed, then saw the more modern site. There was a lot of construction going on and it looks like they have a lot of plans to expand. We ran into a whole bunch of geese along the river, saw some rowboats that were all named after female Shakespearean characters, and then ventured on to the church where Shakespeare was buried. It had a lovely cemetery and grounds, and was very nice inside as well. For a couple of pounds each, we were allowed in to take photos of the burial site:

Eventually, we had to go, but I really enjoyed our quiet walk on a windy but not-too-cold day, with just a few sprinkles coming down. We walked back up the shopping street, boarded the bus, and proceeded on a longer journey to York. We stopped after an hour or so to eat at a convenience stop. Ric and I had Wimpy's, which was the worst fast food chicken and fries a person can eat. You may read these entries and think we didn't try a lot of the local foods, but most convenience stops only have pre-packaged sandwiches, most of which are filled with combinations of cheese, mayonnaise, and ham (which I don't eat). So sometimes, we just had to have fast food. And anyway, Wimpy's was sort of like discovering what English fast food can be. Ric actually pulled the skin off of a piece of fried chicken, and a gush of grease came out. We pretty much didn't eat after that. From the stop, we went on and passed by a lot of English countryside - the flat kind. It's a lot of flat green fields, and a lot of dense, voluminous trees. Somewhere along the line that day is when we passed the area of Nottingham, so I was able to get an idea of what Robin Hood's Sherwood forest was supposed to look like. Here's what we saw most of the time:

We finally made it to York around 2ish in the afternoon. Our tour guide, Leena, gave us a walking tour of York, from the medieval wall surrounding the city to Yorkminster (giant church) to the Shambles, which is a busy shopping street now but was once where a lot of animals were slaughtered by butchers. We were told about how real estate was steep in those days and was only based on the area of land being purchased, so people would buy a small piece of land, then build the next story higher and also extend it out into the street more. Here's an example of how the teetering buildings once looked:

After the walking tour, we were free to roam. Ric and I walked down Shambles street for a while, grabbed a few souvenirs for family, went through a little outdoor market, and then headed to Yorkminster. We went inside and found out that there was a mass in session, so we couldn't go in all the way. We took some photos of what we could see and admired the music from the mass. We found out one could go into a museum below the church, to see the crypts and treasury and such, so we did that. It followed all of the history of the church and the area of York, showing us things that were discovered from different periods of history. It was interesting to see the variety of artifacts. Here's a picture of Yorkminster from the outside. No single photo could capture the whole thing:

After visiting the church, we went on a hike along one of the city walls, trying to get to a good place to have a photo of the church. Unfortunately, time was running short, and while we were able to see a lot of the town, we didn't get the photo I was looking for. That's okay. I loved the walls themselves. We found our way back to the meeting place, walked through York back to our bus, and drove on towards Leeds, where we arrived sometime in the early evening. We all had time to settle in our rooms for a while. Ours was comfortable, and gave us an idea of the local brew from our window:

Ric took note of the brew and made sure to sample it during dinner, which was in the hotel restaurant. We met a couple from Australia who were on their first big vacation. They had just done an enormous tour of Europe. Most of the people on our tour seemed to be from Australia, and most of them seemed to be vacationing for a couple of months in all sorts of locales before and after our tour. We also met a couple from Arizona, who live near where Ric's brother used to live. They were one of the couples who are our age. Dinner was a buffet. I tried the mystery meat and wasn't sure what it was, along with some potatoes. Ric was safe with salmon. For dessert, I could have adventurously chosen pudding, but was advised against it by someone else who had already tried it, and so went with a nice plain piece of cake. It was pouring rain in Leeds that night and was actually kind of cold, so we opted out of wandering the town. It seemed like the area we were in was rather industrial anyway, so it probably would have been a long walk to entertainment.

I had a good shower and settled in to watch some tv before bed. Before dinner I watched some of a kids game show that ran a lot like Legends of the Hidden Temple, but was more pagan-like and more outdoors. I also watched a bit of The X Factor, which I totally got hooked on over the length of the trip. I'll have to go do some searches online to see how the contestants are performing! Most nights I went to bed around midnight, so I'm assuming I did that on this day. Ric passed out as soon as we hit the hotel room.