Happy Birthday, Mr. Hackman

I was watching cable at my parents' house while my mom was in the adjacent room attending to something else. A preview came on for the vintage movie, Downhill Racer. The preview mentioned Gene Hackman, then went on and on about Robert Redford.

Suddenly, mom popped in to look at the tv: "Gene Hackman! Where's Gene Hackman?"

For some of us, stars like Robert Redford just can't hold a candle to the mysterious sparks that fly from a guy who doesn't really look like anything, but who can play anybody.

Er...None of the Above?

I grew up loving shows like Nova and the National Geographic Specials, so I was kind of excited about PBS's new You Pick the Show science programming gimmick. After seeing all three choices, the excitement has died.

Wired Science was the first show. Nice, nice, not thrilling but nice. Watching host lady Ziya Tong saw a big screen TV in two did little for me, but maybe my nephews would think that was kinda cool. I liked the Elon Musk interview (in large part because they found a guy named Elon Musk).

Bachelor number 2, Science Investigators, however, was as embarrassing as the stereotypical chess club kid who decides to try hanging out with the popular clique. "Come back, chess club kid! Just be your-chess-playing-freaky-self and we'll understand you, sort of."

Well, the kid comes back with a vengeance in the third show 22nd Century. This program has lots of talking head interviews of hyperintellectuals set against dancing fractile backgrounds, etherial archival cut-aways a la Errol Morris, and...the ghost of Aldous Huxley having a debate with a hologram from the future. I didn't know whether to applaud or cringe.

I wish one of these shows had been truly ground-breaking, but the ground has already been broken.

I could vote for Wired Science, but I'm kind of rooting for 22nd Century because with a little help and fewer ghosts, it could be an interesting and invovative show.

At least I'll always have Nova, I hope.

The Crying of Lot 44

Sometimes, the only way for me to learn a lesson is to ignore the official expert advice and try to do things my own way, only to feel the hangnail sting of avoidable failure.

Case in point, I am nearly finished with my biggest knitted object to date. Only one more skein to go, but the store is out of my dye lot. Yep. And the next available dye lot in my color looks really different. So there's this darker patch that makes it look as if the rest of the object was left out in the sun or something.

So I'm hunting for more of lot 44. I called an online store, and the woman on the phone said they were out, then she added, "Oh, honey. You gotta buy more than you need, then return the leftovers."

Okay, experts, you win.

I was born on this day

Yep.

Since I didn't really come up with anything special to do in celebration of my birth except eat a really good muffin from the Metropolitan Bakery, I guess I'll do something special tomorrow. Maybe ice skating.

The last year was okay. I settled into a new job. I became a knitter. I learned more about how my brain works. A bunch of friends gave birth to fine new people. My hair got bigger.

It's strange to me how so many things happen and their significance is so fleeting, but then later, I remember how much they effected me. Maybe I should make a bigger deal out of these events somehow.

Maybe I will start an old fashioned journal this year. I used to be such a prolific writer. Sometimes, I can't believe how important writing used to be to me, how often I used to think that writing was the closest thing I would find to a calling. Now, I knit in my spare time.

Maybe I will start saving money to buy a digital camera. I could put the pictures in the journal. I could put drawings in the journal, too. I used to draw a lot.

One thing I must do this year is improve my relationship to money. I would like money to be a tool, not an obstacle. Not, as it often is in my mind, a miasmic specter of doom or another irritating abstract social construction.