A Frolic of My Own

Jazz, Books, Food, and the Writing Life

Blogging from New Orleans, La

30 June 2003

To Do List:

  1. See Small Wonders at the National Gallery, a collection of still lifes by the 17th-century Dutch painter Andriaen Coorte.

  2. Hear Salif Keita perform for free on the Mall Wednesday as part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

  3. See David Ottogalli’s collection of art made with marshmallow Peeps at Kramerbooks & Afterwords Café.
Posted by Todd at 8:42 am | No Comments

27 June 2003

OSHA has compiled a catalog of illustrated fatal accidents. Report No. 67 tells the tale of a 31 year-old male asphyxiated after only a few months on the job:

Three employees were sandblasting portions of a heat exchanger in a manufacturing plant, preparing the surface for paint. The job was almost finished except for some touch-up work. The air compressor used to supply breathing air to the sand-blasters’ hoods was sent to another job. The workers hooked their supply hoses into the plant’s air system without clearing it with the plant’s management.

The plant operators, not knowing the plant air was being used for breathing air, shut down the compressor for scheduled maintenance. This caused the nitrogen back-up system to come on line to maintain air pressure.

One sandblaster was asphyxiated from the nitrogen being fed into his hood.

Posted by Todd at 4:28 pm | No Comments

I spent yesterday in Charlottesville, VA, packing some final items from our old house and cleaning. We’re heading back down this evening, since the movers will be by Saturday morning to cart our couch and boxes off to storage. Two friends are getting married that evening in Charlottesville, so we won’t return to Washington until Sunday. Have a good weekend. Let’s hope it doesn’t rain on our friends’ wedding.

Posted by Todd at 3:24 pm | No Comments

In a welcome move, the Supreme Court reversed its 1986 decision and ruled anti-sodomy statutes unconstitutional. Some have noted that the court simply responded to a change in attitudes towards homosexuality since the mid-80s. When I grew up in those years, people used to debate whether Boy George was gay. Now, I may have just been a naive boy from Oklahoma (alright, I certainly was), but I remember Boy George in an interview sidestepping the question of his orientation by saying he preferred a cup of tea to a roll in the hay with anyone. Would a celebrity today bother with such a silly pretense?

Posted by Todd at 11:02 am | No Comments

While black helicopters out West provoke paranoia, black sedans in Washington can explain away mysteries. The day before yesterday, for example, I was walking down Connecticut Avenue to pick up some beer and frozen cannelloni from the Italian market. For some reason, the police were stopping traffic in the middle of the block. I joined the other puzzled pedestrians on the corner looking around for an explanation. Then, a few black sedans with diplomatic plates drove by and everyone shrugged and kept walking. Just another motorcade, although these cars turned out to be only the vanguard.

I’m new to town, but this motorcade must have been larger than average, since Connecticut Avenue, one of the central streets in uptown D.C., was suddenly cleared of cars for blocks in both directions. A cop stood in the middle of the street at every block, until they stepped aside with the arrival of the motorcycles, and the black SUVs stacked full of secret service agents, and the sedans with windows tinted opaque. Someone on the neighborhood discussion list said President Musharraf of Pakistan was passing through. I wonder if he could get Connecticut Avenue shut down before Pakistan joined the coalition of the willing.

Posted by Todd at 8:54 am | No Comments

24 June 2003

It’s always embarrassing to hit send on an email directed to the wrong person. We’ve all done it, I’m sure. It must be worse to have that email forwarded to everyone you know. It would probably be even more humiliating, though, if the New Yorker published an account of the entire episode. That’s that kind of luck that Jonas Blank, Harvard Law 2L and a Skadden Arp summer associate, had recently.

Posted by Todd at 6:25 pm | No Comments

Everyone says you must follow-up a job application with a call, so I phoned two places this afternoon. One told me they were already interviewing candidates, but the search was still open. The other location said they were forbidden to answer any questions regarding employments. Desperation is beginning to take hold. I suppose I should sign up for temp agencies after the 4th of July.

Posted by Todd at 4:02 pm | No Comments

Kathryn Chetkovich, an unknown writer, examines her relationship with the writer of the moment, Jonathan Franzen. As she says, “This is a story about two writers. A story, in other words, of envy.”

Posted by Todd at 12:39 pm | No Comments

In 1953, Sylvia Plath joined nineteen other young women as guest editors for Mademoisell magazine. Ten years later, she published a fictional account of that summer in The Bell Jar. Two months later, she stuck her head in an oven and finally succeeded in ending her life. Fifty years later, some of the surviving nineteen women gathered in New York to remember that summer.

The New York Times article never addresses the reason for the Plath’s suicide, although some women remember that Sylvia was sick that summer. Some women wonder how they could have overlooked the illness. Most of the women, now in their seventies, put aside careers a few years after that summer to devote themselves fully to their families. Maybe Plath was afraid of this fate.

Once I started reading the Bell Jar, but the prose was awkward so I put it aside. Plath’s poetry, however, has always been incendiary.

Posted by Todd at 9:33 am | No Comments

23 June 2003

I spent the weekend running from one end of Washington to the other with my parents in tow. We saw statues at the National Gallery. Gawked at diamonds in the Museum of Natural History. Smelled vanilla scented orchids at the U.S. Botanic Garden. Read Bob Hope’s packing list at the Library of Congress, which might be my favorite building in Washington. Watched pandas gnaw on bamboo at the National Zoo. It’s hard to tell if they had a good time.

After we saw my parents off, most of Sunday was spent packing the last of our belongings in Charlottesville. We drove back to D.C. Sunday evening and stopped in at a Sex in the City party organized in Capitol Hill. The more time I spend in that neighborhood, the more I like it.

Posted by Todd at 1:55 pm | No Comments

19 June 2003

My parents arrive this afternoon. They’ve been in New York since Monday on their first visit to the big city. I predicted they would hate it. Too big. Too crowded. Too expensive. Also, everything that I enjoy in New York–food, jazz, art–holds little interest for them. Much to my surprise, they love the place. I forgot that New York has plenty of attractions designed to entertain the flyover states’ residents. The entire institution of Broadway might be one example.

Looks like I am in for a weekend of national monuments and bus tours. If it doesn’t rain, we might walk down to see the pandas at the zoo. I don’t really mind, since Washington’s tourist attractions are things I want to see as well.

Today I have another “information interview” with a VP for development at George Washington. (Why the quote marks? I’m perfectly willing to adopt the business world’s vocabulary when needed, but I would like to keep it at arms length on my blog.)

Posted by Todd at 10:49 am | No Comments

18 June 2003

The cartoon bear who happily wipes his ass in the Charmin toilet paper commercial will be featured in a new children’s book. Or, as the Guardian UK says, “Charmin to market its own Pooh bear.”

God, I love the Brits. Bad food, lousy weather, but damn funny people.

Posted by Todd at 8:57 am | No Comments

17 June 2003

Blogs have reintroduced a welcome randomness into the web. For the last few years, Google was the interstate highway that destroyed the quirkiness of the internet. We once ambled along our cyber-Route 66, passing through small towns, stopping at road side attractions on the way to information we needed. Then, Google came to town, built a six lane highway, and we were speeding at 70 miles an hour straight to the site we wanted. Fast. Efficient. And not much fun.

Designs On You [permalinks not working] recently discovered that traffic was flowing to her site for information on the Matrix creator’s complicated domestic life. A few posts back, I noted a visitor looking for information on problems with dial tones. Since then, visitors have arrived at Frolic searching for news about the Telluride Association Summer Program, David G. Bradley, and heroin. When they arrive, it’s probably not what they expected. Instead of advice on fixing their phone, they might run across links to manhole covers.

Of course, Google is the instrument destroying the very order it created. Seeing that they bought Blogger, maybe they want it that way.

Posted by Todd at 6:28 pm | No Comments

16 June 2003

Housekeeping note: I was told that comments did not work for people using PCs. I think I have the problem fixed.

Posted by Todd at 8:54 pm | No Comments

15 June 2003

Housekeeping note: Fonts are now based on percentage values rather than pixel values. Better web design for all.

Posted by Todd at 10:59 am | No Comments

14 June 2003

I’m sitting on the floor of the Telluride Convention listening to the second straight day of endless debates. Breaks from the debates have been provided by writing reports, pulling together budgets, and drinking. We still have two more days of meetings.

We’re meeting in our house in Ithaca, NY, an impressive pile designed by one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s students, although the building is a little long in the tooth these days and desperately needs renovations. I’m always exhausted for days after Convention, but it still a great weekend to catch up with some people I don’t see often enough.

Posted by Todd at 10:38 pm | No Comments