I miss Minneapolis from kevinyezbick on Vimeo.

After a long evening on the town during PLA 08 – before throwing myself onto bed and into slumbers – I took it all in for a moment from my room at the Westin – and tried to balance out the chaos. I was grinning ear to ear while I filmed this — and it all looked much more wonderful at the time. Still – it’s interesting to look back on something so amazing, and be amazed, by my own amazement.

Grand Rapids, originally uploaded by Kevin Yezbick.

Made a site visit to the opulent Amway Grand Plaza Hotel (check the theme music on the website) in Grand Rapids today in preparation for Spring Institute 2008, RAISE THE ROOF! Spent some güd timez with some quality people afterwards. Yay for good people! Boo for leaving my camera in the car – so that I couldn’t take a super quality picture of this installation – whose inspiration is oft mentioned to be anatomically related. Mucho coffee today. Also a high-quality lunch – only meters away from the only 5 star restaurant in Michigan. So close….grrr!

(I know I know! It’s because I pwned yankee hotel foxtrot for all of a month and a half before it got lifted from me…aaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!)

I am loving this webcast. Hope you saw the link on the sideblog this afternoon and are enjoying it as much as me…

Tonight, after browsing through my newsreader (Sage), I noticed that peripathetic’s tags show up in their feed. I thought to myself, My tags don’t show up in my feed. Then I had a second thought.

I quickly moved the <$MTTechnoratiTags$> around in the atom feed — until it finally found a home right after:
<$MTEntryBody encode_xml=”1″$> as <$MTTechnoratiTags encode_xml=”1″$> — about 5 lines from the bottom. That did the trick! Technorati got its first horkheimer tag — which may be gone now – as it was simply a throwaway post. We’ll tag this puppy horkheimer as well — just to make sure I ain’t crazy.

At first – I wasn’t sure it had picked up – so I went on and downloaded the perlscript plugin and followed these instructions — taking george’s <$MTTechnoratiTags$> out of the posted div, but leaving it in the feed.

A moment later I checked. Horkheimer. Tag functionality.
Geekdom acheived.

[of course -- I finally upgraded to MT3+ -- though I don't think that was the key...perhaps technorati is just slowly rolling out the recognition - like google and gmail. WHO REALLY KNOWS?]

I woke up this morning with the hopes of packing some of the smaller items of my room into my Ford Focus and heading out to Alpharetta, Georgia to unload my possessions, temporarily, on my godmother. She wasn’t home.

No, wait. That’s not right.

I woke up this morning to the sound of a lawnmower engine making very quick passes by my window. It was 8:15. Star’s boyfriend was really making tracks on the lawn. Alas, this time he decided to keep his shirt on, and I was denied watching his sweaty, glistening, well-toned bod mulch that lawn into tiny tiny remnants. I pulled myself out of bed, began fixing up the coffee – got as far as the last step – turning on the machine – and went back to bed.

Two hours later I was up again. My alarm was going off. I decided to make something of the day – calling my godmother. No answer.

I logged on and read some feeds, checked the news, did my normal schtick. Then glanced at the time. 11:10. Farenheit’s first showing was on in 20 minutes.

Shower.
Glance in mirror. (Damn I’m hot.)
Theater.

First thing I notice when pulling in is the local NBC affiliate truck sitting right there smack dab in front of the doors. Damn, I forgot to shave! I’ve been featured in some local news clips before — I know all about the soundbytes — but this morning I was really thinking I didn’t have the star power the public demands. (No matter, they were waiting for the second showing anyhoo.)

Next thing I noticed was the diversity of the crowd at the ticket window. Well. Not really. It was mostly Black and White — but once in the movie theater — there were a lot of Grays and Baldies as well. I was happy to see those. Lately I’ve been thinking that perhaps my parental units’ friend Jim was on to something that was yet to be revealed to me when he said:

If you’re twenty and you’re a Republican – you have no heart – If you’re 40, and you’re a Democrat – you have no brain.

Or something to that effect. I guess I really shouldn’t put that in quotes – but – well – Buttwell — tee hee hee.

I’m in the theater and I notice the trailers haven’t started – so I head back out to get my breakfast. Popcorn and soda. Mmmmm… Unfortunately, some kids group is there, 20 or so, most likely to see Harry Potter – and the lines are exceptionally long. Understandable. I mean – it’s 11:30 on a Friday — who wants to see a movie? Well — a lotta people showed up.

I tend to judge a movie by how many times I get up to pee. (I have a really small bladder, and it’s a rarity that I make it through a movie these days without unleashing the beast.) I peed once during Farenheit.

Unfortunately, about 30 minutes into the movie I got fed up with seeing the bottom half of the screen getting cutoff because the frame was awry and rose to have a word with customer service. So I managed to leave my seat during this movie twice.

No matter. And I’ll tell you why.

If you don’t like Dubya, I mean really really don’t like Dubya — much like myself — then you won’t learn a lot from this movie. Most of it has been circled around the blogosphere for quite some time — and most of it still is. The information Moore puts into his film has a timeline that makes you wonder how recently the final cut was made – and how much of a rush there was to put it out there. And therein lies the problem.

This movie felt choppy (as does this review). Kottke wondered aloud what the movie would have been filmed like under different direction — and having read his comments earlier — I have to say the same thoughts were nagging on my mind. Moore still seems caught in the viewfinder for a television program. It’s good to let a little nervous laughter out — but the sequence of scenes and the gravity of the material really didn’t synch, or synch-out, as well as I would have liked it to. Perhaps that is why while I was at first laughing at Kottke’s pondering of how the movie would have been better had it been done in the style of Capturing the Friedman’s, I can now see his point (having seen the movie, duh.) Ebert has nuanced that there are pretty much two movies here. You could cut it with a butter knife the split is so evident. The problem is – in those two halves you have one half where Michael Moore finds it necessary to pull out his usual stunts of dropping in on the big guy…ambushing…bringing it on. The other half is a silent observation of the horror of war. I’ll address the second half first.

Many people, left and right alike are coming out to criticize one portion of the film in particular. Moore is making the bridge between 9/11 and the Bush’s alleged agenda for war with Iraq. In those scenes Moore displays snippets of Iraqi life one could easily associate with a Utopian society — a boy flying a kite, fine dining, women smiling as they walk through the streets. He then switches over to Bush declaring war (well, not really…military exercises) and a screen full of fiery bombings. The criticism has been that Moore shows a pre-war Iraq that pretty much all the experts have acknowledged is somewhat eschew from reality. I won’t argue with that. The mass graves are testimony enough.

Another criticism people are leveling is that the bombing footage he shows is footage of government buildings or the ministry of defense being shocked and awed into obliteration. Why? Well. What other footage is there? Precision bombing is precise on impact. A lens’ focus is on its operator’s focus. Who was behind those cameras? Think about it when you’re watching it. If you’re a cameraman – covering a war – expecting a bombing – where do you want to train your eye? Targets? Maybe? I would. From the safety of my hotel. Miles away. Would I hang with that kite flying kid in the slums that could, just maybe, be right next to these buildings? Time to call the cartographer.

Moore can easily repel this criticism. For in the following scenes there are pictures aplenty of dead babies. Yes. Dead babies. Men. Women. Loaded up into a truck to be taken…somewhere. Then there are the U.S. soldiers’ accounts of missles gone astray – and more pictures — and more Iraqi mourning. Not to mention the background of ruined buildings that are definitely not palaces or government offices.

There was one moment in the film that left an impact on me more than the others, just for bringing to the surface a level of ignorance so apparent in this country that perhaps just a teensy-weensie little more attention should be paid to. The mother of a soldier killed in combat sets off on a journey to the White House where she comes across a protestor (not sure on her story). They share a few words, the protestor stating that Dubya is the real terrorist. They are interrupted . I feel for that soccer mom who interrupted them. She has to feel stupid. She better feel stupid. She told that mother who had lost her child in Iraq to “blame Al Qaeda.” Now her ignorance is documented.

As for the first half…

I think Moore went into this project looking to make the connection between the Bush’s and the United State’s relationship with Saudi Arabia and then got slapped upside the head with a war that nobody could stop. Perhaps it began even earlier than that – with the robbing of the Presidency. It seems Moore was collecting an arsenal of material and just didn’t know what to do with it. But lo and behold, whilst one was stockpiling and another wasn’t, the muse was born.

I found the 9/11 scene to be amazing. We all remember the visions of that day. We recognize the sounds — we know what happened. The future generations will know what happened. And yet – it’s still just as frightening.

I’m losing my groove. I should say this before I pull my sheets up. I am curious to watch the other criticisms of the movie come out. I don’t think it really matters. This country is so partisan now that one person will see it and another will not. That’s what a uniter not a divider does for you. There is a lotta hype. Don’t believe it and you might actually enjoy the experience.

Maybe I’ll come back later with some more — but I’ve really got to get to bed now…

I really don’t think I want to comment on the wedding except to say that I had a really good time and feel honored to have been invited. No matter how I construe the story I’ll be leaving certain details out — so I feel it’d be better just to leave the moments crystallized on the fibres of the mind, and hope that certain others can break off and shatter away forever. St. Lucia is entertaining two very lucky people right now — if only I were so lucky as to have escaped to another country, escaped the hangover and the guilt that commonly thrives in post part depression. Instead I’ve been confined to my home, keyless, as in some sort of karmic wonder, my keys were grasped by hands later bound to a steering wheel set on a course for Louisville, Kentucky. It took me two days to figure that out — and I’m still recovering. My car, meanwhile, still sits in the hotel parking lot.

Don’t get me wrong — I was one of the happiest cats at that ceremony and afterwards…I really enjoyed seeing and meeting everyone. Some I hadn’t seen in many a month — some I’d never seen. Some I may never see again. Then, that shooting star passed out of the night and landed in a big vat of tapioca pudding the next morning.

Cosmic forces are laughing at me. I think they’re responding in kind to that moment when Stephen awoke in Athens to my face glowing orange from the reflection of the flames that were surrounding his socks. Or perhaps they were responding to my prancing around in articles of the ex’s clothing that showed surprising support, an event I can only hope has not been documented on film. (It’s much sexier to use your imagination.) Oh yes, there are plenty of other moments that could be listed — but as the blisters on my feet can testify – their occurrence is damning enough without having to be sketched out completely here. There are pangs of guilt that come on every so often, strong enough to force out audible apologies. They’ve been made in the middle of the night to an empty room several times in the past few days, apologies only to the night air. Yes – I’ve been talking to myself. I’ve lost my mind.

The hours of my tour here in Georgia are dwindling. The waves are threatening to topple this battered schooner. I fear I may be going in circles as I tighten the sashes of my eyes against the razor rain, unable to recover my bearings as a fog has formed under the glass of my compass. Wiping with sopped clothing, even were it a productive activity, would be rendered doubly useless by the ferocity of this storm. I can only strengthen my grasp, digging my fingernails into my palm, clutching close to my heart the only relic of direction I have left.

Oh – and as for my work related project – how about this gem — “They start with the idea of, `OK, guys, be nice to customers.’ The research has shown that really the key to wonderful customer service is treating employees right. The employee will not treat the customer any better than they are being treated.” — still looking for more recent and relevant…

oh- and here’s one on how to play the game…[pdf]

I think my ribs felt like they were gonna burst outta my chest. “The cops!” I thought..I slid the album under the chair and Monsieur opened the front door…nobody. Perhaps it was all our imagina-BOOM BOOM BOOM!! The side door. The carport…Monsieur went to answer it while I sat there and panicked. This was a little too much like the paper boy incident many years ago. I thought for a moment – maybe its Juan. He’s loud and obnoxious and likely to stop by the house at 1 am after being at the bar all night. Instead – I hear the door open and a female voice with a slight southern drawl say -

“Hey – could y’all help me out — my car broke down and I’ve been walking and I just seen your lights on and that’s why I come up.”

Okay. That’s weird. Really weird. See – cause – I live up off a main road – and there’s a gas station not a mile from my house. There is also a hotel – a cheap hotel – not a mile from my house. So – in my head – I smell a scam. And I say – still from the other room -

“Why don’t you go to the gas station?” And I hear -

“I’ve been walking since Buford Highway and…” And that’s where I knew something was weird – cause Buford Highway isn’t anywhere near my house…It’s at least four miles away. But Monsieur is there and he’s helping her out and decides to let her call a taxi. Which she does. And then asks for a cigarette. And Monsieur doesn’t smoke.

My nerves are shot at this point. I don’t take well to strange visits. It gets my mind working a little too much. Meanwhile Monsieur is like “I would’ve given her a ride if you woulda gone with me.” Hell No! What you need to understand is that I never even got a good look at the girl — I just immediately saw her as Tammy from David Cross’ Run Ronnie Run…Monsieur says that she appeared to be sober – that she’s twenty — I think Monsieur has a crush on her.

After she gives us back the phone – and walks out to the front of the house to wait for the taxi – I remember walking into the kitchen and seeing Auburn scrubbing the phone with Rubbing Alcohol…She couldn’t have been that keen.

About twenty minutes later the taxi pulls up and I have to go out and explain to him why the girl is no longer there. Which I have no idea why – although I must say I never thought she intended to stay. I ramble on about crack addictions and apologize to the cab driver – who looking at me – must’ve thought I was crazy…

I’m sorry – this story had to be told — so that Monsieur would stop talking about killing hitchikers…I mean – he’s inserting that comment under entries that have no connection to killing hitchikers. I mean – yeah – killing hitchikers is pretty much complementary to any story – but then there’s overkill.

The point is – go out and rent or buy Run Ronnie Run today! It will change your life!!!