Sheldon Brown's Journal
March-April 2005
Current
| Books | Films | Music | Plays | Travels |
|---|
March-April 2005
| Books | Films | Music | Plays | Travels |
|---|
Film: (DVD) Dirty War
Jury duty
This is the third time I've been called for jury duty, and I've had a trial each time. Unlike many people, I actually look forward to the experience, which I generally find rewarding and interesting.This time I was called to the new Cambridge Juvenile Court. In fact, this was the first jury trial to be conducted there.
The case itself was rather ridiculous, involving a petty theft in a high school, the sort of thing that really should have been handled administratively.
eBook: So Long and Thanks for all the Fish Douglas Adams
Film: (DVD) The Terminal
An enjoyable comedy, with Tom Hanks as a "man without a country" stranded in Kennedy Airport. Good fun.
Film: (DVD) Nell
Jodie Foster********** Harriet off to Florida, I'm batching it for a few days.
My new computer finally arrived! It's a 20 inch iMac, with 1.25 gb of memory and a 250 GB drive. It is quite wonderful, and I also got the Bluetooth package with it (wireless keyboard and mouse.) Not sure, in retrospect that these were really all that worthwhile, especially the mouse which is just a single button mouse. I rather miss the scroll wheel and side buttons of my Microsoft wired mouse.
Now that I have a good desktop machine at home, I am leaving the PowerBook at the shop, instead of schlepping it back and forth on my bike. It is almost 3 years old, and the Applecare protection will expire this fall, so I figure it is a lot safer to avoid transporting it by bike so often. It is also very nice to ride without the weight of the computer, and without needing to carry the big Carradice saddlebag every day. I've been increasingly taking circuitous routes home to get some mileage, and it is a lot more pleasant without the laptop.
Instead of the laptop, I have put all of my active files in a single folder, about 5 gb worth, which I synchronize with my iPod at each end of my commute. This system works really well.
Some years back I built a set of shelves for the living room, sized for audio cassettes. However, I'm pretty much getting out of cassettes these days, so I took the shelves apart and re-aranged them to hold CDs. Took a couple of big bags of cassettes to the library, dumped 'em in the "magazine swap" bin. They went fast, glad to see them going to somebody who has use for them. Most of them were dubs of CDs or vinyl, and I knew I'd never listen to them again. I did keep all of the cassettes I had made from concert broadcasts, which is quite a few. I'm well situated especially for recording Boston Sym-phony broadcasts, and have quite a good collection. These days I record directly from a tuner to my computer's hard disc, no more tape to deal with!
St. Patrick's Day
Rode the Quickbeam in to South Boston to watch the St. Patrick's Day parade. Good to have a green bike for this!
Film: (DVD) The Day After Tomorrow
Some say the world will end in fire, some in ice. This one says ice.
Auditioned for the Summer Revels.Film: (DVD) Luther
A pretty good biopic of Martin Luther.
Film: (DVD) Michael Collins
Second time I've seen this. Good bicycle stuff, especially the "ride-by" shooting on the church steps.
Film: (DVD) Open Water
Two SCUBA divers accidentally abandoned in the open sea. Well acted, with interesting camera work, but very gloomy.
Film: (DVD) Kind Hearts and Coronets
A classic British comedy from Ealing Studios, with a young Alec Guiness playing 8 roles.
Film: (DVD) TITLE
Nice 36 miler on the Quickbeam, out through Dover, got lost in Medfield and Sherbourn, but found Rt 27, took that to 16 and home. Listened to Rimsky-Korsakov's Sadko on the iPod. About 40 degrees. My longest fixed-gear this year.Film: (DVD) TITLE
Film: (DVD) Zorba the Greek
Another classic, if you haven't seen it you should.
Film: (DVD) Head in the Clouds
April Fool: FasterCard
Film: (DVD) The Big Sleep 1945
This was a double-sided DVD, with two different versions of the film. We watched the original pre-release version, which was generally considered to be inferior to the released version, featuring less Bogart/Bacall wisecracking, but making the plot a bit easier to follow.Gotta love General Sternwood in his hothouse...
Cirque de Cyclisme, Greensboro, North Carolina
Got up at the ghastly hour of 3:45 AM to catch a 6 am flight to Greensboro via DC."Cousin" Dale Brown, owner of Cycles de Oro and sponsor of the Cirque de Cyclisme picked me up at the airport, and lent me a fairly strange bike to use over the weekend, a frame he had built, designed around a Softride beam. When people were surprised to see me riding such a thing, I did point out that it was lugged steel!
There was to be an afternoon fixed-gear ride, but it was rather rainy and Dales bike was not fixed and was fenderless, so I skipped this one, went back to the Battlefield Inn to do my email and schmooze with fellow bike fans.
Later in the afternoon, we gathered in Dale's back yard, oohed and ahhed over his amazing collection of gorgeous bikes. He has a work shed which is one of the finest home bike shops I've ever seen, complete with a framebuilding jig and a very large collection of bike bits.
Doug Fattic gave a brazing demonstration and showed off some of his superb output. He's also involved in a program to help set up a bicycle manufacturing industry in Ukrane. He had a Ukranian city bike with him, a Nexus 7-speed in the Dutch style.
Brian Baylis was holding forth in the garden, showing off the gorgeous new frame he had just built for Dale. It was very nice to meet Brian in person, we had several very pleasant conversations.
Went to the Verona restaurant in the evening, where there was nothing available for an Atkins dieter, so I went with the lasagna, which was quite tasty.
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Cirque de Cyclisme Continued
Up early for a 16 mile sightseeing ride around Greensboro. Much of the area is quite lovely, especially as the spring is in full flower here. We stopped at an arboretum, where some local urchins remarked that our group of about 20-30 cyclists were "all riding the same kind of bikes." As if! There were everything from a couple of wood-wheeled fixed gears (Larry Black and Harvey Sachs) to the ride leader's Landshark racer, a brace of Peugeot PX 10s (one of which was a DNF due to a loose bottom bracket) and assorted other classics, including at least two bikes with Sturmey-Archer ASC 3-speed fixed gears.In the afternoon, there were talks at the Lewis Recreation Center, on the general theme of French bikes.
- Mariposa's Mike Barry gave a presentation on the history of the derailer, with amusing comparisons between some of the Italian kludges that resulted from an excessive preoccupation with avoiding bending the slack side of the chain through pulleys.
- David Herlihy spoke about the development of bikes in the 19th century.
- The tag team of Jan Heine, Mike Kone and David Herlihy spoke of French bikes of the 30s-60s. They focussed on the way the high end models were fully integrated designs
- Hillary Stone gave a fascinating presentaion on Bastide bikes of the early '20s, which he maintains represent the birth of modern geometry. Bastides featured round tapered seat- and chainstays, with fully brazed seatstays (previous British bikes mostly had bolt-on seatstays.) They also featured 10 1/2" high bottom brackets, much lower than older designs which were generally in the 12 inch range. Bastide also seems to have been the first racing bike to use caliper brakes. Previous racing bikes, if they had a brake at all, it would be a spoon brake. (Rod brakes were not suitable for racers because of the slowness of wheel removal/replacement for fixing flats.)
In the evening, there was an awards banquet. I was fortunate enough to win the Vintage Bicycle award so I get to hold the cup for the next year!I had been particularly looking forward to meeting Hillary, who knows more about British bikes than anybody I know of.
I was honored indeed to receive the cup, but the best was when Dale asked everybody who had emailed me and received a helpful answer to rais a hand. It seemed that 90% of the attendees had done so!
After the awards, there was a showing of Jeff Groman's film-in-progress on the history of six-day racing. The film was quite excellent, I'll be looking forward to its completion and release. It is introduced by a surprisingly old looking Greg Lemond, and mostly narrated by Frank de Ford. I like Frank de Ford a lot, but wish he didn't insist on his idiosyncratic pronunciation of "BUY-sigh-cle."
After the banquet, I tripped and fell in the parking lot, getting a bit banged up, and also, I'm afraid, slightly damaging the trophy cup. In retrospect, this was one of the first signs of my deteriorating health condition.
| Books reviewed on this page: | ||
|---|---|---|
| So Long and Thanks for all the Fish | Douglas Adams | 3/3/05 |
| Films reviewed on this page: | ||
|---|---|---|
| The Big Sleep | April 1, 2005 | |
| The Day After Tomorrow | March 21, 2005 | |
| Dirty War | March 1, 2005 | |
| Head in the Clouds | March 30, 2005 | |
| Kind Hearts and Coronets | March 26, 2005 | |
| Luther | March 22, 2005 | |
| Michael Collins | March 23, 2005 | |
| Open Water | March 25, 2005 | |
| The Terminal | March 3, 2005 | |
| Zorba the Greek | March 29, 2005 | |
Music: Date Performers Works
February 4, 2005 B.S.O., Rafæl Frühbeck de Burgos.
Brahms
January 22, 2005 B.S.O., James Conlon, Garrick Ohlsson Ullmann, Shostakovich
January 8, 2005 B.S.O., Hans Graf, James Galway
Hindemith, Bolcom, Mozart
October 23, 2004 B.S.O., James Levine
Mahler: Symphony #8
May 2, 2004 Aiofe O'Donovan, Seamus Connoly, Halali "Rapper, Reels & Revelry"
May 1, 2004 B.S.O., Gianluca Cascioli,
Jahja Ling Mozart, Mahler
April 10, 2004 M.I.T.G.A.S.P Gilbert & Sullivan: Thespis
April 3, 2004 B.S.O., Grant Llewellen Vaughan Williams, Musgrave, Walton
January 17, 2004 B.S.O., James Levine Mozart, Carter, Dvorak
December 10, 2003 Australian Opera (DVD) La Bohème
November 13, 2003 Kirov Ballet, St. Petersburg Chopin, Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky
October 4, 2003 B.S.O., Hans Graf, Claudio Bohóquez Tchaikovsky & Shostakovich
October 4, 2003 B.S.O., Bernard Haitink, Dubravka Tomsic Beethoven
March 8, 2003 M.I.T.G.A.S.P Bizet: Carmen
March 8, 2003 B.S.O., Bernard Haitink Beethoven, Harbison
March 7, 2003 Arlo Guthrie Northeastern University
February 21-March 1, 2003 Gilbert & Sullivan: Patience Sudbury Savoyards
January 18, 2003 B.S.O., Ton Koopman, Andreas Scholl Bach, Haydn
December 7, 2002 B.S.O., Marek Janowski Bartok, Strauss
November 29, 2002 New York Philharmonic, Christoph von Dohnanyi, Pierre Laurent-Aimard Janacek: Cappriccio; R.Strauss: Burleske; Brahms: Sym. #2
November 2, 2002 B.S.O., Marek Janowski Bartok, Strauss
September 22, 2002 Boston Folk Festival Barachois, Bill Staines, Cheryl Wheeler, Richard Thompson
July 21, 2002 London Philharmonic, Rostropovich Shostakovich, Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk
July 3, 2002 Stan Rogers Folk Festival Oysterband, Fairport Convention, others.
May 3, 2002 The Australian Opera Wagner, Die Meistersinger
April 18, 2002 B.S.O., Seiji Ozawa Mahler, Sym. # 9
April 13, 2002 M.I.T.G.a.S.P. Gilbert & Sullivan, The Gondoliers
March 7, 2002 B.S.O., Hans Graf, M. Piccinini, A.Häfliger Colgrass, Schubert
February 21, 2002 B.S.O., James Levine Dvorak, Wuoronen, Mozart, Ligeti,Schumann
January 10, 2002 B.S.O., Bernard Haitink Bruckner: Symphony #7
December 9, 2001 Brandeis University Symphony Orchestra Beethoven: Piano Concerto #3; Dvorak: Symphony #6
December 8, 2001 Brandeis University Early Music Society Various works
November 17, 2001 M.I.T.G.a.S.P. Gilbert & Sullivan, H.M.S. Pinafore
November 3, 2001 B.S.O., Federico Cortese Ives: Ragtime Dances, Mozart Pf Conc #9 k271, Kurtäg: Grabstein für Stephan; Schubert, Sym. #4
Novembr 2, 2001 Blue Man Group, Seiji Ozawa Brahms: Symphony #1
October 6, 2001 B.S.O., Seiji Ozawa Brahms: Symphony #1
May 3-6, 2001 M.I.Tl G & S Players Gilbert & Sullivan: The Grand Duke
April 13, 2001 Harvard-Radcliffe G & S Gilbert & Sullivan: Utopia, Limited
March 4, 2001 Newton North High School Chorus
and Orchestra Haydn: Missa in Tempore Belli; Symphony #49 "La Pasione"
March 3, 2001 B.S.O., David Robertson Janácek Sinfonietta,
February 18, 2001 Theatre de Chatelet (DVD) Janácek, The Cunning Little Vixen
February 4, 2001 M.I.T.G.a.S.P. Rowe
& Sullivan, The Zoo
February 3, 2001 B.S.O., James Levine Mahler Symphony #3
February 3, 2001 George and his band at
Harvey Finstein School of Music
December 27, 2000 The Christmas Revels,
Cambridge Appalchian/African-American Revels
December 23, 2000 San Carlo Opera
(DVD) Wagner, Tannhäuser
November 18,
2000 M.I.T.G.a.S.P. Gilbert & Sullivan, The Sorceror
November 16, 2000 Harvestfest, Newton North High
School
November 2, 2000 B.S.O., Christoph Eschenbach Mozart: Piano
Concerto #23; Mahler Symphony #5
October 24, 2000 Leon
Rosselson Johnny D's
October 7, 2000 The
Savoy-Aires Gilbert & Sullivan: The Mikado
June 18, 2000 George and his band at Harvey Finstein School of Music
May 21, 2000 Small Ensemble
Concert--Newton North
April 29, 2000 Spring Revels
April 22, 2000 B.S.O., André Previn, Pamela
Frank Previn: Diversions; Barber: Violin Concerto; Mozart: Symphony
#39
March 10, 2000 Revels, Inc/Shakespeare & Co. The Mysteries
February 26, 2000 B.S.O.,Seiji Ozawa, Christine Goerke, Ian
Bostridge, Thomas Quasthoff Britten: War Requiem
February 19, 2000 B.S.O., Bernard Haitink Mahler: Symphony
#7
February 12, 2000 George and his band at
Harvey Finstein School of Music
January 29, 2000 B.S.O., Sir Simon Rattle
Peter Donohoe,
PianoDvorák: The Golden Spinning Wheel,
Bartók:
Piano Concerto #1, Brahms: Symphony #2
January 8, 2000 George on
Trombone N.E. Regional Senior District Festival
December 19, 1999 The Christmas Revels,
Cambridge Italian Renaissance Revels
December 12, 1999 Pierre Boulez, Met
Opera (video) Wagner: Siegfried
November 19, 1999 Matapat, Lexington
November 18, 1999 Harvestfest, Newton
North High School St. Sæns Danse Macabre
November 7, 1999 M.I.T.G.a.S.P. Gilbert &
Sullivan, Iolanthe
November 4, 1999 George and his band at
Ryles, Cambridge
October 2, 1999 B.S.O., Seiji Ozawa
Florence Quivar, Mezzo;
Paula Delligatti, Sop.Mahler, Symphony #2
September 29, 1999 B.S.O., Seiji Ozawa,
Hildegarde Behrens,
SopranoWagner: Tannhäuser, Götterdämmerung
excerpts;
Strauss: Electra excerpt.
August 14,
1999 M.I.T.G.a.S.P. Gilbert & Sullivan, Crichton
July 24, 1999 David Mallett
June 19, 1999 The
Publick Theatre Gilbert & Sullivan The Yeomen of the Guard
April 13, 1999 Harvey Finstein School of Music
student groups George and Tova at Watch City
Brewery
March 7, 1999 Newton North High School Chorus
and Orchestra Mozart: Requiem, Symphony #38 ("Prague").
March 5, 1999 Harvey Finstein School of Music student
groups George and Tova in Jazz recital at Newton Congregational Church.
March 4, 1999 Newton North High School various
groups.
February 6, 1999 B.S.O.,Seiji Ozawa,
Jacques Zoon
(flute)Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande "Symphony"
Mozart: Flute
Concerto #1 in G, K.313
Stravinsky: Le Sacre du Printemps.
January 30, 1999 B.S.O., Robert Spano,
Andreas Haefliger
(piano)Lindberg: Arena
Beethoven: Piano Concerto #2
Sibelius: The Swan of
Tuonela, Symphony #3
January 16, 1999 B.S.O., Sir Simon Rattle,
Dawn Upshaw
(sop.)Knussen Flourish with Fireworks
Weir Natural History
Mahler Symphony
#4
Schumann Piano Concerto
December 23,
1998 The
Christmas Revels, Sanders Theatre, Cambridge
December 12, 1998 Caroling with Nym
Cooke, Hardwick, Mass.
November 28,
1998 B.S.O., Roberto Abbado,
Lief
Ove Andsnes (piano)Mahler Symphony #1
Schumann Piano Concerto
November 8, 1998 M.I.T.G.a.S.P. Gilbert &
Sullivan, The Mikado
Plays:
November 29, 2002 Lorraine Bracco The Graduate
November 23, 2001 Helen Mirren, Ian McKelln The Dance of Death-August Strindberg
September 30, 2000 Tova/Black Box Theatre, Cornell
University The Maids-Jean Genet
May 30,
2000 Kelsey Grammer/Colonial Theatre Macbeth
May 26, 2000 The Huntington Theatre Co. King
Hedley II
September 3, 1999 The Publick
Theatre Nine
August 21, 1999 Orange
Tree Theatre, Ithaca, N.Y. Sonata
August 13,
1999 Firehouse Theatre, Ithaca, N.Y. Sister Mary Ignatius Explains it All For
You
May 22-29 Newton South/North High
Schools Richard III
December 18,
1998 Newton North High School The Bone Violin, May Flies
November 12, 1998 Newton North High School To
Kill a Mockingbird
052999
Travels:
April 29, 2005 Cirque de Cyclisme, Greensboro, N.C.
February 16, 2005 Indianapolis
November 24, 2004 Plantation, Florida
October 8, 2004 Santa Cruz, California
October 4, 2004 Las Vegas, Nevada
June 8, 2004 France, England
December 22, 2003 Halifax, Nova Scotia
November 27, 2003 Florida
October 31, 2003 Potomac, Maryland
October 10, 2003 Las Vegas, Nevada
September 21, 2003 New York, N.Y.
November 27-30, 2002 New York, N.Y.
October 8-13, 2002 Evanston, Illinois
October 4-8, 2002 Las Vegas, Nevada
July 3-9, 2002 Canso, Nova Scotia
May 24-27, 2002 Long Island, New York
November 21-24, 2001 New York City
October 16-19, 2001 Cape Cod, Massachusetts
September 29-October 3, 2001 Las Vegas, Nevada (Interbike Show)
June 16-23, 2001 Nags Head, North Carolina
October 5-14, 2000 Evanston, Illinois
September 30-October 2, 2000 Ithaca, New York
June 22-25, 2000 Urbanna, Virginia
October 7-13, 1999 Chicago/Evanston,
Illinois
August 19-28, 1999 Ithaca, New
York
August 12-13, 1999 Ithaca, New York
July 23-25, 1999 Bridgeton, Maine
November 25-28, 1998 Fort Lauderdale,
Florida
1988-89 France, England
1980 Yucatan, Mexico
1975 England,
Belgium, Yugoslavia, Turkey
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