Bloggitude
So we went and watched the Wallace & Grommet movie yesterday, with the result that Jerry Lee has seen Wallace & Grommet. I don't mean to say that it wasn't good; it was, funny and charming and witty, but I have to say that ninety minutes of Wallace & Grommet is about as much as I can stand in one sitting. Again, nothing against Wallace & Grommet. I mean to say this is a personal failing if anything: it struck me as too single-note, which probably means that I am missing something.
speaking missing something, we will be taking a walk downtown today. Charlotte--- where I'm blogging from, Charlotte, NC, my home town-- has, in recent years, developed a few features that make the downtown area fairly pedestrian-friendly, including several interesting parks, walk-don't-walk signs that chirp at you, fountains that kids can fiddle with, and, paradoxically, a trolley line.
Now the trolley line, in addition to providing controversy in several areas-- not the least of which has been the appellation, "trolley," which has provided many Charlotte oldsters and quasi-historians to make the specious claim "We never called 'em trolleys! Thems was STREETCARS!!!!"-- has also provided a paved path along it's route, which so far extends front he area now known as South End (Since 1995!) to the Northern extent of Downtown Proper, by which I mean that part of downtown where we have to stop kidding ourselves and admit that only bailbondsmen and surface parking lots flourish here. Now, of course, to say such a thing is sacrilege in my World Class City, but so is calling it Downtown-- "It's UPTOWN, dad-blammit! UPTOWN!!!" (The same way it's the Center City if you mean to include the upper west side, and the steaming trickle of cultural offal that passes for and "Arts District" is called No Da, short for North end of Davidson Street, where the whole "scene" was forcibly relocated from the Downtown area, where it was flourishing passably, to a "revitalization" area around 36th Street, where it is languishing, although languishing fashionably.) This route will take us past one of the city's most recent controversies: The ImagineOn project. This was supposed to be a cheery looking building housing both a library and a children's center where creativity and learning go hand in hand! Of course, the schmucks who planned the thing (and, to be fair, there were schmucketts involved as well) were the kind of people who assumed that creativity and learning don't go hand in hand unless forced to, so it shouldn't come as any real surprise that the finished building looks like an abandoned piece of industrial offal.
Or at least it did the last five times I saw it, which was before construction was complete. It could be that they have tarted it up since I last saw it, made it look less like a cross between a truck stop, an aluminum extruding plant, and a cut-rate airplane hangar, and more like something that was make out of a child's building-blocks. (Which, judging by the archictectural renderings I've seen, must be what they had in mind.) And it could be that they have some decent programs, something that might offer actual value and life-experience for the younger generation.
But I have to admit, I have my biases, and the deck is stacked against this project as far as I'm concerned. They will have to prove the project's worth to me. Until they do, the thing will be known to those who know me as The Imaginarium.
PS: Spellchecker news: used the spellchecker on the latest installment of this blog, and it turns out that the Blogger spellchecker does not recognize the word "schmucks," offering as a substitute the word "schmuck," implying, I suppose, that the Blogger assumes there would only be one schmuck in any given room. It also, of course, didn't recognize "schmuckettes," providing, as the nearest reasonable match, "Schenectady." Of course, the most obvious word the Blogger spellchecker doesn't recognize is, obviously, necessarily, as a matter of course, the word "blog."
speaking missing something, we will be taking a walk downtown today. Charlotte--- where I'm blogging from, Charlotte, NC, my home town-- has, in recent years, developed a few features that make the downtown area fairly pedestrian-friendly, including several interesting parks, walk-don't-walk signs that chirp at you, fountains that kids can fiddle with, and, paradoxically, a trolley line.
Now the trolley line, in addition to providing controversy in several areas-- not the least of which has been the appellation, "trolley," which has provided many Charlotte oldsters and quasi-historians to make the specious claim "We never called 'em trolleys! Thems was STREETCARS!!!!"-- has also provided a paved path along it's route, which so far extends front he area now known as South End (Since 1995!) to the Northern extent of Downtown Proper, by which I mean that part of downtown where we have to stop kidding ourselves and admit that only bailbondsmen and surface parking lots flourish here. Now, of course, to say such a thing is sacrilege in my World Class City, but so is calling it Downtown-- "It's UPTOWN, dad-blammit! UPTOWN!!!" (The same way it's the Center City if you mean to include the upper west side, and the steaming trickle of cultural offal that passes for and "Arts District" is called No Da, short for North end of Davidson Street, where the whole "scene" was forcibly relocated from the Downtown area, where it was flourishing passably, to a "revitalization" area around 36th Street, where it is languishing, although languishing fashionably.) This route will take us past one of the city's most recent controversies: The ImagineOn project. This was supposed to be a cheery looking building housing both a library and a children's center where creativity and learning go hand in hand! Of course, the schmucks who planned the thing (and, to be fair, there were schmucketts involved as well) were the kind of people who assumed that creativity and learning don't go hand in hand unless forced to, so it shouldn't come as any real surprise that the finished building looks like an abandoned piece of industrial offal.
Or at least it did the last five times I saw it, which was before construction was complete. It could be that they have tarted it up since I last saw it, made it look less like a cross between a truck stop, an aluminum extruding plant, and a cut-rate airplane hangar, and more like something that was make out of a child's building-blocks. (Which, judging by the archictectural renderings I've seen, must be what they had in mind.) And it could be that they have some decent programs, something that might offer actual value and life-experience for the younger generation.
But I have to admit, I have my biases, and the deck is stacked against this project as far as I'm concerned. They will have to prove the project's worth to me. Until they do, the thing will be known to those who know me as The Imaginarium.
PS: Spellchecker news: used the spellchecker on the latest installment of this blog, and it turns out that the Blogger spellchecker does not recognize the word "schmucks," offering as a substitute the word "schmuck," implying, I suppose, that the Blogger assumes there would only be one schmuck in any given room. It also, of course, didn't recognize "schmuckettes," providing, as the nearest reasonable match, "Schenectady." Of course, the most obvious word the Blogger spellchecker doesn't recognize is, obviously, necessarily, as a matter of course, the word "blog."
posted by Bobo the Wandering Pallbearer at 5:21 AM
1 Comments:
A RECORD!!!! 2 SPAMS ON 1 POST IN LESS THAT 3 MINUTES! And while I was proofreading it, too . . .
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