Wow, seems like I have been totally irresponsible in my blog-writing responsibilities. I have not written anything since last Monday — 4 days. It was a fairly warm week with temps in the 70’s mostly. Bright blue sky mostly. A lovely winter week.
Summer Vacation Plans
We are contemplating going to Los Angeles this summer for a week’s vacation. Getty Museum, Getty Roman Villa, LA County Museum of Art, Mojave Desert, vineyards, San Diego Zoo, the Hollywood sign. Other stuff I haven’t thought of yet. Or perhaps southeastern Utah — Bryce Canyon, Monument Valley, Zion National Park. An evolving idea.
An Antiseptic Neighborhood
Driving around this week I wandered through the kind of cookie-cutter neighborhoods that sprout up in the suburbs and exurbs. Not meaning to be particularly critical but this kind of development but it is generic, uninterpretable. Look at this picture:
Houses close together, generic design, no real trees within the subdivision (the trees you see are outside the development). From the back any pretense of architectural decoration is dropped. 
Big? sure. Valuable? probably. But when you look at the back all you get is a box. You don’t see anything that dresses up the back. Now, look at the development’s recreation center:
The Amenity Center? Not that this is an uncommon term for these recreation areas but to me the term represents the unimaginativeness of these kinds of developments. Big, comfortable boxes placed cheek-by-jowl, often 6 to an acre. Drive through one and you have no clue where you are, the history of the area, any sense of traditions. All you have are generic houses and the amenity center.
On the Other Hand
On the other hand there remains in our neighborhood an old shotgun house that somehow has avoided being razed for a generic, modern structure.
Probably a double shotgun house, with rooms on each side of the house, with no hallway. Central gable perpendicular to the road, tin roof, simple linear design. This one appears to have an add-on (the wall extends beyond the original line in the back). Off-grade, sitting on cinder blocks with a side window for each room. This house is functional and personal. It speaks of the owners and their own And I like the little entrance gate that the owners had put up during a good period.
The barrier is extended by the bushes extending on each side. Simple but authentic — a real expression of the owners’ own sense of place.
Movies We Saw
On Friday we saw Ghost Rider. Nicholas Cage and Peter Fonda in a comic book brought to life. A silly, inconsequential thing that, however, did not skimp on special effects. And Eva Mendes, curiously enough, was outfitted in clothes she outgrew in the 8th grade and was missing the top three buttons. 
Must have been a budget thing.
On Saturday we saw Eugene Onegin, simulcast from the Metropolitan Opera. Broadcast in Dolby sound and High Definition, watching opera in a movie house is second only to being at the Met. I love technology — when it works.
A wonderful production. The Met brought Russian singers in for all the roles except Tatiana, which was sung by Renée Fleming, and Lenski, played by Ramón Vargas. Vargas, a Mexican, playing a Russian artistocrat, singing in Russian, and taking stage directions in English. Such flexibility! The performances were uniformly excellent. Such range, emotion, and perfectly developed technique. The Met’s gamble worked, bringing in so many performers with such different backgrounds.
Hugh Grant’s hair is remarkably 80’s in this movie. He does this kind of role so well.
