The Bawdy Cloister

V.I.P.

In case you've missed the news this week... Lucy, everyone's favorite Australopithecus afarensis, is visiting Texas now through April!

I now regret throwing out my Physical Anthropology notes from college.  Well, maybe not; 98% of the lectures were about my professor's unfortunate working relationship with and absolute disdain for rhesus monkeys.  A typical page of notes from that class would read something like, "Bad monkey.  Bad, bad monkey.... Caution: Don't wear Prada to the lab."  I remember I took the class because it fulfilled a science requirement.  I figured the subject's overlap with archeology would be right up my alley.  Turned out the intro course I took dealt more with DNA than digs.  But I digress.

The news about Lucy's arrival to the United States spread nationwide.  When I learned she was bound for The Houston Museum of Natural Science on the radio this morning, I nearly ran my truck off the road.  Once I got to work, I started flipping through my calendar to find a free day.  My last trip to the museum was unforgettable... I got within inches of Lady Puabi's Headdress and other artifacts from Sir Charles Leonard Woolley's excavations of Ur.  Ten years prior, I'd taken an archeology course from the great excavator and translator of ancient stadium graffiti, Mark E. Landon.  Among our assigned readings was Woolley's book The Sumerians.  The book contained black & white plates of many of his discoveries from Ur.  To finally see the treasures in all their gold and lapis brilliance nearly brought tears to my eyes.  Mrs. T and my Evil Little Brother, on the other hand, couldn't stop talking about the Body Worlds exhibition downstairs.

The official title of this new exhibition is Lucy's Legacy: The Hidden Treasures of Ethiopia.  What makes this so incredible is that not only will Lucy be there, but also artifacts from Axum.  My knowledge of ancient Ethiopia and the Solomonic line of emperors is quite cursory.  A few years back I read through the Kebra Nagast along with a handful of critical articles on Oriental Orthodoxy, the historical roots of Rasta and the concept of Tewahedo (which at first glance might be wrongly construed as Unitarian.)  I don't know if I should be embarrassed by this, but it wasn't the ganj that piqued my interest in the subject.  Rather, I was exploring the the fall-out of a schism that occurred after some rough and tumble Christological debates at the Council of Chalcedon in 451.  Like I said though, I didn't delve as deeply as I could have.  But now that Lucy has embarked on a good-will tour in Texas, I feel compelled to read up on her home country's history a bit more before heading out to meet her.

Family Matters

We practiced naming animals with the Acolyte today, but it looks like he takes after his Dad in terms of study skills:

Later, Mrs. T drew a family portrait on a napkin at dinner:

Theatre in the Round

All I knew about Lockhart, Texas was that it is the town in which Christopher Guest chose to shoot his film Waiting for Guffman.  So when I received an invite from an old buddy to watch her performance in the town's community theater, I was compelled to go by the sheer irony.

I know Lacey D. from high school.  We took drama together and hung with the theater crowd.  I hadn't seen her since our adventure to Enchanted Rock in 1996.  Over the past month we reunited on Facebook, along with a dozen or so other drama freaks I'd been out of touch with for 10-15 years.  When I learned that she was still performing, I emailed the theater to reserve my ticket.

I didn't know anything about the play before hand, other than its title, The Shape of Things.  I'm glad I didn't either because the plot is highly susceptible to spoilage.  So for that reason I'm not going to delve into the story.  After browsing around online I learned that there's a film adaptation of the play directed by the playwright himself, Neil LaBute.  The film also features the original cast from the play.  It's on DVD, so you can check it out; I know I will.

Lacey's performance was impressive.  I was taken aback by the strength of her stage presence.  She played the lead character, Evelyn.  Evelyn is a feisty, assertive and extremely outspoken university art student.  She contrasted so much from the bubbly and sometimes squeaky Lacey I remembered from high school.  It's difficult to describe the experience actually... not seeing somebody for over a decade, curious to see how they've changed, and your first re-encounter with them is in character!  It was quite a thrill sitting through the play wondering how much or how little of today's Lacey I was experiencing through Evelyn.

After the show, we talked briefly backstage.  I introduced her to Mrs. T, but we were in a hurray to pick the Acolyte up from the babysitter (the drive to Lockhart took nearly an hour and a half each way.)  Lacey was also in a hurry with a ride waiting for her.  But we agreed to meet up again soon when we're not so rushed.  In the meantime, I'll still be wondering.

Rowdy's Book in Review

Like most folks, I don't have time to see all the movies and read all the books I want.  But I realized recently that I'd fallen into a rut where I'd gone a long while without either.  It's mostly due to fatherhood and work.  Or so I thought until I calculated how much time I spent planted in front of the tube.  In my defense, there's a reason for that.  Mrs. T is not a big movie buff, so in my house watching a movie is just as solitary an act as reading.  She does watch TV shows though since they tend to be shorter.  But ideally she prefers to pursue more constructive ways of spending her time and considers sitting slack-jawed on the couch a waste.  I agree to a large extent, but on a regular mundane weeknight I don't suffer much guilt from it.  At any rate,  Mrs. T started scrapbooking in earnest a while back, so for the last couple of months the TV has been off more than it's been on and I've found my nose buried in books.

I just finished a book my Evil Little Brother got me for my birthday:

I knew Carl Hiaasen was the author of Hoot and Strip Tease.  I hadn't read either of them and only watched the movie adaptation of Strip Tease to see if Demi Moore's plastic surgery was as good as everyone said.  What really piqued my interest in Hiaasen lately was learning about his friendship with Warren Zevon.  Hiaasen contributed a lot of anecdotes in Zevon's biography so I thought I'd give one of his books a shot.

Skinny Dip turned out to be a fun read for the most part.  It's a goofy suspense novel that takes place in the Everglades.  But the book was flawed.  Hiaasen is a native Floridian and a champion for protecting the state's natural resources.  Problem is, some of that passion he has gets expressed as hatred toward people.  He's proud of his antipathy for tourists and chastises anyone contributing to urban sprawl.  This misanthropic attitude permeates the chapters of his book creating real downers throughout an otherwise light and entertaining story.  If Hiaasen expects to win any converts, he needs focus his consternation on the problems and not the population.

With a little online research, I learned a couple of poignant facts about the book.  According to Hiaasen, Zevon suggested the title Skinny Dip and was thrilled when Hiaasen decided to roll with it.  Also, Hiaasen would ship Zevon chapters of the book as he wrote them, but Zevon died when the package containing the last two chapters was en route.  Bummer.

Acolyte Update

Here's a picture of the kid yesterday.  He's wearing one of my favorite shirts.

And here's a short video Mrs. T shot on Saturday.  I think it's the third or fourth time she's recorded holding the camera vertically.  I told her that if she does it again I'll have her committed:

Rowdy's Week in Review

ITEM!

I know it's long overdue, but I promised to tell folks how last month's trip to Antiques Roadshow went down.  Our tickets were for 4:00 o'clock and we arrived about ten minutes early.  The ticket said not to arrive more than 30 minutes early anyway.  We passed through security who wanted to ensure we weren't bringing in great-grandpa's favorite box o' dynamite, then entered the line.  About two hours later we reached the front of the line where we met with the "General Appraiser."  She looked over our stuff to determine which of 20 categories they belonged to.  She gave us four "Asian Art" tickets and told us to go stand in the Asian Art line.  It was the shortest secondary line there, only one person ahead of me.  Some of the Americana lines stretched for miles, and after waiting two hours I was glad I didn't have to wait longer.  The first three items were the tanuki, kappa and daruma we got in Japan last November.  The appraiser took a look at the daruma and said it was 1960s kitsch that might fetch a few dollars at auction, same for the tanuki.  Fair enough, that's what I thought.  But then came the kappa... "Yeah, this looks like something you could find in any regional antique store..."  Mrs. T just about punched him.  She is under the impression that the kappa (which we paid much more for) is Meiji era.  She says it was made long before Japanese started pumping out crap novelties to sell to American servicemen in country for the Reconstruction or the Korean War... that's the stuff you see in American antique stores.  Mrs. T lost all respect for the appraiser at that point.  Then came our big one.  Mrs. T's grandmother gave her an old book that appeared to have many hand-drawn illustrations in it.  Mrs. T told me when we got it that it was Edo period.  Mrs. T's grandmother had a friend whose mother lived in the old jōkamachi of Gifu.  The book came from this woman's mother who'd gotten it in the long, long ago.  Mrs. T and I assumed we were sitting on gold.  Just before we left for Antiques Roadshow, Mrs. T gave the book a more careful look and discovered that it was manufactured in the Meiji Period and not the Edo.  She was crushed, but I still held out hope because of all it's hand-drawn illustrations.

So, I pull out the book in front of the appraiser and he unfolds the centerfold and says, "Ooo, what do we have here?"  This attracted the attention of the second appraiser sitting next to him and she took it for a more careful look... "It's a history magazine..."  We knew that.   "It was published in 1892...."  We knew that too.  "Now these illustrations aren't hand-drawn, as they might appear, but they were printed by hand on wood blocks."  I looked at Mrs. T and said, "I thought you said these were hand-done?"  She says, "Duh, they're wood-block can't you tell.  I told you they were made by hand meaning that they were hand-made by wood block."  My dreams of early retirement evaporated at that point.  "This is really nice, you'd probably get $100-$150 for this at auction, have a nice day."   Auughh!  We gathered our stuff and shuffled solemnly back to the car.  No words were spoken.

I showed up at work Monday and one of my associates had gone too.  He had an antique German stein appraised at $900.  Jerk.

ITEM!

This has been a wild week online.  I joined Facebook and have reconnected with a number of old high school friends that I haven't heard from in 15 years.  Just as I was in the thick of reconnecting with folks, I got an email today from completely out of the blue... not through Facebook, but through Classmates.com.  It was my 8th grade French teacher!  She was one of my all-time favorites and I always hung around after class to talk with her.  So I get this email today, "Rowdy!!  One of my very first students!  What have you been up to?"   This is so cool, I'm so used to being the one looking.  It's nice to be found for a change.

Wasting Time

I've spent countless late-night hours this week entering data into Facebook applications like "Cities I've Visited" and "Books I've Read."  Taking a rest today from finishing my "Wines in Storage" list.  No other real news though here...  The late nights finally caught up with me today, so I think it's about bedtime.

I do need to write a post about my Antiques Roadshow experience, so stay tuned.