National Arboretum

It's not really a museum, per se, but it does have a museum on grounds (the awesome National Bonsai and Penjing Museum), so I'm going to review it anyway. Especially the Bonsai museum, which had stuff like this. It also had a Moon Gate where a couple were having their picture taken (one of many Asian couples there, along with just about everyone besides my family and Ms. Albright at The Dancing Crab later that night, which was the most Asians I've ever seen (percentage wise) at a non-Asian restaurant). Anyway, I really liked the ones that had little model people in them, and the ones that looked like the top of hills. Unfortunately, the Tropical section was closed. After that, we headed to the National Capital Columns (kind of incongruously placed on top of a hill, and there was a very pregnant woman taking pregnancy pictures in black short shorts and a halter top, which provided something extremely disturbing to look at), then drove around the Azaleas section (which wasn't blooming yet), past the closed for renovation fern valley, and headed to the Magnolia and Holly area. It was absolutely gorgeous, and Ms. Albright had to restrain herself from running from one Magnolia to the next and smelling the all the flowers. I tried to restrain myself from climbing a Magnolia that was perfect for climbing (and failed to stop, but I did only go a little way up it). The last thing we saw was the Asian Collection, which had a pagoda and some Chinese Redbud, which are not worth going off the path to smell, no matter what you may think they smell like. So basically, I really enjoyed my day, although I got a little sunburned (not as bad as last Memorial Day), but would definitely do again, in a few weeks when the azaleas and some other flowers are out.

TV shows & museums

Reasons for no entry in a while: Doctor Who and Torchwood. Well, a few other things (like basketball (Go Duke!) and social life (hi, friends!)) as well. I'm midway through both season 4 of Doctor Who and 1 of Torchwood. Doctor Who is much better, especially after Billie Piper leaves the show. Eesh to her. Torchwood is still sort of cheesy, but the entire thing doesn't work nearly as well. The goofiness is out of place in a more adult show. Maybe they find their feet? Speaking of TV needing to find its feet, Dollhouse is getting better, but it's still easily the worst thing Whedon has done. It took a while for Buffy to start working after a good pilot, but it certainly did by the end of the first season. Dollhouse's actual pilot (the episode with the Middleman) certainly had a lot of promise and was quite good, even if basically every other one wasn't up to snuff. They've been improving, but I hope Fox allows Whedon the chance to show the episodes. Castle's pilot was fun, but I'm not sure how long that show can last, even though I'm thoroughly enjoying Nathan Fillion having a place to be awesome. Battlestar Galactica has been mindblowing, sometimes in its cheesyness, but I'm still upset that it's basically over so soon. Like, this week. Sigh to the ending of good shows.

The National Museum of American History was recently renovated, and I went there with Ms. Albright, along with an aunt and uncle. I remembered the vague shape of it from when I was there four years ago. There were some problems with crowded areas (it was a nice weekend day, and yet, for some reason, many people were inside). The First Lady's dresses exhibit was way too packed, with lines going all over the place. I did get to see the Colbert portrait, which was nice, as was the pop culture area, with most of my favorite stuff. The war area was also neat, although a little screwed up in design, as the World War I section couldn't be visited in chronological order, and the smell section of the Revolutionary War area was kinda gross. The Punch-esque tea diorama was a highlight. I still like the museum, but I don't need to go back anytime soon, unless there's an interesting exhibit.

The National Museum of Health and Medicine is hidden away at Walter Reed Hospital. Back on Valentine's Day, they had a free lecture on syphilis history in the US. By the way, don't scroll down too far on that page, unless you want to feel as disgusted as I was when I saw the model of a syphilitic penis after the lecture. The lecture itself, however, was a terrible powerpoint presentation. 87 slides, and John Parascandola (author of Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphillis in America) just read them. Ugh. The information was interesting, but if you really want to ruin interesting, just read slides. And again, Americans really treat the sick like crap. And mercury poisoning is certainly much less bad than dying of syphilis, right? The history of syphilis treatments was fascinating. The museum less so, although there were some neat things, like a painting on plastic strips of a vivisected body. I'm not sure if it's really a great museum for those who haven't been in DC that long, unless you're interested in the subject, but for those looking for something most don't see, definitely check it out.

Catching up more with books and comics and museum exhibits

The Killing Joke is Alan Moore's The Joker origin story, along with an excuse to see Commissioner Gordon and his (newly paralyzed) daughter naked. As such, it fits in just perfectly with Moore's other work. I have to say that I thought it was interesting, although I can't say that I like the shortness. I feel like it could have been longer. I do wonder what the midgets were named though.

In an attempt to catch up on things, here's some brief reviews of random books I've read over last nine or so months: The Right Stuff (noted here, and a reminder that Tom Wolfe is a good writer, once you get past the "New Journalism"-y writing style), Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories (first noted by me here, and quite an interesting collection of Ryunosuke Akutagawa's stories, most of which I enjoyed, although the auto-biographical ones were depressing), Memoirs of a Geisha (told you I was going to read it, and it was considerably better than the movie), Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo (noted twice in last week's vampire-puppet filled Middleman, but purchased by me earlier in the year based on a recommendation from some website I can't remember (io9? Bryan Lee O'Malley?) and is basically a rabbit ronin wandering feudal Japan, so of course I was going to love it, but I have 20 something volumes to purchase in order to read it all), Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (read almost immediately after watching The Dark Knight, but I forgot to mention it in that review, but it's actually kind of good), The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (quite a gay little book, but it's going to be a movie, and I was interested, although it's not nearly as good as Michael Chabon's later works), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (probably the last Joyce I'll read as I doubt I could make it through Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake, but it and The Dubliners are excellent) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (a pornographic Alan Moore comic, with a 3-d section that gave me a slight headache, but I loved the extension of the mythology and the pitch-perfect satires of literary genres). Also, I watched the new DVDs of Spaced, one of the best things that's ever come out of England. It's pretty much: Monty Python, Alec Guinness, and Spaced. And I guess HP Sauce and the idea that vinegar is good on chips.

I went back to the Freer & Sackler galleries August 24th, which was quite fun, as it's one of my favorite museums, if only for the Peacock Room, which is the kind of room I want to have in my mansion. But the Sackler galleries had an exhibit on landscapes of the Yellow Mountains, which was gorgeous. A little small of an exhibit, but the artwork was uniformly nice. I have to say that I love landscapes, which is kind of middlebrow, but eh, de gustibus non est disputandum. Unfortunately for all of you, it closed on that day. After that exhibit, I saw muppets. Yes, there's an exhibit about Jim Henson at the Smithsonian. You have until October 5. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's under the garden between the Sackler and the African Art Museum (which I've now been in, but still haven't seen any exhibits, not because I don't like black people, but because I haven't yet found anyone who wants to go with me). Time Piece, his Oscar-nominated short film, is included in its entirety (and it was a bizarre and funny movie), along with many of his 8 second adverts for things that are awesome in their bizarreness. And, of course, there's a Bert and Ernie, a Rowlf, a Kermit, assorted other characters, a couple fraggles (which made me extremely happy and I came very close to singing the theme song when it was shown during a documentary on Henson), and some very, very cool Dark Crystal artwork and props. Basically, if you are my age, you will love the exhibit. If you are younger, you will love it.

Wag of my finger for Netflix, Tip of my hat to the National Geographic Society Museum

Due to Netflix being a bunch of annoying people, I didn't get movies I should have, so I caught up on TV (Generation Kill is not as good as The Wire, but still a very watchable and good show, along with some great lines), watched an old movie I hadn't seen in a while (The 39 Steps, while excellent from a cinematic standpoint, still has a practically neanderthalithic sense of gender roles in that every woman with more than a line or two is either stabbed, beaten, or portrayed to be an idiot in the movie, sometimes all of them, and really, it's not like Hitchcock was always the most progressive when it comes to female characters, with Mrs. Smith enjoying the rape at the end of Mr. & Mrs. Smith (not the one with Brangelina)), and went to a museum. That last one was the National Geographic Society Museum, which I thought was a little small, but was pretty neat. One exhibit was on Zheng He, the most famous Chinese explorer. Basically, he sailed all over the Indian Ocean, being kind of awesome, even while being a Muslim Eunuch. The exhibit had a bunch of maps (one of which was nigh impenetrable, even for someone who knew exactly what it was supposed to be of), models of the ships they think he sailed on, some china from the time, and modern day photos of places he visited. The other main exhibit there was on Shaolin monks, with photographs of them practicing. And most of the monks were 33rd generation or the like. That's pretty amazing. I wanted this photo, but look at that price: $600! I do not have that kind of money to spend on a photo. 50 DVDs, on the other hand... The exhbits are only there for a few more weeks, so you don't have much time.

Kill!, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, & Hyperculture

Kill! is based on the same novel as Sanjuro (about which I wrote "Sanjuro was good, but not as good as Yojimbo. It was funnier, but a little too preachy. Still, a mediocre Kurosawa film is better than the best of most other directors. The ending blood was completely out of character for the movie, but it was ok." when I saw it back in 2003), and was directed by Kihachi Okamoto, who also did Sword of Doom. This was pretty funny, but not nearly as good as Sanjuro. Mainly due to the two leads not being Mifune and Nakadai, the two best actors of their generation in Japan.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (no, I didn't rewatch the movie, I read the novel) is a book by Dai Sijie, who was sent to be reeducated, and ended up going to France to write this novel in French, which was then translated into English. So this was doubly translated, although once by the author himself. The story was still heartbreaking, although the added bit about the Three Gorges Dam wasn't from the book, but it probably needed a little extra due to the lack of that much movie in the relatively short book. It certainly could have worked, but it needed an ending. It could have ended like the book, but that's not going to bring the kind of closure that most movie goers expect.

I also wrote up the Hyperculture exhibit at the Kennedy Center, so if, for some reason, you read this blog, but not that blog, this is my time to tell you to read that one. It has robots, koi, polka-dots, and me almost falling asleep in public.

And, for those who care, apparently the Edison Chen sex scandal may be over, just like the writer's strike! Boo-yay!

Dirty Pictures, Marie Antoinette, 1776, & The Weather Underground

Dirty Pictures was a movie by Showtime made ten years after the events depicted: the Mapplethorpe/Contemporary Arts Center trial in Cincinnati. Of course I was interested in seeing this, since I actually remember this whole thing. I am pretty sure my parents went to see the exhibit. The pictures themselves are really nothing more than typical porn, with the exception of the urolagnia picture and the two "child porn" ones, of which neither are anything more than a typical picture of a kid in a bathtub, which I'm sure most people have. Just because you see a penis doesn't make it erotic. Just take a look at, say, Ken Davitian in Borat. He's naked, and man is he not attractive. Unless you're into overweight bears. I've gone off topic. The film is quite well done, with real interviews interspersed with reenactments. And I'm, of course, completely sympathetic to the film, with its message of free speech, along with the dangerous threat of the bringing of completely spurious lawsuits that go to trial because of biases. There's also the epilogue of the creepy People for Community Values guy explaining why these lawsuits without merit are brought, along with the threats made against those willing to put up art. Just made me frustrated. I hate me some bigots.

Marie Antoinette has a good soundtrack, but ultimately disappointed me. I get that Marie-Antoinette may have been a young woman who didn't really understand anything outside of her life. Then again, it fits in perfectly with Coppola's other films, with a young woman struggling with her location in life. And this has outstanding costume design, well deserving of its oscar, no matter how stupid that "it's literally a feast for the eyes" line in the telecast was. Really it's just not as good as I was hoping, even if I'm not entirely sure how to make it better. There already was a monkey in it.

1776 was long, the songs were boring or stupid, and beh to it all. Yeah, that's all you get 1776. I'll give you three sentences.

The Weather Underground is an interesting look at a violent leftist organization that bombed many establishment places to protest violence against blacks or Vietnam and the like. I really didn't know very much about them, so it was nice to learn a lot. Also, Ian MacKaye, Jerry Busher, Amy Domingues, and Brendan Canty were involved in the music for it, giving it that added bit of DC indie rock cred. The music is reminiscent of Philip Glass's scores for Errol Morris's films, so I bet it was successful in that plan.