Sunday morning reading

Movie critic A.O. Scott sends memos to Hollywood to try to spork it out of its collective stupor. Funny and true.

An examination of President Obama as college professor in context of the Supreme Court nominations to come.

Maureen Dowd on the Republican party's floundering and the Professor in Chief.

Yeah, I'm a whore for The New York Times. You can take the girl out of New York...

In other news, the West Seattle Blog is running a photograph I took of the Alaskan Way viaduct in context of the nightmare that will be traffic today here in town. (For the out-of-towners: Today is Opening Day for boaters. In this town surrounded by water and filled with draw bridges, there will be long waits in favor of marine traffic.) I think it's a pretty boring shot, but out of all the West Seattle photographs I recently took, that's the one they wanted to use. I'm not complaining.

This week, This American Life featured Dan Savage and Joss Whedon. Did you hear it? Doesn't look like it's been archived online yet, but watch the site; should be coming soon.

Sunday afternoon overthinking

Overthinking, as usual.

Spent the morning with my friend BC in Ballard: We had a tasty brunch at Vera's and then strolled through the Sunday Market.

Generally speaking, I'm not a terribly shy person. But somehow, if I have my camera with me, I get shy pretty damn quick and I'm not sure why. It might have to do with the fact that I've spent so much time by myself. It might have to do with my often having used my camera as a sort of filter in situations I think are cool but in which I'm uncertain how to interact. Take a look at some of my Flickr sets--I rarely take pictures of people unless they're people I know. Having BC with me for moral support (though I'm not certain he understood that to be part of his role this morning), I managed to unclamp my otherwise usually loose lips, talk to folks and take some pictures of stuff I don't usually shoot: people. There are only a few, though. The doggies were out in the market today--Seattle does love its dogs--and a couple of them had wonderful character. I think the doggie shots are my favorites. Here's the set, including a couple of shots of my friend of years, BC.