This post title is dedicated to Carrie’s performance reading of the blurbs from The Peridale Cafe Mystery series.
Our selfie with Bassem Youssef
Last night we went down to Hyde Park with Jason and Carrie for a screening of Tickling Giants, a documentary about ‘the Jon Stewart of Egypt’, Bassem Youssef, and his satirical TV show Al Bernameg which ran from 2011 to 2014. The comparison with The Daily Show is appropriate because Youssef was openly inspired by Stewart, but also underplays the phenomenon of Al Bernameg which at its height drew an audience of 30 million out of a total Egyptian population of 82 million.
The film runs through the show’s beginnings on YouTube amid the protests which toppled Mubarak, its glory days under the unpopular (though elected) Morsi and then growing intimidation and finally cancellation once General Sisi comes to power. ‘Cancellation’ is a mild word, but it comes about through protesters outside the studio chanting for Youssef’s death, the arrest of the crew’s family members, the scrambling of the satellite transmission and finally a warrant for the arrest of Youssef himself, who instead flees to the US with his wife and young daughter. And all the while, Youssef and his amazing team of young writers and other crew battle on for their right to satirise the news. When Stewart refers to himself as ‘America’s Bassem Youssef’ towards the end, he’s not really joking.
Youssef himself was at the screening for Q&A, book signing and self-taking opportunities. Unsurprisingly he is intensely charismatic and funny. Oh, and he’s also a surgeon. So if you get a chance, definitely go check out Tickling Giants.
Enjoying the sun with Francisco
La Scarola with Billy and Taylor
Other stuff! After too long a gap we had a reunion with Billy and Taylor at La Scarola, and enjoyed catching up so much that Randi forgot to eat any of her food. We also celebrated Catherine’s birthday with much luxuorious foundue at Geja’s (where no one forgot to eat anything), took advantage of the sunshine while Francisco was in town to wander around Lincoln Park, tricked an unsuspecting group of friends into watching Channel 4’s Naked Attraction (sorry about that) and celebrated heartily on Friday night at Paul Ryan’s big fat healthcare failure. With Indian food, as you do.
Randi and I also decided to expand our pitiful film watching a little. I picked Gladiator because I’d had several “you’ve never seen Gladiator?!” moments recently… and it was fine. An enjoyable 155 minutes, for me at least, although I kept stupidly expecting a scene where everyone would defiantly claim to be Spartacus. Turns out that was in Spartacus. Randi’s choice, Spotlight, was a more unanimous success, although it must be said that the more sobering part of watching a film about brave investigative journalists expose the cover-up of child abuse within the Catholic Church is not the story itself – which I sorta already knew – but the nagging feeling of “wait, who’s paying for investigative journalists anymore?”.
Since Jason and I live half an hour away from each other in Chicago, it seemed only natural to hang out by both flying to Denver at different times and overlapping for a day. So that is what we did. Welcome to Colorado!
Misty mountains
At the (real) summit
Once reunited in Denver, we drove (by which I mean ‘Jason drove’) to Boulder on Saturday morning and then selected a ‘medium+’ hike up Mount Sanitas for a decent morning walk. (The city of Boulder bothered me for a bit because I couldn’t work out why I would have heard of it before, until I realised it is the same Boulder which rhymes with ‘shoulder’ in the Chainsmokers song.)
Once Mount Sanitas had been suitably ascended we moved on to the Red Rock Amphitheatre, which seems like a nice place to see a concert, before enjoying some of Denver’s craft beer and the company of Jason’s friend Raj. Had I wanted to enjoy some of Denver’s other highlights (bad cannabis puns are obligatory!) then that would have been very easy too, as weed shops are just about everywhere. (And for fans of intricate local tax policies, fear not, they cater for you too.)
The stage at the Red Rock Amphitheatre
On Sunday I roamed the city by myself taking in the semi-pedestrianised downtown LoDo area, a great creole breakfast place, the Coors Field baseball stadium, a nice city park and a full three branches of the Tattered Cover bookshop. This makes a truly excellent place to sit with a cup of tea, amongst all of the beautiful books, and read a Kindle.
I also went to the Botanic Gardens, where I learnt all about trichomes (i.e. hairy leaves) from a patient woman at the Science Chats table within the Science Pyramid. Full credit to the Botanic Gardens for being enthusiastic about their Science, but I couldn’t help feeling a little sorry for the person who ends up taking the Sunday morning slot on the Science Chats rota. So that her teaching doesn’t go to waste, let me assure you that most plants have surprisingly hairy leaves, and that looking at them under a microscope is cool.
I wouldn’t say the Botantical Gardens was ‘in season’, but this was pretty
LoDo, Denver
Travel by train! Admittedly only a train to the airport, but still.
Finally, I wanted to lavish praise on the city of Denver for connecting their faraway airport to the centre of the city via a fast and frequent train ride costing $9. Good job!
I made it to Florida!
Blending in
OK, so I made it to Florida in 1993. But that doesn’t count for the purpose of my scratch map since I wasn’t blogging anything at the time, and my main memory is getting yelled at by my parents just because I tried to stick my hairbush into the electrical socket. So last week I tried again, visiting Randi’s cousins in the Miami area. Special thanks to Sandy, Corey, Logan and Landon for hosting us, especially as their back garden looks like this:
Not too shabby
Also pretty nice at sunset
As always, places which are luxurious to visit do not always make for practical living. On the first day we lazed by the pool until lunchtime when we decided to pop out for a bite. The nearest restaurant was an hour’s walk away, during which we saw precisely zero other people on the pavement. (To be fair, at least there was pavement the whole way… I’m looking at you, Skokie.) On the way back, the security guard at the entrance to the estate looked astonished that anyone might turn up on foot, waving us through the gate built for cars with the uncertain salutation to “walk safely, I guess…?”.
I call it the milk test: never live anywhere which isn’t a 10 minute walk away from a shop selling milk.
At the beach
The next day we hung out in Miami Beach, which is technically a different ‘city’ to Miami but is (a) just over the bridge (b) probably what most tourists think is Miami anyway. Unsurprising it is warm, sunny and wonderful to walk down the public beach, admire the historic art deco hotels and wash down Cuban food with a pitcher of sangria. Much more surprisingly, but somehow even better, is the fact that the city is dotted with free public suncream dispensers! Suddenly this seems like the most obvious thing in the world, and I am surprised I have never seen it before.
Miami, you’ve impressed me with your public health programme.
Free suncream!
The Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach
More soberingly, we also visited the city’s Holocaust Memorial. There isn’t much to say abut this other than it’s worth seeing if you are ever in the area. (Especially if you have a job in the Trump administration.)
Later, we briefly stopped by Miami-proper to visit the Wynwood Walls before going home. On Saturday, it was time for a brand new American experience: the high school ‘track meet’. I’m starting to doubt myself, but I’m pretty sure this is not the norm for the UK. I mean, sure, there was a low-key school football team and I’m sure some of their parents and friends turned up for matches. But this is a different level of school pride, which is both kinda nice and rather strange. (Doesn’t school stop at the weekends?) Either way, we got to see Landon’s relay team triumph in their race (go Sharks!) before recuperating from all of this vicarious exercise at the beach club.
Automation in action
Sportz
More sportz
The Cat in the Hat
Wait, who is that adorable child up above? She is Randi’s newest cousin, and reason enough to visit. As a bonus we got to spend our final day with her and her dad Greg at a free Dr. Seuss festival, hanging out with the Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and Thing 2. I’ll be honest: as a child, I wasn’t a fan of their anarchic ways, and was very much on the side of the law-abiding fish instead. But I suspect we have both mellowed over time, especially now that the Cat in the Hat has all of these public appearances to make.
Florida = done. Again.
Hamilton
I know you read this blog for its hip cultural commentary, so let me take you to the very cutting edge of 2015 and tell you about this musical Hamilton…
Yes, OK, I’m not breaking new ground here. But after picking up some spare tickets from Jason back in August (thanks!) I finally got to see it for myself tonight, and it was totally worth the wait. It’s enormous fun, full of life and takes aim at (highly overrated) Thomas Jefferson… what more do you want from a night out? I highly recommend extending some Hamilton-style credit to secure a ticket and then passing the following months by reading up on The Federalist before you go. (Or you could just listen to the songs like everyone else does.)
Oh, and George III has great dress sense.
Last Friday night I also saw A Disappearing Number, a play about the (entirely self-taught) Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan and his collaboration with G.H. Hardy at Cambridge in the 1910s. I haven’t seen such a celebration of pure mathematics since Mr. Bauer jumped on the table of our GCSE class, and it was wonderful. Ramanujan’s most famous equation demonstrates that the infinite sum of 1+2+3… etc. is ‘equal’ to –1⁄12, and I found this baffling enough to do some extensive research ask Katie for help. She pointed me to a controversial Numberphile video, and naturally I shared this with Jason and Carrie the next day (poor things had no idea what they were letting themselves in for). Jason took offence at some of the mathematical slights of hand, and before you know it I had to summon Katie onto Skype and hold up bits of paper with equations written out for her to judge.
Katie tries to bring peace
If you’re out there, theatre people, you should feel very proud of the reaction you caused.
Finally, on Saturday night it was a pleasure to watch The Godfather at Todd and Carolyn’s in a much overdue Salon with Robert and Julie plus the much-missed Shelby and Benno. Todd served us up a delicious meal beforehand, as we sat around a proper table drinking proper wine and talking about proper adult things. And while my main memory of The Godfather from six years ago (I checked) is that it’s a bloody long film, Randi and I both enjoyed it much more than we expected this time around, and we’re already agitating for the sequel.
Addendum
Starved Rock
Some late-night blogging was necessary yesterday in order to jot this all down before flying off to <mystery destination> tonight. Unfortunately, this also introduced a few errors. Not only did I misstate the sum of Ramanujan’s infinite series (now corrected) but I also neglected our weekend trip with Randi’s mum to the Starved Rock state park. We stayed overnight at an AirBnB in the ‘city’ of Henry, Illinois… you can tell it’s not a real city because the owner told us that we were free to lock the front door at night if we wanted to, as if it were a foreign superstition she was happy to indulge but didn’t really understand. Oh, and the park was sunny! Sunny and warm and full of people, only a few of whom choosing to play music out loud from speakers as they walked around.
Donald Trump isn’t good for much, but he has undoubtedly improved Second City. It’s been a few years since I last saw a show there (and yes, that’s a strange thing to write) but I went back earlier this month and the whole thing is much tighter, angrier and more coherent than it used to be. I found it funnier as a result, too, though I’m sure it’s more polarising than the grab bag assortment of sketches which it used to be. Randi and I went with Villy (last seen in London) and her mother, both of whom belong to the comforting class of people who understand visa rules and immigration law in casual conversation.
Randi and Villy and books
In the past few weeks I also made two important introductions which have been a long time in the making. Firstly, at long last, Todd has sat down and watched an episode of Doctor Who. In an attempt to appeal to him as a television connoisseur I opted for the very first one, in all of its magnificent black and white glory from 1963. It’s just so good! While at Todd and Carolyn’s I also fulfilled my completionist desire to finish off the Indiana Jones films with Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, even though everyone warned me beforehand that it wasn’t worth it. Everyone was right.
The second introduction needs only this photo:
We finally got Robert to play Carcassonne!
Otherwise I’ve just been catching up on Sherlock with Catherine, booking exciting trips so that future posts can benefit from more interesting photos and celebrating Valentine’s Day at La Scarola, which needs no improvement whatsoever. In a romantic gesture, I muted the ‘glamily’ for the duration of the meal. This is a giant family WhatsApp chat which has also sprung up in recent weeks: 35 somehow-connected cousins around the world draining each others’ battery lives at all hours. It’s great. It’s absurd. This is how cults start. Clearly we need another wedding.
Helen on Getting ready for some adventures in China: “Enjoy China! Look forward to hearing all about it. A young woman who worked on our ‘casuals’ staff whilst going…” Apr 4, 12:34
