adrian is rad

I’m back from London. Did you miss me?

The reason for visit was my cousin’s wedding, but I got to hang out a couple days in the city as well.

London sites:

• Tate Modern Second time I’ve been there. Still a great collection of modern art. There’s quite a lot I like and quite a lot I don’t and quite a lot that I just don’t get.
• British Museum Greek columns? blah. Roman statues, blah. Easter Island statue, pretty cool. History of clocks with running clocks througout? sweet.
• Design Museum I liked this place a lot. I didn’t quite know what to expect because design covers everything from graphic design to product design to industrial design. It ended up being a lot of graphic design and some of the other stuff. An entire exhibit on various ways people get across lots of information in a compact and understandable way.
• London Eye An engineering marvel and a pretty interesting view of London. Go up on a clear day and you’ll see for miles.
• Natural History Museum—Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibit Some really spectacular photographs here. I bought the book with all the photos in it, so I can show you some time. The photos also had all the technical info and descriptions by the photographers as well. The descriptions ranged from “this was my fourth day waiting for this photograph” to “I just turned and there it was.”

Shows:

• National Anthems Three American actors (Kevin Spacey, Steven Webber (I remember him from the show “Wings”) and Mary Stuart Masterson) in an American play about a tremendously American topic on the London stage. I’m not surprised that it wasn’t a full house there. It’s a story about a recently fired firefighter (Spacey) meeting and spending the evening with the new neighbors on the block (Webber and Masterson), who are materialistic keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ sort of people. It all takes place in a suburb of Detroit but there are also many references to Pittsburgh, where Spacey’s character grew up, including Iron City and “yunz.” The acting was amazing. Just spectacular. There was just so much to it and it built up while drawing one in and not overdoing it or breaking the spell (Naomi Watts should take lessons from these people). This was acting as it is supposed to be done. The play itself is quite good and other productions of it might be good.
• the Producers Funny, clever, well-acted (by Lee Evens as Bloom and Brad Oscar as Max, in this version, and supporting roles, especially the swedish bombshell part). Classic Mel Brookes in many ways, reusing some of the same jokes from his movies and things. Deserves the praise and worth seeing.

Movies seen en-route:

• Alfie meh.
• that new Bridget Jones one meh.
• Unforgiven a 1992 effort from, in this case, director, producer, star Clint Eastwood about an old west outlaw that comes back for one last job. I’m not a fan of westerns or the idea of westerns, really… This one has some complex characters and Clint’s great directing and acting. Morgan Freeman is superb as usual. Not a top 10 movie of all time, but certainly quite good.
• Spanglish another Adam Sandler movie that’s not really an Adam Sandler movie (others being the Wedding Singer and Punch Drunk Love). I thought this movie was entertaining and made some interesting points about other cultures in America, especially Latin cultures in America, but in the end, I was put off by the final moral and the heavy-handedness of how it was presented. Definitely not a bad movie to see on a plane though.