197. The dying of the light of the world

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House

Now I'm watching the second season of House (they didn't have season one), but what I want to talk about is opening credits. The NCIS credits are fine, but nothing special. Castle credits have better music and a more artistic visual presentation -- I'm sure a lot of thought and talent went into creating them. But the opening credits for House are perfection.

The music is a sample from a Massive Attack song that I like better than the song. The visuals are so simple and elegant, just a few well chosen still frames. It looks like a really talented person threw it together over a couple hours, instead of being the work of a committee that went through a dozen iterations. (I stress "looks like" here.)

With the other shows, I would click through to where the show resumed, after watching all the way through once, but I've yet to do that with House. I watch the credits all the way through they are so well done.

Weather

It was still over 80 F when I went to bed last night, so I ran my ceiling fan all night. But this morning there are clouds in the sky and it's cooler. 

Now, a day later, it's even cooler, but still not normal. Our marine layer is due to return tomorrow. This has made for a distinctive Labor Day weekend, so unlike the rest of the summer. Makes for an odd sort of staycation where home (SF) has felt like someplace else, and routines have been broken because of the heat. There were a few occasions when I sought out places with air conditioning, but more often I've found places where I could be exposed to the non-icy air -- especially late afternoon, early evening. My windows at home have been open for days on end -- almost unprecedented, at least for this year.

Nob Hill

Speaking of home: Last week someone in my San Francisco History group on Facebook posted a photo of Nob Hill -- a block away from my building -- from the 19th century. It drove me nuts. I knew there was something wrong with it but it took me way too long to realized that it was flipped horizontally.

I wonder if the ability to flip an image in your mind, and make sense of it, is related to the ability to read upside down? I wonder if Temple Grandin could have flipped it instantly and "seen" rather than slowly deducted the way it should have appeared. 

In my defense, all the buildings are different now and I only had the slopes and cable car tracks to work with, but those are pretty clear clues. And I now know that the site that is due to be turned into a new condo project, has been extensively excavated -- but that is true for most of this part of Nob Hill. Another photo from that group showed the hill before it was excavated for the Flood Mansion and Fairmont Hotel. I'm still looking for a good view of the area around Pine and Mason, but none of the Nabobs built mansions there, so it doesn't usually appear in photos. I'm pretty sure Pine street would have been entirely inside the hill originally. I would love to know how thick the walls and ceiling of the tunnel would have been.

The Light of the World

Finished. I slowed down at the end because I didn't want it to end. While it's Elizabeth Alexander's book, it is mostly about Ficre Ghebreyesus. I'm pretty sure, had I ever met him, we would have talked each other's ears off, we are both interested in so many things. But what makes the story even more interesting is the ways we are unlike.

He was far more social than I am, so much the family man both in the nuclear and the extended and virtual sense. I envy that aspect of his life, in the same way I envy the exciting sex lives of the famous and beautiful -- without particularly wanting to join in (seems like an awful lot of work. I'm just lazy.)

What I would like to talk to Ficre about is colonialism. For him, Italian culture seems to have been almost as important as his highland, Eritrean culture. This is something I'm not likely to get through Elizabeth, as her version would be filtered through her African American perspective. 

But her writing is lovely and I hope to read more of her poetry -- though poetry isn't usually my thing. I will be re-reading as much as I can in the next five days. And on the sixth day I'll be working Opera In the Park, or "Caterwauling in Sharon Meadow," as I tend to think of it. 

House, take two

What I wrote above about the opening credits was entirely from memory, and was nearly entirely wrong. There are a couple short video clips in the sequence. The "stills" are really animations, though sometimes involving still images. In other words there was a great deal more work here than I was thinking. Still very well done but not something even a genius could do in a couple hours.