Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!

Of course there was an entire exhibit devoted to Monty Python, and explaining, with some pride I think, how junk email came to be called Spam.

Flashback: Polish TV

This is really a flashback. I took this picture off the television in my hotel room in Krakow in 1995—in case it's not obvious, it's the Polish version of Wheel of Fortune.

Lights, camera, action

I was going to call this urban poetry, but it isn't really, even by my very loose definition.

I went to a television taping last week -- one of the perks of being retired in New York -- and these are the lights on the ceiling of the studio.

It was fun, and they gave everyone in the audience a huge bag of L'Oreal products, so I won't be running out of shampoo any time in the next year.

Really, it was Papa-mania

The TV in the cafe, like every other TV I saw that week, was tuned to non-stop coverage of the Pope's visit.

(The chyron, in case you can't see it, asks Why isn't the Pope going to Argentina?)

See what I mean about Alaska?

This is the view of the valley at Thingvellir.

Because the landscape is such a chameleon, a lot of movies and tv shows are filmed here, pretending to be anywhere from Nepal to Iwo Jima to imaginary planets. In Game of Thrones everything north of the Wall is actually Iceland, and the landscape Arya wanders through with the Hound was filmed here in Thingvellir.

Urban poetry

In honor of the new season of Mad Men, they installed this rather odd bench in the middle of a plaza on Sixth Avenue. I like the bench itself, with that cool Don Draper silhouette; it's just an odd location.

Maybe they put it there because they wanted people to see it, but didn't want anyone to actually sit on it. And I've yet to see anyone do so. It's facing the traffic, and too close to the curb, and feels like it's unanchored, just floating in the middle of concrete space. Whereas if it was turned around to face the fountain, and closer to the water, it would be a real bench, but people walking past would never notice it.

Last Week Tonight

I admit, I have learned to like my iPhone.

I like that I can dictate texts instead of typing them on that awful virtual keyboard (so a plus for voice recognition, a minus for awful keyboard.) I like the way my bookmarks from my laptop sync automatically. I like the way I was able to tell Siri, "restaurant called Bijou SW Third in Portland" and she came right back with the address and didn't add, "You're standing across the street from it, moron."

But so far I do not love the camera. Half the time I switch it to video without intending to, and the quality of the pictures is disappointing for anything except portraits.

This picture, for example, which I took standing in line for a taping of John Oliver's HBO show last night. The lack of details reminded me of my first digital camera and those whopping 640K images I thought were so amazing, and I ended up flattening and blurring the image just to make it look intentional.

John Oliver is, as expected, very funny and extremely charming in that uniquely English way that makes vague dorkishness adorable instead of annoying. During the Q&A before the taping, he was asked questions like, "Is there any story you didn't get to cover that you wished you could have?" and "Who was the best guest you had?" and he pointed out that this was only his 13th episode and he'd only had two guests so far, and since they only cover one big story per show, yes, there were many stories they hadn't been able to cover. One man asked him, "Kiss, marry, kill -- Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher" and he said, "This is HBO. You can say 'fuck,'" and immediately took a question from the other side of the room.

Just as the lights went down for the actual taping he said, "Fuck -- Jon Stewart. Marry -- Jon Stewart. Kill -- also Jon Stewart, so we could die at the same moment." After a pause, he added, "I think that's the creepiest thing I've ever said." And then he jumped right into the show.