Saturday, May 31, 2008

Racial understanding in Oregon

The Times has reported on the Restorative Listening Project in Portland, Oregon, which aims to increase understanding between the races on gentrification and other divisive issues. Looks like it’s working already:

Last month, Joan Laufer, who is white and who moved into a house in Northeast in 2006, stood up to express gratitude to a black minister for describing how hard it was for blacks to get home improvement loans and for addressing some sensitive stereotypes.

“I’ve learned two things about all you guys already — why the houses aren’t fixed up and why you guys are riding around in all these big flashy cars,” Ms. Laufer, 55, a nurse practitioner, said.

At one point, she also asked blacks what she should call them — blacks or African-Americans.

An older black woman in the front replied, “People.”

Friday, May 30, 2008

Edward Wisner’s fountain

Many thanks to the reader in New Orleans who noticed my post on Edward Wisner and commented on it. He sent this photo later, taken during a scavenger hunt, and added, “After reviewing the photo again, I realized that it must be the fountain that you mention in the article. It’s located in West End Park near where the Southern Yacht Club was located (the yacht club was destroyed by fire in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina). In fact, that whole area was heavily damaged by the storm surge. “

I enjoy the wetland motif of lily pads and cattails that was used to create this memorial fountain. Maybe someday I can see it in person.

Thursday, May 29, 2008

What should I pay for that condo?

Renting isn’t necessarily for dummies, according to a new article in the Times. As the article says (apologies for those who can’t access it):

One of the big lies of the real estate business is the idea that renting a home is tantamount to throwing money away. It’s a useful fiction for real estate agents, because they make vastly bigger commissions on house sales than rentals. But the comparison isn’t nearly so straightforward for the rest of us.

Renting involves one obvious, recurring cost that can never be recouped: the monthly rent check. Buying, on the other hand, involves multiple expenses, some of which aren’t so obvious. On top of closing costs, there are repairs, property taxes, mortgage principal and mortgage interest. (The mortgage-interest tax deduction reduces this last cost but doesn’t eliminate it.) When you own, you also lose the ability to invest your down payment elsewhere, like the stock market.

So where’s the break-even point? At what point does it become more expensive to rent than to buy? The article says it’s roughly the point where a property costs more than 20 times the annual rent for the same property. So if your apartment rents for $2,000 a month, you shouldn’t pay more than $480,000 to buy it.

There are lots of variables to consider, of course, and the Times provides this nifty online calculator to play with them.

Amazingly Very Clean!

That’s what the poster says at my local dry cleaner: “Platinum Shirt Service, Amazingly Very Clean!”

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Iron Man

An email from a friend contains what I thought was an insightful review of Iron Man. Here it is:

I enjoyed IRON MAN.

Well, actually, I didn’t enjoy Iron Man the hero—or Iron Man the computer-generated special effect—or even IRON MAN the movie as a whole—but I loved watching Robert Downey Jr as the solipsistic Tony Stark, hellbent on reinventing himself as Iron Man: it’s a funny and nuanced bit of business, beautifully handled by a brilliant comic actor.

The best scenes are those in which Tony is alone in the garage-cum-laboratory—alone except for JARVIS (and that sophisticated fire extinguisher that is seemingly made to do only one thing—extinguish fires—and just won’t leave the stage until it’s had the chance to fulfill its destiny as a fire extinguisher). My favorite line is Tonys’s remark after being borne aloft—magically—by boots of his own design, skittering around the room, and then coming in for a wobbly two-point landing:

“OK, I can fly.”

He’s just performed a technological miracle, but his mind is racing ahead to the next challenge, the next step in becoming Iron Man. He’s a genius who takes no pleasure in his genius, he’s too busy looking ahead to the next thing. This is all conveyed to the audience in a line or two and in an attitude, with a brilliant economy and flair.

(I also liked the funny-tender scene in which Pepper Potts helps Tony replace the little “arc-reactor cup thing” that keeps his heart beating. I liked it because it was intimate in a yucky way, yucky in an intimate way, and the partly improvised dialogue both funny and sexy, in the old-fashioned, Katharine Hepburn and Jimmy Stewart, screwball comedy style. And because it was something fun and unexpected that arose out of the material—and, in the end, proved anything but gratuitous to the storyline.)

I read online that the sequel is scheduled for April 2010; I hope that now that all the throat-clearing exposition has been accomplished the writers can craft a really good movie out the world they’ve created, the way they did for SPIDER-MAN 2 (the Dr. Octopus chapter, which was the best of the lot, don’t you think?). They just can’t forget that what is really compelling about Iron Man is the actor in the suit, not the suit itself, or the physical punishment it can take . . .