The Aerie
Ever since I posted last week that I have a new office with an actual VIEW of downtown, everyone has been writing to me and writing to me, saying "Please, please, post a picture of this fantastic new view that you have!"
Actually that's not true.
Actually, nobody has written to me to ask for a picture of my fantastic new view.
But I figure, hey, I'll nip this possibility in the bud right now. I will pre-emptively post a picture of my new view in order to head off the inevitable flood of e-mails certain to be generated by last week's controversial post.
Of course, to begin with, I need to post you a picture of the old view. Now, the old view was from a cubicle on the 18th floor of the City Center building, a cubicle that II shared with a very nice East Indian fellow. He and I sat nearly elbow to elbow for nearly a year, and I think we exchanged less than 100 words in that time. And really, that was just fine.
Anyway, sitting in that cube, on the 18th floor, my view was what you see to the left. That's because I was sitting deep in a cubicle farm, far from the windows. My employer actually has policy - at least in their City Center building, of prohibiting contractors from sitting near windows. Must be afraid we'll jump out.
They also have a rule requiring us to sit two to a cube. Even when, all around us, are empty non-window cubes. Along with other policies and behaviors, I get the impression that my client wants contractors to feel unwelcome, even shunned. There are people, not everybody, but a lot of them here, who will talk over or ignore contractors who dare to speak during meetings.
I'm not sure why this counterproductive culture exists, but I suspect it has something to do with resenting people who get paid a lot more.
So to be sitting here, alone in a cube, next to a spectactular view of downtown Minneapolis across the Cedar Lake parklands, well, it's downright naughty!
The weekend was largely uneventful, except for the events. Saturday passed in a blur of nonproductivity and procrastination. I wanted, the entire day, to go for a hike, but I kept telling myself that I had too much work to do. So instead of doing the work, I puttered, procrastinated, and finished re-reading the latest "Harry Potter" book.
Sunday I decided resist the urge to go straight to my homework, and forced myself to take a hike along the river bluff. That was a very nice time, although I should have left the camera home. Nothing bad happened, it's just all that much harder when climbing with a walking stick, a camera to catch the colors, a hat, and a cell phone to call for help when I fall and break my leg. But I got a few snapshots which I'll probably link to later.
The problem, of course, is that the colors are always the same, and I always take the same shots of them. This year was a little different because I usually go out along the old railroad bridge to take my pictures, but they have effectively barricaded the railroad bridge against trespassers as part of installing the Midtown Greenway over the summer. The bridge has a remote-controlled gate that the engineer can presumably open and close from the cabin in the oncoming train. The gate spans more than the width of the bridge, and two wing shaped fence panels extend out on either side, making trespass an exercise in acrobatics that most people will eschew.
I will have to cross the river and see if they thought to put the barricade on the other side, or if they only put it on the Greenway end of the bridge.
But I went for my hike, snapped a few pictures, and got home before the rain hit.
Spent the afternoon doing my homework, and did all the assigned reading. Still didn't work on the Degree Program document, however. I'm procrastinating on that thing real good now. Sigh.
In the evening we went to the new Guthrie theater for the first time. It's only a couple miles down West River Road from us now, instead of all the way across town within the nightmare tangle of the Loring Park neighborhood. Having a world-class theater close enough to the house for the kids to bicycle to is a great thing.
The theater building itself, well, let me preface my opinion by saying that I have no education in or knowledge of architecture or theater construction. So, speaking merely as a layman, I have to say that the design of the new Guthrie is simply crap. "How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways..."
It's built right on the Mississippi river, with beautiful views available of downtown and the lights of the east bank warehouse district and the Stone Arch Bridge. Accordingly, whoever the moron architect is decided that the building should be built with the minimum number of windows allowable by law. What windows exist are recessed inside three-foot deep holes in the walls, lined with reflective metal. The building is designed to shun the gorgeous views around it.
Upon entering you find yourself in a tall, narrow aisle or hall leading through the building's center from the river to the street. The ceiling is quite high, but the overall feel of the space is "alley." I kept expecting muggers, or a guy to selling cheap Rolex watches from inside his overcoat.
Upon arrival, the ubiquitous ushers herd everyone onto a ridiculously long escalator up through a dark, narrow chute. I fully expected to be brained at the top like a steer in a slaughterhouse.
Upstairs the ceilings are low and the feel of the place is claustrophobic and cramped. A ramp leads up and out onto the cantilevered walkway, offering narrow slits for viewing the outside world.
The view from the end of the walkway is worth the trip - once out in the fresh air there is a marvelous view of the river and downtown. A pity that the only decent view in the building has to be stuck way out at the end of a pier to nowhere. When I was there it was mainly being used, not by smokers, but by folks trying to get a decent cell phone signal: apparently the interior of the Guthrie is not cell-friendly, which isn't an altogether bad thing unless you're waiting for a kidney.
The one sensible thing that they've done with the interior is added a sizable bar and restaurant area on the top floor. The worst part about the old theater was that intermission involved waiting in lines first to dispose of your prior drinks and then to obtain and finish your next one. I haven't used the restaurant yet, but it seems a reasonable addition that would allow theatergoers to sit down for a bite before or after the show.
The theater space we saw (there are three) is very nice, extremely reminiscent of the old Guthrie to the point of deja vu, and without a bad seat or a blocked sightline that I could perceive.
Unfortunately our show was Neil Simon's "Lost in Yonkers." I normally despise Neil Simon anyway, but this show was particularly reprehensible. Maybe it was the fact that nothing happens, storywise: in fact, the play violates Chekov's Law. One character displays a gun in the first act, but the gun is never fired.
There is a character who is pursued by the Mob... but the Mob never appears and the character is never confronted. A sick, widowed father is twice hospitalized with a bad heart... but does not die. A woman threatens to emancipate herself from her mother in pursuit of true love... but manages only in getting the old woman to put up with playing the radio of a Sunday afternoon. And two boys ages 11 and 15 wear the same clothes at the beginning and end of the play - despite the fact that one or both of them would have grown a couple of inches over the 10 months of the play's duration.
It's a stupid, mawkish play about a dysfunctional family, and it offers us a mentally handicapped woman who can't remember that her sister-in-law has died, but "speaks truth to power" by incisively telling off her domineering mother. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama... and it made me want to barf.
Which is not to say that I didn't have a good time: I did. Despising Neil Simon can be entertaining, and it was fun to see the new, abhorrent Guthrie. The actors were okay, except that the lad playing the eldest boy still hasn't learned the difference between bellowing and projecting his lines.
Afterwards we went back to the parking ramp, where I was embarassed to be unable to exit. Embarassed because this was the very first American incarnation of the ramps that I had become accustomed to in Germany - fully automated, with a pay-ticket system upon exiting. I should have remembered this from Europe, but I wasn't expecting it, and so I had to back away from the gate and go pay for parking, much to the annoyance of the folks behind me.
The way these ramps work is, you take your parking tag with you, and when you return you put the tag into a vending-style machine to pay, prior to going back to your car. If, like me, you drive to the exit with an unpaid ticket, it doesn't let you out.
How much harder would it have been, do you suppose, to put a credit card slot in the ticket reader right by the exit?
Ah well.
So all in all a good weekend, except I still haven't gotten my homework done. And now I'm out of the "I need to blog" excuse to save me from having to work on it...
Posted by Albatross at October 9, 2006 2:26 PM | TrackBack