I eventually got to BUR and picked up my ever so sexy white Oldsmobile Alero (don't buy one) and spent about a half hour remembering which was the right direction on the right freeway to get me to Santa Barbara. (I thought I knew where I was going -- and it hurts to forget.) I spent a day in SB and then came back to LA and visited various friends and went to a downtown show -- the kind where you have to find the guy with the flashlight on a streetcorner to tell you where the party is. We saw Particle, one of the High Sierra bands ("Particle will save the world!")

The night after Particle was the reunion which was at the Universal Sheraton and was pretty fun but also pretty weird. I don't know. It seems kind of random that the world would be organized so that you grow up with these same people until you're "an adult" and then you go off and do your own thing and then every 10 years or so you pay 80 bucks and they stick you all in a room together for 4 hours. I guess it was nice. I don't know how else to put it. A bucket of beer helped.

WISCONSIN

In June we went to Wisconsin--for this Tribal Employment Rights Conference that I was attending related to work--but the highlight of that trip was the Circus World Museum in Baraboo. Bob and I have decided that the theme of our life together is going to be to collect weird lands. We've been to Filmpark Babelsberg and AlaskaLand and now the Circus thing. This summer we plan to go to LegoLand. But back to Wisconsin -- for some reason Wisconsin was ground zero for circuses way back in the late 1880's and the Ringling Brothers started out in Baraboo. I have circus people in my blood -- really I have the oddest collection of genetics, you could not make this up. But really there is a circus Renz in Europe. So at CircusWorld they have all kinds of historical stuff, great presentation and then they have this mini--circus--land amusement park and we saw the juggling show and the circus show with tightrope walkers and the girl in the spangly leotard who dangles on a rope (and also does the face painting) and a performance by what has got to be the oldest performing elephant in the country. It was awesome.

MY CHOICES FOR 2002:

I loved Amelie, we had The Mummy on DVD as a gift or something and I stuck it in the player to check it out and was surprised how much fun it was, The Claim (heavy viewing but beautiful film), Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (one of the most amazing films I have every seen. After it was over Bob and I kept looking at each other and saying, "do you believe what we just saw?" And for the Indian writers conference this year we had some women from Fairbanks and apparently this film was like the hot ticket in Fairbanks and playing to packed theaters.) For our anniversary Bob took me to Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast, and lately we've seen Frida, which is fabulous and I saw Skinwalkers on PBS. Of course Attack of the Clones which I only saw a measly 5 times and I liked a lot, I loved Anakin. but it's awfully long and with all the trailers and commercials the damn theater tacks on it takes half the day to see it and I have other things I'm working on. I still haven't managed to get out and see the IMAX version but next week ... . And then there's The Two Towers which I keep thinking of as Episode 2.

It's fabulous. Stop what you're doing right now and go see it.

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PHOTOGRAPH: CircusWorld Photographer: Random Person

This page was made on December 20, 2002. Featured artist: 3 Doors Down. Featured beverage: wine.

Posted: 12.20.02
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