CityHangover Miscellany
Because I can.
The Mummy: I neglected to mention a curious site in Budapest in my week(end) in review - St. Stephen's Basilica. For those of you who've done the whole Europe backpacking thing (for you silver spoon types, that's the Europe luxury hotel and rolling luggage thing), you've surely seen your fair share of Catholic churches. Those Catholics really had Europe on lock down! Anyway, St. Stephen's Basilica is a lot like other catholic churches, with one exception. It houses a true national treasure - King Saint Stephen's mummified hand. Seriously. This hand is well traveled, too, having been sneaked out of the basilica during WWII for protection. (I suggested that maybe some guy had pulled his sleeve over his hand and used St. Stephen's as his own to sneak it out, but my travel cohorts quickly shot that down.) I'm admittedly unsure of why Steve's hand merited mummification, but much of Catholicism leaves me similarly confused. Evidently for 60 HUF (eh, 25 cents) you can get one of the church's minions to light the thing up. I wasn't aware of this, so I'll always remember Steve-O's hand as resembling a prop from Tales from the Crypt. No offense.
Tourney Pool: Remember when I mentioned that I had organized an NCAA tourney pool for my London colleagues? And remember when I posted an excerpt from an email wherein one of my colleagues shared her tourney favorite - the New York Knicks? Well, friends, I have some news to share. Said colleague is currently in 3rd place in our pool (there are 29 of us), and she has a damn good shot of winning the whole thing. I spent the first 20 minutes at work on Friday morning feeling pretty emasculated, but I've since decided that I was simply hustled. (As Ice Cube, and subsequently Bel Biv Devoe, said "Don't trust a big butt with a smile". Have truer words ever been spoken?) I'm currently avoiding any responsibility for my own 2nd quartile performance. Instead, I'm blaming it all on Adam "trash stache" Morrison and his Gonzaga Bulldogs. How the hell do you lose a game in which you were up by 17, and actually leading for the first 39 (of 40) minutes? That ain't right.
Movies: I recently saw a great movie, called Hidden (Caché). I highly recommend it, although be aware that it is devoid of a clean-cut Hollywood ending. The premise is pretty simple - a well off family begins to receive videotapes in the mail which basically show their home being watched. The film is about the slow unraveling of the family as they search to understand where these tapes are coming from. One of the best films I've seen in a while.
Music: I've been in a bit of a lull when it comes to new music, which has resulted in far too much iPod airtime for bands like Wilco and Sufjan Stevens. To freshen things up, I went on an iTunes rampage today. I'm not sure if this was a good thing, though. After a few hours of Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket, and The New Pornographers, I kind of feel like slitting my wrists.
The Mummy: I neglected to mention a curious site in Budapest in my week(end) in review - St. Stephen's Basilica. For those of you who've done the whole Europe backpacking thing (for you silver spoon types, that's the Europe luxury hotel and rolling luggage thing), you've surely seen your fair share of Catholic churches. Those Catholics really had Europe on lock down! Anyway, St. Stephen's Basilica is a lot like other catholic churches, with one exception. It houses a true national treasure - King Saint Stephen's mummified hand. Seriously. This hand is well traveled, too, having been sneaked out of the basilica during WWII for protection. (I suggested that maybe some guy had pulled his sleeve over his hand and used St. Stephen's as his own to sneak it out, but my travel cohorts quickly shot that down.) I'm admittedly unsure of why Steve's hand merited mummification, but much of Catholicism leaves me similarly confused. Evidently for 60 HUF (eh, 25 cents) you can get one of the church's minions to light the thing up. I wasn't aware of this, so I'll always remember Steve-O's hand as resembling a prop from Tales from the Crypt. No offense.
Tourney Pool: Remember when I mentioned that I had organized an NCAA tourney pool for my London colleagues? And remember when I posted an excerpt from an email wherein one of my colleagues shared her tourney favorite - the New York Knicks? Well, friends, I have some news to share. Said colleague is currently in 3rd place in our pool (there are 29 of us), and she has a damn good shot of winning the whole thing. I spent the first 20 minutes at work on Friday morning feeling pretty emasculated, but I've since decided that I was simply hustled. (As Ice Cube, and subsequently Bel Biv Devoe, said "Don't trust a big butt with a smile". Have truer words ever been spoken?) I'm currently avoiding any responsibility for my own 2nd quartile performance. Instead, I'm blaming it all on Adam "trash stache" Morrison and his Gonzaga Bulldogs. How the hell do you lose a game in which you were up by 17, and actually leading for the first 39 (of 40) minutes? That ain't right.
Movies: I recently saw a great movie, called Hidden (Caché). I highly recommend it, although be aware that it is devoid of a clean-cut Hollywood ending. The premise is pretty simple - a well off family begins to receive videotapes in the mail which basically show their home being watched. The film is about the slow unraveling of the family as they search to understand where these tapes are coming from. One of the best films I've seen in a while.
Music: I've been in a bit of a lull when it comes to new music, which has resulted in far too much iPod airtime for bands like Wilco and Sufjan Stevens. To freshen things up, I went on an iTunes rampage today. I'm not sure if this was a good thing, though. After a few hours of Bright Eyes, My Morning Jacket, and The New Pornographers, I kind of feel like slitting my wrists.
posted by cjb at 12:54 AM
2 Comments:
Get down with the new Ghostface record. The shit's awesome.
I haven't seen as much excitement from one man as the evening that Joey downloaded the full Ghostface record. I thought I might have to knock him out before he hurt himself or someone else.
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