224 South Exeter is not that into you... and other stories

unfortunate hair --> responsible man

It has been some time since I've been able to update the doctoroffortune blog, so I'd be surprised if it's still being checked. But, that's primarily because I've been having some fun and doing a few thins (hopefully) worth blogging about. Interestingly, I've also been pressured by friends to get my photos up on Facebook where they're more easily accessible, so it's kind of interesting to think of how the medium changes the message. Blogspot is a little slower in uploading photos, but obviously there's a larger space for narrative. How would this change how you tell a story, or which story you would choose to tell? Looking at what I've chosen to write about, and what pictures I've chosen to upload on Facebook, I think that the blog is more about my experience of the situations, or at least my observations of them, than the situations themselves, which make for better snapshots.

Ants at "Jonestown" They of course have developed some kind of immunity and are now again overrunning my apartment....

In any event, time has flown here. It's hard to believe that I'm having to start thinking about cancelling my salary packaging and so on-- I've not even gotten all the Christmas gifts out! But it has been fun. Below are a few pictures from the Launceston City Park event "Carols by Candlelight." Given the late sunset, it was still pretty sunny out for most of it. Also below are the lyrics of "Six White Boomers," which is about Santa using kangaroos to pull his sleigh. Yeah, no one here knew the words either...

www.tasgreetings.com/boomers.html

There've been a few concerts and so on in Central Park, including Symphony under the Stars, when the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra would play. There was also the Festivale, which was a food/wine tasting shin-dig, at which I saw "Mariachi Australia." Kind of awesome & hysterical. I have Snr. & Snra Marlow to thank that I knew the words to "cellito lindo" and sang along in Tasmania. Life takes you weird places, anyway.

Of course, there are still the things that make me giggle inside. Like, for example, this ad for "homely" accomodation...

As far as the title goes, I'm not a huge fan of romantic comedies in general, but my old roommate Brian let me know about this scene in "He's Just Not That Into You" a few months before it came out. That's right, _before_ it came out. I'd moved up to the Bronx from 224 S. Exeter (or "sex-eter," as I pronounced it) and got the call from him that they were filming a movie and using our house as a location. So I finally got around to checking it out:

It's in this scene, and Jennifer Connelly pulls up outside her (our!) unit in a Baltimore townhouse block, walks up to the door, and -cut!- That's about it. The rest of the interior shots were done elsewhere. But first, a shout out to Little Italy and Vaccaro's cannoli and the bocce courts around the corner. So, apparently what happened was an Assistant Director got Brian's permission to film the facade. Then they came and replaced our rusty mailbox, improved the shaky fence, and put in a new screen door. They filmed the 3 seconds or so of screen time-- then took everything down and put back what was there before. I later learned that the place was supposed to be undergoing renovations in the movie. Ok-- three things. One, if you have to do that much work, why not just pick a door you liked better to begin with. Two, thanks for the comment on my place-- that you had to spruce it up to make it look like it was in need of renovation. And three, can we have some of that stuff back?

More soon....

--andrew s.