Better living through toy robotics.
IKEA, the world’s leading home furnishings retailer, today announced that its Atlanta, GA store will open this Summer on Wednesday, June 29, 2005. The store will be the Swedish company’s 23rd in the U.S. and first in the Southeast. Until IKEA Atlanta opens, the closest IKEA stores are in Houston, TX and Woodbridge, VA.
I can watch the construction from my window at work. I can’t wait.
Well, Corner CD is going out of business. It’s barely worth visiting at this point–over the weekend, all they had left were some posters and a bunch of CDs nobody would ever want. The staff didn’t seem as bitter as I thought they might. I have to admit that, although I like to support small businesses when I can, as a consumer they just didn’t have much to offer. They couldn’t compete with Decatur CD or Criminal Records.
In a fit of local loyalty, though, I made sure to patronize two other businesses by my home that I simply couldn’t live without: Aurora Coffee and the Atlanta Book Exchange.
You truly have not lived until you have freed your car from a solid shell of ice fully one half inch thick. Good times!
This guy took pictures of my neighborhood. You can actually see my building and even one of my windows in the background of one or two of these.
…for jury duty!
This is north side of the Fulton County “Justice Tower” in downtown Atlanta as seen through the LTR PhoneCam.
I got very lucky and only missed one day of work. I am $25 richer and swelling with civic pride.
Michael Chabon’s latest update, on his very own Web site, is filled with nothing but goodness. Buried among the myriad exciting facts and relevations is this:
What else? An apocryphal epilog to The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay can be found, not perhaps without a certain amount of difficulty, in the catalog to an exhibit currently on view at Atlanta’s Breman Museum. I can’t give the title of the exhibit because it’s too embarrassing, though the show itself looks terrific.
Hey, I thought to myself, I LIVE IN ATLANTA! I work three blocks away from said Museum. I’ve been saving it for a rainy weekend, but I think I’ll go soon. Or at least get my hands on the catalog.
Also of note:
Down the road: an introduction to a proposed reissue, by NYRB, of one of the most important books of my childhood, that dark and luminous compendium, the D’Aulaires’ Norse Gods and Giants, which has somehow, shockingly, gone out of print.
This is exciting because I have been annotating Chabon’s Summerland on and off for the past year or two, with the goal of putting it on my Web site to show how cool I am and to attract members of the opposite sex. Recently Chabon namechecked Trickster Makes This World, and I’ve been reading the book with a recognition of its relevance to Summerland, which is a story that mixes baseball with mythology and has an important trickster character. The mythology is partially Norse, so I am very happy to find, in the D’Aulaire book mentioned above, another possible source to apply to my annotations.
And if that wasn’t enough Chabon for you, Scott Esposito recounts Chabon’s one and only appearance for his book, The Final Solution, at Cody’s in California.
At the Breman Museum:
zap! pow! bam! the superhero:
The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938—1950Opening October 24, 2004
The Breman’s unique special exhibition, ZAP! POW! BAM! The Superhero: The Golden Age of Comic Books, 1938—1950, the first in-depth exhibition of its kind, will invite visitors into the world of super heroes, illuminating the creative processes and influences that drove their young creators to provide America with an escape from the despair and helplessness of the 1929 stock market crash.
The exhibition will present original comic book art, culled from major collectors, representing the most well-known Super Heroes, including Superman, Batman, Captain America, The Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman.
Also on display will be rare, never-before-seen original comic book art, objects belonging to the first comic book creators and publishers, as well as superhero memorabilia. In addition, the exhibition will feature 1940s serials produced in Hollywood, video interviews with some of the leading comic book artists and writers of the days, and a number of interactive features for children and adults to enjoy.
Last night, Lady Crumpet and I went to see Susanna Clarke. I thought she was just going to read and sign, but she also prefaced her reading with a talk about the genesis of the book and later took questions from the audience.
I don’t want to give anything away, but I thought one of the most interesting things about the book was the relationship between northern and southern England. She touched a bit on the difference and how important it is for her, and I thought that, since my mind is always grasping for analogies, northern England was a little like the American south and southern England was a little like the American north, specifically New England. At least in terms of culture and psychology, to be vague and reductive.
Anyway, I got my copy of the book signed and was able to tell the author how much I enjoyed it. Lady C. chatted with her about their shared enthusiasm for Jane Austen, making me want to reread Emma. This was the first stop on Clarke’s American book tour, and she is an articulate, witty, and fascinating reader and speaker. Go see her if you can!
In no particular order:
Adult Swim panel. Clunky Robot, along with a group of misfits ranging from mcchris (very funny) to Billy West (possibly psychotic). Maybe I’m a simple man, but I had a great time simply watching the Adult Swim promos in a huge room with a few hundred other fans, laughing and hooting along with them. The panel discussed some of the future development and programming plans. Worth noting: Read or Die (the series) coming this fall!
I was delighted to unexpectedly encounter George Lowe, the voice of Space Ghost (in his Coast to Coast reincarnation). The voiceover god and all-around funny man was eating a turkey sandwich and signed two Space Ghost pictures for me (one for work, one for home). Not one to simply scribble his signature, he took a few minutes (between bites of his sandwich) to talk with me and a friend and wrote and drew all over the pictures to ensure I had a very unique souvenir of the experience. This made me extremely happy.
Warren Ellis.
I got to see Bernie Wrightson a few times. He’s the co-creator of Swamp Thing, and he also did some well-known illustratons for Frankenstein and Stephen King’s The Stand.
Warren Ellis.
Three costumes of note: A man soaking up attention as Doc Ock, a man dressed as The Tick, and a combination Elvis-Stormtrooper getup. As for the other costumes… well, I’ll quote Warren Ellis: “Klingons are not on Atkins. And neither are Stormtroopers. There are an alarming amount of very thin young girls wearing elf ears.” [Update: See Lady Crumpet for some pictures!]
All in all I enjoyed the time I was there, even though most of it was not to my taste. I’ll definitely go again, though I’ll probably just get a day pass.
The Atlanta Metroblog notes that Atlanta is a city without a slogan and suggests some.
My favorite so far, for obvious reasons, is “Atlanta - New York without the cold.”
Update: It’s been Farked. Didn’t see anything brilliant here, but I do think one comment I read would do the trick:
Hey. Not all the streets are named “Peachtree”, the others are all named “Piedmont” or “Roswell”.
I would add “Claremont” (or “Clairemont” or “Clairmont”) and “Lanier” to that.
Hey, check it out. Atlanta has a history. Submitted as evidence: Atlanta Time Machine.
My upstairs neighbor is moving to London, so there’s a one bedroom apartment opening up in my building soon. It’s in this part of Atlanta. If you know anyone who’s looking, email me and I’ll give you details on location and price. My main email address if you know my name: my first initial and last name @ gmail.com
In a continuing effort to position LittleToyRobot.com as the premier information source for robotic events in Atlanta, I am pleased to pass on news of the opening of Scandal! It’s an improv soap opera set on a Moon Base/Casino featuring the Internet’s own Clunky Robot as a robot named The Altair 9000, who is in charge of higher base functions, and randomizing the casino numbers.
Scandal! runs every Friday night at Dad’s Garage. I’ll be there this Friday if you’d like to plan an assassination attempt, but for once I will not be the one dressed in an upside down garbage can!
Summerfest is a street festival. A chunk of Virginia Avenue is blocked off to traffic, parking spaces are clogged for three square miles, and people saunter around in the sun doing whatever it is that people do.
But Summerfest to the residents of Virginia-Highlands, my neighborhood, is something else. It’s a weekend-long party. It is, in short, hell for a little toy robot: guys with white baseball caps drinking beer out of paper cups, furniture dragged out to front lawns to form impromptu patios, and seismic cheers erupting from scattered pockets of drunks at irregular intervals.
It meant I had to park a mile from my apartment all weekend, I had to reschedule a visit from the cable repair man, and the entry to my building was clogged by two lonely, large women sitting on my steps crushing cigarette butts into my yard and looking for a hookup.
This is not the ideal environment for a little toy robot to flourish. Don’t get me wrong; I like to drink a beer out of a paper cup every once in a while myself. But I needed the party to end, the street to settle into silence, so I could get back to standing guard on my roof with superhero vigilance looking for injustice to quash with my mighty fist of injustice-quashing vengeance!
A little bomb-detecting robot paid a visit to the neighborhood Little Toy Robot works in today. Look at him go!
