A new special-edition DVD set of West Side Story will be available starting 1 April 2003. And an eight-city Sing-A-Long tour starts 27 March in San Francisco (at the Castro Theatre, where else?). Grr, no stop in D.C. planned.
Letter from Russia. A great bit of imagery from Gary Shteyngart’s lively article on post-Soviet Russian youth, “Teen Spirit,” in last week’s New Yorker:
Still, the best part of the New Russia is the fact that you can leave it. You clutch your exit visa, a precarious document stamped silly with hotel-registration and airport stamps. Preparing to board your plane in Petersburg’s modest airport—its size is more appropriate for Syracuse that for a city of close to five million—you feel like a character in a Russian novel drowning in a sea of exclamation points and question marks, of extreme emotions and uncertainties. How beautiful! How awful! Such a flattering man! Such an enchanting woman! Do I have hepatitis? Where’s my wallet?
The Homo erectus jokes are too easy. Last night I had IMed the following bit of news with my commentary to Stephen, and he recommended I post it here. So it shall be done.
Oldest human footprints found on volcano
New Scientist
“Three primitive humans who scrambled down a volcano’s slopes more than 325,000 years ago left their footprints fossilised in volcanic ash. If the ages of the trails are confirmed, they could be the earliest known footprints of our Homo ancestors.”Hm. I say, okay, but our “homo” Homo ancestors would’ve known better than to track volcanic ash into the cave and all over the fabulous bear rug, and would’ve at least wiped their comfortably clad feet on the welcome mat.
I’m just saying.