The Multnomah Villager

So Jr. V and I went up to the Village last week to see a piece of E.T. at the Outdoor Cinema. He had never seen it before, I think maybe I’ve seen it twice, but it’s been years. It was not as crowded this time, likely due to the opressive heat, although after it got dark, it felt pretty good out there. The A/V setup is great, the sound was good and the movie was pretty enjoyable after all this time. Although I was slightly annoyed to notice that this is the “new” version of E.T. that has been all politically corrected: The guns have been removed from the “hunters” in the openng sequence and E.T. is computer-animated in several of the scenes. I do not approve of this sort of after-the-fact tweaking of movies and the pandering nature of removing the guns annoys me. Onward….

Anyway, we amde a beeline for the concession table once we determined that they were selling snow cones! Here’s a note - when you are offering blue bubblegum as a flavor, it is not necessary to ask either me or Jr. V which flavor we want. The ultimate superiority of blue bubblegum snow cone flavoring cannot be ignored. We spent a few bucks at the concession stand, although technically we owe the MNA a dollar since they would not let Jr. V pay for his popcorn, convinced he had already bought a bag and was entitled to a free refill. He tried to pay, but in the end brought me back my dollar. Stickin’ it to the Man!

I note with amusement that my lamely stitched panorama photo was grabbed off this site and incorporated into the pre-movie slideshow. Which is fine and all, but how ’bout a photo credit next time, eh?

We’ll be up there on the 4th for “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and I’ll hang around to help clean up. This is a fun event. If you go, make sure to corner one of the organizers, particularly Jessica, and thank them for all their hard work.

You know those cookies at Village Coffee? The big, frosted, pastel-colored ones?
Super.Good.
Especially with a black-as-night french roast.

I can understand your frustration, especially this weekend, upon learning that the word “hydropark” does mean “park that contains water features, such as slides”. In fact, in this case it means a park that is operated by the water bureau and contains a huge green water tank. Here’s a quick aerial photo (thanks, Google Maps) to show you basically where this new park is:

As mentioned on Tuesday on the Water Bureau’s blog the Multnomah Neighborhood Association had the July meeting at this new park. It’s open and shady, and paths are being put in, it’s a nice little oasis. One that, in the interest of full disclosure, is already drawing the odd group of “teenagers” after dark, but what are ya gonna do?

During the meeting, Brian Russell, chairman of the MNA, signed into effect our new revised bylaws, making the Neighborhood Association all compliant and stuff, here’s a blurry pic of the action, with Erik witnessing…

Here’s the rest of the hot meeting action!

And a few pictures of the park.

The paths are in progress, there will be a picnic table and a bench or two added, although we pretty much agreed that pushing for a mural on the tank might be a little much, just now. Of course, if it was up to me, I’d slap climbing holds up along the side of that bad boy, but that’s about as likely to happen as a cold front this weekend.

Texas Tank Hydropark info page on Portland Online

Oh, don’t forget about the movie tomorrow night! It’s E.T. by the way - the movie titles have to be kind of word-of-mouth, since it costs serious additional licensing fees to advertise using the titles of the movies. Seriously, don’t get me started about licensing Hollywood films. Or maybe you should. Buy me a scotch at O’Connor’s sometime and ask me about “King Kong”.

Well, the weather and my schedule have finally cooperated to give us a nice First Friday in the Village. Jr. V’s at a sleepover (we’ll see how long that lasts) so for the first time in recent memory, I could go to First Friday and NOT go to the toy store (sorry, Thinker Toys, it’s only a matter of time….) In fact I started out at Sip D’Vine, where I picked up what hopefully will be a nice bottle of red as a thank you gift for a co-worker who has spent all day saving my behind. Canadian, eh? well, not so long ago I had never heard of Chilean wine either, and Aussie wines were merely the stuff of Monty Python parody, so we’ll give this Canuck Merlot the benefit of the doubt.

There’s music (and found object art) all over tonight.. There’s flamenco-ish guitar is the wine store, a pedal steel outside Village Beads, the two young violinists (Ok one was probably a viola) outside Acapulco’s and Jazz coming out of O’Connors. I dropped into Annie Bloom’s to pick up a (trade paperback, yay!) copy of 1776 for my Dad’s birthday, which was ages ago… and then walked up to see how the outdoor cinema was looking.

Despite this clumsily patched-together panorama shot, it was looking pretty good! As I suspected, they had the list of upcoming movies there (see below) and if you hurry - you can catch the tail end of “Shrek”. There’s quite a turnout, and perfect weather - considering it was like 40 degrees last night. The website is multnomahoutdoorcinema.org, by the way.

The movie list is as follows:

• Friday July 7th - Shrek
• Friday, July 21st - E.T.
• Friday, August 4th - Raiders of the Lost Ark (Jr. V and I will definitely be at this one
• Saturday, August 19th - TBA (they’re taking votes)

Mrs. V will be happy that I voted for “Babe” - the Citizen Kane of talking pig movies, but it looks like Star Wars is making a strong running - this I’d be Ok with of course.

I ahve to give props to Riversgate Church who has made a generous donation of the use of their A/V setup for the outdoor cinema. Say what you will about these new-style churches, and I ahve, but this is a seriously generous thing. Rental of hard-core A/V projection equipment doesn’t come cheap. I’m a video/interactive producer in “real life” and I’m painfully familiar with these costs. Thanks!

A nice evening for all, it appears.

So Mrs. V is on her morning walk with one of our neighbors the other day, when this neighbor wonders aloud if Mrs. V has looked at the newly launched Oregon Sex Offenders Registry and done a search for our neighborhood. Turns out that the neighbor did, and got two hits.

One of which is almost quite literally right next door.

So we checked it out and sure enough, there’s the guy, with a rap sheet that does not sit too well with the parents of a five year old child. Not too happy about this development. I’ve never had any problems with this person, in fact I haven’t really had any interaction with them at all, so I’d like to just file this fact away, but you can’t really do that can you?

It just goes to show that knowing your neighbors has its ups and its downs. You guys might want to check that site out too, the link is above.

Well, we’ve had a bit of a comment exposion the last several days - which is good since at least someone has been posting to this dusty ‘blog! I’m afraid my work schedule this summer has not left as much time as I would like for wandering about and posting about it. Things have been happening though.

I appreciate all your comments, and glad you enjoy reading the ‘blog. Oh, and I’m not as anonymous as I’d like to believe. I’ve said it before, but for the new people… The “anonymous” thing is not really driven by anything more than my initial doubts about whether or not this ‘blog would be something I could actually maintain, and whether or not it would attract any visitors. Plus, I don’t really want to be “that guy who writes the Village ‘blog” when I’m walking around. I prefer to experience our neighborhood just like I always have. Google takes care of bringing visitors here quite nicely considering I’ve done no “search engine optimization” or marketing of this blog, and the regular readers that I DO have are good about sharing comments etc. So it’s been good.

I guess this would be a good time to point out that I missed the one-year anniversary of the Multnomah Villager, since I posted the very first post back on June 25th of 2005. I’ve been online journaling since 2001 but this was my first experiment with what I consider to be an actual ‘blog - although I still dislike that term!

You may get more than one post today. But first…

Don’t forget that tomorrow night is not only “First Friday” but also the first night of the Multnomah Outdoor Cinema! Starts around 9, and NO I don’t know what movie they’ll be showing, and so far as I can tell, niether does anyone else… One assumes there will be a list of titles for the four week run of M.O.C. available at Friday night’s show. Seriously though, everyone has worked very hard to get this put together and it should be a fun event. Might want to bring a blanket though, since it looks as if “real” Oregon summer weather is back with us.

Oh and yes, Tamara, I do probably need a cut in another week or two. How’s your arm?