Hopefully, it won’t be the summer “take cover from the torrential rain and deadly lightning” festival, but regardless, the Grant Park Summer Shade Festival is usually a good time.  There’s food, music, and drinks for the grownups.  For the youngsters, there’s storytellers, jugglers, and signing.  Children are permitted to eat and drink, too, but it’s unlikely to be much of a draw for them.

Best I can tell, there are no clowns.  Some of us are not upset about a likely absence of clowns.

But what about dogs?  Can the dogs enjoy the festival?  Apparently not.  Unless you’re certain attendance will stay below 10,000, you’ll be violating a city ordinance if you bring your pet.  It’s like the “fewer than 15 items” line at the store, but with fur.  And fines.  Maybe it’s nothing like the “fewer than 15 items” line.

The 5k starts at 8am tomorrow; the rest of the festivities begin at 10am.  We’ll likely head that way after the runners are finished.

The films featured are as follows:
Wednesday, July 1st:
Transformers, PG-13, released 2007.

Wednesday, July 8th
Spiderman, PG-13, released 2002.

Wednesday, July 15th
Slumdog Millionaire, R, released 2009.

So, two PG-13 films and an R-rated one are considered “family fun”?  To whom?

While I’m glad to see free movies are showing in a patch of grass near my neighborhood, so that I don’t have to pay to park or fry my backside on the concrete at Centennial Olympic Park, calling it “family fun” is misleading (or ignorant).

I got “the look” from my wife for letting our nearly-3-year-old stay in the room during Return of the Jedi last weekend (especially when said 3-year-old covered her eyes and said, “Daddy, that’s too scary” during Darth Vader’s entrance onto the nearly-completed Death Star).

Ain’t no way I’m taking her to see all the mangled bodies and crashing cars featured in the above three films.  Good idea, bad marketing.

See, e.g., the urban legend about Chevy’s marketing the “Nova” in Mexico.

With thanks to the Atlantans Together Against Crime (ATAC) blog, here’s a link to Raw Footage Atlanta Police Department May 8, 2009 Press Conference from Grayson Daughters on Vimeo.

Since I wrote a bit about the public reaction to the Standard shooting, I figured I should write something about the public reaction to this news, too. I’ve read comments of relief and comments of revenge. I’ve read lamentations about teenage shooters and I’ve read calls for blood.

Here’s the truth: I don’t know what to say.

When I tried to write about this from the perspective of a compassionate neighbor, I fell into the traps bystanders often fall into when talking about crime — all melodramatic and grandiose. When I tried to write about this from the perspective of a rational, detached neighbor, I found myself reaching conclusions that offer little comfort — cynical and sad.

What I’m left with is a mix of feelings that combines, one, a emotional, humanist desire to find a big-picture revelation in this specific story and, two,  a practical desire to recognize, both personally and as a community, that there is no one person that can be jailed that will change much. It’s The West Wing versus The Wire, for me.

So I’ve cut a lot of what I wrote here, because it’s all secondary to this: This arrest isn’t an ending. Police and lawyers and bartenders and housebreakers are all still going to work. The days keep coming.