BMG announced that they were going to start charging a monthly subscription fee for Napster this summer. Smart move. If they keep the fee low, like $4 to $5 a month, they'll manage to keep a fair amount of their users. It won't be a hugely profitable business for them, especially after they're forced to share the revenues with record labels. But it's certainly high margin. Let's say 10 million users sign up. That's $50 million a month, $600 million a year. All for a piece of software that's already been built, and the cost of some servers around the country. Assume 80% margins, and they have to hand 70% of proceeds over to the record labels, and they still keep $144 million a year. That's a damn good business.

How cool, a small content sharing exchange for music, using the CD library of global Napster users. Like a stock market, and Napster charges a fee for those wishing to participate in the exchange.

I do think they need to improve the interface. They could do a lot more with the entire interface to make it easier to use and to market particular artists and tracks more strongly.

Chatted with Howie today, for the first time in a long time. He's still pursuing the DJ thing outside of work. I can't wait to hear his first promo CD. That should be interesting. He's thinking of applying to business school this year.

I'm in somewhat of a blah mood, one of those where I feel like I'm not really engaged with the world around me. I don't feel like I'm doing anything. Maybe I just need to go out for a long run or something like that.

On a separate note, Baseball America ranked the White Sox and Cubs #1 and #2 in their annual farm system evaluation. Cool for my Cubs. Can't wait to see some of their young talent in the majors. Maybe they will win a World Series in my lifetime.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:22 AM | link

Supposed to be in Whistler, enjoying the 10 inches of fresh pow that came down Sunday, but had to cut the trip short cuz of late-breaking work stuff. Oh well. The weekend at Whistler was still a beaut. I'm finally starting to feel halfway competent boarding down the hills, and the feeling of ripping down the mountain is awesome.

The key for me was letting go. I was holding back my weight when going down the mountain because I didn't feel comfortable with the speed, the pull of gravity. At the top of one of my first few runs, I just made a conscious decision to just let myself drop into the fall line of the mountain. Everytime I was about to complete a turn, I'd whisper the name of something I wanted to let go, some demon, and then just commit to the turn.

In some zen-like mind-body confluence, I felt myself letting go of emotional anchors while going faster and faster down the mountain. Of course, then Pete tried to lead me into some jumps, and I blew up a few times. Still not ready to take flight in life yet, I guess.

Bill and I took Jason and Jamie up there. It was their first time to Whistler, and I think they were impressed. I'm turning into a Whistler addict. The snowboarding is amazing up there. I never think about work. Just board all day, relax at the house with a book by the fire, listening to music from some band I've never heard of (thx to the music teamers), watching an occasional movie. It's my Martha's Vineyard. Can't wait to head up again.

Jennifer Capriati won the Australian Open! I distinctly remember sitting around with the tennis team in high school, watching her play Seles in the U.S. Open when she was 15 or something. That was almost ten years ago. She lost that match and disappeared with drug problems for a long time, and now she's all the way back and a Grand Slam winner. It blows my mind, how young she still is, and how old it makes me feel. Good for her.

Brian was over for an anime night. We watched bits from Ninja Scroll, our favorite anime film, and we also watched Vampire Hunter D, which neither of us had seen before. It's funny, because we've been planning it for a year, ever since he watched Princess Mononoke and was blown away. It's good to have different friends with different tastes in films. It means you usually never have to watch any flicks by yourself.

Akira comes out on DVD this year. About time!

I spoke to Dan today, and he's coming back to Seattle. That guy is truly a nomad. He redirects himself more than anyone I know. A few months ago he was going to move to Cincinnati. Then suddenly he's in New York, about to enroll at NYU. Then it was Charleston, where he was going to take classes at the College of Charleston. Then, today I found him driving across New Mexico, having just crossed through Roswell. He's on his way back to Seattle now, with plans to enroll at UW, write, and sail. Cool. It will be good to have another of the wolves around to run with on the weekends. What a character. He should be around this weekend. Fun.

Chatting with a Drugstore employee, I learned that two of their topselling items are Viagra and Propecia. It's amazing how much money you can make in this world, capitalizing on people's fears of sexual dysfunction, obesity, and baldness.

Traveling to L.A. at the end of this week. For once, I'm looking forward to getting a bit of sun down there. Seattle from November to June is 44 degrees and cloudy.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:15 PM | link

Praying to the Powder Gods

Please, please, let there be fresh powder on the slopes of Whistler.
posted by Eugene Wei at 4:29 PM | link

Franklin took me out to dinner for my birthday tonight. I was pretty much a zombie after work, half conscious after my fitful night of near-sleep. We went over to Campagne and went with their tasting menu. This is a long-standing tradition between the two of us, to indulge in fine cuisine on the occasions when we get together for dinner.

It was outstanding. Oysters, sauteed foie gras on golden raisins, pearl onions, and some amazing reduction, salmon with a potato cake and watercress and radish, some type of ravioli with shitake mushrooms and tarragon infused chick peas, pan seared scallops and some sort of lobster sausage, and a sick dessert of chocolate/gelato and a cheese plate.

After dinner we strolled across town to find him a smoke. Then we cabbed over to my place, drank some more, watched Keb Mo and Suzanne Vega on DVD (Best of Sessions at West 54th), watched the Eagles, then reminisced about the old days at the house in Fremont. We had some good times out there, sitting on the roof, playing guitar, drinking wine, making long distance phone calls, watching the sunsets over the Olympics. You could always start counting as soon as the bottom of the sun hit the mountains, and 20 seconds later it would disappear completely over the horizon. I think in all our time there we each only convinced one girl to join us out there. Too smart, they were.

This other time, we threw a party at our house, bought a gigantic keg, invited the world, and about 10 people showed up, one of them being Aaron Best in a tutu. We had to empty the entire keg in the front yard, killing a bush in the process.

Okay, Keb Mo is in town tomorrow, what am I doing missing the concert? Oh yeah, we're in a recession and I'm in debt.

Sweet article about pitching and defense which Rob Neyer pointed out.

Robo and I looked up some plane tickets. For around $600, we could fly to Amsterdam for a weekend. Leave Friday, get in Saturday morning. Stay up all night running around, then fly back Sunday. Gosh, I'm tempted. Except I think I'd drop in on Aaron in London instead, and make it a four day weekend. Aiya, Robert brings out recession-proof Epicurean in me.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:21 AM | link

I realize now why I couldn't sleep last night. I had caught a 24 hour virus from someone. My roommate Rich? Jason? Bill? It seems like people all around me have been catching the bug. Stayed home sick today. Would sit up occasionally, then have to lie down in a fit of dizziness. Managed to avoid vomiting though, which is a victory. Passed in and out of consciousness,
and had a series of feverish, dreams.

After all that sleep today, now I am wide awake.

Saw the Enemy at the Gates trailer today. Looks promising. I made a short mental list of all the films I'd like to see this year, and there are quite a few, but in my mind, no sure thing. It's worrisome. Lots of films from directors who seem to be on the wrong side of the creative mountain, lots of sequels or remakes, lots of films from directors who've never proved to be very good in the past (read: Michael Bay), and sure to be lots of hype. In no particular order:

• Moulin Rouge (May 31)


• Pearl Harbor


• A.I.


• Enemy at the Gates (Mar)


• Planet of the Apes (Aug. 9)


• Kiss of the Dragon (Oct. 4)


• The Fellowship of the Rings


• The Road to Perdition


• Captain Corelli's Mandolin


• Hannibal (Feb. 9)


• From Hell (Oct. 25)


• Black Hawk Down


• Gangs of New York


• Windtalkers


• Ocean's 11


• Blow


• The Score


• The Panic Room


• Brotherhood of the Wolves


• Harry Potter (Nov. 16)


• Chun Hyang

Fortunately, most good independent films probably have not been hyped yet, so they will take the place of many of the films above once the year is over and I'm compiling a top 10 list.

While sick today, I watched the first episode of Krystof Kieslowski's
Decalogue. Each one-hour episode is based loosely on one of the Ten Commandments. The first episode was based on the commandment:

"I am the Lord thy God: Thou shalt not have other gods before me."

A university professor violates the commandment by putting his blind faith in a computer. His son adopts his father's belief in the absolute truth of algorithms and mathematical logic, though he is curious about the beliefs of his Aunt, a religious woman. I won't ruin the surprise, as the DVD jacket annoyingly does, but I highly recommend the entire DVD set.

If you enjoy movies, I also highly recommend you pick up any film criticism books by Pauline Kael. I read one of her essays today, and I felt this longing to hear her thoughts on some of the films being made today. I'm sure she'd be disappointed. I highly recommend For Keeps, though it's currently out of print. In fact, most of her books are out of print, which is a shame. For Keeps is an anthology of many of her famous film reviews and essays. I think it may be the most treasured collection of criticism I own. Kael loved movies, and most importantly she was not afraid to treat each film with the most eloquent honesty. In fact, most of her reviews read like essays. She had to retire in 1991 due to Parkinson's disease.

Bill got a promotion to head up the merch team for both music and video today. Congrats to him! Well deserved.

I read somewhere that Sega was going to stop producing the Dreamcast and focus on producing games for the other video game console makers--Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft. Boy, Sony really really shot themselves in the foot by missing their production targets on Playstation 2. They missed revenue and earnings, and I think their dream of having the Playstation 2 be their Trojan horse into the homes of families everywhere is pretty much dead. I wonder who lost their job over that whole fiasco. I predict Microsoft will capitalize on Sony's mistake in a big way.

Sony has always wanted to get a stranglehold on the entertainment/computing brain of households everywhere, but they have never come close. Not that anyone else has done any better, but somehow I expected more from Sony. They've just lacked, I don't know, a certain sense of monopolistic vision and ruthlessness. Good engineers. They just need a bloodthirsty CEO like Bill Gates.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:36 AM | link

I can't fall asleep. The longer I'm awake, the more I think about having to get up at 5 a.m. to work out, and the harder it is to fall asleep. I've had many such nights these past few months, which is a complete oddity. Maybe I need to work out everyday, to exhaust myself. Still, I only got a few hours of sleep last night, so I should be out right now. I passed out for about two hours when I got home from work. I think that is the problem.

I keep getting up, reading a while, and then turn out the lights to try and sleep. Lying in the dark, rolling around. It's like drifting alone in a life raft across the ocean. You lift your head up to look around, and you see random pieces of emotional debris and half-contemplated thoughts floating past.
posted by Eugene Wei at 12:59 AM | link

I'm in a cubed year, as Rachael noted. Certainly, to someone mathematically inclined, that must mean something, something good. I guess that means the last time I had an exceptional year I was 8, and after this year, I'll be 64 before the next big year rolls around. Damn, I'd better enjoy this one.

Spent most of the day helping Christina cook. She came by yet again and put in a big day. She came up with some amazing stuff, all done by hand. I won't be able to do it justice, as culinary-challenged as I am.

Beet salad
Bowtie pasta salad with spinach, walnuts
Baba Ganouj
Hummous
Chicken Potstickers with a green chile soy sauce dip
Seared ahi tuna with wasabi mayonnaise or mango salsa dips (searing and mayo courtesy of The Big Sexy himself, Scott)
Shrimp wrapped in bacon
Grilled peppers and portabella mushrooms, marinated in olive oil and garlic
Cucumber yogurt dip
Tepenade
Turkey, spinach, cheese wraps

My sole contribution was stuffed mushrooms, and even then Christina had to give me directions. I stuffed them with a sour cream, cream cheese, bread crumb, mushroom stem, celery, onion, garlic, dill weed, bacon concoction. I think it turned out okay, since they're all gone. Actually, everything was delicious. Betina contributed a divine crab/artichoke dip and two really tasty cakes, a mocha cake and a german chocolate cake.

We also had lots of good wine. I bought some of my favorites, and folks brought by some good stuff. I made out with some really good bottles of wine and champagne, some sweet cigars, and some good liquor. I foresee some sinful nights of gluttony in my near future.

Christina worked her butt off all weekend in the kitchen. I owe her big time. She's only known me a short time, and I'm already indebted to her in a huge way. Betina came over before the party and jumped in to lend a hand so that I could run off to change. The two of them really spoil me. If my mom were her to meet them, she'd probably adopt them.

Unfortunately, something was wrong with my camera, so I didn't get any photos. Drats! I'll have to take it into the shop. Nikon, you let me down. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to do it again sometime (Christina, are you listening?).

Heard from the folks, from my sisters, from Alan, and even my cousin Chuck from Hong Kong...how did he even know it was my birthday?!? Auntie Wan-Ling called from Los Angeles.

Oh my god. I am old.

I am old.

posted by Eugene Wei at 2:50 AM | link

About 20 minutes ago, I turned 27. Birthdays just serve as reminders of all the things I have yet to do. Time's a wastin'.

I went for a ride around Mercer again today. I managed to shave a minute off my time. 37 minutes to do the outside of Mercer, 1 hour 12 minutes from the front door of the house and back. Still pretty poor. I don't have any kick up the hills right now, it's all this upper body weight I'm carrying. And my legs are not in biking shape. It was raining, and I was pretty soaked. I think I could have knocked perhaps another half minute off if it was dry.

I was coming back across the 90 bridge, and some man blew by on his road bike. I had to chase him down and kill him going up the hill. One of these days I won't be able to catch one of those guys, and it will depress the hell out of me.

Christina came over and cooked for hours. Prepping for my little birthday soiree tonight. What a trooper, just slicing and dicing and blending for hours. I was really touched. I need to find one of those chef hats for her. She's a budding gourmand. One of those people who actually subscribes to high end cooking magazines. I see her as a successful restaraunteur someday. Tomorrow we have another packed schedule of cooking. Poor girl, I wonder if she knew what she was getting into. I'm supposed to make stuffed mushrooms, so I had to download some recipes off the web.

I didn't plan on attending our company party tonight ("The Big Sexy") but in the end Christina managed to drag me out. We got there late, around 10, and it ended at midnight. Every year I recognize fewer and fewer people at the company party. I must admit, looking around, I can't imagine too many companies having company parties like the ones we have. If
I end up working for some stodgy corporation someday, I will die of boredom at the company Christmas party, sipping cocktails and making small talk with the wife of some vice president.

I just feel like going out to run. Like Forrest Gump. Just up and start running across the country.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:49 AM | link

Okay, now I am paying for my early morning workout schedule. I am going to have some deep dreams tonight, because my whole body is beat up. I can't remember the last time I was so tired. Thursday I was up at 5 a.m. and out to Fremont for two hours of pickup basketball in the morning. Then, that evening, I played another hour since the Amazon team had a game. I wasn't even supposed to go, since people were supposed to come over for a movie, but no one showed up and our team was short people. So of course only five people showed up so I had to play the whole game. The bottoms of my
feet are ripped up right now, I have blisters all over. My back is aching, my legs are like jelly from the return to lifting this week. Damn, I feel old.

And to remind me of that fact, I'm turning 27 on Sunday. I think I just have an ancient soul. To prevent the aging process, I am going to push myself to try some new physical feats this year.

1. Marathon (Chicago, New York?)
2. Biking leg of a triathlon (Bill said he'd run, and hopefully Betina will swim, even if it does give her big shoulders)
3. RAMROD (ride around mt. rainier in one day)
4. Climb Mt. Rainier

But still, I have not felt like socializing much lately. I've been keeping a mellow schedule, just working a lot, working out, and staying home and listening to classical music, looking over old photos, and thinking a lot about the future. I think I have somewhat of a Madonna-esque thing, always wanting to recreate myself every few years. Apprentice in all things, master of none. What's the next big thing? I'm not sure.

I spent all night tonight grocery shopping with Christina. I am grocery shopped out for life. We hit Costco, Larry's, and QFC, picking up food for a little soiree I'm having at my place on Sunday for my birthday. Christina is like the mistress of ceremonies. She's cooking up all the food. Betina, Rachael, Scott, and a whole bunch of people are all chipping in, which is sweet. I feel like I have domain experts, all focusing on one piece of food or drink. Tonight, for the first time in my life, I
bought chick peas. How many people go through life, having never bought chick peas.

Tomorrow is the company party. The Big Sexy. I have to take Scott to dinner at the Met sometime because he managed to work that into the company lexicon, and now even the company party is named after that. If only they knew what it referred to. Damn. In a recession, the Met is obscene. I'm going to resort to eating tofu and canned tuna until we pull out of this recession.

I can't decide if I want to go to the company party. It would be the first time I've missed it. This general emotional malaise, it's really bothersome. I can't quite pin it down, but...

as i write, you wilt beneath my pen

to touch her with my art, before she turns away

where do those come from? i can't remember now.

I saw JulieAnn today, and she told me she was leaving Amazon to travel around Southeast Asia for five months or so. Gosh, I was jealous. I've been thinking a lot about my travel plans this year, and I think I should just set them down in the next
two weeks.

Truly, it is hard to find interesting people. The most interesting parts of people, to me, are those dark recesses where their fears and insecurities hide. Most people have those pretty well camoflauged.

Hah, my website has only gotten seven hits to the homepage, and those are all from me. This is truly like a private diary. I should write something evil here. It would be like confession, post-modern style.
posted by Eugene Wei at 2:18 AM | link

This will have to be a short entry, as one of my new year resolutions is to wake up early on Tues. and Thurs. mornings and play basketball at 6AM at Sound Mind and Body in Fremont with the cell-phone totin high fiving cowboys from bus dev. That means I have to get out of the house by 5:30, as it's a long drive from my house. It causes me emotional trauma to get up that early, but I managed to make it on Tuesday, and I felt pretty good that whole day. More alive, for sure.

John Chang visited yesterday. I haven't seen "Sun Tzu" for years, probably since Sharon's wedding, or maybe even before that? He's still much the same, but engaged now, getting married in May. I have to respect the guy, as he's always seemed like he has this internal compass locked in to one coordinate at any one point in time, unaffected by the people and events around him. That's rare.

Strange, how so many of my Stanford classmates who went on to medical school are now engaged or married, while all of us crazy working-class types are all just drifting. John thinks it's because medical school provides such a regimented schedule for one's life that one has to plan out relationships just like any other life choice. Whereas folks like me can live life to life, committing and uncommitting from jobs and relationships and cities according to our own moods and fancies. Is
marriage then the necessary outcome of forced planning? If so, I am not marriageable material. I can't remember the last time I even thought out more than 6 months ahead. Maybe I just haven't encountered the world so perfect I would
want it to continue indefinitely.

I saw another John, John F. Kennedy, in Thirteen Days today. Bruce Greenwood played him perfectly. A really good film, with the key exception being Kevin Costner's horrid attempt at a Bostonian accent. I brought my team from work to see it, and we were all giggling throughout the whole film everytime he spoke. The director should have just had him speak normally. Besides that, though, a very entertaining film.

Stanford beat up on Cal tonight in hoops. My boys are still undefeated, still number one in the country. Pretty amazing, that we'd have the top hoops team in the country. I don't follow Stanford as closely as I once did, but I still bleed Cardinal when it comes to college hoops and football.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:24 PM | link

Is Costco the result of the natural evolution of retail shopping? If I visited an advanced alien civilization, would they have giant warehouses where you could buy Alien Duff's Beer in bulk? I'm not so sure I wouldn't find that high volume low margin model all across the universe. It might be just one of those immutable laws of retail shopping, like Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

Shopping at Costco is not beautiful. It just distills shopping to its purest essence, the desire for consumption and the desire for good deals. After shopping at Costco, I feel like I feel after gorging myself at Thanksgiving.

I mention this because I'm down to my last two bars of Lever 2000 soap, some 7 or 8 odd years after my mom gave me a Costco pack of 12 bars (or was it 24?) before I left for college.

Tomorrow I must decide whether or not to get up at 5 a.m. to play basketball with the cell phone toting cowboys of biz dev. Ugh. Oh yeah, I think John is flying into town tomorrow. Hmm, I hope he calls me soon.
posted by Eugene Wei at 9:00 PM | link

Last night Sang threw a housewarming party to celebrate the newly renovated kitchen. A lot of people came by. I think we were pretty much at capacity on the main floor. I'm sure it was a proud moment for Sang, to have folks admire the
swank kitch, but this morning I think he's regretting it to a degree. A group of that size leaves its mark, especially when folks cranked the music and started dancing on the bamboo floor. Ah, dilemmas. Well, the best things in life are shared with friends.

I ran into Kurt, from my old ATK days, at the party. He just happened to be there, out of the blue. That was odd. We had fun reminiscing about James, who I just wrote today. I wonder what that little hurricane is up to. Probably got some pretty young thing on his arm and a glint in his eye, I'm sure.

The party felt like a reunion. I saw so many people I haven't seen in so long. Scott, who I haven't seen since he left for Fernley. Todd, Tom and Christine, Lauri, Kristin and Kristin, and even Kate, who's back from NY on a business trip.

Today Rachael took me to a play. I went the first two acts without any idea of what the play was called, who wrote it, or anything. How often does that happen in life, when everything is a surprise, when you have no expectations? It turned out to be A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee. I wasn't surprised when I found out. It certainly had the Albee touch, like Zoo Story and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He came to speak at Stanford, and I remember he struck me as an odd man.

I didn't like the play as much as I liked Who's Afraid. I'm not exactly sure what it was about, but I think it was something about how we have to make hard choices between helping out friends in need and protecting our delicate psyches from being infected by their problems. Something more succinctly and eloquently conveyed by a Morrissey song, I think. Plus the performances didn't mesh with one another.
posted by Eugene Wei at 6:21 PM | link

I went to see Rent tonight at the Paramount. I really enjoyed it. I've heard the CD before, but seeing it is a much more enjoyable experience. We were in the nosebleed seats, unfortunately, so I had a bit of trouble understanding everything they were saying, and I couldn't make out their facial expressions. People are always laughing at me because of how fussy I am over movie theater video and audio setup, but let me tell you, when you shell out some serious dough for a show, you deserve some level of minimum quality. I'm glad Rent wasn't like most musicals I've seen. I was ready for something different.

Internet-enabled global commerce is beautiful. You can order the region 3 DVD of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon already. I ordered my copy today. Hopefully it will work on my Apex DVD player. I also got my VCD of The Road Home, directed by Zhang Yimou. It was the first film starring Zhang Ziyi, who played Jen in Crouching Tiger. I'm not usually prone to movie star crushes, but whoa she is a little heartbreaker. She's been my laptop wallpaper for months now.

I received another birthday present today. I'm getting all these gifts early this year, I don't know why. Laura got me the Red Violin soundtrack, by John Corigliano. It's really wonderful, late night music. Some of my best work is done here in the basement I live in, late at night, in the dark, with only the ghost light from my computer monitor. I channel Bruce Wayne, sitting in the batcave late at night, obsessing over matters on the bat computer. I think my personality borders on the obsessive, which can be good at times, lousy at others. I think I'm at an emotional local minimum today.

It's going to be a very busy work weekend. I have to finish writing a specification. That's where the obsessive personality can be a plus. Writing anything, specs, short stories, screenplays...it can be a chore. You just write and write and then sometimes inspiration visits. I've tried waiting for the muse before, and she's a tease.

How is it that our brains store and retrieve little used memories? I got an e-mail from Howie's ex-girlfriend Grace today, and she was telling me about Jon and Su, and it's so odd because I probably wouldn't have thought of them at all unless Grace had brought them up. I'm curious how those types of memories are neurologically cached.

I read something interesting about humans. Our advantage over other animals is that we can attack in this lifetime animals that can only evolve defenses in subsequent ones. Evolution lets those animals down, because those defenses
do not evolve in time to prevent extinction. Somehow this stuck in my mind. It's somehow important to my life right now, but I can't figure out how.
posted by Eugene Wei at 1:48 AM | link

I spent Saturday through Tuesday in Las Vegas, attending the annual Video Software Dealers Association (VSDA) show. Two other shows were there, the Adult Video convention, and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). As if the strip in Las Vegas isn't already strange enough normally, add in several hundred porn stars, several thousand independent video store and consumer eletronics store owners, studio executives from Los Angeles, B-movie stars, and hundreds of Japanese tourists attending CES.

I've been to Vegas many times before, staying primarily on the strip, and this is the first time I can remember being completely dead to the city. I didn't gamble, I didn't go out and mingle, and I couldn't wait to leave the whole time I was there. Several new casinos have sprouted up, and I can't understand how the city can support all those rooms. Maybe
my Vegas days are behind me? To be fair, I had lots more on my mind than normal, but still, the strip is obscene. It is what Walt Disney would have built had he been suicidal and inebriated. Vegas can only appeal to those who have no capacity to dream, no imagination. Paris, New York New York, The Venetian, Aladdin's Castle, Mandalay Bay, all these new casinos, they are patently ridiculous. At one point I was having dinner in a Tex Mex restaurant set in a Venetian casino which happened to be in the middle of the Southwestern desert. Nothing is original to Las Vegas, it is all imported culture which arrives dead.

Of course, the rest of Las Vegas, outside the strip, may be as normal a town as any. I suspect it is. The locals probably steer clear of the strip.

The one good thing Las Vegas has is a wide assortment of interesting shows. I saw my first Cirque du Soleil show, called O, at the Bellagio. The tix were not cheap, at $121.99 a pop, but it was very entertaining. I'm not sure it was worth that price, but I'm glad to have finally seen one of the shows. O is set above a pool of water with a floor that can rise or sink in the water, so performers are constantly diving into the water and disappearing, then suddenly appearing again and walking across the surface of the water. It's escapist entertainment, and I'm not sure it truly sticks in one's imagination as a coherent whole. At the end, I felt as if I had seen an exotic circus, a series of interesting visual images, but somewhat devoid of a soul.

Work has been all-consuming so far this month. My back and hip are starting to feel a little better, but I still have problems lying down on my back and sitting for long periods of time. Fortunately, or unfortunately, most of Seattle's slopes are pretty devoid of snow anyway. I have to heal up and get back up to Whistler soon, work on my boarding skillz.

I'm feeling quite detached from friends and family right now. January always feels like a sprint out of the blocks at the starting line, everyone fighting to get traction and set a manageable pace for the year. No time to stop and just chat with those around us.
posted by Eugene Wei at 10:38 PM | link

Last night, I had several nightmares, many of them are ones I've had before. I wonder what they mean?

The all-time most common panic attack of a dream involves heading off to a final for a class I didn't attend all quarter. This time, I was actually in some review session before the actual class itself, and the lecturer had covered the board with some strange equations and graphs. I thought it might be something on lenses for a second, and I had a brief moment of hope, but then I realized it was something else altogether. Advanced mathematics? This dream has to mean I feel unprepared for something, but I have no idea what it could be.

I also dreamed that I went out to my car, somewhere, and found giant bulletholes in all the windows. That's a new one. Earlier tonight my roommate claims he heard a gunshot go off in our neighborhood. Maybe I had a vision.

In another dream, I run into a close friend I haven't seen in forever and he/she sneers at me and runs off. I know I've done something wrong, but I have no idea what it is. This one actually woke me up at 5 in the morning.

My new web dev lead has just decided to join another company, the day before she's to start. The type of nightmare only a manager could have.

The same restaurant has been showing up in many of my dreams. It's this little diner, I can't even begin to describe it. In every dream it serves a different type of cuisine. This time it was a sushi restaurant.

I know one of the reasons I had all these vivid dreams is that I worked out hard last night. But usually they're not all nightmares. I had some of these same dreams up at Whistler. I was tired there, but I thought they were nightmares
because of the altitude. Now I'm thinking perhaps I'm really fretting over something subconsciously.

Work is nutty right now. The start of the year always is.

Aaron mentioned a clever term the other day, "yuppie food stamps", to refer to the $20 bills that ATMs spit out. But he noted that he didn't come up with the term. So I did a Google search on the web, and I found it all over the place, along with a whole bunch of other clever new terms for the new millenium. I can't even tell where the term originated. How did I miss this when it first spread like a virus?

I'm off to Las Vegas tomorrow afternoon for a business conference. That city scares me. I've never stayed there for more than a weekend. I wonder if I'll be able to maintain my sanity there for four days.

At least I'll be able to catch the Stanford-Arizona game before I leave tomorrow. Zona always kills us in hoops. I can't remember the last time we beat them. I hope the boys pull it out and start my weekend off on a pleasant note.
posted by Eugene Wei at 11:32 PM | link

Itty Bitty MIDI Committee

It's been a while since my last post. I was up at Whistler with my sisters, and my laptop hard drive turned its back on me. My laptop just wouldn't boot. I think the 6 days I was in Whistler was the longest I've gone without Internet access in a year, and it was pretty nice. Conveniently, my laptop started working again when I returned to work this week. My hard drive was giving me therapy!

I bruised my lower back really badly after catching an edge and going down on an ice field in Whistler. I have a hard time walking, and my entire lower back and left hip is just one huge, black bruise. So I have to sleep on my right side at night. But, I went to see the doctor today and X-rays came up negative. I didn't break my pelvis or anything like that. I had to walk from the hospital across town back to work, in the cold rain, but I was grinning like a thief the whole way. Gene Kelly. I'm not knocked out of commission for snowboard season after all. That would have been a horrible way to start 2001. This is the year I become a snowboarder.

I'm in on this Skihaus at Whistler with about 10 other folks at work. It's one of the best things I did, joining up. Seattle and work were so far from my mind while I was up there in Canada. It's a very large house, with a great location, a great view of the mountains, and I felt so relaxed up there. The other folks in on the house are great, real mellow, all quite interesting. Board all day, come back and soak in the hot tub, toss some firewood in the fireplace, whip up a meal in the kitchen, and sit down for a decent meal at the dining room table. After dinner, a mean game of Scrabble, and then curl up with a book or pop in a movie. I could live like that for a while.

Aaron Best, near and dear to my heart, was back in town and we grabbed dinner tonight at the Flying Fish. He brought back his new girlfriend, Roswitha, and we had a sinful feast. I love that restaurant. Aaron has the gift of honest expression. It's too bad he's still not living here in Seattle. He's such a humane, yet somewhat impish, spirit. I am somewhat jealous of his life in London, though.

After dinner we met up with Pete H., Margaret, David Kalil, and Courtney over at Cyclops and just gabbed for a few hours. Pete is also one of the Skihaus crew, and he always has me in stitches. When you absolutely, positively have to have pure, consistent amusement, accept no substitute for Pete. We're going to make a knockoff Warren Miller movie up at Whistler this year and try and sell it through Amazon.

Aaron used to love trying to think up good band names. He's quite good at it. For some reason, my creative juices ran dry. But the table came up with a few decent ones:
Porch
Torn Vinyl Flooring
Itty Bitty MIDI Committee (that was Pete's idea for an electronica band)

David's theory is that if you start a band name with "The" that it can be an R&B band name. Pete is partial to two syllable words that are followed by a number, like Level 42, Matchbox 20, UB40.

The Fed cut interest rates today, by 50 basis points. So all in all, I would put today in the record books as a win. Fly the W flag over Wrigley.
posted by Eugene Wei at 12:32 AM | link