Being like Mike

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Made a quick swing up to Whistler this weekend. It's becoming such a familiar retreat to me that I'm starting to think of the eight hours of driving there and back as a short trip. Jumped over my first picnic table and did some nice face plants in the half pipe.
Saw Hannibal, and it was as I expected, a disappointment. Not surprising because the book itself was so dull. Still, Anthony Hopkins is genius. I'm adopting a Lecteresque persona at work from now on. He'd make a great program manager.
They reran Sportscentury's feature on Michael Jordan the other night, and I taped it. Finally watched it tonight. Man, I miss watching him play. I love the competitive fire, though. I want to compete with someone everytime I watch some retrospective on him.
Why am I in such a combative mood?
I'm going vegetarian for two weeks. Just because.

Digital vs. Analog

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What's playing in my car's CD changer:

  • U2 -- All That You Can't Leave Behind

  • David Gray -- White Ladder

  • Coldplay -- Parachutes

  • Sigur Ros -- Agaetis Byrjun

  • Dido -- No Angel

  • Beth Orton -- Central Reservation


I wish I could always pull up the name of the CD(s) playing in the cars of friends and family around the country.
I was thinking...this whole digital vs. analog debate, CDs vs LPs. There is analog me, which is me as a continuous wave or signal. Then there's digital me. If you see me once a day, you're sampling me at the rate of 365 times a year. Or maybe you hear from me once a month because you live somewhere out of town. So you're sampling me 12 times a year. The more you see another person or come into contact with them, the closer you are to knowing their analog selves. The only person who can experience the analog of a person is that person himself. But a digital sample of a sufficient sampling rate is probably sufficient to really know most people. CDs are reasonable representations of music for most people, and you probably don't need to be with someone every second to feel like you know them fairly well. What is the right sampling rate for another person? It varies depending on how much you value their analog selves. You want to
own some albums as CDs, but others you're content to download as MP3s, and for a select few nothing but the LP will do.
Some people have such massive personalities that you meet them once and they haunt your memory forever. They are like waves of massive amplitude, they leave burns on the walls of your head. You may have heard the LP once, and you don't own it, and you'll spend the rest of your life flipping through the bins of old record stores looking for it.
Can you truly desire something you've never even experienced? What is it Sean Penn says in Thin Red Line?
"If I should never find you in this life, let me feel the lack."

Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten

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Rach took me to the Seattle Symphony tonight for my birthday. We didn't actually have tickets, so we had to stand by the ticket office and see if we made it off the waiting list. The lady in the office gave Rach and I a sign that said "I Need 2" and we were supposed to hold it up as ticket holders walked in. We felt pretty silly, because all these other people had signs "I need 1" "I need 3" and so on and we looked pretty silly, eyeing each other suspiciously and maneuvering for best position. The ticket office had only one person serving the waiting list, so it was agonizingly slow once tickets did get released.
But luck was on our side. We got perhaps the two last tickets, and were the last ones to dash into the auditorium, ushers waving at us frantically at every turn.
Why the sellout? The Russian National Orchestra, led by conductor Vladimir Spivakov, was in town. No exagerration: half the audience was Russian. I didn't realize there were that many Russians in Seattle. Spivakov is the Russian Justin Timberlake.
The program:

  • Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 2 in G major, Op. 44

  • Arvo Part's Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten

  • Tchaikovsky's Suite from Swan Lake


Mikhail Pletnev was the piano soloist. I've never heard Tchaikovsky's 2nd piano concerto before. The second movement was very melodic. Overall, though, I liked the Cantus best. Never heard it before, and it simply consisted of all the strings playing the same descending A-minor melody in successively lower octaves and slower tempos. The 2nd violins played
one octave below the 1st violins, at half the tempo. And so on through the violas and then cellos. And one lone chime in the background, playing a single note. Simple, and beautiful.
So tired right now. Woke up at 5:30 to go play basketball at Sound. Got stuck at a railroad crossing by a freight train next to Safeco field, and sat there for something like 20 minutes. Jason fell on his chin while playing and had to go off for 10 stitches. I'm calling him Scarface. I finally felt my jump shot coming back at the end of the morning. I haven't felt it since I had knee surgery. How beautiful it would be if it returned.
He's feeling pretty puffed up right now, with his Heels #1, and NC in the lead for the Sears Cup, which Stanford's won every year except the first year, when Carolina won it. No problem, we'll pull it out after the swimming and tennis teams do their thing.
Was watching the Region 3 DVD of Crouching Tiger tonight just to make sure my Apex DVD player would process it properly, and it did. Neil's borrowing it for Movie Night at Amazon's AV room tomorrow. Watching a few scenes, I realized how much I love listening to Zhang Ziyi speak Mandarin. And how difficult it was listening to Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun Fat's Mandarin. My dad says Chang Chen's Mandarin was supposed to be deplorable because he plays a Mongolian barbarian in the film. But if I'm going to ding Kevin Costner for a bad Bostonian accent in Thirteen Days, I can't very well let Ang Lee off for allowing bad accents in his film either. Zhang Ziyi is a native Mandarin speaker, and I love listening to very accurate Mandarin. People who can speak it well can cast spells over me, it's like witchcraft.
I realized something while listening to the Cantus. I put myself on the edge all the time, all in the hopes that somewhere along there, I will find a moment of grace. Why tread along the edge of the abyss, where the risk of pain and failure is so acute? Anyone who has ever felt longing knows.
Nietzsche wrote in "Beyond Good and Evil":
"Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze into you."
I'm trying hard. To find that grace. To vanquish those monsters without becoming one. It's hard work.

Redline

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Did two laps around Mercer on my bike Saturday and it nearly killed me, I was so slow. Last year I was doing reverse splits on laps around Mercer, but Saturday I did 36 and 40, which bugged me all weekend. That's so slow it's pathetic. I guess I need to be more patient, since I haven't ridden much this winter, but I think I'm just impatient by nature. These two guys passed me on their bikes, with their aero bars and triathlon framesets and wheelsets, and I couldn't keep up. Bugger.
Friday ended on a lousy note during our business trip to L.A., so I was already irked on the flight back. Then Stanford lost to UCLA, and Carolina moved above them into #1. Anyone but the Tar Heels. Jason will be blabbering about them to no end. Oh dear.
Macho Camacho's in town, looking for a place to stay. We went out and caught Shadow of the Vampire on Sunday. Amusing take on the filmmaking process, and once or twice during the film, especially when the vampire is looking into the film projector lens, I thought the film almost achieved a certain transcendence.
Duke Ellington: In a Sentimental Mood. Good stuff.
The prettiest thing I've seen recently. Oh!
Forgot silver, gold, platinum. Titanium is the metal of choice for gadget-freak jewelry.
Sunday I saw Chunyang, the first Korean film I've ever seen. Somehow I duped Laura into going to see it with me. I enjoyed it, though I don't think I could sit through an actual ponsori, which is the Korean musical form on which the film is based. Like a fable, or a long bedtime story with Confucian overtones. Vivid colors, like Ran.
Song in my head: Yumeji's Theme from Wong Kar Wai's latest film, In the Mood for Love. Beautiful cinematography. Great soundtrack. Mood is the perfect word to describe the film.
Everyone is commenting on how Asian cinema is hot, especially with how well Crouching Tiger is doing. They obviously don't have to view the usual dreck coming out of Hong Kong all year. Only the good stuff makes it stateside. But still, American
film is pretty stale right now. Iranian and Asian filmmakers are bringing some fresh storytelling to cinema. Thankfully.
Dan and I watched K2 tonight. I felt like rock climbing after watching that. Maybe I will have to join Toni at the climbing gym this month. I think I'm designed to operate in a high gear. I'm moody when I don't have a million things to do. I work best when I'm figuring out what not to do than when I have to figure out what to do.
A friend is one who is one beyond the point of personal cost. I heard that somewhere recently. But phrased more eloquently.
Rach and I are going to try to grab last minute cancellations for the Russian concert at Benaroya tomorrow. I heard Spivakov conduct the Russian national orchestra once, in New York. Spivakov played the Tchaikovsky violin concerto. Then, for the encore, he played this beautiful ballad, and I've never figured out what that piece was. I've been haunted by it for two years now. What was it?

Cold Day in Kinko's

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There comes a time in every person's life when they must decide. Stay up all night so you don't risk oversleeping, or go to bed and set your alarm clock on high volume buzzer. I am there now. I think I may have to keep myself up through the night.
Sitting in a Seattle Kinko's, waiting for the world's slowest color laser printer to spit out 100 or so printouts of various design mockups for meetings in L.A. tomorrow. Kinko's late at night is the haven for bitter procrastinanors (primarily students) and business people under the gun (e.g. me).
It doesn't help that the employees here are incompetent. It took them about half an hour just to figure out the post-midnight password to log me on to a workstation. The guy helping me out made up all this mumbo jumbo about having to copy my files into a new folder and then converting them into PDFs because that's the only way they could get good color separation blah blah blah blah. Finally I realized he had no idea what he was talking about so I banished him to his little world behind the counter.
Did have to suffer through some printing problems. IE and Netscape Navigator don't print web pages the same, so I keep having to switching back and forth everytime a printout comes out badly. They also don't display web pages the same, which is no surprise to any web developer, but right now it doesn't make me feel any better.
Have to catch a flight in 4 hours, and I still have to go home and pack, eat dinner, and iron a dress shirt. I need an Alfred, like Batman.
Some company came out with a DVD that simulates watching a movie at the Drive-In. The soundtrack imitates the poor sound quality of drive-in speakers, and in the background you can hear doors shutting, young lovers giggling, crickets chirping. What a stupid idea. It would be like watching one of those Asian bootleg movies, where the bootlegger walks
into a theater with a camcorder and films the screen. People in the U.S. don't need to resort to bootleg copies to see films on a first run, so why would they pay extra for a drive-in theater simulation?
Yesterday night, had an Amazon hoops game. We field a team for a corporate league. We beat up on a team from RealNetworks. That was the only exercise I'd gotten since the Whistler trip last weekend, and it felt good to run around. We opened the game with a 14-0 run and never looked back. So now we're 3-3 after opening the season 1-3. Winning is so much more wonderful than losing. Character be damned.
C'mon silly printer! I can't think of anything to write!
Jason's happy. North Carolina nipped Duke at Cameron today. Stanford pulled out a close one at Maples against USC. If NC plays Stanford, Jason and I probably won't talk for the whole week leading up to the game.
Alan called again. After bouncing around a whole slew of family vacation options, I think we're back to Las Vegas the weekend after my sisters graduate. I will get my fill of the strip this year.
Alright, that's it. I'm going to stay up all night. Ah, this will be like my college days, calling up Howie to brew me a cafeteria mug full of Vanilla bean coffee laced with two heaping spoons of white sugar, alternating between engineering problem sets and that short story, both due in the morning, listening to Bob Dylan cranked up on my headphones.
Working in a video rental store produced Quentin Tarantino. I wonder what type of artistic geniuses Kinko's inspires.
The world's greatest copier. Can use all advanced functions on all models of copiers. You want two-sided, collated,
perfectly stapled copies? You've got it.
Printer's done. Finally!

NAPSTAQ

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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.

Letting go

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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.

Decadence

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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.

24 hours in a sick mind

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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:

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.

One of those nights

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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.

3 x 3 x 3

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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.

Run

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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.

Chick peas

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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.

Two Johns

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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.

Costco and higher civilization

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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.

A Delicate Balance

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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.

To the batcave

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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.

Las Vegas, city for the dreamless

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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.

Recurring nightmares

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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.