Bill James hired by the Red Sox

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Red Sox fans, like Cubs fans, suffer long and hard. But at least Red Sox fans have some fairly progressive management to look forward to. John Henry has shown some uncommon baseball smarts and willingness to embrace new ideas which statheads and sabermetricians have been touting for years, and now they've gone and hired the most famous of all the baseball geeks, Bill James.
Meanwhile the Cubs look like they can get Dusty Baker if they want him. I have no idea how much effect a manager has on a baseball team, having never been part of a MLB roster. At least his teams have been successful, I guess.

Oops Part I

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Sleep deprivation began catching up with me today at the office, so I downed two cans of Red Bull. I'd never really tried it before except for once at a rave, and it didn't seem to affect me then. I'd seen lots of engineers around the office sipping it in meetings, and given the cloudy, addled state of my mind and my general drowsiness I decided I needed the chemical boost.
Oops.
I don't take a lot of caffeine, and those two cans of Red Bull gave me heart palpitations. I nearly had a panic attack during a meeting. I'm not joking. My arms were shaking, my mind was racing, my heart was pounding, and I almost snapped my pen in two. Right now it's about 2 in the morning and my body is still at Defcon 1.
No more Red Bull, no coffee, no soda, no caffeine. As Yoda would say, "Bad things, it does." Keeps you awake, sure, but it's hard to be productive when you're vibrating like a helium molecule in heat.

Oops Part II

I just realized I haven't been archiving my old movie reviews. I overwrote most of them and they're lost forever. Humph.
Someday, when I'm not working, perhaps I can go back and recall what I thought about all of them. Pauline Kael claimed she never had to watch a movie a second time--her first impressions were chiseled into her memory. I dare not claim to be a fraction the critic nor to possess a sliver of the memory of a Pauline Kael, but my opinions of movies tend to be fairly constant after setting in.

ESPN Commercials

Some of ESPN's Sportscenter commercials are back online for a while thanks to T-Mobile. They never really get old, do they? I mean seriously, I've tested this. I've watched the same commercial over and over again for about 57 times, and I still laugh my ass off every time. Every time! When Kenny Mayne slides down on the office carpet and strikes a pose at the end of the commercial where he scores a goal on Alexei Lalas in foosball, I start convulsing and snorting things out my nose. It's got to be something hard-wired in the male brain, like a reflex.
"So Karl started drinking a little bit, and then he was going on and on about he and Mrs. Met. Nasty stuff, I tell you. Nasty stuff."

Doonesbury

Last week's Doonesbury was all about blogging. I liked this one best.

Hostage

The new BMW Film Hostage, directed by John Woo, is available for download. Clive Owen returns to play the poker-faced Driver for hire with a heart of gold and a stable of BMWs at his beck and call. As with all Woo movies, you get some closeups of bullets and guns which come through nicely if you download the 104Mb version of the short movie.
My primary complaint: men should not drive roadsters.

The Marshall Doctrine

Baseball Prospectus recently ran a fascinating two part interview (Part 1 Part 2) with pitching coach and former major league pitching star Mike Marshall. He has a website where he lays out some of his unconventional theories. Chapter 28, on pitch selection, is fascinating if you're a baseball fan. An excerpt:
1. Pitchers should throw all pitches for 66.7% strikes.
2. Pitchers should end 75% of at bats within three pitches.
3. Pitchers should end 100% of at bats within five pitches.
4. Pitchers should pitch equally well to both sides of home plates.
5. Pitchers should use the best six pitch sequences with which to achieve the lowest batting averages and on base percentages for the four types of hitters.
"To hitters who hold their bats vertically, pitchers should throw four seam fastballs. To hitters who hold their bats horizontally, pitchers should throw two seam fastballs. To hitters whose rear foot is close to home plate, pitchers should throw them fastballs away. To hitters whose rear foot is away from home plate, pitchers should throw fastballs inside. However, because all hitters want to hit fastballs, pitchers have to convince them that they do not need to throw fastballs."
I'm very curious to see how you throw what Marshall calls a pronation curve. Pronation of the arm during a throwing motion has applications in lots of sports. When a tennis coach finally taught me how to pronate on my serve, I went from having tennis elbow and a terrible serve to being able to hit the occasional ace with either pace or spin, or both.
For folks more interested in hitting (perhaps for your local softball league), Batspeed.com offers some interesting theories on hitting. Their basic premise is that most swing mechanics incorrectly cite linear mechanics when they should be preaching rotational mechanics. I'm going to try and apply some of these ideas next summer in my softball league.

Writer's bonk

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Who said writing isn't an endurance sport requiring peak physical conditioning? I'm trying to write right now, after another long day at the office, and because I'm exhausted, I can't do it. Can't summon one coherent, interesting, thought. These days I just can't function well without sufficient sleep. Work, work out, go out, write--if my body ain't startin', it ain't departin' to borrow a line from Gary Templeton. Contrast this with my college days when I had to try to do everything on as little sleep as possible, just to prove a point. That point being, I am a golden god.
Most successful writers know their bodies and when they can produce the best material. Throw out all those ridiculous romantic notions of writers on drugs and alcohol, cranking out 50 pages at a time in the middle of the night when hit with a creative snap. Most successful writers I know do their best work at the same time each day, with their minds clear and fresh. I've written while intoxicated, and I've read some of the stuff I've producd in that state. The only person who found it interesting and creative was me, but only while I was intoxicated.
In my last three years at Amazon, I think this past week was the longest work week I've had. And tomorrow morning it starts up again with a 9am conference call.

Thank you Dorothy Boyd

Mitch Lawrence of ESPN looks like Tom Cruise's country bumpkin brother. Wilbur Cruise or something.

Happy birthday Ken

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I think of all my buddies, I've known Ken the longest, since my early grade school days and Sunday Chinese school.
Ken has a better memory about select events in my life than I do. Frightening. He also know more about random facts of culture and current events than anyone I know.
He was also there for two of the great tragedies of my life. The Cubs losing to the Padres in the 1984 playoffs, and my Little League team losing two straight games to our opponents in the Little League World Series in Palatine. We only needed one win to win the Pony League. Someday, when the Cubs win the World Series, Ken will be the first guy I call, and we'll be dancing around and weeping like babies. Well, maybe only I will. I think Ken's more rational and sees the futility in being a Cubs fan.
There's a lifetime of shared memories there: staying up late playing computer games he'd pirated from friends; playing two man baseball in his backyard and having to sneak into the neighbor's yard to fish baseballs out of their pool when we hit home runs; outings to Wrigley Field; sitting around laughing our heads off over Far Side collections; Baker's Square; golf at that course near his house with the 600+ yard hole, I can never remember the name of that place; the time we double dated those Swedish twins, both of whom were models.
Okay, okay, maybe some of my memories are slightly off. They weren't really twins.
Ken, the two strange memories I recall from your life are the home run you hit in that one little league game, and you chipping in from on top of the hill onto a lowered green on some golf hole at that course near your house. I'm still jealous.
Happy birthday dude.

Awk

How awkward is it when some of your friends don't get along with other friends of yours?
That's a rhetorical question.

Netflix

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The problem with Netflix is that all the new movies are never available. If you don't send in an old DVD the day one of the new DVDs release, the new titles will show up in your rental queue as "Long Wait" or "Very Long Wait" or "When a Cold Snap Hits Hell". I use Netflix to see movies I missed in theaters, don't think I'll want to own, but which might distract me for an a few hours if I'm home one night and looking to vegetate. But usually those are new releases which, as I noted, are pretty damn hard to get your hands on. They need to solve that issue, or customers into instant gratification will head back to their local video store, where hundreds of copies of those titles will line the shelves.
Instead of Super Troopers, Windtalkers, Changing Lanes, or We Were Soldiers, which are near the top of my Netflix queue, I get sent an older movie from way down in my queue: Go Tigers! or Blue Velvet or Malice. Netflix needs to be smart and buy up stronger on hot new releases. If they end up with too much stock on those, sell them cheap as used copies or something. Or they should develop a feature where you can send in an old movie and indicate that you don't want them to pick a movie from lower on your list until the top movie in your queue is ready to ship.
Secondly, back in the old days, if a movie came out in two DVDs, one fullscreen, one widescreen, they only offered the fullscreen edition. A big turnoff for cinephiles. I think they've gotten better about that but it was always those little details which always annoyed me. They really haven't improved their site much over time and you'd think one or two smart product managers teamed with a few engineers could keep that site innovating. Now Blockbuster, with their in-store version of the Netflix model (pay a monthly fee, keep a set number of movies out at all times), and Wal-Mart, with their Netflix clone, are moving in. They have deeper pockets and can offer more cutthroat pricing. Netflix needs to stay nimble to stay solvent.

Random thoughts

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New fiction editor at The New Yorker. A good thing, I think. The fiction there needs some more crackle.
The Sopranos isn't as good this year. Too many random story threads that don't move along quickly enough.
The West Wing hasn't been stellar either, though the last episode was good. After a while I wish Sorkin would put some flesh and blood in his liberal puppets. Let Seaborn hook up with Leo's daughter. Have Josh fall prey to Donna's charms one late night at the office.
Woody speaks out agains the war. Woody! When I think Woody, I think of Indecent Proposal, where he is holding that brick, giving a lecture on architecture, John Barry's lush score rising to a crest of emotion as Woody proclaims, "Even a brick wants to be more than a brick." Woody?
Any concert with a big name that's worth seeing in Seattle sells out instantly. If you're not ready to redial Ticketmaster on Saturday morning like a spastic 13 year old girl trying to get N'Sync concert tickets, you're totally out of luck. When you get through, you'll be put on hold for about half an hour, at which point some Ticketmaster agent will try to upsell you on four different Ticketmaster magazines and two different overpriced Ticketmaster services before giving you two tickets in a section you don't want to sit, and they'll charge you $8.25 per ticket as a handling charge. Someone break down this handling charge for me--I'm sorry, is Gisele Bundchen going to hand deliver my tickets, because that bored phone rep on the other end of the line sure isn't lifting a finger, judging from the passion in her reading of the sales script in front of her. Dealing with Ticketmaster is like being forced to watch Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood or Riding Cars with Boys in a shitty movie theater with unhinged seats covered in gum from viewers from a few months back. Anyway, back to the point of this whole thing...if Beck brings the Flaming Lips to Benaroya and I miss out, I am moving.
A very sweet Dell customer service representative with a Southern accent agreed to offer me a refund on the RAM which Dell convinced me to purchase and which failed to work in my computer because of some strange limitation in the way Rambus RAM has to be configured. That was the highlight of my day. PCNation.com, on the other hand, still hasn't shipped my photo printer and has no idea where it is. It's been three months now.

A start

Last Saturday afternoon, I dropped my car off for a repair, and they told me they needed to keep it longer than expected. So there I was, stranded without wheels for five hours. I could have taken the shuttle home, but I had my laptop with me, and in a moment which in a movie would be one of those subtle and crucial turning points in a character's development.
I climb into the car dealer shuttle, and the driver asks me where I want to go. Home, I almost say. The office, I should respond. But after weeks of living in Amazon headquarters all day, and after a morning of working through bug lists on e-mail, I need a break. My brain is cooked.
I could head downtown and shop, buy myself something. But it's a habit I distrust, this self-indulgence after spurts of industriousness. Strikes me as weakness--after all, I want the freedom to get something when I need it, whenever that may be.
Take me downtown, I say. I realize I need to take my watch in for a new battery, so I can start with that, deferring my decision for a bit. Besides, I have my laptop with me, and an idea is sprouting in the corner of my mind.
People everywhere downtown. When I first came to Seattle, it was pretty desolate downtown on the weekends for a big city. Now, with Pacific Place's parking lot (the most crucial cog in the revival of Seattle's downtown commerce in all the time I've been here) and all the big shops lining 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th St., people stream up and down the veins of downtown like they do in the heart of any bustling metropolis. Just being outside, everyone all around, gives me energy.
Four hours to kill. I know what I have to do. I've said it before, so I must take some of my own medicine. I find the nearest Starbucks (in Seattle, that means I just turn around), walk in, pop out my laptop and plug it into the wall, pull out my iPod and pop in my headphones, crank up the tunes, and start writing.
I have this germ of an idea for a screenplay, and some source material with me. So I pull that out of my bag and begin jotting out an outline. Three acts. No wait, it feels more like four. Non-conventional, but when you're in draft mode anything goes. I can always pare it back later.
Back in school, I'd do this once a week, or whenever the mood struck. This outlining. That way I always had skeletons or crude sketches of all sorts of stories in my pocket at any point in time. Finish one story, and instead of reading it, I'd move on to some other story skeleton and give it some flesh and guts. Then, later, I'd pull the completed story back out and re-read it with a critical eye.
I can't always write to music, but the the joy of the iPod is that it stores a gazillion songs and provides just enough noise to drown out the sound of the espresso machine and all the strangers around me. Four hours later, I have a 6 page outline. Four acts of about 21 scenes each. Obviously too long, this is more like a two part miniseries, but always better to have a mind pregnant with ideas than to engage in a staring contest with a solid block of whitespace.
It's been a long time since I've written. It feels good. I know I've got a long night ahead at the office, but I'm flush with writer's high, the satisfaction of the artist who has just surfaced from a long swim in the depths of his craft. Maybe that's too florid a description. But then, writing is not always that fluid and enjoyable a process, so those chances I get to romanticize it? I grab them. Later when I'm struggling I can look back and remind myself that good times lie ahead.

PTA and AS and EW

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Went to a screening of Punch Drunk Love two weeks ago at the amazing Cinerama, and who showed up to promote the film but Paul Thomas Anderson (P. T. Anderson to his friends, thank you very much) and Adam Sandler themselves.
Quirky modern romance film. I didn't love it, but I loved lots of its components. Great performances from Adam Sandler, Emily Watson and Philip Seymour Hoffman, three actors I love to watch. I have a dream. In it, I would be able to spend one long day in their company, walking around a city, sightseeing, grabbing lunch and dinner, taking in the sights, shooting the shit. There are many ways to divide up the people in the world, but one of my favorite is to divide people into those I would love to spend a carefree day with, and those who'd drive me nuts or bore me silly after fifteen minutes. Seriously, try this out. Doesn't everyone fall on one side or the other? They do for me.
Adam Sandler is a very natural actor. He is what he is, a nice guy, kinda shy, the odd neighborhood geek, prone to sudden and unexpected outbursts of anger. He was fairly quiet and didn't try to overwhelm the audience with histrionics the way I imagine someone like Jim Carrey would. His character in this film has the same type of personality, and it should answer any who doubt his screen presence. He's the gentle comedian who injects happiness in your soul.
Emily Watson has the same initials as I do. That alone rates high marks in my book. Oh yeah. She's also as brave an actress as there is, a sweet and dedicated professional, and the type of inspiring, nurturing artist friend we all need in our lives. And she has that lovely accent.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is the mad comic genius who says the things you wish you were honest enough to say, and some things you didn't. I don't think I've ever seen him give a bad performance. Have you? He'd do something bold and obnoxious in public that would embarass you while at the same time making you feel like the part of the most interesting group out that day. Certainly the group having the most fun.
P.T. Anderson is the type of self-confident, pretentious, self-important director people love to hate. But he's also a talented, talented director with an exquisite aesthetic sensibility, and I loved the scope of the ambition in his first three movies (Hard Eight, Boogie Nights, and Magnolia). Punch-Drunk Love contains such natural performances, but the plot that frames them is just the opposite. Everything from the strange accident that opens the movie to the fact that Sandler's character Barry discovers a loophole in a frequent flier mile giveaway and buys hundreds of packs of pudding to take advantage of it to the fact that Barry sells novelty bathroom plungers to the idea that he's supposed to have seven sisters...it was such a deliberate setup it was distracting. True, the story of the guy who found the frequent flier mile loophole is a true story, but I would have preferred a more organic story built around the actors' performances. They're wonderful, but they all seem to be pushing out against P.T.A's calculated plot ideas.
Seeing Sandler put the evening over the top, though. Quite a treat. Happy Gilmore, Billy Madison, The Wedding Singer...there's a reason all his movie titles refer to his character in the movie.

Nanowrimo

It's that time of year when writer friends pressure me to sign up for Nanowrimo again. It stands for National Novel Writing Month. Across the globe, hordes of over-eager Eggers wannabees invade coffee houses near you and spend the month of November trying to crank out a 50,000 word (175 page) novel. Last year I started that brutal sprint, and then along came a brutal week of work, and it was as if I turned my head and ran headlong into a street sign and knocked myself unconscious.
The idea is a good one, though. If you want to be a writer, you have to treat it like you would any other job. Spend several hours each day writing. No breaks except those of the bathroom variety. Those who can't hack it aren't writers at heart. I know plenty.
Am I one? I don't know. I suspect if I were one I wouldn't need to enter Nanowrimo to prove anything to myself.
Friends say, "Time to write."
Blinking cursor stares me down.
It doesn't look good.

Mutant

Everyone who saw me after my bike accident and who've seen me in the past day or two are shocked by how quickly my face healed up. I received my fair share of "that must be your mutant power" comments.
Unfortunately, I was also starting to look like Wolverine. I was waiting on a haircut because of my facial wound, and finally last night I couldn't hold out any longer. Two thoughts arose as I sat there at Rudy's watching my hair fall in front of my face. One, is it rude to not make small talk with the person cutting your hair? Does that make their life more interesting, or more painful? I tried to read my snipper. She looked like an alternative chick with no particular interest in hearing anything I had to say. I kept quiet.
Second, why do barbershops still stock their shelves with all these adult magazines? Isn't that a legacy of old school barbershops that only catered to men? I've never seen anyone with the brass tacks to read an issue. And even if you did, is a haircut really the time to be flipping through something like that?

Congrats...

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...to Joannie, Keila, and Emily for completing the Chicago marathon. Studs all around.
Meanwhile, I'm locked in my own personal marathon at work. All my days are melding together in a haze of meetings, e-mail, phone calls, and frantic strategizing. I think I'm at mile 20, but I can't tell. I know I'm close to hitting the wall, but maybe I'm not. I've lost touch with the world. It's just a two way road from the office to my bed and back. I didn't think I had more of these in me after five years, but the new folks on my team have been inspiring in their dedication, and at a certain point in every project you enter a trance where you just lock onto that marker in distance and it's all you think about.
All of you whose e-mails and phone calls have gone unreturned, know that I am alive. My captors have not harmed me and are treating me well. Send pictures of your new kids, dogs, houses, etc. And food.

BMW Films, Part II

The trailer for the first of the new series of 3 BMW Films is online now. Only for people with fat pipes and massive hard drives.
The first set of these shorts were a lot of fun, though likely not nearly as fun as driving a souped-up BMW at Seattle International Raceway. Someday.

GO JONI

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Joannie runs the Chicago marathon Sunday morning. It will be her first. Amazing! I'm in awe of people who run marathons because I hate running so much.
Taking a page from Ted's playbook, we bought her a shirt that reads JONI on the front and back so people will cheer her name as she runs (a great gift for all your friends and family running their first marathon). We spelled it that way because people can never pronounce Joannie properly.
Good luck sis!

Bah humbug

Jason sent me this link at work today, and it resonated with my current mood. Harmonic chord, minor key.

Shock jocks

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Mornings right now are brutal because my right shoulder, which I separated in the bike accident, is so stiff after a long night of inactivity. I never realized how important the shoulder is in so many movements until now. I was lying there trying to roll myself over and up out of bed without using my right arm; basically, I was stuck.
On popped my radio alarm clock, and it was some shock jock engaged in a heated debate with some caller. And, I'm not making any of this up, this is the conversation they were having:
Jock (shouting): Next time I see a cyclist in the road, I'm running him over! GET OUT OF THE ROAD! I'm so sick of these damn cyclists!
Caller: Cyclists should be treated like cars. You should wait until it's clear to pass.
Jock (shouting): Cyclists are two-wheeled wimps. They are not the same as cars. Get on the sidewalk. Get out of the road. I'm so sick of cyclists while driving in Capitol Hill.
Caller: You're stupid.
Jock (shouting): I'm stupid?! I'm stupid?! You're an idiot. I see you on the road, I'm running you over.
Caller: How about I come over there and beat you up.
Jock (shouting): You want to come beat me up? Come on in. I'll kick your ass.
I'm not sure what radio station it was, but it was the same guy I've listened to on the radio every morning since I got to Seattle. Basically, with my cheap clock radio, I'm relegated to leaving it on the one radio station I get good reception on, or using the BEEP-BEEP-BEEP heart-attack-inducing siren that all alarm clocks are loaded with at the factory. This guy is a moron (so was the caller, but given my bike incident, I was locked on the DJ). I wanted to head over to the radio station and throttle the guy with his headphone cord.
Seriously, 95% of radio station shock jocks are simple-minded monkeys intended to boost radio interest through their controversial, inflammatory rhetoric. Like sports radio hosts who don't know the first thing about sports. They sit in the studios, behind the glass, insulated from all human contact like a circus freak, shouting at callers through microphones from their cells, making prank phone calls to random people for kicks. Why do we have to put up with these idiots?
On my way home from work late tonight, a prostitute was standing in the road near the intersection of Massachusetts and Rainier. I stopped because I thought she was crossing the street, but she didn't move. Instead, she made hand gestures and asked if she could get in the car. I waved her off and drove around her, and she started cursing at me using language not suitable for my PG-13 blog.
Fortunately, in between the morning and the evening, I was at the office where most of my coworkers were sane.
Segway

I saw my first Segway rider in public today. Some guy cruised by as I drove to work this morning. It was a rough neighborhood, too. I guess he wasn't too worried about getting Segway-jacked in broad daylight.
I look forward to the day when a healthy Segway after-market of parts and modifications exist so that people can lower their Segways, add chrome hubs, neon highlights, and 400 watt subwoofers. Well, I don't look forward to it, but you know what I mean...never mind.

Two other cities I'd live in

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In the span of the past week, I've had a chance to spend time in two other cities in the U.S. (besides Seattle) that I'd seriously consider living in: NYC, and SF.
First up, NYC. I was there for a conference last last Wednesday, and I stayed through Sunday morning. It's been a long time since I've spent much time in NYC. It's strange to even call any other city in the United States a city after you've spent time in the Big Apple. It has a grand, extreme personality that is both grating and endearing. Its unique qualities assail you as soon as you arrive.
Lots. New York has lots of everything. Lots of people, lots of traffic, lots of buildings, lots of noise, and restaurants, and sports teams, and activities, and museums. How exciting for me to arrive in NYC, open a copy of The New Yorker or The New York Times, and be able to actually take advantage of all the events listed in the arts and leisure sections.
Friday night, I caught a performance of Mary Zimmerman's Metamorphoses I laughed my head off at the segment where Phaeton visits his therapist's office wearing a pair of sunglasses, floating on an inflatable recliner, recounting his difficult relationship with his dad Apollo and the disastrous day he asked for the keys to his dad's car, the chariot which pulls the sun. Those of you who know the myth will understand why the conceit is so clever.
"My dad is such a pain. It's like, I'm the Sun God, blah blah blah. On my last birthday, he says, 'Son, it's your birthday, I'll grant you any wish.' So I say fine, Dad, I want the keys to your car. And he starts wringing his hands and saying, 'No, anything but that, you can't control it.' But I insist and he gives in. Boy, big mistake. As soon as I'm up there, I'm totally out of control, the horses are going everywhere, I'm lighting fire to farms all over the Earth..."
If you ever get a chance to catch this play, do so, just to see this segment. I wish I had it on tape, like a favorite SNL skit.
Saturday afternoon, a matinee show of Mamma Mia with my sister Karen. And, in a distinctly New York moment, we scalped the tickets for Mamma Mia a few hours before playing time from some guy who grabbed us as we walked past the theater where it was showing. We ended up dead center in the seventh row, Orchestra. Nice.
You can find anything in NYC. Have a craving for good Chinese? Shanghai Gourmet or Joe's Shanghai in Chinatown are your places for outstanding Shanghai dumplings, the type you put on a big soup spoon to eat because they're filled with the tastiest soup. Bite a small hole in the side of one, drink the soup, eat the dumpling. Karen and I shared a basket one morning.
Shopping? I couldn't tell one flagship store from the next, there were so many. Walking up Park Ave. or through Soho I could feel my Visa card twitching in my wallet. I felt sated just shopping with my eyes, like Holly Golightly taking in the showcases at Tiffany & Co.
Shows? The rest of the U.S.'s major cities might be fortunate enough to get a show working out its kinks before it moves to the big time of Broadway (see Hairspray, Seattle, or my later post on Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme, now in the minor leagues of San Francisco's Curran Theatre). Or it might get the dregs of NYC on tour. Make no mistake, though, the big stars play in NYC. In the space of what seems like just two years, they've had Mary Louise Parker, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Anne Heche in the title role of Proof.
I tried to get tickets to see Ed Norton and Catherine Keener in Burn This, but came up empty-handed. But no fear, NYC never disappoints for those with stars in their eyes. Wednesday night turned out to be the 50th birthday of Christopher Reeve and also the birthday of both Michael Douglas and his daughter, I mean wife, Catherine Zeta Jones. Well, they all decided to host a big party at the Times Square Marriott Marquis, where, coincidentally, my conference was being held. I won't be as crass as to recite names of stars present like some Hollywood groupie, but suffice it to say fans of Matthew Modine didn't go home empty-handed. And every time you hop into a cab, they play a recording of some random celebrity urging you to wear your seat belt. The one I heard most frequently? Michael Buffer: "Let's get ready to ruuuuuuummmmmbbblllleeeeee...for safety!" Or something like that.
Oh yeah, I was also in town during the New York film festival's opening weekend. Couldn't get tix, though. Sold out long long ago. I really don't think they price new show tickets high enough in NYC. Seriously, companies and their banks get chastised for pricing IPOs too low on the stock market and flipping their shares for a profit. What about the price of tickets to new shows in NYC? They could raise seat prices by 50% and still sell out.
Which brings me to cost. I bleed money in NYC. Cab rides, meals, shows, rent, taxes, shopping. Sometimes I think subsidized school housing and rent control are all that keep NYC from consisting entirely of wealthy urbanites--celebrities, fashion designers, and bankers--basically, people like Mayor Bloomberg. I did the math and figured that it would cost at least $3000 a month to survive in NYC. Most of that would be rent and housing costs, a big chunk would be food, and what's left over would provide a modest play fund.
Tough. Attitude. You don't meet many wilted flowers in NYC. On Sunday afternoon, before my flight, I went over to the West 4th basketball courts to catch some of the legendary street ball I'd only seen before in Nike commercials. Half the entertainment is the flashy in-your-face style of the play, and the other half is the trash-talking and playground arguments. It's more entertaining than a Knicks game, I can guarantee that, and it's free. This toughness runs through the blood of the inhabitants and can be read in their stoic expressions layered upon hundreds and hundreds of faces passing you on the streets and subways. Its signature wardrobe is the street wear which Karen and I found while shopping in Soho on Saturday. I was actually tempted to pick up an entire outfit of street wear--a hoodie with some vague street gang or small NYC neighborhood reference, some pre-tattered jeans--but I'm of the philosophy that the tude comes before the tat, not vice versa.
Even the drinks in NYC are tough. At a business reception Friday night, the bartender poured me a vodka martini that could have powered a 6 person Cessna (you know just the type, don't you Laura?). It nearly burned a hole through the back of my empty stomach, and as it was NYC, I felt perfectly comfortable cursing loudly in public, "Jesus, what the !@#$% did they put in this?" Though if you do the math, the drinks should be strong in NYC since they cost about twice as much as the fruit juice they call liquor here in Seattle.
Anyway, I'm not coming down one way or the other on New York City. Just collecting my thoughts.
Then, there's...

San Francisco


Went down to the Bay Area for a business trip last Wednesday, and stayed the night at Jon's. He owns amazing 1 bedroom apartment down near Pac Bell, in the Mission district. Quite the bachelor pad, befitting a young banker.
The big event of my one night there was to see the Baz Luhrmann production of Puccini's La Boheme, one of my favorite operas. Baz Luhrmann himself came out in the beginning to give a short introduction apologizing for a long transition between two scenes in the opera. Or is it a musical? Call it an opsical. A popsical. The singers sing in Italian, and there are the familiar English transalations projected on a rectangular screen that hangs from the ceiling. But unlike the opera, the performances run on a Broadway musical schedule. A show every night, an extra matinee on Saturday, and just the matinee on Sunday. This production moves the setting up in time, from 1840 to the Bohemian left bank of Paris in 1957. Unlike most renowned opera singers, the three couples chosen to rotate through the lead parts of Rodolfo and Mimi are all young and attractive twenty-somethings.
Well, call it what you will. It all sounds convincing when Baz explains it in that accent of his.
Baz wasn't kidding. Between scenes, workers would come out and rotate and move props, and a woman would come out after all that was done, get the actors in position (all while wearing her headset), and then cue the music. It was odd, like seeing the "making of" La Boheme and La Boheme itself, all in one show. The six week run in San Francisco is a tryout, much like they tried out Hairspray in Seattle for a bit before promoting it to NYC.
I enjoyed it a lot. Those who are disoriented by the visual fireworks in Baz's movies will find his La Boheme
quite viewable. Baz has cast three different pairs of Rodolfos and Mimis because of the performance frequency (much like starting pitchers in baseball, opera singers aren't meant to sing every day. I saw the Alfred Boe/Wei Huang pairing.
Baz is trying to bring opera to a new generation, to pair the musical heights of opera with the visual spectacle and narration of the musical, and I find that a worthy endeavor. Much like Mary Zimmerman modernizing ancient myths like those in Ovid's Metamorphoses and Homer's The Odyssey. And (here's where I bring San Francisco and New York City together) if you're interested in seeing it once all the kinks are worked out, it will be moving from SF to NYC in November. More news at the official website.

Richard Avedon

The Sunday I was to leave NYC, I dragged Karen along with me across Central Park to visit the Met, to see the photography exhibit collecting some of the famous portraits by Richard Avedon.
Avedon is a fascinating character, his work ranging from fashion photography to stark portraits. Some of his shots, taken with an 8 x 10 view camera, were blown up to larger than life size, and something about seeing pictures of, say, The Chicago Seven, looming above me as if I were in the land of the Lilliputians (or so the caption said I should feel).
He evolved from a fashion photogrpaher, early in his life, shooting his subjects against elaborate backgrounds, to a stark portraitist. Over time he developed a philosophy about portraiture, about how to best capture his subjects on film:
  • White backgrounds--it's about the person, not the set
  • No fanciful poses. Minimal composition.
  • There are no inaccuracies in portraiture, and no truth.
I'm sure there were other points. This is what I remember.
As his philosphy evolved, so did his equipment. He switched from using a waist-level viewfinder on his Rolleiflex to using a view camera because he wanted to be able to look his subjects in the eye instead of composing the photograph through the viewfinder. I can see why he'd wish to do so. It's always odd trying to develop a rapport with your subject when your face is hidden behind a black camera body. Reading it, I thought that yes, this was the type of artistic philosophy that one could only develop with age and maturity, understanding and humility.
In one of his books, an interesting anecdote. It's starting to fade a bit--maybe it's the painkillers. But I remember that he taped a piece of film on his sister's shoulder one day before they went to the beach, or was it his own shoulder? And at the end of the day, after a day of sun, there was a picture on her shoulder.
Another story: he took some photos of his father late in his father's life. Some of those were shown at the exhibit at the Met. When his father finally saw the shots, he was extremely upset. I can see why. The pictures show him grimacing as if he was a crazy old coot, or in intense anguish or rage. Late in life, Avedon wrote his father a letter. In it, he tried to explain to his father why he had taken those photos. In essence, he wanted to capture his father as he thought his father was. No compromise in his art. I wish I could find a copy of that letter online. Anyway, it is a fascinating attempt at reconciliation.
When Avedon's father passed away, I believe Avedon found that letter in his father's jacket.
One of the benefits of living near a museum is that you can visit it several times during the course of a year, seeing one or two exhibits with each visit. That's all I can absorb. As a kid, I'd try and cover every inch of a museum, to maximize the value of admission. But it's like trying to shop for an entire wardrobe in one visit to a department store. Just not productive.
Even just visiting NYC, it felt like the right amount of time to spend at the Met.

Out of it

When work gets crazy, I lose all touch with the world. I'm in NYC at James' place, and he pops out this Aerobed. I guess everyone's heard of it from infomercials. This isn't just one of these inflatable mattresses. Pull the thing out of a bag, plug it into the wall, press a button, and the thing inflates into a 3 foot high bed, complete with a bed skirt and everything. It looks like a mattress placed on top of a box spring. I've never heard of it, but I slept great. No peas for this princess.
Then, on a cab ride to the airport at five in the morning in San Francisco the other morning, the cabbie's blabbing away like it's the middle of the day and like he hasn't had human contact in weeks. I'm teetering on the brink of passing out in the back seat but I can't. He's asking just enough questions that my brain feels compelled to respond. He asks me about the strike. I say, what strike? He says, you know, the West coast dock worker strike. I say, I haven't heard anything about it. He goes on to explain it in great detail. He asks me if it's affecting me. I say, obviously not since I haven't heard about it and my life is as busy as usual.
I browsed CNN.com the other morning and got briefly up to speed on all the random events in the world. It was like coming out from a cave to blink and frown at the world around me before crawling back into my hole. Damn sunlight.

For aspiring comedians

Scientists conducting year-long research into humor have finally released their results. They've identified the world's funniest joke from among 40,000 jokes (criteria being the % of people who found it funny) and it was published in a CNN article:
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services.
He gasps: "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says: "Calm down, I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: "OK, now what?"
Among the other snippits from the article:
Bizarrely, computer analysis of the data also showed that jokes containing 103 words were thought to be especially funny. The winning "hunters" joke was 102 words long.
Many jokes submitted contained references to animals. Jokes mentioning ducks were considered particularly funny.
I didn't find the top jokes for various countries to particularly funny.
This one from Britain was pretty good:
Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go camping, and pitch their tent under the stars. During the night, Holmes wakes his companion and says: "Watson, look up at the stars, and tell me what you deduce."
Watson says: "I see millions of stars, and even if a few of those have planets, it's quite likely there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life."
Holmes replies: "Watson, you idiot. Somebody stole our tent."

Digital cameras--is it their time?

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Luminous Landscape has done a field test on the new Canon EOS 1Ds 11 megapixel digital camera. Exciting results, as it appears that digital is making huge inroads on film. Of course, some people will continue to raise the flag of analog, much as some people refuse to buy CDs while hanging on to their LP collections for dear life.
At some point, though, the cost equation will work out such that digital is more economical. Perhaps not at the price of this Canon (currently list price is $8,999!) but very soon. I really wish Nikon would come out with a high end body with this type of resolution soon. Even more exciting, these new digital cameras will shoot full-frame, without any magnification factor. It's a huge leap forward in the digital camera arena.
This, added up with the fact that you can preview digital photos, change the ISO on the fly, never have to worry about what type of film you have in the body (color or B&W) or carry two camera bodies, and avoid the delay and cost of film processing and scaning means I'll be in the market for the next high end Nikon digital camera body if I can afford it (the Kodak DCS Pro 14n is based on a Nikon body and promises 14 megapixels, but I haven't read any reviews of it yet).

I...love...football on TV

Sometime over the weekend, maybe it was last week, the intro to Sportscenter consisted of a spoof of those Coors Light football commercials. You know, the ones that go, "I...love...football on TV...shots of Gena Lee...and those twins." Or, whatever it is they say. Anyone, some news anchor clearly spent a lot of time writing up that intro, and I just want to applaud his creativity. I wish I had it on tape. Anyway, instead of those blond twins, the anchor substituted the Minnesota Twins.
All the underdogs have won in the baseball playoffs so far. The perfect rebuke to Bud Selig and his pronouncements of doom.
Go Twinkies.

The horror, the horror

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On the one hand, I'm repulsed by my large facial injury. If you just focused your camera on my right cheek and eye, I'd look like Freddy Krueger. On the other hand, with Halloween approaching, this may save me money on a Halloween costume. Rick Baker couldn't come up with anything this realistic. I wonder if this physical disfigurement will cast darkness on my soul, like The Phantom of the Opera who gained a disposition as nasty as his facial injuries and became a bitter SOB.
Thanks to all for your well wishes. I hope I've responded coherently.

Vicodin

This stuff is strong. Every pill I take sends me to Alice in Wonderland for the next four hours. I feel like Grandpa Simpson, passing out intermittently with no warning (my favorite Grandpa Simpson quote: "I'm not wearing any underwear!").
The drugs may also be responsible for my constant feeling of deja vu. When I was in the hospital, I had this unshakable feeling that I had dreamed about the entire accident weeks earlier, that I had foreseen the dog and my bike accident and all that. And I understood, for a second, how it is in Greek myths that some character would have their fortune told and would still wander blindly into their fate. You don't realize what you were dreaming about until it actually happens to you. I felt that I had dreamed about something bad happening to me, and I knew it related to my bike, and I knew it involved a hospital, but it completely slipped my mind until I was lying there in the hospital, immobilized and looking up at the lights on the ceiling.
I tried reading my work e-mail and started to respond to a note, and then about ten seconds later I looked at what I had written and it didn't make any sense to me. Vicodin induces in me the same woozy hysteria that malaria pills do. I have to strain very hard to stay focused.

zzz

Modern pop music, and even alternative rock, bores me to death. I just realized this because I went to put on a CD to try and capitalize on my drug-induced head spins to mine any latent chemical creativity and found nothing to excite me. So instead I put on some Puccini (love Puccini) to try and cure this headache.
Maybe it's just my medication, but suddenly I felt this to be so true.

Keep your dog on a leash!

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Had been working so much recently I didn't have time to do anything. Work out, read, watch TV (about 50 hours of shows taped on that thing--I thought it was supposed to reduce the amount of TV you watch), return personal e-mail or phone calls, sleep, and stuff like that. Today I slept in like a log, then went to the office to try and keep up with a big project and to attend a meeting. Afterwards, it was still light out, and I really had to get out on my bike. It had been two weeks since I got my heart rate above 70. I had to get out on my bike. I had to get out on my bike.
Rushed into gear, then sprinted across to Mercer Island at about 6pm to try and take advantage of the remaining sunlight to get one quick loop in. Just across the bridge, then up the hill, and then I headed down the hill by the two baseball parks (you Mercer-ites know where that is). Just as I began picking up speed, I spied a mother walking with a stroller and a young child along side her a ways down the path. I moved to the right, and they moved to the other side of the path. Then, I was going about 22 mph, and out of the bushes and shrubs at the right a large, grey dog sprinted out of the bushes. It remains in my memory now as a vague grey blur in the shape of a dog, like a vision illuminated for a nanosecond in the darkness.
Bam.
Visually I don't remember the next few seconds. I hit the dog and went over the bars, and my next conscious thought (I don't think I went unconscious) was waking up in the bushes, rolling around in pain. I felt it in two places. My right cheekbone, and my right shoulder. My vision was a little blurry, and I was hurting. I tried to stand up, and found that I was in the bushes. Lying on my back, I could make out shapes and light and darkness as I stared straight up at what I knew from experience was a grey, cloudy sky.
The lady who owned the dog called 911, and in what seemed like 5 minutes, I heard an ambulance wailing, and then I saw a circle of firemen and emergency workers looking down at me as if I were a campfire they needed to start.
They wanted to immobilize me. I said my neck is fine, please don't immobilize me. They won and soon my neck was in a harness. They did that thing where they roll you onto a board on the count of three and strap you to it like a trophy fish. I couldn't move my head because of the neck brace and because they taped my forehead back to the board.
Then I'm off to the hospital resigned to looking straight up at the sky, then at the lights on the roof of the ambulance. Then I'm lying on a hospital bed, still strapped to that board like Ahab to Moby Dick. They left me there for what felt like a half hour, and soon I had a pulsing headache from the spot on the back of my skull which was taped so firmly to the board it felt like they were trying to flatten the back of my head. I started squirming around and trying to tear myself free of the neck brace because the back of my head was throbbing.
My head hurts now. Gotta fast forward.
X-rays. 1st degree shoulder separation. A partial black eye. A bloody right cheekbone like a Neanderthal. Arm in a sling. A throbbing headache.
Please, people, keep your dog on a leash on a bike path. If I had been further down that hill, I would have been coasting along at 30+ miles per hour. This time, the dog came out perfectly. But at 35 miles per hour, the dog would not have fared nearly as well, and neither would I.
Fellow cyclists, wear a helmet and sports glasses. Mine both need to be replaced now, but if I hadn't been wearing them the whole right side of my head might need replacing.
My last gripe, because I'm upset right now. At the hospital, the first words out of a few nurse's mouths were, "How's the dog?" I'm lying there trying to pull myself free of their immobilization device because I have a pulsing pain on the back of my skull, and nurses are asking me about that dog that ran out from the bushes like it was my fault. Then they leave me there for a half hour squirming in that device with a pulsing headache. One of the nurses hears where the accident took place and complains about the cyclists that ride on Mercer because they sometimes hold up traffic. I guess she lives over there. She says this all with a smile, like she's glad one of us cyclists got our due. Alright, first off, I always ride the shoulder if there is one on Mercer to give cars room to pass. Second, I always wave cars through if I see around a turn and it's clear. Third, it's the dog's fault for running out in front of me from the bushes. Or the owner's fault for not having that dog on a leash. I wasn't even in the street, blocking auto traffic!
Sometimes America is too dog-obsessed. Some people treat their pet dogs better than their fellow man, and I'm sorry, that's messed up. Secondly, those damn wealthy Mercer Island residents with their gigantic gas-guzzling SUVs and sports cars are complaining about cyclists in the road? I'm sorry, wait an extra twenty seconds to pass, or get your rich fat ass on a bike.
In this case, the owner of the dog was kind enough to call the ambulance, and I'm not really venting against her, but I have no pity whatsoever for Mercer Island residents complaining about cyclists out getting some exercise. Okay, the cyclist who rides smack dab in the middle of the road needs to learn to share the road. I agree. But I meet far fewer of those than I do some young, rich punks in their daddy's SUV or truck, buzzing by cyclists and honking at them or running them off of the road. For those road hogs, I wish nothing but...
I'm getting too worked up. I'm going to lie down on my good shoulder and pass out.

TiVo has me against the ropes

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My TIVO is ganging up on me. I didn't realize the side effect of hacking my TIVO and adding hard drives. It starts to save up so many shows that you feel compelled to sit around watching TV all the time. I have about 70 hours of television saved up and no time to watch any of it. I thought a TIVO was supposed to reduce the amount of television you watch.
Since the earliest days of theater, mass entertainment has obeyed some basic laws. First, as with Greek drama, the two genres that work are comedy and tragedy. In TV today that means sitcoms (situational comedies) and life or death dramas (legal shows, The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, medical emergency rooms).
Shows that deviate from that have a tough road to hoe. Take Aaron Sorkin's Sports Night. It was about people producing a sports news show (SportsCenter, it was fairly obvious). Not quite a comedy (Sorkin has a sense of humor, but doesn't play for yucks the whole way through) and no life or death on the line, just corporate intrigue. So he took his formula and transplanted it into the White House, which added plenty of life or death drama. Result? A shelf-full of Emmys.
Why do you think all the ads for American Dreams show people about to die. Six Feet Under takes this formula to the extreme, beginning every episode with a death.
There's something perverse at work here. These dramas leave you feeling empty as soon as they're done. So you have to come back for more. It's addictive, like a drug, which makes for great commerce. But don't confuse it for art. Art that stays with you doesn't need to be watched over and over again. It stays with you, in your head, for a long time, perhaps all your life.
The vogue these days in television show ads is to have characters of the show standing there, staring at the camera, smiling, or not smiling, for about 5 to 10 seconds. They usually stand in front of the strangest backgrounds, like a dark industrial factory, or computer generated graphic. I can't imagine how uncomfortable it would be to pose in such a manner. The look on the faces of the actors say, "I'm very uncomfortable, please watch my show so I don't have to stand here anymore." Or "watch my show or there will be problems." Or "come watch my show where you can actually see me talk." Or "you, behind that camera, turn it off if you like your job."
Speaking of television, is anyone else having as much difficulty as I am finding the playoff baseball games on television? I got home yesterday night from work and decided I'd try to catch the Yankees-Angels game. It would be the first of the playoff games I'd seen this year, and trsut me, I'm not happy about that. I checked all the major networks. Nope, nothing on Fox. I checked the regional Fox channels. Nope. Checked ESPN's family of channels. Nope. I could have stood up, logged onto the Internet, checked a newspaper. Nope. Remember, I'm a guy. Using a remote control is in the blood.
I started flipping up from channel 200 on DirecTV, proceding up. Playoff baseball has to be on TV, so it had to be there somewhere. Sure enough, I found it on channel 311, the ABC Family Channel. Did you hear me? ABC Family Channel?!? Baseball's in serious trouble. Who negotiated that deal? Sheesh.

Stanford vs. Texas

This week's Sports Illustrated has a ranking of all the nation's collegiate athletic programs. The writer ranked Stanford #2, behind Texas. What the hell? Texas? Basically, the writer gave the edge to Texas because they offer more intramural and club sports and because of a slight edge in the "major" sports like football and basketball. Very arbitrary. SI's own stats offer a ton of other reasons why you could have arbitrarily picked Stanford. Stanford has 3 times as many NCAA individual titles (18 to 6), twice as many team national championships (4 to 2), a ridiculous edge in athlete graduation rate (90% versus 56%), nearly twice as many varsity teams (34 to 19), and all this with a school population about a fifth the size (Stanford at 6637, Texas at 35,206). Let's not even get into a count of Olympic medals.

Ryder Cup

The best event in golf, but I was in NYC and spent my time exploring rather than watching TV. Did read about the final score, though. Yes, of course everyone in hindsight can say that Curtis Strange made a tactical error by saving his best golfers for last, but not everyone has pointed out exactly why. In a relay race, his strategy would have worked out fine, because every runner is guaranteed their lap, and there's something to be said for having your strongest horse going in the last lap if things are close. However, in events like Ryder Cup, achieving a certain score can end the event prematurely, rendering later matches irrelevant. It's like baseball, which is in mathematical terms a race until 27 outs. In a case like that, you want to maximize the number of touches by your best guys because it's no guarantee they'll be up when they still have a chance to make a difference. True, in Ryder Cup, every player gets their match, but having Tiger Woods match rendered irrelevant was a tactical error. The U.S. needs to pick a new captain.
Similarly, it's silly for Dusty Baker to bat Barry Bonds fourth instead of third. It's one reason you put your best batters at the top of the lineup, and one reason why Tiger Woods should have been one of the first few golfers playing on the last day of singles. Plus, in an event where pressure has such a huge effect on performance, like golf, I believe it's easier to play from ahead, when you can play loose.
By the way, is Sergio Garcia the most irritating golfer alive? From his ridiculous pre-shot routine to his theatrics on the course, he's the golfer I love to see lose. Sergio and his girlfriend, the pouty Martina Hingis, form perhaps the most annoying couple going today.

Blog as confession

The soliloquy derived from the act of prayer, of speaking to God. My blog is like some degenerate soliloquy.