BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: January 2009
Friday, January 30, 2009
Whodunnit
Just because it's cool. Watch this before you read anything more. It's under 2 minutes long, and you'll laugh at the ingenuity of it. Just push play.
Pretty nifty, eh? I noticed a few things; the carpet is very different, the body, the bear turns into a knight in armor, etc, but the sheer amount of change in chairs, pictures, clothing, etc, all camouflaged by camera pans and zooms, is awesome. If I were ever involved in the production of a major motion picture, I'd be hard pressed to avoid throwing in some stuff like this as an Easter Egg. Change the picture on the wall behind Harry Potter while the camera's zoomed in on Hermoine... something. People would assume you did it with multiple takes and angles and edits and CGI, but it would still be fun. And something to profile on the behind the scenes DVD.
In one of the articles I read today about Illinois' crazy governor getting impeached (unanimously) I saw a mention of the last governor to be so summarily tossed out; Arizona's Evan Mecham. I remembered the name and something about canceling the MLK holiday, but it was back in the 80s when I was too young to really follow politics of current events. So I headed to the always-reliable wikipedia, found a substantial article, and was surprised how funny (in a horrible sort of way) it was. A few quotes from the gold mine of content on the guy. Corruption, incompetence, paranoia, casual racism, and much, much more.
As governor, Mecham was plagued by controversy and became the first U.S. governor to simultaneously face removal from office through impeachment, a scheduled recall election, and a felony indictment.
... [There were many accusations of cronyism as he appointed incompetent or unqualified friends to state offices.] Among these nominations was Alberto Rodriguez as superintendent of the Arizona Department of Liquor Licenses and Control, while he was under investigation for murder. Other questionable nominations included the director of the Department of Revenue whose company was in arrears by US$25,000 on employment compensation payments, an appointee for head of prison construction who had served prison time for armed robbery, and as state investigator a former Marine who had been court-martialled twice. Other political appointees who caused Mecham embarrassment were an education adviser, James Cooper, who told a legislative committee "If a student wants to say the world is flat, the teacher doesn't have the right to prove otherwise," and Sam Steiger, the Governor's special assistant, who was charged with extortion.
...Besides the uproar caused by the MLK Day cancellation, Mecham committed other political faux pas. Claims of prejudice were made against Mecham after he defended the use of the word "pickaninny" to describe black children, claimed that high divorce rates were caused by working women, claimed America is a Christian nation to a Jewish audience, and said a group of visiting Japanese businessmen got "round eyes" after being told of the number of golf courses in Arizona. In response to claims that he was a racist, Mecham said, "I've got black friends. I employ black people. I don't employ them because they are black; I employ them because they are the best people who applied for the cotton-picking job.
...Throughout his administration, Mecham expressed concern about possible eavesdropping on his private communications. A senior member of Mecham's staff broke his leg after falling through a false ceiling he had been crawling over, looking for covert listening devices. A private investigator was hired to sweep the governor's offices looking for bugs. The Governor was quoted as saying, "Whenever I'm in my house or my office, I always have a radio on. It keeps the lasers out."
This guy was 20 years before his time. Imagine if he were around today, with cable news and the Jon Stewart show and blogs? God the amusement he'd provide, with this non-stop cavalcade of blunders and foots in mouth. He's like Sarah Palin without handlers or speech writers, albeit without a high school drop out daughter and her self described "fucking redneck" baby daddy.
The racist comments are the worst/funniest/most groan-inducing. I have to assume he was joking (in poor taste) with that "cotton-picking" remark, rather than saying it in inadvertently as a figure of speech. If it was unintentional, it might be the funniest thing anyone has ever accidentally said.
His racist comments remind me of Rush Limbaugh's a few years ago, when he was briefly on the ESPN pregame football show, until he "resigned" after making some comments about how the media always tries to inflate the value of black quarterbacks. Rush, like Evan Mecham, steadfastly denied that he was racist, going to the notorious "I have black friends" defense. And he probably does (as far as someone like Rush Limbaugh can actually have friends, as opposed to sycophants and boot-lickers). But that's not the point. There's a difference between being a racist and a bigot, though the terms are frequently used interchangeably. You can be a racist and not a bigot, though I don't think you can be a bigot and not a racist.
Rush Limbaugh and Evan Mecham are (were, Mecham's dead now) racists, by the classic, 1st definition in the dictionary sense. They see the world in black and white (and yellow and brown, etc) where race colors (taints) every issue. It's the mindset that MLK was directly attacking with his famous "I have a dream" speech. The whole "by the content of their character, rather than the color of their skin" concept. They don't necessarily hate other races; they might even admire them in various ways. You can be white and think Asians are smarter/better at math, Jews are better with money, Blacks are better dancers, etc. All things you might wish to be yourself. That's not the point; the point is that if you attribute those talents to their race, it's the same concept as attributing stupidity or sloth or greed or other negative traits to race. It's racist, even if it's not bigoted.
From even those few quotes of Mecham it's pretty clear that he was bigoted as well, and there's plenty of past evidence to convict Rush of the same sin. But they're not unusual or exceptional; they're just public figures whose comments on race were broadcast widely. They don't think of themselves as racist either; after all, everyone knows that blacks are dangerous and criminal; what's wrong about saying so?
An anecdote. Last weekend I had a first date with another woman I met via online dating service. It was a disaster. Well, that's overstating. I was miserable and had a horrible time and will never see her again, but it's not like we got into a public altercation. I kind of wish we had; it would have been something interesting. I have never been that bored during two hours with another human being, and it came about because she was just inert. She had no opinions, no observations, no suggestions, no comments, she answered questions with short, declarative sentences, she never laughed or joked or smiled, etc. Halfway through, while waiting for the chocolate factory tour to begin, she took the first of her 3 10-minute bathroom visits and I texted a few friends, and my Twitter account, in desperation. And the quick text I got back from the IG was the most interesting remark I'd heard all afternoon.
That's not why I bring up the date, though. The funny part, in an Evan Mecham way, was earlier, when we were driving. We met in Berkeley and I drove us down to a chocolate factory near I-80, after we window shopped a bit and had a coffee. That was the plan, anyway. The window shopping turned out to be a disaster since she had nothing to say about anything, didn't seem to be interested in anything but some theater company fliers in a cafe window, and didn't want to go into any of the shops. She thought they looked weird, or so I interpreted from her wrinkled nose and nervous eyes.
I'm not exactly bohemian, but I've been in that area a few times, and it's far from dangerous of weird. It's mostly White and Asian, it was the middle of the afternoon on a sunny Sunday, there's no graffiti or barred windows in the area, etc. We weren't even in the heart of Berkeley, (like the place I got my ears pierced last week, while there to give the IG moral support for her latest piercing) near the Cal campus where you'll see later-day hippies galore, and most of the stores are sprawling used record places and head shops and there are pushy street vendors on the sidewalks, etc. We were on Shattuck near University, which is a little bit hippy, but is mostly just businesses, small restaurants, quirky jewelry and art stores, etc. It could be a nice semi-downtown neighborhood anywhere in the US. There were a few street people, but I didn't even notice them. It's Berkeley; of course you'll see a few bearded guys walking around with huge backpacks and bedrolls.
She however, very much did notice them. Even very early on, when we were sitting at a little outdoor cafe and drinking coffee (well, hot chocolate actually) she was doing this eye bugging thing whenever someone weird walked by. The funny part came later, when we were driving to the chocolate factory. We headed west on down Ashby, which is kind of a weird street, but it's not the hood by any stretch of the imagination. Certainly not on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Several blocks down Ashby crosses Martin Luther King, on a corner blighted by such dreadful inner city sights as a busy corner market, joggers, dog walkers, children playing, etc. I think there might even have been a woman or two pushing baby strollers. Most of them white people! Horrifying, I know.
As we got to that intersection and waited for the red light, my date peered through the window and saw the street sign. Breaking her near-silence, she said, "Ohhh... Martin Luther King street? I hear it's dangerous here."
I am seldom speechless, or even at a loss for words, but at that one I did take a pause. After taking a breath I said something about the old Chris Rock joke, about the irony of how MLK was a man of peace, but if you found yourself on a street named after him, you'd better run. Run! She didn't laugh, she just kept looking around nervously (there was not a sullen, saggy-pantsed black teenager in sight) and didn't seem all that calmed even when we were half a mile away and parking in a lot entirely full of nice cars and white people.
It was kind of a head-slapping moment; not that she thought it, but that she said it so casually. (Actually, it wasn't that casual. She was on edge right from the start of our date, since she'd obviously expected me to be different than I was, in some unknown way. So probably she blurted out something she'd never have said in racially-mixed company.) And I'm sure that she, like Rush and Evan, would vociferously deny that she was a racist. Nevertheless, I had to think about that afterwards. She worked in the HR department for a tech company and did a lot of their hiring and internal transfers, and I kept thinking about all those studies when researchers send out identical resumes, but one is from John Smith and the other is from Dikembe Shabungue. And Mr. Smith gets far more call backs.
The other interesting thing about this woman's character was that one of the very few things she showed any interest in all day were the fliers we saw for various plays and shows coming to the Berkeley area. One was by some Black performance company, and she said she was interested in seeing it. (Which she might yet... but not with me.) Afterwards, having seen her uneasiness at street people, MLK boulevard, her refusal to go to the Ashby BART station when I wanted to drop her off (since it was nearer MLK and therefore dangerous), etc, I thought back on her theater interest, and her stated interest in indy films, and all the pieces of the stereotype started to come together.
I've often heard about the white liberal type who are sympathetic and compassionate, but only from a safe distance. This woman had happily voted for Obama, and she would go to a play about black culture, and she's probably seen A Raisin in the Sun and The Color Purple, etc. But at the same time she's got this mostly-hidden reservoir of terror of the Other. Weird people, different people, black people, strange things, etc. For her, riding BART to Berkeley was way out of her comfort zone, driving past MLK was scary, etc. It doesn't make her a bad person, and in fact we got along well in email and txt before our date, so we had something in common. But she was only book smart; only interesting when she had time to think of a response. Her real life personality was timid and insecure and non-spontaneous, and that made her boring and hesitant. And that made our date a disaster.
Happily the date gets funnier in retrospect. Talking it over with the IG the next day we were alughing our asses off. Even immediately afterwards, while driving home I called Malaya to vent/rant, and she was laughing hysterically at my depiction of events. I didn't just call her to yell though, I was curious. She used to complain to me how boring her social events were at work. She was surrounded largely by over-educated, suburban, white women, and she always said the conversations were painfully dull. I never quite grasped why that was, but I think I know now. In recent weeks I've gotten to know/dated 2 fairly intelligent, gainfully-employed, well-educated, semi-worldly white women in their early 30s, and both were incredibly boring in person. I'll avoid a massive digression in this post, and just say that after those dates and some discussion of them with friends, I've concluded that there are many different types of "intelligence." People can know a lot of things, be able to write coherently and think, and even do fairly difficult jobs with competence. Yet at the same time they can be horrible at communicating, lack any sense of humor, kill any conversation they're invited into, etc. I'm sure it's not just white people who fall into this trap, but the more white women I date, the more those "white and uptight' stereotypes seem accurate.
And yes, I'm straying in an interesting direction for a post all about racist thinking. The difference, as I see it, is that I don't attribute a genetic, biological reason or predestination for this. It's entirely cultural, just like any superior black dancing ability, or Asian math prowess. Some white people are brought up and live in a way that sews the seeds of them being uptight and uneasy around strange or new or different things as adults. And unfortunately, I keep reaping those harvests via online dating.
Happily, this weekend's date is a lively and intelligent woman who pointed me to some YouTube videos of her doing on-the-street interviews as part of a media project in college, and she's able to talk and think and be sarcastic and wry, on her feet. Literally, in this instance. I'll report how that one goes at some point. Or not. I seem to blog on CPT these days... wait, what?
We've all seen various Top 100 Book lists, but how about upping that 10x? The Guardian UK is in the process of posting their list of 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. From what I've seen, their list is distinguished chiefly by the difficulty of navigating it; it's broken up by genre and you have to click lots of different links to read tiny parts of the list separately. However they do seem to have a paragraph about every book, if you need more encouragement/motivation than just the Guardian's say so, plus a title and author.
Here's the fantasy and Sci-Fi list (which seems to include horror), which is alphabetical by author, and is broken up into one, two, three parts, with about 45 titles in each segment. I've only read a few of the titles, and have only heard of about half of them, but then I've never been much of a sci-fi fan/reader, so that's not entirely surprising. The list has a good mixture of classics and newer works, so get from it what you can.
SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Starbucks Corp, battered by slower store traffic and restructuring charges, reported Wednesday its quarterly net profit dropped 69% and announced plans to shut down 300 more coffee shops. For the quarter ended Dec. 28, Starbucks reported net income of $64.3 million, or 9 cents a share, which included charges to shut down stores and lay off workers. A year ago, the coffee-shop chain earned $208.1 million, or 28 cents a share. Sales slipped 6% to $2.6 billion. Sales at U.S. stores open at least one year -- a measure of retailer health -- dropped 10%. Starbucks said it will close 200 U.S. stores and 100 overseas, bring its announced store closures to more than 900. Starbucks shares closed Wednesday at $9.65, up more than 5%.
Any similar news about Wal-Mart, yet?
And no, this isn't actually good news, no matter how much you (or I) hate various corporate shithole stores. Sure, their profit-grubbing executives could and probably should be boiled in pits of tar and/or pitch, and the job cuts are all about keeping up the profits and stock prices, but the ones getting laid off are the regular workers who keep the economy going. As always in times of trouble, it's the most vulnerable who suffer, while the rich merely retrench, and instruct their government lackeys to be sure they're first in line for official handouts. (Which is why the Republicans were on board with massive bailout/gifts to the rich, white, paper-shuffling vultures of the financial industry, while showing no interest in preserving the millions of good blue collar union jobs Ford, GM, and Chrysler create.
Now that we've got competent adults in the White House, led by an articulate intellectual, and they're working to achieve a stated and very necessary goal, it's easy to forget just how fucked up, politicized, and venal things were for the past eight years. (Factors that helped contribute to George Bush leaving office with the lowest approval rating in the history of approval ratings.) This one article doesn't delve into all of that, but it does remind us of just how unintentionally comical Bush was, at his best (worst?)
Misspeaking will be the lasting legacy of Bush's public performances. But not all Bushisms are alike: they fall, fairly neatly, into three categories. In the first and classic version, it's easy enough to tell what the president was trying to say, even if he manages to mangle his syntax more spectacularly than you might have deemed possible.
("Families is where our nation finds home, where wings take dream"; "Suiciders are willing to take innocent life in order to send the projection that this is an impossible mission"; and his immortal commentary on the difficulties facing gynaecologists: "Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practise their love with women all across this country.") In the second variety, the intended meaning is still discernible, but the result is almost zen-like, hinting at deeper significance or perhaps intentional humour. ("They misunderestimated me"; "What we Republicans should stand for is growth in the economy: we ought to make the pie higher.") Only a small number are truly, majestically baffling. "This is still a dangerous world," Bush noted in Iowa in 2000. "It's a world of madmen and uncertainty and potential mential losses." The incidence of good Bushisms has sharply decreased in recent years, though he was on good form last September in Washington DC, recounting a trip to the seaside. "I didn't grow up in the ocean," he said. "As a matter of fact - near the ocean - I grew up in the desert. Therefore, it was a pleasant contrast to see the ocean. And I particularly like it when I'm fishing."
It's a nice compilation, with chronological highlights, insightful analysis, and plenty of links and embedded videos. Yes, the article is from a UK paper -- "Furin'rs! Makin' fun uh are prez'nit?" -- but that gives it a more impartial, scholarly POV?
This afternoon I somehow wound up watching some video compilations of the best (of the worst) flops from international soccer (football) matches. They're funny, but also quite frustrating to the fan.
I hadn't really thought about it in the past, but I think this could be a contributing factor to one reason soccer never has (and never will?) become a popular professional sport in the US. I don't think there's some sort of national pride or determination that makes Americans reject a sport where there are such gains to be made by pretending to be fouled, but the fact that it's so endemic to soccer is definitely a psychological hurdle Americans must clear to embrace the sport. I don't think foreigners like flopping any more than Americans, but they already like soccer and flopping is just something one must accept to enjoy the sport. Like learning to tolerate the constant, interminable commercial breaks that ruin most US sport telecasts. (Not that I'm the one to advice on that; they're the main reason I've given up watching live sports.)
Personally, I can't stand watching floppers. I wouldn't be watching soccer anyway, since 1) I don't have a TV, and 2) I don't watch live sports anymore since it's too much of a time sink, but the fact that players at the highest level react to almost every tackle or bodily collision by hurling themselves to the ground and writing in pretend agony is definitely something that sours me on the sport. I played soccer from about 5-14, and I remember how much I hated it when some wanker flopped around and tried to draw sympathy calls from the refs. I recall deliberately kicking a few guys in the ankles later in a game, after they flopped early on. I figured they should at least have a bruise or two to go with their performance. No, I wasn't a very happy or forgiving child.
To further the analogy, I follow pro basketball fairly closely, but I pay zero attention to college. I find it boring since the game is usually such a frantic scramble of 6'8" guys bouncing up and down without any real skill or direction, but I also hate the flopping and the way players are coached to try to draw charges at every possible opportunity. (Which leads directly to most of the flopping.) I hate charging as a rule anyway; the fun of the game is watching athletic guys score and attack the rim. There is strategy in obstructing their path, but do it like a man and go after the ball. Just attempting to sneakily leap in front of someone faster and more skillful, solely to cause them to crash into you and get a foul, is a loathsome practice.
The only reason it survives as a tactic is that college teams have deep benches and plenty of expendable players, and most of the players, even the stars, are fairly nice guys. If, instead of attempting to minimize the impact, the guys driving delivered a well-aimed elbow to the mouth/nose, or a knee to the groin/ribs, those would-be blockers would have to think twice. They do it that way in the pros, which is why the game is so much more open and enjoyable to watch. (That and the refs favor offense these days, and the players are so skilled that they can dodge around attempted blocking fairly routinely.) In college most kids know they're never going to the next level (especially the ones who are blocking, as opposed to being blocked) and they have to do what their asshole coaches tell them to do if they want to get on the court.
I don't remember how I ended up there, but a few weeks ago I saw that someone had ripped the entire 1980s, cheese-fest comic book movie version of Flash Gordon and posted it on You Tube in eleven, 10-minute chunks. I hadn't seen it in like twenty years, but I remember viewing it very fondly when I was in Junior High and it was on HBO seemingly every afternoon. I remember my dad being kind of horrified by it at the time, and in retrospect I had some appreciation of how campy it must have been, but I didn't remember thinking it was cheesy, because I didn't have the experience or maturity to understand that concept when I was 12.
I do now, but I watched it anyway, and had a great time.
The You Tube image quality is crap, but it's watchable, and the sound is good and the eleven segments autoplay right in a row, so you don't even need to move a finger to click the next part when one ends (though you'll need to move something when your screen saver comes to life). I watched the whole thing this afternoon, and laughed through most if it, but still enjoyed it, and not just for the nostalgia. It's almost immeasurably cheesy; with the outrageous set decoration, the hammy acting, the jaw dropping dialogue, the Mardi Gras-suble costumes, the physical improbabilities, and the overall sensibility. It's not meant to be taken entirely seriously, thankfully. There are enough nods to the more adult viewer mixed in with the child-pleasing action that you know the filmmakers were in on the joke. I think my favorite element of that was when the hawkmen lined up, like a flying marching band, to spell out "Thanks Flash" in the sky at the end. I laughed so hard at that part I nearly coughed out one of my new earrings.
I recommend alcohol with the film. I watched the first 5 segments straight, but by the time the costume drama entered the second hour I could tell a buzz would help. So I peeled a couple of ruby red grapefruit, partially crushed them, and poured a double shot of Tanqueray into the bowl. Sipping that and eating the fruit during parts six and seven made parts 8-11 much more enjoyable, and I was just about a one-man Rocky Horror Picture Show audience by the pillow-swinging cat fight in part 9. The red digital readout of how many minutes are left before the moon crashes into the earth in parts 10 and 11 had me howling, and when Flash crashes the ship right into the throne room, and it somehow stops without blowing up, but moves just far enough that the point skewers Ming. Moments later, when Flash menaces him with a solid gold broadsword, I demanded that he peel off the foil and eat the chocolate inside. It was easily the funniest thing I've seen this year. In no small part thanks to the pulp-added greyhound I'd just enjoyed.
I can't really recommend it as a movie, since it's not any good. Unless you're 12. But it's fun for the nostalgia, or even if you've never seen it it's just bad enough to be good. It wasn't sexy at all, which surprised me. I still remembered thinking the princess was super sexy in most of her outfits, and especially when she was seducing Flash during the telepathy scene on her spaceship. Watching it now it was just silly. That was partially due to the low image quality of You Tube blurring her beauty (and everything else), but mostly since I'm not 12 anymore, and the thought of a pretty woman kissing a guy isn't enough to give me tingles in my toes(ies).
Just for fun, here's a breakdown using my usual scoring matrix:
I can't vouch for any of those figures, even though I just typed them. For one thing I'm still a little buzzed on the gin, but moreover I'm so not objective about this one. I harbor happy nostalgic feelings for it that cloud my present judgment. And really, it's like critically reviewing a puppet show at a child's birthday. The movie isn't meant to be taken seriously. If you're expecting a serious science fiction drama you won't make it through the opening 10 minutes of MST3K quality-cheesiness, so just turn off your brain and enjoy. As best you are able. Ideally with the aid of alcoholic beverages.
Honestly, it's not any good, but it's fun. And funny. Adjust your expectations accordingly. I was definitely in a forgiving mood, hence my enjoyment. As for the Physics Believability score, a negative seven might be too high, but since the movie isn't trying to pass itself off as realistic, don't let it bother you. I remembered thinking how cool the world/universe of Ming's was when I was a kid, and watching it now it's still cool, if utterly illogical. The "moons" upon which each of the princes and their people live aren't moons. They're small and only habitable on one surface. But how do the "moons" remain aloft, when the're clearly not in orbit? Why/how is there gravity and breathable air all the way up from the surface to the moons? What do they do without any commerce or agriculture? How do they sustain their populations without any women or children?
Leaving aside the sky cities, what are they sky cities above? Ming's planet appears to consist entirely of one quasi-futuristic imperial throneroom/moon base, surrounded by a desert of spiky rocks. What's on the rest of the planet? Where do they grow food? Where do they fabricate materials and technology? Who makes all of these costumes? How does the whole thing travel through the universe? Is it like a world inside a spaceship, with a permanent artificial sun (it's never nighttime in the entire movie) and the illusion of a world?
Furthermore, what's with saving the world? So there's some sort of energy ray chewing up the moon and knocking it out of orbit, so it's going to crash into the earth. That would indeed end life on this orb, but it's not as if the moon would actually have to hit us to destroy civilization. Just a slight perturbation in the moon's orbit would spur tides high enough to swamp every coastal city on the planet. The moon moving closer would cause every geologic fault on earth to rupture, creating nonstop earthquakes of unimaginable magnitude. Volcanoes would pop up all over from ruptures in the crush over the molten core, every river would change course from the broken land, structures would be flattened, etc. Like every disaster movie you've ever seen, x10. And no, it wouldn't just be the Eiffel Tower and Te Statue of Liberty and the Sydney Opera House that got destroyed, like in the movies.
So in the end Flash "saves" us by killing (sort of) Ming, like 1 minute before the moon is going to crash into the Earth. As we've already established, that would be far too late, but that aside, how does killing Ming help? He's not a sorcerer; there's some kind of technology involved, and it's not keyed to his pulse; the energy rays work on their own, and would/should have been disabled by the general destruction to the city (and the earth death ray machinery should have been shown at some point in the film). More likely, the energy rays were only required initially to knock the Moon out of orbit. Once it's become eccentric it's only a matter of time until it crashes into the Earth, and that time could be exactly plotted. So killing Ming wouldn't do anything to stop that; what would be necessary is to use the energy rays to knock the moon back into it's customary orbit. None of which happens. Oh well.
In a larger sense, good scifi or fantasy creates a whole world around the principles, so it seems like a real place in which the protagonists are carving out their own sphere of influence. Bad scifi or fantasy plops down the heroes into an unsustainable world full of special effects and obvious sets, where the main characters are the only people of any importance. That's Flash Gordon, to a ridiculous extent. The entire population is about 500, and it consists of a few principle bad guys, various good guys, colorfully-garbed extras who serve as moving scenery, and lots of inept guards who serve as cannon fodder.
That's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just not a realistic one. And since this movie isn't shooting for that, no worries. The characters need to be evocative though, and they are, if only just. In this sort of film the good guys should be fun to root for, the girls should be hot, the romance should be juicy, and the bad guys should be hissable, and should die enjoyable deaths. They do, for the most part, though I got one disappointment. Three quarters of the way through the film I was sure the evil general lady was Frau Farbissina, of Austin Powers fame. It certainly could be her; it's almost the same character, with the same imperious, scowling, yowling voice and Nazi overtones. Sadly, it appears that it's a different actress. I don't know the name of the character in Flash Gordon and don't care enough to figure it out, but Flash Gordon is not listed on Mindy Sterling's resume. It could have been her; she was 27 in 1980, but alas.
At any rate, before I go on any further, here's the link to part one. The others are all listed in the related films, but as I said, you need not click. They'll all play in sequence if you just let them run.
In an unusual move for me, I actually cooked breakfast. I usually eat in the morning, or at least in the time period shortly after I get out of bed, but I don't make "breakfast" in any traditional sense. Seldom eggs, not cereal, not coffee, not oatmeal, etc. I just have lunch early. Or dinner very early. Or most often, some fruit and maybe a piece of pb/honey toast, if I've got to get out and run some errands.
Today was different though, since I was awake in the a.m., and I made breakfast. I had a couple of those round white things that come from chickens. Pretty weird, when you think about it. What if you woke up one day and saw one of those in your underwear? Like it had just come out of you? I don't think eating it would be high on your agenda.
It's a little known historical fact that humans felt the same way about the eggs that come from chickens, for millions of years. They always liked chickens since they provided stuffing for pillows, drumsticks, and lame, Zen-like punchlines, but eggs were a reviled mystery. Thank God for Ronald McDonald and his historic invention of the McMuffin. And thank God for Americans. And white-faced clowns.
Just started watching (well, listening while I'm doing housework) the swearing in and speech, and my god did John Roberts fuck it up at the start. Dude, you've got like 50 words to say, in bursts of 4-6 at a time. The entire world is watching this. You are (in theory) a brilliant lawyer and the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Can you not mangle it completely?
I'd read a quick news item about it earlier, but much like my last first date, it's much more painful to listen to with your own ears than to read about.
Update: They did a redo that night inside the White House, primarily to snatch the poisoned meat from the jaws of the wingnut-o-sphere, who needed a new toy to chew on now that they've (mostly) given up gnawing on the whole "Obama's birth certificate is fake 'cause he was born in Nigeria, and/or his father is Malcolm X" crazy bone.
Here's a quote from the news item, with a special bonus closing line of presidential trivia:
Don't worry, the White House says: Obama has still been president since noon on Inauguration Day.
Nevertheless, Obama and Roberts went through the drill again out of what White House counsel Greg Craig called "an abundance of caution."
This time, the scene was the White House Map Room in front of a small group of reporters, not the Capitol platform before the whole watching world.
...The Constitution is clear about the exact wording of the oath and as a result, some constitutional experts have said that a do-over probably wasn't necessary but also couldn't hurt. Two other previous presidents have repeated the oath because of similar issues, Calvin Coolidge and Chester A. Arthur.
After not browsing them any for a few weeks, what with winter travel and vacations and such, I hit the News of the Weird archives over the weekend, while spending hours installing programs on the new laptop and transferring over files to the new external hard drive; an expediency spurred by the unhappy sounds coming from my desktop. (Which I'm not using at all now, save in case of emergency.)
Here are a few of the highlights, without links to the actual weekly collections in which each appeared, since I was lazy like that.
Muoi Van Nguyen, 31, was arrested in Spokane Valley, Wash., in November, charged with breaking a window with a hammer at a state liquor store and grabbing a bottle of wine valued at $9. Earlier, Van Nguyen had tried unsuccessfully to break the window with a rock, but decided he needed a hammer to do the job and went to a nearby store, where he purchased one for $11. [MSNBC-KHQ-TV (Spokane), 11-10-08]
In 1983, convicted South Carolina murderer Michael Godwin, then 22, succeeded in getting an appeals court to reduce his death-by-electric-chair sentence to one of life in prison at the Central Correctional Institution in Columbia, S.C. Six years later, in March 1989, while sitting naked on a metal toilet and attempting to fix earphones that were connected to a television set, Godwin bit into a wire and was electrocuted.
In August, the indecent-exposure conviction of a Houston urologist was upheld on appeal despite the doctor's insistence that he is so "small" (2.8 inches) that it would have been impossible for his sex organ to be seen by anyone, even if he had tried to expose himself. [Houston Chronicle, 8-19-08]
Legendary banjo player Eddie Adcock, age 70 and suffering hand tremors that failed to respond to medication, volunteered for a revolutionary neurosurgery in August in which he finger-picked tunes while his brain was exposed, and Vanderbilt University Medical Center surgeons tried to locate the defective area. In "deep brain stimulation," doctors find a poorly responding site and use electrodes to arouse it properly. As Adcock, conscious but pain-free, picked out melodies, doctors probed until suddenly Adcock's playing became disjointed, and electrodes were assigned to that spot. By October, according to an ABC News report, Adcock, with a button-activated chest pacemaker wired to his head, was back on stage, as quick-fingered as ever. [ABC News, 10-3-08; The Bluegrass Blog, 9-9-08]
Complaints were lodged with the Swedish government in June against the state-run retail pharmacy Apoteket, alleging illegal sex discrimination, in that its stores stock sexual aids that benefit women (e.g., vibrators) but none that particularly benefit men. Said one complainer, "(A) woman with a dildo is seen as liberated, strong and independent, whereas a man with a blow-up plastic vagina is viewed as disgusting and perverted." The government's Equal Opportunities Ombudsman rejected the complaints. [The Times (London), 8-12-08]
I had a first date Saturday the 10th (yesterday as I write this, 5 days ago when this post goes live) and it's worth a blog post.
I met her via an online dating service, and like most of the women I've thus far met via that, and then encountered in person, she saw my profile and sent me the first email. (I've mailed a fair number of women, but most have not replied and of most who have replied have not progressed to a face-to-face meeting.) This woman was okay, but she wasn't my ideal. I probably wouldn't have mailed her if I'd seen her profile first but she was interesting/attractive enough to reply to when she made first contact, and we had a couple of good phone chats which encouraged me.
The date was fun; we met in Sausalito, a touristy, bougie, expensive little town on the northern SF Bay. Sausalito is about halfway between my location and hers (San Francisco) so it seemed an equitable meeting place. Saturday was a gorgeous, cloudless day, which broadened our date options. She was free in the afternoon, so we met along the boardwalk @ 2pm and strolled south and looked at the water and boats and tourists and other eye candy. Walking back we took the other side of the street and detoured a bit, walking through several art galleries and a couple of little boutiques. Interesting sights and conversation.
That ran for an hour+, and when we eventually felt some hunger pangs we picked one of the many seafront restaurants for lunch. I suggested we share an appetizer and a salad, and I'd pick one and she'd pick the other. We settled on a shrimp/crab quesadilla and a nice salad, and I then talked her into splitting a decadent apple pie ice cream walnuts caramel syrup thing for dessert. That was clearly the highlight of her meal, and she was literally moaning and sighing while eating it. (As I remarked to myself at the time, at least I would always know what she sounded like when experiencing unfeigned pleasure.)
We spent almost 3 hours together in total, and it was nice. Nothing amazing; she wasn't stupid but wasn't especially bright, she tended to babble instead of speaking more succinctly (a tendency that was quite apparent during our phone chats too), and she was a little spacey at times. Also, she looked at least 5 years older than her online photos, though she said some were from as recently as this summer. Low resolution photos erase a lot of wrinkles, I guess. *cough*
On the plus side she had a good sense of humor, more for laughing at my jokes than for making her own (which was a substantial upgrade over my last first date) and she had a pretty (though not cute or beautiful) face despite the age lines (of which I possess enough not to complain about anyone else's). Most encouraging, to me anyway, was her tall, lean, fit body. She wasn't exactly athletic, but she looked good in jeans that weren't even that tight. She wasn't uptight about physical contact either; she bumped into me and touched me frequently, initiated several hearty hugs (not those sickly, boob-avoiding, one-armed sideways hugs some women use), let me hold her hands to warm them up when she was cold in the restaurant, etc.
I wasn't smitten, and didn't think she was either, but I thought it was a pretty good first date, and was interested in seeing her again. I don't expect that much from a first date: I'm just looking for some personality traits in common, hoping we'll feel some physical attraction, checking if she's got a sense of humor, if she's uptight or distant or high maintenance, etc. This woman wasn't a 10 on any rating, but she was at least a 6 or a 7 on most, and I thought that was pretty good for a first date. I could overlook her slightly bulging eyes and wrinkles since she had a nice body, her sense of humor and vivaciousness more than made up for her lack of education or brilliance, etc.
At the end of the date we walked to her car, and she said she'd drive me to mine since I was half a mile down the boardwalk. We got there quickly and sat to chat for a moment. She first reached over and delivered a long, not-very-awkward car hug, before asking what I thought. I'd previously told her that I had free time this week with the termite tenting at my apartment, and was free for lunch or maybe dinner any day. (The faint prospect of being invited to stay the night, thus saving me one night's hotel expense, factors in there too.)
She listened, and then went into a typically (for her) rambling speech that contained a lot of elements of what a great first date it had been, but wrapped up her discourse by saying that she went on a lot of first dates, and was looking for something really special right from the start, and though she'd had a great time this afternoon, it hadn't been the magical chemistry thing she was looking for.
And then we had another long hug and she said bye and I got out and she drove off, and while I got into my car and started driving home, I tried to decide if I was disappointed or not. During our date I was consciously overlooking at lot of things that I wasn't real thrilled with, but that's how it goes in real life, not "perfect soul mate love at first sight" fantasy storybook dating land. Also, she had a cute butt and slender thighs, extraordinarily-desirable attributes possessed by perhaps 1/20th of the 16-35 y/o female population in America. (Though the odds improve to perhaps 1/10th or 1/8th of such women in the fitter Bay Area.)
Driving home, I thought back over events, and one stood out. During our meal she'd told me a story about a friend who had recently gotten married. I hadn't paid the story much attention at the time, but in retrospect it took on a level of prophecy. The story went that her (female) friend had met a guy on a group outing to a ski resort, or a lakehouse, or something like that. The details weren't clear (which was an element common to all of her stories), but the gist of it was that the woman, my date's best friend, had met a new guy on that trip, and after just one day of interaction, mostly in a large group, she'd told a friend that she'd just met her future husband.
Now maybe that woman thought that about every guy she met and only remembered it this time since they did in fact get married, or maybe she had vague thoughts about it that became much stronger over time as she grew to like him more. I dunno. The key point is that she remembered it that way, and her friend, my date, had heard the story and clearly taken it to heart.
So that was her goal. She was dating a lot, meeting a lot of guys, and though she'd been married a decade earlier, and had (by her description) fucked her way across Europe during a half year of travel after her divorce in 2005, and had known a variety of guys since then, over the past few months she'd decided to settle down, to stop meeting guys in bars, to try online dating, and to get serious about finding a future husband/baby daddy. And she felt like she'd know Mr. Right as soon as she met him, and was determined to keep looking until she found a glass slipper that fit. Perfectly. On the first try. She liked me, but she didn't feel any magical supernatural chemistry, and she didn't have any "he's my future husband" thoughts, and at this point in her life (34 y/o, aging in dog years, and eager for kids) her clock is ticking and there's no time to fuck around (literally or metaphorically) with guys she doesn't think are mutually-interested husband material.
It seems an unrealistic standard to put on every date, but if she goes on a first date a week for a year, I suppose she'll eventually find a guy (or three) she feels that way about. Whether they'll reciprocate, or will just pretend/string her along long enough to take their turn peeling off those jeans and working their way up those long legs, I don't know and won't speculate. In any event, I wish her well. She wasn't for me (and I obviously wasn't for her) but she deserves happiness and she was honest with me.
I found it most interesting to see precisely how different her perspective was. If I were in her situation I would be working intently to date a lot of guys, but I wouldn't expect magic on the first date. I'd want to find guys who seemed stable and open to an LTR, and then see them several times to really get to know them. I don't think you get any kind of true appreciation of another person on the first meeting. I don't know how it is meeting men, but I know most women don't show anything like their real personality/feelings/behavior until several dates in, (though long phone chats and other forms of interaction can move that timetable along; it doesn't have to be only face-to-face time).
Love at first sight? The few women I've felt utterly enchanted by upon the first meeting I always thought better about after additional encounters. Liking someone that much right off the bat is much more about lust/infatuation than something more intellectual or indicative of long term personality compatibility, and I think first impression hunger is a poor standard for judging a future husband or wife. I haven't relayed these thoughts to my first (and last?) date, and I don't have any interest in or need to try to talk her out of her current dating approach, but it's definitely not one I'd take. Then again, she's dated and fucked a lot more people than I have, and she's feeling much more pressure to settle down and start a family, with her ovaries clock tick tick ticking far more at 34 than my testicles will be at 44, or even 54. Though I do want to have kids sooner than that; those 60 y/o men pushing strollers or watching their kid skateboard always look sort of overwhelmed and rattled.
Until then, the online dating foibles will continue. I've got 2 more first dates scheduled for this weekend, and both women seem much more intelligent and mature than this past woman was. (Which is good, from my perspective.) On the down side, neither possesses this last woman's physical attributes, (from the waist down, at least) which means I'll need to be that much more strongly attracted to their personalities and faces to want to invest the time/energy that starting a new relationship requires.
Cats are weird. Yes, shocking news there. Why do I bring this up?
From what Malaya tells me when I pick up the cats after a vacation, Jinx is pretty much inconsolable and skittish the entire time she's at Malaya's condo, while Kyo is immediately at home and romping and playful. This despite the fact that Jinx lived there for the first 3 years of her life, and despite the fact that she knows (yet doesn't quite trust) Malaya. The last two times I've been over to pick up Jinx; in October before I got Kyo, and last week after my New Years vacation, I had to crawl under Malaya's bed to drag Jinx out. This despite the fact that Malaya knew I was coming over and was waiting to close the bedroom door behind Jinx when/if she next emerged to eat or drink. Basically Jinx spends her entire "vacation" hiding under the bed. Initially from Malaya's new husband, and now from Kyo too.
When they were here for the first 3 weeks of Kyo's introduction, in December, they were fairly even. Neither was very happy to see the other cat, and they would growl and stare, or hiss when they were in closer proximity, but there wasn't any combat or interaction at all. Just lots of mutual antipathy. Kyo started to get a little bolder the last few days before my post-Xmas trip, and she'd creep close to Jinx, or follow her from room to room, staring as Jinx ignored her and went into the bedroom to eat.
That dynamic continued, and accelerated, while they were at Malaya's for a week and a half. With Jinx so cowed by the environment and strange tall man, Kyo had a huge advantage and she pressed it; darting after and slapping at Jinx whenever she had the chance. Behavior that clearly contributed to Jinx's hiding under the bed for a week.
That continued, to a lesser extent, for the first few days they were back here this week. Mom was visiting and sleeping on the futon at night, and while Jinx had semi-accepted my mom when she visited here in spring 2008, semi-acceptance means avoidance and flattened ears, but not actively hiding. Jinx grew accustomed to Mom's presence here Wednesday and Thursday, and by Friday morning she was letting Mom pet her, though that was less about kitty happily accepting the caresses and more about Jinx not wanting to avoid it enough to get up and run.
With the familiar location grating Jinx some more confidence, she became less susceptible to Kyo's darting swipe attacks. They continued sporadically, but with decreasing frequency. I drove Mom to the airport for her flight home Friday afternoon, and that night, and then all day Saturday, the cat dynamic shifted noticeably. Kyo hasn't made a darting swipe attack since, which is lucky for her, since as Mom suggested, I've had a water squirt bottle handy since Friday. I was going to pair liquid ejaculations with harsh verbal scoldings when/if Kyo next launched one of her sneak attacks. Jinx is calm and confident now that it's just me and she in familiar surroundings, and her body language projects in some way that Kyo respects.
Kyo is behaving differently too. I hadn't heard her purr at all, and she wasn't looking for attention while Mom was here. Mom wasn't actually playing with or petting her that often, but somehow Kyo was satiated by two people in the environment. That and her Jinx stalking. Now that it's just me and the two cats, Kyo has been doing her "pay attention to me" thing regularly. She hops up onto my lap and purrs and rubs me every few hours. She won't settle down; she's only done the lapcat thing once and that was with me sitting on the bed during her first week here (while the new-cat-traumatized Jinx was hiding under the bed); but Kyo likes the attention and sounds like a little motorboat while she's getting it. She's been following me into the kitchen and rubbing my legs, and she likes to leap up onto the bathroom sink when I'm shaving or brushing my teeth, to purr and rub and be closer to the action.
Kyo wants to be a bed sleeping cat too, but she's still scared of Jinx at close range. Jinx isn't real pleased with her either. And since Jinx is always on my right hip as soon as I'm in bed, sitting or lying, lights on or off, Kyo can't get in there. Last night I was sitting in bed working on my laptop for a couple of hours after a good first date that led to nothing, and Jinx spent the whole time curled against my right hip, grooming herself (all the better to load up on a big hairball for nocturnal emission). Three times Kyo came into the bedroom, paced around the bed, walked over to the left side, and hopped up onto the foot. There she'd crouch and watch, but when Jinx turned to look at her Kyo wouldn't advance any further or settle down. She'd just crouch for a while, then drop down and wander back into the living room.
I need the two of them to be in their normal location and relationship for a while to judge how best to treat them. I don't know if I should be scolding Kyo for attacking, or trying to get them closer together with treats, or tossing them at each other to overload their avoidance circuitry and prompt interaction. And I can't figure it out, since Kyo is still quite new, and I had a house guest for 3 days, and I've been out of town.
Unfortunately (on many levels) the venue and cat psychology is going to continue to be unsettled, since my condo complex is getting sprayed for termites this week, and as a result everyone has to evacuate for 3 days. Pets included, of course. So Kyo and Jinx are going back to Malaya's for another few days, which will return Jinx to her frightened, easily-victimized state, and then necessitate a few more days of settling in time once I bring them back home next weekend. (I'm much less than pleased that I must be out of my apt for 3 days and 2 nights as well, and the fact that I have to remove all food and houseplants is the real pain in the ass, but that's a story for another blog entry.)
Amazing how getting such stupid animals to coexist can be such a challenge. I didn't necessarily expect/want the primary cat and the auxiliary cat to be snuggling besties right from the start, but I did hope they would at least have a relationship with the level of tolerance Jinx and Dusty had. They never exactly snuggled, and Dusty was prone to biting and growling at Jinx, but they could sleep on the same bed and would play by chasing around the condo every now and then, exercising each other. These two are nowhere near that level yet. Well, they do chase occasionally, but it's always with much screaming and hissing and unhappiness. At least they're not fighting in the bedroom at night anymore; being awakened by sudden cat yowling and hissing and maybe thrashing at 5am wasn't really my favorite part of Kyo's first couple of weeks here.
And yes, at some point I'll do a proper introduction to the new kitty post, with photos and original tales and such. I'm sure you can't wait, after the way new-Jinx stories utterly consumed the blog back in Fall 2003.
Another post from my New Years vacation experiences...
Driving from San Diego up to the Bay Area with Mom, with her driving the middle 200 miles (from the snowboarding mountain to dinner at the Harris Ranch, halfway through the Central Valley), was illustrative. Mom drives pretty fast; not wimpy old lady by any means (thank god), but our attitudes towards other drivers are so different. She's far more forgiving of idiocy and incompetence, basically. When I'm driving and inevitably encounter some clueless asshole, I generally wish DIAF upon them. I don't care how fast other people drive, but it drives me crazy when they're too slow in the fast lane, or they're inconsistent. If you're in the left (fast) lane, don't go 60, then 75, then 65. Lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. The latter, preferably.
The mastery of the cruise control feature in automobiles continues to vex most drivers, and the two times in recent years I've had some other driver get all road ragey and frantic were both when a car was ahead of me in the left lane, it suddenly dropped from about 75 to 55 (without breaking), I had to tailgate for a moment before passing their clueless ass and returning to my pre-evasion 75 or 80MPH. That happens a lot cause people just can not fucking pay attention to what they're doing on the road, but two times in memory it's been some crazy guy (of course male, of course 20ish) snapping out of his fugue state when I nearly ran into him from behind, or passed him on the right. Young men in motor vehicles are not known for their restraint or common sense (I was certainly included in that list at that age, though I just liked to go fast, not duel with others), so the two times of record there was much exhibition of short dick syndrome with return tailgating, high engine revving as they passed, middle finger displays, etc.
I think that behavior, like most such antics, are primarily born from shame. The guys realized they had failed in their vehicle operation, but since their fragile psyches didn't allow them to internalize that and learn from it, they had to project externally. It wasn't their fault that someone passed them after they dropped from fast to slow; it was the other driver's fault for making them look bad! Must rev engine! Pass him up! Redeem shrunken manhood! Thus is the fragile male ego maintained by those for whom it is most fragile.
In the most recent case, which occurred on the drive up to LA last week, it was an Hispanic guy in a PoS Nissan Maxima with mismatched doors who was bopping along at about 70, in the fast lane. Suddenly, as he rubbernecked something invisible to anyone else on the road, he was going 45. I was far enough behind him that I was able to merge right, zip by, and then merge back left in front of him without doing more than holding the cruise control lever up long enough to bleed off about 5 MPH (having to touch the brakes on the freeway, with light traffic, means you've failed). He was annoying and an idiot, but I would have quickly forgotten him if he hadn't snapped out of his moment of not driving and floored it once I was a quarter mile ahead of him. Overtaxed sewing machine engine revving furiously, he caught up and ran right beside me on the right for a few minutes. He'd pull ahead, as if it was an achievement to exceed 70MPH, then drop back a few lengths, before pulling ahead again. I just kept going 71 the whole time, which is how fast I'd been going before I passed him, and would happily have kept going behind him, if he hadn't lost his sauce for 15 seconds and forced me to maneuver around him. Which is how this all began in the first place.
Eventually he lost interest, or his beater's engine started to red line, and he dropped back to about 65 in the #2 lane, and was soon lost in the distance behind myself and the others setting the flow of traffic pace in the #1 lane. He might have been an even bigger dick about things, but perhaps the mom-aged woman in my passenger seat gave him some common sense. Whyever he didn't act up worse, I'm sure he finished his drive seething, still pissed at that asshole in the sports car who blew past him on the right and then cut in front of him, making him look bad. (To who? He was driving alone and I'm sure he knew no one else on the road around us.)
That was the most dramatic example, but there were (as there always are) plenty of other examples of car-borne idiocy during the 5 days I was riding with Mom, on the drive up here and then moving around the Bay Area. And in most cases, I had my usual reaction; bemused despair, tinged with loathing. But whenever I verbalized my dismay, at some SUV dropping to 40 on a vanishingly-slight corner on a freeway entrance ramp, with a sarcastic comment along the lines of, "Man, driving around corners is awful scary. You've got to turn the wheel and push down on the gas pedal at the same time!" Mom would usually offer something like, "So many people are so messed up and barely able to function in life. They've got money troubles or relationship troubles or screaming kids in the backseat, and they're paying about 1% of their attention to the road. It's amazing they can stay between the dotted lines at all."
This perspective stems from her years of work as a therapist, where she finds out first hand just how fucked up people are.
Humans don't compartmentalize that much. Some angry asshole old man might beat his wife and kids, but it's not like he wouldn't beat other people too. It's just that doing that to a stranger would result in police involvement, or quite possibly the beater becoming the beatee. That sort of guy probably doesn't consciously use his car as a weapon, but the same rage-from-insecurity that fuels his violence at home makes him liable to snap at any minor automotive incident. Not to mention that he's probably lost in thought and obsessed with the private hell he's turned his life into, and is therefore much more likely to be a bad driver in the first place. Other people have other issues, but quite a few of them in those hurtling, multi-ton vehicles around you on the road are paying closer attention to any number of things than their driving. From my mom's perspective, it's amazing there aren't more accidents and incidents on the road, since she knows first hand just how messed up lots of people are.
I can understand that, and emphasize if not sympathize, but I still want them to get the hell out of my way when they putter down a straight on-ramp at 40 and then (inevitably) inconvenience others as they struggle to merge into the 65 flow of traffic. Or drive 70 on the flat, 75 downhill, and 60 uphill since they can't be bothered to use the cruise control and they're too stupid/inattentive/distracted to vary their pressure on the gas pedal when gravity intrudes.
Mom's insights didn't change my feelings towards the perpetrators of these driving sins, but it did make me a little less likely to send mental DIAF wishes. Honestly, I don't want bad things to happen to them. Not even an inconveniencing flat tire as punishment for the annoyance they've inflicted on everyone else on the road. I want magic to happen. I want them to be better, more attentive drivers, and if not, at least to know their place... in the right (slow) lane. But since that's even less likely to happen than them DIAFing, and the later gives me more consolation as I contemplate it while trapped behind a white minivan or a Volvo or a Prius who finds the fast lane as much to their liking as they find the speed limit intimidating... I suspect I'll continue to resort to it in times of stress.
Continuing with the vacation catch up info, through the magic of future posting via blogger's shitty blogging script...
I went snowboarding for 2 days after I left San Diego; first time in years, and it was great.
I packed everything last Sunday night, which required some intensive baggage-in-the-trunk-oragami. I had my mountain bike, snowboard, a regular suitcase, a big duffel bag full of snowboarding gear, my new 24" flat screen monitor in the original box (for padding), two smaller bags of misc stuff, a box of freshly-rooted aloe vera shoots, food for the drive... plus mom and her one suitcase, after I picked her up on the way out of town.
I drove the 2 hours/150 miles up to the San Bernadino mountains -- first stop; our hotel so we could unload the car and I could change clothing and get lunch for some snowboarding energy before we drove up to the resort. I was going to be boarding alone; mom skis, but she's been having hip troubles lately and such an activity was way beyond her current capabilities. She had trouble enough just walking on the slippery, uneven snow. She wanted to come along to spend time with me though, and once I invited her to ride back up North with me and stay for a few days and meet the new kitty (Who I have still not blogged about at any length. Bad Daddy! Ashamed of the baby!) she was in.
I hadn't been snowboarding in several years, and had only gone once since 2003, after I used to get out a couple/few times a year when I lived in San Diego. The one time was in 2005, when Malaya and me went to Tahoe with another couple. Malaya and the other woman rented gear and took a lesson in the morning and could sort of manage it by the afternoon, but the other guy had no interest and spent his time in the lodge. And that one time was enough for Malaya, and I never cared enough to make some guy friends to go with while up here.
Snow mountains are more difficult to engage in living in Northern California, despite their greater size and proximity. Tahoe has awesome resorts and great hills, but it's too far for a day trip, and it's expensive to stay overnight or for a weekend. Plus it's such a huge mountain that it feels wasteful to just go for a day; you can hardly scratch the surface. The various Big Bear Lake area resorts in the mountains east of LA are an hour from most of LA and a little over 2 hours from San Diego, and while they're pretty tame mountains (their black diamonds are like blues on the bigger mountains in Colorado or Whistler/Blackcomb in B.C.) they're fun, they have lots of lifts, and they're not so large that you feel like it's a wasted trip if you only get 4-6 hours of slope time. Plus it's Southern California, so even at 7000+ feet it's usually 45 degrees and sunny. The biggest weather concerns are chapped lips and raccoon eyes from sunburn.
As a result, a snowboarding trip from the Bay Area feels like a lengthy excursion which will take several days and cost $500+, while from So Cal it's a fun day that'll set you back $100. Or less if you bring your own food/drinks. I did 2 days at Mountain High in Wrightwood for $100, plus $80 for a hotel that mom paid for, and maybe another $30 on food. Gas costs were negligible, at $2 a gallon for highway driving. And it was enough to remind me why I got out there several times a year when I used to live down there.
NoCal disclaimers stated, I had a great time boarding and want to get out again this year. Every woman I've met via online dating is either a snowboarder/skier or wants to learn, so it's just a matter of finding one I click with well enough to spend a couple/few days in Tahoe with. (He said, confidently.) Going alone is a chore up here, with the 200+ mile drive, no one to split gas/hotel costs or keep me warm/rub me down at night, etc.
As for the actual snowboarding, it was interesting to see how I progressed over the course of the day. I've never been an expert, or had much interest in death defying jumps and big airs, but I've always been pretty good at staying upright and I enjoy going really fast on big hills and working my way over difficult terrain, including moguls. I hadn't been on a snow (or skate, or surf, or wake) board in years, but I was hoping it would be just like riding a bicycle. Metaphorically speaking, at least.
It was, with the caveat that I was riding a bicycle on a steep, slippery, icy, crowded hillside. I didn't crash the first few runs, but that was because I was being careful and not taking chances. I remembered how to balance and edge and carve and such, but the board felt foreign beneath my feet and my boots felt very bulky and insecure. I improved in technique and confidence with every run though, and by the end of the first afternoon (we got there after lunch and I boarded until dark/exhaustion) I was able to go really fast and do spins and such, but didn't feel stable enough when directly upright to do any jumps, and my carves were still very sketchy and sliding/chattering, instead of crisp. The snow was pretty slushy too, which didn't help.
The second day I got out at 9:30, with plans to ride for the full 4 hours my lift ticket allowed. Unfortunately as we left for breakfast we found that we had to check out of the hotel by noon, and since it was a 20 minute drive to the resort, and I was going to need a shower and change of clothing and had a lot of stuff to pack up from the room, I had to cut my time at least an hour shorter than I wanted to.
The riding was great, though. I rode on the East Resort the second day after hitting the larger West resort the first day, and though I'd been to Mountain High a few times in the past, it had been nearly 10 years, and I'd forgotten how not to scale their trail maps were. Are. Though they look about the same height on the map, and the West is clearly much wider (and has the only high speed chair lift), the East is a much longer descent. And is much less crowded too, since all the snowboarding jumps and rails and fun parks that the 16 y/os swarm over are on the West. I'm not sure how much higher the East is, but the descent is much more sinuous and a lot more fun. It's at least twice as long a ride down, even if you go flat balls out fast on some of the longer descents, and while the chair lift is not high speed, but it moves steadily and pretty much straight up, taking more than ten minutes from the bottom to the top.
As I said, all of the snowboarding park jumps/rails/etc stuff are on the West mountain, since it's so short and small that they've got to find ways to spice up the descent. The East is a much purer sliding experience, and with such long, smooth, (not very) steep hills I was able to get a ton of practice with carving and riding. Ironically, that got me back in practice enough that I was ready to do jumps by lunch time. When I had to leave.
There aren't any groomed ones on the East though, just little bumps right in front of the snow making guns and lift towers, but I was hitting those at speed and jumping waist high, and also taking slower runs which I filled with hopping carves. Those are the kind you need to do on moguls, where you slide one way for a second, then leap into the air and whip the board around about 180 degrees, so you land facing the other direction. I was doing those on the flat (the moguls hill wasn't open or well-snowed) and just for fun rather than out of terrain-driven necessity, but they were challenging to remember how to balance and edge and coordinate, and very tiring. My legs were throbbing after each run of those, and I kept getting to the chair lift hardly able to stand, just in time to stretch and recover for the ten minute ride back up.
Thankfully, I had prepared for that. For some months at the gym I've been doing reverse lunges for the quad/ham/butt strengthening, and I have to say they paid off on the slopes. A typical lunge looks like this. You can do them on the flat or up onto a step. I usually do about 20 of those, walking around the weights are with two 30lbs barbells before I do usual upper body barbell work. They primarily work the quads and hams, and are a decent stretch for the quads too.
The variation on lunges I've been using are a type I saw in a biking magazine (which they started sending me without my consent after I bought my mountain bike during the summer). The magazine's suggestion was to do lunges, but with your back foot up on the step. That way they are intensely focused on your thighs, especially on your quads. I do a few dozen of those each night at the gym, after I get warmed up by cardio, and they're crazy hard. Depending on how far back you position your torso, all of your body weight can be on your back leg, and you simultaneously stretch and strengthen the thigh. Ten of those are usually enough to leave my thighs literally quivering, where I can hardly stand upright with my weight on the exerted leg.
They haven't made much difference in my occasional biking, but I thought they would be useful for snowboarding too, if I ever got back on the slopes again. In my past experience, it's my thighs that get most tired boarding; especially the quads, and especially the left quad, which is my rear leg when I board. The back leg while snowboarding is the one that most of the strain goes on since you're leaning back, you use the back leg to steer with, it does more of the shock absorbing, etc. Back when I used to board a lot I did a lot of thigh stretches, and those helped when the muscles cramped up, but they didn't add strength. The step lunges do both, and they really helped me out, this time.
So, while I had strong legs and plenty of cardio for exertion at 7000 feet, I didn't have much balance. At least not at first. But it came back with some practice, and having legs that weren't too tired to do what I wanted them to do helped a lot too. Still, stretching and gym or not, I'd have been quivering and hardly able to walk if I'd done a full day the second day. In my experience, two straight days of snowboarding is way too much for comfort, especially if you're doing long runs and carving and going fast, like I do. Exertion levels can be greatly limited by jumps and park stuff, since it's slower, less stressful, and involves a lot of sitting around waiting between runs.
The second day of my trip I was going non-stop, and doing hard exertion stuff, without any pausing or easy flat sections, and my legs were singing by lunch time. Of course part of the reason I worked it so hard was because I knew I only had like 2 hours, so I wasn't going to take it easy or pace myself. Just by the way, I'd think a similar attitude would be useful when visiting a prostitute? I've never tried it, but if I ever get old/ugly/desperate enough to turn to that, I'll let you know how it compares to short term snowboarding.
On another front, I enjoyed feeling the surface conditions evolve on day two, as the snow went from "icy in the morning shade" to "slushy in the rising sun." It reminded me of how much difference the snow can make. I've not gotten to ride in fresh powder very often, but it's such a different feel than snowcat-groomed surface, frozen or not. You can lean so much further and carve such better lines in powder, since it absorbs more and gives you a much better grip. It's kind of like the road turning all contoured and angled for traction, rather than being just as curvy, but a flat surface.
Did I mention that I wanted to get out again this year? And that it's colder in Tahoe; cold enough to make snow every night, and that it actually snows, like from the sky, quite often? Mmmm... do want.
Want a nasty, informative, viciously-insulting list with something to offend everyone? Check out the Buffalo Beast's list of the top 50 most loathsome people of the year. Here are a couple of good ones, and the whole list is solid, and surprisingly informative. They quickly work in lots of details I'd forgotten over the course of the year, and offer quite a few tidbits I didn't know at all. And yes, of course Sarah Palin got #1. I've tried to stop picking on her since she's (mercifully) returned to her tundra-based obscurity, but this summation is too juicy to resist excerpting:
20. Joe the Plumber
Charges: The Che Guevara of bald, pissed off white men. In a lot of ways, Samuel Wurzelbacher really does represent the average American -- basing economic opinions on unrealistic expectations of personal future success, blaming his failure to meet those expectations on minorities and old people, complaining about deadbeats getting his taxes when he isn’t actually paying his taxes, and advertising his own rudimentary historical and mathematical ignorance by warning of creeping socialism in a country whose highest income tax rate has dropped by half in thirty years. “Joe” indeed symbolizes the true American dream—to become undeservedly rich and famous through a dizzyingly improbable stroke of luck. As American folk heroes go, Wurzelbacher ranks somewhere between Hulk Hogan and Bernie Goetz.
16. Rick Warren
Charges: Dubbed "America's Pastor" by The Nation, he's duped people from both sides of the political spectrum into thinking he's the kinder, fatter version of James Dobson. Though he is fatter, how could anyone think a man who -- professionally -- quotes a book written by a make-believe space-giant, instructing the murder of homosexuals, could be anything other than a delusional bigot? Still riding the undeserved wave of fame onset by a meth-head kidnap victim’s ownership of his pop-psych hybrid of churchy prudishness and self-help pabulum The Purpose Driven Life, Warren had a big year hosting a presidential forum at his gay-sounding Saddleback Church, helping to pass Prop 8 and being tapped to invoke said make-believe space-giant at Obama's inauguration. Plus, his neatly trimmed goatee is the queerest thing we've ever seen.
Exhibit A: "God tells us that he created all the land animals on the sixth day of creation, the same day that he created mankind. Man and dinosaurs lived at the same time." Can you feel the wisdom?
Sentence: He shalt giveth The Lord a blumpkin and eatheth of the pie until he bursts.
#1: Sarah Palin
Charges: If you want to know why the rest of the world is scared of Americans, consider the fact that after two terms of disastrous rule by a small-minded ignoramus, 46% of us apparently thought the problem was that he wasn’t quite stupid enough. Palin’s unending emissions of baffling, evasive incoherence should have disqualified her for any position that involved a desk, let alone placing her one erratic heartbeat from the presidency. The press strained mightily to feign respect for her, praising a debate performance that involved no debate, calling her a “great speaker” when her only speech was primarily a litany of insults to city-dwellers, echoing bogus sexism charges when a male Palin would have been boiled alive for the Couric interview alone, and lionizing her as she used her baby as a Pro-life stage prop before crowds who cooed when they should have been hurling polonium-tipped javelins. In the end, Palin had the beneficial effect of splitting her party between her admirers and people who can read.
It's nice to be young and healthy. At least relatively speaking. Not only does one (me) feel better all the time, but one (me) recovers more quickly from the occasional illness. Case in point:
I woke up sick my 3rd morning in San Diego, a couple of weeks ago. I'd driven down on a Saturday and gone to a party with my dad that night, and felt fine. I felt fine Sunday too, but didn't sleep well that night. I kept waking up feeling like my lower abdomen was harboring an overinflated balloon, and by 6am, when I gave up trying to sleep and began the first of several extended visits to the porcelain god, my tummy was gurgling tremulously. I had the distinct feeling that my stomach was full of oog. It felt like I had a bellyful of carbonated pond scum, and that I had to purge myself of it by whichever orifice proved most convenient. Both the upper and lower (orifices) were pressed into service, as events unfolded over the course of the day. And sure enough, I felt enormously better after the second torrential session of vomiting. Had an appetite and everything, though I still felt "sick" in other ways.
I spent most of the day feeling very tired and listless. And cold, oddest of all. I'm usually hot and prone to wearing fewer clothes than most everyone else, and Saturday and Sunday at dad's house I was wearing sweat pants, house shoes, and a light sweatshirt. Monday morning I wore that and was freezing. I put on a second shirt, housepants under the sweats, and thicker socks, without avail. Eventually I was sitting at the dining room table with my new laptop and huge 24" monitor gleaming at me, with a portable space heater under the table pointing right at my legs, and my hands were so cold I could hardly type. Not that I felt good enough to type anything worth reading anyway.
I spent most of that day napping; first on the couch (shivering) under two quilts, and then most of the afternoon fully dressed and rolled up in a thick comforter in bed. I felt a little better on Tuesday, and by that evening I was pretty much back to normal, though my tummy still felt unsettled.
Predictably enough, my dad and stepdad got the virus from me. By Wednesday they were both enjoying the early symptoms; vomiting, diarrhea, chills, no appetite, etc. Sadly, as I foreshadowed in the opening sentences of this post, they didn't shake it off as easily as I. Both were still under the weather, feeling chills and some nausea and upset stomach, five or six days later when I departed San Diego for my snowboarding excursion. Thankfully, Mom proved immune to the ravages of the plague, and was able to travel without discomfort.
So yes, it's better to be younger and healthier, but even when one is able to dodge lingering illness, watching one's elders fall prey to it is discouraging. Not just because it sucks to see your parents sick, but because it offers a preview of our future, declining years. Now I know what to look forward to when every minor flu bug passes through in my 60s and 70s...
I didn't see the game since I was out to dinner with Mom and the IG, but as expected (by me, anyway) Florida won the college football "national championship" on Thursday night, largely by shutting down Oklahoma's astroturf-fueled, run-it-up-in-the-4th-quarter, helpless-against-a-real-defense, chuck-and-duck style offensive machine. And that's it for the college football season, and once again, there's nothing approaching a consensus #1. In a better world (which like all better worlds, will likely never come) we'd have two more games to look forward to next week, with the real championship the week after. The contenders: Utah and Florida are instant choices, and USC too with their one fluky loss all season and a Rose Bowl whumping of Penn State. Texas was unimpressive in their role as the annual PAC-10/Big 12/SEC school that runs rings around plodding Big 10 champion Ohio State in a disappointing BCS showdown, but we need a 4th seed, and they're the best option. And now we'll have at it. Florida vs. Texas, Utah vs. USC next week, and the two winners go at it next week for the real title. Imagine the TV ratings and ticket sales!
Since imagining is all we can do, and that eventually gets boring even when she's a size 0 with perky boobs, here's a new, stat-free article by noted baseball statistician Bill James about why the BCS fails. Hint: it's by design. Here's his concluding paragraph:
...until that happens, statisticians, quantitative analysts, and all related professionals should have the dignity, the self-respect, and the common sense to have nothing to do with the BCS. This isn't a national championship—it's a big-money waltz. The only role that the computer rankings play in this is that they're there to take the fall when the system doesn't work—and it doesn't work most of the time. When it doesn't, you can put the blame on the greedy small schools that wanted to milk money from the big football factories, on the greedy big schools that wanted to keep as much money as possible in the fewest possible hands, on the lunk-head football coaches who can't program a computer to play tic-tac-toe but want to make all the rules, or on the Congress that sits idly by and watches it happen. You guys want to make a mess of this, you can make a mess of it without our help.
I feel like I've been blogging the past few days, but I realized last night that I've only been sending flickers, which don't show up here. And are 140 characters long and semi-incoherent. (BTW, how does "semi-incoherent" differ from "semi-coherent" and "incoherent?" Discuss it amongst yourselves.)
So, it's New Years Day (assuming you subscribe to the prevalent, yet utterly-irrational and randomly-assigned Gregorian calendar), 2009, and I've been visiting my parents and staying at my dad's house in San Diego since I drove down on the 27th. I'll be here for until the 6th or so, when I'm driving back up to SF. Not directly; I'm going to stop at one of the ski resorts in Big Bear Lake, in the San Bernadino mountains well east of LA. The current plan is to drive back up on Monday or Tuesday, snowboard for one day, stay overnight, snowboard again the next morning, and leave after lunch, making the rest of the drive back to the Bay Area that afternoon/evening. I'd planned on doing that alone, but my mom wants to go to the slopes for a couple of days, and she wants to visit me in SF for a couple of days, and since I'm driving up and there's an open passenger seat... she might as well come along.
That will require some trunk origami; my car was stuffed full on the way down, with snowboard, mountain bike, suitcase, big duffel bag full of snowboard equipment, cooler for snacks, misc Xmas presents, some plants, and more. It was even worse starting out, since I had the snake and aquarium (to the IG since she likes the snake, her apt is warm, and I wasn't leaving any heat on at mine), plus Jinx and Kyo in separate carry cases, plus their litter box, going to Malaya's. I actually had Kyo's box in the litter box, in the passenger seat, with Jinx on the floor below. And going back I've added a big screen monitor (in the box), mom's suitcase and um... mom.
We can manage in some discomfort... it's only 500 miles! Well, it's only 40 with the cats, since Malaya's a lot nearer my apartment than San Diego. Or even LA.
Speaking of mileage, it's funny how that works. It's 500 miles from SF to SD, or about 520 if you detour east a bit to avoid the helLA traffic on 5, and take 15 instead. The ski resorts east of LA are 120 miles from San Diego... and then it's 500 miles from there back to SF. Que? Directions are tricky. Especially when windy, mountain roads are involved. I hope the weather stays sunny.
The first day down here was fun; a friend of dad was holding a huge wine-themed party. There must have been 50 or 60 open bottles of wine, all sorted by type and stashed in different rooms. So in some back bedroom there would be 6 different Syrahs, with a cheese plate and some crackers. And by the front door were two big tubs of ice with white wines. And in the kitchen was a plate of chocolate and pies with some dessert wines and ports. This was done in 10 or 12 places in the house, including the upstairs bathroom, and even the bedroom closet. Which was standing room only.
I didn't know anyone at the party, but after a few sips of 15 or 20 different vintages I didn't care, and was easily able to nod along as various old people introduced themselves with names I immediately forgot, before speaking at me about their various gripes of the world. Which I forgot even sooner. That party, after driving for 8 hours, unpacking at dad's house, and then riding an hour with him back north to the party, put me in a very relaxed mood. I didn't get drunk though, but not for lack of trying.
After the party dad and I did our minimal gift exchange; my presents to him don't merit mention, but you can be sure a calendar was involved. Him from me were better. Well, was better, since there was just the one, but it was what I wanted most of all. A new laptop, which he'd gotten a week ago after I saw it on sale but could not obtain since it was a discontinued model that was not in stock at any Staples in the Bay Area.
I've been "using" it each day since I arrived, and I'm getting to like it. I still dislike most everything about Vista, but once I found ways to disable almost all of the user-friendly, hidden controls, Mac-style nerfing that OS inflicted upon the stable frame that was XP, it became tolerable. I haven't found ways to do that with Word2007 yet though, and the all visual, "hard to find the real controls" bullshit picture menus they've added to the program makes it almost unusable. I was going to just put up with it while I'm here, since Word2007 came bundled on the laptop, but it's only good for 25 uses before it expires and I have to pay $100 for the full product. Needlessly to say, I'm not going to pay for it and will just install my old Office 2000, which I much prefer anyway. I'm just not sure I can wait another 21 uses of Word2007 to go retro.
I'm happier with the new display, which I picked up at an after Xmas sale at Fry's. I was going to drop $150 on the cheapest quality 22" monitor, but Dad was unimpressed with the image quality and urged me to get a better flatscreen. Of course the better ones cost a bit more money, but when he said he'd throw in a hundred bucks, my panorama swelled noticeably. Suddenly those tiny 22" screens didn't seem quite adequate, and the 24" and 26" were beckoning. Hell, even that legendary 30" apple cinema display looked nice, but those were still $1700 even on sale, and I'm wasn't smoking that much crack.
I ended up with a good quality Acer flatscreen, 24", for about $320. The biggest difference is that the 22" only run up to 1680 resolution, while the 24" jump to 1920x1200. And that's hella porn. I've been in 1280x1024 on my old, old, old 20" CRT monitor for years, and adding almost 700 pixels in width is just glorious. I can now effortlessly put two full width programs side by side, with still space to the edges of the screen for easy icon access or IM contacts or other fun-ness.
I'm not sure how I'm going to do this once I get home, though. I'll use the big monitor all the time, replacing my old massive CRT death trap, (where the hell do you dispose of a 75lbs/35kg CRT monitor anyway?) but my new laptop is blessed with considerably better specs than my two year old tower (despite costing hundreds less), and I got the laptop since I've been wanting some portability. I want to write (or blog, or do website work) sitting in bed sometimes, or in the park, or at a coffee cafe. Plus I'm dating more lately and lots of the potentials live in The City, and traffic is hell getting in or out at rush hour. I can easily see making a 6pm date and leaving at 3, getting into SF in 20 minutes instead of the 50 it would take if I left at 5, and spending 2 hours in a Starbucks, working and enjoying myself before the date. If only there was um... anywhere... to park for free in SF.
Plus, if I sit in bed and work, I can have dual, dueling lap cats!
Anyway, all those happy fun activities and purchases and plans went on Sunday, after I drove down here on Saturday. Sunday night I didn't sleep well; it felt like I had an inflated balloon in my tummy, and I woke up early and started a fun day of evacuating vile liquids from each end, at roughly half hour intervals. With death-like naps mixed in every 3 or 4 hours. Monday morning, I had the distinct feeling that my stomach was full of swamp water, or pond scum. Something foamy and disgusting that I had to get rid of it. Not that I had much choice in that matter.
I ate a can of soup and about 4 crackers all day, in small installments, slept restlessly that night, and felt slightly better on Tuesday, though there was still a lot of lower intestine unhappiness. Finally that settled down later Tuesday evening, after some heavy consumption of Immodium AD pills, and Wednesday I was pretty much back to normal. Just in time for dad to get sick with something similar to what I'd had. So we had to cancel our New Year Evening dining plans, and he just laid around all evening napping and feeling sick and taking medicine, while I put in a few hours on our ongoing joint novel project and texted the various women I'm semi-dating. Sadly, all such women were 500 miles north of me, and were busy telling me about the fun activities they had planned that evening. None had hot dates, but were out with girlfriends, eating, seeing movies, etc. I wasn't feeling that great yet, and I'd been up since 6am so I wasn't tempted to go downtown to some bar/party in San Diego, but it was a pretty lame evening in a dark, quiet, cold house with dad suffering in the bedroom and all my potential social activities (and midnight kitheth!) pining away in Northern California. I didn't sleep well the night before and I'd been up since 6am, so I worked on the novel and went to bed @ 11. It was far from the first New Year's Eve I hadn't paid any attention to in my life, but I'm pretty sure it was the first one in my adult life I wasn't at least awake to welcome in.
And now it's Thursday the 1st, and I'm feeling about normal. Dad's still on the ropes; I had to make a supermarket run this morning to get him some sickness staples; chicken soup, plain crackers, jello, etc. I picked up a Dr. Pepper and some Pringles, since I hadn't had any sugar or grease intake in days, and felt dangerously low on my unhealthy reserves. (The replenishment process proved foul and unsettling, but ultimately necessary.)
I don't think Dad's going to be up to snuff for any revelry or eating out tonight either, so I'll probably do something with my mom and stepdad, if they're not under the weather. That's the trouble with planning social events with old people in the winter; they're always sick or recovering from being sick or about to get sick. At least so it seems to my youthful, seldom-ill vantage point. I'm sure they'd have their own (differing) perspective on this issue.
And now, before more sickness can descend, I'm going to have some lunch and go for a bike ride. I don't want to have dragged that thing down here (and then taken it back north) for nothing. And since this is San Diego and January, it's a beautiful day with a cloudless sky.
