Why yes, it is 4:30 in the morning

Germany is exactly like North America, except off by six hours.

Heart you!

I'm strangely addicted to coverage of the Conard Black trial. This is something lousy to be addicted to in the States, since the coverage during the actual trial phase would amount to two articles per week in your average paper. His recent conviction on 4 of the 13 charges against him was a boon, because now there are stories everywhere!

Umm, I guess it helps that I started looking for stories on Google News around the time the verdicts came in, thus exponentially increasing the number of stories to read. But nevermind that.

Much of the coverage is hilarious, especially when it's written by personal friends and enemies of Conrad Black. Today, though, I discovered an article written by an ideological enemy of Barbara Amiel, Black's wife. The article is in the possibly prestigious Lebanese newspaper Dar Al Hayat, and was written by the maybe-distinguished-who-knows Jihad el-Khazen. Here's my favorite paragraph:

Amiel is a clever woman and she was once pretty, yet she is 66 today in comparison with her husband Black, who is 62 and who is the fourth husband in the life of this woman. It is hard to estimate the number of her lovers as it is equally hard to write on what is known of her relationships and practices in an Arab newspaper.

I wish more stories in the NY Times were written like that. (The NY Post, of course, is almost entirely written in that style.)

Fun airport quotes!

A middle-aged couple just sat down next to me. (Oh, who are they kidding; they're easily of retirement age.) The man put down his carry-on bags and the woman tried to put down her tray full of Starbuck's Frosty Beverage-attos ... but she spilled them all over the man's legs. I didn't catch what he said to her, but her reponse was a defensive "Do you think I did that on purpose?"

Ah, l'amour!

Waterboarding on a sunshiny day!

According to the Wikipedia entry on waterboarding, CIA officers who subject themselves to this particular torture technique (just for practice?) last an average of 14 seconds.

Was your first thought, "Wow, I gotta try that"? Because mine was. And now that soon-to-be-ex President Bush has signed an executive order banning "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of terror suspects, I suspect we'll see waterboarding booths set up at amusement parks, carnivals, and county fairs. See, if they can put on a show that waterboarding is fun for the whole family, then they can claim it's not cruel, inhuman or degrading and continue to use it. Then again, I find amusement parks, carnivals, and county fairs to be cruel, inhuman and degrading all on their own, so maybe the addition of waterboarding booths wouldn't be such an outlandish step. Do you hear what I'm saying, Six Flags?

This evening I went to see Sunshine, the latest movie from Danny Boyle. It was equal parts contemplative space picture and "cast-attrition thriller", as the Onion AV Club coined it. Personally, I love both those genres, so I liked the movie quite a bit. Admittedly, it could have used a bit more of the former and a bit less of the latter, but what can you do? Make your own movie? Madness!

Danny Boyle was in the theatre for a brief Q&A after the movie. Considering the number of times he mentioned Solaris and Alien in his responses, it's not surprising Sunshine had a strange, servant-of-two-masters feel. He also answered my question, saying that the character in Sunshine named "Pinbacker" was indeed a reference to the character "Pinback" in Dark Star. I thought it was kinda obvious, but I wanted to be sure.

Fig. 1: Neat.

"Psycho killer"? Qu'est-ce que c'est?

We went to the Museum of Modern Art today. It was awesome. I hadn't been in there since they re-designed it and upped the prices, but even if I hadn't got in by claiming to be a student (and therefore paying the $8-cheaper student price) it would have been worth it.

They were having a Richard Serra mini-retrospective, though I guess it's as big as any Richard Serra retrospective could ever get (what with his work over the last twenty years being huge). The show took over the sculpture garden, part of the second floor, and part of the sixth floor. The urge to touch fifteen-feet-tall ribbons of rusting metal was great indeed. You wouldn't think so. You'd think, "Touching fifteen-feet-tall ribbons of rusting metal? I'll take a pass." But you'd be wrong.

Sleepy guards were posted throughout the show to make sure nobody touched the Serra works. That, and the ban on photographing his works, reminded me of a photo in the NY Times from several years go. The article was on the Dia:Beacon, a simply awesome museum located halfway between NYC and my mom's house. It was a simplistic "Museum attracts art lovers" fluff piece, and the photo was a huge, half-page image of a young woman grabbing both sides of a massive Serra piece and leaning in for a look. I remembered it because it was a few weeks after we'd gone to the Dia (why look, here's my blog post about it!) during which I remembered the constant admonitions against touching the Serra pieces. Today, considering the ban on photography, I wondered if Serra had flipped out after seeing that Times photo and decided that cameras should not be allowed anywhere near his work.

Elsewhere in the MoMA were a few pieces of art which were little more than Flash programs on computers. I saw one which was almost exactly like one of the assignments in my Human-Computer Interaction class last year. Apparently there is more that can be done with my degree than I'd imagined.

This piece was fucking awesome. On a table there is a small circular landscape with miniature cars and people and sheep stuck in traffic, just a complete circular loop of traffic spinning slowly on a motor. Elsewhere on the table, there are separate miniatures of a man and of a woman sitting in theatre seats. Elsewhere elsewhere on the table there is a miniature row of theatre seats, where a man and a woman sit and watch a miniature movie screen. About the table are placed several cameras focussed on the miniatures. The images from these cameras are projected onto the wall in a random order. The audio is of honking car horns, as would be heard in a traffic jam. It was quite lovely, especially considering the piece depicted the artists' second date.

There was a retrospective of photographer JoAnn Verburg's photographs. One photo was of Talking Heads singer David Byrne, taken in the mid-1980's. An hour later we were leaving the museum when I saw the real David Byrne in the lobby. That was pretty cool. I was wondering if he had come to see the photo of himself. I regretted not having my camera, otherwise I'd have staked out the Verburg show and tried to get a picture of the 55-year-old David Byrne looking at the 33-year-old David Byrne. Then in 33 years I could try to get a picture of the 88-year-old David Byrne looking at the 55-year-old David Byrne looking at the 33-year-old David Byrne. I bet he'd be game for that, too.

Today marked the second time I'd seen David Byrne in person. The first time was in a discount liquor store in Greenwich Village in the late 1990's. Just so you know: I was emulating him, all those years I was drinking St. Ides malt liquor.

This post is a journey all its own

Oh, blog, what can I tell you?

My recent dreams have been upsetting and weird, but I think that's my brain's way to get me to embrace waking up. Every time I have a bad dream, I wake up grateful that the dream is over and that some more time has been eliminated before my travels.

I'm anxious about travelling, and having even a few minutes of mental down-time gives that anxiety room to grow ... or time to grow, I guess. Or both, really. Who knows how the mind works?

I love travelling and I want to get started already! I'll feel better once I'm on the train tomorrow and once I'm on the plane a week from tomorrow. But until I'm on that train and that plane, the uncertainty is killing me. It's like writing an exam: at a certain point you're ready to write it, but if that point is twelve hours before the exam starts ... gah, now I'm replacing anxiety with tedious writing. And that's a terrible analogy, because writing an exam was (often, for me) the last attempt to avoid failing a class, whereas my travels will take me to the Greatest City in the World and then to the Finest Woman of her Generation. Taken from that perspective, and not from the "airport security hates me, and let's not get started on Customs and Immigration" perspective, my state is quickly going from anxious to excited (with a brief layover in tedious writing, as mentioned earlier).

Am I the only one who sat through the end credits for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, who saw that "The real Steve Zissou is a prominent attorney in New York City specializing in complex federal litigation"? It's ok if I am the only one. When I've enjoyed a movie, I like to sit through the end credits. Lately, I've found myself sitting through the end credits of movies I didn't particularly enjoy because more movies have adopted the tiresome habit of tacking a last scene onto the very very end of the picture at the close of the credits. It's like when bands include a secret hiddem bonus track at the end of their cd's, except you have to wait through 8 minutes of silence to get to it. Bastards! I wish there existed a website devoted to that annoying practice (the movie version, anyway), because Hostel 2 was lame enough already without me waiting for the lame-o secret scene I expected that never arrived. Maybe there already exists such a website, but what search terms would I use to find it?

Hmm?

(If anyone can find such a website, let me know, because otherwise I will totally make one. I'm thinking either ihatethatcrapattheendof movies.com or moviedingleberries.com)

But back to Steve Zissou. As terrible a newspaper as the New York Post is, it does occasionally prove an enlightening read. For example, there was a recent story about two men who were convicted of taking out life insurance policies on homeless men while making themselves the beneficiaries, and then (surprise!) killing said homeless men and collecting the dough. The enlightening part of this story -- other than the obvious "Haven't these guys ever seen Law & Order? That plan would never work!" -- comes from a quote from Steve Zissou, the lawyer for one of the defendants. The quote is not as important as learning that the "complex federal litigation" of "prominent attorney" Steve Zissou involves defending an insurance scammer-cum-murderer. Personally, I think he's got the Crazy Eye.

Here's a link to that story, but I forewarn you that the NY Post website is to websites as the NY Post newspaper is to newspapers.

Now that was a good analogy.

What comes after P? Or V?

Here's a hot tip for you novice computer users out there: Know when to draw the line.

I was having trouble sleeping this evening (technically, I still am), so I thought I'd go on the internets to see what's going down. Oh, not a lot's going down. So at 4am, I decided to do some computer maintenance. This is where I should have drawn the line. Because I accidentally started erasing my Documents folder.

I have no idea how I managed to drag my entire Documents folder into the trash, nor why I decided to empty the trash just then, nor why I was recently thinking the Mac's lack of a confirmation step was a good thing, but when I saw the progress bar erasing hundreds of items instead of the four items I was expecting ... well, I hit "Cancel" pretty quickly.

I dragged my Documents folder out of the trash and looked inside. Seems everything after "Pics" was erased. And inside "Pics", everything after the letter "v" was erased. This is troubling because I have little recollection of what came after "Pics" in my Documents folder, or what pics I had that started with w through z. I'm pretty sure there was a folder named "School" containing a few old essays, and I'm pretty sure there was a folder called "Website" that contained various (you guessed it) website-related items, but I'm also pretty sure there had to be more.

Ah well. A little purge is good for the soul. And now having recounted all that, I think I'm ready for bed.

Flash cards!

Michael Chabon, the author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay



is not Michael Gambon, the actor who could have played Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm.



That was Albert Finney.



None of the above were involved with Waiting to Exhale, or, as it's known in France, Où Sont Les Hommes?



And here are some pictures I took today. The dust is barely visible and I can live with that for the next few weeks.

Cheers

Perhaps the experts were right. I'm in the process of tying one on now, and my blahs are magically disappearing.

I haven't tied one on in months, so I'm tying very gently. Analogy: I'm tying my shoes, not securing myself to the mast like Odysseus.

I didn't want to have an ordinary gin and tonic. Though really, how ordinary could any gin and tonic be when the gin involved is Magellan?

Fig. 1: Magellan gin is blue! Just like ... Windex ... I guess.

Considering the amount of gin in that glass, maybe I am going the Odysseus route.

To make things interesting, I pitted some cherries and tossed them into the gin and tonic, which resulted in a vaguely purple beverage which, like a vampire, could not be captured on film. Also, my camera is digital, not film. Also, I didn't actually try to photograph it because it wasn't photogenic.

But was it delicious? Oh mais oui.

Things I've learned from television commercials:

1. It takes two make a thing go right.
2. It takes two make it out of sight.

I know it's from a song, but I'm not up on my popular music from the 80's/90's/whenever, so I can't imagine how the rest of that song goes.

Yep. The blahs are definitely gone for the evening. I'm ready for ACTION!

Fig. 2: C'mere, little deer! Where do you think you're going?

I don't feel bad about the dust on my sensor any more (right now). It's all worth it (right now).

Oh! Before I forget! I've been in a period of mourning for several years, ever since Larry King stopped writing his column in USA Today. I remember being signed up for a mass audition for the McGill Student Drama Festival, where dozens of actors would get up and do a monologue for the handful of directors involved with the festival who would pick their favorites for their own shows. I planned to do a dramatic reading of a Larry King USA Today column. (I can't find an online archive of his columns, but this transcript of a Saturday Night Live skit/sketch comes remarkably close to replicating the experience.) I ultimately decided not to audition because none of the directors were my pals, which would turn the entire ordeal into actual work, which is the opposite of what I was going for at that point in my life. (Trish - this was two years after my stellar performance in your production of The Socratic Method.)

So yes, Larry King column, period of mourning, etc etc. I recently became aware that Zach Braff, bafflingly beloved director of the bafflingly popular Garden State, writes a blog. I visited the blog and goddamn if it doesn't read like an old Larry King column. Bonus points? The comments people have left on it; they're almost as inane as the original posts. Braff writes about being in NYC for the summer, and there are comments like, "Enjoy NYC!" "Have some pizza there -- I hear it's really good!" and "Wish I could be in New York for the summer!" ... and then there are the countless posts from high schoolers about how Garden State changed their lives.

Here's a bit from the blog. It's long, but if I quoted just one bit, you might misunderstand the ADD-addled ridiculousness that is the guiding philosophy of the entire enterprise.

I am not leaving Scrubs! (People are still asking me this all the time.) We begin shooting the final 18 episodes this August. The finality of this season has nothing to do with me. The folks at NBC have decided this is our last one.

“Knocked Up” = hilarious. The scene with the bouncer (the dude from the Office) is one of the funniest pieces of dialogue I’ve ever heard.

“The Sarah Silverman Show” = hilarious. I’ve been watching them all on itunes. She is one of a kind. (And so cute!)

If you are in NYC, go see the new production of “Romeo and Juliet” in Central Park. The performances are really good and the set is AMAZING! Unfortunately, the production I saw got rained out just as Juliet drank the potion, but I think I can guess how it ends: she wakes up just as Romeo arrives at the tomb and they live happily ever after. Man I love romantic comedies! (The actor who plays Juliet’s father is particularly stunning. He has a relatively small role, and the audience applauded him at the end of his big scene.)

Roscoe is chewing on a “bully stick” which is a treat you buy in a pet shop. Someone recently told me that it is actually a Bull’s penis. If that is true, then man my dog loves bull penis!

I’m not sure when or why the tabloid angle on me was decided that I am a cad. I would have much rather it had been that I am secretly a dentist or that I love soup....

What keeps it from Larry King-dom is senility. Larry King's columns were amazing because they were written by a hopelessly out-of-touch old guy and read like the transcripts of that guy looking for his medication in the morning. Zach Braff's blog is just ... sad. You'd think the creative force behind a tiresome circle jerk like Garden State could string together more than handful of sentences about any particular topic. But no.

It's easy for me to dismiss Zach Braff's blog because I thought Garden State was a piece of shit, but if Wes Anderson ever wrote a blog and it came out anything like Braff's blog ... well, I'd just have to swear off movies forever. I'm avoiding publicity on The Darjeeling Limited for fear that a Wes Anderson blog may be involved.

Oh, I'm aware of the irony/hypocrisy of me criticizing the Braffblog for being random and lame. No need to point that out, thanks.

Dream lover

If I hadn't made a vow to refrain from writing about my dreams, I'd write about the fatal flaw in lucid dreams: The supporting characters know only as much as your subconscious knows, so if your subconscious knows you're awesome, your lucid dreams' characters will all think you're awesome, too. Having people think you're awesome is delightful in real life, but in dreams it turns lunch with Joe Strummer or sex with your eighth grade teacher into underwhleming experiences. (Although considering those individuals are now dead and old, respectively, I suppose "underwhelming" would be an accurate description.)

But yeah, I made that vow about refraining from writing about my dreams, so I'll not write about the fatal flaw in lucid dreams. Truth be told, I don't think that vow would hold up in court anyway.