Can I just...hold on...

I. Don't. Care. About. Michael. Jackson.

I was able to avoid the Scott Peterson trial almost. It took me a week or so to realize the Kobe Bryant trial was over. But CNN.com is running pieces on the Michael Jackson as their main story every day. Often three or four times a day.

It's sickening. And to all the media who say "it's what the public wants to know," I say, the public slows down at car wrecks. That does not mean you have to thrust your camera inside the burning car to see the carnage inside it, then broadcast your footage in real time on a jumbotron screen by the road. That's what the paparazzi tried to do to Princess Di, remember.

Phew. Glad I got that off my chest.

If you agree, please, go here.

8 out of 10...

Eight out of ten ain't bad, right?

Oscar predix

Best Picture Million Dollar Baby

Best Director Martin Scorsese, The Aviator

Best Actress Hilary Swank, Million Dollar Baby

Best Actor Jamie Foxx, Ray

Best Supporting Actor Morgan Freeman, Million Dollar Baby

Best Supporting Actress Virginia Madsen, Sideways

Best Original Screenplay Charlie Kaufman, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Best Adaped Screenplay Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor, Sideways

Best Animated Feature The Incredibles

Best Foreign Language Film The Sea Inside

Off to prep for the big day!

Legos...

So my mom sent me these two Lego sets for Valentine's day, 'cause my mom is like that, and last night I combined them into a giant space ship and now I'm "flying" it around my apartment making little spaceship noises.

I fear I may be regressing.

Myla-hee, myla-hoo, myla-hee, myla-haha!

Yet another example of how the internet is truly bringing humankind closer together.

Damn blog...keeps *looking* at me...

I haven't been blogging much, and for that I'm feelin' kind of guilty, but this whole blog experience has been really an experiment anyway, so I'm not going to force it if it's not working. That said, let's see if some shorter postings work more than the longer dear-lord-when-will-this-ever-end postings...(famous last words, I fear...)

Anyhoo, so, was that was a really frustrating Super Bowl or what? These teams should be at their peak, and it was like watching the Keystone Cops! (Yes, I like football. This is a guy whose mom pounds the family room floor when she's really into a game, who just won a free pizza at the OSU/Michigan basketball game for being the craziest fan. Some of her genes are in me.) Anyway, I did enjoy me those ads. Monkeys in the office...priceless!

Watched it all with my neighbors, and then we wrapped it all up with a viewing of a Kathy Griffin stand-up DVD. Man oh man, she makes my cheeks hurt!

OK. Post over! Of course I have more to say, but I'm not entirely convinced anyone other than my immediate family reads this thing, which don't get me wrong is wonderful (hi guys!) but we can e-mail and talk on the phone, too. And don't think the irony of my sister making amazing use of her blog -- which I suggested she start, credit credit credit -- is lost on me.

See, this thing has gone on long enough already! ABV...out...

My Top 10 Movies of 2004...

Before we begin my fifth "look at me, I'm all film buff-y" official top ten list, there's something I'd like to address. It's true that there wasn't a film I saw in 2004 that bowled me over like The Return of the King, The Pianist, Moulin Rouge (after a view added viewings, that is) or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon had in the past four years. I am not suggesting, however, that this "wasn't a good year for movies," a refrain that has become so common year-to-year that it raises the question: what constitutes a "good" year, anyway? Such a subjective declaration deserves, I think, a rather objective answer; it is a good year for movies if you’re tearing out what hair you have left just trying to fit only ten films into a Best of the Year list, and by that measure, 2004 was indeed a very, very good year for movies. (2000 on the other hand...eh.)

Which is to say, 2004 wasn't exactly great. No, a great year is when a bounty of vastly influential, for the ages, buzz-your-head-and-burst-your-heart flicks flood the theaters and you weep and laugh and cheer over the wealth of your bounty. Some recent, in-my-lifetime examples: 1982, the year of E.T., Tootsie, Blade Runner, The Road Warrior, Star Trek 2 (go ahead, laugh, I'm used to it), The Verdict and Fast Times at Ridgemont High. And 1999, the year of American Beauty (and I can already hear you contrarians harrumphing over that flick, so keep quiet), The Matrix, Run Lola Run, Boys Don't Cry, The Sixth Sense, Toy Story 2, Being John Malkovich, All About My Mother and South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut. I have a sneaking suspicion that 2003 may fall into this category (American Splendor, Finding Nemo, the beginning of Kill Bill and the end of Lord of the Rings quite the auspicious year make, and that’s not even counting the I'll-wait-and-see-if-it's-truly-overrated Mystic River), but only time will tell.

Okaaaaay, now that I have that out of my system:

THE TOP 10 MOVIES of 2004

1. BAD EDUCATION (Pedro Almodóvar)

You'll note my inclusion of All About My Mother as one of the great films of 1999. It's because that film introduced the true promise of Pedro Almodóvar, a promise that was fulfilled this year with his dazzling blend of film noir and the best of Hitchcock, a masterpiece that could very well redefine its genre. The darkly coruscating plot is far too complex, and far too fun, for a retelling here, but I'll give you the hook: In 1980, a young Spanish filmmaker (Fele Martínez) is paid a visit from an old friend from Catholic boarding school (Y Tu Mamá También's Gael García Bernal, as you've never seen him before). The friend drops a story on the director's desk about blackmail, lost love and a pedophilic priest that may, or may not, also happen to be true. What unfolds is at turns harrowing, funny, deeply moving and bracingly dark and sexual -- though its NC-17 rating, for suggested gay sex, is absurd when considering the wincingly explicit blood-and-gore in the R rated The Passion of the Christ, but I digress. Up until All About My Mother, Almodóvar was celebrated for brightly colored pansexual romps that seemed at times to be deliberately alienating -- intellectual exercises that were as wickedly pleasurable to watch as they were hollow of real feeling. With 'Mother ,' 2002's Talk to Her and crowned by Bad Education, Almodóvar has finally matched his one-of-a-kind visual skill with the deep well of emotions his fans always suspected was there, and in doing so he's earned at last his last-name-only reputation.


2. ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (Michel Gondry)

I don't know where to start with this movie. Should I talk about Jim Carrey, submerging his spastic id inside a shy, self-loathing Long Island artist with such utterly disarming realism we actually forget we're watching Jim Carrey? Or what about Kate Winslet, all nervous insecure energy turned winning and even adorable under a mop of ever-changing colored hair and a barely hidden, all-consuming need to find her own piece of mind? (There's no time to discuss co-stars Kirsten Dunst, Tom Wilkinson, Elijah Wood and Mark Ruffalo other than to say superlative performances all.) And then there's screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (a one-man genre if there ever was one) and director Michel Gondry. They’re both known for their respective flights of storytelling and visual whimsy, but they ground this film with an unironic, hand-held pragmatism that lets us believe every single frame, especially as we enter the dreamscape of Carrey's memories. It's there the film taps into forces surreal, primal and Freudian, speaking to fears and hopes we'd forgotten we even carried with us. Or, OK, how about the movie's climatic scene, delivered by Winslet and Carrey in the cold truth of the real world with winsome and heartbreaking grace? It's in that scene that the great irony of true, romantic love comes crashing down on top of you: even when it is absolutely wrong, you will always keep coming back for more.


3. SIDEWAYS (Alexander Payne)

A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote an essay a few weeks ago calling this film "the most overrated movie of the year" (and meanwhile the piling of praise onto Clint Eastwood's latest lumbering exercise in well-acted genre melodrama as the Next Great Coming of Cinema is...what? Showing restraint?). Actually, Scott's point wasn't that Sideways was an unworthy movie, per se, but that film critics as a group glommed onto the film due to its winking affirmation of the critical temperament as seen through the character of Paul Giamatti's Miles. He's an oenophile (to borrow Roger Ebert's assessment), see, so desperately in love with wine that he holds it to exacting standards mere mortals would find obscene. Which I can totally identify with, sure -- did you read my introduction? -- but that's not why I loved Sideways. Movies rarely embrace truly real people, people with contradicting faults who can be tear-jerkingly funny and still make you livid with their stubborn pride and hubris, people captured and presented so accurately that you find yourself nodding your head along with them in the theater -- "YES! I know that guy!" or maybe even "NO! I am that guy!" Sideways is not only filled to the brim with those people, it is, in its own imperfect, ultimately hopeful way, the embodiment of those people. And look, I made it through without ever comparing it to a complex bottle of wine…d'oh!


4. THE INCREDIBLES (Brad Bird)

What else is there to say about Pixar other than theirs is a golden age of filmmaking we'll remember dearly, like film buffs of years past who got to live through the heady days of Disney and Warners, or Ford and Capra, or Truffaut and Godard, or Scorsese, Coppola, de Palma and Malick. And no, my tongue is nowhere near my cheek; those disparate filmmakers may not share styles or methods, but in their day they all made their films with the kind of breakneck inventiveness and joy for the medium that I think we can all agree embodies Pixar thoroughly. Unlike almost any of those filmmakers, however, Pixar crafts their movies for just about everyone; I cannot think of a single person I know who wouldn't at the very least appreciate the story of a family of superheroes struggling to live in a world that no longer has use for them. The Incredibles is without equal this year as an entertainment, an accolade I mean only as the highest compliment; that its visual acuity and "let's-celebrate-excellence" ethic approach the top heights of pop art is, I think, only the smoothest of gravy.


5. SUPER SIZE ME (Morgan Spurlock)

Speaking of food, this movie made me quit fast food, cold turkey. Were that its only accomplishment, it still would be something (how many movies literally make you change your life?), but Spurlock's documentary about his only-McDonalds-for-30-days diet is more than just a one-trick stunt. Perhaps his fast food nation target is as easy to hit as the country's ever-expanding waistline, but he hits it dead on in a genuinely entertaining, literally gut-wrenching, effortlessly well-constructed argument that said more to me about this country's highly dysfunctional attitude about its own well-being than another, much higher-profile "cinematic op-ed" that captured all the major ink. (Any irony concerning the ever-expanding waistline of one Michael Moore is strictly intentional.)


6. HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS (Zhang Yimou)

Swish go the surging coral pink sleeves of silk, thwack go the interlocking shoots of pale green bamboo, plink-and-thud go those silver dead-accurate flying daggers, and beat beat beat go our chests. The eyes, meanwhile, dare not blink, lest we miss but a second of Zhang Yimou's visually sublime follow-up to the more epic, less accessible Hero. Don't see it expecting another 'Crouching Tiger' -- that's like going to a mob movie and hoping for a new 'Godfather.' Do see it for Ziyi Zhang's peerless beauty and Takashi Kirasharu's fluid charm, all swirling inside Zhang's piercing mix of color and movement.


7. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (Paul Greengrass)

This movie did better on its opening weekend than any movie in the history of the James Bond series ever has. The best popcorn flick in an exceptional summer of popcorn flicks, it's not hard to see why: fleet, efficient, visually propulsive, with a secret agent hero that makes crystal clear sense for the times. As Matt Damon's Matthew Bourne turns his anonymous-but-lethally well-trained eye onto the very system that made him (a system so secretive, most who work inside it have no clue he exists), we're invited to contemplate a military-industrial complex as desiccated, cutthroat and self-serving as any Enron or Tyco. That is, after you've left the theater. The movie itself doesn't let you catch a breath.


8. BEFORE SUNSET (Richard Linklater)

The "romantic comedy" -- hell, just the "romance" -- has been so denuded of spontaneity, of recognizable human beings dealing with recognizable human problems, that it took a film that was literally two people talking for 80 minutes as they stroll through a perfect summer day in Paris to remind me of the magic a simple movie love story can cast over its audience. (Eternal Sunshine, if your wondering, is anything but simple.) Linklater's sequel to his 1995 walker-and-talker Before Sunrise revisits the story of Ethan Hawke's American writer and Julie Delpy's French activist, who meet in Paris for the first time since spending an evening falling in love in Vienna nine years previous. What a delight it is to discover that Linklater, Hawke and Delpy have all grown into more assured and confident artists; they prove that life only gets more interesting, if not any easier.


9. KINSEY (Bill Condon)

Besides being the year of Jude Law and Ben Stiller, 2004 was the year of the biopic -- a quick count comes up with nine of them, ten if you count Mr. Mel's The Passion -- but only 'Kinsey' really got it right. It's not an easy job, the biopic; movies usually demand the stories they tell to flow with a well-paced pitch and tone, whereas even the most cinematic of actual lives (Howard Hughes, Ray Charles) are ungainly things, full of nettlesome, goes-nowhere detail and loooooong stretches of terribly boring day-to-day banality without any nice-and-tidy ending. What writer-director Condon discovers in his subject is a man whose life's work and life are, in essence, one and the same, and he presents both with an exacting eye for efficient, truly illuminating detail that would make Dr. Kinsey himself quite proud. Meanwhile, the content of Kinsey couldn't be more relevant; watching it, one sees plainly how much things have changed while still remaining exactly the same. (The FCC has prevented me from discussing the film any further.)


10. KILL BILL VOL. 2 (Quentin Tarantino)

Where the first volume of 'Kill Bill' was a superfun kung-fu ballet, this concluding chapter is more deliberate, slower and talk-y. And what great talk! Bill's story to Ms. Beatrix Kiddo about their daughter, death and goldfish is right up there in Tarantalk with "Royale with cheese" and "I'm trying hard to be the shepherd." If the payoff -- it's right there in the title -- isn't quite the revelatory moment one's expecting, the journey there certainly makes up for it, and then some. Now let's just hope it doesn't take another six years for Tarantino to make his next film.


HONORABLE MENTIONS (in descending order of liking-ness):

We Don't Live Here Anymore, Shawn of the Dead, The Aviator, Napoleon Dynamite, Million Dollar Baby, Fahrenheit 9/11, Spider-Man 2, Garden State, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, The Merchant of Venice, The Door in the Floor, Collateral, Ray, Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence


AND FINALLY (finally!):

My predictions for the Academy Award nominees for Best Picture (announced this Tuesday) are...

The Aviator
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Finding Neverland
Million Dollar Baby
Sideways

Thank you -- especially if you've read this far! -- and good night!

(Oh, and if you disagree with any of the preceding, leave a comment! If you agree, leave a comment! If you want to list your own top ten, or five, or three, leave a comment!)

Sun! Glorious sun!

The sun is out, my phone is working, and Apple just announced an iPod I will most certainly buy. Life is good.

Tsunami, first hand

A friend in LA sent this to me; she got it from a co-worker, who got it from a diver friend who survived, miraculously, the tsunami. It is the first account, first-hand or otherwise, I've come across to convey the true nature of the devastation -- I'm just too numb to it when I see it on TV. It is long in length, but when compared with what this man went through, you'll read it in no time.

Note his treatment by the American embassy -- an all-too common report, I'm afraid.

Without further ado:

Sitting around, day after Christmas, just staring at the TV some movie I've seen before. Mid-morning, post-breakfast stupor controlling Karin and me. The power flickers and we moan. We'll have to get up and do something? Then we hear some yelling outside. I look out the front door, still puffed up with pride about our new house, just 400 feet back from the beach. People are running up our street yelling. It looks like a fire at the large two story resort that effectively blocks our view of the beach. Smoke and dust coming up and all these people.

Then a small line of really brown water comes rolling towards us. That's weird. But I reckon it must be some strange full moon high tide. So we go upstairs so we don't get wet. I look out the window and try and take some pictures. There is a quiet rumble to it, like those white noise generators that are supposed to help you sleep. The water is getting higher and higher and then it destroys our friends cement bungalow! Then our front door caves in, and then water is coming up the stairs! HOLY SHIT. This was the last point my brain worked for a long time.

We try and throw a mattress out the window to float on, but the water is rising too fast, and out the window we climb. It's all going so fast. It's faster than conscious thought and by the time we are on our second story roof, the water is coming out the window. We jump. Karin doesn't jump at the same time or did I jump too early? We're separated. I scream her name, but the crashing roiling water mutes me. I can't hear her. I scream and scream until I get hit by something and pulled under. I can't swim to the top, I pull myself through trash and wood to the surface and off I go. Ahead are trees wrapped in flotsam and as I look a Thai guy is struggling to get free of it, as I pass by at 30 MPH I realize he is impaled on a piece of wood and can't even scream.

My brain shut down when Karin disappeared, and now all I can do is survive. Something triggers and I swim. I swim to avoid the trees which will trap me, possibly kill me. It seems that I am atop the crest of the tsunami, which is less like a wave than a flood. From on high I can see the water hit buildings, then rise, then watch the buildings collapse into piles of concrete and rebar. I swim to avoid these. Left and right I paddle, looking ahead the whole time trying to figure the hazards. None of this is conscious, this isn't me thinking it out, it's some recessed part of the brain coming out and taking control.

I was busy seeing the weird things, like massive diesel trucks being rolled end over end. Or the car launched through the 2nd storey wall of a former luggage shop. Or the person high up in a standing tree in a lurid orange thong. Or the older foreigner that got stuck in the wood and steel wrapped around a tree, and then his body torn off while his head remained. I couldn't scream. I was pulled under, my pants caught on something, I decided that this was neither the place nor time for me to die, and ripped my pants off. I surfaced into a hunk of wood which cut my forehead. A 5 gallon water bottle sped by, and I wrapped myself around it like a horny German Shepard on a Chihuahua. I was passing people with bleeding faces and caked in refuse. Some people reached out to me, and I back, but the water was too fast and erratic. Some people screamed for help and I told them to swim. Some people just stared with empty eyes, watching what happened, but seeing nothing. Some were just floating bodies. At some point, I passed a guy, cut on his cheek, holding onto big piece of foam. We just made eye contact and shrugged apathetically at each other. Then I turned ahead to watch fate. When I looked back he was gone.

Trees were pulled down, and their flotsam added to the flow. I was hit by a refrigerator and pushed towards a building that was collapsing. I swam and swam and swam and swam and still was pushed right towards a huge clump of jagged sticks and metal. I was pulled under, kicked towards the mass, cut my feet and kicked again. I popped up on the other side, spun around and pulled under again. Down there, I knew it was not the time, and I pulled my way up through the floating rubbish of my former town. I pulled and pulled and my lungs ached for air. I flashed on Star Wars, the trash compactor scene, and had some big grin in the back of head as I popped up. Sucking shitty water and air deep in my lungs. This went on for weeks. Time simply left the area alone. I grabbed the edge of a mattress and floated. Breathing, just breathing. Awareness brought back by the sound and look of a water fall. Trying to push up onto the mattress more and more, and it took my weight less and less. Tumbling over the edge, sucked under again, and out I shot, swirled into a coconut grove, where the water seemed to have stopped.

There was even a dyke like wall around the grove. The water spun and churned, but went no where, and got no higher. It wasn't swimming, or climbing, but something in between. I made my way to the land. Every step had to be careful with broken glass everywhere, and sheet metal poking out. It was a long slow struggle.

The low rumble had stopped, and now is the occasional creak of wood on wood and metal scraping. Moans came across the new brown lake. A small boy was in a tree crying, asking for his parents in Norwegian. I climbed up onto the dyke and looked around. I screamed out for Karin, only getting responses in Thai. I stood there, panting, trying to find a thought, anything. As I came back to earth I needed to pee. The first thing I did after surviving the tsunami was piss! Along limps an older Thai guy, finds me, naked atop a dyke amid the destruction, covered in mud and filth pissing. He didn't even smile nor did I. I spent the next minutes running from high point to high point screaming out for Karin. If I made it, she could too. There was no response from her.

I found plenty of other people, and helped who I could, but always looking across this vast area of new lakes for her head. Through the trees was a PT boat, a large steel police cruiser. The boat and I had been brought more than a kilometer (2/3 mile) inland. I was standing near a tree, hoping for a clue, anything to say she was out there somewhere. A small boy in a tree whimpered, and I pulled him down. We went inland. There were houses, still standing, a whole neighborhood atop arise that was untouched. Just feet away were cars wrapped around trees. I handed them the boy. I had finished my medic training exactly one month before, so I went to work.. Pulling people out of mud, from under houses. One car, upright against the trunk of a tree still had the driver. He was dead. It went on.

Before this I had only seen a dead body once or twice. That was remedied very quickly. I pulled people out of the water, only to have them choke and die right there. I would take someone's pulse, scream for help, then find that they had died before we could do anything. It was beyond any nightmare or fear I have ever had. An older Thai woman came up to me with a pair of shorts and averted eyes. She was ashamed that I was totally naked. I smirked and slipped them on. She smiled and scurried away. Was it the bright white ass or the fear shriveled cock that had embarrassed her? Roaming the former streets looking for foreigners to send to the higher ground, a place where we could all meet and tend to wounds. After an hour the Thais came screaming out of the mud saying there was another wave coming, and flying into the hills. We were left alone. Those that could walk did, the rest were carried. We made a new base, higher and safer. And the same thing happened again. And again.

Eventually we ended up in the jungle at a park, where there was water and high ground. It was messy. Eventually there were about 300 foreigners, about 120 of whom were injured pretty severely with broken limbs and ribs, near-drownings. Everyone had gashes of some kind, severed fingers or toes and shock everywhere. There was no medicine, no tools, no scissors, no bandages. Nothing but well water (of questionable cleanliness) and some sticks and clothes. I tried to find anyone medically trained. It was only the diving instructors who all had basic first aid. So we cleaned with the water, we broke sticks and set bones and talked people into a relatively calm place. If someone was severely cut, we used their own clothing to mend the wounds. It was a horror story. The floor was covered in blood, people were moaning, or vomiting or asking us to help them. And more arrived with every new wave of cars and trucks fleeing the next wave.

After hours of this, we got news of helicopters evacuating the injured. So everyone rushed towards the trucks. I had to scream and push and pull people out of the way. The ones who needed the evac the most were the ones who couldn't get to the trucks. After twenty minutes of sorting through the priorities, and feeling like we had a handle on it, someone brought me to a girl who was bleeding severely out of her thigh and was in shock. No one had brought her to our little clinic area, they had left her in the back of truck. Finally, after a few helicopters had pulled out the worst, I headed back down. Through rubber tree plantations, and coconut groves we drove. It seemed quiet and relaxed. At the last corner it was devastation. The road was clear and dry up to a certain point and then it was a horizon of rubble. I shuddered.

Someone on a scooter came up and asked for a doctor. Everyone looked at me! I jumped on and they took me up roads I never knew existed, and over bridges that were barely standing until I was brought to five foreigners in the middle of nowhere. One of them was a good friend and diving instructor. It was the first person I had seen that I knew. It was a total joy. He was banged up pretty bad, but he got out and sent off to the hospital. Then the Thais came roaring up the hill, saying there was another wave. We had to carry four more people with broken bones (including a broken hip) up a hill. There was no wave. There never was.

I stumbled back down, wandering through the town looking for people to help. I found only bodies. I found one with a tattoo like Karin's on a scooter under some rubble. I pulled her out, and it was a Thai woman. Still gripping her scooter, mouth agape. Eventually I made my way back to the dive shop I worked at. We had always whinged about how it was too far off the main road, but it survived. It was a center for the survivors. I walked up to find friends alive and things clean and organized. I had been able to keep on, doing what I could to help people, to close out my mind to what was around me and look only at what I was doing, to not seethe dead people, to not worry about where Karin was.

I had held together so well. When I found out Karin was alive it all fell apart. I could smell the destruction, the horror I had just walked through, just lived through, that she had lived through. My body shouted out all the bruises and cuts I had ignored. It all struck me and threw me to the ground. It was too much. I could no longer accept this. We hugged and ate and slept. My feet were cut up, I had small cuts all over my body, and a sinus infection from all the bad water. Karin had gotten hold of a coconut tree, wrapped herself around it and never let go. She had a few bruises and small cuts and a black eye. I was ecstatic to see her like that. First time I've been happy to see a woman with a black eye.

Most of the rest of our friends had come through. They had set up first aid stations and help stations, organized food and created a center for people to meet. The diving community came together and became our support, our medical care, our food - they did everything they could to help and then some. I can't help but give massive appreciation and even a bit of awe to several people. Whether you know them or not, these are the true heroes. Keith? He was tireless - for days, running around, getting medicine, doing first aid, cooking food, getting clothes, talking to the forlorn, coordinating doing everything he could. His energy was endless and bright. Jim and Andrea opened the doors of their shop, and clothed and housed everyone they could. Joakim ran about grabbing people, helping wherever he could, evacuating people to the next town, the whole while wondering about the safety of his own family. And the two DMT's that helped me out? Two guys who had just taken a first aid class and then had to deal with massive trauma, death and chaos. And all the others? This was not the work of just one or two people. Of course the diving community at large shined like a beacon over the madness. When there was no one else, they all stepped forward. I can't help but swell with pride to count myself among them.

The next day I went back to where my house had been and surveyed the damage. One bungalow nearby had been lifted up and dropped on top of another. The whole beach was visible, meaning all of the two or three story hotels that had lined it were gone. There was a jet ski just near our house. The bottom floor of our house was gone, the upper floor was missing a couple of walls. The only thing left, was a plastic Jesus doll I had bought as a joke. So I was left with nothing in the world except my own plastic Jesus.

The level of destruction is virtually impossible to describe. On our beach we had approx. 2500 hotel rooms. It looked to me, that maybe 50 could still be called hotel rooms. The week between Christmas and New Year's is the busiest of the week. Without warning, without an evacuation plan the survival rates were minimal. The wave at our house was about 7 meters high(20 feet) and in some places it was 10 meters (30 feet) high. It wiped out the third floor of most resorts. The number of dead is astronomical, several thousand on my beach alone. By the second day you could smell it, and in the short walk to my former house, we passed about 10 bodies just strewn about. Our final glance of the town was a cattle truck stacked full of wrapped up corpses. We wanted to go home.

In Bangkok most people got help pretty quick. The Swedes, Germans and English had charted flights for their citizens to get home. The Thai government gave free hotel rooms to survivors and there were lists of places to get food. EXCEPT the Americans. I went in [the Embassy] to find out what help I could get. I was able to get a replacement passport, a toothbrush and a paperback book. They said it was not their policy to arrange flights home. I was cut up, still covered in a pretty good layer of mud, I had no home, no money, no clothing(except some borrowed off Keith) nothing at all, and they could do nothing to help. They did offer to let me borrow money, but they would have to find three people in America who would vouch for me, and that process should take less than a week. In the mean time I was screwed. I was destitute and rejected by the embassy. Karin was with me (she's Swedish) and said that I could still try and emigrate to Sweden. I was VERY tempted.

In these last days, watching politicians go on about helping and giving aide, but they won't even take care of their own citizens? I am very, very angry. All the other nations of the world were taking care of their own citizens! Eventually I got a flight home with JAL - that would be JAPAN Airlines, not even an American company, but a JAPANESE company helped me get home. I am still listed as neither found nor alive. Before I left I had spoken to the embassy twice on the phone, giving my name so I would be listed as alive so my family would not worry. I went to the embassy twice, once to get a passport to replace the one lost in the tsunami, and they never listed me as alive or found. I flew out of the country using said passport and am still not found. I went to the hospital three times, and, as of yesterday I am now listed as injured (having been in the states three days already). My family is now waiting to see how long it will take before they are notified about my status. So am I. It does raise a good question: if I am missing or dead, do I have to pay taxes? While spiteful about the embassy, I am grateful to be alive, and that those I care about are still alive. I still look around and am in awe at what just happened. I really feel like someone has slipped me some [drug] and I woke up in America. No real moral to this story yet.

There are divers helping divers. Most of our community, while surviving, lost everything. My story is just one, there and 100,000's more far worse off. I had somewhere to fly to. Donations should be sent to good charities, ones that truly help. Doctors Without Borders: http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org and the Thailand Red Cross http://www.redcrossor.th/english/home/index.php4 were both there fast and helping out immensely. I can't speak, or even dream of what it must be like in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Perl

CA and OH all with the soaked...what the hell...

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Southern California began its fourth consecutive day of drenching rain Monday as a stubborn wintry mix pounded the region, triggering floods that forced evacuations and caused scores of accidents on slippery roadways.

The wet weather wasn't expected to let up until Wednesday, with as much as 6 inches of rain forecast in the region through Tuesday and an additional 2 feet of snow at elevations above 7,500 feet. Dense fog and high winds also were expected.

s n i p
In Ohio, all eyes were on the Ohio River. Two recent storms sent rivers out of their banks in central and southern portions of the state, flooding ground saturated by melted snow from a storm before Christmas.

At the same time, a snow and ice storm knocked out power in parts of western and northern Ohio. Power companies said about 66,000 customers remained without electricity Sunday, down from 250,000 at the height of the storm.

No serious injuries were reported as a direct result of the storm, but authorities believe carbon monoxide poisoning killed five people using generators for electricity since Friday.

Gov. Bob Taft declared a state of emergency in 28 of Ohio's 88 counties during the weekend, increasing to 49 the number of counties eligible for state assistance, Ohio Emergency Management Agency spokesman Mark Patchen said Sunday....more...

What. The. Hell?!

Rain, rain, go away...

I've got a leak in my apartment. By my desk. Where my computer is.

My carpet smells of mildew, even though I've had a fan running on it for a day now.

My phone is dead for reasons not entirely clear, especially since my DSL line still works, and that runs through the phone lines.

So things could be a bit better in Adamland.

But then, of course, I compare my life to your average Sri Lankan at the moment and the pity party ceases right then and there.

Speaking of, how awesome is this: Two of my friends, Sean and Steffen, hosted an art party Saturday night, at which we used markers, crayons, colored pencils and pastels to make incredibly varied works of art -- from your run-of-the-mill collage to your stunningly supple evocation of Chinese mountain painting. Then we auctioned off said works of art to each other, and, among about 25 or so peeps, we raised, are you sitting down, over $1300 for tsunami relief. None of us expected to raise more than $400 or so tops, so I hope you'll forgive a little back patting on my part.

Oh, and London was fantabulous. A few pictures to come....

Merry Christmas...

...and a Happy New Year! I'm off to London!

Ba-rack my world...

So GWB is Time's Person of the Year again. Within three paragraphs of the accompanying story, we're greeted with this dispiriting statistic:

George W. Bush is about to set a political record. The first TIME poll since the election has his approval rating at 49%. Gallup has it at 53%, which doesn't sound bad unless you consider that it's the lowest December rating for a re-elected President in Gallup's history.

In other words, much like the dollar, Bush's "political capital" is losing face value already. Mandate? What mandate?

So what's a PEM-recovering Democrat to do in the face of such a maddening reality? Buy, or at least read, the newest Newsweek, headlined "The Who's Next Issue" and with none other than Barack Obama's boyish, grinning face on the cover. The story itself details how Obama may be the most uniquely suited man to mend the country's internal rifts -- even if he himself admits he's unclear now on how to go about doing that. And then there's this telling detail:

During the [Illinois] primary [for the Democratic Senatorial nominee], Obama's expert grasp of foreign policy helped him bolt from the pack. He was an early opponent of the Iraq war, but made it clear he was against "this war, not all wars." (He supported the invasion of Afghanistan.)

If only Kerry had been able to put it that succinctly.

Eternal Sunshine...

As much as I loved Sideways, and as much as it will be on my Top 10 list of the year, there are a few other films I feel were better and will have more longevity, one of the top among them being Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, inexplicably released last March and now not nearly receiving the kind of awards season support from its studio (Focus Features, the indie wing of Universal) it deserves. The critics associations will often award films like Eternal Sunshine to give them a needed boost for the Oscars and art house box office, but for reasons I can only chalk up to a passionate love for wine and Paul Giamatti (loves that aren't misplaced, mind you, just a bit too all-consuming), Sideways has swept all the major critics awards, sucking away all the oxygen from deserving movies like Eternal Sunshine.

Until now! Thank you, uh, Washington, D.C. Area Film Critics Association, for giving Best Film, Director, Screenplay and Ensemble to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind! Let the true Oscar race begin!

Long time, no type...

Much like most every Kerry-voter I know, the last six weeks have carried with them a kind of soft-but-ever-present pallor, a disconsolate slow-burn that has weighed me down just enough to keep me from reaching the little things -- like, say, posting regularly to my blog. I like to call it PEM: post-electoral melancholy. Well, dammit, no more!

So, by way of ramping up to what I hope will be my blogging second-wind, let me share with you a few funny/interesting/noteworthy things that have struck me over the past few days and weeks.

Netscape, by which I mean shamed corporate parent AOL, has started an el-cheepo dialup service to compete with growing threat NetZero, imaginatively calling it Netscape Internet Service. I know this because they've started running ads to this effect, pointing out that their service is only $9.95 a month including something called "web accelerator" for free! Evil NetZero, on the other hand, charges you $14.95 for the same web-accelerated service, which is, the ad exclaims, "over 50% more!" As if that statistic was somehow going to have a major impact seeing as anyone with second grade math has just figured out it's a whole five dollars more a month. The first time I saw this ad, I laughed out loud for a good minute at Netscape/AOL's hubris.

When seeing a movie at its premiere, one must remind oneself that usually this is by a considerable margin the best, most openly receptive audience this movie is ever likely to see (unless it's opening night for a Star Wars or a Lord of the Rings or some such). Case in point: Spanglish. The premiere audience clearly thought it a delight, bubbling with laughter at all the right places and even applauding some of the more wittier lines delivered with I-love-I-still-have-a-career glee by Cloris Leachman. So I walked out thinking, "Hey, that's was...sorta kinda pretty OK." Subsequent to this viewing, however, the film, a solid B going down, has left what is now a C- aftertaste, progressively more bitter the longer I ponder it.

Two of the biggest perks of Los Angeles life: 75 degree December days and sunsets so exotic and stunning they could make you weep.

I'm now old enough to truly have "old" friends. By that, I mean, have friends with whom my history is deep and complicated and utterly satisfying to revisit, friends who are essentially the same people I knew back when, just a more layered, complicated, adult version of themselves. It is one of the delights of adulthood and no one quite prepared me for it, a surprise for which I am doubly grateful.

Finally, while George W. Bush's victory may have a great deal to do with a larger shift in the culture and a systemic problem with the Democratic party, as the initial sting of Kerry's defeat wears off I have come to feel more and more that what happened on November 3 had at least as much to do with the particular features of the election itself. Namely, Bush and Kerry and how their specific strengths and weaknesses played out in this country at this very particular time in history.

The details of this argument are wearisome to me, however, and, besides, the reason I bring this up has much less to do with the past than with the future. Many of those PEM-suffering Kerry voters I spoke of earlier have taken the election so much to heart that they've thrown up their hands, essentially abdicating the country to those pesky Kansas voters who stubbornly refuse to vote for their own economic interests. Setting aside the crazy-making notion that the hard work ahead isn't worth doing because we're somehow foreordained to lose, it seems reductive to me to fault those lower-and-middle-income Kansas-esque voters for voting for interests outside of their pocketbook, especially when Democrats applaud the likes of George Soros, Steve Jobs and George Clooney when they vote their conscience (and then some) rather than their stock portfolios. Are we telling those without such far-reaching means that they shouldn't do the same, as if the Democratic party can't also speak to their values? Clinton did. Democratic governors in "red" states like Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Virginia, North Carolina, Montana, and, yes, Kansas obviously have. It's going to take hard work, and there will be more defeats along the way. But let's not give up the midwest and south just yet, how 'bout it?