I should be doing something else...

Can I just...hold on...

2005-03-08T14:09:00.001-08:00

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...

2005-02-28T10:20:00.000-08:00

Eight out of ten ain't bad, right?

Oscar predix

2005-02-27T08:52:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-02-13T13:50:00.000-08:00

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!

2005-02-08T01:10:00.000-08:00

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

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

2005-02-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-01-21T17:26:00.000-08:00

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!

2005-01-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

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

2005-01-10T15:24:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-01-10T11:06:00.000-08:00

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...

2005-01-10T10:45:00.000-08:00

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...

2004-12-25T05:56:00.000-08:00

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

Ba-rack my world...

2004-12-19T10:21:00.000-08:00

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...

2004-12-17T09:17:00.000-08:00

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...

2004-12-16T19:48:00.000-08:00

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?

My day of Thanksgiving fun...ah, memories...

2004-11-24T21:51:00.000-08:00

I'll be celebrating Turkey Day with some friends and their family this year, responsible for the pancakes the next morning and certainly up for any help I can be in the kitchen, but decidedly not responsible for getting the meal on the table. I tried that with my old roommate John two years ago. This, via an e-mail dated Dec. 2, 2002 that some of you may remember, was the result:

So, when I volunteered to host Thanksgiving for 10 of my friends out here in Los Angeles AND do the mashed potatoes AND the green beans, I honestly never thought I would be taking on more responsibilities than anyone else -- which was only my first mistake in a long string of mistakes that I like to call collectively "The Great Learning Experience To End All Learning Experiences." (I'm in talks with NBC on turning it into a mini-series starring James Van Der Beek. Fingers crossed!)

So, forthwith, here are my Top 10 lessons learned from this past Thursday, along with why I did indeed learn that lesson:

1. Always, always, ALWAYS buy less food than you think you'll need, because it will almost certainly be more food than you actually do need, even if you know there will be at least two U.S. marines present at the meal.
    On Friday morning, in our fridge, my roommate John and I managed to fit two half eaten turkeys -- one 13 lbs., the other 18 lbs. -- almost an entire ham, a giant bowl of mashed potatoes, several containers full of green beans, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce and who knows what else.

2. Never put potato peelings down the disposal.
    Our sink backed up, so I had to have friends hold down the drain and that thingie that sticks up next to the faucet while I plungered the disposal, all whilst getting smatterings of cloudy brown water on my person. Yum.

3. Never cut potatoes, or anything for that matter, while there are many distractions around, especially if heretofore you're not used to cutting food. [That should be warning enough for the squeamish not to read on, but I'll go ahead and warn you again anyway.]
    On my left index finger I have a quarter-inch hole where part of my finger used to be. That's not the worst of it, either. The worst of it is there used to be a quarter inch chunk of my left index finger dangling on for dear life which I had to, er, remove before I went to bed, lest it rip itself off in my sleep. Double yum.

4. Be sure to buy your turkey four to five days before you plan to eat it, especially if you have two turkeys (which, per lesson one, you shouldn't have bought in the first place, even if it was free with a $75 purchase from the local supermarket).
    At one point on Wednesday, I had one turkey defrosting in the kitchen sink and, when I couldn't find another suitable sink in time, the other turkey defrosting in my bathtub. Since I'm so germ conscious, of course I had to disinfect and scrub down the tub both before and after the turkey was placed in it. Oh, and both turkeys were STILL not completely defrosted when our friend Jamie came to dress them.

5. Never assume they "just forgot" to put the giblet bag in the turkey.
    After the 18 lb-er had been in our stove for a good 20 minutes, I got a call from Jamie saying she had found the giblet bag in the 13 lb-er and would I please take the 18 lb-er out of our stove and grab the giblet bag before it melted, oh and be sure to not rupture the bag 'cause then the giblets will go everywhere. Needless to say this, for me, became the most stressful thing I'd ever done in my entire life.

6. Never place your hand, or any appendage for that matter, anywhere within the splatter distance of a near-full pot of boiling water.
    My left hand also has an inch round burn after an errant, sizable splatter of boiling water decided to land on it. It's suing my right hand for negligence.

7. Never take a break from cooking anything...
    ...as otherwise you'll have cold turkeys when it comes time to eat them. And cold ham. And cold green beans. And cold stuffing. And...

8. Be sure the pan you're using will fit the food you plan to place in it.
    Let's just say there were several charred green beans that I found stuck inside the stove's burners after we finished dinner.

9. One potato per person is a great formula for making mashed potatoes, but if and only if A) The potatoes themselves are not freakish, giant, hormone enhanced potatoes and B) Your guests are planning on eating a meal consisting entirely of mashed potatoes.
    At its peak, I'd guess there was about three to four lbs. of leftover mashed potatoes sitting in my fridge. (Again, see lesson one.)

10. Always, always, ALWAYS end the evening with a few rounds of Catchphrase (an electronic party game that's a simpler, faster version of Taboo), as the hilarity that will ensue will effectively melt away all the stress and strain of the evening.
    Too true, too true.

And on that note...

Happy Thanksgiving...

2004-11-24T21:49:00.000-08:00

Gobble gobble!

Dozens, I tells ya!...

2004-11-17T13:34:00.000-08:00

Perhaps you've heard of the hullabaloo surrounding this past week's Monday Night Football game on ABC. It seems, for the scripted introduction to the ratings starved broadcast, ABC execs gunning for a bit o'the cross-promotion placed Nicollette Sheridan, the most buxom and, dare I say, smuttiest of the Desperate Housewives (except, technically, as a childless divorcée, her character is not so much a housewife) in the Eagles locker-room wearing just a towel. After asking a top player to miss the game (I'm not gonna pretend I recognize the player's name), she drops the towel, the camera cuts to behind her back, and the NFL, which does not see these introductions before they air, let out a collective gasp at yet another quasi-nude woman invading their airspace in the course of a year. One that, you know, isn't a Dallas Cheerleader.

A bonehead move on ABC's part? Sure. But a cause for more FCC bloviating over the corruption of our culture on the public airwaves that could inevitably lead to further fines, culture cop hand-wringing and red state sanctimony? Hardly. Forgetting for a moment that ABC gets away with far more on the actual Desperate Housewives broadcasts with nary a peep from FCC chairman Michael Powell, one can hardly imagine the NFL's core audience getting all that up in arms about some suggestive female skin.

And yet I read this story in today's New York Times:

...Yesterday, a league spokesman called the sketch "inappropriate and unsuitable for our 'Monday Night Football' audience," and the league office expressed its displeasure to ABC executives. ABC Sports apologized, saying in a statement, "We agree that the placement was inappropriate."

The N.F.L. said it had received dozens of calls and hundreds of e-mail messages in complaint [emphasis added]. ABC said it also received complaints. ...more... (Free registration required.)

That's right: dozens and hundreds in a viewership of tens of millions. Whole thousandths of a percent!

Look, I'm not defending the Desperate introduction -- from reading about it, it sounds tacky and cheesy and in poor judgment and taste. But doesn't it seem wildly unfair and undemocratic that the smallest handful of American viewers, the squeakiest of the squeaky wheels, get to dictate what makes it onto our televisions, televisions that can, at any time, be changed to a more wholesome channel or even, yes, turned off entirely? And does anyone think that maybe this whole controversy has been cooked up to juice the ratings for Monday Night Football, which has been losing viewers and money for ABC for a few years now? Any publicity is good publicity, or so the saying goes...

Rains, it pours...

2004-11-15T12:00:00.000-08:00

I've got a heavy load of deadlines bearing down on me this week, so things'll be quiet here for a while. Unless, of course, something really pisses me off or makes me elated and I must must must share my feelings about them. Which we all know can easily happen.

Clearly the dude hasn't read any of the Narnia books...

2004-11-08T13:47:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Brett for first pointing this out...

TAIPEI, Taiwan - A man leaped into a lion’s den at the Taipei Zoo on Wednesday to try to convert the king of beasts to Christianity, but was bitten in the leg for his efforts.

“Jesus will save you!” shouted the 46-year-old man at two African lions lounging under a tree a few meters away.

“Come bite me!” he said with both hands raised, television footage showed. ...more... (Reuters via MSNBC.com)

Sure glad we signed Kyoto...wait...

2004-11-08T11:42:00.000-08:00

Hahahaha The Day After Tomorrow could never happen hahahaha and if it did it would be over tens of thousands of years hahahaha so go ahead and conspicuously consume hahahaha our children and grandchildren will thank us for the warmer weather hahahaha and who cares if some polar bears die and indigenous cultures perish hahahaha burn baby burn!

Global warming is heating the Arctic almost twice as fast as the rest of the planet in a thaw that threatens millions of livelihoods and could wipe out polar bears by 2100, an eight-nation report said on Monday.

The biggest survey to date of the Arctic climate, by 250 scientists, said the accelerating melt could be a foretaste of wider disruptions from a build-up of human emissions of heat-trapping gases in the earth's atmosphere. ...more... (Reuters via CNN.com)

Go ahead, kick us while we're down...

2004-11-04T11:10:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Edwards has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Read more here.

Vacation from the country...

2004-11-03T22:13:00.000-08:00

So after waking up at 7:30 am this morning, watching TV until Kerry's phone call concession became BREAKING NEWS, and then lying in my bed for another half hour feeling sorry for myself -- so sorry for myself, in fact, that I plum forgot that Buffy was on! -- I decided I needed to take a vacation. From the country. For today.

So I stuck Star Trek: Generations into my VCR, did some very minor cleaning of my apartment, and then eventually set out to Hollywood with my buddy Sean for a double feature of The Grudge and Ray at the Arclight. I probably could think of two current mainstream movies that are more different in tone, style, shape and content, but it'd take me a while -- one, an oblique, non-linear and really rather non-narrative mood piece (and that mood would be creeped out) starring my girl Buffy, the other a conventional, straightforward and somewhat pedantic retelling of one man's extraordinary life with some extraordinary acting from Jamie Foxx. So for four-and-a-half hours, I forgot about the next four-and-change years. It was, as my mother sometimes says, a "mental health day." I only wish everyone had the luxury to do the same.

Heart vs. head...

2004-11-03T01:01:00.000-08:00

I go to bed knowing in my head that Bush has won but wanting in my heart for it not to be over. The margin of victory for Bush is ever-widening in Ohio, to the point where only Mel Gibson himself could bring the miracle the Kerry campaign needs in the provisional ballots. And yet... If 2000 taught us anything, it's that anything can happen.

Meanwhile, if the exit polls are to be believed, P. Diddy's got a lot of 18-24 year olds to kill. I am so unspeakably disappointed in my generation, I could spit. That, and my home state turning into a rain-soaked ground zero is almost more than I can really handle. All eleven state constitutional amendments banning gay marriage (and, in some cases, civil unions and domestic partnerships) have passed. Pat Buchanan was making sense on (MS)NBC, while the network itself projects the lowest electoral count for Kerry among the six major news outlets, lower than even FOX. Democrats have lost two seats in the Senate and five seats in the House, at least.

The only silver lining? Barack Obama will be only the third African-American senator since Reconstruction, and he did so by winning even in districts traditionally held by culturally conservative Illinois voters. Can someone say Obama 2008?

Hawaii...the next Florida?!...

2004-11-01T13:16:00.000-08:00

Electoral "what if?" is the current game du jour, so I thought I'd play along. Here's a fun and not that unlikely scenario that could unfold tomorrow, considering that the swing states as listed by the LA Times are New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, and considering that all other states break for their expected respective candidates:

As polls close across the country, states begin to be called for Bush and Kerry. In the Eastern Time Zone, New Hamshire goes to Kerry. So does New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan. To Bush goes West Virginia, Virginia and Florida. The count is 102 Bush, 137 Kerry. No clear winner.

We move to Central Time. Wisconsin and Minnesota go Kerry, Iowa and Missouri go Bush. 219 Bush, 195 Kerry. No clear winner.

Next is Mountain time. Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada all break for Bush. 263 Bush, 195 Kerry. Bush leading, but by this time...

...California's certainly been called for Kerry, and, in Pacific Time, Washington and Oregon go Kerry too. 263 Bush, Kerry 268.

Then, suddenly, it's down to the two states that no one ever pays attention to: Alaska and Hawaii. Bush is polling 57% to 30% for Kerry, so at 266 vs. 268, it suddenly comes down to Hawaii and its four electoral votes.

One would think Kerry would win then, but the most recent poll for Hawaii, dated October 20, had Bush at 46% and Kerry at 45%, unprecedented in a state that has voted Democratic in all but two presidential elections since it joined the union. What's more, a poll dated the week of October 13 showed 12% undecided. It's enough to make you crazy.

Of course, I don't think this scenario will be the one that plays out. Electoral-Vote.com is giving the edge to Kerry in Iowa, and I saw a poll today that had 65% of voters 18 to 29 voting for Kerry, with zero undecided, usually a good indicator of a large turnout. And if Ohio and Florida both go for one candidate, then the election is pretty much over.

But, then, I don't really think most polls matter in this election given how close they're cutting it and how many new voters there could potentially be at the polls.

Chew on this, though: what if Hawaii goes for Kerry, but Wisconsin goes for Bush and Iowa goes for Kerry? Then we have an electoral tie and, should the Democrats win back the Senate, Bush as president and John Edwards as vice-president.

MMMmmm. It's good to be an Amurican!

The Girl Who Feels No Pain...

2004-11-01T09:36:00.000-08:00

No, it's not the title of the next Lifetime movie starring Valerie Bertinelli. It's an actual girl, who actually feels no physical pain (from Associated Press via CNN.com):

Ashlyn Blocker's parents and kindergarten teachers all describe her the same way: fearless. So they nervously watch her plunge full-tilt into a childhood deprived of natural alarms.

In the school cafeteria, teachers put ice in 5-year-old Ashlyn's chili. If her lunch is scalding hot, she'll gulp it down anyway.

On the playground, a teacher's aide watches Ashlyn from within 15 feet, keeping her off the jungle gym and giving chase when she runs. If she takes a hard fall, Ashlyn won't cry.

Ashlyn is among a tiny number of people in the world known to have congenital insensitivity to pain with anhidrosis, or CIPA -- a rare genetic disorder that makes her unable to feel pain. ...more...

I've been quiet...

2004-10-31T17:50:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted much recently. I think it's because if I started, I don't know when or how I would stop. This election is a mind-crunching combination of high idealism, glad-handed pandering, obscene amounts of money and political trickery at its most underhanded and well-planed. One could say in response, "Well, when isn't it like that?" -- the most recent episode of South Park just did -- but with the polls cutting things so close that they've rendered themselves utterly useless, I'm thinking those hype-inducing screams of "unprecedented" and "most important" and "historic" are also thrillingly and terrifyingly true.

Anyway, Happy Halloween!

Electoral maps...

2004-10-26T11:12:00.000-07:00

Lest you get disheartened by all those projected electoral maps that seem to bleed red in the center, go here for a map (or "cartogram") that shows each state in proportion to its total number of electoral votes. It's much less crazy making (and drives home just how important Ohio and Florida really are).

Africa and women...

2004-10-26T09:06:00.000-07:00

It is one of life's greatest inequities that men are usually much, much more physically strong than women, and it's one of its greatest injustices that men have chosen so often to demonstrate that difference with unflinching brutality. To be reminded of these facts, we need only pay attention to two stories out of Sub-Saharan Africa today: This one from Reuters (via CNN.com) about Amnesty International's estimation that 40,000 women and girls have been raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo over the last six years. And this one from The New York Times (free registration required to view it) about continuing violence against women in Darfur, Sudan, even with increasing international attention paid to the region. Go read them now.

"Up in the air..."

2004-10-24T11:05:00.000-07:00

"Whether or not we can be ever fully safe is up -- you know, is up in the air. I would hope we could make it a lot more safe by staying on the offensive." -- George W. Bush, in an interview with Fox News' Hannity and Colmes that is to air Monday night. Let's parse this quote a bit, shall we?

"Whether or not we can be ever fully safe..." Note the awkward syntax. A more effective way to say this would be "whether or not we can ever be fully safe." Moving on...

"...is up -- you know, is up in the air." This is the quote that is being bandied about right now on the wire services, that Bush thinks our safety is "up in the air." It is exactly the kind of minor verbal gaffe one doesn't need nine days before an election. What would normally be seen as yet another attempt by the Bush camp at cultivating fear in the electorate could just as easily be seen by those few undecided voters still truly on the fence as a President just, you know, winging it. "You know, it's up in the air, could go either way, who knows, I sure don't." Not the kind of ennobling sentiment one expects from a president.
And Bush knows that. It's why he stopped halfway through the sound bite -- "...is up -- you know, is up in the air." He's not skilled enough at public speaking to make a midstream change, though, so he had to go on and finish what he started, attempting to fix the mistake with his very next sentence:

"I would hope we could make it a lot more safe by staying on the offensive." Back on the message of pre-emption, but, again, that funky syntax doesn't help. "I would hope we could make it a lot more safe..." and not "In my next four years, we will make it even more safe..."? Even if the comment is played on Fox News (and replayed on CNN, MSNBC, etc.) in its entirety, that verbal equivocation dilutes Bush's message.

I could be very wrong; this could be the last you see of this quote, but with things so close in the polls (whether they will actually be close on election day is another matter for another time), I can't imagine the Kerry campaign will let this one go. "George Bush thinks our safety is 'up in the air'?! Is that the kind of vision for our future you want your commander-in-chief to have?!" At least, let's hope they make use of it...

Hysterical...

2004-10-21T14:39:00.000-07:00

You Forgot Poland.

I couldn't resist...

2004-10-20T19:04:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I said I was tired, but I just came across this, and couldn't resist.

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- The kids have spoken, and it's Sen. John Kerry with a convincing victory over President Bush on Nov. 2.

An unusual opinion poll that has correctly predicted the winner of the last four presidential elections has given Democratic challenger Kerry 57 percent against 43 percent for Bush, according to results released Wednesday.
[ snip ]
Nickelodeon, a unit of Viacom Inc., has organized its poll every election since 1988, and has a 100 percent record of picking the winner. CNN.com

Of being back home...

2004-10-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

I'm home. It was a long flight, I got business class again but at the very very last minute so things were kind of touch-and-go there for a while (not really, but I'm quite tired, so that's the best I can do for "humor"), and now I'm going to unpack and order some food and have some wine with my neighbors and then head off to bed. It's 4am in Switzerland now. I don't quite know what time it is yet for me. A friend of mine read in a book that your soul takes longer to travel than your body, which is why long flights are so disorientating for so long. Let's hope mine is somewhere over London. It can stay there for a while.

Of train rides and pictures...

2004-10-18T18:15:00.000-07:00

I just returned from a journey to the top of Mount Titlis, at 10,000 feet, the highest point in this part of Switzerland. (Or so I'm told.) The drastic changes in temperature and altitude have robbed me of my better turns-of-phrase, I fear, so I think I'll just let these photos tell their own stories. The first three were taken, respectively, en route to Geneva, en route to Luzern (on what's call the "Golden Pass Line," a train with extra-wide windows so one can better see the Swiss splendor around them), and en route to Mount Titlis. The fourth...well, if you can't figure it out, then I can't really help you.

Of having too much to write and not enough time...

2004-10-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

My apologies to those of you who have checked in here recently; I've had plenty opportunity to write, but not nearly enough time to do any of it justice. As I type this, the outskirts of Bern are passing alongside me, our train to Geneva just getting on its way. The weather has been a consistent pattern of brilliant mornings of blue sky and rolling white clouds and afternoons and evenings of rather cold, unforgiving rain. So, as I type this (at almost 9am, Swiss time), the sky is fairly impossible, vast yet so close, expressive and supple. The whole terrain is like this, really.

Some quick observations before the lull of the train coaxes me back to sleep (a late night of clubbing and an early morning train to catch conspired to make the lot of us quite lazy eyed and sleep deprived):

If you catch any Britishisms sneaking into my prose and/or speech, blame the jolly good fun group of UK journos who are part of our motley crew. One of the better gifts of this trip has been getting to know other gay media types from both the US and UK -- if I do say so myself, we're all quite articulate, intelligent, thoughtful and wickedly funny. There's one chap especially who's, um, made quite an impression, but I'll save any more details on him for when I get back. (Ooo! Suspense!)

Where Zürich -- the largest Swiss city -- was like a storybook town, all narrow cobblestone pedestrian streets and river-hugging shops, homes and churches, Bern -- the fourth largest, and the national capital -- feels much more German and urban. The city is tightly packed between a U-shaped bend in the Aare river, which has cut a deep gorge into which the city has grown, making it as vertical as it is compact. The bridges that run across the river are incredibly high and make for some stunning views.

People keep speaking to me in German. It's a nice compliment, not being taken for a garish American tourist, but my accommodating Midwestern nature cringes every time I have to say "no sprechen Deutsch." (If I misspelled that, well, isn't that kinda the point?)

What the Swiss lack in gay savvy -- our tours have been a wee bit too heavy in emphasizing the Christian history and mythology and skimpy on, say, the shopping and cultural highlights -- they more than make up for in their hospitality. As I said, our group can be rather, uh, boisterous, and gaily so, but if there was a mean look or a brusque comment, we haven't seen or heard them. That's not even the best way to put it; our first day here, we were invited to a presentation on gay friendly Swiss tourism to a group of representatives from different Swiss tourism outlets. There was a lot of discussion of that term, "gay friendly," and we settled on another term: "gay comfortable." That, to my experience, is a perfect description of the Swiss.

I'll close with this. To my right we just passed a tiny town built up along a medium-sized hill and topped by a tiny stone castle. Sloping down beside it, a perfect, a vivid rainbow lands just beyond the town. Off in the horizon, we can see towering, snowcapped Alps hugged by wispy clouds that pull so high you can't tell where the mountain ends and the sky begins. I've taken some pictures, but I doubt they'll do this justice. It is so intensely beautiful, no words, no pictures, can.

Of business class, cheeze fondue and Norman Mailer...

2004-10-13T11:10:00.000-07:00

If you're traveling abroad, and you have the opportunity to do so -- whether by a sudden windfall or by the steady accumulation of frequent flier miles -- then do yourself a favor and fly business class. I don't know if I've ever felt more blissfully infantilized in my life. My mom will find this appalling, but not even when I go home now and lay on our couch and get brought honey toast and chocolate milkshakes. Here...this is what they served us: Prociutto ham with vegetables. Seared beef fillet with a herb crust, with potato gratin, carrots and a Maderia sauce. Two flights of wine, the first a 2002 Swiss Pinot Noir that was smooth and fruity, and then a 2002 Malbec Reserve that was more crisp and peppery. Flourless chocolate cake and a wide selection of swiss chocolates All on a tray table with its own white linen tablecloth, all while I was reclined at a comfortable 45 degree angle, feet up, warm blanket wrapped around my body and watching my own private screening of Steven Spielberg's The Terminal.

Then I popped an Ambien, put my airline-provided earplugs in my ears and face mask over my eyes, reclined my seat back even further and had one of the most satisfying sleeps of my adult life. I woke up just in time for a light breakfast of scrambled eggs with bacon, and I capped off the flight by finishing the last part of The Terminal that I missed after falling asleep.

It was almost like I didn't fly at all.

Once I arrived, I connected with another journalist on the trip, a newspaper crime reporter named Ed Walsh. (He looks the part, too.) We took the quick train into town, walked along the cobblestone streets to our hotel right off the river -- Hotel Adler, Rosengasse 10 -- and decompressed once we got into our small, efficient, comfortable rooms. And I do mean efficient; every hallway is equipped with motion sensors that turn on the lights once you walk through, and you cannot activate any of your room's lights unless you've slid your room-key into the designated slot by the door. Everything in the room is just big enough without ever feeling cheap; the bed's a single, but it's has a fresh down comforter and huge down pillow. The TV is only about 10", but it has a radio and a super-easy-to-use alarm clock built in. The bathroom has one towel, one washcloth, one hand towel. Very efficient.

After a nap and a long shower, I grabbed Ed from his room and we set out for dinner. We walked along Hirschenplotz, a long cobblestone street in the Zürich "old town" lined with restaurants both posh and walk-up cheap, a McDonalds and a Starbucks, a cinema, three "gentlemen's clubs" and several shops and stores. This is Switzerland's biggest city, but the stretch I saw last night makes it feel impossibly quaint and homey. I can't wait to see the rest of it today.

We eventually settled on Adler's Swiss Chuchi, a traditional Swiss restaurant that specializes in fondue and raclette. What are fondue and raclette? Well, so far as I can tell, they're the peak of Swiss efficiency -- you cook your food yourself. Traditional Swiss fondue consists quite literally of just a boiling pot of melted cheese, a big basket of bread squares and a long skewer with which to place the latter inside the former. As Ed said, "it's just like a grilled cheese sandwich." It was tasty, to be sure, but I couldn't shake the feeling that perhaps the indigenous cuisine was not Switzerland's biggest selling point. (Raclette? Why, that's a mini "George-Forman like grill" -- our waiter's description, by the way -- upon which you fry your own food and wrap it in melted cheese.)

As much as I would've liked to go out, all those carbs combined with all that fat made me yearn for bed. (By the end of our meal, the bubbling cheese had begun to resemble the top of a festering brain. I don't exaggerate.) Before I fell asleep, however, I thought I'd better sample Swiss TV -- talk shows, dramas, etc., all mostly in German, along with overdubbed versions of CSI, Scrubs and Sex and the City. But then I flipped to TV5 Europe, and there was Norman Mailer speaking in his singular deep gravel of a voice. Simply because it was the only program in a language I understood, I parked it at TV5, and here's what I saw: Mailer giving an oblique and thoroughly pessimistic assessment of the last 20 years of U.S. history. At various points he said everyone should read Karl Marx as it makes one a better thinker; that he supported the first Gulf War because the country was in such bad shape, it needed a good fight in the same way a struggling married couple needs a good fight; that the first O.J. verdict was one of the worst period in American race relations simply because white people realized that black people believe the justice system to be a game with winners and losers, not the guilty and innocent; that, should there be another massive depression, the country, much more fractured than in was in the 1930s, will fall apart along racial seams and we'll have a de-facto totalitarian state; and that he has no need for being a "good American" since "the worst people are 'good Americans.'" If I had any question as to what much of this continent may be thinking about my country, I needn't have looked much further than one of my country's very best minds on European TV making a terrible sort of sense.

P.S. Oh, I almost forgot: Superman III was also playing on TV. That movie gave me nightmares when I was a kid, and now to see it with Superman speaking German? Yeesh.

Of Mozart and Leah Remini...

2004-10-11T18:43:00.000-07:00

Well this was quite unexpected. I'm sitting in the Korean Air/Swiss Air Luxury Lounge awaiting my departure. My ticket info said I was flying Economy class, a reality to which I'd resigned myself, especially since I'd arrived at LAX much later than I would've liked, thereby killing any chance I thought I had at getting an upgrade. So imagine my surprise when I was already upgraded to Business class. Seat 5G. Seat five G. And then the very business-like ticket agent from Algeria took out the map to the lounge. "There's a lounge?!"

So I'm up here now, the third youngest person in the room next to the very attractive Swedish-looking chap who looks to be all of 17 (but went straight for the Cabernet demi-bottles once he and his mother sat down) and the five year old in the first class section of the lounge. Yes, there is a first class section of the lounge, separated by a partition just low enough to let us know what's on the other side.

There are two German women sitting right across from me wearing very high priced leather shoes and laughing at what's playing on a teeny-tiny camcorder. Of course, whenever Germans laugh at anything in German, I always assume it's about me. (My friend Japhy says this is a safe assumption.)

Meanwhile, the cocktails and wine are flowing freely, Mozart is softly lilting from the speakers in the ceiling, and, on the giant LG plasma flat screen TV above me, The King of Queens is playing on mute. Ahhhh. What a way to live.

I still dream I can fly...

2004-10-11T01:22:00.000-07:00

C h r i s t o p h e r R e e v e 1 9 5 2 - 2 0 0 4

When I was very young -- we're talking 3, 4, 5 years old -- I had this Superman cape my grandmother made me, and I would wear it all the time. I mean this quite literally. Anywhere I could get away with wearing it, that red cape was tied around my neck -- to the mall, on birthdays, to bed, around the house. All. The. Time. I even have strong memories of throwing DEFCON 4 tantrums when we would leave the house without my cape. It wasn't so much that I thought I literally was Superman, I think, so much as I so very profoundly identified with who he was. Superman could fly. Superman was super strong. Superman had x-ray vision. Superman could even turn back time. These powers were awesome and inspiring in their own right, but I don't believe my enchantment with him was wholly drawn from his ability to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Yes, Clark Kent was really from the planet Krypton and the power of our Earth's sun endowed the mild-mannered reporter with his super-strength and super-abilities, but, to me, Superman was, well, super because he caught that falling helicopter and saved the town from the torrent of water spewing forth from the broken dam and repaired the San Andreas Fault after Lex Luthor's nuclear missiles destroyed it and saved Miss Teschmacher's mom before his own friends and loved ones.

Which is to say, Superman could fly faster than a speeding bullet because he was so good, so true to the best of humanity and so iconic in his devotion to Doing What's Right. Anyone who understands this sentiment also understands why it far from sentimentality and why it's what makes Superman one of our culture's deepest expressions of heroism.

On July 23, 2001, I met Christopher Reeve while covering the Karrie Webb Celebrity Pro-Am golf tournament he was co-hosting at the West Nyack Manhattan Woods Golf Club right outside New York City. After the tournament concluded, the press dutifully pooled outside of a makeshift interview room created inside the clubhouse specifically for Reeve. He'd just done a live remote with the cable news outlets about the importance of stem cell research; this was when President Bush was spending weeks deciding whether to fund such study with federal funds, and you could see the toll the stress of Reeve's speaking out on the subject was taking on him and his support staff. I struck up a conversation with woman standing near me who turned out to be one of Reeve's personal nurses. I have never in my life seen a person more bone tired than this woman. She was in her 40s, I think, but looked to be in her 60s, and her whole body was beginning to turn inside itself, her face barely able to muster the energy for a courtesy smile whenever anyone told a joke. I asked her how they had gotten to West Nyack, and she explained that when Reeve traveled, he was required to take his own chartered airplane, fully staffed with nurses and physical therapists and fully stocked with any possible medical equipment and materials he might need. The sheer will necessary to mount such an operation when one is only at the disposal of one's one mind was staggering to me.

Then I was allowed inside the press room along with a stringer from People for what we were told was Reeve's last interview, and I almost immediately regretted even entering. The tonnage of meaning this meeting carried for me was far outweighed by how thickly Reeve's presence overwhelmed the room. By this point, his paralysis was causing his neck to spasm every time he took a breath; his head was shaved along the right side of his head, which prevented his hair from rubbing up against the brace which kept his neck from snapping out of joint. We waited while he had his chair adjusted so he could see us better, and I could not help but notice his paper thin, brittle and eerily translucent skin. But "fragile" is not a word that leaps to mind when describing him. It wasn't his chair, exactly, although it did add five fold to his already imposing six-foot tall frame. It wasn't his body, exactly, so perfectly still, perched as it was between life and death. I can't explain it; what I do know was that on that particular day Reeve was just a little bit tired of being asked inane questions like "what movie remake would you most like to star in?" from people like me. I asked my question anyway, and he deflected it like a pro -- he'd already starred in a remake of Rear Window -- and he wasn't telling what his next creative endeavor would be. (His last creative endeavor, by the by, is this.)

We got up to leave, I took a deep breath, and I told him about Superman, about my cape, and about how inspiring it was to finally meet him in person. I will never forget his response; he barely acknowledged me. The Julliard trained actor said "thank you" like he's said it tens of thousands of times to wide-eyed fans whose ears still ring with that John Williams score, and then it was time to end what had been an incredibly long day. But it wasn't quite over.

A paraplegic man in his 50s was waiting for Reeve in the main lobby. We watched as this man in his standard-issue wheelchair and with full command of his upper-body leaned forward and said that Reeve's determination and drive gave him hope when all seemed lost. Reeve as always remained absolutely immobile, but we could all see how much he was moved.

Every so often, I will dream that I can fly. Usually, the dream's fairly prosaic, just me bouncing off the ceiling inside my home rather than zooming across Metropolis to save Jimmy Olsen from certain doom (this is my dream, remember). But that just makes the fact that I can fly feel all the more real to me; often, in the dream I think, "now why aren't I always flying?" Every time, my subconscious concocts the same rationale for my ability; it isn't our Earth's sun, it isn't Kryptonite, it isn't the possibility of saving Jimmy Olsen from certain doom. It is quite literally the power of my mind; my brain wills me to fly, and so it is.

For nine years, Christopher Reeve never dreamed he was in a wheelchair. He raised money and awareness for his injury and its eventual cure. He tested modern medicine right up to the edge of what many believed was possible, and then often brusquely pushed it farther. He was fallible, he was human, but he was a hero -- he was my hero -- and I take comfort in knowing that he is now free of the body which held his mind and spirit captive for far, far too long.

Well that was unexpected...

2004-10-10T16:27:00.000-07:00

Fat Albert looks funny!

Of breaks and flicks and going abroad...

2004-10-10T01:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I've officially taken my first wee break from blogging since I started this thing, which is I gather a bit of a rite of passage within the blogosphere. I just couldn't think to say anything about the debates that wasn't already being said, and I got a bit swamped with multiple story assignments piling on all at once. I've still got two more due before my plane departs for the Confoederatio Helvetica Monday night.

Confoederwhatico, you ask? Why, that's just the official name for Switzerland (hence those "CH" license plates we all see in Bond movies), and but one of the many penetrating insights I hope to bring to you dear reader(s) during my nine-maybe-ten days in the Alpine nation. I don't know quite yet what kind of net access I'll have while I'm, as they say, "in country," but hopefully I'll be able to post here more than once or twice.

In the meantime, do yourself a favor and see Shawn of the Dead -- that is, if you don't mind a bit (OK, more than a bit) of the gore and especially if you don't mind gleeful belly laughs at the expense of endearingly slovenly working-stiff Brits. Also, keep your eyes a'peeled for Bad Education -- one of the best movies I've seen in a long, long time, and truly groundbreaking in terms of so-called gay cinema. Stage Beauty, on the other hand...you can wait to rent it.

Ponderance...

2004-10-10T01:12:00.000-07:00

You ever do something spur-of-the-moment that at the time seems fun and maybe a bit edgy all in the hopes of perhaps being fun and edgy and maybe a bit tantalizing but then is received as more funny than anything else, so funny that it negates all edgy tantilization and makes you feel a bit of the fool? Just wondering...

The Debates, Veep Style!...

2004-10-05T01:53:00.000-07:00

If the first debate gave voters a stark choice to make between the two candidates, then, whoo boy, is the second gonna be a doozy: Dr. Doom vs. Capt. Optimism. Bush's man in Iraq saying yesterday we "never had enough troops on the ground" (while giving an otherwise spirited defense of the war itself), meanwhile, is certainly a wrinkle that should make the debate that much more interesting.

I have the powerrrrrrrrr!...

2004-10-04T18:53:00.000-07:00

Oh my god, John Woo is making a He-Man movie! I can't tell you how many hours of my childhood were spent watching this show. Let's just hope this new live-action film looks less like this:

(i.e. the bizarre He-Man-Goes-To-Earth-And-Stars-In-A-Fetish-Film debacle -- that I still looooved as a kid -- starring Dolph Lundgren and, that's right, Courtney Cox)

And more like this:

(i.e. the newest version of the cartoon that ran on Cartoon Network in 2002 but doesn't seem to be on anymore.)

What's that? I'm a huge dork? And?

Photos courtesy He-Man.org

WHAT?! I CAN'T HEAR YOU! WHAT?!...

2004-10-04T14:12:00.002-07:00

Out of my left window, I can see a man sandblasting his stucco apartment. Out of my right window, I can see a man feeding a giant pile of trimmed wood into a wood-chipper. But, more importantly, I can hear both of them. In stereo. Which means I can't even quite make out the sound of me typing on my keyboard, which means I don't even quite know if I'm actually typing this, which means existence itself could in fact just consist of the constant deep drone of chipping wood and the piercing clatter of high pressure water chipping away paint from stucco, which means, clearly, that I can't even hear myself think.

To space and beyond...!

2004-10-04T10:04:00.000-07:00

MOJAVE DESERT, California (CNN) -- SpaceShipOne achieved its most spectacular flight yet, climbing to an altitude of 364,000 feet (70 miles), eight miles beyond what was needed to win the $10 million Ansari X Prize.

With a wish of "Good luck and Godspeed," mission control sent the privately funded craft toward space for the second time in a week, the requirements for winning the X Prize. -- CNN.com

Am I the only one who's skin is buzzing right now with the prospect that he could very well go into space in his lifetime?! I'm sure it'll be when I'm 60 or something and the price has dropped to a reasonable 10,000 Earthedits (short for "Earth credits"), but, still!

Frank Rich: The Passion of the Bush...

2004-10-03T13:36:00.000-07:00

Much like the "Big Tent" of the Republican party, Christianity, by definition, takes all kinds. Much like the current leadership of the Republican party, the public face and private thrust of Christianity in this country is currently controlled by a minority of rabid, born-again believers for whom winning the culture war in this country is light years more important than winning the war against terror abroad. Exhibit A:

George W. Bush: Faith in the White House...first surfaced at the Republican convention in New York, where it was previewed in tandem with an invitation-only, no-press-allowed "Family, Faith and Freedom Rally," a Ralph Reed-Sam Brownback jamboree thrown by the Bush campaign for Christian conservatives. Though you can buy the DVD for $14.95, its makers told the right-wing news service WorldNetDaily.com that they plan to distribute 300,000 copies to America's churches. And no wonder. This movie aspires to be "The Passion of the Bush," and it succeeds. More than any other campaign artifact, it clarifies the hard-knuckles rationale of the president's vote-for-me-or-face-Armageddon re-election message. -- Frank Rich, The New York Times (reg. req'd.)

Rich's column goes on to note that "a Newsweek poll shows that 17 percent of Americans expect the world to end in their lifetime. To Karl Rove and company, that 17 percent is otherwise known as 'the base.'" No kidding.

Oh thank god...

2004-09-30T19:39:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm biased, but I think Kerry won. Time will tell, but "I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that!" I think kinda sealed the deal. That, and Joe Scarborough, the most protozoan Republican on MSNBC's payroll (and that's including Pat Buchanan), saying that in the last hour of the debate Bush "lost his way."

What did you think of the debate? Or, if you didn't see it, of the spin (campaign and media) afterwards? If you're reading this, you must leave a comment. I insist.

The Debates, Part One...

2004-09-30T00:05:00.000-07:00

Oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man oh man...don't...screw...up...

Iraq Study Sees Rebels' Attacks as Widespread...

2004-09-29T01:44:00.000-07:00

This report couldn't have better timing. Say what you will about how necessary it was to go into Iraq, but can it honestly be argued anymore that President Bush and his administration are competently keeping the peace there?

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 28 - Over the past 30 days, more than 2,300 attacks by insurgents have been directed against civilians and military targets in Iraq, in a pattern that sprawls over nearly every major population center outside the Kurdish north, according to comprehensive data compiled by a private security company with access to military intelligence reports and its own network of Iraqi informants. -- The New York Times (registration required)

Teen Girl Squad!...

2004-09-28T18:38:00.000-07:00

Almost forgot! (OK, completely forgot!) Yesterday I also got my Teen Girl Squad t-shirt in the mail. I wore it to Improvocative's show, and never before have I had a piece of my own clothing commented upon (positively) by as many people as I did with that shirt, no kidding. I don't think any of them save perhaps the karaoke emcee had any clue it came from Homestar Runner. Now, of course, I must get another!

What a long strange 24 hours its been...

2004-09-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

I'm tired, so this'll be brief. (Ha! Hahahaha! That's funny!) So a little more than 24 hours ago, a cockroach the length of my palm -- that's right, the length of my frickin' palm -- skittered its way up the wall behind my desk, a particularly rude way to introduce oneself, I thought, but then cockroaches have never been known for their decorum. Surprisingly, meanwhile, I didn't scream. I did say "What the hell?!" rather loudly, but who wouldn't when a bug the size of one's palm skitters its way up the wall behind one's desk? This thing was much much much too big to grab with the sticky end of a Postit -- loyal readers of this blog (hi mom!) will get that joke -- so I grabbed a clear plastic party cup and a sheet of paper and rolled my deskchair underneath the roach, which had skittered its way over the window to the right of my desk.

At this point, I learned that, apparently, roaches can fly. Why this isn't common knowledge is a bit beyond me. It should certainly be something taught in today's science classes; it could save a lot of startled people from nearly falling off of their roller chairs while attempting to capture an insect heretofore believed to be decidedly not able to take flight whenever it wants any human within 25 feet to wish they had never even heard of the film Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. (Good call on the rental of that, Dad. Real smart to show the flick that created the PG-13 rating to a kid before he turned eight.)

Anyhoo, the roach now suddenly on the window to the left of my desk, I buck up my courage, deftly slide the cup over the roach and the paper under the cup. I then do what any sensible person would do: I took it downstairs to show my neighbors the fucked up thing that has completely disrupted my life. They, of course, we're terrifically helpful and supportive. "Of course they can fly!" "They can crawl up your pipes, you know!" "You see one, there's 100 more where it came from!" "Get that fucking thing away from me, gur!"

Then I took it outside, walked over to Lola's and threw it at its parking lot. (See "The very real and the Vary subconscious..." for why.)

I come back to my neighbors for our regular Sunday night drinks, which somehow devolves into Rich and Doug wrestling, literally, over whether John Kerry is going to win the election. (Rich, the "realist," says Bush has it sealed up. I was rooting for Doug.)

Cut to this morning. As I began checking my e-mail, my right ear picked up a distinctive buzzing sound. It took me 10 seconds before I even dared to look over. Yep. A bee bigger than my thumbnail had somehow fought its way through the small crack between the edge of the screen and the window frame and was now attempting to force its way back out. (Bees, you see, can fly, but they aren't smart enough to figure out how to just turn around and follow the way they got in. At least, not yet.) I quickly abandoned my plastic-cup capture technique when the bee somehow instantaneously moved from the screen to six feet away from the screen and then back again. I just shut the window, trapping the bee between the glass and the screen. As of this writing, the window has yet to be reopened. Sometimes, it's a war of attrition.

Then not 30 minutes later I get a call from Anne Stockwell, the arts and entertainment editor at The Advocate. She informs me that she and the other editors would like me to go on a tourism presstour in Switzerland for seven days in October all expenses paid. (Excuse me. I must do my version of my sister's "butt dance" in celebration........OK done.) Suddenly, I got a glimpse at what it must feel like to have Publisher's Clearinghouse show up at your door, except the person holding the check is your boss. I mean, seriously, who expects this sort of thing to happen? (Probably the same type of people who find skittering palm-sized cockroaches to be a soothing reaffirmation of life as usual.)

The rest of the day was spent in a frantic flurry of e-mails, phone calls and IMs -- to friends, colleagues, possible new editors, family, etc. -- spreading the ridiculously good news. My mom's not gonna be happy, but I kinda sorta forgot to eat lunch until 3:30pm. Then picking my new friend Japhy up from work 'cause some punk stole his bicycle and he's not so much with the motor vehicle license as of yet, then to the Grove's B&N to grab a Lonely Planet guide to Switzerland, then a quick slice of pizza for dinner, and off to an Improvocative show that had all nine members on stage for the first time ever!. (Frequent visitors to improvocative.com -- hi, uh, Sean? -- will get that "joke.")

A really lousy karaoke rendition of "Ironic" (followed by a redemptively unchallenging cut of "Losing My Religion") later, and I'm back home, typing all of this out for you fine people. Now I'm going to curl up with my Lonely Planet guide and go to bed. long exhale of relief and contentment

Talk about an ego check...

2004-09-26T21:46:00.000-07:00

She's got a blog...what have I done?!...

2004-09-26T09:37:00.000-07:00

So my friend Alex goes to China and starts a blog to give his friends back in the U.S. and elsewhere a glimpse of his new life abroad. Through a complicated sequence of e-mails and invites, I end up signing up to Blogger simply so I can comment on Alex's blog. Then I get to thinking, "Well, I'm signed up, I guess I might as well just see what the big deal is, seeing as this is the Year of the Blog." So I start this blog for no real good reason other than I'm a writer and I like to jump on the latest hipster bandwagon well after anyone who's actually hip has jumped on themselves.

Then I hear from my sister -- who will be leaving for Madagascar in three days for a year studying its flora on a Fullbright -- that she's started a blog herself, even though she just told me yesterday that she can only handle so much computer work before she wigs out and has to read a book or look at leaves or something more worthwhile and tactile.

So. A friend in China with a blog. A family member in Madagascar with a blog. And me, in, uh, West Hollywood, with a blog. Sure. Seems pretty even to me.

The very real and the Vary subconscious...

2004-09-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

There's a very popular bar/lounge/restaurant called Lola's that sits two buildings north of my apartment complex and right against the intersection of Romaine St. and Fairfax Ave. And there's a crosswalk there, but it's just paint on the ground with no lights or signals to otherwise alert drivers who race down Fairfax that a person or two might be crossing the street.

And wouldn't you know it, last night a woman was hit by a car right outside of Lola's.

I don't know exactly how it happened, but a she was crossing Fairfax either at the crosswalk or by jaywalking, and a BMW smashed right into her and stopped right across from Lola's. My neighbors Doug and Adam heard the impact; they also heard her boyfriend bellowing her name -- "JULIA! JULIA!" -- as she lied underneath the car after dropping from its hood. Doug came and got me just as Julia was being lifted in a stretcher and taken away, but there was plenty of evidence left behind for me to reconstruct just how awful it all was. The BMW's windshield was smashed to hell, its passenger's side mirror barely dangling to its side, just-large-enough pools of blood collected underneath. Julia's boyfriend was mindlessly pacing a scene overrun with police cars and fire engines, his face cemented in shock and grief, his hands pressed together against his nose from the time I arrived up through when his friends led him away (presumably to the hospital).

It was a terrible, sickening scene, made more so by how quiet and stark it was. It's easy to forget how much the very real is truly nothing like even the most gritty and brutal depiction of it. It just unfolds without apology; it doesn't care if you're there to witness it or not, going about its sometimes ugly business without concern for time or pacing or anything, really, other than the here and now.

Terrifically sobering, that event, so as a fireman turned on a hose to wash away the blood, we all turned inside. "How about a drink?" I asked. Everyone agreed that was a capital idea.

We collected in Doug's apartment, poured our drinks and raised our glasses to Julia, fumed and vented about how much of a menace Lola's become to our little world -- it's hard not to hear the fights, verbal and sometimes otherwise, that break out like clockwork late each Friday and Saturday night -- and then began to catch up with each other. (This was the first time just about everyone in our complex -- save Vince who's in Michigan and the contentious drag queen who lives beneath me -- had come together since, I think, I moved in.) There wasn't anything stored in Doug's TiVo that held any appeal, so we just sat outside and continued to chat until, after about three glasses of wine, I thought of the four short films I made the summer of 1999 at Vassar College filmmaking workshop. I don't think I'd watched the VHS tape I'd transferred them to since I moved to L.A.; I figured it would serve as an interesting distraction for us all while also proving to be wonderfully embarrassing for me.

I must stress again that it'd been at least two years since I'd seen these films. And that I was drunk off of red wine. This must be understood.

It took some time to get everyone collected inside -- as I was upstairs, some of my neighbors noticed some Lola patrons jaywalking across a just-cleared Fairfax Ave. while the managers said and did nothing to stop them, so some words were exchanged and some more steam released. But, soon enough, everyone was inside and parked in front of the TV. I pressed play, and this is what we saw:

The Juggler, the first film, maybe a minute long, cut in-camera and filmed without a tripod. (All of the films were made without sync-sound on B&W 16mm film.)

Where or When, a "documentary" of sorts about Vassar's architecture set to an instrumental version of "Where or When."

The Curse, my first narrative film, made under the guideline that a character encounter a physical problem and she or he go through three attempts to solve it. My idea was for a guy to piss off a gypsy, she curses him, he falls asleep that night and wakes up outside on a bench in his underwear the next morning. That night he tries to stay up all night, falls asleep again, wakes up in his underwear again, etc. etc. etc. My neighbors thought this plot to be very interesting.

And, finally, Deja Vu. This film could be anything we wanted it to be. I was out of actors, so I starred in it myself. It opens (under the then-just-released soundtrack from Run Lola Run) with a dream sequence. I wake up, comb my hair (a really awful bangs-heavy parted coif that caused my neighbor Adam Cook to rightfully ask "What is with that hair?!"), walk past a friend drying her hair, then encounter a friend playing pool, then walk through a weird hallway, then pass a girl reading a tabloid in a tree swing, then sit next to a guy blowing bubbles, then the guy disappears, then a man in white approaches me, reaches into his jacket like he's going to shoot me, and I wake up! As the title suggests, I start combing my hair. (It's here Adam Cook also notices I still had my earring. "What is with that earring?!") I then think, "didn't I dream this?" and wave it off. Then I pass a friend drying her hair. Weird. Then, walking through a different door this time, I see a guy playing pool. Weirder. And so on and so forth -- it's the same hallway! it's the bubble blowing guy! -- until I'm sitting on a bench, knees pulled to my chest, freaked out of my gourd. And then the man in white appears!

Remember how I said it'd been at least two years since I'd seen these films? Good. 'Cause then, in the film, I freak out, run away...and get hit by a car. Fin.

Talk about my subconscious rearing its head...good grief.

An epilogue: After much apologizing on my part (especially to Adam Cook), we sat and talked some more, I got teased a lot, I drank more wine, and Doug decided to put in Jeffrey, the 1995 film of the Paul Rudnick play. Less then 10 minutes in, the main character...almost gets run over by a cab. No kidding.

The Motorcycle Diaries...

2004-09-24T01:11:00.000-07:00

When he was a 23 year-old medical student in 1952, Ernesto Guevara (Gael García Bernal) went on an eight-month, 8,000 mile journey across the South American continent with his buddy Alberto (Rodrigo de la Serna, terrifically chummy and endearing) on a 1939 Norton 500 motorcycle. The journey would ignite the fire that transformed Guevara into "El Che," Communist revolutionary, Fidel Castro confidant and poster boy for college dorm rooms everywhere. Director Walter Salles's camera captures that journey as if it was at once lyric and entirely earthbound, making us feel at home with Guevara even as we're allowed to observe him. Bernal, who smoldered so well in Y Tu Mamá También, instills Guevara with a guilelessness in the film's first half that makes his political awakening that much more potent and authentic. Whether our politics are also awakened is another matter; Salles's big failure is in getting us to feel the immediate surge of injustice the way it so clearly does for his beatific hero. That the film makes the subtle suggestion that surge was due as much to a bad breakup with a seductively bourgeois girlfriend as any encounter with the masses, meanwhile, could cause a minor revolt of its own. B+

"W" stands for "waffle"...

2004-09-22T15:25:00.000-07:00

Why isn't the Kerry campaign pointing out Bush's flip-flopping on foreign policy?

In 2000, George W. Bush was against using U.S. troops for "what's called nation building," saying so in no less a forum than one of the presidential debates. Now our troops are in Iraq, building a nation. (Bush also said in that debate that our country should be "humble" rather than "arrogant" in our foreign policy so that other nations will "welcome" us.)

Before the Iraq war, our biggest goal was to capture and kill Osama bin Laden. Then we sent a mere 9,000 troops to Afghanistan and bin Laden escaped. (About 150,000 troops presently occupy Iraq.) Now Bush rarely says bin Laden's name in public, and when he does, he says it "could take years" to find him.

Before the war in Iraq, Bush wanted the UN's help for the war, then Bush didn't need the UN's help for the war, and now Bush wants and needs the UN's help to keep the peace.

Before the war in Iraq, our primary reason for invading was WMDs and well as purported ties to Al Qaeda.

Once we invaded, and found no WMDs and no real ties to Al Qaeda, suddenly, Bush said the war in Iraq was about WMD related program activities (hello Iran!), deposing a vicious and cruel dictator (hello Kim Jong Il!), about bringing stability into the region (hello Fallujah!), about installing freedom and democracy in the Middle East (hello Saudi Arabia, just placed on the U.S. State Department's "country of particular concern" list because it curtails religious freedoms!!), etc., etc., etc.

Isn't that bad for our troops? Isn't that bad foreign policy? Isn't that shifting whichever way the wind is blowing? Isn't that wiltling, wavering and sending mixed signals to the enemy?

On May 1, 2003, Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, saying major combat operations had concluded in the country. The total number of Americans who have died in Iraq since we handed sovereignty back to the Iraqi people are greater than the number lost during those major combat operations.

Bush says Kerry flip-flops on Iraq, when, really, when it counts, Bush's position shifts and changes and slides with whatever "facts" and "truths" suit his needs.

Modified 3:23pm, 09.23.2004

Real World Philly...

2004-09-22T14:31:00.000-07:00

Not since Real World New Orleans have I enjoyed this show this much. Usually I'm done after two episodes. Just the look on Landon and MJ's face as they were peeping to see if Willie was indeed in bed in his birthday suit with another guy...was...priceless.

Star Wars is here!

2004-09-22T13:34:00.000-07:00

Star Wars is here! Star Wars is here!

"Everyone's watching it..."

2004-09-22T13:05:00.001-07:00

Over the past six weeks or so, I've noticed many more people freely expressing their hatred towards Michael Moore, hatred that doesn't seem to be rooted in any specific complaint so much as just a general feeling that he's not "our kind of people." (I, on the other hand, have very specific complaints about Michael Moore, but I don't wish the guy any ill will.) And then I come upon this surprising story:

WASHINGTON – Inside dusty, barricaded camps around Iraq, groups of American troops in between missions are gathering around screens to view an unlikely choice from the US box office: "Fahrenheit 9-11," Michael Moore's controversial documentary attacking the commander-in-chief.

"Everyone's watching it," says a Marine corporal at an outpost in Ramadi that is mortared by insurgents daily. "It's shaping a lot of people's image of Bush."

The film's prevalence is one sign of a discernible countercurrent among US troops in Iraq - those who blame President Bush for entangling them in what they see as a misguided war. Conventional wisdom holds that the troops are staunchly pro-Bush, and many are. But bitterness over long, dangerous deployments is producing, at a minimum, pockets of support for Democratic candidate Sen. John Kerry, in part because he's seen as likely to withdraw American forces from Iraq more quickly.... -- The Christian Science Monitor

Cat Stevens: Enemy of the state...

2004-09-22T01:46:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON -- Singer Yusuf Islam, formerly known as Cat Stevens, was taken off a diverted United Air Lines flight from London to Washington after his Muslim name turned up on a "watch list" designed to keep terrorists from boarding flights, a Transportation Security Administration spokesman has said. -- CNN

Maybe he heard the assault weapons ban just expired...?

Forgive me if this seems way too Aaron Brown...

2004-09-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

...but I couldn't help but notice this afternoon how different news outlets chose to headline essentially the same story about John Kerry's speech today at New York University and President Bush's reaction to it. To wit:

The New York Times: Kerry Says Iraq War Raises Questions on Bush's Judgment -- Thorough and dry.

CNN.com: Kerry: Bush's Iraq policy has endangered U.S. -- Direct and slightly less dry.

MSNBC.com: Kerry issues sharp new attack on Iraq -- Direct and possibly puncture-inducing.
Now, that was the internal story's headline. The headline on the home page read: "Kerry rips Bush over Iraq" -- Rips! Finally! Some actual damage!

Associated Press: Kerry Accuses Bush of Incompetence on Iraq -- Drops the "I" bomb, but strange it doesn't use quotation marks. But, stranger still, less than 10 minutes ago, the headline for the exact same story read something like "Kerry Says He Would Not Remove Saddam." Maybe that was too inflammatory? It certainly isn't the first time I've seen an edgy AP headline change into something less potentially offensive.

BBC News: Kerry and Bush square off on Iraq -- Wow, two stories in one headline! Those Brits; they're so efficient!

Reuters: Kerry, Bush Battle Over Iraq as TV Debates Set -- Holy smoke! That's, like, three stories in one headline. Note, thought, that Kerry's message is lost.

The Washington Post: Kerry Sharpens Attack On Bush and Iraq War -- From "sharp" the adjective to "sharpens" the verb. Ouch!
Clickable headline on home page: Kerry Hones Attack on Bush -- Attack on...his home? His policies? What? Better click to find out!

USA TODAY: Kerry hits Bush for Iraq failures; Bush fires back -- And the war metaphor is now complete, each side shooting off its own salvo. Well, except for the...
...clickable headline on home page: Bush defends record on Iraq -- No mention of Kerry at all. Hmm. Reminds me maybe a bit too much of...

FoxNews.com: Bush Blasts Kerry for Iraq Waffling -- Yes! Finally! The real story of the day!

Actually, if you read any of the stories, even the most rabid pro-Kerry supporter must admit this seems to run against statements he's made in the past on Iraq, which Bush took full advantage of while spouting the same empty "Iraq is free! No, really! It really really is free!" spin that Kerry rightfully blasted (punctured! diced!) last week. Good grief, is this election infuriating.

Hastert: Al Qaeda wants a Kerry win...

2004-09-20T01:09:00.001-07:00

And just when I thought the Vietnam train had just about run out of steam. If you want to know what new beside-the-point distraction will be blistering against the good name of honest political debate, look no further than this:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Top Democrats slapped back Sunday at a remark by House Speaker Dennis Hastert that al Qaeda leaders want Sen. John Kerry to beat President Bush in November.

At a campaign rally Saturday in his Illinois district with Vice President Dick Cheney, Hastert said al Qaeda "would like to influence this election" with an attack similar to the train bombings in Madrid days before the Spanish national election in March.

When a reporter asked Hastert if he thought al Qaeda would operate with more comfort if Kerry were elected, the speaker said, "That's my opinion, yes." --CNN

Farbeit for me to enter too far into the fray here, but, as Christopher Dickey, Paris bureau chief and Middle East regional editor for Newsweek, pointed out last week on Fresh Air, Osama bin Laden and his ilk have always wanted a global religious war between Islam and the Judeo-Christian West, and that is just what President Bush handed them when we invaded Iraq. Why, exactly, would they want a change in American foreign policy?

6 for 11*...

2004-09-20T00:53:00.000-07:00

Well, good grief. Other than Ms. de Matteo and Ms. Parker, I was completely wrong with the acting awards, and 6 for 11* overall. (Woohoo Arrested Development! Better luck next year, Amber Tamblyn!...Amber Tamblyn! Amber Tamblyn!) Good show, though, I thought, especially with Elaine Stritch taking the Jack Palance I-don't-give-a-rip-'cause-I'm-a-senior-citizen award.

* Not counting Angels and America, but that was like calling it in favor of the Harlem Globetrotters. And how adorable was Tony Kushner? I've had the good fortune to work a bit for his husband Mark when I interned for EW, and so it was particularly satisfying to see the both of them so, well, giddy.

Emmy predix...

2004-09-19T10:36:00.000-07:00

I usually send this to my mom -- awwwww -- but she's in Hilton Head right now and without access to e-mail, so I guess I'll just have to settle for the five of you (six maybe?...seven?) who read this thing.

>>> Supporting actors & resses <<<

In the funny female column, I'm most fond of Cynthia Nixon, 'cause she was always my favorite character on that show and she reminds me, in a way, of Willow Rosenberg gone hip and Manhattan. (Those of you who get that, get that. Those of you who don't, start watching FX.) And she very well could win. But I think the three ladies of Sex and the City, nominated together for the first time, will cancel each other out, and Doris Roberts will pull out another one. (The woman, by the way, is everywhere in Hollywood.)

In the funny male column, only Jeffrey Tambor stands out for me, and I think this might be the way Emmy congratulates Arrested Development, only one of two network comedies truly worth watching these days. (The other, of course, is Scrubs, and why this show isn't all over the Emmys is a mystery that ranks up there with how Jeffrey Katzenberg thought Father of the Pride was still a good idea after Roy got that unexpected face lift. Woof, that was harsher than I meant it to be.)

In drama, of all the shows nominated, I've only seen West Wing (and let's let that be the last time that show's unfortunate fifth season is ever mentioned here), so I'm going with EW and guessing a Sopranos sweep: Steve Buscemi and Drea de Matteo. Although, if the voting window included this week's Joey, then I'll give an outside chance to Robin Weigert, who my neighbor Doug tells me was revelatory as Calamity Jane on Deadwood.

(Meanwhile, if Jeffrey Wright and Mary-Louise Parker don't get awarded yet again for Angels in America -- sure to be the night's true big winner -- then I may just turn off my TV. OK, I won't, but I'll really want to.)

>>> Leading actresses & ors <<<

Dramatically, yet again I've only seen one of the shows, so, hmm. James Gandolfini always seems to win here, and Emmy loves to repeat whenever it can, but to cover my bases I'll toss a "could win" to Anthony LaPaglia, a well liked actor who those who know such things say provided the most impressive tape of work to the academy for consideration. All the award pundits are saying Amber Tamblyn, Amber Tamblyn, Amber Tamblyn -- and who wouldn't, it's so fun to say! -- but I'm going to be unconventional and go for Jennifer Garner just to be absolutely wrong in at least one category. See, I do think it's Sopranos' year for the big prize (not to get ahead of myself), and so my guess is that the academy will temper that landmark (it'd be first non-network drama to win the award) with a spread-the-wealth mentality in at least one other category. Which means, Edie Falco, you've just picked the short straw.

Comedically, one would assume John Ritter will receive the award for sentimental reasons -- and, really, there are many many worse reasons to give out an award -- and that very well could happen. (Let's just hope Garry Shandling doesn't then make some sort of "posthumorous" joke...like I just did right there.) Tony Shalhoub won last year in a bit of a shocker, but that year there were six nominees, meaning only 15% of the vote was needed to win. (A brief pause to get over that I actually know shit like this...OK, done.) Kelsey Grammer will get votes for a well-received final season (and 20+ years playing the same character), and Matt LeBlanc will get votes for the win he should've gotten two seasons ago. But, in the end, the shock win of the night will be Larry David, who mounted a hysterical season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, managed to get Ben Stiller and David Schwimmer to mock themselves, featured Canter's Deli in a cameo and helped get a man out of jail. What more does Emmy want?

Then there's Sarah Jessica Parker, who's been nominated five times for an Emmy and never won. (Meanwhile, I hear she's made a coffee table out of her four Golden Globes.) If she doesn't win this year, her last chance, I'm really going to want to turn off the TV.

>>> Mini-series and other sundry go-to-the-bathroom awards <<<

Angels in America, Angels in America, Angels in America. And Angels in America. What I cannot wait for is when Tony Kushner wins for his adaptation of his own play and gets to say whatever he wants on national television in prime time. Go here for a possible preview of what might spill forth onto the airwaves. (Scroll down a bit for the good part.)

Variety, Music Or Comedy Series...my heart says Chappelle’s Show, but my head says The Daily Show. Given the climate, I'm goin' with Stewart & Co.

Oh, and, reality TV -- uh, Amazing Race. At least, I hope, just so I can see the cutaway to Donald Trump trying not to show that his universe is crumbling around him.

>>> Comedy & Drama <<<

Plenty of jokes could be made about the heavenly chances of Joan of Arcadia to pull out a win here, but I just don't see it. Everyone knows The Sopranos will be remembered long after Amber Tamblyn (Amber Tamblyn! Amber Tamblyn!) becomes the next Reese Witherspoon (Reese Witherspoon! Reese Witherspoon!), and given that CSI is too popular, The...coughcoughWestWingcough...was a letdown, and 24 is on Fox, Emmy really has absolutely no excuse not to give it, finally, to HBO's crown jewel.

Best Comedy, by contrast, is more of a crapshoot...sorta. While I believe voters will get behind Larry David, I don't think there's enough support for his show, which makes you feel like a bad person just watching it. Everybody Loves Raymond got its Emmy last year; this category has gone to a different show each year ever since Frasier's five-year run of Best Comedy Emmys back in the 90s, and I don't think Raymond's a good enough show to beat that trend. (A brief pause to get over that I actually know shit like this...OK, done.) Will & Grace was harried, crass and overrun with stunt guest stars -- the final seasons of Friends and Frasier, or, better yet, the aforelauded Scrubs, should've been here in its place. Sex and the City could easily garner its second win for a supremely satisfying final season -- except its last episodes weren't so much funny as incredibly poignant. Which, huzzah, huzzah, means I'm pulling for Arrested Development, the kind of groundbreakingly funny show that usually only makes it to its thirteenth episode but, remarkably, has a real chance to win an Emmy for Best Comedy. (Which really helped Evening Shade...uh...right...) Even if it doesn't win, the show's second season starts Sunday, November 7 at 8:30pm (7:30 central) on FOX. Watch it, won't you?

Who do you want to win the Emmys? Leave a comment below!

Soul patch...

2004-09-18T13:53:00.000-07:00

I'm such a lazy shaver, I missed that patch underneath my lower lip. Waddaya think? (Keep in mind, this was taken very soon after I woke up this morning.)

Leave a comment below...seriously!

If I have one more dream...

2004-09-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

...in which Matt Lauer screws me over while filming the Today Show at his gothic mansion with my friend Alex as his filling-in-for-Katie-on-assignment co-anchor -- this after letting me watch Chelsea Clinton deny the lesbian rumors with a laugh and a toss of her hair and then watch Prince William try to do the same, but awkwardly and unconvincingly, and then inviting me back to said gothic mansion so I can sleep on the be-roofed patio/bedroom just outside the Today Show studios and then wake up at 9am, stumble around the outside bar area looking for a way to get to the bathroom without disturbing the filming still going on inside, and once I do get inside I discover that Matt had been drinking and so Katie (who looks remarkably like my friend Biz) had to be called back in to do another version of the show for the West Coast without me and still with my friend Alex after Matt Lauer promised I would get a turn after Alex got a turn, because I "don't have TelePrompTer experience" -- well then I will have had two such dreams in my lifetime, and, believe you me, one is more than enough.

I really do love This American Life...

2004-09-18T02:06:00.000-07:00

One of the stranger, more wonderful pleasures I have stumbled upon while living in Los Angeles is the act of cleaning my apartment while listening to back episodes of This American Life. Today, while attacking my living room and kitchen, I listened to three: the first, Babysitting, which included a fascinating story about a brother and sister who invented a family that needed babysitters just so they could get away from their widowed mother's codependent passive-aggressive abuse; the second, Pen Pals, the bulk of which tells the story of the kind, friendly girl whose thoroughly American open-heartedness and curiosity lead her to becomes pen pals with Manuel Noriega during the peak of Bush Sr.'s campaign to get the Panamanian dictator out of office, and she's vilified for it (one shudders to think what Fox News would make of her now); and the third, Music Lessons, a show recorded live that featured a frighteningly accurate impersonation of Billie Holiday by none other than David Sedaris. I can't imagine what it was like to see it in person.

And I cannot think of a better way to make cleaning feel...fun is not the right word...enriching? entertaining? Aha! Illuminating. That's what the show does -- illuminate our country and help us illuminate ourselves. Yeah, I'm just shy of a decade late to the party, but give a guy some credit for making the most of his time, DSL and semi-phallic harman/kardon SoundSticks.

Bush warned about bleak prospects for Iraq...

2004-09-17T09:23:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has sought to downplay the significance of a U.S. intelligence forecast painting a pessimistic picture for the future of Iraq, insisting that predictions of difficulties ahead -- including the possibility of civil war -- were not a surprise.

Sources have confirmed to CNN that a National Intelligence Estimate was sent to the White House in July with a classified warning predicting the best case for Iraq was "tenuous stability" and the worst case was civil war.

The Bush administration, however, continues to argue publicly the U.S. is making good progress in Iraq, with the President saying Thursday that "freedom is on the march" in Iraq, citing scheduled elections in January next year.... --CNN

John Kerry said yesterday that Bush lives in a "world of spin" when it comes to Iraq. This is exhibit A.

I'm not really 25...

2004-09-16T12:20:00.000-07:00

So I was clicking 'round the net, as I'm prone to do, and I came across an ad for RealAge, a "wellness" website that uses a questionnaire about your health and lifestyle to determine what your "real" age is in comparison to your actual age (and then, of course, suggests you sign up for their premium service so you can better improve your so-called score). A 30 year old, say, who doesn't exercise, smokes, drives too fast and eats a lot of red meat might actually be closer to 40 according to this website's crackerjack calculations. I took the test, and it turns out that while my birth certificate says I was born in July of 1979 (making me, as the site so accurately puts it, 25.2), according to RealAge, I might as well have been born in January of 1987, or 17.7 years old.

Which got me thinking. (Shocker!) Like most gay men my age and older, I came out well past when my straight peers had gone through the age-old birds-and-bees gauntlet of adolescence. I didn't have furtive middle-school crushes on the quarterback who's already shaving (at least, any of which I was fully aware). I didn't sweat bullets in my living room before said quarterback picked me up for a first date consisting of dinner at Applebees and a screening of Jerry Maguire. And I certainly didn't take that quarterback to prom knowing it would be "the night." I missed out on all of these so basic and so important life lessons, lessons that are learned through the heedlessness of youth yet (usually) without the messy consequences of adulthood.

So now, when I do come across a cute guy -- be it in person, via Friendster, or while on a vision quest in the Mojave desert -- I can literally feel myself regressing back to high school. It's not just that what do I say?! insecurity that plagues us all; it's like I've finally been cast as the lead of a play, but on opening night not only don't I know my lines and blocking, I can't even comprehend what the other actors are saying. (This is also probably why watching the gay couple on The N's Degrassi makes me giggle and blush like I'm 13.)

But now a website tells me that, biologically speaking, I'm still a senior in high school -- and this couldn't be better news. Finally, certifiable proof that my heart -- figuratively and literally -- still has a lot of catching up to do.

"Conscience" clause...

2004-09-15T23:43:00.000-07:00

This is crazy. To enable a physician to refuse to treat any patient for any reason goes against the very moral center of the medical profession.

Memos on Bush Are Fake but Accurate, Typist Says...

2004-09-15T13:04:00.000-07:00

HOUSTON, Sept. 14 - The secretary for the squadron commander purported to be the author of now-disputed memorandums questioning President Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard said Tuesday that she never typed the documents and believed that they are fakes.

But she also said they accurately reflect the thoughts of the commander, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, and other memorandums she typed for him about Mr. Bush. "The information in them is correct," the woman, Marian Carr Knox, now 86, said in an interview at her home here.... --The New York Times (registration required).

Please let this be the last word on the matter. Bush was a privileged jerk, those responsible for him knew it then just as those who see through his cynical rhetorical know it now. He's "proud" of his service to our country?! Give me a break!

The ants...they've gone too far...

2004-09-15T11:05:00.000-07:00

I wake up this morning and walk over to my desk, and immediately I notice four or five ants scurrying about its wedge-shaped wood top -- "quick! ant ant ant the giant pink insect is back! ant ant ant scurry about and maybe we'll confuse him! ant ant ant"

And so I did what I always do: I took a post-it and used the adhesive to DESTROY THE ANT INVASION GAAAARRRRREELLLEERRESAALALALALALAL! (That last part is "I will crush you!" in giant fire red ant.)

My task accomplished, I open up my laptop to check my e-mail, and what do I find but ants crawling INSIDE my computer! This is going too far! Something must be done! Something will be done! GAAAARRRRREELLLEERRESAALALALALALAL!

Czar Putin, take two...

2004-09-14T23:39:00.000-07:00

MOSCOW, Sept. 14 - On Monday, President Vladimir V. Putin announced he would strip Russia's 89 regions of much of their authority and electoral legitimacy. On Tuesday, not one of the leaders of those regions said a public word of protest.

On the contrary, there were words of praise.

"It is constructive and productive," Murat M. Zyazikov, the president of Ingushetia, said in a telephone interview, embracing a proposal that would leave him serving at the will not of his impoverished electorate in southern Russia, but of the president in faraway Moscow.

If there were any lingering doubts about Mr. Putin's grip on power, the reaction to his sweeping proposal to overhaul Russia's political system - replacing, for instance, the election of governors, presidents and other regional leaders with presidential appointments - swept them away. The New York Times (Registration required.)

Sigh...

Czar Putin...

2004-09-14T17:51:00.000-07:00

This is incredible. Yesterday Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a sweeping consolidation of political power, in direct violation of the country's 1993 constitution. All governors would be essentially appointed by Putin, and the lower house of the national legislature (the Duma) would be elected not by district but by party affiliation. Since Putin's already cracked down on independent media and appointed the upper house of the legislature, this in effect would make Russia a one-state party with Putin holding just about all the strings. And none of it, by the by, deals directly with the lapses in security that allowed for the terror attacks in the past month that have left at least 430 people dead and devastated the entire city of Beslan.

All of it still requires legislative approval, but Putin's party already dominates a Duma in which no one wants to appear weak on terrorism. (Like when the U.S. Congress thoroughly scrutinized the Patriot Act so soon after 9/11...in the way that they didn't at all.) But here's the best part:

Mr Putin also repeated that Russia had a right to take pre-emptive action to "destroy criminals in their hideouts and, if necessary, abroad." BBC News

Colin Powell expressed concern today that this was "not the best course of action" for the country (your real prone to hyperbole, Colin, aren'tcha?), but those who follow Russian politics have seen this coming for a while now. As have Powell and President Bush, for that matter, and yet the Bush Administration has been incredibly tight-lipped on the matter since taking office. Perhaps that's because they empathize with Putin just a tad too much?

Dispatches from Toronto...

2004-09-14T09:53:00.000-07:00

Any of you film buffs out there who are following the Toronto Film Festival should really check out Moviefone's dispatches from the festival. They're written in part by my friend Peter Debruge -- written so well that in all honesty they deserve a much splashier platform than Moviefone's half-hearted mention on their front page. (Sandie Angulo Chen's pieces are also quite good.)

"New" "look" "dot dot dot"

2004-09-14T02:39:00.000-07:00

So it's 2:39am. I've been up for the last two hours making all sorts of typographical changes to this blog that maybe ten people will notice. It required recalling everything I learned in the HTML sprint course I took first semester freshman year in college (waaaay back in 1997). Which leads me to ask: Is anyone reading this? Please please please leave a comment below if you are...I will waste my time playing with fonts, but only if my friends and family are willing to waste their time looking at them. (And, I guess, reading them.)

Big Tent...

2004-09-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

This American Life consistently delivers hands down the best pieces of considered, thoughtful, open-minded journalism in the media today. Case in point, this past week's show, Big Tent, which examines the modern Republican party with such humanity and grace that an optimist like myself can only hope it serves as a sign that a return to civility in politics is actually possible. Whether you're a lefty, righty or a rabid independent, do yourself a favor, click on the above link and listen to the show, won't you?

The stupid heat...

2004-09-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

...is gone!

But the ants are making a rally around my desk, 'cause they know the ant traps don't work and the Raid fumes give me a monster headache. The bastards.

Of busted A/C and free movies...

2004-09-12T01:29:00.000-07:00

With the stupid heat persisting, and after a day spent downtown with Chris (Alex's boyfriend currently going through his first Alex-in-China weekend) traipsing through interesting-but-not-entirely-memorable exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art, catching a nice and diverting art film whilst soaking up the A/C seemed like the perfect end to the day. Since any movie built around the worship of Colin Farrell is a movie I, for one, can get behind, we decided on catching A Home at the End of the World at the only place playing it in town, the Beverly Center. (Also known as The Last Gasp Theater For Pre-DVD Box Office.) Chris's friend Jason, who've I met several times through David (the bloke who most recently rested his head at the apartment in which I currently reside), was intrigued and decided to come along.

So we get to the Beverly Center, and I walk up to the box office, and I take out my well-worn Wa Mu debit card, and I say, "One for A Home at the End of the World, please." At which point I'm informed that the A/C is busted in that theater, so I can go in for free. Hmmm. We consult, and realize that Mean Creek, another flick on my To See list that, earlier in the day, Chris had thought sounded perhaps a bit too dire, also happened to be playing there.

Now, of course, things had changed. We wanted A/C, even if it meant paying for a movie. I go back up to the box office. "One for Mean Creek."

"Oh, the A/C is busted for that, too."

"Oh. Uh. Is it busted in every theater?"

At this point, the other guy in the box-office, heretofore counting the money in his register's drawer with I-need-to-go-home splashed all over his face, spoke up: "Yeah. First it busted in one screen, then five, then ten. Better a free movie than to charge you for a screen that might have no A/C, so I say go on in, enjoy."

So we walk on in, first testing the theater for Mean Creek. Then the one for A Home at the End of the World. Mean Creek's theater, we decided, was cooler (or, really, not as hot), so we claimed a row and took our seats.

How was the movie? Well, very sad, poignant, and heartbreaking -- not the kind of movie any of us were exactly expecting. But, save for one major plot point, it was utterly honest and always compelling. Rory Culkin's face killed me in the movie's last act -- damn, those Culkin kids just keep gettin' better and better. A-. Even without the A/C.

Weird...

2004-09-10T11:52:00.000-07:00

Some very weird, cool, interesting news pictures. Warning: Some of them, including the first, are pretty darn creepy. Thanks to Tim for pointing it out!

Whoops...

2004-09-10T09:26:00.000-07:00

So Cheney clarifies his statement that voting for Kerry means voting for terrorism, and that Bush memo that said he disobeyed a direct order looks like it could've been faked on Microsoft Word. And I'm the jackass who decided to jump all up in that. Alas, alack. Not that this changes the larger points here -- that Cheney's campaigning by preying on people's fears and back when it really mattered Bush was an irresponsible jackass who took full advantage of the privileges afforded him. I guess I'm just falling into the same mistakes of 24-hour cable news -- go with the eye-grabbing headline before the body copy's been thoroughly verified.

Joey...and stupid heat...

2004-09-10T01:03:00.000-07:00

Joey -- funny, amiable, and just as unrealistic about housing in LA as Friends was about housing in New York City. B. For now.

The reason this is so short? It is stupid hot. It's been stupid hot for a week. What's stupid hot? When it's so hot, it makes you stupid. That's stupid hot. Hence the shortness of this post. (And hence me writing "hence the shortness of this post.")

Sigh...

2004-09-09T13:07:00.000-07:00

So it seems the military has records of Bush being a complete asshole while he was in the National Guard:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Addressing questions that have lingered for years, newly unearthed memos state that George W. Bush failed to meet standards of the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam war, that he refused a direct order [my emphasis] and that his superiors were in a state of turmoil over how to evaluate his performance after he was suspended from flying.
One military official "is pushing to sugar coat it," one memo says of a proposed evaluation of Bush.

Alas, this will also probably dominate the news:

LANCASTER, Pa. (AP) - Teresa Heinz Kerry says "only an idiot" would fail to support the health care plan proposed by her husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Two steps forward, one step back, and all of it has nothing to do with the here-and-now meat and potatoes of the campaign.

Yep...

2004-09-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

I'm sore.

Cheney: Having cake and eating it too...

2004-09-09T01:55:00.000-07:00

'Cause I'm super neurotic and afraid y'all will think me only interested in gym-going and MTV-watching (not that there's anything wrong with that)...

Dick Cheney, 9.7.2004, in Des Moines:

"If we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again -- that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."

Not that anyone should be surprised Cheney would say something like this, but to have a sitting vice-president so clearly state that to vote for the other guy is to vote for terrorism is, well, it's embarrassing.

Except, that's not quite what Cheney said. See, while the first part is what's catching so much media noise right now, the quote actually continues:

"And then we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mindset, if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us."

See, what Cheney's saying here is that you vote for Kerry, and the danger is we get hit and Kerry won't deal with it correctly.

Except, that's not quite what Cheney's saying either.

See, he's saying both things. The first part gets you thinking "voting for Kerry means car bombs in Columbus, Ohio." The second part gets you thinking "voting for Kerry means when car bombs show up in Columbus, Ohio, Kerry will fuck it up." Our VP gets to have his cake and eat it too.

But what gets me is that, beyond the fact that it's a completely false attack on Kerry and an ugly stab at exploiting the worst in people's natures, Cheney's rhetorical hairsplitting is positively...wait for it...Clintonian!

Working out...

2004-09-09T00:20:00.000-07:00

So I went back to the gym today for the first time in over a month. I keep going back and forth between going the strength training route and thinking yoga's really what's best for my body type -- much like I keep going back and forth between am I doing this to be a healthy person and am I doing this to be hot? It's good to go with Tim, 'cause he's wicked funny and he makes checking out all the hot guys -- and there are SO many hot guys -- somehow less salacious and more fun. Like, I check out a guy, and he's all "I saw that" with this goofy grin. Tim rocks that way.

Anyhoo, I'm gonna be sooo sore. So sore. Not looking forward to that. But hopefully the soreness will actually motivate me to, you know, do my dishes and clean my apartment and live like people should live in Los Angeles in West Hollywood in a pad as ridiculously sweet as mine (occasional ant invasions and lack-of-a-working-stove-ness notwithstanding). One can dream.

Also, just watched the first episode of Real World Philadelphia tonight on Dougie's TiVo, and it was such a relief, 'cause for the first time in ages the kids seemed to have heads on their shoulders and something more than booze and sex on their minds. Well, kinda. But with two gay guys in the house for the first time, one a man-bag-toting-muscle-shirt-wearing Gay guy who SO reminds me of my friend Rich and the other a fascinating example of the gay guy who doesn't identify with being Gay, it's gonna be appointment viewing, I think, for me and my neighbors.

OK, PB&J time and then maybe a shower and then to bed with me! (Is this how one ends a blog? Or is that the point? That these things can take on any format one chooses? And who am I asking about this, anyway?)

Here goes something...

2004-09-07T18:46:00.001-07:00

Blogs blogs blogs blah blah blah and I'm a writer so I guess I should try to see if this thing's gonna work or not so here goes let's hope it all works out.