Category: Personal

Sound the hoo-rays, the 49ers beat the Chiefs 17-13 on a tremendous defensive effort by linebacker Julian Peterson. Garcia threw for no touchdowns, scoring came on short runs by Hearst and Barlow but neither had close to 100 yards, and even Terell Owens was fairly quiet (leading receiver and two rushes for 23 yards even so).

Peterson was everywhere today, most especially taking All-World tight end Tony Gonzalez completely out of the game–one catch for six yards. He also was strong on run defense and put enough pressure on KC QB Trent Green so that Andre Carter made a key 4th quarter sack. Props too to fullback Fred Beasley who for the second game in a row did nothing but pick up first downs and throw excellent blocks (well, he does that every week). On five rushes, Beasley had four first downs and 21 yards. The Niners still had problems stopping third and long, particularly Mike Rumph against Eddie Kennison, though by the end the defense had it together enough to make our 17 points stand up.

7-2, baby, a three game lead in the division over Arizona and St. Louis, and next week a road matchup at San Diego, a 6-3 team that couldn’t hold a 27-14 lead with less than six minutes to play today. Seems like we have a really solid shot at no worse than 12-4 and that means the division title since everyone else already has five losses.

If you’re a user of the free version of Blogger or Blog*Spot and need help, a new and probably useful source of help is the Yahoo! Group started by Phil Ulrich, blogger_user_support. Note that this is not an official channel nor is it affiliated with Pyra and no one from the company is even a member. This is a place for user to user support and although it’s new, so far people seem to be getting answers. Better than using the Blogger API group, that’s for certain.

Another meat run to Costco, The Sweet One holding (most of) the proceeds. That box is filled with salmon (raw and smoked), cod, chicken breasts and thighs, ground beef, steak, and pork chops. Not shown are two whole chickens, cause they just didn’t fit into the box’o’meat. Notice how thin she is after two months on Atkins? What a hottie! Tonight we’ll be feasting on steak and asparagus, tomorrow she’ll be roasting a chicken in a homemade, low carb version of teriyaki sauce accompanied by whatever fresh greens we find at the Mountain View Farmers Market. Homemade teriyaki sauce, you ask? Well, soy sauce is clearly the base and has no carbs. I’ll need to taste test along the way but I’m thinking Splenda as the sweetening agent, some sesame oil, and a little bit of extra virgin olive oil. Will let you know how it comes out.

Firefly, Alias, Birds of Prey. What do they all have in common? Not just that I watch them. All have such complex backstories that an explanation must be repeated at the beginning of each episode. Not the opening credits but “After the Earth was used up, we found a new solar system and hundreds of new ‘Earths’ were terraformed and colonized.” Birds explains the origins of our three heroines. Alias, which changed up from last year’s explanation, gives us the scoop on how Sidney Bristow came to work for the evil men at SD-6. I find this…strange. If one simply watches the show, these facts are known and repeating them every week gets under the skin of regular viewers.

Firefly also has a weblog!

Just spent a couple of hours coding up a contact form to replace the more or less direct email addresses on this website. Too many robots crawling the web looking for addresses to add to their “unsolicited commercial email” lists for my taste and no matter what address I put up, one or another found them in a matter of days. So it’s a little less convenient for some of you, if you don’t have my email in your address book, but one use of the form will get that for you. Good thing I have the ability to create unlimited email addresses on my server and block the ones that get too much spam.

Tivo used the following description of this film: “An aspiring actress in Los Angeles for an audition with a young director helps the amnesiac victim of an automobile accident.” Now, I realize they have limited space but that’s about the least useful description I can imagine for this one. At first, I was going to end this write up with the previous two sentences but I’ll go a little deeper.

Simply put, Mulholland Drive is one of the stranger movies of the past few years. Compelling, raw, surreal, emotional, vivid, sensual, sure, but strange. I couldn’t even begin to explain the plot to you. Things happen on screen, and they seem to be connected to each other, like a word that’s just on the tip of your tongue but you can’t say it. As Roger Ebert said (in his 4 star review): “The movie is a surrealist dreamscape in the form of a Hollywood film noir, and the less sense it makes, the more we can’t stop watching it.” Such a response is completely expected since the film was written and directed by David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, The Elephant Man).

Naomi Watts (currently in theaters with The Ring) and Laura Elena Harring (she’ll be co-starring in next year’s remake of Willard) play the lead roles and Lynch demands, and gets, excellent performances from both. There are, by the way, a few lesbian scenes between the two, hot though not as much as a friend of mine claimed. The women play actresses and the plot(?) also involves a director played by Justin Theroux–yeah, who is he–and Monty Montgomery as Cowboy, who has one of the more memorable lines, which is spoken to Theroux’s Adam: “Now, you will see me one more time if you do good. You’ll see me two more times if you do bad. Goodnight.” Another actress earlier in the film is shown playing a character named Camilla Rhodes, and then towards the end, Harring plays an actress named Camilla Rhodes. Watts is introduced as Betty Elms, then later plays Diane Selwyn.

Don’t expect to understand this, just go along with the flow and you should enjoy it. Perhaps if you read the Ebert review linked above you can get a better sense of the film though I doubt it.

Recommended

garret says that “hantavirus and bubonic plague are things we live with every day” in New Mexico (in regards to the article I sent him) and my reply is: keep it in New Mexico, don’t get on a plane to New York when you’re infected. That’s just sick.

Update: via email, garret explains that Bubonic plague and Hantavirus are both pretty common down his way, carried by the local insects, and usually treatable when caught early. Residents do need to be fairly careful with their pets; he has an on-going rodent problem and uses gloves to load mousetraps, a respirator when cleaning the garage. Eek!

As if there wasn’t enough to worry about these days, we have further agita thanks to voters yesterday who returned control of the Senate to the Republicans. Specific to California, Ah-nuld was able to use his name recognition and political ambitions to foist a foolish initiative on us. Lautenberg was able to save the New Jersey seat but Mondale couldn’t hold on to Wellstone’s and Jean Carnahan proved she wasn’t her late husband. A Kennedy lost a safe Democratic seat in the Maryland governor’s race. In the realm of Pyrrhic victories, Gray Davis won re-election as governor of our fair state.

I need some breakfast.

Which Founding Father Are You?

[via Karl M]

Robin Williams has been taking roles that are more and more interesting as the years go on, getting further away from his early ‘jumping out of his skin’ parts. Insomnia, Jakob the Liar, What Dreams May Come. Not that he’s given up on comedy entirely, he had Death to Smoochy earlier this year.

In One Hour Photo, Williams plays as far from type as he might possibly go. Seymour Parrish–Sy the Photo Guy–is a nearly complete non-entity, right down to his pale skin, cropped short blonde hair, and plain solid clothing. We’re talking about a man with no life, no friends, no family, nothing except the fantasies he has where he is Uncle Sy to 9 year old Jakob Yorkin and his parents. Parrish, who mans the photo counter in a chain drug store, has been developing this young couple’s photos since before Jakob was born and he’s kept copies of their photos to enshrine on his apartment wall.

Dylan Smith, Connie Nielson, and Michael Vartan (Alias) are fine as the family, Gary Cole is fine as Williams’ boss at Sav-Mart, and Eriq La Salle as the detective. But all of them are really secondary, barely material except to give context to the world inside Williams’ mind. Robin, Parrish, is the only actor with a chance to shine and, of course, he does.

The other star is writer/director Mark Romanek in, essentially, his first feature outing after working in music videos (R.E.M., Madonna, Nine Inch Nails). One can imagine that Romanek spent quite a long time getting a the little details down, figuring just the visuals to accompany his words. The recurring shots of Williams walking down aisles in the store, into or out of the picture, for example, are quite striking. The elaborate voiceovers by Williams that seem to be almost a second character and sum up to more dialogue than any other role except for Williams’ main dialogue.

To top the pleasure off, we saw it in Milpitas at the Cinema Saver for the Terrific Tuesday $1 admission after chomping on In’n’Out burgers.

Definitely recommended

Recently one of the good people at RMAS was good enough to burn me a copy of an outstanding Little Steven & the Disciples of Soul concert–August, 25, 1984 at the Rockpalast in Lorelei, Germany. But no cover art, not like the massive amounts that are out and about for Bruce’s shows.

So I made my own using Paint Shop Pro. I started with a very cute photo of Steve posted to the Little Steven discussion board. Add a little text, a little poorly copied background color, and an hour or two of playing with the software and voila:

After today’s predictable 2-0 drilling of Moscow Spartak by FC Basel, the Reds cannot settle for a draw next Tuesday. If LFC do not win outright, they will be left in third in Group B and the Swiss side will advance instead. Suckage! The Anfielders are playing extremely strongly now, at least in English competition, but other than the Russian patsies have not done very good work in Europe, just one home draw in the first match against FC Basel and two losses to group leader Valencia.

Speaking of English competition, tomorrow is the first Worthington Cup match of the season. They’ll host Southampton, whom they beat 3-0 in the second game of the Premiership run on two goals from El Hadji Diouf. M. Houllier has said that both Michael Owen and Jamie Carragher will be rested but Markus Babbel will return for the first time since being diagnosed with Guillan-Barre syndrome at the start of this season, Chris Kirkland will get a chance to play goal for the the first team, and Diouf is seeking a return to play after finding his place mostly on the bench since Southampton’s visit. Saturday sees the Reds on the road for a tough matchup with Middlesboro; Owen and Carragher are set to return for that one.

Rob Schneider. Colleen Haskell (right, the Survivor chick). A goofy doctor who rescues Schneider after a horrendous car crash and rebuilds him using animal parts. John C. McGinley as a overamped, jealous cop. A director no one ever heard of. A writer who specializes in writing Schneider movies and TV shows.

The Animal. ‘Nuff said.

Okay, this is one strange thing for IBM to be auctioning off. Also, this was kind of an odd item. What does Mr. Rogers have to do with IBM or computers that would make this worth more than, say $25 over the asking price (about $1725 according to CNet) for this laptop?

Saw this on MetaFilter, so I assume many people saw it. I found the bid history for this ThinkPad T30 to be interesting, however, and quite confusing. For example, right in the middle jabbie118 and then ekjeffrey each made consecutive bids within seconds of their initial bid, raising the price substantially. Also, the last few bidders never got involved until the very end but although the price did not move much beyond their initial bids, not one came back for a second chance.

Liverpool won 2-0 to maintain their margin at the top of the English League, with Michael Owen scoring both goals. Heskey was back on the front line with Owen, no Baros or Diouf, Diao was the playmaker in midfield, and Gerrard got a valuable rest playing only the final 20 minutes after taking Valdimir Smicer’s place.

Notre Dame lost to unranked Boston College, woohoo! The absolute archrivals to my alma mater breakdown against a bunch of nobodies.

Florida saves their season by beating undefeated, fifth ranked Georgia in The World’s Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party 20-13. Neither team had a kicking game, punts or field goals, nor a third down offense worth mentioning.

Pitt beats undefeated, third ranked Virginia Tech 28-21 on the back of some great receiving from freshman Larry Fitzgerald.

North Carolina State, 9-0 and ranked number 10, lost to the Rambling Wreck of Georgia Tech.

All these undefeated teams losing surely helps the BCS (and therefore major bowl) chances of the Trojans! Coming into the weekend, USC was 11 in the BCS standings. NC State was 9 and we should move ahead of them. How far will Va Tech fall from #6 for losing to an unranked team? Going forward, keys will be how Washington State (BCS rank: 8 and a win in hand over us) plays out and our season-ending matchups against UCLA and Notre Dame.

And the best of the “bad” news: New York City gets U.S. nod for 2012 Summer Games. Since I was completely against San Francisco getting the bid, this is terrific.

Bonus non-sports link: The trailer for the next Pixar/Disney animation is now online and looks tempting for this coming Memorial Day weekend.

During the daily MetaFilter cruise, I ran into a discussion of the strange case of Scott Phelps. Mr. Phelps is a science teacher at Muir High School in Pasadena who was suspended about a week ago after he wrote a long email to the school’s other teachers claiming that most of the behavioral problems at the school are causded by the African-American students. Ding ding ding!

Of course his email got out to parents and the media and this apparently hardworking (“the hours of volunteer work we did on saturday mornings last year on test prep), conscientious (“As I said in the Pasadena Weekly”) white teacher was suspended. Now he’s being reinstated though there is no reason given for it. I, of course, think the suspension was ridiculous but the school district brass, who are excoriated in the memo, were probably responding to comments like those made by civil rights attorney Bert Voorhees: “There are few things short of molesting a child that should be taken as seriously as making racist comments in a school setting.” Excuse me, Mr. Vorhees (you moron), but how does molesting a child come close to writing a memo asking to make a change for the better for the very group of people you claim are being insulted?

But was Phelps’ memo racist, or just reflecting the facts? After all, the school is 48% African-American and the memo does state that there are well-behaved African-American students as well. Seems to me that Phelps’ intention was to open a dialog that can find ways to help these underperforming students, a dialog that his district superiors did not want to have. If a problem really is concentrated in a specific group, and the common factor is their race–but not gender, since the memo points to both boys and girls–how else do you begin change if you cannot identify the group because of political correctness?

Two months ago, Warren Zevon announced to the world that he had been diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. “I’m okay with it, but it’ll be a drag if I don’t make it till the next James Bond movie comes out,” said Zevon at the time. Last night he appeared, probably for the final time, as the sole guest on Late Night with David Letterman. Those two have been close friends for years and Zevon has been the main substitute as bandleader when Paul Shaeffer was away.

I just finished watching and this was simple, terrific television. Letterman did his usual opening material, including an amusing Top 10 on “When You’re Too Old to Trick or Treat,” but the bulk of the show was devoted to conversation with Zevon and his performance of three songs. I don’t watch the Late Show much any more, I can only take so much of the host, but I did watch his first post-9/11 show last year and this one and Letterman, to me, is at his best when he’s truly emotionally involved with his guest. He barely restrained the tears last night and last year, sitting there with Dan Rather, he didn’t even try.

To look at him, you wouldn’t think that Warren Zevon will probably die before the year is out. There are no obvious physical cues and his mind and music were as sharp as ever. He still has the long, messy blonde hair and thick beard. And his conversation was witty, not a sign of self-pity, so much so that I was waiting for Letterman to let the tears out just as relief. The last part of the show was performance: “Mutineer”, Genius (the title track of his most recent greatest hits package), and, my favorite, Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.

The last song originally came out in 1978 on his third album, Excitable Boy. What an amazing album this was, so literate and emotional, so full of rock and roll. Out of nine songs, I can still sing five of them 24 years later. Besides Roland and the title track, there was Johnny Strikes Up the Band, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, and, Zevon’s biggest hit, Werewolves of London. To me this was the sonic equivalent of a great caper novel, as if Elmore Leonard or Carl Hiaasen had taken up rock and roll piano. Who else was writing rockers about European mercenaries fighting in the Congo?

So now Warren Zevon is dying. Not from drugs and alcohol, of which he admits to more than his share (though these probably contributed), or in a plane crash, but with time to say goodbye. As he said on Letterman, he really understands now just how important it is to appreciate and enjoy every sandwich. Zevon is taking as much time as he can to write and record new material and the sessions are being recorded by VH1 for a special. To no one’s surprise, he’s living his life until the last minute. The LA Times has a very good article that was done last month, at the time Zevon’s illness was announced.

Ironically, his last two releases were titled “Life’ll Kill Ya” and “My Ride’s Here.” WZ, you will be missed but your music will live on.

At the very genteel Chez TJ, the Sweet One and I had a terrific celebration of our first anniversary together. Expensive but oh so worth it to create a memory we’ll carry with us forever. The restaurant occupies an old house in downtown Mountain View, built in 1894 for a bank vice president, and will celebrate its own 20th anniversary late next month.

The food, prepared by chef de cuisine Kirk Bruderer and staff, was a taste delight. We started off with a little something extra, a salmon mousse served in a minature ice cream cone. Our first course was Roasted Bell Pepper Soup with Polenta Croutons and Basil Oil. The fish course was Pacific King Salmon with Sweet Potato Confit, Braised Red Cabbage and Chestnut Sauce. Next up was the meat dish, Spiced Glazed 1/2 Game Hen with Roasted Pumpkin Risotto adn Grain Mustard Sauce for Vivian and Slow Braised Lamb Shank with Bacon Chive Grit Cake and Pomegranate Sauce por moi. Simple and light were called for next and so we shared Petite Lettuce with Banyuls Vinaigrette and a selection of imported cheeses served with thin tart apple slices.

Last served, and surely the last we could have eaten, was dessert from pastry chef/wizard Pauline Lam. Vivian ordered the Chocolate Covered Banana: Caramelized Bananas surrounded by Decadent Dark Chocolate topped with Fresh Banana Ice Cream while I went for the Vahlrona Chocolate Bisque with Carmelized Brioche Croutons. Chocolate soup, in other words, an awesome treat after two months of no sugar at all on the Atkins plan!

Somehow (I don’t remember mentioning anything), the staff knew we were celebrating and so along with the two desserts they also brought out an extra plate with four extra small cookie treats, a sliced strawberry, a lit candle, and the words “Happy Anniversary” written in chocolate sauce. This kind of extra touch, combined with unintrusive but there when needed service, surely justify the hefty prix-fixe charge. We left on a cloud!

And although we had agreed not to exchange presents, she couldn’t resist getting me a little one, Elvis Presley’s 30 #1 Hits. This album has a great selection of Elvis hits and includes the super catchy Elvis vs. JXL remix of A Little Less Conversation. This new version of an old movie tune came to all our attention back in June when Nike used it to power their Secret Tournament commercials throughout the World Cup.

All my love, Ms. Sweetilicious!

Wired News reports in Cancer’s Enema No. 1? Make That 2 that a respected researcher, who’s investigating a new treatment regime for extremely deadly pancreatic cancer, cannot sign up enough patients for his trial to get a valid result. After three years, only 25 patients (90 reqired) have signed up even though his earlier trial showed that participants’ life expectancy improved from 5 1/2 months to nearly 18.

So why the hesitation on the part of oncologists to refer patients? Because part of the treatment seems outrageous. It doesn’t fit the big medicine paradigm of expensive drugs. So other researchers tarred it with the epithet of alternative. What does Dr. Nicholas Gonzalez propose? Coffee enemas! Twice a day. Okay, also 150 specially formulated nutrional supplements and an organic, vegetarian diet. Not necessarily easy to conform to but those who do seem to find it worth the effort.