Smoky Sunset

Review: The Love Guru

They Call Him Maurice

Martha and I came home a day early from a short getaway (car trouble) and went out to see a movie. We were going to see the new Indiana Jones movie, but due to a schedule change, went to see The Love Guru instead.

If you like Mike Myers' lowbrow form of humor, you should get a kick out of this. It's not going to endear itself to anyone with overly thin-skinned sensibilities. It's pretty much offensive to everyone! Also, I don't recommend you see it with your children, your parents, or anyone else who you don't want to see you laughing at an inappropriate joke.

On one hand, it's just a lot of gags, piled up one on top of another. But some of them are very cleverly linked, with a delayed payoff later on (his name Maurice for example!) The opening scene is a musical number featuring Mike, a sitar, and some beautiful Bollywoodesque babes in Dolly Parton's "9 to 5."

I don't really want to say much more, as you'll have the most fun if you just go and see it. Avoid the trailers, which will just tip the hand of the gags. Get your money's worth!

Mariska Hargitay indeed my child!

Waiting for the Other Shoe

The Barbed Wire is Rusted

In this crazy world where the obvious is anything but, it was great to see the ecstatic response on Gavin Newsom's face to the logical decision it was unconstitutional to deny people the right to marry, regardless of their sexuality. Sure, tomorrow may bring all the kooky right-wingers down from the hills, and right on schedule (every 4 years, during the presidential election) but today, it's a beautiful feeling, sort of like "Don't stand in the way of Love."

Indeed.

Don't Stand in the Way of Love.

Very, Very, Urgent

I don't know a lot about these TED talks; I have seen one or two before. In this relatively short speech, Al Gore delivers a warning and a challenge to us, and he looks pretty intense about it all. I would encourage you to set aside a few minutes (about 27!) to watch this. If you have a pretty fast computer, press the full-screen button (to the right of the speaker icon) to enlarge the picture:



I have shown the Inconvenient Truth DVD to my freshmen Earth Science classes because I believe it's good science, not just a political issue. Many students have already been shown the video by their history teacher, or maybe the substitute teacher, but I wanted them to see it from a science point of view.

This talk is short, and to the point:

1. we don't have much more time to act
2. we can change things if we do act
3. this will be the defining challenge of our time.

Please consider what he's saying, and if you do agree, spread around the knowledge of this talk. You can access the original at http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/243 or at a stand-alone page I created (which strangely works better at full-screen mode than the original) here: http://ggould.com/blogstuff/Urgent_Al.html

Thank you for your time, and I hope you'll share with the rest of us your thoughts below.

Timelessness of MLK's speeches

In the Name of Love

Last Friday, we observed the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination. It's a somber occasion to remind us of a great loss, but also an opportunity to look at what King was doing in his last days. I want to mainly give credit to another blogger, digby, and ask you to read his blog from Friday, which deals with MLK's speeches near the end of his life. My thanks to Mike Groh who turned me on to this excellent piece. In closing, I would simply like to print an excerpt from a speech against the war in Vietnam, delivered exactly a year earlier, which closes digby's blog post. Jeez, you think they might be relevant today?

These are revolutionary times. All over the globe men are revolting against old systems of exploitation and oppression and out of the wombs of a frail world new systems of justice and equality are being born. The shirtless and barefoot people of the land are rising up as never before. "The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light." We in the West must support these revolutions. It is a sad fact that, because of comfort, complacency, a morbid fear of communism, and our proneness to adjust to injustice, the Western nations that initiated so much of the revolutionary spirit of the modern world have now become the arch anti-revolutionaries. This has driven many to feel that only Marxism has the revolutionary spirit. Therefore, communism is a judgment against our failure to make democracy real and follow through on the revolutions we initiated. Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. With this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores and thereby speed the day when "every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight and the rough places plain."

My First Friday Night

Foraging in the Food Court

This last Friday night, we went out for dinner and then on to an opening at the Museum of Modern Art.

Returning to Westfield Centre (Sonja just got a job at Bloomies!), we went back to the food court for dinner. This gave me a chance to retake the picture of the dome, without the lights. It's still quite beautiful, just different.

Before my recent awareness of my blood pressure, there were too many choices, but now I was nervously trying to minimize my fat and sodium intake! What a surprise, no low-fat, low-sodium outlets in the food court! I settled for some salmon and veggie chunks on a skewer!

On to the Museum!

Martha is a member of the SFMOMA, and she gets invited to these openings where crowds of trendy people gather to view cool things. This time it was the opening of an exhibition of Lee Friedlander's photographs. We also went up to the 5th floor to see Olafur Eliasson's trippy exhibit, which in many ways was like some of the perceptual exhibits at the Exploratorium, done up large and art museum sized! When we stepped out of the elevator on the 5th floor, we were flooded with a pure yellow light. It was pretty strange, and made you look like some zombie out of a cheezy B-movie. Hard to believe the color of light could have such a strong effect on how you feel.

All in all, after all the time in the hospital, and self-focus, it was nice to get out for a few hours. Thanks to all of you who have been so supportive. I go back to work tomorrow!

Second Chances

Quick, close your eyes and touch your nose!

You know how a friend greets you with "How are ya?" and you reply "Just fine?" In many respects, I am 'just fine.' As a matter of fact I feel quite lucky in a way I never did before. It feels kind of odd to answer with "I just had a stroke, but otherwise, I'm fine!"

Now, philosophically, I already believed that one should be thankful for the life one's already had to live, and live each day like it's our last. But I just gotta tell ya that it feels a little different when the right half of your body seems out of whack, and you find out you have sky-high blood pressure when you do go to the doctor's.

So, to cut to the chase for those of you that may not know, and to shorten my typing since it's not too easy for my right hand to type accurately, I had a small stroke this week, and I'm basically fine, should recover completely, and must change my health lifestyle, and take blood pressure medicine conceivably forever.

Earlier, on Wednesday, I felt real ill, weak, and went to the clinic, where I found out about my blood pressure. She gave me some cognitive tests, which included closing my eyes and touching my nose with my fingertip. I did fine, and was sent home with some blood pressure medicine. I noticed later that night that it was hard to type with my right hand (which is still true!) but thought it might be the medication. I woke up wide awake around 3 AM, and for some reason started touching my nose, and was shocked when my right finger missed my nose very significantly. My right leg didn't function as well, and I really thought I had a stroke. I had to convince Kaiser of this the next day, and then found myself in the emergency room on Valentine's Day night (boy, did I blow my Valentine's Day!) watching my blood pressure every 30 minutes. Thoughts of guilt and selfishness about how I was now hurting my family flooded my mind. So many of my friends checked in with their concerns, I definitely felt unworthy. Eventually I said to myself, "Quit whining, and just be thankful!"

There's an old saying that goes something like this:

Nothing clears the mind like an execution in the morning

It's no secret that excess weight and a sedentary lifestyle pose health risks, but boy howdy, it sure seems real now. For the foreseeable future (should I be so blessed to have one) my life will change. I share with you a picture of the first meal I've made since getting out of the hospital, and I presume I'll be learning a lot more about low-salt and low-fat diets, to keep me from going insane. I just need to realize my old life is over, and I've been blessed to have a second go at it. Not being able to pig out on desserts and unhealthy 'comfort food' all the time is a no brainer of a trade for my second chance.

[cliché ending alert!]

So, count your blessings, tell the people you care about that you love them, and do what you need to do to stay around this dance a little longer!

Destination Shopping

Shopping as Entertainment
[picture at left is straight up view of rotunda dome, with lots of strings of holiday lights hanging down.]
I have generally escaped contact with the mass consumerist culture this Christmas Shopping season (last minute shopping for chocolates for Martha's xmas stocking are hopefully forgiven!) but as we headed out today to do some errands, and a little grocery shopping, we somehow ended up downtown at the Westfield Mall, home of San Francisco's Bloomingdale's, which is housed in the ghost of the old Emporium.

In many ways, a mall is a mall is a mall, but this one has some dramatic uses of space. The rotunda itself towers over a third floor rest area with chairs and couches, and the string of lights are positively mesmerizing. Some of the views from above down at the lower levels certainly evoke a sort of vertigo I don't usually feel. The food court on the bottom floor had way too many choices, and it took forever to settle on a 'safe' choice of fish and chips (pretty decent). We even got our grocery shopping done there; there's this real upscale grocery store, Bristol Farms, on the same level as the food court, which is an entertainment in itself. It out-Andronico's Andronico's! I even found a little wedge of goat's milk Bleu Cheese for Jeff and Karen's NYE party!

We ended up staying too late, and got locked out of the rear exit where we came in, and had to truck our groceries around the block, but survived. It gave us an opportunity to look closer at the clever xmas windows of Fox Hardware, at their chandelier made from colanders, wire whisk wheels, and other hardware parts!

Walking through the building brings up old memories: My sister Rickie and I shopping with our Grandma; taking my own kids (many years later) to Legoland during the Christmas season. My dad was an architect, now and then, and sometimes I feel a certain shared appreciation for buildings. I don't really know, as we never waxed philosophically about such things.

I feel kind of guilty, as I generally feel people who like to go to malls are like people on sitcoms, but to paraphrase Pogo,

I have met the shopper, and he is me!

I'm Not There [review]

Will the Real Dylan Please Stand Up?

Now, before I get into too much of a spoiler mode, let me take a shortcut to a recommendation. If you're really familiar with Bob Dylan's songs and lyrics, and you also enjoy surrealistic art in your movies (the second half of Apocalypse Now for example), I have a recommendation for you. Just go to the movie (quickly now, it's in limited release) with some friends, then go out to dinner or a coffee shop afterwards to discuss the movie. You can come back here later to read the rest!

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Welcome Back
You've either gone out and seen the movie by now, or like me, you like to read spoilers! Spoilers? It's not like a whodunit, Dylan is still alive, and his story is not a secret, in fact it's deeply woven into our own culture and identity. This film's main shtick is that Dylan is played by 6 different actors, from an 11-year old black boy to Cate Blanchett. None of them is named Bob Dylan, and everything seems to be from some sort of parallel universe. We see scenes that happened in real life, sort of, but the names have been changed. We see the Newport Folk Festival of 1965, but it's not called Newport. Pete Seeger, who is not Pete Seeger grabs for the historic axe to try and cut the power cables to stop the awful noise Dylan/Jude/Cate is hurling at the audience. The scene in fact opens with the band opening fire with machine guns instead of guitars! (See? You shouldn't have read this far. It would've been a cool surprise if you could have seen it without warning!)
Chronologies are mangled, and you need to just let it happen. You may not like this movie if linear narrative is how you like things. I found it to be a reflection of our whole lives, not just Dylan's. The emotions of tragedy, of stress, triumph, loss, and heartache resonate deeply. Dylan was a one-man Beatles for a while in terms of how much pressure he was under as the 'spokesman for a generation,' a title he never wanted. I was fortunate to not know too much about the film before seeing it tonight, outside of the multiple-Dylan shtick, so it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. We then hung out with our friends Bill and Lucy afterwards, discussing it. Even though we all had different levels of Dylan knowledge, we all liked it, and would recommend it. Please leave some comments below if you get to see this.

Trailer

I came to talk about the draft

Do you feel a draft?
Today I was sitting around, watching football on TV, while I was listening to the traditional noontime playing of Alice's Restaurant, by Arlo Guthrie. For those of you who have never heard it, I'm not going to explain it, other than to say it has a circuitous connection to the draft. It originally came out in 1967, so it certainly needs to be understood in that context.

During the Vietnam War (never actually called a war) resistance to the draft was a major anti-war strategy, sort of a way to stop the machinery of the war. I really enjoyed listening to David Harris talk about the draft when I was in college, and I remember him talk honestly about the problems of not having a draft. He said once (I can't prove this, this is from my memory) that without a draft, people would care less about the policies of our government, since their own children were not at risk.

5 years ago
On September 11, 2001, thousands of innocent people were killed in terrorist attacks, which were planned by cancerous elements in Afghanistan, a country under the control of religious fundamentalists. Notice, I didn't say Muslim fundamentalists. When the causes of the 9/11 attacks were identified, I was totally in support of a military response to what I felt were the human/cultural equivalent of tumors, tumors that could spread. This is an interesting point in time. I've always thought of myself as pretty much a commie-pinko-leftist kind of guy, but here I found some of my anti-war friends opposing the US entry into Afghanistan on some sort of absolute pacifist grounds.

Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iraq (sung to the tune of "Barbara Ann")
But I'm not comfortable being in the position of agreeing with anything George W. Bush says. While I now feel comfortable with the idea of having a military, and that the service these men and women provide to our country should be honored, I think having insanity call the tune at the top of our government is no way to operate. When we entered the Iraq war so blithely, and without any plan for peace, it all fell apart.

Return of the draft
So, in the last few years, there have been calls from some minority congressmen for a return to the draft. Today's 'volunteer' Army consists of an inordinate proportion of low-income young people, who have few other options. At this point there is no real support for this idea, but it brings back that old idea of how a draft might affect our foreign policy. If we had a universal service system, with no deferments for the privileged, you can bet your booties that before we send Brett and Ashley Prepster off to war, we'll make sure it's worth doing.

Modern ending
Just like the ending of the Sopranos, I don't have a nice well-wrapped solution here. Do I want my children to be put in harm's way? Not particularly. What if it's something truly noble? Please, no hypotheticals! I guess I'd just like to know how you feel about the draft.