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New music postscript

2011-11-27T14:39:00.001-08:00

I ended my last blog entry with the news that I was awaiting albums from Evanescence and Candy Dulfer, two of my very favorite artists, with much anticipation.

They have arrived.

Now, I should say first of all that it is true that my first impressions of an album don't always hold true for the long-term. This example surprises me in retrospect, but I remember feeling hesitant about Superman: The Movie when I first encountered it. I can't explain that today – at all. I don't remember why I didn't fall in love with it on the spot, but I didn't. Today, it's one of my favorite film scores of all time.

Somehow, I'm not thinking that's going to happen with either of these discs. My first impressions of these two are going to remain lasting impressions throughout my life, I'm pretty sure.

The new Evanescence album is a masterpiece, and nothing short of a masterpiece. I thought so when I first heard it, and that impression continues through repeated listens. As I've written here in the past, I dearly wish I had words to describe what I'm hearing. Without the vocabulary of a trained music critic, all I can say is that there is a magical originality and freshness to this music. This is Evanescence's third studio album, and every one of them have been home runs: musically brilliant, thoughtful, fresh and original. This group, and these albums, are definite keepers, and I'm going to be hearing magic in them for many, many years.

By contrast, Candy Dulfer's new album is not her best, and not her worst. It's not one that would make a fan out of me, if I weren't a fan of her music already. I do give her props for going for a new sound that isn't like anything she's done before, but I have to admit that this doesn't instantly appeal to me the way the new Evanescence CD does, nor the way that other Candy Dulfer albums have done.

Candy Dulfer has some albums I cannot get enough of, no matter how many times I listen. Live in Amsterdam, in particular, is simply the best performance she's ever done. Likewise, Sax-a-Go-Go, Big Girl, Live at Montreux, Dulfer Dulfer, and Funked Up & Chilled Out are always going to be among my very favorite albums. By contrast, I've really never warmed up to For the Love Of You or Candy Store, as I've mentioned before. Between those two extremes are albums that are good but not great, and which have moments of brilliance but aren't brilliant throughout. I'm thinking of Girls Night Out and Right in My Soul. This new album, Crazy, is one of those.

The moments of brilliance on Crazy include one track in particular that's a clear favorite. I've always felt that Ulco Bed, Candy's lead guitarist, is a brilliant but underexposed musician. When he gets a chance to do a lengthy guitar solo – notably on the track “Nikki's Dream” on Live in Amsterdam, or during “I Can't Make You Love Me” on the DVD version of the Live at Montreux concert – he is beyond brilliant. I'd love to see him take that spotlight more often, to be honest. He has written a small number of the songs in her catalog, including many of my favorites from her very earliest CDs, but for whatever reason, he hasn't written too much between then and now. Now, though, the new album has a handful of songs written by him, including one called “No End” which reminds me all over again why I think he's an outstanding and brilliant musician. I'd love to see more from him, and if I ever learn that he's done a solo album, I'll buy it as fast as I can.

His other contributions to the new album are also noteworthy, especially “Please Don't Stop” and “Too Close,” among others, and they make me glad I bought this album. They're not enough to catapult the whole album into the list of best-favorites, but I do approve. It's definitely a thumbs-up, if not a wildly enthusiastic thumbs-up.

The wildly enthusiastic thumbs-up goes instead to the new Evanescence album without hesitation of any kind.

A year of new music

2011-10-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

“Star Trek V is the standard against which all badness is measured!”
— Rajesh Koothrappali, The Big Bang Theory

Speaking of not having blogged in a while, I am also realizing that it's been well over a year since I blogged about new music of any kind, and there has been plenty of it since then to talk about. Let's dig in, shall we?

October, 2010:

My daughter shared Taylor Swift's “You Belong With Me,” and I was instantly taken with it, so I bought the Fearless album after sampling some of the other tracks. I was aware at the time that Swift had sold a huge number of albums, so I was expecting great things. And I have enjoyed it very much, although in the year since then, I find that it isn't something I turn to very much anymore. I've heard it, I liked it, but I've moved on.

November, 2010:

I don't even remember what prompted me to do this. It could have been anything – I might have heard one of their songs playing somewhere, or maybe somebody mentioned them on Facebook. For whatever reason, I got the urge to hear a song by The Allman Brothers.

I don't know why I've never had any of their music in my collection. I've always been aware of them from hearing them on the radio, but never enough to nudge me into buying an album until now. Why now, I can't explain, but on this occasion, for whatever reason, looking for one song grew into time spent on iTunes inspecting the many available best-of collections before finally settling on one called Gold.

Sometimes, as with Swift's Fearless (see above), I'll buy an album thinking I'll listen to it forever, and then I'll grow tired of it after a while. This one actually surprised me with how much I've grown to love it. I can hardly believe I waited so long.

And there are so many really great songs on this album that I'm sure I've never heard before, ever. “Jessica,” ”Ramblin' Man,” “One Way Out,” and “Whipping Post” are songs I remember from the radio, but this collection is 30 songs, most of which are new for me, and all of which are keepers. “Southbound” is an especially delicious discovery. I don't know how I managed to miss that one on the radio, but I did.

December 2010:

I've blogged previously about various expanded film score releases. For Star Trek films, I've devoted specific blog entries to the expanded score releases for James Horner's Star Trek II and Star Trek III, about which I was pleased, but less than enthusiastic. By contrast, I was very happy with Michael Giacchino's 2009 Star Trek film score's expanded release. But of all of them, there simply is no more ecstatic musical pleasure than the expanded release of Jerry Goldsmith's score to the first Star Trek film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture. A decent soundtrack album has been available since 1979, but an expanded release of the score appeared in 1999 under Goldsmith's direction, and when it did, my heart knew true Star Trek geekdom and musical magic all in one sweet moment.

That's why, when I learned that La- La Land Records was releasing an expanded edition of Goldsmith's score to Star Trek V, I jumped on it. I'll happily tell anybody who cares that I vehemently hate that movie (Raj got it right when he called it “the standard by which all badness is measured”), and I'll also agree that this score is not the best of the Star Trek scores, nor is it Goldsmith's best, but it really is quite good, and I'm delighted by the treatment that La- La Land gave to the expanded release.

At the same time, I noticed that the same label had released an expanded CD of Danny Elfman's score for Mars Attacks! I'm not usually a big Danny Elfman fan – he's done a (very) few that I love to death (notably his score to Sleepy Hollow, which is my very favorite of his), and this is one of them. Similarly, Tim Burton has had some hits (The Nightmare Before Christmas) and some misses (Planet of the Apes). Mars Attacks! is one that should have been a bigger hit than it was, in my opinion. I love that movie, and I love that score. Naturally, I picked up that expanded release, and have been delighted by it ever since.

Later in December, I also picked up Daft Punk's score for TRON: Legacy. I did mention that here at the time. What I didn't emphasize enough then was how very much I love that score. I listened to it over and over and over and over again, and still never get tired of it. That score is a definite keeper. Unfortunately, I went to look for other music by Daft Punk to get excited about, and haven't. I'd like to though. If you're a Daft Punk fan and you're reading this, let me know what I should be aware of.

March 2011:

The fiasco that is her personal life aside, and granting right up front that she's not really a gifted singer or musician and that she's a very manufactured commodity, I happen to think that Britney Spears has turned out some very enjoyable albums. I was especially pleased with both Blackout and Circus, her two most recent albums up to this point. So when Femme Fatale arrived, I bought it immediately. What a mistake that has turned out to be. There are about two worthwhile songs on that album, and with those exceptions, it's a thorough disappointment from start to finish.

April 2011:

Several years ago, my friend Kathi turned me on to a jazz group called Fourplay, and I quickly came to agree with her that they really are fantastic musicians. Unless I've missed one, I believe I have all of their albums, and every one is outstanding. I honestly can't pick a favorite album because they're all great, although I'll happily name their song “Blues Force” from the album Yes, Please! as my favorite Fourplay song, with “Bali Run” and “Swamp Jazz” and a few others as close seconds. Fourplay released a new album this month called Let's Touch the Sky, and it is just as much fun as any of the rest of their albums, and highly recommended.

Also that month, I learned that Intrada had released a double-CD expanded release of Alan Silvestri's score to 1985's Back to the Future. I had to have that, of course. What a great score, and what a great movie.

But the very, very best news of all? At the same time I found out about the BTTF score, I also got news that a second volume of music from the short-lived television show Pushing Daisies was released. I've blogged before about how much I loved that show and how sad I was to see it go. One of very many things that I loved about it was its Jim Dooley score. I have long yearned for a Pushing Daisies score CD, but figured that since the show never really seemed to gain a foothold, I probably couldn't expect one. That's why it was such a great surprise not only that there had been a Volume One (a couple of years ago, in fact), but that a Volume Two was on its way too. My heart could not contain my joy, nor are there words to express it.

And that joy is deserved. Both score CDs are, without exception, jewels of musical bliss. Of all the music I am describing in this blog post, of all the music I've acquired in the last year, if I had to pick favorites, these two Pushing Daisies score CDs are the among the best examples of music that lifts my heart and speaks joyfully to my soul.

May 2011:

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Good movie. Not great. Good score CD too. I'd recommend it, especially if you liked the earlier discs. The addition of the Spanish guitar is a nice touch.

June 2011:

After much talk in the press, The Book of Mormon musical arrived on Broadway in New York, and moments later, songs from the musical became available on iTunes.

Now, I've been out of Mormonism for such a long time, and I'm genuinely happy and content with that state of affairs, and so I was really in no hurry to go out of my way to listen to this. Doing so, I felt, would draw me back toward a world I was happy to be away from.

But then I started hearing that it was a smash success on Broadway, that tickets were sold out months in advance, and, what seemed to me especially strange, it had become a hit with Mormon audiences, with ex-Mormon audiences, and with people who had no connection to Mormonism of any kind. At this, I had to admit that I was becoming curious. Being such a hit with everybody all at once has got to be hard to do, especially when you're tackling a subject like religion.

What really nudged me over the edge and got me to buy the soundtrack was when Freethought Radio, a production of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, featured the soundtrack on their podcast on June 4th and again on June 11th. The excerpts they played were just so hysterically funny that I simply had to break down and buy the album, to hear the whole thing for myself.

And I approve. Certain songs are simply gut-bustingly funny, most especially the very not-safe-for-work songs “Hasa Diga Eebowai” and “Joseph Smith American Moses”

However, I remain unable to explain how this musical appeals to any audience other than ex-Mormons like me. It's blasphemous, it's bitingly funny, and it reminds me at every turn why I'm happy to be out of that world. As an ex-Mormon, it seems almost as if this musical had been written specifically with me in mind. But what does it say to other audiences? Honestly, I don't know, nor can I explain the appeal. I can only tell you that it appeals to me, and deliciously so.

Also in June, “Weird Al” Yankovic released Alpocalypse, his first album since 2006. Certain songs are inspired, and my favorite by far is “Craigslist,” his tribute to The Doors. The album as a whole is not his very best, though. For me, that's still his 2003 release, Poodle Hat.

July 2011:

You've probably gotten the impression that I love the music of Jerry Goldsmith. Like most composers, he has done scores I'm not fond of, but by and large, he was a freaking genius, and I love everything he has done. Among my favorites are his scores to Bad Girls and First Knight. I'm pretty sure Bad Girls has gone out of print, and used copies have been selling for a pretty penny on eBay. I don't quite recall if that's true for First Knight as well, but it might be. They're both truly excellent Goldsmith contributions though, and so when I learned that La-La Land Records (yes, them again) had released expanded, limited editions of both scores, I simply couldn't resist. And both have been worth every penny. Both are highly recommended, must haves for any fan of film music, or any fan of Jerry Goldsmith.

Also in July, I went to see Cowboys & Aliens with much anticipation, and wasn't as thrilled as I hoped I'd be … except with the music. Harry Gregson-Williams isn't at, or even near, the very top of my list of favorite composers, but he does have some that I like very much, including Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, especially Passionada, and most especially Kingdom of Heaven. (I also have his Replacement Killers and scores from the first two Narnia movies, but they don't excite me.) So as I watched Cowboys & Aliens, I frequently found myself noticing the score, bought it afterward, and have enjoyed it very much. It's definitely on the thumbs-up side of my Gregson-Williams library.

August 2011:

Do not ask me why, but I've never had any Grieg or Debussy in my classical library. Don't ask me why either, but in August I went completely wild for both of them. For some reason, I just had to have Peer Gynt, and about four full albums of as much Debussy as I could find. It's kind of crazy, I admit. I honestly don't know what got me started, but I'm glad I did.

Christopher Young is another composer who is high on my list, and as I look now, I see that I haven't blogged about him nearly as much as I have other composers, which is a shame, really, because he's brilliant and fascinatingly versatile, and I think it's safe to say that I have at least as many of his CDs as I do of John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith. In August, I discovered his score to the film Creation, which I haven't seen (but it's on my ~~Netflix~~ Qwikster queue). The score is exquisitely beautiful, and I love it thoroughly and utterly.

September 2011:

I've already blogged about our trip to the Hollywood Bowl in September, and how I rushed out right afterward and bought every album by Paris Combo I could find. What a great discovery! I am very happy with that purchase. Uniquely different, very sexy, very jazzy, very much fun.

Also in September, La-La Land Records, did it again: they released two more expanded, limited edition Jerry Goldsmith CD's, this time for the films Forever Young and Sleeping with the Enemy. They get a thumbs up from me once again, as you might expect, although I confess that my heart still beats for Bad Girls and First Knight much, much more than for these two.

October 2011:

Years ago, I became good friends with a guy named Kevin. Then, for whatever reason, we lost contact with each other until he found me on Facebook years later. Thank you, Facebook, for bringing us back together again, and thank you, Kevin, for finding me there! I can't tell you how much it has warmed my heart to reconnect with you again after all this time.

Kevin added Paul McCartney's Ocean's Kingdom to my collection, which turned out to be a very enjoyable piece of music in a classical style. That style of the piece surprised me at first, since I am accustomed to thinking of Paul McCartney primarily as the artist who brought me the song “Live and Let Die,” secondarily as one of The Beatles. This was an entirely different side of McCartney than I was accustomed to or expecting, and once I got over that surprise and listened to this on its own merits, it's something I enjoy very much and would gladly recommend.

Conclusion:

That, dear reader, brings us pretty much up to date, although there are two more CDs coming up this month which I await eagerly.

I've gushed in my blog before about Evanescence, and especially their Open Door album, which I love beyond all measure. Their third album arrives days from now, and I am giddy with anticipation.

Meanwhile, Candy Dulfer, who has been for many years another of my very, very favorite artists, also has a new album out this month. At the time, I blogged about her most recent one, called Funked Up & Chilled Out, which was then and remains now on my very short list of favorite CDs – of hers, or of anyone else's, but it's among her very best studio albums, definitely. The new one might or might not be just as good, but my hopes are high. It's on its way to me at this very moment, and I can hardly wait.

More on those when they arrive. And until then, thank you for reading all the way through this, and for taking an interest in my musical discoveries.

Los Angeles Mensa 2011

2011-10-06T21:57:00.000-07:00

I've been reminded that I haven't posted anything substantial here in quite a while, and goodness knows there's a lot to say. Where to begin? How to organize my thoughts?

Later blog entries (yes, there will be some, honest!) will cover other things going on in my life. First, though, let me start with a number of Mensa activities. Geez, I haven't even blogged about the RG last February, and now we're already planning the next one.

February's Regional Gathering is a dim memory after all this time, except for what was my personal highlight, which is that my daughter gave a presentation on “Should You Have Exotic Animals as Pets?”

Other than that, though, what else do I remember? We did alcohol tastings this year (which was a first for our gathering, and which we're going to do again in 2012), and I loved the ones on rum and liqueur. I played my first-ever game of Werewolves and Villagers, which I enjoyed very much; my daughter tells me that it's her very favorite Mensa game, and in fact, when she comes to another gathering, it will be primarily to play that game. I very much enjoyed Dennis Lynch's presentation, as I always do, but my son told me that the presentation on ocular health that I missed as a result was the outstanding presentation of the weekend. I attended a thoroughly engrossing presentation on the life of Bob Marley, and an enjoyable film presented by master puppeteer Steven Ritz-Barr. Oh, and the one about The Art and History of Burlesque was great fun too.

Beyond that, memories are a blur. I remember missing a number of presentations I wish I had attended because I was busy putting on the event (running money to and from the bank, among other things).

In 2010, I reported enthusiastically on my first-ever national Mensa gathering, called an “Annual Gathering.” This year, I attended my second Annual Gathering in Portland, Oregon over the July 4th holiday weekend.

I'm still trying to put my finger on why this one wasn't quite as thrilling as the last one. Maybe because it wasn't my first? That might have something to do with it, I must admit. Part of it, no doubt, was because I came down with some nasty flu-like something partway through. Part of it was undoubtedly because the presentation rooms were much too small for the crowds that tried to shoehorn themselves into them, and on more than one occasion I found myself feeling faint – perhaps because I was coming down with an illness, but at the time, I was ascribing it to a lack of oxygen and to the fact that so many people were heating up the room – and sitting on the air-conditioning vents – making the temperature much too hot for comfort.

Because the presentation rooms were so overcrowded, I quickly figured out that when I knew I wanted to attend any particular presentation, I needed to plan to arrive there half an hour ahead of when it was supposed to start. That's how I managed to be in the front row when Jen McCreight spoke to us. She blogged about her “day with Mensa,” and if you click on the last picture on her blog entry to enlarge it, you can see me in the front row, looking down at the floor. (I dearly wish I had known a picture was being taken at that moment!)

In her version of that photo, you can also see what I mean about how overcrowded the rooms were, although in her case, a lot of that is because McCreight is a very popular speaker. I still maintain that the gathering organizers should have known that she would be. They had larger rooms they could have put her in. I would have put her in the largest room available, if I were planning that gathering, which of course I wasn't.

Other program highlights from that gathering included:

“Forensic Science from the Inside and Stupid Criminals I Have Known” by Susan Morton, who was a genuinely witty and enchanting presenter with some delightful things to say. I wish I had recorded her presentation, honestly.
Linda Zimmermann's presentation on “Bad Science,” which I loved so much that I bought her book (which I confess I almost never do).
meetings of Mensan Atheists. There was one each day, and I attended each of them except one, and found the conversations in every case fascinating and very enjoyable, and met some great people.

The very best part of that whole week, though, was the city of Portland itself. I had been there once or twice before, but on this occasion, the Mensa people planned daylong tours of the Columbia River Gorge and of Mount St. Helens during the couple of days before the gathering, and those were simply beautiful trips (except that, once we actually got to the summit of Mount St. Helens, clouds kept us from seeing it). That, and exploring downtown Portland on foot during the event was enjoyable too.

Every year, our local chapter buys tickets to a weekend concert at the Hollywood Bowl. I've blogged about this in the past, but (I now realize) I forgot to mention both last year's and this year's outings.

Each summer, the concert we attend is a big weekend show celebrating the music of Tchaikovsky or Disney's Fantasia or John Williams, almost always accompanied by a big fireworks display. As I blogged in 2009, that show was the music of Henry Mancini.

Last year, the big weekend concert was a celebration of the music of Warner Brothers cartoons, and it was absolutely delightful. Last year we added something extra though. If we also attended a classical music concert in the middle of the week, we wondered, would enough people join in to make it worthwhile? We picked a night of Beethoven, put out the word, and waited to see if anybody would come along.

And did they ever. That idea was so successful that this year, we added three weeknight classical concerts – Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Handel (including his Music for Royal Fireworks, complete with actual fireworks!) – and every show was utterly fantastic.

The big weekend concert this year was called A Night at the Moulin Rouge, featuring music from or about Paris. The Bowl brought in actual dancers from the actual Moulin Rouge to do the Can-Can, and that was great fun. The highlight for me was a performance by Paris Combo. They performed half a dozen songs which were all so very much fun that I ran right home and purchased every one of their albums.

(Here's someone else's review of that evening's concert.)

I've blogged about certain TV shows. I've mentioned The Big Bang Theory both here and here, when I've spent a whole day watching an entire season with my children.

Earlier this summer, I discovered that some Mensa friends had discovered the show only recently and wanted to catch up on what they'd missed. Others who, like me, have been following the show from the beginning, were happy to watch them with me all over again. And so I offered to do more Big Bang Theory season watching parties at my home, only this time for Mensa instead of with my family. We set aside four Sundays in August and September and watched each of the four seasons all the way through. Each time, somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen people came to my home, brought snacks, and we watched an entire season.

I can't necessarily speak for everybody, but as far as I could tell, I think everybody had a great time. Those episodes remain fresh and funny, I think, no matter how many times I've seen them, and it was just delightful the way the people in my home filled the air with laughter.

When we finished the fourth season, one of my guests suggested that we might try to attend a studio taping of the show sometime. We plan to do that just as soon as we can get tickets. Unfortunately, at the moment, we're finding that that show is wildly popular, so much so that getting tickets is no easy task. We are going to keep trying though, and eventually we will succeed.

Cross your fingers for us though. Seriously. We're finding that just as soon as tickets become available, they disappear. This is a tough show to get into. But we are going to make it happen.

123,456 miles

2011-07-28T11:45:00.000-07:00

As promised — and yes, as you may recall, I did promise — here is a picture of my car's odometer at 123,456 miles.

This means I have stopped to note the odometer at 100,000 miles, 111,111 miles, and now at 123,456 miles. I can't think of any nifty patterns coming up in the near future, so I will call this a complete collection. Some people collect stamps and coins. I, by contrast, collect pictures of my odometer. I'll leave it to you to decide what this says about me.

This picture was taken on the way to seeing Captain America, by the way. My employer rented a theater and gave away tickets to the first 225 of us who asked for one. And this was two days before the movie opened nationwide, on an IMAX 3D theater screen, in the middle of the afternoon. I may complain about my work environment from time to time, sometimes about my commute, and sometimes even both at once, but I do have to admit that my employer does treat me very well, all things considered, and this little midday diversion was great fun and much appreciated.

I have so much more to blog about, once I find the time: another Mensa gathering, birthdays, this past weekend's family barbecue, stuff like that. I will, I promise. I don't know when, exactly, but I will.

Lost love, with a happy ending

2011-05-03T16:04:00.000-07:00

Some of my coworkers wear headphones that let them listen to music but which don't block out surrounding sounds. They tell me they prefer it that way because it lets them have their music and still interact with other people.

I can't imagine how they function like that. To me, surrounding conversation is profoundly distracting, and I can't get any work done while people are chatting around me.

At the other end of this spectrum is my son, the erstwhile music major, who says that he can't have music going on around him if he's trying to concentrate on anything else because his brain is drawn to analyze in detail the music he hears. I've listened to him talk about music theory, and it's a joy to listen to the way music history, musical forms, borrowings, styles, key and time signature changes, and similarities to other pieces all come together as he describes what he listens to.

That's not me either, though. I sit somewhere in between these two extremes. Just as I can't focus on anything with conversation going on around me, my son can't focus on anything else while music is playing. I, on the other hand, find music comforting, familiar, and exciting, and it drops me right into a mental zone that makes me focused and productive while I work — just as long as it isn't intruded upon by any other sounds around me.

I had a great pair of Sennheiser headphones for a short while, but lost them when Vera's bags were stolen on our trip to Hawaii.

For a while, I was using those widely-advertised Bose QuietComfort 2 noise-cancelling headphones. I liked them, especially at first. In particular, when Bose says they do a good job canceling the background noise on airplanes, they're not kidding. And yes, as you'd expect from Bose, the sound quality is phenomenal. But I found that they're not as durable as I think they ought to be: after a year or two, plastic parts broke, wires came apart, and the leather around the ears disintegrated. But more than that, although they work great on airplanes, they're not great for the office, and although they help to muffle some nearby conversation, it's really not as complete as I want it to be. Bose now advertises QuietComfort 15's, which they claim do a better job in office environments. I probably ought to see for myself someday, but I have another solution that I like better.

Some years ago, a coworker turned me on to a company named Etymotic Research, and I bought a product called the ety8. These are in-ear earphones, meaning that they don't just sit in your ear like earbuds do, nor over your ear like traditional headphones. Instead, they actually sit up inside your ear canal, forming a seal inside your ear that effectively blocks out anything else.

At first, this idea really freaked me out: won't I make myself deaf, or blow out my eardrums, or something, if I've got earpieces that far inside my ear? But over time I warmed up to the idea, then grew to love it. That's because these in-ear earphones really do isolate every bit of outside noise, while giving my music a remarkably rich, high-fidelity sound. Add to that the fact that these are wireless, and (after you get used to the idea of rubber earpieces inside your ear canal) remarkably comfortable, and well, I've been a huge fan of these things for a while now.

I will be the first to admit that I need to exercise more. Workouts and I never have gotten along very well, and the fact that the health club I belong to is crowded and noisy doesn't help. I dearly wish they'd either not play music at all, or else for goodness sake turn it down … but whenever I've asked them about this, they mumble something about the music being preprogrammed and out of their control, or else they mumble something about how other customers like it, which I can't imagine, because I see plenty of other people in that gym who are also wearing headphones to mask out the noise. Either way, for whatever reason, nothing ever changes. That's one more reason why I love my ety8's: regardless of what goes on at the gym, I don't hear a bit of it. My nifty wireless in-ear earphones let me listen to whatever I want, and not what I don't want.

(Aside: Am I the only one who figures that if you can make casual, lengthy, chatty cell phone calls while you're on the treadmill, you're not doing your workout properly? Oh well, I guess I'm the last person who should be giving workout advice. Still, it just seems wrong, on so many levels. Regardless of what it does or doesn't do for the person having the conversation, certainly I find it distracting and annoying to have that going on around me when I can't shut it out.)

And at work, the situation is just as bad. The building I work in is designed like a gigantic cavern, furnished with low-walled cubicles and without even a feigned attempt at the kinds of sound-dampening materials that might help to muffle loud voices. Coworkers don't seem to mind, but it drives me batty. But thanks to my ety8's, I don't hear a bit of it … even to the point where coworkers who want my attention can't get me to notice them if my back is to them. Seriously. They can be right behind me, but unless they knock on my desktop or touch my shoulder or wave their hands in front of my face, I'd never know they were there. I try not to face away from the entrance to my cubicle when I can avoid it, just for that reason.

And so as you can see, my Etymotic ety8 earphones are my salvation in so many ways.

A couple of weeks ago, at the end of the day, a mindlessly stupid accident that was my own fault resulted in snapping them in pieces. I literally screamed a cry of distress when I first realized what I had done. Then I collected my grief and sat down at my computer to find a way to replace them …

… and was heartbroken to discover that they aren't being made anymore. My options, apparently, were to buy used ones on eBay or Amazon, and I wasn't seeing a lot of other alternatives. Although the manufacturer supports them, according to their website, they don't actually sell them. What to do? I considered eBay and Amazon, and I looked at competitors, but wasn't seeing any really ideal way back to where I had been before I broke my beloved ety8's.

Desperate, distraught, I figured I'd try calling the manufacturer the next morning. I didn't know what I thought they'd be able to do, but hoped they could suggest something. To my surprised delight, they agreed to take them back and repair them, and for quite a bit less than I had paid for them when they were new, and for less than it would cost me to buy replacements from eBay or Amazon. Excitedly, I packaged up my damaged earphones and mailed them off to Etymotic that very day.

But the story gets better. Once they got them, Etymotic told me that they couldn't repair them, so instead they agreed to send me a brand new pair of ety8's for the same price that they had offered to charge me to repair my original ones. (I don't understand why they even have brand new ones to sell me when they don't offer them for sale on their website, but they offered, and I wasn't about to debate the point. Whatever the reason, Etymotic scored big in the customer loyalty department that day, and that's what mattered to me.)

Needless to say, I am ecstatic at this news. My lifesaving ety8's returned to me this past Friday, after being away for almost two weeks, and now I have a great pair of brand-new earphones at a great price. I couldn't be more pleased.

While I was without my ety8's, I was at work and in the gym lamenting their absence. Those days felt like an eternity. You don't realize what you have until it's gone, as they say. While in the gym, trying to use Apple earbuds as sad substitutes for my absent ety8's, the wires were flopping all over the place, getting in the way while I was trying to work out, and weren't doing anything to block out neighboring conversations. Without my noise-isolating ety8's at work, I was grumpy and less-productive and constantly on the verge of doing something short-tempered that I knew I'd probably regret later.

By contrast, now that the ety8's are back, whole and in my hands again, I am one very happy music lover.

And now that I realize how valuable they are to me, from now on, I am treating them like gold.

Linzer Bäckerei II: The Recipe

2011-04-21T11:07:00.000-07:00

I tried scanning the mimeograph, and although the second page scanned well enough, the first page just wouldn't. That first page has been out in the light a lot more than the second page has been, so it has faded a lot more severely over the years. I managed to darken it enough to make it legible, but even so, it's not perfect. You can see what I mean. (Remember, you can click on these images to see them at full size.)

Page One:

Page Two:

The Recipe:

I've never made the recipes on the second page. The recipe I've described is on the first page. In case it's still not legible, here it is again:

1 cube butter
1 cup flour
2 egg yolks
1 cup ground unblanched almonds (4 oz.)
2/3 cups sugar
cinnamon to taste
Make a pliable dough. Roll out and either cut with a cookie cutter or bake flat and cut into squares after removing from oven. Bake at 350°. The cinnamon taste should be strong.

My Comments:

“1 cube butter”: I'm not sure whether a “cube” of butter is a regional expression, or an old-fashioned one, or what, but I've been told that it's an unfamiliar expression to some people. I understand it to mean the same as a “stick” of butter, that is, one quarter of a pound.
“Make a pliable dough”: Don't think you're going to mix all of this up with a spoon. There isn't enough liquid in these ingredients for that. You're going to have to mix this with both hands in order to warm up the butter adequately. Don't even think about melting the butter into a liquid — that's just going to make a mess. The warmth of your hands is just right. Holding the mixing bowl in your lap will help too.
“Cut with a cookie cutter / cut into squares”: Not saying you can't do it that way, but when I bake these, I take a teaspoon-sized ball of dough, mold it into a circle about the size of a half-dollar about a quarter of an inch thick, and I place several of those on a cookie sheet.
“Bake at 350°”: She doesn't say for how long. I let 'em cook for about 15 minutes. Unlike most cookies, you aren't looking for these to turn brown around the edges. I don't know about you, but I think these must be eaten right out of the oven. They're good after they've cooled too, but they're truly astonishingly good while they're still warm.

Linzer Bäckerei

2011-04-17T16:45:00.000-07:00

Imagine my German class, 7th and 8th grade, 35 years ago. My German teacher, Joan von Kaschnitz (one of the very best teachers I ever had, by the way), gave us mimeographed recipes for butter cookies. They were awesome, and I used to make them all the time after that, for several years afterward.

Then I just stopped, not for any good reason, probably around the time I got married. (I didn't spend a lot of time in the kitchen while I was married. The joy of cooking didn't really settle upon me until after that marriage ended.)

Well, I was telling Vera about those cookies last night, and today she suggested that I make them again. I wasn't sure I remembered exactly how — it's been a long time, like I say — so just now I went digging into some old, old, old files in my file cabinet, and by gosh, I found the recipe! And not just a copy of a copy in my own handwriting, but the very same mimeograph that I got from Mrs. von Kaschnitz all those many years ago!!!

Maybe later I'll scan it and post it. Right now, though, I've got some cookies to bake!

'Twas the week after Christmas (or: Kids for the holidays, 2010)

2011-01-03T12:10:00.000-08:00

Every year, I look forward to the week my children spend with me over the holidays. Even though I never really know in advance how it's going to turn out — I plan some things, some things happen (or don't) despite my plans — it always makes me happy to spend time with them and to have them around. Then the week ends much too fast, they're gone again, and I miss them. Well, at least I have this blog to try to capture the memories.

My week with the kids started the day after Christmas, on Sunday evening after church, and for most of that week, my daughter was absent. She joined us later in the week, but had to stay behind while waiting for a vehicle repair. Meanwhile, my youngest son wasn't going to stay the whole week with me because he wanted to get home Friday evening to attend a New Year's Eve church dance.

Sunday

I enjoy cooking. I like to think that I'm good at it, at least until certain good friends of mine (*ahem*Kathi*ahem*) who are far, far better at it than I am remind me how much I have yet to learn. But at least I enjoy what I know how to do.

Whatever I know about cooking, I've learned in the last decade, with two exceptions: when I was very young, I expressed enough interest in my mother's chocolate chip cookie recipe and her pizza recipe that she took time to teach me how to make them. I imagine that if I had expressed interest in more of what she did in the kitchen, I might have learned a few more things, but at least I learned that much at that young age.

I have always believed that my mother's pizza recipe is the best pizza on the planet, and I've made that pizza throughout my life. My kids remember me making it when they were a lot younger, and somewhat nostalgically, they asked me to make it for them on that Sunday evening. I haven't made pizza in a while, and enjoyed that a lot.

Monday

Years ago, a friend introduced me to a place in Santa Monica called The Counter, which I enjoyed, but for whatever reason, I haven't been there since. Lately they've been expanding, and recently they opened one a mile away from me in Studio City. At my suggestion, Vera and I ate there for the first time a week or two ago and really enjoyed it, so I took the kids back there again for lunch on Monday, and everybody really enjoyed that too.

That afternoon we went out to see the new Chronicles of Narnia movie. I tried to read those books when I was younger, but could never really get into them. The movies, likewise, don't grab me with the insistent urge to see them again, and I think that the foundational story is the reason why in both cases. The movies are technically well-made, by which I mean that the special effects and acting and photography and music and all of that was capably done, but as I sat through this movie, I was left with the feeling that the story just isn't really compelling enough to bring me back again. There are certain movies and movie series that I come back to again and again, and this just isn't one of them.

There's a Thai restaurant close to my home that I really like. I've taken my kids there a few times, and have been pleasantly surprised that they all like it too. (It's extraordinarily difficult to find a restaurant that everybody in my family likes. If I hadn't seen it for myself, I'd never have guessed that Thai food would be something that gets a thumbs up from all of us.) Going there again was one of my kids' specific requests, but when I called them, I learned that they're closed for an extended period due to some sort of kitchen fire.

Fortunately, I had a backup plan. When I first moved to Los Angeles, I landed in an apartment building that was right next door to Natalee Thai. That place is a bit of a drive from where I live now, but it was worth it. Everybody enjoyed dinner there that night, which I was happy to see.

Tuesday

The big event for today has some backstory and requires a bit of explanation.

For seven years, when I was newly married and my children were very young, our family lived in Texas. While there, we used to go out for dinner to a place called CiCi's Pizza, an inexpensive all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. As far as I knew, this was a Texas-only place, and once we left there for California, I figured I'd seen the last of it.

What I hadn't counted on is that both (a) my oldest son remembers it and remembers it clearly, even though he was seven years old when we left there, and (b) they've expanded and now have franchises nationwide.

Lately, I had begun to notice ads on television for CiCi's, and wondered why I was seeing ads in California for a Texas restaurant, but that's about as far as I went with it. My son, on the other hand, saw the same ads a couple of months ago and immediately rushed to the Internet and found that there's a CiCi's franchise in Chino Hills, an hour from me and two hours from him. He tells me that he embarked on a road trip with friends that very night (or maybe very soon thereafter), drove out to Chino Hills, relived his childhood memories by re-experiencing CiCi's a decade and a half later, and drove back again. Since then he's been wanting to go again, and we agreed we'd do that while they're all here in L.A. with me.

It also turns out that he remembers clearly an incident that I remember too, but which happened so long ago that I thought for sure it had been forgotten. He was six. We were eating at CiCi's in Texas. He had consumed ten slices of pizza, which he thought was a significant achievement, except that I squashed the victory of his achievement by thoughtlessly pointing out that he had left uneaten large parts of each crust. After all, had he really eaten ten slices, if he hadn't eaten all of them? (It was a thoughtless remark. I have learned a whole lot about being a parent in the years since then.) We went to CiCi's in Chino Hills twice that week — once on Tuesday evening and again on Saturday so that my daughter could go too — and on both occasions, my oldest son made sure I knew (lightheartedly, of course) that we weren't just there for the pizza, but also to vindicate his inner six-year-old.

For the record, he ate many more than ten slices on both occasions. And I was there to witness it.

Wednesday

Another activity that all of us enjoy is laser tag. Last year I took them to a great laser tag place near where I live, and I've been looking forward to taking them there again. We got the day pass again, wore ourselves out, had a great time, and celebrated our victories that evening with dinner at Tony Roma's.

Thursday

Throughout the week, my daughter had been keeping us apprised of the progress repairing the vehicle. We were hoping that she'd be able to join us by Thursday, so we made sure to hold the new TRON movie and a rooftop barbecue until that day or later. Sadly, she still wasn't able to join us by Thursday. Whatever is wrong with that vehicle, they're having a really difficult time fixing it. However, I couldn't push everything off to Friday, because my youngest son wanted to get home for his dance, so we decided that the four of us would see TRON in L.A., and my daughter and her mother would see it by themselves.

Everybody loved that movie. I'm especially enchanted by the soundtrack, which I purchased immediately upon leaving the theater, and to which I have been listening pretty much constantly ever since. The special effects were outstanding too. The story isn't particularly captivating, and as I write this, I'm trying to figure out why it is that I saw both TRON and the new Narnia movie this week, both of which were technically outstanding but with stories that left me wanting, and yet this movie I liked and that one I didn't. I think it may be because, in the Narnia movie, too much that happened just seemed a little too convenient, as in, “Hey, we're looking for a particular sword, and oh look!, there it is!” And although there was some of that in TRON too, it didn't seem quite as over-the-top obvious that the story was being helped along by all-too-convenient plot coincidences and narrative shortcuts. Whatever it was that made the difference, I can definitely see myself watching TRON a few more times. I'll pay closer attention to its narrative structure next time.

The theater where we saw TRON was next door to the Universal Studios Hollywood Hard Rock Café, which we all like, so we had dinner there.

Friday

I've mentioned here before that my oldest son, who had been studying music since leaving high school, has switched his major to astrophysics. Over the last year, he's been taking a pile of classes in calculus and hard sciences, and all of this led to a desire to return to the Griffith Observatory during the day to see their solar telescopes. My youngest wasn't interested, and I tried to push this trip off until after Friday since he would be leaving us then, but Saturday the weather report was predicting cloudy skies, so we made the trip Friday after all.

And it was crowded. I have never seen so many people there, nor the parking lot so full. We literally had to park waaaaay down the hill and hike to the observatory, which gave me a workout that my legs aren't used to. (Laser tag did that to me too. I need to exercise more, as a rule, but I definitely got my share of that this week.)

We celebrated New Year's Eve with a rooftop barbecue. I had prepared all of this earlier that day, so that by the time we got back from the observatory, my daughter arrived for the first time and the barbecue was all ready to go. We feasted on shrimp and hamburgers and polish sausages, and then my daughter drove my youngest son to his dance.

Saturday

My daughter returned to my home after doing her work at the zoo, and I told her that because I hadn't had much time to spend with her this week, that I'd let her decide how we spent the rest of the day. She wanted to go to CiCi's Pizza, so we did that again, which we all enjoyed.

Then we came back to my home again, talked for a little bit, and then it was all over. My daughter drove my sons back to their home, and I was sad to see them go.

That was a very happy week. Now my two weeks of vacation are over, and this morning, my life returns to its normal routine.

And I don't mind saying that I'd like to take two more weeks off work and do it all again.

'Twas the week before Christmas

2011-01-02T10:40:00.000-08:00

Two weeks away from work end today. For the last week, my kids have been here with me. It has been a very happy time, and I'm sad to see it end.

The first of those two weeks was a quiet one, for the most part. Vera likes to get away for the holidays, which has resulted in past winter trips to Idyllwild and Solvang. This year, although she was seriously considering it, we ended up staying home quietly, which was relaxing and pleasant.

Well, it was relaxing and a bit depressing, because it rained for almost a solid week. When I was living in Seattle, constant rain seemed like a normal thing, and never really got me down. Besides, Seattle is such a magical and beautiful place anyhow, and I was there only briefly as an outsider, and so I never really felt like it was my place to complain. Here in Los Angeles, though, rain is unusual, and when it happens, it's gone again in a day or two. This week, it went on and on and on and on and ON, and it was tiresome once it had overstayed those first couple of days.

I'll tell you this though: I've blogged in the past here about my home flooding during heavy rains, and ever since then, I've always panicked just a little whenever they happen. (See also “It's rainstorm season” in this blog entry from last winter.) Every time since then, the whole situation has been fine, the water hasn't gotten into the house, and all is well, thank goodness. I still panic a little, but ever since I had those repairs done, it turns out that I haven't needed to.

I enjoyed preparing for the holidays. We found and decorated a very nice tree for the living room and I got my holiday cards out on time (except that I ran out of cards before I ran out of addresses … oops … I will need to buy more next year). But otherwise, we stayed home, venturing out to see Black Swan, which is an amazing movie, and staying in to watch Love Actually and last year's A Christmas Carol again. Vera's parents invited us for dinner Christmas Eve, and on Christmas Day, she and I made dinner for ourselves. I had never glazed a ham before, and so I was delighted when it turned out perfectly.

But my most interesting project during that week involved revisiting my childhood.

One of the Mormon traditions I grew up with was a thing called a “roadshow,” an original short stage musical that was put on each year by those of us who were of high school age. One year, when I was about 16, we did this on film, and that film has been buried in someone's attic or closet or garage all these years. A year or two ago, I asked my mom to ask around among the people she goes to church with, and long story short, she located it recently and had it transferred to a DVD. It's grainy, and most of the audio didn't transfer properly, but I'm still delighted to see that after all these years. What a happy memory!

As I've written here before, my father and I share a love of new technological gadgets. That's why, from the time I was very young, my parents owned a reel-to-reel tape recorder, and starting when I was four years old, they used to record my voice and later my sister's voice every few months, especially at Christmastime. I've always been thoroughly embarrassed to listen to myself on those recordings. My father copied a lot of them onto a cassette tape which he gave me years ago, which was a very thoughtful thing to do — despite which, due to my own embarrassment, I've rarely listened to it.

However, ever since last year, when I attached a tape recorder to my computer, I've thought it would be fun to digitize that cassette tape onto a CD and send copies of it around to my parents and siblings. And I started, but discovered that I don't have all of the source material. I won't feel that I'm done with this project until I get the rest of that too, so I've asked my mother to investigate. She tells me that she's on the case, and now that the holidays are over, she's spelunking in her basement tracking that down.

I can't wait. It's still true that I'm terribly embarrassed listening to myself at that age — I've never claimed to be able to sing, and these tapes prove conclusively I couldn't sing then either … although at that age, I didn't seem to realize it, or to care, and so they include me singing Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer with wild abandon, several times over — but the snapshots they provide of my life as a child really are priceless. Once I get the rest of the source recordings, I'm looking forward to finishing that project.

Disney's Fantasia

2010-12-01T15:47:00.000-08:00

So many classic Disney movies, and everyone has a different opinion about them.

I was never really taken by Beauty and the Beast, even though it was nominated for a Best Picture Oscar^® before there was a category for animated films. On the other hand, my heart has always had a deep soft spot for The Little Mermaid. Similarly, Snow White doesn't really grab me, even though it's a favorite of many, including my mother, and even though I recognize that it was a striking technological achievement for its time. What does grab me especially? Of all of Disney's animated films, my two standout favorites are Sleeping Beauty and Fantasia.

Years ago, when VHS was a new technology, Disney released Fantasia on home video for the first time, and I snapped it up the first chance I could.

But when we put the movie in our VCR (remember those?), the quality of the sound was just awful — muffled, distorted, the highs and lows of the soundtrack would come and go intermittently: sometimes the music would play with a full sound, but just as often, all you'd hear was the mid-range. (I wonder what term a recording engineer would use to describe this; there must a better way to describe this than I'm doing.)

Clearly, we thought, this videotape is defective, so we took it back to the store and exchanged it for a different one. That one exhibited the same behavior, so we did it again. And again. So then we thought maybe the whole batch was bad, so we went to a different store across town. Still no luck.

Years later, when DVDs were new, Disney released Fantasia again. Surely, I thought, now that it's all digital, the sound will be perfect, but no such luck: the sound was muffled just the same way on the DVD release too.

I thought I had a pretty nifty home theater in those days, but I am struck by how the technology has advanced since then. Even my 5.1-channel speakers which were once state of the art are now inferior to current 7.1-channel sound systems. Now I have Blu-ray Disc players playing on widescreen HDTVs connected with HDMI and optical cables. (And yes, I love it … all of it. I have what Eddie Izzard calls “techno-joy.” It's genetic: I got it from my dad.)

What's more, plenty of films in recent years have been restored to give them amazingly rich color and sound. The original series Star Trek episodes that I've gushed about here are a remarkable example of this: sound and picture are fuller and richer in high definition than ever before. My other favorite example is the Blu-ray Disc release of Disney's Sleeping Beauty: the picture and sound on this release truly are breathtaking, and so much clearer and richer in so many ways than the DVD release from just five years earlier.

Put all of this together, and I really was hoping that at last, after many years of disappointment, the once-muffled sound of the home video release of Fantasia finally would become rich and clear. Fantasia was released on Blu-ray Disc yesterday, and although it occurred to me to let someone get it for me as a Christmas gift, I couldn't hold myself back. Yes, I picked it up from the store on the very first day. And sadly, I have to say that I'm disappointed that the same sound distortion is still there, and now it's even more noticeable thanks to the modern clarity of my equipment. As it turns out, it wasn't the VHS tape after all, all those years ago. I guess the original master recording just is that way, like it or not.

I'd love to know what happened. I guess, to be fair, we are talking about 1940, and recording technology maybe wasn't what it is today. Still, other movies from that era don't show the same problem. 1941's Casablanca, for example, is one of my very favorite movies of all time, and it sounds perfectly fine in high definition. So what happened to Fantasia? Seriously, I would really like to know.

I checked out the review of the film at Blu-ray.com, curious what they'd say about its audio quality, and I'm puzzled that that reviewer doesn't seem to hear what I hear. He or she insists that “Audiophiles of all ages will be thrilled with the results,” but I am not “thrilled,” and I know I'm not imagining what I'm hearing.

Oh well -- the animation is still breathtaking, and even more so in high definition, so there's that, at least. But to be honest, even though the animation is as magical as it is, it's difficult to enjoy it fully when the soundtrack keeps reminding me how not-well it has aged.

And now, thanks to my nifty (but no-longer-state-of-the-art) 5.1-channel speakers connected optically to the glorious DTS sound provided by the Blu-ray Disc player, those imperfections in the soundtrack are, if anything, even more pronounced than they were years ago when all I had was a VCR plugged into the stereo speakers that were built into my old TV.

Oh well. If it bothers me too much, I can always go back to watching Star Trek and Sleeping Beauty.

My political journey

2010-10-29T18:34:00.000-07:00

The first time I was old enough to vote, it was 1984, and I was a Mormon missionary living in West Germany. Ronald Reagan was seeking a second term, and was hugely popular. I liked him too, and I saw myself as a Republican anyhow, and so voting for him seemed like a completely natural choice. I had to go to a certain amount of trouble to request an absentee ballot from all the way over in Europe, but I did, and I remember feeling pleased when I learned that he had won.

In the 1988 Presidential election, the choice was not so clear. I remember being not much impressed with the either Presidential candidate, but I was watching the Vice Presidential debates when Lloyd Bentsen fired off his “Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy” zinger, and to this day I think that's the best line I've ever witnessed in any political debate. That year, I was working for a Texas defense contractor, a company that made fighter jets, and then-Vice President George Bush came to our plant to shake everyone's hand and ask for our votes. That's the only time I've ever been in the same room with someone so high up the political ladder. But through all that, do I remember how I voted? I just don't. Whichever way I went, certainly it was with lukewarm enthusiasm. I still saw myself as very Mormon — I was teaching early-morning Seminary classes at the time — besides which, I was also living in a very conservative part of Texas, and so I probably voted Republican again. If I did, it was the last time.

By 1992, I was having serious questions about the Mormon church's truth claims, although I hadn't yet come to the conclusion that it was all human invention; that would come later. Still, I had begun to see cracks in its veneer, enough that I felt more at ease making my own decisions without letting the church influence me. And as a result, at about that point, I no longer saw myself as a Republican voter, but an independent one. And as an independent, Bill Clinton impressed me tremendously right from the start. I was only too happy to vote for him in both of his elections, and I remain tremendously impressed by him to this day.

I left Texas for California in 1995, the year after George W. Bush was elected Governor there. I hated him then, although not quite with the same broiling menace with which I hate him now. At the time, I was just appalled that a candidate I viewed as thoroughly inept had been elected. “But,” I also said to myself, “I'm leaving this state, and that will be the last I ever see of him!” Regrettably, I could not have been more wrong.

When Bush won his party's nomination for President in 2000, I could sense evil on the horizon. He struck me as no less inept in 2000 than he had in 1994. I followed that election closely, and was once again appalled by the way it turned out. But that fiasco wasn't the worst of it; that was just an omen of the evils yet to come. During the years he was president, I watched his administration commit one atrocity after another, and I followed them all with a growing sense of fear and loathing. “Surely,” I thought, as the 2004 election approached, “everyone now sees how destructive this guy is, how evil he is, and that will be the end of him.” I don't have the words to describe how betrayed I felt when he won a second term.

It was during that second term that I came to a dawning realization: I'm not an independent anymore. I'm a Democrat. This wasn't entirely a counter-reaction to Bush and his administration – granted, that all by itself would have been a shallow reason for making that decision, although it certainly started me thinking about it – but rather, during those years I became much more aware of what the Republicans are, and what the Democrats are, and it hit me one day where I belong, and where I feel politically at home. What the Democrats stand for, I stand for, and what they want to achieve, I want to achieve. And so for the first time in my life, I actually registered, officially, as a member of a political party. There was something very thrilling about getting the registration form in the mail, filling it out, declaring myself a Democrat, drawing my line in the sand. Not just thrilling, but comforting, as if I had found my way home after a long time away.

When the 2008 campaign was just getting started, plenty of candidates were vying for their parties' nominations. I could see something magical in Barack Obama from the start. In those early days, I didn't see him winning the nomination necessarily, but as I was watching the candidates, I knew he was someone I would vote for, assuming he made it that far. When he did, I voted for him with glee. And since then, I've been listening to all of his speeches, hanging on his every word, and could not be more pleased with who he is and what he is doing.

And now there's another election coming up. A midterm election, admittedly, but an election that matters, all the same. From what I've read, the predictions are that voters will turn out for Republicans, and they will take over a majority at least in the House, and will probably take a number of seats from Democrats in the Senate.

I understand that this is the way it goes. Historically, whenever the White House switches from one party to another, voters typically vote for a majority of the opposing party in Congress. I get that. In the abstract, I can even see it as a good thing, in that it results in a balance of power between the various branches of government.

And yet, as I watch it happen this year, I'm just speechless. Yes, this is historically predictable … but wouldn't you expect this year to be significantly different from past elections? This year, aren't memories of a catastrophic recession still fresh in people's minds? Don't voters remember what the Bush years were like? Aren't people paying attention to the progress that Obama's administration has been making in cleaning up after the mess Bush left behind?

Apparently not. If predictions are right, we're about to vote for the same folks who got us into the same disaster — and who have frankly said that they want to take us right back there again — that the Obama administration has been working so hard to get us out of.

Tuesday evening, I'm going to be anxiously watching the election returns, probably staying up late to do so. Between now and then, I'm going to be desperately hoping that the exit polls and predictions are all wrong, and that Democrats will turn out to vote in larger numbers than expected to retain their majorities in Congress.

I know how I'm going to vote on Tuesday. If you're reading this, please join me in voting for as many Democrats as you can. I still believe we can prove the predictions wrong. And that would make me a very happy man.

Invasion of the Kingdom Hall

2010-10-23T10:49:00.000-07:00

I left Mormonism almost ten years ago.

About eight years ago, I was living in an apartment complex on the east side of the Puget Sound when two Mormon sister missionaries knocked on my door asking if anybody in my complex spoke Spanish. I told them I was sure there were – I had been frequently accosted by obnoxiously loud mariachi music coming from one of the neighboring apartments – but even had I wanted to, I wasn't able to tell the missionaries where any Spanish speakers lived. Just because they were my neighbors didn't mean I knew any of them.

And until recently, that's been my only experience with religious salespeople in the last decade.

I've lived in my current residence for five years, and in all that time, was never approached by anyone selling religion until recently. Facetiously, I would ask friends why I wasn't important enough to merit getting visited. I have since learned to be grateful for those years, because this summer and fall, Spanish-speaking Jehovah's Witnesses have started a veritable campaign. Different sets of them have been coming by every few weeks to knock on my door, always (for some reason) asking if anyone in my home speaks Spanish.

The fact that no one does, the fact that I already know all about Jehovah's Witnesses and their teachings, and above all the fact that I have no interest in learning more and have said so clearly and distinctly, none of that helps to stop them from coming back. Instead, each time this happens, they promise they won't come by again, but evidently that only refers to the specific couple that came by on that day, because a few short weeks later, a whole new couple of them will come by to start the routine all over again.

I was patient with them at first, but each time this happens, my patience thins. Significantly.

How the tables have turned. When I was a young Mormon missionary doing the same door-to-door routine in West Germany, I once came to a home where someone had installed a very elaborate brass door-knocker with the words “Keine Zeugen Jehovas” (“No Jehovah's Witnesses”) engraved on the face of it. I thought that was really funny at the time (in part, no doubt, because technically speaking, it didn't apply to me, since I was no Jehovah's Witness). But now that the situation is reversed, I'm beginning to think it might be time to get one of those for myself.

And apparently, judging from recent activity, it would be best to get it engraved in Spanish.

111,111 miles

2010-10-08T06:27:00.000-07:00

Remember when I posted pictures of my odometer at 100,000 miles?

Now we know how long it takes me to drive another 11,111 miles.

Why am I amused by such silliness? I can't explain. After all, if we weren't counting in base 10, there would be nothing to notice. In base 2, it's 11011001000000111, and in base 16, it's 1B207. It's just a number, like any other.

Nevertheless, in another eight months or so, when the odometer hits 123,456, I'll probably do this again. Don't ask me why. Just go with it.

Pictures, as promised

2010-09-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

As mentioned in the previous blog entry, these are some of the pictures from the Sequoia National Park trip.

Remember that you can click on any of these photos to see larger versions of them.

My son's arm is in a sling because he had been in a skateboarding accident right before this trip.

These are the two of us taking pictures of each other, just so there's no question that we're actually on this trip and not just recycling old photos off of the Internet.

It's difficult to see from so far away, but we saw a number of wild animals, including deer and this bear. There were two little bear cubs too, but they didn't show up in any of my photos.

You really can't get a true picture of the size of these trees. They're just so huge. The two pictures above were my attempt to capture both the top and the bottom of the same tree.

My photos don't usually have an artistic look to them, but I liked the way this one turned out.

That small person in the picture is me, believe it or not. Did I mention that these trees are just enormous?

My son and daughter. I did mention how huge these trees are, right?

Another of my attempts at an artistic photographic look

My daughter. This is a fallen tree root, out of which a sapling is growing.

Vera and my son in Crescent Meadow

Another nifty artistic shot. That's my son in the foreground.

A view of the Kings River, which snakes through the Kings Canyon

The Kings River again

Look closely: that's my daughter on the rock.

Various views of a concealed swimming pool along the Kings River

Vera, in my last attempt at photographic artistry

Grizzly Falls

Grizzly Falls again

My son in Grant Grove

An eventful summer with family

2010-09-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

I've already written about the movie premiere I attended, and the Mensa Gathering in Dearborn this summer.

That leaves out a whole lot of memorable trips I took with family this summer, and now that summer is officially over, I realize it's about time I got them written down. And so, in roughly chronological order, and crossing my fingers that I haven't forgotten anything, I bring you:

The Life viewing party

Years ago, the BBC produced, and in the U.S. the Discovery Channel aired, a series called Planet Earth. I mentioned this in my blog at the time, at least briefly. My mother recommended it enthusiastically when it first came to the Discovery Channel, and I agree: it's outstanding. And it looks breathtaking on my HDTV. Back when I first got that series, I showed a couple of episodes to my children. Reactions were mixed: the older two really enjoyed them, and the younger two I think were bored after about thirty minutes.

This summer the people who gave us Planet Earth did another series called Life. My daughter asked if I had seen it, because she wanted to watch it. I was going to buy it anyhow, but knowing that she wanted to watch it with me pretty much sealed that decision. We picked a day that worked for her schedule, she came down with her older brother, and they and Vera and I watched the entire ten-hour series in one day.

Both Planet Earth and Life really are, honestly, mind-blowingly well done. I enjoyed watching them very much, all the more so due to the experience of sharing it with two of my children.

Sequoia National Park

Sometime earlier this year, over dinner with my kids, I asked each of them: “If money and time were no concern, and you could go anywhere or do anything, what would you most like to see or do?”

It was a get-to-know-you question. And to be candid, when I asked it, I was really aiming it at the two younger sons, whom I don't feel I know as well as I would like. But the answer I got back from my daughter was the one that intrigued me.

“Sequoias,” she said. She had seen pictures, but she would really like to see giant trees in real life.

The more I thought about it, the more I began to think, “I can make that happen … and yes, that really would be a great trip.”

(Actually, I don't remember clearly anymore whether she said “redwoods” or “sequoias” because at the time I was conflating them. It wasn't until I got home and started researching details that I understood that Redwood National Park and Sequoia National Park are two different places. I asked her to clarify, and she said she'd be equally happy with either trip. Sequoia National Park is closer to home, so that's where we went.)

I invited all four children. The younger two declined. Someday I am going to find something that they and I like to do equally enthusiastically, but so far, I don't know what that is. (And like I say, that was, frankly, one of the reasons for the question that led to this trip in the first place.) My oldest son and my daughter, on the other hand, who both have a fascination for the natural world and are both adventurous and intellectually curious, were eager to join me. And of course, Vera too, who loves any trip into the great outdoors, couldn't have been kept away from a trip like this for anything.

(My son and my daughter each have an intellectual fascination for the universe around them, and a love of learning and of nature, but in each case, that fascination arises from a different source. I love to watch that in them, and I find the similarities and differences in their perspectives remarkable to observe. Maybe I'll blog about that another time.)

So I made a reservation for four of us at Wuksachi Lodge, and was lucky enough to get what I think was the last reservation available for the days we all had available in our schedules. Originally, I was imagining a camping trip, but on balance, I'm glad we ended up with a room after all.

Sequoia National Park adjoins Kings Canyon National Park, and most of that area is wilderness. Should you wish to do so, you could hike out into open country there and not encounter another human being again for days. We didn't do that. There are also a handful of more populated visitor's centers in the park with hiking trails and dining facilities and such, and we stayed close to those. Next time, now that I know what the park has to offer, I'll know what would be involved in order to come better prepared with food and gear so I'm not dependent on the park's offerings, but on this occasion, I really didn't have any of that in advance. My purpose on this first trip was just to go exploring, to see what's up there.

And there was plenty of exploring to be done. Yes, the populated parts of the park aren't exactly wilderness, but they're still very beautiful. We walked along plenty of trails, and along the way got to see lots of beautiful scenery and the gorgeous trees, some striking waterfalls and even a cave, and the clearest night sky I've seen in years, maybe ever. I'll post pictures in a separate blog entry.

If I have to pick one highlight for this summer, that trip to the sequoias is it. It was a great time with family, the scenery was gorgeous, and the whole experience was just perfect. I'm so glad we did that, and so glad that my daughter had the idea to go.

My sister's visit

My sister and I weren't especially close growing up. I'm very happy that that has changed. We've grown closer as adults as we've found that we have had many life experiences in common, but even so, she lives far away, and I don't get to see her as often as I would like.

She brought her two children to Los Angeles last year, and they and some of my children and Vera and I spent time together at Knott's Berry Farm and Universal Studios Hollywood.

This summer, the three of them came here again. They missed seeing my daughter last year because she was busy working at the Moorpark Zoo, but this year she gave us all a tour of the zoo, which gave my daughter and her cousins a chance to see each other again for the first time in many years.

I had invited all of my kids to spend time with my sister and her kids while they were here. As it turned out, schedules intervened. My oldest son was only available on Sunday, and my youngest was only available on Monday, and both of them wanted to go to Six Flags … so we ended up going two days in a row.

I'm not sure why, but roller coasters and I don't get along, and I find that as I grow older, we enjoy each other's company less and less. I don't know why. It's not just my age, I'm sure, because friends of mine who are older than I am love them. Whatever it is, I chose to sit out about half of the rides that the rest of the family went on. As a result, I was told that I missed out on some excellent ones, but I had about as much fun as I wanted to have, and it was all good. I was happy to be spending time with family, and that's what was most important to me.

The Big Bang Theory Season Three viewing party

Two years ago, when the kids were here for the winter holidays, I figured I'd try sharing a couple of episodes of The Big Bang Theory. Who knows, I thought. They might like it.

To my surprise, like it they did, so much that we spent the entire New Years Day that year watching the whole first season on DVD. My daughter wasn't with us for that holiday, so later we did that all over again so she could watch it too, and we did the same thing when the second season came out the next year.

This year, the third season released — on Blu-ray Disc for the first time by the way &mdash on September 14th. So on September 18th, the very next Saturday, the three sons came down to watch that with me — my daughter is busy with school and work, like I say — and once again we spent all day going through a whole season of that show. I'm delighted that they enjoy it like I do, and that they like to watch it with me.

Conclusion

I feel like I'm missing something that should be included here. As soon as I post this, I'm sure it will occur to me. While I wait to think of it, I'm going to post this, at least, and then I'll post a pile of pictures of us in the Sequoia National Park separately.

As always, there's more to blog about, which I will get to another time.

Happy commuter 2

2010-09-22T15:45:00.000-07:00

Almost exactly a year ago, I had an unbelievably good commute to work.

Some days, L.A. traffic is just unbearable, even in the carpool lane. Other days, it's relatively nice. Granted, it's not astonishingly nice, but it's nice. If nothing else, it starts the day on a positive note, and reminds me why I'm lucky to have a carpool lane sticker on my car.

But when I posted my “Happy commuter” blog entry last year, it was so amazingly clear on the freeway that I simply couldn't believe my eyes, and in a fit of overjoyed euphoria, I felt moved to blog about it to mark the occasion.

At the time, I wasn't really thinking of using that event as a marker to see how long it would take before it happened again, but now that it has, it occurs to me to take note of the length of the interval between such ideal drives to work.

And now I know: it's about a year.

SB 535 passed!

2010-09-03T10:32:00.000-07:00

(Review previous whining about my carpool lane sticker here and here.)

I've learned that California SB 535 was signed into law by the governor earlier this week. That means that my carpool lane sticker is good for another six months, until July 1st, 2011, and so I have at least that much longer to figure out how I'm going to manage my commute.

It also means that I know what's happening after that, at least to some extent. The California Air Review Board website has information on new stickers that will be available starting January 1st, 2012 for 40,000 owners of certain electric or hydrogen-powered vehicles.

That means that for the second half of 2011, I'm going to be woeful and disconsolate and probably working from home a lot.

It also means that I'll be looking to buy a new car sometime in the next year or so — just as soon as they start marketing ones that qualify for the new stickers.

No longer an AG virgin

2010-07-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

Anybody reading my blog is surely already aware of the Mensa gathering that takes place in Los Angeles every February. You probably know that I do my part to help put them on each year, and you might even know that I was a presenter a few years ago. (People still comment about how much they enjoyed the presentations I gave, and still ask me when I'm going to do that again. I don't have plans to do so, but I really like that they remember what I did.)

Putting on our gathering each year is no small effort, but for the purposes of this blog entry it's important to understand that the L.A. gathering is just one of a number of such events that take place around the country, each of which is put together locally and attracts a couple hundred people. By contrast, the national gathering is enormous – I'm told that well over 2,000 people attended this year – and the effort to put that together is correspondingly huge.

For reasons that I only half understand, the national gathering is called an “Annual Gathering” even though the local gatherings are also held annually, and a local gathering – ours and others – is called a “Regional Gathering” even though a single local chapter puts them on, not an entire region. It's a quirk that is easier to accept than to try to fathom or change: a small, local Mensa gathering is an “RG” and a national one is an “AG”.

Before this year, I had never been to an AG. I had heard how much fun they are, but until this year, my work schedule wouldn't permit it. Long story short, some things have changed at work which allowed me to go.

Vera and I arrived a few days ahead of the AG in order to spend time with my parents who live nearby. One highlight of that time was our trip canoeing on the Huron River. The rest of the time the weather was unpleasantly humid, but on this one day it was absolutely perfect, and the river was green and lush and gorgeous. Vera, my mother, and I spent several hours on the water, and despite my gripes that we were spending most of that time canoeing upriver and against the wind, I think we all had a delightful time. I guess I wouldn't be telling the whole story if I didn't mention that our canoe capsized near the end of that trip, but I don't think any of us felt like that detracted from the experience in any way.

Other than that, we spent time talking and eating (Zingerman's! Cottage Inn! Fragels! And the Palm Palace!) and watching movies (Chicago and The Fugitive, both of which I had seen but not since they were first in theaters, and Immortal Beloved, which I hadn't seen but enjoyed) and (what would they do without me?) fixing my parents' computers.

And then … I left for the AG while Vera and my parents spent time together without me. They have told me that they enjoyed that time, that they never ran out of interesting things to do, and especially that Vera and my mother really liked the time they spent getting better acquainted.

When I report on a Mensa gathering, I tend to focus on the speakers, because that's what's most interesting to me. Of course, there are plenty of other activities going on there: games, food, tours of nearby attractions, and so on. At the Los Angeles RG, there are often two or three speakers presenting simultaneously, although generally I don't have a lot of difficulty figuring out which of them I am most interested in hearing. By contrast, since the AG was so much larger than the RG that I'm accustomed to, there were often five or six simultaneous presentations, plus games and other events, and at just about every turn there was a conflict between at least two things that I very much wanted to listen to or take part in.

Three presentations stood out for me as stars of the show:

CSI: Reconstructing the JFK Assassination by Dale K. Myers

Myers has been on television with his computer-generated reconstruction of the Kennedy assassination, but I hadn't seen it. He says that what's on television is just a small part of what he has to show, and what we saw was a full and complete forensic analysis, not only of the event itself, but of the various conspiracy theories that have sprung up since then. Bottom line: yes, Oswald was acting alone. This presentation demonstrated that conclusively. I was completely engrossed by every minute of what Myers had to show us.

The Enola Gay and Hiroshima, A Personal Recollection by Theodore “Dutch” Van Kirk

What must it be like, I wonder, to have been a part of something so momentous, something that literally changed the course of world history? Van Kirk is the last surviving crewmember of the Enola Gay. When might I ever have an experience to listen to an eyewitness talk about this again? Listening to him recount his experiences – stories I'm sure he's told a thousand times in his life – were no less vivid as I heard him tell them here. What was really the most moving part of this for me, however, was the question and answer session, as questioner after questioner thanked him on behalf of family members who were grateful for this act that led to the end of the war. Listening to everyone talk made this event much more personal and meaningful for me, rather than the historical fact that it had been previously. Of all the presentations I saw, this one was the most touching, and the best-attended: it was standing room only in the largest meeting room in the hotel.

Much Ado About Nano and Indistinguishable from Magic by Frank Dolinar

I've heard about nanotechnology. I've never understood really what it is. Until now. This was a mind-blowing window into the present and future of a forthcoming technological revolution, one that got me so excited for the prospects of what the future holds that I now literally want to ditch my current career and start over doing this instead.

Various other presentations were lots of fun too. One called Casino Blackjack for Intelligent Gamblers gave me a lot to think about … and I thought I knew how to play that game! Then, one night at midnight, they showed The Rocky Horror Picture Show, a movie I had watched several times when I was in college, but not since then; the Mensa audience participants made the show just as much fun as I remember (and it's just a little startling to realize how well I remember the lines to that movie all these years later). And then there was a presentation on the history of comic books which I almost passed over, and am glad I didn't; I'm not a comic book collector, so most of it was new for me, and I found it fascinating, both as a history of an industry and an art form, and as a history of American culture and politics.

Being at the AG gave me a chance to meet face-to-face a number of the people at the national Mensa office with whom I interact as a Los Angeles chapter volunteer. Not only that, but there were a number of sessions where those people gave out information that I found useful and/or didn't realize existed. And of course being at the AG also let me meet a number of people with whom I have a common interest; sometimes I was meeting in person people I had known electronically, and sometimes they were people I was meeting for the first time. I enjoyed all of that a great deal.

Now that I've been to my first AG, I have some idea what to expect, and what to do differently when I do this again. I can hardly wait!

“In all this land, how many are there?”

2010-07-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

When film scores are released as limited prints, sometimes it takes months or years for them to sell out, primarily I think because they're being marketed to film music fans, which I suspect is the quintessential niche market.

This morning I learned that Star Trek: The Deluxe Edition – which I reported here in a recent blog entry, and which I had only discovered myself on June 25th, presumably moments after it was released – is already sold out!

I did say it was a great score. But like I say, film music fans are not exactly a numerous group, and the advertising channels for this kind of limited edition aren't exactly prime time news. So it frankly surprises me that it's gone already, so soon.

One hopes that the success of this set of 5,000 will prompt Varese Sarabande to make a second printing available soon. Meanwhile, though, I'm honestly astonished that it sold out like it did, so quickly!

Brian attends a movie premiere

2010-07-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

When I was a child, my parents moved around the country about every four to six years. As an adult, I moved even more often. As a young LDS missionary, I lived in six different residences in 18 months, and I lived at a different address every one to three years from the time I left college until I landed where I am now.

That's one reason why it's a bit startling to realize that I've been in my current residence for more than five years. For me, that's an achievement, and a reason to celebrate.

I like where I am. I like the size and the feel of the space I'm in. I like the neighborhood and the area of Los Angeles that I live in. True, I live on a busy street, and wouldn't mind if it were a little quieter at night, although I'm more or less used to it by now. And I wish I were closer to work, because the commute is just awful, but oh well.

And I really like my neighbors.

I live in a building that comprises four condos or townhouses, which means I have three neighbors who share a building with me. That means it's not the kind of big huge administrative bureaucratic condo complex where nobody knows anybody else. On the contrary, we all know each other, and look out for each other, and it's an arrangement that works very well.

One of my neighbors is a filmmaker. Admittedly, he's probably not a name you know like Steven Spielberg or James Cameron, but he makes a living making movies, and I don't, so I'm envious.

For the last couple of years, he's been working on his latest, and in June, he held the premiere on the grounds of Paramount Pictures Studios.

(Now it's time for a little aside. Not to steal his thunder or anything, but for as long as I've been alive, Paramount Pictures has been a magical place inside my head. Long before I had left my parents house, every Star Trek episode I purchased on VHS video tape in the 1980's had Paramount's address — 5555 Melrose Avenue — printed on the back, and so of course I used to fantasize about what it would be like to visit there someday. Years later, here I was, by special invitation, driving right onto that very lot at that very address. Quite literally, it was a dream come true!)

I enjoyed the movie (although the wish-I-were-a-screenwriter in me would have made a couple of changes in spots), but the most fun for me in all of this has been watching my neighbor since then. Like I say, I envy and admire him for his career, and so I want to hear that this film is a success. And it has been. He tells me that industry response has been very positive, and more pronounced than for any of his previous films. It's an exciting time for him, and I'm happy to hear it.

More whining about L.A. traffic

2010-07-23T15:26:00.000-07:00

My carpool lane sticker will expire at the end of this year.

Pending legislation, considered likely to pass, would extend that another six months, and fortunately, my car qualifies for that small extension.

Certain readers of my blog have expressed little sympathy for my plight. I'm a whiner, they tell me. I note with interest that those who say such things do not drive in Los Angeles. I was visiting Michigan earlier this month, and was frankly shocked at the difference. No traffic congestion anywhere. Anywhere! Here, it's a constant, and it's a nightmare.

Getting to work is bad enough in the carpool lane. I don't know how I'm going to survive once I have to drive in the regular traffic lanes again. Honestly, I don't.

As the deadline approaches, I find myself spending more and more time trying to figure out an alternative plan. I've considered other driving routes. I've looked into public transportation. I've considered purchasing other vehicles, including motorcycles and electric cars. Heck, I've even imagined bicycling to work. Each of these has its advantages, but in the end, none of them is really a workable solution, each for different reasons.

Once I lose that carpool lane sticker though, either I'm going to lose my mind, or something's going to have to change.

I just wish I knew what.

Even more new film music

2010-07-23T14:31:00.000-07:00

Okay so … what new music have I picked up in the last couple of months?

In a blog entry last year, I wrote that the score to Star Trek II saw an expanded CD release. In recent months, this also happened with Star Trek III and with 2009's J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.

In my blog entry about the Star Trek II release, I wrote that my expectations were high, but the result wasn't remarkably better than the CD that had been released previously. My reaction to the Star Trek III expanded release is pretty much the same. On the other hand, the new deluxe edition of 2009's Star Trek score is absolutely gorgeous, and a must-have. Not only the music but the packaging is breathtaking.

(Incidentally, I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but Star Trek Soundtracks is a great site for news and information about Star Trek film and television music.)

My enthusiasm for the 2009's Star Trek score is based not so much on my love of Star Trek. As I've said elsewhere, for me, Star Trek is the original series, the animated series, and the first four and the sixth movies. Of everything else that bears the name, not much impresses me, except that I was pleased with the 2009 movie as a well-done homage, even though that too, I don't hold in the same regard as the original series. Instead, my enthusiasm for this score is based on my appreciation for its composer, Michael Giacchino. I first discovered him when he composed the score for The Incredibles, which is an absolute masterwork. I was pleased when he won the Best Score Oscar^® for Up this year, but The Incredibles really is, in my opinion, his best work, and now, years later, after collecting a lot of his other work, that score is still my favorite.

David Arnold's film score to Independence Day also got an expanded release recently. It's another one that blows me away. I loved the original CD release, and that soundtrack consistently sits near the top of my list of albums on Last.fm. (In fact, it's right at the top as I write this. Frankly, I'm a little surprised. I'd have guessed that Evanescence's The Open Door was still sitting in that spot.) The expanded double-CD release of this score is very nicely done, and a welcome addition to my music library.

Another score that I can't praise effusively enough is John Powell's How To Train Your Dragon. I wrote here in May that I was thinking I ought to buy it. Now that I have, it's on constant rotation on my iPod. It's a fantastic and a beautiful piece of work. (As I mentioned in that same blog entry, so is his score to Bolt, by the way. Get 'em both.)

Other music I've picked up recently has been good too, but not on the same level. I bought the scores to all three of Jerry Goldsmith's Omen movies. At the same time, I also purchased John Williams's A Guide for the Married Man, as I said I would in that same blog entry. More recently, I bought scores to Kubrick's Lolita and Michael Giacchino's video game score for The Lost World: Jurassic Park. I was frankly hoping that each of these would have more of a hold on me than they have. My favorite of all of these is A Guide for the Married Man, which is really cute, especially a track called The Globetrotters. As I listen to this score, I can definitely hear a transition from his earlier Irwin Allen style to the fuller, more mature John Williams of the 1970's. Would I recommend it to someone who wasn't already a Williams fan? Maybe not. Definitely give The Globetrotters a listen though, if you're only going to listen to one track.

Interestingly, as I re-read this blog entry, I realize that I haven't picked up a single bit of music lately that wasn't film music. I need to branch out a bit, evidently, and broaden my horizons!

Has it really been two months?

2010-07-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

I knew it had been a while since last I blogged. I didn't realize it had been two whole months. In that time, a whole bunch of stuff has happened.

In no particular order:

Two of my children had birthdays.
Celebrated Father's Day and Vera's father's birthday.
I got an iPhone 4 and a 3D TV.
I attended the Mensa 2010 Annual Gathering and spent some time visiting my parents.
I attended another concert at the Hollywood Bowl with my Mensa chapter.
I endured online traffic school to keep a lane change violation off my driving record.
Attended a movie premiere, held on the grounds of Paramount Pictures.
Read (well, listened to the book-on-CD of) Richard Dawkins's The Greatest Show On Earth.
Shipped our product at work … sort of.
Bought a pile of new music, some of it more exciting than others.

Most of the people who know me well enough to want to read my blog know most of these stories already, but let's see how many of them I can write up anyhow before July gets away from me too.

Seattle music

2010-05-21T19:30:00.000-07:00

I moved to southern California a decade and a half ago. For the first six years I worked for one employer, and for the last seven I've worked for another. In between, I spent a little less than two years living in and around Seattle. The reasons why are long and complicated, and certain aspects of that adventure I'd just as soon pretend never happened, but some memories of that experience – people I knew there, skills I learned, places I visited – I will treasure all my life.

I'd like to blog about how much I enjoyed sightseeing, learning to sail, going hiking, whale watching with the kids, and so much more, and someday I will, but for now, I just want to talk about how much I enjoyed the local music. Every summer, Seattle's city center is converted into a gigantic festival ground for the Folk Life Festival over Memorial Day weekend and Bumbershoot over the Labor Day weekend, and my memories of those festivals are rich and full. I had such a great time there during those two years, and ever since, every summer, I remember them wistfully and think, “I'm flying up there to attend those next time, for sure!” I did that once, the first summer after I moved back to southern California, but haven't managed it since then. Someday … someday …

Early on while living there, I attended a concert by a group called Children of the Revolution, which was so fantastic that it blew my mind, and which in turn led me to Beth Quist, Geoffrey Castle, and The Guarneri Underground. I have a number of each of their albums, (almost) all of which I continue to enjoy to this day. (My very favorite of all of these: Wander This World by The Guarneri Underground. I saw them in concert when this album was released, and that was a truly awesome show.)

But … well … I've moved away, and lost touch … The Guarneri Underground doesn't exist anymore … and I'm sure some of them have regrouped or done other things, but I don't feel like I'm in the loop about what to watch for, and I miss that. Still, though, I've continued to pay attention as best I can, especially to both Castle and Quist, both of whom, for me, were the standouts of the various performances. Quist has an astonishing voice, and Castle can do things with an electric violin that you would not believe.

While writing this blog entry, I checked Castle's website and noticed that he has two CDs out now that I didn't know about. I've placed an order for them and can hardly wait for them to arrive. But see, this is what I mean about what happens when I live away from the Seattle music scene: albums come out and I miss them if I'm not actively watching for them.

Quist hasn't put out an album of her own in a while, and that's because she's been working on other projects. She was performing in Ka by Cirque Du Soleil in Las Vegas for a while, and I got this close to going to see her in that show, except that by the time I finally got around to making plans to go, I learned that she had moved on.

That's why I was so excited to hear recently that she has released a new, fourth album. It's called New Moon. As before, she released it on the Magnatune label. That's the good news.

The trouble is that when I purchased her first three albums from there, Magnatune had a different business model. The idea was: we don't sell CDs, we just sell the music as downloadable files. So fine, I'm good with that. Unfortunately for me, I was expecting the story to have stayed the same when I went to purchase the new album … but no, as of a couple of months ago, it's all different now. And I don't like it.

Now, Magnatune wants me to buy a three-month membership for $45 – which they would love if I would renew indefinitely. Their claim is that this is what people want, but I'm here to tell you that it's not what I want. I just want to buy the one album and walk away, and I want to do so for what I consider a reasonable CD price of about $15. Unfortunately for me, Magnatune isn't giving me that option, and I don't like the one they are giving me. I don't want to pay $45 for a single CD, and there's nothing else on their site that I urgently want.

So now I'm facing an ethical dilemma. The seller is making me an offer. I can choose to accept or decline it, but I don't really get to change the terms of the deal, much though I would like to. (The “you're supposed to haggle” scene from Monty Python's Life of Brian rings in my ear at this point for some reason.) The only other option they've given me is to sign up for a three-month membership, download the album, and then to cancel and pay nothing within 24 hours if I decide that a membership is not for me.

… which of course is what I did. Deliberately. And I really feel like crap too. Unwilling to spend $45 for one album, I've now gotten it for nothing. And my conscience is really unhappy about this.

What is the ethical response to this situation? Pay the $45 and suck it up? Send $15 to the artist directly? Complain to the merchant and hope that he'll change his ways? (Actually, I did write to state my displeasure, but the response I got was a politely worded statement saying essentially, “Thanks for writing, but this is how we're doing things now.”)

Well, so … my unsatisfied conscience notwithstanding … I love this new album. As with all of her albums, admittedly there are some tracks I don't care for, but the majority of them are outstanding must-haves. Everything that I love about her previous recordings is here in abundance. I recommend this new album very much.

Actually, I recommend all four of them. Just, please, if you're going to get all four of them, don't do what I did. $45 is a reasonable price for the four albums. Pay for 'em. One of us getting away with music without paying for it is bad enough.

Recent movie and music reviews

2010-05-03T09:14:00.000-07:00

We haven't seen a lot of new movies lately, and there isn't a really good reason for that. There have been plenty we've wanted to see, but we've both been kind of busy lately. Vera was especially interested in Shutter Island, and somehow that managed to come and go from theaters before we had a chance to see it.

Saw Alice In Wonderland a couple of times, once just with Vera and once with the kids. Loved it so much I bought the soundtrack. I'm not usually one to go nuts for Danny Elfman, although the limited set of CDs of his that I have I love, especially his score for 1999's Sleepy Hollow. His Alice in Wonderland is a welcome addition to that short list. The movie was delightful too. I'm not sure it's so delightful that I must own it when it comes out, but I enjoyed it enough to recommend it to anyone who hasn't seen it yet.

Also saw How to Train Your Dragon. Same recommendation: liked it enough to recommend it, but not enough to buy it. I had resisted falling overboard for John Powell as a composer until I saw Bolt. (Yes, I who am not an animal lover saw Bolt. And I loved it. Believe it or not.) The John Powell score to that movie is absolutely fantastic, and quickly became one of my favorites. I followed that with his scores to the Bourne trilogy and The Italian Job, all of which I like quite well. While watching Dragon, I was listening to the score, thinking, “Hey, this isn't bad. I might have to get this, depending on who wrote it.” By the end of the film, when I discovered it was another Powell score, I decided it was pretty much inevitable, although at this point I haven't done so yet.

Saw The Wolfman with my oldest. Was hoping for more, although I'm not quite what it was I wanted more of. It had all of the elements of what should have been a great movie, but somehow it just didn't coalesce for me. I don't really know why.

The other movie we watched in a theater not long ago is the Hubble 3D movie, showing at the California Science Center. We've seen several IMAX movies there, and whenever we have, there have always been a few dozen people in the theater with us (even though the theater seats a couple hundred). I was completely unprepared for the very, very long line of people queued up outside the theater doors and stretching out into the parking lot. If I had had any clue at all that that was how it was going to be, I wouldn't have waited until the last minute to get our group in that line. As it was, we were enchanted by the Science Center's new Ecosystems exhibit. If you have a chance to go see it, you must. It's outstanding! But because we were in that exhibit until the last minute, we ended up at the tail end of the line for the movie, even though we had purchased tickets a couple hours before. Bummer. So we ended up seeing it from the very edge of the seating chart, which was less thrilling than I would have liked. Still, the movie was also outstanding, and well worth going out of your way to see. I'm not at all surprised that the line was so long, now that I know what it's like.

As for movies not in theaters, not so long ago, I rented 1977's Fun with Dick and Jane from Netflix. I remember liking this movie when it was in theaters, although that was so long ago that I didn't remember it well and wanted to refresh my memory. Vera had seen the 2005 remake, but I hadn't, and she didn't care for it. However, to my delighted surprise, she and I both enjoyed seeing the original. It was especially fun for me to recognize that parts of it were filmed not far from where I live now, and some of those parts of town haven't changed to this day.

More recently, we also rented Up in the Air. Would someone please tell me what was Oscar-worthy about this movie? Where did all of those nominations come from? Don't get me wrong, it's not bad, but it's not great, and I simply do not see how it deserves all the critical and Academy acclaim that it received.

And then there's 1967's A Guide for the Married Man. I put this one on my Netflix queue partly for the impressive cast list, but mainly because it keeps showing up whenever I go to my favorite Internet film score vendors' web sites looking for recommendations by John Williams. It arrived, and we put it into the DVD player not really knowing what to expect, and were both surprised and delighted. This movie is great fun, and highly recommended. And now that I've heard it, I'm definitely putting in an order for this one next time I'm shopping for film score CDs.

Also, while I'm mentioning talking about new music acquisitions, the following recent additions to my library are good ones:

One of my musical friends turned me on to The Corrs recently. Yes, I know, you're asking “Um, who?” I did that too, until I listened to Breathless, and realized that this is one of those songs that you know, even though you don't know that you know it. I purchased their “Ultimate Collection”, and although not every song is as good as every other one, the ones that are outstanding make the whole thing worth getting.
The same friend also sent me two David Benoit CDs. At her recommendation, I already had two by The Benoit/Freeman Project, which means that I don't have a lot of Benoit in my collection. The two new ones are great though, especially one from 2003 called Right Here, Right Now.
Two of my favorite artists released singles on iTunes recently, and both are must-haves. Evanescence released Together Again, apparently a leftover from The Open Door, one of my very most favorite albums, and Orianthi released one called Shut Up & Kiss Me, apparently a sneak preview of her next album, whenever that's going to be. I've mentioned that I went wild for her Violent Journey CD, but apparently haven't mentioned here that I'm equally in love with her more recent Believe CD. Add to that this new Shut Up & Kiss Me single and also a track from the Bratz soundtrack called Now or Never, and I'm a happy music listener.
And finally, most recently, I also picked up James Horner's score to 1989's Glory. Horner is another composer I'm not usually wild about, as I've mentioned previously, but this is a welcome exception to the rule. My very favorites by him are Apollo 13 and Titanic, followed closely by Star Trek II. I've got others by him that I'm less wild about, but Glory is quickly becoming another high-on-the-list favorite. I'm not sure why I waited so long to pick this one up, but now that I have, I'm very glad I finally did!

President Obama at Michigan Commencement

2010-05-03T08:02:00.000-07:00

(Oh dear. He's talking politics again. Someone reading this is going to be offended. If that's you, turn away now.)

When he was campaigning, there was “The Official Barack Obama Video Podcast”. I loved that podcast. When he was elected, I signed up for “President Obama's Weekly Address”. But that wasn't enough for me, so I signed up for the “White House Speeches” podcast too.

The weekly address is a short, five-minute podcast, whereas the speeches are much longer, and I suppose if you're not a news junkie or an Obama fan, it probably seems like a lot of time to spend listening to one guy. But I don't consider it a chore or a sacrifice. I love this guy, and I love listening to what he has to say. I said that when he was campaigning, and I still feel that way today.

Recently, he gave a speech at the University of Michigan commencement in Ann Arbor. If you are willing to give it a listen, I'd like to recommend it. I'm admittedly heavily biased, but I thought it was one of his best. Take half an hour out of your day. It's worth it.

Periodontics: the key to the mysteries of the universe

2010-04-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

I have the greatest dentist in the world. And I mean that sincerely.

I've been to plenty of dentists in my life, enough to know the keepers from the rest, and when she was recommended by a coworker almost seven years ago, I quickly saw that she was the one for me.

Having a good dentist is important, especially for me. My teeth are not a pretty sight. Over the course of my life, I've suffered through: five years of braces as a teenager; maxillofacial surgery, also as a teenager, to correct an overbite (among other things); severely recessed gums resulting in periodontal surgery in 2001 in which tissue was scraped from the roof of my mouth and grafted onto my gumline, and which was, yes, at least as painful as you're thinking it probably must have been; as well as the usual spate of cavities, more than I think are typical for a man my age. In addition to all of this, my dentist has been saying for a while now that I must be grinding my teeth, so early this year she fitted me with a nighttime occlusal guard, which is a piece of plastic that sits on my teeth to keep them out of contact while I sleep.

Except for being noticeably overweight, and except for still suffering from acne at the age of 45 (my parents promised I'd outgrow that!), I'm in reasonably good health. (Whenever I have my blood pressure checked, nurses always comment how good the readings are, and if I ask why that's noteworthy, they'll comment how unusual it is to find someone with normal blood pressure. Go figure.) I guess everybody needs an affliction or two to keep them humble. But as if struggling with weight and acne aren't enough, why my teeth, lord, why??

Earlier this year, my dentist suggested I make an appointment with a periodontist. I trust my dentist, but didn't know why this was necessary. As far as I was aware, the periodontal surgery in 2001 was a success, and my dentist had been keeping my teeth and gums healthy four times a year ever since. Wasn't I pretty much done with periodontics by this point?

But I made the appointment and showed up anyhow, not really sure what I was doing there. I'm so glad I did, because the periodontist shed so much light on so many things. All of those questions about why this was happening to me – why the receding gums, the overbite, the surgeries? – all make so much sense now.

As I understand what he told me, it all starts with genetics. My dad is a lot taller than my mom, which resulted in a genetic mismatch in my teeth and jawbones, which resulted not only in teeth that were so bad that they required five years of orthodontics, but also resulted in an overbite that needed surgery to correct.

(Somewhat grotesque aside: that surgery as a teenager involved putting me under anesthesia, and while I was out, the surgeon opened up my face, cut my jawbones apart, set them in place differently, and wired them shut. This happened during the summer, and my oldest friends will remember that when I started back to school that year, my mouth was still wired shut while the jawbones grew back together. Meanwhile, from then on, and for the rest of my life, x-rays of my teeth show little wire staples inside the jawbones where the surgeon left them to keep the bones in place while they recovered from all of that. Every time I have started with a new dentist, the dentist takes x-rays, sees those staples, and I have to tell this story all over again.)

Well, the surgery to correct the overbite also changed the way my teeth and jaws connect to each other, which he says is exactly why I've been grinding my teeth ever since, which in turn is why my gums have receded so badly over the years. Evidently I've been grinding my whole adult life, not just in recent years, and the periodontist patiently explained to me how grinding one's teeth is a direct cause of receding gums.

Eureka! I understand now! I walked out of that appointment feeling so enlightened, because now my entire dental past suddenly makes sense. Until that point, I really didn't understand any of this. It all seemed like an unjust universe capriciously choosing to afflict me with undeserved dental woes. Now I understand that it's all genetics and it's all logical and it all fits together now in my head.

Well, at least the concepts do, even if my teeth still don't exactly.

Mensa Regional Gathering and February recap

2010-02-28T19:42:00.000-08:00

So I see that I have let another month go by with barely a blog entry from me. It's time once again to recap another month.

The biggest thing to happen this month was the Los Angeles Mensa Regional Gathering (hereafter: “RG”), four days packed with events and speakers of all kinds. As I mentioned previously, my oldest son attended this with me, and he enjoyed it too.

The single best speaker at this year's RG, hands down, was JPL scientist Marc Rayman. Both my son and I were spellbound through his presentation about a NASA mission to the asteroid belt, and my son even commented on his Facebook page that this talk helped to cement his decision to major in astrophysics. (Those of you who have been paying attention to my blog for a while will remember that my son had been planning to go into music. Plans have changed.)

For me, the second most memorable part of the RG was the cheese tasting. Every year at the RG, there are tastings of various things, usually chocolate and cheese at least, occasionally also beer and wine, and this year we also did tea, tequila and ethnic chips. I had never done a tasting at an RG before, and decided that the description for the cheese tasting sounded much too inviting to pass up. I had no idea, going into it, just how true that was going to be.

People have pointed out to me that it's kind of obvious when I'm enjoying my food, because I'll make satisfied happy noises when I'm eating. I try to keep my happy sounds to myself as much as possible, since otherwise I risk embarrassing myself in front of my dining companions – but at this cheese tasting event, just about everybody in the room found out that I have that tendency, because I was making sounds as I was tasting those cheeses that were positively orgasmic. Michael Wong, who led the cheese tasting, brought in a couple dozen of the most amazing European cheeses, most of which – (there were admittedly a couple of exceptions that I didn't care for) – were so outstandingly good that I couldn't help myself.

My third favorite event would have to be the hour of Carnelli that I participated in. Carnelli is my favorite Mensa game, and unfortunately there were only two hours of it scheduled at this year's RG. I managed to join one of them, which was not easy considering how much else there was going on throughout the RG that I also wanted to do. I'd hate to have missed out altogether; I only ever see this game played at the RG, which means that I only get to play it once a year, so if I had missed it this time around, I'd have to wait another entire year for it to come around again.

(So … what is Carnelli, you ask? It's difficult to explain. There's a Wikipedia article that explains it, but I don't think even that page really captures the thrill of playing this game. It's not for everyone, but it definitely appeals to me. I'm good at it, just not quite good enough to win against the folks who play this game along with me at the RG. But I enjoy the challenge of the competition anyhow.)

(I can think of a friend or two who would totally rock at this game, by the way, if I could get either of them into a round of it with me, and who, I'm sure, would probably beat me at it pretty quickly too. Dave and Kathi, I'm looking at the two of you!)

There were a couple of presenters I was really looking forward to who canceled at the last minute. In particular, I was really anxious to hear the California director of American Atheists, and I spoke with a number of other attendees who were looking forward to hearing him too. Reportedly, he has promised to make up for his last-minute cancellation by speaking to us next year, and I'm going to make sure that the RG planning committee doesn't let him get away.

As you can see from the program schedule for the RG, there really was a very full program, and I found that there were very few occasions during the weekend when there wasn't something I very much wanted to participate in. I think that's a tribute to the very energetic and efficient planning committee we had this year. (Okay, yes, I'm on the planning committee, so in a sense I'm guilty of patting myself on the back here, sort of, except that I'm really not, because so much of what made this year's RG so great was the phenomenal work of people on the committee other than me.)

So that's the Regional Gathering. Like I say, that was the major highlight for the month. There were other notable happenings in February too though. Hopefully I'm not forgetting too many of them in the following list:

My daughter has been learning a lot in her college classes, not just about animals, but about their environments and habitats and so on, and she has become a very vocal advocate for issues that affect wildlife, including global warming and habitat encroachment. Last weekend, she and I were talking about these subjects, during which I mentioned that I've been a member of the Sierra Club for a number of years, and also that I thought she'd really enjoy learning more about them, because I get the feeling that a lot of her views on the environment align with theirs. I could be wrong – it's possible that the Sierra Club will turn out to be somewhat more to the left on these issues than my daughter is – but even if that's the case, I still think she'll enjoy learning about it. Either way, I offered to give her a membership for a year so she could see what the Sierra Club is all about. She said she'd like that, so I signed her up. If nothing else, I'm hopeful that she'll see one of their many trips to state and national parks and want to go. I'd enjoy sharing a trip like that with her.

Every summer, the Los Angeles Mensa chapter buys tickets to a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, which are always fantastic. I've blogged about them here before. Two or three years ago, we attended a Tchaikovsky concert there, and the guest pianist was Gabriela Montero, a name I had never heard before, but who quickly became a favorite artist in my classical music library. I went right home and bought all of her albums, all of which are not just great, but beyond outstanding. So, that year, never knowing what to get my parents for Christmas, I gave them (among other things) one of Montero's CD's. Turns out, my mom loved it and wanted more, so I got her several more this past Christmas. Well, this weekend I got an email from my mom who says that she and my dad went to see Montero in concert. My mom wrote, “She played with so much passion, sensitivity and skill, better than any of the more famous pianists by whom we have the same piece recorded on CD's. We had a fabulous evening. Thanks for introducing us to Gabriela Montero.” I really like sharing my music with others, and I'm really happy that my parents like her as much as I do.

Speaking of buying gifts for people, Vera isn't easy to shop for, but I had a brainstorm for Valentine's Day and surprised her by fixing up her bicycle. It has needed a good going-over for a while now. She has been complaining that the gears are harder to shift than they should be, and other bits and pieces of the bike are getting old. So I took the bike in to the shop in our neighborhood, told them to clean, upgrade and replace the gears, the tires, the grips, and so on. I almost got away with it too, except that she went for a bike ride the day before Valentine's Day. Still, she very much liked the surprise, and I was pleased with myself for coming up with something all by myself out of the ordinary that I knew she needed and would benefit from. The problem now is that she says she can go twice as fast on the bike now, which means that I've really shot myself in the foot, because next time we go out for a bike ride together, it's going to be that much harder for me to keep up with her.

Otherwise? Work, work, and more work; it's the time of year once again when the workload accelerates until we ship, and there were several days this month, especially recently, which have been especially overwhelming. I enjoyed the Super Bowl very much and bits of the Olympics too (of which I didn't watch as much as I would have liked). Got my tax refund back, which paid off a pile of bills that needed paying. Tonight marks six years since Vera and I first met; somehow, though, we never quite got around to planning a celebration for this anniversary. My car turned over 100,000 miles. I got a delightful surprise phone call from my old friend Marc, a Mormon missionary companion from back in the day, who called just because we haven't spoken in quite a long time, and he wanted to keep in touch. And the project I mentioned, going through my pile of old cassette tapes and digitizing whatever is worth saving, continues apace. I've found some fun treasures in that pile so far, with more to come as I proceed.

That pretty much covers my February, unless I'm forgetting something, which wouldn't surprise me. If I am, well, blog entries are free, and tomorrow is another day.

100,000 miles

2010-02-10T12:23:00.000-08:00

I mentioned in my last post that my car was about to turn 100,000.

Well, yesterday on my way to work, it finally did, and I have pictures to prove it:

Too bad I don't have one of the newer iPhones that take videos, or I'd have been able to capture the odometer turning over. Oh well!

January recap

2010-01-30T20:21:00.001-08:00

Before the month gets away from me, there are a handful of newsworthy items worth recording. None of them is quite long enough to be a whole blog entry of its own, so I guess I'll just jumble them all together into one long recap of the whole month. Let's hope I don't forget anything. Oh well … if I do, blog posts are free, and I can always start another one.

Raumschiff Enterprise

In one of my last blog entries, I mentioned how much I was going to enjoy digitizing German Star Trek episodes and listening to them again. That project has finished, more or less, and I now have all 37 episodes (all the ones I have on tape, that is) converted to iTunes digital audio files. As I expected, listening to them again after all these years has been great fun.

Audiobooks

I've discussed here before about how I enjoy checking out books on CD from the library to ease the pain of driving to and from work in congested Los Angeles freeway traffic. Not long ago I checked out George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, and more recently, Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was a book I would swear I read in high school. I have a distinct memory of doing so. But recently I was reminded that I really didn't remember the story all that well, and wanted to refresh my memory of it. After listening to it, I'm doubting my memory of ever having read it, because that story is just so emotionally gripping that I can't imagine how I could have read it and not remembered it. Maybe I just wasn't mature enough at the time to have really comprehended what I was reading. I don't know. If I did read it back then, it didn't make the same deep impression on me that it made this time around.

Animal Farm, by contrast, was a book I remember others reading when I was in school, but I knew that I hadn't read it. It and Nineteen Eighty-Four came bundled together as part of the same collection on CD, so I listened to that one too, to get a sense of what it was about that I didn't really have. I enjoyed it very much, both as thought-provoking parable and admirably crafted storytelling.

I don't remember how I got introduced to Stanley Kubrick's Lolita – I just seem to have always known that movie and liked it very much – but hadn't ever read the book it was based on. A friend suggested it recently as my next book on CD, but it took a while to arrive because of the huge number of holds on it at the L.A. library; and when it finally arrived, predictably, someone else had a hold on it, so I never got to finish it. I got two-thirds of the way through it before I had to give it back. It is beautifully written and narrated, and I was very much enjoying it while it lasted; now I'm going to have to put myself back in the hold queue to find out how it ends.

Mensa Regional Gathering

I've also written here in the past about my work with the L.A. Regional Gathering every year in February. I guess I neglected to blog about the fact that two of my kids joined me for the one we did a year ago. (Read my son's rebuttal of one of the presenters here. True, his blog entry isn't exactly a thumbs-up, but that's because he very much disagreed with this particular presenter and wanted to say so. Despite that, both children told me they enjoyed the experience overall.)

This year's RG is coming around again, only two weeks from now, and my son will join me again this year. My daughter, as I've mentioned, has a school and work schedule that takes up all of her time, so she won't be able to join us this time. I almost got one of my other sons to come this year, but not quite.

Putting on the RG is a big job, and fortunately there are a lot of us working together to make it happen. Still, lately, I've been spending a lot of time putting the website together, now that we know who all of the speakers are going to be and what the schedule will look like. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to do it, but it is a time-consuming activity. What's nice about my share of the responsibilities, though, is that I do my part before (putting the website together) and after (acting as treasurer and balancing the checkbook) so that during the RG, for the most part, I can relax and enjoy it.

Sourdough waffles

Vera occasionally turns into a woman on a mission, a woman possessed.

Years ago, her Yoga class was treated to some very delicious waffles – but not just any waffles, these were sourdough waffles. This month – I'm not sure why – she found herself hankering for them, went online to find a recipe, figured out how to make sourdough starter – from scratch! – and has been making sourdough waffles like a madwoman.

It has been fun to watch her going all out over this project. When she bakes them, the smell of sourdough fills the whole house, and the result has been delicious.

Bruce Broughton Double Feature

Does anybody remember 1998's Lost In Space movie? Anyone? At all?

No, I suppose not. I do, though. I enjoy it, though not without reservation; it starts out great but gets weirder and weirder as it progresses, and I'm not happy with the ending at all. I suspect I'm probably the only person reading this who actually has a copy of this movie in his DVD collection.

Here's what's most remarkable about that movie though. I saw it in theaters when it first came out, and the film score made no impression on me at all. Then I bought the movie on DVD, and the score still made no impression on me. And yet, folks on my film music discussion list (which discontinued this month, by the way, after 16 years in operation – sob!) were gushing about this score at the time, about how terrific it was. I couldn't understand why they were saying that, because it just didn't even register with me as I was watching the movie.

But I bought the soundtrack CD anyhow, based on their glowing recommendation. And you know what? It's freaking amazing! I eventually figured out that the reason why it doesn't register with me while I'm watching the movie is because, inexplicably, the score is mixed so far into the background that you can't hear any of it! But when listened to on its own, the score is remarkably beautiful.

The score was written by Bruce Broughton, a composer who has done a large number of films that I've seen or at least heard of, and yet, even despite how I love his Lost in Space score, he hasn't really been on my radar until recently. A “best-of” selection of his work was published as a collection of five CDs, produced in 1999 and now out of print. A couple of years ago, I started fishing for these on eBay, and managed to buy three of the five, but the last two, a double-CD called Double Feature, is extremely rare and difficult to find. One of my most reliable eBay suppliers said I'd need to wait a long time to find it, and he was right. But this month, it finally showed up, and at a price I was very happy with. Now my five-CD set of Bruce Broughton's 1999 best-of collection is complete. Whee!

Seriously though: he's a great composer, very much fun to listen to. Why he isn't better known, I haven't a clue. He certainly deserves to be.

Other film music CDs

While on the subject of film music CDs, I picked up several more this week: two George Duning scores, two Christopher Young scores, the expanded score to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom – which completes my collection of the expanded scores to the four Indiana Jones movies – and Jerry Goldsmith's Escape from the Planet of the Apes, which I didn't realize until this week had had a CD release.

All of this was prompted when a friend gushed about the movie Bell, Book and Candle on Facebook recently, prompting me to think, “I wonder what else there is by George Duning that I can add to my collection.” One thing led to another, and now I have six more soundtracks in my collection.

Children's birthdays

Two of my children have birthdays in January, so I took everybody out for dinner. One wanted Red Lobster, the other wanted Macaroni Grill.

On one of those occasions, we went to see Avatar again, again in 3-D, and again we tried to buy IMAX tickets and found the theater sold out. It was almost an exact replay of the last time we tried to see that movie. I understand that it's breaking all box office records and all, but I do hope that interest wanes long enough for me to see it on an IMAX screen at least once! However, having seen it twice now, I think that's probably enough for me, so I probably won't try for the IMAX showing a third time.

It's rainstorm season again

Last year about this time, I wrote that January and February are the time of year when Los Angeles expects heavy rainfall. At the same time, I wrote that the rainstorms that year flooded the deck area on the roof where I like to barbecue. As I wrote then, two years ago I had a plumber clear that rooftop drain to make sure it would drain cleanly, then last year I learned that that wasn't enough, that I have to clear leaves and debris from the mouth of the drain too. (Yes, I know what you're thinking: “Well, duh!”)

Well, it rained pretty much constantly all during the week of January 18th, and, nervous about the chance of a repeat of the flooding or near-flooding from last year and the year before, I went up onto the roof each day to make sure that water was draining correctly. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. And each day, the downpour was draining just like it should.

So by Friday and Saturday, I finally decided, “It's working fine. I can stop worrying. I can relax about this.” And so I didn't see a need to go up there to check things out.

Starting Saturday and continuing through the weekend, the weather was beautiful, the skies were blue, and the weather was ideal. Vera and I went out to enjoy it.

Late on Sunday, we noticed a (fortunately, small) water-damage stain on the ceiling below that rooftop deck. “Is that new?” we asked each other. We decided that we just must have not noticed it before.

Well, surprise!

Monday morning – don't ask me why – I went up to check on it again … and found a lake of water still pooled on the roof. Mind you, it must have been there all day Saturday and Sunday too, draining very, very slowly if at all. No wonder there's now a water stain on the ceiling: the water must have been very deep at some point, which would have caused it to leak around the rim of the watertight surface they put there two years ago, and would have leaked through to the ceiling below. I'm lucky it wasn't any worse than it was.

But because I was scheduled for a dentist appointment that morning, I couldn't really spend time on it right then, and because it was supposed to start raining again early Tuesday morning, the only real choice I had was to buy a powered drain snake at The Home Depot during the day and snake the drain in the dark when I got home from work that evening. Vera helped me, and we got the job done, but I was cold and exhausted when it was all over. My back and legs were in great pain the next morning, and I'm only just now feeling like I've finally recovered from that.

I'm glad I own a good long outdoor drain snake now. I have a feeling this will happen again from time to time, and now I'll be ready for it when it does.

Stomp

Long story short: with grateful thanks to the undeserved generosity of a Mensa friend, Vera and I were able to see Stomp at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood this past week – from the third row, a few short feet from the performance!

I wasn't familiar with this show, but Vera had seen it years ago and was looking forward to seeing again. I really had very little idea what I was in for, but absolutely had a blast. What a great, memorable, and very delightful show!

My car is turning 100,000

Today, my Honda Civic Hybrid needed an oil change, and the shop told me that it also needed new spark plugs and that a bushing in the left-front suspension had broken and needed to be replaced. This took several hours, and as you might expect, cost several hundred dollars.

Now, when I bought that car, I paid extra for a 100,000-mile warranty, and since the car has traveled almost but not quite that far, I figured it couldn't hurt to ask if the bushing repair was covered under warranty. I fully expected the service guy to tell me that no, it's just normal wear and tear, not something a warranty covers – but to my delighted surprise, he checked my car in his computer and found that yes, in fact, that part is covered by the warranty – which wouldn't be true in another 5,000 miles – and he took time to rewrite the repair bill so that that whole expense was covered. I'm glad I asked! And I'm glad that he didn't just blow me off, but took the time to do the right thing. Because I thought to ask about that, and because he took the time to find the answer, the repair bill dropped by about $250. Sweet!

I have a hard time believing that I've driven that car 100,000 miles. That's four times around the world! But I have maintained it well, and it has treated me well, and I'm very happy.

It seems like only yesterday when I bought that car. But in truth, it has been a while longer than I realize. I still have pictures from 2003 of my then-brand-new car, and that was so long ago that I was still parting my hair on one side.

Herewith, a blast from my hairstyling past:

This was my first and only brand-new car, by the way. I've owned three cars in my life, and the first two were both purchased used. This was the first time I decided to splurge and buy a car that would be mine, all mine, and nobody else's.

Kids for the Holidays, 2009

2009-12-31T10:53:00.000-08:00

My children spent Christmas week with me this year. And it went by way too fast.

As I've written in this space in years past, it's a bit of a challenge finding things they all like to do, although this time, two of them came armed with definite requests. One wanted to visit Griffith Observatory, and another wanted to visit the Aquarium of the Pacific. We also visited the California Science Center again, which was my idea.

I hadn't been to the observatory since it reopened after a lengthy renovation, back in late 2006. At that time, crowds were huge because it had been closed for several years. Now, though, it's no longer so crowded, so we were able to see it at our own pace, and take our time. Unfortunately, the two younger children lost interest before the rest of us did, but despite grumpy requests to go home we stayed anyway, among other reasons because some of us wanted to look through the big telescope there – but I was kind of disappointed once we got to look through it to find that it was pointed at the moon. I was hoping to see a planet or a nebula or something; I've seen the moon before. But oh well, I still enjoyed being there.

I hadn't been to the Aquarium in quite a while either – it's probably been the same three years or so since Vera and I were there last, although I can't remember exactly when that was. We spent most of the day there, punctuated by lunch across the street at Bubba Gump, and from what I could tell, all six of us enjoyed that visit very much. My oldest kept asking me to pick a favorite animal at the aquarium, and I just couldn't. There's so much to see there, and all of it is remarkable. How can I pick just one?

Last year I took the kids out for Thai food at Lannathai, a favorite restaurant in my neighborhood, and all of them loved it. I tried to take them there for lunch on the 24th, thinking, “It's not Christmas Eve yet; some restaurants are still open,” but no, this place wasn't open even for lunch. By contrast, Tony Roma's was open for dinner that night; go figure. (I even managed to get $20 off our bill – score!) My sons and I love to eat a full plate of ribs, so that was a good night.

I planned a big barbecue feast Christmas Day (much like I had done two years before), with steaks, hamburgers, polish sausages, and lots and lots and lots of grilled shrimp. Every restaurant in town might be closed on Christmas Day, even the Thai restaurant, but Brian's Rooftop Barbecue is open for business, at least for my family.

Vera had to work for part of that week, so we arranged some of our outings around her schedule. In particular, this means we waited until Friday to see the movie Avatar so that she could join us. We were aiming for the IMAX showing in 3D at 9:45 in the morning, thinking, “This is early enough in the day, and the movie has been out a week already, so surely the theater won't be too crowded.” To our surprise, by the time we got there at 9:30am, the showing was completely sold out, so we settled for a non-IMAX showing, still in 3D, an hour and a half later. I expect that anybody reading this will have seen the movie by now, but if you haven't, you should. All of us were blown away by it. Highly recommended.

Earlier in the week, on a day when Vera had to work, we went to see 2012. Even though it's been out for a while, none of us had seen it. I've heard mixed reviews, but actually, it's really good, as long as you're not expecting Shakespeare. Special effects are what the movie is all about, of course, and it delivers in abundance. As a pleasant bonus, the soundtrack CD is quite good too. I got introduced to composer Harald Kloser when I fell in love with the movie The Thirteenth Floor, which he scored. Since then I've bought a couple of his other movie scores and wasn't quite as impressed, but his score for 2012 is terrific and gets an enthusiastic thumbs-up from me.

Speaking of movies, we watched a few of them at home during that week. I talked everybody into watching this year's Star Trek movie, which I think we all enjoyed, and which, together with a discussion with my oldest son about racial tensions in the 1960's, led to showing some of the original series (now on Blu-ray Disc!!), after which he posted on his Facebook page, “It's happening... I'm... I'm... enjoying Star Trek episodes....” (Needless to say, I was happy to read that!) Then I showed him Total Recall, which he called “an epically mind-boggling film” on his Facebook page, which I enjoyed reading too.

But the really big hit from my home video collection was The Fifth Element, which is one of my favorites, but which none of them had ever seen. The younger two didn't join us for Total Recall, probably because of its R rating, but The Fifth Element (which is PG-13) kept everybody entertained the whole time, which I was glad to see.

I think that's it. It was a quieter holiday than some of the past holidays have been, and like I say, it went by far too quickly. But it was good to have my children close to me, even if just for a week. It was a good way to end the year.

A plethora of dusty cassette tapes

2009-12-28T15:11:00.001-08:00

You've read (here and here) about my German Star Trek audiotapes. I'm pretty sure that, in passing, I've mentioned that I wished I had a way to convert them to something I can play on my iPod or in my car.

Well, now I can.

When I was very young, my parents bought me a cassette tape recorder. I must have been about eight or ten years old. Once upon a time, tape recorders that were five or six inches wide, eight or nine inches long, and a couple of inches tall were considered “portable”. And this was one of those. I remember spending hours recording the voices of myself and my friends with it years and years ago.

Decades later, several years ago, my mom found those tapes in storage in her basement and returned them to me. I listened to them only once – I had a tape deck in my car at the time, which vehicle has since been totalled, and I haven't had a tape player since; besides which, these tapes were so old that I was nervous about playing them even that one time, for fear of breaking them, because they were so brittle with age. It is remarkable to me just how, sometimes, sights, sounds, smells, and being in certain places can be instantly familiar after many long years have gone by. This was that kind of experience.

Since then, I've been looking for a tape deck that I can plug into my computer so that I can digitize all of these things, so that I can listen to them without fear of breaking them. Recently, I found the perfect thing: it's a tape deck the size of a CD-ROM drive that plugs into an expansion bay in my computer. With that, together with good recording software – (personally, I'm a fan of the suite of Nero products, but of course, there are plenty of options out there) – I have what I need to make that dream a reality.

And so I have dusted off all of the cassettes I own but haven't listened to in years, most of which have been in storage boxes in a cubbyhole under the stairs. Now that I look at them all together in one place, I see that I have a much larger collection of them than I realized I had.

Since most of them are not labeled, I don't quite remember what they represent. I'm going through them one at a time, trying to figure out what's on them and why I thought I wanted to keep them.

As it turns out, many of them are turning out to be collections of recorded music that I used to listen to while commuting, back in the days when I drove a car with a tape deck and no CD player. For the most part, those tapes aren't worth keeping, since any music on them is now in my CD collection and on my iPod.

On the other hand, certain other tapes in that collection have been happy rediscoveries. Not only can I listen to the recordings I made as a child, not only can I hear my German Star Trek episodes again, but I also have a number of Richard Bach's books read by the author and by his then-wife which have never been released on CD (to my knowledge), so now I can listen to those again too. (Despite their New-Age-y flavor, I very much enjoy his books, especially The Bridge Across Forever.)

Most touching of all, meanwhile, is an all-too-short snippet of a recording I made of my two oldest children, apparently about 17 or 18 years ago, at a time when they were about two or three and about four or five. Their voices are absolutely adorable. I remember vividly where we were when I made that recording, although I don't quite remember why. It was just a quick test of my recording equipment, not something I intended to keep, evidently. Now, all these years later, I'm so very glad I still have that, although it makes me wish I had recorded their voices a lot more frequently over the years, because it's a bit sad that that's all I have.

My parents had more foresight in this regard than I had. My parents recorded their children for a few minutes each year at Christmas, resulting in a verbal history of each of us as we grew up, and somewhere in my dusty collection of cassette tapes is a copy of that recording. Once I figure out which cassette that is, I'm going to digitize it too, and then send CD's of it to my parents and siblings.

At long last, a German-language Region 1 audio track!

2009-12-06T15:02:00.000-08:00

In a recent blog entry, I mentioned that I speak fluent German – the result, among other things, of having lived there for a year or two back in the mid-1980's.

In addition to German, I've spent time trying to get a grasp of both Danish and Spanish, though not with a whole lot of success. I've got dictionaries, I've got instructional audio CDs, I've even got short novels and comic books … but don't think that means you can start a conversation with me in either language!

At the same time, I also blogged that I have audio and video tapes of some of the original series Star Trek episodes in German. Those of you who aren't Star Trek fans, please don't fade out on me here. I promise: this blog entry isn't really about Star Trek. Not much, anyway. It's really more about my desire to stay proficient in my various foreign languages, especially German.

I've found that Star Trek in German is a great way to keep my language skills sharp. Granted, I'm sure I won't ever have reason to say “Set phasers on stun” in a German conversation, but there's still plenty of real-life conversational German in those episodes, and I find that a helpful way to keep the language alive in my brain.

Regrettably, over here in Region 1, nearly every DVD that's available for sale has audio tracks in English … and if there are any other audio tracks, the most one can hope for is Spanish and maybe French. It's nearly impossible to find movies with German audio tracks, except for movies like Das Boot that were originally made in German.

So, if I'm going to get German-language Star Trek DVDs, pretty much my only option is to buy them from Region 2. That's not really a problem though. Sure, I live in Region 1, but I can play Region 2 DVDs with little difficulty.

When Vera and I visited Scandinavia back in 2006, I bought a copy of The Incredibles (which was then and is now one of my favorite movies of all time) with Danish and Norwegian language tracks, thinking that if I brought it home and played it, I could use it as a way of learning and practicing my Danish. No such luck. The dialog races by so quickly that it's simply impossible to hear the words as they go zooming past.

Still, that plan works pretty well for a language I already know well enough to speak conversationally, which means German. And so I'd love to buy Region 2 DVDs of the original Star Trek from Europe. However, that search hasn't been going well. I've been trying to find a source for them that isn't going to cost me a fortune, and which will deliver to the U.S. Yes, I know: you'd think Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de would be able to help, but noooooo. They're both too expensive and won't ship to U.S. addresses. But I'm still looking.

This weekend I was in Best Buy, shopping for Christmas gifts for my kids. Love Actually, another of my very favorite movies, was recently released on Blu-ray Disc, and the price wasn't too bad at Best Buy, so I bought it for myself.

This morning, I popped it in the player, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it has not only the standard English, Spanish, and French choices that I'm used to seeing pretty much exclusively, but it also includes German and Italian!

I couldn't believe I could have missed this on the standard DVD, so just now, I double-checked: the standard DVD does not include these extra languages; they're only on the Blu-ray Disc.

I'm delighted … and, frankly, amazed. I now have a German-language audio track for one of my favorite movies, and I didn't even have to buy a Region 2 version of the movie to get it!

Nicely done, Universal Studios – way to go! Let's see more of this sort of thing in the future!

(CBS Corporation, are you listening???)

Identity theft, for real this time

2009-12-06T14:26:00.000-08:00

Last March, I blogged that three credit card companies independently had decided to send me replacement cards because they were concerned that there might have been some potentially fraudulent activity. Naïvely, I titled that blog entry “Identity theft”, even though no actual theft of anyone's identity had actually taken place.

A couple of days ago, I got an email in my spam bucket from Bank of America, warning me that fraudulent activity had occurred, and encouraging me to call them right away.

Ordinarily, this is the M.O. of phishing scams – that is, of spammers looking to steal your credit card numbers by convincing you that they're your bank when they're really not – and my first thought was to disregard it.

However, on second thought, I checked my bank account anyhow, and sure enough, someone hundreds of miles away had swiped a fraudulent copy of my card at a Wal-Mart and walked away with $100, causing my account to become overdrawn. In fact, Bank of America told me that they tried to swipe the card a second time, but the attempt was declined, either because Bank of America recognized that this was potentially fraudulent, or because my account balance was now overdrawn, I'm not sure which. Thank goodness I didn't have any money in that account at that moment, or these thieves might have walked away with a lot more money than they had.

Bank of America has done everything possible to keep their promise that I won't be responsible for this fraudulent transaction, and I'm happy with their service in this regard; but it's still really frightening to feel so invaded. I have been over this and over this in my mind since then. How did someone get my card number? I'm very protective of my cards. I've retraced my steps, trying to figure out who I might have given that card to, and I'm just not coming up with any likely culprits. But what's even weirder is that, in order to swipe my card, someone must have gone to a lot of trouble to create a duplicate copy of my card, with the magnetic stripe on the back and everything. This must have been a very organized effort to do an awful lot of this sort of thing. I realize that I've been doing everything I can to protect myself, and I realize that Bank of America is doing a great job of watching my back, and in the end, I've suffered no actual loss … but still, it's really, really unsettling to realize that even with all of that precaution, there seems to be just no way to stay 100% out of harm's way.

So fortunately, I'm okay, but now I worry for the people around me – friends, family, Vera, and especially my kids. My kids are old enough to have a financial identity, especially the two older ones – and they're old enough that I don't have a legal right to look over their shoulders to keep an eye on their finances. Because I can't watch out for them like I wish I could, all I can really do is hope that they're taking as many precautions as they can to keep their financial identity protected.

If this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone around me, and frankly, it really sucks to feel so helpless, especially where my kids are concerned.

Thanksgiving 2009

2009-12-06T13:13:00.000-08:00

Back in the middle of October, on a whim, Vera and I decided to spend a weekend in Solvang.

Solvang is a small town in the Santa Ynez Valley, a couple of hours north of Los Angeles, quiet and far away from big city life, settled a century ago by Danish immigrants, which has done its best to retain its European flavor from then until now.

There are plenty of places around the U.S. like this. A friend of mine who lives in Georgia says it reminds her of a place there called Helen, although that's aiming for more of a German, rather than a Danish, flavor. Similarly, I'm reminded of a place in Washington State called Leavenworth, a place which also has a German theme, although, unlike Solvang, which was modeled after its European origins from its beginning, Leavenworth is sort of artificially German, having transformed itself into a German town to draw in tourists. (Interestingly, Wikipedia claims that Solvang both inspired and assisted that transformation.) It worked in my case; I visited Leavenworth years ago when I lived in Seattle. In all the years since I lived in Germany, I have only once walked into a bakery and smelled bread exactly as I remember from having lived there, and that was in Leavenworth. But I digress.

Both Vera and I had been to Solvang in the past, but never together, so this was something new for us, in a way. It was fun to discover and/or rediscover parts of the town that I hadn't been to in years. And prior to this time, I had never really ventured outside of the town of Solvang into the surrounding area, but there are other small towns close by with art galleries and wineries, and there's a waterfall a few miles out of town, none of which I had ever seen. We had a delightful time.

It was so delightful, in fact, that she couldn't wait to go back, and so she spent hours and hours planning a big family gathering there for Thanksgiving. She and her brother arranged to rent a house, and he and we and their parents spent Wednesday through Sunday of Thanksgiving weekend in that area.

Vera and her family planned and cooked a huge turkey dinner, and it was wonderful. There was plenty of food all weekend long: as much turkey, dessert, wine, pumpkin pancakes, vegetables, and chips with salsa as we could eat, and all of it was excellent. Considering how much food there was, I was certain I'd come home and weigh myself and find myself five pounds heavier – yet somehow, on that trip, I ended up losing two pounds, which I can't explain, but which was a pleasant surprise.

Vera, her brother and I all brought our bicycles, although the two of them did more bicycling than I did. I've said before that Vera is in better bicycling shape than I am, but her brother bicycles in triathlons, so he bikes in circles around both of us. Fortunately, he was very gracious about that toward me, and did what he could to encourage me, which I appreciated. It was a beautiful weekend to be out on those bike trails, and so even though I didn't do much of that, I enjoyed what I did.

As I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago, in the past, when I've been to visit Solvang, I had never been to the wineries in the area. On this trip we spent a couple of days wine tasting, and I enjoyed that very much too. Vera's family had been to these wineries, although not since about four years ago, but it was all new for me. As you would expect, some of the wines were more appealing than others, but we did find several bottles that we liked very much, which we bought and brought home.

And when we weren't out and about like this, there was football to watch, of course, most notably the UCLA vs. USC game. I don't have a favorite in that rivalry – I attended the University of Michigan – but I was hoping it would be more of an even match than it was. Instead, UCLA played really badly, and USC trounced on them.

And when football wasn't going on, there was also a James Bond movie marathon going on for most of the weekend on the Syfy channel. There are few James Bond movies I don't like, and it's just a bit frightening when I stop to think just how much James Bond trivia I know.

All in all, this was a really relaxing and fun and uniquely memorable way to spend the Thanksgiving holiday. I think we all really enjoyed that.

Can my musical tastes be any more eclectic?

2009-11-20T13:26:00.000-08:00

I'm browsing my favorite artists on Last.fm, which has a feature that tries to match up similar artists based on what people listen to. Most of the time, it's pretty accurate, but when it's not, it's not in ways that strike my funny bone.

Over a year ago, I mentioned in one of my blog posts that my friend Mark introduced me to a young guitarist named Orianthi. She quickly became a favorite, but never so much as this past month, in response to the release of her second album. Her first album was released in her native Australia, whereupon she was quickly noticed by producers in Los Angeles who brought her here to work on another one. And it's just fantastic. Entertainment Weekly gave it a B, which they admitted was based on “cautious” expectation of good things to come. Personally, I think it was too cautious, and they should have given this one an A. This woman is amazing, and is poised to become a superstar just as soon as enough people discover her.

Well, so … I've been listening to her two albums so much in the last month that I've become a “top listener” on Last.fm. Every so often, I'm near the very very top, but then I drop off a little when someone else bumps me off that spot, but then I listen some more and come back near the top again, and so it goes.

Well, so … today I'm off work, just sitting around the house listening to music, and so, motivated by idle curiosity, I went to go find out of what other artists Last.fm believes I'm a top listener.

Time for a bit of a detour. I'll come back to this in a minute.

As you know, I've been a Star Trek fan since I was old enough to know what it was. Literally, since the second grade. I remember well watching Amok Time as a small child, and since it was my first episode, I really didn't understand what I was watching. But I kept with it, and it grew on me, and now here I am decades later still very much a fan of that show.

In the late 1980's, when word came through the grapevine that Gene Roddenberry was bringing Star Trek back to television, I could not have been more thrilled … which is why the disappointment I felt during the first year of Star Trek: The Next Generation was so bitter. That first season ~~sucked~~ was just horribly awful, as I think even those who call themselves fans of that show will agree. “Keep watching,” those fans insisted at the time. “It will get better, once it finds its footing.”

I didn't find that reasoning compelling. After all, Star Trek's original series had its very best episodes in its first year, and had found solid footing pretty much immediately. But, well, this was where Star Trek was headed, I realized, so I really ought to keep watching. Yes, it felt like an obligation, rather than something I wanted to do because I was enjoying it. Gotta keep up with these things when you're a fan. Who knows, I thought, maybe it really will improve. And it did, a little, but not by enough to excite me. I gave it a chance, it didn't do it for me, and to this day, I have very little interest in anything that called itself Star Trek from The Next Generation on (except that I did enjoy this year's Star Trek movie … although I'm not exactly rushing to the store to add it to my collection now that it's available on DVD and Blu-ray Disc).

Except for a small handful of good episodes, I found The Next Generation boring and predictable, and I was about ready to turn away from it for good in about its third year – when I began correspondence with a fan from Germany. He and I were both members of Mensa's Star Trek Special Interest Group back in those days. He told me that the show was delayed there by two years for legal reasons, which meant that as I was watching the third season, Germany was watching the first; the next year, they'd get the second season as I was watching the fourth, and so on. Naturally, he wanted to see them right away, and meanwhile, I was anxious to see the original series translated into German, so he and I struck a deal: I videotaped Next Generation episodes for him, and he sent me German-language recordings of original series episodes.

(The detour takes another detour: Why German, you ask? I guess I haven't mentioned this in my blog before now, but in the mid 1980's I was a Mormon missionary in southern (what was at the time West) Germany. I also studied German for six years in junior high and high school. Put all of that together, and I speak German pretty fluently, although not nearly as well these days as I once did. Once, when I was a missionary, a family invited us into their home, and the Star Trek episode By Any Other Name was playing. In German. Sadly, I only got to watch it for about a minute, since missionaries aren't supposed to be watching television in people's homes. Okay, enough of that side detour; now back to the main part of the original detour.)

That worked well for a few years, until he ran out of original series episodes to copy for me. So instead, he sent me recordings of some German electronic-techno-dance-style music that uses Star Trek's familiar theme as its basis. In his opinion, he told me, that music was good but not great, but it was kind of all he had to offer me. I think he wasn't giving it nearly enough credit; I loved it, and still do. In fact, I went out of my way to find, on eBay, original CDs of the music he had sent me as audiotaped copies.

One of these is a four-track CD called Das Raumschiff Tanzt! (translation: “The Starship Dances!”), by a group called Space Track. That one's probably my favorite of all of the German techno Star Trek music I own – and yes, I do own several of them. There's a track on there called Schweine im Weltraum (translation: “Pigs in Space”) which is great fun, in oh so many ways, and it makes me laugh.

Well, so … it turns out that I'm a Space Track “top listener” on Last.fm. I guess that's not too surprising. How many people even know about this group, after all? Plus, the music is nearly two decades old, so who's even still listening to it after all these years? Me, obvously. Not a lot of others, I'd imagine. Still, even if I'm listening to it a few times, I'm a “top listener”.

But what really strikes me funny is this:

Last.fm is really trying hard to find artists similar to Space Track. In the case of better-known artists, that's pretty easy. John Williams is similar to Jerry Goldsmith. Candy Dulfer is similar to Maceo Parker. Mozart is similar to Haydn. And so on. Last.fm is able to infer those similarities based on who listens to what.

In the case of Space Track, though, they're completely flummoxed. That's because they only really have me and a small handful of other listeners to draw samples from. And because my musical tastes are so eclectic, they're inferring that Space Track is similar to music that just … isn't … remotely … close, including: a couple of re-recordings of Star Trek original series episode scores (which, I admit, does make a certain kind of sense, except that those are orchestral performances, whereas Das Raumshiff Tanzt! is completely computer-techno-beat-dance stuff), as well as the soundtracks to Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (I listen to recordings of both the original stage production and the subsequent 1953 movie); Saint-Saëns's Organ Symphony performed under the direction of Herbert von Karajan; a Seattle world music group called The Guarneri Underground (whose Wander This World CD is marvelous and highly recommended, especially their cover of Led Zeppelin's song Kashmir); my copies of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos and a collection of Bach organ music (I know they're using my copies of those discs, because they're listing the same performers of those pieces as the ones I listen to); and several others.

Yes, I will happily admit it: Last.fm's desperate grasp for artists similar to Space Track is resulting in a wide range of unrelated music, and it's all my fault!

There is at least one artist which Last.fm lists as similar to Space Track – which is also my fault, I admit – which does fall into at least something of a similar category.

Long story short: a few years ago, Vera brought home a stack of CD's she had gotten from the library, which had been donated but which the library didn't want to keep. Most of them were forgettable, except for one self-titled CD by a group called Lost At Last, with which I fell in love instantly. It's a very cool blending of Indian religious chant and instruments with electronic techno beats, produced back in 2001. Subsequently, they renamed themselves One At Last and released another album called Are You Dreaming? in 2006 which I like just as much.

One At Last has nothing whatsoever to do with Star Trek, but at least it's more or less in the same ballpark with the German techno dance music that is Das Raumschiff Tanzt!, so I'll give Last.fm that one … even if it is more of a lucky guess than anything else, just because, although my musical tastes are eclectic, now and again there is some commonality to it.

Occasionally, anyway.

Starting a fight

2009-11-08T18:32:00.000-08:00

“Want to Start a Fight? Just tell someone what you think of Spike Jonze's movie Where the Wild Things Are”
— Mark Harris, Entertainment Weekly

I haven't blogged in a month, although that may be because there isn't a whole lot of news to tell.

Well, that's not true. The last of my grandparents – my father's father – passed away in October at the age of 96. Vera and I traveled to Salt Lake City to attend the funeral, where I got to see cousins I haven't seen since we were all a lot younger, and got to see my father's siblings and their families all together in one place for the first time in many, many years. I enjoyed learning a few things about my grandfather that I didn't know, and was touched to have had that opportunity to say good-bye one last time. The memorial service was very moving, and I was glad to be there.

(It was also very Mormon, leaving Vera with some puzzled questions when it was all over – “Why was he buried in those strange clothes?” among others. And I thought I was the stranger in a strange land, an ex-Mormon atheist among a huge crowd of Mormon-believing relatives. That was nothing compared to how Vera must have felt. At least I knew what the strange burial clothes were all about.)

In happier news, it was Vera's birthday recently, and we went to Disneyland to celebrate, just as we did on my birthday earlier this year. As I think about it now, we've been there quite a few times in the past year. I'm not complaining; I love that place. We both do.

And I've been taking Fridays off, just as I reported here a couple of months ago. My work this fall is turning out to be a lot more hectic than I thought it was going to be, but I'm continuing to take the Fridays off anyhow, and I am definitely finding it about as restful as I hoped it would be (just as long as I don't let myself agonize about all the work that needs doing while I'm at home being a lazy bum).

Other than that, there's not a whole lot of new news, at least not that has happened to me. It's been a fairly quiet month, apart from the funeral and Vera's birthday, and a handful of news items that involve my children, which I will not touch on here, since those are their stories to tell.

Instead, I want to muse about movies for a bit.

Mark Harris wrote an interesting opinion piece in Entertainment Weekly recently about the movie Where the Wild Things Are. He wrote, in part:

People disagree about movies all the time. But on those rare occasions when a difference of opinion morphs into an all-out fight, you should get your movie-loving butt to the multiplex fast, because films deep and rich enough to be worth brawling over are uncommon and exciting things. […] We're about to begin the long march through Oscar season, a period that I fear will, this year, provide too few argument-starting films. When they come along, we should count ourselves lucky[.] […] Have the fight, and encourage everybody else to have the fight too, or Hollywood will continue on its dull path of making nothing worth fighting over.

(Read the whole article. You can thank me later.)

I had seen previews. I thought it looked interesting. I thought it had a visual look that was remarkably faithful to the artwork in the book. Most of all I was especially curious to learn first-hand what Harris was talking about. So, this past weekend, when my kids expressed an interest in going to see it, I was happy to take the opportunity.

When the four of us came out of the theater, we all had distinctly different impressions about what the film was about, and what it was supposed to mean. And although we didn't fight about it afterward, we did spend a long time talking about what it meant to each of us, and coming to a more-or-less common understanding of what the filmmaker may have been trying to say.

I have to say, the film was as good as I had hoped, even though it seemed to run a bit longer than I expected; but probably the best part of that experience was the conversation about it with my sons after it ended. It's not often that the four of us all get together as part of a single conversation like that, and I enjoyed that very much. I learned a few things from each of them that evening.

(My daughter wasn't able to join us for the movie. She joined us later for dinner. As I have written here before, she is getting more and more heavily involved in her college studies, which are taking up many hours of each day, although over dinner I got to listen to her talk about it, and there's magic in her eyes as she does so. I can see in her face that she's enjoying what she's doing wholeheartedly. I don't think she minds that it's turning out to be a very time-intensive experience, partly because she knew ahead of time that it would be, but mainly because it's also hugely rewarding for her, intellectually and emotionally.)

Meanwhile, Vera has been anxiously looking forward to Disney's A Christmas Carol. I was surprised when she first started talking about it, since she has stated on several occasions that she's no fan of Jim Carrey. I wasn't really too motivated to go see it – largely because I expected it to be the same kind of lifeless animation that had given us The Polar Express and Beowulf, neither of which impressed me much – until Entertainment Weekly reviewed it and gave it a solid A, and from Owen Gleiberman no less. (Their other main reviewer, Lisa Schwarzbaum, disagrees with me on a regular basis, a fact I began to notice most strongly when she inexplicably gave the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie a C. By contrast, when Gleiberman speaks, especially when he gives a movie an A, I sit up and pay attention.)

Gleiberman's review read in part:

[W]hen it was announced that writer-director Robert Zemeckis would do a new version for Disney, using the same photo-realist, motion-capture animation technique that begot The Polar Express and all its eager rubber-faced children (and starring the reflexively ironic Jim Carrey as Scrooge), all I could think was, “Not for me.” How wonderfully wrong I was!

Armed with that review and Vera's enthusiasm, we went today to see the movie in 3-D. Long story short, Gleiberman was right again. Wow, what a film! What a great piece of work!

Okay, I think there's still a rubber-faced quality to the faces, very reminiscent of The Polar Express and Beowulf, but much less unsettlingly so. That aspect of the animation style is really a minor quibble, however, since the cinematic vision of the Charles Dickens story is, in so many ways, remarkably presented.

Gleiberman is exactly right (including, by the way, his remark about the “rare misstep” near the end). Read his review. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Then go see A Christmas Carol, preferably in 3-D. You can thank me later.

As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls

2009-10-08T09:37:00.000-07:00

My son blogged last month about what he called “The greatest piece of music the world has ever seen”. His choice? Rachmaninov's Isle of the Dead. I bought a copy of it for myself at his recommendation a little over a year ago. I do like it very much. Am I also going to call it the best music ever written? Well, he's the one who knows music theory. I'm just a schlub who likes what he likes. Whether it's from comparative lack of musical education or just a different set of personal tastes, my nomination in that category is a bit different.

I have an aunt, my mother's youngest sister, who, when I was high-school- and college-aged, gave me record albums of music that she liked as Christmas gifts. She and her brother, my uncle, are together responsible for turning me on to the music of Simon and Garfunkel, but that's another story. During that same period, she also gave me a couple of Pat Metheny's earliest recordings, namely American Garage and especially As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls.

The title track to As Falls Wichita is twenty minutes of pure musical ecstasy. I can't explain why. I can't pull it apart and discuss chord changes and rhythmic meters the way my son can. I just know that it quickly became, and has been ever since, my choice for the single most remarkable piece of music in my collection.

I've kept an open mind. Something else might come along to displace it. But so far, nothing has. Certain music has come very close, of course. I've blogged here in the past about my love for film music, for various classical composers, for pop music, electronic music, specific rock bands and specific jazz artists. My musical tastes come and go; some music I used to love, I never listen to anymore. Others stand the test of time and will be a part of me until I die. But this piece, As Falls Wichita, really is the pinnacle of my musical library – so beautiful, so evocative, so brilliantly constructed and performed – and it has been at the top of my list for so long that it really will take an amazing challenger to supplant it.

Bicycling in September

2009-09-28T14:07:00.000-07:00

At the moment, I'm feeling very stressed out. That's because, this morning before work, I think I did about a thousand errands: gotta go shopping, gotta change the oil in my car, Vera needs my help with a repair to her condo, I need to deposit an insurance check (long story), then Vera's mom calls, wanting to know how things are going with the tenant in Vera's condo, then the repair guys who are supposed to come out to Vera's condo can't come out this morning and need to reschedule, and on and on it goes. (Why am I doing all of this scheduling of the repairs to her condo? Because she has to work, and I'm too nice.) It's at times like this that I am ready to barricade myself at home and tell the world that my ideal weekend involves going nowhere and doing nothing, except maybe watching television.

Vera has a much different idea of a relaxing weekend. Her idea of a relaxing weekend involves going outdoors to do as much physical exercise as she can cram into the day. And as much as I gripe about how not-fun it is to be huffing and puffing for miles and miles up and down hills on my bicycle while pedaling into the wind, I have to admit that it's good for me, and if she weren't in my life pushing me to get some exercise, I'm sure I'd be doing a lot less of it than I am.

The ironic thing to me though is that our relative bicycling skills, hers and mine, have reversed this year. This year – largely because I've done a lot less exercising than I did the year before, while she's made a determined effort to work out in one form or another just about every day for the past several weeks – she's outpacing me wherever we go, while last year I was (not always, but more often than not) fairly easily able to do the bike trips that Vera was huffing and puffing through. Now though, what is easy for her is going to positively kill me. Clearly, I've lost whatever physical shape I once had, and need to get it back.

I've done three bike trips with her this month. Before that, I don't think she and I have done any bike trips worth speaking of during any of the previous eight months of 2009. Earlier this month we biked to the L.A. Zoo and back, which is 24 miles round trip. Two weekends ago she led me along the coast in Malibu for another 20 miles (which I positively hated because it involved fighting a headwind the whole time). And yesterday we did the Ventura to Ojai Bike Path, although we didn't take it all the way to Ojai. Instead, near the top, we veered off toward Lake Casitas and spent a couple of hours at the Ojai Pirate Faire. Total round trip: a little over 32 miles.

I have Facebook friends – two in particular, both of whom are my age – who bicycle across whole states for fun, and who think nothing of bicycling 100 miles on a lazy afternoon. I hope they don't read this, because I'm seriously, seriously envious of what they can do, and also seriously embarrassed at my own lack of shape, especially compared to the two of them.

On the other hand, I'm proud of myself for getting all the way to the Pirate Faire and back without collapsing, even though I know I should be able to do better. Vera is doing much better than I am. I should have no excuse.

The last time I blogged about taking that bike trail, over a year ago, I was similarly dismayed about how it kicked my butt. In that blog entry, I suggested that getting my bike tuned probably ought to have made a difference. Unfortunately for that theory, this time I made sure the bike was tuned before I took it on that trip. I had it tuned during the past week, specifically because I knew that Vera was going to want to go somewhere again after the Malibu trip, and I wanted to be prepared. Well, so, the trip was less exhausting than it might have been – and in fact I think I did marginally better this time than I did the last time I blogged about it – but I seriously, seriously need to get more active than I am, just so Vera doesn't keep showing me up like she has been lately.

That bike trip was good for me, even though you'd never have gotten me to admit it at the time. But that doesn't mean I'm feeling all that great today. No matter how much Vera thinks that was “fun”, today my legs are sore and I'm feeling stressed and tired, as if everybody needs me for something … and frankly, all I really want to do right now is sit at home and watch Star Trek.

OMG OMG OMG … this is FREAKING AWESOME!!!

2009-09-22T17:19:00.000-07:00

Season Two of Star Trek's original series was released this morning on Blu-ray Disc.

I've been waiting for this for nearly two years. The high-definition season set for the first season came out on HD DVD late in 2007, and I picked up my copy in February of 2008. Moments later, as you know, HD DVD lost the format war to Blu-ray Disc, and thus began the long, long wait for Star Trek in that format.

It seemed to take for-freaking-ever, but Season One finally came out on Blu-ray Disc earlier this year. It's nice and all, except that I had seen it before. (Still, the Blu-ray Disc version has some nifty advantages over the HD DVD set, one of which is that it includes the original special effects in addition to the new, remastered CGI special effects.)

What I was really waiting for was Seasons Two and Three, since I hadn't seen those in high definition before.

I plead guilty to the claim that I have been impatient. Intolerably impatient, in fact. Facebook friends saw me posting my impatience over the last few days. I think even my best and most forgiving friends were starting to get a little tired of it.

The wait was SO worth it. So far I've only had a chance to watch a couple of the episodes on the Season Two set, but they are gorgeous and totally worth the wait. I can hardly wait to watch the rest of them. If I didn't have people depending on me at work, I would so gladly have called in sick today. (As an old coworker of mine used to say: “I can't come in today. I'm having eye trouble. I just can't see working.”)

And then – as if that weren't enough – yesterday and today comes the official word about when to expect the Season Three set (December 15th!), together with a big surprise (to me, at least): the Season Three set not only will include the full-color and uncut version of The Cage (the first of two pilot episodes) – which by itself is not a huge surprise – it will also include the original version of the second pilot (yes, you heard right, the second pilot), Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Most Star Trek fans know the story: The Cage was Gene Roddenberry's first attempt to sell his show to television; the network executives passed on it, but were interested enough to invite him to go again, create a second pilot, changing a number of things, and that pilot is the one which sold Star Trek to NBC. Fans also know that the first pilot wasn't broadcast in its original form in the 1960's, but it was edited to become the basis for a two-part episode called The Menagerie, which was broadcast in 1966. Not until 1988 was the original pilot shown on television in its entirety, and around the same time it first became available for home video purchase, first in black-and-white and later in color.

What is less well-known is that that second pilot was also cut differently between the time it was used to sell the series to the network and the first time it was broadcast on television in 1966. The edited version is the one we've seen all these many years since then, while the original cut has been hiding in a vault somewhere.

Well, that's not quite true. Clearly, somebody has seen the original cut, because the missing bits can be seen on YouTube. But I've never seen it, nor have I ever read that it's been shown in its original form, on television or elsewhere.

This is so exciting! I am positively thrilled to hear that it's going to be available on the Season Three Blu-ray Disc set. I just barely got my Season Two set, and already I'm salivating over the upcoming release of Season Three.

Those of you who have me listed as Facebook friends, get ready for the same kind of salivating impatience when December 15th starts to approach. If you thought I've been unbearable lately … well, brace yourselves for more of the same. :)

Happy commuter

2009-09-15T14:23:00.000-07:00

I know I gripe all too often about Los Angeles freeway traffic.

That's why I can't resist expressing my joy at today's commute.

An 18 mile drive from home to work takes 20 minutes on a good day, and 45 minutes to an hour on a bad day.

Today, the door to door drive time was no more than 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes!! I am in a state of delirious, stunned, and joyful amazement.

No slowdowns, no accidents, no congestion – practically nobody on the freeway in fact. Just pure, unimpeded, clear sailing.

AND I got to work to find that the parking space closest to the front office door was open and waiting for me.

AND – as if all of that weren't enough – I've reported my displeasure over the fact that people keep choosing locations to smoke that are right along the path from the parking garage to the office, and it's literally impossible to walk a straight line between the office and the parking garage without passing through a disgusting cloud of smoke – but at least in most cases, you can walk around it if you're willing to walk far enough … all except for the main entrance to the parking garage, where the powers that be decided to place one of those gigantic outdoor ashtrays that doubles as a trash can, and where people are smoking all the damned time (probably because it's the only outdoor location that's both shaded and close to an outdoor ashtray). There's simply no way to walk around this location, because it's the only way to get into or out of the parking garage. Imagine my glee when I found that my plea, my cry of distress has been heard, and that monstrous outdoor ashtray has been removed!

AND nobody but nobody was smoking outside as I arrived at work today – not just was nobody smoking at that one location; nobody was smoking anywhere else either!

The sun was shining, the sky was clear, and the air was clean and cool.

Today is a good day.

Respect for people and their ideas

2009-09-08T09:29:00.000-07:00

Everybody needs a little respect.
— Train, “Respect”

Pretty much like I expected, at least one person spoke up in response to my last blog entry to say that she was offended by my view that belief in God, like belief in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy, is something that we cling to as children, but as we undergo healthy, normal development, we outgrow as we learn more about how the world really works.

As I said in that blog post, I have been in the place where she is now, and I understand how that can be seen as offensive. I still maintain, however, that once one has passed beyond the emotional need for religion in one's life, one will see that progression as entirely normal and natural.

Now then: that's my opinion. I said before and I will say again that I accept and acknowledge that not everybody shares it. In fact, if I haven't been clear before, I'll say clearly now: yes, I know that some of you reading this will find that offensive. This is perfectly normal and to be expected. Do I demand or insist (or even expect) that you, my reader, must respect my view? Of course not. Frankly, I view that whole concept as silly, so silly that it hardly needs to be said. Admittedly, I'd like to ask you to respect my right to believe my own views, but that's really about as far as my expectations go.

However, the woman who commented on my last blog entry regarded my view as openly disrespectful, not only of her religious beliefs, but in fact of her as a person. I also view this as so self-evidently not the case that I feel that it goes without saying.

However, clearly, what I think goes without saying needs to be said, if for no other reason than to get some of the ground rules out on the table.

And so, for the record, my views on respect follow:

Everybody needs a little respect

All human beings, just because they're human beings, deserve a basic amount of respect and honor. They deserve to be treated fairly in every way, they deserve the raw materials they need to learn and grow, they deserve rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness, and they deserve to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but you get the idea.

Respect must be earned and can be lost

Once we start with that basic level of respect for all human beings everywhere, that respect ratchets up or down based on all kinds of factors. I'm not going to try to outline them all here, because there are way too many to even begin to list them, but let it suffice to say, Barack Obama has earned my utmost respect and continues to do so, and George W. Bush has not. I'll let you fill in the rest.

Belonging to a group does not affect your level of respect

I think it goes without saying that skin color, religion, politics, sexual orientation, age, weight, nationality, etc. etc. all have nothing whatsoever to do with how much respect a person deserves.

I don't care what your self-identification might be. You don't deserve to rate any higher than any other group just because you belong to whatever group you belong to.

Respect for people is earned, person by person, based on individual accomplishments. (Similarly, respect for ideas is earned, one at a time, each on its own merits.)

Admittedly, there are a handful of apparent exceptions which might seem like contradictions. I have great respect for individual members of the military, police, fire departments, and any other profession for which a person puts his or her life in jeopardy for the well-being of others. However, this doesn't seem like a contradiction to me, since, as I see it, the members of those professions have individually chosen to take on those very honorable roles of service to society, and so I'm not giving “the military” special status just because it's a group of people, but rather, I'm giving each member of that group an extra measure of respect for making that choice and serving that role.

It amazes me that it isn't plainly self-evident that one's group doesn't earn any special privilege, but it's clearly not. From a young age, Star Trek instilled in me a hope for a future in which none of that matters – as Captain Kirk once said, in his universe, “size, shape, and color make no difference” – and although that's a hope I will not ever let die in my heart, it's clear that that future isn't anywhere in sight. There's still way too much prejudice in the world. I believe that it is dying slowly, but the recent Proposition 8 election in California makes clear that we're nowhere near where we need to be.

All ideas/beliefs/opinions/assertions are open for debate, separate and distinct from who holds them

This is another point that seems completely self-evident to me, while the fact that others don't, won't or can't separate “respect for my beliefs” from “respect for me as a person” absolutely astonishes me.

I claim that every belief, every statement of alleged fact, every scientific theory, every religious or political pronouncement, e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g that is a thought or idea is – in every way – subject to debate, dissection, and frankly, even ridicule.

I claim that every idea, large and small, is and should be subject to a fair trial in an open forum, and that nothing is off limits.

And furthermore, I claim that every idea that anyone espouses should be open for discussion separate and apart from the person who espouses it. People can put forward any idea they please, but if it doesn't survive the close examination and scrutiny of an open forum, the people who are proposing it need to suck it up and not walk away with their feelings hurt.

There are plenty of beliefs espoused by people in this world which I find absurd. By that I mean that they are either flagrantly unsupported by observable evidence, or they lead to obvious self-contradictions, or they're simply wishful thinking. Among these:

the notion that evolution is “just a theory“, but that Intelligent Design is somehow worthy of equal time in school classrooms
that the 1969 moon landing was a U.S. Government hoax
that the Holocaust never happened
that God exists, hears and answers prayers, and has a plan for my life
that God sends bad things to happen to people, particularly to large groups of people when they ban public prayer in schools, allow gay marriage, or legalize abortion
that allowing gay marriage somehow “threatens” any other marriage, or that straight marriages somehow need “defending” therefrom
that the Book of Mormon is what it claims to be
that the Bible is internally self-consistent, let alone infallible (see Richard Packham's list of Biblical contradictions)
that prayer affects the outcome of physical diseases
that Sarah Palin's debating skills indicate that she would have made a good Vice President
that the Republican Party offers a plan that is what's best for this country
that this is a “Christian nation” in any sense of the word (are people even aware of the Treaty of Tripoli?)

I could go on, but you get the gist.

I claim that any and all of these points are open for a fair trial. As it happens, I regard them all as absurd, and I feel no need to apologize for saying so, because, in saying so, I have not attacked anyone personally (well, I have named Sarah Palin by name, admittedly; but since I'm commenting on her suitability for public office, and as long as I don't stray beyond that boundary, I feel that's fair game), except as they choose to see it as such in their own minds. I am happy to discover that I'm wrong about any of them, and I will happily engage anybody on any of them, right up to, but not including, the point where people are going to take my objections personally, claim to be offended, and act as if I've personally attacked them. Whether they believe I have or not, in my own mind, I have not, will not, and am not. (Well, okay; to be fair, sometimes I have slipped and said things I regret, and if I do, or have, please discuss them with me and let me apologize.) I do feel that all of these ideas are legitimate subjects for debate and even ridicule, but once your ego is at stake, as far as I'm concerned, there's no point in continuing, and the discussion is over before it has begun.

And when that happens, it's really kind of unfortunate, because ideas can and should survive only when they can be demonstrated to have factual basis, or at the very least, to have emotional value without also being blatantly in contradiction to the observable universe. (By that I mean that if it gives you comfort to believe that you'll see your loved ones in an afterlife, by all means, go ahead; I'm in no position to disprove that assertion anyhow; but if you believe that prayer affects the outcome of your disease even though that idea has been studied scientifically and debunked to death, you really need to re-evaluate that position, because it just doesn't stand up on its own.)

If we protect ideas which don't have demonstrable value, we're really just nurturing bad ideas that have outlived their usefulness, and which, in Darwinian terms, really shouldn't continue to survive. To put it another way, if you feel the need to protect those ideas from harm, I think it's self-evident that they don't have what it takes to protect themselves, and it's time to let them go.

Your religious and political beliefs are not, and should not be, tied in your mind to Who You Are. I should be free to pick apart the Book of Mormon (or the Qu'ran, or the Bible, or Dianetics), point out its logical inconsistencies and nonsensical assertions, and above all, I should be able to do so without hurting anyone's feelings or leaving anyone feeling like they personally are being “disrespected”.

When I express beliefs that you consider disrespectful, blasphemous, or hurtful, or when I express disbelief in something you consider sacred, feel free to engage me – tell me why I'm wrong, present your evidence, bring on your witnesses. But whatever you do, don't resort to playing the “I'm offended” card, because the fact is, if that's all you've got, your hand is pretty weak.

That's because respect has to be earned. And if you have to insist on it, the fact is, you haven't earned it.

Born a Mormon, now a happy atheist

2009-09-06T14:10:00.001-07:00

I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

— Stephen F Roberts

Someday, I really ought to write down the Whole, Long, Official Version of how and why I left Mormonism, the religion I was born into.

I've touched on it in various places. Most recently, I told a short form of that story in response to a questioner near the end of my 2008 Mensa Regional Gathering talk on Mormonism and Politics. But I don't think I've ever really told the whole story, primarily because it's such a long one, and partly because, well, I've engaged in way too many confrontational discussions about religion in my life, and at this point, I'm just not anxious to start another one.

“But,” I hear you say, “telling your story isn't confrontational, necessarily. It's just your story. You're not being argumentative. You're just telling about your own journey, from your own point of view.”

You'd think so. But that hasn't been my experience.

Some people can't seem to separate what I might have to say about their beliefs from what I might have to say about them personally. You'd think people could make this distinction. If I say out loud that I don't happen to believe that the Book of Mormon is literal history, can't people live their lives as if I'm not attacking them personally with seething vitriol?

You'd think so. And to be fair, many can, at least speaking of people I'm close to. But frankly, some just can't.

Over a decade ago – August 28, 1998, to be precise – I wrote a short email to a group of friends, all of us former or disbelieving Mormons, in response to the question, “Do you believe in God?” One of them liked the way I responded, and asked if he could post my response on his website, where it still sits over a decade later.

At that point in my life, I hadn't yet broken ties with the Mormon church. That didn't happen until 2001. But by 1998, I had pretty much established my views on things, and that essay still pretty accurately describes where I am now.

That website includes a link to one of my email addresses, and from time to time, a few times a year, one person or another, none of whom I know, will send me an email in response to it. Sometimes, it's to say, “Thanks for that; you expressed my own point of view very well.” Other times, somewhat more often, it's a lengthy plea from some believer (often not a Mormon, I've noticed) not to give up on God, or warning me that I'll see how wrong I was after I'm dead, and regret it, but by then it will be too late.

I find it terribly interesting that my 1998 essay generates so much response even after all these years. I am not, after all, telling anybody else what they can or should believe; I'm just telling it like I see it, telling my own story, as it were. Still, people feel the need to rush to God's defense, or to pull me back from the brink of the fires of hell, or something … as if God can't fight his own battles, or as if I'm somehow miserably unhappy and just don't realize how much happier I could be if only I would come to the light.

Let me be very clear: I'm happier as an atheist than I ever was as a Mormon. And yes, I mean that. And no, I'm not just deluding myself into believing that I'm happier when I'm really not. And no, I'm not in a state of denial, secretly suppressing a deep-down belief that Mormonism really is true after all, just because I'm simply too weak to keep the commandments. And no, Satan is not lulling me into a false sense of security, only to ensnare my soul. And no, I don't believe that non-Mormon Christianity would make me happier than either atheism or Mormonism has been able to do – and yes, I do well understand what non-Mormon Christianity wants to offer me – so don't bother. Please. You can trust me that I've heard it all before.

When I gave my last Mensa talk on Mormonism, one of the women in my audience came to me afterward and said that she was very happy that I had left Mormonism, but was sad that I had “fallen away from God” at the same time. I told her, “I don't think of what I've done as ‘falling away’. I think of it as outgrowing the need I once had for that when I was younger.” I see it very much like the way most healthy children eventually outgrow Santa Claus … except that it takes people a lot longer to outgrow God, and some never do.

(People are going to find that statement offensive. My ex-wife told me she considered it condescending. I do understand that point of view, believe it or not. I've been there too. But it is how I see it, and I can't apologize for seeing it like I see it.)

Within the last week, on Facebook, I had another opportunity to see how emotional people get over religion, even when you're not saying anything about them personally, just commenting about their religion. As part of a discussion regarding how many times two of my ex-Mormon Facebook friends had read the Book of Mormon, I added a comment that being asked to teach a year of Mormon history to Seminary students was the beginning of my long path out of the church. A relative of one of those friends – a woman I had never encountered before this – promptly accused me of “Mormon bashing” and being “offensive” Another friend of mine likes to say that “you don't have the right not to be offended,” and I agree with him, but puh-leeze: if we had been giggling over pictures of Mormons wearing temple garments, I can see how someone might find that offensive. But saying that we read and taught Mormon history and Mormon scripture and then decided to walk away from it? That's offensive? Hardly! (When I questioned this woman for specifics as to what exactly I had said or done that was offensive, I was told, and I quote, “if you are so insensitive that you don't see how your comments would be offensive, you need to get off the computer and take some human interaction classes.” In other words, evidently, I lack social skills. As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up.)

“Mormon bashing.” Castigating those of us who left as “anti-Mormon” and “apostate”. Assuming (or insisting) that we “have an axe to grind”, whatever that means. It's all so tiresome. It's all a lot of frightened insecurity if you ask me. Anybody who has to resort to playing the “I'm offended” card really doesn't have any solid evidence to stand on, and surely they must realize that. After all, if the Book of Mormon really is what it claims to be, why would it offend you if I don't believe it, and what does it matter what I have to say about it?

There are many people close to me, friends and family members, who aren't ready to make the leap out of religion. Then again, many others have. This summer, my oldest son wrote a letter to the Mormon church, formally resigning his membership. I am very proud of him for taking that stand.

Similarly, even though I don't expect everyone I know to find happiness in atheism, I'm not quite sure that all of them are ready to read about my journey either. At least not until they can promise me that they can read my critique of Mormonism and of religion in general without taking any of it personally.

Until I'm sure that most of the people in my various circles are ready to read the whole story without getting upset, I'll probably wait to write the whole thing down.

In the meantime, please trust me that I'm genuinely happy this way, more than I ever was as a believer. If that seems like an incredible claim to you … well, please trust me anyhow.

Vacation plans for the rest of the year

2009-09-06T13:41:00.001-07:00

My work on our product is officially over for this year. The product doesn't actually become available until the 9th, they tell me, but my work on it is done, anyway.

So … now the craziness and stress are over, and my work schedule has calmed back down again, at least until the next time around.

I find that I have maxed out my available vacation hours. I get 22 days a year, but I'm only allowed to keep 30 days at a time, so once my vacation balance is at 30, I lose any more that I would have earned. And I'm right at that point now, so between the fact that my work is over for a while, and the fact that I need to cut down on my available vacation days, if I'm going to take time off, now's the time to do it.

I contemplated taking all six weeks off at once – wouldn't that be nice! – but instead decided to spread out my vacation over the remainder of the year by taking every Friday off. I really like the idea of short work weeks and long weekends, and since I don't really have definite plans to travel anywhere this fall, that seems like a nice way to get time off and still stay connected to what's going on at work.

I am also going to take a full week off in October, and again at the winter holidays, and between all of that and taking Fridays off too, I will have cut my vacation hours in half – from 240 to about 120 – which leaves me in no danger of losing vacation due to being maxed out like I am now.

Perhaps there's still an argument to be made for taking six weeks off at once – which really would be extraordinarily relaxing – but I'm not so sure I want to eat up ALL of my available vacation, and besides, this will be relaxing too, and in ways that I think will do me more good over a longer period of time, so I'm really looking forward to this vacation plan.

A potpourri of exciting news

2009-08-10T11:45:00.001-07:00

So many exciting things to report in recent weeks. Where to begin?

None of them are whole blog entries by themselves, I don't think. Chances are, I can just throw them all in here as a mishmash of single paragraphs. Those of you who are OCD about the logical flow of narrative essays, and the concomitant need for a beginning, middle and end, will just have to suck it up today, because I'm not going to bother concluding any of this. It's a ramble. And it's my blog, so I'm allowed.

There's the Star Trek II expanded score CD, about which I've just posted.

In other musical news, Candy Dulfer, one of my very favorite jazz musicians, has released a new album, and it's fantastic. Candy is always awesome live, and her live concert recordings are her very best, but when she's doing studio albums, some are better than others. I've never managed to warm up to “For the love of you”, for example. Her other studio albums are good, sometimes great. Then there are the studio albums “Sax-a-go-go” (get the European version!), “Big Girl”, and “Dulfer! Dulfer!”, which are simply outstanding from start to finish. Her newest album, “Funked Up & Chilled Out” is in the “simply outstanding” category … if you overlook one song (“Bliss 2 This”) that I skip over regularly.

I've been following Candy Dulfer since the late 1980's, and have been overjoyed by her music ever since. In 2003 and again in 2007 I got to see her perform live (and got several autographs both times), both of which were also amazing experiences.

In other news, which isn't official yet, my hope of attending next summer's Mensa Annual Gathering in Dearborn is looking more and more like it might actually happen. If you've been reading my blog for long, you've read about how I've helped to put on the local Los Angeles Mensa gatherings each year in February, but I've never been able to attend the national gatherings in July, largely due to work obligations. That might change in 2010. I can't say much more at this point, but keep your fingers crossed for me. If things work out like I hope, I'm going to be one very happy guy next July.

And finally, my sister is in town this week with her two children. Vera and I spent yesterday with them at Knott's Berry Farm, and will spend another day with them later this week at Universal Studios. Yesterday was a great day: I'm really glad to see them again – her children are simply delightful – and the day at Knott's was great fun, especially an ice skating show called “Everybody Loves Snoopy”. The day at Universal should be fun too. I've managed to get the day off work. Incidentally, I'm hoping that at least one of my children can join us; I'm still waiting to hear from them about that.

And there you have it: a blog entry from me without a concluding thought. Well, unless that's what this is. I'll let you decide. Maybe I'm just incapable of writing a blog entry which lacks form and structure. Or maybe not. :)

Star Trek II expanded score CD

2009-08-10T10:12:00.000-07:00

Somehow, I missed out on the first day of the first Star Trek movie when it was in theaters. I was working on the school newspaper that night, wistfully aware that a long-awaited Star Trek movie was in theaters, but somehow assumed that it was going to be such a big deal that it wouldn't actually come to my southeastern Michigan town; instead I figured it would premiere in Detroit, and I'd have to wait for it to arrive where I lived.

Silly me.

Naturally, I rushed to the theater as soon as I realized it actually was in town after all and I was … like the rest of the world … greatly disappointed – although at the time, I refused to admit the fullness of my disappointment even to myself. Since then, of course, I've learned much about why the theatrical release of the first film was such a disappointment: it was rushed to theaters to meet a studio-imposed release schedule which was simply unrealistic. But in 2001, director Robert Wise put together a Director's Cut of the movie which, in my opinion, greatly makes up for the movie's flaws, and is a genuinely entertaining finished product.

I never again made the mistake of missing opening day of a Star Trek movie (well, if you overlook the Next Generation movies that is, none of which I have seen to this day). I well remember waiting in a long, long line to see Star Trek II on opening day. That movie is generally considered the best of the Trek movies, and I certainly agree. It was a thrilling ride on opening day, and it continues to hold up well all these many years later.

Star Treks II, III, and IV are now available on Blu-ray Disc, and they're beautifully presented, but the news that excited me more recently is that Film Score Monthly has released an expanded version of James Horner's Star Trek II score on CD.

The original CD releases of the scores for each of the first several Star Trek movies were good enough, but several years ago, Jerry Goldsmith oversaw the release of an expanded score of the first film, which was, in every way, more exciting than the version of the score that had been available for purchase up to that time. Goldsmith is one of my favorite film music composers, and this is certainly one of my very favorite scores. The expanded CD is so rich and so enjoyable, and it seems almost criminal to have waited so many years to release it in this form. The original score release was good enough, but the expanded release was fantastic.

I've had that experience with other expanded scores, especially the score for 1978's Superman: The Movie, by John Williams, and (in almost-but-not-quite the same way) Goldsmith's Basic Instinct, Alien, and Logan's Run. Williams is another favorite composer, which almost goes without saying, and his Superman score quickly became my very favorite of his work as soon as I heard it. Just as with Goldsmith's first Star Trek score, the first release was great, but in recent years, as expanded editions have become available, I have been thoroughly pleased with them, and have wished we had had them from the start.

So, when I heard that Star Trek II had gotten the expanded score CD treatment, I was expecting great things from it. I had known for a long time that the previously available CD only included highlights from the full score, and just knew that someday, someone would give it the treatment it deserved.

Well, so … now that I have it … I hate to admit this, but I'm a little disappointed. It seems that the highlights from the original score CD really are just about enough to adequately capture the flavor of the film, and the extras on the expanded CD aren't really as magical as I had hoped they would be. They're nice, and the completist and the rabid Trek fan in me is glad I have them, but I can't really say, like I can say about the expanded editions of other scores in my collection, that every bit of it is musical magic, and that I wish we had gotten all of this from the start.

None of this is Film Score Monthly's fault, I don't think. I've always been very pleased with their work, and this is no exception. I just think that Horner was a very young and less experienced composer at the time, and just wasn't an equal to Goldsmith or Williams, and so, while we got some great stuff on the original CD release, what we didn't get probably wasn't much to feel sorry about.

My daughter rocks!

2009-07-22T09:00:00.001-07:00

I am not an animal person.

I don't know why, although undoubtedly a lot of it is because I didn't grow up around them. And partly it's because I have memories of being intimidated by large dogs when I was a small child. But for whatever reason, I consider the whole notion of pet ownership to be a burden and a chore without any real reward – ya gotta wash 'em, pick up after 'em, walk 'em, feed 'em. Ugh. Vera will go visit her parents and come home covered in cat hair, which is all the reminder I need about why I don't want to bring that into my home – although of course, people close to me would disagree.

Vera, for example, did grow up around pets, and will get very excited when Pet Adoption Day comes around at the local park. She'll go and nuzzle the dogs and then whimper at me about how nice it would be to get a pet. I try not to be too dismissive, but she knows that no, thank you, that's not my idea of fun.

Vera and my daughter have that love of animals in common, although my daughter takes it to a whole other level.

When my daughter was very young, a short lifetime of welled-up frustration came bursting out of her when she looked at me and groused, “You won't let me have a pet!” Looking at her, I knew I couldn't deny my daughter something this important to her, but it was still true that I was in no hurry to take on pet ownership myself. I told her that if she promised that I'd never have to take care of it, I wouldn't object if she got a pet. Clearly, that was the right answer, because her frustration melted away in an instant, and she brightened up as if she had just won the lottery.

It started with a parakeet. She loved that bird. As long as I live, I will never forget the grief she expressed when that parakeet died in a tragic accident. It broke my heart to see my daughter so stricken.

Next it was two parakeets, and then fish, and hamsters, and her dog Pirate (so named because, at least when she first got him, he was all white with a patch of brown over one eye), and meanwhile my sons picked up hamsters of their own, and mice, and a snake, and I've sort of lost track of what all else there is and has been in that house over the years, but it's not inaccurate to liken my daughter's bedroom to a small zoo.

She graduated from high school in 2007, and is majoring in animal studies in college, which she is enjoying very much. What exactly that will mean when she's all done studying has been a bit of an open question until recently: will she be an animal trainer or a veterinarian or a biologist? She has said that she'd enjoy any of those paths, just as long as whatever she does involves working with animals.

Then she started talking about a program called Exotic Animal Training and Management. I confess that I didn't fully understand at first how significant this was, or how important it was to her. At first I thought this was a short extracurricular fun thing to do. But the more she told me about it, the more I got the picture: this is a very intensive, 21-month program that will give her a significant level of education and hands-on training, and will open doors for her in all kinds of directions. It's a Big Deal, much more than I realized until recently.

Earlier this summer, she applied. As I understand things, there are so many more qualified applicants than there is space available that they literally have to draw lots to decide who gets in. My daughter got on the waiting list, not because she was less qualified – my daughter is extremely focused and does very well, educationally, and I'm very proud of her – but because they literally draw lots to put people in line, because they have no other way to be fair about who gets into the program.

My daughter was far enough down the list that she was hopeful but not too hopeful about getting in, and had even begun talking as if it was a done deal that she wasn't getting in this year …

… until she got notified in late June that enough people ahead of her have dropped out, so that she has been accepted into the program, which starts in mid-August.

In her own words, she was “surprised (that's an understatement – I was totally shocked)” – and needless to say, I am thrilled for her. This is exactly what she wants, and it's an outstanding opportunity for her. I know she's going to do well, and I know it's going to be very fulfilling and very rewarding for her in all kinds of ways.

I'm just so proud of her, and so excited for her, that I just want to burst.

My daughter rocks!

The Hollywood Bowl

2009-07-22T08:52:00.000-07:00

I've blogged here before about the various things I do for my local Mensa chapter.

It all started innocently enough. They needed a webmaster, so I volunteered. A little later, they needed a spot filled on the Board of Directors, so I did that for a while. A little more time went by and they needed someone to edit the event calendar from month to month, so I took that over too. One thing led to another, and now I'm filling half a dozen different roles. Look for my name on the chapter's contact list to see what I mean.

That contact list doesn't tell the whole story either. It doesn't include the fact that I help put on the Regional Gathering each year, for one thing.

For another thing, each year, the chapter buys a block of tickets to a concert at The Hollywood Bowl, then gives those away to chapter members and their guests. I've been coming to this event with Mensa since 2006. This year, for the first time, I volunteered to be the one to give out the tickets. That went fairly smoothly, although I was a bit disappointed by the number of last-minute cancellations we had. We purchased 78 seats, and at one point I had them all spoken for with 12 people on the waiting list, but on the evening of the performance, so many people called to cancel (and in a couple of cases, just didn't show up or call) that we only gave away 63 of the 78 seats, leaving 15 unclaimed. If I do this again next year, which I probably will, I have to figure out some way to keep that from happening.

I'm not sure exactly how long the Los Angeles Mensa chapter has been doing this. I know that in 2005, which I didn't attend, they went to a jazz concert at the Bowl. In 2006, when I started going, it was a fireworks concert of the music from Disney's Fantasia. In 2007, it was Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto and the 1812 Overture, also with fireworks. In 2008, it was the music of John Williams, which I mentioned here at the time.

Well, this year on July 11th it was a celebration of the music of Henry Mancini. What a great show it was, too. Great music, and lots of special guests: his daughter Monica, pianist Dave Grusin, recorded tributes by Julie Andrews, even the saxophonist who originally played the Pink Panther (and whose name I've completely forgotten), all under the direction of Bill Conti.

This year the concert also ended with fireworks. And what music did they play? Remember the end of Revenge of the Pink Panther? Clouseau goes to Hong Kong, where he and Dyan Cannon check into the hotel under cover as “Mr. and Mrs. Lo Kee” and we visit the “Lee Kee Shipyards”? Remember how that one ends in a shower of fireworks? That's the music they played at the end of the Mancini concert. What a brilliant, priceless musical choice that was!

I was just thrilled by the whole thing. Great fun! Vera and my oldest son (the one who couldn't come to my Father's Day barbecue) came with me and both told me they enjoyed it very much too, as did many of the Mensans who were there with us.

Father's Day

2009-07-22T07:04:00.000-07:00

It's been well over five years since Vera and I first met.

And in that time, we and her parents (who live very nearby) have spent time together on many occasions; we and my children have spent time together; and less often (because they live in Michigan), we've spent time with my parents too. Most of the time, that happens when my parents come to Los Angeles, although Vera and I did travel to Michigan in the fall of 2006, which is a trip we both remember fondly. (I can hardly believe it's been so long. It's well past time to go back!)

Father's Day is always tricky though. Generally, I spend it with my children while Vera goes off with her parents to celebrate. This year, my parents chose that weekend to come to Los Angeles, and so we decided, rather than spending Father's Day separately like we've done in the past, this year we'd get everybody together – my children, her parents, my parents – in one place and make a big celebration out of it.

And so we did. Vera and I bustled to get the place ready for company (dusting and scrubbing and mopping, oh my!), and we borrowed outdoor tables and chairs from Vera's parents and brought them up to the rooftop deck so that everybody had room to sit.

And we bought huge quantities of food: chips and salsas and veggies and cheese and crackers of all kinds, and steak and shrimp and sausage and hamburger and corn for grilling. Everybody had plenty to eat. In fact I was all ready to start grilling another round when people insisted they couldn't eat any more. Just in case there was ever any concern in the past that anybody may have gone away hungry from one of my barbecuefests, we made sure that didn't happen this time.

From what I could tell, everybody had a good time. Her parents and my parents and my daughter all went out of their way to say so, and I loved playing host to such a big party.

I was a little nervous about the fact that this was the first time her parents and my parents met each other. I also missed one of my children who couldn't make it (but I'm happy for him at the same time; the reason he couldn't come was that he was performing in a stage musical, which is something he very much enjoys).

But all in all, it was a great success, and I'm happy about the way it turned out.

My first trip to Hawaii

2009-06-25T10:58:00.000-07:00

I've never been to Hawaii. Always wanted to. Never have.

Vera's been, a couple of times, years ago, once with her grandmother and once with her brother, but this was a new experience for me.

Ordinarily there's no way I can take off more than a few days at a time during the summer months. Like I keep posting here, that's my very busiest time of year at work. If I ask nicely, though, I can manage a few days off in a row, although certainly not more than a week. In this case, the trip we took went from Wednesday to Monday, so really it was only four days off if you don't count the weekend, and my manager was kind enough to let me go for that long.

The first day we were there, Vera's bag was stolen, complete with a lot of cash, credit cards, her driver license, her cell phone, and various other important belongings. Needless to say, that day turned into a really bad day spent searching for it, filing police reports, and calling to get her cards canceled and her cell phone suspended. Every day we tried calling all the lost-and-found and police phone numbers we had, but the bag never turned up. Hawaii's tourism and visitors bureau really went into overdrive trying to make us feel welcome in spite of that though, calling and sending flowers and gift baskets to our hotel room.

After that first day though, as long as we put that out of our minds, the rest of the trip really was a lot of fun. During the few days we had there, we ate really good food, went swimming a lot, hiked up to the top of Diamond Head, toured the perimeter of Oahu, went out on a sunset cruise where we snorkeled with sea turtles and tropical fish, and went kayaking and snorkeled again. It really was everything I hoped Oahu would be. Next time I want to see some of the other islands, but for a first trip, Oahu was enough to keep me happy.

The view from our hotel:

The same picture with me in it, just to prove that I was really there, even though you can't see me very well:

The view from the top of Diamond Head (including a picture of me all sweaty, so you know I really did that climb):

Pictures of dolphins taken from the boat on our sunset cruise:

Probably the most beautiful day of the trip, the day we went kayaking and snorkeling:

We have underwater pictures of both days of snorkeling too, but they're not here because we haven't developed them yet. That was great fun though. You're literally swimming among a wide variety of beautiful tropical fish, and we even got close to a sea turtle or two. We were told there were tiger sharks out there, and we looked, but didn't find them.

The snorkeling, the kayaking, the beautiful weather – it was all terrific. Oh! And there's a place out there where we were kayaking where you can jump off a cliff into the ocean water, which Vera and I both did, and that was great too. We jumped from about 15 feet – could have climbed higher, I suppose, if we dared, but 15 feet was enough for us.

I was doing pretty well warding off the sunburn until that kayaking trip. After that, I was sunburn-red from head to toe. Vera was trying to shield herself too – she was wearing SPF ninety – who knew they even make SPF 90?? – to no avail: she got badly sunburned too. This trip was at the end of May, nearly a month ago, and even now my skin is still peeling from the sunburn.

But then, sadly, it was all over, and we had to come back home. Have you ever tried to get through airport security without identification? All we had for Vera was a Honolulu airport sheriff's report number as proof that she really did have her driver license stolen. Just imagine what that was like. I didn't even know it was possible to get through airport security without ID; as it turns out, it is, but not before security officers made phone calls, then asked her to name her employer, family members, previous residences, etc. – and then, after all of that grilling, they searched her from head to toe. Vera found the whole experience invasive, and I don't blame her.

But at last we got through security, back on the plane headed for home. Despite the bad experience of losing her belongings, all in all we both had a terrific time and were sad to leave. We'll definitely both be back soon.

Why I haven't been posting lately, part two

2009-06-24T12:23:00.000-07:00

Part one is over here, and my excuse for most of the past month is about the same, but this past week has been especially hectic.

Not only was I rushing to meet another major deadline last Friday (which I met, by the way, on time and on schedule!), not only was I rushing to get the place ready for a major Father's Day celebration (more on that later), but I also unexpectedly had more workers working on the roof.

You may recall my stories of work done on the place a year ago, but in case you missed it, that story is here. Unfortunately, some of that work – which involved the covering over the rooftop deck – turned out to be less than satisfactory. They replaced the latticework overhead – which I'm sure must have been decades old, because it was made of wood which by that time had gotten so old that it would crumble when touched, and so a lot of it had blown down in one storm or another – with wood-colored vinyl latticework, which I expected would last for years … but within months, the outdoor weather had caused that vinyl to crack into pieces, and once again I had latticework falling down from the overhead covering. Ugh.

In case you've forgotten, the pictures of what it used to look like are also on this post, but here is one of them again, just so you don't have to switch over there if you don't want to:

Well, so, long story short, that whole structure has been replaced with one that is much more attractive, much sturdier, (hopefully!) much more durable, and which provides better shade and rain protection than what was there before. Here's a picture of what it looks like now, to compare:

I'm very happy with the result, but what wasn't exactly stress-free and relaxing was that this work was going on at the exact same time that (a) I was getting ready for family to arrive for Father's Day and (b) I was working late nights, well into the wee hours, stressfully and desperately trying to meet deadlines at work.

Needless to say, once Father's Day weekend was over, I slept like a rock. It was great, in so many ways – everyone who was there told us they had a really great time – but there was just so much mental and physical energy spent making it happen that I really was just exhausted once it was finished.

More on Father's Day, and on our trip to Hawaii last month (with pictures!), just as soon as I can find more time to write about it. Stay tuned. More is coming, I promise!

It's your birthday — what are you going to do???

2009-05-16T10:54:00.000-07:00

Disney started a new thing this year. At least, I think it's a new thing. I haven't noticed it before.

If you register on their website, they'll give you free admission on your birthday.

The catch is, it has to be on the day of your birthday, not the day before or after.

Furthermore, you have to pick one of the two parks – either Disneyland or Disney's California Adventure (hereafter: DCA). You don't get a free park-hopper ticket that would let you visit both on the same day.

Meanwhile, however, my birthday occurs during the period that Disney calls “2fer time” – when southern California residents can pay for entrance to one park and get free admission to the other park within 30 days. That's not a park-hopper deal either, so you have to limit yourself to one park on one day and the other park on the other day.

So Vera and I decided to take the day off work and spend the day of my birthday at Disneyland … me with my free voucher, and she with her 2fer ticket.

But this raises a dilemma. I get into one of the two parks for free, but although she has paid for a ticket, and can therefore come back later to go to the other park, what am I supposed to do while she's enjoying that second day? I could buy a 2fer ticket of my own for that second day, but that would just create a new dilemma, since then I'd have an extra day that she wouldn't have.

We showed up on the day of my birthday with my birthday voucher, briefly explained the problem, and asked pretty-please if they'd upgrade me to a 2fer ticket if I paid extra to do so … and to our pleasant surprise, they did so for free. I literally got two days of Disney fun for free, just because I'm a southern California resident with a birthday during “2fer time”. How freaking cool is that??

That first day, we spent at Disneyland. As cool as DCA is, Disneyland really is the star attraction, and the place to go if you have to choose and don't have a park-hopper ticket.

And the day was practically perfect, in every way. The weather was just right. Lines and crowding were minimal, possibly because it was in the middle of the week. We got to go on just about every ride we wanted, several times (except that Pirates of the Caribbean happened to be closed for some reason, unfortunately). We were there until after the park closed, and every minute was magical.

My favorite part of the day? All my life, I've wanted to eat at the Blue Bayou, a restaurant located inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride. Whenever I've tried in the past, it's always been booked up, and/or the prices were more than I could afford at the time. But this time, it was my birthday, so I didn't care how much it cost, and we made our reservations at the start of the day so we were sure to get in. (As it happened, the park wasn't all that crowded that day, which helped make sure we could get in.)

And the restaurant was everything I hoped it would be, and more. The ambiance is everything you'd expect from Disney. But best of all, the food was beyond outstanding. Every bite of everything on the plate, and the appetizers, even the bread, was exactly perfect. Vegetables were cooked exactly the right amount. The soup filled your entire mouth with flavor. The steak and lobster meat dissolved on the tongue, and even the Béarnaise sauce on the steak was the best I've ever had. Vera had the glazed salmon, which I had a bite of, and it was perfect too. Seriously. Perfect. Every time I've ever had lobster tail from anywhere, it's always just a little chewy around the edges, but not this. It was as if the chef had a magic sixth sense and knew exactly when was the exact right instant to bring everything to our table.

I said so to the waiter. I knew I was gushing, but I couldn't help myself. Next thing you know, he brought the chef to our table, where I repeated myself. The chef thanked me, saying that it's nice to hear compliments. I imagine he only hears about comments when things aren't quite right, but I was only too happy to tell him what a perfect meal it was.

Later in the day, we learned that Disneyland has reopened the walk-through of Sleeping Beauty's castle. I mentioned that the last time we went to Disneyland, Disney had released Sleeping Beauty on Blu-ray Disc. If you haven't seen it yet, you must. The Blu-ray Disc transfer is stunning in so many ways -- clearer picture and sound than I've ever seen before. Gorgeous!

On the Blu-ray Disc of Sleeping Beauty, there's a Special Feature about what the walk-through used to look like, back when Disneyland first opened. It's a CGI re-creation of how it was back in the day, but reportedly that walk-through of the castle was closed up decades ago. Well, it's open again now, and although what's there now isn't the original artwork (some of it is pretty obviously computer-generated), it's very close to what's on the Blu-ray Disc, meaning that the experience of walking through the castle must be very similar to how it was when the park first opened. I was thrilled to be able to do that.

It was, in just about every way, a perfect way to celebrate my birthday.

Yesterday (Friday), we took the day off work again and went back to spend a day at DCA. This time, unfortunately, the day wasn't quite as perfect – crowds were thicker, weather was hotter, and like I say, DCA doesn't have quite as much to do as there is at Disneyland (although they're working on that; there was an interesting exhibit in the park describing all the stuff they plan to add in the next couple of years, and it all looks terrific!).

Still, we were able to see the Aladdin show again, which is something we saw three years ago or so and have wanted to see again, because it's a great show, and it was as good the second time around as we remember it from the first time. We got perfect seats this time, right in the center of the main floor. And DCA has this restaurant called Pacific Wharf Café which serves the most decadent bread bowls on the planet. There's just no way I can go to DCA and not eat there for lunch.

And so I am another year older. In the back of my mind is a vague, general awareness that my life is, chronologically speaking, just about half over … despite which, I continue to feel, intuitively, as if it's just beginning.

It's hard to spend time at Disneyland and DCA and not feel delightfully young.

Welcome to the world of your own terrifying imagination

2009-05-04T11:04:00.000-07:00

When I was 10 years old, my father got a job transfer that took us from Iowa to the San Francisco bay area. My parents had purchased a home in Moraga, a quiet, small town on the east side of the bay, which I've been told is no longer as quiet nor as small as it once was. We lived there for four years, and although I have some happy memories from those years, I was not exactly the most popular kid in school, and as a result, when I developed my first crush on a girl at school, she heartlessly spurned me when I asked her to dance in eighth grade, all of which I've never quite gotten over to this day. But that's another story for another time. Maybe.

Very shortly after arriving in Moraga, our family was in the car one night, driving home from somewhere (going out for pizza, I think), and my father was flipping the radio dial. When he landed on a broadcast of an old episode of The Shadow, he cried out excitedly. That broadcast had touched off a memory from his childhood. I didn't understand his excitement at the time. I do now.

Largely as a result of that outcry, I have several episodes of The Shadow in my CD collection which I've listened to several times and enjoyed. But they don't have the same reach back into my childhood that they do for my father, and although I enjoy them for many reasons, the personal attachment just isn't there.

At about the same time that we moved to Moraga, CBS Radio started an interesting experiment. It gave birth to newly created radio dramas, similar to those of the 1940's, into a world that had largely given up that form of entertainment in favor of television. The CBS Radio Mystery Theater (hereafter: CBS RMT) was the brainchild of Himan Brown, a man who had produced radio shows back in the day, and who felt (and, from what I've heard, still feels) that they deserve a place in the modern world of entertainment.

The CBS RMT ran from 1974 to 1982. During the early part of those years, I was a pre-teen with a bedtime which, alas, was just as that show was coming on the radio. The radio in my bedroom didn't allow for earphones, so I would turn that radio on just as softly as it would go, and keep it just as close to my ears as I could get it, because my parents were in the next room, and I didn't want them to know that I was staying up past my bedtime listening to these hour-long radio dramas when I was supposed to be asleep. I felt so subversive, so sneaky. If my parents knew what I was up to, they never said anything, for which I'm grateful, because I really loved staying up to listen to those radio shows. To this day, when I tell this story, I feel like I got away with my little scheme … and frankly, I like the story better that way than I would if I ever found out that my parents knew what I was doing but let me do it anyhow.

I got older, we moved to Michigan, and I lost track of the CBS RMT, so I never heard the later shows in the series. But over the years, I remembered it fondly, and wished I could hear them again. Fast forward a few years, and welcome the birth of the Internet, and to make a long story short, some years ago I discovered sources for the whole series. When I first found them, I exclaimed with excitement – and heard my father's voice come out of my mouth. It was then that I knew what he had experienced that day in the car when I was ten.

A couple of related postscripts. First:

I have blogged about the fact that I spent last year listening to all seven of the Harry Potter audiobooks during my commute to work, and enjoyed them all tremendously.

After that, I listened to some other audiobooks: non-fiction by Barack Obama and Richard Dawkins which I enjoyed very much, one by Christopher Hitchens which I didn't, and a work of fiction by Dean Koontz which was hideously awful.

I'd like to find more audiobooks to listen to, and someday I will, but while I wait to discover them, I've lately turned back to those CBS RMT episodes. There are 1,399 of them, and so far I've only listened to a small fraction, so I have a long way to go. That's okay though, because Los Angeles traffic is horrible and will only continue to get worse, so I will be commuting – and needing something to listen to while driving – for a very long time. At the rate things are going, I may well have a supply of CBS RMT episodes to keep me going for at least that long.

And secondly:

At the request of my children, I joined Facebook a couple of months ago. I'm glad I did, because it's been a great way to keep in touch with friends and family in ways that you just don't get as the result of annual holiday letters.

A number of my Facebook connections are ex-Mormon friends I know from all over the country. Two of those are a married couple with whom I took a long and memorable road trip once. They lived in southern California when I met them, but now live in New Mexico, where they enjoy riding motorcycles and have established a friendship with a guy there who rides motorcycles too. As it turns out, that second guy is a huge fan of CBS RMT like I am. I find it amusing that we share a Facebook friendship triangle where the three legs of the triangle all exist for very different reasons.

Rondò Veneziano

2009-04-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

I've told you about my friend Mark. He's been my friend since we were teenagers, and we've kept in touch longer than any other friend I have. I have a number of friends from high school with whom I still keep regularly in touch, but Mark is the only one whose friendship dates all the way back to just before high school.

He isn't the only one of my friends named Mark. This should be little surprise to him, since, as he posted to his blog recently, there are lots of people our age with that name.

I met one of my friends named Mark in our high school band (yes, believe it or not, I actually played a brass instrument in high school), and I had the privilege of being best man at his wedding. That Mark I think probably wins the award for staying married the longest of anybody my age that I know.

A close second is my other friend Marc, a friend I met when we were assigned to be Mormon missionary companions in (what was then West) Germany. I was his first companion – what Mormons refer to as a “greenie trainer”. We became friends quickly, and we've kept in touch all these years since, especially during the first several years after we returned home from our missions.

We found that we shared a number of the same musical interests, and as time went by, he would introduce me to his favorite music by sending me audiocassettes through the mail. I'd try to return the favor, but – as is the case with my other two musically-knowledgeable friends, Kathi and the first of the two Marks I mentioned – he always seemed to know more music than I did, so I never really got the sense that I was introducing him to anything he wasn't already familiar with.

Still though, I was always grateful for the music I learned about from him, and a number of the albums in my collection are there as a direct result of that exchange.

But one of those artists hasn't been in my collection until recently, not because I didn't like them – I did, very much – but because getting their albums would have meant buying them as imports, which would have been expensive, and because there were just so many albums that I never knew where to start.

The artist I'm referring to is Rondò Veneziano. I'll let you read their Wikipedia page, since that does a better job of explaining who they are than I can. As you can read there, they've produced over 70 albums. Where on earth to start? If I'm buying them as imports, I can't possibly buy them all.

I've kept all of the audiocassettes that Marc sent me back in those early days of our friendship … but time marches on to the point where I literally have no way to play audiocassettes at this point. But I remember those Rondò Veneziano recordings very fondly, and so from time to time I have gone searching for some sort of a definitive collection of their best work.

Recently, at last, I found it. Earlier this year, Sony Classical released a two-CD set called “Masterpieces”. I found it on iTunes, but I'm still old-fashioned enough (my kids would say “ancient”) that I prefer the CD's over digital media. But I couldn't find the “Masterpieces” collection anywhere for sale, even through online retailers like CD Universe – even now as I write this I don't see it there – so I succumbed and bought it from iTunes. (I suspect I'm better off that way, since it's much, much cheaper there than the import would have been.)

I have been listening to this collection ever since, and I absolutely love it. The collection has pretty much all of the music I remember getting from Marc back then, plus plenty more, all of which is terrific.

Thanks, Marc, for introducing me to this stuff. And thank you Sony Classical for making this collection available. I am very, very pleased.

Why I haven't been posting lately

2009-04-27T10:48:00.000-07:00

If you were reading my blog last summer, you know how hectic my work life gets in the months leading up to Labor Day. This year is no exception. Last year I blogged about the intensity of work leading up to each of our milestones. This year, especially lately, I've been unable to do much of anything else.

But I'm pleased to report that we have reached the first of our milestones over the weekend, which takes some of the pressure off until the next one comes along.

I have so much I want to say here, but I just haven't had time. Hopefully, the backlog of words in my head will come tumbling out onto the page in the next few days, because there really is a lot to say.

Hopefully at least some of it will be marginally of interest to the rest of you. :)

Identity theft

2009-03-09T14:59:00.000-07:00

I have never been the victim of identity theft.

Someone did find an old American Express statement of mine in the trash once, years ago, and used it to buy something online. I reported the incident to AmEx and they promptly removed the charge for that item – their customer service in such cases is one of many reasons why I love being an AmEx customer – and ever since, I've been careful to shred my credit card statements into tiny bits of confetti. My shredder isn't just one of those that tears pages into quarter-inch strips. Mine is a “micro-shredder”, which literally reduces my statements to tiny bits of mulch.

A year or two earlier, idiot kids broke into my car and stole my radio. Police at the time showed me indications that they probably wanted to joyride it but failed to get it out of the driveway, so all they got was the radio. Still, what a pain: insurance paid thousands of dollars to get the car back into shape, and my deductible wasn't small either, all for a $100 radio. But what really sticks with me to this day is the whole concept of being invaded, which has left me completely paranoid ever since. I now check three or four times to make sure my car is locked, and I double-lock my residence whenever I leave it, even just to go check the mail. (I freely admit that this is over-the-top paranoia, especially considering that my car was locked when it was broken into.)

As you can imagine, I am extremely careful with my online identity, with my credit card numbers, with my social security number. Despite all of this, I got a letter from one of my credit card companies five or six months ago saying that my card had been compromised, and so they were going to issue me a new one. I check my accounts online every day or every other day, and I'm sure no purchases were made fraudulently, so I never really did find out what the cause for concern was. But the credit card company felt they needed to do this, even though they couldn't tell me how they knew there was a problem. I was a little weirded out by it, but figured, oh well, no harm, no foul. Besides, this was a card I rarely use, so if it gets compromised, it wouldn't affect me much.

Then it happened again. A second credit card company, completely unrelated to the first one, sent me another such letter, and replaced my card. That was weird, I thought. It's a card I use a little more often, but still not very often. But still, no fraudulent purchases, and no idea why the company thought I needed a new card. Nevertheless, my spidey-sense was definitely tingling now.

And then it happened again! Last week I got a third letter from a credit card company completely unrelated to the first two – on a card I do use fairly frequently, as it happens – and now I'm really, really creeped out. Still no fraudulent charges, still no indication that anybody has actually stolen my identity, but – three different cards in six months? It's hard not to feel like I'm being targeted, especially when Vera hasn't received any such letter, nor has anybody else I know gotten one either.

Maybe I'm just really, really paranoid, and maybe I'm overreacting – (it wouldn't be the first time) – but I'm nevertheless sufficiently creeped out now that I feel like it's time take steps to keep my identity protected. So I've signed up with LifeLock.

Why am I telling you this? I'm not sure. Mainly because, if you know of some good reason why I shouldn't be signing up with them, please tell me now. But it seems like a sensible thing to me. With the economy in the state it's in now, I'm sure there are plenty more people than there were before trying to steal my identity, and I'm in no hurry to let them if I can avoid it.

And now, the lighter side of the news

2009-03-02T12:04:00.000-08:00

A dozen and a half years or so ago, wanting to make a good impression on a job interview, I bought a brand new dress suit.

It served me well for the next dozen years, until my fortieth birthday, when I decided that my suit was over a decade old and I wanted a new one. This new suit served me well for a handful of events since then, including a wedding (in Russian and Hebrew and not a hint of English!), and a New Year's celebration or two.

Predictably, I waited until the morning of my flight to Utah before packing my bag. I threw shirts, socks, underwear, and toiletries into my carry-on bag, then reached into the closet where I keep my suit, checked to make sure it was my suit, and threw it into the bag too.

Now, I know I've put on a few pounds since the last time I wore that suit, so for the entire past week (during which time I knew I was going to need to shoehorn myself into this suit), I did my best to eat as little as possible, in hopes of getting it to fit when the funeral took place.

But when I put it on, not only was it too tight, it was way way WAY too tight.

Have I really put on this much weight since the last time I wore this? I thought, horrified.

I managed to shoehorn myself into that suit after all, because I had to – what other choice did I have? – but it was profoundly uncomfortable, and I was never so happy as when I finally got to take it off and get into normal clothes again.

Well, it wasn't until the next day that I realized what had happened. When I pulled the suit out of the closet to pack my bag, naturally I assumed I only owned one suit. I'm no salesman or business executive. Why would I need any more than one suit? (Even when I used to go to church, I didn't wear a suit, I just wore slacks and a tie and dress shoes.) Of COURSE I threw out the old suit when I bought the new one … right? Why would I hang onto it, knowing I had a newer, better one to take its place?

Of course it didn't occur to me, as I was throwing clothing into my travel bag, that there might be another suit in the closet, but there was – one almost two decades old! Not anymore though. That old suit got left behind with my sister who lives in Utah, so that I didn't need to carry it back home again just to give it to charity. She'll take care of that for me. So now I really DO own only one suit, and I'll never again grab the wrong one when I'm packing in a hurry.

… at least, not until the next time I buy another suit, whenever that is.

My grandmother's passing

2009-03-02T10:44:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I was in Salt Lake City. My maternal grandmother, who was 93, passed away the weekend before.

It's both difficult and easy to find words to describe how much I loved her. The funeral service captured very well what a beautiful lady she was, how literally everyone who knew her loved her and felt loved by her, and I certainly agree with all of that. Somehow I want to find an expression of love for her that is uniquely my own, and I find that just about everybody else felt the same way about her that I did: that she was always kindhearted, always bright and cheerful, even when things weren't going well (goodness knows, I can learn a lot from her; I have the bad habit of getting dark and gloomy over the smallest causes), always open and warm and welcoming to everybody in her life. I suppose this is the sort of thing people are supposed to say about the deceased, but there really isn't a hint of exaggeration in any of this: she really was the model of kind, decent, wholehearted concern for all the people she knew, as well as one of the most cheerful and inviting and happy people I've ever known.

She threw a huge birthday party when she turned 90, and family and friends came to Salt Lake from all over to celebrate with her. Of course I went. I had only known Vera for a little over a year by that point, and when word got to my grandmother that I didn't know if Vera was invited, she called me up immediately to make sure I knew that not only was Vera invited, she was thoroughly and wholeheartedly wanted and welcome. That's how my grandmother was. So Vera got to meet her, and Vera was just as touched on that occasion as I've ever been by how warm and welcoming and full of life my grandmother was.

It was good to see family again this weekend. All of my aunts and uncles from my mother's side and most of them from my father's side as well were there, and all of my cousins on my mother's side too, of course. Except for my grandmother's 90th birthday, I haven't seen a lot of these people in a very long time, and it was good to catch up on how they're doing, and see how the younger ones have grown.

For the last two years or so, my grandmother's health has been in decline, and we all knew the end was coming. And so you think you're emotionally prepared for it, and you think you'll be just fine when the time comes, because she lived a full, rich and happy life, and so, logically, you think, there will be little cause to mourn. But then the reality of it hits you like a truck, and you realize just how much you're going to miss her, and how much she has meant to you all of your life, and all of that well-formed logic really doesn't stop the tears from coming like you thought it would … so much so that I can hardly bring myself to type the concluding line of this post.

Goodbye, Grandma. I love you. I'll miss you. Thank you for everything you've been for me for all these many years.

February rainstorms

2009-02-08T14:09:00.001-08:00

Last year in January, I came home one day in a pouring rainstorm to find that water was seeping into my residence through one of the ceiling light fixtures. We were able to deal with it temporarily by placing a bucket under the drip and hoping the problem wouldn't get worse, but it was still a very unsettling thing to realize that the place you live in is not waterproof.

A month later, the problem got worse when another heavy rainstorm caused much more damage: water was leaking through the roof, through the walls, and pooling in the upstairs carpeting. I woke up on a Sunday morning in February to find a lake growing in the carpet. Fortunately, I have one of those Bissel carpet shampooers, which just happens to be a great tool for sucking water out of carpets, and it definitely earned its keep on that morning. I was glad I have that shampooer, because without it, I don't know how I would have kept the rising flood from getting much worse than it did. As it was, there was still enough water to soak through the upstairs floor and into the downstairs.

The leaking roof meant that those early-2008 rains caused a lot of damage both inside and out, and for months afterward, contractors came to replace the roof (which hadn't been replaced in 25 years, and I was told the roof was only designed for 15-20 years of life, so it was definitely time), repair the drywall, and paint. Now the place looks brand new, and the painted walls are a brighter, more inviting color – the downstairs had been a pale grey and is now what the painters call “sandy beach” (although my kids tease me that it looks pink), and it looks remarkably more welcoming than what had been there before – so all's well that ends well, even though it was an inconvenience having all those workers around for such a long time.

A month or two after this was all over, another rainfall showed me that the roof repairs had blocked up the drainage off of the roof, causing the roof to flood. Now, you might be wondering how a roof can flood. Well, you see, my roof isn't an ordinary roof; it's actually a deck. The following pictures are a little old – in fact they're from when I first moved here, because I already have these pictures and I'm too lazy to take new ones – but they'll give you an idea of what the rooftop deck area looks like, more or less:

As you can see, the rooftop is enclosed on all sides by a short wall, which means that if there isn't adequate drainage, potentially a flood up there could be a very bad thing. So, I had a plumber friend of my neighbor's repair the drain. (Probably I shouldn't have needed to, since the guys who did the original contracting job were at fault, but … well, trust me, this way was just easier for lots of reasons.)

I'm extremely glad I did, because it's now February again, which is heavy-rainfall season in southern California. It's been raining here for the past several days. A couple of days during that time I went up to look at the roof to make sure everything was okay, and it was, which was reassuring. On Friday – two days ago – the rainfall got especially heavy, but I didn't think there was anything to be concerned about because I had checked on the roof occasionally to make sure all was well, so I knew I could relax.

Well, I thought I could relax … until water started leaking into the upstairs again. It wasn't much, just some drips around a door frame, but still!

After all that repair work, I thought, this place still isn't waterproof??

So I went up to the roof to see what was going on, and that's when I discovered that the entire deck was six inches deep in cold, cold water. That's when I really freaked out. In a panic, and in bare feet, I went out with a bucket and started to bail water over the sides – until I realized that there was so much water there that this approach would take all night.

That's when I went over to the drain to see if I could see why it wasn't working like I thought it should, only to find that the drain cover had been dislodged and a big pile of leaves was blocking the drain.

Thank god, I thought. I can fix this!

I pulled the leaves out of the drain – and there were a lot of them &ndash and replaced the drain cover, and thank goodness, the water started draining again. Not long afterward, the wading pool that had formed on my roof had subsided, and life was normal again. With the crisis over, I went inside to take a long, hot shower to revive my frozen hands and feet.

The next day, I told this story to my neighbor. He pointed out something I hadn't thought of at all: with all that extra water weight on the roof, he says I'm lucky the roof didn't collapse. Yikes!

I have now learned my lesson: I will never again procrastinate clearing the fallen leaves off of that deck area. A drain cover is a good thing to have up to a point, but it can't do its job when it's covered in a huge pile of leaves.

Now I know.

Tax time again: it's over, and yet not over yet

2009-02-06T12:33:00.000-08:00

I met with my tax preparer this morning. We're waiting on one bit of data which may or may not have a slight impact on the final result, which I should get this afternoon. Then it's all done.

The numbers look good. The combination of my state and federal tax refunds will completely pay off every credit card balance I have, which will be quite a relief.

But here's the problem:

Thanks to our current economic mess, the state of California is barely hanging on financially. The governor has ordered state employees not to work (and not to get paid) two days out of every month, which he expects will amount to a savings of over a billion dollars per month if I understand correctly. But what's more, the state will also be hanging on to all tax refunds, potentially for months to come, until it has money to pay them.

So anyway, it turns out that 38% of my refund is from the state and the rest is from the federal government, and as it turns out, the federal refund by itself isn't enough to pay off my credit cards.

This shouldn't irk me, but it does. I really really really want to be credit-card-debt free, and this tax refund would have been my ticket to that freedom. Now I'm going to have to wait, and it's frustrating not to know how long.

Admittedly, I'd really rather have my financial concerns than California's – imagine needing to find ways to save over a billion dollars a month! – and yet, as much as I sympathize with the state's lack of funds (and, for that matter, with the unfortunate state employees whose pay is being reduced by two workdays per month), I don't sympathize quite enough that it takes the sting out of needing to wait indefinitely for my credit card freedom.

Oh well. There's nothing I can do about it, so I may as well try to find my emotional center and be glad that the federal refund isn't being delayed. Even though it won't completely clear my credit card balances, it will help out a lot, and I am glad about that.

UPDATE: I guess I was wrong: it's not a billion dollars a month, it's $1.3 billion over the lifetime of the furlough. But still....

Recent news, and a story I can't tell

2009-01-27T14:09:00.000-08:00

Some things happen around me that I'd love to tell here, but, well, they aren't really my stories to tell. For a wide variety of reasons, I don't feel I can talk about everything that happened this past weekend, but if I could, I would, because it was a total blast. But, well, you're just going to have to take my word for it.

Two of my children have birthdays in late January, and it's been my tradition to take them all out somewhere nice for a birthday dinner. This past weekend, that meant Red Lobster, which I think we all enjoyed, although my youngest ended up with way more on his plate than he could eat in one sitting. We'll do that again this coming weekend, although I haven't learned yet where we're going, because the one with the birthday hasn't picked a place to go yet.

(Question: why am I not being more forthcoming about whose birthdays we're celebrating or when they are? Answer: because I'm very nervous about the fact that this blog is publicly visible, and I really don't want anybody harvesting my children's identities from my blog. That's the same reason I don't give them names, but refer to them here as "my oldest" or "my youngest" or "my daughter". I'm sure that if someone really wanted to, they could figure all of this out – regrettably, a lot more information about me and my family is available on the Internet than I would like – but that doesn't mean I have to draw anyone a map.)

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that every year I help to put on my local Mensa chapter's Regional Gatherings. That event is coming up in another two and a half weeks, and it's really looking like it's going to turn out well. I am once again acting as webmaster, treasurer, and speaker shepherd for that event, although this year, I'm shepherding half as many speakers, and I'm sharing the shepherding responsibilities with another Mensan, which is going to take a lot of the load off of my shoulders. Meanwhile, I'm very proud of the way the website has turned out, so check it out.

While the kids were here for the holidays, I put on a frightening amount of weight, which I've been struggling to lose ever since. Frustratingly, although I've done a reasonably good job since then of writing down a workout schedule and sticking to it for the most part, the damned scale isn't budging (much). I'm feeling much better physically than I have in a while, but somehow that's not much comfort when the real goal is to be losing weight. Going out for a big dinner with the kids last weekend didn't help, and doing it again this weekend isn't going to help either, nor is my historic tendency to eat unhealthy foods on Super Bowl Sunday … but once this weekend is over, then I'm really going to attack my eating habits with a vengeance. (But then, I've been saying that for most of my adult life, and nothing ever seems to change for long. Can you tell I'm discouraged? Sigh....)

Kids for the holidays, part two

2009-01-03T21:22:00.000-08:00

You've read about some of my favorite shows here in the past. I've told you about my long history with both Star Trek and Moonlighting. I've told you how I became enchanted by Pushing Daisies. What I don't think I've mentioned here yet is my other recent television favorite, The Big Bang Theory.

When The Big Bang Theory first aired, I was immediately hooked. The show made me laugh out loud, over and over again. But I got the distinct impression that I was alone in loving that show.

It's never a good idea to let me fall in love with a television show. I'm bad luck to them. When I discover and fall in love with a new show, it's doomed. This has happened to me over and over and over again. The recent cancellation of Pushing Daisies is a good example of this, and there are many others.

Nevertheless, I honestly thought Pushing Daisies would be the exception, or at least that it would last longer than The Big Bang Theory, because, like I say, I was convinced I was the only one watching that one, whereas I was pretty sure Pushing Daisies had picked up a sizable following. But surprise, surprise, Pushing Daisies is now pushing daisies, while The Big Bang Theory is gaining an audience. Who'd have guessed?

So anyway:

Remember I said that my sons were playing on the Xbox on New Year's Eve? They were playing Left 4 Dead when last I wrote. After that, they started playing Halo 3.

I own the first season DVD of The Big Bang Theory, and there's one episode that involves our guys playing Halo 3, so I asked my kids if I could play it for them, because I thought they'd like it and they agreed. To my delight, they loved it! (By the way, this means that when midnight struck and 2008 became 2009, I was watching The Big Bang Theory with my three sons.)

The next day was Thursday, and we discussed various plans for how to spend the rest of the week. And as it turns out, long story short, what they wanted to do was watch the rest of that first season of The Big Bang Theory. No kidding! We watched that entire season from start to finish from the time they woke up in the early afternoon until long after dark. I went out to get Papa John's Pizza to eat while we watched, but otherwise, I don't think we left the house.

I'm thrilled that they loved my show, and was delighted to share it with them. My kids connected with that show for all the same reasons that I do, and that felt great.

Friday was laser tag day. Often when I drive up to spend Saturdays with them, we'll go to the laser tag place near their home, but the laser tag place near MY home is, in my own opinion, much superior to theirs, and I've wanted to take them there for a while now.

What I didn't realize until this week was that my laser tag place offers (what they call) a “day pass”. I had assumed this meant literally all day, from the time they opened until the time they closed, but when we got there, we discovered that it only covers a four-hour block. Still though, four hours straight of all the laser tag we can fit into that amount of time gave us at least 10-12 games, maybe more – I lost count – and game for game, that's like two bucks apiece. At that price, the value of the day pass is too good to pass up.

My original thought was that we'd play a round or two, take a break, play another round or two, take another break, and keep at it all night. But this new definition of “day pass” changed all that: now we were going to play as many games in those four hours as we could possibly cram into that space of time.

And until now, I have never done that. In the past, I've played two to four rounds (depending on how you count them) in a day, but I've certainly never gone for four hours of nothing but game after game after game. By the time those four hours were up, I was dead-tired exhausted, and my laser hand was stiff and sore from holding that gun so tightly all that time. But don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. On the contrary, we all had a total blast that day, and it was totally worth it in all respects. But yeah, once I got home afterward, I slept like a rock.

The plan for Saturday was either the L.A. Zoo or the Getty Center, depending on how strongly people felt about either choice. There was some question about whether my daughter would join us, which I had thought might have swung the choice in the direction of the zoo, until she told me over the phone that she'd be equally happy with either choice. As it turned out, she ended up not joining us that day after all, and Vera had to cancel too, so it was just the four of us. And the strongest votes from them were for the Getty museum, so that's where we went today.

The Getty is an absolutely huge place, and although we were there for several hours, we only got to see a fraction of what there was to see. But what we saw – some of which I had seen before, but most of which I hadn't – was breathtaking as usual. None of my kids have been there before today, and the oldest enjoyed it especially. He did a good job of engaging his two brothers in the experience – much better than anything I could have managed, at any rate – for which I'm grateful.

And then it was all over. We came home, ate dinner, packed up, and my oldest drove the three of them home.

This has been a good week. I love my kids. I'm glad I got to spend time with them. I believe they enjoyed it all too, and I believe they're glad they came.

But sadly, now the holidays are over, and all too soon it will be time to go back to work again. Well, at least I still have Sunday free before that happens!

Kids for the holidays, part one

2008-12-31T19:03:00.000-08:00

My kids are with me for the holidays this week, and the week's half over. Before I forget how we spent that time, here's what I remember of the time so far:

Sunday I picked up the younger two and brought them back here. The oldest one wanted to come, but had to to stay behind for a dentist appointment on Tuesday. And my daughter, who told me at first that she was looking forward to coming this week, now feels that we're just too boring (when you're done reading my report, you be the judge; maybe she's right, although I think it's been a fun week so far; but then again, I'm not always the best party planner on the planet, although I do what I can), so she's staying home. (There's a friend living there now; that may also have something to do with her decision.) So I brought two of my sons back here, and expected the oldest son to arrive later on.

First order of business: dinner Sunday night. However, as they're both believing Mormons, they preferred that I not spend money on dinner that day, which left me foraging in my kitchen for something to make for them. Turns out, I had chicken, green beans, rice, and other ingredients for prik king, and asked them if they'd be willing to try that. To my surprised delight, not only did they let me make it for them, they both gave it a thumbs up when they finished it.

They're accustomed to sleeping late when it's a holiday, so by the time they woke up Monday, it was already time for lunch. They wanted hamburgers, so I took them to The Habit, my favorite burger place. Then we went to go buy groceries for them so we're not eating out every single time we eat.

It's tough for me to find stuff that they'd like to do, and even though I gave them a couple dozen suggestions – laser tag, going to the beach, movies, bike rides, even Disneyland – waiting for one of my ideas to spark interest, none ever did. (I did mention I'm not always the best choice for Party Planner of the Year, didn't I? But still, I happen to think I'm full of fun ideas. Why they didn't go for them, I can't say.)

Then at last I found a new IMAX movie playing at the California Science Center called Sea Monsters in 3-D. That, I'm happy to report, they were interested in. Unfortunately, by the time we discovered this, it was already too late to get to the theater, so we decided to save that for another day. Instead, my middle son wanted to see the James Bond film Casino Royale, so we spent the evening watching that. (I tried to interrupt the action from time to time in order to find out how much of it my son was grasping on first viewing. As it turns out, he was getting it a lot more clearly than I did the first time through, although I did need to explain the rules of Texas Hold 'Em Poker as the movie progressed. Thank goodness there's at least one way for this old dad to make himself useful while watching a James Bond movie with his son!)

Tuesday, the piano tuner arrived. (Attentive readers will wonder why he showed up Tuesday when I said he was coming Monday. It's a long story.) Unfortunately, I had asked him to show up in the early afternoon (thinking that the kids would want to sleep in; as it happened, they ended up sleeping in past his arrival), and since there was so much work to do, by the time he was done, it was once again too late to go to the science center. So instead, we went to the Universal Studios Citywalk and watched Bolt in 3-D (which turns out to be an absolutely charming movie, and one I recommend for all ages … especially if you can catch it in 3-D!). Then we ate dinner at the Hard Rock Café next door.

That night my oldest son drove down to join us, and he and I stayed up late to talk about all kinds of things. He and I have a connection that allows us to talk about a million different topics in ways that few other people understand the way we do, and we get too few opportunities to cover them in enough depth, especially just between the two of us. I'm always glad when we do, and this was a fun conversation, even if it did keep me up a lot later than I'm used to.

And that brings us to today, when we finally got to see the Sea Monsters movie at the science center. I thought it was extraordinarily well done, and so did my kids. Make time for this one at all costs. Really fantastic moviemaking.

Before the movie, somehow (and don't ask me how, because I'm still not sure, although the fact that my prik king from Sunday night was a success may have helped) I talked all three of them into going out for Thai food at a restaurant nearby called Lannathai which has long been one of my favorites. To my utter delight and (frankly) astonishment, all three of them, none of whom had ever had Thai food before, gave both the restaurant – and along with it, the whole concept of Thai food – an enthusiastic thumbs up. I've been suggesting Thai food to them for years. At last, I have won converts to my cause!

And now it's New Year's Eve, and although we all want to do something to celebrate, frankly, I just can't find anything really perfect to do that involves leaving the house. I know Vera is restless and wants to go somewhere, especially after a long and tiring day at work, although my youngest son just now told me point blank that he'd rather stay in. Universal Citywalk is open until midnight and will count down the seconds to the new year, and that might be something we still go out to do, although I'm a bit leery of just how crowded that experience will be. Otherwise, although both Vera and I have looked, nothing else is really coming to mind. So here I am typing up my memoirs, and the kids are playing Left 4 Dead on the Xbox 360 that my son brought with him when he arrived last night. (Like I keep saying, I do what I can, but I'm not always the one to count on to keep everyone entertained.)

That's the story so far. Check back next time when I finish reporting on my week.

An underappreciated gem

2008-12-31T11:06:00.000-08:00

Five years ago, I fell in love with the movie Love Actually. If you haven't seen it, please do. You'll thank me.

Love Actually is like nothing else I've seen, and so I remember being excited when a new film came out early this year called Definitely, Maybe, announcing itself as “from the people who brought you Love Actually”.

It turns out that the only thing the two films have in common, as far as people working on them, is the producers. Somehow, I was expecting a little more commonality from an advertising campaign like that one: the same writer and director too, for example, at least.

I also remember that this film came and went in movie theaters in the space of about a week and a half, long before I had a chance to make time to see it. I figured that such a short run in theaters couldn't be a good sign, but still, the reviews were above average, and even if just for the tenuous connection to Love Actually, I have wanted to see this one ever since.

A month or two ago, I finally joined Netflix. I'm honestly not sure why I waited so long, but Netflix turns out to be something I should have joined a long time ago. I think maybe I just couldn't believe that it would turn out to be as good as it promised, but in fact it is.

I've often said that there are just so many movies out there that friends of mine highly recommend that if I ever made a list of all of them, it would stretch around the block. Two of my best friends, Dave and Kathi, have each recommended so many movies to me that even if I just kept a list of suggestions from either one of them, I'd never run out of movies to watch. Well, so, Netflix lets me maintain just such a list, and in fact, yes, it stretches around the block a couple of times. I'm going to be a Netflix subscriber for a long, long time at this rate.

Definitely, Maybe finally made its way to the top of my Netflix queue last week, and I watched it twice before giving it back.

Is it the greatest movie ever made? Well, maybe not. But is it something I can highly recommend? Most definitely. (And yes, I'm aware of the subtle clever pun in this paragraph.)

Watch it if you haven't. And while you're at it, if you haven't seen Love Actually, run, don't walk to your local video store and watch it too!

Christmas Day

2008-12-29T10:42:00.000-08:00

Last year in December, Vera found a place up in the mountains called Idyllwild where we stayed in a bed and breakfast for a couple of days. While we were there, the town got its first snowfall of the season. Those of you reading this in areas where snowfall is common this time of year won't quite relate, but Vera was enchanted by the winter weather, and has been anxious to revisit ever since.

Here's a picture of me from last year's trip up there. This is in front of the B&B where we stayed:

Here's a picture of a house in the woods that I'm including just because I think it's a scenic shot:

And this is my car at the end of the trip, and Vera delighted by the huge pile of snow that had fallen while we were there:

Vera's work schedule this year only allowed her to be away from work on Christmas Day and the day after, and she hasn't been getting any time off otherwise, so we chose to make the most of her days off by heading up to Idyllwild again.

This time the trip wasn't quite the same charming experience. All of Christmas Day, instead of snow, we got rain, except right at the end of the day, after the sun had set. That meant that we got a good amount of snow on the landscape the next day, and no small amount of ice. We spent both days exploring the town, shopping, eating in their restaurants. Admittedly, I enjoyed that more on the second day, when we could walk in the sunshine instead of under an umbrella, but Vera loves rainy weather and isn't going to let that slow her down.

Like I say, if you live in a normally snowy place, it will seem odd that we went out of our way seeking snowy weather … but frankly, I like it like that. I like to be able to see the snow when I want to, not when it wants me to. I lived in Iowa for four years, and Michigan and Germany for several more. As far as I'm concerned, that's enough bitterly cold weather for one lifetime, thanks.

And so, more pictures of Idyllwild from this year's trip. First, a picture of me in front of the B&B again:

(I hate that hat. Everyone else loves it, and I can't figure why. I bought it a couple of Octobers ago when visiting my parents in Michigan. I didn't have a hat, needed one, and this was the first one I found. I figured I'd get it then because otherwise my ears would have frozen off my face, and I'd get a better one later on. But so far, I haven't found one that's any better, or any warmer, than this dorky looking one I have.)

The B&B itself again; as you'll notice, there's not quite so much snow this time around:

And the town of Idyllwild, with mountains in the background, which I'm including just because it's a scenic shot:

The restaurants there were a treat, especially El Diablo and Café Aroma, although I was expecting more from The Bread Basket.

The highlight of the trip for me was visiting an antique shop in town. The guy who runs that store was delighted to show off jukeboxes from the 1950's and Victrola record players from a century ago. I'm sure I've never seen one outside of a museum, and was skittish about even standing near one, letting alone cranking one up, but this guy was happy to show them off to me, and I thought it was great fun watching them play records from that long ago.

Majel Barrett Roddenberry

2008-12-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

Another piece of Star Trek passed away this week.

I'm not sad about her passing, per se. From what the obituaries say, she passed away in her sleep, with family and friends at hand, after living a full life.

More accurately, Star Trek has been such a significant part of my life, my personal philosophy, and memories of my childhood that it's sad when bits of that legacy pass away, leaving fewer and fewer of them around to celebrate it with me.

I remember clearly where I was when I heard the news that Gene Roddenberry died. Likewise, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, Alexander Courage, Jerry Goldsmith. I felt then very much like I do now: how sad to see them going away. And yet, like I say, each of them lived a full life, so it's not as if I'm in mourning, exactly. It's more like: how I wish they were still around so I could tell them how much their creation meant to me.

A couple of years ago, Vera and I were invited to attend a very small film festival in nearby Calabasas. And I do mean very small: not many films were screening, and their audiences were a few dozen people, at least for the one film we attended. And yet, totally unexpectedly, Nichelle Nichols was in the audience with us. As we were milling about before the film began, I saw her face, heard her voice, and instantly knew who she was.

(There have been times when I'll see someone and think he or she looks like some celebrity, and later will discover that in fact that really was the celebrity I thought they looked like. Vera and I once ran into Kate Jackson in a sporting goods store; Vera was sure she was, I thought she just coincidentally looked like Kate Jackson. As it turns out, Vera was right, and I was wrong. But in this case, I just instantly knew that this was Nichelle Nichols and not someone who looked uncannily like Nichelle Nichols. It was as if there was some psychic connection in my brain or something.)

And I know I was a bit of a goofball fanboy, but I couldn't help myself. I told her I loved her, loved the show since I was a little kid, how much it meant to me, how grateful I was for it and for her. And I said something like, “I'm sorry, I know you must get this all the time, and I know it must be a bit tiresome, but I can't help myself.” She was extremely gracious about it all, promising that she loves to hear from her fans, and I thanked her again for letting me gush over her.

I got to shake William Shatner's hand when I was about 13. He was promoting a record album called “William Shatner Live” at the time, and was signing autographs for people who bought the album. Of course I did. And when I got to the front of the line, I asked him if I could shake his hand; he did, and I was thrilled.

I wish I had more opportunities like that, to tell these people how much their creation means to me. I'm afraid I might not have that chance again. Certainly as more of them pass away, I'll have fewer and fewer opportunities to do so. I think, really, that's the part I'm most sad about.

You can tune a piano but you can't tuna fish, part two, with more apologies to REO Speedwagon

2008-12-19T14:14:00.000-08:00

(What happened to part one, you ask? It's over here.)

I have clear memories of my mother teaching piano lessons when I was very young.

At the time, she had three pianos: two that she'd use for teaching, and one nicer one in the living room which she'd play for herself.

Several years ago, she added a really really nice one, a grand piano, built in the 1930's if I recall correctly, which is actually too big for the living room so it sits elsewhere in the house.

Well, so, this is just too many pianos for one household, especially since I don't think she's teaching any longer, so when I got married two decades ago, she gave one of the two teaching pianos to me.

It has occurred to me that maybe I should have declined, just for financial reasons. Over the years since then I've changed residences about every three years or so, and have had to pay movers extra money each time just to move the piano. I'm absolutely certain that the amount of money I've paid over the years to have that piano moved far exceeds what it's actually worth.

But on the other hand, I like playing it occasionally (although never when anyone is around to hear!), and my musician son plays it whenever he comes over, and so does my mom … so it's a good thing to have.

The thing is, though: it hasn't been tuned in all that time. It always seemed pointless to spend money tuning the piano if I was just going to move again and screw up the tuning that had been done. Besides, although it was always something I wanted to do, I always managed to find something else to spend money on.

Well, of course I have no idea what the future holds – for all I know, I may move again soon, but I've been where I am for almost four years now, which is something of a record for me – and at any rate I'm not planning on moving in the near future if I can avoid it – and my parents are looking for something to give me as a Christmas gift, so I suggested that we have the piano tuned, since it's been so long. Mom's thrilled at the idea, and so am I.

I had made an appointment with a well-recommended piano tuner to show up before the holidays so that it would be all done by the time family arrives, but at the last minute, he had a family emergency, so we've moved the appointment to Monday the 29th.

That's going to be less than ideal, since my kids will be in the house at the time, and I'm sure with so many people in the house, it'll be a chaotic environment in which to tune a piano. (How can you hear the sound of the piano strings with video games playing in the background?) But we'll figure something out. We always do.

With all of that said, I'm eagerly looking forward to having my piano tuned at last. It still won't mean that I'll want to play for anybody but myself, but it will sound better when someone does play it, whether that's my mom, my son … or myself, with no one around. No matter who's playing, it'll be good to get that done.

Our holiday tree is up!

2008-12-14T19:03:00.000-08:00

Friends and family have been pointing out to me for a while now that my blog hasn't updated in over a month. And they're right.

Part of that is because I've been suffering from an intense case of writers block; although I do have stories to tell, I just haven't known the right way to tell them.

And part of that is because I've wanted my comments about Obama's election and Prop 8 to be the first thing you see on my blog, because I continue to feel that they're just that important. That day has been a bittersweet memory ever since: I can hardly wait for Obama to take office, but I remain downhearted that even California couldn't manage to defeat the travesty that is Prop 8 … and if California couldn't manage it, what chance does the rest of the country have?

Well, so … I can't stay in that funk forever, and it's about time I came out of my writers-block-induced hiatus. And so, herewith, my first blog post since the election:

We bought a tree this weekend, and really scored big time too. We paid for a six-to-seven-foot tree, but I'm convinced that the one we bought was mismarked, because it's got to be over seven feet tall. And it's rich and green and full, and we had a blast decorating it this weekend.

For a number of years, I didn't decorate. Then I met Vera. She persuaded me to decorate back in 2005, and we've been doing it every year since. When we did it the first time, I was just enchanted by the festive atmosphere that a decorated tree brings into the home, what with the scent of pine needles and the bright lights.

An atheist discussion list that I read and contribute to is currently asking whether it's hypocritical of atheists to decorate for the holidays. Some years ago, I would have agreed. Now, though, I understand that the decorating of trees is a tradition that pre-dates Christmas and is entirely pagan in origin, and besides, the festivity it brings with it is (in my view) entirely secular. I don't think of it as a Christmas tree; I think of it as a holiday tree. And I'm happy we have one.

(Remember that you can click on that image to see a larger version of it, although it's a bit fuzzy. My camera isn't that great, especially in dimly-lit rooms.)

Time to vote

2008-11-03T17:25:00.000-08:00

The campaigns are nearly over, and now it's time to vote.

I've been contemplating a snarky blog post for today – something very much like, “Get out and vote … unless you would be voting for McCain, in which case, please stay home and find something else to do with your time.”

However, I am overjoyed by the fact that polls show Obama with a commanding lead, so much so that, well, those of you reading this who feel compelled to vote for McCain, for whatever reason … fine, go ahead and vote. At this point, it won't make any difference. The election is over. Starting tomorrow, the healing can begin.

And I couldn't be happier. Obama is, in just about every conceivable way, the right choice for America and the world. I have heard people give the most bizarre and uninformed reasons for voting against him, and they are almost always based on fear: fear that he'll take away their guns, fear that he's going to board up their churches, fear that he's going to tax and spend this country into bankruptcy. The people who say such things don't realize it yet, but they too are going to benefit profoundly from his leadership. The time to fear the guy in the White House is coming to a close.

(And please – when are people going to get past this ridiculous nonsense about the Democrats being the party of taxing and spending? Puh-leeze. Have you people been paying attention for the last eight years? Have you noticed which party has been the one in charge as we've doubled the national debt, adding an astounding five trillion dollars in just eight short years? The Republicans have given up whatever basis they may have had for blaming Democrats for overspending and for creating big government. Get a clue.)

On the other hand, if you happen to be reading this and you are voting in California, the race for Proposition 8 is far from certain, and so those of you who would be voting for that one are going to get my snarky “please vote, unless you're voting for Prop 8” admonition.

Honestly, is there any other correct choice than “No on 8”? None at all. Come clean and admit it: if you're voting yes on Prop 8, you're voting your religious biases, plain and simple. To put it very bluntly, anybody who votes according to religious convictions somehow missed some very basic fundamentals in civics class about the ideals upon which this country was founded. To put it even more bluntly, those biases are just wrong: they're hateful, they're discriminatory, they're exclusive, and they're derogatory. Rise above your biases and vote no on Prop 8.

The Yes on 8 campaign is mind-blowing in its groundlessness. It's half-truth and misinformation dressed up in a way that is meant to sound like it's defending something traditional, when really the only thing being defended is overt discrimination, and if that's traditional, then it shouldn't be.

Don't take my word for it. Read what the L.A. Times has to say about it. I don't agree with every one of the Times's recommendations, but this one is right on target.

Seriously: if you're going to vote for Prop 8, just stay home. Please. Prop 8 is bad for everyone, in just about every possible way. It's bad politics, it's bad law, and it's bad ethics. Worst of all, the only possible reasons for voting for it are either that you want to mix religion and politics (– and let's admit it: you want it to be your religion rather than someone else's –); or that you're just simply bothered by people who live lives that are different from yours. If that's your motivation, do us all a favor, and please don't vote. At all. Ever.

And otherwise, please do vote tomorrow. Make your voice heard. Take advantage of liberties that men and women have fought and died for.

And if you find yourself voting for Obama and against Prop 8, congratulate yourself for pointing this state and this country in the direction of healing, hope, and honor. It is about to begin again, after a long, long drought.

America, welcome back. You've been missed.

This past weekend

2008-10-20T17:59:00.000-07:00

Saturday:

I belong to a number of Star Trek discussion lists, although for the most part, only ones that talk about the original series, since I tend to regard all of the later ones as “Star Trek in name only”. Since the series is forty years old, you might think there's not always a lot to talk about, but that turns out not to be the case.

Some years ago, I found out that one of the guys on several of those lists lives near me. (“Near” is relative, of course, but when you're talking about a city as large as Los Angeles, anybody in the San Fernando Valley is “nearby”.) From time to time we get together to watch my high-definition first season episodes. I like that a lot, and so does he … and Vera tolerates us kindly enough.

And as it happens, Vera was out of the house Saturday morning, so I had John over to watch episodes and talk, and we went out for Mexican food afterward, to a place I've never been to, but which was really good! Over lunch, John and I got to talking about topics other than Star Trek for the first time, and I learned that he and I share a lot more in common than I realized.

That evening, Vera and I joined the local Mensa chapter at a silent movie showing at the Old Town Music Hall, complete with Wurlitzer organist, of John Barrymore in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, preceded by a not-quite-so-old black-and-white movie, The Laurel-Hardy Murder Case. The whole evening was utterly delightful in just about every possible way.

Sunday:

As I've hinted here in the past, but never actually come out and clarified, I'm also a huge fan of the late-1980's television show Moonlighting. I have boatloads of stories to tell about that – someday – but among them is the fact that some years ago, my love of Moonlighting led me to meet Lisa and Amy, two fellow fans who live nearby, but whom I haven't seen lately in well over a year. Long story short, we decided it was long past time to get together and catch up, so they and Vera and I met Sunday afternoon to watch Religulous and ate and talked afterward.

I'll happily admit to being biased in favor of the point Bill Maher makes in this movie, but I loved it, as did all four of us. It's funny, it's thought-provoking, it knows how to drive home its point, and doesn't mind doing so with a heavy hand, but it's all done extremely well. I loved this movie, and can't recommend it highly enough.

Afterward, the four of us went to a nearby Islands restaurant where we talked for hours about what we've all been up to lately, and that too, was a delightful way to end the weekend (even if I did eat way, way, way too much!).

Poor Vera, though. I've tried to introduce her to Star Trek and to Moonlighting gently, in a way that doesn't inundate her with my silly little obsessions, and when Lisa and Amy and I were talking about anything but Moonlighting, all was well; but when we got to Moonlighting, Vera wasn't able to follow what we were saying. That meant that, once Vera and I got home, I needed to pull out several of the episodes we had been discussing, in order to show her what they were all about. That kept the two of us up way later than usual that night.

Honestly, I wish Lisa and Amy could have been there with us. Why they weren't is another story, one which I won't be able to tell here.

Meanwhile, Lisa was kind enough to give me Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God CD, which I've been listening to ever since, and it's just fantastic. (Lisa knew I would think so, and she was right.) At this moment, I'm just about halfway through, and I've loved every minute of it. So much of it mirrors my own religious journey, it's uncanny. This gift was remarkably kind of her, and I need to find a way to thank her adequately.

So there you go: that's my weekend, and it's been terrific!

A Disneyland weekend

2008-10-13T14:24:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned, we shipped our product recently. The response from reviewers and customers has been wildly positive, and it's very gratifying to see.

So the company decided to celebrate by sending us all to the Disneyland Resort for the day on Friday the 10th.

Well, naturally, I wanted to bring Vera along, so we bought her a park-hopper ticket for that day … but at the last minute, my company found that it had extra unclaimed tickets which they gave out on a first-come, first-served basis, so I found myself with a ticket for her too … which means that now we have an extra park-hopper ticket which is non-refundable, but which is valid for the next 14 months, through December 2009, so undoubtedly we'll end up buying a second one and going again.

It was a beautiful day. We got there on the dot of 8:00am when the park opened, and stayed until we couldn't stay awake any longer. Rode as many rides as we could manage. Had all the fun we could stand. We both really love that place. Oh, and the company threw us a very nice lunch inside the park. I was expecting cold sandwiches, but we got a really nice catered lunch with chicken and tri-tip and a variety of desserts.

Temperatures have fallen recently, and so it was a bit chilly at the park. (Well, it was nice and warm during the middle of the day, but started and ended cold enough that we were glad we had jackets.) I'm not sure if that's why, but I awoke Saturday morning feeling slightly achy, slightly feverish, and slightly nauseous, which got worse before it finally got better by Sunday evening. I had very little desire to eat anything for most of that time. Very strange. I don't know what it was exactly, but I feel like I got a really mild flu bug. Nothing severe enough to keep me bedridden, but severe enough that I didn't want to go out of the house or do anything strenuous if I could avoid it.

As it turns out, though, that ended up giving us time to watch the new Blu-ray Disc release of Sleeping Beauty. I first saw advertisements for this when we were traveling to the Lobster Festival September 21st, and got very excited, because that movie is on the very short list of my favorite Disney animated classics (a list which also includes the original Fantasia, The Little Mermaid and Aladdin). Of course Sleeping Beauty was on display everywhere you turned at Disneyland, and I couldn't help but continue to lust after it every time I saw it, and so Vera kindly bought it for me as a gift. (She's so sweet!)

Well, I must say, the folks at Disney have outdone themselves with this release. I have the last (2003) DVD release of this movie in my collection; I compared it to the new release, and found that the picture really is bigger and brighter like they've promised, the sound is richer and fuller, and the extras are very, very entertaining and thorough. By all means, get this disc no matter what it takes. (Well, as long as you don't steal it!)

The Harry Potter odyssey

2008-10-08T14:56:00.001-07:00

For those who remember back that far, I started listening to all seven Harry Potter audiobooks back in February. Today, I have finished the last book. I enjoyed them very much, would enjoy going through them again someday. In the meantime, though, I've picked up a copy of Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, and started that today.