Monthly Archives: February 2009

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The Entertainer

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img_1720This is a 17 inch Dell behemoth that weights about ten pounds and is useful for checking email. It also offers connection to Youtube, Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, and offers more entertainment than my 42 inch DLP TV in the basement with a DirecTV HD account. On screen is the 2-3pm episode from the current season of 24. 

 

Broadcast television was supplanted by cable. Cable television and its prettier sister, satellite television, are headed for the attic of dead technology by video on demand over the internet. This was presaged by TIVO and the ability to time-shift programs. But Youtube and Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, and shows available on the networks sites all presage a time when you don’t have to watch what is available, but rather you choose exactly when and where to watch what you want. 

Currently, with the offerings of Youtube, Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, I canimg_1721 watch pretty much whatever I want whenever I want. If a program isn’t available in fact, I usually couldn’t care less. This is an important threshold -if something of critical value weren’t available -I would feel compelled to pay extra for it. This one quality that is keeping the satellite subscription alive is high definition programming. It is just valuable enough to keep it around for the sake of viewing on a large screen, but the fact of the matter is that a 50 inch widescreen TV at 10 feet is the same as watching a 10 inch screen at 2 feet (yes, I did the math -proof above). That means, streaming hi-definition images to a 10 inch netbook gives you the same images relative size as watching a 50 inch screen from a couch. 

We are about to cancel our DirecTV connection in favor of our home stable of laptops and iPod touches. The video time that we have as a family is spent in bed with a laptop watching one of 12,000 movies available over the ‘net on Netflix with a $10/month account, or downloaded to an iPod for 1.99/episode, or on DVD, again on a laptop. The large screen is okay for viewing sports, but time is short, and the networks are available over the airwaves in HD. Fact is, I prefer watching sports with other people at a sports bar. 

The purchase I am considering next is a small computer capable of streaming Netflix and running iTunes, with double duty as a email checking station. The cable company gets to stay in the house only for the internet -until fiberoptic broadband becomes available then goodbye cable. In fact, I am waiting to see what Apple does with AppleTV versus the Mac Mini.

What I discovered more recently is this: it is more fun to make TV than it is to watch it. Check out my friend Victor’s channel on Youtube (link). 

The TV is dead. It is now just a monitor.

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The Road Trip

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img_0831The weather broke and hit the mid 50’s yesterday, which gave me the opportunity to shake some rust off. The golf hut was warm without the overhead infrared heaters turned on. I realized I had been missing this essential component of my life. With each swing, the joy factor rose. 

My lovely wife J understands this part of me and indulges me. I have planned a road trip to Texas in a few weeks with a few golfing friends. Friday night down, 36 holes on Saturday, drive back Sunday. Still need a a #4 -any takers?

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The Optimist

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img_0801As we lurch forward into the new era, I am comforted by the dissipation of the overly hopeful buzz that I had from about election day to about yesterday. It was infatuation -the same thing that makes Valentine’s Day a commercial juggernaut. We were a nation of giddy school girls infatuated with the hot new Social Studies teacher, until we realized that he gave a lot of pop quizzes, and he’s really, really mean (stomp – twirl). 

The NYT’s (link) writes about a gang of moderates hijacking the stimulus legislation from the left and the right, and this does give me hope. This centrist bloc is where we should all be as a nation as we detox from a two decade binge of mainlining easy credit while enriching the dealers of said credit. And this is it -we should be detoxing to some degree by abstinence and not by replacing easy money with public money. If cold turkey hurts too much, then a limited run of nicotine patches for the addicted nation until sobriety and clean living within means return to the norm. 

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It's hard out there for a pimp

So where do I turn in these troubling times for examples of clean living? The TV of course, in  the form of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints. I checked out HBO’s Big Love to see what all the buzz was about. It’s an amazing show, and not for the reasons that you would expect. I know, I know, Chloe Sevigny is one of the most important actresses of our generation, and she gives a mesmerizing, hypnotic performance as the-one-I-wouldn’t-mind-being-plural-married-to.

The show’s popularity speaks to a desire to be a part of a larger connectedness that we lost when we chose to accept live as a nuclear family unit, that we move to dislocated exurbs in Charlotte, Atlanta, Nashville, Houston, Minneapolis, Las Vegas, and Peoria -moved about like pawns on a chess board. In these troubled times, the sight of three homes circled like wagons around a common backyard with your own tribe, your own peeps, having dinner at a long table is a splash of cold water in the face. The show focuses on the people and does not dwell on their lifestyle too much, but that’s not unexpected for a great show. The plural marriage thing serves to triple the emphasis on the man-woman interplay, and correctly shows that with three wives, a man can suffer 9 times more than if he only lived alone with a high speed internet connection and a microwave. I rather enjoy this thought – if you support gay marriage, then you have no right to oppose plural marriage. So maybe that’s what I’ll give my wife for Valentine’s day -permission for her to go look for a second wife, for the both of us.

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The 25 Things About Me

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southpark

This is a chain letter circulating around Facebook -this is my contribution. My soul has been bared. 

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

25 things about me

1.Imagination -my imagination tends to run amok. Ally MacBeal was a bit jarring to watch because on some levels, my brain works in a similar fashion.
2.Navel gazing -I am a chronic self examiner. Combined with number 3, blogging and Facebook suits me like swamp water does for a frog.
3.Exhibitionism -Yes. I am a bit of an exhibitionist,. Not in the trenchcoat with no pants way, but more in the need for getting everyone’s attention. But I have a purpose!
4.Food -Food, good food, obsesses me to the point that I have to force myself to view food as a bodily function and not the center of my day. Spam is the pearl of American food, by the way. I can be seduced with food. I prefer savory over sweet. 
5.Bloody mindedness -I have a masochistic streak. My personal motto was set at four, when I declared to my whiny cousin Eugene, “Namja neun ch’ah muh ya deh.” which loosely translates to “a man must persevere.” Stoicism appeals to me, even though I may unstoically complain of its absence. Once, out of boredom, I pulled out 5 of my remaining baby teeth at age 10.
6.I can’t talk about number 6. It involves the Plaza Hotel, the Harvard Club of Boston, Locke-Ober, The University Club, the Four Seasons of New York…There I said too much. They might be reading this.
7.Doing things from scratch -I enjoy creating things from elemental items. For a cucumber and tomato salad, I grew these items along with the chives and then became flustered over not being able to make the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and coarse pickling salt. I then contemplated making the bowl out of the clay from the deeper soil of the garden. The longer the process and the shorter the reward, the greater the appeal. I like to fish with flies that I’ve tied myself, and dream of catching fish in Central Park with just the items from a sewing kit from one of the hotels. 
8.Narcissism -I tend to personalize everything. You are me, and he is me, and we are me, and we are all together -isn’t how that song goes?
9.Golf -I play golf in my mind when I’m not thinking about myself or what I’m going to eat next. I’m a big baby.
10.Rules -I like structure insofar as it draws lines for me to cross, if I can.
11.Impatient -I am not terribly patient.
12.Grand Gestures -I am a bit of a primitive or a throwback in my love and appreciation of grand gestures. Think Taj Mahal or the Defenestration of Prague -actually scratch that last one. 
13.Mongols -Yes, I love anything Mongolian. I would love to live in a yurt with forty horses and my clan in tow going from pasture to pasture. 
14.Chimpanzees -I can sit and watch them all day for weeks on end if given the opportunity. Their inner workings are so mysterious.
15.Women -I can sit and watch them all day for weeks on end if given the opportunity. Their inner workings are so mysterious. 
16.Minorities -The Yakuts, the Kipchaks, the Tai Dam, the Hmong, the Hottentots, Parsis, everyone Stalin moved around, the Piraha, remnant hunter gatherers of the world, Central Asian Jews, the Celts, the list goes on and on. Fascinating stuff. 
17.The Encyclopaedia Brittanica -I used to read it obsessively.
18.Scouting -I was an avid cub scout, but made the mistake of not going beyond Webelos. The ethos of scouting has always been a part of my worldview. 
19.Fishing -I can usually catch fish. A good skill to have. 
20.The Next Thing -My To-Do list is a branchy, multiply bifurcating clade of the next shiny, neat thing to figure out or do. I enjoy constantly remaking my environment.
21.School -If I hit Powerball, I’m going back to school forever. 
22.Anchovies -I really enjoy the salty, super fishy flavor of anchovies on the side with a freshly made Caesar’s salad.
23.Writing -If I had to do it all over, I would have put more effort into writing and storytelling. 
24.Love -I am a believer in true, romantic love. The kind that gives you strength, perspective, and a clear vision.
25.Purgatory -If the Old Testament, hellfire Christians are correct, then the best I can expect is to be in a line with quadrillions of people ahead of me, a line that includes Gandhi, Socrates, the Buddha, the entire pre-Columbian Aztec nation, most everyone who has ever lived in Marin County, aborted fetuses (each wearing an original sin pin on a simple gray smock), spilled semen (reconstituted as hopping demi-beings with whiplike tails, wearing half a black tee shirt with Onan in globby white letters), and a couple of my high school teachers. We’re all waiting to get processed and sent down a large hole in the clouds. We entertain each other with stories about our lives. I’m surrounded by a couple of billion demi-people who claim some relationship to me…

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The Circle of Life

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img_1658As the man of the house, I do get asked to do things that my fairer partner is loathe to do. I am, after all, good for something. When we were living in New York, we had a mouse problem, and it fell to me to rid our apartment of it. I dispatched it after cornering it, and then whacking it with a curtain rod after J flushed it out. It’s entrails popped over the kitchen tiles, and of course, it was my job to then clean the mess up. So it was no surprise when J pointed this mess out to me with a “OH MY GOD WHAT IS THAT!!!!!” From our kitchen window, it looked like a particularly large bird poop. 

Close up, it became apparent what it was -the remains of a rabbit snacked upon by one of the golden hawks that patrol our neighborhood. The rabbit fur was the giveaway, along with the pellets in the intestines and the grassy material in the gizzard. I first thought, is this bird poop -did a vulture poop out his dinner? But the small intestine underneath the dried pile were still pink and moist -pointing to a kill within 24 hours and undigested. I think the hawk either found road kill or took its time eating everything but the vegetables -which is what we were left with on our porch -actually more like grass and green leaf sausages.

Haruspicy was the art of reading the future by observing the entrails of sacrificed animals performed first by the Etruscans and then by their successors, the Romans. The haruspex would look at the lobulations of the liver of the sacrifice to determine the future. The hawk, of course, ate the tasty liver, and left us with only the intestines. My overall read -be grateful for your full stomach lest you be reminded with a nice meal of undercooked grass sausage.