An Island of Blue in a Sea of Green

Well, that was enjoyable. Bearing in mind I was likely the oldest person in the theater and the one who actually got bored sitting through Raiders of the Lost Ark in a Bethesda, Maryland theater in 1981.

Modest spoilers below the cut.

( Do do DO doo, do do doo... )

Not bad, not bad at all. I was less bored than in 1981.

We both thought that the script, direction and casting choices were about as subtle as a 50,000 pound boulder.

Warmest regards,

The Green Death and The Idiot's Lantern

I've been away awhile, but busy. Ten days in New York, followed by four days with the Dude and Little Dude out here in SoCal. Followed by a return to work. Yawn. And all that.

The boys went back to NY last Saturday night, and I've been catching up on sleep deficits.

Some very vivid dreams may come after two weeks of zero sleep.

Monday night I dreamed of Hunter S. Thompson. Not that I ever met him. Or even read any of his books before he died. The one book of his I own is Hey, Rube, a remarkable collection of Doc's ESPN.com columns authored between 2000 and 2003 (the column continued until the week HST died, but the paperback omits the last 18 months' worth of material). Ostensibly a journal of his pro football gambling habit, the book is also a post-9/11 stream of consciousness on the Bush administration. It's fascinating to read, as you might expect.

Of course even though I brought the book with me to Los Angeles I haven't read it in over two years. Why I suddenly dreamed about it is beyond me.

Anyway, the weirdest is yet to come.

Current Location: San Bernardino, CA
Current Mood: melancholy

Dead at 84.

Charlton Heston. Now here's a guy with one of the most impressive bodies of work in U.S. cinema, equally famous for historical epics and sci-fi spectacles.

So why is it that the first Chuck role that comes to my mind, any time I think about Chuck, is his portray of the world's oldest grocery store stock boy on an SNL skit in the mid-1990s?

I just can't figure it out.

Stolen from sitcomgirl:

Go to YouTube, enter your birth year, then post the results.

It took me disturbingly little time to encapsulate my life with just a few YouTube videos...




[Not a great song but it was #1 on Billboard the week I was born]




[On the other hand, if you don't wake up at least three times a week with those power chords stuck in your head, you are not really alive]




[I am Grover...]




[ALERT to the redhead: DO NOT CLICK ON THIS NEXT LINK. YOU WILL NOT SLEEP FOR A WEEK.]
[also spoilers for the ending to the original Wicker Man, if you don't already know or if you prefer the Nicolas Cage version.]



[I WARNED YOU!!!]

I don't know whether this should be a weekly series, or just a single 2-hour program aired every Passover (maybe we can get Barbara Walters to host), but I've decided I really want to see an outlandish TV special about what celebrities of Jewish descent do for the seder.

I've spent far too many contentious seders over the past two decades at my aunt's house in New Jersey and I've always said that if Moses had known about what goes on in New Jersey he'd have canceled the Exodus.

Can celebrities make the ordeal more fun? What if we threw them all together at the same communal seder Does Amy Winehouse think that the four cups of wine should be 40 cups of wine? Would Susanna Hoffs find a way to replace Dayenu with Walk Like an Egyptian? How long would it take Harlan Ellison to complain about how poorly written the Haggadah is? Would anyone even want to sit near William Shatner? And if Harry Potter's own Daniel Radcliffe shows up, does that mean we can expect the ghost of Elijah to actually make an appearance?

Add contributions as appropriate. Or inappropriate, as the case may be.

Here's an article about somebody getting to live the dream:

A New York City tollbooth worker in desperate need of a car wrote a crime thriller script titled "Brooklyn's Finest" last year. Now he finds himself rubbing shoulders with some of Hollywood's finest, including Richard Gere, Don Cheadle, Ethan Hawke and director Antoine Fuqua.

Meanwhile, the creator of the Egg McMuffin died the other day.

Amazingly, he did not die of clogged arteries.

I no longer eat bacon so I haven't had one of these in probably about ten years... but some of my fondest memories from earlier in life have Egg McMuffins in the middle of them. What else was I going to have for breakfast the morning of the SATs, for example? Obviously I owe my academic career to the McMuffin.

Growing up we had a McDonald's and a Burger King both located within half-a-mile of each other on Jericho Turnpike. However, the Mickey D's was closer to the high school, and Burger King's ill-tasting entry into the breakfast meat market was the Croissan'wich. Obviously the McMuffin wins by a substantial margin. If you're into that sort of thing.

Man, I didn't even go grocery shopping. Pretty much a busted weekend. You can see what I get up to while the redhead's on assignment for Travel Channel. She travels, I stay in LA.

It got up almost 90 degrees on top of the hill today so I did spend quite a bit of time on the patio. No heavy reading going on at the moment. ( Read about what I'm reading... if you dare... )

Erm, I did get plenty of TV watching going on. ( It's all about Egypt... )

Only five more workdays to go until next weekend. Actually, four and a half. I'm reporting to our O.C. office tomorrow, and with traffic being what it is on the 22, I get to come in late and leave early.

Current Music: Bob Dylan: The Man In Me

Obviously I have not read nearly as much Arthur C. Clarke as I should have. But I'm glad I got into The Nine Billion Names of God.

Found it in junior high school, in a short story collection called The Science Fiction Hall of Fame (Volume One) (interesting books come your way when your grandmother belongs to the same Brooklyn Hadassah group as Robert Silverberg's mother). I can't say I read every story in the collection, since I was only 12 at the time and most of it was over my head.

In fact, I only read five of the stories (some of you can probably guess which!), but the ones I did read I read about a dozen times each. Nine Billion was one of them.

What's not to love about Nine Billion? 1950s computers, Tibetan monks, you can read it in five minutes, and you just can't beat those last two sentences. I dare you to walk along a country road late on a clear night and not think about the end of this story.

Anyway, I was going to run some smack about "Gee, it's nice that Arthur (like Roy Scheider) doesn't have to be around for the Special Millenial Edition Blu-Ray DVD release of 2010: The Year We Make Contact"... however, that kind of smack is not necessary today. Re-reading The Nine Billion Names of God is a good enough way to remember him. Thanks for that one, Arthur.

I heard excerpts from the then-in-progress Obama race speech on "Morning Edition" at 8:30 A.M. Certainly one of the most important bits of campaign oratory in recent Presidential history, and certainly much more personal (and likely to be remembered) than Mitt Romney's bit of John F. Kennedy-aping earlier this year. I've been combatting some "Obama Is Friends With Farrakhan" e-mails from some of the crazier branches of my own family tree, so I'm glad he finally spoke up and held his own against both sides of the argument. Why couldn't John Kerry have spoken up like this four years ago?

Meanwhile I've been loving on this HBO John Adams miniseries. Part One features a terrific bit of trial lawyering as Adams defends the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. He mounts a defense with almost no resources and trips up opposing witnesses with remarkable subtlety. I'm not worthy! Part Two features one of the more riveting portrayals of the Continental Congress I've yet seen. Starts off with Adams and his fellow Massachusetts delegates snarking off at Zeljko Ivanek from the back of the room, then quickly moves into 12 Angry Men territory.

My only quibble with Adams is in the casting: it's too soon after his role as Detective Tritter in House last year for David Morse to be playing General Washington. I was expecting him to have Adams arrested on charges of smuggling Vicodin into Boston Harbor. That's like, say, asking Philip Glenister go right from Life On Mars to playing Atticus Finch in a remake of To Kill A Mockingbird. It's just too soon.

I am an experienced trial lawyer. I've spent literally thousands of hours in court, arguing with federal judges and turning Board-certified physicians into quivering jelly on cross-examination. Over the past six years I've won several hundreds of thousands of dollars in past-due disability benefits for clients who couldn't get past the United States government on their own.

And yet, before my Jeopardy audition today, I was a nervous wreck.

( Thank you, Johnny Gilbert... )

Current Location: Culver City, CA
Current Music: Merv Griffin: Think!

Fortunately this occurred late enough in the day in Manhattan that I got to hear it during California morning drive-time (I hesitate to say rush hour because I was driving through downtown San Bernardino at the time). All two minutes of his sorry little speech.

I've been really annoyed the last 48 hours (especially as all the sordid little details emerge).

Fortunately, the good news is that the new Governor, David Paterson, sounds like a really good egg. Hopefully he'll be as calm and rational and even-handed in the job as his predecessor was not.

As of now I will officially no longer be bothered by the fact that I enthusiastically voted for what's-'is-name.

I have to say I'm taking this Eliot Spitzer news really badly.

( Feh. )

The creative minds behind "Homicide" -- still one of the best shows on TV today even though it was cancelled in 1999 -- are reuniting to create a backdoor pilot for The Saint.

I still say that my favorite adapation of The Saint is the Vincent Price radio serial, previously but unfortunately not currently available at OTR Fan. Price doesn't get a lot of attention today for his comedy, but his timing was terrific. Plus, he's not Val Kilmer.

Today's the first anniversary of our first full day out in California. A year ago March 6th it was sunny and hot, and we were driving a ridiculously oversized Crown Victoria rental. We arrived in our apartment 72 hours before our furniture did. The future was wide open.

Flash forward one year, and the situation has become unrecognizable. I've been living by myself since August, I have two cars in my garage, my job description has radically changed in the last three weeks, and I went to a Doctor Who convention for the first time in a decade. Earth-shattering! Well. Not to be melodramatic, but... kind of like watching the flash-forwards on the new season of Lost, I'm kind of dreading to see what's going to be left of New York by the time I return there in six months!

Meanwhile, I've been watching something called New Amsterdam, an 8-episode mid-season replacement that FOX is currently burning off. Tonight they aired an episode opposite the highest-rated scripted drama on TV. ( People just liked it better that way )

In spite of my running a 48-hour sleep deficit, the wedding was enjoyable. I didn't realize it was actually a mix of three cultures, since the groom's mother is from Italy (albeit a convert into the tribe). Each culture was represented by its own dinner buffet station, but unfortunately the pasta was at the end of the line and by that time most plates were already loaded up with brisket and dumplings. The bride's mom brought a troupe of Buddhist monks, the politest wedding guests you're going to find.

I always thought, from my crystal-clear memories of The Next Karate Kid, that Buddhist monks liked to dance. At least the first 90 seconds of the below video told me that. This particular group did not, although they did a very nice chant.



The rest of today was mostly a nostalgia tour of the Upper East Side.

First was a post-wedding brunch at an Alice in Wonderland-themed tea house on East 64th Street. ( Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall )

Later on the redhead and I walked uptown and checked out two favorite old haunts. ( If you're going to the Upper East Side... )

Finally, a stop by our old building on 89th and 3rd. A note taped to the front door buzzers explained that Apartment 2-D's buzzer was broken and that guests would have to call up. This is too funny for words. The redhead and I lived in Apartment 2-D for two years, and the buzzer was broken for all but our first three weeks there. I'm sure the current tenants will be elated to learn that the building owner renovated the apartment and jacked up the price... and still didn't fix the buzzer. I did write a brief message on their note: "Didn't work for us either! 2-D tenants '05 - '07".

Back in SoCal now. Granted I'm sure there are many residents here who have equally fond memories of the Inland Empire as I have of the Upper East Side. However, I haven't really established many, and it's now been 363 days since the move!

Had a busy week out in the 'Dino, court appearances Monday through Thursday. ( More on life in the 'Dino... )

Last night/this morning was the Jet Blue red-eye from Ontario to JFK. ( The only way to travel... )

Watching DirecTV on an airplane may be a cool idea, but today my options were rather poor, all at 7 AM Eastern time:
* Unfunny ex-NFL'er Bob Golic in a rerun of Saved By The Bell: The College Year
* Unfunny ex-NFL'er Mike Golic on ESPN's simulcast's dreadful Mike & Mike in the Morning
* A Season 4 episode of Angel. Every single scene in this Conor Loves Jasmine episode was a trainwreck. No wonder they jetisonned Conor in favor of Spike for the final season.

Fortunately, a Chuck Norris informercial was on another channel.

Reported to the office, in my airplane pajamas as usual, and in spite of the sleep deprivation actually put in an 8-hour day. Of course, with some side business and a lot of shmoozing getting done, I can't say I actually added any work to the bottom line.

Finally, check-in to our hotel for the weekend, and a trip to a rehearsal dinner in anticipation of tomorrow night's wedding. ( Wedding hijinks always more fun when they're not your own... )

Things I did not get to do: a haircut from my Uzbeki barber on 17th and Irving; check to see if the new Michael Chabon essay collection is out (the Internet is full of rival release dates, the earliest being this week); sleep, apart from a 75-second nap on the E train on the way back from the rehearsal.

Current Location: East 48th Street, New York, NY
Current Music: Beastie Boys: Ch-ch-check It Out

A) The huge honking surprise end-of-episode revelation at 10:02 would have felt suitably Earth-shattering if I hadn't correctly guessed exactly how the episode would end by 9:18. I'm starting to predict this show with too much regularity, which is not good.

B) More importantly, I really, really need to get myself a pack of Dharma Initiative playing cards.

And now comes the part of the month where I fly out to New York twice in ten days. A one-night trip this week and then a return engagement next weekend. Obviously this first trip was not planned and it sort of wrecks my work-week, but hopefully the business discussed on the other end makes it worthwhile.