toward the end of my ride today (fargen wind, argh!) i passed up some skater/stoner kids on bmx bikes near palm and south b. as i was heading up b, i heard a big crash behind me, and looked back, and saw one of the kids had crashed his bike in the middle of the street.
my personal code requires me to offer assistance to cyclists. these dudes weren't really cyclists (i think the one who fell was the one who was texting on his iphone while riding), and i didn't have any parts that could help repair his bike, so i had to think about whether my code applied. i figured it did, though i really don't remember much first aid. i circled around.
as i got closer he started getting up. i saw no blood, bike was in one piece, and he had a scrape on his forearm but nothing that broke the skin. i turned around again to leave, when a rousing cheer arose from the door of the dive bar across teh street (at 1:30). "yeah, walk it off!" the drunks shouted.
har har har.
it's Frobuary 1, YOMHC 0x43!
i went to a pro stylist for a change, and remember now why i don't like doing that.
the good:
1) it's a really good haircut. the sort of fade/blend that i guess you have to go to cosmetology school to learn how to do.
the bad:
1) it was expensive
2) i got incorrect change and didn't notice it until later, so it was really, really expensive
3) i didn't get the cutter i came for: i went to the crazy elvis themed shop on 3rd, but got catherine. catherine did a great job, but i really wanted the crazy elvis guy. i guess i have to make an appointment to get him.
anyhow, i am happy with the look. if hops can duplicate it, i wont need to go back unless i secure an appointment with the crazy elvis guy.
thumbing through my napa notepad last night to find notes on the fleury cab i planned to drink for dinner, i noticed two consecutive pages. on one, my notes implored me to buy 2+ bottles of 05 artesa foss valley cab, and on the very next page, i reviewed the same wine, saying, in effect, "meh".
i looked through the notepad some more, and found tasting notes from the other artesa visit (we went twice) in which i raved about the wine.
subjective, indeed!
not only that, but the fleury cab was, last night, a bit of a "meh" itself. i apparently did not take notes during my fleury winery tasting. i mis-remembered this cab as being my favorite of the whole trip, but now i don't think so -- i think it was actually hops' favorite. i sure hope it was someone's favorite, because according to fleury's price list, it was definitely one of the priciest bottles i brought home.
it got way better by the final glass, as all wines seem to do. concentrated cab with very subtle oak, minimal tannins. delicious. but not worth the price, imho, and not the best pairing with steak.
everywhere we went in napa (except rombauer, of course), when they poured us their lightly- or non-oaked chardonnay, they prefaced the pour with the caveat, usually proudly, "now this chardonnay is not going to be like what you're used to, it doesn't have much oak or butter". yeah, dude, you and everyone else are making now-trendy un-oaked chards. by the end of the week, it was they chardonnay style i was used to.
napa did not inspire me to blog.
it inspired me to cook. tonight: two course meal.
first course: baby shiitake and morel mushroom medley, sauteed in butter with sea salt, european (forget where) saffron/peppercorn cheese, and napa olive oil.
second course: grilled leeks, grilled sea scallops with lemon/butter marinade and a different peppercorn cheese, drizzled with napa olive oil.
now, if i'd had the good sense to pair this with a napa wine, this would be a great meal. but instead i poured some crap from manteca. bleh.
get what you pay for.
It's Frobuary 2, YOMHC 0x42!
i guess it's what i asked for. i look kinda goofy but it makes me look taller/thinner so i guess that's the tradeoff.
i saw the new star trek. spoilers follow.
i liked it, and i liked it a lot.
i had not seen any trailers, i didn't follow any of the pre-production stuff, or anything. i read a couple threads on slashdot before and after.
the dorks on slashdot make a lot of noise about how it's unfaithful to roddenberry's vision, and there are giant plot holes, and how it makes no sense that kirk gets command of the flagship at so young an age, and it doesn't make sense how stupid the romulans are, or how lame the villain is, and so on. all wonderfully valid points, but...
the movie was great. it was fun. it was engaging. i laughed out loud when "sabotage" burst out of the theater's speakers. whooooooeeeee! jj abrams was making this movie just for me. hops nudged me and said: that guy's dressed in red, he's going to die. sure enough, he did. ha!
when chekov opened his mouth and spilled out the most outrageous russian fake accent ever: ha ha ha!
the movie was alive. not stiff and boring and stillborn like all the TNG movies we've had to suffer through. it's the inheritor of STIV, my favorite of the movies. it's not about science, it's not even about fiction. it's about fans getting to spend a couple hours with people they love, kirk and spock. and though the new spock isn't really spock, fascinatingly, the new kirk is kirk, in spades. the closing shot of him on the enterprise bridge, his posture, his grin, all shatner. his swagger throughout the movie, his anger, his aggression -- kirk!
people whine about the "reboot" of the film, that now jj has erased all the "canon" of trek. who cares? trek had written itself into a corner and all we were getting was crap.
for example, the scene in "nemesis" where inexplicably picard rides around in a dune buggy. okay, sure, there were comparable inexplicable action scenes in this trek, but the point is in this trek they worked. the picard trek was so wrapped up in old-dude stodginess that such a seen seems forced and out of place. when kirk is running unecessarily away from an ever-increasing slew of monsters on some hoth-like ice world, it's silly, and pointless, and hilariously fun. and it's not in the least bit forced.
the original trek certainly was about ideas, and that's often what made episodes so painfully bad. likewise with the first two seasons of TNG. episodes that are so embarassingly unwatchable precisely because they were faithful to gene's vision of a hippie future of peace and love.
we got 4 excellent seasons of TNG to explore these themes, and about the same number of excellent DS9 seasons. but the movies -- the good ones, the ones with kirk and spock that weren't directed by shatner, weren't about gene's vision so much as nostalgic time spent with old friends.
and that's what the new trek does so brilliantly well (and what everyone on slashdot misses). the old guard of trek, the hippie vision of gene, the moral conundrum speechifying by picard, the kill now agonize later speecifying of ds9 -- those have had their run. the trek movies are about the fond memories, and in-jokes, explosions, and kirk grinning, swaggering, and kicking the shit out of bad aliens.
and this movie has all that, and the fans, and the non-fans, and everyone except my mother is loving it.
socrates never left athens.
"I'm waiting again," I said.
"The hell you are," said Victor, "your beer's right in front of you."
"You know what I mean," I said. I leaned back in to the booth, at the same time extending my arm, far, far out form my shoulder, stretching my reach much farther than it should have gone, to grasp the handle of my stein, and bring my beer back to my lips.
"I've found my way back into my rut," I said. "I thought I was done with ruts."
"You'll never be done with ruts," said Victor. "Ruts are what define you."
"I suppose that's true," I said.
"You don't need to suppose it," said Victor, "I'm telling you."
"Yeah, you're telling me. I get into ruts so I can regulate and dispense with the day-to-day crap of getting by. So I can ignore the sleeping, and the eating, and the working, and get on with the living. Focus on the stuff that really matters in the long term."
"Matters?" said Victor. "What do you mean matters?"
'You know," I said. "Matters."
"You mean the stuff that will make your life worthwhile?"
"Yeah," I said. "The stuff that matters."
"I've been wondering," said Victor. "I've been wondering about the stuff that matters. What if the sleeping, the eating, and the working is the stuff that matters?"
I took another sip of my beer and said nothing. I'd been wondering the same thing, myself. Well, maybe not in those terms. No, as a matter of fact, not at all in those terms. Victor had suggested a possibility of meaning -- he'd identified something that mattered, whereas I... me, I'd come up with nothing. I didn't wonder whether the quotidian stuff was what mattered, I worried instead that nothing mattered.
I'd consumed a little too much nihilist art, I think. Seen one too many nihilist movies, read one too many nihilist screeds. In the end, nothing matters, and since the now is just a step on the road to the end, nothing mattered now, either. And if it didn't matter, whether it was the product of the rut, or the rut itself, what purpose was there in doing it?
"Have you ever seen Solaris?" I asked.
"Yeah," said Victor.
"The Russian one?" I asked.
"No," said Victor. "The Clooney one."
"Yeah, they're both good," I said, "but the Russian one troubled me more. At the end of it, I thought that the hero had decided that a fantasy life -- a life separate and distinct from the utterly real -- was preferable to real life. In his real life, he didn't love his wife. It was only when she was a facsimile that he began to love her."
Victor said nothing, but stared back into me. I continued.
"The movie ended without answering any questions, without happiness or peace of mind or even continuity for the characters. And it made me wonder: what's the point of it all?"
"The movie?" asked Victor.
"Yeah, the movie, and life itself -- as it's portrayed in the movie. So pointless, and unmoving, and seemingly endless. And we travel through it without knowing what we want until it's gone."
"Or you do, at least."
"Yeah, maybe it's just me. Just me and Tartovsky."
"Or just you. Just because Tartovsky filmed it doesn't mean he felt it."
"But that's my point, see," I said. "What's the point of a film like that? Or a nihilist screed? Art is supposed to take me someplace, to transport me to another man's reality. I'm supposed to visit a foreign mindscape. Why must it be one that is devoid of meaning, lacking any comforting illusion of order and purpose? Don't I get enough of that in my own reality?"
"Maybe," said Victor, "such art is calibrated for people who don't get so much of it in reality."
"Maybe," I said. "But it's so self-reinforcing! Nihilist art only reinforces itself. Unless I can refute it -- that is to say, unless it has been a total failure in exposing reality -- all it can do is serve as a downer. As a downer, it makes me reflect more on the pointlessness of life, and the more I reflect on that, the less likely I am to make any positive changes, or bother to try to change the world -- and the more nihilistic life itself becomes."
"That's like... uh... cosmic, man," said Victor.
"Don't I know it," I said. "And that's why I'm still waiting."
"Waiting for what?"
"I don't know," I said. "But it's coming. And it's big. And I can't do anything until it arrives. I have to hold perfectly still, to prepare, or things won't be right and it won't arrive."
"I know exactly what you mean," said Victor.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he said. "My beer's totally empty, and I've been waiting this whole time for a refill."
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