My Quote of the Day

"I am an enigma wrapped in a blanket."

Ramblin' Ben

I put up a new movie of my kid that woks on Mac and PC. Music by Bob Wills.
HERE

School Work

I was reading my college alumni newsletter and came across the title of a recently published paper by an old professor of mine -- "Effects of Water Motion and Prey Behavior on Zooplankton Capture by Two Coral Reef Fish."

I know, pretty out there, but why is it that most of the subjects we learned in school turn out to be some of the most interesting things we come across in life? Is it the freedom? The Excitement? The Drugs?

Seattle in 10 minutes

I had forgotten how beautiful Seattle can be when it's clear. When you have 10 minutes to run around and take pictures, the beauty shines even brighter. Here's a slideshow:

Convergence?

I was one of the first generation of kids to spend entirely too much time watching TV. Kids before me spent an hour or so in front of the tube with a choice of 3-4 channels that you tuned into with a knob to get rid of the snow and ghosting. Somewhere before my 7th birthday, the "clicker" became a "remote" and all these cool new technologies started popping up, like VHS and CABLE. Suddenly, there was a LOT to watch, and we sucked it all up, especially my sister. We literally had to pry the remote out of her tiny little hands during her 6-hour marathons so she'd wolf down a little something to eat before returning to "I Love Lucy" or "Little House on the Prairie." She didn't say much back then, and now I know why.

TV can be a comforting experience for me now, just like it was in the past. Knowing that at the end of a long day I can sit on the couch and just be entertained, well, let's just say I'm a happy potato. I guess what I really like is that unlike the rest of the day where you've gotta make constant decisions and deal with complicated trains-of-thought, with the TV, you just make one choice and let the show take over. Auto-piloted bliss.

So I was really excited a few years back when Replay and Tivo came along. Cable and satellite were great because they had such a variety of channels and subjects that I ultimately found something I was interested in. The problem was that clamoring through all the other crap that some tractor repairman in Duleuth found exciting was not fun. Before Tivo, TV had become boring.

Suddenly, the world was different. When I was growing up (I know, I'm having nostalgi-mania today), I never understood why I needed to do certain things. Why did I need to go to camp? Why did I need to brush my hair? Why did I need to clean my room? Now Tivo was saying, "You know, you're right. You don't need to turn the TV on at 6:30 sharp or miss the most important stories on the news, and you don't need to watch commercials either; in fact, why don't you go to bed and I'll do everything for you and you just watch whenever you want and, while you're at it, order out."

Tivo and I were in love. (In fact, Tivo, my wife and I had a bit of a menage-a-trois going, but it was actually healthy for our relationship: Marsha got to watch crappy sitcoms sometimes; and me, Charlie Rose. Sometimes we'd all watch a movie together. I know, hot, huh?

Then HD came along and ruffled things up a little. As I've mentioned previously, the picture quality is so good that any sin-awful show looks fantastic and the next thing you know you're 2 hours into a nature program about Idaho's fly population. (Let's hope my sister never gets HD).

Even with HD, I was still spending a considerable amount of time with standard definition Tivo, especially since I could not shell out $1,000 for the HD Tivo (though I am a daily stop on temptation's way to work) . The problem with our plain-old Tivo was that my wife and I had an earlier version that only had so much room on it. For those of you who don't know, a Tivo (or Comcast DVR or whatever) comes out of the box with a certain number of recordable hours. You program what you want, how many episodes you want to keep, etc. and then any unallocated space is filled up with Tivo's suggestions of what it thinks you may like based on what you've been watching. (That's right, your TV is watching YOU). Anything else is kept for a little while and then whisked away forever.

I would sit down on the couch and look at all the programs I had recorded and some of them would have a dreaded exclamation point next to them, meaning soon-to-be-deleted, a virtual death-row. My peaceful TV-hour was suddenly becoming a little tense.

So I did what any cheap, semi-moderately intelligent, technical misfit who stole my dad's tools when I was a kid and took apart everything in the house and then put it back together with 1 piece missing (oddly, everything still worked) kinda guy -- I bought a bigger hard drive and upgraded the thing.

Unscrewing the case, I felt like James Bond with a ticking bomb.
I kept thinking, "what if I screw this thing up, then where will we be? What if I kill Tivo?" What would happen to me?

But with the top off, you really understand what a Tivo is. It's just a computer, and not a very fancy one at that, and if there's one big thing I know a little about, well then, I guess it would be computers.

I let this minorly-dissapointing revelation pass and 1 hour later I had 200 hours of available space. The world opened up and suddenly I was saving scores of programs. On a busy night, Tivo sometimes suggests up to 80 shows. My wife can watch an entire season of crap whenever she wants. And me, I can keep 20 concerts from Austin City Limits and not worry about them getting erased.

So am I happier? Unfortunately not. Ultimately (as I saw when I opened the box) a Tivo and all it's livingroom brother and sister gadgets are no different than their desktop computer cousins.

When I'm in front of a computer, I'm there mostly because I need to get some work done. But when I'm on the couch, I don't want to work. I don't want to worry. I don't want to feel. I just want to grab the clicker and watch some good TV. Technology, meet entertainment; now sit down and shut-up...Lucy's about to start.

END CALL

I got rear-ended a few weeks back by a woman in a VW Bug just as I was turning into a body shop to have a self-inflcited dent derma-braised from my car. Now you've got to understand that in L.A. (and I am tame in comparison) a smudge on your bumper is as bad as a mole on your rear-end -- needless to say, this poor woman's vehicular malfeasance was a pretty significant blow to my otherwise calm life; still, I shed no tears and I remained -- defiantly so -- pretty solid, given the hysterical nature of her sad story and the events leading up to this moment in her life. Still, even though she rear-ended me at 40 miles an hour while I was stopped-dead in a turn lane, I was on my cell phone at the time with my friend Brady, discussing the splendid details of his Macromedia Flash class at Santa Monica College. I think the last words out of my mouth were something like, "Holy S*&t, what the f#@$Kk!"

Now those who know me say that I'm a gadget boy and, it's true, I've been obsessed with communication gizmos since the first time I saw one of those old car phones in a rental my dad got when something happened to his car. When I say "car phone," I mean a phone with a cord that you picked up and dialed an operator with who connected you to your party for some obscene amount of money. That's right, "old school."

I lived through the old Motorola brick days -- the same phone Sonny Crockett and Tubbs used on Miami Vice. I've seen it all -- from Iridium to Paris Hilton.

Back when the cell phone craze was just starting to get going (before the time when every 12 year old had one) and people were just starting to take them in their cars and drive like idiots, I swore I would never drive and talk on the phone at the same time. It was more than just the danger element -- maybe it was just some latent Hoo-Hoo male thing -- but I felt like that time in the car, driving along the road, watching the scenery go by and taking every turn as it came along -- that was time I would never get back -- and chatting along with someone about something that really could wait, well, that was, honestly, a waste of good time.

So following my encounter with Miss Volkswagen, I swore to lay off the "Call" button while driving. It's been hard -- there are times I really wish I could take care of that outstanding call -- close that one open item on the never-ending list. Instead, I crank up the Ipod, let Her Shuffle whatever "She" wants to play, open the windows and watch the world go by. And you know, I'm much happier for it. Miss Volkswagen, wherever you are, thanks.

The Future of Self Help

Last year, my local paper ran a story about Verizon coming to a community meeting to discuss their new fiber-optic lines and service. Basically, this is just a souped-up broadband line that can receive phone, TV, Internet and Video services. Sounds interesting, especially if you do this kind of stuff for a living.

So 9 months later, I decide to check inand see how things are going. This is the response I get.

"We are unable to check Fios availability and process orders due to a system error. Please try again later.

If this problem continues, please call your local Verizon business office to speak with a Verizon Online representative."

Well I've got to follow this one through, so I call. I'm drinking coffee and checking email at the same time, so I don't really mind the 25 minute wait -- and it's an 800 number. What I do mind is the occasional message from the chirpy on-hold lady that goes exactly like this:

"While you are waiting, let us suggest some self-help tips." No kidding. That's the message. Probably from some woman in Kansas who watches the Celebrity Shopping Network and eats Betty Crocker muffin mix in her spare time. Self-help? You mean like anger management?

I wonder if Verizon could benefit from a little self-help themselves -- something along the lines of customer support and actually delivering on the promises they make to the consumer. No wait, that wouldn't make sense in the modern world, would it?

Worlds Apart

It's an amazing thing, this life.



This morning I watched the sun come up from a small island in the middle of the Atlantic. I then got on an airplane and fell asleep to the drone of the jet engines, my body remarkably warm and comforted under a cheap airline blanket. I woke up as the plane crossed the Mississippi River, had some tomato juice with ice, and listened to an audio program about our nation's energy policy while watching the countryside and sky pass along like leaves in a stream. Thirty minutes after landing at LAX, I was at my office desk, looking out at the Getty Center and the rain, feeling somewhat out-of-place.

My wife came by at 5:30. God, it was good to see her. We picked up something for dinner, talked a lot about all that had gone on during my absence, and headed, along with everyone else, on the freeway toward home. As we passed through the McClure tunnel that delineates Pacific Coast Highway from Route 10, I caught glimpse of the Pacific -- my second Ocean of the day. Far in the distance, toward Point Dume, a lone shaft of light cut through the clouds and hit the water.

I pulled the car into the driveway, unloaded my bags and walked into my house. My son greeted me with hugs and smiles. We stood at the back porch window and watched the light grow dimmer as the sun went down.

It's an amazing thing, this life.

Washington, Disgrace

I recently visited Washington, D.C. with my mother and step-father after a long absence. The last time I was there was in the early 80’s, when I was working as a production assistant on "The Man With One Red Shoe." One of my jobs on the film was to handle all all of the paperwork for the locations around the city and get all the proper clearances. It was thrilling to see our nation’s seat and travel through the only real history I had experienced in my sheltered Los Angeles life. I walked through the DAR museum after hours, the Bureau of Engraving after dark and the streets of Georgetown at 4 in the morning.
The feeling I got of Washington then was a place with a story to tell, and something that belonged -- in a very real way -- to me.

So as the plane descended through the clouds and I could see the Washington Monument in the distance, I got excited, like I was about to see a long-lost friend.

After we landed and started to taxi to the gate, I noticed that Dulles airport had not really changed. In fact, it still looked EXACTLY the same as when I was a kid when my dad took my to see the sites with the rest of my first family. They still have those strange, antiquated trams that look like something out of a Star Wars movie. (I wonder if George Lucas had them in mind when he was designing Star Wars?)

As we got to the main terminal, I wondered if I was in the wrong place. It did not look like any other terminal I have seen in the U.S. To put it bluntly, it looked like crap. Ceiling tiles were falling down and it had that old, musty smell like someone's grandmother's house long after a serious fried chicken session. The baggage carousels made that terrible screaching sound.

The next day, in between meetings, my mother and I had a chance to go out and look at a few of the monuments. I told the driver what we wanted to see and how long we had to see them. Even though he said he did, he had no idea where they were. We spent 20 minutes driving around downtown and the backward way to the FDR monument. In this round-about way, I got to see a lot of places I remembered, but this time, they looked different. Every monument is under renovation. Streets are blocked off, paint is peeling off and lights are burned out. At least I got to spend some time with my mom.

I know that we're living in "difficult times" and that security is important, but if I feel this way when I visit our nation's capital, how must visitors from other countries see our world here? Are we becoming a shadow of our former selves?