Met the grandparents on the mother’s side this morning for brunch, which was fun because it meant driving up PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), which I like because its pretty and I get to drive past lots of beach. Traffic was clear and I actually enjoyed the drive, probably one of my only memorable _good_ driving experiences in…well…forever. On the drive I put a capstone on my thoughts of the last few weeks, namely, that I really like California, and I think I’ll be coming back here after college.

Every security guard in LA seems to be a Pinkerton, which I find endlessly funny since they are the ones we read about in US History so often as violently breaking up strikes. They aren’t that hip to new technology, however, and so their hand metal detector wand saw nothing, as I held my keys, cell phone buckle (it has given me trouble in airports…) and digital camera in one hand. They ignored it and let me go in, again ignoring the items as I placed them on the table and walked through the body metal detector.

So I get inside, where I would assume there are no cameras allowed, but I see no signs and no one has told me anything, so I carry on. I pop out the digicam at various points and snap pictures of my surroundings. You see, I am in the Jay Leno Show, they are recording Live-To-Tape, and there are a bunch of people watching the audience for bad behavior, but they never catch nor say anthing about my camera. Until the end, when we are walking out and I hold it up for a picture of Jay, and the staff woman asks if I’m recording. “It is a digital still camera,” I explain, but the form-factor of the Sony Cybershot leads her to assume that it is video. I quickly put it away and walk out and am given no more hassle.

So I have pictures! A rare commodity coming out of Leno, I would assume, but I have them. Check out the galleries and enjoy. This was a fun show. After Jay interviewed Nicole Kidman, she took the desk and interviewed Ryan Phillipie. Well, she did a bad job, but it was quite funny. And apparently no one else in my party knew that Kidman is Australian and, thus, speaks in an Aussie accent. Suprising, eh?

Afterwards we had a nice dinner at Something-or-other Strauss, a good restaurant at Universal City Walk. Then I came here, and thus, gentle reader, I can now rest. Driving into LA really is a hassle. Not sure if I want the whole summer PA thing after all, not if I have to do the daily commute…

It just kinda hit me that I’m leaving…um….in two days at 6:30 in the fricken morning. Sigh. I should start packing.

Not for the faint of heart (or anyone in my family), but this is incredibly funny, but probably only to people who: a) have seen the Buffy musical; b) Know a bit about the show; and c) don’t mind gay people. (Or, as Joss Whedon says, “Some of my best gay friends are gay!”)

“Once More, All Naked, All Gay”
Joss [Whedon, the creator of Buffy] has joked in the past about doing an “all naked, all gay” ep[isode], “with goats.” This proved to be a little too tempting for one such as I.

And thus, the new episode.

The best explanation I’ve heard so far for why someone would name a televison show and a movie with such a terrible title as, “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”:

They say that Joss Whedon created the entire concept of Buffy the vampire slayer when he said, “hey, what if the pretty blonde cheerleader in horror movies actually fought back at the monsters trying to kill her” and the rest is history….the name Buffy was just perfect for this concept.

(Thanks to Spyder on the Bronze boards)

Looking back I never commented on Aida or the Jay Leno Show. For the first, Aida was awesome although I found the story a bit cliche and some of the songs superfluous to the task at hand. The second half, however, got more in-depth and had more character development. While the story wasn’t wonderfully compelling, the staging, singing, and dancing, plus some semi-dazzling sets, made the whole thing quite enjoyable, enough so that I would see it again, but not before Ragtime.

Jay Leno. What can I say? You watch him on TV every night, or, like me, you don’t, and that is that. The studio is slightly smaller then it looks on TV, but I was expecting that. The whole routine is down pretty well, they do everything in specific orders, they have people in certain places at certain times, during breaks the security people come out to watch us and keep Jay and his guests safe. 🙂

The show is taped some time around 5-ish PST in a format known to those of us in the biz 😎 as Live-To-Tape, meaning they go through live with no cuts straight to a tape, with commercial breaks and everything else inserted. Unless there are egregious problems or the time is too long, they do no real editing and they just feed the show to the satellite at the right time, all the affiliates pick it up, and viola, it looks live!

I got my picture taken with Jay, so as soon as we receive it I’ll get it scanned and up here, but it looks like that will probably after I’m back at school, so maybe it won’t happen. I’m going to Leno again tomorrow night (lucky me) and bringing Tyrone plus Jess and a few of her buds along, so I’ll try to sneak in the digital camera if I’m able and snap some behind the scenes shots. Or at least get Jay’s parking space. 🙂

Finally, one last note in the TV front. I was ready last night to watch West Wing, I wasn’t doing anything, I was gonna get up and walk in and turn it on, but I didn’t. Don’t really know why. I guess because its just not as interesting any more. What they are doing is so…ick. I dunno. I still like the characters and the show, but the summary was along the lines of, “everyone prepares for the state of the union, CJ has fun at Charlie’s expense, and people continue to repeat things over and over.” It just didn’t sound too appealing. Humph. Hope I didn’t miss anything good. But somehow, I doubt it.

A nice older woman approches, I assume she might be entering my aisle.
Me: Should I get up?
Her: You don’t have to, just spread [she laughs]. Sorry, I was about to say, “just spread your legs and I’ll slip on in.”
And everyone around me bursts into laughter. Sigh.

By the way, the play was excellent. It is a 2.25 hour look at World War II from the perspection of Bohr and Heisenberg, focusing on their meeting during wartime at Copenhagan, Neils Bohr’s home town, while it was occupied by Heisenberg’s Germany. The premise being that with one or two words the entire course of the war could have changed. The scientists, Heisenberg states, are the ones who would decide whether to make weapons that make use of atomics. Is this a road we are ready to take? Or can we, as scientists, secretely conspire to change the course of history through our lies and withholding of information from those in power? This is my thing! That, and they made the phsyics understandable to the common person. I mean, I know what spin is (at least basically enough that I can nod in conversation), but they went out and tried to explain things. Fission. Electron shells. Uncertainty. Nice of them to enlighten us common folks. 🙂

I’ve popped up a new design, but I haven’t had time to work out the kinks, so there are some problems, most noticably being some CSS hiccups and a lack of working navigation. Sorry about that. Please use this thread to comment: is it ugly? Nicer? Easier on the eyes? It should be more flexible, but its not all I wanted, I simply ran out of time. A good start? :-/

“What are you watching?”
“The Daily Show. Leslie Stahl is on.”
“Is that the person you’re going to see on Jay Leno?”
“No mom, that’s Nicole Kidman.”

This is wonderful. Oh, did I ever mention, I am bigoted…against bigots. Do I have to hate myself?

Kelly Macdonald (That girl from Trainspotting) on Los Angeles:

Q: You’ve done some film work in Los Angeles. What do you think of Los Angeles as compared with Glasgow and London?
Macdonald: You can’t even say them in the same sentence really. Just completely different. … Driving around L.A., it’s a bit fascinating, everything is so flat. Other than that, I’m just very suspicious of the whole place. I think it’s not really even houses, it’s just sort of the fronts of houses, and there’s people tee-heeing behind and sort of thinking, ‘she thinks she’s in a town. Ha Ha. We’re just pretending. There’s no people actually there.

(No, the title is not a Buffy reference.)
I was feeling cooped up today so I took an excursion down to The Block to get some recreation. I figured if nothing else I could at least get a bit of walking in. I noticed that the film Gosford Park was playing, and it intrigued me. The funny thing is, The Block is a pretty mainstream theater, a massive 30 screen giant, and yet AMC still charges reasonable prices and, in fact, often screens films that, while not fringe independents, are at least less mainstream than others. Gosford Park is certainly not mainstream.

We begin in a rain storm, and the first person we see makes me go “Hey, Its That Guy!” (well, actually, girl) from Trainspotting. Turns out that the movie is basically a cross between Clue and…oh…I dunno…Titanic or something. We’ve got the old rich folks, the new-money rich folks, the folks who are leeches off of the old-money folks, and some folks that are just plain without money. Next we’ve got a bunch of serving staff, the butler, maids, cooks, valets, lady servants, etc. Each of them has a past and a story as well. The first hour is devoted soley to exploring these characters, and, amazingly, by the end of it I feel like I pretty much know all three dozen of them.

The surface appearances of everyone at the party are not as they seem, in fact many people — both guests and waitstaff — have secrets that they’d rather remain buried. These secrets become less hidden when the lord of the manor is abruptly removed from the land of the living. This is when it gets interesting, as various plot lines are merged together artfully in a strange and tangled web of relationships and crossed blood lines.


We are left with a conclusion that is not at all satisfying (nor, I expect, was it meant to be) but which reveals the mysteries of the past, shows a society content with brushing them aside, and returns everyone safely to their homes. What a strange world we live in.

Religions I’ve investigated and decided don’t quite fit me. The list so far, and the current investigation:

• Monotheism
  • Judaism
  • Christianity
  • Islam


• Paganism
  • Wicca
  • Technopaganism

“A startling number of Pagans work and play in technical fields, as sysops, computer programmers, and network engineers. On the surface, technopagans like Pesce embody quite a contradiction: they are Dionysian nature worshippers who embrace the Apollonian artifice of logical machines. But Pagans are also magic users, and they know that the Western magical tradition has more to give a Wired world than the occasional product name or the background material for yet another hack-and-slash game. Magic is the science of the imagination, the art of engineering consciousness and discovering the virtual forces that connect the body-mind with the physical world. And technopagans suspect that these occult Old Ways can provide some handy tools and tactics in our dizzying digital environment of intelligent agents, visual databases, and online MUDs and MOOs.”

My new resolution is that I don’t get to watch Buffy unless it is while exercising. So I’ve setup a set of wireless headphones to the TV/VCR in the exercise room, and now I do StairMaster-ing while slaying. Well, you know what they say, exorcise daily!

Anyway, I have a great quote here that really caught me in my search for all things techno-societal, and I want to say first off, props to the Giles (and thus the writers) for using the word “smelly” in a positive, like I do, instead of a negative. Yay, my usage is catching on! 🙂

Upon being asked why he prefers books and disdains computers.
Giles: Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower or a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell… musty and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is… it has no texture, no context. It’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then the getting of knowledge should be tangible. It should be, um… smelly.”

Thanks to BuffyGuide.com for the reference.

All posts between December 25 and January 4 seem to be permanently lost. Luckily, I didn’t write a lot between those times, but it does mean you miss a nicec Culture Jammer email. Ah, well. You’ll just have to start reading Adbusters. 🙁

The cruise is going well enough. I’ve met a few interesting people. We will reach Puerte Vallerte (sp?) in two days. On this Christmas Eve the crewmembers are singing holiday songs in the grand atrium. Its nice. The food, however, isn’t quite so good as I would have expected.

What is better then I expected is the computer situation. There is, as you can tell, internet access! Now my 15 minutes are about to end, and I don’t want to spend any more money, but suffice to say that their NT machines are sufficiently penetratable that I was able to get around their simple security and in a few minutes get to the hard drive. Now to figure out the settings so I can get my iBook on the network…

But no, I don’t want to stir up trouble. Unless I get bored.

A note to Sara or Kelson: let me know what is up with Mock Trial. Its hard to get my email, but next time I’m online in a few days I’ll try to check it, and I’d like to know where we stand with that. Until then, bon voyage all!

So I’m off on this Mexico cruise thing, a day earlier then I thought we were leaving, so I’m scrambling to get everything done, one of the things not happening being the final Philosophy paper. Eesh, this is really bad. I’m gonna have to figure out a way to do it in the car and email it in before I get on the boat.

I had a dream last night that I wrote something stupid on AgBlog and then wanted to delete it, but didn’t know how. Now, first off, everything I write on AgBlog is stupid, second I try to avoid deleting entries. Third, why the heck was I dreaming about that? :-/

So I got back, after some long flights and some frisking by airport personnel (my cell phone buckle was the problem, apparently). We went to a nice meal and Claim Jumper and I received my Hanukkah present, an iPod, so now I am very happy. 🙂 At first the cats couldn’t figure out who I am, but I think that once I sat down in my room they got it. Its good to be home, even if I’m going to be leaving in three days. Tomorrow I get a haircut and some time to bug people at Foothill. Yay bugging! Oh, and I must embark on my quest to get my family addicted to Buffy. Cause I really am that sad. 😛

People have this obsession with locking eyes and telling truth. I don’t get it, it doesn’t work for me. When I know that is happening, I can’t look someone in the eyes. I’m pretty sure that that was what really got me kicked off of the Justice – not looking David in the eyes when I told him that I didn’t do anything wrong. Even when police reports cleared me, no charges were filed, I even got what could be considered an apology, he didn’t trust me to come back, because I didn’t look him in the eye at The Boulevard when he asked me that question.

See, I have this inner subconscious thing about societal conventions, expected patterns of behavior, and all that. I knew what I was doing as I looked away, I knew I was dooming myself, but I couldn’t help it. Perhaps I hoped he would judge based on the facts and not some fake emotional exchange. There is a whole rant in here somewhere about the truth of memories, the ability of people to lie, etc., etc. Truth is, I’m a very bad liar, and thus I try to avoid big lies as much as possible. So people get upset sometimes, because I tell the truth, because I’m not as tactful as I could be but, for better or worse, that is who I am.

I should probably write the whole incident with the Justice down, but the conversations and chain of events are fuzzy enough that I don’t really feel confident to do so. People asked me about it for a long while afterwards, and no one is content with the explanation that “really, its not very exciting, in fact its quite boring.” Because, truthfully, it wasn’t a big thing, nothing incredible. Police investigations does not equal murder, intrigue, or whatever. And in America we have this thing about being innocent until proven guilty, and I wasn’t even charged. I was called in as a witness in a very minor act of tampering that I did not actually witness. A few statements were made (not by me) that were misinterpreted, and the police detective’s somewhat overzealous investigation lead to some troubles for a certain assistant editor (me) at a highly-unsympathetic newspaper. Of course, if I had waited until I had been established there, learned the people, and then carried out the investigation, this probably would have turned out very different. Truth is, I was given an opportunity for a job that I didn’t completely want, but I felt that the experience would be worth the work and so I signed on to try my hand at editing. I had some high dreams about getting to the heart of real stories that matter, especially at a newspaper that is not at all influenced by major media concerns like advertising. Too bad it didn’t work out, but maybe next year.

And I’ve used the expression “truth is” twice in one entry, which shows that I must really be out of it and incoherant here at 5:30 in the morning. But I figure, stay awake now, and I can sleep on the plane. So. Must…stay…awake.

(How did this come up? It was a line on 24.)