The countdown is on. My journey begins March 31 at 3:20pm and who knows what will happen in the two revolutions around the sun before I again return 'home'. Today I was booking hostel space for my layover in Manila and checking on similar arrangements for my arrival and first few days in Cairns, Australia. Given the amount of time I'll have in the Marshall's, I hope to get my basic SCUBA certification and if that works out, once I'm in Cairns I can do the Great Barrier Reef for a couple days.

Back to the hostels for a moment. For the past eight years I have worked in resorts in the Napa Valley, where we charged substantial rates for beautiful accommodations. Coming from that background, you develop an image of what service standards should be and expectations that follow. The trip I am taking will be a study in extremes. I booked a night in Manila that includes meals, shuttle to and from the airport and more for $6.18. Five nights with meals in Cairns will set me back $67. Now maybe I'll discover you get what you pay for, but my experiences in hostels in Europe and the feedback from others that have traveled to some of the places I am going overwhelmingly support them as clean, functional, and more than adequate for what I need. When three of my friends and I traveled through Europe, the most expensive hotel we stayed at was also the worst one we experienced. The hostels were far and away better, and only the wonderful beds at my aunt's house in Switzerland beat them. (my friends still comment on my aunts beds) I look forward to some very interesting lodging over the next two years.

I am remiss for having posted so little in the last few weeks. One little saga that went on during that time has drawn to a successful conclusion. About a month ago, the heating element in our stove decided it had had enough and self immolated. This obviously made it hard for the rest of us to cook. So a replacement element was ordered and a week passed until it arrived. The technician dutifully installed the new element and went to test it. TA DA nothing..... There was more internal damage than we had first assumed and essentially the stove was shot. Luckily, as my parents were wont to do, we had a spare stove in the garage from a previous home we had lived in. And now lugging it from place to place had rewarded us, so we thought. I hauled the stove up the stairs into the kitchen and got it connected. The next day while I was at work, my mom decided to cook. Well the dish was prepared, placed in the oven and what is that HORRIBLE SMELL emanating from the stove? Quickly, she removed the food, shut of the stove, opened the available windows, and tried to dissipate the rancid air. We surmised that mice had gotten into the stove and when we had a technician come a day later, he was able to open up the side panels and see where they had made nests in the insulation. They also had urinated throughout the insulation, thus leaving a very unpleasant surprise for us. So number two stove is shot. What to do, what to do? Craigslist came up with some very good deals, but in white and everything in our kitchen is cream/beige, so they were all nixed. Fortune still smiled on us and Sears was having a sale online. We selected a reasonably priced model similar to what we were replacing and ordered it. And had to wait eight days for it to arrive at the store, to be delivered to us. The day before it was to be delivered we got a call. Our stove had arrived, but had been damaged in the process of shipping and we would have to wait another week. There is only so much you can do with a microwave (despite what the mother in law of one of my coworkers believes) and we wanted our stove. Well yesterday it arrived, was installed, and promptly put into service baking several dishes, including a pecan desert I was enjoying this afternoon. All is right in the world if only for a few moments.

A couple more flash games I've found recently:

Chronotron and Perfect Balance

I have been busy lately and not posting as much as I would like. I did want to throw out a set of NASA images I was linked to recently. Incredible is all I can say.

I wrapped up my taxes over the weekend and was surprised to be getting nearly $5K back, although the portion from California may never come if the budget stalemate does not get resolved. I'm definitely not expecting it before I leave the country.

And a few Photoshops I've saved from recent contests ranging from:

Sentimental

by Chowderhead

Creeptastic

by ArcLight

Funny

by Snackwagon

Stylish

by TelefunkenU47

And two variations on a theme
that amused me.
Left by Camelclub
Right by Enemyboat

Just got home from up north. I went with my mom for the weekend to check over a piece of property before she put in an offer. Well it seems to be just what she is looking for and now it is ours. Ten acres of pine forest, plenty of space for a garden and orchard with good sun exposure. The house is a little over 2000 square feet with a good layout and lots of usable space. It is in the direct center of the property for maximum privacy. It is nearly finished being remodeled, so that makes it all the more appealing to my mom. The water comes from a strong mountain spring, all gravity feed with excellent pressure, doesn't need filtration. We will add solar once she moves in. There is a second 10 acre parcel adjacent to this one, that actually I might put an offer on. It is raw land, but has even better views. My mom seems overjoyed at the prospect of moving up there in a couple months and getting away from Angwin. Makes me sad in a way, but since I'll be gone for the next couple years anyway, I want to make sure she is happy and where she wants to be.


''The Inheritance'' is a film about power, about the price you pay for it and the responsibility that comes with it,'' explains Per Fly. ''It is about the choices we make that impact our lives, about will vs. passion and duty vs. freedom, about deciding between what you want to do and what you have to do. As part of my research for this film, I talked to several men who knew first hand what it was like to fire over two thousand employees in a single day. One of them had no scruples, and he'd go ahead and do it again tomorrow, because like he said: 'If I hadn't fired them, the whole company would have collapsed'. While another man I spoke with never got over it and subsequently suffered an emotional breakdown.

While not nearly on the scale portrayed in this Danish film, I felt for the main character because of the pressures I've felt since my dad died to preserve the estate and all he had worked so hard for. Even though my brother, my mother, and I agree on most of the financial choices we have had to make, it is still nerve wracking and the internal dialogue over what I want to do versus what I know my father would have wanted done and what I have to do continues to be very stressful. With the economy as it is and several million dollars at stake, I do not feel adequate to be making the decisions I know I have to. And I feel in many ways it is a losing battle, but I go on for the sake of duty. Maybe that is why I thought this was such a fantastic film.

Another Sundance come and gone. Different. Good. What's next.

I flew into SLC on Saturday night, the 17th, picked up my rental car (a fabulous Kia Rio - that's how I roll) and headed to Provo. After setting up in the generous accommodations, I waited to hear from Richard and the Birdmonster contingent, who planned on arriving around 1 am. Well they ran into issues in Nevada and never made it that night. So eventually I gave up and went to bed. The next morning, I still could not get in touch with Richard or the Birdmonsters and even though I was the keeper of the keys, I gave up on waiting and headed to Park City to start doing what I came for - watching movies. The waiting meant I missed a chance to see Cold Souls, so I'll have to be on the lookout for that as a future release, but I was able to pick up a ticket for Children of Invention. It was a story of two children, an Asian American brother and sister ages 10 and 6 respectively. Their parents are split (although only the boy understands this), the father is back in China and the mom is going from pyramid scheme to pyramid scheme trying to keep the family solvent. They lose their Boston house and move into an apartment complex still under construction by Chinese friends. When the mother gets arrested in one of her get rich quick pipe dreams, the children are left to fend for themselves and presume themselves to be abandoned. The brother sets a plan in motion to raise money and buy back their old house, by selling the inventions he and his sister have devised. The family is eventually reunited, but still in financial hardship. Impressive performances by the child actors (both first timers). Later in the week I would ride in the bus with both the kids and their dads. This was a strong start to the festival for me. While waitlisting a second film, EndGame, I got ahold of Richard and made plans to try and meet them, Shep and Pat at the Sundance Resort at 9pm to try and see Boy Interrupted. EndGame was a great movie, telling the backstory of the early negotiations between the ANC and the Botha/De Klerk government in South Africa, prior to the fall of apartheid. I appreciated learning more about that situation and the performances of William Hurt and Jonny Lee Miller were strong. The Q&A went long and I missed everyone at the Resort, but apparently they skipped Boy Interrupted anyway.

Monday was a three movie day, squeezed around a number of other events. Started out early with a showing of Old Partner, which turned out to be one of my favorites. It was a South Korean documentary following a 79 year old rice farmer and the ox he had worked with for 40 years. To see the relationship between man and beast was touching and to see the juxtaposition between the old ways and the new (with neighboring farms using tractors/pesticides) was heartbreaking. The there was quite a bit of humor in the guise of his wife's constant commentary. A very meditative film that got to me emotionally. Second I saw Everything Strange And New. Taking it's title from the pied piper story this followed a man who had the 'American Dream' and now was confronted with the realization that maybe it wasn't what he wanted after all. With very deliberate pacing (which I like, but I know many others think is too slow) he watches the relationships of his coworkers and friends and learns that what we want and what we need are usually not the same thing. Ultimately, he realizes he has what he needs and can ignore the pied piper that tells us we need more more more. I think this would be a hard sell for commercial success, but it was a film that I liked alot. After the film I met up with Richard, Pat and Shondene at the ASCAP music space to see Birdmonster in action. After their set and most of Meisha's we left to get something to eat. Returning from snacking we hung out in the green room and got to meet Wynonna Judd. She was extremely nice and spend close to half an hour talking with the Birdmonster guys. Then we all walked up Main Street to the Gibson Guitar Lodge for a photo shoot. Paparazzi galore, which translated into pictures/video of me on Defamer.com and Radar magazine's website (in the background of course). Here are a couple of my pics of it. Zack (of Birdmonster) is a cousin of Benjamin Bratt, so we headed to Prospector Square to see if we could get into his new film La Mission. There were six of us and we only managed to get three tickets. The others headed over to Eccles and got in to The Messenger. La Mission was a good film, set in SF's Mission District, dealing with violence and exclusion in the Hispanic community there. As it turned out those were the only films the band got to see, so it made their Sundance experience that much more memorable.

Tuesday started with Beyond Tomorrow, an Inuit movie by the same collective that created The Fast Runner. A very deliberate and emotional film. There is an anthropological element to these films as they preserve on film the survival skills of these people groups and showcase their tools and culture. The film itself is the story of two older women and the grandson of one who are given the task of drying fish on a separate island for the summer. They would be picked up at the end of summer and this was not an uncommon situation where some members of the tribe would be out of communication for several months on their given tasks. Drying fish on an island removed the chance of wild animals (or their domesticated dogs) raiding the food stores. Well one old woman dies and the other too are not picked up at summer's end. They make the journey back to the main camp to find that everyone has been killed by a disease and must face the harsh winter on their own. This forces them to make some very difficult decisions and brings us to a painful climax. Next I saw the documentary End of the Line, with Richard. It dealt with the dilemma of overfishing that is gripping the entire world. Some fantastic underwater cinematography paired with powerful information makes this an inspirational and action inducing look at where we could be headed if we do not take a hard look at our stewardship of this planets resources. Afterwards, Richard and the band had to head to SLC for another gig and some TV interviews, so they gave me the six tickets they had for Push and we said our goodbyes. I quickly sold the extra five tickets and settled in to see the eventual Grand Jury and Audience prize winner of the festival. This was a gutcheck movie about an obese 17 year old black girl in New York, who has undergone and continues to undergo tremendous abuse of all types and yet still looks at life positively. With the support of a few teachers she is able to overcome her horrific upbringing and progress down the road to vast improvement for her and her children. My final film for the day was Manure, for which I had high hopes, as it was the latest by the marvelous Polish brothers of Northfork and Twin Falls Idaho fame. It dealt with fertilizer salesmen in the 1950/1960's in the American midwest. It had the look and much of the oddness that I expected, but was disappointing to me. Some definitely funny moments, but it felt very flat in the long run. For the rest of the week I got to masquerade as Birdmonster's manager, since they bestowed his credential on me when they left. Definitely beneficial in getting into the various filmmaker lodges/passholder areas.

Wednesday caught me at Zion and His Brother, a film set in Haifa following two teen aged brothers testing the boundaries of their relationship and taking on the rest of the world at the same time. Both the leads are first time actors and their performances were amazing. One of my favorites. The second film of the day was my personal favorite of the festival. With several parallels with Me and You and Everyone We Know from 2005, this film stars a performance artist/musician who incorporates her performance art in the film. When she reveals to some friends that she has never been in love and doesn't really believe in it, they propose a trip around the country to speak with people from many backgrounds on their ideas of what love is and to see if they can change her mind. This is a hybrid film because the interviews with real people is more documentary, she recreates some of the stories people tell with the use of puppets and performance pieces. She resists throughout, but this is a very cute film and I left with a large smile on my face. Third film of the day was a film noir called The Missing Person, with spot on performances, chain smoking detectives, things not as they seem, deadends, twists, etc. Michael Shannon has to follow a man from Chicago to LA and then back to New York and in so doing figure out who the man is and why someone wants him to return to New York. A great modern homage to the genre. I tried to get into Sin Nombre as my fourth movie and was shut out. It happens at least once each year. So, I went to plan B and hit Motherhood at Eccles. I should have given it a pass. I should note that it is not necessarily a bad movie, in fact it will most likely be a box office hit, but it was not something I would normally have sought out and did not ring true at all to me. Obviously, I am not a mother, but I could not imagine this being remotely realistic and I did not enjoy it. It starred Uma Thurman, Anthony Edwards and Minnie Driver, all of who were at the showing, but none of that changed my mind.

Thursday was another early morning, starting at 8:30 with Adam, a story about learning to love. The title character is a highly functioning Asperger syndrome sufferer who develops a friendship with his new upstairs neighbor Beth. We follow the story mostly from Beths POV. It never gets cheesy and everything is handled in a sensitive way. I really like this film. Next was Unmade Beds, which had an impressive soundtrack and followed two primary leads Vera, a Belgian girl and Axl, a Spanish boy who find themselves living in a London squat as they work out their issues and personal journeys. A creative piece with plenty of musical performances and a mostly satisfying story. I tried to get into Art & Copy, a documentary on advertising, at the new Temple facility, but was too far back in the waitlist to get in. The Temple is a beautiful building from the outside and I wish I had had a chance to see more of the interior, although I was told by others that it was very similar to the Racquetclub space. After missing out of that I got a ticket to Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. I should have give it a pass. It was a hodge podge of short films duct taped together to try and assemble something movie like, there was little to make it cohesive and several segments seemed totally random. The basic premise was that the lead tries to move past a recent breakup by interviewing and analysing all/most of the men she is in contact with. Stereotypes abound. Luckily, my final film for the day was BurmaVJ a documentary about the leader of a band of civilians who risked their lives to get footage out of Myanmar during the past couple years. Especially during the protests and uprisings of the citizenry and the Buddhist monks in that country. These are truly brave people and the doc showed just what the risks they face are. It was personally interesting for another reason: my cousin Daniel is married to a Burmese girl, I grew up with friends in SF who were Burmese, and I would love to visit the country.

Friday, turned into an epic. It started with a great political farce, In The Loop. As one of the festival programmers said, if it wasn't so funny it would be terrifying. We follow the back and forth between British government and US officials as they misspeak, spin, cover, deny, and generally stumble blindly along and make matters far worse. And it is all too plausible. Great performances all around and I was overjoyed to see "Sledgehammer" in a large role. I spent a few hours in the filmmakers lodge and then chose to see Dada's Dance instead of Peter & Vandy. Both had seemed interesting, but maybe I chose wrong. I have to make a concession - it is entirely possible that a bad set of subtitling greatly changed the flow/feel of the film, but as it was there were far too many gaps in the story and un/under explained situations to feel like a product ready for public consumption. Set in China, a young girl, already a flirt with a reputation in her town, is told by her mother's boyfriend that she is adopted after she spurns his inappropriate advances. She sets off with a neighbor boy to find her real mother. What follows is a disjointed and unfocused set of misadventures.

That should have been an omen for my own misadventures to come. I left Park City about 5pm, and on approaching SLC ran into HEAVY fog. I returned my rental car, dropped off my luggage and went to read my book in anticipation of a 9pm departure to SF. Well, the fog did in 29 flights by the time the night was over. Mine was first postponed 90 minutes, the plane could not land from Tampa Bay and was diverted to Idaho. Another 90 minutes and a second attempt to land at SLC failed with the plane now being diverted to Las Vegas. This repeated until they finally got a larger plane and we were able to leave at 4 am. Of course this screwed up my ride to be picked up at the airport and I had to wait nearly 3 hours in SF for an Evans bus to Napa. And once in Napa, it took another 45 minutes for a ride to get free and come to retrieve me. So, by 11 am I was home and could jump in the shower, change and get over to church. Luckily the rest of the day went splendidly and our Chamber of Commerce awards dinner at the CIA was nearly flawless. Sunday was a recovery day and this morning I got four of my vaccinations in preparation for my trip. I got the prescriptions for two more oral vaccines and my malaria medication. I will still have to go to the county for a Yellow Fever vaccine and then I'll be set for the next two years. And I narrowed down my options for travel insurance so it looks like that will be far less than I had expected.

More coming soon.....

The Return of Sundance.....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123120095259855597.html Interesting link 1.

Dave Barry year end review.

Sundance reviews coming in a day or two. Still recovering from a horrible return trip from Utah, thanks to SLC fog, 7 hours of plane delays, no weekend shuttle service in SF when I arrived, etc, etc. But Sundance was very good this year. More soon. Plus a couple book reviews of late.

I'm sitting here listening to a promo copy of Matan's latest release as the incarnation Sesto Sento: Key To The Universe. He has consistently come up with wonderful renditions of 'mainstream' music and the remix of Moby's Lift Me Up is a gem. There is also a vocal psy track (not just samples) called Misterious Ways that is quite good.

Second up is the compilation "organic circuitry" on the Ektoplazm label, which is all over the place - from 110 to 148 bpm. It was mastered at OOOD's Stooodio in the UK and Colin's influence shows. I count that as a good thing. I've always liked how international the psytrance culture is. This comp boasts artists from Sweden, Norway, Japan, the US, Israel, Canada, and Finland. None of the tracks has blown me away, but they are consistently well produced and certainly keep things moving. I think Filteria's The Predator (2907 Remix) is my favorite with its old school goaesque groove.

A couple days ago, on the recommendation of a coworker, I ventured over to Santa Rosa and watched "Slumdog Millionaire" the newest film by Danny Boyle. It was well worth the slow, foggy drive from Angwin. Boyle again proves what a versatile director he is and this is a very strong piece of film to add to his impressive resume. The story is of an un-schooled boy from the slums of Mumbai, who makes it onto the Indian version of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire". He does so well that the authorities believe he has to be cheating. The film follows in flashbacks as he describes how he knew the answers to question after question, from his education in the streets. There is much humor, sadness, and beauty throughout the film. It definitely left me feeling good. And it will be playing at the Cameo later this month for you locals to check out.

Well I hope everyone had a great Christmas. Mine was pretty quiet but that was a good thing. I got a gift certificate to Barnes & Nobles (Thank you to you know who). And that has already been put to excellent use at their 50% off after Christmas sale. This is my written haul:









and, not covered by the GC, a DVD by the director of Head On!

All the best to everyone as we knock the door down to 2009!