Miles High

2003-07-22T01:30:00.000-04:00

A good Salon day - three quality articles!

Homage to Blogalonia: a neat bridging of my lit and tech split personalities - Orwell as proto-blogger! But the article was flawed by the fact that the author apparently knows nothing about the "column culture" of Chinese (more specifically, Hongkongnese) newspapers, which interestingly got carried online pretty much intact by the supposedly ADD Gen Y.

Speaking of blogs vs. essays, I'd really like to introduce Halley to Me-Me one day - and see Michael Patrick King film the resulting sure-to-be-lethal koffeeklatch

Wait, does Carmen Maura blog?
Anyone But Bush: Todd Gitlin is right - "But it's a huge failure of imagination if someone can't imagine why someone would support Bush. Since roughly half the population did." At the same time, an indirect rebuttal to the fed-up liberals moving to Canada in AP's well-circulated story (World Journal picked up the next day & editorialized on it!) - in the mold of the great Stay-or-Leave dilemma of Hong Kong 1997. After all someone has to do the dirty work of converting the heathens in Middle America.
A Green Revolt Against Bush: the first unvarnished Good News on the political front in a long time - Good Guys Scoring Upset Victory. And this is so much bigger than Dems vs. Freepers biz-as-usual: whoever expects new hopes to the environmental doom-and-gloom to be so close at hand? I really hope these guys are right - the alternative is too awful to contemplate.

2003-07-16T16:29:00.000-04:00

Two and half months after promise, I finally finished translating Doc Searl's World of Ends.

Will the Doc's blessing translate to riches & fame, or just (link-sluttery? /dotry?)

2003-07-04T15:10:00.000-04:00

Screwed up my courage & called in the WNYC Brian Lehrer Show for the first time - he has Isabel Allende on air for his excellent The New de Tocquevilles series, where he picks the brains of foreigners and immigrants for insights on America.

Well, I wanted to pick her brains about being an expatriate writer in America, and in general (a tightrope act as V.S. Naipaul showed). Was very nervous about letting my (insecure & untrustable) voice go live on air. As it turn out, it didn't matter anyway - she gave only the sort of general soundbite you can expect on such short notice.

After listening a bit more, I realized the truly original questoins I should have asked: Can Latin America or another non-Protestant foreign culture ever produce a great nation with all the virtues of the USA? Is capitalism (and modernity) genetically entwined with the Protestant Ethic?

(The Billion-Dollar What-If question planted in my head by, among others, Octavio Paz' tour-de-force essay The Labyrinth of Solitude that has hounded me since:)

"North Americans want to understand and we want to contemplate. They are activists and we are quietists; we enjoy our wounds and they enjoy their inventions. They believe in hygience, health, work and contentment, but perhaps they have never experienced true joy, which is an intoxication, a whirlwind. In the hubbub of a fiesta night our voices explode into brilliant lights, and life and death mingle together, while their vitality becomes a fixed smile that denies old age and death but that changes life to motionless stone. ... It seems to me that North Americans consider the world to be something that can be perfected, and that we consider it to be something that can be redeemed."

This was the same paragraph that leapt to my mind in my hour of anger with E. - for obvious reasons. The personal really is fucking political. :-) I'll need to come back to develop this - perhaps the rest of my life.

Meanwhile, a passionate discussion of the pachuco in East L.A. today.

2003-07-04T12:43:00.000-04:00

Correction: I forgot about Sex and the City. In fact, it was my emotional anchor in the last two weeks, as I sit there every night, in front of the TV in the empty house, chewing through the Third Season DVDs obsessively as the Final Season geared up over the cablesphere.

It was a good season - lots of drama, lots of character development, new territories. The breathtaking Carrie-Big plane-crash of an affair that would make Almodovar proud. I cried at the teary Carrie-Aidan breakup scene.

Only if there's someone to share it with ... (girls, you ain't alone.)

2003-07-03T22:35:00.000-04:00

Just back from Marine Park - the Red Bank Fireworks this year is awesome! In terms of visual arrangement, choreography, innovation, or just sheer blinding wattage, tonight's display ranks favorably compared to any in my memory. Some of the two-stage rockets especially, the little bomblets going off in a different direction after the main explosion, in an orderly pattern or like crazed fireflies. And the one whose glowing red cloud fell back down to earth together as a group.

God, it's good to get out the house to mingle with the crowd. My life has been so lonely and dissipated in the last three weeks, ever since the roommates left and I gave up the job search. Only the PDMA project and the Kurniawan Java book kept me going.

(By the way - finally finished this damned book today. Not worth the time if you ask me. Will write an Amazon review.)

Will soon have to make the Big Decision ...

2003-06-13T23:59:00.000-04:00

Another rainy night. It's been monsoon season again since J. left three days ago. Perfect mood for Red.

Such soul food. Like the one red substance that never made an appearance in it, this film has such a rich texture that it compels me to return, to linger again and again. The poignant, unhurried twilight conversations of Valentine and the Judge was what I sought with E., but never got. The curmudgeon and the naif - they did not like, had no trust for each other. Yet there was no immediate write-off, like a modern American is wont to ("Get away from me YOU PERVERT!") Instead, they picked up in each other the scent of authentic being opposite to their own, and decided to stay and explore. Watching Valentine and the Judge slowly circling each other in the lovely golden twilight, I see in the charged air between them the tendresse and pudeur that Stuart Miller described so lovingly.

"Why was Valentine not repulsed by the Judge?" my ears perked up when Kieslowski scholar Annette Insdorf came on screen and threw up this rhetorical hammer, "That is perhaps answered by (Krzysztof) Piesiewicz's remark: 'Red is a film against indifference.' And ... that was Valentine's choice: 'I can only feel pity for you.' Pity - not revulsion, not indifference."

"And why is Red a film against indifference? Because it suggests that we all need to fight against the tendency to dismiss people who aren't as good as we might want them to be. And rather ... to allow them to tell us who they are, so we can help them to get to a better stage."

Exactement. Imagine E., or J., or any other American woman blurting out Valentine's line! But perhaps with good reason - empathy can be a dangerous thing in today's world. The same decision that in communal Old World leads to breakthrough and growth can, in the wilderness of America, lead you one day to wake up next to Travis Bickle.

Other throwaway revelations in the DVD: Irene Jacob relates how Kieslowski made the first draft of Valentine his fantasy Golden Girl. "Noooo No No." she said, "If she's interested in the Judge, it has to be from something unresolved in her own life, unreal relationships that drive her to resolve them with him."

So Kieslowski took her advice, and the re-written Valentine with her own quiet demons rose to be a worthy partner to Judge Kern's Prospero. And their relationship an allegory of the inner dialog between one's Youth and Age (or in Hillman's terms, puer and senex) - but as opposites troubled by each other, not simply antagonists. "He's provoking her. And through this provocation, the real contact can be established ... and that is her evolution, really."

Me? I'm about half way in between, still hopeful although disillusioned more and more by life. Awkward spot, isn't it? I guess that's why I fell so immediately for E. - that radiance of hers that is so easy and authentic, I rarely see in people her age (as Hillman put it above: "Fear is a huge thing for older people. The older people that one admires seem to be fearless. They go right out into the world. It's astounding.") This woman has figured out life's secrets, and I wanted her wisdom bad.

I apparently misread her. So badly that even now I needed this long, rambling mess of self-justification in order to work through my shock and bewilderment.

2003-06-02T00:04:00.000-04:00

E. moved out today.

No drama. No goodbyes. She slipped out of the house without even seeing my face - and I wanted it that way. In fact, I woke up as she quietly moved out the last few loads from her room, bag by bag and trunk by trunk - and stayed equally quietly in my room for two hours, until she filled her car and drove away.

Nothing left to say. The night before, I had finally secured 20 minutes alone with her - by resorting to holding up her deposit. Unsportsmanlike, but the last trump card in my hand as it became increasing obvious that the last-minute confession I had hoped for was not forthcoming. And she stuck to her guns. I've been completely busy, she said, that's all there is. Her favors to J. is just plain kindness - Big Sister taking under her wings a new girl in town. And I have no business in their Girls' Club.

So, even less success than with J. I did not once crack her all-business facade, while my own eyes welled up with emotion as I tried again and again to re-connect with the woman that I once knew.

With the last thread of dignity that remained, I handed back her check, returned to my room and shut the door. I've had enough.

So today, before heading out myself for the usual Sunday Special, I placed the gift and card already prepared outside her room, knowing that she will return one last time. The card said, "To a friendship that could have been." - after the pre-printed message that Real Friends Always Have Time to Talk. I added that I will always remember that day early this year when she took me to tour my favorite Rumson manor where her sister turned out to be butler.

When I returned, there was a note on the table that, in the same business-friendly tone, thanked me for the gift and gave instructions for the last bits of house business.

And that was all.

2003-05-24T12:57:00.000-04:00

Well, things have settled down into an uneasy, temporary equilibrium. J. came back from that weekend surprisingly solicitous, even trying to be a conversational go-between between me and E. E., on the other hand, kept right on with her studied obliviousness, paying me no more than the most perfunctory of attention.

There was one day last week, though, that the old casual rapport returned. There she was, lounging around enjoying an unexpected day off, and I had finally picked up the broom and the vacuum, to give the downstairs an overdue dusting. She chatted about food and restaurants that she had visited lately (like how so many conversations in this house starts). Although she showed no emotional interest to me, the vibe was relaxed and easy, and you wonder why it is so hard to achieve such little bits of grace between people.

Well, that day has passed, and she will be gone by next weekend. How is the finale going to play out? I have my lines worked out, but can I nudge this mess into a satisfying emotional & dramatic close?

2003-05-13T00:17:00.000-04:00

The rest of the week was a black swirl, as I was tormented by abandonment and disillusion. The world has suddenly become a cold, harsh place. Wherever I went, I flinch at the look of a stranger, my eyes scared and defenseless, ready to betray me in a flood of tears to the first inquirer.

The evening that E. and J. were to have their merry girls' celebration, I left the house early, not wanting to be mocked by their kissy-huggy sisterhood. Distraught and suicidal, I ended up on P.'s doorstep, where she restored me in her usual way - by distracting me with the barrage of her own problems :-) Still, she pulled me back from the brink. Time to refocus on my priorities.

Next day, I lunched with her and L. to brainstorm about my jobsearching. Then I called on C., whom I haven't spoken with for weeks. Ended up spending the whole afternoon with her and her now-preteen daughter - always a joy and balm on my soul.

But the weekend was a lonely one - J. off to her family and E. almost completely absent and resolutely cool. There was nowhere to go - so I slowly, numbly went through my routine, the motions of living. As Ventura said: "... the grace we strive for, and the sense of movement that is sometimes all that keeps us alive."

2003-05-12T23:34:00.000-04:00

(5/7) Wrapped in depression, self-pity and anger, I finally confronted J.

Actually, it's that my passive-aggressive cold shoulder has gotten too obvious to ignore, and she asked me simply what's wrong. Well, it wasn't the volcanic eruption that I had envisioned, but with suppressed anger I denounced her exclusive attachment to E. that has poisoned the common social life. Being a true American free-marketeer, she of course denied indignantly that there's anything wrong with that, and pushed the problem back to me. We narrowly avoided an all-out shouting match, but J. promised to debrief E. fully on the first opportunity, thereby forcing my hand - this is not the way I had planned it out!

The next morning, E. ever so casually said to me as I stumbled into the kitchen, "So J- said you want to talk to me?" Caught off-guard with no build-up at all, I stuttered out my words: "Uh, it's just that, uh, we don't seem to have a real chance to talk any more ..." "Oh, I told you back then that I am gonna be very busy when the year starts," and she went on breezily, dumping out her whole schedule for the week. What was I to say? I wasn't gonna bring up J. and start the wronged-wife-in-the-triangle soap opera - no way. So I just said, meekly: "Let me know when you have time that I can take you out to lunch, whenever you can", and watched her walk away.

Oh, it got better. Five minute later, she came downstairs and said, "By the way, I am going out to dinner tonight with J. and S. We are not excluding you; it's just that it's Girls' Night Out." With that, she sailed out the door and left me with my jaw dropped to the floor.

So she knew all along!

2003-05-07T03:06:00.000-04:00

A storm-in-a-teacup, on the homefront
It started Sunday afternoon: I had finished my Sunday paper, and the dandelion infestation out on the front lawn is just too much to endure any more. So I grabbed E.'s special dandelion-pitchfork, a shopping bag, and headed out to do battle.

During the two hours, J. came in and went. And as I finished up, E. pulled up in her putty-putt Mercedes diesel, but wouldn't get out of the car - busy on the cell. Not a look or wave my way. I got back into the house, heard her came in, went downstair. She gave a short greeting. Then J. returned and immediately launched into a long, whining tirade (her usual mode of communication) about Delicious Orchards. There they were, E. and J. arguing about pies and breads in the kitchen, with me right in between and completely ignored.

And neither of them made a word of comment on what they both saw less than half an hour ago - me sweating out there on the grass digging up those buggers. Not "How was it?", "You must be tired." Not even one "Thank you".

That did it. I was furious and I CAN'T TAKE IT ANY MORE!

J. sensed my cold rage when I brushed her on my way out to Foodtown later that night - I must have looked like a raging bull on the warpath stomping down the aisles. Next evening, she put on her "pat the grumpy puppy" mode and tried to engage me in conversation. That only got me madder - "I ain't playing your game this time", I thought. I just ignored her as she got increasingly alarmed: "I just want to know are you mad at me - just say Yes or No." Uh huh, I ain't letting you off the hook this easy: "Look, I'm in a hurry. If you don't mind I'D RATHER NOT TALK ABOUT IT NOW!" She recoiled, whimpered out, and I stomped off to my networking meeting.

That was last night. I lay in bed sleepless, stewing in rage and channeling Michael Corleone - even though I wanted to be Vito: kind, fair, and magnanimous:

"I can't remember the last time that you invited me to your house for a cup of coffee, ... But now you come to me and you say - 'Don Corleone, give me justice.' But you don't ask with respect. You don't offer friendship. You don't even think to call me Godfather. ... Bonasera, Bonasera. What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully?"

Hell hath no fury like a (wo-)man scorned - I want to spew it all out, right in her face. I want to strike fear into her heart - I am tired of being Mr. Nice Guy and never getting credit for it ... but I have to think this through. There's E. and I don't want to lose her. Did she really withdraw from me because of J.? I wanted to talk things over with her and find out her feelings, before I make my moves on J.

Well, tonight I invited my network group home. J.'s in a huff because I didn't specifically tell her in advance, even though I already cleared with both of them on the general level. Even though I assured her, she asked E. again distrustfully, "Did Miles tell you that we are having the meeting here tonight?" - in my presence. And as my friends arrive, she barely greeted them, and quickly retreated to the backroom with E.

The wine started flowing, and the laughter and conversation roaring. Oh, we had a grand old time. And suddenly it struck me - ain't this Stanley Kowalski's poker night! Well, I sure didn't bargain for it, but for the first time I think I understood him - his violent outbursts that to him is only self-defense - to wily female manipulation.

2003-05-02T03:33:00.000-04:00

<geek-groupie>
Finally met some of the blog-gods in meatspace tonight - at the famous Katz's - after all these years (so forgive the embarrassing juvenile slobbering ....)

Spent some face-time with Doc Searl, on the pretext of translating his World of Ends. Not exactly the Walt Whitman that I was half-expecting, but very cordial. Exchanged handshakes and a smile with Halley - very pretty and charming and almost a twin to P. - hair, look, winks, lethal wit, professional ambition, taste in clothes (I can see them ordering out of the same catalog), and maybe even interior decor (quick - contemporary minimalist?). Got to hook them up!

Met kindly Britt, who expounded his project of codifying the grapevine method that we all use to find doctors and plumbers. Fascinating stuff - gotta read thru this later. And later he revealed that he'd spent time in Taichung as a Vietnam-War airforce pilot.

Also fascinating is the erudite Indian CIO of a large European investment bank, who's a book-lover, ex-journalist, and a champion of Open Source and the Mac. But he doesn't blog - position is too sensitive for that. Sanjay will kick himself for turning this down ...

There's Frank Patrick, a management consultant from Jersey, Steve Lewis, an ex-AT&Ter that went on to have an interesting globe-trotting life, and I've apparently shaken the hand of the Dan Gillmor without knowing it (but why would he show up on the East Coast? Not just for this shindig I don't think!). I was told a Movable Type honcho was also here promoting their latest venture.

In fact, the scent of business is thick in the air. From Doc himself to most everybody in the room are involved in the business end of IT in someway, either freelancing or as part of some small company. Promoting, selling, making contact. So the presence of a Wall Street CIO seemed to stir up some palpable excitement. Well, this kind of networking sure is OK by me!

By the way, if you want proof, I am somewhere in this stack of Polariods. Hint: It's obvious ;-)

(By the way, it's so exceedingly embarrassing to be asked by Halley about my blog and to have nothing to show - nothing like public humiliation to get you off your lazy ass ...)
</geek-groupie>

2003-04-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

And E. broke the news - she's moving out. I know it! She's been acting funny & distant for the last two weeks. She's a sweetheart and I love her still, but it's by now obvious that she's also very shrewd about protecting herself. Can't blame her though - life is not like the movies.

2003-04-16T22:37:00.000-04:00

Bustling job-hunt day: Went check out this local IT networking group at Red Bank library for the first time. Some good tips & lots of depressing stories of clueless recruiters and capricious companies. Then evening, uh, research for next week's Amazon interview - Sleepless in Seattle.

Oh well. There was maybe 10-minutes worth of Seattle scenery - the climatic third act was completely set in New York. It's as if the City of New York has optioned a 10-year contract on the endings of all Meg Ryan romantic comedies. And what is the message of Tom Hanks having to fly all the way out to New York to find love?

But what struck me was the scene of father and son sitting around the kitchen opening the stacks of fan mail from adoring females, tossing them overhead left and right. Was it me or does it look like the HR department these days? And Meg Ryan getting cold feet at the last minute before engagement - doesn't that sound like how so many job leads end up? Just when the last interview was done and you thought everything was swell, the line goes dead and you never hear from them again ...

(Seattle actually looks a lot like San Fran, in those few shots. Not bad.)

2003-03-17T03:26:00.000-05:00

... and let's not forget "Royale with Cheese" (Pulp Fiction)

2003-03-17T03:07:00.000-05:00

Freedom Fries: My Congresscritter threw an unbelievable straight ball, and the best shot I can find is this? What's happening to the Stand-up Nation?

Meanwhile, some Victory Gin to go with my Freedom Toast - I gotta go make some Open-Source Love to my Freedom Maid (wait, does that make her Scandinavian? Peaches either way... ;-) )

2003-02-25T01:28:00.000-05:00

Finally caught The Quiet American on matinee -- what a (quiet) riot! This is the film that all the newspapers and TVs should be talking about, if just to remind the Americans what happened when they last went off to a pre-emptive war. Missionary with Bombs - looks familiar?

Special Award for Ironic Casting: Brendan Fraser who played the American Pyle looks so like a Young Al Gore, it's eery to watch him tear off the nice-guy mask and spit out his "We'll destroy the village to save it" speech at the big confrontation scene with Michael Caine.

2003-02-20T22:37:00.000-05:00

"Still digging!"
Dave Winer's motto just became my nightmare the last two days - dug out the walkway, the sidewalk, and the entire driveway pretty much by myself (with some help from E.) Then capped off by driving over to P.'s house to help her dig out her deck. I am paralyzed.

2003-02-20T21:50:00.000-05:00

File this under Eery Parallels:

Infoworld: New day for Linux on the desktop

Substitute "Desktop Linux Summit" with "The United Nations", and "Lindows" "United States", and you are looking at the Politics section - or what should have been!

It is no accident that Open Source, via Linux, got rolling in Europe. It's squarely in the tradition of European progressive social movements - none of the crass American social Darwinism! How ironic that the only successful new world movement coming out of Europe in the last 30 years were started by a bunch of young geeks, while its ruling old futs keep playing the same fuddy-duddy bureaucratic power games and making themselves more and more irrelevent everyday.

Bush and Co. are assholes, but Europe has a lot of its own housecleaning to do before it can take them on. And it is new grass-root movements like Open Source that's showing the way.

2003-02-13T02:51:00.000-05:00

Salon.com and Washington Times on the escalating trans-Atlantic alley brawl:
Fascinating to watch history being made in real-time, and more fascinating to see these formerly cordial heads of states dispense with their diplomatic bowties and silk gloves, and go bare-knuckles on each other. When was the last time an American cabinet secretary acted so brusquely towards the European allies?

Put in context with the recent trajectory of EU development, it makes a lot more sense. As EU grows and integrates, it inevitably aspires for the traditional political weights of past nation-states. The right-wing takeover of US just served as a rude awakening to the Europeans that they can no longer take America's benevolent protection for granted - thus the recent initiatives to put together EU's own military force. In the long run, this can only be a blessing in disguise - only by waking up from the infantilizing torpor of the past 50 years and starting to take care of itself again, will Europe be the master of its own destiny.

Problem is, all the ruckus stirred up not only the European will but a lot of its old skeletons too - like all the traditional distrust and rivalry between the various neighbors - Britain to the Continent, Spain to France, Eastern Europe to Germany and Russia, etc. The Bush gang picked up on them quickly and exploited them ruthlessly - first getting Tony Blair to be Bush's bulldog, then Rumsfeld's calculated "old Europe" comment (itself activating the dormant thread Bush laid down earlier, in praising Eastern Europe for its "special appreciation of freedom, having lived thru dictatorship" (paraphrase)), followed suspiciously quickly by the "European 8"'s open letter of support in WSJ (since when was it deputized spokesman of foreign governments?)

Rummy is using some real fightin' words here - by exposing the old wound between Eastern Europe and France-Germany, he is quite consciously trying to sabotage the European integration project. Something that qualifies for an Act of War.

Of course, like most such things, it is only a Remake of A Chinese Classic - in this case the great Machiavellian Mano-a-mano between the two greatest political consultants of the Warring States era, 475-221 B.C. Su Qin and Zhang Yi, students of the same teacher that turned competitors, masterminding for opposing bosses. The latter in service of the powerful and ambitious Qin, the former trying to whip together the six other states into an alliance of mutual defense - against Qin.

Zhang Yi won. He torpedoed the alliance by exploiting their rifts and convincing key members that it's safer to be the Big Bully's friend than its enemy. Qin gobbled them up one by one and became the first Chinese empire.

Sounds familiar?

2003-02-05T23:48:00.000-05:00

Internet Explorer ruined my day.

To be exact - Internet Explorer 5.50 for Windows. I had just taken a design overhaul of Eva's site after a rather shame-faced re-read of Robin William's design bible:

"Don't center. Centering is the mark of the amateur." (paraphrase)

OK. So instead of centering my navigation bar, I will line the links up to the left, to the strong visual spine made by the background's zigzag teeth pattern. A little table magic to keep the text clear of the jaw line and still leave enough space to fit the widest link. So I thought. But to my horror, IE has decided to nudge my text an extra quarter-inch to the left - breaking my "Art in the Community" link in two.

A little sleuthing revealed that it's IE's customary freebie body margin (Mozilla does not have it). No problem. I've seen this just a few days before. Should be easy to turn it off, right?

First the old IE-proprietary attributes: <body leftmargin=0 rightmargin=0>. Mac IE relented, but not its Windows sibling. Then let's try the standard CSS recipe: body { margin: 0; padding: 0; } -- still no dice. The gap between the frame border and my DIV-wrapped nav bar just sits there, mocking me.

What the $#!@&?? This is what every Google result prescribes, and none of them had mentioned such an anomaly. In desperation I started random-hacking mode, and discovered even more wierdness:
* Adding

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

actually made the nav bar left-aligned (WinIE only).
* Adding align="right" to table tag inside <DIV align="right"> actually made the whole block inline - the next <DIV> link block rose up and overlapped right on top of the modified one (on all platforms - another undocumented CSS "feature"?)

I gave up and settled for a little less left margin and the <body> attributes. At least the inconsistency is not glaring. But for this geek, the glamour of web design just took another big scraping ...

2003-02-01T13:22:00.000-05:00

A big, fat Happy Chinese New Year to whoever is reading out there!!

(Drop me a note, if you will ...)

2003-01-30T20:13:00.000-05:00

My encounters with DHTML seem fated to be dark and stormy - just ended a 3-day hacker's hell that started with a little innocuous DHTML exercise from Laura Lemay's HTML book. The example constructs a cute little menu bar (a la MacOS) - click it and a drop-down menu appears, just like a real OS - but all done via CSS and Javascript.

Well, the example uses a button image. I didn't have one, so decided to construct one using <table> and link. Of course that didn't work - so then starts my wild goose chase thru the books and the internet.

Guess what - I couldn't have picked a worse example - CSS positioning is among the most difficult and implementation-dependent areas of DHTML. I managed to find some decent coordinate-calculating code on WebReference.com, but it still took hours of head-banging long into the night, to get it to work somewhat consistently from both IE and Mozilla on Mac (surprisingly, Windows didn't turn out to be an issue, and Netscape 4.7 was flat-out DOA).

(DHTML Geek Quiz: What is clientTop property and how does it act differently across platforms?)

Now I'm done (the coordinate-reader is still not 100% correct - but I give up), but it has taken a lot out of me. With the lonely LinuxWorld trip, the freezing cold, cabin fever, the oppresive war cloud, frustrating job search, and not the least - E.'s desertion, I am physically, emotionally and spiritually drained. Is this the bottom, O god, or are you gonna try to squeeze me out of my last penny as well?

2003-01-27T12:28:00.000-05:00

Blogdex showed no-one blogging Linuxworld. What the hell? Is the blogging community that disconnected from the Open-Source one? Is that why Dave Winer won't offer his software on Linux?

And I thought the two were a match made in Heaven ...

2003-01-27T04:20:00.000-05:00

Back from the New York LinuxWorld 2003 on Thursday and Friday - tired and rather depressed (in truth, more due to fatigue at the fruitlessness and humiliation of the job search):

* This year is smaller and even more corporate - but without the excitement generated by HP's Hillary-in-Chief Carly Fiorina and IBM finding a new religion in Linux-on-Mainframe. In contrast, this year is more about putting shoulder to the wheel, the plodding working-out of the grand plans of the past. Of consolidating Linux in the corporate corridor. Perhaps it's a satisfying show for an IT manager, but not for me.

* Coincidentally, I noticed a marked abundance of Beautiful (Business) People there: elegant cuts and bold colors on what appeared to be confident, savvy senior IT deal-makers - much beyond the normal businesswear, even in New York. Is Milan invading Penguin-land (by way of Wall Street)?

* Incredibly, Microsoft made its first, low-key entrance on the scene (first for me at least). In a modest 15x15 booth (same size as RealNetwork) it hawked its ASP.Net dev technology and its Shared Source program. And no-one picketed.

* But what shocked me most was the result of my very un-scientific survey: after hearing some good ol' time preaching from grizzled old-timer Jon "Maddog" Hall (Linux International), I cornered him to inquire about the state of weblogging on Linux. To my shock, although he admitted to knowing Doc Searl, he seemed totally confused about my question. "Weblog? Are you looking for tools to analyze web server logs?" (paraphrase) He led me to the waiting arms of the Enterprise Solutions Center staff and quickly disappeared.

Well, not much more luck either. Their Web guru, a clean-cut and friendly Russian dude, never heard of the term either. Undaunted, I showed him Scripting News, but he doesn't seem terribly interested. He also had no advice for me on web design tools (text editor just isn't made for doing page layouts ...)

* No luck job-networking either. The career gurus made it sound easy, but it is not. Noisy floor, transient crowd, distracted marketing guys - not a helpful environment for an INFP like me. I got disoriented quickly and became a blabbering idiot:

Q: "Uh ... are you guys hiring at all these days?"
A: "I don't know. Did you check our website?"
Q: "Yeah, but I want to find out in person ..."
A: "Well I wouldn't know ... maybe you should ask that guy over there?"

Well, it's funny in retrospect. But while you are trudging down the show floor alone, not knowing anyone - it's soul-crushing. Believe it or not, only the free RealNetwork server CD (and the latest from Sun and IBM) made it worthwhile ...

* Lots of PowerBooks and iBooks around - at O'Reilly, Sun, the Orgs, etc.

2003-01-19T00:55:00.000-05:00

The Duende Hunter
Being Carlos Saura's attempt to adapt Dorien Ross' book "Returning to A" to film

"I want to know what it feels like to care about something so passionately."

The advantage of a passion for flamenco is: It's a lot more accessible than a passion for flowers. (Even though flamenco, despite popular stereotype, is in reality not about (melo)drama but simply compás - the sheer musicality. The passion is physical - yes - but not carnal. All the polka-dot trappings, the sound and the fury, are photogenic alright - but at their serene heart it is not. Ergo, the only authentic narrative is that of the outsider digging, conning, and stumbling her way in.)

2003-01-06T17:18:00.000-05:00

Michael Ventura manages to avoid commenting on Almodovar yet again - I never really noticed this before. But how can he not? Almodovar's labyrinth of desire is right up Ventura's neighborhood. What is he trying to avoid?

2002-12-23T01:56:00.000-05:00

C. and husband took me out to see Almodóvar's new work Talk to Her - for the second time this weekend.

Not that it's such a great work. It is nowhere near the peak scaled by his last All About My Mother - and not just because it's about men ;-) In fact, it makes an interesting comparison with his last male-centered work, Live Flesh, which with it brackets the peak that was All About My Mother. Talk to Her has many dazzling pieces that Live Flesh does not have - mostly Caetano Veloso's heavenly song, but also Rosario Flores - her impossibly, cruelly chiseled Spanish face. But for all its lack of glamor Live Flesh has the singleminded coherence of a speeding torpedo - a melodrama by a master returning to his roots. Talk to Her is something else - tentative, open-ended, explorational. It seems that for once Almodóvar was not sure what exactly he wanted to say with this story - he has the plot figured out but that wasn't enough. The men were weak and confused - and unlike most Almodóvar heroines they never achieved wisdom nor redemption at the end. Benigno died like he had lived - a pitiable stunted pervert. And Marco was simply an enigma - his ultrafine sensibility doesn't seem to ever translate into true passion - mandatory for an "Almodóvar character". The exact nature of his relationship with Lydia was vague. It didn't take long before he abandoned the comatose Lydia to go over to hang out with Benigno, even sneaking amorous peeks at Alicia - a capital offense in Almodóvar's world. His steadfast loyalty to Benigno at the end was equally mysterious - what exactly did this hunk see in him (latent homosexuality?)

But the biggest source of confusion is the emotional heart of this movie - Lydia. The most "Almodovarian" character of all, here she's pushed into the background, even while providing the glamor and tragedy for the whole movie. In her I see Almodóvar's struggle to get out of his routine - he wants to do something new yet he can't live without his strong women. The result is a no-win situation - the character still steals the movie, without ever receiving corresponding buildup. The emotional climax and pivot of the whole film - Lydia's suicidal confrontation in the bullring - was never explained satisfactorily. Was this the ultimate guilt trip for her old lover? (the time was long past and anyway he wasn't even there) Was she despairing of going thru with the breakup with Marco? (if she's that weak, she would've died in the first fight that Marco saw) The off-screen final dispatching of her again smelled ham-fisted. It is Lydia that we care about, not the placid, girlish Alicia (except maybe in America).

(At this point I suddenly remembered the second season finale of Sex and the City, where Mr. Big abandons Carrie to marry the much younger and virginal model Natasha. Was there a parallel? I mean, besides the wild women with chiseled forehead and unruly curls, wild animals, and flamenco guitar? Come to think of it - isn't Rosario Flores a Spanish version of Sarah Jessica Parker, with gravitas? I know Almodóvar doesn't want to repeat himself, but wouldn't it be a more enjoyable film if he had kept Rosario and just remade that episode instead? Caaan it be - all so simple thennn...?)

2002-12-19T02:22:00.000-05:00

American Taliban: love the touch of black humor - the Saudi turned out to be the liberal compared to the American. Charlotte Beers should work that into her spiel on how much closer USA is to her Arab friends.

Yeah, with this president in the house, it's getting closer everyday ...

2002-12-15T01:54:00.000-05:00

Joan Walsh said it much better.

2002-12-15T01:42:00.000-05:00

Yahoo! News - Kissinger Resigns 9-11 Commission: an encouraging sign of right-wing retreat. Along with the Trent Lott debacle it shows that rightwingers can be fought, even in their hour of triumph.

(To be fair, I should note that the battle call in this case was sounded by conservative pundits. A nice surprise to see that they have principles. Hopefully we'll see some of them translated into policy - or will we? Well, that won't happen until Republicans get out of their self-denial - as long as Nixon's Southern Strategy continues to guide their party, they will be in the service of racism no matter what they say (and the hatefulness of Talk Radio as well as the persistent incidents of sabotage to black voter turnout prove this). For conservatives to feign shock and horror to Lott is rather disingenious, if not hypocritical (remember Willie Horton?))

The Reuters report mentioned the film "The Trials of Henry Kissinger" and the accusation of him as a war criminal - something I didn't expect from a wired news report. Perhaps a sign of breakthrough that will see him actually brought to justice. My toast to that!

2002-12-13T01:18:00.000-05:00

Finally, a warm and sunny day after all the snow, gale, and freezing rain -- and I was washed out from Shrubloging two nights straight. Politics really is hazardous to your health!

Thankfully, it turned out to be a very productive day. I started on the bestselling career guide Do What You Are in late morning and by lunch time had my personality type figured out - it's INFP.

Normally this sort of reductionist typecasting of people turns me off (that's the P talking?), but in this case their analysis is spot-on (being in the classic bleeding-heart-liberal box made it easy :-)) And the more they went on fleshing out the relationships between the four personality quardrants, the more impressed I got. They very accurately described my thought processes and relationship patterns. And they don't forget to leave a roadmap for growth.

This feels like real psychology, not the pop Mars-Venus stuff. Why aren't more people talking about this? (Being smart businesspeople, the authors already have the books ready for them when they do.)

Meanwhile, I managed to get out for a walk with E. (she's an INFJ - no wonder we fell in right away ;-)). Discovered what seems to be the cleverly disguised Red Bank water tower on Tower Hill where, unfortunately, we discovered that one of the old houses by Prospect St. has been razed.

Almost finished the book by dinner time - I am leaving the meat - the personalized advice section - till tomorrow. Felt so good that I put on Sevillanas and danced right in the kitchen! Now I can't let it go without a little solo juerga can I? So the curtain only came down after I had my fill aping Antonio Gades on TV.

The fun is only beginning! Now there are all the family, friends, and past roommates to type, relationship histories to rewrite, etc. Not mentioning a new neo-70s pickup line!

2002-12-11T02:20:00.000-05:00

DeLong: "Today we know that it never crosses the minds of the powers-that-be in the Bush White House that good economic policies might be worth pursuing because good economic policies lead to a stronger economy. To the powers-that-be in the Bush White House, economic policies are way to reward favored groups of constituents. And their effect on the economy? They don't need to think about no stinking effect of policy on the economy."

And Bush's appointment of yet another overpaid Old Economy fat-cat to the Treasury just proved it.

It is more and more breathtaking everyday to see how this Administration manages to bulldoze the public interest with almost open contempt, and still nary a peep. Previous Administrations, no matter how corrupt, at least made some serious attempts to serve the People. This is the first one in which cynicism runs at 100%.

2002-12-11T01:13:00.000-05:00

Finally watched Traffic - a much-needed release after all the Dubya antics of late (Junior is moving on to bigger things - not satisfied with just a few oil cronies, he's invited back Darth Vader and is now apparently hosting a full Iran-Contra Class Reunion).

The parallel of the two wars is obvious - a dramatic threat to America turned into an ideal political cover for a sitting President Bush to expand his power, while inveighing moral outrage. Only so far, Osama Bin Laden has proved a much better payoff for Bush Junior than Manuel Noriega has done for his dad: more than just a quick high in the polls, he apparently gave George W. religion.

At what point did Bush & the Gang hit the Joan of Arc moment? When did they decide to sell their souls to this unprecedently, terrifyingly single-minded crusade to dismantle the American Republic that even Nixon didn't dreamed of attempting? Was it during the 12 hours post-attack that he went AWOL? Or was the seed there all along (pace Kyoto)?

A job for future historians (and present journalists!) Meanwhile, I want to know - is Steve Soderbergh or someone else gonna be around five years down the road to make a movie about the "War on Terror" like he did here for the "War on Drugs"?

Because, so far, it sure look like no-one is clean.

(In particular, this bit from the Life Imitates Bad Sequel department - politicians only seem to grow backbones in movies.)

And by the way, are all the gutsy liberals now hiding in Hollywood?

2002-12-05T19:23:00.000-05:00

First snowstorm this winter - put myself out shovelling the driveway (twice), then out running errands. What a day. Haven't snowed so hard in a long time.

(Having E. here reminded me of that winter long ago up in Matawan with T. and N. A white winter but, in retrospect, idyllic.

2002-11-26T23:58:00.000-05:00

Finally read the Cluetrain.

Way too verbose and repetitive (for the benefit of clueless CxOs?) Should have included John Perry Barlow's visionary Death from Above (and, while we're at it, a ref to The Cathedral and the Bazaar and Ted Nelson, hey?) instead.

Why'd they leave out weblog? (In particular, where is blog as real-time commentary?)

What they say about corporations and marketing apply about as well to politics, with a minimal replacement of terms. (What then becomes the implication for the democratic system?)

Come to think of it, the implication for the business world itself is huge. The militaristic, hierarchical structure of the Corporation has been challenged many times - never truly successfully. ("Why can we run a great nation with democracy and not a business?") Can the web finally make a difference where all others have failed? What would "Business 2.0" look like then? Can a corporation be run as an open-source project?

Small observation: it's a bit funny for them to harp on "voices" and "conversation", when both the webpage and email are one-way asynchronous pieces of (mostly) text. :-)
So when can we get rid of the resume? (whatever replaces it, I want it. Resume-speak is almost as uptight & goofy a straightjacket as PR-speak.) Where do I catch the train?

Still, when it comes to the end, this is one of those "gut feeling" books. Yep, this is what's been bugging me about business and the internet all this time. This was why I dived into the Usenet instead of being a good CS freshman and code - to talk.

How obvious!

2002-11-24T00:03:00.000-05:00

Eating A Woman Sconed tea cake for breakfast - something totally out of an Almodóvar film (thanks E. :-))

2002-11-22T23:31:00.000-05:00

The Spanish heretic executed by the Swiss Protestant - or: The Unitarian roasted by the Presbyterian

So, chalk up one more for Geneva - I never knew Protestants were also into auto-da-fes (wasn't Salem supposed to be an aberration?) Out goes another sacred cow.

Interesting that Michael Servetus was ahead of his time. That his rejection of the Original Sin (I think) and his belief in "divinity in everyone" came down, thru Unitarianism to today's matter-of-fact New Age "I-am-spiritual-not-religious"-ness.

Well, as far as I know, Buddhism is still the only major religion that never started wars or inquisitions. Prove me wrong! :-)

2002-11-17T02:09:00.000-05:00

Ok, a few tidbits about the actual Swiss trip:

* Funny enough, my most vivid experience from this whole trip was at the end - sitting down to dinner at the Manora Restaurant in Locarno after arriving from Luzern. It's just a 3-hour train trip, but it feels like crossing a major border - south of the Alps the Italian Ticino does not look or feel like Switzerland anymore. And, standing in front of the colorful offerings of what is really an upscale cafeteria, I was choked with emotion - I have never been so happy to see olives again. I wanted to hug the amused young Italian cook behind the counter - "Thank God for the Italians! Thank God I am back in civilization." I wanted, like Henry Miller, to drop to my knees then and there and offer up my thanks to the Heavens.

My family can testify how ecstatically I scarfed down that steaming bowl of pasta a la scelta that night. The most thankful meal in my life, that.

* Touring the north shore of Lac Leman in the first, sunny week and thinking what a beautiful place it will be to live. I had not found a rival for Bay Area until now - world-class Geneva and colorful Lausanne, with the exquisite wine villages of Laveaux strewn along the shore. The Alps in the backdrop and French in the air - what more can one ask for?

Except for the small signs of shabbiness I noticed on the first day in Lausanne and since: clothes in regular stores everywhere that look like leftover inventory from the 70s, flimsy luggage for firesale on the sidewalks, the average streetwear that pales by even our suburban standards, lack of gourmet items in supermarkets that American shoppers now take for granted. Materially, even most Swiss do not seem as well-off as Americans.

* The Jungfrau is so breathtaking that I am tempted for the first time to take up skiing, just so to get a better look of the region.

* Luzern: a more compact and much more interesting version of Geneva, with a more dramatic lake and landscape as well. This is a surprise. A return trip to this region is definitely in order.

* Bern: the most compact and charming capital indeed - but what's the matter with all this graffiti? All over the city are the immaculately kept-up buildings with their vibrant geraniums, and at street level - graffiti sprouting like dandelions over their arcades. Other than that, it feels intensely like a East European city (down to the nostalgia-inspiring streetcars)

* Switzerland is total Mac country - I ran into them almost at every stop, while PCs were nowhere to be seen. I saw Mac shops but not general-purpose computer shops. And watching the Matrix Reloaded trailer on the new 17-in iMac in a Bern store window is immensely satisfying.

* Asian tourists (mostly Korean it seems) everywhere except Ticino. Wonder why?

2002-11-09T03:20:00.000-05:00

Trying to answer my own question, I walked over downtown to see Bowling for Columbine.

Wow.

Didn't know Canadians have so many guns. And they don't lock their doors? That's wild. Thanks Michael Moore for letting us know where utopia is. Too bad it's so cold - would've been lovely to move up to Quebec & marry a French-Canadian babe (sexy and nice - best of both worlds :-)) Why can't Mexico be like that?

But where I am is not too bad, either. Sitting here in Red Bank, New Jersey, it's easy to forget that we are in modern America. A friendly pedestrian downtown that's not completely gone corporate. A nice and active (if rather domesticated) music and art scene. Lots of New Age types. A Latino community on the rise. A local Democratic government that actually seems to work. And - to top it off - our own art cinema right in downtown (where Columbine is played) that has stayed alternative the whole ten year I've been around, through three different owners no less. How many American small towns can say that? (in Jersey, maybe Montclair)

(A good and simple yardstick for small-town hipness, by the way)

And it isn't just Red Bank. I've been wanting to get away for years, but funny enough - the more I travel, the more I realize reluctantly that Jersey tiene su propio sabor - it really is a lot more than the motley bag of ragged burbs and smoke-belching industrial slums of my first impression. Unlike most other states, its charms are demure - like so many of its little scenic towns tucked away among the busy highways. Jerseyans may have attitude and accent to match, but at least in my corner they turn out to be diverse, well-read, and considerate. Their politics is sensible (pro-choice, pro-gun-control); no fanatics from either side have managed to make a stir (Frank Lautenberg is one of the few successes Dems could claim at Senate this year. And the one Republican governor it did elect was the very likeable moderate Christine Whitman - the way the Bush gang shelved her was a shame).

One could point to New Jersey as the state where diversity works -- so well and with so little fuss that no one ever noticed. Hey, Jersey may be home to a lot of killers (the 9-11 bombers, Beltway Sniper's car dealer, not mentioning the Mob). But they love the place so much that they always do their killings elsewhere :-)

Having been suburban probably the longest gives Jersey time to develop some character. That and ring-side seat to the War of Independence. Driving around North Carolina last year, I was surprised (and a little chagrined) to catch myself missing Jersey. And Red Bank has better food than most of Switzerland (ha!) What a shame the single scene here is so dead - no women here my type. Would be a nice place to return to raise family. Some day.

2002-11-08T03:00:00.000-05:00

What bugs me most about American conservatives today is not any particular issue; it is their fundamental nihilism and bad faith - what Mark Pilgrim referred to eloquently as Logical Rudeness: they have no love for either Truth or their fellow men - the only thing that matters is Power. This has been demonstrated over and over at every level of public discourse, from Fox News to Safire to White House mocking the patriotism of Senate Democrats. Liberals are not wrong - they are evil vermins.

It is hard to remain objective and open-minded, republican virtues you'd like to think you represent, when you are dealing with such people. I am willing to consider the moral problems of abortion. I am even willing to try see things from NRA's point of view. But what do you do if your opponent refuses to ever extend you the same curtesy?

As game theory will tell you, there can be no civil discourse (hence democracy) with such a player in it - no stability can resume until after it devours everyone and starves to death.

The national mood being what it is, how can progressives respond besides (A) wait for it to self-destruct, and (B) descend to the same level?

Outside America, this may actually be just the right thing - a rude awakening. The world can no longer rely on the US for parenting; it's now every man for himself. Either grow up and learn to defend yourself or prepare to be beaten into submission by the old man. Time to move out of Daddy's house!

2002-11-08T01:37:00.000-05:00

Democrats have only themselves to blame
So, a month and half later, everybody suddenly comes around to Ventura and I. "The Democratic Party offered nothing and got nothing" etc. Too late - there was the Reichstag fire and now the brownshirts have taken over.

Well, so much for liberal howling. I just hope AA is right - to start on the path to recovery you must hit bottom first. We will find out in the coming days. Gephardt quitting is a good first step - although someone ought to tell him, nicely, that he should just retire, period. He is an anachronism now, a parliamentarian holdover from the idyllic 80's when the Congress was still a gentlemen's club. What leadership can he offer in our age of bare-knuckle politics?

What I still can't understand is this: why do the mostly nice and respectable Americans persist in choosing the most venomous, vituperative politicians to represent them? The same way that the shuttle driver of my auto shop, a quiet and polite young man, listened impassively to the radio shock jocks screaming "nuke-the-Arabs" last winter? The same way that the peace-loving, family-value folks stubbornly refuse to even reflect on the morality of gun ownership on the face of all the mass shootings, Columbine or Beltway Sniper, no matter how horrific?

Is Ventura correct, that politics has devolved into a ritual for the mass to purge its rage of individual powerlessness, and that the Republicans are just better at channeling it?

Is it post-9/11 fear and loathing, that Americans are in no mood yet for generosity? Then when would that moment ever come? Would it take another My Lai? Another Watergate?

The sound you heard on Tuesday night was the shout of relief from the American people as they lend a collective shove to their Republic rolling downhill. Finally they can be released from their unbearable burden of Liberty.

Fasten your seatbelts - it's gonna be a long, bumpy night.

2002-10-18T19:58:00.000-04:00

Well, back already. No travel-blogging this time, unsurprisingly.
More on the actual vacation later. But there's one question I've been having since I started doing pre-trip research on Switzerland. And the more I see the country, the bigger it gets:

"Just what does this land say to them?"

I mean the Swiss people, of course. A people that live intimately with such breathtakingly dramatic landscape (not just the mountains, but the ubiquitous enchanting lakes and lush meadows - nature in its male and female paragons) everyday, as well as smack in the middle of 2000 years of European civilization has to be blessed by gods for great things -- if not worldly empire then surely empire of the mind and spirit. Sitting at the foot of Jungfrau and the crossroad of all Europe, no race can ask for more inspiration.

So what did they get out of this inheritance? Not much after all, it seems. A couple of individual Great Men: Jean-Jacque Rousseau and Carl Jung head the list, then Jean Piaget, Alberto Giacometti and Paul Klee. Of movements, Switzerland can claim credit in the Reformation (Geneva under Calvin was apparently Vatican to the Protestant revolution), the birth of modern psychology (Jung's Zurich to Freud's Vienna), and Dadaism (Zurich again) - only the first of which actually engaged general Swiss society.

Then the stuff that everyone knows: Swiss chocolate, Swiss banks and Swiss engineering (of which the rail system is the most impressive - Jungfraubahnen alone will put the rest of the world to shame).

(Note that my criteria here are not simply citizenship or that great work was done on Swiss soil, but the much more relevent question - did he grow up in Switzerland? After all, Switzerland has given shelter to a lot of famous transients - Wagner, Lenin, Joyce, Einstein, Hermann Hesse, Chaplin, and now Jean-Luc Godard. But that doesn't give it credit for Nibelungenlied, Ulysses, or the Special Theory of Relativity -- does it?)

All these came later. What I was thinking, standing there in the Lauterbrunnen valley, was this: where the hell are the symphonies, the operas, the poetry (lyrical pastoral or epic), cante jondo, the paintings and the photography? In all the expressive and emotive arts the Swiss has come up blank - no Beethoven, Goethe, Lord Byron, Manolo Caracol, Bierstadt, or Ansel Adams. Not even half-way interesting folk music - when illiterate little Appalachian gave us bluegrass. What is wrong with these people? After all, culture is really nothing more than a conversation between man and his environment, and the Swiss gets to converse with giants. Isolation is no excuse either: just among themselves they have the three top European languages - that's plenty of stimulus. It is as if all this monumental nature and social diversity have overwhelmed these people, instead of elevating them. That realizing they have no worthy response to offer, the Swiss gave up and just lowered their eyes to concentrate on their plough - and later, their ledger and drafting table.

It's tempting parlor game to imagine what the French, the German, the Italian (hell, the Spanish and the Chinese as well :-)) will do in their place. And there is even partial data for that -- that is my next logical question:

What does this land say to the visitors?

A good question. The Alps being one of the very first hotspots for international tourism and international sanatoria, there's plenty of exposure to the Western upper class. I am no art historian, but it's pretty obvious that Exhibit A should go to the most high profile - and the most ironic - example: Byron's The Prisoner of Chillon. Ironic, that it takes an Englishman coming 300 years later to immortalize a Swiss national hero. This fact alone tells you a lot about the Swiss and their relation to the rest of Europe.

Then there's Wagner. Much of his monumental Ring of Nibelung was written on the shore of Lake Lucerne. I don't understand classical music, but having seen Lake Lucerne I understood - with its curling tendrils carving out tentalizing turns and pathways, surrounded by rolling hills and mountains and, above it all, the Alps' white mirage pasted to the distant horizon. This is mythical land. And in Wagner's Valhalla it finally found a worthy human response.

(To Art's loss, Switzerland seems to remain neglected by China's muses, who have left fond traces in Italy and England. What a spectacular fusion that could have be -- China, whose people are almost genetically imprinted to seek comfort and wisdom in their land! Where no mountain and no lake escaped the loving gaze of 2000 years of poets and painters! How the Alps would appear in those Chinese landscape paintings, which can make mountains come alive in minimalist perfection.)

2002-09-28T05:47:00.000-04:00

Blogging from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport!

It's 11:37am local time. Just off a flight from Newark and on my way to family reunion and vacation in Switzerland.

Beautiful airport - smart and friendly design with plastic and steel hides the fact that it's a large airport. The ceiling is of regular height, imparting a sense of normalcy. But the large windows and light colors let in plenty of air and light. Plenty of stores - this is one of those "new" mall-airports. "Funky" furnitures. An "IKEA Airport" par excellence -- and really much better than it sounds!

(Especially after downing a very inexpensive lunch of salmon sandwich and Heineken at the elegant bar :-))

2002-09-24T03:31:00.000-04:00

Salon.com: Our man Gore to the rescue - Hallelujah!

The born-again supermensch may just be what we - and the Dems - need to turn back the tide of the Republican jackboots: one fearless man that dares to speak the truth.

Does the rest of the party have the guts to follow his lead? If not, they can forget about November - or their future.

This is the Al Gore that we needed in 2000 but did not get. Now, with hindsight I can see how completely wrong Ralph Nader was. When push comes to shove, as 9-11 undoubtably was, a Democratic presidency would've been a totally different response.

A cynic would say that the best course is to do nothing. Do nothing - let the Bush boys dig their own graves (as they are now doing in full steam). Their hubris will drag this country into a disaster so great that Vietnam will pale in comparison, that it will ensure that the US will never attempt such military adventurism ever again.

But how many innocent lives, here and abroad, are we prepared to let them take with them?

P.S. Just saw his speech on CSPAN (tip from Salon board) . He's still no MLK - that awkward schoolteacherishness has got to go. Also dropped the momentum in many places. However, his passionate defense of nation-building in particular has to be a home-run (impressive array of history from WW1 to post-Soviet Afghanistan), and well-linked to his concern of post-war Iraq becoming another terrorist breeding ground -- a new and important angle. His pointed disavowal of the International Criminal Court, however, disappoints me.

2002-09-23T15:04:00.000-04:00

The WW1 parallel grows more chilling. RatcliffeBlog: "(The Bush Doctrine) is very much like the intransigent German policy of confrontation that followed the dismissal of Bismarck in 1890 and led intractably to World War I. ... World War I began because of a terrorist act"

Right on. Bush and his chicken hawks are playing right into the hands of Uncle Osama. Once US troops are on the ground, the Middle East powderkeg becomes much more volatile than it has been already, and the slightest provocation can set off a regional war or a wave of radical Islamic revolutions. The hothead in charge of Israel this time is already restless.

There's also a distinct Machiavellian possibility that the other countries, threatened by US unilateralism but unable to mount a frontal opposition, are playing along now just to set up the Administration - but will bail out at a critical juncture once US is enmeshed.

This is the kind of debate that we should be having, but are not.

2002-09-23T14:11:00.000-04:00

Randolph Bourne's 1917 essay War Is the Health of the State (thanks Michael Ventura, who distilled and deepened his pioneering thoughts with our all-too-familiar knowledge of the horrors since then.)

Randolph Bourne:

"One keeps healthy in wartime not by a series of religious and political consolations that something good is coming out of it all, but by a vigorous assertion of values in which war has no part."

Michael Ventura:

"The motives of getting experience, gaining understanding, and bearing witness, like the motives of freeing Kuwait and crushing the tyrant and just incidentally controlling the oil--are in the end excuses for succumbing to the magnetism of war. Any so-called reason to play one's part in war invites possession--a kind of demonic possession, possession by the war energy. It works this way: the war finds some personal emptiness in you (inexperience, ambition, illusion) and rushes in to fill it. Suddenly you are not yourself. You are yourself plus the war. ... You are living in its name and by its energy. So when it's over, when it leaves, you are drained and diminished.

"... It's a feeling not confined to people who participate directly in a war, or people who are "for" a war. Many who are "against" a war can also be possessed by the war energy. It can be very exciting, having a war to protest. Your small personal life takes on cosmic historical significance. It feels like you're gaining stature, but actually you're at risk of losing your identity. ... War is dangerous to everyone, on all sides of the issues. Being against a war doesn't insulate you from its demonic properties.

"... Take good care. ... Don't let this war speak through your mouth." (Possessed by War)

2002-09-22T02:56:00.000-04:00

Received a petition of Not In Our Name from C. It's the second one in a month. I know she thinks a lot about these political issues. Still, the fact that it surprised me to receive them shows up my own buried condescension and lack of trust in others. Gotta keep working on it.

Signed and passed it on, with my own lame two-line pseudo-manifesto tacked on. It's really not the quality of the idea that matters, but the way it is expressed. And that's why, unfortunately, this campaign will not make a bit of a difference - the same old Left personalities and the same old slogans that sound more like whines. People have learned to tune them out.

Such is the depth of the failure since the last Gulf War that, faced with a far cheesier remake a decade later, the Democratic Party that sold out its integrity and the American Left that ran out of its vision have even less resistance to offer. "Not In Our Name" is not a movement - it's not even a good slogan. It is the petulant whine of a child that knows he's going to lose.

Michael Ventura, again, has this to say:

"[W]hat unifies a movement? After we go home from the demonstration, are we still a movement? Only if we're grounded in a shared vision. "Give Peace a Chance" is not a vision, it's a sentiment. Having a vision means we have some fundamental idea of how we want the world to be. In the pro-choice movement, the freedom of women to control their own bodies is a concrete step toward a very different world; that's a vision. But end the war and what? Go back to where we were a month ago? Six months ago? That's only a protest, not a movement. There's a difference. Protest will mean very little if the war proceeds successfully; a movement articulates something for the future, and that is always important.

"We could take our cues from Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the people at Tian An Men Square and in Eastern Europe. ... They assumed individual conscience, but appealed beyond it to the most common causes in their respective peoples, causes that could be felt collectively and positively. Which is to say historically. They could make people feel not that they were resisting somebody else's history but that they, themselves, were history.

"With Gandhi, King, Tian An Men and Eastern Europe, the core of the argument was a non-violent critique of their entire society. They saw the power of the state as resting purely on its capacity for violence, and they opposed that power bravely with a non-violent vision of an entirely different kind of state. They presented this vision not by shaming society but by demonstrating something better. That's what a "demonstration" means--it's certainly what it meant to Martin Luther King. You are there to demonstrate your belief, to show how it works. So King's and Gandhi's civil disobediences weren't hectic or frenzied or showoffish; they presented the world they wanted, they were dignified, courageous, peaceful. They articulated a great collective dream. When you see film of their actions, you know what they stand for by the way they behave.

"King, Gandhi and the Eastern Europeans achieved structural change. The behavior of the white American left has not. That speaks for itself.

"A war that's being won is impossible to stop. A victorious government with 80-percent approval doesn't care about your protest. But the country (which is different from the government) can be made to care about your demonstration. It's not enough to express our individualities. It's certainly not enough to accuse America of being rotten--not if we expect to change it. You must ask the questions that King and Gandhi asked: What kind of a world do you want for everybody? And how can that world be demonstrated?" (Demonstrate It)

(In short, "Throw a better party, and they will come." Now Abbie Hoffman did understand that - except that his idea of a good party didn't seem to have the squares in mind :-))

This from re-reading his Letters at 3 A.M.: Reports on Endarkenment. His section on the (first) Gulf War hasn't aged at all.

Consider this selection, a capsule from his Road Trip through America:

""Where you from out in California?"

""L.A."

""L.A.?! That's where it's all happenin'."

"Is he putting me on? No. He's getting a kick out of meeting someone from L.A. The more you get out into America, the more you find it's a country where most people think it's "all happenin'" somewhere else. Sometimes I think this is the most dangerous feeling in America. To say it's all happening somewhere else is to say that nothing is happening where you are. You are not a citizen, you are barely even a resident. You are something by the side of the road. If a television crew comes into town you know all the right words to say about how important family and flag and church are in your community, but what you really think is that everything important happens somewhere else.

"So in Santa Rosa you will send thirty-one of your young men to some place that must be more important than Santa Rosa, and then fill the emptiness of your unimportance by emoting about those sacrificial men, sacrificed on the altar of your need to be important. And in Palestine, Arkansas, you'll humble yourself before a stranger. How much have you had to humble yourself every day to cheerfully and spontaneously shame your home?

"Don't tell me this man is just talking light talk. It is automatic talk. Where you look for the secrets of a family or a country is in their automatic talk. Nothing is happening in Palestine, Arkansas. And to fill that vacuum thousands will die this weekend half a world away." (Burner of Eden)

2002-09-16T16:00:00.000-04:00

Musicians Revolt against The Plantation (USA Today) - a good article. It's about time the music industry's arrogant claim on moral high ground be exposed. Will an anti-trust suit be next?

By the way, this is another example of USA Today's impressive gutsiness that puts the likes of NY Times and Washington Post to shame.

2002-09-16T15:36:00.000-04:00

Not really a surprise, but a Henry Miller is among the 9-11 victims (a firefighter too).

2002-09-15T01:55:00.000-04:00

A date with F., la Italiana, turned into a Jules and Jim situation. Not too surprising, cuz F. is exactly the Jeanne Moreau/Edith Piaf type -- exasperating domineering princess one minute, awe-inspiring life of the party the next. What I did not expect, amusingly enough, was to find myself playing Jim, which I realized as F. and her friend launches into a marathon Italian songfest.

It's worth it, though, and just what I need - when I am about to lose my faith in the Europeans after seeing so many disillusioning portraits of them lately (Tim Parks, re-reading Stuart Miller, Baudrillard, Jean-Luc Godard, and the Harpers article). It is their gracia - most exquisite and inimitable when it's spontaneous - that makes it all worthwhile.

As F. the Sidewalk Chanteuse belted away, it mattered no more that she was not as pretty as all the dolled-up American girls around us - because at this moment, she is the only one that matters, and it is impossible to take your eyes off her.

2002-09-05T23:18:00.000-04:00

Dave Winer again nails the truth in the head at this anniversary of 9-11:

"What kind of a country is so selfish that it doesn't see that 9-11 was tiniest big tragedy viewed from a global perspective. ... we aren't above the rest of the world, but we are part of it."

Thank you, thank you, and thank you.

2002-09-05T01:45:00.000-04:00

This kind of wild shit is why I got into Computer Science in the first place.
(DIY roolz, baby! :-))

2002-09-04T23:39:00.000-04:00

Just back from a weekend in D.C., to see my cousin Nicki and her week-old baby - also her little brother and her parents (my uncle & aunt), who came from Taiwan to help out.

It's good to be home - they were my closest relatives of all when I was a kid. My sister and I spent countless days over at their messy dig, raiding their comic book collections. Then there were the sleepovers, and the best part - going out to the food carts down the street for hot soymilk and deep-fried Chinese churros the next morning.

Some of the memories are still there, but .... the feeling is gone. I started to realize this on my first trip home last year -- suddenly confronted with the eager faces of my entire extended family, my first reaction was acute discomfort - I only wanted to run away and hide myself in a hole. Now in D.C., stepping into their married home for the first time, it hit me full in the chest: I am a stranger now. Somewhere in our individual flights crisscrossing the Pacific and the continent, through the passing of twenty years, the thread has snapped. I have flown too far and now we are on two opposite shores; we no longer know what to say to each other except polite platitudes.

She is still as beautiful and angelic as when I was 10 and had my first crush on her. Her husband, a rather typical Chinese geek, was astonished that I got the year of their wedding completely wrong (to my own mortification). Then I found out that he has his own dot-com business (he did not tell me), from whose site their personal pages hang. I found out that her second sister, the most artistic one, has been writing on a popular Taiwanese portal that I happen to frequent. And - this hurts the most - they have made a number of trips up to New York and even New Jersey, without once calling me!

Well, reckoning time I guess. From that first decision in Berkeley to fly solo, away from the warm comforting embrace of the Chinese expat community in exchange for new horizons and maximum exposure to American life, I knew there will be prices to pay. And I have been paying -- in solitude unbuffered by the banal socializing with other Chinese, who lead totally wholesome and totally predictable lives just like your own. But that did not prepare me for the moment when I finally come to stand in front of the burnt-down remains of the bridge to my childhood.

Still ... before I get even more maudlin ... no regrets. It could not have been any different: this restless blood of the explorer - it's in my nature from the very start. Looking back I can see the seed cracking already in that little boy sitting in the dark grade-school library alone, scarfing down books that he could not quite understand, while other kids are busy playing outside. Well, he is in his 30's now and still reading. And in a few weeks, a new person will be moving into the house -- I wonder what story s/he will tell?

2002-08-13T02:08:00.000-04:00

Posted this review of Pilar Rioja on Flamencodancer:

"... While we're on the topic of supernatural inspirations, here's someone that for some inscrutable reason manages to stay off the radar screen, yet (I've just realized) is the one most reliably goosebump-producing dancer in New York City -- Pilar Rioja.

"Some newspaper wag has playfully suggested that she must have made a pact with El Diablo, to be able to dance in that inimitable way for so long. Sitting there in that dark, little crickety theater last night, I suddenly realized that it may not be too far from the truth.

"Starting from her age. She is in her 70's, so they say. But onstage she has the energy and body of a super-fit 45. When she danced the classical piece "Zapateado" she's a thoroughly convincing skittish 17-year-old lass trilling her castanets. When she takes on the solea of "La Monja Gitana" she personifies the starkness and knowledge of
old age. In alegrias she's all flirty femininity, but in her past
piece "Toreador" she achieved such utter command of masculine grace that I fell into a fascinated trance, in the eye of the crimson storm she whipped up.

"As with Maria Pages, I am sure the professional dancers among you have your technical bones to pick with her. But like with Pages, I can say with confidence that Ms. Rioja possesses a finely-honed dramatic instinct that has few rivals in this business. Her arms are snake-like and her hands have minds of their own. Between the eloquent braceos and her body going from one perfect theatrical pose to another, she is a moveable feast. Her chico pieces can be smooth and dazzling like Chinese ribbon dance, with that special magician's way of raising her arm up to end a compas that just makes you laugh. And when she does jondo, that same articulate body now takes us all the way back to the origin of theater, as a shamanic ritual channeling forces from the underworld to our midst. It isn't just classical or "old-school" styles either; her "La Monja Gitana" is capital-M Modern (down to the Martha Graham-black) yet works thoroughly as flamenco - much more effective than most of the rather cliched solea and siguiriya choreography out there.

"In short, after some 30 years in the business she is now blazing a trail that is completely her own and completely outside of mainstream. Not only does nobody else dances like her, nobody seems to even _talk_ about her! Why is that?

"I hope it's not because of her age. Because her ideas are just as fresh as the rest. And what's more important - they work."

Also, at the risk of indulging in gossip, are these curious singularities about her:

* She has apparently spent most of her NY career in this tiny old theater (that's 30 years!) in an anonymous neighborhood in Manhattan (really, it doesn't have a name. It's not Lower East Side, Gramercy Park, nor Murray Hill) when she could have moved on to bigger ponds long ago. Anybody would have (Noche Flamenca comes to mind) -- and she has certainly earned it.

* 30 years later and she's still a solo act - not even a guest dancer. I can't think of any other major dancer in the same way. True, the stage is a bit small, but that's not even an excuse (see above)

* Besides isolating herself geographically, she doesn't seem to mix in the NY flamenco circuit either. No class at Fazil's or appearance at other people's shows. Less unusual is the fact that she seems to be unknown in Spain.

* Then there's the place itself - a converted 1920s townhouse, with an over-aggressive, lumbering central A/C that seems to date back to the Good War. Threadbare carpet, old photos and framed citations on the wall, a steep, narrow stairway with steps so thin you can only fit the tip of your foot on. Haunted house anyone?

Now put all the above together -- is it any wonder that thoughts like "vampire flamenco" soon started coming to me?

La Petenera indeed. :-)

2002-07-27T00:58:00.000-04:00

Oh, here's how you can pay the pipers and cut out the pimp :-)

2002-07-27T00:46:00.000-04:00

Finally, Hollywood has declared war.

The chutzpah of these greedy pimps is amazing. In Dave's inimitable words:

"The music industry, run by a bunch of people who probably understand music about as well as Steve Case and his little buddy do, stuff a cork up the ass of the distribution channel, and then complain about all the shit that's splattered all over the place. ... For the 18th time in eight years, we're waiting for the idiots to get out of the way and let the goddam business develop."

Fight the Power!

Burn Hollywood Burn!

2002-07-24T03:14:00.000-04:00

Made an all-out tapas dinner a few hours ago, with most recipes from the International Flamenco Posse:

Tortilla española, espinacas, aceitunas, gambas al ajillo, prociutto (no jamon serrano in this neighborhood) y pan. Con jerez oloroso y vino blanco de Piemonte. A la musica de fiesta flamenca -- ay, que está vida!

Watched La Femme Nikita again -- it's amazing how much staying power this little movie has. It takes Hollywood ten years to catch up with it - not quite, but close enough - in The Bourne Identity, which, to steal a line from Nikita, "has tremendous potential". The Doug Liman piece has soul and style head and shoulder above the rest, although still understated compared to Luc Besson. Well, let's put it this way -- there's a pretty good odd that I'll meet somebody like Franka Potente in an International Youth Hostel of any major city, whereas the chance to meet an Anne Parillaud is, say, zilch.

"I do honestly believe that a poor, skinny, misshapen French woman with just an ounce of personality would stop the show. She would have what the Americans are always talking about but never achieve. She would have it." - H.M.

And that brings me to ... Les Amants du Pont Neuf. I finally opened up my copy & watched it the other night. One of these days I'll be able to do justice to this mad masterpiece ... but not now. Just want to say that Juliette Binoche in ratty hair, bad teeth, and a soiled eyepatch is still more ravishing than Jennifer Aniston (or Meg Ryan) can ever be. Something to do with that inner wolf that European women seem to have found a way to live with ...

... and Natalie Portman. Which is why The Professional managed to avoid turning into Luc Besson's self-parody, despite its Hollywood cliche of a plot. Yeah, I guess I understand now why this would be Jo's favorite film (but she fell asleep watching Nikita with me ... go figure).

Anyway, picked up a Binoche line which I didn't notice before. Can be a bit pretentious except that it's something Michael Ventura would say:

"The people in your dreams, you should call them when you're awake. It would make life simpler."

2002-07-20T02:16:00.000-04:00

Revisited Nells a few days ago ... and got reminded once again - of what makes life worth living. A roomful of beautiful, gentle people finding happy refuge in the whirl of Clave, on a hot New York summer night. A well-timed turn. An eloquent flick of elbow. A deviously suave transition move that made your breath stop. And above us all flows that inimitable Cuban sound like waves crashing on beach. It is the hour of ecstasy when life is again simple and sweet. Forget your troubles, and swim with the rhythm.

This is definitely better than sex ... 8-)

2002-07-15T17:48:00.000-04:00

There was a great discussion of Jane Jacobs' classic, _The Death and Life of Great American Cities_, on NY Times Book Forum (deep-freezed).

A particularly good bite:

"To take one that flies most directly 180 degrees in the face of received wisdom: everybody knows, and most museums and schools continue to teach, that cities grew up "on the surplus of" agriculture. "Hunh??" asks Jacobs. "Where did this agriculture thing suddenly come from?"

"It turns out that the trading city of Jericho, one of the world's oldest well-established settlements, is under the agricultural city of Jericho by several layers of junk: the agriculture was invented by the animal-keepers and seed sorters of the trading that always went on in our hunter-gatherer days.

"City" people getting their heads together, whether tens of thousands of pre-agricultural years ago, or today, is the basis of wealth, in Jacobs's view. The country idyl of landed wealth is just fantasy. Wealth is a human creation, and where more people get together to work together, we make more of it." (italics mine)

And of course, "City people are decadent economic parasites on the righteous poor farmers around them" was a central tenet for Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist regime until his death. It was his unique contribution to the Communist canon (Russians did not consider China industrial enough for communism yet). The result: urban middle class was forcefully emptied out of all major cities and dispersed into the vast hinderlands. And China's economy shrank to African levels.

In any case, the City/Country dichotomy is more blurry in China than in the West. The combination of dense population and low technology made for a long history of labor-intensive, small-plot family farming. No giant tractor plowing thousands of acres here. Chinese people are used to live in an urban environment.

This, however, did not result in the charming diversity that nice East Coast liberals like Jane Jacobs rhapsodized. I remember clearly my teen-hood in early 80s Taipei, Taiwan. At that time, Taiwan was furiously playing catch-up, developing and industrializing like there's no tomorrow. An absence of ingrained civic values in the culture combined with ignorance about basic urban planning concepts (zoning did not exist back in those days) results in the following fun facts:

Auto shops often open in floor-level units of apartment buildings, and their noise would drive the residents bonker.
Food stalls pop up like dandelions on sidewalks and in front of apartment entrances. You have to nudge past slurping customers, step over poodles of grease and trash, wave flies outta your face, before you can get in your own door. It's even more fun if they happen to be ones selling Stinking Tofu :-)
The outside of every apartment is buried in a stack of signs in all sizes, plain and illuminated (anyone who's seen pictures of Hongkong streets know what I am talking about), advertising myriad services of its multi-talented residents within: music teacher, palm reader, beautician, notary public, etc. And once inside, you will see the stairwell similarly speckled with stick-on business cards.

These are just the tidbits related to the topic at hand. Other, more general quality-of-life issues are just too numerous to mention (e.g. shoes, shoes ;-)).

Fortunately, with time and education people became more conscientious, and city codes were brought up to standard. "Historical preservation" became an accepted concept. Upper-middle class escaped to new, Western-style suburban subdivisions that came into being since then. But the extreme population pressure insures that, paradoxically, the villaineous "Radiant Garden City Beautiful" will never happen here.

Also, that last sentence of the quote about wealth created by human interaction alone - Dave Winer will love it. It fits totally into his "creative people creating tools for other creative people" ethos. And the "neighborhood vs. mega-project" conflict in the past mirrors so perfectly our current "weblogs vs. Big Media" fight over mental real-estate!

Another tangent: By extension, the assertion "wealth is created by humans not yielded by land" rebukes the classic theory of Comparative Advantages (still taught in my undergrad Econ class) that says Brazil should stick to growing coffee and not try to poke into semiconductors, because that's its proper and natural advantage. Well, we from tiny Southeast Asian islands like Taiwan, HK and Singapore weren't dumb enough to swallow that line, according to which the only thing we could do was to export ourselves out as domestic servants (like our much-better-endowed neighbor). The "Asian Miracle" happened because we had no other way. Two hands and a brain, that's all!

2002-07-15T02:06:00.000-04:00

By the way - the Fiesta of San Fermin has been going on in Pamplona for a whole week, and I just had to be reminded by ESPN2 - quite by accident at that.

(They have two reporters there providing what seems to be half-hour daily coverage, as if it's Tour de France or something. Now you can follow those crazy Spanish bulls from the comfort of your own living room - the wonder of technology :-))

What would James Michener say now?

2002-07-15T01:49:00.000-04:00

Went down to Belmar for dinner this weekend. The small restaurant had a singer that night - a Jersey blonde in mid 30s. Slightly nicer Melissa Etheridge. Chatting about Jimmy Page. Husky.

Well, when she started, what came out was a girlish voice doing New Age lullabies. "Kiss Me" (recent hit by an Edie Brickall-soundalike). The picture does not match at all.

I've seen this before. Something is going on here.

On the way back I stopped at the new Borders in Eatontown. In the cafe a younger woman with a guitar. Earnst songs, but same softened voice.

Well, at least this one here is understandable.

Still, that Belmar woman sticks out in my mind and refuses to go away. She reminds me of all these tough-talking, muscle-y American women (and Jersey women are tougher than most ;-)) that keep in their soul a little girl that cries for lace and teddy bears.

Unresolved tension - and lots of it. I can feel it as I walk down the street sometimes, when a woman opens her mouth: Which voice am I gonna use right now? Daddy's girl, harried mom, or wizened jailbird?

Not that they've had much help. These days proud, charismatic voices of middle-age women are in short supply. There used to be Joplin, Midler, and Streisand. What do we have now? Marianne Faithfull? Grace Slick? Cher(!)?

Susan Sarandon had to give up hers (Safe Passage, Step Mom) -- pity; she could have been America's answer to Jeanne Moreau. Who else? Do we have to wait for Madonna? (shiver)

(By the way, the above applies only to white and white-minded women. I had the fortune to hear the black poet Sonia Sanchez read her new poem at the 10-year anniversary ceremony of the Poetry in Motion program, in Grand Central. And I gotta say - That woman's got mojo!)

(It's a poem about Yoruba gods. By the time she's done, everybody's on their feet hollering. Absolute ecstasy.)

2002-07-13T17:05:00.000-04:00

Just found out about this blogchalking thing ...

(For search engine consumption)
Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk - parsed into magneto-poetry:
31-35 | Chinese | Miles | to | Red Bank New Jersey | United States | and | ... | just | one | Male | .

2002-07-10T02:15:00.000-04:00

A great quote from NY Review of Books, by way of Dave Winer (as usual):
"This is journalism's age of melancholy. Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder. They have discovered that their prime duty is no longer to maintain the republic in well-informed condition—or to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, as the old gospel has it—but to serve the stock market with a good earnings report every three months or, in plainer English, to comfort the comfortable."

And how's that? Well, look at what the media is not covering.

Michael Ventura's been on this trail for a while - but why is he the only one?

Consider this my contribution to this Independence Day. Because, despite what Americans these days seem to think, this country was not founded on God or the Star-Spangled Banner (both of which are in abundant supply), but the Constitution. Unfortunately for America, the Constitution does not fit on a bumpersticker or in a 15-second soundbite.

Is it that hard to understand?

2002-07-05T20:57:00.000-04:00

Notes from my own private World Cup

Special thanks to SINA News, which has the most breaking news, the most in-depth analysis, and the most passionate commentary anywhere. This has something to do with the fact that it's a portal for more than a dozen news outlets all over China (as well as its own staff and web reader submission), few of which are shy about their feeling. Where else can I find "Ode to Batigol", or in-depth description of Hiddink's Dutch staff and his hi-tech "bootcamp from hell"?

Besides sampling Chinese media, it also periodically draws from a wide swath of continental European and South American pro-sport sources - service no English-language websites I know perform (Yahoo, ESPN, BBC, Guardian). Just now I see that Brazilian papers seems to agree with me about Rustu - and it's got numbers to prove it!

2002-07-03T00:13:00.000-04:00

The Copa Insomnia is finally over - hard to believe.

Interestingly, much of my BBC quote below applies even better to the two "black horses" that made it to the top - South Korea and Turkey. Unlike the majority of contenders this year, these two cannot be accused of "1:0-ism". And that, I think, is why they've come so far and ostensibly better sides like England and Sweden haven't.

Guardian has a very good point. Now that they mentioned it, it seems a travesty that the mecca of football hardly ever gets to host the pilgrimage. "... the next time Brazil play in a World Cup final it might be even nicer if the yellow shirts in the crowd had real Brazilian fans inside them. "

Right on!

2002-06-18T13:04:00.000-04:00

FIFA World Cup: Sparta has overcome Athens.

2002-06-12T19:36:00.000-04:00

This first Asian World Cup is unbelievable.

ESPN: Arrogant approach finishes World Cup favourites

He may be right, but come on, this is snotty. Didn't their opponents have anything to do with it? When the Argentina - Sweden game was almost an exact rerun of the France - Denmark one the day before - and to a degree, its preceding match with England as well? When the two Scandivanian coaches (or three - counting Sven) were practically reading out of the same playbook?

The more level-headed BBC sees a lot more clearly:

"But it would be unfair to be too harsh on Bielsa, because whatever nationalists in England and Brazil may think, both the World Cup and football in general are poorer for Argentina's exit.

"Bielsa's team had one extremely rare and precious characteristic: wherever the game, whoever the opponents and whatever the circumstances they were happy to accept the risks of taking the initiative.

"... They never dragged everyone behind the ball, waited for the opposition to make a mistake and then struck on the break. ... One fast striker to win free kicks, ten giants to get behind the ball - not a very imaginative recipe.

"... Chasing a goal is far more difficult and dangerous than defending a lead, or a draw. Bielsa's experiment was, in the final analysis, a failure. But at least it was a glorious one. "

The Scandivanians won their place at the expense of the game. They robbed futbol of its art and us the audience of its pleasure. They remind me of that dull Star Wars prequel Attack of the Clones: in its only poignant scene, the entire corps of Jedi Knights cornered in a dusty coliseum, fighting for their very lives. And only saved by the descent of the mammoth Republican (soon to be Imperial) clone army. As the tired survivors watch the immense, faceless battalions go into battle, they realize that Force or not, their era is over.

Well, Star Wars has Luke, and we still have Ronaldo. Can the verdeamarelos break through the blonde walls of cowardice and give us back el juego bonito?

Existiu
um El Dorado Negro no Brasil

Existiu
viveu lutou tombou morreu denovo resurgiu

Resurgiu
pavão de tantas cores carnaval do sonho meu

Renasceu
Quilombo agora assim você e eu

Quilombo
todos fizeram com todos os santos zelando

Quilombo
todos regaram com todas as aguas do pranto

Quilombo
todos tiveram de tombar amando e lutando

Quilombo
todos nos ainda hoje desejamos tanto

2002-05-18T04:17:00.000-04:00

A Proustian "review" of Thelma and Louise.

Rhapsodies aside, I did discover a few weaknesses that escaped notice in my younger & foolisher days:

1. Louise was such a repressed prick! Whatever had happened to her, for the movie's sake she needs to open up more (not much, just a bit) so we can warm up to her. In particular the way she treated her boyfriend Jimmy - she came off as rather a user. Guess I was blinded by the Sarandon magic. :-)

That leads to point #2 ...

2. Because Louise was so emotionally shut-in, the female bonding which was supposed to be the film's centerpiece, actually amounted to very little until the end - mostly mutual sniping. They didn't even hug. To think so much more character exploration could have gone in ...

3. The movie did not really explain why Harvey Keitel's sheriff should feel so protective towards the two women. We are supposed to just trust his "I am a soft-hearted old dog" mien.

4. Just what was Louise thinking when she made that last, fateful phone call to him that gave their location away? Did she secretly want him to catch her?

2002-05-14T20:18:00.000-04:00

"Never mind the Last Mile; Here comes the Last Yard

<flame>
I challenge *any* AT&T (or Lucent etc.) bean-counter to come up with a report like this (Gil? Joe? Ross? Hsin? - nah) It p*sses me off to have spent so many years at a company that has NO vision or imagination - and don't even know it.
</flame>

Think for a minute, and you'll realize what staggering social and cultural influences that telecomm has today, how central telecomm services are to people's lives (I am waiting to see the "Kinsey report" on how cell phone has changed the way relationships are conducted. How about call forwarding? Personal 800 numbers? AT&T ought to finance such studies). Once you become aware of it, how can such knowledge fail to motivate you (no, make that impassionate) as a telecomm professional? And if you are senior management and you can't motivate your employees, then you really have failed.

2002-05-09T02:46:00.000-04:00

Found a beautiful poem of Rilke in Iron John that just pierces my heart:

I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough to make every moment holy.
I am too tiny in this world, and not tiny enough just to lie before you like a thing,
shrewd and secretive.
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will,
as it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
Translated by Robert Bly

He is talking to me in that first and last lines! I get a sense of what must feel like to want to die for someone who understands you (two Chinese references here : ¡u?h¬°ª¾?vªÌ|º¡v¡A¡u´Â»D1D¡A?i|º¥i?]¡C¡v)

On the other hand, watching Cocteau's movies again tonight got me thinking - they feel like two poets on the complete opposite ends. Rilke possesses an awe-inspiring insight and intensity, but also heaviness. He does not seem to have much of a sense of humor. Cocteau is just the opposite - always wit, beauty and poetic flights of fancy (although he barely hides his inner demons).

How do you keep both of them in da house?

2002-05-03T01:31:00.000-04:00

By the way, April 15 had been the start of Feria de Abril, Sevilla's other primo festival. But this time Canal Sur was quiet as a mouse - I was looking forward to seven days of non-stop sevillanas. How disappointing. What does say about Andalucia today?

(That Feria de Abril has turned into a commercial money-making machine for foreign suckers? Perish the thought.)

2002-05-03T01:20:00.000-04:00

I was reminded - this monday was the 10-year anniversary of the L.A. Riot. It brought back a few memories.

To sort them out, I sat down and wrote out a few thoughts - and of course it took much, much longer than I expected - or was ready for. In fact, what it was was exorcism - and I am not even sure if it worked.

The writing career doesn't look like it's going to be fun :-( :-)

2002-03-29T01:32:00.000-05:00

Todo pintura, con el colór de Sevilla
Todo pintura, con la Semana Santa

Such is the callout of Canal Sur, Andalucía's premier radio station, whispered in Spanish basso profundo, over Real Audio and into my house. It's been my houseguest for almost three days now.

2002-03-26T00:46:00.000-05:00

¡AVISO - Recuerdos son peligroso!

How oh how could I have known, that a innocuous trip down memory lane (more precisely, opening up some old flamenco mail archive) should trigger a massive DNS (Dark Night of the Soul)?

Huck, how could I ever hope to fly like you do? I flapped my arms, but five years was not enough for growing wings. You made it look so easy, but how is it that not only didn't I fly, I couldn't even hike out of this valley? Not only no wings, I didn't even grow any muscles?

Just what the hell does it take to become a man, and still remain human??

Am I here all alone?

2002-02-28T13:08:00.000-05:00

(Gorgeous view of Governor's Island and Verrazano Bridge from the classroom window, dark water rippling silently.)

Exercise: Take three pictures of the same place - in the morning, noon, and twilight. Load one into Photoshop and try massaging it to look like the other two. Is it possible? (Could be a Photoshop-certification question - maybe already is)

2002-02-28T11:24:00.000-05:00

Saw the most beautiful poem that I've seen MTA put out so far (Poetry in Motion series) on the 4 train this morning thru Wall Street:

The More Loving One

   W. H. Auden

   Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
   That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
   But on earth indifference is the least
   We have to dread from man or beast.

   How should we like it were stars to burn
   With a passion for us we could not return?
   If equal affection cannot be,
   Let the more loving one be me.

(This is not actually the whole poem, as I found now on poets.org - the missing half develops and complicates much further the simple sweetness that seemed so complete in the above stanzas that MTA picked out.) Is it another coincidence that the poem that IMO was the truest answer to 9-11 was his as well: September 1, 1939?

2002-02-26T00:54:00.000-05:00

"I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere,
nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead."

For me the greatest, and most dramatic opening paragraph in literature (so far) -- now also a personal stake in the ground. I shall return when my writing - and I - can live up to the man behind this paragraph, and count the days it took me to get there.

Who knows, working out your karma on Internet Time may not be such a bad idea :-)

2002-02-25T13:56:00.000-05:00

My first post - from Nasdaq Building, Lower Manhattan.
Thanks Dave Winer for all the fish!