Motobecane makeover, ver. 0.9, drive train

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Originally uploaded by ScottyJ.

Simple, effective, and low-maintenance. It's also very very quiet, which has become really important to me.

Oh man.

It just keeps getting worse. From Newsweek: Presidential hits.

What happened to Congress? What happened to the Supreme Court? Where's my damn country?

There's a John Cleese in my dreams

My afternoon nap microdream:

Radio Newsguy Voice: On a sad note, famed comedian and former member of Monty Python's Flying Circus committed himself to a mental institution outside of London. Several years ago we intervied Mr. Cleese on this very subject.

Cut to taped interview:

Interviewer: You work over the years has been called loopy, crazy, wonderful, and strange. How do you determine what is sane or crazy?

John Cleese: Well, I know my work has had crazy moments, but it's intentional. I think if elements of my work started showing up in real life, then I would in trouble. If naked organists, or silly walks began making a regular appearance then that would be it, wouldn't it? I'd have myself committed.

Radio Newsguy Voice: One of Mr. Cleese's well known skits was reading nonsense newscasts. Evidently the proliferation of nonsense spam emails appearing worldwide was enough to for him to decide that enough was enough. We wish well, and hope he makes a speedy recovery.

Frenchy in the Studio

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Originally uploaded by ScottyJ.

This is the "Before" shot.

M is for Motobecane & Meredith

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Originally uploaded by ScottyJ.

I still haven't set up my shop. It's getting there, but most of my tools are still dull, and in boxes. I've moved the furniture around several times and I think that I've come up with the best layout for the space. Now I need a project to motivate me to actually get the rest of the unpacking done. So I present to you my newest project: Frenchy, the town bike.
This Motobecane Mirage came as a gift from Meredith. She found it languishing in a thrift store, and decided to suprise me with it a couple of months ago. Seeing as how I have a roadbike, a mountain bike, a folder, and a fixed gear, I knew I needed to build a sweet town bike. I've wanted something with fenders, baskets, and a comfy 'cruising around town' feel for some time now. But that's the future. Let's deal with the present. Here's the bike as it came from the thrift store: Steel rims, rotted flat tires, and rusty drive train. The frame is in good shape. It looks like it wasn't ridden much at all. First I'll stick a wheelset on it, and get a sense of it's geometry, and see how it fits.

Yay! Consumerism!

Whoohoo! There's two new bike stores in westside Petaluma. I'm always happy to see more bike stores because maybe it means that more people will ride bikes. And I'm especially happy to have two new stores downtown because a little over a year ago we lost our last downtown bike store. I was very troubled by it's closure. Sure I can order all my odd-ball goofy bike parts over the internet, but I like going downtown and talking to someone, and supporting my local-bike-shop. So far, I've spent a little money at both of them, and once they get some more stock (they are both under a month old), I'm sure to spend more money there.

the two shops (Bici, and Eastside Cycles) cover a similar range, if slightly different styles of bike shops. Eastside (so named because it's first store was on teh eastside of town) is your more standard bike shop. Bigger than Bici, it covers a lot of the mountain/road mid-range market. It's got a some small selection in helmets, shoes, clothes, accessories and bikes, with a decidedly Moutain Bike slant. But they also work on bikes, and the guy told me they are still setting up and getting stock in.

Bici, is decidedly more stylee. The fixed gear in the window, the pale wood floors, the large plasma tv on the wall, mark it as much more boutique. But I liked it. Good bikes, actually some fixed gear stuff (lock rings, cogs, etc..) on hand, and the Bici guy (whose name I didn't get) is really hoping to make it a 'destination' type bike shop, with group rides, clinics and the Tour on a bigscreen plasma on the wall. Also: coffee. So he's got my business.

Bici Sport: Kentucky Street, Petaluma. Nice guy.
Eastside: In the new parking garage building (ironic, huh?) near the new theater.

Oh my god.

Laurel just clued me in. There's a freaking national pie day and we missed it. I can't believe it, because I love pie. It's like missing the international congress of tea drinkers meeting or something. Good lord. Never again will I forsake Pie Day.

Art Art Art

Last Saturday Meredith and I went to Laurel and Andy's latest art show at Roshambo Winery in Healdsburg. It was awesome, hardly a surprise, but awesome. Go see it. Really.

We also got to see a lot of friends we haven't seen for awhile. Mati and Hugh were there, Dan & Julie & Aidan, Bo & Rosa and their two(!) little girls, gage, david pierce, wil & heidi, my parents..it was a good mellow show with lots of great art.

Laurel and Andy have been busier than usual. The night before they had an openning at SF City Hall, this week they are off to L.A. for another show, and next month they'll be in a show in Chicago too.

Which makes me wonder..with all this jet-setting artyness, do you have to forsake pie?

Ok, so I'm not in Disneyland anymore

It's been a very busy 6 weeks however. There was lots of crazy work deadlines (everybody wanted everything done before the holidays) then I moved, then the holidays, and a bad flu, and it's only now that life seems to be returning to some sort of new normalcy. I'm still unpacking, and trying to remember where I put something. I'm still adjusting to my new roommates, who are smaller and funnier than my last one. And I'm still working like a dog.

However, that doesn't mean that I'll forsake this blog forever.

So a quick update is in order: Disneyland was great, but also exhausting. The 'snow' they promised every night was actually soap bubbles, which tasted terrible, and stung the eyes. It's a Small World seemed to break down every 2 hours (which spared me the pain of *that* song). Of course I feel terribly for the people who were stuck in there when it broke.

California Adventure was actually freaking awesome. It's got more modern rides, but they still imagineered the place up a bit to resemble various areas of California. I was impressed. I think they did a really good job.

By day 3 we were all toasted. After our morning excursion to hit those last few 'must ride' rides, we spend the afternoon sitting in the hot tub and waiting by the pool.

There was no down time after disneyland though. I had 10 days to pack up 7 years of crap and move it to a smaller place in Santa Rosa. I alternated between taking car loads of stuff to the dump, and car loads of stuff to Goodwill. In the end, I still had way too much stuff. But after a wild couple of days moving M's house out, I got most of my stuff crammed into my shop, and we cleaned up for a Christmas Eve party.

Christmas Eve was really fun, it was the first year in a long time that I had a Christmas tree in the house, and we had about 30 people over for fondue and drinks. Ben and Mickey laughed at my attemps of nacent step-fathering, and kids ran crazily through the house. Sylvan and Zelia did an awesome lip-sync to the 'never trust robots' song.

After everyone left, and we got the kids down to bed, I got to see, for the first time, behind the curtains of Christmas. Meredith and I stayed up and wrapped presents as Santa, filled stockings, and ate Santa's cookies (making sure to leave some crumbs). It was really cool, except for one thing.

I was definately coming down with a cold.

Christmas morning I was very sick, feverish, achey, bad sore throat, the whole package. Which made the whole "presents, candy, good cheer" thing a blur. We opened presents with the kids, who then went off with their dad to spend the day with his family. Meredith and I got dressed and went to my parent's but I could only hold out for a few hours before I had to go home and sleep. Thankfully I had the week off of work so I got to spend most of my vacation on the couch sleeping.

But even with the cold, it was a great Christmas.

Disneyland - Day one

Today we flew from Oakland to Orange County to go to my company's 3-day Christmas Celebration. Staff and family got 3 days in the Paradise Pier Hotel, 3 Day passes to Disneyland, Disneyland California something and something else.

While I haven't been a fan of Disney for years (mega-global-entertainment-giants not being my milleiu) I was a little excited to see the original Disneyland. When I was little over 2 or 3 (I think) my parent's brought my brother and I here, and I only have disjointed memories of the trip. I remember driving a little car (and loving it). Being scared by a Yeti in a mountain, worried that It's a Small World dolls would come to life and get us. And being scared at the haunted Mansion, but facinated at the little lightbulbs that flickered like candles.

So now I'm here, first impressions? The park is smaller than I remember (not a suprise), but the matterhorn is pretty striking. Also the Yeti is still a little scary, and those little cars? They actually run on gas. It's odd how much exhaust gets funneled back up the line, but it's really stinky. It's also sponsored by Chevron. In fact most of the major rides are sponsored by some corporation. Kinda odd.

Monorails rule though.

Tonight? It will snow in the Magic Kingdom after the fireworks. Pictures soon.

Some Minor Updates

Moving day is coming up, as is the company Christmas party in LA, Kill-a-tree for christ day (getting a christmas tree), and Christmas. I've got so much to do and pack and freak out about that I feel strangely calm.

As of the 15th I'll be in the new house in Santa Rosa, along with a new email address and new phone number. If you need/want this new info leave me a comment and I'll get back to you through a more private channel.

Housey!

Well, it's almost official. I'm moving to Santa Rosa! I'm still working out the details with my company regarding where I'd work, and we need to put down the money for the deposit/first/last. But it looks like I'll get to wear a Goodman Ave hoodie with pride this Christmas.

Pictures can be found at Meredith's Flickr Page.

Laurel. Not unlike my favorite photo of Fargo (see Sept 2004 at the bottom)

More death in the streets.

More Dia De Los Muertos awesomness. This woman also made a beautiful poster for the 10th Anniversary of Critical Mass that is now hanging on my office door.

Dead-me

Mati and Laurel. Laurel's the fuzzy one.

Andy looking strangely menacing.

Dead-laurel. Note: that's make up, she's not really that skinny. Really.

Again, shot by me, lit by a photo journalist.

Dancers, courtesy of somebody's flash.

Us minus me.

This girl was up on stilts. The stilt-walkers were very cool.

Day of the Dead in the Mission

Day of the Dead

So, it's a week late, but what are you going to do.

Last week I drove from my office in Oakland over to Laurel's place to go march in the Day of the Dead procession with her and friends. Of course no one was leaving the apartment without the requisite decoration. Even I, your fearful scribe, partook of the facepaint and did my best to represent the face of death.

The procession was awesome. There were thousands of people walking down the streets. About 10-20% were dressed up in some way. Horns, drums and flutes played like a New Orleans Funereal march mixed up with NorCal drum circle. Sage smoke wafted over the crowds and people were lit by the flickering of candles.

After some detours and shortcuts which led us to a little party at a former art studio down a really cool alley, and some confused running around we ran into the head of the march where some Incan(?) dancers performed a insanely energetic tribal dance thing. The amount of flash photography was staggering, so much so that I stopped using my own flash and just relied on the professionals to light the scene for me.

Eventually we made our way over to Garfield park and Laurel and Andy laid there cards and candles at an altar (I had left my card to Michael back in there apartment). Then we wandered around looking for our fellow skeletons and headed for home, with a brief stop at McDonalds for some life afirming dead-cow.

I didn't wash my make-up until got home, which made from some awesome double-takes from the drivers around me.

The winter whirlwind

Wow, what a couple of weeks it's been. And that's nothing compared to what may be happening by the end of the year. For those who haven't heard, Meredith has found a great house in Santa Rosa on Goodman Ave (which is really where it's at, neighborhood-wise). But we don't know if we can get it, because I would need to change up my job situation and I just got down here. It's a great house, but it's also no bargin. So I may or may not be moving.

Then there's my company's christmas party. They are flying everyone (families, spouses, significant others and their families) to Disneyland for an action=packed weekend and a dinner for 80 at the rainforest cafe. It should be pretty awesome. I plan to spend the time trying to match up the fuzzy sepia-toned memories of my visit to Disneyland in 1978 or so with the modern one.

Then there's the business trip to Mammoth Lakes, by way of Reno. I'll be driving the trusty comfy Subaru over the sierras during winter-storm months. If you know me, you know I cannot wait! Of course it'll be my luck to have beautiful unseasonably warm weather for the whole trip. I love doing stuff like that, remind me to tell you of the time I drove 17.5 hours to Silver Springs, NV and back in the middle of the worst storm of the winter to deliver someone some clothes.

Not to mention the blur that will be Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's and all that insanity.

Podcasts

My current favorites:
TWiT
DiggNation The latest episode actually made me snort soda through my nose at work. It's super-geeky and lightly obnoxious, but the bit about the sheepherder using wifi almost killed me.
Security Now
Sparkletack, which I haven't tried yet, but looks really interesting. It's history bits about San Francisco. I'll be listening to it during my commute in tomorrow.

Obligatory Car Shot #2 7:45 AM this morning

The view from my office window after a hot indian summer's day.

My new office, not quite setup.

Sweet Zombie Jesus

Here's yet another reason why the internet rules. Zombie Simulator

And now a series of links:

1 Bloglines is a great way to keep track of your favorite websites or blogs. I love it mainly because I surf across 4 different machines, and bloglines keeps me straight.
2. Best car geekery Blog I've read. I love this guy's writing. If you like old cars, or odd ball car/mechanical related stuff, read his blog. Also he has Heelers so you know he's all right.
3. Trane's blog while he's teaching in Japan. Funny, well written and beautifully photographed.
4. And even though Flash may be devil spawn this game is terribly addictive. Actually all their games are. Warning: may lead to lost productivity and a tendancy to mutter

New. Shiny. Green.

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Originally uploaded by ScottyJ.

Eep! Shiny!

I did it. I pulled the trigger and got a newish car. I can't wait to pick it up (which I will do tomorrow morning at 7:30). Oh to have climate control again, and a lack of deafening wind noise. I'll even have 5 whole gears to use. It'll be bliss.

Here's a picture.

For Sale! Yes I have the bumper!

Tug & Barge for fixing the rail road bridge

My Cat, as promised.

The Steinhart in better days. Also, men should start wearing hats again.

The New De Young

I don't like the new De Young.

In fact I'm pretty upset about the whole business. All those great City Beautiful inspired public-palaces are gone. There is no more alligator pit in the Steinhart Aquarium. There is no fancy marble, or gilt paint on the iron work. It's all gone.

Beyond the loss of a historical resource, beyond the loss of craftmanship that cannot be regained, it is to me a loss of ideology.

Those museums were old school. Seriously old school. Science and the arts weren't interactive. They were lofty relics stored in dimly lit halls behind glass. Somber, imposing, inscrutable. That's what I loved about those places. I can't really get into the whole new-science, info-tainment, facts-delivered-by-handpuppet places that seem to have swept over the museum scene. I'm sure there are educators who'll tell me that this method is more effective in teaching facts to ADD addled children, but will it make them more curious about the world? I don't know. I don't think so.

As a kid those palaces instilled in me that science was important, that it was mysterious. Why else would there be such a big fancy building to house it all in? You had to meditate on what was in those dusty diaramas to make sense of it. And more often than not, you couldn't make sense of it. Not completely, because the whole story wasn't told. It wasn't holistic. A friend of mine once told me that good art leaves you with more questions than it answers, and I felt that way about those museums in Golden Gate Park. They gave you the briefest taste that the world was a very interesting place.


And if they ever do anything to the Exporitorium I'll bite somebody.

Edith Saved?

Plans were afoot to decommission and dismantle edith at the end of October. Those plans have been put on hold. Gary and I think, with a little application of money (>$200) and several weekends of light work we could stabilize her decline and keep her 'seaworthy' or at least river-worthy for months, if not years to come. We've currently decided that is the best course of action.

We'll see if we feel the same way during the depths of winter.

Soon to follow, more river barge pictures, taken this very morning. All I'll say is that I was on the water for work, and it was glorious.

Changes

All my little plans run amok in the streets, throwing stones and banging on newspaper machines.

Earlier I noted that I would be transfering to Oakland on November 1st, and moving to SF sometime around the new year. Well, not anymore folks. At least not this week.

Staffing at the Oakland office went through some unforseen hiccups and I volunteered to setup there for the short term until things settled down again. Of course the short term will probably take me until Nov 1st, then I'll be here officially.

As far as moving goes, I may need to put that off for a bit, as now that my commute has started I need a good reliable car soon. And that will soak up a lot of my 'moving' money. That said, my lovely truck and BMW are going up for sale at bargain prices for the discerning collector. Contact me if you are interested.

In addition to the location change I've been given some complex jobs with very short deadlines. So that's why I'm sitting in a sweltering office at 6:30 on thursday, when I should be having dinner with Meredith. Sigh. And I'll be here a while yet.

I'll spare you the promise to update my blog more often, but I won't spare you a picture of my cat looking cute.

Soul Sucker

The weather has cooled down, and I see kids trudging to school when I go to work in the mornings. Fall is nearly upon us (yay!) and I've rediscovered video games. This happens nearly every year. When back to school sales start, I suddenly get the urge to see what new and exciting games have come out. It must be a ingrained habit for procrastination from going to college. There's no better way to procrastinate than geeking out with a good game...unless it's cleaning house.

So earlier this week I bought World of Warcraft because I kept hearing such good things about it. I confess I was quite a D&D/Middle Earth geek as a kid, and I still secretly enjoy that whole genre of game. The great thing about WoW is that it's basically online-digital-real-time D&D. Sure there are differences, but it scratches that same mental/emotional itch. Now my days of working late hours and optimizing my network and file systems are past, it's all about running around in the forest and bashing creatures on the head.

Tea @ SFMOMA

Pretty Soup for Pretty Meredith. Also tasty.

Graffiti on Muni stop in the Mission

Ferns at new De Young

Japanese Tea Garden

Hotel Room

Hotel Hallway

Building in shadow

An alley of mirth

B is for fabric

Studio of Andrew ____, edit: Andrew Schoultz, thanks Meredith!

Building

Pretty Meredith.

San Francisco Love Vacation

A couple of weeks ago, Meredith's ex-mother-in-law watched M's kids for the weekend so we could get out of town. We both needed a break from our routine, and a mini-vacation was the perfect thing. Since we didn't have much time and Meredith has just begun exploring San Francisco, we thought it would make lots of sense to get a hotel room in the city and wander around all weekend.

Photos first then details.

Birthday Addendum

It's looking like a lot of people will be busy on the 27th. So I'm thinking about switching to a daytime bbq/arbitrary gift day to the 28th (Sunday). RSVP me whether or not you can make it on Sunday. That is all.

To Quote Ice Cube

Today was a good day.

It's funny, I stayed up far too late last night, there was another accident on the curve just above our house, and subsequently slept in 'til 10:30. Which meant I woke up with a blinding headache. I feared it was going to be another wasted Saturday, where I didn't get anything meaningful done, but also didn't do anything fun. As it happened I was wrong on both counts!

I got up and went to the Recyclery in San Rafael (well, first I got coffee..) and looked for parts for my folding bike. Didn't find much, but that's best because I don't have much money to spend at the moment. There are some really nice bikes down there right now for small people. I almost bought M another bike cause it was so rad, but she loves her bike and it would be presumptious of me to diffuse that love.

When I got home I spent a couple of hours working on my folder. Lemme back up a bit. Last night I spent almost all evening (after working 11 hours) fixing up my covy of bikes which have been neglected for too long. I had run into some problems with the folder that had vexed me all evening. Today I solved all those problems in no time at all! A little application of a torch and voila, it is done. Then I spruced up the paint some to stop the rust until I have a better sense of what it's aesthetic should be. After that I ate some lunch and took some aspirin (head still pounding), and started cleaning. Before I knew it, it's 9pm and my house is cleaner than it's been in...well since a girl lived here. Laurel's mom (my landlord) stopped by in the afternoon and we had a long pleasant talk about the house, my plans for moving (which she was very supportive about, something I was uneasy about bringing up), and life in general.

Also I found a good cheap source for some anime I've been wanting.

Also tomorrow is Sunday, which means Meredith-Day. Yay! I forsee a nice bike ride along the Sebastopol bike path, then lunch, then lounging around watching anime, maybe a nap and tea.

I hope you had as good of a day as me.

Don't trust me.

As of 8/26 I'll be 30. I'm having a rare celebration of my birthday that Saturday, come by the house, we'll bbq, drink beer, etc. Put it on your calendar. Presents are REALLY not neccesary as I'm trying to get rid of stuff (exceptions of course are the center-cockpit sloop from below, or anything from my amazon wish list) Just come by and eat food. It'll be good to see you.

Not so much news, as a formal announcement of rumor.

I'm moving. Starting Nov 1st I'll be working at our company's nacent east bay office in downtown Oakland. I hope to be living in SF by January 1st, but we'll see. I have a lot of sorting, tossing, selling of my crap to do first. Also, I'm thinning the vehicle herd. As I'll be commuting for the first 2 months (maybe longer) I need a reliable, confortable vehicle to get from Petaluma to Oakland in. I'd rather not go for a honda (theft problems), but I'm open to suggestion, btw thanks Laurel for the 2CV idea, but probably not so good on the freeway.

I want this boat. Unfortunately it's for sale, which means I actually might get it.

River Cat coming back. It's wake was really fun to ride in Edith.

The River Cat.

Torque is almost twisting this boat apart. That's a big propeller.

Work Barge. Nice Sky

Swamping out the photo bilge.

I've got lots of photos piling up that I've been meaning to post. I guess I'll post them by subject. First up: Petaluma River, and it's working boats.

Boats, ships, and the 1st world vs the third

So I'm listening to this book The Outlaw Sea, and while I cannot highly reccomend it, it enlightened me on a question I've been pondering for awhile: Where do all the old ships go? They used to go to places like Texas, Alabama, and Louisiana to get cut up. With rising wages, better jobs, and increased environmental regulation ship breaking has moved onto cheaper shores. First South Korea and Taiwan but now India, Pakistan, Bangladesh. The book talks about Alang, India. A village that fronts on the Arabian Sea that experiences extreme tides. At the highest of the high tides (every two weeks) they plow ships onto the sand at full power and wait for the waters to recede. Then they cut them up.

The images of this are stunning. Imagine miles of beach/mudflats with the world's ships lined up in various stages of dissection. It's beautiful if not for the horrendous pollution, danger, and death that this industry causes. There is little to no thought for worker safety or protecting the environment. Greenpeace has become very vocal about this and has begun patrolling, infiltrating and documenting the worst of it, but sadly I think this strikes at the wrong target.

The worker safety is something that should be addressed, but the pollution is more our fault then India's in my mind. There are laws on the books that mandate before selling for scrap that all the toxic materials are to be removed and disposed of properly. Of course this is almost never done and there's no enforcement. So the Indians are left to clean up, or not clean up the mess. With margins so thin on ship-breaking if they impose to many expensive regulations, practices the whole industry will simply move somewhere else, as it has twice before because there is no real global oversight.

I'm stumped on the right solution. Something that is less patronizing than greenpeace's approach, but something that does solve the problem and not merely let a bad situation continue because peoples live depend on it...

At any rate the photos are stunning. Do an image search on Alang.

Camping

I went camping this weekend up to Grover's Hot Springs in the eastern sierra. Man was it hot. Super hot. The drive both there and back was pretty gruelling, 105 degress, traffic and no A/C. Thanks to Andy and Laurel for letting me hitch a ride. I got to see a bunch of my friends and we mostly sat around and talked. Some played with Dan & Julies wonderful baby, who was probably the mellowest person there.

The best part, other than seeing my friends, was stacking rocks. I love stacking rocks. Laurel had a great idea that I won't post here, because she might actually do it and I don't want it getting poached.

But my idea was to write a grant to get big rock boxes installed in airports, kinda like sand boxes, but with river rocks. So you could pass the time waiting for your delayed flight by stacking rocks. Of course they'd probably have to be small so that no one got hurt lifting heavy rocks or having fingers and toes smashed but, even so, I discovered that stacking pebbles is also fun, if not quite as grandiose.

What's that behind you? the A-Team!

'Thunder, thunder, thundercats, Ho! Thundercats are on the move, Thundercats are loose. Feel the magic, hear the roar, Thundercats are loose. Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thundercats!

There's a voice that keeps on calling me. Down the road, that's where I'll always be. Every stop I make, I make a new friend. Can't stay for long, just turn around and I'm gone again. Maybe tomorrow, I'll want to settle down, Until tomorrow, I'll just keep moving on.

Ten years ago a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem and no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-team.'

All of a sudden after years of silence, A-team references are popping up like zombies. The above 3 paragraphs came from a random text generator I wanted to use for formating instead of the standard lorum ipsum stuff. Now I feel like I'm going to see Mr. T in the produce section....

It's like Tex-mex but with muppets

So fusion is all about taking complimentary flavors and smashing them together to get something great. That's almost what we have for the next great idea. I seem to remember this came to us during a very hot August while putting a roof on.

Title: D stands for Do the Right Thing
Plot: Have you seen Do the Right Thing? Have you seen Sesame Street? Ok you can see how the thing writes itself. It's just a matter of mapping the characters correctly.

Cast:
Mookie: Big Bird
Buggin Out: Oscar
Radio Raheem: Snuffleupagus (sp?)
Sal: Hooper (yeah I know he's dead, what about what his name, one of the human guys..yeah him)
Da Mayor: the Count? I can't remember who we had cast for Da Mayor...Ben do you know?
Bedford-Stuvesant: Sesame Street
Racial Tension between black and white? Speciel tension between muppet and human....

Finer moments:
racial epithet scene based on physical difference between muppets and humans.
Watching Big Bird throw a garbage can through a window.
oo! oo! maybe we can do a little muppet show cross over and have the old balcony guys and the swedish chef as the old guys who sit on the corner all day.

If they made Herbie...

Some of my best ideas are collaborative, but the secret in getting the credit for collaborative ideas (DNA discovery?) is to be louder and more obnoxious than your partner. Ben Saari and I came up with two movie ideas while we were carpentering together, and we even had some ideas about casting. Let's take a look at what some fresh minds, unsullied by hollywood glitz or decent agents can create.

Title: A-Team 2000 (working title, may need to be updated...)
Plot: In this particular time-stream (Trek fans will know what I mean) the A-Team was a real unit, and now 20 years after they went into hiding, Hollywood digs them out and starts filming a movie 'based on the true story.' Except the meglomaniacal dictator (who hits women, and maybe has a bad scar on his cheek) that was overthrown by the A-Team is out for revenge, and sends his hapless goons (lots of black sweaters and vans) to kidnap them and bring them back to his caribbian fortress. His goons, being goons, kidnap the wrong A-Team, they kidnap the actors who were hired to play the A-Team! Which means the 'real' A-Team has to come out of retirement, storm the island and save the actors, with plenty of explosions, jeeps rolling over in mid air, choppers flying over palm trees. It's perfect. Maybe we can even get a couple of Cigarette boats in there for some Miami Vice flavor (can someone get in touch with Phillip Michael Thomas? It'd be a great cameo, and face it, he needs the work).

Cast:
Actors playing themselves, as actors portraying the A-Team:
B.A. Barracas: Ving Rhaimes (oo! oo! we could remake the A-Team van into a Hummer!)
Face: George Clooney (too old? Ok, fine how about Christian Bale?)
Madman Murdock: Jim Carrey, come on, who else?

And of course, Mr. T, George Peppard and those other guys playing the 'real' ATeam....

Oh my god, it's brilliant!

First one, is my latest. I think it's great, but probably the trickiest to accomplish. Check it out: Cross breed an avacodo with peppers. The result will be a spicy avocado which I call "Lavacado" (remember, 42' Sloop, berth in SF). Not only is the name cool, but you won't need so many peppers when you make guacomole!

Lavacado folks, now go and spread the word.

Great ideas

Sometimes I think I'm in the wrong business, I mean, I'm a great idea man. Not so good with the details or the follow through, but for ideas? I'm good. I've been hoarding my best for a while, but I realize that I will probably never do much with any of them, so in the spirit of giving I will share and if anyone actually gets these things off the ground, give me a little credit and send me a postcard. If you make millions off of my idea, I'd like a 41' Center cockpit sloop and a live aboard berth near downtown SF. Thanks.

Wheee..summer time

A little reccomendation: Go find a copy of Tom Waits "Step Right Up." and find a fun car to drive (say, like a 2002) through west county at dusk. It does wonders to blow away the stress. Bonus points for sunroofs or convertables.

PS. Search and Destroy by Iggy and the Stooges is also acceptable.

Wow part deux: Wabi-sabi

Meredith's art is hanging in a show that openned last night: Wabi-Sabi at the O'hanlon Center in Mill Valley. This is her first exhibition of her new encaustic work. Go check it out!

Wow.

This morning when I started up my mac, it took me to the apple home page, and lo and behold there was Shannon Ferguson's band Longwave being the featured iTunes Ad! Funny thing this life...

Fruit

Ok I did it. I"ve been whinging on for months about wanting a new mac laptop, and yesterday I finally bought one. I haven't owned a fruit-box since the Macintosh Plus (and I was jealous of those who had the super-cool external 20 Mb hard drives, which were the size of phone books). Since then it's been a long string of windows and linux boxes, including my poor ailing HP laptop which took a beating and got me through college, but as it's now missing keys, overheating and the fan makes a terrible grinding/flapping noise which was really embarrassing in class. I've been following the press and the blogs about OS X, and it's latest incarnation Tiger, but every time I sat down to work on one I couldn't figure out the GUI, so I'd just admire from afar. But when it came down to spend some serious money on a new laptop I really wanted it to be a mac.

So how's 'The Switch?' my geekier friends may be asking..

I got to say, I like it. In fact I love it. It took a few hours to retrain my hands, but now that I've been running this thing since about noon yesterday almost nothing feels odd or out of place. It's certainly easier to pickup than windows > linux. The secret is in the built in mega-search tool Spotlight, and a little 3rd party app called Quicksilver. Quicksilver is simply the best thing to come along to laptop computing since wifi. The website doesn't do it justice. It's a search tool/launcher that learns how you use your machine. For example, I'm writing this blog, but say I want iTunes open, all i have to do is hit 4 keys and iTunes is open. No mouse hunting, or drilling down application menus. Just four keys. And it works with all the stuff on my machine. Apps, documents, commands, whatever. It's simply brilliant and I haven't even begun to use it's capabilities yet. It does more than I can even comprehend at the moment, but if you have a mac, get quicksilver right now. You'll be amazed.

So. I'll pause on the mac-fanatic tip for a moment and post some photos that have been piling up.

Paella. Super tasty.

Friday fun

Today was our company Open House party. We moved into a new place on 4/15 and finally got around to having a grand openning. And what an openning. We had Paella for 100 by Gerard the Paella Guy. Cheese from Cowgirl Creamery (I highly reccomend the Red Hawk on baguette with figs). I'm sooo stuffed, and because we didn't have enough people show up, I have tons of leftovers (hooray!).

And (here's the best part) I get all weekend off. I am a happy happy camper.