Month: May 2005

A confession from a weird European: when I ride my bike for a longer distance, I will stop at a nude hangout and rest while my clothes are drying out. I did it at Baker Beach in the City today, and obviously it was not only my personal idea.

The currents are strong, and the waves still hit the beach halfway to the rocks. That means there was no real estate to be had, and I had to sit in the midst of testosterone laden muscle men. It felt a little uncomfy, naked as I was, still with the comments of one of my friends in my ears.

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I look out the window, and there is nothing but sunshine and blue sky. I have been waiting for this for a long time, holed up in my room, thinking of other things to do, and not realizing how much the sun changes life.

San Francisco has four seasons: two long ones, which are called the Rainy and the Foggy, and two short ones, which we call Long Sunny Days and Short Sunny Days. Right now, we are in Long Sunny Days, and it shows. The fog banks off the short of the ocean have not rolled in yet, but we are getting close to the solstice. The days are soaking in the radiation and the heat, and we are enjoying our life.

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Ok, so I am not the movie buff. When choosing between the original and the remake, I tend to prefer the remake, in the hope that thirty years of time have improved the storytelling. At least, thirty years are enough to change our attitudes about timing, script, and nudity a little.

So I chose the remake of "The Manchurian Candidate". I loved thinking of Meryl Streep in the role of a domineering and successful mother and senator. And you can’t beat Denzel Washington in the role of the good-but-doomed-to-fail character.

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I shuddered at the thought of having to watch a movie about Oscar Wilde. I knew him as the nemesis of my youth: my high school teacher made us memorize all of "The Canterville Ghost". I still remember the opening page to this day.

Then of course I always appreciated the wit that suffuses his writing. He succeeds in being superficial, deep, amusing, and cynical all in one sentence.  What do you do with quips like: "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance?"

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Amazing what kind of world this little city of San Francisco has become! When I was a kid, the only thing I knew about it was the Golden Gate bridge, the earthquakes, the steep streets, and of course, "The Streets of San Francisco".

I grew older, and it became the city of flower power and gay power. Then hi-tech started picking up, and San Francisco became a suburb of Silicon Valley, dominated by such beacons of civilization as Cupertino (Apple), Sunnyvale (Atari), Palo Alto (PARC), etc.

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Look at you – so you watch German movies in the original, and they are no better than in the English version. Isn’t that really sad, though?

Mostly Martha is about a German chef that inherits a child from her deceased sister. The story revolves around this burgeoning relationship and mostly deals with the conflicts engendered by the conflict between child rearing and a full time job at odd hours.

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How funny. So my first trip to the States was to Honolulu. I landed first in Dallas, then moved on to Honolulu, and stayed there for a week. I actually needed only the first ten minutes. That’s how long it took for me to know I had to move there. Amazing? (more…)

Ok, that was not fair!

I was expecting something in the lines of Shrek – a cutesy animated movie with a lot of good humor and some great voice acting along the way. I was expecting Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, and Eddie Murphy. Sorta hoping it wouldn’t degrade from what it had been.

Whaddayaknow? Instead of doing the obvious, the troupe bested itself! That’s not fair! I was dazzled by a host of new brand name actors throwing themselves in a very recognizable manner into the mix. I saw a much more adult brand of humor with references strewn in left and right, and all of a sudden Shrek 2 was not a children’s movie any more at all.

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There was a time when I wouldn’t walk out of the house without my MobilePro 770. An instant-on Windows CE device, it had the right form factor to allow me to type as fast as I could think. That’s something no other device has ever given to me, an uncramped keyboard, light weight (under 2 pounds), immediate startup. I was even willing to live with the quite quirky operating system.

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Still getting used to Mambo, but really excited about it. I am actually so happy with the new site, I moved the homepage over via Javascript. If you go to the landing page, http://diva.homelinux.org will redirect you to this Mambo site.