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Wild Horses of Mongolia with Julia Roberts:
I am so impressed with Julia Roberts, I had her totally pegged wrong. Mind you, I can't stand Julia Roberts, the actress. I wanted to see Mona Lisa Smile because Maggie Gyllenhaal *drool* was in it (not to mention Kirsten Dunst *faint*), but then ended up not seeing it because Julia Roberts so supremely annoys me on screen. But I just saw a PBS documentary with Julia Roberts in Mongolia of all places, and it took me a while to realize it was her, and even longer to convince myself it was her until she finally mentioned someone calling her "Julia".

It's hard to imagine a pampered Hollywood big shot star being subjected to the conditions she was, and she handled herself without being jaded, or trying to be witty and flippant (read obnoxious) because of her celebrity. She was very down-to-earth and right in the moment with an open heart and open mind. She was nonplussed upon realizing peeing and pooping take place wherever on the Mongolian plains, she got right into milking mares without embarassing all of America by being squeamish and incompetent, and she was matter-of-fact when she got horse poop on her jeans. It was as unglamorous a gig as any agent could have dished out for her. It was harsh. The living conditions and the climate were all harsh. It wasn't some exotic or cool cred-op to put on her resume.

I felt it showed a lot about her character, I think it was genuine. It wasn't a dare or a self-imposed challenge that she was seeing if she could make it through. She wasn't making the best of a temporary, inconvenient career situation, trying to prove that she could still be down with the ordinary people. She was charming, but only to the people, not to the camera. When it was just her and the camera, she was pretty plain, almost monotone. She genuinely loves horses, it showed that she genuinely loves children, and it looked like she really put herself into the situation without constantly letting it be known that she was an outsider. I think this was the first time I've seen her and thought of her as beautiful.

Of course, just by writing about her in this way shows the different standard to which we contemplate our celebrities. If it was just some ordinary person, I might write about the horses, or Mongolia, but no, here I am writing about Julia Roberts.

I caught a bargain matinee of Garden State today. It had a nice tone to it, I came out with a bland feelgood, but ultimately I was disappointed. It lacked depth and challenge that I thought the characters implied and deserved. It seems the movie was influenced by the likes of "American Beauty" and "Donnie Darko", films with explorative indie material or feels, but having crossover mainstream distribution and appeal. But where "American Beauty" was brilliant, and "Donnie Darko", an after-the-fact success, was incredible except for the time concept which is a fatal flaw in my book, "Garden State" just didn't deliver anything except heart candy.

Perhaps I'm looking too deeply in the metaphor of a character returning home from the City of Angels (leaving a cabinet full of anti-depressants) to the clarity of the Garden (of Eden) State. But in a way that's what the main character did - he ended up back in the Garden, a veritable Heaven of loosely strung together scenarios taking place over four days, all a bit too niiiice, too perfect, too sweet. If you want a good movie story, you need a snake, and there is none. The mother? No, she's dead. The Father? There's no prodigal son story here, the tension between son and father is sub sub-story and the resolution is a total copout. You have a girl with a serious mental impairment, really?! Forget it, there's no snake in this Garden, so much for that thesis.

It was all too contrived, and the characters too one-dimensional for the amount of depth implied they have. The father was a wasted symbol. The motorcycle with the unused sidecar was a wasted symbol - should have been tied to the abyss, something missing or vacant, ie - mom. The abyss was a wasted symbol, thank god, because if it was exploited it would've been obvious. The jobs were wasted symbols. The blending in with the wall was such a waste of a metaphor that it should be a crime since the visual was so good that it was almost a reason to see the film in the first place.

And what the fuck was up with that hotel scene? If that wasn't the very definition of gratuitous sex, I don't know what is. Was it to show how fucked up everything is? No, because nothing is really fucked up, despite the principals' insistence that they are. Whatever the movie did well, it's been done better in other films, and ultimately I just felt manipulated through a cheap string of manufactured moments.

Review/Lovefest: Talking Heads - "The Name of This Band is Talking Heads"
I couldn't wait to get the long-neglected, patiently-awaited, eagerly-anticipated CD release of Talking Heads' "The Name of This Band is Talking Heads" into my grubby little hands. Almost 20 years after the rest of the Talking Heads catalog was committed to CD, I want to say it was worth the wait for all the extra bells and whistles, but why did it take 20 years to get this thing released?!

So far, Talking Heads, with the exception of the vastly expanded and re-mastered re-release of "Stop Making Sense", has not played the silly game, a la David Bowie, of re-releasing their entire catalog every few years, depending on who happens to own the catalog at the time and whatever new technology has drifted down the brook. The first generation Talking Heads releases are still the same releases being sold in stores, often with "Super Saver" stickers on them (check the alliteration, dude). Truth to tell, if what they've done with "TNOTBITH", as it's affectionately called in amateur reviews, is any indication of the potential of what can be done, then their catalogue really needs to be re-mastered and re-released.

In many fan circles, the Tnotbith LP was the live Talking Heads album to have, even over "Stop Making Sense". It traced the band's development and captured subtleties and nuances of their live performances that were all but wiped out in the in-your-face, meticulously staged performances of "Stop Making Sense". Fans pounded their chests and wailed to the night sky, begging divinity for an answer why Tnotbith would not be released on CD.

Finally here, it contains over an hour more material than on the LP. The original 1977-1979 LP of the double-album set actually didn't include any representative performances from 1978. Those have been added on the CD, nestled between the 1977 tracks and 1979 tracks, indicating that Rhino records really put some thought and effort into this. There are also more tracks from 1977 and 1979.

Rhino completely overhauled the 1980-1981 LP for the CD and pieced together the entire setlist from the performances covering those years and placed them in setlist order! Very impressive. For the purists, they included in the liner notes, the track order to program into your CD player if you want to listen to the tracks in the original LP order.

There is a caveat to this release, though. All the extras create a better documentary of Talking Heads live, but it is not necessarily a better album than the LP, on which they were limited by vinyl space and had to choose carefully what went on it. The LP was a concise presentation and had the best performances. The CDs meander and include performances that are a bit lackluster, and in the case of the 1980-1981 CD opener, "Psycho Killer", they even kept in an obvious mistake with one of the guitarists going to the wrong chord in the first chorus.

For a quirky little art-geek outfit, Talking Heads were an artistic powerhouse in the late-70's/early 80's. You can trace their development album to album, each one distinct, each one reaching further until their peak with the "Stop Making Sense" movie. I'm finding I didn't really appreciate them back in the 80's, even though they were one of few 80's acts that I actually liked. Tnotbith has me pulling out my brothers' "Fear of Music" and "More Songs About Buildings and Food" LPs, and I'm being blown away by the creativity and innovation. And Tina Weymouth came up with some of the most incredible "new wave" bass lines, the engineers always did right by her by bumping her forward in the mixes. I don't care if she dressed terribly and danced funny - it was the 80's, everyone dressed terribly and danced funny - and it's not her clothes playing the bass anyway. And she was still cute as a button.

Mark Morford is one of the reasons that SFGate.com is still my opening page on my browser, even having moved from San Francisco. Even if he did call me "bitter and defeatist" in this article. I do have a streak of anarchy in me, and part of me does wonder how badly W. Bush can destroy the U.S., which I'm confident he will continue to do, in all the ways Morford mentions in the article, if re-elected.

Come on, be honest. How many non-Floridians went "aw darn" when Hurricane Ivan cleared west of Florida, avoiding a third direct hit on the nation's wang in a month? People suffer, but they chose to live in a hurricane zone, and they'll survive. Or not. And if they don't, surrounding life will go on. At least it's warm there.

How much suffering does there have to be until there's some awakening, some enlightenment on what's important in life and what our priorities should be? Or just how we act and react in the face of our own adversity. Even someone else's. Alright, I do sympathize for the hurricane victims, and my heart goes out when I see the news reports of people evacuating or who've lost their homes. But another four years of W would require more empathy for the country than I could muster. So let him drill America into the ground until he hits oil. He just might herald the end of America's global corporate reign. Besides, we haven't had a chance to impeach him, which I'm predicting will happen if he's given a second term.

People are looking at me sideways now wondering if I'm secretly going to vote for Bush.

Hardy
Har
Har.

Ya gotta make do with what ya got. I bemoaned the lack of hills to climb in the area. The hardest climbs in the area are probably the equivalent of riding up from Sausalito to the Golden Gate Bridge. Nothing even matches the East Bay Hills which were no more than a thousand feet of climbing. I asked someone at a bike store about climbs and apparently they do these "sprinter's climbs" that are readily available and they do them over and over again, but it's just not the same as steadily hammering up Mt. Diablo or Mt. Tamalpais or the Santa Cruz range mile after mile. There are no climbs here that really test you.

What I have noticed is that even though my rides barely break 30 miles, they are faster than in the Bay Area because of the lack of climbs. Rides averaging 18mph were raising my eyebrows, since in the Bay Area they averaged 15mph. So I thought OK, I like climbing but there are no climbs here, I suck at sprinting, might as well work on that.

Mind you, riding in New Jersey sucks because of the car culture, but my parents live in a cozy, quiet suburban town, so if I don't leave the town limits, it's pretty peaceful. But it's not a big town. From the far end of the north side of town to the middle is less than 2 and a half miles, and it's not even a mile wide, but there are some natural loops formed by the roads, pretty much all flat. So I went out and just rode these loops over and over again for 20 miles, averaging almost 19mph. It was pretty nifty, if a bit . . . repetitive. Whatever. I think I did the larger loop three times and the smaller loop six times.

It felt kinda "time trial"-ish, but I wasn't even really pushing it. I just went out for a casual ride wearing street clothes and no PowerBars or water. It was cool because I can do that sort of thing without any preparation, or I can prepare and really push it if I want to, or I can just do it really casually and enjoy the rich, conservative, Republican, suburban peace. Yay me.

Alright, the jury's back on the new Rilo Kiley. If I could go back and genetically re-engineer myself to have 16 hands, I'd give the new album 16 thumbs up. Go buy it now.

Last Monday, I spontaneously decided to double sitting for a week; sort of a sad excuse for a week-intensive that many monasteries undergo every month. To my defense, the type of intensive practice undergone at monasteries is really only possible at my (low) level with the support of a surrounding community. Last Monday, I wasn't able to sit in the morning, so that night I decided to do two sessions to make it up, and that led to deciding to do four 45-minute sessions every day for a week. They consisted of one immediately after waking up, one after lunch in the afternoon, and two at night, separated by a shower or a bite to eat.

The week ended this morning with a single hour and a half sitting, with a pause after 45 minutes to light another stick of incense. Very weirdly, there was a breeze blowing through the window, often threatening to blow out the candle that was lit, but it wasn't until literally right after the session was over that the wind finally blew out the candle cold. Good job.

I know I didn't have much good to say about "Zen Mountain Monastery" in "Mt. Tremper", NY, where I did a "weeklong residential visit" last month (still angling for Google hits), the least of which was their use and mispronounciation of the word sesshin for the weeklong intensive. Sesshin, a Japanese word, is not a specialized, untranslatable word. If they call it "weeklong intensive" or "monthly retreat", you get more of an idea of what it is than if you call it sesshin when you're not Japanese or Japanese-speaking. So to me, it seems they only use it for the exotic factor, a poor reason to practice or train in Buddhism. Even so, many of them (mis)pronounced it like "session". If they're going to mispronounce it closely to an English word, a word which actually would work as a specialized English term to refer to the retreat, they might as well re-term it "Session" (you just have to trust me that they weren't doing this already, they were clearly mispronouncing sesshin, not pronouncing "session").

But I think it was my visit there that did make me think of doing my own version of a weeklong intensive at all. And the work there also has gotten me to make sure I do some sort of housekeeping every day around my parents' house. Nothing major, just 15-30 minutes, sweep out the garage, clean bathrooms at least once a week, anything that can be an assigned task that I focus my mind on.

I like a lot of the theory behind the practice at that monastery, I just wasn't thrilled at the implementation. Along with sitting and work practice, other keystones of their practice include art practice and body practice among other things. I wasn't thrilled that their focus was on exotic Oriental things like Chinese calligraphy and martial arts. But it has made me make sure that I've got music somewhere in my daily schedule as well as riding. It doesn't matter what, really, as long as it involves mindfulness practice.

More Adventurous:
I got a bug in me after I found out that Rilo Kiley's new album was released several weeks ago. I ended up hopping on my bike and riding to Best Buy in New York, on 86th and Lexington. Going there I took the scenic route, 12 miles, but took a more direct route back, 9 miles. Contrast that to where I lived in San Francisco, where a ride to Best Buy was 3/4 of a mile, and are you kidding me? I wouldn't even consider buying a CD at Best Buy. I'd ride the 3 and a half miles to Amoeba. Needless to say, there is nothing like Amoeba around here.

It's a pretty good album. It's par for them. That is to say the best material on the album is probably the best new material I'll hear this year, but the lesser material, like on their previous albums, just don't hit the mark. It remains to be seen whether I'll like this album better than "Execution of All Things". Blake is singing even less on this album, so apparently they haven't found my online advice that they do something ballsy like having an album on which Blake does all the lead vocals. This is despite my loving Jenny Lewis's voice, and Jenny Lewis, and wanting to have like a million of her babies.

So that's too bad. It's the total opposite of Rainer Maria, where the less Kyle Fischer sings, the better. Dude, a cracking voice isn't "character". But I can't cut on peoples' vocal abilities. My vocal range is about five notes, but I end up singing around 27 notes once you factor in the unintended microtones.

Nine miles to Best Buy on the East Side! That's probably closer than either of the Best Buys in Paramus, and is a safer ride since New Jersey drivers are too confounded seeing "bi-cycles" to avoid hitting them or having near-misses. It's just that weird psychological barrier thinking that riding into Manhattan is a big deal and so far. Central Park was closed to cars today, and that made it super nice riding in the park. In general, Central Park is too overwhelming for me to like more than Golden Gate Park, but when there's no car traffic, it's dreamy.

The route I took home was a new one, riding to the north end of Central Park and getting on St. Nicholas which is bike laned all the way up until it hits Broadway right near where I get off anyway to cross the GW Bridge. It's a great route if you don't mind riding through Harlem and Spanish Harlem, and I'm not sure I don't. The bike lanes are almost meaningless, because I don't know what sort of business goes on in those areas, but cars are standing in the bike lane for pretty much the entire stretch.

("don't know what sort of business goes on in those areas", indeed!)

In God we Trust to...
There's a bank in the area called "Wachovia Bank". Whenever I see the bank, I think "just wachova mah money!" I found out today it's pronounced 'wa ko via'. Darn.

And damn it if both Pitchfork and Tiny Mix Tapes let me down in having absolutely zero mention of the new Rilo Kiley album. Haven't they earned their indie-darling status? I can't even get into shows without buying in advance. And me just having put in an Amazon order :(

Desperate Days:
I watched the Tom Brokaw special on that guy whose hand got caught by a boulder while hiking last year and had to amputate his own arm to survive. I remember that was a pretty unbelievable news item. How psychologically traumatic is that to cut off your own arm? What does it take to envision and execute that kind of separation between the self and a part of the self? In the special, he goes back to where it all happened and basically relives it day by day for Brokaw. I admit it, I get emotional about any aspect of the human experience. I'll get teary over chocolate ice cream if you can relate it to the uniqueness of the human experience. Existence itself, to me, seems such a miracle, a second of which is taken for granted is a shame.

What Aron Ralston went through and did was way out on the fringe of human experience. Even watching him describe what he went through in moment to moment detail, it's impossible to know what he went through. Like it's impossible to empathize what a holocaust victim or survivor went through. Like it's impossible to artificially recreate what it feels like when you hear that someone you know has died. There are extreme human experiences that people get placed in and have to chute through. Aron Ralston wasn't just placed in a situation, but he had to proactively act within it and cut his own arm off!

The elements in his story are just mind-boggling. It was so random, fate so fickle. I kick myself for something as small as losing my keys. Just as small is the decision to go hiking, to go climbing on rocks. What if losing my keys led to agonizing for days whether to cut off my arm with a dull knife, necessitating breaking both wrist bones, or not? It's unthinkable. I lose my keys, I'll look for them, eventually I'll find them, or I won't and I'll replace them. Even when I go out on my bike, I'm constantly hyper-aware of the possibility of getting hit by a car. How about go out on my bike and ending up having to decide to cut my arm off?

I would have taken the easy way out and died in his situation, and missed out on the experience of a lifetime. He said something about rather losing his arm and surviving than not having that experience at all. He's right.

Holy crap! Talking Heads' other live album, The Name of This Band is Talking Heads has finally been released on CD! I always say it's better than "Stop Making Sense", but then I think for a second and think, 'what the hell am I saying?'. There's no comparison, really, since they are completely different, but the omission of this album from their CD releases has always been inexplicable and warrants immediate, mindless, guiltless purchase. Yay to Pitchfork for giving it a good review.

I think it's time to change the title of this blog, as I'm not watching much of anything these days, and writing even less about what I'm watching to fall under the theme of that Peter Gabriel phrase. Time to peruse PG CD's for another fitting quote.

Although now that I no longer live in San Francisco where NBC is a premium channel, I can finally agree with Delphine on at least one thing, which is that Conan O'Brien is fucking hilarious! He has really come into his own with his own brand of humor. The little skits are still dumb as dubya, but he himself is righteously funny.

stalking Calgarians:
I *love* Calgary fotologgers. I swear they're my absolute favorites! There's a bunch of them all like linked together (at least they used to be), and they're just so hilarious, disaffected, self-deprecating, beautiful, and punk:
Ashley
Brittany.

And that Canadian wit - you can never tell if they're being sarcastic or not. Even they can't tell if they're being sarcastic or not.

I wanna move to Canada.

Pan American:
Man, I finally made it to a show and didn't back out of going, despite being mad expensive and being located way out in Brooklyn. I figured this might be the last time I'd get to see a Panorama Steel Orchestra competition, but that shouldn't have stopped me from backing out. After all, I backed out of seeing the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra several months ago in San Francisco, even though getting another chance to see them is slim to nil.

So, a little background: the Panorama event is annually held on Labor Day weekend. The Brooklyn Panorama, I think, is second in the world only to the Trinidad Panorama, which is where steel drumming originated. I think the Trinidad Panorama is mostly a Trini event and held during Carnaval in February. The Brooklyn event is centered around the West Indian American Labor Day Carnival, and so has more of a diaspora feel to it. The main figures and the majority might be Trinidadian, but it's a Brooklyn West Indian community event.

Another reason why I didn't think I'd end up going is because I couldn't ride there since the Port Authority bastards close the GW Bridge catwalk from midnight to six in the morning. So I had to ride to the bridge, take a bus across and then take two subways to get to the Brooklyn Museum of Art where Panorama was being held. Mind you, I had to repeat this for the return.

Even after I got there I had qualms about dishing out the $30 to get in, but as I was loitering indecisive by the ticket booth, even though I knew I'd end up paying it, someone came up selling tickets for $25 (he got it in advance), and then I didn't hesitate and went in.

Panorama was so cool, I can't begin to tell you. I was in a little 15-piece ensemble in college, but that was nothing compared to this. Panorama regulations were that bands had to be between 45 and 100 members, and most of the bands that I saw were closer to the 100 than the 45. With 13 bands total, there were pans everywhere, and for easy mobility, most of them were mounted on wheeled racks (nice racks!). In the college band I was in, we had 3 leads (tenors), 3 seconds, 2 cellos, and one set of 6-bass. These orchestras had pans that I didn't know what they were, but I assume they were pans that I'd heard about and never seen, including quads, double-tenors, double seconds, 4-cellos, guitars, engine rooms (rhythm sections) that made our college band look like we didn't have one, and, of course, the awesome 9-basses.

When I first got there, the first of 13 orchestras, Pan Tonic, were off the stage running through their piece, and that was spectacular because the crowd was milling right up around them. The sound was enormous, there was no director or conductor, and there were no lights. It was like the song was counted off and right away 100 people were instantly in a collective groove. The pan player right in front of me had no idea what was happening on the other side of the band, but they were all spot on. That was a cool thing about Panorama, because between orchestras playing their sets on stage, some orchestras setting up for their turns would run through their pieces and that gave people a close-up look at what was going on.

Out of 13 orchestras, I only saw five (four on stage), and three of those bands played the same song, called "War 2004". That song was apparently a favorite this year as two other bands played it after I left. It's OK for orchestras to play the same song because of different arrangements and nuances, but also because Panorama pieces are maximum 10 minutes long, and quite honestly, when you have the bombast of a hundred piece, essentially percussion, ensemble, there's really not a chance of one thing getting so stuck into your head that you're thinking, "oh, it's that song again?!". You just get caught up in the infectious groove of the engine rooms and boogie around the grounds.

It did suck that I had to leave so early, around 11:20, to make sure I caught the last bus back across the GW Bridge. Taking the subway to Brooklyn in the afternoon wasn't so bad because the 'A' train is an express train through most of Manhattan. But at night, it turns into a local train and it goes excrutiatingly slow, stopping every 10 blocks. My stop was 175th St., and by 135th St. you start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. You count only 4 more stops to go, but then they had to stick a stop on 163rd St. between the 155th and 168th St. stops, and I always forget about that one. That extra stop always makes my skin crawl. Insult to injury I tell ya.

I missed the 12:40 A.M. bus by four minutes, and took the very last bus across the bridge at 1:10.

One of the awesome mounted 9-basses of Adlib Steel Orchestra. Five mounted and four on the floor, baby. Each bass pan has 3 notes. This is during their rehearsal run in the parking lot before they went on.


Pan Tonic during their rehearsal run before taking the stage. That's a cellist on the right. In the back is part of the melody section (we called it the "front line"), comprised of tenors (leads), double tenors and seconds. And that dude is drinking a Sprite.


Back view of the engine room of Pan Phonic in the parking lot. Aside from the drumkit, which isn't seen here, the engine room percussion includes congas, various cowbells and bells, you can see a guy with a shaker on the platform, and in the foreground here is the most notable component of the engine room, a row of brake drum (from cars) players. They make a terrific loud clanging and are used more to keep time (16th notes) than for rhythms.


Set of 6-basses in their mounts. Behind it is a set of 9-basses in a different configuration.

Sunset from my room at my parents' house.

I tried to go to Manhattan today to see "Metallica: Some Kind of Monster", but I got a flat on the way to the bridge. A big ol' double-prong staple in my back tire. I foolishly pulled it out and *sssssssssssss......*. I had a patch kit with me, but no pump (duh) and no coins for compressed air at a gas station. So I walked it back to my parents' house, a little over a mile, switched bikes and figured I still had time to make it to a theater in Edgewater to catch Hero.

I thought it was really good. Not perfect, but I didn't expect it to be since I wasn't impressed by the fake looking trailers. There was the potential for the story to get really messy, but director Zhang Yimou helped by color coordinating scenes, making it easy to differentiate the stories. Is that what the color was about? The temptation was to look for some meaning behind the color, but until I read something about it, I'm going with the theory that it was just a device for the audience to differentiate the various stories. The various stories being told being the thematic device of the film.

In fact, I think the film is better compared to Rashomon than to "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", which has been the media tendency. But storytelling and subjectivity wasn't the point of this film as it was in "Rashomon". It was more like a game of chess using stories, fine-tuning it to get to a final version where the story is clarified.

I like what Jet Li said about the film regarding heroes, that it would be nice if there weren't any heroes since the existence of heroes of this sort are only made possible because of some great conflict. The existence of heroes means people are suffering, and it would be better if conflicts could be resolved peacefully. Another point that was quick on film was that this emperor was supposed to be a tyrant, even in his own court, but where his wisdom is established and there's an opportunity to show compassion, it's the faceless chant of his courtiers that seem more tyranical.

Point of history that I'm not positive about: I think it was during the Qin (pronounced Chin) dynasty that outsiders came into contact with the land, thus the name "China" was given for the whole country even though it represented only a part of it.

Definitely worth seeing, definitely worth seeing in a theater.

Hm. I have access to a cell phone now for the time being. But now I feel bad giving out the number because I haven't called anyone except S*phie in the past two months (I didn't tell her I left San Francisco). I left S*die a message once but then never followed up and completely missed contacting her during her couple weeks that she was out on this coast. I haven't given my parents' number to anyone, so no one has been able to call me even if they wanted to. In other words, I've been completely remiss in calling people, what right do I have to give out this cell number, implying they should (or even want to) call me? I think about calling people just about every day, it has just gotten easy and comfortable to not call. Cawl (working on the accent). And I wonder if my attitude towards calling people reflects my feelings about being called. Time to go into self-therapy. OOOOMMMMMMMM. OOOOOOOOOMMMMMMMM! I'll have to see how the issue works itself out.

Well, I got confirmation that the chances are that non-Asians don't know how to cut Asian hair. I went to Supercuts, and I was a bit surprised that in Fort Lee, New Jersey, not a single person working there was Asian. I should have turned around and walked out the door. It's a little weird to think that for the past 11 years, I always went to Chinatown for haircuts. That doesn't guarantee a good haircut, mind you, but at least they know how to cut it. And for me, not having a "look" and unable to give any direction or idea of what I wanted, getting a haircut was always hit or miss. The poor, quiet woman at Supercuts with an eastern European accent had no idea what to do with my hair, so she went ultra-conservative and just wet it, combed it down, and clipped a little off the edges through gritted teeth. She basically trimmed it, when I had asked for two inches cut.

I don't blame her. And better to cut too little than too much when you have no idea what you're doing. On the other hand, what's so hard about cutting perfectly straight hair, you dumbass? Shouldn't you know how to cut Asian hair in an area with such a high Asian population? Shouldn't you have been trained? But now I know. Next time I'll go to Palisades Park, where I'm sure there's a Korean place that cuts hair. They won't understand English, but at least they'll know what they're doing. And Koreans - better sense of style than Chinese, so that may be a plus.

The Asian population around here has become predominantly Korean. The Chinese have always been around in smatterings, kind of invisible in the background, running Chinese restaurants, or professionals like my parents. There was never a huge sudden influx of Chinese. When I was growing up, the Japanese were the first group to come in, with Japanese corporations sending workers to New York and housing them in New Jersey. Japanese patients were my parents' bread and butter in the early days since they preferred going to doctors who spoke Japanese, and when presented with a bill, they'll just pay it. Not like the Chinese who'll try to haggle down a damn doctor's bill.

Now it's Koreans, and I can't figure out what's driving the influx, but I was riding down Broad Street through Leonia into Palisades Park, and suddenly it was block upon block of Korean businesses. Koreans everywhere, and my brother tells me they even hired a Korean policeman! That's a pretty big thing in these white suburbs, because it's infiltrating the power structure. If you want to threaten and scare the bejeebus out of the rich white majority, start hiring minority policeman. I'm sure they screened him well.

And all over the area in general are signs in Korean. Bike Masters, the bike shop we went to when we were kids is now Korean run. Now I know what it feels like to have a completely foreign group move into the neighborhood, and it's cool. I don't know what the hell is wrong with Americans, or any established group, and xenophobia. When the Japanese moved in, it didn't feel like a completely foreign group since my parents spoke Japanese to us when we were kids and we watched period dramas and anime on NHK TV on Saturday nights.

I really should be taking advantage of getting to know Korean food.

Brood:
All summer, there's been a rabbit hanging around my parents house in the evening out for silflay. A very handsome bunny, healthy with beautiful fur. Nice ass. Turns out it's a mommy, and two nights ago she was out for silflay with a little handful worth of baby bunny fur with ears in tow. Trouble was that while all mommy wanted to do was silflay on the lovely weeds on my parents' lawn, baby bunny was also after its nummies. So it was a bit of cat and mouse going on with baby bunny trying to get under mommy, and mommy would hop away a few paces to try to silflay in peace. Then after a while, baby bunny would baby hop over and try to get under mommy and the whole process would start over. It went on all over my parents' lawn. Then last night she was out with two little handfuls worth of baby bunny fur with ears. It was so cute I almost plotzed. I watched from the safety of a second floor window. Mmmm, silflay *drool*.

I still haven't gone down to Philly to visit my brother and his baby. I'm not so thrilled about meeting the baby. I know nothing about him, what would we talk about? I read recently an idea that an infant can't discriminate between its self and its surroundings. As synapses are connecting in the infant brain, caused by sensation, the baby itself is all reality surrounding it, and all of reality surrounding the baby is the baby. I don't know if the baby is past that point close to being 5 months old. But I've never been in the presence/reality of the baby, so I was never a part of its self. The thing is, babies don't lie. They're like the ultimate lie detector test of character. And if I meet the baby and the baby doesn't like me, I don't know if I can take that sort of rejection.

USB Driver is up. August 27, 2004 - 6:06 P.M.: Riverside pathway along the Manhattan side of the Hudson River, looking north to the GW Bridge.

After the downer of the pigs crapping on a peaceful Critical Mass ride last night, I'm not sure I'll go to the protest march in Manhattan tomorrow. Not because of that, mind you. It's an amalgam of things that are pissing me off about New York, including new signs on the George Washington Bridge prohibiting cameras, and closure of the catwalk from 9:30 P.M. to 6:30 A.M. Yes, indeedy, we are the land of the free and the home of the brave. Go U.S.A.

I went to most of the protest marches in San Francisco, marches to which I didn't have ride 15 miles, and I always went alone since I didn't have any friends. I always went under the "every body counts" idea. But now I'm thinking, "no, it doesn't". My body not riding the 15 miles to participate in the march really will not mean anything. Even with the noble idea of standing up for what you believe in, you really need to be getting something out of it, and riding 15 miles, walking alone along the march route with hundreds of thousands of people, then riding back 15 miles just to add a single body to the march really presses its worth. I would really be doing it solely for the ride, and I've already ridden close to a hundred miles this past week.

I'll wake up early tomorrow and see how I feel. If I feel like a ride, I'll go to the march. If not, I'll get a haircut. Either way I'll have put over a hundred miles on my bike for the week.

Florida's "miscalculation":
This is unbelievable: Bush acknowledges 'miscalculation' about postwar Iraq.

How about a big DUH! It doesn't take above normal intelligence to look at the situation in Iraq before the invasion to figure out what the U.S. military would be mired in. It takes a buffoon of unpresidented idiocy to think the U.S. military could go into that country, remove the power structure, and think that would be the end of it, and that throngs of Iraqis would take to the streets in thankful glee to the Americans like Jews being liberated from Nazi death camps.

It was stupid and naive, and the mad rush and frenzy to invade is unforgiveable now that Bush is admitting "miscalculations". So what did the Bush Administration expect? What do you expect when you bring war to a country? Hussein was a brutal dictator, not unlike the many the U.S. government and corporations are familiar with from decades of supporting them, but he was a dam wall that kept all the other internal power struggles in check. Remove that wall, and the U.S. has to deal with all the now empowered groups who had a beef against Hussein or those that don't think becoming a puppet regime for the Americans is a reasonable alternative. It's not advanced political science.

Making "miscalculations" when you're planning to bring untold suffering to a nation through the scourge of war is more than negligence. It should be a crime against humanity. Yet they cavalierly brush it off by saying, "Oh, we made some miscalculations."

My C drive has been reformatted and I officially lost everything I had on my computer and more. I've got the basics working now and I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible, but I still don't have sound and I can't install the USB driver for my digital camera, so no pics. See! Someone is telling me to stop taking pictures. August is coming to an end, and it's already time for another Critical Mass this Friday. I wonder if any Crit Mass folks will try to organize a supplemental action for the Republican invasion of Manhattan next week.

End of August. When I got here at the beginning of July, I wondered where the beautiful sunsets I remember from my room at my parents house. They're here now. They're a late Summer thing, I suppose. No pics because I can't get the USB driver for my camera to install on my reformatted C drive computer.

I've been watching the Olympics. That Paul Hamm guy, his voice makes me want to pound his lilywhite face. And why does he pronounce his last name like Paul Hom, the Chinese guy? It should be "ham" like Mia Hamm, and ham and eggs. What is this? Germany? I also found that I have little patience or tolerance for synchronized swimming. Yeehaw to the Japanese women who got silver, and those Russians who won gold were hella impressive, but . . . I was really hoping that synchronized swimming was a passing fad.

<thinking>diplomatic, diplomatic, say something diplomatic</thinking>

Zen Mountain Monastery in Mt. Tremper, New York (come on, Google hits!) bit the BIG one!!

*ahem*

That is to say, their style of practice didn't quite conform to what I'm looking for. Most of the people there rubbed me the wrong way. We may be on the same journey, but we are on different paths. When someone asked when I was leaving, I wanted to say that I never really arrived. I needed to go up there, I went up there, I'm glad I went up there, not going up there would have been inconceivable, but the actual being there was pretty useless.

I won't say it was totally lame. There's a reason for everything there, and their practice is undoubtedly effective for what it is (ie, for them). In fact, I bought a book of actual formal teacher-student exchanges that are conducted there several times a year in a public forum. Usually that sort of thing would bug the hell out of me, but I do have a lot of respect for the teacher there (he wasn't there while I was there), and even if the exchanges seem flaky and bug me, I do think there is a lot of value for me to look more closely at them.

Anyway, their schedule varies throughout the year, but it was useless for me being there, aside from the fact of going there, because the schedule was all work practice (ie, work meditation). It was all sleep, sitting, eating, and work, strict schedule, and any break between any of those was only long enough to lounge listlessly until the next thing started. So for my purposes, there was no reflection time, no extended walks through the woods, no relaxing, no peace.

And work practice is good in concept, but I found the context in which their work was performed to be no different than secular work. So to me, they call it work practice, but it was just work. Not enough "practice". Maybe that's the European influence in the conception of this monastery. There was an episode of "Northern Exposure" where Chris-in-the-Morning goes off to a Christian monastery to do just what I did - just work and get into the work.

But at this monastery, I don't know, maybe it's a Western obstruction to Buddhism that Westerners need to work on, but we have a problem with power and authority. You place people in a position where they tell other people what to do, and they get carried away, suddenly they think it's their prerogative and mandate to dictate to other people. Things have to be the way they conceive it; they do it right, you're doing it wrong. It creates the duality we're trying to eliminate, even just metaphorically.

I don't understand how telling people what to do or how to do it creates an environment of peace and cooperation. Even at the highest level, on Sunday, the public day, the teacher in charge while the head honcho was away admonished the congregation (it felt more to me like a congregation than a Sangha - a practicing community). Apparently he noticed that not everyone was participating in the chanting, and he said to the "people with their mouths closed" that it was about "full engagement" and "full engagement means participation". Again with the dictating, not only what other people who aren't him are supposed to be doing, but also the mindset. "Full engagement" means moving your lips without thinking what you're saying? What the hell? The way I see it, there are other ways to be "fully engaged" without doing the damn chanting.

Some of the work was pretty miserable, too. You'd think that some consideration would go into what was appropriate for whom. If I went to Deer Park with an eye on becoming a novice, I would expect to be at the bottom of the totem pole and to do the drudge work, but for short-term visitors, you want them on lighter duty, easily supervised, not a lot of responsibility. If the short-term visitor doesn't do something the way the monastery (not the middle management) usually does it, the supervisor does it him or herself to suggest by example. If it still doesn't get done right, it will get done right another time. No firecrackers in the ass.

Ironically, or maybe not so, considering, the most fulfilling moment I had there was scrubbing the stone dining hall floors. That job was pretty miserable, but I'm not complaining about the work. If I was a monk I would have been happy to scrub the whole damn floor day after day; it was visceral, it felt good and you could see the results pretty dramatically. But what was the mindset of the genius to put a short-term visitor on that job? That's what bugged me - it didn't make sense, and not having confidence in the management and functioning didn't make for a peaceful monastic experience, but rather a critical one.

Meh, I didn't go to Maxwell's in Hoboken. It was raining. I could have driven, but while I was there yesterday, I didn't check the parking situation. Besides, I'm avoiding driving at almost all cost. That said, I'm driving upstate tomorrow to go to the monastery, so I'll be gone until next week. After I get back, I still have to see if I can get my computer on life support. Need new Earthlink software to try to get internet back up.

My brother needs what used to be my car every Sunday this month for sailing. So I'm driving upstate in his car - a red 1988 Porsche 944. I hate driving it, not because it's a tacky expensive sports car, but because it's stick. I can get by with driving stick, but I'll never be good at it, and I'll never like it. This is all due to my early bad experiences and stress learning how to drive stick - specifically, getting the car moving in first gear. The cars I learned to drive stick on, including this one, were all really hard to get into first gear, and the memory of that anxiety of not being able to get the car moving and stalling out in the middle of traffic remains to this day. I'd probably be fine and a proficient driver of stick shift if it weren't for the anxiety and muscle memory that I might not be able to do it, that it's not a sure thing.

I remember the first time I did feel like I got the hang of driving stick. It wasn't in a Porsche or an ancient MG Midget or a likewise ancient Alfa Romeo. It was in a friend's Toyota minivan on the streets of Manhattan. If only I learned on a Honda or a Toyota.

Speaking of anxieties, I'm scared of spiders. I've been forcing myself to get over the fear by drawing on the realization that all living beings are equal. I haven't been tested in a while. My apartment in San Francisco was pretty spider free, and I've yet to come across one walking across the ceiling here in New Jersey *scans walls and ceilings of room* *whew*. What we do have here in this house are centipedes - the large ones (up to two inches long) with big spindly legs that move in concert and scurry across the floor like it was an Olympic event.

By any stretch of comparison, these centipedes should creep me out as much as spiders do. But they don't. They're fast, they look hairy, and those legs! Ugh! But every few days I'll see one, and if it surprises me I'll jump, but then I'll go about capturing it in a cup and flinging it out the window (for karma's sake I hope they're fine with the two story drop) into the bushes below. I won't kill a spider either if I find one. I'd probably go through the same steps, but I'm pretty sure that afterwards I'd be shaking involuntarily like a leaf.

I wonder if part of the difference is the metaphor of the web, the web of illusion, getting caught in a web. Maybe I was a fly in a long series of previous lives. *shudder* I shouldn't wonder that the experience of getting caught in a web, seeing a spider approach you and wrapping you up in silk, and then sucking the life out of you is something that might carry over into other incarnations. I prefer the metaphor theory.

It still perplexes me that I'll go on what seems and feels like a major ride, but doesn't even measure up to near 30 miles. I'm getting the hang of Manhattan riding, but tomorrow there's a show at Maxwell's in Hoboken that I want to go to, so I decided to check out the rideability to Hoboken. Mapquest plotted a route that goes on the Turnpike and was 15 miles, so the more direct bike route would be less than that.

It was definitely a rideable distance at 11.25 miles to Maxwell's, and the route was pretty good except for the bike-unfriendly River Road through Edgewater. I've resolved to not hug the side of the road, but to ride an extra bike width into the road to force cars to slow down and move into the left lane to pass, but to also be accomodating when appropriate.

Hoboken blew me away. When they said it was gentrified, I did not envision the cute little treelined roads and beautiful brownstones. Personally, I don't believe that there has been such a big change in Hoboken, I bet it was always more or less like this, but when the buzz got out about it, there went the rents. But I don't really know. I can't say with any certainty that I'd ever been in Hoboken before.

And Maxwell's, I guess, is the main club for national acts in Hoboken. It didn't look like much from the outside. It looked like a restaurant. I think TFT, Fontaine Toups' (ex-bassist/singer/songwriter from Versus) new band, has played there. And isn't Yo La Tengo from Hoboken? Weird. The show tomorrow night is the "Asians in Indie Rock" show, which I didn't even know was going around. I think this is the second one. It'll be in New York later this week with Ida in the line-up, but I'll be at the monastery.

I stopped off at White Castle on the way home. Anyone know a Harold and/or Kumar who wants to go? I just can't believe that these distances, which aren't all that long, are such an ordeal.

I decided against Philadelphia today. It didn't clear up by 9 o'clock, and I overslept and didn't wake up until 11:30 anyway. In fact, it's still drizzly out at 2:15. I called my brother to tell him I wasn't going and it was either way for him, too. He's got a baby to take care of and a wife preparing for her Boards. Besides, I don't know what we'd have to talk about. Which is odd because I was trying to avoid going to visit with my parents, but now I don't know why I'd go without them.

So now I don't know when I'd go to visit. I'm going to be at the monastery from Tuesday to Sunday. My parents are going to Philadelphia on Wednesday and probably think I'll go with them since I haven't told them I'm going to the monastery yet. The weekend after that has tentative plans, but it's possible. The weekend after that is September, and if I'm still around, I'm not going to miss what might be my last chance to see the Panorama steel orchestra competition at the West Indian American Carnaval in Brooklyn.

But that's looking too far into the future. Today, I'm watching Puerto Rico dominate USA in basketball at the Olympics. What a feel-good underdog moment. They say Puerto Rico isn't a medal contender, but they're playing brilliantly, especially a guy named Arroyo. And NBA basketball players - what a bunch of arrogant, overpaid, undereducated, ghetto punks. When's the last time you heard someone from the NBA say something more intelligent than "aiiight"? Michael Jordan? Larry Bird? USA will probably win gold, heck they can still even come back in this game, they have the moves, the talent, and mental focus potential (ego), but big deal. The way Puerto Rico has been playing - that's excitement.

Here's Charley! It just started raining, but it's expected that Charley, already downgraded to a tropical storm, will not have much impact in the New York tri-state area. Charley is supposed to be cleared out by tomorrow morning, at which time I will decide whether roads and traffic will be normal enough to drive down to Philadelphia to visit my brother and his baby. I'm still a little creeped out about having a nephew. And my brother didn't make going down any more attractive by waffling on while giving me directions to his place.

From my relative position, he becomes completely subjective. He simply loses all knowledge of whatever knowledge I might or should have of Philadelphia from previous visits. So he's describing Rte. 676 going through central Philly, how it looks like it's underground, but it's open air, as if I've never been on it before. He took 15 minutes giving me directions that he should have been able to do under 3. "You'll come up the ramp and you'll see the station - you know the station, it was the one in 'Witness', you remember the movie 'Witness'" (uh, not really). So I had to filter through what I thought was important and what was just waffling in his effort to be helpful and meticulous. Unfortunately, his attention to detail is not going to help me from not getting lost, if anything, I'm now expecting to get lost.

He could have been much more helpful by relating street names that I should be familiar with from going to his old place. He moved earlier this year, but I think his new place isn't all that far from his old place, and he mentioned streets that I recognized, but didn't mention them in relation to what I know. So I was pretty confused writing down the parts of his directions I deemed most relevant.

*sigh* And my computer died last night. It's on life support now, and there are still some files I might be able to recover if I can get Internet working and my CD burner, which actually hasn't been working for several months. Then I'll try re-installing the operating system to see if there's any life or hope left.

I'm borrowing my brother's laptop for a few days before going to the upstate New York monastery from Tuesday to next Sunday. And if I'm going to head off to a monastery for reals soon after that, I shouldn't even be thinking of buying a new computer, right? I'm thinking right.

Remember back in the day when your computer would crash, or your father re-installed the operating system without telling you, and you lost all your files and data, and you freaked out in shock and panic? I remember when my first computer died. That empty feeling. That jaw drop. That disbelief. Now, it's just 'eh', because you knew it would happen eventually. Really important stuff you managed to wisely backup, but the stuff that is lost is just lost. Even if I lost all my photos, which I'm not sure I have, they're still there, it's just a matter of whether I can get them off that computer, it wouldn't be such a big deal. If I had sentimental photos, which I don't, I would have backed them up, but all the photos I have are documentary and aesthetic. With digital, I just continue to shoot documentary and aesthetic pictures and it's no big deal if the old ones are gone.

But if you're at all worried, you should go back up anything that's important now. So go.

*SIGH*

I've been in a blog funk lately. A blunk. A b-funk. Ha, I'm actually listening to P-Funk now and was wondering if George Clinton will ever remix and remaster these recordings. I think he mixed records to be heard through 70's era car stereos and boom boxes. They sound terrible through a good stereo system. All midrange, no low end. And that's through my EQ, which scoops out the mids and boosts the low and high ends. Isn't funk supposed to be about booty-shakin' bass?

I haven't been doing much lately. Went sailing with my brother on Wednesday just for the experience. The yacht club culture is an interesting one, and it's exclusive because it costs a lot of money, but the people are alright. I guess most of "the people" (whatever group) is alright, depending whether you're on the inside or the outside. But the yacht club thing is something I wouldn't otherwise touch. It certainly wasn't "me".

Maybe that's what the funk was. Last night I ended up going out with my brother for a night in Manhattan with "his" group of people. We saw "Blue Man Group" which was pretty awesome, but hanging out with those people was just so depressing. Good people, no doubt, but just not "me". How they could talk so endlessly on about food and restaurants exclusively was astounding in itself. I just politely observed the conversation, trying not to embarass my brother. I was in soul shock after I got back to my parents' house. What a waste I would feel my life would be if I lived like that, but I wouldn't feel it was a waste because that's what I would be. And the amount of money people spend in Manhattan was not a small part of what was so depressing. I'm not spending any money because my brother ends up covering me, but just the feeling of being part of the expenditure - stupid spending, really - was depressing. It seems Manhattan is just obscenely expensive.

Tonight was better.

Several weeks ago, I met a couple on the line to see "Zatoichi" and we exchanged email addresses. My brother also met them, so the "his group"/"my" group dynamic is being taken for a louie. They aren't "his" friends or "my" friends, but I'm much more particular about the people I feel comfortable hanging out with, while my brother is much more open and accepting. So, I don't know. I can hang out with them independently, and I can hang out with them with my brother, and the dynamics will just shift accordingly.

Tonight I met up with them for the Sahara Hotnights show at the Bowery Ballroom. Now the Bowery Ballroom is "my" type of venue. My brother has seen shows there, and he thinks he's hip to that, but if I wasn't his brother, I would think he was a fucking dork (alright, alright, I'm an indie snob). And I didn't mention the show to him until late, because I live in a (apparently minority) culture where you go see a band because you're a fan. You don't go to see a band you've never heard of, and I know my brother has never heard of Sahara Hotnights, and I have good reason to believe that he wouldn't independently like them if exposed to their music, either recorded or live. His taste in music is a fucking dork!

When I mentioned the Sahara Hotnights show to this couple, I guess I led myself to believe they knew them. But they didn't, they just went to the show because it was something to do, so it would have been all the same if my brother went. But I'm glad he didn't, because it made tonight an all "me" night. Instead of him driving us into Manhattan, leaving it up to him to deal with parking and New York, him paying for everything, I rode in on bike, had a natural un-self-conscious conversation, paid for everything myself, did everything the way I wanted to, and rode home on bike. And for the first time in a while I felt like myself.

Riding into Manhattan was another kick in the ass. I didn't take Riverside Drive this time, but hopped straight onto Broadway and took Broadway all the way down to the East Village, about 16 miles total. Riding in Manhattan fits my riding style perfectly - fast and aggressive, but also mindful and not stupid (I wouldn't go so far as to call it smart). I rode the same way in San Francisco, but it's like that was just training for this. I took my old school Fuji 12-speed road bike, hopefully an unattractive theft target, which was suitable for flat Manhattan, and neurotically trippple locked it outside the Bowery Ballroom - hey, let all the non-neurotic people have their bikes stolen.

Sahara Hotnights kicked so much ass. I saw them at Slim's in San Francisco, but there was a bunch of frat boy jocks who annoyed everyone within a 2 mile radius just by being themselves. I'm in love with the AC/DC-esque rhythm section. The bassist is so incredibly cool (and cute), and the drummer plays like how I think I played, but a lot better. She also has long blonde hair, which isn't often associated with rocking female drummers (rocking male drummers, yes), but she also had personality and rock star attitude which was totally great.

Afterwards, I didn't even think of taking the subway back uptown, and rode the whole way back, finding the river side path along the west side, and that made my night. It was just gorgeous riding right along the river, with unlighted sections that felt like flying. It was a cool night, perfect for riding, and call me crazy, but I love the stench of polluted waterways. OK, it wasn't that bad, but the Hudson River certainly doesn't smell good. The path went all the way up to 133rd St, where I had to get back on Broadway up to 177th St. The blocks are small, so it feels like going up in 5 block increments, and 45 blocks goes by pretty quickly.

I thought I had left flakiness behind in San Francisco. Ha. I sent an email to the monastery up in upstate that I visited last month, inquiring about week-long residential practice/training and said that I was interested in coming up for a week. I told them my background to give an indication that I'm serious and know what it entails, and they told me they'd send down the information. A week later I received the information they sent, and it says that I should email them for an application if I was interested in staying for a week. They certainly are not helping my dubious opinion of Japan-centric U.S. monasteries.

No harm done, but baseline common sense and communication, what in my original email indicated that they shouldn't send an application with the other materials in the first place? You don't need to know what I wrote in my original message, because I can tell you in no uncertain terms: nothing! Since they're all Japan-centric, I'm sure they understand baka! I sent a much more formal email requesting an application. They got it to me much faster, although I don't think it was related.

I've been listless and tired lately. Very strange. Maybe my body is still getting used to the heat and humidity, regardless of how much I'm not complaining about it. I've even gone back to drinking coffee and more than I drank in San Francisco.

I have a massive blind spot in my left eye, but it hasn't mattered much because my brain fills out the missing information. It was really quite interesting earlier today when my brain, for whatever reason - heatstroke, Korean food, dehydration, probably Korean food - stopped filling in the information. I was trying to read stuff and I had to keep shifting my line of sight to catch words, but still that spot where the words faded out made it also really hard for my brain to process the words to understand what I was reading. I tell you, it was fascinating!

All is back to normal and I have a greater appreciation for the wonders of my brain. I got rid of the Korean food in the meanwhile, couldn't hold it. I haven't had that much chili in such a long time and might have to get my resistance back up by going for more Korean food (so good). It was worse than being drunk because it was just so incredibly painful that I wanted to be put out of my misery. Well, the way my mind works it was more like "If this is what dying is like, I don't want to die!" But then after it passed several excrutiating, delerious hours later, I was back to rationalizing that death, itself, probably isn't that horrible.

Yeehaw, baby! I finally rode into New York, and it's true - riding in Manhattan is easier, and arguably safer than riding in New Jersey. I rode in for my first New York Critical Mass, having been self-disenfranchised of my home Crit Mass in San Francisco.

It was pretty exciting riding in. It's almost three miles from my parents' house to the New York side of the George Warshington Bridge, and from there I found my way to Riverside Drive which just goes down, down, down through the streets from 178th to 72nd St. It really isn't by the side of the river, the West Side Highway is closer to the river, and apparently there is a path that is literally river side that I wasn't able to find my way to. Will look for it soonly.

At 72nd Street, I headed east towards the center of Manhattan, and when I got to Broadway, it felt really familiar, <thinking>72nd and Broadway, 72nd and Broadway</thinking>, and then I looked closely at the shop on the corner whose fascade was covered with scaffolding - is it? It was! It was Gray's Papaya, my favorite hot dog stand in New York. For $2.75, you get two yummy hot dogs and a choice of a tropical fruit drink. Of course I had to stop for dinner.

From there I continued east to Central Park, realizing how easy it is to ride to the Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium, which is called something else now, Rose Center for blah, blah, blah, on 81st-84th Sts. I'll have to check what exhibits are there. Anyway, New York Critical Mass convenes at Union Square in the East Village. It was about a 16 mile ride to get there, taking an hour and 20 minutes. A long way to go for Critical Mass, compared to the three miles it took in San Francisco, but it was exciting, and New York Critical Mass was something else!

Just from the sheer humongalopolous size of New York, you're going to have a large mass (don't forget the 'm'!). You just have that much larger a pool of cyclists interested to draw from. And taking it to the streets of New Yawk, taking attitude to the city that invented city attitude was incredible, mind-blowing. I never would have imagined that it could be pulled off in New York.

- Coming out of the Park Avenue tunnel, I saw a corker (a cyclist that blocks traffic from moving while the Mass is passing) sitting on the hood of an ornery taxi! Risky business even in San Francisco, as people get touchy when you start touching their cars.
- In San Francisco, sometimes I would advise pedestrians trying to cross the Mass to just take it slow and confident, the cyclists won't hit you. I decided it would be irresponsible to give such advise in New York; the cyclists just might hit you.
- In San Francisco, we try to be courteous to pedestrians and call out a warning to other cyclists if a pedestrian is trying to cross. In New York, I found myself holla-ing at pedestrians, forming a critical mass of their own to cross a street against a light, to let them know I was coming and I wasn't going to stop for them.
- The highlight for me was taking the West Side Highway, riding south and screaming and causing a ruckus through the Battery Park Tunnel, and ending up on the FDR Drive with glorious views of Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Bridge! It felt almost akin to riding on the Bay Bridge - just riding somewhere where normally only cars can travel.
- New York's finest handled things very well given the situation. I even saw a cyclist chatting with a motorbike cop. I saw a motorbike cop bump a cyclist in Times Square to get him to move because of an ambulance coming up from behind. I thought it was a reasonable nudge, but then the cop apologized when the cyclist protested. A San Francisco cop would have had the guy on the asphalt with a knee on his back and pulling out the handcuffs. Bastards. The cops handled getting the Mass off the FDR Drive and back onto surface streets very reasonably and professionally.
- I met a guy from fotolog named Adam who showed me the ins and outs of taking a bike on the subway.
- I dropped my fucking camera. I think all my camera dropping is a sign that I should drop photography. I'll wait until the cameras start breaking.

Cross-training. I've been mostly putting time on the bike trainer, set up in the cool basement with a fan clipped to a microphone stand right in front of me; set the resistance on the trainer, put on a mix CD, start a stopwatch, and climb through the gears, going up one every five minutes for 40-60 minutes, figuring it so that ten minutes are spent in the highest gear before dropping down to lower gears to finish off.

But today I hit the road for the first time in two weeks, finally going beyond "Exit 2" up 9W (it's Exit 2 off the Palisades Parkway), crossing the border into Upstate New York. I don't know how my brother used to go on 70 mile rides when he was in high school. That means 35 miles out and back. I'd have to look at a map to see where he got those 35 miles, not that I'd even try going that kind of distance. Friggin' nuts. I totalled 37 miles today, going 17 miles up 9W and turning back at the New York State Thruway, right before Nyack, NY - which is the extent of my geographical knowledge of the area. I recall spending a July 4th during high school years with my brother's friends at Carl Sapphire's riparian vacation house in Nyack, getting drunk (and asthma) on wine coolers and shooting off fireworks. Weird. It's a totally isolated memory.

For such a heavily cycled corridor, 9W still isn't particularly bike friendly. Or maybe I've just been spoiled at the breadth cyclists are given in the Bay Area. There just isn't that much room out here. And for all the wildlife, cyclists should name the 9W corridor the Tour de Roadkill. It's distressing constantly trying to not ride over flattened animals. Poor things. Although I don't think anything will get as gross as when I accidentally ran over a freshly killed squirrel in Pleasant Hill (Bay Area) and upon getting to the BART station, finding bits of squirrel gut clinging to my brake cables. Bleah.

Another difference between here and the Bay Area is that I averaged 17.1 mph over 37 miles. In the Bay Area, my average averages were in the 15 mph range because of the landscape. It was a climber's paradise of sorts. 9W is a rolleurs paradise, and there is hardly a climb in the area worth calling a climb.

It has been sweltering the past few days. Humid and sweaty. I'm still getting used to it, but I ain't complaining. My room is the hottest in this house, but I remind myself of that apartment in Oberlin that was so incredibly hot, something in me had to snap to acclimate, and ever since then I've loved the heat, and nothing got as hot as that apartment. Rain is in the forecast, though, and that should bring things down a notch. I'm still getting used to the weather patterns.

Brain trust that I am, I chose these days to try out running again. I just don't eat that much, but when you're living with your parents - trust me, it's just bad. To counter it, I've been putting more time on the bike trainer, using my brother's old racing bike with the insane (read: really, really hard) gears, but as long as I'm out in suburbia and back in my hot element, I thought I'd see if I could still run. I measured out 3, 4, and 5 mile courses and did the 3 mile today, doing 8 minute miles. If I was an over-achieving prick about it, I'd be moaning about how sucky 8 minute miles are, and that does suck, but that's just peachy-keen for a first official outing (after a very short "feeler" jog two days ago). I knew plenty of poseurs in San Francisco who considered themselves runners, doing 10 minute miles.

I saw the new Zatoichi movie by Beat Takeshi on Monday. It totally ruled, but you have to be familiar with Beat Takeshi's style to appreciate it. Or get it. However, I'm woefully unfamiliar with the classic Zatoichi movies, so I can't give any needed perspective on this version. You just have to know that Beat Takeshi movies are about his style and aesthetic, and he is always the badass in his own films. Sort of like Clint Eastwood in the old Man With No Name and Dirty Harry movies. And dammit, don't analyze the dance sequence at the end, just get into it, it rules. Kitano probably saw this dance troupe, was blown away by it and decided to put them in one of his films. Oh, the next one is going to be a samurai film? Sure, we can do that!

I found out last week that Stephen Sondheim's Assassins was scheduled to close today, so my brother went and got us tickets for tonight's final performance. It was brilliant. I was blown away. I don't even want to think how it was staged back in 1991 when its first incarnation got panned by the critics and didn't even get my curiosity. I remember feeling that it was a minor Sondheim with a dry, bland subject matter - a black and white musical, perhaps, where musicals need to be in color. Odd though that most of the score is the same, and the score is as strong as any Sondheim.

They re-worked the concept, satirically framing the stories of the presidential assassins in a carnival shooting gallery, and they added better continuity elements to lead from one scene to another. But aside from the strong score and great conceptualization, I think what was most compelling was that it was really challenging. The first assassin probed is John Wilkes Booth, and he is made out to sound sane, reasonable, passionate, and . . . a dissenter. OK, we don't like the killing of the emanci-motherfucking-pator of the slaves thing, that goes beyond dissent, but there's room in this democracy for everyone's views, right? And then I think how I'm not too happy with Bush's views and would liked them squashed like a bug, and ergo the challenge. Booth's dissenting view is safely in the past with history written, and it's certainly not one I would agree with if I were living in that time period (pro-slave, Confederate South, fuck that shit, but here's someone willing to kill for that view).

There is a good deal of humor in the show, and the crazies are made out to be crazies, although that's sometimes relative, too. The two female assassins who plotted to kill Gerald Ford were loopy and flaky and might have been people I hung out with in the Bay Area, who knows? Aside from incredible performances all around, other interesting points include the juxtaposition of Hinckley, who was obsessed with Jodie Foster, and "Squeaky" Fromme, who was obsessed with Charles Manson, and having them sing a duet, and the bookending of John Wilkes Booth as the first story, and Lee Harvey Oswald as the last.

I want to say that without both Booth and Oswald, there would be no story here, no musical. Both were necessary to make the subject of presidential assassins compelling. And Sondheim hammers that home with all of the assassins showing up at the Dallas book depository to egg on an unwilling Oswald, pleading that not only will it lead to his own immortality, but also to theirs. Booth points out that when Hinckley's room is searched after his attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, they found every book ever written about him (I thought they should have pulled a "Back to the Future", and when Booth mentions that Hinckley shoots Ronald Reagan, Oswald should have said, "Ronald Reagan? The actor?!"). Fascinating stuff anyways.

I don't know if it was because this was the last scheduled performance or because it was a flawless performance, but I have never seen a Broadway audience get up on its feet for a standing ovation so quickly at the end of a show. It was a brilliant, ingenious show. You'd think that there would be more hubbub, at least a mention, at a show's closing. Sondheim showing up to take a few bows, champagne being cracked open at close curtain. Something, right?

I don't know who it was who lived across the street here, but apparently someone died. Presumably it's been family members stopping in and removing things according to a legally executed will.


Hours later, the rain came pouring down. More people moving stuff out.

Rainy day cooled things down today. Ah, rainy Summer days. Unlike the miserable Winter rainy season in SF. I loved it, but I'm sitting here in the suburbs without a job, not being forced out into it. Poor baby.

My brother found a movie theater showing second run films for $2 and we saw "Kill Bill, Vol.2" tonight. I saw it without having seen Vol.1 because all the reviewers said you can watch Vol.2 without seeing Vol.1 because the story is circular, but none of them had actually done it. They were right. And I liked the movie.

Well, granted that I take Quentin Tarantino films with a grain of salt and I don't watch them with the same standards as other films or I might end up hating them, which I guess isn't necessarily a bad thing. But I ignore most "Tarantinoisms" in his films which might otherwise bug me - basically everything which is pretentious and tacky that he foists on his audience as ironic and tongue-in-cheek or claims is homage. So yea, I let a lot slide to like his style (I don't think I liked "Pulp Fiction", but I don't even remember it. or seeing it.). But I left Vol.2 thinking it was excellent despite its faults. The only hyuge problem I had with it, which I won't let go of and would dock stars from a review because of, is that Uma Thurman gets blown away with a shotgun at the beginning. If not a messy exit wound removing most of her back, she at least should have had a gaping hole in her chest, which somehow healed itself by her getting the shit kicked out of her even more. For the rest of the film, I kept thinking, "But what about that gaping shotgun wound in her chest?". Otherwise I really liked it and will now make a point to eventually check out Vol.1.

I drove up two hours to Mt. Tremper in upstate New York today to visit a monastery I had heard about, but their Sunday schedule had been cancelled for a Dogen conference that had been going on since Thursday. I stuck around for the closing of the conference and then for a dedication of a hermitage that was just completed for solitary confinement . . . actually, I have no idea what it will be used for. And then I stuck around for free lunch.

I talked to a few people. An older (she implied it, really I don't think she was that much older than me) Chinese American woman, originally from Berkeley who came east to attend Barnard College and then stayed out here. An older German doctoral candidate who saw me drive in with my road bike strapped to the back of my car chatted me up because she's a cyclist. And a younger white dude from Toronto talked with me a little while walking back from the hermitage blessing. All in all it seemed like a nice enough monastery, but not enough to travel two hours regularly to get to.

Oh, but the head honcho impressed me, the "Zen Master" whatever (who the hell feels comfortable being referred to as a Master? You don't see doctors who are the top of their game calling themselves Master Doctors or "I'm a Master Lawyer"), whose book I read last year and was blown away by. He had a New York accent and reminded me that one of my goals out here is to pick up a regional accent, but he was a charismatic old fella who gets your attention as soon as he opens his mouth. Otherwise, I may or may not go back to feel out their normal functioning.

Anyway, that German woman who chatted with me about cycling gave me a recommendation for a cycling route, and I think she may be pretty hardcore because the course ended up being a 42 mile killer. I was looking to do and was prepared for something about 30 miles, and she said it was about 25 miles, and I guess it was my fault since as big as a map geek I am, I could have seen from the map that the course was longer than 25 miles. Way longer than 25 miles.

I discovered a funny way that my short-term memory works, though. Maybe it's from years of killing brain cells with alcohol (**mmm, alcohol**). I memorized the route as she plotted it on the map, and also the little things she mentioned about it and to watch out for, but my short-term memory has almost zero recall before things actually happen. It was always after the fact that I thought, "oh, that was what she was talking about blah, blah, blah". For example, there was one intersection where I stopped for several minutes, at a loss which way to go, and after I chose (the correct way), I recalled her mentioning a certain unmarked sharp right turn and a sign leading to Woodstock. And it was too late that I recalled her mentioning a downhill that "you will be braking most of the way". It would have made more of an impact if she called it what it really was: a screaming suicide plunge. It was out of control, man. I was jamming on my brakes and unable to slow down to a comfortable speed. I came way too close to oncoming traffic on those small laned mountain roads than I care to, but the option was to risk going off the side. I hit 41 mph on a road that was far from smooth. It was a seriously bumpy, teeth-chattering, hand-jiving ride all the way down. The only times I've gone over 40 mph have been on long descents on a smooth road surface. That was just nuts. Yea, I'd like to see you doing the hand-jive while riding a bike.

Zen Mountain Monastery main building, Mt. Tremper, NY.


Blessing of the hermitage.


And ta-da! Here's one of the things I love about the East Coast. Rivers, streams, creeks. Just love crossing them, seeing them, thinking about what they are, what they do, what they symbolize. What do they symbolize anyway?

I don't know what's up with distances and scales here. I went for a ride up Rte. 9W and it felt like a full on ride, but I barely clocked 15 miles. I think 9W is a "standard ride" around here, the equivalent of the Paradise Loop back home, all cyclists do it at one point or another. I only went up to the second exit and returned along the awesome, wonderful, stupendous, splendiferous Hudson River Drive (will take camera along next time for river side views). I pushed the whole way, partly because the free-flowing car traffic was giving me a rush, partly because my brother used to do this ride when he was in high school, and he would go 35 miles out and 35 miles back. I was trying not to feel like a wuss, even though there's no comparison. He hasn't ridden in years and has switched to running, but if we both got on bikes now and headed up 9W, he would probably kick my ass. On the other hand, I might be able to beat him in urban riding because I think I have more of a "watch it, buddy, I'm riding here" attitude than he does. I don't think he carries a chip on his shoulder when he rides. He has too much to live for. He's a far better runner now than I ever was, too.

More pics:

Driving through Wyoming was pretty neat. The state is really high up, 5000ft-8000ft on Rte. 80, higher than any point on Rte. 80 going through the Rockies (which I did in the dark again, I also did it in the dark when I moved to San Francisco 11 years ago. I'm good at doing it in the dark). I wonder if that fact contributes to the "big sky" feel there is.


Sun rising in Wyoming.


Big sky.

I went and saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" with my brother yesterday.

I thought it was OK. Important material, definitely appreciated as mainstream media wouldn't touch it, but as a documentary, I think "Bowling for Columbine" was stronger. And being a knee-jerk liberal lefty from San Francisco (from San Francisco?, did I just say that?), nothing came as a huge shock.

I thought he could have made a more effective film by tightening it up and shortening it. Keep the focus on Bush, and at the end, bring it back to Bush since indicting Bush and his cronies is the point of the film. Instead he went for the emotional sucker-punch, which was great footage, coupled with that of the Iraqi woman, but too tenuously, I thought, connected back to Bush.

I'm not saying I could have done it any better, it was still quite a good doc and it keeps interest for the whole two hours. But critically, and pulling for the cause, I thought it would have been more effective if he didn't leave it on an emotional point, which in a documentary style as blunt as Michael Moore's seems a bit contrived having it at the end. We know how much it sucks to have our children, friends, and troops dying for a cause that isn't just. I would rather leave the theater outraged, reminded of the material presented at the beginning of the doc.

The movie makes some great points, though, especially regarding the primacy of power, money, and corporate influence in the Bush administration. It was a funny point when he says the American people pay Bush $400,000 per year, while the Saudis have been giving him and his corporations $14 billion over the course of many years - who do you think he's going to listen to first? If nothing else, though, the American people have the right to know material like this and come to their own conclusion. Bush's people are so shrouded in secrecy and confidentiality, but who is he working for?

On an aside, I'd like to see someone make a t-shirt with a stencil of Cheney, and the words "Fuck off" printed on it, and kids should wear them to school. The friggin' Vice-President said those words in a public forum, kids can't repeat what the Vice-President said in public? It's not some foul-mouthed rapper or pompous, arrogant sports star, it's the Vice-President.

When I was in California, I was starting to be proud, er, not embarassed about being from New Jersey. Now that I'm here again, I have a feeling I'm gonna be wondering a lot where/if these people were educated, or whether they're really from West Virginia and getting to the point where they are proud, er, not embarassed about being from West Virginia.

Anyway, I went and returned the rental truck the other day and had trouble finding the place, despite knowing the name of the place and having mapquest directions (am I the only one starting to get disillusioned by mapquest, or am I finally getting disillusioned by mapquest?). I stopped at a gas station to ask for directions...oh wait, I'm a guy, I stopped to look for a phone but ended up asking the attendant if he knew the place, and he didn't specifically. But he thought the address number was curious. When I asked if the numbers went down or up going west, he replied, "Sometimes they go up, sometimes they go down". Indeed.

Further down the road, I found a phone and called the number I had, and it turned out the place was right there next door from where I was calling, "Oh yea, there you are, I see you", she said on the phone. All of the workers at the drop-off location had the name of the place nicely embroidered on their shirts. However, there was not a single sign outside on the building indicating the name of the place. I'm back to thinking New Jersey as a mutant state. With only West Virginia to look down upon.

I brought my bike to get home from the truck place in Lodi. It's odd. I grew up in this area, and Lodi always seemed way out there - definitely driving distance, along with Hackensack and Patterson. But it's only about 13 miles from my parents' house. In San Francisco, that distance would get me as far as Sausalito without the return ride. But this distance from Lodi to my parents' house still seemed like a big deal. I wonder if it's my old perceptions of scale and distance around here that made it a big deal to ride those paltry 13 miles, or if it was my unfamiliarity with riding in this area. Maybe it was the semi-bike-unfriendly roads (car traffic isn't unfriendly to bikes, they've just never seen it). Maybe I'm just weird.

Moving pics. How this:


became this:


happy as a clam near the Great Salt Flats in Utah.


Isn't that special (Nevada):

On my last day in San Francisco, I was ranting about Brita pitchers and how unnecessary they are and how little they really do, but we think we're getting such huge benefits out of using them because of some corporate cultural sheep mentality. In fact, for the last several months, I drank water straight from the tap and it was perfectly good water. But, oig, when I tried New Jersey tap water, *bleah*. Out came the Brita pitcher and a ride to Walgreens in Fort Lee for a new filter. New York City has reportedly good tap water because they get it from the Adirondacks. If you ask for water at a New York restaurant, you're getting tap water and you'll hear no one complaining about it. New Jersey apparently gets it from the Hudson River.

July 3, 2004; 10:38 A.M. - Crossing the Mississippi River. Eleven years ago, there was flooding here and neighboring towns were in a state of emergency, including Davenport, Iowa. Looks the same to me. I had probably just told Carly that I wasn't going to stop in Chicago.


I think my bottom line is - try the tap water. If it tastes bad or doesn't feel right (hard water), then go for the filtration.

I drove across the country in just over three days. Three full days of driving and then arriving around noon on the fourth day. I don't recommend a solo haul like that. I did the same thing when I went to San Francisco eleven years ago, driving from Oberlin, Ohio in three days. Man, was I messed up when I arrove at my friend's apartment. This time I expected it and have the leisure to succumb to my body's rhythms to get back to normal, whereas back then I had to find an apartment and prepare for starting school. Was that really my life?

It's probably gonna be a while before I can sing along to a song with the word "San Francisco" in it without choking on the word. Interpret that however you like.

Plowing across the country like that allowed for mostly through-window-landscape shots. What could be more boring? So I'll smatter them about, as I am wont to smatter.

July 1, 2004; 11:02 A.M. - Nevada, 15 minutes or so outside of Reno.


July 1, 2004; 12:39 P.M. - Really, Nevada is a boring state to drive through. It's basically this for five hours. I love desert, but not boring desert. This is boring desert.

It's raining in New Jersey. Night-time low temperatures in New Jersey don't go down as far as San Francisco's daytime highs. I've got Dire Straits' live LP playing on the turntable and it sounds great. Stereo systems sound better in houses than in apartments for some reason. I'm clipping my fingernails with the special Japanese clippers that have the sides that prevent clippings from flying all over the place. You can get them in San Francisco, but I don't know if they have them here. And I'm thinking about Nebraska.

Nebraska - where I got out of the truck at a rest area and felt Summer for the first time in eleven years, with the possible exception of two Summers I spent in Bangkok. The humidity was high, the light glowed as the sun set, there was a smell of something burning in the distance, the interstate buzzed, there was a river flowing by, and I kept swearing I felt mosquitos on my arms. It was glorious, it was Summer, and I swooned. I bought a can of Mountain Dew from a vending machine and felt it going down my throat.

For eleven years, the weather was. . . nice. A placid little microcosm where if you could tolerate a few minor idiosyncracies, it was perfect. No humidity, no extreme heat or extreme cold, rain isolated to a few months in Winter. It got old, man. Save it for Eden. Summers should be sweltering, Winters bitter, things should change, complement, dichotomize.

Never once in San Francisco did I buy a can of soda from a vending machine and feel it refreshing and cool down my throat.