To Live and Drive in LA

For those who don't live in Southern California (such as myself), it is easy to forget how crazy life is down there, how utterly dependent the culture is on freeways (and imported water). 

Don't get me wrong, the Bay Area has its share of gridlocked highways and road rage, but SoCal takes it to the exponential extreme.

I was recently invited to give a talk at UC San Diego, and although I initially considered flying from Oakland, I decided to drive.  Road trip!  Hitting LA at around 8 pm, it started slowing and then crawled to a stop on I-5 around Downey.  I needed gas anyway, so I got off to fill up.  Getting back on the freeway, I noticed that there were no cars!  Where did they all go?  Did they finally get beamed up to the Mother Ship?  An interesting premise to be sure, but Occam's Razor would state instead that there was probably a freeway-blocking accident upstream.

I continued on, and hitting the Orange county line, it was as if I had entered Oz.  The freeway turned immaculate, lots of beautiful sculptures in the retaining walls, no gridlock to be seen.

Approaching San Clemente, Nixon's final home, I then saw an ominous sign - "FREEWAY CLOSED AT SCALES - TRAFFIC JAMMED".  Hmm, how else does one cross Pendleton Marine Base to get to San Diego?  I called Christa and Calvin for input, Calvin said "take highway 74, the Ortega highway, to get to I-15".  It was better than getting stuck again in traffic.

California highway 74 is a lovely windy road connecting San Juan Capistrano to the Lake Elsinore region of Riverside County.  Lots of mountains and even some hot springs, it looked to be a place to come again sometime. 

Yet, the people drove like maniacs!  I was trying to keep up, and luckily my Honda Fit drives like a sports car; I was doing 50 mph around curves that were suggested 30 mph, and still people were on my ass saying "you're too slow!  Hurry up!"

It turns out that the freeway blockage was a "pursuit" by the police.  I'm glad that I missed that bullet.

Dreams of canes and laughing; resistance is futile

I dream of evil archvillain McDaniel hobbling about with a cane.  Did I inflict this damage in a portion of the dream I have already forgotten?  In another part of the dream, Jerry Kubik appears, he has his trademark bushy mustache and is laughing uproariously.  To the many who do not know, Jerry Kubik died many years ago. 

Are dreams a portal to the land of the dead?

Also, I have finally joined Facebook.  As they would say about the Borg in Star Trek:  The Next Generation, Resistance is Futile.

Drew in my dream

Guitar player Drew is drunkenly driving my car with me as the very tense passenger.  The road has lots of crevasses and sinkholes that he is miraculously avoiding, but it can't be for much longer.  I finally intervene, simultaneously stomping on the brake, grabbing the wheel, and turning off the engine with the keys.  Drew gets angry, opens the door, and instead of entirely getting out, he steps on the bottom of the door, leans on it, and severs it completely off the rest of the car.

Laughing Data

http://culturemulching.wordpress.com/


Laughing Data is recursively funny, in that Spock, ostensibly Data's precursor in the Star Trek pantheon, only laughed in one episode (primarily because he was actively suppressing his human/emotional side, and in that episode, was under the influence of some sort of emotion-enhancing plant), while Data actively sought his ostensibly absent human side, since he was technically all machine.  
As for the comment about Russian novels, having read a few myself (particularly Dostoyevsky), I would like to cite a recent Arts & Letters Daily article that pointed out that Russian politics, often infuriatingly confusing, can be best understood through 19th century Russian literature in Foreign Policy: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/27/how_gogol_explains_the_post_soviet_world_and_chekhov_and_dostoyevsky?page=full

Let's do the Hollywood Pandemic: "Outbreak" (1995) versus "Contagion" (2011)

In the spirit of a prior Public Health class offered at UC Berkeley taught by former Director of Student Services Vincent Atchity, “Public Health in Cinema,” I offer a review comparing two films on viral pandemics, “Contagion” (2011) and “Outbreak” (1995).  Although the movies were released 16 years apart, I had the opportunity to watch both this year, and I compare and contrast them. 

Numbers: 

	Contagion	Outbreak
Total gross	$75 million	$187 Million
Budget	$60 million	$50 million
Imdb review	7/10	9/10
Rottentomatoes review	84/63	60/55

Let’s first talk about similarities.  Both are large budget Hollywood films featuring large ensemble casts with many familiar celebrities, many of whom in “Outbreak” have won Oscars (for other films).  As it turns out, neither film won any Oscars, and they do cover pandemics, but that's where the similarity ends.

While the films do not have any actors in common (there is a 16 year gap between them, after all), an interesting coincidence is that Donald Sutherland stars in ”Outbreak” while Elliot Gould is in “Contagion”; both played the rebellious medical duo Hawkeye and Trapper John from the original “M*A*S*H” film from 1970 (the inspiration for the long-running TV series with different actors).  Not to be too much of a plot spoiler, but both also have relatively happy endings, or at least achieve some sort of resolution (although the death toll in one is substantially larger than the other).   Both feature in-depth depictions of the response functions of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), including the variety of biosafety labs and analysis of the microbes in question.   

Okay, cut to the chase, literally:  in my opinion, "Contagion" is by far the superior film, even as it ups the ante on global catastrophe relative to "Outbreak".  The acting in "Contagion" is crisper and more believable, and I actually learned some things with this movie; with Outbreak, this was not the case.  What really got me scratching my head with "Outbreak" was all the helicopter chases.  It seemed to me that some studio exec, confused and/or bored by the technical aspects of a global pandemic, simply started barking out orders, "Needs more action!  Let's throw in helicopter chases!"

Futhermore, I don't care how good of an actor Dustin Hoffman is, he simply can't do the action hero. 

 http://www.rottentomatoes.com/

http://www.imdb.com/

Pickpocketed in Costa Rica!

I had a great time on my recent trip to Panama and Costa Rica, with the hi/lo point being pickpocketed the night before I was to return to the US at some festival in Palmares near the capital San Jose.  It was a crowded music venue filled with Costa Rican teenagers, and while I was in line waiting to get a beer, I noticed that my front left pocket was unusually empty.  My wallet was missing! 

Overwhelmed by instant panic, I started screaming and cursing like a madman, and within a minute or so, my wallet magically appeared on the floor with all its zippers opened.  The perpetrator had taken the money (about 50 dollars worth Costa Rican colones, intended for the taxi ride to the airport and the "exit tax") and my debit card, but miraculously, not my credit card nor my passport.  Possibly my quick noticing of the crime and subsequent screaming "Who took my wallet you f*ckers!" frightened them into dropping it immediately.  "Ooh, big gringo is yelling!  Let's get out of here!"

I reported the theft of my debit card to the credit union immediately upon return to the hotel, and I later found out that they had used the debit card as a credit card to buy dinner at some restaurant.  Again, surprisingly, I was compensated for it by the credit union quite quickly, so ultimately the damage was minimal.

Kudos to my "blogfather", Mr. Big Bloated Blog De Blotation

I do want to acknowledge the role of a certain Mr. Bloated Blotation for inspiring me to get off my butt and start writing this blog.  Kudos I tells ya! 

Visit his blog!

bigbloatedblogofblotation.blogspot.com