Gazing into the Abyss

Fascination Place

Michael Rawdon — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 20:12:10 PDT

The day has finally arrived: This evening I launched my new journal, Fascination Place.

Sadly, this does spell the end for this journal, Gazing Into The Abyss, after a nine-year run. As my introductory post at FP says, I've wanted to move to modern blogging software for a while, and get my own domain name, and - honestly - come up with a different name for my journal. So I'm making the big break.

Readying FP has consumed much of my spare time for the month of September: Learning CSS and PHP, figuring out how WordPress works, designing the template, deciding which third-party plug-ins I wanted to use, configuring the template to play nice with them... and that's without writing any actual content! But as the quote I have at the bottom of my home page states, the Web is all about the content. It can look pretty, but that shouldn't get in the way of saying what you want to say.

Hollywoodland

Michael Rawdon — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 22:00:00 PDT

One thing I'm noticing is that I enjoy watching movies set in the 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s but written with a more modern, somewhat more cynical eye. I think I enjoy the atmosphere and the contrast between the often-rosy historical image of those eras and the reality of what life was like then. (Not all films qualify for this contrast, of course, as no one has a rosy image of the Depression, for instance.)

Hollywoodland fits this bill nicely. It takes place in 1959, at the end of the classic (but oppressive) studio era of Hollywood, and concerns the death of George Reeves, best known for playing the title role in The Adventures of Superman. The film traces both the life of Reeves (played here by Ben Affleck) as he tries to resuscitate his career in the 1950s, and the investigation into his death by private investigator Louis Simo (Adrien Brody). (Simo is a fictional character based on a real person.)

Reeves meets Toni Mannix (Diane Lane) and they have an affair - it's an affair because she's the wife of Eddie Mannix (Bob Hoskins), the head of MGM. Toni loves Reeves and buys him a house through her husband. Reeves is able to win the part of Superman, but the role pays little and he finds that he's unable to get major film roles when people are unable to see him as someone other than Superman when he appears in From Here to Eternity (though this may be a false rumor). Reeves tries other things to revive his career, and in the midst of this falls in love one Leonore Lemmon (Robin Tunney). Reeves dies of a gunshot wound in his own home after going upstairs during a small party, and his death is officially ruled a suicide.

Genentech's 30th

Michael Rawdon — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 22:00:00 PDT

I may not have mentioned it before, but these days Debbi works for Genentech, a large (maybe the largest) biotech firm. She's been there a little over a year, and I think likes it a lot. Not too surprising, really, since it's considered by some to be the best company in the US to work at.

Well, Genentech was founded around the same time as my own employer, so both companies turned 30 years old this year. Genentech, however, apparently is known for throwing absolutely boffo parties from time to time, so I was happy to take a day off to join Debbi for their 30th birthday party.

I woke up at some god-free hour and drove up with Debbi, hanging out mostly in the break room on her floor reading while she and everyone else did their morning work. Then around 11:15 we went down to catch a shuttle to head to the main campus for the party.

Plugging Away

Michael Rawdon — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 22:00:00 PDT

I've been keeping plenty busy this weekend. I'm still working on my new journal, and have been making great progress (or so I think). My goal is to launch it by the end of the month, simply because I feel that if I spend most of this month working on it and still haven't taken it live, then I've sort of failed. I really want to start writing content for it! I think it will be a nice step forward from GitA in technology, both for my readers and for me personally.

I'm trying not to get too bogged down in the details, because I know I can change many things later. Wordpress is really terrifically flexible, and I've barely had to look at the source code at all to do everything I want - and haven't had to modify any of it. The only things I haven't been able to get it to do are pretty minor things, "nice to have" features which I can explore adding later.

Most of my efforts have been going towards presentation, and even that I can change later, too. I'm not enthusiastic about the color scheme I've chosen, which has sort of evolved organically out of my technical efforts, but which is really kind of bland. I suspect it's the main thing that will get a major overhaul after the official launch. The main tension is that I want to have a page which is fairly bright, but my favorite colors tend to be darker shades. So that's been something of a struggle.

The Illusionist

Michael Rawdon — Fri, 15 Sep 2006 22:00:00 PDT

Now here's a really neat film to go see: The Illusionist (2006).

Around the turn of the 19th/20th century, a young peasant in Vienna Austria learns how to perform magic tricks. He also meets and falls in love with a young duchess. But when their love is denied, he leaves to travel the world, and returns 15 years later as the magician Eisenheim (Edward Norton), and performs to rave reviews and great box receipts in the city. Such is his success that he attracts the attention of the Crown Prince Leopold (Rufus Sewell), who volunteers his fiancee, Sophie (Jessica Biel), for one of Eisenheim's tricks. Sophie is the woman Eisenheim had fallen in love with years ago, and they find that they are still in love.

One of Leopold's aides, Chief Inspector Uhl (Paul Giamatti) learns that Eisenheim and Sophie are planning to run away together, and he tells the Prince. Confronting Sophie, the drunken Prince goes into a rage and attacks her as she goes to leave the castle. The next day, Sophie's body is found in a river. Eisenheim accuses the Prince, but Uhl quiets him, knowing such an investigation would come to nothing. Eisenheim retires from the public for a time, but then re-opens his show in a new venue, apparently bringing spirits back from the dead, causing unrest in the city, and bringing his conflict with the Prince to a boil.

Perambulations with Karen

Michael Rawdon — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 22:00:00 PDT

No, I'm not dead. I'm not even merely sleeping. I've just been really, really busy.

This past week I've mostly been busy hosting my friend Karen, who's been in town partly on business and partly on vacation. I took Monday and Tuesday off to hang out with her, too. It's been worth it, though!

Karen was staying with other friends through Saturday morning, and got to my house around noonish on Saturday. Then we and Debbi went down to walk the Mountain View Art & Wine Festival, which is the larger of the two art fairs Mountain View hosts during the summer. We walked through the Jehning Lock Museum, which is fairly new and which I hadn't yet visited. They happened to have copies of two new Images of America books which I picked up: Mountain View and Moffett Field. We each picked up a little something at the fair, which we usually do, and it's always fun to look. Fortunately it wasn't too hot!

Well, That Was Painful

Michael Rawdon — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 22:00:00 PDT

Two days, two more Red Sox/A's games. That makes four this year. Unfortunately, this round wasn't as much fun as the last round.

To show you what I mean, here's the Sox' starting line-up for Monday's game:

Cars

Michael Rawdon — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 22:00:00 PDT

I should probably learn not to underestimate Pixar. When I saw an early trailer for Cars - complete with an automotive booger joke - it looked like a complete loser. Well, we dragged out feet going to see it, but we caught it tonight and it's actually a lot of fun!

Structurally it's a straightforward self-realization film: Race car Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) sees himself as the next great race car, and had a chance to prove it in a race he's travelling across the country for. But he accidentally falls out of his truck, Mack (John Ratzenberger), at night and finds himself up on speeding charges in the middle of nowhere, specifically Radiator Springs, a nearly-dead town on the "mother road", Route 66, which was bypassed by the Interstate decades ago. Sentenced to power a paving machine, Lightning chafes at being half there, especially since the attractive Porsche Sally (Bonnie Hunt) was responsible for keeping him there. Still, he becomes friends with the rusty old tow truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy) and through him and the other denizens of Radiator Springs - especially the crusty old Hudson Hornet named Doc (Paul Newman, who reminded me for some reason of Burt Lancaster as Moonlight Graham in Field of Dreams) - he learns that winning races isn't all there is to life.

But it's how he gets there that makes it fun! The crackling dialogue is loads of fun as it usually is in a Pixar film, but the anthropomorphizing of the cars is really the most clever bit. Sure, the basic visuals evoke (for some of us) the classic cartoon "One Cab's Family" (with the eyes in the windshields, as opposed to in the headlights as with the Chevron Cars), but they go a lot farther than that, with the tractors, with Mater's antics, with the clever way the town keeps Lightning from skipping out, with Guido's approach to changing tires.

Summer in Las Vegas

Michael Rawdon — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 22:13:37 PDT

Or, as I thought I heard the captain refer to it on the flight there, "Lost Wages".

Yes, Debbi and I took a two-night trip to Las Vegas this weekend. No special occasion, just that we wanted to go back. We stayed at the Excalibur again, like we did last January. It's not the ideal location, but the rooms are cheap and we enjoy gambling both there and at the MGM Grand.

Plus we went to see Cirque du Soleil's Zumanity at New York New York, which is also right nearby. Zumanity is Cirque's "adult" show, which means it has a lot of nudity and swearing, all of which is basically gratuitous. I don't mind the nudity and in a few cases I think it was preferable to having the performer wear a fairly cheesy skin-colored body suit (though there were acts where they did that, too). It was very similar to Mystere in its stunts, which tended to be feats of strength and pose rather than of choreography. I enjoyed it on that level somewhat more than Mystere (in particular, the contortionist was amazing), but I didn't like it nearly as much as "O" or Ka. Debbi liked it even less than Mystere (but she liked Mystere more than I did).

Baseball Update

Michael Rawdon — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 20:50:23 PDT

It occurs to me that I've been remiss in recording the baseball games I've been to this year, having only mentioned one. So it's time to rectify that.

We're slowly working our way through tickets I bought from my friend Syd when he moved away and sold off his Athletics season tickets. The set I bought included four Red Sox games, which made me pretty happy.

The first two Sox games were last month, July 24 and 25. The first game featured a premiere pitching match-up of Josh Beckett vs. Barry Zito, but it turned out not to be Zito's night, as he gave up 7 runs in 5 innings, which was all the Sox would need. Beckett gave up 3 runs in the 5th and 6th, and then the bullpen took over. So it was kind of a laffer, much to my friend Bill's chagrin, as he joined me to root for the A's, but there wasn't a lot to root for. I mean, when even Alex Gonzalez (never mind Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz) hit home runs off your pitcher, it's not a good night. Final score: 7-3 Sox.

Nine Years

Michael Rawdon — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 22:52:38 PDT

To my surprise, it seems to have been a few years since I last acknowledged the anniversary of my journal. Today it's been nine years since I started this little folly - wow!

I don't post as much as I once did - once upon a time I posted frequently enough to be a member of the Often Webring (raise your hand if you remember the halcyon days of Webrings!), but these days 4-to-7 entries seem to be about all I can manage. Some of this is because of the homebrew software I'm using, which somewhat restricts the convenience of posting. Moreover, the format I'm using makes it awkward (for aesthetic reasons, if nothing else) to post very short entries. All of this is why I'm considering (and, really, slowly moving towards) re-launching my journal under a new domain using modern blogging software.

Inasmuch as this might be my last anniversary with my current set-up, I wanted to briefly acknowledge the event.

The End of Iraq

Michael Rawdon — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 22:00:00 PDT

I don't often write about politics in this journal, although I do have plenty of opinions (some of them quite strong). But politics doesn't really consume my life, nor is it really even a significant hobby of mine, so it doesn't really show up here much. But sometimes it's worth making an exception

For a few years that the Democrats have had a difficult problem in trying to respond to the Bush-led Republican drive to invade and occupy the nation of Iraq and reform it into... something. My perception is that the Democratic response to this situation has boiled down to, "Well, we wouldn't have gone in there in the first place! It was a bad idea!" Unfortunately, presented with the fait accompli of the situation, saying "we wouldn't have done it" isn't really viable leadership. This has reduced the Democratic response - in practice, at least - to one which the Republicans have successfully spun as "cutting and running".

It's a dilemma.

The Orchestral Jethro Tull

Michael Rawdon — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 22:00:00 PDT

Debbi doesn't do big surprises for me very often ("You're very difficult to surprise!" she tells me), and I think the last time was taking me to Las Vegas for my birthday a year and a half ago. But she pulled one tonight, as we joined Subrata and Susan to go see Ian Anderson performing "the orchestral Jethro Tull" at the Mountain Winery's concert venue in Saratoga. It's a tour in support of the album of the same name.

I'm sorry to say I don't actually own this album (nor the Aqualung Live disc, either), though I do have the oddity A Classic Case (which seems to be obscure enough that Amazon doesn't even list it). And despite being a big Jethro Tull fan, I haven't seen them live since 1989 (in support of Rock Island, not among my favorites of theirs).

But this was still a neat surprise, and it was a great show!

Superman Returns

Michael Rawdon — Sat, 22 Jul 2006 22:00:00 PDT

I've been looking forward to Superman Returns for a while now. It's a sequel to the first and second films of the previous franchise (disregarding the later films), in which shortly after the events of Superman II, Superman learns that astronomers have discovered the location of Krypton, and he leaves Earth to go see it for himself.

Five years later, Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) gets out of jail (since Superman never showed up during his trial) and finds his way to Superman's fortress of solitude (which he'd visited in the second movie) and steals some of the crystals from the fortress. Around the same time, Superman (Brandon Routh) returns to Earth and is cared for by his mother (Eva Marie Saint, of all people!). As Clark Kent, Superman returns to Metropolis and reclaims his old job with Perry White (Frank Langella). However, he finds that Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has a young son Jason (Tristan Lake Leabu) and is engaged to White's nephew Richard (James Marsden).

Luthor happens to pick as a time to test his theory that the fortress' crystals can be used to create new land a test of a new space shuttle. His test drains power from the eastern seaboard, causing the shuttle test to go horribly wrong, calling Superman into action for the first time since his return. From here, Superman contends with Luthor's plan as well as trying to reassemble the pieces of his life, especially with respect to Lois, who won a Pulitzer Prize for an article entitled "Why The World Doesn't Need Superman".

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Michael Rawdon — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 22:00:00 PDT

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is the sequel to the surprisingly good film based on the Disneyland amusement-park ride.

Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) and Elizabeth Swann (Keira Knightly) are both arrested at the beginning of the film - just before their wedding - for their parts in helping Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) escape in the first film. Will is craftily blackmailed into going to find Sparrow and bring back his compass in order to win his freedom. For her part, Elizabeth is smuggled out of jail by her father, and she manages to sneak on board a ship dressed as a man to seek out Will.

Sparrow, meanwhile, is trying to find the chest of Davy Jones, the captain of the Flying Dutchman. Unfortunately, in a dream Sparrow learns that Jones knows what he's up to, and has targeted him and his ship, the Black Pearl, for destruction. Sparrow puts the Pearl aground on a remote island, which is where he and his crew are when Will catches up to them., helping to save them from a rather grisly fate.

Our Government Against Us

Michael Rawdon — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:00:00 PDT

Our wonderful government has been busily trying to restrict our freedoms over these last couple of months:

Amendment to Outlaw Gay Marriage:

The 2006 All-Star Game

Michael Rawdon — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 22:00:00 PDT

I watched the All-Star Game tonight. I can't remember the last time I watched it all by myself. Usually I invite some friends over, but with Syd and Keith no longer in the area, and rarely ever seeing Ceej, I felt unmotivated to organize something this time around. And even Debbi wasn't home, since she had a work function to attend in the evening. So it was just me and the cats.

But it was a good time anyway. I did some reading, some mindless Web surfing, watched the game, and - during commercials - watched bits of the final table of a poker championship they'd been showing over the last few days (the final table ended up having some amusing moments but otherwise wasn't very interesting; I usually enjoy watching the earlier tables in a tournament when it comes to watching them on TV, anyway).

The game itself was a pitching duel, and thus wasn't tremendously interesting. Most All-Star Games aren't all that interesting, but then, most baseball games aren't very interesting. Part of baseball is knowing that individual moments, and whole games, are in and of themselves just small pieces in a much larger whole. Another example of Sturgeon's Revelation in action. But you wade through all the mediocre stuff and so appreciate the great stuff that much more.

Portland Excursion

Michael Rawdon — Tue, 04 Jul 2006 22:00:00 PDT

We're back from a lovely trip to Portland, Oregon over the holiday weekend. Debbi came with me to visit our friend Karen, her first trip to this northwestern city. The plan was just to have a fun, relaxing weekend for all three of us, with one exception (but only to the "relaxing" part).

We flew Southwest, which is our airline of choice around the west these days. We learned from Karen that the trick to riding "cattle-car airlines" (where there's no assigned seating) is to check in on-line at least a day in advance, to increase your chances of getting in the group that goes on the plane first. We flew up on Saturday afternoon, and with the full flight I wish we'd known that trick beforehand. But, oh well!

Saturday was a laid-back day as we visited Karen's current house (she's moved since last time I visited), and we ambled down to a nearby Italian restaurant for some pretty good food. The only downside is that the weekend started off darned hot - highs well into the 80s - and didn't cool down until after dark. We also made a trip to massive Portland superstore Fred Meyer, where among other things we picked up some flowers for Karen's window boxes for me to plant sometime during the weekend.

Grosse Pointe Blank and... the other one

Michael Rawdon — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 22:00:00 PDT

Today we went over to Subrata and Susan's for a barbecue and to see a couple of John Cusack movies.

First up was Grosse Pointe Blank (1997), which I've wanted to see for a while since it came out around the same time as my own 10-year high school reunion (as did Romy and Michelle's High School Reunion, which I also haven't seen). In it, Cusack plays Martin Blank, a professional assassin who goes to his 10-year high school reunion and meets his ex-girlfriend Debi (Minnie Driver), whom he stood up at their prom when he ran off to join the army. Blank unpretentiously tells people what he does, knowing that no one will believe him. Meanwhile, he's also in town on business, and some other unfinished business follows him there, too.

The movie is sharp and funny, with many laugh-out-loud lines. It's also moving at times, taking itself seriously in some things and not others. It mainly works because of Cusack's performance being caught between two worlds, his fairly dull high school classmates and his high-pressure life of paranoia and death. Plus, it proves that there's no set-up so ridiculous that it can't be made more so by the addition of Dan Aykroyd. It's a fun film, go see it.

Doctor Who, Season One

Michael Rawdon — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 22:00:00 PDT

Tonight Debbi and I finished watching the first season of the new Doctor Who series. You may recall that I liked what I saw in the early going, so here are my thoughts on the whole season.

First off, since I love making lists, here's my ranking of the episodes, from best to worst: