San Francisco Thing #6: The Human Parade

This deserves a longish post but it is late! And I am tired! So I will just say San Francisco's reputation for attracting more than its share of characters is well-deserved.

San Francisco Thing #5: No Car

I have lived all my life without owning a car. This was much more awkward in Utah than it is here. I guess that people coming from New York might find the mass transit system less than stellar, but, well, that's New York, the only really top-notch mass transit system in the United States (my anecdotal evidence says). You've got the BART, you've got the MUNI, you've got CalTrain...you can get all kinds of places.

Admittedly, it's not as convenient as a car. But it's SO much cheaper!

San Francisco Thing #4:

The muzaks!

I do not by any means fully take advantage of the San Francisco music scene. There is a well-known club that plays much local music five minutes' walk from my residence, and do I go there and listen? No, I do not. (Well, I did once, and saw Experimental Dental School, which was...wait for it...oh, never mind. Dentist jokes are too easy.)

Anyway! Even with my relatively little advantage taken, I have seen a LOT of good musical performances here in SF. Jethro Tull, Richard Thompson, the Soul Savers...the best was a little music festival thing up in Marin that was all local acts playing for an audience of, oh, maybe one hundred fifty in a little community center with a two-foot stage. That was where I fell in (lyrical) love with Miss Joanna Newsom. It was a great night.

The List: San Francisco Thing #3

It is always early spring, or late spring. Except for the two days of winter (in either December or January) and two weeks of summer spread out in two or three day intervals between March and October.

That's it. That's all you get for seasons.

The magnolias bloomed a couple of weeks ago, and that's why. They'll do it again in April.

The LIst: The Things About San Francisco no. 2

Hills.

I am thinking of this one because yesterday I had to get out to a house party to send off our Australian friend, and it involved a fair amount of walking, because I convinced myself it would be faster than taking the bus for the second leg of the trip.

So there I was, walking. And walking. And I came to a hill, and started to go up it, and I realized it was gonna take a while going up the hill. Just at this moment I passed...a staircase. A staircase which promised to take me directly from where I was to where I wanted to go without all of this tedious switchback action.

Accordingly, I started to go up it. And up, and up, and up it.

And up.

And up.

And up.

And then I got to the place I'd been looking toward as my milestone and discovered I was only about half-way to the top.

So.

Up I went.

355 stairs later (I didn't count myself, but I was told that's the number) I was at my destination, rubber-legged and sweaty. But! It was faster than going 'round! So I had that going for me at least.

Going down that staircase when I left was pure pleasure.

Avatar reviewed.

My problem with movie reviews is that either I don't think enough about them to say more than "Yeah, that was pretty cool/all right/a waste of $10," or I have so much to say that it would be the essay with footnotes. (The Dark Knight was like that.)

Avatar falls more into the latter camp, which I guess says something for it. Maybe. Unlike TDK, though, what I want to say is not "This film made me think about human nature and the nature of evil," it was "I found this movie obnoxious in ways I have a hard time stating concisely."

It does have its good points. Namely, that it is beautiful. And perhaps even more important, for movie purposes, when you have humans interacting with what I presume is computer animation, the eye just pans across the scene. No visual jar at all. This is not Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

So, there's that.

Just a few notes on the "story" side: the Na'vi are not really alien at all. They are tall blue humans with tails. It is hard to do "alien" effectively, of course, but here it seems to be done deliberately in a sort of psychological sleight-of-hand. We empathize immediately with the "aliens" because they are, in fact, human, which is important because we are supposed to root for the "aliens" and against the humans, and it would be much harder to bring that off if the aliens really were strange/uncanny/incomprehensible to the audience.

We are also supposed to root for the aliens because we never see an alien do anything that would lose our sympathy, whereas none of the humans not ultimately allied with the aliens do anything to gain our sympathy. Well, OK, this is a very slight exaggeration; one of the Na'vi gets the standard "truculent tribal alpha male displaced by hero" role, in which he says rude stuff, and the Marine colonel is intelligent, decisive, and physically brave...but, of course, he's also a warmonger, so all of those good qualities just end up making him worse. That's about it for the moral ambiguity.

So, fine, we are rooting for the aliens. (And Our Hero, who, in the finest pulp tradition, is the white guy swooping into the native society, assuming the leadership of the tribe, and poaching the most available of the ladies, who is also the tribal shaman-in-waiting, as if Edgar Rice Burroughs had written this part of the plot. Oh, and Our Hero's friends. We are rooting for them too.) And they win! Through the power of the coalition-building montage scene, and a lot of heroic self-sacrifice from the expected quarters, and the Mother Tree zapping all the Marines, or whatever they are.

And the humans are frog-marched to their waiting spaceship and forced to decamp to their "dead world". About three-quarters of the way through the movie we learn that humans have "killed their mother (meaning Earth)" and that there is "nothing green on the planet (Earth again)". If this is not just wild hyperbole, then one might think it would have come up at some point in the movie prior to this--say, when the corporate mucketymuck is explaining why humans are interested in Pandora. At the time he says it is to get "unobtainium", the utility of which is never even hinted at, but maybe it is to establish Pandora as a human colony because the Earth is rapidly becoming uninhabitable, and they just forgot to say so.

But if that's really the case, I have bad news, Na'vi: Human nature being what it is, the defeat of a few hundred Marines is not gonna stop us, and I doubt even Toruk-Makto will be effective against being bombed from orbit.

The List:: Seven Things About San Francisco

Thing #1: Fog.

Not original! So sue me!

The thing that really weirded me out about San Francisco fog...well, two things, actually. The first one is that it can be so localized. My former roommate's brother had a house in Diamond Heights where you could literally walk in the front door in the fog, go to the back door, and look out at a blue sky.

Trip-pee.

The other thing is that it's fast. In Utah the fog just comes in and sits. In San Francisco it goes ghosting along at 10-15 miles per hour sometimes as it comes in off the sea...it's really weird to watch it. So quiet and so swift.

Last Beatles Song

Since this is not a favorites list or anything, just what happens to come to mind, let's have a look at:

"Blue Jay Way"!

One of the least listenable Beatles songs of all time, and yet weirdly hypnotic. And "Please don't be long/Or I may be asleep" has always been a relevant line 'round the old family hope.

Beatles Song the Sixth:

"Hey Bulldog".

Just because.

And also because it just might be the catchiest Beatles' song ever. Seriously.

Yellow Submarine ahoy!

No wonder that blue Cerberus thingy loves it.

Beatles Song the Fifth:

How about "Rain" again?

No?

It is still raining. In fact, I don't think it's stopped all day. Certainly not for long.

So, it turns out that there may be something to getting a Ph.D. after all, and becoming the undisputed master of a sub-demi-niche of the great ecology of knowledge. We have had the privilege of hearing about the research of a Nobel laureate here the last two days, and, as one would expect, the stuff he is doing is pretty awesome. But he showed one picture that made me say, "The picture you are showing does not show what you say it shows; that just so happens to fall in my demi-sub-niche and you will have to explain it better or get a better picture to convince me your interpretation of your experiment is correct."

That is the point of graduate school, really; so you will know enough to be able to have a conversation with a Nobel laureate about his research that is really about his research (assuming his research is in your field, of course; I could do this for Medicine and Physiology, and maaaaybe Chemistry, but not Physics).

Anyway. In honor of that, how about the song the Beatles sing Jeremy Hilary Boob, Ph.D.:

He's a real Nowhere Man
Living in his Nowhere Land
Making all his Nowhere Plans
For nobody.

Beatles Song the Fourth:

"Taxman".

People mostly associate the Beatles with Flower Power and hippieness and so on and so forth, possibly because the Beatles are so indelibly associated with the 60s and the 60s with leftist idealism among (most of) the young and reaction against it among (most of) the powers-that-were. (Viz., "Never trust anyone over thirty" and "The sign said 'Long-haired freaky people need not apply.'", respectively.)

But the truth, as always, is more complicated, and in 1965 George Harrison was ready for a little less in the way of redistributive socialism in England. Specifically, he was really not all that fond of a 95% marginal tax rate on his income. So he wrote a song about it. (Just to prove he wasn't taking sides, he name-checks both Mr. Harold Wilson and Mr. Edward Heath, leaders of the Labour and Conservative Parties, respectively.)

I play this song every April 15th. I'll bet a lot of people do.

NOT a Beatles' song!

The last two nights we have had heavy rain and wind, so that I have waked several times when I hear the rain at the window. It always makes me think of the verse of "A Poor Wayfaring Man of Grief" that begins:

'Twas night; the floods were out, it blew
A winter hurricane aloof.

There are a lot of poor wayfaring men of grief here in San Francisco; I hope they have all found somewhere dry to spend the night, and continue to do so. The weather report predicts rain all week.

Beatles Song the Third:

"Rain".

Or, in this case, "RAIN!"

We actually had a thunderstorm last night, which is a maybe-twice-a-year occurrence here in California, and it rained with enthusiasm for about twelve hours straight, which it almost never does in this neck of the woods. The clouds have dispersed and a watery blue sky with a few cotton-puff clouds arches over us, but we have the puddles to remind us.

"Rain, I don't mind;
Shine, the weather's fine."

Beatles Song the Second:

"Maxwell's Silver Hammer"

When I came home from the record store with my dad after having bought "Abbey Road", this was the song playing as we arrived at home. (That is what memory whispers, anyway.) Dad said it might be his favorite Beatles song ever.

At the time, I thought, "Oh neat! Dad's favorite Beatles song!" Now, of course, I would think, "Wait, the faux show tune about a serial killer and his murder weapon?...Really?"

A clear case of familiarity leading to familiarity leading to weirdness. This kind of thing happens all the time at our place.

"Abbey Road" was also the cause of a slightly painful yet strangely hilarious moment; that first night my dad strictly instructed me not to listen to it all the time, as it is not good for the brain to listen to too much pop music, also, poor Mom to have to listen to the Beatles continually. (He may stated those last two clauses only by implication, but it was pretty loud and clear implication, if you know what I mean.)

So when he came home the next evening and learned I had listened to the album straight through three times between when I got home (at 2:30) and when he asked about it (about 8), he was not very happy. Realizing that it would cut no ice as an excuse for my behavior, I did NOT mention the fact that I had manfully demanded of myself that I go at least an hour between listenings!

The List: Seven Beatles' Songs

#1: "I'm So Tired". Its chief claim to fame in my book it is one of the two songs that I remembered well enough to mention to my father as reasons to get Beatles' CDs for Christmas, which was the beginning of my introduction to rock'n'roll. ("Rocky Raccoon" was the other. That's right, two songs from the deepest darkest depths of the White Album--well, OK, "Revolution 9" is deeper and darker--were what led to my becoming a Beatles fan. Weird, huh?)

But it's also just a great song, and it introduced me to the word "git", which I suppose could be considered a point in its favor? It's also not often you here Sir Walter Raleigh name-checked in your pop music, which is a nice touch. (He's the man who brought the idea of smoking tobacco to England from the Indians of Virginia and/or the Carolinas. At least, that's the way John Lennon tells it, and I think it's true.)

I feel worn to a frazzle

I don't know why. Perhaps it is that I am surprizing close to the Next Big Thing after all.

English

One of the best things about it: the fine gradations of meaning in different words (awe, horror, dread, terror).

One of the worst things about it--the homogenization of meaning in different words (awful, horrible, dreadful, terrible).

Poems

It's been a long time since I've written any.

I wonder if it is simply that I have gotten older, or if it has to do with my being more tranquil now. Correlation and causation are hard to unwind at that level.

It could also be that I got tired of writing for an audience of one. Sometimes more, of course, but only one for certain. Lady Grey mentioned something along those lines to me the other day--that a writer must have an audience, and the better the writer, the more needed the audience. (I hope I paraphrased that correctly...)

It's an interesting idea.

Fun with Microwaves

SUCCESSES
1. Peeps
2. Grapes cut almost but not quite in half
3. Cockroaches (it doesn't do anything to them. I have no explanation for this.)

FAILURES
1. Twist ties.

Posting to a blog:

Only one of the many things it is easier to do every day than to do every two or three days.

At least for me. I think many people are not like that, but I have more than once said "I will do (not do) the following thing every day, starting now" and then gone and done (not done) that thing for many months, in some cases years, in one case for the last ten years. But if I ever miss two days, it all goes to pot.

P=mv! It is not just for physics!

The Beatles, oh, the Beatles

When I was very young I heard them singing "Rocky Raccoon" and "I'm So Tired" on the LP. And when I got to be, oh, 14 or so, I said to my dad, "Hey, wait about those Beatles songs?" And he got Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album for Christmas, and my long slow slide into rock and roll fandom had begun.

Or maybe it was an ascent, I dunno. I do not listen to the Beatles like I used to, but I still have a lot of their trivia at my fingertips, and I can probably sing along with, oh, 90% of their recorded output.

So, yeah, still a fan. :D

TCU done dropped the ball.

We (by which I mean, the Mountain West Conference) were all set to run the table and stake our claim to BCS goodness. But TCU could not seal the deal. They lost 17-10 to Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl. >:(

In fairness, Boise State played really well and were value for money, but it is disappointing that the Horned Frogs couldn't do to them what they did to the Utes. (55-28...the pain still lingers.)

Still thinking about Bishop L

I guess that's not very surprising. One of the things I have been thinking about is how to explain to someone who's not a Mormon the relationship between a bishop and a member of that bishop's ward. No very clear parallel suggests itself so far.

Of course, this is particularly close to my heart because I was the ward clerk for Bishop L for close to two years, so I talked with him pretty much every week. It's really strange to think of him being gone. The funeral will be in southern California, so I won't be able to go; I hope they have a memorial service up here so we get a chance to say goodbye in an official way.

A very somber day

I found out this morning that my bishop passed away last night. It has given me lots to think about all day.

I'm going to miss him.

Observation

Today the tide was as high as I've ever seen it in the Mission Bay canal. Usually high tide puts the 2 in the sign reading "1/2" underwater but leaves the 1 untouched, but today the whole fraction was submerged. Not only that, the high tide line showed that the tide was receding, and the full tide had been about a foot higher than that! I wonder if it's because of a storm surge.

There were sea lions in the canal too. (Two of them actually, which I regard as a good omen. ;)) I never saw sealions in the canal until a few months ago; I wonder if something has changed to make it more congenial to them.