Disorderly Content

Dan Gillmor's blog (which is, not exactly coincidentally, named Dan Gillmor's blog) has news that Kepler's bookstore in Menlo Park has closed its doors. I know that compared to the horrors in Iraq and New Orleans, the loss of an independent bookseller isn't even a blip on the radar. So why does it hurt so much? Could it be because they've been so supportive of my friend Barry, hosting readings of each of his books? Or is it because it's one more sign of the increasing corporatization of America? Or because browsing there was a guarantee of finding something I'd love but would never think to look for?

Life just got a little more gray around here.

Update 10/10: It's alive!!!. I'd heard mutterings about a Kepler's revival, and now it's been confirmed. Some Silicon Valley VCs have gotten involved, worked out a business plan and have brought our very favorite independent bookstore back from the dead. A little early, I'd say; this would have been so much more appropriate three weeks from now. But better early than never, as they always say.

(They don't? It's late, not early? I guess that does make more sense, now that you mention it.)

Today I was in Walmart for the first time in ages. As a rule I try to avoid the place, in part because it's an unpleasant experience, but mostly because I believe wholeheartedly that Walmart represents everything that's evil and wrong about corporate America. So what was I doing there? I'd stopped in a couple of other places to look for school supplies; I wanted some new subjects for my stock photo efforts and was hoping to find some really generic and cheap items without logos I'd have to erase.

Anyway, I found some cheap crayons and pencils and such and then got in line at the checkout. Total of my purchases: $4.44. I checked my change and handed the cashier a ten dollar bill, two quarters and four pennies. Which she stared at. And stared at. And couldn't figure out what to do. Finally she said, "You gave me too much. It's 44 cents." And I explained, patiently I hope, that I gave her 54 cents so she'd give me back a dime. That made the light go off. So she rang up the total, looked at the display and handed me back a dime. And I had to explain, politely again, that she'd forgot the other six dollars. And had to wait for her to ring up the next customer, so the register would open and she could extract my change.

Yeah, now I have another reason to avoid Walmart.

From the wonderful Drawn!, a website about graphic arts and artists, comes a link to The Complete Illustrated Catalog of ACME Products. If you grew up on Warner Brothers cartoons, no further explanation is necessary.

(And when the hell are those bozos at Warner gonna get Animaniacs out on DVD? Huh? When?)

Only two weeks after it was supposed to show up, I finally found a copy of the fifth Starburst set of Farscape DVDs at the local Best Buy. Which I took home and immediately started to play, knowing that I'm only two for four trying to watch the previous sets. It seems the maker has these quality control problems, which is why I was so quick to check out the disks.

Fast forward a couple of episodes (literally in this case) and I determined that, yes indeed, there was a problem. So back I went to Best Buy to see about making my problem their problem. It seems I couldn't just get my money back, at least not as long as they had another copy to give me as a replacement. But before I'd take their one remaining copy of Season 2, Volume 2, I wanted to see if it had the same problem in the same place. So I was pointed at technical support, which has been advertising itself as the Geek Squad, the ultimate answer to every technology user's problems.

And that's what made me wonder about whether I had a good geek or a bad one. Because first I got to watch a couple of technology's saviors try to get a DVD player working, eventually grabbing another one to cable to a convenient television. Then he couldn't find the remote for that player, which meant standing there and holding down the Fast Forward button through thirty-eight minutes of great SF entertainment. Which finally demonstrated that this disc didn't lock up where the other one did.

So I went home and enjoyed my new DVDs. And thought that suddenly the geniuses at my local Apple Store's Genius Bar are looking a whole lot smarter. At least they do if we're grading on a curve...

When I lived in Los Angeles, it seems like half the people I met were either in the entertainment business or trying to be. The temp receptionist with the development deal for a TV pilot, the guys on the loading dock with the band and the connection to one production company or another, the infinite numbers of would-be actors waiting tables. There are so many real phonies in La La Land that it's hard to imagine why there'd be a nead for phony phonies.

Which is why a story in the LA Times is so fascinating. Somehow a con man managed to get an entire group of people to work on a nonexistent reality series, all waiting for paychecks that never came, many of them advancing their own money for the project. Some of them were the usual Angelinos who thought they were getting a huge break. But others were real professionals who should have known better.

And suddenly Ed Wood seems the epitome of Hollywood virtue...

Thanks (if that's the right word) to Backup Brain for mentioning When the Graphic Artists Get Bored. I needed to feel talentless and uncreative right about now.

Today I made a change I never expected to make: I cancelled my newspaper subscription. Not because I don't enjoy the Murky News. And not because there aren't valuable aspects to getting a daily paper. But because of the raw incompetence of their delivery organization.

Today I returned from a short holiday in San Diego. And discovered, for the third time in as many weeks, that my stop order had been ignored. Well, not exactly ignored; that would have been too obvious. No, they stopped delivering the day after I put in the request. And they didn't deliver one the day I left or on my first full day away. But then for some reason they decided to start dropping off a paper again yesterday.

Which I grant isn't as bad as last time, when the stack was half a foot tall. But I would prefer that my neighbors and others not have such an obvious indicator of my non-presence. So I guess I'll learn to get my news from the Web like everyone else around here.

Those amazingly snarky people over at Television Without Pity had a great idea for combining fanaticism and good works: the Tubey's Kids auctions. The idea is that fans who'd love to see TWoP's reviewers take on an episode of their favorite show get together and try to outbid each other, the spoils going to a deserving charity. We Scapers won the first auction, lost out on the second one to fans of Hugh Laurie's show House, and missed the chance to bid on the third one due to some bad timing. But on number four we kicked butt! An organization called Donors Choose, coincidentally the beneficiary of our last win, is a cool thousand dollars richer. And we get a TWoP recap of Farscape's premiere episode. Sounds like a win all 'round, aside from that anonymous bunch who came in second. But there's always auction #5, right?

Update 09/10: Great news! The Premiere recap is up! And with any luck, a few TWoP readers will discover the wonderfulness of Farscape. Right in time for its arrival in syndication too!

I love watching jokes get stretched further and further until they take on a life of their own, disconnected from the circumstances of their birth. Such I hope is the case of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, the godhead of a new religion that came into being as a response to educators in Kansas (a contradiction in terms, I know) who decided that Intelligent Design should be taught in science classes. What's next? Leeches in medical schools?

Anyway, Boing Boing reported on the growth of the joke, including a Wikipedia entry for his exaltedness, the FSM. And today they've taken it another step, with their attempt to create the FSM version of the Christians' holy mackerel. I so hope some enterprising maker takes this on as a product. This is getting almost as good as All Your Base...

Update 09/11: And the joke keeps growing. The Huffington Post points to an article in the Telegraph about Pastafarianism and its phenomenal growth as a religion. (Hey, if Jedi can make it, why not the FSM?) Good writeup, aside from the boneheaded reference to the Scopes Monkey Trial. That was Tennessee, not Ohio, not that I expect a Brit to know the difference.

I've gotta bring recording gear to our blogger get togethers. (Can't call them Meetups any more; now that Meetup.com demands actual cash payment for the use of their virtual hall, we've moved to somewhat less convenient but still free options for organizing ourselves. If you're in the SF Bay Area and want to come to one of our sessions, just email me and I'll give you the details. But I digress. Again.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, the recording equipment. Last night's session was the usual: a few dozen topics, some for just a few moments and others in a bit of depth. At my instigation we talked a little about stock photography and about cooking with chiles. (I've been haunting Mountain View's Sunday farmer's market for groceries and subjects for my photography. Peppers make excellent models. And when they're done getting their closeups, they do interesting things to the most mundane dishes. Like a couple of cayenne peppers chopped into my tuna salad; jeepers!) Other people started other conversations, and things rose and fell and transmogrified in all sorts of ways. Oh, and this guy behind us built, tore down and built these art displays on the walls of the coffee shop. Good thing we all had cameras to capture them for posterity.

During my recent travels I had a series of less than satisfactory experiences with hotel WiFi. Granted, unstable access is still better than none at all. And granted, in most places that access came with the room. But still I was frustrated.

About a week after I got home from my last trip I was having trouble reaching one particular site, which kept rejecting my requests for connection. As part of my diagnosis I figured I'd try connecting to one of my neighbors' WiFi; there's always somebody who doesn't bother with security. But when I turned on the wireless on my laptop I was surprised not to see my own WiFi network. And that got me thinking that maybe the problem is with my PowerBook. Maybe the intermittent WiFi was an indication of an AirPort card going flooey.

Of course, I did nothing to investigate further. Until tonight, when I connected to my Linksys router, checked the settings and realized that nothing looked the way it should. Which is when I realized that I'd upgraded the router's firmware a week or so ago and never thought to check the settings. You see, the new firmware came with a bunch of new wireless security features. And with those new features came a reset of all the WiFi settings, including network name and password. No wonder my laptop couldn't find the network!

To think I used to do technical support for a living. I really do know better than to draw unwarranted conclusions. Or at least I know how to chastise customers when they do it.

I have a new favorite place around here. Take Embarcadero Road east from Highway 101 to the end and you're at Palo Alto Airport. Make a left and you're at the entrance to Baylands Nature Preserve. Which is just teeming with bird life right now: seagulls, pelicans, curlews and a bunch of little guys who move way too fast for me to get a picture or even a good look. And when I get enough of the birds, I can walk a few dozen feet and watch the small planes take off, circle the south end of San Francisco Bay and practice their landings. And play with my new 28-200mm lens, which isn't quick enough for those little birds but does just fine with planes.

Not great as in "this is a great movie"; great as in "let's trash this piece of dren and in the process demonstrate the kind of wit and creativity nowhere to be found in the thing being reviewed". Full credit goes to Dori Smith at Backup Brain, who quotes from some of the reviews of Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, the movie we can all bring up (poor choice of words I admit) the next time the studios complain about this year's disastrous box office. But as Ms. Smith points out, the best review must surely belong to Roger Ebert, who manages not only to trash the flick (which surely doesn't even deserve to be made into guitar picks), but also Rob Schneider's attempt to silence a critic who dared question his film's quality well in advance of its being made. If you read only one Deuce Bigalow review, go to Mr. Ebert's site and read this one.

Back when I used to read a lot of mysteries, I remember feeling let down pretty regularly when it came time for the solution. Problem was that all the complexity of the detective's (or detectives', as the case may be) analysis and deliberations were replaced by the far more mundane details of the resolution. Much as I loved Nero Wolfe, I always felt that the denouement was the least interesting part of any story.

Why, you must be wondering, am I bringing this up now? Especially with a posting title that evokes the laws of Kashruth? This all came to mind when I noticed a blog entry on The Huffington Post with the intriguing and, to me anyway, impenetrable title of "$2M Fight Between Van Halen And The Baltimore Orioles". What was the connection between an aging rocker and a baseball team? The snipped on the blog didn't help; it expanded on the headline but didn't answer the question of why Van Halen and the Orioles are in court. For that I had to go to the article.

Where I got my answers. And suddenly the connection between a band and a ball club was clear. Should have been obvious, I suppose. Maybe my mind is going. But if it was, would I be aware of it?

I just finished reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. No, don't worry; I wouldn't dream of giving anything away. I just wanted to share a thought that came to me as Ms. Rowling was filling in some of the details of He Who Should Not Be Named's early years and formative experiences: that I believed in HWSNBN in a way I never did that other Dark Lord, the one all those movies were about. I wonder what would have happened if George Lucas had hired J.K. Rowling or somebody like her to help with the script. Imagine a plot that involved believable motivations. And non-cringeworthy dialogue. Hey, as long as we're imagining, maybe he could have gone on to find somebody who actually knows how to direct actors. Wow! Just think of the possibilities!

A friend IM'ed me a page with the most amazing bicycle designs I've ever seen. The cycling wizards at Specialized are working on a set of bikes that are guaranteed to turn heads. I'd characterize them as 50s sci fi meets Schwinn. Can't wait to see some of these babies racing down the local bike lanes. Or is this the excuse I need to get back into cycling shape? My new toy resistance is only so strong, you know.

Update 08/10: Doncha hate it when reality intrudes on a really great story? My blogger friend Elke contacted someone she knows at Specialized, who told her that it's all the product of some design student's hyperactive imagination. Then again, they would say that, wouldn't they?

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts lately. In part that's thanks to iTunes 4.9, which makes finding and downloading episodes pretty much effortless. (There is still the occasional glitch, which explains the pretty much part of that last sentence.) And it's also true that I did some traveling the past couple of weeks, which gave me a lot of time to listen. Anyway, one of the podcasts I've been enjoying is called Tips From The Top Floor. The subject is digital photography and the 'casts are full of photographic advice. Not about equipment, aside from suggestions that we get a beanbag to stabilize a camera for long exposure. No, this is more fundamental, and would apply equally well to almost any kind of camera. Even film, if that's your thing.

Anyway, a lot of the very good advice concerns finding interesting subjects. Which connected up with my current obsession of shooting everything in sight for the stock photography websites where I'm trying to sell my work. And it occurs to me that these sites are an excellent way to expand your photographic horizons. What I'm learning is that as I discover the kind of pictures somebody else might want to buy, I'm having to adjust my own inclinations about what to photograph. And even when I shoot the kind of landscapes I've always loved, my approach to framing the shot is changing to accomodate the different uses someone might find for the result.

So here's my little piece of advice if you're a photographer who'd enjoy a new challenge: sign up for one (or more) of the stock photo sites, upload some of your best stuff and see what happens. Here's a list of the major sites, in the order of my own success with them:

• ShutterStock
• iStockphoto
• Dreamstime
• BigStockPhoto
• Can Stock Photo

In the spirit of full disclosure, I get some benefit if you sign up using one of the links above and sell any pictures. Which is one of those win/win situations I've heard so much about.

Yesterday I decided to pay another visit to the San Francisco Zoo. I was hoping the weather would be better than my previous visit. Warmer would be nice; maybe the animals would be more animated. And with not so much gray in the sky. Faint hope, though; right around Daly City things went from bright blue to medium gray like someone had flipped a switch. But I figured I'd press on, since I'd already come this far.

Saved myself five bucks by parking on the street. Got into the longish line to buy tickets, got mine and was all set to walk away when a voice turned me around. Turns out an old friend, her husband and little boy had chosen this same moment for his second encounter with the zoo. So instead of a quick photo expedition, I spent the whole day enjoying the waxing and waning enthusiasms of a five year old. Which made me even more aware of the reactions of all the other children, as when a rather aggressive seagull tried to make off with people's french fries (is it okay again to call them that?) while they were still holding them. Some little kids were scared; others thought it was incredibly funny.

So maybe I didn't get all the pictures I'd intended. But I'm okay with that. And I did get to see the meerkats in the Children's Zoo, a place I wouldn't have gone without a child in tow. Or towing me, as the case may be.

A friend sent me an article from Editor & Publisher about an interesting dilemma faced by the editor at the Seattle Times. When a citizen expires, um, in the act, as it were, is it newsworthy? What if the other participant, uh, well, um, is a, how shall I put this, equine American?

Guess we should be grateful there aren't pictures.

As the owner of a BCD wristwatch and the former owner of a calculator that operated in hex, octal and binary (it also did decimal), I hold a certain fondness for niche devices. Even ones where I don't fit the niche. Which is why I'm so entertained by a piece in Engadget about a Jewish watch. No, it doesn't take a little off the top. And no, it doesn't read from right to left. But what it does do is report the time in Hebrew, offers a Hebrew calendar as well as the Gregorian one and warns you about the approach of sunset, so you can get the candles ready and all that mischegos. Granted, it only has data for seven locations around the world: Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles and Buenos Aires But those are the important ones, right?

Over at The Movie Blog there's a posting about an editor-at-large at Esquire who decided to spend a year following all the rules of the Old and New Testaments. (Or, for my mishpocha, the Torah and that other thing that goyim believe in.) What's entertaining about it is that he's decided to follow the rules literally: where the Ten Commandments says not to covet thy neighbor's ass, it doesn't say anything about anything else he might own. And how many people in this country have neighbors with asses you'd want to covet anyway?

But that's beside the point. Because this is The Movie Blog, there has to be a cinematic angle. And there is: Paramount is going to make a film of The Year of Living Biblically. Personally, I can't wait.

When I was a kid, we'd take regular car trips down to Charleston and Savannah to visit my mom's side of the family. Endless car trips, especially in the years before the Interstate made things safe and easy and predictable. (And various vehicles of questionable reliability didn't help.) So visiting Savannah for the first time in years gave me the chance to see how much had changed and how much I remembered from those long ago travels.

You know you're in the South when: your plane arrives at the gate and some guy pulls the jetway into place. With a rope. (To be fair, at least they have jetways; San Jose's older terminal still hasn't bothered. And the terminal itself is clean and bright and modern. Still, something about being down south and a guy with a rope is disconcerting.

I grew up on White Castle. And I've been known to buy them frozen when I find the supermarket that carries them. But I have to say that Krystal, the South's answer to the Castle, is every bit as good. Maybe even better, once I get over the idea of mustard on my burgers instead of ketchup. Now if only somebody would bring little square burgers out to California...

On Sunday I went out to Fort Pulaski with my sister and her brood. Fort Pulaski was the end of an era, an antebellum brick fortress that became obsolete with the development of rifled cannon. But it's a remarkably serene place in a gorgeous setting.

And on the way out I noticed a sign for the lighthouse at Tybee Island. So I made a little detour to see if it was photo-worthy, and to revisit a place I hadn't seen since I was fifteen. Tybee is Savannah's beach community, the place the locals go to get away from the stifling heat in town. The lighthouse was well worth the stop, for its own sake, for the views from the top, and for the admittedly slight decrease in the temperature. But not, I'm afraid to say, in the humidity.

(You'll find a few more pictures over at Flickr.)