And a happy fortieth birthday to Leif Garrett. His prominently bulging crotch (if not his lack of any discernible talent) was an important part of my adolesecent sexual development. Remember when male celebrities were actually allowed to HAVE penises rather than just to make tasteless jokes about them?
You have to wonder just how long it could take to retrofit one bridge approach and short freeway section. I’ve been listening to really loud heavy equipment outside my front window (which is working on one single Bay Bridge interchange) for longer than it took to rebuild the WHOLE Santa Monica Freeway in LA in 1994. Of course, it doesn’t help that it took about eleven years after the 1989 earthquake for work even to begin…
I don’t really have much to say today. I just wanted to get Leif’s crotch off the top of the page before people started thinking I was obsessed with it. I’m not. I may have been when I was 13, but it was the 1970s. People actually had crotches then, and it was much easier to get obsessed with them when you could actually see them…
I have a lot of work to knock out today, but it looks like a surprisingly (and unexpectedly) open weekend, which means I can either sit here and enjoy the coming rain or go out driving and watch all those wacky Californians (who forget how to drive from one rainy season to the next) kill each other on the freeways. I’ll probably choose the former. Either way, sleep will be involved. Pork products too…
While avoiding some work this afternoon, I was thinking about TV theme songs. In some ways, they’re just not as important as they used to be, although shows seem to be moving away from that creepy trend toward just running the opening credits over the first scene. There are still some good ones around, little ditties which make you feel instantly good the second you hear them.
Thumbs up:
Thumbs way, way down:
Yes, “Dawson’s Creek” is the one show listed above that I never watch anyway. But I really hate that song and I have to hear it on Muzak everywhere I go…
So now I’m pondering barbecue and greens with Dan and Jamie tonight and whether or not to make an unscheduled trip to the Central Valley to see Mark tomorrow…
I can’t exactly remember what I was doing lying on a stretcher in an office building elevator naked and trying to get my pants back on. Or at least wishing I could get the door to close so no one would see me.
Ah, the strange fitful and dream-filled sleep which comes from medication withdrawal or from installing new software until 2AM. Thanks Dan. Really…
It’s a gray day the likes of which I haven’t seen in months. While I’m sort of regretting my decision not to go exploring western Fresno county, I’m also really digging looking out the front window and seeing nothing which vaguely resembles sunshine…
I just wish I could drink coffee…
I have to say that a little Maltese Falcon on KQED was a passable way to end the day…
Yes, there’s been a little remodeling going on. It’s been a year and I decided it was time for a facelift. Hope you like it; I haven’t decided if I do or not. It doesn’t look as good (but it’s still functional) in Netscape 4.x, but if you’re one of the seven people still using that particular browser series, you’re probably already used to everything on the web looking like shit anyway…
I’ve also been babbling a lot here in the old web journal lately. Oddly enough, I haven’t been covering even half of what’s been on my mind. But it’s probably best…
Very nice cuddly, cozy weekend with extremely good company, good food, and good music, not to mention cheap gas and free CDs. And now it’s back to work. Suffice to say I’m not in the mood…
I’ll write more tomorrow. There’s a new Simpsons tonight…
My mom and dad were married 52 years ago today. An anniversary with a number that high seems to be a milestone I’ll never achieve, if for no other reason than the fact that I’d be at least 89 when it occurred…
The rain today was amazing. There was none of that wimpy, drizzly California crap; this was the real stuff like back east. And, on schedule, the fiercest downpour hit this morning just as I was on that three-block walk between the Ferry Building and work…
Which seems a sort of piddly thing to complain about in the face of the latest news from New York. Jeez, what’s next? Earthquakes? Locusts? New Yorkers must feel a little like Californians felt in the early 1990s with the SF earthquake, Oakland fire, and LA riots, although Californians had three years to absorb all the drama…
Anyway, if this week ever ends (not a good thing to be thinking on Monday), it’s off to Fresno to see Mark this weekend. It’s supposed to be raining there too, which is not really a bad thing. I like rain…
Tonight, it’s cubed steak and gravy. I deserve cubed steak and gravy…
My first website in Spanish was particularly interesting, given that I don’t speak Spanish. A patient client is a great thing to have…
With all the rain and the cold, I was feeling sort of Pacific Northwest tonight, which sort of made me feel a little Gus Van Sant tonight. So I popped in Idaho, since I’d watched Drugstore Cowboy more recently…
I don’t think I was in quite the right mood, though. I’m not feeling terribly bleak right now. A little anxious, maybe, but definitely not bleak. All the same, I was amazed at how many obvious little bits and pieces I’d missed on earlier viewings which were crystal clear tonight. Bits and pieces so obvious that I don’t even want to mention them for fear of looking like an idiot…
More than anything, though, I realized how much I want to go back to Portland. It’s been over four years; I think it’s high time…
Just think: if I’d actually pursued a career in planning, I could have spent all my time coming up with grandiose schemes like this one, which will probably never come to pass (and probably never should)…
What is this fascination so many small and medium-size sunbelt cities have with downtown stadiums and “grand pedestrian plazas” with cutesy little concrete doodads? They’re just like those stupid “downtown mall” schemes which blocked off main steets by the hundreds in the 1970s and are now being ripped up all over the country after succeeding at little but turning Main Street into a giant shooting gallery…
And why is it that municipal governments, when faced with lots of colorful sketches of ideas which have failed miserably everywhere else they’ve been tried, always manage to convince themselves that their city is the one place in the whole country where the scheme will definitely work and will “save downtown”, as long as enough money is poured into it?
If people decide to return en masse to downtown Greensboro (or Charlotte or Fresno or wherever), it will be beacuse an interesting culture has developed there over time which provides something not available elsewhere. It will not be because of some grand city-financed “master plan” which redesigns everything and assigns it a cute little name. And spending a fortune to induce white suburbanites to use mass transit is just plain ridiculous in most cities of the south and the west; it’s never going to happen…
They’ve already rebuilt downtown Greensboro about three times since 1970. Strangely enough, its most prosperous times have been the years before and in between, when they just left everything the hell alone…
If this sounds like a rather conservative viewpoint, it’s not really. I don’t mind cities spending money. What I mind is cities spending money on complete idiocy…