I feel sorry for the television watching public in battlegrounds states because the quantity of the adverts on the air here in California is almost overwhelming and the race here isn't exactly close. I can imagine what the folks in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Oregon and New Mexico are suffering through.

I watch the ads very closely. I'm fascinated this election year by the new rule forcing candidates to state who they are and that they approved the ad. What is interesting to me is that in the Bush ads, Bush introduces himself and makes his statement of approval at the beginning of the commercials, while Kerry does so at the end.

Significantly, at least in California, the tone of the political ads from the Republicans is negative against Kerry, while all the Democratic ads are positive. And then there's this interesting difference in when the candidate announces approval of the ad, before or after.

If I were running a campaign, and making use of the negative ads as the Bush campaign is, I too would get the approval over with at the start in the hopes that the viewer might forget the association when the negative attack ends, rather than draw attention and allow people to make the connection between Bush's approval of going negative. On the other hand, if I were in the Kerry campaign, and running mostly if not all positive ads, I would have the candidate state his approbation at the end to reinforce the positive message just delivered.

What I'm curious to see is that as the campaign intensifies and the election draws near, will the Kerry campaign go negative (I think they will have to if the race stays this close) and then will they have their candidate change his approval so it appears at the start of his commercials instead of the end.

I know this is pedantic stuff, but since presidential races only happen every four years, and we're as divided as a country as we've ever been, plus the stakes are about as high as you could imagine, how could you not be fascinated? I can't help myself.

Posted by andrew at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After months of struggle with HP/Compaq "customer service", they have finally given in and are going to send a new notebook computer to replace the lemon that I purchased. It's coming in 8-10 business days and it's coming direct from their factory in China.

I've learned one important thing from this ordeal and that is I never want to do business with HP/Compaq again. When the computer arrives, I'm going to sell it immediately and buy a Dell. Why?

HP/Compaq put me through hell, that's why. I shouldn't have to beg, cajole, scream, be without my computer for weeks on end, be lied to, accept guarantees that are rescinded, be told that my computer is out of warranty when it’s clearly not, have it returned from service with the same problem, then beg, cajole, and scream again to have a working computer.

Certainly not all computers will work perfectly when they arrive however this company and any company should stand behind their products and fix or replace them immediately when there's a problem without forcing their customers to navigate hierarchies of CS scattered all over the world from India to Canada.

Clearly I made a mistake purchasing an HP/Compaq in the first place. It’s a mistake I’m not likely to make again in my lifetime.

Posted by andrew at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The long lost images from my October 2001 trip to Cambodia are back online after several years of languishing in the digital wilderness.

What happened? Well, first of all, I put the site up on Geocities. Each Geocities site is attached to a Yahoo email address and if you don't open up your mailbox every three months or so, Yahoo suspends the account, vaporizing any Geocities pages, rather unsporting of them, I should think.

It should have been an easy matter to get the files and put them back up on this site. However, when this happened, I was living in Samoa and my old PC was in storage in California. I finally got the PC back in my hands in the last few days and have resurrected the page.

For the record, the images were made with Agfa 100ISO B&W film with my old manual Minolta X-700. I developed and printed all the images myself at the Skyline College darkroom.

So without futher ado, I invite you to come check out Cambodia in Black & White.

Posted by andrew at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I just witnessed something that was as absurd piece of television as I have ever seen. Crossfire on CNN just had a show where the topic of debate was Michael Moore's new documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. This movie has been the source of huge controversy when it was thrust into the limelight after winning the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, so it's natural that Crossfire would eventually get around to it.

The problem is that neither of the hosts, James Carville or Tucker Carlson, had seen the film. And only one of the guests Arianna Huffington, of all people, had seen the film and was there to support it. The other guest, Melanie Morgan, a conservative talk show host (is there another kind) from KGO in the Bay Area, took the position that no one should see the film, even though she hasn't seen it, which seems rather indefensible on a number of fronts.

I can understand why conservative pundits want to attack this film. Because even if Moore's assertion's don't have any veracity, and I'm not judging one way or the other, it works against their man in the White House. But while doing so, they risk at great damage to themselves coming up against first amendment arguments in the Constitution they hold so dear, and rightly so.

Carlson, lacking the ability to attack the film for not having seen it, instead attacked Moore, trying to bait Huffington into defending some of the filmmakers more absurd quotes. But Arianna wasn't having any of it and totally flustered Carlson when she kept asserting that she was brought on the show to discuss the film, not the filmmaker.

Carville and Morgan, having no basis to judge the film either, fell into a heated discussion about free speech. Carville is for it. Morgan is for it when it suits her. Ironically, Morgan is the Vice Chairman of a group called Move America Forward.

According to the organization's website, Move America is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization committed to supporting America’s efforts to defeat terrorism and supporting the brave men and women of our Armed Forces. I don't know how contravening the first amendment and sponsoring censorship supports the aims of defeating terrorism, but I'm sure they have an explanation.

On their site is a section called "Stop Michael Moore" which states It’s time to take action to stop Michael Moore’s “Bash America” film, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”. The page goes on to say that “Fahrenheit 9/11” should be shown as a recruiting video for Al-Qaeda, not in our movie theaters.

It seems to me that a) they are going to get nowhere trying to ban the film other than marginalizing their group and appearing alarmist and anti-American themselves and b) they would be much better served by establishing a forum for open debate c) should see the movie before doing anything.

Unlike the folks at Move America Forward, Roger Friedman has actually seen the movie. He's a film reviewer over at the Fair and Balanced Fox News. You think his review would slam the piece as propagandist rubbish, but not so. Here's is what Mr. Friedman had to say:

It turns out to be a really brilliant piece of work, and a film that members of all political parties should see without fail...As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, "F9/11" — as we saw last night — is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty — and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice...More than even "The Passion of the Christ," "F9/11" is going to be a "see it for yourself" movie when it hits theaters on June 25. It simply cannot be missed, and I predict it will be a huge moneymaker.

No matter which side of the political fence you fall on, one thing we can all agree on is that Moore's documentary is going to be a surprise summer blockbuster and Michael Eisner and Disney are going to rue the day they released the rights to the film after refusing to release it.

Posted by andrew at 02:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Yahoo has jacked up their email service with a new look and mailbox sizes of 100 megabytes. For years I've been finesing my mailbox, trying to keep the size down below the 6 meg threshold. It was a constant struggle. But it was healthy because I had to constantly go in and pare down my inbox, throw away old junk and generally keep up to date.

Now I won't need to do that until I amass 100 megs of emails, which could be a long time. But by that time, I will have so much email it will be an overwhelming gargantuan task. On the other hand, it's going to be awhile before messages people send me get bounced for lack of space.

I don't even know why I keep most of the crap I do. It must be some sick sentimentality, but when will I ever get a chance to reread it?

Posted by andrew at 09:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I recently saw Troy, the Wolfgang Peterson epic based loosely on The Iliad. I went into the theater expecting to be disappointed and I was not let down.

Some of the elements of the movie were just plain comical like the "Port of Sparta" (Sparta is in the middle of the Peloponnese peninsula and landlocked. Peterson could have meant the port of Cranae, but why not say it?) And the sun rising over the plains of Troy which face west was absurd (I've stood on the plains of Troy, and I have a good sense of direction). And Odysseus certainly did not get his idea for the Trojan Horse from seeing a foot soldier whittling one. Paris comes into Helen's boudoir at the beginning of the flick, Helen turns to him and says, "Last night was a mistake." Oh, come on. The fact that Achilles is far better looking than that Paris is something we just meant to ignore, I suppose. Helen didn't leave with Paris for his sparking wit.

Then Peterson takes a few liberties with the story. Let me give you a few examples. The Greeks decide to go war and the next thing you see is a flotilla of ships heading out to Asia Minor. What about the ten years the Greeks spent at Aulis waiting for a favorable wind? (And the war takes ten more years, so the characters would have aged two decades by the time Troy finally falls to tickery). What about Agamemnon sacfricing his daughter Iphegenia to appease the gods, who were notably absent from the picture? What about Achilles trying to save Iphegenia which set the tone for the conflict between him and Agamemnon during the war?. Hector kills Menelaus ending a duel that was supposed to be between Paris and the Spartan king, but in the literature, Menelaus survives the war. He is visited later by Telemachus, the son of Odysseus in The Odyssey. (That's Book 4, in case you're scoring at home.) Priam's wife Hecuba is cut out of the story enitrely, as is his daughter Cassandra, a pivotal player in the real narrative. Then at the end, when the Trojans are fleeing, Peterson takes a page out of Virgil's Aeneid by including a young Aeneas who takes instruction from Paris to go forth and found a new Troy, which he does, according to legend, on the River Tiber in the Italian peninsula. But in myth, Aeneas was not a young man during the war, he was one of the major warriors and when he flees, he does does so carrying his father Anchises on his shoulders, not the work of the young man pictured in the movie.

Am I nitpicking? Maybe. But this is only the tip of the iceberg. A real classicist could cut this film ribbons, and deservedly so. Why does Hollywood have an obligation to get it right? Because more and more people in the world are relying on movies for facts. How many people are actually going to take the time to read The Iliad let alone learn ancient Greek and read the material in the original? Hollywood therefore needs to be more circumspect than ever about putting out crap like this that hoi polloi will take for authenic.

Posted by andrew at 04:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My DL is missing, and it's a real pain in the ass. I've been avoiding getting the damn thing replaced, hoping, in vain it seems, that it's going to show itself eventially. Meanwhile I've been going around with my passport (expired) in case I need ID.

The last time I can remember seeing it was when I crossed back into California from Mexico on Memorial Day Weekend. I showed it to the border patrol guard, but she didn't seem interested. She just wanted to know what country I was a citizen of (USA) and how long I had been in Mexico (a few hours). Then she let me go.

As I was driving away, I was so shocked (the back of my Subaru was full of bags that could have contained anything from an illegal alien to former Soviet plutonium) at how easy it is to get into the US, that I may have thrown my DL out the window. I don't know what happened to it. It just vanished after that. It's probably time to throw up my hands, head down to the DMV, shell out 10 bucks and get a new one.

Posted by andrew at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

God is love
Love is blind
Ray Charles is blind
Ray Charles is God

This little piece of misguided logic that I recall from my youth came flooding back to me the second I saw the streaming piece news on CNN that Ray Charles had passed away.

It's always sad to note the passing of great talent. Mr. Charles was a musical genius, a inspiration not only for his unique style, but also for his great sense of humor. Ray Charles might not be God, but he was a musical god and even before his passing, had taken his proper place in the pantheon of soul. Godspeed, Ray Charles.

Posted by andrew at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Coke has come out with C2. Coors has Aspen Edge. Krispy Kreme is had their first losing quarter and the parent company of Ronzoni filed for bankruptcy. "Carb-free" and "low-carb" labeled products are ubiquitous. Kraft has signed a deal with the South Beach Diet. And on and on and on.

This and much more is the crazy legacy of the Atkins Diet craze where carbs are the enemy. They are evil. The purest form of the stuff. Wouldn't want to eat that sandwich. It's evil.

This diet is nothing new. Bodybuilders have been going on carb-fast. protein laden diets to burn fat, but only for short periods of time. The reason? Well, it's three-fold. One is that bodybuilders frequently change their diet dramatically to shock the body. Two is that a diet of protein and fat is particulary bad for the internal organs, most notably the heart, the liver and the kidneys. not to mention the vascular system which supports it all. Three is that carbs not only are not evil, we need carbs for energy.

So what's the net result of this? Are we going to turn into a country of listness no energy waifs? Doubtfully. Because the truth is that while people might be tuning out carbs in their diet, we are still essentially a country of lazy people who want to find a miracle lifestyle where excersice is not a part of good health. Fat chance.

Posted by andrew at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The year before I left for the Peace Corps, I photographed a little triathlon in San Francisco which about 300 contestants that took place on the same landscape on which the famous Escape from Alcatraz is run. It prepared me in no way for the crowds of people, the teeming masses of athletes and the crush of the media that I expericened on Sunday.

I had two assignments. The first was to shoot the running transition from the swim to the bike. The second was to shoot the finish line. I don't know why we shot the transition, but it's not for me to question, just to shoot. So another photpgrapher, Alex, and I set up on the sidewalk of Marina Blvd. and shot some of the 1400 runners that passed us by. I say some because there were so many in such a tiny space that it was impossible to get even half of them. I think I maybe got a 1/3. Probably more likely a 1/5.

That done I headed to the finish line and took up the best spot in the media well right behind the finishing arch under which the runners pass. Under normal circumstances, it would have been simple. The runners cross the line. I shot them with the clock above. Easy. But this event was televised, and there were 1400 participants. And the area right behind the finish line was tiny.

Hasein, the team leader and my old buddy who happens to owe me 500 bucks, told me to just continue shooting no matter what and do my best, which is all I could do. The runners started coming. TV crews, news crews, guys handing out medals and athletes started piling up in the finish area. It was next to impossible to get a clean shot. Some of the athletes came through along the side so that the clock wasn't above them or stopped in the shade of the arch as the crossed the line or looked down to stop their watches right at the time that would have made the best photo. I did my best, but I doubt I made many sellable photos. It was just impossible.

Posted by andrew at 02:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tomorrow I'm going to shoot the "Escape from Alcatraz" Triathlon in San Francisco. According the Brightroom assignment sheet, this event is one of only three triathlons that is televised on nationally & is considered the most prestegious non IronMan event in the world. Pretty cool.

What's even cooler is that there are something along the lines of 1400 participants and should run over 5 hours, so it will be a decent payday, plus I should be able to get some picturesque shots of athletes with the backdrop of the city.

Posted by andrew at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm not exactly sure why I feel compelled to do this, but every time I happen to have a camera in bathroom with a large mirror (and this one was massive) I take self-portraits. So today when I was in the gentleman's lavatory at the Robert Mondavi Winery, I snapped off a few shots. This is my favorite of the lot.

Posted by andrew at 09:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I like this photo because while it hints at the feeling of pretentious superiority of these people sharing a bottle of wine from the hills overlooking the vineyards of Napa, it retains a sense of informality with his shoes off and placed over to the side.

I saw this couple sitting there in front of us, and I thought, this is a cool picture, what a dumb ass I am for not bringing my camera. So I went to the car to fetch it and right when I got everything set up, they got up for a walk, taking their glasses and bottle of wine with them. Fortunately they came back about 20 minutes later and I was able to take a few shots of them.

In case you're curious, this was at the St. Celement Winery, a few miles north of St. Helena. You're probaly weren't, but I thought I'd mention it all the same.

Posted by andrew at 09:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides

When this story was sent to me, I initially thought it was from the The Onion, but it turns out not only not to be a joke, but also to be seriously alarming. I don't know much about the politics of Capitol Hill Blue, but it's slogan, "Nobody's Life, Liberty or Property is Safe While Congress is In Session" seems nonpartisan.

Posted by andrew at 08:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For the last several months I've been fighting a seemingly never ending battle with the California Deparment of Motor Vehicles over the title to my last car, a 1999 Midnight Blue Saab 9-3, which had been an absolute dream to own until I didn't own it, but was still responsible for it.

In September of 2002 I was trying to sell my Saab, but I didn't have much luck, but I was under a huge deadline. I was leaving for the Peace Corps. By the time I got on the plane in mid-October, the car was still not sold. My brother had expressed interest. In fact, there was a plan afoot for him to fly out from DC and for us to drive cross country together. A sort of a last hurrah before I went off to Samoa for two years.

Anyway, for one reason or another, it didn't work out. I left. The car was unsold and my brother kept driving his old Saturn. But sometime during my frequent trips back from our training village in rural Upolu to the capital, Apia. I worked out with my brother that he would buy the car simply by taking over the payments on the loan, which were extremely reasonable. We would both benefit. I would be rid of the car and continue to improve my credit rating and Brian would have a great car. But there was a problem.

Somehow, somewhere, some one forgot to deal with the title. There was a specific person who had a limited power of attorney to deal with matters of the car, yet the title slipped everyone's mind, that is until Brian has to register the car in DC and doesn't have the title to do it. This is where the mess begins and we've spent a good part of this year trying to untie the Gordian knot of the DMV bureaucracy. Fortunately we managed it, but it was starting to look like it was going to get the best of us.

It's never easy to deal with the DMV. Long lines, complete incompetence and a computer system that predates the Nixon administration are the hallmarks of this less than stalwart organization. The problem was exacerabated by the fact that neither my brother nor I resided in California at the time, so it would all have to be handled by mail and phone, never a recipe for expediency.

Brian obtained all the documents, or so we thought. I just needed to send them into the DMV with a check for 15 bucks and it would be over, right? I even express mailed it with a pre-paid express envelope. For my efforts I received all the documents back and a note that said I needed a copy of the back of one of the forms. When I called the DMV to find out what I needed to fill out on this form, they said, nothing, we just need the form. What? COULDN'T YOU JUST HAVE PRINTED OUT ONE OUT? Too simple. I send the forms back in, again with the express mail thing (this costs 27.50 each time just for postage.) I even included a note for them to call or email if there was a problem.

This time I got the forms back in the mail (not so much as a call or email) and was told that I needed a lien holder release from the bank, even though the loan had been paid off months ago. So we contacted the bank and got a notorized release and sent the forms back in and waited, and waited, and waited.

Then I moved to California and thought this would all end. I could just go down to the DMV, which happened to be right around the corner, and settle the matter. But I was wrong. I went in. I was told they couldn't access the account. That their computer system was so old that they couldn't even put a note to change my mailing address so that the title would not be send to Colorado where I had been living. There was nothing to do but wait or resubmit the paperwork to this branch office which was not an option because I didn't have a copy of all the forms, a mistake I will never make again.

With my patience growing thin, I called Sacramento, the DMV HQ, two days ago, only to be told that the title had been mailed on the 26th. It should arrive any day now, and, amazingly, it did, that afternoon. I signed the pink slip in all the right places, or so I hoped, and overnighted it to my brother in DC. This afternoon, I got the following message from my brother:

cool news.

got the title today at around noon. was at the dmv at around 1pm, and out the door at 3pm with DC plates, registration, parking sticker and the title in the
mail, due to arrive in 15 business days.

my long national nightmare is over.

Posted by andrew at 05:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by andrew at 09:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)