The Twilight Report

rt: california

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:58:00 GMT

Made two trips to California this year. The first was on a business trip to the NetCon all-hands meeting in San Jose. It was on a Monday, so I flew out the Friday before to hang out Tyler. I had been wanting to go to La Brea Tar Pits to see the dusty old bones. They had lots of wolves and a whole team of folks processing the remains on display.

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Babel

Tue, 20 Feb 2007 22:38:00 GMT

Thinking about Babel, which as mentioned in the previous post I saw yesterday. I’m not giving anything away by saying that the story is divided into three largely unrelated stories. The connection between the stories is tenuous, but they drive each other. The central characters for two of the stories have been nominated for best supporting actress: Adriana Barraza for her character Amelia in Mexico, and Rinko Kikuchi for her character Chieko in Japan. I wonder how unusual it is for a picture to receive two nominations in the same category like that. Anyway, the nominations, and the award if it follows, would be well deserved for either. Kikuchi (26) delivers a particularly believable performance of a deaf teenager.

It makes me wonder though, why “supporting” and not “starring”? It seems mainly because they aren’t Brad Pitt or Cate Blanchet, who received top billing. Their performances were good, but not brilliant by any stretch of the imagination. It seems to me the Mexican and Japanese stories are just as important, and much more interesting than the Moroccan (American centric) story. Making the American and Australian actors the stars and the supporting actress nominations for the non-native English speakers reinforces the belligerent Ugly Americanism of Pitt’s character, who sees the world revolving around himself.

ex-IBMer

Mon, 23 Jan 2006 15:14:00 GMT

I've been an ex-IBMer for a couple of days now. I may therefore reveal that "The Company" = IBM. I am pretty sure that comes as a surprise to nobody.

Today is the first day that I would have gone to work if I hadn't signed those papers on Friday. My last day I felt oddly detached. I was immune to things and people that ordinarily bother me, like my manager and Jeff. On the other hand I went around and said good-bye to people. It's harder to go wrong with that.

My going away party was on Saturday at Brian's house. I will be seeing people this week, but it is probably the last time that I will see "everyone" together. (Not that it could really be everyone without Sherry, Megan, Joanna and Padraic). I got to say goodbye to Sherry over lunch a week or so ago, and I hopefully I will get to visit Joanna and Padraic in California before I leave.

Everyone should come out and visit me in Salt Lake City for a ski holiday (I'll be there about 6 February to 8 March, with a short trip to New Mexico sometime the week of 22 February), or in Australia (anytime starting May 2006).