Some Lists:

Yesterday when I posted my crankery with regard to DirecTV, I was also going to post a random list of other things/people who bug the crap out of me. But the post was long, and the time short. Without further ado, then, here are some of those. See if you agree:

This bugs me to no end:

1. Girls (mostly) who drive and text message at the same time.
2. People who talk with their mouths full to overflowing. (This is the worst.)
3. People who slurp.
4. People who don't smell good, and yet have no idea.
5. People who tie up a golf course repeatedly thinking they can drive the green, or reach a five in two, when there is never any proof of such ability. Ever.
6. People who speed up in order to NOT let you in.
7. People who judge others too quickly, or do so using poorly chosen metrics.
8. 50 year olds who marry 14 year olds, and think that's okay.
9. People who are fine with offloading their jobs on other people.
10. People who ask you to do things, but don't give you enough information to do what has been asked of you.
11. People who write or speak poorly, even though it is part of their job to do so.
12. People who spend their entire lives living in negative mental space.

Flame if you will, that is your prerogative.

And speaking of lists, here are two more. I saw this a week or two ago, and thought it was such a great idea, that I would steal it for here. The premise is this: Name your dream golf foursome - with you as one of the players. However, I'm going to change it just a bit. Therefore, I present for your consideration, my two lists, naming those with whom I would most like to dine:

First list - people who are alive today:
1. Me
2. Jack Nicklaus - so I can ask him about his golf and business life.
3. Brad Pitt - so we can discuss architecture (I would set a place at the table-next to me-for his lovely wife. Pitt would be sitting ACROSS the table.... ) (bonus!)
4. Quincy Jones - so we can discuss music, but not Michael Jackson

Second list - people who are decidedly NOT alive:
1. Me - although I am not dead.
2. Luciano Pavarotti - I would love to learn everything about his life.
3. Leonardo Da Vinci - Artist, sculptor, inventor, architect - what more can one ask ?
4. Frank Lloyd Wright - I would ask him if he did indeed have an affair with Ayn Rand, which has been highly speculated upon. And many other things
5. Bonus Person: Miles Davis - I would like to get inside his head at about 1945.

So who's at YOUR dinner table??

And also, some of those ladies on Wayne and Garth's list up there are on my list too. Odd. And Kim Basinger, WHY WON'T YOU EVER RETURN MY PHONE CALLS??? You KNOW I'm calling you, it's hard to ignore 20 calls per day. Seriously. Just call me back.

A Great Concept:

The Cookie Mug:

Porsche's New Frontier: The Kitchen

The product of a collaboration between Porche Design Group and Poggenpohl (the oldest furniture brand in Germany), the new kitchen is designed specifically for men.

From the press release:

"With their new kitchen, both companies intend to live up to the trend that shows an increasing number of men displaying an interest in ‘kitchen and cuisine’. “In recent years, kitchens have turned into event and representation areas frequently equipped with audio systems”, explains Elmar Duffner, Managing Director of Poggenpohl. “Our co-operation with Porsche Design enabled us to design a kitchen whose sleek and functional design language specifically addresses male customers.”

more prettiness here

But first, this:

I mentioned that I had some Chair Porn to post for you (because I know how much you love that stuff), as well as a new On My Hard Drive item, but first, I wanted to do this:

Last weekend we watched Fracture, with Sir Anthony Hopkins, et al.

The movie was pretty good - we enjoyed it. But for me, the movie was equally enjoyable just with the setting and cinematography. It was filmed in and around LA, and featured some very interesting and cool landmark spots, two of which I will tell you about here.

First item on the docket is the Gehry-designed Disney Concert Hall. There are several scenes and several other shots of this building. Both inside and out. I'm sure you are familiar with this place, at least you are if you read here often at all.

As I noted there are several shots of this place - overhead long shot, 2 lobby scenes, and 2 scenes inside the hall itself. It's a pretty impressive place.

Then there is The Sherman Estate. This is a wonderful huge house built behind large fencing, shrubs, trees and hills. Here is the description from the film's producers:

The Crawford home was another architectural wonder located in the Encino area of the San Fernando Valley, where the company spent several weeks shooting at a private estate. "The house sits behind these big gates like a cement and glass bunker with a buttressing overhang," recalls Hoblit. "It must be 80% glass, supported by struts, but you can see from one end of the house all the way to the other, all the way through it, side to side, end to end, anywhere you go. It would be a little unnerving to live in a house like that, but fortunately it's pretty well-hidden."

The Sherman estate is protected on all sides by giant hedges, walls, gates, and a formidable hill that leads to a guest house and tennis court which perch high above the pool and backyard. It is also surrounded by a small orchard of orange trees, rose bushes, lavender and blooming flora. It has been used in films before, but has never been showcased to this extent.

Hoblit and Morgenthau particularly liked the reflections and double images that occurred when shooting through the house and its many layers of glass, a circumstance usually considered a mistake in traditional camera work. They frequently placed their cameras outside the house to film scenes going on inside, another rare occurrence for Hoblit, who calls himself a "stickler" when it comes to being close to the action, but in this case took advantage of his ability to use his cameras as the eyes of a voyeur.

Hoblit calls the house "camera-friendly" and says "it was just made to order; a real gift," while Morgenthau believes the opposite, but attests to how good the house looks on camera.

"It was very film-unfriendly, but it was worth every bit of effort and heartbreak and stepping on top of each other," the cinematographer says. "It was a classic, Schindler-influenced building, where the interiors and exteriors flowed from one to the other, but it was not easy," he laughs.

I have tried to find image references to this place online, as well as references to other films that have shown this house, but I could find nothing. The house has a decidedly oriental influence to it, somewhat like FLW's early prairie works. I guess you're just going to have to rent the movie and check it out for yourself. It's a bonus that the actual movie is enjoyable, and the bad guy also drives a Porsche Carrera GT. You car sluts might want to check that out as well. Corvette?? PPhshaaww... whatever.

RIP: Luciano Pavarotti

O Sole Mio - He was famous for that song, among a raft of others. Elvis once heard an English translation of the song, and recorded a version for release in 1960. The song?

It's Now or Never.

It was a number one song in 1960.

You will be missed. Your life transcended your identity. You were my hero for lots of years, and now you are gone.

I've written about you before. You are still the measure of talent in your field, and forever will be.

Farewell, and congrats on a life well lived.

Why we can never find any forks in the drawer:

Lost in Yonkers

So, we went to see Lost In Yonkers last night at the PTC. Can I just say here that it is really nice to have an "equity" house here in Utah? This is about the only one around here that draws actors from the east coast, and we end up with really great talent. We saw Othello a few weeks ago, and that was EXCELLENT as well.

Anyway, it was a great production and was well worth the time. However, the next time we do the season tickets, we need to ask for weekend nights, as opposed to during the week. When you go during the week, you sit among the folks from the local old folks' homes. They hit the local buffet at four in the afternoon, and get to the theater, adjusting hearing aids, etc. until the show starts. There's lots of talk around you while you wait for the curtain, and you would think it would stop when the lights go out. But it doesn't happen - the talking just goes on, as if they are sitting in their public lounge watching Jeopardy or something. For the first 20 minutes the old lady beside me was complaining in full voice to Bill that she couldn't "see a damn thing."

Elsewhere, you can hear lots of other folks say stuff like, "what did he say?"

No "soft-voice" either... full on buffet voice. Maybe the blue hair dye shorts out all ability to be considerate to others, I dunno.

And the old-man-farts. Puh-lease. Make. It. Stop.

On another note, after we got home, sent the dogs out to pee, etc... getting ready to call it a day, this was the conversation:

I walk into the room, and say, "hmmm, it smells like almonds in here..."

She says, "yeah, it's the lotion I rub on my scratchy cuticles at night."

I do a double-take, and say nothing.

She says, "What? I do that."

I say, "I THOUGHT you said you rub it on your scratchy nipples at night"

Blank stare, then she says, "You're a moron."

I say, "yes I am."

Then I say, "Well, you know how you read really fast and just read "word shapes?""

She says, "yes."

Then I say, "well, sometimes I just LISTEN to word shapes, and get some of them wrong."

She says, "You're still a moron."

I say, "I know."

a little bit fruity

no matter how you slice it, this is going to be hard to explain to your mother in law the next time she comes to visit...

Just sayin...

My Sundance moment: copping a feel.

Since it's Sundance season, the time when the Heber airport is overrun by private jet traffic and the streets of Park City are clogged with glitterati and their black-clad hangers-on, I thought it appropriate to share my little claim to Sundance fame:

Background: Sandra Bullock is even more beautiful in three dimensional real life than on emulsified celluloid. I mean "ohh-emm-gee" beautiful.

The year was about 1993-ish - not quite sure. When you're as old as I am, the years start to melt together. Yeah, that's it. She was in a film that year.

Anyway, at the time, I was a sound designer in a local theater here, and I was doing a lot of freelance work as well. On one of those occasions I was contracted by MTV to provide sound services to a local camera operator for three days of shooting at the Sundance Film Festival. Our assignment was to work for the MTV crew doing interviews of anybody they could wrangle, and then hit the party circuit in the evening. I think it was for a daily update show that was airing on MTV during the festival. I don't know if MTV still does that or not, seeing as I don't really WATCH MTV at all.

Anyway, one of our daytime interviews was Sandra Bullock. As all sound guys know, the ideal is to capture clean sound without being able to SEE the microphone in the camera shot. I had a boom with a big fuzzy "beaver" mic on it (don't ask), and a wireless mic set, which would send audio directly to one of the camera's two audio channels. I made the decision that since we were indoors, in a controlled environment, the wireless mic was the way to go, because there wasn't a lot of other ambient noise, and we'd capture her very well with a little lapel clip.

I approached Ms. Bullock, holding the mic clip and the belt pack in my hand, and told her we needed to "mic-up", she was in a makeup chair and her handlers were doing her hair and makeup, etc. She said "sure, go ahead".

I turned pale. Okay, paler.

Then I grabbed the second button of her shirt with my left hand and fed the mic up under her shirt from the shirt tail with my other hand, concealing the mic wire under her shirt, and clipped it to the second button area where my other hand was waiting.

By this time, all blood had now left my head, and the room was spinning. I got it all situated properly, clipped the pack to the back of her pants, and we were set.

We bonded. She's now my best buddy. We go out for coffee all the time. Okay, well, not exactly.

But there you have it: something odd that most people can't say - "I've had my hand up Sandra Bullock's shirt - and she approved."

And in case you're wondering, Billy Crystal is nowhere NEAR as much fun to mic up. I took one for the team on that one. Just sayin.

A GREAT idea: Finders! Keepers?

I've mentioned that I subscribe to MANY blogs via a news aggregator. One of those is a "blog of the day" service, that collects nominations and publishes two or three Blogs of the Day each day.

I look at the message and see what is nominated each day, but I RARELY visit them unless they are VERY compelling - something needs to speak to an interest I have, or something like that.

One from this morning did indeed compel me to look. Its description was simply this:

There you are, going about your business and you see something on a shelf - or on a subway seat - or in a stack of books - that looks the picture. What should you do?

So I went to take a look. And I must say, this is a GREAT project. An artist in Colorado is painting original oil works, and packaging them up and leaving them in public spaces for people to find and either pass on, or keep for themselves to appreciate.

As someone who enjoys art of many types, I must say, this is a great idea. The artist leaves some information in the package (basically, a zip-lock baggie) asking the finder to log onto the site and leave the location, impression, and the intentions regarding what the finder is going to do with the painting.

I've seen this done with dollar bills and such, and you have too probably, but this is a whole other story, when you are talking about making the world a little bit better place for random people.

If there were more people out there like this, this place wouldn't be half so bad.

I'm just sayin.

Two Movies: One to see, and one, not so much

This is the one to see:


It's the best Bond movie in a good long time. The new Bond isn't afraid to get his shirt dirty, or drown some ass in a bathroom sink, for that matter. I've seen it twice, once in a "regular" theater, and once in a "digital" theater. Between the two, the picture is not discernibly different, but the digital sound will blow your little mind. The clarity and depth is astonishing, and quite noticeable.

This is the one not to see:

GGAAAAKKK!

The kids made us do it. A few months ago, actually. We got it from the Netflix, so luckily didn't spend money on sitting in a theater to watch it. Although the music is catchy in a poppy kind of way, the production values of this film are absolutely atrocious. I could hardly make it through the thing. But I did make it - unlike Napoleon Dynamite - I didn't make it through that at all.

But back to High School Musical. The audio levels and syncing between music (singing) and speech were so bad I just about couldn't make it. Failing grade for the post-production crew. Speaks poorly for them, as they are from Utah.

Now I hear that Disney liked it so much they've contracted to do the sequel here in Utah as well. I hope they get it right this time.

The Determined Emptiness of Mind...

No, that's not how I feel, it's a quote from the theater production of Pride And Prejudice we saw last night. Yes, I went and got some "culturization" at the theater.

For most of the night, there were five people on stage. This is a picture of what I saw:
















Actually, the bucket-head in front of me left at intermission - I guess his GIANT HEAD absorbed more culture in less time than the rest of us, and he decided he was cultured enough for one night. Lucky for me.

And, before you need to say it - I KNOW I have awesome paint skillzz. Eat your heart out, Kurt.

Borat Fallout

This just in:

Okay, not really just in, but kinda funny nonetheless...

Seems the Borat movie release has some of the participants a bit cranky. The are claiming that they were spoofed into appearing, or booking "Borat" to appear somewhere, only to be lampooned inthe movie.

The frat boys who appear in the movie have launched a lawsuit, and the person who booked him to appear on a morning news show, which also appears in the movie, got herself fired for booking his appearance.

No word yet from the Pamela Anderson camp. She was totally punked at a book signing she was doing, where Borat showed up, asking her to marry him.

Frat Boy Lawsuit here

Fired TV Producer here

See some clips from the movie here - some of the tamer ones anyway...

Now, I have work to do.

And speaking of the US&A...

We saw the Borat over the weekend.

I'm still not sure what to say here about it though.

I do know I saw some things I probably wouldn't have chosen to see though. Like a buck-naked 380-pound man running full-tilt through a packed hotel conference center.

Among other things.


And from the other side: www.stopborat.com

Thank you for your interest. We hope you are not part of Borat conspiracy against Kazakhstan. We will not become a William Hung for the international community!

OUR DEMANDS!

One. We demand personal apology from Queen Elizabeth II for the humiliation upon our nation caused by British funnyman Sacha Baron Coen. Furthermore, Prince Charles and Camilla must pay an official visit to Kazakhstan. Camilla is much popular with Kazakh people. What Princess Diana was to the West, and Marylin Monroe is to Uzbekistan, princess Camilla is to Kazakhstan - and more. Kazakh men put up her colour pinups in truck and tractor, and Kazakh women go for Camilla look. You will see Camilla photo in many a yurta.

Second: We want to know secret of Camilla's beauty.

Three: We are willing to negotiate peace with Neville Chamberlain

Kazakhstanis Against Borat

P.S. We have nice daughter, you are maybe single westerner with much financial goods

My Netflix

As regular readers here are aware (yes, both of you), I am bullish on the Netflix. I really like it as a 24 month investment, and more importantly, I really like the service.

We've been netflixers for about 24 months now. Maybe longer. A little more than a year ago, there was a class-action suit filed that claimed their advertising was misleading. The early marketing claimed that you could get as many movies as you want, a certain number at a time, "shipped to you the next day."

The suit claimed that their service was in fact NOT next day, because their distribution was not very mature, and often your movies came from some far-away place, making your return on investment (the customer "happy-dance"), a little hard to come by.

As a result of the suit, the company was spurred to dramatically increase the investment in distribution. Luckily, we got a fairly large distribution center here in Salt Lake, and we've been pretty darn happy with the service overall.

A couple of weeks ago, though, we were fretting the fact that we were waiting a long time for the next set of movies (actually, in this case, TV series discs). The site said they were shipped, but they were about three days longer than it typically takes to get to our house.

When the two items in question finally arrived, we noticed that one was from, of all places, Ankorage, Alaska, and the other was from Honolulu, Hawaii. We had a pretty good laugh at that, given the fact that the printed stuff on the return envelope states:

TO: Nearest Netflix Shipping Facility,
Ankorage, AK

We wondered if the entire US&A had been eliminated overnite, without our knowing about it.

More on the elusive Banksy

Remember the "Banksy" post?

It seems that Mr. Pitt likes the Banksy too. He was at a gala Banksy show recently where he purchased several works of spray paint.

Banksy, of course, was NOT there.

To Sleep, Perchance to dream....

I had a dream the other night, the cast of which consisted in equal parts exclusively of people from Veronica Mars, and The OC.

Not quite sure what that means, but there you are.














I'm odd. That's what it means.

I mentioned a while ago that I like art, and have a particular interest in art crimes. (I'm too lazy to go back and link up the post - trust me, I said that.)

Anyway, the reason I find art crimes fascinating has to do with Provenance. This is the process of establishing the authenticity of a particular work of art, along with its own unique ownership trail. It's interesting, because an art thief not only has to come up with a plan to steal the work of art, but he also has to come up with a way to justify his possession of it when he tries to sell it.

Some art theft is "contract" work, where a private person pays someone to steal a particular desired piece of art to be placed in his personal and private collection. A person who contracts for this service pays dearly, and his only motivation is to HAVE the art, rather than to PROFIT from its eventual sale.

Anyway, I was thinking about all this a day or two ago, and then I heard an NPR story about "Funerary Violinists". How do these two things connect, you may ask...

I had never heard of a genre called Funerary Violinists. Odd, I thought, as I had once considered a career in musicology. This is not to say that I know everything there is to know about everything, but I would have thought I might have heard of this somewhere before. But I hadn't, so I listened with interest.

An old dude named Rohan Kriwaczek wrote a book called An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin. He claimed that funerary violin is a previously unknown musical genre that was virtually extinguished by the mid-19th century in the Great Funerary Purges, said to be ordered by the Vatican.

But as first reported in The New York Times, violin dealers, string-instrument publications and other experts say there is no evidence of the funerary violin genre, forgotten or otherwise.

The author claimed to belong to a secret guild of Funerary Violinists, and claimed it as the oldest continuing guild in the world. He was establishing provenance for this entire genre of music, claiming it was still flourishing, while being forgotten at the same time.

Despite the questions of authenticity, the book's U.S. publisher, Overlook Press, still plans to release the book, which includes pictures of legendary funerary violin composers like Hieronymous Gratchenfleiss, musical scores and information on the Guild of Funerary Violinists.

Peter Mayer, the publisher of Overlook Press, bought the manuscript. Even though he had doubts about the authenticity of the material, he was hooked.

Turns out to have been a hoax, illustrating the fact, again, that to claim some object (in this case, a forgotten musical genre), is one thing, and its provenance can prove to be its undoing.

Author Kriwaczek issued a statement Thursday, in which he writes that to call his work a hoax is to misunderstand his intentions. He says he wanted to "expand the notion of musical composition to encompass the creation of an entire artistic genre, with its necessary accompanying history, mythology, philosophy, social function, etc."

And he notes that as a funerary violinist himself, he has performed at more than 50 funerals throughout southeast England.

You can hear some HAUNTING violin work at the link I gave up there. As well as read an excerpt from the book, to be published. Incidentally, the book, yet to arrive on shelves, is categorized in the "music history" section of both Barnes and Noble, and Borders.

And for an utterly FASCINATING read, check out the story of John Myatt and John Drewe here. I find this a MOST compelling story. The movie rights have been optioned, but I don't remember by whom.

ThatOneGuy 100.

I've seen this done many times, and there have been people who've "tagged" me to do it. I've resisted. I've had this on my machine for about a week, pondering whether I really wanted to put it up here or not, but I decided to go ahead. So, without further ado about nothing...

ThatOneGuy One Hundred Things:

1. I spend too much time at work. There is always pressure to spend more time.

2. I'm not a typical "loan officer".

3. My worst subject is school was math. Now I work in a finance field.

4. I haven't owned an American car for a long time -

5. And I don't have any plans to in the future.

6. I'm a fiscal conservative, and a social liberal. That's more Democratic than anything else these days.

7. I'm opinionated.

8. Many of my opinions are based on emotional response.

9. I think all children should take multiple music classes in school, to at least the end of the junior high years.

10. Same with Art.

11. I think many people (including those in my family) think I'm conceited. Or aloof, or stupid, or all of the above.

12. I think there should be an official state lottery in Utah.

13. I think the government spends too much time in our bedrooms and other personal areas, where they have no business.

14. I think the government spends too little time on things that really matter.

15. I think almost every government agency is bloated.

16. I think we should have socialized medicine in the United States.

17. I think healthcare should be affordable to companies in order to be able to care for their employees better.

18. I think the medical system in this country is broken, top to bottom.

19. I used to socialize better with people who were older than me.

20. Now I don't.

21. I wish I socialized more.

22. I wish I had a home more conducive to socializing.

23. I think mortgage interest rates should remain between 6 and 7 percent.

24. I think the Dow Jones Industrial Average should remain at 10,800 - 11,300.

25. Until I retire, that is.

26. I wish I had the financial means to give my kids everything they want.

27. I'm glad I don't.

28. I don't like people who think they are simply entitled, to anything.

29. I don't like illegal immigrants for this reason, among others.

30. I think there should be more school days in the calendar year, and longer school days every day.

31. From a work hours/days off perspective, I think teachers don't know how good they've got it. But they should be paid a starting wage of $35,000. Increases based on Merit and Cost of Living, not tenure.

32. I weigh 25 pounds more than I would like to.

33. I like the fact that I am my own boss, but it does have its drawbacks.

34. I couldn't do what I do unless my wife did what she does.

35. I adore her.

36. I think schools tolerate too many distractions.

37. I don't think regular public schools should be forced to teach and/or accommodate bilingual needs.

38. I think there are too few clubs/restaurants where one can be treated to decent jazz in SLC on a regular, dependable basis.

39. I take Bass lessons.

40. I would like to find three or four other jazz players with whom I could play on a regular basis.

41. I would probably quit taking lessons if I could find that.

42. My wife's successes make me proud.

43. They also make me feel like a floundering slob sometimes.

44. I'm not as mentally tough as I would like to be.

45. I'm 20 times more mentally tough than I was five years ago.

46. There are things I don't admit to myself.

47. I think that more than 50% of adults are poorly adjusted where it concerns sexuality.

48. I am uplifted and inspired by good music of almost any style/genre. There is no "good" country music.

49. Same with well-acted/directed movies.

50. People who misuse the English language, especially in corporate/professional communications, make me crazy, and I tend to think less of them, if only subconsciously.

51. Email is corporate/professional communication. Blogs aren't.

52. I wish my dogs got more walks.

53. I have only myself to blame for that.

54. I wish I were a better student when it counted.

55. I thereby wish I were a residential architect/urban planner.

56. My desk is usually a disaster.

57. Some days I multitask well. Others, I don't.

58. I am loyal, empathetic, compassionate to those around me, sometimes to a fault.

59. I don't like to be the bad cop in the game of "good cop/bad cop" with my kids.

60. But I also don't like making my wife do it either.

61. I'm a Northern European whitey who burns under only a THREAT of UV rays, but my first thought, when thinking about a vacation, is somewhere hot and tropical. Obviously, I'm maladjusted.

62. I have less energy than I want.

63. I eat poorly.

64. 62 and 63 are related. I know. Shut up. I mean it. Really.

65. I'm probably more fit than the median at my age. Which probably isn't saying much, I know. Shut up. Again.

66. People who wish to impose their morality on society as a whole, turn me off. Way off.

67. "Pay It Forward" is a concept that works.

68. I like wrist-watches.

69. My wife thinks her car is green. It's blue. (Apparently, this is more MY problem than hers though.)

70. I have an online stock portfolio that is up 45% since May 06. I don't have any real money in it, though.

71. I recently bought 150 shares of Delta Airlines though. I'm up about 68% on that one, in the span of about 2.5 weeks. It's not very much money.

72. I acted in a production of Saturday's Warrior when I was 15. I played the lead role in a production of Fiddler on the Roof about 9 years ago. I would like to be the bass player in a production of Forever Plaid.

73. I hate cats.

74. My job is much more stressful that I freely admit. I sometimes have trouble sleeping.

75. Most people who work in (all facets of) real estate have no idea what a mortgage office does. Most don't work with a good mortgage office though. Real estate agents who take it upon themselves to do my job for me irritate the hell out of me.

76. I dehydrate easily.

77. I drink lots of water. I have the caps from about 60 water/gatorade bottles sitting on my desk. I throw the caps at people who bother me, either singly, or in big hand fulls. I used to draw different kinds of eyes on them and wear them around the office over my eyes, to show what my mood was at the time. I'm the life of the freakin' party.

78. I have several pairs of glasses, and should wear them more often.

79. The first 20 of these are easier than the last 20.

80. I'm not as handy around the house as I would like. This never stops me, however. Unfortunately.

81. I keep a record of conversations and other pertinent business information on yellow legal pads. Looking back, it's interesting to see where I've been and what I said when I was there.

82. I doodle when I'm on the phone.

83. I'm a pen snob, and only like certain ones. Current favorite: Uni Ball Jetstream Blue.

84. I conduct my business in blue ink, as it tells me what is "wet-ink" stuff and which is faxed.

85. I hate spending money on myself. I generally hate spending money, period.

86. I hate shopping too. If I could, ALL my shopping would be done online - all the time, everything.

87. I like to spend money on my wife. I wish I had more of it to do that with.

88. I have two tattoos. I love them both.

89. They both have specific emotional meaning to me.

90. There are specific teachers or bosses in my past that have helped shape who I am. Not very many, but they are there. There are others who've had a lasting negative effect on me.

91. I believe a big part of my job is education. Many others don't see it that way. I clean up their messes.

92. I'm a licensed broker with more than 230 lenders in 42 states. Where do I go to find the right program for you? Big job.

93. I have two sets of speakers in my back yard. I haven't listened to them NEARLY enough this summer. At all.

94. I would like to write a book of fiction. And have it published.

95. It bothers me when people don't answer their phone, or do what they say they are going to do. A lot.

96. I like IKEA. For shame. :)

97. Fluorescent lights bother me. Most direct incandescent light does too. Maybe that's why I am so white.

98. Rapid changes in barometric pressure bother my noggin.

99. I subscribe to SEVERAL magazines. I read most of them.

100. I'm not sure why I wrote all these, and I'm not sure I'll post it. I guess if you are reading this, I decided to post it.

Do You Know Banksy??

One of my favorite NPR programs is Marketplace. It's produced in the afternoon, and airs in Salt Lake at 6:30. Often, that's my commute time. It is usually a recap of the day's financial news, some commentary, and some interesting twist on business news. Yesterday's program was interesting to me, because I have a small fascination with art, particularly art crimes. I thought this was timely given the recent recovery of Munch's Scream, stolen from a museum in Norway. The thiefs in the Norway case walked into the museum in broad daylight, put the painting under their arms, along with a couple of others, and just walked out the front door. Easy as that. They were on the lam for about two years before the painting was recovered.

For those too lazy to read the Marketplace story, I will stick it here:

RICO GAGLIANO: On Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles, Christophe Loiron stands in front of his vintage clothing store. On the wall near the door is the spray-painted stencil of a rat.

CHRISTOPHE LOIRON: When I first moved into this building, I saw some graffitis on my wall, and to be honest with you, when I first looked at them, I wondered what color paint I was gonna use to repaint the walls.

Then he noticed people stopping by to take pictures.

LOIRON: And asking me if I knew the artist. Some people mentioned his name, Banksy, and it took me a while to figure out how to spell it.

It's B-a-n-k-s-y. And when Christophe Googled the name, he discovered his store had been vandalized by one of the world's most elusive and sought-after artists.

[ Anchorman from UK Channel 4 News Video: Subversive graffiti artist Banksy has now created nine spray paintings on the controversial barrier which separates Israel from Palestine. Channel Four news has exclusive footage. ]

Much of Banksy's work combines edgy political commentary with ironic humor and criminal derring-do. Last week he dressed a mannequin like a Guantanamo Bay prisoner and somehow installed it beside a railroad ride in Disneyland.

On the world's most commercial surface, a blank billboard, he spray painted an anti-commercial slogan, advertising "The Joy of Not Being Sold Anything." To fans, he's a cross between agitprop artist and Batman, fighting the evils of authority and consumerism.

Never mind that Banksy paintings on old-fashioned canvas, are becoming very, very consumable.

GAGLIANO: What is a Banksy canvas going for now?

STEVE LAZARIDES: Depending on when it was painted and the size, anywhere up to over 100,000 pounds now.

That's about $200,000. Steve Lazarides is Banksy's agent. He also runs a gallery in London's SoHo district.

LAZARIDES: There's people who bought canvases 4 or 5 years ago for 500 pounds that can now sell 'em for 45,000-50,000 pounds.

So Business is booming. There's just one problem.

GAGLIANO: There are warrants out for his arrest, right?

STEVE: Yeah, there are several police forces in the UK that are rather unhappy with him, I'd say, yeah.

Why isn't Banksy in jail? Like Batman, he's never revealed his true identity. He won't let his face be photographed, he's never released his real name. Which means Banksy runs his business like no other painter. For instance, you don't interview him, you interview his spokesperson, comedian Simon Munnery, whose job is not to answer your questions.

SIMON MUNNERY: Who is Banksy, yes. I couldn't confirm for sure that I'm not. And even the man I met, is he Banksy? I mean, he was in disguise. I'm not even sure if he knows what he looks like.

Agent Steve Lazarides again. He says the distance between himself and his client gives him a kind of plausible deniability.

GAGLIANO: Do the police ever come to you and try to trace him through you?

LAZARIDES: No, I'm not doing anything wrong, I'm just selling paintings. I pick them up around the back of a supermarket between a couple of old trolleys out the back. That's how I pick up the paintings.

GAGLIANO: Are you kidding?

LAZARIDES: No, that's how they always turn up. I get a phone call and go pick 'em up, back of a supermarket.

Here's the thing: How can I believe him? Couldn't this all be a put-on, designed to maximize buzz and sales? That kind of question might pose the biggest risk to the Banksy business. When your product is anti-marketing, you can't come off like you've made *yourself into a money-making strategy. Banksy's admirers say he hasn't.

JOE LA PLACA: Well, would you want to buy a work of art from someone who refused to meet you?

Joe La Placa is a writer and managing director for Artnet.com in London. He says if anonymity is a marketing gimmick, it's a bad one.

LA PLACA: Because a lot of collectors buy works of art almost as a détente. 'I buy the work of art, therefore I get to meet the artist.' Banksy isn't having any of that. This work isn't about his identity. This work is about something else.

Lazarides insists the work's about getting across a message. That Banksy collectors are shelling out for a rare commodity these days: popular art espousing radical politics.

As with all things artistic, what that's worth is up to you.

What the hell was Fox thinking? Justice?

We look forward to the new season of television around our house... we'll usually watch the first or second episode of a new series, and we'll end up adding one or two to the set of not very many that we actually will watch. We usually don't watch stuff live after we've decided to add it to the list. Instead, we just add it to the TIVO season pass. That way we can watch an hour's worth of TV in 40 minutes, whenever we want.

With the end of West Wing (about the smartest show on TV in the last five years), and Alias (an addiction similar to chocolate), we were interested in what might fill our TIVO from here.

So we decided to give "Justice" a try. Probably the overwhelming reason for checking this show out for us was the fact that Victor Garber was in Alias, one of our favorites, which ended last year.

By the tenth minute we were looking at each other, saying, "is it just me, or is this TERRIBLE acting from every single member of the cast?"

It wasn't just us - it was truly bad. In the actors' defense though, it was more about horrific writing than bad acting.

Add to that the fact that the actual production value was about the worst I have seen on prime time TV for a very long time. The ADR dialog didn't even come close to matching, the camera work, meant to be edgy handicam work, was way too deep, and the entire audio mix was about 15 dB too low - the commercials BLASTED us because we had to turn it up so loud, and there were obvious phasing troubles that rendered the entire audio track thin, tinny, and low. Too many square waves. Harsh.

This show was marketed as "Justice does for lawyers what House does for medicine." "CSI at 100 MPH."

Umm, no. It seems this show was produced in about 45 minutes, with about $10,000. Spent on catering.

Bad

Step away from the remote.

Move along now. Nothing more to see here. Return to your homes... move along...