Interesting. Wesley Clark in the race for the presidential democratic nomination. I loved watching him during the CNN coverage of the war on Iraq.

In fact, I remember watching him and Aaron Brown when CNN first ran live coverage of the war. The both of them couldn't believe it, and sat there with their mouths hanging open in disbelief that they were watching the war in Iraq happen in real time.

I'm not sure Clark is qualifed for the presidency, as far as domestic policies are concerned but he'd be good for these war times.

I sound like the James Caan character in "The Godfather" movies. "I need a war time conciglieri!"

I watched the movie "Falling in Love" tonight, starring Robert DeNiro and Meryl Streep. WOW! Talk about watching to acting pros at work. It's an old movie from the 70's or 80's with totally cheesy bad movie music, but their acting was just so incredible.

They played ordinary people having awkward ordinary conversation. You don't get the feeling they're saying lines or they're even in a movie, but that you're a fly on the wall watching some very human drama taking place.

I was watching some bad TV movie a few months ago about two people falling in love, and the acting was so bad! It was such a pleasure to see Streep and DeNiro show how acting is really done, and done brilliantly.

Now granted the TV movie had a really bad script, and this movie's script was much better, but so what. A really good actor can deliver a great performance from a bad script.

What was so amazing was their delivery of the lines. It was so natural and unforced, like they were real people falling in love, and not bad actors looking like they were trying to fall in love. They made it look so easy, whereas the TV actors made acting look so difficult because they were doing it so badly.

This was a nice deal: Life
-- Warren Zevon, Songwriter / 1947-2003

Thanks to Josh, here's the link to what Howard Dean is saing about Hamas, Dean takes heat for Hamas statement.

My modern art teacher told me I made an original comment about modern art that no one else is saying. I think this is good. Here's what I told him.

Jackson Pollock's drip painting are a physical rendering of performance art. Pollock painted as if in a trance, like a performance, and it's captured in physical form in his drip painting.

If you took a movie, which is made up of frames, and laid the frame on top of each other you'd get a Jackson Pollock drip painting. Time is layered like the painting, one of top of the moment, moments are layered together to make one physical piece.

The concept of snapshop in time, what the impressionists were trying to achieve, doesn't exist in Pollock's work because his work is result of hundreds of snapshots in time, layered one on top of the other, to create one cohesive work of art.

In Pollock's drip paintings, you can also see the influences of cubism because in cubism you saw on one painting, faces, body parts from different angles, as if they were in different time periods. You get the same in Pollock's work because you can see how over time he layered the paint over and over again.

I think Pollock was also borrowing from Dada art, because of the performance aspect of his art, but also taking Dadaism and turning it on its head.

Dadaism is where performance art start, but really performance art for Dadaism was anti-art, a reaction against art, questioning what is art if it's not physical. Pollock took performance art and made it physical, made it art.

In studying how Jackson Pollock made his famous drip paintings, you can also see the birth of conceptual art, especially some of the pieces created by Yoko Ono, and the birth of performance art, in the work of Laurie Anderson and even Andrew Goldsworthy.

I can't believe no one else is making these connections, especially about Pollock's work being performance art, and him birthing conceptual and performance art, not as anti-art, but as an art form.

I need to find the link for this, but apparently Howard Dean defended the terrorist actions of Hamas by saying that Hamas was at war so their actions were justified.

Yeah, like right. Dean was started to look appealing, but if he really did say what he said about Hamas, then I don't know. I cannot vote for someone who has this view. No way, not ever!

The plumber guy guy is here fixing my sink, and listening to Michael Savage angrily rant on and on about the 9th circuit court of appeals decision to delay the election.

Savage's vitriol makes me wonder what he would be saying if a republican governor was being recalled, and it was the democrats who initiated the recall. I somehow sincerely doubt his show would be so invective as he's being now with his tirade about 9th circuit court of appeals.

A three judge panel has blocked the California gubernatorial recall. Shocking! The bets are this case will go all the way to the supreme court. The court making the decision was the 9th circuit court of appeals, those crazy people who wanted to take God out of the pledge of allegiance.

Phil Matier from The Chron said, "Once again, the chads win!"

I have no idea what's going to happen. We're either going to vote in October or March of next year.

Welcome the California Republic! We are definitely our own crazy country.

I wanted to go see "The Order" this weekend, but I was too busy. It got really bad reviews, but the trailers looked so interesting. The reviews must have been right however, because it's not even in the Top 10 movie list this week. That's not a good sign for a movie that just opened last week.

I'm really looking forward to seeing "Underworld". Once again, the previews looked so intriguing. I hope it's not a stinker. Those trailers looked so promising.

Decided to go to Macy's on Saturday to check out the new styles for fall.

Thing that I liked:

Suede - it's so in. I started seeing it last year, and now it's in the store all over the place. I saw the cutest brown suede belted jacket at Costco, but I wasn't sure when I would ever wear it. I would love to buy a suede skirt and suede boots. In fact, I must have suede boots. Not sure if boots really work here in San Francisco though. I was such a boot wearer in college, but when I moved here boots just didn't seem the thing to wear. I hate to buy shoes that I never wear, so I'm gong to have to really ponder buying suede boots.

Short denim skirts - my favorite outfit in college with tights and boots. They're back with a vengence, but when I tried one I felt like I was 20 years old again, because short denim skirts were my uniform at that age. Not sure I want to feel that young again. I like my age.

Long denim skirts - I tried a bunch on, but couldn't find one on sale that fit. I found one today at Ross' for $20, and it's very fitted on me. It looks like one of those skirts those "what not to wear" people say you would wear, so I thought what the hell. You can't beat that low price.

Short brown corduroy skirt - so adorable, but again wearing one makes me feel like I'm still in college. And then there's the boot thing.

I definitely want to start wearing more skirts. Some women at opera commented as I walked by, how it w as a shame that women don't wear more skirts. It's so true, but pants are just so comfortable.

Switching to skirts would be hard, because most of my shoes are for wearing with pants. When it's hot, I don't mind wearing skirts because they look great with sandals and I have them to wear.

When it's the normal 60 something degrees here, I'd have to wear shoes and either tights or panty hose. I have very formal work skirts, which look great with pantyhose, but they're too business like to wear to go shopping.

I saw lots of tights and Macy's, and picked up a pair of black ribbed DKNY tights. I was looking for cotton tights, but couldn't find any. Maybe cotton tights aren't in style anymore. Maybe it's an midwest/east coast thing, and they don't carry them out here.

Cotton tights are so great to wear. They breathe, and they don't make you feel clammy.

I saw some very cute BCBG skirts at Ross', but didn't buy them because I wasn't sure what I'd wear on my legs, and I'm still trying to pay off my trip to Hawaii.

I think they'd look cute with tights, now that I think about it. I'll have all my debts that I've incurred since May paid off next month. If they're still there next month, I'll try them on. They're summer skirts, but with tights I could get away wearing them all the time out here.

I don't what it is about this song called "The Love Thieves" by Depeche Mode that is so haunting that I have to hear it every once in awhile.

The lyrics are so great!

From SFGATE.com

"In an earlier incarnation of this newspaper, the yahoo movie critic Joe Bob Briggs wrote warmly of a phenomenon he called "bimbo fu'' -- a movie genre marked by the feisty brawling of leggy, well-endowed females for the titillation of their male fans."

Would that recently released Charlie's Angels flick fit into the "bimbo fu" genre?

Richard Walter is being interviewed on the radio, and he says you have to write a dozen screenplays to get really good at it and find your voice.

OY!!! That's a lot!

I can't believe John Ritter is dead. He wasn't sick at all, and now he's dead. I liked him, and always enjoyed his work.

And Johnny Cash. He was so great! I knew he was sick though, but it's still sad that he also passed.

It was so cool when he did that cover version of "Hurt" by Nine Inch Nails. He should have won an MTV award for it.

I'm bad. Someone wrote a comment that I didn't like, so I deleted it. I've only ever done that one other time because the comment was x-rated and inappropriate. This time the comment, in my opinion, was just plain nasty and anti-american.

Oh well. It's my blog, and if someone makes a comment that offends me in anyway it's my right to delete it.

Ronn Owens on KGO 810 am ran a piece on 9/11 with music by Creed for the intro to his 9 am radio show.

Man, I cried. 9/11, it's like it happened yesterday for me. I still cry, I stil freak out, I still feel everyone's pain.

I never want to forget. I don't think we should forget. 9/11 happened and my life changed. No, I didn't reach for the nearest person and bond because I thought the world was going to end.

What happpened was that I realized that people hate us for absolutely no reason. That it doesn't matter what you do, people will hate you anyway. My naivete is gone, and I guess that's a good thing.

People around the world hate America, have always hated America. The New Yorker ran some essays awhile ago about what the Europeans thought about the founding of America in the late 1700's.

What's to interesting is that in the late 1700's, Britian and France feared America even then. We were a nation in it infancy and they feared us.

And what did they fear? They feared the revolution that Martin Luther started. They feared a country ruled by its people instead of by a divinely ordained monarchy. They fear this baby America, who said to the world that government by the people is the only kind of legitimate government that should exist.

How threatening this concept must be to the rest of the world, who are ruled by despots who claim some kind of sovereign right to rule through dna lineage or through god. Government by the people and for the people, what a revoluationary concept.

Do we get how threatening the american version of government, this thing called democracy actually is to the rest of the world? Do we get how we totally upset the balance of power in most of the countries of the world.

We've lived with democracy all our lives, we so don't get how foreign it is to the rest of the world. What we take for granted in the states, is a revolutionary concept in the rest of the world.

Government ruled by the people, government ruled by the workers, the people of the country, and not just the rich people. How frickin' revolutionary was that in 1776, and still so very subversive in 2003.

America threatens the world. We have done so since our founding, if those New Yorker essays are true. America is the abnormality, the nail that stands out and must be hammered down, the odd guy on the block, the freak.

Is it any wonder that they hate us? We threaten the usual world order. We are step-children of what Martin Luther started in his religious revolution from the Catholic Church in Rome. We are what the catholic church feared about Martin Luther, we are a country ruled not by some authoritian power from god, but from the majority opinion of our people.

God Bless America!

I had a writing group meeting tonight. I love my writing group. They know how hard it is to create a story, the struggle you go through, the insecurities you feel, all the BS you think about kin thinking your voice is not good enough for anyone else to read.

I love being with a group of people who are struggling like me to create, to reach outside of their regular lives and want something more, that something being a story that people want to read.

The act of creation takes will, takes everything you have from whatever you haven't already spent in your regular life just trying to survive and live, even though whatever you have left is just enough to get you to the next sentence, the next paragraph, the next story.

Writing should be the easiest thing in the world, but it isn't, because everything else gets in the way. To write is to have the strength, the will to create more than what you have, what you are.

To write is to struggle to do what no one else is doing, to fight against the forces of sloth, laziness, how about just plain exhaustion.

It's nice to be with a group of people who are struggling in the same way that you are, to know that there are other people fighting the same fight, and sometimes winning and winning well.

A friend from writing group just had a reading of his work in public, and people loved it. How cool is that? How cool is that to have people love your work?

Go Jon! You'll get your own column on SFGate.com some day. You are so much better than Mark Morford, who is irrelevant and doesn't even know it.

Another great Christopher Hitchens essay on 9/11, Don't Commemorate Sept. 11, Fewer flags, please, and more grit. Wow, I want to marry this man. He is so cool, so intellectual.

Okay, so he's a hard drinking, ciggiliscious smoking kind of guy, I don't care. I want to marry him. He is the ideal of the kind of brain power I want in a guy.

Kudos to the Pete Wilson show on KGO 810 am for turning me on to this article.

A great essay on the second anniversary of 9/11 from David E. Early of The Mercury News that I heard on the KTVU Fox Channel 2 news this morning, In California, feeling vulnerable.

A memorable line from the piece, "As a nation, we have not exhaled since Sept. 11."

Very true. I know I'm haven't exhaled yet.

I went back on my eating plan starting August 18 to try and lose the weight I gained on vacation and from all the stress I've been going through. I only gained about 10 pounds, but all my clothes are tight again and it was seriously bumming me out.

In April I was contemplating the purchase of a pair of size 6 Ralph Lauren low rise jeans because my size 8's were too loose, and I was so excited. I haven't worn that size since college.

Now, my size 8 jeans are so tight that they're uncomfortable. I hate that! It's so depressing, what 10 extra pounds can do to the size of your body.

I've been keeping track of my measurements, and since April of this year, I've gained 9.5 inches back. Dang! That's like an inch for every pound I've gained back. How scary is that!

Today I stepped on the scale and I've lost 5.5 of those pounds. YAY me!!! My pants feel so much looser than they did last week, and it makes me so happy. It's amazing what a difference 5+ pounds make.

I'm going to stick to my eating plan this time and not slack off, and try to get to 135 pounds, which was my original goal weight. This means I have to lose 20 or so pounds.

It's been about a year since I started my second weight loss journey, and I lost 28 pounds in April and then gained 10 pounds back. Bummer! I definitely need to get back on track.

I actually started trying to lose weight in May 2001, and managed to lose 20 pounds, but then gained 10 pounds back.

I've been tracking my measuremnts since May 2001, and as of today, I've lost 33 inches. That's almost 3 feet of me gone.

The only rewarding thing about the weight loss journey is I haven't gained all the weight back. I gained some of it back, but then I got back on track again and took more off and then gained some back.

But at least since May 2001, I've managed to take off 30 pounds and keep it off, so I'm ecstatic about that. I can maintain, and not feel like I've been on a diet for 2 years and 3 months, which is what I've been doing.

I just need to go one more round, and I think I'll finally achieve goal weight. It's been one snail slow process, but at least it's been working.