Even if the A's win against Boston tonight, I don't expect them to go much further. Their pitchers aren't healthy, and their hitting has been spotty. But it's baseball, and it's been a wild season and anything can happen.

Poor Giants! Is there any satisfaction anywhere when their former manager takes his team to their first post season victory in 95 years?

At least the 49ers won a game over their old coach, so that's something to feel happy about at least.

For my modern art history class I went to First Thursday tonight. On the First Thursday of every month, many of the commercial art galleries around Union Square stay open late so working people can view the artworks in their galleries. Many of galleries serve wine and some even have snacks.

It's kind of fun if you're interested in viewing contemporary art and getting free glasses of cheap wine. Plus it's a great for people watching because some people definitely dress for the occassion.

My art history teacher said that if we went to First Thursday and saw artists that we really liked, we could write about them and maybe compare and contrast their styles.

One artist in particular really stood out, Travis Somerville whose work was showing at the Catharine Clark Gallery.

I really liked his work, and out of everything I saw tonight, his stuff really stood out. He definitely has singular vision, and it's very fascinating.

I saw one artist's work, who actually lives in my new neighbourhood, and it was kind of cool because I recognized many of landscapes she painted.

As I was looking at work, I started to get an idea for a story. Many of this artist's painting featured people, and I was thinking, you know how artists are always sketching people in public.

Well, what if you were to walk into a gallery one day, and you saw a picture of yourself on the wall as one the background people in a painting. How interesting would that be.

And what if unbeknownst to the artist, she had capture some kind of dramatic moment in your life. Does this kind of thing even happen? Would the artist have to have permission from someone if they wanted to hang a picture of that person in a gallery. What if it was some kind of random crowd scene, that you just happen to be in?

I don't know. I think it would make for some kind of interesting story line to have a character discover the art in a gallery and then tell the artist that they're the one in the picture, and what was happening that day with them.

Was it american indians who didn't allow pictures to be taken of them because a picture captures your soul? Or was this some kind of Hollywood myth? Anyway, if a photograph can capture your soul, why not a painting?

I suppose I could have the artwork be a photo show instead of a painting show, but I like the idea of a painter rendering the likeness and emotion of the character with paint and brushstrokes.

An artist would just be interpreting the character and what they saw, but the question would be, did the artist get the character right? Or does it even matter that the artist got the character right, it's just an intepretation right?

From Gordon Zaft's blog, I read about this game called "In the Bag" which was from a blog by Terry Teachout, the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the music critic of Commentary.

Here are the rules "you can put any five works of art into your bag before departing for a desert island, but you have to decide right this second. No dithering: the body snatchers are banging on your front door. No posturing: you have to say the first five things that pop into your head, no matter how embarrassing they may sound. What do you stuff in the bag?"

Here are my picks as of this second.

1. cd - The Cure - Wish
2. artwork - Vincent Van Gogh - Vase with 15 Sunflowers (London, National Gallery)
3. book - Japan at the Dawn of the Modern Age, Woodblock Prints from the Meiji Era (MFA publication from Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
4. book - The Bible, NRSV
5. book - The Riverside Shakespeare

Interesting, huh?

There was a man strumming his guitar and singing "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd at the Powell Muni/BART station last night around 10 pm. He had a pretty good voice, and could definitely play guitar.

Memories of other troubadors crooning in public places flooded my tired brain.

The guy with the beautiful dreadlocks at the Picadilly tube stop in London, singing "Wonderwall" by Oasis. The escalator leading down into the station was steep and reminded me of the escalator at the Dupont Circle station in DC.

The man's voice drifted up to me as I rode the escalator down, and his beautiful face came into view at the bottom. I smiled at him and he smiled back, and the I hurried on my way to catch a train to Earl's Court.

When I was vacationing in Bali for a month, I stayed at a hotel in Kuta Beach that had a piano in the foyer. There was a man from Boston, playing "Knocking on Heaven's Door" on the piano at all hours of the day and night. He didn't sing, but played beautifully, slowly, meditatively.

Hearing the song at night was beautiful, and it blended wonderfully yet at the same time eerily with the sounds of the gamelan player who played in the gardens at night.

Then of course, I have many memories of hearing some guy playing a saxaphone in downtown San Francisco during the evening rush hour, serenading the commuters home. There is nothing like hearing a jazz saxaphone soundtrack with its music floating to the top of the highrises to make you feel like you're really lucky to be living and working in a big city.

Where there's a will, there's a way. I was all set to buy a usb to parrallel cable to connect the free office printer my friend gave me, when I decided to try to connect it to my ethernet 10/100 base_tx network and the home portal device I bought for my DSL connection.

After much searching on the internet and stumbling around, and even calling the people who made my home portal who blithely told me that they don't support printer sharing, I figured it out and now I have two printers. YEAH!!!

I used to curse the time I worked for that startup and had to work the helpdesk for six months, but not anymore. The best thing I learned from the "Hi I'm the helpdesk" experience" was how to troubleshoot a computer problem.

I mean, it was the three of us at the startup and if we couldn't figure it out it's not like we could ask anybody else. I learned how to fix things out of sheer survival. It would take all day sometimes, but at least I got it fixed.

The laserjet printer is great. It prints so fast!

As a California resident and voter who remembers all the media hype during 2000 election about Bush winning California, I wonder if the same thing is happening again with Schwarznegger and the recall election.

I remember Senator John McCain even saying one week before the presidential election that Gore would lose California and Bush would win. The polls even showed Bush winning. Yet, Gore won California by a huge margin.

I mean this is the same media after all, who hyped the dot com market and never said anything about it the stocks being overvalued or even talking about the possibility of a crash. We didn't get any of that, except maybe the mainstream media scoffing at the doom and gloomers who said to get out of the market before it crashes.

So let's see ... in March 2000, Nasdaq was at what 5,000 + and today it closed at 1,824.

Does the mainstream media ever get anything right?

I saw "Underworld" on Friday night, and loved it. The critics hated it, and I can see why, but I don't care. Word has definitely gotten around about its suck factor, because there were only about ten people in the theatre.

I think I loved "Underworld" because I love vampire movies. I've seen every single one of them including the original silent screen edition of "Noseferatu", which made weep at the end.

I was googling the movie afterwards, and there's like all this gossip about the movie. At the time the movie was being filmed, Kate Beckinsale was living with the head werewolf guy, Michael Sheen. They also share a daughter Lilly. She probably helped to get him the part.

After filming, Kate breaks up with head werewolf guy Michael and says it was was because they were incompatible.

Months later, Beckinsale ends up engaged to the director of "Underworld" Len Wiseman, who was married to someone else during the filming of the movie.

I wish I'd known all this juicy gossip before I'd seen the movie, because it might have been fun to check out the interaction between the two actors.

Maybe I'm depressed because in the process of studying the modern art of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Alberto Giacometti, art informel, Jean Fautrier, Jean Dubuffet, Antoni Tapies, Francis Bacon and Lucien Freud, I've had to read up on existentialism.

Reading the philosophy of existentialism will, I'm convinced, depress anyone.

Maybe I'm in a bad mood because I saw the ACT production of "Les Liaisons Dangereuses", by Choderlos de Laclos and adapted and directed by Giles Havergal, on Thursday.

When the Glenn Close/John Malcovich version of the movie first came out, I got a weird kind of intuition not to see it, like it was really bad or something. I did end up watching it years later on video, and didn't think it was that bad.

The Annette Bening/Colin Firth version which was titled "Valmont" didn't quite have the menacing feeling that came across in the Close/Malcovich version, but it was better at portraying The Vicomte as a more charming rogue.

"Cruel Intentions" with Sarah Michelle Gellar, Ryan Phillipe, and Reese Witherspoon, was the updated teenage angst version of the story. And although enjoyable, there was something missing in translating the story to a modern day upper class prep school in NYC.

I also saw a play version by Christopher Hampton performed by some friends of mine a few years ago at City College, and they weren't the best but the playwright's adapation was amazing.

In ACT's production, Giles Avergal returned to the original version of the book, which was written in the forms of letters. Giles Havergal did a fantastic adaptation of Graham Greene's novel "Travels with My Aunt" for ACT a few years ago, and he did a good job with this book as well, although as some critics have pointed out he did simplify the plot probably more than was necessary.

The actors were great, and I thought this was the best version I've seen of the relationship between Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil. The two were lovers first, and the play showed that the Marquise was more in love with him that she was willing to admit.

As an audience, you have to know that the two were lovers first so you can understand the extent to which their love, their attraction turned into pure hatred and evil. Havergal's adaption shows that evolution in its entirety and the actors give a great performance as well.

What's missing is the more seemy side of Valmont's debauchery as well the more treacherous aspects of the Marquise' libertine games.

It is disturbing to see love used so wantonly, so cruelly, with little regard to people or to feelings, but I think that was the whole point of Choderlos de Laclos' book. The kind of behaviour of portrayed in the book is common fare on soap operas, although not quite as elegantly done as the original french version.

But despite the shocking nature of the story, in the end the play and the book is a morality tale, and all the bad people get what they deserve. And it is maybe the ending which is the most disturbing part of the play and book. After all when in the real world do the villians ever get punished?

I think I'm having not just a bad hair day, but a bad hair weekend.

I feel blah.
I feel depressed.
I'm sniffling and I feel a cold coming on.
I've slept more than 8 hours, and all I want to do is crawl back into bed.
I saw "Underworld" and loved it, so I must be more of a goth girl than I thought.
I feel like I need new clothes. All my clothes are so boring, so conservative. I want to be edgy and daring, and wear black leather. It's my goth girl coming out.
My stupid pair of $11 DKNY ribbed tights, which I just wore the first time yesterday already has a run. Damn!
I'm starting to think Rush Limbaugh has a point about people who live in California, especially the left wing feminists women.
Maybe it's getting close to that time of the month, and I'm having a major PMS breakdown, because I just want to slap everyone who pisses me off.
I never get PMS, so the world must be ending.
I miss my grandma, and keep dreaming she's still alive.
I'm starting to question the writer thing.
I think my acting teacher was right when he said my biggest fear was fear of failure. He said it's what drives me and stops me from being a great actor.
I hate that I might be driven by the fear of failure, but I hate failure.
Somtimes I feel like if I'm not successful at something, I'll go insane.
I think my biggest fear is living a life of mediocrity, and I'm hiding from the fact that I'm already living that kind of life.
Sometimes I wish I wasn't weird, artistic and creative, since it must be nice to go through life and not worry whether you're any of these things.

So shocking. Robert Palmer, of "Addicted to Love" fame, died at age 54 of a heart attack.

I don't think of him as old. I don't think of any rock and roll guy as old. But they all age don't they? And then they die, which is normal but still shocking nonetheless.

The radio news is reporting that 7.8 earthquake hit Hokkaido Japan. That's huge!

Nanowrimo novel working title: Dallas is a State of Mind

Characters:
Marshall B. Raker - failed dot com executive, living in Dallas, divorced, missed his window of opportunity when the dot com market bottomed out, his big idea in 1999 was building a bigger pipe to move data through, voice and data over IP with a bigger pipe than a T3, Microsoft and IBM said it couldn't be done, the technology wasn't there. He's 5th generation Texas native, family still owns a working ranch in west Texas, republican, former rodeo bull rider, speaks and writes four languages fluently including french, smart, suave, Mr. modern day Texas Cowboy incarnate, loves 19th century literature and quotes Dickens and Melville, sees himself as a character in a Dickens novel battling against society and himself, has old fashioned values bordering on sexism, but manages to cover it up with his magnetic charm.

Jane B. Cartano - SF journalist who is researching an article on executive casualties of the dot bomb era, flies to Dallas for a week to interview him. She's hip with inner hippie, hates 19th century literature - too many long winded sentences and boring middle class values, she grew up in a commune located along the Hanapepe river with her very hippie dippy rich parents. She's ambitious, a vegan who eats meat when she's on assigment because it makes her aggressive, and of course she's attracted to Marshall B. Raker because he's everything she despises about men and dot com executives.

Harlequin romance, here we come!

My structure, subject to change, is 12 chapters about 10 pages each. I think it will be fun to write from the Marshall's point of view and then from Jane's, so it will 6 chapters for her and 6 chapters for him, alternated of course.

Chapters 1 & 2, intro
Chapters 3 & 4, first meeting - Day 1 in Dallas, lunch at the Hyatt Regency Dallas
Chapters 5 & 6, Day 2, lunch at The Mustang Cafe at Las Colinas
Chapter 7 & 8 - Day 3, dinner at the revolving restaurant at Reunion Tower, the passion night
Chapters 9 & 10, Day 4, The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza
Chapters 11 & 12 - Day 5 - DFW Airport and goodbyes

I received an email from the Nanowrimo folks asking if I was going to write a novel in 30 days in November again. I wasn't sure if I was going to do it, but I told them to put me on the list.

I was at a cafe last night writing in my journal, and I came up with an idea for a novel, and even outlined a possible chapter structure. I didn't think I had any more novel ideas I wanted to pursue, but this one came and I like it.

My last two Nanowrimo novels weren't complete novels, but just the start of novels. I didn't know back then anything about how to structure a novel. Not anymore.

I learned a really cool trick in my writing seminar at Learning Annex last month, on how to outline a story, and so far it's been working. Actually, I'm combining outlining ideas I learned in my screenwriting class with the new technique I learned in last month's class.

So I'm going to attempt to write a novel from start to finish this time, and it will be a romance of sorts.

For some reason I was thinking about my good friend B from Dallas, who I don't talk to anymore because he said he couldn't be friends with me without wanting soemthing more. I still miss him, but he did what he had to do for his own well-being and I can't him fault him for doing that. But B from Dallas was such a trip and a character, that I was thinking he would make a great fictional character if I amped him up big time.

That governor debate was scary. Peter Camejo of the Green party is a lunatic. The man is so scary! Ariana is a fright.

Actually liked McClintock a ton, but I could never vote for him because of his social views who will have the right to appoint judges. Can't have judges with McClintock's social views legislating from the judicial bench.

Arnold was scary, and Bustamente, well, I am a democrat voting NO on the recall after all and I could never vote for a republican for the any high government office.

The LA Times last week ran an article on the old Al Pacino movie "Scarface" because there's a new print of it in theatres right now, but I couldn't read it because the darn LA Times is now charging about $40 a year to read their Calendar Live articles. I love the LA Times, but I don't know if I love them enough to pay $40 a year to read one of their sections.

I'd never seen "Scarface", so I went out and rented the movie. It was a great movie, and definitely a classic.

Now the NY Times also followed suit and wrote an article about "Scarface", 'Scarface,' a Foul Mouth With a Following. The article says it's now an underground classic among hip-hop fans and how college students are throwing "Scarface" parties.

Brian De Palma directed the movie, and Oliver Stone wrote the screenplay. Al Pacino has a really bad cuban accent, but his performance is so over top and great, that it makes up for the fact that his accent is more italian than cuban.

A DVD is being released by Universal which will include prominent rappers talking about how influential "Scarface" is to them. P. Diddy says he saw the movie 63 times.

I really loved the movie up until the very end, when the Tony Montana character started to just make me mad. The end of "Scarface" reminded me of an F. Scott Fitgerald novel I hated so much because of the ending that I've blocked memories of the novel from my mind. I hated that Fitgerald novel so much, the experience made me think Fitzgerald only wrote great short stories and wrote awful novels.

I really should reread that Fitgerald novel again, if I can remember which one it was, just to see if it makes me crazy again. I read the novel sometime during college, and my values were definitely different then.

If you haven't seen "Scarface", or it's been awhile, watch it again because it really is a great movie classic and showcases a young Pacino at this best.

NY Times columnist and middle east specialist Thomas Friedman was interviewed on KGO AM this morning. His insights are so great, and he had some interesting comments about the war in Iraq and politics in general.

Below are a few of his gems but I'm paraphrasing what he said:

France wants us to fail in Iraq, and won't help us and will do everything to insure we fail. They are not an ally, they are our enemy.

To my liberal friends, some things are true even if George Bush says them.

To politicians - Never put yourself in a political position where when you succeed the US fails.

I still stand behind my position that the US was right to go to war with Iraq, even though I had strong reservations.

There is freedom of speech in the arab world, but there is no freedom of after speech in the arab world, and that's why I supported the US led war in Iraq.

It's good to be a baseball fan in the SF Bay Area. Both my boys, my teams - the SF Giants and Oakland A's, won their divisions.

Already dreams of a Bay Bridge World Series are going thorugh people's head.

It's good that baseball is good here, because both the football teams are sucking the big ones right now!

It looks like the Raiders may have missed their window of opportunity for a Superbowl with the current roster. And the 49ers ... okay you have a new coach but there's no excuse for the mistakes they've been making on the field.

So I'm flipping through this Sunday's SF Chron Book Review, and I see a familiar face and name.

Some guy I went to college with wrote a book on russian history, and his book was being reviewed. So weird. From his picture, the guy hasn't changed at all.

The guy lived in my college house for awhile, and we even had a brief flingie. His girlfriend moved into the house later, and we became really good friends. The review said the guy is a historian and a former professor of history at Harvard.

As I remember, the guy was really smart, studied constantly, was constantly in writing lab for his papers, is very tall and hails from Kansas of all places.

He's the first person I know from college who wrote a book that's been reviewed in my local paper.

Is it a small world or what?

The funniest line I heard on that show "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" was "Say no to crack!", which for guys would mean don't let wear your pants too loose that when you bend down everyone can see your butt crack.

But what about for women? Do we need a show called "Queer Eye for the Straight Chick"? Low rise pants for women are really in, but that means when women bend down there's not a lot of material covering their butts.

I've seen so many chicks' butt cracks lately, hairy ones too, and it's so not attractive. I mean, maybe guys get turned on by seeing a chick's butt crack, but I sure don't.
If you don't see a chick's butt crack, you see their ratty panties or worse, you see their thong. I saw this girl yesterday, and when she bent down her white thong was huge! And what's with thongs? I thought women were wearing thongs so don't you see panty lines. It's so not true.

Sure you don't see panty lines on the butt itself, but then you see the thong line at the top of their tight pants. What's up with that? I thought the whole point of wearing butt floss was so you didn't see any panty lines at all on the whole butt, and not just on the cheeks. Seeing the thong line looks like you're wearing a pair of panties with the part for the butt cheeks cut out, and it looks very weird under tight pants.

I bought some low rise bikinis when I bought my low rise jeans, because it did disturb me that my bikinis were hanging outside my jeans when I sat down. Scary!

For men as well as women "Say no to crack!"