Tonight I did some fiddling with my digicam’s settings, figured out how to do a time exposure and took this shot of Silicon Valley. It’s a three-second exposure using the cam’s shutter-priority setting. I let it rest on the handrail of the landing on our stairs outside, and used the delayed-release timer to get this effect.
I may fiddle some more to figure out how to get some of the grain out of it. But for now it’s pretty cool.
Just thought I’d post a pretty picture of this morning’s fog moving across the hillsides.
I’m listening to a This American Life rerun in the yard, thanks to the new wireless router the landlord put in the other day. Nice range, nice speed, so long as I’m out in the yard. The screen on my laptop is blindingly bright. Ira Glass’s show is wonderful as usual. A story about a woman who suspects she’s a lesbian, throws everything she’s got into the lifestyle, with only one small problem: she cannot conceive of having sex with women. After a couple years of this she has this flash of insight that she likes men after all. So after going “out” to her family and friends she has to have a reverse-outage. Hilarious. Then there’s the story of this Hasidic Jew who tries his hand at rock-stardom. Another perfect TAL story; amazes me how they keep coming up with them.
Somewhere, fireworks are going off. I can’t see them; there are mountains in the way. But I can hear the rumbles. There’s something vaguely obscene about these fake war sounds happening while real wars are happening God knows where and limbs are being separated from their owners and people are waking up in hospitals trying to be thankful for what’s left.
Must not think bad thoughts.
Crickets, dogs and clicking on my keyboard are the only things I hear after the fireworks are over. I can see downtown San Jose glimmering through an opening between the hills.
It’s a cinch I look like a lunatic typing away in the dark out here, the laptop’s light giving my face an evil glow or something. But it’s the kind of thing you see in California; strange but not surprising.
OK, time to call it a night.
Well the landlord just bought a new wireless router that sends a decent signal down the hillside, which is where I’m sitting. You’ve seen the sunset pic so I won’t bore you with another.
Radio Paradise is playing “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress.” A minute ago it was an acoustic version of “Born in the U.S.A” that had the dark edge Bruce had in mind to begin with.
So I have fresh beer (Gordon Biersch, natch), a whisp of a breeze and an evening sky getting orange.
(Now it’s the White Stripes … cool).
A minute ago the landlord’s Jack Russell terrier jumped up in my lap and interrupted everything. Right now it’s Brooke, one of his two springer spaniels, keeping me company.
There are better ways to kill a Friday night, I suppose, but few come to mind at the moment.
“I coulda been a contender.”
“Make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
“Stellaaaaaaa!!”
“What are you rebelling against?” “Whaddya got?”
“You’re an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to pick up the bill.”
The guy put some phrases into the langauge that people’ll be saying long after they remember why.
Marlon Brando was one of those impossible artists. Hard to take — only his ego was bigger than his belly — but irreplaceable.
Who else could’ve been Kurtz in “Apocolypse Now”? Why does any actor even bother to audition for the role of Stanley in “A Streetcar Named Desire”?
Yeah, the guy took some silly roles, like Superman’s dad, and he behaved badly too many times to count.
But when the guy was on, he was on.
Here’s the New York Times obit.
Simply put: In film acting, there is before Brando, and there is after Brando. And they are like different planets.
This morning’s breakfast comes “fresh from the factory,” as Melissa put it.
Yes, there is a small chicken coop on the property and these soon-to-be omelettes are the result.
"It’s humbling."
That’s Tilly, summing up the immensity of the sights at Yosemite National Park.
Here’s Dad and Til in the Yosemite Valley.
Dad puts his chin back in place. The jaw-dropping splendor of the place can
be a bit mind-boggling at first. And second, and third. (It still boggles mine
after my fourth visit to the place.) That’s the famous Half Dome back behind
him. Used to be a whole dome till a combination of earthquakes and glaceriers
broke it in two. The idea of forces being powerful enough to break mountains
in half is another of the humbling things about Yosemite.
This is the first time I’ve been here early enough in the year to see the waterfalls
flowing powerfully. We’ve gone up three times in the fall, when the snowmelt
has nearly dried up so the waterfalls are more like waterstumbles.
Here’s an angle on El Capitan that I hadn’t seen before. Note the cloud bank
moving across the sky… it looked like a storm was brewing in the valley; turned
out we did see a few sprinkles, but nothing that’d cause Donner Partyesque difficulties.
Dad gaping in wonder again. You could strain your neck if you’re not careful.
Now we’re on a bus to see the Giant Sequoia Redwoods at Mariposa Grove.
Dad walked into the frame while I was shooting the base of this giant redwood,
creating a priceless image.
Dad and Til pass the roots of a fallen giant. It’s really bigger than you can
imagine.
This is about half of it.
There’s nothing small about a trip to Yosemite. It’s four hours over, four
hours back, and four hours in the park if you day-trip from Silicon Valley.
The park’s a hundred miles across and you end up spending half your day on the
road (but what a road!). Really takes three days to get a sense of the place,
and that’s before you step foot on a hiking trail.
Coming here provides a perspective the place of a single species — us — in
the grand scheme of things. Trees living here now were saplings before Jesus
was born. Lord knows how long those rock formations have been there … hundreds
of millions of years, probably. New brush is filling up hillsides burnt black
in fires a few years ago. In 50 years a whole new forest will be there.
This morning, the thought of humanity’s self-inflicted insanity makes me wanna
scream: people, chill out. Sit down on a rock, stare at a mountainside for an
hour and get over yourselves.
We have company calling from the flatlands. Today I’m taking ’em up to Yosemite.
My dad, Larry Mangan, and stepmom, Tilly Mangan, stop by the ranch.
Tilly considers the local flora and fauna … that’s Melissa’s finger pointing
to some off in the distance.
Dad curries the favor of a neighborly hooved creature.
Tilly proves she can take a digital picture.
More to come as the week progresses.
An Oakland guy named Mark (who builds telescopes, how cool is that?) and his wife blogged yesterday’s A’s-Giants game.
Here are the pictures his wife took with her Sidekick PDA/digicam/thingie.
Now I’m thinking of what to do for Blog Me Out to the Ballgame 2005. Most likely I’ll pick a game that won’t draw such a huge crowd — that way people can gather and form their own cheering section. Or drinking section.
OK, so back when I had a moment of weakness that lasted 10 months and blogged
almost every day, I got the fine idea to do something called "blog me out
to the ballgame," in which a bunch of bloggers all go to the same game
and write about it on their blogs. After I retired the blog that gave me this
swell idea, the whole bloggers-at-the-game notion crept back into the background.
But I still had my two tickets to the A’s-Giants game, and I knew of at least
one guy who said he had bought
his tickets too. So I felt obligated to at least do something, and this is that
something.
I’ll tell you right off, the game was unremarkable. The Giants won because
their pitchers kept A’s base runners away from home plate. None of the late-innings
knuckle-gnawing of the past two games. Mostly it was a scalding-hot way to spend
a Sunday afternoon. But at least there was beer.
One of the coolest things about A’s games is that the BART train stops at he
stadium so you can get in, get out and not have to fight parking lot traffic.
When the A’s aren’t playing the Giants and drawing crowds in the 28,000 range,
you can buy your tickets at the stadium and get good seats.
This is the crosswalk heading over to the ballpark. Network Associates Coliseum
is perhaps the least-charming sporting venue on the planet … built back before
it occurred to people to build charming, cozy ballparks in the middle of a big
city (The Giants new stadium is a prime example). This one has industrial parks
for neighbors.
Another great thing about the A’s is their winning tradition. They’ve never
gotten much respect — Bay Area people have always preferred San Francisco and
the Giants to Oakland and the A’s. It gives ’em an underdog aura that’s really
undeserved: the A’s have always had one of the best organizations for developing
and finding talent and assembling great teams. The last time the A’s and Giants
met in the World Series (in 1989), the A’s mauled ’em. It’s like a bug up the
butt of Giants fans. The Giants had Willy Mays but the A’s have all the World
Series rings.
A bunch of hard-core A’s faithful at field level. We were in the park’s Plaza
Level bleachers, which were cool because they had shade (at least till the sun
got higher in the sky; it didn’t get unbearable till the eighth inning, by which
time the Giants pretty much had the A’s licked.
Yeah, that’s my shoe. We arrived early enough to find seats at the front of
a section, allowing valuable kick-backage.
Beers promoted even more kick-backage. Oddly enough, to my way of thinking,
this here Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was selling for the same price as Bud Light.
I didn’t ask why, I just purchased. Some descendant of Carrie Nation must be
in charge of setting prices, because at $7.50 a glass nobody can get drunk without
risking bankruptcy.
Between innings they have this promotion asking fans to wave their water bottles
in some outrageous fashion, and some prize goes to whoever acts nuttiest. Or
something. Anyway, this little girl and big guy were very much in the spirit
of the competition.
Here’s the dangerous Barry Bonds at the plate. He was first up in the inning,
right after the A’s had fought and scratched and clawed to get a single run
home. Most teams walk Barry because the next hitter isn’t nearly so fearful.
But if he’s at bat first in the inning with nobody on base and you’ve got a
one-run lead with a solid left-hand pitcher who should be able to get him out,
you let him pitch to Barry. He swings with enough force to launch a Volkswagen
to Neptune, but this pitch gets past him. I’m goofing off, looking away from
the action when I hear the "pop" which can mean only one thing: Barry
has smacked another one into the bleachers about 50 yards to our left. One swing
nullifies the A’s efforts thus far. It was going to be that kind of day.
I’m pretty sure the guy in the yellow is hollering "Let’s Go Oak-Land"
at the top of his lungs. When he’d rest, the guy in the Giants shirt next to
him would do the same, only it’d be "Let’s Go Gi-Ants." The odd thing
about these interleague games between local teams is that they fill the stadium
with large numbers of fans rooting for each team. Which means if you’re on your
way to the john because of too much beer to early in the afternoon and you hear
the crowd erupt into mad applause, you never have a clue who the beneficiary
of the uproar might be. I also wondered whether it was such a good idea to have
so many fans of the opposing team in one’s ballpark. If they’re outnumbered
500 to 1 they tend to behave; but if they’ve got lots of friends, and lots of
beer in them, they could get carried away. But everything was calm from our
perspective (maybe they’re on their best behavior because they skipped church to
make it to the ballpark in time for the first pitch).
This guy had the lime-greenest shirt I have ever seen.
OK, so now it’s late in the game and the A’s are down by 3 and there’s not
much point hanging around, except we remember the Giants scoring four runs in
the top of the 9th last night and we figure, what the heck, may as well stay
till the last pitch. No miracles this time, though. Mostly it was hot and sweaty
in the sun, which, I suspect, is why we have so many night games in this league.
A saxophonist entertains the crowd heading back to the BART platform.
Here’s our train. We stood in line five minutes max, then we were on our way.
And somebody else did the driving. Great way to cap a day at the ballpark.
Our last look at the ballpark before the BART train pulls away. In the flower
power era, the hippies lived across the bay and the Hells Angels lived in Oakland.
I’s that kind of town. Gritty, unpretentious. Violent if you’re in the
wrong neighborhoods. The A’s have great fans; I just wish there were more of
them, but then again, if they were popular they wouldn’t be cool. So let’s hope
nobody builds them a quaint little Wrigley clone downtown. It’d ruin the
aura.