The Check Was in the Mail

If you’ve read this blog for a while, one of the threads that was left hang­ing was our claim on the dam­ages of some of our fur­ni­ture and belong­ings when we moved here. After nearly a year, that fate­ful day had arrived when we’d see the enve­lope arrive in our mail­box with our names on it from the mov­ing com­pany, a state­ment of what of our claim they were will­ing to repay in it, along with, of course, a check (or since we’re in Canada, a cheque).

Not quite. It’s not that they didn’t agree that they had crushed a beau­ti­ful cof­fee table, or that they had bent a set of metal racks for MIDI equip­ment so that they had to be dis­carded as junk. No, that was all in order. What was amiss was that the enve­lope was open (per­haps steamed) and the check that they claimed was enclosed was nowhere to be found. We called the com­pany and left a mes­sage, telling them that the check was miss­ing, to please stop pay­ment on it (there was no num­ber, so we had to tell them only what we knew), and to please cut us a new one. It’s hard to believe that after all this time, we find our­selves still wait­ing, this time because they couldn’t think of a more secure way to send money to us than a plain enve­lope and a loose check.

Ridicu­lous.

Beware of Geeks

We had just fin­ished din­ner when the phone rang. I knew after I answered and there was a moment of silence that I was get­ting a phone solic­i­ta­tion. I should have hung up right there. It was right near the end of Jeop­ardy, too, and a close game at that. Oh well.

Me: Hello?
Clue­less Phone Caller: Hi, can I speak with <my name>?
Me: That would be me.
CPC: I’m call­ing on behalf of <a well-known phone com­pany>, and I’m happy to tell you see that you are now able to get our Inter­net access.

Me: Gee, I have to say that I’m pretty happy with the ser­vice I’ve been get­ting with <a com­pet­ing ven­dor>. It’s very high speed and I really like the extra bandwidth.

CPC: Yes, but what about our prices?

Me: Well, can you get me at least 4 or 5 Megabits per sec­ond down­stream and no less than 1 megabit per sec­ond upstream? I’d also like to main­tain a Sta­tic IP.

CPC: <short silence> Uhh, what’s a “Sta­tic IP”?

Me: Y’know what? Don’t worry about it. I’m really not inter­ested, but thanks for calling.

CPC: (clearly con­fused and dis­ap­pointed) Um, OK.

I know I know, I’m a geek, but if you’re going to be doing phone solic­i­ta­tion, per­haps a lit­tle coach­ing on what to do when your prospect asks a ques­tion that you are clearly unpre­pared to answer might be in order. It’s not that the guy didn’t know what a Sta­tic IP was, it’s that he asked me what it was. I wasn’t about to waste both of our times get­ting him up to snuff on some of the finer points of the ser­vice he was sell­ing (and a request that maybe 1% of the pop­u­la­tion cares about).

One more Month to Sample

Pam and I were walk­ing home from din­ner (we were hun­gry, so we feasted on the deli­cious All-you-can-eat Sushi, Korean bar­be­cue, tem­pura and Ton katsu at Shabusen, up the hill on Granville) when she pointed out that we’ve been in Van­cou­ver every month of the year except for June. In a week and month ahead, we’ll have been in Van­cou­ver for at least some period of time in every month of the year. (in mid July, we’ll have lived here a year — already!).

This is sig­nif­i­cant, because I’ve some­times remarked that this city does indeed have a Jekyll and Hyde per­son­al­ity; actu­ally it’s more an Apollo and Diony­sus dichotomy. At any rate, what I mean is there is a brainy Van­cou­ver, and then there is a more lan­guid, epi­curean Van­cou­ver. These two faces make their appear­ance depend­ing on the change of the seasons.

Here’s how it goes: Half of the year, the city’s res­i­dents must duck into a dry library, con­cert hall, movie the­atre, book store or work­place to escape the con­tin­ual show­ers. There, by the gas fire and sip­ping ser­ial lattes and cap­puc­ci­nos, we hun­ker down at our com­puter screens and note­books, write nov­els and soft­ware, think deep thoughts about cul­ture and phi­los­o­phy, lis­ten to count­less new music con­certs and go to doc­u­men­tary fes­ti­vals into the sun­set (which takes place at about 3 PM). In short, Van­cou­ver assumes the role of Seat­tle of Canada. Maybe with a touch of Prague and Cam­bridge (OK, OK, I’ll stick with Seattle).

Then in late April, the city under­goes some­thing of a meta­mor­pho­sis. Like those mousey librar­i­ans of those clichéd movies (and episodes of ‘Love, Amer­i­can Style’ ) who remove their cat’s-eye glasses and with a twist of their head, unfurl their long, brown hair from the bun it’s been in since Novem­ber, the city mag­i­cally trans­forms into a Party Girl. Or, Surfer Dude. The beach beck­ons, and we leave work to take a long walk, or sip some Mer­lot (or beer). There are flow­ers every­where, and a book is OK, as long as it’s sur­rounded by a pic­nic. The sun sets at 9 PM, so every day is poten­tially a lit­tle mini vaca­tion. To be sure, it’s hard to sit inside at work when you really want to be wear­ing sun­glasses and saun­ter­ing down by the water. Van­cou­ver becomes Canada’s San Diego. Per­haps even a lit­tle LA and Cannes. (Oh all right. San Diego.)

In a lit­tle over a week, the Game­lan I play in, Madu Sari, is play­ing at Simon Fraser Uni­ver­sity (where we usu­ally rehearse) in the after­noon, and then in the evening, we per­form at the In the House Fes­ti­val, where a series of peo­ple in East Van­cou­ver open up their homes and back yards for a series of eclec­tic con­certs and Bur­lesque shows. Well, maybe some of that Apol­lon­ian, intel­lec­tual side does last through in the Spring and Sum­mer months.

The most notable thing about the Game­lan rehearsals at SFU lately has not been the fact that my bus trips to Burn­aby moun­tain are no longer into the dark, but that we seem to be com­pet­ing against the March­ing bands of Bag­pipers who are also prac­tic­ing on cam­pus (I assume for Grad­u­a­tion Cer­e­monies in month or so) . It is truly a multi-ethnic Ivesian (and in fact, I’d ven­ture to say, typ­i­cally Van­cou­ver) expe­ri­ence to hear the duel between Javanese Per­cus­sion and Scot­tish Pipes.

The Power of Sarcasm

The extra­or­di­nary appear­ance of Stephen Colbert’s at the White House Press Club Din­ner last month (which we can still offer him thanks for) was all the more remark­able for the fact that he unleashed his par­ody of con­ser­v­a­tive pun­ditry not 20 feet from King George him­self! The video has been played all over the Inter­net and the tran­scripts are all over the place, but I can’t help quot­ing my favourite bit:

“So the White House has per­son­nel changes. Then you write, “Oh, they’re just rear­rang­ing the deck chairs on the Titanic.” First of all, that is a ter­ri­ble metaphor. This admin­is­tra­tion is not sink­ing. This admin­is­tra­tion is soar­ing. If any­thing, they are rear­rang­ing the deck chairs on the Hindenburg!”

I’ve asked many the same ques­tions: How did it hap­pen? Why did the press club invite him in the first place? Was this their way of finally mak­ing it clear how idi­otic the admin­is­tra­tion is through the mouth­piece of a come­dian rather than a jour­nal­ist? Were they expect­ing him to play nice and just be a lit­tle wacky? Nah, I’ve come to the con­clu­sion that it’s sim­pler. The peo­ple in charge of the invi­ta­tions saw a few clips of Colbert’s show and didn’t get the joke. Appar­ently irony and satire is a bit too sophis­ti­cated for some of those on the Right. Col­bert is play­ing a part, a sort of Proto-Fox News Pun­dit. He doesn’t really admire Bush or ‘Papa Bear’ (O’Reilly) or really think that Cre­ation­ism is the Answer because Sci­ence is Just Too Hard… It’s all a per­sona! As they say in Eng­land, he’s “Tak­ing the Mickey out on them!”

What made me come to this real­iza­tion that they missed the satire is that it’s hap­pened again. Today, Tom DeLay’s Legal Defense fund sent out a mass email crit­i­ciz­ing a new doc­u­men­tary ‘The Big Buy: Tom DeLay’s Stolen Con­gress’ by Robert Green­wald, whose pre­vi­ous film was “Out­foxed”. The email uses as its lead item, Greenwald’s appear­ance as a guest on Colbert’s show, when Col­bert (again, in char­ac­ter) pro­ceeded to give him a hard time. Now per­haps the Tom Delay Legal Defense fund thinks that the peo­ple that they are send­ing the email to are so dumb that they won’t get the joke. Or maybe they didn’t get the joke, either.

I won­der how long this can go on, with Stephen Col­bert con­tin­u­ing to con­vince the Right that he’s on their side, all the while rip­ping them to shreds? Some­one once told me that Mar­garet Dumont was so stu­pid that she thought she was doing dra­matic movies with Grou­cho, and some­how man­aged to for­get all of those times he insulted or tried to get a rise out of her. Maybe some of these guys are a throw­back to that Dumont-ian blind­ness to a smarter, wit­tier Marx­ist (the ‘Broth­ers’ kind, that is).

Sick Days, Childhood TV and the New Apple Cube

On Thurs­day morn­ing I noticed that I had a sore throat. By noon, I was weak, a lit­tle nau­seous and sun­light was giv­ing me a headache. At that point, it was obvi­ous that I was run­ning a tem­per­a­ture, so I went home early and went to bed. By night­fall it had turned into a pretty bad fever and chills, along with the usual cold symp­toms. This morn­ing I was still a bit fever­ish, but a bit bet­ter, and tonight I feel 100% bet­ter. Hope­fully this recov­ery will con­tinue and I’ll be back to work on Tuesday.

Tues­day? Yes, this week­end is a three day week­end that I would not be enjoy­ing if I was still liv­ing in Boston. It’s Vic­to­ria Day, the first Mon­day before May 25^th, in hon­our of Queen Victoria’s Birth­day and the cur­rent reign­ing Cana­dian Sov­er­eign, Queen Eliz­a­beth II. Cel­e­brat­ing a British hol­i­day is not all that new to me; I remem­ber cel­e­brat­ing Box­ing Day and Guy Fawkes Day (and isn’t it funny that Guy Fawkes has made a come­back in V for Vendetta ? ) but it does feel a lit­tle odd, given that we fled an ‘Impe­r­ial Pres­i­dency’, to be cel­e­brat­ing the birth­days of British Mon­archs. Hey, it’s only a week before Memo­r­ial Day back in the US, so at least it makes up for that.

The Future with Strings Attached
With a day at home, I spent some time on email and phone, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the office, but I did have a lit­tle quiet time to myself. I indulged my inner 5-year old. I watched some videos that I have got­ten over the Inter­net of what was prob­a­bly the first tele­vi­sion show I was ever a fan of: Fire­ball XL5.

Fire­ball XL5, cre­ated by Gerry Ander­son and his wife Sylvia, was a new genre of sci­ence fic­tion and action tele­vi­sion that used mar­i­onettes on strings, bril­liantly exe­cuted mod­els, and clever cin­e­matic tech­niques, along with an inno­v­a­tive use of an audio trig­ger­ing mech­a­nism attached to the jaws of each puppet’s face, so that the pup­pets auto­mat­i­cally syn­chro­nized their speech move­ments to spo­ken dia­logue. The show’s ini­tial run was from 1962 to 1963, which means that by the time I saw it, the series was already over and in reruns. Nev­er­the­less, I adored it, par­tic­u­larly the open­ing sequence (some frame grabs shown above) where the Fire­ball space­craft took off through the means of an accel­er­a­tion ‘sled’ on rails, gain­ing speed on it’s ver­ti­cal run until the track tipped up at the end like a ski-jump and as the the rocket leapt sky­ward. As a kid, I missed all of the goofi­ness, ignored the obvi­ous strings and wires and black and white (the TV was black and white any­way), the fact that the voice of Pro­fes­sor “Matt” Matic was obvi­ously an imi­ta­tion of Wal­ter Bren­nan, and the accent that Venus (Colonel Steve Zodiac’s side­kick and ‘roman­tic inter­est’) had was clearly not French, or any other lan­guage, for that mat­ter. Com­man­der Zero and Lieu­tenant Ninety at Space City (Fire­ball XL5’s home base) were hys­ter­i­cally wooden (well, let’s not be so tough on them; they were pup­pets, after all). Robert the Robot, a trans­par­ent robot copi­lot, had a fas­ci­nat­ing computer-generated sound­ing voice that eerily fore­shad­owed what syn­the­sized speech would sound like in the com­ing decades, albeit in that monot­one that every­one assumed robots would speak. Still, it’s a won­der­ful and strange sen­sa­tion to relive some of my ear­li­est child­hood mem­o­ries of cin­e­matic sto­ry­telling inside the Quick­time player win­dow. I put this up there along with get­ting an MP3 of the obscure col­lab­o­ra­tion between Dr. Seus and the Great Gilder­sleeve, Ger­ald McBo­ing­bo­ing, which I also loved as a child. (I’ve recently learned that in ani­ma­tion his­to­rian Jerry Beck’s 1994 poll of ani­ma­tors, film his­to­ri­ans and direc­tors, the car­toon made from this story was rated the ninth great­est car­toon of all time, so maybe it isn’t entirely forgotten.)

Mean­while, in Man­hat­tan
This week Apple Com­puter opened a new store on Fifth Avenue, between 58^th and 59^th Street in New York City. Besides the fact that it’s one of the most exclu­sive addresses in the world, and the fact that it will be open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, the entrance to this sub­ter­ranean retail estab­lish­ment beneath 5^th Avenue is a stun­ning 5-story glass cube, which was appar­ently designed by Steve Jobs him­self. Here’s a photo from a cou­ple of days ago:
I’m bett­ting that Steve Jobs never saw the film ‘Thir13en Ghosts’, in which Arthur Kriti­cos (played by Tony Shal­houb of TV Show Monk fame) and his fam­ily are ter­ror­ized by an intri­cate mech­a­nized glass house (pow­ered by the ghosts trapped within it) that they are told they have inher­ited from their eccen­tric col­lec­tor Uncle, Cyrus Kriti­cos (played by F. Mur­ray Abra­ham).

OK, it was more than just a cube, and much of the glass had extra­or­di­nary cal­lig­ra­phy writ­ten on it, and there were cogs and hinges and other weird mech­a­nisms, but even if he had just seen one or two scenes from that movie, I’ll bet Steve J. might have been put off from hav­ing cus­tomers enter and decend from such a creation.