Memorial Day - More Than Burgers n' Beer

Photo by Tom Uhlman

In the midst of trying to decide whether or not we'd like our burgers medium rare or with cheese; decisions between Corona (my drink of choice today) or Budweiser, or shopping on sale at Macy's or Bloomies; I thought I'd take a moment to really thank all the people who have lost their lives to defend our country. I can only hope to ever have that kind of commitment about anything in my life.



Regardless of your feelings about this war or any other war ever fought by this country; despite some people's feelings about the military and the mind-set that one might generalize with soldiers and the strong arm of the goverment; you can't help but hand it to people who are getting up off their ass, putting on their helmet, and going off to battle - knowing there's a damn good chance that they might not return alive.

And also regardless of what you think, they're doing it for YOU. The government says they are doing it for their country, the soldiers think they're doing it for their country; and for some of us who are jaded about it all, we let our frustration become apathy towards the men and women who are sitting in tents waiting to get blown to bits in some far off country. But, honestly, they are doing it for us.



Some of us may want to drag these boys home kicking and screaming - especially the ones who, bless their hearts, are so gung ho they aren't thinking about the fact that it's clearly an object of sisyphus and we will never eradicate terrorism entirely, and want to sign on for a second or third tour. Personally, I think anyone in their right mind can only agree that it's time for everyone to come home, period. The number of casualties are growing every day.

But, I digress. That's a whole other rant.

What I want to say is that I, personally, thank these soldiers who have given their lives, and hope the other ones out there come back in one piece. I can barely handle work, four pets, a semi-creative life and balancing a checkbook (uh, wait, scratch the checkbook part). Some days I have trouble getting out of bed. The idea of running off to another country to put myself in the line of fire for a country full of people, many of whom forget I'm even fighting over there what with their job stress, children or lack thereof, and who's winning American Idol, is incredibly foreign to me...

And it makes me sad that my first thought on Friday wasn't about remembering the fallen, but about what I was going to do during my three-day weekend.

David Weiss: Wither the Wireless Mighty Mouse?

David Weiss's blog is a great spot to check in if you're an Apple/Mac geek, and even if you're a new initiate into the Realm of Jobs such as myself.

I'm telling you - the Mighty Mouse that I scored at the Apple Store Opening is so awesome. I use it with my PC desktop or my Ibook; the little scrolling ball is rockin'. It glides like Brian Boitano on oil slick on ice.

I'm almost over the fact that I didn't get a t-shirt.

Almost.

YAL: From My Listening - Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit

YAL: From My Listening

I was reading YAL earlier today, and caught an entry that I had missed, where she posted what she was listening to: Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.

I hadn't thought of that song for a little while, and it reminded me that I need to pull out my Billie collection, a glass of wine, and give myself the luxury of indulging in the poetry that Billie shared with all of us. The imagery of lynchings in the deep south that is brought about so powerfully in the poetic yet horrific lines - crooned with her lovely voice, making it one of the most eerie and important songs to come out of the 20th century.

According to Songfacts.com, when this song first came out it was "denounced by [Time Magazine] as a 'piece of musical propaganda.'"

The irony is that in 1999 Time voted it the Song of the Century. The times, they are a-changin'. Hopefully.

My Mom Was A Hot Slut

...According to Dlisted: Hot Slut of the Day Blog, Ann Wedgeworth was the Hot Slut of the Day for September 11th, 2005.

How awesome is that? Some people might think I would take offense; but no, dear reader, we're talking about someone who purchased a t-shirt from 80stees.com that had the cast of Three's Company on it with Swingers in bold letters across the bottom. I bought her two of them.

She and Dad giggled.

RIP Desmond Dekker

We lost another great one: Desmond Dekker, one of the original Rude Boys, who brought ska out of Jamaica and to the rest of the world, and paved the way for greats like Bob Marley.

Asimov Realized - Robot Rules for 2006

Technovelgy.com's Bill Christensen mentions in a recent article that Japan is creating a set of safety guidlines for the new generation of Robots that are being created, very similar to those written by science fiction writer and guru Issac Asimov:

A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

They're also talking about safety "off" buttons, which might come in handy when your little tin buddy decides he would rather have you take out the garbage instead of him. I suppose that now that there are robots that are actually walking around and have an ability to do physical actions, the whole I, Robot concept of an electronic dude being as psychotic and neurotic as say...oh, I dunno...a HUMAN, might be a little scary.



I think it's so interesting that I am living in a time when the books that I read as a child are coming true to a degree. The tv shows, too. We've got little Spock-phones (what I first called flip-phone cell phones when they first came out) from Star Trek; we've got video conferencing from Blade Runner and Outland; and we've got Robots - which you can give lots of credit to Asimov, but let's not forget Phillip K. Dick, and - God, are there any Sci-Fi writers worth a crap that haven't at least written about artificial intelligence to some degree?

But, I digress.

I think it's amazing that I can sit back and watch the evolution of technology, that has made leaps and bounds, the same way people marveled at electricity, the telephone, cars, and airplanes.

Pretty fantastic.

Blossom Vegan Restaurant

One of my new favorite restaurants is Blossom Vegan Restaurant. They have a rockin' chocolate cake, that is best cut with one of their really good organic red wines.



They also have an amazing pizza...and vegetable sides that include these grilled (or are the sauteed?) brussel sprouts that are incredible. If you have never eaten vegan food, don't worry - the yum yums are so good, that you won't miss the dairy or animal products.

Ask Robert the manager to help you.

I'm hoping if I give them some PR, they'll give him a raise, and he'll give me the $80 he owes me.

Apple/Mac Store Opening On 5th Avenue

Megan and I attended the new Mac store opening on 59th and 5th Avenue yesterday. Actually, "attended the opening" sounds a lot more glamorous than the truth, which is, we stood in line for over three hours freezing our buns off to get a free t-shirt and a possible glimpse of Steve Jobs, like a couple of tech geeks with Beatlemania tendancies.

The line snaked around nearly eight blocks in total, and originally I was stoked because the first 2500 people were supposed to get a free t-shirt. When we showed up and realized that there were way more than 2500 people ahead of us in line, we still clung onto the hope that these cheap bastards were going to give us SOME reward for waiting in line for so long - I mean, you KNOW they made lots of money that first day.

After the first hour or so of waiting, Megan went to go get relief supplies, in the form of a couple of pints of Fosters, which we white-bagged (to go along with the Apple theme) and slurped through straws like the lushes that we are. I wasn't about to wait another two hours sober. We discussed important things like Howie Mandell's return to fame in Deal or No Deal, a strange man who came up to Megan and very menacingly asked what the line was for, and how surreal the experience was that we were standing in line for three hours to GIVE THEM MONEY.

Every five to ten minutes you would here shouts and cheering, and we at first thought that Jobs had shown up in all his geeky glory. It turns out it was the store personnel, sporting the t-shirts I had come to desire like the Holy Grail, who were cheering customers as they entered and left the store. I noticed the cheers were louder for those who bought something.

By the time we got into the store, I felt like a cross between Dorothy entering the Emerald City and Tony Soprano ready to kick some ass. I was excited, but I was tired and realized that I was probably not going to get my t-shirt. The staff gave us high-fives as we pranced our way into cyber-nirvana.

To say that it was an amazing piece of architectural and PR wonder is an understatement. As you can see from the picture above, the building itself is this glass cube with the glorious Apple glowing like the Mothership. You have the option of taking a glass elevator with a swivel door (dude, it was so cool) or the winding staircase. Throughout the wait in line, we made reference to Willie Wonka's great glass elevator. If I could have had Johnny Depp show up, that would have made up for the fact that we missed the t-shirts.



We got to play with the new MacBook in BLACK:




and when I say that is a sexy piece of machinery, I mean SEXY. I almost started humping the computer right there.



I was determined to walk out of there with something, so I bought a new Mighty Mouse, which I needed anyway...

Ernie Martin Studio in Motion: 2

Jack and Daddy
Originally uploaded by Billychic.

This is really Jack's project. I was going to do a documentary on Dad, but it was Jack that had the film studio, that had a vision along the lines of what Dad did (a tv pilot) and the ability to go forward with it. He knows the HBO dude. So, although I have to admit that I was at first a little upset that I wasn't able to do the documentary and someone beat me to the punch, I am so happy that someone like Jack is there to do this for Dad. Jack is honestly one of the best people I've ever met, bar none.

He is, as some may remember, the 6-Million-Dollar-Man pal of mine who got hit by a car over a year ago (one of three people I know who have been hit and almost killed by cars in the last year). He has come such a long way, it's amazing.

This project will no doubt have good and bad aspects to it in terms of creative egos, for I'm a major pain in the ass. But I'm really pleased with the way things are going. We're interviewing Lorraine Bracco tomorrow, we interviewed David Zayas and Fermi Reixach yesterday, and I think this is going really, really well.

Right on.

Ernie Martin Studio in Motion

Ernie in Motion: 2
Originally uploaded by Billychic.

Some fellow acting class students are going to make a documentary about Dad and his acting classes very soon (which is what I started to do, but hell, they have much better camera equipment, lights, etc) and it's going to be exciting. So far we're going to be interviewing David Zayas and Anne Pitoniak, Ann Wedgeworth (Mom), and Fermi Reixach. We're trying to get some of his other former students and people he has either coached or directed, like Sean Penn, Lorraine Bracco, Calvin Levels, Chaz Palminteri, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel and Anthony Edwards, to name a few...It's going to be hard to get ahold of some of them, though.

I think it's going to be an amazing thing - I've been wanting to film Daddy's classes for a while and really get to the meat of his teaching and share that with the world, somehow. In case you haven't seen it, please visit The Ernie Martin Studio Theatre and check out the site that Jessamin designed and I maintain, that highlights Dad's career and his classes.

We start filming next week. I'm working on monologues...oy.