I was asked to bring "The West Coast Review" out of mothballs so I could write about the Star Wars Christmas special, which I saw for the first time tonight, thanks to Sarah providing me with a link ( Read more... )

May the happiness you bring to so many of us be returned to you many times over today.

As I was driving from City Hall down Spring Street to the Santa Monica Freeway to go home from work, there was a film crew on the sidewalk, doing their thing. (That thing consisting mainly of standing around, as anyone who's ever been on, or watched, a film crew knows.) Some of "the talent," a.k.a. the actors, were among the standers around, and ( Read more... )

To my friends living in the Los Angeles area, I heartily recommend the Carleton Watkins photography exhibit at the Getty On the Hill. There's a description, as well as a slide show, here ( Read more... )

This has an Associated Press by-line, so I think it's for real:

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20081218/NEWS/81218039

I can't tell you happy I was to hear Obama quote Sam Cooke in his victory speech ( Read more... )

Actually, you would have heard it first at around 10:15 p.m. Pacific Time, Tuesday night, as I was talking with my sister on the phone ( Read more... )

I got pretty close. I was wrong about Iowa, Indiana, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, but I got the other 45 states right.

More to the point, I think my basic underlining theory was right: the Democratic Party can write off the Solid South, and win the Presidency because of, not despite that choice. This grants us the profound relief of ( Read more... )

Sometime around the first week in June, I sat down at my computer at work and made my best guess about how the electoral votes would add up in the Presidential election. Then I saved it and put it aside. Today, I got it out and took a look. I thought I'd post it here, so you can see how close I came - probably sometime very late tonight ( Read more... )

I finally got around to doing something I'd been threatening to do for a long time - I had the walls re-painted in my apartment's living room and kitchen. The lead singer from my band, who's both a very experienced professional painter and a close friend, handled the painting. That worked out perfectly, because he did a great job, and I didn't ( Read more... )