I’ll write more later, but right off the bat you should go to LIT bar to see the mosaic show that stars Brooks Tower and was juried by him from international mosaic artists. It’s outstanding! Brooks’ piece, “Bucky Loves Meemaw” is jaw dropping astounding. Wow! The bar’s walls are full of eye popping wonderful art. Go see it. No shit. Brave the Bricktown crapola and go see it. It’s worth it.

Notoriously fascist Times of London fulminated today about the Golden Globes’ glorification of the homosexual left wing agenda. Whatever the fuck that is. Anyway, here’s a quote I couldn’t resist:

“…

Right-wing radio talk show hosts also took pot shots at the Globes yesterday. Stephen Bennett, of Straight Talk Radio, said: “When Hollywood is pumping out anti-family movies with sexually explicit, twisted and perverse themes that glorify homosexuality, transsexuality and every other kind of sexual immorality — then awarding itself for doing so — Middle America better take note. Last night Hollywood exposed its own corrupt agenda. [It] is no doubt out on a mission to homosexualise America.”

… “

WTF??? Hollywood wants to do WHAT to America??? What would a “homosexualised” America look like? What would America look like if it were un-homosexualised? Would there be no decorating and accessorizing? It’s a fuckin’ MOVIE, fer goodness sake! Do you think that 100s of Thousands of wanna be Wyoming cowboys are going to see this movie and just all at once and for the first time in their lives decide they’d like to suck a dick? Maybe just change sides of the plate? The only thing worse than left wing paranoid conspiracy fantasies are right wing paranoid conspiracy fantasies.

The world is a bigger place than we think and not everyone sees the world the way Americans see the world. OK, I think most of us would nod our heads at that. Here, however, is the world seen through the eyes of a “moderate” Iranian news source. It sounds very different than the western news reports we’re used to reading about Iranian intransigence, doesn’t it?

The West Is Falling Into Iranian Trap
By Safa Haeri
Posted Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Paris, 17 Jan. (IPS) As the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council decided on Monday 16 Jan. 2006 in London to “agree to disagree” over the question of sending the Iranian controversial nuclear issue to the Security Council for possible sanctions, with an unusual diplomatic brinkmanship, the Iranians are bringing the international community into a trap they have carefully laid down: That of resuming all nuclear activities and blaming this to the Europeans and the Americans, according to well-informed Iranian political analyst.

“If we are referred to the United Nations Security Council, the Government has no other choice but ending all engagements it concluded concerning the voluntary suspension of its nuclear activities, as approved by the Majles (Iranian Parliament)”, Foreign Affairs Minister Manouchehr Mottaki announced on Thursday 12 January 2006.

If we are referred to the Security Council, we have no other choice but ending all engagements about suspension of nuclear activities”.
He was referring to undertakings made by Iran on October 2003 to Britain, France and Germany to suspend all nuclear activities on a voluntarily basis.

The talks came to a halt on August last year after Mr. Mahmoud Ahmadi Nezhad, a devout Shi’a Muslim and former Revolutionary Guards officer who was the Mayor of Tehran, became President and immediately started activities at the Uranium Conversion Facility situated near the central and historic city of Esfahan.

But frothy eight hours later, Tehran put a velvet glove on its iron fist. In a surprising move, the Foreign Affairs Ministry “invited” the European Troika to cool down and calmly come back to negotiation table, reiterating that doing nuclear research and development has nothing with enriching uranium which, like “many other process, remains suspended”.

“The best way to solve the nuclear issue of Iran is discussion, not a language of force and pressures. Anyway, we are not afraid of the United Nations, besides that we have devised our response to such a possibility. The main question is that Iran is given its natural rights and the Europeans to see their worries removed”, hammered out Hamid Reza Asefi, the official spokesman of the Foreign Affairs Ministry on Sunday 15 January.

Analysts said the Iranian soft attitude must have been the result of behind the scene warnings from the more moderate wing of the Iranian clerical-led leadership and possible advises from Moscow to deescalate the growing tension between Tehran and the international community.

“The doors to negotiations are again half open. Tehran expects the Troika call off the Extraordinary meeting of the IAEA’s directors and setting a date for meeting the Iranians again”, one Iranian analyst speculated in the absence of reaction from Berlin, London and Paris.

“”The Islamic Republic of Iran has predicted necessary strategies and has no concerns in this regard, Asefi told journalists during his weekly press briefing, adding, “We should not see issues in black and white. Talks with Russia, China, Europe, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) should be continued and judgment and evaluation should be then made”, Asefi told journalists during his weekly press briefing, adding that “Iran believes the two sides can find a solution through negotiations”.

“The election of Mr. Ahmadi Nezhad responded to the new policies decided by the most top ranking decision makers in Tehran, based on a 180 degree departure from the policy of détente followed by the previous government of the moderate Hojjatoleslalm Mohammad Khatami. The new policy is based on a return to the sources of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, on the leadership of the Middle East and the Muslims and internationally on provocation and confrontation”, the source told Asian Times Online during an off the record conversation.

Hence, more crackdown on the limited social, cultural freedoms and on the press and expression, ban of Western music, movies with the so-called feminist, liberal or secular tendencies, tight press censorship; escalation of verbal attacks on Israel, the State that Ahmadi Nezhad wowed to wipe off the map of the world and then negated the Holocaust, all aimed at uniting the Muslims, mostly the radical forces of the Arab world in anti Israeli crusade and internationally, a deliberate provocation over Iran’s nuclear activities.

“Unfortunately, the structure governing the domestic and foreign policies of the State is that it is stranger to the concept of détente. It enters the arena determined to win, but when faced with difficulties and obstacles, it prefers and defeat to retreat and compromise, for such a principle is considered as a red line. Reading Iranian political literature proves this claim. Therefore, one can conclude that with or without the Security Council, the nuclear question would lead to anywhere except a friendly issue”, said Mr. Abbas Abdi, a journalist and political analyst who spent years in prison after the polling company he was a director found out that more than seventy per cent of Iranians favour resuming relations with the United States.

After the excitement of Friday and Saturday nights, it was nice to have a quiet Sunday.

Nevertheless, I found something wonderful to do.

The Oz and John X and I filmed Mackenzie, the young barista who is involved in getting prosthetic feet for orphaned African children who were victims of the Sierra Leone civil war.

Of course, the Oz wants a piece of the film for his movie and John X will edit the conversation into one of his possibility X pieces. We also hope we can edit in some of her film of one of her four trips to Africa this past year into a DVD she can use to raise money for her cause. I was just glad to be able to be a part of it. I can’t tell you how impressed I am with this lovely young OU grad.

She spoke with passion about following her heart and her God and of her desire to be a part of a cause that is bigger than herself. Full bore, girl. I have so much respect for that. Better to be passionately wrong than sit and bitch and moan and be bored with life and think that nothing matters anyway. And, there’s just that chance that she’s passionately right and doing something that really will make the world be a better place. I’ll passionately back her to the hilt just for that chance. There will always be that someone who will cynically tell you how hopeless your efforts are, but screw them. I believe that if you act with love and hope and give your all, you can never make a mistake. Things may not turn out as you might wish, but it’s still the right thing to do, in my opinion.

Mackenzie works for a local, faith-based non-profit, For Him. If you’ve got a spare buck, give it. The average ANNUAL income in Sierra Leone and Togo is about $120. You’ve picked up bar tabs that size and/or paid a dinner tab that size. Only $80 will give an African family a year’s worth of clean water, one of their greatest needs. They support orphanages and try to provide villages with enterprises that will support the families there with income for the future. Couldn’t you give up that one pair of designer jeans to give an entire village a chance at survival? Children with no feet cannot pull themselves up by their bootstraps because they have no boots and no feet. No, you can’t save the world, but maybe you can save yourself.

Today, we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I can’t think of anything that would better honor his memory than to give Mackenzie’s passion a boost with a few dollars. Do it. Just do it.

Some of this post about Saturday night may be a little fuzzy because I didn’t get to bed until 5 a.m.

Congratulations to Julia and her crew for the success of the Momentum show last night.

The show was so high energy, the crowd so high energy, that I was jacked up and excited and unable to stay still for hours afterward.

Good thing there was a rock your world afterparty at Nova to work off some of that juice.

Even then, I was jacked up and joined others at various places for coffee (just what I needed) until about 4 a.m.

For a poor schlubb like me who doesn’t drink and didn’t have a date on a Saturday night, it was just about as much fun as a guy can have.

There was so much going on at the Momentum show, I hardly know where to start — bands, poetry, performance art, dancers, installations, paintings, sculpture, beautiful people well dressed and hardly dressed, buzz buzzz and buzzzzzzz.

A couple dozen rooms of art, each room a revelation and a discrete encounter with young and high energy artistic minds.

At least four different bands played and played loud and well. People danced and boogied in place on their feet as if to dance. Swirls of people, cellphones and loud talk, whispers and people holding hands and caressing, jammed up on the staircase and lined up for the bathrooms.

You turn a corner or walk through a doorway and get pounced upon by someone you know well or just barely. Or maybe you’re a tall blonde named Carey I just had to tell looked wonderful in her form fitting leopard print long dress.

Brightly hued found object robots provided cover for a stomach crawling military figure that might “die” in a pool of blood before your eyes.

While one band disassembled and another set up, two young women in white tees and black slacks began a modern dance with a swing as a prop.

“Erika West” boomed over a microphone from a sound room next to the big bar upstairs, reading prose or poetry, standing in her black dress and high heel boots behind thick glass, unattainable as always.

there were films and animations with free flowing audiences sitting and watching for awhile and leaving and coming as disjointedly as the stories on the screens.

Even the art that wasn’t so good showed promise and energy and enthusiasm for creativity.

Every few steps I ran into someone I knew. Oklahoma City’s such a small town. New friends and old friends, but the best part in my opinion was that it was NOT the Gang of 500 you see time after time at every art opening. Hundreds of young faces!!! It was a happening. An event. Spontaneity sizzled through the rooms. I had a couple of internet friends from Norman that I actually recognized and got to meet in person for the first time, always a treat.

Sensory overload.

And it all spilled over into Nova after midnight.

The nightspot filled up with merrymakers from Momentum with a smattering of the very cool who were just there and a dollup of Jon Bon Jovi concertgoers.

I sat next to the door with the Oz and Debster and Tim the hypnotist and knew about one in five that came in. The smoking tent was full. A dozen Asians and others crammed into the VIP room watching a huge flat screen. Blondes shimmied in the bar area. Squealing young women with abundant breasts snaked through the tables behind the bar. Only one hip hop rhythm seemed to dominate the DJ’s turntable, bass thumping through your lungs and behind your eyes.

When they turned the lights on for last call sometime around 1:30 a.m., it seemed for awhile that the crowd would rebel and refuse to leave. It was that kind of night. You didn’t want it to be over.

I slid into IHOP about 3 a.m. for breakfast with the lovely Juliet and we were briefly joined by one of her posse with the inevitable teary eyed boy trouble of the young and the restless. Kat with a K found a table in smoking with her roommates so I didn’t have to just stand in a corner and puff by myself. Even IHOP was full to the gills, every parking place full, every table overflowing.

Oh, and I saw the redoubtable Thomas of Raffine in his ballcap and he chided me for not mentioning that I’d seen him on Paseo the other night in the company of a gorgeous red head with long curly hair.

First, I was a bad boy this week and extensively played hookey from my work in order to be outside in the Miata and sunshine and I kept the top down even when it was pretty chilly. Second, I’ve been “in a mood”, as you regular readers already know.

So, when The Gary observed that my biggest nightmare, Friday night dinner with three guys and no girls, had become reality at Cafe do Brazil, you can imagine my delight. AAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHH

You know, it wasn’t at all bad, though.

Went to see Elizabeth Brown’s work at Untitled after a sparsely attended Friday at the Red Cup and sans The Oz and Debster, who had another committment.

Elizabeth’s work was pretty cool.

I didn’t understand nor much like the main exhibitor, Ms. Sutton, who showed wierd photograpy technique to what seemed to me not much effect.

But the totems Elizabeth showed were brightly colored and heavily textured and I liked them much better. When she explained the groupings could represent people in small groups, it was like a flash. Eureaka! She was spot on. Little groups of art show clumps of people, leaning in to listen and craning their necks to see over the heads of the others what they are missing.

And, like people, some were attired in bright colors and others were more drab, but textured.

Elizabeth herself was also a work of art, I might add. She looked great with red, spikey hair, a golden, off the shoulder top and black leather miniskirt. YUM!!!

Heard some gossip, saw my hero and knew I was in the cool place, and ate some of the wonderful roasted pepper gnosh Laura put out, and made an exit.

The new Cafe do Brazil was a treat.

Between four of us, we only ordered two dishes: The Gary and Dano had chicken breast in white sauce and Tall Ed and I had Churrabasca Misto, a combo plate of pork, beef, chicken and sausage. Mine was really good and really too much for one person; Tall Ed took home half of his for lunch.

The Gary and DanO must have thought well of theirs because they both made “happy plates”.

The new 11th and Walker home of Cafe do Brazil is a HUGE step up. It looked great in yellow and blue and the main dining room has a tall vaulted ceiling. Soon, an upstairs patio bar with a great view of downtown will be open.

I highly recommend you give it a try.

Afterward, Tall Ed and I returned to Paseo. Tall Ed could find no “targets of opportunity”, extolled the virtues of living as if there were no tomorrow, and left early.

Not me.

I stayed for a couple of hours of Watermelon Slim and The Workers and enjoyed the company of Huda and Kat with a K and some of her friends. The band knocked the slats out of the place. Wow. Blues that makes you want to dance and boogie ’til the cows come home.

I also just have to mention that Brandi the waitress looked really great again. Her co-workers teased her that “the 80s are calling”, but I thought she looked really sexy and good.

Went home and went to bed a little after midnight. Life is good.

From today’s San Fransisco Chronicle. This is for my Haas Mac fans and the Webmaster in Stillwater

Intel inside — so what?
Few really care — or understand — what’s inside anything
David Lazarus

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Macworld Expo came to a close at San Francisco’s Moscone Center on Friday, leaving an awestruck world to ponder the glory and the greatness of Apple Computer uniting with chipmaker Intel — a corporate tie-up that publications worldwide hailed as “historic.”

To which I say: Get over it.

It’s a computer, for goodness sake, a plastic box that does lots of really cool things. Does it matter any longer how it does them?

Who cares if the box has bits and pieces made by Intel or IBM or Samsung or any one of thousands of other electronics manufacturers?

Reality check: You pick up a phone and you get a dial tone. Do you honestly care how this happens?

Even more miraculous, you place a bag of kernels in a microwave oven and you get popcorn, without any visible heat source. Can you even begin to understand the physics of that? Do you really want to?

A computer’s no different.

I stopped by the Apple Store near Union Square on Friday. I wanted to see what others had to say about our supposed love affair with tech.

I found Kris Caberto, an 18-year-old student, fooling around with a sleek iMac computer. I asked if she cares what kind of chip the machine contains.

“Not really,” Caberto replied with a shrug. “A computer’s a computer. As long as it works, right?”

But she’s not a true Macolyte. So I put the same question to Christine Kimball, who runs a video-editing company in Utah and is a true believer in the cult of Apple.

“They’re faster and more efficient,” she said of Macs with Intel chips.

But computers are supposed to be fast and efficient, and they’re supposed to be getting faster and more efficient all the time.

Kimball thought for a moment.

“Essentially,” she said, “it’s satisfying to have Intel inside. It’s taking two things that used to be enemies and making them one.”

Mac enthusiasts are perfectly comfortable with squishy talk like this. For them, it’s not about circuits and wires. It’s about an emotional connection with the box.

“There’s a certain je ne sais quoi about Macs,” observed Harris Schwartz, who runs a San Francisco marketing firm. “That’s very important.”

And indeed, there is something inexplicably French about the Mac. It’s a cool device (but not as cool as it thinks it is).

Still, does it really matter what’s under the plastic?

“No,” answered Karen Van der Meulen, who works for biotech giant Genentech and is a confessed gadget nut. “It’s like a car. As long as it works well, and as long as it’s safe, I’m a happy camper.”

That’s what I’m saying. When it comes to tech, it’s not the how, not anymore. It’s the what.

I wandered outside the Apple Store and across the street to the Virgin Megastore. I found Brian Lowe, the administrator of a San Francisco law firm, shopping for a DVD.

I asked if he could tell me how a DVD works.

“No,” Lowe admitted. “But I don’t need to know that any more than I need to know how my computer works.”

I also found Marie Hill, a flight attendant from England, shopping for CDs. She told me she buys about a half-dozen CDs every month. Does she know how a CD works?

“Nobody’s ever told me,” Hill said.

Does it matter?

“Not as long as I can hear the music.”

Outside the store, I bumped into Officer Gary Constantine of the San Francisco Police Department. He had one of those fancy police radios clipped to the shoulder of his uniform.

Could Constantine tell me how it works?

“The mechanics of it? No,” he replied. “I just know that it does what it’s supposed to do. It’s a valuable tool of the trade. The only thing that’s important is that the battery is full.”

At the Marriott Hotel on Fourth Street, I encountered concierge Alan Weiss busily working the phone on behalf of guests. Perhaps he could tell me how a phone works.

“You pick it up and dial,” he offered helpfully.

Yes, but how does it work?

Weiss considered for a moment. “It’s a mystery of life,” he decided. “It just works.”

I finally made my way to Macworld Expo at Moscone Center. Surely there’d be people there who could make a case for why anyone should give two hoots about tech nowadays.

The first person I met upon entering was Kelly Vaughn, a slim blonde in skin-tight workout duds (who graced The Chronicle’s front page this week as part of our and other papers’ glowing coverage of Macworld Expo).

Vaughn was helping demonstrate accessories for the iPod that you can use at the gym.

I put it to her directly: Why should anyone get worked up about the prospect of Macs containing Intel chips?

“Oh, it’s a really big deal!” Vaughn exclaimed. “I mean, PCs have Intel chips. So this is important, right? It’s like the future of computing!”

A slightly more informed perspective was offered by Rio Sabadicci, a San Diego software developer who’s been test-driving an Intel-powered Mac for the past few months.

“You can’t tell the difference,” he said of the new Mac versus the old Mac.

So does it matter what’s inside the box?

“No,” Sabadicci said. “Not as long as it works.”

But that’s not to say I had trouble finding Mac Daddies (and Mamas) who were more than happy to gush about their favorite piece of hardware.

“There’s a great joy in the peace that comes with Intel joining Apple,” said Elizabeth Carney, a San Francisco nutritionist who said she’s into tech because she’s “really interested in using the Web and podcasts to help people know more about their lifestyle.”

Apple and Intel coming together is “a beacon of hope for the planet,” Carney said. She was only half-joking.

I tried to get some official comment from Apple. There were hundreds of black-shirted Apple employees prowling around Macworld Expo. But not one was authorized to speak for the company.

So I called Apple’s Cupertino headquarters on my cell phone (how does that work?) and left a voice message (!) with a spokesman to get back to me with an explanation of why anyone should care about what kind of chip a Mac has inside it.

The spokesman called me back later to say that he couldn’t address this issue and that it was probably going to be difficult to find a senior executive who could answer my question.

Even Apple, I guess, is getting over tech.

On my way out of the conference hall, I met 10-year-old Cambria Loose, who was exploring Macworld Expo with her mom because she’s got a new iPod and it’s totally cool.

I asked if she knew how her iPod works.

“It’s got all the little chips in it,” Loose said.

Right. But how does it work?

“I don’t know,” Loose said.

Then her face brightened. “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “If it works, it’s fine.”

David Lazarus’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Send tips or feedback to [email protected].

Son Jack calls to say he’d been to see the Ang Lee blockbuster, but that he doesn’t like it all that much. “I’ve seen this movie before,” he said. “But it was called “Same Time Next Year” with Alan Alda and it was a lot better and a lot funnier. It even intended to be funny, unlike this movie that was only funny when it tried to be so melodramatic. This emperor has no clothes.”

Guess which fox will investigate the henhouse of whether Bush violated the laws when he ordered wiretaps on all of us? Why, the inspector general of the NSA who approved the wiretaps in the first place, of course! Who did you expect?

By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 11, 2006; Page A04

The National Security Agency’s inspector general has opened an investigation into eavesdropping without warrants in the United States by the agency authorized by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to a letter released late yesterday.