Brown Motion

The names of love.  That is the English translation of this outrageous, hilarious and inspiring French film starring people I have never seen or heard about. This film won some French equivalent of the Oscars ... specifically the lead woman protagonist.  She is an amazing actor.  Wide blue eyes like saucers and a toothy smile and at least one breast exposed is how she waltzes throughout this comedy drama about the war between liberal left and conservative right. Her character is an odd mix of ethnic backgrounds which runs into his, that of a closet Jew with a scientific mind and life of quiet solitude including his work as a veterinarian / epidemiologist in Paris.  The collision of these two personalities, one reserved and scientific and her character a complete hippie who views the world in black and white or leftist and fascists makes for 90 minutes of humor like no other. With phrases that describe arcane concepts like 'hybrid vitality' and 'political whore'

After depositing the child at a school in Orinda to take her Scholastic Aptitude Test or the SAT we decided to use our Sat as in Saturday to good use.  Given this part of our bay was relatively new to us we set about first on foot, then by car to browse the towns of Lafayette, Moraga, Orinda also known in the hood (or this part of the bay) as LaMoRinda for short. Since the school where the kid had to write was in Orinda we strolled its green leafy streets taking in the absence of any sort of retail.  That was then followed by a drive to a Catholic educational establishment called St. Mary's College situated in Moraga.   Situated on 400 plus lush acres it is a scenic setting on some prime real estate.  The church certainly has good taste.  A private liberal arts college surrounds the central church building, which rises on the green plateau surrounded by rolling hills. We visited the church, which always is a treat since the interiors are pleasant and cool and you ca

OR alternately it could be titled - Why I like paper books or Why I go to the library. To wit - I have enjoyed many a fall color when we lived in Michigan for many years.  During the course of this stay, at the onset of autumn we drove about four hours north of the Detroit suburb where we lived to a place known as the Upper Peninsula. For most Michiganders this was a seasonal must do.  The Upper Peninsula or UP as it was affectionately known is a largish bit of real estate, in fact about 30% of the state was the UP bordered by some of the cleanest fresh water on earth.  It juts out into three of the five large lakes otherwise called the great lakes. The point I am getting to, believe me there is one in the end - is that the landmass here was mostly forested.  With some species of birch or the other, but predominantly featuring maples.  What happened in autumn or just as summer days turned cooler was that the leaves on these maples and other deciduous trees turned color.  Gone w

Selling anything requires new tricks.  After all everything on sale is already a commodity.  So creativity rules.  Moving three tons of steel on wheels is no small feat. I was wandering in search of food as I am prone to on any given weekend.  This time the wandering was happening on the old El Camino Real.  While nothing spiritual moved me there was one item that did catch my eye.  To the point that it moved me. On a used car sales lot I spotted the below.  Not sure if this was a clever prank by the dealer or some passerby hobo had had his fill of the voluptuous beauties but certainly did not hurt that the soul lingered longer than it would at something as cheesy as a used Chevy truck with garish decals sitting in the heat.  Perhaps the models were of the same vintage.. After all any model year is good if it stimulates you enough to make that purchase.  Foot traffic is king in retail.  Subsequently I found what I was really after ... some good biryani made by a Pakistani

The library again yielded some worthwhile content to read.  I did.  The entire weekend was spent lazily soaking in history and state of the planet we occupy. First title was Rocket Billionaires  - Musk, Bezos et al.. This narrative is the historic perspective on how the privatization of the space we call 'outer space' came to be.  A series of lucky coincidences, entrepreneurial hubris and flawed government oversight in the form of NASA and bloated bureaucracies largely paved the way for commoners to dream of cracking the Karman line (named for a Hungarian physicist), which is an imaginary plane at 100 km altitude above earth. While full commercial flight into outer space is not a reality there are significant strides to solve for a flight of fancy.  Why someone would want to take a joy ride for hundreds of thousands of dollars to be in the rarefied atmosphere and gaze down is akin to a solution waiting for a question. Yet there is an aspiration to reach for the next p

What if such a concept was available now accurate to the minute?  Even those in the esteemed Silicon Valley seem unable to crack this one. Not so for a Belgian filmmaker who directed 'The Brand New Testament'.  Originally released in French this film is a dark comedy about something most humanity holds sacred and frankly is unable to or unwilling to discuss.  Death. The basic plot revolves around a family in Brussels, the father is God who along with his timid wife and a 12 year old daughter, Ea, live in an apartment.  God pretty much runs the show and does not allow anyone in his family to have a say in anything and neither is anyone allowed outside their apartment. One day the bold and insanely curious Ea escapes through a wormhole inside the washing machine in the apartment and goes in search of discovering the unknown.  Not before she breaks into God's computer and broadcasts the date of death to all living people on the planet. Conceptually audacious and ecc

Not sure what to make of this film.  It is directed by a Mexican, has an English woman and American dude as its main actors along with a strange amphibian of Amazonian origins.  It is part love fest and part heist movie, showing a gay man harboring an undocumented alien who in turn goes out and sublets to another undocumented alien.  Eventually the first alien has sex with the subletee. It is beauty and the beast meet Mission Impossible where both beauty and beast are mute.  Set in the late 50s the film portrays a creature captured by the US military and brought to Washington for research given that it is a unique specimen that glows and looks like a giant mudskipper. So as far as the plot goes we have a bunch of handicaps including the dictatorial military man (his ego being his handicap) prodding the amphibian to discover its secrets and therefore beat the Russians (who just launched a dog in space on a Sputnik) in a game of one upmanship. It is fantasy in a very different li

If you are Jackson Pollock you might have been able to do that literally - draw blood.  I mean it sounds abstract enough to me.  But this is about a more routine event not some stunning work of art. I had to get my blood tested, and the medical term used by the clinicians is drawing blood.  As in they draw it out of your body into a vial or vials depending on what sort of tests you want done. My doctor typically gets me to go and get it checked once a year to keep an eye on the goings on inside of me.  I know there must be a lot. Of goings on.  With the pounds of edible matter that I push down my gullet each day and the variety that makes up those pounds I am certain the bloody system is hard at work sorting, digesting, figuring out and filtering crap out while also creating new blood to keep the machinery working in tip top shape. This procedure is conducted by people called Phlebotomists in a lab.  The technical term for the procedure itself is venipuncture.  So it was this m

You hear this expression a lot in corporations.  He or she is just not cutting it.  It is a typical symptom of the corporation working with someone who has lost their edge. An edge that would have given said business an edge when it comes to their competition. Well in this case I refer to the dilemma faced by the world's largest manufacturer of shaving blades.  The name that has become synonymous with the function it provides Gillette is running out of ideas to sell more blades.  Hairy problem that. You see the business that was founded at the turn of the 20th century (pretty much when Daimler was inventing the Benz) by a fella called Gillette, has now found itself scraping the top of the their collective heads.  This because much like Daimler the Gillette company, part of the much larger entity named for Messrs. Proctor and Gamble itself has reached revenues similar to what Daimler has selling cars. The problem stems not because there are less hirsute men being created b

Homo Deus - A 'now consider this' type of essay as a follow up to the famous history lesson called 'Sapiens'.  Written by Israeli historian Yuval Harari reads in part like a doomsday scenario and part like an agenda for the 21st century. While he is often viewed and perhaps criticized as an eternal pessimist, I actually find his writing thoughtful and realistic.  That said there are points of view he shares that do seem fantastical in part for the very idea that no one living on this planet can predict the future. He is careful to read from history to being able to provide a possible future state of the world we call home.  The entire premise postulates that while our species Homo Sapiens Sapiens has evolved over the last million years from the Homo Erectus and other apes before it we are in a state of migrating to the next logical stage of evolution.  He only half jokingly calls it Home Deus (to mean god-like).  Or divine. Divinity not in the form of being ab

Basmati Blues.  A ridiculous indie musical.   On many fronts.  The director, one Danny Baron also agrees in an offbeat interview.  Lot about this film is whacky. For starters it stars Oscar winner Brie Larson.  With Donald Sutherland who actually sings in the movie.  What the f?  Imagine a cross between Roja and La La land except the result is wretched.  Then there is a motley crew of random erstwhile catwalk models both male and female, some of Indian origin, along with a set of motley desi actors who on occasion pop up in an English language film. There is a smattering of Kishore Kumar songs in the background as part of the thematic score including 'Ina Mina Diga'... but the songs appear out of place given the setting is the western coastal state of Kerala where the film is shot. The film is about rice farming but made by Americans who end up stereotyping a whole set of ideas about India for which it was soundly criticized. One of the hilarious moment in the film

Wonderful picture.  Part documentary, part 90 minutes with the luscious Diane Lane on a two lane highway in France.  The movie meanders much like I digress writing my blogs.  It starts as a trip from Cannes to Paris by car but ends up in detours to see uniquely enchanting places along the way, courtesy an eccentric Frenchman. The film moves like a food and travel show taking us from the south coast of France or Cote d Azure and the Provence region through Burgundy into Paris by way of Lyon, on a two day road trip collapsed into 90 minutes of watching the sultry and naturally beautiful Diane Lane.  There is some (actor never before heard of) charming French bohemian who drives her north on this trip while her producer husband played by Alec Baldwin has to work and disappears from the scene after the opening shot. Just as well.  The film has amazing photography, scenic captures along with a bit of history interspersed with did I mention Diane Lane?  Total delight in its simplicity

A visit to the dentist is ripe with blogging material.  Today was no different.  It was my biannual cleaning ritual.  This is an hour spent with a dental hygienist or a mouth sweeper.  The person, man or woman who works at the dentist office is assigned the job of using a warm water spray that is pointed into my oral cavity and with proper directional control used to remove the detritus that has accumulated with constant eating for the past several months. Today said cleaner was a British woman.  Let us call her Angie to protect her sanity.  Being persistently curious about my surroundings I like to inquire into the personal lives of the people that are in close proximity to me.  At least for the next hour.  I do not want a stranger just taking liberties with my gums and molars.   So we start with the formal pleasantries of what our parents have named us respectively.  After getting past that awkwardness Angie informs me that we are going to need X-rays.  By we I mean I was going