mccullochblog

Wow, those hackers...

Can you believe it? Someone actually hacked into my Weblog and said those things about nice Mr Bush? Geez, I was thinking just the other day what a good job he's doing in Eyerack and with global warming etc. And that Condoleezza Rice, she's going to be such a great help too. Anyway, back to my Green Card application.

Oh God.

He is such an utter idiot.

Snapshots of a Geisha

At age 13 I had the opportunity to go and study at the National Youth Theatre for a summer. I was a bit reluctant to spend weeks in London away from home, especially when there were girls like Fiona Stewart to be going on dates with, and Live Aid to watch on TV. Anyway, I didn't go, and accordingly am not making millions acting in Hollywood blockbusters to this very day.

Still, when I stumbled upon the filming of 'Memoirs of a Geisha' while cycling in the Presidio, San Francisco today, all those 'might-have-beens' came flooding back. As the low-grade camera-phone pictures here show, a cast of literally hundreds was filming (as I was reliably informed by an 'extra') the final scenes of the movie.

OK, so the pictures here show extras milling around a refreshments stand and a few old taxis - but trust me, there WAS a movie being filmed.

It was all quite fascinating actually; there was lots of stereotypical shouting of "Roll 'em" and "Action" and "Cut it". Lots of cameras on cranes etc. Interestingly, most of the 'set' consisted of blue screens. I have yet to flick through a copy of  'Geisha' to check whether there is a wierd ending where the sidewalk and buildings all turn blue, but I suspect this isn't the case and that clever geeks will add in the necessary street scenes in the future.

For the record, the 'extra' originally told me they were filming "a porno". He only caved in and confessed the truth when I highlighted the lack of naked people and excessively long 'foreplay' that seem to be preceding any 'action'. He did also kindly tell me that "the woman from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was in it, but no-one else famous". I suspect that means he was Ben Affleck.

Celebrities. Not my strong suit.

Cause and effect.

As a PR practitioner of moderate renown, some might contest my qualifications to hypothesize about global tidal patterns but this week I became convinced of a connection between the tragic tsunami in the Indian Ocean last month and the record high tides in the San Francisco Bay, the mudslides in Southern California and the complete flooding of Carlisle in England.                           

I may not have been riveted by Dr French’s geography lessons all those years ago, but I definitely recall a cyclical connection between clouds, rain and earthly water. Am I a conspiracy theorist, or is the Weather Channel missing something?

Anyway, while the scientists figure out how to connect a wire or two between their brilliant earthquake recognition systems and one or two life-saving alarm systems, I’ll share with you another story of a hypothetical connection which I contest is entirely feasible and Emma claims is a chance-in-a-million coincidence.

I felt Emma and I getting intercepted by a California Highway Patrol vehicle while driving home from Tahoe at 80 miles per hour was connected somehow with Emma’s long-term habitual speeding and aggressive driving. Emma on the other hand views the speeding citation as a lesson in luck rather than fate. “I was unlucky to get caught”, she said.

It would have been difficult to argue with her logic had it not been for the fact that the ‘flashing blues’ appeared about 5 seconds after Emma had said “Why can this arsehole get away with driving 60 in the outside lane?” and I’d responded: “Because there’s no law against that here – by the way, you’re doing 80 and there is a law against that.”

Surely, any deity with a sense of humor would have noted the quality of that potential comedy moment and immediately dispatched an angel disguised as the CHP?

Anyway, we could take the whole thing a step further and contest that our ‘bad luck’ at getting caught speeding was a consequence of Emma and I bunking off work today to go snowboarding…but no, surely the Gods would have allowed us that indulgence?

I mean we weren’t eating ice cream for breakfast or opening birthday presents a day early, we were just making use of all that lovely snow that God had obviously intended to be boarded on…

Ah, who knows the mysterious ways of the world?! Conspiracy theories on a postcard please to http://mcculloch.typepad.com

Zen and the Art of Desk Renovation.

It's amazing what you can achieve with a bit of teamwork and a belt sander.

Emma and I started 2005 with a renovation rather than a resolution. Well, technically we started it with cocktails and fireworks on San Francisco's embarcadero, but once the hangovers had passed, we had a peculiarly practical start to the fifth year of the second millennium.

Between 11am and 7pm today, we bought a desk via Craiglist.org (the Bay Area's preeminent site for buying stuff or arranging sex with strangers), stripped it of varnish, sanded it and re-stained it Walnut. For two people who's daily physical exertion usually extends to photocopying or stapling, the magnitude of this task should not be overlooked. Anyway, come and see the desk sometime, it's great...

In the meantime, we have some resolutions to share, mostly focused on things likely to be of interest to anyone who reads a Weblog, as opposed to me promising to not to leave my pants on the bedroom floor. So, here goes, in 2005, we will:

1. Run a marathon (Emma) - Em ran the Nike half-marathon in October and has already forgotten how much pain she was in the next day. Accordingly, she's going to run twice as far sometime this year.

2. Write a great book (me) - OK, so I said that in 2003 too, but I REALLY mean it this time. It's still going to be called Statendam, it's still going to be a stirring novel juxtaposing the greatest era of transatlantic travel with one person's struggle to survive in one of the most difficult socio-economic periods in human history, and err, it'll be much better than that intro makes it sound.

3. Watch less reality TV, eat more mud (both) - Emma and I will likely fall out irrevocably if she watches more reality TV than she did in 2004. To satisfy this household's need for sweat, dirt and tragedy, we'll be going mountain biking up steep hills instead.

4. Visit Bolivia, China, Holland, New Zealand and Yellowstone (both) - OK, ok, so my Weblog's boring unless I'm travelling, so I'll keep travelling. China and Hong Kong at the end of March should be the first stop.

5. Become Americans! - Yes, George Bush has made America less popular than even Osama BL could have imagined, but you just can't beat the snowboarding in Lake Tahoe, the camping in Yosemite, the wine tasting in Napa and the mountain biking in Marin...so Emma's applying for citizenship and I'm getting a green card. We have both pledged however to keep our British passports and cross our fingers while pledging allegiance to the flag. God bless the UKofGB&I!

So, there you go, that'll do for starters. Naturally we'll also be attempting to eat less, exercise more, spend less etc ...but frankly I think it's much more likely that we'll actually run a marathon and write a novel.

Happy New Year!!

D & E.

p.s. I've finally put a few more China & Tibet photos on the Web site. Visit www.davidmcculloch.com to see those.