Last
month I visited doctors twice: in San Francisco to have a spot of sun
damage checked, and in Bangkok for a physical. As Mrs. Kuchenbecker,
my sixth grade teacher said, "Let us compare und contrast."
SAN FRANCISCO
I
make an appointment, the doctor will see me in about a month. I show
up on time, fill out forms and, clutching my Ganesha (the Hindu
elephant god associated with overcoming obstacles), am waterboarded
by a nurse-enforcer who finally establishes my financial worthiness. I
sit down. Another patient in the waiting room stands up, exclaims, "I
don't have time for this," and leaves.
After
45 minutes I am ushered into Doctor's room (as in "Doctor will see
you," as if his mother had ordained his profession at birth and
named him Doctor). There I wait for another half hour, poring over an
ancient copy of Forbes.
My father was a do-it-yourselfer, a master carpenter
probably better than Jesus as the Son-of-God's carpentry skills were
never well documented (but I'm sure the SOG had more important things
to do than building bird houses). I didn't take after either one. My
woodworking was plagued by bent over nails and my middle school shop
teacher, a large ruddy man bursting with blood pressure, said I did
rivits like “a girl.”
But the Maker Faire , sort of a Burning Man meets Martha Stewart
affair, grabbed what was left of the little boy in my soul, the urge to
build a Go Cart or blow up the neighbor's garbage can. This was not a
hangout for the tough-as-nails guys who hang out in the tool department
of Home Depot. Here the muse was as important as the monkey wrench.
Download MP4 (iPod)
I am headed to Sri Lanka next week and
asked a mutual friend of mine and the late Arthur C. Clarke if it
would be possible pay Clarke a visit. "I'll try, but he is very weak", was the
reply. Clarke, of course, passed away yesterday. I spent a day in
1994 exploring the sandbox that is his mind while working on a
documentary on the future of travel.
I was doing a search in our video footage files and came up a clip I shot several years ago and proceeded to forget. It was a rainy day aboard Peter Deilmann Cruises Mozart, a luxe riverboat the plies the Danube...which is really blue at times and quite beautiful. I fixed my camera on my cabin window and watched scenes along the riverbank dissolve before me. The vocal of Strauss' Blue Danube was recorded by Frieda Hempel in 1907.
Veterans Day Shrine - London (Inset enlarged from frame)
Review: The Panasonic FX100 Digital Camera by Russell Johnson
I have never been
very much for boxy things: Humvees, large suitcases, Wagnerian
contraltos. I own two boxy cameras, both antiques: a 1950s Brownie
movie camera and a vintage Crown Graphic, a bulky machine with
bellows once favored by cigar chomping, flashbulb-popping guys who
sat at the edges of boxing rings and Eisenhower-era CSI agents. In
fact, the Graphic was given to me as a teenager by a friend of my
father, an ex-boxer turned photographer named Ed, deaf from too many
blows to the head and always reeking of stogie. My mother hated him,
thought he was a bad influence. Ed taught me photography and a couple
of punches with which I wasted the neighborhood bully. I hung up my
gloves at age twelve but stuck with photography. I have always
favored precious little Leicas with squinty viewfinders handmade by
the Good Elves of the Schwartzwald, cameras with smooth, precision
gears, burnished surfaces and shutters that click with the uninvasive
self-confidence of European maitre d's.
Traffic at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (c) Russell Johnson
Feed the Tiger: The Future of Las Vegas
When will it end? Why as our salaries
shrink, our expectations dwindle, our house values plummet, our IRAs
squeal like piggies being led to slaughter, does that supersize-me
oasis of bare buns, aged sirloin and greedy motives called Las Vegas
keep on getting bigger. Last week the strip got its latest boob job
called the Palazzo, a 1.9 billion hotel implant that would dwarf the
crumbling palaces on the Grand Canal and make a Doge weep. Outside
of Las Vegas, what else could 1.3 billion get you? According to the
UN, you could immunize every child in the world against deadly
disease for 1.3 billion a year. But then, what happens in Bangladesh
stays in Bangladesh...Las Vegas is a different reality.
Ron Paul Country: Mongolia in California by Russell Johnson
California is, for the most part,
Mongolia. Erase the coasts and the canals that suck water from the
north to feed Big Asparagus and whiten the teeth of Valley Girls, it
would be as desolate as the steppes of Central Asia. Driving through
the high desert between Bakersfield and Las Vegas I note two
landmarks: a graveyard for embalmed airliners, in permanent holding
pattern at Mohave airport, and a shrine for Republican presidential
candidate Ron Paul. Paul is what is known as a Libertarian, a sect
of American politics that wavers between admirably cranky
conservatism and loco-weed lunacy: just right for the build-a-wall,
save-the-republic denizens of this landscape of coyotes, cactus and
bullet-riddled road signs.
As a Monty Python fan, London in my
minds eye is a city of silly walks: eccentric lopes, tortured
tangos and Teutonic goose steps. It is really quite opposite that, in fact.
That's why the Pythons were funny. Last week in London, Pat and I
settled into an apartment off Fleet Street and toured old London by
foot. I admit that I now live in a place where the only crowds are
formed by geese, which the local authorities are employing dogs to
break up, but I do spend a fair amount of time in places like New
York, Bangkok, even Delhi, so I am not a weenie when it comes to
huddled and non-huddled masses. But walking in London this time
around was culture shock.
Oh, we Americans
are a wild and crazy bunch: toiling hard and productively, spreading
democracy by day...partying hard by night. Or is it partying day and
night? According to a new report on travel trends, we Yanks are
binge drinking, G-string snapping "debaucherists," longing for
the eternal spring break.
This report, put out by the UK research
firm Euromonitor International, says the hot trend among the British
is traveling with pets. Western Europe likes Slow Travel (an analogy
to Slow Food) and South America "End of the World Tourism"
inspired by "March of the Penguins." For the Middle East it is
Halal or Islam-safe travel. But we North Americans are cut from a different
cloth. We pine for the lifestyles of the rich and vacuous, of Britney
and Kevin and the rest for whom life is one endless DUI. I'll admit
that I share the helpless anguish of millions of Americans about the
state of our Union and have entertained the notion that finding a pal
in Yukon Jack until Bush lets go of the football might be less toxic
than watching cable news, but is this a for-real trend or a
fashionable whack at US culture drawn from the backside of The Queen?
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