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.
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.
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.
Its a fact. Guys, animals or people, do odd things to attract the opposite sex. I've seen it on National Geographic, I have seen it at Oktoberfest and I know it from personal experience.
This is not the real Oktoberfest, but a far more reasonable and less-intimidating facsimile thereof in the woods of Northern California.
