Posting from Alameda

Posting from Alameda

I’m staying at Dave & Heidi’s, across the bay from beautiful San Francisco. It’s been fun. I’ll be heading back down to San Jose tomorrow to spend another day with Brian & Maureen, and then back to Austin.

Saturday night, I saw the band Luna at Bimbo’s with a friend, Robin, and a couple of her friends. Good show–Luna has a sort of folk/rock style with quirky humor. Closed with covers of Bonnie and Clyde (originally by Serge Gainsbourg) and Season of the Witch (originally by Donovan). Thanks, Robin, for knowing who did those originally. That night I saw a Hummer limo–truly obscene.

Sunday, D&H and I went to an amazingly busy diner in bustling downtown Alameda. That night I was supposed to go to a fire practice in SF, but had left the exact address back in Austin (d’oh!), so I had to bag it. Today, I went in to San Francisco and just bopped around on foot for hours, which I love to do. Went to the Japantown mall. Consumed yukimi-daifuku (those of you have have been paying attention know how much I love these). Spotted Giant Pocky (remind me to tell you about Giant Pocky someday). Then I went to the Metreon to catch the digital projection of Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. I don’t really like the Metreon, but I think it’s one of the only places with digital projection, and since Lucas made such a big deal out of how this movie was all-digital, it seemed like the aesthetically correct way to see it.

What do I think of the movie? Good special effects and good action sequences. Awful script, bad direction, and acting that generally failed to rise above these limitations (except for good old Ewan MacGregor, and perhaps Christopher Lee).

Newsflash: digital image quality still isn’t as good as film. The difference wasn’t so great that I was generally aware of it, but in some of the more statically shot scenes, if I looked, I could clearly see the jaggies.