• I've got two weeks to update this Web site before going back to the day job. If anyone reading this is good with MAMP/SQL, holler. #
• Thanks for the idea, Ray Davies. That's what I'm going to do Monday. I'm gonna drink champagne and dance all night. #

• I've got two weeks to update this Web site before going back to the day job. If anyone reading this is good with MAMP/SQL, holler. #

I ran today with no knee pain. On my way home, it started snowing. World, you’re making me happy today.

Another thing that had me laughing: In class today I said “One more time,” and the two kids in front broke into simultaneous Daft Punk song.

A room full of French kids singing the Dreidel Song: a gleeful Rick.

I started a short story last night, and it came out quickly enough that I finished it too. This is the first time in years I have finished a piece of fiction. It’s really short — like seven and a half college-ruled handwritten pages — and I don’t think it’s much good. If there is merit, it’s in the characterization, not in the plot or the language. But it’s something. I will keep writing and when I get discouraged, I will look back and say, I finished something; I can finish this, too.

Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland, apparently on his way to a film festival. (link: New York Times)

I, a passionate movie fan, say: Hell yes. Finally. I was actually shouting and pumping my fists.

Continue reading →

All three soccer teams I follow (the one avidly, the other two casually) won today. Mom’s b-day party, too. And I saw a photo of a molecule.

A few years ago, Dan Neil beat out all America’s opera, film, ballet, music and literary reviewers to win the Pulitzer Prize for outstanding criticism. Here’s a small sample of why:

Lathed from solid envy, thick with menace, low with conspiracy, wide with mayhem, the DBS Volante sends other motorists into a lane-crossing frenzy as they dive for their cellphones to take pictures.

It’s tremendous fun to run up behind an SUV with adolescent boys in the back and watch as, their noses pressed against the rear window, their little minds become permanently warped with car fever. Their mouths go slack, their eyes spin. The Aston is the end of automotive innocence for them. Xbox will never be the same.

And then, shift down a couple of gears and stomp the throttle: The 6.0-liter V-12 starts murdering air and gas, the tailpipes tear the veil off reason and common sense, and the car . . . just . . . disappears.

Mommy, I want an Aston Martin!

Yep, he writes about cars, and really well, too. I cackle aloud at least once every time I read one of his reviews, and I start hatching get-righ-quick schemes about as often. When Maybach lends him a super-luxury sedan, the Los Angeles Times’ readership is briefly escorted into the plush serenity of a chauffeured ride up Rodeo. We can taste the grit on our tongues when he goes off-road in a four-by-four.

But he doesn’t just write about whipping the latest exotic supercars around mountain roads and German highways for our vicarious thrills. Neil also writes about the economic, environmental, political, and social challenges facing the global car industry and motorists, and as far as I can tell (other than what I read in the Times, I know little about these things), he does it with sophistication, precision, fairness, frankness, and clarity. An impressive acheivement for any critic, and he should be proud of the way he informs his readers about something that matters very much to them in many practical and emotional ways.

Read the whole article quoted above here.