Weather: We haven't had any measurable moisture for most of a week.



Visit: A Tale of Two Movies

Wildlife: A Bald Eagle perched across from my office on Highway 93, and flew away just as I was taking his/her picture.

Charity Alert: Animal Rescue Site -- A click is as good as a coin!

In The Community: I have a conflict this Friday -- an FVCC banquet plus a reception for the Miniature Show at the Hockaday -- I'll have to shoot just a few photos at the museum, and then run to go set up and man the P.A. at the banquet. Benefit Auction of Miniatures on May 20th at the Hockaday Museum of Art

Media Watch: We are picking up some good ideas from shows like A&E's Sell This House, and HGTV's Designed to Sell et al.
We also see some of the damndest things on these shows -- leopard-spot wall paper, red-on-red-on-red rooms, or forest green striped bedrooms, with forest green solid skirting. The designer on one of these shows walked into that hideous stripey-green room wearing a green striped blouse, a green skirt, and said "This is fun!" (She painted the room a whole different color and scheme though.)
C-Span was a pipeline for right-wing propaganda on Sunday, with the cringing Thomas Friedman doing In-Depth, and a real suck-ass named Brian Anderson telling outright lies while selling his book South Park Conservatives: The Revolt against Liberal Media Bias.
I want to research Friedman's assertion of a "35 hour day" in India, otherwise it was sad to see a fairly good writer acting as an advocate for amoral ruthless economic opportunists, while trying to pretend he was a reporter, but never really listening to objections, or other points of view -- just repeating the party line of his clients.
Speaking of the above, I missed a discussion on Saturday: 2005 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books: Deception in Politics & Academics -- John Dean, Maureen Dowd, Eric Alterman, Michael Shermer, and Jon Wiener discuss lying, as it is practiced by politicians and academics. They talk about why people lie, why they get away with it, and the consequences of lying. From the 2005 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on the campus of UCLA: Eric Alterman, author of "When Presidents Lie: A History of Official Deception and Its Consequences"; John Dean, author of "Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush"; Maureen Dowd, author of "Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk"; Michael Shermer, author of "Science Friction: Where the Known Meets the Unknown"; and Jon Wiener, author of "Historians in Trouble: Plagiarism, Fraud, and Politics in the Ivory Tower." The moderator is Larry Beinhart, author of "Wag the Dog" and "The Librarian."
My guess might be that Sunday was composed of illustrations and examples of those lies and deceptions.

Future Blues: I saw three movies about musicians over the weekend 1) The Last Waltz, featuring The Band; 2) End of the Century, featuring The Ramones; 3) The Year of the Horse, featuring Neil Young and Crazy Horse. I had strong feelings about all of these films, and I'll write something about them, but not now.