Everyone loves a tourist.

We visited the San Diego Zoo this morning, typically we spend our free days engaged in errands, chores, napping, running or swimming. I forget that San Diego is the home of a world class menagerie. We played the role of out of town tourists - purchased zoo ephemera, enjoyed the mild winter temperatures, wore shorts and t-shirts. I think Seb enjoyed the day, he made quite a bit of noise at the primate exhibits.

Cog Sci 101

"Theory of Mind is the ability to attribute mental states—beliefs, intents, desires, pretending, knowledge, etc.—to oneself and others and to understand that others have beliefs, desires and intentions that are different from one's own." - Wiki

My little guy has not developed Theory of Mind. It was made apparent this morning at daycare. When we arrived the newest member of the daycare was crying. Immediately Seb pointed at the crying child and began to laugh. Even though the response was incongruous to the event, I began to laugh at his response thus positively reinforcing his socially inappropriate response.

(photo credit: Chris Ritchie)

12 months

The last 12 months have passed ever so quickly. Happy birthday son!

Today and forever

I received a short e-mail from a friend today. His cousin was hit by a truck riding her bike to work. She had just graduated from Yale (as all Binghams do) and was working for a non-profit in Cleveland.

I met her when she was fourteen at the friend's wedding. The day after the wedding we went to Powell's Bookstore. She recommended the Tin Drum to me, while I recommended Absolute Beginners to her. We kept in touch after the wedding. We lost touch eventually, but I occasionally wondered where she ended up.

My first impression of her was that she was very bright, well read and a brilliant conversationalist. She was destined for great things.

Home renos starting again ...

1. Water heater conversion to tankless
2. Master bedroom closet
3. Kitchen patio

Starting in two weeks.

Office

I am tired of seeing my brother's blog entry, I decided to post a picture of my office door instead.

Video of the month.

A Haunting at the Last House on Haunted Hill

A Haunting in Connecticut: So the movie pitch to the studio heads probably went something like this:

"Ok, we're gonna get Casey Jones, the wine-taster from Candyman, Slimer, and a bunch of extras from 13 Ghosts. The movie is barely based on real life events, but who gives a fuck? We'll scare the audience roughly once every five minutes."

So that about sums up this movie. There are effective, but predictable scares at every corner. But I couldn't help but be reminded that I've seen this somewhere before...House on Haunted Hill! Creepy house that used to be an insane asylum or mortuary? Check. Old operation room? Check. Bitter dead people? Check.

Nothing so much as an original bone in this movie...until Casey Jones crashes in. He puts on his hockey mask, does his best Powder impersonation, and kicks the ectoplasm out of the Foot Soldiers aka dead people. The turtles, not used to taking on zombies that have been Banksy'ed in blood, take a back seat to that woman chanting Candyman in the mirror until Bloody Mary comes out to rip shit up. Christopher Walken, who was not available to play an arch-angel to Jones's vigilante, commented "come join me for champan-ya at The Continental." And then Forrest Gump shows up and is like "well shit man!."

The fat guy beside me, who was hard of breathing, sounded like he was gonna have a heart attack during the movie. In this day and age, I think that counts as being entertained.

I give this movie 1.5 shriveled balls in a room full of gay people wearing angel wings...meaning I don't know if I was scared or had a good time.

Ignoramus.

Two scientists from P.R.C. are visiting our lab this autumn. All of the sudden I am the local expert for all things Sino - pronunciation, INS, language, culture etc ...

My mind is blown by the rampant stupidity in the lab.

On a different note, Bruce Lee is still the realness!

Ha ha ha.

"Do not concentrate on the finger or you will miss all of the heavenly glory!"

Visit to L.A.

We took our first family roadtrip to LA a few weeks ago. We stayed at the Viceroy in Santa Monica, which also happened to be ground zero for the Gumball 3000 rally. Pulling into the hotel we were assailed by noise, race queens, exhaust fumes, television crews etc ... I was quite annoyed that they did not tell us about the car rally when booking the room.

On Sunday we stopped by a friend's house to say hello!

Pluvial silliness.

A recent topic of conversation concerned the "Asian ladder." Admittedly, I have never heard of it explained this way. The argument is framed as such: Asian worth can be traded like currency by marrying a "preferred" Asian race. The rationale is intellectually lazy and dishonest and, frankly, racist in a Suzy Wong way. The notion of trading Asian status currency is silly. The ladder assumes a national inferiority complex mixed with Darwinian mumbo jumbo. I would not surprised if the ladder was a WASP invention, after all they are kooky.

I suspect my pigment challenged friend heard it from his moon-faced Korean friend (who's opinions are moot since she was adopted by an American family, is Suzy Wong and loathes her own race). As an aside, check out this shining example of an adopted Korean. Perhaps my friend heard it from his brother's fraternity brothers (his WHITE brother joined an ASIAN frat).

As you can tell from the picture above, my favorite guy disagrees with the notion of an Asian ladder. His thought bubble says it all.

Weekend redux

1. 28 miles of running.
2. Fine-tuned the banana-apple ratio for my favorite guy.
3. Watched Terminator Salvation.

Our son's name

Our neighbor quipped, "How clever! A pun! I do like puns." If our son decides not to run, that is fine. However, it would be killingly funny when they announced his name at a race.

P.S. He is wearing the family drinking hat. My youngest brother has been known to wear his hat at the bar.

My brother the comedian.

Well, I'll have to say he looks like us in our baby photos. Big eyes,
inquisitive look, wondering why he's wearing jazzercize leg warmers,
wondering why there's a half-naked man behind him.

These days.

First up is a picture of my good looking favorite guy. Since the picture, his hair has filled in. Renovations are finished, paint touch-ups are all that are needed. With everything more or less completed, it is time to baby proof the home.

This is the guest bathroom. I installed a paper towel dispenser, I hate washing hand towels.

3Form wall and door of the guest bathroom. In the evening, the entire hallway is bathed in green.

(find Bob Dylan in the photo)

Bookshelf with 3Form panels. Panel layout and color design by Leonora Chan. Mo's Rody is in the foreground!

The living space - Rug by Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby. Jay Osgerby is Theo's (of Leo and Theo fame) art school tutor. The color scheme of the rug ties the entire space together (note the use of the color singleton). The longitudinal pattern facilitates the cardinal axis of the space. The area is friendly and easy - the path of least resistance accesses each functional living unit. The implied functional space maintains the wash of natural light and preserves living space in a limited floor plan.

More Baby Feet!

Picking up the slack for SFS and posting a picture of Mo.  I vaguely recall chewing on my feet as a child.

Strange day at Chez Crewtonz

This evening somebody slipped a book into my car. The car was parked in front of my house with the windows ajar. The book was one that I really wanted, I saw it when I visited the Design Museum on Shad Thames. I was able to leave the bookstore without buying said book since I have a rule about purchasing books while traveling. Instead, I would order it from Amazon when I returned home. Fast forward seven months and the book was on my car seat. There was no card accompanying the book, nor was there an inscription. I asked the wife about the book, she responded, "No, but I wish I had." I have no idea who could have given me such a fantastic gift. To whoever it was out there, "THANK YOU FOR THE BOOK, I REALLY APPRECIATE IT!!!"

Strange indeed.

While I am here at it, another picture of Sebastian Good Vibes!

Quit harshin' my buzz.

Dining alone can be a fab experience

Today was lazy. Meandering around with my little pal today I hit the following points of interest - Chateau Harder (CR's abode), coffee with CR, the hospital and lunch with the wife, hanging out with my little pal at home listening to unreleased Velvet Underground thanks to CR.

At coffee an elderly lady stared intently at my little pal and proclaimed, "He is a master, I can tell. I can feel strong positive vibrations coming from him." She waved her hand around his stomach like he was a crystal ball. She asked for my little pal's name. She commented, "Sebastian is a strong name ... of course, what else would it be for a master." This is the second time an older white lady has made these types of pronouncements about my little pal. Do they know something I do not?

Over coffee, CR and I discussed various models of female worth. This is entirely irrelevant to me as I am happily married. His models were grounded in age specific cost-benefit analyses. My model consisted of a hole in the ground or a tree.

In the evening, the two of us (little pal and I) went to a local eatery in Carmel Valley. It is really nothing special, a family restaurant in a suburban strip mall setting.While waiting for a seat at the bar, I spotted the Realness of Carmel Valley. Imagine a 60 year old Asian man with a dense white shock of hip hair, the tightest ladies sloping v-neck shirt, the tightest pants known to mankind and a teddy bear. He sat alone at a table enjoying (to the n-th degree as n goes to infinity) his meal. Before each bite, he relinquished the morsel to his dining companion - the teddy bear. He was blissfully unaware of the stares he garnered

He shared a strong esemblance - facial, hair and body type wise - to CR's friend EA, if EA was a sixty year old flaming Asian male. He was the queen of Carmel Valley and for once I would not have minded being a royal subject. He was having the most fun in all of SD at that exact moment. Watching him made me re-consider the idea that dining alone in a bland suburban eatery could be a "fabuloso" experience (on the order of imbibing large quantities of high grade drugs). After paying his bill, he danced his way out the door. At birth, he likely danced his way right out the womb.

Who is this gentleman??? I need to know.

Assholes from the desert

A closer analysis of Spring in San Diego reveals a transient abundance of Zonies. For those of you not in the know, "Zonie" as defined in the Urban Dictionary refers to -

Short of [sic] Arizonian, these people invade local beach towns in California during the summer causing traffic jams, and straight up annoying the population of the local town [sic].

i.e.,
Person #1: Damn zonies fucking invade San Diego every summer!
Person #2: Fuck i [sic] know! They need to get their own damn town!

*Note the gratuitous usage of the F word and syntactical violations, these are common in the English language as spoken with the San Diego vernacular.

This morning, my little pal and I almost died from one of these douchebags. Driving down the freeway I spied a lifted truck, with half-a-dozen unsecured long boards in the flatbed, merging onto the freeway. Because the boards were not strapped down, there was a high probability of them becoming hazardous to my little pal and I's health. As a responsible parent, I changed lanes from the slow lane to the adjacent one to avoid this truck. The truck merged onto the freeway 15 mph faster than is safe and proceeded to change another lane (the lane I was in) without shoulder checking or signaling. The boards jostled about and appeared about to become airborne. I quickly swerved out of my lane. Luckily there was no other cars in the adjacent lane, otherwise you would be reading about my little pal and I in the newspaper. I then noticed the truck had Arizona plates. I hope the people in that truck get stabbed in PB/OB/MB tonight (p>0.65).

Talking to CR after the incident, we hypothesized they likely surfed Scripps and were on their way back to their MB boardwalk house rental. So predictable ....

Absolute Beginners

Summer is peaking her head at Chez Crewtonz, I missed her terribly this winter. Prior to her visit, Spring made a brief stop-over. With the company of my little pal, warm evening breezes and leafy green mysteries as seen through my bedroom window, I am re-reading one of my favourite novels - Absolute Beginners by Colin MacInnes. As a metaphor, my little pal is an absolute beginner - the emergent self in a new soul.

In other news, the renovations are coming to an end. The bookshelf was completed, the 3Form panels have been installed. The layout and color scheme came about during a late night conversation in Wapping with my English cousin. She came up with the brilliant idea of the color singleton! If you catch me in a whimsical mood (i.e., drunk), I'll explain the post post-modern idea behind the design scheme that links Francis Bacon, Peter Fowler and color-opponent processing in extrastriate visual cortex. The 3Form bathroom panels were installed today as well, I cannot wait to use the commode. I suppose the experience will be similar to defecating within a green jello shot.


Better photos to come. I need to ply CR with Boddingtons to entice him to take pictures. CR is my SD consultant for all things photography. There are a lot of phonies around, but CR is the realness.

Shit talking.

Of note recently, I have been able to spend time with old acquaintances with and without my little pal. I am sure he is absorbing all the verbiage like a linguistic sponge. 

Tonight over quite an enjoyable dinner at the Kensington, an individual in the dinner party ejaculated into the conversation the following inquiry, "Does he rape you during sex?" The other guest is of Chinese descent and is seeing a Japanese gentleman. 

Another outing included said dining partner and one of my science colleagues. My colleague, who is the smartest scientist I am quite fortunate to have as a friend, made this astute observation, "If you are a giving a blow job to a dude, you are gay..  No questions about it." Imagine this statement coming from a  mind whose IQ exceeds 200 easily .

I mentioned to the rape comment colleague the other day, "I distinctly remember forgetting that piece of information."

Makin' Time

To counter the previous crass post, I have posted a baby picture (clothing by Marks and Spencer).

Due to a recent paucity of time for workouts, my recovery pace has increased from seven to eight mins/mile. Sigh ... The eight minute pace feels effortful, whereas last fall the same pace felt absolutely glacial. I need to pick a target race and start the training regime again.

Led Zeppelin has been on constant play at Chez Crewtonz. I have always opined that early Zeppelin borrowed liberally the vocal stylings of Steve Marriott from the Small Faces. Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love (1969) = Small Face's You Need Loving (1966) - listen to the middle eighth. It is rumored that Marriott was Page's first choice for the band. Other songs from the early Zeppelin catalog sound like The Pretty Things SF Sorrow lp.

I feel a little naked tonight

Yo, guess who's back? I finally have something to write about...my ass! So that growth on my ass has not reduced in swelling for an entire week. It was especially painful today so I got myself to the doctor's office because I'm worried it's a cyst/boil and not a simple pimple.

So i whip my pants off in front of the doc the conversation was something like this:

Doc: Whoa, ok...ummm...let me lock the door first to give you some privacy.

Me: Don't worry about it. Really, I don't mind.

Doc: No no, I'll lock the door. Yup, it's kinda pusy, let me get a swab test, I'll be right back. Put your pants back on.

Me: No really, it's no problem.

Doc: Jesus, just get behind that curtain!!

So he gave me some antibiotics and topical cream to hopefully reduce the swelling. I just looked at it was more swollen and blue/black in color. Damn, I forgot to take a photo before putting the cream and a band-aid on.

Who wants to see this?

Until LT comes up with blog gold, this blog has effectively become a baby picture blog.

How does it feel to feel.

Sebastian's first Christmas came and went. To truly appreciate how mind blowing this is, imagine your greatest high. I can think of multiple times where I thought I would never come down (Cal Greek Theater, Pop Scene, Cream Rave, Vice party at the Pussy Cat Lounge, Amsterdam etc ...). Now multiply that by a hundred to get a sense of how it feels to feel.