Big Love

I admit, I'm hooked on Big Love, HBO's new Sunday night polygamy hour. I have HBO on Demand so I've caught all three episodes in real time and invited Michelle and Drew over to watch the first two which they'd missed.

I see I'm not the only one weighing in on this either.

I don't watch TV (my big screen is for movies) but Big Love has me hooked. Why? Most TV shows are one of a handful of basic plots (cops, funny families, doctors'n'nurses, etc.). This one is different. Way different.

How different? It hits up against taboos. Strong taboos. Non-traditional family structures, non-mainstream faith, cults, pedophiles, to name a few. Several people I've talked with find Big Love genuinely disturbing. And for that alone, it qualifies as non-trivial TV.

I gotta say I'm having the time of my life shooting photos for the Google Pack Screensaver. Great little screensaver that rotates between the photographs in a designated folder. What's great about the Google screensaver is that it "tosses" the photos down at random locations and angles, just like you're tossing real photographs on the table.

So far I've done photo collections of Alcatraz, poker, and neon signs among others. I'm having fun planning these collections than anything I could be printing. And that's what digital photography means to me: digital (as in non-print) output.

Works for me.

My current Marfas (79843)

Big Love on HBO. As if handling one woman is do-able. Three? Puh-leeze. Not that I'm not hooked...

The Bay as second city. And I always thought it would be Vancouver or Boston.

Now my oldest wants me to do acupuncture on him, not Miki. Silly me, I thought he didn't want it at all. Guess that answers the question about me wanting to treat my own kids. Guess I don't have a choice after all.

Psychoacoustics, binaural beats, and the Schumann Resonance. As MP3 now, podcast later.

And flower essences. Bach Flowers of course but others too. Botanicals, always back to botanicals.

As much as I love movies, I haven't been in a theater for 4 or 5 months. Long live Netflix.

It looks like I'm gonna have to learn QuickBooks. Great. In my spare time.

Herbal liquors. Way beyond Jagermeister. I'm collecting nips, mostly from Ledger Liquor in Berkeley.

And lastly, I spoke with Les Blank on the phone last week. Big cultural hero.

Make sure you know what you're looking for so you'll recognize it when you see it. This implies keeping your eyes open as a way of life.

I'm sitting once or twice a day. Time to clear up my karma. Good for the kids. Mom wants to come for a month.

[sigh]

Back home again

I'd like to think that Oprah has had a positive effect on book consumption and literacy in general. Don't know; don't watch her. But when I stumbled across this in the Austin airport I had a hard time believing that it's progress. Towards what? Further growth of the Oprah Empire? And why won't she marry the man??

Is there a pricetag on happiness? How valuable is pursuing one's passion? Will I recognize a genuine rite of passage when it drops in my lap? Is it time to step back and do something else? Is a business meeting on your Mom's birthday significant? 1:30 tomorrow will tell.

And it has nothing to do with Oprah.