I've been meaning to write about this interesting
sub-species of automotive participant for a
while now. More precisely, ever since I moved
to the great State of Oregon.
For it appears that this particular variety
only breed and thrives here - nowhere I've
ever travelled to (and I can honestly say that
I've been all over the US) did I encounter
such fierceness and determination in this
automotive behaviour.
I've defined it as the "NWIHAYGTPM-Driver" -
or more commonly referred to as the
"No-Way-In-Hell-Are-You-Going-To-Pass-Me"
Driver. Every driver, native or otherwise, has
experienced its utterly erratic and unnatural
behaviour: There it is, travelling at 45mph
on a deserted highway - its usually dinged, bent,
and rust-ridden vehicle (no matter what the fabrication
year) squealing and cackling along. More often
than not, it is trailed by at least 10 other
cars - angry, huffing pieces of metal who
intuitely know that the highway is made for
greater speeds than this.
But the NWIHAYGTPM-driver doesn't burden itself
with such truths, nor does it care. It stubbornly
keeps the speedometer at a steady pace of 45mph.
There is an exception however - the instant
an impatient driver comes up from behind,
signaling that he's willing to take the risk
and pass the NWIHAYGTPM-driver, the usually
docile beast's temper flares up.
Prompted by having its accelerator stomped
on, it heaves its metal carcass in sudden
fury, lurches forward and speeds up. No velocity
seems too great now. 60, 70, 80, even 90
mph are achieved with ease. For a few seconds,
an exciting neck-to-neck race between the two
vehicles ensues, and depending on the passer's
mental determination and the raw horsepower of its
vehicle, he either triumphantly zooms by the
NWIHAYGTPM-driver, or in dumbfounded
astonishment eases off the gas and gets back
in line behind the NWIHAYGTPM-driver.
In either case however, the NWIHAYGTIPM-driver
seems to be taking the foot entirely off the
accelerator now, slowing down to an even lesser
speed than before the race -
as if the sudden power demand had put too much
of a strain on the delicate automotive system.
Now at the front of the line again, he comfortably
gets back into the 40mph groove, leaving the
drivers behind him slackjawed, wide-eyed (those
would be the out-of-state-participants) and
most often than not, hammering their steering
wheels with their fists in a blinding rage
(this can be most frequently be observed with
local drivers).
Now - I travel the 25-mile stretch between
my house and Bend on a semi-regular basis.
It's a docile stretch of mostly 2-lane
highway, skirted by tall pines, few exits and
dotted with only one passing 1-mile lane
(going south) and two such lanes, going
north. And yet - the
Oregon Department of Transporation has dubbed
it "the most dangerous stretch of highway
in the state".
At first I didn't understand. But after 2 1/2
years of driving that road I now *understand*.
It's not about the ice, nor the snow, nor the
worn grooves. Oh no.
It is indeed the most perfect route for the
NWIHAYGTPM-driver ever created. Plenty of
long, deceivingly straight-looking passages,
with only a light touch of real passing lanes.
Just enough to keep the attempting passers
tempted to actually try and make a run for it,
but not enough to make them succeed at a
satisfying rate.
In the early months after moving here, I blamed
the phenomenon on the largely eldery population
in the county.
You know the type - little 86-year ole farmer Tom, dressed
in his trademark blue overalls (I suspect he
even wears them to bed), balancing glasses roughly
twice the size of his own head on the nose,
clutching the oversized steering wheel of his
rusty '76 Chevy pickup until his usually white
knuckles turn almost glassy, and barely able
to peek the road over the top of the wheel. Not
realizing that the rules of the road have changed
since 1952, he maintains an average travel
speed of 35mph. His native pride however isn't
going to allow him getting passed by some
ridiculously tanned Southern Californian with
his equally ridiculously fancy-schmancy Mercedes
SUV - and so the normally gentle farmer Tom
turns into a fierce NWIHAYGTPM-driver.
But by no means is he alone. As a matter of
fact, the most fascinating aspect of this
particular automotive tic seems to be its
contagiousness. Shortly after moving from
San Diego to Bend, and after having traded
his Benz SUV for a huge 6-wheel Dodge Ram
pickup, said tanned (now a bit more bleached)
Southern Californian inexplicably
and suddenly adopts the same exact driving
practice - leaving an even greater amount
of still-sane drivers slackjawed and
wide-eyed in his wake.
Sadly, there appears to be no cure for this
crippling disease. No matter how many times I flip off
a NWIHAYGTPM-driver, in the rear-view mirror
or otherwise, honk at them or dart them with
you're-going-to-die glances - they never seem
to realize their wrong. Au contraire - many
of them act like angry hornets, tailgating me,
or even worse, trying to pass me again to reclaim
their pole position on the road.
In an exhibition
of particular NWIHAYGTPM-driver brashness,
an recent incident pitted me against a mini-van who
insisted on claiming the fast lane (on a
stretch of 4-lane road) as his, speeding up
only so much that I couldn't possibly pass
him on the right, but quickly letting off the
gas again when I had to slam on my brakes due
to a slower vehicle - as if sympathizing with
my plight. Both the birdie and the death-to-thee
glances seemed to make no impression on his
stoic, pudgy face.
And so I'm left with the faint hope that some
sense of order will be restored once the
county turns that stretch of highway into
4-lanes all the way to La Pine (as I'm told
will happen in 2007).
In the meantime however - no matter how
impractical in the snow, I'm keeping my
BMW. It's the only weapon I have against
the NWIHAYGTPM-driver, and the only way
I can keep myself sane on Oregon's roadways.
April 26, 2005 - Bumper Stickers
Bumpersticker seen yesterday:
I'm not as Think as you Stoned
I am.
All-time favorite bumper sticker:
Spear Britney!
April 22, 2005 - Top Ten Signs Spring is Here
I'm sensing Spring is just around the corner.
Or at least I stubbornly tell that to myself
every day now. Because I'm tired. Tired of
winter. Tired of the cold. Tired of the snow.
I want sun and bone-scorching heat and cool
showers and walking barefoot in the grass - so bad
I can taste it.
But there are signs that Spring is indeed here.
10. I look out my window at 9am, and it's snowing.
9. I look out my window at 3pm, and it's sunny with blazing blue skies.
8. I look out my window at 6pm, and a fierce wind storm is ripping
through the trees around my house. I shake my
head and go hibernate some more.
7. My car is actually adhering to the road again.
6. The bunny rabbits, squirrels and birds in
my yard regularly go crazy and chase their own
up and down and through the trees at dizzying
speeds. I get a headache just watching them.
5. The blower motor in my home's heating system
decides to burn up and quit - and I have the sudden
and random urge not to replace it until Fall. But then I
remember the lore of snow in July here in La Pine
and decide to get it fixed anyway.
4. I can sense the lawnmower in my garage stirring.
He's hungry and can't wait either.
3. Three sets of Canadian Geese with their
goslings in various stages of grown-up-ness
visit my cracked corn feeder. Right now, each
family has right around 6 goslings. The countdown
is on...
2. I walk out the door in the morning, and the
bright yellow of a freshly emerging Daffodil
catches my eye. I oogle over it and thank
Mother Nature for the beautiful gift.
1. The next morning, I go to visit the Daffodil
again. It's been mowed to the ground. Same
with all the other flowers in the vincinity.
The deer are back. I guess it must be Spring.
April 15, 2005 - OMFG
OH MY FUCKING GOD.
I always knew there would come a time, if ever
so brief, when I would be grateful for my irrational
impulse to daily feed-read Wil Wheaton's blog.
Yes, people - that day was today. I don't think I've laughed
this hard in a very, very long time.
Whining and groaning about lost acting jobs
aside, Wil can indeed be pretty funny sometimes.
But surely,
this one takes the cake. I quote:
So there are these Star Wars Uebernerds who
are lining up in front of Grauman's for the
premiere of "Revenge of the Sith" in a
couple of months.
The only problem is, "Return of the Sith"
isn't going to screen at Graumans. For
reasons that are best left to the shadowy
corners of The Film Distribution World, it
will be playing at the Arclight, which is
about a half-mile away.
When they found out about this unfortunate
turn of events, the Star Wars Nerds
naturally packed up their stuff, and walked
down the block to Arclight.
Except they didn't.
They're keeping the line right where it is...
as a self-described act of protest.
I fear commenting on this would render
it less funny.
But wait - it gets better.
OK, who would have guessed that in the very small group of people who are willing to line up months in advance of a movie to get tickets, in front of a theater where the movie isn't going to be playing, there would be room for cliques and infighting between the popular super nerds and the unpopular super nerds? I wouldn't. And I would have been wrong. A post in this thread by "certified instigator" has just confirmed the existence of said infighting. Read on...
"No one is talking about leaving the line. The popular clique has flat out refused to be open minded about where we see the movie as a group. They insist that no matter what we - as a group - decide they will not see it at the Arclight.
They make it very clear here on the boards and in line. That splitting up the group is better than seeing the movie at a theater the popular clique doesn't like.
Many people I've spoken to are willing to see it at a theater they don't prefer in order to keep the group together. But they are less popular and way less vocal."
OK, so some waiters in line want to keep the line together no matter what theater it's shown at, and other linesters don't give a crap about the line and only care what theater they see it at - and this is shaking the foundation of the line to it's core. TO IT'S CORE!
I admit that at this point I was cracking up
so hard, tears were rolling down my cheeks,
and the screen got all blurry before my eyes.
So I leave you, my alert readers, to enjoy the
rest of the post over at Wil's.
And I will only
say this: If these nerds would have to line
up here in Bend instead of L.A., they'd ....
uhmmm... wouldn't line up at all. Cause they'd
freeze their asses off. But then of course
that's a minor distraction - compared to something
so huge as lining up in front of the wrong
theater ... [Note: you'd think maybe the lack of large Star Wars
billboards at Grauman's would have given that
one away at all?]
And why am I suddenly reminded of
Lord of the Flies?
April 15, 2005 - Old Programmers
I just had to blog this quote - uttered by
alert reader and frequent contributor of
exquisitely articulated one-line wisdoms,
Kerry Liles:
Old programmers never die - they just
reboot themselves in the head a lot.
April 14, 2005 - Burning Man 2005
Well, as of today, it's official - I'm going to
Burning Man
this year! Yippeee!
![[]](http://emeraldbayphoto.com/blog/pics/Burning_man_ticket.jpg)
The event has been on my "Things To Do Before
I Die"-list for a while now (what? you don't
have one? Get one! Now!), but the opportunity
just never seemed to really come up. Now it
finally has. And the fun thing - I'll be
going to with
two
fellow
photographers.
My goal to cover the event visually will be
a huge challenge though - especially since
so many people with cameras have taken so
many images already (many of them
very good). In a sense, I almost feel
the event coverage is oversaturated. To keep
things fresh and new, I'm gonna have to sit
down and seriously think about my approach.
So that will be my creative contribution to
the Man.
If anybody has any pointers, ideas,
suggestions or comments about Burning Man
(how to get there, what to do, what not to
do etc.), drop me a
mail, please.
Or if you're going, and you wanna hook up, see above.
April 11, 2005 - Sin City
Jamie Zawinski - my very own personal jesus -
wrote this simple, yet powerful one-liner about the movie Sin City
last week: "Oh my god, this may be the most perfect movie ever made".
So I went to see it last Friday. And realized,
that poor Jamie may be utterly and completely
out of his mind (even if just this one time).
Really, Sin City is not much more than a giant
gore fest.
Sure, it's stylish.
Sure, it's groundbreaking.
Sure, it's visually a cinematic achievement.
But what's all that - without a real story?
Cause seriously - there is no plot. Rather, it's
a twisted quilt of semi-coherent stories, held
together by only one red thread - violence. There's
decapitation, castration, dismemberment, smashing
of skulls, faces and virtually every other
body part, good old-fashioned semi-automatic shooting,
and even an assault with arrows (did I leave
anything out? Oh, wait, yes. I faintly remember
an attempted hanging. And someone gets their
skull split by a small flying metal swastika...)
In a particularly
creative moment, director Robert Rodriguez even
helped Benicio del Toro's character shuffle
off the mortal coil by having him imbed his
own back-fired gun shaft in his forehead.
As a matter of fact, were the movie not predominantly in
black and white - with the blood mostly neon-white, but
sometimes also red and yellow -
it would be a worthless piece of blood-soaked cinematic junk, sure to
be relegated to art house screenings, and rented
only by serial-killers and other similarly
depraved human beings.
And yet, interestingly, the very fact that
the "stories" are set in a surreal
surrounding, the characters look surreal
themselves, and the plot makes no sense at all,
turns the violence in something equally surreal.
Ridiculous, even. Only the most sensitive of
viewers could possibly be offended or nauseated
by it. I know I wasn't. Rather, I was shocked
on a sublime level - shaking my head at the
director's feverish dedication to it, without
having any real and true purpose for it all.
And the acting? Well, the movie features a roster
of well-known names and faces, sure to be a
major draw for the general audiences. Most promimently,
there's Bruce Willis, Clive Owen ("Closer"), Elija Wood (in surely
what will turn out to be the most bizarre part of his career), "Carnivale's" Nick Stahl,
Rosario Dawson ("Alexander"), Benicio del Toro, Brittany Murphy, Jessica
Alba, Michael Madsen, pretty-boy Josh Harnett, and even good ole Rudger Hauer
(who can forget him in "Bladerunner"?).
And yet - ironically -
the best performance comes from someone with
such a savagely deformed and dehumanized facial
prostetic, that he's almost unrecognizable (which in retrospect was
utterly unnecessary - he's plenty scary-looking in real
life): Mickey Rourke. Yes, risen
from the cinematic graveyard of oblivion, he
has come to claim the doubtable crown of having
outperformed everybody else in this particular
movie. Leave it to director Robert Rodriguez
(or rather, it seems more likely the idea came
from Quentin Taratino himself) to resurrect
the 90s poster boy for depravity and cast him
as a surreal super hero - and actually make it
work....
Overall, I'm convinced that a major influence
in casting these people were not necessarily
their names or faces, but rather their voices:
As the three main characters (Bruce
Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen) narrate their
part of the movie , you notice that they all
have similar, if individually distinct, voices.
Raspy, deep, with a certain danger, reminiscent
of those 1940s mystery movies. Smoke and whiskey
voices. Again - it does work as a style device.
If nothing else.
The women also - none in specific, but notable as a whole -
are worth a mention. Not one of them sports a single piece of proper
clothing in this movie. Ever. They are all either
half-naked (meaning, they'll wear a thong at best),
or outfitted in some sort of fetish-wear - consisting
mostly of fish-net stockings, black leather,
chokers, chains, and of course lots and lots of
gleaming latex. Their eyes are huge, their lips
too. They look as if freshly plucked from some
1950s comic strip. Now lucky for the audience,
every single woman is also drop-dead gorgeous -
meaning it doesn't really matter that they
wear next to nothing most of the time. They're
eye-candy, and a vital part of the overall
look and feel of this movie.
So style - really - is its saving grace.
I don't know if that makes it worth seeing (it certainly
doesn't make it palatable for wider public consumption), but
if you're into cinema and the art of movies, you
might wanna sneak in for an afternoon screening.
April 4, 2005 - Compassion
The Pope is dead. How sad. I'm not catholic, or
even religious - as a matter of fact I despise
the church for its corruption and spreading of
crazy, outdated values - but I'm still sad that
he's gone. I may not even have agreed
with much of what he stood for (ok, pretty much
nill), but he always seemed like a decent guy,
a good human being. Not a jerk Pope. A
nice, sincere Pope. You gotta give him points for
trying.
And he seemed to have one thing in overflow: compassion
for his fellow humans. Some people really should
take a clue from him. Like a certain wait staff
for a certain Bend Sushi restaurant.
Yes, I know the comparison between the Pope
and a sushi restaurant staff may seem far-fetched - but
in this crude world, a bit of compassion, nicety
and accomodation can really go a long way. When
I go to a nice restaurant to drop some dough
on eating out, I want to be treated with a bit
of respect in the very least. Not told to go
wait in the car for my turn.
Shannon's
already ranted about it in her blog - but I
want to make a point that it's really not ok to
treat customers like crap. Under no circumstances.
And no matter how hot of a eating-out spot
you may be (or think you are) at the time.
The place in question is a fairly new restaurant
on the Bend Westside called Kanpai. They
serve sushi - which of course in itself is a
hip thing to eat. I drove by the place a few
weeks ago, on a Saturday night, and it was
packed to the gills. So I figured, I'd go some
other time.
Last Saturday seemed to be that time.
We had a party of 8, and since Kanpai doesn't
take reservations on Saturdays, Shannon and
I walked down to the place about half an hour
early, around 5.45pm, to see if we could score
a table. The smallish restaurant was full already,
and the waitress didn't heed us much attention.
When she finally did come over to talk to us,
I instantly knew she had attitude. She told us
they didn't have space right now, and to come
back in 45 minutes. And since they didn't have
standing room space and we were "in the way", we
should go out and wait in the car (mind you -
it was roughly 40 degrees outside). With that she
turned, and walked away.
Uhmmm... WHAT?
I gathered my wits, went after her, and asked
if she could at least hold a table for us.
The chef standing nearby said they didn't usually
do that, but that they'd try if we'd guarantee
to be back in 45 minutes. I gave them my name,
and said we would.
And so we were. After 5 minutes waving at the
waitress, she finally graced us with her presence.
And tersely explained that they were just freeing
up a table for another party of 7 - *they* had
waited outside the restaurant.
Oh, ok. So that means you really don't stick
to your word - and really don't give a shit
about your customers.
Why?
Because you can.
You don't need your customers. They are merely
suckers who should clamor to be allowed inside
your hallowed dining establishment.
Right?
Well, guess what. You treat enough people like
this, and the word gets out. Bend is a small
town. So why again would I want to spend
my money there? Exactly. I wouldn't. There is
no point. In a town with the highest concentration
of restaurants per head in the state, there
is no need.
I told them to go f*** off, and instead we went
to the Mexican restaurant La Rosa. They
were full too, but they had heating umbrellas outside,
the staff was cheerful and attentive, and even brought us
Margaritas while we waited. The food was great,
they had mariachis that took requests, and the
waiter went the extra mile and gave us all a
taste of some awesome habanero tequila. What a
great dining experience.
So if you want sushi - SKIP KANPAI. Go to Sushimoto's in
Sunriver instead. Not only is it the best sushi on
the West Coast (no kidding), they are also
super-friendly.
I'll be looking for Kanpai to bite the culinary
dust.
Soon.
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