The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

I was definitely late to the party, but a few weeks ago I finished reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and really liked it. It started a little slow (it starts off with a long chapter of exposition) but then really gets going to the point where you don't want to put the book down.

Big thanks to S-Q for the suggestion!

By chance I was able to see the Swedish film adaptation of the book, and I thought it was really well-done. They had to depart from the book in certain ways but I think how they altered the story made sense. Here's a trailer:



I'm about to start the second book in the trilogy, and look forward to seeing the film adaptation of it.

But what I'm reallllly excited about is that David Fincher is directing an "American" adaptation of the novels starring Daniel Craig. With the exception of Christopher Nolan, I don't know of a better choice to make a series of films based on these dark, noirish books. Sadly Fincher's first film of the series won't release until 2011, but I'm sure it will be worth the wait!

Random samplings and musings

Inception was brilliant. I had to see it twice this week.

If you have not seen the film, you might want to skip the rest of this paragraph. If you have seen it, and realized the Edith Piaf connection, click here and read the article/watch the video. Hans Zimmer scored the film and he is amazing.

I'm trying to unravel the bar exam-related webs that have formed in my brain; sleep is helping, as are movies and books, too. I've been reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I am liking it! I think I'm the last person on the planet to have read it, but that's OK.

I've also been enjoying some yummy food and drinks:

Sam's Cafe is "southwestern" food, meaning that it combines mexican, southern, and even some native american flavors into the menu. I had the most amazing blackened shrimp quesadilla - it had goat cheese (c'mon), red bell peppers and roasted corn. Heaven on a plate. The margaritas are awesome too!

I recently went to Grimaldi's Pizzeria in Scottsdale to celebrate a friend's birthday. The pizza was good, don't get me wrong, but the stories of how the owner ships water from NY to specially make the pizza did not convince me. This pizza is labeled as "NY Pizza" but it isn't; it's California-style pizza with a thin crust. True NY pizza is really street food and you can't get feta cheese and kalamata olives on it, OK?

It was tasty, but not as good as Pizzaiolo in Oakland or Dove Vivi in Portland.

Went to the old [healthy] standby, Pita Jungle with a friend today. Yummy hummus and our waiter was either from the UK or Australia. I'm leaning toward the latter but the crowd made it hard to hear him.

Tonight I'm going to Cyclo with some friends tonight. This is my second try with Vietnamese food. My first attempt was at a place in Berkeley and while I can't remember the name, I remember it being very bland. I think Cyclo is supposed to be tasty. Looking forward to it!

Next Saturday I'm heading to Rokerij with with a big group of friends to celebrate the end of school, *passing* the bar exam, and moving out of AZ. Should be tasty - it looks like it is American with some southwestern/Mexican flavors infused there and about. Yummmmmm.

I've been discovering and re-discovering music recently. "Audience" by Cold War Kids is worth checking out (even if it did come out 8 months ago). And I just realized I owned "Sweet Disposition" by The Temper Trap - I had no idea.

Lastly, Cat Power and Nick Drake have really helped me the last couple of months.

Speaking of movies...

The trailer for "The Lovely Bones" (directed by Peter Jackson) is out. Enjoy.

Happy June!

Summer is here (it's 100+ degrees daily now) and it's looking to be a good one.

I finished all five seasons of The Wire and plan to go back and re-watch them again. If you haven't seen The Wire, check out this video with the show's creator, David Simon. They show some clips from the show but nothing too revealing plot-wise.

Since finishing The Wire, I started reading the Harry Potter series (2 down, 5 to go) and watching True Blood - which I already love. Wowsa, vampires are HOT. I can almost tolerate the Southern accents because this show is already so good (I've only seen 2 episodes).

Today is the first installment of the David Lynch Interview Project, an online video series with new episodes released every three days for a year.

Last but not least, I'm going to start writing about places to chow in Phoenix (since I can't talk about my job, other than saying that I love it, which I do). Such post forthcoming!

The future of newspapers is uncertain but surely grim

Who reads the newspaper anymore? I don't know about you, but I surely don't.

The future for newspapers is bleak, but as this well-written comment states, "Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism."

Problem is, journalism doesn't come for free and someone needs to pay for it. The closest to "free" it could be is government-subsidized, but all of us should be fearful of a state-sponsored press. The papers are too deferential to government as it is without the government paying for it outright.

None of the proposed models are working (from ad revenue to paid subscriptions) and people want free, up-to-date information via the Interwebs. Something's got to give, and as the comment points out, it's unclear what might happen:

Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.

When we shift our attention from ’save newspapers’ to ’save society’, the imperative changes from ‘preserve the current institutions’ to ‘do whatever works.’ And what works today isn’t the same as what used to work.

We don’t know who the Aldus Manutius of the current age is. It could be Craig Newmark, or Caterina Fake. It could be Martin Nisenholtz, or Emily Bell. It could be some 19 year old kid few of us have heard of, working on something we won’t recognize as vital until a decade hence. Any experiment, though, designed to provide new models for journalism is going to be an improvement over hiding from the real, especially in a year when, for many papers, the unthinkable future is already in the past.

Ted, sweet Ted

My friend and former co-worker Ted (not Teabagger Ted, but another Ted) is featured in an ad my former employer made... Hilarious:


Meet the Visual QuickStart Guide Bunny from Peachpit TV on Vimeo.

Missing Suzie Q already!

This weekend I had a lovely time chillaxing with Ms. Suzie Q - it was a good weekend to decompress and to try and do as little as possible. Perfect for me since the new semester starts tomorrow!

After she arrived on Friday night, we headed to Thai Basil in Tempe. Aside from some of the odd peeps in the place, we had some yummy panang beef curry. We then went back to my casita and had a stiff greyhound cocktail before going to bed. Yay!

We started out on Saturday at a simple but good day spa in Mesa. Suzie got a much-needed massage and I had an amazing pedicure - I even got a mask for my feet! It was lovely. Later that day we had some yummy sushi in Tempe before heading to the mall for a marathon shopping afternoon. We found some cute makeup, I found some great shoes for work on sale, and Suzie got a ton of gifts for Dexter at the going-out-of-business sale at KB Toys.

We spent the evening drinking and chowing with some law school friends at AZ88 a fun/funky place with delicious cocktails and amazing burgers. I only had one cocktail since I was driving (the Fleurtini - vodka, framboise liquor, lots of citrus, topped with champagne) and Suzie and I split the Burger Au Poivre II. It was intense and delicious! We also had the Golden Gate Cake for dessert - we wanted to die afterwards but it was yummy while we were downing it.

On Sunday we did absolutely nothing and it was everything we hoped it could be. We had some breakfast at home, followed by some 30 Rock, movie watching, junk food snacking, cocktail imbibing, cupcake baking, then reading, then bed. It was glorious.

Now I have to transition back to a responsible existence - suckage. ha! Thanks for visiting Q!!!

Studs Terkel, 1912 - 2008

Studs Terkel recently passed away - in fact, he died right before the election. If there was anyone who believed in hope more than Obama does, I'm sure it was Studs. My hunch is that he knew - probably before the rest of us - that Obama would win the election.

I was able to see Studs in Berkeley several years ago and I loved him (that talk is posted below). Studs was best known for what we'd now call "documentary journalism" I suppose; he was interested in the story of the average person, and did what he could to promote those everyday voices.

Just like Dorothea Lange and to some degree Richard Avedon, he captured moments in the life of people you might otherwise miss. Arguably, his legacy is reflected in the series This American Life. I hope he continues to inspire others, as he does me!

David Sedaris

I got to see David Sedaris tonight in Tempe. He was hilarious of course. He read excerpts from his diary, random unpublished pieces, and an essay recently published in the New Yorker (a snippet):

I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”

Then you’ll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?

Dave Eggers, 826 Valencia

This is a great video of Dave Eggers presenting to a TED conference about a new, 826-related education program to connect communities with their local public schools.

He also talks about other 826 locations and how they've taken the tutoring-center/pirate store concept in SF and mixed it up a bit. For example in NY, there's a "superhero supply company" and in LA there's the "Echo Park Time Travel Mart" - what Eggers calls "a 7-11 for time travelers." It's awesome to see the wit of those McSweeney's peeps come alive in a retail experience!

Enjoy!

Bill Moyers and Economic Inequality

Holly Sklar, author of Raise the Floor, was on Bill Moyers Journal discussing how driving down working class wages is bad for the economy overall.

You can watch the video here.

Two great minds together on one stage...

Fun with Reading

I saw this cute little game over at The Prock Life today and I wanted to play!

Here are the deets:

I have a meme for you just so I have something to post about. It will be much shorter than the get to know you email lists. Here it is:

Look up page 123 in the nearest book
Look for the fifth sentence
Then post the three sentences that follow that fifth sentence on page 123

So, technically, the closest book to me is my Property textbook, and I can assure you that you don't want to read what I found on p. 123.

So I pulled a book off the shelf, The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and it reads:

"That's the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard," she said sharply, putting sugar in her cup and stirring it. But she looked unconvinced by her own words, and I pressed on.

"Do you still have the book?"

"Yes."

(The excerpt is actually the 5th sentence plus the three that follow - I wasn't sure how to interpret the rules. Anyhoo.)

Thanks for the fun distraction Carla!!

Linky-links

Check out two new links I posted under "keeping an eye on" - I thinks you might likey:

Beautiful Hell in the USA: My friend Gary-Paul's ("GP") blog from his East Oakland hideout. He promises to blog more this year.

BKV Blog: Musings and updates from Brian K. Vaughn, graphic novel and script writer (he's one of those J.J. Abrams-affiliated superstars).

Happy 2008!

I'm here in Portland (pictures forthcoming) and having a great time with Amby, Josh and the Watsons!

We've been taking it incredibly easy (my favorite thing), venturing out into the cold to grub on the deliciousness around the city. My first night in town we had an amazing sushi dinner. The next day out at breakfast it started to snow! Lovely.

On New Year's we had a yummy dinner at Stickers and then headed to The Blue Monk for more drinks... only to realize by 11:15 we were ready to had back home and watch 30 Rock. We may have started a tradition... now I can't imagine ringing in the new year without Jack Donaghy.

New Year's Day was lovely and chill. We strolled around downtown, grabbing some coffee from Peet's, a delicious thai lunch, then checked out Powell's. I picked up one book, resisting the urge to buy three - at least until we shop there again later this week. I love Powell's - it's impossible for me to resist all its temptations. It's like a crack house for bibliophiles.

Happy Christmas!

I scored this year on gift cards - as I mentioned to Amby earlier, I don't think I'll need to spend any cash at Target for all of 2008 - yes!

I was also tickled pink to unwrap my gifts and get the following:

Twin Peaks (the entire series)
Veronica Mars (season 3)
"Lunatico" by Gotan Project
What is the What by Dave Eggers

And the food... oh the food.

We had baked brie as an app, followed by a dinner that included prime rib, spinach gratin, and garlic mashed potatoes. My aunt made a cherry pie, which was especially apropos, given the whole Twin Peaks-cherry pie thing.

Yippee!

"Disaster Capitalism"

Naomi Klein's new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, is releasing soon.

Here is a snippet from a longer excerpt:

I started researching the free market's dependence on the power of shock four years ago, during the early days of the occupation of Iraq. I reported from Baghdad on Washington's failed attempts to follow "shock and awe" with shock therapy - mass privatisation, complete free trade, a 15% flat tax, a dramatically downsized government.

Afterwards I travelled to Sri Lanka, several months after the devastating 2004 tsunami, and witnessed another version of the same manoeuvre: foreign investors and international lenders had teamed up to use the atmosphere of panic to hand the entire beautiful coastline over to entrepreneurs who quickly built large resorts, blocking hundreds of thousands of fishing people from rebuilding their villages.

By the time Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, it was clear that this was now the preferred method of advancing corporate goals: using moments of collective trauma to engage in radical social and economic engineering.

Free Culture

Just discovered that Lawrence Lessig's book, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, is available for free download here. The book was published by Penguin and I'm impressed they went for the 'free download' thing - I'm sure they didn't have a choice if they wanted to sign him to a publishing deal (Penguin is a sister company to Peachpit).

I haven't started reading it, but I've read his other stuff via Wired. Copyright law is an area I am definitely interested in and he is at the forefront of the movement to transform copyright to meet the demands of the digital age. I'm looking forward to reading this book!

Goodreads

Mark told me about Goodreads, a site where you can share your ratings and opinions on books you are reading, have read, or want to read. Very cool!

Save indie publishers!

More evidence that publishing should be a non-profit venture, subsidized by our tax dollars (books not bombs!). The need to make a profit is killing the best of the indie best:

Ironically, PGW -- the largest American distributor of independent publishers -- was by all accounts having its best year ever, and the financial troubles of AMS, a corporate giant that mainly distributed to wholesalers like Costco and Sam's Club, brought it down. AMS filed for Chapter 11 on Dec. 29, a result of being unable to bounce back from SEC and FBI investigations into its advertising accounting practices -- which led to three executive indictments -- and a class-action suit on behalf of its shareholders. As Horowitz points out, "It wasn't the indie distributor; it was a big, old-fashioned corporation with accounting problems."

(Note: I reference a Salon article above, which may require watching a wee lil' ad to read the whole thing. Believe me, it's worth watching the little flash animation to get to the article.)