What are some of the worst sentences I have ever heard?

“There has been an accident”

“Is there a doctor on the airplane?”

“We are being audited by the IRS”

This last sentence was pronounced on us during the worst week of the year that I wrote about earlier. It came amidst so much other raw news that my reaction at the time was to laugh.

If you are not an American, the Internal Revenue Service is our federal taxation agency. Last November, we got a letter from them, asking us to produce proof of all of our charitable gifts claimed on that year’s tax form. I guess giving 10% of your gross pay is considered a problem.

Deb put together a packet for them which included copies of all of our receipts and sent it off. We were advised by our tax preparer that we would likely only hear back from them if there was a problem. If everything was OK, we would never hear from them.

So another chapter in that horrible week has now closed. We got a letter Friday which began:

We are pleased to tell you we did not make any changes to the tax reported on your return.

After this opening sentence, nothing much mattered in the letter. “Pleased?” So am I. Any explanation for why they audited us? Any tips on how to avoid an audit in the future?

In fact, the rest of the letter was filled with provisos, qualifiers and other legal mumbo-jumbo, giving all of the reasons that don’t apply to us, but which explain why we might owe them money anyway.

But what was really charming about this letter was that it was post-dated. The date on the letter is February 8, 2010, and it arrived at our house on February 5. Now, I don’t suppose they would accept a future-dated check from us for any tax we owe, but I guess it’s OK for them.

If you host your blog on wordpress.com, you can’t embed any objects.

I keep running into this in the various blogs I contribute to, and I sort of understand it. If any random hacker could create a free blog and then embed a script that takes down the whole site, then it would be a Very Bad Thing.

But yesterday I got a shockwave object that I wanted to post on my blog, and because it’s hosted on wordpress.com, the system will silently just delete the code. Here is a statement from the support forum:

“No, there is not a way to add shockwave objects on a WP.com blog. The only upgrade that would allow this is the VIP upgrade, which costs several hundred dollars per month and is designed for blogs getting millions of hits.”

So I’m left with very few options. My friend Dirk Hohndel suggests I bite the bullet and just host my blog on my own self-administered system.

· I could run whatever version of WordPress I want to and upgrade it on my schedule.

· My blog URL could be much simpler, in fact I could just use my www.davest.com domain.

· I could embed scripts and shockwaves and videos to my heart’s content.

In the roughly four years I have been writing a blog, I have had this option in front of me. But I have always been afraid of it. In fact, I allude to it in my second blog entry, back in March 2006. So let’s say I get a little PC at home, plug it into my fiber optic connection, load up a little open source operating system, load up WordPress and transfer my blog there. What’s wrong with this?

· I would be responsible for doing real system administration. If the blog goes down, it’s totally my fault and I really do have a life.

· This includes regularly applying security fixes to all of my software so someone wouldn’t break in.

· And still I could leave a security hole there just in the way I had set things up

· I would need to make sure backups are done, so if someone defaces my blog I can recover it.

· And there probably is no good solution to Denial of Service attacks.

I got a chance to watch Avatar again last night with Laura and had some other insights:

• Unfortunately, in the year 2154, people still smoke cigarettes, we still have Marines, and we’re still sending them to war in countries with large petroleum reserves, particularly Venezuela and Nigeria. You pick these up as throwaway lines to help flesh out these characters. But you would think that 144 years from now we wouldn’t need oil any more and certainly wouldn’t need to send in the Marines to secure it. And are we still smoking then?
• I was struck by how both human and alien technologies assume the ability to hard-wire brains together. But the human system is more advanced since it’s wireless! But wiring up your brain to your deity sounds a little too Woodstock for this child of the 60s.
• The call of the wild, the idea of “let’s get back to our primitive roots” is so ironic. If everyone got back to nature, like the Na’vi, we would be unable to produce movies as slick as Avatar.
• And, how would I look as an avatar?

(In case the object above isn’t playing correctly in your browser, here is a static photo of it. Do you think it looks like me?):

Last month I finally achieved a major personal goal: running in a 26.2 mile race fast enough to qualify to enter the Boston Marathon.  I have been running marathons since 1998, and have been pretty serious about this goal for several years.

It dawned on me recently how much I have depended on cheating.

I’m not talking here about cheating like Rosie Ruiz who “won” the Boston Marathon in 1980 even though she didn’t run most of the race. But short of this, there are plenty of shortcuts I tried to attempt get an advantage in order to qualify:

• I tended to pick races that were entirely or mostly downhill.  In 2005 I ran the Fort Collins Old Town Marathon in Colorado, which has a 1200 foot drop. That same year I ran the Tucson Marathon, which has a similar elevation drop. I figured that running downhill would make me quicker.
• Before some races, I would spend time at high altitude to build up my red blood cell count. Usually this meant some days on vacation in Colorado. Sleeping at high altitude is supposed to build up the “RBC’s” and increase aerobic capacity. As a result, you don’t get out of breath as easily. This is like legal blood doping.
• If I could have found a race with a consistent tail wind, I would have jumped at it.
• I would never have considered intentionally running a really hilly course or one with a history of poor weather conditions.

Remarkable that I didn’t employ any of these tricks in last month’s race.

• Although the California International has a slightly downhill course, it’s too slight to notice, and there are some noticeable uphill segments as well.
• I had no chance to spend any time at high altitude before the race.

These little tricks were a constant feature of my marathon training in the pre-coach days. Now my coach has me working on getting stronger, more flexible and a higher aerobic threshold.

We Americans like shortcuts. We coin new abbreviations daily (LOL, my BFF) and overuse them unconsciously. We look for the shortest path to our gate at the airport, quickest route on the GPS. But sometimes cutting corners isn’t the best idea. Sometimes the best goals take work, thought and love.

What’s not to like about Avatar, particularly in 3D?

• Director James Cameron has created a totally immersive experience in a world which is significantly different from our own. The plants glow when touched or float in mid-air. Hero Jake Sully wanders around experiencing this alien world as we might, with a sense of wonder and sometimes fear.
• Even though it’s a genre film, the story is quite accessible on the ecological and cultural diversity levels. It’s easy to see Dances with Wolves or Pocahontas, two moderately successful films set in the past, and see their stories played out on an alien planet.
• It’s great to see Sigourney Weaver, who looks marvelous by the way, deliver another strong performance as a woman who takes no BS from anyone, yet is willing to grow and learn when things change.

But, there are some significant issues with the movie as well:

• I’m no English major, but I always learned that three dimensional characters have a past, present and future. Other than Jake Sully, and a little bit with Weaver’s character, all of the characters are one dimensional. You don’t know where they came from or where they are going. They all seem more like cartoon cutouts or caricatures rather than being fully fleshed out.
• The accessibility of the story also makes it seem incredibly derivative. In fact, the internet has been joking about how similar Pocahontas is to Avatar. In fact one page gives the high-level description of the one movie and shows how easy it is to translate it to the other. And frankly, I get annoyed when it seems like you are assumed to be some hippy-dippy pantheistic new ager if you care about eco matters.
• People are calling Avatar to be the Star Wars of this decade. But as Don Miller states in A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, you can freeze frame Star Wars any place and point to any of the characters and know what they want. It’s clear where all of them want and where they are going. In Avatar, most of the characters are too thin to figure this out.

So, the bar has definitely been set for the look of movies in the future. But there are many better stories which could have been told.

Imagine if you were to die tonight, and someone was assigned to write a movie script about your life story.

Let me stop right there and confess that nobody would be interested in a biography about my life. Maybe you are someone with a very compelling life story, and if so I congratulate you. But I don’t suspect that my life story would sell any movie tickets, since my mom has passed away.

This is exactly the situation Donald Miller found himself in, but he was still alive. He got the chance to see his life through someone else’s eyes and realized that the story wasn’t very compelling or even very interesting.

A Million Miles in a Thousand Years is Miller’s latest book about how all of our lives are stories being written by us. The subtitle for the book is “What I Learned While Editing My Life” and gives insights into what makes a a life into a good story and how we have the opportunity to make our lives into stories that will compel and inspire others.

I first encountered Miller in Blue Like Jazz and loved this amazing collection of life experiences. Million Miles has that same flavor: a mixture of his own experiences and those of others, set in Portland, Oregon’s cooler neighborhoods.  It doesn’t read like a self-help book, but l found myself staring at the reflection of my own life and realizing that I need to do more to write a better story.

I highly recommend Million Miles – it will stretch your heart and soul as it entertains and challenges.

My favorite movies of 2009. So many animated and genre films this year were great, leading commentators to wonder aloud if our society is trying to provide an escape from the Great Recession. But many provoked me to examine my heart and ask some deep questions about my place in the bigger story of life.

1. Ponyo – Hiyao Miyazaki, the Walt Disney of Japan, concocts another magical movie fairytale using the old tech of hand-drawn animation. A little fish falls in love with a human and wishes herself into being a girl. I loved the exquisite care to show little details of the regular life of Japanese people without feeling the need to dumb it down or explain it. It’s strange, and doesn’t explain everything, like many of life’s experiences. And that sushi you had for dinner might have had higher aspirations.
2. Coraline – Of all the movies shot in Portland which take place in Oregon, this must be the finest of the year. The creative geniuses at LAIKA (and bit of financing from Nike’s Phil Knight) use the classic tech of stop motion animation and it often makes you wonder, “how did they do that?”  Be careful what you wish for because it may not be what your heart truly needs. But, like Dorothy we may learn “there’s no place like home!”
3. Where the Wild Things Are – It’s risky to take a magical childhood classic loved by millions and attempt to make it into a movie that could be loved as much. Spike Jonze makes the attempt. It’s wooly ride which works on many levels, both as a simple romp and as a fleshing-out of the inner mind of a child. Risky, but terrific. Our hearts long to be wild, but at what cost?
4. Moon – A gem of a story and a terrific solo performance by Sam Rockwell. To look at the technology on film, it could have been made 20 years ago. But it delivers a satisfying and memorable story as it plays with our notions of reality. Who are we really? Is there a bigger story that we are a part of, that we don’t yet know about?
5. Avatar – the story may be totally derivative and the characters thin, but the visuals make this a movie like no other. A fully realized alien world and totally immersive experience. James Cameron has set the bar high for the synthesized realities of the movies.
6. Princess and the Frog – New Orleans sights and citizens, jazz and gumbo. Dreams really can come true if you put in the work. But what if you take it to extremes and assume that you must be a workaholic to achieve anything? Perhaps this is the most thought-provoking concept of this wonderful hand-drawn animated tale.
7. The Soloist – Spend any amount of time in a downtown area and you will see them: paranoid schizophrenics, often mumbling to themselves or shouting. A person like you or I, but I often want to avoid them rather than reach out and learn their story. This is the true story of someone who risked reaching out and loving. Will we risk and love the unlovable?
8. Star Trek – It redefines a story and characters which would seem dead or untouchable. The film looks wonderful and romps energetically but JJ Abrams isn’t skilled enough at space fiction to create a true master work. It’s good, but not great.
9. Monsters vs Aliens -  Big, 3D and creative. I loved the female empowerment story and the comic destruction of San Francisco. In any other year, this would have been a stand-out success and a great milestone for Dreamworks. Unfortunately, it got crowded out by too many other 3D computer-animated extravaganzas.

Not so good:

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – I admit, I never read the books. The previous film in the series (Order of the Phoenix) was better at portraying Harry as a now gangly and alienated youth entangled in political intrigues beyond. “Half-Blood” doesn’t risk as much or engage as deeply.
• Watchmen – Fans of the graphic novel probably loved its faithful rendering in celluloid. But these loser superheroes just didn’t work for me. If the blue and glowing naked guy is all powerful, how can there be a real story? What possible conflict could he not solve with a single brain wave?

Raclette. Traditional Swiss thing, originally uploaded by davest.

raclette is peasant food

Edited to add: We went to my Dad’s place for dinner before I came home to Portland. Dinner was “Raclette” which was totally new to me.

As my quick cell-phone note above says, Raclette is Swiss peasant food. Here are a few more details:

Raclette is a table-top apparatus with two levels, both of which are heated electrically. On the top level is a dish of little potatoes. The bottom level is home to a number of slots which fit little “shovels”. Everyone gets their own shovel. You put on a thin slice of meat and cheese on your shovel and slap it in a slot, where you leave it until it bubbles. Then slide the warm gooey mixture onto your taters, add a pickle or something and feast away!

It seems conceptually close to fondue, which is also a a Swiss invention, just with fewer oils. We agreed afterward that the meal was a total Atkins affair, but nice from the standpoint of sharing a meal that you cook together, like fondue or Chinese hot-pot.

It’s a bad admission, but I tend to be a sentimental guy for a few things. I still have a collection of 12-inch laserdiscs, after all.

The Princess and the Frog is a sentimental throw-back to that older style of making animated movies.

• It is simply a beautiful piece of art. Tiana, who is Disney’s first black animated heroine, sings her “dream song” early in the movie about how she aspires to run her own restaurant some day, and the style of art changes too. It becomes a glowing 20s-style Art Nouveau fantasy sequence. There are several other sequences like this, where the very style of the art changes for the service of the story. A technique missing from the computer-generated features, which strive for realism.
• The structure of the story flows like some of Disney’s best animated movies of the past: the Hero/Heroine’s “aspirational” song, the big-time show-stopping production number, the hero-cycle quest for transformation. You can see this theme in some of their best such as Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Aladdin and others.
• I am quite sentimental about New Orleans and this movie captures it beautifully from the French Quarter to the St Charles streetcars to Mardi Gras parades.
• I got a lump in my throat several times due to the story. This hasn’t happened in an animated movie, Disney or otherwise, since The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

But the movie breaks a few rules too, which keeps it from being just a tired retread of an old art form:

• Other than a few notable minor roles, the voice cast is made up of unknowns. Most animated movies these days seem to be more of a game of “guess the celebrity voice.” In this case, I could stop trying to figure out who’s who and focus on the movie instead.
• I can’t give it away, but it’s fair to say that typical Disney happy ending was remixed in an unusual way.

Offered, for your consideration, a little miracle of kindness and convergence in this Christmas season.

I landed in Denver International Airport last night in a snowstorm. Temperatures in the teens, wind whipping the snow.  My wife crept out to the airport in our Honda CR-V at 30 MPH.

And no wiper fluid.

Well, actually there was fluid in the tank. It had simply frozen. Making driving in a town where they spread copious quantities of de-icing chemicals quite a problem. She could drive for about 10 minutes and then the view became nearly impossible.

She made it to the airport, and we crept over to my sister’s house in Aurora. But it was pretty dangerous.

Christmas Eve morning dawned clear and cold – 7 degrees. Still no wiper fluid. So we pulled into a Honda dealership to see if they could help us out.

It was an hour before they closed for the day, and there were no cars waiting, so they took our car in and told us it would take them about an hour to thaw it out.

But 20 minutes later, they called us over and everything was working fine. No charge! And the name of the service guy who helped us?

It was Jesus!

Yeah, OK, it’s probably pronounced “Hey soos”, but it was an awfully nice convergence with the season.  As we pulled out of the Honda dealership and headed down the road, I pulled on the washer and we got a nice stream of washer fluid. Deb was heard to exclaim:

“Thank you Jesus!  …and Hey soos!”