SF 2008, Part 3

Third set of pictures have been posted.

On Sunday, King and Gwen took me to lunch at Joanna’s Diner in San Mateo, and then we parked the car at Fort Mason, overlooking the Bay and downtown, and walked down to Fisherman’s Wharf, where we caught a boat for a Bay Cruise. The weather was perfect — nice blue skies, in the high 60s — as we boated around the Bay, circling around the Golden Gate Bridge (the big red one) and passing close to Alcatraz Island on the way back to the dock. Later that night, while eating pizza we watched “A Midwinter’s Tale” — a funny portrayal of a group of actors trying to put together a production of Hamlet for a small town.

On Monday, I caught up on some reading, and later wandered around Haight Street, shooting some more abstract shots and getting a sandwich from the Cafe Cole on Cole Street (as is my tradition). I even stopped by the local Anarchists’ Bookstore, but much to my surprise, on the inside all the books were neatly categorized and sorted, by a central authority no less. King spent the day at work, and it looks like Gwen has been selected for jury duty (for the next four weeks!). Later, King and I went to the Red Vic Movie House to watch “My Kid Could Paint That.” Interesting documentary; it ends up involving the guy making the documentary as much as the people who are being documented (“I just want you to believe me,” says the woman being interviewed, to the director asking the questions).

On Tuesday, I “watched” the Keynote for Macworld Expo online, as various people physically present at the keynote furiously typed in new updates from Steve Jobs’s speech, as the speech was happening. Not a few websites and blogs melted down from the avalanche of people (like me) that were curious to see what’s going on. Later that afternoon I took the MUNI bus (good ol’ 71) to downtown, where I picked up my exhibition badge and wandered around the exhibit floors (the Expo is in Moscone’s South and West halls this year) looking at new gadgets, new software, new iPod accessories, and the new introductions: namely, the MacBook Air, the new improved Apple TV, movie rentals, Time Capsule, enhancements to the iPhone and Touch, and so on. Lots of cool stuff, but it didn’t take long for the sensory overload to set in, and after a couple hours I headed back to the house. On Tuesday night King and I watched his DVD of “Manufacturing Consent,” featuring Noam Chomsky. I’d barely heard of Chomsky’s name before; this 2.5-hour film was a complete (if not exhaustive) introduction to his views and actions. The film itself (though long and dealing at times with very abstract ideas) had clever approaches to visualizing and presenting various points. I now have a much greater appreciation for Chomsky, and his distinctions concerning freedom of speech, the role of corporations and governments in influencing media, and various other issues. And the vegetable egg foo yung from the local Chinese delivery place was excellent.