New pictures from other planets will always get a nod on this blog while I have any say so. I don't know how guys can work on those projects -- sixty percent of the Mars probes we've sent have failed. Can you imagine working years on something like that, all to have it disappear (and usually without any explanation)? I would have nightmares.

Home. Just flew in from L.A., and why am I not more tired? For the record, fifteen and a half hours to Hong Kong (ulp), then a layover where we got five minutes rest, then another three and a half hours to S'pore. That sounds like a long time, but we must be used to it or something; I don't know why, but it didn't seem that bad. Marjorie slept a good nine hours of the first flight, while I got a good fifteen minutes or so. I'm functioning purely on sunlight, jetlag, and Sudafed right now.

LAX was a madhouse, even worse than last time, and not without drama -- I got called out by an airport worker for cutting in on a line that I didn't cut in on. Luckily the people ahead of us in line vouched for me.

We brought a serious load of CDs, DVDs, and consumables back with us. Stuff. We like stuff.

Oh, Griffith Park was awful. In the old sense of the word -- full of awe. Our hiking trail took us up to the summit of a lookout with a 360 degree view, looking out over the entire sprawl of L.A. and the ocean in one direction, and the mountains in the other. Rain the previous day kept smog to a minimum, and the day was sunny as we could have hoped. Just stunning. Pictures to follow.

Celeb spotting -- we ran into Gary Jules, who's a former neighbor of Marjorie's friend in L.A. He's recently famous for his cover of Mad World that was the number one song in UK over the holidays. If you saw Love Actually, you'll understand why there's a particular emphasis this year on being number one in the UK for Xmas. The song was used in the movie Donnie Darko.

The Atlanta visit was most agreeable, if not exactly relaxing. Took care of a lot of the business that needed to be taken care of after being away so long, and saw old friends and haunts. New Year's we went to our friends Rob and Ally's house for a party with the old Posse.

In Los Angeles now for one day before we fly back. Yesterday driving around we saw the restaurant where the begin and end of Pulp Fiction was filmed, and later took a drive up and around Mulholland Drive, with its amazing view out into the valley.

While driving I spotted a car with the license plate "IMBJORK". Driving it was a smirking woman who looked something like Bjork. But I'm not sure. Having seen the footage of her taking down a paparazzi in an airport, I can't imagine the real Bjork wants to advertise.

Today we're going to hike in Griffith Park, where much of Short Cuts was filmed.

Depressingly, it occurred to me last night that this is now the year of my 20th high school reunion. Sigh.

Our day. Mailed off Australia paperwork (aah). Tried to get fingerprinted. To the bank: deposited checks, fixed ATM card. Lunch at Eats. Looked at $230 glasses -- just the frames -- at Pearle Vision. Bought $30 frames at Stefan's in Little Five Points. (We each bought frames. They are identical. What are the odds? We are now officially Twinkies.) Blew $100 on CDs at Criminal Records. Had lenses put in our new glasses. Dinner at Ma Li with Marjorie's parents -- their Pik King Pork may be my favorite meal anywhere. On to the Thrashers game -- we lost, 2-1, to the Canadiens. Hockey is such a great sport. Grocery shopping -- stocked up on things to take home (cold meds, Mexican rice, Shake and Bake). Night night!

Back in ATL: We've already been able to indulge our craving for Nuevo Laredo, now it's on to Burrito Art with our friends Rick and Stephanie. Later this evening I suspect we'll rent another uncensored movie, since we feel deprived in Singapore. It's been nice to spend some time with Beau and Sadie (doggies), and with my parents, plus I finally got my first full-night of sleep since returning to the States, as the jet lag is finally fading.
Mark didn't mention that we also saw a beautiful bald eagle at the Enchanted Forest. My first siting our our national symbol in the wild.

On our last full day with my parents, we tooled around the area a bit, looking at wildlife and such. First stop was the Enchanted Forest Nature Sanctuary; then a drive north to Ponce Inlet, near New Smyrna Beach. We saw alligators, gulls, shrikes, tortoises, kingfishers, armadillos -- it's a neat area where they live, definitely.

We're up in Atlanta now with Marjorie's parents; we're about to head off to Nuevo Laredo for some din. Yum. Lots of work to do here tomorrow, which we're trying to forget for the evening...

So, what's weird about being back in the US?

Currency. There's a thing I (and many others, apparently) do when visiting a new country and trying to buy things, which is to just hand the cashier the smallest bill that will cover the cost, instead of trying to figure out the small change and such. Sadly, I've reverted to doing just that back in the US, since the currency denominations here are different than the ones I'm now used to S'pore.

Handing the cashier money. It's like, I've forgotten whether there's a proper way to do it, like there is in Asia (two hands). There isn't really a proper way here, but I still feel self concious doing it.

Malls. Lots of Americans running around here. It just seems kind of surreal.
A year is too long to go, not seeing your family anyway. Yesterday for Christmas Marjorie & I took a walk down to the ocean with my parents, and in the evening had our second bridge lesson. It's a game I think we're going to like a lot; most interesting. We also rented Donnie Darko, which the clerk at Blockbuster said was her "favorite movie ever!". I should have told her that it's a Christmas tradition for us.

The Petri dish. In Cocoa Beach now at the parents. My sister was down with her kids, who all had the flu; I only saw her for a few minutes, as she was laid up in her bedroom sleeping it off and quarantining herself. My brother and sister-in-law and their kids were down too; so the household was quite festive (and hectic). Got lots of goodies. Everybody's gone now except myself, Marjorie, and my parents. Ahhh, quiet. We're going to get them to teach us bridge tonight.

But what I really want to do is direct. We had a super time out in L.A. last night with our friends Michael and Kristina, who took us down to Santa Monica for dinner and shopping and then on to two house parties and a warehouse party. Met lots of fabulous people and (amazingly) stayed out until 3 pm or so, operating on two hours of sleep. Today we're off to the farmer's market for lunch then on to do some shopping. Might go see "Lost In Translation" tonight, which I'm really looking forward to.

USA bound! Tomorrow we head off back to the states. What great changes have occurred since we left? Will we see flying cars, moving sidewalks, microwave popcorn that doesn't burn? Watch this space for a full report.

On the plane I plan to write a program that will "screen scrape" all our old blogs into a single document, for archiving purposes. It will snip off all the title and sidebar information from each page, and automatically pull in all comments, pictures, and, if I'm ambitious enough, external web pages that our blog entries link to. I'm bitter that some of our old comments seem to have gone missing from the old comment site, just as of this week. I should have written this program a long time ago.

Duran Duran's all fun and stuff, until "Wild Boys" is stuck in your head for two days.

At the concert last night Marjorie mentioned how she thought it was great that Singaporeans could love something (like Duran Duran) with unbridled enthusiasm. It's true. When there is no guilt, there's no such thing as a guilty pleasure; it's just pleasure. They aren't so much unhip here as anti-hip, at least in the music realm. In a society this multi-cultural, no one's going to tease you for liking Chinese opera, Bollywood soundtracks, or Duran Duran. And so enthusiasm thrives here like a tropical plant.

It's unfortunate, though, that hipness seems to be a necessary ingredient to being a music producer, as opposed to a music consumer. Lacking ego, no one ever sees a show and says, "I could do better". Maybe we should go tease people more.

Out out damned snot! Mark's given me his headcold as an early Christmas present (is this like a lump of coal?). I'm hoping it will pass through my body before I have to get on a plane. Long-distance plane rides are already so fun, throw in a head cold and I'm sure it will be pure bliss.

20 Years ago, I saw my first concert at the Hampton coliseum in Hampton, VA. Duran Duran were my favorite band then, as depicted by the hundreds of posters of them I had plastered around my bedroom walls, and the scrapbook of shoplifted and legitimately acquired teenbeat magazine photos with their favorite ice cream flavors, movies, and eye colours.
Full circle: Tonight I again saw Simon LeBon and the boys gyrating around on stage singing "Save a Prayer" and the other classics. It was much fun, but I can't help but feel ancient thinking about my teen fanatic self. To their credit, I think my interest in the band developed, not only my fetishism for men in make-up, but also a more sophisticated taste in music through forays into other New Wave bands such as the Split-Enz, the Psychedelic Furs, and later on The Smiths and New Order. By the age of fourteen, I'd already become embarassed by my earlier devotion to the "fab five". Maybe now it's time to pull out the old albums again.

The Ultimate Geek Gift. If I were just a little bit more of a geek, all my nephews and nieces would be receiving this.

Singapore travel warning: when starting a fight, Singaporeans lead with the foot. An argument broke out in the parking lot underneath my office window today, culminating in an attempted kick at the other guy's kneecaps. Which missed. It broke up immediately; nobody wanted to go to jail, I'm sure. This is the second fight I've seen in Singapore, and both times the aggressor started with a kick.

Bah, humbug. Christmas's opening act is a month made of Mondays. Serving suggestion: garnish with head cold. "Most wonderful time of the year"? Don't make me hit you.

Human jerky. Today was for visiting Body Worlds: The Anatomical Exhibition of the Human Body. It was really, really interesting. The bodies are actual human volunteers, "plasticized". Different displays showed the muscles, the nervous system, the circulatory system, the digestive system, and the reproductive system (snigger snigger). Sometimes the organs were left intact; sometimes they were shown in cross-section. And they had many examples of unhealthy organs next to healthy ones. (The coal miner's lung looked like a lump of coal.) Most fascinating, and disturbing, was the cross-section of the pregnant woman. An interesting and edumacational excursion; highly recommended.

Tonight we are planning on our first visit to Zouk, Singapore's biggest and most famous discotheque, with our out-of-town friends. I don't know if we'll be drinking, though, after seeing the liver with cirrhosis earlier.

Friends good. Our Atlanta friend (and his wife, son, and mother) are passing through town. We did dinner with them last night at Boat Quay and are going out on the town with them tonight. Woop!

Marjorie and I have that psychic connection (that's so annoying in other married couples ;-), where we know what each other is thinking, often saying things at the same time, and being instantly able to read each other's moods. Which is why it was so surprising to me tonight that for the first time in forever, while we sat and watched Love Actually, I totally misread her body language, and got up as the credits rolled expecting her to totally love it. But despite the chick-flick theme, I was the one who dug it, while she apparently couldn't wait for it to end. Strange. So, go see it, or, as Marjorie would advise, don't.