Sorry, but no pics. There wasn’t much of anything worth photographing today. However, here were the highlights:

1) After getting in at about 2 a.m. West Coast, M and I crashed. Hard. We had flown from Pittsburgh to D.C., then across the country on an uncomfortably long flight. We awoke to a gorgeous view of the Bay, Alcatraz Island, and Coit Tower.

2) We walked a few blocks to get a Viatnamese pork sandwich for lunch from a hole-in-the-wall called Saigon Sandwiches in the “Little Saigon” part of town, not too far from Union Square, where our hotel is located. The sandwiches came on a recommendation from Arun, and damn were they tasty. Better than the Viatnamese sandwiches at the market in Columbus, Ohio. Sweeter, but with a bit more kick, too.

3) We ate them in Union Square proper, where it was odd to see people ice skating despite the 52 degree temperature.

4) M is sick with a bad stomach virus that won’t leave her alone, so she mostly kept to herself in the hotel room the rest of the day. We found the nearby hotel where her interviews will be tomorrow, and hiked up one of the city’s many steep hills to get there. M was out of breath after just a block. I blame it on the sickness.

5) Later that night I hurriedly located someplace to eat, settling on a Lori’s Diner, a touristy ’50s recreation with several locations around the bay area. The tuna melt with onion rings was doable. The orange freeze — orange sherbert mixed with Sprite — was delish. Across the street, I spotted a place I’d like to try before I leave: Tad’s Broiled Steaks. From a distance, it looks like a more authentic dining experience, and it has simply the coolest signage I’ve ever seen on a restaurant. I’ll take a picture later.

6) After dinner, with M out of commission and my friend Jonathan, also in town for the conference, taking it easy tonight, I opted for a movie. Frost/Nixon was just okay, far from the great film I thought it may be based upon the subject matter and the trailer. Frank Langella, who plays Nixon, does a commendable job. But I had a hard time buying into Frost’s character. I just didn’t find him, or his struggles for credibility, to be all that compelling. Frost pulled off a near miracle in getting Nixon, who was backed by an army of shrewd politicos and media types and was himself a wise old man, to own up to Watergate. But on the silver screen, Frost seems like a total hack who more or less lucked into Nixon’s confession, based upon a few nights of hard work. His character seems shallow and too transparent, and by film’s end I didn’t believe in his transformation. As for my ambivalence about the film, I blame the screenwriters, who focused too little time on the actual interviews themselves, missing a golden opportunity to follow their own conclusions — that the close-ups of the TV screen revealed more about Nixon’s character than a thousand words — to the logical end of concentrating more heavily on the heat of the moment. Also, for a film whose protagonist continually battles to resist portraying Nixon in a sympathetic light, Frost/Nixon does just that. By the film’s end, I feel sorry for the guy. Overall, I just didn’t find the film to be that believable, which is sad since it’s not a work of fiction.

A fictional movie about the 1960s Group Sounds movement in Japan, titled GS Wonderland. Hell yes!

It’s been a while since I posted a photo of a bare-chested guy. I apologize.

Paul Newman passed away at the age of 83. He was the lead in one of my Top 10 favorite movies, Cool Hand Luke, a nice little non-conformist flick from 1967 which gave us the famous line, “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can’t reach.” Of course, he was in several more heralded and commercially successful films, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Hustler, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Sting, and The Color of Money, but I tend to like his more quirky movies better (like, for instance, Slap Shot). I’ve long wanted to purchase the movie poster for Cool Hand Luke, which is just too cool (and oddly psychedelic, a result of the time of its release, 1967, rather than the content of the film).

“Come on safety pin — POP!”

Another great scene.

1) Watch it — Jesus’ Son — probably about four years ago.

2) Try to read Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke. Fail miserably. Stop after about 110 pages.

3) Feel guilty about stopping. Remember that you’ve never read Johnson’s other acclaimed book, Jesus’ Son.

4) Decide that maybe you should read it. Look at the pile of books on the nightstand. Instead decide to watch the film.

5) Bump the movie to the top of your Netflix queue.

6) Go the mailbox, find the movie waiting for you, let it sit on the coffee table for 7 days while you “get in the mood to watch it,” then stick it in the DVD player during a desperate moment when cable TV is not an option because Comcast is rebooting your cable box thanks to its shitty service.

7) Five minutes in, say to yourself, “Hey, haven’t I seen this before?”

And there you have it.

Possibly the RNC/John McCain subliminally caused me to want to watch Werner Herzog’s 1997 doc Little Dieter Needs to Fly. I had never seen it, which is surprising because upon being introduced to Herzog a few years ago by M I have enjoyed his films, and this particular one is highly regarded. In short, the doc retraces the captivity of a German-American who served in the Navy during the early stages of Vietnam. His plane was shot down and he was held captive for over six months. Over that time period he was tortured and escaped once before being promptly re-captured. His second attempt was a large-scale prison break and he and a fellow prisoner almost made it to Thailand before trouble struck. I won’t spoil the film’s plot by sharing any more.

Herzog’s narrative approach for this film is fascinating, as he takes Dieter back into the jungles of Laos as the subject recreates the events of his captivity, including staging several scenes where he is ushered hands tied through the jungle with actual armed guards. This form of reliving his captivity on camera makes for engaging viewing. Of the three Herzog films I have seen (Grizzly Man and The White Diamond being the others), this one featured the most interesting person. While Timothy Treadwell, aka Grizzly Man, was also intriguing, his virtue as a subject lie in his own charming absurdity. Dieter, by contrast, is a man who is far more in touch with reality, which makes his suppression of his past (and grappling with it) all the more of interest.

Has anyone seen Herzog’s Hollywood reprise of this doc, Rescue Dawn?