Author: splicer

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My faith in Vice restored

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After a depress­ing­ly slow, awk­ward­ly-paced, and poor­ly writ­ten and act­ed pilot episode (which yosemite­sam and dra­cun­cu­lus were wit­ness to a cou­ple weeks back), where the stylee MTV cars-and-music for­mu­la did­n’t kick in until ten min­utes before the end of a two-hour episode, I final­ly forced myself to watch the first reg­u­lar episode of Mia­mi Vice, Heart of Darkness

This is still bad cop TV, but now I feel I can chalk it up to first-sea­son awk­ward. The pac­ing is … Read the rest

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Cruising California Bizarro

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I’m writ­ing from the din­ing room of one of Cal­i­for­ni­a’s great curiosi­ties, des­tined to amaze and befud­dle even the most jad­ed of observers. Today I’m lunch­ing at the worlds most beau­ti­ful Taco Bell.

Yes, that may sound like damn­ing with faint praise, as though I’d said the world’s most hon­est politi­cian or tallest midget, but indeed this is exact­ly such a curiosity.

Here in Paci­fi­ca, right off of Route 1, there is a sleepy lit­tle wood­en shack over­look­ing Rock­away Beach. … Read the rest

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As Splicer continues to hemhorrage money

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Rode my new motor­cy­cle even far­ther today… all the way to Daly City. I actu­al­ly toyed with the idea of going all the way to Paci­fi­ca, but the way I know to get there involves a real high­way por­tion of Route 1, and I’m not quite com­fort­able enough on the bike (hav­ing rid­den on the streets less than two days) for the free­way. Route 35 was scary enough because the wind was pret­ty high. Get­ting pushed around by cross­winds … Read the rest

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Getting in gear

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My down­stairs neigh­bors had a par­ty last night. I’m get­ting old over here and what would have been a nice tame par­ty when I was twen­ty turned out to be an insane­ly crowd­ed drunk­en explo­sion. They had drink­ing games set up in the garage, and I have no idea what the rules were. I nev­er could fol­low the rules of a drink­ing game when I was drink­ing, and frankly nev­er cared to. Drink­ing games were invent­ed to be lost, weren’t … Read the rest

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Goin’ for a putt

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Wow.

No, I mean WOW.

I thought I was crazy. Per­haps I still think I’m crazy. But this is good crazy.

I was ter­ri­fied of this thing, and per­haps I was right to be. I still am. I almost did­n’t do any­thing but take it straight home (well, after bring­ing it by Mud­dy’s to show off, of course.) My friend Rick told me I HAD to ride it, but pru­dence was win­ning. After all, stalling out in the mid­dle of Van Ness … Read the rest

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365HelloChallenge

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Sor­ry, for­got to write down yes­ter­day’s: Out front of Mud­dy Waters, I said “hel­lo” to a woman who paused briefly at the entrance. She said “hel­lo” cheer­i­ly before con­tin­u­ing down the street.

Today, wait­ing for the bus on the way home from work, I asked a pair of jour­nal­ism stu­dents who were exam­in­ing the bus map if they need­ed help find­ing some­thing. We chat­ted briefly about the bus route and the cor­rect place to wait. Stu­dents trav­el­ling togeth­er. I got … Read the rest

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1/365

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On the train on the way to the gym for my swim les­son tonight, I noticed that I was seat­ed across from a young woman who was work­ing in her sketch­book. She was atten­tive to her work and did a good job of trans­lat­ing what her eye saw to what her pen­cil drew out.

She had some dif­fi­cul­ty with the fore­short­en­ing of the out­line of the eyes of her sub­jects, espe­cial­ly from the side. And no won­der: that’s a very tricky … Read the rest

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