Never read a Nicolas Cage interview first thing in the morning.

Wednesday, November 1 10:14 AM

Well, this just frosts my cornflakes. Observe this excerpt from Roger Ebert's recent interview with Nicolas Cage:

"The Weather Man" is a big studio production with a big budget and a big star, but it's written and played like an art picture. Is that a contradiction?

"It's very risky for an actor who's a bankable star to make pictures like 'The Weather Man' or 'Lord of War' [also in current release], because they inevitably promote them like big studio releases. And they're not big studio movies, they're more edgy, thought-provoking, independent-spirited films. What happens is, it goes into the computer, and everyone says they can't open the movie because they thought it was X when it actually was Y."

I mean, ****ing Microsoft! If anybody ever laughs at the assertion that this company is, collectively, an evil gang of bastards and thugs and that they need to be stopped, just show them this quote. Yes: the company has so completely beaten down the spirit of our tired and defenseless populace that similes about operating systems that don't work properly have apparently become an acceptable and universally-understood part of our society's vernacular.

If this were a Mac-dominated world, the quote would be: "They're not big studio movies. But what happens is, the user clicks on the icon in the Finder, does a 'Get Info', and manually forces it to be opened with the wrong application, which messes everything up. Whereas if they'd simply double-clicked it and allowed the operating system to open it automatically, it would work perfectly, just as you'd expect from a Macintosh."

Yesterday went swimmingly. I spent the whole afternoon in Hampstead, mostly walking through the Heath. Back home, I'm used to hiking through either fairly wild forests accomodated with a few footpaths, or highly-sculpted and planned parks. The Heath is sort of a fusion of both concepts. Like a park, there are plenty of open spaces and mostly-unpaved paths that have been well-defined by at least a century of ramblers, but like the woods it all seems very natural, wild, and un-fussed-with...and without a map and a compass you're absolutely certain to get lost. Fortunately, the Heath is compact enough that if you just walk along one consistent vector for an hour, you'll eventually reach one of the roads that encircle the thing.

The views are fantastic. My progress was slow because just like last time, I kept stopping every forty seconds to take pictures of something or other. And on a damp day like Monday, the Heath's smells and sounds are just as big an attraction. You're absolutely surrounded by life. Every whiff of the air is filled with leaves and dirt and moss, and if you stand still and listen for a moment you realize that nearly every patch of brush has something rustling in it.

In fact, I just might have gotten a bit too caught up with my Nikon for my own good. I was sort of obsessed with this one tree (it looked as though it had sprounted from the unmarked grave of a heretic, and existed mostly to the steal the souls of children) and was approached by a constable. His manner was casual and friendly and conversational, but nonetheless a police officer doesn't strike up a conversation with someone unless he's got his civic duty in mind.

But we had a lovely five-minute chat during which I didn't appear nervous or desperately pull a gun from anywhere and start shooting, so he wished me well and continued on his way. That's just good advice, kids: when Officer Friendly chooses to have a word with you, don't be nervous and don't draw a weapon and start shooting. Unless it's one of those cool deals where the constable is running by, sees the Boston Red Sox pin on your jacket, and yells "An American! Thank God! Would you mind opening fire on that drug dealer who just blew past? All I've got is a whistle and this stick."

Though I can't possibly imagine anyone dealing drugs in the Heath. For one, I think that specific trade relies on sitting on a bench and counting on lots of passing traffic, and there aren't many of either one to be found in the Heath. Besides, who can even think about selling or buying heroin when you can sit and watch the birdies in the skies and the wee pink-nosied animals gamboling through the underbrush?

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Gotta Book

Wednesday, November 2 11:57 PM

I was shocked, disoriented, and yes, maybe even just a little bit hurt when I popped the memory card out of my Nikon tight, plugged it into my PowerBook, and iPhoto reported that there were only 27 photos ready to import.

27. Twenty-seven!

I should explain that I've been in full-on, ultra-obnoxio tourist mode since Saturday and this is the first time I've returned to my lodgings with less than 200 pictures. The record was set on that very first day of the series, when I Touristed as though I knew that I'd be filled with the ability to feel pride and shame the very next day, and that my ability to make such a perfectly stereotypical jackass of myself was going to be seriously compromised. A long walk plus a huge street market plus another long walk plus two parks plus a huge and awesome memorial plus a terrific museum equalled more than 500 shots.

So seeing a "27" come up tonight made me feel as though I wasn't even trying. Or, again, that maybe after a whole week in London I've finally found a long-atrophied sense of dignity, along with a desire to show respect to the many peoples and traditions of this world-class and ancient city.

Naaaaah. The real explanation was that today was, alas, a Work Day. I'd managed to get way ahead on my work before I left Boston, and the only thing I had to do after completing my speaking commitments at Mac Expo was write one newspaper column. Time zones were well on my side with this one: as one of God's favored, I was given a six-hour headstart on the daylight, but as a wretched soul enslaved to the pursuit of Le Mot Juste, I just couldn't hand it in one second earlier than 9 AM Chicago time. I kept polishing and rewriting it, and by the time I finally let go of it (8 AM Central Time, actually) it was 2 PM and I realized to my horror and shame that I'd just spent the entire morning and much of the afternoon inside staring at my PowerBook instead of out and about in one of the greatest cities on the planet.

And time is now pretty dear: my flight home takes off at 6 PM tomorrow, which means I can squeeze in another morning of sightseeing if I plan wisely. Which isn't to say that today was wasted, either. Wisely, I'd planned to do all of my Armageddon-style touring from Saturday through Monday, with Tuesday and Wednesday devoted to simpler goals. Today I chose to visit the New British Library, on the basis that more than one writer friend had recommended it and that I could also do a little business there.

The BL isn't a place where perverts come in to look at pornography on the Internet terminals. It's more along the lines of a research library: it's the main repository of the nation's books, magazines, manuscripts, maps, documents and other sources-o-nollege. You don't sign things out. You fill out a form at a terminal and then you sit at a numbered desk and when the little light comes on to let you know that they've located the original 1711 lyric sheet to "Yankee Doodle" and are bringing it right on over.

Patrons are strongly encouraged not to be drinking a 64-ounce cherry Slurpee while they manhandle priceless original sources. Spreading Silly-Putty across the images on a medieval illuminated manuscript so you can stretch St. Augustine's face is considered to be an even bigger no-no.

In fact, they take such care with their material that you can't actually bring in coats, bags, umbrellas, or anything else that might represent a threat to the security of their materials, or to their continued lack of any sort of chocolate handprints on their edges. Instead, you immediately deposit all of your belongings into a locker when you enter. You can take in a notepad, laptop, or anything else you need to write with, provided that it goes into a clear plastic bag which is searched as you enter and leave every individual reading room.

As you might guess, this is not a place to kill some time with some "Calvin & Hobbes" books while you wait for your train home.

In fact, they won't even let you in without a Reader's Card. No kidding, you have to walk into this little office on the ground floor and apply for permission before you can use the library at all. They review your application and then, after you initial a three-page list of Conditions of Use, they give you a card that grants you access for anywhere from a month onward.

I know I'll be coming back to London from time to time, and truth be told, I'm sort of nursing along a story that would strongly benefit from being able to spend a few days with the British National Collection. So instead of heading for the gift shop, I followed the signs and made an application. When my number was called and I took a seat at the clerk's desk, I was prepared to exercise a little bit of agility. The questions were almost certainly going to provoke awkward answers.

"You're writing a book, you say?"

"Yes, Ma'am. Well, no, actually, I just have an idea for one, you see, but I have no idea whether or not the story will work unless I learn a bit about what was going on with the British Navy during the American Revolution."

"You don't have history books in...Boston, was it? Aren't there a lot of famous universities there? Or do you just not know where they are?"

"Yes, yes, but our history books say that you guys are all complete bastards. I want to see what the British had to say about the Americans."

"I can start you off with a real lu-lu right now, if you'd like..."

But she looked at the form and asked if I was a published writer or not, and when I explained that I was a newspaper columnist and I handed over one of my Sun-Times business cards, she immediately gave me a three-year card. Apparently that's more or less the automatic standard for journalists. It's way-cool; it's got my picture on it and everything. So much so that I might have to start it off in the Power Position in my wallet right next to my grammar-school-era Star Wars Official Fan Club card, so that it can be made to "accidentally" fall out onto the table when the date's clearly stuck in a slow patch.

Naturally, having earned the trust of the caretakers of British knowledge, I had to immediately get cracking on abusing it. I went to the locker room and deposited anything that seemed remotely suspicious, having to stifle the genetic impulse to drop my pants in anticipation of changing into gym shorts. All I took out of there was my pocket notepad and my A4 spiral notebook, safe inside a clear plastic BL bag just like a grown-up and everything.

I didn't have the time to do any real, honest-to-God research but all the same, I spent about an hour in the Humanities reading room, writing. I honestly wish there were a library like this one anywhere near my house. Never in my life have I ever felt such an intense need to quit fooling around and get straight to work. You're surrounded by a couple of hundred people, each sitting at a station identical to yours, and everybody is either reading something or writing something down; in fact, despite the fact that it's a huge room and it's filled to near-capacity, Reading and Writing are the only two sounds you can hear. So if you're just sitting there reading comic books or worrying if Jessica Simpson's marriage is on the rocks, it sort of lowers the intellectual and creative temperature of the room, which almost seems like an act of vandalism.

Afterwards, I'd planned on a leisurely walk down to Trafalgar Square to eat dinner, buy comics at Forbidden Planet (Wednesday is New Comics Day, after all), and get back to That Place Where A Lot Of My Stuff Is. But it was raining in a particularly rainy fashion -- that annoying, windy kind in which keeping an umbrella stable expends far more calories than simply being wet -- so I hopped on a bus to Oxford Street and walked the remaining half a mile from there.

I think I timed out this trip perfectly. Since Saturday, I've done everything that I had hoped to do, and left myself Wednesday as sort of a "floater." There was no particular need to rush anywhere or get someplace before it closed or scrutinize a map and wonder if the street numbers had gone metric on me somewhere in the past nine blocks. It was a late-afternoon and early-evening spent treading familiar paths and simply appreciating the city. And even the rain.

Tomorrow, I pack, I possibly squeeze in a quick little trip to Greenwich, and then I shall be thrown out of the country.

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Oh, right! My blog! I forgot!

Thursday, November 17 10:13 PM

Hmm. I'm trying to figure out if this is indeed my first post since my return from London. Dare I actually tab over to Safari and look at my own weblog to find out?

...

Well, I'll be damned: two weeks since my last post. Surely I can't be expected to get straight back into things. I need at least three days to get my internal clock back on 'Merican time, allow my TiVo to tell me about all of the cool shows it watched while I was gone, and thrill various friends and family members with ripping yarns of adventure and intrigue.

Although actually, my TiVo remained mum for thirty whole hours. I've been to the UK often enough that I look forward to my little traditions. I usually book myself a flight that gets me home by 9 PM, and I try to stay up until my usual bedtime to yank the starter cord on the settling-back-in process. And it's a glorious five or six hours: I know that my TiVo is packed to capacity with shows, and because I weeded out all of the dull stuff from its To-Do List, it's all Grade-A Choice meat.

The TiVo remote where wasn't I left it nine days earlier.

Nor was it in the other place I usually put it.

Nor in the place where I usually find it when I can't find it. Nor under any of the sofa cushions, nor inside any of the drawers, alongside any of the equipment, or in the kitchen or next to the washing machine, in case I happened to have it in my hands when I walked around the house.

Yes, at around Hour Six I was getting rather desperate to find the thing.

As any fellow TiVo owner can tell you, the device's designers wouldn't dream of compromising its futuristic design by putting any actual buttons anywhere on the device. So: no remote, no TiVo. And the box also does this thing where it starts deleting old programs to make room for new programs. I'd adjusted this before I left to ensure that it wouldn't delete anything before I watched it, though.

Well, not really: I told it not to start deleting stuff until two days after I returned. Yes, the clock was now running. Like a far more nerdy (and twice as long) edition of "24," I was stuck in a real-time game of cat and mouse in which I had just 48 hours to prevent a lot of people from dying. Good, honest, hardworking people like "Columbo" and "David Letterman" and "The Apprentice".

At Hour Thirty, I asked myself if I was really so damned addicted to television that I was actually going to drive to Wal*Mart -- no, make that Wal-****ing-Mart -- at 10:30 PM to buy a new universal remote. Was I really going to spend twenty dollars just to watch shows that had been recorded for free?

No I was not, I proudly report: it was actually just $7.99.

(Shut up.)

Well, on and on. In my defense, I've been rather actively posting long photoessays to my Flickr blog. Regardez-vous, silver plate:

Mac Expo UK 2005

A Very Long London Walk, part 1

A Very Long London Walk, part 2

Lots more photos remain to be posted, so stay alert.

Today was a particularly busy day. Up at the crack of nine for an 11 AM briefing. This was a good one; there are briefings where you wish you'd just read a press release and stayed home, ones where it's largely a social call (always enjoyable and welcome, but doesn't advance my selfless agenda for educating and informing my millions of readers), and then there are ones like this, where most of the time is spent bouncing ideas off of me.

Don't you wish that George Lucas had emailed you a couple of years ago, treated you to lunch, had you sign an NDA, and then told you the story of "Revenge of the Sith"? And he seemed to be both attentive and grateful when you said "For God's sake, George! Vader can't break free from the table and shout 'Noooooooo!'! Do this: Palpatine tells him that Padme is dead; you go tight on his faceplate, then subtly black out the eyepieces with CGI so you can no longer see his eyes. After holding on that shot for a tense three seconds, Vader just says 'Good' and moves on to the next thing. You see? It really sells the point that Anakin has totally embraced the Dark Side and he's practically a whole different person."?

Okay, I think I got off on a little tangent there. The point is that maybe your (incredibly wise and absolutely correct) advice would be heeded, maybe it wouldn't. But at least you'd know that you'd said it to somebody with the power to do something about it.

Then I finished a special Sun-Times column that's due to run on Thanksgiving. It's special for two reasons: one, I am stealing an idea from Oprah Winfrey lock, stock and barrel; and two, it's taking up the whole page.

The idea is, of course, Oprah's "My Favorite Things" show. I'm taking a risk here, I know. Oprah is probably too nice a person to litigate over such things, but I bet that Chicago's full of lawyers who'd sue me right down to my foundations just for the opportunity to maybe get on her good side. If it comes down to that, I'll just say that she stole the idea from me. Her "Favorite Things" episode airs three days before my column will run, but I filed it four days before it aired.

Yeah, mainly I'm just going to cross my fingers and hope that she doesn't sue.

As to the other thing, kudos go to my editor. It takes a special sort of man not to flinch when he's told that a column is a cozy 1,000 words over its normal word count, though in the interests of accuracy I concede the possibility that what I assumed was stoicism was merely the silence of one who's been angered past the capacity for speech.

No, no. I knew that he was giving me a lot more room for this one, so I made no attempts to restrain that magnificent white horse known as My Genius. My editor read the draft and then suggested that I beat and beat and beat the aforementioned horse with an axe until the pieces could fit into a box two-thirds the size of the original, and thus I had a bloody afternoon's work ahead of me.

Eventually the deed was done, though I'm not proud of this act of bloodlust-fueled editing and I've lined up someone who's willing to testify that I was with him all day building homes for Habitat For Humanity, if this whole sad incident ever makes it in front of a grand jury.

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