'Bred Crumbs

Exactly six years ago today, also a Saturday, I was making my second visit to San Francisco. At the end of a weeklong visit with Sam and Jennie in their new Daly City home, we celebrated Sam's birthday by going into The City. But afterward, when we got to the BART station to head home, we learned their were no trains going that way because of a supposed power outage. This was odd; the power wasn't out during our mid-afternoon meal and margaritas at Chevy's, but apparently it was true; big chunks of the city and Bay Area had lost electricity (because, we would learn later, of a failure in the Western power grid).

The only one in our party with a car, David, had gone before we found out about the problem. How to get home? All the cabs were full. We tried catching a MUNI bus down Mission to get back to our car at the Daly City BART lot, but the thing was packed. Facing a seven-mile-plus journey, we couldn't take the claustrophobia and bailed well before our destination. We tried to reach David at his home, which took a while because the outage slowed traffic. We finally got him, and he came and picked up Jennie, but since his car was only a two-seater, the rest of us had to wait for David to ferry Jennie to her car so she could drive back into town to get us.

Our waiting place happened to be the Safeway at Market and Church. We tried to pass the time as best we could. We went into the store, which was hit by the outage but still operating its registers and freezers on backup power, to experience shopping in the dark, but the thrill wore off quickly. For a while, it was amusing to hang in the parking lot and assess the clientele of the store, which seemed to be patronized almost entirely by gay couples and people with broken or damaged arms and legs. (The store is on the edge of the Castro, which I didn't realize because I didn't yet know San Francisco well. I can't explain all the casts, canes and wheelchairs, though. Hell, we even saw a dog in a cast.)

But after a while even the people-watching lost its charm, and we sat on the sidewalk, tired and dejected, surrounded by pigeons milling about pointlessly.

"You know," I said absently after a long silence, "if I had wings, I'd use them more."

Sam, bless him, cracked the hell up. He said that such a grand observation out of nowhere, utterly so matter-of-factly, just got to him. Our spirits lifted again, and soon Jennie arrived to get us back to their blissfully electrified flat.

So, I got stuck for a while in a crowded city experiencing its second big power outage that summer. And somehow, I wound up just being more charmed by the place than ever. Maybe I was infected by the earthquake- and AIDS-surviving city's spirit of joyous endurance, I don't know, but my determination to move here ratcheted up significantly that chaotic Saturday six years ago. I made the big journey three months later, and my life started happening.

On top of all that, today is also Dewayne's birthday. August 10, we salute you.

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Being a good geek, I bought the Lord of the Rings DVDs on the day of release Tuesday, and have already secured my receipt and coupon for the rebate on the truly massive special-DVD release in November. And getting the DVD has finally triggered in me a common male impulse that I've never before experienced: I want a bigger TV. This movie's just too big for my screen.

The thing is, I just upgraded to a new TV last summer. It's 23 inches or some such common dimension (see? No head for this), and it doesn't have much in the way of features, which wouldn't solve my LotR problem anyway. I mean, screw picture-in-picture; I need picture-beyond-picture.

Immersing myself in Middle Earth yet again also has rekindled my recurring interest in the details of language, pronunciation, and spelling, and I wonder: doesn't it drive English linguists crazy that phonetic isn't spelled phonetically?

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For mysterious, unknown reasons, it took me months to finally acquire Ben Folds' Rockin' the Suburbs, but now that I have I have commenced to wearing out certain tracks. "Still Fighting It" especially shows one reason I love Folds: he can write an instantly compelling, heartbreaking song whose first verse is about nothing more than buying a kid fast food.

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Every time I see one of those commercials trying to convince people to escape phone static by getting a digital cell phone, I think, are there really people who don't have digital mobiles? Turns out there are, 20 million of 'em. Imagine. (Link via NextDraft)

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My new favorite sports team name: the Omaha Beef.

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Dear Record Company,

I listened to the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots online, liked it, and bought the album.

See how that works?

Regards,
'Bred Crumbs
 

Dear Car Company,

Even though I now hear that "Days Go By" thing every 15 minutes, and even though your commercial using it is trying to be oh-so-painfully hip by showing that pitifully bereted girl having a seizure in the car while all her friends laugh at her, I will never complain about or make fun of this commercial again if you will just stop showing that damned ultra-annoying "One Week" commercial.

Or at least reshoot it so that tedious yuppie guy singing along in the passenger seat gets punched in the face.

Kisses,
'B.C.
 

Dear Fast-Food Chicken Company,

Please make Jason Alexander go away now.

Yours,
'Bred

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Update regarding the new version of this site: Steve reports that Internet Explorer 5.0 on PC is making the Crumbtrols so wide that they obscure part of the main text. So far, this is a stumper, but I'm gradually attempting a few fixes, though I have no access to 5.0 and so can't really check my work. More reports are encouraged, and my apologies if you're having this problem, which doesn't occur so far in IE 5.5 or, I'm told, 6. Sigh. Browsers.

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Welcome to 'Bred Crumbs 2.0. Not a drastic change, but a significant one behind the scenes. Here's what's different and why, from general to technical:

Crumbtrols. The new feature on the left lets you pick from a small assortment of font faces and sizes, in case you don't like what I like. The changes affect only the main, center content. You can also choose whether you want links to pop a new window or not (the default is not). Your chosen preferences are saved via cookie. If you hate or fear cookies, don't click a button. More about that later. Also, your preferences won't apply to older 'Bred Crumbs pages, but they do work on the 'Bred Box.

Design changes. While the main motivation for this version was to meet Web standards (more below), I also decided to spruce up the design slightly, mainly by finally vanishing my previous visual rendering of "crumbs." They always interfered with the page architecture, and they looked like popcorn anyway. Also, a slight change in the link color scheme, a little more color all around, and a cleaner separation between center well and margins.

Browser compatibility. I've become a strong believer in Web standards, which browsers are finally starting to support. Modern browsers, that is. The dinosaur that is Netscape 4 still wanders out there, and coding for it means multiple versions of pages, intricate scripting, or old, bad code. The other choice is to code to standards knowing that it will take only a little easily changed tinkering to make the same thing show up the same way in all modern browsers, and let the luddites fend. My choice: bye-bye Netscape 4.

Those of you who cling to the old tools can still see the content of the site; but the layout is bad, and the toys don't work. I could explain more, but too many others already have.

JavaScript and cookies. Anyone who knows my views on Web matters will be shocked that I'm using these. But though I've historically reviled them for different reasons, they were the most effective way to accomplish the Crumbtrols, which were something I very much wanted to add here. My hatred of all the sites riddle with JavaScript errors, and of the millions of unannounced cookies that marketers cram onto our hard drives daily, remains. But I can live with using cookies here because (a) I plainly announce their presence, and (b) I make them avoidable. If you don't click a Crumbtrols button, you don't get a cookie.

If you want to know more about the technicalities of the site, check the updated "about the site" section. I've tried to test things as much as I can, but mistakes seem inevitable. If you find something that doesn't work right, and I've said it should, please let me know.

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If you plan to see Signs and haven't gotten there yet, here's a pointer for you. This is not a spoiler, just a detail to alert you to that will enhance the enjoyment. In the scene where the dad and the kids are looking through a book, and they start showing closeups of the pages, read the captions of the pictures. Humor awaits.

My spoiler-free review: Signs was very entertaining, suspenseful, and well acted, and M. Night Shyamalan's skill at building stories backward remains masterful. But the movie was less satisying than either The Sixth Sense or Unbreakable – less visually interesting and with a less buyable payoff.

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