All posts by Steve Stern

Go see “The Big Sick”

Film

The Big Sick A-As an aside, I am definitely doing something wrong, this is the third time I’ve typed this. Then I think I save it and all that comes back is the picture. Michele and I went to a small get-together to honor Catherine Santos, it was at her home and I had never been there without her and that really brought home the realization that she is gone. Today I learned one of my co-cardiac-rehabbers, Placida Chavez, died last Wednesday at 93. We often walked on treadmills next to each other and sometimes we chatted; a week ago, we chatted about her finally getting all the weeds in her garden pulled. Now all that is left of Placida is our talking about her and an obit on the table where we write down our vitals. Somehow, my pitch on The Big Sick disappearing seems to fit right in. End aside.

Michele and I saw The Big Sick last Friday and I’ve been thinking of it ever since. It stars Kumail Nanjiani, playing himself, and Zoe Kazan, playing the movie’s script writer, Emily V. Gordon who in real life is married to Nanjiani and the movie is about their early relationship. Zoe Kazan is radiant – the only other time I’ve seen her in a movie, Ruby Sparks, she was also radiant and she should get more work – and that radiance is bright enough to carry her presence through the Big Sick phase of the movie in which she is in a coma. The movie is billed as a RomCom and it is very romantic and very funny but it is also about how our relationships don’t exist in a vacuum and a big chunk of the film is about Nanjiani’s relation with his and Emily’s parents. Every player in this movie, from the loving- couple to the nurse in the hospital seems real.

Trust me on this, go see The Big Sick.

We went to a World Superbike Race and it was sensationfull

Around home, Local events

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When I first read about the motorcycle races at Laguna Seca and pitched it to Michele, my eyes read FIM Superbike World Championship but my mind read MotoGP World Championship. I really had no idea what the difference was, I now know: Superbikes are like racing Corvettes or Ferrari street cars, MotoGP is like Formula 1, cars built only for racing. In terms of speed, they are much closer than, say, a Ferrari street car and a Ferrari F1 car.

We got to Laguna Seca around noon, in time to wander through the Paddock and get lunch before the race at 2 o’clock. Between twelve and two is also the hottest time of the day and there is not much shade in the Paddock as we looked at various open garages, sweat rolling down our faces, we tried to guess at what we were looking at. There we stood, looking at stunning motorcycles with no real idea of what they were. At first, when it said Factory Team,  I assumed we were looking at genuine Superbikes, but when we wandered over to an area where the Superbikes actually were, they are completely hidden from view. MotoRaces-01767I told Michele, “I have no idea what’s going on and, yet, I am strangely comfortable.” Michele pointed out that I have been coming here for years and it is the place itself that feels comfortable. Thinking about it and doing a little Googling later, I realize that the first race I saw here was November 1957 and I still remember it. Sammy Weiss beat Jack McAfee, both in silver Porsche 550 Spyders; it was one of the best races I have ever seen. But in those days, I knew who the drivers were and I could recognize a Porsche 550 at a thousand paces, here I didn’t even know what engine size each class of motorcycles had, let alone their brand without reading the label, and I didn’t know one driver’s name (at one point, Michele said “I can tell who the best drivers are.”, me “Oh, how?”, “They are the ones with the longest autograph lines.”).

As a disclaimer, I love hot motorcycles, the kind that used to be called, derogatorily by Harley people, at least, Riceburners (even though a lot of the best are Italian). The kind of almost racing bikes that we see on the street, driven by a young kid almost laying down on top of the bike, weaving in and out of traffic. The kind of bikes, like a MV Agusta Brutale 800, that are exquisite pieces of sculpture. If I had the money and space, I would have one in my living room in plex box as a piece of sculpture. MotoRaces MV-02325

In the Paddock, there were almost a hundred exquisite pieces of sculpture, each lovingly handmade, each way more delectable than a Brutale 800 street bike. Some of them were obviously well cared for by wealthy teams and some were just with a guy and his dreams. MotoRaces RC-01743 MotoRaces Suk-01708MotoRaces lg-01789

Over lunch, we talked about watching the race. Since we had no idea what was happening anyway, I suggested that we go for maximum sensation by getting close to the track rather than going for the overview. At two o’clock the first race started…

Explain to me why North Korea is an existential problem

Americana, Politics, Psychological Musings

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Across 25 years and five administrations, we have kicked the North Korean can down the road. We are now out of road. National Review

The threat, dubbed “the worst problem on earth,” has persisted across U.S. administrations and only grown more alarming over time. Outgoing President Barack Obama warned Trump during the transition that North Korea was the most urgent and vexing problem to confront. NPR

Across the political spectrum, all the news reports on North Korea act as if North Korea is an existential threat to the World and, especially, the United States. I don’t understand it. Nobody seems to have an explanation of why North Korea is such a big threat (I’m guessing somebody must have but if so, I missed it). We are told that Kim Jong-un is crazy and while he does seem to have a crazy haircut, he doesn’t seem to do crazy stuff. Except for the Kim Jong-uh is crazy stuff, nobody explains why North Korea is such a big problem, they just assume that you know, or everybody knows, that it is obvious.

What I do know, or think I know, at least is that North Korea is a country of about 25 million people ruled by Kim Jong-un, the grandson of Kim Il-sung, the dictator appointed by and backed by the, then, Soviet Union. North Korea is next to China in the north – and China is North Korea’s biggest trading partner and, theoretically, its biggest external influence – and South Korea in the south (duh!). Its people are starving poor and it still has a larger standing army than we do with (although it is considered to be ill-equipped by modern standards). What it does have is a limited nuclear capacity and an increasingly sophisticated ICBM program which North Korea is trying to parlay into an operational nuclear missile fleet – that’s probably the wrong word – capable of hitting anywhere in the United States. The treat of this program has scared the shit out of us going all the way back to the first Bush. The mainstream media have fanned these fears for over twenty-five years alternating between mocking Kim Jong-un – and he does seem easy to mock – and screaming “The sky is falling!” with no explanation of why this is such an existential problem.

What I think, or know I think, at least is that all this hysteria is made up, there is no real danger, North Korea is like a spoiled kid trying to get the world’s attention. Let’s just imagine, for a minute, that North Korea is fabulously successful in their schemes and they have a hundred nuclear-tipped ICBM ready to go. What are they going to do with them? Nothing, the same as Pakistan or Russia (Russia has about 7,300 nuclear warheads, with about 1800 ready to fire, by the way). If they use them on us or South Korea or Japan, the retaliation would annihilate North Korea along with the Kim Jong-un regime. The only thing a nuclear weapon does is prevent an attack. I read that North Korea is irrational to want nuclear weapon, I think it is irrational to not want them, just ask Moammar Kadafi. We have demonized North Korea since Jun 25, 1950, and we do have a record of attacking countries that we demonize. I think what North Korea wants is attention and the Kim Jong-un regime wants recognition as legitimate.

Demonizing North Korea sells newspapers and magazines, it gets people to watch the nightly news, and it gives the American regime in power a useful distraction. It does not contribute to a better world.

Happy 4th of July….sort of

Americana, Around home

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I – all of us really, I think – are constantly barraged with Trump; he is always on the front page of some newspaper and on the cover of at least one mag a week – this week it’s The Economist – he is almost always the lead story on the Daily Show or John Oliver, CNN has become obsessed with him, and my Facebook friends and enemies are  screaming back and forth like they are in the third grade. Trump is changing our world, our country, in a way that I don’t like and I am reminded of that many times every day. This new normal tempers my usual 4th of July enthusiasm, I am both mad at my country and frightened for it. And it’s not just Trump buffoonery, it’s our Forever Wars, our pious outrage when Russia does to our political system what we feel we have the right to do to anybody we damn well please, it’s our slide into a corrupt oligarchy.

But, from here, where we live, from the edge of Silicon Valley, California, USA, it’s a great Fourth! (and the influence in our day to day lives is really in that order). On Saturday, we went to the San Jose Earthquake~Los Angeles Galaxy Soccer Professional Football Game at Stanford. The tickets were from my Little Brother, Edwin, who now works for the Earthquakes. It was a full house – predominately, but far from entirely, upscale Hispanic – and it felt so American. Really, when you think about it, what is more American than the immigrant experience, all of us are from immigrant stock. Immigrants are what turned a backwater set of colonies into the most powerful country the world has ever seen and today, here, in Silicon Valley, immigrants or the sons of immigrants, are changing our world, they have given us Intel, eBay, Google, and Apple to name a couple. Watching The Earthquakes/Galaxy struggle on a cool summer night also felt typically Californian, another form of the Northern/Southern California rivalry. The game itself was great, LA scored early but The Quakes played a better game finally tieing the game at the 75 minute, and then winning during the Stoppage time.

I was going to continue this post with some pictures of the Redwood City 150 Year Anniversary and Parade, for some reason unfathomable to me, I cannot upload them.  The Parade had all the usual players, The Mounted Sheriff’s Patrol, firetrucks – lots of firetrucks which came early in the Parade –  and our local SWAT Team marching through the streets like an occupying army, but it also had lots of floats and marchers that would not fit in most parts of America. The largest group at the parade, by far, was Falun Dafa, which touts that it is an advanced self-cultivation practice of the Buddha School and the DAR was represented by the Gaspar de Portola Chapter – which, since Portola was the first governor of Baja California having been appointed by the Spanish crown in 1767, is more irony than I can grasp standing up –  for example.

Anyway, while it is still July, I want to say, again, Happy Fourth of July.

Slipping into the future

Uncategorized

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Michele and I have sort of slipped into the habit of using Google – and Apple on the other phone, and, sometimes, Waze – to show us the fastest route on even the shortest of trips, especially when it is rush hour (rush four hours?). At first, the results were a little surprising like when Google told us to go surface when we were driving up Highway 880 to Berkeley from the San Mateo Bridge – I didn’t and Google was right and we got stopped in an East Bay traffic jam – then the results became routine as Google routed us off the freeway and through residential neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Now, when freeway traffic is heavy and Google provides an alternative surface route, cars start to back up at the off-ramp and we follow three or four cars – with cars behind us – through a residential area or along a county road.

All of a sudden a quiet residential street can become somebody’s – lots of somebodies’ – fastest way home and that home may be twenty or thirty or forty miles away. Now, everybody has local knowledge and the real locals are starting to react. Some, especially in rich neighborhoods, are starting to petition their City and Town Councils to have one end of their streets blocked off. It seems that the best way for us to get somewhere is often not in the best interest of the people living in places that are on the way to that somewhere. The world has changed in a major way and the institutional antibodies are starting to kick in.

As an aside, I’ve heard somewhere that “medicine is not revolutionary; sanitation is revolutionary” is a Che quote and I have cheerfully quoted it ever since. Now I can’t find it on Google and I am starting to have my doubts so I’ll say Misquoting an alleged Che quote, ‘Computers are not revolutionary; smartPhones are revolutionary,’. Several years ago, Michele and I were walking through the outskirts of a rural village near Yangshuo – China – when a group of school kids appeared ahead of us on the trail. I’ve been in this situation dozens of times, kids in a dirt-road-poor village asking for pencils or candy, but these kids just waved and took pictures of us with their smartPhones. As an aside to the aside, when we were in China, we were offered iPhone knockoffs in about four flavors, the cheapest was just a phone and camera and the most expensive did everything a real iPhone could do. End aside to the aside. All over what we used to call the Third World people who have never had a landline phone or, even, electricity, are getting smartPhones. In rural Africa, places that have been off the grid for 10,000 years, people are getting solar cells for their roofs. In many cases, they are not powerful enough to run a refrigerator but they can run a signal light bulb and a cell phone charging port (if the family is rich enough, they can even get a small, cheap, low-power TV). With their cell phones, 15 million people in Kenya – using a Kenyan App, M-PESA – transfer money without walking to the nearest big village; with cell phones, farmers in India can now get weather forecasts; In Bangladesh, people look for and advertise jobs on CellBazaar; all over the world people are inventing their own Apps to fit their local conditions. According to The Economist, “Unesco pointed to data from the UN, which shows that of the seven billion people on earth, more than six billion now have access to a working mobile phone. ‘Collectively, mobile devices are the most ubiquitous information and communication technology in history….More to the point, they are plentiful in places where books are scarce.'” End of the aside.