All posts by Steve Stern

A nice way to start the day

November 21, 2014Around homeSteve Stern

When I first moved into our home, in 1981, I had a great view. At night, looking north, I could see lights, bright, sparkling, in the East Bay hills above the inky black Bay. Often I saw the Oakland Coliseum with its bright lights that didn’t seem to be dimmed by the distance. In the mid to late 80s, I rented the house out and moved to Palo Alto for several years. When I moved back, with Michele, the East Bay was still there but there was a row of Redwood trees that were starting to encroach on the view. Now they have blocked most of the view.

This morning, as Michele was drinking her coffee, sitting on the couch and watching the sun start to dry out the backyard, after two days of rain, she saw a Golden Eagle on top of the tallest tree.

We both watched it through the window – and through the Buckeye – but there is only so long one can watch a bird, even a Golden Eagle, sitting in a tree a couple hundred feet away, so I went outside to get a better view and a picture. This Eagle had eyes like a Hawk and, seeing me come out on the deck, sort of fell off the tree and glided away. Still it was a very nice way to start the day.

Proof that some car companies have a sense of humor

November 20, 2014CarsSteve Stern

Luke Akers, a film maker had an old, beater, Nissan Maximum, for sale. He decided to make a humorous one minute film advertising it.

The film apparently went viral – although I didn’t see it – and it prompted Nissan to buy the old car and restore it. They made a sort of – matching film to celebrate their purchase.

Gone Girl by The Brothers Grimm

November 19, 2014FilmSteve Stern

Michele and I saw Gone Girl over the weekend and we were both surprised that the theater was so full (we had lousy seats because we misguidedly got there pretty late thinking the theater would be empty by now). Often, after Michele and I have seen a movie, we will talk about it on the way home and then, when we get home, read various reviews and explanations in a way of continuing the experience. Sometimes I like a movie better than my favorite reviewers, sometimes less – and occasionally much more or much less – but the reviews almost always point out something I missed.

In Gone Girl’s case, we both felt that the movie didn’t hold together, that there were just too many parts that didn’t quite fit. Too many bits in which, on the way home, Michele or I would say Wait a minute, why….? (But that was on the way home, not sitting in the movie theater, there we were both swept up in the drama.) Thinking about the movie in the comfort of our marital home, reading reviews – especially a review and an article in The New Yorker – it became obvious pretty quickly that this was meant to be a modern Fairy Tale, an allegory if you prefer – every bit as gruesome as The Grim Brothers.

This is not a movie about Nick and Amy Dunne’s marriage, this is a movie about Marriage. The unappreciated sacrifices, the built up annoyances that becomes resentments, the disappointments that don’t get addressed, that is part of every marriage. Like all marriages – OK, most marriages – it starts off as the Dream Marriage based on projected fantasies and impossible standards and deteriorates into a power struggle. A power struggle in which the wife is as smart as the husband – maybe smarter – and the husband is as emotional – maybe more emotional – as the wife. Like any marriage, we can take sides but it is hard to think that either side has a monopoly on evil (or virtue).

As Joe Bob used to say Check it out (if you are one of the few people who haven’t seen it already or read the book).

Michele’s new Bauhaus car

November 13, 2014Around home, CarsSteve Stern

Bauhaus was a German design school started by Walter Gropius in 1919 and closed in 1934 with the rise of Hitler (if the name Walter Gropius is familiar, it might be because he escaped from Germany and came to the United States, where he ended up influencing mid-century American Design and Architecture). Bauhaus was started to bring modernist design to mass-produced artifacts and, while it did have some influence, it ended up being most famous as the design school that the Nazis hated. Because its lifespan roughly coincided with the short period of pre-war German democracy and freedom, Bauhaus also has become – vaguely – emblematic of the interwar German avant-garde.

During World War II, Audi, like almost all German companies, relied on slave labor under brutal conditions. Audi, alone, used about 20,000 slaves and the conditions were so brutal that about 4,500 workers died. As Audi admitted this – years after the fact, naturally enough – it does not want to be defined by it, so, about the time that Volkswagen was coming up with the new Beetle, Audi’s California Design Studio came up with a design exercise they said was influenced by the Bauhaus school/movement. Audi said that the TT embraced Bauhaus values like Honesty, Simplicity, and Purity, which – while I am not sure those were exclusively or, in many cases, actually Bauhaus values – resulted in a car with a very distinctive, very stylized, design.

I think Audi was trying to do two things by the Bauhaus reference: exorcise Audi’s connection to the Nazi regime and establish a new design direction. I don’t know about exorcising their Nazi past, but the TT did change Audis corporate design. Michele said that she has lusted after a TT since they first came out and she finally got one.

Her TT is in the form of a three-year old Audi TT convertible. While it is only a garden variety TT – not a S or RS – it is still very distinctive looking and surprisingly fast. When we were in Napa for a sort of proto-Thanksgiving for Michele’s stepfather, last weekend – to get me out of the house – Michele suggested that I take the TT out for drive. Actually, Michele had suggested I photograph some vineyards, but I opted to find a back road on which to go out and play.

I’ve owned 32 cars over the years, alot of them were fast – fast for their time, at least – but I can only think of one time I’d driven a car that was faster than this (my beloved Renault R5T2 which, with its snub nose and rump, is similar to the TT). Sure, there are lots of faster cars out there, much faster in many cases, but this car is much, much, faster than I am. Especially on a back road. It has an automatic transmission with paddle-shifters that I couldn’t get the hang of, so I just stuffed the shifter into the Sport setting and drove. The transmission always knew what gear I should be in, not even once, stepping on the gas when coming out of a corner, did it feel like the wrong gear. On a rough road like I was on, the TT just hunkered down and scooted. It was great fun.

It had been a perfect day to play on back roads with a shiny new convertible. Now, as the day wore down, with the temperature dropping and the light changing – getting soft and warm – I turned on the radio to Jazz 91.1. In the fading light, listening to Jeremy Udden on alto saxophone, I cruised back to the proto-Thanksgiving dinner. Sometimes, Life is sweet.

They are moving in and taking over

November 7, 2014UncategorizedSteve Stern

For at least the last ten years, we have had a doe that visits our backyard. Michele would go out and talk to her in a soothing voice and she has become more brazen, even walking up on the deck to eat the potted plants that I have brought on to the deck to protect. Then she started bringing her fawns with her. Last spring she even left her two fawns in our ivy. Somehow, it seemed like we had become her babysitters.Both Michele – I think – and I have mixed feeling about all this. Yes, it is fun having the deer around, but they also do an amazing amount of damage. They eat everything, including stuff that is – allegedly – deer proof.. This morning, when I went out to the garden, there was a large buck just camped there. I snuck back and grabbed my camera but by then he was nervous, jumped up, and left. I didn’t get much in the way of photos, so you will just have to take my word for the fact that he was a magnificent animal.