I think that this gives better – better meaning accurate and powerful – picture of Afghanistan, or, really, Kabul, than any article in the New York Times. It is about nine minutes long but – if you have nine minutes – really worth it.

http://vimeo.com/15841377

SKATEISTAN: TO LIVE AND SKATE KABUL from Diesel New Voices on Vimeo.

Dexter is – in its strange way – an uplifting story of how we all feel alone and uniquely damaged but are all the same. The title character is a likable serial killer who only kills bad guys, but there are really four or five plots going on at once. It is one of my guilty pleasures.

Recently, in passing, Dexter snidely brushes off the computer as entertainment by suggesting its highpoint is showing a cat that farts and coughs at the same time. That the farting cat is all that is there.

I was reminded of movies dissing television at the dawn of the television era and realized that I may have lived through the complete cycle of television. If so, it is probably the only complete cycle I have lived through. After all, cars were here when I was born and will still be here for a long time. The same with planes.

But, when I was young, most people did not have television. As television grew, it went from television as the upstart, simple and primitive, to television as the dominant story teller. Now, as the dominant story teller,  the best television programs are longer, more complex, movies.

The Sopranos, or Mad Men, or The Wire, or, even, Dexter, tell better stories than any movie. And, like movies felt under siege by television, when when television was just starting; television now feels under siege by computers. Or, maybe, it is the internet, or maybe, just YouTube.  

(This was started yesterday.)

I am back from my knee surgery, feelin' groovy and very Thankful, although I do have a numb knee – try saying that fast twenty times. I had a torn cartilage or meniscus which – I am told – will now be fine. Well fine except that I am getting old and a deteriorating meniscus just comes with age and will, apparently, keep coming.

This picture, part of a set given to us we left the hospital, is purported to be a picture of the inside of my knee joint taken by the doctor with an arthroscopic camera. How is this even possible? How do they get a camera and a light and all the tools required into this tiny little space?  

The operation was done at the Seton Medical Center because the doctor I wanted – Dr. Shabi Khan – operates there. So I get Shabi, who has operated on both of my shoulders¹ and who I think is terrific; and as a bonus, I get Seton. Seton is a Catholic Hospital and everywhere you look, there are crosses. I am slightly cross phobic, but, at Seton, I find it mildly comforting.

The preponderance of my spiritual experiences have been in nature and I think Thoreau was spot on when he said In Wildness Is the Preservation of the World.  But there have been a few people and a few places that just glow with their spirituality: an Irish, Catholic, priest that officiated a wedding in Alviso in both Spanish and English, The Taj Mahal, The David, a hyper alive Mosque in the otherwise dead city of Fathehpur Sikri in India.

And, to a lessor extent, Seton Hospital. I have had four operations at Seton, and, each time, I leave feeling blessed. It isn't that Seton is a high service boutique hospital, it isn't. It has a sort of production line vibe. It isn't that it is cutting edge high tech, although it might be. It is that everybody there seems to be aligned in Service; a soft, easy, greater, Purpose. 

So, given the circumstances, it was a great place to spend the day before the start of Hanukkah. I left feeling thankful.

  ¹ a bad fall skiing at Whistler.

I had to get a blood test today because I am going to get a knee operation this Wednesday. Over the check in counter of the blood lab, is a water color – or, maybe, an acrylic – painting of Lake Como. 

Looking at the picture, I was struck by the beauty of Lake Como and how that beauty must influence the people who live there. I am drawn to beauty – I think everybody is. When Malcolm Pearson and I went to the Mullin Automotive Museum a couple of weekends ago, there were a couple of cars that just stunned us. We just stood in front of them – awe-struck.

At one point, Malcolm said something along the line of God was there when they designed that car. I don't believe in God but I do believe in Something; I just prefer to use the word Divine. I would really prefer to use Connection or Bridge to the Infinite, but both of those are cumbersome and  require too much explanation. Divine seems to work.

I feel pretty much the same way every time I go north down the Waldo Grade and look over Sausalito, the houseboats, Richardson Bay, and across to the Tiburon peninsula. Like Lake Como, it is staggeringly beautiful. I have been over that section of road at least 500 times, and it still takes my breath away. The people who live there, live with that view must be happier than someone living in a slum.

I don't mean always happy or happy just after they got diagnosed with breast cancer, but happier than they would be if they lived somewhere without that view. And it is not just that they are richer. People who live surrounded by the beauty of Lake Como must be happier and, originally, they were peasants; no richer than today's slum dwellers.

As a movie lover, I noticed pretty early that there are two kinds of LA movies: movies that show a beautiful, idyllic, LA and movies that show a seedy, nasty LA. The first is always a happy movie, maybe a romantic comedy, and the second is always a sad, downer movie. I spent a year in Korea, stationed in a HAWK anti-aircraft battery, on a hilltop overlooking the Yellow sea. It was a gorgeous place with staggering sunsets. I remember it with fond memories.

I am starting to think we should spend more money cleaning up slums, planting more trees, painting more bus-stops. I am convinced it would be money well spent. Well spent in that the whole country would be better off.

Meanwhile, back at the Mullin Automobile Museum, when talking about cars as Art, the two names the raise to the top of any list are Ferrari and Bugatti. Today, Ferrari is much more famous and anybody who loves cars, especially anybody who loves race cars, has a favorite Ferrari. Mine is thge 250  Testarosa. 250 Redhead.

Named redhead for the red painted red cam covers – talk about Euro-trash – I love it.  It had six Weber downdraught carburetors and four megaphone shaped exhaust pipes – the sound of it's twelve cylinder engine @ 8,000 rpm has been compared to the sound of canvas tearing  (OK, by Ferrari himself, true, but still) – and very bad brakes that Ferrari thought would be as good as his British competitors if only the brakes had enough cooling, thus the pontoon fenders that make it so lovely. One sold for $12.2 million in 2009.

But Ferrari – el commodore, himself, who couldn't bear to go to races lest he see his beloved cars get hurt – was an heartless industrialist compared to Ettore Bugatti, La Patron.  His art pieces were built in a private compound that La Patron toured daily on his specially designed bike . He built Bugs that ranged in size from – literally, as Joe B. would say – a peddle car for his kids to a limo for kings, called the Royale, with a wheelbase of 169+ inches (for comparison the huge mid-60s Cadillac had a wheelbase of 129.5 inches) and a radiator cap featuring an elephant standing on its hindlegs. .

All Bugattis, even the Royales, were light, agile, and very fast. Fast for their time, and, most of them, just fast. A 1931 Type51 Bugatti race car – not this one which is a 1924 Type 35, but a similar one and they were almost all similar with a distinctive Bugatti look – could hit 140 miles per hour. In a car without seatbelts or a roll bar.   

Bugatti is now owned by Volkswagen and the Bugatti Veyron is the fastest production car in the world at 268 mph but it is not a real Bugatti in that it was not made by La Patron and, in this museum, it is relegated to a dark corner by an exit.

Meanwhile, the center piece of the collection – the holiest of the holies – is the late 1930s Type 57C  – C meaning compressor or what we now call a supercharger – which is reputed to have sold, recently, for somewhere between $30,000,000 to $40,000,000.The cars – and there were only three made – were designed by Ettore Bugatti's son, Jean. They featured a straight eight cylinder, supercharged engine, and had  riveted seams that gave it a distinctive look.

(The first and last pictures are double clickable to enlarge.)

As Malcolm and I stood watching the car rotate on its special turntable we took on the same quiet awe as everybody else. There are side reasons for that awe: the car is restored way past the level with which it left the factory; it sits in the center of the museum among similar but lesser wonders; it is the center of attention; but, for me, it is the artifact-ness of it that most captivates me. It is the distillation of one man's vision.

Building a car is a team effort, but only when that effort is in service to one person's vision does it transcend an automobile as an appliance and become a work of art.