The Conical Glass: July 2007

Monday, July 30, 2007

Hooting and rooting for the Marlins

I was watching the Giants play the Marlins on Saturday, and got really excited when I noticed that the Marlins had a second baseman on the team named Dan Uggla. "Hey," I said to Joe, "'uggla' means 'owl' in Swedish!" I Googled him and found that, indeed, he "descends from the untitled branch of a Swedish noble family." Apparently, Uggla's name is a source of merriment to sportswriters and fans; a Sporting News blogger said the moniker is "one of the goofiest names I ever heard." Naturally, any Swedish music fan is familiar with superstar Magnus Uggla. I'm guessing the two men are related somewhere down the line. (By the way, the announcers pronounce it "ugh-la," but it should properly be closer to "oog-la.")

While looking up info on Dan Uggla, I found that the Marlins have another player of Swedish ancestry on the team: relief pitcher Matt Lindstrom. Matt is a Mormon who did his two years of missionary work in Sweden. He played in Friday's game, but I missed that one since we were busy seeing "The Simpsons Movie."

I don't have any connections to South Florida -- I suppose my Florida allegiance would have to be with the woeful Devil Rays, since their dreadful domed stadium is located just a couple miles from my parents' winter home in St. Petersburg -- but the presence of two Swedish-Americans on the Marlins' roster means I'll be rooting for them, at least a little bit.

posted by 125records @ 1:27 PM 0 comments

Sunday, July 29, 2007

Animation sensations

Back in the spring, when all the summer movie preview articles were starting to appear in magazines & newspapers, I looked through the list and declared that there was only one film I was interested in seeing -- "The Simpsons Movie." I'm one of those "Simpsons" devotees who quotes the show incessantly and owns many of the seasons on DVD. Out of the 400+ episodes, I would estimate that I've seen more than 395 of them. (I missed a couple back in Seasons 16 & 17, but I'm sure I'll catch them eventually.)

Like most old school "Simpsons" fans, I believe that the show is a few years removed from its finest era, but even the most blah episode has at least a couple good gags. Besides, an all-star team of the show's finest writers had come on board to script the film, so I figured it couldn't lose. I had to be there the day it opened! (I would have been at the first matinee, but decided to wait a few hours, since Joe has that pesky job to go to during the day.)

Obviously there are a lot of folks who feel the way I do, since the movie did amazing business, "exceed[ing] even the most optimistic expectations as it grossed an estimated $72.9 million." That's a lot of doughnuts.

But is it any good? I wasn't quite sure what to expect going in, but it turns out that instead of going in a bold new direction a la the "South Park" movie, "The Simpsons" basically delivers a super-sized episode of the TV program, with only a couple celebrity cameos. Amazingly, though, it never lagged during its 90-minute running time, although the jokes are come at a much more fast & furious rate during the first half. I don't think any "Simpsons" fan will be disappointed; indeed, IMDB users have already voted the film into the site's top 250 (though I'm a little dubious about its position above classics like the original "Manchurian Candidate," "Annie Hall" and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington"). It's fun to see a wide-screen Springfield, and there's a little PG-13-rated humor that the writers could never get past standards & practices.

We decided to make it an animation twofer and go see "Ratatouille," despite my earlier reservations about the whole rat thing, because so many people were saying it was a really excellent movie. I was happy that I was able to overcome my squeamishness about the rat cooking -- Remy does most of his work hiding under a chef's toque, controlling the inept cook Linguini through an elaborate system of hair-pulling -- until one scene near the end of the movie, when a meal at Linguini's restaurant is prepared by an entire army of rats. The film makes a point of showing that the rats are steam-cleaned before they begin to cook, but still! YUCK! Ultimately, I think one rat can be cute, but an infestation of rats is just horrifying. Of course, being Pixar, the film looks positively gorgeous and has a heartwarming ending. But I don't think I'd take anyone with a rodent phobia to see it.

"Ratatouille" did make me feel kind of sad about the fact that I dislike cooking so much. I would love to run around the kitchen tossing sprigs of chervil into a saucepan and creating delectable meals, but even when I do cook, I'm hopeless unless I have a recipe to follow. I eat way too much mediocre food. You know, maybe I would let a rat into my kitchen, as long as he kept his paws clean and could whip up a mean souffle au fromage.

posted by 125records @ 9:13 PM 1 comments

Friday, July 27, 2007

Outsourcing life - the investigation!

In an exclusive Conical Glass investigation, I spent 10 minutes at Barnes & Noble yesterday paging through The Four Hour Work Week in order to glean its secrets -- chiefly, how do you create an $80,000-a-month, "hands-off business" that will enable you to live the glamorous lifestyle of the New Rich? Here it is: become a professional middleman. In other words, find something that people want to buy; sell it over the Internet at a big mark-up; outsource the fulfillment; make $$$. One of the examples used in the book was French sailor shirts. Use Google Ad Words to draw traffic to your web site. Voila -- instant riches!

OK, I'm simplifying (you didn't really expect me to read the entire book, did you?), but it seems like this would be more likely to lead to a lot of people overestimating the demand for things and thus being stuck with gigantic caches of merchandise they are unable to unload. Maybe I'm just bitter because I'm sitting on a storage room full of unsold CDs.

I know one person who is very rich. He has the lifestyle that I'm sure Four Hour readers would love to emulate -- first class travel, a luxurious home in a desirable area, meals in fine restaurants, lavish home theater, etc. How did he make all of that money? He worked really, really hard for years and years, at the expense of personal relationships, sleep, etc. Believe me, it was no easy road to riches, and I wouldn't want to do what he did.

The truth is, even though it's sometimes aggravating, I like my job and would probably keep doing it even if I won big money in the lottery (unlikely to happen, as I don't play the lottery). It's a fairly creative, fulfilling career, and for the most part, I really like my clients.

My advice: if you can't cut your work week down to four hours, find something that you like to do that also pays a decent wage. Save 10% of your income in stocks, bonds and/or a high-yield savings account, so if your job becomes intolerable, you won't feel trapped, because you're not living paycheck to paycheck. If anyone wants to try and spin that into a book, feel free.

posted by 125records @ 11:22 AM 2 comments

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Outsourcing life

A couple days ago, I heard a brief story on public radio's "Marketplace" about a new book, The Four Hour Workweek. Based on the four-minute piece, the author's thesis is that you're a big ol' sucker if you're working more than the titular four hours, and you can accomplish this by outsourcing everything to India. I'm not kidding! They can even apologize to your spouse if you've been fighting, according to this excerpt from the book. Maybe I could pay somebody in India $5/hour to write blog entries for me. ("I need 500 words on what I thought about 'The Simpsons Movie,' stat!")

Anyway, my thoughts drifted back to the "Marketplace" story today because I'm doing something super-tedious: setting up an Amazon.com Associates store for one of my clients. It involves looking up the ISBN numbers for around 100 books. Couldn't someone in India be doing this for me instead?

I thought I'd look up the company mentioned in the book excerpt, Brickwork India. I Googled them and found their web site. Instead of finding info about how I can get my very own personal ISBN-searching assistant, I saw this error message:

Server Default page

If you see this page it means:
1. hosting for this domain is not configured
or
2. there's no such domain registered in Plesk

OK, that's a bad sign. If the company can't keep its web site up, I'm not sure I trust them to work on deadline for me. Then there's this blog entry, written by a would-be Brickwork customer who complains, "[M]y experience with them has been nothing short of laughable... I tried to try their services out with a personal assistant, and all I got was a complete runaround."

The Four Hour Workweek allegedly contains info on how you can earn big bucks by operating "a hands-off business that generates $80K per month with no management." I might have to flip through the book at my local Barnes & Noble to see what sort of business that might be. My current business generates a lot, lot less than that, and requires a lot of pesky work!

Ironically, one of the "hands-off businesses" that often gets mentioned in get rich quick books & articles is affiliate programs, such as Amazon.com Associates stores. I would love to know what the average affiliate actually earns; I'm guessing it's pennies, not thousands of dollars, per month. I was unable to get any realistic figures, since Googling "affiliate programs income" and similar phrases mainly gets you tons of hits on shady web sites. Personally, I have been running an Amazon.com Associates store on my lineups page for several years. That page gets literally thousands of hits a day, and I earn roughly $200 a month from it. That's not bad, but it's hardly my ticket to a life of leisure, either. I can't be sure, of course, but my guess is that I'm in the top 5% of associates in terms of income earned.

The truth is, I am something of a control freak and I can't imagine delegating anything, so it's doubtful that I would be a good candidate for outsourcing my life. If anyone has read the book or is making $80K a month through a "hands-off business," I urge you to post a comment here and share your opinions/secrets of wealth.

posted by 125records @ 2:22 PM 2 comments

Sunday, July 22, 2007

The trouble with Harry

Note: There will be NO SPOILERS in this post! A couple of minor plot points will be mentioned in passing, but that's it.

I wouldn't call myself a Potterhead. I have read all of the "Harry Potter" books, but I've only seen one of the movies (I had a hard time staying awake), and I never spend any time between releases contemplating the characters' fates or hanging out in online fan fora like Mugglenet.com. However, I do think the books are sort of fun -- who wouldn't want to find out that they're not just an ordinary kid, they're a wizard, and an extra-special one at that? Along with Lemony Snicket's "Series of Unfortunate Events," they've forced me to skulk around the children's section of the library.

I think there were four books out when I started reading the series. As the hoopla surrounding the books grew, I realized that unless I read them right away, there was no way to avoid spoilers. Things reached a fever pitch with the sixth volume, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I managed to get on the waiting list at my local library months before it was released so that I could get it on the day it came out. A good thing, too, since almost immediately, news of a major character's death was all over the Internet. Some cheeky bastard even started selling a T-shirt that said, "[Character] dies on page 596."

After that big fat spoiler, I knew it was even more imperative to read Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as soon as possible. Again, I reserved the book at the library as soon as it was entered into the system; there were already 110 people ahead of me, but luckily, they order about a zillion copies. Then I put my name on the list at a second library as a back-up. Both came in Saturday morning, so Joe went out and picked them up soon after the libraries opened. One for each of us! Finishing the book was no simple task, since it's over 750 pages long. And while it might be heresy to diehards, I think J.K. Rowling, or her editor, could easily have cut out a couple hundred pages; there is way too much time spent on Hermione, Ron and Harry running around the English countryside, for instance. After spending months on the run, avoiding danger, what finally takes them out of their safe zone is a really stupid mistake on Harry's part.

At least the books are brisk, easy reads, even though I kept forgetting plot points from the series -- unless you're in the habit of rereading them multiple times, who can keep track of the whole Potterverse during the long breaks between books? I couldn't recall what a Horcrux was, for instance, and was Mundungus Fletcher good or evil? Do you have to memorize the whole Black family tree to keep track of who's who?

I finished the book around 1 AM. I was satisfied with the ending. And now that I've made it through all 4,000+ pages of the Harry Potter series, I'm content to put it behind me. I'm not sorry that there won't be any more Potter books; it was originally mapped out as a seven-part series, and Rowling delivered on her promise to tell the complete story of Harry's years at Hogwarts. Now that I've read "Deathly Hallows," I can move on to the other books in my to-be-read pile. Luckily, I don't have to dodge spoilers for any of those, so I can read them at my leisure.

posted by 125records @ 7:50 PM 2 comments

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Silence is golden

For several years, I have been meaning to attend the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. I'm not a particular aficionado of silent film -- I've only seen about a half dozen of them, mostly back in the day when the Paramount in Oakland used to show one each summer -- but the idea of an entire film festival devoted to silent film just seemed incredibly cool. Anyway, it always got away from me, until this year, when about eight thousand mentions of the festival on Mick LaSalle's weekly podcast (fest founder Stephen Salmons is a frequent guest) kept it at "top of mind," so to speak. I bought advance tickets for the opening night screening of "The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg," starring Norma Shearer and Ramon Novarro.

I'm glad I purchased them well in advance, since the film was sold out. Not only that, but an hour before the show was due to start, the line snaked all the way around the block. Apparently silent filmgoers get to the Castro even earlier than noir fans and International Film Festival attendees.

"The Student Prince" is 80 years old, but I was surprised at how engaging and touching the story was and how good the production values were. It's the tale of a lonely prince (Novarro) who goes off to college and falls in love with a barmaid (Shearer). In the words of LaSalle: "This isn't about nostalgia -- seeking the past in the present. It's about the opposite, finding the present in the past. Finding eternal human values and enduring emotions." What's more enduring than a love story? Really, it was much more enjoyable than most of today's "modern" entertainment, and Dennis James did a stunning job providing live musical accompaniment.

The only annoying thing about silents is that there are always scenes where people are talking, and you get the gist of what they're saying, but you really wish you could hear their voices -- or, at least, lip-read. Of course, since Novarro was Mexican, it's doubtful he would have been cast as a German prince if it had been a talkie. One of my favorite things about seeing old movies is looking up the bios of the stars whose lives I'm not already familiar with; Novarro's story was briefly summarized in the festival program. Sadly, he was beaten to death by a pair of male hustlers at his Hollywood home in 1968; the gay Novarro frequently employed prostitutes. Jean Hersholt also played a major role in the film -- he is, of course, well known to Oscar watchers because of the Humanitarian Award that bears his name.

The festival continued all weekend long with 11 different programs, but I was too overbooked to make the trek to the Castro more than once. Now that I've finally attended the fest, though, I shall certainly plan to go back next summer.

posted by 125records @ 11:01 PM 1 comments

Monday, July 09, 2007

Assassination vacation

A few years ago, after seeing the animated movie musical "South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut," I walked out of the theater humming one of the score's catchiest songs. I won't mention the title here, because it is incredibly obscene. If you saw it, though, you undoubtedly know the one I mean. As melodic as that song was, it would be incredibly embarrassing to be caught singing those lyrics in public.

Stephen Sondheim's musical "Assassins" also has some catchy tunes in its score, and if you sang them aloud, you might just find a Secret Service man on your doorstep one of these days: " If you can shoot a president, you can get the prize. C'mere and kill a president!"

"Assassins" is kind of a strange play -- not a lot of sympathetic characters, after all. The idea of all the presidential assassins past & present converging on stage to talk and sing is what you might call an unlikely subject for musical theater. Not surprisingly, it wasn't a huge success; its 2004 Broadway version won five Tonys, but closed after just 101 performances.

The Custom Made Theater Company is currently presenting what it refers to on its web site as "Assassins'" "San Francisco professional premiere," which makes me wonder if, say, a local high school drama class beat them to the punch (what 15-year-old doesn't dream of someday portraying Charles Guiteau?). Custom Made does have a couple Equity actors in the "Assassins" company, but as is often the case with tiny theaters like this one (its Off-Market Theater has just 70 seats), the quality of the acting was rather inconsistent. One of the performers in particular was a weak link in the show; I'm not going to name names, since you have to admire the gung-ho spirit of any company putting on an ambitious show like "Assassins" on a shoestring budget and I don't want to be churlish. Joe and I both agreed that the scarily charismatic Molly Coogan, who played would-be Ford assailant Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, was the standout in the cast. Not only was she a dynamite singer, she really had that glazed, insane look of love in her eyes when she talked about her darling "Charlie" (Manson).

On to music that's not about killing presidents: one of the interesting things about iTunes is that it keeps track of exactly how many times you listen to every song in your playlist, which can be informative (why do I never make it all the way through that Neutral Milk Hotel album?) and/or embarrassing (I've listened to Morningwood's "Nth Degree" how many times?). Most of the iTunes stuff has been downloaded from eMusic; sometimes I rip my CDs, other times I just listen to them on my stereo. So it's hard to get an exact count of what my most-played music is. I would venture to guess that I've given the most spins so far this year to Fujiya & Miyagi's Transparent Things CD, which isn't the sort of thing I normally listen to (dance music!), but I really, really love it. It's very Krautrock-y -- despite the name, F&M are an English band, not Japanese. Their new single "Uh" is posted on this MP3 blog, and it sounds, well, pretty much exactly like Transparent Things, down to the "taka-taka-boom-chik"s. If you like "Uh," you'll probably want to pick up the CD (not available on eMusic, unfortunately); if not, well, F&M probably aren't for you.

My most-played album on iTunes, as proven by the hard numerical evidence, is Spoon's A Series of Sneaks -- I know it's almost 10 years old, but I just bought it on eMusic this year, so I was late to the party. It's a brief (just over 30 minutes) album and rather fragmented; a lot of the songs are under the two-minute mark, and you kind of wonder if the band just got bored and didn't feel like finishing them. It took me a few plays to warm up to the album, but now it seems perfect just the way it is. Plus, since I still never stop mourning the break-up of Pavement, "Advance Cassette" sounds so much like that band that hearing it for the first time was like discovering a great lost Pavement track. Since the bands were active at the same time, I wonder if it's a purposeful homage. Apparently Sneaks was originally released by major label Elektra, sold miserably, and the band was given the boot shortly thereafter. It really says something about the 90s and the aftermath of Nirvana's success that such an aggressively low-fi, uncommercial album was put out by a major at all. At this point I feel so attached to Sneaks that I haven't downloaded any of their other stuff for fear that it would disappoint, but if any Spoon partisans want to suggest a worthy follow-up, go for it.

posted by 125records @ 5:13 PM 7 comments

Friday, July 06, 2007

17th century fart jokes

I always dread the period farces that A.C.T. seems to put on every season. I just don't find them funny. "The Rivals," from the 2005-06 season, might be my least favorite play ever produced by A.C.T. People running around in wigs, breeches, jerkins and bodices, indulging in witty wordplay and double entendres -- sorry, give me "Avenue Q" any day. Therefore, I practically had to force myself to cross the bay for "The Imaginary Invalid," the Moliere play ending the current season. (I always figure that when you pay for season tickets, you must see everything.)

"Invalid" is about a hypochondriac, so the play is chock full of jokes about enemas and -- God help me -- flatulence. Yes, some sound effects guy had to create fart noises and then amplify them so they could be broadcast into the theater. The first 10 minutes were excruciating. Things perked up a little when the lovely & talented Rene Augusen enters; she plays the wife of the invalid, Argan, and the evil stepmother to Argan's daughter Angelique. The play almost became tolerable with the introduction of Angelique's love interest Cleante, played by Jud Williford, who made a big splash earlier this year in "American $uicide." Like all the actors in the play, Williford overacts to the max, as he also did in "$uicide," but somehow, he managed to reveal some expert comic timing and was far less annoying than the other actors, save for Augusen, who is always a delight. Happily, Williford's just joined the theater's core acting company; please, A.C.T., give him a nice subtle role next year.

The usually reliable Gregory Wallace irks as a 17th century version of Urkel, and Stephen Anthony Jones manages, despite copious rouge and lipstick, to retain a bit of dignity in his role as Argan's doctor. Everyone leaps and minces around the stage as if they were modeling their movements on Monty Python's "Ministry of Silly Walks" sketch. I would be remiss if I didn't report that the audience seemed to adore it -- they were laughing from start to finish. So I guess this one just wasn't to my taste.

So, as we do every year, let's rate the A.C.T. season, from best to worst!

Blackbird
The Little Foxes
The Circle
Hedda Gabler
After the War
The Imaginary Invalid
Travesties

Yes, I'm actually ranking Tom Stoppard's "Travesties" below "Invalid," because "Travesties" is one of my favorite plays and I thought A.C.T.'s production was kind of sucky. All in all, I'd give the season a B-; it was their 40th anniversary, but I felt their big prestige productions, "Hedda Gabler" and "After the War," just didn't deliver. "Blackbird" and "Foxes" were both excellent, "The Circle" was very good, and the rest... eh, a little disappointing.

Of course, hope springs eternal, so I've already renewed my subscription for Season #41. It would be hard to screw up Mamet's "Speed-the-Plow," and the recent Broadway version of "Sweeney Todd" should be worth seeing (I must admit I've avoided it thus far because of my aversion to the theme of cannibalism, but at least the music should be great). Happily, there are no 17th century farces on the roster.

posted by 125records @ 4:32 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Jamaica: no mistaica

I am blogging in the air again, flying over the Rocky Mountains. So far our trip home from Jamaica has been one of those horrible travel nightmares that make you want to stick close to home for a good long while. First of all, our flight from Montego Bay to JFK yesterday was 3 hours late in departing. Then, once we got to JFK, it took us two full hours to go through customs and claim our luggage. If there's anything duller than watching bags go around and around a carousel for an hour-plus, I don't know what it is. Plus, when my suitcase FINALLY arrived, it was partially unzipped and the bright green luggage strap around it, which I've used for years, was gone.

Note (added later): According to FlightStats.com, the Montego Bay-Jamaica flight on American Airlines is on time only 27% of the time, and its delays are considered "excessive" 39% of the time! It departed a whopping 5 hours late the day after we flew, so I guess we should count our blessings.

Since our flight to SFO was leaving this morning, we had reserved a room at a Ramada Inn near the airport. By the time we checked in, it was after 2 AM and we had time to get about 5 hours of sleep before we had to get up again. Despite the fact that it's the closest hotel to JFK, the Ramada only runs one small shuttle to the airport every 30 minutes. Of course, there were lots of people waiting to get on it, so everyone had to smoosh in there with their luggage so it was more crowded than a Tokyo subway car.

One interesting thing about going through airport security in Jamaica: they don't make you take your shoes off! Hooray. It's probably a good thing since it seems like most of the people catching a flight there are wearing flip-flops with no socks. I see more and more people wearing flip-flops on a daily basis, not just in Jamaica but in New York and San Francisco, too. How do people walk on them all the time without winding up with foot problems? They're not exactly supportive footwear.

Anyway, this is a really petty complaint but here it goes anyway. One of the nice things about United business class is that you get a portable DVD player stocked with a bunch of recent releases. I noticed that one of the selections was the Will Smith tearjerker "The Pursuit of Happyness," which I'd wanted to see but hadn't gotten around to catching in the theater. At first, my DVD player wouldn't start. I traded it in for another. Then one channel of the headphones wasn't working. Finally, everything seemed fine and I watched the first 75 minutes of the film. Suddenly, there were a bunch of technical glitches -- the disc skipped, and the soundtrack wasn't audible. I assumed it was a problem with the DVD, so I had the flight attendant exchange it for another. I forwarded it to the proper chapter and it did the exact same thing! I have no idea what that's about, but I just gave up. I'm obviously having a bad technology day. At least my laptop is working. I'm going to run over to the video store when we get home so I can rent the movie and finish watching it later today.

Note (added later): Fortunately, my neighborhood video store had a copy available for rental. Sometimes bricks & mortar really does beat Netflix.

Luckily, I've been pretty calm on all my flights. I think the techniques I learned in the book did help. I'd checked it out of the library, but I plan to purchase my own copy in case I need a refresher. I'd like to go back to Europe next year, and eventually I'd love to visit Australia and New Zealand. Of course, even if I'm not paralyzed with fear, I do get bored during long plane trips. I read, I do crosswords and sudokus, I listen to podcasts and music on my iPod, I write, I watch movies if the player works... but there's just something about being trapped in an enclosed area for hours and hours that drives me to constantly check my watch and wish I could do something else -- preferably something that doesn't involve sitting. If anyone has any coping strategies for long-haul flights, I'd love to hear 'em. (Maybe Yellojkt will weigh in now that he's back from China?) Keep in mind that I can't sleep on planes and I don't want to take any sedatives, either.

So let me do a final analysis of the Jamaica trip. To recap, I'd been having trepidations about it for almost a year now -- the country is so far away! I'm going to be stuck in a house with a bunch of extroverts I don't know very well! It's dangerous! The "far away" part worked out OK, I suppose, since at least we were able to fly business most of the way. As for the people, they are all really nice, great, friendly folks. We're just different. They're all Baby Boomers, so there was a bit of a generation gap. Usually, that doesn't bother me; a good percentage of my friends are over 50 but for some reason, I seldom think about that, maybe because we have so much in common. Books, for instance. Joe and I were the only people in the house who did any serious reading. I got through five books and he read two, though his were both really long. Not once did anyone ever ask me what I was reading or even take a look at my books, which is weird to me, since my friends and I would have been totally into comparing notes and trading paperbacks. There were also numerous board games at the house where we were staying, but we never succeeded getting a game of Scrabble going. Again, not bad -- just different.

On our last night in Jamaica, I did finally agree to go out with the crowd. Several folks had been eager to hear live reggae music, which apparently is trickier than you'd think. (However, there were posters all over the place for the Reggae SumFest later this month, which should provide plenty of opportunity.) They complained that even the music DJs played in clubs was not Jamaican -- lots of American hip-hop, apparently, which appeals to the younger generation of Jamaicans and tourists. The concierge at the Half Moon had recommended a club at the Coral Cliff hotel, right across the street from Margaritaville. The Coral Cliff is also a casino, which seemed like a bad sign (could you hear the music over the din of slot machines?), but the lounge was actually quite pleasant and the band was not bad. They played a few pop-reggae numbers before going into a set of covers of American hits, like Tina Turner's "Simply the Best" and Aretha Franklin's "Respect," so it was hardly the authentic indigenous music of the islands. We left at the reasonable hour of 11:30.

Is Jamaica dangerous? I would say no, as long as you have someone like our driver Ruben to steer you in the right direction. Joe and I were fairly cautious, but our housemates went out a lot and visited public beaches & markets and experienced nothing worse than a bit of harassment from ganja dealers (the men) and a few young hustlers looking for rich Americans a la How Stella Got Her Groove Back (the women). They answered with a firm "no", and it all made for a good story at breakfast the next day. Certainly if you are going to an all-inclusive resort like the Half Moon or Sandals, you'll probably be as safe as you are in your own home. The resorts also run their own sightseeing excursions for guests, and if you need a cab, state-licensed taxis are easily recognizable by their bright red license plates.

Jamaica is a poor country and the tourism industry is incredibly important; according to this site, one of every three employed workers in Jamaica works in tourism and services, and the average income is only US$3,660 per year. I wouldn't let a few well-publicized incidents deter anyone from going -- I mean, horrible things happen in New York too, but I rode the subway there at 2 AM and experienced no problems. People have been mugged and killed right in my neighborhood, and heaven knows things are pretty bad in Oakland right now. No place is 100% safe and if you're looking for lots of warm weather, sun and sand, Jamaica's got it.

Across the board, the Jamaicans we dealt with were incredibly helpful, friendly and had an almost old-fashioned courtliness to their manners. The staff at our estate could not have been nicer. On the last day, Sylvia, the cook and household manager, asked me when we'd be coming back, and that she hoped we'd return, and I'm quite sure she meant it. Our group was sincerely appreciative of her cooking, and we eagerly ate every Jamaican specialty she dished up, even stuff that seemed a bit weird initially. Joe can be a bit of a picky eater, but he devoured things I never thought he'd touch. We took photos of the gorgeously arranged platters of food and applauded after meals. I think we were a pretty fun, low-maintenance bunch.

house

Despite its problems, Jamaicans are obviously very proud of their country. The only time I saw the unflappable Sylvia upset is when she was telling me about a past guest who had referred to Jamaica as "backwards." It's obviously not as techno-savvy as the U.S. but pretty much everyone there seems to carry around a cell phone, and there are numerous Internet cafes. The Montego Bay cable system even has Comedy Central!

So, would I return? I might, though I must admit that I'm such a city girl that my ideal vacation spot is someplace with tons of museums, theater and urban architecture; I'm not into water activities (several of our housemates were avid snorkelers) and sitting around on the beach. But if I could find 8 friends to share the house who were into board games, reading & discussing books, and watching "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report," and Sylvia was still there to do the cooking, I'd at least consider it. I definitely wouldn't take American Airlines' flight from JFK to get there, though.

pool

posted by 125records @ 9:49 PM 2 comments

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Name: Sue
Home: San Francisco Bay Area, California, United States
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