The Conical Glass: South by Southwest (to Palo Alto)

Sunday, March 23, 2008

South by Southwest (to Palo Alto)

Joe & I went down to Palo Alto yesterday to visit his dad and check out "North by Northwest" at the Stanford Theater. I've wanted to see "NXNW" for years, and have kept missing it (I believe its last local presentation was at the Cerrito Theater, but we were in Florida that weekend). And no, renting the DVD was not an option. Anyway, perhaps it was the years of build-up, and seeing that Cary Grant-running-from-the-cropduster footage during every Chuck Workman "great movie moments" Oscars montage, but I found it a bit disappointing, especially compared to other Hitchcock films of his Hollywood era (I'm partial to "Vertigo," which came out just one year earlier, and "Rear Window"). I loved the noir set-up, with Grant's ad man being mistaken for a spy, but the film just seemed a bit too long and convoluted, and Eva Marie Saint's character seems like a lesser blonde when compared to the likes of Grace Kelly and Kim Novak. Not that it was bad, mind you, I just don't think I'd call it a masterpiece.

We had lunch at Caffe Riace, which was, sadly, free of celebrities, but had a lovely ambiance on its outdoor plaza. A nearby couple was dining with their two poodles, which were dressed in tiny country club logo'ed tennis outfits and sitting in a pink baby carriage. A woman happened by at one point and started talking to them, I overheard the couple say they live in Atherton, which is an incredibly wealthy Silicon Valley community and the home of the most affluent ZIP code in the U.S., according to Forbes. If you're rich enough, I suppose, you can push your poodles around in a baby carriage without anyone laughing at you. Of course, I'm enough of a dog nut that I found it slightly adorable.

One of the fun things about visiting Joe's dad is seeing all the new technology he's accumulated since our last visit. He is an early adopter and always buys stuff the day it comes out. This time, he had an Amazon Kindle, which unfortunately didn't seem to be working (at least I couldn't figure it out -- I don't think he's used it much yet), and one of those super-thin Mac laptops that the ad shows being slid into a manila envelope. If I traveled a lot, I would definitely consider getting one of those because it's so light. As for the Kindle, since I'm such a dedicated library user, I can't see spending $400 for an e-reader, but it would be cool if a lot of out of print titles were somehow made available for the Kindle. Not sure how that could happen, but really, if you could download, say, the collected works of Lenore Glen Offord (a rather obscure mid-20th century mystery author my book group will be reading next month), that would be an incentive to buy it.

Before heading home, we had dinner at Darbar, where we got enough Indian leftovers to last us a couple days at least.

posted by 125records @ 6:41 PM

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