48 Hour Genre is Comedy!!!

Stephanie reached into the bag of Genres and fished around and pulled
out COMEDY!!!

Character is Thomas or Thelma
Description: Former Attorney
Prop: String Instrument
Line: "I cancelled my plans for this"

Does anyone have a connection with a cafe or deli or small restaurant
we can shoot in?

Wheels Up at 9 heading to the NYC 48

Once Stan showed up it was quite clear we needed more space so we
loaded up the Sequoia. 4.03 a gallon for gas and 1.99 a gallon for
artificial fruit drinks. Has anyone thought of artificial gas? Maybe
that's what ethanol really is.

California Wine trips and some films too

In the past month I have been very fourtunate to have had business twice in Califonia's wine country.  My trips covered Napa, Sonoma, and Lodi.

The main thing I learned, which many wine lovers probably already know is that the wineries keep the good stuff for themselves. Even the best wineries send their lesser wines to the stores.

I toured at least 4 wineries in each county and I has only ever tried wines from no more than 2 of them, either they don't distribute outside of their own wine club or just not in the places I frequent.

I was amazed that my favorite winery was not in Napa or Sonoma but in Lodi. The Lucas Winery is a very small wine

ry with huge attention to detail and they sell 90% of what they make to their wine club. I would encourage anyone who loves finely crafted wine to visit there, not only for the taste but the prices are amazing for the quality.

I was in Sonoma for 2 days touring because of "The Toll" was in their film festival. And at the recommendation of a friend at the Tiburon Film Fest we started the day with Bubbles at Gloria Ferrer. We stuck to the bubblly and some chocolate for my dad. We sat out on the patio and looked over the vineyard and it was a great start to the da

y. Maybe too quick for Wanda because the bubbles went right to her head. Oops wrong time of he day to get her tipsy. Later that night we were accross the street at the Jacuzzi Winery who threw a great opening party and Wanda was a knockout in her black dress ( I wasnt the only guy starring at her).   We came back the next day for a great and economical tasting and left with a case of wine a club membership and a few tasty bottles of olive oil.
Benziger had the best tour by far ( bought a case of some real quality stuff and signed up for 6 bottles quarterly) Pay the extra couple of dollars and taste in the private room and do the tour that includes tasting in the caves we were only the 2nd tour allowed in the caves and while it was an extra $30 each it was a blast. Arrowhead (bought 1 very nice bottle) and Imagery were very good Mayo was a great surprise and I totally reccomend their pairing restaurant which is located north of the wineries store. I bought a case of heir Pinot Noor that as on sale for $13 a bottle. We didn't make it up to Wattle Creek but did their tasting in Ghiradelli square and they were a great value and taste. (bought a case and signed up for 4 cases within a year)
The biggest disappontment unfortunately came from Kenwood. They were a sponsor of the festival and each day i avoided Their festival tent because the wines wee outside in the sun. Well at the closing party they were the only wine in site and I said what the heck be went for their reserve ( Pinot or Syrah I forget ) I only had 2 glasses and got 1 headache, not good!

I was going to save the Napa trip for anothertime when I had more time. But I called my favorite winery that my brother in-law Derek enjoys and the could fit us in. A huge difference in Lodi to Napa is you need to schedule a tasting to get into the good places.

We decided to take the 35 minute over the mountains instead of the 1 hour trip around them ( well thats the at the GPS read at least ) mullholland drive in LA has NOTHING on the curves and steep dropoffs seen on this shortcut thru the mountain, its not a trek for the faint of heart an especially the buzzed driver!!!

We arrived at Honig Cellars 30 minutes early so we ventured back to the main road and tried Elizabeth Spencer, now I am not saying the wine was vinegary or had a bad nose and ugly body but it was the first place I elected to spit or dump any extra in the glass. We didn't even finish the tasting choices. We headed back to Honig just in time to restore my faith in Napa Valley. Honig was a very small tasting area that was off the beaten path. The parking area had huge rosemary bushes and I think even speariment you knew walking in that this was not a tourist trap, there should have been a sign along the quarter mile driveway that read quality wine ahead. Kelley guided us through a very relaxing tasting with great conversation and a reccomendation for a great dinner place in up the street ( Market, we all loved this place dispite a few mixed reviews on Yelp ) Honig was the first place we bought a magnum, I ask Wanda for it to celebrate my 40th in a few (couple) years. This place was not cheap but it was all delicious. Along with an order for a pretty decent wine club I left with a hat that reads "friends don't let friends drink chardonnay"

The next day I returned to Napa to visit the local Mac dealer ( Napa 1 ) and stopped in at V Sattui winery. I mailmy stopped because I finally saw a sign that matched more than just cheddar cheese with wine. I was delitefully surprised with an extremely drinkable rose "Gamay Rouge" which will be my new hot summer afternoon refresher.

I signed up for more wine to be delivered and wine clubs than just 2 of us can enjoy so I think we will host a few parties.

I will be adding reviews of each place to my yelp page soon

Very happy to have a designated driver! Thanks Mom!

and please forgive spelling and grammar this was my first post from an iPhone and i suffer from fat thumb syndrome.

Google addict

I am caught up in all these google apps like gmail, docs, calendar, and desktop and they are all listed as being 'Beta'.
Is google just the worlds largest drug dealer hooking us up on the free stuff and prepping to charge us through the nose when they release these apps for real?

George Orwell's MAC

I don't know if I have asimilated a MAC persona or my inner MAC has been brought into the light. I always hated people calling their laptop 'My Mac' or worse yet, 'My MacBookPro' with Leopard. For crying out loud its a laptop and it only as good as the operator.
Maybe these people want a sense of belonging that MAC ownership gives them. Is it like being a high tech frat brother? Do you get invited to better parties now?
My father in-law used to call his TV 'My Sony' and my kids wore Pampers and we wiped their faces with Kleenex. So brand names are very often in our common vernacular. But I have always felt that saying 'My MacBook' showed a weakness in character of someone grasping to be included in a larger high school clique.

I write this from Interstate 95 South on my way to Cambridge in My Toyota 4 Runner Sports Edition, onto my Palm Treo 700zw. I will log on later tonight to fix any spelling mistakes on My MacBooPro.

Big Mac Migration

Last Friday I finally gave into the Mac pressure. My last apple ( besides an iPod) was my apple IIe in High School . After that I went to Amiga, and broke down to buy a PC 2 years after Amiga went belly up. So for almost the last 15 years I have been a windows pwrson and our company was a windows shop. I have always had problems with PCs but they were mostly due to the cheap nature of most of the other consumers who kept pushing for faster and cheaper, where Apple always keeps high quality control. Dispite these problems and the huge amount of video and designer peer pressure I stayed PC. I just couldn't see loosing that right mouse button. So OS X comes along and then the switch to intel chips. Those moves and Paralells so I can still run the windows apps I have to allowed me to migrate. Well that's not giving enough credit to Microsoft for releasing Vista which was the final straw that broke this deal for me. 3 of our 5 new Vista based Laptops at the company can't connect to our Windows based network with any regular consistancy.
The last few programs we run that don't run on Mac at least run on Linux and our tech people in the Animation Dept (Brian) have been testing that for a while. So a year from now I would guess our Windows based company will be all Mac and the remaining systems will be a party of my computer museum which also includes an Amiga 1000 and a few Newtek Video Toasters, or they will be relegated to jukebox like my old SGI O2 was for so many years.

The Toll screens at Tiburon

I try and use my cameraphone to videotape the screenings of the films I make. This proved very helpful the first few months of "The Toll" because we re-edited the open and re-timed a few other edits to allow for the laughs to play thru. W.C. Fields was a master at the re-edit to allow for comic timing.