Month: March 2004

Haven’t written in a while — major problems at work, so I’ve been pulling all-nighters. However, I managed to be able to start my mini-vacation with P– on Thursday to San Francisco. We flew out of JFK to SFO and got in at 10 AM. We’re staying at a hotel near Union Square. We managed to pull of going to Fisherman’s Wharf and eat the mandatory Dungeness crab (the best place is the nondiscript place at #2 Fisherman’s Wharf that has the rattiness folding chairs but the best crab subs and whole crab at their sidewalk stand. Got cable car passes which worked great. Walgreens is our savior from tourist trap hell (their souveniors are cheaper, and their Ghirardelli chocolates are cheaper than even the ones sold at Ghirardelli Square). We walked to Ghirardelli Square, saw a few art galleries, had overpriced sundaes at Ghirardelli — we checked and found out that the cups held only 6 ozs! Saw Hero at the San Francisco Asian American Film Festival, finally met Min Jung, gorged food at the Asian Art Museum and went home to conk out. Got to the Alcatraz boat in time by taking a taxi in the morning. Had dim sum in Chinatown at Four Seas (founded 1960 — recommended) and bought Chinese pasteries at a bakery on Grant Avenue that I forgot the name of, just that it is north of Old St. Mary’s Church, but was the biggest, most delicious dan tat’s (egg custard tarts) that I’ve ever seen. Tonight we have half priced tickets to Beach Blanket Babylon and going to the Film Festival’s event at Cafe du Nord. OK, more detail tomorrow — have to find the theater….

I should crawl into bed right about now after quite a day at work (didn’t help that I kept writing 3/3/03 all day long – the sign of an addled brain) — but figured I’d blog a bit.

Post-Super Tuesday – I must say that the whole ballot thing in NYS was a bit confusing, but not that confusing (“Oh, yeah, I’m supposed to be voting for delegates too. Uh…”). Otherwise, the whole Kerry thing was no more exciting than what happened with the Oscars – no surprises. I thought that Edwards should have stayed in longer, but even he knew it just wasn’t happening. At least he tried. And, Vermont – an amusing state, to still go for its ex-governor, even if he’s not in contention. Got to hand it to loyalty, I guess.

“Star Trek: Enterprise” latest episode of 3/3/04 – was actually a good watch. Spoiler alert – but, beware that I don’t necessarily reveal much in detail anyway…. I felt touched by what was happening and paid actual attention; and the cliffhanger – I was left thinking, “And we must wait for how long before the next episode?! They can’t leave us hanging like this!!!” This is the feeling one has to have when watching decent Star Trek (like with the last season of DS9, when the last 10 episodes forced one to catch each episode or else – crazy, because each episode had an unresolved plotline, but made for a good journey of television viewing). If this is indeed the last season of “Star Trek: Enterprise,” I’m at least relieved that tonight’s episode at least made an effort to tie together the insane storylines of this season (and the past two other seasons). It’s an episode that has to be re-seen when UPN re-broadcasts it this weekend – catch the memorable moments and speculative queries (why oh why is T’Pol acting so un-Vulcan?; nice to see Mayweather have more than two sentences this week; and Archer – ah, yes, sir, you do realize how you’ve bent a lot of moral principles this season and managed to remind the crew of the original mission of Season 1, Episode 1). Plus, the return of Crewman Daniels, the time-traveling guy who really annoys the heck out of Capt. Archer (Scott Bakula did a decent job acting as driven captain in this episode; then again, they gave him a meatier script).

Anyway, Daniels once again reminded me of happier times with Star Trek franchise – and it’s funny how I have come to like Daniels – he has every potential to be the most despised character (since he’s messing with timelines every single time and it’s so annoying), and yet the minute he mentions the word “Federation” – the alliance of planets that celebrates diversity and other utopic stuff, the setting of the prior Star Trek franchises (and because Daniels is the guy from the “future” to influence Archer’s pre-Federation era)… ah, Daniels just gives me the warm fuzzy feelings that I had from the prime of “Star Trek: the Next Generation” or those thrilling moments when DS9 war episodes weren’t so depressing (i.e., Capt. Sisko gets all glowy and vows that the Federation will rise again, even in the face of defeat). Of course, Daniels has a hard time making Archer believe in the Federation and its lovely ideals – which is the point, since Archer is in a problematic (re: 9/11/01-like) context and Archer has been awfully distrustful of those against his mission to save Earth.

I have to catch up on “Angel,” since I taped last week’s episode, but caught most of last night’s – intense stuff. There is more to come with this series and hopefully they won’t end as strangely as “Buffy” did last year.