COVID Schmovid I have just travelled through seven different global airports on eight different flights, spending some fifty hours in airplane cabins with their recirculated air, over the past few weeks. We stayed in seven different hotels and ate in something like thirty different restaurants ranging from an elegant Middle Eastern Lebanese restaurant on the Nile to Tre Scalini on the Piazza Navonna in Rome, all the way to a Martian Dome eating hall at…
Here I Go Again Kim worked for David Coverdale in the 80’s when she started working in L.A. trying to jump-start her musical theater career. She was the personal assistant for the band Whitesnake, who came out with the song in 1982 on the Saints & Sinners album. I’ve always liked the song and did even before I met Kim. There is something so familiar and lonely all at once about the lyrics that suggest…
Have I Been Replaced? Even if you live in an insular world, you have heard the volume over artificial intelligence (AI) go up quite a bit over the past few months. The movie A.I., with Jude Law, came out twenty-two years ago, so you know the topic been out there for some time. But I think the two subjects which have brought this to the fore right now are a combination of Tesla’s autonomous driving…
All Quiet on the Western Front, but Not So Sunny The Oscar season is upon us again and as I glanced down the list of nominees for the various big awards, I saw films that I have seen and admired, films I have seen and thought were not worthy and even a film that I have tried to watch twice and cannot get into despite being told its sooooo good. But one movie completely slipped…
ES-Jesus We are leaving Rome today and taking the day to transit to Cairo to start our Egyptian leg of the trip. If anticipation is a big part of any trip, we now have anticipation coming out of our ears. I’ve always wondered how mountain climbers feel when they are hanging out at Camp 4, preparing for the summit. They are acclimating and preparing themselves for the most important and probably most dangerous part of…
Into the Ozone I am a big fan of technology, and especially the communications vehicles like email and text. In fact, since I consider communications the heart of human interaction and evolution, I am especially enamored with how, in my lifetime, our ability to communicate with one another has evolved to the point of her perfection. I only moderate that view with the term “near” since I’m sure that there are some that think we…
The Garden of Eden All of the religions that honor Abraham as their founder embody a version of the fabled garden that sits at the center of the ancient world where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers flow together in Mesopotamia. That area now has a very bad rap since it constitutes the entire country of Iraq and up into Syria and Southern Turkey. If the rampant warfare wasn’t enough, the forces of nature have conspired…
Wadi Bashing What a shame that everything is not perfect at all times in our lives. Most of us come to expect and deal with the imperfection on a day-to-day basis, but on vacation it suddenly takes on expanded importance. We got “dumped” here at the Wadi Rum Sun City Camp at 1 PM today. Other than taking a hike, we had pretty much done everything that Wadi Rum has to offer. I wish I…
Mudslinging Today is the last day of our trip to the Levant. We have an early morning flight tomorrow from Amman Jordan through Heathrow to San Diego. It’s been a great trip, but like all trips, as it winds down, it feels like a long trip and both Kim and I are ready to go home. We have thoroughly enjoyed traveling with Mike and Melisa and we’ve shared some very good times, and some good…
The Belly of the Beast Dehydration sneaks up on you. One minute you are trying not to drink too much water so as not to be inconvenienced by a call from nature, and the next minute you realize your lips are puckering and you wonder if you are becoming a mummy before your time. As our trip to the Levant starts to wind itself down towards our last few days in Jordan, I have a…