Half Moon Bay Memories & El Granada Observer

about selling my car. After all, I’ve known the J30 for 15 years; we’re close; she’s like a pet. I’m even concerned about who the next owner will be. I’m worried about it.

Today I drove the J30 to the Park Auto Sales lot in San Bruno

Here’s my pal, the J30–note “the spoiler”

Joel took the car; he also owns racehorses that win

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And, finally, here’s a little video called “Goodbye J30, Goodbye”. To view, click on the link below

http://vimeo.com/1020148

with troubled but gorgeous, freckled young actress Lindsay Lohan posing in her place in a spread in New York Magazine

If you’re my age, you know that some of these Bert Stern photographed images of forever icon Marilyn have been floated around before. Now Stern’s done it again, with Lindsay Lohan playing the role that Marilyn did so much better because she understood her emotional pain–but couldn’t squelch it.

(Unlike La Madonna, who needs only one name for universal recognition, Marilyn, who crumbled before us, and was so much more real, still seems to need the two names: Marilyn Monroe.)

As is so typical of these times, this era, when, sadly, originality is rarely found, for fun Lindsay Lohan has to don a platinum wig and pretend to do a famous photo shoot that has already been done.

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After Note

Yes, I am also a TMZ PerezHilton etc. junkie. And on their blogs, I have been see Britney sometimes wearing a pink wig–was she hoping to be the Bert Stern model?

I have the solution…..

Just like we said goodbye to the horse and carriage, we need choice; we need a new professional baseball league: the Steroid League.

Paulie’s survived cancer, he’s got emotional problems—he hates cats—- and while he’s pumped up, he’s got 20-year-old arms, he just doesn’t feel like his old self anymore. How does he keep on going?

I know! he’s got good connections.

The brother of “Paulie,” played by actor Tony Sirico–is Robert Sirico, an intellectual Roman Catholic priest and the founder of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty.

—of course Father Sirico has better connections than older brother “Paulie” has—

I’m feeling high anxiety about watching the last episode of the Sopranos. I fear it coming and I’m not sure I’m ready to watch HBO’s solution for me and other soon-to-be depressed viewers, the visual sedative, the tranquilizer, if you will—and that’s the first showing of “John From Cincinnati,â€? or whatever it’s called– scheduled to air right after the possibly bloody resolution of the Soprano epic.

“John from Cincinnati,� the new surfer dude series that the folks at HBO hope will take my mind off the fact, the reality, that there will be no more Sopranos for me to look forward to on Sunday evenings. [To be fair, the intriguing promo features “John� in full surfer costume—black wetsuit, minus his surfboard, standing on dry land--but as if he were riding a wave, that is, his feet are a couple of feet of the ground.]

It’s been years and years and I’m attached to Tony and his family.

And how I looked forward to seeing my “little� friends in hi def on our 40-plus inches flat screen.

I have a confession, though: last week’s thrilling episode moved too fast and didn’t work for me. Tony Soprano’s fall through space, with bullets flying all around him, felt too hurried and that’s why I fear the final episode. I just never imagined Tony, the family man, huddled alone in a room with a loaded rifle.

Somebody’s in a rush to get this all over with and I’m not sure I can face it. Maybe I’ll watch the rerun.

it’s time to dump that lady in the tv commercial who’s a chocoholic on a diet, who’s now wearing a size 2–and badly needs a voice coach to teach her how to laugh like a real person. Her imitation of a ha ha is the worst I’ve ever heard.

Please, please, Nutrisystem, it’s long overdue……..time for the hook….

colorful dialogue is produced for all the characters?
How is it done? Who can figure out the scenes with multiple, complex characters as well as what they are saying?
Today I learned that the brilliant writer David Milch goes into a room with his staff, lies on the floor with a pillow (because he has a bad back) and starts talking, creating the dialogue for say, Swearengen, then Trixie, then E.B.–and all the words are typed on a keyboard and appear on a big cinema-size display.

great HBO watching
beginning with
Deadwood,
then
the plucky Entourage, followed by
the absolutely vulgar Lucky Louie
and we top the night
off with the scary
Brotherhood on Showtime
where every week angelic looking good brother Tommy Caffee’s devastatingly handsome Robert De Niro lookalike evil brother Michael beats up or kills somebody: (when are the cops going to arrest Mike and get him off the streets?–well the writers won’t let that happen because Tommy and Mike may be brothers but they are also two parts of a whole)

Do you think Simon Cowell was testing his power over public opinion or just going with the flow when he proclaimed the night before the official American Idol winner was announced, that it would be Taylor Hicks?

I wonder.

The hints of who the winner would be had been in the air before the usually tightly wound Cowell blurted out his pick. Both Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson had been early lovers of Hicks, chastising Cowell for not loving “the silver foxâ€?– and reminding the audience that most of the past winners had been women and it was time for a man to take center stage.

A majority of 63- plus million voters anointed Taylor Hicks the American Idol (more than the results of any presidential election, Ryan Seacrest, the host with the “smiley mouthâ€? face, reminded). But not only was Taylor a man– by rock-n-roll standards, with that head of silver gray hair, he qualifies as an old man.

Taylor Hicks’ performance the night he was pronounced the winner may have revealed his singing voice’s vulnerabilities, but the judges proved they’re not age-ist.

Some posts back, the TV’s indefatigable Video Professor had driven me to the following desperate observation:

“Dear Mr. Video Professor,
I know you’re from the ‘old school’ and your tv sales pitch is directed to computer illiterates—but I am sick and tired of you, the lady and the three- and-a-half-year- old daughter who knows more about computers than all of you.
BTW: If the kid exists at all, she’s probably in juvenile hall…”

Whether because of our critique, or the ad agency– whatever the reason, at least we see some fresh commercials.

No, Video Professor, I’m not ready to sign up, but at least you’ve given me some new material to criticize.

Dear Mr. Video Professor,

I know you’re from the “old school� and your tv sales pitch is directed to computer illiterates—but I am sick and tired of you, the lady and the three- year- old daughter who knows more about computers than all of you.

BTW: If the kid exists at all, she’s probably in juvenile hall by now awaiting sentencing.

Isn’t it time for a new commercial with real computer geeks and nerds? I’ll probably learn to hate that one as much but at least it’ll be a change.

Soprano, that is.

Star of the HBO hit, The Sopranos.

For almost two weeks now, Tony has been lying in a hospital bed hooked up to a gaggle of life-saving equipment. With a huge ugly hole in his stomach from the bullet wound inflicted by his senile Uncle Junior.

Tony’s in an induced coma. Last week all I saw from my side of the hi def screen was his big chest rising and falling as some medical machine helps him to breathe. Emotionally drained wife Carmella, and son, Anthony, and daughter, Med, visit; together or separately they sleep in the room with “Tone”– they talk to the unconscious body in the hospital bed and they play his favorite rock ‘n roll tunes.

But Tony’s dreaming. He’s dreaming a weird story about some guy who’s accidentally taken his identiy– when, through a mix-up at a bar, far from home, this guy picked up Tony’s briefcase (identical to his own), the briefcase filled with Tony’s credit cards, driver’s license, etc. How’s he going to get on the plane without showing his driver’s license, he asks Carmella during a frustrating phone call. That’s what he’s dreaming about…

From the beginning, from the very first show, I became a Sopranos fan. And the family became very real to me.

A couple of Soprano seasons ago, Tony was cheating on Carmella with a beautiful, young Russian lover, and his wife found out and her price for peace was a summer vacation in Rome. With her girlfriends. Where was she going to stay? She told us tv viewers that she was going to stay at the elegant Hassler Hotel.

The Hassler is not a made-up hotel for tv–it’s a real hotel, set high on a hill.

A few months later we (Burt & I) were traveling to Europe, to Italy, and where did I want to stay? The Hassler Hotel–that’s where Carmella stayed, I remembered.

And when we arrived at the Hassler and were enjoying a drink in the intimate patio, I summoned the courage to ask our waiter: “Did Carmella Soprano stay here?”

He looked at me cockeyed. I couldn’t believe it. “You know,” I said gently, but with a bit of a push, “The Sopranos, the HBO show…Tony’s wife, Carmella, said she staying here for the summer.”

He had no idea what I was talking about. Not even the great HBO rang a bell.

Later an American friend who lives in Europe emailed me asking about the Sopranos. At that time it wasn’t on tv over there, he said, and he knew it was a hot cable series. When he was in New York he’d seen a few of the early episodes. He was anxious to talk about the characters and the plots. Could I tell him what the current episodes were about?

Which brings me back to Tony lying in a coma in that hospital bed. I hope he’s okay, I hope he’s doing fine. I hope he’s going to live.

Update: Did I hear right? In the last or next-to-the-last episode of the Soprano’s 2006 season, did I hear Carmella say to Tony that she never got to Rome? Never got to Rome that summer several episodes earlier? No wonder nobody knew who Carmella Soprano was when I was staying at the Hassler Hotel. Mystery solved.