After yesterdays update I was kind of thinking of keeping today short and sweet. I just have a few random thoughts to get off my chest.

As we are about to enter October the California recall election is drawing closer and closer, and the candidates running for office are really starting to drop like flies (Arianna Huffington being the latest one to fold) and it’s looking more and more like it’s going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger as the leading candidate to try to replace Gray Davis as the Governor of California. Yes I know I think it would be an interesting adventure to see what happens in the next few years with Arnold in office, but after talking to a few friends from California and doing some research on the whole recall issue, I’m kind of finding myself falling back to my original stance, of voting NO to the recall. No my mind hasn’t finally off the deep end and starting to support Gray Davis, I’m just thinking like I originally said, if you voted him into office only 11 months ago, why didn’t you change then. You (as in the people of California) made your decision, live with it. That’s why they call this a democracy; you had a choice to vote someone new into office to make changes, but you didn’t, so live with it. Yes I know things are bad there, My friend Sam was telling me that they doubled the taxes on his car tabs, to make up for the budget crisis, he told me don’t even start with how much the property tax is going to be on his new house. (Makes me glad that Angela and I never bought a house in Southern California).

What it basically comes down to is that this whole recall thing is just a way for the Republicans to steal another election, they just decided since they didn’t win fairly why not use a small loophole in the California Constitution. Then to add to it, they decided to help entice the general public, why not have someone running that is a household name and very charismatic to run to help pull the attention away from us being sour losers. Don’t get me wrong I’m sure Arnold has a good heart, and thinks he can do a good job. But I don’t think he would do much better then Davis since the Governor doesn’t really make the laws, which would be the state house and senate. Those are the bozo’s the people of California should be going after, not a figurehead like the Governor (I guess you can say the same thing with President, but I really think George W. has been a puppet for Dick Chaney since day one anyway). It’s going to be interesting to see what happens next week, I think either way no matter what happens I think California is screwed.

Hmmm didn’t I say at the beginning of this update it would be a short one? Doh! Guess I had more to say then I thought.

Real quick, on to a very good news item it was announced by the BBC that they will be bring back on of my all time favorite TV shows. Anyone who has know me for a long time can probably already guess which show I’m talking about. G_d thinking back all through out junior high and high school (not to mention college) I used to be such a freak for this show. Even though it was a British import show and only shown on PBS late at night being a total sci-fi fan I ended up staying up late (when your in high school midnight was late) to watch the show ever night. Heck some friends and I had even built a Blue Police Box, and I have had done some art pieces over the years in honor of this show. What show am I speaking of? You haven’t figured it out yet? Why of course we are celebrating the return of Dr. Who. Instead of sounding like the total geek I’ll send you a site where you can learn all about the return of Dr. Who. After 14 years off the air, this site will give you all the news and also a history of the show that ran from 1963 – 1989 (not going to include the made for TV film that Fox did in the mid 90’s).

So I’m going back to wrap a few more presents for a certain little guy who’s going to be hitting a big miles stone tomorrow, it’s hard to believe he’s already going to be 4. It still seems like yesterday that I was holding him in my arms for the first time and staring into those beautiful blue eyes. I’ll give you a full report of the celebrations tomorrow. Enjoy a few pictures of the little guys first few years below.

Happy Birthday Son!!!!!!

Peace

Mike

September 27th

Hi all, You remember a while back I mentioned that we would sometimes have a guest writers on the website, well Judy told me this story of what happened to her today, and I told her she just had to put it up on the website. Hope you enjoy it. It really gave me a good chuckle... Mike

Hi,

I must be the 21st century’s patron saint of animals found wandering in the middle of the road. Can I be Jewish and be a patron saint??? Is there a sign on my forehead that says “sucker for defenseless creatures?” According to Mike there is a big “G” for gullible up there, but that is another story for another day..

Anyway, it is now obvious to me that it is my duty to rescue dogs running in traffic, cats trapped in sewer drains and turtles trying to cross busy intersections. My roommate Woody has even gone as far as saying I would open a home for wayward animals if I had a chance. Being that the latest episode happened on Sunday (the second day of Rosh Hashanah) I think that I was being given the opportunity to save a life before Yom Kippur next week, when I am going to be fasting while asking G-d to be nice to me during the upcoming year!

Sunday, as I was driving to my mothers for lunch after synagogue, I turned into her subdivision and was presented with my second turtle rescue to date (the first one was down the street from my house sometime last year). I parked on the side of the road and got out to investigate, remembering that some turtles bite! This particular turtle was not happy to see me. He stuck out his neck and tried to nip at my hands and when I touched him he resorted to what can only be referred to as “turtle intimidation tactics” and stretched out his back legs until his shell covered butt was pointed way up in the air and then he JUMPED! No one ever told me that turtles could JUMP!! He was a mean turtle but he didn’t deserve to get run over by an SUV so I persevered. I went into my gym bag and sacrificed my clean t-shirt and tried to protect my hands from this ferocious creature and picked him up to move him off the road. Anyone who has picked up a puppy who doesn’t want anything to do with you knows what it is like when something wiggles the minute you lift it off the ground. I finally got him (at least I assume it was a him, if it was a girl turtle she was not very well mannered) off the road and at the start of the wooded area and put him down, facing in the direction that would take him back away from the street. Instead of heading off to hide, he turned around and started stalking me! Mind you, I was in a suit and heels, standing in pine straw and trying to rescue this ungrateful critter from an untimely death! He practically chased me back onto the road and as I was making my escape, one of my mothers’ neighbors drove past me and looked at me like they were sure I was losing my mind. I just might be, but something about the holiday and the idea that on Rosh Hashanah we are preparing ourselves for review and examining how we live our lives, and saving the life of this mean and crabby turtle just seems a little too coincidental to me. Maybe the idea is that it is the little things we do in life, the kind things, and taking a moment to stop and do something that one person might think is silly but makes us and someone or something else happy, is really all that is important when it comes down to the wire. It might only be a small and goofy thing to move a turtle out of traffic, but if we all just stopped every so often to do something kind, the world might be a better place. Just one silly woman’s opinion…

Toodle

Judy

September 25th

Hi there, remember me. I’m the guy who owns runs this little website called Fabersplace.com, sorry I haven’t been around steadily but between working on a few different projects, my computer going ka-put, having a cruddy internet provider (cable internet sucks, I’m in the process of switching over to DSL). Then to top it off I have caught a cold. Not a bad cold but just enough to keep me off kilter, a little more then normal (no kicking mike when he’s down, so I beat you to a punch. HA).

Today when I was driving home I had the interesting situation of almost getting my car hit by a woman driving oblivious to the word. Why you would ask would she be so lost to the world? Was she hurt or injured, No. Was she in a hurry to get somewhere and the deveil may care. Nope. Was she blind as a bat? Nada. Hell I would have been happy if she was putting on make-up. That be too easy, butt no, a new evil which many of us have experience with everyday. This evil was in full control of this woman, what am I speaking of, why her cell phone of course. Not only did this woman cut me off, she also cut off at least four other cars, not paying attention. She even forced a car in front of me on the curb. This woman was so oblivious the world around her that she ran a stop sign and continued into a parking lot. Then she parked her car and grabbed her bag and pranced into the gym, all the while still blabbing away to some mysterious being on the other side. I was in just so much awe of this woman’s ignorance that I couldn’t help but sit there with my jaw open. I know I have been guilty as much as the next guy (or gal) talking on the phone while driving (it dose make the commute home quicker), but I use a hands free unit so I can give my full attention to the road and the drivers around me. Cell phones and driving don’t mix at all. Hell I almost lost my Dad last year because of a cell phone. He was driving and was on his phone and must have been distracted and he ran a red light. A car coming through the intersection broadsided my dad’s car. The impact of the collision was so hard that my dad’s mini van flipped all the way over till it was upright again. The rescue workers who pulled my dad out of the car said he was lucky still to be alive, and all of this because of a stupid cell phone. My point is, just be careful folks, and be aware of your surroundings, there are enough stupid drivers out there as it is, giving them a cell phone is like handing them a loaded gun.

This past weekend I was able to get to the movies and see the final chapter in the El Mariachi saga, Robert Rodriguez’s film “Once Upon A Time in Mexico”. A very well crafted almost beautiful movie, that in some ways makes you forget that the movie is a very violent and extremely bloody. The movie takes you through a side of Mexico you don’t see in the tourist brochures. It involves a drug lord, a rouge CIA, a retired FBI agent oh yes and a Mariachi player. This is the set up for the story about deceit, betrayal, and revenge. Oh did to forget to mention that’s to mention that’s when all hell broke loose. I’m not go into too many details because I can write ten pages on this movie, and not even scratch the surface of this film. The reprise of the roles by Antonio Banderas and Selma Hayek and being joined by William De Foe, Enrique Iglesias, Marco Leonardi, Ruben Blades, and a stunning perforce by Johnny Depp (He really made the movie, and I’m actually thinking maybe best actor for this role, but who am I to say?) I have seen a few of the other Robert Rodriguez’s films and it seemed like all of them have been building up to this film (pace wise, and style wise). The beautify running though this film is quite electrifying, and the story telling keeps you just revisited to your seat. A must see, but not for the whole famaly.

On that note I’m out of here, I’m still fighting a cold and my eyes are starting to collapse on me.

I’ll write more tomorrow, about how I think that there a US mitatary draft in our future. Unitl them

Peace

Mike

Sorry if I had told this you this story before, but since today it seems appropriate with it being the anniversary of the Destruction of theWord Trade Center, and everyone seems to be talking about it I wanted to tell you about how I found out about the horror that occurred on this day two years ago. Some of this might seem a little shallow and aloof, but you have to realize that living on the West Coast we were kind of cushioned from the actual horror like the people had on the East Coast.

As a normal day for me at that point in my life I was actually still asleep at 6:10 in the morning and was startled at getting a phone call that early. In the past the only time I ever got calls that early in the morning was when my mom called at 5am to sing happy birthday since she forgot that Seattle was in another time zone and we were three hours behind her. So quite startled and hazily I answered the phone to hear a very panicked voice of my friend Dion calling all the way from Australia asking me if I had heard the news? Trying to pull my head to the present from what ever I was dreaming of a few moments before I asked her “What news?” She came back and said that somebody had blown up one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York. I laughed at her and said “Dion, my dear, you must be watching the history channel, that happened over ten years ago, and they didn’t succeed.” Quickly and very calmly she replied to me knowing that I was still half asleep “Mike, it’s on all our TV stations here that terrorists hijacked a airplane and flew it into the top of World Trade Center". Trying to still make sense of what my friend was saying I slowly made my way into my living room to turn on the TV. As soon as I switched on the TV my heart froze, and became instantly awake at seeing the horror in New York that was brandishing across every single channel and wished for everything in my power that I was still dreaming and that this was just a very very bad dream. I couldn’t really say anything to my friend so I told her I would talk to her soon. Ten to fifteen minutes had passed by, I was sitting on my couch riveted to my TV seeing the people jumping from the top floors to their sure deaths and seeing the heroics of NYC police and Firefighters. Nobody was ready to be prepared for what happened next. When the first tower collapsed as with most people I just couldn’t believe my eyes and didn’t even want to fathom the horror of everything happening to the poor victims in the tower. Within a minute of all this my phone started ringing with various friends calling me just to communicate with me to share in this horror, and vent the numbness that was creeping over the country.

Within the next hour I was joined by my neighbor Ann who I had woken up and dragged her out of bed, with the events of that day as such that I just didn’t want to be experience anything alone. A lot of people associate September 11th with the World Trade Center disaster, but we also have to remember that two other planes were hi-jacked that day. One of course was flight 93 that ended up crashing in Western Pennsylvania, and the other one crashed into the Pentagon. I do consider myself luck that I didn’t loose anyone close in the horror of that day, my biggest fear was the safety of my family in the attacked areas. I wasn’t really worried about the World Trade Center would take any of my immediate family or friends, but for some reason I had a sick feeling in my stomach that my dad was in the vicinity of the Pentagon. With my dad’s profession he’s on the road constantly in the DC area, so there could have been a shot at it, but thank goodness he was nowhere near it on that day.

By 11:30 in the morning both Ann and I felt very burnt out from all the rumors of new attacks and watching the buildings collapse over and over again, we both decided it was time to leave the apartment and take a walk around the lake by our apartment. As soon as we walked out of our building, a very eerie calm surrounded us. Usually when you walked out of the building you were inundated with the sounds of the city, but on this day there was an eerie silence in the city. The car traffic in the city was virtually dead, and of course no air traffic at all. Usually there were seaplanes, helicopters, and jets coming in for approach to Sea Tac Airport flying over our neighborhood, but at this point there was nothing. The stillness took us by surprise, but as we began our walk, we started noticing the faces of everyone that we did pass on the street. Each person we passed had a look on his or her face of someone that hadn’t slept in over a week. Even after the walk when we stopped in to Starbucks for coffee, all the usual hustle and bustle of a usual coffee shop was strangely muted. No one even really wanted to talk about what they all had seen on TV but didn’t feel right talking about the usual nonsense that passes as a daily “normal” life.

Two years later the events of September 11th 2001 don’t seem any more distant, or faded, the closeness that followed and patriotism that seemed to bring everyone together for a bit has almost disappeared. Many articles, committees and reports have tried to decide what should go on the location of the World Trade Center, from a memorial, to a park, to a rebuilt office tower complex. My feelings are that the later will be built with a memorial somewhere in the base of the new buildings. I think the people of the United States continuing and going on with our daily lives will be a sign to show that the group that caused this disaster that they haven’t won, but in fact gave certain people in power the excuse to play cowboys and army men.

One thing I don’t remember if I did mention here and I don’t want to start any conspiracies or such, but about six months before the World Trade Center Disaster there was a TV show called “The Lone Gunman”. The show was a spin off of the X-files and dealt mostly with government conspiracy theories. Well in the first episode the characters un-cover a plot for the US government to purposely hi-jack commercial flights (claiming it was Middle Eastern Terrorists) and flying them strangely enough right into the World Trade Centers. The reasoning on the show behind it would be that the country would then boost military spending and a strong military force would go after America’s enemies. Luckily though on the show the airplanes were stopped in time and everyone lived happily ever after. It’s just strange how art sometimes foreshadows life, but even our government wouldn’t be that sneaky to do something that underhanded. Would They?

Just remember today should be a day to remember the poor souls lost in these senseless acts of brutality, but also remember that your still here and that you have so much to live for. This should be a day of remembrance, and reflection, not a day where everything came to a stop, but a day where we came together and became something special.

Hey it’s just my opinion and my world, I’m just sharing it with you.

Peace Always

Mike

September 8th

Something interesting I have been noticing every morning when I have been working out at the gym. Well of course the first thing I notice, “geeze this place is packed for 6:25 in the morning”, but that’s not what I was writing about. As most modern gym's, the one I work out has a multitude of TV’s all though out the building. They either have ESPN, CNN or some local programming on it, but on about a half dozen of the televisions they have music videos. Each day the format of the videos vary, for music style, and overall it’s pretty non obtrusive. It’s now been about three months now that I have been working out at least four days a week, and on top of the free weights, I do either the tread mill or stationary bike and have plenty of time to pay attention to the videos. (Yes stick with me here, there is a point I’m trying to get to), I have noticed one main consistent theme, that all the performers / artists that they show are completely fit, and somewhat beautiful. Yes I know it would be kind of counter productive showing videos by heavyset or obese artists, but wouldn’t it also be kind of inspirational to the people working out to say “Hey I better keep on working out or I’ll end up looking like Jon Popper or Carney Wilson whose in their glory days used to way a ton (both have now lost a lot of weight by going the easy and quick route of getting their stomach stapled, not by working out). It would put the fear of food into some of these people working out seeing a video by the Barry White, the Fat Boys or the Weather Girls. Hmmm maybe I should drop a few suggestions into the comment box the next time I’m at the gym.

In the world around us it’s interesting how the general public is finally getting fed up and realizing that the country is falling to pot around them. Let’s get this strait first this will not be a George W. bashing session but a poll released over the weekend showed that the presidents popularity has been steadily dropping and is hovering currently about 45%, not that I’m a big fans of polls, but it shows that the smoke might around George W. and his administration has cleared to show an economy that is just puttering along on life support and our armed forces being faced with a lengthy stay in Iraq against an enemy that just seems to disappear into the background. The comparisons to Vietnam are way to scary to even starting to think about. To top it off the president now has to eat total crow and ask for help from the same United Nations that six months ago he was referring to as "irrelevant and toothless". This has not been a good period for Mr. Bush, I wonder if now regrets taking so many vacations, and not taking naps in meetings. I don’t blame him completely for the economy falling apart, that was caused by too many individuals put too much "stock" in High tech in the late 90’s, and greedy corporations fixing their books to look positive whey in truth they were loosing billions of dollars. It wouldn't of mattered if it was George Bush or Al Gore in office, things would of been bad. The one thing I have noticed with the President and his administration is they don’t take the responsibility for anything bad, almost like a very immature little kid, who got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. They are so quick to blame congress or his predecessor Bill Clinton for all the evils in the world. If anything George W. should maybe take a look in the mirror and think about possibly learning something from the past. When Bill Clinton took office in 1992 (from George W’s daddy, George senior) the economy too was in a massive recession, but instead of laying blame and not doing anything about it, the President at the time worked directly with congress and went ahead and tried to fix it. As history has shown, the economy will eventually pick up, but President Bush could help speed it up by not putting band-aids on a gaping wound. The sad thing is even with George in this weakened state I don’t see anyone on the Democratic side that could do any better. Hmmm maybe Arnold is running for the wrong office?

I have a lot more to talk about, but will get into that tomorrow.

Peace

Mike

September 1st

Happy Labor day folks, hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday. Mine was very laid back and very quite. I pretty much wanted to hang low and just not have to worry about any kind of travel. It was nice, not having to worry about being anywhere and being able to sleep in everyday. (beats getting up at 5:30 am everyday). Well when I say sleeping in that’s kind of misnomer, my sleep schedule is kind of screwed up as it is, it probably has been that way for almost three years now. Sometimes I sleep four hours a night sometimes maybe two hours, or a normal six to eight hours. But the one catch is that no matter what the length of time is I never sleep all the way through. Sometimes I wake up multiple times a night and then have trouble falling back to bed because my mind is usually racing on many subjects. So when I say I was sleeping in it’s probably a figure of speech. But anyway I digress. The weekend went great overall, I even got to catch a great film called American Splender.

American Splendor is a hybrid of documentary, comic book graphics and straight-ahead drama. about the life of Harvey Pekar a mostly manic file clerk from Cleveland who just also happens to write a comic book about his daily life called American Splendor. Like I said this film is a mix of documentary, having the narration by the real Pekar, but he is played wonderfully by Paul Giamtti in the film. The film shows how a nothing shlub like Harvey Pekar can make something for himself, but he’s so wrapped into his life and the people around him that he doesn’t realize how successful he’s become. The movie is basically a self-serving psychological turmoil look into Harvey’s life and those around him the triumphs and tragedies, which seem to intertwine with each other as it dose in real life. One series in this filmed showed Harvey's apperances on the old David Letterman Show on NBC, it was very cleaver how they mixed the actual TV show video, with the new film footage, they didn't do it ala Forest Gump to make it fit, but they did it very obviously since the actor they chose to play Pekar didn't really look like the actual person, it was very cleaver the diffrences, and how they made them intermingle. This movie probably was one of the best movies I have seen this year, maybe even better then Nemo or Pirates of the Caribbean. If you want to take a peek at the website from the website and maybe even support Harvey by picking up one of his books click here.

Anyway my eyes are starting to go blurry, so that means tonight’s update is coming to a quick end.

I hope you and your family had a great holiday weekend.

I’ll talk to you soon

Peace

Mike