Santa Barbara

This weekend April and I drove up to Santa Barbara for a mini “babymoon.” A babymoon, as I just learned, is a sort of last hurrah before that little gift from heaven anchors you to your apartment for the next few months.  I guess the analogy is more akin to a bachelor party than a honeymoon.  We also wanted to visit Solvang so that I could get in touch with my Danish roots.  It was nice of our friends Scott and Rebecca to let us crash at their place and show us city dwellers around.

April and I got up to Santa Barbara first thing Friday morning.  We had a nice early morning stroll on the pier.

We visited the old courthouse as seen in Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law, which is possibly the best law-themed show ever.  The courthouse, which is still in use, is spectacular. 

They even let you go up on top of the tower.

Fortunately Scott was able to get the afternoon off from his residency shifts at the hospital so we all drove up to Solvang.  Solvang is just like Koreatown except that it is smaller, was made by Danish people, and they don’t speak Korean.  As far as I could tell, nobody spoke Danish either.  For you Simpsons fans out there, Solvang is where Millhouse’s uncle is from. 

We toured the beautiful streets and shops and saw the old mission.  We also went to this really strange place called Solvang Ranch that was a mix between the Old West and Denmark.  They had cowboy boots and Wrangler jeans next to traditional Danish dresses. There were also depictions of Danish monarchs along side of photos of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.   It almost made me feel as if we had teleported to a “red state.” 

The town offers spectacular views of the surrounding mountains and vineyards. 

The other thing about Solvang is that the entire town is obsessed with Hans Christian Anderson.  There are at least ten statues of the guy (giant nose and all), a couple of streets named after him, a museum, and a square in his honor.  It’s almost as if he is the only cool guy to ever be Danish.  What about Niels Bohr, I might ask?  Or what about Søren Kierkegaard (who is way cool, by the way), or even Beowulf? Oh yeah, plus I’m Danish (ethnically speaking that is).  Where’s my statue?

But the best thing about Solvang is that I was finally able to get my hands on some imported salt licorice.   Salt licorice is basically like crack for licorice junkies.  I also found some marzipan, and to my pleasant surprise, some amar bidder stang (it was fifteen dollars a pound and worth every penny). 

The next morning we hung out on the wharf and then went sea kayaking.  We got within a few feet of some sea lions which was way cool.

Thanks Scott and Rebecca. We’ll have to come back sometime.

I’m a Lawyer (sort of)

Today I had my first real case. It was unemployment insurance hearing for a former Metro Transit Authority driver downtown. I represented the driver through the clinical program here at UCLA. I served as the representative (giving the direct and cross examinations), my partner gave the closing argument, and our professor sat in to make sure we didn’t screw it up. Fortunately we didn’t. I think the hearing went very well. We'll hear in a couple of weeks whether or not we won. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Now that it’s over I may even have time to post on the blog again.

Update: MSNBC has a very good article on UI appeal hearings like the one I was doing yesterday (ironically the article came out yesterday as well). Here’s the link:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29151900/

The article captures the mood of these hearings. The MTA was there fighting tooth-and-nail against us to deny benefits. In fact funny story, when we got there we asked our client to look around to see if there was anyone he recognized so we could know if the employer was there to fight the appeal. He told us he recognized his former line instructor sitting in the corner. Just as I was about to approach her to introduce myself and see what evidence she might have brought the judge called her into a hearing. She had been fired as well and was there for her own appeal! It looks like everyone is getting fired and accused of misconduct. Then our client’s supervisor and another person that the MTA sent to fight our appeal showed up.

The article cites Boyton, a case about a taxi driver that we relied on heavily in our oral argument before the judge. This was a driver who got in several accidents that were way more severe than anything that ever happened to our client (essentially our case was about a flat tire) where no misconduct was found. The author of the MSNBC article speculates that the Boyton case would not come out the same way if it were decided today. I guess we'll find out...

Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Arm

Let me reiterate that this is not a review blog. I like review blogs, this just isn’t one of them. That being said, I can’t help but discuss the books I read, but in that case I’m really using the blog as my own little book club. And I don’t want to review new music (music being one of my other passions). But I’m going to break down here and review an album while also engaging in some familial promotion (Paul is my cousin).

I finally got the new Paul Jacobsen and The Madison Arm CD. I had older versions of some of the tracks and had heard many of them in concert but the other day I got my first chance to hear the album in its entirety. It was a good experience. Though I really enjoyed Paul’s first CD this new one is definitely a cut above. The songwriting is professional. Paul avoids using clichés, a crutch so common among aspiring songwriters. The album also works musically.

If you don’t want to take the word of one Paul’s relatives here’s a link to a review that appeared in Salt Lake City Weekly: http://www.slweekly.com/index.cfm?do=article.details&id=955C2281-14D1-13A2-9F0FF641811D7AEC

But in case you are willing to take my word for it, what follows is a discussion of my favorite tracks individually (I admit that is most of them).

Time: a sweet longing melody with some great images like: “city sirens howling at red light moons.” I also can’t help but be pleased that the song mentions Ruth’s Diner, good memories.

Like a Proper Noun: This seems to be about those people that think much too highly of themselves and take themselves way too seriously, usually at the expense of others. I love the choppy electric guitar it almost forces my head to bob like those guys in the front row of a concert who are too into it to care whether they might look silly to an outside observer. I love the opening words: “haven’t you already passed the lines you never drew. All the limits you never set are all laughing back at you.”

Stupid Little Things: This song gets at the heart of what it’s like to long for someone by focusing on all of the little things you miss when you loose or are separated from the person you love, things like having someone to share the joke you just heard with.

You’re The Song: This is probably Paul’s most popular number and for good reason (great melody and meaningful lyrics among other virtues). This song is probably tied for first place with Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” as being the closest thing, for April and I, that could be considered “our song.”

Western Skies: great sound, great feel. The lyrics are also really good: “If it’s a case of grass is greener, pennies drowned the fountain dreamers just some wasted discontent some day you’re gonna wake up, wonder where your good times went.” Like his song “Stupid Little Things,” “Western Skies” focuses on the concrete rather than the general or abstract which makes the sense of longing in the lyrics much stronger

You Were: pop-craft at its best. The feel of the song rises perfectly into the chorus. It almost sounds like Phil Spector could have written it.

Anything Pecked to Death Will Die: despite the tautological statement in the title this song conveys a real message. It starts out describing Frank Abagnale Jr. the notorious con-man popularized in “Catch me If You Can.” The images and metaphors used in the song to describe Abagnale’s life rank high on the clever-o-meter. I also like the image of having “a river in a world full of thirst.”
At that Day: is reminiscent of an old-style spiritual. It seems to be looking forward to the second coming while acknowledging the troubles and sorrows that plague the earth while it waits. I’m a sucker for these old-style spirituals. They really move me and this one is no exception. I wish we had more of this spiritual music within modern Mormon culture but instead I usually have to find it elsewhere. Initially there was a great spiritual/poetic movement in Mormon thought. Eliza R. Snow’s “O My Father” probably represents the best of this era of early LDS poetics but also much of Phelps’ work, and of course William Clayton’s “Come, Come Ye Saints” all rank high on the list. But spiritual songwriting of this quality is rare among contemporary LDS (at least as far as I’ve been able to discover). I’m not counting the modern inspiration LDS songwriting, the likes of Michael McLean etc... This is probably for the simple fact that I don’t care for it. I feel the same way only much stronger about contemporary Christian rock. Especially when, to allude to a quote from the Simpsons, all they do is write a pop song but change the word “baby” to “Jesus.” In contemporary Christian/Mormon pop there is little yearning and instead a feeling that the spiritual or divine has already been attained. Consequently there is a sense of preachy-ness that pervades the praises and diminishes them. Besides, without a genuine yearning I feel that much of this music comes across as a little cheesy (that was a long way to say that I like the album’s concluding track).

My only real criticism of the album is that it took way too long to come out. He’s been working on this album for something like five years. The album was worth the wait but sometimes as Voltaire observed “the perfect is the enemy of the good.” True, quality is more important than quantity but you still need quantity. The album is perfect, or at leas very close, I just wish that Paul would crank them out a little more frequently even if a little perfection is lost. I only say this because I am about the furthest thing there is from a perfectionist, probably in a bad way. But that’s why I married one.

You can get the Album along with some of Paul’s prior work on iTunes or from CDBaby where you can also stream samples of all of the songs. I recommend getting the hard copy for the album artwork and photography which are first rate. Also, you can hear some of the tracks in their entirety on Paul’s MySpace page at http://www.pauljacobsen.com/

Best Films of 2007

I know most people do their “best of the year” movie reviews at the end of the year, but I see most of my movies on DVD. Blockbuster online is such a bargain and it’s not exactly comfortable to snuggle with my wife in those theater seats but my couch works just fine. Besides, everyone else does their reviews at the end of the year so perhaps this one will be at least a little more interesting by virtue of its novel timing. In fact it’s such a good idea (if I do say so myself) that I may do a best of the year music blog in a later addition.
So here are my favorite flicks of last year in no particular order.

I Am Legend: Kind of like Cast Away but with zombies and explosions. I also loved how the Bob Marley music broke up the tension. “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.” Seriously, something about his music just slows your heart rate the second it comes on.

Rescue Dawn: Werner Herzog’s films have this overwhelming sense of reality and this one is no exception. There’s this one scene I can’t get out of my head. It’s where one of the characters is sitting there playing with these plants that close up when you touch them. So natural, so real.

Enchanted: Amy Adams was great.

The Simpsons: I laughed a lot. Plus it was a whole event in and of itself. They even converted the 7-Eleven down the street into a KWIKI MART.

As you can see April was very exited to be there. Here I am as a Simpsons' charachter. You can try it yourself at
http://simpsonizeme.com/

The Company: My brother and his wife gave me the DVD’s of this movie/mini series. It’s a great spy thriller with a lot of accurate and some inaccurate history that follows some fictional and some historical figures through almost the entire history of the CIA. Well acted (especially by Michael Keaton who plays James Jesus Angleton the real life “spy hunter”), extremely well written, and historically accurate. I also happen to be reading Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, a very well written informative albeit somewhat biased history/op ed piece of the CIA.

Ratatouille: Great animation, great voice acting, great story.

The Bourne Ultimatum: I liked the first Bourne but I didn’t think it was anything special but the second and third installments have had a lot of depth as spy thrillers and have done so somehow without sacrificing any action.

In the Shadow of the Moon: I was absolutely fascinated with the in depth personal descriptions of what it was like visit the moon. I felt as if I somehow experienced the trip myself. Also the collection of foottage is fantastic.

Breach: I know this the third spy movie on the list but it was a good year for spy movies (The Good Shepard almost made the list as well but not quite). This one is a true story.

Live free or die hard: A lot of fun, as always.

Spider man 3: Liked way it was solved. The protagonist and antagonist actually worked their differences out instead of settling them in some abandoned factory.

Harry Potter 5: Not as good as #4, but still had a good time. April and I saw it Imax 3-d, Fun.

Dan in Real Life: A great little comedy.

Rocky Balboa: Redemption for the series after #5.


No Country For Old Men: I've liked every film the Coen brothers have made. The scenery was stunning, the villain was a modern classic, and the suspense level was up to eleven for much of the movie.

Juno: There were a few things that bugged me about this film but it was cleverly written and I laughed a lot.