Yeah, I hate Christmas too.

Phony, sad, nonsensical holiday held hostage to consumer frenzy and the dim, not too clearly lit nostalgia for the free toy ride of our distant past. Sincerely, I like Jesus, I like the story of his birth (doubt heavily the date ascribed to said event by the early church) and if that were the main thrust of Christmas I would be gleeful. The mindless crush to purchase and re-create a mythical christmas that is the wholesale construction of Madison Avenue makes me ill. I don't like having to purchase a lot of crap people don't really need, with money I don't have in order for everyone to have a memorable, it's a wonderful life holiday. Let me put up some lights, watch the Astair Sims version of "a Christmas Carol" and lets be done.

However: I do like burning me some 8' tall elf effigy, lighting fireworks and eating chili with 80 friends. We have created our own magical phony sub-holiday event: Burning Elf.

We Wuz ROBBED!

I left at about 10:30 AM, to go to an eye exam in Ballard. John Pai was late coming to pick up some wireless mics and called and told me to leave them on the porch- he would only be a couple minutes late. Driving down the sad, barely pave cow path that serves as our "street" there were two men walking back towards the south: they looked out of place. I didn't recognize them, one was a light skinned black guy, thin in a black hoodie, the other a large Pacific Islander in unseasonal shorts and a butt ugly, backwards, red and Black Yankees cap. I should have turned around and thought as much. I thought the guy in the hat could belong to the Samoan family down the block. I was being "un-P.C." I thought, it's just walking down the street. I went to the eye exam. My prescription didn't change but I need to go back for a glaucoma check because I have strange pressure in my eyeballs. I came home to the house, opened the side door and immediately said out loud, "well did we get robbed?" I walked to the back door- it was open. Did I leave it open? I had been working in the driveway on my table saw before I left, I could have forgot to close it...There had been an ongoing string of daylight burglaries in my immediate neighborhood. big screen TV rustling mostly. So much so, Laurie suggested that we hide our laptops when we left the house. Fortunately I did, before I left. I turned and looked at the front door and saw it was open too, the door jamb laying in pieces on the floor. I called the police. Were they still here? I didn't think so, no sounds nothing. They had walked past al;l my audio gear which lay in the front hall, neatly in cases ready to go. They had no clue what it was- 15K easy in gear. They took the Nintendo Wii. They had been upstairs, all the doors and lights were on, in every closet and drawer. Didn't look like they found much. In our bedroom they went into our metal file case in the closet, rumaging so fast they over look my Granddad's gold pocket watch. They take my 16mm Bolex. They leave some of Laurie's costume jewelry on the bathroom floor. Back downstairs they go through our pantry and desk, leaving the Bolex on the top of the cat box. In the end it seems all they got was the Wii, Ned's iPod and 40.00 in cash from Tom's wallet. Something scared them off. I wish it was the cats, who were no doubt terrified to see a huge Samoan pile through the front door. John Pai saves the day, arriving late for the equipment, pulling his car into the driveway and scaring them off through the back door. My neighbor, Joe accross the street told me that he heard pounding at my house about 10:30- he was in his yard. Because of the table saw he thought I was working on something. That means it happened a couple of minutes after I left. It was "those guys".

The cops say they know who has been doing these burglaries. They know the car.

The weirdest part. Laying by the backdoor was the prayer book given to Ned by his Oma and Opa on his first communion. Why dig through a kid's underwear drawer for that? I hope it leads to their repentance. If not then I hope they have bowel disruption in public frequently.

As I cross the imaginary barrier of my father's number of days.

Sometime on November 22nd 2011 I will out live my my father's too short life. It is both an uncomfortable feeling and a relief. My dad, Ned Sander died during open heart surgery on April 25th, 1972, at age 50. Open heart surgery was new and almost black magic at the time. What killed him I am told is easily avoidable now. I was ten years old at the time. Through the miracle of mathematics I have figured the date that I will pass him as 11/22/2011, yes I figured in leap years. When I think of the last 40 years with all the changes in society and all the upheaval in my family, my marriage to Laurie, my kids and how comforting it would have been to have had him all that time, I get angry at him. Like most American men, probably men anywhere, I spend an inordinate amount of time trying to live up to his mythologized existence in my mind. In his 50 years he lived through the depression and world war two, a successful career in the savings and loan industry, four kids and the accumulation of property and status that I will never know. I wonder what he would think about my strange adolescent choice of a career in TV, I wonder what he would have thought about the greed obsessed raiders that tipped his own industry over 15 years after his death, what he would think of our present world where the same sort have stolen our country blind. I don't know what he would think of me. I didn't know him as an adult. All I know is on November 22nd, 2011 I will have lived longer than he was allowed to live. If I live to 100, I hope that I am half the man he was.

We named our first kid "Ned". I feel like with our Ned, I can give up the old one. Thanks Dad. I hope we can get to know each other someday.

Hilarity of the Corporate "Skit"

A few times a year we are called upon to make corporate folks look and sound funny. Some times it is. Other times your flesh crawls with embarrassment from the shame of collaborating with the devil.

Your best guess here:

I hate Halloween

This is the last time Tom had fun on Halloween; he was three.

I really have a hard time trying to make Halloween special for Tom. I always thought I would be good at this but I am not. I really try but costumes are hard. I once made a really cool (or I thought so any way,) costume for Ned- a "Scarebucks" coffee cup and he hated it so much it traumatized him for life, probably me as well. The whole cute-child-in-costume-begging-at-strangers-house-that-is-decorated-like-a-slaughterhouse-thing is sort of weird too.

Tom was a half hearted Ninja this year- a red hoodie sewn to look like a mask with a fire symbol of some kind (I made it up) painted on his chest. He was fine with it- I thought he looked like a refugee in a really lame costume gaming the system for free candy. Hey I guess he was....

The world did not end again.

It was supposed to end on Oct 21 2011. It didn't.

I went to Singapore and bought t-shirts.

Singapore. Disneyland with the death penalty. A shopping mall with a seat at the UN. I went there in late September with several friends from Montana State University to help teach classes in film for our college friend, Clifford Yap and his College of Film and Television. Singapore was interesting; very affluent, very up to date and in fact made me feel as though I was coming from the 3rd world to stand in the shiny city on the hill, not a feeling I expected. All their infrastructure project and architecture outclasses anything I have seen in the States for many years. It truly is Asia's century. The food was great and English was spoken and written everywhere. There are many neighborhoods in the US that have less English in evidence. There was an almost oppressive sense of success around the city. The political scene is changing, where the government is in everything now, I got a distinct sense that the people want something a little different for the future, not that they want to give up the affluence that semi socialist iron fisted regimes can bestow, they would like cable TV uncensored and to buy chewing gum. We stayed at the "Hotel 88 Sakura" in the red light district on Joo Chiat Road in Singapore and watched Thai and Vietnamese hookers walk up and down the street in front of our local bar, the "Dragon Palace" where we would sit and drink Carlsberg beer. Rick and I visited a Hindu temple one evening and found it beautiful. We ate the local food in hawker courts and more mallish food courts. Much beer was consumed and I visited a whore house in Kuala Lumpur (without partaking of the beautiful young women paraded like a 4H auction). We also visited Maleka in Malaysia. The flights to and from were long and I missed Laurie and the kids very much. I was glad to come home.It was fun but I did miss what turned out to be a lot of work. The benefits of travel and reconnecting with old friends always outweigh the loss of income but it hasn't been as lucrative a year as last year so it is noted.