Philly in the morning

Here's another picture of the same view as last night - this one taken around 7 in the morning.

Contrasts come clear

I just realized that my visceral reaction to the cold (previous post) may have been exacerbated by the fact that just last night I had dinner in Jeff Nowak's backyard and sat outside until 11. It got a little chilly after dinner so we moved over to the outdoor fireplace and finished up the evening there. Very nice.

We had sublime steaks, wonderful wines and fun friends from out-of-town (Leslie Fisher and Ryan Curry - fellow wine geeks) for the event. The theme was cabernet, but we also had champagne (1996 Deutz and, tragically, a corked 1990 Krug), a few whites and a couple of dessert wines. For any budding wine geeks out there, here's a link to the lineup (and my scores): http://www.cellartracker.com/event.asp?iEvent=6961

Phrosty Philadelphia

It's about 8:30 PM local time and I'm sitting in a 17th floor apartment in Philadelphia, looking out over 30th Street Station, the Schuylkill River and the now-moving traffic at the intersection of I-76 and I-676. A couple of hours ago it was a parking lot. Right next to the train station there is a new building I have never seen before:

I didn't bring my real camera and I had to use the phone instead so the picture isn't great. But, as you can see, the view is quite different with the giant blue-lit office building in the middle.

So, what am I doing here? I'm visiting our main office for the week and am staying in one of our corporate apartments. Like most companies, we've cut back on travel lately, but we used to have enough people visiting from India and Romania to make it worthwhile to keep a couple of apartments in the city.

What else? Oh yeah - I'm freezing my ass off!!! Not inside the apartment, but outside. It's 30 degrees Fahrenheit (-1 C) which isn't even that cold, but I've completely forgotten what that feels like. I haven't been this uncomfortable in years: I'm wearing a thick sweater and a long winter coat, but the miserable, punishing wind goes right through me. I've become both a wimp and a grump, and keep muttering things to myself: "I can't believe people put up with this. Why would anyone consider this acceptable? We developed transportation for a reason - to leave places like these."

I've lived my whole life in cold climates, and while I've never really liked cold weather, it never bothered me anywhere nearly as much as it does now. It's amazing how your perspective can change in just a few years. And, it isn't just the weather. I went out to get some dinner, and since walking wasn't a realistic option in this weather I took the car.

I found that I reacted as an outsider to several things that used to be "normal" to me when I lived here. The traffic here is much less orderly than what I've gotten used to in Arizona. People swerve in and out of lanes without using their signals, cars stop randomly in the streets backing up traffic, and the driving is generally much more aggressive.

And, it's impossible to find parking. I drove around Center City for a good 30 minutes, prepared to stop just about anywhere since there are places to eat on almost every corner, before I gave up and drove out for some fast food instead. In retrospect, I realize that finding a spot would have done me no good since I don't carry quarters anymore. (Parking is generally free everywhere in Arizona - even in parking garages, with the exception of the ones around the downtown stadiums and the convention center.)

Finally, the streets are so narrow and the buildings are so dark and so close to the street that I felt trapped; almost like the buildings were sinisterly leaning in over me, waiting for the right moment to suddenly come crashing down on me.

Obviously, the city hasn't changed. I have. Am I still me?

Morning has broken

Whoa. I woke up at 5:45 this morning, went to Starbucks when they opened at 6, and then over to Camelback Mountain for a morning hike. This is the first time I got up on Camelback - can't believe I waited this long. I didn't go up all the way to the top, but got high enough to get a nice view in three directions and saw a pretty nice sunrise.

On the way down I saw eight hot air balloons rising over Fountain Hills, but they were too far away to get a good picture. 

The Chronicles of Enotria continue

I went to Enotria - my favorite wine bar - last night and several of the usual suspects were there so we opened and shared a few bottles. After a while a father-daughter pair came in and sat down at the bar. He had been in before and recognized some of us but none of us remembered him. Then, he went quiet for a little while before he said: "Do you remember the night when a woman was crying at the bar?" You'd think that would trigger some memories, but enough strange things happen at Enotria that I half-jokingly responded "That happens all the time here - you need to get more specific."

Well, he got more specific and I remembered the evening in question. About six months ago, he and his wife - both in their 50s - came in for a few glasses of wine. They were in town from Pennsylvania, visiting their daughter for the weekend, and had just finished dinner with the daughter and her new boyfriend. Let's just say that the dinner had not gone well and that they were less than impressed with the boyfriend. After the first glass, the mother began crying uncontrollably. The father explained to us about the dinner and said something about the "boyfriend" at which point the mother turned around and blurted out "He's NOT her boyfriend! He's just a fuck-buddy!"

You couldn't make this stuff up...

Well, last night the daughter got to hear the story for the first time, and that wonderful mixture of uncomfortable awkwardness and drunken uninhibited laughter ensued.

25 Random Things About Me

In case you've missed it, "25 Random Things About Me" was a meme that spread like wildfire on Facebook last month. The idea was simple: post 25 random things about yourself and tag 25 of your friends, hoping that they would do the same. Well, I posted mine a few weeks ago and thought I'd post them here as well.

1. My life is on a southwest trajectory. Every time I’ve moved to a new town – with the exception of going home after my high school exchange year – I’ve been going generally southwest: Uppsala (Sweden) -> Örebro (Sweden) -> Kumla (Sweden) -> Boston -> Philly -> Scottsdale…

2. I’m a huge fan of Southwest Airlines. No change fees, no bag fees, no seat fees, no surly flight attendants, no delays.

3. I cry during insurance company commercials.

4. I am a big wine geek. I love it. I have been serious about it the last four years and have met so many incredible people and have had so many fantastic evenings because of it.

5. I love to travel and need to make an effort to do it more. Especially to go to places I haven’t been before.

6. I feel incredibly lucky and fortunate to be able to live a life so rich with great experiences and so luxuriously free of constraints.

7. Sometimes I worry about not caring enough about the important things in life, but then I pour myself another glass and say “this is some good juice!”

8. I know a little about a lot of things, but not a lot about most of them.

9. Fifteen months ago I found the music again. I listened to music all the time growing up, and I did it actively. I remember getting a new album and just sitting in my room reading the liner notes and listening to it over and over. In college I’d go to live shows in small clubs all the time. Over the years my interest slowly dwindled all the way to mostly getting new albums from artists I already knew. Now I’m back, baby, and I’ve found a ton of new stuff and I love it.

10. I love having moved around as much as I have and not having any idea where I’ll be living five years from now. It’s an incredibly liberating and enriching feeling, but it has its price. I often miss my friends who don’t live near me and wish I could see them more.

11. I think everyone should live abroad at least once in their life. Or, at least travel to many different places and get to know people from different countries. It totally changes your perspective on life and I can’t deal with narrow-minded people.

12. People who are not intellectually curious bore me. I’ve come to learn that almost any topic can be fascinating if you learn enough about it. Except the names of different rocks.

13. I’m drawn to people who know things that I don’t, do things that I don’t, say things that I don’t.

14. After having moved to sunny Arizona I don’t understand how I ever found the climate in any of my previous places even remotely acceptable. Moving here was like having a life-long mild depression lifted off my shoulders. I guess I just didn’t know better.

15. If I had to give up one of the following features of my TV-watching experience, I honestly don’t know which one I would choose: color, high-definition or the Digital Video Recorder. I’m seriously considering ‘color’ but realize I’m probably in the minority there.

16. I go to Vegas a couple of times a year and feel like it isn’t nearly enough.

17. I occasionally blog: http://janssonmattias.blogspot.com

18. I am an elite procrastinator. I’ve been meaning to change that, but haven’t gotten to it yet.

19. I wish I was better at artsy things. I often feel the urge to write, but seldom act on it.

20. If I were very wealthy I’d take all my good friends and family on a giant vacation on a tour of all my favorite places.

21. I spend a lot of time alone. Mostly by choice, and I do enjoy myself when I’m alone but it doesn’t create a lot of memories.

22. I once had an idea to start a business renting dogs in parks for single guys to use to pick up women. It would also be a dog-walking service for busy dog-owners. It’s a win-win – I would just sit in the middle collecting money from both sides.

23. I am a big admirer of Aaron Sorkin and will probably watch all 45 episodes of Sports Night every few years for the rest of my life.

24. Ditto for the Sandman-series by Neil Gaiman. I’ve become very interested in Graphic Novels the last several years, and consider these to be some of the best works I’ve encountered (regular books included.)

25. I feel like I spent more time than I should creating this list but less time than I needed.

All I Can Do Is Be Me Whoever That Is

I just watched I'm Not There, the 2007 movie inspired "by the music and many lives of Bob Dylan." 

In case you're not familiar with the film, it is a mish-mash of six portraits of different reincarnations of Bob Dylan played by Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, Ben Whishaw, and a black child. Each version showcases different aspects of Bob Dylan's life and music: aspiration, rebellion, fame, self-doubt, family, infidelity, religion, refusing to be defined, etc.

I have to say that the experience of watching the movie was very uneven. At times it seemed to be muddling along and it was hard to see the point of a scene (I fully admit I don't know enough about Bob Dylan's life to pick up on many of the references to real-life events) and at times it was simply brilliant. While several of the acting efforts were very strong, Cate Blanchett is the unequivocal star of the movie. I'd heard much about her performance in the move before seeing it, but I was still blown away.

That reminds me, if you have not seen Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes, Cate's performance in it alone makes it worth seeing. She plays herself and her own cousin in one of the ten shorts that make up the movie. The film as a whole is also uneven, but there are some true gems in there. Here are my three other favorites: the one with Tom Waits and Iggy Pop, the one with RZA, GZA (from the Wu Tang Clan) and Bill Murray, and the one with Meg and Jack White (from the White Stripes).

Lastly, the idea that we're all complex, multifaceted beings that react and behave very differently depending on where we are, when we are, or who we are with; is something I've been thinking a lot about lately. Take the phrase "I'm sorry, I wasn't myself," for example. What does that mean? We're always ourselves, strictly speaking, even if we sometimes seem very different. I know what we mean by it, obviously, but isn't it a strange way of explaining our own behavior? 

I've also been thinking about what "me" really means. What is it that makes Mattias be Mattias? I'd like to think that when people think of me they think of a personality rather than just a physical being, but what does that mean if I'm different in different situations? Maybe it just means we never really know anyone fully?

The movie Solaris (I've only seen the newer version by Steven Soderbergh, not the original by Tarkovsky) explored this in an interesting way. The main character (George Clooney) encounters his dead wife seemingly alive on a space station. But, because she's only a manifestation of his mind, she is defined by how he knew her and his memories of her. His real wife committed suicide, and at first he sees her appearing on the space station as a second chance to be happy together, but she is limited by "how he knows her" and she slowly becomes suicidal again. Not the happiest of movies and the last 20 minutes are downright confusing, but it was thought-provoking.

I also want to recommend a book I read in college: The Society of Mind by MIT professor Marvin Minsky. Minsky is an expert in cognitive science and cofounded the Artificial Intelligence lab at MIT. The basic idea of the book is that our minds are not singular, but rather a collection of different functions and traits (agents), all simultaneously both working together and competing with each other. Each agent may be simple in itself, but the vast number of them and how they interact is what makes us complex. 

It's a bit like the Internet: no single webpage is that special, but the large number of them and how they are connected is what makes it breathtaking. Or Sun Microsystems' old tagline: The Network Is The Computer. Or Metcalfe's Law: the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users.

Anyway, I leave you with a few lines I wrote some time ago. I already stole the opening in a post title a few weeks ago, but didn't post the rest because it feels like a work in progress, but I don't know if I'll ever get back to it:

I am cacophony, I am harmony

I am cold logic

and inconsistency

with her I am me

with him I am me

without them, me

each the same, but none the same

I am intrinsic, I am context

I am cacophony

and yet still me

Oh, I forgot to mention Ray Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines. An interesting look at the future and artificial intelligence, and some intriguing thought experiments regarding the ability to continue life beyond our bodies by transferring our minds to a computer. But, if we could do that, would I still be "me"? What if we were able to copy me without destroying my original brain - would both of them be "me"?

Be Careful What You Wish For

I went to see Coraline this weekend. I chose to see the regular version - 3D just seems like it would be intrusive to me.

As you may recall from previous posts, I'm a huge Neil Gaiman fan (The Sandman series is one of my favorite works of fiction - all categories) so I did what I could to lower my overambitious expectations. Nevertheless, I thought it was a very impressive effort and I am yet again completely in awe of the stop-motion animation technique! Imagine making a whole movie by moving dolls and surroundings around, advancing them one frame at a time. Henry Selick, the Director, mostly known for The Nightmare Before Christmas, must be the most patient man on Earth.

I'm also a big fan of Ian McShane (played Al Swearengen on Deadwood) and, as expected, he completely stole each of the few scenes he was in. Although, I kept half-expecting him to call someone a cocksucker, but it was probably best that he didn't since half the audience were kids under 12...

I am cacophony: A-F

Ha - I just went to Wikipedia to look up something and noticed that the drop-down from previous searches is pretty telling of what kind of person I am. See below for my recent search terms from A to F. There's absolutely no rhyme or reason to it. 

This is the reason why the Amazon recommendations will never be very good. How would you predict that I have an interest in Charlotte Gainsbourg from my searches for Christina Applegate, Fruitcake and Cellular Automatons? 

What's spinning now?

I just made myself laugh when I got a visual in my head of spinning MP3s inside my iPhone. I'm like a 3-year old sometimes.

Anyway, here's some stuff that I've been listening to lately.

A Camp - Colonia
A Nina Persson solo side project which I'm enjoying quite a bit more than her work with The Cardigans. The new album Colonia has been getting a lot of Mattias playtime lately.

Fever Ray - Fever Ray
Another solo side project -this one by Karin Dreijer from The Knife. Solid album in a similar electropop style, distorted vocals, etc.

Trost - Trust Me
If it's possible to hit you over the head in an understated way, multilingual German singer Annika Trost knows how to pull it off. Especially listen to her stunning cover of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's Black. So good.

The Last Shadow Puppets - The Age Of The Understatement
Released almost a year ago, but I just discovered it. Yet another side project; by Alex Turner of The Arctic Monkeys and a guy from The Rascals. Pretty commercial in style, but a good album.

Larkin Grimm
I've only heard two of her songs, but I can't stop listening to one of them: Ride That Cyclone. An energetic acoustic guitar-riff that could be coming from a Johnny Cash song layered with husky repetitive, trance-like vocals. Love it!

Jolie Holland - The Living and the Dead
Jolie is growing on me more and more. I have one of her previous albums (Escondida) and loved one song on it (Old Fashioned Morphine) but the rest of it quickly faded into oblivion. I really like the new album, though - will need to revisit the older stuff soon...

Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid
You've gotta love this opening line: "I've been working on a cocktail called Grounds for Divorce. Whoa!" And, any band that writes a song called "The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Operator" has got to be onto something. Low key, solid album.