Alpine Meadows, CA. 22 February 2006 

I went back to California last weekend, and had a great time snowboarding up at Lake Tahoe. I got 3 full days of riding in — 2 days at Northstar and one day at Alpine Meadows. Both were good, but kudos and top marks go to the good folks at the rental shop at Alpine for giving me a free replacement Switch back (the blue plastic piece in the picture above) when my binding broke unexpectedly.

The conditions were pretty much perfect: It snowed at least 12″ every day, and it was also unusually cold for California, which meant that the snow stayed dry, powdery and lots of fun. It was easily the best powder I’ve ever ridden on in California.

The trip was arranged by my buddy Gordon, who is currently based in Washington DC, but who I first met on a snowboarding trip to the “Ponderosa” (the ski cabin owned by the family Pon) back in 2000, when we both lived in San Francisco.

We stayed in the Ponderosa again this time around (first time I’d been back since 2000), along with 9 of Gordon’s other friends, and 6 other folks in a different group — the cabin had been double-booked! Fortunately everyone was cool about the situation, although it was definitely a little cramped.

On the way back I also had drinks with my ex Jessica and dinner with a bunch of friends (Angus, CK, Mark, Stephanie and Suzy) in the Mission (my old ‘hood between ’99 and ’02) before heading back to New York.

All in all, it was a great trip. Next month: Whistler, near Vancouver!

I’m glad to see that the controversy over George Bush’s illegal domestic spying program is getting more heated. Could this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, and brings down this awful administration? I hope so — it’s basically the same issue that forced Nixon to resign in 1974 under the threat of impeachment, and resulted in a law specifically to prevent such breaches of privacy and infringements of civil liberties: The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, a law that George W. Bush has apparently broken.

A few interesting recent developments:

1. According to today’s New York Times, a number of Republican politicians, in both houses, are now starting to publicly express doubts over the leaglity of Bush’s covert domestic spying program, including Representative Heather Wilson, Senator Susan Collins, Senator Lisa Murkowski and Senator Arlen Specter, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee (and who I can’t help thinking of as “Uncle Arlen,” even though I’ve never met him, since he’s related to my ex-girlfriend Jessica).

2. The Feds have been stepping up their inquiry to discover who leaked the information about the illegal wiretapping program to the New York Times in the first place– a witch hunt that is no doubt intended to warn other potential whistle-blowers that they will be hunted down, and which clearly shows just how nervous the administration are about this whole issue.

3. George W. Bush recently announced that the security services had foiled a plot by Al Qaeda shoe bombers to fly another commercial jet liner into another building, this time the Library Tower (although apparently he mistakenly called it the Liberty Tower) in Los Angeles. Please — the timing is just a little bit too convenient, and are we really supposed to believe that Al Qaeda are so lacking in imagination that they would try exactly the same act of terrorism AFTER security measures have been tightened up in airports and on planes throughout the globe?

4. Moveon.org have produced a clever new TV ad that includes footage of “Tricky Dicky” Nixon morphing subtly and seamlessly into footage of George W. Bush, and clearly makes the following point:

“Nixon was also illegally spying on Americans for reasons he claimed were related to national security. America disagreed and we passed a law after Nixon resigned that balanced national security and the civil rights of Americans.”

5. The Campaign to Impeach Bush published a full-page ad in the New York Times recently.

I just came across the website for the International Ginger Kids Foundation the other day. It’s good to see that this important social issue is finally getting the attention that it deserves.

Earlier this evening I went to see Why We Fight, a documentary by Eugene Jarecki which apparently won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.

It was excellent, and clearly demonstrated the build-up of the “military-industrial complex” since the end of the Second World War (as forewarned by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his outgoing Presidential address), and culminating in the enormous U.S. arms industry and lobby that is the driving force behind the aggressive American military imperialism of the early 21st Century.

As one commentator notes, when you have a defence industry that’s worth $3/4 trillion dollars annually and that makes profits of 25%, you’re going to see a lot more wars.

Highly recommended — if you live in New York, it’s showing at the Angelika Film Centre until this Thursday.

Yesterday I went snowboarding for the first time this season, to Hunter Mountain in the Catskills, self-proclaimed “snow-making capital of the World.” It’s fortunate that they have good snow-making capabilities, because there’s been hardly any natural snowfall on the east coast of the United States so far this winter.

I had a great day yesterday, primarily because the weather was bizarrely warm and sunny; it was much more like spring skiing in California than winter skiing in New York!

I got to meet one of my all-time favourite authors briefly tonight at Barnes & Noble in Union Square near where I work; Paul Auster read a chapter from his new novel, The Brooklyn Follies, and then signed about a million copies of the book, including mine.

They have some pretty good authors at that store; last summer, I listened to Umberto Eco read from his latest, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana. I bought a hardback copy, but couldn’t be bothered to queue to get it signed, and I have to say I wasn’t that impressed after reading it.

I finished reading The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini today (I’m quite possibly the last person in New York to read this book, judging by how many people I saw reading it on the subway over the summer).

It was a very good book, although also very sad and moving. It also had one of the best endings I’ve read for a long time — not good in the “happily ever after” sense, but just well-written and satisfying. I dislike stories that just stop.

Anyway, here’s the filthy lucre link — click on this, buy it from Amazon, and I’ll make 5 cents or something.

This is cool — Pandora is a new free web service that came out of something called the Music Genome Project.

Apparently, the people behind this project have analyzed hundreds of attributes for over ten thousand tracks, and come up with a unique “genome” for each track. The idea behind the Pandora service is that you type in the name of an artist or track, and then it searches the database and plays other tracks with similar attributes.

In addition, you can register whether you like or dislike the suggested tracks, add a track to your favourites list, or buy the track from an online music store.

I can see why they chose the name Pandora — it could potentially open up a time-consuming and costly world of new music if it worked too well! Thanks to Scyld for pointing me to this.

The last two movies I saw at the cinema were Good Night and Good Luck and Syriana, which have four things in common: Firstly, they both benefit from solid, understated performances by George Clooney, secondly, they are both movies with strong social messages, and thirdly (as I just found out today from this Observer article), they were both made by the same production company, Participant Productions, a project of billionaire eBay founder Jeff Skoll.

In addition to producing the movies, they also run a website, participate.net, that encourages people to get involved in social change campaigns related to the themes in the movies. Which I think is very cool.

The fourth thing that the movies have in common is that they are both very good movies.

I got a brand new nephew today! Kaelen Daniel Gill was born at 3:43am local time in Cyprus. Congratulations to Dave & Jo — hopefully there will be some pictures on their podule.co.uk website in the not too distant future.