World's colliding...

... and not in a good way! No kidding guess who was the third Worst Person in the World last night according to Keith? U2!!!!! Can you believe? Turns out they performed at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to celebrate the wall coming down, so what did they do to keep out the folks without tickets? They built a wall! Duh! Not the smartest moment in the history of U2/MTV and whoever else is responsible for this stupidity.

Coolest. Thing. Ever.

Ok I totally just ripped off the title from the @U2 blog... they are not kidding!

I have been trying to find a way to celebrate the total awesomeness that was 100K people together for U2 at the Rose Bowl on Sunday night, please forgive the one day delay - frankly I was recovering!

Here it is, it is called U2 Mosaic, click on one section and just keep following it down the rabbit hole. @U2 is right - you could waste hours away at this thing!

"I'd rather have AIDS then die."

No kidding that was a line on The Practice last night. A character needs a kidney transplant and the only one that matches enough is her sister who is HIV positive. And the lady that needs the kidney says, "I'd rather have AIDS then die."

I had to press pause. Did I just hear that right? And is that how far we have really come? Frankly I am not sure we really have come that far, certainly HIV/AIDS is not a death sentence anymore. And... the drugs can wear out their usefulness, and we may not be able to keep up, and the latest research on the damage it does to the brain scares the crap out of me, and it is still most likely you will die eventually from a related illness.

But there is death sentence and death sentence and thankfully we are dealing now with the later.

I am not sure we are really there yet, but it was awesome and shocking to hear that line on prime time television last night - 10 years ago - who would have thought.

Something new under my roof

So I don't often blog of random goings-ons in my life, but I realized something new under the sun, or at least my roof, had happened.

Let's get the setting straight... room in the high school years - John Stamos pinups everywhere! When we moved to LA my mom did not even bother to wallpaper my room until after I went away to college - smart move. Architectural drawings, posters of whatever, drawings from friends, photos photos photos, the walls of my bedroom have always been well covered.

I don't talk work here, but suffice to say work is light at the moment and so I have some time at home at the end of the week, which for me at least has been a blessing. I have a dinner party on Saturday night, and I had had the notion that Saturday I would go see the new Gerard Butler movie, run to Target, and the grocery, and then home to clean, and decorate, and get ready by 5.

Then when I had the day off I had it all planned to clean a few hours and watch some more of the national parks mini-series and maybe do some drawing... ya whatever! Cleaned for 6 hours! I do get to blame the summer and the open windows and the fires, but good grief!

Now on to what is new in the world... I also spent the evening redecorating the house, with all the latest moving folks, there was real need of art on our walls. So now, in my bedroom, for the first time in 37 years, I only have two things on the walls - my window frame mirrors and the above dogwood poster. And I must say, I like it. Peaceful.

By the way, I realized the other day, I have spent precious few moments in my adulthood up-side-down on the sofa and/or bed looking at the ceiling lines. I used to imagine the world up-side-down all the time, I think it helped a lot as a designer. I need to get back to it.

What childish thing have your forgotten to do lately?

Here are a couple pics from my dad of the grand wash you should not go across with storms threatening.

So my latest venture to a national park was to Guadalupe Mountains in west Texas, that was last year road tripping with the parents. I think my sister has climbed it.

A piece of advise from our family's time at Capital Reef in Utah: Do Not Enter Gulch With Storms Threatening. Well that is the advise the sign gave. What did we do with storms threatening? We drove right through that gulch and went and looked at the holes in the side of the cliffs that the outlaws used to hide out in anyway. Luckily we are all here to tell the tale. That must have been, well I think it was 1992 - it comes up every time our family gets together.

That dear reader is the power and fun of the national parks.

By the way, this is not my pic, but some are just as good... the point being a little more telephoto, a little less proximity.

Ok, so I might have gotten a wee bit too close to the big huge beasties once or twice... making my father a bit more nervous then he would have liked... and me a bit more freaked out when he showed me how far I had walked to get my great pics.

Seriously... if you could just go hang with them in the fields like you can other large animals... I might move there.

For my mother...

You know how you have those lines from your mother that always run through your head? Here are two of my favorites from my mother.

When standing in Yosemite Valley I remember her saying, "I don't know how anyone could stand here and see this and think there is no God."

The other is when discussing people that had lived close to Yosemite (we will protect their identity by not mentioning the city, although a little humiliation might be a good thing here) all their lives and never going to see Yosemite she said, "You know I think that might actually be a sin."

Like John Muir and all those that have followed over the years, Yosemite is clearly a religious experience for my mother. I must agree as a fan of religious architecture... it might just be the best cathedral in the world, and we did nothing to build it.

Your theological thought for the day, via my mother...

Our Best Idea

Well, our second best idea... and so we belatedly today begin a series on our National Parks. I am half way through the new documentary by Ken Burns. I think it may be his best. But that could be because I have been to so many, and so it is like going home again. This is one of the themes really, this idea that in our parks we remember who we are as human beings, as Americans, as believers.

So here is a pic from a park I knew very little about, didn't even knew it existed actually until President Bartlett mentioned it in an episode of the West Wing, where they use the Antiquities Act to save some land someone wanted to "strip mine the length and breadth of." I have stolen that line or its sentiment in this blog before so that is where I stole it from if it sounds familiar.

Acadia National Park - French for Heaven on Earth.

I guess congratulations are in order...

What the!!!!!...

Making all the conservatives crazy makes me really happy. But I have to admit when I heard this morning I said,"Huh?" I was wracking my brain trying to figure out why. I thought maybe it was for being the first western leader that wasn't white as the day is long. Then I heard the speech and I still didn't know why they gave it to him. So now I have read a little of what the Nobel people are saying and the speech makes sense.

So here are my two thoughts for the day: How cool are those kids - Dad you won the Nobel Prize, its Bo's birthday, and don't forget we have a long weekend.

Two - Now he has to earn it.