The last four weeks were dedicated to family gatherings: two unexpected funerals, a cousin's wedding, and an emotional reunion of siblings, estranged for over 20 years.

I would love to get my hands on the floorplan of the hotel we stayed at when we were in Vail. The architectural inspiration must have been the labyrinth in The Shining. I even looked for a fire escape floorplan to photograph, and--incredibly--there was none. It was probably too complex for the architects to render. They really should have inserted in the guest info binder (along with 'What to do in Vail' and 'Dining and Entertainment options') a 'How To Get From Your Room Back To the Lobby/Down To Breakfast' map, just before the 'Room Service Menu (Because You Will Never Make It Down To Breakfast)'. This was the route we had to take from the elevator bank back to our room: left> right> left> right> left> left> right> right> left> right> right> left> right> left> et, voila, room 427B. By the end of our stay, however, I proved once again that I would make a good lab rat and was having little contests with myself to see how much time I could shave off of my previous time in getting to and from our room.

I finally set up a portfolio blog. I also set up a photo blog. The portfolio blog still needs a lot of work, but *duh* after more than a decade of not doing anything with meanjean.com (still no future plans for development over there...), what took me so long to think of this easy, free solution to putting work up on the web?

Come visit Meanjean Ink. And while you're over there, have you Seen Jean?

I just updated this template and lost some 'things' in the process (checking old links, looks like previous flickr links bring you to the account of some poor, unsuspecting flickr-er named Bacterie.) I've also lost all links to blogs I was following here, so if yours was one of them, that's what happened.

I also got the bright idea to make a portfolio blog, as I still haven't done anything with meanjean.com and have no web presence whatsoever that indicates that I can even align 2 objects. My portfolio blog will probably only take a quick few years to pull together.

In the meantime, count some sheep!

I spent my Election 2008 evening sitting in the live studio audience for TV5 Monde's presidential election special. Can you find me? Unfortunately, after I left the audience, I didn't even think of walking north a few blocks to Times Square. I am a New Yorker, and like many other New Yorkers, I try to avoid Times Square, so it's actually a neighborhood I know very little about, much less think much about--so it didn't even cross my mind that it would be a good spot to be in for a large, warm, fuzzy, spontaneous crowd reaction that I could remember for the rest of my life as the place I was when the announcement was made. Instead, I was handling a large, greasy pan over the kitchen sink when I heard people yelling outside of my window. I spent the rest of the night in front of CNN. And then post-election night depression started to set in precisely because I realized I could have just gone to Times Square, and I went outside at 1.45 am, trolling for a spontaneous, large crowd party--perhaps at Brooklyn City Hall (nope). There were people here and there, cheering outside of bars, but it wasn't what I was looking for. The next morning, I read that there had been several spontaneous, large crowd street parties in nearby neighborhoods (my neighborhood is just too darn full of staid young-kid-families), and that made my depression a little worse. Oh, well. It's a superficial problem to have, especially since we have a supergreat president elect! But, I can't even say, 'Maybe next time,' because it will never be like it was on the evening of November 4th, 2008.

So, I've got a new pasttime--it's called comment reading. I read all sorts of comments--Amazon.com reviews, rottentomatoes.com reviews, Zappos.com reviews...now I'm addicted to YouTube comments. Blog comments. They offer great insight into a group's collective mindset and sensibility. I've been reading some of the 1,600+ comments left mostly by Italians about Berlusconi's remark about Obama's 'suntan'...the Italian comments left by readers of the NYT are really funny, especially when read en masse. I have learned that 1.) Many Italians disapprove of Berlusconi and feel trapped under 14 years and counting of his leadership 2.) They think he's an evil brainwasher controlling their minds with the tv that they watch 3.) They deal with this with a very funny sense of humor vs. the often grave, serious tone of American commentors on the same entry. Here are some I've enjoyed so far:

--Hi from Italy, save us!!!! Please!

--You got OBAMA we have berlsuconi, I WANT TO COME IN USA.

--If you want i will appreciate if you drop bomb in italy instead than in iraq.

--you all are very lucky…just heard ,sometimes, about his silly jokes all over. we HAVE TO HEAR from him EVERY DAY IN iTALY

--I can’t stand him any longer, please help me, convince Obama to invade Italy and get us rid of him.

It's the Presidential high-school lunch room! Obama has to apologize to Nancy Reagan after joking about her séances, Prime Minister Berlusconi won't apologize to Obama...Gossip Girl, who has to apologize next? The real question is, was Berlusconi's comment about Obama's youth, looks and, uh, suntan...(awkward pause)...veering on clueless racism, along the lines of the Spanish basketball and tennis teams' affection for Chinese eyes? Or was that really a compliment, as he claims? Compliment? I've been trying to put myself in Berlusconi's shoes, and trying to imaging what was going through his head to think it was a compliment he was paying our President-elect, and this is what I came up with: could be that he (delusionally) sees himself (in a funhouse mirror) as an older version of Obama: Berlusconi was once young, still considers himself good-looking, and is perpetually suntanned. And as the world IS revolving around Obama at the moment, B thinks the world revolves around him.

What amazes me most about this 'suntan' remark is the reaction of the Italians on the blogosphere--it is totally opposite of the Spanish public's reaction to international outcry about the eye-slant incident, where thousands of Spaniards vehemently defended the basketball team and denied any racism in the action or in their collective national mindset, unintentional as it was. Italians seem pretty dang embarrassed and ready to admit a larger Italian problem with discrimination.

Perhaps this is because Spaniards love their national basketball heroes, and many Italians think Berlusconi is a corrupt ignoramus. But, I do like to think that Obama's election has already made a marked change--opening up dialogue about race relations and holding up mirrors to European countries who are at this moment experiencing significant increases in their own immigrant populations, yet are in denial of ingrained elitism, classism and racism. In a nutshell, America did it, so can these other countries. There is inspiration for citizens worldwide to shake up the 'old regimes.'

From the NYT:
"Yet Mr. Berlusconi’s latest gaffe seemed to tap into a deep well of anger at him, which is at least as strong as his high approval ratings. A brief report on NYTimes.com about the comment drew nearly 1,600 responses, most from upset Italians.

A reader named Alberto wrote, 'Mr. Berlusconi’s stupid joke is a further demonstration of the racism and intolerance that grow inside Italian population, helped by the embarrassing attitude of Italian politics.'"

UPDATE:
Yesterday's NYT had an interesting piece discussing exactly that topic I mentioned about Obama's election causing Europeans to reflect on their own country's/fellow citizens' attitudes towards minorities. It's worth a read.

Blood pressure: 106/54. Pulse/min: 70.

I'm watching the VP debate live, via NY Times streaming video. I'm also flipping back and forth between several websites to monitor blog comments...I just flipped to 'le débat en direct' via yahoo france's homepage...this is really bizarre--Biden and Palin are being simultaneously translated in voiceover. It's a bit unfair, because when dubbed in French, Palin loses her grating 'hick hockey mom' edge and comes off as unusually elegant and cosmopolitan. Her translator, though, is probably sweating bullets keeping up with the pace while trying to translate a vat of run-on, undiagrammable sentences.