howeird | Catching up on Netflix (Reply)

What with my laptop DVD player not working correctly, I finally watched a couple of DVDs which have been in their little red envelopes for weeks. And was reminded that the HDMI connection on my new DVD player is not behaving. So I plugged in the component cables and the coax digital audio. It may be the cheap cables, so tomorrow I will buy good ones and try again. If they don't work, I'll have to send the player in for repair. It was a refurb anyway.

Watched about 20 minutes of Reno 911 Miami before the BS meter slammed me upside the head. I was hoping the uncut version would have some gratuitous nudity, but I was not expecting it to all be scrawny men.

Followed that with a 1983 documentary about musical schizophrenia in Thailand. It did an excellent job of showing up-country music vs. Bangkok Thai pop music, and worked in a lot of classical Thai music as well. The tack they took was that to bust out of the up-country rice farmer rut, boysae took their chances training for Muay Thai, girls for classical dance, and everyone for acting or singing stardom. The movie opens with one of the King's musical compositions, which sounded a lot like The St. Louis Blues played by a marching band, and also had a rare clip of him playing jazz clarinet (he is very very good - used to play with Benny Goodman). Lots of little details in the movie which I had not run across - it ends with a ceremony reminiscent of a Baptist "speaking in tongues" Chautauqua.

As I'm writing, the wine country and Barry Bonds photos are uploading to my howeird.com gallery. I'll pluck some wine country shots and load them on Flickr if I have time tonight.