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I renewed the domain name for this blog today, as it was going to run out tomorrow for another two years on register.com . They are not the cheapest, but I did get to talk to a human in a reasonable amount of time as I had forgotten the password for the account. I also got four nag phone calls from them to renew, which was in one sense good because I was putting it off, but on principle, I don’t give out credit card numbers to people that call me.

In other news, there is talk about allowing single letter domain names. As of now, all single letter and number domains are reserved, except i, q, x, and z, which were grandfathered. I like to use a@b.com in forms that randomly ask for an email address when I’m not interested in junk mail.

Saw in Metro NY (the free morning newspaper) about Fotolia, a stock photo website that lets you buy and sell digital photos. The Fotolia currency is a “credit”, which is equal to US$1. You can exchange them for PayPal dollars for a 2% ($1 min) commission. Photos can go for $1 upwards, or you can give exclusive rights. Sounds fascinating.

Had a double Thanksgiving this weekend – Thursday at P’s parent’s house, and on Saturday, I cooked at my mom’s house. P’s mom, as a former housekeeper, did the complete Martha Stewart deal, including a perfectly rosted turkey, mushroom sausage stuffing with brown gravy, mashed potatoes, yams, pumpkin pie — you get the picture. On Saturday, I pulled off my godmother’s baked ham recipe that my mom was given, and a big tray of lasagna. Good eats for at least a few more days.

I didn’t buy anything on Black Friday, but instead we had to swap our Time Warner cable box. This was the second Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000 that broke on us. Web reviews had mentioned that the DVR had quite a return rate — had heat problems, hard drive problems and an underpowered CPU. I asked if they had anything else, and they upgraded us to an 8300. Hopefully this one will be better. It doesn’t have the heat problems, and it does change channels faster. Also, it has keyword search of the listings, which is fantastic for finding things.

The box came up with several new channels, including the ImaginAsian channel, which seems to go head-to-head with the AZN (nee International) channel, and the chinese channels were not scrambled. However, the free In-Demand channels didn’t work. We’re up to 1014 channels!

Another interesting Chinese cooking show on Discovery Living: Kylie Kwong, a chef who is a 5th generation Australian Chinese. She looks like a thirty-something version of my aunt from Trinidad, and her accent is just as thick. Usually, I’m pretty good at figuring out Commonwealth English, but at some points I had to turn on the closed captioning to figure out what she was saying – definately a sheila. But the food was quite nice — if we ever make it to Sydney, we’ll have to check out her restaurant.

This past Friday night, I should mention, had a fascinating Charlie Rose interview of Judge Richard Posner of the 7th Circuit and Law and Economics fame. Such a great interview!

The new “Nightline” is coming…

Saw “Rent” yesterday. I thought it was a pretty good musical movie. The fact that it had the original cast (or most of them anyway) was great too – beautiful voices and very attractive cast. And, yeah, some of the cast is looking a little long in the tooth to still play characters in their twenties, and it’s not a perfect movie (no plot, as one person said – but it’s a musical, and musicals are always going to be weak in plot). I liked the NY Times review by A.O. Scott best:

In other words, “Rent” is occasionally silly, often melodramatic and never subtle. Every song swells toward bombast, and every theme, musical or narrative, is underlined almost to the point of illegibility. [“Rent” creator Jonathan] Larson’s attempt to force the marriage of rock and Broadway often sends the worst of both genres into noisy collision, as if Meat Loaf and Andrew Lloyd Webber were reworking “Exile on Main Street.” Certainly, the musical traditions of the show’s native ground – home to the Velvet Underground, the Ramones, Sonic Youth and so on – are hardly audible in its tunes. But to raise such objections – or to chide “Rent” for its childish politics or its simplistic and instantly obsolete vision of the New York demimonde – is to think like a them.

Yes, Bohemia is dead. Its funeral rites are pronounced by Mr. Larson’s best song (“La Vie Boheme,” quoted earlier), a wondrously nonsensical catalog of tastes, ideas and attitudes ranging from microbrewed beers to Kurosawa movies, with a toast along the way to “Sontag and to Sondheim and to everything taboo.” But the passage of time, which has left almost nothing taboo, has also inoculated “Rent” against the disdain of hipsters who might find it woefully unsophisticated. Its idea of Bohemia is not realistic, but romantic, even utopian. Openhearted to a fault, it stakes its integrity on the faith that even in millennial New York, some things – friendship, compassion, grief, pleasure, beauty – are more important than money or real estate.

It never hurts to be reminded. Precisely because some of the specific concerns of “Rent” have become dated, the truth at its heart is clearer than ever. It is undeniably sentimental, but its sentimentality might serve as a balm to those of us, in New York and elsewhere, who sometimes find ourselves living in the long, tuneless sequel. Who would ever want to see a show called “Mortgage”?

Nice points. Although, I do wonder if the Red State folks may stomach “Rent,” but it’s been around almost 10 years, so what can one really say? Just sit back and enjoy the visuals and the music.

The passing of Pat Morita, a.k.a. Mr. Miyagi of “Karate Kid” and Arnold of “Happy Days.” Fascinating obituary by Associated Press, noting:

For years, Morita played small and sometimes demeaning roles in such films as “Thoroughly Modern Millie” and TV series such as “The Odd Couple” and “Green Acres.” His first breakthrough came with “Happy Days,” and he followed with his own brief series, “Mr. T and Tina.”

“The Karate Kid,” led to three sequels, the last of which, 1994’s “The Next Karate Kid,” paired him with a young Hilary Swank.

Morita was prolific outside of the “Karate Kid” series as well, appearing in “Honeymoon in Vegas,” “Spy Hard,” “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” and “The Center of the World.” He also provided the voice for a character in the Disney movie “Mulan” in 1998.

Born in northern California on June 28, 1932, the son of migrant fruit pickers, Morita spent most of his early years in the hospital with spinal tuberculosis. He later recovered only to be sent to a Japanese-American internment camp in Arizona during World War II.

“One day I was an invalid,” he recalled in a 1989 AP interview. “The next day I was public enemy No. 1 being escorted to an internment camp by an FBI agent wearing a piece.”

After the war, Morita’s family tried to repair their finances by operating a Sacramento restaurant. It was there that Morita first tried his comedy on patrons.

Because prospects for a Japanese-American standup comic seemed poor, Morita found steady work in computers at Aerojet General. But at age 30 he entered show business full time.

“Only in America could you get away with the kind of comedy I did,” he commented. “If I tried it in Japan before the war, it would have been considered blasphemy, and I would have ended in leg irons. “

I linked to the Cnn.com’s version of the AP article, which also included a fascinating video clip of Pat Morita.

The passing of Hugh Sidey, the Time magazine writer/Presidential historian.

Newsweek has a cover article on Charles Darwin, the man behind the theory of evolution. Fascinating article. Almost made me want to pick up my old copy of “Origin of Species” from college to recapture that feeling of “wow, what is this Victorian era guy saying?” (the operative word behing “almost”).

Law.com still won’t take a break this holiday (good for them) – posting this article on Justice O’Connor’s speech on judicial independence, and on the ABA and studies on appellate judges.

Today’s NY Times editorial – great thoughts:

We often find it hard to be as thankful as we should be these days. For so many Americans, it is no longer a question of having too little or having enough. It’s the difference between having too much and having way, way too much.

It is too easy to forget, amid this abundance, that all across America a different kind of Great Depression is still going on. The old stories would have been told very differently – if they were told at all – if they had been tales of growing up poor in the midst of wealth. There was no shame in the collective poverty of the Great Depression. There is no shame in the poverty Americans suffer today. The shame adheres to those who do nothing to change it.

Perhaps it isn’t necessary to have gone hungry in order to be thankful for eating well. In a land of economic entitlement, gratitude may be almost too old-fashioned to sustain for more than this one day. But then there is something to be said for an old-fashioned holiday like this one. For a moment, we grasp how rich we are, how close we feel to the ones around us, and we give thanks before it all seems merely normal again.

Be thankful for what you have; health, family, etc. Wish for peace on earth.