It's Official: The War is CANCELLED!



Today the Lake Merritt lighting authority mostly completed taking down the red, white and blue lights from around the lake. They were rainbow colors (sort of) for East Bay Gay Pride in August, and then about a week later they changed the lights to red, white and blue for September 11. Then they were red, white and blue for Thanksgiving, then they were red, white and blue for Diwali, Ramadan, Kwanzaa, Solstice, and Christmas. The whole time I was guessing that they were up to support our troops in their unheroic swoop into Iraq, but today THEY WERE BACK TO THEIR OLD COLOR. A nice off-white. So, the authorities have spoken. The war must have been cancelled. They wouldn't take down this three and a half mile long "necklace of lights" involving twelve thousand or more bulbs unless it was so. Tomorrow they will finish turning it peaceful white, which it will remain until August when it will probably turn rainbow again.



I love Lake Merritt. The brown pelican are a bit pushy around the small black sea birds (cormorants, I think), but mostly it's the geese causing problems with the joggers who wipe out cutting across the goose-poop-laden grass. But it's all worth it when I see traffic slow to a stop next to the lake to let a long train of geese floppyfooting their way across four lanes of blacktop. And though the pelicans are big and splashy there's only 5,000 mating pairs left, so I won't resent their taking up some space.



From Databay:



This is the only salt water lake in the center of an American city, perhaps in any city in the world. As far back as 1870, Lake Merritt was declared America's first state game refuge and today is home to leopard sharks, striped bass, different types of ducks, sea anemones, mussels, herons, egrets and a resident population of Canadian geese. The lake is flushed twice a day by the tidal action of Oakland Inner Harbor and San Francisco Bay.



The Birds of Lake Merritt


Here's the vital statistics for Lake Merrit from the Lake Merritt Institute web site.


And click here for entertaining Oakland and Lake Merritt factoids by Nonchalance.



P.S. The Slacker Stalker Low-Down on Adaptation



Lesbian Movie Standard Score: zero (i.e. no two female characters have any one conversation at all, let alone a conversation about something other than a man).



The Gay Character: Nicholas Cage as the main character is working out a narcissitic relationship with himself through his twin brother, and since narcissism has long been considered the root of homosexuality, I'm making him the gay character.


The Jesus Figure: Also the character(s) played by Nicholas Cage. I don't want to say too much, but he suffers, has the passion in the garden the night before the execution, dies and rises again and is redeemed by love.



And my recommendation? See it. See it at least twice. See it alone and then see it with friends. Or see it with a date, then alone, and then with friends.



This movie completely rocked. I didn't remember anything from the reviews or previews, and so I didn't see anything coming. I, and many of the San Francisco Thursday night audience, laughed a lot, and laughed AND clapped at some points. At very subtle, good humor, too, not just the crazy action that happens later on. This movie was seamless, except for having the Nicholas Cage character drive out of the parking garage at the end in the lane that ends in tire-spikes. I don't think they meant those signs to be visible to the camera.