Ex Bibliotheca

The life and times of Zack Weinberg.

Thursday, 31 October 2002

# 11:05 PM

Tonight, the ICSI Movie Committee (of one) screened "Dark City", which is a beautifully disturbing movie about memory and identity. I can't really describe the movie without spoiling it; for this reason I am not linking to any reviews. But go rent it, you won't be disappointed. (It is not a horror movie.)

We were invited to come in costume. I had all of ten minutes to put mine together, so I pulled some old clothes out of the back of my closet and went as a 1992 grunge rocker. This costume worked only because of the wonderful hat which my mother made for me this summer: it's all black and brown and blue wool, in a sort of pointy cylinder shape. I don't think any grunge rockers actually wore such a thing, but it is definitely something one can imagine seeing on a grunge rocker.

This makes two movies in one week, which is a personal record for the entire year: I see a movie about once every three months, on average.

In other news, the British Standards Institute has reissued the original C standard, ISO/IEC 9899:1990 (commonly known as "C89"): a hard copy can be yours for only £30. Just punch "9899" into the search box on that webpage. C89 has been superseded by the newer C99 (ISO/IEC 9899:1999) but it's still good to have it available; backward compatibility will be important for years to come.

# 3:45 AM

Just got back from seeing Seven Samurai at the Castro Theatre with friends. It was an amazing movie. I'm not going to try to review it in detail, there's plenty of commentary on it available elsewhere; let's just say it's worth seeing in uncut form, despite the length (more than three hours).

Walk into the Castro Theatre and you step right back into the Roaring Twenties. The place is as spectacular as any of Los Angeles' remaining Deco theaters — and none of them have a real live pipe organ which is played before every nightly show. It is apparently the largest fully operational Wurlitzer organ remaining on the West Coast.

I got to Castro Street by taking the Muni streetcars from a downtown BART stop. In downtown SF, the streetcars run underground; it reminded me strongly of the New York City subway experience, even to the crowdedness. It is utterly lame how difficult they make it to transfer between BART and Muni. You have to exit through the BART turnstile, cross the station, and enter the Muni turnstile, paying a second time, and woe betide you if you haven't a dollar in coins. At some stations, there are change machines that will break a dollar bill, but none that will break a five... too bad that BART's change machines will only give you fives for larger bills.