Nosh.org

3600 miles later...

Well, I've just driven from Berkeley to Boston in 7 days. Here's a quick review of my trip:

After emptying my apartment, I drove from Berkeley through Tahoe and then down into Reno. Passing through Reno, I ended up in the eastern Nevada desert and spent a night in a weird casino in Wendover. For $65, I got a room with a jacuzzi and a mirror on the ceiling above it.

Next day, it was through the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, passed through Salt Lake City, then into Wyoming, through the sparseness that is Laramie and Cheyenne, and down into Boulder to visit Garvin and Tania and their son Aden.

Leaving Boulder, I took I-76 through desolate eastern Colorado. This was my chance to see real tumbleweeds. I took a little video of them, but it doesn't capture the true weirdness of giant rolling bushes:

To get a sense of what I was really seeing, here's some more videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWm0SudZTvw (warning, horrible music!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_hKDp0Zlnk (my tumbleweeds weren't this big)

Entering Nebraska, land of "the Good Life", I encountered sleet and snow and long, flat prairie. Spent the night in Omaha. There really is a Mutual there.

Next day through Iowa. Very exciting. I spent the night in Chicago at Stacey's, with a quick visit to Tami and my cousin Erik and his new baby Frida Ruckus.

Passing through Benton Harbor in Western Michigan, I got to see the old Holiday Inn where my parents were married in the late 60's (now a Lake Breeze Inn).

Also got to see the former Howard Johnsons where my mother used to work as a waitress summers between college (now an abandoned 'City Buffet').

Next, on to Ann Arbor, where I entered heaven, aka Zingerman's, the best deli on the planet.

I bought something like $80 worth of their food, saw my friend Jacqe Kaufman, then headed to Detroit. In Huntington Woods, I saw my old friend Abby Rutheiser Kushner and her family.

Then brunch with Mandy and Mel, and a visit to my old high school, Andover, then to West Bloomfield, to see the house of my childhood.

On the road to Cleveland, with a surprise visit to Angela, and eastward through Erie, PA to the state of New York. A night in Oneonta then led me finally into Western Mass, where I drove through Northampton, Amherst, and stopped to admire the scenery for lunch at the Montague Bookmill with a pint of stout and some peanut udon noodles. The bathroom had a sweet sign.

Then, finally, after 7 days of driving, I arrived at John and Justine Neely's house in Boston, just in time for dinner.

Whew. I think I'll avoid the car for a few weeks.

On the road again

It's finally that time. It's Sunday night, October 19th. 9:00 PM. My apartment is just about empty. My car is packed. Tomorrow, I will be doing a very quintessentially American task .. that is, driving my car across country to a new job in Boston.

We Americans are incredibly mobile. Moving cities for our jobs, sometimes across the country, to places where we know very few people. But I haven't done this kind of thing since my mid-20's. So I'm kind of stepping back in time.

It's probably one of the last times I'll be quite so mobile - able to uproot so quickly, sell everything and move. It's just me and my cat right now, so that's what makes it so easy.

I'm a little sad to leave my amazing community of friends, but strangely detached from the whole experience. Watching all my possessions sell and leave my world forever. Saying goodbye to everyone I've known for 9.5 years here in the beautiful Bay Area. Having my last Bay Area sushi dinner.

Who knows...maybe after 7 cold months in cold Boston I'll want to come back. I'm leaving the option open...

More stories from the road. Next stop, eastern Nevada.

I'm official.

I now have two shows that have been officially published into DVD's by the networks who I produced them for. That means you can buy these programs and keep them in your home library. Right next to your copy of "The Matrix" and "Shrek". Seriously.

Here's the first...Hooked: Monster Fish!

Here's the second...Rebuilding the Boat: The I-5 Fix in Sacramento.

You know you want a copy of each. Don't deny it.

Actually, you can watch the entire I-5 Fix show on YouTube - how cool is that:

Fall 2008 Update

My goodness, it's been 4 months since my last post. So much has happened:

-Field produced a show for National Geographic Television's "World's Toughest Fixes" in the arid desert near Antofagasta, Chile

-Produced and wrote KVIE's "Rebuilding the Boat" about a highway construction project in Sacramento

-Went to Burning Man for the 6th time

-Took a two week trip to Boston and New York, which led to...

-Accepted a job at Boston's Powderhouse Productions, where I'll produce and write two shows for Discovery Channel's "Build it Bigger".

Yep, that means I'm moving to Boston. After 9 years in the Bay Area, I'll have my first winter in a decade. I haven't lived on the East Coast since 1995, when I spent 9 months in Washington, DC. Since then, it was 4 years in Michigan and 9 years in San Francisco. Needless to say, I'm expecting some culture shock. Who knows, maybe I'll return to SF. Or head to LA or NYC. Either way, it's a change, and that's always good.

In case you've never seen my show "Berlin Wall: Great Escapes", part of National Geographic's Megastructures series, it's been posted online at Google Video.

It's a fun watch, and one of my favorite shows. For some reason, this version was revoiced by a hilarious Scottish VO artist. Keep your eyes peeled for cameos by Patrick van Beusekom (smoking his first ever cigarette), Kat Covell, a number of Kat's film friends, and even yours truly crawling through a tunnel.

Free Wireless Internet in the Santiago airport

Overnight flight from San Francisco/LAX to Santiago Chile. Now that I'm here in Santiago, with a 6 hour layover before I head to Antofagasta, I have to say, I'm happily surprised that there's free wireless internet in the airport. That's more than most American airports can say. They'll charge you $10 a minute!

LAX is an absolute pit. Confusing, dirty, poorly staffed, poorly laid out. I consider it the 7 levels of hell...in one location. An example, the security check through point for the int'l terminal looked like the back hallway of a rundown YMCA. Ceiling tiles drooping. Makeshift barriers cracking and peeling, and out of place. One barrier had a hole that had been papered over with paper towel that someone had ripped, so it fluttered in the warm air. Ugh. The line was stretching across the hallway, so they divided it in two, only to have those two lines come together again only 50 feet later. Bizarre.

The flight was nice. Free chilean wine.

Chile is a touch European. They drink capuccino and espresso standing up at wooden bars. Very civilized.

Song that got stuck in my head...

For some reason, in the last week, I can't get enough of this song...

Tattoos in New Zealand

When we were finished in Japan, our next stop was New Zealand. First, I had a couple days to write script and see my friends Matt & Minette and their daughter Lillian:

It was a bit windy on the Auckland volcano where all the tour buses stop (CAUTION: LOUD WINDY NOISE ON VIDEO!):

Then we went back to their house in Ponsonby. Matt and I headed out for beers. After a long red-eye flight from Japan via Australia, this was the perfect antidote:

Back at their house, Lillian showed off:

I headed off for some surfing in Raglan...and stayed in an eco-hostel where the cabins were made from recycled train cabooses:

Then we got to work. In Auckland, we met Maori tattoo artist Tu Duley, a great guy and excellent artist. He tattooed our host:

Then he invited us to join him on an adventure. He was heading up into the mountains of the
Te Urewera National Park, to a village called Te Mapou, where his tribe, the Tuhoe people have lived for centuries. They're the only Maori tribe who weren't colonized by the Europeans, and they live pretty close to the land - under the shadow of their sacred mountain, Maungapohatu:

We filmed the drive:

When we arrived, they did a traditional welcoming ceremony:

Here's a video of us approaching the Marae:

Then Tu tattooed some facial mokos on other members of the tribe:

Tu looking like a stud:

Rua Kenana is the prophet who founded the town in 1908:

Then we spent the night in the longhouse - the marae - and left the next day. All in all, an amazing trip.

Tattoos in Japan

Working on a History Channel show about the history of tattoos, I went to Japan and New Zealand to see what tattooing was all about in both of those places.

I took millions of photos and videos, so I'll condense it down to the highlights.

In Japan, we visited the world's busiest intersection in Shibuya:

We also stayed in some tiny hotels:

On our search for tattoo history, we visited Jikei University, which has a dried and mounted tattooed skin - preserved from a dead Yakuza in the 1930's. Kinda gruesome, but very very interesting. They were very nice to us and showed us the skin:

Here's a video of the skin:

We met Horiyoshi III, the country's top hand-poking tattoo artist. He gave our host a tattoo. Horiyoshi has a tattoo museum with some interesting displays, including preserved tattooed heads from New Zealand and Kewpie dolls:

When the shoot was over, I headed to the slopes for a little skiing:

I found some funny menu items, as well:

Turkey Day in Stockton

I decided to stay in San Francisco over the holiday, so my good friend Kathleen took me in as a holiday orphan, and invited me to have dinner with her parents in Stockton. Also in attendance were 2 dogs, 3 neighbors over the age of 90, and Kathleen's 90+ year old grandmother. Lots of food, and some opera singing.

Some videos.

Kathleen sings in Russian:

Kathleen sings in French:

The Buster Brown Band Performs at Ashkenaz

About two months ago, I joined a music program called Bandworks. You sign up and tell them what instruments you play. They place you in a band with 4-5 other people, give you some songs to learn, and someone to instruct and guide you.

I originally wanted to play the drums, but they assigned me to the bass. So I also became the lead singer. My group - the Buster Brown Band (myself, Patty, Jim, Oren, Bernie and our instructor, Bhakti) - met once a week for 8-9 weeks and then had our first and only performance at Ashkenaz in Berkeley on 11/14/07. Seemed to get a good reception, and I had a great time having my big rock and roll moment.

Check it out...(special thanks to Sean and Ingrid for taking the videos and photos).

Photos from the performance and later that evening: