This is What an Earthquake Is

The first thing I remember was the force. The same force you feel when you're zooming down the incline of a roller coaster.

It was 16 years ago this morning that a 6.4 earthquake hit the San Fernando Valley on a previously unknown fault. We all went from being Valley Boys and Valley Girls to being earthquake survivors.

It was around 4:30 in the morning and with the world shaking around me, that force was so great that I couldn't get out of bed.

All my life as a So Cal kid, I was trained to find a table and get under it. But I couldn't even get out of bed as the G-force produced by the quake kept me in bed. The most I could do was put the pillow over my head and wait for it to end.

When it was over, I remember the darkness. No power on a new moon twilight.

I immediately reached for the door to my bedroom, and it wouldn't open. With it completely dark and no idea what your surroundings looked like, I wondered... was I trapped? Had everything collapsed around me? Was the world still there?

Then I realized..... My bed was blocking the door.

Then I realized, I shouldn't be able to reach for the door from my bed. It had been on the other side of the room. The bed, with me in it, had traveled from one side of the room to the other, and it wasn't on wheels.

That is what an Earthquake is.

For perspective, the quake in Haiti was about six times more powerful with infrastructure dozens of times less strong.

There are still lives to be saved in Haiti. Text "Haiti" to 90999 and contribute $10 to relief efforts.

This is Our Greatness

Like a prideful lion atop the highest point of the prairie, we as Americans always like to boast how great we are.

And we have plenty of reason to, though many have misplaced where that greatness truly lies.

Anyone who doubts America’s greatness had less reason to after the actions of a majority of its people and government this week. In the face of unfathomable disaster by their neighbor Haiti, Americans have answered the cries for aid quicker than the needle moved on the seismograph during the 7.0 earthquake.

In just two days, the American Red Cross has raised more than $7 million off nothing more than folks sending a single text pledge of $10 each. Planes filled with aid have overloaded the Port-au-Prince airport, and the capital city’s port would have been the same if not for it being destroyed in the quake. Save for a few nuts and their dittoheads, seemingly every American – from the Kindergartner holding a lemonade sale to office workers pooling donations – has wanted to help the people of Haiti.

This is our greatness.

There are some who will tell you that our greatness comes from our might. From bombs and guns, and from forceful words and actions.

That is not the reason the world looks up to America. Our greatness comes from our generosity. From giving aid and a helping hand. From answering a call for help and acting as the shining beacon that leads the world to a better place.

This may not seem like the best time to give ourselves a pat on the back. Just a few hundred miles to the south, there are still people buried under crumble concrete hoping for some ray of sunshine to lead them back to life.

But pointing out our greatness is needed when there are still those among us who don’t realize what makes America great.

There are those who say we are better as a nation to simply ignore the cries of Haiti. That we’ve already sent enough of our money down there. That we should just worry about ourselves. For that reason, it’s important to cry out that it is not American or patriotic to be selfish.

There is a minority that would rather spend billions to blow up Iraq than spend millions to save Haiti. But the world doesn’t admire America for Hiroshima or its nuclear arsenal. It admires us for the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Air Lift.

When America seemed to forget that for much of the last decade, the world’s view of America declined. Each piece of candy passed from one of our brave soldiers to a child in Baghdad did more to rebuild the country than the bombing of a Baghdad building.

There are also those who use religion to claim the Haitians had it coming. But the greatness of the world’s religions comes not from them being perverted to justify hatred and evil. It is from the teachings of Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Buddha, Hinduism - and seemingly all religions - that say the same thing: Good will to all men, and love thy neighbor.

This is our greatness.

Let our beacon of hope continue to shine. Text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross relief efforts.

Bra Beating a Message

It took a while for a lot of us to catch on to what the whole one-color thing was on Twitter and Facebook. Especially for us macho males.

Were people giving alternate colors for “Avatar” aliens? Were they describing their favorite Power Ranger?

In the end, the colors were far more important trivial. They were part of a homegrown, out-of-nowhere viral campaign to draw awareness to researching and preventing the scourge of breast cancer. And it was simply by announcing what color bra you were wearing.

Whether it was from the mind of one or from a collective mind, it was brilliant.

There has been some criticism of the campaign - from claims it puts ambiguity on a serious issue, to not leading the reader to action.

Perhaps the most concerning criticisms have come from breast cancer victims themselves, including an excellent piece from survivor Susan Niebur, who say the bra meme has done nothing more than dredge up the nightmare they experienced for the amusement of others.

I have all the sympathy in the world for Niebur and anyone who has gone through this ticking time-bomb. And she is correct that this one-word-color campaign may be a stark reminder for those who have had to suffer with it. But this campaign was targeted for those who don't know Susan's story. Those who think it can't be me or can't be someone they love.

As someone who's been a part of several viral marketing campaigns in the past, this was one of the most effective I've seen... And it went to a good cause instead of getting people to eat a burger, invest in a company or go to a resort.

Do you think we would have been talking about breast cancer today without it? Did you know Susan Niebur’s story until today?

I live every day with the fact my wife is in a demographic that has a high chance of getting breast cancer. Having seen others I've liked and loved go down with forms of cancer, I dread this possibility and hope she never has to suffer through it. That may end up being niece, but I do know she, and others, can prevent it.

If just one person sends a buck to the American Cancer Society, joins one of the many breast cancer walks around the nation or gets a mammogram that finds a tumor early after catching on to what those colors, then this is one virus worth spreading.

Happy Halloween!

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Twitter for Members Only

Twitter is the cyber equivalent of the Members Only jacket.

You remember the Members Only jacket, don’t you? In the 1980s, you either wore one or you were more of a recluse than Ducky from “Pretty in Pink.”

You joined in the crowd and got one, only to discover it didn’t really keep you warm, stained and tore easily, and by the end of the decade was heading to Goodwill. You wondered what the big deal was.

This morning’s knockout of Twitter like a Mike Tyson punch may be that Members Only jacket moment where we wonder, what is the big deal?

In the past year or so, it has become as vogue for businesses and media sources to tout they have a Twitter page as it once was to say they had a fax number, an E-mail address or a Web page.

But the problem for Twitter that those other means of communication don’t have is you’re relying on one floor of people on 539 Bryant Street in San Francisco to keep it running.

It would take a disaster of planet-wide proportions to knock out all phones, or all E-mails or the entire internet. To stop Twitter, a squirrel can electrocute itself on a power pole of Bryant Street and there’s a service interruption.

Not very reliable.

We certainly saw the good that Twitter could do as a form of communication with the continuing drive for freedom in Iran, but that doesn’t mean it is a decent replacement for the E-mail or text marriage … any more than the carrier pigeon was a great form for mass communication despite its success in saving lives in World War I.

People who have come to rely on Twitter for business had a rude awakening this morning, but it wasn’t like it was the first time Twitter has been down. People have come to get used to the Twitter’s fail whale screen like they used to the test screen if they stayed up too late past the Late Late Show.

At this moment, they may be thinking of sending Twitter to Goodwill, like that Members Only jacket.

The Dark Knight: A Brilliant Journey to Darkness

There are but few moments you have in your lifetime inside a movie theatre that stick with you forever.

No, I’m not talking about the time when you were 16 and reached for your date’s knee, only to dip your hand in their cola. I’m talking about when you saw that star destroyer zoom in the top of the screen for the first time, when the Terminator introduced you to morphing, when you had to be part of the Titanic phenomenon or seeing Middle Earth come to life for the first time. First moments with a movie that stick with you forever.

I had another such moment last night after taking in an advance IMAX screening of “The Dark Knight.”

Christopher Nolan’s second Batman film indeed lives up to the hype but not in the way you would have expected. You won’t be high-fiving each other upon leaving the theatre, just in quiet repose of what is a masterful, yet very brutal, work of art. Think of how you left “Platoon” and “No Country for Old Men,” not how you left “Spider-Man” and “Iron Man.”

With that most reviews I have seen are quick to try to compare “Knight” with other film of the comic book heroes genre as well as others. The best comparison is not to make one. “Dark Knight” fits into a genre all by itself. It doesn’t fit in with other hero movies. Comparing this to Iron Man is like trying to compare “The Princess Bride” with “Lord of the Rings.”

As a kid, I remember the abrupt jump those comic books I scrounged under the couch for coins made in the 1980s. They went from Superfriends dealing with tough dilemmas like how to keep kids from hitchhiking to the elaborate, true-to-life plotlines of the graphic novels. “Dark Knight” makes the same kind of jump from any previous film involving a caped crusader.

Gotham City is very real — even more so than the previous film “Batman Begins.” It might as well be called Chicago. It might as well be our Chicago.

It’s actually closer to something Scorsese, Coppola or Mann would make but doesn’t necessarily fit there either. It creates its own genre: the costumed crime thriller.

“Knight” has a lot of surprises, not the least of which is you’ll be surprised by your watch at the end … that you didn’t realize two hours and 30 minutes went by. Not to mention how much writer and director Nolan packs into that timeframe. Put it this way: Gotham City isn’t the only locale Batman flies over.

The worst thing about Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker is it’s going to be his last. His Joker had me looking at that American Film Institute list of best film villains in history, and he easily fit into the top spot above Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter. In the same way Jack Nicholson made you forget about Cesar Romero, Ledger will make you forget about Jack.

The Joker isn’t about committing crime in comedic style or being motivated by insane greed. He’s just truly scary with death as the punch-line to his cruel joke. Each of his crimes involves a moralistic dilemma where there isn’t a good answer and there is almost always a loser.

It isn’t overstating to call Ledger brilliant, but lost in that may be how great the other performances in the film are, especially that of Aaron Eckhart as new District Attorney Harvey Dent. He is the beacon of light at the start of the movie but his journey to a different place proves to be the center of the film’s message of the balance between the side of us that shines, and the other side the sits in darkness. And that yin and yang doesn’t just exist between good and evil, but within the side of good itself.

But we can’t forget Bruce Wayne himself. Christian Bale captures what it’s like to set the train in a runaway motion without realizing what happens when the track runs out. He is the darkness of good to Dent’s shining beacon of hope, though it proves inevitable that the light will burn out. What stands out in Bale’s performance is his ability to present this divide without treading into moping, woe is me territory. You can see Wayne try to keep an even keel on the outside, while tearing apart within.

Gary Oldman bolsters his title as the best actor to never win an Oscar in his role as police lieutenant James Gordon. He is the only character in this play of masks without an ambiguity between his light and dark side and Oldman truly brings him to life.

Also in enjoyable returns are Michael Caine as Wayne’s father-figure Alfred and Morgan Freeman as Lucious Fox. I am truly enjoying Freeman and Bale’s moments together, with “try this gadget out” scenes that evoke the James Bond and Q motif.

I may have been one of the few who actually felt Katie Holmes’ work in the first movie wasn’t sub-par. But after getting past their lack of visual similarity, Maggie Gyllenhaal doesn’t skip a beat as she portrays Rachael Dawes dealing with her own internal division.

While the divisions are evident within the characters in the film, the transition between scenes filmed in the IMAX format and those not was absolutely seamless. You don’t notice the switch other than noticing the top of the eight-story screen darkening out at certain points.

This is the first mainstream movie being shown in IMAX theatres that truly belongs there. The already incredible action sequences take on an epic quality where you feel like you’re zooming through traffic right along with the Dark Knight.

I had but one disappointment and it was with the score. The work by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard for the first film was one of my favorite soundtracks of the last few years. While you expected and wanted to hear a lot of those themes again, I didn’t expect as much straight, lazy rehashing of previous themes and little new material.

But that may be reaching too far for a flaw in a film without many. That said, I could see some tastes not finding the Dark Knight to their liking. It lives up to the “dark” of the film’s title and is far from the feel-good movie of the summer. Those for whom the Adam West Batman is still the best might feel disappointed. And the film reaches as far to the edge of PG-13 as a film can and I wouldn’t recommend this film for younger kids.

If you’re willing to experience a film that transcends genres and is truly a masterful work, you’ll leave with that movie-going experience that will stay with you for good.

Coffee Crisis!

We had a coffee crisis here at the office today that once again made me thankful I’m not a coffee drinker.

Found out today that the Starbucks near the office will be one of the ones closing which, which coupled with the closing of a “Java Express” drive-thru coffee place a month ago, has caused panic inside our offices.

The nearest drive-thru coffee is now the famous Las Vegas Sexxpresso (www.sexxyespresso.com) where all the baristas wear bikinis or lingerie.

Maybe I should try this coffee thing after all.