San Diego Day 2

     We started off the day innocently enough. With two options in mind for breakfast, we ended up driving past Breakfast Republic because the line was out the door. We drove to Morning Glory, the other spot on my list, because they have the Japanese Souffle Pancakes that I really wanted to try. Unfortunately, or fortunately as you'll see in a moment, they had a farmers market going on in the same area so cars were parked everywhere and streets were blocked off. We chose to park in a parking garage (with a $35 charge for only 2 hours!) and when we got in the elevator to head up, floor two said "Morning Glory". Well there ya go lol. We actually wanted the first floor though. W had to stand in line in order to add our names to the waitlist. This place was popular as f. So, with about a 40 minute wait, we checked out the farmers market until it was our turn.

    This place was very interesting to say the least. Check out the link above to see it. The restaurant was open air so we actually had pigeons flying in occasionally. The souffle pancakes were... not what I was expecting, I guess. The texture felt off to me, like I expected them to be light and airy, and they were still pretty dense. I dunno, everyone that eats the pancakes really likes them, but I prefer the originals. Patrick really liked his egg chorizo hash thing; it was very tasty if not a tad spicy for my liking.

    After breakfast, it was time to visit the place I was the most excited for: La Jolla. It was still pretty cloudy out and it was taking its sweet time to warm up, (too early for swimming) so we decided to walk around the shore a bit before doing some window shopping up the main two streets on Prospect and Girard. As I began to walk past a gallery, which I would normally never enter, we decided to take a peak. The artist, Ian Elly, was a wonderful photographer and had a lot of gorgeous pieces on display. Patrick really liked this one of the moon, but the one that caught my eye was his gorgeous shot off a dock looking at a storm, bolts of lightning, and even a piece of the galaxy of stars in the corner. It was incredible; all of these things in one shot. The lady who worked there hooked us in, began talking about the pieces, and thought to bring us into a small room where we can see different lighting conditions on the piece (it's crazy how much light can bounce off the whitest parts with hardly anything shining directly on it).

    She told me that if we were interested in the piece, the smallest size was 20x60, and was $5500. That made us pause, of course. We/I had never spent that much on a piece of art! Apparently, and I should have figured this but never really thought about it, digital artists need to create scarcity in their pieces, you know? They have the original file, and can make copies as often as they want, but they choose to limit the amount sold and once they're gone never bring them back. So when she said this was only 1 of 500 pieces, that's what creates the price and makes them limited edition. She then mentioned free shipping, which is normally about $800 because it's crated and has an insurance policy on it. And then also said there was no sales tax if shipping outside of California (for some reason). It got me a lot closer to saying yes but I still wasn't sure if that was enough. She also said that the piece included his coffee book, which I guess sells for 1k (like, why??), and mentioned this piece was shot in Washington. That peaked my interest, I asked if she knew where, because that would be cool to tell people it was shot in my state. She said she'd be right back and when she returned she was followed by Ian Elly himself! He had stopped by and generally wasn't around as he didn't live locally, but was doing some work there. He said it was shot in the Seattle area but wouldn't disclose exactly where because he didn't want to ruin it in case he wanted to return. Fair enough, I get it. Seattle was close enough to say anyway. But how cool to meet the artist! And knowing it was a piece shot in WA kind of sold it for us. We celebrated with some champagne (well, Patrick did) and he told us that he would sign and dedicate the coffee book to us, which was so cool.

    After blowing our budget for the entire trip (and then some lol) it was time to head back up to the car and switch into our swimming stuff. We stopped by Bobbi Gelato for some delicious ice cream and got ready to go swimming. La Jolla is one of the prettiest places I have ever seen. The ruggedness of the west coast always takes my breath away. The colors of the water are striking, and my pictures definitely don't do it justice (in order to keep us to a carry-on, I left my camera gear at home). I wanted to swim in La Jolla Cove, so we headed down there. The air temp was about 75, the clouds were finally parting, and the water temp was between 65-70. The tide was going out but was still very high, and I was not expecting the waves to be so strong. I wasn't used to the huge undercurrent. The way that the beach was, there was a large dip close to shore, and that's where all the waves formed. A large wave would come in and hit us pretty hard even at knee or waist high, and pull back so strongly that I had to hold onto Patrick most of the time.

    Then, the worst happened. Patrick and I were standing probably 6 feet in front of the concrete entrance stairs. This is a pic to show you how high off the ground they are. An incoming wave swept me off my feet, and threw me right into the stairs. The side of my face hit them as well as both of my knees pretty badly. I got pushed into them twice before I was able to stand up. Luckily the undercurrent didn't take me back out to sea, as I was able to grab onto the railing in order to stay put. There were several lifeguards on duty and one of them got to me quickly, though. I am okay, but my face is pretty scratched up, my right leg is all bruised, and my left knee was injured in some way, like maybe a bruised MCL. It hurts to extend or bend my knee at all, and I was limping for the rest of the trip.

    Obviously after that accident, we headed back to the car and went to the hotel to shower and make sure I was really okay. I did not hit my head on the concrete luckily, so no concussion. Just banged up, and hoping the knee heals up quickly. We decided to eat in at the resort, and spent the evening at their many fire pits on their private beach along the bay. It was a nice way to end the night.

San Diego Day 1

    For Patrick's 50th Birthday, we decided to travel down to San Diego and celebrate with his longtime friends, Ruth and Josh (and their families, as they were also turning 50 this year). He would show me all the sights and try to convince me to move back down there with him. (Spoiler, no thank you. It's beautiful, but I think the heat would kill me!)

    We decided to buy a package through Costco Travel that included the flight, 3 nights in Kona Kai resort, and a rental car (small upcharge for the premium model). However, I don't think I would do a rental car through a typical company anymore. The website for Budget said "Toyota Crown or similar", which is the exact car I wanted, as it's on my spite list for not being able to get it from Turo in Texas, but they don't guarantee the model (the guy that showed us to the car said that they "hardly have any of those", which makes me think that their website is very misleading and I am upset about it.) I mean, the other issue was the cars that were offered, which were a Toyota 4-Runner or a Hyundai Tucson, weren't even hybrids, so no, it's not a "Toyota Crown or similar"! Similar would be a hybrid at the very least! We decided on the Tucson, as much as I dislike Hyundai for several reasons that I won't get into here, because it had better gas milage. When I think of premium, I think of a class of car, not a size. The Tucson is very much an SUV, which we didn't really need, but I digress. 

    Since we were too early to check into our hotel, we did a little exploring. We had to stop by a grocery store first to pick up some things we couldn't take on our carry-on, and grabbed some coffee as well as we had had an early flight. After that, we grabbed lunch as Shawarma Guys. This was our first time eating Shawarma and this was voted one of the best places so we checked it out - but it was a food truck so we didn't eat there. We drove to Cabrillo National Monument in order to get some stellar views and eat up there at the same time. You could see Mexico from our viewpoint. The food was also very good, but I don't think I'll ever seek out Shawarma again.

    It was time to check into our hotel and although the grounds were impressive, the hotel itself left a bit to be desired. The bed was certainly comfortable, and the room was clean, but the "Bay View" was more parking lot than bay, which was very disappointing. The shower was also gross and was completely busted. I mean, it worked, but leaks were spraying water everywhere. We were tuckered out so we took a short nap before we headed to the one place we booked tickets for: The San Diego Sunset Cruise. 

    The cruise itself was nice, but they only circled Mission Bay. I was hoping they would kind of cruise along the cliffs but I realized later that probably wouldn't have been possible and I was expecting too much. And unfortunately, the sunset was pretty much nil. It was the same for the whole trip actually, which was super lame. I was glad of the clouds though, as when the sun is beating down on your as far south as San Diego it's pretty intense, and any temp the gauge says, add 10 degrees when it hits your skin. 

    We figured we could squeeze in one more thing before heading back to the hotel for the night, and that was to check out the free Mission Bay Park where they have fair stuff and a path along the beach. I liked that we went after sunset as the fair lights were nice, and of course the temperature was perfect. The fair part was pretty small but hey, it was free so I can't complain. We walked along the beachwalk for a while and checked out the houses on the shore. One of them had a QR code to book a stay (they were probably all Air B&Bs) and it was I believe, $2700 a night - in October. Yup, that's San Diego for you!

    After that we called it a night. We had some great plans for the next day!

    

Virtuosity

It's Review Wednesday again! We're in for a treat, this time. Patrick and I have been doing a lot of "what movie is this?" Youtube quizzes, and we discovered an interesting movie to watch. It's from 1995, and stars a quite young Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. I've loved a bunch of movies they've been in so I wanted to check this one out, called 'Virtuosity'. 

Here is the synopsis from Rotten Tomatoes:

"A former cop who has been imprisoned for murdering the psychopath who killed his family, Parker Barnes (Denzel Washington) is recruited to test out a new virtual-reality program where the goal is to apprehend a computer-generated being called SID 6.7 (Russell Crowe), who has been modeled on hundreds of deranged criminals. When SID manages to escape into the real world, Barnes must capture or destroy him before the soulless entity can go on a killing spree"

The premise seems simple enough, and this movie was WAY ahead of its time. I mean, it kind of bombed on Rotten Tomatoes, and probably because in 1995 none of this stuff existed yet so it was hard to write about and make it seem legit. I mean, this movie was released the same year as the Virtual Boy for goodness sakes. VR was not a thing yet. So obviously, real AI was also still 20 years away. The CGI visuals... left a lot to be desired. It's hard to say if the budget was enough or if it was just that bad in 1995, but I have to remember that Jurassic Park came out in 1993, and Terminator 2 came out in 1991, so like, it seems like it could have been better.

The plot was kind of awful lol The guy that invented SID decides to release him into the wild to see how he does because he's batshit crazy, obviously, and it feels so Terminator 2 that SID is basically unstoppable with his silicon body that can regenerate if it "soaks up" glass shards. It also seems to pull a lot of ideas from Demolition Man as well, and apparently was the inspiration for The Matrix (??).

I feel like they directly ripped the idea of SID from the Star Trek: TNG episode called "Ship in a Bottle" (released in 1993), where Sherlock Holmes nemesis, Professor Moriarty, becomes sentient and takes over the Enterprise to force them to figure out how to release him from the holodeck so he can go live his life. I won't spoil the ending to Virtuosity if you wish to watch it, but suffice it to say the endings were not that different. 

I just feel as if this movie could have been SO much better. The plot felt disjointed as if it were missing pieces or we had to assume a bunch of information, and important parts that could have been fleshed out were skipped. Making Parker the "only" person who "understood" SID because he hunted him once in VR is silly. Even if the creator of SID wasn't available to ask (which he wasn't when he disappeared after letting SID out) there are Behavior Analysis specialists in the real world who would do a better job than Parker, in theory. The things Parker assumed about SID and his motives/location I believe anybody could have gotten.

It's so unfortunate, and I believe strongly that this movie would do amazingly well if rebooted for today. With VR being much more realistic and AI beginning to scare people with its abilities, now would be the perfect time to rewrite this crazy plot and make it something worth seeing. I even think that the writers kind of knew what they were doing when they wrote SID 6.7 in the beginning. AI needs data to work off of, and in the end, it's still only programming, no matter how "real" it seems. The AI of today just pulls its info from the internet or data dumps and adds code for "fluff language" so that it answers you like a real person instead of like a machine. It is not sentient, it can just act like it is. 

It makes me wish Tony Scott the director was still alive today. Unstoppable is one of my favorite movies of his, starring Denzel, and his movies just have a way about them that make the action gripping. He directed the Taking of Pelham 123 (also starring Denzel) and you could tell it was the same guy. He also directed Top Gun, Enemy of the State, Deja Vu and Man of Fire. He would have fit in perfectly directing this as a reboot. 

Let's do it, bring it on! And I will be in line to see it.