I’m back from our day trip to Joshua Tree and have a ton of photos that I will upload when I get a chance. Here’s a few from another hike we took yesterday morning.

“This is a very sad time for me. I never really wanted the job. And it was only in the last year or so that I realized I could do it. And the tragedy is that when I really wanted it, I lost it.” - Gerald Ford, shortly after his defeat in the 1976 Presidential election (Shadow, by Bob Woodward)

This past Tuesday, Gerald Ford, the 38th President of the United States, passed away at his home in Rancho Mirage, California. I wasn’t yet alive during his Presidency, so the only knowledge I have regarding his time in office comes from my history books. Following his defeat in the 1976 election, however, he moved to Rancho Mirage, the town where I was born and raised. Ford and his wife, Betty, were well known for their generosity to various charities in the Coachella Valley, including the local theatre, children’s museum, Bighorn Institute, and, of course, the Betty Ford Center. To show their appreciation, local cities dedicated a main thoroughfare and local elementary school in his honor.

I had the opportunity to meet President Ford several times while I was in middle school. He once came to my school and gave us a lecture on politics and history. Imagine that, the former President of the United States standing before a group of eighty 7th and 8th graders and explaining why he pardoned Richard Nixon. Shortly thereafter, myself, several other students, and Cheryl attended the Indian Wells Town Hall lectures featuring Doris Kearns Goodwin and David McCullough (it was mainly a venue for the wealthier, older citizens, but the Town Hall series always gave out several free tickets to local students). After the dinner following the lecture, President Ford came up to us, signed autographs, and talked with us for several minutes. That man was a real class act.

In recognition of his service to our community, it was only fitting that we bid farewell to President Ford before he was moved from his adopted hometown to Washington DC for the state service and then Grand Rapids, Michigan for his final burial. His service was held this afternoon, with a public viewing to follow. We decided to go at 8pm, figuring the crowds would have thinned by then (the public viewing runs from 4pm to 9am Saturday…yes, you could even go at 3am if you so desired). The service and viewing are being held at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church, Ford’s local place of worship. I live about half a mile from this church, but they would not allow any pedestrian traffic through (in fact, they had blocked off Highway 74 to all traffic). We had to drive to the Indian Wells Tennis Garden, located several miles away.

I ripped all these photos from the AP wire…we couldn’t take cameras

Of course, you had to go through security.

And then wait in line to board a bus to drive you all the way back to the church near my house. The buses were all from the Los Angeles and Orange County public transportation networks, which must have thoroughly confused some of the local drivers.

St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church

Filing into the church

Inside

And past the casket and honor guard…

(You’re probably thinking “That’s one fine looking church.” Well, that’s because it was built by one of the most awesome and talented builders in the valley, MY DAD. )

The whole process probably took less than three minutes, and we found ourselves back on our OC bus headed towards the Tennis Garden. Afterwards, we went to TGIFriday’s and held our own little wake for Jerry, complete with tropical drinks and nachos. He woulda wanted it that way.

“I know I’m getting better at golf because I’m hitting fewer spectators.”

Tomorrow I’m heading up to Joshua Tree…and I have some more hiking photos I need to upload

Three wood. First time I’ve ever done that. Not quite sure what happened, but I saw the head fly off and looked down at the considerably lighter shaft that was still in my hands.
“Ohhhh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit!”

Ryan risked life and limb to retrieve the head from the driving range. The nice folks down at Marc’s Golf are fixing it. Happens all the time, they say. I need to relearn this game, methinks.

My mom woke me up at 6:15 in the morning to go hiking. The city of Palm Desert recently completed several trails in the mountains near my house, and my mom has subsequently become a hiking junkie (training for the Grand Canyon, she says). I was thoroughly perplexed by this newfound hiking craze, which I learned about in my phone calls home:

“Dad is getting me a GPS unit for…”

“Your car?”

“No, for my hiking.”

And:

“What do you want for Christmas?”

“A headlamp.”

“Huh? Like what coal miners wear?”

“Well, for my hiking, in case it gets dark. LL Bean has them.”

“O…K…”

The trail we took for the morning hike was an easy four or so miles roundtrip, with some nice views of a still sleepy Palm Desert in all of its illustrious palm tree and big box store glory.

Later that day I met up with Katerina to run some errands, which included trying the new shrimp tacos at Del Taco. Loved ‘em. Yeah, it’s fast food, but better than any tacos the least coast can come up with. Even bringing up the concept of a “fish taco” thoroughly puzzles east coasters, as they are unable to imagine filling their tortilla with anything other than beef or chicken. They’ll never know the awesomeness that is the Del Taco crispy shrimp taco, and will instead continue to eat their soggy fish sandwiches. Poor bastards.

Next on the agenda was a trip to the local driving range. Every red-blooded Palm Springs resident owns a set of golf clubs, although most of them are likely sitting in a garage collecting dust like mine. I hadn’t picked up a club in nearly nine years, while Katerina had recently honed her skills on the Jack Nicklaus Tournament Course at PGA West in La Quinta.

“Can you wear flip flops to the driving range?”

“Dude, it says ‘no spikes’, not ‘no flip-flops’!”

We bought a bucket of 165 balls, so we were there for quite a while, driving our fellow golfers nuts with our incessant giggling and “Wow, look at that turf fly!” I spent most of my drives trying to hit the tractor that was moving around collecting all the range balls, but unfortunately missed.

Uh, the divots were there before we got there…

Real golfers wear Uggs

I did have a few good drives, though, one of which elicited a “Dude! That’s totally a CEO shot!”

“I know, right?”

HIGH FIVE!

As we were heading back to the car, one of the 80 year old guys complimented us with a “You did great, girls!”

“Thanks, I’m trying to work on my long game.”

You should totally come golfing with Katerina and I. The mad golf cart driving alone would be worth the green fees.

Afterwards, dinner at Las Casuelas (yeah, more Mexican food) and beer at the Yardhouse, the only place in the desert where you can drink Lindemann’s framboise and Shiner Bock in one sitting.

Looks a lot like this:

72 degrees and sunny. Cold weather is for suckers. (Yes, so says the person who voluntarily gave up California for DC. WTF was I thinking?)

Merry Christmas to all my friends…and to those of you in Iraq, Armenia, Sri Lanka, Uganda, etc., drinks are on me next time you’re in town.

Flight left DC at 6:50am. Got into Palm Springs a little after noon. Temperature was 75 degrees and I was roasting in my turtleneck. Couldn’t wait to change into a polo shirt and flip flops.

First stop: In-N-Out. It’s a Fincher tradition, whether I’m coming back from DC, London, Moscow, or St. Pete, we have always stopped for a double double on the way back to the house.

I had guacamole, too. Real guacamole made by Californians with California avocados. It was heavenly.

We also had an earthquake tonight…a small one, only a 4.1. Still, definitely haven’t been in one of those in a long time.

All in all, a great first day back in the Golden State.

There we were, ready to knock France’s École Polytechnique off its pedestal and claim the title of “Tenth greatest university in the world,” when some fellow in the Social Psychology department decided it would be a great idea to admit Monica Lewinsky to the MSc program. The end result was a ton of jokes at Lewinsky’s expense (obviously), several “WTFs?” from LSE alum, and an eventual drop to #17 in the Times Higher Education Supplement. THANK YOU, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY!

Lewinsky, by the way, recently donned her gown and hood to participate in LSE’s graduation ceremony:

Former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, whose sexual relationship with U.S. President

Bill Clinton led to his impeachment, has graduated from the London School of Economics, her publicist said on Wednesday.

Lewinsky, who was 21 when she became involved with Clinton, is interviewing for jobs in Britain, publicist Barbara Hutson said.

When Lewinsky, 32, received her Masters of Science degree in Social Psychology last Thursday “the audience of students and parents erupted in spontaneous applause. … It was a very emotional moment for her,” Hutson said in a statement.

Hutson said Lewinsky spent the past year studying and “staying away from the London social scene.”
She completed a thesis entitled “In Search of the Impartial Juror: An exploration of the third person effect and pre-trial publicity.”

Alright, first off, she still has a goddamn publicist? Second, if she lands a job in London I am going to cry. Do you know how hard it is to land a job over there as a non-UK/EU citizen?! Apparently, if you’re a spoiled princess from Beverly Hills who take a few slices of pizza to the President and later becomes embroiled in a full-on impeachment trial, you’ll all of a sudden be interviewing for jobs in the greatest city in the world. No, I’m not bitter. Lastly, interesting choice for a dissertation: “In Search of the Impartial Juror: An exploration of the third person effect and pre-trial publicity.” Still, it doesn’t sound as riveting as mine, “The Geopolitics of Caspian Oil Transit Routes: Russia and the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline.” Besides, I had COLOR maps in my dissertation. Yeah, you heard me, COLOR MAPS of pipelines. I had to pay 35p a page for those suckers.
Monica, if you aren’t able to find a job in London, you can always move back to D.C. I’ll see you at the next LSE alum happy hour!

Yes, it’s true…if the news reports are correct. His Excellency Saparmurat Niyazov Turkmenbashi, President of Turkmenistan and Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers (yes, that’s his official title), arguably one of the world’s most eccentric dictators, is dead at the age of 66. I’m still expecting him to randomly cut into an oh-so-exciting Turkmen TV show and announce that, hey, just kidding, he’s alive, so forgive my initial skepticism.

I will admit to having a strange fascination with Turkmenistan thanks to the bizarreness of Niyazov. The guy essentially turned Turkmenistan into his own personal theme park, with revolving gold statues and everything! Crystal and I were trying to arrange a trip to Turkmenistan during our spring break at LSE in 2005 (Dude, spring break in Turkmenistan, hell yeah!) but then we found out it would require flying to Baku and jumping on a random freighter full of sketchy Azeri sailors for the trip across the Caspian. Don’t get me wrong, it sounds like something the two of us would totally be up for, but it wasn’t something we could plan in under a week. Also, it would give my mom a heart attack. (“You’re WHERE? You got there HOW? You mean a cruise ship, riiight…A FREIGHTER?!”)

I still want to visit Turkmenistan, but it looks like it will occur under the reign of a less eccentric, slightly more boring dictator yet-to-be-named. Still, I’m sure the cult of personality surrounding Niyazov will grow ridiculously larger, and I will perhaps have the chance to see his stuffed corpse on display, a la Lenin in Red Square. I, for one, cannot wait.

With Niyazov’s sudden departure from office, let’s take a look at some of his finer accomplishments for the citizens of Turkmenistan, with a little help from Wikipedia:

He liked to name everything after himself!
He renamed the town of Krasnovodsk, on the Caspian Sea, Turkmenbashi after himself, in addition to renaming several schools, airports and even a meteorite after himself and his immediate family.

He put his face on everything and awards medals…to himself!

Niyazov’s face appears on Manat banknotes and large portraits of the president hang all over the country, especially on major public buildings and avenues. Statues of himself and his mother are scattered all over Turkmenistan, including one in the middle of the Karakum Desert as well as a gold-plated statue atop Aşgabat’s largest building, the Neutrality Arch, that rotates so it will always face into the sun and shine light onto the capital city. Niyazov commissioned a massive palace in Aşgabat commemorating his rule. He was given the hero of Turkmenistan award five times. “I’m personally against seeing my pictures and statues in the streets – but it’s what the people want,” Niyazov said.

He was a literary genius but he HATED libraries!

An enormous mechanical replica of the book is located in the capital; every night at 8:00PM it opens and passages are recited with accompanying video.

The education system indoctrinated young Turkmen to love Niyazov, with his works and speeches making up most of their textbooks’ content. The primary text was a national epic written by Niyazov, the Ruhnama or Book of the Soul. This book, a mixture of revisionist history and moral guidelines, was intended as the “spiritual guidance of the nation” and the basis of the nation’s arts and literature. With Soviet-era textbooks banned without being replaced by new publications, libraries are left with little more than Niyazov’s works. In 2004, the dictator ordered the closure of all rural libraries on the grounds that he thought that village Turkmen do not read.

He liked to issue bizarre decrees!
- In April 2004, urged young people not to get gold tooth caps or gold teeth, suggesting instead that they chew on bones to preserve their teeth

- The Tapei Times reported that the Turkmen leader changed the Turkmen word for bread, and name of the month of April, to that of his late mother.

What a guy!

Oh yeah, I should probably mention that Turkmenistan has a lot of natural gas…like, 2.9 trillion + cubic meters worth just sitting around waiting to be tapped by some Western multinational. While Russia has the largest natural gas reserves in the world, Gazprom depends on Turkmen gas to meet its export commitments to Western European customers and satisfy its own domestic consumption. Gazprom was getting a pretty sweet deal on Turkmen gas, buying it for $65 per thousand cubic meters and shipping it to Western Europe where they sold it for $230/tcm. Niyazov was like, “Whoa, I’m getting kinda ripped off here…think of all the gold statues I could by if I jacked up the price of gas.” So that’s what Turkmenistan did…basically told Gazprom that they wanted $100/tcm. Gazprom finally agreed, although they were none too happy about it because in their view, Turkmenistan was getting all uppity and with a Russian monopoly on the area’s pipelines, where else would they ship it?

Niyazov’s death has opened up a new chapter in the fight for Central Asia’s hydrocarbon reserves (the so-called “New Great Game”). If the U.S. AND EUROPE are on top of their game, they should make their moves ASAP and convince the Turkmens that the construction of a trans-Caspian pipeline to feed into the recently completed Baku-Tbilisi-Erzurum pipeline is in their best interests, both politically and economically. Of course, this would require diplomacy and cooperation, and hell, maybe some economic aid and concessions…but that might be a small price to pay if it means Alexei Miller won’t be running Turkmenistan.

According to the weather report, today’s high in Washington was an incredibly pleasant 73 degrees. IT WAS 73 DEGREES IN MID-DECEMBER. I’m used to winter temperatures in the 70s, considering I grew up in PALM SPRINGS, CA, but 73 degrees in mid-December in Washington-effin-DC? Global warming, FTW!
There is a fun little flash tool on An Inconvenient Truth’s website that lets you calculate the amount of carbon dioxide you produce each year. Here’s mine:

I calculated this using the time period December 1, 2005 – December 1, 2006. Since I only bought the XTerra in October, I obviously haven’t put a lot of miles on it, so I took my odometer reading from the truck and added on a bit more mileage to account for any December 05 driving (when I was last behind the wheel).
What really puts me into the “larger than average” category is all the flying I have done over the past year. But really, what can you do about that? How the hell else am I supposed to get to Yerevan, San Diego, or Houston?

My friend Liz told me that she recently saw Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and thought of me driving around in my XTerra while images of melting glaciers played on the screen. Rather than admonishing me for my choice of vehicle, you should be thanking me for flying everywhere and buying a vehicle that gets 17MPG. Admit it, you love this 70 degree weather in December. I’m just doing my part to ensure that DC will soon have a winter climate equivalent to that of Palm Springs! I always was an altruist at heart.

Finally got my DC license plates. If you’ve never seen our politically snarky DC license plates, here’s your chance:

Obviously they aren’t blank…I ran them through Photoshop

Our license plates say “Taxation without Representation” on them because, despite having a population larger than the state of Wyoming, we are not entitled to a voting member of Congress. We do have a “non-voting Delegate” in the House, Eleanor Holmes Norton, but she doesn’t get to do anything and is effin crazy anyways. So you see, unlike the rest of America, we Washingtonians have no one who will read our impassioned letters about the plight of the fringe-toed lizard, attend our ribbon cutting ceremonies, or land us some sweet pork barrel projects. Instead, we have to put up with all of your representatives using our city like one of their cheap and innumerable mistresses.
Right now my license plate is the standard boring combination of letters and numbers. I’m considering personalized license plates, but I doubt the DMV would approve any of my top choices: “DCSUX”, “IH8DC”, or “FU DC”. Suggestions welcome.

And now I’ll leave you with a quote from one of the best shows on TV, “The Office”
Episode 3.08: “The Merger”
Andy: I saw your dorkmobile in the parking lot, what does it get, like four miles to the gallon?
Dwight: Uh, try double that. Classic Trans Am, vintage American muscle. Please.
Andy: Yeah, my Xterra’s pretty sweet. Luxurious yet rugged. Leave it to the Japanese.
Dwight: Xterra’s not even a real word.
Andy: Actually, it is. It’s Latin for “earth.”
Dwight: Oh, so you drive an X-Earth?
Andy: Yeah.
Dwight: That makes sense. I’d rather drive a classic Trans Am than an XEarth.
Andy: Yeah, I bet you would. Oh, by the way, 1985 called and wants its car back.
Dwight: Well I hope 1985 has a time machine ’cause I drive an 87.