Finding Balance in San Francisco

May the Force Be With You

We just got back from Sacramento, where we saw Star Wars in Concert. The kids were delighted with their first symphony. They were very impressed with the dazzling laser light show, pyrotechnics and video clips from the original movies (all of which the boys have seen at least some part of). It was a great way to expose our young kids to a full symphony orchestra.

We took Quinn for his upcoming 5th birthday, and he's been looking forward to the concert for about 6 weeks. He went in full Darth Vader regalia- Jordan changed a bunch of times- here at our house just before we left he thought of going as a devil, and earlier in the day it was Peter Pan. I explained about those not technically being Star Wars characters, but he wasn't dissuaded.

Here they are, showing off their moves (a cross between Michael Jackson and kung fu)

Shasta joined in the pre-Star Wars concert fun

but Shasta wound up staying in San Francisco with our neighbor Dave and Jordan wound up settling on his Superman pajamas as an outfit. Quinn got a kick out of all of the Star Wars memorabelia

and we enjoyed it. Here's couple low-quality clips from my camera:

Star Wars for Quinn's Birthday from kathy hassanein on Vimeo.

Star Wars - with symphony from kathy hassanein on Vimeo.

The show was a couple hours long, and 3 year old Jordan was getting a little restless toward the end, but overall it was a great experience and I'd recommend it to kids who are 4 or 5 years old and older.

May the Force Be With You!

Three Cheers for Robert Redford

My friends and I joined an adoring crowd in enthusiastically jumping to our feet when Robert Redford strode onto the Castro Theater stage Wednesday evening to accept the Peter Owens Award from the San Francisco Film Society.

The audience was aglow with cell phones trying to take home a small piece of the man who has set the Gold Standard for A-list celebrity, philanthropy, integrity and patronage of the arts for over four decades. In his onstage interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s Phil Bronstein, Redford’s thoughtful simplicity underscored the power and elegance of a man who has lived a life of importance. Redford’s stories covered the waterfront– from growing up in a mostly Hispanic, no-frills neighborhood to shadow boxing with fame to his take on the seismic shifts currently happening in Hollywood.

He seamlessly fielded a question from the audience about the recent passing of his close friend Paul Newman, noting “he lived a life that mattered, and I respect that.” 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, giving audience members as well as Bronstein and Redford a chance to reflect on age and the passage of time. With his typical sardonic wit, Redford makes aging gracefully look easy.

At 72 he continues to be the talk of the town. Audience members couldn’t get enough of Redford– one woman continued to ask her questions even after the microphone had been taken away. When he got up to leave, the audience was again on its feet, cheering wildly for one of the greatest icons of our time.

Bill Gates last day at Microsoft from CES 2008

Earlier this evening Bill Gates gave his final Microsoft keynote at the 2008 CES show in Las Vegas.  Throughout the keynote he made many references to what he will do with his free time once he retires from day to day operations at Microsoft. It turns out, Bill has big plans in addition to his foundation after all.

Great production value in this send-off video, and it's nice to see that Bill has a sense of humor as well.  How cool to be able to ride off into the sunset and run his impressive foundation next. 

Click on "read more," below, to get to the video.

read more | digg story

The Revision3 - Digg Love Triangle, continued

My good friend Sarah is now on-air again at a company she calls the Revision3 Gazette- or R3G.

I was just Digg-ing around and found a new clip of Sarah on-air at Revision3... which, by the way, her ex Kevin co-founded, as is widely known in that space.  To read more about the Sarah-Kevin-Brendan love triangle, click here.  Pretty interesting.

For those of you non-tech people (like me), Kevin is basically an Internet celebrity.

 

 

Anyway, it's the first time I've actually seen Sarah (affectionately known as Petite Syrah) on-air, and she was great!  Sarah was my roommate for years but to get her tech-centered show (Screen Savers) I would have had to have some super mac-daddy cable package, and I just had the basic.

She's hosting a video chronicling Revision3 hosting its very first gala event (for Kevin's wildly successful company, Digg) in the new Revision3 office. The guests?  In, you know, the parlance of our times: the ghetto fabulous Digg.com team, 'cause Revision3 camped in Digg's offices for months.

And you can see Sarah interview Kevin on this little clip, too. Click "read more," below, to see the video. Who needs made-up drama? There's so much fun stuff actually going on in the world.

read more | digg story

The Lovely Miss Zandra Rhodes and the Mighty Quinn

I'm not a person who can count celebrities among my friends, save one: Zandra Rhodes.

That's her, with the hot pink hair holding Quinn. This photo was taken in Del Mar 2 weekends ago, and Quinn is watching opera with Zandra. Quinn loves music, but I frankly wasn't expecting him to enjoy opera at the tender age of 2. Those expectations notwithstanding, he sat there, enraptured, on Zandra's lap for about a half hour while she explained to him what was going on in the video recording (VCR, in fact) of Turandot that she was watching.  They had some lovely moments together, ushering Quinn into opera appreciation.

She's more or less my grandmother-in-law, for lack of a better term. She's the 20 year or so partner of my husband's grandfather Salah. Today's NYT has an article on Zandra.  I don't know many other people who have had an article written about them in the New York Times.

So... let's see... I know her so does that make it 1 degree of separation or 2? If it's you personally is that 0 degrees of separation or 1? Hummm... I'm thinking that since the expression includes the term separation, you'd have to be 0 degrees of separation from yourself. So that takes me to 1 degree of separation from being in the New York Times. Or at least that's how I'd like to think of it. At any rate, congratulations Zandra (you go, girl).