My prelim is in a scant 13.5 hours. I took today off (mostly) and went into San Francisco, walked around a bit, popped into the library, and went to one of the cheapest sushi places I’ve seen ($4.25 for the 7 piece nigiri), ate too much wasabi, talked to Adam about this and that on the phone while he waited for a bus that neglects its duty to stop and pick up passengers, sat in a cafe rederiving forward and backward linear prediction filters (I said it was only mostly off) and revising (to use the Brit expression) my measure theory, hung out with Ann, watched The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeosie by Buñuel, which was hilarious, and then went to Nirvana, the fabulous “Burmese” noodle place in the Castro. All in all, a satisfying relaxing day.

The Castro Theater, which is where we saw the movie, is one of the coolest things (to me) about San Francisco. It’s an old-style movie house, with a balcony, wood seats upholstered in red velvet, tall ceiling, with a chandelier, and gold paint on some pretty elaborate molding on the walls. And they show foreign/old/art films. And before each screening there’s a guy who comes out and plays the organ for about fifteen minutes. Today he played a medly of old tunes, including “Blue Skies,” which is one of my favorites. In fact, Brent Spiner singing it was about the only good thing in the last Star Trek movie. In any case, I’ll be going there next week to see Errol Flynn as Robin Hood on the big screen — how could I resist? Daffy Duck would be so jealous.