The Manrilla Blog | Life. Art. Religion. Culture.

Hooray!! I know this’ll sound a little childish but I’m so happy that I finally found a WAN (Wireless Area Network) hot spot in Madison that you don’t have to pay for. What I mean is that for the longest time there were only two other cafe’s in town and you had to pay an additional fee ($12.95/mnth.!!) just to use their freakin’ service. Well, here at Muddy Waters (1 N. Randall St.) you can surf ’til your hearts content as long as you but a drink (that’s fair business). Perhaps this’ll be where I’ll be doing my FTPing for a while to come. As a matter of fact, I’m FTP’ing this from my car in the parking lot…

The small diary that I kept of out trip to San Francisco is up and completed. Feel free to take a read. In other news, I have switched my host provider for marcmanleyphoto.com to hostforweb.com. Now I don’t have to pay an additional $9.95/mnth for POP3 access to my e-mail. Those pikers over at Yahoo! “Damn ‘em Jimmy, damn ‘em ta HELL!!…” (make sure you read that one in a strong Irish accent).

On Friday I was fortunate enough to make it to the local theatre where I was treated to a wonderfully moving film, The Pianist. My prior cinematic experience was not so enjoyable. The story is of a Polish Jew during the war and his survival is a griping tale. I share no love for Roman Polanski but the film really isn’t about him; it’s about the tale of this piano player. After seeing it, it came as no surprise that Adrien Brody won an Oscar for his performance. If you have not seen this movie you really must do so.

In other news today, I did my first real photography gig here in Madison since I moved here eight months ago. I feel as if I’ve returned to being me, in a sense. Photography has been the passion that has chosen me for the past two years and it feels damn good to be active again. I felt so moved that I continued to shoot even after the event I worked at today. The days that I have pulled my camera from its bag and gone out to shoot just for the pleasure of it have been few and far between. Well, now it’s time to add the perfect cap to this day: a little Thai food and some Charles Lloyd.