How to Disappear Completely

Because I like to waste a lot of time managing my music in iTunes, I've found yet another way to focus even more of my attention on that application. I wanted to listen to all the music I have at least once, so I created a smart playlist that holds every song whose playcount is zero. After the song is played, it then has a playcount of one, and it disappears out of the playlist.

Essentially this playlist left me with mostly songs that I really didn't care to listen to. And it turned out to be around 10 gigs worth of music. So it's been a grueling couple of weeks as I listen to the likes of Janet Jackson, The Dandy Warhols, and a metal band called My Dying Bride that co-worker-bee Brady likes to call "church-burners". And Johnny Cash pops up from beyond the grave in chunks of about 7 songs to not only sing in Folsom Prison, but also to take on covers of songs from bands like Soundgarden, Nine Inch Nails, and Depeche Mode.

But in listening to this Underplayedlist, how did I not ever listen a song on Kid A? And how the hell did I acquire every Squarepusher album? Anyhow, I've managed to get the list down to around 2 gigs, and under 400 songs left. But if I have to endure one more Elton John ballad, there won't be anything to read here next week.

Bad

Last week was grueling. I spoke with around 12 customer service reps from Sears when I wanted to return the replacement for my TV of 10 years. The new TV had an amazing picture, but the vertical line running through the middle of the screen didn't look so great. In trying to get Sears to pick up this faulty set, they referred me to delivery, who referred me to the national customer service line, who forwarded me to repair, who sent me to delivery, who forwarded me to the store where I bought my TV, who told me to call delivery, who sent me back to the store. I went into the store with receipt in hand and the Sears employee told me I had to call delivery. He probably saw the steam starting to emanate from my ears, so he called delivery himself and told them to head over to my house to pick the damn thing up.

Later in the week I spent probably a total of 3 hours on the phone with Dell for the replacement for that replacement, after I found out the sales rep had lied to me about how long it would take to deliver the TV. He said it would be the next day. The e-mail said it wouldn't even be shipped for another three. I canceled on the sheer principle that I don't wanna give money to liars.

And the capper of this stellar week was FedEx on Friday. A director friend of mine was shipping a firewire drive that had footage for a music video. Unfortunately for me, the FedEx way is to try to deliver to workplaces before most workplaces are open. I tracked the package and found out that they attempted delivery at 7:40 am, but they would re-deliver by 3 pm. 3 pm comes and goes. No package. 4 pm comes and goes. I was losing a whole day of editing on a music vid that was due on Monday. Sweet. I called FedEx and discovered that the package was still sitting at the facility and there would be no other attempt to deliver that day. Needless to say, it was a fun conversation that ended in me putting on my FedEx hat and driving to the facility and wasting more time there while they attempted to locate the box. Then I got to work all weekend and avoid the nice weather everybody else enjoyed down here.

Not such a great week, eh? I thought so until the IT guy at my work came in with a cast on his right wrist & hand. He had just had surgery on his wrist the day before. Apparently he had to walk to his surgery appointment in the morning because his neighbor had his car towed for blocking his driveway. And he probably won't be getting his car back soon, because he has a bunch of unpaid parking tickets, and he'll have to part with a good chunk of his cash if he wants it back. Oh, and on the walk to his surgery appointment he stepped in dogshit and had brushed some on his pant leg while strolling. But he didn't notice the dogshit until he arrived at his doctor. I'm sure the surgery wasn't much fun either. In light of that, my week was a cakewalk.

Freedom

On Monday I got a chance to see what it was probably like in Mayberry back in the Andy Griffith days. A town hall meeting with the mayor of Culver City and 4 council-persons was to decide whether our street could be closed off to make it a cul-de-sac. One of the councilmen said that in his eight years service he hadn't received as many letters, phone calls and e-mails as he had surrounding this issue.

The main reason for the potential street closure is the fact that in our neighborhood, our street is the only one with a traffic light at the end of it. And that light leads to a road that eventually takes you to the 405 freeway. Our street was never intended to be a collector road, and its narrowness has caused several sideswipes, car wrecks and lawn-driving maneuvers by agrro motorists driving at speeds up to 70 mph. This on a residential street where the speed limit is more like 25 mph. Add to that the fact that there are around 25 kids on this street, many who are skateboarding age and they like to ride their skateboards in the street. A street two blocks away is the logical collector road for this traffic but there's only a stop sign where that road ends, and motorists tend to choose the street that they have the best chance of blowing through - ours.

On moving to our new neighborhood, we were introduced to many of our new neighbors through visits from them asking us to send in a ballot card to say "yes, we'd like our street closed!" Who the heck wouldn't want that? So I checked the yes boxes and sent it in. Soon afterward the proposition passed, but the Culver City council thought it might be good to hear from all sides first. And our neighbors on the surrounding streets weren't too happy about this possibility of inheriting our traffic, as was evidenced by their numbers in attendance for the town hall meeting.

It's interesting to go to a town hall meeting and experience politics on such a small scale. It's politics that you actually have a voice in. In fact, there were 30 or so voices going up to the podium for three minutes each and speaking their minds about the street closure. There were the neighbors on my street telling the council that they've been dealing with the traffic and working over seven years to get to this point. There were the neighbors on the surrounding streets telling the council that they don't want our problem. And there were the five elected representatives stuck in the middle. The discussion on this topic had started at 8:25 pm and it ended at 12:15 am.

At one point it seemed as if the council was going to do nothing. The mayor, who was set to finish his term in two weeks, piped up and said "Well, it's approaching midnight and we're all tired here." At which point we knew that our street closure wasn't going to happen. Then he continued, "Except I can't leave office knowing that some kid might get killed on that street if we don't do something". The neighbors from the surrounding streets were probably letting out an inner "fok", knowing that we were gonna be there much longer and much later. One member of the council came up with a new plan that wasn't exactly closing the street, but it was a good compromise. And the mayor threw in to the proposal adding more traffic cops in our neighborhood to crack down on speeding.

It came to a vote, which required a simple majority. And when the voting lights in front of each council-person came on, we had won: 3 yes, 2 no. But one of the council-persons mentioned that her vote was incorrect, that it showed yes when she had voted no. Boos from the crowd. Re-vote came up 2 yes, 3 no. More boos from the crowd, until another member of the council felt the heat and asked the crowd, "who on the neighboring streets are in favor of this new plan?" There was a surprising amount of applause. The councilman requested to do a re-vote. 3 yes, 2 no. The crowd erupted in applause, and everybody left City Hall shaking hands and smiling. That is, everybody but the city council, who still had a few more items to discuss.

The next day, I spoke with several of my neighbors and they all felt happy about the decision, but they didn't believe it would really be implemented. And the following day Lily said she saw at least seven cars pulled over by cops giving tickets. Either that's progress, or I'm getting old. Maybe both.

World of Entertainment (W.O.E. is Me)

So I'm on the plane back from Sea-Tac, on a relatively new Virgin America airplane, and I sit down in my comfy black seat with the uber-hip white panel in front of me containing their Audio-Visual system called Red. Not shortly after reaching our cruising altitude of 36 thousand feet, the crew came through with the drink cart to offer refreshments.

After ordering, the three gentlemen in the row directly in front of us - who seemed not to know each other - all started asking questions about the capability of Red to do what they needed to do on this 2.5 hour flight.

Man #1: "Do you offer broadband?"
Crew member: "Sorry, we don't offer broadband yet, but it's coming. In like 6 months or so. But that's not soon enough for you, yes?"

Man #2 (To Man #1): "But you can chat on the plane if you want"
Crew member: "Oh yeah, you can chat with the other passengers"

Man #2 (repeatedly pressing his Red touch screen): "My chat isn't working"
Crew member: "Would you like me to restart you?"
Man #2 (still pressing the screen): "Yes please."

Man #3 (repeatedly pressing his Red touch screen): "How come these TV channels don't work?"
Crew member: "Sometimes we lose reception up here"
Man #3 (repeatedly pressing his Red touch screen): "Well CNN comes in, why don't the other channels?"
Crew member: "Would you like me to restart you?"

What the fuck, people. Two of the three of these men had their laptop computers open. Is that not enough? Do we need somebody to come over and perform magic tricks for them as well? Just be like Lily and play 50 games of Mahjongg. That'll keep you occupied for a couple hours.

You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire

In my recent attempts to save every penny possible, I've located the most obvious place, and that's at the Extra Space Storage facility in Marina Del Rey. Now that we have enough room in our house to store all those boxes of useful junk, I can nix the $77 that we were paying.

And due to an oversight in their accounting department, I was credited an amount equal to the 2 months rent I would have paid for breaking my lease early. So those extra pennies will help out with the increased cost of housing, the new TV I'll have to buy because my old one blew out, the cost of flying the family up to Seattle for a funeral, etc etc. But I get to keep an extra 77 bucks a month? Somebody up there likes me.

Stardust

I take no credit for the creation of anything in this post.

Three Car Jam

1. As I careened out of the Target parking lot on a Sunday morning, apparently I went through a red light. I didn't realize it at the time, but the authorities were kind enough to send several pictures at different angles of me and my car taking a left through the intersection while the light was clearly red. Luckily I wasn't doing anything incriminating like picking my nose, or like the episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm where Larry is photographed going through a red light while looking at his passengers ass, which was up in the air because she was reaching into the back seat. The little series of pictures will only cost me $380 plus another $50 for the privilege of spending some time at traffic school.

2. About two weeks later on my way to our new abode, I had the sensation that the car wasn't handling well - like it had a flat tire. I got out of the car at the nearest intersection to inspect the situation and unfortunately I was right about the tire. Torn sidewall. Fortunately I was close enough to our old abode to change the tire in our driveway. To get at the spare tire, I removed all the crap out of the car trunk: Bottles for recycling, grocery bags, a skimboard.

The resident homeless guy that we like to call Burnout - because he can spend days reclining in the sun, and his black clothes and hair appear burnt - came up to me and asked if I had seen a guy he described as looking exactly like me. The guy apparently took a grocery bag (which Burnout said looked like a grocery bag that was sitting next to my car with the flat tire) that was full of money. Burnout would have used this grocery bag full of bills to go somewhere around Christmas. Burnout repeatedly asked me if I saw the guy around anywhere, and I repeatedly told him I hadn't seen anybody (who looks just like me).

I put on the spare, and lowered the car with the jack, only to find that the spare was flat. I figured that the spare isn't much bigger than a mountain bike tire, so I grabbed my bike pump and got to work. My triceps hadn't seen a workout like that in months. That afternoon I went to Big O Tires and spent $380 for 4 new tires because the 3 working tires probably didn't have much longer to live.

3. Last weekend we went to the nearby Sherwin-Williams paint store to buy one more can of white semi-gloss for the interior of our new abode. Because Lily had been choosing all the paint to this point, she went into the store while Judah and I waited in the car. It was hot, so I pressed the buttons to roll down the windows. The rear driver side window had some trouble going down, but it eventually made it all the way down. When Lily came back I rolled all the windows up. That is, all but the rear drivers side window, which didn't come all the way back up. It sounded like it wanted to close, but the crunching noise led me to believe that it wasn't gonna. I still haven't taken it in to the shop for that one, but my guess is that it's probably going to cost $380.

It's like that, and that's the way it is

Moving on Monday, taxes on Saturday, clients in all week. See you next Thursday.

Third Eye

Walking back from the Third Street Promenade, I approached the intersection at the post office and I noticed a blind woman with a cane. She tapped the white cane around the edge of the sidewalk, seemingly unsure which direction she wanted to go. She looked flustered. She did a 180, then stopped and did another 180, and she seemed on the verge of a panic attack. Several people walked by without offering any assistance.

I walked up to her and asked "do you need help?" She took a deep breath and said yes, thank you. She said "I need to find 5th street". I looked up at the sign at the intersection and it said 5th Street. I told her she was on 5th Street & Arizona. Then she told me "Can you point me in the direcction of 4th Street?" I turned her in the direction of 4th Street and told her "now you're facing toward 4th Street, toward the beach."

She said "Thanks so much" and tapped her way toward 4th Street. As I turned and continued on my way, I realized that probably nothing going on in my little world was as bad as what she just went through.

Pac-Man Fever

On Monday night a work project fell into my lap at around 5:45 pm. The project was the video component of one of those newfangled rides where you're sitting in a movie theater in a small group of theater seats that move in relation to what you're seeing on screen. Luckily for me, I was stoked to work on the project because it features a character from a TV show who says "Doh!" starring in it.

The "Doh!" part was about as good as it was gonna get. Because then the real work began. Taking a series of still frame rough animation files and putting them together isn't really what I consider "editing", but it falls under editor duties and thus falls into my lap at 5:45 pm on a Monday night.

I was to take a sequence of still images and compile them into a 5 minute movie, and then attach the existing sound bed so that it was in sync. Sounds simple, right? Too simple? Too simple. It wasn't in sync, and the production manager and I spent the next three hours trying to figure out why.

We slipped the audio this way and that until it was about in sync as it was going to be for this stage of the animation, so that the sound designer/mix people could do their job and then the whole thing could move forward again. At 9pm we were laying off to tape and I assumed I was done. And I was, until the next day at noon.

One of our production coordinators walked into the editing suite at noon and told me that a two-minute chunk of the sequence with revised animation was being sent over the network. All I had to do was import the sequence, cut it over the existing sequence and lay it off to tape. The Executive Producer of the TV show that this "ride" is based on with the character who says "Doh!" would be waiting for this tape on the studio lot at 3 pm. Sounds simple, right? Too simple? Too simple.

I import the new animation into the edit system (Avid) at around 1 pm. I line up the spot where the new animation goes over the old stuff, and I quickly realize there's a problem: The new piece goes way longer than the old piece. And then I quickly discover that every 5th frame is a repeat of the 4th frame.

So I call our producer for this "ride" and tell him what's up. We talk tech mumbo-jumbo (different than this tech mumbo-jumbo) for 10 minutes before he decides to get off the phone to see what he can do on his end. The clock is rapidly ticking toward 3 pm, so I start trying different compression techniques to see if that'll work. The producer calls me back about 45 minutes later only to tell me that it will take 2 hours to recreate the animation correctly. Hm. Two hours plus 1: 55 pm equals pissed off Executive Producer of a ride and TV show with character who says "Doh!" DOH!

I tell the producer that I'll take care of it, and we hang up. If you know anything about how editing works, then you know that there are a few very basic commands: Mark In, Mark Out, and Cut. And probably the last remaining thing that Avid has going over Final Cut Pro is a little routine where you can punch in plus or minus then a number on the keypad then Enter (i.e. +5 Enter), and you'll go that number of frames ahead or back. Then every time you just press Enter it'll go that same distance. Every 5th frame a duplicate? No problem.

I remap my keyboard so that it'll be Mark In, Mark Out, Cut - using the ring finger, middle finger, index finger (in that order) on my left hand. After that left handed sequence I'm pressing Enter (for the +5 frame advance) with my right index finger. Repeat ad nauseum. I knew playing all those video games back in the day would pay off.

I'm cruising through this little 5 frame edit exercise (and I'm amazed at how the Avid can keep up with this insane tapping), and I get the slightest tinge of carpal tunnel. Every now and then I take a break to check the frame numbers to make sure I haven't gone astray, and every now and then I have gone astray, so I stop to fix it. After a few minutes of speed metal finger tapping, I'm grimacing and letting out the occasional scream because nobody is supposed to edit like this. But I'll be damned if that deadline is missed.

My fingers thoroughly fatigued, I finally get the cutting done and I'm ready to lay off to tape. But some stupid Golf commercial is using the tape deck I need to lay off to. Looks like Mr. Executive Producer of the TV show with a character who says "Doh!" in it would have to wait. At least he wouldn't be waiting because of me. DOH!

Independent Worm Saloon

After a semi-tough day at work and a completely tough drive home in the rain, I walked in the back door to our apartment and saw the usual sight of Lily reading a book to Judah as he attempted to finish his dinner. A stack of children's books about 12 high stood on the counter next to them. I took off my backpack and set it on the floor, and I had removed one of my loafers when Lily said "Could you return these books to the library?"

As any good husband and father would, I pulled on my recently removed shoe, grabbed the stack of books and headed out the door. The Abbot-Kinney Library is right across the street from our driveway. It's also the place where, in the rain or in any other kind of weather, a group of homeless folk call their home. And being that it had just rained, a group of 6 or 8 homeless guys were standing off to the side of the entrance to said library.

And as I crossed the street toward the library, one of the smoking homeless guys stared me down. I returned the stare as I made my way toward the entrance carrying the armful off books. As I passed the guy, he shrugged his shoulders, looked back toward his buddies and muttered "bookworm". The group erupted in laughter. Great. Like I wanna be made fun of by a group of homeless guys. Actually, it was a good one. Bookworm. I'm gonna keep that one for a rainy day.

Run To The Hills

At the risk of pigeon-holing myself as a closet metal nerd, I need to get this off my chest. I've been to a lot of concerts. A ton of concerts. So many concerts that when I turned 21 (many moons ago) I decided that I wasn't gonna go to concerts anymore. That didn't last long.

I still go to plenty of concerts. Especially now that I live in a place where every single band comes through. But the one concert I didn't go to, if I could go to one concert that happened in my lifetime? Iron Maiden - Powerslave tour - 1984-85.

If you've ever seen pictures from this tour, then you know that the stage setup was a spectacle of the Spinal Tap variety. You don't have to like heavy metal to appreciate monstrous stage setups with fog machines, flamethrowers, fireworks, and a huge animatronic Eddie.

That concert eluded me, and I'd been trying to go to an Iron Maiden concert ever since. I came close in 2003, but the realities of a tight work schedule nixed my drive down to Shoreline Amphitheater. It looked like a live Eddie sighting wasn't in the cards. Until this year.

Iron Maiden at the Forum in Inglewood. Perfect. The parking lot was like a scene from 1984: muscle cars and jean jackets. The Forum looked like 1984. When we walked in, I imagined Magic Johnson no-look-passing to Kareem for a Showtime slam dunk. Kobe Bryant would never play here. Jack Nicholson probably wouldn't be caught dead here now. The Forum stinks and after you get 10,000 Iron Maiden fans spilling beer everywhere, it's treacherous. No lights on the slippery soaked stairways tells the whole story.

So after the obligatory horrible opening band, Iron Maiden came on and played mostly songs from around 1984. Rocked the house. Everybody looked a little older, but after the 10 foot tall animatronic Eddie walked around the stage with a laser gun, nobody noticed anymore. And now I can cross "See Iron Maiden Live" off my to do list.

These go to eleven

In plowing through my ever-expanding music collection, I've discovered some songs that aren't really songs. They're silence. They're tracks on albums which, on vinyl or cassette or 8-track or CD, might go unnoticed. But in digital music file format, they're bona fide "songs" which take up space on my hard drive.

And in researching some of the new albums I have, I've noticed that digital music stores such as Amazon & iTunes sell these silent tracks. You can buy them as part of an album or as individual tracks. "(Silence)" by Ciccone Youth: Only 99 cents at the digital store of your choice. "One Minute of Silence" by Soundgarden: Same price. "(Silence)" by Juno: Again, just 99 cents.

And they really are just that. Silence. So here's my plan. For a mere 50 cents - that's 49 cents cheaper than any digital music store - I'll sell you a track of silence! 50 cents! Can't beat that.

Stealing People's Mail

In my possession is an e-mail account that must be worth some money. I say that because I get a lot of inadvertent mail because so-and-so told their friends "hey, my e-mail is blah@blah.com" but their friends heard something more simplified than that.

For instance, my dream e-mail address would probably be "lee@mac.com" because it's short and sweet and easy to remember, but somebody who's even more ahead of the curve and more cutting edge than even I am got there before me and stole it from its rightful owner. So instead, I have an e-mail address that's a little harder to remember than that, but people may assume, under drunken circumstances probably, that I said "lee@mac.com".

So basically I receive inadvertent e-mails from all over the place because drunk people thought somebody told them an e-mail address, but it wasn't what they vaguely remember. And here are some of the results of that drunkenness:

Louise

All detail of the offer below. I was a little inaccurate on the car allowance so it is just £400 short of current basic if you choose to take the car allowance. There is the option to take a car. Of course they pay all your business mileage/petrol when used on business.

The sooner you can come back the better.

Tom

Tom was offering Louise a job, but apparently either Louise or Tom was at a 3 martini lunch and one of them (probably Tom) got Louise's e-mail address mixed up with mine. Too bad. Louise would have gotten a pretty sweet gig complete with 5 weeks "holiday" (this is in the UK), and 4 weeks company sick pay. Apparently I'm working in the wrong country.

Here's another. Somebody named David sent these pics, and all it says is "here ya go":

Fun



Regular




And this mistakenly sent e-mail might have caused eternal damnation:

Lindsey,

Would you mind printing these for mass today. I thought "We bring the sacrifice of praise" for the opening, "Change My Heart" for the preparation and "Shine Jesus Shine" for the last one. Thanks.

Tyler

There were no attachments. Somebody's gonna burn in hell.

Good Morning, Captain

Well I had planned on spending this morning putting some letters together into words in this space, but instead I spent the morning trying to keep Judah one step away from complete meltdown.

It goes like this:

(Judah throws soccer ball repeatedly)
Me: Judah, you can't do that right now because you'll wake up the neighbors downstairs.
Judah picks up ball and throws it again
Me: Judah, if you do that one more time, I'm going to have to take the ball away from you
Judah picks up ball and throws it again
Me: Okay, I'm taking the ball away now.
I put the ball on a high shelf where he can't reach it. Judah gets upset and does the standard tantrum-style fall on the floor face down, hands and feet pounding the floor. I go to the kitchen to get some juice. Judah comes running after me and sees the juice and wants something.
Me: You want some milk?
Judah: (sniffling) Yeah
I grab the jug of milk and put it on the counter. I grab a purple sippy cup out of the cupboard.
Judah: No! No! No!
Judah falls on the ground crying
Me: Do you want a different cup?
Judah: (sniffling) Yeah
I grab a pink plastic cup out of the cupboard.
Me: Do you want this one?
Judah: No! No! No!
Judah falls on the ground crying. I grab a yellow sippy cup.
Me: Do you want this one?
Judah: (sniffling) Yeah
I grab the lid to the sippy cup.
Judah: No! No! No! No top! No top!
I put the lid down and grab the milk jug.
Judah: No! No! No! No milk! No milk!
Me: Judah? You said you wanted milk. Do you want water.
Judah: (sniffling) No
Me: Do you want milk or water?
Judah: (sniffling) Milk
Me: Okay
I pour a little bit into the sippy cup
Judah: Big one! Big one!
Me: Judah? I'm only giving you this much because I don't want you to spill it.
Judah: Big one! Big one!
I hand him the cup that doesn't have "Big one" in it.
Judah: No! No! No!
Judah falls on the ground crying.
Me: Judah, please drink this and I'll give you some more
Judah gets up and grabs the cup which barely fits in his little grasp. He takes a tiny sip and puts it down. He runs off into the living room to play with his trains. I grab his cup and my juice and head into the living room. I put the cups down on the coffee table

After playing for a bit, Judah grabs his sippy cup and takes another tiny sip. He almost gets it down to the table, but he lets it go early enough for it to tip on its side and spill all over some important documents. At least he didn't spill it on my computer. And the moral of the story would be: Don't cry over spilled milk. Or not enough milk in your sippy cup either.

Futureworld

Being the good Los Angeles citizen that I am, I'm quickly abandoning any semblance of using modes of transportation other than my car. The bike rides have become less and less as the weeks go by. There's always some lame excuse: It's raining. It's too cold. I have clients in today and I don't wanna be all stinky. I don't wanna crash and destroy my laptop. Etc, etc. Seeing's how I've spent a good majority of my life as a licensed driver not owning a car, I figure I can drive a bit in this town.

So in order to combat the high cost of burning fossil fuels, I use this little widget called, appropriately: Gas. The Gas Widget tells me where I can get the cheapest gas within a specified radius. Except sometimes I go to the station that the Gas Widget points me to, and the gas isn't the same price as it said on the widget! Can't trust anybody. Or any little computerized thingy called widget.

But recently I noticed there's a button on the widget that says "Spot". I clicked on it and it told me how I could become a "spotter", which is basically how the widget gets the information about what the gas prices are. As the legion of spotters drives by whatever gas stations, they're gathering information and putting it onto a website where you can then see on a map what the prices are in a given area. That info is then related to the simple little Gas Widget.

Spotting is no easy task, especially in Los Angeles, where there are bazillions of gas stations on every street. At first I took spotting sorta lightly. I'd drive past a 76 station, look at the sign, and speak aloud the cents part of the cost. i.e. "29 39 49", which means "$3.29, $3.39, $3.49". But the saying it aloud thing didn't work too well with remembering, especially after passing about 3 gas stations. So I started writing them down on a piece of paper. While driving. Hell, half the people I see on the road are either holding a cell phone or texting, so scribbling some numbers on a piece of paper can't be all bad now can it? For the greater good of all gas consumers?

If that's not enough, The GasPriceWatch website even awards points for every updated price you enter into the system. And they keep a running tally of which users have the most points every month, and the high score overall. Needless to say, I want the high score. So I'll waste a bunch of gas driving around LA to find gas prices so I can win!

Freedom of Choice

The moment had finally arrived. The moment I'd been waiting for since July, when I shipped my iBook G4 off to the winning ebayer: Macworld. Not just Macworld, but the Macworld where they were rumored to be releasing the replacement for my iBook G4: The new and improved ultra-slim MacBook.

But then the dream died. Steve Jobs didn't deliver. Well, he delivered a stunningly beautiful new ultra-slim laptop. But he didn't deliver what I had in mind.

Instead of replacing the MacBook at its price point, he gave us the MacBook Air for (in computer terms) considerably more money. Instead of giving us the same functionality, he took out the optical drive and the ethernet port and firewire. And if I may geek out even more, he gave us a slower processor and slower drive rpm than the less expensive MacBook. I guess I wasn't the only one who felt old Stevie didn't deliver:



That eleven-hundred bucks was burning a hole in my wallet. Coincidentally, my car didn't pass smog, so on the same day as the Macworld announcement I took it in for repairs so it would pass smog. And on that little trip, they found out that my brakes were shot, the ignition was faulty, and the car had an oil leak and a few belts that needed replacing. Price tag: $1100.

Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)

If you managed to read the one-liner that comprised my last post, then you know that Lily was out of town for a week. Luckily for me, Mr. Jesse Clark was so extremely gracious as to fly down to Los Angeles to help me keep Mr. Judah Gardner alive until Lily came back.

And on one of the days that Lily was gone and the three of us boys were just hanging around the apartment, I heard Judah in another room saying "broken" over and over. I walked toward his voice to find him sitting near an outlet in his room where his truck-shaped night light used to reside. Except now he's got the truck part in one hand and the light part in the other. And like he said, it's "broken".

As I fully intend on shopping for a similar night light the next day - but it doesn't happen - I take an old night light in the hall that emits a lower level blue-ish light and I stick it in his room. Fast-forward to about 3:30 am and the little bugger is screaming bloody murder and waking his dad up and probably his uncle Jesse up as well. Experiment failure noted.

Next day I decided that the blue-ish light ain't gonna work, so a trip to Target was planned. An outing for the boys. Except that we barely made it into the parking lot before it became painfully clear that we weren't going to move, much less find a spot to park in. Actually it took Jesse making that painfully clear to me, and we agreed that I should just get out of the car and go in to buy the night light while Jesse and Judah found a parking spot.

I hurriedly go inside and pass all the schmoes who don't have somebody parking their car outside, and I head for the kid's section. On my way there I realize that I'm not really sure that's where the night lights will be sold. I briefly consider shoplifting the night light, because I know it's going to be a bitch to get out of here with my sanity. There's a Target employee nearby trying to act like she's working, so I ask her where the kid's night lights are. Her face assumes the look of "I don't have any idea", but she points me toward housewares. No dice.

Then it's a trip back to the kid's section, where I find another Target employee trying to act like she's working, and I ask the same question. She's more confident and she tells me "aisle N6". I go to N6. No dice. I wander around looking for anything resembling kids night lights until I find the flashlight aisle, and there are some night lights there. Not exactly the truck night light variety, but I find a nice star-shaped metal light that, from the picture on the box, emits a nice warm glow. Done.

After making my way through the riot-inducing Target checkout, I walked out the doors and spotted our car right near the entrance. Perfect. Jesse told me that he didn't see a single open parking spot the entire time.

When we got home, Jesse took the initiative of installing the star-shaped night light. As far as I can remember, I heard him say "looks great" and then "aw fuck". Apparently after he plugged in the light, he tried to adjust the metal star part and it broke away from the light part. Broken like it's a cheap piece of shit and it wasn't going to be anything other than a cheap piece of shit without an entire tube of crazy glue.

Well Jesse was again so extremely gracious as to get some scotch tape out and tape the hell out of the original truck night light and get it back into working shape. I plugged it back in. That night the boy slept soundly the entire night. Thanks Jesse!

Since You're Gone

Well, Lily's left me again. For a week anyway. My hands are full with trying to keep the boy alive, editing another lithium-fueled rabbit commercial, and just generally keeping my sanity. So LLMB is on hiatus until I can come up for air.

Thanks for reading, and HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Do It Again

I'm sick for what can only be the last time in 2007. There are many more germs awaiting my entry into 2008, for sure. The only blessing about this final 2007 bug is that I'm sick early enough to make a speedy recovery for New Year's Eve, and that means sitting around with some parents whose kids are probably sick, and we'll be talking about what we used to do on New Year's Eve's before we did this.

The added bonus of being sick this time is knowing exactly when, where, and who I got my illness from. The added bonus not being the knowing, but the added animosity toward the person who was so kind as to show up at my cousin's Xmas Eve dinner knowing she was coming down with something nasty, and sharing it with the rest of us.

She's a woman of probably about 57, named Roz. Roz didn't really have much to say to us (or anyone), other than to remark about how rambunctious Judah was being, and also that the Poinsettia he was playing next to was poisonous. According to the Bible (Wikipedia), Poinsettia's aren't poisonous, but we didn't have that information at the time so we all silently watched Judah like a hawk until he moved to a non-Poinsettia region of my cousin's house. The next morning I woke up feeling like crap, and I recalled how good I was feeling until that precise moment.

In any case, here I sit drinking Nighttime Airborne, loathing Roz. Nighty-night.

Trim Up The Tree

What I really want for Xmas this year is to know, once and for all, what my ethnic background really is. When I was a kid, it was simple: Dad was German/English, Mom was Filipino. But over the years it's gotten oh so muddled.

Upon doing a family tree homework assignment in high school, I found out that moms was not just Filipino, but her father was Spanish & Chinese. And then a couple years ago, Lily did some more questioning of my mom to find out what was up with my father's side of the picture, and she found out that there was Scottish and French in there as well.

I wanted to get to the bottom of this, and being as my dad's attending the great gig in the sky and not around to answer questions, I asked his brother. He told me there wasn't any Scottish or French in our family but there was German and Welsh. I'd never heard that I was Welsh before, but I felt like I was getting someplace.

The moment of truth finally arrived this year when we had a family reunion at my uncle's house in San Diego. I was so excited to ask the question about our ancestry and get the last word on what I'm really made of. Nope. Nothing but divergent opinions and ideas on what we were. Oh, and that my grandfather had a completely separate family from the one I knew about.

And then just the other day my cousin, who didn't bother to make the trek down to San Diego to help fill in the blanks in the family tree, calls me on the telephone. I explain the whole story of the reunion and the lack of information. He then tells me that years ago one of our relatives, who's not a relative anymore because of divorce, did the research and told our family (including the people at my family reunion) that not only were we German, English, and Welsh, but IRISH too! Well if that don't beat all. I hope at some point I find out I'm Italian as well. I've always wanted to be Italian.

Deep in the Heart of Texas

When my employer asked me to travel to Dallas to edit a spot, I was asked one minor question: Do you want a rental car? Seems like an easy answer: Yes! But after speaking to another editor who'd traveled to Dallas, the likelihood of getting lost in Dallas in my rental car seemed very possible. And because I'd never been to Texas before, I decided it was probably a better idea to use taxis to get around.

Simple enough. Cab drivers know their city, right? Wrong. Every morning, I'd hop in the taxi, tell the driver the address and neighborhood, and each one would turn around and look at me like I was speaking Tagalog or something. The first day, the driver drove away from the hotel, pulled out a Thomas Guide and proceeded to look for the name of the street. Seeing's how I didn't want to get in a wreck over something as silly as getting me to the office, I said "gimme that" and looked for it myself.

The next day, things were looking up. The cab driver had a GPS thingy on his dashboard. Aside from the fact that he didn't know how to punch in the address, it functioned perfectly. Except for the fact that 75% of the roads around the office are under construction/not there anymore. We drove around in circles, with the GPS thingy saying "Turn right. Recalculating" every time we made a right. Luckily I had some modern technology of my own, a cellular telephone, to make a call to a co-worker and get real directions.

By the time you read this, I should be halfway to the office or circling around the same patch of roads under construction.

Sweet Child O' Mine

Lily tells me our son now says the word "Dammit". I wonder where he picked that up from? Damn!

Bellbottoms

Not long ago, probably about a month ago, it dawned on me that my wardrobe was getting some serious wear. And tear. Which is a good thing, because I want to get as much mileage as I can out of my gear before the style police come along and tell me it's time to get into whatever retro year it is this time.

So on a Sunday, the family went on a little outing to the Beverly Center to do some shopping and basically hit the closest H&M to our neck of the proverbial woods. To make a long story start, we went into Club Monaco and I tried on some slacks. Nice, but they needed tailoring, and Club Monaco does free tailoring with your purchase. At least that's what the fashionista working the dressing rooms told me. Turns out that it's free if your merchandise is not on sale, which mine was, so I had to pay 10 bucks. Not bad for the convenience of not needing to go someplace else and do the whole fitting, pinning, paying exercise all over again.

The much-younger-than-me guy working the register handed me a ticket to fill out with my name and phone number. He tore off one part of the ticket and handed it back to me, and he told me my pants would be ready next Wednesday. I walked out of the store feeling oddly satisfied that I did some shopping, but I had no merchandise.

Wednesday arrives and Lily is kind enough to brave the Beverly Center again to pick up my pants. That night I pull the pants out of the bag to try them on and complete the shopping nirvana feeling. But I find that there are still pins in my folded, cinched pants. No tailoring had been done. I asked Lily about it, and she said she just picked up the bag from the store. The employee said they were done. Done has a lot of meanings I guess, but this didn't fit my definition of done.

At my earliest convenience, I called Club Monaco @ Beverly Center and spoke with a manager. He apologized not so profusely and said I could bring the pants back in and it would be done. Really? I'm allowed to drive my car into one of the worst parking lots ever and enter one of the few places I really consider hell on earth just so they could finish what they were supposed to have completed in the first place? No no no. I asked if I could bring the pants to any Club Monaco to have the tailoring done. He said yes, and that if anyone gave me a problem, to have them call him. Ooh. Tough guy.

There's a Club Monaco on the 3rd Street Promenade in lovely Santa Monica, and it's conveniently located walking distance from work. I drive there and bring the pants in on a Friday. I tell an employee my story, and we're good. She tells me to come back Monday, and they'll be done. I come back Tuesday. They're not done. There's no apology. Just a smile and the kind of blank stare you get from a lot of vendors in Southern California, begging you to say or do something you'll probably regret.

I assumed that they expected me to come back at some undefined later date in hopes that my pants will one day be tailored as we agreed upon way back when at the Beverly Center. But instead of playing that game, I asked them if they could be so kind as to call me when they're done. Blank smile girl said "of course". No apology.

Time passes and there's no phone call. I make the call, and I discover that the pants are ready, and they've been ready for a week. I ask for the manager, and I find out that I'm already speaking to him. I tell him my plight, and he's sympathetic. When I go in and get my pants, they're ready and they fit perfectly. The manger gives me a $30 store credit. What do I do with it? I buy more pants that need tailoring.

Hair

You may have heard, by first-hand accounts or by reading this space or otherwise, that I'm a marked man. Marked in terms of having incredibly bizarre misfortune at restaurants, coffee shops, etc. One place neglects to order my meal, another place decides to leave a broken bread tie in my eggs. One place has every beer imaginable on tap, they take our order and bring everybody's beer except mine because they just ran out of the beer I ordered.

These things usually occur when I walk into any establishment. And they happen almost every time, without fail. There's a sign imprinted on my forehead that reads "fuck with this guy" that's visible to everyone but me. I'm convinced. It's happened way too many times for it not to be there.

But this time I didn't even have to venture out into the world, make a phone call or interact in any way whatsoever with a vendor to get fucked with. I enjoyed half my delivered lunch and then discovered what looked like a pubic hair in there. Bon appetit.

Flying High Again

I'd never done this before, and I hope to not make it a regular occurrence, but I took the skybus this week. Flew up to San Francisco and back in the same day. It may have possibly consumed less time than a lot of people's driving commutes here in the Southland.

I woke up at 4:20 am to get on a flight departing at 6:30 am. Fine. No problem. I just stayed away from the caffeine enough to sleep like a baby for the 45 minutes or so that we were in the air neither taking off nor landing. I even ran into a friend who was on the same flight, and he was kind enough to offer me a ride to work in his rental car. I was looking forward to riding the BART, but I was happy to have a comrade in travel.

The return trip was a little more adventurous. I decided to ride the BART to SFO, thereby leaving a narrow window of time to actually make my flight. BART drops you off right at the international terminal of SFO. Domestic travelers must go upstairs to catch a tram to the domestic terminal. Seeing's how I wasn't even leaving the state, much less the country, I went upstairs to catch the tram. 45 minutes before takeoff. I looked at the Information map to see where the Virgin America gates were. No listing for Virgin America. Must be too new.

The tram arrives, I step on with the rest of the travelers, and I remove my earphones just in time to hear: "Next stop, International Terminal. Virgin America, blah blah." I look at the tram system map and it contradicts the voice on the loudspeaker. The map says that Virgin America is the final tram stop. A couple standing next to me is apparently flying Virgin America because they saw and heard the same thing I did and they begin arguing in a rapidly escalating manner.

Doors open. The loudspeaker doesn't repeat the info. I quickly make the decision to go with the voice instead of the sign and I step off the train. I head down the escalator to the International Terminal (the one I could have walked to from where BART dropped me off in the first place) and I find one of those "Departures" screens and I see my flight number and gate assignment. It says A-11. I look up at the gate sign I'm standing under and it says "Gates G-1 through G-11". 40 minutes til takeoff.

I have no idea where the "A" gates are, but luckily there's an information booth nearby, so I walk over. A non-native-English speaking man beats me to the information booth and he asks (in non-native-English) the ancient sage working the counter where he can buy a ticket. Who the hell buys a ticket AT THE AIRPORT?!?!??!!! The sage tells me "be right with you" as he struggles to find the information. Moments later it's my turn, and I ask where Virgin America's gates are. The sage tells me where I can buy a ticket. (Apparently he neglected to notice the difference between me and the guy before me.) I tell him I have a ticket and I need to know where the "A" gates are.

The sage points up at a huge number on a pillar that says 11. "You see that number 11? Well when you get down to 1, you'll be there." I asked him if I should get back on the tram, but he said I could walk it. More like run it with the time I had left. I did my best speedwalker impression and hoofed it down to 1, and there indeed were the "A" gates. 35 minutes til takeoff.

The security check line is comprised mainly of Filipino travelers who don't have their shit together like I do. Meaning they're digging through their luggage to find passports and boarding passes. Things are not moving quickly enough for those of us who are about to miss our flights. This lack of speed continues all the way through the metal detector to the other side where somebody's bag has to go through the x-ray 3 times. As I wait, I look back at the security line and spot the arguing couple from the tram, and they still haven't made it through the ID check part of security.

I was about to ask security if I could grab my bag/laptop/shoes/jacket from behind the part of the x-ray machine where it has passed through, but not really past the part where you're supposed to grab it, but then I had a vision of a lengthy strip-search and me missing my flight. I waited patiently. 25 minutes til takeoff.

Finally I was able to grab my stuff and cram my feet into my loafers enough to get going. Speedwalking continued and I reached the end of the terminal where my gate was located with 20 minutes til takeoff. And to my left was an Il Fornaio cafe proudly displaying an Anchor Steam sign that I couldn't resist. Virgin America could wait.

I ordered, noticed a bar type of setup on the other side of the cafe, and moseyed over with my large glass of beer. I looked up at the TV hoping to see Monday Night Football, but instead it was some pirate movie that turned out to have Johnny Depp playing Keith Richards as a pirate. I was about to ask if they'd change it to the game, but a group of euro-looking travelers seemed really into the pirate movie.

I took a sip of beer and sent a taunting text message regarding drinking beer to a co-worker who I knew was still working. Then the loudspeaker came on: "Virgin America flight blah blah going to Los Angeles will be closing its doors in 5 minutes. If you want to go to Los Angeles, be here in 5 minutes." Couldn't be clearer about how long I had to finish my beer. Plenty of time.

Who Are You

Lily and I took the li'l bugger out for his first Halloween last night. Not really his first Halloween, but the first that he dressed up in a costume, walked around the neighborhood and took candy from strangers. So cute. He didn't want to wear the head part to his Tiger costume, so I wore it so people could at least make the connection.

At one point - the point where we walked by the house with the really loud stereo blaring haunted house noises - Judah got scared. He refused to walk anymore and he tried to crawl up Lily's leg or my leg to be held, so I assume that meant he was scared. He's incapable of looking me in the eye and telling me, "Father, I have a great sense of fear because of the really loud stereo blaring haunted house noises, of which I have no association to this day you call Halloween." So I'm assuming he was scared.

We carried him around for a bit, setting him down in each doorway so he could get the loot and people could say, "Aw, cute." After a while, he seemed okay with the everyone-in-costume thing, and he started to charge around on his own.

At one point, he darted off up the walkway to somebody's door with the rest of the kids, and I made eye contact with a woman who looked like a mis-colored rendition of Raggedy Ann. She stopped and declared somewhat excitedly, "I know you from somewhere!" I knew her from somewhere too, but I couldn't remember where.

An industry person at an industry party? The mental face rolodex was spinning, but no match. A parent at one of Judah's multitiude of social events? That's possible, but we'd never know, seeing's how most parents are too busy chasing their kid around to remember people's names and such. A random hookup? I've never hooked up with any random person in LA, and seeing's how I've got my girl, I never will.

Well we stood there for a sec trying to sort out each others masqueraded faces, until she looked at Lily and said "I know you too!" Lily reacted similarly. Then Raggedy Ann realized we had all talked at the playground at the beach recently. And as soon as that realization came, she said her goodbye and took off faster than a kid grabbing a handful of candy. Was it something we said at the beach? My guess is that she would have stuck around for chit-chat if there had been a random hookup in our past. Who cares. I needed to get Judah away from the candy bowl.

Song 2

At the risk of potentially turning this space into rantings about coffee instead of rantings about music (?), I'm dipping into the coffee story well for the 2nd week in a row. Because yesterday I had the best coffee in the world: Poop coffee.

Call me crazy, but coffee that's been through an animal, a cat-monkey animal called a Paradoxurus, is the best I've ever tasted. I almost always take cream & sugar in my coffee, but this poop coffee didn't need any. Smooth, nutty, silky. Good to the last drop.

The coffee is actually called Kopi Luwak. Calling it Kopi Luwak probably gets more first-time customers than calling it poop coffee. It's expensive as hell. 60 bucks a cup. A cup! Three dudes from work and I went to our new favorite coffee house, Funnel Mill, because occasionally Funnel Mill sells Kopi Luwak at half-price, and yesterday was our lucky day. It was a brothers-in-arms sorta effort because we figured nobody should drink poop coffee by themselves.

Here's what the Funnel Mill site says about Kopi Luwak:

Kopi Luwak coffee comes from the Indonesian island of Sumatra, an area well-known for its excellent coffee. Also native to the area is a small civet- like animal called a Paradoxurus. That's the scientific name, but the locals called them Luwaks. These little mammals live in the trees and one of their favorite foods is the red, ripe coffee cherry. They eat the cherries, bean and all. While the beans are in the Luwak's stomach, they undergo chemical treatments and fermentations. The beans finish the journey through the digestive system, exit. The still-intact beans are collected from the forest floor, and are cleaned, then roasted and ground just like any other coffee.

Our group was in agreement that Kopi Luwak is one of the best coffees we'd ever tasted. Was it worth 30 bucks? Probably not. But the fact that this coffee is rare because it's been through a cat-monkey made the experience worth every penny. The owner of Funnel Mill even brought a pad that has the names of the individuals who've dared to try Kopi Luwak, and he asked us to add our names to the list. After I was the last of us to sign, the owner told us he'd be sending us personalized Kopi Luwak mugs with our number on it. I'm lucky 13.

As we were settling the bill, the woman behind the register told us that because of global warming, it's getting harder and harder to find the Paradoxurus and their magical coffee-enhancing intestines, so Funnel Mill doesn't get very many Kopi Luwak beans anymore. So better run out to your local coffee shop and ask for some poop coffee! Pronto!

War Stories

After a visit to the doctor and finding out that my peak flow rate was 10% lower than it was two weeks ago, I drove to get some coffee. I'd missed the 3 o'clock cup, and caffeine is supposed to be good medicine for asthma, so I pulled into the Starbucks in Brentwood.

There was hardly anybody in there. Nobody in line, one guy grabbing a cup from the pickup area, so I stepped right up to the register and ordered a grande iced coffee. $2.35. A silver platter displayed a bevy of mini coffee cakes. I asked the register guy, "Are these samples?" He said yeah, so I grabbed a chocolate one and took a bite.

By the time I strolled over to the pickup area, the barista yelled "GRANDE ICED COFFEE". After all, it merely took pouring the iced coffee into a plastic cup. The barista folded his arms and leaned back against the sink area. I asked "Do you guys have that liquid sweetener?" He begrudgingly grabbed my coffee, and as he added the sweetener he said "Next time ask for it at the register."

I took another bite of the chocolate coffee cake and then thought "Did I just get reprimanded by a barista who's not busy at all?" I replied mid-chew "They usually ask when I order." And I grabbed my coffee and walked over to get a straw.

As I walked away I could hear the barista giving it to the register guy, "BAD, BAD, BAD". Wild afternoon at the Starbucks in Brentwood.

Here Comes Sickness

I've been sick for working on two weeks now. My new and not-improved immune system has been doing a pretty lame job of keeping up. Symptoms are: congested as hell, occasional cough, runny nose. My co-workers are afraid of me.

I believe I've shared my germs with two people now. Oh yeah, and I got my kid sick too, so that makes three (or two and a half if you're counting restaurant style). This thing has gotten so old that I'm not resorting to taking a daily multivitamin and skipping the 3rd cup of coffee. The coffee's the really hard part.

One of these days I suppose I should see a doctor to give me some antibiotics or perhaps a bottle of pills to make me feel better. But for now, just make sure to get your daily vitamin C to keep this thing away. Cuz it's coming to a town near you soon.

Goodbye Cruel World

I'm a goner. They didn't tell me how long I've got to live. I hope it's not too painful. But when a doctor tells you it's trouble, then you're done. They didn't have to be so grim about it, but they did have to let me know the horrible news. I've got gum disease.

I know, I know. Thanks for all your sympathy. I appreciate it. It's probably one of the worst of all diseases, and the hygienists were certainly very very very concerned about it, but I know I must accept it and accept my fate.

The doctor told me I've got maybe, maybe another 20 years before a tooth falls out. I know. I know. It's horrific. I know. But at least knowing, well, that's half the battle. The dental team researched my case long and hard (possibly over 12 minutes at the very least) and they couldn't come up with any possible explanation for the state of my gums. I was quick to point out that I did all I could: Brushing often, flossing nightly, even using mouthwash. They were convinced my hard-livin ways were to blame, but I eventually told them I've got bad genes.

They've given me one final chance to make it through. Gave me a referral to see a periodontal specialist. It's my only hope. Keep me in your prayers, if you please.

Girl You Know It's True

Last Friday night I braved the elements of torrential downpour, lightning and slick roads to eventually arrive at the El Rey theater in Los Angeles, California. A metal band named High on Fire, who claim Oakland, California as their home, was featured. High on Fire's music and album covers* contain themes surrounding medieval topics and songs with titles like "Cometh Down Hessian", "Brother in the Wind", "Cyclopian Scape" and so on.

Need I say more? Okay, I will.

The singer has a gravelly voice that's not quite as cookie-monster-ish as the Grindcore music, but it's in the same neighborhood. I'd seen a picture of the band somewhere before, so I had some idea as to what they might look like and perform like onstage.

I had imagined some longhaired bearded black-shirted with matching black-wristbanded singer/guitarist guy who shunned the whole rockstar thing so that he could concentrate on sounding like what a gargoyle might sound like as he plucked crushing thunderous riffage out of his axe (guitar), all the while staring out into the crowd and seeing only orcs and piles of dead where the fans should be. Man, was I wrong.

Instead, the signer/guitarist guy came out with no shirt on, sporting tattoos on sculpted muscles that you get from going to a modern gym, probably not from going back to the middle ages and carrying boulders to mountaintops. And he definitely embraced the rockstar thing with open arms: strutting, posing, and repeatedly pointing at the crowd for a quick second before banging his head to the beat.

But what did I care? The music sounded the same. They didn't start singing in falsetto and do the power-ballad windmill guitar dance. They didn't change the lyrics to be about chasing bimbos and guzzling beer. But I think I almost would've rather had GWAR appear onstage and finish the set by lip-sync. That would be more like what I had in mind.

And why is it like that? I can (and you can too) probably name more than a dozen bands whose look/performance doesn't match the look/performance in your head.

Arcade Fire: Didn't know the lead singer was a goofy giant who dances goofy and dwarfs the rest of the band

The Shins: Balding bearded emo-guy anyone?

Death Cab for Cutie: Not a cutie

Luckily for most of these bands, people listen to them more than they watch them. After all that, I went back to listening to High on Fire and the mental picture went back to where it was in the first place. Gargoyle with axe in front of piles of dead. Rock on.



*

It Takes Two

A couple things I've noticed in conversations with people lately:

Cupcakes. Cupcakes. Cupcakes. I don't know where this whole rage came from, or who exactly wants 'em, but every time I turn around, somebody is shoving a cupcake in my face. Red Velvet ones, especially. Being a non-cake person, I'd just as soon go for the ice cream. But the ice cream renaissance is around the corner I guess.

Cell Phones. Cell Phones. Cell Phones. Not the iPhone, thank you. I'm referring to cell phone reception, specifically reception (or lack thereof) in your own home. Here's the deal: You notice that your cell reception sucks at home because you're at home a lot (unless your initials contain the letters A and C) therefore you notice that the reception sucks there. End of story.

Unless it's the cupcakes that are jamming cell phone reception at home. Which is entirely possible.

Ghost in the Machine

We were on vacation last week. Which explains why there was nothing new in this space last week. Anyhoo, we had a great time for 10 days away from home. And when we came back our TV was on. We didn't leave the TV on when we left.

Before we took off for vacation, I was concerned that some of the people who live in the library parking lot across the street would break in and steal some of Judah's toys. Actually, I was more concerned with them stealing the toys that Lily and I have in the apartment. Namely the computer and related electronics like DVD players and iPods and such, as well as the jewelry collection I'm building for Lily.

So I made a note to go out and buy a few of those electrical timers that you put on lights so it looks like you're home even when you're not at home. But I procrastinated that part of my list away to oblivion, and I was forced to leave a couple lights on for the entire vacation.

Which leads us back to the whole TV on when we returned thing. Lily and I thought that our apartment manager Jolene (who appeared in LLMB 070507), who we asked to collect our mail while we were gone, might have come over to watch a little TV and forgot to turn it off.

Lily knocked on Jolene's door, and her new temp roomie Josie - a Bettie Page / Suicide-ish Girl with facial piercings and hair that never moves - answered it. She said Jolene was asleep, and Josie told us she'd thought we came home days ago because she heard the TV when she came in the other night.

We decided to check the apartment to see if anything was missing. Nothing was missing, so we went about our business of unpacking. 10 minutes later I heard a gentle rapping on our door. I looked through the peephole but it was dark and I couldn't see anything. I opened the door, and there was Jolene looking like a ghost because she had just applied a green facial mask. (Do people really feel comfortable enough with their neighbors to knock on their door looking like that?)

Jolene told us she hadn't come into our apartment, but she had seen the TV on through our window for the past few days and she thought we had returned days ago. She ventured guesses like maybe it was on a timer (nope), or maybe there was a power outage and the TV automatically turns back on (nope, no digital clocks were flashing and the TV doesn't do that), or perhaps Judah had hit a button before we left and set a timer to turn on days later (wow, the kid is amazingly freakin smart, but no).

The mystery is still a mystery. And the TV hasn't magically turned itself on since we've been back. But if I find any green facial mask goop anywhere in the apartment, I'll know what really happened.

Rain

I've been nearly spit on twice in the last couple of weeks. Not spit on intentionally, but I just happened to be near somebody spitting for spitting's sake. The first time I was walking down the Third Street Promenade in lovely Santa Monica, and as I strolled near one of those sunglass vendor carts, one of the vendor guys hawked a loogie directly where I was stepping. My reflexes must be wired tightly or something because I managed to delay my step a half second, narrowly avoiding a loogie on my blue Pumas. The vendor guy quickly looked me in the eye (my sunglasses really) and said "My bad." Really.

The next time I was nearly spit on I was walking by the fire station on 7th street in lovely Santa Monica. Just coming back from the library, or lunch, or buying those foam insert pads for Judah's bike helmet. Something. Minding my own business and enjoying the lovely Santa Monica perfect weather of 75 degrees with a light breeze and then BAM! Spit coming my way from a guy walking the same direction as me, but just slightly in front of me. This time it wasn't reflexes that saved me, it was sheer luck. If I had been walking a half second faster, I would have been slimed.

As I figure all things happen in threes, there's gotta be another spit encounter coming my way soon. Unless you count the time I inadvertently spit on someone walking out from behind a bus shelter. Just minding my own business, enjoying a lovely San Francisco morning, standing right next to the wall-ish part of the shelter where the big advertisement usually hangs. Hawked a loogie and spat out toward the street, when BAM! A lady walks out from behind the ad and right into my flying loogie. All she could say is "ugh." Ugh indeed.

Touch Me, I'm Sick

The germ-induced loopyness in my head won't allow me to write anything worth reading. See you next week. Ack.

Brown Album

R.I.P. Lil' Brown

Space Oddity

We've been living in The City of Angels for 1 whole year now. I still haven't made the adjustment to needing a car like I need legs, but I'm getting there. And because we made it over the 1 year hump, I figured we weren't going anywhere soon. Therefore it was time to get all the boxes out of our apartment.

After going through the motions of trying to get rid of excess stuff via Goodwill and the trash dumpster, I searched online for storage units. There's a storage facility about 2 blocks away from us in Venice, but that one cost about double what another one did less than a mile away in Marina Del Rey. I got a 4' x 5' unit for a bargain, especially considering we'd be getting more than that space back in our apartment, and the little boy would have more room to push his toys around.

Taryn at the storage center office had me sign documents saying: I wasn't in the military, I wasn't storing a car in a 4' x 5' space, or that I wouldn't live there or house animals or food in the unit. It felt like I was signing my life away when I was really only trying to rent a tiny piece of California. One of the last things to sign for was insurance, and because I already had renters insurance, I told her I didn't want it. Taryn told me that I get the first month's insurance free, but I'd have to come back into the office to cancel it later. I really didn't want to come back, but I thought: What the hell, it couldn't hurt.

So I loaded the boxes I had with me into the 4' x 5' space. I figured that was enough excitement for a Saturday and I'd bring the rest tomorrow. Besides, we had to go to Pasadena to meet Judah's brand new cousin, Siena.

The next morning I made at least seven trips up and down the stairs loading the wagon to take our boxes to the storage space. When I got there I did the routine of grabbing the cart, loading the boxes from the car to the cart, and going up the elevator. When I arrived at the third floor I saw some guy who looked like Borat with a couple carts of his crap blocking the hallway. I looked for an alternate route to get to my space, but another guy had blocked the hallway with his crap. I left my crap sitting on the cart and asked Borat-guy if he wouldn't mind moving his cart so I could get mine past. He was annoyed and told me to look in my space first because there was a flood last night, and I might not want to put my crap into a wet storage unit.

I walked over to my storage space, unlocked the padlock and looked inside. At first glance it looked fine. Then I touched the floor. Damp. Damn. I looked at a couple of the boxes and they were soggy near the floor. Luckily Taryn took care of me and got me a new, dry storage unit that was even better because it was near the entrance and the carts. She even gave me some new boxes to replace my soggy ones. Nothing was damaged too badly except the box that the microwave was in.
And the microwave is pretty sog-proof. Now I can cancel that insurance. What are the odds of lightning (or a flood) striking the same place twice?

Double Vision

Do you ever receive industry schwag? You know, the stuff with whoever's company logo on it, handed to you so you can sell their company logo or whatever it is they sell by wearing the stuff they give out for free? In the industry I'm in, you get schwag everyplace you go. I can wear a different t-shirt from a different production/post/design company every day of the week and not wear the same thing twice.

Do you ever have those days at work where you might be wearing a similar outfit as a co-worker, only to be ridiculed by some other co-worker about not getting the memo that "We were supposed to wear the red polo shirt with the black jeans today. LOL!"?

Well I had the misfortune of wearing some industry t-shirt schwag to work, only to see the guy who sits right next to me walk in an hour later wearing the exact same t-shirt. Too bad that nobody else was there to make the "memo" joke. I couldn't resist, so I said it myself.

Ironhead

My bike helmet had fallen to bits. Not the outside, silly, that's hard foam covered by a chocolately plastic shell. Mmm. It was the inside that was falling apart. The stuff that's supposed to be the soft cushion between my head and the actual hard helmet part. Yes, countless sweat-inducing rides had finally broken down the cushiony stuff, and what was left had become rags and bits of black soot that managed to stick to my forehead when I took the helmet off. And the velcro was now digging into my head, and that wasn't the comfy ride I was looking for.

The hard portion of the helmet seemed fine. And the rule of thumb is that you get one good wreck where you bonk your noggin against the ground, a car, whatever, then it's time to toss the helmet in the trash and buy a new one. But because I hadn't had the one good wreck yet, I figured I might just be able to buy the cushiony inside stuff.

So I went to my nearest bike shop, looked around, didn't find any, then went to the dude at the register and asked if they carried such a thing. "No, we don't sell that. How long have you had your helmet?" I said "I dunno, like four years maybe?"
"Four years, huh?" he said and I knew the sales pitch was coming. Register guy continued, "You might be able to find that inner stuff from your helmet manufacturer, but they're probably gonna say 'Four years, huh? It's time to buy a new helmet.'"

Not to be deterred by his sales pitch, I came back with "Why's that?"
Register guy told me "The elements, you know, they break the helmet down. UV rays, stuff like that."

UV rays indeed. They break down plastic covering hard foam to the point where my helmet might not work after four years of being in the sun a lot less than I am. I better get some stronger sunscreen if that's the case. Well I figured I was either gonna live with black particles and chafing velcro on my forehead every ride or I was gonna buy a new helmet. So I walked over to the helmet area and tried a few on.

This one was too weird looking, that one was too feminine. That other one was way too expensive. One of the bike shop employees saw me trying on helmets and came over and said in some Euro voice "Why don't you try dis one?" and pointed to the more expensive end of the helmet wall. I tried it on and it looked weird. He had me try on 5 more helmets before we found one that fit both my style and price range. He told me he wasn't a salesman, but a mechanic, and he walked over to the register to see if this one was on clearance. I followed him and stood, next in line.

The bike mechanic disappeared. I waited. The guy standing on my side of the register was buying the entire store and trying to figure out what else he needed. It was taking forever, and I really didn't want to buy a helmet that day anyway, so I left the helmet at the counter and walked out the door.

The next day I went to REI and bought a great helmet at 1/3 of the price and used my REI dividend to reduce the price even further. Good times. I tossed my old helmet in the trash. Wouldn't want anybody to mistakenly try to use it after all those UV rays might have secretly broken down the helmets innards.

I rode home wearing my new helmet and I could immediately feel the difference. Not only was there no sense of velcro chafe-age, there was actually more wind flow cooling my noggin! Amazing.

The next day I set out for work with my new helmet on. About 2/3 of the way there, as I turned to leave the Santa Monica beach bike path, my front tire slipped out on a swath of sand. I went to the ground so fast I can't remember it happening. Smacked my right shoulder on the pavement. I can't remember if I knocked my helmet or not. Yep, not even 24 hours after buying my new helmet, I wreck. Funny how that works.

The Man Who Sold The World

I sold my laptop computer - a 2004 iBook G4 800 mHz 40GB HD 640MB RAM AirPort Wireless - last week on eBay. It's the first item I've ever sold on eBay. It's quite the exciting experience, let me tell ya. You get to see how many watchers are watching your item. See how much people are bidding. Or how much they're pushing the bid up to anyway.

When it was all said and done, the laptop went for $430 plus $20 shipping. Not too shabby when you consider how much mileage I got out of it.

Bought it for $1099
minus $430 (eBay sale)
equals $669

Had it for 41 months
equals $16.31 a month

divided by approximately 30 days a month
equals about 54 cents a day

Not too shabby.

All About the Benjamins

The Washington Mutual Bank at 5th & Arizona in Santa Monica is a real mess. It's the most convenient bank for me to go to, but when I get there it's the most inconvenient place to be. There's always a really long line for the teller windows, and if I want to speak to a bank representative then I've got some sitting around to do.

Apparently I'm not the only one who thinks it's a mess. While waiting in the teller line at the bank recently, a bank representative from the desks asked "Does anyone have a straight deposit, no cash?"

The 2nd and 5th individuals in line turned toward the bank rep and raised their hands. The 5th guy immediately walked over and sat down. The woman who was 2nd in line threw her arms up in the air and muttered something to the 3rd person in line. She turned toward the 5th guy and shouted "I was next, but you can go ahead!" She shook her head and muttered something that sounded like a blast of tourettes to the 3rd person.

Then the doors to the left of the line swung open where a man with crutches stood, trying to hold the doors open. Everybody in line turned at once to look. He yelled "Whoever's working on the ATMs, ya can't shut 'em all down at once." I turned away, as if to avoid seeing what might come next. The bald bank manager in a teller window looked up. The man yelled again "NOW TURN ON THE GODDAMN MACHINES!"

The guy behind me let out a chuckle. The bank manager quietly said "We'll get right on it, sir". The man on crutches hobbled out of his door predicament. I felt good knowing that I was about to contribute to my child's college education.

Song to the Siren

It's hot. Not unbearably hot, but summer in SoCal hot. Hot enough that sleeping at night is a bit of a challenge. Hot enough that when I go in to check on the sleeping boy, his hair is moist. Hot enough that even in loud-ville, the windows have to be left open.

Lily and I were lying in bed Tuesday night, discussing whether or not to close the windows, when we heard horrible off-key singing outside. I was convinced it was our apartment manager, because I had seen her bringing her easel and paints to the patio. Lily was convinced it was somebody else. It wasn't somebody else, and it really didn't matter much who it was, we wanted it to stop.

The choice to close Judah's window was a tough one: Close the window so he doesn't wake up from a shrill note tickling his eardrum, but potentially making his room too warm? Or leave the window open so a breeze will come through with the shrill notes? I decided to close the window but leave his door open so some air flow would get in.

We heard our manager singing the same song over and over. Same chorus again and again. I looked out the window to make sure it was her, and it was, and she had headphones on and she was snapping her fingers. Now how one can paint and snap fingers at the same time is beyond my comprehension, but she was managing it.

After our laughter had worn out and the joke wasn't funny anymore, we decided to close the window closest to the singing. I drifted off to sleep shortly thereafter, only to awake about 30 minutes later to hear the same chorus. Firework/gunshot sounds were a welcome tune the following night.

The Birthday Party

Another candle on the cake. Another year gone by. Another prime opportunity for my family (not my "new" family, but my "old" family) to make right all the crazy missteps through the years and finally find some appropriate gifts for somebody they've known this long. So when my (old) family gives a birthday present, I always hope that this year will be different.

Nope. From my sister: NOTHING! Actually, receiving nothing is better than the gifts she gives me, which over the years have included:
- A plastic blue "beehive" hairdo
- A pair of Abe Lincoln boxing puppets
- "Pee Guy": a small figurine of a latino-looking man with a plastic stream of pee going from his crotch to the base of the figurine.

Yes, all memorable and very useful indeed, but they pale in comparison with the types of gifts my mom gives me. It's always clothes. Clothes that must originate at the very bottom of the last-ditch bargain basement pile. For Lee's Birthday 2007 I got a t-shirt that is the color of poop. It's a weird brown color that has no other possible description. The kicker there is that the shirt is size 14/16. Now, I'm no XL person but I can wear adult size shirts, mom.

She also gave me two polo style shirts that, although I wear polo style shirts, would probably make the general public wonder if I had lost my way from the nearest mental facility. Does she see the clothes I wear now? Does she remember the types of shirts I wore as a teenager at home? My sincere hope is that she bought these for the homeless kids at the local shelter and they got mixed up with the fly threads she bought me. Boom, right into the Goodwill bag with the gifts.

The real tragedy here is that this gift-buying behavior is now being passed onto my son. Mom included an extra little gift pack for Judah along with the thoughtful gifts for me. With so many cute clothes for kids nowadays, how could she go wrong? Girls clothes. Yep. Poor kid.

Garbage

There are two trash bins in my edit suite. One is next to the door. One is next to the edit console. I noticed shortly after I started working there that the one next to the console was never being emptied. I noticed it because the bin was overflowing with trash, while the one near the door was consistently empty when I came in every morning.

Because the only option for speaking to the cleaning crew would be to stay much later than I'd like to, I decided to manually move the console trash bin to right next to the door trash bin every night as I left work. It worked for a while. Now for whatever reason, the door trash bin is empty while the console trash bin - which is sitting right next to the other one - is still full of the same trash when it was placed there the night before.



And I'm thinking "Why, that's odd. How could one trash bin be emptied while the other is not?" It's probably physically impossible to empty one without having it bump into the other. In fact, a person would have to be somewhat careful about not knocking over the other trash bin whilst emptying the first.

I have no idea what to do. Leave a note? Wait around to ask the cleaning crew about it? Put the entire trash bin into the other? I guess the easy answer would be for me to dump the trash from one into the other, but now this has turned into a game of who's gonna blink first. Stay tuned. I guess. If you really give a shit about the resolution of how this trash thing goes. Jeez.

Jailbait

With all the drunk driving arrests in the past year, it's kinda scary to be on the roads here in Tinseltown. Nicole Ritchie, Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Prison Break star Lane Garrison, Backstreet Boy Nick Carter, Lindsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton just to name a few. Thankfully they locked up Paris Hilton, and then locked her up again before she got behind the wheel and ran over some poor unsuspecting pedestrian on one of her late night burger binges.

Just think of how many NON-celebs are out there on the road at any given monment after increasing their BAC to a non-legal level. Joe Shmoe gets pulled over by the LAPD and ain't no paparazzi around snapping photos and selling them to the tabloids.

At least Paris Hilton got the worst punishment imaginable: Sarah Silverman ripping Paris a new one at the MTV music awards. That's gotta hurt more than enduring a few weeks in the cushy wing of the jail.

Car Wash

Our "family car", a 2003 VW Passat Wagon, hadn't been washed in a while and it was so dirty that it was becoming embarrassing. A blight on the LA car scene. Not like we took it off-roading or anything, but the air isn't the cleanest around here and the fine particulate matter tends to come to rest on everything.

As I've now done the math and came to the conclusion that it's worth it to take my car to a car wash, I put in the required procrastinating and finally found a coupon in the bulk mailers for a few bucks off the standard rate at Millenium Car Wash in Venice. I took all the extra junk out of the car - baby strollers, sun shield, miscellaneous papers - so that they could vacuum every square inch, and I drove to Millenium.

On my way there I remembered that I forgot to bring a magazine to read when the car was being washed. When I got there, I left the car with the keys in the ignition, rolled up the windows, and told the checker I had a coupon. He handed me a ticket, I paid and took a seat with the rest of the car washees. Some guy and his girlfriend bitched at the manager because his passenger seat was soaked because the window wasn't rolled up. I wished I'd brought that magazine.

A short while later the car washer guy waved my keys in the air and I handed him the ticket along with what I deemed a generous tip. I pretended to have to put something in the trunk so I could inspect the vacuum job, because I've had problems with the trunk being overlooked in the past. Clean as a new car. It felt like I had a new car. I drove off and felt like a responsible LA citizen with my clean, new-feeling car.

I had to pick up some groceries, and as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw somebody pulling out of the rockstar spot. Sweet. All mine. I pulled in and went into the store. Bought some lunchmeat, some oatmeal for the boy, and some water. On my way past the bakery section, I grabbed a glazed donut for the ride home.

As I left the grocery store and stepped onto the pavement of the parking lot, I pushed the shopping cart and hopped on for a ride to my shiny new car in the rockstar parking spot. I pushed a little too hard and had to jump down to put on the sneaker brakes. As I was rushing by, I saw a car that looked just like mine, but it had a bunch of splotches of bird shit on the hood. I thought "that's not my... is that my? Aw shit."

Yep. Car Wash Karma.

Photograph

Last week I went to the opthamologist. The waiting room was hilarious. I sat down amidst a bunch of old folks with dark sunglasses on (to help with the pupil dilation part) waiting for their name to be called. I'm hardly ever the youngest person in a crowd anymore, but I certainly wasn't in the majority there.

The beauty about the elderly is that they don't have to sit around fiddling with their gizmos and talking on phones all the time. They don't mind sitting and chatting with each other or looking around, looking out the window, sitting in the waiting room listening to the repeated slow pounding of the pile driver breaking ground on a new wing of the hospital next door. Besides, there was a brown placard on the desk that said NO CELL PHONES with a picture of a cell phone and the international NO symbol (circle with a slash through it) on top.

The waiting room became sort of lively when a 70s-ish couple came in to drop some records off. The husband wore a tan jacket and matching fedora/safari hat and he held a stack of his files in his hand. His wife hobbled in on a cane and told him to drop them off on the counter. The man held them above the counter like he was about drop them off, but the staff were running around not noticing him. The wife told him again to drop them off . He looked around and told his wife nobody would see the records. She assured him they would be seen at some point. He turned away from her and stood patiently waiting for the staff to notice him.

A blond boy who was probably 9 years old wearing glasses with coke-bottle lenses came running into the room followed by his mother and father. She was decked out in brown camouflage pants or shorts (I couldn't tell because they seemed too long for shorts and too short for pants) and brown Chuck Taylors, and she had a hairstyle like Bon Jovi from the early Bon Jovi days. She yapped on her pink cell phone while her son jumped around her asking for money. The kid wore a t-shirt that said I'M ONLY PRETENDING TO LISTEN. His dad's t-shirt read OLD GUYS RULE.

Kid: "Can I have a dollar? Can I have a quarter?"
Mom: "What happened to your cell phone?"

The father had a cane that looked like one a blind person would use (he definitely wasn't blind), but the cane wasn't as long and it had a rounded end that the dad repeatedly prodded the back of the kid's knees with.

The kid ran out and back into the waiting room.
Kid: "Can I have a quarter?"

The old man in the fedora handed him a quarter and said "Here's a quarter."
Mom: "He just gave you a quarter, what do you say?"
Kid: "Thank you"

The kid ran off again.

After many minutes, the waiting room cleared one by one until I was the last one there. The woman working behind the counter finally asked me for my health insurance card. I handed it to her and noticed that she looked like she could be a superhero in her green jumpsuit and ridiculously long black boots. She told me she'd see what was taking so long. I took my seat again, 60 minutes after I had first taken my seat.

20 minutes later I would experience what it probably feels like to have a searing cattle prod burnt into the back of my eyeballs as they took photographs. Pupil dilation is only good when you're on drugs. Thankfully I had remembered to bring my sunglasses.

Journey

My apologies for not posting last week and not even having the decency to leave a note that I wouldn't be posting. I had this really elaborate plan in mind that probably would have been the best blog ever, but well... shit happens.

We went to Spain last week, which included a stop in London for a day. Really nice. I won't bore you with details of sunny days by the pool and the beach, or experiencing historically important places, or anything of the sort. But I must say that the Europeans can teach us stupid Americans a thing or two about livin. Here's a few:

- taking a siesta
- throwing the standard architectural city plans out the window and building areas with winding streets meant only for foot traffic
- making the standard driving test far more difficult thereby taking at least half the morons off the road
- 2 dollar coins
- topless beaches
- allowing the purchase of Cuban cigars

Here's a few things they could learn from us:
- coffee to go
- putting more cupholders in cars
- there are sports other than "proper football" and cricket, and they should be shown on television 24 hours a day
- automatic transmission

Funny how most of the things they could learn from us kinda revolve around living on the go. Maybe they know something we don't.

Fake Tales of San Francisco

This week I'm in San Francisco. One of the things I miss about this city is the ability to take a taxicab to wherever you want to go. Not that you couldn't take a cab in LA, but that would be ridiculous and expensive.

Each day I walk out of the hotel and cross the street to the taxi stand. Twice now I've walked up to the driver and said "you available?" And they've replied "where are you going?" Usually, the "where are you going" question happens AFTER they've replied "yes, I'm available."

The first time I got the question, I replied "11th & Folsom". And the driver said something like "I'm not going in that direction". Funny, I thought taxicabs were ALWAYS going in your direction. That's because their main function is to drive you in whatever direction you're going. Not whatever direction they're going in, unless they happen to be going to pick up a fare, and they really oughta be more concerned with picking up that fare than wasting their time stopping for random people who just might be going to where their future passenger is waiting.

So the next time I go up to the taxi driver and ask "you available?" And the driver asks "where you going?" And I reply "you available?" The driver says "yes" and I get in the cab and tell him "11th and Folsom."

I think they'd rather hear me say "wherever the hell you want to drive so's to get a huge fare and relative tip. So let's just drive around until you're tired and I'll get the fuck out." Right. That would be like me asking a potential client how much editing they want to do before I decide to take the job. Please.

TV Party

I'm gonna bring a TV set to work and watch it. (If you know me or if you know what I do for a living, then you know that there's always a TV at work. But just go with it.) Yes, I've decided that it's time for me to be able to sit in my work chair and just kick back and watch the tube.

I could watch some home videos, or maybe tune in and watch some music videos. Perhaps an episode of a classic television show I used to enjoy as a kid. Right there on my personal TV at work. Sounds fun right? Nothing wrong with watching a little TV at work, right?

But wait, I don't need to lug a big ole TV to work at all. I've got YouTube to do my TV viewing already. And all my co-workers are doing it too! No more guilt about watching TV at work at all. In fact, several of my co-workers regularly send me links to watch videos on YouTube. And they're not just 2 minutes vids or whatever. Last week I recieved a link to a video that's over 20 minutes of a guy playing Super Mario Brothers and swearing a lot whenever Mario gets killed. If co-workers are watching over 20 minutes of a guy playing Super Mario Brothers and swearing a lot whenever Mario gets killed then it must be okay for me to watch a little TV at work, right?