Tag: me

Even funnier, I had to ask her to turn it down.

Weird and cool: Coming into the living room and seeing my 76-year-old mother watching Nick Cave on the TV. And liking it.

Weird and funny: Getting two text messages from bikupan that appeared to be from a year ago, one saying “What, no potato salad? Bah!” and the other “Is something wrong?”. I vaguely remembered going back and forth about my accidentally vegan potato salad recipe last year and having some technical snafus. But no, she really did send those last night, and it wasn’t a temporal wormhole in the SMS system.

Neither weird, funny, nor cool: My re-discovery tonight of the fatal flaw in desktop computers nowadays: they’re all I/O bound. Here I sit with an 800 MHz PowerPC and 1 gig of RAM in my lap and I can’t do jack. Why? Because there’s disk intensive activity going on. The window manager slows to a crawl, none of my apps respond except in annoying bursts, and inexplicable errors occur probably due to clicks and keyboard presses out of focus because windows are changing erratically. It’s like I’m connecting to my own computer over a crappy old 14.4 modem link. RAAAAAAR. I want IDE to go away. [/geek]

Neither weird, funny, nor cool: I am reading a book about the Vietnam war. Bad: we’re doing it again. Worse: we’re doing it again much more stupidly . I’m experiencing nostalgia for the sincerity, honesty, and sense of duty of CIA and military officers from 1966. YOW!

Weird and funny but not cool: Bro ‘n’ ho couple arrive in D’s tonight and she asks D., who is behind the counter: “Do you have Chocolate Tea?” A moment of silence, and D. says “Umm, no?” Customer says: “Could you do that, like, put mocha in tea?” D: “I guess, yeah!” Customer: “Would that be disgusting, do you think?” D: “Yes, it would.”

Annals of My Working Life: Barry

Early in my computer stuff career I worked for a small dotcom outfit that did work for entertainment companies. There were four principals who ran the place, each of which deserves his own article. Today I’m going to talk about Barry (not his real name).

Barry was a smallish, delicately built man with a careful tan. He wore Entertainment Executive Casual clothing of the 90s: those priest collar shirts, khakis, expensive loafers. He had been an exec at a big movie studio and this was his first independent company.

In most ways he was a stereotypical New York entertainment Jew transplanted to L.A., and like most smart people who are stereotypes he played it up. The result was a near-perfect reenactment of Woody Allen in Annie Hall most of the time. When I first started working there he took me out to lunch, and over a Reuben and home fries I got to hear a 90 minute oration on tap water. The tap water in New York was good, but then he came here, and he put a glass of tap water next to his bed and in the morning he saw all the disgusting sediment, and he only drank bottled water now. Yes, 90 minutes.

Barry was halting, diffident, nebbishy in conversation. He salted his sentences with “uh you know” and “if you see what I mean” and “okay, so, okay, so” and pulled his hands up to his face pointed down, like a chipmunk. He’d then rub them together rapidly, changing animals to become a grape-washing raccoon. His eyes darted around the room and he frequently turned away from people while speaking to them, or looked fixedly at some object while he talked.

He loved privilege and perks, and was careful to make sure that he got them all. When any swag or free tickets arrived in the office he was sure to be there to spirit them away. If one of the underlings managed to score something Barry would appear at the desk: “Uh, yeah, hello. So. Yeah, the items, that came from Paramount. Yes. Those are, um. I’ll need to, yes, thanks, take them.”

When something was on deadline (which was always), Barry would succumb to terrible anxieties. Often he would end up behind some hapless employee’s desk, mincing back and forth between two blind spots. “Hi, yes. Not wanting to um bother you! Just, I am trying to. If you could. Um, how is the timing looking for this. The agent, is, you know, waiting. Okay. Okay yes.” He could stand there, slightly too close, and wait for someone to complete a writing or graphics task for a good solid hour. If he felt especially worked up he might actually come up and poke someone unexpectedly, which caused at least one employee to snap and scream “BARRY DO NOT EVER DO THAT AGAIN GODDAMNIT”.

Barry was an aficionado of humor. The Simpsons were in their prime and we all had sound clips, which since he didn’t know how to do sound he envied. I remember him making me play the Harry Shearer Springfield Police Department Rescu-Fone thing over and over and over while he rocked back and forth giggling at my desk.

Barry was single and in great need of a date. And we had many beautiful women come through the office, some of whom were actors and others just pretty people in the business. One time in particular I was doing a kind of online interview thing with an unknown but steaming hot actress. She and I were BSing and horsing around joking with her agent person before we did this event, and Barry was back in the executive office. He kept leaning way, way over to get around his monitor so he could look at her breasts through his office window. Just as she left he rushed up and shook her hand and gave her his card. He then came over to my desk and talked to me about her “rack” for about 15 minutes while making chipmunk hands.

He had great confidence in his own comic skills and loved to do little impressions. One of his favorites was a disheartening racist Ching Chong Chinaman accent act which would make everyone in the room stare silently at nothing and the record player skip and all the cowboys turn around and look, every time he did it. At the time we were having trouble getting enough business from our clients and Barry was the man assigned to go lunch with people and get us gigs. At one Santa Monica soirée with moguls, he did the full Charlie Chan routine over drinks. The president of [redacted], an important movie studio, was his big target that night. Unfortunately the guy was married to a Japanese-American woman and took Extreme Offense. We lost the big account.

Barry made millions when the company was sold. He’d promised equity stakes for underpaid early employees but he lied. I hear he’s married now, and running some other internet thing. I bet his hands are still really, really sweaty.

Brain notes

This set of brain adjusters (300 mg Wellbutrin XR, 10 mg Lexapro, 20 mg Adderall XR) is the best I’ve had. The combination of the Wellbutrin and the Adderall seems to jack my dopamine levels up to something like normal, and the Lexapro keeps me from completely losing my shit with anxiety fits or sliding into day-long fits of obsessive depression. I’m going to call that a win.

too much information about my psyche here

Cogito emo sum

I saw someone I have a lame crush on today. Later on she was in the same area I was, but kind of away and behind things with her friends. Every time I looked over there the sun was hitting her only and making her all shiny, because she was the saint in the painting.

vickajew and I gave friendly_bandit a short walk through the geopolitics of the last 25 years, but I don’t think he was grateful. In fact, he looked like he wanted to go live under his bed afterwards, which is sort of understandable considering the material at hand.

DZ came and talked at me for a bit. He claims his health is good and he hasn’t had a seizure in over a year and a half but he looks like a corpse. He sort of talked around the huge fights he’s had with his property manager, and the fact that his aunt and uncle bailed him out of his trailer purchase. He mostly made sense but sometime the digressions were pretty hard to follow. I seriously wonder how long he has on Earth, looking at him and hearing him talk. It’s hard to watch.

When I watch a Hollywood movie, you know with a hero and heroine and villain and sidekicks., I can never put myself in the hero’s role. Even as a fantasy, I haven’t cast myself as the lead before. I’m no villain either, because Evil is just lame, nor can I be the wacky sidekick for longer than about an hour. I think I’m the sacrificial guy who eats it in the last reel so that others may live. I always sympathized with that guy, the one who gets to say “It’s too late for me. I’ll stay here. RUN!” Even if he doesn’t get whacked, he has to stay behind and deal with all the bullshit. I am Claude Rains in Casablanca, or if I’m feeling especially butch maybe Steve McQueen in The Sand Pebbles. No ride into the sunset, but if I take one for the team people will think highly of me later.

dirty and gritty

I spent the day sweating. Partly this was because it was over 80 F and unusually humid, although I have no right to complain; just about the rest of the nation had Suicide Weather.

I’m a sweaty guy to start with (helllooo, ladies!), and the happy helmet pills make it worse. When I was on Paxil it was almost humorous, and the current regimen is a lot less perspiratory. But wow, today. My alarm for “too sweaty” is when the waistband of my jeans is damp, and that hit about 1 pm.

I saw actual people I know tonight, which was nice. It was also really nice to get the hell out of the house and be somewhere with a breeze after making spaghetti & meatballs for 4, eating it, and then cleaning up the kitchen for a meal for 4. It’s nice to see my brother & nephew, but I forget each time what it’s like to be the cook for more than one or two people. My meatball-fu improved this time, though.

I just finished paying my Apple loan late (oops), on MBNA’s website. I was annoyed by two things. First, the online payments are delayed a few days, so that even though I had it in time it won’t be in time. It should be instantaneous, come on guys. Second, the slogan for the bank, which is the title of their webpage, is: If You’re Into It, We’re Into It. What. The. Hey? First Bank of Easy Rider?

It’s good to live where I do.

Southern California this week is going to be a dangerous and painful furnace. Today it was 120° in Indio (desert town). The emergency services people have put out a dire bulletin advising people to be careful of the high temperatures and unusually high humidity, and not to leave old people, children, or animals in cars, and for chrissakes don’t die of the heat.

Meanwhile, the report ends with this:

ONSHORE FLOW AND A MARINE LAYER INFLUENCE WILL KEEP TEMPERATURES
FAIRLY MILD ON THE COASTAL PLAIN…GENERALLY IN THE 70S AND
80S…EXCEPT 60S ON THE BEACHES.

Thank you, Dad, for buying a house in Paradise 40 years ago.

The Still Center of a Turning World

As a child I spent a lot of time in art museums. My parents were culture vultures and we traveled a lot in Europe, including a year in Paris and some summers in Italy, France, and England. From the age of 7 to 14 I tagged along to every church, museum, archaeological site, castle, and concert in the First World.

Despite my strong desire to run in circles and eat sweets, I enjoyed high culture as a child. I could sit staring at a favorite artist’s work for a long time, and even if I didn’t like the stuff it was a fun game to learn all about it. For an agnostic I know way too much about Catholic saints to this day. There were downsides to this life (my mother would delay lunch way, way too long if the museum was good), but on the whole I was happy.

My favorites were Henri Rousseau’s big, colorful, naive paintings; Monet, especially the biggest ones; Arp’s shiny sculptures; Caravaggio’s paintings; and, although we never visited any of those countries, almost anything from Asia.

I have a particular memory of sitting in front of a large bronze Buddha. The museum atmosphere was sterile and white, and the only sound was that of the hygrometer occasionally ticking in the corner. The gallery was mostly empty. I sat on a wooden bench slightly too high for me, so that my legs swung, and looked up at him. I think this must have been a Nepalese or Indian Buddha, because he had the half-twisted little wry smile I associate with Hindu art. His patina’d hand was held up in the Buddhist benediction sign. I wanted to be that statue, and for an hour or so I thought I almost was, under my own personal Bo tree, unmoved.

That experience is in the library now, and I can go there when I need it. I’ll never be a Buddhist, but I can go back to that moment in a forgotten museum and sit on that bench next to Buddha and be still any time it’s necessary.