Doh.

According to the Enquirer or Globe or one of those magazines, Sept. 11th seemed to have scared my favorite First Twins straight and both of them have given up boozing. Damn that Osama. No more stories about my girlfriend Jenna boozing it up in Hollywood and dirty dancing with her fellow interns with Brad Pitt or Barbara doing beer-bongs in Cabo San Lucas with the University of Miami football team. Sigh.

So, with them out of the gossip loop, they seem to be focusing all their attention on poor Chelsea, who having just turned 21 is apparently living it up at Oxford, guzzling vodka till all hours. Which is what, I guess, the Clinton's are really good at. When all else fails, just gossip about them. Poor Chelsea too. Of course she's boozing it up. Who wouldn't blame her if she was found whacked out on Mescaline and tequilla, puking her guts out in a dance club on Ios? Both Bill and Hillary are going to have to earn lots of money just to pay for all the therapy that the poor girl is going to have go through.

It's only a few more working days left in the year and everyone at BofA is running around frantically, trying to do as much as they can get as much into the books as they can. Which makes me want to work even more slowly than I already am. I dream of somehow throwing the whole machine out of whack. Of being the cog that undoes the corporate wheel.

I think I can do it. I handle thousands of dollars a day and put it into the bank's coffers. Just a zero here or a zero there, a click of the enter button here or the failure to do it there, and viola. And the year will come to a close and the accounts won't make any sense and the bank won't know what's up and everything gets all screwed up. In the confusion, the bank can't issue statements about profits or losses and the stock takes a dive as investors get nervous. Executives panic and the Corporate PR department spins into overtime. The bank starts to fall apart and anarchy ensues.

And I will be discovered as the culprit. I will be found out and the charges are made. I tell the press that I did it for all the people BofA laid off over the years, despite record profits. And for all the customers of the bank who constantly get reamed over mysterious ATM charges. And I also did it for all the dot-com workers who slaved away at 80 hour a week jobs only to see them lose it all because their bosses blew it all on foozball tables, launch parties and the hiring of their frat brothers as Corporate Vice-President's. And for all the people who got screwed by Enron, the poor people who lost their retirement accounts as the executives scammed their way into million dollar bonuses.

I will become a folk-hero. A Robin-Hood for the recession, an icon for these dark financial times. Pundits will debate me, essays will be written about me,
blow-hard talk-show hosts will harangue me and blame it all on me being from San Francisco. I will be featured on "Nightline" and during a debate with George Will, I will tell him what he can do with his bow-tie. John Ashcroft will denounce me as a domestic terrorist and in response, I issue a press-release with just two words on it: "bite me." On TRL Live, I will tell thousands of screaming girls that while I may be only a mere temp, at least I didn't lose an election to a dead person. The tabloids will be full of stories about how Pamela Anderson cheated on Kid Rock with me or how Julia Roberts is now in love with me. All of which won't be true as they'll completely miss my torrid affair with Natalie Portman. People Magazine will declare me as one of the "25 Most Intriguing People of the Year" and Barbara Walters will pay me thousands of dollars to interview me.

I will be arrested and thrown into minimum security prison where I'll work on my golf game, watch cable tv all day, and know I'll pretty much not have to worry about getting a job for awhile. Rappers will give me their props, rock stars will hold benefits for me, and activists will protest in my name. I will make millions on a book deal and then parlay that millions into millions more from all the stock tips I will have garnered while at prison. And a movie will be made about me starring Jason Biggs and Sarah Michelle Gellar will play my girl-friend. When I get out, I will be rich, famous, and a national hero.

I am really bored at work and I hate my job.

Got nothing to say tonight other than this- I miss Beavis & Butthead.

I saw part of the new Osama Bin Laden clip and and see that he's now referring to himself in third-person. Who does he think he is now, a star athelete?

We're back….

Happy holidays everyone. As a Jew sitting around this time of year, watching all the Christmas festivities and goings on, all I can say is I don't know how you goyim can take it. All that stress, all that money being spent, all that shopping. I had to go to the mall to pick up a few things for moi and got stressed out in just the five or ten minutes I was there. And y' all actually look forward to this holiday?

And I'd like to say happy Kwanza to everyone. I guess it's day four or day five of it. Which just raises the question- just what the fuck is Kwanza and why should anyone care? The way I hear it, way back in the '60's some black intellectual activist types looked out at the state of the African-American community, saw the struggles of the Civil Rights movement- the poverty, the crime, the economic injustices, the rioting- and decided that the thing their fellow African-Americans really needed the most was a holiday. So they made up some holiday that's supposed to help fix all that, with the added brilliance of placing during the time of year when just about every other religion has some sort of holiday (way to make sure you don't get overlooked). And now, because we're all so multi-cultural and PC, you're starting to hear more and more about the holiday because people are so afraid of offending the sensibilities of the five or six people who actually care about Kwanza.

Oh wait...sorry... being too snarky for the holidays. Should be more in the holiday spirit……


Okay, in that vein, I'd like to present the First Annual Hooray For Anything Guide to the Big Hollywood Movies. As we all know, this time of year always sees the release of several major, big budget Hollywood movies. Everyone goes to the movies this time of year mainly because after two or three days with the family, everyone's run out of things to do and say and starting to realize what they hate about other members of the family, so everyone just goes to the movies to avoid talking to each other. And because it's been deemed that the Members of the Academy have short-term memory problems (too much LDS in the '60's, I guess), Hollywood always sees fit to release their big, serious, "we're sorry for all the crap we threw at you during the summer" movies. In other words, it's Oscar-bait time, that time of year when half of the movies are released in which it seems like the entire purpose of the movie is for someone to get an Oscar. You know, the kind of movie in which half of the cast is rehearsing their acceptance speech during the filming, the kind in which everyone describes as "uplifting" and the kind where somewhere during the movies' preview the narrator always says something like this movie "will make you believe in miracles" or "make you fall in love all over again" or some crap like that. In other words, totally manipulative, overly sentimal cheese that should be avoided at all costs.

With that in mind, we here at Hooray For Anything would like to help you through the mine-field of Xmas flicks and help you decide what to see.

Here we go-

Lord of the Rings- Duh. Like I even have to tell you to see it
(by the way, I've seen it- it flat out rocks. Furiously reading through the book so I can go see it again. And again).

The Majestic- Let's see, the director did such drivel as "The Shawshank Redemption" (which I've heard is actually pretty good and which I always tell myself to watch whenever TNT shows it like every weekend) and "The Green Mile," in every shot of Jim Carey during the previews he's all dewy eyed and sad looking, like he's gonna break down in tears at any second, the stories about it says that it's trying to be like a Capra flick and I'm pretty sure the preview for it had the narrator say something like "a story that will fill your heart." In other words, AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Christ, Carey's trying so hard for the Oscar, like he's doing all he can to make up for the fact that his first major hit featured him talking out of his ass. He seems to have aquired Robin Williams' agent. On a sidenote, I've heard interviews with Carey lately and he's been talking about trips to Tibet and discovering his spiritual self and how he wants to uplift the world through his movies or something like that. God help us all. Beware the comic actor suddenly wanting to get taken serious- it's ugly.

Ali- Yeah, big movie bios are usually catnip for the Members of the Academy and this should be no exception. And as much as the thought of Will Smith getting a nomination could be a sign of the Apocalypse, I hear he's pretty good. But Ali's a pretty amazing guy and it's a pretty amazing story so I'm down with it. And Michael Mann's a pretty good director, the kind not to get weighed down in sap so it shouldn't get too bad. Plus, it's a boxing movie and boxing movies are always much more fun than actual boxing matches. No endless moves around each other, no hugging for stall tactics, no ear biting. In the movies, it's just all punches, all the time (think about it, if there was an actual boxing match like the one's in the "Rocky" movies, do you think the boxers would still be alive afterwards?). And it's all done to great camera work and incredible music.

The Shipping News- Don't know much about it, but I think the book is an Oprah book. Or if it isn't, probably should have been cause it sounds like her kind of thing. In other words, nyet.

Vanilla Sky- Tom Cruise trying to be arty. Just ain't buying it.

Ocean's 11- The original wasn't really that good despite it's cast, but still fun just to watch Frank in all his Chairmen of the Board glory. This one also has a pretty good cast and a director whose at the top of his game. Could be fun.
(also saw this one. It's actually kind of better movie than the first, although nothing's as much fun as watching Frank swagger around. And they totally whimped out and went for a sappy ending).

A Beautiful Mind- Let's see. Ron Howard's never been nominated for an award, despite the fact he's done some pretty big (and not half bad movies) and this movie deals with someone being mentally/physically challenged. I think it's Academy rules that if a movie is about someone mentally or physically challenged and it's not half bad, it will get an automatic Oscar nomination. In other words, total Oscar-bait. This despite the fact the only really decent movie about the mentally/physically challenged was "There's Something About Mary." Plus, Jennifer Connelly's in it, but she doesn't get naked. So that's a thumb's down

Not Another Teen Movie- You know how in TV they always talk about counter-programming? Like how the other networks decide to run shows aimed at women opposite Monday Night Football? This is kind of like that, then- a dumb (probably really dumb) movie with absolutely no socially redeeming qualities in a season full of movies that reek of Socially Redeeming. So, even though the commercials probably show the only funny jokes and I thought "Scary Movie" was depressingly unfunny, I'm game. Plus, it's the only non-foreign movie I've seen in which the preview showed naked breasts, so you've got that going for you. Which is nice.

The Royal Tannenbaums- Okay, so I didn't think "Rushmore" was all that and I do not fall prostrate at site of Gwyneth, but this movie looks kind of funny and I've also heard some good things about it. Plus, it's got Ben Stiller, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson in it- three actors who, to paraphrase that famous quote about Aretha Franklin, could recite the phone book and make it funny. Please, Ben, don't suddenly decide you really want to be taken seriously as an actor and try to win an Oscar.
(Seen this one too- it's pretty good. I even liked Gwyneth in it and the movie has an incredible soundtrack, including the best use of a Ramones song in a movie since "Rock n' Roll High School").

So, there you have it. Good viewing and remember to thank me for not wasting the ten bucks or so it costs to see a movie now.

A couple of weeks ago, I actually got a response to resume that I sent out concerning a job. Considering how rare that it is, I was stunned and excited. The person who responded said my resume looked great and that they'd be giving me a call to set up an interview. The call never came. Day after day went by and I'd constantly check my messages at least three times a day, hoping that call would come. I even sent an e-mail to follow up on, saying I hadn't heard back from them and was still really interested in the job.

Today, several weeks after the initial e-mail, I finally got an e-mail back from them saying that they found somebody else who would be perfect for the job and were hiring them. But what about me? I could have been even more perfect that that person was. How would they know? They never called me to set up an interview.

So, if they didn't call me for an interview, why did they go through all the trouble of telling me my resume looked great and that they'd call me? Why didn't they call me? Was it something I said? Was my grammar bad in my e-mail back to them? What did I do wrong? And yes, I am taking it a little too personally.

When something like this happens, it's like when you meet some woman at a bar or club or a party, she gives you her business card without asking when you take leave of each other, but then blows you off when you ask them out.

God, I hate looking for a job.

Went to take do some banking at my bank, that being, yes, Bank of America. Went to the ATM machines right by the office where I'm now working so we're talking state of the art ATMs. As I'm putting money in and taking money out, I notice that the that prompts you as to what buttons to push is flashing the information that the screen will soon have both audio and video capabilities. And I'm thinking, so?

Why the fuck do we need video and audio capabilities at an ATM machine. All most people want to do is take money out, put money in, or see how much money they have. I'm pretty sure they could care less about seeing something or hearing something as they are doing it. I'm guessing too that if you asked BofA customers what would be high on their list of things they want out of the bank, watching video while taking money out would not be high on their list. In fact, I'm guessing that it's probably way, way below things like not having to wait in a line for fifteen minutes at a bank because they only have two tellers working. Or not having to wait fifteen minutes on the phone when you try calling them. Or not getting gouged by mysterious ATM charges everytime you take money out.

And what exactly are they going to show? I'm guessing that they're not going to be showing you "Seinfeld" clips, highlights from "Sports Center" or the latest Creed video. No, I'm guessing they're going to bombard you with commercials. Commercials for the bank and for anyone else who pays BofA money. So, now, when you take money out of your bank, you are now in a position where once again, you are gonna get bombarded by ads. Thanks a fucking lot.

And all I want to do is to take out a $20 so I can buy coffee because the company is too fucking cheap to provide free coffee for it's employees. The people who run that bank are such a bunch of wankers.

Why doesn't this stupid thing work?

Grrr Aarrgggh....

My temp job sucks. Like sucks in a black-hole kind of way, the kind of suckage that swallows up everything around it and sucks it all into the black-hole of it's suckiness. No phone, no web access, no nothing. Not even free coffee or free asprin. It takes me all the strength I can muster not just to walk out, quit and go home. Temps can do that.

I'm miserable there because I have to get up at 6 to start work at 7:30. I'm miserable because I can't go online and check my e-mail or take a short break to read the NY Times. I'm miserable because it's dreary, brainless, mind-numbing data entry and it's all I can do all day. And then today, to make it all that much worse, I found out that I have to take breaks only at specified times and I have to take my half-an-hour lunch at a certain time. And today, when I came back late from work (of course, I'm gonna buckle against the rules), I found my supervisor hovering over my work, waiting for me to come back to give me the fifth degree about being late.

I want to quit. I can't take it. I can't take the drudgery of the work, I can't take the early hours, and I can't take being told when I can take a break and being watched over when I take those breaks. Which is why I'm miserable

But I think about it. There are lots of people out there who have it worse. They have to get up earlier, they have worse jobs while making lower pay. They don't mind having specified break times or lunch times. Some of them even have time cards that they're supposed to punch in and punch out during their breaks. When I was younger and did temp work, I didn't complain that much about specified break times.

And I need the money cause I'm running out. You realize at a certain point that sometimes you have to suck it up to pay the bills. All those people doing the jobs I could never do, like factory work or being a janitor understand that. Even the guys who jerk off turkeys because the turkey's are too fat to know that. They seem to be able to do it and don't complain that much. In some ways I should be very lucky to get even what I'm getting at this time of year. Hell, it could be worse. I could be doing retail. I could be a waiter. I could be the guy jerking off turkey's. I've even had temp jobs that were worse. Yet, I hate what I'm doing.

Does this make me a wuss? An over-educated, overly pampered, upper-middle class white boy with no work ethic with a snotty attitude that I'm above doing all this? Am I slacker write large- pissed off at the lameness of my job, beholden to the chip on my shoulder caused by the universe's inability of the world to reward me for my unrecognized brilliance? Should I just shut-up and be grateful that I won't have to worry about paying the rent this month?

Or does my job just suck?

I'm back. I'm sure the zero people who are reading this were probably wondering what happened. Too drawn into the general suckiness of my job to post anything so to make up for it, here's a few quick takes on things….

1)The American Taliban- I am so loving this story. Too much to say, too many comments to make. Just remember, folks, there are worse things for your kids to do than drugs. To think, the guy could of done what most mis-directed upper-middle class kids do- massive bong hits, blue unicorn acid, finding the meaning of life in a Pink Floyd song- but no, he had to put himself in some situation where he wound up in some god-forsaken cave in a god-forsaken. Guess kids today don't have much to do now that Jerry's dead.

2)And too all those right-wing blowhards out there railing about the kids parents and turning it into an excuse to make fun of Marin and Californians- fuck off. When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah building, did any of them criticize poor white-trash and their dumb-ass redneck parents? Sometimes people are just misguided and dumb, no matter who or what the parents do.

3)So, affter previously railing about how any band that does the half-time show at a football game instantly looses all their credibility due to the inevitable lameness of it all, I find out that my beloved U2, a band whose posters filled almost every spot in my bedroom, is playing the halftime show at the Superbowl. I guess I have to take it all back now. I know they're not American, but have they ever seen a halftime show at a football game? Think I'll just be my usual overly drunk self so I won't realize what's going on. The horror, the horror.

4)For some reason, I find myself more and more listening to Howard Stern in the mornings (see above mention of crappy, soul-sucking job) and he had a pretty good point about something. He was talking about the photos in Vanity Fair of Tom Cruise. Howard's point, which I thought was pretty damn funny, was that if you just sued every damn tabloid in the world for spreading rumors about your sexuality, you shouldn't be posing bare-chested and hairless in a magazine spread. Tom doesn't just look like he's doing male porn, but male kiddy porn.

5) Don't have e-mail access at work, so I have to wait until I get home to check my e-mail. For some reason, I thought that this would be a big deal and that I'd be missing a lot by being out of the e-mail loop. Turns out all I'm missing is spam. I'd say at least 25% percent of my e-mail is spam mail. And that doesn't even include the shit that goes directly to the Bulk Mail folder that Hotmail so convienantly to their service after they sold all of their customers addresses (thanks Bill). Didn't I mention that there's a very special place in hell for spam mailers? I'm pretty sure they get skinned alive, doused with flammable gas, then burned alive while being forced to listen to every Celine Dion CD ever made. Maybe get attacked by some ravenous ferrets at the same time too. How much did you get for your soul?

6)Speaking of which, got this lovely spam mail the other day "incest porn." Is there anybody who is actually into that? Have they run out of bestiality porn to show? And how do you know that they're really family members? And are they hot?

7)Found this event in the Bay Guardian and I'm so excited I can't believe it. This Saturday (Saturday, Dec. 8) "the People's Resistance Against U.S. Terrorism, Black August Organizing Committee, Justice for Palestinians, the Barrio Defense Committee, and others are having a community speak-out on the war on terrorism, featuring Mumia Abu-Jamal's new attorney Eliot Grossman and others. " Have they missed anybody? What about the People's Front of Judea, will they be there? Get a life people.

8)Flipping through the channels's during and VH-1 was showing some Shania Twain special. Wouldn't you know it, but she was dueting with Elton John. Is there anybody else Elton hasn't done a duet with? If I call him up, will he sing a duet with me? (Uh, I mean singing, not anything else -not that there's anything wrong with it). I'm trying to think of what would be the funniest duet I could picture Elton doing a duet with, but after he sang with Eminmen, I can't come up with much of anything. Except for maybe Ozzy. Yeah, Ozzy. Now that would be something.

7) Apropos of nothing, I really can't stand that band Godsmack. I think it's because my favorite station, KSJO seems to know exactly the moment that I turn them on and decide to play one of their songs. Don't know which one's because they all sound the fucking same.

8)I think tonight there's a big election in the City. During the last, extremely boring and apathetic inducing election, the candidates for City Attorney came in pretty close in the votes so they're having a run-off. Now, I understand the reasoning behind run-offs, but maybe they should make a rule that there should only be run-offs for positions that people care about. Not that the City Attorney position isn't important or anything. I mean, there in charge of, umm, well, umm, I don't know exactly, but it's important. So important that more money has to be wasted in a run-off in this election, between two people nobody really cares about in a position nobody knows anything about. Whatever.

Was gonna post something about how the Temp job is beyond sucking into a whole new dimension of suckdom, but I just scored some free tix to see "Lord of the Rings" on opening night.


I got tickets, I got tickets!
I got tickets, I got tickets!
I got tickets, I got tickets!
I got tickets, I got tickets!

Sorry, but I had to :)

On the other hand, I saw that according to People Magazine, Jen and Brad are very happilly married. Who am I to feel sorry for myself when I know that Jen and Brad are so happy and in love? I feel much better now.

And it looks like after the crap-fest that was Real World X, someone's getting kicked out of Real World XI. Thank God.

I signed up with a Temp Agency yesterday. I've been unemployed now for almost four months and I'm running out of money. Spent four hours being tested on grammar, spelling, typing, data entry, math, word problems. You name it. Today they called and gave me a three month gig doing data entry at Bank of America for $12 an hour. They needed a decision real fast and since I'm not good making quick decisions, I decided to take it. Tomorrow, I'm getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning to go to work for the first time in four months. I can't wait.

While I was leaving, I wound up talking to the Receptionist at the Agency. She's a Temp too. She was telling me about how she just got out of school and signed up with about five temp agencies and barely making it. She had kind of an sad tone of voice as she talked about it, like she didn't realize it would be this hard and this wasn't what she expected. I just kind of laughed and told her that that's what I did when I got out of school and that it's kind of typical of things her age. Poor thing. They don't tell you things will be like that when you graduate from college. Especially the kids today, fresh out of collegeas they are, having just gone through the boom like we did.

Me? Been here before. Things really have come full-circle. A Bush is President, we're at war in the Middle East, a recession is going on and I'm doing data entry for temp work. Only this time I'm 33.

Sigh. Deja Vu all over again

A long time ago, I had figured out what I thought was a pretty decent peace plan for the Middle East. The way I figured it, your average Israeli and average Palestinian doesn't really care about anything other than making peace and being left alone. They might not like each other or want to have anything much to deal with each other, but, basically, the average Israeli and Palestinian just wanted to live in peace and, well, feel free to live.

Unfortunately, on the fringes of each society are the extremists. These are the Palestinians who want to push the Israeli's back to the sea and think that blowing yourself up on a bus and killing tens of people is a sure fire way of getting into heaven. On the other side are the Jews who think that just because the Jews had a piece of land over 2,000 years ago and supposedly some higher being promised it to them several thousands years before that gave them a right to do whatever they please.

What both sides really wanted to do, or at least what they're extremism led them to want to do, is to basically kill each other. The extremist Palestinians just wanted to kill Jews in Mohammed's name and the Jews wanted to kill the Palestinians in G-d's name. Because this is what God (the same God, by the way) wants. And there's nothing God loves more, I'm sure, than people killing other people in His name.

So, my proposal was to take an arid stretch in the desert, some place pretty far away from most of civilization fence it off, and let them at it- give each side all the guns and explosives they wanted and let them do what they really want to do. This way, the extremists would all kill each other and wouldn't be around to mess things up for all the others. Everyone's happy. The extremists get martyrdom and all the normal, average people are left alone to do what they want without the extremists messing them up. The two sides then would get together, and with nobody bothering them about any sort of mucky muck about biblical edicts, Talmudic interpretations, or quotes from the Qu'ran, and, viola- peace. And they'd all live happily ever after.

Now, I'm not even sure that'll work. Sigh.