-Was about to exit a BBQ today when just as I was about to make my move, somebody decided to announce that we should do a quick clean up. Naturally, it meant I had to stick around for a few more minute and help clean up. Because it would look totally lame if I suddenly bail just as somebody announced that we should help clean up.

-I've eaten Mexican food pretty much every day for the past five days. When I was considering what I should eat for lunch, I was thinking that I shouldn't have chili for lunch because that would mean that I would have eaten Mexican food for every day for the past few days and nobody eats Mexican food every day. And then I realized, of course, that that's not true (think about it, it's a delayed joke). So I had salad for lunch. And tacos for dinner.

-And finally, one problem that I'm realizing about being as old as I am (that being the mid to late 30's) is that I'm having trouble seeing myself as that age. I don't think I'm that old and since I never really see myself, I don't consider myself as looking that age. I also hang with mainly people much younger than me or people who still seem young at heart and not that old. All of which means that it occasionally comes to being quite a shock when I go to a party where most of the people there are my age and it takes me a few minutes to come to grips with the fact that all the people at the party who look and act old are actually my age and that to them, they're probably thinking the same when the look at me. Ugh.

Man, I saw something this morning I haven't seen in a long, long time- videos on MTV. I know. And for those of you wondering, it is true- I ain't no hollaback girl.

Few odds and sends:
-Finally heard the new Coldplay song. As I read somewhere else, yawn me a river. With the exception of Clocks, they're such the kind of band you listen to while driving in your SUV with your Starbucks mochachino and crank up because it makes you think you're edgy. When you are so totally not.

-Here's why "Lost" is going to have problems in the future. You know how Locke finally sees the monster, or at least runs into the monster? Afterwards, you'd think somebody would say something along the lines of "dude, what happened?" or "what did it look like?" or "what the hell were you doing?" Instead, they make it out like after he got rescued, nobody said anything and they just kept on their merry way. Why that's a problem is that after awhile, it tends to drive viewers crazy. The "X-Files" was like that- episode after episode of people saying "I think I know what's up" but never saying what they think is up or seeing things and then never telling anyone else what they saw. I really hope, though, that the producers are smart enough to tell the networks that no matter what, they're only going to do the four seasons they supposedly have planned out. Because besides the fact it's hard to drag a mystery out for much longer and because it's going to be hard to deal with all the actors getting older, changing haircuts, gaining/losing weight, etc.

-So there's a story out there saying movie ticket sales are down and blaming DVDs, TiVO, et al for them being down. Now that I have a DVD player and Tivo I can say that yes, I've been seeing less movies. And yes, it's a fairly easy assumption to make. But maybe it's just a matter of, oh, maybe releasing better movies? Seriously. Yeah, Star Wars is pretty kick-ass and Sin City was kind of cool, but other than that, what's been released this year? Total and complete crap. Even now, what do we have out there besides Star Wars? The Longest Yard? Not even.

Dear Tivo,

I trusted you. Totally and completely trusted you. You've recorded everything I've asked you to, you've recorded shows I wanted when I didn't know it aired, and you've even recorded stuff I didn't know I wanted to watch. You've basically done everything I wanted you to do and more.

But tonight, tonight you fucked up. You killed me. See, I wanted you to do two main things, two things that I wanted more than anything else- record PTI and Around the Horn during the day and Lost when I'm out playing kickball. And if I ever wanted you to do what you needed to do, it was tonight of all nights- the two hour season finale of Lost. I was so looking forward to it. But you didn't. You recorded an episode of Entourage that I've seen three times already, a South Park rerun (granted, it was the "Beefcake!!" episode), and Hardball. You even fucking recorded a lame-ass Robin Williams movie, Toys. Even worse, you recorded Toys instead of the first hour of Lost. How could you? What were you thinking? But since I trusted you, I stayed out and didn't get home til 9:30. Hell, I trusted you so much I was going to have people come over to watch Lost tomorrow night. But you didn't record

You broke my heart.

And finally, what are we to make of "Revenge of the Sith?"

Because these people can write much better than I can, I have to say that I completely agree with David Edelstein’s review in Slate in that the movie’s first half (two-thirds?) is slow and riddled with all of the problems found in the prequels- wooden writing, acting, and way too much exposition- but that somewhere along the way, right when everything starts going to hell in a handbasket, the movie picks up, finds it’s footing and grabs you. Somehow, at some point, it suddenly occurs to you that this, now this, is what we’re talking about. This is the movie we all wanted to see.

And I’ll also agree with Mick Lasalle that the movie, if handled better, could have been a classic, a masterpiece if you will. After all, the portrayal of a good character turning evil is about as classic theme of tragedy as you can get and has provided us with some of the most memorable characters in art- MacBeth, Michael Corleone, Faith. But in order to pull this off, in order to hit the go-for-the-fences-homerun, you need the dexterity to hit all the right notes at the right time and in the right way and that’s something Lucas just isn’t up to. The writing is sharper, but still occasionally bad, and the acting, well, Natalie Portman is at times laughable and Hayden tries, really tries, but he’s occasionally lost. Not that he’s too blame- you get the feeling that before all the big scenes, right before the shot Hayden would ask George what to do only to find George checking out the sketches of some cool ship design and never having time to tell him anything. As a result, the big, climatic moment, the moment where Anakin finally give into the dark side has no heft, no power to it. It kind of just is. On the other hand, Hayden does a good job in showing how lost Anakin is, how if somebody just talked to him without any agenda behind it, he just might not have done what he does.

Which doesn’t mean Lucas doesn’t deserve some credit. There are some amazing visuals in this movie, especially the long tracking shot that starts the movie in which you start off in space and then slowly swoop into this kick-ass space battle. It’s pretty much the moment in which I knew I was once again Lucas’ bitch. Even better, Lucas knows what’s at stake here and he knows this movie is what it’s all about and so he ups everything. The battles are bigger, the sets grander, the music more stirring. He even lays off the cutsieness that mars most of the movies (even "Return of the Jedi"). And when the movie gets going, Lucas is on it, like even he’s been bored for the past seven or eight hours of prequelness and now that he’s made the payoff, he’s into it. The last fifteen or twenty minutes or so, when all is lost and the movie becomes kind of an inversion of the original trilogy has a power and sweep you didn’t think possible but always hoped would be there. You really do get a sense of tragedy, of what’s been lost and just how much Anakin made a mess out of things. Some of the moments are, dare I say it, tear-jerking.

And that’s the best part of the movie. That’s why Lucas succeeds. After seeing this movie, everything changes, your perception of the prequels, your perception of the original trilogy, everything. You remember that great poster from "Phantom Menace" in which it shows Anakin walking through the desert with a shadow of Darth Vader behind him? That’s how "Phantom" feels now, the whole weight of the tragedy coming down upon this poor kid. And there’s no way to watch the Darth Vader of the original trilogy and not see him not as maybe the ultimate icon of movie evilness, but as a sad, pathetic, emotionally shut down figure completely bringing the evil only because he’s got no other choice to. He’s both literally and symbolically trapped by the decisions he’s made. He’s evil because he’s got nowhere else to go.

All of which means this- Lucas might not have made the greatest movie ever, but he made one damn fine Star Wars movie, yes, as good as the Star Wars and Empire. Loved this movie.

One more thing, I always kind of defended the prequels because I had a feeling that Lucas saw the movies not as self-contained movies, but as one, big long story arc. Like taking "Phantom Menace" as itself would be like watching one episode of "Lost" and thinking that was it. Sure, it would have helped if the movies were better or that the story was a bit more compelling (what the hell was up with the first movie being about a trade spat?). For that, I think he deserves some credit. Dude tried to do something epic and did it. Can't say that about Ron Howard now can you?

Lately I've been kind of tripping on the random snippets of songs that pop into one's heads. Do this- next time some song pops into your head, think about the lyrics for a second and start thinking about why that song could possibly be in your head. Cause I swear, it can be pretty Freudian some times. It's been happening a lot lately, the details of which I won't get into as I'm not into splaying my guts over this here blog like I used to, but I totally believe song snippets mean something.

Then, this morning, I noticed that some random bit of music was running through my head. After thinking about it for a minute, it suddenly occured to me what the song was- it's from "Jesus Christ Superstar." And the lyrics?

"You will rise to a greater power.
We will win ourselves a home.
You'll get the power and the glory
For ever and ever and ever
You'll get the power and the glory
For ever and ever and ever "

Yeah, I dunno either. I guess either my whole theory about the Freudian nature of song snippets in the head is totally flawed, I'm about to have a revelation and turn into a Jesus Freak, or I found some totally whacked out way of psyching myself up for a Monday at work. I'm hoping it's the later, but if I start praising Jesus over the next few days on this blog, you'll know why.

Tonight I walked into one of those typical San Francisco indie book stores and asked the guy at the front if they had the new Sarah Vowell book. They didn’t, but as I think everyone was so dazzled by my coolness that it didn’t matter. Or maybe I should have asked if they had the Noam Chomsky Reader on Sexual Identity instead.

This weekend I wound up going to Hooters for somebody’s birthday. What can I say, it was one of those spur of the moment decisions and lest you think it was some sexist dude-fest, it was a woman’s birthday and her idea. All I can say about Hooters is that I was kind of underwhelmed, both for the food and the, well, Hooters. More like Wonderbra’s if you ask me.

At some point during the night, they bring up whoever’s birthday it was and all the guys whose there for a bachelor party, make them get up on a table, and then all the waitresses would sing to them. Since my friend was both a woman and turning 30, it was actually kind of funny. I do have to say, however, that when the waitresses announced all the soon-to-be-newlyweds to the crowd and started chanting "sucker, sucker, sucker" I couldn’t help thinking that they just might as well put a poll up there since they were pretty much there anyways.

Afterwards, we went to some semi-lame goth bar (by accident- it had a non-gothy name on Citysearch). When we went in there, it was pretty obvious that the main clientele were thirty-something computer engineers who put the leather pants and leather duster jackets on during the weekends as a way to leave their drearily, nerd reality. Which we were actually pretty much told by the people who ran the bar. In fact, when we walked in- a large group of decidely non-gothy totally run-of-the-mill crowd, they were both excited and worried when we walked in. Excited because they had never had such a big crowd before, worried because they were afraid we’d scare off all the regulars. The regulars, as we soon discovered, liked to get up in the back corner of the bar and dance to some 80’s goth tune. By themselves. They danced pretty much just like that dwarf did in "Twin Peaks." All of which made me think that not only could you tell a lot about a person about how they dance, but you can tell a lot about a musical genre about how people dance to it. If they get on the floor, shake their butts, and grind away (like apparently, my girlfriend Jenna Bush did), that’s pretty good music. If they go into a corner and dance like some trippy character in a David Lynch tv series, that’s a pretty good sign that a musical genre, it sucks.

Ah yeah, I suck. I meant to post but I'm having one of those bouts of "God, I totally suck as a writer" self-loathing moments and threw away what I did have. I even have a huge, lengthy review of "Sith", which was great by the way, but it totally blew. So I'm going to rewrite it.

I will say this, however- "Sith" may be one of the biggest movie events ever, the most highly anticipated cinematic moment in years, the possible definining moment of a generation. I don't fucking care if you can't get a babysitter- don't ever, ever, ever bring a six-month old. And if it starts crying, don't sit there thinking that they'll cry through it in a few seconds and be quiet again- the moment that baby even breaths loudly, get the hell out of the theater.

I know everyone has been coming to my site to read what I think about this whole Newsweek kerfluffle. And here's what I think about it- I don't care.

Why? Because we've been here before and we know what's going to happen. Which is nothing. Absolutely nothing. No wait, that's not exactly right, this is what's going to happen.

-the Right and the TV blowhards will somehow manage to get it all pinned on Newsweek
-the Left will meekly throw out a bunch of facts. Whatever that's worth.
-the Press will sit around, wring their hands, and go "gosh, maybe we screwed up" instead of, oh, fighting back or saying something like "we don't even begin to screw up or tell as many lies as the White House does and if you people would actually pay attention to anything, you'd see how there's much more to this than Newsweek making a mild mistake"
-the American public will seethe in anger how the finale of American Idol will be up against Lost.

Oh, and then there's this- the President will emerge unscathed.

Which is all pretty much what I have to say about the 2002 memo that recently came out that pretty much shows that Bush lied to get us into war. Well, that and this- it doesn't matter anyways- he already got away with it.

Today I was at the gym and I started thinking to myself that I've been watching what I eat. Like I've been eating the big salad two to three times a week for lunch. And I've been working out. Maybe not every day, but a two to three times a week. I'm feeling healthy, feeling good, feeling lighter. And so I go and check out my weight at the gym.

Last time I do that.

My commute home:

Run downstairs to catch the shuttle just in time to see it pull away. I stand at the stop for a few minutes pondering what to do and decide to run to catch the shuttle at another building. I run to the other side of my building, run across the street and get to the other building just in time to see the shuttle pull away. So I decide to go to Caltran, take Caltrain to Millbrae, and then catch BART from there. Hop onto Caltrain, get to Millbrae and see that there's a BART train right there at the stop. Naturally, just as I put my BART ticket into the entrance gate, the BART train pulls away.

You'd think that somebody would figure out that it might be a good idea to hold BART there for a few seconds so the people who pull into the stop can get on board. But that would make too much sense.

And on the BART that I eventually got on, halfway through some girl, maybe in her mid-twenties hops on in Uggs boots and carrying one of those tiny, rat dogs in her big purse. Seriously, why don't you just wear a sign saying "hi, I Wanna Be a Stupid Spoiled Whore."

Man, that episode of "Lost" was some damn good TV. That whole thing with the black smoke was way cool, especially as the lost shot.

So as it's been said before by many other people, I am pretty deep into my relationship with Tivo. It's love. And yeah, I know, there are some people out there who say I shouldn't get so socked into it, that I should get out more, that I should have a social life. But why? Tivo doesn't cause you to look through your wallet the next morning wondering where the hundred you took out the night before went. Tivo doesn't cause you to wake up tired and exhausted and feeling like you really, really need to stop drinking so much. And it doesn't tell you after a few weeks that it just wants to be friends. Nope. All she does is record stuff for me. For me and only me. It even finds things for me and presents it to me, like "here Jon, I think you'll like this. I offer this recording of 'Spongebob' to you."

And yes, maybe I should go out more these days. I've even started thinking that. But then I just stumbled onto some Web site with a pretty good list of bootlegs and, well, again, why should I go out when I can just download live tracks of Zeppelin from '69 all night? Hell, I just got myself a U2 bootleg recorded last week.

I love modern technology.

Okay, so the highlight of Bay To Breakers had to be at the end. People who my friends and I were with brought some little plastic tricycle. We had a wagon with us. Part way through the race, somebody came up with the clever idea of pushing people around on them. So we'd pile people onto either the wagon and or trike and push people. Towards the end of the race we got close to the finish line and one of the guys we were with put me on board and through the crowd, giving his final little push about 50 yards away from the finish line. Unfortunately, I didn't quite make it so I started to try and peddle the sucker, which isn't as easy as you would think considering it was built for six year olds. So I peddled and peddled, determined to make it through the line, but just couldn't. And so I stopped. A group of people walked by and somebody yelled out these words, these inspiration, Rudy type words which will live with me forever: "You can make it Trike-y, you're almost there."

And with that, I peddled a few more feet and stopped again because my fucking calves were killing me.

We'll leave the ins and outs of Bay to Breakers for later, well maybe later, but I think we can sum it all up by the fact that afterwards, I saw two things on the N Judah I've never seen before: somebody passing a bowl around and an entire train car taken out of service because somebody took a shit on it and just left it there.

And yes, ick. Total and complete ick.

To show you how much things have changed over the past year consider the case of my shoes. For years, I only really owned one pair of sneakers, usually all black. This was because I never saw the need for wearing multiple shoes. What's the point of shoes anyways other something to put on your feet when you walk around? And if you're going to just wear something to put on your feet when you walk around, why wear something that's not comfortable?

Then, a few years ago, I got on the two pairs of shoes. Except for a Doc Marten's phase, the second shoe was usually a pair of Skeechers or converse. They weren't the most comfortable of shoes, but they looked cool. The main reason why I wore them wasn't necessarily because they were cool but mainly because it took me awhile to figure out that constantly wearing one pair of sneakers got awfully smelly. And yeah, I had dress shoes, but they were usually the Doc Marten's I occasionally wore.

There was another reason why I didn't own many shoes and that was because I was too friggin broke to buy anymore shoes. When you're unemployed, the only reason to buy new sneaks is when they're basically so fallen apart that you can barely wear them anymore. Money is tight and better to spend it on things like getting to job interviews, food, and alcohol then a pair of sneakers that you don't really need.

Now, about eight months into the new job, all of this has now changed. I now own two pairs of sneakers, skeechers, dress shoes, and some kick-ass hiking boot type shoe. But that's not the whacky part. The whacky part is one of the pairs of sneakers are my fitness shoes. They're the shoes that on Monday I'm going to bring into work and leave at my desk so I can always have a pair of shoes around for when I go to the gym.

And speaking of sneakers, I went to buy a new pair today. Now usually I buy solid black sneaks. I like 'em plain and black- the Beavis & Butthead look. This time I saw a pair of white sneaks and tried them on. Now, when I was a kid, white sneakers were the in way to go. It wasn't until the grim and grungy early 90's that people switched to black sneakers. I liked the black sneaks because I like to think of myself as grim and grungy and because the problem with white sneakers is that they look so shiny and pretty that you hate to wear them outside lest they get dirty. Then when they get dirty, you kind of feel like they're ruined. Then they just get dirtier and dirtier and dirtier and it's kind of depressing. Black shoes, for obvious reasons, stay black. They don't just suddenly get dirty. Oh, and there's another reason why I always hated white sneakers- white shoes always reminded me of old Jewish men in Miami. Never a good look.

But this time, in the store, faced with a purchase of the white sneaks with black stripes or the solid black sneaks, the same type of sneakers I've worn for about fifteen years, I went white. Yes, I am the proud owner of some white Adidas, which I will of course, wear when I rock the mic.

The only reason why I went against my normal solid blacks? Just because- I just felt like shaking things up a bit today.

When do you know that you're getting your pop cultural cross currents crossed? When you see one of those MSN "news" blurbs about "Terri's Tryst" and it takes you a couple of seconds to realize that they meant Teri Hatcher and not Terry Schiavo.

So once again it happened, I wound up in a yoga class with just me and another person. Even crazier, I show up and find out it's not some normal yoga class but "restorative yoga" which basically means you do these poses and hold them for a lot longer than normal. The thing about a class when you're one of a few students is that it means that it's totally easy to busy you when you just mouth along to along the chants. And also you realize you can't slack off because the teacher is right there getting all-pretzel like with you. I actually wound up liking the class. First of all, you spend most of your time on your back in restorative yoga and I like spending a lot of time on my back. It's also fairly mellow and not very strenuous. I like mellow and not very strenuous. The best part, though, is what happens when you hold the position- you're stuck in this position for so long that you run out of things to worry about with your pose, things to worry about involving work, things to worry about involving the social life, and even things involving the Giants bullpen and after awhile, out of sheer boredom, you get all zen with it. So, in other words, I'm feeling pretty darn relaxed right now.

About last night's "Lost." Still not buying Kate as a fugitive, no way ,no how. Way to cute and perky to be a fugitive. I know, it would be bad to have some ugly, white trash character with like tattoos everywhere and a face that looks like it's seen it's fair share of hungover mornings, but still.

Anyways, I'm about thirty pages away from finishing "War and Peace" and I just realized that the entire ending is nothing but Tolstoy bitching about historians and how history is debated. It's kind of interesting in a way, but also totally boring. It's like getting to the end of LOTR only to have it end with Tolkein write about linguistics. Or having "Return of the Jedi" end with that infamous Joseph Campbell interview by Bill Moyers. The worst part is I want to kind of skip over it, but I've already read 1440 pages so I feel like what's another twenty pages or so. I could never actually own up to reading it. And sheesh, what happened to Tolstoy's editor? Couldn't the editor have pulled Tolstoy aside and said "Leo, baby, love the book, but you gotta nix the ending." Or maybe the editor figured after 1400 pages, what's another forty or so?

More odds and sods while I recover from a nasty bit of insomnia.

-So Ben & Jen are having a baby. Throw in the Spederline baby and the possible Ashton/Demi baby and right there are three out of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. It's looking like those three kids will all be born around the same time which could mean spontaneous combustion for all the tabloids.

-I'm about 40 pages away from finishing "War & Peace." Yep, I'm on page 1334. Not bad, especially considering the new toy I just bought. My brother is right in that it could keep on going. On the other hand, as I look back on it, not that much happened. Which sounds kind of weird considering it's a multi-character novel based on the 1812 war but it's kind of true. In 1334 pages, Frodo was approaching Mordor in LOTR. It's just that most of "War & Peace" seems to be mainly about the ins and outs of Russian society and who said what at which ball. Not that it's bad it's just I thought there'd be more. After all the hype and all the pages, I kind of expected the Meaning of Life to be explained. Which is kind of explained, not just in ways that make me want to go "wow." The funny thing about the book is that I don't know whether it's my modern sensibility and my belief that irony wasn't invented until the early 90's but most of the society stuff is pretty irony-laden.

-So LeBron fired his agent and is going to hire one of his entourage (great show, by the way). I had last year in the "LeBron Goes Crazy" pool.

-And finally, Kansas is once again trying to get Creationism taught in school. I'll say it before, I'll say it again- let 'em. Let's just see how many of those kids go onto MIT or Harvard.

I tried posting all weekend, I really did, it's just that blogger wouldn't let me. So, anyways, let's do this all at once, shall we?

-Was crossing the alleyway between Valencia & Mission on 16th and almost got hit by a car coming out of the alleyway. The guy who, yes, was in a Benz, was too busy talking to his girlfriend to see me crossing the street. Now granted there was a van parked in the alleyway making it hard to see me crossing, but isn't that a reason to slow down? And not only did he not see me crossing, when he got to me he didn't even slow down to let me cross. Hell, he was so busy talking to his girlfriend that he didn't even see me give him the finger as he made a right into the street.

-In front of one of those cheap department stores on Mission street is one of those kiddie rides where you put a quarter in and it shakes the kid around for a bit. This particular one was an aircraft and it would bounce up and down for a bit. The cool thing isn't the ride, the cool thing is the fact that it plays Kenny Loggin's "Danger Zone" as it bounces up and down.

-Went to the Giants game Saturday afternoon and got a bad burn. On my knees. It was the first time I sat at club level which was pretty cool as I got to walk around the club section. Hanging out in the club section, though, is an interesting experience in that while you're at a baseball game, you find yourself, like me, having a dilemna in that while you're eating your Cubano panini sanwhich you have to decide whether you'll watch a Giants bases loaded rally or the Kentucky Derby on the TV.

-The guy who sat next to me at the game was one of those short-haired, goatee wearing dudes. He spent the whole game spitting I guess chewing tobacco into a plastic cup. Every once in awhile, when he was bored, he'd call up his dawgs and check in on them. I guess he's about to make a big decision in his life because I actually overheard him saying this to one of his friends- "yeah, I think it's time. I've fucked around and I've had my fun...it's just hot chicks....she's a good girl. We'll get married, have some children, it'll be cool."

-The thing about Tivo is that to catch up on my programs, I'm actually beginning to schedule time on my weekends. Like 4-6 on Saturday & Sunday is now my catching up on Tivo time. One benefit to it, however, is, of course, the ability to fast forward through the commercials. In doing so, you realize just how many commercials there are. I love the "Chappelle Show" but it's basically a short skit, commercial, short skit, commercial. And if you fast forward through the commercials, dumb skits, and bad musical guests, it's possible to watch Saturday Night Live in about fifteen minutes. If that. But, through in a DVD player and On Demand, when you're feeling lazy, it's even that much harder to get motivated to see a movie. I like seeing movies on Sunday, even try and make a habit out of it, but today I was sitting there and thinking that well, I could see a movie, but on the other hand, I have three South Parks, two Buffy's, and an HBO Real Sex. Why should I schlep out and spend ten bucks to see a movie I'll probably not like anyways?

I go to the gym at work which is great because it's pretty cheap and a pretty nice gym. Of course, there's one downside, that being that I might run into a coworker in the locker room. In fact, it's pretty much one of my nightmare scenarios that I come out of the shower (the showers in the gym are stalls so there's no showering in groups) only to bump right into somebody I work with.

Monday, for the first time, it happened. Well, not to me exactly as I was already dressed, but to a coworker. He came out of the shower, clad in only a towel, and walked up only to realize that his locker was two lockers down from me. Although he tried to hide it and although he's a really nice guy, I could tell that just for a second, the look on his face was more "oh no" than "oh, yay! a Coworker!" So he stood there and we talked and I could tell he was delaying the big moment where he'd have to take off the towel and put on his underwear but after a few minutes, he gave up and resigned himself to the fact he was going to do it. Which he did. And to which I helped him along by totally looking away but in such a manner it didn't look like I was looking away just to look away (I'm good at staring at things or not staring at things as it were while doing the opposite).

With that done, he quickly got dressed and we left together. And no, not awkward at all.

"Lost" wasn't that bad. Kind of good, actually. You gotta love, though, how for the big dramatic scene with Locke and Shannon that it all of a sudden starting raining. Like somebody said "hey, we got a big scene here, how can we make it more dramatic?" I guess to make it appear a little less random, they had a character say something about a storm but it was a little weird considering it didn't look like there was about to storm. It was pretty gosh darn sunny. And considering they're supposed to be stranded on some island, it's not like they can listen to AccuWeather reports.

By the way, TiVO is totally out of control right now. I don't even know what it's recording and/or why. When I got home today, it had taped a spanish show, another Nickelodeon cartoon, and something on Bravo. I don't even get Bravo. But that's not the crazy part. The crazy part is that I came home and discovered that it taped all these shows about Pennsylvania sports, including a Pittsburgh sports report. Which is kind of scary in a way. Somehow, TiVO knows I'm from Pennsylvania and is recording shows for me.

And yes, I rushed home as fast as I could from work today to see what my new baby recorded for me while I was gone. I'm already beginning to see a problem in that I feel like I have to watch everything I've recorded so I feel like my job tonight is to watch four South Park episodes, two Curb Your Enthusiasms, and three Buffy episodes.

So I'm watching baseball.

Today this morning at work, a weird little thing happened while sitting in the shuttle waiting to go to work. Somebody who was on the shuttle left the shuttle to go outside for a bit and left their briefcase on their chair. Somebody who came in late and didn't see who left the briefcase started asking around to see who left it. At first, I thought he was just being really nice and wanted to make sure that nobody left something there but after thinking about it for awhile, I began to think that maybe there was something else to his asking around. Like he thought somebody left the briefcase on the shuttle as some sort of car bomb. Bully for the guy for playing total Homeland Security Eye, but dude, it's a shuttle to go to SuperMondo Corp. Other than one of the companies that's pissed at us for swallowing them up, I just don't see our little shuttle as an Al Queda target.

I've been in a bit of a funk lately. Not quite that major of one because I am working right now. Not to mention making good money. But still, just kind of that existential, everything is as it always is, kind of funks. And I've had it for quite awhile. So finally, after months and months of contemplation, after months and months of internal debate, and after months and months of summoning up the courage to make the change, I finally went out and made a huge change.

TiVo, baby. TiVo!

Oh, and a DVD player.

Between the both of them, I don't really need to leave my apartment anymore other than going to work and I'm not necessarily sure that's such a bad thing.

And just for the record, here is my season pass programs: Lost, The Chappelle Show, South Park, The Daily Show (no more staying up past 11 just to watch it), Curb, the Office (sadly, I got it to late to get the American version which didn't turn out to be half bad), Best Week Ever, and, of course, Buffy. Always Buffy. In fact, it was Buffy that made me break down and get TiVo in that I had some time to kill one morning before leaving for work and I flipped on the TV only to realize I had completely missed the first three-quarters of the Buffy Musical (otherwise known as the Greatest Hour of TV). The funny thing is that after I had programmed all of that stuff in, TiVo comes in and makes their first recommendation on something I should watch. And what did TiVo recommend? A PBS documentary on the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Must be from all the South Park I'm about to be taping.

PS- the bit about being in a funk? Just joking around. It just makes the bit about Tivo funnier.