I saw "40 Year Old Virgin" today and all I can say is it's worth it just because the movie has, by far, Best Use of Asia's "Heat of the Moment" In A Movie. Ever.

By far.

Not to mention the song "Age of Aquarius."

Actually, it was a pretty funny movie.

When I left the Metreon, though, some panhandler in a wheelchair literally chased me down on the street corner to ask me for spare change and got so much in my face he almost ran me over. Needless to say, he didn't get my money.

I'm in my apartment getting to go out and I hear some loud yelling echoing through the streets and into my apartment. Because I often hear loud clamoring, I couldn't tell whether it was just a crazy guy, street protest, or even one of those preacher types who occasionally sermonize on the corner. I head down and notice that it's a combination of them- it's a crazy guy with a bible sermonizing. Or at least I think he was sermonizing as he more liked barked stuff out and the only word I could hear was "God." The dude was loud, though, so loud I could hear him from a block away.

When I passed him, I couldn't help notice out of the corner of my eye that one of the local homeless dudes was busy staring into one of those ATM Machines. When I looked to see what he was doing, I noticed he was using the mirror attached to it to shave.

Ladies and Gentleman, the Mission.

Oh, the dude who was shaving is this guy who I've been seeing around a lot lately. He's kind of young-ish looking with face tattoos who's walking around selling those spin art things we all did as kids. As his story goes, he's holed up in a hotel room with his wife and kid and he's selling his kids art work to earn money to support the family. Which was a great story the first time I heard it. I mean, he could be just out there hustling money but he's trying to at least he's making an effort to give something for people's spare change. And the art work, well, I've seen worse.

But after a few months of seeing him on the street, I think I've lost sympathy for his plight. It's just that all that time and effort he's expending into trying to sell his kid's artwork makes me wonder if he could be using it more judiciously. Like looking for a job.

I went to go pay my PG& E bill the other day, you know, to keep the company going while they blow up more things in San Francisco. First thing I do is try and call the phone number on the bill to pay it that way. Instead of having a live operator, which, of course would never happen, or one of those voice mail systems that allow you to punch in numbers, they had a voice activitated system.

I love voice activated systems.

First of all, I'm in my friggin cubicle and I'm now supposed to say out loud things like my checking account number or my address or my phone number or my frickin' social security number. Not to mention the fact that I'm gonna come off sounding like a big ole dork since I'm just going to be saying a bunch of random things.

But the main reason why I hate the voice activated systems is because you have to speak almost perfectly in order for the thing to work. So you find yourself saying things like "billing....billing...bbbbiiiilllliiiiinnngggg" in order to get it through. And forget even trying to say those long numbers that you have as your account number.

So I tried the online site. First thing that I noticed was that somehow I was listed as already being signed up on the online site. Which I think I tried years ago but gave up on when I realized the site didn't work. But for whatever reason, the five passwords that I constantly use never worked with the screen name I always use. So I clicked on the button that said it would send me my password and waited for an e-mail with my password. I got it. They sent my screen name instead.

Naturally, I resigned up with a different name. That worked great except for the fact that everytime I'd type in information and hit "enter," I'd get one of those screens that say "error, try again." And so I did. And it would work until I got to the next screen where I'd type in all my information and hit enter only to be told to try again. I finally made it through, about ten minutes later and entered all my information with excitement in the fact that I had finally paid my bill.

A day later I got a notice saying the payment didn't go through.

Yeah, I haven’t posted in a few days. Sorry. Sometimes I do have a life.

There’s this guy who takes the bus into work with me. He’s about ten to fifteen years older, kind of fat and grey with a beard and a long, stringy ponytail that looks more like a rat tail than an actual pony tail. Despite the fact there’s no dress code at Super Mondo, he always dresses the same every day, in a button down shirt, dress pants, tie and suspenders. He also always wears a little black fisherman’s cap. When we take the bus in, he’ll push his seat all the way back and quickly falls asleep, snoring loudly the whole way. When we get into work, I often times see him in the cafeteria, getting usually the most disgustingly greasy eggs/sausage combo, which always makes me go yumm but never eat because I’m trying to watch what I’m eating. After searching for months who he reminded me of, it suddenly occurred to me: he reminded me of the one and only Ignatius O'Reilly.

Anyways, yesterday as I’m taking the bus back home, he sits across the aisle from me. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him shift in his seat and kind of lean over to the side. Once positioned, he then proceeds to let out a really loud fart and once done, sits himself back down into normal position and, without batting an eye, continues to read his book.

So there you are, having a mildly stressful, more like frustration onsetting kind of week when Thursday rolls along and all you can think about is "yay, it’s Thursday!" because that’s the day you’re going to see a bunch of friends you haven’t seen in awhile to go see one of your favorite back-in-the-day bands, Dinosaur Jr. But then, as the day goes on and things get more and more stressful and you can feel the storm clouds gathering like gathering gloom everything goes to hell in not just a hand basket but matching accessories. Which is how you find yourself becoming the victim of one department’s steam blowing off exercise. And is how you find yourself getting reamed out by someone in somebody else’s cubicle. Loudly and visibly and in front of the whole department. And not very nicely either. Best part of the whole thing? It’s by someone with whom you have somewhat of an off-kilter relationship with in general and with someone whose work is considered by people in the know as someone as a bit of a screwup and who you’ve been covering for months. The kind of worker to whom people say "what the hell does she do all day?" and "is she back from lunch yet?" The kind of worker who several times has missed important e-mails because the mp3's she e-mails her friends have clogged up her e-mail hard drive.

So you got that going for you.

Then, twenty minutes later, the loud, Hawaiian shirt writer with a notoriously bad attitude and in inability to realize that in joking around, there’s a fine line between being snarky and an asshole, is on the phone with you as he’s working from home. After spending five minutes trying to get an explanation out of him as to why he wrote something that doesn’t appear to have any purpose and to which he can’t remember if he wrote it or not, he puts his five year old son up to the phone to tell you to "stop busting my dad’s chops." Funny and cute, perhaps, but also all sorts of jerky and completely and totally unprofessional.

And so you go leave work and head off to your grand adventure, something you’ve been super-psyched with for months, and all you can think of is just how fucking pissed off you are. Instead of going "woo hoo!" to what’s transpiring, all you can think about is the writing and editing of the e-mails to them, coworkers, bosses even, in avengence of your honor. And as you hang out with the friends and go to the concert and hear one of your favorite bands play some of your favorite songs extremely loud and extremely well, all you can think about is how fucking pissed off you are and how lame it is that you just went through what you went through.


Man, Thursday sucked.

One more thing about all of today's news. When you get to a certain age and you have friends at certain stages in their life, when they call you up and leave a message with you saying that they "have news," it's kind of easy to figure it out. All of this depending on what stage of their life they're in. If they're dating and say they have news, it's probably that they're engaged. And if they're married and say they have news, that could only mean that baby is on the way.

Oh, I'm going to see the big Dinosaur Jr. show tomorrow night. Which means I'll get find out the answer to the big question I'm sure everyone's dying to know: do people in their mid to late thirties still slam dance? And if not, what do they do?

And we're back. Sorry for the no posting but have you ever gotten fish at a restaurant that every once in awhile, you take a bite and say to yourself "that doesn't taste right" but it's not enough to stop you and two days later you're well, I'll let ypu figure it out.

So....

Just today a coworker announced she's buying a TIC, a friend sent an e-mail saying he just bought a house, and a friend called to say he's going to be a dad. Going back a day, a friend's roomate who's been unemployed for a little over a year and a half announced she just got a job. And going back a week two friends got engaged and going back two weeks two friends moved in together.

That's a lot of big, life changing moves.

And I? Bought tickets to beer drink my way through Europe for a week.

You take what you can get, I guess.

PS- well, I do have my new bed.

PPS- and as a friend pointed out, I haven't lost my job yet. Which does put things back in perspective but I wonder how long the statue of limitations runs out in the job putting things in perspective?

Tonight I went over to a friend's house and watched a DVD of some movie that aired on Showtime about the Mitchell Brothers, the two guys behind many a porn-flick and the O'Farrell Theater strip joint. Long story short, the two became even more infamous when one shot the other.

First of all, can you do a movie about the porn industry that doesn't involve lots of coke and a rapid descent into murder and violence? Sheesh, talk about a depressing genre.

Anyways, all you need to know about the movie was that it starred, as the brothers, Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen. Not only that, it was directed by Emilio and is billed as "A Film by Emilio Estevez." Need I say more.

For whatever reason, I have a particular fondness for movies such as this one. It was, for lack of a better word, awful. It was badly acted, badly written, super-cheap looking, and one cliche after another. Among other things, it was one of those movies/tv shows that try and do the 60's but looks even less authenticly 60's than if you went to a 60's theme party. The worst part of the movie, though, had to be the super-cheap wigs Charlie and Emilio wore to make them look balding. Several times I kept on thinking the wig was about to fall off.

But somehow, I liked the movie. Kind of. Not only that, I kind of admired it for it's crappiness. Because while it was badly done, you could get a sense that Emilio wanted this movie to be his "Citizen Kane." So as a director, he completely goes for broke. You name the artistic bell and/or whistle, and he did it. Jump cuts? Check? Sudden shift into black and white? Check. Weird random point-of-view camera angle? Jerky hand-held camera motion? Tweaked cinematography for dramatic effect? Check, check, and check. But the thing was is that none of it worked. It was all showy and pointless and just plain old badly done.

But for whatever reason, I love those kinds of movies. I respect those kind of movies. Because Emilio could have gone conventional, he could have chickened out, but no, he said I'm going to be an auteur. This despite any evidence to the contrary that he has any talent to even contemplate going the artiste.

It kind of reminded me of those BH 9'er episodes that were directed by Jason Priestley. Whenever his name came up as the director, friends and I would cheer in anticipation of what would come. Priestley also thought he was an auteur and Beverly Hills 90210 worth the cineaste approach so he'd throw in lots of trippy camera angles and weird surrealistic bits and none of it was ever appropiate and none of it had a point to it and it was all for freakin Beverly Hills 90210 yet Priestly thought it worthy of giving it the David Lynch treatment.

It was brilliant.

So yeah, the movie was crap, but I still kind of liked it.

At 9:45 this morning, while still laying in bed, the phone rang. Thinking it was a friend trying to coordinate plans for the day, I got out of bed to go pick it up. It wasn't my friend. Instead, it was somebody from "John Kerry." Yes, as in that John Kerry. And yes, the election is way over.

Now I was getting e-mails from him off and on since then, but have since put him into such a spam filter that I don't get his e-mails anymore. The phone call bit, though, was new. And all things considering, I was not amused. Did I mention that it was at 9:45 in the morning?

All I can say is this, Dear John: You lost. Big time. And your loss wasn't some "Rocky" type loss where you were the upstart inspiring underdog who gained respect enough in losing. Nor was a "Bad News Bears" type loss where you lost but won for not selling your soul and showing everyone how to do it right. And it definately wasn't a "Braveheart" type loss where you lost the battle only to inspire a bunch of people to win the war. Nope, it was a plain old loss. Because you sucked. Because you were a pompous windbag who couldn't beat an illiterate smirker whose main campaign slogan was "it's hard." In fact, I'm sure I'm not the only one who is slightly glad you didn't win only because you saved us from four years of your boring monotone robotic style. Yeah, this country would be better if you were President, but in some way's, it's easier to take Bush as President. Because hating on such a purer emotion than embarassed rationalizing.

Like most people, I'm loving the Cindy Sheehan story mainly because she's got the President by the short hairs and as we all know, I love nothing more than when something comes along that wipes the smirk off the President's face. As I was flipping through the channels, I stumbled upon Fox News in full "to the Bat Cave" mode and doing a hatchet job on the poor lady. It seems that the talking points for the attack are not about her anymore, but on the company she's keeping. Because she's doing something anti-war, she's got a lot of the anti-war people behind her, including Michael Moore and MoveOn.org. Knowing that nothing scares the beejesus out of Fox news watchers, they couldn't help but drop the names of all those anti-war folks as much as possible. One total humor-less editor for some right-wing newspaper, one of those bitter young folks who turn Republican due to an inability to have women talk to them up until their mid-twenties, was on reciting the litany of supposed offenses the anti-war movement commit on a regular basis ("they don't like war!" They have tattoos! They look funny!). During another interivew with an actual Democrat, one of the Fox News anchor people was almost beside himself that somebody would have the temerity to question the President and mentioned Michael Moore every fifth word.

The thing about it, though, is that they have a point. If I were advising Mrs. Sheehan, I'd tell her to stay as far away from possible as the anti-war people as possible. And don't even think about blogging on Michael Moore's web site. Why? Because when it comes down to it, the anti-war movement people are probably their own worst enemy. When people look at them, in all their dreadlocked glory, I'm pretty sure the average American immediately dismisses them as nothing but a bunch of loonies. In fact, somewhere I read an article recently (I tried looking for it but I couldn't find it) that pointed out that polling is showing that whenever there's a lot of protests going on, support for the war increases. When there's no protests, polls drop in support of the war. The reason? Because if your average normal person had a choice of who to support, they'll go to the dumb guy who talks funny as opposed to the dumb guy who looks funny.

Which, actually, is what I'm thinking about the war. I don't support it and kind of anti-war about it, it's just that I don't really support the anti-war movement. In fact, I think if you were to create a line and put "sane response" in the center and anti-war people on one side and war supporters on the other side, I'm thinking that the war supporters would probably be closer to "sane response" than the anti-war supporters. Not that either would be close to the center, but still. I think I wrote elsewhere that I was behind the "Ambivelant About the War" movement and wished we could organize protests and rallies in support of not exactly knowing what to think. Or, I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm sure as hell not going to support the President on Iraq, but I'm sure as hell not going to be marching in the streets.

Well, and for what it's worth, as bad as the war is, leaving Iraq right now would be even worse than staying. Bush just got us in a terrible, horrible jam and someday, one can only hope karma gets her bitch on.

I love the fact that sometimes when your a little down, a little overwhelmed with meh-ness, that with one quick little move, you can change everything. It's especially true because of the Web. All you have to do is do a quick little search, press a few buttons and the next thing you know, you've just booked tickets to go to Oktoberfest with friends and just like that, birds start chirping, rainbows start appearing and everything is groovy.

Yep, I'm off to Europe next month and everything is pretty much honky dory.

PS- Mazel tov Deemer and Hoppy...

In light of the Kansas Board of Eductation once again voting to deemphasize Evolution and emphasize "Intelligent Design" all I can say is that the answer to the eternal question fo "What's the Problem with Kansas" is this: they're fucking stupid. And yes, my policy lately has always been that if some Red State wants to do something stupid, we should just let them and make fools out of themselves, but dude. Seriously.

Wouldn't it be great if some Democrat actually got up there and asked about how to win states like Kansas and whether they should pander to the Wing-Nut bible thumpers said "it's not my problem if they're stupid."

Also I just finished this book that was the last book in a series of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Republic. I loved the books, so much so I'm thinking about rereading them again because there was so much going on. So after I finished the last book, I went to Amazon to see if others felt the love and noticed that the first person who had posted a review on the book, and somebody who loved it as much as I did, is the one, the only Newt Gingrich. Even scarier, he too saw the parallels between the rotting of the Roman Republic with modern day times, which makes me wonder what's going on because the things I'm seeing in the book that show the rot of the Republic couldn't possibly be the same things he's seeing. And considering he's one of the people who helped create the rot, well, either he didn't really read the book or he's totally changed or I completely misread the book.

Tonight I had dinner with a cousing, her husband, and their little kid. Since I don’t feel it’s right to say anything bad about family, especially one’s who don’t deserve anything mean said about them, I’ll refrain from saying anything. Not their fault. Let’s just say that the problem I’ve always had is that we have absolutely nothing in common. Nothing. Well, except for lots and lots of TV, but there’s only so much TV one can talk about.

As they came to visit, I thought of the problem of what to do. Living in the Mission like I do, I love showing it off. I do live in the hippest, most happening spot West of the Mississippi. But what makes it the hippest, most happening spot West of the Mississippi would probably be lost on them. Among other things, the things I love about—bars, bars and more bars, is nothing something that would interest a four year old. And I’m not sure how all of them would be into Pakistani food or Peruvian food or Middle Eastern fusion.

So we got Chinese.

Couple of things about the night. First of all, the first part of the occasion was taken up by the dilemna over whether or not the four year old went to the bathroom. At first, it was when she could go. But then when she refused to go, it became a question of when she last had to go. And once that established, it became a question of when she should next go to the bathroom to avoid having to go to the bathroom on the way back. When she finally did go, there was a bit of conversation about what exactly she did.

And so I’m thinking, the point of having kids is what again? God help me if it ever comes the point where half of my time is spent pondering somebody’s potty schedule. Of course, I’m saying this is a person whose week old plant is dying a fast and miserable death.

The other thing was that old problem of being so far into the world of hi-tech that hearing any note of ludditism. Like when I was trying to give them directions from where they were staying in Novato. When they asked me how to get to my place from Novato, I went to the automatic response- go to Yahoo Maps and see what it says. That got a quick reaction of "what’s that?" I was stunned.

Later on, during dinner and after the discussion of the toilet, I went to what we had in common and started talking about TV. So I brought up Tivo thinking that they must have it- they watch a lot of TV. And if not, everyone knows what Tivo is. They didn’t. Never heard of it. Didn’t even know what something like Tivo could do. And so I’m thinking where are these people from, Kansas? They’re not, they’re from Virginia, nice suburban Virginia.

Did I mention we didn’t have that much in common?

Yay, I finally got "Once More With Feeling," the Buffy musical on Tivo. I've said it before and I'll say it again-- always Buffy.

Anyways, today's random Marina bar that I went to after volleyball was the City Tavern. One of the infamous Triangle Bars. Of course, as we were there, everyone on my team (who I do like and are much cooler than I'm making it out to be) was doing the standard defensive "oh, even though I live here, I never hang out in this neighborhood because I hate the Marina types." One guy was saying how he never goes to Marina bars and how he doesn't hang out with people who do and right in the middle of it, one of his buddies comes up to him to say hi.

By the way, it's my third week in a row going out for drinks in the Marina on a Tuesday and it's the third Tuesday in a row we stumbled into $2 drink specials. It's looking like the entire Marina is $2 on Tuesdays. Hell, the City Tavern has bar food for $2 too which is how I got a turkey burger, some fries, some buffalo wings, chicken tenders, and a drink for $10. In other words, maybe I need to hang out in the Marina some more. And maybe it's because I've been living in the Mission for too long but Marina women? H-O-T-T. Especially the one's dressed in full Paris Hilton regalia and those Muggs boots.

Even though I was at a party Saturday night, for whatever reason, I didn't feel like drinking. So I didn't. Or, at least, had a few drinks but not enough to feel one way or the other. One thing that I realized about that night is part of the reason why it's important to actually drink is because drunk people aren't as much fun to hang out with when you're sober. Wanting to talk to random strangers? Don't care. The "I love you guys" schpiel? Not feeling it, or at least not on the "I love you guys" wave length. And the friend who has the drunken meltdown, breaks down uncontrollably and pretty much has to be carried out of the bar? No patience for it. Seriously.

I remember one of the worst nights I had in college was taking 'shrooms with some friends at the beach (one of the great pleasures of going to UCSB- we had a beach you could do drugs at) only to come back to the dorm to encounter one of those progessive parties going on. People on hallucigens and drunks should not mix. As I walked around, I saw way too much drunkeness, way too much people hooking up with people who they shouldn't be hooking up with, and way too much just general stupidity. Afterwards, I marched into my friend's dorm room and announced that I was going to move to Wyoming and hide from civilization because civilization just isn't worth hanging out in. Case in point being the party raging outside the dorm room. Or at least I remember I did that.

Yesterday I went to the yummy Chinese restaurant across the corner from me and got a fortune cookie only to discover that there was no fortune in the fortune cookie. In terms of fortunes, what does that mean? Does that mean I will have no fortune? Will nothing ever happen to me ever again?

Also yesterday I noticed why those electric trolley cars always look so dorky-- it's because it lets everyone who sees the trolley into a little private moment in which you're partying. Partying, of course, is kind of a private moment in that for the most part, it's with people you know and the tens or hundreds or people at the same place as you. But when you're in the trolley, everyone can see both how well the party is going and how well the partying is going. So, like yesterday, when I saw one of those trolley's go past, one I'm guessing for a wedding considering everyone was all dolled up in tuxes and bridesmaid dresses, I couldn't but help notice what a lame party it was because nobody was doing anything except stare glumly off the sides of the trolley. Well, except for the one girl in the middle of the trolley doing her best to party it up by dancing along to the music while holding a champagne party. She was the only one who wasn't basically sitting there and staring glumly out the side of the trolley. So, in other words, in just passing the trolley, everyone can pretty much see what a lame, dead party is going on. And everyone can see how dorky that girl is for being the only partying in a party full of non-partying. Or maybe she wasn't the dorky one. Or, whatever, nevermind.

So let me get this straight- baseball announces this drug testing program and everybody screams it won't work, it's not enough punishment, and that nobody will get busted, especially somebody big. And then somebody big gets busted, thus proving not only that the testing works but that despite the ten day suspension your name gets sullied if you get busted, and all you hear is "oh God, baseball is in trouble! It's a crisis!" And all this because Rafael Palmeiro is a bone-head.

Oh, and I love all the people squawking about how he lied before congress. Puh-lease. If they busted everyone who lied in front of congress there'd be nobody left in Washington.

It's been two days but my nice, lovely plant is dying. I don't know how it's dying but it is. I mean, I've watered it like I was supposed to and it's by the window so it gets plenty of sun, but it's dying. After only two days.

And people wonder why I say I don't think I can handle ever having kids.

Sometimes you find yourself in the strangest of places, places so far away from the norm that you can only only wonder what the hell you're doing there. Like tonight. After the volleyball game I found myself going with my team to the Bluelight. Now while Bluelight might not be part of the triangle, it's definately in the burbs of the Triangle. And it was a scene- jam packed and full and total meat market. All the women there looked like they had just stepped out of a magazine shoot and all the guys looked like every evil guy in those 80's teen sex flicks. It was like Cobra Kai went out for drinks after sweeping the leg.

When was the last time I was in that bar? I'm pretty sure the Bush in the White House was the father. In fact, I remember that there was a scene in the Real World: San Francisco filmed there (Judd went there wearing a wedding band to see if it helped him meet women) and I remember watching that scene and thinking "hey, that's the Blue Light."

And coming home on the 22, two guys behind me were talking about being in the scene back in the day. I heard comments like "oh yeah, that's how he got to work for Green Day" or "I shared a rehearsal space with (insert name of totally hip early 90's band from the area). When they got off I got a look at them. They were all chubby, balding, and greying.

Hate getting old.