Hey, John done good. How 'bout that? The amazing thing about the debate is how many times I sat there and could only wonder one thing: "how did this guy ever become President?"

And without much further ado, it's the Bay Guardian Wank of the Week:

Here's the intro to a review of some band that played at the Make-Out Room last week. I think it's probably the most descriptive, most right-on description of the 9-5, Workingman Blues that I have ever read:

"A NINE- to-five, Monday-through-Friday desk job is an inhumane way to cage the human spirit, and the cognitive dissonance the weekend brings – work, work, work, work, work, quick, go have fun! Work ... – doesn't always help. I spent Monday trying and failing to "be part of the team," opting for my Bartleby the Scrivener "I would prefer not to" act, staring at the wall of my cubicle. After work I went to my volunteer gig HIV testing at the needle exchange, feeling low-energy and not really emotionally available. When that was through, I needed some comforting myself.

The Music Lovers at the Make-Out Room was the right prescription to scrub the dull patina of pain and diverted aspirations off my day. I caught about half a sweet and soothing song by openers New Telepathic Friends before heading out for a bite with J, who'd caught her stepfather cross-dressing over the weekend. Comfort food was in order.

When we got back to the club, my eyes were fixed at half-mast and I had a serious case of pork chop nod…"

Just add some slow, grooving tune and you got one hell of a beer commercial.


PS- Dear Giants: aaaaaaaaccccccccccccckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

I got a cell phone on Monday and it's pretty exciting. Believe it or not, I've been pretty much cell phone-less since the whole cell phone craze began. Yeah, I had a cell phone awhile back, but it was a job phone and free for working there. Once I quit, I lost the phone. This cell phone I bought with my very own money and by using my Super Mondo Corporation discount.

When I went to sign up I was given a list of cell phones I could chose from. Because I'm signing up with a cellular service, some of the phones were free. But what would the point in getting a free phone be? Instead, I went with the cell phone with all the bells and whistles you can get without actually having the camera attached (my feeling about the cell phone camera is that it's really fun for about a week or so then gets pretty old fast). I can play games, text message, check the Web, choose all sorts of different ring tones, and send e-mail. Which, of course, means I don't know how the damn thing works.

When the phone came, it came with it a hundred page book on how the thing works. And while it can tell me how to put cute little smiley faces in my text message or press a number so that the phrase "I'll meet you there" automatically shows up on the screen, it doesn't tell you exactly how to send a text message. Or, the book tells you how to send voice mail messages to the entire Eastern Seaboard but doesn't tell you how to record your voice-mail message. I'm not even sure what half the buttons on the thing do and I'm kind of afraid of pressing them for fear I'm going to be making a super-expensive call to China or download "Doom" at $10 a pop.

Now that I have a cell phone, though, I was half expecting that instantly my life would change. I'd get phone call after phone call and I'd spend half my free time calling everyone to see what Jimmy's doing tomorrow night or if Susie like totally made out at the guy at the bar after the game, but it ain't happening. Nobody's calling. So far, I haven't even made the big cell phone call from the company shuttle yet. Or even the cell phone call while waiting at BART.

Now that I have one, though, I realize that I'm faced with making one of the biggest decisions a person can face- their ring tone. Because like the At-Bat theme song, the ring tone isn't just a tone, it's a sign of who you are. Of what you like to be. And what you want people to think of you because, after all, isn't the point of having a cool ring tone is that people here it and go "that's cool?" And the leading contender for my ring tone? Salt-n-Pepa's "Push It." Yeah, it's not like I'm a "Push It" kind of guy, but can anyone tell me that hearing that riff doesn't bring a smile to their face?

Yesterday I was walking around the lunch cafeteria and saw these young-ish, Marina-type girls walking around. And yes, one of them definitely looked a bit JAP-y (and remember, folks, I can say that). JAP-y girl was walking around with this over-the-shoulder bag that had written on it "Glamour Girl" with a macramed picture of some girl opening up all these boxes which look like they all hold fabulous and expensive clothes. So I'm wondering this: granted that in the age of Britney, Paris, and Lindsey the Rich Bitch is the It-girl of 2004, but if you're a bit on the JAP-y side, do you really want to advertise to everyone that you're a bit on the JAP-y side?

One of my Marketing Managers was gone for most of last week. She was back today so when I ran into her I asked her where she went. You know, making small talk to schmooze the people I work with. She told me that her boyfriend moved to Colorado and she drove with him to help him move.

Now, while that answer might not be up there with "my father died and I had to go to the funeral" or "I had a gynecological condition I had to take care of" in terms of awkward conversation topics, boyfriend moving to Colorado and helping him move is kind of up there. Especially when I've been there for a month and haven't quite gotten to the level of schmoozing where I know how to handle things like that. As a result, I basically froze up and held tight til I was rescued by another Marketing Manager with whom I quickly rifled with questions involving her projects.

We're also working with an agency that helps produce some of the stuff we're working on. Now pretty much everyone I work with doesn't like the agency and thinks they're a waste of money. They're expensive, way too high-maintenance, and screw up a lot. The people at the agency who are at the front lines of all of this are the Account Executives- in other words, the 24 year old, fresh-faced, low-paid grunts who think Advertising is the place to be. My AE, who is also the AE most everyone else uses, gets the brunt of it mainly because she's the one who deals with us. Whenever she screws up or the agency does, she gets it and because everyone's looking for an excuse to ditch the agency, everyone's looking for any sort of slip-up to hold it against the agency. Except, of course, me. Girlfriend is a nice Jewish girl and we like to do right by our fellow tribesmen. Girlfriend is also hot 24-year old Jewish girl and well, girlfriend could accidentally take all of my projects, take them to a bar, spill Jager on them, and then accidentally leave them on the Cable Car and I'd let it slip. Probably even defend her to my bosses. In other words, she doesn't have anything to worry about with my projects. In fact, she's probably got one pro-active, easily reached, extremely talkative contact she has to deal with, one who'd never ever rat her out. And is that so wrong?

I got a spam-mail the other day from a "Christian Debt Service." To, I guess, get out of debt the Christian Way, whatever that may be. I'm actually a little unclear on the subject as while I'm in no way an expert on the New Testament, I'm pretty sure there's nothing in there about consolidating your loans. Nor do I think Jesus ever said anything like "blessed are those that are maxed out on their Visa Card" while preaching on the Mount. I'm also pretty sure that for a long time, the main Christian position on credit was forbidding themselves to lend money because it's not the "Christian way." It is, however, the Jewish way. Or is when it's pretty much the only job they'd allow the Jews. Getting out debt back then usually consisted of sending said money-lender to the Inquisition.

Hopefully that's not what the people behind the "Christian Debt Service" have in mind.

I apologize for the not-sharp writing this night. I'm tired (stupid insomina).

I've been down the yoga thing lately and have been going to a place around the corner from me. The space is beautiful (great view of the Mission, especially during night class when you can watch the sunset while downward facing dogging it) and I like the classes, but all of the classes I've been to have been a bit sparsely attended. Saturday's class was so sparsely attended that I was the only one who showed up. Yep, I was a class of one.

Yeah, it sounds kind of cool because it basically meant I got a personal yoga tutorial, but it wasn't. Who was I supposed to watch during class to make sure I was doing the right move? Who could keep the class going if I wanted to take a little rest for a minute? Who was going to keep the teacher from watching every move I make? I mean, it's hard for the class to have "flow" if I'm the class. I'm not very flow-y.

The teacher was as weirded out as me, probably because she was doing the class the whole time a little pissed off that she could have had the morning off if it wasn't for shclubby, not very bendy me. Factor in the fact I paid about $9 for the class and we're looking at a teacher who was basically getting paid bupkus for still teaching a class. She wound up ending the class really early and while I would have preferred a normal class-time, was okay with.

The main reason why I was kind of wiggy about the whole thing, though, is because of Baba Bhatt, from "Seinfeld." See, if the people who run the yoga place don't get people to show up, then they'll have to close down. If I keep on going there, I'll start really liking the classes and I'll start the teachers and I'll start liking the people who go there and that would be bad. Never, never, never get attached to a place of business. It's bad news.

When I was in college, there was some guy who opened up a sausage place in the town we all lived in, the gloriously named Isla Sausage. Because I kind of dug the idea of getting fat, greasy sausages in health-conscious, beach-laden, sunny California, I started going there. The sausage was kind of good but the chili-fries were to die for. It was a small place and never really busy so by going there on a semi-regular basis, I started to know the guy who ran the place. He was from the East Coast and sunk all of his money into moving to California and opening up the sausage place. As I got to know him, I also began to see that he was also a little bit of a loser, one of those guys who always had bad things happen to him. In fact, one of the reasons for the big move to California was in fact because he was trying to get away from something. So now I'm going to the place, getting to know the guy, and feeling sorry for him and the place just ain't happening. Nobody was going there- partly due to bad location and partly due to the fact there wasn't really a crying need for a sausage place in I.V- and I started to feel really bad for the guy. I started dragging friends over there, all of whom liked it and started eating there fairly regularly (those chili fries were goooooood) but it still wasn't enough. The place was dying a slow death. After a month or so, I stopped going there because I just felt so bad for the guy I couldn't deal with it.

And that's what I felt like in that yoga class on Saturday. I don't like it when that happens

You might be wondering, well some of you, just how I spent Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year? Did I get all solemn and reflective and do the fasting thing?

Funny thing about Yom Kippur this year- I had kind of planned to actually do something related to the holiday and was considering going to services Friday night but then I got tickets to the Giants/Dodgers game and, well, there is only a week left in the baseball season and a humdinger of a pennant race going on. So I went to the game. I had also thought about doing the fasting thing but I did go the ballgame and one does drink beer at baseball games. Especially on a Friday night of a pretty good week (any week in which I work at a good job, make good money, and don't get laid off is a good week) and one doesn't think of not eating or not drinking when one is in a celebratory mood. Okay, so I might have been able to play it like I drank but didn't eat but one does need to eat the next morning after drinking due to the inevitable hangover. And I did have a friend visiting from out-of-town and it's not quite so much fun to hang with friends when you're spending all your time on the couch trying not to think about how friggin' hungry you are. So I ate.

And you know? Whatever.

See, the whole purpose of the holiday is to look back and reflect on the past year; to think of things you did wrong and things you could do better (yeah, I know, how Jewish. And people wonder why we're so neurotic) and frankly, I don't want to reflect about last year. The only thing I want to do with last year is completely and totally forget it ever happened. Things are kind of happening now and spending a couple of days looking back at The Unemployed Years Part III: The Unemployment Office Strikes Back is not really want I want to be doing right now.

In other words, I am such a bad Jew. Especially when you consider I wound up spending the day rehooking up my shareware program and downloading songs. For free. And once again it's not like I intended to do that but I had heard that the new U2 song was out there and of course had to download it because I hate it when there's a big new song out there that I can't hear (it's pretty good too- kind of rocking and fun and a throwback to the early stuff, which we're totally down with if a bit weary of the idea of a bunch of 40 year olds trying to sound like a teenage band. Song's not "Beautiful Day" but still much better than pretty much anything being played on the radio). Anyways, so I had to download that song and once I downloaded that realized I should probably download some more and, well, six hours later, I had another hour and a half of songs downloaded. Did I mention I was a bad Jew?

PS- somebody broke into my apartment when I wasn't there and downloaded Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me a River" and Xtina's "Beautiful." The nerve of some people.

PPS- okay, I admit it- it was me! I downloaded those songs! I admit it! And Beyonce too.

7-Foot Crucifix Falls, Kills Woman

Nope, no irony there. None whatsoever.

Now that the Bay Guardian Wank of the Week has gone big-time, I've been a little worried that one day I'll open up the paper and find absolutely nothing to post. The crazy thing is that ever since I've been doing it, I've become so accustomed to the paper that even an essay that compares blogging to ephemeral movies is starting to make sense to me and I have no idea what the hell an ephemeral movie is. Which is why nothing made me happier this morning than to pick up the Bay Guardian and see that it was The Sex Issue.

Now it would make sense that this week's posting be something sex related, especially considering that this week is, as the Bay Guardian< puts it, "the sexiest weekend of the year" due to the Folsom Street Fair (and boy howdy, are they right on that. Having been a few times, I can say there's nothing sexier than old fat guys in bondage gear) but frankly, I fell asleep halfway through the sex-related articles. I tend to do that when reading articles that throws around phrases like "performative in terms of viewer response" and "barometric reading on our societal subconscious." Turned on yet?

So anyways, I'm going with something else this week. It's a review of a dance performance going on at the Yerba Buena Center of the Artsy. Apparently, the choreographer, John Jasperse, is big in France. The title of the piece is "California" which is what it's about. Yeah, I know, pretty original. Now while the writing of the piece isn't particularly on the pretentious tip, what's being described is- call it Pretension by Association:

"Jasperse's newest piece – and Bay Area debut – relays a sense of existential doom by using the state of California as a metaphor for broken dreams. Here, there are no Hollywood endings, and optimism quickly fades to cynicism. From the onset things went wrong: three women entered the stage, boldly ornamented with a hanging metallic-looking canopy … but the houselights remained on, as if due to some mechanical glitch.

Clad in blue mechanic uniforms, the dancers… seemed ready to repair the defects around them. They used leaf blowers to unfurl the canopy and blow it upstage, and later pulled on its strings until the mammoth structure partially collapsed. As California progressed, though, it became obvious the dancers were as broken as the material things they were supposed to fix. Set to Jonathan Bepler's dissonant score, which at various times screeched and halted, the choreography plodded along at a frustratingly slow pace. The dancers rolled on the ground in unison like a group of angst-filled insomniacs and dragged their arms to the floor as if physically unable to get up. During the more intricately choreographed trios and duets, bodies huddled en masse one moment and violently whipped through space the next. Apparently happiness and contentment are just temporary states of being.

When the dancers shed their uniforms to reveal ragged underwear, they appeared more vulnerable, but emotions remained absent. In the end, the music emitted several jarring, clash-and-clang noises between the sounds of a sputtering motor. Leaf blowers were placed atop two supine bodies, while next to them a dancer pulled at the never-ending cord of another blower."

I don't know about you, but I'm going to rush out and see it. You know, just reading about this makes me realize what I always thought was missing in ballet- more leaf-blowers. Yep, I gotta have more leaf-blowers, baby

We, the editors of Hooray For Anything totally apologize for a lack of postings recently. For those of you about to join us, this must kind of like be when Geraldo opened up Al Capone's Vault. And yeah, we got suckered into that one too.

Sorry.

We tried to post stuff, really we did, but between having tons of other things to do and Blogger being all wonky, we got bupkus. Off to bed....

Remember back in the unemployed days when I had that occasional gig as a Spa-Boy? Oh, those were the days. Nothing puffs the ego quite like wearing polyester pants with elastic waste bands and picking up towels left by hot women much younger than you. Well, the spa was attached to a five-star hotel which also includes a five star restaurant. A seriously expensive five star, eighty year old, plush leather seat, restaurant. The kind of place that reeks of old money, fat stogies, and middle-aged women with face lifts. On Friday night, to celebrate the new gig, friends and I went there for dinner. Loved, loved, loved the idea of going back there for dinner. After all, what says American Dream more than from going from one end of the service economy to another?

And I threw down. We all did. Never have I spent so much money on a dinner that didn't involve the potential of getting some. We're talking serious decadence here. We're talking crab crakes, filet mignon, and cherry upside pie a la mode.

It was yum.

The icing on the cake? Gratuitous Keanu sighting at the bar.

For whatever reason, the homeless guy was nowhere to be seen on Saturday. Don't know where he was or what happened to him. His stuff, however, was neatly folded up and left by a light post on the street. Maybe he realized that trying to sleep on Valencia Street on a Saturday Night was probably not the easiest thing to do. Or maybe his kind-of-cool fort that he built on the middle of the sidewalk was actually deemed a bit too much by somebody and the police were brought in. Who knows? Either way, he's back today with the fort fully functional.

I got a spam-mail tonight from Palm Reading and checking out online psychics. And I'm thinking to myself, how the hell are they going to be able to read my palm?


Oh My God, I saw it! I saw #701!

Oy.

Yep, once again, I was a day late, dollar short on a major Barry Bonds home-run, continuing my streak of seeing #501 and #601, as well as #69. I actually thought I had a chance today as my luck's been good of late and the friend who I went with always has good luck. He saw #71.

Oh well.

Not to digress too much into baseball and I do owe this thought to Chuck Klosterman in his duel with the Sports Guy, but it is true that Barry has gotten a bad rap. Dude may occasionally be surly and a jerk but he is, in his own way, keeping it real. As opposed to Sammy Sosa, who everyone loves because he tries so hard to be so gosh-darn likeable, but is really a total whiny prima-donna. Then there's Golden BoyA-Rod who took so much money from the Rangers that they couldn't compete and then whined himself into getting traded because the team couldn't compete. And, finally, I give you Kobe. If you're going to go around bemoaning the fact that athletes are all fake and dumb and say only things like "I'm just going to have to step it up" or "we're just going to have to take it game by game", you can't really go around bashing the one's who aren't. And isn't it all about keeping it real anyways?

I'm walking out my door to work the other day and noticed that the Homeless Guy whose been camping out next to my door has pretty much decided to settle in. He's brought his shopping cart and bags containing whatever possessions he has and put them next to the door (and boy, what a wonderful smell). The stuff is even kind of laid out neatly, like he's trying to achieve some sort of Feng Shui with his encampment. It's like he's playing Monopoly and has decided to put a house down on Charleston Street. Maybe in a week or two I'll walk by and he'll have a barca lounger, electronic TV, and mini-fridge all set up there.

All of this on a major street in a major part of town. Not to mention all of this about half a block away from a Police Station. Yet nobody seems to want to do something about it. Hell, the way this city works is that it's not the homeless guy whose the problem, it's me for having a problem with the homeless guy.

So tonight I went to my first yoga class in over a year. The teacher started off the class by giving some speech about the power of thought and the power of words. Words and thoughts that have a positive vibe are healthy and create positive energy, words and thoughts that have a negative vibe are harmful and create negative energy. To be healthy and to live mindfully, you must involve yourself in positive thoughts.

So with that, I give you, the Bay Guardian Wank of the Week

We actually have two this week because this week as we're going with more of a theme. One of the writers is having a serious Japanese Jones and wrote up reviews of both some an exhibit by some Japanese sculptor and an obscure Japanese art-flick that I'm sure was nothing more than an obscure Japanese art-flick even in Japan (thus making the writer that much cooler for seeing it- it's obscure in two countries).

Here's the money quote from the story about the Sculpture Exhibit, an exhibit that pretty much consists of Dolls With Attitudes

"What are these critters so angry about? What are they rebelling against? What have you got? Some observers might point to Nara's (the sculptor) guilty recollections of abandoning his dog as a child. Still others reach for Nara's musical inspirations – the soundtrack to his isolated days as a latchkey kid in northern Japan, one that today consists of new and old punk including NOFX, Sleater-Kinney, the Ramones, Green Day, Nirvana, the Clash, Sum 41, and the White Stripes. Selections by Eminem, Neil Young, and Gram Parsons stick out as musical aberrations, though like the sketched girls who yelp "Fuck!," they all embody an attitude that goes back beyond punk and rock 'n' roll to rage against a Japanese homeland that pounds down every nail that stands up and delicately forbids pubic hair from even the most ultraviolent and outrageous manga or hentai (anime porn)."

Thank you for listing his CD collection- Neil Young often makes me think of anime.

And here's the one about the obscure art-flick :

"RINGU RATTLED YOUR nerves, Ichi the Killer shot your equilibrium to hell, and Battle Royale declared war on your psyche. Now the trauma has faded, and you have to ask, "Where have all the Japanese cinematic scares gone?" The answer: the dis-ease can clearly, subtly be found in the lives of young Japanese women struggling for defined identities amid fluctuating gender roles, designer fashion, and the protracted recession of the past decade."

Love that "dis-ease" bit. And boy does that sound like a scary movie.

Now I know what you're saying- what about that whole "positive thought" bit? Shouldn't I be living more mindfully? Sure. But the way I see it, tomorrow's the start of the High Holy Days so all I have to do is fast next week and I'm golden.

There's somebody I work with who I'm pretty sure is Jewish. And not only Jewish, but possibly Israeli. I can tell because I have a pretty good sense of Jaydar. That and the fact that his first name is Hebrew.

Because I like finding knowing who the fellow Hebes are, I tried to think of a way to know for sure. You can't, after all, just go up to somebody and say "hey, are you Jewish?" That would be bad. Turns out that the guy is taking the next three days off, which also happens to be Rosh Hashanah, and so I had my opening.

Today at work, having yet more Birthday Cake, I started asking him where he was going. Yep, just as I thought, he was headed home (Houston) to be with his family for Rosh Hashanah. So I started dropping hints to him that I was Jewish too. Like letting slip I knew when Rosh Hashanah is or that Yom Kippur is on a Saturday (nothing says weekend, by the way, like atoning for your sins. Which makes sense in a way because it's the weekend when one does most of their sinning). He didn't pick up on it. Didn't pick up on it all. In fact, when I mentioned something, he went into some long explanation of the thing as if I didn't know anything at all, like how Yom Kippur is eight days after Rosh Hashanah or that the holiday starts on sundown. Once again, I thought up a way to drop an even bigger hint but decided to let it lie for now. Maybe drop a "L'shana Tovah" on him when I leave. Or ask him if he's working on the Friday before Yom Kippur.

But I couldn't pull the trigger. Because just as I was thinking up ways of letting him know I was Jewish, I kept on getting this mental image of the guy on the Philly Season of "The Real World," the one who spent the entire premiere episode trying to figure out ways of telling each of his roommates that he was gay. So I dropped it.

For various reasons, I haven't really been paying that much attention to the news lately (serenity now…serenity now…) but I delved enough into it to discover that the big issue facing us right now apparently is kerning, leading and typography.

The question I have to ask is this- have we lost our marbles?

Oh, and one more question-

Ashlee Simpson- are we even trying anymore?

My mother is just not with it technology-wise. The main problem this causes is that she doesn't check her e-mail regularly. First, she has AOL, which as we all know sucks. Second, she belongs to several list-serves and hasn't figured out to get the messages in digest forms as opposed to plain old e-mail form so as a result she gets bombarded with e-mails. Throw in a really bad dial-up connection (since corrected) and so she finds herself drowning in e-mail. With all that e-mail backing up, she gets anxious to check her e-mail and so rarely does.

For those of us who check e-mail every five minutes and go into heart palpitations whenever we can't, this is craziness. It's not just a matter of not being able to understand the lack of desire to check e-mail (there are people out there who are just that way), but it's how hard it is to communicate. Send e-mails about the latest news and it takes her weeks to get it. Can't make plans because it'll be too late for her to get to them. The rest of my family will have entire conversations about stuff she's involved in and she won't get any of it.

How are we supposed to function as a family if she won't keep up with what's going on? How are we supposed to do anything? What am I supposed to do, call her?

Totally Random, Completely Totally Awful Song that Was Stuck in My Head Today:

Color Me Bad's "I Wanna Sex You Up" (thanks shuttle driver). I-yuck. Add in mental images of Donna Martin and David Silver dancing along to that song, double I-yick (by the way, I've been noticing in blog-land that when some dumb-ass actress gets a really bad boob job, the kind of boob job where the boobs go to the sides leaving a big, huge canyon in front, it's called either "the Tori Spelling" or "Getting a Tori Spelling").

Just for the hell of it, here's a few links-

-This one's been going around everywhere (or, as they say in Blogland, it's a meme) but it's still brilliant: Bush's TV Commercials If He Were Running Against Jesus.

-Part of me thinks this is one of the most tasteless, awful, offensive things I have ever seen. Another part of me thinks it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen. And yeah, I'd rock the t-shirt: Christ-Killer.com- The Fashion of the Christ

Finally, I give you this....

-The Greatest Web Site Ever

Overheard at a post-Burning Man party (and yeah, I went to one- don't ask).

"So, how was your re-entry?"
"Pretty rough. How was your re-entry?"
"Ugh, I hate coming back to reality."
"I got the videos of it."
"Really?"
"Yep. I'm going to stream it and put it online in a few days."
"Cool."

Stupid, Burners.

PS- Dear Mr. Cab Driver- If you really want to be a cab driver, it might help if you actually learned your way around the city. Or, at least, realized that if you're going from 9th & Folsom to 21st & Bryant and the cab is going from 9th street to 8th street to 7th street you might be going in the wrong direction. Oh, and if the customer says 21st and Bryant, they do not mean 22nd and Bryant. Or 23rd and Bryant. They mean 21st.

I kind of feel guilty for my friend puking outside the door of the cab when you finally dropped us off, but all things considering, I kind of don't. In fact, I kind of wished she had puked in the cab instead of outside the door just because it would have been your own damn fault for not knowing how to fricking get around the city.

So the homeless guy who was camped out next to my apartment all last weekend? Well, he wasn't there during the week so I thought he was gone. This weekend? He's back. Was he there the whole week and I just missed him due to not being home a lot or did he leave and come back? And if he left and came back, does that mean that the little spot next to my apartment is where he "weekends?" Is it his version of the Hamptons?

I also went shopping for new sneakers today. I'm slightly embarassed to admit this, but I've been buying my shoes at PayLess for awhile (darn unemployment) which is why I now know that Shaq has some sort of deal with PayLess to sell his brand of shoes. While this may be a wise business decision (more people probably buy shoes at PayLess than, say, Foot Locker) but I can't but help wonder it's really a smart way to show his bona fides. After all, having your brand of shoes, the ultimate of ultimates in the NBA, is all about the expensive, super-gaudy, bling bling shoes and how bling bling can your brand of shoe be if it's at PayLess? Let's put it another way- I'm pretty sure no kid has been killed so someone can take their PayLess shoe. And isn't that the ultimate honor if you're a hoops star, that somebody killed somebody else just so they could wear your shoe?

The thing is, though, that they're actually pretty decent looking shoes. The pair I was interested in were just the way I like 'em- solid black and as plain as plain can be. As much as I wanted to get them, though, I wasn't sure if I wanted to get a Shaq shoe. Although I fall more in the Shaq side of the great Shaq vs. Kobe debate, which, as we all know, is the great question of our time, I still wasn't sure that I wanted to announce that to the world. It's a big step. After all, buying somebody's brand of shoe is kind of like wearing a band t-shirt and wearing a band t-shirt isn't just wearing a t-shirt, it's making a statement as to who we are. I may like the Franz Ferdinand song, for instance, but I'm sure as hell not going to wear their t-shirt because I'm not a Franz Ferdinand kind of guy. And that's what owning a Shaq shoe would be mean.

On top of that, the shoe does have the Shaq logo (that of somebody dunking a basketball) predominately displayed on the side of the shoe. The logo's kind of small, which is kind of nice, but considering the rest of the shoe is all black, it still sticks out. Besides ruining the all-blackness of the shoe, I just don't like logos. I've long had an anti-Nike ban going on that isn't really based on the politics of Nike, but just the obsequiousness of the logo.

All of which means that as much as I liked the shoe, buying it would have been very un-me. On the other hand, they were on sale. So I bought them.

Went to Wal-Mart today to buy, shall we say, new work supplies (hello Mr. Coffee and hello coffee thermos!). Remember the really old, electronic football games from probably the 80's (or hell, maybe even the 70's) in which the field is basically a bunch of dashes and some of the dashes are you and some are the computer's and the object is to move your dashes downfield by avoiding the other team's dashes? Well, they had it at Wal Mart. And did I buy it? Hell yeah.

Guess what I'm doing all afternoon…..

PS- naturally, the Mr. Coffee Coffee maker, which advertises a super long, super adjustable chord, also comes with a huge knot and so the super-long, super-adjustable chord is neither

Totally Random, Not Quite As Sucky as I Used to Admit Song That Was Stuck in My Head Yesterday

Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time."

This week's Bay Guardian Wank of the Week isn't as much something that's totally pretentious as it is a train-wreck of a sentence. Here's the first sentence of an article praising a local band that I've never heard of, Tartufi:

"In a world – or at least a city – of costume bands, nightmare-streaked new wave, and sweaty, naked, sexually assaultive backup dancers, the rock 'n' roll trio known as Tartufi stand up for certain classic traditions, like verse-chorus-verse, infectious melodies, comprehensible lyrics that aren't afraid to stomp on your heart a bit, and the kind of anthemic songs that make a girl want to start a band, leave town on a long road trip, or find someone to make out with outside the club; the kind it would be wrong not to accompany on vocals when alone in one's boudoir. "

For those scoring at home, that's a ninety-nine word sentence. Did the copy editor fall asleep?

Maybe it's because I'm new to the whole Big-Ass Tech Company thing but I just discovered today that Super-Mondo Corporation outsources their IT Department. This means that there's no slightly overweight, cigarette smoking, bitter Tech Geek to help fix a computer when it needs fixing. Instead, you get Sanjay from Bangalore. Kind of ironic considering it's a High Tech company.

Today I finally got an e-mail account, but naturally I had problems getting my e-mail. So I had to call the Help Line. I had to spend around an hour waiting for somebody to pick up my call, being bombarded by ads and bad "Matrix" sounding muzak the whole way. For calling for Tech Support in the company I work for. When I finally got somebody, I got somebody whose English, shall we say, wasn't so great. Not that she was that bad, but having somebody try to explain things while over the phone is hard enough, much harder if they have to try and spell everything out for you ("that's A as in 'Apple' and B as in 'Boy'….). And it's a lot, lot harder if they don't ask what type of computer you have and spend the first ten minutes assuming you have a PC (I have a Mac). She kept on telling me to go click on the "Start" button and it took me about ten minutes before I figured out the reason I couldn't find a damn "Start" button is because Mac's don't have no damn "Start" button.

PS- Turns out nobody in India knows how to fix a Mac. Everytime I tell them that, they start getting panicked and start pulling things out of their asses.

Totally Random, Kind-of-Sucky Song That was Stuck in my Head Yesterday-
Haircut 100's "Love Plus One" (thanks, VH-1)

Totally Random, Kind-of-Sucky Song That was Stuck in my Head on Sunday-
John Denver's "Country Road"

Totally Random, Not-So-Sucky Song That's Stuck in My Head This Morning-
Terror Squad "Lean Back"

The entire weekend there's been this homeless guy sleeping pretty much right by the door to my apartment complex. Morning, noon, and night, in temperatures reaching the high 90's, he's been there, sleeping, with what little stuff he has strewn all about him. It's like he just discovered this part of the street as his own and just decided that's where he was going to sleep. He could have gotten up and walked around, maybe bought some smack or begged for some change, but everytime I walked by, he was there, fast asleep. All this in a heavily trafficked area on a heavily trafficked street. Not to mention half a block away from a police station.

Not to get into the politics of homelessness, but am I the only one who thinks there's something wrong about this? Not in the "homelessness is a serious issue and it says a lot about our country that there's people living on the streets kind of way" but more in the "this guy's been sleeping on the street for three days and nobody seems to notice?" kind of way. I felt like just standing over him, right in the middle of all the street traffic and yelling: "hey, there's a guy sleeping on this street and he's been here for days." Well, not that I would have, but hopefully you get my point.

Yesterday I had a draft for another Fantasy Football League. What can I say, I'se a love me some fantasy football. Plus, I figure that because my other league, the one I've been in for years, is pretty gosh-darn tough, I should be able to use what I've learned to kick some major butt on the chumps who allowed me to play for them.

Once again, in signing up for a league, I had to give my team a name, always a big decision. The name, after all, is who I am and who I want to represent. Now, both my my other fantasy football team and fantasy baseball team have the same team name- the clever and erudite "Bite Me." What can I say, I must have been in a crabby mood when I chose it (I know, moi? Crabby?). Actually, considering these leagues are usually all men, you need to come up with some sort of strong and aggressive, yet imminently stupid name. Thus Bite me. After all, I gotta show my masculine bona fides.

For this league, I wanted to mix things up, to change things around. So I searched my mind to come up with another name and came up with what I thought was a brilliant name- "The People's Front of Judea." Brilliant name, right? It sounds kind of aggressive and macho yet is totally silly and a way cool pop culture allusion. Who doesn't love the whole "People's Front of Judea/Judean People's Front" thing? Just thinking about it brings a smile to my face. Everyone in the league will fall down in hysterics just hearing my name.

Except nobody knew the allusion. Well, one guy did, but nobody else. And nothing bombs bigger than a supposedly hip and wanna-be funny pop cultural allusion that nobody gets. Even worse is having to try and explain to all these dudes, all of whom I had never met before, where the allusion comes from. Because as we all know, nothing says "cool" and "dude-like" like Monty Python allusions.

The best part? When I told somebody what the name was, they said "is that some kind of Star Trek thing?" Is there any way of answering that without coming off like a big, huge dork?

Yes, it's a little late, but here comes (drum roll please…..) the Bay Guardian Wank of the Week.

It's a little hard to believe that despite the presence of six (six!) reviews of the Vincent Gallo "hey, I got Chloe to blow me" flick, the Wank of the Week has nothing to do with "The Brown Bunny." Talking bunnies, on the other hand….

Yep, the Wank of the Week comes from us from one of the two reviews of "Donnie Darko" a movie which I regrettably have to admit to not getting and not particularly liking. I want to like it, but for some reason I don't. Which makes me feel like a dolt because I'm just not a cinéaste enough to see that the movie:

"…maintained a great deal of dignity while being cuttingly satirical and viscerally hip. It suggested everything and divulged nothing. It captured, but didn't cage, its ambiguous reveries on the magic of first love, the realization of mortality, the awakening of sexual identity, and the power struggles inherent in adolescents assuming adult responsibilities. It commanded a palatable sense of silence and the unspoken while blending together a soundscape that was at once mournful, pointedly nostalgic, and lushly romantic. Donnie Darko was a cinéaste's intoxicating dream: pure and fragile poetry that became more potent with each viewing, profound because its mysteries were unanswered and therefore universal."

I feel so stupid.

Because a friend burned a copy of the "Garden State Soundtrack" for me (thanks Bloomer), we thought it would be cool to listen to it during the long commute to the new job. So I grabbed my CD Walkman and brought it with me to work Problem, though. CD Walkman's are so late 90's- everyone who is somebody these days has an iPod. Especially when you work for a high-tech company. In other words, my CD Walkman made me look like a total dork. It reminded me of when I showed up to school wearing my Miami Vice outfit (shiny jacket, colored t-shirt, no shaving, and no socks) in '86 when everyone had so totally moved onto something else.

Today was departmental out-to-lunch day. Yay! We love free lunches at semi-expensive chain restaurants. Actually, I've been kind of enjoying these big lunch things only because I've started to notice how weird they can be. After all, you're taking a whole bunch of people who mainly only interact in a work environment out of the work environment. What happens is a lot of people sitting there looking around, with nothing to say to anyone else. Depending on who you sit with and how well you like you're co-workers, those out-to-lunch things can be kind of awkward.

And speaking of whose sitting next to you, the lunch thing is always fun because of the little element of High School-ness that enters into it. What I mean by that is that the biggest thing at these lunches is who sits where and who rides with whom. Especially if you're in week two of your employment. Everybody wants to sit with the cool work kids and nobody wants to sit the uncool, even creepy, work kids. And there's always one or two of the creepy variety in every work environment.

In my office, there's one woman there in her 50's so she stands out because everyone else in the department is either in there 20's or 30's. She's also new to her position and still kind of feeling her way in a position that's really hard to do if you don't know you're way around (actually, it's doing what I do). In other words, she's the uncool kid. The way uncool kid. All day before lunch I'd be thinking to myself "you're gonna get stuck with her…you're gonna get stuck with her" because the newbies always get stuck with the uncool kids. It's in every teen flick ever made. Even Lindsey Lohan got stuck with the uncool kids in "Mean Girls." So I was going to make an effort not to get stuck with riding over to the restaurant and not getting stuck sitting with her at the end of the table.

Naturally, I got a ride with her and got stuck at the end of the table with her.

And all you people out there who think I'm awful for writing this can't tell me that when they go out for lunch like that with the whole department, you really don't mind sitting with Sanjay the Engineer and the sexually ambiguous guy in his mid-40's who still lives with his mother.