Two notes form the weekend-

-I was walking down 16th street wearing my baggy Giants sweatshirt. I like baggy things. Harlan and I pass a homeless guy and the guy actually said "I like your sweatshirt. It looks good on someone as big as you."

Yes, some homeless guy just called me fat.

-Walking down 17th street (or was it 18th street?), Harlan say a sign that said, and I quote: Put Your Trust in "Jesus"-- just like that, with the quotes around "Jesus." As she pointed out, doesn't putting something in quotation marks make it ironic? Like they're saying Jesus with air quotes around it. So, was it just a weird sign put up by somebody not clued in the ways of irony or was the irony intended? It's so hard to tell in the Mission.

I had one of those hour and a half long interviews today. I hate those-- they're an ordeal. By the end, I couldn't speak, my throat hurt, and I had long since passed the point of going from being on-topic and sharp to a blabbering, incoherent idiot.

Ick

You know you're in a weird mood when you hear "Where the Streets Have No Name" on the radio and the line "blown by the wind" makes you giggle


Being at the corner of 22nd of Valencia, we have determined that Boogaloos is the Official Brunch Place of Hipsters. In fact, I think it could be deteremined that it has one of the highest HPSF in the Mission (that is, of course, Hipsters Per Square Foot), something that we noticed the last time we were there and what looked like a 70's rock band, with groupies, showed up for breakfast.

Today's brunch was no exception. In fact, it was pretty hipsterific-- so much so we had a contest (well, kind of) about which Hipster was the most tragic of the bunch.

So let's meet our three candidates-
1)The bus boy with expensive and well pressed black jeans, dangling key chain out of the back pocket (natch), and some sort of comic strip panel sewed onto one of his back pockets. His shirt? Lumberjack, red and black checkered flannel shirt. To top it off, he not only had a trucker hat, but the tip of the hat was pulled upwards. We also couldn't tell, but we think he had a mullet burried underneath the oh-so-2002 trucker hat.

2)The guy in a sideways baseball hat (can't remember if it was trucker or not), cut off jeans, an Iron Maiden t-shirt, and a handlebar moustache. But what made him especially awesome was that he was covered everywhere in tattoos, even going so far as to having a tear drop tattoo under his left eye. For those who don't know, that's the gangsta symbol for doing time in prison. This despite the fact that it was pretty apparent, that in the words of Beavis to Butthead, "you've never been to Compton." We wanted to kidnap the dude and drop him off in the Bayview.

3)Early thirtysomething girl waiting outside with a Shelley Duvall-like body. She wore platform sneakers that were at least six inches high, white knicker pants that went down to her knees and white stockings that met up with the bottom of her knicker pants. She sported a maroon vest sweater and as a topper, a tie. Naturally, she also wore big sunglasses.

And our winner?

The Bus Boy! Why? Because the dude was so committed to his hipsterness that he wore his hipster costume to work. I mean, he was walking around filling people's coffee mugs while still looking like he had just been picked up from the bus station, such was his commitment to coolness.

Bravo, dude, bravo and well played.

Jesus frickin' Christ, Led Zeppelin showing up on iTunes might just be the best thing ever.

Last night, Super Mondo Corp had their big trade show party. And by big, I mean big. Like Cow Palace and parking lot big. Playing that night as entertainment was Lenny Kravitz, Steve Nicks, and Billy Joel, who headlined.

Now, at one point, Prince was going to play. While he was supposed to play, some sort of fight broke out between somebody and one week Prince would headline, the next week Joel. Now this seemed kind of crazy to me because while Joel is deserving of some respect, we're talking about Prince. I guess it was a generational thing with the older execs thinking Joel is their cup of tea while anyone young enough to see "Purple Rain" thinking that nobody, but nobody gets higher billing then the Purple One. And seriously, would you rather watch Joel tinkling on a piano or Prince doing some sort of thirty minute funk jam. I'm not sure, but I wondered if they would both play the main stage and I'm thinking does Joel really think Prince should open for him? And I'm not talking about in terms of who is a bigger star, but I'm talking about the fact nobody can really top prince.

But whatevs-- Prince did not play anyways.

Billy Joel did get the headline and played the Palace central. While I think playing the corporate party circuit is probably a humiliating venture, Joel did manage to fill the place so I'm thinking it's in a way, the biggest audience he's played in front of years. While I'm not a fan (I'm kind of apathetic-- I don't hate him but don't really like him but think he's kind of talented anyways), he did put on a good show, except....

To play with the whole idea of playing in San Francisco, he did a few minutes of "Somebody to Love" and, then, God help us "Purple Haze."

I left the arena immediately in protest.

You know how the old saying was that there's a little Elvis in everyone. Well, you could say the same about Hendrix and there is no Hendrix at all in Billy Joel. Not even close. I heard from someone that they played a few snippets of "Highway to Hell" and, dear God, there is no AC/DC is Billy Joel at all. Ever and never.

So Harlan and I checked out some Stevie. She was actually pretty good-- her voice was phenomenal. She played all the big Fleetwood Mac songs (with Mick Fleetwood on the drums), Dave Mathews' "Crash" (?) and a few solo hits. Towards the end, there was a miny drum solo, then a beat kicked in, the guitarist started wailing, and then out came the recognizable groove to "Edge of Seventeen."

Yes, I was about to hear Ms. Nicks herself sing about the White Dove who sings a song sings a song ...and Sounds like she's singing... whoo...whoo...whoo. She wailed too.

Now I've seen a lot of bands. I've seen a lot of great bands playing a lot of great songs. I've also seen a lot of completely random bands doing randomm songs (the Hooters anyone? Madness?) but that had to be one of the most random moments of my musical life, the fact that I can say I have now seen Steve Nicks sing "Edge of Seventeen."

Top that.

See, the thing is that when I first started listening to rock radio, Steve was HUGE. Her first solo album had come out and every half an hour, the station (WYSP, represent) would either play "Stop Draggin' My Heart Around" (an underrated gem if ever there was), "Leather and Lace," and, yes, "Seventeen." All I needed was Tom Petty himself to hop onstage to sing "Stop Draggin" and my inner twelve year old would have been happy.

And all thanks to Super Mondo Corporation.

In the past week/week and a half

-My DVR went kablooie and I went from being at around 40% capacity to 98%, thus losing all of my recordings and the thrill of spending at least in hour total of time dealing with Comcast

-I've been eagerly awaiting a book from Amazon, the first in the Left Behind series (so stoked) and got it, only to discover that they sent me the wrong book-- a book about Windows Office '97.

-Had my work email go down on one of the busiest days I've had in months

-Lost my ATM card

-The hot water in my apartment went bye-bye late Thursday night and continued that way until today

-Lost power sometime around 5:30 Saturday and was out of power until, again, God knows when as I camped out elsewhere. All of which means, I was without power and hot water for most of the weekend, full on primitive as it were. It also means that tonight, I am spending my time resetting clocks and throwing food out of the fridge.

Oh, and what does one do when there's no power and it's starting to get dark and the person you can camp out with isn't home yet? Watch downloaded shows on your laptop. Thank God for Apple.

Finally, I lost both of my fantasy football games this weekend, thus eliminating me from the playoffs in both of my leagues. In other words, this was one sucky week.

Lately, I've been discovering that I'm moving away from listening to Live 105 and switching more and more to KFOG. This concerns me.

For years, I've always thought of KFOG as the radio station listened to by either white-bred Yuppies or old, aging baby boomers still holding onto the rock. I did not want to be in either category so while I respected the station for it's enormously huge catalogue and variety of songs, I didn't want to be a Foghead. Also, they tend to play either Bonnie Rait or Robert Cray like every hour and I cannot abide by either of them.

But now, I'm starting to creep more and more to KFOG on my radio dial. Now some of it is because I once again find myself hating Live 105's playlist. They tend to play over and over "classic alt-rock" from the previous decade that I've heard already over and over again because I was actually around in the previous decade and all those just craptastic "emo" bands that are out there. Thankfully, they tend to go light on Fall Out Boy, but there's still way too many of those simliar, carbon copy bands out there. So while I like the fact they tend to play music that I might love (like the mighty Wolfmother), those moments come few and far between.

The main thing, however, is that I'm starting to move farther and farther away from wanting, for lack of a better word, "to rock." I'm starting to dig mid-tempo songs more than fast songs, acoustic treatmens rather than overfed electric guitars and kinda digging pretty over raw.

In other words, after years and years of trying to hold true to some sort of edge, I am slowly losing my edge. Is it almost being 40? The girlfriend? My hatred of emo bands? I don't know. All I can say is I'm getting a little concerned here.

Oh, KFOG may have a wide variety of songs and almost impecable taste, but they still, occasionally, bust out 4 Non-Blonde's "What Goes On" and this is absolutely INEXCUSABLE. There is no reason to ever, ever, every play this song. Ever. It's so awful it doesn't stand up as ironically fun due to it's pure suckiness and the yodeling over-and over again of the chorus.

Why is it that when you call a lot of utility companies or any type of service (credit cards, insurance, etc) they ask you to entire all your information over the phone and then, as soon as somebody gets on the line, asks you all the information you just entered?

I have an interview on Thursday and the thing is I've done so many job interviews and the marketing biz here in SF is so incestuous, I'm pretty sure I've already interviewed with this person, I'm just not sure where. I'm not sure that's a good thing-- I've already made my first impression.

The other thing is the job listing is like two page longs and details a whole lot of work that the job requires and as I read it, I couldn't help but think that the job involves a lot of work.

I'm still not sure whether or not that's a good thing.

Today, at brunch, we sat down next to a couple who were obviously either on a first date or an early date. Not sure how it went. This reminds me, however, of a couple who were obviously on a first date that we sat next two a few months ago. Since we were sitting pretty much within a few feet of them, Harlan and I couldn't do anything but listen to the conservation. How could you not?

Anyways, they both worked in some capacity at a hospital, so they had that in common, but it was pretty obvious that it was a mismatch. While the girl looked obviously like a smart, intelligent, capable professional, you could tell she had a bit of a fun, party girl buried down underneath. The guy, however, was one of those bearded, horn-rimmed wearing glasses hipsters who took himself way too seriously. At one point, she started talking about reading US Weekly and his response was "well, we all have our guilty pleasures."

I'm pretty sure that at that point, if it didn't happen then, but the girl pretty much decided in her head that there was no way in hell that anything was going to come out of it.

What a ponce.

And speaking of over-hearing things, we were at Blondies a week ago (don't laugh, when it's mellow and you get a seat outside, it's quite a nice little bar with yummy and incredibly toxic drinks) some girl dressed like Wonder Woman (it was Halloween weekend, and no, she didn't quite fit into the costume) was loudly gabbing on a cell phone to a friend when we swear we heard her say about a friend "that was before she Britney Spearsed her life."

Awesome. She, however, was not as she gabbed and gabbed loudly nearby. In response, Harlan's cousin made sure to blow his cigarette smoke in her direction to chase her way.

Here's a sign I want to make for the next peace march: "What do we want? Apathy! When do we want it? Eh...whenever."

I have become a huge fan of those History Channel documentaries. No, not the endless amount of WWII documentaries, the ones about some historical thing in the past that involves lots of re-enacments. They're interesting yet cheesy, informative yet kind of silly. So far, the one I loved the most was on the Plague. It was actually pretty good.

The thing that fascinates me about them is the actors they get to portray "historical" figures. Are they actors so at the bottom of the acting rung that the only gig they can get is "Plague Victim #3" Or maybe they're just a huge collection of extras. And if so, do they keep on using the same ones so that somebodies resume reads like "Knight Templar #2, King Richard II, Bishop of Lyon."

I saw one on the Anti-Chris the other day, which wasn't very good, but they had this one guy who played the anti-christ the whole way through, complete with oh-so-typical eye tricks to make him look evil. Imagine that poor actor, all stoked because he got a role as the Anti-Christ in a History Channel Doc.

I've also noticed that other channels are getting into the mix, like Doc.TV. Except they don't have the History Channel's budget so God only knows who they use as actors. They must be the one's who are cheaper than the one's for the History Channel.

Oh, I was so inspired by the documentary on the Anti-Christ that I went online and purchased the first "Left Behind" book, a book I've always wanted to read for sheer laugh value. Best part of the purchase is that I bought a used copy for a whopping one cent. And they say pennies can't get you anything these days. In fact, the whole thing costs more just to ship so I spent a well-spent four books to buy this book.

A few weeks ago, Harlan and I went to see the Shins. What I think of the Shins is neither here nor there (more there than here, actually-- it wasn't my idea to go to the show). On the way over, I decided to play one of my favorite pre-show contests "Name Your Fellow Concert Goers."

See, the thing works like this-- you look around BART at who else is on the train and figure out if they're going to the same concert you are. The totally stoned black kids sitting around behind us? Definately not. Stoned skater boys hanging out by the doors. Nope. Tall guy wearing a button down short sleeve shirt with thrift store jacket and wearing big, horn rimmed glasses? Definately.

Coming back from the show, however, we saw some guy wearing a pink John Deer Tractor Trucker Hat. Now, first of all, I thought the whole trucker hat was mercifully over. But what the hell was up with a pink John Deer hat? I mean, on the one hand, wearing a John Deer trucker hat is about as ironic as it gets-- urban hipster rocking the hat of midwestern farm boy. But pink? Is that a play on the masculinity of John Deer by feminizing it and in that case, does that make the hat doubly ironic? But can you be ironic on something already ironic? Can you do that? Doesn't two bits of irony make a positive instead of a negative?

Anyways, the whole thing was LAME.

Oh, and as for the Shins, they made me think of that story in last week's New Yorker written by the dude who thinks indie-rock is too white. Or, at least, don't have any swing or any dint of rockingness to them. Which is my complaint with a large number of bands out there. The Shins have no swing to them. Or anything to them. At some point, a few people started to actually mosh and my first reaction was "Really? To the Shins?"

Of course, I'm madly in love with Radiohead, especially the totaly white and not-rocking "In Rainbows" but if anyone's seen them live, you know there's a little Prince buried deep in Thom Yorke's soul.

And away we go...

I just found out I didn't get a job I interviewed for last week. Not that I expected to get it, mainly because I realized halfway through the interview that I went one way to get the job, only to find out I needed to go another way to get the job. What I mean is that there's a certain amount of "spin" you need to do to get a job and I used the wrong spin.

The thing is that in retrospect, the job was almost exactly what I was looking for. It was beautiful, perfect, ideal. The problem, though, was that I didn't really know that until haflway through the job interview. Because they never really let on to what the job was. Sure there was a job description, one that I probably didn't read as carefully as I should have, but most job descriptions are kind of generic and bland and a bunch of buzzwords. The job had a lot of specifity to it that didn't get mentioned in the description.

But what happened is the interview started with the usual shifty, weasely HR person who basically went through my resume and wanted me to talk about all of my job experience. At no point did he actually say "well, this job is to...blah...blah...blah..." (one job I recently interviewed for actually let off with people drawing me diagrams of what the job would be like) so I bs'ed in the way I thought I needed to BS. It wasn't until the interview was over with the HR guy and I got a chance to kind of guess what the job was did I realize I BSed the wrong thing.

Enter the editor. She actually tells me what the job is and how it works and what I'm supposed to do. She even brings up a couple of things that definately fit right up my alley but, of course, I didn't know this because the HR person didn't bring any of this up. And it's too late for me to backtrack-- the damage was done.

Now the thing is the job might not have been perfect. It could have been for less money than I wanted and it was a bit of a commute and I could have hated it. But, of course, I'll never know. At this point, the job is the shiny, perfect, wonderful job that got away.

And since like job hunting is like dating, it's like this. Every once in awhile, you go out with somebody who just in the first date is awesome and that you'd make a great date. Halfway through, you're thinking "I like this girl. A lot." But then something happens-- bad timing, an inappropiate joke, an embarassing attempt at closing-- something, anything. And she might not have been the one, she might have been crazy psycho or still pining for her ex-girlfriend, or still trying to beat that nasty crystal meth habit, but you'll never get the chance to find all that stuff out.

After all these years, I have finally come upon my million dollar internet idea, involing iTunes and the Ipod. So, if anyone knows or works with Steve Jobs, please pass along this idea.

Anyways, the idea is based on the fact that one of the great things about iTunes is the ability to download all those guilty pleasure songs you have. The reason, of course, is that because most of your listening is done in private so the only person who hears those guilty pleasures are you. The problem is that sometimes you have friends over who are listening to your music or you have your iPod cranked in the car while you drive. What this means is that every once in awhile, those super-embarassing songs occasionally pop up. While we won't admit to which guilty pleasure song we have, we will have to admit that we have leaved over our coffee table and reached our computer in seconds flat to change a song which would bring endless amounts of hell from friends.

So my idea is for Apple to create some sort of way of hiding all those guilty pleasures. Say creating some sort of code or space on your iTunes where you can put all of your guilty pleasures. When you're alone, you punch in a code and those songs get added to your collection. But when you have the possibility of other people listening to your music collection, you punch another code, or put them somewhere, where those songs will never, ever be played. And not only that, they disappear from your music directory so if somebody were to go through your music list, they will never see those songs.

See-- it's brilliant.

So the question to be asked is why am I blogging again. Some of it is because I've stepped back a bit from SFist and am feeling the need to write again. Once you start writing and opening that part of your soul, it's hard to stop it from coming out. And there's another thing-- I'm looking for a job once again. Which means, dear readers reader, it's Job Hunting Time and so, the blogging fun begins.

The main reason is because of my stupid contract situation at Oracle. After being a contractor there for over three years, they have suddenly maintained that all of the contractors have to go bye-bye due to federal rules. While some contractors have complained about their status, thus the rule, most of the contractors at Oracle do not complain. I've had a pretty sweet set up for the past three years, maybe too much so as I admit to have gone way past fat and lazy these past four years. And considering my previous years, fat and lazy is a good thing.

I now have basically five months to get a job or else fall into the Hell that is Unemployment. I do not want to ever, ever, ever be unemployed again for obvious reasons (see every post written on this blog over the years). I only want to be unemployed when I retire which should be, like, never all things considering (due to my financial situation brought on by years of unemployment, I fully expect to be a greeter at Wal Mart when I'm 70). Sometimes that keeps up all night, the thought of running out of money while the highlight of my day is watching "Charmed" reruns in the morning. And sometimes I think how cool it'll be too actually get a new job, an actual job with responsibility and some amount of power, something I've probably earned and something I'm probably due (but not too much responsibility-- I've actually refused to send in resumes for any jobs that mention "managing teams," "work on budgets," or "come up with proposals.")

So there you have it-- it's time to look for a job. And you know how much I love doing that.

If ever there was a reason to contemplate the ridiculousness of those super-huge SUV/trucks that dominate the world, consider my parking garage. Around the corner from me, down a really narrow alleyway, is a parking garage where I park my car. Because it's stuck in a tiny, congested part of the urban world, the parking garage is on the small-side with cars jammed here there and everywhere. I'm not sure, but for the most part, I think they actually shrink the sizes of the parking spots to accomodate all the cars that park there. Some of the cars that are in there, like mine, are for monthly parkers. Others are overspill from the main part of the garage, the one that's set up for people coming into the Mission (mainly I'm guessing from the outlands of outside San Francisco) and park there at night, mainly on the weekends.

Now the thing is it's a tiny parking garage in a tiny, narrow alleyway but the cars that I mainly see in the garage and in the alleyway are those huge, dinosaur-like SUV/trucks. So, when I take Ralphie (my beloved and well loved '94 honda) onto the alleyway to park, I often have to actually go onto the sidewalk to have enough room to move my car around the behomoths. Then, in the parking garage I have to squeeze Ralphie into already tight spaces in between those cars and surprisingly enough (I'm being ironical here), most of the people who drive those big-ass cars are also lousy parkers and don't seem to care at all that a small portion of their car is actually in another person's spot.

Now the thing is that this is all in a city. Cities are tight and condense and not built for big-ass cars. Yet, all I constantly have to deal with those ridiculous, behomoths that don't friggin fit.

I hate those cars.

You know what I hate? When you're having one of those work/shooting the shit talks with people at work and right in the middle of it, you get the urge to go. You know, the one that says "you must go now," especially if it could possibly involve sounds and/or smells. So you have to kind of exctricate yourself from the conversation but you're kind of in the middle of it and you're also having a good conversation so there's no real place for you to make your exit.

I hate when that happens.

One of my huge (HUGE) pet peeves in politics is the constant appearance of Bill Kristol on pretty much anything. In fact, the apperance of him anywhere. If there was any justice in this world, he'd be tar and feathered and run out of Washington, his entire career, reputation, and bank account gone for time immemorial.

But he's not.

What also gets me is when I'm watching "Fox and Friends" and the two nominal liberals, Juan Williams and Maria Liasson (they're liberal because they're on NPR and minorities, so, of course, that means they're liberal) just sit there and accept the fact that they're doing intellectual debates with a man who has been unbelievably wrong about everything since back when the internet didn't exist. I just don't know how either Juan or Maria don't just sit there and whenever he spouts off about something, just say something like "oh yeah, well, how's the Iraq war going?" or "let me know when you actually get something right."

Anyways, they were debating Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize and Kristol, of course, was disapproving. Now, it can be debated that maybe Al isn't deserving of a Peace Prize or half the awards he's won this year, but not from Bill Kristol. Which is why I got really upset when Juan didn't say something like "well, gosh, how many people has Al killed?" or "you know, he's been pretty much right about things, unlike, say, you." Or even, "shut the fuck up you goddamn idiotic war-mongering jackass. May you roast in hell for a long, long time."

Which is pretty much what I'd say.

Alright, let's try this again

Have you ever put on an album, disc, what have you, and within a minute, maybe more, just sat there and suddenly realized that the thing you are listening to just might be absolutely perfect album for where you're head is at and you're mood and soon afterwards realize that the music is sending chills up and down your spine as you realize you are hearing just about the most perfect thing you have ever heard at this particular point in life? I guess what I'm saying is Radiohead's "In Rainbows" is just about the most perfect, beautiful, awesome, disc I've ever heard. Well, I've had other albums I've said that about and I probably wouldn't have dug this album years ago, but right now I'm thinking this just might be favorite piece of music I've ever heard.

If Faust/Arp doesn't doesn't crawl into your brain and stay there, keeping it all warm and fuzzy, I don't know what would