part of my job is to help maintain the database of contacts for companies/people to whom we mail materials or email updates.
i just found out there is not only one, there are several people whose last name is “rosenzweig”.
that just blows my mind.
[now hearing this: jawbox – (self-titled). you need good music to help pass time spent database-updating. luckily this cd is so unbelievably choice.]
i don’t think most people who maintain any kind of journal, online or otherwise, would say that just because you didn’t get around to writing for a chunk of time, that there was ‘something wrong’. actually more often the opposite is probably true; when you’re just having a grand old time and filling every day with activity, why would you kill all the momentum by stopping yourself to say, “oh wait, i’d better write all this down.”
i’m not suggesting that my life has just been brimming with adventure and excitement this week, but i have been keeping occupied enough to where my normal sit-and-stare-at-laptop time is pretty reduced. i think a similar thing happened last summer too, because when you sit at a computer all day at work, doing so in leisure time becomes somewhat less appealing, predictably. and i try not to enter blog-world at work because i’m pretty sure once i do, it’ll only be downhill from there. yes, i am trying to be a good worker/intern, at least until further into the summer.
i left a few minutes early from home today though since i needed to get gas, and that never takes as long as i think it’s going to, so every time i go to get gas i end up getting to work about 15 minutes early. hence, i can write a little here without any guilt, since technically i’m not even supposed to be here yet.
and maybe i will grow weaker as today wears on and i don’t get any engrossing projects to work on, and i’ll end up writing again; because my theory on summer internships at this point is that it’s okay not to like them, or want to go to them, without feeling that “this isn’t the career field for me”, because who in their right mind would want to work at an intern-level position all their life? i’m absolutely certain my job would be more interesting at this very same office, if i were a level or two higher up the totem pole and not given the “make-the-intern-do-it” tasks that higher-ups don’t want and naturally don’t really have time for. i don’t think it’s naive or even stupidly optimistic to think that i’m supposed to hate my job right now, at least to a degree, and that i’m just putting time in toward a more fulfilling role in future offices, whatever those may be.
i guess it’s a strange sort of optimism i have, that i’m hoping my optimism about future job satisfaction isn’t optimism at all. i’m optimistic that my optimism is actually realism, i might say.
anyway, that’s enough for now. thank you for dropping by.
[now hearing this: a very quiet office, 9.5 hours until i’m back at home.]
playing video games all afternoon made me hungry, so josh and i hit up in-n-out, then coldstone (coldstone combo #3: sweet cream w/ brownie and cherries. apparently this is called “black forest”, but i didn’t see the little suggested-flavor placard on the counter until i asked for that and the server pointed it out to me, so i maintain that i am some kind of ice cream prodigy).
after ice cream we jetted over to best buy where i had been told i could get a good price on the mr. show dvd set, but which failed to even have any copies in stock. and just when i was tempted to return, if even for a day, back to the world of retail shopping. but oh no, back to the pits of e-commerce i go!
what am i talking about, pits. deepdiscountdvd is the best thing ever. and they even have a separate site just launched for really cheap cd’s too. guess what that one’s called? you’re right. plus the shipping is always free. so best buy can kiss my entertainment-craving ass goodbye, that’s for sure. if the one time i come to your store looking for something, you don’t have it — you just get cut off. like that.
i still love amoeba though. seeing about a boy again the other night made me feel bad that a friend’s surprise birthday party had to be the same night badly drawn boy was playing a free in-store there. i mean, she would have been surprised had the party been the next night too, right? sigh…
[now hearing this: joshjazz. someday i will start finding out what all these cds my roommate plays actually are, you know. someday. but for now, i shall simply call it joshjazz.]
some of the most painful minutes of my recent life have been sitting through a band called “ultrababyfat” which quite unfortunately preceded david cross’s standup performance. the thing is, the two singers/guitarists were girls, which, i’m sad to say, i pretty much never like. there are exceptions of course, but really, in all honesty, girl bands suck a lot. seriously, a lot. and girl bands like “ultrababyfat” sure don’t make me quick to give girl bands another chance, as much as they make me wish i could strike myself temporarily deaf by eating my napkin or some such convenient method. the just couldn’t sing, and their songs all sounded the same, which was boring and annoying, and their lyrics were stupid, and to top it off they weren’t even hot.
jesus they sucked ass.
however…it was well worth enduring the pain, because thursday night i sat in a room and laughed harder and more often than at anything i can remember ever seeing or hearing in my life; while a man i am now pretty sure is one of the best comedians alive ranted for nearly two whole hours to my utter delight. a 15 dollar ticket plus a 15 dollar dinner was a paltry sum, it was so pricelessly hilarious and grand. his two topics of choice: ignorant/southern people and organized religion, with some lovely george bush bashing thown in and post-9-11 humor as well. oh my god, i don’t know if it’s possible that anyone reading this will live in a town he has yet to visit on tour, but if so do not miss this opportunity.
he actually referred to the bible as “some D&D shit.” oh christ i had a great time.
the only snag not involving a shitty girl-band opener was that trying to get in, i showed them my drivers license, which is from a state i will prefer not to metion, and which is oriented vertically as opposed to standard horizontal — to indicate it was an under-21 license (but which also says clearly at the top: over 21 as of 01-24-2002). the doorman did not approve of this license and asked if i had anything else with my birthdate on it, which caused me to think later, is there even any other form of identification that ANYONE would have with their birth date on it? am i supposed to show him my passport which i keep around my neck on a string at all times? what the hell.
but anyway, i said no, and he told me to wait a minute, and came back with a book of “id’s across the nation” or something, with pictures of what each state’s ids look like. and, since there wasn’t a picture of a vertical id for my specific state-of-license, he took my completely valid license and put it in his pocket, and told me to come get it back after the show as he put big black magic-marker X’s on both my hands to show everyone i was a minor and would be playing straightedge for the night. i mean shit, i didn’t even want to drink, but what the hell would i get a fake id that was vertical if it wasn’t a real fucking license? jesus, that was frustrating. and it’s just so hard to argue with a beefy guy with a shaved head in a black polo shirt that says “security” on his sizeable left pectoral. at least i got it back on the way out so i could, you know, drive, and prove to non-retarded establishments that i am who i say i am, but goddamn, that was so annoying and unnecessary. i hate that state.
[now hearing this: i think there’s an ice cream truck outside somewhere.]
this was a real conversation i had at work. it was wednesday afternoon, and coworker was going over some stuff in a database about recent movie releases.
coworker: [aloud but not really directed at anyone, from his cubicle] did that movie the importance of being earnest ever come out?
brian: [confidently] yeah. it’s still out right now, i think.
coworker: [surprised at my quick response] how’d you know that?
brian: because i was thinking about going to see it a week or two ago but i ended up doing something else.
coworker: really? you were going to go see this? why?
brian: well i’m a big oscar wilde fan . . .
coworker: oh; is he in it or something?
yeah, that really happened. after i pointed out a few seconds later that he had made a mistake and oscar wilde was the playwright, dead for over a century now, not an actor (and a second coworker had a quick chuckle at his expense, being shown up by the intern, me), he said, something like, “yeah, i know, i was joking, i know who oscar wilde is,” but i don’t know if i believe him. he’s a real standup guy, this coworker, but my gut tells me he was just saving face. maybe he does know who oscar wilde is and it just didn’t occur to him straight off, which i could believe, but i’m pretty sure by the way he said it that his initial response was not at all feigned.
and it really was pretty funny.
so tonight i went to see about a boy again and it was still a good movie — consider this my second recommendation — and tomorrow night it’s down to santa ana to see david cross live and in all his glory. and right before i made a trip out to pick up the new mr. show dvd set too. what timing. i’ll let you know how that goes.
[now hearing this: roommate’s cool piano jazz cd i wish i knew the name of, alternating with the badly drawn boy soundtrack snippets left over in my head from the movie.]
a snippet from this very good article, as found by a link on this weblog, on young boys’ tendency to read less than young girls:
“Seventy-five percent of elementary school teachers in the U.S. are women, while the percentage of female elementary school librarians is closer to 80. So it shouldn’t surprise us that many boys don’t see reading as a particularly masculine activity. We tell boys that reading is important, that reading is for everyone. We show them that reading is something mostly women do. While they’re creative and well-intentioned, I’m not convinced that the Reading is FUN-damental posters of Michael Jordan and Sammy Sosa with their noses in books are making much of a difference. Boys know why these guys are famous and how they make their money. It’s not from reading.”
it’s a good article, and makes me think i will be a very good father; at least as measured in terms of male-reading-role-model-ness. it’s sort of a weird thing to admit to thinking about, but i have to say i’ve done it before too. it’s just not a question for me, really — whenever i think about there being kids in my care someday, i think about how smart they’re going to be being around someone that loves books as much as i do.
that is, if i can carefully position myself so that there isn’t an anti-reading as anti-parental rebellion backlash of some kind, which i would see as one of my life’s great failures, were it to occur. i’ll let you know in a decade or so.
[now hearing this: hey mercedes – “let’s go blue”. i just found out yesterday that they’re coming through southern california for a stop on their tour with piebald. hot damn is that going to be good or what?]
the song of the week wasn’t working because of a bad filename. should be fixed now though, in case you were going mad with anticipation.
and a happy sunday to you.
take THAT, heaviest book i’ve probably ever read for my own pleasure. finally, i have scaled to the summit of the mountain known as infinite jest. it was a six-week journey and not exactly a walk in the park, but the hours paid off. very good book. i would have liked more of a tying up of ends before it finished, but i guess once you get to over a thousand pages you get to thinking you should just call it quits sometime soon, as a writer. just a theory. great book though.
storytime:
today i went to the beach with my lady and there was a family with a couple little girls on the sand not far from us. at one point, one of the little girls yelled in her father’s direction (he was behind us, facing toward the water and his daughter, playing catch with his son), “oh my god, look, a clown!” so of course i turned around and looked up behind us. on the bike path up the short hill from the beach was a person riding a bike, with brightly colored paper wrapped between its spokes, wearing mismatched clothes and a funny hat and with large bundles in a baskets at both front and back of the bike. i turned to my girlfriend, who had her head down tanning, and said, chuckling, “that’s not a clown. . . that’s a hobo.” the girl’s father was laughing too though, so i didn’t feel too bad. boy, was that funny. little kids crack me up.
[now hearing this: texas is the reason – do you know who you are? this cd holds classic status in my collection — i can never go too long without pulling it back out and giving it a listen, and tonight was one of those nights.]
oh, there is now a link on your right to a rough draft of a music reviewing project i have become a part of. it’s a good idea, i think: have two people review each album, so you get two points of view and less outright bias. like one of the other writers, my buddy spencer, said, “this way, if both people really like it, you know it’s probably something worth checking out, and if both people think it sucks, well . . .”
anyway, it’s only a rough draft of a site, and as far as the writing goes — well, we’re just getting started. i’d say we’re all pretty sharp guys though, so it’s pretty decent at least. i’d actually really like it though if someone read some of them and then emailed me and told me i really sucked ass — it would probably motiviate me to work harder.
[now hearing this: modest mouse – “dark center of the universe” . . . which reminds me; have you heard about the unlimited sunshine tour going on this summer? flaming lips with modest mouse and de la soul? how brilliant is that?]
“we are finished waiting for you!”
well, it’s later. later like tomorrow, but you weren’t that impatient, were you? later as in time for the song of the week, like i said before.
the new wilco cd is awesome, you might already know. well, when i was trying to figure out whether it was awesome or not i downloaded pieces of it to test-drive, and ended up with this live track, which is probably/maybe better than the recorded version. i like it a lot. so the song of the week is wilco’s i’m the man who loves you.
other things i like: days off from work. sadly though, today’s was unexpected and unfortunate. see, i got up in the morning, showered and ate and got in the car and departed, as if today were going to be a real and normal work day. of course, that didn’t seem to convince my automobile, who after being in california and under my charge for less than three weeks, decided as i stopped at a red light on the way to work this morning to just, well, die. one minute, motor running. slow to a stop at a red, engine sound goes briefly and slightly up, then down, down, down. nothing. can’t restart. i gave my thumb a blister trying, actually, while i was in the left northbound lane of la brea avenue, but that didn’t help. neither did the fact that i discovered just then that the switch to turn on the hazard lights had at some point been, well, removed i guess by the car’s previous caretakers, apparently.
i eventually coasted backward down the incline into the turn lane to at least keep people from honking, at which point a nice lady stopped and offered me a jump (for the battery, that is). so then i got to coast downhill backwards and left across two more lanes into a side street to try this, which didn’t help. luckily she let me call on her mobile phone to my own phone, and once my machine picked up i was able to assert to anyone in the apartment (i.e. roommate with car) that they should pick up my phone, because i needed help. which worked, and got me a ride home to make the important phone calls to parents, towing company, repair shop, etc., despite having to dodge giving a fiesty, very round so-called jazz musician a ride “out of this place” in exchange for ten bucks (that’s a whole different story though).
so now 300 dollars later, hopefully my car will be working again tomorrow afternoon. damn you timing belt. i ended up not getting to work though, which brings me back to where i started, which is that even though i lost a day’s pay and the use of a car and had to deal with a whole bunch of crap out of nowhere, at least i got the afternoon off, which i like.
now i’m hungry.
[now hearing this: song of the week.]