Boo

My boss asked me why I wasn't in costume for Halloween. "I'm scary on the inside," I said.

Oh, speaking of work, today the ad manager asked me to show one of her 80-year-old helpers how to lay out text in Photoshop. Hey guess what: You're not supposed to lay out text in Photoshop, especially not if you're 80 years old and you've never used Photoshop before and I've got my own work to do. I failed to convey the "please don't lay out text in Photoshop" message and just did the work for her. She made me promise to show her how to do it later. Sure!

At this point, the ad manager said, "Thank you for your help. You have a GOOD HEART." I don't know why she said "GOOD HEART" with such volume and emphasis, but I was immediately worried that she'd been reading my email, wherein I describe her pettiness and general incompetence. Ah, fuck it.

Speaking of which, I started a new art project today. Technically I started it yesterday, but I didn't realize it was an art project until today, so ... maybe we'll leave this to my biographers to sort out. Anyway, it's called "Faces of Death (Gradual)" and it conveniently combines my narcissism with my contempt for my workplace.

Cool / Uncool, Other Music

I tried Other Music for those last four Yo La Tengo tickets. They had two of the four I wanted. I had time to kill, so I took the train to Hoboken to try Tunes -- they too lacked the last two tickets. Considering people on Craigslist are offering $75 per ticket for those two nights, I think I'll call myself lucky and settle for seeing six of the eight nights of Hanukkahpalooza.

Bill Cosby: Fine Inspiration / Lousy Grammarian

Lindsay over at Lindsayism.com came up with the perfect headline for this:

"Bill Cosby Eats, Shoots, Leaves Out Important Comma"

Fig. 1: No, that hasn't been Photoshopped

If any part of the path from victim to victor involves ... the title of this book ... then Bill Cosby has been watching waaaay too much porn. Hey, I like porn as much as the next guy, but I don't think you're supposed to glean life lessons from it.

Uncool, Ticketweb

Ticketweb is the exclusive online seller of tickets for Maxwell's.

Tickets for Yo La Tengo's Hanukkahpalooza at Maxwell's went on sale two days ago.

According to Ticketweb, nights 3-6 are already sold out.

That kinda bites. I'm hoping the NYC record store Other Music will still have tickets, expecially since they only take cash and who carries that much cash with them? Other than me, of course.

Least disappointing

Mawell's doesn't validate parking anymore, but the pretty waitress went ahead and wrote on my parking stub anyway to try to get me the reduced price.

Fig. 1: I'm first class. And my thumb is apparently jaundiced. And those aren't my feet!

It didn't work. I'm ok with that. Maxwell's is still the best venue I've ever been to.

I went to see the Dirtbombs there last Saturday. For this show, I'd give them an 8 out of 10. I'm ok with that. Only three other bands have scored 8 or higher, one of which was also the Dirtbombs; they got a 10 the last time I saw them (at Maxwell's, natch). Since they got a 10 that time, an 8 shouldn't be considered too precipitous a drop or too disappointing a show. Hell, I just spent 4 years in Saskatoon where the highest score a band could get would be a 6.5, just because of the deductions for lousy venues.

Instead of mixing it up with the crowd in front of the stage, I stood on the steps along the wall. Because it's Maxwell's, even those steps were close to the stage. Standing with me were a handful of middle-aged folks. We rocked out as only old people can: deliberately, with a wistful nostalgia and a tragic understanding of our own mortality and a comic understanding of our poor retirement planning.

I made a video with my camera. The sound quality is terrible but I figure it's the Quicktime equivalent of seeing them without earplugs, ie you'll regret it and you'll enjoy regretting it, so there!

The video is here. It's them performing Underdog and Ode to a Black Man. For comparison's sake, I've got their studio version of Underdog here. I don't have their studio version of Ode to a Black Man online because you should really go buy the album. You won't regret it.

But why the loss of two points from last time? Well, there was a jam that went on too long, and their encore was a bit brief. For the latter, I blame the lame-ass 75% of the audience that went home as soon as they finished their set. For the former, I blame my dislike of jams. Thankfully there was only the one jam. And I'm not even sure it was a jam.

I'm thinking about it, though, and those two problems are insignificant compared to two awesome parts:

1. When they came back for their encore, Girl Bassist* told a joke: What's the difference between jelly and jam? ... I can't jelly my cock up your ass.
   
   Hey, coming from Girl Bassist, it was cute.
   
   
2. At one point in a song (I don't even remember which song because this part was so great), Mick and Guy Bassist** faced each other with less than a foot between them, each repeating the same two notes really really fast. Nothing other than their hands moved as they stared each other down. Eventually the drummers brought the song to a close but neither Mick nor Guy Bassist was about to concede defeat in their guitar-based staring contest ... so the drummers resumed playing the song. Mick and Guy Bassist went at those two notes for a surprisingly long time before breaking out laughing. It was almost like being at an Oneida show, only with laughter. And twice as many notes.

* I do know Girl Bassist's name, but since I don't remember Guy Bassist's name I thought I'd be polite and pretend I don't know either.
** see above

Gah. Dirtbombs. Love the Dirtbombs. Their next album comes out in February, which should be accompanied by a real tour; ends up this weekend was a solo stop for the CMJ festival. So get your scorecards ready. If there's any band that could overcome a lousy venue's score deductions, it's the Dirtbombs.

Fig. 2: Gah. Dirtbombs.

Most disappointing

If you've been let down by my lack of recent updates, I'd like to distract with something even more disappointing: The NY Times' online Q&A with Tina Fey.

At this point you are certain to remark, "Tina Fey? I love her! Her television program, Thirty Rock, is an exemplar of crackerjack comedy writing. I can't wait to see that Q&A, for it cannot fail to delight!"

To which I would respond, "Who talks like that? And it's 30 Rock, not Thirty Rock. I can't believe I let you talk on my blog. I am so embarrassed. Almost as embarrassed as whoever produced the Q&A with Tina Fey idea."

Why should that person be embarrassed? I don't know.

It could be that allowing people to post questions reveals NY Times website readers as the same sort of mouthbreathers who read comment on Yahoo news stories or post on IMDB forums. Half the questions involve people asking how they can get work writing sitcoms, and half of those are people looking for internships on 30 Rock.

Of the non-desperate questions, there are winners like this one: "... is there a 'Linda Richmond' type in your new family??" Surely there must be, because Tina lives in New York City and clearly every third woman there resembles the nuanced, non-stereotypical, utterly realistic character of Linda Richman (not Richmond, idiot). Mike Myers is such a douche.

To be fair, there were a handful of really good questions, but because there were 179 total questions I'm not about to dig through the muck to pull out the gems.

"Oh, 179 questions! I wonder how many Tina Fey answered," you say like a normal person this time.

She answered three.

I don't blame Tina Fey for answering only three questions; according to that American Express commercial, she's a busy lady! Actually, I don't know if there's anyone to blame. The entire thing looks like someone had a good idea at first, and then everyone sorta forgot about it. That's a classic recipe for disappointment.

Foux Da Fa Fa

I was finally able to take my car for a drive last night after work. It was delightful. The car drives beautifully and is also really cool: its radio picks up WFMU much better than it picks up the 50,000-watt corporate stations.

I made this video while out for a spin:



I'd never noticed before making that video, but South Orange bears an eerie resemblance to Paris.

Heartbreak at 72 dpi

I think this might be the most depressing portrait ever taken. Do you know who the boy in the portrait is?

Why, it's Peanuts creator Charles Sculz of course!

I'm tempted to pick up the new biography of Schulz that has elicited praise from Calvin creator Bill Watterson and Rabbit writer John Updike, while simulatenously eliciting condemnation from Schulz's family. I was never a huge fan of the Peanuts strip, but the suggestion that Lucy annoying Schroeder at his piano was inspired by Schulz's wife annoying him at the drawing table is too rich to ignore. It is a little dark, though. And that childhood portrait is ... gah! The kid's practically on the verge of tears.

Hope your day is going well! If it isn't, just gaze into that picture for a few minutes and be glad you're not that kid.

I'm keeping it

I got a haircut yesterday that started off interestingly.

You know how you sit in the chair and the stylist/barber/whatever moves around you? I'd call it "heliocentric" because A) that word doesn't get used enough, and B) it reinforces my belief that I am my own Sun God.

Well, forget all that. Yesterday my stylist/barber/whatever was a downright heathen. He stood in one place and rotated the chair as the need struck him. This was the opposite of heliocentrism. It was geocentrism.

"Geocentric" is an ugly word and used even less frequently than "heliocentric." I actually had to look up "heliocentric" on Wikipedia because I didn't know the word for "revolves around the earth." There shoould be a slogan, something along the lines of "Geocentric: Not as cool as heliocentric."

There's a reason why we rejected astronomical geocentrism; it's because it's wrong. Likewise, we should reject follicular geocentrism. Why? Because instead of looking like Will Arnett on last week's 30 Rock, I look like Will Arnett on an aggressive course of chemotherapy. Wearing sunglasses, I look like Richie Tenenbaum after he tried to kill himself. At work in a blue dress shirt, I look like I'm doing layout on a day-furlough from prison.

That's all I got.

Oh, I bought a car last Friday.

Would Ayn Rand eat a tomato-and-hummous sandwich for lunch?

Last night I had a dream that I was trapped in an airport because the Transportation Safety Administration refused to let me on any plane. They wouldn't tell why I couldn't get on a plane, and finally they cut up my passport and driver's license.

When I woke up, I realized I'd become an Objectivist since the previous day.

I'm at work now, trying to balance my Objectivist beliefs with my desire not to get fired. It's going pretty well, mostly because everyone here is too polite to interrupt someone who's working. I have a question about the front page, but the editor--in-chief looks busy. Yesterday she had a question for me, but I was appearing busy at the time, so she saved it for later. There's nothing else for me to do, so here I am, sending a blog post via email. This makes me look busy, except it involves way more typing than my regular duties require. That, and the editor-in-chief can see my monitor from her office. Would getting a rear-view mirror for my monitor make me look suspicious?