|
a place where i sometimes write:
journal
old entries here:
nov.2000-jan.2001
feb.2001
write me here
|
4.17.2001
first day of work at the judicial library today. it was pretty lame. i did the same kind of stuff i've been doing on my one-day temp assignments. still, i should get to work on the conversion project and for what they're paying me i have no cause to complain. work is work and it always blows regardless of where you are or what you're making. at least that's always been my experience.
by now, everyone knows about the passing of joey ramone on sunday. it's sad...i wasn't even aware that the man was sick. in his honor, i'm going to dust off those old ramones records and maybe watch rock n'roll high school.
i was lucky enough to be watching on tv when barry bonds hit his 500th homer at pac bell park tonight. i'm not a giants fan, nor am i fan of bonds per se. but it would've been something to have been there tonight. he hit the ball a ton...in the blink of an eye the thing was out of the park and splashing into the water of mccovey cove. there were a few boats and what looked like a psycho kayaker fighting for what is certain to be a pretty valuable piece of memorabilia.
11:03 p.m.
4.14.2000
whoa...two posts in the same week! i'm getting fairly prolific with my writing these days. maybe next week, i'll try for three posts. that would make kai proud, i'm sure. i should really be posting at that other site, the one that can't be named yet. the one where others are getting the ball rolling and i'm sleeping on the job.
after a huge breakfast at boogaloo's this morning, i finally finished a mixtape for miles. i dragged the damn thing out for so long...i hope the continuity is alright. there's nothing worse than a mixtape that doesn't flow.
i had a flash of brilliance last night. i realized that i'll be making enough money to cover all my expenses only working 3 days/week. if i don't get the job for the other 2 days, i'm thinking of temping one day (either monday or friday) and having the other day off to do whatever i want. a 4 day work week would be pretty sweet. it would give me time to catch up on movies i haven't seen, books i haven't read and beers that haven't been consumed. the beer part will be done in moderation, of course. after all, kai's in hawaii.
11:15 a.m.
4.12.2001
i had two interviews at the supreme court of california today. they both involve working in different departments of the judicial library. one's a three day per week job, the other a two day per week job. they offered me the three day position and it looks like i'll get the two day one as well. the main library there is pretty amazing. even though working for the government isn't my lifelong dream, i somehow feel better about it than i would working for a law firm or a big corporation. also, i'll get to do some cataloging work...which does interest me. and it pays well. actually, better than i expected.
things are looking up in other ways too. i'm finally getting over a nasty sinus infection which has kept me from indulging in my favorite vices, namely beer and cigarettes. or maybe it was those vices that got me sick to begin with. perhaps i should leave them be, but there are a couple beers in the fridge and one of them is calling out to me. with beer comes the craving for a cigarette, which starts a nasty cycle of drinking and smoking. ah...maybe i'll just shut up and drink an odwalla . after all, it was the wellness drink (featuring the double whammy of echinacea and astragalus) that hastened my recovery.
at the risk of turning this site into a baseball blog, i've gotta mention the houston astros again. although they got spanked by milwaukee today, the boys have started the season a healthy 6-3 and people are taking notice. i'm thinking i might need to plan a trip back to texas during a crucial homestand late in the season. maybe i'm getting ahead of myself...
5:02 p.m.
4.07.2001
kai called from hawaii last night and gave me a hard time for not updating this. my answer, quite simply, is that i have nothing to say. except for attending a show last weekend, i haven't done a thing but work and watch the occasional movie or bit of tv. returning to work has been a bit of a bummer, as has the beginning of the pollen season. i've been sneezing my head off all week and going through more tissues than most people use in their entire lives. i'm basically keeping kleenex in business. damn hay fever...i curse whoever's responsible for my predisposition to it. i guess that means i'm cursing my parents.
but really, there's been nothing worth talking about except baseball. the astros have started the year 4-0. i'm excited about their chances this year. but anyway, the lack of stuff to talk about worries me. we're on the eve of launching a new group blog and i have nothing interesting or witty to contribute. posts on lousy burritos and loose-leaf filing aren't gonna do it. so...until something interesting happens, i just may be silent for awhile.
11:44 a.m.
3.27.2001
my return to the wonderful world of the working stiff began last thursday. in addition to bumming me out in general, this development has also resulted in a lack of updates. not that there's a lot going on. just the same old, same old. i did manage to make a rather unspectacular return to the saturday morning basketball game. my shot was way off and i'm still sore from running into screens that my teammates neglected to call out. but at least my wind was okay. i played about 5 games and wasn't sucking air like some of the other guys.
i watched the oscars on sunday and now i'm not sure why. it's always that way. i tell myself it's not worth it, but when the day comes...i'm sitting there in front of the tv screen. it was cool to see benicio del toro and steven soderbergh win, but overall it was pretty lame. anyone who's really into film knows what a bunch of crap the awards are, so i won't go into how i feel about gladiator taking best picture and russell crowe taking best actor.
my movie count for the year is up to 66. i'm not sure if i'm on a pace to beat the total of 210 from last year, but i bet i'm close. i saw several excellent films over the last week, the best of which were probably urbania, the contender and bob le flambeur. i'd love to say what i liked about these films, but i've got laundry to do and an empty stomach to feed. if you like good movies, please check them out.
5:53 p.m.
3.19.2001
my weekend took a turn for the unpleasant when i went to an ATM to take out money and discovered i had considerably less money than i did just 2 days before. i'll admit that i started to panic. what the hell's going on here, i thought. i calmed myself down and decided to find out what the deal was before i lost it. after some checking with the bank, i found out that my final paycheck from my previous employer (which had been in my account via direct deposit for a week) had been "reversed". how they can reverse a deposit from a week ago, i'm not sure. but it meant that i was pretty well screwed. with my funds starting to dwindle, i was counting on that money to give me a nice cushion for the next few weeks while i looked for a new job.
after spending last night brooding over my bad luck, i woke up this morning and called the HR person at my old company (who, i should mention have been prominently featured here once again). as it turns out, my final paycheck had given me 3 extra days of pay and so the company realized their error and promptly took the whole fucking thing back. i was informed that they cut me a check for the correct amount and mailed it late last week. of course, they didn't communicate this to me or to any of the other folks who took a severance package on the same day. better to just let us sweat it out. morons...it's no wonder the company has gone down the toilet.
11:58 a.m.
3.13.2001
today was a good day. a really good day. i finished a tape and then headed to berkeley for an acoustic in-store performance by idlewild at mod lang. these scruffy scottish lads were pretty great. i've been anxiously awaiting the u.s. release of some of their older lps after hearing "when i argue i see shapes" on a mixed tape i got from nikki in the UK. although they didn't play that one, the songs they played sounded good. i'm listening to 100 broken windows, which was released today and it's amazingly catchy and well-written...and it rocks. i keep hearing the line "gertrude stein said that's enough...i know that's not enough now" over and over. i'm starting to think i should rally and head over to the bottom of the hill to hear them play these songs plugged in. ah...what's life without regrets. i have more than a few when it comes to missed shows. at least i saw them this afternoon.
i've gotta say it's been a truly great year for music already and we're only in mid-march. amazing new records by frodus, small brown bike and the aforementioned idlewild have already made their way into my collection. with over 9 months left in 2001 and new records by hot water music, red house painters, juno, burning airlines, mark eitzel, milemarker, rocket from the crypt and countless others on the horizon...it's going to be great year.
since the boundless optimism of this entry is starting to frighten me, i'll switch into critical mode. i saw stephen malkmus at the fillmore last night. i was optimistic going in due to the fact that i liked pavement, was excited about going to the fillmore for the first time and was eager to see francesca's friend mike, who's playing guitar and keyboards with malkmus on the tour. that said, i was a bit disappointed. malkmus himself was just as i expected, tossing out clever comments between songs and putting on a good show. on the downside, i had trouble connecting with many of his new songs. to be fair, i'd only heard one song ("the hook") before seeing him. but i found many of the tunes to be lacking the hooks and clever lyrics of pavement's material. another distressing thing was the presence of malkmus' girlfriend heather on stage. i'm not sure what her role is, but it appeared to consist of flailing around the stage shaking a tambourine and singing horrendously. she was annoying to say the least. still, a few songs were spot-on and it was exciting to see mike rocking out up there. we talked with him briefly after the show and he seems to be enjoying the tour. so...all in all it wasn't really a bad show. how's that for remaining optimistic?
8:18 p.m.
3.12.2001
why do i always do this to myself? once again, i've woken up to an apartment with no food. of course, i'm starving. so i have to actually get dressed and walk to the store or restaurant and get something. how nice it would be to have cereal or pancake mix or something. i have to learn to be more aggressive with my grocery shopping. think long-term...buy a lot of shit.
except for managing to miss al burian not once, not twice, but three times...it was a good weekend. i went up to sackatomato with kai on saturday for miles' art opening. the opening was good. paintings were sold, lots of folks showed up...overall, a success. afterward, we went to a place called the fox and goose to celebrate and see miles' friend's jazz band, the sardonics, play. they were interesting, but i was a too tired to really enjoy 'em. we finished off the evening by throwing down some 99 cent del taco burritos. now that's living.
the highlight of the weekend for me, aside from playing with miles' cats (rosemary and josephine), was emerging victorious in both bowling and pool. 2001 has not been the best for me competition-wise, so it was nice to chalk up a few wins. this is especially true in pool, because i've been getting trounced as of late. maybe the luck of the irish is coming through for me cos it's close to st. patty's day.
9:13 a.m.
3.07.2001
"you've got a rope around my neck - tied to a weekly paycheck. i'll take what you give only because i have to live. but you won't own me...no, you can't own me"
i came across the quote above while making a mix tape for a friend in DC. it's from the zoinks! song "garbage". and as it becomes increasingly clear that i won't be able to find the kind of job i'd like (whatever the hell that is), it's words such as these that i have to keep in mind. chances are, i'm going to be working for some corporation or law firm and i'm going to be miserable. it's either that or leave san francisco. there are jobs out there that i wouldn't mind doing, working at a bookstore or record store. but for the most part, those are $8-10/hr. -- 20-30 hours a week kinda jobs. anyone who lives in san francisco right now knows that isn't enough to survive on...
although it's quickly fading from memory, i should mention that i attended a noise pop show over the weekend. i won't say much about it other than spoon was great, superchunk was just okay and i don't much care for bimbo's. i also almost got into a fight, which is pretty strange for me. i won't say much about that either, except to mention that the guy was a drunk asshole and pissed me off. lucky for me, i didn't take it to the next level, because the guy had a head like a cinderblock. that's the part of his body i was tempted to try and knock off and whatever power i could've gotten behind a punch probably wouldn't have been enough. oh, and i should also say thanks to kristina for snagging me a spoon setlist.
with spring training underway and the baseball season just around the corner, i just finished watching cobb, a movie about the great and infamous ty cobb. i'd learned a lot about cobb from watching ken burns' documentary on baseball. amazing player (perhaps the best ever)...incredible asshole. the movie's worth watching for tommy lee jones' portrayal of cobb. it also got me interested in the book it was based on. evidently, cobb summoned sportswriter al stump to write his biography. cobb was in his early 70's, but still a miserable bastard. he put stump through hell and stump ended up writing two books...one was cobb's vision of himself, the other was a more honest look at the man and all the messed up things he did.
3:14 p.m.
3.01.2001
spring is just around the corner. you can feel it in the air. temperatures are warming up and things are starting to happen. one of those changes, which i found out about yesterday, doesn't make me all that happy. kai is getting sent to hawaii for a year by his job. it's a good thing for him since he has family and friends there, but a sad time for his friends and family in northern california. in an attempt to put a positive spin on things, i'll say that while i may be losing a comrade-in-arms for a year...i'm gaining a healthy liver and some extra spending money. i have this strange feeling that my alcohol consumption will be going way down after kai's departure. of course, my pool game will probably go to hell at the same time. there's always a trade-off involved in these sorts of things. anyway, the man will be missed...but i'm sure we'll see him again soon enough.
another change around the corner is one that excites me, but i don't want to talk about it too much in case it ends up falling through. it's a project in the developmental stage, masterminded by a very smart man. he was kind enough to invite me to participate and i'm looking forward to the day when we get started.
sadly, i'm being a bit of a slacker on the job hunting scene. there's not much out there that interests me and i'm not quite ready to throw in the towel and return to corporate or legal hell. so, i'm biding my time. i still have some breathing room, at least for the next 2-3 weeks. instead of worrying about it, i took in a movie yesterday.
you can count on me had a few elements that i don't care for in a film: the issue of marriage, the issue of being a single parent and one of the most annoying things in film...the cute kid (i think one of mccaulay culkin's brothers played him). that being said, i was surprised to thoroughly enjoy the film. it avoided heavy-handed sappiness and the acting was so good (especially laura linney and marc ruffalo) that you ended up caring about the characters and hoping that they'd get their shit together.
10:33 a.m.
|
places to go:
froto
listen missy
math of breath
oppress this
saturn
underachievers
us-against-them
the wire
|
