Tonight's Troubadour at D's

He plays mostly sixties covers, as you'd expect from a guitarist of his age. He did cover Richard Thompson's "From Galway to Graceland" which was a nice surprise. Turns out he idolizes Thompson. He told me his 16-year-old son shares his love for the RT and is trying to play in a similar style, and is "scary good" after just a few years. Won't let the kid at his Chapman Stick because he's afraid his son will outdo him and he'll have to jump off the Pier.

He's a good guitar player, but uses so much reverb and delay/loop stuff that you're hearing what he picked last week. At times he stops playing for a bit and the music just goes on. My own theory is that he dropped, like, a POUND of acid in 1974 and the rest of the world sounds this way to him. And he thinks he's playing like Richard Thompson on Small Town Romance while we all talk like we're underwater.

Anyway he's a very nice guy.

Freedom Science in a can!

kniwt found the article below, an AdWeek teaser, and I dug up another on the same subject. Long story short, they're bottling dieter's teas as soft drinks. The claim is that they "speed up metabolism", which is a phrase that should alert you to danger every time you hear it. In this case they're putting carbonated green tea in a can, probably boosting the caffeine as well, and who knows what else. Nothing wrong with drinking iced green tea, mind you. But when they tell you they're speeding your metabolism, or that some product "burns calories", hang on to your wallet. You're either being sold speed or colored water.

I like the fact that one of these beverages is being sold by a "former tech entrepreneur" who acknowledges that he needs to break through people's skepticism. Also that being sold by Coca-Cola would make the whole thing more legitimate. [laff track]

( two news stories about Enviga! )

Brain notes

This set of brain adjusters (300 mg Wellbutrin XR, 10 mg Lexapro, 20 mg Adderall XR) is the best I've had. The combination of the Wellbutrin and the Adderall seems to jack my dopamine levels up to something like normal, and the Lexapro keeps me from completely losing my shit with anxiety fits or sliding into day-long fits of obsessive depression. I'm going to call that a win.

( too much information about my psyche here )

I am become Death, eater of pies.

Courtesy fg

WELCOME TO CZECH REPUBLIC!


Hope this was okay to repost, fg. I remember visiting the Paris catacombs as a kid. There was stuff like this everywhere, plus weird "ads for Death" everywhere that said stuff like THE GRAVE AWAITS ALL or DEATH TAKES RICH AND POOR ALIKE etc. Dia de los Morticias.

Goin' back to Carvel

Miscellaneous Hip-Hop Guy from 1992 showed up last night. Black guy in his twenties somewhere in red sports jersey, baggy pants, really big athletic shoes, red bandanna with sideways red athletic cap, swagger, radio Walkman permanently attached to head. He looked like he'd just answered a casting call for a movie about the life of Tupac Shakur.

He made a beeline for the ice cream store, which had just closed, and banged on the glass door, hard. He alternated doing that with doing the tough guy gangsta swagger walk in circles for a few minutes. I tried to differentiate between "kinda eccentric guy in the wrong neighborhood" and "total loon".

Finally the ice cream store guy came to the door. This was D.P., who is a classic Newport Beach preppy wimp: polo with popped collar, curled short hair, weak chin, very clean athletic shoes. People who went to high school with him describe him as a Drama Dork.

D.P. popped open the door and greeted LL Fool J, and they proceeded to carry out a complex Hip-Hop Guy handshake with lots of knuckle bumping and finger gestures. They then departed into the back of the ice cream store.

[Poll #542747]

And you thought Chick Publications was weird

Edit: This site may be triggering for people who have childhood abuse issues.

A Southern California cult that was called the Children of God and later The Family produced what must be the most messed up comic book EVER.

Their attitude toward sex and religion is giving me vertigo.

Disclaimer: this site is clearly anti-"Family" and run by people who are pretty angry. However, wow. Also, wow. The glossary is near Scientology quality. There are a lot of cults called "The Family" but this one is pretty choice. And of course, they started right here in Orange County, CA. Some of the Jesus Movement people ended up being Calvary Chapel, and then others...

Three depressing links about the war.

1. Here's a first-hand account of what it's like to be arrested and jailed by the secret police in Iraq right now. If you're lucky, that is.
   
   
2. We're scouring our poor island colonies for recruits. Young people in places like Guam have no jobs and no future in our WWII leftover archipelago, so we're sending them to the next colony. It's the new Gurkhas.
   
   
3. Counterpunch is a marginal news source (I don't trust Cockburn so much). However, if we really did lose nuclear warheads off Somalia in 1991 and someone got hold of it, we're about to star in a really bad James Bond movie. We've certainly lost nukes before, including a spectacular incident off Spain a long time ago.

I'm going to go outside and pet puppies now.

Annals of My Working Life: Barry

Early in my computer stuff career I worked for a small dotcom outfit that did work for entertainment companies. There were four principals who ran the place, each of which deserves his own article. Today I'm going to talk about Barry (not his real name).

Barry was a smallish, delicately built man with a careful tan. He wore Entertainment Executive Casual clothing of the 90s: those priest collar shirts, khakis, expensive loafers. He had been an exec at a big movie studio and this was his first independent company.

In most ways he was a stereotypical New York entertainment Jew transplanted to L.A., and like most smart people who are stereotypes he played it up. The result was a near-perfect reenactment of Woody Allen in Annie Hall most of the time. When I first started working there he took me out to lunch, and over a Reuben and home fries I got to hear a 90 minute oration on tap water. The tap water in New York was good, but then he came here, and he put a glass of tap water next to his bed and in the morning he saw all the disgusting sediment, and he only drank bottled water now. Yes, 90 minutes.

Barry was halting, diffident, nebbishy in conversation. He salted his sentences with "uh you know" and "if you see what I mean" and "okay, so, okay, so" and pulled his hands up to his face pointed down, like a chipmunk. He'd then rub them together rapidly, changing animals to become a grape-washing raccoon. His eyes darted around the room and he frequently turned away from people while speaking to them, or looked fixedly at some object while he talked.

He loved privilege and perks, and was careful to make sure that he got them all. When any swag or free tickets arrived in the office he was sure to be there to spirit them away. If one of the underlings managed to score something Barry would appear at the desk: "Uh, yeah, hello. So. Yeah, the items, that came from Paramount. Yes. Those are, um. I'll need to, yes, thanks, take them."

When something was on deadline (which was always), Barry would succumb to terrible anxieties. Often he would end up behind some hapless employee's desk, mincing back and forth between two blind spots. "Hi, yes. Not wanting to um bother you! Just, I am trying to. If you could. Um, how is the timing looking for this. The agent, is, you know, waiting. Okay. Okay yes." He could stand there, slightly too close, and wait for someone to complete a writing or graphics task for a good solid hour. If he felt especially worked up he might actually come up and poke someone unexpectedly, which caused at least one employee to snap and scream "BARRY DO NOT EVER DO THAT AGAIN GODDAMNIT".

Barry was an aficionado of humor. The Simpsons were in their prime and we all had sound clips, which since he didn't know how to do sound he envied. I remember him making me play the Harry Shearer Springfield Police Department Rescu-Fone thing over and over and over while he rocked back and forth giggling at my desk.

Barry was single and in great need of a date. And we had many beautiful women come through the office, some of whom were actors and others just pretty people in the business. One time in particular I was doing a kind of online interview thing with an unknown but steaming hot actress. She and I were BSing and horsing around joking with her agent person before we did this event, and Barry was back in the executive office. He kept leaning way, way over to get around his monitor so he could look at her breasts through his office window. Just as she left he rushed up and shook her hand and gave her his card. He then came over to my desk and talked to me about her "rack" for about 15 minutes while making chipmunk hands.

He had great confidence in his own comic skills and loved to do little impressions. One of his favorites was a disheartening racist Ching Chong Chinaman accent act which would make everyone in the room stare silently at nothing and the record player skip and all the cowboys turn around and look, every time he did it. At the time we were having trouble getting enough business from our clients and Barry was the man assigned to go lunch with people and get us gigs. At one Santa Monica soirée with moguls, he did the full Charlie Chan routine over drinks. The president of [redacted], an important movie studio, was his big target that night. Unfortunately the guy was married to a Japanese-American woman and took Extreme Offense. We lost the big account.

Barry made millions when the company was sold. He'd promised equity stakes for underpaid early employees but he lied. I hear he's married now, and running some other internet thing. I bet his hands are still really, really sweaty.

Killing another night in Costa Mesa

I fled from the worst "Irish" band ever to the new Diedrich to see changeng play. He's as good as ever, including a fine interpretation of Trio's "Da Da Da" for toy piano and a disco medley followed by Eminem/Vanilla Ice mashup. He seems to pick the songs that make people laugh but also sing along, which is a very fine line. It was nice to see Sandi too. I rarely get over to that place. joyfulagitator and I were sitting on the couch when a guy walks in and she immediately says "Well, he's a complete asshole." I looked around and saw him, and got the same instant impression. About 3 minutes later I remembered him; he's the guy from the 12-step group who challenged me to a fight for absolutely no reason a few years ago, and went insane when I refused. As I was leaving I heard him say to one of his group "Yeah, I'm just a cop magnet. Even after I'm sober. Why's that?"