P.S. It was only a theological discussion, he swears!

1:16 PM
Cerebellum fried to a nub by white noise of TV and chatter of "intelligence" pundits. Must shop and consume. Life empty – need new slacks – film at 11.

Thursday, September 13, 2001
2:42 PM
"We tend not to do what we ought to do until we get hit between the eyes."

An interesting – and somewhat shocking – article from today's Salon, talking about the bipartisan blue-ribbon commission on domestic terrorism headed by Rudman and Gary Hart, which spent nearly 3 years determining that the U.S. was eminently vulnerable to acts of terror on our soil. When the panel reported its findings in the beginning of this year, they essentially got shelved by President Bush in favor of a new commission headed up by V.P. Cheney. Instead of following the commission's recommendation of creating a new agency focused on national homeland security, Bush decided to hand such responsibilities to FEMA, which is headed by Joe Allbaugh, Bush's gubernatorial chief of staff and presidential campaign manager.

Genius move, don't you think?

Wednesday, September 12, 2001
11:29 AM
"Will we ever get to the point that we realize we will be more secure when the rest of the world isn’t living in poverty so we can have nice running shoes?"

So this morning I run to Safeway to pick up a couple of blank video tapes – an emergency purchase for my habitual daily taping of, yes, The Joker's Wild. The clerk asks me if I want to donate a buck to prostate cancer research. I say yes. I'm handed a piece of paper:

This donation made in honor of: __________

I figure it's kind of stupid to make it in honor of myself, so I try to think fast of who will be honored by my 100-cent act of philanthropy. And so in a rare moment of inspiration, I fill in the blank with:

Frank Zappa

The clerk takes the slip of paper, then says "Thanks, Mr. Zappa." She catches herself and chuckles, the you're-a-smart-ass chuckle. She didn't know FZ died of prostate cancer, so I told her. Nice to impart trivial knowledge to other folks.

Monday, April 16, 2001
2:11 PM
You've probably heard it elsewhere, but Joey Ramone's gone. Lymphoma at age 49. Damn.

Saw this haiku on Salon – 17 syllables for the man who wrote so many 2-minute masterpieces:

First rule is: reduce!
Broken down: "1-2-3-4!"
As manifesto

— Bob Lee


Friday, March 30, 2001
3:57 PM
Presenting... "The most vile act ever!" And to think we go nuts when someone head-butts a ref. Did I just say "go nuts"? Er, bad choice of words.

12:59 PM
So I found out the last company I worked for is planning to liquidate its assets. And, to little surprise, there's a class action stockholder lawsuit brewing.

Leaves me with decidedly mixed emotions. It was the first "e-tail" company I worked for, in a time when these companies were beginning to break big. I spent a year and a half there, feverishly cranking away to launch the site, and then to redesign it 6 months later. I worked with awesome people, in a great work environment, and was pretty damn well compensated. I was there when it was 40 people in the San Francisco office, when they flipped the switch. I was there when the employee count got bloated to 200 or so, when the company went public on NASDAQ. I was there as the stock tumbled, and continued to do so. Each time we'd think it had hit a solid floor, we were proven staggeringly wrong. When the window on the employee stock purchase plan was closing, and others cashed out without stock because it had sunk from $27 to $3 in 6 months, I kept my money in, thinking it was a sign of loyalty and patience, when it was a neon sign of naïveté. My options, which I thought were an iron-clad lock when I exercised them at 50 cents a share, went underwater.

All things considered, though, I took away so much more than what I've tithed to the worthless stock. I made some connections which helped me jump to my current job. I was able to establish a solid reputation and a great wage for what I do – for whatever that's worth when I next look for work. And I didn't go nuts and buy a Boxster or lease a $2000/mo. apartment in San Francisco. And I'm sure I didn't lose as much money as civilian stockholders out there who got nailed.

The company sold a necessary product and coupled it with some first-rate medical content that rivaled WebMD and Medscape. But they built a huge infrastructure they couldn't support, they turned down a prime brick-and-mortar partnership opportunity (at least one that I know of), made other partnerships which didn't pan out well enough, and they pissed money away in customer acquisition costs and the then-in-vogue practice of making overvalued agreements with AOL, Yahoo! and iVillage.

But it was an invaluable learning experience. From the mole's-eye-view of my cubicle, it was an interesting ride.

RIP PLRX.

Thursday, March 15, 2001
11:23 PM
In Memoriam: Paxton Warner

Truth be told, I didn't know Pax all that well. But he was an irreverent, ebullient, bug-eyed, mustachioed silver fox in a cowboy hat. More often than not, every Thursday he'd be with the rest of us regulars at Club Fusetti – wailing his favorite country songs (Steve Earle, Johnny Cash, George Strait, Willie Nelson), stomping around with his boots, playing the spoons on his knee during the instrumental breaks, drinking and smoking too much, rattling off ribald Shel Silverstein poems verbatim. At the end of the night, he'd cruise off in his Cadillac with horns on the grill (I shit you not) and the vanity plates PAX2000 – his sly double meaning of peace in the new millennium and his name (2000 pounds comprising a ton, natch). To paraphrase Plautus, he was a parade.

Last Thursday, while singing at another karaoke bar, he suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma. Today, they took him off life support, and he passed. I couldn't help but feel more than a touch of sadness, for his on again-off again girlfriend Suzie, for his two 12-year-old boys, one of whom will be going to live with Pax's brothers in Michigan. From the tales I heard, he lived three lifetimes in the span of one, joyously and with individual abandon.

Tonight at the club, they passed around a jar to help pay for his hospital bills and take care of his sons. I dropped some money in, sang a couple of his favorite songs – "Folsom Prison Blues" and "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" – and came home with a knot in my stomach.

The karaoke bar will be that much more boring for the loss of Pax. Peace, buddy.

Sunday, March 11, 2001
9:18 PM
Just saw State and Main today. Very funny movie. W.H. Macy is my hero – and not only because his wife is the hottie from SportsNight. David Paymer was awesome in the film. Philip Seymour Hoffman is the man.

Damn, I want to do what they're doing. Whose salad do I have to toss to get that kind of gig? Oh wait, I'm already a corporate whore. One john at a time.

12:00 PM
I had a dream last night that I was shot in the arm. My family was all there, yet I was the one who had it together enough to pick up the phone and call 911. They told me an ambulance would be there in an hour. Because I was in an "urban" area. I haven't had a nightmare like that in a while.

So yesterday I dragged my friend Dan to Milpitas, a suburban city near San Jose, to catch The Crush in a Shakespeare play. I'm not a Spanish scholar, but I believe "Milpitas" roughly translates as "shitty nondescript village with a mall." Not just any mall, mind you, but the Brobdingnagian Great Mall of the Bay Area.

We ventured to the mall before the show to check out a place called Dave & Buster's. I would not wish a visit to Dave & Buster's upon my worst enemy. It's the mongoloid test-tube satanspawn of TGI Friday's, Walt Disney World, Circus Circus, and Chuck E. Cheese's. It's like a sports bar, only you can't follow any of the games on the big-screen TVs because of the cacophony of the cavernous arcade, batting cages, virtual golf driving range, dining rooms, and last but not least, the hordes of suburban-trash families in attendance, because this is highfalutin entertainment in Milpitas. We enjoyed some mediocre pub grub and ventured post haste to see some hot live Bard action.

The Crush did a great job, but the rest of it was decidedly blah. Note to all aspiring directors out there: Unless you're staging a Tennessee Williams play, stay the fuck away from using Southern dialects, especially if your cast can't pull it off. Southern dialects have been completely played out for years. Also, conveying Shakespeare clearly is enough a challenge without putting it through a redneck filter. The director even tried to have Nick Bottom affect a Cajun accent, with disastrous results. I'm planning to get out and audition again after a 6-year respite; I pray to God I can find better productions than this to audition for.

Tuesday, February 27, 2001
11:18 PM
So here I am, in a humongous bookstore chain, sucking down a double mocha because: 1) it's one of a distinct few coffee houses open past 9 in wonderfully somnolent Marin County; and 2) I stayed at home all yesterday and today, telecommuting, and I developed an acute case of cabin fever. So why not set it off at Borders? BOO-YA! How ya like me now?

Thank God I wasn't in the office today, because The Turk paid a visit. The Turk is a euphemism from football and baseball preseason training. The Turk is the one who delivers the bad news to the players who have been cut, and who collects the playbook. In the e-hole world, The Turk is the rent-a-stormtrooper who helps the freshly laid-off out of the building tout suite. Twenty-four folks at my company got to live Fucked Company news today.

This is the third company I've been at that has wielded the ax. It's brutal every time. The first time, February '98, we were called into a movie theatre next door, where we usually had our company-wide meetings. The CEO proceeded to tell us that home base was cutting the year's budget in half, ergo 1 out of every 2 of us wouldn't be back the next day. Then for the rest of the day, everyone shuffled in and out of different offices to receive either a reprieve or a severance package. I had to wait most of the day, then found out I was gone. They were as nice about it as they could be – gave me two weeks' pay, which they didn't need to do, as I was a contractor – but still it was an atmosphere of fear and loathing ending with a figurative kick in the groin.

The second time was last summer. I entered through the back entrance of the building, and I was met by an unsmiling, balding, mustachioed plainclothes Turk with an earpiece and a walkie-talkie. "You can't come in this way, sir," he said. "Why not?" I asked. Reply: steely silence.

So I hiked all the way up and around to the front of the building and made it to my floor, where I saw 3 or 4 more expressionless Turks. I knew one of two things was happening: 1) a pissed-off stockholder called in a death threat on our CEO because our stock was tanking famously; or 2) layoffs galore. As I walked by the kitchen, a coworker walked by me and cheerily (and obliviously) chirped, "They got us Noah's Bagels and cream cheese today!"

I immediately knew it was blood-in-the-cubicles time.

We were on virtual lockdown all morning and most of that afternoon. The jackboots strictly monitored all the doors in the building and hustled the unlucky ones to their cars. If we left the building, we couldn't come back in until 2 PM. They made company #1 look like bleeding hearts. And all for what? Who the hell was going to steal the confidential documents of a company that we all knew would be shitcanned in 8 months' time? Thirty people got the hook that day. The gallows atmosphere lingered like mildew after that. People got liquidated in dribs and drabs. Others saw the writing on the wall and jumped off. I eventually did the same; the week after, they announced they were shutting down operations in the Bay Area. Now they're getting out of e-commerce. It was a very cool company, too. Breaks my heart.

I was spared from The Turk this time, thank goodness. The market out there has gotten increasingly spare. I received a blow-by-blow account from a coworker via IM. One of my cube neighbors – a hilarious, talented, nice fellow – got his walking papers. (He also had a CD burner. Damn!) He was one of the first employees there, too. Major bummer. I don't think the foosball table will be chopped into firewood yet, but I think it puts the company on notice.

Now it's time to go home and stock the new bookcase I assembled today. You don't know how momentous this is to me. I'm incredibly deficient in the handyman gene – it's a wonder I even have opposable thumbs – so putting together a cheapie Home Depot 28-inch bookcase is something almost worthy of lighting a menorah for. If I ever learn how to change the oil on my 1980 Olds Cutlass, the second coming will follow soon after.

Friday, February 23, 2001
1:04 AM
So CBS just had some golf tournament highlights – set to The Doors' "Break on Through", with golfers holding up lyrics like some country club, lobotomized version of Don't Look Back. Nothing is sacred – even dead medicore narcissistic drunken "poets."

I entered the office on Wednesday morning for the first time since I got The Haircut™. A great preponderance of coworkers say I look younger. Comments have been largely positive. Best comments: "Do you have a job interview?" and "Do you have a court date?"

Saturday, February 17, 2001
11:53 PM
Two interesting things happened today.

First thing: I got a haircut. Shortest it's been in probably 7 or 8 years. From shoulder-length to real short. Before and after photos will follow shortly. I hope this will make me look a lot less like Ron Jeremy.

Second thing: I wrote a scathing email in reply to a mail list posting – "So-and-so doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about" – and instead of sending it to an individual friend from the list, I sent it to the whole list. I hit "Send" in Outlook Express, saw the message Contacting groups.yahoo.com at the bottom of the screen, and had one of those slow-motion, realizing-something-went-horribly-wrong, feeling-myself-dropping-through-rings-one-through-eight-of-hell moments.

I promptly unsubscribed myself from the mail list, essentially giving myself a "timeout" and assuring I wouldn't make another stupid-ass mistake like that again. Then I promptly emailed the guy I slammed to say, "I didn't mean to send that to the whole group, but it's no excuse. I'm a huge asshole. I sincerely apologize. Post this to the email list if you'd like." All I'm missing is gasoline and some matches to complete the self-immolation.

Wednesday, February 14, 2001
6:51 PM
Happy Saccharine Consumer-Driven Unrealistic Hopes and Dreams in Denial Feel Useless if You're Not Involved and Inadequate If You Are Day.

I'm a hopeless romantic. Swear to God.

Monday, February 12, 2001
10:27 AM
So another dopey VBScript virus is winding its way through the office email system. You figured people with half a memory of the ILOVEYOU or Mother's Day hacks would not open a goddamn file with a .vbs extension.

The script kiddie who sent this virus out, though, had a good sense of geek psychology. Name of the file: AnnaKournikova.jpg.vbs. Thus assuring an almost Pavlovian reaction before common sense would take precedence. Idiot savant genius, I tell you.

Friday, February 09, 2001
4:57 PM
Looking out the windows of my office, I see there's been a break in the storm that made my morning drive a slow and heinous one. I hope I can bust out of here after I finish my peppermint tea, so that I may avert the next storm.

Knowing the week I've had, however, I doubt that'll happen. I will most likely stagger out the door in my rhinoviral haze, to the wet strains of the latest arctic storm front, and land smack dab in the middle of the heinous cluster known as Friday night San Francisco traffic. C'est la merde, as Alex Trebek would say.

Monday, February 05, 2001
11:39 PM
Today was a day-long bender of hate, frustration, and miscommunication. I have an anger hangover – I need a goddamn Advil.

It was one of those days where I was trying to juggle about 3 or 4 things, and all of them fell out of my grasp multiple times. Astrologically, they say Mercury has gone retrograde – supposedly a harbinger of about three weeks' worth of breakdowns of communication and machinery, a veritable orgy of shit going haywire. I don't know if I completely buy into that. You know, there's a little thing the kids call [making quote marks with fingers ala Dr. Evil] free will. Still, stuff like this has happened too many times for it to be dismissed as only coincidence. Eh. Whathefuckever.

The heinous nature of my Monday could only be mitigated by the fact that I celebrated my birthday all weekend with fine Moroccan and French dinners. Then again, I turned 29. Should I be facing this whole year with the dread fear that I'm anticipating I'll feel? This is my 30th year of current existence.

Thur. Tee. Eth. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

G'night.

Saturday, January 06, 2001
10:57 AM
Shameless plug time: My friend Dan Kurtzman is the editor of About.com's Political Humor site. He took on the gig a month or two before the presidential elections, so naturally he's been thrilled about the resultant chaos which has been such good fodder for humorists everywhere, and a fantastic source for eyeballs and click-throughs. He recently held the 2000 Political Dot-Comedy Awards, where he and the users picked the funniest political sites. One of the award-winners – Too Stupid to be President.com – saw fit to make a Flash movie out of the occasion, wherein they got the Kurtzy award.

Dan Kurtzman, who've I've known since we were 3 years old, has officially been bronzed. Couldn't happen to a more deserving fellow.

So I found my new favorite karaoke tune. And it's... "Sweet Transvestite" from The Rocky Horror Show. (Fishnets and bustier optional.) Yeah, that song's gonna score with the chicks.

Saturday, December 30, 2000
11:36 AM
I've been struck by the approximate bi-annual urge to actually clean my hovel of a bedroom. Times like these make me thankful that I shelled out the $35 at Office Depot for a shredder/wastebasket.

Oh, my family laughed at me, thought me weirder than I already was, but they didn't understand. I justified my purchase – something surprisingly hard for me to do when I'm at Office Depot or Staples, because I get a contact high and a penchant for impulse office supply shopping when I'm there – because I wanted to securely dispose of all the credit card crap I get in the mail.

Little did I realize how utterly cathartic having a shredder could be. I stumbled across a photo of an ex and myself on vacation. It had been collecting dust in a corner for almost 2 years. I deliberated (slightly) and then fed it to my mechanical Audrey II – ambivalent technicolor memories, cut quickly into long vertical ribbons, made the syncopated sound of paper rain as it hit the bottom of the wastebasket.

Nothing feels better than getting rid of stuff that's far outlived its usefulness.

Happy new year. Mwa ha ha.

Friday, December 22, 2000
1:31 AM
Just got back from karaoke at my favorite spot, a Brazilian nightclub in Marin called Club Fusetti. Only a few people were in there, so I got to get up and sing around 7 times in 3 hours. Sweet.

So the bartender, who I think also owns the place, passed me something he wrote on a napkin:

Lou

We have two beautiful girls at the bar: Samila and Becky.

Sing one song for them.

Awwww yeah, mega-suave-Jack-Jones-singin'-fat-guy in the hoooooouse.

Remember that 2nd truism about karaoke I mentioned earlier – the one about the dearth of groupies? I think it applies only to me. Some dude – short guy, in shape, with a fairly strong voice and a bit of a swagger that some might construe as dickitude – ended up playing tonsil hockey with a lady on the dance floor late in the evening. While I was singing "Kiss," fer chrissakes. He carried quite a 'tude for being the alpha-male in the near-empty karaoke bar. Kinda like being the mightiest beetle on the dung heap.

Do I sound nothing less than completely embittered yet? Thought so. G'night.

Friday, December 15, 2000
11:25 PM
So I've spent part of today relaying to friends and family my brush with Survivor glory last night. My whip-smart sister asks me, "So did you dedicate a song to her, like 'Eye of the Tiger'?" (Yes, the theme from Rocky III by... Survivor.)

"Er... no, I didn't think of it, actually," I replied. "Damn, that's a good one," I thought.

"Or how about '867-5309 / Jenny'?" That's the popular '80s song by one-hit wonder band Tommy Tutone. "You could have changed the lyrics to 'Jen-na, I've got your num-ber / I need to make you mi-ine...'"

"Aw man, and they had that song, too," I said. "Double damn", I thought.

"Time to fire up the time machine, Lou," said my brother-in-law.

It's a hilarious thought. If I ever invented a time machine – and that's way down on my to-do list, right after "Get a Ph.D. in physics so I can try to figure out how to invent a time machine" – instead of going back in time to do something noble like avert catastrophes and prevent wars, I'd probably use it solely for the purpose of feeding myself the most perfectly witty comeback – you know, the comeback I thought of 24 hours after I got zinged by someone and really could have used it. Or to give myself some suave lines when I'm flailing to keep my composure around a beautiful woman. Or to mail that bill payment I had missed, or return that overdue video to Blockbuster on time.

See, I wouldn't be a mad scientist/inventor. Just a petty and vain one.

1:39 AM
Just got back from the karaoke encounter. Strange bit of fun.

Silver Clouds Bar and Grill is located on Lombard Street in San Francisco, in the trendy Cow Hollow/Marina district. The place was crawling with young yupsters and hotties, all singing in mightily tuneless styles. And then there were a few women in Chinese silk dresses, hawking some new Chinese import brew called Shanghai Beer. I laid down my 2 bucks for a bottle of Shanghai, and suddenly I found myself waxing sentimental for the full-bodied piss-water taste of Tsingtao.

As I walked in the door, I spied someone who looked familiar in the drunken post-frat crowd. I wasn't sure at first, but by the time I left, I was convinced where I knew her from.

It was Jenna Lewis, the spunky single-mother-of-twins / babe-in-a-pink-bikini-who-almost-got-nekkid-for-Playboy / victim-of-the-evil-Tagi-alliance from Survivor. She could tough it out on Pulau Tiga, but when it came to singing "Say My Name" by Destiny's Child, I knew why the tribe had spoken and not busted out into song. She pursued the "strength in numbers" stratagem of getting up as part of a big, tone-deaf group to sing, to no success.

I got to the bar first, and my friends followed soon after, with the Crush finally arriving after engaging in the Survivor Parking Immunity Challenge for a half-hour or so. In the span of about two hours, I sang twice: two of my "showstoppers," Prince's "Kiss" (a la Tom Jones) and Louis Prima's "Just a Gigolo." I wasn't up to top form, but I guess I faked it well enough, as the crowd was receptive and appreciative of the rare person who could halfway carry a tune. The Crush seemed impressed, which made me happy. I couldn't even glance her way when I was singing, for fear of utter embarrassment. I also got mad props from some of the testosterone-laden members of Hootie Nation™ in the bar.

When I got up to sing "Just a Gigolo," a guy yelled out, "Hey, you look like Ron Jeremy!" Sadly, this isn't the first time I've been compared to the pudgy, Semitic, mustachioed porn performer and director. I'll post a photo comparison in the near future. Somehow, I've acquired this rep of being a dead ringer for "The Hedgehog." It's happened too many times now to be called a mere coincidence – people have pulled the Ron Jeremy card on me at open-mic comedy nights, strip clubs, and now at a karaoke bar. This does not help me get laid in the least. Ron Jeremy is someone who gets action because producers pay thousands of dollars to women to fornicate with his hairy old ass on-camera. This does not inspire me. I need to hit the gym and get a penis pump, not necessarily in that order, so that I may aspire to be a "younger, cuter Ron Jeremy." A man can dream, can't he?

Anyway, the Crush says she wants to see me more often than every 8 years, which bodes well for me. "You're a rock star!" she said. Er, okay. But if there are two truisms in karaoke I've discovered, they are:

1) No matter how bad you think you sound, there's always someone up there singing much worse; and

2) No matter how good you are, karaoke will not get you groupies of any kind. Ever. Ever. And if you do obtain groupies, 6:5 odds are that they're mentally imbalanced.

Thursday, December 14, 2000
5:12 PM
Yesterday was the first time in a long while that I – a 300-plus-pound, 28-year-old hairy beast – ended up blushing, flustered and giggly from a phone conversation. (Well, at least from a non-phone sex encounter.)

I was setting up a get-together with some old high school friends – including a longtime crush of mine. The goofy part of the whole thing is that it's at a karaoke bar in San Francisco. Even goofier – the Crush wanted to see me sing. She kinda catalyzed the whole event.

Back story: I'm a karaoke enthusiast. (Ergo, I'm a sick sick man, but for now that's between me and my shrink.) My friends – at least, the friends I haven't scared off yet – don't share my enthusiasm, so they'll come to a karaoke bar very occasionally but will go nowhere near a mic. Imagine my shit-a-brick-Twinkie surprise when the Crush – through a friend of hers – let it be known that she'd like to see me sing.

So I gave her a call yesterday to confirm the evening. She said, "Yeah, I'm up for it if you are." To which I had to reply, being a karaoke freak, "Well, when would I not be up for it?" And the absurdity of it all swept over me – that I was talking to a beautiful woman that (until recently) I hadn't seen in around 8 years, making plans to meet in a karaoke bar. And I chuckled. Then she chuckled, perhaps because she too realized the absurdity, or perhaps in response to my own stupid laughter. Which, of course, kept me chuckling, momentarily unable to form a coherent sentence, and left me blushing.

Boy howdy, I do believe I was enamored. Am enamored.

Time to brush up on my repertoire of Barry White songs.

4:36 PM
OK, another wack-ass dream from last weekend.

I'm a student again at my alma mater, UC Santa Cruz. But now I'm a film actor. I had just appeared in an independent movie, as one of a couple who's held hostage in an apartment by a punk, inexplicably played by aging insult comic Bobby Slayton. I was scheduled to start a David Lynch movie shortly thereafter.

Er, whatever.