just had my first “this-side-of-the-fence” experience.


i was asked to give a prospective job candidate the knowledge shakedown. i felt all-powerful.


it’s weird talking to people about jobs from this side. I’ve spent so much time as the seeker, being interviewed, putting forth the best face, etc.. I really felt my age, which is a pretty rare thing. usually i’d put myself around 22 or 23 instead of my aged 24.75. i just feel like a whippersnapper and i like it. now here i am interviewing 21 year old fresh outta college grads. call me grampa, dammit!


then i had to think, “do i tell her about the big negs of this place, how most everything is cool except for the small office politics? I didn’t. hey, no one warned me about that crap. i made some certain allusions to it’s a small place, if you don’t like someone you’re still gonna see them every day. all day.


so i think we just hired her. partly based on my approval. [insert best Keanu "whoa" here -indicating amazement at level of personal responsibility-].





there’s a new creepsville


morning news is apparently rebooting very very soon

a lot of you have never heard of lungfish. their frontman, daniel higgs is probably one of the scarier/nicest people you’ll meet. [see pics below. courtesy kris mestag]


he’s got a huge unkempt beard, dresses like a quaker, talks like a pirate, and covers himself head to toe in tattoos (including a huge lotus blossom on his throat). very intimidating. anyway, here’s some anecdotes on higgsy i was reading over on kris’ site.


“somebody from the crowd flicked a cigarette across the stage and dan higgs leaped off the stage in a rather impressive manner to tackle the person who did it. after a brief struggle, he returned to the stage and calmly explained his “ingrained fear of flying incendiary objects.” “

“My band played that show in NY and in fact Dan Higgs did stick a safety pin into his forehead. Along with that, he bent and destroyed the mic stand then used it as a frame that he stuck inside of his suit making him look like some sort of twisted scarecrow… all events are true as I saw them first hand… and daniel higgs ate a pen!!”

“Yes, Mr. Higgs did indeed stick a safety pin into his forehead at the December 10th show at Brownie’s in NYC last December (an act that prompted me to bring a camera to the next show in hopes of a repeat performance, but alas spontaneity is what it is). The next night (they played two days in a row) during a lull between songs, someone yelled, “Time is melting!”.


Hearing this Mr. Higgs halted the band from beginning the next song to say, with the most perplexed look on his face (I thought those semi-comic aztec masks were bizarre), “Time is melting?…Do you realize that that implies that time at one time was a solid? WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?” and then proceeded to stand there staring into the ceiling until the band decided it was time to reel him back to earth. … “

“at about 3/4’s of the way through their set Mr. Higgs constructed a baracade between himself and the audience with nearby amplifiers and monitors and milk crates behind which he sat and smoked a cigarrette during an instrumental. In fact he actually completed the set wandering in and out of view. Avoiding bad mojo or something.”

boys nite out


jesus, i really don’t remember a lot of these pictures. all i know is that i won’t be touching the sauce for some time (at least until i get home…)


finally woke up around 1:30 … couldn’t speak. had some sort of little ninja guy on my shoulder repeatedly plunging a sword into my skull. went back to bed.


got up again around 3:00 with vocal ability intact. ninja sword replaced by nunchucks. ended up lounging ’til about 9:30, wandered out and saw pearl harbor… promptly vomited all over the theater. (yeah, so i made that last part up, what of it?)

Americans better at comedy, say top British writers


well duh, who can best the comedic genius of bob saget and full house?

before i forget, Dirt Bike Annie drew us all a map to the ROCK last friday nite. they know where the rock is. they could give guided pink jeep tours to the rock and back! DBA opened up the show at the black cat, warming up the stage for the Hissyfits and Squatweiler. Infectious 3 part harmonies over fast poppy punky chords with fully choreographed stage moves! it was a beautiful sight and we danced our asses off.


the last song of their set, they impressed the hell outta me. they got everyone in the club on the floor. no, not dancing.. literally squatting down on the floor like a bunch of kindergartners during naptime. as dirt bike dan preached the story of the rock to us, one by one, he got some of the most standoffish people in one of the most standoffish clubs in one of the most standoffish cities to participate!


hissyfits: ugh. there were a couple of minutes in their half hour set that i wasn’t cringing. that’s the ‘glass is half full’ review.


squatweiler: dunno if it was an ‘off’ show for them, but i just didn’t get all the hype. i’ve heard from numerous folks how hi-energy and crazy their live shows are. didn’t see it. DBA blew ‘em all away!

christ, what a weekend… you’ll get the full photo-story once i get some of the scanned proof from jason. for now, I’ll just say… my friends tried to kill me. it wasn’t pretty.


couldn’t leave the house until the next night at 9:30, so we went out to see pearl harbor. it wasn’t too bad. personally i love me some WWII dogfight action, so there were some really great action sequences and some beautiful effects. i just couldn’t deal with the romance. yet another case of someone taking a decent movie and applying the hollywood formula.


i’m not much of an authority on race relations in 1941, but a few of the scenes with Cuba Gooding Jr. seemed a bit strange. almost as if we were rewriting the history books thru movies to eradicate racism. there was no hint of any b/w separation, cuba was even left alone to get stitched up by the beautiful white nurse. dunno, maybe i have too many visions of hardcore southern racism going down. i’m usually wrong about these things.


bought requiem for a dream on dvd last nite and watched it again. the dvd is awesome and has a couple different ‘making-of’ sections, deleted scenes, 2 commentaries and an interview with the author (who is really friggin scary, i may add). very, very, very well worth my $20.


gotta get started on some busy work for the time being. the boss is on the prowl. I’ll be right back!

hmmm.. i seem to have lost sunday. have you seen it?


coming soon:

• bachelor party shizznits
  
  
  
• missing: one sunday. reward offered.
  
  
  
• pearl harbore review
  
  
  
• wedding freakouts

doesn’t really effect me much right now, (because i work out in the boonies of reston) but when i get that hip job as senior web designer at a downtown DC firm. I’ll be glad that WABA has expanded their Bike-On-Rail Program

Johnny Deep?! What the hell kind of name is Johnny Deep?*





*Johnny Deep, chief executive officer of Albany, New York-based, Aimster, a Napster-like program that piggybacks on America Online’s messaging service.

in memoriam to the late Douglas Adams, the binary freedom people have organized Towel Day


…from the Guide:

any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

[via: zannah ]