Wednesday, July 27, 2005

3 o'clock

Not long ago in a galaxy not far away, the people who write the articles on the website you're parked at right now all worked at the same company. Western Images at 300W Townsend street San Francisco, CA. When I began working there, I didn't drink coffee. I don't know if Tama did either because coffee didn't seem to involve so much of her daily existence as it did the others. Alan constantly had a coffee mug at his desk, and Josh constantly carried one with him wherever he went.

I drank orange juice in the morning. The bike ride down Potrero ave at 8:30 am complete with cars racing by within 6 inches of my bike was enough to wake my ass up. But then the afternoon would arrive and asses would start dragging. I began to notice that Josh and Alan were hanging around the kitchen at 3 o'clock every day drinking coffee. I'd get my regular - Coke in a plastic cup with ice. Coke poured before the ice was put in so as not to flatten the Coke. I hate it when fast food joints do it the wrong way. Anyway, one time at 3 o'clock Josh asked if he could buy me a cup o' joe. Figuratively speaking, of course. It sounded like fun, and away we went. The energy level after 3 o'clock coffee definitely trumps what a Coke will do. Enough caffeine-induced energy to get through the end of the work day.

I joined the tradition of congregating in the kitchen with the other coffee aficionados at 3. And even though Western Images is gone, the tradition remains. For me at least. Or maybe it's called caffeine addiction now that it's less of a social thing. In any case, another tradition that IS social is wearing a tie on Thursday if you're gonna tie one on at Thursday Night Social Club. And then there's the tradition of AC buying you drinks if you're wearing a tie. Or even if you're not wearing a tie. What could be better than that?

Thursday, July 21, 2005

Howdy Neighbor

Neighbors suck. Well, they don't ALL suck. But for the most part I think I can safely say that my neighbors, in general, suck.

I live in a house which includes seven rental units. In this day and age, if you even see your neighbors a couple times a month it's a rarity. Some neighbors I see far less than that. Included in San Francisco neighbor-dom are the people who live on either side of the house that's standing next to yours. So I have a neighbor on one side who's an opera singer, and one on the other side who's redoing his backyard. There was a time about two years ago when I would hear the opera singer belt one out, and I thought it was beautiful. Now I think she's showing off. And as for the guy with the backyard, he needs to get it done before the wind blows all his dirt away. The opera singer's friends routinely park in our driveway, despite the NO PARKING IN DRIVEWAY sign. And I routinely tell them, "Hey, it would be super cool if you guys could just put a note on your car saying which apartment to ring. K?" Why I oughta...

Those are small gripes compared to the ones I have toward the people living in the same building as me. They collectively do the absolute minimum it takes to keep the building in order. One of my neighbors (who I don't mind so much, but Lily does because he's nosy) called last week to gripe about the lack of participation by the rest of our building in taking the trash bins out for Thursday morning and taking them in that night. Nobody in my building takes out the trash bins nearly as often as I do. So obviously I was ready to hear him out.

He wanted us to leave the trash bins out after the collection and have somebody take them in, other than the three of us who regularly do it. Not a big deal, seeing as how I take them out when they're full (i.e. Heavy as hell), so taking them in when they're empty shouldn't be too difficult. But no, the bins sat there on the curb for days. Days after all our neighbors on the block had taken theirs in. After a while I began to feel childish about it, and that we were becoming the neighbors who suck by leaving them out there. I was just about to break and roll them inside when my neighbor who started this test told me that he saw Bob taking them in at about midnight the night before. Bob's one of the newest residents in the building. Bob had a little accident
when he moved in. When he was moving in at 3am a bunch of guys beat him up, and now his shoulder is messed up. He's probably pissed off at the people who left the bins out there for a man with a bum shoulder to take in. I better wrap this up. I forgot to take the trash bins out. Neighbors suck.

Thursday, July 14, 2005

Minutes

A very hearty "welcome" to my newly found 4th reader. Enjoy!

Thursday July 7th -
9 am - Work on Dean Martin
6 pm - Work on Barbershop

Friday July 8th
9 am - Work on Dean Martin
6 pm - Meet Brian, Joe and JC at Hi-Dive. Margaritas.
7 pm - The four of us go to Red's Java House. We grab a beer before entering SBC Park which sells half the beer for double the price.

7:20 pm - Enter SBC Park to see Giants v. Cardinals.
10 pm - Giants lose 3-1. I am hoarse.
11 pm - The four of us go to Noe's. More margaritas.

Saturday July 9th
1 am - We travel to El Farolito. Super quesadilla suiza - Al pastor. Chips. Corona.
2 am - I am dropped off and immediately pass out on the sofa.
6 am - Lily helps me find the bed.
9 am - Hangover begins
10 am - Lily gets me ibuprofen.
11 am - Lily returns from the corner store with Gatorade.
12 pm - I get out of bed and return to the sofa to space out for hours while Lily prepares and bakes a plum tart.
1 pm - Director of Barbershop calls to request revisions.
2 pm - Shower
2:30 pm - Drive to San Anselmo for BBQ with Kevin & Sheila and their two kids.
5 pm - Dinner - Poached salmon, flank steak, grilled zucchini and mushrooms, rice pilaf.
8 pm - Return home and work on revisions.

Sunday July 10th
12:30 am - Go to bed
9am - Wake up
9:15 am - Get e-mail and more revisions
10am - Edit revisions
11am - Prepare old computer for sale to new owner
12pm - Edit more revisions
6:30 pm - Post last revised cut of the day
7 pm - Drive to the law offices of George Rush to drop off old computer. Setup takes 10 minutes.
7:30 pm - Pick up Jesse and drive to Metreon. The newly paved Mission street between 5th and 11th streets is very smooth.
7:45 pm - Eat chicken curry and rice at Sanraku. Sapporo and sake to share with Jesse.
8:40 pm - Batman Begins
10:50 pm - Batman Ends

Monday July 11th
9:45 am - Doctor appointment
12 pm - Work on Dean Martin

Tuesday July 12th
9am - Work on Dean Martin
10:45 am - receive e-mail notification of approval of Barbershop title sequence
5:15 pm - ride to Washington Mutual new location in Potrero Center and deposit checks. Receive massive flirtation from teller. Remember wedding ring is in pocket and put on in front of said teller.
6 pm - Post clean version of Barbershop for titles to be animated elsewhere

Wednesday July 13th
9am - Work on Dean Martin
5:45 pm - Go to gym. Answer guy's questions about my Shure e2c earphones. Recommend said earphones. Wonder if he heard a word I said.
6:45 pm - receive call from Lily.
6:46 pm - remember that I forgot to pick up Lily
6:47 pm - drive downtown to pick up Lily. The newly paved Mission street between 5th and 11th streets is very smooth.

7:15 pm - calculate timings of titles for Barbershop and e-mail producer
11 pm - roll trash bins to curb

Thursday, July 07, 2005

mp3 of Death

As you no doubt have heard in the press, there have been a rash of robberies in New York City lately for iPods. In fact, one 15-year old boy was killed for his iPod last week. I can just imagine the thugs who stole the iPod thinking "heall yeahz, I'm gonna fill this up with all my dope-ass tracks" only to find that they need a computer to actually put their dope-ass tracks on the stolen mp3 player. Doh!

Well I thought it was only the east-coast riff-raff that were capable of such dirty deeds, but the San Francisco riff-raff proved me wrong. As I rocked out to Slayer's "God Hates Us All", some punk kid in the lower Haight with a Rambo knife charged at me and yelled "Gimme the iPod!" Well, I actually don't know exactly what he said because I had my earphones in and... nevermind. The dead giveaway was wearing my old standard-issue white headphones because I forgot where I put my decidedly better sounding black Shures.

Not really wanting to get sliced in any way, I reached into my pocket and held out my first-generation 5GB iPod from 2001. I removed my earphones and the kid looked at me quizzically. "What the fuck is that?" he asked. "My iPod" I replied. "That ain't no muthafuckin iPod, bitch" he said, shaking his head. "Uh, yeah it is" I replied. He asked me how much storage it had and I told him. He just said "shit" and turned and walked away. I put the unwanted iPod back in my pocket and got back to Slayer. Well, at least it's still wanted by me.