Category — random

I must watch too many cop shows. (I’m still in the 2nd season of The Wire btw…) Instead of laughing at this DirecTV ad, or being offended and wondering about the state of Russians in popular media…  I now look at this ad and wonder if the two women in it will show up dead in the next ad.  Too many cop shows and movies.

I’m just glad the guy kisses the giraffe instead of getting in a meat-and-potates fight with Viggo in a sauna.

I’ve been busy with some life changes (I switched gigs – more on that later) so here is some miscellanea to tie you over until I have more time (and network access) to add some fuller posts.

-Yesterday I saw a Volvo station wagon and a Prius get in a fender bender. I was sad that I wasn’t in a good position to get a pic. For some reason, it really amused me.

-Today I was riding to work and, like in this last post, there was a shuttle bus blocking not only the bike lane, but the next lane too. A tough guy riding by smacked the shuttle bus with his hand and made a big noise. If he were a car bumper-sticker he’d be “No Fear“. Dork.

wow

-I noticed that some Spanish stations were added to the Comcast HD lineup.

I found a telenovela called Las Muñecas de la Mafia by chance one night. It could be the greatest show ever. Even if you don’t speak Spanish.

Check out this Wikipedia entry (before it gets changed).

Apparently it’s about a married drug dealer guy who goes out with younger women. It focuses on the younger women.

-In other news, last week I went to a restaurant that my parents have been too a number of times out here when they’ve visited. It’s called Brenda’s French Soul Food. And you know what? It’s damn good.

It’s tiny and there will be a wait, so get there early, put your name on the list and wait your turn — and then pig out on grits, biscuits and other stuff. It’s worth it.

-One of the other things I did last week was to stock up on Macarons at La Boulange on Pine (and Fillmore). Good lord those are good. Just a thought – Macarons vs Cupcakes- who wins?

-I was also reminded about how pleasant Trader Joe’s (and other stores) are during the working day when most people are at work. I also found that they have peonies the size of my head there.

-I also found out that peonies sounds a lot like panties when the cute cashier with a tongue piercing speaks to you.

-I’ve had a draft of a rant about The Tonga Room on my computer for a while but I haven’t had a chance to finish it. There’s been a lot of talk about “saving” (preserving) it if the hotel changes owners. I’m on the side of getting rid of it. In a nutshell, I think it’s run poorly by the hotel and the only way to save it is to let non-hotel workers run it.

-Oh, and a reminder: I’m a hater. I drink the haterade. (as if you didn’t know)

I’m always impressed with people who take the time to bounce ideas off their friends or peers- mostly because I don’t take that time [see that post below about my thoughts on Those Who Save Us as an example (or any of my dvd 'reviews')].

It’s not an theme per se, but this has come up a lot recently- almost randomly…

I had been loosely following the Team Coco debacle on tv.gawker.com and somehow came across a link early last week of Patton Oswalt giving a radio interview on Comedy Death Ray Radio (link).

I don’t really know much about Patton Oswalt, I like his bits and voicework, but I haven’t seen him live or anything (although I did hear him on an NPR podcast last week talking about Big Fan also)… but I was impressed by his answer to the show’s host about his thoughts on Leno.

He says he had been talking about that with his peers for hours that day… and then also compares Leno’s rise to Nixon’s as described in the Perlstein book Nixonland.

I haven’t read that book but I did add it to my ‘to-read’ list.

I’m not saying I don’t have peers to bounce ideas off of, I do… but maybe my interests don’t match up right. For example, I know damn well that it’s pointless to discuss Audition or Old Boy with Kuz, but we meet in the middle on other things.

Some people can bounce ideas off each other online pretty well- I see really well described forum posts/threads like this frequently.

But online discussion is one area that I’m not comfortable with. Well, I should clarify, that it’s a one-way street. I get good ideas, but I add little to meaningful discussion. I have a tendency to write too quickly and fire off missives without putting reasoning behind it. I think I prefer the in-person “arguing and refining my argument” method (mostly because I’m wrong a lot).

I don’t know where I’m going with this post, but maybe I need to get out more, or start a book club…

I decided to be lazy this morning and not ride my bike in the rain, but to take the bus (thankfully my express bus was running).

The bus was emptier than usual because EVERYONE has the holiday off today except me (and I’m not bitter).

Around Baker or Divisidero a guy got on the bus and took a long time to pay the driver. I only looked up because of this. He came all the way to the back where I was sitting and reading (I like to sit at the very back) and took the middle seat blocking my view of the married cuties who like me were reading…

After messing around with his bag for a minute and loudly applying some anti-bacterial gel to his hands, he got out a permanent marker and wrote some drug name down on a piece of paper, then walked back up to the middle of the bus to give it to a woman he had been talking to at his bus stop.

He then came all the way back, realized he forgot to tell her something, walked back to the middle of the bus, loudly said something he thought was funny and sat back down. And started fidgeting to get his gel out again.

I should have mentioned that he was wearing fingerless Harbinger fingerless gloves and was really only putting the gel on his fingertips and was using a (used) paper towl to wipe off the excess.

But the thing that made me jumpy was that I took his bag to be a range bag at first. It could be a tool bag, but at 8am I was thinking “wtf, why is a guy wearing fingerless gloves and carrying a range bag in SF on a bus?”.

To make it even worse, I realized his bag was secured to his person– I mean, he had a locked cable that kept his bag attached to him.

wtf right?

Maybe I’m just paranoid due to staying up too late to watch the first season of The Wire. Or maybe the cop & spy books I’ve been reading lately have got me caught up in them. Either way I kept my eye on the guy for the rest of the ride. (pic below)

On the bright side- when we got to the last stop and he screamed “thank you operator” to the bus driver twice he wandered off and I watched him wander off towards Mission and one of the bus cuties asked me what that guy’s deal was.

I said I had no idea, but asked if she saw his bag. She said she also thought it was weird that it was cabled too him and wanted to know what was in it.

I said I had only seen smaller bags inside and used paper towels… and a lot of hand gel.

Yeah, I just turned a story about a creepy guy making me jumpy into a story about a cute girl talking to me on the bus.

guy on bus w/ bag strapped to himself

Oddly enough, I was more creeped out by the jackass clipping his nails on the 38 last week. That’s so nasty.

Powell Muni station closed … now Van Ness too:

Check out these Street Vids- 4th & Folsom:

2 From Francisco:

These Prius ads keep coming on and they’re starting to bother me… well, not really, I just hate seeing the same ads over and over.

The campaign and/or ads remind me of the mystics scene from the video remix project “At War with Baraka” (Bascially someone took the audio from The Flaming Lips album At War With the Mystics and put it to the movie Baraka)

Prius “Harmony” Commercial:

Prius “MPG”

At War With Baraka (Google Video):

On Writing by Stephen King

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
I was pretty surprised at how much I enjoyed this book. There are enough anecdotes to keep most people interested who came to the title for ‘writing tips’ – and vice versa.


View all my reviews.

Lives of the Monster Dogs by Kirsten Bakis

My review

rating: 2 of 5 stars
I thought it was an interesting concept and was doing well, but lost steam about 3/4ths of the way through….


View all my reviews.