April 2006

That would be an awkward subject if I weren’t talking about a CD. I just purchased the long-lost (to me and MikeD) soundtrack to the 1997 film, The Last Time I Committed Suicide. I have to say that the movie isn’t one of my favorites. I don’t really even like it very much. (Sorry Mike!) However it’s got an amazing soundtrack that’s been out of print for ages. Mike and I used to listen to it fairly often, and once I left Stockton, I realized I needed a copy for myself. No dice. It’s almost as hard to find as a copy of Boulderdash’s We Never Went to Koxut Island, which I had to have a friend in Belgium buy for me. I’ve been trying to get a copy of Suicide off eBay, but never found one when I remember to look, but didn’t quite want it enough to look harder.

I lucked out the other night, and found a copy for $6 and change after shipping through an Amazon seller. It arrived today, and I’m just so pleased. :D While I own some of the tracks on other albums, it’s a great all-in-one piece. Blue Note knows how to put out an album, that’s for sure. Read the track list and feel the love.

1. “Better Get It In Your Soul” - Charles Mingus
2. “Straight No Chaser” - Max Roach Quartet
3. “Move” - Miles Davis
4. “It’s A Metaphor”
5. “Sugar Blues” - Dianne Reeves
6. “Shaw ‘Nuff” - Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie
7. “Right Back Where I Started”
8. “A Tisket, A Tasket” - Ella Fitzgerald
9. “Sixteen” - Thelonious Monk
10. “The Thin Man” - Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers
11. “Woody Wagon”
12. “Country Girl” - Javon Jackson featuring Cassandra Wilson
13. “He May Be Your Man” - Dianne Reeves
14. “The Wild Stuff”
15. “Heartbreaker” - The Andrews Sisters
16. “Budism” - Jacky Terrasson
17. “The Suicide Suite (Original Score From The Movie)” - Red Fish Blue Fish
18. “Carry On, My Brother”
19. “Ride My Heart” - Pet
20. “Who Is This?”

As posited by Jim Emerson and found via kottke, here follows the list of 102 movies which critic Emerson believes everyone should see.

This isn’t like Roger Ebert’s “Great Movies” series. It’s not my idea of The Best Movies Ever Made (that would be a different list, though there’s some overlap here), or that they were my favorites or the most important or influential films, but that they were the movies you just kind of figure everybody ought to have seen in order to have any sort of informed discussion about movies. They’re the common cultural currency of our time, the basic cinematic texts that everyone should know, at minimum, to be somewhat “movie-literate.”

…I tried to represent key examples of all important genres, movie stars, directors, historical movements, and so on — like an overview of the 20th century in 101 [sic] movies.

I agree with Emerson that there is a certain cinematic literacy that we should all strive toward. However achieving this literacy is difficult at best. I know that I would not have been exposed to any French New Wave cinema (for example) had I not been a film major in college. I’d guess that a goodly number of films on this list were part of the cinematic explosion in my life that happened between 1996 and 2000. (The musical does seem to be greatly underrepresented here, but I’m also biased toward the format.)

The following is Emerson’s list, with notations for the ones I’ve seen [#] and ones I own [$]. I realize there are some “odd” films which I’m missing. Chalk it up to me wanting to follow the path I was already on (either continuing with the oeuvre of a director or seeing the major pieces of a genre, or possibly just that I don’t really like Stanley Kubrick). I’m trying to put together my own (significantly shorter) “must see” list too. Coming soon to a blog near you.

Read the rest of this entry »

My dad called tonight to tell me that the time has come. The information for my ten-year high school reunion arrived in the post today. (C’mon, you didn’t expect me to just come out with the Paul Spericki/Grosse Pointe Blank quote, do you? Been there, done that.) I’m not sure what to do. Granted, I do want to go, I think. But for $74? It’s hard to believe it’d be worth the money. The reunion is at Dave & Busters, so I could just show up and play games and not interact in the fancy-schmancy showroom where the reunion is being held. Checking the list of people that the reunion service couldn’t find…well several folks on that list are people I’d be most interested in seeing again. Guess I need to call Hedyeh about being my other date to the reunion.

Also, while I particularly loathe the “Fight Club” episode of The X-Files, I’d forgotten how cute the Mulder and Scully guess-the-cause-and-culprit-before-the-slideshow interaction was. I should watch the first 10 minutes of the episode again some time.

Oh, the cute…

Mulder: You have any ideas, Scully? Any thoughts?
Scully: What I’m thinking, Mulder, is how familiar this seems. Playing Watson to your Sherlock. You dangling clues out in front of me one by one. It’s a game and…and as usual, you’re…you’re holding something back from me. You’re not telling me something about this case.

I’ve definitely had enough drama to supply myself and the four of you with some dramarama for your afternoon. But suffice to say, I’m coming around…I’m only hoping that others might as well. The more things change, the more they continue to change. If things happen for a reason, it’s only natural to imagine that some of those reasons are unreasonable. Meh.

However, the true Hollywood story is, in this case, my behind-the-scenes work on the blog today. I’ve updated the theme (finally) to Tarski 1.1.1 and chose to join the modern sector and use my own CSS instead of b0rking about with the style.css in the heart of the theme. I updated Ultimate Tag Warrior to the latest version. My archives have been tidied up a bit with Clean Archives, which I really dig. For really no reason at all, I also added a specific Creative Commons deed.

Want to know about other stuff you can see? myStatus got its own class in the CSS, so it has a specific look all to itself. I felt that it looked too much like the post content, and not enough like sidebar content. I’ve updated my DVD collection info, which is now mostly complete. Did I mention the change to the header? That happened a few days ago, but I’ve been working on it just as long as the other one has been up. Because I know you’ve been waiting for this for ages now, you can click on that cute photo of me and read my new bio/about page.

I’ll bitch a little too. Now that I’m tracking my traffic etc., I know and understand my Google page rank. (Nifty extension which I use to see this.) I’m vain enough to want to know why someone who has a hosted blog (i.e. Blogger or LiveJournal) can, with very little content and zero link savvy, receive a higher page ranking than me? Feh.

This has been, hands down, the most difficult and exhausting week of my career. Capped off with today, a brutal test of who I am and what I stand for. I’ve challenged who I am as a person, as a friend, and as a manager. I’m still only sure that I’m a pretty good manager. The rest may be up for debate, at least in my head.

I won’t be blogging for the next few days. The bullshit in my head isn’t fit for public consumption.

Well, at least Dena and Melis might remember that one… I’ll be working, and not doing anything even remotely interesting in that vein. I shall live vicariously through the people who I know will not let the day pass them. I also did the smart thing and gave several key people on my staff the day off. I wasn’t born yesterday.

I rarely get to use one of my favorite phrases on myself (because while I’m self-mocking, I have to draw the line somewhere), but in this case, it’s definitely apt: “The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead.”

Mentally, I feel like my wittle brain went on a marathon race and forgot the water and the Clif bars. The last three days have been a whirlwind of activity, and I’m exhausted mentally. So exhausted that I was unable to react to the complete and utter cow patty that was tonight’s ending to Alias. (My essay on where J.J. Abrams went wrong is now in its fourth volume.) Beginning on Monday, we started interviewing supervisors. A candidate pool of seven needed to be whittled down to four–three in my new store and one to replace me. But who can replace me, right? Oh snap.

Each interview ran anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, and each one required a huge amount of mental juice. It always amazes me how much energy just sitting and really listening to someone takes. This may be because I’m not much of a listener. (I’m sorry, did you say something?) Monday was just a single interview to get my feet wet. Tuesday was a grueling four interview session, from 10:30am until 5pm. We were chomping on some Mocha Magic during the last one to try and stay with it. They were all phone interviews, so I was sitting in an office with at least one other manager, trying to make deep and meaningful eye-contact with the phone. Today we rounded out the interviews with two final candidates.

The decision making has been, thus far, the easiest part. I got to give my recommendations to my boss, then I sit back and wait for his ultimate decisions. He’ll be conducting one more reference check tomorrow, and then I expect we’ll have a decision to throw out there to our candidates on Friday morning. Oy. I’ve definitely been sweating the whole process. It’s really important for me to feel like I’ve given this my all and have helped to make the right decisions for this new store. Frankly, it’s making it difficult for me to sleep, and most of you know that sleeping is nearly my favorite hobby.

Have I mentioned that I’m also still doing my old (current) job on top of all the interviewing. I feel I’ve managed to be relatively productive doing both. I’m getting a lot done through others, that’s for sure!

I’m going to get into bed now. It’s time to try and sleep while I can.

Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, asked recently:

If you had to design a dating web site that matched people on just two criteria, what would those criteria be?

The comments/answers to his query range from thought-provoking to ridiculous. I’d previously told Amanda and Savannah that I only have one criteria for dating consideration: personal hygiene. Everything else can be negotiated. After all, I’ve been known to do ridiculous things for people I love. Like go to Texas or enter a country-western bar. (Thankfully I didn’t have to do those two things at the same time!) Thus, I present my two criteria.

1. Attention to personal hygiene.
2. Interests that are not exactly like my own.

I figure if they bathe regularly and can introduce me to things I may not have otherwise done/tried/seen, they are worth consideration. Some overlap is good, but why would I want to date someone exactly like myself? That’s just narcissism. Bryan fits both nicely. Now if only he would close the kitchen cabinets… =)

I GOT IT! :D

For those I couldn’t tell in the first 36 hours, I’ve been offered the assistant manager job at the new Mountain View store, and I’ve happily accepted it. Wahoo! I’ll be working in my current position for the next month, then will be working in a temporary office until the store itself is ready to have inhabitants. Sadly, I’ll be doing double-duty of both jobs for the next month as well, but without the pay jump. We start interviewing supervisors next week. Guess I should get ready…

Monday afternoon I got the call. The Bay Area human resources rep called me to ask about the weather. Ok, not really. She called to set up an interview time with me, and to joke that she was calling about the weather. I like her. =) I’ve been ready for this interview since the middle of February, so I’ve just been itching to get out and do it. I set it up for 11:30 on Tuesday morning. Get it out of the way, and then sit back. I was, if I am correct, the first interview. For me, I definitely want to be either first or last. Set the standard, or be the last one they have in their head.

The interview was a conference call with the HR rep and the new store manager. It lasted just over an hour, and I paced the whole time. I’d posted up in my manager’s office, and paced as far as his phone cord would let me. Slightly less than three feet in either direction. While I don’t like phone interviews (I’m much more brilliant and charming in person), it does afford an opportunity to have my notes in front of me. Rather than flipping through pages, I had color-coded post-its. Each post-it was one example of something great I’d done which I wanted to use in my interview. Once I used it, I pulled it off the wall so I wasn’t repeating my examples.

At the end, there were only three left on the wall. Not because I hadn’t gotten to them, but because I had only touched upon them, and didn’t feel like I’d said enough to pull them from the wall. All in all, I think it was a good interview. I’m feeling pretty confident in the way I presented myself, and the kind of impression I made.

There are seven people applying for three jobs. Someone else can do the math for me on that one. I’ll know about the job by Wednesday, the 12th. Keep your fingers crossed!

For the third year in a row, my friend Anne is doing the AIDS LifeCycle. In short:

AIDS/LifeCycle is co-produced by the San Francisco AIDS Foundation and the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center and is designed to advance their shared interests to end the pandemic and human suffering caused by AIDS.

It’s a seven-day, 585 mile bike ride from San Francisco to Los Angeles. I repeat, Anne is doing it for a third year in a row. This year she’ll be joined by her brother and her father. I’ll also pimp my co-worker, Micheal, who is doing the ride for a second year. Please, if you have a few dollars to spare, donate to them and help them with their fundraising goals. It’ll only take a minute, but every penny makes a difference.

Please donate to Anne and her family.
Please donate to Micheal’s goal too.

Spring cleaning time! Seriously. I understand that those of you who know me really well will find the idea that I’ve embraced any sort of cleaning as a sick and belated April Fool’s joke, but I’m quite serious. Bryan and I got home from our vacation and came home to a sty. And not a neat pig-kind either. We’re talking dog fur and dust everywhere. Granted, now that the weather is (in theory) changing, Chandler is shedding more than ever. Be that as it may, we’re trying to keep up with the fur deposits, as well as minimizing our own “deposits” along the way. Little things like doing the dishes every night and me hanging up my coat when I get home go a long way toward reducing clutter. I even found our kitchen table earlier this evening! Go me!

We’re sweeping through the house in stages. The kitchen, living room, and bathroom are complete. I’m finishing the office and the guest bedroom tomorrow. Our bedroom will happen too, but it’s mostly buried under laundry, and not filthy like the rest of the house was.

Oh, and I get my interview date and time tomorrow. Wish me luck on getting the promotion!