Giveaway

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Another freak at work

There is this person at work. They recently moved my desk and I’m warming up to the new neighbors (although I think most of them are probably unbalanced).
I have to preface my complaint with the fact I have the worst sinuses / allergies known to man. I rarely go a day without sneezing and I have one of the most earth shaking sneezes a person could muster. Honestly I have scared the crap out of more than one co-worker. I feel bad for it, but I can’t sneeze differently.
That said (or written), I am able to contain most of my noises. The girl that sits behind me has the nerve racking habit of working out her mucus flow, in the most loud and obnoxious manner I have ever seen. Imagine, if you will, your father or uncle who likes to – I don’t know the polite phrase – hock a looogie. That throat clearing sound that winds up the whole process. This is the sound that haunts me. A few times a day I hear it. Loud. There are no attempts at anything quaint or ladylike. I started keeping track:
Mon = 1 (but she left within the first hour of the day) ; Saturday = 4; Sunday 4; Monday 7.
It was on that last Monday that I quit keeping track. I though it would be fun to keep track, but it turns out, not so much fun.
This person also reeks of cigarette smoke. She is the same one to, in the words of another employee, “Pitch an unholy bitch fit”, if someone comes in wearing too much fragrance. Hello Old Spice my old friend.

Wierd Dream

I tried my wife’s Lunesta the other night and wound up having a very vivid dream. The drummer from No Doubt – Adrian, I think is his name was getting a cow tattoo by Rene Zellweger (or Joey Adams or Jewel as they are basically all the same person to me ). The tattoo isn’t of a cow, his whole body is the classic black and white print of a Jersey cow (I think he is from Orange County, Calif. ) . I think part of it stemmed from my borrowing my wife’s copy of No Doubt’s “Rock Steady” and wondering what the drummer did on this record. It’s a good dance record with a disco nod, but it appears to be all sequenced with drum machine’s.
I don’t know where Rene Zellweger came into play.

The guy whowas training me might be crazy

I started a new job a couple of weeks ago. Its back to the call center. I'm hoping that I can use this position as a springboard to better things. I was shadowing a few different people over the past weeks. Most of them have been pretty cool, but I had this one guy that I had to blog about.

Everything started normal enough - the usual blah, blah about what I did before this, how to use the phone functions. He appeared to want to be the Alpha male and assert his superiority over me. Never mind that I have worked for the company longer and likely had a better overall knowledge of the way things worked - but when in Rome. I had noticed him while I was training. He sat by the window and he was hard not to notice. He had a banker's light on his desk and he was constantly in motion. He was moving things around and all the while bouncing his knee up and down. He was like this amazing kinetic ball - always doing something - lots of wasted movement.

After giving me the rundown, he took his first call with me on the line listening. I started to notice something. Some sort of accent. I couldn't quite place it, perhaps Texarkana, perhaps Texas. For a moment it seemed he might be attempting a Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday impression. When he was done with the call, he recapped the call with me - no trace of an accent.

It was weird. Every call was went predictably the same way. Slow and steady. Key phrases kept repeating themselves. "I'm mighty sorry about this whole mess". "We are over here in Maintown, ( city name changed to protect me), so we aren't too far from you." "Who do I have the pleasure of speaking with."

Wow.

Then he talked about how every morning he has breakfast with his pastor. I mean, I can see Sundays, and the odd every other Monday - but every morning? Smacks of one thing - cult.

It all stays pretty surreal with me. I have completed my training and I feel comfortable with a couple of co-workers to aske about it. I asked about the accent. My co-workers seemed incredulous. He always has that accent. No, no he doesn't. And anyone who really is familiar with that part of the country and the accents would ferret it out as a phony in a minute.

So, now I am completely scared of him. I'm hoping if he ever comes in for a spree killing of everyone on that floor, at least there will be this blog as some kind of record.

My favorite films and why they are my favorite

This list is not in order of best to worst of most favorite to least. I really couldn’t do it that way. I have a list of films that I enjoy. They are my favorites as a director ( I can’t remember which one) explained film like putting together a mosaic. You take each little piece (the acting performances, the music, the screenplay, etc) and polish them up and put them together. Hopefully when you are finished you have a design that is appealing.

Certainly there are good actors in wonderful parts. The best ones are the ones you cannot imagine anyone else in that part. Moreover, you are completely convinced you aren’t watching an actor at all – Robert Duvall in The Apostle, Benecio Del Toro in Traffic, Johnny Depp in Blow.

Comedies don’t fit my list. They either make me laugh or they don’t. Comedy on film is not an easy task. A film like Borat, got praise for being socially relevant and funny – I found the film only to be socially relevant. I realize I’m in the minority with this one and I don’t care. Borat is not funny. Ali G is a different story as is Sasha Baron Cohen. I don’t need comedy to be socially relevant, but some of the Marx Brothers’ films did and Chaplin’s The Dictator was relevant in a big way.

Horror films don’t really fit. I like some suspenseful films like Seven, but I really can’t compare it against any of the Nightmare on Elm Street films.

1. Chinatown – Growing up in Los Angeles makes you a little jaded when you see films. You know a lot of the technical secrets and you also have a hard time suspending you disbelief when you know darn well from the trees in the background that you aren’t in Vietnam, you are in the Warner’s Brothers lot in Santa Clarita or you aren’t in Tombstone, Arizona - that’s Vasquez Rocks. There is nothing in the background setting that gives Chinatown away. You are completely convinced you are in 1930’s Los Angeles. Also Jack Nicholson and the wound his nose through most of the film is great. I can think of few other actors that would pull it off. The story is compelling, Roman Polanski has a cameo. What else could you want.
2. Ed Wood – For a lot of the same reasons regarding the setting, Ed Wood pulls of 1950’s in Hollywood. Johnny Depp is pretty over the top, but it fits with the subject nature. Martin Landau is completely deserving of his Oscar performance. It is a really fun film.
3. JFK – I find it really funny that congress thought so much of this film, that they opened a new investigation into the assassination. I have seen this film a number of times, and they never really come to a conclusion who killed Kennedy. They really only come to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald did not, which is laughable. Politics aside though, this is a tremendous film. There are more great actors in this film, I think, than any other – Gary Oldman, Jack Lemon, Joe Peci, Kevin Bacon, just to name a few. This film I think gets a lot of criticism for its historical inaccuracies. I say if you want history, watch a documentary. This is a film, and a great one at that.
4. Dead Man – Yeah, I said it. I know Jim Jarmusch is the darling of indie film, but I don’t care. This is a great buddy film. I also particularly like his technique of telling how far west you move by the class of people that are on the train. It moves from the upper class and their teacups to ruffian cowboys shooting at buffalo through the windows.
5. Basquiat – I think it would be tremendously difficult to direct a story about a painter. Especially a painter that was your friend. This is a wildly interesting film. Visually, it has a lot of wonderful touches as do the performances. My favorite moment of the film is when slacker, stoner and all around hanger-on, Bennie, pretty well nails how long it takes to get famous and how to stay famous. He tells it to Jean Michelle during a casual moment shooting baskets.
6. Seven – As much as I want not to like Brad Pitt, he if often very thoughtful in his performances. Seven is one of them. This is probably the best opening title sequence on film to date. It is like a Wiktin photograph come to life. I particularly like that despite having gory and gruesome references, the film is not a blood bath by any means, in fact I can think of only of two, bloody scenes.
7. Citizen Kane – Yeah, I know it makes everyone’s list, but it should. If film is a mosaic, the Citizen Kane is photo realism. Every piece is polished, ever scene, and angle, performance sound, story it meticulous. If you think it is over rated, you have to consider that nothing looks like Citizen Kane before the film debuted, but nearly everything looked like it (or started to) soon afterward.
8. Pulp Fiction – For the same reasons as Kane, it was the first film to shake up the format of film. I think I saw it 9 times in the theater. It was the first to use titles for each scene and the first to shake up the story order. Again, nothing looked like Pulp Fiction before it came out, but now even t.v. shows use many of the film’s devices.
9. The Wizard of Oz – I know now my list is beginning to look cliché, but the thing about this film is that is was made in 1939 and nothing in it really gives that fact away. That in itself is amazing and unlike any other film.

Worlds Largest Remote

Everything here is the God's honest truth. Nothing has been altered, not the photos, my sarcasm, my shock and awe, nor my sense of humor.

Here it is. The world's largest remote from the world's largest cable company. I know it looks like a novelty carnival prize, but the thing is for real. I put a Motorola Razr next to it in order to give it some sense of scale and included my hands which normally takes a large or extra large size gloves (that's right ladies).

This thing is meant for our more seasoned customers who find our regular sized remote too complicated. I'm almost afraid to give someone one for fear they would beat me to death with a tennis balled walker. This thing is so cartoony that it takes four, count them, four AA sized batteries to run. I'm a little surprised it doesn't have a kick starter.

Did someone do market research on this thing and find this is the product the, "Greatest Generation" really wants? As if the shear size isn't frightening enough and the possibility for electromagnetic fields causing some sort of brain cancer, the thing has a lanyard. Yes, that is right. You can strap it right to your wrist so you never ever lose it. Never mind the fact that if you did lay it down, you could locate where you left it using the sattelite feature on Google Maps (that and of course, the Great Wall of China).

Wow. Let me know what you think.