The regrettable art project.

The wall in my dining room is kind of weird. It's a big white wall, and right in the middle of it is a phone jack. Weird spot, huh? I guess if I had a wall phone it would be fine -- I'm imagining it being one of those old school ones like on I Love Lucy, where Lucy would pick up the phone and say, "Hello operator? Get me KLondike 5-1212."

Instead, I've opted to hang some of my artwork. I really don't have anything to fill the wall so I came up with the genius idea of hanging three same-size canvases all painted red. And since I needed to do it on the cheap, I went back home and dug up out of my closet some crappy old paintings I did in college.

These were serious crap paintings. In college, I treated a lot of the painting assignments like term papers -- rushed and done the night before they were due. The three I pulled out of the closet were no exception.

One was of a beach scene where I had a can of SPAM under an umbrella. What the hell?

Another was of a "plant-woman" growing out of a vase. It looked like a poor man's Swamp Thing with tits.

And the last one was of a desert landscape that ended up looking like a background to a Roadrunner cartoon.

So what I did was take those paintings and wrapped pieces of duct tape across each of them. And then I spray painted each one red.

They look horrible.

Well ...so far. The spray painting was just a base coat to cover up the old paint and tape. Next I'm going to buy some red acrylics and paint over the canvases by hand to get a really rich red color on top of the underlying textures.

It'll probably still look horrible. But I'm determined to see this project through and hang those three canvases on my wall to cover up that stupid phone jack.

Second jobs and scavenger hunts.

I started a second job today. The new apartment has been quite the drain on my finances, so I figured a part-time job on the side wouldn't hurt. Plus, it'll keep me busy and I can meet new people.

So far, the "new people" thing is great. This new job is really diverse. And by "diverse", I mean "I'm not the only minority in the building".

At this part-time job, I'll be working in the cafe of a bookstore. Today was my orientation - I did the requisite paperwork and sat through a couple of videos about the company. One was full of employee testimonials about how great it is to work there. Seriously, there was a full two minute montage of employees saying, "...it's about the people..." And when they said it, there was always this short dramatic pause between "about" and "the people."

You know what I'm talkin' about. I know you can picture it. There's a person on the screen and they say, "Working here is great, it's really about..." and then they stop to look away from the camera for a moment (meanwhile, you're on the edge of your seat like, "What? What's it about? The books? The music? The incredibly overpriced DVDs?"), and when they finally turn back towards the camera there's always this thoughtful smile on their face as they give that confident nod and say, "...the people."

The second video I had to watch was about sexual harassment. Did you just read that as "huh-RASS-ment" or "HAIR-ess-ment"? I'm sure both are correct, but one totally makes you sound like a pompous douche. I'm not saying which. Anyway, as soon as the video starts, there's the president of the company with a very dour look on his face. No more screwing around, people. The first thing he said was that the company had a "ZERO-tolerance policy on sexual harassment."

Wow. There's a shocker. I'd like to know what company has a 50%-tolerance policy on sexual harassment. Where's the company where the guys can grab half an ass-cheek and have it be okay?

After the videos we got sent on a "scavenger hunt." ("We" being me and the other trainees.) We were each given a list of about 50 categories (stuff like Linguistics, Tarot Cards, Death & Dying, Parenthood, etc.) and had to go find what shelves they were on. It wasn't supposed to be taken too seriously, they just wanted us to wander the floor and get familiar with the different book departments.

Stupidly, I took a clipboard with me. So there I was walking the floor with a clipboard and a pen - next thing you know I had customers coming up to me looking for "Investors Digest Weekly" and "Studio-In-A-Box". Luckily, leading these customers on a wild goose chase helped me find a few of those book categories from my list.

After lunch, I finally did some time behind the cafe counter. The cafe manager wasn't working today so I just stood back there and sampled different coffees (the green tea latte is excellent - it's oriental AND supercaffeinated!). Every now and then I would help a customer, but after knocking down a bunch of labels in the dessert display, my co-workers figured it would be better if I just wiped down some counters and stocked the cups.

The "sexy" factory.

Has anyone noticed how ABC has figured out the formula for bringing back forgotten celebrities and "sexing" them up? Teri Hatcher and John Stamos have benefited from whatever deal they've made with the devil. And now it looks like Tim Daly is going to get his shot at sexiness-dom. What will the gang at Tom Nevers Field think?

What's going on at that network? And what do I have to do to get Princess Caraboo: The Series on the air?

Beef sticks and sundae cups.

I have a friend who loves beef sticks. Get your mind out of the gutter - I’m talkin’ Hickory Farms-style beef sticks. I’ve always been fascinated with the whole Hickory Farms thing. Those big sausage shaped logs of smoked meat are like some kind of ultra-sized Slim Jim --only you can’t really snap into it. Have you tried walking around while gnawing away at one of those? Watching someone wrap their mouths around the end of a beef stick would be pretty vulgar.

Anyway, my friend and her boyfriend (on a trip back home) were at a supermarket for a snack run before gathering with the family to watch DVDs. They picked up some ice cream sundae cups and then noticed a “buy one get one” offer on beef sticks. No way! ...a BOGO on beef sticks???

Now here’s the dilemma: beef sticks are friggin’ gi-normous. You can barely stomach one, much less two. So my friend decides to just buy one and forego the BOGO. This, of course caused a big ruckus back at the family home - “How could you NOT get the free beef stick?” “...you need to go back and get that beef stick...” “...it’ll keep.”

It’ll keep. Ain’t that the truth. Your bomb shelter should be loaded with Twinkies and beef sticks.

So a little later in the evening the family discovered that one of the sundae cups had leaked, so it was time to head back to the supermarket for replacement ice cream. --AND, ... “Hey! Now you can get that other beef stick!” Bowing to peer pressure, my friend headed back to the supermarket for a new sundae and the unwanted, but rightfully hers, beef stick.

There she was - 9:30 on a Friday night running around a supermarket in her pajama bottoms carrying a sundae cup in one hand and a beef stick in the other. All she could think of was, “...please don’t let that guy I had a crush on in high school show up right now.” Had her life been Must-See TV, surely the town hunk would have came around the corner, or worse - her bitchy high school rival could have seen her and made some pompous snarky remark about how she would never put “that kind of junk in my body.” Well screw you, Betty, this is a BOGO.

MySpace Cowboy: An Introduction

These are the stories of a hapless MySpace junkie and his efforts to meet women. As told by the people who have to listen to his "bragging."

I’ve decided to add a recurring feature to the blog. These will be the stories of the MySpace Cowboy. We all know someone like this — a guy using internet social gathering places like Friendster, Everyone’s Connected, or MySpace to meet women. There’s nothing wrong with meeting new friends – but the MySpace Cowboy roams the range, lassoing in the profiles of all the cute phillies he wants to hogtie. Or, to put that in a non-rodeo vernacular -- he stalks girls on the internet.

And by “girls,” I mean in the 19-22 age range. And what’s the MSC’s age, you ask? He’s in his 30s. Not quite old enough to be a dirty old man, but old enough to know better. I should probably add that these girls aren’t exactly that smart, either. When a guy 10 years older than you likes Jojo’s music as much as you do, ...alarms better be going off in your head.

The Cowboy’s latest adventure had him driving over an hour and a half to meet a 20-year old at her mall job. I’d feel sorry for him, but his attitude really makes it hard. “God must love me, they’re falling right into my lap,” was how MSC felt about meeting up with this girl during her 15 minute break.

When I first heard this, I was outraged, “He travelled almost two hours to meet a girl for 15 minutes???” But no worries, it turned out he got his money’s worth – he loitered in her store pretending to be a customer for the rest of her shift. The bad news was (actually, this is ALL bad news, isn’t it?) she worked at a girlie shop. And that’s the end of the story.

No, really. Her shift ended and then he drove all the way back home. But apparently our deluded zero was under the impression everything went well. He said she seemed to be impressed by his pop references to the O.C. -- really? What about Veronica Mars? At least she solves mysteries. Maybe she can get to the bottom of what kind of spin-doctoring filter MySpace Cowboy has got in his brain.

The band name formula.

You know how sometimes you hear or read a phrase and think to yourself, "That would be a great name for a band," but then you forget it later on? Well I didn't forget, so here are some great band names -- they just need a band to go with them.

Pinata Montage
Andy P. Salzman is a Dick
Ghost Man on Second
Lollipop Cowboy

There you go. As you can see, the formula for making a great band name is just pull random phrases out of the air. See? Even "Random Phrases" would be a great band name.

But here's a great band name that's actually a product you can make -- check out the Duct Tape Wallet.

Tryptophan attack.

Every year for St. Patrick’s Day, people from my work go out to Brennan’s for corn beef and cabbage. Brennan’s is a hof brau/Irish pub place in Berkeley. It looks just like Cheers on the inside, but with the addition of a cafeteria-style food line. If you’re in the mood for beer and tender, slow-roasted meat, then this is the place you want to be.

So about ten of us showed up and the line was practically out the door. On a normal day, Brennan’s at lunch time would be populated mostly by old people. I think probably because the food is soft and chewy, making it easy to digest. But for St. Patty’s - the entire room was packed with professional people gnawing away at salt-brine cured meat.

While waiting in line, I noticed a guy at the bar wearing about 20 or so green-beaded necklaces. Y’know, like Mardis Gras-style necklaces. What was this guy trying to pull? I just sort of stared at him trying to figure out how he was going to get business women to show him their tits during lunch hour.

When I got up to the front of the line I wasn’t in the mood for corned beef, so I ordered the turkey platter. Not “plate,” but “platter”. It’s like comfort food overkill - mashed potatoes, stuffing, vegetables, cranberry sauce, and thin slices of oven-roasted turkey. The problem with hof brau food, is that the meat is so tender and so thin, it melts in your mouth and makes it too easy to finish your plate. So yes, I ate all my turkey. And I then I had to spend the rest of the afternoon trying not to fall asleep at my desk.

An A's fan strikes out.

The baseball season is coming. So on TV they're starting to show commercials about getting out to the park or buying season tickets or whatever. I saw one last night that sort of confused the hell out of me.

It's got Oakland A's pitcher Dave Stewart on the mound getting ready to pitch to some guy. There's a close-up on his face - and he looks mean. I'm serious. You may not think pitchers look intimidating, but I'm convinced Dave Stewart could stare you down so hard, you'd be making trail mix in your underwear. Anyway, the footage is obviously from some old game because you see and hear the crowd as he gets ready to wind up.

So, cut to the edited-in footage of a guy at the plate. It's just some regular dude pretending to be waiting for the pitch. There's a really tight close-up on this guy because they don't want you to see the throngs of empty seats behind him. BUT, you do hear crowd noise nonetheless.

The commercial keeps cutting back between the Stewart stock footage and the dude at bat. After Stewart pitches and the guy pretends to strike out, you see Stewart jump up and down while the crowd cheers. Then I realize the guy at bat was wearing an A's hat. Wait, so Dave Stewart was staring down and striking out one of his own fans? And people are cheering this?

Even if this was a fantasy, why would the fan want to be struck out by his favorite team? Wouldn't a better fantasy be the fan pitching and striking out someone from a different team? ...or the fan hitting a home run against a different team?

Drinks and furniture construction.

Friday proved to be a very busy day. After cashing in a half-day at work I met up with a friend for lunch. She came up from the city to check out my new place and neighborhood. I dazzled her with my one big chair, mystery rummage-sale tray, and TV that sat on the ground because I didn't have a TV stand. I really needed to get something to set the TV on because the remote control beam was always getting blocked by my beanbag or whatever object was on the floor in front of the TV.

So after a drink at Cato's, and getting kicked out of Kotobuki because we didn't know they closed for a few hours after lunch, we grabbed food at a different place and then headed to Ikea. I went to Ikea with a goal in mind - get a TV stand. I didn't do too bad, my only additional purchases were an endtable for $10 and a six-pack of chardonnay glasses for $4. My friend actually seemed disappointed in how quickly I was able to breeze through the store - she made me promise to bring her back when I was ready to do some real shopping. Little did she know real shopping to me meant blowing $100 at Dr. Comics.

After saying goodbye to her it was about 5pm and I had about an hour and a half to get home, assemble the new furniture and get ready to meet up with my cousin and her husband. After dragging the boxes in to my living room, I opened up the TV stand and laid all the pieces out on the floor. Ikea instructions are the easiest thing in the world for me to read because it's just like a comic book. There aren't even any words, just pictures of screws and furniture pieces that fly around in the air and magically form an object sturdy enough to hold a television set.

And the best thing is, what you see is what you get. Unlike many aborted model kits from my youth, the TV stand I assembled looked like the one on the last page of the instruction booklet. Thank you, Ikea! And screw you Rodan Model Kit from the Polar Lights Godzilla Monster Series (mine looked nothing like that).

It took about a half hour to put together the stand and endtable, so I had plenty of time to shower and get ready. When I got done, my cousin and her husband hadn't shown up yet, so I grabbed a book and sat on my front stairs to wait for them. And guess who I saw? My upstairs neighbor who's clunky shoes had woken me up that morning. We talked for a few minutes but I couldn't help myself from making quick glances at her feet to check out her clunky shoes.

When my friends (yes, I've shortened "my cousin and her husband" to "my friends" for the remainder of the story) showed up they brought me an awesome bottle of wine and some huge red wine glasses that made my Ikea wine glasses look like paper cups. I gave them the quick tour of the place and we broke open the bottle of wine and finished it off before heading out for a walk on Piedmont Ave.

After that we ended up heading to Jupiter on Shattuck in Berkeley for some pizza and big ol' glasses of IPA. The place was super packed and super loud. I think I got pretty drunk because my cousin kept giving me the "beer goggles" signal whenever I started checking out any girls.

When the other shoe drops... over and over.

Today's "wake up call" in my apartment came by way of my upstairs neighbor. I've met her, she's very nice, and Canadian, eh. Not that being Canadian automatically makes her nice, but I was a little disappointed she didn't have a weird flapping head and wore shirts that displayed her first initial on them.

So this morning, I'm lying in bed when I hear the clomping of shoes on a hardwood floor coming from my ceiling. Normally, that's not a problem, but today, she kept clomping - over and over. What was she doing? I could hear her move from one side of the room to the other. My best guess was - she was trying to figure out what shoes to wear with whatever outfit she had on.

I could be completely wrong, but that was the only way I could justify the sounds of "heel-toe, heel-toe, heel-toe" knocking around above me. I totally pictured a Family Circus style dotted-line map of her trail around her apartment. What was she getting ready for? Was there an important meeting at work? Did she have a hot lunch date? Was she naked while putting on this shoe fashion show? I don't know - but the thoughts were enough to prevent me from sleeping in until 8am.

Luckily - the weather outside was perfect. So I got up, got ready, and took a nice stroll down to Gaylord's on Piedmont for some coffee before heading to work.

The funniest thing I saw last night.

On The Amazing Race, contestants had to give shoeshines to the locals in Santiago, Chile. One contestant, Gretchen - from the obligatory "old couple" team - was giving the worst shines EVER. Whenever the camera showed a close-up of her work, there was always black shoe polish on the customer's sock.

Those customers had the saddest looks on their faces.

Bric-a-brac Department

Last Sunday I went with some friends to check out the big White Elephant Sale to benefit the Oakland Museum -- it's touted as "the Bay Area's biggest and best rummage sale," and they weren't kidding. The sale was located in some out-of-the-way warehouse on the Oakland/Alameda border. It wasn't the easiest thing to find, and parking was difficult, but the hordes of rummage sale zombies walking in the same general direction helped point the way.

Oh, I wanted to add that some of the residents and other businesses in the area were holding their own "white elephant" sales. TRICKERY, I SAY! The old lady on the corner selling cracked dinner plates and broken sewing machines wasn't going to fool me. I knew if I trudged on to the REAL white elephant sale, there'd be plenty more cracked plates and broken machinery awaiting me.

We finally got inside and the place was HUGE. I'm talking "the Spruce Goose could fit in here" huge. And they had everything. If you were looking for used books, toys, clothes, furniture, appliances, hardware, dinnerware, arts & crafts, etc., it was there. I kept trying to find the little old Asian man selling mogwai, but the place was so packed I'm sure I must have walked right past him.

Anyway, after some initial wandering, we headed for the big sign that said "Bric-a-brac" - I was thinking, "isn't this ALL just bric-a-brac? Why is this bottle bric-a-brac, but this glass is dinnerware?" I spent the most time in here, and after checking out desk blotters, miscellaneous wood items (seriously, my friend bought a little stump of wood that didn't look like it had any function at all), and woven baskets, I settled on two items.

The first was an empty frosted bottle. The kind you stick messages in and toss into the sea in the hopes that destiny will lead it to your one true love who will happen to be in the right place at the right time to find it. But then you can never throw it out far enough and the current just brings it back the next day and you feel really stupid when one of your friends finds it on the beach. Man, why DID I buy that stupid bottle?

The second item I bought was a tray. A simple skinny black tray. I'm not sure what it's used for, but it looked cool. If anyone knows what it's for, please let me know. The only identifying mark on it is an "L" logo on the underside. The "L" looks like the kind Laverne stitched on to all her clothes so you'd know she was "Laverne."

And how much did I spend on the bric-a-brac you ask? Well, since Sunday was 1/2 off day, I spent a whopping 65 cents.

Laundry BOOM.

I recently moved in to a great apartment - it's plenty big for one person, and it's in a really good location. The only problem I can see is with the laundry room. It's right underneath my apartment and people in my building do laundry at really odd hours. I'm talkin' 5am odd.

There's a big steel security door to let you in and out of the laundry room and for some reason EVERYBODY slams it. I'm sure it's not intentional - they open the door, walk in or out and the door slams behind them. So that's why I'm tired this morning. The slam of heavy steel smashing up against a wooden door frame - BOOM. I kind of want to put up a sign saying, "Please don't slam door," but I'm the new guy so I'm not sure if it would be cool ruffle feathers so early in my lease.