THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

It’s always embarrassing when someone says “you have a blog?” and then
you give them the address and you haven’t written anything on your
blog in like six months.  So you say, “it used to be much funnier when
we were on editme and PETE and I used to do posts.”  Then you try to
send them a link to a random month from the good old days and there’s
a giant picture of you naked at the top.  Anyway, I’m trying to post
this from work so if this works I’ll be happy.

Thing 1)
When you ride your motorcycle over the Bay Bridge in the morning,
heading East, during that time of the year (Spring, apparently) when
the sun is rising to the Southeast so that it comes in at about a 45
degree angle to the road, well when you are going about 70 mph the
shadows cast by the bridge’s structural members alternate at a very
organic rate with the patches where the sun is glaring right into your
eyes.  The overall effect is that the sunny patches give your vision a
deep red-orange tint, while the shady patches in contrast turn
everything blue-green.  The contrast gets more and more pronounced as
you keep on.  It always puts me in an interesting state of mind, like
Natural Born Killers without any killing.  It’s kind of hypnotic.

Thing 2)
There’s a cover article about Joanna Newsom in the new issue of Paper
Magazine.  (hat tip Deepa)

In it, the author commits what I believe to be the following slander:

“Before meeting her, I had a hard time imagining her, say, operating a microwave or watching a VH1 reality show. But throughout our interview, Newsom sprinkles the conversation with an Office reference one moment (”That’s what she said,” she mutters quickly, quietly and familiarly when I bite off a piece of chocolate that I determine to be too big for my mouth)….”

We spent 5 hours on Wednesday debating this, and the end result is
that No, That’s What She Said is not an “Office reference.”  It might
be, but considering the fact that TWSS is an age-old joke that goes
back AT LEAST as far as 1995’s seminal Wayne’s World, for the author
to assume that Joanna Newsom is making an Office reference with that
line is beyond the pale.  It’s like saying that a guy making a lay-up
in his driveway is referring to Terry Porter.  I confirmed with Nick and Ed that their extensive use of TWSS, which led last year to the upswing in mine, predated that fateful episode of The Office.  I also confirmed with Shark, who, improbably, was watching that very episode of The Office with me when Michael dropped TWSS for the first time, that both of us had been hearing and saying it for several months beforehand.  Joanna Newsom rhymed “canaries” with “catenaries.”  She’s dating Adam Samburg (sucks!).  She doesn’t need to get her Wayne’s World jokes from the American version of The Office.

(full disclosure:  I like the American version of The Office)

-Hip E.