THE JO-TEL … illegal blog downfield

Re-read The Metamorphosis upon returning home and find it bad.

-Kafka

#5

So turns out that the words “going forward”, as used liberally by HR personnel, are two of the most pointless words you’ll ever hear. “The new TPS report cover page will greatly help us to improve administrative efficiency going forward.” Oh! Going forward! Wow, things are really moving forward into the wonderful future! Because, for a while there, I thought that the new TPS report cover was supposed to be implemented retroactively to old TPS reports only. Phew.

#6

I’ve had the pleasure, in the last few weeks, of attending two of the best shows I’ve ever been to: Man Man @ The Independent and The Hold Steady @ The GAMH. One thing that was great about both was the outbreak of uncharacteristic (for an SF indie show) mosh pits. I was weened on mosh pits in my early high school days so I’ve developed the desire to feel a live performance instead of just, to borrow a phrase from the Dismemberment Plan, “doing the standstill.” Now I’m going to go ahead and admit that most of the really hardcore mosh pots are pretty damned annoying. Beside listening to a little live music, mostly what you’re doing in these types of pits are two things: (1) holding your arms protectively in the air to deflect the painful, blindsiding approach of crowd surfers from above, crushing your head and neck; and (2) swirling around in the cyclonic pit while trying to avoid that dude with the spiked wrist band who’s throwing indiscriminate punches. Oh wait. I forgot an important one: feeling up girls that are crowd surfing. Dudes in the mosh pit are really good at this, having mastered the technique of flipping surfers over onto their stomachs, whereupon, if they are female, they can be groped. But I’m really not a huge fan of these mosh pits. They’re too distracting. But the pits that have been breaking out during the perenially staid SF concerts have been wonderfully moderate. Plus, at The Hold Steady, I got to run up on stage during the last song.

#7

Every time I watch The Play it makes me laugh. It’s great that the best play in the history of college football is also the funnest. Here’s a youtube version that is slightly longer that the version that most of us are used to watching.

I really hope that Cal beats UCLA this weekend.

-Shark (originally posted 10.14.07)