misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

Most of you know I almost never use this blog for family issues. In this case, however, my sister Lisa has asked for as many positive thoughts as possible, so I wanted to put it out there.

About ten days ago, my sister Lisa gave birth to a baby daughter, via emergency c-section. Unfortunately, due to several complications, Katelyn was born about four months premature, and is facing a number of difficulties. As many of you have heard me explain over the years, Lisa always seems to have to face challenges that most of us don't. This is one more example of many. Luckily, she's ten times mentally stronger than my bitch-ass, who can't even ride a water slide without a total breakdown, and thus she's faced this as well as can be imagined. But there are still a ton of potential pitfalls. If you aren't the anti-religion agnostic most of us are, feel free to say a prayer. Everyone else, please just think something positive on her behalf.

You can get the full story, read Katelyn's daily journal, and see pictures here. Hearing from Lisa how many supportive services and people there are for both her and her baby make me feel fully guilty at how little I do for the earth (unless you consider advertising the newest rate for a Capital One credit card or drinking beer to be a real contribution). The Ronald McDonald house has given Lisa a comfortable room close to the hospital, so she can stay by Katelyn for the four months she'll need to be there (Because Lisa lives in Montana, she had to go to Minnesota for a hospital that could handle her case). The hospital itself provides around-the-clock treatment for Katelyn by countless specialists. Even the website that hosts the journal is donated by a non-profit group. The list is endless ... It's good for the world there's a lot of people more generous with their time and money than I am. Maybe this will motivate me to get off my ass and actually do something for someone other than myself one day. I probably don't because I've had it so easy always - I don't realize how essential this help is to people. People like my sister, who aren't nearly as lucky or blessed as I've been, don't make that mistake.

In any event, feel free to browse around the website and follow the story, sign the guest book on the website so Lisa knows you're out there, or just think something positive. I'll keep you updated about little Katelyn along the way.

(Soon after her birth, Katelyn was baptized, and Lisa asked Jill and I to be her godparents, which adds another esteemed title to my growing list: Godfather. I like the sound of that.)

Sweet. Just got word that the project i've spent the past two months working on was killed, right before the photo shoot. That's good news for you: less bullshit to clutter your web surfing experience. For me? Well, like my profession in general, it is a total and complete waste of time. I literally could have spent the past two months drawing 1,291 unicorns on a bed of crushed bicycles with nothing other than my urine. Or spent my months attempting to grow a giant bell pepper in the shape of a Yeti, aka the Abominable Snowman (by the way, that is the worst name for a monster ever. Firstly, 87% of people can't pronounce, or create a definition for the word Abominable. Secondly, snowmen are not inherently scary, even if they are abominable). This is why I want to open a bar. Serving beers to people is inherently useful. They get a direct benefit from the service I provide: happiness. When you own a bar, every day is useful. You don't work on something every day for two months that then suddenly disappears, meaning your two months of life essentially disappeared as well. I guess I spent the past two months making money. That isn't useless, even if the work I did to earn that money was. I still haven't figured out why anyone would want to pay people like me to do a bunch of work that never actually does anything, but then I won't bring that up with them. I'll just keep spending my days doing as little work as possible, knowing that in the end, the result will be the same as if I had been working. Nothing will get made in either event, so might as well use my time more wisely, such as finally getting a total count of the number of hairs on my left arm. Carpe fucking diem.

EDITOR'S NOTE: As a result of my career crisis, I've become more emotional and introspective than usual, resulting in this way-too-long blog/movie review. If I kept a journal, this entry would be in it, as I wrote it for myself, but I don't have a journal, so it is here. Don't read it just so you can comment on how long it is (this entry, not my penis).

In recent weeks, during the course of my career crisis, I've engaged in a number of conversations, both in this blog and in the outside world, regarding the ever increasing levels of acceptance people develop when dissatisfied with something. The advice regarding my problems with the futility of my job range from "oh well, what are you gonna do?" to "just wait it out" to "stop bitching". Such advice has useful elements, although I've always been struck by the quickness with which people will simply accept their unhappiness with something. As if waiting and doing nothing can somehow create change. Perhaps people simply believe that leaving stability for a fruitless search for happiness in career or life in general is irresponsible. Perhaps they are secretly guilty they aren't looking themselves. Perhaps they are afraid of failure. Perhaps they believe something better doesn't exist. I do know, however, when I quit my job the first time to travel, in 2000, i was hearing the exact same bits of advice as now. Had I listened, I would have missed out on one of the most defining experiences of my life.

Every time I run into someone who actually enjoys what they do, or found success, I am not surprised to discover that at some point, they had the balls to break away from common convention, ignore the masses, and actually try their own "irrational" ideas. They had the faith in themselves most people don't.

I've noticed that when you are surrounded by a community of people who think a certain way, in an attempt to be accepted, you will eventually start thinking like them. We've all done this at some point in our lives. When I was an english major, I learned to love Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Graham Greene. When I was learning IT at age 22, I learned to love protocols and security algorithms. When in ad school, I learned to love Crispin Porter and Nike commercials. I didn't actually love these things. I loved the fact that other people loved them, and I was hanging out with those people a lot.

The primary pitfall of this reality is when you allow the desire to fit in to overwhelm the very idea of who you are. This sounds obvious enough, but it becomes so obvious you don't realize it when it is happening. I'm in advertising. I bitch about global warming, and yet I worked on a national ad campaign for a new SUV that gets 18 mpg. Somehow, I never even made the connection. When it came to work, my moral system didn't matter. Only doing a good job did. My current agency has Phillip-Morris. They've never asked me to work on it, but would I say no if they did? Would I advertise cigarettes? If I was in a room filled with my peers, all of whom had no problem with it, it'd be damn hard to say no. I want everyone in a room, especially my bosses, to like me. So I'd rationalize that yes, I was advertising cigarettes, but, more importantly, I was advancing my career. The reasoning is inherently self-interested. And when you get a whole group of self-interested people, the general community gets fucked.

I've always thought this is essentially what happened during the recent wave of corporate scandals. The corporate world, particularly in a capitalist system, obeys nothing other than profit. Make money, and increase profits at all costs. This is why companies, like Enron, will go to the lengths they do to make that happen. It is easy to peg them as corrupt -- totally different from you. Just like it is easy for me to say i'd never advertise cigarettes. The corporate world, however, seems to embrace the idea that the idealistic and moralistic people are fools. What we call sins, or crimes, they call smart business. You get enough people together who think the same, and you can easily see why all of this happens. Doing the right thing doesn't hold a candle to doing the profitable thing. When everyone around you thinks this way, so will you. Soon, you'd find yourself fixing accounting books, because all the people around you tell you it is the right thing to do. You might think you are above that, but ask yourself if everything you've done in your career was beneficial to the world at large.

Principles are easy to have until they are tested.

This is the premise of one of the best movies I've seen in some time: Michael Clayton. It isolates the life of a man stuck in the middle. It focuses on two questions I think we all face at some point or another: Just how far will you go when it comes to bringing yourself success and money? And what do you do when you realize something you've done has harmed other people? The road to corruption starts small, with a single decision. Someone asks you to defend a company or person you know is in the wrong. Maybe the company made a product that killed thousands of people. Maybe they fucked consumers out of millions of dollars. But it is your job, so you do it. Eventually, you forget there is anything wrong with what you do at all. You separate what you do for a living with what you do think about life. I remember once reading a quote: men have principles until their paycheck depends upon them not having those same principles.

Michael Clayton gets to the heart of this dilemma. It is a perfect moral barometer for our country. We all claim to be good people, yet bad things happen every day. Someone is responsible. Lots of someones. And as the movie so accurately asks: If you're aren't one of the people who does wrong, are you one of the people who does right?

The community I'm part of doesn't ask this question, which is partly why I feel the need to be part of a new community.

Imagine if one day, thousands of New Yorkers were reported as missing. Literally, thousands. They left for work, and never arrived. Then, a week later, the same thing happened. Nobody had any idea what the hell had happened.

Eventually, you learn that once a week, a fake subway train loads up passengers, and disappears into a secret tunnel. By the time the passengers figure out something is wrong, they look outside the windows to see hundreds of masked figures roaming around the tunnel, holding knives, peering into the windows. Chaos breaks out in the trains. People who try to escape are killed. The others are left.

Thank you to Jillian Cordes for that idea.

For the past few weeks, I've kept a list of all the ideas for movies that come up in conversation, dreams, and drunken rants. The idea list has about 8 entries at this point. When it hits 25, I'll host a night for any interested parties in which all ideas are described, and one is selected. At that point, I'll write a treatment, and see open it up to critiquing. It'll be the first ever community-written screenplay. I use the term "community" loosely, as my blog community consists of about three readers. The above idea is one of the eight entries at this point. Feel free to add your ideas here, and I'll add to the list.

Despite all its the conveniences, it recently dawned upon me that TiVo is slowly destroying my life.

Firstly, it's obliterated the small amount of patience I ever had on my persons. The decline began a year ago, when I first brought the evil powers of the TiVo into my household. I acquired it for its primary purpose: fast-forwarding through commercials. After a few months of that, I became even more impatient, so I began fast-forwarding through opening credits, show recaps, and any scenes not involving dialogue. Later still, losing any ability to deal with unwanted content, I began to fast-forward past anything I didn't find instantly entertaining, within two seconds of viewing, including whole segments of the actual shows that were the reason I got TiVo in the first place. I'm now able to get through hour-long shows in about eight minutes. It's essentially the equivalent of speed reading. When I watch Jeopardy!, as example, I fast forward between each question, even though it is only about a three second wait in real time. But those 3 seconds are intolerable. I am like a god-wizard, manipulating time and space.

The second problem is TiVo has squeezed out all the enjoyment of watching TV. There used to be true excitement when you stumbled upon a movie or show that you were able to watch spontaneously, and a desire to race home to catch your favorite show. Now, I consider my TiVo list to be a To-Do list. It's become a chore to watch all I've recorded. The list hangs over me, the same way a dirty bathroom does. I think, "shit, i have to watch that last episode of Family Guy" in the same way I think "shit, i have to clean the shower". I watch shows only so I can delete them, keeping my list tidy and up-to-date. Further, I'm watching shows I don't even like, simply because they are there. This isn't about entertainment anymore. This is about filling quotas, and being able to discuss any show that someone might ask me about upon my travels. I sit there each night, blankly scanning through the show guide, recording anything that catches my eye. And on top of my bloated Tivo list, I have three NetFlix movies sitting there, which takes me months to fit in.

It is 100% entertainment overload. It's exactly like drinking another beer when I'm already complete drunk. I can't even feel entertainment from a show anymore. I just switch from show to show, looking for a quick fix, my attention span so low I can't even listen to complete sentences before getting bored with it. Worse of all, it is slipping into my life as a whole. When having conversations, I tire of them immediately. I have a strong desire to fast forward past boring stories told my co-workers at lunch. I want to TiVo certain chicks on the subway so they are on my list for later viewing. I try to skip past shitty assignments at work. I've had this job for five months, after leaving a job I was at for six months, and already want a change. This isn't even about instant gratification. I can't even get gratified.

I shall soon eliminate the Tivo. I shall learn to appreciate watching a show only if I happen to be home to see it. If i'm not, well, then, fuck it. I've missed it. Which isn't even true. By missing it, I've actually missed nothing, as I can't even enjoy it anymore. Maybe I'll try enjoying something other than TV, such as real life. The good thing about real life is it has to be dealt with as is, boring parts and all, which in the end makes it that much more fucking enjoyable.

I discovered scotch when I was 26 years old.

I was standing on a rocky crag jutting into the North Sea, at the furtherest reaches of the Scottish mainland, late November wind and rain torturing my body. I was literally at the end of the world. I'd never been so cold. It was then that my Scottish guide handed me a worn leather flask, and told me to take a sip. I did, and instantly realized the beauty of scotch. My body warmed, a fire was set in my mind, I understood hundreds of years of Scottish history and culture.

I was changed.

Since that time, two truths have risen to the surface:

1) I love scotch.
2) I'm a cheap piece of shit.

These two elements might not seem to be compatible, and in fact, they aren't. Good scotch costs good money, and it's nearly impossible to be a cheap piece of shit and still drink scotch. I've had the good fortune to receive fantastic bottles of scotch as gifts over the past year (thanks Age!), yet when the bottle runs dry, I have to suspend my cheap ways few moments and head to a liquor store.

The thing is, the cost of scotch is inherent to it's aura . If it wasn't expensive, I wouldn't enjoy it as much. There's a pleasant escape when drinking it. It's an exception to my usual standard of low quality. It's intensely satisfying to pour the aged, nurtured, spoiled carmelness over some ice cubes, complicated scents drifting up to your nose, sophisticated, historical, haunting flavors gently burning into your tongue, warmth ebbing through your body after a sip.

In essence, I'm a cheap piece of shit because I believe incredibly few products actually deserve their price. Scotch is the exception. It's worth every single dollar. In fact, when you buy scotch, you aren't buying a product. You're buying a history.

So i was abhorred to find that the king of cheap, Mark Lee, has discovered an alternative to the well-worn tradition of scotch. Apparently, both Cost Co and Trader Joe's are now both offering branded versions of 18-year-old scotch:

Here's a picture of Cost Co's version.

The minute a brand that makes underwear, cheap batteries, and imitation twizzlers is making an 18-year-old scotch, a line has been crossed. They say it is from "overflow" from the Macallan Distillery, but come on. Why the hell would one of the most popular scotch distilleries in the world peddle their cherished product to some bargain company like Kirkland? Why would BMW let Hyundai sell a version of the M3?

A cheap alternative to scotch already exists. It's called Canadian Club. Kirkland Signature? Did they really have to do that? Did they really have to enter this market? What's next? Kirkland Signature Funerals? Kirkland Signature puppies? Kirkland Signature yachts? How can you pair a word that means cheap (Kirkland Signature) with a word that means elegant (scotch)? It's an anomaly. It's a natural violation. It's breeding a rat with a ballerina. It doesn't work. If anyone attempted to serve me Kirkland Signature 18-year single malt, I'd piss on their face and shit on their head. Knowing Lee, he's going to buy the Kirkland Signature, and use it to fill real bottles of scotch (did you guys actually think you were drinking real Grey Goose at our SF parties?)

I'm truly sickened by this discovery. I can't erase the image of some fat fuck from Denton, Texas buying a couple of bottles of Kirkland Signature, drinking it in his stained boxers, and degrading every virtue scotch stands for. The lines have been blurred. Cultures have been insulted. History has been disrespected. When I go home tonight, and pour a bit of my Balvenie 12-year Double Wood single malt into a tumbler, I'll say a prayer to St. Andrew, that the abomination known as Kirkland Signature Scotch will die a quick and proper death.

And then I'll remind myself never to drink scotch at Lee's apartment. Or vodka, for that matter.

This weekend I attended my first ever traditional Jewish wedding (being from the West Coast, i've only recently been introduced to this fabulous culture. There are more polar bears in San Diego than Jews). I've always wanted to attend a Jewish wedding, as I wanted to know where it would place on my list. By list, of course, I mean the ranking I keep of wedding quality, cross-referenced by ethnicity and religion. In my time as the premiere wedding jockey of discs in the San Francisco metro area, I had the opportunity to attend the weddings of white, asians, blacks, mexicans, and indians (those who like eating curry, not those who like opening casinos). Based on those experiences, I offer the following rankings:

5. White Weddings - Yes, Billy Idol sang a song about these, probably because he was white. And had 100 mg of heroin flowing through his veins at the time. But, in truth, white people weddings will always grace the bottom of any list. And I'm not just saying this because I am white, and by ranking it last, it allows me the ability to stereotype other cultures, which I shall soon be doing. White weddings are steeped in the torturously boring traditions that most of us associate with weddings in general: cake cuttings, bouquet tosses, father/daughter dances, bad music heavy with snare drums (including conga lines to Hot! Hot! Hot! by Buster Poindexter), dry salmon plates, cliche speeches, old people with blistered legs, etc. White weddings are plagued by a formality and lack of originality that make more than 50% of them intolerable. Going to a white wedding is like going to a horror movie: you know what you are going to get, moan when you get it, then forget it as soon as you leave. This holds true even for destinations, where the white girl braids her hair rasta-style in an attempt to be unlike the other white weddings.

4. Asian Weddings - I can't speak to Asian weddings in Asia, as i've never been to one. But Asian weddings in America (of which I've been to thousands, thanks to Lee insisting on naming our business "SF Ninja Weddings" .. he might as well named it "Xiang Chu Wang Productions") are generally based upon the white wedding format, with slight improvements. Instead of the shitty dry salmon dish, you get 10-courses, including imitation shark-fin soup, which gives one the sensation of being a bear gnawing on a human spine. The other pleasure of an Asian wedding is the red-faced, drunken Chinese uncle's thirty-minute toast, in Cantonese, complete with a relative having to usher him off stage. You also don't get much dance-time at an Asian wedding, as the 10-courses and myriad of speeches (by the thousands of relatives in attendance), there is time for a slow dance, then you're done. The benefit of an Asian wedding, if you are the one being wed, is the red envelope tradition in which you stock up on cash from rich relatives. This beats the white wedding tradition of getting crock pots and big wooden spoons from Crate and Barrel.

3. Black Weddings - While based on the white wedding format, black weddings offer two critical improvements: better music, and better alcohol. I've been to black weddings that held the philosophy: fuck the food, let's dance! And you can rest assured that you won't be dancing to Bob Seger or Elvis Presley: You'd better prepared for a steady diet of Jay-Z and Michael Jackson. And you'll be doing this with a glass filled with cognac, or other fine alcohols reserved for celebrations. It's an extension of the cultural stereotypes in general: white weddings are buttoned-up and uncool, while black weddings are relaxed and cool. So why only third on the list? Location. They might splurge on Cognac, but that's mostly because they saved money by holding the reception in the back banquet room at Red Lobster.

2. Mexican Weddings - Yes, i've only been to one. But the one was a top-scorer for all time. Unlike most other weddings, Mexican weddings are built around a celebration, from beginning to end. There's none of that bullshit pretense you find at most other weddings .... There's no chantilly lace, mono-filament lights, multi-tiered cakes, custom wall drapes, flowers from holland, break-up lighting patterns, themed drinks, and so on. At a Mexican wedding, you'll get homemade tortillas, pinto beans, and tamales. If you want a drink, you should mix yourself a margarita or pour a cup from the keg located by the bar. The DJ is also your neighbor, and he'll have no problem playing songs about cocks, pussies, cocks in pussies, and fat asses. And, if you are a good-looking Asian man in your late twenties, there's a good opportunity for you to hook up with a high school chick. Good times from start to finish.

1.5. Indian Weddings - Indian weddings have all the good qualities of Mexican weddings, but on a higher scale. It is a two day celebration, instead of one, usually costing in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending where you lie on the caste system. Food is similar to the Mexican weddings, in that it is plentiful and tasty, only instead of tamales, you get samosas, and instead of beans, you get curried rice. Indian music is superior to white wedding music. The henna body art adds a certain mystique to the proceedings. I could go on, but that would take time away from announcing the new official first place:

1.0. Jewish Weddings - Any wedding that BEGINS by carrying the bride and groom in around the dance floor in chairs to a hip-hopped version of Hava Nagila is as of now the gold standard for weddings the world over.

As i've written in the past, during the eight years I spent coming of age in Rancho Bernardo, I was incessantly plagued by the overwhelming sense I was missing out on something. At the time, I wasn't precisely sure what I was missing out on. I've since learned enough to uncover exactly what I felt I was missing: action. Rancho Bernardo got started in the 1960s as a retirement community. In case you have trouble translating that fact, let me help you: You were more likely to find a pacemaker shop than a pizza place. Towns built for old people don't make fun places for young people. So I spent my time shooting basketball at the court near the retirement home, running over rattlesnakes with my bike, and waiting for college.

At the time, I wished more than anything that Rancho Bernardo had something, anything, going on.

Well, my wish has been granted, albeit in a form I didn't desire. It's incredibly surreal to see Matt Lauer and, as of yesterday, George Bush wandering around the streets I used to try and skateboard down. Soon, people might recognize Rancho Bernardo as they recognize the Ninth Ward, previously unknown (for a reason) towns thrust into the national consciousness. Not as a result of achievement, but of disaster. People at work who know I'm from San Diego become even more interested upon learning I'm from Rancho Bernardo itself. The catch being, of course, I have few connections left from my days there. I wouldn't know if the house I grew up in has burned down, as there's nobody to ask. And I haven't heard from my sister, so that either means a) her house and cell phone has burned down or b) she's ok.

As Age aptly pointed out, if you are going to face a disaster, it might as well be a fire. It doesn't ruin as many freeways as earthquakes, doesn't get your rug as muddy as a hurricane, and doesn't come without warning like a tornado. The residents had plenty of time to hop into their Mercedes-Benzes and drive off to their winter home in Palm Springs. They didn't have to rely on non-existent buses like the people in New Orleans. With a fire, you return to clean plot of land and enough insurance cash to rebuild your dream home with. No need for expensive steam cleaning. The people who are totally fucked are the illegal immigrants, who live in those canyons. They didn't lose their million dollar houses, but they didn't have insurance, either. They had entire communities in those canyons, the gardeners, car wash workers, housekeepers, and others who worked on the million dollar houses that have since burned away. They've lost more than a house.

Well, I always wanted being from Rancho Bernardo to mean something. It finally does.