'Bred Crumbs

11:06 AM In which our hero once again makes witty with a stranger in a men's restroom:

(Tim is at a urinal at the Voodoo Lounge. Behind him, a member of a band Tim really likes, which has just finished its set, waits his turn. And waits. And waits.)

Band Guy (clearly in need, but chuckling): Wow, you must have drunk a whole keg! That was, like, minutes.

Tim (finishing up, speaking with mock shock): What, you weren't clocking it?

Band Guy (approaching urinal): Yeah, man, we should have called Guinness!

Tim: No, not Guinness! That's what got me here in the first place!*

*Actually, it was Asahi, not Guinness, but one does not spoil a punch line with something so trivial as truth.

Send e-mail

06:46 PM LIFTOFF!

Sorry. I had to do that. The date's just too cool.

·  ·  ·

Two longtime San Franciscans and I were talking about the Seattle earthquake, and it came to light that I have yet to visit Seattle. "Oh, you should go!" Nick said. "It's completely different -- it rains all the time, there's lots of techies, they have earthquakes, there's a coffee shop every block, it was hip about five years ago . . ."

"Is everything overpriced?" I said, playing along.

Nick paused in mock thought. "Yes, it is!"

Which raises the philosophical question: did Seattle become San Francisco or did San Francisco become Seattle? Or did they both become something else?

·  ·  ·

I had high hopes for the new movie Series 7: The Contenders, a satire that, though conceived a few years ago, arrives in a timely matter, taking the immorality of the ice-hearted "reality" game shows that now fill TV to its logical conclusion. But the reviews are mixed. The New York Times and Salon ding the movie, but Rotten Tomatoes -- which, I see, has smartly tweaked its design -- reflects much praise.

Having obliquely slammed Survivor again, I will confess to having watched most of Temptation Island. To me, TI is a nice big step down the bread-and-circuses path that the dishearteningly successful Survivor paved and that Series 7 forecasts the conclusion of, and thus is praiseworthy for its open-faced tawdryness. Yet, Salon's expansive episode-by-episode recap of Island is far more entertaining than the actual show. Being an MST fan, I shouldn't be surprised by that.

Send e-mail

10:18 AM And a shoutout back to you, Brad. Had I more spare reading time, I would have been enjoying The Daily Brad well before now. Thank goodness I got there in time for this line: "he's got enough different personalities to hold a whole DCI competition in his head."

You know, I actually follow drum corps, even though I wasn't in band. I'm going to the finals this year, for the first time in a while, even though they're in Buffalo. All of this puzzles many of my friends.

Send e-mail

09:48 AM D'oh! The mystery of the Swedish Metallica-Dojo link, reported here yesterday, is not so mysterious after all. There is a Kirk Hammett reference on the page in question; I'd forgotten he was at a rally the troupe was supposed to be at. And the page's copyright line contributes the "images" qualification. Gee, if only Short-Term-Memory Webmaster here had been alert enough yesterday to actually search the page. Then again, I did not lie in my entry; there are indeed no Metallica pictures on the site. I think ...

Send e-mail

05:36 PM

Ah, the ways of the Web are mysterious. Apparently, if you do a search on a Swedish website called Evreka for the terms images Hammett Kirk, the No. 5 result (of about 700) is a page on the site for my improv troupe, Dojo Fabuloso, which, I can confidently state as webmaster, is 100-percent free of pictures of anyone in Metallica. However, Swedish Metallica fans are certainly welcome to the Dojo fold. We crave diversity.

(Personal favorite Metallica reference: "We're gonna sit back, relax, watch the stars / James and Jason, Kirk and Lars" -- Fountains of Wayne, "Laser Show")

·  ·  ·

So the Net powers that be have decided that Web ads need to be bigger and more annoying. (CNET gives us this news along with the obtrusive way it is implementing one of the new standards.) Is it naive to suggest that maybe Internet ads aren't working not because their sizes or locations are ineffective but because their content is ineffective?

Send e-mail

11:04 PM The instant the words had come out of my mouth, I was stunned and dismayed. Over a midday collection of appetizers at Mel's, I said to a friend, "You facilitated that excellently." And I meant it. O lawdy, what has become of me?

Send e-mail