'Bred Crumbs

The Lame Parties Always End Early

While I wasn't looking listening, 92.7 Party, the local all-dance radio station with the annoyingly small playlist, died. Suddenly, it's Power 92.7, the metro's third "urban" station.

(Actually, of course, it's "the new" Power 92.7, just as its predecessor was "the new" 92.7 Party for the whole two years of its existence, and just as the WB's Tuesday night lineup is "New Tuesday" even when it's all reruns. Idiocy rulz, and I'd better get youzt 2 it.)

I'm not terribly disappointed to lose this station; I'd already memorized all its songs anyway. Given that the station's management hasn't changed, I'm sure the people who sample the new format will encounter the same problem.

I won't be among them, because you can't spell crap without rap, and my finger won't be hitting that preset anymore. Especially since Live 105, finally having realized it can't live on testostorock alone, is listenable again.

How do you not make a dance station a success in San Francisco? Laziness. It's not quite accurate to say the Party's over. Even though Pink's anthem was among the select few tunes the station played, the Party never really got started.

·  ·  ·

Three-quarters of the scaffolding came down. The sun came out. Much better.

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If You Love Somebody, Take Down Their *!#% Scaffolding

When we saw the signs, our hearts leapt. The construction crew marked off two guest parking slots last night, to save them for the arrival of the scaffolding truck this morning. That had to mean they were finally going to take down the scaffolding that has surrounded our home for five months. To which we thought, about frelling time.

The pace of the construction project has become very frustrating this month. Our bay windows were finished at the end of February, and for about three weeks now, our balcony has looked to be on the edge of completion. But never quite completed, until this weekend. Maybe. They never quite tell us these things.

In some ways, the workers have been meticulous about remembering that they were working on someone's home. When they had to work inside, they would put plastic over everything, and even lay down plastic pathways for themselves. But finishing up has not been a strong point of this crew. For starters, they never exactly notified us that they were done with the bay windows. We just assumed they were done after they puttied the last hole from the bolts that held up the temporary wall. They didn't arrange the post-job walkthrough until a month later.

And then there was the day the crew left for the evening and kind of forgot they'd been in our apartment. Robbie came home from work to find not only the front door unlocked, but also the balcony door slid wide open, inviting the whole world to come, take, and eat all you take. Yes, a stink was raised.

We've also enjoyed the "24 Hour" notices, left on our door at 5 p.m., advising us they'd need to be inside our place at 8 a.m. the next day. You do the math. They didn't.

So as progress on the last few steps of the balcony shrank to microscopic proportions, even while the iron web of scaffolding was wrapping around the complex at cheetah speed, we started getting discouraged and pissy. Maybe the scaffolding is damn handy for them, but we were sick of looking at it.

Then came the tease, the parking signs of promise.

So today when I got home, I came through the back gate with a smile on my face, eager to not see the scaffolding.

And there it still was.

Apparently, the truck was called just to haul away the pieces of the scaffolding they took down two weeks ago. Even though all work is done on both sides of the building that meet at our corner, our unit remains caged.

I'm taking this lingering personally. They might as well have attached a metal tongue on the scaffolding to stick out at me. Then again, I really don't know why I'm so desperate for the bars to be taken down. It's not like it would be letting the sunshine in; it would just be letting in dreary gray.

Yeah, I've been in better moods.

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Eowork

No matter what awaits in the workday ahead of you, you can get an extra oomph going in if you have the Rohan theme from The Two Towers trumpeting loudly in your headphones as you enter your workplace.

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The One With the Giving Up

A while back, I asked readers to help me decide how the Friends should die to bring the moribund series to a satisfying conclusion. The response was not exactly ringing. Either I way underestimated Friends backlash, or people fear my email form, or most likely, my ten or so readers just never got around to it.

If I wanted, I could try something more to stir up anti-Friends sentiment. Maybe bumper stickers:

FRIENDS SHOULDN'T LET

FRIENDS WATCH FRIENDS

But never mind. Since NBC moved Scrubs, thus removing any reason for me to turn on the TV during prime time on Thursdays, I've missed a lot of NBC's overwrought promotion of its dying walrus, and my bloodlust has dimmed. And soon, the show will finally be gone, and the point will be – as Joey once said back when Friends was funny – moo.

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