There was a period of time for me, a stretch that lasted about six or seven years, where I worked a pretty busy schedule. I’d dropped out of college and I supported myself by working a bunch of pretty mediocre jobs: I delivered pizzas, and I managed a restaurant, and for a couple of months, I waited tables. I got by, and my income was pretty decent, but I put in a full seven days a week, and most of those days were long and hard and left me exhausted by the time I got home at night, I was exhausted.
Part of the reason I decided to go back to school to finish my degree was so that I wouldn’t have to work seven day weeks. I didn’t have a lot of course work: two semesters worth of classes, and even though I was still working about sixty hours a week, and even though my only day off fall semester was Thanksgiving Day, I enjoyed the hell out of that year. It was more than just the people, and it was more than just appreciating the education I’d taken for granted my first try at college, I enjoyed the hectic scheduling that did not allow me to waste a single hour. I relentlessly scheduled myself: I don’t know how I found time to grocery shop, I don’t know how I found time to do laundry, but I’m pretty sure I did. (Either that or I smelled really, really bad all semester … might explain why I didn’t get laid all year).
I was hoping, when I graduated, that I could work just a regular old 9-5, and have my evenings and weekends to myself. But by the time I found a job (many, many months after graduation), I knew I wanted a part-time job, and found a perfect one at the Bookstore: it both offered me a way to keep myself from going stir crazy, and a hefty 33% discount. In addition, it became clear that with the higher cost of living in DC, that I would require the income.
A coworker clapped me on the back last night. She used to be a bookseller, but is now a part of the crew who works after hours to make sure books are put out on the shelves. She told me, “You were right.” Back in December, I’d been fretting about the company’s precarious financial situation and contemplating a move to a rival. I made a decision — the wrong decision, as it turns out — to wait until the new year. I waited too long.
As hour cuts continue to be mandated from corporate, night crew has started taking hits, with hours trimmed and shifts cut. It isn’t easy for any of us in the store, and even though a number of us work full-time jobs and need the Bookstore to make our checking accounts stay in the black, there are plenty of people whose entire income come from the store.
Management has tried to shield the full-timers as much as possible, and the brunt of the cuts have come from the part-timers. It sucks, but it’s understandable. I’ve looked around, and have been unable to find a part-time job elsewhere, and many of us are in the same boat, calling in night after night to find out if anyone has called out and if we’re needed to come in to cover. The answer is usually no, either because no one has called out, or because someone else has already called in to volunteer.
Right now, as sad as it sounds, our only hope for more hours comes in the termination of our coworkers, and the enforcement of an unofficial hiring freeze. Management has taken a hard line on people who’ve frequently called out, or shown up late on a regular basis. Familiar faces are gone, and far too often I’ve found that someone I thought simply not to have been seen because of the reduction of hours, was let go. Some of the managers think they’re going to be laid off: corporate took the butcher blade through HQ and let go a number of high ranking management folks. There remain fears that more stores will be closed.
I work six days a week: my Office job Monday through Friday, and the Bookstore Monday night and all day Sunday. And even though it would mean giving up my day off, I would jump at the chance for a Saturday shift. I would jump at the opportunity to work seven days a week. In a heartbeat.
I should not have ventured out on Sunday. I should have called in sick, and stayed nice and warm in my cozy little apartment.
Of course, there’s really no slack at the Bookstore to cover for people who aren’t able to come in sick. I’m proud of the fact that in the near year I’ve worked there (I was hired in March of ’08 and started in April), I’ve only called out three times: twice, I was genuinely sick, once, I needed to stay very late at the Office to finish a priority project.
We were busy Sunday. I mean, we weren’t “technically” busy: the sales, I’m sure, don’t reflect that we were busy. But as corporate slashes available payroll to keep the company from floundering, staffing takes a major hit. We had no scheduled cashiers. We only had two booksellers, and a member of the inventory team to staff the register and the information desks. Our Loss Prevention guy, and our service managers, had scheduled shifts at the Info desks to provide slack. Our magazine guy came over to help ring when he had long lines.
Most of my post-lunch shift (which was a casualty of the cuts, I usually have lunch at one, I had to wait until two) was spent on the lower level, staffing the Music Information desk. I was rarely there. There was a big V-cart stacked with books, and I spent most of the evening running from Kids to Music, via Cooking or Romance, mass markets and quality paperbacks and hard covers tucked under one arm, directing customers to Self-Help (oh, the irony) or Popular Fiction or Poetry, while looking for books called down from Main Information for customers.
For a Sunday, our customer traffic was slow. Our sales were down. But we were busy hustling and running, and I’m glad I wore sneakers. While most of our Sunday regulars stayed home, the crazies did not. We’ve got a lot of crazies who come into the store: we have nicknames for most of them, although they’re not all particularly useful: –we have at least half a dozen customers we’ve given the moniker ‘manga man’ – one has a weird Sarlaac-monster-teeth-thing going on with his mouth, another I can’t tell his (her?) gender, a third we’re pretty sure has stolen half the section, and a fourth smells like rotten cabbage but returns the books to the section after he’s done reading them, so we like him (our noses don’t agree with our assessment).
They’re not all crazy: some are argumentative, some are detail oriented, some think we’re publishers, or a library, or Staples. There’s a guy who keeps ordering the same book on German Shepherds over and over again: it’s out of print, no one has it, but I guess he believes in persistence. Another writes up long legal briefs and distributes them to staff, along with little buttons that attempt to sum up each brief’s subject in a word or two.
I was yelled at Sunday, early on, when I was at Main Info. “Yelled” might be a strong word, too strong, in fact. A lady came over to me with a smile on her face, and asked politely for directions to The Mall. I think it’s safe to say, in the DC area, especially in the downtown DC area, that when someone inquires for directions to The Mall, they’re not looking for an enclosing shopping area: they’re looking for a long green rectangle with the US Capitol at one end and the Lincoln Memorial at the other. I was about a quarter of the way into telling her how to get there, when her face abruptly went from a smile to a frown, at which point she interrupted me and inquired whether or not I was giving her directions to The Mall, or to the fucking park? Because, godammit, she wasn’t interested in the godamn park with the godamn giant penis, she just needed a scarf, and shoes, and okay, maybe a food court. Properly chastened for my incredible stupidity, I pointed her in the direction of Friendship Heights (I think there’s a mall up there).
Another insisted that the water in the bathroom wasn’t running. Even after our LP guy went to check and confirmed that, indeed, the water appeared to be functioning normally. An elderly gentleman read our store’s write-up on the company’s locator website and thought we had famous political folks wandering throughout the store on a daily basis, and, dammit, where were they? He’d come a long way. I apologized: George Will had been in the previous Sunday, but the weekdays were really the best times to see them. Like we’re a zoo or somethin’. “Over here, on your left, is a Republican pundit … if you choose to approach him, do so at your own caution and remove any blue you might be wearing!”
Fortunately, our hustle paid off, and right at closing time, we’d totally have been ready to go … but to some people, “We’ll be closing in five minutes, please gather your personal belongings and begin to exit the store” is not an indicator that they should gather their personal belongings, use the bathroom, and then exit. Rather, she waited until our actual closing announcement to do that, meaning we had to wait around several minutes until she finally made her exit.
Even with her, we still made good time, and by 7:10, we were all beginning to assemble at the front for bag-checks and good-byes. As we were pushing out, customers were trying to push in, even refusing to listen to our pleas of, “We’re closed! We’re closed!” Right up until one of our managers, a big gentle giant who with a scowl and set of his shoulders turns into an intimidating motherfucker with a growl and a low rumble satisfied all our would-be shoppers, “Closed!”
All but one: a fellow who just had to buy a CD, he needed it , desperately. He was refused, and his protests that our website showed a later closing time gently rebutted, referred to a different store. By this point, I was rapidly proceeding towards the bus stand: no mood to wait for the delays on the Red Line, or to walk. By the time I got home, well over an hour later, having stopped at Giant for lunch meat and bread, I had barely the energy to throw my food into the refrigerator before collapsing onto my futon and kicking off my shoes and crawling under the covers.
I bet they slept together afterwords. Possibly beforewords, too. Anyway, now the whole seemingly incestuous nature of their relationship is freakin’ me out, man!
I’m not that brilliant in the kitchen. Okay, I make a mean pot of Kraft Mac & Cheese. And my experiments with Apple Betty and lasagna have turned out quite excellently. On the other hand, I fucked up spaghetti when I put waaaay too much beef in the meatsauce. So, really, the lesson here is never to put anything past me when it comes to fraking up simple recipes.
I e-mailed my Mom this past week for her recipe for broccoli quiche. Now there’s something I never thought I would actually find myself purchasing in a grocery store: broccoli. And yet, Friday after work, that’s what I was bagging up: broccoli, feta cheese, cottage cheese. I also picked up some beef, taco mix, and shells, and made tacos for dinner. Sadly, most of the shells were broken, so it was sort of a taco salad without the, uh, salad.
Back to the quiche, here’s what I needed:
Pie crust, broccoli, eggs, 8-oz feta cheese, 10oz cottage cheese, parmesan cheese, 6 teaspoon milk, nutmeg, salt, pepper. I had most of that available already, but I picked up a package of pie crusts: I had one in my fridge, but I bought that to make a pumpkin pie back in October. Indeed, it was well past the expiration date.
Saturday around 6pm, I fired up the oven and consulted my Mom’s recipe. It seemed pretty simple enough: mix up four eggs, spices, and cheeses in a bowl. Chop up some broccoli, mix it all into an unbaked pie shell.
My first hurdle was how to steam broccoli. Google is the idiot-cooker’s friend, and I put a cup and a half of water into a pot, and when it was boiling, added both bunches (the recipe calls for two medium-sized bunches). I set my microwave’s timer for five minutes, and at the appointed time, pulled the pot off the burner and pulled the broccoli out of the pot (there was a considerable amount of “ow! ow! ow!” at this point).
Meanwhile, the cottage cheese, the parm, the feta, the eggs, all went into a bowl. I sprinkled in some nutmeg, pepper, and salt, and a few teaspoons of milk. I mixed it quite thoroughly, then moved back to the broccoli. I chopped off the stalks, then cut up the big-leafy parts quite tiny. Although Mom’s recipe called for a pre-baked pie crust, I think that was a typo, and substituted a non-baked crust. Once the crust was in the pie-baking-dish-thing, I spread the broccoli over the bottom of the crust, then poured the cheese mix over that. I sprinkled some parm cheese and nutmeg on top, slipped the whole thing into the oven, and baked for 35 minutes at 375 degrees.
And this is where I ran into problems: when I pulled the quiche out, and stuck a knife into it, it didn’t seem to have, er, come together. So I baked it for a total of ten more minutes, and at that point, I was pretty sure I’d ruined it. It looked puffy and runny. Bummed — because I’d spent however much bucks on the food. I watched TV for a bit, then went back to the kitchen to clean up and throw away le quiche.
And what to my surprise should await me! A beautiful looking quiche. So I cut out a slice, and ate it (peaches on the side, duh), and it was fantastic. I guess it just needed some time to settle. In fact, it was soooo good …
Yeah, well. I didn’t want to lose weight this week anyway.
Although I probably won’t see it opening weekend, I’m looking forward to seeing Watchmen (it opens in about two weeks). I was scrolling through some websites when I learned that there are three cuts of the film, and that the longer cuts will be available on DVD.
The first cut is the theatrical edition, running at a respectable 156 minutes.
The second cut, the director’s cut, is 190 minutes.
The third, and longest cut, incorporating “The Tales of the Dark Freighter”, is 205 minutes.
I’ve seen almost none of this year’s Oscar slate. Largely, this is because I don’t get out to theaters much. I think last year the only films I ventured out for were The Happening, Indiana Jones (twice, but only because I promised to go see it with my Dad), The Dark Knight, and The Quantum of Solace.
(Also, I’m pretty sure I haven’t been to the movies since Quantum of Solace).
So, really, all I have to say about whether or not Heath Ledger should win the Oscar for Best Actor can be summed up by my post-Dark Knight reaction post. Which is to say: no. If he wins, and mind you, this is only my opinion, but his win will be based on his death, and not his performance. Who wants that?
Meanwhile, I have never been a big Quentin Tarantino fan. I’ve enjoyed some of his films, but I’ve never been the rabid drooling mess that bolts head first for the theater when one of his films is playing. I tend to think his films are short on brains, heavy on blood, and while I certainly can appreciate both of those aspects, and even combined, I usually watch one of his films, roll my eyes, and wonder just WTF people see in them.
So imagine my surprise that I find myself drooling with rabid excitement for Tarantino’s WWII film, Inglorious Bastards.
I know virtually nothing about this film, except:
1. It’s directed (and written, I assume?) by Tarantino.
2. It’s not based on the previous WWII film Inglorious Bastards, which I don’t think I’ve ever heard of before.
3. Nazis die. Probably violently.
4. Brad Pitt is in it, and he’s got a weird stupid mustache on his face.
I hope to thoroughly enjoy myself, whenever it actually comes to theaters (it’s currently scheduled for late August).
Okay, but in all seriousness … only one of the four DVD films has been any good (Bender’s Big Score, but in fairness, I haven’t seen Wild Green Yonder yet). So I’d be a little worried about the quality of Futurama on the broadcast screen, since it hasn’t had a great track record on the DVD screen. All I’m sayin’.
The Digital Bits is reporting that Universal will release Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Series on DVD on July 28th. However, for those of us who have been buying these releases on a season-by-half-season basis, Season 4.5 will apparently street on April 21st, to coincide with the DVD release of the forthcoming prequel series, Caprica (presumably, the tele-movie “The Plan” will also be released this day).
(Also: there is this disturbing news. Apparently, Universal never got the memo that Lorne Greene is DEAD. Or they want Glen Larson fraking around in Ron Moore’s BSG universe which, uh, fuck no.)
I shave my head. I usually do this every night, because most mornings I hit the snooze button a few times, then realize how late I’m running, and dash into the bathroom, trying not to trip over any sleeping cats as I do. Last weekend, I decided to forgo buying expensive cartridges for my razor, and went with a bag of the cheapo ones.
On the face of it, this might seem extremely stupid: however, the first time I shaved my head, back in 2003, I had considerable luck with disposable razors. I was, however, not able to repeat my earlier luck with said disposables, and several cuts on my head promptly began spilling large quantities of blood down my face. While the wounds were nothing that some water, a towel, and some pieces of tissue paper couldn’t take care of, it became obvious to me that continuing to shave my head every evening was going to make it hard for these wounds to heal themselves.
So, for most of a week, I stopped shaving. Hair began to grow: bristle and rough at first, oddly furry by today. After I got home from lunch with my parents, I examined my head in the mirror and rubbed my hand over my wounds. Judging from sight and tough, I decided that shaving my head was again an option, and loaded a new cartridge, rubbed shaving gel into my hair, and went to work.
And guess what?
No blood. The wounds had healed. My head is once again as smooth as a baby’s freshly-cleaned ass. And since I was feeling productive, I went ahead and shaved a few stray bristles of hair from my upper cheeks, and the patch of hair under my lip … and then I shaved the mustache part of my beard.
I’m so excited, and I just can’t hide it! Fanboys’ limited release has been expanded, and it came to Washington, DC yesterday. I’ve got work Monday night, and a post-work happy hour Wednesday night, so I’m planning on making my way to theaters Tuesday. Who’s in?
Why poorly written? Look, I’m no journalist, but shouldn’t there be some background for those who might’ve forgotten exactly who “Condit” is and why he’s relevant? This is the only line he’s given: “Police questioned Condit several times in connection with the murder, but never named him a suspect.” Erm, don’t you think some background on who he is and why he’s important might help for those who don’t remember this case?
And, for those curious: although I’d certainly forgot Condit’s name, I remember well the role he played in the investigation.
You’d think they could flesh that out a bit. Meanwhile, here’s his Wikipedia page.
EDIT: CNN has revised the article, detailing the relationship between Condit and Levy, and Condit’s role in the investigation.
According to my iPod, these are my most played tracks:
Bleed it Out by Linkin Park Can’t Hold Back by Survivor A View to a Kill by Duran Duran Admiral and Commander by Bear McCreary Raider’s March by John Williams Video Killed The Radio Star by The Presidents of the United States of America Streets of Philadelphia by Bruce Springsteen Save Me by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Tribute to Queen Eye of the Tiger by Survivor Agent of Chaos by Hans Zimmer The Battle by Harry Gregson-Williams Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen On Her Majesty’s Secret Service by John Barry Orchestra American Pie by Don McLean One Night in Bangkok by Murray Head You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth by Meatloaf Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen Fort Walton, Kansas by Hans Zimmer Flash by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra Tribute to Queen Turning Japanese by The Vapors Dance Hall Days by Wang Chung You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) by Dead or Alive The Adventures of Mutt by John Williams Seven Seas of Rhye by Queen Long Long Time by Guy Forsyth
One wonders what Delonas, the cartoonist behind the New York Post’s racist editorial yesterday, was thinking. There’s really not much of a question in my mind that the editorial is racist — how, precisely, you can tie the shooting death of a chimp in Connecticut with Obama’s stimulus plan isn’t something I’m capable of.
Well, unless you’ve heard of the ridiculously stupid argument that blacks are like monkeys, which is probably what went through Delonas’ mind, in which case I suppose he’s equating the Republicans to the police as the “thin blue line” between us and the damnation we’ve released by electing a black guy President. Fuck that.
Holder was more right than he knew, and I’m just as guilty as anyone about being a coward on this, but that’s a story for another time.
I spent my Saturday catching up on the last president’s administration, via Oliver Stone’s W.
Essentially, the film is about George Jr., out getting arrested, and walking out on jobs he didn’t like. Meanwhile, his father was always there to clean up his messes, and brag about Jeb’s successes in life. Motivated by the desire to impress and outdo his father, George Jr. entered politics and, well, we all know how that turned out. The film’s finale comes in a nightmare sequence as George Jr. is berated by his father in the Oval Office for ruining the Bush family name, a political dynasty which had been slowly building for decades.
Now, let me state: approaching the movie as just that, a film, and making no assumptions on the accuracy of the film as it pertains to the motivations of the main characters, I came away feeling a considerable amount of sympathy for George W. Bush.
Well, the character played by Josh Brolin, anyway.
(presumably, the tele-movie “The Plan” will also be released this day).
