So I've been getting all kinds of requests for more entries, and I haven't had any time to update. I recommend adding me to your RSS reader, because if you're just checking every so often you'll probably get bored in the amount of time it takes me to write new entries. I also recommend leaving comments so I have a better idea of how many people are reading, and also because I like getting comments.
Anyway, so many things have been happening and I can't blog about them. Last Tuesday I started improv classes here. I was wisely advised not to write about what I think about the class lest they eventually read my blog and blacklist me from Seattle improv. Let's just say I miss NYC a whole lot and when I get back it's going to be high on my priority list to see shows at UCB and the Magnet.
My parents came to visit for a week and I really shouldn't blog about that either, but you know what, my parents should not be reading my blog. Mom, Dad, if you're reading this, please click here. This isn't for you.
Acting class started today, and I think the stuff regarding improv class applies here as well. Let's just say that whenever you transfer anything from New York to Seattle, heavy doses of hippies and granola and free love are applied. It seems like people out here are a lot less hardcore about everything, and this is not something I can or am willing to get used to.
Finally I met an awesome girl out here, and I certainly cannot blog about that. Not because she might be reading, but because her boyfriend might be. Whatever, that's what he gets for not being me.
Oh ok here's something I can talk about. I got drunk for the first time ever on Thursday night. My friend Karen was determined to find alcohol that I thought was palatable. And I give her a lot of credit, because she tried hard and made me a lot of different drinks. Finally she gave up and just made me drink stuff that tasted to varying degrees like paint thinner. Then we went to a bar (the crazy art bar mentioned in an earlier entry) and I drank more things. Then I wobbled around for a while and generally felt very pleasant.
I think that's a good way to end that entry.
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Entry 8: Way Behind
This whole thing feels like a constant struggle between my wanting to have a blog and my not wanting to write a blog. That said, the mental discomfort I feel when I write is probably good for me - it means I'm exercising a part of my brain that needs it. You know, the way you felt when you failed math in high school.
So last weekend Sean and Robin were in town, and that was a treat. If there's one thing Seattle does not have, it's New Yorkers, but for four days it had three of them. Friday night was the "Bachelor Party" at a bar in Queen Anne. It did not feature any strippers or...well, I don't really know what else is associated with bachelor parties. Fun? It didn't have that either. It had a bunch of guys sitting around drinking beers and telling embarrassing stories about the groom, as some guy whispered to me "These aren't really his friends". At one point the bachelorette party swarmed in, which I think means their marriage will have seven years of bad luck.
My goal in writing this is to just start with a topic and type a stream of consciousness, not really thinking too hard about how to organize it or what I'm going to say. The problem with that is that every so often I start to write something and realize that people are going to think that I'm a dick for writing it. Thing is, I clearly am a dick, because I still thought that thing that I decided not to say. So way to go, society - you've successfully oppressed me once again. (Note: I did not run into this problem when I wrote about the improv here in Seattle, but I did get informed that I was a dick.)
Alright, so on Saturday we went to the Solstice Parade. That was a hoot, let me tell you. Every summer Seattle celebrates summer by having this big crazy nonsensical parade. It starts out with about three hundred naked cyclists, followed by naked people dancing, naked people waving things around, and naked people dressed in weird costumes. (Took you a second, didn't it.) If only I could convey to you in this small space just how absurd the whole thing was. There were atheist pirates, pieces of a giant sandwich, robots, zombies, some kind of crazy kickball team, big Bert-clowns (Bert, like from Bert and Ernie), and so much more.
Here are a couple of pictures. I have about 15 pictures that Sean took, but I didn't want to put up any naked pictures of anyone without their consent, so here are the two that are left.
And Monday evening was spent atop the Space Needle, where I hadn't been since I visited here a few years ago.
So that was everything we did, but what was not captured in all of that was how much fun it was to host Sean and Robin for the weekend. They insisted on paying for everything everywhere we went, and they made me laugh constantly, which was refreshing as I left all my comedian friends back home. It was absolutely the best weekend I've had here to date, with the one where I went to see bad improv by myself coming in a close second.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Entry 7: 'Nother Week Gone By
I told you guys I wasn't going to be able to keep up with a blog. I told you, and you didn't listen.
So I went back to Unexpected Productions way back on last Saturday and I am just getting to write about it now. Let's see how much I can remember. Oh yeah, it sucked. It sucked hard and fast and long and purple. They did a longform called Spoken that was invented by the theater's director, and this went on for an hour and consisted of little to no laughs from the audience. I should be clear: this was the fault of the performers and not the form. They were making basic mistakes that they teach you not to make in a level 1 class. They looked like they were afraid to be performing, and as such they did all the things that Mick Napier tells you that scared performers will do. I'm particularly bitter because these shows are twice as expensive as the ones in NYC and a small fraction of the quality. I'm more bitter because these are apparently the people I'm supposed to take classes from. Luckily I don't think that any of the teachers were in that particular performance that night, but if those were the best they could come up with to put a team together, I can only imagine what I'm going to find when I sign up for classes.
The best part was when I went into the lobby and asked someone who had just been in the show about taking classes. He told me to sign up for level 1, but I told him I had been working at the Magnet for the past 9 months, at which he looked a little skeptical and said maybe I could get into level 2. I guess level 2 is where they teach you how to freak out and negate everyone.
Alright, what else. I signed my lease this week, so I'll be moving into my new place in the beginning of July. Pictures coming soon. Other than that I'm doing a lot of annoying admin stuff that I shouldn't have to do, like calling the Hoboken post office every couple of days to find out what the fuck they're doing with my mail. Seriously, what's the point of setting up mail forwarding if they're just going to keep delivering to the old address anyway? Nothing. There is no point.
The social front is slow-going, but what do you expect - I work with a bunch of software engineers, and the term "work with" is a bit generous. Work near, maybe. So work isn't good for a social scene; I'm hoping that once I get into acting classes and improv classes those people will be more...my type? How gay does that sound. In the meantime I've taken to just doing stuff myself; last weekend I went to the last day of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and saw a movie called The Wackness, starring Ben Kingsley. It was set in NYC, about a kid who graduates high school, deals drugs, and tries to fuck his psychiatrist's daughter. Highly recommended.
The upcoming weekend should be fun. It will feature special guests Sean Taylor and Robin Rothman of The Spotlight With Sean Taylor fame, and our musical guest will possibly be Lauren Berenstein, but this remains to be determined. The Solstice Parade is tomorrow, cause Seattle is a bunch of hippies. A blog post will definitely be warranted.
So I went back to Unexpected Productions way back on last Saturday and I am just getting to write about it now. Let's see how much I can remember. Oh yeah, it sucked. It sucked hard and fast and long and purple. They did a longform called Spoken that was invented by the theater's director, and this went on for an hour and consisted of little to no laughs from the audience. I should be clear: this was the fault of the performers and not the form. They were making basic mistakes that they teach you not to make in a level 1 class. They looked like they were afraid to be performing, and as such they did all the things that Mick Napier tells you that scared performers will do. I'm particularly bitter because these shows are twice as expensive as the ones in NYC and a small fraction of the quality. I'm more bitter because these are apparently the people I'm supposed to take classes from. Luckily I don't think that any of the teachers were in that particular performance that night, but if those were the best they could come up with to put a team together, I can only imagine what I'm going to find when I sign up for classes.
The best part was when I went into the lobby and asked someone who had just been in the show about taking classes. He told me to sign up for level 1, but I told him I had been working at the Magnet for the past 9 months, at which he looked a little skeptical and said maybe I could get into level 2. I guess level 2 is where they teach you how to freak out and negate everyone.
Alright, what else. I signed my lease this week, so I'll be moving into my new place in the beginning of July. Pictures coming soon. Other than that I'm doing a lot of annoying admin stuff that I shouldn't have to do, like calling the Hoboken post office every couple of days to find out what the fuck they're doing with my mail. Seriously, what's the point of setting up mail forwarding if they're just going to keep delivering to the old address anyway? Nothing. There is no point.
The social front is slow-going, but what do you expect - I work with a bunch of software engineers, and the term "work with" is a bit generous. Work near, maybe. So work isn't good for a social scene; I'm hoping that once I get into acting classes and improv classes those people will be more...my type? How gay does that sound. In the meantime I've taken to just doing stuff myself; last weekend I went to the last day of the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) and saw a movie called The Wackness, starring Ben Kingsley. It was set in NYC, about a kid who graduates high school, deals drugs, and tries to fuck his psychiatrist's daughter. Highly recommended.
The upcoming weekend should be fun. It will feature special guests Sean Taylor and Robin Rothman of The Spotlight With Sean Taylor fame, and our musical guest will possibly be Lauren Berenstein, but this remains to be determined. The Solstice Parade is tomorrow, cause Seattle is a bunch of hippies. A blog post will definitely be warranted.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Entry 6: Week 2 In Review
And so with each day that passes, I become more and more of a Seattle resident. First on the list this week was to get a voter card. Why a voter card, you ask? It's not like I'm going to be, you know, voting or anything. Well, the way it works is this: Washington state requires an obscene amount of documentation to be able to get a driver's license. I have to show them something like three forms of identification and two forms of proof of residence. So of course I don't have most of the stuff they will accept, nor do I have any way to get them. The guy on the phone at the DMV helpfully suggested that, since I have no way to prove that I'm a WA resident, I get a voter card with my address on it. If you're like me, at this point you're probably thinking "Wait a minute, DMV guy - don't I need to prove to THEM that I'm a resident?" No, apparently not. So really, all it takes to establish residence in Washington is to show up the the Voter Registration Office in Renton and ask nicely. Fifteen minutes later (plus two hours for bus rides) I was a proudly registered voter, and new resident, of Washington state.
Next up: getting an apartment (my temporary housing only lasts me halfway through July). My primary concern in looking for a new spot was that I was going to get the hell out of the wilderness they call Belltown. Unfortunately, it seems that Seattle only has one neighborhood less wildernessy than Belltown, and that's downtown. Good enough, let's go there. One catch - they were too busy building office buildings and such to remember to put in any apartments. To my current knowledge there is exactly one apartment building in downtown Seattle, and they didn't have anything decent available. Luckily there opened a condo for rent in Newmark Tower, so starting in July, that's where you'll be able to find me (as if there's anyone reading this that isn't 2500 miles away). I'm happy with it though; it's got floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows in the living room which look right out over the bay and down on Pike's Place Market, which is only a block away.
A block in the other direction is the "bus tunnel". See if you can follow along, cause I didn't fully understand what they meant until I actually saw it. Ok, so when I first got here I was telling everyone how dumb they were for not having subways, which are the greatest things in the world. They were like "yeah, but we have the bus tunnel". Me: "What's that?" Them: "A tunnel where only buses can go". So, I'm picturing the buses driving along their normal routes, and then at one point they go into this special tunnel, so they can go faster or something. Big deal. Actually, here's what it really is: it's a subway, except instead of subway cars there are buses. So you actually go down the stairs onto the platform and wait there for a bus to come along, and there are 5 different stops in this "bus tunnel". It would be fantastic if it went to more places. But it doesn't. But it will get me close to work, which I guess would be more exciting if I wasn't planning on getting a motorcycle anyway, which is why I needed to get that voter registration card. It's funny how life always comes full circle.
Last night I went back to Unexpected Productions to see its longform show. It was so horrible it will require a blog entry all its own. Stay tuned.
Next up: getting an apartment (my temporary housing only lasts me halfway through July). My primary concern in looking for a new spot was that I was going to get the hell out of the wilderness they call Belltown. Unfortunately, it seems that Seattle only has one neighborhood less wildernessy than Belltown, and that's downtown. Good enough, let's go there. One catch - they were too busy building office buildings and such to remember to put in any apartments. To my current knowledge there is exactly one apartment building in downtown Seattle, and they didn't have anything decent available. Luckily there opened a condo for rent in Newmark Tower, so starting in July, that's where you'll be able to find me (as if there's anyone reading this that isn't 2500 miles away). I'm happy with it though; it's got floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall windows in the living room which look right out over the bay and down on Pike's Place Market, which is only a block away.
A block in the other direction is the "bus tunnel". See if you can follow along, cause I didn't fully understand what they meant until I actually saw it. Ok, so when I first got here I was telling everyone how dumb they were for not having subways, which are the greatest things in the world. They were like "yeah, but we have the bus tunnel". Me: "What's that?" Them: "A tunnel where only buses can go". So, I'm picturing the buses driving along their normal routes, and then at one point they go into this special tunnel, so they can go faster or something. Big deal. Actually, here's what it really is: it's a subway, except instead of subway cars there are buses. So you actually go down the stairs onto the platform and wait there for a bus to come along, and there are 5 different stops in this "bus tunnel". It would be fantastic if it went to more places. But it doesn't. But it will get me close to work, which I guess would be more exciting if I wasn't planning on getting a motorcycle anyway, which is why I needed to get that voter registration card. It's funny how life always comes full circle.
Last night I went back to Unexpected Productions to see its longform show. It was so horrible it will require a blog entry all its own. Stay tuned.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Entry 5: Seattle Improv
So I'm now officially three days behind on this blog. I don't like procrastinating, but it's so easy to do.
Saturday night I went down to the Pike Place Market (Seattle's major tourist attraction, for those of you unfamiliar) because I had bought a ticket earlier in the week to see TheatreSports (short-form improv developed by the legendary Keith Johnstone) at Unexpected Productions (Seattle's biggest improv theater). The last sentence used a lot of parentheses (punctuation marks used for the purpose of adding supplementary information to a sentence).
First impressions: I was not crazy about the location of the theater. Especially not since they have a "Public Market" sign over the stage - you get the sense that they're pandering to tourists who for some reason decided to take their vacation in Seattle and then realized that after the market and the Space Needle they're pretty much out of options. The audience was predominantly frat boys with backwards baseball caps and the kinds of girls that hang out with those kinds of guys. They were all pretty loud, which I guess is fine for TheatreSports because TheatreSports encourages the audience to be loud.
So if you don't know what TheatreSports is, it's a lot like Whose Line Is It Anyway? Two teams "compete" by challenging each other to improv games, using audience suggestions appopriate to the game. There are three "judges" who dress in black robes and give scores to each performance by holding up cards. The judges are supposed to be the bad guys, starting out with very low scores, and the audience is supposed to boo them as much as possible. (Side note: I found it hard to boo the judges for giving low scores, mostly because they were giving the same scores I would have given.)
Ok, the show. Fuck, where do I begin. I happened to show up on a weekend where they had some special guests in town - a group of improvisers from Japan. I can't think of any reason this wouldn't be a good idea, can you? A group of Japanese improvisers, playing to an American audience? Wait, what did you say? Oh that's right, THEY SPEAK FUCKING JAPANESE! No joke, there were four of them and two didn't speak any english. One spoke broken english, and one spoke decent english. They mixed it up so that each team had two Japanese people on it, and throughout the whole show the girl who spoke broken english was translating for the two who didn't speak any english. Picture this: for the first game, someone from each team approached a podium, and they took turns naming things that would be found in a certain location. The first location was "auto junkyard". The game went something like this:
American woman: Old tire!
Japanese girl: ::making pictures with her hands::Aieee!
American woman: Cracked muffler!
Japanese girl: ::more hand pictures::Ahhhhh....
American woman: Broken mirror!
Japanese girl: Old....shoe!
and mercifully they called it there. The audience still had the nerve to boo the judges.
The rest of the show was really not that good. The first three scenes all ended up resorting to sex to get a laugh. They played a lot of games that involved the Japanese language. The whole thing was very jokey. I checked my watch a lot.
But, all is not lost. The theater does have long-form shows, which I plan to check out this week. The guy who runs the place studied with Del Close, so I still have someplace to take classes out here. A girl I took Matching Energies with at the Magnet was actually a company member at this theater, and she had a lot of good things to say about it. So, all's well that ends well.
This weekend they're having a 54 hour improv marathon, where the performers aren't allowed to sleep between 6PM Friday and midnight Sunday. Anyone who stays for the whole thing gets a free lifetime pass to the theater. I think I'll probably go toward the end of it, cause I'm really interested to see how well these fuckers improvise after an unhealthy lack of sleep.
Saturday night I went down to the Pike Place Market (Seattle's major tourist attraction, for those of you unfamiliar) because I had bought a ticket earlier in the week to see TheatreSports (short-form improv developed by the legendary Keith Johnstone) at Unexpected Productions (Seattle's biggest improv theater). The last sentence used a lot of parentheses (punctuation marks used for the purpose of adding supplementary information to a sentence).
First impressions: I was not crazy about the location of the theater. Especially not since they have a "Public Market" sign over the stage - you get the sense that they're pandering to tourists who for some reason decided to take their vacation in Seattle and then realized that after the market and the Space Needle they're pretty much out of options. The audience was predominantly frat boys with backwards baseball caps and the kinds of girls that hang out with those kinds of guys. They were all pretty loud, which I guess is fine for TheatreSports because TheatreSports encourages the audience to be loud.
So if you don't know what TheatreSports is, it's a lot like Whose Line Is It Anyway? Two teams "compete" by challenging each other to improv games, using audience suggestions appopriate to the game. There are three "judges" who dress in black robes and give scores to each performance by holding up cards. The judges are supposed to be the bad guys, starting out with very low scores, and the audience is supposed to boo them as much as possible. (Side note: I found it hard to boo the judges for giving low scores, mostly because they were giving the same scores I would have given.)
Ok, the show. Fuck, where do I begin. I happened to show up on a weekend where they had some special guests in town - a group of improvisers from Japan. I can't think of any reason this wouldn't be a good idea, can you? A group of Japanese improvisers, playing to an American audience? Wait, what did you say? Oh that's right, THEY SPEAK FUCKING JAPANESE! No joke, there were four of them and two didn't speak any english. One spoke broken english, and one spoke decent english. They mixed it up so that each team had two Japanese people on it, and throughout the whole show the girl who spoke broken english was translating for the two who didn't speak any english. Picture this: for the first game, someone from each team approached a podium, and they took turns naming things that would be found in a certain location. The first location was "auto junkyard". The game went something like this:
American woman: Old tire!
Japanese girl: ::making pictures with her hands::
American woman: Cracked muffler!
Japanese girl: ::more hand pictures::
American woman: Broken mirror!
Japanese girl: Old....shoe!
and mercifully they called it there. The audience still had the nerve to boo the judges.
The rest of the show was really not that good. The first three scenes all ended up resorting to sex to get a laugh. They played a lot of games that involved the Japanese language. The whole thing was very jokey. I checked my watch a lot.
But, all is not lost. The theater does have long-form shows, which I plan to check out this week. The guy who runs the place studied with Del Close, so I still have someplace to take classes out here. A girl I took Matching Energies with at the Magnet was actually a company member at this theater, and she had a lot of good things to say about it. So, all's well that ends well.
This weekend they're having a 54 hour improv marathon, where the performers aren't allowed to sleep between 6PM Friday and midnight Sunday. Anyone who stays for the whole thing gets a free lifetime pass to the theater. I think I'll probably go toward the end of it, cause I'm really interested to see how well these fuckers improvise after an unhealthy lack of sleep.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Entry 4: Weird Art Cult
One of the other engineers on the team had arranged for a group outing Friday after work for the new people on the team (me and the intern) to get acquainted with everyone else, plus other people at Amazon that he knows. Long story short, most people didn't show up (including the intern who inexplicably sent out an e-mail asking if we still had plans and then bolted without waiting for a response), so it was pretty much just me and this other dude hanging out. But that's not the interesting part.
The interesting part is where we went: The McLeod (mc-cloud) Residence (http://www.mcleodresidence.com). From the website, "McLeod Residence, located at 2209 2nd Avenue in Belltown, is a home for extraordinary living through art, technology and collaboration." I still don't fully understand it, but it was like a combination bar/lounge/art gallery with all kinds of crazy stuff on the walls, most of which was for sale. I remember a piece that had a small child kneeling and praying, surrounded by glowing green dollar signs and lightbulbs of all different colors. Another exhibit was dedicated to the "Thank You For Shopping" plastic bag that you get from convenience stores, et al. The artist thought it was VERY deep to ponder such "existential" questions as "Who exactly is the bag thanking?" I think the answer is pretty obvious, which is why I'm not an artist. Oh, my favorite was a giant Michael Jackson head mosaic fashioned entirely out of breakfast cereal. Did you know that they have blue Froot Loops now? I didn't.
What kind of creeps me out about the McLeod Residence is that they consider themselves some sort of family. You can pay to become a member, but they have some crazy shit on the website about how "you have to REALLY want it" - presumably, you have to want it more than they want your $300. Some of the members have actually changed their names - for instance, Buster McLeod is now legally Buster McLeod. No word on what he's going to do when the place closes down; maybe he can get another name change and become Buster Knights of Columbus.
The interesting part is where we went: The McLeod (mc-cloud) Residence (http://www.mcleodresidence.com). From the website, "McLeod Residence, located at 2209 2nd Avenue in Belltown, is a home for extraordinary living through art, technology and collaboration." I still don't fully understand it, but it was like a combination bar/lounge/art gallery with all kinds of crazy stuff on the walls, most of which was for sale. I remember a piece that had a small child kneeling and praying, surrounded by glowing green dollar signs and lightbulbs of all different colors. Another exhibit was dedicated to the "Thank You For Shopping" plastic bag that you get from convenience stores, et al. The artist thought it was VERY deep to ponder such "existential" questions as "Who exactly is the bag thanking?" I think the answer is pretty obvious, which is why I'm not an artist. Oh, my favorite was a giant Michael Jackson head mosaic fashioned entirely out of breakfast cereal. Did you know that they have blue Froot Loops now? I didn't.
What kind of creeps me out about the McLeod Residence is that they consider themselves some sort of family. You can pay to become a member, but they have some crazy shit on the website about how "you have to REALLY want it" - presumably, you have to want it more than they want your $300. Some of the members have actually changed their names - for instance, Buster McLeod is now legally Buster McLeod. No word on what he's going to do when the place closes down; maybe he can get another name change and become Buster Knights of Columbus.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Entry 3: The Sun Got Lost
and it ended up here! This must have been some sort of mistake. Around 6pm tonight the clouds over Seattle parted and lo and behold, the sun. It reminded me of those old Bugs Bunny cartoons where Bugs pops out of the ground 800 miles away from where he intended to go and laments that he must have "made a wrong turn at Albuquerque".
In any case, for those of who have requested pictures, I took advantage of the situation and snapped a few shots of the views from my living room. Enjoy.
In any case, for those of who have requested pictures, I took advantage of the situation and snapped a few shots of the views from my living room. Enjoy.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Entry 2: These People Are Out Of Their Minds, Part One
I call this Part One not because I have a Part Two lined up, but because I'm positive that I have not seen the last of batshit-crazy people here in Seattle.
I'll do this in chronological order. The first was the cab driver who took me to get my keys on Sunday. First, this guy was dead set on me suing the housing company for the pain and suffering caused by me not getting my keys on time. Second, he was dead set on representing me in that case. He asked if I was a Bush supporter - I can only imagine what he was planning to do if I had said yes. Kick me out of the cab? Hike up the fare? Lecture me on all the injustice in the world? Moving on, he proceeded to tell me that Seattle women are tough, but if you want to have sex with one, all you need to do is tell her you want an "oil change and a tune-up". Noted. He went on to say that if you want to have sex with a virgin, you have to go across the border to Vancouver, because as everyone knows, Vancouver is where all the virgins are.
This next one is my favorite. Riding the 36 bus home yesterday, a crazy bum got on and sat a couple of seats away. Now, being from New York, I am no stranger to crazy bums on public transportation and have generally come to expect them. This guy had all the hallmarks of a crazy bum: unshaven, unshowered, unkempt, peculiar odor, making eye contact with people while speaking complete gibberish in a gravelly voice - you know the deal. However, there was one key difference between this gentleman and the NYC crazies that completely floored me. He was carrying recently-purchased boxes of Fruity Cheerios and some kind of vegetable cracker, and through his gibberish he was offering them to people. Let that sink in for a minute. The bum was offering people food! That's the exact opposite of every bum I've ever encountered in my life. I was floored.
And finally, my third "these people are out of their minds" award goes to the Amazon Web Services team, of which I am a part. Yesterday, my second day of work, I was invited to a bi-monthly meeting of the Tatonka club. In a nutshell, about 50 Amazon employees bumrush this tiny wings-and-beer outfit in North Seattle and order, literally, thousands of dollars' worth of food. (I say literally because at the end of the night, one guy was running around yelling "Who hasn't paid?! We're a thousand bucks short!"). Anyway, as a rite of initiation, new employees attempt to earn the Tatonka Platinum award, which is achieved by downing 25 wings followed by 5 "pasty wings". I will leave the exact definition of a "pasty wing" to your imagination, noting only that yes, they are not pleasant to eat.
I'm going to have fruit and vegetables for lunch today.
I'll do this in chronological order. The first was the cab driver who took me to get my keys on Sunday. First, this guy was dead set on me suing the housing company for the pain and suffering caused by me not getting my keys on time. Second, he was dead set on representing me in that case. He asked if I was a Bush supporter - I can only imagine what he was planning to do if I had said yes. Kick me out of the cab? Hike up the fare? Lecture me on all the injustice in the world? Moving on, he proceeded to tell me that Seattle women are tough, but if you want to have sex with one, all you need to do is tell her you want an "oil change and a tune-up". Noted. He went on to say that if you want to have sex with a virgin, you have to go across the border to Vancouver, because as everyone knows, Vancouver is where all the virgins are.
This next one is my favorite. Riding the 36 bus home yesterday, a crazy bum got on and sat a couple of seats away. Now, being from New York, I am no stranger to crazy bums on public transportation and have generally come to expect them. This guy had all the hallmarks of a crazy bum: unshaven, unshowered, unkempt, peculiar odor, making eye contact with people while speaking complete gibberish in a gravelly voice - you know the deal. However, there was one key difference between this gentleman and the NYC crazies that completely floored me. He was carrying recently-purchased boxes of Fruity Cheerios and some kind of vegetable cracker, and through his gibberish he was offering them to people. Let that sink in for a minute. The bum was offering people food! That's the exact opposite of every bum I've ever encountered in my life. I was floored.
And finally, my third "these people are out of their minds" award goes to the Amazon Web Services team, of which I am a part. Yesterday, my second day of work, I was invited to a bi-monthly meeting of the Tatonka club. In a nutshell, about 50 Amazon employees bumrush this tiny wings-and-beer outfit in North Seattle and order, literally, thousands of dollars' worth of food. (I say literally because at the end of the night, one guy was running around yelling "Who hasn't paid?! We're a thousand bucks short!"). Anyway, as a rite of initiation, new employees attempt to earn the Tatonka Platinum award, which is achieved by downing 25 wings followed by 5 "pasty wings". I will leave the exact definition of a "pasty wing" to your imagination, noting only that yes, they are not pleasant to eat.
I'm going to have fruit and vegetables for lunch today.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Entry 1: A One-Way Ticket
Here's what you know already: I got fired from Yahoo! in February, rejected by Google in April (what, you think you could do better?) and today I started working for Amazon in Seattle. Not to take anything away from Amazon: they're an amazing company, they hire some of the most brilliant software developers in the world, and I'm both honored and humbled to have been chosen. That said, Seattle is a far cry from NYC, and what better means of humorously pointing out those differences than a blog? This will be the new "White People Are Different From Black People".
I will also tell stories.
So, I'm a day behind on this whole blog thing. I actually flew out Saturday evening; the flight was delayed on the runway for two+ hours due to inclement weather (near Newark, though - and don't think I'd hesitate to jump all over this if it was Seattle's fault). The delay meant I was going to miss dinner unless I could find something near my new place that was open late, but I held out hope (because I was starving, and when you're starving, hope is pretty much all you have). I finally arrived in Seattle close to 1AM with instructions from the housing company to go to the door of my apartment, where I would find a lockbox. They also had given me a secret code that, when typed into the lockbox, would produce a key. I will not lie, I was very excited for this. Straight out of a spy movie, the only way they could have made it better was if they had used a retina scanner instead.
Problem 1: getting into the apartment building required a key fob, which I did not have because it was presumably inside the lockbox on the apartment door.
And I had to pee.
I waited for a few minutes outside the door before someone else who lived there showed up and went inside. This really didn't take long at all, but the night was far from over.
Upon arriving at my apartment door, you can probably imagine the amalgam of emotion that swept over me when I saw there was in fact no lockbox on the door. Disappointment, panic, exasperation, hunger.
And I still had to pee.
Luckily, I had remembered to write down the emergency contact number given to me by the housing company. Unluckily, my phone was dead. Luckily, there happened to be an outlet in the hallway, and I had packed my phone's charger. Unluckily, it was buried somewhere in my suitcase.
Ok, I was desperate. I opened up the suitcase in the hallway and dug around until I found the charger. Made the call, told them what happened, they said they'd call me back. I really had to go at this point. They called back and told me that they had gotten in touch with the building's management, and if I went down to the lobby (previously empty upon my arrival), I could find the security guard who would then let me in. This was all true, but they did not say I was going to find a grizzled old man who was not fully capable of forming words and who was none too pleased about going up to the 17th floor to unlock an apartment for a guy with a bunch of suitcases who may or may not actually live in the building.
And yet he did. And finally I could relieve myself, which was by far the best part of the night. But even this victory was bittersweet, for the guard would not actually give me a key. So now my situation was only somewhat improved: I was inside my apartment, but I couldn't leave. I called the Oakwood people for what seemed like the 19th time that night and told them of my dilemma. The woman's reaction was priceless: "Do you NEED to leave?"
The eventual resolution was that I would have to go down to their offices in the morning and pick up my keys there. They were nice and got me a cab, and overall the customer service was great, offsetting all the ways the people who were actually supposed to implement this had fucked up. I suppose it could have been a lot worse: I might not have gotten into the building at all, or I might not have found an outlet to charge my phone, and then I'd have had to spend the night on the street.
I don't know how to end this entry. I will work on conclusions for the future.
Oh wait, I got it.
The end.
I will also tell stories.
So, I'm a day behind on this whole blog thing. I actually flew out Saturday evening; the flight was delayed on the runway for two+ hours due to inclement weather (near Newark, though - and don't think I'd hesitate to jump all over this if it was Seattle's fault). The delay meant I was going to miss dinner unless I could find something near my new place that was open late, but I held out hope (because I was starving, and when you're starving, hope is pretty much all you have). I finally arrived in Seattle close to 1AM with instructions from the housing company to go to the door of my apartment, where I would find a lockbox. They also had given me a secret code that, when typed into the lockbox, would produce a key. I will not lie, I was very excited for this. Straight out of a spy movie, the only way they could have made it better was if they had used a retina scanner instead.
Problem 1: getting into the apartment building required a key fob, which I did not have because it was presumably inside the lockbox on the apartment door.
And I had to pee.
I waited for a few minutes outside the door before someone else who lived there showed up and went inside. This really didn't take long at all, but the night was far from over.
Upon arriving at my apartment door, you can probably imagine the amalgam of emotion that swept over me when I saw there was in fact no lockbox on the door. Disappointment, panic, exasperation, hunger.
And I still had to pee.
Luckily, I had remembered to write down the emergency contact number given to me by the housing company. Unluckily, my phone was dead. Luckily, there happened to be an outlet in the hallway, and I had packed my phone's charger. Unluckily, it was buried somewhere in my suitcase.
Ok, I was desperate. I opened up the suitcase in the hallway and dug around until I found the charger. Made the call, told them what happened, they said they'd call me back. I really had to go at this point. They called back and told me that they had gotten in touch with the building's management, and if I went down to the lobby (previously empty upon my arrival), I could find the security guard who would then let me in. This was all true, but they did not say I was going to find a grizzled old man who was not fully capable of forming words and who was none too pleased about going up to the 17th floor to unlock an apartment for a guy with a bunch of suitcases who may or may not actually live in the building.
And yet he did. And finally I could relieve myself, which was by far the best part of the night. But even this victory was bittersweet, for the guard would not actually give me a key. So now my situation was only somewhat improved: I was inside my apartment, but I couldn't leave. I called the Oakwood people for what seemed like the 19th time that night and told them of my dilemma. The woman's reaction was priceless: "Do you NEED to leave?"
The eventual resolution was that I would have to go down to their offices in the morning and pick up my keys there. They were nice and got me a cab, and overall the customer service was great, offsetting all the ways the people who were actually supposed to implement this had fucked up. I suppose it could have been a lot worse: I might not have gotten into the building at all, or I might not have found an outlet to charge my phone, and then I'd have had to spend the night on the street.
I don't know how to end this entry. I will work on conclusions for the future.
Oh wait, I got it.
The end.
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