Suck My Guac

Entries from June 2009

Is my intern a speed freak?

June 26, 2009 · 1 Comment

Let’s all get on the same page. I have an intern. I will not tell you his name, but he exists. He goes to college, studies hard, has entrepreneurial leanings, and may or may not be cranked out of his god forsaken mind all day. The question around which I base this post is as follows: Does it matter?

Allow me to set the scene for you reader. Open office, classic tech company layout, everyone is equal and up in everyone else’s biznatch. There are only two offices in the place and they are reserved for the CEO and the COO. But even these offices are completely glass. The bathrooms are just open ditches in the middle of the office like a watering hole – totally gender neutral.

The players:

  • Jamie, our intrepid hero with a predilection for burning one down as he’s pulling out of the parking lot.
  • The Supervisor, the oldest of the group, lawyer by trade, dude by choice. He recently broke his wrist in a mysterious walking accident and has an enormous blue cast. Consequently, Jamie has to open his Vicoden bottle twice a day to keep him sufficiently drugged up.
  • The Intern, possibly lacing his nostrils with gutter glitter.

The three of us are responsible for launching a pretty major website. I don’t want to tarnish Suck My Guac’s reputation by associating it with my actual work, so let’s keep it vague. It involves a lot of busy work. There are tons – technically tons is too small – there are over 90,000 units of things that we do on our site to get organized. That’s a lot of vagary.

The Supervisor generally delegates, does high level stratgizing, does most of the worrying. He then deligates the Intern to me. Excellent (if you didn’t already, please go back and reread ‘excellent’ sounding like Mr. Burns, but only if you didn’t automatically do it on instinct.).

Now the intern and I split responsibilities, wherein splitting involves a way of dividing something unfairly. I think we can all agree that there’s busywork and then there’s bizzay work. At first I wanted the later to sound worse, but frankly cut me off a piece of that bizzay work.

Unlike the Intern, I know everything that has to get done. So when I’m working I can completely ADD out all over the place and bounce from thing to thing getting them all done – partially – and then calm down and finish whatever I was originally working on before. The Intern, on the hand, is given one task. Complete it and I shall give thee another. But guess what? Your first task? It’s going to take you forever! Bwahahaha welcome to Hell! No Jews Allowed! Let me know when you’re finished and I’ll give you something else to do. Thanks, you’re doing a great job.

Then I slink back to my desk to explode over productivity like a bomb knowing I gave the most fundamental and boring task to the Intern. Now he has to go through thousands upon thousands of pieces of data, and so I ask the original question: Does it matter if he’s knocking back line after line of California Cornflakes? Not a fucking bit. I’ll buy. This kid comes in first thing in the morning and just gets to it. Gets it done. He’s a light eater and after lunch he is “reengergized.” Don’t care how. I nap in my car, we all have our vices.

The Supervisor and I were discussing this issue and have come to the conclusion that since he is my intern and I approve of most everything and he is getting his work done, then that’s all that matters. Of course, Supervisor is already pretty high off that pill I popped for him so most things get approved by him towards the end of the day.

But we’re in crisis mode right now trying to get this fucking site up and hitting problems at every turn. But… WEED!… CRANK!…. VICODEN!…. CAPTAIN PLANET. With our powers combined, we might get through this.

- Jamie

Categories: Jamie · Work
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How to Drink for Free: Part I

June 25, 2009 · 1 Comment

I don’t make very much money. I’m not complaining—given this economy, I feel lucky to even have a job. But still, the fact that I make barely enough to cover rent each month means that I am very, hmm, how to put this, strategic about how I spend my money. Well, I seem to have picked an appropriate city, because San Francisco teems with equally strategic people, all of whom gravitate towards the cheap, the thrifty, the (if you’re lucky) free. Now this applies to all aspects of life, but for this particular post—which I hope will become an oft-updated series—I direct my attention to alcohol.

If you’re determined and undiscriminating, it turns out, finding free alcohol in this city is a very attainable goal. This will be my forum to post, as I discover them, my findings.

Free booze opportunity #1: Somehow (I won’t reveal my sources), I found out about “Cocktail College,” a once-monthly event held at a bar and restaurant downtown (I will not reveal the name, either, lest you cheap, free-loading hoodlums swarm upon it and somehow destroy my chances of getting the goods). Cocktail College is, as one might guess, a class on how to make cocktails. Each month focuses on a different liquor—three months ago I went to the whiskey class; this past week I got to play around with gin—and includes a lecture-type explanation of said liquor, followed by a hands-on cocktail-making sesh. The latter half can be regarded as an edifying opportunity, one in which to experiment with the way muddled rosemary plays off of the subtle juniper hints in triple-distilled gin, or it can be regarded as a mad dash to make and consume as many cocktails as possible before the alcohol supply runs out. Take a guess which approach I take.

The most beautiful part of Cocktail College is its unqualified, unconditional free-ness. All you’ve gotta do is be on top of your game and make sure to RSVP a few weeks in advance, because it fills up. And when you’re as strategic about money as I am, believe me, you don’t forget to sign up for free booze day. So, a few days ago, I found myself in a light-filled room on the 16th floor of a high-rise, overlooking the sun-dappled city and sparkling bay, drinking a complimentary glass of straight-up gin and waiting for the educational seminar on gin’s history and component parts to begin. Now, to be totally honest, I hate gin. It makes me want to vom. But a diligent seeker of free alcohol must be, as I mentioned above, entirely undiscriminating. And I, along with being strategic, am very, very, diligent. Bottoms up!

-Kate

Categories: City Life · Joosin' · Kate

Naked ladies!

June 22, 2009 · 7 Comments

This post should have been written two weeks ago.  I experienced an extremely blog-able (bloggable?) afternoon and evening, so much so that even as it was unfolding, I thought to myself, “Man, this will make a great blog entry.”  But sometimes, with subject matter so exceptional, one becomes paralyzed because of its greatness.  Like in Apples to Apples when you have the Helen Keller card but never use it because it’s too good and you don’t want to waste it, don’t want to fuck it up.  I spent two weeks trying to come up with the right slant on it, how to present the experience, what my overall message would be, what point I should try to get across, what order in which to divulge the details—and of course, with each passing day, my paralysis became more absolute, more rigid.  I had built it up to be too much, exactly like I am right now.

So I decided, fuck it.  I have no angle, no argument, no greater message that I can think of, so I’m just going to tell you, with no fancy stuff, exactly what I did on Thursday, June 4th, 2009.

It was, of course, the first Thursday of the month, which—as I believe I’ve mentioned before—means free gallery openings, wine, food, etc. all over the city.  I always hit up the first Thursday galleries with my artist friend Dave.  Dave and I had planned to meet at our favorite gallery, Hang, at around six.  So when I got off work, I high-tailed it down to Union Square, excited for a laid-back evening of art I wouldn’t understand and white wine in plastic cups.  As the gallery loomed into view, I saw Dave emerging from its doors, flanked by two people I didn’t recognize.  He spotted me and ran over, an apologetic look on his face.

“Hey Kate, change of plans—we’re not going to the art gallery, we’re going to the strip club.”

Turns out, Dave’s two friends were party promoters who had been involved with promoting the 5-year anniversary of The Gold Club, a notorious (to those people who know that kind of thing…) San Francisco strip joint.  And so, twenty minutes later, I found myself in a long line, snaking its way down Howard St., of middle-aged businessmen, overly made-up women, and more than a few unsavory-looking characters, all waiting to get inside and see some titties.

Now, the ostensible draw of this party at The Gold Club was that, with the help of my new party promoter friends, I would get free entry, free drinks, and free food all night.  But, to be totally honest here, I actually really like strip clubs.  Maybe that makes me, like, an anti-feminist.  Maybe I’m negating centuries of woman’s progress toward equality.  Maybe I secretly hate myself.  But, come onnn, strip clubs are fun!  Boobs!  Dancing!  Funny music!  Splits in mid-air!  Sleazy men to make fun of!  It’s like the circus mixed with alcohol and porn.  I don’t watch porn or like the circus, now that I think of it, but somehow the combination works here.

Anyhow, the evening was everything I dreamed it would be.  The room was dark and vast, with a floor-to-ceiling pole holding court in the center of an elevated stage, flanked by velvet curtains.  Couches and tables lay spread across the space, where pot-bellied men held plates of mini hamburgers and shrimp cocktail and watched gyrating girls onstage.  Cocktail waitresses (“Strippers in training,” Dave whispered to me) walked by with trays, bringing me really bad whiskey on the rocks and Miller Lite.  There were old women and young women, hot girls and mediocre ones, awkwardly bad stripping and awe-inspiringly amazing stripping (this one girl, I swear to God, could hold onto the pole and like magically zip herself up to the very top, all the while with one leg basically up over her shoulder in this really impressive vertical split-type thing).  Acrobatic quasi-strippers performed a floor routine where they swung and flipped like trapeze artists using pieces of cloth suspended from the ceiling.  I met a self-identified “Fernet Specialist” who gave me his business card and told me we should drink Fernet together sometime.  I peed next to one of the strippers in the bathroom.  I ate the tiniest cup of chocolate mousse I’d ever seen.  I had a freaking good time.

So that’s my night.  There is no moral or greater message, as much as I tried to find one.  Maybe the only real substantive thing to take from it is a question:  what does it say about me that I like strip clubs so much?  And not male strip clubs—those gross me out.  What do you guys think?  How do you feel about strip clubs?  Ladies?  Gents?  Am I a huge freak?  Well, too bad if I am, because I’m already getting excited for The Gold Club’s 10-year anniversary party.

-Kate

Categories: City Life · Joosin' · Kate
Tagged: , , , , , ,

Jamie is a pussy

June 19, 2009 · 3 Comments

Jamie cannot cut it in the big city.  Homeless people make him cry and involuntarily curl into the fetal position.  He throws around terms like “crack” and “whore” the way my grandmother talks about “the interwebs” and “magical typing machines.”  He has no fucking idea what he’s talking about, and is terrified of what lies beyond the guard’s booth of his mother’s gated community (come on, Jamie, I’ve been there).  But to save face, or something, he tries to spin his wussiness as a sort of anti-cool cool, a neo-hipster reactionist decision that finds its foundation in the principle that people only live in gritty, gross, dangerous parts of cites to be cool, that it has become a sort of status symbol*.  Spoken like a true suburbanite.  Well, if we are to believe such hogwash, the following incident elevates me to the highest possible status:

I had just gotten out of the BART station and was headed toward my apartment, listening to my ipod and searching through my bag for my keys as I walked.  From about 50 yards away, I see a bum standing outside my door–pretty standard, as you know.  As I get closer, I realize that his pants are around his ankles, he is wearing no underwear, and his white ass is exposed for all the world to see.  Okay, this makes things a little more awkward, but whatever, I can just pretend I don’t notice and go right past him into my apartment.  Then, still walking, getting closer to the target with every passing second, I’m hit with a horrible smell.  At that same moment, I notice that the man is wiping himself with what appears to be a wad of newspaper (is this where print media is going, btw?).  I look down.  Oh.  No.  The sidewalk, in a perfect circle with about a 3-foot diameter, is covered in this man’s feces.  I really want to describe more in depth what it looked like, because it was definitely a sight to be seen, and probably would have been of some interest to a gastrologist, but for propriety’s sake I’ll spare you.  I frantically sidestepped the mess, trying desperately not to breathe at all (inhaling through either nose or mouth seemed equally abhorrent, for slightly different reasons), and jammed my key into the lock.  Of course I used the wrong one, and was stuck there, mere feet from this man and his excrement explosion, for about 15 horrible, horrible seconds while I fumbled with the keychain and jiggled various keys in the lock and finally, mercifully, the gate swung open and I ran inside and sucked in great, gaping breaths.  I didn’t leave my apartment for another 5 hours, just to be safe.

So, how cool does that make me?

Also, Jamie, you called San Francisco dirty, and declared that, at least in comparison to La-La Land, it is not glamorous.  Well, I just saw a man in a purple mini-skirt, blue stilettos, and an orange feather boa.  If that ain’t glam, I don’t know what is.

-Kate

*I will give a bit of credence to Jamie’s theory, although it must be amended slightly:  hipsters do gravitate to the Mission, drawn by it’s “realness” and lack of pretension and, yes, its crack whores, but these status-seekers do not venture so far as to actually live on Mission St., as the reeeeeal cool kids like me do.  They live one block over, on Valencia, where all the crack whores have been scared away by dreadlocked liberal arts grads in elbow-patched jackets and cropped jeans.

Categories: City Life · Kate
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Housing Crunch: Now even crunchier.

June 18, 2009 · 2 Comments

Living at home, albeit princely at times, is not really where I need to be in life. Spread your wings little bird. Fly, fly, away – at least a few miles from mom. My lease is up. It was nearly impossible to find a place with free rent, utilities, cable, Netflix, wireless internet, pet-friendly, laundry service, and dinner made every night. Alright, I’m exaggerating. It was impossible.

Every place makes you pay rent, and if they don’t you find yourself playing ventriloquist dummy on the knee of some washed up producer wearing a Swiss Miss outfit – that sentence is vague, is the producer wearing the costume or am I? I leave that up to you reader, whatever gets you going.

My eventual roommate is moving down from Boulder, CO and I get the impression that he’s over quaint little neighborhoods, with tree lined streets and porches. He thought it would be fun to live in Downtown LA. Woo hoo! Come on, kids, let’s go!

Hairy butthole, Batman! Where to begin? Let’s move from the inside out. Downtown is home to a ton of amazing lofts. Great spaces, huge windows, exposed brick, ceilings that touch Heaven, and a bunch of hot men and women also enjoying the building’s open house. Also, due to recent economic something or other, I really haven’t heard much about it, the rent is really cheap because they have created these enormous developments – I mean buildings worth – and no one is moving in. Weird?

Maybe it’s the loft’s fault. The two bedroom options really emphasized “loft living.” To clarify what those sarcastic quotes mean, the bedroom, while enclosed, were not enclosed by walls that touched the ceilings. Now this is a luxury most of us take for granted. When we enter a room, there we are. Outside is outside, inside, inside. Not in a loft. Hey buddy, you fucking some chick? Cool, I’m just over here in my bedroom. Yeah, I can hear the hooks of her bra being freed from their eyelets. I love lofts!

Certainly worth a pause. Now let’s take the elevator down into the lobby. Cross the mailboxes, the giant metal sculpture of the Predator, yep, nod to the security guard, and step outside. HOLY FUCK, GET BACK INSIDE SOME CRACKHEAD IS PEEING ON A KNIFE!

I’m not exaggerating here. But I am dramatizing. If I ever brought a girl back to that apartment and the sun went down, she’d have to spend the night. Mostly because fear turns girls on. Kate has made it clear that there are some bits of local color in her neighborhood, crackheads, whores,  what have you, but this is LA not dirty San Francisco. As much as I hate to admit it and use the word, we’re more glamorous here.

There seems to be a trend with young people in cities to live in the biggest shithole you can find. One, out of thriftiness, but two, because it’s some sort of status symbol. I hope, reader, that you live in a city and completely disagree with me, but I think that two really might have a fart of truth to it.

I found places just as nice in a nicer area for less money. I’m committed to being cool, don’t get me wrong, just comfortably so.

- Jamie

Categories: City Life · Jamie
Tagged: , , , , , ,

I’m too young for this

June 8, 2009 · 9 Comments

I didn’t think it would ever happen, to be honest. Or at least not for another ten, five, MAYBE three years.  I just didn’t think I was that type.

When my friends, perhaps more aware or tuned-in or endowed with more potent feminine wiles, would point out people’s rings (“Oh well he’s married,” “Poor her, she’s not even engaged,” “Dammmmmn her fiance must have BANK,” “Looks like he’s single and ready to mingle!”), I was always taken aback.  Who actually notices that stuff?  I could carry on a (seemingly) flirtatious conversation with a guy at a bar for over an hour and it would never even occur to me to check his left ring-finger.

But somehow, while I wasn’t paying attention, while I was taking a shower or cooking rice or waiting for the bus or (let’s be honest here) out drinking somewhere, I joined the ranks of the others.

Today, on my 5-minute train ride to work (dear lord I will never stop loving BART), I idly passed the time scanning the hands of my fellow passengers.  Married, not married, not married, married, ooh shit married, aww not married.  I didn’t even realize I was doing it, until I got stuck on one guy who had his hand in his pocket, and I found myself staring at his pelvic region waiting for the relevant finger to emerge.

This is out of control.  This absolutely must stop.  But how, dear reader, can I return to my former state of blissful ignorance?  Ohh the idyllic days of yore.

-Kate

Categories: Conversations · Dating · Kate

You call this theater?

June 4, 2009 · 2 Comments

I’ll be the first one to tell you, reader, that Los Angeles is not the most cultured of dames. Feeble attempts at gallery openings, book fairs, and in general collective thinking-times general fall flat on their face because, in short, they’re not movies. My little sister’s second-grade play was no exception.

First of all, what decent theater starts at 9:00 AM? Los Angeles has its head so far up its ass that we are actually teaching children that live theater is something best enjoyed first thing in the morning. Well the grandparents seemed to like it.

Right off the bat, some tiny seven-year-old girl, playing a stink bug, gets her hat caught in the one piece of scenery: a fake tree. Instead of staying in character she completely breaks the fourth wall by saying to the audience, “This happens every time.” Had she actually been a stink bug, her attenae would be in the process of being torn from her head. She should have been screaming.

All mumbling, shyness, and general I-don’t-want-to-be-here-but-I-have-to-be-itude, why were all the major lines – and the ones said the loudest – all given to children who can’t pronounce the letter ‘R’. And of course, their lines were riddled with R’s. Cute? Hardly. Enunciate. Jerk off. That’s right, I called a second-grader a jerk-off.

Finally, the choreography, it was shallow and forced. However, when two girls dressed as ladybugs did cartwheels, only one made it all the way around. The other? Faceplant. You have to laugh. She wasn’t bleeding. And even if she was, those teeth are meant to come out. Come on. Laugh a little.

So except for that one highlight, I would give it a 4 out of 100. Frankly, I think the major problem was all the children. Had they just cast adults like they do in most theatrical circles, the play would have been entirely different.

- Jamie

Categories: City Life · Jamie

Choose your own adventure – Car Girl

June 3, 2009 · 2 Comments

Per a comment from one of you, reader, I am adding a poll to determin my best course of action. Please refer here to understand exactly what the fuck I’m talking about.

If you feel that these two choices are deficient, feel free to add your own in the comment section.

Categories: Dating · Jamie

Back to Cali

June 2, 2009 · 1 Comment

When you get home from a vacation, especially a long one, there’s usually a lag time between returning to your normal life and actually realizing that you’re back in your normal life, that the vacation is over, that you are, in fact, home.  Well, after returning to the golden state yesterday, my mental transition back to San Francisco has not been so gradual. When I stepped out of my apartment yesterday morning, onto the Mission St. sidewalk and into the fog, the first thing I heard was this conversation between two strolling bums:

Bum #1: Well I do methamphetamine, and I inject it, so THAT’S what I’ve been up to.

Bum #2: Mmmm-hmm.

Home sweet home.

-Kate

Categories: City Life · Kate