Three signs the Apocalypse is nigh:

1. That stupid Carl’s Jr. TV commercial for the “flat buns” patty melt that is annoying as hell, not to mention the fact that it’s a blatant poseur ripoff of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” video.
2. The fact that Senator Sam Brownback is actually promoting a “wait-and-see” attitude where Idaho Senator Larry Craig is concerned, possibly offering some sign of leniency or mercy or forgiveness.  I’m surprised given his traditional faith-based stances on things, like the fact that he’s pro-life and anti-stem-cell research and anti-same-sex marriage.
3. Miss South Carolina totally being an effing idiot on national TV.

So I haven’t been around for a couple of days because The Girlfriend™ and I packed up and left town — went to Las Vegas for a few days.  We stayed in Luxor, which seemed pretty decent except for the fact that the air conditioning didn’t seem to be working, which, I’m told, is a common complaint there these days… not sure if it’s an issue because they’re working on the building or because it’s an effing black pyramid in the middle of the desert.  But we were definitely running around Vegas a fair amount, and we saw Spamalot (which was hilarious) and Love (which was incredible albeit a little busy).  One of the best exchanges of the weekend came from Spamalot:  “Why didn’t you tell me you were a Jew?” “Well, it’s not really something you tell a heavily armed Christian....” Oddly enough, as I write this, a commercial for Mandalay Bay, which is next door to the Luxor, is playing on TV.

They say that Americans are overworked, overstressed about work and desperately in need of taking the time off that they don’t use.  For me, it was the first time in 2 years that I took a week off from work, and that’s only because it got to the point where I had maxed out the time I could accrue — and that’s not something I’m trying to brag about.  Hopefully, I won’t feel so reticent about taking time off in the future, since, despite the fact that I had my moments of thinking about work, I still feel a hell of a lot better having taken this past week off and getting away.

Pictures, naturally, are here.

Two media-related items, both involving The Girlfriend™:

1.  Last night, we’re watching Family Guy, and they did one of their quick cutaway dealies like they usually do.  Brian had said something about how he was good at finding things, and remember how he found President Bush after Katrina?  Cut to the flashback, where Brian runs up to a treehouse in Crawford, Texas and says, “Mr. President, you have to come quickly, New Orleans has been destroyed by a hurricane!” and Bush responds, “Go ‘way, I’m readin’ Superfudge!” The Girlfriend looks at me with this expression of understanding dawning on her, and she says, “That… makes so much sense!”

2.  We went to see Superbad tonight.  Hoooooooly effing crap, this movie is funny.  Yes, it really is as good as the hype.  Seth Rogen, Bill Hader and Christopher “McLovin” Mintz-Plasse completely steal the movie.  Unfortunately, as a result, The Girlfriend spent the entire way back from the movie shouting the line “Prepare to be fucked by the long dick of the law!!” and then exploding into laughter.  I feel so proud.

I neglected to mention… for all the Jews in the house… At Jack’s Second Show, the surprise special guest was Tone Loc, who came out with a DJ and one of his crew to perform “Wild Thing” and “Funky Cold Medina.” The crewmember appeared to have no other function than to introduce Tone and then jump around on stage during “Wild Thing” yelling “What’s the name of this song?” to try and get the crowd to chant “Wild Thing.”

The funny thing was, though, after Tone was done with his two-song set, he proceeded to give shoutouts to a couple of his pals who had rapper nicknames like D-Qwon or T-dawg… and then, Tone closed it up by giving a shoutout “to my man Morty Schwartz.”

Oy, what a week.  I crammed about three weeks’ worth of work into a single week (including sitting in on a roundtable discussion of five people on Friday where my job was not only to contribute, but also to transcribe the entire conversation — I somehow managed to type almost 4,900 words in an hour and got everything so I don’t even need to go back to the tape in order to write a feature article recapping what was said).  All of that, plus the stupid 150,000-acre wildfire up in Santa Barbara that’s playing hell with my allergies, and I’m in bad shape.  Thankfully, I had actually previously scheduled myself to take a few days off from work this coming week so I have some time to myself.

I spent yesterday down in Irvine at Jack’s Second Show, and they say every arena show needs a drunken buffoon who’s out there making a complete fool of himself.  Well, that dude happened to be sitting in our section — I know, you thought I was about to say that it was me.  Sorry to disappoint, I was sober for the show.  This guy was probably in his 50s, stripped to the waist and looked like one of those guys who would jump into other people’s pictures and thinks he’s still the life of any party any night.  He was only slightly less entertaining than the prostitute who was sitting in the row in front of us, who The Girlfriend™ originally thought was a stripper until I pointed out the fact that if she were actually a stripper, she’d have better rhythm and would be a better dancer.

The prostitute was wearing fiery red lipstick that was smeared around her mouth, which was another reason I noticed that letter in the Parade magazine in today’s Sunday Los Angeles Times (shut up, so what if I read the paper and Parade) — someone wrote in to ask about the letter they wrote to Kyra Sedgwick’s show, The Closer, about her red lipstick and how they hated it and did their letter make a difference since Kyra didn’t seem to be wearing the lipstick anymore.  While the show’s producer answered that viewer letters were the reason why they changed Kyra’s lipstick, I still wonder how bored or boring a person has to be when they not only write into a show about a character’s lipstick, but then write into another magazine to ask if their initial letter was the impetus behind the change.

Observed at the mall today:

“Hel-lo, I know where the movie theater is, I don’t know where you’re going, you need to follow me,” the girl said as she and her boyfriend walked out of Bloomingdales and began the tug-of-war of which way to go.  I could hear the high-maintenance-I’m-spoiled tone in her voice, so I didn’t bother telling her that, in fact, the movie theater was in the opposite direction from the way she was leading her boyfriend, but I would’ve liked to have been there when the two of them discovered that the theater was not, in fact, wherever she thought it was.

Since I discovered PostSecret a few years ago, it’s become very much a guilty pleasure for me.  I call it “guilty,” because seeing these secrets posted every Sunday is almost voyeuristic to me — these people are giving me a peek into their own heads, and I’m seeing the dirty, deep secrets that they’ve kept to themselves.  In some ways, it’s therapeutic though, since it makes me think two things:  (1) that I’m not the only one with a little craziness upstairs and (2) that there are people out there who are way more screwed up than I am, and even though it makes me feel a little guilty to think that, it still makes me feel better that I’ve got it pretty good in comparison.  In some ways, it’s almost therapeutic, and everyone who I’ve given a PostSecret book to as a present has always come back to me weeks later to say that the book is incredible and it’s one of the best presents they’ve gotten.

I don’t know if I’d ever post a secret.  I either keep things to myself or I blast it out all over the world, either by blog or by e-mail to friends or by telling them personally.  I’m usually not a secretive person, so anything I keep to myself is pretty much on double-secret lockdown.  But I still admire the people with the bravery to send in their own — for whatever reason they do, it’s therapeutic for them to send and for me to read.  And if it helps me or them or anyone else reading it, then the project has done its job.

There’s a short movie up on the site that sums things up pretty well, and the person who started the whole thing talks briefly about his own experiences with PostSecret.  If you’ve never gone to the site, it’s an incredible introduction.  If you have, well, it furthers the experience.  Please watch it.

So I was promoted this week at work.  And it feels really good, especially since a lot of people are telling me it’s long overdue and that it’s well-deserved.  The problem is that it’s not just a promotion, it’s a “do new work but keep doing everything you were doing before” promotion, so I’ve got a fair amount of stuff to do.  On top of that, I’m taking over for someone else who was supposed to have laid the groundwork for sessions at our annual convention next month, but hasn’t.  It’s no wonder I woke up at 4:30am yesterday morning, sitting straight up in bed and thinking, ”Holy crap, how am I going to come up with three more convention sessions (in addition to the three I’m already working on) in the next six weeks and weekly columns and everything else?” Not to mention the fact that I had already planned to take off an entire week to decompress from work and head to Vegas for a couple of days, which will seriously put me behind.  So it’s kind of mixed blessing.  If I can just make it to October without my head exploding, then I’ll be good.

I’m once again in the Spanish immersion course — this is the second of 2 weekends.  I’m still having issues since it’s so similar to French that, after having taken 7 years of French classes, I’m understanding the Spanish just fine but answering partially in French.  At least tomorrow, we’re heading out to a Mexican restaurant for lunch.  Yo quiero un burrito!

The Girlfriend™ and I stopped into a local T-Mobile store on late Sunday afternoon because she needs a new phone.  She had been looking at the Blackberry Pearl, which she said was $79 and I said was $249.  So I did the thing that most people would do — I saw the only guy standing there dressed in a button-down shirt, tie and slacks, and I said, “Excuse me, how much is the Blackberry Pearl?” Because honestly, when you’re in a store late on a Sunday afternoon and you need assistance, you tend to look for the people who are better-dressed because you assume they’re employees because who wears business attire late on a Sunday afternoon except the people who are, you know, working?

Except this guy wasn’t an employee.  And I was fine with that and I apologized, but what really pissed me off was the fact that the guy made it racial.  Yes, he was black, but seriously — friends and relatives have commented that unless I’m deliberately being politically incorrect, I’m pretty colorblind.  I went by the clothing.  But this guy had to respond, “No, it’s okay, I get it, you saw the black dude and thought he was the one selling you stuff.”

Eff you, dude.  It’s people like you who are causing the problems.  I was dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, you were one of the only people in the store dressed in a button-down shirt, tie and slacks.  Which one of us is more likely to be on the clock at the moment?  It was a simple mistake, and it had nothing to do with the color of your skin.  But if you’re predisposed to thinking that way, and you put that vibe out there, then you create the racial rift between us.  It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, and if you’re actively looking for something, you’ll probably find it in places where it doesn’t apply simply because you’re so intent on seeking it out and you’re running everything through that filter. 

And this guy probably went home and told his girlfriend/wife/friends about the White Devil who was racist to him in the T-Mobile store, and they all probably harrumphed a bit, and that guy probably felt better about the fact that he pointed out to me how racist I am.  And maybe he’ll go out and try to bait someone else next week.

I was up way early this morning for the first day of a four-day Spanish immersion course.  It’s not going as easily as I had thought — I was told that since I took 7 years of French, Spanish would be an easy switch to make and I’d be able to pick it up quickly because the two languages are similar.  It’s actually working against me, since the verb-conjugation and some of the words are so similar that I’m getting them mixed up because there’s subtle differences and I’m using the French version instead of the Spanish version.  Oops!  But so far, my French background has served to help me, because I can understand enough Spanish to get by when I hear or read it… it’s speaking it that I have issues with.  Basically, I’m good with the input, it’s the output where I have problems.

On a completely unrelated topic, I got a new bed this week — one of those Temperpedic dealies.  Dear Lord, I love sleeping on this thing.  I was fairly annoyed though; I took Wednesday morning off to wait for them to deliver the bed and frame, only to be told Wednesday morning by the warehouse that they slated me for delivery between 1-5pm, and by the time I found out, it was too late for me to go into work for a couple hours and then turn around and come home, so I had to extend it to a full day at home.  The salt was poured into my wounds when the delivery guys showed up with mattress and boxspring… but no frame.  After a few calls to the store that I bought from, I was finally told that the frame was on back-order, and I wouldn’t get it for another 3-4 weeks.  I’m sorry, 3-4 weeks?  I’m astonished that through all of this, no one bothered to tell me anything until the guys actually showed up at my door.  Customer service really is nonexistent these days, isn’t it?