So, Christmas break. 
- I rode the mechanical bull at the world-famous Saddle Ranch on the Sunset Strip.  There’s a reason why there aren’t any Jewish cowboys.  I was thrown off after about 3 seconds… and then, at the urging of my co-workers who apparently love seeing me getting tossed around, I got back on.  And got thrown off again.  And was urged to get back on again, so I did.  And got thrown off again.  You’d think that kind of thing would make someone nauseous, but thankfully… Pictures may or may not be coming, depending on how dumb I look… or at least how much dumber than normal I look.
- I enjoyed Christmas with Honorary-Jew-for-a-Day Amandarin.  We saw Juno (which I thought was awesome!), Sweeney Todd and National Treasure: Book of Secrets.  And apparently Jim Belushi likes the Jewish Christmas traditions, since we saw him at my local Chinese food place during dinner.
- I had a minor screaming fit when I found out that, after 5 years, Futurama is leaving the Adult Swim lineup.  Thankfully, I discovered a little while later that Comedy Central will be airing it every night at 9pm starting the day after New Year’s, and the screaming ended.  Now instead of going up against The Daily Show, it’ll be up against Countdown With Keith Olbermann.  Oh, the sacrifices!  [back of hand to forehead]
- I’m gearing up for New Year’s in Denver at The Best Friend™’s place.  It seems a little weird, but I haven’t experienced temperatures below 30 degrees in over 5 years.  And yet right now, it’s 7 degrees there… I’m going to enjoy this.

So another birthday has come and gone, and I’ve been both carded several times since then as well as told that I look somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 years old.  I’m not quite sure what to make of that.  Either way, I’ve decided that it’s time to start crossing things off my Giant List of Things to Do in Life, so rather than continue to play the massive amounts of air guitar that I do, I figured it was time to actually learn how to play real guitar.  So I went out to Guitar Center and bought myself an acoustic guitar and a starter kit.  And now I can tune the thing, but that’s about all I can do… hey, I’ve had it for less than 24 hours.  I haven’t gotten to the part of the instructional DVD where I learn about chords yet, but I’m starting to get the feeling that the DVD is not going to help me much and that I’m going to have to find myself someone to teach me.  Anyone know anyone in Los Angeles who gives good guitar lessons?

The new TiVo is working now, thanks to yet another visit from the Time Warner Cable guy, and I’ve been using my vacation time to catch up on all those movies that I either wanted to see or have been told I should see but never got around to.  So far, I’ve already taken Fletch, O Brother Where Art Thou? and That Thing You Do! off the list.  I’m now looking for more movies that have some kind of punctuation in their titles.  But speaking of movies, tomorrow is Christmas, so I will be celebrating the traditional Jewish way:  Movies and Chinese food.  I’m making Amandarin an honorary Jew for the day. 

It’s in that spirit that I wish you all a Merry Christmas and stuff, and I present to you Blink 182’s “I Won’t Be Home for Christmas”, which is my favorite Christmas song.  And to all, a good night.

So I spent the majority of my birthday sitting in my apartment, waiting for the cable guy.  See, Time Warner Cable came out on Wednesday to install a couple of CableCards in my new TiVo, but one of them failed that night.  Genius!  So I called to make another appointment to have them fix it, and the soonest I could get was yesterday afternoon from 3-5pm, so I stayed in starting around 2pm just in case.  At 5:30, I called Time Warner Cable to say WTF — apparently, they logged a call to me at 4:49pm, no one answered so they cancelled the appointment.  My phone didn’t ring.  No one called me.  And my CableCard is still not working.  So after I yelled at them a little, they got me an appointment today… an all-day appointment.  Which means I’m basically tied to my apartment today from 9am-7pm while I sit.  And wait.  Again.  All freakin’ day.  For them to fix what should’ve worked the first time.  Have I mentioned how much I looooooove Time Warner Cable?

What I am putting off today (in order to once again wait for the cable guy) is crossing something else off my Giant List of Things to Do:  I’ve decided that I’ve played enough air guitar, and I want to actually learn how to play guitar.  I had planned to head down to Guitar Center and pick up one of their “starter kits” — an acoustic guitar, a carry case and an instructional DVD. 

I had also planned to go grocery shopping today, but I can’t really leave my place.  So that would probably explain why, when I got home from dinner and drinks and a birthday cigar with a friend, I went over to the supermarket and picked up some last-minute necessities… and some semi-drunken birthday Pop-Tarts that I may or may not regret this morning.

Attention, network TV Standards & Practices executives:  “What the frog” is not — I repeat, not an acceptable coverup for the F-bomb.  That is all.

Yeah, yeah, I know — using two R.E.M. lyrics in the space of two days for subject lines.  Get over it, they’re both relevant.

I’m in Tucson right now visiting The Parents™, but am heading back to Los Angeles tomorrow.  My parents seem to be pretty happy here, and my dad keeps talking about how we should’ve moved to Tucson years before they actually did.  Personally, I’m not a fan.  And one of the main reasons why is the fact that religion is way up in your face here.  Half the cars here are sporting bumper stickers featuring all kinds of “yay God” sayings… just today, I saw an “honor God and His Son” one, one that said “I’m putting the CHRIST back in Christmas,” another one that said “I love my family so I listen to Christian Family Life Radio” (with the implication that anyone who doesn’t listen doesn’t love their family), I also saw license plates that said “ILUVGOD” and “GODHLPR,” and I’ve seen more of those fish things than ever.

I’m not anti-God, nor am I anti-religion, nor am I anti-any particular kind of religion just because I’m not in a majority.  I’m not one of those militant Jews who will correct people when they wish me a merry Christmas.  But I am a bit sensitive to proselytizing, and I’m also a bit sensitive when Chief Moron Bill O’Reilly starts yelling about his “war on Christmas” again.  My point is this:  I have no issue with religion, and I don’t mind people being religious, but what people have to realize is that theirs is not the only religion and theirs is not the only way.  This is a country founded on freedom from religious persecution, and people (especially those in the majority religion) need to remember that everyone has a right to their own beliefs and opinions and shouldn’t have to face religion being foisted on them and pushed in their faces.  That’s great that you want to put the Christ back in Christmas, but do it on your own time — go to church on Christmas and volunteer with whatever place to help further peace and love and goodwill towards men, but actions speak louder than words, and I don’t need to hear about it… just do it, there’s no need to trumpet the fact.  To Bill O:  If you’re so concerned about “secular progressives” taking the religion out of Christmas, then encourage Christians to go to church or whatever.  The Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Sikhs or whoever here in the U.S. have a right to not celebrate Christmas, and we don’t need to be hounded for not wanting it shoved down our throats.  A lot of us tolerate it because we realize we are in the minority, but we shouldn’t be forced to be portrayed as the enemy because we don’t want to participate.  You want to be a part of it, go ahead.  Just don’t make me.

It’s one of the reasons why I’m so upset about the religious discussion in terms of politics.  Politics and religion shouldn’t mix, because then you’re legislating morals according to a book or a set of principles that not everyone believes in or abides by.  And quite frankly, “good Christian morals” these days seem to involve a lot of naughty priests and intolerance.  Turning the other cheek doesn’t mean you have to do everything in your power to convert me or tell me that I’m evil and going to hell because I’m not following your path.

Someone needs to take some ad execs out back, beat them senseless with a rubber hose and then re-educate them — starting with the meaning of the phrase “excessive hyperbole.” I’m sorry, guys, but there’s no way any kind of pregnancy test could ever be described as “the most advanced piece of technology you’ll ever lay eyes on.” I’m not 100% sure, but something tells me the TiVo and TV I’m using to watch the stupid commercial is way more advanced than a pregnancy test.  In fact, most everything on the planet is more advanced.  Hell, let’s demonstrate to these ad guys the wonderful technology known as a taser!

So I went to see I Am Legend tonight.  I really really liked it, but hooooooooooly crap, it was intense.  I highly recommend it.  The scenes of a deserted New York are incredibly haunting, and Will Smith does a great job of a guy trying to keep it together while suffering alone and bearing an incredible burden.

One of the issues I’ve always had is that my morbid fascination with post-apocalyptic stories will hang out with my imagination, and the two of them will have a great time running amok with each other.  And the problem is, with this type of doomsday scenario (unlike some of the others like dragons taking over the planet or the moon exploding)… well, it’s actually possible.  And I think that’s what freaked me out the most, giving my brain fodder to shift into high gear as I was driving home.  There’s a crapload of genetic tinkering going on these days — hell, I just read an article a couple of days ago about how scientists are trying to genetically manipulate viruses to reprogram them to work to our advantage rather than against us — and there’s so much of it going on that we don’t know about.  What if one of these things gets out?  What if one of them is deliberately introduced because it shows initial promise but then turns bad, and there’s nothing we can do?

And then my brain started to wonder… what if I (or any of us) was faced with this kind of scenario?  What if there was a virus that had deadly effects or could turn to you into some kind of mutant zombie thing like 28 Days Later?  If you knew you were infected or there was a possibility you’d turn into something horrible… would you kill yourself?  How would you deal if a member of your family or your best friend or significant other became infected?  If you were among the immune, how would you protect yourself and survive?

And then my brain started to spin out of control with the whole thing, and I decided it was probably a good idea to pacify it with vodka.

More friends lost their jobs yesterday, and it didn’t exactly put me in a good mood.  It’s always a fine line for me to walk, because I want to be a friend to them and just be supportive and let them deal with it in the time they need to deal with it, but on the flip side, as a news reporter, it’s my job to get the details and report them to the masses ASAP (especially since we have an overzealous competitor — and I don’t like getting beaten on news).  Either way, I was happy that the kids downstairs at one of our sister publications came up to our break room right near my desk to have a small party, so I was able to duck in there and grab a beer or two.

Today is my last working day of 2007.  As of the time I leave work tonight, I’m on vacation until the new year.  I’m not quite sure how I feel about that, since I do like what I do and I have the tendency to be a bit of a workaholic since I do like my job — it’s also a function of liking to know what’s going on, so I’m sure I’ll probably check my e-mail about 15,000 times over the break.  Either way, I can’t remember the last time I was away from the office for so long, and it’s going to feel strange… Now I just have to come up with stuff to do and figure out which of my friends are around over the break so I don’t become a hermit and fail to leave my apartment for days on end.

I consider my car to be my sanctuary.  She kind of signifies freedom for me, in that despite my daily obligations, if I really wanted to just take off for parts unknown, I could just get behind the wheel and head out.  We make a good pair that way.  How I drive is an extension of me.  And when I’m in my car, it’s me time… I’ll usually crank up the radio and sing along (and occasionally air-guitar or air-drum) and work out whatever’s in my head or whatever’s weighing me down.  It’s my own little piece of peace, my world of me.  I get the feeling that other people think that way too, except for the fact that many of these people seem to forget the fact that their cars may be their own little world, but a good part of it is covered merely in glass.  I pretty much have no shame and don’t care when people see what I’m doing in the car, but I doubt others have that same self-actualization… like the woman beside me at the red light tonight who was definitely digging for something in her nostrils — and doing it pretty vigorously.  But the worst part came when she was done, and she stuck her finger into her mouth.  I hope she didn’t find anything during her nose excavation.

In other personal habit news, I’m considering breaking up with Grey’s Anatomy.  I have this issue where once I start something like a book or a TV show or a movie, I have to see how it ends — and even if I know how it ends, I need to see how they get from Point A to Point B.  But as Amandarin and I were discussing, when episodes start piling up on your TiVo (or VCR tape or whatever) because you just don’t have the desire to watch the shows and then you either just force yourself to watch or you delete them, it may be time to drop the commitment.  So for me to stop watching a show, it’s kind of a big personal deal.  But the most recent episode of Grey’s has been sitting on my TiVo for a while, and I’m not super-inclined to watch it.  Nor do I find myself compelled to find out what happens to these characters, despite the crises occurring when I left off with the show.  Soap operas aren’t my deal, and this is no longer a medical drama.

I just opened up a new package of butterscotch toffee coffee this morning.  It was unexpected, but it was extremely pleasant to walk into my apartment this evening and find the place smelling like butterscotch.

Pardon me while I take a moment to re-attach my face.  It was rocked off tonight at KROQ’s Almost Acoustic Christmas.  Quick rundown, since I’m exhausted and must get up for work tomorrow:  Spoon was better live than I expected since I’m not really a fan, Feist seemed cool (the half-a-song we saw), Silversun Pickups effing rocked, The Shins were (as usual) giving the stoners something to make out to, The Killers came in for a surprise set (is it a surprise when you play Almost Acoustic Christmas every year?), missed Modest Mouse, Jimmy Eat World were incredible, and Muse was unbelievable.  J.E.W. always put on a great show and have so much energy, and they could’ve easily headlined.  Muse was a frenetic performance full of sound and light and energy.  We saw Joel McHale backstage, he’s much taller than I thought.  I also walked by the lead singer of Jimmy Eat World, and I was so tempted to grab him, hug him and tell him how amazing his music is. 

I have to admit that it was a surprisingly productive weekend.  I had a list of about 10 different places to go and errands to run, and I got it all done and still had time to watch some TV, especially when you consider that anything past 4:30pm today was a wash due to the show.  Speaking of wash, it actually did rain here Saturday night, and the natives (predictably) lost it.  It was barely even drizzling when I got to Target and I walked across four parking lot lanes without an umbrella or any rain gear to get into the store, only to find at least a dozen people huddled around the door either waiting for it to stop drizzling or waiting for their friends/significant others/children/housepets to drive the car up to the door so they could dash in.  Either way, I’m still amazed at the fact that I can’t walk out of Target without spending at least $100.  It’s friggin’ Target. 

And now, sleeeeep…

I seriously need to find a way to make good on my threats to take most of the residents of Southern California and dump them into rush hour in Manhattan or Boston to teach them how to friggin’ drive.  This is getting ridiculous.  People here just don’t get it.  If I stop at a green light and not go across an intersection, there’s probably a good reason — like the fact that there are cars backed up on the other side of the intersection, and if I were to proceed, I’d block the box and probably be stuck out in the middle of the intersection when the light turns red for me and green for intersecting traffic.  Blowing your horn at me is not going to make me go.  And those little white lines on the pavement?  Yeah, those are called “lane markers,” and you’re supposed to stay within them.  Weaving all over the road because you’re not paying attention is uncool.  And for the millionth time, hang up the damn phone and drive!

Naturally, things are going to go to hell tomorrow when it rains here.  In true SoCal fashion, “StormWatch 2007” has already kicked in on all the local TV newscasts with live, on-the-scene reporting from all over the place for no apparent reason, as everyone here prepares for the Worst Storm Ever Until the Next Worst Storm Ever™.  Again, this may be another reason to dump the populace here into New York or Boston.  A city can actually function and people can get around when water falls from the sky!  Imagine that! 

While half the nation is getting pounded with ice and snow and yuck, I was running around in a T-shirt today because it was 80 friggin’ degrees in Los Angeles.  I actually had to burn myself a CD of Christmas tunes to take to work with me to make my brain believe that, yes, Virginia — it really is December.  (And no, they weren’t your standard Christmas tunes… the Bitter Jew™ does the “twisted Christmas” thing with angry rock songs that tend to be about how much the Christmas season sucks and giving the finger to various ex-attachments.  Oh, and the occasional ode to Swiss Colony Beef Logs by one Eric Cartman.) So when people ask me how I can stand L.A. with the traffic and the smog and the plastic and the attitude and the astronomical housing prices and the more traffic and the fact that Lindsay/Britney/Nicole/Paris is shown as actual news… well, 80 degrees and sunny on December 4. 

I crumbled and joined Facebook.  Be my friend.

Maybe it’s because I was trained as a copyeditor, maybe it’s because my parents made it a priority that I make everything as correct as possible, but I’ve always been a good speller.  And lately, I’ve been seeing a ton of spelling errors out there in the general public.  I don’t know if this stuff is jumping out at me because I do have that particular background or if I’m just becoming more sensitive to it — or maybe spelling is just getting worse, but it’s really pissing me off.  I’m seeing signs, banners, menus, fliers, TV scrolls and other stuff everywhere that have spelling mistakes on them, and I don’t think anyone knows the difference between they’re, their and there anymore.  I swear, we really are descending into Idiocracy.  And that scares the crap out of me.  Besides, isn’t spell-check widely available?  Can’t people run text through a spell-check before putting it out there into the public?

I’m doing the on-again, off-again dance with Firefox.  For some reason, the stupid program won’t launch a new window when I command-click, it opens a new tab.  I hate tabs.  Anyone know how to fix this?  I’ve set the preferences to launch in new windows rather than tabs, but apparently, Firefox doesn’t like to listen to its preferences.

I was overjoyed to get the new Futurama movie on Friday, and I was so excited to have new Futurama to watch for the first time in over four years — and wouldn’t know what happened next or almost every line — that I watched it twice over the weekend.  And I’ll probably watch it at least once more before the week is out.  Happiness is new Futurama… and some old Futurama too.

Happy Chanukah to my fellow Tribespeople.

So a few weeks ago, I was carded.  Last night, I hit the other side of the equation and now feel a little ancient. 

I went with Amandarin to see American Gangster (which we both liked — I recommend it if you haven’t seen it), and the movie theater we went to out in Burbank was a little packed.  We were on our way up the escalator towards the lobby when one of the trio of high school girls behind us asked, “Excuse me, what movie are you going to go see?” Amandarin asked why, and another girl responded, “Well, we’re going to see Alive, so if that was the movie you were going to see, we were wondering if you could walk in with us.” The implied “because you definitely look safely old enough to be going to R-rated movies without getting carded and could be a parent or guardian” was definitely hanging in the air.  My ego bruised just a little, I said that no, we weren’t going to see Alive and then we got off the escalators and headed inside.  After a concession stand visit, Amandarin noticed another group of high schoolers trying to get in — who were turned away and had their tickets ripped up for good measure.

But still.  Ouch. 

I don’t know why I woke up in a bad mood today, but I did, and I could feel the claws start to come out even before I’d left my apartment this morning.  I was muttering under my breath about a co-worker while getting ready for work.  Then on my way to work, some genius in a Mercedes decided to test the theory that anyone who drives a Mercedes owns the road — he was drifting in and out of his lane as it is because he was on his phone and not paying attention to the road and came within inches of hitting my car in the process, so when he tried to jump in front of me on the freeway, I conveniently sped up enough that he wouldn’t be able to… and then a few minutes later, I successfully cut him off just to reinforce in his head that he did not, in fact, own the road.  Then I got to work and gleefully deflated a pompous former co-worker by pointing out that the premise that he’d built this entire argument on was incorrect.  Then I found out a friend is losing her job tomorrow along with a whole bunch of other people I know, and things took a turn.

I don’t believe in karma or fate, I don’t think that the type of vibe you put out into the universe is what you’ll get back because I’ve seen way too many assholes and self-important and undeserving people get ahead in life, while other good-natured and deserving people are left by the wayside or putter along in obscurity or are mired in difficulty.  I’ve accepted this as fact, and I’ve accepted that the universe can be unfair in a lot of different ways.  So it’s not that I’m sitting here taking responsibility for what’s going to go down tomorrow, because I had absolutely nothing to do with the situation besides know the people involved.  But a small part of me does wonder if I unconsciously saw some of this coming, and that’s the reason why my emotional coloring was more on the dark side today.

I made the desert run yesterday, covering just over 500 miles in about 7 1/2 hours (including a stop at the border for gas and snacks).  I probably would’ve made record time had it not been for the usual slowdowns out in Palm Springs and San Bernardino.  I was, however, pleasantly surprised to find out that the spirit of radio is alive and well in the form of XM — one of their channels was doing a Saturday night show that I kind of thought was prerecorded, since on my way out to Tucson on Tuesday night, I heard the guy on the air give out the request line number and I called to find I was dialing a voicemail box (admittedly, it was 3am in DC where he was).  Either way, I called into the Saturday night show to make a request and gave it to an actual person who picked up the phone… and despite the fact that I requested a followup single that went nowhere from a one-hit wonder, my song was pounding through the speakers 20 minutes later.

Now comes the task of trying to fight off, well, senioritis for lack of a better term.  As of the end of my workday on December 14, I’m on vacation until 2008.  I’ve got a ton of stuff to do before then, but it’s still a matter of keeping myself motivated to get everything done that I need to without losing the will to live.  And then it becomes a matter of figuring out what the hell I’m doing to do over those 2 1/2 weeks without being bored to tears.