Our fears were unfounded, an e-birdie recently told me. I don’t want to overstep my bounds here since my place on the nice, new Triangle couches are at stake, but let’s just say the dream will be lived and our house of straw will withstand a few more huffs and puffs.
Geof Castle used to be my hero. He’s an extremely gifted writer; he reviews what he writes, show’s interest in becoming a better writer, and he’s generally excellent at it already. Not only that, but he’s a talented leader who is good at addressing problems and seems to enjoy almost every aspect of being editor of The Triangle. He seems genuinely interested in including everyone as an active member of his team. Just today he started tidying up his office, what I took as a sure sign he was planning to run for editor next term as well.
As it turns out, he’s not interested in “living the dream” (as Chris puts it) anymore. Apparently, he’ll step aside and let Jason run for EIC next term. While Jason has his good points, I don’t think there’s any question as to who the more qualified candidate is. I understand that Geof took the job mainly out of a sense of responsibility but I guess I thought he’d find it as much fun as I did, especially since there has been some real progress made in recruitment and retention.
Who knows? Maybe Jason is the prince I’ve been hoping for, but I doubt it since he brought up the assinine notion of switching The Triangle to Adobe InDesign. Quark doesn’t have that many problems to begin with, not to mention the fact that he’d have to retrain those who do know Quark and convert the templates and libraries to the new format. As if there weren’t enough problems right now without silly notions of grandeur.
Marc seems to have redeemed himself. He’s back to his usual goofy self, but has more than atoned for his sins by annoying Gus to the point of fixing The Triangle’s online classifieds system. He also claims the couches that Al and I picked out from Raymour and Flannigan will be arriving tomorrow. I’m excited beyond all belief to be able to throw my bag on the piles of junk that always end up on the couches. My laptop will never have had it so good. Just wanted to let everyone know that Marc isn’t all bad.
My sales teacher should have seen me in action at the Liberty Place mall Saturday morning. I rolled into the upscale mall with one thing in mind: Fruit Fusion smoothies, one for me and one for Dia, who was waiting patiently outside. Normally she’s like a dog in heat for these things, but we were tired from blading from the art museum. The distance was nothing, but dealing with traffic and crosswalks and construction and potholes is really exhausting.
I had no trouble rolling into the place, right onto the escalator, and the short distance over to the smoothie bar. After waiting in line for seven or eight minutes, I hear a “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to come with me please.” Of course, I tried every excuse I could think of in pleading with the security guard. He didn’t care that I didn’t see a sign prohibiting rolling or that I’d been waiting in line for a while, and he wasn’t very receptive to the idea of me taking off my shoes. When I asked him what the problem was, since I was in control and everything, he said it was all about the insurance and I could sue. Which makes no sense, since I was the one who put the rollerblades on then came into the building, but it wouldn’t be the first time this giant insurance scam didn’t make sense.
Since I didn’t have an answer to the whole insurance thing beyond “I won’t sue”, I simply shrugged and told him “sorry”, but that I wasn’t leaving. Just before he radioed for backup I said, “Look, my girfriend has been waiting outside for 20 minutes — alright, it’s only been five or so — but she’s been waiting. And if I go outside without a smoothie now, she’ll kill me.”
“Alright, I can’t argue with that,” he said. Lo and behold, it worked! (And I don’t use exclamation points lightly.) Even though the women behind me in line protested at using women as scapegoats, the guy said he wasn’t passing judgment, he just knew how ladies can get. He asked me to be careful on my way out, and I thanked him as I got on the escalator smooties in hand.
I had it out again with Marc the other day. He can be a real prick sometimes; all day long he kept screaming at me, I guess trying to beat me to the punch or something. Well the punch was coming, but not the kind he was thinking of….
The basic disagreement was whether to give a free ad to a kid who wanted to advertise some memorial service for a dead kid. Not just any dead kid, Brien Kivlen: the kid who jumped off the Sheraton hotel last year. It wasn’t a real big deal for me (no, not the suicide, well OK the suicide too, but the ad mainly), but I thought it would probably be a good idea if Marc ran it by edboard. So because I partly cared and partly because I wanted to upset him a little. Well I guess it worked, because I couldn’t even discuss the subject with anyone in the office without earning a shout in my direction. Finally I’d had enough, so I jumped out of my chair and shouted at the top of my lungs that I wasn’t talking to him, how he’d been shouting at me all morning, and if he did it again it would be the last words he ever spoke.
The importance of the shouting session is that it felt damn good. I think I’ll be doing a lot more of it from now on. Especially since we’re going drinking tomorrow.
Last night I went to see Changing Lanes with Dia, Chris and Lisa. Nathan opted out because he didn’t want to be the fifth wheel. I doubt it would be like that since we’re all friends, but some misconceptions are just not worth altering. the movie was alright, but not the impetus for this post. As we were walking across one of the parking lot roads (“road” not “lane” because there was a double yellow line to help dictate traffic rules I suppose), I noticed two cars about 15 yards away, and since they weren’t moving I figured I had enough time to cross the street. After all, we were in a parking lot where pedestrians were in abundance. Soon after I commit to crossing, some shitty, blue Pontiac without his headlights on (twilight was approaching) accelerates right towards me. I continue at the same pace, since I was crossing before he decided to move, after all. Just as the guy gets real close and leans on the horn, I stick my foot out behind me in his path and kick the car as hard as I can. Needless to say, the guy was pretty pissed. A lady standing nearby says to me, “You’d better get inside.” Of couse I keep walking, first of all because that was my original direction, secondly because I made my small point, and third: the guy was the size of a planet. He was able to follow me all the way inside since he left his bitch to watch over the car. The guy wasn’t fast of course, but he was persistent. For some reason he went to “get the manager” after he accosted me, where I explained to Mr. McFatty that I didn’t kick his car, but that he ran into my foot. Well, while he went to get the manager (what did he expect some pimply-faced manager to do, orbit around him?) Chris suggested we get tickets for the 7:50 show instead of the 7:00, since it would give us plenty of time to get lost in the food court for a while. It was a good idea, especially since Dia chose a moment when Sir Twixalot was right behind us to confirm the title of the movie we were seeing. Nice one, Dia…. if we were going into the theater right then, this guy would only have to pay $7.50 to kick my ass under the cover of darkness. The guy was gone when we got back after dinner and shopping, but his story shall live on. Especially since I was a dick to a guy five times my size and I lived to tell about it.
My friend Matt and I went drinking last night. I had a love/hate relationship with everything in sight (like that trashcan; it totally dissed me after our magical experience) except maybe the the people in the Korman computer lab. I’m pretty sure everyone there hated us. The second Matt stood up and thanked everyone, wished them a goodnight and warned them not to drink in the lab on Friday nights, their stares showed us the way out.
As I’m writing this, cleaning my fingernails with my last five-dollar bill, there are only a few other tell-tale signs of my experiences last night. Most notable are the police barriers stuck in the trees across the street, the sagging balloon on the upstairs landing coupled with the cut on my hand I think I got from tearing from a pole where it was advertising some Drexel event, and the e-mail I just received from myself — sent to The Triangle’s editorial board. Here’s the text:
I’m reallyy fucking drunk right now. and il’d like to thank the fine poele who
put this week’s issue together, and nathan for uptting up with us on the way up
to myers hall on fridya night.
great issue, so great that i didn’t find any problems while downing a few pints
at the Black Sheep friday evening. except for something in geof ocolumn
“except for knowledgeable or somethign.” wexcept for thwen i lok at it
sober, then it might make sense.
please show me this leatter.
thanks
all hail the barn and WSAETTLER@@@@@
BBO
BOB
The only regret (so far, since I’m still remembering things) is that the evening came with a $20 cover charge. I left the house with $30 and after running around the city like a chicken with an approximate destination I realized I’d lost the larger of two bills. If anybody finds it and returns it to me, you can keep half and live guilt-free.
We kicked the evening off at my house with a game of Settlers and drinking. Well, only Matt and I were drinking, that’s probably why Ankit won (though he did really well anyway.) Mullen called us from The Black Sheep just before it started to rain, so we quickly finished up our game, filled Matt’s meter (post-ticket, I should add), and moved towards the subway. At this point Matt and I were pretty tipsy, but fortunately we were aware enough to know that we didn’t have the bar’s exact address. That’s where we fumbled around drunkenly with the computers at Korman before Tomas logged us into a terminal in one of the upstairs, people-acutally-working labs. For future reference, the Black Sheep is on 17th Street between Locust and Spruce, and also for future reference, never look for me in Korman again.
We ran to the subway, and after 20 questions with a Septa worker I learned I only needed $2 to ride the damn subway. We missed our damn stop since Tomas parted ways with us after he ran into a familiar skate rat. All those soulless days at Aramark paid off in a way, since the unholy yellow glow of the 11th Street stop sparked an old reflex and we got off.
We had to walk all the way back to 17th street in the rain, and I’m not exactly sure how we managed to stay alive. It’s really saying something about technology and society if two beligerent, car-hating drunks can make it nine blocks using only blinking pedestrian signs without getting flattened. It’s especially scary considering I have distinct memories of leaning way too far over the Schuylkill River from the Chestnut Street bridge, stumbling through 30th Street Station, and talking with Yoni and Nathan at Triangle HQ. In fact, the main thing I can distinctly not remember is crossing a single street.
The evening’s other two influential players were Mullen and his friend Jan. Mullen met us down at the Black Sheep. There were two old broads (late 30s or so) who claimed that their birthdays both happened to be this weekend. If Mullen hadn’t pointed out that they were probably just trying to scam us for drinks, we may have actually fallen for it. We had about two beers before heading over to Oscars, which could be just about anywhere, where we met up with Jan. There we each had another beer — despite the sign that said “We don’t serve VIPs: Visibly Intoxicated Patrons”. Luckily, I was just sober enough to leave a tip for the good lady; at the time I was worried about getting served again. It turned out not to make a difference, since they would accept credit cards for food. Seems like bullshit to me now, but waitresses are as powerful as gods when everything’s blurry.
We made it to Wawa for dinner. We took a cab and I’m pretty sure I didn’t pay my full share. I hit the ATM for the last $10 I had in my checking account; I only remember because I found it amazing at the time — and I still do — that I got my PIN right on the first try. I also stumbled back and forth along the counter while conversing with the sandwich makers. They seemed genuinely concerned about our well-being, but then again I was just drunk. There are stains on my “I’m like a chocoholic, but for booze” shirt from cradling a hot roast beef Shorty against my chest. Now that I think about it, they should sell those shirts with stains already-built in. Mullen was heading to the Troc for a show (not Flogging Mollys despite how loud and how often I shouted it on the streets of Philadelphia), so Mullen hopped back into the cab after it was clear he couldn’t convince us to join him. From there we stumbled home shouting at almost everyone in sight until Nathan walked us home.
The next time you see two drunken idiots flopping all over the street, make sure you follow them around, if not for a few laughs then for the money that’ll be falling out of their pockets. I know I will — I want my $20 back. Also, I’m going to study them to see how they cross the streets because I’m still amazed I didn’t get run over.