The Conical Glass: January 2007

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The special ones

Because I am lucky enough to know someone who works at The Special Company, I have visited it several times. Of course, you know about The Special Company because you use its primary product all the time, but you've probably read about its lavish employee perks in publications like the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, which document T.S.C. as exhaustively as People covers Britney Spears or Angelina Jolie.

The most famous perk at T.S.C. is the free food. T.S.C. has hired top chefs to produce cuisine for its employees. If you're in the mood for something Asian, Indian, Mexican, or organic & macrobiotic, you'll find it in one of T.S.C.'s numerous eateries. Plus, if you work there, you can invite your friends or relatives to join you for a meal -- absolutely free. I can attest to the fact that the food is delicious and top-notch. The only thing lacking is a fine wine to accompany it, but that's understandable; it is a workplace, after all.

In addition, T.S.C. offers "mini-kitchens" in each of its buildings, with on-the-go foods like fresh fruit, trans-fat-free cookies, string cheese, granola bars, yogurt, etc. The kitchens used to contain a lot of junk food, like M&M's and potato chips, but T.S.C. decided those things weren't healthy enough, and got rid of them. This led to some controversy among the employees, but if anyone really needs a junk fix, there's an In-N-Out Burger right down the street from the campus.

What else do you enjoy if you work at T.S.C.? The buildings are stocked with washers & dryers (free, natch) so you can do your laundry at work. There are free or reduced-price massages, or, if the masseuses are off-duty, massage chairs. You can bring your dog to work. Doctors and dentists come right to the campus in specially equipped vehicles so you can schedule an appointment on-site. Famous speakers from all walks of life address the employees. Occasionally, the company whisks everyone away to a free ski vacation, via a chartered bus to the mountains.

The T.S.C. even cares about you when you go to the bathroom. They have installed special high-tech toilets with heated seats and bidet functions.

T.S.C. only hires geniuses, and they do love their jobs. All of these perks are, in a way, velvet handcuffs: they want to keep you at work as long as possible, obviously. Why would you leave to go to lunch or dinner when the food served right there is far better than anything you could get off-campus?

I always feel a little wistful when I peel off my visitor's badge and leave the grounds. I've been self-employed for the last decade, but I have spent a lot of time in standard workplaces, and Joe works for a big high-tech company, so I'm not completely out of the loop of Employment Today. At T.S.C., you get the overwhelming sense that someone cares about you. It's like being enveloped in a loving embrace. They want you to be happy. They may have ulterior motives, but let's face it, 99.999% of us work for companies where you're expected to be highly productive, and all you get in return is a paycheck. Whenever I go to lunch with Joe, we always go out; it would never even occur to us to eat at his company's mediocre cafeteria (where, by the way, the food costs money).

The biggest drawback of T.S.C., to me, is that it's located in Silicon Valley, and I wouldn't want to live there; it's too far from San Francisco and boring suburbia-land compared to the East Bay. Plus, I know that whatever quirky talents I do have, they're not the ones T.S.C. is looking for. It's possible Joe could get hired there, but he's not as easily seduced by free food and massages as I am; he always reminds me that "work-life balance" is not a priority for employees, and it must be hard on the spouses. Still, I have to admit that it would be nice if some of T.S.C.'s philosophies on how to treat one's workers rubbed off on corporate America as a whole. Is a happy employee is a productive employee? The geniuses at T.S.C. are proving that, every day.

posted by 125records @ 12:06 PM 2 comments

Friday, January 26, 2007

Liberal folk

In my ongoing quest to broaden my musical horizons, I went to see Eliza Gilkyson at the Freight & Salvage last night. I wasn't familiar with her music, but Neal highly recommended her, and I always like going to the Freight. Most music venues serve liquor; the Freight, on the other hand, sells an awesome variety of teas as well as cookies and brownies, and really, just about any form of entertainment is enhanced by the addition of brownies.

Eliza is a veteran folk singer who seems to be coming into her own in her 50s; she mentioned in a sly aside that for a long time, she wasn't able to get a booking at the Freight, so it was particularly gratifying to her that she can sell it out now. Eliza's brother Tony, a longtime member of the band X, was supposed to open the show, but he had to cancel due to an unspecified medical problem. So she had to fill the whole 2-hour slot on her own (along with a guitar-playing sideman and, on a few songs, a wonderful young violinist). Many of her songs were stunningly beautiful, like "When You Walk On" and the title track from her latest album, Paradise Hotel, and she has a gorgeous voice, but it would have been nice if her bro had been on hand to offer something a little more rockin'. The closest Eliza came to blowing the roof off the place was when she played "Man of God," a scathing indictment of the Bush administration. Needless to say, the song went over extremely well in the heart of Berkeley; the Freight is always a popular hangout for the town's aging hippie population, and Joe and I even noticed counterculture icon Wavy Gravy in the audience last night.

Anyway, listening to "Man of God," I wondered why there are no Republican folk singers. After all, folk music is protest music, and there are plenty of things for Republicans to protest, especially these days. How about this inspiring anthem, for starters:

Death tax, death tax
Get the government off our backs
You work hard, you scrimp and save
Don't let the IRS rob your grave!

This morning, I Googled "republican folk singers" and found that another blogger had been curious about the same topic back in 2004. (Scroll down to the March 25 entry.) "Based on the responses I got, I guess the answer is that right wing folk music is called 'Country & Western.'" I suppose that makes sense. Toby Keith is the Red State answer to Peter, Paul and Mary!

posted by 125records @ 9:52 AM 2 comments

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

The F state

My friend Doug tagged me with the following:

Each player of this game starts with "6 weird things about you." Each person who gets tagged needs to write a blog post of their own 6 weird things as well as clearly state this rule.

I have been thinking about this for a couple days now, and have been unable to come up with a single weird thing about myself. Am I really that mundane and normal? Perhaps it's just that in a country of 300 million people, it's hard to distinguish yourself; I mean, I didn't start driving a car until I was in my mid-20s, but I know a woman (a transplanted New Yorker, of course) who doesn't drive at all. I've never watched a single episode of "American Idol," but a friend, a brilliant AIDS researcher, undoubtedly couldn't name any of the "Idol" judges or past winners if you put a gun to her head. I'm pop-culture-savvy enough that I could probably reel off just about every "Idol" winner and runner-up.

The reason I haven't posted lately is because I have been in Florida, at my parents'. I sat down intending to write something a couple times, but couldn't think of anything beyond, "Wow, I sure am enjoying this 70-degree weather and sunshine! Take that, rest of the country!" I know Florida is supposed to be the weirdest state in the union, but I've been visiting it my whole life and love the place. I would never want to move there (I couldn't handle the summer heat), but it's hard not to envy the folks who are able to spend their winters lying poolside and walking on the beach.

The worst thing about my annual visits to Florida is getting there. It's a long, long trip from Northern California, and I hate to fly. If it were up to me, I'd have my own Madden Cruiser. Nevertheless, I keep getting on planes -- I generally fly about three times a year -- because I like going to different places. Usually, if the ride is smooth, I manage to relax a bit after the first half hour or so; if it's turbulent, I am in a state of constant terror. Now, logically, I know that turbulence is uncomfortable but nothing to be afraid of; I've done a lot of reading on the subject, including this excellent Ask the Pilot column. But it feels horrible.

Recently, I found a new reason to be worried about flying: the possibility of dying on the plane, or having someone else die on the plane. This situation makes the news occasionally, when a celebrity passes away at 30,000 feet; most recently, Richard Carlson, author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff, died of cardiac arrest while en route from San Francisco to New York. Celebrity biographer Albert Goldman also died while aboard a plane. The really scary thing about this possibility? Pretty much every flight I've been on in the past several years has been completely full, so if your seatmate's heart gives out halfway to your destination, it seems horrifyingly likely that you'd wind up sitting next to a corpse for the remainder of your travels.

Luckily, I should be able to stay on the ground for at least the next five months.

posted by 125records @ 2:40 PM 5 comments

Monday, January 15, 2007

We have a winner: "Casino Royale"

It had been years since I'd seen a James Bond movie -- in fact, I missed the entire Timothy Dalton oeuvre. Even though the series was still wildly profitable, the films just seemed preposterous and convoluted to me. And no one was ever going to be as good as Sean Connery; I had seen those old Bond flicks several times back when ABC used to run them regularly in prime time during the 80s. Even when I was a kid, it seemed obvious that Connery was James Bond and the others were merely pretenders to the throne.

Until now, that is. After seeing "Casino Royale," I'm a total convert to Daniel Craig as Bond. Craig is probably the best actor ever to wear the tuxedo, and he makes the part his own. And though he's not really my type, I appreciate the fact that this is perhaps the first Bond film where the agent is objectified more than any woman he shares the screen with -- Craig's glistening, muscled torso must have been displayed a good 20 times.

"Casino" has two of the most jaw-dropping action sequences I've ever seen: one in which Bond chases a man through a high-rise building under construction, and another set on an airport tarmac involving a gas tanker rigged to explode headed for a collision with a jumbo jet. But even when Bond isn't running around chasing and shooting at people, the film is really good. Eva Green as Vesper Lynd is a very interesting and complex character in her own right, and Judi Dench is cool and authoritative as M. There are plenty of surprising plot twists. All in all, "Casino Royale," like "Spider-Man 2" and too few others, is that rare Hollywood blockbuster made by people who actually care about making a good movie. At the very end of the credits, the words "James Bond Will Return" appear on screen; I can't wait to see what happens next.

For the record, "The Pursuit of Happyness" and "Volver" tied for second place in my survey and "Dreamgirls," "Miss Potter," "Notes on a Scandal" and "The Painted Veil" got two votes each. One critically praised 2006 film that I do not plan to see is "Pan's Labyrinth," because that monster with the eyes on its hands freaks me out every time I see it. I'm sure the film would give me nightmares for weeks.

posted by 125records @ 9:19 AM 2 comments

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Lively up yourselves

The votes -- all 17 of them -- are in, and I shall be attending the winning movie this evening. I'll keep the polls open for another day or so just in case my readership increases dramatically on weekdays; unlike a lot of bloggers, I don't really track the statistics of who reads this stuff and where they come from or which wacky key words they searched on to get here (+saarsgard +naked, anyone?). I thought I would get a few more votes than 17, but there's so much else going on online, who am I to judge anyone who would rather spend their precious time elsewhere? Mary Worth is going to Vietnam, for God's sake! Anyway, if there's a significant groundswell of votes for a runner-up film, I'll try to see that one, too.

No one correctly guessed the movie I didn't want to see. It was "Miss Potter." Every time I've seen the preview or a clip from the film, I've cringed at the incredible tweeness of it. That scene where one of her watercolors comes to life and Renee Zellweger squinches up her ferrety little face and admonishes Jemima Puddleduck to "stop that silliness!" -- dear reader, I fwowed up.

I mentioned the Shins a few days ago, and I still maintain that "Phantom Limb" is a good song, but after seeing them on "SNL" last night, I can state unequivocally that the Shins are the dullest live band in America. The lead singer has the looks and charisma of a junior high school geometry teacher. The rest of the members seem to be in a competition with each other over who can move the least. Their second song came on at around 12:50 AM, no doubt putting millions of people to sleep.

There was a time when I'd go see any band whose songs I liked, but nowadays, I'm far more selective. It's not enough for me to love your music; you have to be entertaining, too. Two of my all-time favorite live acts, Cheryl Wheeler and Ted Leo, are going to be coming to town this winter. Young artists could do well to learn from them. And if you're a frontman with zero stage presence, there's always the option of hiring a dancer or two to liven things up. I hear Bez may have some free time these days.

posted by 125records @ 2:04 PM 2 comments

Friday, January 12, 2007

A Conical Glass special interactive feature

In an effort to provide you, the loyal Conical Glass reader, with a more customized user experience, I am conducting the first-ever CG Reader's Poll. You -- yes, you -- can have an impact on what I do this weekend! I've listed several movies that are currently playing in town; you can vote on which one I should see and write up for the blog. To make things more interesting, I included one in the mix that I have no interest in seeing. If you're feeling diabolical, you can try and figure out which one it is and vote for it. I'll keep the survey live until I actually go see the movie (probably sometime on Sunday).

posted by 125records @ 2:15 PM 9 comments

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

The perils of discovering new music

One of my favorite podcasts is NPR's All Songs Considered, a weekly program which presents an eclectic mix of new music. Sometimes it bugs me -- the show's host, Bob Boilen, and its guest contributors are often too predictable in their tastes, touting hipster/rockcrit faves like Joanna Newsom, Cat Power, Bright Eyes, the Decemberists and the Arcade Fire. However, there's no denying that if you listen to the show regularly, you'll be a much more informed music fan. And occasionally Boilen will champion something less predictable, like one of my favorite discoveries of 2006, J. DiMenna; he was also an early booster of English pop princess Lily Allen. Sometimes he throws some interesting world music acts into the mix, like Irish folk band Lunasa.

Anyway, I listened to last week's show twice, mainly because I was interested in hearing the new Arcade Fire song. Yesterday, I was driving home and happened to hear a really fantastic song on KFOG. The station has a cool feature in which the name of the artist and song are displayed on the car radio's control panel; however, this one showed up as Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up In Blue," and it definitely wasn't that. I tried remembering bits of lyrics so I could Google them when I got home. I'm usually pretty bad at making out lyrics and this song was no exception. The only phrases I could remember were "foreign lands" and "spray-on tans." I rushed upstairs and typed those words into the search engine, which instantly told me that the song was "Phantom Limb" by the Shins.

Not only do I own a Shins album (Oh, Inverted World), so I should probably have recognized their sound, but when I looked at the playlist for last week's All Songs Considered, it turns out that "Phantom Limb" had been played on the podcast. So I'd already heard it -- twice. And I guess it made no impression on me. I was most likely working while I was listening to it. But on the car radio, it captured my full attention and blew me away.

A couple of days ago, I listened to the MP3 of Sloan's "Money City Maniacs," which was posted on the music blog Idolator. Now, I'm sure I must have heard Sloan before; it wouldn't surprise me if I have some of their tracks on mix CDs my friends have made. I might have dismissed them as Posies wannabees. But at that moment, "Money City Maniacs" sounded like the most perfect power-pop song ever. Within five minutes, I'd downloaded a bunch of their stuff from eMusic, and I'm thinking, how could I not have realized how brilliant these guys were back in the mid- to late-1990s, when these CDs were released?

My iTunes playlist, where all my eMusic downloads wind up, demonstrate quite succinctly what a short attention span for music I've developed in the past year or so. It seems like every couple of months, I discover a new "favorite" -- DiMenna, Jose Gonzalez, the Pernice Brothers, New Radiant Storm King, the Raconteurs, fill in the blank. Then I discover something else, and who has time to go back and listen to everything that's already been downloaded? iTunes keeps track of how many times you play something, and my most-played tracks are the first two songs from the Raconteurs' Broken Boy Soldiers, which I listened to 11 times each. That doesn't sound like much. Most songs, even ones I really love, show between three to seven total plays.

I feel like my life would be poorer if I hadn't discovered Sloan and Grandaddy and the Celebrity Pilots and all those other bands I've downloaded, but I can't help but feel a little nostalgic for the days when I could only afford to buy one album a month and I could spend all day lying on the floor in front of my stereo listening to it. Everything's background music in my busy life today. On the other hand, I love the instant gratification; going to a record store seems so 20th century (and yes, I am going to try to get more of the 125 Records catalog on eMusic this year).

posted by 125records @ 2:05 PM 0 comments

Friday, January 05, 2007

A bunch of nights at the theater

There's a fab article about the Cerrito Theater, blogged about here on Jan. 1, in today's Chronicle.

Last night, Joe & I went to see "Jersey Boys" at the Curran Theater in San Francisco. When the show was announced, Joe (a Jersey boy himself, since he was born in the Garden State) said he wanted to see it; I said I did not, since I don't like '50s music. Joe responded that technically, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons constitute '60s music (their first #1, "Sherry," was a hit in 1962). I've always thought of them as being more akin to artists like the Platters or other "number" groups like the Five Satins or the Four Freshmen than '60s bands like the Beatles, the Stones and the Kinks. Nevertheless, the musical was getting rapturous reviews so I bought the tickets as a Christmas gift.

It turns out that "Jersey Boys" is such a great show that it doesn't really matter how attached you are to their pop hits. The reason this musical has succeeded where other so-called "jukebox musicals" based on the songs of Bob Dylan, John Lennon and the Beach Boys failed is that "Jersey Boys" puts the story first. It's exceedingly well-written (by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice) and not just an excuse to throw a lot of hit songs at the audience.

The play is divided into four parts, or "seasons," with each section narrated by a different member of the group. This enables us to get to know each guy, and hear the story from his perspective. There's Tommy, the trouble magnet whose debts get the band mixed up with the mob; Bob, the shy guy and genius songwriter whose talent for writing hits takes them from a Jersey streetcorner to #1 on the charts; Nick, who feels overshadowed by the other members; and finally Frankie, the Italian kid with an angelic voice.

This may be a touring production, but the cast, which also includes several men and women who play numerous roles, is absolutely Broadway quality; at times, the audience's wild cheering made you forget that these guys are just pretending to be in a famous group. Christopher Kale Jones is dynamic as Valli, a role that must be exceptionally difficult to cast (how many people can convincingly sing in that famous falsetto?).

Anyway, now that 2006 is behind us, here are the best five plays I saw last year. I saw quite a few, but even so, it's always a bit of a bummer to read the critics' year-end recaps and realize all the stuff I missed out on.

1. "The Little Foxes," ACT: The night I saw this, the last thing I wanted to do was go to the theater, and the fact that it won me over so completely makes it all the more impressive.

2. "Love is a Dream House in Lorin," Shotgun Players: Shotgun had such a successful season that it's hard to pick which one of their plays was the best, but I have to give them credit for creating and mounting this audaciously ambitious production and pulling it off so wonderfully.

3. "The Glass Menagerie", Berkeley Rep: It's hard to believe I had never seen this oft-produced play before, but for my first experience with it, I'm glad I was able to witness Rita Moreno's performance as Amanda.

4. "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee," Post Street Theater: I saw it twice, and it was even better the second time. Just ridiculously entertaining and funny.

5. "LOVE," Cirque du Soleil, The Mirage, Las Vegas: You could see an entire season's worth of plays at the Shotgun for what you pay for one ticket to "LOVE," but what glorious excess it is. A jaw-dropper.

posted by 125records @ 2:21 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Fiascos & favorites

I had forgotten that January is National Just Read More Novels Month and started off the year by reading a nonfiction title, Fiasco: A History of Hollywood's Iconic Flops, a Christmas gift from James. In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to kick off a brand new year by curling up with a book called Fiasco. I probably should have found something titled Amazing Success! instead. To make matters worse, the University of Michigan crashed & burned in the Rose Bowl yesterday.

Anyway, now that we're in 2007, let's look back at 2006, shall we? (Is it too soon for VH1 to do a special on "We Love the Mid-2000s"?) I begin with my top five movies of the year:

1. "Inside Man" - The only film I saw last year that I truly thought was brilliant. I loved it from the kinetic opening credit sequence on. Much more than your run of the mill bank heist flick.

2. "The Illusionist" - A sentimental favorite; Joe and I argued half a dozen times about whether the ending worked or not (I loved it, he didn't).

3. "The Queen" - In lesser hands, this could just have been a big screen equivalent of all those movies-of-the-week about Charles & Diana. Even the most hardened anti-monarchist couldn't help but sympathize with Helen Mirren's Elizabeth.

4. "Stranger Than Fiction" - Wreckless Eric's "The Whole Wide World" provided the best musical moment in any movie this year.

5. "Little Children" - Between this and "Election," Tom Perrotta's batting .1000 in terms of having his books made into extraordinary movies. Now will somebody please film "The Wishbones"?

Most overrated film of the year, comedy division: "Borat"
Drama division: "The Departed," but I still hope Martin Scorsese finally wins that Oscar.

posted by 125records @ 11:01 AM 1 comments

Monday, January 01, 2007

2006's Best Thing

I was fed up with the Bay Area -- the crowds, the traffic, the high cost of living, the noise, even the fog. I was also fed up with my building, which I will never be able to afford to leave as long as I continue to live here; it has all the charm of a concrete slab and the floor plan seems to have been drawn up by someone high on magic mushrooms. I needed an intervention. Send me a sign that I should stay here!

And then it came, toward the end of the year, a glorious, brightly lit beacon rising high above a strip of auto body repair shops, fast food emporia and payday loan outlets. It was... a movie theater.

But not just any movie theater. No, it was a restored art-deco two-screen movie theater. And so many things about it were perfect:

The admission charge is only $6, with two-for-one admission on Wednesdays.

If the listing says a movie is going to start at 9 PM, it starts at 9 PM on the dot. No ads, ever, and any previews or cartoons (yes, they show cartoons) are screened before the advertised movie time.

Sick of noisy teens disrupting your moviegoing experience? Monday through Friday, only patrons over the age of 21 are admitted.

The snack bar serves alcohol.

And food -- fabulous popcorn with real butter, but also healthy stuff like hummus, garden burgers and veggies & dip.

They show today's big hits, but they also screen older movies, from cult classics like "The Princess Bride" and "The Big Lebowski" to golden oldies from the 1930s and 40s.

If your response is, why would anyone pay $6 to go see an old movie they could Netflix and watch at home?, then you and I have deep and profound philosophical differences that can never be bridged. If, on the other hand, you think it sounds fab, join me at the Cerrito Speakeasy Theater. I went there six times in December, most recently last night to see "After the Thin Man." The place was packed, and it did my heart good to see a wildly diverse crowd enjoying a 1936 classic. For all the disadvantages of living here, I'm pretty sure that only a densely populated metropolitan area could support a place like the Cerrito.

The Cerrito is owned by the same folks behind Oakland's Parkway, which has been a favorite of Joe's and mine for years now. The Parkway has the nuisance factor of being far enough away from where we live that it's entirely possible you could get stuck in traffic while en route. The Cerrito, however, is conveniently close, and while during the planning stages some people in the community groused about the theater's lack of a parking lot, there are tons of spaces in the area, which until now has been pretty much a dead zone in the evenings.

This is what the Cerrito looked like back in the olden days; it was used as storage space by a furniture store for decades, and the fact that it was restored so beautifully is a movie lover's dream come true. Here are some photos of the renovated Cerrito. It's a real jewel. Every Monday, I anxiously await the e-mail with the following week's schedule; so far, the programming is crowd-pleasing without being predictable. For instance, their Christmas weekend selection was "The Bishop's Wife," a 1947 Cary Grant holiday charmer. In January, they're doing a Hitchcock mini-fest.

The Cerrito is the sort of community-focused, locally-owned business that people should support wholeheartedly. I know I will continue to do so as often as possible in '07 and beyond.

posted by 125records @ 10:51 PM 3 comments

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Name: Sue
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