Doing it Seven Days a Week

Posted on October 23, 2006 by Girl Friday

Posting that much is hard, especially when you watch as much TV as I do! So, I took a week off from posting, but I’m hoping to get back to a semi-regular schedule. Life is still as hectic as ever. Yours truly, Girl Friday, will be a homeowner on Friday (unless I have just horribly jinxed myself!). Here are a few of the things I have been up to:

Television! I think I will honor characters that exemplify Girl Friday qualities–characters who go above and beyond the call of duty, characters who are put through the ringer for this thing called employment.

Studio 60: Finally, I’ve caught up! Are you watching, Sarakastic? Lauren Graham guest starred last Monday and will be back for more today. If you follow the gossip rags like Notorious M.A.G. and I do, then you should know that she is often linked socially to Matthew Perry. Supposedly they’re just friends…

The Girl Friday Award goes to lowly production assistant Suzanne! Given the chance to be interviewed by Vanity Fair, I’d crack under the pressure and probably reveal compromising anecdotes about my boss, too!

Veronica Mars: Poor Veronica! She has good reason to be suspicious of Logan. She knows better than anyone what a sleaze he can be, but I don’t think being obsessively jealous and paranoid is healthy. Let’s hope she can find her cool-as-a-cucumber self again.

I’m honored to present Mr. Weevil Navarro with the Girl Friday Award! He was pleased as punch to be Keith’s sidekick. I only hope he won’t be too disappointed with the worst demotion in history—private dick to janitor—in under sixty minutes!

Movies! I don’t have an award to give out, but just a strong recommendation. I finished watching the HBO film Girl in the Café, and it is seriously one of my new favorite movies! Its dry British humor offsets its socially conscious message. I laughed and I cried. The majority of the movie takes place in Iceland (yeah, baby!). The main characters, Lawrence and Gina, joke that no one really knows more than one fact about this awesome little country.

By the end of the movie they knew four things:

Gina: I do now know four things about Reykjavik–Björk comes from here…

Lawrence: Spassky played Fisher here…

Gina: Zips shrink here. And it is possible, in Reykjavik, to have a night of something quite close to love.

Run henceforth to rent The Girl in the Café! Would Girl Friday lead you astray? I think not!

Posted in Movies, TV | 3 Comments

There’s No End to the Love You Can Give

Posted on October 14, 2006 by Girl Friday

Last night The BF, Lucky 10-Key, and I went to the much pined over Dresden Dolls concert. It was at Bimbo’s 365 in San Francisco. The venue was perfect—intimate, yet large enough that I still had to crane my neck. The club opened in 1931 and it has the feel of another era, and that’s probably why The Dresden Dolls fit in there so well. They’re music is described as Brechtian Punk Cabaret, whatever that means. It’s the kind of music that is raw, raunchy, quirky, dark, catchy, disturbing, and lovely all at once. But don’t take my word for it. You can listen to and even download a few of their songs for free at their site.

Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione are captivating and gracious performers. I was thoroughly impressed by this piano and drums duo. They rock as hard as any full band out there. They are worth the thousand mile trips I’ve taken now twice. I have fully forgiven them for canceling the show in July (it wasn’t their fault to begin with, but when you’ve taken vacation time and driven as far as we did, you’d be peeved, too). I will gladly see them again wherever they’re playing in the sate.

When we got back to Lucky 10-Key’s place last night, I sat down and tried to remember the set list. It’s not perfectly in order in the middle, but the first three and the last three songs are accurate! I can never remember the lyrics to the cover songs! I tried Googling, but no luck as of yet. I’ll stalk some forums and hopefully I’ll find out the names of the cover songs.

October 13, 2006 Set List and Girl Friday’s commentary on choice material:

Cover

Sex Changes

Gravity: Wow. This song makes me want to be a way better piano player.

Coin-Operated Boy: A crowd favorite. It’s fun to see Amanda and Brian play off one another and go wild.

Modern Moonlight

Bad Habit

The Jeep Song: Apparently they don’t play this song live because it needs backing vocals and Amanda can’t sing back up to herself. They played with the stipulation that the audience had to participate. They invited some lucky bitches on stage and they sang, but so did the crowd. It was rad.

Mandy Goes to Med School

Cover

Mrs. O

Delilah: OMG. I was crossing my fingers that they’d play this song. Amanda invited a special guest to come out and sing with her. It was amazing. There were also “dancers” who didn’t so much as dance as just pose. They sort of acted out the story of the song. They had great costumes and gave me something to look at when the biotch in front of our table kept swaying and covering up Amanda and Brian.

Good Day: One of my favorite songs to sing along with in the car. I was so impressed that the Dolls can keep their energy up through the constant switching of fast and slow songs.

The Kill: This is an older song not on any of the albums I have. I loved it instantly and will now scavenge the internet for it.

Sing: The “last song.” It was really amazing because every act came on stage and sang back up for the chorus. The song’s message is really inspirational without being cheesy.

Me & the Minibar: The first encore. Amanda performed this song solo. She has a way of making a rowdy audience completely silent for just a few moments. That’s how powerful she is on stage.

Half Jack: The second encore. Brian came back out and the pair played an awesomely long intro with just piano and drums and their intense looks at one another. You know it’s just them playing beats, one following the other, until Amanda starts belting the lyrics. Rad.

Girl Anachronism: The final encore. I love this song and no matter how many times I listen to it, I can’t sing along that well. It’s so fast. They performed it even faster live. An astounding feat, really.

And this concludes my Dresden Dolls fangirling moment.
Posted in Music, Travel | 3 Comments

In the Way of Progress

Posted on October 12, 2006 by Girl Friday

Isn’t it funny how time slips through our fingers?  I’m at work for 9 hours and sometimes I get nothing done.  I’m busy refreshing that page, those blogs, chatting with so-and-so, dealing with one problem after another.  The inbox is never a manageable size.  I thought of at least a dozen projects that I should have done before I leave for my mini-break.  I tried to tie up loose ends by 5:30, consequently I was very late to my meeting with the realtor.

How can I be responsible enough to be a homeowner when I still haven’t made my new fiscal year binders?  I have stacks of paperwork since July and I just hope my boss doesn’t have the guts to go through my stuff.  I didn’t finish (or even start) a project for my coworker Jake.  Instead I sent him a pitiful e-mail, returned the project to his box, and suggested he get Sara to help him.  She won an award today for being such a stellar employee.  I think she really deserves it.  She probably never surfs the web, and she’s certainly never late.  I’m sure she never talks smack about annoying students.  They bring her flowers.

I spent two hours discussing an a-hole student that comes in once a week to piss me off with my coworkers.  Today he asked if it would be possible for the grounds crew to mow the grass after 10:30 AM.  They obviously have nothing better to do than coordinate with his REM cycles.  He also asked them not to over-water the grass.  I asked the student if perhaps he’d like to quit his graduate program and start his own landscaping company.  Apparently he knows more about plant life and he’d be so mindful of sleeping residents that he’d do it at a time everyone like him is awake—at 2 AM.  He told the director he doesn’t own a cell phone but is thinking of getting one.  I told him not to bother because no one would ever call him.

Well…okay, I didn’t exactly say those things out loud.  I told my boss and the director.  They were highly amused.  Maybe if I learned to zip it for the majority of the day I’d actually be on top of my ever-expanding pile o’ work.  I’m going to try not to think about work until Tuesday.  There’s nothing I can do about it while I’m out—my mistakes and tardy assignments will all be waiting when I return.

Joy!

This is Girl Friday signing off.  Talk to you on Tuesday.  I’m taking a break!  I’ll be back with a Dresden Dolls’ adventure, one way or another!

Posted in Life, Office Stories | 2 Comments