Company provided work attire

Hey you guys, sorry it's taken so long for me to check out your blog. I really enjoyed reading it last night, I went through the whole thing and left comments on older entries. I really like your reviews on movies, I might have to counter with something of the sort. I'm looking forward to much debate over them. I figured it would be more convenient if I switched over to this blogsite because you, Daniel and mom are the only ones who read it and this way we don't have to leave comments anonymously.

I found this video a couple of weeks ago, it cracks me up every time. The cat's mannerisms are spot on. Whoever made it has terrific talent. My favorite part about it are the cat's giant eyeballs and his purring. If you haven't seen it already, enjoy.



Come December 16th, all employees of Applebees are required to purchase new, all-black dress shirts on their own time and with their own money. The red and black polo shirts each employee were given upon being hired will no longer be allowed. This burns me up. What was wrong with our polo shirts? Every employee wore the same one, they looked more uniform than all of us walking around in mismatched and random dress shirts, and they were free. This isn't the first time they've done this either. When football season started, all servers, hosts, and bartenders were required to buy a football jersey to wear on Sundays and Mondays. With their own money as well. I found one for nineteen bucks at TJ Maxx across the street fifteen minutes before work. But this time I wont have it. A thirty dollar dress shirt is a tenth of my paycheck.

So what I did, I took my old, black Barros Pizza polo shirt and colored out the embroidery with a Sharpie. Everytime I go into work, I just pin my "Hello Neighbor! My name is CHAD" button over it and no one's the wiser.

Speaking of Applebee's here are a couple of random facts I have learned about the restaraunt since I began working there.

First, the little packages of Applebees Riblet Wetnaps that are included with messy fingerfoods like buffalo wings or baby back ribs make for optimal toilet paper. When nature calls and I take my ten, I grab a few of them from the expo line and head for the back.

Second, the fattiest part of any salad is predominately it's dressing. The Oriental Chicken Salad is delicious at Applebees, with ramen noodles and walnuts and asian greens, except most people don't realize that the oriental dressing is made out of only chicken fat and sugar. That's it. Chicken fat and sugar.

Third, approximately one fourth of all the employees at our restaraunt (save for the cooks) have at least one D.U.I. A few even have three. Three of my coworkers rely on taking a taxi to get to and from work. And yet they all hang out after work drinking 24 ounce glass after 24 ounce glass and driving home anyways. How does one afford living with two/three D.U.I. convictions hanging over their head? I got slammed with a minor infraction ticket in August for $170 and I'm still trying to make up for it in the ol' savings account. Sure enough, it was on my way to hang out with some of them. I've conveniently flaked every time since then. I'm convinced that Applebee's employees=bad juju.

Here's some reviews on art and literature I've been enjoying this last week or so..

Literature


God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian by Kurt Vonnegut
B-
My good buddy Brian gave me this book for my birthday last week. He raves about Kurt Vonnegut's work but I've never had the chance to check any of them out. This novel is only about 80 pages long, and is written as a translation from a sequence of radio broadcasts Kurt Vonnegut performed in Texas, from a lethal injection facility. The premise behind the whole novel is that Dr. Kevorkian is performing near death operations on Vonnegut and resuscitating him so that he may speak of who he met at St. Peter's gates. He is never allowed into Heaven. I haven't spent much time researching the novel, I'm not sure if any operations were ever performed but his recounts of meeting James Earl Ray, Sir Isaac Newton and Adolf Hitler are hilarious, often nonsensical and light-heartedly playful. It's a good read if you're bored near a mall and need to kill time at a Borders. I read it in about thirty minutes.


The Gum Thief by Douglas Coupland
C+
I have been following Douglas Coupland's work since I was a junior in high school. I've heard he was the author who coined the term "generation x" and his novels have always held a finger on the pulse of late twentieth century pop culture, always riddled with cynicism. His novels are often set in the British Columbia province or Washington, with characters usually depicting middle class suburbanites. The Gum Thief was an episilatory sequence of letters written between two Staples employees: Roger, a middle-aged, twice divroced alcoholic and his twenty-something year old gothic coworker, Bethany. Interspersed are various letters written between the characters to Roger's ex wife, his daughter Zoe, Beth's mother DeeDee and chapters from Roger's novel Glove Pond. While it's informal structure was fresh, it is something Coupland has touched on many other times, and often, more successfully than in The Gum Thief. While I enjoy his abandonment of formal syntax and oddball storylines, this one didn't resonate as much as some of his earlier work. If you need a place to start with Coupland, I highly recommend the novel Life After God. I recommend it to anyone and everyone. It's short, thought-provoking, concentrated and what I believe as our generation's answer to Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Save The Gum Thief for later, after you've developed an appreciation for Coupland's work, it will probably leave a better taste in your mouth.

Audio


The Alchemy Index- Volumes 1 and 2 (Fire and Water) as performed by Thrice
B
When I was in high school, namely a freshman and sophomore, I was nuts for the Irvine-based metal/punk quartet. Their first album, Identity Crisis pushed the limits on local punk and hardcore acts by implementing faster shredding, harmonized riffs and gang vocals. The lyrics were promising and well written. Most of it's songs became anthems among my peers and friends. Some dawned Thrice tattoos, other's began emulating their sound in their own respective bands. Their second release, The Illusion of Safety, abandoned their preliminary punk/up-beat influences in exchange for a heavier, darker and experimental sound. It worked flawlessly. No sooner had people became familiar with Identity Crisis when they were thrown for a loop with TIOS's drastic timing changes, key changes and more poetic rhetoric. Every song sounded orchestrated, rather than mass produced. After TIOS's release, the band went on to sort of, well, lose itself in it's own rhetoric I think. The experimentation and evolution of the band started working backwards, rather than forward. Or maybe I'm just biased. Nevertheless, I sort of renounced my affection for the band and lost interest. When I heard of their latest project, The Alchemy Index, I wrote it off. But I was pleasantly surprised. What it is, it's a compilation of four experimental EP's, each one depicting a specific element: Fire, water, earth and wind. They are sonically supposed to embody each one. The two EP's released last month were Fire and Water. Fire being heavier instrumentations with "searing" guitars and punctuating drums, while Water is characterized by digitally synthesized melodies and flowing rythms. I've paid almost no attention to the Fire EP, but the Water is pure gold. They have done a magnificent job at creating an innovative concept album.


Pennybridge Pioneers as performed by Millencolin
A
Technically, this is a fairly old album. The first time I heard it was my freshman year of high school, Devin and I were nuts over it. But I was listening to my Ipod at school on shuffle and when I heard one of it's songs, I listened to the entire album immediately and felt the need to mention it. I love Millencolin. Their songs are catchy, light-hearted and the vocals are unique. When I hear Millencolin, I imagine four Swedish teddy bears in barbershop quartet outfits playing punk rock music. Don't ask. But I can listen to them any time of day and feel better about everything after having done so. Surefire hits from the album would be the affectionate "Fox" written about a Moped scooter, the biting and cynical "Penguins and Polarbears", and my personal favorite "Duckpond", a ballad for being left behind.