| May 19, 2000 | My Sudden Gwen Stefani Obsession |
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Let's get this straight, I have never been a huge fan of No Doubt's music. But the other night when I was out with Selena and JP to see Tsar play at a Hollywood club called Vinyl, those two pop junkies (Selena and JP) started talking about Gwen Stefani. "Why won't anyone marry poor Gwen Stefani?!" one of them said. I listened as they discussed things I knew nothing about, things I had maybe heard about but had allowed to fall under my radar as pop tidbits about things that I just wasn't interested in. They excitedly discussed No Doubt's video for "A Simple Kind of Life," and how everything in the video is about how Gwen wants to get married and have a baby, but that none of her boyfriends were at all down with that. The men in the video all run away from her and look at her like she has three heads. It's also weird because Gwen used to date Tony (the Indian guy in No Doubt), but they broke up and are still friends, but as JP pointed out -- you need to notice that the baby Gwen picks up at the end of the video looks like he is Indian.
Labels: camille, jp, music, selena, video, women posted by Jess Barron @ 5:44 PM 
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| March 29, 2000 | The Queen of Whale Cay, and Other Office Oddities |
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I almost forgot to tell you about this really weird book that Camille and Tim were talking about the other day while we were hanging out in the Scour office. It's called The Queen of Whale Cay, and you had better click on the link and read the description, because I cannot possibly describe it. I'll give you the first sentence of their description to titilate you in case you're feeling too lazy to click: "British eccentric Marion "Joe" Carstairs (1900-1993) was a world-class speedboat racer, heiress to the Standard Oil fortune, ruler of her own Caribbean Island ... and a cross-dressing lesbian." And be sure to take a look at the cover up close. Did you notice the little doll on her shoulder? Why that's her inseperable companion -- Lord Tod Wadley. I'm not kidding. Of course, I think she sounds like a really interesting woman. She had an affair with Marlene Dietrich, after all. I added the book to my Amazon.com wish list, in case anyone out there is feeling benevolent... Wow, I learn so many unexpected things at my office... For instance, did you know that Moffit the Daggit from Battlestar Gallactica was played by a chimp named Evie? See this other post for more details. posted by Jess Barron @ 6:01 PM
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| Scour=Seinfeld 90210 |
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I really *am* living inside a cartoon, or perhaps some twisted-micro-topic-dissecting Seinfeldian sitcom. Yesterday at the office (i.e. Scour.com in the 90210), Camille was telling me about her bizarre mayonnaise phobias (brought on by working at a sandwhich shop with a woman who licked the spoon while transferring a large vat of said oily-eggy substance into smaller containers) while we were snacking in our office's kitchen (which like kitchens at most decent start-up companies is always well-stocked with Pop Tarts, Red Vines, Kit Kats -- I couldn't find a website for Kit Kats, but I did find The Kit Kat Ranch, a bordello in Nevada, Corn Nuts, M&Ms, Pretzels, assorted sodas, and Perrier), when Kris wandered in. Overhearing our conversation, she said, "You think that's gross? You wanna her something really gross?" and then proceeded to tell us about the "universal sponge." According to Kris, one of her girlfriends is married to a guy who used to do something very dubious in his bachelor days. When this friend of Kris's was first dating this guy, she discovered that he would use a sponge to clean his toilet, and then use that very same sponge to wash dishes. It was his "universal sponge." Camille and I were shocked and repulsed. Caroline (who was photocopying in the vicinity) could not believe it either. The way we see it, sponges can make a progressive one-way transition through household tasks (for instance, you can use a sponge to wash dishes for a week or so and then when it gets older it can be used for cleaning counter tops or the sink and then when its even older, it can be used to clean in the bathroom), BUT once a sponge is used for something other than dishwashing, it CANNOT make the move back to being a dishwashing sponge. There need to be some lines drawn. You should not have a "universal sponge." Apparently, this guy has learned the error of his ways and now subscribes to the separatist transitional theory of sponge usage. In any case, I'm just glad I never ate dinner at his house. Later in the evening, I was eating take out vegetarian in the conference room with the rest of the web development team, when it came up that I had gone to school at Vassar (that kind of stuff always comes up -- that's precisely why people go to sorta pretentious-y schools like Vassar in the first place) and Ilya, one of our site's founding engineers, said, "Oh. You went to Vassar? I know some people who went to Vassar." "Were they guys or girls?" I asked. (A fairly reasonable question.) "I'm not sure," he responded. "You don't know your friends' genders?!?" I started cracking up. He explained that he couldn't remember which of his friends went to Vassar, and therefore since he didn't know which friends were the ones, he wasn't sure of the genders. I guess it makes sense. Sort of. From there, we heartily launched into the topic of whether robots had genders. We all agreed that we naturally assumed that R2-D2 and C-3PO (sci-fi savants the web engineers immediately announced they were played by Kenny Baker and Anthony Daniels) were male, although R2's gender is left somewhat ambiguous. Out of nowhere, John insisted that Moffit the Daggit from BattleStar Galactica was played by a monkey. Nobody else believed him. "That's an urban legend. Moffit was just a puppet," Shac said. So, we pulled up the Internet Movie Database on the overhead projector, and did a search for Battlestar Galactica, and found that Moffit wasn't listed. That didn't solve any of our problems. "Does the IMDB not list animal actors?" I wondered, appalled at this unfair treatment. Sure enough, we looked up Lassie, and there wasn't even a mention of the series' star. Then we returned to our Daggit debate, and after some dedicated searching on John's part, we found The Battlestar Galactica episode guide which tells that Moffit the Daggit is played by "Evie the chimp." Score one for John. Labels: camille, la, losangeles, scour, vassar, web posted by Jess Barron @ 4:55 PM
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