Presenting... "The most vile act ever!" And to think we go nuts when someone head-butts a ref. Did I just say "go nuts"? Er, bad choice of words.

So I found out the last company I worked for is planning to liquidate its assets. And, to little surprise, there's a class action stockholder lawsuit brewing.

Leaves me with decidedly mixed emotions. It was the first "e-tail" company I worked for, in a time when these companies were beginning to break big. I spent a year and a half there, feverishly cranking away to launch the site, and then to redesign it 6 months later. I worked with awesome people, in a great work environment, and was pretty damn well compensated. I was there when it was 40 people in the San Francisco office, when they flipped the switch. I was there when the employee count got bloated to 200 or so, when the company went public on NASDAQ. I was there as the stock tumbled, and continued to do so. Each time we'd think it had hit a solid floor, we were proven staggeringly wrong. When the window on the employee stock purchase plan was closing, and others cashed out without stock because it had sunk from $27 to $3 in 6 months, I kept my money in, thinking it was a sign of loyalty and patience, when it was a neon sign of naïveté. My options, which I thought were an iron-clad lock when I exercised them at 50 cents a share, went underwater.

All things considered, though, I took away so much more than what I've tithed to the worthless stock. I made some connections which helped me jump to my current job. I was able to establish a solid reputation and a great wage for what I do – for whatever that's worth when I next look for work. And I didn't go nuts and buy a Boxster or lease a $2000/mo. apartment in San Francisco. And I'm sure I didn't lose as much money as civilian stockholders out there who got nailed.

The company sold a necessary product and coupled it with some first-rate medical content that rivaled WebMD and Medscape. But they built a huge infrastructure they couldn't support, they turned down a prime brick-and-mortar partnership opportunity (at least one that I know of), made other partnerships which didn't pan out well enough, and they pissed money away in customer acquisition costs and the then-in-vogue practice of making overvalued agreements with AOL, Yahoo! and iVillage.

But it was an invaluable learning experience. From the mole's-eye-view of my cubicle, it was an interesting ride.

RIP PLRX.

In Memoriam: Paxton Warner

Truth be told, I didn't know Pax all that well. But he was an irreverent, ebullient, bug-eyed, mustachioed silver fox in a cowboy hat. More often than not, every Thursday he'd be with the rest of us regulars at Club Fusetti – wailing his favorite country songs (Steve Earle, Johnny Cash, George Strait, Willie Nelson), stomping around with his boots, playing the spoons on his knee during the instrumental breaks, drinking and smoking too much, rattling off ribald Shel Silverstein poems verbatim. At the end of the night, he'd cruise off in his Cadillac with horns on the grill (I shit you not) and the vanity plates PAX2000 – his sly double meaning of peace in the new millennium and his name (2000 pounds comprising a ton, natch). To paraphrase Plautus, he was a parade.

Last Thursday, while singing at another karaoke bar, he suffered a heart attack and fell into a coma. Today, they took him off life support, and he passed. I couldn't help but feel more than a touch of sadness, for his on again-off again girlfriend Suzie, for his two 12-year-old boys, one of whom will be going to live with Pax's brothers in Michigan. From the tales I heard, he lived three lifetimes in the span of one, joyously and with individual abandon.

Tonight at the club, they passed around a jar to help pay for his hospital bills and take care of his sons. I dropped some money in, sang a couple of his favorite songs – "Folsom Prison Blues" and "You Never Even Called Me By My Name" – and came home with a knot in my stomach.

The karaoke bar will be that much more boring for the loss of Pax. Peace, buddy.

Just saw State and Main today. Very funny movie. W.H. Macy is my hero – and not only because his wife is the hottie from SportsNight. David Paymer was awesome in the film. Philip Seymour Hoffman is the man.

Damn, I want to do what they're doing. Whose salad do I have to toss to get that kind of gig? Oh wait, I'm already a corporate whore. One john at a time.

I had a dream last night that I was shot in the arm. My family was all there, yet I was the one who had it together enough to pick up the phone and call 911. They told me an ambulance would be there in an hour. Because I was in an "urban" area. I haven't had a nightmare like that in a while.

So yesterday I dragged my friend Dan to Milpitas, a suburban city near San Jose, to catch The Crush in a Shakespeare play. I'm not a Spanish scholar, but I believe "Milpitas" roughly translates as "shitty nondescript village with a mall." Not just any mall, mind you, but the Brobdingnagian Great Mall of the Bay Area.

We ventured to the mall before the show to check out a place called Dave & Buster's. I would not wish a visit to Dave & Buster's upon my worst enemy. It's the mongoloid test-tube satanspawn of TGI Friday's, Walt Disney World, Circus Circus, and Chuck E. Cheese's. It's like a sports bar, only you can't follow any of the games on the big-screen TVs because of the cacophony of the cavernous arcade, batting cages, virtual golf driving range, dining rooms, and last but not least, the hordes of suburban-trash families in attendance, because this is highfalutin entertainment in Milpitas. We enjoyed some mediocre pub grub and ventured post haste to see some hot live Bard action.

The Crush did a great job, but the rest of it was decidedly blah. Note to all aspiring directors out there: Unless you're staging a Tennessee Williams play, stay the fuck away from using Southern dialects, especially if your cast can't pull it off. Southern dialects have been completely played out for years. Also, conveying Shakespeare clearly is enough a challenge without putting it through a redneck filter. The director even tried to have Nick Bottom affect a Cajun accent, with disastrous results. I'm planning to get out and audition again after a 6-year respite; I pray to God I can find better productions than this to audition for.