The performance has come and gone. I had fun, though the majority of the crowd had dispersed by the time I was up to sing. Dammit. I hope to grab some photos soon. No audio, though - didn't see any camcorders in the audience.

Leave it fuckin' Fox to come up with this. What's next - Who Wants to Club a Cavewoman Over the Head and Drag Her Back to Your Pad?

One of the Kings of Rock was murdered tonight. RIP JMJ.

VCR Alert: Warren Zevon is on Letterman tonight. I haven't heard of anybody doing this since Michael Landon was on Carson right before he passed. I imagine it'll be a slightly surreal show.

Yesterday, after the final rehearsal for my Halloween singing gig, I went searching for the last couple of touches on my Jake Blues costume: skinny black tie and Wayfarer knockoffs. (I found a perfect hat before rehearsal.) Unfortunately, I entered the heart of mall darkness in Daly City, clawing my way through a Casual Male Big & Tall, Ross Dress for Less, Target Greatland, and Burlington Coat Factory, and coming up empty-handed. With each new store I encountered, I could feel my dander getting progressively infused with a mental napalm. Let me say for the record: if any of you hear me considering a move to Daly City, just beat the living crap out of me.

Nothing like starting the day by getting your big toe shot up with anaesthetic. I went to a podiatrist to get an ingrown toenail taken care of. Now, it's just Neosporin, Band-Aids, and the occasional soak in warm salt water. It all started about 3 weeks ago when I botched a toenail clipper job. From here on out, I'll leave the pedicure to the professionals. Or just let my toenails grow like Howard Hughes.

Yes, the Giants were destined to break our hearts all over again.

96 wins. Dispatching the routinely excellent Atlanta Braves. Pimp-slapping the St. Louis Cardinals. And it came down to 2 innings from a World Series title. And the wheels just came off. The first 177 games of the season were great. It was just the last 2 that killed them. But it was quite a ride.

On top of that, Blogger took a dump on me - some kind of database errors. After I had composed a post for 20 minutes. If it's not disappearing archives, it's fucked-up DBs. When I have free time (ha!) I may look into Moveable Type.

The one highlight of the weekend: Bowling for Columbine. By turns, it left me laughing my ass off, dropping my jaw in astonishment, and heartsick.

Jesus H. Tap-Dancing Christ, that was a horrible World Series game. Are the Giants destined to break all our hearts again, continuing the great tradition from the '62 line-drive out and the '89 spanking from the A's? I will be looking for morale boosting from Cubs and Red Sox fans. Oy.

The day's just gotten better. A coworker in the cubicle across from me - a really sharp engineer and funny guy - cleaned out his workspace and left. By choice? I doubt it, as he was accompanied to the building's front door. Bums me out. From my quasi-knowledgeable point of view, he did a great deal to upgrade the company's site and have it well-prepared for the holiday season. But if anything, he was a staunch nonconformist, which may have hastened his exit but heightened his charm.

Aw, crap. Now Richard Harris has died, too.

MSNBC Sucks, cont'd: "Sniper porn," as Michael Moore so beautifully termed it, has pre-empted his appearance on Donahue for the second time, until Monday now. Dumb shits. We could see an engaging town hall meeting that discusses the things symptomatic of the culture of guns and fear that preceded and abetted this whole shooting spree. Or we could hear from Bo fucking Dietl one more time. This pretty much tears it; these solipsistic pits of white noise known as "24-hour news channels" are useless about 95% of the time.

On top of that, Sen. Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash, a week and a half before the elections which could swing control of the Senate back to the Republicans. He was probably the most progressive voice in the Senate, a proud and unrepentant liberal. A horrible and heartbreaking loss for Minnesota, as well as politics.

Two scenarios I've been considering which would blow my sports-fan mind to bits: World Champion San Francisco Giants, and the Boston Expos. The former is something I haven't prepared for, as I am lifelong Giants fan and ergo a homegrown pessimist. The latter is just a bizarre, only-in-Bud-Selig's-baseball idea (anyone remember that freakish trial balloon called radical realignment?). I hope the Expos stay in Montréal one more year - it gives me a great excuse to go there.

Join the party!

I said I was going to redesign the blog, and by cracky, it's done. Took me a bit of the weekend and today to play with the format. All CSS, no tables. This was fun. Hope you like it.

Freaking great, MSNBC. I was all ready to double your viewing audience by watching Michael Moore on Phil Donahue's show, and you decide to pre-empt it for the utter non-news called "Hunt for the Sniper: Speak Clearly, Your Cell Phone Sucks." Jackasses. Can you let the police do their job and cut the speculation crap?

I got an assload of hits to the blog yesterday by people searching for anything on Terilyn Joe, the San Francisco San Jose anchorwoman who was fired the other day from KNTV NBC3 NBC11. Er, whatever. Anybody who watches NBC11 News doesn't really want news anyway; they just want a way to feel slightly superior to people who get their news from Entertainment Tonight. The switching of NBC affiliates in the S.F. market this year – along with the resulting New Coke channel branding – is one for the record books. KRON, which was the NBC affiliate for 52 years and is now independent, seems to be eating everyone's lunch so far by putting Dr. Phil on at 8 p.m. Interesting counterprogramming.

I busted my ass to get to work early today. Mere hours after my last post, I found out there was going to be an informal weekly class on Linux happening at the office, to which I said, "Hosanna! I shall finally get to wrap my soft, unused brain tendrils around this newfangled 'penguin language' gewgaw." (Why yes, I do often cry out in archaic verbiage when excited.) Alas, I hustled into the office (a 50-minute drive, mind you) and found out, oh, it's been cancelled today. My crap-on-a-stick-sunny-side-up breakfast was ready.

It wouldn't have been so bad if I wasn't bound to stay here into the early evening – though it's the killing-time thing that's bugging me, not the reason I'm staying late. We've got a sort of ad hoc house band which plays on special occasions. It'll be convening on Halloween, and I've been invited to sit in and sing on a couple of tunes. Thus, I've spent copious amounts of time the last week or two caterwauling "Werewolves of London" and "People Are Strange" at home and in the car. Tonight is my first rehearsal with the band. This is the first time I'll be singing without the benefit of a karaoke machine and mass quantities of liquor to anesthetize the ears of the audience (it's a daytime / at-work / bone-dry event). To paraphrase CSN at Woodstock, I'm scared shitless. Ho ho.

And on top of that, I don't know what the hell I'm going to wear for the occasion. Last year, I got the Fat Vegas Elvis jumpsuit out of mothballs, so that's played out. I'm thinking I can recycle the wardrobe I bought for Caesar – black single-breasted suit and black fedora – and buy some Wayfarer knock-offs and a skinny black tie. Voilà! Jake Blues. I'd just have to work on my cartwheels and backflips.

And I thought Ellen Feiss was whacked out. Nothing compared to the dipshits at Microsoft PR who tried their own "switch" ad. Who broke the story of the stock photo on the "switch" page? A Slashdotter, of course. Entirely too funny.

Speaking of switching, I want to mess around with Linux (I'm leaning towards Red Hat for no particular reason). I can: 1) partition my PC and install Red Hat on it or 2) get a cheap-ass PC and use it as a Linux sandbox. Anyone have opinions and/or words of advice on this? Email me.

On the 18th try, we finally fucking killed Julius Caesar. And now to sleep. For about 3 straight days. While my ingrown toenail heals. Ugh. I'll fill you in later.

Mark it down now, provided you have a 2003 calendar handy: Friday, February 14. (Yes, Valentine's Day.) Check local listings.

I talked with Fernando. No, I'm not going to tell you the ultimate outcome of my advice. Yes, I'm a big freakin' tease. If you're dying to know, email me.

I got the third call. HOLY SHIT.

After the second call, my pulse started racing like crazy. Not too long after, maybe 15 minutes or so, the phone rang with a 212 (New York) number on the ID. Per their instructions I picked up on the third ring and there was Meredith Vieira.

I won't post any spoilers. At this point, I don't know if I got the question right or not, but my gut instinct says yes. I kind of flailed, though, and the Google search came up slightly inconclusive, especially since I was racing against the clock. I'm sure Fernando will call after the show to discuss. When I get an airdate for the show, I'll be sure to post it here.

I got the second call – Fernando's in the hot seat. Holy shit.

For the Millionaire call on Wednesday, I had to be in the office by 7 a.m. For anyone who knows my work schedule, that's laughably early; hell, I don't even get up until 7:30 on most days. And since work is about 30 miles away, I decided to get a hotel room near the office to aid my early-morning commute. So I spent a night in a fairly good hotel room that had shitty A/C – I turned it on, and reverberations rattled the plumbing in the bathroom, so I had to keep it off while I sweat like crazy in my sleep and my subconscious was haunted by an infomercial starring the late "TV's Robert Urich." (I keep the TV on most nights so I don't have to listen to the whirrings of the CPAP that helps me sleep soundly.) Got to work at the appointed hour and got the first call from New York at 9:30, which confirmed I'd be around by the phone for the whole taping time (10:45 until 4 Pacific time). I would get a second call when Fernando gets in the hot seat, and then if there were a third call, Meredith Vieira would be on the line and it would be showtime. I waited and did my work, until I got a call from Fernando at about 3:58, telling me he'd be held over until Thursday. By this time, I was just zonked, so I went home an hour later, watched the Giants whoop up on the Cardinals early and hold on late, then passed out around 9ish. No hotel last night, so I had to get my dead ass up at 5:30, jump in the shower, then zoom to work where it was just me and the crickets. I got the first phone call at 7:30 this morning. They start taping at 10:30, so I'm nailed to my chair till 4 again. I'm currently processing the venti-sized mocha I just inhaled, hoping to gain some lucidity in case the second call comes. I hope I'm not completely inchoate by the time Caesar starts up tonight for its final week. If I am, though, it may help my performance.

Man, there are times I wish I could dictate my blog extemperaneously into a recording device, usually when I'm driving home. Because once I get to the abode, I lose my motivation and go to sleep. It's the times lately when I've been coming home from a play performance or a date, turning numerous things over in my mind while blasting Royal Crown Revue or Meat Loaf or A Tribe Called Quest or Pet Sounds on the stereo. Zooming to the Richmond Bridge three nights a week, past the Safeway distribution center with the queer smell of mass-baked sponge dough wafting through my open windows.

Considering what to do when Caesar gets offed for the last time on Saturday. (Well, in the short-term, I'll be sleeping. A great deal.) Wondering why dating, like a date told me a week or so ago, is such a mystery. It's a mystery and it's an occasional chore, and it's a social dance in which I feel oafish and unsure of myself. And I wonder what the hell it is I'm looking for. I date, and it's fun, but it feels like something's missing. I'm not expecting soul-mate material every time, but when things don't completely click, I feel like a failure for some reason. Like I need to propel a relationship, or give more, or fill the awkward silences with something that I can never find in myself. When it doesn't work, it's because I did something wrong. And I don't know why I feel like that. I thought I had gotten over the scars of adolescence, the feelings of complete inadequacy and undesirability, but every so often the emotions strike me, and I feel like one big throbbing exposed nerve.

Uh, well, at least I got excused from jury duty. My phone-a-friend duties will happen as scheduled on Wednesday. I need to install the Google toolbar on my desktop before then. In the meantime, it's about 200 degrees out here. Where the hell is autumn already?

Provided I don't get seated for jury duty next week – summonsed on Monday, delayed from July to visit Hanne – I'm going to be a phone-a-friend on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Fernando is a very nice, personable guy – a firefighter from Long Beach who I met at the tryouts in Sunnyvale; he took a road trip up with his wife and kids to try out. He didn't pass the written test in Sunnyvale, so he continued the vacation by driving up to Seattle, the next stop on the Millionaire tryouts tour. He passed the test up there and just got the call last week. I'll get to work early, keep a browser window open to Google, and wait for the call should he need to use it. (Watching the first couple of weeks of syndicated Millionaire, the questions have gotten a bit tougher, and those lifelines get used earlier a lot more.) I told Fernando my definite strength is pop culture stuff (I just hope he doesn't get a boy-band question or something that would expose my nascent creeping curmudgedonly-dude-who-doesn't-know-modern-pop-music mindset), and I know how to use Google fairly well – I've been practicing almost every day on searching with regard to questions I didn't know. Being a phone-a-friend is a fairly clutch position; each contestant is asked to provide a list of 5 people for this lifeline. As far as I know, I'm Fernando's only option thus far. All I can do is be relaxed and try to help him as much as I can within a 30-second timespan.