Anyway... I was speaking of java. More specifically, I was perusing said java. Man - peruse is such a twinky word. I'm going to stop using it now. Peruse has been retired. Done, dead to me. Over. finit. Finished. I shall pursue a word to replace peruse.
(editor's note - this is where the ADD kicked in and a completely new train of thought was jumped on)
I spent a lot of time in edit this week banging my head on a keyboard watching aggravating, frustrating, non-working videos. (which, after much coaxing, did finally come around to the 'moderately awesome' stage) When I wasn't banging my head, I was watching the pinwheel of death while footage rendered. Rendering is the most aggravating part of working in video. In order for playback on a video to be clean, the footage has to be "rendered" - this can take anywhere from a minute to an hour. Sometimes it's an overnight thing. There's a little progress bar that charts the progress but that bar is a big fatty McFatHead liar - it will say 7 minutes, but really it means 45. It will say 1 minute, but really it means an hour. It builds hope and then crushes you like a beer can on a strongman's forehead.
I don't exactly know what I was doing when I made up this song but at some point during my stint in Cambodia, I mean, at my last job, this song got stuck in my head. Now every time I see the render progress bar, it pops in my head.
::ahem:: ::clears throat::
(Sung to the tune of the dreidel song )
Render, render, render
Oh render I will play
And when the render's ready
Oh video I will play
WITHOUT FAIL .... literally kids - EVERY SINGLE TIME I render, I sing this song in my head. Do you have any idea how many times a day I see that freaking render status bar? Do you realize how often I must sing that little ditty? They should make this goy an honorary Jew for the amount of times I shlep that schmaltzy song around in my head. I can kvetch with the best of em so I say bat mitzvah me up. (clearly my yiddish ain't too shabby either! thanks princeton!)
Speaking of kvetching... I was searching for music this morning and I love checking out people's imixes to get ideas for new stuff to listen to but holy cow! Some of the names those kids on come up with for their iMix titles! "White egg with nothing inside"... "Dead Flowers in Memphis" ... "Instruh Mental" (ooohh.. I get it!)
In my day we just labeled em Mix Tape #1, Mix Tape #2, Mix Tape #3.....
kids.... such smendriks
So today at Barnes and Noble, a book caught my eye and I burst out laughing in the middle of the store. It's always awesome to draw attention to the fact that you're a little nuts by belly laughing right by the self-help books.
This was the book - now settle in for story hour.
One night after work, back when I was at VH1, my friend Jill and I convinced our buddy Steve to come to Bennigans and have a drink with us. We loved hitting up the tourist crap bars in times square because they had the best happy hours. And they were usually relatively empty. I mean, seriously - who goes to TGIFriday's in Times Square? (answer - a shockingly huge amount of people..... why would you go to nyc and go to TGIFridays?? It makes no sense) But Jill and I had scoped out Bennigans which was on 8th and 48th-ish - just far enough off the times square madness but still a crappy chain with an awesome happy hour. Perfect for a quick "decompress" beer before heading home.
Our friend Steve hardly ever came out with us so this particular night jill and I were all happy that we finally dragged this dude out for a beer. We take him to Bennigans and figure we'd start there and see what ensued.
Almost right when we get to the bar, an older guy walks up to our table and tells us he's a producer from 20/20. He has a crew with him and hands us his card so we know he's legit. Plus, he has that tired old dinosaur look of an old timer news producer so we pretty much believed him without the cameras and business card. He asks Steve if he would play pool with this guy for a segment they were producing for 20/20 - Jill and I say it's cool if they take our friend as long as they buy us a round. They did and so we happily sent Steve off upstairs to play pool.
So Steve is playing pool with this guy, casually chatting with him, cameras are rolling, nothing much in terms of excitement though. Jill and I are chatting with the producer and he's telling us that his daughter did an internship with VH1 and it was the worst experience of her life. Apparently she had to transcribe a bunch of tapes and didn't get to go on a lot of shoots.... uh, yea dude - that's what being an intern is. He actually gave us his card with this almost sympathetic "if you ever want to get out of there" tone.
After a few beers, we look over and Steve is doing an interview with the producer and the guy he was playing pool with. We can tell they're breaking some sort of news to him but Steve is pretty much the coolest cucumber ever and barely even blinks.... the producer comes over and tells us that oh, btw, the dude your friend is playing pool is actually a chick. We're like, "yea and?"
Steve was completely not phased, Jill and I are like, whatever and the producer and camera crew are a little flustered because there's absolutely zero shock value at the "reveal" - by going to Bennigans they told us thought they would find bible thumping tourists from Kansas who would be simply shocked to find out that this he is a she and throw a fit on camera. Instead, they found 3 jaded new yorkers who couldn't have cared less if it was a turtle in disguise.
Turns out the he-she was a girl who had spent a year living her life as a man as research for this book she wrote called "Self-Made Man." 20/20 was doing a special on her - they were looking to gather "shocked" reactions. She must have had a pretty good press agent because we saw a lot of her in the following months. It was like - oh, there's that super boring chick from the bar!
I never read the book so I'm not sure what she discovered in her research but ummm... yea, isn't that sort of a dead horse? Women and men are treated differently. Also, a table has four legs and a dog barks. And Scott Kelly will hunt birds.
Of course, we never got Steve to come to Bennigans with us again. And sadly - they closed the place down shortly after.
Sigh.....
there goes one of nyc's greatest establishments (in the crappy cheap beer category!)
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