For the unemployed and underpaid

DID YOU KNOW? You can get two-for-one Jamba Juice until the end of July using this coupon.

But in happier news, I just found out that there is a list of every Starbucks in the United States that is closing within the next year and one of them is the one at Shattuck and Cedar right by my old digs in Berkeley. I'm kind of not surprised that it's closing because there are five places to get cheaper, yuppier coffee within two blocks ("better" is a value judgment, but "cheaper" and "yuppier" are objective) and one of them is the original Peet's.


Seriously, when you open the Peet's website as of this writing, these are the first two words you see. "Yuppier" is totally objective.

I guess the two things I miss most about my old apartment are proximity to Monterey Market, the greatest grocery store in recorded history, was its proximity to the original Peet's Coffee and Tea. I always loved having people over who wanted coffee, because then I could be all, "Oh, if you hurry, you can make it to the original Peet's! It's only two blocks away at Oxford and Vine." I've heard that Cole Coffee near Ruthie and me is pretty good, except that they get mad if you don't pick out the exact beans you want or whatever; nevertheless it doesn't have the same cachet as referring someone to "the original Peet's."

Anyway, now that I don't live two blocks from the original Peet's anymore I'm trying to give up coffee again. Basically my entire life is a struggle to give up coffee, except before I had even started drinking it, at which point it was a struggle never to drink coffee. I've kind of worked my way off by drinking only black coffee, rationalizing that my current number one goal in life is to be as butch as possible and lattes are the number one impediment to that other than Project Runway reruns. Yet still, oh, the smell, it just gets me sometimes. The taste is usually just okay, and coffee always does a number on my stomach, but, dang, I've got some sort of like Pavlovian salivary response to the smell of coffee now and it's kind of freaking me out. My best guess is that I developed this response during my sophomore year at MIT, the promise of coffee being the only thing keeping me going through Thursday night 18.701 all-nighters.

Speaking of all-nighters, I'm only finishing up this entry because I'm currently in the throes of an insomnia plague. I've found a lot of things to do, like washing the dishes and getting a platinum medal on Wii shooting gallery and researching methods of killing ants and doing push-ups and starting bread dough, cutting tofu and sending out housewarming party invitations, and also unsuccessfully trying to hang up Pinchy again. Man, that's a lot. But finishing up my new blog entry, that's important too. At this point, I don't know if I should even go to sleep because I want to get to Berkeley Bowl around 10 AM so that I can avoid the crowds.

It's all very nostalgic, because Ruthie just woke up and I was like, "I don't have a problem!" except I was playing Wii Play instead of doing psets and she was going to the free clinic instead of the UA office, and "Should I sleep or should I wake now?" is such an undergrad thing to think. And really, I should be tired. I was in the city all day today. I saw a punk rock marching band and a glass fungus exhibit and the most expensive thrift store ever and ate a burrito with tongue and then the topper was the Ruthie and I split Sam's Sundae at Bi-Rite, which is chocolate ice cream, olive oil, sea salt, and whipped cream. I hypothesize that if you ask for one scoop of chocolate and one scoop of roasted banana ice cream, that would be the most fantastic gourmet ice cream experience of all time.

Once again, "yuppie" is objective.

Too much to dream last night

DID YOU KNOW? An early draft of The Dark Knight Returns had Dick Grayson as The Joker.

Ruthie and I saw The Dark Knight at midnight last night, which ultimately was probably a very good decision because it meant I was really tired when I got home at 3 AM, which meant that I was able to sleep, which probably would not have been possible otherwise. Seriously, it's the most disturbing movie I've seen since Requiem for a Dream, and although it didn't quite leave me in a fetal position muttering "Where's Spring?" like that movie did.

It's rated PG-13 and if you let your 13-year-old see The Dark Knight you are totally a bad person. Seriously, maybe it has no swearing or blood or drug use but no other film is going to make you consider and reconsider your own death more than The Dark Knight does. If I had to describe it in two words, I would choose "relentless" and "horrific." And you can combine those, too. "Relentlessly horrific" probably works. "Horrifically relentless," well, not quite so much, but kind of.

Because, seriously, the things The Joker does in this movie are horrific. Like, terrible. Inhuman. They're the worst things any villain has ever done in any superhero movie, ever, and it's not even close, because The Joker wants you think about them. It's not like tying a girl to some railroad tracks or something, it's like, present impossible moral situations to innocent victims at the moment of their death just for the sick pleasure of it. The phone. The barges. It's funny, because I was just thinking about Der Besuch Der Alten Dame yesterday and then The Joker has to go and basically recreate the plot of that play at one point but of course he puts his terrible, insane anarchic spin on it and it's almost too much to bear. And then when someone guesses wrong, Batman doesn't get to fly around the world backwards to reverse time and fix everything.

And, yo, Two-Face? I don't know if you heard. You probably heard he was in the movie, but did you hear that they wouldn't even show his face in any previews because it's too terrifying? AND IT IS. I almost couldn't watch his revelation scene. I got slightly more used to the grotesquerie as the film went on, but still, nothing could prepare me for the utter insanity of his last scene. Seriously, that's twisted.

But, really, even though I'm using adjectives like "horrific" and "insane" I really enjoyed the movie, and that's because it's relentless; it just keeps pounding and pounding away and getting worse and worse and worse and then like one percent better and then the movie is over. The aforementioned Alten Dame choice appears at what you already thought was a climax and then also comes with a 60-minute time limit. The only weak point, I thought, was the major chase scene, which got a little bit carried away in terms of relentlessness. They worked so hard making the Batmobile believable as a clumsy tank and then the Bat-cycle that pops out of it is doing like 180's up walls. Like, spend a little more time working on the other two wheels, Morgan Freeman. It was just a little too much.

And Heath Ledger, too. I really loved his crazy lip-sucking performance, although I feel like critical opinion would be a little more divided if he were still alive, and the character he was handed in the script was totally amazing. What would have been awesome to see would have been V for Vendetta except with Heath Ledger Joker as the hero instead of boring-ass V. My biggest problem with V for Vendetta (the movie, at least) is that there's no suspense because V is basically omnipotent and has infinite resources and it's like, duh, of course he can take down a corrupt goverment when he's unstoppable. The Joker has some elaborate schemes in The Dark Knight, but his execution thereof is pretty much believable. He doesn't really use anything other than knives, gasoline, explosives, and (briefly) a bazooka. And nonstop crazy. And a pencil.

Relentlessly horrific.

But, yeah, twelve hours later, those are my thoughts on The Dark Knight and I kind of want to think about it more and less, both at the same time, because it was awesome but because it's really painful and crazy to think about some parts of the movie. Anyhoo, you should go see it, not with your thirteen-year-old child because that would be horrible, but in the company of responsible adults, and several hours before you go to sleep. Like WALL-E, it is a seriously amazing movie. Unlike WALL-E, it is not uplifting at all and does not have Peter Gabriel on the soundtrack.

Missed it by that much

DID YOU KNOW? The gourmet salad ingredient lamb's quarters is also known as dungweed in some parts of the country.

I had a blog entry ready to go on the whole Vanity Fair thing where Ruth and I were going to propose an idea for next month's cover, but I hesitated because I was a little worried that it was too offensive for this generally unassuming blog. Anyway, in my vacillation some lame-o political cartoonist beat me to it, and was way more offensive to boot.

Idonno, I still like our idea better. We thought the picture should depict Senator McCain struggling to comb his hair and looking very wrinkly, standing next to a Terminator robot and yelling "Trollop cunt!" at it. I'm not sure why I think Cindy McCain should be represented in political cartoons by a Terminator robot, but it makes about as much sense as Jon Stewart's apparent insistence that Dick Cheney is actually a duck.

Yeah, the Vanity Fair cover. If nothing else, it resulted in me learning a lot about Angela Davis. Ruthie and I discussed it during dinner last night and I'm still struggling with a synthesis of especially quotable things that I remember from perusing blogs, which is basically my approach to forming all political opinions (if you can even consider this a political issue). Usually I get them confused with some of the cooking blogs I read and then I'm like "Oh man, Obama's move to the right on maple-glazed tempeh is totally not as drastic as people are making it out to be" (it is, however, delicious over brown rice with a little bit of fresh ginger added to the marinade).

In other news, I had to cross a picket line to get to work today, and by "cross" I mean "bike around." UC facilities workers are on strike and so far I haven't really felt any heat from that, but I'm a little curious as to when things are going to start going down. Speaking of workers of the world unite, I'm looking to get a Peace and Freedom Party sign for our front lawn just because Ruth has already expressed interest in putting up an Obama one and, as I've always said, I'm for everyone getting to say what they have to say, no matter who they are or what it is (wait, maybe that should guide my opinion on the New Yorker cover too).

So I went to the party's website and found out that, duh, we won't officially select a candidate until August 23rd. I mean, I might have chosen a slightly less apocalyptic font than they did to convey that, but whatever. I scrolled a little further down and discovered that there are still four people in the running (and major news networks are lamenting the end of primary coverage): my pick, Gloria La Riva, Cynthia McKinney, Brian Moore and... Ralph Nader.

You know, I'm glad that my political party has moved beyond nominating people who are currently incarcerated for President, and I like that no other political party would have the guts to display the subheading "In Jail? You Can Vote!" so prominently on their website. But seriously, guys? If you ask me to put a "Socialist Ralph Nader 2008" sign in my front lawn? I'm not sure I can do that.

Perhaps it is today that I have discovered shame.