I am entering the final planning stages for an event i'm working on and we had a meet and greet night this week to recruit volunteers to help us execute everything. Hilariously, I received this email today to access a spreadsheet summarizing the volunteer involvement:
One person was actually listed as ""very, very special".
Cabbie: ben D is down for dinner tonight Cabbie: roasted chicken, kale/garlic salad Cabbie: he's going to get chicken, im going to grab kale/garlic Cabbie: any other thoughts on sides? JeffreyBeaumont: some kind of potato? Cabbie: haha i was just thinking that Cabbie: roasted potatoes? JeffreyBeaumont: yes
BenD: ok change of plans YOU ARE BUYING THE CHICKEN BenD: i have good wine BenD: and i am providing the rice
JeffreyBeaumont: Umm...
JeffreyBeaumont: hey i will happily pay for the chicken JeffreyBeaumont: but am concerned about having time to buy it Cabbie: what is Ben D telling you? JeffreyBeaumont: can you grab and i'll give you dollarS? Cabbie: i dont want communication to get crosswired JeffreyBeaumont: BenD: ok change of plans YOU ARE BUYING THE CHICKEN JeffreyBeaumont: BenD: i have good wine JeffreyBeaumont: BenD: and i am providing the rice JeffreyBeaumont: hahaha Cabbie: what rice? Cabbie: nobody said anything about rice
BenD: ok change of plans YOU ARE BUYING THE CHICKEN BenD: i have good wine BenD: and i am providing the rice BenD: ok no worries just come over BenD: this is a hilarious three way conversation
Cabbie: hahahahahaha Cabbie: this is amazing
JeffreyBeaumont: google, we need a "chatroom" function
Dropped my work camera's lens cap onto the subway track at the Bergen St F/G station. Even though it was 1am, I chose not to jump down onto the tracks... safe but now unprotected.
JeffreyBeaumont: john just sent me this http://www.mediafire.com/?jmyhxv4myyd JeffreyBeaumont: quote: "ShrimpCracker: 1st song is legit" hotdorknobs: good god. JeffreyBeaumont: 99 problems over scarlet begonias hotdorknobs: good god. hotdorknobs: i didn't bother downloading hotdorknobs: haha JeffreyBeaumont: no, dont JeffreyBeaumont: also JeffreyBeaumont: IT'S 2010 JeffreyBeaumont: BLACK ALBUM CAME OUT SIX+ YEARS AGO JeffreyBeaumont: SERIOUSLY DUDES
JeffreyBeaumont: so..... JeffreyBeaumont: "dirt off yr shoulder / fire on the mountain" JeffreyBeaumont: ok nevermind hotdorknobs: LOL @ "almost annoyingly reasonable"
Total Slackers are the worst band I have seen, for dollars or for free, in years and years--in a way that they combine terrible tuneless songs with underage trashcore pretension to make a magnified centerpoint of awful..
So, umm.....
"Sorry, Dudes!"
On Jan 6, 2010, at 10:42 PM, Jeffrey Beaumont wrote:
These bros are called Total Slackers, and they are the proud inaugurators of a new post theme on Slang to replace what used to be lengthy and belabored blogscreeds of Beaumont hate.
Here they are playing a song called "Secret VHS Tape Collection". It is, I think, their best song.
EK: did you go to the phish show recently? JeffreyBeaumont: no no JeffreyBeaumont: never again JeffreyBeaumont: i saw i dunno, a bunch of shows JeffreyBeaumont: from 95-2000 EK: not that bad JeffreyBeaumont: ha well it would have been much much worse if i'd had more money and more freedom JeffreyBeaumont: one buzz-harshing i can retroactively thank my parents for EK: haha EK: did you like that band the cheesestring evidence EK: or whatever its called EK: cheesecake incident JeffreyBeaumont: hahhahahhaah JeffreyBeaumont: no JeffreyBeaumont: thank god EK: wait, what is it called?? JeffreyBeaumont: stringcheese incident EK: yes! EK: thank you
Somehow I like imagining The Cheesecake Incident as a polka band of obese midwesterners slyly and shamefully glancing at one another as they waddle across a stage and put out requests for waltzes and "wild ones".
This is kinda long, but that's sorta the point (stick with it til the end, please)...
5:07pm FriendZ: i presume before too long google will let you forward your voice number to gchat or something like that FriendX: Just one more step on their way to taking over the world. FriendZ: of course so few people actually call me... FriendX: haha me too.
5:17 PM FriendZ: how much snow did you guys get in DC? FriendX: 15" so far, it's pretty crazy. FriendZ: wow! FriendX: At one point it snowed 3 inches in an hour before. FriendZ: when was the last time that there was that much snow? FriendX: Are you in Boston now? FriendZ: yeah FriendX: Getting any there? FriendZ: we are supposed to get 12 or so tonight and tomorrow FriendX: We've never had this much snow as long as I've been here. FriendX: A few years ago we had a huge storm and some places got like 20" near here, but we got like 6" FriendZ: well i'm sure everything is closed down FriendX: It was so weird, like we had a little snow blocking bubble over us :( FriendZ: what are you doing for xmas? FriendX: Visiting Buffalo for a few days with GirlFriendX then heading home on the 24th-27th FriendZ: ah ok FriendX: What you doin? FriendZ: we're going to GirlfriendZ's parents and then Portland
5:21pm FriendX: Going to get some skiing in out there? FriendZ: not sure about skiing FriendX: Mt. Hood has gotten like 150" this year. FriendZ: wow FriendZ: actually...we have some exciting news FriendZ: GirlfriendZ is pregnant :) FriendX: 173" actually FriendZ: so no skiing for her
Anyone who knows me knows that one of my many mantras is "I'll try anything once", and how could a trip to a farm to load milk onto a truck not include an offer to do a little chewing tobacco, right?
Above on the ground you will see the chaw that I held in my mouth for approximately three minutes before being advised by a ten year old girl to spit it out so as not to end up like her cousin, who spent a night puking after his first time chewing.
It was both more intense and more gross than I'd imagined it to be, but also a worthy experience in the Book of Beaumont Life Actuation.
Well, the arc of work craziness is nearing its apex as the big event approaches on Wednesday. In celebration, I have spent the past sixteen and a half hours in the office. And by "in the office", I mean that I haven't set foot outside of the building since I arrived here at 7:30 this morning. Gah/blah/mah. I am ready to go home.
And, now, finally, it seems that tiredness is starting to hit me, I think.
Facebook suggested that I befriend this former high school classmate who, like many other non-friended former high school classmates, I have a reason for not currently having as friends.
While I definitely plan on taking a pass here too, I couldn't help but be drawn to her strange and seemingly unironic choice for a profile photo. Girls holding cats in general says something, but there's something specifically odd about the look in this cat's eyes that is just supremely deprarious.
JeffreyBeaumont: this is seriously an unironic facebook photo of a girl i went to high school with SheHateMe: hahaha SheHateMe: the best thing about that photo is SheHateMe: that the cat is making the face I made when I saw the picture
The NBA season is now upon us and halleluhah. I'm not ready to make too many points just yet, but I do gotta make this one:
Baron Davis, you are absolutely killing me.
I still love you, man, and your terrible shot selection isn't something new for 2009. But: you are reaching new levels of a lazy, don't-give-a-shit-about-winning offense, and as a result right now you are shooting a definitively deprarious 18-54 from the field.
Honestly dude, it's time to start playing like you care.
Once again today I found myself literally running from the F train platform at Rockefeller Center to my office, as I was for the Nth time a few minutes late for a meeting I've already been warned to be on time for. If I possess one pathological behaviour not inherited from my father, it's being late. It seems that no matter what, I am always and insistently late for whatever it is I'm supposed to do next. Often it's just by a matter of minutes but the lateness is scaled proportionally based on circumstance--so that if it is only a few minutes, then those minutes were probably crucial; if not, the my tardiness will be longer to reach some longer level of crucial failure.
The worst thing about being late is that most of the time it could be generally prevented if I just got my shit together. Today I am going to be late to a staff meeting at work because the L train was delayed 10 minutes, but truly had I gotten to work early this wouldn't have been an issue.
I believe my problem is threefold:
1) A willful desire to add (unnecessary) riskiness and challenges to my life
2) ADHD makes it challenging to unfocus from the last thing i'm doing and move on to the next
3) Greed of wanting to continue enjoying whatever it is i'm engaged in
I do want to overcome my battle with punctuality, but it's not easy overcoming 27 years of rooted behavior.
I take it as a sign that officework-driven madness is afoot when my dreams at night entail situations where I'm hanging out with coworkers and Cam'ron together, them mostly bombarding with me questions about "lazer spit" and "baguettes".
Yeah, yeah, creepy shake-cam action, but still: really? This was the ONLY urinal at an entire rest stop in Connecticut. Which, in case it isn't clear by the blurry photo comes up a height far below a short Asian man's knees.
Additionally I can't fail to include that according to Lil Beau, the women's bathroom had a sign in it that said, "Please do not urinate or throw feminine products on the floor. Thanks."
What was this fine establishment? You can probably guess that this rest stop was, yes, an Arby's, arguably the worst and most disgusting of all fast food chains--one predicated on the most visually and intellectually disgusting sandwich imaginable, the hot roast beef sandwich--and so for some reason it makes a deprarious level of sense that the lone urinal would come only 12 inches off the ground and patrons need to be warned against their natural urge to just let it rain whenever/wherever the fuck they feel like it.
Somehow I imagine that this is close to what Hunter S. Thompson had in mind when he described the "savage heart of the American Dream".
Sanam: word birth! Sanam: procrasturbation Sanam: "to waste time pleasuring one's self" Sanam: I didn't make it up Sanam: but I will be spreading it like wildfire
Still making my way through photos and came across this hilarious shot taken in Walt Whitman Park after walking over the Brooklyn Bridge with Mia at 9am (we woke up at 7 and walked from Union Square all the way there--first time I'd ever been down Broadway in daylight without seeing any humans): many dudes, maybe 30, playing soccer** and seemingly rejoicing in great harmony of the leather ball and togetherness. And one of them among them, with the longest, most insane dreadlock ever worn by man.
It's not entirely easy to make the whole thing out (I really should have asked him to pose up close) but basically the man has a few long locks, two which are so lengthy that one is wrapped around his waist like a belt (AND around his neck like a necklace) and the other drapes all the way down to his shins.
Meaning, he is an actual human approximation of Bib Fortuna.
!!!!!!!!!!
Good times here, always. New York, have I mentioned to you recently how much I love you?
NOTES: **-- Mia groaned after when we got near them after realizing when I'd said they were playing fussball and not (American) football. "Oh, this" she said, deflated and instantly bored, "What do you Americans call this, Suck-er? This reminds me of every boring minute of my life."
In tracts he hands out to all who will take them as he treks across the benighted land, Kirk cites certain passages of his own particular inspiration, but stresses that each man or woman's path to comprehension of the light, each individual circumstance of seeing will be unique and unknowable save that it must come from the sincerest desire to know, to apprehend the light.
So I (and possibly you) thought that I loved Dirk Nowitzki. Holy Jesus.
Clearly my love for The Dunking Deutscher is nothing compared to the relationship author Jonathan Callahan has with the man, as outlined in the longform writing piece linked above. Saying this as a man who goes out of his way to discover strange errata, this "piece" is quite possibly the most insane thing I have ever (attempted to) read.
Looking back, Richard Pryor explains his freebasing habit had fuelled his paranoia to unparalleled heights.
"I left all my guns right out in the open so when the boogey man bust in my house... he could see 'em. I thought everyone was stealing from me. I continued to smoke until I ran out of coke. I was suffering serious dementia. I was miserable. Alone. Frightened. Then I thought. 'Okay, I'll set myself on fire."
Dousing himself in cognac Pryor set himself alight, dived through the bedroom window and ran down the street. "You know what I noticed. When you run down the street on fire, people get out of your way."
On the topic of fairly random and unhelpful statistical lumpings, one such category would be absolutely meaningless "_____ greatest by a player who bats righty, throws lefty."
Why? Basically NO ONE bats righty and throws lefty. Like, really, NO ONE. You would think out of only six possible batting/throwing combos (right/left/switch batting x right/left throwing) there would be a decent dispersion of players in all categories, and there is... in the other five. But of the righty swingers lefty throwers category there has really just only been a strange small handful -- literally 25.
Steve Treder of The Hardball Times earlier this year did us the service of evaluating and ranking all twenty-five of them, which you can read here. A glimpse through the names yields but five that present any note to me:
5) Brian Hunter (the stocky first-baseman, not the light-hitting CF speedster
Brian Hunter holds a bit of note to me as he was responsible for sharing first-base duties in the early 90s Braves Dynasty with Sid Bream (whoa, that name doesn't even sound real anymore) before Fred McGriff was brought on-board in July 1993 and my entire world exploded. As the Braves have been my favorite team for the past twenty seasons, all of their various men have meant something to me at one point or another and Hunter is no different. However, at his peak--which lasted about two seasons--he was a decent platooon player, but no more
4) Jason Lane
A recent supporting player on the Houston Astrosin the earlier part of this decade. I am familiar with his exploits.
3) Cody Lane
A recent supporting player for the Florida Marlins. I am not familiar with his exploits but I have heard his name mentioned before.
2) Ryan Ludwick
A legitimately good player who had an excellent past two seasons for St. Louis before this year's relative mediocrity (though he has been coming on stronger as the year comes to a close).
And of course, our top dog:
1) Rickey Henderson
Literally the only player on this list to have a great or arguably even good career, The Rickey is The Man when it comes to Bats Lefty, Throws Righty. Once again, Rickey, like with everything else he's done, stands alone.
Of course, this entire topic is of slightly greater note to one Jeffrey Beaumont, because ... drum roll... like all of these men, he too bats righty, and throws lefty. Which probably makes me the twenty-ninth greatest Bats Righty, Throws Lefty ballplayer ever (hey, I could throw 74 mph when I was in 9th grade). Seriously though, this is not something I choose--and according to Treder, of all the six possiblities is the least physically advantageous combination I could have been (Still, thanks, Dad!). And doesn't this description more or less define my entire existence:
So here we've got athletes displaying enough ambidextrousness to bat one way and throw the other. Yet not only do they eschew the switch-hitting option (which admittedly is far easier to do in theory than in practice), these guys find themselves in the least advantageous circumstance both offensively and defensively. One hopes it came about through some manner of unusual and immutable brain wiring, because to the extent that deliberate decision-making might have been involved, these guys got it double-wrong.
It's so perfectly deprarious I couldn't have dreamt it better myself.
Sighing, I put on my jacket and took her by the shoulder and trudged off down Fifth Avenue toward the Barnes and Noble 7 blocks away. She relayed to me a rather ridiculous story about a sudden stated need to provide every person in the room of an event with a copy of Newsweek focusing on issues related to the Taliban. We went into the store and grabbed every copy they had, but of course there were only 26 and the intern squealed with concern. I told her not to worry and then asked if they'd given her money to pay for them and she handed me three $20 bills. Ahh, yes.
Best part: there was a writer from Newsweek actually in the room participating in the discussion, who could have arranged for copies to have been made available for everyone (gratis, natch) had any of the event-producing parties had the foresight to consider the possibility... but instead we end up with a frightened intern, an annoying need for me to submit expenses, and $160 of nonprofit dollars unnecessarily wasted. Holla holla.
[WARNING: This is one of those terrifyingly long Beaumont posts (tagged hereafter as "JB screeds"). And actually, it's two long stories, but well, I don't feel like separating them from one another. So, yes. Sorry?] PART I: Bank of America, I Would Like To Completely Obliterate You And Demand That You Take Reverse TARP-Funding
After a wonderful and lengthy (but not long enough) visit, last week my visitor is now gone, off to see more of the world on her long, strange world tour--seriously, her voyage will last SEVENTY-SEVEN DAYS and is touching down on six countries on three continents--but I had a great weird ten days wandering around parts of the greater New York environs and amazing seeing things that I've either never seen before or saw long ago and have since taken for granted.
The whole experience last week of "time off at home" was truly fantastic, EXCEPT for one financially-related blip having to do with my entire world of funding (two bank accounts and a credit card) having been frozen due to some overzealous Bank of America "fraud preventioneering".
The issue was triggered on Monday Sept 14 when I headed with Lil Beaumont to go pick up a new bike from a girl in the heart of Bushwick. As she temporarily had only limited dollars, I agreed to cover her purchase temporarily. I went to the ATM to withdraw funds from my credit/debit card but accidentally added an extra digit in attempting to get money from my account (therefore going over the limit) and was rejected. I then attempted to withdraw the correct amount from my account on the same ATM but was again rejected. Trying once more (thinking perhaps i'd mistyped something) but this time even less funds, I was declined a third time.
I then received an automated call from Bank of America asking me to approve three potential fraud transactions, which I did, but then I immediately called the Bank to make sure that in doing so they didn't think I'd actually withdrawn any money from the account.
"Hi, thank you for calling Bank of America. I look forward to helping you today."
A rep on the phone confirmed for me that nothing had been taken out and said he'd help me make sure the fraud lock is lifted if I'd just wait a second. In the meantime though I was warned by the person on the line when asked a variety of security questions that despite having opened my account at a Fleet Bank in Saratoga Springs in 2001, my account now stated that it had been opened at Rockefeller Center in some time more recently...also apparently my "user account phone password" is "customer", which I also got wrong. I'm assuming that BofA chose this for me since I have to believe that I would have never chosen such a hilariously terrible password (I would have at least gone with "password" if I was going to go the ridiculous route). Finally, after being placed on hold, I was for a second time sent to the automated fraud removal line. I groaned--and probably shouted out loud--but went through the prompts yet again and then went home without attempting to use my card again.
After going Tuesday without using my card, on Wednesday, I went to work and managed to use the card three times as a credit card at a Duane Reade and to get food at a nearby eatery--seemingly without problems. I did not attempt to withdraw any cash from an ATM though.
Coney Island sign, from behind train station entrance
I was under the impression at this point that everything was fine, until on Thursday Mia and I went to Coney Island. Immediately after getting there I decided to get some cash so I could show her the wonders of corn dogs and fried clams (amazing honestly, being able to give someone a first experience on that stuff). However, when I attempted to withdraw $60 from my account I was given an "external decline" message and told to contact my bank. Sure enough, within minutes I received yet ANOTHER call from the automated fraud prevention line asking me to sanction potentially fraudulent activity. I did not go through the prompts this time though, and immediately hung up and dialed customer service because I was so angry that simply attempting to withdraw reasonable amounts of money from random ATMs throughout the CITY I LIVE IN would signal the "fraud preventioneers" and wanted to talk to someone immediately to straighten things out. After getting someone on the line and explaining my situation (including the desperate plea NOT to be sent again to the automated line), I was put on hold and then... sent back to the automated line.
Increasingly frantic in my desperation for dollars and annoyance at BofA bullshit, I dialed them back once again and this time insisted on speaking to a human who could help me. They finally transferred me to a "fraud prevention specialist" who said he could take care of things.
This is where things went rapidly downhill: he asked me my security word ("customer") and my social security number, fine, but then the question of the age of my account came up. He asked if my account was older than five years. Obviously it is based on what I mentioned above, but to make sure I was clear to him I said, "Yes, it is. My account was opened at a Saratoga Springs, NY Fleet Bank location in 2001 or 2002, but I have been told that it may now say Rockefeller Center and I have no idea therefore what year you have listed."
Long pause.
He then asked if I have any direct deposits set-up (yes, my work). He asked me the amount it was for. Mind you, I'm standing on a boardwalk at Coney Island starving and staring at corn dogs. I have absolutely no idea what the amounts of my direct deposit are, only that each paycheck is a slightly different amount because of my health insurance deductions.
Long pause.
He then asked if I had any regularly scheduled monthly payments (yes, credit card and a checking-to-savings swap). Did I know the exact amounts though? No.
Longest pause.
Speaking slowly, he said, "I'm sorry sir, but since you have not been able to pass the security requirements I'm going to have to ask that you go in person to a Bank of America to verify the account."
I couldn't believe it. I had more or less answered all of his questions and could provide exact detail on a variety of things he didn't ask. I then pleaded we him if there was anything else we could do to get the fraud prevention removed and he said no, and so I then asked for his BofA ID # so I could file a complaint against him and asked to speak to his supervisor. He then paused again and said hold on and then the line was disconnected. gahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
So after spending about 25 minutes of me being on and off hold and answering question after question, I had accomplished nothing. Or so I thought. I called back once more, resolved to get things taken care of, only to find out that my friendly Bank of America attendee had put a lock on my account so that the only way it could be reopened would be to physically go into a Bank somewhere. Thanks a lot, dude.
Coney Island Boardwalk (near "Shoot the Freak")
Again, we were in Coney Island and my friend was just visiting. I think there may have been a bank somewhere nearby but I didn't want to waste Mia's time so I just decided to go to the one in Williamsburg when I got home. We spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon exploring, taking photos and counting the trash cans and crazy people (seriously, there are innumerable amounts of them both) and then headed back to the Burg around 3. We got home at 4 and I headed immediately to the BofA on Graham Ave expecting I had plenty of time, but sure enough, blammo, the office had closed at 4 and I was fucked, immediately, and for the next 17 hours.
Since not just one but all of my accounts were locked, I had literally no access to funds (note to anyone: here's one good reason to use multiple banks for different accounts). This wasn't inherently the end of the world, as I could certainly borrow dollars from Mia, but the next day was Friday and we planned to be gone the entire day visiting Storm King upstate and had plans again early Saturday morning--meaning that if I wanted any funds before Monday, I would need to get into a Bank of America the next morning before heading to Storm King.
Unfortunately, the lone bus to Storm King leaves each day at 10am...meaning that we needed to be there by 9:40 to ensure we would have enough time to get a ticket and make it onto the bus.... leaving us but 25 or so minutes to "make it happen" at Bank of America and then rush from the location on 44 St & 7 Av to the Port Authority bus terminal.
We woke up earlyish the next morning and began getting our stuff together before finally leaving the house (late) at 8:45. We got out of the train at 42 & 7 at 9:15 and I almost ran fullspeed to Bank of America from there. Upon entering, I quickly grabbed the attention of salesperson and relayed to her my plight.
"Ok, come with me Sir. I can help you," she said, leading me into an office. I walked in and "handed" my identification to her (which was admittedly more of a "forced my identification on her"). "Ok, great, I can help you," she said, repeating herself, "Just have a seat and let me get a representative on the phone to help you with your issue."
Scrrrrrreeeeecchhhhh! [insert phonograph needle skating across vinyl]
"Umm...," I said, "Why do you need to get someone on the phone? They told me I had to come in here so you could unlock the account and then it would be fine."
"I'm sorry sir, but actually, I'm only able to verify your identity for a representative who can help you with your issue."
At this precise moment I was torn between my rapidly increasing need to get out of the bank and over to Port Authority to catch our bus and my urge to pick up the now dialing telephone and throw it as hard as possible at the glass window behind me. Probably the intense confusion of feeling at this moment actually saved me, because rather than barking at the in-store attendant and causing her to stop what she was doing, I simply sat there, too stunned to move or say anything until the voice of yet another Bank of America phone operator cut the silence.
"Hi, thank you for calling Bank of America. I look forward to helping you today."
I then had to for the fourth time explain my situation, whereby the skeptical sounding woman then requested to speak with a BofA rep who could attest to my identity claims. I then called another attendant in, who verified I was indeed Me, and I thought it was finally over but then I heard the woman on the phone ask him for some kind of special authorization code. "Seriously?" he said, "Can't I just give my employee ID#?" No. The man left the room and was gone for a bit before finally returning a few minutes later during which time my anxiety-stricken brain began to assume that there was no way that the call wouldn't somehow be dropped and we'd have to start all over again. GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
But instead he gave her the code, handed me back the phone and we proceeded.
"Ok, Sir," the woman said, "Now I can begin to help you with your issue." Duh-what?????
"We're all set now, right?" I asked hurriedly, adding, "I'm late for a bus and need to get going."
"Sir, I need in order to assist you with this fraud-related issue I need to ask you a few security questions about your account." Stunned silence from me, followed by, "... Uh. [sigh] Ok."
"First can you please verify the following transaction..." and she proceeded to ask me about the Coney Island ATM withdrawal which I'd already verified twice to the automated teller, twice to a human on the phone, and once to the in-store bank attendant. Umm. O. ... K. ...
"Ok. Now can you please tell me what were the last three purchases made on the card and the exact amounts they were for."
.... !!!! ... !!!!
There do not exist words or punctuation to describe my feeling at that very moment. Only the knowledge that I could potentially drop the call and have to start all over again prevented me from slamming the phone repeatedly onto the table and my own face.
I drew a deep breath and spoke slowly:
"Ma'am. Wow. I honestly have NO IDEA what my last three purchases were on this card, and I definitely have no idea what the amounts were. The account has been locked for over 24 hours now and moreover, I'm not sitting in front of a computer screen where I might be able to review this information and share it with you***. In fact, I'm currently in an actual Bank of America where I was told I could come in and show my identification to prove that I am who I say I am and get this all taken care of. I'm pretty sure that I made two purchases at Duane Reade, for amounts totaling less than $20 in each purchase. But I couldn't tell you what the dollar figures were, or what the third transaction was. Please, please, stop asking me questions and let me get my money so I can go try and catch a bus that your bank seems hellbent on making me miss."
Pause.
"Sir, I'm sorry, but I need you to answer these questions in order to remove the fraud security lock from your account. Can you please tell me the amounts of these purchases?"
At this point I shouted "Hold on, one second" and then raced out of the room to the attendant standing in the hallway.
"Please, dear god," I said, "Tell this woman on the phone that I am who I say I am. I have no idea what my recent transactions were. I only know that I have done everything that should be necessary to prove my identity and that I am on the verge of missing a bus that will ruin one day out of my friend and I's vacation. Please, please help me."
The attendant then followed me into the office and put the receiver on speakerphone.
"Ma'am, this is [name], [title] of the Times Square Bank of America branch again. Mr. Beaumont has provided enough evidence to remove the fraud lock from his account. Let's please wrap this up."
It's 9:48am.
"Ok, I am just making sure that we have answered all the necessary questions. We are all set now and you may use your account immediate--- [CLICK]" I threw the phone back on the receiver and dashed out the door, grabbing Mia by the shoulder and saying, "Run!" She handed me a cigarette she'd rolled for me and we raced off toward Port Authority, whispering, "I have donuts and a New York Times" in my ear.
Ten Morals Of The Story (WITH CONVENIENT BOOKEND POINTS): 1) Fuck you Bank of America. 2) CONSIDER USING A BANK OTHER THAN BANK OF AMERICA 3) I am deprariously lackadaisical when it comes to doing things promptly or carefully, and could have easily avoided a lot of this absurdity by being on top of my shit a little more. 4) We are near the endpoint in our civilization when humans serve no purpose but to annoy each other and make babies. 5) There is already almost no way to avoid these kind of braincrushing commercial interactions.
6) For every action, there is an opposite and actual reaction.
7) Coney Island is more fun to take a visitor in the fall on a weekend when all the action is open.
8) Banks are destined to grow more and more powerful.
9) If my skin were made out of money, I could avoid these kinds of issues by shaving dead layers off into people's hands in the form of currency. 10) FUCK YOU BANK OF AMERICA. THANKS.
PART II: Storm King, After I Found You, You Provided Me With Rich Excitement And Assuaged My Feelings Of Weltschmerz
Epilogue: After arriving at Port Authority, we tore up the stairs frantically looking for the ticket booth, and upon finding it, I attempted to bribe the woman in front of the line with a fiver to cut her (she demurred and let us pass gratis). We bought our tickets (the ticketeer had no smiles to give) and rushed over to the departure gate. When we got there the gate attendent was gone already and so we burst through the exit, just to see the bus closing its doors. I ran to the bus and banged once before the driver opened and let us on. Exhale--until two seconds later my heart dropped as I saw that every seat on the bus was taken except for two singles in the back; for a moment it suddenly occurred to me that after all this malarkey we'd have to spend a 90 minute bus ride sitting apart from each other. These fears were almost immediately allayed, however, as Mia quickly offered gummi bears (gummibärchen!) to one of the singles in exchange for his seat. Phew. Yes. Of course.
Bus booths, Newburgh Bus Terminal parking lot
Fairly Tangential Epi-epilogue: After all of this craziness Mia and I were so relieved that we rather depariously somehow failed to exit the bus when it reached Storm King. Despite seeing a location that looked very much like what I had imagined Storm King to be, we didn't hear the driver announce anything [he was apparently using his throat and vocal cords rather than amplified microphone to broadcast his voice??] and so we didn't get off until about 15 minutes later Mia said, "Umm.... did we miss the Storm King?" We had, in fact, missed it (I'd thought since it only went there once a day that Storm King was actually the end of the line and that we wouldn't be able to miss it). The driver let us off at the Newburgh Bus Terminal, which my iPhone told me was 8.9 miles away from Storm King, and found out almost immediately from a near-laughing ticketeer that there was no "next bus to Storm King".
I burst into maniacal laughter and wandered outside for a cigarette, wondering how much a cab driver would gouge me to take us there, and how I might go about finding one. I crossed my fingers it would be less than $50. But much to my delight, upon exiting, I heard two middle-aged women on a nearby bench talking say the words "Storm" and "Museum". I wandered over to them and asked if they were by chance going to Storm King. To our luck, they were. Meaning... !!!!!! (this did not in reality merit four exclamation points). They immediately asked if I wanted to split the cab and I pumped my fist unnecessarily and sat down to enjoy my cigarette.
10-15 minutes later a yellow minivan pulls up with reggaeton BLASTING out the windows. I attempt four times to open the side door before the driver finally reaches over and throws it open.
Mia and I quickly climbed into the back and the cabbie looked at the two women as the entered and barked, "Hola. Que tal? Donde vamos?" Seriously.
He also had not turned the music down, so they looked at each other and then began shouting in English to him.
"Que Uds dicen?" he asked$. I began to see steam coming out of their ears and began attempting to communicate in pidgin Spanish, which was enough to get the car moving (but not the music lowered). For whatever reason, after everything that had happened, this situation seemed not remotely annoying but instead entirely hilarious.
The driver then began speaking muy rápidamente into his radio, asking for directions and saying something to the effect of "What the fuck is Storm King and where the fuck is it?" The women in front of us began alternating between feelings anger over the loud volume of the music and concern over the fact that the driver appeared to have absolutely no idea where he was going.
After turning around for the second time, I busted out my iPhone and pulled up directions from its Google Maps GPS%%%. I then started shouting directions while simultaneously assuring the ladies that everything would be fine and we'd be there shortly.
When we finally got there--which honestly was only about 10-15 minutes later--we got out of the car and the driver said, "Ok sí, $10, gracias."
We all looked at each other in disbelief--$10! For a nine mile trip! In NYC that would have cost a minimum of $25, and I was just expecting it would be more here. Nope. Topping it off, the women stunned me by then speaking in Spanish with the driver to arrange for him to pick them up again in the same spot at 5pm.
And then I looked ahead, and there we were, finally: Storm King. And the rest is history.
NOTES: ***-- Ok, ok. Yes, Mom, to be fair, if I balanced my checkbook like old people do, I probably could have pulled it out of my briefcase and recited the figures back to her and avoided a lot of these troubles. But it's 2009, and I feel like I don't want that to be the lesson of this whole thing. I guess I would hope it wouldn't have to come to that by now. And anyway, sheesh. $$$--Or something like that. Paraphrasing, obviously, because I don't remember and I don't really speak Spanish. %%%--Aside: yes, a world without cell phones would be great, but also, really: fuck that, right? Bring on the future!
It's nice to balance the frequent office FAIL with at least an occasional VICTORY or two. Including my discovery last week that our office is in possession of an almost never used Nikon Coolscan V film/slide scanner. This no-longer-made-but-completely-invaluable 35mm film scanning tool is prohibitively expensive but also of such significantly superior scanning quality that it's made me feel like buying a cheapish flatbed would be a waste of my time. Having just begun more heavily shooting and developing film, the costs of having labs do scans for me (coupled with the generally poor quality of their scans) has made me wary and self-conscious about my shooting--but now I can fire away knowing that I can do it all myself. Holla rare office secret surprise.
It's of course a shame it took me four and a half years of working here before I discovered this, but my wallet says, "Better late than never!"
"Last month Harmonix announced that it will license software tools and provide training for anyone to create and distribute interactive versions of their own songs on a new Rock Band Network, which will drastically expand the amount and variety of interactive music available. The Rock Band Network is so potentially consequential that Harmonix went to great lengths to keep its development secret, including giving it the unofficial in-house code name Rock Band: Nickelback, on the theory that the name of the quintessentially generic modern rock group would be enough to deflect all curiosity."
Also, as an aside: one of Lil' Beaumont's friends once received for Christmas not a requested cd of the folk-bluegrass group Nickel Creek, but instead a live Nickelback DVD. Whoops.
Which is not unlike Christmas '99 when my grandmother accidentally gave my young cousin a Blackstreet cd instead of the new Backstreet Boys cd. Yes, the same grandmother who bought me the Smashing Pumpkins and Pearl Jam. No diggity.
I just had the misfortune of viewing the entirety of the 1985 filmSt. Elmo's Fire (umm, thanks Netflix InstantView :-/), and I now want 100 minutes of my life back.
At one point I could probably have relied on knowing that a sizable portion of any under 40s I spoke to would have seen St. Elmo's Fire already and therefore I would need to explain nothing, but I guess it's a good thing for you all that we're far enough removed from 1985 now that its mediocre b-movies can sleep silently in peace.
It's not really worth an explanation, but the short of it is that St. Elmo's Fire is a movie that almost astonished me in its terribleness. I expected it to be a bit hokey and solipsistec like many what-should-the-white-folk-do?! 80s films, but the petty, self-interested depravity of every single one of the characters made me wanna vomit all over my TV.
The thing that felt strange about St. Elmo's is the deprarious degree to which the film seemed to be lacking in self-awareness. Were this film to have been made in the past ten years, it would have been a dark comedy where everyone's in on the joke and they'd all laugh mirthlessly as each new "tragedy" befell another member of Team I; or perhaps a straight-up Todd Solondz film culminating in a scene where Emilio Estevez, in climactic stalker wing-spreading is either arrested or killed in a car crash and Rob Lowe finally seduces lowly "Wendy" into boning him and he gives her AIDS.
Instead we have a picture that is utterly unable to imagine the realistic viewpoint in which all of these people are actually just fucked. In watching, I could hardly contain myself--with each passing frame, I found it harder and harder to control myself from shouting at the assholes in front of me and their bullshit perceptions of a life they haven't begun to live. And don't even get me started on the poor women in this film, some of whom represented the few arguably not terrible humans, all of whom allowed themselves to be treated like garbage by the self-centered twats they were surrounded by. Grow some balls! Stand up! Dear god.
But most significantly, this film served as a reminder to me that, culturally speaking, the 80s were not in fact the beginning of the Forward-Looking Future Generation, but instead a quaint last gasp ode to the limited-thinking/dreaming dogmatism of the 50s; and, dare I say it, a period where Americans were worse even: people of the 50s at least bought into McCarthyism because it was new and they didn't know much else, but in the 80s we looked back despite knowing the dark side because we thought we might rather choose death over an uncertain future so desperately feared.
The long and the short: do us all a favor and keep on living righteously. Let yourself get bent out of shape when you witness awfulness, and be prepared to catch a sunbeam if it crosses your path.
Announcement: I am about to leave to go away for a few days, but in a fairly standard Beaumont move, I managed to leave the house without bringing my phone. I am not sure if there will be another phone where I am so please contact me by email if you need to reach me before Wednesday. Though, for that matter, I'm not sure if there'll be internet where I'm going either...
jaychampionvinyl: HAAA jaychampionvinyl: "Fares as Low As" jaychampionvinyl: "FARES AS LOW AS" jaychampionvinyl: HOLY FUCK jaychampionvinyl: hahahahah jaychampionvinyl: also: "Join the MyPaws club" jaychampionvinyl: one of the reasons "Why I Should Fly Pet Air" JeffreyBeaumont: hahahahaha jaychampionvinyl: "Pets are never left unattended in a warehouse or on a ramp." jaychampionvinyl: the crew on these flights jaychampionvinyl: jesus jaychampionvinyl: haha jaychampionvinyl: THERE IS A FIRST CLASS jaychampionvinyl: HAHAHAHA JeffreyBeaumont: hahahahahahahhaah jaychampionvinyl: MY LABRADOODLE WILL FLY COACH WHEN MY GARDENER SPEAKS ENGLISH jaychampionvinyl: THAT IS TO SAY: OVER MY DEAD BODY JeffreyBeaumont: hhahaha
jaychampionvinyl: oh man jaychampionvinyl: thank you for sharing that
jaychampionvinyl: hahahahahahah I just got an email from Stacy sent from her Blackberry jaychampionvinyl: no subject jaychampionvinyl: "Umm I think I just took yoga next to nicole kidman." JeffreyBeaumont: hahahahhhaha
jaychampionvinyl: gold jaychampionvinyl: so it was nicole kidman JeffreyBeaumont: hahahaha jaychampionvinyl: says Stacy: "She was oddly not that great at yoga"
This one is a big part of the great annals of Beaumont Developmental Folklore, its discovery made possible by the reverse black hole of never-thrown away everything that is my grandmother's house.
Your Hero, circa Fall 1999.
Can we just run down through a checklist of awesome certainty here?
VERY long hair?
Check.
Shirt without tie?
Check.
Eyebrow ring?
HOLLA.
Goatee without beard or even mustache?
Check.
Creepy and remotely drug-addled off-stare?
CHECK.
Lonely and crazy and spending most of my time in the car listening to Phish or in the forest, alone?
So fucking hard YES: if I could CHECK this one any harder I'd be on the Penalty Kill line for the Islanders.
Life is good, especially when you are reminded of how much better it can get.
Been waiting for a few days to put this one up, but I photographed this Bro at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris while I was waiting for my flight home last week:
Wow. Yes.
Seriously dude, wow. You have a PC laptop... but either wish you had a Macbook... or you hate Macbooks... and wanted to make a funny... and so you thought you might accomplish that by... putting an Apple logo sticker over your Dell sticker... upside down.... yes.
For serious???? We know you have a gay daughter and all but honestly, could you have said or implied ANYTHING like this over the past nine years, when, say, you were one I the most important people in America?
Thank you for your moral support, Dick Cheney. I have no idea why you're saying this now, or why you didn't say anything then, but I am pretty clear that you are more interested in political strategery and personal gain than, say, the lives of others. Next thing you know we'll be hearing you decry torture for potential terrorists, right? Once again, a reminder of how many powerful people are selfish dicks.
Thankfully--with the chain on its own worth $75--I only needed a lock and not the full lock-chain set. Which was nice to not have to spend another $100 for a new set... but unfortunately, even replacing the lock alone is quite expensive, as Kryptonite cuts you a deal by buying the chain and lock together. I hemmed and hawed for a bit about going with a less nice lock to save money, but ultimately I decided that a little savings now wasn't worth the longterm bummer theft posed, and so I purchased the black lock above known as the Kryptonite Series 4 for $45 plus tax. This is a serious lock--the same as what I owned previously and had cut last night--though it is, amusingly, not Kryptonite's strongest--only registering a "9" on a scale of "11", with their strongest lock having the simple and pretty-deprarious-when-you-think-about-it name "New York Lock"***. Still, after watching a locksmith spend 25 minutes last night trying to cut through it with a mini-disc drill--he ran through two discs!!--I feel satisfied that only the most dedicated thief will crack my shit. Far more likely, if my bike is ever stolen, it will be due to my own negligence or idiocy.
Anyway, the sad end result is that I am now out $188.76, which is about half the amount I had been hoping to spend on the shitty track bike for commuting (so that I might be able to cease spending days at my office in constant fear that my bike was being carried off by thieves while I tarried on spreadsheets and CMS backends. This is the life of Ben Scheim. He apologizes to Jeffrey Beaumont on a daily basis for making him deal with this constant bullshit. C'est la vie.
----
If you're curious about what kind of lock to buy, check out the following: a 2008 NY Mag article, 2006 Slate article here and another here. And a simple Google query will result in many more hits as well.
NOTES:
*** - Interestingly (or deprariously) enough, while most bike locks carry some kind of anti-theft warranty, many of them have warranties that are specifically voided if the bike is stolen within the state of New York. Basically, New York is fucking sinkhole for theft and its denizens of the underworld have both the desire and know-how to steal just about anything they want. Rad!
Yes, that is the sight of a locksmith drilling the lock off my Kryptonite chain, directly in front of my office. Why is he doing this? Because, sigh: I was heading home from work but had forgotten something, so I quickly locked the bike up in front of my office and dashed inside to grab my stuff but on the way I DROPPED THE BIKELOCK KEY DOWN THE CRACK OF THE ELEVATOR SHAFT.
YES. I AM NOT JOKING. I COULD NOT POSSIBLY MAKE THIS SHIT UP.
I immediately called a locksmith, who came to fix and take care of everything, which he did, but at the cost of an hour of my time and $140 from my wallet. $140!!! Fucking New York!! Again: sigh.
Finally after much grunting, the lock came off. But then my day was hilariously capped on the way home by crossing the Pulaski Bridge the one time ever where a large boat was passing under, therefore resulting in a raised drawbridge, resulting in more waiting.
!!! A pain in the ass, but sometimes its good to know who we are, aye? Example: two weekends ago I was sitting under a tree at a garden party. A bird then pooped directly into my open palm. Went to the bathroom to wash off. Returned to said tree and it pooped on my face. Sorry about the prob. $50 bike lock.
The Ken Caminitis and Matt Lawtons of the world sadden me, but at least I can understand--and in some twisted way, emphasize with them; in a tough game, where every tiny bit counts, they just want to keep a footing for themselves in the only world in which they've learned how to live.
But Manny, you of the golden swing, you are a greedy coward. You make me want to scream. You, and Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez, and Roger Clemens--it was never enough that you were among the best in the game. You would not stop until there was no question. Some might admire this thirst to rise above, but I am sickened by it, by you. Barry, Roger, I believe at least that the two of you played many seasons in the 80s and early 90s before getting into steroids--and over these points you won four MVP awards and three Cy Youngs. What the fuck? That was not enough for you?
The worst part, again, is the mass culpability. Our mass culpability. To LeBron James' onslaught and devastation of the NBA, we are all witnesses--and to accepting the lies, thievery, and bullshit of major league cheaters, we are ALL guilty. All of us except the kids of the 90s who were just happy that you jerks had quit your petty squabbling enough to play a fucking World Series again. Those poor kids, who fell in love with Sammy Sosa, or Mark McGwire, or Jeff Bagwell (yeah, said it), Juan Gonzalez, a million others. Brady Anderson, you cheat, you inspired a million kids who wanted someone to root for besides the superstars. And you fucked them. Who's next? Chipper Jones? (god, please... please, no) John Smoltz? Ken Griffey, Jr.?*** Randy Johnson? Pedro?
Really, at this point, it just doesn't matter who did and didn't do steroids. We all did. Bud Selig, who, like a Washington politician ruling lobbyists and yet living in fear of them, did nothing but cast a blind eye as muscles bulked and heads (and pimples) popped. DUDE YOU RUN THE MOST TALKATIVE YET SECRETIVE SPORTS LEAGUE IN THE COUNTRY. OF COURSE YOU KNEW WHAT WAS GOING ON.
What kills me most is the lying triumvirate of atheletes, executives and sports writers, all collectively lying or refusing to believe what they knew was really going on for the sake of their next home run, their next dollar, their next tight lede. Fuck all of you dicks.
And then, fuck all of us for LOVING IT. We loved the longball. We loved 11-7 scores. We loved the 9Ks per 9 ratios. We loved the storylines!! Matt Williams and Griffey in '94, Brady Anderson, the quad-headed Rockies in '96/'97, McGwire and Sosa in '98. We loved it all. The Mariners won 116 games in 2001, even more than the fabled Yankees in '98, but does anyone seem to remember it? Partially because they didn't win the World Series but also partially because it was the first season in ten years without Randy J, Griffey, or ARod. No pumped up stars--other than new freak of Japan, Ichiro--and therefore few memories. We loved it all despite seeing thin men big, big men huge, and even some thin men huge. We saw what we wanted to believe.
The world, honestly, is not filled with surprises. Things happen by chance, yes, but most of that chance has a percentage of possibility attached to it based on the cold principles of natural reality. David Eckstein does not, as a rule, hit 30 home runs in a season. He just can't, because he is who he is. We knew this was true about Brady Anderson too, but we turned away. Also, old people, as a rule, do not outplay the post-kid vets. And yet there was Barry Bonds at age 36 hitting 73 HRs, 24 more than he'd ever hit before. And middling no-pop vets do not suddenly become middle-of-the-order threats after they turn 30. 90 years of baseball told us that this was true and yet there was Jay Bell, Steve Finley, and Luis Gonzalez, telling us otherwise.
So fuck it. We saw what we wanted to believe. C'est la fucking vie. Because this is America. WE LIKE CHEATERS. We actually LOVE THEM. Or rather, we like cheaters who succeed in cheating. What we do not like are cheaters who fail, cheaters for whom the game is up. We loved the cheaters on Wall Street and in the real estate markets in the late 90s and early 00s when they were making dollars because we loved their fly action and dreamt of having some of our own someday too. Those systems didn't collapse because some great diligence and intolerance of cheating finally brought down the bad guys; they just collapsed because the cheaters stopped cheating well. And then when it collapsed, we swarmed upon the cheaters like locusts, in hopes that a swifter move on our own behalf condemning their wrongs might save us from the real judgements of god soon to come. Our own guilt pulsed like a great heart beating louder and louder as the head-filling sound of crime began to subside; and lest we hear it too deeply and freeze in our tracks, we acted, pouncing on the public record of guilt to rape it loudly enough until we were satisfied that it was distracting enough for us to go on ignoring everything else that was still wrong, that is still wrong.
This is NOT a tale of bleakness and woe. It's just an observation on who we are and who we are afraid to be. The steroids story is so much the same story as the housing market story that it floors me. As Americans, our hunger for more, bigger, and better--which brings us both good and terrible achievement--is such that we blind ourselves from seeing not just that which is immediately in front of us, but everything that lies ahead.
This is how we as Americans live, and I don't know if there's anything we can or should do it about it. But understand that the toll is heavy, and that one day, as a nation, we will pay the price. The day will come when our blindness finally becomes so overpowering that we will not be able to see that we have walked into a room of hungry bandits, and we are not only too frail to hold them off from plundering our resources, but too blind to even know that we need to. And then, new powers will be born, and we sink to the bottom (quickly or slowly) while they rise above. Or something like that.
NOTES/LOVAGE: *** - Literally the only home run hitter I'm sure never took steroids is Fred McGriff, my beloved Crime Dog, who it seemed had the tragedy (or perhaps, in hindsight, good fortune) of peaking right before the "development of the extended power game" in baseball. Fred who in 1989 and 1992 led his league in HRs with 36 and 35 over the fence. When was the last time someone led either league with no more than 35 HR? Yep. I stand by you, Fred, forever and always, and I will never forget the Blue Jays, your torrential Summer '93, the Summer '94 that was taken from you, or you holding our Braves down in '95 when they finally put it all together for the Series. And most of all, I will never forget having the opportunity to see you hit that final home run for Tampa Bay in San Diego in June 2004. You will always be my classy, understated hero.
CoWorker1: god, so now that things are basically fucked, i have to share a little story with you. CoWorker1:Last year, i had the interns doing The Boss's expenses and he being the complete slob that he is turned over fistfuls of random, crumpled up receipts to Intern-A CoWorker1: she diligently sorted through them all and typed the whole thing out and it looked great. CoWorker1: When i was going over them, i noticed that she had typed "Lingerie" into one of the misc. spaces CoWorker1: yes. JeffreyBeaumont: umm JeffreyBeaumont: ...
JeffreyBeaumont: no CoWorker1: yes. CoWorker1: upon closer inspection I found the receipt taped to the rest of the pages. He had actually given us a receipt from a lingerie store. CoWorker1: and somehow, Intern-A had straight-faced put it on his expense report w/o saying anything to me JeffreyBeaumont: Please. dear god. accidentally? right???????
CoWorker1: Ah, i fucking hope he didn't mean to give me that receipt CoWorker1: hilarious, no? JeffreyBeaumont: !!!!!!!!!!!!!! JeffreyBeaumont: i cannot cannot believe that CoWorker1: i probably should have saved it, but at that point i didn't hate him yet. So i just ripped it up into tiny pieces and threw it away.
JeffreyBeaumont: wow wow wow wow wow.
JeffreyBeaumont: this is the very definition of deprarious.
Two delightfully deprarious Beaumont Life news bits to share from yesterday:
1) So after last week having a third light stolen off my bike (my fault, sure, but yeah awesome!!!), I had the real cake last night when, after getting to my bike at 7:40pm, I noticed that someone had stolen my motherfucking SEAT POST CLAMP. What is a seat post clamp even, you ask? Well it's this and the image above.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thankfully they hadn't actually stolen my seat since I am now in the habit of bringing both that and the front wheel into my office, but it never even occurred to me that someone might consider stealing a seemingly innocent $6 item like a seatpost clamp. Hell, I didn't even realize that mine could be removed from the bike! But beyond the general annoyingness of having to shell out $6 more on bike products, what it also meant was that I had to make yet ANOTHER trip from 50 St & 6 Av to 12 St & Av C to get to the only bike shop I know of open at 7:55pm on a weeknight, Continuum Cycles [they are awesome, FYI. I bought my bike there are you should love them if you can]. Thankfully I squeaked in as they were literally locking the door to the shop and got the requisite clamp so I could do a little sitting down on the rest of my journey. This shit is just getting to be straight fucking deprarious. If a bike is not safe in midtown Manhattan during a weekday in broad daylight, where the fuck might it be safe? Ahh yes, in my office where I'm not allowed to store it.
But yeah, let's not forget about...
Our car, in better days
2) No joke, but I got a call from a police officer that, somehow, my mom's stolen car has been found and re-appeared in south Williamsburg sans stereo (have fun without the faceplate, fuckers).
I haven't seen the car yet, but apparently it's still in drivable shape and is being held by a tow company to be returned to the insurance company who are now its owners.
What the fuck, right? Life is fucking strange these days.
Shit man that sucks. Have you ever thought about just bolting down every piece of your bike. That seems like the only way to avoid getting it stolen. Another interesting idea might be to create some kind of elaborate bear trap for a would be thief. If not bolts of bear traps maybe you should get in touch with these guys: http://www.cyberbond1.com/ and see if they have anything that could help.
Note this deprarious exchange. Read carefully. This was mostly hilarious, and a reminder about the dangers of typing and walking simultaneously. Whoops!
-----Original Message----- From: L****, Becky Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 2:45 PM To: Beaumont, Jeffrey Subject: Re: LA Media Council Breakfast scheduled
A what?????????? J J
-----Original Message----- From: Beaumont, Jeffrey Sent: Friday, April 10, 2009 2:45 PM To: L****, Becky Subject: Re: LA Media Council Breakfast scheduled
Great news. If you can get me his headshit I'll put on the site.
Cheers Jeffrey
Sent from my iPhone
-----Original Message-----
On Apr 10, 2009, at 5:42 PM, "L****, Becky" wrote: > > An LA Media Council breakfast has been scheduled with Eric S*****, EVP of Entertainment, D****** for Thursday, June 11 from 8:30 to 9:30am. > > > > Becky L**** > Associate Director of Development, Los Angeles
Boss: Jeffrey, can i have this script? I said I needed it for 10am today Jeffrey: Umm. I emailed it to you yesterday. Boss: Emailed? Yesterday? You sure about that? I didn't get anything from you. Jeffrey: Umm. Yes. [points at screen] See, 5:45 yesterday. [points at screen again] And see, you wrote back to me at 5:49 and said, "Thanks man." Right?
JeffreyBeaumont: ok so this is where i get to use the word "deprarious" in real life. JeffreyBeaumont: my boss bought himself a ticket to Europe for our april site visit trip to Berlin, before we actually confirmed the definite dates we need to go JeffreyBeaumont: you can guess where i'm going with this one... JeffreyBeaumont: he "found a good deal" (which means non-changeable, non-refundable) and SURPRISE, in the process of confirming we've now been asked to go on different dates JeffreyBeaumont: i have been arguing with him for a week why it makes sense to go a week later than he wanted to go and NOW he tells me that he's been holding back because already bought his fucking ticket jaychampionvinyl: wow jaychampionvinyl: that dude is really just....difficult JeffreyBeaumont: the "deprarious" factor here is that he bought the ticket all impromptu because it was a good deal so he could save money so i could still go (the COO above him hadmandated that i can NOT go with him due to "new needs to cut costs")... and now we are going to have to eat that nonrefundable money to buy him a new ticket, which may make it too expensive for me to go with him JeffreyBeaumont: how you like them apples? jaychampionvinyl: haa jesus jaychampionvinyl: very deprarious jaychampionvinyl: and also insmazing JeffreyBeaumont: you see why i need these words in my life! JeffreyBeaumont: i run up against this shit all day long JeffreyBeaumont: it's like i live inside the cels of a Dilbert cartoon jaychampionvinyl: haha JeffreyBeaumont: Boss: "Why did it take you six months to complete this simple task?" Ben: "Because of your continuous changes, your unclear communication, and your short work days."" Boss: "i'm looking for something more along the lines you being lazy." jaychampionvinyl: hahahaha jaychampionvinyl: this could be a blog jaychampionvinyl: Dilbert cartoons jaychampionvinyl: with your face on them jaychampionvinyl: something like "Garfield Minus Garfield," but more like "Dilbert Plus Jeffrey" JeffreyBeaumont: Jeffrey Not Dilbert
GET BEHIND ME DEAD MAN
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Apparently Jimmy Buffet wrote a ... novel. And ... people, including 
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