Archive for July, 2008

links for 2008-07-31

Posted July 31st, 2008 in del.icio.us Links.

Waiter Rant

I’ve read Waiter Rant for a couple of years now, so I was quite happy to snag The Waiter’s book when it was published. I got my copy yesterday, and I wolfed it down this afternoon like one of his yuppie customers polishing off a $200 meal at The Bistro. Wait, no, I enjoyed it far more.

While the whole of the idea is to take the reader through the narrative of what it’s like to be a waiter—the lifestyle, the business environment, and how waiting tables seems to attract all sorts of misanthropes and social deviants—The Waiter also takes the reader through his own narrative: how he became a waiter, how he rose to the top, how he was beloved, and how he ended up becoming a minor tyrant at The Bistro. The whole book has a nice arc and speaks well of The Waiter’s newly-chosen career. The advice often given to writers is to write what they know, and The Waiter knows the restaurant biz well enough to tell the front-of-house story engagingly.

I’ve never worked in the restaurant business, but I’ve lived with folks who have. Understanding the economics of that back when I was co-oping and making ends meet most of the time helped me to recognize that, if I was going out to eat, I could afford to tip well. [And if I couldn't afford it, I'd keep my happy ass at home.] I like to think that The Waiter would find me to be a nice customer. I certainly try to be.

If you like a good narrative, are interested in the food business, or just like supporting bloggers-turned-dead-tree-product pushers, Waiter Rant is an excellent choice. I’ll admit: when I first saw the URL, I thought it was “Wait Errant”, like a knight errant. That mental image has always colored how I read The Waiter, but I also think that it fits.

Posted July 30th, 2008 in Booklogging.

links for 2008-07-30

Posted July 30th, 2008 in del.icio.us Links.

A Brief Vacation Update

So, let’s see … the ear infection killed my Friday, so I didn’t go to visit my parents over the weekend as expected. Presumably, I was going to work. But no. I felt like crap all weekend. I went in to the office to get my work laptop around 0630 yesterday, came home, went back to sleep, got up in time to go to Hooters for my boss’s birthday lunch [it's his wife's idea; honest], came home, went back to sleep [for as much as I hate to sleep, I love to sleep when on vacation], and when I considered working last night, my ear got to acting up again. Gah.

I haven’t done diddly crap today, other than canceling my reservations for the chalet. I figured it was 50-50 that I’d still feel like dogmeat, and I didn’t want to be spending $200+ to feel like dogmeat in Guntersville when I could feel like dogmeat in Madison.

At some point, I still have to do some work. Oh, and my count for work phone calls this week is already at five. I have probably three or four hours’ worth of work to do, and then I can forget about work [yeah, right] for the rest of the week.

So what am I doing? Finalizing plans for the long-overdue desk-building in the loft [ready to be doing layout later this week ... am probably putting the chalet money towards prototyping], sleeping, and generally not saying a word. This probably surprises some people who know the gregarious, outgoing, extroverted me, but when I’m alone, I go into complete hermit mode. [This surprises exactly none of the people that have ever lived with me, however.] Also, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about random things, and that’s good. This is, functionally, a week-long passive soak. Intuitively, companies understand this, and that’s why I’m getting paid to sit on my ass right now.

I should’ve known better than to make any damn plans for my vacation. My plans never survive contact with the enemy. :casts an eye towards the motto of this Weblog’s jokey name:

Posted July 29th, 2008 in Life Updates, Sickness & Health.

links for 2008-07-29

Posted July 29th, 2008 in del.icio.us Links.

links for 2008-07-28

Posted July 28th, 2008 in del.icio.us Links.

Geof’s New Music: 27 Jul - 2 Aug 2008

Hallelujah and praise the Lord! I’m on vacation!

Last week was pretty disappointing.:

  • Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy. Okay, so the Led Zeppelin that I love is the rockin’, bluesy stuff. And to quote Wikipedia on Houses of the Holy, “This album was a stylistic turning point in the lifespan of Led Zeppelin.” And, well, on “The Song Remains the Same”, I was confused for a minute, thinking that maybe Geddy Lee had replaced Robert Plant or something. [I'm sure that several people broke things after reading that sentence.] Admittedly, it gets back to sounding a little more like Led Zeppelin as the album progresses, and I am the person that did say, just two weeks ago, “I’m a firm believer that bands have to experiment lest they [and/or their fans] become totally bored with the thing.” But that doesn’t mean that I have to like it. So, yes, I should rate this now, right? Three stars, mainly on the strength of “Dancing Days” and “D’yer Mak’er”.
  • The Cardigans’ Super Extra Gravity. The phrase that I was going to use for this album was “solid, but boring” until I got to “I Need Some Fine Wine and You, You Need to Be Nicer”. I have a lot of friends who are excellent singer/songwriters, so I say this with a bit of trepidation, but … man, The Cardigans rock way too damn much to try to do the singer/songwriter+backing band thing. Sadly, that and a fusion of quasi-country stuff [although it felt like Nina Persson was channeling Sixpence's Leigh Nash for the first few tracks] made for a boring start. But it picks up in the second half of the record, which is good. Three-and-a-half stars.
  • Coldplay’s Viva La Vida. Egad. Jacob said this about Coldplay on a forum I run: “The best way I can put it is that I like simpler Coldplay. It just feels like they’re trying to be something that they’re not right now. The indie-rock/prog-rock (good call Adriene) feel just doesn’t fit what Coldplay was. Sure that sounds like the old fan wishing their band hadn’t grown up and changed their sound…I’ll cop to that. But some of their earlier songs made me want to cry. Now their new stuff does that but for different reasons.” I can’t say it any frickin’ better. One-and-a-half stars, and if any of my friends wants it, I’ll give it to them. I don’t want it back. One-and-a-half stars. I haven’t bought an album that I’ve actively hated in quite some time, but … this is it. Gah.
  • 25 Oct 1997 [Utica, NY, USA] concert bootleg of Blues Traveler. I’m surprised that a SBD sounds this poorly-mixed, but then I probably shouldn’t be. Sound board operators don’t have time to give tapers jacking into their boards the time to give perfectly-mixed feeds. The mix is very definitely pushed towards the treble and towards John’s voice standing out above all others. For people that crap on me wanting to do SBD/AUD matrices, well, suck on this. Two stars. [Sad, because Bob Sheehan was really on this night. And before Chris Smith says crap to me ... suck on it, LC.]
  • 1 Sep 2007 [Denver, CO, USA] concert bootleg of Wilco. Gah. Another week of getting burnt by a stealth rig. Venues that don’t allow tapers suck. This sounds pretty good despite being stealthily done. Two-and-a-half stars.
  • 26 Apr 2008 [Dayton, OH, USA] concert bootleg of Over the Rhine. It’s a rare case when I’m disappointed by a matrix [well, other than my own, heh], but I am by this one. Karin’s vocals are too hot in the mix, but I fear that’s probably a fault of the sound board op [which shocks me, because this typically isn't the case with CST shows] than the taper. [After all, if she's too hot in the SBD feed, she's probably too hot in the mains, and you can't compensate with the AUD part of the feed to get more of the band.] I mean, it’s still a decent recording, but I only give it three stars. I expected four-plus.
  • 27 May 2008 [Milan, Italy] concert bootleg of Feist. Feist bootlegs are hard to come by, so I was willing to chance it on a recording made by a Zoom H2’s internal mics. [Hey, I own and use a Tascam DR-1, so I'm understanding. It's just that internal mics aren't going to get a big band's sound, especially not in a room like that.] So it’s not terribly surprising that the recording is muddy and distant, but hey, it’s free, right? Two-and-a-half stars.

Posted July 27th, 2008 in Musiclogging. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

links for 2008-07-27

Posted July 27th, 2008 in del.icio.us Links.

« Older Entries