Its amazing the things you find on the web when you're unemployed. . .

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We got a new dog!!!

According to the City of New York Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. . .First of all, what the hell is "metal hygiene." It sounds like some Big Brother program to convince us all not think dirty thoughts. Anyway, this thing we got in the mail is just plain funny. Apparently Rick is the owner of Princess, a spayed Shih Tzu.

We have no idea why New York City thinks we own a Shih Tzu, but its amazing that her name is Princess.

Lisa Kudrow's brilliant new web-show

I've loved Lisa Kudrow for a long, long time. Ever since Friends and even Mad About You, way back in middle school, I've harbored a deep love and appreciation for this extremely intelligent, beautiful and hilarious woman.

I thought Kudrows portrayal of Phoebe was by far the greatest performance of the bunch on Friends and I never quite understood why Jennifer Aniston and Courtney Cox seemed to get most of the attention. Probably because they were the more conventional beauties on the show. Then came The Comeback, in my opinion the most underrated comedy series of the last decade. Kudrow has a gift with comedic timing and adds amazing subtley to every role, making her fascinating to watch. And I find much of her more recent work goes beyond pure comedy. She's not afraid to invest in a character and slowly build out her psyche. Alot of her recent material is not so much laugh out loud funny as slow-burning, twinkle in the eye, sly smile satisfaction. You almost forget she's in on the joke. She employs comedic devices such as subtle verbal tics, uncomfortable pauses, and quick eye movements to build some of the most complex comedic characters we've seen.

Take Web Therapy for example, Kudrow's new web based show which you can catch at www.lstudio.com or here, specifically: http://lstudio.lexus.com/#vid1204 . Kudrow plays Fiona Wallace, a completely self-absorbed "therapist" who is launching a new business by offering 3 minute therapy sessions. Fiona is elitist, confrontational, and awkward and I love every moment of it. She's probably the worst therapists out there, as she seems to have no formal training and spends most of the each 3 minute session addressing her problems. Flying by the seat of her pants, Wallace has chosen this new therapy "modality" because she discovered that 50 minute sessions usually amount to patients "going on and on about dreams and feelings and memories and past experiences that add up to whole lot of nothing. . ." Of course the written word does not nearly convey the way Kudrow delivers this line, complete with eye rolls, condescension, disdain. Even the 10 second introduction is a tiny slice of brilliance. Notice how Kudrow says her character's name, "this," and "therapy." Her eyes also bug out for a brief moment in excitement and she makes a little neck gesture to express enthusiasm. All this in just the introduction. Right now there are only 9 short episodes online, but they are better than the majority of the schlock that is on network tv right now. So check it out, let me know what you think, and if you haven't seen The Comeback yet, Netflix it immediately.

You know you love me
XOXO,
JB

The Fucked-Up Economy Hits Home. . .

I can't say that I didn't see it coming. Things have been bad at work. As far back as last Christmas, when Rico told us he couldn't give us an Xmas bonus, things were bad. And that was almost A YEAR AGO. That was before gas prices shot through the roof and the housing market crashed and I think every American bank went under and oh yeah, something happened with the stock market as well. So, sales were down. We moved out of our delivery company and hired an in-house delivery team. We converted the basement to a warehouse. We reduced our hours to 4 days a week for the entire summer and then some. I actually thought we were doing remarkably well considering the circumstances, but apparently not. We reached a breaking point. 

So, yesterday I got laid off. It was all very amicable. First thing in the morning. Rico praised my work over the past three years, and told me how upset he was and he gave me a hug. Anna, our bookkeeper, gave me a hug too. Rico told me that he would gladly write me a recommendation, and asked for my keys. And that was it. I was out the door, free, and unemployed. 

Its hard to describe how I feel. Its a heavy mix of emotions and I swing wildly from one extreme to the next. I've been "terminated" once before from a hotel in Provincetown and honestly that one stung a lot more, and I know its because that one had to due purely with my work, whereas this job loss is completely economics based. So the ego didn't really take too big a hit. One thing does make me angry though. Rico chose me and not Rumy to let go. Rumy was technically my subordinate, and I'd been there far longer than her. It hurts that Rico felt Rumy was more valuable than me, and that I was not given the option of taking a shortened week or less money. Rumy definitely is payed less, so perhaps this was the deciding factor. Either way, it doesn't seem fair, but as my father properly taught me "life's not fair." 

I am tempted to vent about many of my experiences at the store, but I'll refrain from that now. Perhaps at a later date when I've got no money and no job and I really need to let off some steam. For now, I'll say that overall it was a good experience. Overall, Rico is a good man, a wonderful artist and designer, and a great boss, but often overly emotional and irrational.  

That said, I do not envy Rumy one bit. Running that store is going to be exhausting by herself, and dealing with Rico 5 days a week would drive anyone insane.  Even thinking of the current ongoing problems and having to deal with them all myself makes me feel really bad for her. Then I have moments of unbridled joy when I realized that Oh my God, I'm never going to have to deal bitching, anal customers, wrong pillows, wrong orders, seams coming undone, stains, delivery damage, exorbitant shipping costs, late deliveries, un-met lead times, coked-up designers, whack jobs that come off the street and waste my time, and literally thousands of annoying customers I've dealt with over the years ever again. Its clear I still haven't let go of alot of this stress because I still feel anxious when I think about certain issues. All things must come to an end, and although this one came to an end about 9 months too soon, I'm going to look at it as a blessing in disguise.

Because, as I said, I'm free. As much as I actually did like my job, it was a sort of trap and I had gotten everything out of it that I was going to. I was stressing about telling Rico that I was planning on going back to school and obviously thats not an issue anymore. There are several major bonuses. First, I have lots of time now to work on submitting kick-admission's-ass applications to my journalism schools. I can spend more time with my dog, with my husband, and at the gym. I can focus on my writing (my blog!) and most importantly, get a new job that has to do with writing! Yeah the economy is going down the shitter, but I'll try not to think about that too much. . .to Craigslist, my dears! I'll keep everyone updated!

The Obligatory Obama Oration

Yeah this isn't an oration, but I fucking love assonance so deal. And barring the tone of the topic and the previous sentence, I am overjoyed Barack Obama will be the next United States President. I am just as happy that George Bush is out of office and the Republicans are in retreat. 

Election night was quite nice. I come home and Rick is positioned in front of the TV with CNN (obviously, cause no other station has Campbell Brown and David Gergen), which was a strange sight considering he's usually asleep when I get home. 

I plop myself down, grab Rick's hand and wait for the returns to roll in. Ok, so it wasn't as dramatic as that, and as everyone knows, waiting for returns to come in can be as boring as watching paint dry, and then sitting back and deciding you just LOVE this new color (like what happened on Tuesday), or realizing you've just totally changed the room into this hideous new thing that doesn't agree with any of your social values (2000 & 2004). Yeah. Moving on. 

The very first returns made me just the slightest bit nervous. They projected a couple of states McCain was supposed to win, and he seemed neck and neck with Barack in several other states, with McCain slightly leading. Of John King, at his beloved Magic Map, kept saying that the urban, democratic areas had yet to be reported, but I was poised for the worst, given the outcomes of the last two elections that I was just sure would go to the Democrats. Well, they started calling more and more states for Obama and then he began leading in several key states. Of course the major turning point was when they called Pennsylvania for Obama. There is a bar just below our building with a back patio which we can hear very clearly now that there is a huge building shadowing it and reflecting all the noise up the side of it. Every time a state was projected for Obama, a huge roar would go up that seemed to shake the whole building, and there was no doubt we were living in good ole liberal Brooklyn. Soon after, Ohio was called for Obama, and although they couldn't call it yet, everyone started talking about the implications of Obama winning. As we all know, at 11 PM EST, they called the race and proclaimed Obama as President Elect. It was a wonderful moment, and Rick leaned over, said "this is good for us, baby" and kissed me. I could literally feel a weight lifting off my shoulders; a lightening. We popped a bottle of champagne and toasted to No More Bush, to Democratic, liberal leadership, and to the first African American elected President.

Of course people had been hooting and hollering the entire time outside and honking horns going down Atlantic Ave. This continued throughout the night even to the point where Rick had to get up because he couldn't fall asleep due to all the noise. He may have been a little excited, too. Now, I was a Hillary supporter and slowly warmed up to Obama as the race wore on. While I don't have the frothing-mouth, fanatical love for Obama as many people I know do, I have to say he has given me something that no other politician has ever given me: hope. Yes, just as he promised, just as he campaigned on. I knew it exactly the moment it happened, the next day. I was crossing the street and thinking about Grad school and applications and projecting what my future might be like depending on what school I go to. And then I realized that no matter where I went to school, Barack Obama would be President while I was going there. Not George Bush, not John McCain, not Sarah Palin or some other asshole who thinks of me as a second class citizen because I love another man. No it would be Obama and I actually felt a surge of happiness and above all, hope. It felt amazing. Here's the the future, O, let's make it a good one. 

Is it just me or is Gossip Girl getting crazy good as the season goes on?

I mean! I'm just sayin. . .

BioShock: The Review

Well, I promised a review of Bioshock a while ago and now, since I finally beat the game this weekend, I'm now delivering. 

As a preface, Bioshock has gotten amazing reviews from every major electronic games magazine out there and has one several "game of the year awards" as well. It received an aggregate score of 95 on metacritic.com and basically has been called the bomb by everyone whos anyone in the video game world. 

My experience was a little less enjoyable than that. And I'm not surprised. I'll put it out there right now: I am an extremely hard to please gamer. I demand constant innovation and immersion to keep my attention. I am a developer's worst nightmare. So, while there are many parts of Bioshock that are admirable and deserve high praise, overall I was dissapointed with my gaming experience. 

Bioshock is a first person shooter that begins with you taking the role of an unnamed man on an airplane that suddenly goes down in somewhere over the Atlantic ocean. You rise up to the surface surrounded by a ring of fire and are able to swim to tiny creepy island, where upon you discover an "elevator" that does down. . .way down. . .

The elevator takes you to Rapture, a gleaming city built at the bottom of the sea, a place its architect and god-like ruler, Andrew Ryan, has built to escape the oppressive regimes of our world. "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?" Ryan asks. "No, says the man in Washington, it belongs to the poor. No, says the man in the Vatican it belongs to God! No, says the man in Moscow, it belongs to everyone." Such is the context of the rich world you are about to enter. The writers of Bioshock have done a superb job of creating a world unto itself. Ryan has gone about creating his own utopia under the sea and the production team behind Bioshock has mounted an incredibly believable model of this world. The visuals, although for the most part dark and saturnine, are rich a mix of stylized 1950's naivetee and an underwater labrynth constructed with steel, glass and fire. The sound is equally as enthralling. T

he heap of metal you are in is constantly creaking and heaving under the oppressive weight of the ocean and these

 sounds really help in immersing you into this world. The denizens of Rapture are a twisted bunch and you can almost always hear them before you see them. Their mutterings, death cries, and caterwauls echo off the metal walls and, and the beginning at least, produce a palpable sense of fear. Its equally terrifying and pleasurable discovering what Rapture was and has become, mainly due to the impressive production value the designers have instilled in the game. The story unfold through audiotapes left around Rapture and its up to you weather or not you want to listen to them. They add considerable deapth to the story, although I found them sometimes distracting and hard to understand. I had to turn on the subtitles option

 halfway though because almost every main character speaks in one crazy accent or another. I've heard they are filming Bioshock movie, which comes as no surprise, as this game is ripe with the makings of a creepy action blockbuster. 

Rapture is a world gone insane. Unchecked scientific progress has lead to widespread use of personal genetic modifications - think of plastic surgery gone mad - that clearly spun out of control until a tipping point was reached and anarchy erupted in Rapture, killing most of its occupants. The things that remain, the Splicers, are deranged, mutated humans who are constantly searching for adam, the stuff that lets you genetically enhance yourself. Soon enough, you'll have the opportunity to splice yourself up and be able to wield awesome powers - fire, electricity, telekinesis, even command swarms of insects, as well as outfit yourself with suped-up tonics that provide sweet passive bonuses such as invisibility and electric skin. And

 you'll need them, because you're goona have to take down Big Daddies, and lots of 'em. 

A Big Daddy bears down, Little Sister in hand. Uh, I think we're gonna need a bigger wrench.

Big Daddies are the hulking, drill-for-a-hand equipped behemoth protectors of the Little Sisters, the Keepers of the Adam. They'll do anything in their power to protect these little girls. After you do eventually take them down, you're confronted with the a decision - save the Little Sisters from the "worm" that is infesting them and take some their adam, or kill them and take all their adam. Huh? Exactly. The specifics of what exactly is going on when you chose to save or destroy the Sisters is muddled and therefore, for me, diluted the intensity of the moral decision I had to make. Yet it is still there. Do I save this little girl, albeit one with glowing, red evil eyes, and scrape by, or do I destroy them, and become more powerful than I could ever possibly imagine MWAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH. Personally I decided to save most of the little girls, cause, y'know, I'm a stand up guy, but I had to kill a few just to see what happened cause, y'know, I'm bad ass like that. Critics have hailed this feature of the game as one of its best, because it "makes you feel." Now, I did have to think a few seconds about what I was going to do the first few times, but there are so many Little Sisters, the experience became rote and repetitive. 

While it might sound like I liked this game overall, there are several major problems in it for me. The most important for me was the repetitive nature of the game. Overall, there are only about 5 enemies. There are the Splicers that either jump at you, shoot at you, or throw bombs at you, there are gun turrets, and there are Big Daddies. I quickly grew bored of level after level of the same thing. The Big Daddies are scary and menacing, but after the 12th one you've killed, the excitement is gone. I wish they each had different strengths weaknesses, different attack styles etc. similar to Mega Man bosses, because as it is, I used the same strategy for each one - stand back, launch a few grenade rounds, stun with electricty, launch a few more, repeat. The levels have a similar been-there-done-that feel to them as well. While its true you go to lots of different places like the Medical Pavilion, the energy generator, the "Vacation Land," etc. They all feel so similar and are colored with such dark, murky tones, I got more than a little inured to the style.  Now, perhaps I didn't spend quite enough time with the game, or play it on a high enough difficulty level, but frankly, I didn't want to. I've read how innovative the game can be, and how you can progress through different parts in different ways, but to be honest I don't have any desire to go back and experience this again. Even as I could tell I was nearing the end of the game, I had to force myself to keep playing, mainly so I could just beat the damn thing and move on to my next game. THAT, more than anything else tells me that this is not a stellar game. Or, maybe its just me. I DID play it all the way through and thats not something I can say about every game. 

Overall, I give it an 86 out of 100