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Archive for the ‘Office Space’ Category

Andy Abramowitz–A Beginner’s Guide to Free Fall (2020)

Posted in Drinking, Marriage (Happy), Marriage Trouble, Office Space, Parenting, Roller Coasters, The Districts, Tom Petty on October 8, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE DISTRICTS-The Districts (2014).

The Districts are a band from around Philly.  They are very popular there.  I saw them live with a crowd that knew every word to every song (I didn’t know them that well and felt a little out of place).

The band was in high school in Lititz, PA when they formed.  They independently released a couple of EPs and an album, Telephone in 2012 (while they were sophomores).

This EP was their first for a label (Fat Possum) and has three newly recorded songs from Telephone as well as two new songs.

“Rocking Chair” opens the EP.  There’s some Americana-ish guitar melodies and the some loping, rocking chords.  There’s also a couple of “whoos” and a full on “oooh” singalong part near the end. Rob Grote’s voice is old-in-a-young-body, with some nice gruffness.

“Lyla” is a slower, moodier piece with some really pretty guitar fills at the end of each verse.  There’s some loose, rambling dah dah dah’s near the end of the song that are very fitting to the feel of the record.

“Funeral Beds” starts out with quiet guitar and a harmonica!  There’s some slide guitar-sounding parts, giving it a desert feel.  The drums start as simply a thumping bass drum. At three and a half minutes, the drums amp up to include some martial snare beats.  And then the song takes off, rocking on to it’s five and a half minute conclusion.

“Long Distance” is my favorite track on the record.  It’s got a great melody, some clear guitars and jaunty rocking chord changes.  It’s got a big raucous sing along chorus.  After almost five minutes the song drops away for a simple thumping bass line and the whole band singing the chorus.

“Stay Open” ends the EP with a bit more raucousness–alternately slow and rocking controlled sloppiness.

It’s a great introduction.  They would follow this with a terrific full length the next year.

[READ: September 19, 2020] A Beginner’s Guide to Free Fall

This book came across my desk and it sounded really interesting.  I’d never heard of the author–this is his second novel–but there was something about the title and the cover that grabbed me.

And boy did I really enjoy this book.

The book starts four months from now, with the narrator trapped under a car that has crashed into the sea.  It’s an inauspicious beginning, but proves to be the logical conclusion for a man whose life went from amazing to horrific in one day.

Davis Winger is the man trapped.  He has a lovely wife and daughter.  He has a very cool job (he designs roller coasters) and he is well liked by everyone.  Even by his sister, Molly, with whom he has a great relationship.  Molly proves to be an excellent co-protagonist.  Indeed, her story proves to be more interesting than his. (more…)

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Lincoln Park–Handle Time (2008)

Posted in Canadian Music, Corporate skewering, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Lincoln Park, Luther Wright & The Wrongs, Office Space, Short Books, Steve Martin, Work on September 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: LUTHER WRIGHT AND THE WRONGS-instrumentality (2006).

I loved Luther’s Rebuild the Wall, and I kind of thought of him as country, but not really country.  A sort of punky country (his song “Broken Fucking Heart” lead me in that direction, too).

But this album is all instrumentals (hence the title) and it’s very traditional bluegrass/banjo-fueled tracks.   Eleven tracks in all (totaling about 22 minutes).  There’s even a cover of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”  Listening to this I realized that I like banjo music (not as my favorite type mind you, but certainly more than a little).  Steve Martin (an excellent banjoist himself) once said:

“You just can’t sing a depressing song when you’re playing the banjo. You can’t go– [grins, plays and sings] “Oh, murder and death and grief and sorrow!”

And there’s something to be said for that.  With this fun collection of mostly 2 minutes songs, you’ll smile for twenty minutes or so.  (And the playing is top notch, too).

[READ: September 11, 2010] Handle Time

When I wrote about One Night @ the Call Center, several readers said I must read Handle Time, that it was the consummate Call Center novel and that it was much better than One Night.  So I tried to find it.  No libraries in New Jersey carried it.  And although I could get it at Amazon, there was precious little other information about it.  Well, I finally decided to add it to our library collection (so I didn’t have to pay for it) and to read it for myself.

My first surprise came when the first line of the text has the word embarrassed written in a super large font.  The font is so large in fact that it put a pretty sizable space between the lines of text (that’s called leading).  My second surprise came when I saw that littered throughout the text were a whole bunch of large words and crazy fonts and a bunch of clip art pictures that showed what was happening.  (I was especially surprised when one of them turned out to be Mr Burns from The Simpsons!).

So it turns out that there are different fonts throughout the book, some of them large and crazy, others fancy and scripty.  But the long and short of it is that this book is really only about 50 pages long (I mean I read the entire 188 pages in about 2 hours).

Okay, but what about the content.  Well the plot itself is fairly brief.  Chase gets a job at a call center.  She sits through orientation, begins working, gets demoralized and has a panic attack about her job.  That’s pretty much it.  But really what you read the book for is for the side bits, the comments, the snark, the sympathizing with call center workers.

Except that I’ve never worked in a call center and yet I have experienced many of the things in the novel.  So, this book, much loved by call center workers, could be about pretty much any shit job (except for the part about keeping your numbers up (and the part about not actually helping people because it skews your average handle time)).  But bad cafeterias, microwaves, bizarre HR nonsense, stupid powerpoints, they’re part of any corporate job.  And she does a good job in skewering them, they’re just not specific to call centers.   (more…)

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