Monday, December 30, 2002

Charles hosted a lovely party

Charles hosted a lovely party yesterday, with the glamorous Lori, of course - and thus inspires me to relate one of his stories.  Charles was working with a small crew of computer artists - eccentric, overeducated and overcaffeinated.  And that’ s good, because they were working in Livermore, an old inland valley town from stage coach days, now a homogonized suburb, a midwestern enclave in the very loins of the Bay Area, a boring and inimaginative place where people say “howdy” a lot and drive large pickups.  The town symbol, appearing on police car doors and the mayor’s butt tattoo, is a clumsy collage of a steer (the Livermore Rodeo claims to be the “world’s fastest"), a bunch of grapes (the area claims to be California’s first wine country, still makes a mean cabernet) and an atom (for the Lawrence Livermore Labs).  Pure class.  I can’t imagine why they invented a new design for their flag.  I myself worked in Livermore for 14 months - it’s a different world out there, one populated with some very uptight parochial people.  People who were just waiting to be made the butt of cruel computer artist humor. 

So Charles is out in Livermore with his freaky friends and they regularly eat lunch at a soup and salad emporium, one where everything chills or simmers behind sneezeguards and little signs tell you what you’re spooning onto your tray.  It’s a classic business model, and the clientele are into rodeo, Jesus, and being from Livermore.  Charles’ crew swipe a blank food label from the restaurant and painstakingly match the font and color of the lettering, creating a nearly-indistinguishable rogue label for their amusement.  They bring it back to the restaurant and slyly, one of them sneaks over to the soup station and removes the label from the New England clam chowdah… Charles was given the honor of sauntering over next and casually installing the label reading “Viscous Phlegm.” The animators then sit and choke with laughter on their croutons and soft-serve as patrons step up and read the sign, decide whehter or not to get a bowl of the hot creamy phlegm, usually deciding thoughtfully or at least phlegmatically, only occasionally reacting with shock… At one point someone tells the busboy, not a native speaker of english, that “there’s something wrong with your sign.” Obediently, if incompetently, the busboy removes the offending tub of soup and replaced it with an identical one.  The sign remained far longer than it should have. 

Before Charles and his merry band of pranksters got a chance to try it again, their company moved to Berkeley, where words like ‘viscous’ are more readily comprehended by a larger percentage of the population.  The next mission would have been to rename the rainbow jimmies at the froyo station.  I bet they’d still be popular even if their sign did read “rainbow maggots.”