Work Text:
WEDNESDAY
Susan came in earlier with her eyes glowing in excitement. "You gotta check this band out," she said, and pressed play on a Walkman then shoved it into my hands. I put the headphones on. It was a lullaby. I looked at her skeptically and she gestured frantically at me to keep listening. "Susan, I have work..." I grumbled. And just as the lullaby ended, everything exploded like a musical supernova, making me jump. "Jesus!" I yelped, taking the headphones off momentarily. Susan quickly put them back on, "Okay, you don't have to listen to the whole thing, but just this one song? Pleeeease?"
I don't listen to as much 'now' music as Susan does, but this song made me feel so many things that I'd never felt listening to a song before. After it ended, I took the headphones off and gave the Walkman back to Susan, who paused it. She was grinning intensely, more than the time she discovered Duran Duran. "Whatcha think?"
"Wow," was all I could say.
I think Susan spent the rest of the day introducing everyone to that album.
We were all hanging out in the lounge and Susan would not stop talking about that band. Apparently, they're called 'Jellyfish' and it's run by these two best friends and they're from San Francisco and I stopped listening after that. But my interest was piqued when she mentioned that they had an online fan club thing. And of course Susan's already on there!
Bug actually seemed interested though, which I found odd. Susan said that they're this hippie, long-haired 70s revival band. It's funny— their music didn't sound very 70s to me.
THURSDAY
Susan made us all sign up for the 'Jelly-List' and she's supposed to get the fan club newsletters delivered to the house as well. They're actually on tour right now. And Susan made sure to let us all know that they're playing in San Jose on Sunday so she booked us all tickets. So now I have to pay her $20.
***
I got past the embarrassment and went to Susan to ask her if I could listen to that song (which I now know is 'Joining A Fan Club') again. She was actually listening to it when I did, so I bent down to her level and we shared headphones awkwardly.
I focused on the lyrics this time. I talked to Susan about it afterwards, how these guys seem to hate the very idea of fan clubs, but she didn't care. "But who even joins fan clubs nowadays, Dan? Plus, I think it's about religion and stuff... Didn't you listen?"
FRIDAY
Karla and I were talking about Jellyfish today; she's not that into the fashion and stuff but she says it's interesting to talk to everyone on the Jelly-List. "It's a lot more fun being in a chat room when you actually have something to talk about, something that unites you all. But I don't think I'd like any of them in real life. They have this psychotic, obsessive relationship with the band and none of them are actually sensible about it. It's not really the place you'd go for an intelligent conversation."
I haven't actually talked to anyone on there yet, but I guess I should.
She's also not happy about how Susan basically forced her into going to the concert. We got Bug to join in with our conversation and he agreed that it sucks that we all need to pay, but he's actually glad that Susan bought tickets for everyone. "You kids need some actual cultural activity in your life," he said, and then left.
So the conversation shifted back to chat rooms and how scary it is that we're just able to talk to anyone on the Internet now. "Well, just think," Karla said. "Companies want us to spend all our time talking to people on chat rooms until all our interaction is entirely online. It's easier to advertise to us that way."
And then we started talking about how much computers can change advertising, and then about the billboards we've seen driving around Palo Alto, and then we started salivating over the idea of sleek, undriven, unadvertisable highways.
About online communication, though— back in Microsoft, e-mail was such an efficient form of communication. Even though we all worked in the same building, everyone found it easier to e-mail their neighbour instead of just going to see them. It's a bit different now that we're at Oop!, but I don't know why that's happened. We're all talking to each other normally again; maybe the novelty of e-mails wore off. It's fun using our Oop! addresses to e-mail people outside of Oop!, though, because they ask a bunch of questions about it. And we're back at online advertising.
***
Susan gathered us all up and told us that we'd be leaving tomorrow afternoon for the concert. She wants to spend the day in San Jose before going to see the band in the evening to "get to know the place". So I guess I have to pack.
Also: Michael and Ethan aren't going. They said that Oop! is too important to spend two days slacking off and going to a concert, but I know Michael isn't going because he thinks he'd be too awkward. I think Ethan genuinely means that thing about not slacking off though. I feel kind of terrible for thinking this, but I'm glad Michael isn't going. I'm no less awkward than he is, but I think he'd freak out at the concert and make it weird for all of us and not just himself. There was this one time Abe went with Michael to go buy some Lego or something and he told us that Michael totally shut down and just refused to go into the store because of all the people. And I don't want Michael standing outside of the concert hall all evening.
SATURDAY
Karla and I made packing lists for ourselves, and they're strangely different to each other.
My list:
- 2 shirts
- 2 pants
- 2 pairs of underwear
- 1 pair of socks
- Toothbrush & toothpaste
- PowerBook & charger
Karla's list:
- 2 shirts
- 2 pairs of pants
- 3 pairs of underwear
- 3 pairs of socks
- 1 bra
- 1 jacket
- 1 nightdress
- Box of tampons
- Toothbrush
- Toothpaste
- Notepad
- Pencil
- Pen
When she looked at my list, Karla was incredulous. "I thought I'd be packing lighter than you!" she exclaimed, and then went into a whole rant about how efficient she was being because she was planning for contingencies and she needed a notepad and pencil and pen because "there's no way I'm bringing a PowerBook to San Jose!". But then we actually packed our stuff and it all fit into one suitcase so she calmed down a bit.
Todd packed 35 protein shake packets. "You never know..." he said.
***
I didn't actually know that San Jose was only a half-hour drive from Palo Alto. Susan apparently knew this, but she was acting the entire trip like we were exploring some uncontacted civilisation. The drive was alright though; we had the same car arrangements as we did when we drove to Palo Alto from Microsoft which protected our collective sanities from Susan's excited chattering.
We left quite late so didn't have time to walk around when we got to San Jose (much to Susan's disappointment). After having a quick dinner in the first restaurant we found, we checked in to the hotel, then everyone gathered in what we had unanimously decided was mine and Karla's room to discuss tomorrow's itinerary. I realised at this point that I didn't know where the concert actually was, so I asked Susan and she told us that it was at a university. So then Todd and Susan burst into enthusiastic conversation about the possibility of hooking up with students, which then turned into a nasty fight about who would get the single room.
"But, Susan, you can just go with Bug! I'm much more likely to hook up with someone tonight than you are."
"As if! This is a concert, fuckbrain! Nobody's looking for jocks; they're looking for hot rocker chicks! Plus, you and Bug are both men, so it makes sense!"
"Oh, come on! Bug won't do anything if you stay with him, will you, Bug?"
"Not to Susan, I won't..."
We ended up deciding that Susan would get the single room, but Bug is being very bitter about sharing with Todd and all his bodybuilding stuff. Bug's got this superhuman power to put up with anything eventually, though, so the worst Todd's getting from him is a few sarcastic comments.
SUNDAY
We all woke up at around noon because everyone was talking until 1am (well, everyone except Karla; she fell asleep early) and, by that time, the breakfast hours at the hotel were over, so we went out to get some brunch— over-processed fast-food meals at a chain restaurant. We did some tourist-y things for a few hours but Karla and I were starting to lose steam so we managed to persuade everyone to go back to the hotel and hang out. After sitting around for a while in our room, Susan announced her extreme boredom to us so Bug and Todd went with her to go sightseeing, which gave Karla a chance to teach me some more shiatsu.
The shiatsu wound up into us taking turns holding each other and giving each other little kisses, which was nice. I was kind of expecting it to go further at first but neither of us did anything, and now I'm pretty content that that's all we did.
***
Bug, Todd and Susan came back to the hotel after being gone for 3 hours with a bunch of souvenirs, singing 'Do You Know the Way to San Jose' over and over but none of them could remember any of the lyrics so it all ended in a mishmash of 'something-something's and 'blah-blah-blah's. And by that time, it was 6pm already so we all went to our respective quarters to get ready.
There was a moment where Susan entered mine and Karla's room, unannounced, because she was having trouble with her eyeliner, and she happened to walk in just when I was taking off my shirt from yesterday to change. She screamed, which alerted me to her being in the room, and I quickly pulled my new shirt on. "Jesus, what was that for?!" I turned around to face her.
"You're so skinny!" Susan shrieked with laughter, which caused her and Karla to fall into giggles.
But then they calmed down and did each other's eyeliner (I was surprised at Karla's acceptance to wearing eyeliner); I thought Susan's was a bit messy because it was so smudged, which made sense because Karla did it, but Susan said that it was supposed to look like that. I joked to Karla that I didn't know she was some secret makeup genius, but she didn't find it very funny and said, very bluntly: "I'm not."
Women continue to fascinate me.
Susan also tried doing Karla's hair but Karla didn't like it, so she brushed it out and decided to also wipe off her eyeliner. "It was fun, but nobody's going to take me seriously."
***
We walked over to the event center for the concert, although we got there quite late so the seats were bad. We didn't get to see much of the band because we were way off to the side, but the music was almost three-dimensional— I was so surprised that they could get all those sounds to come out with just four of them onstage. I noticed Karla looking around the hall during the set and, when I asked her what she was doing, she said that she was trying to figure out all of the audiovisual connections. I was so fascinated by the music that I hadn't even thought about the technology, so we both looked around at all the cables, trying to make sense of their infinite, twisting branches while a slow song played.
During the break, Karla and I told Bug about our theories about the audiovisual setup, and he got really excited and convinced us to go speak to the sound and lighting guys. They were super cool about it and told us everything we wanted to know, so we geeked out over it for a while
We went back to our seats when the band was setting up again, which gave us an opportunity to see them properly— they weren't hippies at all!
***
Susan and Bug were gushing about the band all the way back to the hotel. I don't know how they don't run out of things to say about those guys. But when we got back, they were both so tired that they fell asleep as soon as they got into their beds. And neither Susan nor Todd brought anyone back, so that whole argument about who got the single room turned out to be pointless.
Karla and I settled in our room and talked to each other for a while— I don't even remember what about now. We fell asleep in each other's arms.
MONDAY
We got up earlier than we had the previous night so we didn't miss the hotel's free breakfast. They had this make-your-own waffle station and practically NO staff, so we made as many waffles as we could to take back with us. Todd also stole a bunch of mini peanut butter pots. Susan said, "I think the practice of putting commodities in little plastic pots is going to die out pretty soon— just look at Costco!" But then Karla pointed out that commerical travel is becoming more and more prevalent these days, especially considering all the VC meetings and product launches in Silicon Valley, so she thinks the opposite is going to happen.
So we all ate breakfast and drove back to Palo Alto, and worked for the rest of the day with Susan's Jellyfish cassette playing start-to-finish, back-to-back. She was thinking out loud about potential opportunities to sneak Jellyfish into Oop!, so every 30 minutes you could hear her say 'record player?' or another ridiculous idea of how to incorporate a soundtrack. Although, Michael actually liked the idea of putting a record player into Oop!.
***
I went into Bug's room, trying to find him after he had disappeared for an hour, and I noticed that he had a new shrine in his room that was dedicated to one of the guys from Jellyfish. And he'd made bracelets and everything! He's a lot quieter about his new obsession than Susan is, that's for sure. I went back and Todd said "Did you find him?", but I just shook my head and didn't say anything about his Jellyfish shrine. I guess I was scared that Bug was secretly listening in on me.
***
I found Bug! Or, rather, he came back. He'd driven to this bar to "meet up with someone".
"Who?" Todd asked.
"Someone from the Jelly-List."
Susan ooh-ed. "Did it go anywhere? Was she nice?"
"He. And we only met up because he mentioned living near Palo Alto."
"Ohhh, why did you get to meet up with him?! You don't think you could give me his e-mail, do you? I'm DESPERATE to meet another Jellyhead."
"Don't I count?"
Susan made a gagging noise, then got to talking about how cool it would be to date a member of Jellyfish. "And he would write songs about me and I'd get to hear all the demos and I'd be best friends with them all... sighhh..." Karla looked at me with a 'get-me-out-of-here' look.
TUESDAY
Well, it was only a matter of time. Susan's made a Jellyfish fansite. It's a lot better-looking than some of the ones I've already seen around the Net (Susan's very proud of her web design skills on this project), but you could tell that Ethan was not happy about it. He didn't blow up at her or anything— it was just a reminder that she should be focusing on Oop! because, after all, "it's what I'm paying you to do".
***
Karla decided, after the 7th run of that album today, that she couldn't listen to it any more, so she took me to the record store and we bought Jellyfish's other album, Bellybutton. Susan was endlessly happy about it and went to put it on, but we all soon realised that we didn't have a record player after selling all our stuff back at MIcrosoft. So we drove back to the record store and bought a used record player, and Susan was so anxious to get home that she almost crashed the car.
She didn't like Bellybutton. Well, she liked the first track, but everything else was just too happy for her. She went on a whole existential 'my life has been ruined' rant, but then I put on the other album and it cheered her up. Bug liked it, though! I would've thought that it'd be too happy for him. This whole Jellyfish thing has really made me reshape my opinions on him.
***
I talked to Karla when we were lying in bed about how Bug's personality has basically flipped upside down now that he's found Jellyfish (and also let it slip about his new shrine— whoops!), and she said that it's because Susan was a lot more obsessed with Jellyfish, so he felt like he could get away with liking it, too. Though I'm pretty sure Susan doesn't have a Jellyfish shrine installed.
We could hear Bellybutton being played from Bug's room and we listened carefully while falling asleep, the rhythms and harmonies weaving into our tired brains and bodies.