The Brighton Front Yard

An ensemble of shots from just outside the pad, with performances from neighborhood animals - including the one and only Mr. Moxin - and the song Mushrooms from Junkie XL.

Subject: field trip details

all right, ese locos, it's almost that time...the matadors have been practicing, the bulls have been grazing, the lobsters have been clicking their claws in anticipation...so here's the 411 on this Sunday's field trip to Mexico:

DEPARTURE:
--meet at ***'s pad at 4833 Coronado in OB
--bus leaves at 10:45am sharp
--try to arrive by 10:30am...enjoy a famous *** bloody mary while you wait!

PLEASE BRING:
--your I.D.
--$30 for the bus ride+bus booze+bullfight tix
--extra $ for lunch, beverages, souvenirs (and for the federales if you get in trouble)
--a sweatshirt, a jacket, or something else warm (*** fur available as a last resort)
--note: most cell phones don't work south of the border!
--and in case you were wondering: we should be getting back at around 8pm!

LOOK FORWARD TO:
--beautiful scenery along the Mexican coastline!
--exciting bus games with prizes!
--delicious food and tasty drinks!
--amazingly great times with incredibly cool people!
--a f*ckin' bullfight!

AND IN CONCLUSION:
--any questions, call "my" cell at 619-***
--if you have to back out, please let me know so we don't wait around!
--see you on Sunday at 10:30am!

RE: South Eastern Pennsylvania Transport Authority

Good to hear from you, ***. News from the east always brightens my day; in fact, I've grwown increasingly nostalgic as of late. Times are certainly strange here in San Diego. I work five days a week, which as a shock to the system of the highest order. The gist of it is this:

Around 6 AM, I check the clock and I get out of bed and I take a shower and I put on a suit and I drive to an office and I say "good morning," and I have a donut and I turn on my computer and I process paperwork and produce more paperwork, and I process the paperwork I have newly produced. My vocabulary includes investment jargon such as "counter-cyclical" and "vertically integrated" and "dividend yield" and "10-k" and "Bloomberg." Someone mentions that everyone knows what T.G.I.F. stands for, but not everyone knows that S.H.I.T. stands for So Happy It's Thursday. That strikes me as extremely funny.

Around 5 PM, I turn off my computer and I say "see you tomorrow" and I drive to my house and I take off my suit and I take another shower and I ponder my options for the evening and I check the clock and it's 7 PM already. My vocabulary is normal again.

I believe it was the extra-curriculars you inquired about, so I'll go into some detail there, as well:

Around 7 PM, I go run errands I've put off for awhile or I go drink beers at my friend Mike's house or I go eat dinner at my gilrfriend's apartment or I just go for a drive in my car because it all seems fun even if I'm just sitting there listening to my stereo. Around midnight, I crawl into my girlfriend's bed, or I crawl into my own bed, or I look at my watch and think "I should probably be crawling into fucking bed" as I order another scotch and soda at a local bar. My sleep is fitful as I know that I get to wake up at 6 AM the next morning; in fact, I wake up at 4 AM and 5 AM just to practice looking at the clock and saying "aw, shit."

Next email: the weekend. Stay tuned.

file: self-appraisal excerpt

From the arrival of a new Director of Marketing to the opening of our Canadian mutual fund business, I’ve been kept quite busy this year, and most of my new ideas have revolved around streamlining my current activities and working more efficiently. I’ve continually sharpened the monthly commentary writing process, for instance, and as a result, commentary drafting is relatively painless – despite its time-sensitivity and its required input from people in Mutual Funds, Portfolio Managment, and Compliance.

Another example relates to the quarterly commentary. As we laid out our plan of attack for the third quarter’s installment, I noted that the “Market Results” section didn’t quite mesh with our bottom-up philosophy – and that the quality of the QC might not suffer if the section were omitted. I suggested that we drop Market Results and lead off with the “Portfolio Notes”sections instead; this new idea was well-received and implemented in that quarter’s commentary.

I’ve also demonstrated initiative in my work for other departments. In the first half of the year, for example, I conducted a detailed review of the calculation method we previously used to obtain D/E values for our benchmark indexes, presented my findings to ***, and gained his approval for a change to a different, more straightforward method. This new method simplified the gathering of monthly fundamentals and, in my opinion, strengthened the accuracy of the D/E numbers we report for our benchmarks.

FW: Tunak

From the freakiest and funkiest corners of the Middle East comes this magic carpet ride of sounds and sights...you'll want to enjoy it again and again!

One fine day...

...picture it: San Diego, California, a bright August day on the beach. Your humble narrator is splish-splashing around out in the surf, bodysurfing here and there, but mostly just enjoying a heavenly blend of warm air and cool salt water.

As usual, I'm feeling confident and ready to flirt with any female swimmers that happen to wade into my general vicinity. On this particular day, it's a thirtyish woman in a one-piece whose slightly-chubby-but-well-tanned body catches my eye. My passing interest begins to turn to full-fledged desire as I realize she's checking me out almost as blatantly as I'm ogling her. After raising a quick fist skyward in a tribute to the mighty Ra, I make my move.

"The water's great, isn't it?" I ask, letting my arms open to indicate I'm talking about the ocean around us - and to send a subconscious signal of availability.

"It's wonderful," she replies, intrigued by my daring, and saying as much with solid eye contact and a warm smile.

"It's as much fun as you can have with your clothes on," I say with a grin, throwing caution into the wind.

"Hee hee hee!" she giggles - and the game is afoot.

After ten or twenty minutes of conversation out in the water, I've got all her general info - new in town from the Chicago area, working 9-to-5 as a secretary, just realizing how pleasant this Ocean Beach she's moved to really is. To those confessions I add my own appraisal: she's lonely, sex-starved, and already moistening at the thought of taking on a young, sexy, stylishly-tattooed beach bum like myself as a lover for the summer.

Looking towards the beach, I begin the hardest part of any pick-up: the segue from initial flirtation to a course of action. "I think I'm headed in. Where are you sitting?"

She hesitates briefly in the face of my boldness, but quickly regains her composure. "Over there by that lifeguard tower," she says, standing on her tiptoes to point.

"Can I grab my stuff and join you?" I ask.

"Sure," she replies, and we part for the moment.

As I make my way back to my towel, I can't help but smile at what I've been up to for the last several minutes. While I've come a long way with my technique in recent years, I've never gone for it like this - at least, not without trusty alcohol at my side. "It's on," I think to myself, "it's so on," and I don't even reprimand myself for the cliched Swingers reference.

Anyhow, back to the beach. I'm making my way over to where she's at, and I'm as happy as a clam, ready to drink deeply from the well of feminine goodness.

I see her and spread my towel a few feet away. Our conversation picks up right where it left off, she playing the part of the new person in town, me the native who knows a few of the town's best-kept secrets. It's going great - we chat comfortably, with a few laughs from her here and there at my cute little jokes. "All right," I begin to think to myself. "Where do you go from here, champ?" A good conversation on the beach is nice and all, but I'm just about ready for something more along the lines of a sex marathon back at her place.

At this point, however, fate intervenes - in the form of a fat, shirtless 8-year-old kid in swimming trunks. The kid seemingly materializes from nowhere, waddling through the sand to position himself so he's standing at the foot of our towels. His gut hangs over the waist of his trunks. He's got a half-eaten blue raspberry snow cone in his hand.

The kid stands there, looking at me and the woman who I'm hoping to hump all night long. The moment is so surreal that time seems to slow down. A bright blue drop of melted snow cone takes an eternity to drip off of his chin and splash on his fat belly. For what seems like forever, no one says a word.

The kid snaps everyone back to reality. He takes a big slurp on the snow cone and chews on it for a second. Then he points at me and says, "Who's THIS guy, mom?”

FW: Subject: freak-out puppet.mpg

as good as a PG forward can be...

minutes from the house meeting

Brother ***, Athletic Chair, said he pissed off the intramural department, so this year, we won't be having a softball team. Apparently *** mistook their bag of softballs for giant marshmallows and ate half of them.

Brother ******, Pledge Chair, said that the pledges who walked out of the University's "Greek 101" seminar would be going to Ronald McDonald house to do community service. Their first task is to fix the chair that Brother ****** sat in when he was over there.

Brother ****** wondered how brothers could sleep at night after signing the anti-hazing agreement and then considering hazing. Others wondered how ****** could sleep at night with Brother ****'s half-naked, Jello-riffic fatbody snoring hardly four feet away.

Brother ********* promised to "restrain his animal feelings" in the aftermath of his behavior at the previous night's mixer with Chi Omega.

Decrying the injustice of having to view pasty chicken legs, Brother ** introduced a motion denying Brother **** the right to ever wear shorts again.