The beat-beat-beat of the Tom-Tom

Tom Cruise broke records at Yahoo, creating the longest lines of Yahoos filing into our cafeteria, aka Url's.

Tom also brought productivity levels down for the day and delayed lunch service at our cafeteria, because he was about two hours late. For some reason he was flying his own P-51 Mustang war plane into the area through some less than ideal weather. (Katie was flown in by commercial jet.)

In the meantime, they played 30-second clips of all the songs from all of Tom Cruise's films, over and over again. Loudly. TWO HOURS. My ears were bleeding.

Luckily I was sitting with fellow designers, Joe and Sam (who I hope will appear in Valleywag's impending battle of the Yahoo! hotties) while we waited. I managed to feel somewhat productive, because they were sharing good geeky tips with me about managing RSS feeds.

ANYway, Terry eventually apologized for the delay and showed a montage of Tom's memorable scenes from his various films. Then finally Tom arrived with a very preggers Katie Holmes, who sat in the front row with Dan Rosenzweig (COO).

The questions were pre-filtered and not terribly insightful. They were along the lines of "How did you become the awesome person that you are?" Tom talked a bit about how he does a lot of his own stuntwork and still gets excited about each new project.

Hells, if I were as hot as Tom Cruise and got to keep doing awesome action films, I'd be excited too.

Yes, yes, Tom does have his talents, but I think it was clear to everyone; Tom is a good-looking man, especially after seeing him in person. I think that may have helped in his career a touch.

As much as everyone worries about Katie (a coworker was spotted with a "Free Katie" button) and the future spawn of Scientologists, I say, kudos to her. She got quite the hottie and hopefully got some nice genes for her offspring. Not that many boys can continue to look that good.

It was fun anyway, to see Yahoos get so starstruck and to see preview scenes of Mission Impossible III.

Terry reminisced with Tom about their successes together, and then Terry shared a funny anecdote about boating with Stanley Kubrick, when Tom Cruise made like a real life hero and saved people from a sinking boat. Justin tells that story better in his play-by-play of the event.

Flickr, of course is now exploding with Tom Cruise photos. And this amusing video clip has been circulating, of a woman who turned into a 15-year old girl upon the sight of Tom, as he exited our cafeteria. Let me just say, this woman was not a Yahoo! employee. We Yahoos may have been starstruck, but we managed to maintain some level of professionalism in the workplace. And isn't it suspicious that she was so easy to spot in the crowd, wearing hot pink in a sea of blacks and grays? As if, perhaps, she was planted!?

However, to my surprise, US Weekly magazine was briefly interested in my pictures. I had brief dreams of getting some extra cash to indulge in a DVF dress or a new flatscreen computer monitor to use at home. But I guess they found out there were better photos, because they didn't get back to me in the end. My favorites are this one and this one.

More Tom-foolery

Last week, I had the oddest dream.

I dreamt that Tom Cruise was accosting me with kisses.

Now mind you, I am not some kind of big Tom Cruise fanatic. Even if nobody believes me, I swear to God I hardly ever have dreams like this, much less about Tom Cruise.

Well, maybe there is some latent attraction I was previously in denial about. Hell, just look at this picture.

Regardless, I am not into fervent Scientologists. Even in the dream, I had the sense to shove him away and yell "But what about Katie! And the BABY!!!"

So I woke up very confused and amused by the whole thing. I tend to not read into dreams too much. I am fairly pragmatic about dreams and would more likely conclude that I just dreamt it because Tom's been in the news media so much.

HowEVER, I then showed up at work, only to learn that Tom Cruise would be coming to Yahoo! as part of our Influential Speakers series!

I was wondering when my psychic powers would emerge.

So Tom will be showing up tomorrow morning! Everyone is speculating on what kind of goofy questions he will get. Aside from Scientology and philosophical media questions, is this just going to turn into Inside the Actor's Studio w/o the fun of James Lipton? Well... Semel might make a very amusing James Lipton substitute.

I am very tempted to pick up a nice cream pie for Tom, dress up as a South Park character and carry a big "I heart you TOM!!!" sign. But lucky for Tom, I'm too lazy for these antics.

I'll be lucky if I get up early enough to get a seat at the event!

I work with funny people

At work, we have an email list reserved for non-work-related items, mainly for selling/buying things.

A recent email went out with the subject, "Junk in my trunk."

To which someone responded:

Whatcha gonna do with all that junk!?! All that junk inside your trunk!?
oh. give it away. right. sorry.

--Bob

HALF??

Remember Zack and Slater? From that Saturday morning kids' show? Guess which one is part-Asian.

Guess again. Mark-Paul Gosselar, the blonde who played Zack, was a nominee at the 2006 Asian Excellence Awards. I was confused when BK told me about this, so I had to look it up. Mark-Paul is, indeed, half-Dutch and half-Indonesian. HALF.

That blows my mind.

My mom told me that there is some Persian in our bloodline. I'm guessing it's not that much, but now I could be totally wrong about that.

Bastardino!

Bastardino!
Originally uploaded by misocrazy.

Just when I thought I would not buy any more toys... I bought this. Of all places, this was at the Virgin Megastore. (--strategically placed on the way to getting my cupcakes. They know what they are doing, these retailers.)

But how could I not. It matched my tokidoki leSportsac! And it is a tiny dog in a CACTUS SUIT! An ANGRY dog in a cactus suit. And it is leetle.

And it is called Bastardino. That is reason in itself.

As a side note, it turns out Tokidoki is designed by an Italian named Simone Legno. (And "Tokidoki" means "sometimes" in Japanese.) Go figure!

Cupcake Rewards

Citizen Cupcake
Originally uploaded by misocrazy.

After spending a humiliating morning where I was conned into performing theater improv (something I really don't know how to do, but did anyway to help my friends out with their film project), I decided to reward myself with cupcake at the top of Virgin Megastore.

Citizen Cupcake is the perfect pick-me-up break spot in Union Square where you can treat yourself w/ lusciously frosted cupcakes and Illy coffee while you look down at the tiny shoppers crowding the busiest intersection of Market street.

Stopping here only led to another delightful day of shopping indulgence, including discount Ben Sherman shirts, Crate & Barrel, a folding shopping cart, and a cactus dog. And I was holding myself back.

Less meetings, more pillows please

I love Jonathan Grubb's blog entry about the 8 types of meeting attendees.

Sadly, I know I fit one of these types. But it is often because I hate meetings, as my manager knows. He even made it a running joke. When people want to cancel meetings, he says, "Are you pulling a June, now?" When it goes over 3 meetings a week, I get antsy. Like, stop the madness, just leave me alone so I can be a productive employee already!

And get this: some of my peers at work now want me to start leading bi-monthly meetings. HA! Ha. Hahahaha. Good one.

I have more pressing things to deal with, like working on Yahoo! Messenger and finding good pillows! Thanks to those who gave me thoughtful advice on floor pillows for my bench/table. I couldn't decide between these Flax and Espresso pillows from West Elm. So I bought 3 of each to test out. Now I am on to the wall art! (And possibly a credenza or closed-off entertainment center.)