Office Space

Consensus Terrorism: The process that decides in-office attitudes and behavior.
--Douglas Coupland

Wednesday, February 24, 1999
One year ago: Dinner with J

Jack was in an emailing mood this morning. I don't remember ever getting so many messages from his work address! When we were walking through the movie theater last Saturday, I'd mentioned that Office Space was a movie I wanted to see, so he proposed we go and see it tonight or tomorrow.

We met up at Jack's place after work. Thankfully his daughter A----, though late arriving, was within the grace period acceptable to him, so she didn't get in trouble which would have put the kibosh on the whole movie idea for the evening. She was totally soaked, though, since she'd walked back from downtown Redmond in the rain. Her friend didn't seem so wet, for some reason.

When Jack called the friend's mother to see if it was ok for A--- to spend the evening there, the mother upped the ante by inviting A---- to spend the night, too! Score! So we dropped the two teenagers off on the way to the theater, instead of taking them along and having them watch a different show.

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I don't think Jack was expecting much from the movie. He's not a Mike Judge fan like I am. I find Beavis and Butthead funny! But Jack laughed a lot! Some of it struck uncomfortably close to home, since he's currently on contract at Boeing. Thank heaven that most of it didn't remind me of Microsoft.

I enjoyed it, too. I was tickled by the coincidence of the neighbor (played by Diedrich Bader) having the same haircut as Jack. The second half of the movie wasn't as good as the first, as often happens with comedies. A good ending for a comedy seems to be tough to do! Anyway, I expect good things from Mike Judge in the future, since he's got one of those unique comic visions.

I liked the production design. An interesting illustration of our varying tastes: I thought the protagonist's apartment was spare and elegant (thus not realistic for most twenty-something geeks) while Jack thought it looked like it all came from a used furniture store.

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We restrained ourselves from going out for a treat after the movie; instead we had rainbow sherbet at home, and watched Voyager (still not interested) and Law and Order. I'm developing a mild interest in the latter, though finding more TV to watch is not one of my goals. But they have such a great cast, and I've always liked Sam Waterston.