the really ugly truth

In light of recent events regarding memoirs, and not wanting in incur the wrath of Oprah, I am going to write about what happened to me yesterday.

What you are about to read is absolutely true. Nothing has been embellished for dramatic effect. None of the names have been changed to protect anyone.

It is one hundred percent, stark naked truth.

Okay...

As I've mentioned before, I work for a motion picture company here in Southern California. And located on the lot on which I work is an employee store where they sell candy and soft drinks and magazines and other assorted sundries. It's a nice place - there's even a guy who fixes watches and a place where you can drop off and pick up your dry cleaning.

But what I was interested in was the shoe repair service they offer. See, I broke my shoestring a while back as I was trying, as I am want to do, to tie my shoes as tightly as possible. So for the past few weeks I've been walking around with my right shoe only laced up half way and while I was getting tired of my shoe kind of flopping around, I was more concerned with where - and how - to procure new, black shoelaces. I mean, how do you do that? Where do you buy shoelaces? I wouldn't even know where to begin or what to ask for. Was it something I needed to order online? It was too much, and my shoe was staying on my foot pretty well (although not as tightly as I normally like) so I was putting it off as long as possible.

Then it hit me - the company store. Surely they sell shoelaces

I proudly announced my plans to my co-workers - none of whom believed that they actually sold shoelaces at the company store.

"But they have a shoe repair service," I explained.
"Doesn't matter. They don't have shoelaces."
"And I know for a fact that they sell chap stick there. I've seen it. And three different flavors of Ricola."

Still, no one believed that I could buy shoelaces at our company store. Now my goal was two-fold; first, to get shoelaces and enjoy a snug shoe once again and second, to quiet all the haters.

So I walked over to the store and asked the girl behind the counter if they sold black shoelaces.

"No, I'm sorry. We sure don't."

Failure.

The above story is as true as the fact that my wife just came upstairs after serving coffee and cookies to a contractor who doesn't speak English and was left behind by his co-worker who went to "get supplies", and said non-English speaking contractor has been in our garage by himself listening to an LA Kings game on the radio for over two hours now.

death tour

Living in Los Angeles has its advantages. One of them is being able to take a tour like this.

I love it here.

oh my glasses

So I picked up my new sunglasses the other day. When I put them on for my wife, she said:

"They're...stylish. And don't take this the wrong way, but...you're not stylish."

Oh well. I'm gonna wear them on the bus and see what everyone there thinks.

If you want to see what they look like, they're right here.

Five Habits Of The Freshly Tagged

As long as no one is expecting me to be highly efficient, I'm more than happy to play along (although I have to be honest - I don't have five friends in real life, let alone know five people in cyberspace to tag. And I was recently involved in a similar Ponzi scheme involving scratch off lottery tickets and nine people and long story short, the pyramid is in shambles.)

Anyway, here's the nuts and bolts:

The first player of this game starts with the topic five weird habits of yourself, and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged and link to their web journals. Don't forget to leave a comment in their blog or journal that says You have been tagged (assuming they take comments) and tell them to read yours.

So, let's see.

1. I love to be early. For anything. Like, really early. Like an hour or two. I am always the first person in the office in the morning so I'm the guy that warms up the copier, turns on the lights, does all of that. In fact, one day a few years back I came back from a few days off and overheard a co-worker of mine on the phone with the copier repair guy complaining that the "automatic turn on switch" was broken. She had assumed, somewhat accurately I suppose, that the machine somehow turned itself on in the morning. I let her down gently.

2. Whenever I am deplaning and we're all standing there in the aisle waiting for that unseen person to get their stupid rolling back down from the overhead, I make sure to inch closer and closer to the person in front of me. This doesn't really speed things up, but it sure is irritating!


3. I set and re-set my alarm clock at least a dozen times at night before finally going to bed. I think this has something to do with being late for something (see number 1.)

4. I like to look at pictures of cats online. I don't think that's really a habit, but I thought I'd throw it out there.

5. The sink must be wiped clean at all time. There's nothing I hate more than a sink with water everywhere. Ask Kelvis about my mortal enemy "Splashy Sink." Oh, how I loathe Splashy Sink. I will wipe him down whenever and wherever he appears, my only weapon a small, green wash cloth. But he is a wily foe. He haunts me...

So, there it is.

bus crazy

In an effort to consume less of this planet's finite resources, I have been taking the bus to work. And since I happen to ride the bus in Los Angeles, people always greet this news with a blank stare followed by, "Wait, you what? Why?" When I try to explain that the bus runs right past my house and drops me off right in front of the building I work in, that it only costs .90 cents and that my company happens to subsidize my clean air commuting, not mention the fact that gas now cost almost $2.50 a gallon and there's this whole war going on, there is no good reason for me NOT to take the bus. It all sounds good, but people still think I'm crazy.

It turns out the people on the bus think I'm crazy too.

I normally catch a 7:15am bus at a park and ride right off the freeway, the first stop for this particular bus line. But yesterday, the 7:14 bus broke down and we had to wait for the 7:45; and that meant we would be picking up twice as many people as the bus made its way through the valley.

Now, I always make a point of not putting my bag on the seat next to me (my sister, who lives in New York, told me that people who put their bag on the seat next to them are the most obnoxious people on the planet. It's just plain rude.) So, knowing that we'd have a load larger than normal on this particular morning, I made an extra effort to make sure there was room next to me. I am the most considerate busrider in Los Angeles, I smugly thought to myself.

By about the fifth stop, the bus was really filling up. And I realized that no one was sitting next to me. Now, I can speak from experience, that when you get on a crowded city bus, the first thing you do is scan the crowd and create a 'crazy scale.' You hope that the most normal - or least crazy - looking person has a seat available next to them. If they don't you go to the next person and so on until you find an acceptable bus-mate. And suddenly, here I was, clearly at the bottom of everyone's crazy scale. As people got on the bus, stop after stop, they would quickly assess the situation, decide who was the most nuts and then do whatever they could to not sit with that person - including standing.

And I was that person. It was like being picked last for dodgeball. Only now I'm 35 and I'm being snubbed for my perceived limited mental capacity as opposed to my perceived (and often real) limited physical abilities.

I'm clean. I wash. I have an okay job that I have to dress appropriately for. I couldn't figure it out. But there I was, the craziest person on the bus.

My co-worker suggested that maybe my eagerness, the fact that I'm practically tapping the seat next to me with my hand and grinning like an idiot, might be what's turning people off. Maybe. Maybe I'll sulk on Tuesday.

Or maybe I'll just enjoy the fact that I have so much space. It saves me from having to sit next to a crazy person.

What Blogging Means To Me

I was talking to my sister the other day (who will now be known as The Punisher) and I was telling her about my blog, and blogs I like and what blogs mean to democracy but I could tell that The Punisher just wasn't getting it.

So, Punisher, let me put it like this:

Where else can I expose to the entire world wide web pictures of a box spring mattress I destroyed on Sunday? The answer: My blog.

Enjoy.

get motivated, lazy!

Yesterday, my company flew me out to Las Vegas to attend the Consumer Electronics Show (better known as CES.) I was only going out for the day, flying out in the morning and flying back that night, so I found myself wandering around Los Angeles International Airport around 6am. With nothing else to do, I walked into JetWay books and kind of thumbed through the paperbacks that were neatly stacked right at the entrance. My eyes drifted over to the magazine rack where Cheri and Club magazines promised me the nastiest hardcore action on Earth from beneath their plastic wrappings (really? The nastiest hardcore action on Earth was found at LAX? I didn't believe that for a second.) I strolled over to the next bin of paperbacks and started poking though them when I came across that book The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People. I thought about my situation; here I was, wearing a dark suit, hanging around the airport, about to fly to Vegas to go to CES on my company's dime. I suppose, to all outside appearances, I might look like an 'effective' (or as I read it, successful) person (although, certainly not a 'highly effective' person.) But I knew that if you looked in the leather briefcase I was carrying, all you would find is the sports page from the Daily News and a banana I planned on eating on the plane.

I could certainly use some advice in becoming highly effective so I opened the book, hoping for some quick, free advice.

I was greeted with graphs and charts and diagrams and page after page of complicated equations and lists and my head began to ache within moments.

I closed the book and reassessed my situation; I already knew I wasn't a highly effective person, but since I couldn't even skim this book, it turns out I wasn't even a merely effective person.

Which, really, I already knew.

So I flew to Vegas. And I ate my banana on the plane while everyone around me typed on their blackberries and talked to nobody on their Bluetooth headsets and I looked forward to seeing what the world of consumer electronics had to offer a schmuck like me.

the right sight

I think I've made a terrible mistake.

On 12/31 I went to the eye doctor to get new sunglasses before my insurance ran out for the year. I won't get them until next week, but thinking back on it now, I'm pretty sure I ended up getting these huge, Gucci-esque glasses, the kind that old ladies wear as they slowly drive their shiny Jaguars through Beverly Hills with a small dog on their lap yelling at valets.

I didn't mean to get them, but every time I picked out frames I liked, the optician (or was she the optometrist? Or maybe the ophthalmologist?) would slowly wag her head and say, "No. Try these." And then she would produce these huge frames with all kinds of crazy designs on the arms that I didn't particularly like but put on anyway. Then I would take them off, put back on a pair I did like and she would say something like, "No, those get lost on your face. Try these."

I'm not sure why I didn't just get what I wanted. It's not like this was my wife sitting here saying, "Oh, honey, you look HOT in these." That would be different. That would makes sense. This woman who was sitting across from me was just some vaguely maternal woman with features I can't even recall handing me frames that I didn't like. Maybe it was the white coat. Maybe I saw her as some kind of authority figure and I didn't want to disobey or disappoint her. But whatever the reason, just like a bad Seinfeld episode, I'm pretty sure I bought lady's glasses.

I guess I'll find out next week.

do i know you?

I work for a motion picture company here in Southern California and during my lunch breaks I like to walk around the backlot. I try to look inside the soundstages, at the sets being built and the occasional pack of extras crouching and smoking cigarettes. As long as you look like you know what you're doing and you act like you belong, everyone pretty much leaves you alone to do and go as you please.

So the other day I was taking my stroll and had just finished watching some sign painters put the finishing touches on what would soon be a Chinese restaurant marquee and was heading back to my office. As I rounded the corner of stage 3, I noticed a young kid, maybe 20ish, looking a little lost - something that got my attention immediately. So I must have looked at him a moment too long because he glanced up, saw me and walked right up to me.

"Do you know where the commissary is?"

And this kid looked pretty normal. He was wearing the standard issue hipster-dufus uniform of large, black glasses, dress shirt with the collar splayed out over a neat sweater and on his feet, dark, thick soled shoes. Nothing about him seemed strange - in fact, I was essentially wearing the same outfit. And while I thought I heard just a trace of a lisp or a slur or something in his speech and while maybe his left eye was a little droopy, nothing really set off my freak-alert. Just the same, something seemed maybe, barely, just the slightest off about him. But the sun was shining, I was in no rush to get back to the office, somebody had obviously let him on the lot for some reason, I knew where the commissary was so I figured I'd not only help this kid out, I'd do him one better - I'd take him there.

Without missing a beat, I smiled and said - "The commissary's right over here. Come with me."

And the two of us walked off.

I kind of glanced over at him and thought that maybe he might have a slight limp but couldn't be sure.

We walked a few steps in silence. He seemed nervous.

"Got a lunch meeting?" I asked him.
"Uh huh."

We walked a few more steps, past a couple of wardrobe racks and bicycle messengers. Then the kid turned to me and said -

"Do you know if anyone other than Jim is going to be there?"

Huh.

And so it was decision time - tell this kid that I have no idea who he is let alone who is going to be at his meeting (things that should have been obvious to him since we just met for the first time moments ago); or pretend like I had the intimate details of his meeting.

I chose the latter. And made something up.

"I know Jim is going to be there and I know Steve is going to be there but I'm not sure who else can make it. Elliott has that thing but he said he was going to try to push it to three so he might duck in late."

This kid nodded like this all made perfect sense.

"Yeah, I just saw Jim last week at the theater in Pasadena and that was cool and all but I'm really hoping Michael will be here today," the kid said.

"I know he's going to try to make it," I said.

The kid kept nodding. He was lost in thought and I assumed that he was processing the misinformation I was feeding him. We were now only a few steps from the commissary and I was starting to feel a little bad about the whole thing. So I just pointed him in the right direction from there.

"Alright, just go past this building here, turn right and you'll see it," I said
"Okay, thanks."
"Have a good lunch man," I said.

The kid just kind of nodded and grunted and walked off toward the comm. I watched him walk away and wondered why he didn't think I was going to lunch with him - and I wondered why I didn't invite myself along just to see what would happen.

When he disappeared around the corner, I again headed back to my office. I thought about this kid and he reminded me of that book "Breakfast Of Champions" where Dwayne Hoover is convinced that he is the only human on earth and everyone he encounters are merely robots put in his path to perform certain duties to serve him. Is that what this kid thought? Did he think that maybe I was a robot placed in his life for these few moments just to direct him to his meeting and fill him in on the attendees? Maybe I am a robot and don't even really know it and maybe what I told him was accurate. Could that be true? I mean, those words did come out of my mouth for some reason..

I was starting to scare myself and wanted to stop thinking about it. Maybe I just looked like I knew what I was doing, which is what I was doing all lunch anyway; pretending that I belonged.

Although I do wonder how is meeting went.

sick

it's been a strange week. Our luggage was lost somewhere between Dallas/Fort Worth and Los Angeles and we spent most of our arrival time at LAX wandering around luggage carousal #3 with the cheer squad from Allen, Texas (who was here for the Tournament Of Roses Parade.) The cheer squad traveled in a dense pack, all of them with ironed flat hair, all of them hyper-nervous and super-aware, thinking that every one of their motions was being watched by their peers along with all of the unknown eyes of Hollywood. And when the announcement came that our bags would not be coming to southern California anytime soon, this fog of 15 year old girls overtook the luggage claims booth, swallowing Kelvis and me up with it.

You have to understand that I have no internet access from my computer so I have to post from Kelvis's outpost downstairs. My intentions for this blog were lofty but my execution sucks. It reminds me of an old saying about the road to hell...