Thursday, June 28, 2007

The Birthday Party

Another candle on the cake. Another year gone by. Another prime opportunity for my family (not my "new" family, but my "old" family) to make right all the crazy missteps through the years and finally find some appropriate gifts for somebody they've known this long. So when my (old) family gives a birthday present, I always hope that this year will be different.

Nope. From my sister: NOTHING! Actually, receiving nothing is better than the gifts she gives me, which over the years have included:
- A plastic blue "beehive" hairdo
- A pair of Abe Lincoln boxing puppets
- "Pee Guy": a small figurine of a latino-looking man with a plastic stream of pee going from his crotch to the base of the figurine.

Yes, all memorable and very useful indeed, but they pale in comparison with the types of gifts my mom gives me. It's always clothes. Clothes that must originate at the very bottom of the last-ditch bargain basement pile. For Lee's Birthday 2007 I got a t-shirt that is the color of poop. It's a weird brown color that has no other possible description. The kicker there is that the shirt is size 14/16. Now, I'm no XL person but I can wear adult size shirts, mom.

She also gave me two polo style shirts that, although I wear polo style shirts, would probably make the general public wonder if I had lost my way from the nearest mental facility. Does she see the clothes I wear now? Does she remember the types of shirts I wore as a teenager at home? My sincere hope is that she bought these for the homeless kids at the local shelter and they got mixed up with the fly threads she bought me. Boom, right into the Goodwill bag with the gifts.

The real tragedy here is that this gift-buying behavior is now being passed onto my son. Mom included an extra little gift pack for Judah along with the thoughtful gifts for me. With so many cute clothes for kids nowadays, how could she go wrong? Girls clothes. Yep. Poor kid.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Garbage

There are two trash bins in my edit suite. One is next to the door. One is next to the edit console. I noticed shortly after I started working there that the one next to the console was never being emptied. I noticed it because the bin was overflowing with trash, while the one near the door was consistently empty when I came in every morning.

Because the only option for speaking to the cleaning crew would be to stay much later than I'd like to, I decided to manually move the console trash bin to right next to the door trash bin every night as I left work. It worked for a while. Now for whatever reason, the door trash bin is empty while the console trash bin - which is sitting right next to the other one - is still full of the same trash when it was placed there the night before.



And I'm thinking "Why, that's odd. How could one trash bin be emptied while the other is not?" It's probably physically impossible to empty one without having it bump into the other. In fact, a person would have to be somewhat careful about not knocking over the other trash bin whilst emptying the first.

I have no idea what to do. Leave a note? Wait around to ask the cleaning crew about it? Put the entire trash bin into the other? I guess the easy answer would be for me to dump the trash from one into the other, but now this has turned into a game of who's gonna blink first. Stay tuned. I guess. If you really give a shit about the resolution of how this trash thing goes. Jeez.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Jailbait

With all the drunk driving arrests in the past year, it's kinda scary to be on the roads here in Tinseltown. Nicole Ritchie, Lakers owner Jerry Buss, Prison Break star Lane Garrison, Backstreet Boy Nick Carter, Lindsey Lohan, and Paris Hilton just to name a few. Thankfully they locked up Paris Hilton, and then locked her up again before she got behind the wheel and ran over some poor unsuspecting pedestrian on one of her late night burger binges.

Just think of how many NON-celebs are out there on the road at any given monment after increasing their BAC to a non-legal level. Joe Shmoe gets pulled over by the LAPD and ain't no paparazzi around snapping photos and selling them to the tabloids.

At least Paris Hilton got the worst punishment imaginable: Sarah Silverman ripping Paris a new one at the MTV music awards. That's gotta hurt more than enduring a few weeks in the cushy wing of the jail.

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Car Wash

Our "family car", a 2003 VW Passat Wagon, hadn't been washed in a while and it was so dirty that it was becoming embarrassing. A blight on the LA car scene. Not like we took it off-roading or anything, but the air isn't the cleanest around here and the fine particulate matter tends to come to rest on everything.

As I've now done the math and came to the conclusion that it's worth it to take my car to a car wash, I put in the required procrastinating and finally found a coupon in the bulk mailers for a few bucks off the standard rate at Millenium Car Wash in Venice. I took all the extra junk out of the car - baby strollers, sun shield, miscellaneous papers - so that they could vacuum every square inch, and I drove to Millenium.

On my way there I remembered that I forgot to bring a magazine to read when the car was being washed. When I got there, I left the car with the keys in the ignition, rolled up the windows, and told the checker I had a coupon. He handed me a ticket, I paid and took a seat with the rest of the car washees. Some guy and his girlfriend bitched at the manager because his passenger seat was soaked because the window wasn't rolled up. I wished I'd brought that magazine.

A short while later the car washer guy waved my keys in the air and I handed him the ticket along with what I deemed a generous tip. I pretended to have to put something in the trunk so I could inspect the vacuum job, because I've had problems with the trunk being overlooked in the past. Clean as a new car. It felt like I had a new car. I drove off and felt like a responsible LA citizen with my clean, new-feeling car.

I had to pick up some groceries, and as I pulled into the parking lot, I saw somebody pulling out of the rockstar spot. Sweet. All mine. I pulled in and went into the store. Bought some lunchmeat, some oatmeal for the boy, and some water. On my way past the bakery section, I grabbed a glazed donut for the ride home.

As I left the grocery store and stepped onto the pavement of the parking lot, I pushed the shopping cart and hopped on for a ride to my shiny new car in the rockstar parking spot. I pushed a little too hard and had to jump down to put on the sneaker brakes. As I was rushing by, I saw a car that looked just like mine, but it had a bunch of splotches of bird shit on the hood. I thought "that's not my... is that my? Aw shit."

Yep. Car Wash Karma.