Always Something There to Remind Me (part 2)

continued...

I raced over to the nearest Big 5 location, the Brentwood area, cursing every red light along the way. The clock was ticking louder and louder, because I knew that once the children went back outside to play, it was only a matter of time before some kid found my ring and there'd be no telling if they'd be telling.

I arrived at Big 5 and as I passed the cashier saying "can I help you?" I asked "where's the metal detectors". She pointed toward the back and I made a beeline to the goods. For some reason they were situated next to the guns. And nobody was behind the register where the guns and metal detectors were kept, so I briefly considered opening the gate to get to the other side of the counter and grab the metal detector.

It was a good thing I didn't because an employee arrived and opened the gate and it made a loud buzzing noise. I suppose to keep random people like myself from grabbing things like metal detectors or guns. I might as well have been jumping up and down pointing and saying " that one! that one", and the guy handed me the metal detector that happened to be on sale that week for 100 bucks. I practically ran to the front register to buy the thing, but as I made my way, I read on the box that the metal detector needed a 9V battery. Good thing I checked.

My memory of what a 9V battery was or looked like escaped me, but the Big 5 salesperson was on the case. He found the nearest battery display and found a 9V. Those are the batteries that have both the + and - on one end and gives a shock when you press it on your tongue. I brought the metal detector and the batteries to the register, handed over my credit card. I scanned the return policy sign to see if they didn't take metal detectors.

Soon I was out the door, into my car, and racing back to the preschool. But I pulled over after having a vision of getting to school, turning the metal detector on and it not working. I parked in some residential neighborhood in the northwest part of Santa Monica. The only people around were guys with lawnmowers and the elderly. I pulled the metal detector out of the box, half-assedly assembled it and ripped the 9V batteries out of the package.

Upon inserting the 9V into the designated slot in the metal detector, it wouldn't fit. I tried to cram it in more. Nope. I found some random plastic toy in my car to attempt to pry it in more. At that point I knew I'd break the damn thing, so I figured I'd just try to hold the battery in place with my vice-grip of a hand and see if it worked.

Out of the car flew me and my new metal detector. I stumbled over to the nearest lawn and threw my keys on the ground and turned on the metal detector. I didn't know what setting to choose, but I kept pushing buttons until it looked right. I passed the metal detector over the keys. "Beep!" said the detector, and that's all I needed to get back into the car and hurry to the preschool.

When I arrived at the school, I saw that the staff had arranged a bunch of orange safety cones at the perimeter of the sand area around the swings. Most, if not all of the kids were outside playing, but they were respecting the cone area and not playing by the swings. I carried the metal detector in through the gates and children immediately took notice. I mean, as a 3 to 5 year old, how could you not notice a strange contraption like that? So of course the kids started gathering around me, walking with me toward the swings.

And immediately the questions began: "Where did you get that?", "What is that thing?" "What are you gonna do with that?" "Why did you lose your ring?" I explained that it was a metal detector that I bought at the store, and I would use it to find in the sand the hunk of metal buried that was my wedding ring. As soon as I started waving the contraption around over the sand and it beeped a few times, even more children came by to find out what was going on.

A few of the kids started ignoring the safety cone perimeter for a closer look. It beeped so I put the detector down and dug around with my hands a bit only to find a penny. I waved the metal detector around some more and found more change. One of the teachers told the kids to keep their bodies away from the sand so I could search without interference. The children generally listened, but kids can only be expected to keep away from something as exciting as a metal detector for so long. And they started to dig around in the other corners of the sand area.

One kid grabbed a pint-sized plastic shovel and started digging, sending sand everywhere. The thought crossed my mind that sand flinging could potentially be flinging my ring in a direction that I'd already scanned with the detector. So I gently told the kid to scram.

After holding the 9V battery in place for a while, my hand started to feel the burn. I switched the hold of the detector to my other hand and arm. I must have passed over the same area at least 30 times. Things started looking bleak. It was approaching lunch time, and today was "hot lunch" day for the kids. So several of the parents were there to help out. And to witness the sand sweeper action. I received countless more questions from the parents like "What did you lose?" "How did it fall off your finger?" "Are you sure it didn't go over there?" I tried my best to be polite as I showed my re-enactment of the ring flying off my finger, and where the ring would have logically fallen off. The sun beating down on me in the sand area didn't help with the politeness part.

One parent named Basil, the father of a good friend of Judah, came by wearing a suit. He didn't ask questions. Maybe one of the other parents already filled him in. Or maybe he had been in the same situation. Whatever the case, he got down to the business of digging through sand without saying a word. Finally he asked if I had already scanned this area or that, and we narrowed the search down to only the area where the ring always fell off in my re-enactment. I found a metal spike like a nail in the sand, and I was glad that no kid had found it first.

A short while later his wife Jennifer came by and started digging as well. Luckily it wasn't a big week for the local cats to be pooping in the sand area. Jennifer asked if I had dug around by the poles at all. I told her that the metal detector would always beep around the poles, because they're metal, but I had dug around them anyway and didn't find anything. Basil grabbed a large plastic milk crate type container and started sifting sand. We did a few large crates full, and I was about ready to give up. I turned around and Jennifer had a huge smile on her face and she was holding my wedding ring .

I exclaimed "where was it?" and she said "Right here next to the pole". Of course. Exactly where the metal detector was beeping the most. I said a million thank you's, and informed the entire school that my ring was found by Jennifer. I showed them the ring to prove it.

The next day I went back to Big 5 and returned the metal detector without as much interrogation as I expected. I can only imagine that people who buy those things have a specific purpose, and once that purpose is completed, back goes the metal detector.

After that little exercise in sand digging, I decided to keep my wedding ring where it could always be found: Inside the confines of my home. In the ring's place on my finger, I'm considering a ring-sized tatoo that says "Lily". For sure that would never fly off.

Always Something There to Remind Me

Possibly one of my biggest fears is losing my wedding ring. Not being eaten by a crocodile. Not falling from a skyscraper. But having the symbol of my marriage disappear from my sight, never to be found again. Lily doesn't inspire that fear. Yes, she'd be upset. She'd be more than upset, she'd be really pissed. But she'd forgive me at some point. But I don't think I'd ever forgive myself.

And I know that somewhere in the archives of Lee Lee the Musical Bee, I've written at least once about losing my wedding ring. And one would think that I'd be more careful. And from now on I'm going to be more careful. But in the meantime, I lost my wedding ring.

It was a slightly cool morning at the preschool swings in Santa Monica. Judah and I were doing the daily routine with the rest of his friends: Judah's dad pushes all his friends on the swings. I love it. I'm legendary in their minds. The boys see me and Judah enter through the gate, and they run toward the swings and wait for their turn for a "blast off". Which entails me pulling each of them in a swing back as high as I can, then pushing as hard as is considered safe. It usually sends them high enough to make them think they're going to be launched, but not really.

I'm pushing Judah and his friend Aris, and I've got them going in perfect alternating harmony. I push Aris with the left hand, and Judah on the right swings back in time for another push. As I'm doing this, the thought crosses my mind that my wedding ring is a little loose due to the shrinking of my flesh due to the cool weather, and I think I should probably take it off. But do I listen to this voice of reason? No.

It was getting close to the time when the kids need to get inside for school, and after one good push of Aris, I felt my ring fly off. I immediately stopped pushing the kids and said "nobody move". I did a quick scan of the area where it felt like it may have landed, but no dice. It's sand everywhere, and my ring is made of platinum, and rather heavy as far as rings go. So it could be mere centimeters below the surface of the sand, but out of sight.

I started digging around in the sand, and another dad came up and said "did you lose something?" I replied "my wedding ring". He didn't say anything, but he immediately started digging next to me because I'm pretty sure he knew the gravity of the situation. The school office manager came up and asked the same thing, and next thing you know there were three adults clawing around in the sand digging for treasure.

Luckily the kids had to go inside or it would have made the whole search a lot tougher. One by one the school staff came by asking "did you lose something?" to which I replied "my wedding ring" and they'd be speechless. After a while I started getting the next logical round of questions:

- "Did you see where it flew off?
- "Are you sure it's in the sand and it didn't fly off over there someplace?"
- "How did it fly off your finger?"

As much as one can expect, given the same line of questioning, my answers became more and more curt with every reply. I eventually had to call my work and tell them I lost my wedding ring in the sand at my kid's preschool, and I wouldn't be in until it was found. Luckily it was one of those days where I didn't need to be in first thing.

My digging dad compadre had to leave for work, and as he left he shot me a look that could only say "it was nice knowing you" or "you're a dead man walking" or something to that effect. And the staff person and I were left with those little plastic sand sifting toys that weren't going to do the trick. Finally someone came along and said "you know what might work? a metal detector!"

Because my ring is made of platinum, I wasn't even sure that would work, but the day was starting to get away from me. One of the teachers recommended I call a hardware store to see if I could rent one. I sat down in the teacher's lobby and started my online search on their iMac for nearby hardware stores. I called a few, and each one told me that they didn't rent metal detectors, nor did they know where to find one. I got so desperate that I even called Home Depot, but after the first round of getting shifted from department to department, I hung up.

I Googled "metal detector west los angeles" and found one place near UCLA that sold surveillance gear, so I called. The guy on the phone said that yes he had one, but he wasn't at the store currently. I looked at the clock, which read 10:15 or so, and he said "I might be able to get there around 11." I guess surveillance doesn't need to get going very early in the morning. He told me it would cost around 35 bucks to rent the metal detector for the day, plus deposit, but he wouldn't say what the deposit was. I didn't want to waste any more of my work day, so I decided to bail on the rental idea and just go ahead and buy a metal detector outright at Big 5 Sporting Goods.

to be continued...

Double Nickels on the Dime

First a shout-out to Mr. Matthew Hegarty, who I met in AZ at Spring Training last week. He came over and asked if I was Lee Lee the Musical Bee, and said he reads the column regularly. I appreciate that, Mr. Hegarty, and it's nice to know that there are people I don't know out there tuning in each week. Makes it all worthwhile.

So on said Spring Training trip to AZ last weekend, we had a nearly unsurmountable task ahead of us: Driving the 400 miles or whatever from LA to Scottsdale to get there in time to see a baseball game. 400 miles. With kids. The online maps said it should take about 6.5 hours. I figured in the kids + my accelerated driving pace = 7.5.

We were making stellar time. We even stopped in the Palm Springs area for a bit of breakfast and to let the kids run around a bit. Driving about an hour out of Phoenix, it appeared that we'd prolly reach the stadium around 12:50. Just in time for the first pitch.

But no, that would be too perfect, now wouldn't it? I heard from the back seat "I have to go potty." Being in the western part of Arizona doesn't leave many restroom options, so I pulled off at the nearest exit to let the boy whiz on the side of the road. But no, that would be too quick and easy, now wouldn't it? He had to go #2. And that wasn't going to be possible on the side of the road.

We found some economy chain motel to stop at, and as I carried the boy in, the guy at the counter said "bathroom? to your left." I guess dad hurriedly carrying child is universal language for bathroom emergency. He took care of his business, and we also changed the baby girl's diaper. An efficient pitstop, but at that point I knew we were cutting it close.

I did what any man on a mission would do: I picked up the pace. Funny thing about AZ that they don't tell you in the visitor guide: There are "photo enforcement" stations all over the friggin' place. At least they have the courtesy to post warning signs before the cameras start snapping unwanted photos. Which is ridiculous, but I wish they'd do that for all speed traps. Like signs on the road saying "cops up ahead" would be great.

However if you miss the "photo enforcement" signs, then you're kinda busted the old fashioned way, without a courtesy notice to slow down. So I'm following this truck who's doing 75 in a 65, and I figure I'd do the same. I must have been distracted by some kid activities/nonsense in the back of the car, because I didn't see any sign but I did notice a couple of flashes go off next to some radar guns mounted on the side of the freeway. Great. I just hope it was for the truck and not me. Or if it was for me, I hope that my mug was obscured by the speeding truck.

At approximately 1:10 we drove up next to the stadium to find zero parking nearby. After driving around for what felt like an eternity, Lily was so kind as to take the wheel and use her parking karma to get us a spot nearby. In typical Angelino fashion, we walked through the ballpark turnstiles just in time for Inning 3. And there I met Mr. Hegarty, and was handed a cold beer by Mr. Alan Chimenti. Best Coors Light I've ever tasted.

Breakfast in America

Last weekend I took the boy Judah up to the mountains for his first skiing lesson. Because he is a direct descendant of mine, of course he picked it up naturally and schussed past many a fallen skier. One of my many proud moments in fatherhood.

And because I wanted him to get a double dose of ski lessons, I made a plan for us to stay at the nearby cabin owned by our neighbor, so we wouldn't have to make the drive from LA twice. We had a fun time watching "The Jungle Book 2", making a fire in the fireplace, and generally chilling out after a long day on the slopes.

The next morning we lounged around in pajamas, but Judah was getting antsy to explore the outside of the cabin. The sliding glass door leading to the balcony was calling his name, and he was calling back by pounding on the glass. Not wanting to contain the lad any longer, or have him break the glass, I clicked the door lock and attempted to slide open the door. No go. It was being held shut by a security pin at the bottom of the door. I slid the pin up, slid the door open, and we walked out to the deck. I closed the door behind us to keep the heat where it belonged - inside.

Judah had a good time taking fallen branches and scraping chunks from the pile of snow on the balcony, then throwing said snow at his dad. It was sunny and probably 45 degrees, so it was bearable in our jammies. But I was running out of coffee and starting to get chilly, so I told Judah we better head back inside. I grabbed the sliding door and pulled on it, but it didn't budge. I pulled again. The door only moved a few centimeters and stopped. The pin. The pin at the bottom of the door fell into the hole when I closed it. Brilliant.

When I informed Judah of our situation, he basically ordered me to open the door. At least he appeared to think the situation wasn't as dire as I thought. I looked at him in his little Paul Frank pajamas and wondered how long it would be before he was crying because it was too cold. I tried a few times to pull the door open that few centimeters and poke a stick in the gap in hopes that I could lift the pin. But there was no way I could even see the pin.

I rocked the door back and forth a few times to see if the pin would lift up. I guess my brute strength got away from me, my attempts intensifying until finally the door made a pop sound and slid open. I grabbed Judah by the hand and went inside and closed the door. I looked down at the pin area and saw that the sheath holding the pin in place was bent all to hell. But lucky for me I'd brought my Leatherman along for the trip and I was able to bend it back into place. Good as new. Sorta. I put the cabin keys into one pocket and my phone into the other. Another one of my many proud moments in fatherhood.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

It was a St. Patrick's Day party, one with adults drinking Guinness and kids drinking juice boxes. My kid ran over to me saying "Dada, dada! Let's play baseball!" He had a gray plastic kid-sized bat in one hand and a fluorescent green tennis ball in the other. I put down my bottle of beer and grabbed the ball from Judah. I threw a slow, underhand pitch to him and he hit it fairly well, knocking it to the tree on my left.

I threw it to Judah again and again, and his batting average was starting to blow my mind. Probably somewhere around .400. Not bad for a four-year-old who doesn't visit the batting cages very often, or at all. I thought it was time to stop when he hit the ball toward the windows of the garage and knocked over some decorative bamboo poles. But some of the other kids saw how much fun he was having, so they started to congregate next to him.

I told Judah we'd better put the baseball bat down so we don't break anything, but he wanted one more swing of the bat before handing it over to the others. I threw it to him and he hit the ball solidly and it nailed me right in the crotch. One other kid ran over yelling "My turn! my turn!" Yeah, right. Like I was gonna allow that to happen again. I was taking my ball and going home.

Wait a Minute, Mister Postman

A few weeks ago on a Saturday I was out running errands with the boy Judah. Most of the time that involves either going to the bank or going to the post office. Sometimes it's both.

I've got a stack of envelopes and I pull up to the drive-up mail deposit box and throw a bunch of envelopes into the slot. Easy enough. Then I run some other errands like buying coffee beans, and so on. Exciting stuff.

Then we drive to the bank and get out and walk over to the area where you fill out the deposit slips. I've got a few checks, so I start filling out the deposit slip, and then I notice that one of the larger checks is missing. And then it hits me: The check went into the mail slot with the rest of the envelopes.

By this time, it was getting close to Judah's soccer practice, and he loves his soccer practice. And after soccer practice the post office would surely be closing early for the weekend. So I called Lily to tell her that I dropped the check in the mailbox, and hopefully she'd be able to pick it up.

Out of the goodness of her heart, she went to the post office as soon as she could, with the baby girl in tow, and the nice people at the post office were so kind as to open the box up and find the check for us. Hooray!

That little lesson was short-lived because I did it again yesterday. At least this time I realized I dropped the check in the mailbox as soon as I drove off. I did a u-turn and pulled back into the green-strip 30 minute street parking area in front of the Culver City post office, after being yelled at by an elderly man getting out of his SUV that had a handicapped placard hanging from the rearview mirror.

Luckily the standard 20-person line wasn't happening, so I only had to wait through two people before it was my turn. I went up to the counter and told the dreadlocked postal worker that I accidentally dropped my check in the box outside. His already deadpan face went more deadpan as he swiveled his chair around without saying a word. He disappeared from sight for a bit and I wondered if he just decided to leave. I probably would if I were him. But he reappeared with the key and made his way from behind the counter to go outside.

As he walked by, the smell of pachouli invaded my nostrils. "Which one?" he asked. "The middle one" I replied. He opened the bottom of the box and pulled out a white bin that the mail falls into. I always imagined those mailboxes crammed full of mail, but this one wasn't even half full. Or was it half empty? Anyway, he started flipping through envelopes and I reached out to flip through some too. He stopped, looked me in the eye and said "You CAN'T touch the mail" in a very serious, commanding tone. I folded my hands behind my back, as if to show him I understood the seriousness.

It appeared that hunching over for 10 seconds and flipping through envelopes was hurting his back, because he muttered "I can't do this" and stormed back inside the post office. I followed, keeping my hands folded behind my back. He put the bin onto a table and started flipping through again. He muttered "gah, another bin" and went behind the counter to get another bin.

When he returned, he started tossing groups of envelopes into the 2nd bin. "Did the check have a stamp on it?" he asked. "No" I replied, thinking he meant "did you intend to mail this check?" He dumped more envelopes into the 2nd bin. "I'm only gonna look for envelopes without a stamp" he stated as I wondered how the hell he was going to see anything through the blur of envelopes descending before us.

I told him "Okay, it's around here, cuz those are my wife's stamps." And next to those was my check, which was stamped from the employer mailing it to me. I pointed at it, so's not to touch any mail. His face went even more deadpan. "So it DID have a stamp on it" he said as he handed me the check. He dumped the rest of the mail into the 2nd bin. "Thanks" I said while hurrying out of there in what was probably one notch below actual running.

If there's one lesson learned, a rule of thumb, that would be: Go to the bank first, then the mailbox.

Talk Talk

A while back I was editing a music video for a new director. He wanted me to edit at his studio, so I'd go there at night after my day job. On a nightly basis I'd meet some random new person I hadn't met before, all of them young fashionable kids who seemed fresh out of art school. 25 years old, maybe 27 tops, but nobody appeared to be anywhere close to my age.

Then one night I went in and saw one guy sitting at a computer who looked like he could have been 60 years old. More telling than his age, he seemed out of place with his level of cleanliness. He was disheveled in a way that looked like he might not have showered in a week, and his clothes probably hadn't seen a washer in a while either. Luckily he didn't stink.

Being the polite and friendly guy I am, I went over and introduced myself. Mainly to find out what his role at the studio was, because my noodle was having a hard time making sense of his presence in the studio. He turned around and shook my hand (which I kept away from everything until I could get to some sanitizing gel) and he told me his deal.

He launched into stories about how he used to be into computers and how he had a real estate business, and that's when I noticed at least 3 of his front teeth were missing. I couldn't get a word in edgewise as he told me about his furniture making companies and how his wife left him and finally we got to the place I knew we were heading: He was homeless.

Apparently the director had just met him on the street that night, and the director hired him to make silkscreens and tatoo logos all over Venice. I figured I had enough info to make sense of the situation and to get back on track with trying to get work done. But the guy never took a pause long enough to escape politely. It's then that I put two and two together and figured the guy was probably a lot younger than he looked because he was a meth burnout.

Finally I was rescued by the director, who had been giving instructions to one of the art school graduates. He turned around and said "Hey could you guys keep the conversation down? I can't even hear what I'm saying here." Yeah. You guys. Plural. I don't think I'd voiced a single word since "Hi, I'm Lee". It was all meth beast from that point on.

I said "Excuse me, I think I better get to work" and I went upstairs. While I was editing, all I could hear was the homeless guy rattling on about this and that, and when somebody played a new wave tune from the 80s he said "Right on man, is that Pink Floyd or somethin?" The director shouted downstairs to the guy that he was going to have to stop talking or he'd be kicked out of the studio. He was booted shortly thereafter. Surprise surprise.

Gish

A few weeks ago at my last gig, I noticed that something was amiss in my little edit room. Generally I like to keep a tidy workspace. No extra clutter cluttering the room. No empty coffee mugs lying around. Pens and papers in their proper places. But on this day something didn't feel quite right.

I took a step back from the console and I finally saw the problem. There were two extra chairs in the room. Two extra chairs making my little edit room littler. So I did what any borderline obsessive compulsive editor would do: I walked out of the room and began searching for a place to put these extra chairs.

The answer lay right next door in the adjacent little edit room, which had only the editor's chair inside. Plenty of room to house the two extra chairs. So I rolled each chair into the other room. As I went to close the door, my attention was diverted from the closure of closing the door. My hand slipped off the door handle and into the area where the door latches into the doorframe. Bang. Ouch. My middle finger was smashed and gashed and immediately started bleeding profusely.

As I went searching for the medical cabinet, I couldn't help but think "Why did I do that? My room was fine with the extra chairs. I could have kept on working without this smashed bleeding finger which impedes using the tools I use for working. Why?" I found the healing gel and some bandages and kept the bleeding to a minimum.

In the following days, I made the extra effort to heal the wound as quickly as possible. I made sure to keep a fresh bandage and ointment on the finger at all times. And in a week, the finger was almost completely healed.

Did I learn to accept the fact that sometimes people leave their chairs and junk in my little edit room? Did I learn to accept clutter? Hell no. I learned that, with just the right amount of obsessiveness, I can do anything.

Rooster

It was inevitable. Simply by having a goddamn e-mail address it was inevitable. I received some nude pictures via e-mail today. Nude pictures of some random person, inadvertently sent to my e-mail address. And it couldn't possibly be pictures of a nude hot woman. No. Women probably don't send nude pics nearly as often as men. It had to be pictures of a dude. And not just nude pictures of him. But up close and HELLO yes very very personal pictures of his junk. Rightfully so these pictures landed in the "Junk" mailbox.

I don't know why, but for some stupid reason I always need to know what the unread junk mailbox count is all about. Usually it's about choosing the right contractor to upgrade my house. Or it's spam for flowers this Valentine's Day. But today it was two innocent looking mails from what looked like a personal e-mail address.

I clicked on the first one and was exposed to two shirtless upper torso pics of a guy, photographed in a mirror, who looks like he's frequenting the clubs. I clicked on the second link and within less than a second it was HOLY CRAP RIP MY EYES OUT NOW!!!! This while I was at work, with no NSFW warning from this pornographer. Before that second deadly click, I vaguely remember having some thought shoot across my mind about "don't click on that second one". And then the ick bomb landed. I've heard of people sending nude pics, but for everyone's sake please verify the address first before hitting the send button. Can't we just get rid of e-mail altogether? Ick.

Word Up

Lily sent me an e-mail the other day with the subject line: Note to self - Don't enter this film fest.

She found the following posting on a parents online forum in LA. Posted by the founder and producer of the film fest which shall remain unnamed, because... well, just because. And the film fest is here in LA, the capital of like all the movies in the entire universe!


The Microsoft Word program driving me crazy. It shows me a kind of q
looking character with an extra line every time I hit return.

I cannot figure out what to turn off to make it stop.

Please help.


What year is it? 1993? Yeah, Word has been making the "q looking thing" every time you hit return for decades now. And to make it go away you hit the very same "q looking" button on the toolbar to do what Microsoft calls "hide". No more wacky q thing everywhere. Or any of the other formatting that you may or may not want to see.

Thankfully most films don't have words on the screen. Or q-looking characters. Otherwise she might have a real problem getting films into her fest. Note to self: Don't enter that film fest.