In the sense that most of these make perfect sense for a Google auto-fill to try and guess what I’m asking, but the one…
Ripple? Really? Were they all out of Everclear down at the Rite Aid?
What is wrong with the world today? Why can’t kids just find some 21-year-old who will buy a six-pack for them for $20 and keep the change like we did?
Filed under Farce
What do you mean, “They’re not coming?” Did you not see how many freakin’ orcs have us surrounded?
“Plan B?” I thought that YOU were in charge of coming up with a “Plan B!”
If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my quarters, building a pillow fort.
Filed under Paul
I am not a morning person.
There was a time I remember getting up at about 5AM every day, anxiously eager to see what the day would bring. That’s because in a very full house, getting up early like that gave me at least an hour to sit and read while everyone slept. It was the best. Then I hit second grade and it’s been somewhat downhill ever since.
Now, were I to be given the choice, up by the crack of noon would be about right. Those signing my pay check have other thoughts, but one of the best things about my current job is that I’m only ten minutes away, so I can push that snooze button quite a bit before scrambling to hit the road.
Unless, like tomorrow, I have an earlier start to the day and at a remote location that I’ll only get to after more driving than I normally do in a week, in very heavy duty LA rush hour traffic to boot.
Smart phones to the rescue?
What I really need is one that starts shouting, “If you’re not in the car in sixty seconds you’re NEVER going to make it on time! Fifty-nine! Fifty-eight! Fifty-seven…”
Filed under Paul
Barre, Vermont – Mom’s front yard, 1975
(It was always great to sit out on the front porch or on the grass and watch the sunset, wait for the stars to come out. There were about two acres of grass sloping down to the street with the hills and mountains just falling away to the west toward Camel’s Hump. If you were really quiet you wouldn’t disturb the deer as they came out of the woods to eat the crabapples. As Joni Mitchell said, “You don’t know what you got ’till it’s gone.”)
Filed under Photography, Travel
Image: Weather Underground
Dear Powers That Be:
With all due respect, if you’re going to just eliminate a day from existence, could we please make it a Monday and not a Sunday? It’s that whole “Monday’s sucks” vs “Sundays suck much, much less than the other days of the week” thing. Some of us are sort of on thin ice here to begin with, so it would be wonderful to get cut a little bit of slack as opposed to being kicked in the teeth while down to begin with.
tl;dr version – don’t be a dick.
Love,
Humanity
Pop quiz time!
You’re in Los Angeles. Maybe you live here, maybe you’re visiting. It’s not relevant.
You need ping pong balls. Not 27,000 of them like for that Mythbusters episode, but maybe a six-pack.
You need them now. You don’t have time to go find a sporting goods store that’s open, or order them from Amazon, even if they do get delivered in an hour by an Amazon drone. (OK, scratch that, if you can get a six-pack of ping-pong balls delivered in an hour by a flying drone, then screw the pop quiz and go do it!)
You go into one of the large, upscale Los Angeles chain grocery stores. Not Bristol Farms or Gelsons upscale, but better than your average neighborhood Ralph’s or Vons. (Okay, it was a Pavilions.)
Where do you go in the store to find the ping pong balls?
Think about it.
Toys? You have a “toys” aisle, or even a toys section in your grocery store? BZZZZ! Wrong answer, and by the way, you’re in a Bristol Farms or a Gelsons. Or maybe you’re really lost and you’ve stumbled into a Rite-Aid with a milk & bread & candy & canned soup & pet food aisle and you think it’s a grocery store.
Ok, then that tiny section where they have like cheap pliers and screwdrivers and miscellaneous bolts and screws for a hundred times what you would pay at a hardware store? Wrong.
I guarantee that they’ve got them. Where, oh where, would they put them?
Think.
Think.
Think.
Explore.
Explore.
Explore.
It’s like a really weird version of Supermarket Sweepstakes.
And the answer is…
Of course! In the frozen food aisle! Over with the frozen chicken patties, TV dinners, frozen, gluten free Jimmy Dean Delights Breakfast Bowls!
Welcome to Los Angeles! Now go get your head tattooed to look like stubble!
Filed under Los Angeles, Photography
That feeling when you’re feeling the time pressure because the freakin’ computer at the hangar went belly up and you really don’t have the time to be dealing with this but you’ve actually gotten to the store and gotten a decent new computer in a reasonable amount of time but now you’re standing in the parking lot because you know you parked Hissy over here somewhere because you remember being next to that car and just down from that car but Hissy’s nowhere to be seen and you can’t figure out what in hell you’re doing wrong but gee, that car right there looks just like your old van, same color, same everything, what are the odds of that…
And yet Siri wondered why I needed directions to get back to the hangar.
Don’t think of it as a brain cramp – think of it as “flight following” in a moment of exhaustion.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Health, Paul
I know that Austin likes to “Keep It Weird,” Portland has that guy in a kilt & Darth Vader helmet who rides a unicycle while playing a set of bagpipes that shoots flame out the top, and New York… Well, New York has Times Square. But I’ll stick to my contention that no one can out weird California in a pinch. Although I think this particular example might be more of a Los Angeles specific weird.
Rolling billboards. Pick up trucks with large advertising A-frames in the bed. Not advertising for the company that owns the truck. Nothing subtle. Nothing tasteful. Garish, in your face, you’re-stuck-on-the-freeway-next-to-me-and-you-have-to-look-at-this-shit-until-we-get-to-your-exit grade advertising.
(That’s not the thing that’s weird by the way. You probably see those in every big city by now. I’m just setting the stage.)
I’m behind this thing and it’s pushing a new type of cosmetic surgery. I’m dumbstruck. Flabbergasted. Gobsmacked. Even by the standards of this place it’s astonishing to me.
There’s a place you can go and have a zillion tiny little black dots tattooed all over your head. Or, at least, all over the bald spots.
This is designed for guys who are going bald and want to address that condition not with a comb over or a rug (or with an ounce of maturity and gracious acceptance of the capricious nature of the universe) but by shaving their heads. Yeah, that will hide it and make me look like a macho studmuffin to boot!
Except…
When you shave your head you get that little dark stubbly look. It’s like five o’clock shadow all over your skull. Unless part of your skull is actually bald. That’s “bald” as in “NO HAIR GROWS HERE!” That’s “bald” as in “the Benevolent Order of Follicles Local 699” is on strike in this location. The five o’clock shadow is those shaved off hairs starting to grow back in.
So if you suffer from male pattern baldness and shave your head, you’ll get stubbly five o’clock shadow look where you would normally grow hair plus “smooth as a baby’s butt” where you’re actually denial-will-do-you-no-good bald.
Until now.
These guys will go in and tattoo in every one of those little hair follicles for you. Let them use you skull as a giant pin cushion for a while (who know that PinHead
would end up being fashion forward?) Then, assuming you actually do shave your head, you’ll look like you can grow a Fabio-like mane at will, but you’re making a macho choice to have your head looking like that all over.
With all due respect to the fine surgeons and tattoo artistes doing this life saving work, may I suggest that anyone thinking about this procedure could go and spend the money on therapy, hard liquor, and/or Lottery tickets and come out way ahead of the game compared to having this procedure inflicted on yourself?
Jeez!
Filed under Freakin' Idiots!, Health, Los Angeles
That feeling when the stress finally clicks and you find yourself for at least a moment starting to transform from lowly, common graphite into rare, wondrous diamond. After all of the preparation and work that went into it, the start of the phase change is painless.
It’s something of an out of body experience, your thought processes splitting, the “outside” you going off and being socially acceptable and pleasant while the “inside” you steps back from that other self and says, “Ah, I see what’s happening here! I’ve heard of that, never thought I would see it up close, let alone in my own cerebral cortex!”
From there, grasping to hold onto that new state, desperate to not tumble back to dust, it’s exhilarating and empowering to be able to touch that feeling in future times of crisis, to keep it hidden where no one can take it from you, a shiny mental trinket buried deep in memory. Perhaps with time and possible repetition and practice, it will be large enough and strong enough to act as a shield – or a sword, slicing away at the self-imposed bonds and limitations.
Tomorrow we fight again. Possibly stronger, possibly more wise, hopefully less afraid.
Especially that last one.
Filed under Deep Thoughts, Health
UC Davis, Picnic Day, Battle of the Bands
(This was a great day – not perfect, but great. Picnic Day is a fun tradition at UC Davis and I went to visit when my daughter was in college there. A parade in the morning, ball games in the afternoon, food and booths and music and the usual crap everywhere, with the Battle of the Bands next to the lake in the afternoon. It went on forever and ever with bands from Davis, Berkeley, UC Irvine (my alma mater), Cal State Sacramento, and probably another one or two I’m forgetting. It would be wonderful to go back someday when I’m not so freakin’ busy.)
Filed under Entertainment, Music, Photography
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We Love The Stars Too Fondly 