Irony

"Look at her cellulite!" a three-hundred pound woman says to her four-hundred pound husband in the checkout line at the grocery store. Her husband grabs the magazine and inspects the bikini'd celebrity.

"Who is that?"
"Cindy Crawford."

The husband shakes his head.

"She needs to lose weight."

The World is Fucked

There’s nothing like a trip to the mall during the holiday season to make you wish for more 9/11s. Five minutes and I was ready to give my life to jihad.

Backstory:

Traffic in LA is the worst thing in the world. Worse than the sound of children playing. It is so bad that I find myself planning trips around right turns. You can’t fucking turn left in this city unless you’re willing to put your life on the line. Left turns are even banned in some places. And you can fucking forget left arrows. They only exist where you need them the least.

During the holidays, shit gets compounded. Traffic was bad. Now it’s worse. There was nowhere to park before. Now even the handicapped are fucked. In LA, parking is so bad that places like 7-11 and Carl’s Jr. enlist security guards to make sure you don’t drop your car off and run errands. This blows, because the fast food restaurants usually have the largest parking lots and there are never sixty motherfuckers chowing down on a Big Mac at once.

“But what about Ronald’s Playplace?”

Breeding grounds for Mexican birthday parties and Mexicans don’t have cars. So, if you need to run to the grocery store for a last minute turkey on Christmas Eve, you’re shit out of luck because Christmas will be over before you can make it into Rosa’s line. You’d be better off killing your own turkey, plucking its feathers, and comparing its wattle to grandma’s clitoris. Egg nog, anyone?

So last night my phone gets stolen. Mostly my fault. I went to a screening of There Will Be Blood (my first screening) with my coworker and adopted little sister, Jen, who is just so beautiful and Jerseytastic it’s impossible not to think impure thoughts. There were rent-a-pigs outside the theater doing the whole airport security thing – checking your bags, pockets, etc. Everything but the anus. Anyway, I could’ve probably hidden my phone, but I figured what the fuck. It’s a beat-up, first-gen camera phone that can’t even snap a decent dick shot. Who’s dumb enough to think I can record a movie with it?

“I’m sorry, sir, but I can’t let you in with that.”
“But it’s a piece of shit.”
“I’m sorry.”
“But that guy just went in with a Blackberry.”
“He wasn’t in my line.”
“Well what the fuck am I going to do then?”

He told me I could go put my phone back in my car, which was near the back of P-212. I checked the time. 7:34. The movie was starting. So, being the idiot that I infrequently am, I hid my phone behind a trash can.

“You can barely see it,” I told myself. “And if you did, you wouldn’t take it. And if you did, you’d turn it in to the Lost and Found.”

Well somebody saw it, took it, and didn’t turn it in to the Lost and Found. I’m not saying it was a Mexican, but I wouldn’t be surprised if my phone ended up in little Pedro’s Christmas stocking hanging above the stove. By the way, fuck the movie Crash. If it looks like beans and it smells like beans, then do not leave your shit lying around because it will end up next to a plate of beans. That being said, I am friends with the cleaning staff at the gym and I frequently give them rides home. I can say shit like this. I want a churro.

So my lost phone brought me to the Beverly Center. Less than three miles and over thirty minutes to get there. The cars filing into the parking structure reminded me of orphans going through the gruel line. Lemmings lining up to walk off a cliff. You know, I hate people who preach all that anti-consumer/anti-corporate bullshit, but watching botoxed women in big sunglasses and unnecessary scarves pilot their Range Rovers into a giant parking cave, one by one, is one of the most visceral, disturbing things I have ever seen. If you want to know what bothers me, what offends me, this is it.

The scary thing is that they’re not even the worst. It’s their children. Mainly their daughters. An entire generation born to shop and text message. Impossibly hot jailbait tapping away on their Sidekicks like a primitive, tongue-clicking tribe. They worship at the shrine of LC and think friend is spelled “freind”. Nepotism will have these kids in power in twenty years, and then it’s just a matter of time before movies like “wil u go out w me” and “omg my lif iz ovr” are setting box office records.

Vacant-eyed, vacant-headed drones leading us into the apocalypse one “lol” at a time.

You know how you’ll be taking a shit and you’ll get that stubborn little hanger-on, the one that just won’t let go? And after much Michael J. Foxing of the ass you decide to bite the bullet and wipe? That first, massive smear of shit you wipe – the one that looks like good barbecue – is the next generation.

The worst generation is always the next one. They don't live. They kill time.

Anyway, long story short, I didn’t get a new phone because I’m still on the family plan and needed a grown-up there with me.

National Controversy

So I kinda sorta was at the center of a national controversy.

I could have easily planted myself on TV for the millions of blood-hungry finger-pointers out there, but what would have been the point? You can’t argue with an angry mob – especially when it’s made up of whole-milk drinkers who propelled Wild Hogs to a forty-million dollar opening weekend last Spring.

“It just ain’t funny if nuts ain’t gettin’ hit. Pass the Sam’s Choice Cola.”

What I did was offensive, insensitive, and plenty of other –ives, but it was with merit. There was artistic value. And I’ll be goddamned if it wasn’t funny. In the one interview I granted, the reporter – a Tech alum – burst out laughing when I told her about the honorary degree in my back pocket. She promptly apologized and said she shouldn’t be laughing.

Why not?

You know, we like to talk all this shit about the Muslims and how they need to lighten up; how they’re blinded by their religion; how they’re savages. But what the fuck are we? Angels, saints, heroes? I liken it to white trash and ghetto blacks. You have these two groups of people who hate each other, yet they have so much in common.

Christians and Muslims are the same.

Now, I’m not saying that all of the people I offended are religious, but I’d be willing to bet a week’s worth of jack-off sessions that a large portion of them don’t miss church on Sundays.

“Dear God, please give me the strength to hunt down that Jeff guy and kill him.”
“Why?”
“Because he mocked a tragedy.”
“But don’t you beat your wife?”
“Yeah, but that’s in private.”

A lot of people asked me how I would feel if my mom was killed and somebody went as her for Halloween. I asked them if paying for my car insurance would be part of the costume.

But yes, I would probably be upset if somebody dressed up as my dead, bullet-riddled, tire-treaded, flesh-charred mother. However, I’m what you’d call a biased source. Which means the media would immediately seek me out to sensationalize their story.

“Tonight, a dead mother’s alive son is deeply upset over a Halloween costume of his dead mother. But first, the weather.”

The media never consults the neutral. They don’t fact check either. Everyone who ran my picture identified me as a Penn State student. People threatened to drive to Pennsylvania to teach me a lesson. I linked them to Mapquest directions. It’s kind of flattering when a gallon of your blood is worth more than a gallon of gas.

“But don’t you have any feelings for the victims’ families?”

I don’t know the victims or their families. I can understand their pain, but I can’t feel it. That being said, I went to a party in Los Angeles. Los An-juh-luss. I did not parade around anyone’s home shouting, “Look at me. You’re saving on tuition.” I did not leak my pictures. I did not demand attention. People chose to give it to me. People chose to turn this into something huge. I just wore a costume.

Should we consult the rest of the world before do something offensive? Should we call up concerned parties and ask them if it’s okay?

“Hello, Magic Johnson? I’m going as a T-Cell for Halloween. Is that okay with you, or should I be Jason?”

Maybe next year we can all go as eggshells.

Poetic Justice

I gave all of my roommate’s beer to James. He’s homeless.

Twenty-something cans and a couple of bottles. I loaded them into a garbage bag and lugged it over to the Big Lots on Vine Street in the rain. For light beer, it was pretty heavy.

A little backstory:

You know the asshole who asks you to keep it down? That’s me. I’ll admit it. I am the party-ruining square who values his sleep, the guy who isn’t defined by how much alcohol he can drink or how much pussy he can get.

Four months ago I thought I was moving into an apartment. I moved into a freshmen dorm. A fucking hotel for my roommate’s friends to come and go as they please. I’m paying rent and they’re stumbling in at two in the morning, louder than a deaf couple fucking. They smoke inside, leave cans and wrappers strewn about, and even remain once my roommate leaves. My concerns and frustrations have been met with the obligatory “I’m sorry’s”, but shit always starts back up again, usually within days.

My roommate and his friends treat life like an extension of college, guys who live the beer commercial guy-image because that’s what they think cool is. These are the guys who think their dicks are going to fall off if they don’t go out and get shitfaced every night. The guys who show up at a party and complain about the lack of “chicks”, even though it doesn’t matter because none of them have the balls to approach a girl in the first place. But that’s cool because real men don’t need chicks to bring them down and cut into guy time. “Remember when” stories of almost-hook ups are a lot more fun anyway. Pass the beer. Go Steelers.

What’s most annoying is when your food disappears. Something missing here and there. Now I don’t mind sharing, but if you’re going to shack your friends up without even checking to see if I mind, at least have the courtesy to ask if you can dig into my shit. To my roommate’s credit, missing items have been replaced, but that’s not where the damage lies. The damage lies in not asking. The damage lies in taking.

If I’m gone, don’t assume it’s okay to toss out the milk I was saving to make room for your beer. Because then your beer might disappear and go to a homeless man who really appreciates the less-filling, great taste.

I left a note on the table last night before I went to bed:


It should read “Who drank the rest of my milk?” I don’t know why a giant piece has been torn off. Probably to play drunken tic-tac-toe.

This morning, there was an answer on the flip-side:


The part of the note that really irks me is the “sorry, no, 3!” To me, this translates to, “sorry, you are a retarded fucking child!” Like I was too busy jerking off to Sesame Street to realize that my milk was bad. And it wasn’t. I know when milk is spoiled. I drink a shitload of it. Nobody knows my milk better than me. My milk was fucking good. In fact I overpaid for it at a convenience store two days ago on my way back from the airport ($4.99 for a half gallon). I was hoping it would get me through until Saturday, but no dice.

Note to everyone: the sell-by date is not the go-bad date.

But you know what is spoiled? The week-old gallons of 2% that belong to the professional stoner/aspiring musician who lives in the other room. Those were left in the fridge. By the way, the stoner won’t be paying me the $100 he owes me for living on the couch last month. He’s too busy collecting worker’s comp and going fishing with his pet snake.

Here is all of my roommate’s beer:



Here it is in a garbage bag:


Homeless guys are like house parties. You think you know where they are until you go looking for them. I could not find a homeless guy for shit this morning. The one who lives on the corner by the park was nowhere to be seen. Out collecting cans probably. If only he’d stayed put. There was one asleep outside by the laundry room – the guy who usually wakes me up with his dumpster diving, I think – but when I approached him he said he didn’t like beer. There was fear on his face though, like he thought I was an undercover officer with the LAPD’s ABDB Unit (Arrest Beer Drinking Bums). I told him it was cool and to go back to sleep. I wasn’t going to rat him out.

I thought about searching for the dreadlocked homeless guy who wanders up and down Cahuenga mumbling to himself and smelling like a fat kid’s wet towel, but decided against it because he looks younger, and I think younger homeless guys are more violence-prone. Somebody should do a study on that.

Big Lots was the next logical step. There’s an awning by the back entrance that the homeless are always camped out under. They lay out their cardboard sheets and pass out, bundled up in their sleeping bags and old blankets. I’ve seen ten lined up in a row before.

But this morning there were none. Just a lone woman in a knit cap and a couple of shopping carts. I trudged up to her with the garbage bag.

“Hi.”
“Hello…”
“Do you like beer?”
“No. I don’t drink.”
“You have any friends that do?”

She pointed to the main entrance. James was asking for change. I hung around for a moment and waited for him to come over.

“What’s up, man?”
“Yo.”
“You like beer?”
“Yeah… Why?”

I opened the bag. James eyes lit up like the last roach.

“My roommate threw away my milk so I took all of his beer. You can have it. It’s not poisoned or anything.”
“You serious?”

I nodded. James grinned a big, piano-key grin. He stretched open his arms and gave me a giant hug. I hugged him back. He smelled good. No stench at all. When I remarked on his cleanliness he told me he’d only been homeless for a week (“fresh homeless”) – kicked out by his bi-polar girlfriend. He said if he could go back and change things he wouldn’t give his love to anyone. That way people couldn’t keep putting a foot up his ass.

We cracked open a beer and spoke for a while, airing our grievances and taking pictures.

I wish I had enough money to adopt James. Really. Like the Waitzkin family does with Laurence Fishburne in Searching for Bobby Fischer. He is that nice, that genuine of a guy. Yeah, it could have been all the free alcohol, but I feel like it transcended the hops and empty calories. I feel like we made a connection – two guys who had been wronged who were trying to make things right. I told James not to worry, that things would look up. After all, he’s only been homeless for a week and he already has a shopping cart and a roof. That’s pretty fucking good.

James shared his take on my situation:

“See, it’s like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. And Daffy Duck. You know who they are?”
“Yeah.”
“Elmer Fudd was always chasing Bugs Bunny with the gun, and Daffy Duck was chasing him too. And Bugs Bunny was always hunted, but sometimes he got that gun, and then that Daffy Duck… it was all bad for him.”
“He got his beak shot off.”
“His beak got shot off. Flipped right round on the back of his head.”

I probably won’t see James again, but his next words will never leave me:

“It ain’t no fun when the rabbit got the gun.”