Pauly Shore's Birthday Party

“Are you Kitty?” I ask, double-fisting a Miller Lite and margarita.
“Yeah!”
“No! I jerked off to one of your scenes the other day!”

I’ve never talked to a pornstar before, so I’m not sure if this compliment is appropriate or out of line. I know I’d be flattered if somebody told me that they jerked off to me:

“Are you Granite Wall?”
“Yeah.”
“Dude, I totally came to one of your scenes the other day!”
“Thanks, man. That means a lot to me. Want me to sign the napkin you blew in?”

Kitty squeals with laughter and covers her face, embarrassed. I think this is funny considering she routinely takes foot-long black cocks in her ass on camera. She’s about 4’11. Tiny, Asian, and looks like a twelve-year-old girl. If you have a dick and internet access you’ve probably seen her. I tell her that I’m a fan and that she’s one of my favorite actresses, even though I don’t have her freeones.com page bookmarked. She giggles and blushes and we take a picture together.

For the next thirty minutes I tell everyone I met an Asian pornstar.

“Who?” Brian, the PT manager, asks. Brian’s tall and reminds me of a cool math teacher (“Bro, I wanna bisect her vertex”). He and I kind of have a friendly, unspoken Asian-getting competition going on. Not because we objectify Asian women, but because we objectify all women.

I point Kitty out.

“You would break her,” Brian says.
“You wouldn’t say that if you saw her movies.”

The Comedy Store is a quiet black building in the heart of the Sunset Strip. It stands out by not trying to stand out. You want to see Dane Cook dance around and shout overly-enunciated words? Go down the street to the Laugh Factory. This place is for people who tell jokes. An indie theater. Not a multiplex.

Pauly Shore’s party is in the main room. The crowd is composed mostly of comedian-looking schlubs (“Hey, have you heard the one about the guy who didn’t get laid…”) and plastic-surgeried bimbos who can barely see over their cartoonish chests. Your standard party songs from your standard rappers boom from tall speakers while overmakeupped barely-legals in slutty black dresses crank and shake and dip onstage like they’re auditioning for “America’s Next Rape Victim”.

Needless to say, I’m digging the motherfucking scene.

I spend most of the night drinking free beer and trying to dance. I feel inadequate in the shadow of Aaron, my light-skinned black friend with a poofy firework ‘fro. Unlike me, he’s able to dance without attaching himself to a girl’s ass. All I can do when I’m alone is hold my drink up, bob my head, and say “Yeah!” I also do something with my fists and shoulders, but I’m not quite sure what the fuck that is.

After I scare off a couple of girls that are feeling Aaron’s infinitely feelable moves, he tells Patrick that I need to work on my game, which is very very true. But Aaron is black. Game-spitting is in his blood. Him telling me I need to work on my skills is like Superman criticizing Joe Public for not being able to burn shit with his eyes.

One of the things that sucks about getting out of a long term relationship is your inability to talk to girls. Once I get past “What’s your name?” and “What do you do?” I’m pretty much fucked. I’m not used to the bullshit-for-pussy barter system. I’ve been getting a free ride for the past five years. And suddenly I’m expected to pay? What the fuck? Where’s the manager?

My friend Annarose tells me the trick is to act like you don’t care, but how are you supposed to do that when your dick is leading the way?

This is something Clarissa never explained.

As the night presses on, I gawk at more girls. Some smile. Some don’t. I overanalyze everything and my insecurities eventually consume me. Living/working/partying in the vapid part of LA doesn’t help things when you’re a semi-attractive gym employee with no money who drives a ’92 Subaru with close to 230,000 miles on it. How can that compete with an ‘08 Bentley? How can my unpartitioned nook in a tiny one bedroom compete with a house in the hills?

You can charm your way into lives out here, but you won’t be taken seriously until there’s something in your wallet.

I see Pauly making the requisite birthday rounds, getting kisses, shaking hands. I hang around his general area until he sees me.

“But Jeff, how the fuck do you know Pauly Shore?”

Well I don’t, really. He’s in and out of the gym all the time and I say hi. The only conversation we’ve ever had was about Wes Craven suing him for water runoff or something (they’re neighbors). I think I called Wes Craven a prick, although I’m sure if I was having the conversation with Wes Craven I would’ve called Pauly Shore a prick. That’s the thing about me: as much as I try not to kiss a celebrity’s ass I always end up doing it.

Pauly recognizes me and gives me an extended, reach-over-a-couple-of-people high-five and a bro-ish hug. I wish him a happy birthday and the party photographers snap a couple pictures of us. Then I get my own picture:


Kiki, a trainer from Northern VA, has a friend that I actually went to high school with. Kiki’s friend tells me that she hears Pauly’s an asshole. I nod and shrug – one of those I-respect-your-opinion-and-semi-agree-with-it gestures that you do when you don’t respect somebody’s opinion or agree with it. But she’s cute and I feel like I have a chance working the nostalgia angle (“Hey, remember when…”). What bothers me about her, other than her sour demeanor and constantly-judging-everything-you-say personality, is her lips. They don’t exist. I have this fear that I’ll fall in love with a girl who doesn’t know how to kiss, who doesn’t have the equipment to kiss. I’m fucking packing in the lip department and don’t want to feel like I’m making out with my palm.

But it ends up not mattering like I thought it wouldn’t because I’m drunk and say this to her:

“You’re my nigga.”
“What?”
“You’re my nig-ga!”

She gets this disgusted look on her face like I just said her breath smelled like a thousand Mexican farts and backs away from me.

“No I’m not.”
“Don’t get mad. I listen to enough rap music where I can say that.”

I then tell her to chill out and not get like the movie Crash on me. I emphasized the “uh” sound. I was friendly when I said it. I may as well have been singing a Tupac lyric. Show me the fucking cross I burned, you know? Later, Patrick makes a good point and says that maybe she’s upset because she thought I was calling her black. Maybe she’s the racist. This is why Patrick is my best friend.

Kitty is on the dance floor with a couple of her friends. I approach her again now that I’m running on fewer inhibitions:

“Kitty!”
Giggles.
“Come dance on stage with me!”

Louder giggles. She covers her face and shakes her head. Keep in mind this is someone who has been videotaped swapping cum. So I pick her up with one arm (about 80 lbs) instead and we take another picture.


I feel powerful holding her, like King Kong. It’s nice when you feel like you can manhandle someone you’d like to fuck.

I think I recognize one of her equally small friends:

“Are you Tia Tanaka?”
“No no no no.” Head shakes.
“Yes she is!” Kitty squeals.

Since I’m kind of fucked up, I don’t know who to believe. On one hand, this girl looks a lot like hot Asian porn starlet Tia Tanaka and she’s hanging out with Kitty fucking Jung, one of my go-to creamers (along with Evelyn Lin). On the other hand, lots of other hot Asian girls look like Tia Tanaka, even a few at the party. She’s off the assembly line, a prototype: beautiful but unremarkable. No flaws, nothing that stands out. I’m sure I could dip inside any given Hollywood club on aZn night and point out twenty Tia Tanakas. I want to call her a liar in a jocular, drunken fashion, but I decide against it because lately I haven’t been watching as much Asian porn as I should. My ex-girlfriend is SoKo and I still get kind of sad when I see petite brown lips being impaled by dicks that don’t belong to me. For all I know, this girl could just be a Fast and the Furious extra. (note: after much early afternoon “research”, I have since discovered it was Tia Tanaka.)

I finish my beer and head outside to shoot the shit with Chris, a trainer (and former Wall Street powerhouse) and Dawn, a membership advisor. She tells me they just saw Dave Chappelle and I immediately head back into Pauly’s party to look for him. Pathetic, right? By no means am I a star-chaser. I’m pretty desensitized, actually. I don’t hound celebrities or ask for autographs or harbor delusions that we will one day be BFFs. I just want to get my picture taken with them so all of my friends back home think I’m the man. I want to be a celebrity by proxy – that guy that gets talked about when a bunch of people are sitting around smoking weed:

“Yeah, my boy Jeff is living out in Cali doing his writing thing. Motherfucker was chillin’ with Jeremy Piven the other night.”
“Who?”
“Dude on Entourage that’s the agent and shit.”
“Ohhh… that’s so cool!”
“I know, right?”
“Let’s go in your room.”

A celebrity-by-proxy proxy hook up. Those probably only happen if Brad Pitt is the lead off.

But I do chill with Piven. Well, not chill. He just comes into the gym sometimes when I’m working and I scan his card and validate his parking and ask the occasional question about Entourage and whatever movie he’s working on.

I see him at the party and wrap my arm around him:

“Jeremy!”
A “who the fuck are you?” look.
“I’m the front desk guy at your gym!”

After a moment, recognition registers. I’m not sure if it’s real recognition or polite, fake recognition, but as long as I can pretend it’s the former I’m cool.

“Oh… Hey.”

I tell him it’s good to see him and let him get back to the girls who want to take celebrity-by-proxy to the next step and fellate his fame staff. I run into him outside half an hour later and he’s nice enough to indulge me and snap a couple pictures. He’s looking away in the first one because my camera is old and takes forever.



I strike up a conversation with the prettiest Piven hanger-on while he chats with comedian Dom Irrera and the good-looking guy from Mad TV.

“Watch out for this guy. He’s an Emmy Award winner.”
“That’s what I hear.”
“What’s your name?”
“(I don’t remember what she said)”.
“I’m Jeff.”
“Nice to meet you.”
“Likewise. What do you do?”
“I’m an entertainment reporter for KTLA. Channel 5.”
“Cool… Are you gonna get a ‘scoop’?”

Thank you. I’ll be here all week.

Dumped

Being in a long-term relationship is like being a passenger on the Titanic. You think of it as this big, indestructible force that's going to sail forever. But all it takes is one crack to bring the whole thing down. While it's filling up with water, you're busy listening to the reassuring words and fancy music. You pay no attention the tilting, the creaking, the rushing sound from below. Things will be okay. They have to be. This is the Titanic. The greatest ship ever.

Bullshit.

The ship is going down. And you're motherfucking Leo.

Five years is a long time to spend with someone, especially when a relationship was never the goal in the first place. But relationships tend to sneak up on you when you think you're just fucking and making jokes. Before you know it, you realize you'd rather have her head on your chest than your dick in her pussy. You care if she comes. Genuinely care. Not because you think your sexual reputation is at stake. You notice her flaws and find her more endearing for them. You want to take care of her and make out with her in the rain, because as shitty as those movies and song lyrics are, they're not so shitty when you have someone you can reenact them with.

Sappy becomes good. When you're in private, at least.

Relationships aren't defined by the big moments, but by the small moments in between. The days spent laying around. The trips to the grocery store. Giving up your last french fry. Her drool on your pillow. The things you take for granted -- the mundane, the inconsequential. Those are the things you miss the most. It sucks when you realize you'll never hear her mumble about work in her sleep again.

Distance does things to relationships. Stretches them. Like a thread of gum clinging to the sidewalk and a shoe-bottom. Everyone told me it wouldn't work, but most people are idiots. Assholes. If you can play to the assholes in this world, if you can lower yourself down to entertain them, then you stand to make millions. Dane Cook is living proof of this, although I'm not sure he's lowering himself.

Anyway, this time the assholes were right. It didn't work. But what surprised me is she ended it. I thought that if anybody was going to end it, it would be me or my ever-curious dick. Not the big-headed Asian girl who paid for everything. I miss her big head. I can't blame her, though. I mean how would you feel if your boyfriend abandoned you for a dream? What if the only time you saw him was when you had enough money to buy him a plane ticket? And you still had to convince him to come see you? And he's got all these pictures of him up on his Myspace dancing and drinking with pretty blonde girls and you're at home in the Tennessee woods eating spaghetti and doing crossword puzzles and falling asleep by ten o'clock on Saturday nights. How would that make you feel?

Yeah. I know.

But this is my blog and I have to say, in my defense, I make eight dollars an hour and pay twice the rent she does and have to work as much as possible to stay afloat. My nights out are earned. And I never ever ever forgot to call.

But distance does things to relationships...

I won't go into details (I know a lot of them), but he was 5'6. Five. Six. His dick was somewhere in between. Physically (and mentally, I'm sure), he's an inferior male, which is a huuuuuuuuge blow to my ego. Take how much the average person with a brain hates Oprah and multiply that by ten. That's a big fucking blow.

The problem with inferior people is they're not so inferior when they're around. They're substitutes. Rental cars. Utilitarian entities. She was lonely and he was in the lab next to hers. He showed her attention and that's what she needed. That's what we all need. She told me she likes him, but when we're lonely we'll like anybody who likes us, as long as they're reasonably attractive and don't smell like shit.

Plus I was the only guy she'd ever been with. That's like eating filet mignon all the time. As good as it is, you get tired of it. Used to it. After a while, you want to know what taco meat tastes like.

I'm not looking forward to hitting the reset button on my sex life. I have to start all over. Test the freak waters again. What if the next girl's not a good kisser? What if she doesn't like to be choked out? What if she's not down to put a finger in my ass? What if she doesn't swallow? And how the fuck am I going to find all of this out without her thinking I'm a fucking pervert? Shit.

Still, sex is ultimately sex. Love is not ultimately love. You can't get the same things back with different people. And it makes me sick to think of trying. Maybe it's still too soon. I don't know. All I know is, my girlfriend and I, we hated the same people. We made made fun of retards together. I could fart in front of her, forbid her to do the same in front of me. We could watch each other sleep. Kiss each other with morning breath. Fuck each other with no condom on and without showering beforehand. I could make the odd slur and not worry about her branding me a racist or leaking a tape to the media.

I could talk to her about anything. And I can't imagine, not in a million years, doing that with someone else. And it feeling the same. Or even near the same. No.

If you read my giving-beer-to-the-homeless blog, you may remember James (my homeless friend) saying that if he could do it all over again he wouldn't give his love to nobody. That way they couldn't put a foot up his ass. I disagree. But then again he's black and homeless and I'm just a white guy who thinks way too much of himself. But still...

One of my coworkers is afraid that her burgeoning relationship is going to end in pain. She's thinking of pulling the plug before she gets in too deep. So I asked her this:

"Would you not get a puppy knowing that it would die someday?"

She said she'd get the puppy. So I told her okay then. Don't pull the plug. Because in essence, that's what relationships are: pets. They start out small and untrained and unbelievably happy, and then they grow and get bigger and wiser and older. They slow down. Stay in a lot. But the love is still there. And there's no need to prove that love because of everything that's come before it. The joy, the pain, the laughter. Times have been had, memories have been made, stories will be told. And you've grown as a person. You're better. Stronger.

And that's why it's so hard to say goodbye. To lay with it for the last time and hold onto it. To wish you could go back in time to when it was a puppy and make things that way forever. But you can't. And those tears flow and burn when you wrap it in a blanket and put it in the ground and shovel dirt on top of it. And you stare at that mound and you make sure it's perfect. You put flowers on it. You visit it every day. And you promise to remember and hold onto the pain.

But the pain eases.

The grave gets dirty. You visit less. The weather beats the mound into flat earth again. And as hard as you try to recall the pain, to make yourself cry, you can only squeeze out a couple of tears.

All you remember are the happy times.

Firsts

My first true love dumped me and I bought antibacterial hand soap for the first time. I never thought either of these would happen.

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.”