Road Rage

Do you know how lucky you are to be alive today?

I don't mean that in a "Look at what technology can do--we're getting jetpacks soon!" kind of way. More like, I narrowly avoided my own death again and it occured to me how common these little run-ins are becoming.

This morning I slipped in the shower--put my foot down and had that eternity of a half-second where I felt it slide out from under me. But I didn't fall. Again.

And there was the time last week where I dropped my soda can in the car and my car slid into the lane next to me...but no one was there. And this stuff happens all the time, to me and probably to you.

The vast majority of these little close calls are in the car, and no wonder. 48,000 Americans died in car/truck/bus accidents in 2002. Your odds of dying in a car accident that year were 1 in 5,953. Your odds of winning the Powerball lottery? 1 in 146,107,962. People are lining up to buy Powerball tickets.

Personally, I am a road rager of the first order. My odds of dying of an accident in my car are much lower than my odds of dying of a stroke in my car. The person unlucky enough to drive in front of me is subject to such violent invective that it is sometimes audible from outside my vehicle.

The reason for this intense anger is because of my calm, Zen outlook on life. I look at traffic as being a river, where there are currents that move faster than others, where those currents shift from time to time, and it is necessary to flow around non-moving objects or sweep them away. Anything that disturbs the inexorable movement of the river is working AGAINST NATURE ITSELF. This is why I get so upset.

However, there are little clues that I've discovered that can tell you who among the drivers out there are likely to be the worst sinners--the ones who are AFFRONTS TO GOD. I'd like to share them with you now, so that when you see them on the road, you can use the current to carry you far, far away.

--A Rhode Island License Plate. This automatically tells you you're dealing with an amateur, someone with little knowledge or care for the rules of the road and common decency. They'll run you off the road and not even notice until they pick your teeth out of their tire treads.

--Any anti-abortion bumper sticker. "Abortion Kills Children Dead" "It's Not a Fetus, It's a Baby" These people aren't anyone you want to get too close to outside of your car, either. Still, the sticker tells you a lot about who they are--likely fundamentalist Christian, believers in an afterlife, usually driving at about 20 miles an hour. If I thought there was a life in heaven after death, I wouldn't think twice about pushing the speed limit. Not these folks, apparently.

--Any New York Yankee paraphenalia. Their attitude toward the game translates directly to how their fans drive. They own the road--you're only on it to give them someone else to play with.

--Any SUV larger than the town you grew up in. These drivers, merely through the purchase of their vehicle, have already demonstrated what they think of you. Instead of "Suburban" or "Expedition," it should just say, "FUCK OFF AND DIE." You're part of the outside world, that strange and frightening place outside of the tinted windows that they can't control. It must be shut out, run over, and eventually destroyed. Forget about turn signals with these people.

--Support Our Troops Magnetic Ribbons. This is intended to be a sign of patriotism, but like all such demonstrations, the ribbon is usually about as far as it goes. In any case, the drivers of these cars are basically lecturing you to...support our troops. They won't say how. Demanding that the government withdraw from Iraq as soon as possible? Petitioning Congress for increased VA funding? Probably not.

I have to go now, but expect this list to get longer...

My Life (R)

Normally, when you talk about a TV show being a rerun, you're talking about the content. In my case, though, I'm living in one.

It has not been unusual for me to be hired onto a show that has former co-workers on staff. That's the nature of freelancing--jobs are generally short-term and acquired through employers who have worked with you before. This show, though, has no fewer than five people on it from the staff of a previous gig, plus a couple of different people from yet ANOTHER one.

Coincidentally, the show that I know most of these folks from happens to be one that really sent me off the rails for a while a few years ago--helping to create the perfect storm of crap that resulted (among other things) in a 10ft x 3ft jigsaw puzzle that now hangs in my apartment's entryway.

By good fortune, none of my current colleagues were responsible for any of that. They're among the best at what they do from that program and nice people to boot. It's no small amount of gratitude that I feel for having had the opportunity to work with them again. But it is weird.

People remind you of things. So do places, songs, and smells, but only people actually go out of their way to do it verbally.

"Hey, remember that guy we worked with who we pressured into eating someone else's fatty cyst? That was funny."

"Hey, remember that time you got arrested over the 4th of July weekend and hauled yourself into work an hour after getting bailed out? That was funny."

"Hey, remember how you've been saying for ten years that you don't want to work on shows like this anymore? That's SO funny."

It's enough to make you make you want to work with new people once in a while.

Clip Show

For the twelve years I've lived in Los Angeles, I've never gotten my hair cut at the same place twice. It's because I've had for all intents and purposes the exact same haircut since age 12 and so direct comparison between places is easy--the judgement swift and severe. One haircut, one look in the mirror, then BAM! The place is scorched earth.

Plus--remember that I'm grading on a curve here. I realize there's nothing these people can do about the sorry state of my face. I only judge on the hair and only in comparison to how it looked before. That's the problem.

It isn't that the places I've been trying have just been bad--the series of barbershops and salons shows a definite pattern of decline. I have the uneasy feeling that I arrived in LA with a decent haircut and things have been getting progressively worse since.

When it became clear a week ago that my hair was too long and that Los Angeles was 3000 miles away, it seemed like a opportunity to start with a clean slate. A new day, tonsorially speaking. My brother recommended a father-and-son barbershop near his house with an important caveat. Stay away from the son. He's a butcher.

Simple enough.

So the place is a tiny, two-chair clip joint. A third was cordoned off in back--maybe Dad was expecting two sons and only got one. Anyway, I sat down and looked for a newspaper and got smut. You know, Van Nuys Crude. Pornography.

This was obviously not the first time I had seen porn in a barbershop. It's common. Still, when my brother and I grew up, we went to a place run by a devout Italian Catholic who had a picture of the pope on the wall. His magazines tended toward Sports Illustrated and Catholic Digest. That's why, when I see Penthouse at the barber, it still throws me.

And there it was. A guy in the chair was flipping through it right as I walked in.

How did it evolve that the barbershop became the one acceptable public place to look at porn? I'd love to know this.

It's not like the porn is an accessory to the business's primary function. It doesn't enhance the haircutting experience. It isn't even a bite-the-bullet situation where you require distraction from an inherently painful procedure. You're getting your hair cut, for Christ's sake. Make conversation for a half an hour.

And--you're in a barber's chair looking at porn. You're not admiring the gentle aesthetics of the female form. It's porn. So...what are you going to do about it? Granted, you have a huge sheet draped over you, but still. You're not going anywhere. You're not doing anything. (Please, God...let you NOT be doing anything.)

My brother's theory is that the barbershop is the last guys-only bastion of American life and so that's where we have to keep the porn. I could argue that that is incorrect, but even if it were true it still comes back to the question of things-you-do-in-public vs things-you-do-in-private. Getting your hair cut--public thing. Looking at porn...not so much.

Bottom line: There's a place to get your hair cut and a place to enjoy your porn and never the two shall meet. I just will never get it.

In any case, there was also a Boston Herald on the shelf--the articles of which are probably less-researched and poorer-written than Penthouse's, but it had a puzzle. And the haircut turned out to be okay. Every hair on my head ended up about a half-inch long, so I'm ready for them to reinstitute the draft.

It could have been a lot worse. I could have gone to that awful place on Beverly, where they play horrible Russian music videos at full volume for every second you're there. But at least they have some porn to distract you.

So Sorry, Los Angeles

I'd love to post, but I'm currently neck deep in one of the most surreal experiences of what I'll laughably refer to as a career.

For now, I'll just leave you with two reasons I'm happy NOT to be in Los Angeles this week.

Reason one: My apartment there does not have A/C.

Reason two:





Presumably, "Mild Day" is facetious. I also suspect the word "Forecast" in this case is a euphemism for "Prophecy of Death by Fire."

Quick Question

Does anyone know if it's possible to catch tetanus without breaking the skin?

Production brought back a mess of rusty antique horseshoes, nails still in them, from Tombstone, Arizona. Not from a shop or anything, because that would cost money. These came out of a vacant lot inhabited by meth-mouthed transients.

They gave one to me as a souvenir. One of the cruddy, dull nails stuck my thumb without breaking the skin. Now my thumb is stiff, achy, and tingling near where the nail jabbed me.

Probably nothing to worry about, right?

hy·po·chon·dri·a
n.
1. The persistent conviction that one is or is likely to become ill, often involving symptoms when illness is neither present nor likely, and persisting despite reassurance and medical evidence to the contrary. Also called hypochondriasis.

2. Sound familiar, Matthew?

100th Post

This is the 100th post of Kathy I'm Lost... The vast majority of these have appeared since the grand re-opening in April. There have been well over 1200 hits since then, and I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your continued readership.

Blogging is a much more conusming amusement than I thought. Sure, it's lived up to all of my expectations as far as feeding my insecurities and vanities go. It's been fun most days, a chore in others. I'm sure that's probably how it is to read, too. Still, it's emotionally involving despite...

I once wrote that Kathy I'm Lost is the closest thing I have to a journal. That may be true, but "close to a journal" is not a journal. There's a very sound reason for this--when I started blogging, I told my friends the address where they could read it. I know all but a couple of you. All of you know who I am. While many blogs are anonymous, this one--for all intents and purposes--is not.

Even though I've written from no fewer than ten different cities and at times as late/early as 5 in the morning, in my best moods and some pretty foul ones, I have yet to succumb to the confessional impulse that blogging immediately inspires. I have not yet blogged drunk. I have not yet written anything that I would not want my mother to read about--again, she has the address.

Anyway, I expect to keep this nice, safely distant persona for a long while. For now, I'm off to have a drink. I'm keeping my car keys, but I'm giving my computer to my brother.

A Wednesday Note

Whenever a show I work on rolls into a town, I usually have to call ahead of time to case the joint. That means finding out who owns most of the property in town, whether there's an unofficial "mayor," who's the last guy in town you want to piss off. (This is the time for using my people skills, in case you're wondering who actually gets to see them.)

In every place, though, when you ask about finding someone who can just TALK about the town you invariably get one man's name. (It's always a man.) Not the mayor or a spokesman, he's the man at the VFW or the barbershop who grew up here and knows everybody. And he knew everybody's father and maybe their grandfather. He knows what used to be on the corner of Main and Elm. He's watched the jobs leave. He's seen the heyday and the bad days. He's not a historian of the town, but the history itself--and everyone there points to him.

Saco, Maine lost their Man last night. That's important to Saco and to his family, but it probably doesn't mean much to the rest of you. Why should it? Saco's not your town. Your town has their own Man.

How long does he have left?

We take it for granted that this stuff doesn't go away, that history persists as a force of nature. That when one man dies, another will take his place that will be able tell you everything that he knew. It's not true, though. History goes away.

Saco, a town founded in 1630, now has thousands of questions without answers. Someone will ask, "What was that place...?" or "Who was that guy...?" The answer will be on tip of the tongue of everybody in the room. It'll never come. There will be nobody to ask who will know.

We hope that somebody is working at this stuff, keeping it around. We hope someone is tending the light. The problem is that it isn't going to be me, and it probably won't be you, either.

These Men, though...they have sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, people who see them collect knowledge over a lifetime. Some may be inspired. They'll see something worthwhile in history, perhaps go on to be historians themselves one day--not of their towns, but cultures and movements and countries.

That would make Saco's loss your gain. Our gain. It is the most we could ever hope for.

Take This Job...

Is it just me, or does it seem to you like nobody picks up their phone anymore? I mention this because I am in day 7 of a frantic, desperate search for a segment on our show and nobody is actually picking up their phone when I call. Or calling back after I leave a message.

That never used to happen. When I'd say, "Hi, my name is Matthew XXXXX, and I work on the XXXXXX show on the XXXXX network," people were thrilled. They'd drop everything to help out the XXXXXX show, because they loved the XXXXXX show! It was only after they helped us that these folks realized what a pain in the ass we were.

Now, when I call for the NEW XXXXX show, people don't return the message. If I pester them enough to actually get them on the phone, they don't want to talk about being on the show. The realization that we're a pain in the ass seems pre-loaded into people these days.

I suppose that it could be that with the explosion of communication devices in the past ten years, people are tired of talking. They're tired of being accessible everywhere they go. They're tired of getting calls (and hearing other people get calls) in restaurants and movie theaters. They're tired of telemarketers. They just don't want to speak to anyone right now.

Or--and I need you to be with me here, folks--could it be that this is yet another unintended consequence of Paris Hilton's existence? I think so, and for that I credit Paris Hilton. That's right. I thank her. I thank Paris Hilton. I think that people see her all plastered all over their plasmas and it begins to sink in that maybe being on television isn't that much of an honor anymore. Although she's made my job much harder, in so doing she has hindered the progress of reality television. That enriches our culture, and for that I say, "Thank you, Paris. Now could you get your car off of my leg?"

Perhaps one day there will be an award named for her--an award not for excellence in the field of night vision, but for positive contribution to the arts through negative example.

An award called...the Parry!

No. Shit. That's awful. How about...The Hilty!

Crap. Paris Hilton, Hilton... Wait, I've got it! The Tony!

Whenever someone's public persona is so reprehensible and overwhelming that it shames the entire culture-at-large into positive action, it shall be rewarded. It will be known forever more as the Tony Award.

Here we go, people. It's a brave new world.

Reading On The Brain

Michael Kinsley is great.

I usually (but not always) agree with him politically. He's so smart about pointing out the hypocrisies of others that he sometimes comes off as arrogant or too-clever-by-half. Nevertheless, the guy's writing sings. His stuff was made for the op-ed format, too. Eight hundred words to make your point and get out, and he rarely comes up short.

Kinsley also has Parkinson's Disease. He's had it for years now, but only announced it in 2001 or so. It hasn't impacted his work--he still writes his syndicated column regularly, plus sideline stuff for Time and Slate (the e-magazine he founded and edited for years). He even took on the Editoral Page Editor job at the LA Times for a while, shuttling between Seattle and LA before the commute and the local media mob got to him.

It's not that Kinsley's work didn't change as a result of his disease. (One of the pleasures of his column has become seeing him regularly dissect the zealots opposed to stem cell research. Not surprisingly, it's a pet issue of his.) It's just that it hasn't totally been consumed by it.

Well, he just had brain surgery this week. Three days before, he wrote a column for Time about it. You should read it.

When I did, I couldn't help but think of my favorite columnist--and one of my favorite writers, period--Jimmy Breslin. About ten years ago, Breslin was diagnosed with an aneurysm in his brain. He lived through it, of course, and the book he produced from the experience is a terrific read.

So there you go. Two terrific reads from two terrific writers who have had their heads cut open. If that isn't perfect beach reading, I don't know what is.

Rock

So, today some melting glacier ice broke a huge chunk of rock off of the Eiger in the Swiss Alps. It caused a 15 minute avalanche of stone, but no one was hurt.

My favorite little factoid from the article is this:

A 100-foot-high rock formation on the Eiger known as the "Madonna" collapsed earlier Thursday.

A rock formation that was considered a unique enough feature of the Eiger to have been named...collapsed. Usually, you have to wait millions of years to see the planet do this kind of remodeling. The destruction of a 100 foot tall geological landmark? That took part of a Thursday.

I love when stuff like this happens. Not because it's fun to watch big stuff blow up or crash, but because it's a great paradox. The planet is always changing in ways we can't see--rocks are always breaking off somewhere or building up someplace else--but this still feels like a once in a lifetime moment.

It's like standing in the middle of twelve lanes of speeding traffic, when all of a sudden a bright red Model T Ford putters past you. Technically, it's just another car--another example of what you're surrounded by. But it's special anyway.

And it caused a huge cloud of dust hundreds of feet high. How cool is that?

LARF

Speaking of fun things to do in LA, this weekend is the next LARF. That's L.A.R.F--the Los Angeles Race Fantastique. It's basically a localized Amazing Race, but better because instead of watching supposedly loving couples scream at each other, you get to do the screaming.

LARF was started by a couple of guys who you'll swear you recognize. They invited all of their friends to play--the whole thing is like a "That Guy" convention. (You know...I've seen that guy before, and that guy, etc.) Over sixty people played, so it is a true test of...nothing in particular.

Every Race has a theme--the one we did last year was "Memento," while this week's is "The DaVinci Code." It also has a start time. That's more or less all you need to know. Teams of four sprint from clue to clue (and sometimes from one end of town to the other) as quickly and quietly as possible--don't want to give anything away to the other teams.

The first half of the last race featured a lot of running from one nearby location to the other, then shifted into more of an auto chase (safety first, of course).

Our team came in third for "LARFmento". We should have come in second, but one clue at the Sherman Oaks Castle required us to find an internet station with a printer and we took too long finding one. Also, we got lost on the way to Franklin Canyon. (We also ran all over Santa Monica, Venice, Studio City, and Van Nuys. It's an all day thing.) Damn you, Thomas Guide with one missing page...

As for the prizes? Well, there are none. Not really. Third place gets you a little medal that you'll take an altogether inappropriate amount of pride in, second place gets you a different medal and half off the next LARF, and the winner? The winner gets a T-shirt. And a medal. And they get to LARF for free next time. It's not about monetary incentives--LARF hasn't gone all MLS on us yet. It's about the love of competition.

Want to join? One key is that you need at least one great runner, one great puzzler, one great wheel man, and one person who does all three pretty well. I was not the runner for our team. It also helps to have a friend who isn't doing anything on a Saturday and can stay close to an internet connection.

The other important thing is to want to win. Badly. But have fun. But want to crush the other teams. But take time to laugh. And kill.

My former teammate J had to put together a new squad for this one (I'm in RI and the other two had like a Fleetwood Mac breakup thing, so they're out), but the new guys are ruthless, relentless, and they have the most dangerous driver on the LA freeways. I have no doubt that they'll win. Or die in a flaming wreck on the 405. But hopefully win.

It's too late for YOU to run in this weekend's LARF, but sign up for their mailing list at this website and maybe when I get back, I'll be competing against you. And you're going down...

Not a Real Post, But...

...all of you Angelenos should know.

Surfing music pioneer Dick Dale plays for free TONIGHT on Santa Monica Pier 7:30 to 9:30 pm.

That's pretty cool--talk about the right place for the right act. If I were there, I'd go. Actually, I'd probably talk about how I wanted to go and was planning to go, but in the end I'd be at home doing crossword puzzles and trying to think of something to blog about.

You should go.

The Problem With Talking To The Dead

The dead have been getting a lot of attention the past few years. You can't turn on your TV or go into a bookstore without seeing some story involving someone who sees dead people or talks to dead people. It's even brought the zombie movie back--there've been, what, 80 of those in the past couple of years?

Everything I've read about it says this is a sign of people looking for comfort in a post-9/11 world. We're anxious about death, looking for some security that there will be a light for us to go towards. Our stories reflect that. Or, conversely, they reflect that the dead will return to eat the brains of the living for their sins. Who knows?

See, the fictional stuff about the dead talking to us is just innocent escapism and if it makes some folks feel better, I suppose that's just swell. The reality stuff is where we cross a line.

Remember John Edward? He claimed (and still claims) to speak to the dead for private clients--and later, on television. This is clearly bullshit. People have been claiming this for thousands of years, all using more or less the same techniques. This guy set himself up as some kind of paranormal therapist, though.

He would talk to your dead mother about the stepfather who molested you and tell you that she is SO sorry she didn't do anything about it. Or assure you that Grandma wants you to know that everything is so peaceful now and it was the right decision to pull the plug. People left his stage staggering, weeping.

And I saw this occasionally--it ran on two stations multiple times a day. All I could think is, "If there does turn out to be an afterlife, John Edward is going to hell. And not regular hell, either. Hitler hell." These were desperate people, desperate for solace and closure and all the other stuff that takes years to achieve through hard work and life experience. And he was saying--POOF!--you're okay. Sure, everyone left the stage crying, "Thank you, thank you." Two weeks later, when they're still having the nightmares, John Edward was not going to be there to help.

(And that's true, really, with all reality television. The cameras are there to film the "reveal," the big moment where the "real person" takes off the bandages or gets the dream house. And viewers are supposed to think, "Wow, this show really affected this person's life."

But life goes on, and viewers don't see how the "real people" were actually affected. How the experience of being on TV can spackle over the cracks in a person's life for a while, but never get rid of them. How it can sometimes make them worse. And by then, we're on to the next show anyway.)

I work on one of these shows now. Not a medium show and not one nearly that ethically bankrupt. But without mentioning the name, I will say that there's a lot of discussion about ghosts and when you're talking ghosts, you're talking dead people.

Most of the time, when the people I talk to say they're being haunted, it's by an unnamed spirit. Either their house is on an ancient burial ground or six people were pole-axed there in the eighteenth century but no one knows who they were. It's just...ghosts. (Once in a while, someone will name the spirit that's harassing them. You know, like a pet. Like the windchimes will suddenly go crazy for no reason and they just tell the neighbors, "Oh, don't mind that. That's just Penny.") My point is, we're dealing mostly with dead people in the abstract--a concept, not a name.

Once in a while, though...

We just ran into a "case" where in the course of the "investigation" a female "ghost" was "found." And only one woman was known to have died on the site. And it was a violent death. And it less than 20 years ago. And we know her name. We even have her picture.

This woman still has a family out there. I know this. I checked. Their house is probably still covered with pictures of their daughter--their daughter who never even got to her 30's. They were certainly proud of her. I'm not going to tell you why, but they're right to be proud. They probably still have her trophies. Maybe they still have her room just the way it was when she left home.

And maybe they watch our network. And if they turn on the TV and hear her name or see her picture...then reality TV has just become too real. It's too much to ask of anyone, to have to relive that horror for the cheap entertainment of others. It's not fair to them and it would be cruel of us. It would make us tourists in their suffering.

No decision has been made yet. I'll let you know if I'm going to get the cell next to John Edward.

The Rte. 2 Restaurant Tour - Stop #2

Applebee's

Before I begin talking about Applebee's, there's a minor correction I need to make to the previous tour stop review. The name of the restaurant is NOT "Ruby Tuesday's," but rather "Ruby Tuesday." No possessive. It wasn't named after an owner or an owner's valued relative. No one named Ruby Tuesday ever started a restaurant that, through sheer popularity, bloomed into a chain with hundreds of locations. Instead, some Rolling Stones fans from the University of Tennessee were looking for an investment opportunity. That's it. So, please disregard the possessive of Ruby Tuesday--it doesn't belong to Ruby. It belongs to the stockholders (NYSE: RI).

Now, to Applebee's. The location that I went to is located in the parking lot of a shopping center with a mega-grocery and a store that sells Christmas goods year round. The restaurant is an island in the asphalt, a respite from the workaday cares of buying fresh food and maybe a Dancing Santa statue.

Compared to Ruby Tuesday, it's actually a bit more subdued. It feels like more of sports bar--most of the memorabilia on the walls is sports-related, though they couldn't resist the urge to throw a random concert poster or waterski up there next to it. By far the oddest decorations in the place were on the back wall near the wait station. Taking up the entire space, a good 10'X10' section of wall, was a shrine...to James Woods.


I wasn't in a position to get a good picture of this, and I may regret that for the rest of my life, but I swear to you that I am not kidding about this. There are at least ten photo stills from his movies, spanning 20 years. His entire working life displayed on the back wall of a chain restaurant.

James Woods grew up here, it turns out. I don't think that Applebee's was his hangout as a kid, though. In fact, I'd bet good money that when James Woods was rolling through here as a creepy, intense teenager, Rte. 2 didn't have a single national chain restaurant. Or anything else but trees, for that matter.

I guess, though, that someone noticed that there was a dearth of monuments to their town's favorite son. They decided that there needed to be a place to let the world know--James Woods lived here thirty-five years ago. And not his high school--it's always a high school. No, there's a better place. A place where the community gets together to relax after buying their year's supply of tinsel. A place where people gather over a tall beer and a basket of deep fried potato skins with chives and bacon bits on them... Applebee's.

Anyway, I got a seat in a booth near the bar to catch the last four innings of the Sox/Devil Rays game (and don't think I don't get a little thrill every time I realize there's a Major League baseball team called the Devil Rays). The menu is another picture book, and though Applebee's doesn't attach a quality to every category of food, they are sure to let you know that the steaks are Sizzlin'!

The illustrations were even more helpful than Ruby Tuesday's. They're actually annotated, identifying the different layers of a sandwich so that in case I've never seen one before, I won't have any problem remembering that the meat goes BETWEEN the slices of bread.

I ordered the "Roasted Garlic Chicken with Asiago Drizzle." The picture didn't have any arrows on it, but I did take note of the distinctive grill marks across the chicken. Every national chain restaurant must think we as customers insist on grill marks that look like they were painted on using a straight edge. They're perfect in every way, uniform in width and intensity. You would think that this miracle grill they're using cooks evenly at all points and that the chicken breasts they're serving fall onto the grill without a single gap.

It also comes with smashed potatoes. I like smashed potatoes.


Like Ruby Tuesday, the food at Applebee's came out from the kitchen in less time than it takes for me to open a bag of Doritos. While this was disturbing, I was drinking enough at this point to go with the flow.

It wasn't bad. There was little doubt that everything had been pre-prepared to such a degree that Ray Kroc himself might be gazing from hell and taking notes. Still, the asiago drizzle was tangy and it did come with smashed potatoes. I like smashed potatoes.

Anyway, David Ortiz hit a grand slam in the ninth to put the game away. I had a case of beer in my trunk that I was planning to put to immediate use when I got home. Applebee's was certainly better than Ruby Tuesday in terms of the food. Life was okay.

Next stop: Who The Hell Knows? Probably Chili's...

This Post Is Everything That Is Wrong With Blogs

I have a friend, we'll call her H, who told me once that she hates blogs because they invariably become navel-gazing exercises, some "here's what I did with my day" crap that nobody else cares about. I agreed whole-heartedly and then told her about this new blog I was starting.

This one's for H.

Sorry there hasn't been regular posting here in a while. Things have been busy--and then on top of that, there's all the laundry.

Regular readers might remember that I refer to my corporate housing apartment as The Waiting Room, because of the Not-Office furniture and the sterile off-white...everything. Once in a while, though, you have to give the doctor his due. In a small closet right off of the kitchenette is a stackable washer/dryer and it has changed my life.

In Los Angeles, I go to a laundromat about a mile away from my apartment. At $1.25 to wash and .25 per 10 minutes in the dryer, it's not the worst deal in town--I know of a place nearby which is only a buck a wash, but it's a lot smaller and I'd rather not fight over the dryers. The bulk of the clientele at my place appears to be divided into two main groups--young people with scripts to read and the homeless.

Doing laundry is just enough of a hassle that I won't do it every week, which means I won't do it every two weeks, either. (My wardrobe has evolved to fit this laundry schedule--if I find a shirt I really like, then I'll buy two so that I can wear it at least twice in a laundry cycle.) It's sort of like skiing. I enjoy the actual activity, but it's the getting up early and schlepping all that crap to the mountain that I'm procrastinating. Except instead of size 15 ski boots and 210 Rossignols, it's eight loads of dirty clothes and an extra-large bottle of Tide with Bleach Alternative.

This turns laundry day into an event. First step, I have to decide that this is the day that I will finally do my laundry--this is actually the hardest part of the whole process. The final determination is usually made by the realization that there are only three clean socks left in the bag, that two of them have holes, and none of them match.

Once I'm absolutely certain that today is in fact laundry day, I have to decide which three-hour block of time will actually be dedicated to the laundry. Usually, that's the 6-9pm slot. Next, I drag all the laundry onto the bed and do the whites/colors sort, finding the five articles of clothing which could go either way. (They concern me even though everything I own has been washed so many times that the only color they still have left to bleed is Blue...ish.) Once it's all in the three laundry bags, the schlepping begins.

Each bag down the stairs, out the door, down the street to the garage, open the trunk, dump the bag, close the trunk, back upstairs, repeat three times. Drive to the laundromat. Wait for a parking space. Get into shouting match with Russian woman in Range Rover re: parking space. Wait for another parking space. Park. Shlep all the crap inside.

This is the traditional moment where I remember that I don't have any cash on me, so I have to go to the Carbolite place next door for their ATM. And once I have the cash, I don't want to be stuck with getting 20 bucks worth of quarters, so I need change. But the Carbolite place won't give change because they're next door to a laundromat. So I have to buy a soda for a buck. Every...single...time.

Now that I'm back in the laundromat with the correct amount of change, odds are 8 out of 10 that I'll next discover there's not enough Tide with Bleach Alternative in the bottle to wash all the clothes. That means .50 for the powdered Cheer! in a box that will be used on the towels.

Keep in mind, all of this crap has happened already and until now not a single drop of water has actually hit my laundry. The smart thing to do would be stagger the timing of the washing machines so that there's time to put one load in a dryer before the next machine goes off. I throw all eight loads in and walk down the line plugging in quarters like it's a race.

Twenty minutes for intermission.

Bing! The lights go out on the machines, one by one like a little blackout. It's right about this point that I see how I've forgotten to bring hangers again. No problem. On the other side of the laundromat is a dry cleaner who knows just by looking at me that I Forgot The Hangers Again, but he gives them to me anyway--despite the fact that I only own two pieces of clothing requiring dry cleaning. He's a saint.

Now it's a dance, moving from washer to dryer with a metal cart with enough jagged edges to start a tetanus colony. The direction the wheels point in have no relation whatsoever to the direction the cart is moving in. The cart and I bump into three different people reading scripts, who will in turn all bump into me when their washers are done.

The dryers heat up to roughly a billion degress in three seconds. They leave nothing to fold but ashes. Still, I stick in a few extra quarters to make sure everything is charred black because if I have to go through this routine, it's not going to be so I have soggy T-shirts at the end of it.

As the laundry comes out of the dryer, it's a quick toss to the table, then fold, fold, stack. Toss, fold, fold, stack. Toss, fold, fold, stack. Tedium sets in. (Feel it now? Feel the tedium? Thought so.) Finally, at long last, everything is finished.

Back to the car, bags first into the trunk. Then the denim, left damp to prevent shrinkage, in the front seat. And last, the hanging shirts draped on top of the denim, making sure to drag at least one sleeve through the dust on the car door--preferably a white one.

Drive home. Trunk, bag, stairs, repeat. And then...when it's all upstairs, and the car is locked and everything is in its place...you feel it. It's what the Buddhists call "paramita"--perfection. A sense of accomplishment so complete, you don't need to do anything else for WEEKS.

Total. Victory.

But in the Waiting Room, the machine is right here. You have four days worth of dirty clothes, you wash them. I brought almost every piece of clothing I own and have worn maybe a fourth of it.

The great part of it is that after 12 years of laundromat living, I am SO conditioned to have that sense of infinite light after finishing laundry...that I still get it EVEN WITH THE MACHINE RIGHT IN THE APARTMENT!!

Four shirts and a pair of jeans? YES!!!!!!

This is the best thing ever.

Superman Returns and Sucks a Lot

Living in Los Angeles, you complain about movies at your own risk. There's a technique to learn--if you see something you really didn't like, when the lights come up, you wait until you have some relative privacy and then quietly say what you have to say. Trash a movie in public, and someone who worked on it (or a friend of someone who worked on it) could be there.

There's another important reason not to be seen in Los Angeles bitching about bad films. LA is full of people who want to make movies--to write them, direct them, produce them. Everyone thinks they should be up there. If you're caught giving a two-and-a-half hour crapfest what it deserves, you ineveitably get the reply:

"Well, what have YOU done?"

The implication from the questioner is that this is what he/she DOES, pal. Or wants to do. Unless you're WAY higher on the Hollywood food chain, you have no credit to draw from in this discussion. It's a way of putting you down quickly, dismissing your opinion before you even make an argument.

Well, I'm nothing to nobody in Los Angeles. I know no one important and have no pull anywhere. I am the lowest form of human life, a freelance reality television stooge.

I have got to tell you, "Superman Returns" is a lousy movie.

Now, there are going to be plot points discussed here that, if you haven't seen the movie, will be unfamiliar to you. Don't worry, though. These spoilers will not ruin the movie for you. What WILL ruin the movie for you are the actors and the script.

First, the actors. There is not a single casting choice that was made that seems better than those in the 1979 movie. Every character seemed better defined and better acted in that version.

The guy playing Superman is doing a dead-ringer Christopher Reeve impression. If this were a radio show and not a movie, you'd swear at times that Reeve was playing the part. This is not in and of itself a bad thing, and he's actually pretty natural. You get the sense that if he were in, you know, a Superman movie...he'd be a good choice.

Superman's always kind of been a blank slate. Even his villains point this out--he's such a boy scout, there's not much to do with him. The great part about Superman is his supporting cast, and here they fail miserably.

Kevin Spacey has made an outstanding living playing incredibly dark characters with amazing comic timing (See: Seven, American Beauty, The Usual Suspects). Lex Luthor should be the role he was born to play. Instead, he seems to think he's in a mid-70s Bond flick. Gene Hackman was evil, arrogant, and hilarious. This guy's an angry bore.

Frank Langella sleepwalks as Perry White--I swear to God, he gives his performance with his eyes half shut. He's slurring his words. It's the Chief on percoset.

I liked Eva Marie Saint as Mrs. Kent. She was terrific with both her lines. But, when you compare her to Glenn Ford as Pa Kent in 1979, she still comes out behind.

The worst of it, though, comes from Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane. Her problem is simple--she's not Lois Lane. In this movie, Lois Lane is shown solely as a weepy mess. That just shows a total disregard for every single portrayal of the character since the 1950s. There's not a single reason for Superman to give a shit about this woman except that her name happens to be Lois Lane.

These bad performances, though, cannot be blamed only on the actors. They were probably told that they'd be in a Superman movie. They were misinformed.

Of the TWO AND A HALF HOUR running time, less than an hour is devoted to Lex Luthor's scheme and Superman stopping him. The action. You know, the stuff you'd want to see. Instead, we all get a chick-lit novel starring Lois Lane.

The entire focus of the movie is Lois Lane and her reaction to Superman Returning from wherever he was for five years. And now she's with someone else, someone who is Not Superman. And she has a kid. Who's five years old. Well, she's in agony and she wants to believe that she doesn't need Superman so she's writing articles saying NOBODY needs him and she doesn't want anything more to do with Superman because she's NOT in love with him, damn it, she's NOT. (Anyone else bored to shit with this? It goes on for TWO AND A HALF HOURS.)

This is not Lois Lane. Not the character we know from the last 50+ years. Lois Lane wouldn't act like this. However, it seems minor compared to how badly they've fucked her up with the Mommy act.

Giving her a kid (Surprise! It's Superman's!) is a mistake that cannot be underestimated. Put simply, Superman can't have a kid. There is literally not a single thing about the Superman story or his relationship with Lois that is improved by giving them a child. In fact, it makes everything a lot less interesting.

Plus, it makes Superman an asshole--and I'm not even going into how the new love-'em-and-leave-'em Supes factors into this. No, toss them a kid and there are two options. I'll give them to you along with ACTUAL STORY POINTS:

1) Superman doesn't know he has a kid with Lois Lane. When he returns and discovers her living with a guy and with a child who assumes the guy is his Dad, Superman seduces Lois on the roof of the Daily Planet--essentially saying, "This guy can't compare to me. I'm Superman." He's just reminding her of his superiority, knowing she'll leave the father of her child. In this option, Superman is an asshole.

or

2) Superman realizes the kid is his. Still, Lois is living with this guy and a child who has grown up thinking of the guy as Dad. But he's a Super-kid. So Superman decides instead to "check up on the kid," and flirt with Lois, knowing that she's going to leave the guy eventually--breaking up the family and separating father and son. In this option, Superman is an asshole.

Giving Lois a kid also performs the counter-productive function of making her boring. It takes away all her edge. Now she's not fearless, brassy reporter Lois. She's crying-Mom-worrying-about-her-son Lois.

And here's the worst part of the whole kid thing: we're stuck with him. He can't go anywhere. For a generation, whenever there's a Superman movie, there's going to have to be this kid. It took 15+ years to reboot the franchise last time. That means because three guys (Bryan Singer and two credited screenwriters) were arrogant enough to believe they could improve on Superman's basic ingredients, you will never have the chance to see a good Superman movie until at least 2030.

A few other thoughts:

--The movie appears to have been made for women. It's basically the quasi-Lois's story and any story element that might make it interesting to guys is always subjugated to hers. If you're a guy, you just want to scream at the screen, "For Christ's sake, HIT SOMEBODY!!" Like I said, chick lit.

--Speaking of Christ, I get that Superman has always had Messianic elements in his story, but Jesus... Enough was enough.

--If you had told me that they were going to make a new Superman movie that would be a direct homage to the Donner film, ripping off the production design, the music, the titles, and bringing Marlon Brando back from the dead--plus having 200 million bucks worth of effects--I'd have thought it was going to be the best thing out this year. So, so disappointing...

--If you are going to make a 200 million dollar Superman movie, you should make damned sure that the best thing in it isn't a recycled piece of 25 year old music.

Contrary to how it must sound after the last few hundred words, I'm not one of those comic purists who think any deviation from some 4-color gospel is an unforgiveable sin. However, Superman is something that--even if you're only familiar with the Richard Donner movie--we can agree has definite boundaries. There are things it needs and things it can't have.

This movie fails on every non-visual level. It looks great, but it's totally empty. I'm sorry I rewarded the people who made it by going to see it. Don't you make the same mistake I did.

(Oh, and a final reason to hate it: It's a Superman movie made almost entirely in Australia--a wonderful place, but one which is taking jobs away from people I know. But I guess that solves one problem--you can tell everyone in LA how much you hate it and not worry about accidentally slagging it to a crew member. They're all in Sydney.)

No Shit. Really?

Al-Zarqawi's Death Fails to Stop Bloodshed.

The truly amazing thing about stories like this is the surprise with which they are reported. Like any deviation of reality from the Bush Admistration line is reality's problem and not the other way around.

Wow, there's still an armed, organized resistance without Al-Zarqawi? Nobody could have seen that coming. Nobody, that is, except all the people who have been correctly predicting the disastrous outcome of this war since day one--none of whom are actually in charge of prosecuting it.

It's time to start reporting bad news in Iraq as the rule and not the exception. It's time to investigate the good news for Administration fingerprints. It's time to treat this war as the decided issue that it is--decided in the polls, decided in the cities of Iraq, decided in the graveyards and hospitals of America.

It's time to leave.