The Hipsters Are Coming!

There are a lot of things wrong with this country. Domino’s Oreo Pizza (a.k.a. diabetes in a box) comes to mind, along with the 101 highway in Los Angeles, which was recently closed down because a house got trapped under an overpass. Seriously, a fucking house. But I feel it’s my duty as a reporter to alert my readers to the latest plague sweeping the nation, hipsters. Those of you in San Francisco know exactly what I’m talking about, but the rest of the country needs to be adequately prepared for the throngs of skinny white kids that will soon be bombarding their streets, leaving a trail of ironic destruction in their wake. I know you’re probably filled with fear right now but don’t worry, I’m here to answer all your questions.

What are hipsters?
Hipsters are a relatively new phenomenon, only gaining serious traction in the last five years or so. Mostly white, mostly middle class, hipsters have dedicated their lives to invading and subsequently ruining every respectably cool neighborhood, restaurant, and concert you’ve ever been to.

What are hipsters about?
Hipsters operate under the premise that they’re cooler, nay hipper, than you. Whoever you are. These are kids who for the most part grew up in middle class neighborhoods but are determined not to be associated with the privileges they’ve been given. They attempt to distance themselves from their decidedly uncool suburban past by adopting certain elements of lower class culture, while simultaneously maintaining their superiority over people who are actually lower class. Basically they want to have the “authenticity” of poor people without any of the problems, like not being able to use your lawyer dad’s credit card to buy shoes.

How can I recognize a hipster?
Just look for anything that smacks of irony. The most ready example is the trucker hat. Hipsters wore these mesh chapeaus as a nod to perhaps the least hip profession in the country, truckers. Trucker hats were about as uncool as you could get, therefore hipsters thought they were incredibly cool. Then trucker hats become widely popular, meaning hipsters could no longer wear because people who pretend to own John Deere tractors are lame, as opposed to when hipsters first did it as an ironic statement. Confused? You’re not the only one. Let’s keep going. What’s the official beer of the working class? It’s undoubtedly Pabst Blue Ribbon, so hipsters drink it by the gallon, the idea being they can’t afford any “fancier” beers, though they’ve conveniently overlooked the fact the bar they’re in is next to a sushi restaurant and not a Midwest steel factory. And they’re all incredibly skinny. Poor people are the most obese population in America largely because the only nutrition they have access too is fast food. But fat people aren’t particularly cool, so hipsters go to their local Whole Foods, buy organic seaweed, and watch the pounds melt off. If you’ve ever spent $200 on a pair of white jeans designed to look like you bought them at a thrift store, you’re a hipster.

Why should I hate them?
God there are so many reasons. The detached air of superiority drives me insane, I just have a hard time being called a sell-out by someone who’s parents spent $10,000 a year to place them in a private school for kindergarten. But it’s mostly the attempt to live in this netherworld between middle class privilege and lower class hardship. Sorry, you just don’t get to have it both ways. Either use your parents’ credit card and admit your mom drove you to soccer practice in a Dodge Grand Caravan , or actually work for a living and realize being poor sucks. You’ve got to pick one and go with it like the rest of us. Fair warning to any hipsters out there; I’m about ready to snap. If one more of you aviator glasses-wearing motherfuckers asks me for spare change I’m going rip that Virginia is for Lovers t-shirt off your back and strangle you with it.

I don’t care where you live, hipsters are coming for you. I’ve seen them walking around suburban malls; because only cool people go to the mall, which would make people at malls actually uncool, which would in turn make a hipster (who makes the uncool cool through irony) at the mall cool. It’s so mind boggling ridiculous I can’t handle it. So there, you’ve been warned. I’m highly encouraging everyone to band together and fight this threat. Start neighborhood watch groups, send in pictures of hipsters around your neighborhood so we can identify them, do whatever you have to do. Together we can stop hipsterism from spreading.

Still not sure what a hipster is? Watch this video.

Nothing Realy Matters

The world’s spinning so fast I’m nauseous. Today General Petraeus testified to Congress about the situation in Iraq (downgraded from apocalyptic to atrocious), rebels bombed gas lines throughout Mexico, and exiled Pakistani prime-minister Nawaz Sharif was arrested and deported to Saudi Arabia. Big freakin deal, Britney Spears made her public performance return last night. Thinking about the world’s problems make me depressed, the type of depression that only eating frosting straight out the container can cure. So before I get so fat I have to scratch my back with a stick, let’s just focus on all stories out there that don’t really matter. They’re the best kind anyway, beginning with…

The aforementioned Ms. Spears performed last night at the MTV awards and I’m still busy scrubbing my retinas with a toothbrush to try to erase the image. I hoped for the best while preparing for the worst, but sweet jesus on a bicycle that was awful. She looked like a 40 year old stripper in some nightclub in Nebraska; squeezed into a regrettably scandalous outfit and only occasionally remembering she was supposed to look like she was enjoying herself. She was clearly just waiting until it was over so she could go smoke a pack of Newports and down a couple Coors Lights. Fame has chewed her up and spit her out, no one looks good covered in fame-y saliva.

President/dictator/ Hugo Chavez is pushing legislation through the Venezuelan legislature that would make crazy names illegal. The law lists 100 names that parents will no longer be able to name their children, including Hengelberth, Maolenin, Kerbert Krishnamerk, Githanjaly, Yornaichel, and Nixon. Venezuela has an international reputation as the world’s insane name capital and it would be a real shame to see them lose their status. Plus, it seems like a completely unenforceable law, there are simply too many name possibilities to ever eradicate the problem. Sure you can outlaw Hengelberth, but what’s to stop me from naming my son Holmes Air Purifier Slavik? Actually, that’s not only the first thing I saw when I looked around the room, but actually kind of a cool name. I wouldn’t name my first born child that, but if I convert to fundamental Mormonism and have somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 kids, number 101 is gonna be named Holmes Air Purifier Slavik. That’s a promise.

Kanye West and 50 Cent both have albums coming out tomorrow and the kinda-coincidence has been turned into a marketing/media frenzy. The cover of Rolling Stone has them face-to-face like rival boxers. Who’s going to sell more albums? Who’s the biggest name in hip-hop? Who fucking cares, and why does this kind of thing only happen in hip-hop? If Maroon 5 and Nickelback had albums coming out on the same day they’d probably send each other good luck cards and a cheese platter. It’s a sign of how desperate artists and labels have become in the face of lagging sales that they have to resort to this kind of chicanery. For the record lesbian folk heroine Ani DiFranco has an album coming out on the same day too. Hear that 50? Ani’s coming for you homeboy. Oh, it’s on.

Another hilarious moment from the MTV Awards: Justin Timberlake tells MTV to stop running reality show crap and get back to showing music videos while the cast of The Hills stands mere feet away. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about let me think of an appropriate analogy. Ok, it would be like a doctor telling an obese man that if he’s doesn’t stop eating fried chicken he’s going to die, only the man is Colonel Sanders. Now replace the doctor with Justin Timberlake, fried chicken with reality shows, and Colonel Sanders with a collection of rich girls from Hollywood that have to wear flip-flops because they get confused by shoelaces. Got it?

Are you sick of talking about Sen. Craig’s arrest for soliciting gay sex in an airport bathroom? I’m not. So far his excuses have been painfully lame, it would appear the man just likes him some airport lovin. If I was doing spin control here’s some excuses I would have written up: Craig is a former Broadway tap dancer who was merely practicing his routine, not tapping out a code asking an undercover cop to take off his pants. Actually, Broadway tap dancer sounds pretty gay too. What if he has a very rhythmic form of Tourettes? Or he was simply out of toilet paper and trying to see if the guy in the next stall had any. Bingo, that’s it. It’s not very dignified, but neither is getting arrested in an airport bathroom. I really feel like “ran out of toilet paper” is the way to go. Someone get Craig on the phone, I think I just found my calling.

San Francisco City Supervisor Ed Jew is currently being investigated for lying about his residency. It turns out he doesn’t live in San Francisco at all, a federal crime for someone who filed candidacy papers attesting otherwise. That’s not funny. What is humorous is the media coverage. It’s newspaper protocol to only refer to a person by their last name, almost never including their first. So the headline would be “Bush says troops will stay in Iraq until Baghdad is as safe as Detroit” not “George Bush says…” Of course it’s a whole different ballgame is your last name happens to be Jew. The San Francisco Chronicle’s editors are understandably uneasy about headlines like “Jew wanted for questioning” and so have decided to only refer to him as Ed Jew. Plus last night a homeless mayoral candidate named Grasshopper Kaplan was arrested for trespassing at Ed Jew’s home, meaning that for the first time in history we could have legitimately read the headline, “Grasshopper arrested for stalking Jew.” Which is all just further proof that San Francisco is indeed the craziest city in America. God I love that place.

What was the point of today’s article? I don’t really know. How’s this: no matter how screwed up your life is, you’ll still look like Mr. Rogers compared to Britney Spears. I should have that embroidered on a pillow. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a tub of frosting waiting for me.

Senor Spam and the Getty Children

I have met a lot of obscenely wealthy people in my lifetime, essentially because of nothing more than an extended series of coincidences. Every time I’m in some new palatial estate I always look for signs of unhappiness and tragedy. After all, the only thing keeping me from hating these people is the belief that their money has left them empty shells of humans; that my meager existence has some happiness that is walled off to the rich. Well, rejoice my paycheck-to-paycheck brethren, I come offering substantial proof that money is not the key to happiness. In fact, it’s more likely than not to leave you and your children gnarled wastelands of humanity…

The Gettys are one of the most prominent families in San Francisco, Mayor Newsom owes no small part of his success to their money and influence. The young and beautiful jewels of the family are Billy and Vanessa Getty. The razor-sharp cheekboned couple has two young boys but have clearly turned over the bulk of the parenting responsibilities to an English nanny. I happened to be in the kitchen when Vanessa arrived home to spend some quality time with the boys:
Vanessa: “Hello my darlings, come here.”
(The two-year-old waddles over to her, she picks him up. The four-year old is much more interested in playing with his truck out on the back porch. He looks up at her and then continues playing.)
Vanessa: “I said come here, now.”
(The four-year-old is indifferent, continues to play).
Vanessa: “Fine then, Mommy hates you. I’m going to go upstairs and get dressed.”
(He spins around startled and then starts towards his mother, who is already well on her way upstairs. Begins to cry.)
There is absolutely no way that kid is going to have a serious cocaine problem by the time he’s 15. I wish there was a way to gamble on these things, this kid and Nicole Richie’s baby are stone-cold locks to become extraordinarily messed up adults. This is valuable insider information people.

On the other side of mean is crazy, also known in more kind circles as eccentric. Tom Hormel owns an unbelievably large estate in Malibu, the kind of place that takes your breath away, until you realize you’re looking at the guest house. Oh, I’m sorry, let me back up. Who is Tom Hormel? Tom is the heir to the Hormel fortune, as in Hormel Foods, the meatpacking giant. I shook the hand of the man who owns Spam, and that’s a pleasure I will take to my death. I feel a little bad about mentioning him here because he’s a genuinely kind man, but I have to. You see, he’s a strict raw food vegetarian, he won’t allow meat to even enter the property. Let that sink in for a moment, the irony’s almost overpowering. You have to believe he knows exactly what goes into those tins of processed meat and it can’t be pretty. If you ever find yourself with Tom be prepared to drink enormous of his special beet/ginger/macrobiotic enzymes juice. Consider yourself warned.

On a more general note: Two recent newspaper articles have left me rejoicing. The first is about a recent rash of robberies in Bel Air. For those of you who’s only exposure to Bel Air is Fresh Prince re-runs, the real place is enormous, once you turn off Sunset Ave. and go through its exclusive gates it can take as many as twenty or thirty minutes to wind through it’s shaded streets to a house. As it turns out (much to my delight) Bel Air denizens have left themselves only more vulnerable to robberies. Their homes are surrounded by high walls and heavy foliage, a.k.a. perfect cover for robbers, no one can see into the property to notice someone breaking a window. Even if their burglary alarms go off it can take half-an-hour for the police to arrive, and since pool boys and gardeners are constantly coming and going no one thinks twice about a white van parked outside. HA! Suck on that rich people! Turns out being part of a community and regularly interacting with people actually makes you safer, and that’s why I choose to live in an apartment building (let me believe what I want to).
Also, on a parenting note, a new study has concluded that not only do Baby Einstein videos not increase a child’s intelligence, they make them stupider! Children who haven’t watched the videos have almost twice the vocabulary as those who did regularly. It turns out that talking to your kids and interacting with them is more beneficial than sitting them in front of the tv. In other shocking news the key to losing weight is consuming less calories while expending more. Who could have possible known? Oh, that’s right, I did. And not all the blame goes on parents, Baby Fuckin Einstein Inc. (or whatever they’re called) has been preying on parental fears by selling them a product that does the opposite of what they claim. People should be rioting, and I hope they do. Burn Baby burn!

Let me be clear, I need more financial assets. But the key seems to be knowing when to stop. You want money, but not “I only drink ginger/beet juice” money.” You want a large bank account, but not “Mommy hates you,” large. As Americans we’re not particularly good at moderation, in fact I’ve been suddenly inspired to coin the term “obesely wealthy.” That’s trademarked, if you want to use it you’re going to have to pay. Hey, I got to make a living.

My Lovely Lady...um...shoes

No matter how paranoid you are, it’s not enough (unless you’re dressed in a tinfoil suit of armor and living in a bunker, that’s enough). As hip-hop veteran Davey-D pointed out, marketers and advertisers is at war. They’re battling for control of your brain, which is presumably connected to your wallet, but it’s been a massacre because the general public doesn’t realize they’re at war. It’s been a completely one-sided fight. There’s probably no other art form that’s as closely connected to marketing as hip-hop, though by no means the only one. I’m sure Toby Keith is busy shilling Chevy’s or Bud Light right now, and if that sounded like I was taking a cheap shot at country music because I don’t know anything about it, you’re absolutely right. Materialism and hip-hop are currently locked in a chicken-and- egg cycle with advertisers and product placements so interwoven it’s impossible to tell which came first. Actually that’s not always, sometimes you can tell exactly which one came first.
Take this little nugget of loveliness; Fergie signed a $4 million deal to promote Candy shoes in her upcoming songs. First of all the point is that she’ll mention the shoes in her songs and then Candy will use her shoe lovin lyrics in their commercials, so it seems as if the commercials came after the songs when the opposite is true. I’m telling you, the tinfoil hat and a bunker thing doesn’t sound so bad now, especially if my bunker was stocked with a lifetime supply of carrot cake, but then I’d just be a fat crazy guy in a bunker…anyway I would be a little concerned about how this is going to affect Fergie’s lyrical content and artistic integrity, except this is the woman who once sang “my humps, my humps, my lovely lady lumps.” The second thing that kills me is the records exec who says that with record sales down he has to find new ways to make money. Here’s a crazy thought, maybe record sales are down because the music’s crap and people don’t want to pay $15 for a cd that turns out to be an extended shoe commercial.
With thinking like that I should control of A&M Records, and if I did this is what I’d do: I looked at Fergie’s last album The Duchess and I’ve prepared a re-release that I feel provides some excellent opportunities for synergy. Here’s the tracklistings with the original title in plain text and my suggestions in italics.

1. Fergalicous Ferg-a-Butterfingers-are-de-licous
2. Clumsy Clumsy (because the heels of my shoe broke, I should have bought Candy shoes, they have the most reliable heels in the business)
3. All That I Got (the make-up song) All That I Got (the Max Factor song)
4. London Bridge London Bridge Tours Only 5 Euros!
5. Pedestal Tough Actin Tinactin Stops Athlete’s Foot Dead
6. Glamorous Glamorous in Gucci
7. Here I Come Here I Come, in my Ford F-150
8. Velvet Velvet (trimmed shoes by Candy)
9. Big Girls Don’t Cry Big Girls Don’t Cry, They Go Shopping
10. Mary Jane Shoes Mary Jane Shoes Suck Only Buy Candy
11. Losing My Ground Losing My Ground, Gaining Frequent Flier Miles
12. Finally Crazy Eddy’s Used Car Emporium

What do you think? We’ll make millions, millions I’m telling you. Somebody get me Fergie’s people on the phone. I was also planning on making fun of 50 Cent's disastrous lip-synching at the BET Awards and then shamelessly plugging his ownership of Vitamin Water…then I got scared he’d have me killed. So let me close with my suggestion for his new Vitamin Water ad campaign and call it a day:

“Vitamin Water, guaranteed to have you feeling more energetic, even if you’ve just been shot in the face nine times.”

I think it has a certain ring to it don’t you? Anyone else have any marketing campaign suggestions? Remember, this is war.

Imposter!

First and foremost I want to apologize for the extended delay in articles. I know how much you all have grown to need my writing in much the same way a barnacle needs a whale. Or is it the other way around? Point is you’re the whale and I’m the barnacle. Shall we?

Recently a story came out of the Bay Area about a girl who spent an entire year attending Stanford University, except she didn’t actually go there. She managed to talk her way into a dorm room and convinced virtually everyone she know that she was enrolled there. I’ve got a few thoughts:
1) It’s a sign of the times that the pressure of attending the “right school” drives someone this far. Well done Baby Einstein/Kaplan/Sylvan.
2) Good work. You have to be impressed that an 18 year old pulled this off. I would even be a little awed if it weren’t for the fact that…
3) I do this all the time! I practically invented the fake enrollment thing!

One of my earliest memories is traveling with my dad and hotel crashing. We would go to the top floor, see the view, hang out in the lobby, even take food from room service trays. I want to take this moment to sincerely thank my dad for this informal education, it has served me well. Hotels are goldmines of freeness, and I highly recommend availing yourself of their services. It’s really the perfect environment; hotels are built around providing customer satisfaction, they’ll get you anything you want, and with such high volume there’s no way they can keep track of who’s legit and who’s not. Even if you don’t want to go all out, if you’re new to a city find a nice hotel and talk to the concierge. They’ll be able to tell you about good restaurants, give directions, even get you tickets to shows. Just make sure you’re in a Four Seasons and not a Ramada or the concierge will give you the old, “there’s a lot of great places to eat in Sacramento. We’ve got a Applebees, a Fridays and a Hooters.” Yeah, that recently happened to me.
There’s a small cult of such freeloaders who go from city to city partaking in quasi-free goodness. I’m sure they won’t be particularly happy that I’m sharing this with you, but my readers come first. Plus I enjoy reminiscing.
In San Francisco the St. Francis near Union Square has glass elevators that are on the exterior of the building, it’s easily the best view of the city. Every time I was in the neighborhood I’d stop in for a quick ride.
One of the all-time best has to be the Marriot in San Deigo. The pool area is more of a rainforest draped by palm trees and trails that opens into winding pools and a grotto hot tub. Good lord I have spent some time in that hot tub. As soon as you enter the lobby turn left, first bank of elevators take them a floor down, you’re there. I’d go down there wearing swim trunks and carrying a towel.
For a couple years my buddy The Reverend and I had the top floor of this hotel in Boston locked down, right near the Wang Theater, the exact name escapes me. It was an unbelievably great find. The hotel had inexplicably stopped using its top floor, even though it had its own lobby with enormous comfy couches, a bar, and a big screen tv. We’d pack some food and go there to watch the Patriots games, I believe we even watched the ball drop on New Year’s once. Tragically they shut it down, but Jesus it was good times. It’s honestly hard to believe we never got caught, but its like that floor had slipped through some crack in the space time continuum.

Back to our girl the fake Stanfordite. College campuses are also great places to crash. I made a living off the practice for a solid two years. When I first moved to San Francisco I didn’t know anyone, didn’t have a job, didn’t have a place to live. I would spend all day on the Cal campus attending lectures on everything from Mexican governmental history to astrophysics, and then chow down at the receptions after. After finding a place to live me and my roommate Sir Trotter would go to the International House (reserved for students from foreign countries) to watch Monday Night Football on their big screen tv. The foreign kids never wanted to watch football, but we would just walk up and change the channel. After a few weeks they gave up and we had the lobby to ourselves. In retrospect that’s a perfect microcosm of America’s relationship to the rest of the world. Good times.
I’ve also spent some time at the aforementioned Stanford campus. It’s easy to see how this girl got away with it for so long, that campus is a cakewalk. Back in the day (2001 is officially back in the day right?) I would go down there and crash with my friend Farcus, who actually managed to get into Stanford. All the cafeterias are all you can eat, so you either slide in and pile your plate high, or have a friend bring you something out. Even better some of the resident houses have magic cupboards, meaning every week the students put together a list of what food they want and then the school delivers the requests. Befriend someone in those houses and they’ll let you take anything, they don’t care, they’ll just go back to the magic cupboard. I once walked out of a house with well over 100 PopTarts.

The key to crashing is simple confidence, I promise it’s infinitely easier than you would imagine. Of course it helps to be white, and male, and not dressed like a hobo. No surprise there. The point is there’s a world of resources around you everyday just waiting for you to illicitly use them. The next time you’ve got some time to kill in the downtown city of your choosing, peruse the hotel scene. In fact, NoChance is now the official headquarters of hotel/college campus crashing. Know any good spots? Have some useful hints? Feel free to share. Maybe some day we can all meet up in the conference room on the top floor of the Nikko. No reservation needed after six p.m., trust me.

Homeless Hall of Fame

San Francisco has LA beat pretty soundly in the cultural department. Believe me, San Francisco has more than its fair share of annoying phenomenon, chief among them the wave of hipsters that have descended up on the city like a Vans-wearing fog. There’s nothing more aggravating than someone who spends hours every morning trying to look like they just rolled out of bed. At least LA doesn’t pretend, aspiring actresses aren’t ashamed to admit they’re just steps away from becoming collagen enhanced cyborgs. But there is one area that San Francisco soundly beats the bejeezus out of LA, their homeless population. SF has some of the most creative and memorable homeless folks in the country. In a way they’re a microcosm of the city’s general population, people who just didn’t quite fit in other places and at least found a place where no matter how crazy they are, there’s someone infinitely more insane waiting around the corner. I have to say I’m relatively disappointed in LA’s homeless population, there’s plenty of them but I don’t think I’ll remember a single one. It may be a matter of location, West Hollywood may not attract the cream of the crazy homeless crop, but I oddly find myself longing for the days when a guy wearing a tinfoil hat would calmly sit next to you on the bus. In SF the homeless become minor celebrities, every neighborhood has its favorites and a select few even achieve city-wide fame. It’s not uncommon to have this exchange:
You: “So where do you live?”
Me: “I’m in the Inner Sunset.”
You: “Oh, you know that guy who walks around with a live rabbit on his head?”
Me: “Of course, I was just talking to him today next to the ATM machine.”
So to ease some of my San Francisco homesickness here’s the first induction ceremony for the Homeless Hall of Fame. To qualify you need to be not just crazy, but you need to make a significant contribution to the crazy game, setting the crazy bar just a little higher for the next generation. On a side note some of these people are certainly homeless, and for some it’s completely conceivable that they have a home yet spend every day on the streets doing things that would in no way qualify them to participate in mainstream society. The point is we’re not talking about eccentric millionaires or performance artists here, these are people who are genuinely a few sandwiches short of a picnic. Ladies and Gentleman, may I present the 2007 Inaugural Class:

The Guy Who Smells Like Pee: The name says it all. Anyone who rides the N Train on a regular basis knows exactly who I’m talking about. Now it’s nothing special for a homeless man to smell like pee, but this guy has taken it to a whole new level. He smells like he peed his clothes, took them off, peed on them again, and then put them back on. Rinse, lather, repeat. He smells so bad people cram into the front car of the train to avoid him, giving him the back car all to himself. In every other way he’s your run-of-the-mill homeless guy, tattered clothes, doesn’t even really talk. It’s like he decided he was simply going to own the urine-smell department. Just simply outstanding work, a real dedication to his craft.

Painting-scooter guy: Here’s someone who probably does have a home somewhere, but how he makes enough money to survive I have no idea. He’s an innocuous older white man complete with decades old khakis and loafers who works primarily around Church St. and Market St. He putters around on an ancient scooter with a trunk in the back while wearing an enormous black helmet. Every so often he calmly pulls over, reaches into the scooter’s trunk, pulls out a paint brush, and slops a couple of lines of white paint on some surface. Billboards, storefront windows, the sidewalk, it’s all fair game. There’s no `apparent logic behind what he paints and there’s no discernable image or message. It’s undoubtedly illegal but he does it so calmly that no one ever says anything, everyone’s just so stunned by his brazenness he operates with seeming immunity. He’s my hero.

Lucy – I’m pretty sure that’s her name, my memory is letting me down (I’m sure one of our SF readers can confirm). She’s consistently smears her entire face with red lipstick and hangs out around 9th and Irving St. She never stops ranting, just a constant stream of fascinating associations. “No you can’t take my dog! Marshmallows! Where ‘s the hammer, I need some nails for the hammer!” What really sets her apart is her ability to speak completely lucidly for small moments. She’ll go into a store and calmly buy a packet of cigarettes with loose change, exchange pleasantries with the store owner, talk about the weather, and then literally the second she steps foot on the sidewalk it’s back to “Merry Go-Round explosion unicorns!” The rumor is she used to be a lawyer before her life fell apart. Watching her transition from complete civility to insane rant is incredible.

Hate Man: A true Berkeley institution. He believes that only in anger can people truly connect, so if you want to talk to him you have to go shoulder to shoulder and lean against him so there’s a constant struggle to remain upright. Everyday he can be found banging into a never-ending stream of people, ending each conversation with a resolute “I hate you.” He’s relatively non-threatening, and frankly it’s only a matter of time before you have to give it a whirl; give him a shoulder bump, and say “Hi, I hate you.”

Frank Chu (see picture above) – The undisputed champion. No one seems to know any real info on Frank, the rumor is he has a house in Oakland (he might also have a house on Zenon), regardless his prospects for unemployment seem remote at best. He walks around the Financial District screaming that an intergalactic organization called the 12 Galaxies has conspired to keep him from becoming a move star. I don’t even know if I can explain how little sense he makes. Take a moment to read his sign in the picture, that’s exactly what he’s talking about. He’ll show up to protests and do his thing with little to no regard for what’s being protested.
Crowd: “Stop the unjust war in Iraq!”
Frank: The transuniversal ecto-laws have made me intergenic!”
What we need is for some enterprising reporter to just follow him for a day to see where he goes at night, I’m astounded the SF Chronicle hasn’t already done it. God I love Frank Chu.

I present to you the first class of the Homeless Hall of Fame. For those of you who live in places without enormous homeless populations who might think this is a little unsympathetic to say the least, let me respond: either you start finding a way to laugh about the army of destitute and pained people around you everyday, or you turn into a quivering mess of regret and guilt. The reality of the situation is a little more complicated than “I’ll do a good deed and give this guy a couple dollars.” I encourage all you out there to send in your nominations for the Hall of Fame, we can make this a truly national endeavor.

May Day Riot

Nevermind. This is a battle. As I was writing the May Day article yesterday the LAPD was firing rubber bullets into a crowd of non-violent protestors. I’m doing my best to not fall into the “us vs. them” trap I wrote about yesterday (no matter who you feel is “us and who is “them) but that’s also a luxury I have sitting in my apartment, bullet wound free. I’m gonna go ahead and quote Jesus, “what you do to the least of these you do to me.” If the police are willing to beat anyone they’re willing to beat you. The anniversary of the L.A. riots was last week, talk to any local and they’ll tell you all about the police abandoning a burning Koreatown and forming a protective ring around Beverly Hills. Who do they serve and protect? It depends on where you fall on the hierarchy. As a white male I’m definitely a lot better off than most, but I also know if there was an earthquake tomorrow the copters would be flying right over the crumbled ruins of my studio apartment to rescue those poor millionaires stranded in the Hollywood Hills. The only solution is to recognize our common humanity and make as many connections with others as possible. A bad night, but a good reminder of the raw force the government can bring down when it chooses. Here’s the video…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdNkXJMH9A

Lighter fare next time, I promise. Unless I’m kidnapped, thrown in a plane, and tortured in some remote country…it’s a good thing the U.S. government doesn’t do anything like that or I’d be worried.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFdNkXJMH9A

Hater Nation

It’s time I just came out and said it: I’m tired of living a lie, always afraid to reveal my true self. Ok, here it goes. Hello, my name is Nathan, and I’m a hater. How do I know? Because people tell me constantly, that’s always a clue. If Webster’s had definitions for this sort of thing it would read:
Hater (noun), Someone who speaks disparagingly about another person when such criticism is unwarranted. Also see jealousy, envy.

I can’t deny some part of this definition applies to me. I can’t help it, I’m from Boston, a place where hating is a way of life. For example, I hate Alex Rodriquez, the third baseman for the Yankees. He’s currently having

the best offensive month in baseball history, and I’m completely unable to appreciate it. Why? Here’s why.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jp1hfYQAXE&mode=related&search

Those people clapping and chanting “Yankees suck” as grown men pummel each other? Those are my people. With roots like you have to hate.
The hater label has also been used to shield folks from any legitimate criticism. Hip-hop artists use it all the time to dismiss anyone who thinks their music is terrible (I’m looking at you Jim Jones). And it’s worked surprisingly well, no one wants to be called a hater and so many a much-needed put-down goes unsaid. It’s hard to imagine that tactic working in other facets of life:
Cop: “Son, you were going 85 mph in a school zone, and I believe you’re intoxicated…is that a loaded handgun on the passenger seat?”
Me: “Damn! Why you hating? Go drink yourself some Haterade Officer McHatesalot.”
Cop: “Yeah, you’re right. Well, be on your way then.”
So we can see there’s a proper time and a place for some good old fashioned hating. The place is here, the time is now.

The NFL Draft – Now I love football, and I mean almost in the Biblical sense, but the draft has gotten way out of hand. There’s around the clock news coverage of a completely hypothetical situation! ESPN’s been running draft updates every thirty minutes, except there’s nothing to update. “This just in, the draft still hasn’t happened.” The truth is a large amount of the draft is a crapshoot. Ryan Leaf, Tom Brady, Jerry Rice, all of them were monumentally mis-analyzed by draft experts. Plus draft guru Mel Kiper’s hair looks like the Exxon Valdez disaster. I think I saw a Greenpeace worker rescue an oil drenched puffin from his scalp yesterday. For some actually insightful draft coverage check out www.the323.blogspot.com

ATMs – Did you know that in France ATM machines don’t release the money until you’ve collected your card. Brilliant! I don’t even want to talk about how many times I’ve forgotten my card in the machine. How hard could this possibly be to implement? You go to hell Wells Fargo ATMs, you go to hell and you stay there.

Alberto Gonzalez – I absolutely believe the politically based firing of eight attorneys is wrong, but it’s hard for me to really get worked up about it. His testimony on the other hand, that was infuriating. The man said, “I do not recall,” over 50 times. So either he’s a lair or has the memory of that guy in Memento. The testimony reminded me of the kind of tactics you used when you were a kid and got caught doing something wrong.
Mom: Nathan, did you eat the entire package of Oreos?
Me: Um, no.
Mom: Then why are there Oreo crumbs all over your mouth?
Me: I do not recall.

The cashiers at the Sunset/Fairfax Rite Aid – I realize working the overnight shift at Rite Aid probably isn’t what you wanted to do with your life, but when I approach the counter you look like I just punched your grandmother in the face. And there’s really no need to wrap my Diet Coke in four plastic bags.

Fergie – So “My Humps” wasn’t exactly the most intellectually stimulating song of all time, but I was willing to dismiss it as just shallow fun (Alanis Morisettes parody is fantastic http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZw-8RSyvh8 ), but “Glamorous” is terrible. I can’t help but hate a song that repeatedly tells me “if you ain’t got no money keep your broke ass home,” and then talks about going to Taco Bell to keep it real. You can’t have it both ways Fergie, either you’re richer and better than us, or your just a normal girl who likes crappy faux-Mexican food. Which reminds me…

Anyone who went to the Taco Bell on Valencia St. in San Francisco – I’m not going to hate on fast food, but the Mission district of SF probably has the highest concentration of Central American restaurants in the country. Why would you go to Taco Bell when there’s a place literally next door that will give you homemade papusas for half the price? That’s like going to IHOP and saying “you know what, instead of delicious pancakes could you just reheat a Hungry Man breakfast and charge me double.” Why God why!?

Believe me, I have a lot more hate inside just waiting to bust out, but I’m starting to get a little worked up. And when that happens it’s only a matter of time before the old middle finger starts flashing at anyone who pulls the “drive into the crosswalk while I’m walking” move. And if the guy in the BMW convertible who pulled that shit on me this morning is reading, if you do that again I’m going to strangle you with your own $500 thrift store t-shirt. See, you take me out of Boston, but you can’t take the Boston out of me.

And another thing….

*Got something you want to hate on, let it out. Share with your fellow NoChancers, you’ll feel much better afterwards. Or remain a bitter little ball of hate, either one.

*CNN continues its crusade to blame the problems of the world on hip-hop. Now Anderson Cooper has ridiculously managed to link rap with the V. Tech shootings and serial killers in an interview with Camron. Did you know Busta Rhymes was actually the chief architect of the Iraq War? It’s true, just ask CNN. Here’s a great NY Times article about it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/25/arts/music/25hiph.html?ex=1178164800&en=1e14302a3381319e&ei=5070&emc=eta1.

* Besides having one of the coolest names in the history of mankind, NoChancer Sahara is also a dope photographer. Now you can look at her work online, enjoy.
http://saharamarinaborja.blogspot.com/

God Thy Name is Traffic

There’s no way for an outsider to fully understand what traffic means to L.A. It’s a literal living entity, like some Godzilla sleeping in the ocean just waiting to emerge and wreak havoc on the city. If there were any virgins in LA residents would have long ago thrown them into the La Brea tar pits in an attempt to appease the terrible gods that determine the length of your commute. This is probably why there aren’t any virgins here, parents encourage their children to start early in order to avoid becoming a human sacrifice.
LA is not a city, it’s a state. In second grade LA beat up Rhode Island and took its lunch money, so you can forget about public transportation. Walking? HA! There’s no way to get around the city without driving. Not a day goes by that I don’t dream of owning a rocket pack (why hasn’t this happened? It seems like the most useful invention of all time. How do I not have a rocketpack!? Other than the whole unbelievably dangerous thing).
How can I get you to understand what traffic means to those of us stupid enough to live in the City of Angels? People here talk about traffic like they talk about the weather on the East Coast. Last week the LA Marathon shut down half the cities streets, it was like a nor’easter was brewing.
“Oh man, did you hear? There’s a marathon a headed this way, it’s gonna be real trouble. I’m not going to leave the house all day. You better go to the grocery store now, when I was there they were down to bottled water and cans of tuna.”
If someone tells you they’ve lived in LA, ask to see their calves. Seriously. Their right calf should be freakishly developed from hitting the brakes thousands of time in traffic jams. There’s also a chance they’ve had calf implants, in which case they’re definitely from LA.
I’m still not getting my point across, the accumulated frustration has reduced me to a quivering mass capable only loosely organized rants. Here are some more concrete examples:
* The Sunset Ave. exit ramp on the 405 has a sign that says “Ramp will be closed intermittently until Oct. 2010.” There is no way that sign exists anywhere else. They’ve basically announced that they’re going to screw you repeatedly for the next three years, intermittently. What could they be doing that takes three years? They better be painting elaborate frescoes on the pavement. Whatever it is they’ll be done exactly in October.
* The other day I was, surprise, sitting in traffic on Santa Monica. In my side mirror came a man who was obviously a serious meth addict. He was wearing short basketball shorts circa 1974, tube socks pulled up knee high, no shirt and a small pink backpack with an airbrushed portrait of a unicorn. Even from across the street I could tell he smelled like hot dogs, snickers bars, and pee. Good times. Every so often he would start sprinting as fast as possible while swatting at the air, my guess was he thought he was being chased by a swarm of flying scorpions. But he would get exhausted after twenty feet and stop to catch his breath. The race was on. For literally two miles I watched him go flying down the street, pink backpack flapping behind him, and then collapse onto the sidewalk. Traffic would move, I would pull up on him, catch the scent of pee wafting on the afternoon air, and he was off again. Traffic is so bad in LA a crazy meth-head can outrun you for miles. I was seconds away from getting out and racing him on foot. I think I could have taken him.
The more I think about it the more insane it is. People complain about traffic constantly, but unlike the weather they have the means to control it. You know you’re going to get slammed in traffic, and yet you start that engine anyway. It’s like complaining about how sharp darts are, and then jamming one of them into your eye. There’s nothing quite like being ten feet away from the person in the car next to you for two hours, and not acknowledging their existence. It’s the car as a cocoon.
The other day I was behind a SUV with TVs in backs of the chairs; the kids were in the backseat watching the screens in a somnambulant daze. Remember being a kid and staring out the car window on trips? That’s where you learned about the world, saw human civilization pass before you in a speed blur. It seems like a dangerous sign that kids don’t stare out the window anymore, which is a shame because lord knows they’d have plenty of time to look. TV-glued-kids could easily miss the enlightening sight of a meth addict bouncing down the street. I don’t want to live in such a tunnel-visioned future.
I apologize for the scattered nature of this weeks installment of NoChance, I just needed to get this off my chest. Thank you for reading. Let’s have a little whining party. Is there something you have to deal with everyday that drives you insane? If there isn’t I got news for you…you’re the thing that drives other people insane. Feel free to share with your fellow NoChancers, we can all wallow in our misery for a week. Coming up soon, a detailed breakdown of R. Kelly’s lyrical genius! I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait.

Before we go here’s a new installment of overheard quotes classics, severely inebriated version:

From the one and only Emily in San Francisco: Late at night/early morning. The roommate’s drunken friend won’t stop talking, her drunken monologues are keeping the whole house awake. Finally blessed silence, it appears as if the drunken friend has finally passed out. Then, from the darkness, comes
“Wait…I was cuter than that other girl, right?”
It’s kind of sad if you think about it. Good for us we don’t think about things, so that’s just hilarious.

From Steve, teacher, father, lover of sunflower seeds:
“While eating dinner at the restaurant my sister works at there was a drunk patron yelling at her ...when he handed her his credit card she asked “do you want me to run this”...he said "run it hard baby, run it real hard, really hard’”.
I’m not even sure what that means. I hope she ran his card real hard, like 40% tip hard.

Heather and Mike Tyson? Only at NoChance.

Normally I spend countless hours carefully handcrafting the articles you read on NoChance (or at least keeping the whip hovering over the heads of the Malaysian children I have working for me) but some urgent matters have come to the forefront which demand my immediate attention. A writer’s work is never done…sigh.

*Some reader mail: For those of you who may have missed it, NoChancer Heather from the great state of Texas (a.k.a. Mexico part 2) had a follow-up question to the tattoo article. Here’s the essence of the response:
"I think I would have to add one obnoxious question to your list though... this is the one that gets me themost. "So, what does it mean?" I probably asked you that about your first one way back in the day, but I have become much more older, wiser and more tattooed since then, so I'll just skip the apology. Also, I have no problem with friends asking me this, but strangers... WTF! To me asking what the tattoo means or why I chose the ones I did is fine from friends but from perfect strangers it seems like a very personal question. It is along the lines of "so, what kind of person are you, anyway?" or"do you believe in god?"

Preach on sister! In order to address the “what does it mean” dilemma we have to consider both sides of the question. On the one hand, it’s like asking “what’s art?” one of those questions posed to hopelessly enthusiastic freshman in humanities classes (oh the good old days). Tattoos can be intensely personal and symbolic, or simply serve the same aesthetic function as a Rothko painting. In the spirit of full disclosure, all the tattoos on my sleeve are taken directly from the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The large flaming-headed demon on my forearm is named dharmamahakalapala, and for those scoring at home my spellcheck just has an aneurysm. He’s the guardian spirit of the Dharma (the Bible of Buddhism) and also the protector of the East. Plus he looks badass. So basically he’s the badass guardian of words that come from the East, rather appropriate for yours truly, no?
On the other hand, some tattoos are stupid and meaningless; don’t be afraid to think so. When I lived in San Diego, I knew I guy who had an enormous crying clown tattooed on his leg. What could have possibly been the story there!? “My dad was a circus clown who died one morning in a terrible pie accident, so I got this tattoo to memorialize him?” “I love clowns, but I hate happiness, so I got this crying clown tattoo to properly express the paradox that is my soul?” It wasn’t just a tattoo, it was his entire leg. If I’ve said it once I’ve said it a million times, people are stupid. You read this column, so you’re obviously at the apex of intelligence. Use your best judgement; if it feels appropriate, ask someone about the meaning of their tattoo, you just may get a fascinating story. And if they have a huge crying clown make a mental note, and then rush home and write me so NoChanceNation can collectively mock them. I love reader mail!

* On a completely different note…there’s no way to say this without sounding like the epitome of LA, so I’m just going to go for it. I met someone famous, actually infamous would be the proper term. That’s right, I met Mike Tyson. It was one of the most surreal moments of my life. There is an endless parade of minor celebrities in my gym desperately working the elliptical machine like their career depended on it (I’m looking at you cast of Real World/Road Rules Challenge), but a bonafide celebrity is rare. The sequence of events was completely ordinary; I’m walking to the squat rack, the large black man in front of turns around, his face is tattooed, and it was Mike Tyson. Sometimes you see a celebrity and there’s that moment of “Is that? Could it be? Oh my God it is.” This was not one of those moments. This was more like the type of “Sweet Jesus that’s Mike Tyson” moment that gazelles must feel right before they spot a lion creeping towards the watering hole. It was all I could do not to pee my pants. He was surprisingly calm, like he was on serious psychological medication calm, but I was ready to run at any moment. He could have pulled a trident out of his gym bag and speared Jeff Goldblum and I wouldn’t have been surprised. We were essentially face to face when he asked me something in such a soft voice I had to ask him to say it again.
“How are you?” asked the former heavyweight champion of the world.
“Um, I’m fine, how are you,” I responded numbly. It would later dawn on me that this was an extraordinarily dangerous question to ask someone who once bit another man’s ear off, but it only seemed polite at the time.
“I’m wonderful, just wonderful,” lisped Iron Mike, “it’s important to be wonderful, are you wonderful.”
“Um, yeah, sure, I’m wonderful,” I responded. At his point every moment I was still alive was a wonderful moment.
“Good, I want you to be wonderful,” said Mike as he walked away to do some sit-ups.
That was it. Nothing spectacular, but I can legitimately say I’ve never been so terrified of another human being in my life. My heart was racing for an hour afterwards. And one last bit of tattoo advice, someone with their face tattooed has officially announced that they have no chance of joining the normal world, not even for a moment. Mike Tyson is so far outside the normal world he makes Flava Flav look like Tom Hanks. I’m not sure that analogy technically makes sense, but you get the idea.
I’ll post a more worldy relevant article next week, that is if Tyson hasn’t hunted me down and eaten my unborn children. That’s basically a direct quote, he actually threatened another boxer with such a fate during a pre-fight press conference. God, I feel so blessed just to be alive right now. Until we meet again…

Ink You Very Much

Here at NoChance we’re committed to not only entertaining you with tales of Hollywood happenings and removed organs, but we also strive to provide our readers with thoughtful and balanced information. And when I say “we”, I mean myself, and the magical elves that sneak into my room late at night to write articles. I firmly believe that knowledge is peace, and that the more we know about each other the better the world will be. Also, a lot of people make me angry when they ask me stupid questions, and that needs to stop. So in the spirit of inclusion and harmony I present:

The Average Person’s Guide to Dealing with Tattooed People

In this handy-dandy little guide I’ll answer some frequently asked questions and review some protocol for dealing with those who are tattooed. The first step is to figure out where you belong. Are you a tattooed person?
Do you have a small turtle inked on your ankle from a spring break in Mexico? Then no, you’re not, and there are probably some embarrassing videos of you on the Internet. Do you have barbwire around your bicep? Then no, you’re not, and steroids have shrunken your testicles to the size of raisins. If neither of these scenarios describes you, than congratulations, you’ve done something right with your life.
Still not sure where you fit? If you’re routinely asked about your tattoos by strangers, than you are, and if not, than you just might be annoying the bejeezus out of others (like say, Nathan Richards Slavik). I’ll also try to let you in on a little bit of inside information that you can use to ridicule people who think they’re cool because of their lame tattoos. Think of this like a public service announcement, I’m in negotiations with Al Gore to do a documentary.

Question 1: “Did it hurt”?

Jesus Christ on a bicycle! Yes it hurts! When you’re tattooed a needle (which can range from the size of a highlighter to a pin) repeatedly punctures the layers of skin directly below the surface. That’s not pleasant. Some parts of the body hurt worse than others, the general rule is the more skin you can pinch the more it will hurt. For example, the inside of your arm hurts far more than the outside. The next time you see a “barb-wire around the bicep” guy, check to see if the ink extends completely around his arm. If the ink is incomplete than he’s a wuss who’s obviously overcompensating for something. Feel free to share your observations with him.
Also parts of the body that don’t have much protection at all (ribs, elbows, collarbone, etc.) are routinely the worst. It’s not so much that the pain is excruciating, as you have to overcome your instincts. When a needle is being driven into your elbow every nerve in your body wants to jump away, it’s exhausting to stay still. That punk kid on the bus who thinks he’s hardcore because of the star tattoo on his arm (that conveniently goes around his elbow but not directly on it)? Call his mom, he’s probably late for piano lessons.

Question 2: “Who did your tattoos? Can you hook me up?”

This is like walking up to grizzled crackhead and asking, “Where’d you get that crack? Can you hook me up?” If you don’t already have a dealer than a true crackhead isn’t going to point you to the good stuff, and he’s certainly not going to share his own stash. Tattooing is a unique art form in that it involves a contract between two people: you need the artist to get tattooed, and the artist needs your skin/canvas to practice his/her art. It’s a partnership. Most tattoo shops operate under the partnership principle. If you bring an artist a piece that they can be genuinely excited about or that you worked on together, the tattoo’s price will be minimal. Artists make their money by overcharging people who bring them typical and boring tattoos (hello sorority girl with flower tattoo). Just like I imagine a crack dealer would take one look at me, assume I have no real idea about the market price of a crack rock, and charge me double. You’d be surprised how useful crack can be in various analogies.

Question 3: “Can I see your tattoos?”

This is by far the most innocuous but most aggravating question, and I hear it all the time. I now routinely cover my tattoos in unfamiliar situations. The demand is a very abrupt invasion of my personal space, yet if I were to say, “No, you can’t look at my tattoos,” people would think I’m a jerk. In other contexts you can’t just approach strangers and ask them to show you their bodies. Here’s the best analogy I can come up with, and no it doesn’t involve narcotics. It actually involves imagining myself as a woman (I think my mother may be starting to get worried.)
Let’s say you decide to really get in shape, and you work out every day. After a while you start looking pretty good. Sure enough, summer comes along and you think “you know, I usually wear one piece bathing suits, but this summer I’m feeling so cinfudent about myself I’m gonna wear a bikini.” If a friend or family member were to compliment you on the new look, you’d feel pretty good, but that doesn’t mean you want every guy on the beach coming up to you and asking to see your breasts. Think about that the next time you’re tempted to talk to someone about their ink. And if you’re the type of person who just routinely asks people to expose themselves anyway, there’s nothing I can do. May I recommend a barb-wire tattoo.

I hope this little tutorial has taught you how to deal better with tattooed people, or given you ammunition to more effectively mock them. You know, either one. Because here at NoChance we’re determined to change the world, one convoluted, rambling, barely read article at a time.

My Appendix and Me; a tragic love story

I’m missing an organ…well I wouldn’t say I’m missing it (thank you, I’ll be here all week, tip your waitress). For 24 years my appendix was a fully functioning member of the Nathan’s body family, and then it decided to pursue other opportunities. It was completely unexpected. I mean sure, we had our ups and downs, but what relationship doesn’t? It’s true my appendix never really did anything for me, he was more or less a stowaway, but sometimes late at night I wish we were still together. Not only do I miss the way he would snuggle against my (anatomy), but my life’s become much more complicated since we went our separate ways. This, this is our story.

ACT I: The Beginning of the End:

It all started so innocently. The girlfriend and I were an enjoying an afternoon out on the town when I started to get a stomachache, nothing special. A couple hours later it was worse, but I had promised my lady an elegant dinner (a.k.a. California Pizza Kitchen) and I wasn’t going to back down. Over the course of our culinary delight the pain had progressed to “stitch in your side after running” proportions, and I had to admit I was feeling sick. I went home, laid on the couch, and figured some alka-seltzer and 7-UP would do the job. It didn’t. The pain got sharper, and by midnight it felt like an angry dwarf was stabbing me with a pencil. Finally, I had no choice; I was headed to the hospital. I put on some sweatpants, woke up the girlfriend, and we were off. By the way, if you ever see me outside my apartment in sweatpants, that means I’m in trouble. Please, alert the proper authorities.

ACT II: In Which Our Differences Become Irreconcilable

I live in West Hollywood, which means I checked into the Max Factor wing of Cedar Sinai hospital. It was good to know that even though I might die, Max Factor would ensure the proper hue of blush would be applied to my still warm corpse. Waiting with us in the emergency room was a guy in a silk shirt who had busted his hand in a bar fight, accompanied by his hyperventilating girlfriend. “But look,” she’d beg the nurse” he’s bleeding! He’s gonna die!” I prayed the nurse would shove some Valium down her throat so we could all enjoy the fluorescent/antiseptic ambience of the waiting room in peace. After a brief exam I was shown to my room, or at least a gurney in the corner of the room, and told to wait. A doctor telling you to wait is like Hitler telling Stalin he won’t invade; deep down you know things are going to end horribly, but there’s nothing you can do but hang on and hope for the best.
(Let me pause to remind you that I’m telling you this in the spirit of cooperation. If a metaphorical angry dwarf starts stabbing you in the side with a pencil, this info is going to come in handy. If a literal angry dwarf starts stabbing you with a pencil, you’re out of luck. I doubt even the police can help you. Now, back to the hospital).
I had three major problems with the examination/surgery process:
1)The Happy Face Pain Scale – A nurse will ask you to rate your pain, from 1 to 10, and show you an accompanying range of sad/happy faces, just in cause you’re numerically illiterate. Simple right? No. They say “On a scale of one to ten, one being nothing and ten being the worst pain you can imagine, how bad is it?” Well, I have a pretty good imagination. My side hurt, but I’d imagine being slowly burned alive would be considerably worse, and getting shot in the hand’s probably not pleasant…by the time I was done imagining I had to rate my appendix a five. Big mistake, a five gets you ignored. I should have acted like the hyperventilating girlfriend in the waiting room; “Ten, Jesus Christ on a bicycle it’s a ten! Everything’s getting dark…momma I feel so cold.” Then maybe I wouldn’t have had to wait another eight hours before surgery.
2) The Impossible Task – The nurse makes it very clear that food and liquids are forbidden, then gives you a cup to pee in. I’ll give you a second to think about that. It’s just not gonna happen, it’s a simple input-output problem. Then the nurse glares at you and your empty cup like you’re holding out on her. Well maybe if you’d give me some goddamn water, we could talk business.
3) Um, Possibly, Maybe – The truth is no one knows why your appendix bursts, and more importantly if your appendix is the problem until they open you up.
The doctors will say, “Well, here’s the deal. It could be your appendix, in which case we’ll just cut it out. Or maybe it’s not, in which case we’ll spin a giant wheel, see which organ it points to, and cut that out. Ok? Just sign here, and here, and here.” An appendectomy forces you to give the green light to doctors who openly admit that they have no idea what’s going on. Oh, and if they don’t do anything you’ll die. Fantastic. This is really working out well for me.
Needless to say the surgery went fine and my appendix got the heck out of dodge. I’d go into more detail, but I was in a morphine haze for the next two days. For more details, check with the saintly girlfriend. She spent that time sleeping in chairs, dealing with a constantly rotating stream of Philippina nurses, and making sure my hospital gown didn’t reveal anything too sultry.

Act III: The Aftermath

They handed me the bill on the way out of the Versace recovery center. I had turned down a delicious breakfast of orange juice concentrate and a buttered roll, so factoring in those savings, the bill came out to a svelte $18,000 (or as I preferred to think about it, a million bazillion dollars). There was literally no way I could pay it. Unless I sold my organs on the black market, that would be ironic. Then, like a knight in shining armor, lung cancer came to my rescue. That’s right, lung cancer is my new best friend. About five years ago the State of California lead a class action lawsuit against Phillip Morris, everyone’s favorite maker of cigarettes and macaroni and cheese. Phillip Morris lost (those damn activist judges!) and was ordered to pay millions into a fund to cover healthcare costs for state residents. The bureaucracy involved in applying is a special circle of hell, but after four months of paperwork, Phillip Morris picked up the tab. God bless em. I went straight to the corner store and bought a pack, saluted, and threw the cigarettes in the trash. It’s times like these that I’m reminded of the words of Geronimo, the famous Indian warrior: “America is a crazy person.”
I wonder where my appendix is now. I like to think it made it out to Mexico, found a little resort town, started a carpentry business, and leads a simple happy life. If you’re ever traveling and see him, do me a favor; tell him I miss him, but I’m fine without him. I got the scars to prove it.

Big Brother Is Listening

Spend some time with me, and chances are you’ll notice I’m not paying attention to what you’re saying. Please understand, it’s not that I don’t value your company; if that were true I would have already devised an elaborate system of avoiding you. You see, I suffer from an as yet undiagnosed case of Auditory ADD (if everyone else is making up their own little diseases, than I can too).
My sickness causes me to listen to every conversation in earshot. More accurately, I’m a chronic eavesdropper. Letting off some steam about your boss on the train ride home? I couldn’t agree more, he was more relaxed when he was drinking. Talking to a friend about your boyfriend’s habit of keeping his socks on during intimate moments? Please, go on. Telling your mother that you’ve realized all that tuition money was probably a waste? I got every word. The explosion of cell-phones have only made me sicker, people will talk about anything in public now. But every so often I hear something so fantastic, so unexpected, so absolutely stupid, that I have to write it down. Looking back over my notes, here are some personal favorites.

The Scenario: I’m eating lunch in a café at UCLA. A group of engineering students behind me are talking about whatever they talk about. I’m barely paying attention and very much focused on my crossword when I hear…
The Line: “You know, sometimes I wish I lived in the time of wizards and hobbits.”
The Reaction: It took me a second to realize the full implication of this statement. I hate to break it to you my magic card-playing friend, but there never was a time “of wizard and hobbits.” You seem to have crossed a very important line. “I wish I could play polo on the back of a stegosaurus” is an infinitely more plausible scenario than the one you’ve laid out. I considered saying something, and then pictured him casting a fire spell on me while tossing his cup of barley soup at my head. I held my tongue.

The Scenario: I’m standing in line waiting to order breakfast. The woman in front of me has been contemplating the menu like it’s the DaVinci Code. When it’s her turn she approaches, glances at the board above the cashier, and asks…
The Line: “So, is this your menu?”
The Analysis: No amount of sarcasm could possibly be enough: No, this isn’t our menu. This is a menu from another restaurant we’ve traded with. You’re gonna have to go there and read our menu, then come back here and tell me what you want. It’s just something we do to infuriate our customers. Also our menu is in Sanskrit, so you’re probably going to want to get an interpreter, or enroll in a four-year university. Next!

The Scenario: On the train home, late night. Not only is this guy talking on his cell phone, but the train is pretty empty, so by process of elimination I’m listening to every word. He’s not very interesting, babbling about some vacation plans, when he says…
The Line: “There’s no way I’m going back to Seattle, not after what happened with the zoo thing.”
The Analysis: What!? What’s the zoo thing!? Jesus Christ on a bicycle tell me what happened at the Seattle zoo! My mind was racing with possibilities. Did one of the animals attack him? Maybe he attacked one of the animals. Maybe a llama spit at him and he got the ornery beast in a headlock before being attacked by a whole llama gang. I don’t blame him, I wouldn’t want to go back to a zoo where I was viciously beaten by a pack of furious llamas. In the end, I couldn’t bring myself to ask him what happened. Not because I would have to admit I’d been eavesdropping, but because I figured the real story couldn’t be as good as the one in my head. I was right, to this day many a waiting room hour has been spent contemplating just what can go wrong at a zoo.

The Scenario: I’m at a meeting at work, this was during my catering days. We’re all sitting there listening to the manager lay out the complications of chocolate fountains, when there’s a sharp bang, followed by a voice behind me whispering…
The Line: “I think I just staple-gunned my finger.”
The Analysis: What do you mean you think you staple-gunned your finger? Look at your finger. Is there a staple sticking out of it? If so, then you probably shouldn’t have been pretending like the staple gun was a real gun. Or at least made sure all your appendages were safely out of the way. For the record the speaker of this particular line was a good friend, and when I turned around to inquire about said stapled finger, he replied “Christ, it feels like there’s a lightning bolt in my finger.” This is why I like him so much.

Looking back at this list, I’m pretty happy with my disease, it certainly makes the world a more entertaining place. I’m not really sure what other people do when they’re waiting in line for things, no cell phone game is half as engrossing as the pearls of wisdom that come out of the mouths of your fellow human beings. I know I must have said a few over the years, I hope someone was around to record my best moments.
I’m sure everyone has some personal favorites, moments that have stuck with them throughout the years. Feel free to share, we can do a sort of almanac of overheard conversation. And if for some reason you can’t think of anything, then I highly recommend taking a little more time to examine your environment. After all, if you’re not listening to other people, I’m probably listening to you.