Oops!

Bad time management = no entry today.

Fun with Lifeless Improvisation!

Here is a thrill-a-minute interview I just did with outgoing CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather. While you listen to it, imagine how much better it could have been if I'd put some thought into what I was going to do before I pressed the record button.

Nothing, Really

What an exciting day! I got to go to both the City of Commerce and the City of Industry! God bless the Southland and all the clever names she gives her many, far-flung communities!

Shit. Seriously, this was kind of a rotten day. Actually, it was pretty typical, but it took kind of a downturn around two, after I wolfed down a turkey and cheese croissant I bought at a donut shop and found myself feeling like I had stomach cancer. Following that was a tedious zig-zag back and forth across the San Fernando Valley, leaving me in Sherman Oaks. Which I only bring up because, when I was in Sherman Oaks, I was twice scolded by a security guard for running inside the building. Which, in retrospect, isn't funny, but it made me mad, and there's nothing in my contract that forbids me from using this space to vent my grossly enlarged spleen.

Ah, all right. I was just on the phone for two hours, and it's now past my bedtime, so that piece of shit above (plus this piece of shit down here) is all you're gettin', my pets. More as it develops.

Those Hilarious Nazis!

Man, am I tired! On top of that, I just read a bunch of posts on a white power message board in which typical Jewish traits were discussed. Pretty much your typical, "Jews are sneaky and have big noses" stuff, but I did learn a couple interesting things. For instance, Jews use quotation marks to play down the significance of certain "facts." Also, and far more shocking, both Dwight David Eisenhower and Franklin Delano Roosevelt (but presumably not Teddy) were Jews. I would have thought that would have gotten more press, but once again, the Aryans are hoarding all the good trivia. Here's some other stuff I learned:

• Jews can shape-shift
• Not only was the Holocaust grossly exaggerated by the Zionist cabal that controls all human thought, it was actually a case of Jewish bankers attempting to eradicate German death camp guards, and then trying pin it on the Germans after the Jews' mechanical incompetence led to the accidental gassing of two or three Jewish serial child murderers
• There is a secret World Government run by a panel of twelve particularly dastardly Jews: Peter Jennings, Bill Gates, Tony LaRussa, Cokie Roberts, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Margaret Thatcher, Francois Le Pen, Bashir Assad, Victoria Beckham, Latin Heartthrob Gerardo, Ciccolina, and Yao Ming
• Jews are so sneaky that even a baby Jew can trick an unsuspecting Aryan into trading his birthright for a bowl of porridge*
  
• The reason Jews have big noses? So they can smell money**

* That, I believe, was the first Bible joke I've ever written. Can you place the source?
** The alternate answer, and the punchline of which I'm proudest, is, "Because they're ostentatious!"

Bonus Thing

I already wrote a long entry (see below), but since I wrote it early, I figured I'd throw in a bonus for those who read it early. It's a link to a sporadically brilliant, four year old, 15 minute pilot for a show that was rejected by USA, but is now going to air on MTV2 (renamed as "Wonder Showzen" and presumably tweaked) beginning Friday, and I love it more than I love Jesus, who I love very much. Oh, also, my birthday's coming up on the Ides, so you might want to think about getting those presents in the mail. Thank you.

A Life on the Road (pt. 2)

(Continued from the previous entry.)

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12:00 PM - I am instructed to drop off the package I am holding for West LA. I pop onto the molasses-slow, northbound 405 freeway to the westbound Wilshire exit and make the drop within a half hour. I am then told to drop off the package I am holding for Santa Monica.

1:00 - After a few minutes of driving in the wrong direction thanks to a misleading street sign and a poorly timed phone call from my newly out-of-work father, I find the middle-class block for which I've been searching. It takes me another minute (during which I try in vain to tell my father that I'll call him back when I'm less preoccupied) to find the specific house, as this is one of those blocks in which the residents seemingly go to great pains to either not display street numbers or post them in obscure places. Eventually, though, I ascertain that I am indeed at number 2910, and I ring the doorbell. It is apparently not just a doorbell, but a magic button that unlocks a veritable Pandora's Box of unpleasant sounds from within the house; I can discern several dogs, a baby or two, and something that sounds like a cross between a gibbon and a giant turkey. After another minute of waiting, the noise dwindles down to just one baby's crying, and a Mexican woman who is either the maid, the nanny, or a money-saving combination of the two, opens the door and drowsily signs for the package. I return to my car and call base. I am instructed to "call clear" (i.e., let them know that I have nothing left to deliver). This means another half-hour drive, this time up to the toney suburb of Pacific Palisades.

1:30 - Nodding vague hellos to the unresponsive Mexican gardeners I pass on my way from where I've parked my car on the street, I walk up the small driveway to what is probably a below average home for this neighborhood. Through the large, uncurtained windows on both sides of the front door, I can see the house is fairly crammed with the sort of gaudy furnishings I saw the time I made a delivery to "The Anna Nicole Show" star, Bobby Trendy's store. After a moment, a Mexican man in a filthy, garish t-shirt promoting some sort of auto racing event answers the door and signs for the package. I walk back down the driveway and, instead of turning right and going to my car, I turn left and head for the port-a-potty on the street in front of the neighboring house and avail myself of its pragmatic charms, trying my damnedest to neither breathe nor look at the plastic toilet, which is half-filled with soiled toilet paper. I return to my car and try to call base, but I can't get any reception, so I make my way down to Sunset Boulevard and try again. I am advised to standby. I park, and a couple minutes later I am told to go to nearby Brentwood. To back up this request, I am immediately sent four messages. It takes me a few minutes to transcribe everything, but I do not feel rushed for time, as three of the pickups are within a three block stretch of San Vincente Boulevard, and the fourth is not terribly far from them.

2:05 - I have made my first two pickups without any real difficulty, although I am briefly distracted when my friend Flash calls, bored at the airport. But now, even though I could have easily left my car in the lot of the neighboring building where I'd just made the second pickup, I am circling the block frantically, praying for a space. Every right turn I try to make, there are rich pedestrians moseying through crosswalks, talking on their cell phones and looking like they have not a care in the world (at least, not a care for us working stiffs). Finally, I luck into a space with four minutes left on the meter and run as fast as my furry little legs will take me. As I exit the elevator and head down the hall toward the law firm I currently seek, I see a middle-aged couple walking in my direction. With preternatural instinct, the man lowers his head to avoid eye contact, but I can still tell that it is Dustin Hoffman. The woman, who I take to be his wife, offers me a warm, pleasant smile, as if to say, "Yes, that really IS Dustin Hoffman." I smile back, moving all the while. I enter the office, and an ugly young receptionist with a sour demeanor and a wart on her face hands me an envelope, staring back down at her computer before I can offer up even the briefest of pleasantries. Who does she think she is--Dustin Hoffman?

2:50 - In the thirty-five minutes that have just passed, I've driven through obscene traffic down to Olympic Boulevard, made the third pickup, been paged again, and driven back up to Wilshire for another pickup, this one a piece of cake (which term I use idiomatically--what I actually went there to pick up was a manila envelope, presumably with something in it. I only WISH I went there to pick up some cake!).

3:10 - Still on Wilshire Boulevard, this time at the Northern Trust Bank, where I find myself on an almost daily basis. All things considered, it's not a bad place to make deliveries, as there is a handy loading zone in which I can park, I don't have to sign anything or show ID to get let in, and it is usually very quick. The problem, though, is the bank personnel. The woman at the reception desk is attractive, but not attractive enough to get away with being as cold as she is. The first couple times I went there and did not know precisely what I was doing, she'd point vaguely toward somewhere behind her station and tell me to go "there." Not knowing where "there" was and unable to decipher her cryptic, lazy gesture, I'd wander around somewhat aimlessly before a thick-set, older woman would growl, "here," sign the manifest, and get back to work without so much as a smile or a word of thanks. This time, though, I knew where I was going, so I walked past the receptionist without acknowledging her and went to the bitchy, middle-aged woman's desk. She was immersed in work and did not look up at me. "I'll sign for that," said a young man a couple desks over. I thanked him, and he thanked me, but very quietly and very unsure of himself. "He must be new," I thought. ""In a month or two he'll be reduced to simple grunts like the rest of them." On the way out, the receptionist uttered a quiet goodbye to me as I passed her, but I pretended not to hear. As I drove out of the loading area, I noticed with pride a flattened paper cup that only the day before had been filled to near the top with my hot urine (there's not a lot of time for bathroom breaks in the courier game).

3:30 - Next I made an unprecedented second stop at the base (it's rare that I go there at all), this time to deliver one of the packages I'd picked up, and to pick up another one. And, it turned out, to drop off something else I'd picked up that was to be delivered somewhere fairly far away from the other places I still needed to go that day (I wish they'd told me before I came up the first time, as I was parked a black away and had to run back down to my car for it). As I'd still had nothing to eat or drink all day (except for the few remaining, hot ounces left in the complimentary bottle of Santa Anita Racetrack water--which, I understand, is filtered through genuine swatches of Eddie Arcaro's old riding silks--I'd been given the day before), I was a bit wobbly on my feet by the time I was through there, enough to compel one of the dispatchers to ask if I was all right. This, I felt, was justification enough for me to quickly stop at the liquor store on the corner for a bottle of Coke. How I do spoil myself!

4:10 - Forty minutes and three deliveries later, I am done. The only noteworthy thing about these last three stops (a cosmetic surgeon's office and two law firms with a combined seven-hundred names in their letterheads) was that at the second law firm (the one in Beverly Hills), the receptionist was as stunningly attractive a woman as any I've ever seen, with such alluring and well-displayed cleavage that I had to jam a pen a quarter inch into my thigh to keep from drooling directly into it (her cleavage, not my new thigh wound). She also had--if her signature on the manifest is anything to go by--the handwriting of a six-year-old. Still, it's nice to see an attractive girl can catch a break in this town. As for me, well... we make our own luck, don't we?