dada

dada could be a harsh critic of my work

         Dada was my favorite, in the way that a child might be their parents favorite.  Not that they love one child more than the others but due to some experience they shared together which was special or unique they have memories that will cause them to to be closer.  His life ended tragically the day after Easter in 2008.

Not long after finishing our Junior year in college, Jaime and I kicked around the idea of getting a cat.  We called the Bellevue animal shelter and went down “just to take a look.”  The number of kittens was limited but there was one we locked eyes with.  He was completely black and sitting way in the back of his cage so that all you could see were his little yellow eyes.  He was scrawny, clearly the runt of the litter which is what drew Jaime and I to him.

We took him home named him Esteban and watched him grow.  We were the typical doting parents who loved him and worried about him like we were raising the Buddha reincarnate.  Much to Jaime’s joy Esteban loved to cuddle and often I could find Jaime asleep in bed her body curled around a black fuzzy ball.  Sadly just over a year later Jaime and I found ourselves driving to the Eastlake Veterinary Clinic with Esteban wrapped tightly in a blanket for the final time.  

For months Esteban had been having difficulty passing his stool.  You could see it lodged in his rectum as he would slink into his litter box trying to pass it, but nothing would happen.  Eventually the build up would become so great that he would crawl around the apartment crying out in pain.  The vet diagnosed him with mega colon a condition which caused a part of the intestine to become enlarged and the stool gathers until it becomes impassable.  We would take him to the clinic where they would give him an enema and keep him overnight for a fluid treatment.  On one such visit they took X-rays of him and showed them to us.  In the black and white image you could see that he was literally full of shit.

They gave us some medicine which made the stool softer and passable.  Because it was a compound it had to be specially made for us and a thirty day supply cost us $60.  The medicine worked, unfortunately it made his stool so soft that it would literally leak out of him.  We were finding little puddles of gray matter in corners of the apartment.  (Gray because of the special food we had to feed him.)

We had to lower the dosage which unfortunately required us to go back for more enemas at about $300 a visit.  Our last resort was an expensive surgery where they would remove part of his colon, even still we were not guaranteed the procedure would be effective.  There was a slim chance that the whole thing might just clear up on its own.  We decided to keep him on the medicine and hope for the best.

On a cold week that following October we noticed a lack of stool in his litter box and we waited for the impending pain.  Jaime and I had never discussed euthanasia but I think we both had it in the back of our minds.  After about a week without a bowel movement Jaime and I knew we needed to make a decision.  We could not afford another enema nor could we afford the needed surgery.  Silently we decided to spend a quiet weekend at home with him watching TV and trying to forget anything was wrong.  By Monday morning he was howling in pain and we reluctantly wrapped him in his favorite blanket and drove to the Vet where they would put him to sleep.  Neither of us had ever made a decision like that before, part of me still feels that I was a bad owner because I did not try for the surgery.  We bawled throughout the entire process, and held him in our arms while they injected him with a fatal dose of Phenobarbital.  There is a strange moment one that I think of often, where while holding him I tried to understand when he ceased to be Esteban and instead became just an empty dead vessel.  We held his dead body until we realized it was time to move on, there is no harder feeling than watching a technician take away your cats body knowing you will never see him again.  We didn’t have enough money to cover the euthanasia so the Vet graciously allowed us to make payments.

A week later unable to fill the void in our seemingly empty apartment we went back to the Bellevue animal shelter “just to look” and adopted a small black and white kitten we named Addison.  She was the opposite of Esteban in almost every way, bright and bubbly she was mischievous and less likely to cuddle with you than nibble on your hand.  Now we were the parents who’d lost a child and were constantly afraid of something happening to her.  In the first week we had her we lost in the apartment three times and brought Jaime to tears each time.

That Christmas we began watching a cat for a friend who was having a difficult time.  Riley was a big cat who had a heart of gold, one of the sweetest you would ever meet.  He arrived at our apartment covered in flees and filled with worms.  I remember giving him a bath and watching as blood swirled down the drain.  He had a patch of fur right above his tail that he’d scratched bald and bloody.

Within a month the flees and worms were gone and the bald patch was covered in hair.  He became as much of the family as Addison and they spend most of their days cuddling together in the sun by the window.  Riley’s owner rarely came to visit him and two weeks before  our move to Los Angeles we debated what to do with him.  We wanted to take him with, not only because we’d become attached to him but also Addison was attached to him.

In an effort to save our friendship with Riley’s owner we tried to be as diplomatic as possible.  We told her that we would be leaving in two weeks and that we would be more than happy to keep Riley.  She took deep offense to our offer to took Riley back, I hoped not to become flea ridden and full of worms again.  I still truly believe that we should have kept Riley and dealt with the consequences later.

When we arrived in LA Addison began wandering the apartment at night holding a toy in her mouth and howling.  It was clear that she missed Riley and we did as well, it felt like he had died and all three of us were trying to get over the loss of him.  On our second week in the apartment Addison slipped out the door unnoticed, it took us two hours before we realized she was missing.  We started looking for her and when we concluded that she must have gone outside Jaime began to loose it going from door to door in the building crying big wet tears of loss.  After an hour of scouring the building and thinking that she was gone for good, Jaime found her tucked up inside an old broken Coke machine.  Afterwards we started talking about getting another cat to keep Addison company, deciding to wait till after Christmas.

On a mid December Sunday Jaime and I were driving up to Target, on our way we passed the Burbank animal shelter which was advertising a “Kitty fair.”  We vowed not to stop, but on our way back we agreed to stop by and “Just look.”

The room with the fair was held in a room separate from the cages, the kittens were kept in little pens.  People were taking turns holding them deciding if they were a good fit.  At first it seemed we would in fact just look but Jaime spied this small black and white cat with long disheveled hair.  Jaime held him for a while until she handed him to me while she talked to the staff about adoption procedures.  As I held him he proceeded to fall asleep in my arms purring like a tiny motor.  I remember thinking that this is what it must feel like for parents holding their newborn child.  Here was this kitten who didn’t even know me trusting me completely.  By the time Jaime came back there was no doubt we were adopting him.

We couldn’t take him home that night because he hadn’t been spayed yet, they told us we could pick him up the following Tuesday after the operation.  On the drive home we discussed names, concluding that he was a serious cat and thus needed a serious name.  Something distinguished, perhaps something after a distinguished writer.  I threw in Spalding, Kafka, and Mingus.  Jaime threw in Faulkner, Plath, and Hemingway.  None seemed to work until (and I don’t remember how) we settled on Dada.  Named for the 20th Century art movement, we chose it mainly because the Dada movement was started by serious artists who took themselves seriously but seemed to produce humorous results.

The night we brought him home we were unsure how Addison would react.  She’d never been around a kitten before and we hoped that she wouldn’t try to eat him.  Neither Jaime or I are ones to slowly introduce animals into a new environment so we just plopped Dada down in the middle of the living room/kitchen/dining room.  There was much admiring from a distance by Addison but when she started to get closer Dada began purring.  So loud we could hear him from across the room.

By the end of the week he and Addison were best friends.  Dada loved to cuddle with everyone all the time.  He was like a little dog who would follow you from room to room just wanting to be near you and know what you were doing, then cuddle up with you.  What I remember best about him was his love for the computer, he would spend hours just watching me type.  Occasionally batting at the cursor as it flew across the screen, and when he got tired he would lay down next to it and drift off to sleep.

Last Sunday while organizing paperwork in our filing cabinet deciding what should be recycled and what needed to be kept, Jaime came across Dada’s paperwork from the Burbank animal shelter.  I looked it over trying to remember what it was like to be that age, what it was like to live in that apartment in California, what it was like to have Dada.  I tried to remember what Dada was like, what he used to do, but all I could remember was sitting at my computer having a spectator basking in the bluish glow of the laptop.  We took the papers, then filed them away with the other animals paperwork.

the first year is the hardest part ii

this is a thanksgiving dinner for two

            Often I would meet people in LA who seemed to be making their dreams happen,  be it acting, directing, writing or working in some capacity for a production company.  I would stare at them like they were a mechanic working on a car engine or a complex math problem, something I wanted desperately to understand but could not begin to wrap my mind around.  I was curious to know just how they seemed to be making this happen, nine times out of ten what I would find out is that they were one of three kinds of people.  A.  There was family money which was paying for their living expenses leaving them with wide open days to audition.  B. They had a relative involved in the business who was advancing their career regardless of their talent.  C. While appearing to do well for themselves they were actually quietly drowning in debt which will eventually swallow them up.  That one out of ten is a real rarity, yet this is the type of person whose story the media glorifies over and over.  Everyone else that isn’t one of those ten is just hustling, trying to make it.

The week before Thanksgiving Jaime applied to a stylish new restaurant in the heart of Hollywood, called Citizen Smith.  This was one of those restaurants where it was you along with 1000 other actors/writers/directors hopefully applying for 5-10 jobs.  It seemed like a long shot but when the interview went well things were looking promising.  The initial interview was designed to weed out the completely incompetent, so Jaime was called back for a second interview.

The writers strike was still going strong, we had to dodge protests to get to the restaurant.  Despite this Hollywood shutdown Jaime and I traveled deep into the Valley to an agency which claimed to help actors get agents.  This is basically like going to someone who promises to find you a temp agency, not a job, your paying them to talk to agents who may or may not be interested in you.  Best case scenario is that you sign with a talent agent who then still will need to find you an audition.  At the interview which lasted two hours they told Jaime something we would hear a lot over the next year and a half.  “Your great!  But with the writers strike there’s just no work.”  Even reality shows employ writers and so many of them had stopped production as well.

Trying to find a balance between accessing auditions, getting jobs and having actual consistent work which pays you enough to cover your bills is the biggest hurdle to overcome by far, harder than any audition you will go on.  Most former actors I met left acting exactly for that reason, they were busily working to find that balance when they landed a good day job and never went back.  You’ll eventually learn what your truly passionate about (even if it takes you 15 years) you’ll either stay passionate about acting or find something else you enjoy doing just as much.  There’s no shame in that it’s just the reality of the business, many great actors have found jobs they were much happier at.

Jaime wasn’t anywhere near that point, she was still full of hope and willing to make huge sacrifices to make her dream happen.  During her “call back” interview with Citizen Smith Jaime really hit it off with the manager and his suggestion to her was to come back that night and have dinner, get a feel for the restaurant.  Citizen Smith is a swanky place and there is nothing cheap about it, but in the hopes of getting Jaime this job we sucked it up opened our wallets and went in for a few drinks and appetizers. 

Like most of the trendy Hollywood clubs and restaurants, Citizen Smith looked like nothing from the outside but on the inside it was a sight to behold.  The design could best be described as the offspring of an Andy Warhol painting and a TexMex family restaurant.  If there was ever a place that screamed out “HOLLYWOOD” this was it.  The seat cushions were cow hide and the tables looked like (and for all I know were,” enormous slabs of sliced Redwood trees.

It was early about 6:30 and Hollywood doesn’t come to life until 9:00 or 10:00 so the place was mostly empty.  At the bar we ordered two $15 drinks a $20 Macaroni and Cheese and something else which I found so memorable that I cannot remember it now.  We watched Easy Rider on the t.v. and when are bill came the total was $60, which for two kids with no income was pretty steep.  We never met with the manager and I just hoped that somehow he would know that we’d been there.

On our way back to our car we saw the most adorable black and white cat sitting lonely in an empty parking lot.  It was the spitting image of our cat at home only about fifteen pounds lighter.  He sat looking mournfully as if asking me to come and take him home.  We watched each other for a long moment and I crouched low and slowly moved to pick him up.  I’m sure he was covered in flees and his intestines were full of worms but I just had to see how close he would let me get to him.  I was right on top of him when he darted away and under a car on the opposite side of the street.

The following Thursday was Thanksgiving, our first away from friends and family.  Often the week before a big holiday you would run into someone you knew and start talking.  The subject of Thanksgiving would be brought up and they would mention some orphan dinner that was taking place at a friends place or a friend of a friends place.  You would either show up with a dish or you find an excuse to decline.

Since the only two people we knew were going to be out of town we held our own Thanksgiving dinner in our apartment.  We got dressed up and spent the day watching t.v. and snacking as if company was going to arrive any minute.  For dinner we made enough food to feed eight people and then preceded to make ourselves sick trying to eat it all.  It was lonely knowing that 1,100 miles away our families were laughing, catching up, and getting full together without us.  On the other hand doing this all by ourselves made me feel more like an adult then I’d ever felt before.

The following week Jaime waited patiently to hear from Citizen Smith, after two days she gave them a call, only to be told that they were going to need another week to decide.  This was their way of saying “sorry we didn’t hire you.”

It was upsetting for her not to get the job but infuriating that we went down there and dropped $60 on mediocre drinks and appetizers with money we really didn’t have.

By the end of the week I got a call from Borders bookstore to schedule an interview.  I had applied for it two weeks previous and had forgotten all about it.  I would be going in Monday for an interview at their Century City store.  

To be continued...

my favorite corporate juggernaut

less known original flag design 

I am always skeptical of someone who says that their favorite... whatever is some kind of large corporate chain.  You’ve probably heard things like this before, “Applebee’s mozzarella sticks are my favorite.”  Some times you’ll hear it about an entire restaurant like “Outback steakhouse is my favorite steakhouse.”  Today I heard many “Borders was my favorite bookstore.”  Though these statements may be made with genuine sincerity, I just don’t see how something so readily available to almost anyone in the country could fill such a special place in your heart as to be called your “favorite.”

Yesterday we got news that Borders, my former employer filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy, a move that I had been expecting for over a year.  They also announced the closure of 200 of its stores including the store I worked for in Century City, Los Angeles.  I saw immediate public outcry from people lamenting the their soon to be closed local Borders bookstore.

For those who live in locations where the nearest bookstore to them is Borders I do feel sorry as I believe that any bookstore is better than none at all.  Though I love Amazon.com, their infinite selection and great prices cannot make up for the experience of browsing the bookshelves in a physical store.  Those who will lose that opportunity are the people that will really feel the loss if their store closes, I noticed that most of this outcry was not from them.  It was coming from people who lived in a metropolis with a Barns and Noble or even better an independent neighborhood bookstore.  LA is blessed to have a few pretty good ones like Book soup in West Hollywood or Skylight books in Los Feliz.  Similarly in most cities you can find bookstores like this, they may not be as easy to find as Borders but they are far more of an enjoyable experience to visit.

These independent bookstores have the advantage that they really are a part of your community from the customers up to the owner.  Any of these national companies claiming to be your neighborhood anything are kidding themselves.  How could a large chain possibly understand what it means to be the provider of a community?  Everything from the products they carry to the store layout and furniture down to the rehearsed lines that you are greeted with by the employees are dictated by a corporate office hundreds or thousands of miles away.  That they have any understanding of your neighborhood is absurd.

Though they will not carry as many titles, the independent bookstore will cater more to your neighborhoods taste.  It may also carry some harder to find titles in more customized categories.  For example one of my favorite “independents” Skylight books, while not a big store with a vast selection they understood their neighborhood.  They carried most of the popular books, the best sellers but they also carried some less know books by smaller publishers and lesser known authors, they also had a book lovers wet dream.  A well thought out wall dedicated to McSweeny’s publishing.  This included all in print versions of McSweeny’s, the Believer, and any of their other published books.  The staff was much more knowledgable about the books in the store and could make thoughtful recommendations carrying on unrehearsed conversations about literature.

You can’t blame the employees of the big chains for not living up to the expectations of those working at smaller independents. They don’t have any investment in the company or how it performs nor does the company place any substantial investment in the employees.  There was a time when you applied for jobs based on your interests, if you love books you applied to bookstores, if you love electronics you applied to electronics stores, if you loved arts and crafts you applies to art stores.  When was the last time you went into a Michaels craft store asked for something and found that the employee was knowledgable and could lead you right to what you were looking for?  That’s never happened for me, they always look at me glassy eyed like I’d asked them where they keep the holy grail, we wonder down aisles of the store until we arrive at items completely different from those I was looking for.  If you go to a Blockbusters and expect them to have a vast working knowledge of films then you are expecting far too much from them.

These employees didn’t take those jobs because they were genuinely interested in the products being sold they took them because the needed a job.  I worked for a Borders and I loved books, I worked with others who also had a love for books, but in today’s economy that is the exception.  These chain stores pretend that they are just a bigger version of your local independent they even train their employees to act like they work for one, but by their very nature they just don’t have the ability to be so.

This is not to say that I don’t shop at these Corporate Machines, because I do.  I buy most of my books either used or through Amazon.  These items however are less special, not different but the experience of buying them was different.  I could probably go through my bookshelf and point out all the books I bought from independent booksellers tell you which specific store and what it was like to make that purchase.  These books are special to me because the entire experience of finding them on the shelves and buying them was much more personal.  I’ve never had a meal at chain restaurant that beat out a meal from a non-chain.  I love going to a local True Value hardware over a Home Depot, not only because the employees at Home Depot are just as bad as those at Michael’s but also because I get the sense that the employees really use the tools being sold and have real opinions about what does the best work for the job.  If you’ve ever been to an independent bookstore over a PetCo or Petsmart you understand how much more enjoyable buying dog food can be.

I understand if you like to stop by a Borders to kill time or occasionally buy a book on sale, if you enjoy Applebees mozzarella sticks, or go to Petco for kitty litter because its close by.  To go so far as to say that any of these are your favorite means that either you’ve never experience the pleasures of an independent store or you’ve just been brainwashed by the corporate juggernaut.  Now that many will be losing their local Borders, this will hopefully give neighborhood bookstores a chance to thrive and show people how truly special it can be to shop at a store like that.

the first year is the hardest part i

LA riots.  need i say more?

One thing that I heard over and over my first year in Los Angeles when things were difficult was “Don’t worry, the first year is the hardest.  The second year gets better.”  I admit that I am guilty of saying this to others in their first year.  We say this like a Junior or a Senior in college might say to an in coming freshmen.  The truth about that saying no matter how true it is (because it’s totally true) is that when you first move to LA the last thing you want to hear from someone is that this first year is going to be shit, you begin to hear it so often that you tell yourself this and it becomes your mantra.  Then before you know it that saying has become a self fulfilling prophecy.

I don’t know if there’s ever a good time to move to Los Angeles but if there is, late 2007 definitely was not it.  I would go so far as to say that the only worse times to move there would have been the 1992 riots or the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

The week we arrived the big news story was the impending writers strike.  Everyone openly said that an agreement could be reached without striking but deep down in the center of the brain which holds all our pessimism we knew that there was going to be a strike.  As we all know it couldn’t be avoided and it lasted from November 5th to February 12th, during which production shutdown on just about everything.  Add that on top of an economy which was going down like the Titanic, and there were Jaime and I walking the decks looking for jobs.

Good Luck!

Due to the strike thousands of production crew members whose productions had been shut down were suddenly out of a job, then there were thousands more extras, stand ins and background actors who were also looking for work.  Last you can add to that rapidly shrinking pool all the other already out of work actors.  Available work went from an olympic size swimming pool to one of those little inflatable ones for children, with people spilling out the edges.

Since I didn’t have the luxury of being picky I will willing to take just about anything to get a paycheck.  The only incoming cash flow we had was the balance of my two week vacation from my previous job which when it arrived would be about $1000.  There was $150 which I would be receiving thanks to the CDC who was in town and randomly selected me to fill out two questionnaires and take a physical examination. (Our time in LA was full of these little money making surprises which often managed to keep us afloat.) Then there was Jaime’s unemployment which was about $200 a week.  Aside from those we were just burning through money.

By the end of the first week of job hunting I’d turned up empty but Jaime had managed to get two interviews, both restaurants both on Melrose.  A lesson for anyone in LA seeking a waiting job is, if you apply for it and don’t have to fight off 150 or so other aspiring actors then there is something wrong with the restaurant.

One day while driving through Hollywood I passed Beso, a trendy restaurant owned  by a desperate housewife.  The previous day I’d seen a “now hiring” sign up outside the main entrance.  Now there was a line of people out the door and around the corner.  Easily 200 people strong all vying for the same 10 jobs.  This was just their first day of hiring.

In LA applying for restaurant jobs is akin to going in and auditioning for a casting cattle call.  Each restaurant is catering to a specific audience and wants their wait staff to look the part.  Just like an acting audition you’ll probably find yourself in line with dozens if not hundreds of people who look just like you.  Hipsters, models, rockers, hippies you name it, just like acting you’re going to be typecast and they will be hiring based on that role.

The first of the two restaurants Jaime had an interview with was one of those restaurant/club/bar places where they try to do a little bit of everything.  He was some kind of Eastern European dissent and though I never saw him I imagined a stocky guy with balding hair that he hid by shaving it completely.  He wore a sports coat with a brightly colored shirt unbuttoned down to his sternum, he had thick Brillo pad hair emerging from beneath that shirt and gold around his neck and on his fingers.  Jaime didn’t trust him and so this was the image I conjured of him.  Jaime’s second interview was for an upscale Cuban fusion restaurant called Xiomara run by a fiery Cuban woman named... Xiomara.  She ended up getting both jobs and chose Xiomara because she didn’t trust the other guy and because they wanted her to start that evening.

I was relaxing at home thinking the dominos were falling into place and that everything was going to be okay, when I got a cryptic text from Jaime saying “I don’t know about this.”  This was bad news because if a situation is a little bit dicy Jaime is always able find the positive within and work through it.  On the flip side if something is truly dicy  I will get texts like this one which amounted to her waving the white flag of surrender.  I began to worry that this job was not going to work out.

When she got home she explained her evening.  If you’ve ever been a waiter (I have not, though I have lived with one for seven years.) then you know that it is very unusual to start the night you are hired, it is even more unusual to start serving on your first night without any training or knowledge of the menu.  Her first table was a group of B-List actors and when one of them asked her what came with the “yucca blah, blah, blah,” she was forced to feign ignorance.  Asking for help was useless because the other employees hardly spoke any english.

I felt horrible for her being placed in such a tough situation.  What we needed most of all was money and when you need money you don’t quit jobs, but this job was going to be nothing but problems and offer little in compensation.  Jaime was scheduled for a double shift the following day and after completing the first half I picked her up and she told Xiomara that she would not be making her evening shift.  Just like that she was jobless again.

I on the other hand had an interview with H&M for a customer service position in their store opening at Hollywood and Highland.  My interview was held in the outdoor food court atop the Beverly Center which... you just have to go to the Beverly Center to understand it.  The following week I was called in for a second group interview at their LA offices on Sunset in West Hollywood, which seemed a little backwards to me.  Prior to the interview they had us sign a form stating that I would not reveal what activities actually occur within the group interviews.  Since I was already sued by a national corporation last year I will refrain from mentioning the details here.  I will say that it involves group oriented activities too childish and complicated to explain.  If you find that you’re really that interested to know what H&M feels that you need to be able to do in order to sell cheap clothes for  minimum wage, then you can buy me a beer and I’ll tell you.

I left the interview without ever hearing from them again which I really wasn’t too broken up over.  I wanted a job but after that interview I could feel that I really, really didn’t want that job.  After three weeks four interviews and one job later, we were both still jobless and getting more desperate.

I gave up a difficult but well paying job in Seattle when we moved.  A job which is nearly always in demand.  A job I easily could have transferred to Los Angeles.  Instead I thought I would start over at something new, I was just hoping that I hadn’t shot myself in the foot.

To be continued....

open letter of apology to my future children

i expect my children will often give me the finger

Dear [insert children(s) name(s) here]

First I would like to apologize for the high cost of energy, that 50% of your income  goes directly to your energy bills is probably my fault.  In my defense those energy saver light bulbs are terrible and make everything look like an office building, the only reasonable thing to do was to replace all the lightbulbs in my house with halogen bulbs, even though they suck more energy then those ladyboys down on Santa Monica boulevard.  (Santa Monica boulevard was a street in Los Angeles a city in California before it sank into the Pacific ocean.)

I would also like to apologize for a shortage of water.  Contrary to what President Bristol Palin would have you believe, we were warned of an up coming world water shortage and instead of preparing, I continued to run the sink while brushing my teeth and washing the dishes, I also needed let the shower run for three minutes in order to get the perfect temperature.

Unfortunately we were also warned that we would eventually run out of oil.  It was a huge surprise to us there really wasn’t any oil in ANWR and we destroyed the landscape looking for it.  It was very beautiful (you can find pictures on wikipedia).  I’m also sorry about the beaches, apparently offshore oil rigs were not as safe as we thought.  If you ever got the chance to ride in a gas guzzling car you would understand why oil was so difficult to give up.

Finally, I’m sorry that you won’t get to eat at McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, Applebee’s, KFC, or any other fast food or national chain restaurant.  I know that you probably see all of your friends enjoying Big Macs, and Double Downs and I’m sure they taste delicious.  During our senior year of college we gave up eating at those restaurants.  They may be quick, efficient, and seem delicious but the dark side to these companies is that their food is horrible for you, horrible for the people who work for it, horrible for the food industry, horrible for the environment, and while it may be tasty at first not long after you finish that seemingly delicious burger you will start to feel sick about yourself and in your stomach.

I also should apologize for not keeping processed food in the house.  No Kraft mac n cheese and definitely not with little ball park hot dogs chopped up in it.  No Oreo’s or TV dinners, pop only on special occasions and no juice boxes or Capri Sun.  Though you will be bombarded with hundreds of commercials for sugary cereals like Lucky Charms you won’t be getting any.  Prepare yourself for brown rice, whole wheat pasta and organic granola only.

What you will get an abundance of is fresh vegetables, fruits, legumes and roots (locally grown only.)  At this point I should also apologize for you having to spend every Saturday morning watching your parents swoon over organic eggs and vegetables at the farmers market like kids in a candy store.  You may also be required to log some time in your own garden tending to whatever can be grown in the back yard.

Why am I so guilty about raising you as a healthier better person?  Because in my youth I gorged myself with every one of those indulgences.  I could eat an entire bag of Cheetos in an afternoon and in my college years was known to drink a six pack of Dr. Pepper and fix myself a plate of bacon cooked in the microwave.  I ate McDonald’s and my favorite fast food dish was the Burger King chicken sandwich.  As I got older I became more conscious of not only what this food could do but what this food stood for.  I educated myself on the history of food and farmers and drastically changed my lifestyle.  I began reading the labels on food packages not looking for nutritional information but checking the ingredients.  

There was a time when I ate processed and fast food, had every cable channel available and wanted to be rich and famous in a big house with tons of toys.  Now my dream is to move to Maui and live in a small house with a poly cultural self sustaining farm.  I’m truly sorry your parents became hippies, it happened long before you were born and was in no way decided upon to make your life more difficult.

Love,

your caring parents.

new city

self explanatory

       Having never moved to a new city before I wasn’t exactly prepared for this moment, the moment that occurs right after you’ve unpacked all your boxes and put things in their proper place.  The moment after your new home begins to feel like your only home.  The moment that you realize you have nothing left to do but to introduce yourself to this new city.  

There is a picture that sums up how I best remember those first days in our new home, I was on the phone with my mom telling her about our new apartment and walking from room to room taking detailed pictures like I was a crime scene photographer.  While taking a picture of the living room I caught Jaime asleep on the couch a blanket covering her.  The reason I remember this image most from those days was because that was exactly how I felt, tired and overwhelmed.  We hardly knew Los Angeles and on more than a few occasions I would lay down and drift off to sleep and dream of being somewhere more recognizable and comfortable.  When you don’t know what your next move is sleeping is as good a way as any to put off making it.

We were officially settled in by Friday the week we arrived and though we would soon be burning through what little money we had we decided to give ourselves the weekend to just relax without looking for jobs.  This gave us time to try and get ourselves acquainted with the city, learn the layout a bit.  If you’ve been to LA then you know that knowing the layout of the city is practically impossible as it essentially is one massive urban sprawl.  Not like New York with tall skye scrapers and twelve story apartment buildings contained in a small space or like Seattle where there are simple land marks to help orient yourself.

As our luck would have it the only two people we knew in the city were out of town the week we arrived, coincidentally in the Northwest.  It was up to us to get our bearings on our own.  We started small, with a trip to the Gelson’s kitty corner from our building.  At first we were excited to live so close to a grocery store but once we went inside we realized that we were living next to a grocery store priced like it was inside of an airport.  People often would ask us, what is Gelson’s like, and I would say “well it’s like any other grocery store accept add $2 to everything, so the celebrities can shop there.”

Our next big adventure out was to a Hollywood Bed Bath and Beyond and though it was less than two miles away we had to google map it and spent fifteen minutes looking for it.  By the time we got there I felt like an Alzheimer’s patient who didn’t really know where they were, how they got there or how to get home.  In fact we were so close to our apartment we could almost see it from the store.  By the time we arrived home there was a surprise, our first piece of mail.  It was a note from my mom noting that she was sending us our first piece of mail.

Aside from the grocery store we also lived across the street from what is called “Franklin Village” which is home to a series of restaurants, a very expensive cafe, a pet store, clothing store, used bookstore, wine store, a video Hut (more on that later) and finally the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater.  That first month we spent nearly every night there, the shows were cheap (about $5 a person) and there was guaranteed to be someone that we admired performing that evening.  It was like our chance for a cheap night on the town, we would even get a little dressed up to go stand outside the theater to get our hands stamped and watch an hour to two hours of raunchy comedy.  We didn’t miss one show in particular which was performed every Wednesday evening, until one night when the girl in the box office recognized us.  This may not seem like a big deal however there was another guy who saw every show the theater performed, we’re talking 3-4 different shows a night 7 nights a week, you could not walk by that place without seeing him first in line for the next show.  Clearly this guy had no life and when the box office girl recognized us I had this vision of becoming best friends with that guy waiting in line with him before every show and as we walked outside past that guy he stopped us.

“Hey do I know you?” He asked Jaime.  “Are you on a TV show?”

This wasn’t unreasonable to ask because as I was well becoming aware, if you think someone is famous they probably are.  In this case however he was wrong he recognized us not because we were famous but because we’d been going to the same shows for the last fucking week.  That was the moment that made me realize that perhaps we needed to diversify our entertainment options.

This is when we discovered Video Hut.  If you haven’t been to one they’re mostly extinct now but imagine your local video store before Blockbuster and Hollywood video took over the brick and mortar video rental business.  Small spaces with small selections and movies released two years ago that were still on the “just in” shelf with sun faded covers.  You had to love it’s old world charm but the thing you really had to love is that they would rent out movies the week before they were released.  In order to keep ourselves from becoming that creepy fanatic waiting in line we supplemented our theater going with “officially”  unreleased movies from video hut.

Our first Sunday we spent the morning by venturing all the way out to IKEA in Burbank, a city which I had heard of many times but didn’t know what exactly could be found there.  As it turns out... nothing.  After we returned home we sat around trying to think of something not too far away or expensive that we could do.  Somehow we decided on driving over to the Kodak theater at the heart of Hollywood.  This was the only time in three years we ever spent time there just to visit.  The reason being that you only need to go once to realize that that place is a total nightmare.  A couple of boring landmarks, stores you could literally shop at in any mall in America, a bunch of assholes dressed up like super heros, shops full of stripper clothes, and a million disappointed tourists.  They came here expecting exciting photo opportunities but instead found something far more depressing.  A street of broken dreams.

Back at home we silently acknowledged to one another that we would not be returning there anytime soon.  In a few hours our grace period would be over, we would no longer be allowed to nap on the couch in the middle of the day without feeling guilty.  We could no longer ignore the balance of our shrinking checking account and live a carefree lifestyle.  We had to get jobs and become productive members of society.  I wasn’t stupid, I didn’t think that would come easy. 

It didn’t.

age 27

felix doesn't like the cold and neither do i

According to baseball writer Bill James, who I will call the Godfather of Sabermetrics, once noted that most baseball players will have their peak season at age 27.  I assume that he came to this conclusion by way of a spray chart, a line graph and complex mathematic formulas which make my head spin.  What it means is that according to James a player will have matured fully by age 27 and will post his best numbers.  Right now as I write this blog I am 27.  So.... yeah.

Last weekend my wife and I attended the Seattle Mariners fan fest at Safeco field where the main attraction for us was waiting in line two hours outside the stadium in the freezing cold and then another two hours standing inside on the relatively warm suite level waiting for an autograph from the reigning Cy Young award winner Felix Hernandez.  This May Felix will turn 25 and has already won the Cy Young, become the third fastest to reach 1,000 career strike outs, has been selected to the All Star team and in 2005 was the youngest pitcher to appear in the major leagues since 1984, not to mention that he is arguably the best pitcher in the American League.  He won’t even turn 27 for another two seasons.  It goes without saying that this kid makes me feel like a failure.

If Bill James’ assertions are to be believed then Felix has two more years in which to improve and grow his skill set, it also means that this is my peak year and that whatever it is that I do I will have my best year at.  I’m not entirely sure if that means that I will have my best year of writing plays that no one will ever read or if this will be my best year at being lost.  Neither option makes me feel terribly optimistic as I don’t want to have my best year at either of those.  Maybe right now as I sit here on my couch writing this I am having my peak season and if this is it, then I am thoroughly unimpressed.

When I was growing up I was convinced that I was a good enough baseball player and I too would one day have my chance to become a professional.  I would sit in my room and study their cards paying close attention to their ages and subtracting mine from theirs to see how much older than me they were.  I felt that the closer I was to their age the closer I got to being a major leaguer.  When I got older I still would check their ages but now I was much closer to them in age and my dreams had changed, now I was gauging how close to adulthood I was.  At 27 I still check the age of my favorite players but now I find that I am older than many of them and I can’t quite come to terms with the fact that I am an adult even through I don’t feel like it.

My wife and I had Felix sign our baseball and made sure to have him include “2010 Cy Young”.  I will take that ball and put it on a shelf next to memorabilia from stars much older but maybe less talented, stars who I looked up to.  I will spend my age 27 season looking at that ball and I will try to figure out what it is that I am supposed to be having my best season of.  Then again maybe Bill James with all his fancy numbers and mathematical formulas is wrong.  After all plenty of players have peaked in their mid 30’s and many other’s have peaked in their early 20’s only to flame out before they ever reach 27.

Then again there is the 27 club where Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain all died at 27, so I guess I could have that to look forward to also.  Given that proposition I suppose I will take peaking at writing plays that no one will read.

This could be my year, checkout my latest play not coming to a theater near you.