Today’s soundtrack: who loves the sun
Today at 4:02pm: receiving change in pesos



If you are a frog you should move to Rosarito, Mexico. Because there are many flies there for you to eat. Clusters of them, it would be like a banquet for you. You’d be whipping that tongue out like an amphibian ninja.

Flies were not the most outstanding thing about the place, but I needed something to kick this entry off and the frog thing just doesn’t go in the middle.

For me, the thing Mexico had in common with the transcendent state of nirvana was that they were both places I’d never been. Nirvana’s a long way from L.A. but Mexico’s just a couple hours. So we downloaded directions, tanked up the car and put Los Angeles in Los Rearview Mirror.

The drive was smooth sailing, two hours of pristine freeway. I was folded in with a pack of cars going slightly faster than the bulk of traffic. One of them was a white convertible driven by a blonde woman. She was in front of me so I couldn’t see her face. She had a ponytail, which I guess is a practical hairstyle when a windscreen is the only thing dividing you from 80 m.p.h. winds.

At one point I pulled alongside her, and was surprised to see a child sleeping in the passenger seat. We were all driving pretty fast. I imagined the woman and her child were fleeing something, headed for a future of gringo anonymity south of the border.

It started to rain. First a little, then a lot.

Next the skies opened up and it began pouring.

But the woman in the convertible wouldn’t stop to put the roof up. She kept going, like Thelma & Louise.

The entrance fee into Mexico was two dollars and thirty cents. Crazy when you consider getting into a club back home can cost like twenty bucks.

Actually, come to think of it, the $2.30 wasn’t just to get into the country, it was for the toll road. There are two ways to get down to Rosarito, the free road (libre) and the toll road (cuota). The toll road runs along the coast and supposedly has less traffic.

The second you cross the border, things change. It’s as if you were driving around in America looking at everything through a Photoshop filter, then they suddenly took the filter off. Everything is at a slightly lower resolution.

The signage fonts are different and almost look hand-lettered. The roads feel softer. Bridges and overpasses are clearly built with less concrete and inspire doubt. Some of the first residential structures you see are ramshackle corrugated-tin huts built into a hillside, and suffering the effects of gravity.

I hate seeing people living in conditions more...challenging than those in the ‘States, even as I realize that my sorrow at feeling this is a perverse luxury and perhaps something to be ashamed of.

Everyone goes to TJ (Tijuana) but we left it alone and headed for Rosarito, which is supposed to be a little calmer.

We’re there inside of thirty minutes. We pull off the highway to find a long, dusty main drag lined with Mexican commerce--shops, grocers, pharmacies, eateries. It’s low-rise and pretty flat. Rows of cars are parked along the sidewalk, at a diagonal.

I’m a little nervous ‘cause we’ve clearly got the nicest whip in town, but no one seems to give us a second glance. I’m glad we picked Rosarito though, because I don’t see any other tourists, or anything too touristy. Just dusty shops and dusty locals going about their business.

She and I pick an outdoor Taqueria. A dark wooden countertop with a row of handmade stools, each slightly different than the one next to it, all topped in red vinyl. You take a seat and the grill and a bunch of sizzling pots are right in front of you, along with all kinds of steaming foodstuffs.

They serve us Pepsi in thick, substantial, worn glass bottles with the Pepsi logo on them. They’re reused, like drinking glasses so you give them back when you’re done with them.

The best goddamn fish tacos I’ve ever had in my life. I’m adding these to the death row mealplan list.

Sometime in 1995 I was on a train from Paris to Madrid. Backpack on a rack above my head. Next to me in the compartment, a chatty Spaniard in his fifties, Manuel. Short, squat and dark. Looked more Mexican than Spanish but what the hell do I know.

Back then my Spanish was perfectly serviceable (date a boricua, you’ll learn fast) and when Manny found out I spoke a little, he started talking my ear off. It was a long trip and I didn’t mind. We’d just crossed from France into Spain. Several times he used this word I didn’t know, frontera, and through pantomime he managed to explain it to me: ‘Border.’ Aha, like ‘frontier.’

I got off the train with a handshake and a dozen new vocabulary words. But throughout Madrid, Barcelona and the subsequent ten years in New York, I never got to bust out ‘frontera’ in conversation, not once. It just doesn’t come up, ‘border.’

Fast-forward to 2005, I’m in a Mexican cigar shop picking up some stogies for pals back home. I buy six Mexican stogies, individually wrapped in cellophane. I ask the counterguy for a box, afraid they’ll get crushed in my bag.

He gives me a box for Cuban cigars. Cubans are illegal in the ‘States, of course, and I don’t wanna catch shit for it when I try to re-enter the country.

“Uh,” I say, scrambling for the words. I don’t have ‘illegal.’ Then, lightbulb: “Pero eso...es un problemo a la frontera,” I say, pointing to the Cuban label.

“Ah, si, si,” he says, swapping the box out for a Mexican one.

I walk out of the store secretly thrilled I got to use “frontera.” Thanks, Manny!

Wait a sec...“un problemo,” I’d said. Is it “una problema?” Ah, dammit. In another ten years I’ll be in Argentina trying to get this right.

Today’s soundtrack: is worth the pain of waitin’
Today at 9:02am: sitting at a corner table



Lot of mom-and-pop donut shops in this part of Cali. As opposed to the chain kind. There’s no Dunkin’ Donuts out here, that’s an east coast thing, yeah?

She showed me this one killer, killer spot off the main drag. The best goddamn donuts I’ve ever had in my life. Homer Simpson would have a heart attack and die. Police officers should have conventions at this place. If I ever had the bad fortune to wind up on death row (the penalty, not the record label) I’d request several of the glazed from this place for my last meal.

A crazy man outside the donut shop, ranting and raving. They’re different from east coast crazies, more of a hippie vibe here, yet strangely coherent, almost articulate. Same great fashion sense but less layers. Warm-weather crazies.

This particular WWC was going on about how everyone should own guns, how everyone needs them, how great they are. I caught the last half of the conversation and I’m sure I missed something, because the last thing I heard him say was “...‘cause this city is filled with fucking zombies, man.” I guess when your Governor’s a cyborg you think all kinds of crazy shit.

Saw this bumpersticker that read “Something Wiccan This Way Comes.” S’funny how something like that, combined with the munitions-minded wack job outside the donut shop, makes me feel like I'm in California more than the sun and palm trees do.

David’s one of the first cats I met, the first time I came to L.A. If any of you reading this know who Epak is, David’s like his west-coast counterpart, or vice versa. Well-traveled and plugged-in, he’s never steered me wrong with a recommendation. In terms of things to see he’s like my E.F. Hutton.

He leaves a message on my cell, delivered through poor reception. The only words I could make out between the static were “dim sum” and “mariachi band.” Called him back and he gave us directions to some sort of mercado.

(If any of you want to check it out, the directions are as follows: Take the* 5, get off at the 4th Street exit, near downtown. Go north on Cummings until you hit 1st Street. Bang a right on 1st and head east. After about ten blocks you’ll see a graveyard on the left. Soon after you’ll see a large building on the left, I think it even says “mercado” on it. Parking in the back.

*For some reason, in L.A.--maybe all of Cali, I don’t know--they always insert the word “the” in front of route numbers, as if they’re talking about subways or “the” Bronx. Hence 110 becomes “the 110” etc. When my friend Alison moved to New York I heard her refer to 95 as “the 95,” and any east-coaster will tell you how bizarre that sounds.)

It was a huge, rather gritty Mexican marketplace, filled with stalls and shops selling everything humans made that didn’t need to be plugged in: Clothing, shoes, toys, dolls, candy, religious stuff. And chow, lots of it. Food stalls selling the down-and-dirty authentic shit. At a plastic table in the back we killed some quesadillas and a gordita. It felt so much like what I imagined Mexico to be like that I’d run here if I was a fugitive.

Upstairs they had the largest single-room restaurant I’ve ever seen. Huge, bigger than a Chinese banquet hall. “It’s like a Mexican dim sum place,” said David, gesturing to the scale.

There were two mariachi bands (“There’s normally three,” said David) on opposite ends of the room. One band was dressed in all white, the other in all black, and they took turns playing. Kind of cool, it was like the light and dark side of The Force, but with rhythm and brass. I know the new Star Wars is coming out but I’m not that amped to see it. I’d rather watch Jedi battle each other with mariachi music than lightsabers.

In the early ‘70s a fair amount of television was still produced in New York, with L.A. being a place where they made movies. Johnny Carson had the Tonight Show, which was shot up in midtown, then he moved the whole operation to Burbank, beginning the pop-cultural shift from east coast to west.

Anyways now that I’ve seen it with my own eyes, I can tell you Burbank is a fuckin’ ghost town. There’s like, tumbleweeds blowing down the street and shit. Hard to believe this place did what it did to Broadway.

Weather’s nice though.

We were in Burbank to see Ed’s friends in a play. Afterwards there was talk of gathering in a bar; Ed was hoping for K-town, but the crew selected Burbank. Ed grimaced. “I don’t wanna hang out with Valley people,” he said. I didn’t understand what he meant.

“The Valley crowd is like your bridge-and-tunnel,” he explained.

I guess in some ways, cities are the same.

Today’s soundtrack: I feel the chaos around me
Today at 12:32pm: “doing” lunch



In New York people drive with a sense of opportunism, but in L.A. they drive with a sense of entitlement. I can’t explain to you how it’s different but it is.

On the freeways I modulate between go-with-the-flow calmness and predatory lane-changing. It’s not as challenging as back home but there’s a fuck of a lot more room to open up the car. The whip’s a four-banger but has a fair amount of get-up-and-go.

I met up with L.A. Ad Man, a/k/a caffeineguy, known more commonly by his long and sophisticated name, Ed. Reminds me of Holy Grail when the wizard says “There are those who call me...Tim.”

Ed works in a building that looks like where the scientist worked in Terminator 2. I’ve only been out here a couple days and already I’m referencing everything through movie clips. Anyways I showed up at his office, then he drove us to the restaurant in a spanking, fiendishly fast BM, the one with the three-liter six.

The way Ed drives I felt like I should be shooting at the car behind us. I think I got whiplash. It was like we were being directed by Michael Bay.

He pulled into the parking lot up on two wheels, like in Dukes of Hazzard. “I don’t like to drive,” he explains, “but I thought if I got a fun car it would make it better.” As he locked up the car I noticed there were several small children pinned underneath the front bumper. I was going to say something but I didn’t want to be rude.

At the restaurant we met up with Mai, and a waiter who’s clearly in love with Ed. I’ve never seen a man filled with such joy at the sight of another human being. He took our order and Ed took his heart. This waiter would follow Ed to the ends of the Earth. As he brought our food you could tell he wanted nothing more than to run towards Ed slow-motion through a grassy field. We didn’t stiff him on the tip but I encouraged Ed to stiff him in the parking lot.

After lunch Ed scraped some pedestrians off the front bumper, then whipped us through El Segundo (where I found Q-Tip’s wallet). There was a beach there. As Ed pointed out, a block away from the beach was...a tanning salon. Yep yep.

L.A. is where they pioneered the drive-thru (I think) and the drive-by (for sure). Can’t help but wonder if one led to the other. Like if the first drive-by target was a guy who worked in a drive-thru. They tried to kill him but then he ran outside, and they followed him across the parking lot in the car and mowed him down.

Today’s soundtrack: can’t help myself
Today at 11:02am: merging


I’m a freelancer, I live alone and work alone. My bio in nine words.

The disadvantage of being a freelancer is, work comes in sporadically. The advantage is, work comes in sporadically. You can do things like leave for six days. So I got on a plane to California.

You could say a guy with debt like mine ought not to be buying plane tickets on credit. Mastercard loves me; my accountant speaks to me slowly.

I am staying at someplace called Orange County. Out here they name the counties after fruit, not royalty.

L.A. freeways are all they’re cracked up to be. The overpasses are impressive, the traffic, expansive. You rarely see more than one person in a car. Sealed in glass and metal boxes, cell phones pressed to their faces, motorists yammer away in silence.

Been tooling around in a borrowed whip. The towns all sound exotic: Laguna Beach, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach. Okay the last one sounds like cigarettes but whatever, they look exotic. Lots of palm trees and weird spiky plants and apparently they have people here who clean the garbage off the streets. Am thinking of kidnapping one and bringing him back to New York as an experiment.

It’s insane the way they drive over here. I don’t mean the manner in which they drive, I mean that if you want to go to the store next door, twenty feet away, you get in your car and drive over, it’s fucking crazy. Even worse, I found myself doing it too. The sidewalks just don’t feel hospitable enough to walk on; they don’t even have any garbage on them.

I have witnessed a weird form of beauty. At a four-way intersection with no signal, I watched four cars (I was one of ‘em) each approach within seconds of each other. Magically, everyone staggered it perfectly, stopping for a second, then driving straight through with no traffic static. I guess it’s like walking through midtown in a hurry, if you know what you’re doing you won’t slam into anybody’s shoulders.

Went to see a play called “Play Without Words.” It was next to the Disney Concert Hall (the building that looks like the construction model for it melted in a horrible fire but then they built it exactly like the model anyway) and it was pretty cool. Set in 1960s London.

Five minutes of the play went by before I realized the actors really weren’t going to talk at all. But it had this great jazz soundtrack, and cool clothes, and multiple actors for each character to draw your eye all over the place. Despite the fact that they expressed themselves solely through dance, I dug it, and I’m not a modern dance/performing arts kinda guy.

I’m doing something wrong with the cashiers out here. ‘Cause they start off real friendly, “Hi, how are you?” but seem disappointed by the end of the transaction. Perhaps because I don’t make eye contact (it’s a habit, get off my back) or maybe my “Howya dune” isn’t the appropriate response to their earnest greetings.

The quest for coffee is different in California, which I have to get used to. Back home if I want coffee I go to a deli or diner. Coffee to me is a staple, something regular places just have. But here, as in most of America, they have places that were constructed purely to serve coffee. Starbucks, The Coffee Bean, Diedrich’s.

Apparently my view of the beverage is out-of-step with the rest of the nation’s. I drink coffee in transit; it’s a supplement, not an activity. Everywhere else, coffee seems to be a destination in itself. These people go to places purely to have coffee. Which is weird to me because I view it as fuel. Imagine going to a gas station, sitting your ass in a couch, flipping through magazines and listening to one of the Gilbertos for an hour while your car tanks up.

Forgot that everything takes forever out here. Unable to find a deli I stopped off at a Krispy Kreme to get a cup of coffee and like, forget about it. There was only one person in front of me and it took like ten minutes. I could’ve picked a pot’s worth of beans, ground ‘em and brewed ‘em myself in that time.

I keep reminding myself that I am in a different place where I must respect their rules. Service-wise the emphasis here is on friendliness, not brevity or efficiency. If I want fast coffee I can wait ‘til I get back to the city.

Relax.

You are somewhere else.

Embrace L.A.

Learn patience.

The service is kind of funny though, funny in a good way. Like at this one place the waitress came by to see if everything was okay. I said it was.
“Awesome!” she said. I had to smile at that. Awesome!

“How’s your pasta?”

“Pasta’s good.”

“Awesome!”

Haha.

“Hi! Please stop jawboning with the customer in front of me and get me a coffee! Milk no sugar! Right away!”

“Okay!”

“Awesome!”

(a host of the dearly to meet me with hosannas sung at the door)

Hi.

This is where I live, normally.

But my good friend Mastercard bought me a plane
ticket to go to this other place for a few days.

Maybe you’ve never been to L.A. before. Well, I have
and I know the place cold. So peep the breakdown.

Every single building in Los Angeles looks like this. All of them.
This picture is of a post office. (They design them this way because
after an earthquake they straighten out.)

Everyone in California rides around in limousines.
Everyone--busboys, garbagemen, professional clowns, you name it.
At the end of a shift, limo drivers park their stretches and another
one comes to pick them up. The regular cars you see in the background
are just props for the many movies they film in L.A.

The City of Angels is just as valid a terrorist target as
New York. Here we see a constant reminder: anti-aircraft
palm trees keep important areas safe.

Los Angelenos keep their figures trim and their intellect
sharp by eating their staple bread, pictured here.

They develop a special taste for the bread at an early age.

I wasn’t kidding about the buildings. This is a Taco Bell.

Today’s soundtrack: can’t sleep at night, always thinking about you
Today at 9:02am: filling the empty studio with the sound of Motown



Food tastes better when it’s free.

The upshot of managing a photo studio is you occasionally get to scavenge. For Thursday’s (women’s magazine) shoot, the art director came by with bags bursting full of food from one of those catering places with “Le” in the title. Roasted chicken, pesto rigatoni, seasoned potatoes, fluffy bagels with lox spread, fresh fruit, cookies, brownies, muffins, pastries, salad.

I touched none of it during the shoot, of course; it’s not for me, though I suspected there’d be plenty left over. The studio was full up but models, as a class of people, are generally not overeaters. Plus the photographer, assistant, art director and makeup guy were all skinny, so my prognosis for a free dinner looked pretty good.

Sure enough, towards the end of the shoot one of the crew members turns to me and says my favorite twenty words in the English language: “There’s plenty of food left over, shall we leave it here, or did you want us to pack it up?”

“Ah, you can leave it,” I say, in what I hope is a casual and not scavengerlike tone of voice.

After the crew left I broke all the lights down and compressed the discarded set paper. I’m getting really good at it, I can fold a nine-foot sheet into like, the size of a dollar bill. Okay so I’m exaggerating a little.

In a drawer in the studio kitchen I found a box of plastic sandwich bags, and I used these to individually wrap all the bagels and goodies on the dining table. I packed everything up and hauled it home in a large garbage bag. I’d say it was about nine cubic feet of food.

Alone at last, I spread the whole thing out on my kitchen table, Roman Emperor style, and gorged. Little of this, little of that. Lot of this, lot of that. I was almost disgusted with myself. Afterwards my face was covered in food. I avoided wiping it off my face for a few minutes, for no reason other than that I was by myself and thought it was funny.

Next day I’m in the studio, cleaning up before a client comes in. Between the couch armrest and the wall I spy a plastic sandwich bag sticking up. What the hell? It must’ve been from when I was packing up the food, but I’m wondering how it got all the way from the dining table to the couch by the front door.

I stroll over to the couch and pull the baggie out. It’s all wadded up and I’m surprised to see it’s got seasoning inside it. Oregano.

And...rolling papers.

Ah.

At first I get excited, but then I remember I don’t even smoke pot. My first thought was that it was oregano, for chrissakes.

Someone from one of the previous shoots must’ve left it. The studio was full of people so I’ve no idea who, and it’s not like I'm gonna call ‘em all anyway. Still, I don’t want to throw it out; this has gotta be worth something to somebody. And by “somebody” I mean a pothead.

I try to remember which of my friends smokes up, but I can’t recall.

I call Mike the Photographer, because he’s the most social guy I know. I don’t think he smokes, and nowadays he’s a highly successful, driven and focused photographer, but maybe I can get him to start. Maybe he would get hooked and I would have like, inadvertently destroyed his career. That might not be good for either of us but it would make a great story at future dinner parties.

Mike’s not home, so I call Fashion Advertising Girl. She lives in the neighborhood and I think I saw her toking once or twice, though I could be wrong. It’s ironic that I don’t smoke pot and yet have the memory of a potsmoker. (I also don’t do heroin but I’ve got the carefully sculpted body of a skid row junkie. Like, when I take my shirt off, people give me Methadone.)

“Hello,” she says.

“Hey, [Fashion Advertising Girl], it’s Rain. Do you smoke up?” I hope I’m getting the terminology right. What do you crazy kids call it these days, ‘blazing,’ yeah?

“Indeed I do,” she says. “Why?”

“Someone left a bag of weed at the studio,” I say. “I didn’t wanna throw it out, so I asked myself ‘Now which of my friends is a degenerate drug addict?’ and called you.”

“Well I’m glad my name came up,” she says. “Sure, I’ll take it.”

“Okay. Are you in the neighborhood?”

“Yeah but I’m busy right now. Can I get it later tonight?” she says.

“Fine...I’ll hold on to your drugs,” I say, in my best afterschool-special voice. We click off. Problem solved.

I’m gonna have to come up with another nickname for Fashion Advertising Girl, partially because the acronym is F.A.G., but mostly because she quit her job last month. I enjoy giving my friends nicknames based on their vocation or hobbies. Lam has become Advertising Lam, Tony is Outdoor Tony, etc. and ‘Unemployed Girl’ doesn’t quite roll off the tongue.

Speaking of F.A.G., I once read a study that said people whose initials spelled something positive, like A.C.E. or W.I.N., do better in life than those with negative acronyms, like D.U.D. or S.U.K. Do you believe it? I do. My last name is Noe so I’d better give my kid a successful name like Wilfred Ignatius.



Year 2025


FRIEND: Dude, your dad is such a heroin addict.

WILFRED IGNATIUS: He doesn’t do smack, he’s just built that way.

FRIEND: Well get him to put his shirt back on, he’s totally like, ruining my birthday party.





It’s 8:51pm and F.A.G. hasn’t called me back. Uh--anybody want a bag of weed?

(If you are a federal agent, please note: “Weed” is current slang for “hibiscus.”)

Today’s soundtrack: ”69 Police” - David Holmes
Today at 8:40am: making an unpleasant discovery



I don’t wanna be up at 8am on a Sunday, but there’s a shoot, so I gotta. And it’s better than yesterday, when I had to be up at 6:45.

On my way to the studio I stop at the diner to get a coffee. I’m a regular so all I gotta do is show my face, mumble “Good morning” and they start making it. I give them exact change.

I get to the studio building early, the client’s not supposed to show for twenty minutes. On my way up the stairs, I spot two pairs of sneakers peeking over the top. Ordinarily I’d just grab ‘em and throw them out before the client arrives; problem is, they’re attached to a body. Lying face down and unmoving. Blue jeans, low-rent jacket, dirty baseball cap.

“Hey buddy,” I say. No response.

He’s unmoving, but I’m pretty sure he’s not dead, because I’ve seen Law & Order, and for him to be dead I would have to be walking with a buddy and talking about the previous night’s sports scores when one of us would spot the legs and say “Hey Frank--look at this!”

Plus I don’t hear that “cha-chung” amplified gavel noise.

I look for blood, then stare at his lower back to see if he’s breathing, but I’m no Quincy; can’t tell. Can’t open the door without hitting him either. I’m tempted to just roll him out of the way with my foot, but with my luck he will be dead, then Forensics will find my footprints on his torso, and Sam Waterston will cram that jury right up my ass.

So I go back downstairs and punch that infamous date into my cell phone. I liked it better when 9-11 was a Porsche.

“Nine one one, what is your emergency,” says the operator. I avoid telling her my personal emergencies--I’ve got bad debt, and work deadlines, and taxes coming up--and get to the part about the body.

Takes her three tries to get the address right. Jesus christ. When I call to get a pizza delivered, guy who picks up the phone doesn’t even speak English, but he nails the address on the first try. Call to report a possibly dead body and it turns into an Abbott & Costello routine.

“We’ll send somebody over,” she finally says.

I put the phone back in my pocket--and two seconds later I hear sirens. Okay so the operator’s slow, but they’ve got the pizza people beat on delivery times.

The sirens get louder and louder, and then an enormous red fire engine rounds the corner and screeches to a halt. I was expecting an ambulance rig or a beat cop. Maybe the new policy is to douse found bodies with a powerful hose.

Four burly firefighters jump out. I’m amazed at how they always really do look like what you see in the movies, built like lumberjacks, and they’re almost always either Irish or Italian. I don’t know what it is about being Chinese or Greek or black, but it makes you not want to run into burning buildings. (Don’t send me angry e-mails because you are actually a Chinese or Greek or black firefighter, ‘cause I don’t care; I’m making sweeping generalizations here.)

I walk towards them, and that’s apparently enough to identify me as the caller. “What’s the trouble?” says one of the firefighters, approaching me.

I’ve got some bad debt, and work deadlines, and don’t get me started on taxes.... “Uh, body on top of the stairs,” I say, pointing. The firefighter follows me to the doorway.

“He breathing?” says Head Firefighter.

“Can’t tell,” I say. Two of them head upstairs with a jump kit.

“Rain, what happened?” says Mohammed, drawn out of the diner by the commotion. I point upstairs, where the guy’s feet are poking out.

“Nice going, Mohammed,” says the firefighter, apparently a local. “You gave him bad eggs.”

“No! I didn’t feed this guy!” says Mohammed.

“Relax, I’m kidding,” says the firefighter.

The two other firefighters come back downstairs, accompanied by the body, who’s now walking. He’s drunk as a skunk.

“He walking away?” says Head Firefighter. As if following instructions, the drunk goes through the door and wordlessly shuffles down the block.

“S’get outta here,” says one of the other firefighters.

Next an ambulance pulls up. Head Firefighter saunters over, shoots the shit with the driver, who looks like he could care less. In a minute the two trucks roar off, and the block is quiet again, like nothing happened.

I feel a little foolish for having wasted 911’s resources on what turned out to be a drunk, and start making excuses for myself. Well, you never know, can’t be too careful, et cetera.

On the sidewalk I finish my coffee and have a belated laugh--“Bad eggs,” ha ha ha.

I know, it’s stock. Sue me.

Today’s soundtrack: the nest is in our soul
Today at 12:52pm: I know I shouldn’t be having another cup of coffee but I am a desperate man, can’t you see



I’m halfway into my commute, walking up Park, when I spot the hovering ‘copter. Just hanging out over Lex like a patient mosquito.

The sight of moving helicopters is a common one in the city, but I hate when they’re sitting still, because it always means something bad happened. They don’t put the bird up for traffic shots, at least not over Manhattan. (“Newsflash--Manhattan congested! Shocking video at eleven!”)

Sure enough, looking uptown I see a dense concentration of flashing lights. And southbound traffic on Park is unusually light, meaning the road must be blocked off.

Ten blocks later I’m close enough to see the Emergency Services vehicles, an assload of them scattered across the block. Blue and red, cops and firefighters, parked at almost artfully random angles to each other, lights ablaze. Big-ass trucks. In the middle I spy the fucking Haz Mat truck with its distinctive snout. I know we need it but I hate the sight of it, because when I see it, I start thinking about it.

The commotion is at the 70 Park Avenue Hotel, directly along my route. Out front, a crowd of confused-looking onlookers. Firemen are going back and forth and there’s a clusterfuck of them in the lobby.

“W’happened?” I ask a bellhop.

“I don’t know,” he says, looking as confused as everyone else. Maybe terrorists have gotten their hands on Confusing Gas.

I’m late for work, so I keep stepping. I’m curious to know what happened but I’m not speak-to-more-than-one-stranger-type of curious. I figure I’ll look it up on NY1.com when I hit The Corporation.

But by the time I settle into the office fifteen minutes later, I’ve forgotten everything. The projects I’m working on aren’t interesting or important (to you or me, that is) but doing them properly requires my undivided attention, and I do so love to do a thing properly. Particularly when my livelihood depends on it. By mid-morning I don’t remember anything.

I hate, I despise Meetingspeak. I’m no William Safire but I can’t stand the blatant abuse of our language--using words to mislead, obfuscate and fill air, without actually saying anything. It’s why I can’t stand lawyers.

Actual statements I overheard today:

- “It was high priority, but it became low priority because there were other important things that needed to get done first.”

Uh...doesn’t that mean it was fucking low priority, from jump?

- “To answer your question, I don’t think I can answer that question.”

Twelve. You just said twelve words that don’t, mean, shit.

I leave before five to prevent myself from diving out of a window. I’d rather take the work home and do it over the weekend.

On my walk down Park I pass the hotel again, and remember this morning’s possible calamity, but everything looks normal.

I walk for another forty-five, making it almost all the way home before screaming, deafening sirens emasculate my iPod again. A bunch of firetrucks rush past, going the wrong way down a one-way. One of the trucks is special, I’ve never seen the likes of it before and it says “Fire Command Post” or something like that on the side. I wonder what they’re commanding this time.

Back at the house I am safe. Actually it’s not a house, it’s an apartment but whatever, I’m safe. I lock the door, molt out of my jacket and pull one of four perfect apples out of the refrigerator. I’m getting really good at picking them, almost as good as I am at picking pineapples. I’ve worked so hard for these skills and I don’t want any terrorists taking them away from me.

I wonder if terrorists have Meetingspeak.

- “We were going to bomb, but the situation became unbombable.”

- “We were unable to generate terror, per se.”

- “They raised the terror alert levels after lowering them, so we were able to make the determination that the efficacy of terror as it pertains to alert levels is not necessarily in direct conflict with our core competency and goals of raising or lowering the alert levels.”

I hope they do have Meetingspeak. Why should only we suffer?

Today’s soundtrack: rivers always reach the sea
Today at 7:32pm: reading a magazine on the platform



Turns out buzz is just buzz. I’m not sure why Sin City wasn’t my cup of tea, but it wasn’t. Everything about it felt gratuitous, and while translating comic-book shots into film sounded novel, in reality it wore off after a few minutes.

It also didn’t help that you could totally tell the actors were performing in front of a green screen. Bruce Willis and Michael Madsen are nothing short of horrible in their opening scene--I kept expecting to hear Rodriquez yell “Cut!” I think the only (leading) actors that pulled it off with any conviction were Clive Owen, Michael Clarke Duncan (for his three lines) and Mickey Rourke.

I was surprised by two things: One was that the stories were boring, two was the level of gore. People lose limbs often and guys are getting shot in the dick and whatnot. When there’s that much gore on-screen apparently the viewer is supposed to enjoy it, and I couldn’t. Maybe I'm getting old. Plus with the war going on, I feel it’s kinda distasteful to pay 11 bucks to watch someone get shot in the neck and live.

Overall it reminded me of Sky Captain, another green-screen movie I was amped to see that disappointed. Bottom line, I felt neither of these movies really had any heart.

Still, maybe you’ll love the flick; a movie critic I ain’t. I’m amused by odd snippets of things. There’s Buster and his “mon-ster” line, and now my second favorite audiovisual experience is that Jamaican cat doing the “moneyfingers” dance in the middle of the Red Stripe commercial. I love it. I tried to put up a link but it plays in a pop-up window. If you’re bored, go to http://us.redstripebeer.com/media and click “Dance.”

Any good movies on the horizon?

Today’s soundtrack: all the peacemakers, turned war officers
Today at 9:02pm: mutating



(Friday night)

Uh-oh.

First, I feel something like heartburn. Next, an intense bout of violent sneezing. Third and most alarmingly, my hands start to itch--from the inside, a maddening sensation. It makes you want to grab 80-grit sandpaper and shred it between your fingers.

The last time I’d felt this particular trio of symptoms, it was only minutes before I broke out in hives.

I run to the mirror. My reflection is unfamiliar, a puffier version of me in a different shade. God, dammit.

I dig through my black file cabinet until I find the box of antihistamines from last time. Pop one and start drinking glasses of water, hoping it’ll dilute whatever’s running through me. Fucking Chipotle. Looks like I won’t be making Yuka’s party down the hall tonight.

I’m lying in bed waiting for the swelling to go away. I feel like The Thing and my chest burns. There’s a knock at the door.

“Rain!” I hear Mike yell.

“Rai-innnnnn,” I hear a girl’s voice say. More knocking.

Just lie here and they’ll go away.

“I wonder if he’s home,” I hear Mike say through the door. Knock, knock, knock.

Then my cell phone goes off, loud enough that you can hear it on either side of the door. I run across the room and grab it. It’s Mike.

“Hey dude, you home?” I can hear his voice louder through the door than I can on the phone.

“Um...yeah, but I’m in bed.”

“I came down with the girls. Come hang out!”

“Uh...can’t,” I say, doing my best to sound tired. I hem and haw and eventually they go away.

My new favorite thing in the whole world is when Buster on Arrested Development shrieks “I’m a mon-ster!!!” It gets me every time. Anyways that’s what I feel like right now.