PHASE 4.1
WEEK 21... and so on...
As the phases (and weeks, for that matter) matter less and less, we begin this chapter with a panoramic from one of the more Elysian collegiate overlooks there is.
Sarah from Irvine and I took a trip up to  Pepperdine this week, which is the most ridiculous college campus ever. No, replace “college” with “cloud-like paradise”. First of all it’s in Malibu. Second of all it’s up on top of this Olympus-like mountain, giving you roughly 120 degrees of high-up ocean view. Third, well, just look at the picture. Pepperdine's a small school but is Division 1 in baseball and tennis. I can't imagine why anyone would want to play here.
 Oh, and nearby there actually is a castle up on top of another mountain. The only way to access it is via beanstalk.
7AM SORE-THUMB SURFING - 2/7/04
So here come the posts. I’ve got a lot to catch up on.
Last Saturday was the first of Gabe and I’s Saturday Surf Sessions at Manhattan Beach. Joined by friends Ryan (to show us how it’s done) and April (to cheer from the ice-cold sand sideline), we waddled out into the water at about 7:30am to find there were already several hundred people trying to catch waves. Apparently they take their surfing seriously in the South Bay.
The temperature in the South Bay changes roughly 30 degrees between 7am and noon, but believe it or not, surfing first thing in the morning was NOT one of the retarded decisions made that day. Nothing opens your eyes after an all-night security shift like 40-degree ocean water, especially when you don’t have a wetsuit. This, I learned, is an essential accessory for surfing in February – of the hundreds of people in the water I was the only one not wearing a warm rubber suit. I was barebacking it, I was told by the countless other surfers who stopped to marvel at/mock me both in the water and on shore.
Yes, I was a sore thumb. I had no idea how to surf, no idea how to dress, and no idea how to control my 9-foot pontoon of a surfboard, which nearly got away from me and clobbered people on numerous occasions. But I braved the waves just the same, conspicuous in my red swim trunks – the color of which my skin had turned after about half an hour when I finally gave up and returned to shore, shivering uncontrollably, having failed to make it upright on my board even once.
Yup, can’t wait to go back next week.
Paulina Employment Pandemonium - 2/12/04
Much has been made of the bizarre cornucopia of jobs my roommates and I keep at 702. My security/SAT prep combo, JD's record store job that's 30 miles away, Gabe teaching middle school in Watts... it's not normal. The strangest thing of all, though, is the hours we keep. Gabe works something close to a Mon-Fri 9-5, but the rest of us are a far-cry away from that - in fact it's rare if any of us are working between 9 and 5 on a weekday. It's all very wacky.
Of course, it would be impossible to describe exactly how wacky it all is without some type of visual aid, such as a multilayered employment grid of some kind. So here it is.
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Now, you may see some interesting trends developing. For one, JD has Mondays and Tuesdays off, I have Wednesdays and Thursdays, Sam has Fridays and Saturdays, and Gabe has Saturdays and Sundays. Also I work roughly 11pm-7am, Gabe works roughly 7am-3pm, and JD works roughly 3pm-11pm, with Sam laying on his bed roughly most of this time. So you might imagine there being little time when all four of us are around, and you might imagine some other notable aspects as well. And you might imagine right.
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On the above chart, white areas represent periods where nobody is working, light gray areas are where only one person is working, medium gray is where two people are working, and dark gray areas occur where three people are working. Interesting to note, first of all, is that there is no time during the week where all four 702 Paulina roommates are working at the same time. And this is despite working a combined estimated 200 hours per week. We never all overlap, even for one minute.
Some other observations:
- Not only this, but there are only 10 hours in which even three of us are working, and about half of these occur on Sunday afternoons. So much for day of rest.
- Unfortunately there are also only a handful of blocks where none of us are working, and most of them fall in the middle of the night on Wednesday or Thursday, or before noon on Saturdays and Sundays. So realistically, since Gabe goes to bed around 11, there are only 4 two-hour blocks during the week currently that all four of us can get together to, say, chug beers and run 100-meter dashes.
- Between the four of us, we are employed by the education industry, the music industry, the health industry, the radio/journalism industry, the test-prep industry, the security industry and the entertainment industry. This shows little signs of changing.
- The chart looks like a board from Arkanoid.
Admittedly, I am a big part of the cause of the above wackiness. But Aura is phasing out and teaching/tutoring is increasing, and I'm currently trying to get my weekends back, so hopefully by Phase 4.2 I'll at least have a different kind of wackiness to report.
Ocean 1, Gabe and Paul 0 - 2/14/04
Four lessons were learned during this morning’s surfing attempt:
- When getting creamed by a huge wave, make sure to take a deep breath before you go under, in case you have to be down there for thirty seconds or so.
- When getting creamed by a huge wave, cover your head so your giant pontoon surfboard doesn’t bop you on the head.
- If you don’t know how to surf, avoid huge waves so you don’t get creamed.
- Some waves are huge enough to break surfboards in two.
As I once mentioned, the problem with having an apartment without Nay-Sayers is thatsometimes, you end up doing things that somebody really should have said nay to. The fact that Gabe and I are the two biggest Non-Nay-Sayers of all is a large part of why we found ourselves surfing in 10-foot waves this morning.
It occurred to me (later, of course), that what we were doing was the ocean-equivalent of two beginning skiers skipping the bunny hill and heading straight for the black diamond. I’ve found in life that once you gain a little bit of experience with something, you’re able to appreciate it more, and respect the skill it takes to become very good. Like playing golf, or the piano. You begin to consider things like “Hey, that wave looks big. Maybe we should be careful.” But when you have absolutely no experience, Mozart looks the same as Chop Sticks. Gabe and I approached the surf with this kind of mentality. With ignorant abandon. With childlike innocence. With “Hey, that wave looks big. Big waves are good. Let’s ride it.”
And so we did, and I nearly met my end. Twice. And my surfboard did meet its end. Or rather the sea rose up and took it, after becoming pissed at me for refusing to be smoten down. The first wave sent me tumbling through the undertow like a sock in a washing machine, running short of breath but coming up just in time to think “Man, this surfing thing is kind of hard.” The second wave, estimated by spectators as somewhere between 10 and 15 feet high, throttled me in a similar manner. Emerging, I really thought I was getting the hang of things when Gabe looked at me with a shocked expression and said “Dude. Your board.” I turned around and found that my surfboard has been ripped in half. That was the end of surfing for the day.
Making our way back to the shore, we learned more of the territorial and somewhat derisive attitude possessed by a lot of surfers who do this regularly. “What the hell are you guys doing?” said one guy. “You’re gonna kill yourselves!” Maybe he was just being observant. An old guy on shore said we should stick close to the shore if we didn’t know what we were doing. “Was it that obvious?” I asked. He just looked at us. Apparently another guy exclaimed a gleeful “Bye-bye!” as I was being destroyed by the second wave.
We got out and I inspected for lacerations (of which there were only a few) and missing toes (of which thankfully there weren’t) and we headed back to the cars. It was the closest I’ve come to death since the night I moved in, when Gabe was also there to check on me afterward to make sure I was still breathing. I swear to god he’s going to be there when I die. Not in time to save me, mind you… but Gabe will definitely be the person who discovers my body. We’ve conceded Surfing Quarter One to the gods of the sea - at some point even Non-Nay-Sayers must admit they’re beaten. We’ll take a couple weeks and regroup – Gabe to find a board that’s a little longer, me to find one that’s a little more in one piece, and preferably not from the sixties. But we’ll be back. Stubborn as always, though hopefully with a little more wisdom and common sense under our belts.
By the way, for some reason I asked the old guy on the way off the beach if he thought there was any way my board could be fixed. His response: “What? Are you kidding me?” And Gabe’s response: “Paul, stop talking. Let’s go home.”
All Roads Lead to the Hood - 2/18/04
On my continuing venture to find a way to live in LA without a car, I took the train downtown today to visit Eddie and friends Bart and Doug who were in town from New York and San Diego. Yes, those are far apart. And yes, LA has a mass transit system.
Other than having to transfer twice, I was basically impressed. The train moves quickly and is fairly clean, especially for a train. The trip took a little over an hour, which isn’t that long considering it was like 20-plus miles. Anyhow it’s faster driving during rush-hour.
The odd part about the light rail in LA is that in order to get anywhere, you have to go through South Central first. Want to get from Hollywood to Pasadena? Gotta go to the hood. Redondo to Long Beach? Through the ghetto with you. It’s a little strange, but it adds a fascinating diversity to your ride.
But by far the most interesting person I encountered was this woman from Miami who got on the train with me in El Segundo and kept me company until she got off at the Greyhound station in downtown. Miami, LA, Greyhound? Yes, she had an interesting story. And I had nothing better to do since my ‘Interview With the Vampire’ book-on-CD had run out of batteries.
Her story as best as I can remember and pare it down: Apparently she had taken a bus all the way from Miami to Los Angeles, a journey every bit as horrible at sounds. Throw in all the stops and dumb routes along the way and you’re looking at a 68-hour trip. 68 hours. On a Greyhound bus, the melting pot of all the screaming babies and screaming wack-jobs lower society can spew forth. Last time I was on a Greyhound the driver almost got in a fistfight with a guy who was thirty seconds late coming back from McDonalds. The time before that my row-mate won a bet with a girl over who’d had more sexual partners, because he used to frequent prostitutes. More than 500 of them, to toss out a number.
This woman had been accompanied by her husband, but in Texas something happened involving him punching her in the head, the driver calling the cops (this happened right on the bus), and the cops taking the husband to jail. I guess he’d heard one too many screaming babies. He also had all their money with him, which she tried to get back as they hauled him away, but he wouldn’t answer. So she was left with her suitcase, no money, and a restraining order.
Now here’s the part that defies all reason. Despite having only a one-way ticket, she decided to proceed to LA on the Greyhound and negotiate her return trip here, rather than doing it right there in Texas. I and several other people have tried desperately to fathom the logic behind this, but so far have come up empty. I guess we’ll have to leave it that she’s a crazy person I met on the train in South Central.
Anyway she got to LA, promptly had her suitcase stolen, then rode the train around for a day and a half until she wound up at a Denny’s at the airport talking to this religious guy from Long Beach. He told her about a church there, where she went and was given a check made out to Greyhound for the price of a ticket back to Miami. She then went back downtown, was told her check was no good, went back to Long Beach, was given a hand-written note to go along with the check, and now was on here way back downtown to give it another go. Oh and did I mention she was 35 but walked with a cane because she said she’d been mugged and paralyzed several years ago?
I know what you’re thinking. A scam. But she never once asked me for money or even my name. She just liked to listen to herself talk, I guess. I helped her carry her new suitcase (given to her by somebody else – I didn’t even ask) up a flight of stairs, but that was it. And c’mon. Who makes up a story like that?
All in all it made the trip very enjoyable, and gave me something to write about at long length. The only thing that bothered me was she had this habit of saying vaguely racist things, on a crowded train-car full of the kind of people who don’t typically respond well to vaguely racist things. Things like “the black areas here aren’t nearly so bad as the black areas back in Miami. At least not that I’ve seen so far.” I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to things like this.
I guess she plans to hire a lawyer to divorce her husband, as soon as the lawyer working on her workman’s comp settlement comes through with some money. I thought about telling her she should consider rehiring the same lawyer if he won the first case, but I refrained. Good for her, I thought. Divorcing her husband. Something tells me the two of them hanging out more can’t possibly lead to good things. It’s hard to say what exactly is ‘workman’s comp’ about getting mugged and paralyzed, but I don’t know. Maybe there was some other story I didn’t have time to hear. There were a lot of things that were hard to say about the whole encounter.
I finished the evening at a video arcade with Eddie, Bart and Doug reclaiming our childhoods by beating the original Ninja Turtles game. It only cost us 14 dollars.
2/20/04
 No, I wasn’t making it up.
There really is a book called “Why Johnny Can’t Read”, and in fact it has two sequels: “Why Johnny Still Can’t Read”, and “Why Johnny Can’t Add”. Sounds like poor Johnny has a ways to go before he’s ready to compete with Sam and Gabe in the GED.
"Catty Midget Bitches" - 2/22/04
My friend Sarah from Minneapolis emailed me recently and demanded to know why I haven’t done a post about Fox’s new show “The Littlest Groom”. To anyone not versed in the latest in pandering reality television, this show is basically “The Bachelor”… with midgets. In SAT-style multiple choice (because obviously such a format applies to Fox reality programming), guess the reason why I have not done such a post:
A) I don’t typically do a lot of media commentary, preferring more obscure topics such as people I know and things I make up
B) I haven’t watched the show
C) I find the exploitive idea of a ‘little people reality show’ to be morally reprehensible and refuse to endorse such twaddle by writing about it online.
Well it can’t be C), so it must be a combination of the other two. Truth is I still haven’t watched the show (sorry Sarah), so I wouldn’t be able to write on the subject without making baseless assumptions about the show or extrapolating to broader observations about midgets in general.
So here goes.
I sum up my feelings about midget-based (apologies to any vertically-challenged readers who prefer the PC nomenclature “little people” – I find the term just a little vague and not nearly as funny-sounding as “midget”) entertainment with the following statement: It’s about time. Midgets have always been an integral part of mass-media awesomeness, from the great Oompa-Loompa days of yore to the infamous porn-midget in the legendary film “Tiny’s Big Package”. And since they’re on track to make a reality show about everything anyway, it’s about time they made one about diminutive singles competing over love.
I really hope they fight. For the sake of my own entertainment, I’m just going to go ahead and imagine they found a bunch of pugnacious, drama-queen midgets and really let ‘em have at it. I hope the male midgets (if there’s more than one) hate each other’s guts and wrestle all the time. I hope the female midgets are some serious catty midget bitches, and pull hair and scream. Cuz God that’s cool.
I doubt I can ever watch the show now, because I’ll probably just be disappointed. I remember how upset we were when we found out Tiny only had about ten minutes of screen time in his own movie, and that he didn’t even have any lines. We were really looking forward to one-liners like “Get the stool, wench.” To say nothing of our dismay at discovering Tiny was actually a handicapped midget with a hearing aid.
I hope Tiny’s in this show. I hope my predictions are wrong – that “The Littlest Groom” is everything a reality show about midgets is supposed to be – base, depraved, and absolutely hilarious. And I hope that Fox continues to provide its viewers with quality programming just like this (tomorrow’s post: an in-depth look at “Man vs. Beast 2”).
I also hope I get the chance to use the phrase “catty midget bitches” at some point again in the future.
Man Vs. Beast 2 - 2/23/04
As promised, the Man Vs. Beast article, inspired by Fox’s fantastic new line of high-brow entertainment and friend Sarah’s insistence that I watch some of it.
Shows where midgets compete with animals. Where midgets compete with each other. Fox’s other programming (which may or may not involve midgets). The network has finally come to grips with its lowest-common-denominator nature. And I think this is great. There’s no point in being half-ass about it – if you’re going to cater to the masses, then break out the whole banquet. I’ve always liked Fox for bringing us shows like the Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle, and now that they’ve admitted to their pandering side and are wholly living up to it… well, it’s a self-honestly that’s rare in television these days.
My roommate Sam first introduced me to Man Vs. Beast when the first one came out like a year ago. In this grotesque TV spectacle, a world eating champion challenged a grizzly bear to a hotdog eating contest, a weight-lifter fought an orangutan in the Tug-of-War, and 44 midgets battled an 8,000 pound elephant in an airplane-pulling race. In all cases Beast kicked Man’s ass.
This year’s result was slightly different, because one key factor common to all Man Vs. Beast challenges finally kicked in – that fact that the Beast typically has no idea what’s going on. I think it’s obvious that an adept animal is going to win out over a human in most physical competitions, but a lot of the time it doesn’t try, for the simple reason that it’s an animal. It doesn’t know it’s in a competition. That’s why greyhound races require fake rabbits and horse races require jockeys. And why that camel race was only a race once the camel decided it liked to chase midgets.
The show was absolutely ridiculous, and for that reason absolutely awesome. For one thing, they kept referring to all the animals as “The Beast”, as if the black lab retriever in the first event was the Creature From the Black Lagoon or something. I guess it was for the dramatic effect, so they could say things like “Just look at the intensity in the Beast’s eyes.” Or “The Beast has really been jumping well today.” They were also prone to dressing the animals up, especially the primates. Maybe it was for modesty reasons, or maybe because they realized the humor and product-placement value in monkeys wearing Adidas shorts. They liked to comment on this also, as in “The Beast seems to be having a little trouble, in that his pants are coming off.”
This year’s competitions (and let's all pray that Man Vs. Beast 3 is on the Fox horizon) featured an Olympic long jumper versus a dog in dock-jumping, a Samoan tree-climber versus a chimpanzee, and a relay team of 4 midgets racing against a camel. Gotta have the midgets. But personally my favorite event was a guy versus an orangutan to see who could hang onto a gymnastic bar the longest. First of all, the idea of trying to out-hang an orangutan is preposterous. It’s what orangutans do. It’s like trying to out-swim a dolphin, or out-vegetate a starfish. It’s stupid to even try, and yet they did, bringing in this Olympic-hopeful kid to see if he could hang in there longer than the monkey could. The argument was that despite being physically outmatched, the Man had one thing the Beast didn’t – heart and soul. Well the Beast can’t play the piano either, but that ain’t gonna stop it from clinging to that bar for like three days. And listen, Plato, this is Fox. Don’t get all philosophical on us about whether or not the Beast has a soul. That’s for the Lord to decide.
Shockingly, this was the one event that Man won outright. After about five minutes or so the orangutan started getting bored, peed itself, and then totally lost interest and climbed off the pole and into a nearby tree. Man won by disqualification. The monkey had no idea. God, if only he had thrown some feces at the camera. That would have been classic.
At some point we started wondering if the humans were getting paid for this. It couldn’t very much. And then the question of eligibility came up – is this kind of thing professional enough to get somebody disqualified from the Olympics? How funny would it be if that gymnast guy couldn’t go to Sydney because he got 200 bucks for competing on Man Vs. Beast 2?
 Yes, Fox is great. Monkeys are great, and midgets are great. Put all three together and you’ve got yourself something special. I sum up this glowing review with a picture taken from the show… for anyone who knows them I believe that’s Dan Kuckel in front and Aaron Winters right behind him. Followed by some deformed midget and then Meatloaf.
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Email me! paul@paulspond.com
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