PHASE 4.3
Passion of the Criggety - 3/22/04
Costa Sarah and I saw Passion of the Christ the other day, which surprisingly had little effect on me. The book was better. No, seriously, I guess I’m in a good position to be fully saturated with the story (having a pastor grandfather and a Sunday School teaching mother), and full desensitized to all the graphic violence, being a child of the 90’s and all. Though it does get a nauseous thumbs-up in the latter department – those Romans sure know how to stick it to the Son-of-Man. But to me the whole thing wasn’t much more than Saving Private Ryan meets the Easter story – there weren’t any wild Hollywood twists like Jesus gets a chainsaw or anything.
We did, however, get a supplementary lesson on the idiocy of the masses – our theatre was blessed with a gregarious couple that wouldn’t stop yelling dumb things at the screen during the whole movie. Yeah I know. During Passion of the Christ. I think every other person in the theatre told them to shut up at some point, to which they responded with threats of coming to find people in the darkened theater and fighting them. God how sweet would it have been if a melee had broken out during Passion of the Christ? That would have just secured my faith in mankind. I would have shouted out something about “Maybe this flick’s a little over your head,” or “Jesus says I should love you but you’re making it really hard,” but I was too busy watching Christ die for our sins.
HugeFrown.com; Razing Arizona - 3/24/04
Hugesmile’s been down for more than a week now, which is partly why I’m going to be posting post-emptively here for the next little bit – there’s amusing stuff to catch up on that happened during my week of internet blackness. Hugesmile being down for more than a week, by the way, is also partly why I now have a new website.
I drove to Phoenix today, with the dual intention of getting away from LA for a couple days and helping my Grandmother move out of her house there. And by help her move out I mean loot the place dry. The objective was to cram as much stuff as possible into the Spacemobile that I could either use, sell, give away or merely hoard until a future time when it might become useful. Just another challenge for the old Mobile. Anything remaining at her house will be taken by Indians.
My grandmother, having sold her usual television, has resorted to this method of using two half-broken TVs to watch programming – one supplies the screen; the other the audio. Amazingly, the NCAA tourney was just as exciting this way.
PS – Don’t hate Hugesmile too much – I’ll still be posting news and media there occasionally. You can go ahead and hate CIHost though, which is the server company.
Indian Giving - 3/26/04
Mama and Papa Jury even came in for the house-pillaging challenge, but it turned out to be a joke for the Spacemobile. A desk, recliner, patio set, lounge chairs, bookshelf, dresser, end table, kitchen table, 8 chairs, Skootskate and a huge box of oranges? The Spacemobile laughs at your challenge! I didn’t even have to put anything in shotgun.
Now my garage is full of more cool stuff that I know what to do with. The house is in utter shambles right now, however, which has something to do with no less than 7 ex-fraternity members staying with us this weekend… I’ll explain later. But first I have to rearrange my room and fix the rest of the house before I can even think about finding a place for Grandma’s easy chair.
When I said anything left at my grandmother’s house was going to be taken by Indians, I wasn’t kidding. At about 11:30am the day after I left, six Apache Indians arrived from the reservation where my Aunt and Uncle used to live, with not one not two but three pickup trucks. Apparently they do this from time to time to provide good used furniture for thrift stores on the reservation. Anyway they descended on the house like locusts. In four hours the place was stripped cleaner than a turkey skeleton after Jury Thanksgiving. They took the curtains. They took the curtain rods. They took the goddamn outlet covers. Those Indians don’t fool around when it comes to getting’ free shit. I admire them deeply.
Meathead Pandemonium (Part 1) - 3/27/04
I mentioned the plethora of old frat brothers staying with us this weekend… well, I’d like to blame that for the out-of-control degree of Meatheadery that occurred during those days.
Steve, Nuf, Mike and Jesse joined us for their spring break, and Elia came down from Westwood to begin the tomfoolery Saturday night with a fairly typical game of beer-pong which quickly degenerated into a very atypical game of beer-pong, involving 4 balls at a time raining down like bombshells onto a 7-base, 23-cup pyramid of cups. Fairly soon Gabe was running around screaming “Pandemonium!” and hitting people with an empty Arrowhead water cooler. At some point the Wild-Monkey-Dance may have been involved. There was also a moment when Gabe was playing with a glass blender pitcher and he dropped it, smashing our April Smoothie-making hopes to bits on the floor. There was a stunned silence for a moment, followed by uproarious laughter. Finally, the 12:30am Dunk-Contest which got us yelled at by the neighbors was sequeled by a 3:30am Dunk-Contest, which really got us yelled at by the neighbors.
One would like to attribute most of the previous to a night of besotted debauchery, but unfortunately the hullabaloo did not stop there. Sunday included very little drinking by anyone. But it nonetheless included Gabe riding a desk chair down a hill, Sam working from the floor of his room after derailing himself so badly the night before that he couldn’t get up, and five guys slam-dunking from a line of fire in our driveway, fueled by nine-tenths of a bottle of lighter fluid and match.
I will have to continue this in my next post. There are many more shenanigans to report, but this takes us through the weekend, and I think I hear Gabe calling me to a Skoot-Skate race challenge.
Meathead Pandemonium (Part 2) - 3/28/04
Monday brought me destroying my cell phone when I tried to ride a Skoot-Skate (read: skateboard with a handle) down the enormous hill at the end of our block. I got going nearly 30 when the board swerved wildly for some reason, throwing me off and onto the street, where I skidded for roughly 20 feet before coming to a stop. I guess those Aikido classes are paying off, because I had the presence of mind to stay on my back rather than trying to put my hands down, literally saving my skin and miraculously not even damaging my shirt. I have no idea how this happened.
  But apparently Japanese self-defense also imbues you with the instinct to fall on your cell phone, if you have one – in this department neither phone nor corresponding pants faired nearly as well. But at least I wasn’t hurt, so I sheepishly got up and Skoot-skated the rest of the way to meet my parents and let them know I needed to change clothes before we went out to eat.
For everyone else’s part, JD and the guys decided spontaneously to drive to Vegas in the middle of the night, on no sleep through the fog. Sam, Gabe and another platoon of alums launched a day or two later, leaving roughly everyone I know from LA in Vegas except me. Thought it helped ease the pain when everyone came back varying degrees of broke, particularly Jeremy who flew out for 7 hours Saturday night, lost tons of money, walked back to the airport then flew home in the morning.
Paul and Gabe Go Camping - 4/2/04
 Gabe is on spring break from teaching 6th graders in Watts this week, so we decided to celebrate the vacation with an impromptu camping trip. Our location was selected by essentially throwing darts at a map - I searched Google randomly and picked whatever came up first and looked interesting. Mt. Baldy in the San Gabriel Mountains was far too appopriate to be overlooked.
So with roughly ten minutes of packing and roughly two minutes of figuring out where we were going, we set out in the Spacemobile late Wednesday night for a twenty-hour camping bender. We left at 10pm. Yes, 10pm. As Gabe's mom put it, "What else would we be doing at 10pm on a Wednesday night?"
We stopped briefly for possibly the manliest Von's trip I've ever been a part of. We made exactly two purchases. Beer, and wood. That case of San Miguel and that pile of logs, sitting up there on that conveyer belt in the express lane... it was beautiful. We were also in the store for roughly 90 seconds. This is how men shop.
This purchase, of course, spawned the subsequent debate: if we could have added one more item to the list, what would be the most masculine possible addition? Ideas included chicken wire, gasoline, whey protein powder, a power drill, and of course, porn. We ultimately decided against porn, since two guys buying porn together could be easily be contrued as something totally un-manly, thus undermining the purpose of the entire operation. In the end we elected to forego all the aforementioned choices and picked ammunition.
The best reason for leaving at 10pm (among the many) is you stand a very good chance of avoiding the ubiquitous LA traffic. So in less than two hours we were high in the mountains, far from bathrooms and gas, which wasn't great because the Spacemobile was dangerously empty and we were dangerously full. At least the latter of these problems was easily remedied.
 One cool thing about being in LA is you can drive an hour one way and be at the ocean and an hour the other and be in the desert. Apparently you can also drive an hour, even in April, and be in snow. Not just little snow, either - 5-foot banks of snow. Perhaps this was why the road we were supposed to take was closed and blocked with a huge metal gate. Of course we didn't think of it this way - all Gabe and I saw was a big metal impedement to our camping goals, that needed to be surmounted as soon as possible. Without a word or moment of hesitation Gabe jumped out of the car and set about trying to figure out how to unlock or break the gate so we could get through.
Two minutes later we were on our way again, and only then did it occur to us that perhaps the road was closed for a reason, such as a huge gaping hole in the road, or possibly rampaging gorillas. We decided we'd spot the former in the headlights and that we really wanted to see the latter, so we really had no choice but to continue. After a few miles of ice-dams, potholes and piles of snow, the Spacemobile could go no further. We got stuck in some ice and our only choice was for me to back down the icy, narrow road in the dark, trying to avoid the cliff off to the left and the snow bank on the right, being directed only by the illumination from my brakelights and Gabe walking behind the car waving a a flashlight like an air-traffic controller. It was some seriously challenging backing-up.
Finally we found a clearing and decided to settle. Twenty minutes later we had a raging illegal fire going and the evening had turned from taunting death to perfect, relaxed camping. We were in rare form. Brilliant ideas included using a snow pile to keep beer cold, using pinecones to keep the fire hot, and using coathangers to cook hotdogs and s'mores and one of our doomed pots to cook chili. Items that really pulled their weight in our camping venture included my trusty maglight, the coathangers, the pot which readily gave its life so that we may have warm chili, and of course the Spacemobile. Not-so-brilliant ideas included leaving a package of smoked salmon outside overnight - not because it was ruined, but because of the possible risk of attracting any wild animal within 100 miles. I guess there aren't any animals left in greater-Los Angeles because the food was fine, but anyone who's gone camping with bear-bags would know that on the list of things NOT to leave sitting out near your campsite overnight, salmon is probably #1.
It was cold enough to maintain 5-foot snowbanks, but it didn't affect our sleeping much since we had brought along about a dozen blankets plucked from 702's living room. It was a veritable blanket-jamboree. We could have slept until noon.  But we didn't, because at 8:30 there came the old familiar knocking on the van window that can only mean "somebody wants to know what the hell we're doing here." We opened up and found two resort workers curiously tapping, wondering just that, and more importantly, how on Earth we had gotten past the locked gate. We told them we had just opened it and drove in. Or rather Gabe told them this - I later revised the story and told them it had been left open. They didn't seem to question the discrepancy. In fact they were very cool about the whole thing - after explaining ourselves somewhat and complimenting the job they'd done plowing out the road (apparently the whole mountain had been a ski run just one week before), they just let us be. After all, they weren't rangers or anything - they just worked on the mountain. So what did they care?
Concerned now that more less-unconconcerned mountain workers might come along, we chose to get our hike taken care of right then and there. Though not until we cleaned up all the beer bottles and kicked the illegal firepit apart. Then we walked, saw two hawks, a bluebird, some chairlifts, made it up to the top of the mountain where the satelite towers were, and ate a nice brunch of smashed PBJ sandwiches and non-bear-eaten salmon.
 Somehow the van was still there when we returned, and we drove out, broke back out of the gate, got stuck in the ubiquitous LA traffic this time, ate some In-N-Out, got home and went to sleep. It was some serious efficient camping. The stopwatch clicked off at about 18 hours: one-fourth driving, one-fourth hiking, one-fourth sleeping, one-fourth-drunk. Don't worry. There wasn't any overlap.
Security Guard of the Month - 4/9/04
This morning I was told I had been made Employee of the Month at security. I did my best to keep a straight face.
First of all, I was Employee of the Month for February, and this is April. But more importantly, I don’t think anyone quite realizes how little I actually do at security. The announcement of my award was made to me on a day where I had spent the first two hours of my shift meeting with Sam at our coffee shop, before I drove to airport to pick up my bike, and then spent the next three hours sleeping in the security car. It was made to me during a week where I’d called in sick twice, once to go to Phoenix and loot my grandmother’s house, and the other time to get drunk with a bunch of frat guys who were in town for spring break. It was announced to me during a month where I’d decided to quit this security post in favor of getting my weekends back, had told the assignment supervisor about this, and had only not already quit because I was waiting to see what happened with some of my other scheduling issues. All together, conservative estimates have me only being awake for about 14 of the 24 hours I worked this week, and 4 of those were spent at a coffee shop.
One could argue that behavior like this would make me a bad security guard, or at least one undeserving of a prestigious Employee of the Month award. Actually, most of this stuff is OK - going to the coffee shop for one-fourth of my shift, calling in sick, sleeping… most of this is pretty standard procedure for guards at my site. But it is true they probably wouldn’t like my taking their security mobile to the airport, or to a party in Manhattan Beach like I did one time during my shift. I flashed my siren and nearly broke the party up as I was leaving.
But to say I was bad guard, I think, would be giving too much credit to what the job of graveyard security guard actually is. The airport, the party, the In-N-Out in Westchester Sam and I went to one time… these places are all within walkie-talkie range, if the guys at base need anything. Which they never do. In fact, what I mostly do when I’m at work – writing, watching movies, walking around inside buildings looking for candy that’s been left out… this stuff actually classifies me as a very good security guard. Hey, I’m awake and right there if anything happens.
Anyway they gave me a check for 50 bucks (of which the government promptly took half), and I guess I’m getting a plaque. I can’t wait to hang it in the ping-pong room next to the picture of the deformed babies.
I suppose there’s a small possibility I’m good at my job. There’s a larger possibly I’m terrible at my job but good at hiding it. There’s also a possible that I’m good at neither but they had to give me the award since everyone else already has one and they’re not allowed to repeat. Lastly, I guess it’s possible they’re just trying to make me want to stay, since I don’t think that many people have quite a good at time at this job as I do. Good luck.
A female comedian friend of Sam’s once joked that she liked to date security guards, because “If a guy’s willing to take a bullet for 8.50 an hour, imagine what he’d do from some pussy.” Brilliant comedy. But unfortunately inaccurate. First of all, I don’t make 8.50 an hour. Second of all I would never, ever take a bullet (even if bullets did happen to be flying around a copy machine factory at 3 in the morning). Not for all the 25-dollar checks and plaques in the world. I probably wouldn’t even be awake for it.
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