Welcome back to Paul's Pond with a brief recap of my whirlwind tour of the East Coast and Minnesota.

Being on the 9am-2pm sleeping schedule, which translates into a noon-5pm sleeping schedule Eastern Time, I was a little worried I wouldn't be able to adjust flying to Boston for Mark's graduation. But nothing shocks the system like a sprint to the airport and a cramped red-eye where you lose three hours. By the time I got there my body had no idea what time it was, and was willing to adjust to whatever kind of sleep I would give it. Even the kind that happens in a chair during his ceremony.

From there the Jury family celebrated by eating steak (always an impressive sight), then moving Mark out of his modern college apartment and Alex into his slightly more dilapidated one. Imagine an 80-year-old 3-story in Providence, slap on a Blair-witch basement and a house next door that's caught on fire three times in the last year, and you get the picture. Oh, and cram in 8 frat guys and 4 artsy girls from the Rhode Island School of Design. Fun fun.

Having successfully deposited Alex in his hovel of neighboorly delights, we stuffed the other 6 Jurys (Uncle and Grandma included) and set off across the country in Spacemobile 2, aka the Rammobil (German for Spacemobile. How creative). We stopped at a friend's farmhouse in Michigan to eat bacon and watch the Pistons begin their quick becrumpling of the Lakers. A good time not to be in LA - folks riot when the Lakers win, but when they lose buildings can collapse from the quake of 8 million people jumping off the bandwagon.

Finally we left Grandma in Wisconsin because she kept making fun of us and made it home, and then up to the cabin. Of this I don't remember much, except playing a lot of cards and drinking beer like it was my job. It was wonderful to see all the friends from home. And great to swim in a body of water that doesn't leave you feeling like a salted hide.

And now I'm back. I suppose after seven months of 60-hour weeks I deserve to do nothing for a fortnight or so, but it still felt wierd. I suppose we did finally get that lingering musical sent out to theatres, and I did finally catch up on sleep... but I seem to be having trouble getting back into things. Hmm. Well, Gabe's done teaching now, so maybe we need a project together. Something constructive. Something productive. I'll give it some thought.

IT HAS BEGUN!!! - 6/25/04
What do you get when you cross a burned-out Watts teacher on summer break before law school with an unemployed writer/tutor/security guard/drifter, with too much time on their hands and nobody to say nay?

From what Sam has told me about last summer, apparently Gabe goes a little crazy when he doesn't have any structure in his life. Well he doesn’t, and he is, but I’m a little worried I’m going even crazier, having spent two hours and probably half an ink cartridge printing the following enormous game-poster for our ping-pong room wall. At left is the graphic from my computer pre-print – at right is what it looks like in all its mounted glory.

Note the carefully Photoshopped “702” on the building’s address. And people say my four years at Northwestern were wasted.

It Continues - 6/27/04
OK, this summer hasn’t been entirely devoted to liver destruction. We’ve also been doing a lot of surfing, which is also worth writing about. If only we had some kind of “surf log”.

The summer is officially one week old, and so far we’ve gone surfing 5 times, drinking 4 times, In-N-Out-ing 3 times, and poker-playing twice. We also caught a partridge from a pear tree and let it loose in the house to see who could catch it first.

In other news, mini-golf and a lots of beach football has inspired us to branching out into other obscure sports… our first kickball game is today in Santa Monica, and I’m working on starting a dodgeball league. Gabe’s efforts to start a beer-pong league are progressing, understandably, a little slower.

That’s it for today. I’m off to Vegas.

Vegas 1 - 6/28/04
I met my brother Mark in Vegas Sunday night for one last hurrah before the new graduate goes off to work for Corporate America and I go back to work for, well, America. Some might call it strange to leave for Vegas on a Sunday night instead of coming back then, but that’s what you do when you’re not working.

I’ll take Vegas in small chunks, since it happened over a couple days, and I’m lazy. Getting there was smooth minus a freeway fender-bender I was involved in thanks to the parking-lot-slow-down from another accident further up the road. How ironic. Mark flew in from Minneapolis and managed to avoid the airport slot machines to get picked up by me and the God-Accursed Buick LeSabre.

We stayed at the Luxor, one of the Strip’s trendier and more unique casino/hotels (because everything in Vegas is a casino/hotel). The Luxor is Egyptian-themed, and as you can see is shaped like a giant pyramid. One cool part is that the inside is hollow (forgive the blurry picture), so except for the balconies of rooms that get closer together the higher you go, you can stand in the middle and look straight up 30 stories. You can also throw a half-eaten Egg McMuffin off your balcony and hit a slot machine.

But perhaps the most interesting thing about Luxor is its creative compliance with the Las Vegas Lightbulb Law. The Las Vegas Lightbulb Law dictates that every hotel on the strip must have at least sixteen thousand lighbulbs, or the equivalent electricity usage thereof (not unlike the Times Square Wattage Rule). However, the general design of the Luxor seems to call for it looking like a giant black pyramid with no lights at all, so where are they using all their required bulbs?

LUXOR OWNER: So we want to build a casino shaped like a giant pyramid… but we want to make it black so we won’t need a lot of lightbulbs.
VEGAS GAMBLING COMMISSIONER: I don’t think that will work with our wattage regulations.
LUXOR OWNER: OK… What if we combined all the lights together and made one super-powered light and just shot it up into space?
VEGAS GAMBLING COMMISSIONER: That might work.

About the equivalent of 8 searchlights all aimed in the same direction, the Luxor’s light is the first thing you can see when you get within 50 miles of Vegas. Or Nevada for that matter. Apparently you can see it from the moon.

My question is what would happen if the light wasn’t pointed straight up but rather moved around the Strip, scorching people and lighting stuff on fire? Imagine having your hotel room lit up by a spotlight brighter than the center of the sun, as you’re trying to enjoy and innocent stripper-and-cocaine-bender. Imagine crowds of people running away in horror as the Wrathful Eye of Ra the Sun God burns a streak of charred sidewalk down the center of the strip.

The Luxor is cool, but I think that would be even cooler.

Vegas 2 - 6/29/04
We didn't eat much in Vegas, because we were too busy drinking and gambling. But we did eat this.

Mark and I kicked off our Strip adventure by each consuming one of these. The awesome part was that for 4 dollars it came with fries and your choice of soda or beer. Um, beer please. The bad part was that with a hotdog 18 inches long and 3 inches thick, no amount of ketchup could possibly disguise the fact that it tastes like, well, hotdog. I raced through my Sequioa-dog as quickly as possible, before my stomach realized what was happening to it. Mark took more time on his collosal meat-tube, before excusing himself to basically recreate the same exact thing in the bathroom.

The sad part was I'd already eaten two corn dogs and a chili dog at an A&W on my way to Vegas. I'm pretty sure that's the most pig scrotum I've ever eaten in one day.

Vegas 3 - 6/30/04
Vegas is a lot more fun when you win. Which made this trip’s +$50 a bit more enjoyable than the previous two times’ –$100 and -$200. I won at Let It Ride, lost at Black Jack, won at Poker, and lost at Craps, Kino, Roulette and Slots, although these last three only accounted for 8 dollars. Black Jack too was nearly even – we played for probably 8 hours over the course of the three days and I think I came out down about 20 bucks. And considering we were wrangling about 3 free drinks an hour… well, it was worth it. I also lost in gambling on baseball because the lousy Twins couldn’t edge out the White Sox, even though the Phillies beat the Expos for $5 in Paul’s Meaningless Lock of the Week.

The most fun had to be the Poker, though; partly because I’ve gotten OK at it during all our late night betting binges, and partly because I somehow wound up at a low-stakes beginner table. The nice thing about 12 person big-blind poker is you can play for hours and only win a couple pots to stay nicely ahead. This I did, luckily managing to stay out of powerhouse hands like this woman who beat two full houses with her four 4’s. The casino people came over and congratulated her, gave her 20 extra bucks, then made her sign something promising her soul to the hotel.

But the best hand was undoubtedly the following. Follow along if you know the game of Hold ‘Em (apologies again for the crappy pictures)

My cards.

Not too bad. A King, and suited. A few people at the table started throwing money around, but this was worth staying in for, considering the possible flush. Little did I know these odds would be decreased by:

His cards.

A guy across the table had nearly the same thing. And yet, somehow:

Lightning struck.

From the flop I was optimistic, and when the guy across the table started betting all he could, I figured he had something similar. Not to mention another guy who had two pair.

But then fourth street hit, and I knew I had him. Turns out he had the second highest hand possible, but I had the nuts, as they say - the highest. The guy and I bet until they made us stop. And needless to say he was not happy when I flipped my two. It was the most chips I'd ever amassed - too bad they were all worth a dollar.

I left Vegas having paid for my gas there and all my food. Mark left $112 down, but conveniently won 13 bucks of a fifty-cent piece I gave him from a slot machine at the airport, leaving him just under a hundred. Who says slots are weak? And who says you can't win at the airport?

Eureka! - 7/2/04
I FINALLY SOLD THE BUICK!!! But not without one last adventure.

Here is the story of how I wound up on a train headed to San Bernadino with 12 hundred-dollar bills in my pocket.

As my increasing ranting posts may indicate, I've becoming progressively desperate to sell before the Curse of the Buick sucks the rest of my will to live. So when a guy who'd seen my Carsoup ad called me Tuesday from San Diego, I jumped on it. Yes, that's 160 miles away. But the Buick has cost me over a thousand dollars, been in an accident and got towed by the neighbors for parking in front of their house. The suffering needed to end.

The plan was to meet halfway, in San Clemente. I was willing to drive of course, but I needed to make sure he had to work too, so he'd be invested when he got there and want to make the purchase. That Northwestern Psychology minor is paying for itself already. Part 2 of the plan was not quite so well thought out though - hopefully we'd be finished by 4:45 and I could jump on the last local train of the day in the general direction of Los Angeles. I've tried to give LA mass transit the benefit of the doubt in the past, but here I'll admit that it really is just awful. San Clemente and Redondo Beach are probably only about 50 miles apart as the crow flies, but I called every tranportation service in Southern California and no one could think of a way for me to get home involving less than 3 trains and 4 buses. At 4:30pm on a Friday. No wonder everybody drives. There are New York subway lines that run further than that. But I didn't have any other options - everybody I knew was out of town or working or lives 100 miles away or all of the above. If I caught the train I'd get home, eventually. If not... well... yeah. Adventure time.

So we met, and everything went smoothly. John took a 3 minute test-drive and proclaimed everything in order, the price was set, and we got in line to sign over the title at the DMV, where we'd strategically arranged to meet (see I told you the first half of the plan was well-concieved). It had taken me almost two hours to drive down in 4th of July weekend traffic, and man was there something cathartic about selling a car when all the freeways are clogged like Newt Gingrich's arteries. The only quirk was John's payment method - we got everything settled and he promptly pulled out a fat wad of hundred-dollar bills and rolled me off 12 of them. The Buick also had one last chance to curse me - when I opened the door my discman fell out and cracked on the sidewalk, along with one of my favorite Toad the Wet Sprocket CDs. Burn in hell, Buick.

And then the adventure began. John dropped me off at the train station just in time to catch the last train of the day, which unfortunately was not going to LA but to San Bernadino, which is correctly north but very, very east and in fact further from home than San Clemente is. Also just to mock me the ticket machine gave me my change back from my only 20 all in Sacajawea dollars, so I boarded the train weighed down by a pocket of gold deplumes.

After calling the Metrolink service line from my cell phone (while riding their train), I learned that if I got off in Santa Ana and somehow found a way to Fullerton (10 miles away), there was a train that might actually take me to LA, if I got there in time. But I had to call the OC bus line to figure out the three bus transfers I'd have to make to get from A to B.

While all this was going on I began a conversation with a woman across from me, coincidently named Paula. Taking pity on my plight, she offered to drive me from Santa Ana to Fullerton, since she was getting off anyway and her car was at the station. Gratefully accepting, we departed the train and began drive 2 of the day across Orange County to try and make it to train 2. I made it with 10 minutes to spare and celebrated by buying a hamburger, since I hadn't eaten the entire day so far. Somehow I forgot about the Sacajawea dollars and had to put 4 dollars on my credit card to avoid breaking a hundred.

The next train took my to Union Station in downtown, where I could get on the metro rail. Through the hood, or course. Now I've discussed this before, but the only thing better than taking a train through the hood is taking a train through the hood with 1200 dollars in cash in your pocket. I did my best to look large, mean and slightly crazy.

I got off in Hollywood where my friend Nate was kind enough to pick me up to join him and Liz for Tapas. After this my other friend Josh picked me up to go to a bar in Westwood, where we got drunk with some Austrians. Finally at about 3:30 am Josh drove me back to Redondo, rounding out the total adventure at about 14.5 hours and the total distance at just under 200 miles.

And damnit, it was worth it.

If somebody asked me how to travel from San Clementa to Redondo Beach without a car, I'd tell them it takes 3 trains and 3 favors. If somebody asked me how to sell an Arizona Buick in Los Angeles, I'd slap them until they gave up on the ridiculous idea.

I think I might have just broken even on the whole fiasco. Financially, at least. All the registrations, repairs, smog-tests, ad costs, transportations and getting towed by the neighbors just about added up to a wad of 12 hundred-dollar bill, I believe. The hundred hours of stress I wasted on the debacle was another matter, or course. But at least I learned the valuable lesson to NEVER EVER GET THE SPACEMOBILE REGISTERED IN CALIFORNIA. Actually, what I learned was NEVER EVER TRY AND SELL A CAR IN LA. Or maybe I learned NEVER DO A FAVOR FOR YOUR GRANDMOTHER. Or maybe that's interpreting too much into it. I don't know. My head hurts from train fumes.

Happy 4th - 7/4/04
I'll leave Independence Day with a little bit of unrelated clever photoshopping someone put online.

It was either this or a dull story about two naked girls making out on a mechanical bull at the bar we were at last night.

Yup.

Happy 4th.

Close Contest - 7/6/04
The summer of drinking and surfing continues. So far drinking is ahead, 10 to 8. But who knows what week 3 will bring?

The Sad News... - 7/8/04
The days of 702 as we know it are numbered. Gabe is of course moving back to Chicago to start law school, but Sam and JD will also be departing as of August 15th to move to Hollywood. The real Hollywood this time, not just the basic general within-50-miles we're at now.

The Interesting News...

I've decided to stay. The old salmon palace is just too cheap, too nice (when we're not destroying it) and too near the beach for someone who has no particular reason to live in Hollywood at least until he's working there. I've decided to use this as a social venture, attempting to find 3 new roommates, fun, responsible, and looking for a place in the South Bay. And since I don't know anybody like that, I decided to resort to good old Craigslist.

And the Good News...

Within 24 hours of my post I've had 30 responses. With more coming in. A few sketchy, but most decent to very exciting. I guess if I learned one thing from our housing adventure it's that you don't every day find a place for $525 in Redondo.

So now we wait for New News. With this many candidates and next year's Pond cast at stake, how could it not be interesting?

Dodgeball - 7/11/04
Today was the first occasion of the weekly/bi-weekly dodgeball game we’ve started in South Bay. We only had 8 players for our first match, half of whom were over 30, but it was good times nonetheless. Also I drilled my friend Terri in the groin, which she was not pleased about.

Perhaps more interesting was my two-hour hunt for dodgeballs last night, which involved me driving up and down Hawthorne Blvd in search of sporting goods stores, toy stores, or, hopefully, dodgeball stores. The latter did not exist, and my visits to two Sportsmarts, two Big 5 sports, a Target, a Sports Chalet and a Copeland’s (closed) yielded onto rubber playground balls – perhaps acceptable, but not the foam, rhino-skinned gem balls I was hoping for. Remember those from 2nd grade PE? Yeah, they’re really hard to find. My last hope was a Toys R Us I was pretty sure existed somewhere along the street, but wasn’t sure exactly where. I passed a Kids R Us, a Babies R Us, a Kids R Furniture, but no toys. Finally I spotted at it and was dissappointed to find only more of the same. Finally I gave in and picked up 3 rubber ones.

Turns out the rhino-skinned foam balls wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes on the blacktop we were playing on. Rubber invinca-balls rule the day after all.

On a side note, my hunt for roommates next year has spiraled out of control. I’ve now received over 50 responses, and had 6 people come by to see the house. Most of whom are really cool. Craigslist rules.

Malibu - 7/12/04
People hate LA because of the traffic and the beautiful but lazy people. People love LA because of the weather and the beautiful but lazy people. But people also love LA because it's one of few places in the country where you can go surfing, ski, and hike in desert mountains all the same day.

Yet nobody actually does this. Because, as I mentioned, people in LA are beautiful but lazy. Today Ryan, Gabe and I conquered two of the legs of this recreational triathlon, and I vowed that someday I'm going to do all three. We drove up to Malibu and surfed in the morning, then headed into the mountains to hike in the afternoon. There even would have been time for skiing in the evening, but instead we chilled at Ryan's folks' place, ironically atop a hill in the Valley, and ate salmon, Oreos and fruit punch. And then drove back in rush hour. Maybe it was a triathlon after all.

Trailhead	Restricted trail? Ha!	Lookout

Bear vs. Trampoline - 7/13/04
You must watch this right now.

Bear Falling Out of Tree Onto Trampoline movie

In Montana this bear was stuck in a tree, so to get it out they pushed a trampoline underneath and then shot the bear with a tranquilizer dart. What follows is the greatest thing in history.

The bear was fine, but nothing's better than seeing animals and people getting totally worked. Spurred by this, Email me if you want me to try and refind and post the old videos I had of "Kid Getting Hit in Head by Basketball," "Sheep Running Into Wall," and "Monkey Smelling His Own Ass and Passing Out." Lemme know.

For the Love of God - 7/17/04
I was recently sucked into watching the finale of “For Love Or Money,” one of those new-fangled “reality shows” that pits uppity women against each other in competition for men and cash. It was everything I had imagined.

As a teaser for their “thrilling next season full of exciting new twists!” they took roughly eight minutes to explain exactly how all these “exciting new twists” would work. Apparently next year one of the women from this year’s show will be choosing between 16 eligible men, who first compete for her and then decide whether they will pick the girl or the money. Only this year some of the men will be choosing between the girl and a million dollars, while others choose between the girl and one dollar. And this year the girl also gets to choose between the guy and a million dollars of her own. Oh, and also this year there is not one, but actually two women, who at first don’t know about each other but are introduced in a hair-pulling showdown during the season premiere. So the guys choose the girls, the girls choose the guys, then they all squabble it out for either one million dollars or one dollar, and no one else knows how much each person is fighting for. Also I think there’s an alligator loose somewhere on the grounds. Or maybe I made that part up.

These reality shows are getting way too complicated. I remember when it was just two guys videotaping each other getting kicked in the nuts. Why can’t they call these reality shows what they really are? Or at least give us some shock-value satisfaction amidst all this vicarious voyeurism? Like

or

or

I’d watch that. Or at least if they’d bring back the Catty Midget Bitches. They were so awesome.

This Past Weekend's Schedule: - 7/20/04

SATURDAY
7:55am – Awake on 4 hours sleep after a late-night poker/drinking party to go surfing with Gabe.
8:10am – Gabe actually wakes up.
8:25am – Arrive on the beach to cram in a quick hour of surfing before…
9:30am - …the monthly Hermosa Beach football tournament starts up. Sun block is reapplied.
9:45am – First jello-shot is taken.
10:15am – Games begin with a close loss in our first game.
12:45pm – Sixth jello-shot is taken.
1:45pm – Sixth game of football is completed. We get knocked out of the tournament but I get a coupon for a free pitcher of beer for cleaning up come cones.
2:30pm – Tournament ends, and we all retire to the bars still covered in sand. I discover I’m not the only one with a free pitcher of beer – we all have them. It seems no one will be paying for drinks today.
6:00pm – Stumble home to find Sam trying to drink a whole six-pack of beer while watching “The Road To Wellville,” for no apparent reason. Not questioning this, I fall asleep on the floor.
8:30pm – Wake up and head to April’s for another barbeque that goes long into the night.

SUNDAY 9:30am – Wake up for an 11:00 business meeting in Santa Monica.
11:00-4:00pm – Write curriculum for on online Algebra course.
4:30 – Stop by the library to return a book.
5:00-8:00 – Get email and dinner at home, and prep for tomorrow’s SAT class.
8:30 – Continue working on Algebra curriculum long into the night.

It is the summer of the yin-yang.

AVP - 7/22/04
We went down to Hermosa Pier randomly last night and discovered that there had been a national pro beach volleyball tournament there all day. While watching ESPN at the bar, they recapped all the athletes and celebrities who had been there that day, about a mile from our house. The whole thing was running on TV all day. There was even a tug-of-war contest between ten Playboy bunnies.

If this kind of thing had happened in Minnesota, I think I would have known about it.

The System - 7/27/04
The address of our house is 702 N. Paulina Avenue. But when Gabe went to the DMV last fall to get his California license, somehow the address that made it on was 702 W. Pauline St. At the time we weren’t sure which was more miraculous – the fact that he made 3 errors in a 4-term address, or the fact that they let him. But we all agreed that it was hilarious, and patted Gabe on the back for a job well done.

Do they check these things? What would have stopped him from putting an even more incorrect address on there? Or a fake birth date? Or somebody else’s picture? Somewhere truckloads of cocaine are being smuggled into the country by a Gobe Drukkar of 720 S. Paula Crescent, who looks suspiciously like Fidel Castro.

It was a top level blooper, right up there with the ass-face boy from South Park and the kid from my high school whose yearbook picture was a random picture of some arbitrary guy he found in a photo booth. But we figured if Gabe ever lost his license – or got pulled over – it was as good as gone.

And yet, recently an envelope showed up at our house, addressed to Gabe at 702 W. Pauline St. Gabe had lost his wallet (or rather it was stolen) at a concert about a month ago, and here was this letter from the Fullerton Police saying they’d recovered his wallet and license in a Porto-potty. It had been sanitized (they actually said this) and was waiting for him at the station.

No mention of the wrong address. The mailman seemed to have no trouble finding us. No allegations that Gabe was, indeed, leading a double life The system is drastically inadequate, but it knows its inadequacies so well it’s able to adjust and make things work. It’s quite amazing really.

The only question now is whether Gabe will actually drive back to Fullerton to get his wallet. The three dollars inside was of course taken. And I mean, how much can they really sanitize a wallet that’s been in a Porto-potty?

Countdown - 8/1/04
As you've probably noticed, I've been pretty terrible as of late about updating the Pond. Even this entry wasn't written anywhere near the 1st. It's not that things haven't been happening - it's just that I've been busy/drunk to post them.

The problem is the Summer of Rampage collided head-on with the Fall of Productivity - amidst the race for debauchery, several of the job fires I started when it looked like the Buick was going to suck me dry burst into flame all at once. Suddenly in addition to two SAT classes and three tutoring students, I've been writing high school algebra cirriculum 50 hours a week, doing web design, and I finally got another security position. All of which deserve entries of their own. Simultaneously I've refused to curb my libational gluttony, so the Wolfman has continued to climb up the wall. The result has been lots of well-funded consumption, but not so much writing production.

But this is not an excuse. Because the countdown is in effect - on August 15th Sam, Gabe and JD will be moving out, and new roommates will be moving in. In the meantime there's a lot of adventure to have. Some of which has already happened, actually... but since I'm so behind I'm just going to report on everything 1 week delayed. I'll catch up, I promise. One day at a time. I can still get work done, keep the rampage going, and at the same time keep posting. I promise.

PS - To show my committment after writing this post, I sat down to drink a six pack and write a chapter on Solving Systems of Linear Equations. At 4am.

PPS - I didn't finish either.

Camping 2 - 8/2/04
In Gabe and Paul’s Second Annual Spontaneous Camping Trip, we took off Sunday for Joshua Tree. For anyone unfamiliar with Joshua Tree, it’s a rather simple National Park in Southern California that stretches for hundreds of square miles in the desert and consists of two things – rocks, and Joshua Trees. I guess Rock National Park was already taken.

But it’s pretty awesome, made more so when you don’t hit any traffic getting there. Last time we drove two hours and camped in snow and mountains – this time we drove two hours and found rocks and desert. And we drove mostly in the same direction. Maybe next time we’ll go to the tropical rain forest near Mission Viejo.

	?

All this set us back maybe 50 bucks between gas and supplies – the most expensive part of the trip was definitely the gambling on the way home. We spontaneously stopped at the casino of the sovereign Native American nation of Chukupenga (I’m making that up) and Gabe prompty lost $50 but was consoled by my treating him to A&W afterwards. I won $5, which was just enough to pay for the $4 ATM fee plus one dollar at A&W.

Camping in back in 24-hours. Next stop Catalina Island.

Oh there's the water.	Can you find the hiding Spacemobile?

You Know You Have a Problem When... - 8/3/04
Our bi-weekly Tuesday Poker night tonight spilled over into a midnight run to Hollywood Park. Hollywood Park is the local Inglewood Casino where they have a racetrack and you can get a roast ham served to you as you gamble, but they don’t have regular rules Blackjack. It also smells like and is shaped like an airport terminal.

I played for a few hours and lost the 30 dollars I’d just won at the house game. Actually, I lost 32 dollars, bringing me two bucks down for the night and one dollar down for the Joshua Tree/Hollywood Park weekend. Damn you ATM fees.

Broke-Ass Phone - 8/4/04
Just look at my broke-ass phone.

What a disgrace. Half the buttons don’t work. Half of those buttons have fallen off. Every time you drop it at least six more pieces fly off. Even when it lands on carpet. The only thing cool about it is the voice-recorder, which lets you make memos at the push of a button, but now that button doesn’t work.

I’m getting a new one. Even though trying to trade-in without contracting any more months with a company is the most expensive way to buy a phone, I’m getting a new one. Maybe one for junior high kids, with lots of designs and cool ring tones. As long as it’s sturdy, and it works. No matter what it’s gotta be better than this phone. What a broke-ass phone.

Employment Mayhem 2 - The Revenge - 8/5/04
So an update on all my new jobs.

Back when the Summer of Rampage was just that and not Summer of Rampage/4 Jobs, I started getting a little nervous that I would run out of cash. High school kids don’t like to get tutored in June, Security companies don’t like to hire, and apparently beer costs money. So my dear friend Molly was kind enough to hook me up with a job writing Algebra curriculum for an online textbook. This turned out to be a great job – flexible hours, working from home, great pay, and technically this is my first job getting paid for writing. Sure, the glory of polynomials is a long way from The Simpsons, but hey, it’s something. Plus occasionally I get to slip in bits about the Scalene being the bastard step-child of the triangle family. Maybe that’s why they hired me. Or maybe they thought teaching affluent high school kids how to take the SAT counts as real teaching. For the record, it does not.

Then I got another security gig. I had to go to another company – the stultifying bureaucracy of the first place finally overwhelmed both them and me – they said I was going to have to fill out all the paperwork again and undergo training for the third time in a year. That’s when I stopped calling them. The new company’s not bad – at least as far as Security Companies go – they had me hired and placed in about two weeks, since I already have certification. I still had to endure training again, but at least it was in a different room. And I got a few hours of Algebra writing done while they were showing all the videos.

The test prep students kicked back up, and suddenly I’ve picked up an 80-hour work week. It hit a peak last week with two consecutive 18 hour days, nearly rivaling the 44 out of 48 consecutive hours I pulled that time last fall. By the end of it I was half-starved and emotionally crazed. I drove home from security listening to the end of ‘Of Mice and Men’ (Books on CD while stuck in LA traffic are my new thing these days) and actually cried. No, seriously, I wept like a little bitch. It’s a damn good Book-on-CD. It inspired me to someday start a great book collection from my adolescence, maturing in style as I got older, from ‘The Giving’ Tree and ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, to ‘Indian in the Cupboard’ and ‘Ender’s Game’ , to ‘Grapes of Wrath’ and ‘Catch 22’. Someday. Maybe in the same financial windfall that enables me to start sleeping more than 4.5 hours a night.

I believe I ended that day playing Beer Pong with JD’s 15-year-old brother and his 15-year-old friend. Good thing my work ethic hasn’t decayed with my morals.

Razor Sharp Fins - 8/6/04
JD's entire family (and I mean everyone) is in town this weekend, and his brother and brother's friend wanted us to show them the surfing ropes. Yes, the same ones who we played Beer Pong with yesterday.

It turns out you can rent foam boards down at Hermosa Pier for like 10 bucks, so we were covered between The Chief, Dauminator, Ryan's board Chef Tony and these two new foam imposters. The only problem is the foam boards came equipped with razor-sharp fins, apparently for warding off sharks. They accomplished that; however, they also did a good job warding off JD's brother's ear, when he got too close to a wayward board after a wipeout and found himself with a nasty cartilage slice. As we do with all surfing injuries, we laughed at him and then thought about taking him to the hospital. We decided against it.

It's Sam's Birthday Party - 8/7/04
And rather than tell it in words, I think a picture tour is better. Because a picture is worth a thousand words. Or in this case 18,000 words.

Please click here.

Moving Out... - 8/13/04
Today, after a week of last minute packing, surfing and rampaging, the roommates have moved out. After watching Jeremy help Sam and JD charge through an all night moving venture, I helped Gabe lug a Spacemobile-load up to Westwood. In the process more than five pieces of furniture were broken. I’m gonna miss living with those guys.

On the other hand, we got to have an empty-house party. Which mostly involve Gabe, Sam, April and I playing caps then running around drunk in the street, some of us in bare feet (OK, I was in bare feet) hurling the Nerf Vortex around like there was no tomorrow. Maybe there isn't as residents of 702 Paulina. But there is for friends. And for other Vortex-related shenanigans. That much I promse.

Moving In... - 8/14/04
Perhaps my running around barefoot in the street last night could have been better thought-out - by the end of today I had a nasty toe infection. This was compounded by my spending 10 hours in a row on my feet all day - first teaching, then helping new roommate #1 Brian move from Long Beach, then helping new roommates #2 and #3, (Kolleen and Noah) move in as well. These are the new characters, by the way - Brian has moved from Long Beach to live in Sam's room, Kolleen has come from Torrance (and Boston) to take JD's, and Noah just arrived recently from New York to fill Gabe's spot. They are the next chapter of 702 Paulina, and will undoubtedly become integral parts of Paul's Pond as well, whether they like it or not.

So I earned an infected toe from all my moving altruism, but we also earned a sweet, huge couch from Kolleen's place. The house transformation has begun. The couch was so big at had to be carried in two pieces (it's one of those corner couches), and marks only the second thing we haven't been able to fit in the Spacemobile in one trip. A queen-sized box-spring was the first. We also earned 27 cans of tunafish we found lying in the various cabinets and cubbies and grottos of the kitchen. I guess Sam had been stockpiling them for the nuclear tuna-less winter. We decided to designate an entire shelf to tuna in one of the cupboards - the Tune Shelf - because it's funny and also the tuna took up nearly that much room.

We now have a Tuna Shelf, a Beer Fridge and a Garbage Room. I'm looking forward to the inauguration of the Twinkie Garage.

My Toe Hurts - 8/15/04
I'm having trouble walking now because my toe is so messed up. It's one of those deals where the lymph node swells up. I've been treating it with Neosporin and hot compresses, but I think I should have started earlier. There's a red stripe going across my foot. Yeah, it's no good.

My mom yelled at me on the phone for not going to the doctor and going drinking instead. So I felt bad and took some penicillin Kolleen stole from her house, and then Gabe yelled at me for taking someone else's prescription medicine. Apparently this is a rule that everybody knows except me - that you're not supposed to take someone else's prescription medicine. I told him it wasn't birth control or anything - that Kolleen's mother had had an infection too, but he just yelled at me some more. This is the guy who's gone on two illegal camping trips with me, watching amusedly as I've almost drowned from surfing, and instigated throwing beer cans at skunks... so when Gabe yells at me I know it's really bad. The only other time he's done it was when I almost ate a pound of hamburger meat that was dark brown and had been in the fridge for a month. I told him cooking it would kill all the bad things, but he just yelled at me a whole bunch and threw things. So anyway I stopped taking the penicillin and then April yelled at me because if you're gonna take someone else's prescription medicine, you have to do it for the whole 10 days or else you just make the virus stronger.

This is just no good. I keep getting yelled at. And my foot hurts.

We Came, We Saw, We Punched a Trolley - 8/17/04
It's over. The Rampage, that is, not my foot. My foot's better too, actually - Kolleen's mom's penicillin cleared that right up. Unless the infection's just lingering deep within my bones, spawning superhuman strength and waiting to conquer... But the Rampage is done too.

After just under 60 days, the board came down, signifying the end of summer and the end of Gabe and my teasing of alcoholism. Ralph the Wolfman ended up on top, with a sliced finger, and infected toe and a broken beer bottle he threw at a neighboor's house. 58 days, 30 steps up the wall... I hear it's only 12 steps back down. I wish they'd pay me to do this kind of math.

Gabe and Sam and JD are out, and Brian, Noah and Kolleen have firmly taken over, scrubbing and vacuuming and throwing-12-month-old-freezer-steak away. Gabe begins Law School on Monday, and Sam and JD begin... whatever it is that Sam and JD do up in their little apartment in Hollywood. Perhaps fondle each other. Perhaps write things. And I begin healing my liver, and turning eyes to what's ahead - a fall filled with productivity but fun... and I'll have to make sure some writing is crammed in there too. And, of course, I begin transfering from present into memory, a fantastic summer, that will always be known as The Summer Rampage.

PS - If anyone didn't know the esoteric "punched a trolley" reference in the title of this entry, it's from the original Rampage video game where my brother and I would try and get our monsters on either side of the San Francisco trolley and punch it back and forth until it exploded. If anyone didn't know what the word "esoteric" meant, get a damn dictionary.

Long live the Rampage.

And long live the board.