Michael O'Blogger

Current Musical Obsession: Scala & Kolacny Brothers

2010-09-05T03:07:00.000-07:00

In the middle of my having many other things to do tonight, I got obsessed with finding a piece of music that I couldn't get out of my head. I had other things to put in my head, so I really needed the space.

A week or so ago I watched the trailer, online, for the upcoming film "The Social Network", the David Fincher directed/Aaron Sorkin written/ Jesse Eisenberg starring story of the creation of Facebook. It's an extraordinary trailer, for reasons that don't necessarily having anything to do with the film. What gives you goosebumps is the opening bit, which is a mix of a slow-to-frenzied stream of images and a haunting and, frankly, badass piece of music. You quickly realize you're listening to a cover of Radiohead's "Creep", but done by some kind of choir. It's both amazing and beautiful, and is completely captivating. The track is mixed in throughout the remainder of the trailer, when we get to the actual footage of the film.

Tonight that track came back into my mind-pod and started playing on continuous repeat, so I turned to the web to hunt down where I could find this song. Turns out the track is done by a band known as Scala & Kolacny Brothers. And what is that band? It's a Belgian all-women's choir (?) conducted by Stijn Kolacny with piano accompaniment by his brother, Steven Kolacny. The group has done whole albums of rock/pop cover songs, and it's their 2002 album "On The Rocks" where this Radiohead track originated (along with covers for Nirvana, Garbage, Wheatus, the Police and more).

The album that, of course, you can't buy on download from either iTunes or Amazon.

I did, however, go ahead and (just now) buy their 2007 CD "One-Winged Angel" on iTunes, another cover compilation (with some originals) that gives their angelic treatment to songs from Depeche Mode ("Somebody"), Bjork ("Joga"), Placebo ("The Bitter End"), Kylie Minogue ("I Believe in You"), The Cure ("Friday I'm in Love"), Marilyn Manson ("The Beautiful People"), Gordon Lightfoot (!) ("If You Could Read My Mind") and others, including more Radiohead ("Fake Plastic Trees"). Looking forward to diving into it.

Is this one of those bands that everyone else knew about but me? I'm finding it hard to imagine that. So if you're going to come at me claiming to have been down with an obscure Belgian girl choir for years, I'm going to make you provide some verification on that. Oh, I'll have questions ready, people...

For those of you not familiar, check out the "Creep" track over the aforementioned "The Social Network" trailer. Hope the film lives up to the promise the emotional weight of this trailer makes.

Michaelocomedy.com - LIVE.

2010-02-24T23:23:00.001-08:00

Just a heads-up to you Michael O'Blogger fans that have been following the news on my quest for the comedy lifestyle. You're not going to get a lot more of that here, since that news has been shifted to a different blog.

Michaelocomedy.com is my new site for my comedy stuff. Eventually, it'll be a full-blown web page (that makes it sound dirty, but that's not how I meant it...), but for now, it's just a blog, like this one. It'll have the updates on everything going on with my comedy stuff, where I'll be performing next, and it has handy links to other stuff, like to my new Michael O'Connell Comedy Facebook fan page (over 100 fans so far, bee-yatch! Yeeeeah!). So why not head over there and take yourself a look, hmmm?

I'll still be blogging here with other stuff, of course, so don't take this one off your list either. And, as I always promise, I'll try to get more regular with the blogging. And chances of that increase with two blogs to fill. Right?

Garfield Ave RepreSENT!

2010-02-24T23:05:00.000-08:00

So I was just downtown, finishing up catching a night of comedy at Luna's Cafe, and I made the following joke on my Twitter:

"Hanging on the sidewalks of downtown Sacramento, just BEGGING to get mugged. Typing on this phone is probably not helping."

'Cause, you know, I'm from the suburbs. And we fear downtown. We're convinced it's a constant hotbed of crime and malfeasance, that every time we park, our stereo's going to get stolen, and that we're liable to get stabbed if we're within 50 feet or so of a Lightrail station.

So after I survived my few minutes of hanging on the sidewalk, finishing up a cigar and a conversation with a couple of comedians, I got in my van and headed home, back to my nice, safe, quiet suburban hood. Mi gringo barrio.

I was headed east down Madison, almost to my intersection, when a sheriff's car, lights-a-flashy, went booking past me. Okay, then. I pulled over for a sec like everyone else. I just started to go again when another one whipped out from a side street and followed the first one.

Just as I got within eyesight of the Garfield Avenue intersection, I saw them go through the light. And then I saw another flashing sheriff's car shoot through the same intersection, going north on Garfield. Then, right after that? ANOTHER one speeding by, but this one going SOUTH on Garfield.

First thing I thought was, "Wouldn't it be awesome if they all blew the same light and just ran into each other?"

Second thing was, "What, do they not KNOW where the crime is happening? Did someone call on a cell phone and say, 'Help, I'm being robbed! I'm somewhere in the suburbs! Come find me!'?"

Then as I pulled into my complex and got parked, I started coming down my wheelchair lift, and overhead, a police helicopter with its spotlight going buzzed by.

So I guess the point I'm getting to here is...does anyone know of any decent, affordable housing available right now in the downtown area?

You know, where it's safe?

Tommy T's Open Mic Finals - Round 1 Begins!

2010-02-16T01:55:00.001-08:00

Some of you may have heard that I ended up in the open mic comedy finals at Tommy T's Comedy & Dinner Theater. By some of you, I mean anyone who's read this blog.

Well, tonight, it all began. All the details just got worked out, the names all got drawn, and round 1 of the finals began tonight. No, I was not in it. There are 18 comics involved, and round 1 is spread over three evenings, with six comics competing against each other each night (with a week between nights). In the drawing, I ended up on night three, which means I'll be up on stage competing on Monday, March 1st! Which is awesome because that gives me a couple weeks more than I thought I had to prepare. Whew!

But tonight, I had to show up to watch and support my fellow comedy peeps! So I headed out to Tommy T's. I just said there were six comedians each night, right? Well, tonight ended up with five. Oddly enough, the sixth guy (Aaron something-or-other) whom I'd never heard of before (I assume he won a competition before I became a regular there) apparently fell out of contact. They just could never reach him. So the competition was down to five, and they just happened to be five of my favorite local comedians, people I've been on stage with before, hung out with, and marveled at for their comedic prowess. So those lucky folks who showed up to watch were in for a big treat.

The comedians competing were Aaron Shine (he of the masturbating and stuffed animals), Willie Mac (the OTHER cable guy), Jennifer Rutherford (the showerhead queen), Ty Anderson (who fakes African accents at McDonald's) and Jason Tate (the big, muscular guy whose dog is a dirty, dirty whore). I got there early to talk to each of them and wish them luck. Great atmosphere in there, full of anticipation and excitement. I also got to talk to the painfully funny Boogee Quinn, another regular there (who I gave a joke to backstage once that he used, so that made me like him even more), who let me know he's slated for night #2. This made me feel much better, because competing against Boogee is not something you want to do if winning is, like, a big thing to you. I'll just have to deal with him in the finals. Optimism! Also chatted with Lou, the manager, and he finally got my headshot that he needed so he can post me up on their website, so that'll be coming soon when the night #3 details go up.

Went alone tonight, as Vlado's out of town and everyone else was busy, and that was just fine with me. Got me some chicken tenders and a Guinn and kicked back to cheer for the whole gang. Everyone stepped it up on stage...instead of the usual 5-minute sets we all do at open mics around town, the first round is 10-minute sets, so everyone had some new stuff. Great jobs by all. But much as I don't want to choose someone out of that list as doing the best? Ty Anderson blew my mind. Ty's a guy who started off, when I first saw him perform, not quite so strong. But Ty never gave up...he kept coming back, kept learning, and he got noticeably better week after week, until he finally won an open mic, putting him in the finals. Ty clearly KNEW he was in the finals and wasn't going to mess around. That man did things on stage I'd never seen him do. He was doing voices. He was doing physical comedy (including a perfectly executed on-stage ninja roll). He was messing with the audience, and the audience was loving it. He was more confident than I've ever seen him. He was loud. He was funny. He OWNED it. Couldn't be happier for that guy!

But, sadly, only three could advance amongst this whole awesome group. At the end, Lou got them all back up on stage and started with the audience voting. This took a while, because it was ridiculously close. There were several re-votes. In the end, the lucky winners were Willie, Jennifer and Ty. They're now going on to round 2, and it couldn't have happened to three better comics. Damned proud of all of them. For now. I, of course, will be forced to destroy them all later...

After this, the after-party was up at Po' Boyz in Folsom, where the regular Monday night open mic was going on. Some people went right up after their wins and did a new set here (like Willie and Jason). Jennifer, Ty and Aaron just wanted to hang and socialize. I wasn't feeling it for going up, as I had my head in the spectator place tonight, so I didn't do a set. Instead, I hung out on the patio and had a cigar and rapped with comics (always the best part of the comedian lifestyle). Oh, and speaking of Willie...he runs a comedy night up at Cafe Nostro in El Dorado Hills, which is booked a couple months out it's so popular. He came up tonight and asked me if I wanted to come up there and do a twenty minute set. Uh, you THINK? So that'll be sometime in April. I'll let you know.

My favorite part of the night, though? After all the other comedians started going in, there was this young guy still out on the patio, smoking. He started talking to me. Great kid. I eventually asked if he was a comic, and he said no, but he's really been thinking about it (which is why he showed up at Po' Boyz tonight, to see what it's about), but had no idea how to get started. And the weirdest thing happened. I became a mentor. I started telling him how the whole thing works, what the Sacramento circuit's like, the best places to go, the important people to know... Did this for over a half hour and totally filled him with info and got him psyched to finally get up and give it a try. In the middle of this, it occurred to me...I've been doing this for not even six weeks yet - and yet here I am talking like a vet. While on the one hand it seemed silly (because I still know so little, really), on the other, I marveled at just how far I've come, how much I've done with this, and how much of learned in so little time. All of a sudden, I'm actually, like...a comedian. What do you know? So here, again, I must give thanks to comic buddy #1 Vlado for calling me up and saying, "Screw it...let's just do it" and getting me started in all this. I'm having the time of my life, and it's all because of the Fist Officer. Thanks, man.

So, again...MARK YOUR CALENDARS. That is MARCH 1ST (Monday) at Tommy T's in Rancho Cordova. I will be doing 10 minutes with all my comedic might, trying to step up to the semifinals. As it's audience voting, I of course would be dumb to not invite as many of my peeps as possible. So as this gets closer, keep in contact with me, and watch this blog. Next week, when I show up to watch night #2 (go Boogee go! No, wait...that's bad for me. Choke Boogee choke!), Lou's going to be handing me a bunch of tickets to hand out to folks. So chances are your name might be on one of them. Would love, love to see you there, but more importantly, I'd love to get as big a crowd there as possible for the benefit of the other comedians who'll be sweating it out with me. A big crowd is good for everyone, and I want to share. So prepare yourself for a great night of local comedy, and a pivotal night in my burgeoning comedy career.

Lest ye be square? Be there!

Comedy takes a sick day

2010-02-02T19:08:00.001-08:00

Oops! Scratch that notice from yesterday that said Vlado and I would be doing Laughs Unlimited or Tommy T's tonight. Vlado went and got himself ill, and is home hacking like he's got the SARS. So we had to cancel the comedy for tonight...which works out awesome, since tonight is the season premiere of "Lost"! Hellz yeah!

Stay tuned for details, but it's likely we'll be back on next week at both Po' Boyz (Monday) and Tommy T's (Tuesday). We'll keep you in the loop.

Here's hoping for a "get well soon" experience for the Fist Officer. Remember, Vlado, when it comes to comedy and the flu...you may think it's funny, but it's snot. (You see what I did there?).

The Comedy Odyssey - Part 4 ("The Boyz at Po' Boyz")

2010-02-02T01:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, just a quick one tonight, as I've gotten home late from this one.

In the first of our back-to-backs this week, Vlado and I hit the open mic night up at Po' Boyz in Folsom. This is a bar and grille that features live music (mostly blues, I hear), but has comedy nights on Mondays. This open mic is hosted by Cheryl the Soccer Mom, a well-known and hi-larious Sac area comedienne who handed me her card (by way of John Baradin, if you remember that story) on our first night up at Tommy's. With Vlado back in town from his paying job (who needs one of THOSE...?), we finally got a chance to take her up on her offer and head up. Good news - I emailed her first last night, and since she knew we were coming, she just went ahead and put us on the list ahead of time. No need to rush there. Awesome.

So we decided we'd take my van, and Vlado and Babydoll showed up at my place at 7:30ish. We drove up there figuring to eat and drink before the thing started at 9:00. We got there to find all of two or three people there (?!). After talking to the bartender, we found out more people show as the comedians come in at 9:00. Whew! We grabbed some chow (I got tacitos! I've missed tacitos!) and some beverages and relaxed. Well, *I* relaxed. I was just up there to do my same basic 5-minute set with some minor tweaks. Vlado, on the other hand, had decided to come up with mostly all-new material...like, an hour before he headed to my place. Ballsy. So he was still trying to get it memorized. He basically used this is a personal test to see how well he could pull off last-minute material. Right on.

Cheryl and others started to show, and I found out from her that while she was the host, instead of doing any MCing she was just going to have each comic finish their set and have them introduce the next comic coming up. She had me set at person #2. I asked if she could go ahead and put Vlado at #3, because I was the only one in the place capable of properly pronouncing "Vladimir Zeravica".

The crowd was not what you'd call huge, and seemed mostly made up of comedians and their guests, but it was a small place and a closer atmosphere, so it didn't seem empty. I got up and did my stuff, felt it went really good. I liked some of the changes I put in and may hold onto them. I got done and enjoyed getting to feel like an MC by introducing the Fist Officer. And I also enjoyed getting to hear Vlado's new stuff without knowing it all ahead of time for a change. We've been trading routines back and forth and editing each other this whole time. Finally, I got to go in with no spoilers! The new stuff was awesome...more pilot-based stuff, naturally...and even a little bit of Broadway choreography thrown in (whaaaaat? Well, that's what you get for not showing up to see it, isn't it?). We both felt great about the experience, enjoyed the really relaxed atmosphere of a largely-comedian crowd, and were quite happy to be #'s 2 and 3, so we could just kick back for the rest of the night and enjoy the show...you know, and drink.

Very happy with the Po' Boyz experience, and definitely going to do it again. I think I knew every single other comedian there save for one, as all the regulars from Tommy T's showed up - including our perennial host, Ellis Rodriguez, who showed up to do some new material (and material that just killed, dude. The man has skills). This is a great venue, I now realize, to try out new material, so I plan to use it for that purpose. New jokes a comin'! Only downside is the 9:00 PM start on a weeknight. We didn't get done until almost midnight. Not that this is a problem for me with my sleep schedule, but it does muss up things if you want to invite people along. You know, people who HAVE jobs?

Still no final word on tomorrow night, but it's looking more and more like Laughs Unlimited downtown. So seems we'll be hitting the big room in less than 24 hours. Stay tuned here for confirmation and a full report!

O'Connell/Zeravica back 2 back open mic action!

2010-01-31T19:51:00.001-08:00

The Professor X of Comedy (tm) and the Fist Officer (tm) are back on stage this week!

Yes, that's right comedy fetishists, Michael O'Connell and Vladimir Zeravica, after a couple weeks off while Vlad's been off flying around the country and earning a living, are back on stage this week for your chuckling pleasure. And back to back nights, Monday and Tuesday!

Monday is set. We'll be appearing at Po' Boyz Bar and Grill in Folsom for their weekly open mic night. That show starts at 9:00 PM, and we'll be on sometime after that point.

Tuesday is still up on the air on the location. We will either by appearing back at Tommy T's, OR will be debuting at Laughs Unlimited in Old Sacramento. There's still a scheduling question on that, so I'll have to update you once I know. The big Tommy T's open mic finals is coming up later this month, you see, and there's a "Finals Dry Run" going on Tuesday after open mic ends, where competing comics will be previewing their sets. I'm not sure at this point if that's ALL us open mic winners or just some, so don't know if I need to be there or not. Waiting to find out. If so, Vlado will be on during the open mic portion, I'll be on stage during the Dry Run portion an hour or two later. If not, we'll both be hitting Laughs Unlimited and doing our stuff for the downtown crowd.

Now, as a warning - this will not be new material. We'll be fine-tuning our existing acts (with minimal changes) this week, so if you've seen our YouTube videos, you've largely seen our sets. If you want to see those same jokes live, then by all means, come out and support us! If, however, you feel let down by reruns, we certainly understand.

More to come, but for now, here's the info on the definite one tomorrow night:

Po' Boys Bar and Grill
9580 Oak Avenue Parkway
Folsom, CA 95630
(916) 987-2886
NO COVER CHARGE

Hope to see you there!

Hecklers ON stage? Another night of Tommy T's comedy

2010-01-26T23:54:00.001-08:00

I headed down to Tommy T's tonight for the Tuesday open mic night. No getting up on stage for me this week. Two reasons. One, Vlado's out of town, and I don't want to be pulling ahead of him in the stage experience. That ain't right to do to a hard-working pilot-slash-comic. And two, I went alone, and therefore had no one to lift my ass up on stage. So unless they planned to have me do my act from back by the bar, it was just going to be spectator tonight. After the near-empty room Vlado and I had to deal with a couple weeks back, I wanted to do my part for fellow comics by at least being another person on the crowd. Apparently, on some nights, that can near DOUBLE the crowd.

So I hit the pharmacy first on my way over, and found myself in a ridiculous line. I thought this was going to make me late, but after I got to Tommy T's at almost 7:00, I found out that someone had confused the details on the evening. While the notice had said they would start at 6:30, it was actually a 7:30 start. I was early! Sweet! That allowed for starting drinking even earlier. You can do that kind of thing when you're not having to worry about getting up on stage.

I hung up at a table by the bar this time. This is where the comics tend to huddle, so it seemed like the place to be. Said hey to Lou and Ellis...and Ty, the big winner last time I was on! I noticed near me there was a table with a couple of pretty loud guys (REALLY loud guys) who seemed to be drinking a lot. I sensed trouble amiss...

I had assumed these guys knew each other, but, as I found out later, they were just both really loud, really drunk guys, so the Jack Daniels pheromone just pulled them into each other's orbits, and they fell in love immediately. As the show started, they were both quite distracting. Sometimes they'd be together, sometimes one would be at the bar while one was at the table. When this one guy was sitting alone, he would, without even looking up, comment on what the comedian was saying (positively, at least - "Yes! Yes! That's true!"), and with his voice, the comedian AND the whole rest of the place could clearly hear him. That is, when they could hear him over the REALLY drunk guy, who was talking at near shouting level to the bartender for what seemed like forever. People all the way up front kept looking back all night, wondering who the rude loud people were in the back (you know, the ones right by ME?), and many of the comedians had to deal with the situation - either having to play off the guy at the table with his comments, or deal with heckles or general loudness from bar guy.

So after a while, Ellis gets up there and call for the next comedian. Oh, joy. It's table guy! Table guy (pretty drunk but serviceable) states right off that he's not a comedian, and that he just came in to fill out a job application for waiting tables and decided to go up. He has no act. But to his credit...he was entertaining. He just kind of talked about his life a bit, and was a pretty naturally funny guy. So it wasn't disastrous or anything. But he did look up at one point when he obviously had nothing left and asked, "Isn't there supposed to be a red light coming on to save me here?", and Lou hit the light for him. He finished and went back to his table. Pretty well received.

So bar guy continues the yammering. Loud, drunk, obnoxious, getting shushed from all sides. Twice on stage Ellis, while making it a joke, of course, told the people back the bar to...well, to be quiet (I'm paraphrasing, of course). Then we're down to only three comedians left. Night's almost over. Ellis introduces the next comic by name...and bar guy start loudly yelling cheers for himself. There was the most amazing collective "Oh, God" from the whole room. It was magical. It was a brilliant mixture of discomfort and train-wreck anticipation.

Bar guy takes forever to get up to the stage, holding up his arms (and his drink) and yelling for himself the whole time. My first breath-holding moment (an "Oh, no" combined with a guilty but unavoidable "Ooh, this is gonna be good!") was waiting to see if he made it up the stairs to the stage - stairs I've seen sober comedians trip on three times now. He managed. He set his drink down on the stool and grabbed the mic. And started rambling. And stumbling. And, not surprisingly, going nowhere. It was painfully beautiful. After a couple minutes of this (I still couldn't tell you what he actually said, as fixated on the carnival atmosphere as I was), I started to wonder if he'd even see, and if so, heed, the red light when it came on. Well, that didn't end up being a problem. Apparently lost for more to say, he then decided to wow the crowd by stepping OFF the stage and on to one of the front row tables (where people were sitting). NOW we were in about-to-see-some-good-stuff territory.

At this point, Lou cut his mic. Which confused and annoyed bar guy to no end. Then, from my seat in the back, I could see Lou and Ellis, each slowly coming forward on opposite sides of the room, readying to get up on stage from two different sides and put an end to the spectacle. Bar guy saw this, and said (as you may have surmised from his vocal description earlier, he didn't NEED a mic to be heard), "Okay, okay, fine, I'm getting back." He then backed up and stepped back on the stage, managing to (dammit) do so without falling over. But Lou and Ellis approached, having him penned in, and apparently explained it was time for him to leave the stage. Thankfully, they didn't have to physically drag him off. Wait a minute...did I just say "thankfully"? Ripoff!

There were a couple more comedians to go, and, of course, bar guy didn't leave. He was back at the bar, being loud. Now, when the last comedian of the night went on? That's when this guy went into full heckle mode, and completely destroyed this guy's act (a guy whose act was, frankly, a bit cerebral and hard to follow to START with). I would hear later that it was around this point where bar guy then asked Lou when it was his turn to go up on stage. Ooookay. That's when Lou let him know it was time to go. I didn't get to hear all of it, just some loud bitching from bar guy as he was made to leave Tommy T's.

The show ended, and I headed down the elevator to go out to the smoking area where everyone meets post-show. I managed to get out there just in time to see bar guy being dragged by someone he obviously knew...dragged toward a car. There was a clearly embarrassed girl behind the wheel, waiting. Bar guy was pointing and belligerently yelling at the assembled crowd. I came out there just as he was yelling, "Come on, hit me! Any of you! I dare you!"

And I swear to you...for a minute there, I almost went up and did it. Just because it would have been the funniest thing to do at that moment.

But, after dropping him to the pavement once, his buddy managed to get him into the car and drive him away.

Oh GOD am I glad I didn't perform tonight.

The good news? In the middle of his drunken ranting at the bar, this guy apparently told Lou that he'd be back every Tuesday night from now on.

I can only dream....

[NOTE: The photo above was taken just before bar guy left the stage. You can see him there behind Ellis, being a drunken asshat]

The 01/05/10 Comedy Video - Now on YouTube

2010-01-20T23:02:00.000-08:00

Hey! Did you just tell me to go embed myself?!!

People who couldn't make it out to the big me 'n Vlado comedy debut on January 5th have been shouting for video. Well, here's mine, to start with. Will be getting Vlado's up ASAP.

This video, again, was shot by our old pal Rich, who was nice enough to lose a lot of sleep (he rises at about 2:30 AM to get to work) and drive a long way (he lives in freaking Galt) to set up a camera and do this for us, and then to have jump through a few hoops to get it transferred off his camera. Not only did he get the video for us, but he made each of us some awesome DVDs of them. So thanks, again, Chico Rich, for all the effort and for being there for us.

The sound's a bit low, but that's mainly because of the acoustics of the place and...well, frankly, my not-so-booming voice, and my not having figured out yet that just holding the damn mic works better for me. So you may have to pump up the volume a bit.

Hope you enjoy. And away we go...

The Comedy Odyssey - Part 3 ("Post-Comedic Stress Disorder")

2010-01-16T21:36:00.001-08:00

So my second attempt at stand-up hadn't been fantastic, but it hadn't been disastrous either, at least. But I knew I needed to get right back on the horse. Or the bike. Or whatever the right metaphor is. Vlado, too, wanted to get back up onstage and keep hitting it so we didn't get rusty, so we decided we needed to hit the next Tuesday night's open mic at Tommy T's--me, just to practice (you can't win again if you've already won, but a lot of comedians, as I said earlier, show up just to work their stuff in front of a crowd), and Vlado to see if he could get a win and get in the February competition as well.

I was going back to my original 5 minute routine, with just a couple of minor tweaks. Vlado had reworked his routine, adding in some new stuff and adjusting old. Both of us did our practicing at our respective homes (having learned my lesson about not rehearsing, I was taking no chances this time).

Tuesday came, and Vlado said he and Babydoll planned to have dinner at Spaghetti Factory and invited me to join them, so I did. Per Vlado, loading up on carbs before comedy can only be a good thing. It took a bit longer than we thought, but Tommy T's is right upstairs from the S.F., so we headed up with a few minutes to spare. The place was mildly filled, even a bit on the quiet side. But as we soon found out, it was going to be a long night - there were twenty comedians signed up for that night! Damn! Vlado had gone upstairs before we started dinner and put us on the list, and we decided that going in spots #'s 8 and 9 would be good for us (let the crowd get good and warmed up first...as I'd learned a few days before, going first sucks!), and this time, Vlado would be the one going before me (just to mix things up a little).

As the comedy began, the place slowly started filling up more. Pretty soon it was a pretty packed house. But the best part of the crowd, Vlado and I both noticed, was a couple of guys sitting a couple tables down from us. These were big guys...and the kind of guys who just seem to laugh at everything. And better yet, they had that kind of infectious laugh that gets other people around them going. We were both pretty stoked by this, as these guys promised to make things a lot easier for us.

We started to notice that while our time was supposed to be coming up, people seemed to be getting up ahead of us...people whose names were not on the list. Turns out there were some drop-ins...local comedians who popped in and wanted to do a few minutes. The vets get vet treatment. So we waited, and waited...

Soon we got told that we were coming up. Whew! Vlado wheeled me over to the stage door area, where we had a seat. The plan was that he'd get up and do his thing, come back down while Ellis was doing his interstitial bit, take me backstage and get me up the stairs to wait my turn to go. We were both prepared, calm and ready.

Then things started going a wee bit wrong. Know those two guys I mentioned? Just as the latest comedian finished up and Ellis got back on stage, we looked over and noticed both those guys got up and left...along with their whole big table. That was very disappointing...we were counting on those guys. Then, right after that? ANOTHER table got up and left. There had been a lot of comedians up there, and as this was a week night, people weren't going to hang around too late. So as we watched, the place emptied more, and more, until...

Vlado's turn!

Vlado went up on stage and looked down on the crowd. He didn't count right then, obviously, but did do a count later after both of us sat back down. 19 PEOPLE. That's what was left of the crowd when our turn at the mic finally came.

Can you guess what happened next?

Yeah, not pretty. Playing to a very small crowd? NOT FUN. Vlado did his revised act. An act, of course, meant to play to a big crowd...or even a medium crowd...but not, like, a can-fit-them-all-into-one-minivan crowd. It was rough. The room was dead. DEAD, I say! You could smell their bodies decaying. Their next of kin requested charitable donations in lieu of flowers.

Vlado got done, came down to get me, and told me, "Just push on through. That's all you can do." What else CAN you do, right? He got me up the stairs and I waited, and oddly, after having seen what he had to go through, I got eerily calm and relaxed. I now had zero expectations of doing well, and that seemed to take all the pressure off. All I was up there to do, I figured, was just practice my set, get my timing back, experiment with my new plan of just holding the mic the whole time instead of messing with the stand, etc. The crowd being involved? Irrelevant.

So Ellis gave me my intro, which I actually enjoyed quite a bit: "Ladies and gentlemen, the funniest man on wheels...the Professor X of comedy...Mr. Michael...O'Connell!" So I rolled out with the DJ playing AC/DC's "Back in Black" as my intro music. Very cool. And, yes, I remained calm. Almost TOO calm, in fact. I felt like I was talking to a few friends over dinner. So I just did my bit, and those 19 people were nice enough to sit through it. I had my marks and my timing back. I even felt the improv groove again, and called out to Ellis, referencing something in one of his earlier jokes and tying it into mine. What I didn't know at the time was that after introducing me, he'd LEFT...he had to take off for a few minutes or something, and (as I would find out at the end of my set when some other guy came up instead of him) had someone else do his MC chores for a couple of comics. My improv bit didn't actually require a response from him, so it wasn't like I was left hanging or anything. But I did find it funny that one of the other comedians in the back tried to cover for him and did a deep "Yeah" in response to what I was saying. So, yeah...I was just happy to work my stuff. Why? Because Vlado had jumped on the grenade first, and I knew in advance what to expect. I'm trying to imagine what would have been going through my head NOT realizing how quiet things were going to be. I had a good time, all things considered.

After I was done, we headed back to where Babydoll waited at our table, and we 1) ordered drinks quickly and 2) made sure to stay for the entire rest of the show for the poor devils who still had to go on AFTER us. We wanted to make sure to give them some extra support. And they needed it, because even MORE people left. By the time the last three comedians of the night were up, there was maybe 6 or 7 people left. Ow. I felt really bad for one guy in particular, because it was his very first time doing an open mic. And he had THAT crowd to work with. It was almost complete silence for him, but the thing was, he actually had a really good set. And he had good delivery. He would have killed with that act if there was more than half-dozen people there. After he got down, I wanted to be able to tell him that, but he was sitting a ways away and ended up taking off before I could talk to him. I really hope that didn't sour him to the experience. Oh, and one guy I really liked? He was, like, the second-to-last comic. And he looked down and saw the crowd and made a comment about the small size...and the proceeded to just throw out his whole routine and just goof around with the crowd. And it was funny! That's a sign of a real comic, guys who don't need a routine to please a crowd.

My favorite part of the night, though, was when the winners were announced. No, sadly, not Vlado this time (we'll be back to try again), which would have REALLY made it my favorite part, but what happened was very cool. See, when Vlado and I first checked out the open mic at Tommy T's, the week before we went on, the first comedian that went on was...well...he was not good. I mean, he seemed like a really great guy, and seemed like a very funny guy, and had the confidence...but he just didn't seem to get the structure of comedy. He kind of...well, lacked any kind of punchlines. At all. It didn't go well for him that night. The following week, before Vlado and I went on, he came back and went on again. And both Vlado and I were pleasantly surprised to find he had a couple of punchlines in there. Excellent. And then came this open mic, and there he was again. And you know what? He got it! His routine was good! It was done the right way and everything! I was really happy for the guy. Unfortunately, he ended up taking off after his set, and didn't hang around 'til the end to find out that when they announced the two chosen winners...he was one of them! I'm so inspired by that guy! He tried it once, it didn't work, but he didn't let that turn him off to the experience. He learned from his mistakes, adjusted, tried again, and did so again he got it right. And it paid off! Now I may be competing against him next month. This guy's my new hero!

Okay, actually, my favorite part of the night ended up being after the show. Vlado, Babydoll and I headed outside after the show FINALLY ended (it went on forEVER) where Ellis and some of the other comics were hanging out and smoking. There's nothing in the world like hanging out and talking with comics. It's not like a normal conversation. Here, someone would bring up a subject, and then it was like everyone was just passing the punchline around the circle. Everyone's just doing bits on the fly. It was great being a part of that. Comics are awesome people. It was great getting to know some of them some more.

So, to summarize...WE didn't stink...the CROWD did. I swear! I had already had my tepid crowd experience the previous Wednesday, but now Vlado and I both got to experience the tiny crowd moment. This is something comics have to deal with, so we were both glad that we got to get that experience out of the way. It's kind of like learning to box. You're going to be afraid of getting punched in the face until you actually take that first punch. And we did. And we'll both be prepared for it next time. Neither of us have been booed or heckled yet, so we still have THAT experience to look forward to at some point, but so far we're doing okay, and both of us are hungry to get up there and face it again.

And we shall...so stay tuned here for details! More stories and a big comedy competition yet to come!

The Comedy Odyssey - Part 2 ("The WRONG Way...")

2010-01-14T17:10:00.001-08:00

So I left Tommy T's after the night of my big debut feeling pretty good. After all, I hadn't just achieved the goal of simply getting up and doing it, but I'd done pretty darned well. Like, winning-the-contest well. After having spent years wondering what the stand-up experience would be like, I now knew, and I LIKED it.

Now I had to go back the next night and open for the Wednesday night comedy showcase. And they even handed me up to five additional minutes. That's pretty short notice. I had less than twenty-four hours to pretty much double my set, so I figured I'd better get right home and get it figured out.

I got home, still pretty wound up from the experience, and it was getting on toward midnight. I first had a lot of Facebook things and emails to answer about the night, since everyone on there was all a-buzz about the reports Vlado and I had been doing during and after the show. That took a while. It was getting quite late, though, and I knew time was short because I had to get up early(er) the next day. See, I had arranged with Tim to go see a matinee of Sherlock Holmes, and had already bought my ticket online. Plus, I had also told my friend Barrie we'd come grab him afterward and we'd all head for Tobacco Road, my cigar lounge, a place Tim, unlike Barrie and I, hadn't gotten to experience yet. So I had little time to work with that night, and no time the following day to work before having to arrive for the show.

But I wasn't that stressed about it. After getting off stage that night, I'd had one clear impression that stuck in my head, surprising at is was.

"Wow. That was EASY."

This was problem #1.

I had faced the great on-stage challenge, and it had gone unexpectedly well. Based on this, my mind told me that all my stressing out and preparation the first time around had been a waste of time. Doing comedy was a piece of cake! So I figured I didn't need to sweat it so much the next night. Yes, I had five additional minutes to come up with, but that really wasn't a problem. As I mentioned last time, there was lots of stuff that I'd had to throw out to work my material down to five minutes. Now, I figured, I could just relax and take my time up there, and all I had to do was to select a few things from the cutting room floor and insert them into my previous material. How hard could THAT be? Not very for me, I figured. So instead of sitting down and writing, preparing a new set and rehearsing it, I just decided I would go to Tommy T's, get up on stage, and "just wing it".

Because, you know, I had SO much comedy experience at that point, why SHOULDN'T I expect to be able to pull that off?

So I finished up my Facebook stuff, had a celebratory cigar on the patio, and got into bed, setting my alarm to get up early to get ready and make it to the movie on time. But I was still wound, and had a million things going through my head (possible new jokes being many of those million), and I just could not fall asleep, try though I did. In the end, I ended up getting about three hours of sleep before the alarm went off.

This being problem #2.

I got myself up and around, packed up all the stuff I'd need for the night since I wouldn't be coming home before the show, and headed for the theater. Tim met me there and we saw the film, which I enjoyed quite a bit (despite the fact that, due to the lack of sleep, I started dozing off a little at one point). After that, we grabbed Barrie, and we headed to Tobacco Road. Some of my regular guys I hang out with there were on site, and wondered how the big comedy night had gone. I told them about the win, and Zack bought me a cigar to celebrate. Cool. So we chilled out and smoked up, until it was finally time to get underway. Tim headed over to the joint, while I dropped Barrie off and then went and picked up Vlado. To Rancho we did go.

The night before, after the show ended, the manager Christine had told me to call and and let them know how many people would be coming with me the second night, as they would reserve a table for my party. Reserved table? My, my. I liked that. In addition to Tim and Vlado and I, Tim's brother Brian, A.T., Ken, and my housekeeper Cindy had said they were coming. When I called Christine at the club, I gave her the number, and she said the table would be waiting, and she said she'd just get us our "regular table". Vlado and I had sat at this table both times we'd been there, and now it appeared that we were becoming such regulars that we had an acknowledged "regular table". NOW we were starting to feel like comedians. And showing up and finding a sign on your table that says "VIP Reserved - Michael O'Connell"? Now THAT's living the dream.

Cindy coming was an awesome thing. During all the lead-up time, when she'd come over to clean my place and do the laundry, I had been telling her about this. And she very much wanted to come see my open mic. But Cindy is also the mother of my friend Tami, who's married to my friend Chris, and Cindy is their babysitter. So she knew if both Chris and Tami went, she'd need to be with the the kids and wouldn't be able to attend. So I told her, jokingly, not to worry - I'd just have to win the contest so she could come see me the next night. Well...THAT turned out well. So she showed up, very happy to be there, and I was very happy that the win had allowed that to happen.

So we relaxed at our table before things started, with me, kind of in a daze and half-awake, feeling no fear. I was chill. That night was going to be a comedy showcase, with three comedians and a host, and me opening. The host came over and say hey to me...nice guy named Robert that I'd met and chatted with after the previous night's show (he'd been one of the comics on stage, but not competing to win, as he'd already won a previous open mic...just working on his stuff). He soon got ready to head up, and Tim and I took our cue to head for the stage door (luckily no one was seated in our row of travel this time). The place was pretty full-up. People hadn't spread up to these seats this time, though, because apparently the floor paint had dried in front of the stage, and those tables were back. This intimidated me a little. I had, the previous night, been initially bothered by the open floor, but it turned out to be kind of nice without having people looking right up at you. Now I'd be able to clearly see faces. Hmmm.

Tim got me up the stairs, and Robert quickly introduced me...and kindly mispronounced my name (O'Conner. That's helpful when you're trying to make a name for yourself. At least he didn't call me a "fist commander"...). Out again I went, though this time not as zen...and this time, kind of a zombie from the lack of sleep. I arranged with Tim to come out and set the mic stand for me, so I wouldn't have the same problem with the having to lean over. He got it to a certain height, and I told him that was fine. It LOOKED fine when he set it, but as soon as he left I realized it was just a little bit too tall...and because of that, and because of my non-bending spine, leaning toward it was going to make my head go down even further. To get the mic up to me, I had to grab the stand and lean it up to me, holding it at a balanced angle. This was kind of awkward.

Which kind of set the tone for the performance.

I got started, and felt out of sorts from the start. This got worse when I went from my same opening joke and moved right into the "new" material. Which, again, I hadn't practiced with (because, again, I'm so much of a pro that I don't NEED rehearsal...). So I felt unsure about it, and I think that came through. And the new material wasn't necessarily great. Pretty early on I did a Jerry Lewis joke that fell totally flat, which was my first taste of onstage crickets. I now knew what it was like to hit the wall of silence. It's not a pleasant feeling the first time, believe me. You get a rush of panic when you've not experienced it before and you're not too sure what to do with it. Please note, also, that the first two tables in the front row were filled with a group of college girls celebrating a birthday party. Clearly, none of them were old enough to have any idea who Jerry Lewis WAS. Coyotes howled in the distance. A tumbleweed went by. I longed to have an emergency dick joke in my quiver for backup.

I pressed on, not having a grip on my set, fumbling in a couple of places trying to integrate the old and new. More new stuff didn't hit big. More panic. More nerves. I was not only out of it, but had lost my previous night's confidence. My energy level was low. My mind was all over the place. So much so that I didn't even realize until a day or two later that I'd left out part of a bit, which made the punchline not make too much sense. The hits just kept on coming.

Was it a total tank? It sure as hell felt like it up there, though there was laughter. By the end, I did my final joke, kind of lingered for a moment, and then said thank you and good night. I left the stage feeling like I'd totally blown it, and just to add that little extra helping of goodness, Robert asked the crowd to one more time give it up for Michael O'Conner. Greeeat.

I got back to my table, and the others were kind about it. But I knew what doing it right felt like, and that had NOT been it. I ordered food and drink and dealt with it, and listened to the rest of the comics. I'd asked Vlado to video it for me, which he had, because good or bad, I wanted to be able to review the game tape for learning purposes. I had things to learn, all right. They included:

1) Sleeping before a performance is kind of important. I should have said no to the movie and gotten a good night's sleep. Sleep helps you brain more better.

2) Practice, practice, practice. Winging it is not a game for the noob. I should have gotten home the night before, decided for sure what I was using, typed the new stuff into the existing routine, and practiced it a number of times. I heard a good quote that night from Vlado, who was quoting Sting: "You have your whole life to make your first album. Then you only have six months to make your second one". I had very little time to come up with a longer routine, but I still should have taken that time. I'd forgotten how important all my previous prep had been to making my confident.

3) Going first sucks. The opener is the one who has to has to warm up the crowd. By definition, then, the crowd is COLD when you get them. This is not pleasant. I prefer a crowd thawed and pre-heated. Will try to avoid that in the future if possible.

4) Confident is not the same thing as cocky. I'd gone up the previous night confident, because I'd gotten myself into that state. Because of the way the experience went, I let it get into my head that doing a set of comedy was a breeze. You never know, from one night to the next, what kind of crowd you're going to have, whether there will be tables or an empty, just-painted floor in front of you, or if a sorority girl is going to be having a birthday party. You have to respect the stage. And I did not. This was a lesson learned the hard way. Which is a good thing, I think.

We enjoyed the rest of the night, though I had a lot on my mind, smarting from my lukewarm sophomore showing. Turns out I could have done worse. Robert, the host? All of a sudden, another comic ("Boogie"...very funny guy) was up on stage hosting instead. Where had Robert gone? Well, I talked to Lou the manager after, and he said that Robert was supposed to be doing like three jokes between comics, and he'd been doing just one. So he got yanked in the middle of the show and replaced. Ow. That made me feel bad for Robert, but made ME feel a little bit better. At least I didn't get fired.

After it was over I ended up talking to a couple of comics, including the last comic of the night, whose name, if I'm remembering right, is Brian Diamond. While he had shown up late and hadn't seen my act, I talked about it not going too great, and a got a lot of good advice from him from his twenty years of doing stand-up, mostly about how there are way too many factors that affect what a crowd, and a night, as going to be like, to stress over trying to figure it all out. You just need to get through it and get on to the next gig. I really appreciated what he had to say. And also, a couple of girls stopped on the way out to tell me how great I'd been. I simply said thank you, when what I wanted to do was apologize. I let my co-ed fans down! Oh, the humanity!

I always try to look for the lessons in any seemingly bad situation, and found many of them that night. The biggest silver lining was that if I want to continue doing comedy, I'm going to have to learn to deal with a bad crowd, and with moments of silence when the jokes don't quite work. And I got that experience on that Wednesday night, very early on in my "career", and felt it prepared me nicely to deal with that possibility in the future. Having a great first time out isn't necessarily a positive thing - they aren't all going to be like that, and the sooner you get that through your head, the better. It is, I can tell you, through my head.

And getting back on the horse is very important, too, so I wanted to do so as soon as possible. Vlado and I both felt that way, and agreed we needed to come back the following Tuesday night for open mic, and, like many comedians there, work on our acts in front of a crowd.

Of course, "crowd" can sometimes be the wrong word, as we were going to find out in less than a week.

Part 3 to come.

The Comedy Odyssey - Part 1 ("The RIGHT Way...")

2010-01-13T22:23:00.000-08:00

If you've read the earlier entries, you know how my journey into stand-up comedy began: I made myself a bucket list in 2002 and decided to put "Do a comedy open mic" on it, I mentioned this a while back to my buddy Vlado, he said that he and I should get up and do it, I said okay. Just that simple. He did some research on local Sacramento comedy clubs, and we decided we would do this thing at Tommy T's Comedy and Dinner Theater in Rancho Cordova.

We set a date not too far distant, and both started working on our material. I, being a procrastinator, took my time. Not surprisingly, the date crept up fast (being right after the holidays). So I finally had to sit myself down and do some writing, and come up with 3-5 minutes of material. My problem with this was probably the opposite of most people. Your average person would sweat having to come up with a whole five minutes of comedy. For me, it was trying to figure out how I was going to squeeze everything I wanted to talk about into JUST five minutes. So I wrote, and I wrote, and I threw lots of stuff out for the sake of time. When I finally had the routine I wanted, it came out about two minutes too long. Oops. More editing. During this time, Vlado and I spotting each other became invaluable. I would send him my routine, he would send back notes with lots of edits. It was only because of his intervention that I was able to FINALLY (like, two nights before the show) get my bit running at right around five minutes. This would work just fine, providing no one laughed very much. Yes, I too enjoyed the irony.

Being big Facebook guys, we posted up our intentions on our respective pages. Another part of Vlado's plan was that we tell everyone we knew what we were doing, making it that much harder to back out of it. This worked nicely, because suddenly, we both had tons of friends and family expressing interest in coming to see it. There was now no turning back.

We decided it would be smart to go the open mic night at Tommy T's the week before we went on, both to get a feel for the place and to get a lot of our questions answered. We showed up just before they opened, and the manager there was extremely helpful and friendly. I got the chance to figure out the wheelchair logistics. The stage in this place had three big steps going up to it on either side. I realized right away that even though someone could probably lift me up those, doing so in front of a crowd of people would not only be a little humiliating for me, but pretty uncomfortable for them to watch. The place did have a backstage area, though. Still steps to deal with, but they could be handled out of eyesight, at least. I asked my chair-lifter of over thirty years, Tim, to hook me up on that, since he was going to be there anyway. Problem solved.

We ordered drinks and food and settled in to watch the show, and to see what we were in for. The very first comedian on stage--not to be unkind, just to be accurate here--was awful. He literally did not know what a punchline was. He just tried to tell funny stories...ones that never really came to a point. They weren't even jokes. The next comedian wasn't all that much better. Vlado and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing: we could do this. If these guys could do it, certainly we couldn't do any worse. Even if we stunk, it appeared we'd be in good company. We left there, with a week left to go, feeling confident and relaxed. We were now able to visualize the location, which makes a big difference when you're rehearsing, and we also got to see how other people would be seeing us up there. It helps to realize that even though people might not be laughing aloud, that doesn't mean they hate your guts.

As the day approached, did I fear doing this? Not really. I've been a big self-help, Tony Robbins kind of guy the past couple of years, and I'm all about trying new things and ignoring the fear (and sometimes that even works). All my emotional turmoil came from working the routine. Many drafts later, I found that once I had a final product, I relaxed. Thinking I'd never be able to complete a routine was a much bigger fear than the idea of actually doing it. I did have fears about being able to memorize the routine; I haven't had to memorize anything in quite some time. But then, one night, I was in the kitchen and had my stopwatch handy, and was away from my written routine (still on the computer, unprinted). I decided to time out the opening part of my act, to check its duration and see if anything there could be shaved. I hit the stopwatch, and much to my surprise, I did my whole act from memory. How about that?

Once I had the final set locked, I spent that last couple of days before the big Tuesday rehearsing - making sure I had it memorized, trying different physical movements and voice inflections to maximize the funny, etc. I had it down. All I had to do, now, was to do the same thing on stage. Under a spotlight. In front of people. Hmmmm.

Tuesday came. Vlado offered me a ride with him and his girlfriend, but I decided I wanted to drive. I wanted to have that final bit of time during the commute to get my head straight, go over my act, and get my emotions in the right place of no-fear. I also made a decision before I left my apartment. I was going through my checklist, and one of the items was to print out my routine to take with me. I figured I'd take a final look at it at the club before going on, and keep it folded in my coat pocket as a backup in case I got brainlock up on stage. I pulled up the file, and was about to hit the print button, and I changed my mind. I remembered the previous week at Tommy T's, watching some guy sitting at a table before the show, looking a nervous wreck, pouring over his typed routine. He looked miserable. I also remembered seeing a couple of comedians on stage actually taking out their notes and setting them on the stool, and referring to them as they went along.

I didn't want to be any of these guys. I didn't want to be the first guy, minutes away from getting on stage and still not believing that I was ready or able to pull it off. And I definitely didn't want to be the other guys. The essence of stand-up comedy is to appear that you're just making up, on the spot, the stuff you're talking about up there. Notes completely destroy the illusion - and they also look very unprofessional. So I made the choice to leave my notes at home. As someone said to me later that night, I was like Cortes burning his ships. While this is historically inaccurate (he actually grounded them, and only nine out of the twelve, and you don't care about any of this, do you?), it serves as a pretty good metaphor. It was all or nothing for me at that point. And making that choice stoked my confidence even further.

After a drive through heavy commute traffic (which is why I left early), I got there, met up with Vlado and Arianna, and headed inside. We were a good hour early (they were open, but the show didn't start until later), so were able to get the table we wanted (the same one as the previous week). And soon, we were joined by a couple of important members of our crew: Tim, who would be my "stairmaster", and Rich, who had agreed to video the performances for us (being a professional in the industry, he was the perfect choice. I should point out that he was in TV. If I left it vague like that, you'd suspect I was talking about porn). Vlado got himself a beer. Me? I'd decided I didn't want to drink or eat anything until I was off stage. So I hadn't eaten all day. Probably not the best idea, but still seemed like the smarter choice.

We'd had several people have to cancel on us at the last minute, so we weren't sure how many of our people were actually going to show. Well, plenty did. Soon enough, my friends Barrie, Jessica and Kyle showed up. And Vlado's lifelong buddy Al joined us. Old school chums (as in old chums from school) began to appear. Dennis (the goalie!) and his friend Laura. Mike R. Kim (who I hadn't seen in about 25 years (if not more)). Roxanne. Chris K. and Tami. Larry and Tina. Rachel and Nichole. Robert. And John B. It's important to mention John because of something that happened later. Like Kim, I hadn't seen John in over two decades. John's ended up with M.S. in the years since, and uses an electric scooter. Not only was it great to see him again, but he inadvertently became part of a funny story. Also, my friend Joy, who hadn't been sure she was going to be able to make it, showed up with her mother and niece, both of whom I know. And even though they had to show up late, Chris B. and Emily made it just before the show started. The only one who looked like he wouldn't make it in time was A.T., who had a class that night that didn't get out until 8:30, but he said he planned to show up and hang out with us anyway, even if he missed us on stage.

And family was also in attendance. Arianna's family showed up to support Vlado. I had representation from all three sides of mine. My stepsister Wendy and her husband Rick showed up for the Bryant side. Chad came with Larry and Tina, repping the Moon side. And carrying the banner from the O'Connell side, my Uncle Stan and Aunt Kathy (and Stan's sister Dorothy) made the scene. This was brave of them because I warned that largely Mormon side of the family that these comedy shows can get quite vulgar and explicit, and that they could always just wait to see the video of my stuff later (which PROBABLY be less vulgar and explicit...), but they took their chances and braved Tommy T's anyway, which really meant a lot to me.

So we had ourselves a good showing of support, and were quite happy about that. Soon the lights went down and the show began. It was coming. I was more excited than nervous, but still felt some nerves with the anticipation. We had signed up on the list to be #'s 5 and 6 for the night, so we would let the crowd get a little warmed up first. And they did. There were two comedians up there who were really, really good - so much so that I decided not to bother worrying about winning the contest because one of them would surely take the prize. So that actually relaxed me some more.

The main manager (Lou) came over during one comic's bit and let me and Tim know that I was up next. This was our cue to head to the stage door to get ready to get backstage. Problem - the place filled up quite nicely, and the already close row between tables that led there was filled with people. We had to clank and bash and "excuse me" our whole way there, knocking chair aside, but finally made it. This was the biggest stress of the night for me, but only because I was so afraid that we were making a lot of noise and distracting the comic up on stage. He didn't seem to notice, thankfully.

Once that guy finished up, the MC - Ellis Rodriguez, a great comedian that Vlado and I had met the week before - got up on stage to do his between-comics jokes, and that meant is was time to head in. We got backstage, and Tim easily got me up the extra-tall stairs (three decades of experience makes that happen), and he headed back down, leaving me there behind a black curtain, waiting to hear my name. I could see some of the audience from back there. I went into kind of a zen state. I didn't want to be afraid. I didn't want to be nervous. I wanted to relax, have a good time, radiate confidence, and do my routine just as I'd practiced it so many times. The only concern on my mind then was not wanting to run over my time and get management ticked at me (as management is the one who decides the contest winners, after all).

Ellis's bit went quick, and then I heard my name, and the applause. Go-time. I rolled out into the spotlight. I had asked Ellis beforehand to drop the mic stand for me, and he did so. Unfortunately, turns out it was TOO low, and I realized quickly that I was going to have to lean over to speak into it for that portion of my act that required a stand (I'd be removing it at some point for the final part of my routine). So I took a breath, leaned in, and began.

And I wasn't nervous. I felt so relaxed, in fact, that I even broke script and improvised something right up front, making a joke having something to do with the strange set-up of the floor (they had roped off the whole area in front of the stage for floor painting, so all the tables were gone). And I went into my act. Now if you've never been on stage, you haven't experienced the strange kind of time compression that happens. You know how during an accident or when you're starting to take a fall, everything kind of goes into slow motion? This is the opposite. This period of time kind of just vanishes. You go into autopilot. This is why rehearsing your act is so important; if you're going on autopilot, you'd damned well better have your route programmed in. I did, and before I knew it, my time was over. Only after did it occur to me that I had never seen "the light". There's a light, which I now know is up by the bar (didn't realize until I was starting to go up that I'd never bothered to find out where the light they told us about was), the goes on solid red when you're down to a minute left, and starts blinking white if your time is up and you need to (and I quote) get the hell off the stage. Had I gone over? I had no idea. I just knew I heard cheering and was leaving the stage as Ellis came back on.

It had felt really good, that act I had just done, but I had no way to know if it really HAD gone well...since I could barely remember any of it. My first sign that it had was Tim, meeting me at the stairs, quite excited, whisper/shouting, "Dude, you killed!". Oh...killed is good. In comedy. Right on. That made me feel better. I can't really remember what Tim and I discussed going down the stairs. The rush was still jamming up my head. So much so that I didn't realize until later that Ellis was on stage talking about me at that time. Still don't know what he said, since I still don't have the full video yet. Let's hope it wasn't, "Could the rest of you comics tonight please not go seven minutes over your time like O'Connell did? Did he NOT see the blinking light?".

Second sign was when we came out the stage door, and Vlado came up. Vlado was getting ready to go up, and was heading to the stairs at stage right, and like Tim, he looked really, really jazzed and whispered, "Dude, you nailed it!" Okay. Nailing is good, too. Killing and nailing. I was feeling pretty sure that my good feelings about the performance weren't just all in my head. We then headed back through the thin, thin row of tables, but this time, didn't have to ask people to move. They all got up. And several shook my hand, and said that that had been great. That was cool. But cooler still was getting to the and of that aisle, and realizing the person sitting alone at the last table was A.T. He had managed to arrive and get inside RIGHT before I went on. That made my night. I really wanted him to be there for this. I was quite glad they'd started the show a little late.

Vlado got called up. And called up badly, I should add. Ellis Rodriquez impressively butchered his name. Vlado had written his name (with his pilot title in mind, as he was going to be doing pilot humor) as "First Officer Vladimir Zeravica". Ellis had trouble reading it and pronounced the first part "FIST officer" and then did things to the pronunciation of Vlado's name that shouldn't be done to a barnyard animal. But that was his cue, and, decked out in suit and tie, Fist Officer Vlado took the stage.

Vlado HIT IT. I'm not going to get into details, as I don't want to give spoilers (we plan to have the video of both our performances up soon), but as someone who knew Vlado's routine inside and out from reviewing all the drafts, I can tell you he was ON it. He, too, even managed a little improv in the middle (cocky bastards, aren't we?). The jokes in there that were my favorites did really well, which made me feel all smart for betting on the right ones. It was as though he held the whole audience in his...fist? (See what I did there? In comedy, we call that a "throwback". Okay, I totally just made that up. I've been in comedy for just over a week. Like I really know all the lingo by now...). He finished on the perfect groaner joke (in a good way), and as he told me soon after, he, too, had NO idea how long he'd been up there or if he'd actually done his whole act. Fortunately for him, he has a lot more experience at autopilot than I do, so it was smooooth flying. Nicely done, Fist Officer.

My next indication that I'd done okay came in the middle of Vlado's act. Ellis came over to my table and crouched down next to me. He clasped my hand, leaned over to my ear, and just whispered, "Jesus Christ". He then paused, like he was looking for more words, but then just repeated "Jesus Christ" again. With that, he shook my hand, got up, and walked away. So that's good, right? Blasphemy is better than even killing and nailing, right?

Some of our people had to leave (it WAS a Tuesday night, after all), including Rich, who came and did his video thing until after 9:00pm with us even though he had to get up at 2:30 AM for work. That's why he's our BOY, yo! Most of the disappearing folks didn't come over and say goodbye, and I thought that was very courteous, them not wanting to talk over the other people up on stage. We knew we'd talk to them the next day.

Oh, and I also flagged down the waitress right away and ordered FOOOOOOOD and drink. I was really, really hungry at this point. Got me some chicken strips and fries (and a Guinn), and was so hungry I burned the inside of my mouth on hot chicken. Didn't even feel it (until later)...I was feeling too good. Vlado and I toasted there at our table. We had set upon a mission, had seen it through, and hadn't either embarrassed or soiled ourselves. Armed with our phones, we both started going Facebook updates for those who hadn't been able to join us, and waited on the final comics to do their thing.

When the very last comic was in the middle of his bit, Christine (the manager who'd given us our tour the previous week) came over to me and leaned in for a whisper. She asked if I was available the following night, because they were about to announce me as the winner and the winner is supposed to come back to open the show the following night. I said I was, she said not to tell anyone just yet, as Ellis was going to be announcing it up on the mic. Vlado and Tim looked at me to see what that was about. I kind of shrugged them off, wanting to keep to my covenant of secrecy. But Vlado pulled out his phone, got on Facebook, typed the words "MIKE WON!!!" as a status update, but didn't hit "enter" until Ellis came up on the mic a few minutes later and made it official.

Wow. Shock. This was an important life lesson for me. One about facing fears. Everyone knows the stats on where the fear of public speaking ranks with people (scarier than death OR the Blair Witch). Comedy is scarier. It's not just public speaking. It's the lion's den of public speaking. Your job isn't just to hold the audience's attention. They expect LAUGHS. A lot of them. And they will punish you (with either silence, heckling, or yawning and starting to play Bejeweled 2 on their iPhones) if they don't get them. Your feedback is immediate. That's intimidating. So when you factor all that in, it's a pretty scary proposition. This made it a perfect test of my new way of thinking, and all that I've tried to learn about managing fear. I knew that I was going to feel great just knowing that I'd forced myself to do it and follow through, one way or the other. If I'd failed, I'd have at least been able to say I tried, and would always have the story about the time I got up on stage and tried to tell jokes with a bunch of my favorite people in the world there to watch me. Winning was not expected. But it was really cool. It was just that extra little pat on the back for not chickening out, and an incentive to keep trying new things in life...because you never know if you might just end up loving it.

And I loved this. Comedy kicks ass.

So I now officially have TWO things (this and Ireland) crossed off my bucket list, so big thanks to Vlado for forcing me to get it off the list and put it on the stage. He and I set out to make this reality and did just that, having a fantastic time in the process. And getting us a new nickname for Vlado in the process (I'm thinking of officially changing his name on my cell phone to "Fist Officer" now...).

A good and successful first night of comedy. And a chance to come back in less than twenty-four hours to do it again...and this time with a full 10 minutes available to me instead of 5. Hell, after a debut like that, there was no way anything could go wrong the following night, right?

Yeahhhhh. About that?

Stay tuned for Part 2 ("The WRONG Way...").

EPILOGUE

Oh, yeah...the John B. thing.

So John was sitting in his scooter at a table a few away from ours. While Vlado was on, this woman came up to John in the dark, handed him a card, and told him she'd really enjoyed his stuff. She said she ran an open mic up at a place at Folsom, and that she'd really like it if he'd come up and perform there.

Yes. She thought he was me.

Because, you know, us wheelchair people? We all look alike. At least in the dark, apparently.

Best part of that? John never even told her. He just rolled with it, thanked her for the compliment, took her card, and after the show was over, came over and handed it off to me.

Now THAT's comedy.

Second chance! Tommy T's, tonight, at 7:30!

2010-01-06T02:25:00.000-08:00

Wish I had time to go into all the details, but the night is short, and got to get this out before I turn in.

So, yeah, last night was the big open mic comedy contest at Tommy T's Comedy Club, and Vlado and I went up and did our thing. Much prep, much sweat, much angst, much self-doubt...but we pulled our material together and stayed true to our pledge to get up and do this.

And we both did pretty darned good. How good? Seemed to me that one of us HAD to end up the winner, since we were, of COURSE, the two funniest guys in the room (in our minds, at least, but positive visualization is all part of the process). We both hit it hard.

And at the end? Holy crap. I won. Didn't see that coming. I thought this would be a one-time, once-in-a-lifetime thing. Looks like now it's going to be at least THREE times in a lifetime.

So because I won, I have to come back tonight (Wednesday, 1/6) and be part of a comedy showcase, and (woo hoo!) I get a full 10 minutes. If you knew how much material BOTH of us had to leave on the cutting room floor when trimming down our routines to the 3-5 minutes allowed, you'd understand how much I have left to work with. So much so that I'm not even taking additional notes. I'm just going to get up there and reintegrate earlier material from memory. Should be able to hit 10 minutes, no problem. Especially if I doze off for a little bit in the middle... And apparently this now enters me in a contest in February I need to show for, but I'll have to wait on the details of that.

So if you've got nothing else going on on a Wednesday night, feel free to drop in sometime before 7:30 and join us. I'll be the one on stage, but Vlado, Tim, A.T. and I will be hanging there, and from indications, several others. If you're one of those people who wished you'd made it Tuesday but something came up, you've got another shot. So use it! We already know a number of people showing. Should be another fun party.

Can't begin to thank everyone who showed up to support us. Man, I'm not going to be able to remember everybody. A.T., Tim, Barrie, Jess, Rick, Wendy, Rachel, Nichole, Babydoll, Babydoll's fam, Robert, Mike, Roxanne, John, Joy and fam, Chris K., Tami, Tina, Larry, Kim, Chris B., Emily, Chad, Dennis, Laura... Who else, who else? A special thanks goes out to my Uncle Stan, Aunt Kathy and Aunt Dorothy, who, despite my warnings about the "blue" comedy of all those less family-friendly comedians (hey, I did a couple stripper jokes, but strippers have families, too, right?), showed up to represent the O'Connell family. And a very, very special thanks to our man on the cam, Rich, who showed up and did the video despite the fact that he has to get up at 2:30 AM to go to work, and hopefully (I'm now worried about the lighting after seeing some photos...) captured the performances of me and V for those who couldn't make it to enjoy.

Okay, off to sleep myself, but again...if you think you can make it, see the previous post for the map and such. Come on down and have a good time with us! Join the O.Z. (O'Connell/Zeravica) Tour! Or the Z.o.O. (Zeravica or O'Connell) Tour, depending on what we decide on...

Michael O'Connell & Vladimir Zeravica...Live on Stage, 1/5/10!

2009-12-29T23:43:00.000-08:00

WHAT (?): Michael O'Connell (that's me) and Vladimir Zeravica will each be doing 3-5 minutes of live open mic comedy. For reals.

WHEN: Tuesday, January 5, 2010, at 7:00 PM

WHERE: Tommy T's Comedy & Dinner Theater - 12401 Folsom Boulevard, Rancho Cordova, CA 95742-6416. (916) 357-5233

WHY?: Funny story...

So, like a few months ago or something, I happened to mention to my good friend Vlado (for those not in my high school loop, Vlado and I went to the same Adventist school back in the...well, let's not focus on the when, okay?) my belief that everyone should be required to, at least once in their lives, get up on stage and see if they have a 3-5 minute set of comedy in them. Even if they totally crash and burn, just to be able to tell themselves that they had the guts to try.

So, like a couple of months ago or something, Vlado called me up and said, "Let's do it." I said, "Okay". Come to think of it, that's not really that funny of a story, is it?

This is something that's actually on my bucket list, so the opportunity to finally get it off there was a challenge I embraced. And Vlado wisely pointed out that we needed to pick a date and set it, AND tell everyone we know that we were doing it, so there would be no backing out. Mission accomplished, because one week from tonight, it is ON.

Those of you in our Facebook circle have known this, those of you not there might be going "WTF?!" for the first time, but for both flavors of you, here's all the final details, which I waited on until Vlado and I actually scouted the place and attended an open mic...which was this evening. So, the details are:

Tommy T's is a comedy club located in Rancho Cordova, on Folsom Blvd, just off Highway 50 at the Hazel exit. Here's a handy map:

(Click it for a bigger map)

If you're from Sac, you probably know where the Old Spaghetti Factory is on Folsom, right? Tommy T's is upstairs from it. The entrance is on the east side parking lot...big overhang, you can't miss it.

As this is open mic night, with no headliners, there's no need for tickets. There MAY be a $5 cover to get in. There currently isn't one, but the person we talked to there said one may start getting charged in January.

While there's no tickets and little or no cover, this ain't free, so come prepared. There is a two-drink or two-food-item minimum. Food items do replace the drink minimums if you're not drinking. They have full dinners and they have appetizers. It's restaurant pricing, so not dirt cheap. Round up and expect $10-$15 for appetizers, $15-$30 for dinners, under $10 each for dessert items. This minimum is per person. So, probably cheaper just to get drunk, don't you think?

The place opens at 6:00 PM, the show starts about 7:00 PM. It's a pretty big venue, so there should be no problem with getting a table. But getting there early gets you the good ones.

After just spending an evening there, I want to make sure we have full disclosure, specifically for those folks who don't care for, shall we say, "blue" comedy. This is an 18-over comedy club (so, in case there was a question of it, no kids). This means you will be sampling plenty of foul language and big helpings of sexually explicit humor. It's a comedy club...it happens. So if that's not something that interests you, I will totally understand if you don't think showing up would be a good idea for you. We'll be getting our stuff on video, so you can always check our stuff out online later on. I just don't want there to be any unpleasant surprises for anyone, or anyone feeling uncomfortable being there. You make the call.

That being said, we would LOVE to get as many folks there as possible for our great leap into the big lagoon of comedy. We've each got our own set to do (no, we're not doing this as a team, for those who wondered about that). We may triumph, we may go down in disgrace and humiliation, but way, you can be there to witness it.

So prepare to have your funny bones crushed into powder, girlie men! (Or manly girls, depending...). Join us for a Tuesday night to remember...or perhaps one we'll be praying that you'll forget.

Thanks everybody, you've been great, good night!

For further info on Tommy T's, visit their web site.

Christmas is a Feeling

2009-12-25T14:48:00.001-08:00

On this Christmas Day, I thought I'd share some sentiments from a song I sang in the school choir in the sixth grade. Academy classmates, feel free to sing along.

CHRISTMAS IS A FEELING

by
Natalie Sleeth

Christmas is a feeling filling the air

It's love and joy and laughter of people everywhere

Christmas is a feeling bringing good cheer

It reaches out to touch you as the holiday draws near

It's mistletoe and falling snow

And candles burning bright

It's a baby in a manger on a cold winters night

It's glad noels and chiming bells

And presents by the tree

It's the spirit of giving in you and in me

For Christmas is a feeling filling the air

It's love and joy and laughter of people everywhere

But if Christmas is a feeling bringing such good cheer

Then why oh why don't you and I

Try to make it last all year

Why can't it last all year?

Merry Christmas, everybody.

Return of the Kings

2009-10-30T18:19:00.001-07:00

For me, at least.

I'm sitting here on my patio listening to the second game of the 2009/2010 season on my laptop. I'd be inside watching the game on the tube, but my housekeeper is in there doing her thing right now, so I figured I'd stay out of her way and enjoy some audio basketball. Besides...this way I can have a cigar while I do it.

As suggested in my previous blog entry, I did watch the opening game of this season for Sacramento's only claim to pro-sports fame. We don't have a football team in Sac. We have no MLB team. No hockey to be found. No, Sacramento is all about the basketball, and has been since 1985 when we got our first sports franchise. And for a magical handful of years at the start of this new century, our franchise was actually one of the elite in the league, an exciting, headline-making team that was a part of what many consider to be one of the best playoff showdowns of all time.

These days? Well, the season opener kind of defined where we are now.

I, once a Kings fanatic, fell away from not only the team, but the sport. It wasn't really a conscious choice. Like many of Sacramento's fans, I had my spirit crushed by the loss to the Lakers (which many of us still consider to be questionable...but don't get us started), but was back again for more the next season. But life changed for me with a lot more work hours, and my Kings euphoria turned to anger is management decided to start selling off my whole team, player by player, and eventually dumped my coach, too. It was no longer the team I knew so well, and while everyone talked about how good all these changes were for the team, I never bought it, and found myself regretfully vindicated as the team continued to decline until, last season, the once championship-ready team become the worst team in the NBA.

But I didn't have to witness this whole descent, as, due to the work thing, I didn't have the time to watch games anymore. I'd just catch the occasional headline, hear people talking (with shaking heads) at the office. I had left basketball, my greatest love, behind. There was a time when I could tell you what was going on with every team in the league, and probably tell you things about your own team that YOU didn't even know. The best weekend of my year was the NBA All-Star Weekend, where I'd stay glued to the set for all three days of festivities. I'd even take the day off work on the day of the NBA draft. I was a junkie. And yet, I didn't so much kick my monkey as let my monkey slip away from me.

This season, I told myself it was time to get the monkey back. Or least hang out with it more.

Not having a job means no excuses as far as time. And not having a winning team is no excuse to not be a fan. I've never seen myself as one of those fans. It was never about the final score for me. I was there for the joy of the game, to watch the passing, the rebounds, the defense. I knew every one of my Kings in complete detail back in my day, their strengths and their weaknesses - cheering when a player did something outside his normal skill set, groaning when another tried to take a shot that I knew (better, apparently, than that player) was just NOT his kind of shot. It was all in the details for me. If my guys were winning? So much the better. But I never booed them when they lost. I felt like I was in it with them.

And here I am now, returning to the Kings, and have come to realize in the past couple of days just how far I am from where I used to be. I had virtually no idea who was on our team anymore. I had to actually pull up a team roster online and check out and read about the players. And what I could find from my reading was that we now have a very young, very non-superstar team. While I still find myself wondering how we could have let that happen, I find that kind of exciting. It seems a good time for me to step back in, as it feels like I'm doing so at the very beginning of a new team area. This could be good news for them, as the team seemed to have stopped winning AFTER I stopped watching. Hoping to bring my mojo back for the boys.

What excites me most about the new team, though, is the new coach. When I first became a true basketball fan, I had just moved to Phoenix, and the coach of that great Suns team was Sac's latest coach, Paul Westphal. Westphal always impressed me not just for his skill, but because he always came off as such a genuinely nice guy. I've been a fan for years, and finding out that he was not only coming back to the NBA but to Sac put a big smile on my face, and raised some hopes for me that this team might have a chance after all.

I don't know the team well enough to discuss the players yet, but after one (very disappointing) opening game, I've already found a favorite player in one of our rookies - Omri Casspi, the first NBA player drafted out of Israel. I love the idea that his nation - like Turkey back when we had Hedo Turkoglu as one of our rooks - is staying up until 2:00 AM to watch Kings games and cheer their national treasure on. Omri, in an otherwise forgettable game, showed some serious skill and coolness under pressure. My eye is on him, for sure. We're going to need bench guys like him to step up, considering our best player - Garcia - is out with injury until mid-season. Some of his teammates are going to need to follow suit.

As for tonight? Things are looking (or, in my case, sounding) better. We're currently in the fourth quarter, and the game is all tied up. This sure beats the 20-point deficits of the opener. Woah! Let's call that a lead, thanks to a three from Nocioni, who's scored 14 points in his 16 minutes. Nice. The other standouts are Kevin Martin (18 points) and our big news rookie, Evans (15 points), and both Brockman and Thompson are lighting it up in their own way with 10 rebounds each. We've got us an exciting back-and-forth game going on between two teams that are each trying to not start their seasons at 0-2. Who will prevail? We'll know in six minutes and twenty-three seconds. I'd hang with you and let you know, but my laptop battery's going to leave you in suspense.

So I'm back with the Kings, and it's good to be home. Here's hoping for a season that'll buck the expectations we managed to set last year (we won 17 games. All season. Ouch). I'll be along the ride, either way. Go Kings.

(The Final) Kings Flashback - Orlando at Kings

2009-10-28T16:29:00.001-07:00

Figured before the first game of this season starts (in a matter of minutes), I might as well post the final of my 2000/2001 Kings game recaps. Consider this my symbolic way of letting go of the past and moving on with the new Kings team. S0, one last time, join me in taking a look back at the Kings of old, and reliving some of that old-school Arco magic. Ironically, AGAINST the Magic...

Orlando at Kings
11/14/00

Unagi.

Hey, I’m right up there with every other sports writer in the country in choosing a lead for this story. Tonight was all about Scot Pollard.

So here I am, all ready for Lawrence Funderburke to step in, to get his first start of this season in place of the still-injured Chris Webber and really shine. And what do I find out when the game starts, and Orlando has pulled into town to try and gum up the works in an impressive Sacramento home series? Rick’s decided to start Scot Pollard at power forward instead. Scot Pollard? As in Vlade’s backup center? Stepping in instead of Chris’ regular backup?

For half a second, I was disappointed. For Fundy. And then I remembered that Scot Pollard is one of my favorite players in the game, and that Rick was actually—I repeat—starting Scot in Webber’s place. That’s some big shoes to fill.

Did I mention that Scot wears size 19 Nikes?

Scottie-Too-Hottie, the Butcher, the Samurai Center, stepped up from the opening whistle, quickly passing his game average in the first quarter, and ended this 96-82 battle with the Magic with a career high of 22 points. Those are Webber-sized numbers, baby, and they came from the team’s goofball. Big fat thumbs up for the man.

Scot’s opening, a reminder that a team star was on the bench with injury, was the story of the night for both teams. Orlando walked in minus recently-snatched superstar Grant Hill back home. Grant’s ankle injury has kept him out of the last six games, and frankly, no one knows when he’s coming back. A tough blow for Orlando, who picked up one the truly great ball players in the sport and had such high hopes this season. But hey…at least the Magic still have their other big star, the powerhouse called Tracy McGrady, right? Well, they did. For the first half of this game.

Tracy went down and injured his hip after posting up 20 points. He was noticeably hobbling, and you could just feel the despair setting down on the city of Orlando. What next? It was tough to see, even for someone like myself who’s supposed to be cheering for the Kings. Hey, I was—have no doubts there. But I really have a fondness for Orlando, and Grant Hill, and the amazing T-Mac. I spent the first half of this game—a blow-for-blow battle up and down the court, two teams playing at equal levels and keeping the score tight—applauding Orlando play as much as I did (okay, that’s pushing it a little) the Kings floor work. T-Mac was putting on quite a show. Doleac, coming off the bench, was really raining fire. Bo Outlaw was everywhere—only 7 points on the game, but 8 big rebounds. But the most jaw-dropping performance of the night had to be coming from Armstrong. Wow. I mean, I’ve known of him before, but tonight, I just became a true fan. What drive, what grace, what lethal accuracy! He played a full 42 minutes (so he never got out of our faces), scoring 22 points with authori-TIE and grabbing 8 rebounds, with 8 assists and a couple of steals. He was practically a one-man team. In the second half, he practically had to be.

But the big love out to Orlando goes to the heroic Tracy McGrady. As I mentioned, he was injured after 20 points, and was hobbling up and down the floor. You know what? He came back out. By choice, limping and in pain, T-Mac came back out in the second half. He was in and out of the rotation, and he only put up one bucket in the final two periods, but he played. Now THAT’s what you like to see in an athlete. Willing to go at it for the team, even when the chips are down and the personal cost is high. That goes for him and the whole team, who played their guts out with a lot of bad luck and tough times hanging over them. They gave us a really great, nerve-wracking game, a real nail-biter nearly all the way. Had love for them before, got even more now. My best wishes for team recovery and better days ahead to all of them, and I look forward to playing them again soon, playing them at full steam and seeing a REALLY serious battle on the court.

And, with all that said…

I love my Kings.

Scot was the big news because of the unexpected performance, but for sheer superstar-in-the-making glory, it was Peja’s night. Peja absolutely (I always feel like using a Vlade accent when I use that word) shined, with 27 points, a career high 11 rebounds, 5 steals and 3 assists. He was outside, he was inside, he was making free-throws, he was gunning the 3’s, slamming it down, cutting and passing and loving every minute of it. It was really his night, and the Sacramento fans couldn’t get enough. It’s a sad thing to think about, but if, in fact, Chris Webber does leave the capital next year (as Jon Barry suggested to Jim Rome that he would. Oh, what a wonderful cleanup job he had to do with the local press after THAT one), the team will certainly not be without a star. Sure, you’d think Jason Williams or Vlade would be that star. But I think at the rate of improvement Peja’s running at, by the end of this season, he’s very likely to be a household name…in households that know more about basketball than the word “Shaq” that is. When it got down to less than two minutes in the game, and Jon Barry had just put up and missed a 3-pointer (don’t worry, he’d made one earlier), players on both teams were just standing still, watching the ball bounce off the rim and start back down…and out of nowhere, the only man, seemingly, in motion, Peja flew in, grabbed the rebound, and slammed it in, picking up a foul along the way. Had to be—what, about his 10th highlight of the evening? Your star is rising, friend Peja. Time to start working on the English lessons a little more, because people are really going to start wanting to hear what you’ve got to say. A star continues to be born.

And speaking of stars, there was Vlade tonight, with another powerful night, taking on a leadership role on the floor and making it all happen. 21 points for the Marlboro Man, 11 rebounds to match Peja (9 of those in defense), and 8 assists. Can this man ever pass! How does someone that big pass so good?! Way to be the captain, Vlade. J-Will had another one of those nights that sportscasters just don’t seem to get. All they can talk about on nights like tonight is that he’s 0 for 5 and put nothing on the scoreboard. How can they continue to miss his role on this team? It’s GREAT when he gets points. I’m all for it. But it’s bonus, not necessity. Jason’s not about getting, folks, he’s about giving. He’s about making it happen for the team as a whole. 8 assists speak to that. And the 3 steals weren’t that bad, either. Give the man a break! He’s helping win these games. As much basketball as these sportscasters watch, you think they’d pick up on the fact that there’s more to the game than just making the buckets. Pretty good night, there, Jason. And I did enjoy the commentary from Greg Poppa (we were catching the TBS feed on this game) pointing out that when Bobby Jackson came in and replaced J for most of the 4th, Jason was Bobby Jackson’s “biggest fan”, sitting on the floor by the bench, cheering Bobby and the other Kings on. Nice reminder that we’ve really got a team that works like a team.

And Bobby was looking great again. 10 points on the night and a couple of steals. Doug? Pretty good effort, with 8 points and 3 steals, still looking solid and really a part of the swing of the Kings. Jon Barry had some home crowd fun, with 7 points and 5 assists (he should really get a commission from his fellow players for making them look so good on those shots they’re making thanks to him). Turk got 4 minutes…pretty early in the game, too…but this just wasn’t his night (for the 1st time in his few showings this year, so I can’t complain). Fundy was in for a little, and didn’t really get a groove on in his 14 minutes, which, again, made me sad, as I was pegging this as his breakout game. And, once again, there was Nick—5 mintues of play, 2 turnovers, 1 missed shot. Okay, don’t get me started on that one. It’s just going to make me sad and cranky. And another game with no Derek. Told you we wouldn’t be seeing much of him this season. And I spotted our “injured” rookie reservist, Jabari Smith, sitting in civvies with Chris on the bench. Wonder if we’ll get to see this kid play this season at all, or if he’s going to be like Ryan Robertson, last year’s donut-fetcher, who only got to play in the last game of the regular season (and make 6 points, if I recall right. Or was it 4)? Hmm. Come to think of it, if we’re going to see him play, that means we’ll probably have to have a couple or three injuries going at once. Maybe you could just keep getting those donuts, Jabari. Don’t think I want to see you play quite THAT bad.

Beautiful game, and even more beautiful is the fact that we just won 5 in a row, baby. That’s now 7-2, putting us a half game behind the Suns for the #1 spot in the pacific. I REALLY want that #1 spot. And what’s standing in our way? The Lakers, Thursday night. On national TV. Can’t decide if I’m nervous or excited. I keep thinking of all those really close-shave match-ups we had with them all last season. And then I think about game 5 of the playoffs. Brrr. Best not to think about that. Think I’ll focus in on the positives, and remember that we really play these guys good, and I think we’re in for one beast of a TNT basketball game. Welcome back to Sac, Kobe. You know…that place you got beat in during the pre-season? History…you may feel free to repeat.

Kings Flashback - Dallas at Kings

2009-10-28T04:34:00.001-07:00

With the new Kings season about to begin, I was reminded that I never finished posting the last of my 2000/2001 Kings game recaps. I started re-posting these last summer on this blog...and "re-posted" isn't quite the word, because these sports write-ups had never been seen anywhere before. An ambitious and fanatical Kings fan, I was putting together my own Kings fan web page, and planned to do my own reports on each and every game of the season. Nice idea, but it didn't last too long, thanks to me having a job and everything (come home late from work, watch the entire game, then sit down and write about it? Worked for a few days, at least...). I wrote a total of nine of them, and seven of them I've already put up here, leaving two entries left of my brief foray into sports writing.

These serve as a nice reminder of how good we had it in the golden days of Kings basketball. This was the season when the big run really started to happen. Already getting famous for our dazzling (if not reckless) offense, this was the year we found ourselves a defense thanks to the addition of Bobby Jackson and Doug Christie. This was also the rookie year for our Turkish newbie, one Hedo Turkoglu. It was the year with the cloud hanging over it, as our big star Chris Webber's contract was up and we didn't know if he'd be staying after the end of the season. And it was another year of the unbelievable Jason Williams causing jaws to drop around the globe with his Houdini floor skills. Times were good. For the team, and for what Sports Illustrated voted as the best fans in the NBA - those cowbell-clanging Kings fans.

For me, these write-ups are a reminder of just how obsessed I was with the Kings, and with basketball, during my time living in San Diego (watching every game via League Pass on cable, and watching them with my roommate and fellow King freak Aaron), and how completely annoying I must have been to everyone around me, because I don't think I talked of much else. Had I been living in Sac, that would have been no problem. In San Diego, land of the Laker fans? Well, there was no one in my life there that didn't know who my team was. Or how I felt about the Lakers...

Those golden days are remembered with bittersweet longing now, but we've still got a team, and our new boys (most of them ARE still boys...) deserve their chance to prove themselves and try for their own piece of NBA history. But as we prepare to cheer them on and dare to dream once more, I thought we'd take moment, the night before the 2009/2010 season officially begins for our Kings, to remember those guys who took us from obscurity (I'm being kind choosing that word) and made our team one that no one in sports could ignore...or ever forget.

Travel with me, if you will, to November of the year 2000, and to another sold-out, floor-shaking night at Arco Arena...

Dallas at Kings
11/12/00

Home sweet home.

The Kings continue to pour it on, holding virtual basketball clinics at Arco (and abroad, when you take the Oaktown trip into account) and dishing out mind-boggling (for being the Kings!) defense, tonight rousting the Mavericks in a stunning 109-84 win.

Once again, it was everyone’s game on the Kings side, with masterful (and show-stopping) passing and highlight-making feeds and jams. I should note that Aaron pulled another one on me tonight, as he was apt to last season. Thanks to our schedules, Aaron often ends up watching the games before I get home to watch the tape, and it’s always tricky business, I’m sure, trying to keep from giving anything away. I checked my cell phone voicemail from work, and there was a message from Aaron, telling me he was cooking up some stir fry, so there’d be leftovers, and mentioning, in an unenthusiastic tone, that he was sort of half-watching the game. Leading me to believe, of course, that the two-game trouncing of Golden State was followed up by a little dose of reality for Sac-Town.

Sneaky SOB.

Dallas was looking good for the first couple of minutes. And that’s all they got. It was all Kings after that. Peja got his stroke back in a big way, tacking up 28 points and shooting 4 of 4 for free throws (finally). There was a great moment when he made his first free throw (which we didn’t really get to see, because all cameras were on coach Don Nelson as he dealt with his technical, trying hard to push the ref into bouncing him), and he got some good-hearted heckling from the bench for finally making one. Peja burst into a goofy laugh, and went on to make his next (thanks, Don!). Peja was everywhere again, looking BEAUTIFUL under the net, receiving some great unselfish passing from his teammates. And no slouch from range, of course, Stojk sunk 4 3-pointers to bring the Arco crowd to its feet again and again.

And it was good news/potential frightening news for Webber. Webber was looking fantastic, with more poster slams and slick moves, leading his team to glory as ever. There was one moment of sheer Kings joy, where Chris missed a free throw, which was pulled down by Vlade, and Vlade—with two Mavs on his back—tossed a slick behind-the-back pass to Webb, who leapt up and slammed down with authority. He put up 23 points and 12 rebounds…

…Before we suddenly saw him, out of nowhere, writhing on the floor in agony.

Webber managed to twist his right ankle badly in the middle of a rebound struggle, and fans were deafened by the sounds of a pin dropping somewhere up in the rafters as Sacramento held its breath. This is absolutely the last thing Sac fans ever want to see, especially in the middle of such a joyous game, and in the middle of such a great season-starting run. Chris was helped to his feet and was able to gingerly walk his way to the locker room. Which is good news. As of tonight, Chris’s status is day-by-day, and we’ll need to wait and see if he’s able to come back for Orlando Tuesday…and, more importantly, for the all-important home game against the Lakers on Thursday.

But let’s look at the bright side. Now, mind you, many fans wouldn’t see a bright side in this, but then many fans aren’t the big Funderburke freak that I am. We all know that with Webb down, Lawrence has to step up and fill his all-star shoes. And me, I see this is a golden opportunity for Fundy to really show his stuff. Not that I want Chris out! Even for one game! But if it has to happen, and with how great Larry’s looking this year, we could really see some great stuff off our oft-overlooked bench gem. If Chris needs a break to heal—and frankly, if it has to happen, it could come at a worse time, as once we get past these next two games, we’ve got six whole nights off for him to rehab—I expect to see number 51 step in and really shock some nay-saying sports writers who would be unanimously predicting a Kings slide without our big star. I think they’re in for a big fecal burger, and if they’d look back on last year, they’d maybe remember that the Kings really lit it up during Chris’s injury period last season. Chris is one of the major components to this team—but it’s still a team, and if anything good can come of something like this, it’s a little reminder to the NBA of just how good the Kings as a whole can be, and how deep our bench is when the call goes out. If Chris is parking in the blue spaces for a bit, keep an eye on Lawrence Funderburke, folks. A star could be born.

Obviously Chris and Peja were the big stars of the game, but if I had to pick a player of the game, my vote would go to Doug Christie. The man who’s leading our born-again defense (eight games in, we’ve still held every team we’ve played to under 50% shooting) was on fire tonight, doing it all. Defense. Passing. Offense. It was a big 13 points for Dougie tonight, and the crowd loved it, believe you me. And his 3 steals kept the slaughter going all through four quarters of Big Kings Love. Did I mention how perfect he fits into the Kings style of basketball? I swear, it’s like he’s been there all along. He was heroic tonight, with a couple of his buckets being beautiful, wild fallaways that had no prayer of going in. Ah, but our resident good Catholic boy has prayer on his side. Glad to have you with us, Doug.

Bobby got some minutes, and 9 points of them, and reminded me again what I love about this guy—his hunger. He’s hungry to play, and the love of the game is written all over his face, and in every charge for a loose ball, and in every made shuffle to stick to his man like glue (like Turko-Glue? New, from Romco!). He got a rest, and Rick gave Derek some time, but not enough to make any real contribution. Vlade may have only had 3 points, but his fingerprints were all over this win, with 7—count ‘em!—assists. His court awareness and teammate-reading resulted in a few of tonight’s big highlights. Give it up for the Flopmaster! Speaking of 7 assists, let’s give a shout out to Jason for living up to his reputation, and continuing his masterful late-start season. 12 points for J-Will, kicking it in with the turbos and making the Mavs look like they were standing still. Pollard was large and in effect again, moshing under the boards for 8 big rebounds and a bucket. Jon Barry got his time, and gave up some glory to help teammates look good (like the picture perfect pass to Lawrence for a big jam), managing a fan-pleasing 3 to further coffin-nail Dallas to the Arco floor. And we talked Funderburke? With Webb back in the locker room, Lawrence gave us what may have been a little preview of the Orlando game, chalking up 14 points in his 16 minutes, shooting 4 of 6 and dead perfect for 6 big free-throw points. Rick put in the rookie again for a few, and Turkoglu brought the bench to their feet with his MIGHTY slam in the 4th.

This was a team effort all the way, and Globetrotter-style crowd-wowing. “Unselfish” was the buzz word tonight. They’re going to be showing the 4-main jet pass sequence on SportsCenter, I guarantee you, a textbook (if the Kings were to write the book) example of fastbreak perfection that left Dallas looking like “Hollywood” in Top Gun (“I said where’d he go? Hollywood said “where’d who goooo?”). The boys are in the ZONE, playing Kings ball like the fans want it, and making it count with the newly-found defensive fire that’s giving us the big “W’s” that didn’t always come after a big performance last year.

And then there’s Nick. This really pains me. He pained me last year, because I so wanted him to be part of the team, and he went cold more times than not. This year, things are almost worse, because he has to come off the bench, and he does so, more often than not, desperate, in my opinion. Our bench goes deep, as I said, and a 1st-round draft pick and former superstar like Nick Anderson shouldn’t be the man in the rotation that can’t make it happen, leaving the rookies and non-stars out-performing him. In his 4 minutes (is that all a star rates?), Nick did pick up 3 rebounds, I’ll admit, but for the most part, he just looked sloppy, picking up a foul and giving away an embarrassing turnover. More and more, Nick is looking like the one man who just doesn’t belong on this team. And I’ll say it again…it pains me. I cheer for him when he steps up, hoping the old Nick from his Orlando glory days will awaken, and will join this journey to victory that we’ve set ourselves on. It hasn’t happened yet. And if something doesn’t happen soon, he’s going to see even more bench time, and will be trying to start over next year on another team. I really don’t want to see that happen. I really want Nick to come along for the ride and be a part of the magic. I’ll keep cheering him. I’ll keep hoping. I’ll keep remembering that amazing 25 point game in the early season last year when he shook off his 2- to 4-point games and finally came into his own again. And I’ll keeping waiting to see that happen again. Plenty of games left in the year, Nick. Let’s make something happen.

Dallas, Dallas, Dallas. Don’t know what was up with them tonight, but they have a lot to think about on their way home. Way too much clunk and little if any defense. I’m a huge Finley fan and always love to watch him play, but his 12 points went almost unnoticed tonight. Irk Nowitzki (a little tag from Aaron’s friend Jody, by the way. “Irk”…as in, no “D”) was about the only one bringing any fear with his big 16 (and “big” describes him in just about every way). Laettner (I forgot about his move to Dallas…) made a pretty good showing, tying Finley’s 12. Their bench was actually pretty impressive, outperforming ours and putting a little fear of Texas in us for a while, mainly from Davis and Buckner (11 and 10, respectively). But it was too little, and really much too late. The Kings owned the Mavs tonight, as they have most the last few games against this franchise, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. We need these home games to buff up our record before any of the big road runs upcoming. Home is where we’re going to have to shine if we’re going to improve our standing in the playoffs this year, and so far, we’re off to an amazing start. Arco regulars and long-distance digital League-Passers alike are getting their money’s worth with interest, and we can only hope this stretch can continue, and be indicative of what we’ve got to offer in the months to come.

Now we all start checking the web reports on the Webb, and wait anxiously to see what our hero, maybe our hero for the last season, can do to recoup and get back in game. Godspeed, Webb. The Lakers are waiting for you. And you know how I hate to disappoint a Team of Destiny ™.

Hey, and some NBA news, by the way. Philly’s now 7-0 on the season, and looking like the team to fear. Atlanta, meanwhile, is balancing them nicely at 0-7. You’d think they were playing football in San Diego or something. Cleveland’s looking solid, too, at 5-1. Byron Scott’s New Jersey Nets just beat the living CRAP out of the struggling Sonics last night, 126 to 91. San Antonio—the team tied for my coveted “2nd favorite NBA Team” award with the Suns—dropped one to Dallas a couple of nights back, but are still looking great at 5-2. Did I say Suns? Guess who’s leading the Pacific Division at 6-1 (oddly, losing their only game this year to Golden State), just one game ahead of YOUR Sacramento Kings. The Pacific’s going to be the division to watch again this year. Let’s see if the 3-3 Lakers can wake up and smell the destiny and get back in the race.

Help for Vanessa

2009-10-15T16:41:00.000-07:00

For my birthday, I'm asking for a gift for someone else.

On the morning of September 27, Vanessa Teeters was involved in a terrible car accident in Las Vegas. Those of you who've known me for a long time may know my cousins - Melissa, Melinda and Paul, who all attended the Academy for a time. Vanessa is Paul's daughter by marriage. I've known her since she was just a young girl. She moved off to Las Vegas some time ago.

This was a rollover accident, and Vanessa was ejected from the vehicle. Her back was, essentially, crushed. While she survived, Vanessa is now in the hospital, on her second surgery, and is paralyzed from the waist down. Such news is devastating enough, but hurts more for such a young, beautiful girl in the prime of her life.

Particularly one with no medical insurance.

Obviously we can't do too much about the bigger costs, but an immediate concern is trying to get her transferred home to Sacramento, to UCD Med Center. There's apparently some cost involved in this, and funds the family doesn't have.

There's a fundraiser going on this Saturday, October 17th, between 2:00pm and 8:00pm at a bar in Roseville called Trocadero. I plan to be there around 6:00pm. This is the day before my birthday. So if anyone wants to drop in, wish me a happy birthday and have a drink or two, and give a little something to the Vanessa fund, I'd really love to see you there.

Trocadero

314 Lincoln St, Roseville, CA

(916) 783-7892 ‎

If you can't make it there, but would still like to offer your support, there are a couple of ways. There's a donation account set up for Vanessa at SAFE Credit Union. The account number is 451636. Any local Sac people can drop into any SAFE location (such as the one at 3720 Madison Avenue in North Highlands) and make a donation, but you will need to have the account number on you to do so.

Or, as an alternative, you can go to PayPal and punch in my email address (oconnellmd@aol.com) and make a donation, and I'll get the money over to Paul to add to the fund.

If you can make it, I'd love to see all of you there, and seeing everyone would be the best birthday gift I could imagine. My family would really appreciate the help, too. Thank you all. And please...drive safe.

Stormy Sactown

2009-10-13T21:05:00.000-07:00

Figured I should get a blog in while I still have power.

Autumn tends to drop like a hammer here in Sacramento and squash the remains of the extended summers we have. Such was the case today, for sure. We've been having clear skies and sunshine, with lots of warm weather, and particularly spring-like these past couple of weeks, hitting highs only in the 70s and 80s (where we were 90s and triple-digits just before the cooling trend began). But today, it's time to pay our dues.

The storm has come.

I was out on the patio last night, late, when the winds first began, and the force of them started to get pretty frightening. I kept waiting for trees to start going over. I got to sleep, and by the time I woke up today, we had a full-on storm raging. Heavy rains, 40 mph winds. And wouldn't you know it, today was the day I absolutely had to go out and hit and ATM machine for a deposit I had to do. Staying home, as much as I'd have preferred it, was not an option. So I put my positive-attitude gears in motion, decided not to whine about going out into it, and decided to look at it as an adventure.

I'd been hearing the storm blowing outside, but didn't really appreciate it until I opened my front door. Immediately, I could see downed branches all over the complex. I could seen rain blowing sideways in the winds. And, my favorite part (always) - I could see that the walkway in front of my building was, as it always is during heavy rainfall, totally flooded. Greeeat. This is loads of fun with my wheelchair situation. I can only use my left arm to wheel myself (right arm, locked at 90 degrees as it is, can't reach). So I end up using that left arm for some propulsion, but also use my feet, and they do most of the steering. The flooding problem means that if I put my feet down, they're going to be underwater (it gets that deep). And I can't steer/move forward with just the arm.

So I did my best. I could getting a fast-rolling start, but I still have to make the sharp left turn to head toward my van, so momentum wasn't going to do much good. I tried to do what I could with the arm, and tried to use just the heel of my left foot in the water to minimize shoe soakage. But soakage there was. Add to this having to fight against the ridiculous wind. On this first part of my journey, I was dumb enough, too, to try to use my umbrella. As soon as I straightened myself out, I got hit with a massive gust that nearly took away both my umbrella and my Kings cap. But I managed to get through the water, and to get to/into the van without getting TOO wet. But it was ugly out there, believe me. But I told myself it was just a quick trip to the bank, so I'd be home before I knew it.

I got to the Wells Fargo, and the storm had gotten even worse. While sitting there parked, the van was getting rocked back and forth, and I started to wonder if I was going to get tipped over. I knew the umbrella wasn't a good idea, so I left it and pulled the hood up on my favorite Kings hoodie instead, opened the doors, and rode the lift down in the rain. I rolled quickly to the small (almost useless at this point) overhang at the bank and tried to use my remote control to raise the lift and close the doors back up, but my battery's low, and the range ain't great, so the snickering universe was making me roll juuuust far enough out where the rain would be coming down on me as I waited for the van to seal up.

I had just finished that, and had just turned toward the ATM machines, when the boom happened.

I saw the flash out of the corner of my eye, and with it came a sound like a cannon going off right next to me. It was so loud that, immediately, car alarms in the parking lot started going off. I'd never been that close to a transformer blowing before. It's quite a sight...and a sound.

And guess what that blown transformer meant? As I feared, I rolled up to the ATM machine, and the power was now out. So I'd left my nice, dry, warm home to come out into this mess because I HAD to use the ATM machine. And then when I got just a few feet from it, the block lost power, and I could therefore NOT use the ATM machine. Again...universe snickering.

Part of me thought about going into the bank, but I quickly put together that they didn't have any power INSIDE now, either, so there wouldn't be anything they could do in there for me. As in answer to my thought, someone ran up and tried to go in, but the bank manager opened the door and advised the woman that due to the power being out, they're not allowed to let anyone into the bank, for security reasons.

Fighting the wind and rain again, I waited the excrutiatingly long time for the lift to come back down so I could sit on it, getting drenched, as it just as slowly carried me back up. I got in the driver's seat and waited for a few minutes, trying to calculate how long it would be before power could be expected to return there, and watched as a number of people ran up to the ATM, did the confused, indignant huffing at its non-operation, and tried to get into the bank, only to be turned away by the manager. The answer to the "how long it would be" question was pretty obvious, of course...too long to bother waiting around. So I started the van up, drove across Carmichael (dodging fallen branches and flooded-out areas on the streets along the way) and headed for the Bel-Air where I often use the Wells ATM inside.

They, thankfully, still had power. But the rain got gotten even worse, and there was no protection to be had from it here. Just had to sit and take it for the lift ride, and put up with it blowing into my face as I waited for the doors to close back up. I hurried inside, fearing that another power outage (and another universal gag) might follow me, and handled my deposit. Whew. With one more umbrella-less lift ride, I'd turned into quite the sponge. The sponge headed home.

Back at my place, the wind seemed to have died down a little, though the rain hadn't, so I decided to risk the umbrella again, holding it tightly as I disembarked and headed for my apartment. Now I had to deal with the walkway flood again, but this time, as I'd hoped, the wind was on my side. I actually did a little better on distance by using the umbrella as a sail, the wind blowing from behind me and all, and it helped pull me along through the water. That did good to get me to the right turn to my front door, but the turn itself ended up requiring both feet, so my shoes got fully sogged.

With all my clothes drenched, and me paranoid about getting sick right now, I went ahead and got into a hot shower. After, while I was sad not to be able to use the hoodie that I all but live in right now, I switched over to my warm Kings pullover that I haven't worn in quite some time. And switched to an alternate pair of (dry) shoes to go with some dry socks. All this just to hit an ATM machine. No wonder I stay home as much as I do.

The storming seems to have died down quite a bit, but it's due to be with us the rest of the night and through tomorrow. My hope as that I won't have to deal with any power outage (and the boredom that comes with it) here at home, and I really don't want a repeat of big several-day blackout from a couple of years back (which led to several days of whiny blogging from me, where you'd have thought that I was the last survivor after a nuclear holocaust or something). But I've got my flashlights and candles all ready, just in case. For now, just happy to be warm and dry, and happy that I shouldn't need to worry about going anywhere else for a couple of days.

Sorry to see you go, summer. I'll miss you. But let's get together next year, shall we? Trust me, my feelings for you will have grown even stronger.

No, seriously...motorists, watch for bicycles.

2009-09-14T02:07:00.000-07:00

I was leaving my apartment on Saturday, ready to go off and do some shopping. I wanted to check my mail first, so I wheeled myself right at the end of my building. As I did, I could hear a loud, idle engine behind me, which would have been toward the driveway leaving my complex. It sounded quite large. A moving truck? A garbage truck? Whatever it was, I wondered if it might be blocking my way out to the street, but I figured I'd look and see on my way back with the mail.

No mail in the box, so I headed back that way, and found the the engine I heard belonged to a fire truck. It was sitting directly across from my driveway, blocking lane 1 (the left lane) of southbound Garfield Avenue. Cones were down, closing lane 1 behind in front of it, so southbound traffic was cut down to just one lane - lane 2, the closest to my driveway. I could also see that there were cones across the middle cement divider, blocking northbound Garfield's lane 1 as well.

Had their been an accident without my hearing it? My apartment is right next to the driveway, so that seemed odd. It must have happened, I figured, while I was in the shower. To get a better picture of what was happening, and to see if I should even bother trying to get my van out onto the street, I rolled up the walkway beside the driveway; it stays level as the driveway drops down a hill, so going to the end of the walkway would give me a slight overlook on the whole thing. As I approached, I noticed other people standing on the sidewalk on Garfield, watching the scene...and could see the same on the other side of the street, where the other, more populous, complex is.

I stopped behind some hedges and looked down, and could see the firetruck with two firemen sitting on its front bumper. Ahead of them, I spotted a group of about five CHP (California Highway Patrol, for those of you out of state) officers standing on the center divide a ways ahead of the truck, talking amongst themselves. I didn't see any wrecked cars around, but I quickly spotted something that always puts a chill down your spine at one of these scenes.

A bicycle.

The bike, bent up a bit, was laying on its side near the officers on northbound Garfield's lane 1. I looked around for an ambulance, but saw none. I assumed that meant the ambulance had already come and taken the rider away, and I hoped that he, or she, was all right. The officers were laughing as they talked, so I hoped that was a good sign. I rolled forward to get a better look southbound, to see if the inevitable auto involved was parked there, and I could, yes, see one just ahead, with another vehicle stopped ahead of it and some people standing around.

As I'd rolled forward, my eyes had caught something on the street, in my side's lane 1, right next to the center curb. It was yellow and long, but something about the fact that no one seemed to be around it, or be too concerned about it, made me skip right over it and look for the car. As I continued trying to put together what happened (old claims adjuster habit), my eyes went back to it. It occurred to me, then, what it was, but I didn't believe that first thought right away. Then it became clear my first thought was right. I was looking at a yellow police tarp.

And it was covering a dead body.

It still didn't make sense for a moment, considering the casual, seemingly jovial nature of the officers there, but a further look around the scene showed me two shoes, a ways from each other, on the street near the firetruck, each with orange chalk marks around them. Bike, shoes, no ambulance, yellow tarp - yeah. Dead body. There'd been a fatal motorist vs. bicycle accident right in front of my home. And the victim of that accident was laying out in the street, under the sun, with cars slowly driving right by it in the one open lane, and with no one in charge bothering to stand there with it.

I felt terrible, and had that sinking "oh no" tingle of sadness in the chest, but I wasn't shocked. At my age, I've seen a number of dead bodies in my life. And thirteen years in the auto claims business means that this kind of thing has been part of my life for a long time, and I've seen plenty of scene photos like this one. And, as always, my very first thought was of the family member or spouse that's going to get that phone call and find out that person who went out for a ride is never coming home. I know those people well. I've had to talk to them many times, in different stages of the emotional process. My later claims years got easier, as I moved into vehicle total losses, which meant there were often a few days between the loss and the claim getting to my desk. In my earlier, front-line days, I'd get them on the phone a day or two after it happened, if I was lucky - the same day if I wasn't. Sometimes I even got the call right from the scene. Awful stuff to deal with, but I always remained kind but calm, professional but understanding, trying to be the strength for them that they had no earthly reason to have themselves at a moment like that.

A photographer was speaking to the police, his camera and its long protruding lens in his hand, and he, too, was laughing. One has to understand, I suppose, that when you do this kind of thing day in and day out, and see all this tragedy, you have to shut yourself off to it or you'll go a little insane. But still...just from a strictly P.R. angle? Is joking it up around the gathered pedestrians and slowly passing cars really sending the right message to the public? I would think there must be some way to remain detached without seeming callous and disrespectful and the seemingly forgotten corpse.

A tow truck pulled up and went passed me, pulling up behind the auto that seemed to have been the cause. Obviously, in a collision between car and bike, the car's not going to have a lot of damage, but in cases where a fatality is involved like this, the police have to take the vehicle. It's going to be in storage for a while, I can tell you that. The truck stopped with its rear slightly in front of my driveway, and that was going to make me pulling out difficult. Not impossible, but difficult. I was on a schedule to make it somewhere before it closed, but it wasn't so big a need that I wanted to maneuver my van around the truck while trying to keep my distance from the yellow tarp. I know enough of these things to know you don't leave a body out of full view for that long, and it had been a while now, so I figured the coroner van must be on the way. So I decided to wait it out.

And with this, I made the decision to stay where I was and verify it was clear before I headed to the van. The last thing you ever want to be is one of those people that gather around an accident scene and stare, and I was tempted, for this reason, to go back inside. But in the end, the (former, but hopefully not for long) claims adjuster in me won out, and I felt that I should remain and watch the process. When you do phone claims, you don't always get the full picture of what happens at the scene itself. If it wasn't such a ghoulish thought, I'd think that claims adjusters should be required to go to accident scenes as part of their training, so that they'd know not only how the steps go (to help with their investigation), but to see what those involved go through, to be able to properly understand them when you've got them on the line.

So I stayed, keeping up on my hill, at my respectful distance, and quietly waited behind the hedges.

Other neighbors of mine were NOT so respectful.

I spotted the woman I see leaving for work at 5am each day (if I'm out here at 5, which I often am), standing there with her husband or boyfriend. And I was dumbstruck to see that there were binoculars in his hand. And he used them. He would use them to watch the car down the way (which I didn't have a clear view of, so I didn't know if some juicy bit of wailing guilt was going on for his amusement), and would then use them - yes - on the body. We were 150 feet from a dead body, and he had the nerve to use binoculars to get a better view of it.

Across the street, by the low-rent complex, groupings of watchers were gathered. One stood out. He was a man with a video camera. He never stood still for long. He kept walking quickly up and down the sidewalk to get better angles.

Below me, a woman in shorts and a tank top came plodding up, dragging a child of maybe seven with her, anxious to get a closer look. And she got one. I'm not a parent of course, but really, is pulling your child up to get a nice clear view of the dead person the best idea? My neighbors were making me ill. But, at the same time, I realized I was still there watching, too, so I supposed I didn't have much of a soapbox to stand on (or sit on, in my case). I liked to think there was a difference between observing and gawking like it's a spring break wet tee shirt contest.

Soon a car pulled up on the northbound side and came to a quick stop, parking on the sidewalk. A man and a woman got out, both looking anxious, but not grief-stricken, so I put together that they weren't related to the victim, but likely to the other driver, who'd likely called them. The spot where they parked put them in a straight diagonal line to the soon-t0-be-towed car across the street - with the body between them and it. They checked for traffic, walked quickly across the lane to the divider, and didn't even seem to pay attention to the body that they looked close enough to trip over. They paid it no mind at all, didn't even give it a wide berth as they passed. This made me even angrier, and increasingly agitated the no one without a video camera or binoculars even seemed to notice it was there. It occurred to me, having that thought, that this person was no longer a "he" or a "she". In one unlucky second, "he" or "she" had transformed into an "it".

After a while a saw the man coming back across, heading for his car. And once more, he all but stepped on the body. This time, I was happy to see, an officer turned and saw him and made a "come on..." gesture of disbelief and said something to the man. I didn't hear the words, but I hope they were terse ones. That man didn't seem to understand what he was being chastised for. Moments later the woman he'd come with reappeared with an older woman. I assumed that was the driver, imagining that she'd called her daughter and son-in-law, who'd come to drive her home since she no longer had a car. They all got in the parked car together.

At this moment, the tow truck started and pulled out into the lane, clearly going to get itself in front of the car to set up the tow. The man with the video camera all but ran down that way, stopping when he was directly across and filming again. My neighbor with the binoculars zoomed in on the scene as well. The police photographer (or someone who works with the police, as he wore no uniform) joined up with with a second photographer, who pulled up in her car. They talked. They smiled. They laughed. They started taking shots of the scene and the covered body.

After a few more minutes, the coroner's van finally arrived, pulling in front of the body and backing up to it. The workers got out, putting on their gloves. The police, and the photographers, headed for that spot. After a few moments of them chatting, one of the officers looked around at all the gathered spectators. He didn't just look, but seemed to glare, and I felt that was more than appropriate for all of us. He called the fireman over and said something to them, and they quickly headed back to their truck. They pulled it over the divider, to the north side, and lined it up to block the view of the body from the folks on that side of the street. The same officer made a motion to someone out of my range of sight, and a CHP motorcycle appeared, parking just behind the body, blocking the view from behind. The officer then produced a sheet from his waiting car, and a couple of officers unraveled it, stretched it out and held it up, the final wall to cover up what was about to happen. It mostly worked, but not completely.

While all this was going on, the guy with the video camera had dashed across the street to my side and run up to our driveway, the nearest vantage to the scene, and was getting lined up for the camera shot. The same indignant officer as before spotted that, turned and started walking toward him, and started making a clear "cut it" slashing motion across his throat. This time I could hear his words. "No. This is not happening for your entertainment or for you to film. Shut it off". The man obeyed, slowly, taking his small camera and making an overly-done gesture of putting it back in its leather case. The officer just shook his head at him and went back to his duty.

Through the opening between the sheet and the motorcycle, you could still see part of the body. They removed the tarp. I could make out a man's chest and a shoulder. Shirtless. Whether he was shirtless at the time of the collision or became that way after, I have no way to know. The photographers took their shots. An arm was lifted, and the body rolled. They were soon finished, and one of the coroners started pulling a gurney and blankets out of the van while another, with a plastic bag in hand, went to collect the body's missing shoes. They wrapped and lifted the body and strapped it to the gurney, and the sheet was put away. They loaded the last of this man (young man? Old man? I don't even know) into the van.

Seeing that their van was pulling away, I went to mine.

With that done, and the tow truck already having left, I had a clear exit. I carefully made my right turn as on officer picked up and moved the broken bicycle. As I straightened out on Garfield, I saw that there was a spray of wet, soapy water across both lanes, from the center divider to the sidewalk. That's where, of course, they'd had to hose the blood away. There was no way around it. I had to drive over it, and that, I think, was the most sobering part of this for me. The rest had been just seeing the accident's aftermath. This was physically touching a part of it. I drove away, solemnly, wondering who that bike rider had been, if he'd even been identified yet, and who of his loved ones was going to be receiving the call that night. And which unfortunate adjuster was going to get the call to handle the necessary claim details.

I came home later that night, with all evidence of the incident now gone, save for some orange chalk-marks on the road that traffic would soon dispose of. I went inside and tried to search the web - would there be any details yet? Anything on the CHP site? I found nothing. Later that night, just before sunrise, I checked again. No Sacramento news sites had reported anything about it. It just seemed like they should have. It was important. A man died in front of my home that day. And he lay there lifeless as police and firemen and photographers laughed, and as locals gawked and filmed.

As of tonight, still no news. I don't know who he was, or what happened. The adjuster in me, again, drives me to know. I need to see the incident in my head, find out where the other car came from, know if the auto was at fault or if the bicycle made an erratic last-minute turn that not only ended his universe but forever changed the life of the woman behind the wheel. I'm not looking to blame. Claims isn't about blame. Liability, yes, but not about blame. We don't make moral judgments. Just legal ones. It's not something I currently do for a living, but the old muscles are still there. And I guess, more than anything, I just want it to make sense. I guess I still have this superstitious belief that if, somehow, the reason behind a tragedy like this is known, we (on the assumption of some kind of collective unconscious, where my understanding somehow transmits to all of mankind) can learn from it and somehow keep it from happening again in the future.

But we won't. It will keep happening. As long as we have cars, and as long as we're behind the wheel of them. And long as these things are true, there will always be a need for my chosen profession.

A profession that's already telling me to get the facts, put it behind me, and move on.

But while I can't reach all of mankind through some kind of new age transference, I can at least speak to those reading this blog. I don't need all the facts to remind us all of this - watch for bicyclists, always. You won't much care if they were the one at fault or not when you're left knowing that it was your car that ended someone's life. Let's all keep a closer lookout for them this week, okay?

Late Night Bikini Drama

2009-08-31T03:16:00.000-07:00

3:00 AM. I'm out on the patio after a night out drinking with A.T. at Slingshots. He headed home, I had dinner and finished a movie ("Burn After Reading", a film that should have been titled "Burn Before Watching"), took care of some things inside, then came out to do some writing.

I hear voices from behind me, and suddenly CGWI is standing next to my patio.

In a bikini.

I turn, and I see her roommate (also in a bikini) behind her, along with a dude. If not for the dude, this story would not be a blog entry, but a letter to a long-standing men's publication.

She asks me if it's going to bother me if they get in the hot tub. I say not at all. She explains that the landlady has been keeping a close eye on her, giving her trouble (one wonders why), and I assume she's well aware that no one's supposed to be in the pool area after 10:00 PM. I say it's fine with me. She thanks me, they go get in the hot tub. All seem quite tipsy, but hey, so was I a couple of hours ago. Fair's fair. I write onward, working on some new possible track names to contribute to Geoff Liver and his Space Orchestra's in-production album (don't ask). CGWI's cell phone goes off a couple of times over there, which I know because she has a music ring tone and it's turned up loud enough to wake both the King of Pop and Farrah Fawcett-Majors.

Soon the roommate comes back through the gate, says thank you to me (for what? Who made me Lord of the Hot Tub? Her roommate's dad OWNS the place) and good night, and heads back to their apartment. After just a couple of minutes, I hear her calling down to CGWI and the dude. I don't make out all of it, but I get "You guys...we're in so much trouble...cops...". Er?

CGWI and the dude come back out and head back to the apartment. I wait to see if any cops come up. None do. I can only assume, by deduction, that maybe the landlady called the apartment and told them to get out of the tub or she was going to call the cops? Hard to say. Why would she call the apartment if she knew they were in the hot tub? Unless, as I've long suspected, she has hidden cameras in all the apartments and saw the roommate stroll back in.

Regardless, it appears there's more demerits in CGWI's column on the landlady's death list. But is it a fight an otherwise power-mad apartment manager can win when trumped by the might of nepotism?

Stay tuned...

P.S. It's nice, at least, to be asked. That's a merit checked off on her column on MY list for courtesy. And courtesy goes a lot further when delivered in a bikini.

Your Internet Lesson of the Day

2009-08-26T17:59:00.000-07:00

I got this email today.

FROM: lumberjacksn@inimplast.com.br
TO: oconnellma@aol.com

SUBJECT: Thank you for settling the order No.75111511

Dear Customer!

Thank you for ordering at our internet store.
Your order: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, was sent at your address.
The tracking number of your postal parcel is indicated in the document attached to this letter.
Please, print out the postal label for receiving the parcel.

Internet Store.
Firstbatteries.com

ATTACHED FILE: D04f5fbec.mim

Oh, no! Something's wrong! I don't remember ordering any item! There must be some mistake! Am I being billed?! I'd best open this attached file right away and find out what's going on!

Okay...

There are people out there, all over the world, looking to rip you off, hijack your computer, or, hell, just wipe out your computer just for the fun of it. This is one of the ways they do it. And they count on people not thinking and just opening the file out of panic or curiosity. Then the deed is done, and you're eight ways screwed.

First off, look at the email address this one's coming from. It has a .br extension. This means it's from a web site in Brazil. For once, it's not out of Africa, at least. Nice to see South America getting it on the fun.

Second, my email address is one letter off. How this actually works, I'm not really sure, but it tends to lead you to think you accidentally got someone else's email...all the more reason to open the file, either to help them out or try to steal whatever item they ordered yourself!

Note the subject line. "Thank you for settling the order". Who talks like that? Answer - people that do NOT speak English as a first language. Bad spelling, grammar, or just awkward phrasing is another clue you're being spamulated.

"Dear Customer!": Just "customer", not me by name. Plus, an exclamation point after it? Again...English as a second language. "Thank you for ordering at our internet store". THAT's working the brand name, guys. Generic = suspicious. "Your order: Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, was sent at your address." It was sent AT my address, not TO my address? Do I handle the company's shipping now? "The tracking number of your postal parcel is indicated in the document attached to this letter". Letter? It's an email. Ass. "Please, print out the postal label for receiving the parcel." Oh, I'll open that RIGHT away, as I'm sure that will give me all the info I need to clear up this misunderstanding! Plus - "parcel", not "package". And it's signed "Internet Store" (there's that catchy store name again). And we finally get a site name: Firstbatteries.com, which I will NOT be browsing out of curiosity, as it's probably set up to shoot all manner of spyware at me the minute I do.

And the attached file. First...IT'S AN ATTACHED FILE. Never open those if they're not coming from someone you know, and even then, maybe not. This one's a .mim file, which is a generic internet format that, in essence, hides what kind of files, and how many files, are attached. If I downloaded that and opened it, I guarantee I could kiss either my computer or my bank account good-bye. Or at least I'd be changing internet passwords 'til spring.

These emails come in all forms. I get regular ones that look like they're coming from PayPal, telling me my account is being shut down unless I click the attached link and clear up "the problem". This link will, I assure you, go to a very PayPal-looking site that asks me to punch in my username and password. Cha-ching! It's Christmas Eve in Nigeria! I get them from banks or alleged banks, where they talk about a problem with your account. Even if you DON'T have an account with this bank (I get BofA ones all the time, and I have no account there), people are still concerned and curious enough to click the link or open the file...you know, just in case they FORGOT about an account they opened up.

Evil men across the globe are out to rip you off or just mess with your life. At this point in time, legally, there's little that can be done about them. All you can do is negate their expectation of you being dumb...by not being dumb. If it looks hokey, it is. Just delete it. Never click a link, never open an attached file. It's 2009 so we should all know this, but based on the fact that so many of these are still flying around, clearly people are falling for it, or they would have stopped long ago.

Don't be that guy!

Of Lawn Chairs and Crazy Neighbors

2009-08-25T15:43:00.000-07:00

Most of us haven't been lucky enough to get to this point in our lives without dealing with some kind of neighbor drama. Either it's an issue over parking, over loud parties, maybe a tree growing over a fence, whatever. Sometimes these are just annoying, sometimes they get really ugly. But few of us have had the joy of dealing with the outright crazy neighbor...like, in this case, one who feels a pair of lawn chairs are an eyesore that "obstruct his view" from his bedroom window. And one who plans to take legal action if the situation is not remedied.

The email exchanges regarding this are quite entertaining. Click on the images to see them full-sized for easier reading.

Thanks to the folks at emailsfromcrazypeople.com for sharing.

Favorite Movies Scenes (I can think of right now)

2009-08-21T03:10:00.001-07:00

Just up doing some late night writing, watched a couple of great films the past couple of days, got my mind on movies and those scenes that never quite leave me. Movies can be judged and analyzed and rated as a whole, but it's those scenes - those particular moments - that stand out in your memory and become your emotional anchor to them. I have far too many favorites to remember or mention tonight, so I just feel like hitting a few.

And this isn't going to be very informative, because I also don't want to give out any spoilers. But hopefully you've seen a few of these and can back me up. Or, if not, maybe you'll consider giving some of these films a try.

"COLLATERAL" - JAMIE FOXX IN THE HISPANIC BAR. Just finished my first re-watch of this Michael Mann masterpiece in a long time tonight, so it's on my mind. So many amazing scenes. The first is the cab ride with Jamie and Jada Pinkett Smith, a brilliantly understated but poignant human moment. There's the fantastic moment of unexpected connection when Tom Cruise gets Jamie's dispatcher on the radio and completely upturns our expectations about his character. And there is, of course, the coyote. But the scene with Jamie in the bar, going in solo? Clock ticking, everything on the line, having no idea if he can pull this off? THAT was magic.

"WANTED" - THE KISS. Another film with plenty of scenes to nominate, from the great walk-out of the office to the spectacular slo-mo factory run. But you can't be a guy and NOT dial in on the whole scene with the kiss. Daaaamn.

"JAWS" - SHOW ME THE WAY TO GO HOME. Three men, all from different worlds, drinking together, comparing scars (Roy Scheider and his appendectomy one...brilliant!), comparing stories, with the remarkable Robert Shaw telling the tale of the fate of the Indianapolis that found us all holding our breath as he did, and the singing of the old sea shanty as the men finally bond. Spielberg, if they had an Oscar category for "Most Magnificent Bastard", you'd have a whole case filled with them.

"ANY GIVEN SUNDAY" - COMANCHE. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. Thank you, Oliver Stone, for showing love for the game, not turning it into some kind of big fascist metaphor conspiracy.

"COPLAND" - STALLONE WALKS ALONE. Man-tears are a strong possibility for any red-blooded male lucky enough to have seen this scene, and to have sat, dumbfounded in wonder, at the unexpected return of Stallone as an actor. I can't hear you, Ray...

"HEAT" - TIE: THE WHOLE DAMNED SHOOTOUT AND THE KILMER/JUDD "WAVE". Many reasons to count Pacino in for this, but for me, it's all about the most glorious use of bullets in the history of cinema, and that heartbreaking moment with Ashley Judd giving Val Kilmer "the wave". Something about the way it was shot, the choice of music...it was devastating.

"THE BEST OF TIMES" - THE FINALE. I dare you not to shed a tear. I dare ya!!

"MAGNOLIA" - THE "SEDUCE AND DESTROY" SEMINAR. Say what you want about Tom Cruise. Then watch this scene. Respect the c***, folks.

"BOOGIE NIGHTS" - THE NIGHT RANGER COKE DEAL. You might be picking something involving Roller Girl, and who could blame you? Me? I'm going for the delicious insanity of that whole scene at Alfred Molina's house. The 80s music. The firecrackers. The tension. The long, long, long tight shot on Mark Wahlberg's face, and the lifetime being projected from behind his eyes, the final confirmation that, holy crap, Marky Mark CAN act! Motorin'...!

"BOONDOCK SAINTS" - "THERE WAS A FIRE-FIGHT!!". Willem, Willem, Willem. You are still the master.

"THE PROFESSIONAL" - THE FINAL ASSAULT. Excuse me...I think I have something in my eye...(sniff).

"STAR TREK II" - THE NEEDS OF THE MANY. Oh, screw you, you cried like a little girl, too.

"BREAKING AWAY" - THE LITTLE 500. Go, you Cutter, go!! Dennis Christopher, where did you GO after this?! We've missed you. One of the greatest coming-of-age films ever made. And it came from the 70s. Go figure.

"JACKIE BROWN" - "ALL I ASKED WAS FOR YOU TO BE BEAUTIFUL...". Tarantino made his first grown-up movie (thanks, of course, to the Elmore Leonard source material), and it was a moving experience for me. One of its most poignant moments was the Sam Jackson/Bobby DeNiro van moment. But I'd be wrong to not recognize the closing as well. Across 110th Street is a hell of a tester...

"PULP FICTION" - "BUT I'M TRYING, RINGO. I'M TRYING REAL HARD TO BE A SHEPHERD". Yes, first Sam Jackson broke our concentration, but it was in this moment when he became a superstar.

"THE COWBOYS" - THE JOHN WAYNE SURPRISE. Let's...sniff...let's just move on, okay?

"EMPIRE OF THE SUN" - "P-51! CADILLAC OF THE SKY!!!". Before Christian Bale started being done with people (professionally), he blew us all away with this childhood role, and this transcendent moment in American cinema.

"SWINGERS" - THE DANCE. With this, he knows what to do with the bunny. Who's the big winner? Mikey wins.

"JERRY MAGUIRE" - THE MISSION STATEMENT. The scene that made us all reevaluate our lives and our place in the world. Yeah, okay, there's that whole Cuba Gooding moment, too...

"THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT" - SAM JACKSON BEHIND THE WHEEL. Yeah, Sam Jackson again. A moment of pure redemption, a lifelong loser's moment of heroism. Chefs do that.

"LORD OF THE RINGS - THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING" - THE BATTLE IN THE WOODS. A handful of men against an army, and damned if they didn't make us believe they could pull it off. One of the most brilliant action scenes on record. Close enough to be a tie? "Fly, you fools!"

"LORD OF THE RINGS - THE TWO TOWERS" - HELM'S DEEP. The whole damned thing, but specifically, the ride out to meet the enemy. One of the best WAR scenes every filmed...and it had freakin' orcs in it, for crying out loud!

"SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" - THE FIRST TWENTY MINUTES. One of the most remarkable theater experiences I've ever had, the moment when, after all my years of watching World War II movies, I finally knew what being there was like.

"APOLLO 13" - "IT'S BEEN AN HONOR FLYING WITH YOU GENTLEMEN". "Apollo 13, this is Houston, do you copy?" I now know what it was like when the whole world held its breath, because thanks to Ron Howard, I did, too...

"ST. ELMO'S FIRE" - EMILIO DRIVES AWAY. Say what you want about the movie, but the Kirby Keger/Dale Biberman resolution will make you cheer.

"STEALING HOME" - FLY, JODIE FOSTER, FLY!!! A wonderful forgotten film of the 80s climaxed with an amazing Mark Harmon scene that put the bow on the whole thing. Try this one sometime if you've never seen it.

"THAT THING YOU DO!" - TIE: THE GENESIS SCENE AND THE RADIO SCENE. Maybe not one of the greatest films ever made, but it contains two of my favorite movie scenes of all time, both involving that damned song...

"THE SIXTH SENSE" - THE CAR SCENE. You thought I was going to go for the ending, didn't you? For me, the biggest moment of emotional connection in that film was between Haley Joel Osmont and Toni Collette in the car just BEFORE the ending. Wow.

"UNBREAKABLE" - THE BREAKFAST TABLE. I again challenge you to hold back a tear, in this magnificent scene in a film you either got or you didn't. I hope you did.

This is nowhere near a complete, list, as I said, and it's made up of random late night thoughts when I should be sleeping. But these are some of those scenes that continue to stoke my love of film, of what it can do to us, and what it can be when all the ingredients mix just right. And when that happens? THAT, my friends, is what they call movie magic.

To be continued.

"Boy, you got it made there."

2009-08-16T15:00:00.001-07:00

An older woman I don't know (new neighbor? Visitor?) just left the pool and walked by me on her way back to whatever apartment she came from. While passing, she commented at me, with a smile, "Boy, you got it made there."

Her comment was based, I'm sure, on the fact that I'm relaxing in the shade, lazily reading/writing on my laptop, smoking a cigar and probably looking as relaxed and serene as I feel.

"Yes," I commented back to her, thoughtfully, with a smile. "Yes, I do."

The summer afternoon is right at my perfect level - warm, but not too hot, with the sun not yet shining directly down on my patio, but safely overhead behind the roof. There's a very slight breeze occasionally blowing, and the sky is blue and clear.

I had a good night's sleep last night, which was a rare thing. I got up feeling refreshed, rose and got to some studying I'm doing to prepare for the job interview I have coming up on Tuesday, which is for the exact type of position that has NOT been showing up on want ads for the past six months. I was able to focus and get a good chunk of my reading done without my mind wandering to other things I'd rather be doing, because preparing for such a fortuitous interview is nothing but a pleasure.

I'm taking a break from it and catching up on a couple of things on my fully-functioning laptop that's giving me no errors and my internet connection is not going down, causing me to go back inside to reset the router, something that's been happening a lot lately. I happen to have a couple of cigars left, my favorite, familiar brand, and this particular cigar is not rolled too tight or too loose, but has just the right draw. And I can smoke it without being anxious or guilty, because my long-time upstairs neighbor - he of the open windows who refused to use his A/C - moved out several days ago, and the apartment, for now, sits vacant.

My folks have a job. After eight months of heartache, frustration and challenged faith, they're relaxing today in their temporary home on Sierra Vista, Arizona, waiting for the first Monday of the job to begin. It's not a long-term job, and may only take three or four months, but it's a job, and it's a paycheck, and their relief brings me a peaceful gladness.

I've just spent three days in a row out doing things with good friends, enjoying their company and catching up on old times, and during that time I saw two amazing movies, and saw both for free thanks to free movie passes given to me back during the holidays by family members who know what makes me happy.

I'm checking Facebook and Twitter and finding out what friends (and favorite celebrities) are doing with their Sundays, and there seems to be a universal enjoyment of the day going on, and spirits are high and thankful.

My stomach isn't perfect, but it's not treating me worse than normal, and my hearts seems content to operate like it should and not distract me with its fussing.

Children are playing in the pool - happy, but not screaming. Neighbors are strolling by, in no rush to get where they're going, clearly content with the day and their lives.

I have a list of things to do with the remainder of my day, and look forward to - instead of resent - completing them, and to the feeling of accomplishment that will come with doing so.

I'm alive and well, have a life populated by amazing people who enrich it just by being in it, live in what I still consider to be the greatest state in the union (economy paling in comparison to the weather and the scenery), have a roof over my head in these troubled times, and looking ahead to a future that feels ripe with possibility and adventure instead of heavy and wearying.

Yes. I do seem to have it made here.

I hope this Sunday finds you feeling the same.

"The Hurt Locker" and "District 9"

2009-08-14T23:53:00.001-07:00

Two movies in two days. Finally getting into my summer movie groove.

Yesterday I hooked up with A.T. and Rich to go catch "The Hurt Locker", a film we were seeing on my recommendation. I'd happened to be over at Rotten Tomatoes checking on another film a while back, and I spotted a film mentioned there - one I'd never heard of - that carried a startling 98% "fresh" rating. That means 98% of critics reviewed it positively, and this number is almost unheard of.

Curious, I went to learn more. I saw words like "A near perfect movie" (Time Magazine); "One of the defining films of the decade" (Daily News); "A viscerally exciting, adrenaline-soaked tour de force" (New York Times); I even saw someone say this this film is to the Iraq War what "Full Metal Jacket" was to Viet Nam. And then I found out it was directed by Kathryn Bigelow?! The woman who brought us "Point Break" and "Strange Days" and the 80s vampire flick "Near Dark"? A Bigelow film was now being discussed as a "leading contender for the Academy Award" (Chicago Sun-Times)? Intrigued? Why yes, I was.

So I talked Rich and A.T. into it, and even sweetened the deal with some free movie passes I had left over from Christmas. No dollars to be lost, just time. So, knowing almost nothing about it (not even who was in it), we went and checked it out, blind.

Here's the thing. It IS an amazing film. I want to underscore the "film" part, though. It is not a "movie". It's not Hollywood. It doesn't follow a normal formula, and doesn't go the expected ways. If you walk in thinking it's a Bruce Willis movie, you might end up like some others in the film around us who apparently got bored and walked out. This is an indie film. It's a character movie. Know that before you attempt it, and be in the mood for that.

If you are, you'll find yourself feeling like you've served a rotation in Baghdad. The film feels almost documentary-authentic. If it's not a realistic portrait of Army life in the Gulf, then it sure fooled me. The main focus of the film is a group of soldiers that are part of the bomb squad, who disarm (or set off) explosive devices. Through their experiences and their eyes, we learn about the surreal nature of military life there, the dangers around every corner (not knowing civilian from enemy), the loneliness, the questions of mortality, and the varied ways war gets inside a man and how it changes him. The best part about it, I think, was that it was not a film projected from a pulpit. There were no politics in it, no questions of should-we-or-shouldn't-we. Those are questions for us back home. This film was about those guys over there, and it never forgets that from its start to its finish. I found that very respectful, and welcome. Viewers are left to make up their own minds, and will likely, I think, walk out with exactly the same views that had walking in - but with a greater appreciation for the men and women serving there. It LETS you think. It doesn't TELL you what to think.

Another review called it a "Full-tilt action picture". Uh...no. That's misleading. There IS action, but it's not Hollywood action. There's a lot of tension and suspense, but it's punctuated, like life over there, with long periods of inaction filling time. You might find it drags in parts, but I like the think that was intentional, meant to mirror the day-to-day existence of the troops. What's the old phrase? - long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror? Something like that. I, myself, was not bored, but fully immersed it. Whether you will be or not depends on your own film preferences. But I felt it fair to warn you in advance so you'll know what to expect, and with that warning, I strongly recommend seeing the film. It really is a piece of quiet greatness, with brilliantly understated performances and a few surprise cameos. If you get a chance to see it before it's gone, I say go. If not, it'll be a great DVD watch for you, too.

Tonight it was just me and A.T., and our film of choice this time was "District 9", one that we got to see free, again, thanks to my final pair of passes (quick note to folks - those Price Club movie passes you buy at a discount? Those work even for new films that say "no passes" next to them in the listings. Those are well worth buying). We headed to my personal favorite theater in town, the UA stadium theater in El Dorado Hills. It's worth the drive up the freeway. Plus, there's a great selection of restaurants surrounding it, which led us to having a great dinner at Pete's before the show.

"District 9" is a sci-fi movie that's been in the pipe for a long time. I'm not really sure what the delays were about (haven't researched that), but it was being heavily marketed at last summer's Comic-Con when I was there, and the photos I saw of this year's Con showed the same promotional materials set up. It took it's time getting here.

And it was worth the wait.

I'm going to disclaimer this one for you, too. NOT HOLLYWOOD. This a (wonderfully) unique piece of cinema, and will stomp on all your expectations. Be prepared for weirdness. Magnificent weirdness. Produced by Peter Jackson ("Lord of the Rings") and written by a South African screenwriter, it's set in Johannesburg, where, twenty years ago, a massive alien ship arrived and floated above the city--and stayed there. The government finally moved in, only to find a million stranded alien beings, clearly with no way to get home. The government moved the aliens off the ship and into a holding area that turned into a slum. The aliens are now quite hated by the local humans, who want them out of the area. The pending forced relocation of them to another area - essentially a concentration camp - starts our story, which is shot (in the beginning) as a documentary.

Warnings for potential viewers - lots of Shaky-Cam (tm), so if you're prone to motion sickness, prepare for a headache. Also lots of gore. I saw people get up and leave during some of the more graphic scenes. But the gore is done in - dare I say it? - an almost entertaining way. If you saw "Robocop" or "Starship Troopers", then you know what to expect. Unlike "Hurt Locker", this IS more of an action film, but draped more in satire than adrenaline. Yes, much of it ends up darkly funny. It's part of its charm. I heard one reviewer call it "Independence Day for the art-house set". That's fairly on-the-nose. It has spectacular special effects, but ends up an unexpectedly human (and alien?) film. You will laugh, you will feel your heart ache, you will be on the edge of your seat, you will grimace at exploding people and yet find yourself snickering despite yourself.

Some of the initial concerns I heard before the film's release was that it was a big metaphor for apartheid, and isn't that message a good decade or two out of date? Don't worry - the apartheid part is there, but it's at the beginning of the sentence, not the punctuation. It's the setting, not the overall message. It doesn't tie a big "apartheid is bad!" ribbon on the top of it, because it knows, naturally, that we're all quite aware of that and in agreement on the thought by now. It just makes for a much more interesting stage.

I'd wager to say it's a science fiction film like you've never experienced, and that alone should draw you to it. The lack of any name actors makes it feel all the more real and aids in your immersion into the story, and you'll find yourself invested in the film through the whole thrilling and riotous ride. If you're cool with a lot of gore and a trip down an unfamiliar cinematic path, then you'll enjoy "District 9" as much as I did.

Two films, two winners, no cost. Not a bad couple of summer days, I'd say.

Your Thought For Today

2009-08-10T15:41:00.001-07:00

"I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

---Michael Jordan

Rockalottapus: A Former Sophomore's Heavy Metal Journey

2009-08-02T02:29:00.000-07:00

During my sophomore year in high school, I was not cool. I LIKE to think that very few sophomores are, but I was definitely a nerd. The guys who were cool, on the other hand, were the upperclassmen - the seniors and the juniors. Those guys had all the cool stories, did all the cool stuff, and us lowly underclassmen could only dream of being part of their legendary adventures.

So naturally, this thought occurred to me when my former schoolmate, Vlado (one of the seniors), dropped me a line on Facebook and asked if I'd want to go with him, Randy (another senior), Robert (a junior) and Shawn (graduated before any of us) to go see Judas Priest, Whitesnake, Tesla, Saliva, Trapt, and several other bands at the 98 Rock "Rockalottapus" concert event, a ten-band head-banging show. At this time in my life, I really don't have the dough to spend on concerts, but Vlado insisted and fronted me the ticket. And so, with twenty-five years having passed since I was that sophomore, I was getting the chance to go to a heavy metal concert with the cool guys. I wish I could have sent a temporal email back in time to sophomoric me and told him so. I'm sure he would have crapped his nerdy pants.

The big day was Saturday, August 1st. This is a concert event I'd heard about on the radio, when I've ended up on 98 Rock (when *I* was a young rocker, the station used to be 93 Rock...and we liked it!), but didn't give it much mind. Probably because I haven't actually been to a concert since about 1994. I used to be a MAJOR concert-goer during my rocker days. If there were guys with perms and makeup involved, I had a ticket. Van Halen, Queensryche, Aerosmith, Dokken, Cinderella, Scorpions...and, yes, even Whitesnake and Tesla, two of the bands on the Rockalottapus ticket. Concerts start to lose their appeal as you get older. You don't want to be the old guy there, for one thing. Plus, you start to look at the drunken, tattooed, screaming idiots around you and realize you really don't have much in common with them anymore. Also...it just gets to be kind of a hassle. The driving, the traffic, the parking, the crowd, the clouds of weed smoke flowing overhead, the people vomiting on your shoes, the damage to the eardrums, the hour-long lines to horrifyingly toxic bathrooms, more traffic trying to leave the venue and get home... You get older, and it all just starts sounding like a game meant for the young to enjoy. You'd rather sit home on your couch with a nice DVD and put your feet up.

But the memories are still there, and most are good ones. And you get to a certain age where all that hassle suddenly pales in comparison to the thought of reliving your glory days and feeling like a young rocker again. And when you find out it's a show that promises thousands of people your age and beyond, the idea becomes even more appealing, just as a unique time travel experiment - what do all those people you rocked out with back then look like now? I couldn't wait to find out.

So the day arrived, and Vlado and Robert pulled to my place, ice chest in tow, to load up into my van. There was some question of not taking my van for the trip, since my air conditioning is out, and...well, it's August. I don't mind the heat, but I didn't want to have to subject these guys to it. Turns out these guys were more than willing to do so to arrive at the show in a tricked-out blue flame van. It was decided, and I was the chauffeur. Outstanding. I really hate climbing into other people's cars if I can avoid it.

Randy was picking up Shawn (whose name I knew, but I'd never really met, since he was class of '81 and I was class of '86) in Davis, and we were to meet them near Arco Arena - a good central meeting spot on the way to Sleep Train Amphitheatre in Wheatland, our destination - and drive our two cars there together. We ended up outside an In & Out Burger near the Arena, and Randy and Shawn arrived almost immediately after. We hung out there for a few, chatting, cracking some cold beverages from Robert's ice chest, and then finally got underway. I was in the lead. Not really knowing the directions, I was letting Vlado do the navigating in the passenger seat, but he was also doing double-duty as DJ, getting a Judas Priest CD set up and playing. So I drove right past the turnoff to I-70, leaving Randy and Shawn confused but assuming I knew what I was doing. NEVER a good assumption. We got turned around and let Randy lead the way this time, and took the roughly 30-minute cruise there.

We showed up nice and early on purpose, so parking wouldn't be a problem and we could catch as many of the bands as we liked. We wouldn't get to see ALL of them, since there was the main show on the main stage, but also a "B-stage" outside with some of the other bands playing out there simultaneously. As we opted (of course) for the main stage, we wouldn't be seeing Saliva, Cavo, Since October or Rehab (I know Saliva, only, amongst those bands anyway). Randy had paid extra for the VIP parking, so he got to park in the same lot as I did with my handy handicapped parking. I found a great spot right by the entrance, since not a lot of folks showed up as early as us. It turned out to be an even BETTER spot than I'd thought. After all we all got out and got more beverages happening, we noticed a minivan pull up right nearby and pull into a handicapped spot. The passengers were NOT physically challenged, believe me. This was the van from Deja Vu, a local strip club, and it was filled with dancers who would be (we found out) appearing on stage at one point (not to strip...well, not completely...but to hose down the crowd with water guns). It's not every day you get to watch a bunch of gorgeous strippers in tiny little dresses pile out of a van, so, yeah...good spot.

After some hanging out in the heat (and it was hot, believe me. Robert with the bottled water was a lifesaver) we figured it was time to head in. We got my ticket from Will Call and flocked inside. The guys had all gotten general admission "pit" tickets. As this was probably going to suck for me, after discussing it with me, Vlado got me a handicapped seating ticket, which is AWESOME seating at this venue, right at the rail at the bottom of the main seating with just the pit between me and the stage. We went there first to find my spot, and while Vlado and Robert didn't have tickets for that section, a helpful security guy took their tix from them and marked them up to allow them to sit there in chairs with me. Now they'd have the option of relaxing in nice, safe seating or braving the dangers of the pit, depending on their mood throughout the day. Awesome.

I mentioned it was HOT, right? Whew. This is an outdoor amphitheatre, and we had the hot August sun beating down on us. Randy, forward-thinking guy that he is, brought and shared sunblock. He particularly remembered this because, not too many months ago at our school's alumni event, I'd sat outside too long talking with him, his wife and others, and I'd gotten SCORCHED (I'm Irish...it happens...). As I'm beginning to write this right after getting home, I haven't taken a look in the mirror, so I'm not sure if he made it to me in time this time.

The crowd was an interesting mix, as expected. You had your aging rocker dudes, like us. You could spot them even without the beer guts or the balding, just by the fading tattoos (as opposed to the bright and fresh ones of the young folk). You had what we were most looking forward to seeing - what we referred to as your aging skeezer MILF crowd. You know, all the girls that were hot and skanky in their ripped jeans and tube tops back when we did our early concert-hopping, now still trying to pull it off with their stretch marks and Botox? There were many. But I was surprised at how many young Priest fans there are out there. Part of this was a multi-generational thing. Some vets had clearly brought their kids along (sometimes their small children, interestingly...). But some young folk - college age - were clearly just there for the bands - hairy young dudes in their recent concert shirts (as opposed to guys like me, who had finally thrown theirs out or donated them to Good Will years ago), hot drunk Spring-Breaky girls out there to shake their collective thing in the pit in bikini tops. Kind of fun seeing such a wide range of head-bangers, young and old.

We settled in for the first show. There weren't a whole lot of people there, since many were waiting to show up for the bigger acts, but we got to enjoy, first, a set from Michigan's Pop Evil. And they surprisingly rocked the HOUSE. Really enjoyed these guys, and even more, enjoyed being back in the concert environment, with massive speakers shaking my chest and blasting my ears. That brought back a lot of great sense memories. They finished and a...unique band followed. That was Powerman 5000. I knew they weren't a typical band when they came out and all members of the band besides the Billy-Idol-looking lead singer (who calls himself "Spider One" and is actually the younger brother of Rob Zombie...but if they're actually related, shouldn't his name be Spider Zombie?) were wearing full-face sci-fi-looking helmets (?). A mix of rap metal and industrial metal, these guys, too, really nailed it, wowing the slowly-growing crowd.

After this, I needed a break from the direct sun, Vlado and I decided to head out into the main concourse area (with many sellers of tee shirts, beer, food, etc) and find some shade while I had a cigar. Bizarre moment there: while we sat talking, about a woman, as it turned out, some girl suddenly leaned over and said "She sucks!". Uh, what? Guess she felt like getting into the conversation, her joke being (I guess) that any woman we were talking about probably sucked. Budweiser makes for strange new friends... We got to chatting so long (us, not the drunk skeezer, who was gone pretty quickly, no complaints from us) we didn't realize that Tesla had already started playing. Oops!

We made it back for most of their set, and it was a great time. For those not in the know, Tesla is probably the most successful thing to come out of Sacramento (granted, this isn't saying much). They hit it big during the last years of hair bands, not needing the mascara and spandex, but just good old-fashioned hard-rocking. If you know them at all, you probably remember their very successful cover of "Signs". There's always been a great deal of pride in this town - at least amongst those with rocker leanings - when it comes to Tesla, and Tesla has always appreciated it, taking pride, in return, of where they came from. Their set was a mutual love-fest. It also inspired much drunk-girl wanna-be-stripper, think-we're-on-Spring-Break dancing in the pit in front of me, so that was an added bonus to go with the music. It's always fun to wait for that moment when they exceed their capabilities in their drunken state and fall over.

A story for another time: I'd met Tesla's lead singer, Jeff Keith, backstage at a Whitesnake concert almost exactly nineteen years ago, where I also had a nice long sit-down chat with Whitesnake frontman David Coverdale. The Coverdale chat was hard to focus on, because his wife - Tawny Kitaen, star of memorable Whitesnake videos and several crappy movies - was standing right next to me in very tight jeans and leather chaps. Again...story for another time.

After Tesla, the Deja Vu girls finally appeared onstage with the 98 Rock DJs, spraying the pit crowd with giant water guns, lifting their skirts and shaking their g-stringed booties at appreciative fans. I hear they'll be appearing later for a similar performance at an upcoming Jonas Brothers concert.

At this point, Robert and Vlado decided to hook up with Randy and head into the pit and storm the stage. I remained (you think?) and settled in for the Whitesnake performance, which ended up being a nice flashback for me. Due to the backstage story mentioned above, seeing them back in 1990 was one of my best concert experiences, and I was a huge fan of them back in my perm days (yes, I used to have the body perm). As I'm no longer the same music fan I once was, I didn't know any of the newer songs they played, but appreciated the classics, particularly one of the better crowd songs from the hair band era, "Slow and Easy". Coverdale is in good shape for his age, but is definitely starting to look like your grandfather in a wig. He announced that this is the twenty-fifth anniversary or their song "Slide It In". How did this information slip by the major networks? Stupid liberal media... He also announced that he'd just become an American citizen, finally (U-S-A! U-S-A!). I got a text from Vlado, letting me know he, Randy and Robert were all crushed up against the stage. The concert hounds of yesteryear, it appeared, still had it. Rock on, boys.

Whitesnake's set saw the setting of the sun, and it was dark by the end of it, which led to me finally noticing the video screen on either side of the stage. By this time the venue had filled, with all the seats behind me filled up, as well as the cheap-set grass area behind. The pit area was clogged, and was growing more so in anticipation of the main act beginning - that being Judas Priest. Robert and Vlado had had enough of the stage-front mashing and shoving and returned to sit with me. Besides that, Vlado, after seeing up close how Coverdale had aged, realized he really didn't want to see Priest's Rob Halford in such an advanced state, preferring to hold onto his 80s memories of the infamous singer.

Here's the thing with me and Judas Priest. There was a narrow generational gap in my youth between heavy metal and hard rock. I missed the metal window. While those rockers older than me thrilled to Priest, Iron Maiden, Ozzy and Dio, my "generation", while forced to respect such bands for fearing being called "fag" and getting our asses kicked, didn't really have the same connection to them. So while I knew some of their songs, I'd never bought any of their albums (this, as you may recall, was during the era of actual "albums"...and the glory days of cassettes), and didn't count them as one of my big influences. So while they were the headliner of this event, they weren't the big draw for me, as most of my exposure to them had been seeing their logo on the back of the jean jackets worn by the 14-years old that used to try to sell me weed outside the bowling alley when I went there to play videogames. But I was definitely into seeing this performance, as my curiosity was high, and I've aged enough to know that such biases held in your youth are often not rooted in logic and can make you miss what others seem to see so clearly. Bring on the metal, I figured.

My expectations ended up being exceeded, much to my pleasant surprise. There was a reason this band was at the top of the bill. Thirty-five years after forming, Judas Priest still knows how to own a crowd, and how to rock quite brilliantly. My first sight of Rob with his big gut made me wince, sympathetically, a little. But he was immediately likable. He's got this kind of serenity of the aged aura around him now, like he's genuinely enjoying what he's doing as is grateful for the chance to still be doing it. You just wanted to cheer him on. Seemed like a great guy. The crowd seemed to agree with me, and loved every minute of it.

Most of the bands I used to listen to were strictly of the head-banging-but-not-metal kind, so I hadn't really been to any shows with a mosh pit. Once formed, a wide circle in the middle of the pit, which fascinated me. How did it form? Who instigated it? Are there set rules about this kind of thing? But there it was, and it was a blast to watch, again because of the variety of fans. You expect to see young, virile white boys in these things, acting our their aggressions. But soon enough, I noticed a kid in there that looked about twelve. And a couple of young blonde girls. And guys of my generation. And at least one guy who looked like someone's grandfather. They all spiraled around, having a great time bouncing off of each other. It added a lot to the experience.

The band's performace was high-energy and addictive, with fantastic trappings of heavy metal shows, right down to lasers and a giant Nostradamus head with lit-up red eyes. Their guitarists did their patented stand-beside-each-other, left-to-right-banging sway, another standard of performances past. Rob worked the crowd - obviously not being able to be as acrobatic as he once, I assume, was - but kept the energy high and went through a couple of costume changes, the most memorable being what we referred to as the disco ball trench coat. There was much banging of heads and calling of woos, forked finger gestures thrown high, girls up on boyfriend shoulders swinging their arms.

Ah, yes, and I got to experience the encore ritual again. I've missed that. Obviously in a multi-band show, you can't accomodate encores for the early bands, so Priest would be the only one. There's that moment when they say goodnight, head offstage, but the lights are still on, so you know they're still coming back. I wonder, was their ever a time when the encore was not a ritual, but was instead spontaneous, with the band back in their dressing room, starting to take off their shoes, and a stage manager rushed back and told them the crowd wasn't disbanding, and they needed to get back out there? In our times, it's all part of the process. For this one, Rob came back out on stage riding a Harley. After more of their hits (and yet, no "Turbo Lover". What's up with that?), a banner with the Priest logo flanked by both Old Glory and the Union Jack was down, and Rob talked about how America and Britain were partners in metal (wooo!), partners in peace, and partners and war, and went on the give a heartfelt shout out to all the troops overseas.

Finally the show ended, with the band taking their bow, and that moment happened when, after they left, the stage shut down and the "house lights" went on. That's the moment when you know it's officially over and it's time to go home, but there are always those hopeful few that think if they can whip their fellow fans into a big enough screaming frenzy, the band will return. Doesn't happen. The show was at an end. We hung out in our seats, as Randy returned from his sweaty adventure up by the stage and Shawn found us, until security told us we'd need to leave. We headed out with the rest of the crowd, and again, our timing was good, because suddenly we were walking behind the Deja Vu girls, who weren't even attempting to keep their skirts pulled down. People were stopping them to take photos with them, and I was tempted to do the same, just to experience the total reversion to horny young rocker, but self-respect got the better of me. They finally headed back to their van, as us to mine.

We let the whole place empty out, standing by the van, discussing the experience and old times, sharing intell on former classmates we'd tracked down over the years. We told long-held secrets, and verified that there was one particular girl that almost all of us had made out with back in school (I'm not naming names). It was the perfect ending to the adventure, and soon, Robert and Vlado and I said our good-byes to Randy and Shawn, let them head to their car, and loaded up in the van for the enjoyable drive home (where more stories and secrets were shared). We got back to my place around 1:30 AM, and Vlado and Robert got into Robert's ride to head home, while I FINALLY had something to eat (hadn't eaten all day, by choice, for reasons you don't want me to go into), then headed out to the patio to start this blog.

It was everything we could have hoped for - great music, old concert memories, getting guitar picks as souviners (I even got a Telsa one, as a security guy had caught one and gave it to me there in the wheelchair seating), oggling both professional and amateur skanks, getting plenty of photos (all of mine viewable now by my Facebook people), feeling eighteen again and, most importantly, spending some quality time with great old friends. While I'm not much for crowds these days, I was definitely glad I made the exception, and took part in an amazing memory.

Thanks again, guys, for including me, and helping me prove that we are, still, "ready to rock".

Can't wait to tell all the guys at school on Monday...

Rockalottapus Concert Teaser

2009-08-02T01:52:00.001-07:00

The blog update will be coming up soon on the concert event I just returned from. In the meantime, here's a special teaser recorded at the scene (because I remembered the new iPhone software includes a voice recorder):

Click Here For Teaser

Stay tuned...and rock on!!

Patio Update: Breaking the Fourth Wall

2009-07-31T16:12:00.000-07:00

If you know my friend A.T. - and if you're from Sacramento, there's a better-than-average chance that you do - you know a few things about him. You know he loves the color orange to a level that borders on unnatural. You know that his booming radio/carnival barker/game-show host voice can be heard anywhere up to including three quarters of a mile from his present location. And you also know that it's impossible to NOT meet A.T. if you walk anywhere within about a half-block of him. People are drawn into his orbit like so much helpless space debris, powerless to resist being dazzled by his infectious extrovert nature. He will make eye contact. He will say "hi" to you, no matter who you are - man or woman, young or old, Republican or Democrat, it matters not. And from that one simple syllable, you will find yourself - unable to really explain why - having made a new best friend and adding him to your Facebook list, your MySpace list, your cell phone address book, and likely making plans to go out clubbing with him over the weekend to introduce him to your OTHER friends. He is a force of nature, a pied piper of social networking.

So it really should have been no surprise to me when, after A.T. arrived at my apartment to stay a few days with me, he was already on a first-name basis with CGWI before, literally, he had even gotten in my door.

After all my months of chronicling her adventures - viewed and heard (by no choice of mine) from this patio - I had never even spoken a word to her. This is not the A.T. way. I knew that her name was Kayla from the wonderful high-volume arguments with her thick-headed ex. A.T. knew this, now, from introduction. I knew that it seemed strange to me that she was able to get away with all the fights, the open-window THX-quality sex, and, most curiously, the endlessly yapping little dog in a complex that, to my understanding, doesn't allow pets, all without reprisals. A.T., between his car and my welcome mat, had found out the reason why.

Her father OWNS this complex.

NOW it all makes sense...

While I've never met Daddy Landlord personally, he and I have a history. When I first moved into this place, five years ago, it was because my friend Theresa worked for this man, a man who owns two or three complexes, in addition to other holdings, and she knew that there was an apartment open here. I turned out to be eternally indebted to Theresa for this, because I fell in love with the coincidentally handicapped-accessible unit, and it's turned out to be the best place I've ever had. There was a bit of a problem in my first months here, though, and that centered in my oft-drunk apartment manager, a chronically blunt lady who takes no crap but dishes it liberally if any of her numerous and varied rules are broken. I've seen, for example, her have cars towed at 1:00 in the morning on a Friday night for parking in the office parking spaces - an office that's closed all weekend so no one would need to use that parking until the following Monday anyway. When I first moved in and had friends over visiting on my patio (my friends are not quiet), she stumbled over and scolded me like a child on the need for silence right in front of them.

This manager (who seems to have stopped the drink in the past couple of years, I feel the need to add, as I applaud her doing so) is very aware of all the goings-on in her complex. Creepily so. Anytime anyone would come to visit me, she'd appear from the nether before they could reach my apartment and ask who they were and who they were coming to see. One could see this is a bonus - and in my glass-half-full way of thinking, I tried to - as it meant security was always going to be top-notch in my new home. But her obsessions went beyond visitors and spread to me. I found this out when Theresa - who had to deal with the manager on the phone on a daily basis for her job - would relate to me how Rental Unit Hitler would relay details of my life, from what time I came home to how I had boxes stacked up just inside my front door to how I'd remodeled the closet (added a hanging shelf unit so I could reach my stuff) without permission, etc. She had opinions on my friends who visited. She had opinions on my housekeeper and the exact amount of time she spent in my apartment, which clearly wasn't enough to be doing the job properly so she must be ripping me off. Yes, the irony of my blogging on my neighbors is not lost on me, here. But back then, knowing that she was watching every detail of my life - and griping about it - was getting on my nerves. As were some interactions I had with her when I was not yet used to her near-complete lack of social skills. I made these feeling known to Theresa.

One day Theresa's boss was griping about this manager, and how she had angered a real estate inspector who was supposed to be writing something up on this property, and Theresa decided to mention my problems I'd been having. Daddy Landlord, caught at the exact wrong moment, went ballistic. He got on the phone, called the complex, and started screaming at the manager, telling her to leave me alone, stay out of my way, etc. As he didn't want the manager to know that Theresa had said anything, he decided to tell her that I had called him and complained myself.

Wow. Thanks.

I found this out when Theresa called me a few minutes after at my office to warn me, and to apologize for inadvertently setting all this off. Now, suddenly, I - a guy who goes ridiculously out of his way to avoid conflict with anyone - had a major problem with my apartment manager, who now thought that I was ratting her out and trying to get her fired. To say I was stressed for a while was to understate most impressively.

But the good news in that front is that, with time, all that faded away, and I've had nothing but a great relationship with my manager ever since, having learned her personality and how to deal with an accept her (and which buttons NOT to push), and she's been nothing but a help to me in the past four years. But I learned, through my conversation with Theresa that day, what a terror her boss could be, how he often flew off the handle and started yelling at people, and what an unpleasant guy in general he was, per her opinion.

And now I knew that CGWI was his daughter. Suddenly, her daddy issues that I'd heard of through her loud outdoor phone calls all made sense.

So last night A.T. and I were relaxing on the patio, sometime after 1:00 AM, after the rest of my company had gone home. As we talked, we heard people approaching. It turned out to be CGWI, her current boyfriend, and another (very attractive) girl. Their volume and manner suggested they were just coming home from a night of drinking. As they passed, CGWI spotted us, stopped, turned, and, friendly-as-you-please, said hello. Once more, the A.T. spell had proved irresistible, and now, after one brief conversation with him, she thought of him as an old friend. She let the others go on to the apartment and started talking to us. She mentioned that the other girl had just moved in with her - this, by the way, was my final evidence that she was not, as reported, planning to move out anytime soon (and why would she? It was clear now, due to her father, that she had no reason to and certainly wouldn't be getting kicked out). She started talking about her dog, in fact, and hoped that I wasn't one of the people that the dog had bothered. I, of course, lied and said that I wasn't. She said that a neighbor lady had even moved due to the dog (not much question, I guess, about which one of them was going to lose THAT fight, huh?). She told me, at that point, that her father owned the complex, and I wisely decided not to mention my story concerning him and how much of a prick people seemed to think he was.

She then, out of the blue, asked if we played poker, and said that they play at her place every Wednesday night. She said she thought she'd seen me playing poker on my laptop from her window once (she hadn't). Her boyfriend is apparently quite addicted to it, and she's gotten quite good herself. And she invited us to come join them when they play. I, of course, did not mention the fact that she lives on the second floor, but she picked up on that pretty quick, and added, "Or we could come down here". A.T., of course, thought this would be a great idea, and told her so. This, of course, being A.T. She went back upstairs after saying good-bye and giving the poker invitation again.

So, thanks to A.T.'s mysterious Jedi powers, I have now finally met CGWI. I'm amused by how different my personality is from A.T.'s. I, the introvert, avoids eye contact with neighbors and doesn't feel the need to ever meet them. A.T., my social opposite, could never imagine not meeting all his neighbors and making friends with them. He's moving into an apartment complex next week, and I guarantee by the end of the week he won't be able to walk through it without getting a "Norm!" response on a daily basis. He is the very definition of a people person, an enviable state of being.

Of course, now the fourth wall has been broken here, and suddenly I'm faced with the possibility of the people who are the untouchable terrors of the complex coming to MY place to hang out? How would this, I wonder, reflect on me and the people around me? What if CGWI and the new beau start screaming insults at each other in my kitchen, or sneak off to my bathroom for absurdly vocal carnal knowledge? Or, better yet, what if the immediate worst-case scenario that came to mind once she began speaking to me comes to pass:

1) A.T. befriends her, bringing her into my life.

2) She gets just close enough to find out about my blog and looks it up and reads it.

3) She finds out that I've been detailing her life and love-sounds for the world to enjoy.

4) She calls daddy, and I find a not-surprising eviction noticed taped to my front door?

Time will tell. One wonders, though - is cozing up to the daughter of the owner a mistake, or a smart way to guarantee continued residency, an armor-plating from any future apartment manager complaints of my actions?

Yes, time will tell.

I mentioned that her new roommate is really hot, right?

Night Owl Patio Update

2009-07-29T04:56:00.001-07:00

Been a while since I've done a patio update, hasn't it?

Coming up on 5:00 AM here, and still dark out. I've come to know the familiar rhythms of pre-dawn in my complex. The first one each day to emerge from an apartment is always my upstairs-but-not-right-above neighbor, also known as Older Beer-Gut Speedy Guy. He looks to be around his early sixties. His crew-cut hair is a dark gray. He has an unshakable penchant for wearing shorts, even in the morning when he appears to be on his way to work. And though he's overweight and has a pronounced hunch, both things coupled with the gray hair suggesting, to the casual observer, that he's getting up in years and should have a gait to match, his pace is always hurried. Is he in a rush all the time, or is he just a man who knows exactly where he's going in life, so wastes no time getting there?

He's always the first door I hear, right about 4:15 AM. He, in his shorts and polo shirt, carrying some kind of briefcase, makes his beeline for his truck and pulls away while the rest of the complex (except me, of course) seemingly slumbers. Ah, but not all is at it appears, for others, too, are on the rise. At almost precisely 4:30 AM, my next-door neighbor, Dennis, exits his apartment (one that I've been in before, before he ever moved into it, because I used to feed the cat of my previous neighbor who lived there while she was out of town) and heads for his own truck, almost always turning toward my patio while passing and saying "Good morning" to me in a daylight voice, not bothering to whisper as the dark sky and quiet walkways might cause others to. This fits Dennis, as he strikes me as the kind of man who is always himself in any circumstance, not bending to fit the environment, but simply confident that who he is is who he is, and the world can take him or leave him. He's natural friendly, mustached and barrel-chested, quick to share a genuine smile with any in his path. Dennis is a church-goer, a fact I've picked up from the pleasant, short conversations we've had over the past year, over my patio rail or as we're both arriving at our parallel front doors at the same time. I'm not sure, at this point, which church, but whichever one it is, it seems to make him a peaceful, satisfied man. His outgoing nature is the reason that I actually know his name and don't need to make up a silly acronym for him.

There's thirty minutes of silence after Dennis, and then Blond Lady With Good Posture comes walking by, traveling from her apartment at the other end of my building, so I never hear her door open. Her hair is medium length, and I believe she's got a few years on me. Her shoulders are always squared, and she walks as through she trained with books stacked on her head as a schoolgirl. She moves like a graceful, programmed robot gliding easily along her assigned morning path. She strikes me as someone who either enjoys or has just accepted routine in her life, making me wonder, were our walkways made of dirt, if I might examine them after her passing and find that her footsteps have fallen in the same impressions she made the day before, matching them exactly.

After her, the complex is all mine for the remainder of my final writing/reading/thinking shift, with only the sound of early traffic and the hum of surrounding air conditioner units my calm companions. If I stay out a little longer on Mondays, the garbage truck will loudly pull in and do its duty just across from the complex office. This happened yesterday, and on a whim, I decided to, for once, roll forward so I could see the process. The thought that made me do so was realizing how magical the sight of a garbage truck lifting and tipping a dumpster was when I was a child. It's amazing to me how our perceptions change, how the once-extraordinary becomes all but invisible to us as we grow older and our minds fill, instead, with the worries and regrets of everyday adult life. I wanted to see if I could somehow recapture some of that magic, to see if I could glimpse what had so mesmerized me when my eyes were once so much wider. Apparently, I could not. Now it's just a garbage truck, something to resent if its doing its job when I'm inside trying to fall asleep, manned by workers whose jobs I would not want but probably make more at their hourly wage than I ever have.

Remember when I last reported, after hearing her (consistently) over-loud phone conversation from her patio, that CGWI would be moving out in a couple of weeks? That was the middle of June. It's now almost August, and she's shown no signs of vacating. Just tonight, when I decided to roll outside with my iPod as midnight neared, she had a small party going on, with her and several other smokers out on her balcony loudly laughing and talking. She's still around, her dog still barks at all hours, but the change in weather, at least, has caused her to keep her windows closed. So at least the Porn Theater has MOSTLY ceased. For a while it seemed her new guy had reached the level of a platonic friend, or so I assumed from the lack of screaming, God-calling and rump-slapping. But a few nights ago, with the array of air conditioners providing me with a comforting white noise as my background, I heard a sound that didn't seem to fit. After a moment's pause to listen, I confirmed that the theater had re-opened, but at least the show wasn't open to the public. It was understated enough to ignore, and I was grateful for that, at least. I continue to watch, against hope, for a U-Haul truck to magically appear in the parking lot some afternoon.

The biggest news on the goings-on here, though, surround the infamous WFK. The news is two-fold - first, he actually HAS a parent, and second, he knows my name! Both of these were quite surprising. I finally found my answer to the question of why I never saw any legal guardian of his coming or going from a job. This turns out to be because this parent works HERE. I finally figured out one day, while he and what I assumed was a friend from the complex, were in the pool. Mike, the complex handyman, came walking by and started talking to the boys through the pool gate. This is when I found out that the boys are brothers, and that Mike is their dad. Mystery solved, and this oddly pleased me. First, because it was now clear that WFK was not somehow living on his own in my complex, an orphan surviving on untoasted Pop-Tarts between his OCD rounds of the property each day. Second, because he had a brother, so he was not all alone in the world (and was not brought to his weirdness by isolation). But third, because I approved of who his father is. Mike is a good guy, a short but muscular (disproportionally so in his upper body) man probably just a little younger than me, who's personable in that salt-of-the-Earth kind of way. He's come in and changed high light bulbs and done toilet fixes for me in the past, and we've had nice talks. He's very proud of his home electronic system and likes to go into detail about it, particularly about his (literally) thousands of videogames that "they" have. I'd never connected the "they" before, and "they" seem to comprise him and his boys. So WFK does have a family, apparently one with the mom out of the picture, but one filled with X-Box games and a library of DVDs that puts my (I once thought) impressive one to shame. I know this because one day while I was outside, Mike came out and showed me a photo of his system and library, proud as a father showing off graduation pictures, which I thought was a nice gesture, since, as he lives on the top floor, he knew he wouldn't be able to bring me up to show it off in person.

What really threw me for a loop, though, was the day not long ago when WFK, his brother and another friend were heading toward the pool (the gate of which is right across from my patio). As they passed, and as I was typing away at my laptop, WFK suddenly spoke in my direction and said, "How's it going, Mike?" This jolted me. The kid I'd never spoken to (as we discussed earlier, it's never good form for single, middle-aged men to start up conversations with children in this day and age) suddenly spoke to me...and knew who I was, obviously from talking with his father. I'm always surprised to find out that people have discussed me - or even have given me a second thought - when I'm not around. I suppose it's a self-esteem thing, but I tend to think my always staying under the radar keeps me OFF people's radar. I tend to forget completely that I'm often the only person in a wheelchair some people have ever met, so I'm not near as anonymous as I seem to think.

So I find myself happy that WFK, who's no longer a child, really, but a burgeoning teen, seems to have a happy home life after all. This makes me worry less about him, and gives me hope that, despite his unusual and very Jack-Nicholson-in-As-Good-As-It-Gets behavior, he has a better than average chance of turning out all right after all. Good for him. Maybe one day I'll even know his name.

Oh, and a quick wrinkle to the morning - I just heard a car accident happen nearby. Its exact location was hard to pinpoint, since the screech and impact I heard happened right as a small plane was flying overhead, but the further squeal of tires afterward makes me think it was a hit and run. Over a decade in auto claims has taught me that this is all too common. It's also taught me that, since I only heard a crash and saw nothing happen, that I'm completely useless as a witness, so there's no point in my being involved, especially since I don't even know for sure where it happened. So there's no point in my pursuing it further. That's life living off of Madison Avenue. I just hope everyone's all right. The good thing that all those claims also taught me? Most of the time, everyone is.

The sky has now gone blue, birds are chirping, and it's a beautiful morning out. A strong breeze has given sway to the trees, and I'm still alone in my little world. Time for me to pack it in and let the rest of the residents here take over and get on with their days. Mine is at an end. Sleep calls, and a handful of errands awaits me later in the afternoon. So as my Tuesday closes, I wish you all a good Wednesday. Drive safely. And if you feel the need to wake your significant other with an intimate surprise, please...keep the windows closed.

Time Savers (Pt. 1)

2009-07-28T05:12:00.000-07:00

I'm introducing a segment here called "Time Savers", where I will, though my own life experience, find and pass on to you opportunities to save valuable time in your busy life.

Let's get started.

Time Saver #1:

Imagine that you - like I was - are watching something on the Science Channel about breathalyzers. They've just finished showing you how the thing works, and explaining some of the scientific principles behind it. They're about to go to commercial, and they tell you that, coming up, they're going to test several urban myths on how to beat the breathalyzer and see if they really work!

Turn off the TV. Walk away. Do something else with your time.

Do you honestly think they're going to show you, on the Science Channel, actual successful ways to beat a breathalyzer? Seriously? On a show that gets shown by science teachers to their young students, do you really expect to hear the words, "Wow! Who'd have thought?! We had our drunken test subject eat an entire raw onion, and sure enough, he read as legally sober! Crikey!" (I added the "crikey" because it was an Australian program I was watching)?

No!

So you already know the outcome. Accept that you can't beat the breathalyzer, or at least that the Science Channel isn't going to teach you how (this is what the internet is for), leave the program and go catch up on your scrapbooking.

Time saved.

Stay tuned for more exciting Time Savers, coming soon!

The Great Renuzit Can Scandal

2009-07-27T21:55:00.001-07:00

A tulip, by any other name...

...can get your company in a bunch of trouble.

In 1995, I was living in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I worked for the Dial Corp. As the name might suggest, the Dial Corp is the manufacturer of Dial Soap. But they also have many other products under their banner, other brands they've purchased over the decades. Purex Detergent is one. Breck Shampoo is another. They even own a line of canned meats - Armour Star (maker of fine Vienna Sausages. No, they're really not fine...). From bleaches to wood polish, corn starch to hair color, the Dial Corp has it all. And when I started working there, they had even recently purchased a whole line of air fresheners. Renuzit air fresheners, to be exact.

My job title at Dial was "Consumer Information Representative". Here's how my job worked. Let's say you have a bottle of Liquid Dial in front of you. If you were to pick it up and look on the back, you'd find some small print that provided you an 800-number to call if you had any questions, comments or complaints about the soap. I was the person at the other end of the phone, there to listen to your soapy rantings.

People who heard what I did for a living would often look at me with a baffled, amused smile and ask what people could possibly have to call about. You would be surprised. I sure was in my first weeks on the job. I, myself, had never considered placing such a call in my life. But many, many consumers did. Mothers would call to ask if it was safe to wash their cursing child's mouth out with our bar soap (our legally safe answer was that we did not recommend it for that use). People would call when they couldn't find one of our products in their area anymore, trying to track down a store that carried it (this was especially traumatic for users of Breck Hair Color, including one panicked woman who stated that her own husband didn't even know what her real hair color was...and for some reason she didn't want him to find out). Folks with allergies wanted to double-check and be sure certain ingredients weren't in our food products. Observant Jews wanted to know if certain products were kosher. Kids doing reports for school would call to get help on their homework. Women would swear at me for twenty minutes when stains didn't come out of their laundry. People would claim injury from our products - slipping on soap, a sliver of glass in their food, a rash from our fabric softeners. Lonely housewives would semi-regularly call me from the bathtub (careful to point out their location to me at the start of the call) with unimportant questions, just to have the thrill of the clothes-free conversation (I was like Richard Gere, if Richard Gere knew way too much about antibacterial vs. regular soap). People sure they were going to be rich would call with new product ideas they'd come up with, only to see their dreams dashed when I had to tell them that we didn't accept outside ideas. An angry father once called me when, after he'd sprayed some of our air freshener in the parrot's cage, the beloved family pet dropped dead, and the kids were due home in about an hour and he had no idea what to tell them (tell them their father should have known better than to spray a chemical all over an exotic bird?). One of my favorites was when a woman in Arkansas, quite distressed, called me to let me know that we'd ruined a breakfast she'd held for some visiting friends when it turned out that two cans of our Armour Star product called (I'm not making this up, and this sells fairly well in the south) "Pork Brains in Milk Gravy" had been bad, and her guests were so disappointed because they'd been looking forward to some brains and eggs.

So after just over a year of this kind of thing, I'd thought I'd heard it all in my job.

Ever notice how the minute you think something like that, the universe snickers and rubs its hands together?

We started getting some strange calls one morning. More and more of the same call kept coming in. Soon enough, management had to call us in for an emergency meeting. Apparently, we had a problem. And it was clear from the look on our manager's face that it was one she did not feel comfortable discussing.

The Renuzit line is made up of many products, varying by scent and by type. There is, for example, the Citrus Sunburst fragrance. If you like this fragrance, you can get it in a variety of product types, ranging from aerosol sprays to "adjustables" to plug-ins to carpet fresheners. Consumers were quite apt to call and let us know which fragrances they loved and loved not so much, and we'd take their comments, thank them, and send them coupons for future purchases. That was one nice part of the job that I never got in any occupation thereafter - the ability to brighten a customer's day with the promise of an envelope full of coupons at the end of the call. People who call 800-lines LOVE coupons. I feel that if 976-numbers had offered coupons, they'd still be around for heavy-breathers to this day.

One popular fragrance was Fresh Cut Flowers. And why not? What person (who is not a guy, who could therefore care less) doesn't enjoy the scent of flowers, much less the freshly-cut variety? The graphics on cans and other containers for this product made its title clear - it was a photo filled with a pleasing variety of wild flowers, one that promised a veritable florist shop's-ful of nasal delight for the purchaser. This photo was a recent change to the product, one that, I'm assuming, tested well with focus groups, and had shipped some time before, gracing all the different product varieties of Renuzit Fresh Cut Flowers (or "FCF", as we of the Consumer Information Center knew it, as this was the code we typed in on our DOS-based computer system when we took a call concerning it).

There was a problem.

On the aerosol spray can, a metal seam ran down the length of the can, top to bottom, and that seam cut off the photo in a spot that was not cropped on any of the other FCF products. The part of the photo it dissected, on one portion of the can, was the curled petal of a tulip. Just a tulip petal, nothing scandalous, nothing that would have raised an eyebrow in the art department when the photo was being approved.

But when that seam cut off the tulip petal, a situation created completely by chance? It no longer looked like a tulip petal.

It looked like a penis.

There was an ensuing period of "Where's Waldo" in our meeting at that point, all of us looking at the cans and trying to find it, believing this must be some kind of joke. It was no joke (even though most of us were trying hard to remain professional and not snicker). If you knew where to look, you could find it. Now, seeing as how we, in the Center, all had access to the other products, we could pick up, say, a can of the powdered carpet freshener and see the uncropped photo, and clearly see that it was a rolled up tulip petal, as we could see the whole flower there. But that unfortunate seam had done its work, and done it well enough for someone, in some store in America, looking at cans and trying to decide which scent would best accentuate their trailer home, to spot it, do a double-take, and become convinced that there was clearly a veiny, tiny penis in the photo.

As the old 70s shampoo commercial goes - they told two friends, and they told two friends. And so on, and so on, and so on...

Word had started to spread, and quickly spread far enough to start reaching a couple of morning radio shows. It was then the fires were really lit, and the Renuzit Penis urban legend was born. As the concocted story went, the photographer responsible for that photo had found out he was losing his job. Disgruntled and vengeful, he decided to get a little payback on his last day on the job, and he...well...inserted himself into the photo. It was a story with absolutely no basis in anything even close to a fact. But it was a GOOD story. A story with a penis in it.

And thus began the Renuzit scandal, and the living nightmare for all of us who worked the call center at the Dial Corp. Calls started flooding in. Some were just people trying to verify the story, and we were MORE than anxious to dispel the myth, and offer to send them a color copy of the entire photo to review, or recommend that they go to their local Wal-Mart and pick up the carpet freshener and see the uncropped photo for themselves. People, of course, didn't want to do that, because the false story was, let's face it, much more fun. Add to that the fact that many of these people had been telling this story to every friend and relative they had, with an air of insider information in their confident reporting, and didn't want to sound the fool for being duped.

Others calling in were not curious, but outright angry. There was a rising fundamentalist rage over a trusted consumer product manufacturer introducing pornography to unsuspecting store shelves. You expect that kind of smut in the cosmetics aisles with all the half-naked hussies posing on the boxes, but the air freshener aisle is supposed to be a family aisle! Many of these angry callers were also parents, as this story spread through schools with ridiculous speed, and children were impressing each other with this shocking (yet giddily pleasing) tale, often bringing their mother's can of X-rated air freshener to class with them. One distraught mother told me that her young son, since finding this out, had been unable to keep his hands off the can...or himself (her words).

Most, however, were callers that completely eroded my faith in the American adult public, something that not even people calling to scream at me "It doesn't SAY anywhere on the bottle of bleach not to wash your dog with it!" had accomplished. Some of them couldn't even make it through the call they were snickering so much. Grown men and women became sniggering adolescents at the sight of an imaginary winky. Some even tried yelling while they were doing it, threatening to sue, but couldn't contain their laughter and pull it off. Some calls were less humorous and more...well...sexual. This was the hardest part for me - not for me personally, but for how I felt for my fellow workers, who were almost exclusively women, who spent the next few months going through their work day in a state of, essentially, constant sexual harassment. Guess we were cheaper than a 976-number. Plus, you know...coupons.

The media had fun. Morning radio was practically born for moments like this. We got wind of one "wacky" morning show doing a live broadcast from the local Target, handing the can to unsuspecting passersby and asking them to take a close look at see what they saw. The brief pause would then be followed by an "OH MY GOD!", and hilarity would ensue. This got so far that the then-undisputed king of morning radio - yes, Howard Stern - picked up on the story. He called our center and got Danette, the girl who sat next to me and a good friend, on the line. Danette was a very sweet girl, whose whole goal in life was to become a contemporary Christian singer. And she had to be the one Stern got on the line. I was sitting there when it happened. She calmly and emotionlessly said, "Please hold". And she put him on hold. She looked at me, told me who it was, and said, "There's no way I'm going to end up being 'The Renuzit Girl'". She took off her headset and walked to our manager's office to discuss it. In the end, she left Stern on hold so long he hung up. That probably didn't help much with casting doubts on the photographer story.

So we took the abuse, as such was our duty. Day in, day out, the phallic phone calls came, with callers enraged, aroused, or enjoying themselves immensely, and none of them believing our explanation of innocence. I felt bad for the poor folks with valid Pork Brains issues that couldn't get through to voice their lament. The Dial C.I.C. became All-Penis, All-The-Time. Even my personal, and sizable, adoration for being a part of anecdotal awesomeness like this could only last so long. There are only so many ways to say "It's not a penis, ma'am", and only so many times you can say it before (hard to believe, I know) it gets old. I became a dork-denying drone, going through the motions, praying, for once, for a finch to drop dead to break the monotony. There was no joy in Dialville - we were not a happy group of workers.

Thankfully, the United States of America is held up by two unifying foundations - individual freedom, and short attention span. The calls did eventually trickle off. Bill Clinton was in the White House, after all, so there were other penis scandals to be found. And we had O.J. to thank for further distraction. By the time I left the employ of the Dial Corp to move back to California, only a handful of penis (I'm interrupting the sentence right there to make you chuckle so you can feel like one of our callers) queries (I chose that word for the same reason) were slipping through (bwahahaha!), but they would no longer be my problem. My days of bar soap rashes, laundry disasters, spoiled Brains and Fresh Cut Penises were over.

Oh, but you can bet your ass I took one of those cans with me. I may have given up on Brains, but I'm no dummy.

NOTE: As with all urban legends, even ones that come from such a doubtless source as me...always double-check them on Snopes.com.

Comic-Con without me

2009-07-24T16:12:00.000-07:00

Feeling a little sad this weekend. Why? Because this is the first summer since 1994 that Comic-Con International in San Diego is going on without me.

There's a good chance that you've heard of this event by now. Some of you may not have. For that latter group, I recommend you go to Entertainment Weekly's website today or tomorrow, and see how many times you see the words "Comic-Con" on that page and in the big Hollywood stories. Or check CNN.com. Or MSNBC.com, where the first photo on the page right now is from Comic-Con. This should give you an inkling of the popularity of this thing.

And what IS this thing?

Outside the San Diego Convention Center

This is, in short, one of the greatest spectacles you're ever likely to see if you're lucky - and smart - enough to attend. It calls itself a "celebration of the popular arts". While it started small and simple back in San Diego in 1970, a convention focused heavily on comic books (back then it was simply known as the San Diego Comic-Con), it has grown to a four-day event that all but takes over downtown San Diego, with over 100,000 people attending each year (tickets for the event now sell out months in advance), and is the mecca for all things comic, film, television, videogame, card game, science fiction, fantasy, animation, anime, horror, and many other genres of fandom. It fills the ridiculously large San Diego Convention Center from one end to the other. For four days (five, really, since they have "preview night" the night before it all begins, which has essentially turned into another half-day of convention), fans of all that stuff get to check out a mind-boggling array of merchandise, meet and get autographs from celebrities ranging from A-list to obscure-but-embraced, attend a vast array of panels that run the gamut from Hollywood studios (and stars) showing off their upcoming films and TV shows to Q&A talks with popular writers or artists or actors, and just wander like wide-eyed cattle amongst the massive display booths and tables with their video screens and life-sized Batmobiles and pounding bass from massive speakers, while countless others attendees wander by in Stormtrooper, Batgirl and Transformer costumes. While fandom as a whole is divided into many camps - comic fans, Trekkies, Star Wars fanatics, anime junkies, Hollywood star-addicts, Harry Potterheads and Twilight zombies, to name just a very few - this is where they all come together, the United Nations of nerdity.

A very small portion of the convention floor. Notice how long those aisle signs keep going on. The imagine turning around and seeing the same thing going in the other direction.

It used to be a relative secret to the world outside San Diego and fandom. And this always amazed me. Some people go their whole lives waiting to see a celebrity in person. At Comic-Con? For $25 bucks a day (or for free, if you're designated an industry professional like myself), you don't just get to waltz into ballrooms and see household names speak and joke and answer your questions, but you often bump into familiar celebs on the con floor, in the elevator, or just in the john (there is no celebrity loo...they have to pee in the same place as the rest of us). I think it was the year that Halle Berry showed up that the media collectively went "WTF?!", and suddenly, Entertainment Tonight and E! and TMZ were swarming the place. That's when things really took off. Up until just a few years ago, you could just walk up the day of the convention and buy a ticket and walk in. Now, not only are you not getting in if you don't get your badge reserved months in advance, but you're simply NOT going to get a hotel room anywhere within miles of downtown that week unless you plan almost a year in advance. Yes, it's that big.

Some have complained that the Con has "gone Hollywood". I rejoice at this truism. The studios and the TV networks are all there, as are their stars. Halle was a big piece of news at the time, but now those kinds of appearances are the norm. Just this year, on Thursday, Tim Burton was presenting a panel on his upcoming "Alice in Wonderland" film, and in the middle of it brought out a special surprise guest - the film's star, Johnny Depp. Christian Bale has been there more than once. As has Angelina Jolie. Sam Jackson. The list goes on and on. Fans of TV shows are always in for a treat if there's a panel for their favorite program, because often the entire cast shows up for it. The "Lost" panel is always a huge favorite for this reason. If you're a Twitter person and follow celebs, chances are one or more of the stars on your follow list are tweeting about what they're doing at Comic-Con this weekend. "Swingers" star and "Iron Man" director Jon Favreau is on my list, and updated while he was loading up on his minivan and getting ready to drive there, and has updated from the Con floor regularly. My favorite notice thus far has been from Academy Award-wining screenwriter Diablo Cody (of "Juno" fame), who wrote "OH MY F***, I met Stan Lee!" (she added a photo of her and the godfather of comics to the tweet). "Firefly" and "Castle" star Nathan Fillion is home in L.A., but has promised that if his follow list reaches 100,000 by this weekend he's going to pack up the car and head to the Con and meet with fans.

Yes, it's a big Hollywood spectacle (even though it's a couple of hours away from L.A.), but it's so much more to me than that. It's been a staple of my summers since 1990, when I went to my first one, and I've been going as a pro since 1995. I've flown from my homes in Sacramento and Phoenix, and, even better, have simply hopped in my van and driven downtown during my years living in San Diego. It's a place where I get together with old friends, many of whom have moved away. It's our excuse to get together and hang out again, even if it's only once a year. We wander the Con together, attending panels - or often do so separately, attending different panels that meet our individual interests, and keep in touch via text and cell on where we're at and decide where we're meeting after our panels have ended. We walk across the tracks to the Gaslamp downtown together for lunch and drinks and catching up on old times. We get together in the evenings, either at a restaurant or bar or at someone's home (these days it's at Tony's since he's the only one still living in SD). We swap celebrity stories and photos and laugh and debate which new shows or movies look good or look horrible. It's a fantastic time, start to finish. And, yes, it makes me sad that this year, it's going on without me, me being without a job and therefore without any dough. I'm not alone. Many folks I know are in the same boat and just couldn't make it happen this year, so we're all sullenly sitting around our own hometowns, getting emailed photos from Tony of all the familiar sights - Tony, while being lucky enough to be there, is sad himself because he has no buddies to share it all with.

The standard Comic-Con trip these past few years has gone like this: I fly into town, either Tuesday night or Wednesday morning/afternoon. The Con runs officially Thursday through Sunday, but Wednesday, which used to be just the night for pre-registered people to pick up their badges, has become another day of Con since they started opening the floor early for "Preview Night". I get there and either get a rental car, if I'm traveling with someone, or just wait for a pick-up from Tony. We all get our badges. Some people hit the floor and check out Preview Night, but that's never a big thing for me, since I know I'll have four days to see it all, so I don't like to waste it early. There's usually dinner downtown and the initial catching up with the gang - those that have arrived already, that is, as some, due to work or whatever, can't fly in until Thursday or Friday (some of our regulars come from Seattle...Idaho...Iowa...D.C...North Carolina). Then it's off to Tony's house up the freeway, and to my room that Tony's family graciously offers me each year. There's usually two, sometimes three of us staying there. The next morning, it's time to rise, get the backpacks and satchels together, check and make sure you're not leaving your badge behind (you're not getting in without one), and then load up the car and head downtown. We've discovered that the best parking is to hit the lot across from the ballpark (go Padres!) and walk it to the Convention Center. That's the best moment - coming around that corner and seeing the Center - and the streets in front of it filled with countless thousands of Con-goers - and knowing the week is officially about to begin.

Writer/Director/Offender Kevin Smith up on the video screen at one of his panels

In the old days before the internet, the most important part of the night before the Con was getting out the Con schedule of events - the one you get handed when you pick up your badge - and everyone circling all the different panels they want to see, and finding out which ones two or more of us might be attending. But since the web, the schedule is published and updated regularly on the Con site, and plans can be made before even leaving for San Diego. Some of us don't even bother with the paper schedule, mostly, as we cut and past our panel lists and info into our PDAs. So the great Con experience begins as we either split off or group up for panels, or wander the floor to check out the booths together. I laugh, now, wondering how we used to manage to coordinate in the old days, before cell phones. Back then, we picked a meeting place (it became the DC Comics booth, as that big logo is easy to spot), and would set a time at the end of the day when everyone would group up and meet, and the arrangement that if anyone wanted to find each other, people would drop by the booth at the top of each hour and see if anyone else was there. Now? Coordination is a snap, and even among all those thousands, we're always able to know where our other pals are if we want to track them down.

The best part about this event for me, as a writer, is the inspiration. It's a chance to see booth after booth, table after table, filled with creators and the comics, books or films they make. You realize, there, that despite all your fears about making it and getting something produced, that there are plenty of people doing just that, and seeing what they're doing really sparks your own imagination. It's also a great networking place. There are a number of artists I've talked to, year after year, who know me by name (even without the badge). And the panels are the biggest inspiration. I've taken writing seminars from some of the biggest names in comics over the years (Chris Claremont, Peter David). There are panels made up of numerous writers that answer questions for upcoming writers, and their insight is priceless. I never miss a panel by comics guru Scott McCloud, whose panel on web comics years back inspired me to start the "Nice Guy" web site. And it's not just comics. It's screenwriters and filmmakers, too. One of my favorite moments back in my early years, back when you could just wander into a panel room without waiting in a line, was an hour-long panel with John Carpenter talking about his films and filmmaking in general. Another can't-miss panel each year is from my creative hero, Joss Whedon ("Buffy", "Angel", "Firefly", "Dollhouse"), and those are always more fun when he's in the middle of producing something, as he often brings stars along with him. One of most memorable Con moments ever was after "Firefly" had been canceled, and the "Serenity" big-screen continuation was announced, and he brought the entire cast with him right from the filming location.

An example of what it looks like inside one of the panel rooms. This is only the left side of the room.

I tend to miss a lot of the "big" stuff, on purpose. Most of these events are held in the massive "Hall H", where the big Hollywood things happen, and there are often people lined up outside it the whole night before. They're just too crowded and complicated for me (though I do go to some). One of the craziest ones, for example, I completely avoided - the "Twilight" panel with the writer, the film's director, and the whole cast. I watched video on the web of it later, and it was like a Beatles concert in there, with thousands of screaming, bawling teenage girls. I do make my way in there each year for the never-to-be-missed Kevin Smith panels, always the most entertaining (and foul-mouthed) panel each year. Often you'll find yourself going into a panel early there just to make sure you've got a seat for the panel that comes after, and I often enjoy the irony of me showing up in the middle of a Nicholas Cage talk, just waiting for him to shut up and get off stage so the panel I'm really interested in (usually with much lesser-known stars) can begin.

I'm more about the smaller stuff, my favorite things. When it was announced that there was a panel for HBO's brilliant but little-known sketch show, "Mr. Show", with stars Bob Odenkirk and David Cross hosting it, I was all over it, and loved the fact that I was sitting right behind "Lord of the Rings" star Elijah Wood, who was just there as a Mr. Show fan. As a fan of David Boreanez (of "Angel"), I decided to go to the panel introducing his new show, "Bones". With both him and co-star Emily Deschanel there with us, we got to watch the pilot episode months before the show's release, and the star answered questions about it afterward. I've been introduced to a lot of popular shows like this over the years.

A lot of my celebrity moments, and there have been many, are lost on a lot of people, but have meant a lot to me. Running into "Quantum Leap" star Scott Bakula in an elevator (one of many elevator moments I've had, including being kicked out of one so Mark Hamill's handlers could get him "safely" up to a panel). Talking with Go-Gos bass-player Jane Wiedlin while she ate her lunch. Getting web-sales advice from 70s Battlestar Galactica star Richard Hatch. Shaking hands with James Hong, best-known (to me) for playing David Lo-Pan in "Big Trouble in Little China". Standing next to my buddy A.T. in the pro registration line when he turned around too quickly and ran right into the chest of the "Incredible" Lou Ferrigno. Also with A.T., meeting the comic book chick from "The Real World: Miami". Those are just the actual meet-'em moments. There are countless ones where I didn't want to be annoying and talk to celebs (but should have), as I sat next to Danny Bonaduce, had Neil Patrick Harris almost bump into me, and watched some of my favorite modern film guys - Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen and "Superbad" Jonah Hill - walk right past me. I really should have talked to Mr. T. (I pity me, fool!), but opted for just videotaping him instead. I had the aforementioned Nathan Fillion sitting on the floor right next to me during a Whedon panel, and felt like a failure for not saying hello to one of my favorite actors, but luckily got to meet him later at the "Serenity" world premire in Hollywood (great guy).

Yeah, baby, I hung out with Ponch!

The celebs are literally everywhere. Some are just there for their event or autograph signing, some are just wandering the floor seeing the sights, some are outside smoking and talking with fans. You could wander the streets of L.A. for months and not see so many of them. It's a hell of a thing. And it's funny, to me, how it's become so normal for me. I was once sitting at a table up on the upper level, outside and under the sun, having a cigar and relaxing with a few of my buddies. Brent "Mr. Data" Spiner came walking by on the way to a panel. My buddy Russ said, "Hey, Spiner." Spiner smiled and said "Hey, how's it going?" We all casually nodded and said "Good", and he went on his way, and we went back to smoking. There's this weird connection that that just makes you feel like the Con is the celebrity, and all of us, famous and not famous, are just there to see it together.

One of my favorite years was the one year I got to BE one of the celebrities (kind of). This was the one year that Tim and I got ourselves a "Nice Guy" table on the Con floor, and spent our five days behind it, pushing our comic, making new fans, and even finding a fan or two we already had (?!). We didn't get to see much of the Con that year - we only allowed ourselves two panels each, and separately, because one of us always had to be behind the table - but it was a great experience in and of itself. After all those years attending, I finally got to see what the behind-the-scenes stuff looked like, watching - while setting up our table - as all the big companies moved forklifts around to set up their booths. That, and the camaraderie of getting to meet many other cool independent comic creators, made it an awesome experience. We'll have to do that again one of these years...if we ever get our second comic done.

But, alas, no table and no new celebrity stories for me this summer. No flirting with Xena's gorgeous stuntwoman (yes, I did). No sitting with thousands through another Battlestar panel with Edward James Olmos and listening to him go on about the coming pandemic (?). No buying tee shirts that I just HAD to have, only to realize, after getting home, that I'd never wear such a shirt in public (and yet would end up buying a similar one the next year). No grabbing up as many movie poster postcards as I can find (a hobby of mine). No meeting awesome, enthusiastic alternative comic creators, the generation still coming up in the biz. No heading up and down Artist's Alley and getting sketches done by some of my favorite pencilers throughout the years. No spending $12.oo for a sandwich, chips and a drink up on the mezzanine level because of being too lazy or pressed for time to walk to the Gaslamp for a reasonably-priced meal. No hilarious lunches with the guys at Dick's Last Resort. No sitting down for dinner at an Italian place and realizing Mr. Chekhov is at the next table. No Jean Claude Van Damme showing up the floor and causing a near fan-riot. No girl at the costume contest losing her top up on stage, allowing 95% of the crowd the near-religious experience of seeing real boobies for the first time. No Sunday night wind-down on Tony's back porch with stogies and Guinness, reflecting on another amazing Comic-Con experience, and another great few summer days spent with old friends.

Me and some of our regulars - Tony, A.T. and Russ - relaxing outside between panels

No, this summer I'm home, sweating in the Sacramento heat, waiting on Tony's latest emailed photos from the Convention Center. It's a sad thing, true, but it's really okay. I've been very fortunate to have been able to keep showing up, year after year, through flush times and tough ones. I figure I'm due for a year off. But next year marks the 20th anniversary of our trip together to the Con, so you can be sure, one way or the other, that I'll be there - wearing my badge (but remembering to take it off before going to lunch to avoid looking like a nerd even though the entire CITY is filled with nerds), filling my backpack with purchases, roaming the autograph area to meet celebrities from my youth (Erin Gray is still looking good), waiting in numerous lines (but bypassing many by playing the wheelchair card), and getting my quality time with my old gang.

Next summer, San Diego. I'll be there.

And hopefully, Xena's double will be, too.

Oh, come on...you'd have flirted with her, too...

ADDENDUM: Just as I finished writing this thing, I decided to check email before completing and uploading it. I found two mails from Tony...with two pieces of video he recorded. The first was one with those actual "Nice Guy" fans I mentioned - the amazing Suzi, who got me and Tony in to the "Serenity" premiere in 2005. Tony ran into her this afternoon at the Con and recorded a message from her to me, reminding me I need to be there next year, and "no excuses!". That was awesome. And the second was addressed to all of us buddies who couldn't be there with Tony this year. Tony had just gotten out of the panel for the upcoming ABC remake of "V", and he stopped the cast of the show on their way out and explained that his friends had backed out and hadn't made it this year, and recorded a message from three of them (including actress Morena Baccarin, best-known for "Firefly" and "Serenity", whom Tony and I had met at the "Serenity" after-party) telling us that we should have made it, and that we'd better make it next year. And, of course, reminding us to watch "V". I think Tony just nicely, and amazingly, made my whole point of this writing for me. This stuff only happens at Comic-Con, folks. Do like the aliens from "V" say to do...and come to Comic-Con!

P.S. A tweet from Tony: Overheard at Comic-Con: "I just saw Bon Jovi in the mens' room." Probably true.

Thank you for watching "The Running Man"!

2009-07-16T23:51:00.000-07:00

THE RUNNING MAN has been brought to you by: Breakaway Paramilitary Uniforms, Ortopure Procreation Pill, and Cadre Cola; it hits the spot! Promotional considerations paid for by: Kelton Flame Throwers, Wainwright Electrical Launchers, and Hammond & Gage Chainsaws. Damon Killian's wardrobe by Chez Antoinne: 19th-Century craftsmanship for the 21st-Century man. Cadre Trooper and studio-guard side arms provided by Colchester: the pistol of patriots. Remember: Tickets for the ICS studio tour are always available for Class-A citizens in good standing. If you'd like to be a contestant on THE RUNNING MAN, send a self-addressed stamped envelope to: ICS Talent Hunt, care of your local affiliate, and then go out and do something really despicable! I'm Phil Hilton! Good night, and take care!

Have you seen this bike?

2009-07-15T22:40:00.000-07:00

DOWNTOWN SACTO PEEPS ALERT!

My friend Cindy just had her bike--which is currently her ONLY means of transportation--stolen out of a friend's back yard.

This fact sucks.

So if you're roaming around downtown Sac in the next few days, keep an eye out for a crackhead (I'm just guessing) riding on a pretty pink bike. It's a custom-made Kosmopolitan Cruiser, and disappeared today (Wednesday, 7/15). If you see it, call the coppers and tell them you think it was stolen from famed Sacramento photographer/filmmaker Cynthia E. Jones. They'll take care of the rest (hopefully). And if this happens, let ME know right away. Email is fine, text is fine, call me if you got my number.

Let's bring this pink beauty back to its happy home!

The Mourning Glory

2009-07-12T02:44:00.001-07:00

Psst! I started a novel...

As some of you may have heard, some of my...let's call it "free time"...has gone into starting a novel. Didn't mean to do it. It just happened. And as of now, the first act of that novel (at least the first draft of it) has been completed. And I thought, before trudging onward, that it might be nice to get a few opinions on how it's going so far.

So I figured I'd post it up when it was done and just provide a link. But, this being me (marketing-minded guy I am), I went ahead and built a little web page around it, just to make the experience a little more fun.

The novel is called "The Mourning Glory", a title which will make sense by the end of Act I, I promise. This here is one of them science-fictiony novels you hear about, so if that's not your speed...well, you might give it a try anyway. I like to think I have my own little twist on sci-fi, so it may not be what you're expecting. There's only one way to find out. Hey, what a nice segue to posting up the link!:

www.themourningglory.net

Note four distinct possibilities for screwing up that address if you're typing it in: 1) Forgetting to add the "the" at the start, 2) forgetting to use the "U" in "mourning", 3) getting confused by those two g's right next to each other and forgetting one, and 4) trying to type .com instead of .net. Yeah, some other joker got the .com one before I could. Ah, well. Let's pretend a .net address is cooler, shall we? So it's a URL fraught with possibilities for misadventure, so maybe using the link above might be best. Or, if you ever forget it, you can always go to michaeloconnell.com, got to Exposition section, and you'll find a link there.

Once you get to the Mourning Glory home page, you can read the pretentious, wordy introduction I made for it that goes into the history of this story (what led me to writing it, and how its origins are nearly 20 years old) and a rant on my impatience with Earth-based spacey sci-fi stories. So I won't go into all the history here and repeat myself (you lucky dogs). You'll also find a dedication page, and then you can jump right into Act I itself!

I was going to translate the story into HTML, but thought better of it. I remembered that a lot of people don't like to sit and read at their computer screen, so I wanted to allow an easy print option. I was originally going to do HTML with a .PDF option, but after creating the .PDF file, I realized people who want to read at the computer can just read the damn .PDF onscreen just as well, if not easier, than the HTML. And it looks prettier, too. I've found on both my computers that Adobe opens it at 130%, which is a little overwhelming, so you might want to drop that to 100%. Or, if you're like me, you might want to go a step further and knock it to 75%, which makes it (to me) look a lot more like a paperback novel. That's the other thing I like about .PDF. You can re-size it all you like to fit your preferences.

After I finally formatted everything down from my Word doc into the .PDF, Act I came out at 57 pages. It's split into eight "parts" (I'm not really going with "chapters", per se, but these kind of act like chapters, and are numbered), so you can read a few pages at a time, if you like, and go back to it later without having to spend too much time looking for where you left off. Just remember you were about to start section "3".

I also added a "News" page and a "Contact" page. Both of these are strongly connected to the idea of people being able to contact me and let me know when I've screwed something up, and then I can let people know when the fix is done. And if you're a regular reader of this blog and are aware that the 2009 Great Typo Contest is currently underway, you know what THAT means...a 57-page GOLD MINE of opportunities for points!

Yes, I would LOVE for people (please, please?) to make note of any errors they find (typos, spelling, whatEVAH) as they're reading along and let me know about them. Once they (by "they", I mean "you", of course!) let me know, and I can make the change in the Word doc, re-save the .PDF, and post up the fixed copy. This is why the News page is cool, because you can check it and see if you've got the latest version. I'll be posting dated entries each time a new one goes up.

Please note that this IS science fiction, so there's some stuff typed in there that's meant to be spelled/written wrong to fit atmosphere of the setting, so no points for "there's no such word as 'vidscreen!'. You get the idea. Also, as always with the contest, the points go to the first person who spots the error and reports it, so if I were you, I'd start reading early!

I've meant to do something like this for a long time, ever since I started michaeloconnell.com. I've always meant to crank out some fiction for my Exposition page, but just haven't gotten around to it. So, this'll be the start. My plan here is to keep on writing until a whole novel is done (however long THAT takes...), and to keep putting up the different "acts" as I go. Along the way, your opinions can make a huge difference. Every heard that old "forest for the trees" phrase? Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to spot things that the guy in the middle of the woods misses completely (staring at the trees like a doofus as he is...). I'd like to know if anyone has what I refer to as one of those "wait a minute..." moments. These are those moments when you spot something in a plot that just doesn't make sense, or is contradicted by something else in the story. As the whole version that's going to be up on my web page is a first draft, this is the perfect time for me to find those and deal with them, and maybe even correct them before the second draft begins. But beyond just finding typographical and logical errors, I'm really curious to find out what you think of the story. I don't want you on board here just as an editor. I want you as a reader, and I want to take you on a journey that will hopefully be a great and exciting ride for you. Writing, for me, is always about customer service. I want to do everything I can to make sure you enjoy the product.

So, all that said, I do hope you're intrigued enough to jump in and give The Mourning Glory a try. Be prepared - it's not going to jump right out of the gate with epic space battles and blaster fire and flying fists. Oh, that's coming, don't worry. But one of the main themes in this tale is life being about the journey, not the destination, so there's a progression to it all. I'm going to ease you in, introduce the world, the story, the characters, the teases for what's to come. I hope you'll find those parts captivating on their own. But this is no novella - it's a big story, and it's going to take you a lot of different places before it's done. So enjoy the ride, as I hope to make it one well worth your time.

So strap in, kick back, and let the ride begin. Your journey awaits.

** WARNING ** There be spoilers in the comments of this entry! Proceed at yer own risk...and after you read Act I!

Kosovo: The Musical

2009-06-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

How does a satirical Beach Boys song parody, made by a Seattle DJ in 1999, get turned into music video by bored Norwegian soldiers stationed in Kosovo in 2002, only to somehow become an international incident in the summer of 2005, and then only make it to my notice in the summer of 2009?

I don't know. Video's funny, though.

Watch it here.

Then get the full story below.

NY Times, August 21, 2005
Video of D.J.'s Satirical Song Provokes Offense in Kosovo
By NICHOLAS WOOD

PRISTINA, Kosovo - Most of the satirical songs written at the radio station
KZOK in Seattle amuse listeners for a brief life, then fade from the air.
But one number from 1999 about the war in the Serbian province of Kosovo
has ignited a diplomatic dispute years later and halfway around the world.

The song, written by the D.J. Bob Rivers and set to the melody of the Beach
Boys hit "Kokomo," ridiculed what he considered the nonchalant way the
United States assumed the role of the world's policeman when it led an air
war over Kosovo, a place most Americans knew little about.

The trouble started, Mr. Rivers said, when a group of Norwegian soldiers on
peacekeeping duty in Kosovo came upon the song in 2002 and decided to make
a rock video of it.

The two-and-half-minute video shows four soldiers miming to the music -
dancing on watchtowers and armored trucks, wearing bulletproof vests over
their bare chests, performing routines in their military compound and even
splashing mineral water on one another.

Over time, the tape (which has a link on Mr. Rivers's Web site,
www.bobrivers.com) made its way to the Internet and caught the attention of
BK TV, the Serbian television station. When the station broadcast the
video, it incited an uproar, and not only because of the dancing and
lightly clad soldiers. What was most provocative were the song's lyrics.
Verses such as "Protecting human rights, airstrikes and firefights/We'll be
dropping our bombs, wherever Serbian bad guys hide," caused deep offense.

The video prompted criticism among Serb leaders of the NATO-led
peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, a province that officially remains part of
Serbia, but has been administered by the United Nations and patrolled by
NATO since the two-and-a-half-month bombing campaign in 1999.

A senior adviser to Serbia's prime minister, Vojislav Kostunica, said the
video suggested that the NATO mission, which was meant to be evenhanded
between the province's majority Albanian population and its minority Serb
community, was biased.

"Such things only help the Serbian side to prove that there is no security
in Kosovo, no respect for human rights and no multiethnicity," Agence
France-Presse quoted the adviser, Slobodan Samardzic, as saying.

"The president was very shocked to learn about this," said Vuk Jeremic, the
senior foreign policy adviser to President Boris Tadic of Serbia. Mr. Tadic
was especially upset because the soldiers came from Norway, a country with
a strong record for peace initiatives and conflict resolution, Mr. Jeremic
said in an interview.

The video showed that four years after the collapse of Slobodan Milosevic's
autocratic government in Serbia, the nation's image abroad is still
sullied. "This is what boys from Norway think about Serbs," he said.

Norway's ambassador to Serbia and Montenegro, Hans Ola Urstad, promptly
issued an apology calling the video "highly regrettable" and promised an
investigation. He expressed the hope that the video would not do "serious
harm to the longstanding and deep friendship between Serbia and Montenegro
and Norway."

The original intent of the song - to question American involvement in
Kosovo - had clearly been missed. "It was meant to be very lighthearted,
and was aimed at our own government," Mr. Rivers said in a telephone
interview, but instead it was taken as propaganda.

He said that for several years he had received e-mail messages from Serbs
complaining about the song.

Zoran Stanojevic, a journalist who writes a column about the Internet in
the Serbian news magazine Vreme, understood that the song was not the work
of Norwegian soldiers. If they were that good at satire they would be
"doing stand-up on the radio," not serving in the army, he said.

"If nobody tells you it is a satire, it can sound a bit harsh," he said in
a telephone interview. He blamed cultural differences for the
misinterpretation. "For example, the ironic use of a love ballad, they
didn't understand the idea." Most Serbs still do not know the song's
origin, he said.

The Norwegians' video is not the only case of cultural insensitivity by
NATO troops in Kosovo. In July, Express, a Kosovo Albanian newspaper,
republished an interview by an American soldier with his hometown
newspaper. In it the soldier, Sgt. Robbie Nelson, from the 635th Armor unit
of the Kansas National Guard, compared local farming methods to
turn-of-19th-century America. The article caused some amusement and some anger.

Sergeant Nelson said he had no idea that his article would be reprinted in
Kosovo. "I didn't have any intention of causing anybody offense," he said.
"I was just telling my local paper what's different about Kosovo."

A spokesman for the Norwegian Ministry of Defense said this month that
there would be no proceedings against the six soldiers responsible for the
video because they had all left the army.

Mr. Rivers said he believed the Norwegian soldiers were to blame for taking
his song out of context. But he was not sure if the video merited an
international dispute, or if the Norwegians should have apologized for what
was, after all, his song.

"I don't know enough about the world to know who should apologize to who,"
he said.

Up In Smoke

2009-06-29T02:33:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I'm on day three of "bye-bye stogies".

As some of you may know, I'm both a proud cigar smoker and unemployed. These two things do NOT go well together. It is very difficult to be both.

And I knew this once the unemployment thing happened, and knew a time was coming with the cigar thing was going to become unrealistic. It took a surprisingly long time. Having friends that would surprise me out of nowhere - in person or via FedEx - with cigar gifts was both unexpected and ridiculously awesome. Between that happening and money not being as huge of an issue at the start, I was able to mostly continue my cigar lifestyle, with occasional, short gaps. Sometimes these gaps would have no cigars in them, or would be filled, instead, with smaller, less expensive cigars (note that I didn't say "cheap cigars". Once you've switched to the good stuff there's no going back to the liquor store brands). Sometimes not. But I finally hit the wall a few days ago and ran out. Though while I was over at a friend's house just after that, he passed me a couple of great ones (my brand, and even larger than my usual size). So I spread those over the next two days, using each of them at my perfect smoking time of the day - that being around 4:00am, for reasons I'm about to get into. So Thursday night/Friday morning was the last one, and I said, "that's that", and went off to bed.

Haven't had one since, but let me just advise you, in case you didn't know - while they're not near as bad as cigarettes (as I know from experience), there is an addiction factor with cigars. And that means withdrawals. That, in and of itself, is (almost) enough to make one realize that something good for you probably doesn't need to whisper its name in your ear while you're trying to watch TV. I'm used to those withdrawal feelings after years of off-and-on cigar smoking, so I know from experience that it takes me around 48-72 hours to get past the crankiness - which, again, is nothing like the Marlboro crankiness. The tougher part is the lifestyle adjustment change, but I find that, often, change is good, and can lead to a series of other positive changes. Change, like fine tobacco products, can be addictive.

And my smoking lifestyle has become more complicated, anyway. Here's the thing - I'm a patio guy. I'll be out here when the weather's bad, and don't mind bundling up as long as it's not so cold that my laptop is freezing up. But what I wait for all year is that glorious summer season, when I can come out here, light up a smoke, and do my writing, my reading, or just my heavy (or light) thinking, surrounded by the toasty warm air that I dream off all winter long when I'm whining about the chill. If it's daytime and hot out, I'm okay with that. But, better yet, if it's late at night, and the temp is up in the high 60s or low 70s? THAT is my happy place.

Summertime does have its double-edged sword metaphor, though. Unfortunately, it seems I don't live in this complex all by myself.

Last year is when the upstairs guy problem started. I've lived here for over five years now. But until this guy moved in? I'd never given my smoking a second thought, as far as how it would affect anyone above me. I guess I'd just been lucky enough to have a neighbor up there who, like me, just didn't care to open his windows...ever. My luck changed with the new guy last summer. I didn't even realize there was a problem at first. But soon I started noticing the sound of windows shutting up there after I'd lit up. Soon after, those window closings started becoming window slammings. Okay, it was starting to sink in. My thought on the matter was that well, I felt bad about it, but there was nothing stopping him from closing his windows and using the A/C for the thirty to sixty minutes it took me to finish a cigar. So, problem solved? Not really. One day I started hearing a noise on the balcony above me, and couldn't quite figure out what it was. I quickly did. He, or his girlfriend (who I actually think was the one who was offended and all window-slammy), opened the sliding glass door up there, loudly dragged two rotating fans out onto the patio, pointed them outward, and turned both on to attempt to blow my rising smoke away.

Experts in the "subtle" business classify that as a "no, that's not really subtle at all" hint.

So it irked me for a couple of days, because I was clinging indignantly to my "I was here first" sense of entitlement. I griped to some friends, who all universally gave me the "screw him!" back-up on that. But really, come on - in what universe is the guy puffing cigar smoke all over the place, smoke that's going into other people's homes and invading their space, considered to be the victim? Yes, I felt I had a right to enjoy smoking on my patio. But I realized he had every right to be able to open his window without the clearly delicious fragrance of fine Dominican tobacco (what is WRONG with these people and their nasal retardation?) wafting in.

So I worked within the system, trying to be a good neighbor. Feeling like a stalker, I would first go outside - perhaps using getting my mail as an excuse - and take a look up at his window and see if it was open. If not, I felt okay to smoke up. If so, I was okay with that. I could put in my earbuds, turn on my iPod, and head to either end of my building, go around the corner, and enjoy some shade and some away-from-keyboard thinking over whatever I was writing at the time.

As an ironic and fun twist to this, check this out: so a while after this started, with me still feeling kind of resentful at that guy and his woman messing with my life choices, I was outside writing away. I don't think I was even smoking at the time. I heard this guy open his door and start coming down the stairs. Then he stopped, went back up, and came back down the stairs after going back into his apartment. I was doing my usual and avoiding eye contact when I saw him start coming toward my patio. I looked up, and he was standing there with, of all things, a couple of cigars in his hand. Friendly as you please, he told me that a friend of his had given him those some time ago, and he wasn't going to smoke them, so he thought I might enjoy them. And just like that, all my grrr-that-guy resentment went away. It's amazing what one unexpected act of kindness can do to defuse a situation. And I like to think that maybe that was his way of saying he'd noticed my not smoking when his windows were open, and appreciated it. Maybe.

Anyway, that was last summer. Cut to THIS summer's problems.

So after losing my job, I figured, well, at least I'd have some good patio/writing/smoking time. And that was working swell for a while. Then, in classic good-news-bad-news tradition, the weather started getting better. I should also mention that I noticed that my upstairs neighbor was suddenly home ALL THE TIME. I know this mainly because of his vintage Prelude that's parked right in sight of my patio. He would just never leave. For a while I thought he was some kind of work-from-home guy (I do know that he's a musician, so maybe he made a living at that somehow?), but soon realized he was probably unemployed like me. Which was too bad. For him AND for me.

See, as soon as the weather started improving, his windows started opening again. Which led me to my stalker thing again of always having to go outside and see if they were open or closed. And they were open a lot. So I started doing my thing again of going to my alternate spots elsewhere in the complex. But suddenly, that had its own problems. Now he wasn't the ONLY one opening his window. At the evening spot I prefer - at the front of my building, under some trees, with the complex driveway between me and the next building over - I picked up some new neighbors, too. I didn't even think about this until one night while I was out there, with a podcast playing in my earbuds, and I saw some guy over there come walking out his front door and stand there. I kind of caught him out of the corner of my eye, and didn't want to look right at him, but he seemed to be looking right at me - you know, that kind of thing where if a guy gets cut off in traffic, he feels the need to speed up and look at the person that cut him off, just so...well, so the other guy knows he's been looked at, I guess? Soon he went back inside, and I happened to pause my podcast, just in time to hear a window slamming. Oops. Okay, I'd have to watch out for his window as well.

Soon I found that the window on other the other side of the building from him was a problem, too. The miraculously mild summer weather we started out with this year seemed to be inspiring all kinds of folks to enjoy the breeze. I diverted over to my other alternative, which is the back of my building. This is a little grassy spot, also under a couple of trees, at the entrance to a couple of apartments. It's also right next to the low brick wall that people climb over to get to the parking lot of the strip-mall next door, either to get to their cars (some prefer to park there) or, more often, to walk to the liquor store for a beverage. I'm cool with using this spot during the day, but prefer not to at night. Why? Because it's a parking lot of a liquor store. Really, would you want to be sitting out there next to that in the middle of the night? It's a lot that's also a favorite stopping point for impressively hallucinatory homeless folks.

Now the windows of the apartments back there didn't seem to ever open. That was good. However, if ever I was out there when this one woman, and her son, came home? She would pause and give me what clearly a very dirty look. O...kay. Since there was no window problem, I didn't really see the issue. But a couple of those looks prompted me to maybe find another spot. One night, around 1:30am, I went all the way around to the other side of the complex, next to an iron gate that our garbage men use to exit with their truck each Monday morning. From there you can see the back of the strip mall, which, at that particular spot, is the back of the corner bar (yes, a liquor store AND a bar). That was about the only other place I could find with no open windows that night, so I made use of it, telling myself to keep an eye out for shenanigans on the other side of the gate (there's the occasional fight or...other alley stuff behind the bar). After a few minutes, though, I spotted a large guy in shorts and a tee shirt come ambling quickly from behind one of the apartment buildings, seeming to be heading for the nearby dumpster. I relaxed. No big deal. Probably just one of my neighbors, needing to throw out some forgotten trash. He disappeared behind the dumpster. Then I heard him in the bushes behind me and right near me - violently puking his guts out.

Okay. Gave up on THAT spot.

Recently, I was down to the brick wall spot again, and it was evening, maybe 10:00 or 10:30pm. I saw the evil-eye lady come home, and felt another evil-eye. She went into her place. I had some music playing in my ears, but caught a shadow about a minute or so later, and then saw her in my peripheral vision as she came back out. I paused the music and pulled out my earbud, turning to address her, as she was just standing there.

"Is there some reason you come out here to smoke?" she asked me, bluntly.

Uh...well, it was a question I could answer, though I was a little lost on the reason for it, so I did - I explained to her about open windows in the complex, and me not wanting to bother anyone with the smoke, and me not being able to use my patio until very late at night to smoke on. I asked her, honestly and quite politely, if that was a problem. I couldn't, at the time, see why. She went on to explain that all kind of people are hanging around out there in that corner, and there are drug dealers doing business there, and she didn't want any of that around her son. She also stated she guessed it was okay if I was just smoking cigars. That's when we got down to it - she had assumed I was smoking something ELSE, which is why I was back there (near all the drug dealers) doing it secretly. I HOPE that I properly convinced her that I'm NOT getting high behind our building like a high schooler, and that I'm her middle-aged neighbor that she's seen, plenty of times, cigar smoking on his patio as she's walked by. But I can't quite be sure. She's kind of hard to read, as she's one of those people that just kind of looks pissed off all the time.

But really, my main problem all comes down to this - if not for my upstairs neighbor and his open windows, I would be able to do as I had all winter, and come outside with my trusty laptop, whatever time of day I pleased, light up an Upmann and get creative. But things got even worse this summer with him. As the weather stayed kind, only reaching highs in the 80s, or sometimes lower, he would leave those windows open twenty-four hours a day. This kind of confirmed my belief in his unemployment. I figure he really can't afford to use his A/C. I sympathize (though, really, I rarely used mine when I did have plenty of extra dough laying around). But where does that leave Mr. Downstairs (me) when it comes to EVER being able to smoke and write at the same time again, at least before winter comes back around?

Aside from the occasional lucky breaks when I've seen him get in his car and head to the gym (the shorts, sleeveless tee shirt and the towel around his neck when he goes leads me to that conclusion), allowing me to grab a smoke in the later afternoon, my patio smoking time had gotten cut down to right around 4:00am. This is what I figured out to be about the time that if his windows happen to still be open, he's probably going to sleep through the smell while I'm out here. So I've used this as my final writing shift of the day (late-night lifestyle guy that I've become), but it's always, still, with a little bit of worry. Always at the back of my mind is the anticipation of hearing that window slam up there, or the fans being dragged back out, either of which are trumpets sounding out the announcement that I'm a BAD NEIGHBOR! And you know, I really don't WANT to be a bad neighbor. Hopefully, all this effort I go through (that no one really knows about...) shows that I want to be fair and come to an arrangement that works for everyone.

Well, problem solved. I finally hit the point, as I said, where I could no longer justify spending cigar money, even at the awesome online rate I would get. I have just now (almost exactly) hit the 72-hour mark, so the addiction blackboard is wiped clean again. The next step now becomes re-arranging my creative schedule and getting it used to writing and being on the patio again without a smoldering cigar. It can certainly be done. It's all just a matter of reconditioning. Considering that it's 5:20am and it's right about 70 degrees out here right now? I'd call that incentive enough.

However...

Cut to last night. I came out here to work on a writing project. I wasn't necessarily in the greatest mood, either. But I made myself come out anyway, reminding myself that the important thing is actually sitting in front of the computer with fingers on keys, even if the work's not really flowing. So out here I sat, with the weather quite nice. Yesterday, after all, was quite a scorcher, as anyone living in Sacramento can attest to. As I stared at my monitor, doing battle with a disagreeable paragraph, suddenly, I heard a loud noise behind me. It shocked me because it's one I hadn't heard in quite some time. For a year, in fact.

Last night, just at the time when I finally stop the cigars, the guy upstairs decides it's time to finally turn on his air conditioner.

I could have decked the son of a bitch. But I'm sure that was just the addiction me talking.

So the weekend I end up quiting, after a couple of months of fighting with the air needs of my whole complex, changing my hours, getting the stink-eye, being accused selling dime bags to high school kids out behind the building, AND getting vomited at...the weather finally changes. As of right now, the neighbor upstairs still has the A/C running (apparently he now just lets it run all night), and a quick check seems to indicate that there is not one open window anywhere else in the complex around me.

Irony SUCKS.

I just wanted to point that out.

WARNING: Vital survival information - please read

2009-06-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

In these times of concern about terrorism, pandemics, climate change, etc., it's easy to overlook more common and, potentially, more deadly risks to ourselves and our communities.

Please click on the attached image and familiarize yourself with these important tips. Experts suggest printing this guide and posting it on your refrigerator so that your children can learn from it as well. As much as we don't like to think of such things, we may not find ourselves home when our kids come into contact with such dangers, and a prepared child is a healthy child.

Please share this information with others, and let's all be sure to look out not only for ourselves, but for others. We're all in this together. Thank you.

Please note: I have checked this through Snopes.com, and found this guide has been verified as both genuine and accurate. Also seen on ABC's "Good Morning America". And on CNN. And a friend of a cousin of a co-worker of mine claims to have had to make use of this, so I assume it must be completely true.

If you forward this to at least ten people, God will bless you, and your true love will find you within three days. If you read this and do not, all the curses of Egypt will descend upon you, and your pets will combust instantly before your eyes. God bless!

Patio Update: More Sex, More Cops, and a Dog.

2009-06-16T17:01:00.001-07:00

Been a while since an update, huh? I figured another visit by the Sacramento Sheriff's Department justified a CGWI update.

When we last left off with the neighbor drama, the cops had shown up, at her request, and requested the asshat boyfriend leave. I'd closed that update out wondering how many days it would be before the Asshat was back.

Well, that's a little open to conjecture. There was a guy, about three days later. I could hear that through the open window. Whether it was the same guy, I couldn't be sure, but I suspected this was someone new. I got this from the argument I was forced to hear. I couldn't hear all of it (I was, frankly, trying hard to ignore it and get back to writing), but the accusatory, angry words I heard from him were, "After all I've done for you, and then I try to take our relationship to the next level, and you--" I lost it after that. Just heard her crying and yelling stuff back. So from that, I gathered that this was a new guy, a male friend who'd been waiting for his opportunity to make his move, and now had a chance since Asshat was out of the picture. Three days is a fair expectation for a woman to get over a relationship, don't you think? And now it appeared he'd been up there trying to make that move, and she wasn't having it, and he was pissed off about it, certain that whatever it was he'd done for her was an investment that was going to get him some if he waited long enough. Nice. She can really pick 'em.

I think it was a couple nights after that I caught a reflection in my laptop screen while it was powering up - her and a guy walking toward her building. Just a quick flash, but it did make me wonder if this was the Asshat or someone new (maybe the man friend who'd been feeling ripped off by the lack of quid pro bone). Frankly, it's really hard to tell these guys apart. They're all the same. Fairly short, but with plenty of time spent in the gym to compensate. Ball cap tilted sideways. Pants hanging down over their boxers. I couldn't be sure. But it was about a half hour later when the sex chorus began again. At least the windows were closed this time. But that wasn't enough to drown out either her or the overly loud spanking sounds and accompanying screams.

The next night, around 3:00 am, I carefully opened my patio door and listened. Silence. No porn chorus. I sighed in relief. I went back inside, finished up something I was working on real quick, punched a cigar, grabbed my laptop, and came back out. As I rolled out through the door, I heard the chorus sounding, closed my eyes, and shook my head. Part of me wasn't going to be bullied out of my nightly ritual and intended to stay, but that idea lasted about a minute. Every window and the glass door seemed to be open up there, and it didn't just sound like they were right in the next room, but right on the patio with me. I couldn't take it. I went back inside, checked the clock, and decided to try again in maybe thirty minutes. Once more, I cautiously listened first after cracking the door. The concert seemed to be over, and it didn't sound like there was an encore coming. Had it still been going on, I wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or to give the guy a thumbs-up of congratulations next time I saw him. The complex quiet again, I cleared my head and got down to writing.

Since then, things have been workable. No free x-rated radio, no fights, nothing. I've counted myself fortunate. All I've heard, mostly during the day, has been the incessant barking of her little dog, who apparently is locked in there by himself all day. It occurred to me that except for a couple of times after I first saw her in the complex, I haven't ever seen her walk him, day or night. I know enough dog people to know how much that would piss them off, yappy small dog or no. A dog needs fresh air, needs some exercise, and also needs to NOT crap and whiz all over the apartment. This got me wondering, again - aren't pets NOT allowed in my complex? But I figured I must have been remembering wrong, because surely something would have been said to her by now, especially knowing MY apartment manager.

Today, after doing some running around, I came home and noticed my upstairs neighbor's car was gone. This is a rare treat, he-of-the-open-windows actually leaving his home (he's normally there 24/7, either unemployed like me, or stuffing envelopes and making the fabled $3000 - $5000 per month from home that the telephone pole flyers promise), and giving me a chance to have a smoke out here in the middle of the day. I did my usual courtesy rounds, though, after I got my mail, just to see if any other windows around my place were open. The only one I saw was the second story one of CGWI, and imagine my lack of concern about THAT.

So I got out here, lit up, and decided to do some reading before I started writing. After a few minutes of this, I heard CGWI coming out on her balcony, clearly talking on the phone. I say clearly because she only seems to have one volume - whether while chatting or moaning - and that is playing to the back row of the theater. So, like it or not, I was once again privy to her conversation, something that blocked out any chance of me focusing on my reading. The conversation, I quickly learned, concerned the dog. What do you know - my manager HAD brought it up. She was talking to a friend about how the landlady wouldn't listen to her because she knew that her father was paying the rent, and that she didn't think the landlady could do anything about it, blah blah blah. If I'd had her cell number, I might have texted her at that point and let her know that the landlady (the office is right by my apartment) could likely hear every word she was saying, just like me. But, sometimes these kids gotta learn.

She went back inside after a couple of minutes, but not before I heard The Guy (Asshat status unknown) talking to her from inside. I was able to read again. I heard a car pull up into the complex, and decided to check and see if it was Upstairs Guy returning home from his all-too-brief-journey (maybe he'd gone out to pick up some more envelopes). No, not him. It was a Sheriff's car. Two officers got out and came walking by me, calmly and slowly, and one said hi to me. They kept going, and GUESS where they ended up?

I heard CGWI talking to them at the top of the stairs, but couldn't make out much. I did hear her use the words "I'll be moving in a couple of weeks anyway" and my heart did a pleasant little somersault. Soon one officer came strolling back and got in the car. After a couple of minutes, the other officer did, too. Okay, I was really confused. Clearly, if it WAS Asshat up there, there had been no fighting of any kind, so there was no reason for her, or anyone else, to call the police. Was my landlady trying to have her forcibly evicted for having a dog? I didn't think such a thing was legally possible, but I wouldn't put it past her to try. This is the same landlady who has cars of tenant guests towed at 1:00 in the morning on a Friday night for being in the (closed) office parking row.

I heard the office door open as the cops started their car, and out came said landlady, walking toward them. "What's going on?" I heard her say, because her volume level, too, is suited for singing the national anthem in a powerless stadium (thankfully, I only know this to be true for her "chat" volume...). She clearly hadn't called them. Traffic was going by on the street, being rush hour, and the police cruiser engine was going, so I could only get little bits. But I heard:

COP: "Just a father and daughter blah blah blah--"

LANDLADY: "Not even supposed to have a dog in there."

COP: "Blah blah leash--"

LANDLADY: "Blah blah blah even with a leash--"

COP: "Blah blah moving in a couple of weeks blah blah--"

That's about all I got. Now I'm still confused. The police being called was some kind of father/daughter thing? Did her father call the police on her? For the DOG? Or did CGWI herself call the police, in some kind of dingbat expectation that they would listen to her story and go tell the landlady the dog was allowed to stay? I do not know. But the police left, the landlady went back to the office, and I saw the girl and her young knight come down the stairs (without the dog, who surely sat at the door wondering, "Is anyone going to #$@& walk me EVER?!") and head toward the back of the complex, where he parks his white Camaro (which I know because I've been out on that side smoking a couple of times when they've parked and climbed over the low brick wall between the mini-mall and our complex).

So today's mystery is still a mystery, but one with a dandy silver lining. Loud neighbors gone in a couple of weeks! Woo hoo! The complex will once again be peaceful and quiet. All that will be left to make the tenants' lives here perfect is to find some way to rid of that cigar guy...

Footprints II

2009-06-09T18:58:00.000-07:00

Okay, can you see two sets of footprints NOW?

UPDATE - India Cloud found and back home

2009-06-05T17:51:00.000-07:00

You might have seen the comment on the initial post on this blog stating that India was back home with her family. I wanted to confirm it through a couple of other sources before I updated here, and I did so. It is confirmed that she's back home. She was found in the Haight area in San Francisco.

I don't have any other details, and don't need 'em. Now that she's back, that's her business and the family's business. The important thing is that she's safe, and she's home.

Thanks for your eyes and prayers, everybody. Happy ending.

India Update - Spotted in San Francisco

2009-06-05T06:36:00.000-07:00

Got this update, posting it here:

"India Cloud was recently seen on Haight Street, near Amoeba Records in San Francisco. Her hair has been bleached so she may appear slightly different from her photo. She has moved from this location, but may not have gone far. She was reported alone and seeming confused.

India Cloud has been missing from her home since May 29th. She is 16 years old. Her family is desperately looking for her and is concerned for her safety. Please help them find her."

Anyone in the Bay Area, please take note, and see the previous note for contact info. Thanks.

ALERT: Nor Cal people - MISSING GIRL

2009-06-02T22:50:00.000-07:00

This is one of those things you come across, a friend of a friend of a friend situation. But it's here, it's local, it's real, it's not some internet email forward thing that's been floating around for ten years. A 16-year-old girl is missing, in our area, and her family needs our help.

The girl's name is India Cloud (the family's last name is Cloud). I'm just going to go ahead and cut and paste the information note from her father, Chris, that's been going around to people:

MY DAUGHTER INDIA IS MISSING
Share Today at 2:21am

India Cloud was last seen on Friday May 29th, at 1:30 pm, walking on Sir Francis Drake blvd. in Fairfax, heading towards San Anselmo. She was carrying a wheeled suitcase and was possibly hitchhiking. India is 16 years old. Her Height is 5'7", she weighs approximately 120 lbs, her eyes and hair are brown. Her clothing is unknown.

Possible areas she might be are: Marin County, San Anselmo, San Rafael, or heading towards Sacramento. Please contact Chris at 916 267-9883 or email at cfcloud23@gmail.com

I really don't know much more than that myself, except that things are really getting mobilized, fliers are going up, and a lot of people are on the lookout for India. All I ask, all my Northern Cal people, is that we do the same. In case like this, whether it's a runaway situation or not really doesn't matter. Finding her and getting her back to her parents does.

Please, if you hear anything, contact Chris Cloud using the information above. Or, hell, contact me and I'll do it. Keeps your eyes sharp and your prayers strong for the sake of the Cloud family, will you? Thank you all.

Live Patio Update - Police on Scene

2009-05-26T04:27:00.000-07:00

Interesting.

It's 4:30 AM. I came out on the patio about half an hour ago to wrap up the night and unwind (and smoke my last cigar), to be greeted by the usual sound of College Girl With Issues and her beau yelling at each other. Windows open. I'd get bits and pieces, though I was trying to ignore it. She yelled at him to do something or other about the barking dog, he, in turn, yelled a couple of blunt expletives at her. I heard something in there with her yelling about having cream cheese in her hair. Oh, her name is Kayla, I heard, by the way. I heard him say that when he yelled something cocky and patronizing at her. Things eventually progressed to the usual threats from her about doing something with the authorities, and him, quite confidently (and dumbly) telling her that it would all get blamed on her. Like I said...the usual.

And then the cops showed up.

I didn't even notice. I heard the car pull up, but that's normal this time of the morning - I think it's a paper delivery kid who normally gets dropped off here to start his rounds. So a cop walked right by me without me even knowing. It wasn't until I heard her door opening and her coming down the stairs and addressing someone that I knew something else was up. I didn't look, just listened. Though I did lean over and look at the parking spots in front of the office, and noticed the Sheriff's car.

I heard bits of the conversation. Obviously she'd called the cops on him. But it appeared it was just to have him removed. She sounded quite calm and apologetic about it. As they were talking, another car pulled up. As Sheriff #2 got out, my neighbor Dennis (next door) came out, as usual (he works really early) at this time. He walked by the officer, said hello, and said that he lives here, and wanted to know if there was anything he should worry about. "Nope!" the officer said, pleasant as you please. Okay, then.

They finally went upstairs, and I guess a conversation took place. I heard jackass boyfriend talking to them (also calm and polite). The gist I got was that since he doesn't have a car, he's called a friend to come pick up him up, and he's to take his things and leave. Interestingly, the police didn't hang around to make sure that happened. THAT sounds safe.

So they're gone now. I heard him place the cell call to his friend while the cops were still here, and the cops telling her that if for some reason he doesn't comply and leave to call them. Hmm.

And now I'm hearing them arguing up there again. I'm no cop, but this smells like a recipe for disaster. Man, that girl can SWEAR.

She's accusing him of things. He's using sarcastic, mocking, belittling tones, further explaining, I'm sure (an air conditioning unit running is keeping me from hearing for sure), that this is all her fault. So, she dipped her OWN hair in the cream cheese? Is that some kind of new age conditioning technique?

My other upstairs neighbor, from above Dennis, just headed for his car, too. He works early as well.

Anyone want to place a bet on how long it is before jackass boy is back here - assuming he actually leaves? I really hate to sound jaded, but I've seen this too many times before. Young women and their bad boys. Can't live with them, can't live without them. I wonder if he's going to take the barking puppy with him? No, that would give him some kind of responsibility to look after. I don't sense that desire in him. All I sense is the likelihood of more loud open-window sex sometime between now and Friday.

So much for a quiet night of writing. Oh, well. A little Jerry Springer drama instead.

I really do need to be getting to bed. I have somewhere to be in the early afternoon. I even shaved tonight, after not bothering to do so for a few days. I just want to see if he peacefully leaves. I just realized I left my cell phone inside, so any 911 call from me would be a little slow, if things turn nasty. Well, I'll listen anyway, make sure it all goes okay.

Someone walked by. I think it was the newspaper kid.

It's currently 57 degrees outside, by the way. After a few cooler days, we're going to be back to 95 or so for a high the next few days. Bad time to run out of cigars. The hot weather means that my upstairs neighbor leaves his windows closed until the evening, so that gives me a chance to smoke and write without offending him with my stink. Just means I have to put up with the heat, but that's rarely a problem for me. I dig heat.

I got into an interesting debate on a message board tonight. Some guy posted up a thread, some poor 23-year old sap whose girlfriend not only just left him but started sleeping with a friend of his less than a month later. As some posters were suggesting that an ex was open game, I posted up my opinions on the Guy Code, and how it is never, ever acceptable to date a friend's ex. No special circumstances (but I'm really attracted to her!), no gray area. You just don't. It's a simple Golden Rule concept - would you like it if your friend did that with YOUR ex a month after the split? One of the responses I got was a guy actually arguing, in all seriousness, that the one being a bad friend is the one who won't let his buddy hook up with his ex and gives him grief over it. The internet brain-set vexes me. You never really know, though, if people are serious with their opinions or just being contrary to feel potent.

Well, it's getting late (or early, depending on your world view) and I've yet to hear any friend with a car show up. Then again, I have noticed these two crazy kids tend to park in the lot of the strip-mall next to the complex and climb over the short brick wall to get home. Maybe he had his friend meet him out there and he's already gone. Or maybe it's going to be a long wait. Or maybe they'll make up before the sun rises. I don't know. Either way, I don't think I feel like losing anymore sleep worrying over a girl who's clearly addicted to this kind of drama, as she keeps coming back for more. I know...jaded, right? Shame.

So I'm off to bed. Here comes Tuesday.

Kids and Pools

2009-05-25T19:52:00.001-07:00

My buddy A.T. called me today. Today being Memorial Day, he was looking to get his two kids, Parker and Harry, into some water, and he found out their local water park closed down. He wanted to know if they could drop by and use my pool at my complex. I said sure. That's what Memorial Day is all about when you're a kid - a pool!

He and I visited by the pool while his kids did their thing, and he was stressed out most of the time because of the volume of his children, not wanting them to bother all the neighbors. I didn't want to interfere with his fathering lessons, but, for his own peace of mind, I quietly let him know that he really had nothing to worry about - my pool ALWAYS sounds like that when kids are out there. His kids were nowhere near the ruckus I normally hear coming through my window.

There is a truism about kids and pools - something about water makes kids LOUD. They have to scream everything. And inevitably, their civic-minded parents try in desperate vain to curb this law of nature, but it's a fool's errand. They're going to scream. They're going to have drama. They're going to be having the time of their lives one moment, and then bawling and shouting accusations at each other the next, ratting out their siblings and friends to the grown-ups for such crimes as pushing, splashing, hogging the ball or pool toy or air mattress, whatever. As I'm sitting here typing this, with A.T.'s kids having been gone for over an hour, I'm hearing the latest shift of young'ns to my right, screaming bloody murder, getting threatened with the worst punishment imaginable (having to get out), and using glass-shattering, piercing yells to make every point or simply call out for someone to watch whatever amazing feat they're going to attempt (jumping off the side, holding their breath for a really long time, etc).

The swimming pool is the natural habitat of the young. The wild, for them, if you will. In their homes and schools, they're domesticated, forced to follow society's stringent rules. In a pool, they are primordial. They are in their element. And while parents are commendable for trying to make them into better citizens through the process, they'd probably do their own blood pressure good just by sitting back and surrendering. There is a pool - and your monkey children are loose, and the party is ON.

I have loads of childhood memories of pools. I never had one of my own until my last year of high school, but your parents always manage to hunt down some kind of aquatic habitat for you when the summer months come - a more affluent family friend's home, a public pool, a water park that has all the frenzied chaotic feel of Chuck E. Cheese with water wings. Large bodies of water filled with chlorine and inflatable, floating distractions are just plain heaven for kids. They're places where kids discover exciting new stunts to perform. I remember my pride in standing on my head in shallow water. Or at hooking my legs over the edge and hanging upside down underwater while holding my nose. I remember having a lot of difficulty with pool the summer that I saw "Jaws" for the first time, constantly feeling the need to spin around and check behind me, sure I'd see a giant rubber shark coming to devour me.

Important lessons are learned in the pool. You develop a lot of social skills there, as you rarely have the pool to yourself, and have to deal with the foreign ways of other children. Many an argument broke out over the rules of such pool games as "Marco Polo". You learn to work with those who have a different worldview than the one you're being raised with. You also learn confidence. You always remember that first time you swam in the deep end, away from the safe and comforting feel of slick concrete beneath your toes. Your first dive, perhaps the most accurate metaphor for moving forward in life and facing new and unknown fears. Opening my eyes underwater, not using goggles, was a big problem for me. I was sure it was going to hurt me eyes a lot with all the chlorine. I resisted it for a long time. But I clearly recall the day when my father stood at the edge of the pool and told me to go underwater and do it. I whined and resisted, and he suddenly used that father voice and ordered me, sharply, to just do it. It had so much force behind it that I couldn't even imagine going under and faking it. I knew that voice too well. I dropped, opened my eyes, and found that it was, after all, something I could do. It took a parent making me push myself to make that important step.

Oh, and the drama of getting kids forced to get OUT of the pool. I just heard a whole slew of that (the neighbor kids have now gone in, and it's quiet out here again as the sun sets). The whining. The bargaining. The feeling of being so horribly wronged, forced by adults who don't understand to leave the cool, fun comfort of the pool and return to the indoor world of brushing teeth and finishing spinach. I feel, now, for my poor mother, as I can still see her standing there at the ladder of a public pool, tired and low on patience, trying to get me out, with me offering a compromise of "just going under one more time"...which then got amended to one MORE time... Poor Mom. Is this a birth thing? Are our bodies remembering the liquid, carefree peace of the womb, and our parents forcing us out of it into a cold, unpredictable world with all its clinging gravity and hard surfaces? The ease of floating carelessly is gone. Out in the world, all is heavy, all is work. And yet, if we don't leave it behind, we miss out on all that life has waiting for us out there. Plus, our skin gets all pruny.

My apartment is directly across from the pool, so either through the sliding glass of my bedroom, or from the open air of my patio, I hear all the screaming, the splashing, the anarchy. And you know what? It never bothers me a bit. There's something uplifting about hearing kids just being kids, being free and being themselves. Perhaps it's just a reminder of what those simple, less complicated days were like. Whatever it is, I welcome the din.

Marco Polo for all, I say.

Boldly going...again.

2009-05-13T17:32:00.000-07:00

Yes, I went last Thursday. And yes, I'm going again.

While I'm not ready for my full review yet (I want to have a second viewing before I do that), the fact that I AM going again should tell you how I felt about it. All manner of awesome.

I snuck out with my pal James opening night, before I left town for the weekend. I got back into town and am still getting reports in of who did and did not make it. But every single one of them who did make it expressed a need to see it again as soon as possible.

There are a couple who didn't make it, so after talking with them, we've schedule a viewing this Saturday night at 7:00 PM at the Century theater on Ethan (the usual haunt). So if anyone's yet to make the plunge, or just wants another chance to see Uhura in her underwear, the invitation's open. Join us! I would again advise Fandango, but there's less chance, obviously, of a sellout on the second weekend. So either way. Hope to see you there, and stay tuned for my big review!

I'm boldly going...but unfortunately, probably not with you...

2009-05-05T21:14:00.000-07:00

The first (and arguably most anticipated) of the summer films hits theaters this weekend, Sac-Town Summer Movie Gang! And that is the J.J. Abrams monster re-ignition of the once-failing Star Trek franchise.

It would have been nice of me to be in town this weekend, then, huh?

Big apologies, gang. It's the opening volley of the season, I was planning to get a big group thing organized, and then I realized I had my weekends wrong, thinking Mother's Day was the FOLLOWING weekend. It's easy to get dates mixed up when you sit on your ass at home all day and don't pay much mind to the calendar...

My folks will be coming into town Friday morning to take care of some of their big-city business, and then I'll be following them back to Lakeport (about two, two-and-a-half hours) to spend the weekend at their place up in the woods - my Mother's Day gift to Mom (no, I'm not just cheap...it was her request!). I won't be coming back until Monday sometime. So the weekend movie action is, sadly, out for me.

That being said...just as I was getting ready to start putting this blogapology together, I remembered that the movie actually opens on Thursday. Thursday nights, of course, are not a serviceable gang movie night, since people have these things called jobs (I'm going to look up the definition of that later, as the word is a mystery to me), and some have these other strange things called kids...and those often require equally bizarre things called babysitters (that's just a disturbing word, isn't it? Who are these people, and why do they sit on babies?). Seeing as how this is all last-minute and on a week night, I don't imagine that would work for many, if any, of you.

However, I, myself, am going to do it. Even if it's got to be solo. I don't want to sit up in the woods all weekend thinking about it, after all this time waiting, while spoilers and reviews are stacking up and filling the web, my voice mail and my email. And I'm not expecting anyone to wait around an extra week for me, since the luster of the opening weekend excitement will be over, and THAT's no way to start the movie season.

So I jumped on Fandango and got myself a ticket. I'm going to the 7:30 PM show on Thursday (May 7) at the Century 16 theater on Greenback. You know, the one right by I-80? I repeat...the Greenback one, NOT the usual Century theater on Ethan that we normally go to. This is mainly because this one's right by my place, and if I end up the only one going, I don't see the need to give myself a freeway drive. I just went ahead and jumped on that ticket because I suspect the Thursday night shows will sell out pretty fast. The 7:30 show there is a DLP (digital projection) showing, so while that won't be an IMAX viewing, it'll still be nicer.

So if anyone feels they can sneak out on a school night without getting busted by their totally square parents and join me, that'd be great. That's where I'll be (are you taking notes, TMZ? I know your cameras will, once more, be all over me as soon as I park...). I would advise doing like I did and going to Fandango.com and getting your ticket secured that way. And then just letting me know that you're coming, so I can keep an eye out for you. You can either email me or just post up in the comments right on this blog.

Sorry, again, that this is last-minute, and that I won't be able to go with you all. And by you all, I mean the regular gang, who can, of course, still coordinate and get together. I'll get an email out to the regulars with notes on how things were looking best for some folks, day- and time-wise. Sorry that, unless you get on my schedule, I won't be experiencing what, so far, is still a 100% film on the Tomatometer after 30 reviews (woo hoo!) for the first time. It sounds like one hell of a ride. But if you decide to skip this weekend and see it next week, I have this sneaking feeling that I won't mind seeing it again at all. So let me know!

Love long. Prosper. All that.

Postcards from the Patio

2009-04-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update from my patio at about 6:00 in the evening.

W.F.K. is making his rounds. He's passed by twice, sporting a hard to miss white shirt with light, bright blue stripes (fashion note for whatever parents (assuming there is one, as I still have seen no evidence) buys his clothes - stripes are not thinning on the less-than-svelte), and this last round he's appeared with a stick (I'm trying to figure out if he picks up a stick randomly or if he has it timed out to a certain rotation around the complex) that he's lazily swinging at plants as he passes.

College Girl With Issues is home, as is, clearly, her boyfriend. I know this because they have the windows all wide open and are partaking in very loud, moany carnal knowledge for all to hear. Which, I assume, all are, as it's six in the evening and other neighbors are getting home, walking by my patio with their just-retrieved mail from their boxes on their way to their apartments. Haven't noticed if anyone's actually looked up at CGWI's window yet. Oh, and along with overly-dramatic love sounds is the occasional and seemingly perturbed barking of the puppy that she has up there - even though pets aren't allowed in the complex. She lives on the edge, that girl. It's moments like this that I wish she'd come down and complain about my cigar smoke creeping into her open window. I wouldn't say anything back to her, wouldn't lodge my own counter-complaints about the gunfire and explosions from the movie they were watching, blaring out their open window last night at 3:00am while I was out here trying to write (who leaves their windows open when it's 43 degrees outside? In California, at least), or the fighting spells that I've come to refer to as White Trash Theater, or the high-volume cell phone calls she makes walking around the complex in the darkest hours of the night. No, I wish she would do so so I could do just like the kid who played the younger Forrest Gump in the movie, in the scene where the school principal is leaving the Gump house after getting his "bribe" from Forrest's mama, still pulling up his suspenders as he's stepping out. I'd just like to let her finish saying her piece, then turn my head toward her, stare blankly at her, and start precisely miming her own sex sounds at her.

"Uh! Uh! Uh! Uh!"

I think that'd be funnier.

Ah, they seemed to have now finished with the only glue that holds their sad, co-dependent relationship together, so I shall return to my work. That is, unless Upstairs Opens His Windows Guy decides 63 degrees warrants sliding open his patio door and having issues with my rising stogie smoke again. Wouldn't want him having to complain to No Social Skills Drunk Landlady on me.

SacTown Summer Movie Nights 2009!

2009-04-27T18:53:00.001-07:00

It's the moooost...won-der-ful tiiiiime...of the yeeeeeaaarr...

At least for us SacTown movie fans! Yes, our season is back! The summer movies start dropping this weekend, and we've got a whole summer of Hollywood block(or crap)busters and indie gems ahead of us. So it's time to lock and load and get the band back together, 'cause it is ON.

For those of you new to the experience, I started this event last year, during what some were calling the biggest summer movie season ever. I did a list of all the big summer movies to come, and then used this blog to announce gang movie nights - the when and where info on whatever film we'd be gathering for on any particular weekend. And it was a smashing success! Obviously, with so many movies to see, and with people having tight schedules and limited entertainment funds, not everyone made every single film, but that was the nice part of this. You could pick and choose which ones you felt like seeing (and which ones you felt warranted theater viewing and wouldn't be best left for DVD later), and be able to know you'd at least have a couple other people to go see them with. We had great time, not just catching the flicks, but having an opportunity to get together and hang out, always a rare thing with everyone's hectic lives.

So it begins anew, and here's how it goes. I'm going to list a bunch of the upcoming season's flicks, with their release dates. Note that some may have the same date, of course, but we're not necessarily going to see each film on its opening night, either. As this is my blog, I'll naturally be listing a lot of the films that I'm interested in, so since I don't have kids, chances are you won't see any of the big animated or otherwise kid-centered ones here (for that, you must arrange your own playdates). After that, keep watching for announcements on this blog (assuming you're in the Sacramento area) for which shows an event is being put together for. You'll see the theater and time. And you can then, if you please, choose to join us. And note: I will continue to suggest people make use of Fandango to buy their tickets in advance. There's nothing more depressing than showing up to get a ticket and finding out you can't get inside to join your pals. Plan ahead!

So let's see what the summer of 2009 has to offer us! Links on the titles will take you to trailers for each film.

05/01/09 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

Hey, what to do you know? Another super-hero movie! After the performance of last summer's "Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" films, Hollywood is going to keep cranking these out for a while. Hugh Jackman reprises his role as Wolverine from the "X-Men" films in the first (and maybe last, depending on how it performs) spin-off from that franchise. This one's already got controversy surrounding it, as a work print of the film got swiped and made its way onto the internet a month before the premiere - a BIG deal that's got the FBI involved and everything. Let's see if Jackman can bring the claw-popping magic back, with the help of co-stars Liev Schreiber and Ryan Reynolds. Hot mutant big-budget action, baby!

05/08/09 - Star Trek

This is THE big one of the summer. With a trailer that's blown people away for months, this J.J. Abrams-directed prequel/reboot/re-imagining has fans and critics psyched. Looking in on the first adventure of the young original Trek crew, the film has relative unknown Chris Pine playing Kirk, but it's the rest of the cast playing the familiar sci-fi icons that has most of us drooling - people like John Cho ("Harold and Kumar"), Simon Pegg ("Shaun of the Dead"), Zachary Quinto ("Heroes"), Karl Urban ("Lord of the Rings"), and some big-name stars in other roles (Winona Ryder, Ben Cross, Bruce Greenwood and Eric Bana). It looks like a sure-win, with mind-blowing effects, riveting action and plenty of laughs. Old-school Trek-heads may gripe about this film messing with the sacred franchise, but you can bet that they'll be right there with us to see if it pulls off its promise. NOTE: If you're as anti-spoiler about this movie as I am, I'd just skip viewing the trailer and save some surprises for the film.

05/15/09 - Angels & Demons

This is an interesting concept - a sequel to the big-box-office "The Da Vinci Code", the questionably-reviewed film adaptation of one of the best-selling novels of all time, but one that's based on a book that was actually a prequel to Da Vinci. Ah, that wacky Hollywood. Tom Hanks and Ron Howard return to give the paranoid theological world of Dan Brown another try, so we'll see if they have better luck this time around.

05/15/09 - The Brothers Bloom

Already a critical darling, this off-beat action-comedy about two brother con men pulling one last big score stars Adrien Brody, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel Weisz, Rinko Kikuchi and Robbie Coltrane. The world-hopping swindling fantasy looks like one of the most original films to come out in some time and might be a nice break from all the gunfire and explosions. Except, of course, that it appears to be filled with gunfire and explosions...

05/21/09 - Terminator: Salvation

Like the Terminator himself, this franchise refuses to die. The end of the world is back, with this installment taking us into the future to see the exploits of the heroic John Connor, and finally showing us the war between man and machine that we've heard so much about. With the interesting director choice of McG (of "Charlie's Angels" fame), the film stars box-office-platinum Christian "Done with you professionally" Bale, Bryce Dallas Howard, Helena Bonham Carter and Michael Ironside, and promises a special effects bonanza of futuristic action. Guaranteed to be one if the loudest films of the summer (the actual winner of that crown is still to come on this list), it will be a hell of a sight to see, whether or not McG can pull it off.

05/29/09 - Drag Me To Hell

Let's see...so far we have action, sci-fi, comedy...what's missing? Why, a hell of a lot of horror, of course! And horror fans have reason to cheer, because the amazing Sam Raimi ("Evil Dead 1 & 2", "Army of Darkness") has left his kid-friendly "Spider-Man" films behind for a moment and gone back to his horrific roots. Starring Allison Lohman and Justin Long (in a rare non-comedic role, so good for him), along with a supporting role by the great David Paymer, this seems to revolve around a bank employee denying a home loan extension to the WRONG crazy-ass old lady, and a curse - and lots of horrific consequences - follow. Looks scary, and who doesn't like a little scare in their summer? Ones that don't involve aging fat men in tiny speedos at the beach, that is...

06/05/09 - The Hangover

Three groomsmen-to-be wake up in their suite in Vegas the night after the bachelor party - with no memory of what happened the night before, no idea why their suite is trashed, and no idea where the groom is. Or why there's a baby in the closet. The only reasons why this one is a "maybe" for me is 1) it stars Bradley Cooper, who you might remember as the jerk fiance from "Wedding Crashers" but whom I'm a fan of from the TV shows "Alias" and "Kitchen Confidential", 2) it's from the director of "Old School", 3) Heather Graham's in it and 4) Mike Tyson's in it (as himself) and is seen rocking out to the drum solo from Phil Collins' "In The Air Tonight". Will wait for reviews, but it's a "maybe"...

06/05/09 - Land of the Lost

Yes, yes, you groan, and probably with cause, at the thought of another Will Ferrell comedy. You may be right. Or, like those of us who grew up watching the thrilling (to us...because we were, like, six years old) "Land of the Lost" TV show from Sid & Marty Krofft, you might be thinking about it. A bonus is that it has Danny McBride in it, who stole the film "Pineapple Express" (not as easy thing to do in a Seth Rogen film). Filled with prehistoric special effects and commendable dialogue like "Matt Lauer can suck it!!", it could be just the light-hearted summer escapism you're looking for. Or...it could really blow. Check that Tomatometer as the date approaches, kids!

06/12/09 - The Taking of Pelham 123

For those of who haven't seen a John Travolta character take hostages in a couple weeks or so, your wait is over. Every summer needs a Tony Scott film, and Mr. Scott is dealing us a fresh helping of action-suspense, pulling in his usual helping of big-name Hollywood talent (Travolta, Denzel Washington, John Turturo, James (needs this to help get "Tony Soprano" behind him) Gandofini...and my biggest draw, the incomparable Luiz Gusman (look him up...you'll recognize him from many films you've seen)). Written by Brian Helgeland ("L.A. Confidential, "Mystic River", "Man on Fire"), this edge-of-yer-seater deals with a group taking hostages aboard a New York subway train, with subway controller Denzel trying to save the day. Let's just hope it doesn't give us the Tony Scott Ending (tm). (That joke was for a handful of people I know who'll get it...).

06/19/09 - Year One

Do I really have to say more than "Jack Black" and "Michael Cera"? Seriously, you put these two in a film about a couple of prehistoric slackers who get banned from their questing-for-fire tribe and get into all manner of wackiness in the ancient world...what else do you need to know? How 'bout that it's directed by Harold Ramis, produced by Judd Apatow, and features David Cross as Cain, Paul Rudd as Abel, and Hank Azaria as Abraham? The trailer looks like lots of win to me. I'd down for some over-the-top Old Testament humor. You?

6/24/09 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Yeah, I feel kind of bad for this film. You know it's just not going to make ANY money this summer... (WARNING: Sarcasm levels rising!) Director Michael Bay returns with the sequel to the mega-blockbuster hit, and with a budget even CLOSER to matching the President's stimulus package. The whole gang appears to be back, including stars Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox's navel. Even with all the sci-fi actioners we've seen listed already, I guarantee you this will be the LOUDEST film of the summer. Spectacles like this were what summer movies were invented for. If you miss this in the theater, you'll be mocked later, will be sad and cry. And with Michael Bay as the director, I can also guarantee you this (putting on my best trailer-announcer voice): Stuff...will...fly...at...the...camera!

7/1/09 - Public Enemies

I wonder what happens when you put, arguably, the two biggest box office draws on EARTH in the same movie and release it in the middle of summer? Guess we'll find out this July, when Johnny Depp and Christian Bale pair up for the based-on-a-true-story tale of John Dillinger, directed by none other than Michael "Heat" Mann. With a very impressive supporting cast that includes Billy Crudup, Leelee Sobieski, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff, Rory Cochrane and Lili Taylor, this period shoot-em-up promises to sparkle with the patented Michael Mann style. Kind of a Miami Vice for the prohibition era, if you will... If I were you, I'd "Mann" up and be there.

7/15/09 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

For those of you who generally suspect me as a giant nerd, allow me this defense - I have never read a "Harry Potter" book, nor have I seen a "Harry Potter" movie. This, of course, makes up for the seven seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and eight seasons of "Star Trek: TNG" on my DVD shelf, and the "Serenity" poster framed on my living room wall... I have totally missed the boat on this franchise, but it would, of course, be completely disingenuous to leave the latest (is this the last? I don't even know) "Harry Potter" extravaganza off this summer's list...as I knew too many fanatics, from children to their parents, who've been waiting for a very long time for it to arrive. You'll probably have to see this one without me (unless by some strange turn of events I watch all the other Potter films in the next couple of months), but if the trailer's any indication, you will walk out of it with your jaw stuck in "dropped" position for at least a fortnight.

7/31/09 - Funny People

Did somebody say Judd Apatow? My film hero has produced and co-written too many films to mention in the past several years, but this one is only his third written-and-directed one (the others being "40-Year-Old Virgin" and "Knocked Up"), and, no surprise, it stars Seth Rogen again. However, its other star is Adam Sandler, who plays a famous comedian who finds out he's not long for this world, thanks to an unexpected cancer diagnosis. Rogen plays an up-and-coming comedian who ends up befriending him. Despite its title and its stars, this is meant to be a more serious film. Apatow says, "I'm trying to make a very serious movie that is twice as funny as my other movies. Wish me luck!". The film also stars Apatow's brilliantly funny wife, Leslie Mann, along with his two young daughters, who proved ridiculously hilarious in their performances in "Knocked Up". I've put the link to the trailer up there, but you know what? I'm going to advise you not to watch it. It's one of those trailers, in my opinion, that tells you way too much about the film (it seems to kind of summarize the whole story from start to finish). I say trust the Apatow and just go with me and check it out. You can blame me if it sucks.

8/7/09 - G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

Wow. Could this EVER go either way... You might have seen the teaser for this one during the Super Bowl, and noticed that every woman in the room went "Huh?" while every guy threw his arms up and screamed "Yeeahhhh!!". If you're from my generation, and you're a dude, you just HAVE to know. And knowing is, after all, half the battle... Directed Stephen Sommers of "The Mummy" fame, this film stars...well, a bunch of people we don't really know, but some notables (for me, at least) like Dennis Quaid, Rachel Nichols (mmmm...Alias season fiiiiive....), Jonathan Pryce, Ray "Darth Maul" Park and (shudder) Marlon Wayans. After the ridiculous success of the Transformers movie, Hasbro and Paramount team up again to bring another animated-show-designed-just-to-sell-action-figures to the big screen twenty years after it was popular. Seems to have worked so far. Prepare for the "Transformers" formula, and expect lots of guns, completely overdone CGI, national monuments around the world crumbling, and stuff...flying...at...the...camera!

8/21/09 - Inglorious Basterds

First off, no, you don't get any Typo Contest points here for that title above. That's the official way it's spelled in this film's name. Us big-time fans of Quinten Tarantino have waited juuuust about a decade for this...Q's much-rumored but not-much-made World War II film. Having gotten his Bill-Killing and House-Grinding out of his system, he's finally gotten around to this tale of a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers put together to engage in open acts of retribution against the Nazis. Beyond Brad Pitt - who plays the lieutenant who puts the team together - you probably won't recognize many (if any) of the names in this cast (but "Freaks and Geeks" fans will Freak over seeing Samm "Neal Schweiber" Levine as one of the soldiers), but maybe that's a good thing. While I'm all over this movie, I'm also more than a little nervous. Tarantino is a very different filmmaker than he was ten years ago. His work has fallen into (unapologetic) campsploitation of late. Will this taint what could be his comeback film as a "real" filmmaker again...or will it be another drive-in level indulgence that cements that as his final place in film history? I'll be there to find out.

8/28/09 - The Boat That Rocked

This, to me, is the perfect way to end the summer season. After months of robots and cyborgs and mutants and Nazis and dinosaurs and angels and demons, I'd like to decompress with a film that makes me laugh, makes me cheer, and makes me think. And I think this will be the one. Set in 1966, the British comedy - written and directed by "Four Weddings and Funeral" scribe Richard Curtis - tells the story of an illegal pirate radio station that broadcast rock-n-roll music into Britain from a boat out in the North Sea (this is not a directly "true" story, but based on an amalgam of pirate radio stations of the era, specifically on the pirate radio ship Radio Caroline). The biggest draw to me is that it stars my favorite modern actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, as the American DJ amongst the Brits, but the fact that it's also got Bill Nighy, Nick Frost and Kenneth Branagh. Sure, it looks like your typical "screw the man, rock-n-roll will save the world" standard, but it looks like it's done with a lot of style, a lot of fun, and a hell of a lot of great music. I'm on it. You?

And THAT, ladies and gents, ends my summer movie list. Did you see some missing? Perhaps a romantic comedy or powerful-looking drama? Apologies. The SacTown Movie Gang is largely made up of DUDES, so the interests are going to run that way. And while many of these same dudes are fans of more cerebral cinema and enjoy the occasional foreign existential piece, that's not what they're looking for 1) in the theaters 2) during the summer. Summer movies are about EVENT - about movie hype, big budgets, cheering crowds and shameless sequels! So while there are a couple of variations there, this summer, like last summer, will be largely about us feeding the studio monster. And having a great time doing it.

So if you want to share in that good time with us, stay tuned here for all the details! Let the summer fun begin!

And let stuff...

Fly...

At...

The...

CAMERA!

Can we all just get a clue?

2009-04-27T01:22:00.000-07:00

For reasons I won't go into (they would just confuse you), I was on IMDb (that would be the Internet Movie Database for you non-film-nerds) looking up some info on the 1994 film "Airheads". As I was scanning for my bit of intel I sought (okay, I was looking for piece of info to help me complete a bad joke about the death of poor Bea Arthur I was posting on a message board. Satisfied? I'm ashamed), I happened to see the title of a discussion thread about the film. I thought the title was a joke. I found out it was not. And I felt old. And kind of speechless.

The set-up: if you haven't seen "Airheads" (Brendan Frasier, Steve Buscemi, Adam Sandler, Michael Richards, Chris Farley, and Amy Locane in fishnets? What are you waiting for?!), it revolves around this wanna-be rock band that ends up taking over a radio station in an attempt to get their song played. A huge crowd of supportive rockers gathers outside, being kept back by police. In an effort to get the police to turn the lights back on, the lead singer (Frasier) incites the crowd by starting the chant, "Rod-ney King! Rod-ney King!".

And here's the thread (in part):

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Subject: Who's Rodney King?

By sanja 86
Didn't quite get that part.Can anyone explain?

By Comic Lover
he was a black man, who has beaten by the police in the early 90s, i guess it stirred up some controversy cuz the cops were pretty brutal, it was across the street from the biker bar in terminator 2

By Myers4892
didnt know rodney king was beaten across the street from the biker bar in T2. you learn somethin new everyday.

By Cryonaut
Basically the 90's version of "Attica." As for the line itself, I had no clue who Rodney King was and I thought they were talking about Don King. I was scratching my head for a bit.

by lisabaum8
Rodney King is on Celebrity Rehab 2

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I just...

I just...

...

I'm going to bed now.