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And I wasn't even texting or anything. Oh life. What joy you are. | | |
| Last night saw the Los Angeles premiere of Will Smith's new movie, Hancock, at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood. The Hollywood elite, their children, and several hundred fans all flocked to the area to see the movie and attend the after party. While this reporter can't speak to the quality of the film itself, I feel it is my duty to review the party that proceeded the screening. Guests of all rank and class were led on a red carpet from the Chinese Theater, across Hollywood Blvd, to the entrance to the party, situated in a dank alleyway between a tacky, SoCal souvenir shop and what may possibly the world's most run down Budget Rental Car agency. While making this trek across the street, guests were lovingly caressed by the gazes of several hundred tourists, a handful of tranny prostitutes, and at least one street performer alarmingly dressed to look like a very tall shrub (there may have been more; the disguise was very effective, and this reporter found it hard to tell the difference between plant life and human life). Once across the street and down the alleyway, guests walked through a makeshift tunnel and came out the other side into what, during the day, is a parking lot. At night, though, for this event, it had been transformed into....A PARKING LOT WITH CUSHIONED GROUND!! Oh, the magic. It was as if a whole new world had been created for we revelers to partake in! The invitation to the event had promised multiple flaming cars strategically placed around the party to ooh and awe us; indeed, there were several busted up cars scattered around the parking lot, possibly because they had broken down in said lot during the day and the production crew for the party had decided to take advantage of that good fortune. I don't know whether you could really claim that the cars were aflame, though, so much as they had a small pilot light burning on the dashboard. Hobos make bigger flames in steel drums than I saw in those cars. Guests at the event were invited to partake in a wide variety of completely mediocre food. Corn on the cob, brisket, and spaghetti and meatballs were the fare of the day, and people seemed amenable to this, though not overjoyed. Several guests were overheard asking, "where are the mini hamburgers? I only come to events like this for the mini hamburgers."* Alas, none were to be found. Ray Romano, accompanied by his three unfortunate looking children, gave the Thai food station a wary eye before ushering his kids toward more appeasing nourishment. Over at the dessert table, what appeared to be Jell-O shots turned out to be "Soup Shooters." While this reporter was intrigued as to how one could make a soup the color of atomic orange, neon green, or electric blue, that intrigue did not provide sufficient encouragement to overcome my gag reflex and force one down my throat. This seemed to be the case for several would be diners, who approached the soups, picked them up, sniffed them, and then promptly replaced them on the tray. Chi chi food turned down by the very people who caused the fad in the first place? It must have been the ghetto parking lot locale bringing out the normal in them. Several activities had been set up for guests to enjoy. A DJ spun the latest hits from 1975, much to the delight of absolutely no one at the party. Sony had set up an area were you could watch clips from the movie, without sound or explanation, on their new TVs. They also had some sort of robot that rolled around while playing Will Smith's "Gettin' Jiggy With It." Upon touch from a human, the robot would die. All of this created a feeling like being in a Brookstone, except not as fun because there were no massaging chairs to sit in. A spray-on temporary tattoo station in one corner of the party brought out the child in even the most ancient of people, and guests were amused as a tattoo reading "Hancock Was Here" was sprayed onto the calf of a woman nearing the age of eleventy billion. Unfortunately, the machine providing the air pressure needed to paint on the tattoos was not strong enough to power both hoses simultaneously, causing severe backup and tension that later erupted into a knife fight*. Another corner saw the placement of a bounce house and those elastic cable things that you strap yourself into and use to jump higher than you normally would jump. Appeal of these attractions was low for any person over the age of 7, or anyone wearing a dress, which was pretty much every woman there. Finally, there was a photo station set up where you and your loved ones could pose to look as though you were easily lifting a car off the ground and over your head. While the allure of this attraction was high, competency rates of those running it were low, and it was out of commission for the entire time this reporter was at the party. Will Smith made a brief appearance among the peons before scampering off to the VIP section of the party. It was easy to tell the difference between the VIP section and those sections available to the masses. The VIPs were situated on a raised platform with plush couches and tables; the masses were allowed to sit upon an air mattress within a fake jail cell, balancing their plates on their knees and glaring down anyone who appeared to be waiting for them to leave. In the end, this reporter left the party a bit let down. And there wasn't even a gift bag. Grade: C Stars Seen: Valerie Bertinelli, Larry Birkhead (questionable as to his star status, but he practically ran me over, so I'm listing him), Ray Romano, Will Smith, Charlize Theron, That bitch who played Lynette's bitch adopted daughter on Desperate Housewives. Best Decoration: A fake blue whale strung above the party. High Point: Leaving the party. *By several guests, I mean myself. *I am guessing this is what eventually happened. We were in a parking lot, after all. | | |
| I like to drink. Alcohol. All types of it, really. It is fun and usually I have exciting adventures that I don't remember. It's sort of like leading a double life, or having multiple personality disorder, but without the baggage that would come along with those sorts of things. My friends are usually pretty good at filling in the gaps of the previous evening for me, and I'm always amazed and intrigued by the things drunk Forrest gets himself into/says, like singing a song about wanting a subway sandwhich, or giving a long speech about how I'm not a cock block to my roommate's boyfriend. Last night was my roommate's birthday. We went to a bar, and I was already feeling tipsy. I went to order a round of drinks and was waiting to get a bartender's attention. This was taking several minutes, and I noticed a lady standing next to me, waiting as well. So I struck up a conversation about how waiting sucks, and how we were cooler than the other people at the bar, blah blah blah. While chatting, her boyfriend/fiance/husband mysteriously appeared. I took one look at him, turned back to my new lady friend and said "whoa! Is that your boyfriend? He totally looks like one of the Bee Gees!" We didn't talk anymore after that. Sometimes I'm amazed I don't get decked in the face. | | |
| Since about last September, every Monday night I travel to The Red Lion Tavern in Los Feliz. This is a German-themed bar, and looks vaguely like a Disneyland restaurant on the inside, meant to inspire in you the idea that you are actually in some sort of Bavarian tavern in the Black Forest and not, instead, in a bar across the street from a Citibank and a strip mall. The pluses of this bar, though, are that the drinks are cheap, and every Monday night there is a pub quiz. A pub quiz, for the uninitiated, is a trivia contest that takes place within a bar or pub. There is a host (in our case, a highly amusing, lovely woman named Krista), who asks questions that cover pretty much every topic you can think of. There are 7 rounds, with variations among the rounds involving things such as picture identification. At the end of the 7 rounds, a team (or individual, if you're playing alone) is declared the winner, and gets a $20 gift certificate. Teams also get to come up with amusing, jokey names for themselves. Our team is named "Truly Truly Truly Outrageous," which, if you know where that line comes from, you can be my friend. Other regular team names include "Alex's Exes," (a duo of ladies who both previously dated a man named Alex...not the same one), "Quizteam-a Aguilera," and "Buck Knife" (don't ask). Part of the reason I enjoy going so much is that, in the beginning, the event wasn't very popular. There were 4 teams, including my own, that showed up religiously, and that was about it. In fact, shortly before the new year, there was a night (my personal favorite, because I believe it's the night we actually won), where we four teams were the only ones present, and it gave the event a sort of a condensed or clique-y feel, that we were in on something that other people were too stupid to notice. Anyway, inexplicably, pub quiz has sort of caught on in the year 2008. I don't know how word spread, but somehow it did, and as a result, going to it has become something of a hassle. The once deserted parking lot now regularly fills 30 minutes before start time, leaving the rest of us to search for a spot across the street and up the block quite a ways. While this is a minor inconvenience, the more major impact of increased popularity has been seating. The room in which the pub quiz takes place is rather small, with seating at a premium. As a result, getting to pub quiz ludicrously early has become something of a necessity, for if you don't, you have to end up sitting at the bar area next door, sending an emissary from your team into the room to hear the round of questions, and then coming back to answer them. This sort of fate, for me, is rather depressing since, as I think I described earlier, part of why I like pub quiz is the feeling of community amongst the regulars, and being physically isolated from them in the other room does little to inspire communal feelings. Last night, my teammates and I arrived what we thought was sufficiently early, about 20 minutes before start. We had to park far away, but we assumed there would be room inside. FALSE. We got to the doorway of the room and saw that every table and chair was taken up. Some of them were taken up by regulars, so I couldn't begrudge them. But a rather large seating section was currently being occupied by a group of about 15 people, who had NEVER been there before, and had clearly just come to eat dinner and had decided they would also stay and play the quiz. Amongst this group was none other than Dave Holmes. If you can't quite remember who Dave Holmes is, he was the poor soul who lost out to Jesse in MTV's first ever "Wanna Be a VJ?" contest. Ironically, MTV ended up hiring him anyway, and I believe his career there lasted much longer than Jesse's, and I believe, moreover, that he actually still has a career, which I don't think Jesse himself can say. Dave Holmes might not be A-list, but I was especially annoyed that not only was I being forced to sit by the bar because of a large group of previously unseen quizzers, but that I was being forced to do so by a so-so celebrity. I am sure Dave Holmes isn't extravagantly wealthy by any means, but all the same, his life is probably better than mine in many ways. In my mind, celebrities should live in their own little world with other celebrities, the people who understand them best. Let we little, unfamous people have our fun and, more importantly, OUR TABLE in the world in which we reside. Go to some fucking bar in Brentwood or Beverly Hills, Dave Holmes. Leave the seedy dive bars to regular folk who patronize them. So yes. Because of Dave Holmes, we had to sit at the bar the entire night (though this did have the added bonus of getting us some free shots from the manager, who recognized our team and felt sorry for our lack of proper housing in the trivia room). More infuriating, though, was that Dave Holmes and his team had the nerve to fucking win. Yes, that's right. He won the quiz. A dark horse victory, he only leaped into first place because the last two rounds of trivia were both music related, which of course gives a former VJ an advantage. Once again, his celebrity status makes the win more stinging; a $20 gift card for my team greatly subsidizes our drinking and allows our already anoerexically thin wallets a bit of relief; a $20 gift card for Dave Holmes and his 15 person team does NOTHING. What does that get you, 50 cents off your drink? In my mind, Dave Holmes might as well have just taken the certificate and pissed on it in front of all of us, for all the good it did him. We packed up our shit and left in bitterness. Fuck Dave Holmes. What an asshole. And that is how Dave Holmes ruined my Monday night. | | |
| I am not the world's best driver. I tailgate like a mad man. I speed like I'm fleeing the a-bomb. I tend to cut people off if they don't kindly make space for me to merge. I admit all these things. The one thing I usually feel I have going for me in the driving realm is that I tend not to be emotionally aggressive. I may yell at a driver, but only with my windows up. I never give the finger, and I rarely use my horn. When it comes to things like that, I tend to strictly adhere to the golden rule. I figure, I don't like it when people give me the finger or unnecessarily honk their horn at me, so why would I do it to them? I think part of what I like best about driving is the anonymity. Driving around LA, there's about a 99% chance that I don't know in any capacity the people around me, and they don't know me. Honking at someone, or flipping them off, or whatever you want to do breaches this wall of nameless existence and creates a situation of personal interaction that I rarely find pleasant while in the car. A result of this, though, is that sometimes I find myself trapped in situations that I'm unwilling to resolve, since the only solution appears to be active communication between myself and another driver. Such a situation occured last night. I was on my way home from my friend Hailey's apartment, and reached a stoplight at which I needed to turn left. This intersection I was at crosses a street that's fairly busy, so the left turn green light doesn't activate all that often. I arrived at the stoplight and was stuck behind two cars, one in each lane. Both of these cars were the first in each of their respective lanes. I sat there, and happily noticed the light for traffic in the other direction turning yellow. Anticipating my turn to go, I lifted my foot off the brake, only to find that the light stayed red. "Weird," I thought. "Usually people on this side of the interaction get to go first." I watched as people coming toward us got to use their green light, expecting that we would be allowed to go after them. But no. Once they were done, the light for traffic on the thoroughfare turned green again. Incredulous, I looked to God for a reason as to why I still remained waiting, but quickly discovered it myself; the problem was the two cars in front of me. Both of them were parked SO FAR behind the designated stop line that the sensor wasn't reading their, or anyone behind them's, presence. Essentially, the light wasn't ever going to turn green for us because as far as the computerized mind of the stoplight was concerned, there was no one waiting. Obviously, I could have remedied this situation. One of the cars in front of me had their passenger window down, and all I really needed to do was to roll down my own window and tell them to pull forward. But I was uneasy about this; I've read enough news stories and seen enough 20/20 to know that it doesn't take much to turn an everyday driver into a road rage murderer. I really didn't see a way to tell these people they needed to pull forward without it sounding bitchy or critical of their driving skills (which, to be fair, were obviously lacking). I imagined the scenario going something along the lines of this:
Me: "Hey, you need to pull your car up to the stop line, or this light is never gonna turn."
Driver of Other Car: "Fuck you man! Fuck you!" Gets out of car with gun, walks up to my window, shoots me in face. THE END. I've got a thing against death, so I sat there and waited. And waited. And waited. Other cars piled up behind me. I did the most passive aggressive thing I could and pulled my car as close to the bumped of the car in front of me, hoping that it would become uncomfortable and pull forward, thereby solving the problem. But no. It sat there, blissfully unaware of my proximity and, apparently, of the unusually long amount of time we'd been sitting at the stoplight.
(On a sidenote, I think I found this to be most incredulous of all, that somehow, BOTH drivers of the cars felt that there was nothing odd about how long they'd been sitting there. If I had been one of them, I would have been backing up and forward over the stop line, trying to set off the sensor. Of course, if I had been one of them, I also would have stopped at the correct place. But anyway...) So. I bet we sat there for a good 5-7 minutes, just watching other cars go by. Frustrated, I called my friend Hailey. As I was relating the story to her, I glanced over and noticed that the woman in the car next to me was motioning for me to roll my window down. Intrigued, I did as she asked, and the following conversation took place: Woman: Hey, are you talking about these two assholes in front of us?
Me: Well, yes, actually, I am.
Woman: They need to pull the fuck forward or we're never gonna get to go!
Me: Yeah.
Woman, taking matters into her own hand: MOVE YOUR FUCKING CAR!!! (blares horn repeatedly) PULL THE FUCK FORWARD, YOU DUMBASS!! (blares horn some more) MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE!!! I quickly rolled up my window, not wanting to be associated with Road Rage Annie, on the assumption that if the driver of the car in front of her had similar road rage and went on the killing spree imagined earlier, he'd probably also shoot anyone seen talking to her, on the assumption that they'd encouraged her behavior. Remarkably, though, the car in front of hers pulled forward with nary a retort or backwards hand gesture, the sensor was tripped, and away we all went. Road Rage Annie sped off into the night, and I feel bad, because in my haste to avoid death by association, I never got to thank her for saving all of us. Her methods were a bit crass and rudimentary, but I appreciate them a lot, not the least because they were something I never would have been able to do. Who knows how long I would have sat at that stoplight if it hadn't been for this angel of a woman? People talk about doing random acts of kindness for others, how that makes their day. But this shows that, really, you don't have to be kind to do a kind thing. Apparently, being a belligerent asshole to someone else can amount to an act of kindness for a related third party! So thank you, angry driver lady. May you continue to police the streets of LA, cursing and honking at drivers whose lack of awareness hurts us all. You are my hero. | | |
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