Quorum of Awesome

Zanzibar, Emmerich, and Other Exhausted Ramblings

2010-01-15T02:06:00.000-08:00

I've got this friend. Let's call her Lexi Newman. That's not her real name. Her real name is Zanzibar Extremo.

Zanzibar Extremo and I have been friends for about 43 years now and in that time she has not lead me astray. Except for this one time where she said that overalls were the new hip clothes for boys. I believed her. She was a tad off.

But Zanzibar Extremo works a very arduous job. She asked me to update Quorum for her own selfish, selfish reasons. Being torn between updating and winking suggestively at my computer is no contest: winking usually wins out. This is because I am dedicated to my craft. But if Zanzibar says wear overalls, I wear overalls and if Zanzibar says update, then I update.

So, Zanzibar, this one is for you.

Today, though, is seemingly a good day to update. Major shit going on in the world. Important stuff like Haiti (donate somewhere) and late night wars (I'm officially on Team Jason Robards) and I hear there's something going on in Massachusetts of note (I assume that Will Hunting came back into town and had the answers to Lost and everybody shit their pants... I assume).

But really what's occupying my brain today is: I'm friggin' exhausted and I don't want to live in a world in which Roland Emmerich is right.

Allow me to explain.

First of all, one of the reasons I haven't updated in the last two months is because things got insanely busy out there in the real world. The holidays descended like a fucking screeching banshee and did not spare me for even an instant. I found a job (briefly I had two, but the second one laid me off after three days... but that's a different story). I worked a retail gig at a Major Department Store that has been the subject of scathing wit courtesy of a certain gay southern essayist whose names start with "D" and ends in "avid Sedaris." My work at Major Department Store consisted of selling many blenders and attempting to sign people up for credit cards that they, clearly, needed. Because it's not like credit cards caused this recession or anything! Right? Ha! Yes, I betrayed all my beliefs for 50 cents above minimum wage and the right to listen to a three-hour loop of Christmas carols for eight hours a day.

Anyway, the gig wasn't all that bad. It was just retail. The people I worked with were pretty cool. I'm fairly sure one of them was Yoda. Yeah, it was this tiny woman who knew everything and her name was -- Wait, what I am I doing? I can't be reasonable on the Internet. Quick, resort to hyperbole! Major Department Store promised me a new life and instead destroyed all I believe in! It launched a missile into my Tree Of Souls and I had to ride a big dragon-butterfly thing and then Sigourney Weaver died!

What I'm saying is I've worked worse retail jobs (Hi, Six Flags!) and this one at least treated its employees with a modicum of respect. The worst part of the job didn't come till the end when I had to work three graveyard shifts in a row in order to inventory the whole store. That, my friends, was a big, loud, annoying bitch of an assignment. Inventory is basically the Heidi Montag of the retail world.

The graveyard shifts were last Sunday through Tuesday. And ever since then I have been adhering to the Bill-Paxton-in-Near-Dark ethos: "We keep odd hours." Odd and fucking infuriating hours. For the past week, I have essentially become nocturnal, never falling asleep before 6 a.m. and never waking up earlier than 3 p.m. Today is attempt two at fixing this cycle of bleary-eyed torture. I didn't go to sleep last night and have elected to, through sheer force of will and Red Bull, stay awake until sleep puts me in a stranglehold and forces me to slip off into the Land of Nod.

Perhaps it is because I am in this grumpy, sleepy, and other assorted dwarves state that I am susceptible to stupid thoughts.

And thus I return to my premise: Roland Emmerich cannot be right.

In case you haven't heard, California is experiencing some bad weather. It has been pouring rain in Southern California for the past two days and Northern California, somehow, angered Raiden from Mortal Kombat because lightning is shooting out of the sky like the craziest fucking finishing move in the history of video games.

But even worse is that, apparently, a tornado warning has been posted for Southern California.

If this sounds familiar that's because it has been done before. A few years back, Master of Destroying the World (and Film) Roland Emmerich wrote and directed a little art-house movie called The Day After Tomorrow. In this movie (which I didn't see but am prejudging because I can), tornadoes, caused by global warming, strike the heart of Los Angeles and leave untold devastation in their wake.

Now, obviously I hope this tornado does not materialize as I don't want anyone getting hurt but also because I refuse to live in a world in which the dude who directed Godzilla (the movie that asks you to believe an enormous lizard can find places to hide in the middle of New York City and, more incredulously, tries to pass off Ferris Bueller as an action hero) holds any sort of prophetic sway over the world.

The visions of Roland Emmerich must not come to pass.

Except for that one he had about Randy Quaid flying his jet fighter in to the alien spaceship. That was kind of cool.

Till next time!

The Hick and I Part Two: South Central Travails

2009-11-13T15:29:00.000-08:00

On the business side of my right heel, right smack-dab in the middle, where seemingly all of my weight rests, there's a blister. A sizable one.

As it stands now it has been a little more than a week since my brief time with The Company. And yet it still feels like it happened only a few days ago. I'd like to forget about it, all of it: The Hick, Asian Johnny Cash, The Austrian, The Firefighters, The Tweekers, The Pitch, and really every single aspect of and moment I spent on the expanse of Slauson Avenue. But I can't. My fucking foot won't let me.

But the blister isn't the worst, most frustrating part of this sad little tale of woe. No, that is still to come, believe it or not.

PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF...

When we last left our hero (me), I had started to realize just what sort of quagmire I was getting myself into. Asian Johnny Cash was blaring top 40 hip-hop while The Hick regaled The Austrian in the backseat of the Ford Mustang about some intensely interesting movie he had Netflixed over the weekend. He couldn't remember the title, but the film had profoundly affected him.

"They, like, went on some sort of killing spree," he kept saying. Now, I'm a film buff. I love movies of all sorts and will watch pretty much anything. When people claim to "watch" a movie, but clearly didn't pay any attention to the plot of the fucking thing, it irks me, to say the least. But I wasn't going to show that. After all (and this part is really sad and makes my blister throb and sear just a little harder), I was still trying impress these people.

The resume debacle had been embarrassing enough, and I knew I would have to redeem myself and do it fast. I would be given such an opportunity. And then promptly blow it.

A little exposition is needed at this juncture: while I won't reveal the name of The Company on this blog, I will tell you what they do. They call themselves a marketing company that specializes in sports. They seek out high-profile clients and then market said clients to potential customers, via ticket packages and promotional offers. But, really, that is all one epic ream of horseshit. Here's what they really did: The Company prints up several hundred glossy, cardboard-like sheets with tickets to various sporting events on them. These are the ticket packages. On this particular day we were peddling Clippers tickets and Kings tickets. Now, The Company owns the printer that prints the "packages" and each "package" (I was told this by The Hick) costs 7 cents to print. The Company then charges $40 for the Clippers package and $50 for the Kings. Part of The Pitch is that you're supposed to emphasize each ticket packages' total dollar amount (which was around $500). Now, this is all legit. You would actually get two tickets to a Clippers game and four buy-one-get-one-free coupons for $40. As far as I know, everything was above-the-table. They printed these sheets, marked them up, and sent gullible schmucks out into the city to pound the pavement and attract "clients." Who were our clients?

"We do business-to-business marketing here," The Hick said when we dropped off The Austrian at (seriously) a random 76 gas station. Of course, "business-to-business" was bullshit. The real answer to "Who are the clients?" is "Anybody we come across... anybody."

Now, clearly, when selling tickets to sports it probably helps to have some knowledge of sports. Or, in my case, any knowledge of sports. Sports and I have an ugly history, but, generally speaking, if I leave it the fuck alone, it leaves me well enough alone. And I'm not completely sport-illiterate. I know who Kobe Bryant is. I know what teams Los Angeles has. I know... uh... look, I went to college, all right? And you know what I did there? I read books. A lot. So, y'know, go to hell with your sports and your balls and your rules and scrimmages and punts and inbound passes and other stupid facts that don't matter. Can you name Joss Whedon's alma mater? Because I can.

Of course, none of my geeky obsessions would be of any use when The Hick asked, "So, guy," (I told you he forgot my name about 30 seconds after I told it to him), "what kind of sports do you like?"

"Oh," I said, trying to remember words that I have no use for while, simultaneously, attempting to block out whatever "hot jam" Asian Johnny Cash was blasting, "basketball? Base...ball?" The question marks are entirely accurate.

"Oh, nice," The Hick said. We were cruising up Slauson and I hadn't noticed our surroundings yet. "How do you like Kobe this year?"

Mother pus bucket, my brain said. What do you know about Kobe? He's still a good player, right? Okay: Kobe. Plays for the Lakers. Really good. Spike Lee made a documentary about him. He was accused of raping someone, right? Wait, don't say that last one. Whatever you do, don't bring up the rape.

Of course, now all other smidgens of information I had about Kobe Bryant had fallen by the wayside and the only thing I could think of was the rape. "Kobe?" I asked.

"Yeah, Kobe," The Hick implored.

Don't say rape, don't say rape, don't say anything about rape. Say anything else. Go. Go. Go.

Nothing. Just a whole lot of very-intelligent "um"-noises and lip-biting.

Literally, spew any old stupid word out of your stupid mouth so you do not seem like a doddering fool! My brain is kind of a jerk.

"Yeah, he...," I was like a kid at a spelling bee who couldn't remember how many Es were in the word "mercurial." "He's really giving them a show."

This, remarkably, worked.

The Hick guffawed (not an exaggeration--he actually guffawed). "Ain't he though?"

I rule.

And then I got out of the car and realized how much I totally don't.

THE MIDDLE, CONTINUED (Or: The Hick Dons Blinders)

We had arrived.

Asian Johnny Cash parked the car on a residential side street off Slauson.

"I wish I hadn't worn black today," he said as we all climbed out of the car. I wanted to point out that that totally would've ruined my nickname for him, which I'm sure he would've gotten since I'm just that clever. "It's a hot one."

And it was. Even though we were in the early days of November, this is California and the thermometer was mockingly informing us the day's temperature would be around 80. We were dressed appropriately, though, in K-Mart slacks and Gap dress shirts. Not to mention our shoes: scuffed black pleather things that provide about as much support and comfort as a pair of flip-flops made from the skins of crocodiles. We were set.

I took off my sports coat and shoulder bag (you're not way out of line if you think that I seek to mimic Indiana Jones in most professional settings) and put them in the car. As I looked at our surroundings, I started to get nervous.

"Well," The Hick said as he, unbeknown to him, stood in a puddle of drain water, "we are on the edge of the Ghetto."

Asian Johnny Cash nodded, stopped, looked puzzled, and shook his head. "No," he said. "We're flat-out in the middle of the Ghetto."

Asian Johnny Cash had spoken out of turn and The Hick let him know with one slicing glance. "No," The Hick said. "We're a few blocks away from it." He made a gesture to me. As if I couldn't figure it out.

In case you haven't noticed yet, The Hick did not think highly of me. He thought I was still trying impress him (which I was, but wouldn't be for much longer). And I guess he thought my glasses were of the Mr. Magoo prescription because I think he assumed that I couldn't see where we were.

I could. And Asian Johnny Cash was right. Welcome to Ghettosville, population: us.

I could tell from the overgrown weeds that threatened to swallow rusty train tracks. I could tell from the cigarette butts and discarded cans of Tecate that littered the sidewalks. I could tell from the faded billboards that promised lower prices and better lives. I could tell from the chop shops with leery mechanics watching the two white boys walk down the street dressed like a couple of Mormon missionaries. I could tell from the sad number of kids who, by all logic, should have been in school (it was a Monday after all) yet roamed freely. I could tell from the homeless in their tattered rags who, with shredded minds, desperately spouted all manner of nonsensical ramblings, as if the correct guttural mumbling would act as some sort of magical incantation that would free them from their fate. I could tell.

However, whether it be through willful ignorance or actual myopia, The Hick, seemingly, could not. One of the first stops on our trip was to a local Big Lots. As we walked in, one of the more desperate members of Slauson Avenue lay on the concrete outside, twitching and moaning in such a way that meant it had either been too long since or was too soon after her last hit. It was one of those moments where you feel that pang in your stomach. You know you can't do anything about it and you don't know anything about this woman other than fact the that she is strung out, but you feel overloaded with compassion.

Unless you're The Hick. Then you just keep on being an idiot.

"Did you see that?" he asked when we were inside the grocery store.

"Yeah... sad stuff."

"No, man," he said. "She was wearing bunny ears!" This was not a false statement. The junkie had been wearing bunny ears atop her head. They were filthy, covered in dirt and half-falling off her greasy, matted hair. "Looks like someone forgot to take their Halloween costume off, right?"

It was right then and there that I finally decided I no longer cared about this job, The Hick or anything else to do with this stupid, stupid company. As the day went on I learned more and more about him and with each nugget of information he let slip, the grating aspects of his person were revealed. The Hick came from South Dakota, as I have already said. He has, if I remember correctly, two siblings and his parents own a farm. They do something with horses. The Hick himself used to be a ski instructor in Lake Tahoe before moving to Oregon. He hooked up with The Company via answering an internet posting (just like I did) and started out shilling for Sears (there are many aspects of this company that I am not aware of). He married his Brazilian wife (you're not entirely off base if you think it's a Green Card marriage) and left her in Oregon (because that's how you show you're in love) and came down here to work his way up the ladder in The Company.

So, he's led a life, is what I'm trying to say. He's been around the block. He could tell the woman outside the Big Lots was tweaking because you'd have to have the brain of a five-year-old in order to arrive at any other conclusion. So either he knew she was jonesin' and chose to make fun of her or he's an idiot. I'm gonna go with option "C": all of the above.

Once inside the Big Lots, I heard The Pitch for the first time.

The Pitch went a-little somethin' like this:

THE HICK: Hey! How you guys doin'?

CUSTOMER (usually a clerk or manager of a business): Fine, I guess...

THE HICK: Yeah? Hey, quick question: you heard that the basketball and hockey seasons have started up again, right? (He would usually accompany the words "basketball" and "hockey" with pathetic little pantomimes of someone shooting a basket and swinging a hockey stick.)

CUSTOMER: Yeah...

THE HICK: Yeah! All right! Big sports fans here! Well, me and my bodyguard (that was me--hilarious, right?), were sent out by the owners of the Staples Center to offer tickets to fans at 90% off. You ever been to the Staples Center? (I often found this the most condescending part of The Pitch).

CUSTOMER: Of course.

THE HICK: Well, we're offering two tickets to any Clippers game for only 40 bucks. Interested?

It was awful, condescending, semi-racist, and imbued with the worst aspects of capitalism. The Hick had no qualms about shilling his little heart out. I stood behind him like a rube, feeling disgusted with the whole enterprise (but, as is my pathetic, suburban wont, I didn't actually say anything about it). Now, thankfully, The Hick had a bad day. There are many basketball fans in South Central, but say the word "Clippers" and you'll be met with a hearty chuckle. I actually enjoyed the shit out of that aspect. Every time The Hick launched into The Pitch, he would say "Clippers" tickets, the potential customer would roll their eyes and wait for us to get out of the shop. It felt good. The free market may be a broken, evil system that corrupts everyone who touches it, but you can't deny that supply-and-demand economics can sometimes be hilarious.

THE MIDDLE, CONTINUED SOME MORE (Or: The Warnings of Friendly Firefighters Go Unheeded.)

I want to make one thing clear: the people we met and spoke with, whom The Hick desperately attempted to worm his way into their wallets, were amongst the nicest people I have ever met. Everyone (literally everyone) we talked to was friendly and polite and, when most people would've told us to fuck off and die, they waited until The Pitch reached its conclusion and then sent us on our merry way.

Of course, at the beginning of the day I had no idea that this was the case. My faith in people, at 10:30 a.m. on Monday November 2nd, was at an all time low. I felt taken advantage of. I had been suckered into this "job interview" and here I was trailing The World's Most Dense Human Being, who was convinced that he was teaching me things.

Our second stop (and don't worry I'm not going to go into all of them) was at a fire station. Burly fire fighters were working out, cleaning the trucks, gardening. Were I a gay 13-year-old I would've thought this was quite the sight to behold.

The Hick pitched them the package. Rightly, they turned it down. As we turned to leave they stopped us.

"Hey, guys, be careful, all right?" one of the younger ones said.

The Hick laughed. I didn't.

"No seriously," the firefighter said. "If you stay within the next three blocks you should be all right. Any further than that, you're in dangerous territory. Gangs patrol this area and they will mug two white boys in broad daylight without a second thought."

The Hick, fucking genius that he is, laughed again. "Okay, guys thanks for the 'warning'."

An older fireman came out of the house. "No, he's right, guys. Be careful."

The Hick laughed even louder. It wasn't a real laugh. It was one of those laughs that was meant to be loud enough to drown out things like warnings. And reason. And truth. When we had gotten out of the car, Asian Johnny Cash had made a remark about the Ghetto and The Hick shut him up with a look. Now, he couldn't do that.

Of course, I wasn't thinking about any of this. I was too busy wondering if Docker's Stain Resistant trousers somehow resists the stains of human defecation.

That was when I realized how screwed I was. I had gone from being confident to nervous to annoyed to pissed off to terrified. I looked at my phone. It was quarter to 11 and, with my coat and bag in the car and Asian Johnny Cash off doing his rounds, I was stuck here for the whole day. I had no choice than to stick with The Hick and pound the pavement.

And we did.

The Hick and I headed up Slauson. He stopped every few minutes to pitch a shop clerk or manager or random passer-by, with me behind him trying to signal with my eyes to the shop clerk or manager or random passer-by that they should definitely not give this guy any money at all whatsoever. We walked some more. The Pitch began to blur into a tinny din. Every time I heard it I started to think of new ways to rebuke it. The blocks stretched on in front of us and my feet began to ache around hour three. Around hour four the pain became as ubiquitous as The Pitch.

At one point, I remember, we stopped at a nail salon. The Hick went in, guns blazing, with his big, stupid Used Car grin and his heavily rehearsed gesticulations and his sheer inability to improvise or deviate from the script. A woman in the back of the salon actually seemed interested and called him over to talk more. I stayed at the front of the shop and adopted my best "fuck this gig" stance. It didn't work. I think I just came across as awkward. I mopped my brow with my sleeve.

"Hot?" I heard a voice ask.

I looked over to one of the nearby chairs where a girl about 20 was blowing on her nails. She wore an orange dress.

"Yeah," I said. "It's warm."

She nodded and stood up. Her dress concealed a baby-bump, about five or six months along. She walked over to an older woman. "We'll leave soon, grandma." She turned back to me. "You're friend is really hustlin'."

I tried to imagine what an alternative universe in which The Hick and I were friends would be like. I decided it must have dragons and people worshipping tablecloths. "Yeah," I said. "He..." I couldn't think of anything to say. At first I thought of saying "Yeah, he can really sell" but that was a lie since he hadn't sold anything that day. Then I thought of maybe "Yeah, he's dedicated" but I honestly didn't want to give him that much credit.

"How come you ain't huslin' like he is?" she asked, saving me from lying and thus my soul from curdling a little more.

"It's my first day," I said. "Only day" would've been more accurate.

"Hmm," she said. She looked me up and down in that way that only women can do, as if she were processing my worth via running data through her advanced science of facial pattern software and cosmetological psychology. I never got to find out what her conclusion was, because the next thing she said changed my viewpoint of The Hick forever: "Well, your friend's a believer, definitely."

The Hick had botched the sale and came back. He pushed me out the door and we were back on the sidewalk. I had no idea what the woman in the orange dress had meant.

We walked for a few more hours and I could feel the blisters start to form. We walked past all the businesses and up a hill. We found a small Mexican restaurant and stopped for lunch.

Back in the parking lot of The Company, he said he would go over the pay structure at lunch. We ate mostly in silence, but eventually I had to know how much it was worth to wear your feet down to bubbling boils of death.

"So, how does the pay work?" I asked.

The Hick's eyes lit up. He took out a slip of paper and a pen and sketched it all out for me. He spent about 15 minutes going over all the potential earnings but here's the short answer:

While working for The Company, you are paid a grand total of Fucking Nothing. Before taxes.

You know what word hadn't come up in the ad for the job, the first interview, the meeting with fast-talking bosses, the initial moments with The Hick, or at all during the day so far? Commission. The whole thing was a commission-only job, meaning you made only what you could sell. In fact, as The Hick made clear to me, you didn't even make that much, since at the end of the day you had to give away 30% of your sales to your lead (which The Hick was) and 30% to the office. Over half the money is gone. No benefits, no bonuses.

"So wait," I said, trying my best not to grab my bean-covered fork and impale The Hick's troglodytic forehead, "after all this... all the walking, all the pitching, all the going to dangerous places... you might walk away empty handed."

"Well, yeah," he said. "It's a business."

"Right... and if you don't sell anything, you could get fired."

"Yes, that's always a risk."

"And does the company pay for gas?"

"No."

"Do they provide training?"

"This is the training."

"And they make us wear these clothes? We can't wear sneakers so it might be easier?"

"No. We are a business. We wear business attire. You can sneak in those Dr. Scholl's gel pads though. Just don't tell them." He stopped. I could see why he never went off script -- for a dude who was looking to make a living out of sales, he does a shitty job of hooking a customer. "Look at it this way: we're in a burgeoning field. There is so much room for growth here and so much money that can be made. I mean, I've only been here six months and look how far I've gotten."

I looked around at the sunken booth we were sitting in, surrounded on all sides by yellow wallpaper, and treated to the finest of classic mariachi. And this, honestly, was the highlight of the day. The "burgeoning field" of ticket sales wasn't so much a field as it was a sinkhole.

The Hick, though, was unwavering. "There's so much money to made!" he said.

Holy shit, I thought, pregnant-orange-dress-lady was right. The Hick is a believer.

A lot of things fell into place after that. I understood The Hick so much more. He genuinely believed that The Company would make him a millionaire. It was no wonder he pitched so hard. I felt a little bad for him, but mostly hated him even more.

THE END (Or: The Blue Balls of Revenge)

After lunch it was 3 p.m. and The Hick was more determined than ever to make some sales. He became resolute and more aggressive. No longer satisfied with bombarding business patrons and people waiting for the bus, he barreled into schools, day care centers, churches, check-cashing places with wild abandon. He pitched people in KFC, he pitched teenagers, he pitched old ladies in wheelchairs. His belief drove him. Much like a Girl Scout peddling cookies for their troops, The Hick made sure that no person went unpitched lest he face the wrath of an angry Troop Mom.

It all kind of blurs together at this point since my feet were, bizarrely, burning. The blisters had gotten so bad they stung and seared the words "OH. FUCK. THIS." into my brain with each step.

At one point we ended up at a gas station. It was an incredibly nice one. Charged 3.19 a gallon. It was packed. I looked around and noticed that there were at least 15 people there and I wondered if the day's sensory overload of destitution had somehow forced me into seeing a mirage of prosperity.

There were two shops on the gas station's property. The building that housed the shops was newly refurbished, done up in an adobe style. One of the shops was a convenience store. The other... well, the other explained a lot.

Slauson Medical is not a hospital. It's not a clinic. It's not a doctor's office of any kind. But Slauson Medical was the reason for this diamond in the rough. Slauson Medical was small-- basically a waiting room with a few chairs, some magazines and a counter with a huge, thick, plastic partition. As The Hick started to pitch the guy behind the counter, the clerk was helping a customer. He reached into the counter and took out a glass jar half-filled with the unmistakable buds known as cannabis. Several other jars with names like "Orange Kush" were stored underneath the counter. Slauson Medical sold weed.

I couldn't help but marvel at this place. Anyone who says the country will go downhill if drugs are legalized needs to take a trip to Slauson Medical. It's helping the economy of this one little area to no end, provides a valuable service (I heard one old lady with an oxygen tank and a walker say "Praise Jesus" as she left the shop), and hurts absolutely no one. I don't even smoke pot, but I had to marvel at this enterprise. The recession would be over in two weeks if someone turned Slauson Medical into a franchise and peppered them throughout the country like Starbucks.

We were in Slauson Medical for 15 minutes. After minute four, I started to think about asking for a job application.

The day wore to a close and The Hick never stopped selling or rather attempting to sell. To be fair, he made a few here and there, but nothing like the money he swore the "burgeoning field" of ticket sales promised at lunch.

At the end of the day I found myself sitting in the empty Playplace of a McDonald's, wondering if I should check to see if my feet were bleeding. I was exhausted and angry. I remembered the beginning of the day, when I had gotten out of bed ready and excited for a new challenge. Now, I was worn down and wanted to make someone cry.

Guess who I had my sights set on.

The fast-talking boss-man at the beginning of this whole affair had told me that if the day went well, I would fill out a questionnaire and they'd let me know if I had a job. I couldn't wait to fill out this questionnaire.

Asian Johnny Cash picked us up, amped by a day of guzzling Monster Energy Drinks. He hadn't done too badly for himself. The Austrian had done the best, though, and had brought in a sizable chunk of change.

But I didn't care about any of that. I wanted to get my hands on this questionnaire. I wasn't going to fill it out, oh no. I wanted to turn it over and write My Revenge.

My Revenge would be epic: a scathing indictment of The Company and The Hick and a recount of all the stupid, stupid things that had happened that day. As we headed back to the office, I started to formulate it in my head. It would be glorious. I'd start off with "I went to college..." yeah, that's good... then I'd segue into The Hick... and then I'd tell them about the firefighters and the bullshit we went through and how the job isn't even a job since you're barely getting paid. I would make them cry.

I may have been delirious. In fact, I know I was. I know this because, in between these mental acerbic declarations, I kept nodding off in Asian Johnny Cash's passenger seat.

We got back to the office. I got out of the car and smiled my best dastardly smile at The Hick. I couldn't wait to tear this guy--

"Okay, guy," he said. "Thanks for coming in. Good luck with your job search."

Wait... what? Which I conveyed by saying: "Wait... what?"

"Good luck," The Hick said. "Thanks for coming in. We're done for the day."

"But... what about the questionnaire?" My rue-the-day masterpiece was fading fast.

"You don't need to fill that out."

"Oh..."

"Good night! Thanks for your work!" he said. The Hick, Asian Johnny Cash, and The Austrian all headed inside.

I limped to my car. I got in, turned it on, and drove away.

The whole way home I listened to NPR and thought about the day. After an entire day of bullshit and frustration and wastes of time, I hadn't even been offered the job. I kept thinking "I went to college" and grew angrier and angrier. Those monumental asshats hadn't even let me have my half-hearted retribution.

Fuck it, I thought, as I pulled up in front of my house. That's what the Internet is for.

The Hick and I Part One: Hubristic Folly

2009-11-03T15:07:00.000-08:00

I went to college.

This isn't the first thought I had as I climbed into the front seat of a Asian Johnny Cash's Ford Mustang. No, the first thought was a folksy bit of wisdom I once had the pleasure of hearing a friend's grandfather uttering: "Like tryin' to fit five pounds of shit into a three pound bucket."

Five pounds of shit. Three pound bucket. In a way nothing seems more quintessentially American than this statement. For starters, it's impossible, obviously. But, why should that stop anyone? After all, this is America, the land where impossible things are possible: revolutions, civil wars, free speech, individual liberties, and the turducken. Pound that shit in, I say, we can make it work.

Except in this instance. Ford Mustangs, and really all sports cars in general, were not designed for people of my girth, to be politically correct. To be politically incorrect: my fat-ass (the proverbial "shit") will not conform to the interior of a car made for skinny people (the proverbial "bucket") who always, seemingly, are on their way to the beach or some other such place where abs glisten like the diamonds of King Solomon's mines and the bodies are rivaled only by the extra's casting department of The O.C.

So, no, I went to college was not my first thought. It did, however, become the dominant thought throughout the day. A day that started so well and quickly revealed itself to be a harsh reminder of what having a degree in a liberal art gets you.

THE BEGINNING (Or: How I Learned To Start Worrying and Hate Alarm Clocks More So Than I Already Do)

It was Monday, November 2nd, 6:14 a.m. and I was having a grand ol' time, not harming anybody, galloping through fields of barley somewhere in the Midwest atop the back of some kind of woolly mammoth/rhino/gorilla hybrid with wings. I was just about to best Joe Lieberman in a joust over universal health care and the right to take Christina Hendricks' hand in marriage when all of a sudden, from the northern sky, came the shrieking portal of Sony, beckoning me back to the land of the waking. I said "Adios" to Joe and shrugged to Christina and the mammorhinrilla took off and the day began.

6:15 and I was already grumpy.

But that isn't unusual for me: I'm not a morning person. Then again I'm not an afternoon person. Or even a night person. By and large, I'm not a person who should ever be woken, for anything, ever. Just let me sleep. I am happy there.

The kicker of it though was the fact that I couldn't even indulge my grumpiness. I had to be upbeat, and happy, and determined, and full of positive self-affirmations. In other words: I had to be an entirely different person.

Why? Because on that Monday I had a job interview. But it wasn't some bullshit "first interview" waste of time. No. This, ladies and gents, was a call-back interview. That's right. No more of any dinky, bring-a-copy-of-the-resume-that-you-already-emailed-but-we-won't-bother-to-print-out-because-we're-just-that-awesome, check-in-with-the-receptionist-who-has -you-penciled-in-as-"Roy," sweat-bullets-for-25-minutes-even-though-you-were-there-on-time, first interview shenanigans. Clearly, I had impressed the good people at The Company (I'm going to try and refrain from mentioning any real names, but if you ask me in person I will gladly tell you) to be invited back for a second interview.

The thought did occur to me, as I pulled onto the parking lot known as the southbound 5 freeway at rush hour, that I didn't really say much of anything during the first interview, mainly because it lasted all of five minutes.

The first interview had taken place a week previous. Here's what happened there: I walked in on-time (but clearly not on-time enough since there were still 10 people ahead of me) and everyone in the waiting area was around my age and were either engrossed by magazines that promised to reveal the courageous battle of Farrah Fawcett's adult children or they were entranced by the classic piece of American cinematheque known as Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen playing on the television. Thinking this was some sort of primary psychological test, and realizing that I had left my library book in the car, I decided to forgo both of these options and proceeded to stare blankly out the window. When I was called in for the interview, the woman spoke very fast which was fine since I countered her every speedy proclamation with a sublimely charming and businesslike display of stuttering and complete lack of eye contact. Also, I'm fairly sure I had ketchup on my face the whole time.

Irregardless, as I careened down the freeway at the break-neck pace of 23 miles per hour, I arrived at the only logical conclusion: I must retain some sort of inherent employable quality. My person must give off an instantly marketable musk, a sparkle of self-starter go-getter-ness mixed with a dash of commitment to excellence and a soupçon of "Hire this guy, now!" I am money, baby, pure money. And now I will finally make some. Probably with benefits and a secretary. It'll be like Mad Men except without all the sexual harassment and slightly more boozy board meetings! Adama-rama, let's rock this show!

And then I looked at the clock and realized I was late. I had just pulled off the 101 when my phone rang and an equally fast-talking secretary asked me if I was on my way.

"I-I-I-- yes, ma'am, I'm f-five min-minutes away," I said.

"Okaygreatseeyousoon." Seriously, they must make everyone employed by The Company take a "How to Speak Like Six from Blossom" class.

THE MIDDLE (Or: The Hick Makes Himself Known and I Put Up With Motormouths)

I parked the car, jogged to the door (which looks super professional in slacks and a blazer), took the elevator up, and I had arrived.

"Where's my paycheck at?!?" my inner monologue screamed as I walked in the door. My inner monologue sometimes takes on the persona of Tracy Morgan.

Seated around the room were slightly-less-than 10 people, again all around my age. They all looked... what's the polite way to say this... there isn't any. They all looked stupid. Really stupid people are what they all looked like--incredibly gullible, young people who were very stupid. Why I thought I was somehow smarter than them, I don't know. But that was the first time the I went to college thought popped into my head.

In the interest of full disclosure (also full schadenfreude) my superiority was and is completely ill founded, because as I walked in I was handed a form to fill out. The form read something along the lines of I would be participating in a day-long training session and it was completely voluntary (which is ridiculous, really, since nothing is voluntary in a job interview--you either do it or you don't get the job. If it were voluntary, then I would opt to skip the interview, the job itself, and go straight to retirement and pull down a fat retirement bonus and 401k). Now, the form didn't specify when the day-long training would be and, naive goofball that I am, I thought they meant that if the second interview went well, then I would be called back to take part in the training.

I'm an idiot. But I still had hours to realize that.

I was called into a small room by a man who (sur-fucking-prise) spoke around the same speed as Christie's auctioneer. We had a very brief conversation, meaning he asked me how the drive was and by the time I decoded his rapid-fire question and spat out "Fine" he had already asked me, like, three other questions.

He closed the door to the room behind us. This was where I met The Hick.

The Hick has a real name, but I honestly don't remember it. "The Hick" moniker didn't come till later but right away I could tell there was something about this guy that just screamed "yokel." And not in one of those salt-of-the-earth ways that conservative talking heads love to fetishize. He just seemed like the type of guy who possesses no sense of irony at all whatsoever (I turned out to be spot on about that). Fast-Talking-Boss-Man told me The Hick would be supervising and training me for the day.

I balked at this, and they probably saw it. At no point was I told that this "second interview" would be a training day nor had they told me it would last the entire day. For a second, I wondered why they hadn't made that clear. Then I worried that perhaps they had told me, but since they speak at a speed that only the most devout Red Bull drinker can understand, I had not understood them. But, no, they hadn't. Know how I know? Because I realized that they hadn't told me anything about the company. I knew they were a "marketing" company, but other than that the first interviewer just spewed a lot of buzzwords like "motivated" and "communications" and "clients" and "assembling promotions." I knew nothing about what the hell kind of job I was up for. That was when I started to worry.

The sudden realization that I would be stuck with The Hick for the rest of the day was disconcerting, to say the least, but I figured this was the closest to employment I had been in months. We left the building and went back to the parking lot.

"So, you have a copy of your resume?" The Hick asked once we were situated in the very professional surroundings that is the space between a Honda Pilot and a PT Cruiser.

"Wait, what?" I said, which, really, every potential employer wants to hear. No, I didn't have a copy of my resume. This was not because I'm stupid (although re-reading this makes me think otherwise) it was because when the secretary had invited me for this "second interview"/training day/I-just-got-totally-bamboozled-didn't-I? festival I had asked her, precisely: "Should I bring anything? Another copy of resume?"

"No, no," she said. "We already have your information on file."

And they did. In fact, if you count the one I emailed them when I responded to the online ad, the one I handed to the other secretary and the one I gave to the first interviewer they had my information on file in triplicate.

"No, sir," I said. "I was told I didn't need to bring another copy."

"So you don't have a copy?" The Hick asked.

"No, I'm sorry."

"You really don't have one."

"The secretary told me that my resume would be on file."

Now it was The Hick's turn to balk, which just made him look more Hick-ish.

My musk of marketability, my dash of employability was fading quickly. Now, I just smelled like Old Spice.

In his defense (and this will be the last time I defend him, as you'll see) he was pretty cool with the whole thing. He asked me where had I worked before and what I liked about it and some basic questions.

I was still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I would be gone the whole day. I needed to clear this up.

"Sorry, sir, but are we going to be training the whole day?"

"Yep. We're going to Slauson Avenue." (Note: despite living near Los Angeles for almost ten years, I retain little-to-no geographical knowledge of the city proper. So if the name Slauson Avenue is familiar to you then you're reacting how I should have reacted upon hearing the name for the first time.)

Instead, I went: "Ah. I should probably move my car then."

And move my car I did to a side street about two blocks away from the office building.

When I got back, I met the rest of the cast of characters.

First there was a guy who I immediately branded Asian Johnny Cash. Asian Johnny Cash wore all black, drove a black Ford Mustang, and had the quiet, intimidating disposition that seemingly all county-western singers pre-Garth Brooks managed to retain. He regarded everything warily and had the appropriate reaction when he heard where we were headed, which was: "Aw, shit."

I called the other guy The Austrian because he had an accent and I thought it was Austrian (I was right). He talked more than Asian Johnny Cash but rarely said anything worth listening to.

I should note, just so I don't come across as a total prick, that these three also clearly forgot my name within five minutes of meeting me. For the rest of the day I was referred to as "Hey" or "This guy" or "Man." I can only imagine what stupid nickname they gave me, but I'm hoping it was something along the lines of Fatty McSchmuckschmuck, as that would have been the most accurate.

"We carpool," The Hick told me as we headed over to Asian Johnny Cash's Mustang.

Suburban flabby-guy shithead that I am actually had the thought: "Oh, how green."

We were off. It was 9:30 in the morning. And I still thought things would turn around at some point.

I'm going to stop here for now. There's a lot more to this story (including run-ins with all manner of fascinating people and an instance in which I almost push The Hick into traffic).

Check back in a few days for the rest. Same Quorum time. Same Quorum address. Same Quorum humiliation!

For now I'll just say:

TO BE CONTINUED...

The Ubiquitous Halloween Post

2009-10-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know, I graduated from college about 18 months ago (yes, fellow grads, it really has been that long) with a very valuable degree in English with an Emphasis on Creative Writing, which probably explains why I retain the odd fascination with notebooks and pens that I do.

Creative Writing majors are forced to do many things, some of which seemingly have nothing to do with actual writing. A lot of it has to do with reading your peers work, often while half-watching an episode of Arrested Development on your computer (this fact probably explains why so many of peer reviews contained a variation of the phrase "I feel as though Character X would be more believable as a rogue agent of the Intergalactic Initiative and leader of the Time Scouts if you worked in a zany uncle character who turned blue at odd intervals.")

Anyway, some of you may be wondering, "Okay then, Snobby McDouchenozzle, what grand works of fiction did you write while holed away in your Bay Area ivory tower of judgment and day-old pizza?" Well, look, obviously I am no Jonathan Safran Foer or Michael Chabon or Valerie Bertinelli or any of the great writers and thinkers of my time. Much of college was spent scrambling to read the week's reading assignment while still reading lots of Gaiman, King, Link, Hill, and Pratchett--all solidly genre writers.

Alas, with Halloween around the corner and all the blogoplane alight with "Decorating Tips for the Holidays" and "Best Gore-Fests of All Time," I decided to join the chorus poorly-worded puns and whatnot.

So, girls and ghouls, pre-scare yourself for a momentously monstrous macabre tale of terror and join me as I sin-troduce some short-short stories I wrote back in cruel-niversity.

Ahem... I will stop that now, I promise. The first is called "The Vulture."

The Vulture

Ow. Ow ow ow. That really hurts. Do you think you could stop doing that please?

Hmm… no.

But you are eating my eyes.

That’s what I’m supposed to do. They are quite delicious.

Right, I understand.

Its just—

Just what?

No, no. Its silly. Please continue.

No, really, what? I can’t eat your eyes until I know what. Come on, then. Look, okay, right? Show of good faith. I will stop eating your eyes. So you can tell me.

Well, that’s very kind of you.

Oh, its nothing. Please, lets not get formal with each other.

Of course not. I guess what I was going to say was, well, I mean we hardly know each other, do we?

I suppose we don’t. But then again I’ve never known any of the names of the things whose eyes I’ve eaten.

So, you’re a vulture, then?

Yeah, suppose so. And you are… wait don’t tell me. A bear? A bear?

What? No, I’m not a bear. I’m a person. A human. A living breathing—

Eh, eh, eh, hate to correct you there, mate. You’re not so living and/or breathing anymore.

Oh right. Yes, yes of course. I had forgotten.

No matter. I wouldn’t eat your eyes if you were living. That’d just be cruel.

I didn’t know vultures were so kind.

Well, you probably didn’t know vultures could talk either did you?

No, can’t say as I did. So, if I’m dead, how am I speaking?

Dunno, friend. There’s very little that happens at this stage that makes any sense at all.

This stage?

The end.

Do you have a name, vulture?

No, can’t say that I do.

Can I give you one?

Sure. But look I’m really quite hungry. And your eyes are going to spoil if they are let out in the sun any longer.

Okay. Well, I’ll call you Horatio.

Horatio, eh? Yeah, that’s not bad.

What’s your name then, friend?

It was Winston.

Hello, Winston.

Hello, Horatio.

I’m going to eat your eyeballs now.

Bon appétit.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that. The next is called "Dear Nana."

Dear Nana,

Mom says I have to write to you and say thanks for

I am writing to you to say thank you for my Christmas gift. It is very nice and I like it very much. How is Granddad? How are Boomer and Mickey? I was sad to hear that Mickey ran into the nettle patch. That must hurt a lot.

Thanks for my Christmas gift, Nana. Even though I asked you for a skateboard. Where did you get it? Mom says it must have cost a lot because of the engraved W on its lid. What does that W mean? Mom says that she used to have a box just like it. But I don’t think she did. I am going to tell you something about that box, Nana, even though Mom says I shouldn’t because she thinks that I am just having nightmares.

After you left Mom said me and Brian had to move all our presents out of the family room. I moved everything upstairs except the Nun Chuks Uncle Pete gave me. Mom took those away and hid them in her closet. I went to bed that night with all my new presents and couldn’t wait to wake up the next morning and play with them.

I put the box you gave me at the bottom of my bed, where my feet stick out. When my feet would touch it, it felt very cold because the whole house gets very cold at night.

I was sleeping fine but then I woke up at 1:34 in the morning. I could hear Mom and Dad downstairs watching TV. I thought my feet were on fire, Nana. It was weird. I hopped out of bed as fast as I could and the cold floor hitting my hot feet made them hurt a little bit. But I didn’t think about it very much.

The reason I didn’t think about it very much is because I couldn’t stop staring at the box you gave me. From between the wood pieces there was this red light pouring out. It was freaky. But I wasn’t real scared because only kids get scared at stuff like that. I was breathing really fast and even though it was super cold I was sweating a lot.

The red light from the box kept growing brighter and brighter. And then it would fade for a bit and come back even brighter than before. Brian said that when things go away and come back and go away and come back it's called “pulsing.” The light was pulsing, Nana. But I wasn’t scared yet.

I got scared when the box started talking to me. Well, actually, it didn’t say anything at first. It just laughed. A deep, grown-up laugh. But not like how Dad laughs when he reads the Sunday comics. It was a laugh like how the kids at school laugh at me when they trip me at lunchtime. It was like that but scarier.

And then the voice said: “They cry in the dark, so you can’t see their tears.”

And then it laughed some more and said: “Hey, kid. Know what that’s from? A song. A song called ‘Hell is for Children.’” And then it laughed even louder than ever before.

Then I ran down the hall and into Mom’s room and found where my Uncle Pete’s Nun Chucks were and ran back down and told the box to shut up! Mom and Dad must've heard all that running because they came up the stairs and yelled at me. I told them about the box but they said I was just dreaming.

I put a lock on the box the next morning, Nana. I don’t want to hear it ever again.

Love, Marty.

Well, that's all from me. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Halloween. Actually, forget safety--be ridiculously reckless as that is, usually, more fun. If you hated these stories (or particularly enjoyed them) please leave a comment below telling me what you thought. There's probably a bite-size Snickers in it for you.

Happy Halloween!

Captain Awesome's Top 13 Reasons Why The Youth Of America Should Watch John Carpenter's Vampires And Not The Vampire's Assistant

2009-10-13T21:08:00.000-07:00

On October 30th, 1998, a little film that could (but didn't feel like it) hit theaters with a resounding "meh." That film: John Carpenter's Vampires. And while the rest of the theater-going public wisely surmised it was little more than a cash-in on the current vampire fad that was sweeping the nation, one 12 year-old boy in the audience thought it was the greatest fucking movie ever made and that launched him on a quest to defend its merits well into his adult years. That little boy's name was Captain Awesome and you will address him as such.

Eleven years later, in the midst of yet another vampire craze, a little movie that won't (because I say it won't) will hit theaters. That movie: The Vampire's Assistant. Being billed as Twilight (the little movie that doesn't put out) for boys, The Vampire's Assistant is (hopefully) planning to ditch the glitter and breathless melodramatic overacting for... John C. Reilly as Phil Spector, I guess.

Apparently, Salma Hayek is in this movie as well, which is stupid because she's already been in a vampire movie. If you don't know which one, then you were never a teenage boy.

Anyway, kids today are stupid. And it is up to us (re: me and Captain Awesome) to make sure that instead of seeing this overproduced schlock, they buckle down and watch John Carpenter's Vampires. Why? Well the reasons are 13-fold and follow below. Teachers and parents should feel free to use the subsequent list as a handy teaching aide and make it an essential element in their daily lesson plans.

13. James Fucking Woods. Which would you rather see, young ones: John C. Reilly slumming it in a gaudy costume that looks like something several dozen Muppets had to die to make or James Woods in a leather jacket, brandishing a crossbow and deliciously devouring every last bit of scenery that is available on the set? There's a correct answer here.

12. Strippers. You're 12. You've never seen a breast. This is your opportunity to be, like, at least six months ahead of your friends.

11. Viscera. At one point in Vampires, the big, bad vamp shows up and proceeds to slaughter his way through the entire vampire-killing team, in a glorious rampage of blood and guts. It's awesome and features a guy being split in half and gushing blood. If you don't believe me, go here and fast forward to 8:40. Totally NSFW, in case you didn't figure that out already.

10. This exchange between Jack Crow (James "Chew Chew Om Nom That Is Good Acting" Woods) and some dude playing a priest.

Jack Crow: You ever seen a vampire?

Father Adam: No I haven't.

Jack Crow: No... Well first of all, they're not romatic. ... Garlic? You wanna try garlic? You could stand there with garlic around your neck and one of these buggers will bend you fucking over and take a walk up your strada-chocolata WHILE he's suckin' the blood outta your neck, all right? And they don't sleep in coffins lined in taffata. You wanna kill one, you drive a wooden stake right through his fuckin' heart.

9. The Soundtrack. If you don't know already, John Carpenter is legendary for composing the music to his movies. Ever hear the score to Halloween? You can thank him. Carpenter formed a band for this movie called The Texas Toad Lickers and the group crafted some of the most awesome quasi-western, mariachi-tinged rock that serves as a perfect complement to the film's sun-soaked desert backdrop. Listen to "Cruel Highway" and try your damnedest not to picture an orange sun easing itself at dusk into the scorched earth. Sadly, the soundtrack is hard to find now, but all the songs are available for streaming on YouTube. Listen to "Cruel Highway" here and "Stake and Burn" here.

8. Strippers. I can't believe you are still reading this list, kid. You could totally be looking at boobs right now.

7. Sheryl Lee. Kristin Stewart can go walk up someone's strada-chocolata. Sheryl Lee is damn sultry.

6. Daniel Baldwin. I bet you didn't know there was a Daniel Baldwin. Well, there is and he's in this movie. If you had the opportunity to see a mythological creature, even a lame one, you would do it, wouldn't you? Same principle.

5. At no point in this movie does anyone sparkle. Pretty self-explanatory.

4. The Catholic Church is loaded with backstabbers. No one attacks the church anymore, and I really don't see why. This movie goes the extra five yards and casts a Cardinal as the ultimate Judas and leaves the heroes completely stranded.

3. At one point in this movie Sheryl Lee bites a huge CHUNK out of Daniel Baldwin's neck. In what is simultaneously the goriest and most amazing vampire bite scene ever, Lee freaks out and doesn't just bite Baldwin, but full-on rips a healthy Oreo-sized chunk out of his throat, spits it out, and proceeds to gulp down blood. And then, at the end of the flick, they ride romantically off into the sunset... which is weird, but whatever.

2. Strippers. You made it this far? Seriously? What're you, a eunuch?

1. James Woods. He's the world's greatest actor. Ever.

So there you have it. 13 reasons. Enjoy the film. Treasure it.

Till next time.

James Patterson Presents James Patterson's Idiom Series

2009-10-07T17:23:00.000-07:00

I had no beef with James Patterson, which I'm sure comes as a relief to him. I do, after all, carry quite the punch around the Quorum of Awesome offices, which is a totally real place and ridiculously swanky to boot. We have a fireman's pole for no reason other than just to have one. In the break room, we've got Skeeball.

Had no beef, until, that is, I learned the man once said "I just want to be the thrillingest thriller writer alive." And, with that sentence, he launched an utterly unprovoked first strike in the war against spelling and grammar. Which makes him an English/Creative Writing major's Public Enemy Number 1 and a glutton for punishment. Or at least a deserving punch line for half-thought out digs on a blog.

Unfortunately, I couldn't think of any. So, instead, I obtained through completely legal channels the titles, plot, and promotional materials to several of his upcoming novels.

And if you are thinking that this came about simply because I found this convenient list of idioms and decided that all of them sounded like James Patterson novels then you are just a big ball of Fucking Wrong. I am a merry Internet prankster. Like Ken Kesey, except without the legions of followers and rampant misogyny.

Plus, are you really sticking up for James Patterson? Did Along Came A Spider really mean that much to you? What say you, imaginary-naysayer-that-I-am-being-inappropriately-aggressive-towards, huh?

That's what I thought.

Oct. 17th will see the release of Mind Your Ps and Qs, a thriller about a young hotshot criminal profiler named John Pummerson who will face the toughest case of his career when his former partner Carl Quinton falls into a coma three days before he is supposed to testify against a notorious drug king pin. Pummerson and Quinton were the best there ever was, earning the moniker "P and Q" from "the guys" on "the force." But with Q out for the count, P will think the case is unsolvable until he realizes there is one place he hasn't looked for evidence: Q's brain. With the help of a beautiful and sassy psychic prison guard, Pummerson will take a journey into the one place secrets can't hide: your mind. Buzz has it that Brett Ratner is already attached to direct the film adaptation.

On Oct. 20th, Patterson's latest will hit the shelves. Baker's Dozen focuses on Jamie Pherson, a young hotshot insurance claims investigator, who teams up with a sassy, but beautiful supermodel-turned-psychologist to find out which of the 12 recently-released repeat offenders set free by corrupt judge Tom Baker is responsible for the recent spate of "accidental" house fires. The trail will take Pherson into the depths of the city and culminates in a magnificent monologue on the steps of the capital building. Tom Jane has already signed on to play Pherson and Jimmy Stewart's reanimated corpse is in talks to play the eponymous Baker.

Patterson is very excited about his "silver trilogy" that will be released on Oct. 22. The three-set of books tentatively entitled Silver Bullet, Silver Lining, and Silver Spoon will tell the story of Jimmy Paulson and his epic journey to catch notorious killer Wentworth Silver -- a man so rich that he kills his victims by pelting them with Sacagawea dollars and then pays off witnesses and cops. Paulson, a young hotshot detective, will be forced to team up with a snarky ACORN activist, Scarlett Wilksbury. In Silver Lining Paulson will realize how gorgeously beautiful Wilksbury is and the two will fall in love. She'll be pregnant in Silver Spoon and therefore probably relegated to a much smaller role. Patterson is calling it "his most personal work to date."

Finally, just in time for Halloween, Brass Tacks will be available to fans worldwide. Brass Tacks tells the story of young, hotshot President Joseph Pattersen, the best leader and man in the history of the entire United States and the world. President Pattersen will face many an issue pertinent to today's political climate: health care, the economy, and Twitter. He will solve all of them in the first 20 pages. But not everyone loves President Joseph Pattersen: suspected domestic terrorist Xander Tacks has launched a deviant assassination plot against the top brass of the country. The Secret Service, for some reason, remains powerless against Tacks' attacks, so it falls to The Most Powerful Man In the World and his sassy, beautiful First Lady to bring Tacks to justice. Co-written by Stephanie Meyer, edited by Dan Brown.

There you have it. James Patterson's creative work, laid out bare for all to see.

(ifyoureadthispleasedontsuememrpatterson.)

Till next time!

I Have All Sorts of Thoughts About Health Care and Denzel Washington

2009-09-27T20:40:00.000-07:00

I love movies. It doesn’t really matter what kind of movie it is. As long as it was committed to celluloid, I’ll watch the shit, but only so I can relate to my peers through the shallowest of shared experiences. Let’s get that straight: you could be my brother but unless you can name three reasons why Data from The Goonies would totally own Short Round from Temple of Doom in a backyard, bare-knuckle, Thunderdome-type situation, our friendship will probably be short lived.

Ergo, I can’t help but see the world through my very narrow prism of pop culture ties and references.

Example: Does anyone remember a not-very-popular or good Denzel Washington movie called Fallen? No? Alright, well, in this movie Denzel plays this detective who is investigating this series of deaths. And turns out these murders are being committed by this vengeful ghost-demon thing that was killed can now possess folks simply by touching someone. So the ghost-demon-killer-Glenn-Beck thing inhabits you, takes over, you kill someone and touch someone else and bam, its into this other person and you have no knowledge of what you have done.

And this stupid, stupid movie is the only way I can understand health care protestors.

I mean, they don’t want universal health care, fine. So they hoist themselves off their sisters and squeeze their lard-full asses out of their trailers and round up the most learnded folks in the county which (purely coincidentally, of course) happens to be a the sweetest, most adorable seven-year-old girl who suffers from chronic asthma, which is totally manageable and treatable if the girls parents had health insurance. Which they don’t. Also the little girl has a lisp and uses crutches. Feel bad.

So they round up this asthma-riddled, crutches-bound, lispy ball of cuteness, pigtails and hand-me-down Mary Janes, and tell her to write them a couple of signs that pithily explain their oppositions to "that there commie thing that hurt’s ’Merica and cancels every show Chris O’Donnell tries to star in."

They get their signs made, and their water bottles (rage parches the throat, guys, seriously), and their tea bags and whatever. And then one of them, because he’s a genius, decides to confirm the stereotype of every other person in American and the world and packs a fucking gun.

And you know what? That's fantastic! Seriously, well done, America. Free speech, even if it is guttural and probably a signifier you were strangled by your own umbilical cord inside mother-cousin’s womb, is a fantastic, beautiful thing. Free speech, to me, is pretty much the equivalent of Scarlett Johansson wearing a loin cloth, riding Falcor from Neverending Story while fighting the mechanized minions of Hitler bin Laden Vader. In other words: FUCKING AWESOME.

But the gun thing... I mean, that guy took a huge fucking leap of logic. Like he clearly fucking vaulted over steps B – F and landed on N was like “Firearms! Yes! Nothing says patriotism like Yosemite Sam!” But whatever. It was an anomaly.

Until it happened again.

At that point, I lose the plot. Because, literally, when I heard that more than one dude has deemed it appropriate to bring a loaded weapon to a health care rally, my brain went, “Oh, dude, no, no. See, it’s just like in Fallen. There is a literally a crazy gun-loving, pro-privatization ghost-demon making its way across the United States and possessing some of the less educated folks of this fair land and convincing them that nuanced arguments are no match for loaded automatics.”

This is my brain, people.

Because you just know, exactly like it plays out in Fallen, that these people are eventually going to go home unpack their signs and their shit and sit around the table in the special kind of afterglow that only dawns on the most self-righteous and the one dude is going to take out his gun, put it on the table, chuckle a bit, stop, look around and go, “Seriously, guys, what the fuck? Why didn’t someone stop me? Todd, c’mon, remember that time in ninth grade when you were loaded on margarita mix and wanted to go go-karting? And remember how I stopped you by telling you that maragarita mix doesn’t actually contain any alcohol and then you didn’t look like a complete asshole? YEAH, WAY TO RETURN THE FAVOR, TODD!”

Kanye West Did Something Assuredly Important

2009-09-13T21:49:00.000-07:00

Hi, there. How are you? Hope that rash is clearing up nicely. No? Okay, here's a soothing balm of comedy in the form of a Quorum update. This update is brought to you in part by a man named Rob who I used to spoon in public before English class. He was a good sport. And that's why I love Jesus.

But enough about me, Rob, our totally heterosexual friendship and my need for validation through the internet, let's talk about something that's been on my mind for, literally, the past 10 minutes.

Today Kanye West did some shit. It was different from that time he did some other shit and not as bad as that time that other shit went down.

According to "Google" which I believe is a magical portal through which you can have the interweb fetch you proverbial frisbees of information and, y'know, other things that us techo-savvy kids love. Like jet packs. And dinosaurs. And the way corrugated boxes smell. The google fetched me a news item about Kanye after I typed in "Kan yay" and it said "Did you mean "Kanye"? And I said "yes" but apparently the computer is not like the computers in Star Trek that respond when you talk to them. I had to push a button.

After I pushed a button, I learned that Kanye was very mean or something. There was some girl who was blonde and is called Taylor Swift and looks like Joss Stone but isn't Joss Stone, I think, but I'm not entirely sure what Joss Stone looks like. I do know what Joss Whedon looks like. He won an Emmy other night. So that's pretty good. Kanye rushed the stage for that as well. I may have some facts there wrong.

So Kanye and this woman who may or may not be Joss Stone had some kind of struggle over a statue of Neil Armstrong. It was possible it was not Neil Armstrong. Maybe it was Lance Armstrong. Yes that sounds more accurate.

You see Joss Stone is a bicyclist who won an award for best bicyclist and Kanye got upset about this because he has been bicycling for his entire life. Kanye then teamed up with Joss Whedon and the two bicycled up to the stage and did some sick jumps. And then they stole the award. And gave it to not-Joss Stone, aka "That Girl from Goldmember."

According to the google, Kanye has history of being angry about bicycling. There are videos of him being so angry about bicycling that he yells about it.

My first bicycle was a ten-speed.

The end of this post has been reached. Please insert side two.

And by "Please insert" I mean "I totally boned" and by "side two" I mean "your mom and sister."

Choco-tacos!

-Rory.

The Oh-Shit-I-Need-To-Update Update

2009-07-30T22:08:00.000-07:00

While rummaging through a notebook, I found this essay that I must have written a few months ago. Was going to dust if off and re-work it but I think it works pretty well on its own. Not the funniest thing I've ever written, but, hey, they can't all be winners.

Don't worry, I'm working on some more Embarrassing Tales of Rory's Shoulda-Been-Aborted Life. But for now hope this tides you over. Enjoy!

To study the nature of and purpose of alarm clocks is to study the nature of good and evil.

For starters, in the beginning, way back when when people were shitting their pants over basic machines like the Pulley and the Walkman, we have the inventor of the alarm clock. Let's call him Johnny Punctual. Under the assumption he was doing humanity a favor, Punctual creates a device, a relatively simple one, that allows its user to set it at any time said person chooses to. Which is great except that everyone does not choose when they wish to arise. Having interrupted their natural biorhythm and completely corrupting the accepted idea of REM Cycles, humans must now guess when they thing they will want to arise. They presuppose that since the sun rises, so will the body. This is a fallacious argument. However, since the alarm clock tells them it is time to wake up, they have no choice but to stumble, bleary-eyed and cranky, out of their warm position and to the nearest hot water and/or caffeine dispenser.

Recognizing the utter lack of choice and sheer idiocy of trying to guess when you will want to awake, along comes a man. Let's call him William Lethargy. Lethargy sees that the world has become totally dependent on alarm clocks. Without them no one would get to work "on time" (another completely man-made idea as it is merely an agreed upon hour at which things begin and could be changed if anybody dared to suggest such a thing) and business would not occur, traffic would lessen, secretaries would not be sexually harassed, and the economy would collapse more so than it already has. Yes, Lethargy sees the need for improvement and so he adds to the alarm clock a device that he creates with only the best of intentions and ideals; a device meant to allow the alarm clock user the option of reformulating his/her original "wake up time" hypothesis; a device meant to ease the suffering of cold bathroom floors and vitreous humor (also known as "eye boogers"): the snooze button.

Now, neither Punctual nor Lethargy were evil men. If anything, they thought they were helping humanity. And they did.

And yet, how many people curse their alarm clocks every morning. How many people feel robbed, angry, and annoyed by the klaxon-esque blaring that jostles them from their sleep? How many regard the neon-colored numbers that emanate from it as heralds of a morning that they do not want? How many consider alarm clocks to be purely and wholly and undeniably EVIL?

Which is ridiculous, of course. An alarm clock is just a machine: plastic, wires, simple mechanisms and programming that have no brains or blood or anima. We control them. If we don't want an alarm clock we don't get one or we just switch it off. But we don't.

Thus, people are evil. No, wait, sorry didn't build up to that enough. People are...

EVIL!!

Ahem. So people are evil. They are the ones capable of truly evil acts.

And since our cast of characters consists of two, let's decide which is to blame: Punctual or Lethargy.

The evidence against Punctual is, at first sight, the strongest. Punctual created the infernal machine and propagated it amongst an unsuspecting public. He should have warned us He should have warned us that these things, these machines, could and would end up controlling us, dictating us.

He is to blame, yes? Much more so than Lethargy who just wanted to improve on something that needed improving. Sort of like that guy who thought to create those rubber sticky things people put in showers so they don't slip -- a simple solution that probably saved lives.

No.

Punctual gave us a machine -- we could have controlled it but we didn't and that's on us. Our bad.

Lethargy gave us something worse: choice.

He gave us the absence of the absolute. Before him there was either awake or asleep. There was slumber or there was alert. There was black and white. He gave us the Gray Area.

Now we have: five more minutes, I'll do it later, I don't want to.

Lethargy gave us hope. The hope that maybe, just maybe, it will bedtime again soon.

Then again, I guess we could just wake up to the radio.

And Thus I Enter the Pirate Phase of My Life

2009-06-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Let's do a quick recap:

There was the Time Before the Beard. It didn't matter much, save for a few key scenes and plenty of nocturnal emissions. It was sort of like the early Harry Potter books (from what I understand, seeing as how I've never read all the books) -- you have to read them only to get to the fourth book where things become interesting and exciting.

And then there was College, a.k.a The Time of The Beard. What a glorious time it was. Wrought with peril and danger, filled with scantily clad women all bursting through their clothes just to get to me, the Bearded One, and satisfy my every carnal desire. Yes, it was glorious. I remember the time that I left my spacious San Francisco dwelling to partake of a very healthy lunch of pizza and soda, because I take my nutritional cues, as well as religious motivations and political opinions, from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Not long after I entered the pizza parlor, I was beset, beset, I say, with young, nubile, generously endowed women all hellbent on pleasing me. In a sexual manner. With their boobies and vaginas. We partook of the sexual happenings, using skills I had learned from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

That story really happened.

Then there post-college which, honestly, like everything else that entailed this post-college year, has been sketchy. Let's call it: the Time of the Facial Hair Reconstruction. Like most things in my life I can blame it all on This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad and Ryan Gosling.

This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad is not his real name. I'm not using his real name. Let's just say that his first name starts with T and ends with om Schilling. Anyway, so This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad and I were having lunch one day. Over cheap noodles and fried wonton, the discussion naturally came around to my retarded post-graduate malaise. I had no answers. He had no answers. The conversation didn't last very long.

I did, however, make a small (microscopic, practically) mention of my beard, my glorious beard, and how I had been kind of, sort of thinking about shaving it off. I mean, I was so tired of buxom female (as opposed to buxom male which basically means the Meat Loaf character from Fight Club) beard-fetishists begging for my hot love action of sex and heat. This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad then said:

"Hmm. You ever seen Half Nelson?"

"I haven't seen anything Ryan Gosling has ever done." This was a lie. I have totally seen Remember the Titans and I have probably seen the Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode he was in. But that barely counts. It's not like I've seen The Notebook. And cried over it. Twice.

"Well, Half Nelson is good, you should see it. And the whole movie basically builds to a climax in which he shaves off his beard."

This struck me, for some reason. It was like This One Motherfuckin' MIT Grad had given me a cryptic message that would solve all my problems: just shave the beard. It was like that scene in every Nicholas Cage movie where he has to find stuff out. It was like National Treasure 3: The Secret of Yosemite Valley, in which Cage and Vanessa Redgrave stumble across a book that leads them to the lost Incan treasure that is being protected by a series of puzzles carved into the walls of Old Faithful. Or something.

The next morning, I did the deed. I did the fucking deed hardcore.

And.

Looked.

Like.

This:

Ignore the smile. Focus on the eyes. Those eyes are dead inside. Those eyes are the eyes of regret. Those eyes are screaming, "Are you fucking high, you double-chinned fuck?!?!"

It was a bad move. Totally retarded, one that I am completely embarrassed about (and of course the internet is nothing if not a place for embarrassing tales). I loved my beard. It was more a part of me than anything else. My beard was comfortable and safe and warm and I swore, once the beard grew back, I would never shave it again.

And then I shaved it again. Fuck.

But this time I had no one to blame for myself. It was shaving mishap. A misjudgment of skin-to-hair and a too-deep setting on the trimmer.

At least it ain't all gone this time.

Now I look like this:

It's gotten mixed reviews. I think I look like a pirate. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Pirates can be cool. Been a while since I been on a plundering or ripped a bodice. Just sayin'.

I've also been told that it looks like I have a Bloatee. Which I think is kinda cold. But the world's a cold place. And your face could easily get frostbitten.

Unless you have a beard. Then you'll be fine.

If one thing's for sure, I don't have a 24-inch cock.

2009-06-16T19:19:00.000-07:00

This yarn is about a guy and the ways he was defeated by a town that is not entirely dissimilar to an open sore on the genitalia that is the Nevada desert.

First of all, I should've gone to Chinatown. Because Chinatown has dim sum and dragons, so really the minute you've reached Chinatown you've already won 10 points.

But, I was doing the Vegas thing, which in hindsight was not really the Vegas thing that everyone else does. I had always had a vision of what my first time in Vegas would be like, ever since I read Hunter S. Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I thought it was mandatory to blast into Vegas, narcotics steaming out of your pores like you just finished a three-day soak in a Columbian sweat-house, wearing nothing but cargo shorts and a tropical shirt. I thought they handed out convertibles and overweight Mexican sidekicks at the border. The same way Luau girls await your arrival in Hawaii to give you leis, I thought an Elvis impersonator would be standing at the Nevada border to hand you fifth of Absinthe, two tablets of LSD, a loaded Magnum Revolver, and a Tourette-addled hooker named Chastity that suffers from a deviated septum.

But they don't do that. Maybe when the mob ran the place things were different. But now it's all $7 a day for parking and middle-aged waitresses in vaguely-Roman costumes and ergonomic shoes.

Then again, I would be the wrong guy for Thompson's Vegas. An overweight, bespectacled nerd with a few too many washed-out X-Men t-shirts and an overly-cautious on-hand supply of Purell Hand Sanitizer isn't exactly the counter-culture, "fuck-the-man" demographic that Hunter S. was portraying. I didn't blast into a Vegas in a swirling storm of dust, vulgarities, and fleeing Toby-Maguire-yokels. No, I set the cruise for a moderate 65 m.p.h., wore respectable shoes, and had two different sets of directions (Mapquest and GoogleMaps, of course). In fact, I think my friend and I were listening to friggin' Keane the whole ride there. Nothing like rolling down the windows and feeling the blazing desert air whip across your arm, while Brit-pop alterna-easy-listening washes over you. Hell. Yeah.

We were meeting a cousin of mine. A good guy who suffers from the eternally unfortunate disposition being a 6'4" young-Vince-Vaughn lookalike. And, if that doesn't make you want to slit your own throat with the rusty handle of a cereal spoon, the dude has one of those lilting-yet-manly Irish accents that insures American girls will, at his first and slightest utterance, swoon, which is my very politically correct way of saying "will do anything up to and including tranquilizing him with a potent mixture of tryptophan and Cialis, drag him up to their palatial suites (yes, he gets the rich, hot ones because he's fucking Superman) and proceed to use him, in much the same way a feral dog tears apart a Cabbage Patch Kid, as their own personal rag-doll o' love."

We met with him in the casino. To protect the humble Board of Trustees of this casino, I will not use it's name. Let's just say it's named after a famous sword once brandished by a character that Sean Connery played in First Knight. Which is one of the many useless facts that I, apparently, can't un-know despite my best intentions.

What followed next would best be described in a montage of sorts: I walk in. I pay for parking I go to a buffet. I eat food from all corners of the fried-food globe. I pay for food. I go to the room. I notice the bed has wholesome and charming semen-esque stains on the sheets. I react accordingly and douse the bed in a combination of industrial-strength bleach, acetone, and lemon-zest PineSol. I gamble. I lose money. I drink profusely.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, up until I thought it was a good idea to combine recycled, stagnant air and hard liquor, I was actually having a pretty fun weekend. All I needed now was women. Because, clearly, I was in state of mind that the fairer sex would not be able resist.

And if that weren't bad enough (which it was), I didn't just want a quick lay with the nearest willing contender. Blame it on the lack of exposure to natural sunlight and therefore a dearth of Vitamin D, but, for some reason, I didn't just want a woman. I wanted a connection. I wanted someone lively and funny and ready for a life together. We would stroll through a New England Autumnal woods, clad in cable-knit sweaters, and then go home and read to each other from the latest column by Calvin Trillin. I was determined to find this girl. In Vegas. That night.

For most of that evening I had been more than happy to play wingman to the veritable Adonis that is my cousin. And he had a much simpler, more binary-based system -- talk to the ones showing cleavage, any cleavage.

And then he spotted the Bachelorette Party.

One of these fine, classy ladies (I could tell she was the classiest of the bunch because she only hiccuped once and her lipstick was smeared, but not on her teeth) was holding what I have come to call "The Chamberlain."

The Chamberlain was a two-foot-long, phallic-shaped piece of silicone, designed to do either one of two things: pleasure a woman or beat back invading packs of bloodthirsty cybernetic-werewolves.

The cousin sidles up alongside the one wielding The Chamberlain and says: "How did you get an exact replica of my penis?"

She snorted (so charming) and said, "Yeah, like I haven't heard that one a million times tonight." She then, for some reason that will remain a divine mystery for the rest of my life, looks at me and says, "I bet this is like yours though." She might have even accompanied that oh-so-subtle line with a come hither stare... or she had a lazy eye. Could've gone either way with that crowd.

Now there's me: still lost in my fantasy of tobogganing on Sundays with a wife straight out of a Ralph Lauren catalog. And there's her: still lost at the bottom of a bottle of Vanilla Baccardi. But, nonetheless, I was chuffed. And I, like a realist, started to think, "Is this her?" Of course it was! I mean, she resisted the charms of my cousin! This is straight-up kismet!

Not wanting to start our relationship off on a lie I, like a genius, responded with the very charming:

"Well, you would be disappointed."

Go. Me.

I didn't say much after that. Neither did anyone else, save for the Fail Golem that was dancing in my hair, chanting an epic limerick about how I'm a retard. But then again, I might have imagined that.

Thus my Vegas yarn comes to a close. Ah, well.

Forget about it, Jake, it's... Vegas.