There's Just The One

I have a theory. Well, it's more than a theory, it's more like a lead-pipe cinch to be fact. I just don't have a valid way of testing it. Yet. But it's one of those things that when you hear it you just know it has to be true.
   A bit of explanation. In one of my prior jobs I used to travel a lot. All over the continental US and then to various foreign parts of the world. So I lived out of suitcases and ate in strange restaurants and lurked in funny-smelling comic books shops in cities and towns and villages far from my home. I also spent a lot of time in airports and had a chance to see where they're different and where they're the same. And they're all pretty much the same, no matter if you're in Honolulu, Savannah, Frankfurt or Fukoka. This is where my theory comes in.
   I'm convinced that there is only one airport. Just one. Everyone all over the world uses the exact same airport no matter where they are. It's just that the airport looks different depending on which door you use to enter it. And you can't see the millions of other people using the One True Airport, only the ones who came in the same door as you.
   It's a multi-verse kind of thing, with a touch of experientialist solipsism thrown in. When you go into the airport in LaGuardia you have to traverse a certain path, travel certain roads to get there. And that path determines what the One True Airport looks like to you when you enter it. Same thing when you go to the airport in Adelaide, Australia, you have to work your way through the local environment to get there. It's kind of like solving the maze on the back of child's placemat in a restaurant; locally there's only way way to get to the One True Airport, and that one way determines how you see everything inside. So when you go to the Leonardo DaVinci Airport outside Rome all the signs look like they're in Italian. But when you go to Gatwick all the signs - which are the exact same signs - read in the Queen's English.
   That TGIF Friday's in DFW? It's the same one in McCarran. Exact same one. The burrito places are the same, the newsstands are the same, even the shoeshine stands are the exact same in each and every airport you're ever going to visit. The details just look different to you.
   You ever wonder why the janitor cleaning the bathroom in O'Hare looks just like the janitor cleaning the bathroom in Brussels? Because they're the exact same guy. It's true.
   Yeah, it's a brain-twister. But anyone who's traveled for a living knows what I'm talking about and they're with me. They get it. Now, if I can just figure out a way to prove myself right...

Buzzards

Okay, technically turkey vultures, but we called them buzzards growing up. They'd circle the thermals out in the country, waiting for something to die. Since they're vultures they're carrion birds which means they eat dead animals, but you knew that. In the mornings in West Texas, where they have to roost on the ground, you can see them standing on fence posts with their wings outstretched to dry so they can begin the day's scavenging. They're big too, like two or three feet tall. And stink... whoo boy. They're all over the countryside around Texas.
   And now, evidently, they're operating well within the San Antonio city limits.
   Time was you knew you were in the country when you started seeing buzzards. Last week I saw two of them perched on a lamp post near my house, and just today I saw two perched on a lamp post near my mother's house. Two different sets of buzzards, lurking in suburban neighborhoods.
   Unless they were the same two buzzards both times, stalking me as they wait for me to keel over from the heat...
   Ignoring my paranoid conspiracies, I don't think having turkey vultures in town is a good thing. Aside from them being terribly ugly and not at all in keeping with the non-Gothic architecture, vultures are country birds, they don't belong on lamp posts. And yet, there they are, like Beaky Buzzard* in Death Valley.
   Why?
   What has changed to bring turkey vultures into the city? And I don't mean on the fringes, I mean smack dab in the middle, with miles to go in any direction before they find what used to be their natural habitat.
   Kind of scary, if you think about it. I don't mean in my paranoid 'are the buzzards following me?' kind of way, I mean in the 'why did a species of wild animal change its habits so drastically?' way.
   Besides, they creep me out, hanging around like my street is some kind of Old West Boot Hill. They need to go find a dead armadillo or something and leave me the hell alone.


*reference courtesy of the Warner Bros Archive of Cartoons Kids Don't Watch Nowadays

Monstrous

I settled in for the night, snuggling down in my covers, shivering as I waited for my body heat to warm the sheets and pillow.
   Borzes cleared his throat, the sound rattling around the room. Borzes is the monster who lives under my bed.
   "Hey, sport," he called out. He calls me 'sport' because he can't remember my name. He drinks. "You gonna have a nightmare tonight?"
   "I don't think so," I murmured as my eyes closed. "Not much going on to have a nightmare about."
   Borzes grumbled, and I heard a few other squeaks and bubbles from his digestive system. He eats dreams, and finds nightmares particularly tasty. "Nothing? What about the state of the economy? Global warming? Your stalled career?"
   "Nope," I yawned, "all of that stuff is so far beyond my control there's no point in worrying, let alone having bad dreams."
   "Really? Not even your career?" my monster sounded both disappointed and angry. "That's firmly in your control."
   I laughed. "Hardly. Settle down, Borzes, maybe I'll have some sort of surreal Hieronymous Bosch kind of dream you can eat. You like the weird ones, don't you?"
   "I like nightmares better..." he groused. "What about serial killers? One could sneak in here and gut you like a fish."
   "Stop talking," I said.
   For a long time Borzes said nothing and I drifted down into slumber.
   "I could show you my true form." He sounded a little timid, almost frightened.
   "I've seen you," I said. "Remember, when I thought you were a mouse? Chased you with a flashlight? Honestly, you're not that scary. You're small enough to fit under a bed."
   Another long pause.
   "You're going to die alone and unloved."
   I sat up. "Seriously? You're trotting that one out? That's more a psychiatrist's couch thing than a nightmare. And it's not true anyway."
   "Ohhh..." I could hear the smile in his voice. "I got it. Something to wake you screaming at 3 AM."
   "You got nothing," I challenged, trying to sound more confident than I felt.
   "Marriage. Commitment. Kids. A house in the suburbs. Real responsibility to someone other than yourself. More debt than you have income to take care of. No more time to yourself..."
   "All right, cut it out!" I snapped as visions of kids and mortgages and college bills flew through my head.
   "Hit a nerve, didn't I?" Borzes chuckled. "Ah, I still got it. Still got it."
   "Shut up," I mumbled. I dug further into the covers. "I'm not going to have a nightmare, so you can just starve."
   "Sweet dreams," Borzes whispered as my eyes closed.

She Looks Chinese-ier

I swear by all that I hold sacred this story is 100% true. Even I couldn't make this up.
   I was in the post office this morning, mailing queries for a kid's book my writing partner and I are trying to sell. I was standing in line, minding my own business, inching forward as the clerks took the next people up.
   The lady in front of me, an older white woman, well past retirement age, tapped me on the arm and said - and I quote verbatim - 'You can go next, I want to talk to this person, she looks Chinese-ier than the others.'
   Chinese-ier.
   I guessed in an instant what her problem was, she had something to mail to China had couldn't make heads or tails of the non-English characters. But still... Chinese-ier? How do you measure that? Is it a ratio from 0 to 1, with Seal at 0 and Kim Jong Il at 1 and everyone else somewhere in between?
   She then proceeded to gesture at the other postal clerks, Asians all, and tell me 'Those other ones don't look as Chinese as she does.'
   So now I had a definition of Chinese-ier. Kind of. But, honestly, the clerk this woman was pointing to looked Korean to me. And, sure enough, when the older lady stepped up, the first thing the Chinese-ier clerk said was 'I don't speak Chinese' with absolutely no trace of an accent. So that's one big srike against the theory of Chinese-ier-ness the older lady subscribed to. And I'm still mystified by how she decided one particular clerk looked Chinese-ier than the others, none of whom were probably Chinese at all.
   But this got me wondering: do older Asian people look at me and see a 'white-breadier' version of other white guys? That I'm somehow even less funky than decidedly non-funky frat boys? That I keep pink plastic flamingos in the weedy front yard of my run-down trailer home? That I can't afford to pay my meager rent but somehow I'm always mullet-deep in cigarettes, Jack Daniels and lotto tickets? I'd like to think not, but I know in reality they probably do. I mean, I do watch NASCAR, maybe they can tell somehow...

The Stooges Gene

I went to Ikea with my sister and brother-in-law yesterday. That is apropos of nothing, except the fact that Ikea is in Round Rock, which is over an hour away. We took my nephew as well, who is a solid two-and-a-half years old and loving every moment of it. So in addition to the time we spent in Ikea, I had several hours of driving time to observe him and his reactions to things.
   I know I'm not treading new ground here, but little boys are very different from little girls.
   My nephew has The Stooges Gene, which is that genetic quirk in boys that lets them find the hilarity in noisy bodily functions. Boogers were a favorite while we were in Ikea, but on the trip back he encountered the adult male's ability to burp on command. Since he's two years old he wanted me and my brother-in-law to burp over and over and over again, which we did, and he squealed with delight each and every time.
   My sister endured silently, then called one of her friends to chat while we echoed the truck cab with belches.
   I have two nieces as well, both of them substantially older than my nephew, and both of them gifted with wickedly funny senses of humor. Neither of them, however, would have found fifteen minutes of burping nearly as funny as my nephew did, not even when they were that little. I can tell you that not once did either of them laugh uncontrollably at a burp, then demand that I burp over and over and over again. I would have if they wanted me to, but it just never came up. It's a guy thing, chicks just don't understand.
   Burps are funny. Intrinsically funny, axiomatically funny. If a dying man interrupted his last words for a burp, guys would laugh, that's just the way it is. Farts are funny too, even if you're the victim of a particularly rank one. People getting slapped in the face is funny, and getting knocked in the head with a big board is funny, and getting poked in the eyes is funny, or jabbed in the stomach or pinched in the nipples by lobster claws or having a sledge hammer dropped on your foot... the list goes on and on and on, anything The Three Stooges did is funny. Always. And getting hit in the nuts is always funny too, as long as it happens to someone else.
   The Stooges Gene. It's only a matter of time before modern science isolates it within the human genome. It's probably in the same region as the Playing With Fireworks gene and the Hey Watch This gene. Once the Stooges gene is isolated we can get you ladies gene therapy so you can share in the glory that is two grown men burping on command for a two-and-a-half year old.

Formerly Fat Comedians

I've been watching The Price Is Right off and on for a week or so. This is after Drew Carey lost something like seventy pounds this year. He's skinny now, practically a beanpole. Undoubtedly this is a great move for him, losing so much weight and keeping it off will almost guarantee him years more life with fewer problems like diabetes or joint pain, that kind of thing.
   But he's not funny any more.
   The first day I watched I wasn't sure. It has been a while since I'd seen the show, and it's a new season, things weren't 100% the way I remembered. Drew wasn't zinging them quite the way he used to, but maybe it was my imagination. I thought. So I gave it another day. And another. And another. I was thinking maybe I wasn't paying attention, or he was subtler, or God knows what. But everything else was pretty much the same, same models, mostly the same games, same wildly exuberant crowd. I can only assume that the production staff is the same, even though they got rid of Rich Fields as announcer. Same same same same same. Only the host was no longer fat.
   After a few days' viewing I reached the inescapable conclusion, Drew just wasn't as funny thin as he was fat.
   Which got me to thinking. Why is that? Why would Drew Carey be funny fat and not funny thin? Is it my expectations? Maybe. My memories of the other season and my time 'between assignments?' Maybe. But I think empirically it's the case that he's not as funny when he's thin.
   I think that whatever changed inside him - for the better, most assuredly - that led him to want to drop seventy pounds is also the thing that made him lose that comic edge. Funny comes from a place of pain, and when you smooth the edges of that pain you take the bite out of your funny. It's the curse of comedian's success; when you ease the trauma and pain of your early days you get rid of the thing that made you funny in the first place. Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Seinfeld, Ray Romano, Kevin James, it happens to them all. It happened to Drew Carey too.
   I don't begrudge him the change, but The Price Is Right just ain't the same. I guess I'll have to find something else to occupy my time in the middle of the morning. Maybe Sesame Street is on, I could use a dose of Elmo.

My Drunk Barber

I've written before about how it's impossible for me to get a good haircut. Since the quality of the cut never seems to vary, I usually decide to go with economy. As cheap as I can get away with, short of paying kindergarteners to practice on me with their safety scissors. Which might not be a bad idea, come to think of it...
   Anyhoo, I have three regular places I get haircuts, I usually frequent one a few times in a row until I get the feeling that maybe - just maybe - I might be able to get a better cut at one of the places I haven't been in a while. And then I'll go there a few times in a row. You get the pattern.
    One of places is a for-real barber shop, a tiny alcove in the basement of the YMCA (really), complete with an ancient linoleum floor, barber chairs that are just as old, and barbers that are only slightly younger than that. I've been going there for years, since I moved out to SoCal.
   Out of the five barbers who work this place, one guy, Joe (really), is the worst. I know this because I've been avoiding him for years now. The first time I saw him he walked a little funny, like maybe he'd had a stroke or something, or had some sort of neuro-muscular problem. Either way, not the best candidate for a career as a barber. But I let him cut my hair anyway, mostly because I was next in line and his was the free chair. Guys, you know what I mean, ladies, just go with it for sake of the anecdote.
   I got him the next time I needed a haircut, and he wasn't walking so funny. The cut wasn't bad, still a little rough, but manageable. I got him the time after that and he was back to his stiff-legged stagger and I got a particularly bad haircut. I started to suspect something was up. Two or three haircuts after that I happened to be walking into the tiny barber shop as Joe was walking out. It's a good thing I wasn't carrying an open flame or we would have had a fireball in the doorway made from the Scotch on his breath.
   Dude was plastered. Blotto. Three sheets to the wind. Blitzed. Polluted. Hammered. Trashed. Loaded. Ripped. Stewed. Full of Irish courage. Which explains the stumbling and the varying quality of his haircuts.
   I learned Joe's schedule - Tuesday through Friday, 10 to 3. Not bad, if you're not into making a lot of money. I avoided the barber shop when I knew he'd be there and the years went by, me without a really good haircut, but with no really bad ones either.
   Fast forward to yesterday. I needed a haircut and I stopped in at the barber shop about 1 PM. On a Friday. And who was outside talking with one of the denizens of the YMCA? Joe. And who cut my hair yesterday? Joe. He was the one with a free chair.
   He wasn't drunk. I got an okay haircut. Not great, but not terrible either.

Tales From My Past - Hulk Smash

Back in the heady days of 2007, when the nation was just beginning to understand that the prosperity of the previous five years was a lie based on a false assumption driven by misguided optimism, at Countrywide the people in charge realized there was no hiding how bad the situation was from the rank and file.
   So, like any corporation trying to seem like it was doing something, we had a meeting.
   It was an all-hands HR meeting, and I got there late. The room had filled up from the back, and the only seat left - literally - was up front right next to our Chief Leadership Officer. The guy was a tool, a complete jackass from the word go, and I had to take the bullet nobody else would. I said 'hi' as I sat down, though of course he didn't respond. I don't want to put down the dipshit's real name, but it sounded like Bichael Binston.
   The meeting started and it was the head of HR demonstrating her lack of compassion at the same time she was betraying her ignorance of finance and the mortgage business the company was founded on. A whole lot of nothing. She asked if there were any questions and Mr. Winston - oh, sorry, Binston - actually raised his hand even though he and the head of HR were practically touching knees.
   "What does the next fiscal quarter portend?"
   Say what? Did he actually use the word 'portend' in a sentence? I wasn't certain I had heard properly, but my natural hatred for this poser kicked in right then. I felt my hand clenching into a fist.
   The head of HR gave her non-answer, and then Michael - sorry, Bichael - nodded sagely, as if he understood the nonsense she was spewing.
   "That augurs well."
   Ooooooh... I actually felt my blood boil. Augur and portend? Within a minute of each other? And sitting right next to me? You have got to be out of your mind...
   I had to stop myself from hitting him. It was one of those moments where someone you hate just pushes your buttons so thoroughly that there's no other response but the physical. I had to sit on my hands.
   Later, when the monkey-spank was well and done, some of my colleagues asked me how I managed to sit next to that walking turd without hulking out. I almost didn't.

COMMUTE - there - 75 minutes - seriously, it was insane today      back - 55 minutes, like I said, insane in the membrane
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 53 days

Y2 Crazy

A friend of mine reminded me that this past New Year's Eve marked ten years since the Y2K insanity. Ten years... how time flies. Seems like it was only yesterday.
   What was I doing? Glad you asked.
   I had started a new job in February of 1999. Being the new guy, and seeing as how shit flows downhill, I got to be our department's Y2K compliance guy. Wheeee!
   At the time the term Y2K hadn't quite taken hold, that really happened over the summer when clueless media finally got in on the panic. Since the company I worked for had mainframes, and since they knew five years before they were going to have a problem, they'd already come up with their own term, Change of Century. Y2K vs. CoC. You can see the reason Y2K won out.
   Anyway, I spent about half my time from March until December documenting in detail exactly why going to a 4-digit year wasn't going to have an effect on any of our systems. I talked to software vendors, I talked to hardware vendors, I talked to programmers, I talked to administrators, I got piles and piles of supporting documentation from everybody under the sun.
   I even spent quite a while devising my own tests and verifications for systems that other people had already tested and verified. Why? Because my manager wanted it. Why did he want it? Because his manager wanted it, and so on up the line. In an amazing spasm of incompetence and insecurity, our senior management decided not to accept the results of tests anyone else performed outside the company. We had to verify the operation ourselves. Twice. Several times I spent an 'executive hour' (fifty minutes) going over my test results with a VP who clearly had no idea what I was talking about. He just wanted to be able to tell his boss he'd heard it for himself, in person.
   Fast forward to New Year's Eve, 1999. I had to be at work. Yup, despite the three-foot stack of proof I had that there would be absolutely no problem with any system I or my team touched, used, or breathed on, I had to be in the building along with about 500 other unfortunates. 'Just in case.' Just in case what they never said.
   We counted down the minutes in a large meeting hall, where they plied us with candy and caffeine. When I say I would rather have been anywhere else I really mean it. It would have been less punishment to be snuggled up to a huge, hairy murderer in prison. But I don't have that kind of luck.
   Three... Two... One...
   Everybody waited, as if the carpet were going to roll up and the ceiling would collapse. Nothing happened. The lights didn't go out, no planes fell from the sky, there was no more panic or looting than is usual for New Year's Eve. A big, fat non-event. And I wasted it being at work. I went back to my desk, did about 45 minutes of tests to verify - AGAIN - that I hadn't been lying with all the other tests I did needlessly, and then I went home.

Later that night I got a call from a severely drunk friend of mine who needed a ride home. He was so intoxicated that he fell asleep against the windows of my new truck, leaving nose and eyelash prints on the glass. Even that was more fun than what I'd been doing.

Lost In The Sands Of Time

The other day I was cleaning out a closet - more like rearranging it, really - and I found a small can of paint. So I got to thinking, somebody must have invented paint. Somewhere, some time, some dude thought that it would be a good idea to coat a piece of wood in a layer of stuff that would keep it from getting wet or keep bugs away. But that had to have been so long ago, thousands of years. We know who invented the light bulb, but there's no way we'd ever know who invented paint.
   Thinking further, I wondered what other ubiquitous things had to have been invented by people we're never going to know.

Forks
   Soap
Mayonnaise
   Thread
Coasters - the kind you put under glasses
   Ink
Boat oars
   Fences
Hammers
   Erasers, either chalkboard erasers or the ones on the end of a pencil
Buttons and button holes
   Wire

This is the kind of thing that occupies my day.

The Other Shoe

You ever get the feeling that the Universe is just biding its time before it puts the screws to you? I don't usually, but for the past few days...
   See, nothing odd has happened to me since last Monday.
   Others might count that as a blessing, but weird crap happens to me all the time. ALL THE TIME. Every day. People try to sell me stuff, crazy people think I'm related to them, birds follow me, machines stop working when I go by or ones that have stopped start working again, I overhear terrible conversations, and on and on and on. It's just something I've gotten used to, something I expect, almost something that defines me.
   And now it's stopped.
   You remember when Popeye would finally have his fill of Bluto, he'd eat his spinach, and then he'd wind up his forearm to make sure he got a really solid hit? I got a feeling that I'm Bluto, and the Universe is Popeye winding up for the twisker sock. If I suddenly dissolve in shower of light, or get kidnapped by Mole People, or suddenly become King of Prussia, don't say I didn't warn you.

Old Folks Say The Darndest Things

I read somewhere - probably Scientific American - that as people age, the circuits in their brains that keep them from saying the first thing that pops into their heads stop working. This is what gives rise to the phenomenon of Grandma cussing up a blue streak when you never thought she knew those words in the first place. Add to that the tendency of old people to stop caring what other people think, and you have a perfect storm of indiscretion. And I can tell you first-hand that this is true.
   Yesterday I was at an audition down in Santa Monica - for Fed Ex, cross your fingers - and they were seeing all kinds of people. My age, younger, older, freaky looking (not me), not freaky looking (hopefully me), short, tall, fat, thin, you name it. The fact that the audition was on a Saturday and that there were so many different kinds people meant the client had no idea what they were going for, or they changed their mind, or both. Opportunity for me in any event.
   I happened to be there with a lot of old guys. And I don't mean older than me old guys, I mean OLD guys, well over 70. While they were gregarious and friendly, they were also the most vicious bunch of SOBs I'd been around in a long time. Maybe I'm just used to the 'everybody wins' attitude in modern society, but these old guys were in it to win it, if you know what I mean. Talking about another old guy when he's ten feet away and can certainly hear, doing the classic undermining confidence tricks - 'you're wearing that?' 'nailed it...' 'you all might was well go home now' - and even trying to nudge their way up the list with lame excuses. Man, if that's what Hollywood was like thirty years ago no wonder actors are a sad, bitter, angry group.
   They didn't screw with me or anybody without gray hair, though, only with the other old guys. If I were a sociologist I might be interested in discovering exactly why that was the case. But I'm not a sociologist so I don't give a sh*t, as long as they leave me alone.
   Oh, and I got a parking ticket too. Bastard meter reader got me at five minutes over time. It's what I get for street parking in Santa Monica on a Saturday afternoon.

Sunk So Low

Everyone has things in their life that they're not proud of. Maybe you swept leaves onto your neighbor's lawn, maybe you drove in the carpool lane when you were by yourself, maybe you lied on your resume, maybe you shoplifted Reese's Peanut Butter Cups from the convenience store. Hell, maybe you robbed the convenience store for money to buy meth. Well, I myself have reached a new low.
   Last night, I watched fart videos on YouTube.
   It started out innocently enough, I was looking for clips of epee fencing (that's my sport, what I do for exercise). I went through a few of them, and then I saw this clip of farting dinosaurs available on the right-hand side. I'm not made of stone... come, on, it's dinosaurs farting. So I clicked, and that was the end of the fencing videos.
   An hour later and I still had not scratched the surface of farting videos available on YouTube. Dinosaurs, pigs, hippos, they all farted for my amusement. And the people - jeez, just try to STOP them from farting when there's a video camera around... impossible.
   I knew I had to quit watching, but every time I played one clip, there was another on the list I hadn't seen. I felt like a crack addict must, ashamed of myself but unable to stop the tragedy from unfolding. Finally I had to turn the computer off.
   I'd like to say I cried myself to sleep, but I can't. Some of those videos really are funny...

Mom Tricks

Do you know how little kids can tell you're trying to feed them something healthy?
   You won't tell them what it is until they've tasted it.
   The first time I can remember my mother doing this I was between two and three years old. I know it was then because my little sister had invaded the house, but she hadn't reached her first birthday yet. My mother put some green stuff on my plate - why is it always green? - and I just stared at it, expecting it to do something. I asked her what it was, because it certainly didn't look edible to me, I thought maybe she had gotten my plate and the baby's mixed up somehow.
   "Just try it, you'll like it," my mother said.
   I remember the words specifically, because even to this day as far as I'm concerned that phrase is shorthand for 'I'm tricking you into eating something really, really gross.' And it was zucchini, and it was gross. But because I was three-ish, I didn't really have a choice, I had to eat it. No civil disobedience in my parents' house.
   Little kids are smarter than you think, they know when you're trying to put one over on them, they just don't have the vocabulary to let you know that they know what you're doing. So if you want to really trick little kids, when you try to feed them something healthy, just lie to them. Tell them the grody zucchini is cake and then the next time you really do have cake, maybe they'll think twice before gobbling it down.

And Get Off My Lawn!

If I had any doubts about my impending old-man-ness I don't now. I'm well on my way to inch-thick glasses, a combover, and black socks with white tennis shoes. Why do I say this with such certainty?
   I involved myself with local government last night.
   My district - our district, I suppose, since I don't own it... yet - had a meeting about beginning re-work on Pasadena's General Plan. Since I'm 'between assignments' I decided to attend. Good way to kill a Tuesday night, if nothing else. Not only was I the only one wearing shorts, I was easily the youngest person in the auditorium by twenty years, not counting the city staffers.
   The attendees were not nearly as uniformly caucasian as I assumed they would be, but they were as old as I suspected they might be. I got more than one quizzical glance, then a second glance, and usually a third because I was wearing a t-shirt that had words on it. And you could see my sexy knees. Many of the 'community' knew one another by name and obviously from other city government functions, further cementing my iconoclasm.
   During the course of the hour-long meeting I was thoroughly impressed with those elected and appointed to our city government (go Councilman Tournak!!), people who are clearly not doing it for the money. But I realized during the inevitable 'question and answer' period that the main problem with community involvement is that it involves the community.
   Out of the twenty or so questions posed, only four of them were really questions rather than rambling manifestoes spouted by people who couldn't take the hint to shut the hell up. Our councilman and the city planner running the meeting were nothing but polite and deferential, which was a mistake in my opinion. Maybe I was just cranky - I really, really needed to cut one and couldn't in an auditorium full of geezers - but I felt like tearing my eyes out when some of the public were droning on and on and on and on without getting to the point. There are no stupid questions, just stupid people.
   Besides, if someone wants to make their point repeatedly and without interruption or consideration for others, they should start a blog.

Bacon Is Magic

It's a culinary axiom: Bacon is magic.
   And I'm not talking the metaphorical kind of magic, either, not the kind of 'magic' behind a home run or a the 'magic' of children's laughter or the 'magic' of a Van Halen reunion with David Lee Roth. No, bacon is real magic, like a Van Halen reunion with Sammy Hagar.
   Here's the proof - there is nothing savory that can't be made better by adding bacon.
   I'm not talking sweet. Bacon and ice cream? Probably not the best. Bacon and cheesecake? Pass
   But - bacon and pizza? Mmmmm... Bacon and fillet mignon? Mmmmm... Bacon-wrapped shrimp? Well, I hate shrimp, but people tell me it's good. Bacon and macaroni and cheese, or mashed potatoes or cous cous or spaghetti... I tell you, the list is endless.
   I will go out on a limb here and say that no one can find a savory food that isn't made better by the addition of bacon. Prove me wrong.

Things I Had To Go To Australia To Learn

I went to Australia two years ago, and it was a learning experience for us both. Here's what I learned:

You can put beets and pineapple on a hamburger and it's actually pretty good.
   I didn't know if I would like a burger that way. I do like beets, and I do like pineapple, and I do like a good cheeseburger - but all at the same time? Yeah. Good on ya, mate.

Santa looks good in shorts.
   A little pasty, but it's not the affront to my senses I imagined it might be. And there are some really cool Christmas sand castles. It's summer in December in the Southern Hemisphere, for those of you who don't know. Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, for those of you who don't know that.

Up close koalas are a little creepy.
   Sacrilege, I know, but the eucalyptus they eat don't give them very much energy, so they sleep all the time. So when they're active they have permanent bed-head and bags under the eyes. Like they're on the late shift at the cute factory.

The purple-flower trees lining many Pasadena streets are called jacarandas.
   I never knew the name of this tree until I went to Australia. I was describing the scene - much like today - where the trees are all blooming and there is a riot of purple lining most major streets (except Colorado where they tore all the trees out). My friends told me the name of the tree, and I amaze and confound everyone with that knowledge to this day.