You Know What This Town Needs?

I went on a long walk today instead of going to the gym. Where they want to take my fingerprints. And I had a few thoughts about how to improve the city.

   Moving sidewalks. I'm walking for my health, but I do get a little tired now and then. If we had Jetsons-style moving sidewalks I could take a breather when I needed and still make progress to my destination.

   Refreshments. Just like they have for marathon runners, only good. Not cups of warm water, mugs of ice cold beer. And bowls of pretzels. Maybe some Cheeze-Its if that's in the budget.

   A ban on creepy people. No hard-bitten strung-out broads driving beat up panel vans, no extra-hefty gentlemen carrying tiny little dogs, no Eurotrash holding cigarettes the wrong way and giggling in their mother tongue, all those people are up to no good and they should be prohibited. Possibly flogged.

   Conversely, we need more crazy conspiracy people. The kind who will hold an earnest conversation with you about just why the aliens are coming for Jesus and give you a pamphlet to prove their point. But we need to put them all in one place, maybe right by the pawn shop. They can fight it out in a cage match to see whose nonsense wins.

   More big, goofy dogs. The kind who knock things over with their tails and don't realize it. We should be able to pet at least one big friendly dog every block.

   Street food. I noticed a definite lack of hot dogs, churros, and pretzels on every corner. Sure, the local restaurants would object, but if you're buying a hot dog from a cart you weren't going into Cheesecake Factory in the first place.

   Street performers. They could move from block to block every half hour, so they wouldn't totally block foot traffic or screw up any single business for too long. Jugglers and fire eaters draw crowds.

See? Seven great ideas just from an hour of wandering around. If the Pasadena City Council would implement just a few of these suggestions Old Town would be a much more fun place to be. They should hire me as their Idea Man. I could totally do that.

Factions

Not to overstate things, but I almost saw the end of the universe today.
   See, there are two different garbage truck companies that work my neighborhood. Okay, 'waste management experts,' or whatever you call the people who take away all my filthy leavings. One company has gray trucks with red, the other company uses blue trucks. I think my apartment uses the one with blue trucks, which is neither here nor there but I'm throwing it in for a touch of veracity.
   Anyway, the two companies try to keep different schedules on different days, so they're not trying to pick up garbage on the same street at the same time, which would be no good for anyone.
   Except it didn't quite work out that way today.
   The gray truck was on my street, rattling and banging and making all kinds of hydraulic noises as it hoisted a dumpster high overhead and upended it. There was beeping too, as the little truck that retrieves the dumpsters was skittering all over the place. Man, those guys work fast....
   As I got to the corner I saw another of those little trucks take a right turn onto my street. The guy driving jammed on the brakes when he saw the other garbage truck, and he grabbed his radio. Right behind him the blue garbage truck that was also going to turn right skidded to a stop - which, if you've never seen a garbage truck skid to a stop, is truly an alarming sight - and almost clipped the back of its little service truck. I think the blue truck sloshed out some garbage juice, because it suddenly reeked of garbage-y grossness right there. Pretty disgusting, but it has to be even worse for the guys driving.
   The blue truck backed up, which just put even more beeping and grinding noises into the atmosphere, and then the little pickup truck did the same. All the while completely tying up traffic at the intersection. Meanwhile the guys in the gray truck noticed what was going on and they seemed genuinely alarmed, maybe even a little upset, and I don't think it was because of the garbage juice smell.
   Obviously one of those trucks shouldn't have been there. I don't know who had dibs, I just know neither crew expected the other. I used to think it was just a matter of the street being too narrow for two garbage trucks at the same time, but given the reactions of both crews I think it's more than that.
   I think one garbage truck is matter and the other is anti-matter. And if Star Trek has taught me anything it's that when matter and anti-matter get together... BOOM!! Instant end of everything as we know it. That's the only explanation that really makes any sense.
   Either that, or the two crews are like the Jets and the Sharks and they have to rumble when one encroaches on the other's turf. Yeah, maybe that's it, singing and dancing garbage truck crews. Stranger things have happened.

Safe Inside Or Out In The Nuclear Wasteland

You want to have a little fun with your friends? And by fun I mean start more trouble than you thought you would or are really comfortable handling? You are? Good. Try this:
   When you're gathered around twenty or thirty people - friends, family, co-workers, what have you - get one other person and start playing a hypothetical 'what if' game. Or, as Einstein put it, ein Gedankenexperiment. What you'll do is assume that the world has been utterly destroyed in a nuclear holocaust except the building you're inside. Every door and window has been sealed, there is no way for any of the radiation to get you. You're all safe.
   However... there are not enough resources to keep everyone alive. So you and your friend have to make the tough decisions regarding who gets to stay safe inside and who gets shoved to almost certain death (or mutation) outside. And you can't do it in secret, you have to discuss this right out in front of everyone. If people ask why you're the ones making the decision just tell them because you thought of it first.
   A friend of mine and I did this years ago, between shifts at the Olive Garden. We had some time to kill and decided to rank everyone in sight according to their fitness to stay inside our non-nuclear safe zone. For a while there we had a Purgatory of an airlock, halfway between salvation and damnation, but we had to abandon that idea when the population inside the airlock was greater than that either in or out. Being that we were in our early 20's we kept a lot of the hot waitresses because we'd need breeding stock to repopulate the Earth when the time came, and we kept a few of the smart guys because they'd be fun company, and then most everybody else we shoved outside. We kept only one guy in the airlock, so he could run outside and repair the antenna when we needed him to.
   What for us was a way to kill ten minutes turned into a days-long back and forth, complete with negotiations and pleas and backstabbing mutterings. Our population grew from just those people we could see that afternoon to the entire population of the restaurant, cooks, bus boys, waiters, cashiers, bartenders, managers, regional mangers, absolutely everyone. People really got into it, with those we kept inside very proud and disdainful of those outside, and those outside eager to make their case as to why they should stay safe and become part of the 'in' crowd. Those we relegated to the wasteland eventually decided they were going to form a radioactive mutant army and come back to storm the restaurant and take it by force. Until we pointed out that, because they would be contaminated by radiation, if they did breach the walls they'd just be turning the last hope for non-mutant humans into more nuclear fallout. And then we told them their lack of foresight is what made us put them outside in the first place.
   It was a very telling exercise in human nature, one that took us entirely by surprise. Who knew that people would take it so seriously? And, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, if I'd been a little quicker on the uptake back then that whole business probably could have gotten me laid.
   Ah well, live and learn.

Our Hero Returns

Captain Grant Manley gazed out across the stark Venusian landscape, ready to spring into action in the event one of the degenerate insectoid natives had survived the assault launched from the USS Victorious. The sulfurous volcanic winds blew hot and fast, but Manley kept cool and calm in his skin-tight pressure suit, supplied as it was with patriotic Earth air and kept at a normal, non-degenerate Earth temperature.
   "I think that's the last of them," Manley muttered, though he still kept an eye peeled. "Looks like we taught them a lesson they won't forget."
   "You do good work, Grant," Estelle Sparks sighed. She ran her hands along his wide shoulders, which bulged and rippled with muscles even through his pressure suit. "And I don't just mean slaughtering aliens."
   "Aren't we the aliens here?" Teddy Courage asked. The Captain's trusty cabin boy, Teddy took Manley's depleted Q-ray blaster and replaced it with a fully-charged one.
   "Nonsense, my boy," Manley chuckled, gesturing at the ochre plain littered with the remains of chitinous exoskeletons. "Look at them, with their compound eyes and six legs and those disgusting mouth parts. Why, you can blow three legs off one of those grasshoppers and they still keep coming. That counts as an alien in my book."
   "Grasshoppers," Estelle mumbled, the term the Earth Council troops used to refer to the indigenous Venusian lifeforms. "Why can't they be more like us?"
   "Some day, the good Lord willing, they will be," Manley said, his hand casually draping around Estelle's waist. She sighed.
   Teddy moved between Estelle and his Captain, pressing his fingers hard into Manley's shoulders just the way he liked. The way Estelle could never get right.
   "But this is their planet," Teddy insisted, "we're the invaders."
   "We're only here to win their hearts and minds," Manley reminded Teddy. "And to bring civilization to this backwater cesspool of a planet."
   "Didn't they have a thriving civilization before we got here?" Teddy asked. "Aren't we the ones who blew up their cities and killed thousands of their people and ruined their infrastructure?"
   Manley turned slowly, his square jaw set, his steel-gray eyes focused with purpose. Teddy quailed under his Captain's masterful gaze and his heart flutered in his chest.
   "I'd hate to think you didn't support the Earth Council one-hundred percent, lad," Manley growled. "If you're not completely with us you're against us."
   "Isn't informed dissent one of the cornerstones of Earth Council governance?" Estelle remarked idly. "Didn't our founding fathers and mothers disagree on almost everything?"
   Both Teddy and Manley stopped and turned to the lithe, buxon, raven-haired science officer, astonished at her words.
   "I don't think I like your tone, Estelle," Manley said.
   Teddy nestled closer to his Captain's rock-hard physique. "Sir, doesn't that sound dangerously close to treason?"
   Manley nodded his head. "I believe it does, lad. Estelle, get back into the ship. You and I are going to have a talk about what it means to be a patriot."
   Pale and shaken, Estelle trudged back towards the USS Victorious landing site, her ample hips shaking a counterpoint with each step.
   "Such a shame," Manley said when Estelle was out of earshot, "she's a good officer, but a little too smart for her own good. History is what the Earth Council says it is, not what you read in books."
   "Besides, she's just a girl," Teddy said as he kneaded the knots out of his Captain's shoulders, "she'll never really understand what it's like for us men, out here, alone, on the desolate frontiers of proper civilization."
   Manley sighed and relaxed under his trusty cabin boy's ministrations. "Truer words were never spoken, lad."

What If?

What if every American just refused to go to work one day? I mean all of them (us), every one, including policemen, firemen, pilots, sewer plant workers. Everybody.

What if cars could drive themselves? Would they really do that much better a job than we do?

What if you remembered everything? For all your life. What you ate for breakfast as a three-year-old, every stroke from every time you shaved, how much water was in every glass you ever poured. The look on that middle-school kid's face when you told him his family was poor? Everything.

What if the Chinese had a decent navy? They could put a lot of sailors on the water, and a lot of Marines on foreign soil.

What if lightning keeps the Earth alive? Like a huge defibrillator?

What if someone was secretly photographing you when you picked your nose, and then they posted the pictures on line? And then what if someone did that to them?

What if you could understand what your dog was thinking? Would you be flattered, bored, or horrified?

What if you could understand what your cat was thinking?
   We know the answer to this one. You'd be horrified. Cats think of nothing but murder all day.

What if you weren't potty-trained until you were 30?

What if you could see air? What would you see? And would that make you functionally blind? And if you were an astronaut how would you see out of your space helmet, and how freaky would space with no air be to you?

What if all the power in the world stopped working? Even solar and hydroelectric? What would we do?

This Is Humor?

I don't usually watch sitcoms. I make an exception for The Big Bang Theory - because it's about my people - and I do watch Modern Family from time to time but only because Sophia Vergara is a luscious handful. But tonight I decided to watch some sitcoms that normally I avoid.
   What a colossal crap sandwich.
   Seriously, it's bad. Very bad. Alarmingly bad. Not funny in the least, which is the best you can say, and insulting to boot. I think it was Seinfeld that started the trend of not-funny sitcoms, which continued with Friends and all those related mind-numbingly dull and awful programs. But it's even worse now, if you can believe. A room full of monkeys could write better jokes and situations.
   Or someone with a blog could do the same.
   So here, with absolutely no forethought or editing, is a list of sitcom premises that would do better than everything on TV today. Or at the very least they couldn't be any worse.

A wacky short-order cook leads a double life as a cannibal chef in an underground forbidden-foods club.

A motley collection of ne'er do-well itinerant jugglers decides to leave showbiz and settle in a small town where juggling is illegal. When beanbags are outlawed, will only outlaws have beanbags?

A frazzled young weather girl tries to find love in the big city alongside her work friends, all of whom hate her guts and are secretly trying to murder her.

An agoraphobic man meets a woman under house arrest on video chat. They find love and romance through the internet, and never realize they're next door neighbors.

A Victorian-era genius inventor must deal with the chaos that ensues when his half-wit lummox of a brother moves in with his ill-mannered, dirty family, complete with adorable talking piglet. Will our hero ever perfect the steam-powered zoetrope?

   See? Just off the top of my head and any of those would be better than 'How I Met Your Mother.'
   And I swear to God, if I see any of these ideas become shows I will find you and I will cut you three ways: hard, deep, and repeatedly. Try me.

Jeez... Already?

I was walking back from the gym this morning, minding my own business, when I saw it. Then I saw another one, and another, and another, multiplying like bored bunnies. They were lining Colorado Boulevard, as far as the eye could see.
   Christmas wreaths. Green and gold and red, hanging from the recently-repainted and then repainted-again and then repainted-one-last-time street lights.
   It happens every year now but it still takes me by surprise. It's not even Thanksgiving and already the Christmas stuff is out. Time was, back in the good old days - when the US proudly interfered with other countries instead of shamefully like we do now - the first weeks of November were for Thanksgiving stuff. Kids made cardboard turkeys from the outline of their hands, they dressed like pilgrims for the school play, they made papier-mache cornucopias (and people knew what a cornucopia was), and they for sure didn't have access to Christmas stuff. You didn't even see red, green, and gold until the day after Thanksgiving. Not no more. Christmas is already everywhere, it's even hanging behind the palm trees on Colorado Boulevard.
   Actually, I saw Christmas crap in Target weeks before Halloween, so I don't know why the wreaths on Colorado bothered me so much. Probably because I can choose to ignore it in Target, or even not go into Target, but out on the street I can't help but see it. Every day.
   How much time do I have before the Santas with their red kettles and really loud bells are everywhere?

Idle Thoughts

Here are a few random thoughts I had recently, which occurred to me while I was doing other things. No, not in the bathroom, when I'm in there it's all business.
   These things are in no way connected with one another. Or are they...?

Why is it that UFOlogists on TV have crazy eyebrows? Why do they wear odd sunglasses? Why do they wear blazers that have never been within shouting distance of a drycleaner? You'd think someone on the fringe like they are would want to pay more attention to dress and grooming, to be taken more seriously.

What color would flamingos be if they only ate broccoli?

Is there such a thing as 'Professional Tiger Week?' Because I had a dream that there was, and sometimes my dreams come true.

How embarrassed would you be if someone came up to you and offered you money because they thought you were homeless, only you weren't and you had to tell them you didn't need or want their charity? Do you think you'd go right home and do laundry? Maybe shave and get a haircut?

Straight Guys Who Like Musicals

We have a newcomer to our meeting tonight. Go on, stand up. Don't worry, it's okay, you're among friends.
   Hi, everyone.
    Hi.
   What do I... I mean... I never... God this is so hard...
   It's okay, really. You know what to do, you've seen it in enough movies, right?
   I guess so. Just... oh, God, what would my father think...
    We're ready when you're ready. You just have to make the first step.
   Okay. Whew.... okay. Hi, everyone.
    Hi.
   My name is Don, and I'm a straight guy who likes musicals.
   Hi, Don...
   It all started with Singing in the Rain. You know, with Gene Kelly? I saw it when I was a kid, couldn't have been more than eight.
    Statistics show that the younger straight guys are exposed to musicals, the easier it is for them to be hooked.
    What about gay guys?
    They're born with it. Like being able to color-coordinate things and having a fabulous design aesthetic.
   Makes sense. Anyway, it was on Saturday afternoon, you know? Back when there were only three channels and after cartoons there were either monster movies, Abott and Costello, or musicals.
    Those were the days.
   Yeah. Little Rascals sometimes, too. So I was eating a baloney sandwich, with the crusts because men liked the crust, but with Miracle Whip and cut diagonally because that's the way my mother did things, when I see this guy splashing around in puddles. My mother didn't like me splashing, but here was a guy on TV not only doing it, but singing while he was doing it.
    Gene Kelly. One of the best. Singer, dancer, and actor.
    No shit. Like the Brett Favre of straight Hollywood triple-threats. Brett Favre? Green Bay Packers? Two SuperBowls, one win? Nine-time Pro Bowler?
    Hmm... doesn't ring a bell.
    Played his first year for the Falcons?
    Oh! That Brett Favre!
   Yeah. So after that first taste, the first forbidden look at a grown, heterosexual man singing and dancing in a movie, I was hooked. I saw them all, An American In Paris, On the Town, Top Hat, Shall We Dance. All of them. But I couldn't let anybody know.
    Your secret shame.
   Exactly. Every Saturday I had to tell my friends I was grounded, or that I had to help my grandparents or something. It was hard, living a double life. I managed to suppress it for most of high school. But then in college a girlfriend dragged me to see the theater department's production of Guys and Dolls, and I was off the wagon. After that, it was anything goes. All That Jazz, A Chorus Line, The Lion King. Even... God help me... High School Musical. I'm so ashamed...
    It's okay. Really. We've all been there.
   Thanks. It's good to finally be able to talk about this. I mean... I thought I was alone. I thought I was the only one.
    You're among friends.
   A few weeks ago I went to see Wicked. Great show.
    You didn't go alone, right? Did you at least go with a girl?
   Absolutely.
    Was she hot?
    Like you wouldn't believe. Beautiful eyes.
    Nice rack? Hot ass?
   Well, you know, kind of the whole package... I'm not sure I should be telling you...
    Got a picture?
   No, but she has a myspace page... wait a minute. I'm not showing you guys!
    Well, we might like musicals, but we are straight.
   Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for understanding, guys. It's good to talk.
    Seriously, about this chick you took to Wicked, one a scale from one to ten...
   Aren't you supposed to have sugar cookies?