don’t be a jerk

Ed O’Neill is far more interesting than I am, because I am a mere human, and he is an exotic animal that does puzzling, vaguely human-like things.

Let’s check in on the current state of Ed, shall we?

• Ed finds great significance in my flossing.
  It doesn’t matter if he’s chilling, gnawing on an old almond shell, or even sleeping under the towel at the bottom of this cage - the moment I start flossing, he hears it and he’s scrambling to the top of his cage and screaming at me. I can’t tell if he wants to be involved somehow, or if he simply disapproves of the fact that I floss. It’s a mystery.

  Brushing my teeth doesn’t seem to interest him as much, and on the few occasions when I take a dump with my bathroom door open, he just stares at me suspiciously.

• Ed has this new thing that I didn’t teach him.
  Whenever I knock on a hard surface 4 times, he stares at me, then mutters, “Hello?”

  Like I said, I didn’t teach him that. I think he learned it from the neighbors while I’ve been at work.

• Ed has another new thing that he doesn’t understand completely.
  Through some odd trail and error, Ed has developed a signal for when he’s tired of being out and wants to go back up to his home cage. He’ll crane his neck upwards, look towards the ceiling and say, “Wanna go up?”

  I’ll “confirm” it with him by having him do it a few more times, then I’ll bring him back up to his home cage. The thing is - once I put him back, he’ll keep doing the “Wanna go up?” thing, like a million more times. At that point, I don’t know what the fuck he’s asking for. Stupid animal.

So I have a friend who called me today to vent. Said friend is feeling overwhelmed and smothered by a third, mutual friend who is having a bit of a hard time in life and is in a vulnerable, needy, crazy and very self-absorbed state.

My friend, the sane one, was conflicted and even a little guilty about the fact that she was feeling overwhelmed and smothered and generally just sick of hearing it, and eventually asked me (regarding herself), “What makes a good friend?”

I didn’t have an immediate answer for that, which surprised me. It’s a seemingly simple question.

I can pull out all the Hallmark standbys about what a good friend is, but in the end I told her that I didn’t think this was the right question to ask. I think the right question to ask is, “What makes a good friendship?”

I’m not going to write an essay on that. I’m sure that’s already been done by people with much more insight than I have. And, really, I think each person has his or her own particular answers to that question.

The problem is, you won’t necessarily find the answers to what makes a good friendship by asking yourself what makes a good friend. Looking at a friend is like looking at a still picture of a single person. Looking at a friendship is like watching a movie of both people. You’ll learn a great deal more by looking at one than the other.

It was surprising to me what perspective that gave me on the the relationships in my own life. It was a new way of seeing why my good friends are my good friends.

Neil, Vince, Randy, Jae, and Randy’s Wild’n Out buddy Marques drove up to Phoenix, AZ this past weekend to shoot a short film at a Day’s Inn that Neil’s family owns.

We had a bit of a deadline cause we were making the deadline for the Sundance/Youtube Project:Direct 2009. Neil produced, I directed, Vince did cinematography and editing, Jae did makeup, hair, and costume (though I picked out the beehive wig), but the real stars of this project are Randy’s script and his and Marques’ performances.

Enjoy! If we make the top 10 finalists, I’m gonna be bugging everyone to vote for us.

This year’s turkey was a ridiculous 19 pounder that was probably the best I’ve ever made on account of my folks’ new handy dandy oven with it’s built in meat thermometer. I have been gorging myself on Thanksgiving kibbles for the past 48 hours.

Decided to hit up the Central LA Critical Mass on Black Friday to burn off the inevitable belly.

This month’s CM and the ensuing People’s Ride (basically another 10-15 mile ride for folks that don’t feel like calling it quits after CM’s 10-15 miles) were pretty brisk. I liked it personally, but these are supposed to be “no drop” rides meaning we wait up for the slowest person, and it didn’t work out that way this time. I’m fairly certain we were gradually losing riders from pretty early on in the ride.

Here are some blurry pics:

Tim and I rode out the 8-9 miles from West LA for the meetup. Our tally by the end of the night was probably 40-45 miles. With long leisurely rests, of course. There sure is a lot of drinking and smoking of the marijuana on these rides. There’s a Saturday night ride called Crank Mob which is supposed to be even worse.

Big Neil (aka “Optimific” in the LA Fixie scene.) Neil drove up from Irvine to meet up with us. Missed the start of the ride by a few minutes, but after a series of awkward phone calls and texted updates, he was able meet up with us.

God, my little pocket Canon isn’t doing it for me during these night rides. One of these days, I gotta lug out my big camera to really get some of these night shots.

And a video. 2nd street tunnel by bike mob.

…another parrot staring at a turkey. Ed has an appropriate moment of silence for his gigantic, dead brethren.

Change.

Cheesy? Yes, but damned if I didn’t get a little misty when it was official.

I really would like to have named this post “5 pieces of practical advice” but I had a hard enough time coming up with 4.

I am in no way implying that I have my shit even remotely together enough to be telling other folks how to live their lives, but I do think that I have a few valid pieces of advice in me.

So here are 4 practical (and unrelated) pieces of advice:

1. Keep a stash of petty cash in your glove compartment.
   Whenever I get some $1 bills in change from purchasing, say, coffee, food, or parrots - I’ll stick one of those bills in my glove compartment and by this I gradually build a small cache of $1 bills in my car. At any given point, I’ll have between $5-$15 in my glove compartment. This has saved my ass countless times at drive-throughs, paid-parking garages, and with the Mexican police.

2. Take the time to make a list of everything in your wallet and on your keychain
   After the last time I lost my wallet (however many years ago) I started keeping a record of every credit, debit, membership, and other type of card that I normally carry. Having had to struggle through remembering which cards to cancel once in my lifetime was enough to prompt me to spend the 8 minutes it took me to write up this list. Every few months I’ll double check and update it.

3. The worst time to get your car washed is on a Friday afternoon.
   Cause rest assured, the fella who’s getting paid minimum wage and has been working all week long and happens to be wiping your car down is trying his damndest to get the queue clear in time for him to start drinking with his buddies before the sun goes down. Find another time of the week to get your car washed. Don’t believe me? Feel free to come over any time and see the crusted turtle wax that’s been on the right side of my car for the past 8 months.

4. No matter how short the line may seem at the grocery store, don’t ever, ever get in line behind an old person.
   This will only ensure that you will have an excellent view of the line that you chose to pass up - the long line of teenagers and single men that you will helplessly watch whittle away while you slowly rot in your short line with the old person in it. That one “Who Needs a Quickie Mart” Simpsons episode was absolutely correct about this.
    
   I went to buy some milk this afternoon and made the mistake of getting in line behind 2 old people. I think that the second old person had actually started out young and had grown old waiting for the first old person to finish their fricking purchase. Hell, I had a fucking beard by the time I got to the cashier. And my milk had expired.
    
   Old people are slow as fuck. They are all very lonely and starved for conversation. And they can’t see well. And they also want to know if this gum is on sale. And they’re very sorry, they thought this coupon worked, but since it doesn’t, they don’t have enough cash so they’ll have to write a check. And one more thing - could you please get them a pack of Benson and Hedges Lights from the cigarette cabinet?
    
   This may seem like I’m talking about one old person, but I’m not. I’m talking about all of them. All old people.

I have two buddies, Neil and Mike G, that have pretty much eliminated the need for me to actually look up any info.

When I need to find something out, whether it’s about how the stock market works or how babies are made, 95% of the time, I can get an easy, well-crafted explanation from between the two of them. In the unlikely case that neither of them has a satisfactory answer for me, or if I happen to not believe them, then I might actually hit up google. (Note to self: apologize to Mike for not believing him about how babies are made. He was right. He was so shockingly right.)

One of the reasons this is the case is because they’re both smart guys with huge repositories of info in their large, smart heads. The other reason is because they’re both fastidious, borderline obsessive researchers. When either of them wants to find out about something, they really find out about it, and within days they’ll pretty be much experts on whatever they’ve decided to zero in on.

Awhile back, Neil decided that he wanted to start biking and took a week to characteristically make himself an expert on all things bicycle, then spent the past few months trying to get me to start up too. About a month ago I finally started going on rides with him, and two weeks ago I bought my own bike. It’s pretty darn fun. I’m going to hopefully start biking to work soon, cause, I’m telling ya banking accounts don’t mix so well with minivans and $4 gasoline.

Anyways, Neil, Tim, Neil’s buddy Brian, and the other Dave Lee hit up Santa Monica Critical Mass last Friday and it was a hoot. Very chill. The ride moves so slowly that you really don’t need a hardcore bike to do it or even have to be in great shape. It’s more of a social thing.

To start off, we all arrived at the Santa Monica Pier promptly at 6:30pm and did our best Obama impressions.

Dammit Dave, do the damn Obama impression!

VIDEO - Critical Mass loves circles!!!
Whenever we came upon one, we rode around it incessantly and loudly, gradually bringing down the property values of the surrounding neighborhood. It was like Mad Max, but with more hippies.

If I look embarassed it's because this helmet makes me look like a dickhead. Literally. I'm going back to REI this week to exchange it for something less dick-like.

Tim’s a good-looking guy. For some reason I have a penchant for taking not good-looking pictures of him.

Taking a break at the Ralphs parking lot.

Tim took this photo. A tranquil scene in the middle of Windward Circle.

Riding into the evening

The Marina Pier

At this point we broke off from Critical Mass and refuelled at Del Taco

...then we hit up a different part of the Marina...

...and made our way up the Santa Monica boardwalk. And that was the night.

So I’ve been seeing a new girl for the past few months. She’s a real cheery type. Ebullient and optimistic, I would even say.

She also happens to probably be the one person in the world that knows even less about football than I do.

I don’t care a lick about the Patriots nor the Giants, but I found myself getting drawn into the game more and more, and by the end I was yelling at the top of my lungs for the Giants.

Aside from having to explain to the girl what a 3rd-down conversion is, and pretty much how the entire game of football works, I also had to justify my decision to root for the Giants. She had decided to root for the Patriots.

“It’s so sad,” she said. “Why don’t you want them to have a perfect season?”

That got me thinking. Why was I rooting for the underdog? Is this a sign that I hate perfection? Does this mean that I secretly resent success in others and, maybe, in myself?

I think the reason I rooted for the Giants was because of the magnitude of the mismatch coming into the game.

Had the Patriots played another team this year, one that, at least by the numbers, more closely matched with the Pats, then I think I would have rooted for the Pats. I would have cheered them into a perfect season. In my mind, it would have been an earned achievement.

However, the press couldn’t stop talking about how much better the Patriots were than the Giants. An unlikely Giants victory would be “possibly the greatest upset in Super Bowl history”. By some accounts, this year’s Giants didn’t even deserve to be in the Super Bowl.

I rooted for the Giants because this wasn’t a fair fight. I rooted for the Giant’s because the mismatch in this game reminded me of standing up to bullies in grammar school. I rooted for them because the pre-game press reminded me of times when I strove to succeed when no one gave me any chance or credit. And I cheered for them because true, compelling, history-making drama does not come from the stronger defeating the weaker, or even from the slightly weaker defeating the slightly stronger, but in the rare times when the the child defeats the giant. The writers of the Bible decided to include the story of “David and Goliath”, not the story of “Biff and Mongo, who was a bit larger than Biff.”

So I’m not anti-success. I’m human.

We all find success in our own way. There are times in our lives when we are truly remarkable and others admire us in these best moments. And sometimes, we are the ones that watch others in their Big Show. And we’re fascinated by these moments and these people. We want to be them, and be around them, and watch them succeed, because these times are as rare as they are significant.

But these moments must come under fair and noble circumstances. They must earned. They must not come at the expense of those that remind us of ourselves - because then we abandon the allure of perfection to rally to the defense of our own…like the 2007 Giants.

That being said, I hope my Steelers make a good showing next season.