don’t be a jerk

Here’s my day:
 10:00am - I wake. When work is stacked, i.e. I’m editing a video, or rebuilding an entire wall/desk enclosure, I’m there for however long it takes me to finish. This sometimes involves 12-16 hour work days. When work is lax, I go in at my leisure and spend most of the time browsing the internet. Lately, work has been lax, but I decide to try and make it to work by the leisurely hour of 11am. I am truly a spoiled fucker.
 
11:30am - still haven’t left to work yet because since I’ve gotten up, I’ve received numerous phone calls regarding a job I booked on a TV show. I am stoked because it’s my first TV gig. I am puzzled because there are a surprising amount of technicalities and legalities to settle for a part that requires 1 line of dialogue and, I’m assuming, less than 30 seconds of screen time.
 
12:15pm - I arrive at work, looking forward to a long, leisurely afternoon of reading poe-news.com and drinking coffee. However, I am surprised to see Spiffy walking towards me as I enter my building. Turns out that the big production company that Spiffy works for is throwing a company party at the W Hotel in Westwood. He has ditched the party instead, to have lunch with me and Mike. I am puzzled and dismayed as to why he would give up the opportunity to hit up an open bar at a hot Hollywood party so that he can pay to eat food with two male friends.
 
12:30pm - Mike is not actually here, as he is in New York overseeing the workshop of his new play. Spiffy must settle for just me. We go to Chili’s. He gets a peppercorn burger. I get a mushroom swiss and a 24 OZ Hefweizen.
 
Drinking during the workday = fuck yeah.
 
1pm - lunch is well underway. I spend most of the time talking shit about people we know. I am just in that sort of mood today.
 
1:15-1:30pm - We finish lunch and Spiffy goes back to his party to undoubtedly snort high-quality coke off the rock-hard stomachs of supermodels and Hollywood starlets. I go back to work to kick it with some graduate students in Computer Engineering, all of whom are male. By the way, they’re all serious dorks. I’ve never in my life met a genuinely cool student of Computer Engineering.
 
1:30-4:30pm - Some of the graduate students of Computer Engineering are playing Quake 3 on the student network. The ones that aren’t playing Quake 3 are ogling pictures of semi-hot women that one of them took pictures of at a holiday party. I shit you not.
 
4:30pm - This is ridiculous. There’s seriously nothing to do at work today, and the graduate students of Computer Engineering are fully nerding me out. Since Mike’s in NY, I go to his place to check his mail and water his plants.
 
4:45pm - I am watering his plants. This, for some reason, is more difficult that I had originally imagined. Some of the plants are in awkward places. Others are so leafy that their leaves effectively deflect the water. I soon become frustrated. I clearly underwater certain plants and overwater others. In fact I really think I overwatered those certain plants. As I left, I could actually hear them calling for snorkels and life-preservers, but I ignored their hateful little cries and just hoped that they’d survive until Mike comes back.
 
5:15pm - I approach my new apartment (I am now fully moved in, thank fuggin gawd.) As I make a left turn into my driveway, I notice some fellow with a soda cup from Fatburger riding his bike on the sidewalk, just about to cross my driveway. We both hit our brakes to avoid the accident. I stop in the middle of the road. He, however, goes flying over his handlebars and fully face-plants. His Fatburger soda explodes onto the sidewalk.
 
Still in the middle of the street, I roll down my window and ask if he’s alright. The guy shoots up onto his feet (I now notice that he is fairly scruffy and crazy-eyed) and yells, I shit you not, “A SYSTEM OF CHECKS AND BALANCES!!!”
 
I have no response to this. I start looking for my pepper spray.
In fact, he bellows a few other things, which I don’t really catch as I’m still processing his non-sequitur about checks and balances and realizing that I don’t actually own any pepper spray. At some point he screams something that sounds like, “Freedom of [unintelligible]“. I would imagine that the garbled word would have been “speech” but I don’t think it sounded anything like that.
 
He finishes his diatribe, nods at me authoritatively, gets back on his bike, and rides off. He does not retrieve his Fatburger cup.
 
6:00pm - I have dinner with my friend Jane, visiting from Florida. Jane is an actress who used to be a TV news reporter. Before she was a news reporter, Jane was a model. Before she was a model, she was a beauty queen. Jane is also one of the most hard-core Christians I’ve ever met. I truly consider Jane one of my closest friends, and I am truly puzzled by the fact that I have no desire to sleep with her (not that it would ever happen). Maybe that’s why we’re such good friends. But maybe it’s because she’s such a hard core Christian, and that, quite frankly, scares me a little.
 
8:15pm - I get a call from an old friend, Clark, whom I haven’t talked to in about a year. Clark is one of the most uncomfortable people I know. He is also one of the most unfortunate. You know those people that just can’t seem to get a break? Well, Clark is one of those people.
 
The last I had heard from him he was in debt. His sister had had some sort of unexpected seizure and by the time they had found her, the oxygen deprivation had caused her permanent brain damage. Because of this she is living in a vegetative state. The responsibility of her care has fallen upon Clark because his father was, around the same time, diagnosed with terminal cancer. By the time they discovered it, the doctors figured that he had about a month to live.
 
As I am talking to Clark, I find that, his father did indeed pass away about a month after his diagnosis. Clark is even more into debt due to medicare costs for his father and sister.
 
But talking to him, Clark sounds the happiest he’s ever sounded. He has attended a Landmark seminar, which has changed his life. Turns out that he also wants to invite me to a Tuesday night meeting. I turn him down before he even gets a chance to explain what it is. I’m happy Clark is so happy, but I suddenly get a strong gut feeling of the intense religious retreat my parents had sent me on five years ago.
 
Still he does sound the happiest I have ever heard him. I mean, he’s not snorting coke of the rock hard stomachs of supermodels, or drinking large amounts of beer in the middle of the day, but he sounds like he’s doing alright, you know?
 
2:30am - Finish writing blog entry, and finally get to sleep. Wonder how Mike is doing. Wonder how Clark is doing. Wonder what supermodel Spiffy is passed out with right now. And just in case there really is a God, I say a small prayer asking forgiveness for joking about wanting to sleep with one of his biggest fans.