SIGNING OFF

The following story pretty much summarizes how the past 2 weeks have gone for me. It touches on a couple of potentially offensive subjects, but it’s a story that needs to be told. I’ll do my best to make it as socially acceptable as possible.

I was running a little late to work this morning.

I had some things to get caught up on as soon as I got to my desk, followed by a meeting at 9am. That seemingly left no time for a morning breakfast… I NEED a morning breakfast… Especially if I have to sit through a meeting without falling asleep.

I raced through my morning work and was actually able to open a 15 minute window of opportunity for me to jump in my car, speed over to the McDonald’s down the street and make it back in time to eat my food before the meeting.

This was a risk… The McDonald’s in question is without a doubt the least organized and least efficient McDonald’s in the country… seriously.

They screw up my order about 60-70% of the time- I wish I was exaggerating.

Despite that I was able to pull directly up to the menu, order, and see on that little menu screen that they got it right.

There was only one car in front of me and they were at the pay window.

I pulled up behind them and waited for my turn… and I waited… and I waited.

I pulled up a little closer to try and see what was going on.

I saw five, yes FIVE workers crowded at the pay window trying to read a note that the driver of the car in front of me had handed them.

I didn’t know what to make of this… The driver was angrily pointing to the list and appeared to be yelling… I rolled down my window to see if I could hear what was going on.

Suddenly it became clear what was happening once I heard the voice of the driver… she was deaf… she was handing them a list for her order… the workers couldn’t read it because, well, I’ll just say that I have had better luck in this place when I order in Spanish.

My car sat in line for another 10 minutes before I got to pay my money, THEN I had to wait again as the “hearing challenged” person went through the whole charade once more at the pick up window.

When I finally got my food, it was correct, but I had only approximately 2.6 seconds to eat it before getting back for my meeting… which was a bad thing because I like to chew…

So my question is this: If you’re deaf- what the hell are you doing going through the drive through window!?

I’m all for supporting the right of people who have special needs… park up front, get the spacious isle seats at the ball game, get your own bathroom, your own entrance, whatever… I’m even okay with the brail writing on the buttons of the drive-up ATM machine… but here’s the deal- you can’t be deaf and go through the drive through.

It’s just wrong. You slow everyone else down and add an extra obstacle for McDonald’s workers to deal with. And let’s be honest, the last thing the workers at McDonald’s need is an extra obstacle. Life is kicking their ass already and then you have the nerve to try and go through the Drive Through with your little note, well no! N-O!

I’m sorry but unless you can come up a designated order person to help you out, you have to go inside!















[sorry ladies, but no drive-through for you]

Would You?

A magical red button sits on a table in front of you… When the button is pressed, one million dollars (tax free) is automatically deposited into the bank account of the person who pressed the button… That’s the good part.

The bad part is- a totally random person in this world will lose his or her life.

Would you press the button?

A friend of mine asked both Moe Greene and myself that very question not too long ago.

Moe asked a few questions, debated the options aloud, made a stupid comment about “what if you knew the person that died?” and then finally decided that he would press the button… I guess in an attempt to justify his answer to those present, he made some BS statement about how part of that money could be donated and help save the lives of thousands of- blah blah blah…

When it was my turn I only had one question… “Is there a limit on how many times I could press he button?”

I almost expected him (my friend who asked the question) to end the discussion by telling us that , in fact, there was such a button and of course, he even knew where it was... He didn't though. *


* sub-question... if indeed you would press the button, how low would you go? Would you do it for half a million, 250k, 50k, a $100 Best Buy gift card???

** I'm really starting to love the footnote idea a blatantly ripped off from Chanclita.

***Just so we're clear, I would feel guilty about the whole thing later on... really... but I would push the hell out of that button.... at least 10 times.

Payaso Gordo

Sunday afternoon my wife woke up in bad mood... for no apparent reason.

She does that sometimes, and for whatever reason it's usually on a Sunday.

I on the other hand woke up in a great mood... also for no apparent reason.

As she sat in bed watching TV I decided to try and make her laugh, or at least give me a smile... I tried making dumb faces, telling dumb jokes, and just generally acting like an ass in the name of getting some kind of reaction out of her... Mainly I think I was just really annoying her. But I don't quit that easy.

I decided to break out my secret weapon... An impromptu strip tease... Nobody can resist laughing at a fat guy doing a strip tease, right? When I finally got down to my boxers (still no reaction) I jumped up on the bed and did my best imitation of the "River Dance"...

That finally got a reaction... She threw a pillow at my head and screamed, "Eres un payaso gordo!"

Translation: "You're a fat clown."

Normally something like that would bother me, but seeing as I was jumping up and down on the bed in boxers, I had no choice but to agree with her assessment.

And then I saw it... on the corner of her lips... a grin beginning to form... I increased the velocity of my jumping- "Payaso gordo, payaso gordo, payaso gordo!" I mockingly yelled.

And with that she finally broke into laughter... Mission accomplished.

I may be a fat clown, but I got her bad mood to go away. It was a good Sunday.

Rain Dance

The apartment complex I lived in during my 2 year stint as a resident of Baltimore City was unique from the typical apartment complex setup.

Instead of having a few large buildings, there were like 20 separate smaller buildings that looked like brick houses.

Each building contained 4 apartments- two on top, two on the bottom. There was no common staircase. Each apartment had its own front door entrance to the building.

If you lived on the top floor your front door would open to a staircase. If you lived on the bottom floor, like me, the front door just opened to your living room… The two doors that led to the top level apartments were in the middle, so there was two staircase hallways that separated me from the apartment next to me… I don’t know how well I’m explaining that, in fact I’ve probably made it seem more complex than it was.

The point I’m trying to get to is that because of the staircases, I could only hear noise from the apartment above me… the apartment next to me was a world away.

For the most part, this was a good thing. There was only one apartment to potentially disturb me, and only one apartment for me to potentially disturb.

On the flip side, any disturbance that did go on seemed very personal… In a large apartment building if you have one apartment making noise it affects many people, and all those people can band together as a group to say “hey you, in apartment 512, stop making noise!”

But in this situation, that won’t work. It has to be a one on one confrontation.

For the first few months the apartment above me was occupied by a single mother with two kids… She would often leave the kids alone for inappropriate amounts of time and they would scream, cry, and generally make a bunch of noise.

When she got home from wherever she had been she would start yelling at the kids in a way that lead me to believe she was, at the most insane and at the least, an unfit mother… I made a couple of passing comments about how thin the walls were but she didn’t seem to care… Luckily for me, just when things were starting to border on intolerable, she moved out.*

The apartment stayed vacant for 2 gloriously silent months until finally it was rented by a middle aged school teacher who looked and sounded just like James Earl Jones.

He lived alone. He had no visitors. The only time I heard any noise from his apartment was when he talked to his sister on the phone and I could hear his baritone “Yellow Pages” voice creep down into my bedroom and echo off the walls.

Luckily he only called her once or twice a week and the calls only lasted 5 or 10 minutes. Without question, he was way better than the crazy mother.

But after a few weeks, some strange noises started to emanate from his apartment.

It started with some muffled chanting sounds… Almost like a religious sounding thing. It wasn’t very frequent however, and never really loud enough to disturb me, just peak my curiosity.

Soon enough though the chants began to get louder and stranger yet, they were accompanied by thumping sounds… It sounded to my untrained ear like a Rain Dance. Or at least what I imagined a Rain Dance might sound like.

Visions of my James Earl Jones look-a-like neighbor dancing around in a Native American outfit and pounding a drum flashed through head… and again, the noise wasn’t bothersome, just… weird.

At first the Rain Dance would only take place on Saturday afternoons, like around 11 or so… but then that expanded to the occasional weeknight.

I hadn’t spoken to the man since the first day he moved in but I would occasionally see him walking to and from his car in the parking lot… He seemed very shy. He would walk directly from his apartment to his car or vice versa… He never spoke to anyone. He was always dressed very conservatively. By all accounts he was a mild mannered guy.

Sometimes I’d see him walking to his car the morning after he had performed one of his more vigorous Rain Dances and it just didn’t add up. How could this quiet man be making such crazy sounds?

When football season rolled around things got even more interesting. Just before the afternoon game started he would, without fail, perform a very emotional version of his dance.

Then the games would start and he would really get going…

When there was a big hit he would scream out “YIPPIEEEEEEEEE!” or “POWWWWWWWWWW!”

He didn’t seem to be rooting for any team in particular; just big hits.

And sometimes he would start to laugh historically for no apparent reason… The quarterback would throw an insignificant pass into the air and it would bounce out of bounds and he would scream with delight… “HAAA HAAA HAAA, you didn’t see that one comin' did ya, you dirty son of a bitch!!!!!”

Sometimes he would make train sounds, “Chooooooo Chooooooo!”

And all of this went on in his deep James Earl Jones voice of course.

It still didn’t bother me... In fact, I found it amusing. It didn’t feel like Sundays until he would start his show and the games would come on.

But of course, inevitably I suppose, his noise started to occur at later and later times… And he no longer needed football to set him off… He could be watching the 11pm news and decide he needed to break out the Rain Dance.

Gradually, his antics went from amusing, to annoying, to down right frustrating.

Sometimes I would bang on the ceiling and he would stop. Sometimes he wouldn’t.

I’d think of ways I could politely approach him about what was going on in his place, but then I’d see him walking timidly to his car and I’d decide that it was no big deal after all… I could delay our eventual confrontation for another day.

You can imagine my surprise then when James Earl Jones decided it was time to confront me about my noise…

It started one night when I had my girlfriend over. This was the crazy ex-girlfriend I have written about in the past… and of course on this particular evening we were doing what we did best- arguing.

I don’t recall what the argument was about, but I do recall that this was a particularly vicious battle… Despite our constant fighting, very rarely had we ever fought in my apartment. The first year I had lived there I had a roommate and after that, when it was just me in the apartment, the girlfriend and I happened upon a good stretch in our relationship and the fighting was (for us at least) minimal.

When fights did take place they seemed to always happen either at her house or in my car. In fact, this is the only time I ever remember arguing with her at my apartment.

Like I said, I don’t remember the ‘why’, just that it was a very bad fight.

I recall that at one point she tore up a picture of her I had tapped to my mirror… then at another point I was crying and wouldn’t let her leave the apartment… and yet at another point SHE was crying and it her refusing to leave the apartment… somehow the whole ordeal ended peacefully, and I ended up walking her to her car with a hoarse voice but very content because we had “worked out” whatever the hell it was we were fighting over.**

On my way back from walking her to her car I noticed that my upstairs neighbor was sitting at his window and peering down me. He was giving me a not so happy look, and when he noticed me noticing him- he pointed to his watch. (I guess indicating that it was very late at night and that he did not approve of my late night noise)

It was only 10 pm, and it was a Saturday night… This jerk had woken me dozens of times, at later hours, and during the week!

I was now ready for our confrontation… I was not afraid of hurting James Earl Jones’ feelings anymore.

The next morning I made a point of leaving at the same time he usually did… Sure enough, as I was getting in my car I saw him come around the corner… he walked straight towards me, and not in his usual timid manner either.

“I don’t like the noise that late at night,” he angrily proclaimed in his deep voice.
“But more than the noise,” he continued, “it’s the foul mouth that I don’t like.”

I thought for a moment at the absurdity of his statement and then replied, “The entire argument was in Spanish so how would you know if it was done in a foul mouth?!”

“From the tone of voice!” he angrily shot back without even a pause to contemplate what I had said… “That tone of voice had to be filled with dirty words, no matter what the language…”

I didn’t even know how to respond to that… On the one hand- that was an insane thing to say. On the other hand- he was right, there was plenty of cursing in Spanish during last night’s argument… I took a long pause to decide how I should continue this conversation.

“What about you and that Rain Dance nonsense that goes on at all hours of the night?” I was finally able to retort… I had played my trump card.

James Earl Jones squinted his eyes at me in anger. His fists clenched. He looked like wanted to hit me… Finally, he unclenched his fists, pointed a stubby finger in my chest and said, “I’ve got Tourrette’s Syndrome you asshole!”

And with that he walked away leaving me alone in the parking lot. I felt like the biggest jerk in the world, and maybe I was… We never spoke again… I continued to endure his antics for another 6 months or so before I finally moved out. (For reasons unrelated to his Tourrette’s Syndrome).

When I think about the whole thing now I’m left with a lot of questions… why did it seemingly take a few weeks before the noises started? Why did they gradually get worse? Why did they only happen at certain times? Why did football seem to set him off? And most of all- why didn’t he mention to me before that he had Tourrette’s and that he might be performing a Rain Dance every now and then? That would have solved everything.

Or maybe the whole thing was a lie… maybe he didn’t even have Tourrette's and he just liked making goofy sounds at strange hours of the night? Who knows… it will probably forever remain a mystery… But as the NFL football season approaches I can’t help but wonder where my James Earl Jones look-a-like is, and if he’s still doing his pre-game Rain Dance?







*(coincidently or perhaps not, this lady was VERY hot in a Lauryn Hill kind of way and that may or may not have had something to do with me never confronting her about the noise)

**(This was probably the end of our good patch because if my memory serves me correctly, this was the beginning of an entire year long fight that always seemed to end with a hoarse voice and me optimistically feeling that things were now fine… even though they never were)

Role Player

Well I just got back from the annual “guys” weekend beach trip… We don’t really do anything that could be classified as stereotypical male behavior. All we do is watch movies and have heated arguments over hypothetical questions like, who is better- Pacino or De Niro? [as a group I think our conclusion that Pacino is more versatile, but De Niro has had the more enviable list of credits to his name]

The other big debate, which was a spin off of that last question was, are De Niro and Pacino done?

To my shock and disappointment both Moe Greene and Mike So Def (the final member of the group) both seem to agree on the fact that both of those great actors are basically done and “will never do anything significant again”!?

As is stands Mike So Def is claiming that neither of them "will ever play a significant role in a significant movie again".

This argument literally almost caused a fist fight in a moving car, which is pretty pathetic…. Really I’m only writing about the whole debacle as a way to create a public record that I’ll be able to point to later on when my idiot friends are proven wrong.

Besides the big argument, we watched a bunch of movies- 3 of which I had never seen:

“In America” (Decent movie- 7.25, a little too corny for my tastes)

“The Royal Tenenbaums” (managed to be really good even though Ben Stiller and both Wilson brothers were involved. 8.25)

And, “Dog Day Afternoon” (I know shameful that it took me this long to see it, I gave it a 9.0)

As good as the movies all were, it was a single character in one of the movies that sticks with me… Every now and then I’ll see a movie and one particular character or role just grabs me and makes me say “I would have killed to play that part!”

When I come across one of these roles, it’s not only that I want to try the part, I’m actually 100% convinced that I could play the part- perhaps even better than the real actor did! And I’m talking about professional, talented, sometimes even legendary actors.

Regardless, I just know I could nail the role.

I base this on the fact that I was did a really great monologue in Drama class my 9th grade year… Overall, the class was an absolute disaster for me.

The very first day of class our first assignment was to do the “Fall Backwards” trust activity, and I just couldn’t… I was the only one who couldn’t do it, so of course the teacher then decided to have me do it in front of the whole class with me as his partner.

I still couldn’t do it… and then he got angry… he thought I was trying to show him up or something, but I was actually just not capable of letting myself fall backwards into someone else’s arms.

When he finally realized that I couldn’t (or in his opinion wouldn't) do it, he said in front of everyone (and very tersely I might add), “If you really can't do this than you probably need therapy or something.”

Did I mention that this was also my first day of High School?

Anyway, surprise, the class didn’t go very well for me. The teacher was a jerk to me all semester and I never felt comfortable with any of the other kids in the class… I put forth a minimal amount of effort while watching clock and praying not to be called on.

When the final assignment was given I was straddling the border of passing or failing… The assignment was to act out a scene from a play, with a partner, on the auditorium stage, in full costume, in front of the entire class… and because the teacher liked me so much, as a partner he gave me the only guy in class who wanted to be there less than me; a kid named Joe who had recently been released from a Juvenile Detention Center and was not in the class by choice.

Of course, when the big day arrived my partner decided he would rather violate his parole by skipping school rather than show up for our Drama I final exam.

Now I was the only person on stage and someone would be reading my partner’s lines off stage.

Right before I went on I realized that, not only was I capable of doing my part well, but I actually wanted to do it well… I walked on stage feeling like I was the character and in my humble, modest, and only slightly biased opinion- it was the greatest acting job in the history of the stage.

Afterwards the teacher came up to me and said it was the best performance he had seen from anybody in the class all year long, and that he was giving me a perfect score… despite the fact that he was big enough to come up to me and tell me that, I still hate him to this day.

After my flawless performance I decided to retire from acting right then and there. I was going out on top.

Sure I could probably be the greatest actor of my generation if I wanted to, but I choose not to…. However, every now and then I see a role that I love and I think, “I could nail that role…”

I have compiled a short list of those roles… of course we have to ignore some trivial facts such as “when the movie was made”, “whether I have the body type or age to play the role”, and of course we’re supposed to assume that someone would actually give me the role.

So, what we’re left with is a list of roles that I could have played if time, age, and physical appearance were not a factor... and don’t re-read that sentence more than four times or you’ll start bleeding from your eyes:

[1] Leon, “Dog Day Afternoon”- this was the role that caught my eye over the weekend. Leon plays a homosexual who wants to have a sex change operation… His entrance into the movie is quite shocking and dramatic… He starts out on the cusp of being the comedic stereotype gay man before he reels himself in just in time to become a touching character with depth and emotion. If you’ve seen the movie, you remember Leon.

[2] Lenny, “Of Mice and Men”- The ummm, special needs side kick from the screen version of the Steinbeck classic. He was played very well by John Malkovich, but I feel pretty strongly that I could have done an equally good job.

[3] Tony T., “Carlito’s Way”- The aging mob boss that Sean Penn smacks with a crow bar and leaves in the Hudson River. He has a very good scene in the prison visiting room where he puts a fright into Sean Penn. I feel I could have been a little more subtle without losing any of the scary… Ignore the fact that I’m 26 and not remotely Italian looking…

[4] Ray Kinsela, “Field of Dreams”- This is the father at the end of the movie… He only gets the one scene, but it is the climax of the movie … The guy who did the scene is so bad he almost ruins the whole thing. And I’m not just talking about his feminine throwing motion either, most of his lines sound… goofy… But not if I had done it!

[5] God, “The Messenger”- I think I’ve mentioned this before when I did the Film Vault Tuesday on this movie… This would clearly be my most ambitious role, you know, playing God and all... And I doubt that I could have played it better than Dustin Hoffman, but I could have been good.

[6] Scotty G, “Boogie Nights”- No way I could be better than the great Philip Seymour Hoffman, but this would be one of the coolest to ever play. You get to dress up in the goofy outfits, make a lot of really creepy comments, there are a ton of funny lines, AND there is the scene where PSH stole my heart by flashing the entire range of emotions in about 10 seconds… for my money it might be the best small part in the history of modern movies... so of course, I would have no problem taking care of that role too.

TRAIN GAME

Even in a job where the times and dates are notorious for changing at the last minute, it had been a particularly unpredictable week. My schedule had changed from day to night at least 3 times and when I awoke from my unplanned (and as it turns out untimely) nap on the Orange Line, I was a bit confused. I wasn’t sure if I was on my way to work or on my way back… Although I love my job, its times like these that make me question the wisdom of ever joining the work force.

Glancing down at my watch revealed that it was 2:30 pm, and that I had a thermos of coffee at my side… I must be on the way to work. The train conductor’s voice boldly announced the next stop, “Orange Line to Vienna, next stop McPherson Square.”

I wasn’t exactly sure where that stop was, but I knew it was well past my usual stop on Capitol Hill… In fact, it was possible that I had missed my stop, taken the Orange Line all the way to the end, and was now back on my way towards the Hill again.

I quickly scanned the train in search of a map to confirm this suspicion.

It was there that I saw her, in the seat that blocks the view of the map… why do they put a seat in front of the map?

What first caught my attention, besides that fact that she was blocking my view of the map, was her hair. Braids, with a hint of pink highlights in them… Then I noticed the piercing, eyebrow and lip… and the vibrantly colored butterfly tattoos that started at her left wrist and made their way up her forearm.

Her skin was bronze, her eyes green, and despite her eccentricities she was breathtakingly beautiful… Scratch that… I should say that her eccentricities were part of her beauty… or maybe what I mean is, she would have been beautiful with even the most conservative of appearances, but her eccentricities seemed to only add to her beauty… Perhaps her parents or some uptight protector of “family values” would disagree with that assessment, but this story is told from my eyes.

Perhaps even more striking than her obvious beauty was her relaxed state of being… There aren’t a whole lot of people on the Orange Line at 2:30 in the afternoon, but the people who are on the train, are busy.

They’re just leaving work and in a hurry to beat rush hour traffic; they’re headed to another part of town for a meeting; they’re tourists trying to cram in as many sights as they can into one humid DC afternoon; or they’re like me, late for work.

This train girl didn’t seem to fit any categories. She wasn’t glancing at her watch. She wasn't even wearing a watch… She wasn’t yapping into her cell phone… She wasn’t sitting on the edge of her seat listening intently for the call of the next stop…. She appeared to just be enjoying the ride.

There was a well used duffel bag resting on her feet. Patches sewn into the fabric of the bag gave me a deeper look at who she might be… Che was there in striking red and black, making his famous glare at whoever might pass by; There were several patches of bands I didn’t really know but now had a sudden deep desire to hear… There was a patch of the sun and moon... There was also a large patch was the Brazilian flag… Was she from Brazil? Maybe her parents were? Or maybe she has once visited there on vacation?

I quickly tried to fill in the gaps based on assumptions, half-truths, and wild guesses.

I named her Paola, and I decided she was on break from her liberal and no doubt very rigorous studies at some University in Rio. The rebelious daughter of a doctor.

Her summer travels had already taken her to the usual stops in Europe. Now maybe she was bumping around the US, her instinct serving as both compass and tour guide… Maybe she would stay in DC another week, or maybe the wind would blow her in the direction of Miami to check out South Beach.

She didn’t know where her whims might take her anymore than I did. She was as free as a person could be. There were no limitations such as time, money, or emotional attachments. Or especially work commitments. I doubt seriously that Paola has ever been so overowrked that she couldn't remember where she was going.

It didn’t matter to me if ANY of my story was correct. She could have actually been the anchorless and beautiful adventurer I saw her to as, or maybe not…

As I continued to imagine what my dream girl might be like, the conductor continued to call off stops… My earlier assumption had been correct; I had missed my stop so terribly that we were now on the way back towards it again.

I thought about trying to start up a conversation with her... Paola… Our eyes had met a couple of times and she flashed a warm and possibly inviting (?) smile.

But really, what good could come of that? Even with the best case scenario: I start up a conversation, and somehow within the couple of minutes that lay between now and my stop, she falls as inexplicably in love with me as I was with her.

I would then have to make the choice between missing my stop (again) or staying longer to talk with her… and why?

So I could find out she was really just some girl who was on her way to her job at the mall… That her name wasn’t Paola, it was Mindy and she wasn’t really even Brazilian… she was just a girl with a great tan and a boyfriend who loves the Brazilian National Team so much that he sewed the flag on this old duffel bag that she was now using to tote around their dirty laundry… Maybe that’s where she was headed, the laundry mat! Wouldn’t that be a fine way to ruin the image I had?

No, I would NOT ruin the anonymity of my Train Game by actually talking to this girl! No matter how beautiful she was, I would never, under NO circumstances let her go and ruin the perfect statue I had sculpted with something as silly and pointless as the truth.

After all, there would be others. That’s the beauty of the Train Game; the doors slide open up and new waves of people come in. You pick someone out and make them as daring and provocative as you want… They can be dangerous, or perhaps generous. They can be tragically flawed, or they can be perfect, like Paola.

The only thing they can’t be is… them.