amalgam

Just thought I'd jump on here. I've been keeping to myself and catching up on ex-coworkers through Facebook but not jumping out there to contribute much. My sister loves Facebook for the games and I even had to join Farmville because she needed "neighbors" (a la Amway) to help keep up her virtual Columbian drug-lord-sized plantation filled with all the e-fruits and e-vegetables and e-farm animals you could ever want or need.

This Punxsutawney Phil, yours truly, figured he should poke his head out just to show people he's still here, and not the victim of crossing the wrong mob family or getting nudged into the oncoming lane at rush hour. I poked, I saw, I ate some dirt. I'm headed back in. You kids have a good evening. I'll come back in another 44 weeks with an update. Until then, hasta, pasta.

I was waiting in line for a screening of Milk (Sean Penn, Emile Hirsch, Josh Brolin), which was excellent, by the way, and standing in front of me was Lisa Edelstein (Cuddy on the show "House") and I wanted to say something but you know, you're doing everyday things in the city you live and you're probably pestered all the time, and I couldn't do that to her. Oh, I'm a big fan, blah blah blah... Unfortunately it's hard to get a picture with someone if you don't tell them you want a picture with them. But man. A picture would have rocked. If we were interviewing her, that would be a whole other matter entirely.

I could have annoyed her, got the picture, and then stood in awkward silence next to her for the next 45 minutes, but I know I was there, and that was fun enough. It's cool just to be nominated, as they say.

Target dog.

Not a Target dog. THE Target Dog.

I wonder what it would take to get Target Dog?

It's been too long since I've put pen to paper. ... Fingers to plastic squares. Oh, THAT'S poetic. Whatever. Moving on.

So I kind of feel like punishing myself more than I have, so I figure the best way is to tell you what I did last week and you all can slap me upside the head. (FIGURATIVELY. Don't be gettin' no i-dee-ers.)

Okay. So I'm watching the studio feed at my work where you can see what's going on right at that very second, and in the studio, on the lobby level, is Alan Tudyk, filling in as host for vacationing Leonard Maltin on this show he does called Secret's Out. Alan Tudyk from 3:10 to Yuma, Alan Tudyk from Death at a Funeral (funny, funny movie) and Alan Tudyk from the wondrous Firefly series and of course the accompanying film Serenity. Which I LOVE.

So he's down there. And I'm a fan. But I'm thinking, you know, those celebrity people don't need the annoying bother of people all up in their faces about how much they love them and stuff, they're doing a job, HE'S doing a job, and I don't know, it seems tacky.

And then I see who Alan's interviewing. His good friend Nathan Fillion. He plays the captain on Serenity. That movie that I may have mentioned I love, somewhere earlier? It's all a haze. Oh, there it is. Yeah, I mentioned it.

Now, I'm nowhere near wired in the head to be ... in the tendency to ... um, the... the man-man-love thing. If you know what I mean. But come ON. The writing on that show was thick enough to stand a fork in it. Just tasty. Like, you know, all kinds of witty and you know, like that. Stuff. Like West Wing turn-on-closed-captioning-to-eat-it-all-up quality.

I seriously thought about it. I even thought about it out loud. And I sat there and watched the interview from the comfort of my monitor, floors above the action, saw Nathan finish, removing the mic, and talk with people on set. And then I went back to work.

It was not more than an hour later I found out that this woman I work with and another from a different department, and this editor guy, are all huge fans. And HAD GONE DOWN THERE. Sat outside. Said hi. Probably shook hands. Most likely got a signature. Camera phone pics. Shared a good joke. Maybe Nathan went down to his car and got some personal 5x7 headshot glossies to hand out. Maybe not. The point is, I DO NOT KNOW BECAUSE I WASN'T THERE.

Anyway, that's my story. You have my permission, slap away.

The funny thing is, if it had been someone else down there, like Mischa Barton or pretty much anyone from the OC for example, I would have thought, "Sure, go ahead and fawn all over her, jeez. Show some professionalism, ya pansies." But now pansy moniker be damned... stick me ankle-deep in potting soil if that's what it takes for the meet n greet, and I'm good to go.

And I really wanted to see a cool explosion. And I could have. We covered it on our show later, so in a way I got to see it. But to see it in person... And why didn't I see it?

I ordered a pizza.

Of course it occured to me after I made the call that now I'm going to have to wait for it to show up, so no going out to see the explosion. If I had a nickel for every time a life experience was usurped by cheesy goodness...

This is from an email I got at my work.

"Please be advised, during filming tonight there will be a mock car explosion on 5th Street. We expect this to occur after 7:30 PM. There will be popping noises and a possible smell of smoke or burning."

How can there be a "mock" car explosion? They've mentioned "mock gunfire" before, which makes sense, but a car is going to explode or it isn't. There's nothing mock about it.

I might just have to come out to see that.

A year and a half ago I never would have thought I'd see Aaron Sorkin in the flesh, and tonight I'm going to a Q&A screening of Charlie Wilson's War and he'll be there!

I just have to figure out how to get from Downtown to the west side of Hollywood in 45 minutes when I get off work. It's RSVP but they overbook, so you still have to get there early.

Aaron Sorkin! Now I need to keep myself from saying some nerdy joke like, "Huh huh, I loved the West Wing, huh huh, I have all four seasons on DVD! Huh huh, get it? Because you were kicked off for seasons five and six? Get it? Huh huh huh!"

I want him to sign my forehead. Backwards so I can see it in the mirror.

I left the old, broken streets of Los Angeles for Thanksgiving and its surrounding days to visit my folks. In return for redeeming some vacation time, I volunteered to work Saturday. That was the best decision I've made all weekend. Among my less fruitful choices were:

- taking Amtrak to Northern California on a delayed train, starving and desperate enough to eat any sandwich in the Stockton vending machine with an unmet expiration date, riding an overloaded train containing swearing group-home jailbait who were coaxing digits from random goateed boys with faux "grillz" and low-slung pants, and arriving three hours late on a bus driven by a guy who made sure to "don't blame me!";

- while on the train, allowing some guy to sit across from me. This allowed him to tell me he believed we had some connection because we were of the same religion and that he was a producer and I was a writer, which in his eyes gave him an invitation to namedrop like mad, and in the middle of his pretend not-drunk bantering, asked if he could be my agent, leaving me his number and email before departing the train IN FRESNO;

- leaning only slightly on a towel rack in my sister's house and managing to rip thick screws out of the two-year-old house's drywall;

- and forgetting I would be adding my sister's camera bag to my return trip luggage, which almost tipped the scales of my personal carrying weight and made the 37-mile walk back to my car feel like at least a 56-mile walk.

But that's the glass three-quarters empty. Here's where it was a quarter full:

- I got to play my mom's piano again, a pristine 30-year-old Kawai upright with the sound of a grand.

- I got to see the stars again.

- I have the whole floor to myself here at work, in a room so big I can swivel in my chair all the way around with my legs outstretched.

- I was able to enjoy the last leg of the ride to LA listening to the entire Nickel Creek concert recorded November 6th in D.C., and it was impressive as always.

- I got to have Thanksgiving dinner with my mom, dad, sis, brother, their respective spice, er, spouses, and six kids.

- I read to my four-year-old nephew one of his favorite books just before bed, a little kid novelization of the movie Cars you can order online, written in a personalized style that puts him in the middle of the action as a reporter interviewing Lightning McQueen himself!

- I bought my sister's $900 camera for $300 before she was going to sell it on Ebay. It's a Canon digital 8mp reflex that shoots 6 shots a second. If that doesn't get me to post more pictures of my surroundings, nothing will.

I should do some work, I guess.

At work we have to change our password every month or so. I'm not sure on the actual time window but it feels like four to six weeks. I am, however, absolutely certain about my strength of will, fighting the urge to just go home when I turn on my computer and it asks me "Your password will expire in 14 days. Do you want to change it now?" and I know that it's starting again.

Every day thereafter it will ask me, and I'll turn it down, since succumbing to the request will just move up the date when I'll have to do this whole thing again. Sure, this may sound like no big deal to you, dear reader, but it's not as simple as picking a new word or alternating between two or three passwords. I've tried that one. My computer popped a window up that said:

"The password supplied does not meet the minimum complexity requirements. Please select another password that meets all of the following criteria: is at least 6 characters; has not been used in the previous 4 passwords; must not have been changed within the last 1 days; does not contain your account or full name; containing at least three of the following character groups: English uppercase characters (A through Z); English lowercase characters (a through z); numerals (0 through 9); Non-alphabetic characters (such as !, $, #, %). Type a password which meets these requirements in both text boxes."

Wouldn't seeing that make you want to go home?

Tres bizarre. I Google "Veramyst works" now and my journal comes up as #1.

I'm conflicted as to whether I like this new development. I'm under higher scrutiny! I'm on the grid! Did I hide the porn? Is my credit card number displayed anywhere? What if I'm nominated for Supreme Court Justice??

Oh, I just remembered that I recorded The Office and I still haven't watched it. My paranoia will just have to wait, I guess.

I was watching a commercial for the new prescription allergy spray Veramyst, and about halfway through, I saw a disclaimer in small print that read, "The way VERAMYST works is not entirely understood."

If you were using it, wouldn't something like that bother you? Here, take this. It'll keep you from sneezing, although we're not quite sure WHY.

Reminds me of the diet pills (with tapeworms inside) advertised back in the 30's.

The hinge on the back of the toilet seat has been loose for a while now and I'd been contemplating the whole live-with-it-or-tell-the-landlord-or-try-to-fix-it-myself decision, when the decision was made for me when the seat slipped and actually cracked almost in two. Still, I thought that the time it took to get the powers that be to come up here and replace it might be prohibitively long. So I did it with my own two hands! And a screwdriver.

First, I was still unsure about the whole procedure, and whether it would be costly, so I headed over to the local Home Depot to find a toilet lid and see how much it costs. The place is so huge that just going there for a little thing like a toilet lid seemed goofy. I almost got a few long two-by-fours and a circular saw so I wouldn't feel out of place at the register. It turns out there are a ton of toilet seats to choose from! Long ones, cushy ones, wood, plastic, with prices ranging from under five dollars to over forty. I was going to go with the cheapest one, seeing as how I'm just renting, but butt knows best, so I splurged another five and got a decent generic white lid with a seven year guarantee. I personally can't imagine how a guarantee system would work. How would they know you're still within the seven year limit? Would you keep the ten dollar receipt? Would you register your lid with the company?

If you worked at the toilet lid company and one of your customers' lids broke after six and a half years of use, would you honestly want them sending that thing in to you for replacement? I'd work on the honor system, I think. "No worries, sir, we believe you. We'll send another one out." But you know someone would take advantage of that and just get all these free toilet lids that they could then sell on the black market.

I'm glad I don't work for them. So I installed it and realized too late that I lost my one and only opportunity to lick a toilet seat and not get grossed out or sick from a virus or whatever. Oh, man! I could have had friends over and tricked them into daring me to lick it for fifty bucks or something! I would totally be a rich man right now!

Anyway, I feel like a total carpenter now. Does anyone need anything built? Give me a ring!

Here's the last of my observations of the Emmys:

( It's a little long so I saved you from scroll-finger carpal tunnel unless you're really interested. )
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Anyway, it was okay. I'd give it a C-.

Yeah, um, namedropping... not working all that well.

The Emmys are on in 10 minutes. The show is hosted by Ryan Seacrest, which seems wrong to me. It's like, if the Super Bowl was hosted by, well, Ryan Seacrest.

The thing is hosted by FOX, and they have Seacrest's deal with the devil in blood, so I could see how it would be easy to recruit him. (That was the deal for Ryan: fame and fortune on America's top rated TV show, in return for his soul. But as with all deals with the devil, there's a catch. Really two. The show was American Idol, and he's destined to work for FOX.)

Five minutes!

Eh, he might do well. He was funny in Knocked Up.

I happened to notice the brand of toilet at my work: American Standard. Just beneath it is listed "3.8 liters/flush 1.0 gal/flush". All right, maybe this is nitpicky, but with a name like American Standard, wouldn't you think they'd at LEAST list the gallons one first??

Hmm. I think maybe I have too much extra time on my hands.

So I'm just minding my own business and not even noticing that there's like the biggest International Comic Convention within driving distance. How stupid is me?

Saturday's sold out already. It'll have to be Sunday, and MAYBE after I get off work on Friday (But that means I wouldn't get there 'til after 9pm.)

BUT Friday night is an hour long program of the Worst Cartoons Ever through the history of cartoons. THAT is something I need to see! And then Spike and Mike has some Sick and Twisted animation I'll sit in on, but I can't leave too late and get home like 3am. That would be tres insane-o.

I've never been there... I wonder what it'll be like?

My Personality Page

At first I thought "Naturalist" was one who frequently likes to be naked. I thought, right on! But when I got only 50%, I decided it probably meant something else.

I have a bus to catch!

My sister's going to Las Vegas for some family time with my brother, so I'm taking some time off to catch up with her plans. She comes from the north and I come from the south, so in order to travel together, I'm taking the bus to meet her (somewhat)halfway in Bakersfield. It's one of those "It's a great place to visit but I wouldn't want to live there" cities. Except for the part about it being a great place to visit.

It's on one of Amtrak's connecting-city buses, not Greyhound. I've heard about the crazies on Greyhound.

But all that is tomorrow morning. Let's hope for no crazies!

Guess what happens when you have a city of thousands of people who have access to off-brand, crazy contraband fireworks? You have quite a show from all directions of my six-story window.

Sounds like a gun battle sometimes. I'm pretty sure it's not, though. I can see bottle rockets a few miles away, and up and down my street they're setting off stuff. And it's not even dark yet!

The next few hours will be pretty cool.