TimeWaster

Shoeverine: Origins

I'm loving this tease I heard for a news story about to come on - "Coming up next - we learn more about the reporter who threw his shoes at President Bush.  And what MAY have set him off..."

I'm gonna go with the YEARS AND YEARS OF BOMBINGS.

Plus, even more ridiculous was President Bush's comment that he "Didn't know what set the guy off.  Maybe he just wanted to get on TV."  You know, after eight years of being in office, I'm starting to suspect that President George W. Bush might be a little stupid.

Shake, Rattle, and Whatever

I know everyone in Souther California is all abuzz about the earthquake from yesterday, but here's the thing - I'm like the one person in all of Los Angeles that didn't actually feel it!

I'm like some kind of super....powered...man.

 

Time To Get A Freakin' Dog

Okay, there's a couple that live out somewhere in Southern California that had a monkey as a pet.  Now, as every 10 year old can attest, having a monkey as a pet is pretty cool.  And no, this wasn't a helper monkey.  

So then one day the monkey got out of his cage and ran through the neighborhood like, well...a wild animal.  And it attacked some people in the neighborhood and some of the cops that tried to subdue it.  Thankfully no one was seriously hurt.

Now, when you hear that snippet of the story, you (like myself) might think, "Well, that's the end of this story of two adults raising a chimp like they're a couple of adolescents."   But you would be wrong.

After the debacle with the chimp's neighborhood rampage, the family went to court with the city.  The final ruling was that the couple had to find an animal friendly refuge for their chimp.  The monkey was taken into the custody of the state, and someone who's paid by my taxes had to drive all over the southland looking for some place for this chimp to live.  Apparently the word "zoo" never once came up.

Okay, again - you're like me and you're thinking "Well, this is the end of the story about the family that owned a chimp and acted like they'd never set foot on planet earth and didn't realize this was a bad idea."  But it's not.

The state worker who's job it was to find suitable lodging for this chimp took a long-assed time to find a suitable home for Moe (the name of the chimp).  I'm talking like 2 years here.  And all that time, Mo was held at another animal refuge where Moe's owners would go visit it.

So then on Moe's birthday about a year or two ago, Mo's owners went to visit him at his temporary digs.  And while they were there looking for Moe, the man who owns Moe got attacked.  By 4 other monkeys!

The monkeys went to town on this guy.  They bit off some of his fingers.  They bit off his nose.  Most of his upper lip.  One of his eyes was either bitten out or gouged out.  And yes, the monkeys attacked this guy's genitals, too.  

So the owners of Moe sued the city, because apparently it's the city's fault that Mo was taken to a temporary animal habitat and the city hadn't found adequate lodging for this monkey.  Because this couple cared so much about their monkey, but I guess they couldn't be bothered to find a suitable home for it in all that time.

Okay, now you're thinking "Jeez, this guy's completely brutalized by these monkeys - I guess that's the end of this story, right?  Please?"

Well no.  

Now this guy's on the news because Moe escaped from the sanctuary and has disappeared into God-knows-where.  And he's pleading with everyone to find Moe and bring him back, because apparently Moe is "frightened out there all alone."

I'm gonna guess that, living in a sanctuary with monkeys that'll bite off human faces and more, that Moe's probably better off living under a freeway.  

Evil Spam

Got a spam e-mail in my bulk folder today.  Normally, their subject headlines are usually pretty disgusting and my first thought is always "Who in their right mind would open this?"  My second thought is generally "And how the hell did I get on this mailing list???"

But the one I got today...it just...well, decide for yourself:

"Tim Russert's Sex Scandal Exposed At His Funeral"

Seriously, right?  Who's opening an e-mail that says THAT?  And how in the hell did I get on that mailing list?

I'm Probably Not Covering Any New Ground Here...

But I just heard about American Airlines instituting a $15 a bag policy for people who fly on American.  The spokesperson said the reason is because of high fuel prices - the high cost of fuel is going to cost them an extra $3 million per year.

Yet in the same exact report, the American spokesperson mentioned that this $15 extra charge is expected to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for the airline.

So even if they only charged us, say, $7.50 per bag, they'd still make 10 times what it's going to cost them with the extra fuel costs. 

I guess we should be thankful they're being upfront with us?

Black Widows

There's this story in the news around these here parts about two old women who are facing life in jail for pulling life insurance policy scams. From my understanding, these women found homeless guys, took them in, took out huge life insurance policies on them, and then staged hit and run accidents to kill them and collect the life insurance money.

This leads me to 2 questions -

1) My older post "Out Crazying the Crazies", did I inadvertently step in the middle of this plot???

but, more importantly:

2) How the hell did this get past the planning stage???? No one said "This will never work." No one said "This is a little too obvious." No one said "Hey, maybe we should use NON-HOMELESS PEOPLE TO REDUCE THE SUSPICIOUSNESS OF THIS ENTERPRISE!?!"

And really - when just one of these crazy old bats takes out a huge life insurance policy on just ONE homeless guy that she just freakin' met, how does no one jump to the most obvious conclusion? And yet two old women did this, apparently quite a few times!

So here's what I'm gonna do - I'm gonna go down to Hollywood Toys & Costumes and buy the scariest werewolf costume I can find. Then I'm going to go to the nearest amusement park and I'm going to run around and growl at people. Then the next morning I'm going to show up at the owner's office and offer to buy the place on the cheap.

Then all I have to worry about are some meddling kids and their dog.

Dr. Casual Reading

So I'm watching the news tonight, and there's a big story on how certain Los Angeles area hospitals continually fail inspections on their mammogram equipment. Pretty serious stuff - they're interviewing women who have had mammograms at these hospitals, and they're in tears talking about how worried they are now that their tests could be faulty.

And during the story, there's an interview with the doctor who is the head of the committee that inspects all the mammogram equipment. The interview takes place in his office, and he's sitting in front of his bookshelf. And what's the one book prominently displayed behind his head?

Hollywood Animal by Joe Eszterhas.

This is the guy that's in charge of this investigation? Really? And no one thought to move the book - which has a bright pink spine, drawing your eye to it no matter how hard you try to look away?

This is what we in the legal profession refer to as "discrediting the witness."

**Please note I'm neither a lawyer nor actually in the legal profession, but I have paid thousands of dollars to a lawyer over the last 7 years.

Out-Crazying The Crazies

I think I've done the impossible. If you read the heading, you can already guess what that is. If you're too lazy, then I'll type it again - I have out-crazied a crazy person!

Impossible you say? Well sir or madam, here's how it all went down:

I'm standing at the crosswalk, waiting to cross Ventura Blvd and standing next to me is your garden variety crazy homeless person. Imagine every crazy, grizzled prospector you've ever seen in a Bugs Bunny cartoon - the type with big bushy beards, toothless grins, and stinky filth dripping off of them.

So, just as the light's just about to turn red and allow us to cross, a woman in her BMW is charging towards the light. She's just far enough away from the light to not be able to run it, yet she doesn't seem to be slowing down. So as the light turns red and we get the little white walk guy, I hesitate on the curb because this woman still has the car gunned. My bushy amigo, however, isn't so observant.

Right as he steps in the crosswalk, the woman slams on her breaks and just barely avoids slamming into the homeless guy. I have to think that he did this on purpose - if you've literally got nothing to lose and you see a BMW charging down the street, I imagine it's pretty tempting to test out the flexibility of the car's bumper.

But anywho, the woman misses hitting the guy and I step into the street. And as I'm about half a footstep away from her, she floors it and pulls right through the red light. I was pissed. I spun around and screamed "SLOW DOWN!!!"

And that's when the crazy homeless guy turned to me and, very calmly, he said - "Hey man, it's okay. What's wrong?"

It's at this point I made a split second decision - I didn't want this guy bugging me for money or talking to me much longer. So i just started mumbling angrily. Not saying any real words, I just waved my hands around and literally said things like "Garble mudge moo chew - aaaaargghh!!!"

And it's then that I saw the look in the crazy guy's eyes. He had no idea what the hell I was doing, and he started walking away from me. Slowly. Carefully. Scared.

Now, there was one slight problem with my decision to out-crazy the crazy person. Or, technically, there were five problems with my decision - the five other people on the street walking about three feet away from my lunatic outburst. These people saw me coming, and picked up the pace, briskly distancing themselves from me and ducking into the restaurant they were headed to for lunch.

Unfortunately, it was the same restaurant I risked life and limb to cross the street for.

Ten seconds after they enter, the door opens again, and this time it's me walking in. And the five people all turned around and left.

Which is fine with me, because I really hate waiting in lines.

Things We Need To Fix in 2008

Let's be honest with ourselves - 2007 sucked. Let's kick 2008 off by fixing a couple really simple things:

1) Spoiler Alerts - this is a big one, but how hard is it for online journalists, bloggers, whatevers to not give away huge spoilers in the headlines of articles. This is really, really annoying. For example - Survivor: China's finale. Does AOL really have to write "So-and-So Wins Survivor China!" thereby ruining the whole freaking show for anyone just about to watch it?

We still haven't learned by now that's annoying? We can't write "Survivor: China Winner Crowned"?

Normally, every single headline you read online always has to play it coy and cute by hiding what the hell the article's about. Except when it comes to spoiling the outcome of sporting events or reality shows.

2) Phone Messages - This is something we should've wrapped up a long time ago. When leaving a message on someone's voicemail, can we lose the "Hey it's so-and-so, got a question, call me back." Because here's what happens - I call back, so-and-so isn't there. I leave a message. So-and-so calls back, I'm not around, I get a ridiculous "Hey it's me calling you back" message.

The tip here is - leave the freaking question/info you need response to on the message. That way, if you're not around, I can leave my answer on your voice mail and we don't have to play phone tag all day and all night.

If we can just stamp these two things out in 2008, then we're taking a step in the right direction and maybe, just maybe, things will be all right.

Big Wheel Keep On Rollin'

It all happened on an unseasonably warm November afternoon in 1998.

About two weeks earlier, I, along with everyone else working on a horrendous edu-tainment Saturday morning cartoon at Warner Bros. were told our show was wildly over budget. The sweet jobs that we'd been promised would last for about 3 years was coming to an end about 14 months sooner than expected.

In my search for a new gig, I had a friend working on the newest incarnation of the Gong Show. It aired on the Game Show Network and was now going under the name "Extreme Gong". My friend told me they had an opening for someone to appear on the show that day. All I'd need to do was recite a pre-written monologue. Oh, and dress up in a full on head-to-toe dog costume. And drink water from a dog bowl. And eat a dog treat.

Faster than you can say "no shame," I was down at Hollywood Center Studios dressed head to toe as an oversized and overweight dalmatian. And as I sat in the bleachers, waiting for my turn to rehearse, that's when I heard it. The voice - his voice. "That is a nice outfit!"

It was Ike Turner.

Ike and I sat in the bleachers, waiting for rehearsals, and just talked. He probably would've called it "chilling". We talked a little about why I was dressed as a dog (I needed the money), we talked about why Ike Turner was on "Extreme Gong" (he needed the money). But mostly, Ike and I just hung.

For about a half hour, me and Ike Turner were buddies. We were on the same team. I am pretty sure a high five was exchanged at some point. But then the show started, Ike did his thing and I got bumped. Ike took off, and because of the complicated nature of the dog suit, I had to have someone help me out of it before I could say good bye.

I'm probably not mentioned in his will, and there's probably not going to be any Dog Boy character in "What's Love Got To Do With It? Part 2 - Ike's Revenge". But I do know that I spoke to Ike Turner more recently than Tina has, and for a moment there, we were pals. Pals that never hung out again.