While still in college, I answered an internship ad at the job board and ended up working at the Los Angeles Reader, a since defunct free weekly newspaper. Because the paper was in a terrible decline at the time (they had just lost Matt Groening’s Life in Hell and several other important writers and editors had split), my rise was meteoric and in just a few months I had ascended from “listings guy” to Assistant Editor. It was quite a ride.

One feature of the place was that most of the sales staff were serious alcoholics and coke heads. They were frequently found getting all drunked up in the Two Guys from Italy bar downstairs, or departing for Palmdale to get an 8-ball. I was frightened of them. The whole atmosphere in the sales department was very Glen Garry Glen Ross and I was a young kid who liked crazy punk and noise music, but never partied harder than beer.

As you might expect, St. Patrick’s Day of 1987 led to a complete breakdown of business function. All of them went off to the Robin Hood and drank half & halfs until they didn’t know their names. One guy in particular stands out. Ted was a 50something burnout salesman who was nearing the final stages of fatal alcoholism. He had trashed his life to the extent that the only vehicle he possessed was an unlicensed unregistered former ice cream truck in which he would slowly weave down Van Nuys streets. Most of the time he didn’t drive at all. His buddies would pick him up from home with his full “coffee” mug of Jack Daniels and ferry him into the office, where he would alternate sales calls with vomiting in the restroom.

On this drinker’s day of days, I was working with the production staff on final layout for that week’s issue. As I leaned over the mat adjusting my story, I heard a commotion and looked up to see that everyone had departed, and Ted was bulging and stumbling into the production room. He had a tiny stupid “Irish” leprechaun hat on and had pulled the green feather out of it. His face shone like a stop light. His pants were half open. He stank.

Ted looked at me half crosseyed. “Shurghg… blrggh.. do you know why I carry thish FEATHER?”

“No, Ted. Why?”

“I carry th’feather for the LADIESH. Becaush.. shome of them like a little TICKLE…” He touched the feathery end, here.

“And shum of them like a li’l POKE!” he waved the other end of the feather at me and then passed out cold on the production table with a loud cartoon klunk. An exacto knife sitting there missed his eye by about 1 cm.

When I left the office 2 hours later he was sitting on the floor, holding the feather in front of his face and singing softly.

Had a completely magical evening. I went with Jesse, Dan, and some other friends to an excellent and not too expensive french place called Pescadou, which I highly recommend. Had a tremendous meal, good wine, good conversation. It’s a very family style restaurant that serves bistro food, and a warm and pleasant place to spend a rainy evening.

As we were talking after dinner, the people at the next stable were discussing something with the owners, and then surprise! It turns out that they are flamenco performers. So Rafael Aragon starts up playing, and plays beautifully, and during one of this songs a woman at his stable stands up and dances, also very beautifully.

At the end of one song a friend of his at the table said to us “See that child? She is my daughter, she is autistic. Only music speaks to her; this music has saved her. Remember. you’re not just applauding for entertainment, but for humanity.”

And then back into the torrential rain and home, full of good food, good wine, and good feelings.

Leif the Unlucky

Leif The Unlucky was a tall, thin Norwegian, with a patch over one eye, his face congealed in a permanent, ingratiating smirk. Behind him lay an epic saga of unsuccessful enterprises. He had failed at raising frogs, chinchilla, Siamese fighting fish, rami and culture pearls. He had attempted, variously and without success, to promote a Love Bird Two-in-a-Coffin Cemetery, to corner the condom market during the rubber shortage, to run a mail order whorehouse, to issue penicillin as a patent medicine. He had followed disastrous betting systems in the casinos of Europe and the racetracks of the US. His reverses in business were matched only by the incredible mischances of his personal life. His front teeth had been stomped out by bestial American sailors on Brooklyn. Vultures had eaten out an eye when he drank a pint of paregoric and passed out in Panama City Park. He had been trapped between floors in an elevator for five days with an oil-burning junk habit and sustained an attack of the D T’s while stowing away in a footlocker. There was the time he collapsed with strangulated intestines, perforated ulcers and peritonitis in Cairo and the hospital was so crowded they bedded him in the latrine, and the Greek surgeon goofed and sewed up a live monkey in him, and he was gang-fucked by the Arab attendants, and one of the orderlies stole penicillin substituting Saniflush; and the time he got clap in the ass and a self-righteous English doctor cured him with an enema of hot sulphuric acid.

–William Burroughs

I gave up on reading this book about Vedanta because it was one of those books that lies about being introductory. After all this reassurance from the author that it was a Good Introductory Book about Vedantic Thought it turns out to be no such thing, and he keeps dropping bombs like “this explains the huge controversy about the teaching of Hlaghlag’aghl with which we are all familiar” etc etc. Someone who wasn’t a Vedanta scholar should have reviewed the book before publication.

So now I’m reading a history of Hinduism which is hard going but at least explanatory. I decided to stop reading it tonight when a description of one sect’s beliefs ended “thus the highest name of God is ‘The Darling of the Milkmaids’.” and I started giggling madly. Time for beer and internetting instead of trying to understand Big Ideas.

I like beer.

Our government is starting to sound very comic opera, as though this was Panama or North Korea rather than the U.S.

This news story that our terror level will soon go to “Dark Orange” is quite fine, including bonus points for

• Making a new color between orange and red because they hadn’t thought of that before
  

• “ninja squad”
  

• Closing down the Liberty Bell
  

• The news article actually being a PR Newswire release about another news article

This has not been a recording. Here I am, J.H.

DEAR FELLOW REPUBLICANS:

WHEN KARL ROVE AMBUSHES YOU IN THE HALLWAYS OF THE WHITE HOUSE AND PINS YOU AGAINST THE WALL AND FORCES HIMSELF UPON YOU AND JAMS HIS LONG, LIMBER TONGUE DOWN YOUR HELPLESS THROAT THIS IS NOW TO BE KNOWN AS A VICTORY KISS. THE FRENCH ARE NOT IN FAVOR.

THANKS,

THE MINISTRY OF LOVE

I pulled up to a stopsign in Costa Mesa (Tustin & 17th) with my window open yesterday. It was near the end of the workday at the quick lube place, and the workers were kinda blowing off steam, yelling at each other good-naturedly. One guy looked about sixty and worn and sunburned in a kind of Okie way. He was looking into the office and suddenly he yelled out, in the most gravelly whisky-soaked Marlboro-burnt voice I’ve ever heard:

WILL YA GET OFF THE HORN FINALLY SAM? YOU’RE LIKE A GODDAMN BROAD!

I didn’t think anyone still alive spoke like that. Is he in 1936?

I had a great dinner tonight. I don’t usually eat all veg (unfortunate dead animal addiction), but tonight was delicious: sautée of onion, eggplant, tomato, sweet red pepper, mushroom with asafoetida, cumin, garam masala, oregano, ginger. All over couscous. SO GOOD.

My local produce market, Growers Ranch, rocks my little world so hard!

Also a really nice Pepperwood Grove zinfandel. Very smooth wine.

But I am far too food-oriented. I am already thinking about pancakes I might make tomorrow.

At the black hole coffee house again tonight. BS’d with the staff for a while, stared into space. Went to the bookstore and bought a Bible translation I didn’t have (NKJV), a book about Vedanta, and the New York Review of Books. Enough to chew on for a few.

Went back to the bookstore and encountered Bave and Dethya and Ranger Dan. Was having an enjoyable discussion with them when the guitar player at the next table, who had been quietly noodling along playing chords, took a break and lit up a joint.

It was sort of weird and uncomfortable sitting there smelling his WEED as we talked, and wondering why he was doing that in public. When he wandered away, came back, and lit up again Bave finally had to go tell him that the smoke was making his wife sick (Dethya can’t deal with it, it makes her nauseous) and he finally stopped.

Great comment from one of the coffee guys: “Yeah, I bet he wanted to say ‘I just lit that up ACCIDENTALLY because I’m so FREE and EASY that I don’t even notice your social anxiety about HERB, maaan.’.”

Actually I just can’t stand the smell, myself. But it was weird. I wonder if he was half-hoping a cop would show up so he could be a martyr to hemp.

Came home and had a pr0k sandwich and a bowl of saffron rice. Tomorrow I’m on call so I’ll go buy vegetables and fruits at Growers Ranch and make a fruit salad maybe and certainly a big ole vegetable stir fry delight.

Dunno what I’m doing tomorrow night. I want to have BIG FUN though. Any suggestions?

I worked from home without permission today, but no one seemed to object. I think I am getting a wee bit of bad attitude. Just a wee bit though.

1. The crows have invaded my neighborhood. Literally a hundred or so of them hanging around going GRAWWWWWWWK all day. They’re fascinating, yet loud and annoying.

2. The I.T. departments at large companies are the last vestige of the old Soviet Empire.

3. It’s too bad that Saddam’s deadline falls on St. Patrick’s day. You know he’d rather be drinking green beer at Ba’athy O’Shea’s that night.

4. I want to be free! Like the bird, like the bee! Oh, why am I classed with the mammals?

5. I really really like this beer-cheddar bread I’ve been making. Like. Obsessively.