Cop, to Rooney, while filling out an FI (field interrogation) card: “Give me your full name, date of birth, street address, and phone number. Okay now, Mr. Rooney, tell me what happened.”
Rooney, with a hint of arrogance: “That terrible man over there chased me down the sidewalk with that pooper scooper full of dog poop and he threatened to hurt me.”
Cop, incredulously: “He threatened to hurt you?”
Rooney: “Well, he didn’t exactly threaten to hurt me, but I felt threatened by him following me down the sidewalk with that thing,” as he gestured toward the pooper scooper.
Cop: “Why would he do that in the first place?”
Rooney: “I don’t know. Maybe he was going to mug me or steal my precious dog, Fang.”
Cop: “Mug you or steal your dog, Fang…really?” Now the cop was shaking his head, I think, because I really didn’t match the profile of a mugger nor a Pomeranian dognapper.
Cop, to me, while filling out another FI card: “Give me your full name, date of birth, street address, and phone number. Now, Mr. Snarky, tell me what happened.”
Me: “Officer, Mr. Rooney over there had been letting his dog poop on my lawn on a regular basis for months without cleaning it up, and I finally caught him in the act this morning.”
Cop: “You actually witnessed Mr. Rooney with his dog, Fang, while said dog relieved itself on your front lawn?”
Me: “Yessir.”
Cop: “And you’re positive it was Mr. Rooney and this dog?” The cop pointed his pen down toward Fang. Fang barked and then hid behind Rooney.
Me: “Absolutely positive, officer – here’s the evidence.” I thrust the loaded pooper scooper toward him.
Cop: “That’s a lot of poop for such a small dog.”
Me: “Fang’s poop is the fresh one in front that looks like a cat turd.” The cop took a closer look and then turned toward Rooney.
Cop, to Rooney: “Well, Mr. Rooney, Mr. Snarky here says that you let your dog poop on his lawn and didn’t clean it up – is this true?”
Rooney: “No, it is not true – that man is a LIAR!”
Cop: “Mr. Rooney, calling someone a liar is a serious accusation. And what about the fresh evidence in the pooper scooper? Are you telling me that this didn’t come from Fang?”
Rooney, in a blustery, dismissive tone: “I have no idea where that came from!”
Cop, sensing that Rooney was not actually telling the truth: “Well then, Mr. Rooney, I guess I have no choice but to take the poop Mr. Snarky alleges as coming from your dog as evidence and also take your dog, Fang, into custody until he poops again at which time the crime lab will perform a DNA test on both poop samples. If they match, Mr. Snarky may sue you for trespassing, property damage, and defamation of character, and you will also be charged with giving false information to a peace officer which is a misdemeanor and could result in up to six months in county jail and a fine up to $5,000.”
Rooney: “Ha! Officer – you’re joking…right?” The officer looked Rooney straight in the eye and shook his head slowly.
Rooney: “You can’t be serious about taking Fang into custody as if he was some common street criminal! You aren’t going to cuff him, are you?”
Cop: “I never joke about making an arrest and taking people or their dogs into custody, Mr. Rooney. I’ll have to radio in for animal control to come and pick Fang up.”
Rooney: “Animal control? Fang will end up in the city dog pound!”
Cop: “Yes, he certainly will. I hope you’ve kept up on his vaccines – you never know what he might pick up at the pound. Stuff like mange, distemper, kennel-cough, ringworm, heartworm, rabies, fleas…stuff like that.”
Rooney, in an excited, wavering voice: “Whoa-whoa-whoa! I-I-I simply cannot stand the thought of Fang sitting behind bars with a bunch of flea-bitten ill-behaved mutts from who knows where. Um, officer, I, ah, I think things may have gotten blown up way out of proportion here. I-I-I mean that I didn’t really feel threatened by Mr. Snarky. I, ahem, I, ah, I was just totally embarrassed that he caught me and Fang red-handed, and I may have, ah, overreacted just a smidgen under such a stressful situation.”
Cop: “A smidgen?”
Rooney: “Okay-okay, I absolutely overreacted. I-I-I owe Mr. Snarky here an apology.” Rooney gave me a sheepish grin and said, “Please accept my sincere apology for acting so foolishly.”
Me: “Mr. Rooney, I was just trying to make a point; please excuse me for my crude, impolite methodology.” We briefly smiled at each other and shook hands. Rooney’s hand was clammy and wimpy; it felt like I was shaking a cold, dead fish.
Cop: “Okay now, citizens, are we good here?”
Rooney and myself, in unison: “Yessir.”
Cop: “Okay now, both of you go home; I have some real criminals to catch.”
And as the cop was walking away from us heading back to his black-and-white cruiser, he reached down to his tactical belt and pulled out a tiny pair of dog-sized handcuffs and twirled them around on his index finger. He was serious after all.
Musing aside, I followed Rooney to the end of the long block where he turned right and headed west. I let him sweat it out for another minute or so and then turned around and walked back toward home. I was feeling some satisfaction that Mr. Rooney now knows that I know that he and his dog Fang are the poop offenders when suddenly the irony of the situation struck me; once again, I had picked up his beloved Fang’s poop. That man was diabolical! I never saw him again.
All of this nonsense could have been avoided if only Mr. Rooney and his ilk would be more responsible about their dog’s poop. This is not hard to do!
The War on Dog Poop needs you to stand up and fight for your right to stroll through your neighborhood without stepping in it and your right not to have to pick up someone else’s dog poop from your front yard.
See something, say something! Call these miscreants out! Take a picture of them and their dog and post them around the neighborhood with some sensationalized tabloid headline, like, “GUILTY OF POOPING IN PUBLIC!” or “IT’S ALL HIS FAULT!” Or something like that.
Or maybe lobby city hall to create a new law for these dog poop ignoramuses that requires them to provide a public service like dog poop clean up, for example. Or perhaps pay a $5,000 fine or spend 6-months in jail. Maybe this will help alleviate the problem. Or not.
Because everyone walking in America deserves public poop-free zones!
A sign of the times. This should NOT be necessary.
Story 9 of 52
By M. Snarky
Authors note: out of respect for my reader’s time, this and future posts will target 1,500 words, or about a 10-minute read per post. Thank you for following my writing journey.
Aside from an IRS audit, stepping into a pile of dog poop on a public sidewalk is the next most hated thing in America. It stinks. It’s messy. It’s disgusting. It gets into the tread of your shoe and now you find yourself trying to get it out by dragging your shoe back-and-forth across someone’s front lawn, looking like a loon in the process, and often exacerbating the problem by driving the poop deeper into the tread. Sometimes this method works, sometimes it doesn’t. Other times, you need to find a stick and try to scrape out the poop from the grooves which is really gross. The last resort is getting back home and using a high-pressure hose nozzle to clean it off which is always effective but now your shoe has to dry out for a day or two. I have much better things to do with my limited time on this planet than cleaning up what was obviously someone else’s mess. What kind of dog owner is it that doesn’t pick up after their dog? The completely arrogant, irresponsible, selfish, and indifferent dog owner, that’s who. These people must be stopped! I declare a War on Dog Poop!
These are the type of people that the “Please Clean up After Your Dog” yard signs were invented for. Signs like this would not be necessary if all dog owners exercised some common decency, for example, picking up their dogs excrement. I’m also pretty sure this group of dog owners are the reason for the proliferation of the “free” dog poop bag dispensers found in public spaces and generally maintained by some city or county governmental department, like Parks and Recreation. Any government entity that tells you something is free is totally lying to you because any good or service provided by the government uses taxpayer dollars to pay for it, ergo, it is not actually free. This also means two other things: 1) Taxpayers paid 10¢ for a 1¢ plastic baggie, 2) Taxpayers are subsidizing people’s lack of proper dog poop clean-up etiquette. There’s probably a free online course about this too, so there’s absolutely no excuse for people not to clean up after their dog. As far as I’m concerned, ignorance cannot be claimed and the lack of picking up after one’s dog is a blatant act of disrespect for the neighborhood.
The not actually free government provided dog poop baggie issue aside, without much effort or expense, dog poop baggies can be purchased almost anywhere. They are in the pet aisle in the supermarket, often at convenience stores, and all over the Internet. Some of them even come with a handy dispenser that can be clipped onto a leash or a collar. They come in various gender specific colors too if that’s your jam. I think the black ones represent non-binary dogs but since dogs are color blind it doesn’t really matter to them. One can even subscribe to have them delivered on a regular basis which is very convenient for busy urbanites. If bought in bulk, they are less than a penny each. So, I think I can rule out inconvenience or budgetary constraints as reasons for not carrying dog poop baggies and picking up after your dog. It must be something else…
Oh! Look! A little satchel of dogshit!
Oddly, some of you DO go to the trouble of picking up your doggos doodoo…and then for whatever idiotic reason you drop the poop baggie to the side and keep moving. You see these everywhere; the little green, blue, pink, or black plastic baggies of dog poop sitting on the sidewalk, or in a driveway, or tossed onto someone else’s front lawn. I just don’t get this half-assed attempt to clean up after your dog. Why can’t you just take the poop bag with you and toss it into the trash when you get home? Oh, maybe it’s the smell that bothers you? Let me tell you something; nobody actually likes the smell of dog poop either except for other dogs and perhaps some super-freaky people, but it comes with owning a dog. You want a dog? Get used to bad breath, smelly poop. and stinky dog farts. If you can’t handle any of that then get a goldfish.
Thinking about this further, I can only imagine the dog poop getting onto the sidewalk or on your front lawn in one of the following ways:
Someone’s dog got loose and relieved itself when the moment came as it was running through the neighborhood. This is free-range poop and there’s not much to be done about it.
Somebody simply left their doggie poop bags at home and didn’t bother to come back to pick up after their dog. These are generally well meaning, but obviously lazy, inconsiderate dog owners.
Someone was physically unable to bend down to clean up after their dog. I’ll give disabled persons and the old folks a pass on this, but maybe they should try curbing their dog.
Somebody just doesn’t care where their dog poops and cares even less about cleaning it up. These dog owners are Public Enemy #1.
There was a #4 in my old neighborhood in Granada Hills who let his dog poop on my front lawn on a regular basis and left me to clean up the mess. He reminded me of an older, graying version of Mr. Rooney from Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, mustache and all. It took me a while to figure out it was him and his ankle biter Pomeranian as he was very sneaky about it. Was it a sign that he didn’t like me? I don’t think so because we never met each other. Or, maybe he thought he was doing me a favor and fertilizing my lawn? Well, I don’t know what he was actually thinking, but one morning I was looking out of my front window sipping my coffee and I caught him and his dog in the act. He was nervously looking around as his dog was dropping a deuce on my lawn. I stormed out of the front door and confronted him about it. There was no use denying it. I said, “I really don’t like cleaning up your dog’s poop; why don’t you pick up after your dog?” He sarcastically quipped, “Or what; are you going to hurt me?” like some schoolyard taunt from a ten-year-old masochist. And then he just casually walked away, leaving the fresh, steaming pile of dog poop on my front lawn. This blatant act of defiance enraged me.
I ran to the backyard through the side gate, grabbed the pooper scooper I used for my dog, quickly scooped up some Labrador poop from the backyard, ran back to the front yard, scooped up the fresh pom poop (indeed, I was going to pay Rooney back in spades) then ran to the corner in the direction that I last saw him walking and looked up and down the street, and there he was, strolling south down the sidewalk like nothing had happened. He was maybe two houses ahead of me. I briskly but quietly walked up behind him, and when I got about ten feet away from him, I said (sarcastically, of course), “Excuse me sir, I think you forgot something!” He stopped dead in his tracks and spun around on his heels to see me standing there with the loaded pooper scooper. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped a little. Without saying a word, he spun back around on his heels and began walking away from me at a fairly brisk pace, looking over his shoulder every now and then to see if I was still following him. Then I said to him, “I’ll just follow you home and leave this on your lawn!” He picked up the pace a little bit more and yelled over his shoulder, “I’M CALLING THE POLICE!” which made me chuckle a little bit thinking about how that interaction with the cops might transpire…
In 1979, at 18, I finally got my drivers license. But then I needed a car. $400 later, I was driving a 1968 Buick Electra 225 with a big block 430 ci engine that I bought from by brother. It was named, “The Tuna Boat.”
The hubris of my youth combined with its commensurate ignorance conspired against me for a belief of invincibility. Or so I thought…
Around 1970 when I was 9 years old, my dad rented a single-story 4-bedroom farmhouse on 40-acres of pasture in rural Capay Valley which is about 30-miles northwest of Sacramento, CA, and moved the entire family of six into it. This was boondock living before it was cool. Nothing but silos, cows, and alfalfa fields as far as the eye could see.
I was the 3rd of four children. My half-brother Marc was the eldest by several years, followed by my sister Lisa, followed by me, and our little brother Scott was the caboose of the baby train.
The property also had a scary old, dilapidated 2-story 19th century Victorian farmhouse about 50-yards from the main house. We convinced ourselves that it was haunted, so we mostly avoided it.
Living in the boondocks like we did, Lisa, Scott, and I found unique ways to entertain ourselves often in the form of dares. A dare from an older sibling was a way for us youngsters to prove our worth and stay in their good graces by demonstrating our mettle. Or so we believed.
The first standout dare in Capay Valley was that Lisa challenged Scott and I to climb over the fence of the cow pasture and touch a cow, which we boldly accepted. The problem was that it had recently rained, and the cow pasture was a massive muddy quagmire. This, however, did not stop us boys from proceeding. Scott and I slowly slogged out to about 50-feet from the fence when a bull far off in the distance spotted us and began trotting toward us. The bull had to be at least 200-yards away, but it was making good speed in the mud. Scott and I quickly turned around and began running for our lives back toward the fence. Scott stopped in mid-stride and yelled out, “My shoe got sucked off of my foot; I have to try and find it!” This was a bad idea. I kept heading toward the fence while Scott was hopelessly groping around in the mud with his hands as the bull, now picking up speed, was quickly closing in on us.
I got to the fence and climbed over it and turned around to see Scott on all fours, now covered completely in mud, and still frantically feeling around for his shoe. Lisa and I yelled out to him, “RUN SCOTT, RUN – THE BULL! THE BULL!” as we pointed behind him. He looked back at the bull and realized that we were not kidding. He jumped up and began to run as fast as he could toward us and the perimeter fence of protection. As he continued to run for his life, his sock got sucked off his foot, then the other shoe, then the other sock. By the time he got back to the fence, he was barefoot. Lisa and I helped him get over the fence and by this time the bull was only about 50-feet behind him, which, in my opinion, is as close to a bull as you want to get unless you are a matador.
When we got back to the house, I was half covered in mud and Scott was fully covered in mud. The look on my mom’s face when we got to the mudroom at the back door was priceless. Then the inquiry began. “What were you boys getting into this time? How did the two of you get so muddy? Scott, where are your shoes and socks? Lisa, what do you know about this?” As my mom was stripping us boys out of our extremely wet, muddy clothes, the truth spilled out. A dare. A couple of willing little brothers. A muddy pasture. An angry bull. A near death run for our lives. A lost pair of shoes and socks.
As was typical of my mom, she spoke in matter-of-fact tone. “What were you two thinking would happen? You boys are lucky that you didn’t get gored by that mean old bull. Lisa, stop daring your brothers to do such dangerous things.”
One day not too long after the bull incident, I noticed a swarm of bees under one of the lower eaves of the presumably but probably haunted old farmhouse. It was maybe about 8-feet above the ground. I watched it for a while and was mesmerized by it. I showed it to Scott and Lisa. They too, were mesmerized by it.
Then my sister said something familiar to me that I could not resist; “I dare you to knock the beehive down!” Well, a dare is a dare (it is a personal level challenge, really) so I took it upon myself not to wimp out. I knew where my dad kept some lumber and walked over to the carport and grabbed a 2-by-4 stud and walked back with it. “I’ll use this!” I said triumphantly as I thrust the slightly warped wood stud forward.
I lifted the 2-by-4 up by one end and put the other end along one side of the beehive and gave it a shove. It didn’t come down, but it got the bees riled up and they started buzzing around me as honey started to drip out of the hive. Scott and Lisa took a few steps back. I shoved the beehive again, this time with a little bit more force, and most of the beehive came down with a plop about 3-feet in front of me as I jumped back. Now the bees were very angry and swarming around the beehive pile and darting toward us.
Then my sister dared me to run through it. I knew this was a bad idea, but I accepted challenge #2 anyway and I ran through the swarm of bees not once…but twice.
The first pass was a full-speed run through the cloud of swirling bees and although a few bounced off of me and a few landed on me that I quickly brushed off with my bare hands, I did not get stung. Now, I was feeling invincible, so the next pass was a slow walk through the tornado of angry bees. This was another bad idea. The bees were now landing on me en-masse, and I was brushing them off as fast as I could as my pace quickened because I was sensing that maybe I overestimated my invincibility. Then a bee landed on my lower lip and immediately stung me as my siblings stood there in the distance, gawking. This stinging of the lip was certainly not the fault of the bee that sacrificed its own life for the sake of the colony; I was, in fact, an existential threat.
I’m going to assume that you, dear reader, have never been stung on your lower lip by an angry bee so I’ll explain to you what it was like in an attempt to dissuade you from doing anything foolish with a beehive. You can thank me later.
The initial sting on such a tender part of my face was extremely painful and the rush of the adrenaline induced fight-or-flight reflex shot through my body like I got struck by a bolt of lightning. I panicked and tried to brush the bee off of my lip while also spitting and running away from the swarm as fast as I could. This is when I noticed that my lower lip was already starting to swell up. I started to panic and ran to the house without breaking pace.
By the time I got inside the house calling for my mom with tears in my eyes and a panicked, trembling voice hoping that she could somehow triage my lower lip with some old timey remedy, my lip had swollen considerably to the point that when my mom finally got a look at me, she started laughing. My siblings, who were hot on my heels, also got a fresh look at me and started laughing. They couldn’t contain themselves. Let me tell you, trying to talk when your lip is so swollen that it’s hanging down preventing you from closing your lips to pronounce letters like B, F, M, P, U, V, and W, makes for a very cartoonish Elmer Fudd like voice.
Then my mom started with another inquiry. “What happened?” I was trying to explain but it was hard to talk with my inner tube sized lip. It also didn’t help that everyone was still laughing at me. My siblings gave an abbreviated version of the incident skipping over the part about the dare, but I didn’t care. My mom put together a baggie of ice and told me to hold it on my lip. This is when I rushed to the bathroom mirror to assess the damage. My god! How can my lip balloon up like that? Will it ever go back to normal? Am I permanently disfigured? What will the kids at school say? Will my family ever stop laughing at me? Questions like these raced through my mind. Also, now I understood why my family was laughing at me – I had a freakish appearance with my big, puffy lip hanging down revealing my bottom teeth, looking a little bit like a Shih Tzu with a bad underbite. I could have been hired as a circus sideshow attraction.
For the next several hours, I held an ice pack to my lip while struggling to talk or eat. My mom eventually administered an antihistamine, and I don’t remember the rest of the night. I woke up the following morning and my lower lip was almost back to normal size and by the late afternoon you it was as if nothing had happened.
The only consolation that I had was that I technically “won” the dare, but I definitely lost the battle with the bees.
“Oh, honey; look how cute he is!” said my wife, Kim, while pushing her phone into my face with a picture of a small, softball sized fluffy orange hairball. “He’s a rescue cat from Palm Springs named Cheeto that was found in a hole in the desert. He’s already been neutered, and he needs a home; can we adopt him?” A rescue cat with a backstory posted on the Internet looking for a nice suburban home to move into already sounded dubious to me. Also, she asked as if she needed my permission for anything – Kim is going to do what Kim wants to do anyway, especially when it comes to cats. She grew up with cats and so I knew that it really was only a matter of time before she got what she wanted. My cat-free days were numbered.
Kim started scrolling through the plethora of pictures of Cheeto-the-homeless-feral-long-haired-orange-tabby-kitten-found-in-a-hole-in-the-Palm-Springs-desert like he was some A-List celebrity. “Awe, look at him sleeping!” She turned her phone toward me again. I really couldn’t make out his head from his tail and it reminded me of a furry creature from a Star Trek episode titled, The Trouble with Tribbles. Yes, he was undeniably cute. No, I didn’t want to adopt him or any other cat for that matter because it would interfere with my scheme to eventually be a pet-free household so we could travel the world extensively without worrying about any animals back at home.
“I miss not having a cat and Bagheera has been gone for 4-years now.” Bagheera was a fluffy black cat that had lived an indoor life of ultimate leisure with us for 17-years and was from a litter of kittens from another rescue cat named Avalon that Kim “found” wandering around the neighborhood. I sensed a pattern here. “Besides, Sydney needs a playmate.” Sydney is an Aussie-Doodle dog that Kim also “found” on the Internet.
Kim met up with an anonymous woman – who I was sure was a typical low-level Internet con artist – at a local park. Kim got the dog, and our bank account took an unexpected four-figure hit. Easier to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission, I suppose. Oh, and no documentation for the dog to prove her pedigree or vaccinations…not even a paper receipt for the cash transaction. I’m sure the anonymous dog peddling woman claimed the cash as income on her 2018 federal tax return.
And so, this is how Kim set me up for the Cheeto trap…
“We can drive down to Palm Springs on Sunday and have a nice lunch and Mai Tai’s at the Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar on the strip, then we’ll go over to meet Cheeto. If we like him, we can take him home.” She knew she had me at Mai Tai’s at Tommy Bahama’s. I caved. Kim called Cheeto’s foster parents and arranged the itinerary.
On the Saturday afternoon before we were planning our road trip to the desert to meet this homeless kitten, Kim said that she got a call from Cheeto’s foster parents and they had to change their schedule, and we had to pick up Cheeto before 10:00 AM on Sunday. Damn, the Tommy Bahama Marlin Bar doesn’t open until 11:00. Also, there was no way I was going to show up at a bougee bar for some day drinking in the triple digit desert heat with a kitten in a carrier; it would just be too hot for the little guy. Also, I didn’t want to field any nosey inquiries about Cheeto from any curious onlookers. I was immediately reminded of the quote “The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry,” (translated) from To a Mouse by Robert Burns. Or was it that I was actually tricked? The jury is still out for deliberation on this.
It was a breezy 80-MPH early morning drive to the Coachella Valley, and at around 9:00 AM we met with Cheeto’s foster family, who were very nice people. They had other siblings from Cheeto’s litter that were also very cute, but Cheeto was the cutest of the litter with his long, striped, flaming orange coat and his already magnificent orange striped fluffy tail. Looking at him, what immediately came to my mind was that he is a warrior Viking Kattuz and he should have been named something more appropriate like Ragnar or Frode or Gorm. But since he already had a brand name, I didn’t want to go through the rigamarole of the legal system’s rebranding process and deal with its legions of lawyers and reams of paperwork plus it would be too stressful for him to go before a judge at such a young age to plead his case.
We donated some money to Cheeto’s foster humans to help cover the costs of his surgery and his room and board in Palm Springs, popped the little orange fluffball into a cat carrier that we brought along with us, and were on our way back home before 10:00 AM.
A tear rolled down my face as we drove past the exit for the Marlin Bar.
Twenty minutes into the drive, Kim took Cheeto out of his carrier and held him in her lap all the way home. They bonded while I was driving down the Interstate trying to avoid the sea of idiotic Prius and Tesla drivers going exactly 65-MPH while everyone else around them was going 80. We got home around noon.
Our dog of questionable origins, Sydney, went bonkers when we introduced her to Cheeto. Syd had never seen a kitten before and I believe, at first, she thought Cheeto was a new play toy…until the claws came out. The yelp that Syd let out the first time she got impaled on her nose by a sharp kitten claw was both of pain and astonishment.
Now the real fun begins – raising another kitten. The thing about kittens is that they have no sense of time, and they seem to only have three modes; sleep (80%), eat (2%), and play (18%). Three modes and no schedule means that anything can happen at any time of day or night.
If kitty wakes up at 2:00 AM and wants to play, kitty is going to pounce on your head or on your face or walk up and down your body with remarkably heavy paws for such a small animal. This nocturnal behavior was not exclusive to victimizing the humans in the house – Syd got her fair share of harassment too. Turns out that this little kitten found in a hole in the desert was an insomnia inducing, circadian rhythm killing fluffball from the Viking underworld.
You might be asking; how fluffy is he? For starters, he has thick fur growing out between the pads of his paws that requires constant trimming, or else navigating the hardwood floors is more like ice skating than walking. The long, downy soft fur under his belly turns into baby dreadlocks if you don’t brush it regularly, which he absolutely hates. He has tufts of long fur coming out of his ears like a 90-year-old man. But it is his tail that takes the cake; it is a tail of such enormity that it is nearly the size of his body, and he struts around the house with it proudly waving high in the air and with such dignity that it borders on arrogance.
I’m surprised we haven’t received a notification from the city to get a permit for his glorious tail (effectively a tail tax), but I’m sure somewhere deep within the bowels of city hall, a bureaucrat sitting beneath a flickering fluorescent light is scheming.
Cheeto developed his own little parkour course in the bedroom between the upper and lower levels of the nightstand, our bed, and the dresser, Sydney’s donut shaped bed, and the windowsills. Rattling the horizontal shades in the wee hours of the morning is his personal favorite. It is his way, I think, of saying, “Wake up hoomans – it’s time to play NOW!” This feline reveille is when the 18% play factor feels more like 100%.
We tried to discourage him from his naughty nocturnal behavior with a spray bottle filled with tap water mixed with a little bit of white vinegar, but instead of dissuading him from his little night terror habit, he gamified it. For example, he will rattle the blinds and look over at me to see if I was reaching for the spray bottle. As soon as I motioned that I was arming myself, he would dive under the bed…and then he would come back up and do it again within 5-minutes. Every now and then when I was stealthy enough to hit my moving furry orange target he would scurry off to some dark corner of the bedroom, and after sulking for maybe 5-minutes, he would start all over again. I think he actually liked getting nailed with the spray bottle.
And if you make the mistake of wiggling your toes while you’re sleeping or hanging your hands or feet outside of the blanket, Cheeto will quickly remind you of his presence with a fang or a claw – not in a vicious way, mind you – but man, has he interrupted some good REM sleep sessions. One minute I’m sailing the ocean blue toward an emerald-green tropical island and the next minute I’m being attacked by a Kraken.
We tried closing him out of the bedroom too. It took him about 30-seconds to realize that he could reach under the bottom of the door and hook it from the inside with his claws and rattle it. The problem is that he has no musical rhythm and it made it impossible to incorporate his door rattling with any piece of music that I could think of while trying to lull myself back to sleep. It seemed as if we had a little orange monster in the hallway. I think if we had a levered door handle instead of a round doorknob, he would figure out how to open the bedroom door in a nanosecond. Don’t think that he hasn’t rattled the doorknob too!
Cheeto has developed some unusual dietary habits. He does not like any canned cat food at all. He has rejected every brand on the market; sorry Morris, you’re apparently a mislead spokescat. But Cheeto does love his Lickables, that is, as long as it does not have chunks in it. If it has chunks, he’ll lick around them. He also loves…wait for it…raw asparagus! One day we were bringing in the groceries and temporarily put the grocery bags on the kitchen counter. One of the bags had a bundle of asparagus in it. Cheeto hopped up on the counter and beelined it to that grocery bag, dove into it, pulled out the bundle of asparagus and started chomping the tips off of the stalks. Needless to say, we had to change our dinner menu. What a weirdo.
Cheeto has also developed an unhealthy obsession for plastic bags and not just for playing with; he chews on them and bites off and swallows chunks of them. One day he was not feeling well and was vomiting here and there. Finally, a cat sized bite of plastic sheeting came up and he felt better. We forensically matched it with a bite taken out of a recently delivered Amazon package. I think this also indicates that Cheeto has microplastics in his body. We are now in the habit of keeping all plastic bags away from him but mostly for selfish reasons like not wanting to step in any more cat vomit with bare feet and not wanting to take him to the vet for emergency abdominal surgery at 2-AM.
In our efforts to make life enjoyable, we have purchased many cat related products like catnip laced stuffed toys, plastic balls with bells and feathers, an oversized fake cheese puff bag that crinkles when you touch it, balls of twine, and a laser pointer. A friend of ours gifted Cheeto a nice multi-tiered cat tower replete with scratching posts, a perch, and all sorts of dangly things to bat around. He loves it.
One day Kim brought home a tape roll core made of thick cardboard and casually tossed it onto the living room floor. Cheeto lost his mind for about an hour pouncing, batting, kicking, and chasing that thing around the house. The problem was that he also liked to pounce, bat, kick, and chase that thing around in the wee hours of the morning. This is what happens when you’re a spoiled suburban housecat with an all-access pass and zero rules.
I considered sending Cheeto off to a fancy boarding school somewhere like Shortridge Academy, New Hampshire, Hurtwood House School, United Kingdom, or Collège du Léman, Geneva, Switzerland, to knock off the rough semi-feral edges and polish him up a little bit but after seeing the outrageous tuition of those places I immediately changed my mind as it would quickly land me in bankruptcy court.
On the upside, Cheeto does have a sweet, loving side to him. He likes hanging out on the living room couch with us. He’ll nudge your hands relentlessly to encourage you to pet him. Sometimes he even cuddles with Sydney.
So, we’ll just keep our diamond in the rough gato diablo as he is and adjust our lives accordingly (as per usual) because we do love him despite his lack of a formal education and his overabundance of antics.
Everyone has at least one scar. No? You’ve somehow miraculously lived an injury-free life? Newsflash! Your belly button is technically a scar, so there’s that little factette. Indeed, birth itself scars us for life on Day 1. There are people who receive many, many more scars throughout their lives; their umbilical cord getting severed in the delivery room is just the first one.
Some scars are small, like what you might get from nicking a finger with a sharp kitchen knife just after you sharpened it (coincidentally only a moment after you cautioned yourself not to cut your finger!), but the cut didn’t require any medical attention – only a band aid or maybe some duct tape. Other scars indicate that professional emergency medical attention was needed, and sutures or staples or surgical super glue were definitely required.
Oftentimes, the scars we accumulate are our own damn fault obtained from our foolish or occasionally reckless decisions. We can look back at these scars and maybe laugh a little bit because we knew better but engaged in idiotic behavior anyway. But sometimes a scar comes from an unexpected event that is completely out of our control and are no laughing matter whatsoever.
Some scars tell a story of great, almost unbelievable suffering and pain, resilience, and survival.
It’s easy to tell the minor scars from the major scars from a visual standpoint, however, it’s all but impossible to gauge the mental impact of any one of them. There’s no doubt that some of them required subsequent therapy. And maybe some strong pharmaceutical medication for a little while.
Everyone remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing then they got their scar as if it happened today.
When you look at your scars, you relive the events that precipitated the injury over and over. Some of the circumstances of the injury can be slightly humorous while others are far more serious or even disturbing in nature. Or sometimes the situation was just extremely reckless and you’re lucky that you survived. You remember those all too well.
I look in the mirror and see the scar on my chin that I got when I was about 7 years old. I got that one from wearing my dad’s old cowboy boots up the cinder block steps to the aluminum skinned Airstream trailer, catching a toe in one of the cinder block holes and tripping forward onto the shiny metal threshold. I couldn’t believe how much blood was coming out of my chin and it freaked my mom out a little bit. Four sutures later, and I was good as new. Summer of 1968, Zamora, CA.
There’s a scar on my right check from when I was about 9. I was playing kick the can with the kids in the neighborhood and while running full speed toward the can, I ran into the sharp end of a freshly pruned oleander hedge as I was trying to run through it. 1971, Sacramento, CA. A couple of inches higher and it would have been my eye.
There are the scars that tell the stories of our careless youth, for example, the scars on our knees and elbows from skateboarding. Mine are from approximately 1970 to 1982. The DNA from my skin is all over the streets and sidewalks of North Hollywood.
There’s a scar on my left temple from when I got pistol whipped when I was 21. The short version is that this is a cautionary tale of youthful hubris going wrong and making the mistake of letting a belligerent friend – who will remain anonymous – with nunchucks under his car seat (which, by the way, is highly illegal in California) engage with a drunk person with a revolver in his back pocket who turned out to be extremely dangerous. Summer of 1982, in the parking lot of the Star Lite Room / Henry’s Tacos at the corner of Tujunga Avenue and Moorpark Street, North Hollywood, CA. It took dozens of sutures to close up the two lacerations. I was slightly concussed and had a ringing headache for three days.
There are scars that tell a story of a life changing traumatic event like from a major surgery or from putting a person’s body back together after a godawful car accident, or from a fire, or from being in combat. I have a scar on the inside of my right forearm from a skin graft for a 3rd degree burn that was received after getting electrocuted with 277 volts. It was a near-death experience and seeing the white light was a life changing event. That happened on Monday, December 26, 1994, at the DIC Entertainment building, Burbank, CA. It took me seven months to recover from that accident. This only reinforced my disdain for Monday’s.
Decades after an injury, the scar will always remind us of the time and the place and the physical pain we endured when we think about them even though they have been long healed. Painful events always stick with you like that.
Granted, not all scars are physical; we all carry an unseen scar or two. These are the scars that run much deeper than human flesh and bone and go directly to our soul and are often more painful than their physical counterpart. We all have these. Life requires this of us.
Ultimately, our scars tell the authentic stories of our lives.
I’m a bit old, weathered, and rusty in a few spots. My engine leaks some oil, and my transmission leaks some fluid – but fortunately not enough to be considered an environmental hazard…yet. My windows and sunroof leak too and let some of the rain in which makes for a dank smell. I definitely need some air freshener. My gas gauge no longer works. I’m hard to start sometimes and even harder to push, so it’s best not to let me run out of gas or let my battery go dead. But back in the eighties, I was the ride that everyone wanted for their special occasion, and I fetched a princely sum for my services.
Back in 1988 I was purchased new as a Town Car but then I was stretched out at Krystal Koach Limousine in Anaheim Hills, CA. I still wear my oxidized badge with pride.
In my prime, I was complimented on my smooth ride and luxurious interior appointments complete with sunroof, crystal, leather, faux wood accents, cigarette lighter and ash tray, split air conditioning, blackout tinted windows, and an entertainment center that included a color television, VHS tape player, AM/FM radio, and a cassette player. That’s how I rolled.
I’ve been to all of the iconic locations in and around the greater Los Angeles area. People took lots of pictures of me too. I’m in the background of thousands of photographs, and behind me you’ll see places like the Santa Monica pier, Disneyland, the Hollywood sign, The Forum, the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl, the Greek Theater, and the Dolby Theater on Oscar night. I don’t like to boast, but I’ve had a few Hollywood A-listers and business VIP’s riding in the back. Politicians too, but they talk too much, don’t tip well, and their entourage leave trash, cigar butts, and used condoms all over the place. The politicians always brought alcohol, hookers, and drugs.
I’ve also been seen on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, the Miracle Mile, all up and down Pacific Coast Highway from Newport Beach to Malibu, the Sunset Strip, and Mulholland Drive.
I’ve been out on countless prom nights, weddings, mitzvah’s, girls night out, guys night out, bachelor and bachelorette parties, concerts, and movie premiers. My favorite ride was when a young couple hired me so they could bring their baby home from the hospital in style. Very classy, indeed!
I’ve also been hired many times to rendezvous with a love interest to take them out to a fancy dinner at many of the Beverly Hills and Los Angeles area hotspots of the era like Lawry’s The Prime Rib, Chasen’s, The Palm, and Spago.
There have been copious amounts of booze, cocaine, champagne, quaaludes, and weed consumed in the spacious seating area in the back over the years. There’s still an empty champagne bottle rolling around in the back somewhere that my owner hasn’t found yet. Makes him crazy.
Oh, did I forget to mention the vast amount of sexual activity in the back? I’m talking about steamy, fog-up-the-windows sex! Apparently, I make people quite horny. Heterosexual couples, homosexual couples, and sometimes even group sex. One night while I was driving down the Sunset Strip, a woman performed fellatio on a man while he was standing up through the sunroof taking in all of the city lights.
There was another crazy night when a bunch of porn stars from the various adult film studios in Chatsworth, CA, hired me for an event at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Talk about debauchery! Someone even brought a briefcase full of sex toys. There was so much sexual activity in the back that I thought I had a flat tire. Wild!
Facing the harsh reality of my future, I know I’ll eventually end up in a junk yard in the desert, or in a car crusher, or shredded to bits in a massive industrial shredding machine.
But I wouldn’t mind if my last drive was a jump across a river in a TV show or a nosedive fall from a high cliff in a Hollywood movie, you know, go out in style.
Maybe I’m not cool anymore, but back in the day I was the ride. It was a good life and I have zero regrets.
I was born at L.A. County General Hospital and have lived around the Los Angeles area for almost my entire life, mostly in the San Fernando Valley. I took my written exam and driving test at the DMV office at the corner of Vanowen Street and Kester Avenue in Van Nuys when I turned eighteen way back in 1979. In other words, most of my driving experience is in the greater Los Angeles area, so I’m writing about this from firsthand experience.
Granted, I was guilty of doing all of the dumbass things that young new driver’s do like speeding, burnouts, racing on Mulholland Drive, and pulling a Rockford or two. But I grew out of it quickly after getting too many citations. It also didn’t help that I didn’t go to court on a couple of them because I knew I was going to have to pay a fine and didn’t have any money. Getting arrested for an FTA (failure to appear) after getting pulled over for another driving violation is not the way to impress your girlfriend passenger. After that, I decided that I’d rather keep my hard-earned money in my pocket as opposed to writing fat checks to the government for ridiculously high fines for moving violations.
Maybe I’m being foolish here, but it is assumed that everyone driving a car or riding a motorcycle in L.A. also possesses a valid California Class C driver’s license or a California M1 motorcycle license which means that they read and studied the CA Driver’s Handbook and passed both the written exam and the driving test or motorcycle skills test. This implies that they know what the actual rules of the road are. But alas, being a regular driver, walker, and cyclist here in L.A., I feel that my life is in constant danger because there are so many terrible, inattentive, discourteous, a-holes in cars and on motorcycles. You know who you are.
I’ve also spent countless hours being stuck in traffic so thick on the I-405 on the west side of Los Angeles, that I could walk to LAX over the roofs of the cars faster than driving to it. Ironically, slow, thick traffic like this does not discourage L.A. drivers from being incredibly rude, reckless, and absolutely dangerous even at snail’s pace speeds.
An Implied Mutual Trust Blown to Smithereens
The vehicle code was developed to make people aware of the law and what their personal responsibilities are as a driver or motorcyclist. So, it is assumed that if I have a driver’s license and you have a driver’s license that were both issued by the same state, we mutually know what the rules of the road are within that state and therefore there is a baked in default level of implied mutual trust in the system. For example, I trust that you know that it is illegal to run through a red stop light and you trust that I know the exact same thing. You cannot claim ignorance about this sort of thing because it is part and parcel of the driver’s handbook. The roads are much safer this way, right? Right! But here in L.A., I see drivers and motorcyclists constantly running red lights, and regularly speeding to do it – especially the left-hand arrow turns. This blatant disregard of the law obliterates the implied mutual trust, is extremely dangerous, and can have fatal consequences. Knock it off.
Lack of Turn Signals
These are used to inform other drivers around you of your intention of changing lanes or turning right or turning left. They have been mandatory on cars since 1967, so unless you’re driving a classic car that requires hand signals, your car has them. Turn signals are really easy to use too: You stick out a finger on your left hand and move the little lever sticking out of the steering column up to indicate a right-hand turn or move the little lever down to indicate a left-hand turn. So simple. As a fellow driver, I appreciate knowing which direction you are intending to go so that I can anticipate any directional changes that I may need to make or any braking that I may need to apply to prevent a collision with your presumably cherished Tesla, you know, all in the name of safety.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of you either find turn signals too difficult to operate, or aren’t aware of how they actually work, or entirely forgot about California Vehicle Code 22108, which requires all drivers to signal at least 100 feet prior to making a turn or changing lanes. Or maybe it’s really because you just don’t care about being a safe, courteous, and mindful driver and would rather live your life as a rude, selfish, asinine jerk who doesn’t mind it when people flip you the bird. Please, be nice and use the lever thingy. Thank you.
Incessant Speeding
Prima facie speed limit signs be damned – I’ll drive as fast as I f-ing want! This appears to be the default attitude of many L.A. drivers and motorcyclists. I’m not exactly sure why, but I’m thinking that this is because so many people here in L.A. have their heads up their rectum and can’t see the road signs. Or maybe they watched too many Fast and Furious movies and forgot that they were fiction. My experience is that if the posted speed limit is 45-MPH, everyone is driving 55-MPH…or faster. But there are always those drivers that must go faster than everyone else even when everyone else is already blatantly speeding. These are the drivers that are always involved in those horrific crashes that are covered on the local television news. People get hurt or killed because of them. Private and public property are damaged or destroyed because of them. Sometimes the speeding driver gets killed too which is maybe Darwinism at work and I’m actually okay with that because it’s better that they are off the road anyway. Please slow down for the sake of everyone around you – the life you save may be your own.
Stop Signs & Limit Lines
Stop. This is a word that we learn at a very early age. I won’t bore you with the multitude of dictionary definitions of the word itself, but everyone knows what stop actually means…that is, with the exception of L.A. drivers of course. I certainly do know that there is no other way to interpret the word stop: You either stop or you don’t. The lack of the stopping at the limit line is exceptionally dangerous for walkers and cyclists. For the sake of public safety, just take a few seconds to stop like you’re required to do. Thanks in advance.
Limit lines – also referred to as stop lines – are not optional. Per California Code, Vehicle Code – VEH § 22450:
(a) The driver of any vehicle approaching a stop sign at the entrance to, or within, an intersection shall stop at a limit line, if marked, otherwise before entering the crosswalk on the near side of the intersection.
Legally speaking, the word shall is an imperative command, usually indicating that certain actions are mandatory, and not permissive. Seems crystal clear to me. Then again, California invented the California Roll. I’m not writing about sushi here; I’m writing about a rolling “stop” when a driver does not come to a complete stop at a stop sign and rolls right through, so there’s that. As a regular walker in my neighborhood, why do I have to keep my head on a swivel to avoid getting run over in a crosswalk because nobody actually stops to save like 2-seconds of their time? Maybe they should keep in mind that a car is a deadly weapon, and they might hurt or kill someone by disregarding the law. Delivery drivers are the worst offenders of this – I’m talking to you DHL, Amazon, UPS, FedEX, DoorDash, UberEats and PostMates drivers. Try paying attention to the goddamn law for a change!
Mobile Phones & Other Electronic Distractions
The bane of all banes. Texting, Instagramming, Facebooking, watching cat videos, TV shows, full-length movies, and likely some pornography while driving a 2-ton vehicle is ludicrous. Eyes should be on the road in front of you – not on the screen of you darling iOS or Android powered handheld device you’re clutching in your hand. Aside from being an illegal activity while operating a motor vehicle, the distraction level is akin to that of a naked person walking in front of you: For whatever human psychological reason, you just can’t take your eyes off of them, warts, and all.
It used to be that the radio was the primary distraction while driving followed perhaps by lighting a cigarette. Nowadays, the radio has been replaced by streaming music on your phone via Bluetooth and cigarettes have been replaced with vaporizers, of which I am never certain if what is being vaporized is actually a tobacco or a cannabis product. As far as I’m concerned, smoking cannabis while driving is no different than cracking open a beer and drinking it while driving – either way, you are driving under the influence which makes you a far more dangerous driver. This also makes me wonder about how many people are driving under the influence of pharmaceutical drugs which may explain much of the problem. Regardless, your responsibility as a driver of a motor vehicle is to be safe, not high, so try focusing on that, please.
Tailgating
Why is tailgating even a thing? Unless you’re a NASCAR or F1 driver drafting the car in front of you to get an edge, there’s absolutely no point. Also, rear-end collisions are the most frequent type of car crash, so why would you want to increase the chances of crashing your presumably favorite, often expensive car into mine by decreasing the time to react? Also, I’m pretty sure that you don’t want to pay a $1,000 deductible so there is that little financial consideration. Tailgating is entirely reckless, extremely dangerous, and can easily be avoided; all you need to do is…back the hell off. Why not use the one car-length per 10-miles of speed rule or the 3-seconds behind the car in front of you rule? This is not a difficult thing to do. Try it!
If I’m stuck in thick traffic and can’t see the front license plate of your car in my rear-view mirror, you are maybe a little bit too close. If I can count the dead insects on your front grille, you are absolutely too close. But in L.A., this happens at 80-MPH. Being so close at that speed you might as well get in my car so we can use the carpool lane and save a little commute time. On the other hand, you may be the recipient of a random brake check which will evaluate your reflex time and put your bad little tailgating habit to the test and potentially give me the opportunity to call Larry H. Parker. Please be courteous and allow me and everyone else on the road some needed space. Thank you.
Car Clubs
Mulholland Drive, Pacific Coast Highway, Kanan Road, and Malibu Canyon are typical weekend car club takeovers where I live. It’s a collective circle jerk. They use the power of numbers to intimidate…and they know they’ll get away with it.
If you’re some poor soul driving along one of these roads and minding the speed limit and a Subaru WRX car club comes up behind you, you will get tailgated, flashing lights, and as-close-as-possible illegal passing over a double solid yellow line often on a curve. If you’re a cyclist, this is the most terrifying and dangerous situation that you can imagine. C’mon, people; you know that public roads are not for racing – how about maybe taking your car club to the track instead of endangering everyone else on the road? Cool it with the juvenile Ricky Road Racer attitude and stop pretending you are a professional race driver (you’re not even close) on public roads and take it to the track where you can really test your mettle while also keeping other motorists safe.
Motorcycle Clubs
These guys have a similar attitude to the car clubs with the takeovers and intimidation tactics but zip by at even higher speeds.
Generally speaking, the motorcycle clubs break out into two distinct groups: Imported and domestic.
The two groups have very different riding styles too. The import guys are always going as fast as possible, usually in single file, often sliding out and crashing when they push the envelope too far. One day while I was climbing Glendora Mountain Road (GMR) on my road bike with my wife and some friends, a guy on a Yamaha YZF was coming down much too fast and slid out across lanes on a hard right turn directly in front of us – almost taking out the front cyclists in our group – and hit the concrete K-Rail on the opposite side which stopped him from descending a hundred feet off a cliff edge which would likely have been fatal. His riding bros all stopped and blocked traffic going up and down GMR, including us cyclists which was completely unnecessary. Fortunately, the rider limped away, but his Yamaha was unrideable. SLOW THE HELL DOWN, BOYS!
And now we come to the Harley Bros, the most obnoxious motorcycle riding group of them all. Typically, these are a bunch of fattish middle-aged men with graying pedophile goatees clad in black leather vests with a club name on the back like Sofa King Phat, or Weasels on Wheels, wearing those stupid ugly black Nazi-light (or is it Darth Vader-light?) looking helmets, and riding side-by-side on a narrow two-lane road and making as much noise as possible with their garish BarcaLounger sized $50K V-twin noise making machines complete with cup holders for their skinny organic milk fair trade lattes or Bud Light beer cans. It’s a let’s pretend we’re one-percenters kind of thing, and these guys apparently really hate cyclists. I say this from personal experience.
Maybe the Harley Bros don’t know this, but per California Vehicle Code 2176 – effective since September 16, 2014 mind you:
California law requires at least three feet of clearance when passing a bicyclist on the road. When three feet is not possible, the driver of the motor vehicle shall slow to a reasonable and prudent speed and pass only when doing so would not endanger the safety of the bicyclists, taking into account the size and speed of the motor vehicle and bicycle, traffic conditions, weather, visibility, and surface and width of roadway. Failing to do so can incur a fine, regardless of a collision or not.
Then again, maybe I’m wrong to assume the Harley Bros can actually read or can approximate three feet of clearance. Bros, here’s a clue; it is approximately the distance from the center of your chest to your fingertips, give or take a little for the girth of the individual, who is often expanded due to how much beer the Harley Bro guzzled down that morning.
This law also seems crystal clear to me, but three feet of clearance is apparently lost on the Bros. I’ve been run off the road too many times. I’ve been intentionally passed within inches of a Harley handlebar striking the left-hand side of my road bike drop bars. The Harley Bro specialty is cracking their throttles wide-open (to a noise level definitely far above the CA legal maximum decibel level of 80dbA) when they are right next to you as they speed by, making you flinch by reflex while also making your ears ring. I would think that a cyclist would get a little bit more respect than that being that we are also on two wheels and don’t have any significant protection other than our helmets. Nope. We’re apparently intentional targets of the Bros.
Oh, and most of these drivers and motorcycle riders I’m referring to here are male. Guys: You can do better than this. Harley Bros: Knock it off with the land pirate cosplay caca del toro already and behave yourselves. Car club drivers: Take it to the track. Thanks a lot. Kisses!
A Special Mention Goes Out to the Arrogant Prius and Tesla Drivers
I’m just going to come right out and ask; why are you all a bunch of arrogant, self-righteous jerks? Driving one of these car models does not give you license to drive like an a-hole.
Aside from being guilty of all of the bad driving habits listed above, weaving in and out of lanes and cutting people off, passing cars from the right-hand turn lane, driving 65 in a 35, and driving in the HOV lane with a single passenger and no CAV (clean air vehicle) tags from the CA DMV on your bumper is how you raise the ire of the law-abiding drivers around you that are flipping you off.
You Prius drivers regularly going exactly 65-MPH in the fast lane while all of the other traffic is zipping around you at 75-MPH is an obvious sign that you are both a road hazard and possess zero situational awareness. Either move over to the slow lane with the cement trucks where you belong or get off the freeway and take the side streets. Or maybe just sell your super ugly car and get a bus pass and take public transportation instead.
I don’t know what’s going on with the Tesla drivers, but you are either driving 65-MPH like the idiotic Prius drivers or you’re driving 95-MPH like the boneheads in the car clubs. I don’t understand the reason for this, but you are dangerous either way. Why don’t you just go with the flow? I mean, with all of those fancy electronics and sensors and sonar and radar installed in your Tesla it can probably drive itself better than you can, so maybe try autopilot. On the other hand, one just has to be somewhat reasonable and possess a modicum of situational awareness to be a safe, courteous driver that doesn’t want to make fellow drivers angry or endanger anyone with their assortment of bad driving habits. Why don’t you give that courteous thing a try?
And no, Barney, you really are not special; you are just one the many sheeple living and driving in Los Angeles that think you are cool in your HEV, PHEV or flashy BEV car when you’re actually not.
Try something new: How about trying not to drive like an a-hole for a day or two or maybe even forever?
Has anyone noticed the overuse of hand gestures when people are speaking in public these days? I personally find them a major distraction and it has really gotten out of control.
CEO’s, politicians, people in academia, vloggers, and law enforcement spokespersons all come to mind. Some gestures are subtle, for example, people who put their fingertips together as if they are contemplating something serious and they generally move their hands in tandem while they are talking. Less subtle are the ones that wave their hands around and move their arms about like a classical music conductor from Budapest.
The worst offenders are the ones that look as if they are holding an invisible basketball between their hands and move their hands at the same syllabic cadence as their speaking pattern. It is as if eve·ry sin·gle syl·la·ble that spills out of their mouths are of utmost importance and MUST be emphasized. They don’t. It’s silly and looks like it’s a modern-day riff of follow the bouncing ball from Sing Along with Mitch circa 1961. So, am I supposed to follow along with the hand gestures and get seasick or am I to look at the face of the speaker? It can’t be both.
Maybe the speakers do it because there isn’t much content in their speeches, so they feel the need to make it more of a visual performance. Maybe it’s because the speaker has ADHD and needs to do something with their hands because they can’t use their fidget spinner while speaking to the general public which, coincidentally, would also signal to the audience that they are very uncomfortable and potentially untrustworthy. Or maybe it’s because some psychologist du-jour wrote a book about how hand gestures can indicate a level of confidence, passion, or expertise, or that the lack thereof indicates that you are not trustworthy or are indifferent. And since hand gestures fall under the larger category of body language, there’s just too much to unpack there.
Is it not okay to just not flail around when speaking in public these days? My opinion is that speaking in public does not need to be a form of visual entertainment; it just needs to be clear messaging whether it be a press conference or a commencement speech or a quarterly sales report in front of shareholders.
I do think I have a solution: Make lecterns and podiums mandatory for public speaking. Think about it. At the very least, they give the speaker somewhere to put their hands instead of waving them around like they are conjuring up a spell from the underworld. They are also useful for hard copies of the speech, you know, in case your i-something electronics fail, and they are also a handy place to slap on a logo because branding is so important these days! Remember to include the QR code to your organization and the Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter – er, make that X – accounts too! You don’t want to miss out on picking up a bunch of new trolls, um, followers, right? Right!
Now, I’m not asking public speakers to put their hands in their pockets either, that would definitely look ridiculous. I’m just asking for a little bit less emphasis of the moving of the hands all of the time and a little more emphasis on the content – just be honest to your audience.
On the other hand, universal hand gestures (including the offensive ones!) are always welcome because they speak truth.
I live in a subdivision of the San Fernando Valley that was built in 1952 by a contractor named Ponticopoulos, Inc. The homes here are mostly modest post-war houses ranging from 1,100 to 1,400 square feet and are typically 3-bedroom, 1-¾ bathroom, with a fireplace and an attached or a detached 2-car garage. Some have swimming pools. They were built without central heating or air conditioning. There are only about four original floor plans and as is typical of a subdivision, the floor plans are reversed (or “flipped”) to add some variety to what were ostensibly cookie-cutter tract homes. Compared to new subdivisions, the lots here are generous in size. Our 1,246 square foot house sits on a 9,298 square foot lot. We purchased the house in 1999 from the original owners who hadn’t done any improvements, but it was in great overall condition.
On Amestoy Avenue near Stagg Street, there’s an old original Carter Fence Co. sign on a neighbors old chain link fence with the even older seven-digit phone numbers on it:
Carter Fence Co.
There are concrete stamps in the sidewalks with the contractor’s names and the year the concrete was poured. I’ve identified the following stamps around the neighborhood:
1950 – PRCE & Graham Contractors. This is the earliest stamp I have found. The hand etched 1950 numbers are a little hard to see in this image.1951 – Malcolm Paving Co.1952 – Kirst Construction Co.1952 – PRCE & Graham Contractors. Again, the hand etched 1952 is not easy to see.1953 – Kirst Construction Co.1954 – Kirst Construction Co.
Judging by the quantity of the stamps, Kirst Construction Co. built the most sidewalks, curbs, and gutters here implying that they had close ties to the general contractor / builder Ponticopoulos, Inc. I think the stamps are cool looking and a semi-permanent memoir to the contractors that poured the mid-century cement. I’m planning on finding out more about these contractors at a later date for an exercise in Los Angeles urban development history. The 1952 stamps in the sidewalk around the corner indicate that our house was built during the third of five phases.
Only about 50% of the sidewalks in the neighborhood are still flat-ish. Between the mature trees and their roots pulling everything up and the many earthquakes over the decades, there are countless parts of the sidewalks that are buckled, tilted, cracked, or totally shattered.
Over the years, many of the homes in the neighborhood have been remodeled or built an addition, for example, a fourth bedroom. The trend now is building mostly 2-story ADU’s (accessory dwelling units). Some ADU designs are definitely better than others as far as style goes; some look like basic boxy utilitarian housing, while others were given far more architectural thought and are more pleasing to the eye. Many of the garage conversions look like they were done by a DIY-er and a maybe a couple of friends on a 12-pack Saturday and most likely without a permit. There are also other perpetual construction projects at various stages throughout the neighborhood.
I regularly walk around my neighborhood 4-5 days per week to get my (mostly) daily 10,000 steps. I have set 3 and 4-mile routes that I know like the back of my hand, and so I pass the same houses along those routes all of the time. Some houses are just more noticeable than others for various reasons. My observation is that the houses generally fall into the following categories:
Bright
Faded
50/50
Derelict
Hoarder
Squatter
Cat Lady
Bright
These are the homes that are well maintained and visually appealing. They are in tip-top shape and don’t need any improvements. The roofs are in excellent condition. The paint looks fresh. The front landscaping is well manicured. There is a late model car or two in the driveway. They often have seasonal greeting flags and some big box DIY store yard decorations that came all the way from China. There is pride of ownership at work here and it shows. You would not be afraid to ask this neighbor for a cup of sugar and they would probably ask you what kind of sugar you needed; white, brown, coconut, jaggery, or piloncillo.
Faded
These are the homes that need some love. The roofs are showing signs that they are approaching their 25-year lifespan. The paint is peeling and chipping all around the exterior of the house especially on the areas with southern exposure. There is a lack of landscaping. Untrimmed trees, bushy shrubs, and overgrown hedges take up the sidewalk. Tall weeds, and mostly dead grass occupy much of the front yard because the sprinklers don’t work anymore. There are older cars in the driveway. These are either rental homes that the landlord doesn’t care to maintain, or the homeowners gambled their retirement money away playing the lotto or playing the slots at the local tribal casino or in Las Vegas. You normally would not ask this neighbor for a cup of sugar, but you would do so in a pinch.
50/50
These homes fall in between the bright and the faded. It wouldn’t take much to get them into the bright category, but if they continue to let it go it will definitely fall into the faded category. A little paint here, some trimming there, a working sprinkler system and some fertilizer would work wonders while increasing the curb appeal – and the value – of the home. This is really DIY stuff here, so they don’t necessarily need to hire an expensive contractor to do the work. There is always the option of picking up some questionable day laborers at the local DIY big box store too. Questionable, meaning that if you go up to a group of these men and ask for someone who knows plumbing, they will all raise their hands. Same goes for electrical, carpentry, drywall, and even dentist – these guys miraculously seem to know everything. This is what they do.
It is difficult to tell whether these homes are slowly ascending to bright status or slowly descending into faded status. Only time will tell.
Derelict
You know these homes. They look like something from a slasher movie. They also look like they need to be condemned. There might even be a dead body somewhere on the premises. There are old cars or boats or trailers or RV’s (or a combination thereof) at various levels of decay that haven’t run or moved in years that are parked in the driveway, or on the front yard, and in front of the house. There might be one beater car that actually runs. You almost never see any of the occupants. The heavily weathered formerly white picket fence is falling over onto the sidewalk. Trick-or-Treaters don’t even dare to ring the doorbell or knock on the door for some free candy. You would definitely never ask this neighbor for a cup of sugar because you might get a cup of rat poison instead. Or maybe some crystal meth.
Hoarder
A hoarder house looks a lot like a derelict house but with additional, apparently important “stuff” that takes up most of the outside space of the property. It’s difficult to differentiate between hoarder and collector, but you’ll see places like these on American Pickers on a regular basis. The stuff is generally anything; old signage, broken coolers, wheelbarrows, car parts, strollers, rusty bicycles, long dead appliances, stockpiles of bricks and plumbing parts and scrap lumber that might come in handy one day. The cars on the front yard look like they’ve been abandoned. God only knows what the inside of the house looks like, but if the yard is any indication, there is probably barely enough room to walk in. But if you needed, say, an intake valve for a 1932 Ford V-8 flathead engine, they probably have it AND know exactly where it is in their, um, vast filing system kept between their ears. I would on no occasion ask them for a cup of sugar in fear of finding it infested with dead insects.
Squatter
You’ve seen these houses scattered around the city. They are a mash up of the derelict and hoarder house but with a dozen or more people living in them. The residents are mostly drug using and/or drug dealing bachelors. People come and go all hours of the day and night. Their collective of barely running (likely stolen) cars are parked in the driveway and on the front lawn and spill out onto the surrounding street along with their trash that they never bother to pick up. These men simply find a vacant house, break into it, and move in. If there’s no electricity, they will tap an extension cord onto the unfused live overhead utility wires and bring it into the house through a window. Talk about the real danger of a fire…or possible electrocution! But hey; it’s free rent and they need a place to charge their electronics.
My understanding is that it is a hellish process to get squatters evicted and it can take a year or more and cost tens of thousands of dollars. There’s actually one of these houses a few blocks down the street from our house. One day I counted 13-cars on the property, all of which were at various levels of drivability – or not. A cup of sugar from that house would probably include a free sample of whatever highly addictive drug they’re selling so you’ll come back for more later on. No thanks. I’ll just go to 7-11 on the corner instead and pay the exorbitant amount of $10 for a pound of sugar.
Cat Lady
We have one in the neighborhood. She lives a couple of cul-de-sacs over. The godawful smell from that house is overwhelming and it assaults you 3-doors down as you walk by. There used to be this wooden multi-level cat condo structure in the driveway that housed dozens of feral cats. The city finally made her take it down after the neighbors complained about it for months. We still see the feral cats all over the neighborhood. The front yard and the curb in front of this house are everchanging. There’s an ongoing furniture thing that’s happening on the unkempt front yard. One day, you’ll walk by and see a coffee table. On another day, it’s a dresser. Sometimes it’s an old, clawed up couch or loveseat. Sometimes it is several pieces of furniture at once, as if someone is moving in or out. But it is always changing. I have no idea where the furniture comes from or where it goes. Maybe she’s just airing them out to freshen them up. Maybe she’s a furniture afficionado who knows the value of secondhand furniture and makes a living buying and selling on the Internet.
At the curb, the trash bins are always full of smelly, empty cans of cat food and empty dry cat food bags and empty cat litter bags. They always wreak of dead fish and ammonia-tinged cat litter. There are also various and sundry cat related items at the curb like partially deconstructed catnip filled toys, and heavily shredded scratching posts and perches.
Every now and then I’ll see her SUV parked in the driveway with the liftgate open. The cargo area is always full of bags of cat litter, dry cat food, and cases of canned cat food that she picked up from Costco. Seems to me that she likely let all of the feral cats move into the house when the city condemned the cat condo.
The upside of our neighborhood is that most of the neighbors take care of their houses and are friendly and reasonably quiet, and they dutifully pick up the dog poop that their favorite pooch deposits on the front lawn.
The feral cats, however, deposit their poop in my front planter on a regular basis leaving the telltale signs of little piles of dirt and mulch in the center of their scratch marks.
The cat lady owes me an apology and a regular weekly clean up.
msnarky 