Paul Walker Died, So I'm Telling

I'm 2 Slow, 2 Stoic to have seen any notable Paul Walker films, but that hasn't stopped me from getting caught up in news of his death, namely because of my ongoing obsession with people who died doing what they loved. In Paul's case: speeding in cars.

I tried to figure out if I've ever seen a Paul Walker movie and it turns out I have: Pleasantville, which he was good in; She's All That, which I don't remember him in; and The Skulls, which I'm almost too embarrassed to admit that I've seen.

More importantly, while looking at Paul's IMDB page, I came upon the most important factoid of all: he was a child contestant on I'm Telling!, a sort of Newlywed Game for siblings. My sister and I would watch it often as kids and dreamed of going on it, mainly for the toy spree at the end. We were [are] also really good at fighting with each other in front of other people, which is half the show.

"Don't let me down, YouTube!" I said aloud as I searched to see whether Paul's episode was there, and thankfully, it didn't disappoint. Nor did the episode. If you're feeling sentimental about Paul, or just nostalgic for 80s TV, you'll enjoy the uploaded episode (which includes bonus 80 kids commercials.) 

Part 2 of I'm Telling episode
Part 3 of I'm Telling episode

See Paul:

• bicker with his sister
• make a "funny" face
• discuss his drinking problem... (the drink being milk)
• not-so-modestly declare himself better looking than his sister
• when pressed to describe what animal his sister eats like, daftly say a "human being"

At this point, Paul had a long way to go as an actor, though, because he was clearly being upstaged by the third set of siblings. Their blend of social awkwardness, twitching, and over-explaining their answers made them the obvious stars.

I'm Telling! will have to suffice as my memorial for Paul. Surely it's no worse than Alyssa Milano's tweet, which the CNN obituary saw fit to quote in full:

Huh? You. #beauty #love #RIP

Real Apologies

Real men extend real apologies.

(Bonus assholery: I can’t remember why I was doing it in the first place, but I do remember saying, “Mmm, you smell like ‘Original’.”)

It's 3[:30]AM I Must Loony

I thought the crowd at the 24-hour taco place by my house at 2am after the bars let out was really weird… until I met the 3:30am crowd. Anyone scoring a burrito at that hour has been up to no good.

My friends and I were there, too, so admittedly we deserved to be categorized similarly. At least we had the good sense not to try to intermingle with the fellow riffraff, but all the other patrons were intent to chat us up anyway.

First, an older gentleman interrupted a couple of my female friends' conversation about their respective hairlines to give his input. He was a "comedian" but never really said anything funny. When my friend finally tried to excuse herself from a conversation the guy wouldn't take the hint needed to end, she told the slightly balding guy, "Okay, good luck with your hairline!"

Then there was a straight male ginger Latino fashion student (who knew?!) who was celebrating his 21st birthday. He claimed he had $4,700 on him that his father gave him to celebrate and kept offering to buy us stuff and take us places. He told us he had paid his friend to be a DD and that he was on his way to Vegas after eating and we could join him. Behind him, his friend shook his head no to indicate that was not going to happen. The ladies also declined to give him their phone numbers, despite his persistence. I'm not really sure whether he had all that money on him either, but he did wind up buying us an horchata.

Meanwhile, some woman a few feet away started screaming and slapping a guy after he told her he was leaving her at the taco place because he couldn't afford the gas to drive her home. She could have left before with Tito if he had mentioned that fact earlier!

Both the 21-year-old and the comedian were asking where we all lived, and one of my friends offered up the fact that I lived "right over there" and pointed. I leapt into action: "Yeah, but not right there… way way back. Like a few miles in that direction." Sorry, but we don't give my address to shady drunk people.

Speaking of shady drunk people, the creepiest dude of all never even talked to us. He was a young guy by himself carrying a 12-pack of Tecate in his arm. As he methodically made his way through his beers, he would flash a big smile and just wave at us every couple minutes or so. At first it seemed friendly, then it seemed like a condescending joke, and then it seemed like we might get murdered. At some point, the smiling and waving between strangers needs to stop, or people are going to start to think the worst. It's a shame, too, because it might have been nice to be friends with a guy unashamed enough to drink a 12-pack on a public street corner.

No more enchiladas at 3:30am.

Pocket Bacon

I just remembered that I've had bacon in my pocket for the last seven hours and so I ate it.

Man, it was delicious.

The story could end right there as far as I'm concerned, but you probably want to know why I had bacon in my pocket.

I ate a late breakfast (the hungover, 3pm kind) at a diner. I ordered a plate that said it would come with 3 strips of bacon, which was disappointing because you always want more bacon than that. Much to my delight, I was served about 10 strips of bacon.

I can't recall a time where I was like, "That's too much bacon!" but I legitimately reached a point in the meal where I could no longer stomach any more. It was too much of a good thing. Still, it was bacon, so I didn't want to leave it to go to waste or waste a whole to-go container for one strip. My solution was to wrap it in a napkin and put it in my pocket for later.

Maybe not seven hours later, but it was still great, so whatevs. You're just jealous you didn't think of pocket bacon first!

Sadly, there's precedent for this kind of odd behavior. I also once did a napkin-wrapped "pocket steak" in Las Vegas, but that didn't hold up nearly as well.

What Would I Say?

I admit it, I really like What-Would-I-Say because it's essentially Horse eBooks but with your own words! Usually it's hard to laugh at your own jokes, but when you didn't actually write them, the laughs flow freely.

That is a potent pill the government is prescribing.

Better safe than sorry.

Any guesses? Mitt Romney, obviously.

Well?

Yeah I am!

You can't say I didn't try to uphold journalistic integrity.

It's best not to.

It was time to pay up.

The revolution won't be televised, but it will be a grumpy gus.

This one's a thinker. She's not trying to kill herself, she's just trying to make it look like she tried to kill herself, I guess. 

What a disappointment. This is why people don't read.

Ugh, tell me about it.

My Saddle's Waiting

Dancing Alone to Pony

With all due respect to veterans, let's take time to honor to the real heroes: each and every solo "Pony" dancer. 

It's Like 10,000 Spoons When All You Need Is A Knife

I know "Ironic" isn't actually ironic, but is it considered irony when your life mimics an Alanis Morissette lyric?

(Also, somebody please wash the knives.)

Don't Stop Beilievin'

SoRrY dOn'T nOrMaLlY sHaRe StUfF lIkE tHiS, bUt I nEeD a HuGe FaVoR fRoM tHe BiG gUy.

Serving Suggestions

Don't get me wrong: grilled salmon and lemon rice sounds great. However, this microwavable bag of green beans might want to taper its expectations for its customers. I am, after all, microwaving green beans, so let's not kid ourselves about "dotting" food with goat cheese and thyme.

Here's what the serving suggestion should really say: Buy some some fresh produce, you lazy fuck. 

Quail-Man

I dressed as Quail-Man for Halloween. I chose Doug Funnie's alter-ego because the actual costume IS a crappy costume and therefore isn't hard to put together. But it was still a hit! I mean, most people seemed to have no idea who this dude was running around with a belt on his head and underwear* as outerwear, but the minority of people who did recognize me were super into the nostalgia and I wound up posing for a couple dozen photos with strangers. I just wish Quail-Man had some kind of catchphrase, because each time people shouted at me, I had nothing to respond but, "Heyyyyy." (What does the Quail say?)

I thought Quail-Man would be an original costume - I've never seen anyone dressed as him before - but wouldn't you know it, I ran into two other Quail-Men in my trek around Hollywood last night. We should probably start an Awesome People/Awesome Ideas club.

* I purchased the tighty whities from Goodwill for 50 cents. Yeah, that's gross, but I washed them twice and they went over my pants so I think it's okay. I hope it's okay, anyway.

Halloween Suicide

In 7th grade, my friend hung himself a couple of days before Halloween. I learned about it from a couple of crying girls the following morning outside of the junior high. At that age, half of everything you hear about someone else is mere gossip, so I kept watching the school buses, expecting to see him get off one and confirm that it was all a horrible rumor. With each bus that emptied without him, his death felt more real.

Halloween is an especially inopportune for a peer to take his life. Everywhere we looked, the morbid decorations were no longer playful, but yet another reminder of death.

I found it inopportune for another reason, too. We still went out trick-or-treating that year despite the somber mood. At some point in the trek between houses, someone referenced the topic we were all trying to avoid. I chimed in, "I don't get why he didn't at least wait until after trick-or-treating."

I cringe when I think back to that comment. I honestly wasn't trying to trivialize the matter, that was legitimately how I felt. If you're going to kill yourself, fine, but take advantage of the free candy first!

Really, though, the quip speaks to just how young we were. My number one concern then was maximizing the number of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in my pillowcase… there's no way a 12-year-old was capable of making such a final decision about his own mortality.

Schmaubrey Shplaza

When you live in Los Angeles, you inevitably run into celebrities fairly often, but most of the time there's nothing worth saying about the encounters other than, "Saw 'em!", which makes for boring stories to most people aside from your East Coast relatives who find this sort of thing fascinating. So while I normally don't namedrop on this blog, I do have a slightly better than nothing tale to tell about a certain famously moody Parks and Recreation actress who we can call, oh, Shmaubrey Shplaza, for the sake of protecting her identity.

Two friends and I were eating at a Vietnamese restaurant when Shmaubrey Shplaza came in with two friends of her own and was seated at a table across from us. We did a quick, whispered, "That's Shmaubrey Shplaza," and then went on with our own lives and conversations. If anything, we were more focused on the waiter, who my friend decided she had a crush on. I started to glance at strange books sitting on a shelf next to us, one of which had a cover my friend thought was funny enough to take a picture of.

For the record, she took a picture of the book. But given the angle the picture was taken at, Shmaubrey Shplaza apparently thought we were snapping a photo of her eating in the background and got irritated.

Look, I don't blame her for thinking we were taking a picture of her because I bet people do that kind of thing to her all the time. But we really didn't! And it's one of those things where you almost want to get up and show Shmaubrey Shplaza the picture and prove that she isn't even in the background so she has nothing to roll her eyes at, but that's just going to make you look crazier.

It's also possible that Shmaubrey Shplaza didn't care about the photo at all, but was just sort of scowling and staring intently because that's what she does naturally. Like, Shmaubrey Shplaza was pretty "in character" throughout dinner, even as her friends seemed pretty pleasant.

Whatever. I pride myself on not being that guy who tries to coyly take pictures of celebrities, but now a celebrity seems to think we're that kind of people anyway. Sometimes you just can't win!

Starbucks Birthday

I almost didn't attend Eric's party because the invitation seemed like a joke: a birthday celebration at a Starbucks at 5pm on a Saturday. Now that I've experienced it, however, I have trouble understanding why more 30-somethings don't throw their birthday parties at the coffee chain - it's like the grownup equivalent of McDonalds.

The employees seemed a little perplexed by the unannounced party, but they didn't attempt to kick out the few dozen of us that took over the Starbucks patio. It probably helped that attendees bought a good amount of coffee, plus various pastries to serve as the birthday cake. It also helped that though conversations were boisterous, they fell short of rowdy. That's not to say that the studying college students and LA duo working on a screenplay weren't put off by the sudden influx of people on their previously quiet area, but to their credit, they did subsequently join in singing "Happy Birthday" all the same.


I don't normally patronize Starbucks (because corporatism and caffeine, yuck) but I will gladly make birthday exceptions.

Buffering...

"You'll never be able to move on until you stop sharing a Netflix account. Knowing what TV series your ex is marathoning is way too intimate."

I don't offer relationship advice very often, but I feel very strongly that a breakup isn't final until someone changes the Netflix password.

The Break-In

There was a break-in at my house last week. Sort of.

I was there just sitting in the living room when my front door popped wide open. I figured it was my roommate, who had left to run an errand not long before, returning, but it wound up being a strange man.

"Hi?" I said. He mumbled something incomprehensible and let himself up the stairs. Perplexed, I sprinted toward the staircase to try to catch him, which is when I encountered two women - presumably a mother and teenager daughter - letting themselves into my house as well.

"What is going on?" I asked.
"We're here to look at the apartment," the younger one said.
"Uh, why?" I said.
"The room for rent. He's showing us the room for rent."
"I.. wha… uh… there's no room for rent. I live here."

We continued to try to hash out the details a bit more, but I realized the longer I talked to the women, the longer the man upstairs was unattended. "Look, you're welcome to come in, but there's no room for rent here," I said before running to find the man. [I probably didn't have to be so nice as to invite potential intruders in, but I was frantic and unsure of how to deal with the situation.]

Upstairs, I found the man stumbling up and down the hallway. When I got a good look at this face, I realized he might be a former neighbor of mine who I hadn't seen in a long time, but he looked especially sickly. It didn't seem like he was stealing anything, so I asked, "Are you all right?" and kind of gently coaxed him back downstairs. I couldn't understand his mumbled Spanish, but I was pretty sure he wasn't a threat to me.

At the women's request, I called the landlady to see if there was actually a room for rent anywhere in the compound. She told me no, and urged me to call the police to get the people out of my place. I told her that it probably wasn't necessary because whatever was going on seemed like a mistake, not malicious.

It turns out it was my old neighbor after all. He had spent a long time in the hospital after being diagnosed with a brain tumor and his mind wasn't right anymore. He wasn't just sort of confused, he was terribly confused, and somehow the ladies got pulled into his story that my apartment was for rent. The women apologized profusely, but I assured them there was nothing to apologize for, and we called the man's daughter to come take care of him.

Meanwhile, we're being more proactive about locking the door because you never know when someone's going to let themselves in and try to rent out your home when you're not looking.