The Eagle has Landed

I know I was in the middle of my LA trip update, but I must take a detour to talk about something different.

Yesterday, while at soccer, I saw and heard the most horrifying thing. At the field, there is an eagles nest. Its fairly obvious, and periodically, you see the eagle sitting there checking out our lovely ladies teams kicking the ball around. He’s a pretty good fan, making little noise and while flying around every once in a while, never flying anywhere near us.

On the other side of the street is a food wholesaler, produce and dry goods mostly. As such, there are a large number of seagulls which hover around the food place. I'm sure they see us over at the field, but thankfully, they have avoiding visiting our area to drop a dump on us or whatever it is seagulls do when they are flying around.

So yesterday, we hear a huge screaming from some seagulls. When we look up, we see the eagle, flying back to its nest, gripping a captured seagull in its talons. Other seagulls are screaming their heads off and somewhat chasing the eagle, but clearly being scared, fly off in the other direction for fear of being the next meal victim.

So for the next 30 minutes, we hear the captured seagull screaming for its life as the eagle has its way. Needless to say, they were not playing cards. Probably the most mortifying thing I've heard in a while. I half debated throwing a rock or something, but realizing that the same eagle could chase us, or worse, I would miss wildly and peg off some kid on the teeter-totter, I thought better.

What a way to go though. Flying around, minding your business, looking for yummy lettuce and tossed out fruit, only to be captured mid-air by some other meaner bird, who takes you home for dinner. Chasing salad to being the salad.

At the same time, most people have difficulty swatting flies. Can you imaging trying to catch another bird in mid air, especially given how well birds turn and change directions. I’d be that eagle flying around chasing only to hit a tree by accident or better yet, flying into an electrical wire and zapping myself.

I’m off KFC for a while I think. Nah, I’ll still eat it.

I met a guy who was an extra on Ghost Whisperer!

Well I took my therapy on the road this past week, visiting beautiful Los Angeles California. My brother had suggested a quick trip to LA to catch some hockey and enjoy the better weather. I jumped faster than David Lee Roth (see original Van Halen for you youngins) and I was California bound.

Now this trip was not my first visit to LA, nor will it be my last. At the same time, its always interesting to see in person the city you tended to watch so much of from TV, Movies etc. Before we even got off the plane at LAX, it was hard not to eavesdrop on the types of conversations I would be experiencing in La-la Land. In one word - fake - like the many sets of boobs I saw. Talk about listening to a whole lot of "well you've gotta go to this place, it is to die for. So divine. I'm real good friends with this guys dog's groomers drivers pizza delivery guy. He can get us a deal!" Ugh. Maybe I could go without listening to people on this trip. Oh the foreshadowing of things to come.

The other part about landing in LA is immediately seeing paparazzi hanging around waiting for important people to come by. Clearly, none were on our flight since these same photogs decided they would rather change film and drink coffee than come to our gate. A while later, we saw them move to a different gate, cameras ready. But for the life of me, I could not tell who they were trying to photograph. Put sunglasses and a toque on and everyone looked mysterious to me now. I told a whole bunch of tourists it was Brad Pitt and Angelina, so they took off, allowing me quicker access to the bag dispenser. We would see paparazzi at many other locations on our trip, but try as I might, they never looked my way. I guess I need to work on my celebrity, or get on a reality show or have a sex tape or something.

We did a lot of things in 3 days, more than I can fill in one blog, but one of the highlights for me was taking the ever popular Warner Brothers Studio tour in Burbank. For those not in the know, Warner Brothers (WB), they of the Looney Tunes and Bugs Bunny fame, run one of the most historical and successful production studios in LA - home to many shows and movies too numerous to mention here. If you watched it on TV and liked it, it was likely made at the Warner Brothers lot. Unlike TV studios like CBS or NBC, WB offers studio space to anyone regardless of affiliation, and hence attracts all sorts of productions which for whatever reason are not made at the actual TV station site. For example, Friends, which was a huge NBC success, was filmed at WB Studios, not NBC Studios as you might think. Something about Jay Leno's ego or something. I dunno.

So the tour involves a guided tour of the lot. They put you into these little trolley carts of 13 people max. One person gets the honour of sitting beside the tour guide, while the remaining 12 people sit in one of the four 3-seat benches in the back of the trolley. For the life of me, I could not figure out why they made benches 3 abreast instead of an even number. I guess they assume everyone travels in 3s, or perhaps they were hoping for group interaction. Its the LA way I guess. We had the luxury of sitting behind these two gay Turkish dudes, who dressed identically (crew cut, denim pants and jackets, white T-shirts, black boots and tinted sunglasses). Think gay Scarface. By the way, I keep stressing the gay part because I've never seen 2 men so gropey. Get a room fellas! I'm almost positive these 2 guys were trying to find a secluded place on the lot to engage in some frivolity. Our tour guide was regularly looking for them, since they always seemed to wander off and never wanted to look at what we were all looking at. Besides, who would not want to have some secret nooky on the set of Two and a Half Men, right?

The worst part of our Turkish friends was their English was not great. As such, they felt it necessary to ignore the entire spiel from our tour guide, constantly talking and annoying everyone else who was trying to listen. But worse was the fact tour guide guy did nothing, even though he knew people were yammering and talking pictures while he was pretending to sound like he did not memorize his "script" which was obvious to me that he had (since he spoke of things we had already passed a number of times as things we were about to see).

I suspect a lot of these tour guides are wannabe actors themselves, and probably more focused on the paycheck than the experience for us. Our guy was definitely an actor - master thespian - star of community stage and student cinema. He probably told us at least 8 times during his spiel that he was an extra in Ghost Whisperer, with Jennifer Love Hewitt. It took every ounce of energy for me to not get his autograph, but I prevailed. He also talked of many of the productions "WE" made at this lot, not him of course, but the WB family. I appreciated the family sentiment, but I trust he was still driving his trolley that day due to a bad audition. I even tried to have a "normal" conversation with him while we were waiting for others to return from a Harry Potter museum. Out of nowhere, he pointed to the water tower on the lot and said "Look, I see the Animaniacs up there, don't you?" Thanks for sharing that one guy.

There is so much more to say about the trip, but I'll leave a Hollywood cliff-hanger for you all until next time.

Time to be quiet now.

Dear Diary for April 16, 2010

Dear Diary,

Today was a very interesting day for me. It started with me sleeping in, resulting in lightening speed showering and shaving to make up time. Thank God the crinkled clothes look and "Gel-met" are back in, or at least I hope they are.

I saw at least 5 people driving with cell phones attached to their ears, one person of which was swerving into my lane. As you know Diary, there is a ban on cell phone use while driving, yet no police were anywhere in sight to capture these rascals. Those same cops must have been setting up shop in the speed trap I will see them in later today when I am pulled over. I always like to look at these people as I drive past them, but unfortunately, I could not see some of their faces as some people were adjusting their radios and looking into their purses at the same time. Too bad really, as nothing gets me going in the morning better than a death glare at a passing driver.

On my way back to the office from lunch, I saw some naked boobies as a young lass was for whatever reason sitting on the seatback of the bus bench, with her feet where you might normally sit. She was leaning forward, perhaps in an attempt to prove to all who chose to look that she had somehow forgotten to wear a bra. I of course, frown on such behaviour, and was more interested in the advertising on the bus bench. Shame on her nonetheless. Clearly her mother would be disappointed.

I tried to send an email to a person today, copying the email address off their business card they provided me. But it turned out the email address on the business card was wrong. This begs the question, who would actually use business cards where parts of the information are incorrect? Maybe there is some logic to this concept, in that perhaps the person does not want emails, or perhaps it was foreshadowing of the demise of that person from the company. I prefer to view it as a shrewd way to determine how well the reader can apply some guesswork to solve puzzles, and how only those people who can decipher the puzzle are worthy of having their emails read. Hopefully, I get a prize.

Finally, one of my co-workers decided to tell me about a work incident. I decided to respond at every opportunity with "I see...", even touching the clef of my chin and nodding at times to make it seem like I was in deep thought. This statement, "I see..." which is fact in my case, was repeated 8 times in a row, and I trust the person I was speaking with did not realize it. I will try for double digits next time. I'm sure there is a prize for that too.

Have a good night Diary.

Candy Shlopping Day Returns

Many people have a candy sweet tooth, and I am no different. If I happen to be at the store, and hit the candy aisle, my candygasm meter kicks in - I gotta have some. Yes, its bad for me, and yes, I will have to run extra far tomorrow to burn it off, but somehow, the only thought in my mind at that very moment is exactly which of those lovely candies will I be enjoying that night. I know - I am simply writing what happens to many people, but hey, this blog is about getting stuff out there, so blame me for saying what most of you do as well. Don't deny it.

So today, I hit Wal-mart. Of course, I still wish they married Wal-mart and Denny's (see my earlier blog on that one), but I will get over that one. So I am there to buy a gift for my sister, when I see to the right of the front door, just as you walk in, a spectacle to behold. That's right - candy! Not just any candy mind you, but Easter candy, as in the same Easter candy you could have bought last week so the kiddies could hunt for, but now today, is available for the low low price of 50% off. Candygasm meter overload people.

At this point, its important to clarify something. The candy purchase guilt meter does usually have a ceiling. Although its truly relative, there comes a point in time when the price of some candy gets too high for me to want to buy. In economics, you call that your marginal propensity to candy consume. Candy is not always cheap, so a few small packs of candy, usually chocolate or licorice, should suffice for my budget. Could I always buy more, of course! But that handy guilt meter holds me back.

Yet not today. At half price, I'm going all in. And of course, I was not the only one. There were people calling clerks over to verify the candy was indeed priced properly. I saw people run off to those remote price scanners just to verify the prices were what they were. They even had a clerk assigned to the area to keep order among us candy crazed consumers. You hear people mumbling stuff about how they are buying it for the office (yeah, right, like I've ever seen Easter Candy sitting on someone's desk at work), or how Junior got a broken chocolate bunny on Sunday, so this would be a great replacement. Whatever words coming out of their mouths were truly the excuses they were giving to the rest of the people around the area since we all knew Junior moved out 10 years ago, and this candy was going into grandma's belly. There is no charade for me, and I am not too proud to fill my basket with as much as I could get (which I'd be willing to eat of course - some of that crap is truly crap whatever the price).

By the time I had checked the shelves, a hurricane had hit the store. Candy was everywhere, mixed in every way, nothing ever matching the signage. It looked like the cabbage patch craze all over again - people waiting for other people to put candy down, so they could snatch it up. Who cared if the candy was good - it was 50% off, what more did you need to know.

The same experience occurs the day after Halloween, Christmas and Valentines Day. I'd like to propose a new word to best define this process. I will call it candy shlopping = the art of buying seasonal candy on the days after the specific holiday, at which point the candy was significantly discounted to clear off the shelves. Lots of people candy shlop, and if any of you have seen the lack of Halloween candy just days after Halloween, you'll know its become a tradition in and of itself.

Time to be quiet now. Besides, I have lots of chocolate to eat now.

How to make new friends on the bus

I had to take the bus the other day. This is not my normal mode of transportation, but every once in a while, you have no choice. When I was a kid, I took the bus often, and tended to gravitate towards the same part of the bus every time - the back - since that’s where the cool kids sat. Over time, I would work my way back to near the front of the bus though being the considerate guy that I am, always avoided those handicap seats in the event someone more worthy should take them.

So anyways, there I was sitting in my cozy spot on the bus, once again at the back - Oh yeah you cool kids, I'm taking your spot. Try to stop me!

I like to watch the unique behaviour of my fellow riders. As people get on and the bus begins to fill, you start to see people protect their space, as if they own that portion of the bus. By that I mean, I see people move to sit on the aisle side of the seat, or even in the middle, as if god forbid, some crazy were to come sit beside them. Others sprawl their bags all across the bench, as if the bag paid a fare. Anything to ensure nobody else sits beside them. As such, those new riders, many of whom apparently went to the polite school of ridership, tend not to barge into those open seats. Apparently, interaction on the bus is taboo that way. I saw some crazy death glares when people even tried to touch the buzzer anywhere near where the other person sat. The only thing missing is the cool Westside Story music.

So as I am on the back bench acting all cool like Fonzie (for you youngin's, that’s the cool guy of the crowd), I see a crazed woman eyeballing the space right beside me, despite her being at least 30 yards away at the front. At that point, there are NO other seats to her, just the one beside me. There were still tons of open seats at the time, yet she gets this bug-eyed look on her face, goes steaming down the aisle, bumping at least 8 people along the way with her bags, and whammo, plunks herself down right beside me and another person, thereby cramping our space now.

So it made me wonder. Why did she sit here? What did she avoid every other open seat to come sit beside me? Was this an experiment, or was I on Candid Camera? Did she want to sit with the cool kids too? Oh so many thoughts, but so few answers. I could be naive and assume she totally thought I was the cats meow and she must sit beside me to feed off my Tom Cruise vibe, but even I am not that dumb. The fact that she smelled like garlic and cigarette butts did not help matters, though that can be a total turn on for me ;)

So the long trip continued, and she eventually got off the bus. No words were spoken. No eye contact. Nada. Thanks for coming.

Now I am a common sense guy. I tend to respect other peoples space, and spread out at every opportunity. Same thing with parking lots. If I can park a few spaces away from another car, thereby ensuring easy access without banging into the car beside me, I'll do it every time. Yet other people don't think that way.

I encourage my reader(s) to try an experiment next time they are on the bus. Especially if the bus is near empty. Make sure you sit BESIDE someone else, even if you are the only 2 people on the bus. I trust you will garner strange looks from your new neighbour, but you'll have to overlook that. Say nothing. Don't look at the other person. If you can make yourself stinky by avoiding deodorant or eating a Ceaser salad ahead of time, even better. Just see what happens and let me know. I am curious.