- Call them Less Than Satisfying Encounters
with Humanity, or LTSEWH, for...short. They are intended as a chronicle
of the decline in civility and deference, written with just the slightest
implication of humor, in this, the alleged 21st century. Names have been
included whenever possible to ensure fullest humiliation.
-
- LTSEWH #1 - ALL YOU NEED IS. . .
-
- These are hard, mean, Ann Coulter days.
These are "get over it" days, and "I got mine" days,
and days of eating pig uteruses for money on television. These are days
of "whatever the market will bear" and $100 million steroid-jazzed
baseball players and government agencies standing by while people drown
and starve in their homes. These are days of bankrupting budgets for war,
and cutting money for education, and calling social security "commie."
These are days of pop music that sounds like buzzsaws and shrieking, or
buzzsaws and crying, and children "rapping" about rape, degradation
and murder.
-
- So it should not have surprised me to
see him. But it did. One of the things that makes these times bearable
is that they never fail to surprise and entertain.
-
- I noticed him because of a cell phone,
or rather, his voice spoken into one. He was dead center in a small restaurant,
and dead uncaring about the fact that he was blurting his important business
conversation as if he were alone in his living room.
-
- As is my usual procedure, I turned to
take a look---not to glare, or give him the slight frown and head-shake,
as that never works, and occasionally puts your life in danger. I just
wanted to inspect. I wanted to discover what manner of overbearing, oblivious
creature this might be. What permutation of specimen of cellphonus horribilis
was sharing space with me.
-
- He had very hairy arms, and a very hairy
neck, a two-day-old beard growth (perhaps grown in one day) and a kind
of orangutan build. (No slight intended to the "man of the jungle.")
His hair was black, receding, and his eyes were big, alert, and trained
to radiate belligerence, disdain. He sat with what either was his daughter
or his hot young chickie, I couldn't tell.
-
- But the coup de grace, the punchline,
the capper, the fortune inside the cookie, the payoff, the man behind the
curtain, the jack in the box, the sensational poetic touch that made this
teency moment worth reporting here. . .
-
- Was his T-shirt.
-
- "Love," it said in big black
letters, "is for losers."
-
-
- LTSEWH #2 - SHRIVER DRIVER
-
- Maria...I just met a girl named Maria...And
suddenly that name...Will never be the same...To me, Maria. . .
-
- It wasn't the most romantic encounter,
I'll grant, but it was memorable. Having the First Lady of California frozen
in your headlights is an unusual experience, after all. Not that she was
in any danger, understand, despite my disapproval of her buffoon husband.
-
- There I was. . .
-
- Put-putting along, around 7 p.m., in
Brentwood. Doing perhaps fifteen miles per hour, owing to an approaching
stop sign and pedestrian traffic. And there she was (cue the music again)---Maria!
Jaywalking right in front of me with her (apparent) daughter, headed for
a nearby dance class.
-
- I should have made a citizen's arrest!
-
- But then, Maria, the most beautiful sound
I ever heard, Maria, made eye contact with me, and either guessed what
I was thinking or noticed that I had recognized her. Yes, I had that raised-eyebrow
"look, it's a celebrity" doofus stare. She thought better of
crossing in front of me. Perhaps she had read some of the columns I've
written about Mister Maria.
-
- And here I was about to motion for her
to go right ahead. I was ready with the I'm-harmless smile and the "please
cross" hand gesture. But it was all over almost as quickly as it had
begun.
-
- Maria, I just passed a girl named Maria.
. .
-
- LTSEWH #3 - SPACED OUT
-
- If I am sentenced to eternity in hell,
as many of my "Christian" readers have suggested, I know what
it will look like.
-
- It will be about five stories tall, constructed
entirely out of cement and steel, and reek of urine. It will be filled
with car exhaust at all times, and a line of vehicles barely moving as
they travel from one level to the next in search of a parking space. .
.
-
- That does not exist.
-
- And there will be no way out.
-
- I had a little taste of hell in Santa
Monica, which, given the price of housing there, is perhaps not an unusual
experience. There I was. . .
-
- Behind a young woman in a Volvo. A mid-80's
Volvo, which, like most post-1980 cars, still registers as "new"
in my high-mileage brain. I would say she was driving, but that is like
saying that George W. Bush is speaking. Sounds come out, and are perceptible
as a kind of language, but the similarity ends there.
-
- Volvo Woman was on full parking space
alert. If you have ever driven with women looking for a parking space,
you know exactly what this means. To the female psyche, a parking space---let
alone a "good" parking space---is a matter of considerable excitement,
often causing all sorts of bizarre and illegal traffic transgressions in
order to secure it. The phenomenon extends to women as passengers, too,
as they are particularly good at barking "there's a space" immediately
after all available legal means of reaching said space have elapsed.
-
- Anyhow, Volvo Woman was on a kind of
alert I have not seen before. So intent, so keen, so determined was she
to find the first available space that she crept along at no faster than
a person walks. A person on crutches. Her head wobbled left and right regularly,
like a radar scanner. She seemed to live in stark fear of slipping past
an available slot, and having to (gasp) stop and back up.
-
- Yet the only way she might have missed
an empty space at that speed was if a dimensional space warp opened and
transported her car to Arcturus.
-
- I hung back politely for the first level,
or maybe the first two levels. But as it became apparent that this structure
was probably filled entirely to the top, and that I was likely doomed to
cover all its mysterious levels at an ant-crawl---then reverse my path
at the same (lack of ) speed simply in order to escape, I'd had enough.
-
- I tapped the horn.
-
- No response.
-
- So I became a wee bit more emphatic.
-
- "ARE YOU RETARDED?" I inquired,
my head hanging out the window, my hand slamming the horn.
-
- Volvo Woman looked in her rear-view mirror
in amazement, shook her head, then continued what might charitably described
as "moving." I peered carefully behind her car, to see if there
might be a slime trail. Time-lapse photography would have revealed great
forward progress.
-
-
I took the head shake not to mean "no, I'm not retarded," but
rather disgust at my outburst. What could I do? In hell, there is no recourse.
So I crept along, level after level (why are they called "levels"
when they are not level?) praying that Volvo Woman might contentedly park.
-
- It occurred to me that I was privileged,
really. After all, most human beings in all of history have never even
had a chance to see an automobile, let alone drive one inside of a structure
of concrete and steel. I was having a very modern, highly sophisticated
experience involving complex technology. It had taken millions of years
of evolution to grow the intelligence required to create my particular
situation at that moment. 21st Century Man, I was!
-
- Yet this was insufficient balm, and I
finally just leaned on the horn and more or less forced my way around her,
zipped up to the roof no faster than Bill Clinton zips his fly, and headed
back down. On the way out, I saw Woman pulling slowly into a just-vacated
space---what a glorious moment for her!---and on about the second level,
I stumbled across quite an array of more available slots.
-
-
"Aren't you going to park?" asked my female superior.
-
- "Not a chance. I'd rather find a
space on the street miles away, and if that's impossible, I'd rather just
go home."
-
- And therein lies the difference between
men and women.
-
- LTSEWH #4 - CHARITABLE F---ING DONATION
-
-
Try and do something nice. . .
-
- I regularly donate nice clothes and used
appliances to the National Council of Jewish Thrift Women, or the National
Jewish Women of Thrift Council, or something like that. I understand that
they do a lot of great work, plus they give me a decent write-off. Over
the years, I've donated thousands of bucks worth of stuff.
-
- But I'm through with 'em! Every last
National Thrift one of them.
-
- "You haff to do it ZEES vay!"
-
- This was the sentence sternly spoken
to me by the plump older woman handling incoming donations. I had brought
two bags of clothes containing some nice shirts, carefully folded, and
two fine corduroy jackets. Parting with them had been sentimentally difficult,
but I was in the mood to clean closets, and I comforted myself with the
realization that this place would put them to good service.
-
- I had filled out the form with my name
and address as I have done for the past ten years---with the unit number
on one line, and "Los Angeles, California" and the zip on the
line below that.
-
- "Sir! You can't write like thees!
You haff done it WRONG. You haff to do it ZEES vay!"
-
- She crossed out my clearly printed "Los
Angeles, Calif." and the zip, and wrote on the line above, "L.A.
CA" and the zip. Except that her writing was so screwy that it looked
like scat-singing.
-
- Look, had she said so much as "Good
morning," it might have averted the impending disaster. But no. No
"good morning," no "how are you, sir?" and no "thank
you for you donation." And certainly not a "Sir, if you could
please fill out the form with the city on line two, that would be helpful."
Just a quasi-shouted order, actually scolding me for the way I had filled
out the form. I tried to allow for the fact that she was perhaps from a
less friendly country, although that was hard to imagine, here in Limbaugh
Land.
-
- "Look, ma'am, I'm sorry, but I'll
never remember your instructions. I only donate every few months. So there's
no point in telling me, okay?"
-
- "No! You HAFF to do it zees vay!"
-
-
(Cue Peter Pan on the Disneyland ride: "Okay, everybody, herrrre weeee
GO!")
-
- "Look, just don't mess with me,
okay? I'm bringing you nice clothes. Don't give me a goddamn lecture on
how to fill out the form. I've been filling out the form this way for ten
years. I will not remember your instructions."
-
- "Sir! Sir! You HAFF--- "
-
-
That was it. I took the opportunity to attempt to confirm the stereotype
of The Ugly American, and I must say I succeeded spectacularly. It's easy,
really. You just liberally invoke the most beloved and descriptive of all
words in the English language.
-
- "Look! Don't f--- with me! I'm
bringing you free f---ing clothes! You don't even f---ing thank me! You
just f--- with me! Why are you doing this? Are you insane? Or are you
normally just a stupid rude f---ing ass----?"
-
- Her eyes bulged, and then narrowed.
I could read the busy little you-haff-to-do-it brain. Ah, he is one of
these Ugly Americans! I threw in a couple of "f--- you's" for
good measure, and went on my f---ing way. As I drove off, she came outside
and said something to me, and my guess is that it was not "Haff a
nice day."
-
- Which left me wondering: who had the
lesser TSEWH?
-
- LTSEWH #5 - STAIR-OUT
-
- Attention, Pentagon: if you are short
on troops to manage Iraq, you might want to check out the army of ushers
at Disney Hall. They don't seem to have much to do, and there sure are
a lot of them. They're all young, impressionable, healthy, too---and what's
more, they are tough and do not question orders. I can attest to it.
-
- There I was. . .
-
- Trying to take in the pre-concert lecture
before a recent L.A. Philharmonic performance. It was Sunday, it was breezy,
and I had been in a nice Sunday breezy mood. Stand around, listen to the
nice lecture, then head inside and listen to some nice music---perfecto.
-
- Except there was nowhere to stand, let
alone sit. I had crowded into the access-way leading to the lecture area,
and was actually helping to block the path. I took note of a couple of
Disney Imperial Guards taking note of me. Figuring I should help keep access
clear for safety reasons, I sought an alternative.
-
- The stairs!
-
- Yes, there was a great, sweeping staircase
leading up into some undefinable area of Frank Gehry's stupid building,
and there was not a single human-type-person on it. Well, except for one:
an elderly gent who was about three steps up, leaning on a wall, watching
the lecture beyond it.
-
- Great vantage point, thought I! Great
way to get out of the way, thought I!
-
- So, I joined the elderly fellow, who
promptly left the scene (my breath?). I leaned on the wall and began taking
in the lecture.
- For about five seconds.
-
- She appeared in the corner of my eye.
An Imperial Guardswoman. A Gehry Ghurka. She was looking at me with great
seriousness in her approximately-20-year-old eyeballs, motioning me to
come to her. I had stirrings of memories of teachers calling me off the
playground at recess. . .
-
- "Yes?"
-
- She said something I couldn't hear.
-
- "I'm sorry?"
-
- "Sir, you can't stand on the stairs."
-
- Of course, she was quite wrong. I was
living proof that I could stand on the stairs. I could have even walked
right up them, if I had so chosen. I could have sat on them, tap-danced
on them (if I took some lessons), rolled down them naked, crawled on them,
writhed on them, stood and declaimed on them. . .
-
- "WHY?"
-
- "Because we have to keep the stairs
clear."
-
- Folks, I was burned out from my encounter
with the National Council of You Haff To Do It Zees Way Woman. I didn't
want any more trouble. I simply turned and gestured incredulously at the.
. .Empty staircase. Wide and lonesome as the lone prairie. At least twenty
feet across. There wasn't so much as an endangered species on the goddamn
thing. Of course, the poor child had her orders, and who was I to disobey?
-
- As I stepped off, she said the magic
words:
-
- "I'm sorry."
-
- Not as sorry as I was.
-
- LTSEWH #6 - TRUCK YOU
-
- Several days each week, I walk a couple
of miles into Westwood, which necessitates crossing four dangerous freeway
on-and-offramps. I sometimes stand on the curb, watching ten, fifteen,
30 cars refuse to stop for the pedestrian. That pedestrian being me. Just
for sport, I sometimes smile and give them all the raised third finger.
Some drivers laugh, some return my hearty salute.
-
- The other night it was wet and slick
with rain. I was to cross two lanes. I waited until all traffic cleared
completely, and there were no oncoming vehicles insight. I stepped off
the curb.
-
- Just as soon as I did this, a small red
truck appeared in the distance, as if it had materialized out of the ethers.
Well, I reasoned, it's far away and I can get across without a problem.
Yet as I walked, the mysterious truck neared with amazing speed---enough
so that by the time I was half-way across, it was within collision range.
-
- How, I wondered, had it covered ground
so quickly? Where had it come from? Did Satan drive?
-
- Now, nine out of ten people would have
kept walking, assuming the obvious: that the driver had seen them, as there
was plenty of light, and pedestrians have the right of way in California
(plus I was wearing light colored clothes.) But I stopped.
-
- And sure enough, the driver blasted right
by, five feet in front of me, doing about 40, never having even slightly
slowed down.
-
- Now, I sometimes get angry, and other
times I "make a statement" in order to alert someone so they
might be more careful. Seriously. I figured that if I yelled at this guy,
it might save someone's life later in the evening. So as he passed, I leaned
forward and hollered in his partly opened window a rather indelicate message,
the nature of which I will leave to the reader to glean.
-
- You guessed it.
-
- Red truck, though well into the on-ramp,
slammed on the brakes and skidded to a halt. And proceeded to back down
the on-ramp toward Wilshire Boulevard, and me.
-
- Yessirree, he was going to teach me a
lesson!
-
- How dare I attempt to cross a street
in front of him, when he had important things on his mind, and important
places to go.
-
- Because I know many American citizens
to carry guns in their cars, and to have difficulty with reading and writing
and reasoning, I moved quickly on, and red truck reversed direction and
went on his way.
-
- Guess he showed me!
-
- For more LTSEWH's, watch this space.
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