rew | ff

Friday, May 7, 2004

"What? What?!? Who are you?" - Pedro Martinez, on Karim Garcia

Today got off to a weird and surreal start when I participated in the ancient ritual of driving-someone-to-the-airport-in-the-wee-hours-of-the-morning. Sean and I woke up at about 4:30am, and were out the door by 4:40. We hit the road and headed down I-17, mingling with the poor souls who have to be at work at that hour. It's always kind of like visiting another world, or at least a parallel dimension, when you make that early morning trek to the airport. Who are you, in that mid-eighties Pontiac that is making a horrible noise, and what are you doing up at this hour? Is this a rare occur...

Ah ha!!! Bottom of the ninth, game-tying 2-run homer for the Red Sox! I love MLB net radio...

...ance for you, or are you up like this every day, trudging your way to work and hoping this isn't the day that Pontiac finally craps out by the side of the road? I hope not, because I was that guy once, and that sucks. But when you only have to do it once in a while, it's kind of weirdly magical. In the kind of way that makes you do things like give your Visa card to your little brother as he heads into the airport to go see his telephone-girlfriend in Chicago for a few short days... by which I mean in a very bad idea kind of way. As if I don't have enough debt on that card already.

NOTE: Hey, wait a minute, I have an ex-girlfriend in Chicago. What the fuck! Can I get in on this program?

As I write this I'm lying on our couch, listening to the Sox (still tied in the bottom of the ninth; KC going to the bullpen), and BASKING IN THE GLORY OF AIR CONDITIONING. They fixed it. Thank God. When I got home from work and felt the cold air upon entering the apartment, I immediately scrapped all other plans and laid down on the couch for the rest of the day. Later I may attempt a clandestine oil change, but more likely Dane and I will go check out a supposedly cool Irish pub in Scottsdale called The Vine. We both have to work tomorrow, as per the norm, so it'll be an early night.

Jason Varitek game-winning pinch-hit double with 2 down in the bottom of the ninth! We love you, Carlton Fisk!

Thursday, May 6, 2004

"Well, I'll be damned, you're a poet. Welcome to hell." - James Wright, to his son

It's too hot to write tonight. Our air conditioning isn't working, and I'm pissed. They replaced the thermostat today, and it made no difference. The fan isn't even working... I don't want this shotgun approach stuff; just send someone who knows what the fuck they're doing, and fix it. This is fucking Arizona, for fuck's sake. Now! Goddamn it!

Sean's leaving for Chicago in the early morning to go and visit Ciara. We have tomorrow off from school, so he's not missing any time. Actually, Sean did miss both school and work today as a result of a wicked case of food poisoning. It was kind of tragic... Dane tried to be a really nice guy and bought Sean and I burritos from Chipotle when he went there after work. We got home and Dane gave them to us, which was really nice, because we were both hungry. There was a chicken one and a steak one, and I offered to take the steak, since Sean prefers chicken and I have no preference. However, I somehow read the "C" as an "S" and got halfway through the chicken burrito before I realized what I was doing. I tried to make things right by offereing to switch midway through, but Sean said no, don't worry, he'd eat the steak. This turned out to be a fateful decision. While I slept well all night, knocked out by my earlier loss of blood, poor Sean was up all night barfing, by his count over 30 times. That burrito was meant for me.

Anyway, while I do have half a day off tomorrow, I anticipate being pretty tired due to our 4:30am wakeup call in order to get Sean to the airport on time, so I'd better get going.

Wednesday, May 5, 2004

"The rose goes in the front, big guy." - Crash Davis (Kevin Costner) in Bull Durham

Oh, man, I gave blood today, and I'm wiped out. They talked me into the "power red" deal, where they take 2 pints but run a second line back into your vein to replenish your plasma or something. Isn't that what Gatorade is for? Apparently I have really great looking veins, by the way. Finally, an angle I can work with those hot Scottsdale chicks! Anyway, I couldn't believe how cold I got. The whole thing took about 40 minutes, and by the end of it I couldn't stop my teeth from chattering and I was shivering uncontrollably. In Arizona! I ate a bunch of crackers and got back to class just as it was ending.

Due to my lack of ability to watch much TV I'm not as informed as I'd like to be about this whole U.S. torturing Iraqis thing, but I do catch NPR in little snippets each day. This sounds like a really big deal. Could this be the blow that knocks Bush out of office? The way it's sort of unfolding it seems like it could possibly end up being his Watergate. Any of you guys at the Oregonian want to be the next Woodward or Bernstein? Put some red flags on your balconies and start hanging out in parking garages? Come on, you know you want to.

Tuesday, May 4, 2004

Apparently there's a fire in our apartment building... there are two fire trucks in the parking lot. They sort of converge right at our parking spot... it kind of looks like my poor little car has been hemmed in by the two trucks, trapped at the end of a chase in our covered parking spot. Hopefully whatever's burning won't get him... one brush with burning up my car per month is enough for me.

I ate lunch with all the mechanics today, and I found out definitively that NO ONE likes Freakshow. It was his day off, and apparently he has tomorrow off too, and the conversation turned to how much happier everyone is when he's not here. I think it was the first time it was really out in the open and everyone was talking about it... I actually felt kind of bad for him, because while he is extremely annoying and without question lowers the quality of my life by several factors, he is so pathetic that it's hard to talk shit with his other co-workers without it just feeling sort of redundant. No one likes this guy... for the moment I'm considering that punishment enough. I reserve the right to snap at any given moment and have Vicky rip his heart out, just for the record.

I forgot something pretty funny yesterday. You're going to have to have seen the most recent episode of South Park to understand this, but everyone in class was talking about it on Monday. The episode was a loosely veiled story about immigration in which people from a jobless future began coming back in time to work for absurdly low wages in South Park, causing lots of the regular characters to lose their jobs and rant "They took our jobs!" in funny redneck voices. In class people started talking about South Park in general, and one kid, who's a bit of a wannabe intellectual, brought up how subversive it is. Another guy agreed and said, as if he was revealing shocking information, "Yeah, like that one last night. They weren't really talking about people from the future... (dramatic pause) ... They were talking about Mexicans!" Nothing gets by you, buddy.

When we got home I snuck out into the parking lot (pre fire engines) and put the new hub and bearings on Sean's car by cover of darkness. Even though said darkness made it difficult to see, I managed to get it done in about a half an hour, and now the screaming wheel is no more. Also, as we kind of thought might happen, the thump in the steering, scourge of Sean's car since December, has disappeared as well. Sweet.

Monday, May 3, 2004

OK, it's hot now. Today it was 100 degrees F. Which is boiling, right?

The Daily Show informs me that it's been a year now since the war in Iraq ended. That's good. Because I was a little confused, thinking it was still going on. It's good to know it's over, though.

I'm tired and am not going to write too much tonight. That seems to be happening a lot these days, huh? Sorry. Is it possible I've milked Phoenix, automotive students, annoying bosses, hot weather, car problems, lack of girlfriends, bass-playing neighbors, sand, lizards, and crazy drivers for all they're worth? Only time will tell.

Goddamn it, would this Atkins fad end already? Hey, want to lose weight? Try moving to Phoenix, working 14 hour days and eating almost nothing. I haven't been this slim since high school!

Sunday, May 2, 2004

We didn't get to bed until really late last night, so we didn't get up until around noon today. When we did, we went straight to the junkyard, something I've been meaning to do ever since I got here. The reason for going was that Sean's car is making really awful noises from the front right wheel, and we wanted to get a new hub for it. The yard we went to closes at 2:30 on Sundays, so we didn't have much time, but when we got there we found that they had a bunch of 320is with lots of parts left on them, so some future trips will definitely be in order. Something really funny happened that I don't think I'll be able to relate in text, but I'll give it a shot:

We had pulled the hub off the junked car and were packing up tools and getting ready to go when Sean picked up the hub and, without thinking about it, turned it over in his hands. The outer wheel bearing fell out and dropped a couple feet to the ground which, being the desert and all, was made up of sand. This is different than the junkyards we're used to in Portland, which are usually paved with rocks. The bearing plopped into the sand right in the middle of the three of us. The best analogy I can come up with for this for those of you who don't know cars is this - imagine if you were at the beach, and there was a hot dog stand there or something. You go up to it and buy a hot dog, but when you pick up the basket it comes in, you tip it over and the meat part of the hot dog falls on the gound. It's covered in sand. You might be able to brush the sand off, but you'd never get all of it. If you eat it now, you'll be certain to get some sand in your teeth. Anyway, the bearing, basically our whole reason for being there, plops down into the sand between the three of us, me crouched down, Dane standing off to the side, and Sean frozen above it with the inverted hub still in his hand.

(pause)

Me: That's, uh.... that's probably the end of that.

Sean: Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm gonna go get started on another one.

As Dane noted, the pause, where we all just sort of stared at the sandy bearing, each independently going through a similar thought process something like, "Sand... in the bearing... can we clean it off?... probably not... sand will ruin it if we ever tried to use it... this bearing is now completely useless..." It was hilarious, even if it doesn't translate too well on the page. And crazily enough, I realized later that that hub wouldn't have worked anyway, because we weren't thinking and took it off an early 320 rather than a late one like Sean's, and they use different sizes of hubs and bearings. So we were lucky it happened the way it did.

Once we got home we all bummed around the house and did laundry and watched baseball. The Red Sox were on, but they lost, which they always seem to do whenever I actually get to watch them. Dane and I took a dip in the pool, and now we're all three watching the Bourne Identity. Good flick. Hopeuflly we'll be in bed before too long, and another week begins.

Saturday, May 1, 2004

I had a pretty bad day at work today. It's amazing how grown men can be such ridiculous little bitches about things like food. I picked up the massive lunch order at Sonic, and when I got back one of the bosses (not Freakshow, amazingly, who is extremely picky and annoying about his food most of the time) became enraged when his order was slightly screwed up. He confronted me, stared right into my eyes, and completely seriously said, "We have a major problem. We've been ripped off." I thought it must be something having to do with one of the cars, or a bad check, or something... certainly he couldn't be talking about the food. He just seemed way too serious. But no. The "major problem" was that his cheeseburger was a single rather than a double, and it didn't have enough chili on it. I was already tired and in a not so great mood, so I sort of snapped back at him once I realized what was going on, explaining that if they send me to a fast food place with a $50 order, knowing full well that the staff is going to be a bunch of teenagers whose English is not all that great, chances are there are going to be mistakes. The boss actually said something to the effect of, "Yeah, I guess you can't really go through every single thing on an order this big," by way of agreeing with me, as if I go through each burger item by item, shuffling them as though they were decks of cards, each time I pick up the food just to make sure everything is exactly perfect. It's just fucking food, for Christ's sake! Fucking eat it and be done with it!

After work I got home and Sean and I watched another bad movie on TV, until Aaron and Bobby showed up and we all went to Scottsdale for what we'd heard would be a gigantic Cinco De Mayo party at a huge open-air bar. Scottsdale is amazing. Everyone looks like they just walked off the set of a Britney Spears video. Girls so far out of my league they're playing not only a completely different sport, but one that doesn't even exist on this planet and is played only by supreme cosmic beings who use more than three dimensions and have total consciousness. As I usually do when confronted by incredibly attractive women who I have no ability to talk to, I turned to parlor games. Sean and I played an epic 7-game series of air hockey (which I won, but managed to injure myself in the process), and actually sort of got this whole section of the bar really into air hockey spectatorship. It was loud and crowded, but it was a lot of fun. I had my Zippo lighter with me and it was acting really weird all night. I realized later that I'd accidentally filled it up with Rain-X instead of lighter fluid, confusing the two bottles in Dane's closet. Rain-X burns with a green flame, if anyone's curious.

© Long Shot Films 2004