Super Flashy Raft

We’ve got some strange looking people at my workplace, but none stranger than the lady that comes around and waters the plants.  Her makeup looks like she puts it on in the dark: wild amounts of eyeshadow and blush topped with a thick layer of almost indiscriminate face powder.  And her hair’s this ghoulish bouffant, that sticks straight out from her scalp.  Facial scars around the chin are also in strange abundance, which only further heightens my apprehension as she waters my potted ferns.

"Wh... what you running for?... GET SHEILA AND THEM!"

My girlfriend is generous, kind and extremely cute and girly.  It also doesn’t hurt that she is one of the most uninintentionally funny people that I know.  Her verbal gaffes and overwhelming ignorance on pop culture always gets me laughing.  This is the girl that thought that Blade Runner was the movie about the first Olympic Jamaican bobsled team, a fact that I have mentioned repeatedly in my other, now almost entirely defunct blog.

Do I Look Jamaican to You?

Now it seems that her particular knack for mashing up pop culture icons has spread to me.  As we were dining on delicious frozen yogurt the other night, Chan started waxing poetic about Gary Cooper, the famous Western film star of yesteryear.  Thinking I was being exceedingly witty, I quipped, “What you talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”. 

Notwithstanding the disparity of 20 inches in height, eight shades in skin color and three decades in age, I immediately realized my mistake and Chan and I had a pretty good chuckle about it.  Still, not to be outdone, my girlfriend - still puzzled at the true identity of Gary Cooper - asked innocently, “You mean the guy from Hanging with Mr. Cooper?” 

“Oh baby” I said after three or four minutes of unadulterated laughter, “Don’t ever change.”

One of the funnier reviews I’ve read on yelp, perhaps unintentional but no less mirth-inducing.

“We went with a group of 12 for a birthday party, so we were in a semi-private room to the side.  This place is very busy.  Reservations are a big plus.  

TIP: arrive just after the street parking opens up at 7pm and avoid the crowded and chaotic valet parking.

Nice: they bring plates of requested meats, and provided small dishes of tasty sides.  I loved the mashed (not chunk) potato salad which had an unusual addition of thinly sliced apple.

Nice: they did come and change out the grill after we had cooked plates and plates of meat on it.

Not so nice: they do no clearing of dishes in between, so the tabletop gets crowded quickly.  They never brought water but left 12 empty plastic water tumblers on the already crowded table.   We finally moved some empty dishes to a side bussing tray and asked for water.  

Not nice:  they brought out the boxed bday cake we brought and left.  No plates, knives or forks to use.  We scavenged some nearby clean plates.

Laughable: when we asked for FORKS to eat the birthday cake, the waiter came back with a plate of PORK.  Sigh.“

This reminds me of the “SUPPLIES!” joke.  Oh, you don’t know that one?

Barack Obama is brilliant and I’m proud to have him as president of the United States, but it only sweetens the pot knowing that I won dinner off of certain cynical naysayers that refused to believe a black man could capture the highest office in the land. 

Because no matter how you look at it, racial discrimination and an increasingly out-of-touch Republican party are no match for cocky poses.  We goin’ to Sizzla!  We goin’ to Sizzla!

Whenever I get together with my buddy, we talk a lot of shit.  Most of the time we just chalk it up to having a good time but once in a while, one of us will come up with an idea that is groin grabbingly amazing.  A few weeks ago my friend posited what I think is probably the greatest employment plan since the Alphabet Soup days of work agencies during the Great Depression.  Which I guess is pretty fitting given these similarly turbulent financial times.

Given the preponderence of day laborers at various home improvment and moving centers in Los Angeles, Chan theorized that we should hire them at a generous fixed hourly rate and then harness their 3rd world work ethic, generally dimunitive statures and impossible burro-like strength to hone them into the premiere break dancing group in Los Angeles.

Of course, as first world capitalists (and scheming Asian men) Chan and I would receive the lion’s share of the group’s profits as well as its merchandising and movie rights…  but think about the benefits!  Not only would this tackle the issue of job conflicts between lazy Americans and their non-lazy illegal alien counterparts, but would also bring a sense of culture and pride in these brave men’s lives…  plus allow them to feed their multiple children and family members back in the old country. 

I dare the ACLU to try and come up with a better plan.

Now I’m sure that there are lots of consultants out there that bring value to customers that hire them on.  Many of these people are highly educated, intelligent and facilitate positive change in the company that have hired them.  However, in my working career I have never encountered one of these types of consultants before.  All I’ve seen from consultants are buffoons that regularly spit out esoteric jargon, try to change perfectly efficient policies and generally waste the time of the people that attend their meetings. 

Also, the representatives from this group that I’ve encountered tend to invariably be (in no particular order) unattractive, surly and lazy in the extreme, while at the same time being highly paid with generous expense accounts.  Which leads me to wonder, why didn’t I get into this gig?

Recruiter: "You know, you'd make a great consultant!"

…and who aren’t athletic or any embody any of those “positive stereotypes” (if there can be said to be any) that generally follow African American people…  Given the amount of violence, poverty and racial discrimination that comes with being black, but not having any of the positive aspects:  it must really suck to be them. 

Then again, this is America where all things (as through Christ) are possible…  except you know, without any of those pesky religious undertones.  Go Obama!

You really don’t know what you’re going to get out of something.  Many historians have claimed that more millionaires came out of the Great Depression in the 1930’s than the Roaring 20’s.  Many (including myself) despise Donald Trump’s oafish demeanor and generally reprehensible actions, but you have to admit, the guy knows how to benefit greatly from  depressed markets.  And after seeing my real net value (already a pitifully small sum) get decimated in these troubled times, it’s hard to feel like anything is going right.

Still, I suppose that we all just have to plug away and make sure that we have enough to get through the game.  Because one day you might have this reprehensible piece of Euro-trash:

According to Vlade Divac, he has never fouled anybody in his entire basketball career. 3, 3!

And trade him for someone - equally reprehensible, but luckily, also extremely skilled and profitable - like this:

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

My girlfriend and I moved this past week and due to landlord chicanery (long story) we’ve been left without a refrigerator.  Although I’m as partial as anyone to the joys of dining out, this recent economic downturn as well as my rapidly expanding waistline has forced me to pack lunch and cook dinner at home.  As a veteran of many professional kitchens, you can only imagine my consternation at being forced once again to slave away over the stove (and this time at no pay!).

Cook at home again?? Miyagi pimp slap taste out youuuu mouf'!

Still, eating breakfast lunch and dinner out everyday for a week has increased my food bills exponentially.  To cut back this astronomical outlay on food, I’ve fallen back on my favorite skill set: scamming.  The vast majority of my evil deeds are perpetrated at the hotel cafeteria right next to my building.  As they weigh salad by the ounce ($.30 per) but sandwiches by the pound ($7.00 per), I will carefully arrange a small layer of lettuce on the top and bottom, load up the middle of the container with expensive deli meats such as pastrami and roast beef and then drape them again with a light layer of greens to mask my meaty prize. 

Not content to let this cost-cutting trend go unrealized, I’ve now set my eyes on filling opaque 12 oz. containers with tuna salad (another high ticket item) and paying the $2.95 flat fee, claiming it is soup.  I know that the cafeteria’s regular prices relative to food cost are wildly inflated, so I don’t feel so bad in paying what I feel is a fair price for these items.  That is to say, the least amount of money possible.

Cost-benefit analysis at its finest, you might say.

Although I’ve gone over this trend before on other venues before, I must say that it’s still a strange thing to me to see so many undercover Armenians today.  What with race relations the way they are now, you would think that they would gladly throw the dark cloth of ethnic integration off and bask in their proud ethnic heritage.  Yet, here we are.  A few notable examples:

Gwen Stefani(an)

Steve Buscemi(an)

Andre Agassi(an)

Cher (Cherilyn Sarkisian)