Two random things I remember from my childhood

1) When I was growing up in Los Angeles my brother and sister and I had a hankerin for a tasty treat called Devil Dogs. The only problem was that Devil Dogs weren't sold on the west coast at the time, so we always had to wait until one of our east coast relatives would visit with boxes of the stuff for us to ever partake of one. Of course we'd devour the stuff in a matter of days, but in those days all we needed to visit heaven for a few moments would be to open the freezer door and blissfully pull out the little plastic wrapped pieces of delight.

And then I thought, "This is bullshit. What if I don't want to ONLY have Devil Dogs this week? What if I want to have Devil Dog NEXT week?" At which point I came up with the awesome plan of hiding one or two Devil Dogs in the freezer behind some nonsense that never got used. I did this for a few years before anyone caught on. I got lazy one year and decided to enjoy a Devil Dog in front of my siblings in order to make them really jealous. They started doing freezer searches after that. Game over.

2) We had a video camera growing up. It was one of the super old school ones that was enormous, had super shitty quality, and took a special, awkward type of video that not even digital historians would be able to recognize today. My brother and sister and I had a hankerin for the performing arts, so we were constantly putting on shows and making little movies.

My favorite of all these movies (now possibly lost to the sands of time) was one titled The Berenstein Murder (our last name is Berenstein). It was a murder mystery, and what it lacked in suspense and atmosphere it made up for in ADORABLENESS. Of all the "awwww" worthy moments, my personal favorite, and one that made me giggle for a good 20 minutes when I recalled it the other day, was the opening credit sequence.

Open on a piece of paper with the words The Berenstein Murder written on it, and my siblings and I saying off camera, "The Berenstein Murder!" Now picture a plastic knife being tossed onto the paper, and all of us kids going "Dun nuhhhhhhhh!"

Your honor, we find the defendants...precious.

Move to Costa Rica, Rush Limbaugh.

Rush said he'd move to Costa Rica if Health Care passed, and it did and now he is backing out, blaming us all for misreading his intentions.

Rush, I am not misreading your intentions. I am just saying please...PLEASE move to Costa Rica.

Go there and ruin that place instead.

I need a new phone...

I know that I need a new phone, but I don't want to get one. I don't know what the issue is. Maybe you can figure it out.

When I first get started in the crazy "having a cell phone" game, I picked out a phone that I thought was cool (back in 2001).

I got scammed by the Tmobile guy (at that point he was actually the VoiceStream guy) who told me he was giving me a deal by giving me the phone 1/2 price ($50). The truth is that I could have gotten it for free anywhere else. This is just one example of the many times I got reverse jew-ed since I moved to NYC. Don't worry: I've been jew-ing it up since then, and am now more than caught up.

Still, it was a good little phone. It lasted me a long time.

When it came time to move on, I got a flip phone from Motorola.


It was the first flip phone that I ever had, and I wasn't crazy about it. Charger was a pain in the ass, texting was a bit of a bitch, and it had a rubber back so it stuck to the sides of my pockets in a really annoying way.

After that phone's year was up, I went back to Nokia and fell in love with a little guy...name the Nokia 3220.

You ever meet someone who's everything you didn't know you wanted? Well, that's how I felt about the Nokia 320. Light, small and a breeze to use, this quickly became the best of all three of the phones I've had.

In the four years that I've used this puppy there were a few times when I could have gotten different phones. A friend of mine even gave me a Tmobile Smartphone, but I sold it. I never wanted anything more than this cute little guy. It's been with me through so much. I've done the majority of my texting on this phone. Sure, the camera doesn't work all that well, the battery isn't as strong as it was back when I got it, I can't go online, there's no GPS, and of course the keys are all busted up from over-use, but this is my PHONE! This is my phone! My simple, small, light, easy to use phone.

About four months ago my phone had a career ending injury. A few pieces of the back panel fell off after having been dropped for the 20th time or so, and I know that, as a phone, it isn't meant for this world much longer.

Nokia has made drastic changes to it's format since I got the 3220, so I refuse to go to them for my next phone. At the moment, I am at a loss for what to do. My current game plan is to continue looking at phones (and maybe some new plans) until something comes out that fills my very specific needs: small, light, easy to use, and totally amazing.

Health Care Debate

There is a lot of noise going on about socialized medicine and bla bla bla. Jesus christ, can you think of anything more dumb than worrying about the red menace? Fucking hell, Glenn Beck recently asked someone if he liked Karl Marx! Why is nobody asking Glenn Beck the important questions, mainly "Where is your time machine and how did you get here from 1952?"

My point about health care is this...let's say that, hypothetically, it would cost me exactly the same amount of money to get my health care from the insurance company or the government. Let's say $5,000 a year. I pay $5,000 a year just in case I need to have surgery or something.

Now let's say that, hypothetically, I never ever ever have to go to the doctor's office. That $5,000 isn't ever coming back to me. In the current system, that money went to the insurance company, which means that my annual $5,000 went into some corporate insurance d-bag's pocket.

If it was a government run program, my $5,000 wouldn't be going to profit, it would be going into the system that was making sure my fellow American's were getting the medical attention they required. And that doesn't bother me at all. That makes me proud to be an American.

Hypothetically, of course...

"The Office"

I know I owe you guys the end of my "Traveling" blog, but I've been watching the office, and it's been blowing my mind.

Jim came back from his interview at corporate and asked Pam out to dinner?!?! WHAT? What's gonna happen?!~?!

I could just start season 4 and find out, but I enjoy just flipping out for awhile.

on the road...

I've never been a big fan of traveling. Well, actually that's a bit of a lie. I used to love traveling, but it changed at some point from something that totally fascinated me to an incredible waste of time.

I used to view everything past my block as having limitless potential for adventure. I harassed my parents constantly to loosen the leash they had me on. I wanted to get a job. I wanted to get a bike. I wanted to get my drivers license. I wanted to learn to fly a plane. At a very young age I packed a bag full of triskets and a pepsi and rode my bike exactly half a block away, found a cool spot under a tree and chilled out for a few hours. When I reached adolescence I started taking walks to the neighborhoods I was less familiar with around Brentwood, and as a teenager with a license I tended to enjoy getting lost in random outer LA towns and trying to drive my way back. I would be gone for hours and was happy as a clam so long as I had music and no one to answer to.

Then when I first went to go look at colleges I discovered what travel really was: I took a long flight to a place to pick up a car with my dad and we drove. And drove and drove and drove. I had no idea where I was going. I had no idea where I was. All I knew was that Dad would tell me where to turn, and after HOURS in the car listening to the same tapes over and over again we would arrive at a college where I would interview (awkwardly), then get back in the car and continue the journey once again. After my week of looking at schools around the east coast, I decided that I was done with traveling for awhile.

Each expidition after that was similarly annoying. The road trip across America was dominated by my brother and his douchey tendencies. The trip to Europe was tainted by a perpetually upset stomach, a lack of culinary expertise, and my miserable gay friend and his hag who liked me. Road trips had breakdowns. Flights were cancelled. It wasn't long before I only wanted to dig in somewhere and never ever leave.

I found a place in Queens, New York and stayed there for five years. I traveled as little as humanly possible and was happy as a clam.

Then came improv tour.

To be continued...

I BEAT HOUSE!

I was watching “House” the other day. It was the episode where they treat a homeless woman who is having seizures. About twenty minutes in I made a startling realization: I know what’s wrong with this woman.

“Sensitivity to light...violence and aggression...bats where she sleeps…she’s got rabies!”

(I had just recently listened to an episode of “This American Life” which talked about the symptoms of rabies.)

Now, I am not a doctor, so I gave the episode the benefit of the doubt. “Surely this team of professionals would have thought of, and already ruled out rabies as a possible diagnosis.” But low and behold, forty minutes later…

“My god…it’s rabies!”

I BEAT HOUSE TO A DIAGNOSIS!

You’re damn right it’s rabies, Foreman! If I existed in your TV world, that fictional woman would be ALIVE right now!