Monday, August 28, 2006

Povertyland


Back to normal civilian life after a weekend well spent with the angelic winged Jasmine. But it wasn't without its scares.

Yes, we saw Snakes on a Plane, but that wasn't the frightening thing.

After blazing through Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure in one day, we headed back to our hotel on foot. The walk was a relatively short one (about a block or two) up a hill, over the freeway. But as we were trotting along, we saw a husky black gentleman a good distance ahead. He looked normal enough; afroey hair enclosed in a cap, shirt and jeans, shoes and even socks. In his left hand looked to be a portable CD player (with no cord extending out of it) and his right hand jittering in the air.

It wasn't till he muttered "Where are you God?" that Angel Wing Jasmine and I thought he might be a little off. At this point, we were pretty close to him. So we stopped dead in our tracks. I popped my cell phone out and pretended to take a call using such obvious security terms as "oh Bob, you have 911 at the ready" and "oh, the police are on the line too?"

The man didn't seem to care. He just went along muttering to himself and walking down the sidewalk.

We waited a long time for him to be a really good distance away. It appeared as if we were home free. We sighed with relief. A family of six was even approaching from behind. Things were looking safe.

Looking ahead, the guy was so far ahead that we couldn't see him anymore. Paying no mind, we continued on toward the hotel with the family close behind.

As we finally crossed the freeway overpass, suddenly a rustling from the bushes and the jittery-hand man emerged from off the road. He was now five feet in front of us. We stopped. The family stopped.

The man pulled up his pants. It was obvious that he had taken a leak or a dump. He slowed his pace to a quick tip-toe as we approached our hotel. It was just sort of disgusting until he pointed his hand like a gun and pretended to fire at the passing cars. Click! Click! That's when it got scary.

The family behind us rushed ballsily passed the man. My plan was to stick with the family. It was the old adage that your chances of crossing a river full of alligators are higher when you cross with a big group. Angel Wing Jasmine pulled me back. She wanted to wait as long as possible (when our hotel was a hop, skip, and a jump) to blow passed the guy. And that's exactly what we did.

BOOM! We zoomed passed him and didn't look back. Into the lobby, up the elevator, and into our room; we were safe.

Yeah, it was scary. So to lighten the mood, here we are kicking butt on Buzz Lightyear.




Afeared of scaries,

Ricky
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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Quarter Centurama


Birthdays come around too quickly. Honestly, is there anything much to say? Hooray, I'm 25 years old, I guess. But yeah, 25 feels like 24.

My close friends called to wish me well as expected, but the real highlight was getting a birthday cake from my Animal Crossing neighbors. It was the coolest thing when Pate, a local duck, greeted me outside my house and wished me happy birthday. It was awesome.

Ducks are fun.


Twenty-bore,

Ricky
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Sunday, August 20, 2006

"If Something Stinks, It's Usually The Butz"


This weekend was a big weekend for the theater freak in me. Two shows that I coordinated finally came about: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and Curtains.

On Friday evening, we (Lee Leman, Cousin Spacey, Ellvin Kelvin, K-mart, Timotei, and me) went down to the Pantages Theater in Hollywood to catch Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. I had seen the show in New York and was blown away by Norbert Leo Butz's performance as Freddie Benson. The show has some genuine laughs and is mostly raunchy humor, but there are only a handful of good songs. At the stage door where you can meet the cast, I had tried to get Mr. Butz to sign my program, but the two times I was there to meet him, he had slipped away quickly. I had learned that he would be touring with the show, so after watching some bootleg videos on YouTube, I was motivated to see the show again, despite the hefty $80 price tag (in New York I paid $25). So the show was okay. Mr. Butz was as good as ever, but the rest of the cast seemed to be asleep during the whole thing. Oh well, after the show we got to meet Butz. He was gracious enough, signing a ton of programs (including mine) and taking pictures willingly. Just in case you were wondering why anyone would even care to meet this guy, he was in the original cast of RENT, he originated the role of Fiyero in Wicked, and won the Tony for his part in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.



On Saturday afternoon, we (and there's too many of us to list off; basically everyone in my entire family) went to the Ahmanson Theater in Downtown Los Angeles to catch Curtains; a world premiere murder mystery musical comedy starring Fraiser's David Hyde Pierce. This was more of an old-fashioned musical with a modern twist. There's so much story going on it's hard to keep track and not get too bogged down while watching. Basically, an actress is murdered at the end of a new terrible musical on opening night. A detective (Pierce) is called in to investigate. He names everyone in the show a suspect, but becomes more interested in fixing the musical for a reopening night. More people die and eventually he finds the truth and love in the end. I thought it was really inventive (the way they staged stuff) and the story was interesting and the detective character was funny and charming, but because the show was old-fashioned, some of the music wasn't to my taste. But still, it was really fun to watch, for $20 to boot!

And speaking of which, I got my confirmation for my group order for Wicked coming to Los Angeles next March. I've got 40 tickets reserved, great seats, at $96.50 a piece. Wanna go? Let me know soon!


Take that!!!

Ricky
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Thursday, August 10, 2006

Bitchslapped by a Spider


There's no denying that I'm as blind as a bat without my glasses or contacts. My unaided vision allows me to see globs of roundish shapes, each fuzzy around the edges. Every morning, when I empty my bladder, I kinda just stand in front of the Juan and hope to hallahalla it hits the water. Sometimes I'll hear the snare drumming and steady pitter-patter vibrations of tinkle upon the floor and have to mop it up, which is a pain. But what can I say? I'm blind.

Course, the point of this story wasn't to showcase my hilariously tragic vision deficiencies. It's not for your amusement, sicko. Its purpose was to detail how this condition often impedes my ability to live a normal life. Morning blindness can have serious consequences, mostly when bundled with a phobia of mine.

Imagine if you will, stepping into the bath for your morning shower. All is as it should be with your every morning routine. Rushing water from the spout, step inside, water rains down to cleanse, lather, rinse, repeat. But something compels you to look down at the floor and you see a blackish fluff. Juevos Crickey, it's a spider. After an initial moment of panic, you simply step away from it and direct the water to flush it down the drain.

Unthinkable you say? No! True story! And it's happened several times I might add. But it's not that frightening because the spider stands away from you and they're easy to take care of. If you want to talk frightening, let us discuss this morning.

So I got out of bed, late, and made my way to the sink to brush my teeth and wash my face. I got my washcloth from the towel rack and ran it under the running faucet. Suddenly, something hit me in the left side of my forehead.

"What the hell?" I groggled, backing away from the sink.

I saw what looked like a fluttering bug at chin level. I proceeded to blow it away, but noticed it just kept falling slowly, gracefully. I took a step forward and approached it ever so closely with my face and a giant, ugly, black, stringy spider came into focus. The freakin' devil's crabs as I like to call them. Now, realize how close I had to be to see this thing clearly. I could have probably tapped it with my nose, I was so close.

I shuffled back in a panic as it webbed down and touched base with my counter top. Then it proceeded to prance over the edge and start its descent downward. I watched it, angrily, with the faucet still running. I was paralyzed, but I knew I had to do something. I couldn't just let it get away with what it had done. So I took the nearest object I could find that I didn't care to get spiderguts on, which turned out to be my bright yellow glasses case, and with vengence in my soul and eyes probably wide shut, I pounced that yellow lion onto the cliffhanging bandit!

Only to miss.

There was no friendly squashed eight-legger flattened on the plastic case. There was no longer a blackish fuzzy orb desending the white canyon counter.

I leapt back, expecting the thing to run full force at the blind man who attacked him. I looked up and down the counter, but did not see anything except... MY GLASSES!

I snatched them up and put them on. Scanning... scanning...

But there was no spider lying helpless on the carpet. I pictured a bug on its back, two legs over its head, sighing over-dramatically in agony. "Whoa is me," he'd cry, in a squeakish voice. "Whoa, whoa is me. Sigh. Sigh."

My terror alert jumped up to arach-red. Still scanning... scanning... Heart racing... Water running...

I now had a big Listerine bottle in hand, ready to drill that monster into the carpet fibers.

Alas, it was nowhere to be found; not under the two bags of garbage waiting to be taken out of my washroom; not beneath the bulk supply of Lever 2000 soap bars next to the door; not near the empty Waterpick box under the sink (we threw out that broken Waterpick long ago; why do we still have the freakin' box?!).

Whoa is me.

I can't go back. I know he'll be there, waiting. Next time, I know he'll successfully land on my head and suck my brains out. Or perhaps lay his babies in my pores. And when they hatch next Spring, I'll look like Seal. Although, with this Summer's breakout of acne, I'm about two zits away from looking like Seal. Hey, at least some chicks like Heidi Klum dig pimples. They finds it zexy!

I can only hope there are supermodels who find "death by spider" zexy as well.


Paralyzed and paranoid and parafied of ¡espideres!

Ricky
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