Taser Laser

Posted by Fleeceman on July 2nd, 2009 filed in Absurd, Action/Adventure, Comedy, Entertainment, Music, Outdoors, Personalities, Technology, politics
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I’m not normally one to complain about other people’s loud music. I like my music loud too, and some tunes are simply meant to be played at ear-splitting volumes: Ozzy, Jane’s, Metallica, … Chris Isaac.

I do, however, hold a certain angry, intense contempt in my heart for static: and on that note, a stereo went off the other night at 2am.

At the time I was sleeping in a tent on my parent’s property, in the garden area above the gnarled slab which once held their house before it burned down in the Tea Fire. The next-door neighbor’s outdoor speakers started blaring at about 800 decibels, spewing forth a brain-splitting mess of static, country and jazz. It was a noise that made me want to pull my hair out.

I waited two minutes, thinking it was so loud how could the people in the house ignore it? Finally my eyes began to bleed. It was still on, and the stations began to waver, as if someone were fiddling with a shortwave radio, adjusting it so it was incredibly wrong.

I walked the short distance up the shared driveway toward the neighbor’s driveway, and noticed the house sitter’s Jeep. Good, so someone was home.

I rang the doorbell, and two little dropkick dogs started barking inside. Okay, progress. I rang the bell every 20 seconds to be polite, for about two minutes. Nothing happened, but I did notice a light go on upstairs. Finally I couldn’t take the noise anymore, the outdoor speakers were blaring, like the foreboding moments in a horror movie when things get possessed and you know someone’s about to get decapitated.

I rang the doorbell incessantly—DINGDINGADINGADINGA—still nobody answered the door.

Consumed by the knowledge there was someone inside not answering the door and wanting to pull my face off as the noise continued to fry my brain, I pounded on the door with both fists. No answer.

I went back down, got my flashlight, and walked back up, through the gardener’s gate, up the front patio steps, and into the unlocked kitchen side door. I was in the house.

“HELLO?” I bellowed. “I am in your house. I am downstairs in your kitchen … I am going to turn off your fucking stereo.”

On the wall across the great room (or whatever you’d call it) was a flatscreen command center console for controlling the whole house. The little Jujube sized buttons read: kitchen, garage, music, … Barbie’s. (I’ll let you wonder about that last.)

I pushed music, found the radio, and for some reason changing the station turned the godamn noise off. I went back down to my tent. Ten minutes later Montecito was lit up by the sound of two cop cars doing 100 miles an hour across the early morning streets. The sirens, the screeches, the revving engines, until finally they were idling on my driveway, the radios squawking unintelligibly.

I knew they were there for me, so I grabbed my flashlight—a tall, trigger-handled shop light powered by a cordless drill battery—and walked out to the driveway with my arms held wide and waggling the light.

“Gentlemen,” I said, letting them know where I was.

“It’s the sheriffs!” the designated talker informed me. The one in charge of the flashlight immediately lit me up.

“No shit,” I said. “You’ve got two cars, a dog, and three cops, and you just woke up the rest of the neighborhood. It’s fairly obvious you are here to represent the law.”

I continued to walk toward them, up the slope of the driveway, two car lengths worth, and they were about ten feet beyond the last car. My arms were held wide the whole time, and I stopped just at the hood of the foremost car.

“Sir, you need to put your light down.”

They put their cop light right in my eyes.

“You put your light down,” I said, pointing mine right back at them. “You’re on my driveway, and I have done no wrong.”

“Sir. Remove the light. We received a call about an intruder.”

“Yeah. I’m who you’re looking for. Seriously, get your fucking light out of my face. Put it on my chest. What do you think, I’ve got projectiles coming out my face? The neighbor’s godamn stereo came on. I made an effort to contact the housesitter, and after no response, I went into the house to shut the fucking thing off.”

“Sir, I need to inform you that you have a gun trained on you.”

I looked down to see two wavering laser lights directed at my solar plexus.

“What? You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve got a flashlight. Get your fucking gun off me. Fuck you.”

“Sir, it’s a taser, not a gun.”

“Oh, so you’re going to electrocute me with 50,000 megawatts of electricity, liquefy my muscles and watch me do a header into the pavement as I fall over backwards? Get them off or fucking shoot me. Come on. Do it.”

“Sir, sit down.”

“Fuck you. You sit down.”

I pushed them to the limit, and finally kneeled, setting the light down, and put my hands laced over my head.

“Get it over with. Shoot me or search me.”

After they had me leaning against the cop car, their flashlight still on me but out of my godamn face, their tasers reholstered, they asked me:

“So you said you broke in to this man’s house, then left when you heard the silent alarm?”

“Did you hear what you just said? YOU heard the silent alarm. Not me. And I didn’t break in, the door was unlocked.”

“Sir, in the future, you need to call us. We can cite them for a noise ordinance or something like that.”

“Yeah, you guys are doing a great job. I’ll put you on my Favorite’s list.”

They finally let me go after calling my name in.

I walked back down to the tent and sat on a bench until I started freezing to calm myself down. This is the second time cops have responded to my presence on my own driveway and treated me like a common criminal. My mom the next day said I could have been shot, either from somebody in the house or by the cops themselves. When I tell this story, most people love it—fuck the cops, and all that—but a few people think I was really stupid to enter the house. I don’t deny that. The neighbors are definitely packing, it’s just not guns that they’re packing, if you know what I mean.

The French fry Thief

Posted by Fleeceman on April 22nd, 2009 filed in Personalities, politics
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Tony Blair had entered the building.

For a week prior to the event, I kept thinking I’d be doing security for Tony Bennett, but no: the two are entirely different entities. The former was a diplomat with international connections, those connections continuing into his private life despite his having buddied up next to the poison Bush. The latter sings. Both have curly grey hair, which may have been what was throwing me off.

Blair’s topic for the evening: The World’s Faiths Need to Get Along … (not as in “little doggy”) didn’t really require any more thought than reading the title. The common sense concept that humans need to stop killing each other simply because their religious forefathers came up with a different name for “god” should be a topic digestible by even the most uneducated lout.

Regardless, I was hoping to get posted inside, so I could at least hear the topic and form my own opinion—particularly for international fodder for this here blog. The opening speaker was a renowned professor from UCSB, one who when I went to school there was in the process of writing a book that included his firsthand interviews with the world’s number one terrorists: including bin laden himself.

Instead, I was posted to the parking lot.

I could hear over the COM, (which consisted of a radio and a macaroni in my ear) that my boys on the inside were already bored, and only the professor had spoken. The fact that they couldn’t stomach this genius’ speech made me angry and sad. Here I was counting cars and making sure random wanderers didn’t go by the building that was secure to the point of absurdity. The State Department, Scotland Yard, two private security firms and about 30 cops had been assigned to make sure Blair was one protected dude.

Lord knows that some heavy shit goes down in Santa Barbara.

Just then a lad in his early 20s came running out of Vons toward a side-parking area between the two buildings. He weaved between several cars, tossed a small paper bag into my walkway about 20 yards down, then proceeded to hop over the five foot wall.

“Hey,” I growled in my best impersonation of a security guard thoroughly concerned that the bag might have a smoke bomb or some nefarious device. “You have to go around. Walkway’s closed.”

By the time I sauntered up to the area, noting that the three security guards in the side room had done nothing but adjust their stance so concerned were they, the lad had somehow disappeared around the corner. I walked back to the bag.

Its contents were warm. It was freshly creased. It was sealed with an official Von’s sticker proclaiming Von’s Potato Wedges: $1.65. They were warm, almost hot.

Damn, I thought, these are straight from the deli.

I verified that the bag was undamaged. There was no way the contents had been tainted except for the shock of being tossed and dropped over the wall. I walked back to my post, knowing that if the kid had been desperate enough to steal less than two dollars in food, he’d be coming back looking for his loot. I had every intention of giving the fries back, I was merely going to tax him a few for the trouble.

Five minutes later he came walking by.

“Lose any French fries?”

“Whuh?—No. Nuh-uh.”

“You sure? Nice hot bag of tasty potato wedges?”

“No.”

I could see him eyeballing the bag. I was waiting for him to make a grab for it. At the same time I was marveling at either his hunger-driven ballsiness or his flagrant ignorance of the horde of motorcycle cops 100 yards to his right. He wandered off, and I was again impressed with his ability to disappear. He walked behind a mini motor home and I never saw him again.

The fries were mine. Quite tasty. Not quite as fulfilling as listening to a historically significant international character interviewed by a renowned scholar, but perhaps just as salty as a British Schmoopy Doop might sound.

The iPhone

Posted by Fleeceman on March 16th, 2009 filed in Entertainment, Movies, Technology, Writing
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I needed an iPhone about as much as I needed an elephant in my back yard, but since Amazon was fresh out of elephants, I opted for the simpler purchase of the phone.

Suffice to say, it’s pimp. As one fellow user said, it’s a far better computer than it is a phone, but otherwise it’s flawless. The camera during the day for portraits is almost stunning, but in low light it’s like smattering corn meal over frog’s eyes in a mud puddle at midnight. Non-lovers of the phone poo-poo the idea of the buttonless keyboard, but I’ve used the Crackberry alternative, and was duly unimpressed with those tiny little carpel tunnel buttons.

The Apps, which is part and parcel of Apple’s amazing ability to turn the common into something bordering on the second coming of Louis the XIV, are simultaneously super cool and slightly glitchy. Being a wordsmith, I felt obligated to find a dictionary app, and while the free ones were somewhat decent, they were limited, and the user comments basically put them on the back burner. One user freaked me out: she’d tried every dictionary app, in effect buying all the apps, which range from .99¢ to $9.99 and some were $25, which means she probably spent close to $200 to find the “right one,” but none of them truly tickled her word fancy. (She did eventually find one, but damn, by that time you might as well just go back to the dictionary.) The simple fix? Go to Merriam Webster online and add to homepage: it’ll give you a cool little button and automatically be a mobile-based wordfinder.

It also plays movies like Batman and RocknRolla, which I backed up and fed through iTunes. That part is utterly fantastic, as far as I’m concerned. People with video iPods have already been there, and most people who haven’t tried it give a haughty sniff to the wind at the concept of watching a movie on a screen the size of a credit card. But then you try it.

This is all old news of course. A “review” of a phone that’s been out for days? Who cares? Well, I haven’t written anything since the Tea Fire in Montecito burned down my entire neighborhood, so I figured this was a good place to start.

Now I’ve got to work on getting a new backyard so I can get that elephant.

 

The Telethon

Posted by Fleeceman on December 16th, 2008 filed in Pigeonholed
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I recently attended a telethon, and there’s a reason that ends in a “thon.” All you have to do is replace “tele” with “mara” and you get an idea as to the fun to be had while attending a 12-hour telethon.

Who watches these things?

My point here is not to dis the impact of their intent. I think they probably help a lot of people who actually need help. They feed and clothe families who otherwise wouldn’t enjoy a nice hot cup of clam chowder. But the delivery borders on pure madness.

Nine cameras, an alleged 10,000 volunteers, multiple announcers, and the ubiquitous Kenny Loggins? My goodness. Watching the behind the scenes was kind of amazing. Each announcer team had approximately three minutes to deliver their schpeel, which was the same thing OVER AND OVER for twelve hours. Every time they got on camera, they appealed to the need for money, and how awesome it would be if you just whipped out your credit card and dropped down a small wad of cash. 

The level of enthusiasm and glee never wavered. These people were giddy with telethon delight every time that red light went hot on their camera. The strangest thing was, most of them (besides the “red head” with the tight red dress) were wearing frumpy couch clothes—the kind you normally wouldn’t go outside with.

And yet the question remains: who watches these things? Twelve hours of the same thing, with little bits of entertainment peppered in to break up the insanity? I’ll admit in times past I have stumbled upon a telethon on the television and sat there for a few minutes in rapt attention, in blind wonderment that it’s even on, and further stupefied that these seemingly mad people are so exuberantly repeating themselves in so many different ways, laughing at their little interactions that aren’t funny.

It’s a talent, really, to get up there and do that. It’s a talent I’m glad I don’t have. And if, somewhere deep down inside my fetid little mind I could somehow dredge up the mind-numbing skill to blather endlessly in front of a camera, maybe I’d do it for the money, or at least long enough to stand next to Ryan Seacrest so I could stab him in the neck with a dull pencil.

But telethon talent, now that’s another ball game. These poor people were born with the ability to present for, with unbridled fervor, that which their show doesn’t have—money.

As the day wore on, one of the many shifts in volunteer groups came in, and one catty little miss said, “Oh, I’m totally unimpressed. I’m an event coordinator.”

Missy, despite the overwhelming element of cheese that accompanies a fundraiser, the production was nearly flawless. Kenny Loggins was scheduled to play live at 9pm, and by gum, when that clock turned, their was Kenny, live for the, um, world to see.

On a final note, the News Press was apparently streaming the show live on the Internet, but as I looked for the stream (because I could, standing there in the room, on my new iPhone—woo woo) it saddened me to see that you had to be a subscriber to the News Press. So there we all were, putting our time in to gather money for the less fortunate, and the News Press couldn’t find time to allow for a free stream of the content.

Nonsense. 

Rich Kids with Tight Pants

Posted by Fleeceman on November 9th, 2008 filed in Personalities, Pigeonholed
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Sheltered rich kids have such a dazed look about them: as if the real world is a little too bright for their delicate sensibilities.

 

They get their first job and they show up wearing slacks that are a tad too tight, and a sweater a size too small. This look is not to be confused with the quick-talking, coffee-drinking hipster, but is closer associated with the idea that his mom still dresses him, or his boarding school never showed him how to dress properly.

Not that I’m harboring an inherent dislike for rich kids. I’ve known quite a few who I’d be willing to share my pizza with, but overall, the squinty-eyed, pasty-faced, quoff-dood gentiles who look like they’ve had too much brie and sat through one too many conversations where everybody’s lower jaw extended as they shared their respective tales of the Schmoopy Doops are people I don’t want to deal with — unless that dealing concerns them handing me money.

There’s also a difference in the boys and girls. In most cases the boys are sent out into the real world (albeit with a regularly replenished bank account), and rarely are they trained in the wiley ways of the actual world. Most figure it out, but there are a few chumps who never quite get it.

The girls are born shrewd, and through the watchful eyes of Incredibly Important Dad and Lady by Day, Vixen by Night Mother, the daughters become modern day huntresses, capable of tagging you in the temple with a metaphoric rock or hucking a spear right through your spine as if you were an unsuspecting Wooly Mammoth caught by Ayla in Clan of the Cavebear.

“Oh, Jandalar!”

I mean shrewd in a complementary fashion, unless that same shrewdness turns into bitch.

When I’m valet parking, there are a select few people who ignore the red shirt, at which time I knock on their windows in case they’re driving blind. Today a lady drove in and almost ran me over in her obvious contempt for the red-shirted servant in front of her car. I knocked several times on her driver’s side window. She opened her driver’s window and yelled,

“Don’t you ever knock that hard on my window ever again! I have a flat tire and came out here for assistance.”

Lady, I don’t care if your vagina fell off and is currently rolling around on your carpeted floor like an aborted sea lion fetus.

All you had to do was acknowledge my presence and I would have accommodated your needs in any way possible. As it is, you pull in like it’s your own private Idaho, yell at me like I’m your retarded servant who accidentally emptied a wheelbarrow full of horse shit into your trunk, then talk loudly on your phone about closing some deal but only after you’ve raised the price on your client until they squirm.

Based on your harpy-like attitude it’s obvious you’ve never experienced a flat tire. I’m willing to bet that on the days you’ve got a manicure or a styling appointment it’s like the end of the fucking world if you’re deterred in the slightest.

A slow barista at Starbucks would send you into ulcerous conniptions.

A broken heel on your shoe is tantamount to someone slaughtering your newborn with a machete. That is, if your ice-cold uterus had ever been capable of producing anything but a fishy stench of penis-shriveling proportions.

Screw you, lady. Take your crotchety self elsewhere, with your bland grey suit skirt and fitted white blouse. Don’t trip on your way out.