Not Surprising

Same old story. I was supposed to have a coffee table delivered today. I bought it like six weeks ago, and a couple weeks ago the store, CB2, called to set a date for delivery. Today was that date. They said they'd be calling me to tell me what time they were coming, but I never got a call. So around noon today I called the store to see what the deal was.

The table wasn't in stock, and somebody was supposed to have called to notify me but didn't. The girl on the phone had no explanation as to why this had happened. She apologized. She set a new delivery date for next week.

This is constantly happening to me. I pay good money for a product or services, somebody is supposed to contact me but never does, and then when I follow up after my time has been thoroughly wasted, it's always, "We don't know why no one contacted you."

I know why: incompetence. It's everywhere. It's infiltrated every person working at every company on planet Earth. And it really chaps my goddamn lips already.

The Club Scene

Went to a Hollywood club the other night. Was immediately reminded of why I don't go to Hollywood clubs.

I went out of pseudo-obligation: it was my girlfriend's friend's birthday party, and my girlfriend's other friend was promoting the club, and thus had her own table. This is the only reason I went; having your own table at a Hollywood club is key, because it allows you a place to sit and drink and not have to constantly get jostled around somewhere in between the bar and the dance floor amidst all the riff-raffians and douchebaggery.

I was there for all of a half hour before Club Promoter Friend announces that we all have to get up because she "sold the table." I don't even really comprehend what this means; all I know is that 45 seconds later I'm being hustled over to the purgatory I was previously guaranteed to be able to avoid, and some other people are settling in to relax where I had just been sitting.

This, to me, was really the height of uncoolness between friends. You invite people to a club you're promoting because you have a table, then "sell" the table and force your friends to stand around like common assholes? This would be like if I invited you to a baseball game, then scalped the tickets in the parking lot and told you to call a cab home. Some nerve.

So, let the jostling commence. As I was standing by the women's bathroom, waiting for my girlfriend and her friends and trying to pretend like I was having a good time (or at the very least like I'm not a weirdo who patrolls women's bathrooms), I noticed a fat girl who was freaking another girl in a wheelchair. This confused and depressed me. What was a girl in a wheelchair doing at a club? What is the point of that? If I lost the use of my legs, this would be the last place I would go. "Hey man, you coming out to the club tonight?" "Sorry bro, paralyzed from the waist down. Just gonna chill tonight and watch On Demand."

At the end of the night, I was just thankful not to be there single, because I would commit suicide trying to pick up girls in a place like that. It would be fine if everyone knew sign language and you didn't have to scream at people to be heard. Or if I was a good dancer and could just shimmy up to chicks. But as it is, these places are not for me.

God Bless

When exactly did it become mandatory for all baseball players to point two fingers to the sky after even the most minimal of achievements? What are they doing? Thanking God for allowing that bloop fly ball to land in short right field for a single? Paying tribute to a dead grandmother who was the inspiration to play the game as a child?

I don't remember this happening before Barry Bonds started doing it as his trademark, pointing to the sky when he reached home plate after every home run. That was his thing. He was Barry Bonds. Don't these nobodies realize how trite it looks nowadays when every single one of them makes the same insincere gesture upon reaching first base after drawing a walk?

Super Dupe

Oh man, have I got the kvetch of all kvetches today. This one was a doozy.

Last night I went with my girlfriend and two friends to a concert - the Killers at the Hollywood Bowl. A couple weeks earlier, my girlfriend found a guy selling tickets on Craig'sList: four for $100 each in the Garden Box seats. The face value of the tickets was about $135, so this was a great deal (obviously you can see where this is going). Nevertheless, my girlfriend said she caught the posting about a minute after it went up and the guy claimed he was selling them cheap because he needed cash quickly, so we just thanked our lucky stars and snatched them up.

My friend Adam actually went to meet the guy to pick up the tickets, because he lives not far from where the guy was. He actually remarked that the ticket seller was a nice guy, and that he told him the tickets had been given to him as a gift, but that he couldn't use them because he had been invited to the USC-Ohio State game, and he needed cash quick to get a plane ticket. Stupidly, none of us thought to question this based on the fact that the football game was last weekend, and the concert was on a Wednesday. In one ear and out the other. But I guess when someone tells you a story that's too stupid to actually be true, it's just human nature to assume that it is.

So, here we go. My girlfriend goes and picks up a whole smorgasbord of picnic supplies - two shopping bags full of food, because our "tickets" are to a four person box with a picnic table. We take a cab to the Bowl, nice and early, walk through the security checkpoint, up to the ticket takers, who use their little sensor gun to scan our tickets, and...BEEP-BOOP.

I had never heard the BEEP-BOOP before when having my ticket scanned. It's usually just a happy, upbeat BEEDLE-BEEP! This BEEP-BOOP was a discouraging sound, like when a contestant gives the wrong answer on a game show. The ticket taker looked at her gun. "Invalid ticket," she said. She scanned my girlfriend's ticket. Same sound. Same response from the ticket taker.

We all looked at each other, stunned. We continued exchanging stunned looks as someone led us to a security office and explained that we had been ripped off. They showed us three other packets of fake tickets with our exact seat numbers that other naive rubes had been sold by the same brilliant but dastardly con artist. A regular Frank Abignale Jr. had gotten his hands on us.

As this was happening, I flashed back in my mind to when my friends had shown up at my house prior to the concert and handed me my ticket. I recalled a brief blip of a thought going through my brain at the time that the ticket didn't feel quite exactly like a real ticket...the texture of it was almost imperceptably off...but this fraction of a notion quickly vanished - most likely because someone put a cocktail in my hand, and I moved on to thinking about drinking it.

In any case, this ignored premonition was of little use to us now, standing around outside the Hollywood Bowl with bags full of food and no tickets to the show. The security officer gave us a photocopy of our fake tickets and encouraged us to file a police report. She said that if this guy had ripped off enough people - and from the looks of it, he was on quite a roll - then his crime could escalate to a serious charge. Again, little solace was taken in this at this particular moment.

Luckily, I went to the box office and was able to purchase four more tickets in very similar seats in the Garden Box section, for only $25 more per ticket. Of course, this was on top of the $400 we had already flushed down the toilet. But we did get to see the show, which was great (kvetch-free!). And we do have a pretty good story.

All I know is, this asshole has some pretty intense karma coming his way. This isn't like someone breaking into your home and stealing your TV. This is: you made plans, made preparations, invited friends, got excited for something you were looking forward to, got in a car and went somewhere...only to have it all taken away from you. That's a pretty shitty thing to do to someone...let alone however many people Dickwad McMoneybags did this to.

Bad Car Wash

Just took my car to the car wash. My car was pretty dirty, but the most glaring blemish was a large white bird shit stain on one of the taillights. When I got home, I noticed a significant portion of it was still there. I had to go upstairs, come back down with a rag, and scrub the rest of it off myself.

I realize it was my bad for not checking the car out before I drove away. But still, come on. That's inexcusable. The most basic expectation of bringing your car to a car wash is for them to get the bird shit off it - if not in the high-powered, roll through washing section, then for sure on the human-powered rub down afterwards. This half-assed effort makes me burn with regret for tipping the car wash employee. But, then again, lesson learned. From now on I'll remember to check and see if all the bird shit is gone.

You May Exercise, But You're Still a Hog

Hey lady. Yes, you, the one who's been working out here in the building fitness center every morning this week. The one who never even acknowledges me when I walk in, even though the room can only fit about five people.

I don't know if you've noticed, but there's only just this one TV in here. So whatever is on that TV, that's what everyone has to watch. And yes, I realize the unwritten rule is that whoever gets to the gym when no one else is there assumes temporary ownership of the remote and can watch whatever he or she wants. So congratulations, you always get here before I do. You win. Enjoy your control of the television.

All I'm saying is, if the roles were reversed, and it was me who had the power of the remote every day, maybe one time I would offer it to someone else. Like, say, the only other person in the fitness center who I pretend to ignore when you come in after me every single morning. I might not subject you and whoever else might be working out here to watching the same stupid VH1 video countdown every single morning. Or even if I didn't offer you the chance to watch something you might want to watch, at least I myself might try changing it up, so as not to see the same lame Taylor Swift and Adele videos every single goddamn day. That kind of thing might be considered courteous. As opposed to your behavior, which I consider to be discourteous. I'm just saying.

Oh yeah, and as long as you're going to force me to watch the VH1 video countdown every morning...maybe you could turn the TV up to a volume where we could actually hear the fucking songs. What do you think?

Nothing Short of Blasphemy

I heard something downright alarming the other day. It was so horrifying, my earlobes nearly folded themselves up into my ear canals so as to permanently prevent me from ever hearing anything ever again.

I was listening to the radio in my car - Star 98.7, I believe it was - when (and I think we can all agree on this) one of the best songs ever written came on: "Sweet Child O' Mine" by Guns N' Roses.

So there I am, singing along to Axl's sweet sweet vocal stylings. And then, as he finishes up the chorus, it came time for Slash's big solo - one of his best, mind you, and Slash is not a guitarist short on awesome solos. As I set my voice for falsetto mode to screech along to his Les Paul...the song fast forwarded to later in the solo. Meaning, they edited about 30 seconds of it out, skipping right to a later part of the solo.

I couldn't believe my ears. Not only that, but later on in the song they edited another section out. I can't remember which one, because I was still suffering from the emotional devastation of the first edit. Nevertheless, I picked up on something else being wrong, even though I was too woozy to pinpoint it. It was probably similar to what it's like for a soldier to get shot in war, then kind of only barely notice when he gets shot a second time, because of the overwhelming pain of the first bullet. I probably should have pulled the car over, but I didn't. Luckily, no one was killed.

Except for "Sweet Child," that is. Why would they do this? Why would they edit down such a classic rock song? It's not like they censored swear words or anything, like when you watch "Casino" on AMC and it sucks because every third word is "fuck." They just went ahead and shortened it. Why? I don't know. It's not like it's a particularly long song. And even if it was, is there a finite amount of time radio stations have to play music? Are they worried they'll run out of air space that goes on forever? Last time I checked, the radio just plays music continuously, all the time, and will continue doing so until the world ends.

Suffice to say, I am of the opinion that whoever was in charge of this decision to bastardize "Sweet Child O' Mine" is a hater of good, if not all, music, and should be tortured before being put out of his misery.

Man's Best Friend

There are few things more brain-blowingly frustrating than standing around on a sidewalk in the early morning waiting for a dog to shit. Especially when said dog has woken you up at 7:30 AM by yapping his head off from his enclosed area in your home, indicating that he has to go to the bathroom.

This leads you to groggily arise and wander the streets in clothes a homeless person wouldn't be caught dead in, something you clad yourself in before your mind was functioning on a fully coherent level. And then the dog has the nerve to sniff everything it sees, eat god knows what off the ground, sit and scratch himself endlessly - in short, doing everything but what he tricked you into coming outside to do.

You can't go back inside yet, for fear that he'll shit in the house once you take your eye off him for one second. Putting him back in his enclosed area is a 100% guarantee of more ear-splitting barking. So the unfortunate reality is that the very best option you have is this: standing around outside, your life governed by the scatalogical timeline of a 9-month-old mongrel, as you hope, wish and pray that he will just poop already. The only thing more pathetic is the euphoric joy that erupts in your heart when he actually does bless you with a decent sized turd, which you then have the glorious honor of picking up and throwing away.

This psychological humiliation is all magnified a hundredfold when the dog is not even yours, but your girlfriend's, who sleeps soundly in bed upstairs.

More Corporate Lies

These companies really kill me. It's like seriously impossible to complete a transaction over the phone or internet without some sort of colossal hassle involved. My girlfriend and I went to Cabo a couple weeks ago, so she handled the bookings through Priceline.com, using my credit card. Then she found out we could get a better room in the same hotel for a cheaper price, so she canceled the hotel booking she made with Priceline (but kept the plane flights). She was assured I would be refunded the hotel portion, which was over $1,100. Beautiful.

After we got back, I checked online and saw my credit card had not been refunded the money. I called Priceline and was assured - a second time now - that the request was still being processed, and I had nothing to worry about; I would definitely be refunded.

You can guess what happens. A week later now and still no refund, so I call again. Bad news, I'm afraid. My refund request has been denied. The room, you see, was nonrefundable. "No no," I responded. "I was told twice that it absolutely was refundable." Again, the customer serveice rep says, nothing they can do.

As you already know from my earlier postings, I'm an old hand at this sort of thing, so I immediately asked to speak to someone with more authority. This new guy told me the same story. "You cannot do this," I started to raise my voice. "You can't have someone promise me that my reservation will be refunded, then have me go on vacation, come back, and tell me you can't refund the money. That's lying!" There was the usual back and forth on how there was nothing he could do, and I was just expected to politely eat the $1,100, hang up the phone, and happily go on with my day. After I started screaming a little more, he asked if he could put me on hold to see "if there were any options" for me. Would I mind holding? "I'd love to," I said.

It took all of one minute for him to come back and tell me they were going to refund the entire cost of the reservation.

I don't know what the deal is with these companies, why it's always lies and grief and stonewalling, as opposed to honest transparency and friendly customer relations. Is it just me? Or does this sort of thing happen to everybody?

Worst Class

I flew first class last weekend, LA to NY. Never flown first class before. I was actually pretty excited, but it didn't take longer than five minutes into the flight for me to be brought back down to earth (not literally, of course, as I was in the sky).

Usually when I fly, I stop off at the gift shop to get a couple magazines. Not this time, I told myself. I was positive they would have ample reading material and in-flight entertainment up in first class. But alas, when I pushed the flight attendant button, a frumpy woman shuffled over and scowled at me, saying "What happened, did the button push itself?" Thrown off by the sarcasm indicating her resent at my asking her simply to do her job, I mumbled an apology, then asked if they had any newspapers. "No," she said flatly. "Really? Magazines, anything?" She told me no again, but then reassured me that "If I see any lying around, I'll grab it for you."

Awesome. First class amenities include the flight attendants performing the acts of a street urchin by scavenging other passengers' belongings. I couldn't wait to get my hands on whatever rumpled publication this woman could root around and dig up from coach (which never happened, by the way). I've been on much shittier airplanes in third world countries that give you free copies of the local paper. And I can't even get a goddamn LA Times in first class on American Airlines.

I started drinking mimosas, and looked through the in-flight magazine (my only reading option) at what the movie was they'd be showing. It was something I'd never heard of, called EASY VIRTUE. It was about an English guy who marries an American girl and then has to introduce her to his family (hilarity ensues, I'm guessing). I checked to see what the flight was going to be on the way back to LA. It was THE PROPOSAL, that romantic comedy about Sandra Bullock forcing Ryan Reynolds to marry him to get a green card or something, and him having to introduce her to his family. So what I had to look forward to here were two romcoms about couples getting married and meeting each other's families. Nice variety. I was overjoyed when the stewardess brought me my own personal movie player that had a wider selection of things to watch...you know, the kind of thing that JetBlue has built into their seats...in coach.

When I ordered my third mimosa, I was actually cut off. The stewardess told me to wait till after breakfast. I asked her if she was worried that I was going to get drunk. "Yes," she said. Then, trying to backtrack on offending me, she said "Not because of you...because of me." Righty-o. Whatever that means. Again, I was under the impression that in first class the customer should be totally catered to. That's why the tickets are like three times more expensive than coach. And here I was being told to slow down on my champagne and orange juice. It's not like I was doing Jaeger bombs, for Christ's sake. I told her not to worry about it, then ordered one from another flight attendant.

Other than that the flight was quite pleasant. I was just really hoping not to have stuff to kvetch about on a first class flight. Well done, AA.

I Continue to Hate Sprint

Recently I went to a dinner party. At one point I was asked to make a run to the local corner mart (despite being a guest) to pick up some pineapple juice for the specialty cocktails being made. When I returned I tried to call someone to let me into the apartment complex, only to be routed to a Sprint customer service center informing me that my account had been suspended. Having almost shot myself as a result of dealing with Sprint matters in the past, I could immediately sense my heart rate quickening.

There was the standard 10 minutes of hold time before I could speak to someone, during which I managed to get into the building and back into the party. I excused myself to the balcony, as I knew there would be voice-raising, possible yelling involved.

I was right. A subhuman female customer service rep finally picked up and informed me that my service had been shut off because I had a past due account balance of $177 - two months. I told her I didn't understand how this was possible, as I always pay my bills on time. In fact, I have a wonderful feature set up on my account that automatically charges my credit card when my bill is due every month, so there is no possible way I can fail to pay my bill on time. But as I've learned, anything is possible in Sprint Land.

After berating this emotionless freak for just up and turning off my phone service - as opposed to, say, sending me an email or text message informing me that my bill was past due - perhaps maybe even warning me that my service may be in jeopardy of being shut off - I calmed down, wanting to get on with the business of just paying the bill and returning to the dinner party. As I was getting out my wallet, the she-zombie told me they would not accept payment in the form of a credit card. "What do you mean?" I asked, confused. She told me the only way I could pay this bill was in person, with cash, at a Sprint store, or by way of "money gram." She was very insistent that there was no way they could take my credit card, despite the fact that this is how I have paid every single phone bill with them for years and years.

"Listen to me," I said, blood temperature on the rise. "There is no way in hell I am spending any part of my day going to a Sprint store with $177 in cash to pay this bill. That's insane."

"You can also pay with a money gram, sir," she repeated.

"I don't even know what the fuck a money gram is!" I screamed. "That is not a form of payment in this country! We pay for things with credit cards!" Then I asked her "Can you even tell me what a money gram is?"

She didn't answer me. "Hello?" I asked. Still no answer, but I could hear her clicking away on her keyboard. She was looking up what a money gram was. I looked through the window at my friends enjoying the party, having a good time, possibly wondering what I was doing out on the balcony. "Look, put someone else on the phone," I sighed. "This whole thing has been a colossal waste of my time. Put someone on the phone who has more authority than you."

She put me on hold. Much more waiting. Finally a guy with a whiny voice took over the call, and things didn't get much better. He kept insisting I had to pay this bill in cash at a Sprint store. I tried to reason with him, to tell him that was ludicrous, to please listen to the very words that were coming out of his mouth. No matter. These people have all been brainwashed to produce the most frustrating answers available to their loyal customers. The one positive thing he did for me was actually turn my service back on. But again, to pay my bill, I would have to go to a... "Yeah yeah yeah," I said. "Look, I'm not going to a Sprint store. I'm just not. So if you won't take my credit card then we have nothing left to talk about."

"All right sir, you have a nice night." Asshole. I hung up and went back inside.

The next day I got a text message from Sprint asking me to pay my bill online via credit card.