Special Guest Kvetch

My good friend Adam had this to say on Facebook regarding the incident yesterday in which a killer whale at Sea World in Orlando killed its trainer:

From an article i just read on the incident: "While this incident remains the subject of an ongoing death investigation, there are no signs of foul play," the sheriff's statement said.

What does this even mean? What even qualifies as "foul play" with a KILLER WHALE? Do whales sometimes murder their trainers for insurance money or something? Did the trainer's husband catch her cheating, and stage and elaborate "accident"...in cahoots with the whale?!

From the same article: "This is the first time in 46 years that we've ever had an incident like this with a trainer," he said. Although Tillikum (the whale) is large and has to be handled carefully, "to mark him as a killer is unfair."

Yes. Unfair to call this whale a killer. Even though he has killed two other people (prior to the trainer). And is literally CALLED A KILLER WHALE.

Crazy Rock 'N Kvetch

This kvetch definitely falls under the Seinfeldian ""What's the deal with...?" observational category.

I just had dinner at a sushi place in West Hollywood called Crazy Rock 'N Sushi. I feel like there are a lot of sushi places around LA that have similar names. There's the chain Rock 'N Fish...maybe I'm just seeing that restaurant all over the place. I have no factual evidence to back this up, but I'm just sensing an awareness of sushi joints popping up everywhere that are trying to be ultra hip by dubbing themselves "crazy" or "rock" affiliated.

It comes across in their menus too...they have all these "crazy" kinds of rolls: dragon rolls, monkey rolls, spider rolls, crazy boy rolls, crazy girl rolls...look guys, it's just sushi. People eat it because it's delicious. You don't have to hype it up by telling me how radically extreme I am by eating it just because it's got some cream cheese it there. Let's everyone just calm down.

That is all.

My God

I just read an article in the LA Times sports section about Grant Desme, a 23 year-old prospect in the Oakland A's organization who retired from baseball to enter the priesthood. This is a kid who was ranked among the top potential major leaguers out there; it was basically guaranteed that he was going to play in the big leagues and enjoy whatever niceties come along with that: fame, enormous amounts of money, the joy of playing baseball every day as your vocation...and he willfully chose to say no to that life, shutting that door in favor of another one that allows him to speak to and about God every day.

It's truly astounding to me how little in common I can have with a fellow human being. I am more similar to almost any member of the animal kingdom than I am to Grant Desme. If aliens exist and they land on Earth and are murderous, power-hungry, conquering destroyers, I would easily relate to them more than this guy.

Clearly, the line dividing us is faith. He has all of it; I have basically none. I don't really believe in God, and Desme has chosen to devote his life to serving Him. This is what he told the Times: "If I hit a home run, the excitement would subside by the time I touched home plate. But the joy of talking with people about God never ended."

I don't even know what to say about that. Had I been wearing socks when I read that, they would have been blown right off my feet (by science, not God). All I know is, if there is a god, it's pretty cruel of him to have given Grant Desme the talent and ability to play professional baseball, knowing that he's going to squander it in favor of becoming a poor, brainwashed simpleton, when someone like me grew up daydreaming of hitting a homer in a major league stadium.

And if there isn't a god...well...let's hope for his sake that this kid never finds out. I guess the world needs dreamers. At least he didn't play for the Giants.

Get Off the Road!!!

I know it's very cliche and obvious to complain about driving problems in LA, but I simply cannot keep this hostility inside. It is my purpose to flood the world with my negativity. You're welcome.

I honestly cannot drive any distance in this twit capitol without blaring my horn at some A.D.D.-prone yahoo who is obliviously contributing to the slowing down of society. Just now, on a one mile trip back from Best Buy to my home - a five minute drive - I had to honk at two such morons. The first was probably the most common type of offender: while waiting to make an unprotected left turn, the driver sat there in the intersection after the light turned yellow and the oncoming traffic slowed to a stop, until I gave a good long honk. He or she (probably she) finally jolted back from her daydream of unicorns or monkeys clapping or whatever retards think about these days, and zipped through the now-red light, leaving me stuck until the next green.

I would say this happens over half the time I'm behind someone making a left hand turn. It's especially common when there is an actual left hand turn arrow - the arrow turns green, and the lead car just sits there. Often times the cars behind the first car don't even notice; I've been like five cars back and have to be the one to lean on the horn. Is it so much to ask that drivers stay alert long enough to register the changing colors of the flashy lights before their eyes? Life is short, people! Hurry up!

When I got home, there was an elderly woman in a Volvo who had turned her car so that she was pointing at the driveway to my building, but she wasn't actually in it. Instead, her car was just sitting there perpendicularly, effectively blocking the driveway and the opposite flow of traffic simultaneously. It looked like she had attempted to put her car into the driveway, but stopped just short of actually doing so. I waited about seven seconds or so before I gave her a solid beep too, which she responded to by jolting her 80-something year-old head up like it was D-Day again. Then her car lurched forward and out of the way, bumping up against the curb violently as I zoomed around her.

I think elderly peoples' licenses should be automatically revoked after a certain age. Why wait for them to prove that they've become incompetent at handling an automobile, like that geriatric who mowed down those people at the Santa Monica farmers market a few years ago? In addition, it would be great if there was a system by which you could have your license suspended based on how many times people honk at you. Three honks, you don't drive for a week. That seems fair. That's all I need, is for there to be a system to incentivize my honking.

I'd also like to revive my dream of getting to have three missiles a year that I can fire from my car at other vehicles or pedestrians, but one step at a time.

Cast Off

I went to see THE WOLFMAN last night. In addition to being a generally crappy movie, the filmmakers committed perhaps the worst example of the worst sin in filmmaking I can remember seeing: they completely miscast the lead role.

The protagonist of the movie is an American who goes to London to see his British father, played by Sir Anthony Hopkins, and investigates the mysterious death of his brother. The American is played by Benecio del Toro. Benecio del Toro is a great actor. I loved him in TRAFFIC and FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. But here's the thing: he's a fucking Mexican. His facial features are that of a Mexican man. When he speaks, it is with a tinge of a Mexican accent. Now granted, he could play parts other than Mexicans - like, say, a Spaniard, or an Italian. He played Che Guavara not long ago; Che was Argentinian. You know what absolutely doesn't work for him though? Playing the American son of Sir Anthony Hopkins.

I mean, at minute four of the movie, when this relationship is established, I just asked myself, "Wait, Benecio del Toro is supposed to be Anthony Hopkins' son? How is that possible?" And then the whole rest of the movie, I couldn't stop thinking about it. It just bothered me. How could the makers of this film commit such a huge oversight, trying to establish that the fundamental relationship of the movie is between two people who have no business even being on the same continent? It was like watching a movie where Tom Hanks says "Ah, here's my long lost identical twin brother: Don Cheadle."

Okay, maybe it wasn't that bad. But it was definitely worse than the last glaringly horrible bit of casting that stood out to me, which was Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane in SUPERMAN RETURNS. She was like 22 in that movie. It was comical how someone who looked like a babysitter was supposed to be a bigshot newspaper reporter. You'll also notice how that role effectively killed her career.

I hope for Benecio's sake he doesn't suffer the same fate at the hands of the imbeciles who blew $150 million on THE WOLFMAN.

A Beneficial Day

This little vignette isn't so much a kvetch as just kind of an amusing episode from my weekend. I guess I could try and shape it as some sort of complaint, but it didn't build up frustration inside me like other postings have. Oh well. It's my blog, right? Excuse the fuck outta me if I color outside the lines a little.

My friend Jonas, who lives in my building, asked if I wanted to go to a benefit concert of some sort today featuring a world music singer he apparently met one time. He said she comped him two tickets, which were ordinarily $30. I didn't have anything better to do, so off we went.

When we were in the car, Jonas told me the concert was being held at a house in Beverly Hills. This struck me as a little odd, but not unfathomable given some of the mansions in BH. "What's this a benefit concert for?" I asked. "I don't know, probably Haiti," he said.

But when we got to the address, it was a fairly normal sized house. The front door was closed, and there was no sign of any people anywhere. I thought we must have been at the wrong place...how could this be the venue for a concert?

A moment later an elderly couple walked up. Jonas asked them if they were going to the benefit concert. They said they were, and we let them ring the doorbell, then trailed them inside when another elderly woman opened the door. She introduced herself to us, which I quickly discovered would happen a lot over the next hour. We were then shown inside what I determined to be the Most Jewish House I Had Ever Seen.

Now, I've been in a lot of Jewish homes. Between my grandparents and all of their friends, I know what to expect when I walk into a Hebrew Home. This one took the cake. It was like a synagogue on steroids. Menorahs, statues of rabbis, framed torah portions on the wall...I mean, this place had mezuzahs hanging in every door of the house! I noted that had I not been a Jew myself, I would be about a hundred times more weirded out.

We were introduced to the owner of the house: a Jewish man in his 80's named Maurice, who at one point gripped me firmly by the elbow and ordered Jonas to take his hand out of his pocket. Then we were shown into a room where there was tea and a table with a buffet spread of fruit and pastries. There were probably about five other people in the house besides me and Jonas. I couldn't help but wonder: where the fuck was I?

Over the course of the next hour, people started trickling in. Most of them were over 60, and just about every single one of them introduced him- or herself to me. Apparently they were all related to the girl who was performing. It started to dawn on me that I had basically been duped into attending a glorified family function. Jonas was just as confused as I was; neither of us had anticipated this kind of a scene.

After an hour of mingling with geriatric Jews, drinking complimentary Diet Coke, and studying the labels of the bar mitzvah VHS home movies on the bookshelf, the 35 or so people at the "concert" were summoned into the living room, where folding chairs had been set up. The performer was introduced, and a pretty girl about my age came in and performed about 45 minutes of world music. In case you don't know, world music is basically Spanish vocal exercises set to classical guitar and hand drums. It was fine, but not really my cup of scotch, especially when she kept imploring everybody to get up and dance. It was an inappropriate demand, given both the venue and median age of her audience.

When she was done, this snotty gay guy got up to "say a few words" about the cause the show was put on for. He whined about independent artists not getting enough support from record companies (or something), then patted himself on the back for devoting his life to doing just that. Then he told everyone he understood that we had all paid $30 to see the show (except for Jonas and I), but any more money we could spare would greatly benefit this performer's burgeoning career. That was it.

"So wait," I said, turning to Jonas. "The benefit concert is just to benefit the artist?"

"I guess so," he said.

"Normally that's just called a concert," I said. We tried to slip out quickly, but ran into the performer herself on the way to the front door. I had to stand around awkwardly while Jonas exchanged tedious small talk with her. Then we made our getaway, following a girl out the front door, which I closed behind me.

"Oh great," the girl muttered. "You locked me out!" We turned around. Apparently, she had designs on going back inside. "Uh, I'm...sorry," I stammered. "We'll wait and make sure you get back in," Jonas offered.

"It's okay. I'll be fine," she sighed, ringing the doorbell.

"Are you sure?" I asked. Never before have I asked that question having been so positive that the person would be fine, as well caring so little if she actually would be.

"Yeah," she said. Jonas and I stared at her for a couple seconds longer, then shrugged, turned and walked off. It was a fitting end to a supremely awkward experience.