Guest Kvetches!

What a banner day it is over here at KK headquarters. I actually got sent two guest kvetches! So without further ado, enjoy the literal stylings of Jonas Wadler, my Hollywood Regis neighbor/Wii Tennis protege; and my mother, lovingly known throughout the family as P-Furmz. (Just kidding. Nobody calls her that.)

JONAS'S KVETCH

Dear Members of the National Public School Auditorium Naming Center,

I'm a local, upstanding, tax-paying member of the greater Hollywood community. I'd like to address the naming board about the "Michael Jackson Auditorium" that has been christened at the local elementary school down the block from where I live.

It has come to my attention that the Jacksons attended this elementary school and you have decided to honor the fallen singer with an auditorium so that in death he can still touch the hearts of young children.

Now, litigiously, Michael Jackson was not convicted of his crimes against children, but nor was Orenthal James Simpson, yet I don't see any government offices naming their institutions 'The OJ Simpson Probation Center.' You know why? Because by naming an auditorium after a highly suspected pedophile, it is an easy way to outrage and concurrently drive away potential parents who would want their children attending this school. Now maybe you're saying, "Enough, let the guy live peacefully in death," to which I say, look at Macauley Culkin. That muthafucka hasn't done anything since Home Alone besides Party Monster which I put up there with my first album post-American Idol: hovering right above the trash bin, but not in it. Macauley even let Mila Kunis run away. That's how fucked in the head he is by Michael. Why? Because he's still got visions of Michael Jackson's hands cavorting around his private parts like it was his own, private Idaho.

Selfishly, I'm conflicted. While this can't help the re-assessed value of my apartment, maybe it can help lower my property taxes.

MA'S KVETCH

I went to Sam's Club this afternoon for a few necessities.  Among them, toilet paper.  After I got home I looked at the packaging. It says "Charmin -- Soft, Absorbent, Long Lasting."  Really?  Exactly how long do you want your toilet paper to last???

Light of My Life

This is a picture I took of the lamp I bought from Bed, Bath & Beyond for my room:

Admittedly, I suck at putting things together. Being handy is not one of my strengths. That being said, I have never paid money for a bigger piece of junk than this lamp.

You can see those poles, right? Those poles are supposed to screw into each other with double-sided screws. Well, they don't. They don't screw together at all. I stood there with each pole, twirling them around absent-mindedly for a dozen minutes, before coming to the realization that it just wasn't going anywhere.

Determined to get my money back, I marched out into the hallway, where 5 minutes earlier I had thrown away the box for the lamp in the recycling bin. But alas, in that 5 minutes, the garbage had been collected. So now I'm stuck with this modern art.

I think I'm going to set it on fire and throw it out my window. People do stuff like that in New York, right?

I HEART NY

A whole new city. A whole new world of bullshit I never imagined having to deal with before.

My first day here, I bought a mattress. Imperative to buying a mattress in New York City, the salesman told me, is also buying a mattress cover, to prevent being infested by bedbugs. Interesting. That's something I never thought about in LA.

So I buy the mattress cover for an extra 100+ dollars. Fine. When the delivery guy comes, he tells me I have to wash it first. Fine again. I take it down to the laundry room in my building.

Here's where shit starts getting annoying. When I lived in an apartment building in West Hollywood eight years ago, it cost me 75 cents to do my laundry. Now it costs $2.75. Thanks, Obama. But the machine doesn't even take money. It only accepts a prepaid laundry card that I have to get from a machine on the wall.

Not only do I have to load money onto this card in advance to do my laundry, I also have to pay for the card itself, which costs four dollars. I actually have to pay $4 just to simply earn the right to do my laundry in my apartment building.

And even that alone would only be a giant scam I could go about my day cursing under my breath...except the machine only takes ten dollar bills for the purposes of buying this sacred laundry card.

That's right. It accepts ones, fives and twenties if you want to add money to the card...but only tens to buy the card. I stare at the instructions on the machine, flabbergasted.

Since ten dollar bills are the rarest of all American currency, next to Sacajawea dollar coins, I did not have one on me. So that meant I had to go out into the city, into a grocery store, ask for change for a twenty, get denied because the girl couldn't figure out how to open her register without me making a purchase, wait behind someone else in another line, ask that cashier to break the twenty............................kjsbfsjkdbjkbgjdwo4utiOWUI4T0.........

It all turned into a blurry haze. I understand now why people in New York are so busy. Even the littlest things here take the most maximum effort.

I Know, I Know...

...I haven't kvetched in awhile. I get it. You can stop reminding me. I've been busy moving from LA to New York, via Lafayette, CA. I've been a little crazed. Rest assured that plenty of things are still annoying the piss out of me, and I'm sure that will continue in a whole new New York state of mind when I arrive on the East Coast next week. But for the next few days, go find someone else's misery to delight in.