A quick update; I received the following from my apartment building manager today:
Dear LuXe Residents
Unfortunately we have been made aware by the Santa Monica Police Department that there is a professional bike theft ring working the residential buildings in this area.
We recommend at this time you either double or triple lock your bicycles or store them inside your apartments. We will allow them to be transported inside the elevator until further notice.
We also recommend you register your bicycle National Bike Registry (www.nationalbikeregistry.com).
A few thoughts:
1) I had no idea that there was such a thing as a "professional" vs. "armature" bike-theft ring.
2) I am glad that the SMPD can put a notice like this out with a straight face.
3) I am perplexed by the fact that the professionals can cut through one lock but my building manager think they will roundly give up if there is more than one lock.
4) I can't believe that there is a national bike registry.
5) In my head, this professional gang wears plaid and steals for the irony of the theft as opposed to chop the bike for parts.
Los Angeles: 5,380 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0
I'm wearing you down...
-I Heart Palindromes
15 July 2010
There's No Silverware in Baseball
When you grow up in Chicago as a Cubs fan the experience of attending a baseball game equates to something very specific in your head and in your heart. For me, it always meant a sip of dad's Old Style at Murphy's Bleachers, the smell of fresh-cut grass, the heavy Chicago summer air, and generally basking in life with the other 42,000 ridiculously happy white people around you.
That above vingette is what puts my first Dodgers game into such relief. While I have been to plenty of other ballparks (including Angels Stadium, where I was offered sushi that would be brought to me in my seat and that I could pay for with my credit card) no experience was quite as out-of-baseball-character as my night at Dodger Stadium.
My Uncle #3 of 5 (yeah, that's just my dad's side of the family... what can I say... I'm Irish) asked me if I wanted to go see the Cubs play (read: lose to) the Dodgers. Knowing that there is only one acceptable answer to an invitation to a Cubs game I accepted (you never know what game will be the game you will desperately regret missing, though with the Cubs, this is a more difficult discipline to uphold). I made my way over to meet Uncle #3 of 5 for a drink and wait for his friends (who we will call I Make More Money Than You & I'm Bill Murray's Brother (seriously)). Once we headed over to the stadium I was greeted by metal detectors and a pat-down by an elderly man. Do I look like a Latin King? Don't answer that.
The next thing I know, I am being whisked down a hallway and having my hand stamped by a girl in a pencil skirt and five inch heels (indication #1 that I was not attending a baseball game). I was then taken down an elevator to a subteranian, all-you-can-eat restaurant. Now, I know what you are all thinking, and I am sure most of you have had a corporate box experience at a sporting event where there is a miniature buffet in your suite. This was not that. This was a full-blown, 300 person capacity restaurant (complete with dimly lit lounge/bar) that had stations with every meat/pasta/sushi roll imaginable, ready to be sliced off the bone and placed delicately on your plate. The kicker: everything (including my numerous Stellas) was free (indication #2 that I was not attending a baseball game). Can we all back-track for a brief moment and revisit the fact that I was served a beer in a glass bottle, no more than fifty feet from the field of play of a major league baseball game? These people clearly did not go to state school (indication #3 that I am not attending a baseball game). Yes ladies and gentlemen, that is a zucchini on my plate. Yes my father just rolled over in his grave. Yes I am blaming his younger brother and taking no responsibility. I am sorry, but actual silverware and going to a baseball game have been, without exception, mutually exclusive events in my life. Until Los Angeles had to go and take that from me. Los Angeles: 5,378 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0. I wish I had been at the game with a girl, armed with access to a purse I would have palmed the silverware just out of principle. Home Alone style.
Eventually we actually managed to extract ourselves from the full-service restaurant in order to investigate whether or not we were actually near a major league baseball field or just on the set of CSI Tacoma. Thanks to Uncle #3 of 5 this was the view that I was greeted with. What can I say, some people blood-related to me are substantially more successful than I am and because my father was their hero (as he was mine), they treat me better than I deserve to be treated. I am not above that. Especially when it involves being this close to an American baseball game (indication #1 that I am attending a baseball game).
I got to meet Jennifer Aniston, who showed up in the fourth inning and left in the 7th. I hear this is a common event in Los Angeles. I was also informed that some attractive woman from E-news was sitting behind me who was there for less than two innings. I don't forgive that girl, but frankly, Jennifer Aniston could show up in the bottom of the ninth and talk on her cell phone for the final out while asking me why a ball that fell on one side of the foul-line was a strike and I am fairly sure that I would still be impressed with her as a person and humanitarian. Life is fair like that. I also got to meet a famous Jewish guy. I have no idea what his name was or what he does for a living. But given the fact that he had a large pinkie ring, a "girlfriend" thirty-nine years his junior, and a line of 20-something Jewish guys lined up to pay respects to him during mid-innings, I am going to assume that he is in "the business" and staggeringly successful. Sorry Darwin.
Just as I was feeling as though I was actually witnessing America's greatest past-time ten feet in front of my face, I was handed the following. Yes, that is the "in-seat" menu. Because I clearly wasn't fed enough in the restaurant/lounge/brothel. I apologize for the photo quality, I must have still been shaking in anger. If you can make out the "Ultra Premium Selections" you will note that I was given the option of ordering a 12-year-old scotch at a baseball game (indication #4 that I am not attending a baseball game). This is unassailable proof that the whole can occasionally be less than the sum of the parts. Los Angeles has again taken two things that I love (baseball and scotch) and, by combining them, absolutely ruined both of them for me. Los Angeles: 5,379 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0.
That above vingette is what puts my first Dodgers game into such relief. While I have been to plenty of other ballparks (including Angels Stadium, where I was offered sushi that would be brought to me in my seat and that I could pay for with my credit card) no experience was quite as out-of-baseball-character as my night at Dodger Stadium.
My Uncle #3 of 5 (yeah, that's just my dad's side of the family... what can I say... I'm Irish) asked me if I wanted to go see the Cubs play (read: lose to) the Dodgers. Knowing that there is only one acceptable answer to an invitation to a Cubs game I accepted (you never know what game will be the game you will desperately regret missing, though with the Cubs, this is a more difficult discipline to uphold). I made my way over to meet Uncle #3 of 5 for a drink and wait for his friends (who we will call I Make More Money Than You & I'm Bill Murray's Brother (seriously)). Once we headed over to the stadium I was greeted by metal detectors and a pat-down by an elderly man. Do I look like a Latin King? Don't answer that.
I got to meet Jennifer Aniston, who showed up in the fourth inning and left in the 7th. I hear this is a common event in Los Angeles. I was also informed that some attractive woman from E-news was sitting behind me who was there for less than two innings. I don't forgive that girl, but frankly, Jennifer Aniston could show up in the bottom of the ninth and talk on her cell phone for the final out while asking me why a ball that fell on one side of the foul-line was a strike and I am fairly sure that I would still be impressed with her as a person and humanitarian. Life is fair like that. I also got to meet a famous Jewish guy. I have no idea what his name was or what he does for a living. But given the fact that he had a large pinkie ring, a "girlfriend" thirty-nine years his junior, and a line of 20-something Jewish guys lined up to pay respects to him during mid-innings, I am going to assume that he is in "the business" and staggeringly successful. Sorry Darwin.
Just as I was feeling as though I was actually witnessing America's greatest past-time ten feet in front of my face, I was handed the following. Yes, that is the "in-seat" menu. Because I clearly wasn't fed enough in the restaurant/lounge/brothel. I apologize for the photo quality, I must have still been shaking in anger. If you can make out the "Ultra Premium Selections" you will note that I was given the option of ordering a 12-year-old scotch at a baseball game (indication #4 that I am not attending a baseball game). This is unassailable proof that the whole can occasionally be less than the sum of the parts. Los Angeles has again taken two things that I love (baseball and scotch) and, by combining them, absolutely ruined both of them for me. Los Angeles: 5,379 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0.I also need to stop and address an endemic issue here in Los Angeles. This "city" loves to attach needless and redundant modifiers to otherwise straight-forward phrases. So I suppose if I only have a first mortgage (at 95% loan-to-value) out on my house I can only afford the "Deluxe" liquors but if I have a HELOC and an additional unsecured second-lien, I can afford the "Ultra Premium" liquor. Thank god it isn't just premium, people might not know how important I was if not for the ultra.
There is so much else from the evening that I would like to relay (like the fact that Uncle #3 of 5 met and spoke with Ernie Banks at length, who was in town for the All Star game. The worst part is that he had worse seats than us, which is un-American. I should be shining Ernie Banks shoes if not for the fact that they magically never get scuffed.) but I am truly worn out just from having to re-live the above. I hope that you will forgive me. The only two people I really wanted to tell the fully-indignant story to already know it anyway. Sorry inter-web, we just aren't BFFs yet.
Doug Dascenzo
-I Heart Palindromes
14 July 2010
No But Seriously... This Happens Every Day
Re: Commercial Shoot with Full Street Closure
Parking and loading dock egress and ingress will be possible via Olive Street during the posted filming hours stated above.
Please advise your employees, vendors and guests of this filming, and to plan for accordingly for possible traffic delays in our area.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Please be aware an ESPN commercial shoot is scheduled in and around our immediate area on Sunday, July 18, 2010, beginning at 6:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. A full street closure of 4th Street from Beaudry Street eastbound to Olive Street was approved by the City of Los Angeles for the duration of the shoot.
Bo Knows H'wood,
-I Heart Palindromes
Parking and loading dock egress and ingress will be possible via Olive Street during the posted filming hours stated above.
Please advise your employees, vendors and guests of this filming, and to plan for accordingly for possible traffic delays in our area.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Please be aware an ESPN commercial shoot is scheduled in and around our immediate area on Sunday, July 18, 2010, beginning at 6:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. A full street closure of 4th Street from Beaudry Street eastbound to Olive Street was approved by the City of Los Angeles for the duration of the shoot.
Bo Knows H'wood,
-I Heart Palindromes
09 July 2010
FW: Potential for Civil Disorder **Please read**
New band name, "Potential for Civil Disorder". I am not sure if I have heard a more vaguely ominous phrase recently. These are the types of things that Los Angeles sends you via Outlook Exchange, you know, just to brighten your day with the rush of the potential for physical harm. Those asterisks alone could keep me awake for days.
excerpt from the e-mail:
"Please be advised that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has issued an alert of the possibility of civil disorder resulting from the verdict of the Mehserle case scheduled to be announced before 4:30 pm today. LAPD has a contingency plan in place for the City in the event of any civil disorder.
Should we feel any potential danger to the occupants of the building exists, the Security staff will be on heightened alert, which includes locking all building entrance doors, the parking garage and the loading dock. In addition, no one will be allowed to enter the building."
Great, the LAPD has a "contingency plan" in case the racial tension that one of their officers provoked turns into a riot. I hope it isn't beating more strung-out minorities to death, that doesn't seem to have been an effective deterrent yet.
I also feel much safer knowing that my building's reaction to this will be to go into Stage 5 lock-down. I appreciate that they make a point of delineating between locking every single orifice of the building and my permission to exit and enter as well. Did you have to insult my basic reasoning skills as well as needlessly panic me?
All a day-in-the-life of someone who works in "downtown" Los Angeles (I put this in air-quotes when speaking as well, as not to offend real downtown areas). If the earthquakes don't get you, the riots will. If the riots don't get you, the jaded hipsters will.
Los Angeles: 5,377 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0
"If you learn to love then you might love life" -Beastie Boys
-I Heart Palindromes
excerpt from the e-mail:
"Please be advised that the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has issued an alert of the possibility of civil disorder resulting from the verdict of the Mehserle case scheduled to be announced before 4:30 pm today. LAPD has a contingency plan in place for the City in the event of any civil disorder.
Should we feel any potential danger to the occupants of the building exists, the Security staff will be on heightened alert, which includes locking all building entrance doors, the parking garage and the loading dock. In addition, no one will be allowed to enter the building."
Great, the LAPD has a "contingency plan" in case the racial tension that one of their officers provoked turns into a riot. I hope it isn't beating more strung-out minorities to death, that doesn't seem to have been an effective deterrent yet.
I also feel much safer knowing that my building's reaction to this will be to go into Stage 5 lock-down. I appreciate that they make a point of delineating between locking every single orifice of the building and my permission to exit and enter as well. Did you have to insult my basic reasoning skills as well as needlessly panic me?
All a day-in-the-life of someone who works in "downtown" Los Angeles (I put this in air-quotes when speaking as well, as not to offend real downtown areas). If the earthquakes don't get you, the riots will. If the riots don't get you, the jaded hipsters will.
Los Angeles: 5,377 -- I Heart Palindromes: 0
"If you learn to love then you might love life" -Beastie Boys
-I Heart Palindromes
03 July 2010
Just Take Your Damn Shoes Off Sir
I hate flying on holiday weekends. The airport develops a serious case of armature hour-itis that strains something I usually enjoy a great deal (travelling). No, I don't just mean going places with palm trees and beaches, I actually enjoy the experience of physically travelling. I like the motion. It probably has some connection to all of the travelling I did with my family when I was a kid but I feel genuinely at home on an airplane (being raised thinking a nine hour flight was fairly standard... you can get from a lot of places to a lot of places in nine hours).
This means that I find it taxing to stand in a security line with people who are scared absolutely shitless or confused to a point of hysteria. This morning at LAX I was subjected to a little too much America for my taste this fine Independence Day weekend. Don't ask me why I am in a security line that is six people long and you are in one that is sixty people long. Life isn't fair. Isn't that always the answer to your questions sir?
Perhaps I am being too harsh. To be fair, I have only ever had two travel partners that I have actually enjoyed in my life: my father (The Legend) and Boondock. My mom (The Sky is Falling) and my sister could easily be placed in the previous "hysterical" category when travelling. My father used to play this game with them where as soon as they began to board he would immediately think of something that he needed to get from the concourse (a newspaper, a magazine... a beer). This would, without a single exception, throw my mother and sister (The Dancing Orange) into an absolute panic. I would take this moment to note that it is not as though a plane ever left without all of us on it. That never seemed to calm them.
Anyhow, that is probably where I get it. Why I am so relaxed through a process that seems to be desperately stressful for so many. I do know one thing, being a good travel partner is in the top ten of qualities I would need in a significant other. No one likes a divorce on a jet-bridge.
As timing would have it, my flight just started boarding. Onward and upward.
Charles in Charge,
-I Heart Palindromes
This means that I find it taxing to stand in a security line with people who are scared absolutely shitless or confused to a point of hysteria. This morning at LAX I was subjected to a little too much America for my taste this fine Independence Day weekend. Don't ask me why I am in a security line that is six people long and you are in one that is sixty people long. Life isn't fair. Isn't that always the answer to your questions sir?
Perhaps I am being too harsh. To be fair, I have only ever had two travel partners that I have actually enjoyed in my life: my father (The Legend) and Boondock. My mom (The Sky is Falling) and my sister could easily be placed in the previous "hysterical" category when travelling. My father used to play this game with them where as soon as they began to board he would immediately think of something that he needed to get from the concourse (a newspaper, a magazine... a beer). This would, without a single exception, throw my mother and sister (The Dancing Orange) into an absolute panic. I would take this moment to note that it is not as though a plane ever left without all of us on it. That never seemed to calm them.
Anyhow, that is probably where I get it. Why I am so relaxed through a process that seems to be desperately stressful for so many. I do know one thing, being a good travel partner is in the top ten of qualities I would need in a significant other. No one likes a divorce on a jet-bridge.
As timing would have it, my flight just started boarding. Onward and upward.
Charles in Charge,
-I Heart Palindromes
01 July 2010
MTV, Google & Facebook Oh My
These are my neighbors in Santa Monica. When I stop at Ralphs (an awfully awkward name for a grocery store) on my way home from work, these are the people that I am buying bread next to (for those that aren't carb-phobic of course).
I am going to make a confession:
It is actually somewhat fun to be the fish out of water. I can remember coming out of college when no one knew what a hedge fund was. Except, of course, every desperate 28 year old "former model" at a bar in Manhattan. I can mentally map-out the process by which that all changed, when I could no longer feign being in the lawn care business. My profession has now become like tort law, everyone has a very serious (read: negative) opinion of me and what I do (and they can't wait to tell me).
Moving out to Los Angeles was like time-travel back to 2006. Everyone I meet here is in "the business". Every woman is/was/is going to be an actress (or a singer, or an agent, or a....). Every man is a writer (or a producer, or a set designer, or a...). More importantly, since I don't do what they do, they genuinely don't care what I do. I secretly love it. I will actually admit to missing that once I leave.
Los Angeles: 5,376 -- I Heart Palindromes: 1? (probably not)
Now back to the gardening...
-I Heart Palindromes
Update (3 July 2010):
What I encountered on Ocean Avenue on my way to Main Street yesterday. You know, in case you thought I was exaggerating.
-I Heart Palindromes
I am going to make a confession:
It is actually somewhat fun to be the fish out of water. I can remember coming out of college when no one knew what a hedge fund was. Except, of course, every desperate 28 year old "former model" at a bar in Manhattan. I can mentally map-out the process by which that all changed, when I could no longer feign being in the lawn care business. My profession has now become like tort law, everyone has a very serious (read: negative) opinion of me and what I do (and they can't wait to tell me).
Moving out to Los Angeles was like time-travel back to 2006. Everyone I meet here is in "the business". Every woman is/was/is going to be an actress (or a singer, or an agent, or a....). Every man is a writer (or a producer, or a set designer, or a...). More importantly, since I don't do what they do, they genuinely don't care what I do. I secretly love it. I will actually admit to missing that once I leave.
Los Angeles: 5,376 -- I Heart Palindromes: 1? (probably not)
Now back to the gardening...
-I Heart Palindromes
Update (3 July 2010):
-I Heart Palindromes
so I've got that going for me, which is nice.
"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers." -E. Fromm
I am generally not a large supporter of quotations. This is primarily born out of my preeminent distaste for anything that even intimates triteness. I also believe that people rarely apply quotes from old white men in the spirit in which they were uttered. Sometimes, history plays a very perverse game of "telephone" with what dead white men said before they died. I tend to limit my quotations to PCU or Caddyshack (title-in-point), their meaning seems safer to me somehow.
As a mental exercise, however, let us review my current details:
I live in Los Angeles (Santa Monica if I'm feeling particularly sensitive about my LA-ness at the exact moment that someone asks). I am in the process of leaving a job, within the first year, that I had signed up for with a ten year plan in mind. The driving factor behind both of those decisions is (to put it democratically) somewhat less present than I was banking on. The best laid plans... am I right? Two years ago all of these things would have been neigh impossible.
In more sanguine news, I am tan, my hair gets more blonde from the sun daily, and I am running every day again. It is amazing what you can accomplish when 90-hour work weeks are supplanted by apathy-induced 50 hour jaunts through the office. My dry-cleaning is no longer held hostage for time-periods that test property laws. I remain taller than average.
For those that know me well, concern will be limited. I work hard enough that I tend to land on my feet (Irish luck and all). I am newly twenty-six (ick) which gives me just a little more runway to figure things out... again. More importantly, in hindsight, I am confident in the priorities I struck and the decisions I made around them. Presented with the same scenario again, I know that my heart and my head would arrive at the same place. In fact, I am very much hoping to be presented with the exact same situation again, for the very fact that I did not choose incorrectly.
In silver-lining news; not having my hands on the switches as VIX spikes back to astronomical levels (again) and Mr. Market is surely headed back to re-test some technical level that will inspire very ugly headlines (again), may just add a few years to my life on the back-end.
The most important question is what to invest all this new-found uncertainty in? Work, running, reading, and Boondock were the answers before. My mental suggestion box is open. I am paying attention.
Doogie Howser, M.D.
I mean...
-I Heart Palindromes
I am generally not a large supporter of quotations. This is primarily born out of my preeminent distaste for anything that even intimates triteness. I also believe that people rarely apply quotes from old white men in the spirit in which they were uttered. Sometimes, history plays a very perverse game of "telephone" with what dead white men said before they died. I tend to limit my quotations to PCU or Caddyshack (title-in-point), their meaning seems safer to me somehow.
As a mental exercise, however, let us review my current details:
I live in Los Angeles (Santa Monica if I'm feeling particularly sensitive about my LA-ness at the exact moment that someone asks). I am in the process of leaving a job, within the first year, that I had signed up for with a ten year plan in mind. The driving factor behind both of those decisions is (to put it democratically) somewhat less present than I was banking on. The best laid plans... am I right? Two years ago all of these things would have been neigh impossible.
In more sanguine news, I am tan, my hair gets more blonde from the sun daily, and I am running every day again. It is amazing what you can accomplish when 90-hour work weeks are supplanted by apathy-induced 50 hour jaunts through the office. My dry-cleaning is no longer held hostage for time-periods that test property laws. I remain taller than average.
For those that know me well, concern will be limited. I work hard enough that I tend to land on my feet (Irish luck and all). I am newly twenty-six (ick) which gives me just a little more runway to figure things out... again. More importantly, in hindsight, I am confident in the priorities I struck and the decisions I made around them. Presented with the same scenario again, I know that my heart and my head would arrive at the same place. In fact, I am very much hoping to be presented with the exact same situation again, for the very fact that I did not choose incorrectly.
In silver-lining news; not having my hands on the switches as VIX spikes back to astronomical levels (again) and Mr. Market is surely headed back to re-test some technical level that will inspire very ugly headlines (again), may just add a few years to my life on the back-end.
The most important question is what to invest all this new-found uncertainty in? Work, running, reading, and Boondock were the answers before. My mental suggestion box is open. I am paying attention.
Doogie Howser, M.D.
I mean...
-I Heart Palindromes
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