The last few days here have been so great weather wise. 60's, grey and with a constant drizzle. A lot of people here are bummed, but to me, it feels like home.
Last night, went out to see a friends band and this local guy glommed onto me right when I walked in the door. Was hanging out with us all night, talking non-stop and kept asking the band to play Cat Stevens 'Morning Has Broken' so he could sing along karaoke style. In his way broken English, he told us his name was Nick and that he was a doctor. Dr. Nick? All us devoted Simpsons fans had a field day with that. As with Dr. Nick Riviera, we had to question his bona fides as he not only was chain smoking, but forcing anyone in his reach to chain smoke. I watched him pressure this one guy who said he didn't smoke and had given it up years ago to finally break down and start puffing away. I woke up this morning and could smell the smoke billowing out of my clothes in the laundry basket. I took a whiff of my socks and underwear and even they reeked of it. Hi eveybody...
Below is the entry from a couple weeks ago that I couldn't post. I had to change the names to protect the anonymity of my friend as not everyone knows of his condition...enjoy.
Kind of an uneventful week for things that belong in this diary. Was going to go write up things from a couple of fall back topics, like Betty and my ongoing (at least once a week) discussion about Chinese drivers and my daily statements that I cannot understand why they (a lot) will pull the most asshole of maneuvers to cut in front of people because they "think" they are better/more important than the people that have to now wait while traffic comes to a complete stop. Then Betty justifies this behavior by replying that it is their survival of the fittest mentality ingrained for millenia. Cut to me shaking my head about how shitty it must have been in China for millenia to make them such assholes, and then blurting out how this Darwinian explanation demonstrates how sub-human they remain.
Or I was going to write about the old Chinese bats, and how they walk around town with scowls on their faces and move slowly, as if near death. Yet when they see/smell the free samples at the Costco, they exhibit super human strength and speed in fighting for the small cup of Singapore Curry, then gather in a circle with the other bats attacking it like hyenas over a zebra carcass.
Instead, am going to follow up on last weeks lament about how our aging bodies are breaking down. Yesterday, I asked a friend (will call him Chief) about how our mutual buddy (Boss) was doing. Had seen on Facebook that Boss' wife was taking him to the doctor for back pain, and then posting some breaking hearts emoticons. Chief emails me this morning saying that they found a serious health condition and that they are trying to figure out what to do. Got me thinking about my old friend and feel the need to share some stories.
Boss lived on the same floor (Hughes Hall/6th floor) as me sophomore year in college. We weren't super tight, but hung out a bit, mostly playing sports. I remember a night when Boss and another dude (Pooh) came into my room wanting to get stoned and them loving the song Fire in Cairo that was playing on my boom box and then all of us singing along to the chorus. There was many a game of touch football in all kinds of weather and those being some of the best games ever. A couple years after graduation, I was living in LA and Boss moved out to the coast for some reason that I can't recall and we hooked up. I needed to move out of my parents place and we, along with another college buddy (Slick) decided to rent an apartment together in Rancho Palos Verdes (RPV). The place had an amazing roof deck where you could see the length of LA from the South Bay to the Sierra Madres. We could see the planes lining up to land at LAX, and on July 4th, would watch dozens of fireworks shows going off simultaneously.
I think we lived in that place about 3 years...me working and Slick and Boss both deciding to go to law school. There were a lot of fun times together. Like...
- Somehow, we became huge Clipper fans. It was probably due to the fact they sucked and tickets were cheap. We did partial season tix in the most perfect of locations that were $35 each and supplemented those with Entertainment book '2 for 1' cheapies where we could both get in for $10 total with $3 parking. They played at the Sports Arena, which is in the heart of one of the toughest neighborhoods in town. This was at a time when they had to move some games to Anaheim during the '92 riots. While the dance team, then called 'Clipper Spirit', was awesome, the Clippers were terrible and we would spend most of the night making fun of the players, giving them our own nicknames that were funny only to us. My favorite was for coach Mike Schuler, who looked like a dentist (and coached like one too), we would call him Mike Schuler, DDS. Dumb I know, but we could go for hours on this jag.
- Boss and I would play tennis fairly regularly (famously playing in the Tracy Austin Tournament, where we bowed out in the first round) and we had compatible games. Most notably, we both sucked but thought we were better, and when things weren't going our way, we would smash our rackets in fits of temporary rage McEnroe style. We weren't rolling in the dough at the time, and I know we spent more than we could afford buying new rackets. At the aforementioned Tracy Austin tournament, we both smashed our rackets and recall the look of disgust on the faces of just about everyone.
- We were all keen on gambling, particularly the horses. Not very successful at it, but still loved it. At one point, Chief, who was doing better than us financially, bought a race horse. St. Louis Kid was its name. The Kid's first race under Chief's ownership was at Hollywood Park (R.I.P.), and Chief rented a box that day and we all went out to root it on. I believe it was the morning line's third choice at 4 or 5-1 in the 5th race. We are enjoying the early races and our brush with celebrity, soaking in our rare opportunity to hang in the high roller section, and Chief comes up with a sad look on his face, saying his horse had a cough and was scratched. Two days later, the Kid was dead. Can't remember what did him in, but we all felt bad for him.
- Boss had this girlfriend for a while, damn if I can remember her name, but she was a trip. They bought an Iguana together, I'm sure it wasn't his idea, and creatively named it Iggy. Had to feed that poor thing whenever they went out of town and it would escape from his terrarium all the time. One thing Betty (we were dating at that time) remembers is that we didn't cook much, but one night the girlfriend decides she is going to make Hamburger Helper and didn't drain the fat from the meat. The girlfriend had this hyper-motor and she would work in an office all day, then work a shift as a hostess at a local restaurant, then go all the way downtown to a club (without Boss) and dance The Lambada. The Forbidden Dance. Then she'd wake up early and do it all over again. I don't think they ever cleaned their bathroom (the apartment was pretty spacious and we all had our own), but from time to time, we'd go in there to borrow something and would see all of Boss' beard hair caked on every part of the sink. I know that Slick will remember this, but he and I would be watching the TV and notice that from time to time, they would both take showers in the evening (which they never did otherwise) and then they would "retire" early for the evening. As soon as we heard that shower turn on at 7ish, we would both turn and laugh hysterically. To be fair, she had a heart of gold and we also regularly got smokin' deals at the restaurant where she hosted.
- If you know LA and where RPV is in relation to the city, you know that it took 25 minutes just to hit the freeway and then you had to deal with some of the most congested freeways (the 405 and 110) in town. Boss' school was in downtown LA so he regularly felt the brunt of gridlock. One day I'm driving with him in his car (a sun ravaged Toyota Cressida if memory serves) and see the windshield is spiderweb cracked on the drivers side and asked him what happened. Nonchalantly, he tells me he got so pissed in traffic that he punched out the window. I swear he never got that thing fixed. This is the car where he bought a watermelon for a July 4th bbq and left it in the trunk for several months. From then on, that car had such a unique odor that would make you gag for the duration of your ride.
- We had a thing for bad horror movies. We would be tickled when one of us brought a new one home from the video store and we would cackle at how truly bad they were. The worse they were, the more grotesque the killings were done, the better we loved them. One I recall most vividly was Deadly Friend and how the deadly friend killed character actress Anne Ramsey (Momma from Throw Momma From The Train) by exploding her head with a basketball.
- When Betty and I got married, we didn't want to do the stupid chicken dance (and the Macarena hadn't been "invented" yet), but we always loved the way they danced to the Hava Nagila at Jewish weddings. As we are flying around in circles, Boss and Slick decide to take me out by blindsiding me as if I'm returning a punt. I didn't know who did it at the time, but I suspected them and they vehemently denied it. Seeing the wedding video months later, sure enough, there they were. You can watch them conspiring leading up to it and then one going high and one going low. They'd get a fine from the commissioners office these days.
I could go on...I know these will mostly sound terrible to some, but those were some great times for us. Around 94-95, we all moved out of LA and other than once or twice, haven't seen any of those guys for nearly 20 years. While it took some hugely unsettling news to bring them up from the deep recesses of the mind, these are some of my favorite memories from the best of times with lifelong friends. I hope I can see them all real soon.
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