Having grown up in LA, living at one point in a municipality called Studio City, and attending my dad's yearly NBC holiday parties, any celebrity-seeking fanaticism I might have had a chance of developing was quashed by an endless parade of C-list disillusionment. At a certain point, when your only two autographs are Leonard Nimoy's and Soleil Moon Frye's (no joke), even a nine year-old knows there's no point to star-worship (though my 26 year-old self now thinks an odd-couple sitcom called "Spock and Punky" would be a real winner).
Sometimes though, despite attempts to avoid it, the entertainment industry shows up uninvited anyway. This happened twice yesterday.
The first, unequivocally positive, encounter happened on the Fox lot, where yours truly was visiting his brother and happened to walk by the Bluth stair car from Arrested Development. Being an Arrested D superfan (I'm going to preemptively link to my recounting of the David Cross Incident since someone would have brought that up eventually) this was a rare moment of star-struck giddiness.
The second, decidedly less enjoyable, encounter involved Andy Dick stealing my beer at a bar. Waitress: "Yeah... he's been kicked out of here twice this month but he just keeps coming back. I'll get you another one."
12/8: At a restaurant, I order a turkey burger with Swiss cheese for lunch. The waitress informs me that they do not have Swiss and proposes gruyere as a substitute. I accept her proposal.
5/13: Enjoying the nice weather, I opt for taking the bus home from a friend's apartment instead of the subway. Checking the schedule on the sign post, I note that the next bus will be arriving in six minutes. Actual wait time: seven minutes.
6/19: My 76th partial or complete television viewing of the movie Predator.
11/15: Finding my hot chocolate too hot, I wait several minutes for it to cool and try again. Still unsatisfied, I preoccupy myself with thoughts of power and wealth and retry a few minutes later. The liquid is acceptably cool.
2/4: A friend tells me he will be unable to attend a concert because his cousin Dan will be in town. I reply that I didn't know he had a cousin Dan. My friend informs me he said "Stan", not "Dan".
"Critically heralded as the consummate bon vivant of his generation, [Morland] possesses the timing of Kaiser Wilhelm, the bravado of John Denver, and the keen legal acumen of William Howard Taft. His performances are more like sermons."
-- Sioux Falls Picayune Times
"If I were stranded on a desert island, the three things I would bring with me would be a hammock, 60kg of undiluted "Afghani blue" heroin, and Morland's latest collection of short stories / Asian-fusion recipes."
-- Outgoing Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan
Catch Ghana's most renowned futurist in an electrifying around-the world trip!
Much better than 'Cats'!
DATES:
12/24-1/2: Los Angeles, CA
1/4: Hong Kong, SAR, China **ONE NIGHT ONLY**
1/5-1/6: Cebu, Philippines
1/7: Los Angeles, CA **SPECIAL ENCORE PRESENTATION**
Hong Kong show is 18 and over. Other shows are all-ages. Kids drink free.
Don't miss out on your chance to see the John Birch Society's #3 up-and-coming young entertainer of 1963.
I meant to post this on Friday, but: it is an immutable law of the universal interplay between affliction and entertainment that Mr. Holland's Opus will be on television when I am home sick.
In San Francisco for G.A.M.E. I found myself with a day to kill. After walking around and taking the sort of pictures one takes there (hills and vistas and piers, oh my), I noticed the Bay Bridge occupied many of my photographs and decided a walk across it to Yerba Buena Island was in order. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, unlike its golden neighbor to the north-west, no pedestrians may cross (legally).
Two days later the Bay Bridge was shut down so police could spray a briefcase full of Christmas lights with water (a.k.a. a bomb scare), right as I happened to be crossing it in an automobile on the way to Oakland Airport. This act of precautionary providence turned the bridge into a parking lot, and I got to walk along it after all.
