Sunday, November 23, 2008

Rats

I am housesitting for someone this Thanksgiving. So I went over and picked up the keys and got the lowdown on the animals. This is someone I have house sat for many times over the years. I enjoy her animals. They are good, well behaved and generally fun. Now, she has a menagerie of animals because her daughter likes animals. 2 dogs, 2 rabbits and 2 rats.

Now most encounters with rats for me have been the wild kind. In alleys of downtown L.A. at night, scuttling along the sides of walls and buildings. You know, feral, big as cats and unafraid. Normally when I am housesitting, the rats stay elsewhere. I don't necessarily fear them but I think there is something primordial in humans that is repulsed by rats. Like in the caves, lurking beyond the firelight, they were there in the corners eating the refuse and thriving. Even then I'll bet that the cavemen were running around trying to bash them with clubs and grunting, "Holy crap, there's a rat!" BAM! Of course then they probably cooked them and ate the rats. Protien is protien after all...

So as she told me how to care for the rats, I looked at their bodies. That wasn't scary. Furry, rodents, not unlike the gerbils and hamsters I had as a kid. But then you see the tail. Hairless, long tapered, like a finger that has gone horribly wrong in development. And I think that is what freaks people out. The skin that looks all to human, it's fat and all too alive, attached to vermin.

Or maybe it's the fact that they can chew thru cinder blocks and tread water for 36 hours. Kind of a toss up...

Monday, November 17, 2008

Christmas letters

My Mom writes a letter every year for the Christmas card she sends out to family and friends. I learned a long time ago that I need to write what my year has been like and submit it to her to include in the Christmas letter. Why? Because her view of my life is profoundly different than my view of my life. Her view of my life is down right depressing. It makes it sound like I'm banging my head against the walls here in Hollywood and getting nowhere. One year I didn't get a chance to give her my version of my life, and my friend Terry asked, "Did you read your parents letter this year?" No, I didn't but got a little pissed off after I did. It sounded like I lost all hope and had a gun in my mouth.

I admit that I do have flat spots on my cranium, but it's not all as futile as my Mom writes. She loves me and doesn't like to see me struggle, but it's the struggle that makes the successes sweeter. Even the small wins are good to have. The following is my portion of this years letter.

"In January Brad went backpacking around New Zealand and Australia for 18 days. He bungy jumped of a bridge and hiked a glacier in New Zealand; and went scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef in Austraila. Brad had 2 Verizon commercials running on cable this year and he did a one man show about the physicist Richard Feynman called QED. Now he is venturing into the world of voice over."

Short. Sweet. Hopeful. Life is difficult, but if everything is handed to you, you don't value it.

I hunger, and I struggle.

Thumbnail

On June 29th of this year I bruised my thumb while working. Not a small bruise. The tip of my thumb prevented a heavy piece of equipment from crashing to the ground. Way to go thumb. A big black and blue bruise raised up under the nail and I have been watching it slowly grow out from where the bruise started way back in the nail bed. My friend Julie said, "your thumb has been black forever." Well, hallelujah, all traces of the ruined thumbnail are finally gone!

It only took 20 weeks. That's right, 140 days.

Now I have never paid that much attention to my nails. I cut them when they need to be cut. But because of this injury I have been acutely aware of my thumbnail. It seemed to take forever to grow. And it looked and felt different than the other nails. Did it feel like and outsider? Hmmm...

And like a loose tooth I played with the thumbnail and its shape simply because it was different than all the rest of my nails. It was almost a subconcious thing. You know how if something is different than normal you constantly play with it? Like people with tongue piercings are constantly clacking it against their teeth. Annoying as shit if you ask me, but they don't really know they are doing it. Everyone has to have a hobby I suppose...

So now I can stop rubbing that thumb nail. No, really, I can...

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Notes Nailed to a Cross

I was working a gig this weekend. Some sort of Christain gathering for kids. The immediate impact? No cussing during the job. Which for a bunch of riggers is not easy. That's like telling Hell's Angels not to be so violent. And usually I curtail some of my explicative use after working in Anaheim anyway, I realize I sound uneducated when I cuss so much.
As we waited to go into the roof to take out the points, I saw a bunch of kids pulling nails out of 5 or 6 wooden crosses that were about 6 feet tall. They had notes attached to them. This sparked my curiousity, of course. What did the notes say? So they pulled the nails out and put them in a box. And they took the notes from the nails and put them in a cardboard box.
At the end of the night, the trucks rolled away leaving the cardboard box. Me being me, I reached into what would soon be in the trash and pulled out some of the notes, put them in my pocket and read them later. I could tell the gender of the writer by the penmanship. And I kind of discerned what the nailing of the notes meant by what was written on them.
So let me share what the 5 notes said with you. It's secret, no one will know, right?

1. I want to get rid of bad language (male)
2. Die to flesh & let God do the work. (female)
3. It's kept me from doing the things that God wanted me to do. (female)
4. Pride. Unforgiveness. (male)
5. Family breaking apart, and always fighting, Jesus I need you to bring us together. (female)

So the notes seem to be what they want to get rid of, and what they need help from God in doing, or just admitting their faults. Some are a little vague, and I'm guessing, but I wasn't there the hear what they were trying to do with the notes. For #5, I hope it works out.
Am I a bad person for reading these notes? I don't know. Curious, always. But is it worse than throwing them in the trash? Hmmm...

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Gay Marriage

I'm disappointed that Prop 8 banning Gay Marriage passed. The fact of the matter is that it effected only those people who are gay. It wouldn't bring about the end of civilization. It isn't a sign of the End Times. It's civilzation allowing people who love each other to marry. The government shouldn't be in our bedrooms, nor should people impose their religious faiths, and all the biases that come with them, on everyone else.

Now for the biting satire portion of this post.

I think that people were afraid of Gay Sex! That's the thing that scared them to vote in this way. But they should look at their own married lives. I have heard anecdotal accounts that once you are married, sex stops! Or at least happens maybe once a month. I have no first hand knowledge since I am single and out there just getting laid constantly! Wahoo! So if the Gay Sex was what they wanted to stop, they should let gay people marry. The sex would stop, and the fearful people would have nothing to fear.

The only bad thing that would have happened if Gay Marriage was allowed to remain, Gay Divorce Lawyers. I'm pretty much against anything that creates more lawyers. There are already too many in this litigious world. And having Gay Marriage would create a need for a sub catagory of lawyers specializing in Gay Marriage.

So there you go. This world should be less complicated by small minded people...

Obama!

Wow. Can I just say I'm very glad that Barack Obama is the president elect? Wow. After 8 years of being mis-managed by Shrub. I'm ready for an elitist, liberal, socailist, marxist, muslim, friend of terrorists to run the country. Wait. Sorry, was just clearing out the bullshit lies told about Obama by his opponent. Wow. The vitriol spewed by the McCain Palin camp was amazing. But when you have no ideas or message you attack the guy.

If Obama is elitist, I'm fine with that. In my first blog back in August, I said I wanted someone smarter than me as preisdent. Someone who thinks and listens to the ideas and advice around him and then decides. The impulsive knee jerk thinking of Shrub has fucked up the USA and the world. Let's fix it.

That's a naive view of the world and what any president will be able to do, but just electing him has made the world think differently about us. So let's hope he can do many of the things talked about.

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Cute Kids

I badgered my Dad to get the old super 8 home movies from when I was a kid converted to DVD. It was easy after finding a deal at Costco for transfering anything to DVD. $20 for 150 feet of film and then 12 cents per foot afterward.

I sat there laughing at these old images of me and Jeff being kids. And though I remember seeing the movies before I don't recall some of the things we were doing. It's obviously me, but the memory is gone. I do remember running down the hill at my grandma's house wearing a red cape like superman. And then trudging back up the hill. And for a 4 year old, that was a big damn hill. At the bottom there was a creek; if you weren't careful or had too much momentum, superman got wet.

There were vacations to the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Ohio, Troy, New York, Florida, Pikes Peak, Colorado. In the movies I was climbing everything, and jumping off most of what I climbed. There was also swimming in the summers at a hotel called the Valley Ho. (I'm not kidding about the name.) I still remember the smells of that place.

There was also the sheltie we had named Whitney. From the time he was a rambunctious puppy attacking everything. I was behind the sliding glass door because I was afraid of him... I was 4.
At Yellowstone I got a stuffed bear with a leash and collar. I totally forgot about the bear until I saw the toy on that video.

It was cool to see these old movies again. And there are 3 more reels to check out when Costco gets them transferred.