I hadn’t even left New York before my first LA celebrity sighting. Having given up my claim to the aisle seat so my lady could feel less claustrophobic (read: avoid inevitable fat guy who would crowd up the armrest) I wondered what luck I’d have in filling the free seat to my right.
As a sunglasses clad Alan Ruck walked down the aisle, my girlfriend started tugging my shirt, “I think that guy is famous!” “Shh honey, that’s Crispin Glover, play it cool.” Alan Ruck, (perhaps best known for playing Cameron on Ferris Beuller’s Day Off) smiled and said hello. As calmly as possible, we made room for him.
I have to admit I was kinda buggin’ out. Ferris Beuller’s Day Off, aside from being the most classic of all 80s films had become hard wired into my brain. I often find myself sitting half dressed before work repeating, “I’ll go… I’ll go… I’ll go…” I quote it to the point that it’s almost a separate personal loser dialect. HE pushed the Ferrari out the window!! This was the guy! In the flesh, sitting next to me!
I reminded myself that while I knew him intimately, he didn’t know me at all. I would have to just relax and pretend he was a normal person. Which as he drank his Dunkin Donuts coffee and busted out a script for something, seemed to be the case. I would be the normal non-celebrity guy who was actually cool and low-key enough to be friends with a celebrity. In order to earn his trust and respect I tried not to be creepy and get all up in his grill. I started by ignoring him. (more…)
Danny Eagle Passed the Acid Test
Danny Eagle inserted himself into Los Angeles this weekend.
Los Angeles did not explode. But it did shudder, as Eagle’s fearsome energies touched every facet of this town:
-Danny Eagle ate breakfast. For lunch!
-Danny Eagle raced cars. Inside a video game! On a pier!
-Danny Eagle imbibed many many margaritas, while watching guacamole being made
-Danny Eagle stood on the railing at the edge of the pier and prepared to quote Titanic.
At that point I felt obliged to step in.
Kids, don’t make the same mistakes as Tuffie. Stay away from vitamins.
Seriously yellow pee is not the only side effect of taking too many vitamins, and that’s putting it mildly. I was not even peripherally aware of this fact, and so as with all knowledge acquired in my life, I learned it the hard way this past Monday.
First, some necessary background: Tuffie suffers from something, she doesn’t know what, but it makes her cold, almost constantly, and mainly in her hands and feet. Slow circulation? Maybe, maybe not. Lack of proper protein in her diet due to vegetarianism? Could be. Regardless of the cause, the effect is indescribably annoying and results, among other odd behaviors, in her sitting at her work desk, year round, with a space heater blasting. Seriously.
This being the case, over the years, Tuffie’s visited doctors, homeopathic specialists and even an athletic trainer to figure out the root cause, all to no avail. She’s even gone so far as to take a shot of flax seed oil, straight up, first thing in the morning, for a three-month period. All that got her was some nasty-ass nutty burps. (more…)
I’m comin’ your way. I wanna take in that smooth sunshine and oddly fresh and delicious fast food. I want to drive everywhere. I want my got-damn chicken n’ waffles. I wanna see why most of our readers are from California (thanks Google Analytics!). I’m stealing your secrets and taking them back to Brooklyn where I’ll open an burrito/surf shop and be tan year round.
Kimmy, Under the Pier
Before our first photo shoot, I’d barely said ten words to Kimmy. When I actually got up the gumption to ask her to pose, I was fairly certain she’d turn me down, thinking me just another guy trying to get creepy with her.
Our first photo shoot was a bit awkward, as is normal, the getting-to-know-you stage, but by the end we had a bit of fun, took some good shots.
And we’ve kept in touch, emailing back and forth.
Now we talk regularly, we’ve done a second photo shoot, she’s comfortable around my camera. I consider her a friend.
Which is really what this whole photography thing is about for me. Meeting people, making friends, finding out about people I’d seen, met through friends, but didn’t really know. Why do they call that girl Tuffie? I’ll do a photo shoot with her, find out. How come that girl Kimmy is giving that guy a lap dance? Time for a photo shoot. It is my way of getting to know people, which, despite all the means of communication we have at our fingertips these days, is, to me, still the best way for me to open the door.
Sometimes it leads me to awkward conversation in a stranger’s apartment. And sometimes it leads me to the underside of a gigantic pier next to the ocean, taking photos of a friend while creepy construction workers and stoned high school students look on. And if that’s not a good time, I don’t know what is.
After watching my tenth episode of Deadliest Catch I’ve firmly decided that I cannot be a crab fisherman in Alaska. I cannot be a fisherman anywhere. I grew up near the ocean and only learned when I was 24 that a “keeper” was not a kind of fish. These guys have faces that look like they were carved out of the bottom of ashtrays, and they don’t seem to sleep…ever. Massive engines break down for no reason and they have to get down in the engine room and fix things up with some duct tape and bubblegum while massive waves clobber the boat. I’d rather be on Apollo 13.
Future sticky like rice.
This past Christmas, my sister gave me the “Smart Cookie Fortune Ball,” with its promise to dispense “little bites of wisdom,” but which instead consistently responded to questions with asshole commentary like, “Do not mock cookie,” or “You don’t wonton know.” First of all, if I didn’t “wonton” know, I wouldn’t fucking ask, and since when is “Am I going to get a life?” a mocking question to anyone other than who is asking? The only time it ever gave me a straightforward answer was when I asked it if it hated me. Its response: “the honorable answer is yes.”
After three days of interrogation, I was forced to hide the cookie under my bed because it was depressing me by refusing to provide the answers to life I wanted to hear. In an instance of peculiar foreshadowing, I found it the other day on my way to the grocery store when looking for an errant flip-flop (which, I might add, was strangely enough not in the couch). (more…)
Saw this little ehem, baby, floating around the interweb yesterday. Enjoy!
Megan, Conjuring Mischief
I asked her why she needed the side mirror of her car fixed. This is the direct pull from her email response:
“…we all decide to leave as the bar is closing and go back to jared’s…against all reason, {I} get my keys and drive. this is where the story gets very blurry.
i’m weaving back and forth, i think i was headed towards jared’s but i honestly have absolutely no idea where i ended up. all i know is that at some point i pulled over, parked, crawled in the backseat of my car, and passed the fuck out. i woke up at 6:30am freezing cold, still drunk, with no idea where i was. drove home, went back to bed, showed up late for work, threw up about a hundred times, and found gum in my hair that had to be cut out. all in all, there must have been roughly 700 angels watching out for me that night, because i did not a) die, b) kill anyone, c) get injured, d) injure someone else, e) get assaulted or molested as i slept in my unlocked car, f) choke on the gum that wound up in my hair and die, g) all of the above.
so, that’s how my mirror got fucked up…”
Kick ass.
Despite our distaste for the Reverend, we here at the BAT would like to apologize. We would like to apologize for using our Header of Doom to kill Jerry Falwell. It is well known that our header is possessed of an awesome and, yes, terrible power. We would like to think that we are responsible enough to handle this power, but sometimes we get carried away. Sometimes, on a head full of peyote, we forget our duty to use the header for good, not evil, sometimes we forget that it is wrong, very wrong, to focus the death-inducing stare of our header onto those we find bigoted and small. It’s a problem, we acknowledge that. We’re working on it.
And so, to his followers, friends and family: Sorry! Our bad. Won’t happen again, promise.
Photo: Mark Humphrey/Associated Press
As usual, B.A.T. was thinking ahead using its Higher Power to predict the future. The above B.A.T. header shows the now deceased Jerry Falwell in the jail of the afterlife, peering out gloomily into eternity. (It was posted days in advance of his death).
As it turns out, we talked to God today. God said Jerry was wrong about most stuff, like the racist and homophobic stuff mainly. According to God, he’s now spending eternity in a ghostly loser jail.
“…he was a lightning rod for controversy and caricature. He apologized, for example, after televised remarks suggesting that the 9/11 terrorist attacks reflected God’s judgment on a nation spiritually weakened by the American Civil Liberties Union, providers of abortion and supporters of gay rights, and after he called Muhammad a terrorist. He was ridiculed for an article in his National Liberty Journal that suggested that Tinky Winky, a character in the ‘Teletubbies’ children’s show, could be a hidden homosexual signal, because the character was purple, had a triangle on its head and carried a handbag.” -New York Times
Read more about his remarkable acheivments in life. Jerry Falwell, R.I.P.
She looks sweet, doesn’t she? (And yes, ahem, those are clip-on sunglasses she’s wearing.)
It was my mother’s birthday last Friday and the cat (Suzy Q) blatantly out gifted me when it brought a bunny to the back door. (P.S. I knew I disliked that animal for reasons other than red, itchy eyes and a runny nose.) The thoughtful books I’d meticulously selected instantly dulled in comparison to this living, breathing, as-yet-moving birthday present. In fact, I found out the cat had been showering her with gifts all freakin’ week, including two lizards (which my mom claims she hypnotized), a mouse and a sparrow.
I got all the details when she called me at work to make sure I had made the dinner reservations and to confirm what time my father and her would swing by my apartment to pick me up. “Suzy Q brought me a bunny this morning,” she said, innocently enough and with a smile I could hear through the phone. “I put it in a plastic bag and set it on the patio table to show your dad because he wasn’t home, but then it hopped off so I had to throw it in the trash can.” (more…)
Courtney: John Bonham reincarnated?
I met Courtney at a barbeque on Saturday, where, during our conversations, she revealed she’s the drummer for an all-female Led Zeppelin cover band.
Which blew my mind.
Not that such a band existed, as one of my favorite concerts was the Rocket Queen show in Hollywood several years back, an amazing G n’ R cover band fronted by a woman as brash and amazing as Axl himself.
What blew my mind was the fact that I was sitting across from someone who attempted, on a regular basis, to match the genius of John Bonham, über-drummer. I looked her over after she mentioned this, wondered if she had what it took to mimic such genius. I was impressed that she would even try, said that this is a band I must see.
Okay, maybe I’m not being completely forthright. I think there is something alchemical about cover bands that mess with the gender make-up of the bands they cover. When it fails, it’s a beautiful disaster, like watching children play Court Room. But when it works, there’s something transcendent about it, where the elements, the key elements of the original band are highlighted, distilled, purified, thrown at you like ectoplasm.
I got mad respect for those willing to channel such forces as 70s rock. We’ll see if they can master such forces, or if they are consumed by them. {cue Zep’s THE OCEAN}
One thing I’m never short of in New York is conversation with strangers. Often these strangers and I don’t share a common language, which by the way, isn’t a big problem. We talk anyway. Leaving my apartment an older gentlemen delivering pizzas wanted to talk about my bike.
Pizza man: “Ooo. How ma themps?”
Me: “You like it? (Man picks up bike with one hand) I think it’s like 15 pounds.” (no idea if that’s true or not).
“”Thuh zerta fenta.”
“How much?”
“Yah”
“Five hundred.”
“Five thousand?” (he says in plain English)
“No, five hundred dollars.”
“500 pizzas.”
“Um, not sure what the conversion is to pizzas, probably less pizzas than dollars.”
“Ya, nii.”
“Have a good one!”
“You too.” (again in plain English)
Later that day, kinda sketchy dude with sweat band on his head and one earphone says,
“Nice bike.”
“Thanks.”
“I don’t sleep much so I can’t ride bikes. But that’s nice, black on black like the cars.” (He doesn’t make a lot of eye contact).
“Huh.”
“You live around here?”
“Yeah.”
“Well if your bike goes missing, that dude probably knows where it’s at.” (nods over his shoulder to sketchy guy pushing cart of junk).
“That guy?” (I point).
“No need to point dog, just sayin.”
“Gotcha, avagoodone.”
Left: Famous Author, Right: Future Famous Author
Last night Tuffie & I went to the central library for another author’s discussion. Our last trip was, we now agree, so awful it was amazing, accomplishing that rare trajectory of being so bad it becomes good, if only for the wealth of story potential it creates.
This time we were delightfully surprised by Michael Chabon (#2 on Tuffie’s list of Jews I want to marry, and will one day marry, even though they are already married), who was charming, self-effacing, yet in no way verbose or high-falutin’, like some other authors we’ve seen (I’m looking right at you, Jonathan Lethem).
There’s not really much to say about the night itself, the questions (asked by LA Times film critic Kenneth Turan, whose opinion I’ve never agreed with, but now that I’ve discovered he’s Jewish, I’ll go easy on) were on point and very much the same questions Tuffie or I would have asked, Chabon’s answers were insightful, it was quite pleasant.
The thing that struck me about the night, and this feeling continued right up until after I’d had him sign my books, was that I wanted everyone to know that (more…)
