3:08 pm - Saturday, Dec. 10, 2005
R.I.P. Richard

Just got the news that Richard Pryor died...

I've always listed Pryor as one my top three favorite stand-ups (Bill Cosby and George Carlin being the other two).

But unlike Carlin and Cosby--who, whatever their material, were essentially just funny to me (If you're too young to remember when Cosby was actually funny, check out some of his early comedy albums)--Pryor was something more: He was a window into a world way beyond my experience (While attending an all-white high school in Durand, Michigan, I was listening to Is It Something I Said? and That Nigger's Crazy), and an example of how someone could take the painful raw material of their life and turn it into art.

There aren't really that many people in the public arena who are important to me on a personal level, who "mean something" to me.

Pryor meant something to me.

I'll miss him.

I was vaguely embarrassed to realize that, of the two events, I feel much more effected by the death of John Lennon than all the death and destruction of Pearl Harbor.

I think it's that John Lennon's death happened in my lifetime, and it was one of those times, as I watched the news, shocked and saddened, that I knew I was watching history in the making.

And like many other people, I think Lennon's music, the honesty of his lyrics, and the fact that he made his life such an open book, made me feel like someone I knew had died. That I'd lost a friend.

But the nice thing?

While the man may have died, the music lives on.

Forever.

I haven't counted my hours this week (And on two days, I'm closing concessions, so it's kind of open-ended as to when I'll be done on those days), but it looks like I'm getting just about the same number of hours this week as I did last.

It's discouraging to think that I finally got up the courage to leave Borders, which I really felt I needed to do, tried to find something I felt like I could live with...and as a result, am maybe just a little bit worse off than I was before.

But talking to Cary earlier today, he re-iterated some things I'd been thinking myself...

There's no law that says you're going to automatically be rewarded for finally "taking the leap" to improve your situation, after a long period of stagnation; it may take two or three leaps-or more-before that happens.

And it's premature to write this off as a "mistake". Cause really, who knows how things will shake down? You've no doubt got a bunch of people at the ArcLight who are "seasonal", so when they go and I'm still there, maybe I'll get those hours I need.

Maybe a management position will work out here like I never felt it would at Borders.

Maybe this will lead, in some unexpected way, to the next thing, the thing that will work out.

Maybe this somehow "clears the way" for the acting stuff to happen more fully (The point's been made, more than once, that if you call to let them know you'll be late, you're pretty much "golden" at ArcLight, which was not the case at Borders. And I've always been about calling my job as soon as I know what the deal is).

Point is, I don't want to write this off as a mistake. And more than that, I don't want to use this as an excuse to not try and "shake things up" in the future.

It was slow roasting death--Two and a half hours of deep boredom, listening to options I mostly couldn't afford, as people interrupted the speaker every two minutes to ask about their own particular, arcane health insurance situations.

Near as I could tell, the closest thing to something I could afford would be "short-term insurance" (Which you can get up to a year); I could do that, and hope in the interim that the opportunity to get something more long-term (Through SAG, another job, whatever) would come up.

In terms of free help, I'm still making too much money for Medi-cal (They've got even more stringent financial qualifications than they do for food stamps), but might have to apply anyway--and be rejected--in order to apply for help at the county level.

In any case, if I'm going to apply for something I'll have to pay for, I need to do it before my next birthday, because hitting 45 would be another jump in premiums.

(Sometimes I wonder--Is there anything good about getting older?)

But I didn't do it.

I need to take the car in to get looked at.

In addition to the grinding/scraping sound when I come to a stop (Or, it turns out, when I back down a ramp), the car is laboring when I make turns.

(It's not physically harder for me to turn, but the car is making more noise when I turn. I can hear the car...wheezing around turns, basically.)

As Cary said, and as I know from personally experience, cars do not heal themselves.

So, I'm going to go in on Monday morning, cross my fingers, and hope for the best (I'm going to the place where, while they didn't manage to fix my Corsica, I at least didn't feel like they were intentially taking me for a ride).

Wish me luck on that.

But unfortunately, I'm out of time, so I'll have to save the rest of this for the next entry.

It's off to work I go...

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