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10:15 pm - Tue 5/07/02 In the excitement around some big events--Namely, Chris's George of the Jungle gig and my getting the car--I feel like some little things I've meant to get to in here have gotten away from me. Two things I thought were funny... Thing One: A couple weeks back, I was walking home from the grocery store, carrying four or five bags that were very heavy. The grocery store is on Vermont and 3rd. I'd gotten to 5th, the street I live on, which meant I was about three blocks from my apartment, when I saw an abandoned shopping cart. I looked at the cart. I looked at my bags. I looked back at the cart. The bags were so heavy... Then I saw myself pushing a shopping cart down the street. Suddenly, the groceries turned into bags of empties I'd fished out of the trash. I was wearing rags, and I smelled like death warmed over. I left the cart where it was, and struggled the rest of the way home, not ready to be "Shopping Cart Man" just yet... Thing Two: On the day I "played hooky" from work, I got a haircut. Now right there, I find that pretty funny (If you need proof that I rarely skip out from work, there it is. I felt like I was in one of those sitcoms where the guy skips out from work to go to the ballgame, and ends up on the Jumbotron, for everyone to see). I hadn't intended to be so stupid, but I'd been anxious to get out of the house, I'd already seen the movies at the nearby theater, and the place where I'd gotten my last haircut, which I'd been very happy with, was just a couple blocks away from the theater, on Hollywood ( It had been months since my last haircut, and my hair was at that "awkward phase"-- Too long to be "short", too short to be "long". Either extreme is fine with me, but that phase in the middle just doesn't work. But anyway...). I was literally in the middle of the haircut when I thought, "Hey, aren't I supposed to be sick today...?". So there I was, looking damned good, but feeling like a moron. I worried the rest of the day. It's not like there were likely to be any serious repercussions from my skipping work, but I was very embarrassed and uncomfortable at the thought that people would know I hadn't really been "sick" ( Or at least be very suspicious). I thought maybe I could go to Supercuts or Fantastic Sams or wherever the next morning--I had to be at work at noon--and ask them for a receipt that someone left behind. I was so anxious to avoid potential embarrassment that I was prepared to pay someone for a "faux haircut" (Just so I could have a receipt to proffer, should anyone give me crap about what I'd done on my unscheduled day off.) Then, talking to Jane, she suggested the obvious; Call the place where I'd actually gotten the haircut, and ask if they would give me a receipt dated for the next day. So I called the barbershop the next morning--and it is a good old-fashioned barbershop, which I like--and explained my embarrassing situation. And the barber, a guy a couple days older than God, said fine; Just come on in and he'd take care of it. So I rode to the barbershop, identified myself as the moron who'd called him earlier, and got my receipt. Then I saw it was dated for the day previously. The day I'd actually gotten the haircut. No good. I asked if he'd mind changing it, thinking he'd re-write the whole thing (They didn't have a register tape, it turned out. He'd just hand-written the info on a small piece of paper). But all he did was cross out the "wrong" date, writing that day's date above it. Still no good (That made it look exactly like what it was, that I'd gotten the haircut the previous day and asked the guy to change the date). But I like this place--the price is right ($9.00), and it's all the haircut I need--and didn't want to risk annoying the guy, so I just said "thanks" and was on my way. You know what I ended up doing? I rode down Hollywood, and when I saw a place advertising haircuts for $8, I went in and bought my "faux haircut", much to the confusion and consternation of the Chinese lady who was the proprietor (There were two customers in the salon. One was pretty funny; After I told them my story, she explained to the owner, "He want it like--what do catholics call it?-- "special dispensation"). And I made sure I got a receipt (The owner, uncomfortable with charging me for a haircut I didn't actually get, told me to come back and she'd give me a real haircut. I'm not sure I'm going to take her up on that--the last time an asian woman gave me a haircut, it didn't turn out so well--but we'll see). Of course, it turned out to not really matter. I had to be at work at noon that day, and no one questioned I'd gotten my hair cut earlier that morning. Whether people believed me or didn't believe me or didn't care, I could have saved the $8. But if anyone had given me crap, I had a receipt. ____________________________________________________________________________ Well, I may be too proud to be seen pushing a shopping cart down the street, but I'm apparently not too proud to grab castoff furniture left out on the curb... Some time back, after I bought my "office table", I saw an ugly black chair on the sidewalk, and thought to myself, "That ugly black chair would be perfect for my 'office'...". And a week ago Sunday, I happened to run into my musician buddy Jeff, who was moving out of the building (To a cheaper place in Studio City). When I got back from the last performance of Crossing The Line, I noticed that Jeff had left an ugly pink chair out on the sidewalk, and I thought to myself, "That ugly pink chair would be perfect next to my phone...". So I'm pretty much set for ugly castoff chairs. ____________________________________________________________________________ I did something recently that doesn't matter at all in the big scheme of things, but that somehow felt important; I reorganized my cds. On some level, I've always had the impulse to be organized, but have struggled with how to go about it. And I've struggled to not feel overwhelmed by my frustration, stuck between the impulse to be organized and the feeling of never being organized enough. I don't have a lot of cds--about 110 different titles (Though some of those represent double/multiple cd sets)--but I've always had a hard time figuring out how to shelve them. I've tended to want to to organize them by genre, like a record store, but that's never really worked very well for me; Unlike a record store, all my cds are on the same shelf, and life is too short to make yourself crazy over questions like, "Should Purple Rain go with my 'Prince' cds or under 'Soundtracks'?". So we've gone with a new, extremely simple system--Straight alphabetical by artist (With soundtracks or multiple-artist compilations by title). From "Louis Armstrong" to "Yaz". It's not a big deal, but somehow it is. Because I'm organizing, but not the way I think I'm supposed to. I figured out something that works for me. I need to do that more often.
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