Yearly Archives: 2013

Someone broke into our house and stole everything

Someone just broke into our house and robbed us blind. I’m only writing about it because whoever burglarized us stole my computer, including all of my blog posts that I had written out for the next month or so. So now I don’t have anything. I’ve been doing this every day for over a year, always with a hefty surplus of essays in my pocket in case I have a day where I can’t think of anything to write about or I don’t have any time to sit down at my computer. I usually back up my work every once in a while, but I guess I grew a little complacent.

This is crazy. I spent the whole morning at work. I came home around six-thirty and everything was fine. My wife was out all day and came back at around eight. It was a really nice night out, so we decided to take the dog for a walk to the park.

We were out a little over an hour. We stopped for ice cream and started making plans for what we’d do for dinner. We made it back to the house and I put my keys in the front door, but it only opened up like an inch before getting caught. On what? It was that chain lock, the kind you find on every hotel room door, a chain that I didn’t even know existed, it came with the house but we’ve never used it, but it’s something that could have only been hooked from the inside.

It didn’t make any sense. It was one of those actions that I do so many times throughout the course of the day, I put my keys in the doorknob and open up. And when it didn’t open my brain just couldn’t provide me with an immediate answer. I was just staring at it for a good ten or fifteen seconds, not really thinking about a break-in, not really thinking anything at all. It was just, “does not compute, does not compute,” in my brain, over and over again until …

And then it was obvious. Someone broke into our house. I said it aloud to my wife, “Someone broke in the house,” and I reached my hand inside that crack, I couldn’t make it to the chain, but I could flip on the lights which, once turned on, they illuminated our living room, totally ransacked.

I immediately thought about my laptop, all of my writing. “It’s not there,” my wife saw our kitchen table, empty. I started thinking about what else might be gone, the XBOX, my guitars. Again, my mind started freezing up, I was paralyzed, and when I finally realized that I wasn’t doing anything, I made it a point to act, to do something, even though I didn’t know what I should have be doing.

Let’s get inside first, I thought. I had never done anything like this before, but I decided that I had to kick the front door open. It shouldn’t be too hard to break the chain, I thought to myself, I’ll just take a step back like they do in the movies and try to put all of my body’s weight into the middle of my right foot as I – KICK. Thud. Nothing. It didn’t work. That was frustrating.

Let’s try this again, I wound up, harder this time and, bingo, the chain came off. I immediately ran upstairs to check if anybody was still inside. I came back down and headed out through the back yard, right past the garage, out into the alleyway that leads to the next street. Nothing. There was nobody around. I started running. I was running down our block, then down the next one.

I’m a good runner so my body automatically shifted into distance mode. I covered all three adjoining streets in every direction, but still nothing. What was I looking for, a bunch of guys running away holding our stuff, right? That’s what I was thinking, I think. We were only gone for like an hour, how far away could they have ran?

But nothing, nobody, nothing. I made it back to the house and got on my bike. But the further I extended my search outward, the more futile I realize my actions were. Maybe these guys were in a car. Maybe there ere a bunch of them and, what was I planning on doing exactly if I did somehow run into anybody?

I made it home, I took a more measured look around the house. They must have jumped the backyard fence, climbed up the gutter, and busted through the bathroom window. The cops came, they filled out a bunch of paperwork. The detectives came, they told us that we can’t clean anything up until someone shows up before Tuesday to dust for prints. All I can do is sit here. That’s it.

Whatever, a couple of laptops, an XBOX, all of my wife’s jewelry, yeah, that sucks, but it’s all just stuff, we’ll replace it eventually. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway as I sit here writing this all out on my old desktop computer that was probably too big and out of the way for the thieves to make off with. It stings though, having had stuff and now not having it. I like to think of myself as this enlightened progressive guy, but stuff like this shows me that I’m just as materialistic as anybody else. But what really hurts is my work, my writing. I was like thirteen thousand words deep into a novel I was trying to write. Like I already said, my blog posts for the next month are gone, and I’m going to have to sit here and wing it every day until I can slowly build back up enough reserve posts. What a setback.

This sucks. I want to find out who did this. I want to kick down their door and steal all of their stuff. Fucking assholes. But what am I going to do? That’s the worst part about all of this, the sitting and stewing, the impotent rage as I wait here totally helpless, I’m not Batman, I’m nobody, and some other nobody just broke into our house and stole all of our shit. Fucking assholes.

I say yes!

Without exception, when the universe asks me to do something, I always say yes. I say, “Yes universe! Yes, yes, yes!” not always out loud, but a lot of the time yeah, it’s out loud. Sometimes I scream it. Sometimes I’ll scream it while I’m spinning around in a circle, punctuating that final “Yes!” by pointing my finger straight in the air, like if there were a camera circling me from above, they’d see that last shot, that last “Yes!” like you could freeze-frame it, like you could put that photo on the cover for every spiritual self-help book, or you could make a spiritual self-help magazine, a monthly, maybe a bi-monthly, you could call it Yes! Magazine.

“Unlock your inner Yes!” might be the headline for the first issue. I don’t know, that was just one idea. We don’t necessarily have to go with it. It’s just that, I always say yes to any ideas that pop into my head. One time I read this article on how to be a writer, it said, don’t just write down anything that pops into your head. And I thought, jeez, that’s terrible advice. It’s like, what was I doing, reading No! Magazine? “Delete that last headline: Everything you write is terrible” might be the headline for No! Again, maybe it would be something else. I just can’t really picture anybody buying a copy of a magazine called No!

Well, I mean, I guess there are some things you should say no to. Like crack. Like crack cocaine, I mean, it’s part of the universe, right? Like it’s made out of the same star dust or whatever that you and I are made out of, that everything’s made out of, right? So maybe you don’t have to say “no” to crack. Maybe you can say yes, but then maybe just don’t smoke it? Like, maybe you can make some jewelry out of it. Like a nice crack necklace? Or what else can you do with rocks? You could collect a bunch of them and maybe line your garden with them? That could be kind of nice, maybe?

You see what I did just there? I was right in the middle of maybe thinking of an exception to saying yes to the universe, and what did I do? I wound up saying yes. I said yes to crack! Think about everything else we can say yes to. Like I used to get so bent out of shape, every time I went to the movie theater, every time I bought a popcorn and soda at the concession stand, the cashier would go, “Do you want to donate a dollar to charity?”

And I would get so mad. I’d be like, these stupid movie theaters with their stupid expensive soda and stupid dollar charities. I thought to myself, I want to say no. But I’ve already committed myself to saying yes! So I thought, OK, well what if I just say yes? Do you want to donate a dollar? Yes! And then I’ll just walk away, because they only asked if I wanted to give a dollar, not if I would give a dollar.

But I didn’t think it all the way through. The cashier was holding my change, so she automatically deducted the dollar. I said, “Hey, that’s my dollar,” and she said, “Didn’t you want to give it to charity?” and I said, “Well, yes … never mind,” and from that moment on, I made it a point to only pay for movie theater concessions in exact change. That way it could be a very simple, “Donate?” “Yes!” and then, “Goodbye!” walking away, me not having had to give up a dollar, but also not having had to say no either.

While the previews were playing, I started mentally laying out the contents of the first issue of Yes! Obviously I’d include the dollar charity trick. But what about some more tricky situations? Like, what if you’re waiting tables and some guy’s like, “Hey waiter, does this cheeseburger have peanuts in it? I’m allergic to peanuts.” It doesn’t have peanuts. But I’ve made a commitment to say yes!

Or what if I’m walking down the street and I hear a commotion behind me, “Hey! You! Stop! Wait!” and I turn around and some guy just totally barrels into me. We both fall to the ground, he’s holding a purse, he gets up, leaves the purse in my arms and then takes off running again. Two seconds later a police officer runs right up to me, lying on the ground, holding this purse, he shouts at me, “Did you steal that purse?”

What do I say? How do I get out of a jam like that? Maybe I shouldn’t have taken such a strict yes-to-the-universe vow. Shouldn’t I have left in a little elbow room for maybe just a few exceptional “No!” scenarios? Yes?

Movie Review: The Internship

What happens when you make a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy? You get something that resembles the original, kind of, but there’s a definite degradation of quality. You look at your end result, say to yourself, well, everything is where it should be, but it just doesn’t look right. That about sums up The Internship, the wacky summer comedy movie starring two of America’s favorite funny actors, Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.

We’ve all seen the trailers, there’s nothing that I could possibly spoil for you, even if I wrote out the entire plot of the movie. It’s derivative comedy at its most basic. It’s two guys that don’t know anything about computers that wind up at Google as interns, competing for a handful of full-time jobs.

Get it? Because they’re old. Right? They’re so old. That’s the joke. They keep telling us over and over. “But you guys are so old!” And so Vince Vaughn has a flip phone. And they don’t know how to use computers. It’s like, come on, even my grandfather knows how to use a computer. This trope might have been slightly more believable maybe ten years ago, but by now it’s growing ever more unlikely that there exist a couple of forty year olds living in California that are really this inept in modern technology.

The movie actually starts out funny enough. There are a couple of ridiculous back-and-forths that evoke those old feelings of seeing these two guys in a movie and not automatically assuming that it’s going to suck. But they play their trump card way too early, a signature over-the-top cameo by Will Ferrell, and after that’s come and gone, the movie limps toward the finish line, realizes that it’s way too far away, and decides, whatever, they’ve already paid for the tickets, let’s just call it a day.

These sort-of comedy movies always follow such a formulaic approach to story telling. Characters find themselves in unlikely scenarios, they decide to give it their all, after one or two comical false starts, they rally together, work really hard, and start turning some heads. Of course there’s a bad guy, and of course he winds up getting under the good guys’ skin. There’s self-doubt. Vince Vaughn winds up quitting. But of course he comes back. And of course they rally again just in time.

It was the same in Dodge Ball. It was the same in Old School. It was the same in Wedding Crashers. It’s just over and over and over and over again. Throw in some really cheesy romance. Sprinkle in a scene where everybody goes out to a strip club. I’m sitting there in the theater, not really laughing at all, and I’m just thinking, this is so boring. I can’t believe I’m sitting in this seat being spoon fed the same completely unimaginative garbage summer after summer. Who’s making the money at the end of this gravy train?

To make things even lamer, it’s all a big Google commercial. They talk about Gmail and there’s the Android logo everywhere. Nobody has an iPhone. There’s an almost imperceptible walk-on role by one of the two Google cofounders. When they’re not making funny faces or acting out premature ejaculation jokes, they’re having serious conversations about Google connecting people to people, people to information, making the world a better place.

What else? I’m seriously out of stuff to say about this movie. It was so boring. I can’t believe I actually spent money to go see it. This is something that normally I’d only ever watch if I were on a really long vacation with my entire extended family, and during one of those weird in-between points, when everybody’s asleep or waiting for dinner, and we’re all just kind of hanging around the one TV wherever we’re at, and TBS is playing a “very funny!” movie, and we’re all like, The Internship, huh, we all forgot that this movie ever even came out. And we watch it, it’s terrible, but nobody makes a move to turn it off, and everybody’s a little bit more tired having had to sit through such unfunny two hours of their life.

Man, I’m so tired. I hate having to so thoroughly bash something. But what a joke. An unfunny joke. There’s nothing else to say. I’m really sad and tired now.

Every kiss begins with Kay

It was sometime around Mother’s Day, I was watching TV and this commercial for Kay Jewelers came on. I thought to myself, damn it, I hate these stupid commercials, some lame ass jewelry store trying to pollute our minds, convincing us that we need to drape ourselves in shiny rocks, fork it over buddy, it’s time to go jewelry shopping for your wife. And I was about to turn off the TV, but I stopped myself. This commercial, it was powerful. It changed my mind, about jewelry, about jewelry stores, about family, about everything.

The commercial started out with some dude walking over to this little girl sitting by herself on a swing set. She looked really pissed off. My immediate reaction was, hey dad, why are you going to give this girl jewelry? She’s just sitting there moping, pouting. You come over and you give her a necklace, you’re going to reinforce that behavior, all she’s going to learn is that every time she wants something shiny in life, all she has to do is sit in the corner and look angry.

But then he started talking and we find out that this guy, he’s not the little girl’s dad. He says something to the effect of, “Listen, I know that this past year’s been really tough on you, but I love your mom, and I love you, so here, I wanted to give you this necklace.” And the little girl immediately brightened up, and she said, “It’s just like Mommy’s!”

And it was just like Mommy’s. They cut to the mom, she was standing like five feet away, and she smiled, she looked down at her chest, so did the camera. It was true, the necklaces matched. She was smiling. The little girl was smiling. She hugged the guy and then he started smiling too. I caught my reflection in the mirror and, look at that, I was even smiling. I couldn’t believe it, me, sitting here having an emotional response to a Kay Jewelers commercial.

But then I got sad. I realized that this commercial wasn’t speaking to me. I’m already married. I don’t have any daughters, let alone an adopted stepdaughter. Why are you doing this to me, Kay Jewelers? It’s like you’re just creating this little narrative to sell necklaces while simultaneously rubbing it in my face, reminding me that all of this genuine joy being felt by the people on TV is something that I’ll never get to experience.

I wanted a divorce. I wanted to get out there and hit the dating scene, looking for single moms raising young daughters. After a few dates, we’d hit it off, we’d have to hit it off, and she’d bring me home to meet the kid. I’d have to be just standoffish enough to make the little girl initially reject my presence, but with enough reserved charm that I could then go to the Kay Jewelers kiosk in the mall and win her over by reenacting as best I could that scene from the commercial.

Would the little girl’s dad still be in the picture? I can only hope so. Nothing would please me more than sticking it to this deadbeat nobody. Hey pal, guess what? I’m in the picture. I bought your daughter and your ex-wife matching Kay Jewelry necklaces. Yup, exactly, the ones from the Mother’s Day commercial on TV. What’s that? You don’t want your little girl calling me dad? Too bad, because I’m moving in. Yeah, I talked my way into having my name put on the deed to the house. Sorry, I know you only get to see your princess once every two weeks, that’s a pretty shitty custody agreement. And what are you going to do if I’m a little late in dropping her off, huh? You want us to file a restraining order? Do you?

But wait a second, I’m picturing my current wife, right after I divorce her, she’s going to call me up, “Rob! You asshole! I can’t believe you left me! And I’m pregnant!” Shit, I hadn’t anticipated that. In my quest to find my own single mom, I’ll have created another single mom in the process. And what if some other guy swoops in and steals my own daughter away with his own matching Kay Jewelry mom-and-daughter necklaces?

Goddamn it Kay! Why do you have to be so specific? It’s good to have a target demographic and everything, but I feel like you’re just playing games with us consumers. Give me something that I can relate to. Make a commercial about a guy that was supposed to fold all of the laundry while his wife was at work, but right as she walks in the door, he looks to the pile of clothes and says to himself, shit, the laundry, she’s going to kill me. So right as she’s putting her stuff down and hanging up her coat, the guy goes onto his computer and navigates to Kay’s web site. There’s a big, “I’m fucked” button that he clicks on, and when his wife walks in the room, he’s like, “Look honey, I bought you this beautiful ‘I’m sorry I didn’t fold the laundry’ bracelet.” It’ll be all shiny and diamondy and everything. And then she’ll give him a big kiss, right as they play that jingle, “Every kiss begins with Kay.”

No more free refills on soda

At the restaurant where I wait tables, management recently got rid of the soda fountain. Whereas before five dollars would get you unlimited Coke and Diet Coke, now five dollars gets you one twelve ounce bottle of soda. Whatever, I was all bent out of shape about it initially. I hated having to explain a stupid change in soda policy to every single table that I wound up serving.

“What is this?”

“We recently switched to bottled …”

“So no more free refills?”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK. But I hate you. And I’m not tipping you. And I’m going to follow you home and egg your house. Asshole.”

OK, nobody actually said that last one to me, not explicitly. But I’d stand there and smile and bullshit about how, “We really just want to make sure you’re enjoying an optimal soda drinking experience,” and I could tell these people wanted me dead. They don’t care about quality. If you’re a Diet Coke drinker, you’re not in some sort of a quest for quality. It’s super popular, yeah, everybody drinks it, but come on, does anyone truly enjoy Diet Coke? What is that taste? It’s like a battery that’s been left out to rot out in some old socks for a decade before accidentally being dropped into a vat of Coke Classic.

I’m getting carried away. I realize that now. A couple of months have passed and our customers have since gotten used to no longer receiving unlimited, intravenous Coca-Cola, and so I don’t have to talk about it all that much anymore. But at the time, man was I pissed. I was so angry. I came right home after that first shift and wrote a whole blog post about how much I hate bottled soda, how much I hate my managers, how the restaurant industry is this giant scam.

I sat on it for a couple of weeks, I always sit on my writing for a couple of weeks, and it’s a good thing too. Because I reread my diatribe against the soda policy and I scratched my head, like, huh, I was getting all bent out of shape over this? Over Diet Coke? Come on. That’s lame.

Although I am pissed off that I don’t get to drink free soda anymore. That used to be a really minor perk of working where I work. Every five minutes or so I’d fill up a huge glass of seltzer and I’d pound it down, enjoying that crazy sensation of those bubbles trying to go every which way, up my nose, down my throat. I’d close the back of my throat and squint my eyes really hard, because you know, just try chugging any carbonated beverage, that’s no joke. But it would pass and I’d feel instantly refreshed and recharged.

Now I can’t do that anymore. Before I had a perk. Now, there’s no perk. And I’m not being dramatic. I tried chugging a glass of plain water, and I almost quit right there. One, it’s boring. There’s absolutely nothing going on with a glass of plain water. Two, there is no two. It’s just one, water is boring. No bubbles, no fun.

I also tried switching to unsweetened iced tea, and that worked for about two hours. I’d fill up a glass, squeeze a lemon, and I’d get that refreshment, I liked the added caffeine kick. But you ever try downing more than two large glasses of unsweetened iced tea in a short time? Man, it’s like I boarded an express train to upset-stomach central. I had to sit down. I thought I caught some sort of a virus.

Finally, I’d like to end with a little anecdote. So we have bottles of soda, which means tons of empty bottles that we’re throwing straight in the trash. I can’t believe restaurants can get away without recycling that much plastic. I think that if I tried that in my house, the city would give me a fine. Anyway, this one waiter started collecting all of the soda caps.

I was like, hey man, what are you doing? And he was like, “Oh, well, you see these codes under the caps? If you type them into the Coca-Cola web site, they’ll donate .0001 cents to the charity of your choice.”

I was like, wow, thanks, I guess. But what I was really thinking was, Coke, you’re willing to donate all of this money to charity, but only if some random person gets on his or her computer and types out a long string of nonsense onto the Internet? Don’t be an asshole, Coca-Cola. Either donate to charity or don’t donate to charity. Don’t condition you’re philanthropy on whether or not you can get complete strangers to sit at their computers and do a bunch of mindless, unproductive busy-work.