Celebs and Such

I meant to blog about this a week ago but I guess I just don't love you enough to be on time. I keed, I keed. My new job keeps me for 10 and 12 hour days already, but I LOVE the work. It's very fun. More on that later.


I took my friend Eric, (who's crashing at my place until he gets his house rented and his roommates into the state) and Jami to Palms Thai a little over a week ago. It's a Thai place that has a Taiwanese Elvis impersonator who performs at dinner time and long community tables where you sit right next to the party next to you.

Right next to us that evening was this gentleman, who was in THE SHIELD for the first four seasons. I didn't bother him at dinner (what the hell would I say?) but on the way out I gave him a little salute and nod which he smiled widely at and seemed to understand that I was a fan of the show and waved goodbye. I didn't think too much of it because it's par for the course here. If you know your B-level celebs and character actors, you'd probably see somebody every day if you go out.

Just over the weekend I saw LA VIE EN ROSE, which pleasantly surprised me. My bread and butter movies are Kung-Fu, zombies, gladiators, heist movies and typical armchair tough-guy nerd stuff. I'd like to think it's rare for a guy that watches a lot of this would admit he really liked a biopic about France's most beloved ennui-filled songbird, which I really did.

At any rate, when we were leaving the Arclight, we saw this guy. In a span of about four days, I saw two of the main characters from the same gritty, FX cop show. I expect to see Michael Chiklis picking out grapefruit at Ralph's any day now.

Also, I saw Britney Spears on our floor on the Sony lot. I realize she's a much bigger star than these guys, but she's so remarkably uninteresting (other than being crazy lately) I don't have much to say about seeing her. She looks -exactly- like she does in tabloids and on TV. She had a gaggle of handlers, assistants, make-up and other people around her. I'd say it takes about 5.5 human beings to manage 1 Pepsi product of a human being.

Birthday Music

Monday was my birthday. I chose live music over comedy for the evening and am I glad I did.

While the headlining band was fine, I was impressed with the opening band and LOVED the second band.

Grand Ole Party is a three-piece band, which I have a history of liking; Violent Femmes, Primus, Nirvana, and The Yeah Yeah Yeahs just off the top of my head.

The female lead-singing drummer of Grand Old Party is all moxie. Whoever invented that word had her in mind when they coined it. In a way it's a shame she's bound to the drum kit, because I'd love to see what she'd do for stage performance while she sings. I bet she dances like a pixie.

They share something with one of my all-time favorite live bands, The Make-Up in that their live show blows their CD out of the water.

In other news, I got a new job today. Monday I start as a casting associate on 1 vs 100. I'm willing to bet I'll be the only person on IMDB that was a contestant that went on to get a job on the show.

Trying to Wear the Old Man Out.

AKA: Bob's cubicle scam.

First of all, I should say it's unfair to call my cousin Bob's sale of some office cubes a "scam", but it sounds good.

About seven years ago my cousin Bob found out about a whole office building in Dayton that was closing and they were selling off all their furnishings cheap. With some research, he quickly found somebody in Indianapolis that needed as many office cube walls as they could buy. If I remember correctly, Bob purchased 140 sets of cube walls for around 25 dollars a set. The buyer in Indianapolis was paying $90 a set. Even after you rent a truck and pay your poor cousin and brother-in-law $10 an hour to haul cubes, that's about 8 grand profit.

My dad (Ed) told Bob that he would help because there was no way we were going to get all the cubes loaded up, driven to Indy and unloaded in one day with just 5 guys. Ed counts as about 3 or 4 regular laborers, so we were good.

I rode with Bob early in the morning to pick up the rental truck. He told me he was going to try to wear Ed out. Bob was about 34 or so at the time and my dad was 60. I should note that Bob is a stickler for his health and is a fit and strong fella. My family has worked on rental properties, cars and other projects together in the past and my dad's endurance is legendary. Granted, my family drinks more beer in the first day of a project than said project warrants, but by any measure, he has John Henry-like stamina. Bob said he was going to exhaust the old man, he knew this would be the job to do it. I was sworn to secrecy.

It took us about 10 hours or so to disassemble and load all the cubes into the truck. We had a couple hand carts, but no forklift or anything like that. I want to say there were five or six of us for the first part of the job. A couple of us had to drop out for work and other reasons, which left three people to drive to Indy and unload the cubes.

We had started the whole project about 7 in the morning on a Sunday. I found out they got back with the empty truck about 3:30 in the morning. I waited until I thought Bob would be up and gave him a call to see what happened.

Me: So what happened? Did you wear him out?

Bob: (laughs) Not exactly.

Me: Soo.....

Bob: My buddy got in the back of the truck to rest around midnight and fell asleep. I managed to stay awake until we'd unloaded everything, but I could barely keep my eyes open. Ed had to drive the truck back and I fell asleep 15 minutes into the ride home.

Me: That's about right.

Bob: He's not human.