Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Devolution Theory

Sunday leaving Vegas is a dark time for everyone. Even if you're a mormon and you spent the entire trip going to shows and laying by the pool drinking milk you feel like shit because it's 130 degrees in Vegas always and it is the only city in the world with 3 suns. And just imagine if you do enough blow to kill a horse and so much molly that you literally are devoid of endorphines. Compound the heat, the hard drugs and about 6 gallons of vodka in a 12 hour period, Sunday is a particularly stressful day.

Well I did some of that stuff listed above and I'm pretty sure I could have gotten through it. I mean a hangover on a travel day is going to suck regardless of the situation, and whether or not you are traveling in a vomit stained sport coat is largely irrelevant. However the lack of foresight to book a return flight home from Vegas is just unforgettable, because no one wakes up and sees that Sunday afternoon flight for $150 and thinks "what a deal."

Or at least I didn't...

See the past 24 hours had gone as follows. I went out hard Friday night because that's what you do on Friday night. I took a limo to the airport Saturday morning because, "hey, I'm a baller, I'm going to Vegas. Fuck it!" I arrive at the airport and run up a 100 dollar tab at a bar watching sportscenter by myself because "Hey, I'm a baller, I'm going to Vegas! Fuck it!" Arrive in town and drink, gamble, order prostitutes, buy outrageous amounts of bottles at Las Vegas superclubs and get denied entry to my own hotel room by my buddy because I was so blitzed that I attempted to bring home a 3...even adding the requisite 2 points for the vacation bonus, she was still under a 6...the requirement to slay in the group suite.

No, I would have had that 150 bucks for that plane ticket home but my buddy decided that we needed to pay $800 to move our table at XS over 20 feet. (Fucking Birdman) I don't even remember most of the night, I was rolling so hard I think I forgot to speak 90% of the time. But hey, Wolfgang Gartner! I don't even really know who he is, but I guess it was fun.

Fast forward to Sunday, I am now dreading my 6am call time at work on Monday and even worse I now have to take the 25 dollar bus to cut my losses on Vegas.

Bad idea. When you are depressed on a bus travelling slowly though the desert you have a lot of time to think.

A few of the thoughts that went through my mind.

I wonder if I have drank my weight in alcohol in the last year.

(The math: A gallon of water weighs roughly 7 pounds, assuming the density of hard liquor is of a similar density I would have to drink 30 gallons in a year to drink my weight in just straight up liquor. That's 60 handles in a year which is 5 in a month, I would have to be taking down a little more than a handle a week...while I might have hit those kind of numbers once, probably not anymore. However if you add beer into the equation, I'm sure I've pounded 210 pounds of booze through my system in the last year. How am I not a raging fat ass...?)

Have I done my weight in drugs in my lifetime?

(The math: This one is ridiculous. There are like 453 grams in a pound * 210 would be about 91,000. But this is the shit you think about when you are super depressed about your life and a Mexican child in front of you is crying. Honestly it was the worst public transportation experience in my life. The girls behind me were strippers that specialized in fetish, I almost asked them the going rate for a foot job because I've weirdly always been curious about that market, but I held my tongue.)

What could I have bought if all the money I ever spent partying, I magically had back?

Now this one is the one that really kills you, because you think about every ridiculous expenditure of your lifetime and realize you have nothing to show for yourself except a few glory days stories with your buddies.

Some things you could afford:
A down payment on a house.
A whole house (in Michigan)
An engagement ring
A year of tuition for your future child at a nice private school
A boat
A car
To put money into a 401k
Groceries at Whole Foods for a year
A year long trip around the world. (to be fair, a large chunk of my money spent partying in life was already in a world tour, but if I had it all back I COULD DO IT AGAIN!)

But...after all of this. After the 4 hour bus ride becomes a 9 hour bus ride because of dust storms, after the Quizno's at the rest stop runs out of Batch 81 sauce when you are next in line...after your roommate picks you up downtown at midnight and you have to be at work in 5 hours, there is only room for improvement.

I mean Monday sucks too...but you got through it. Tuesday sucks too...BUT YOU GOT THROUGH IT. I mean, I sit here typing on a Tuesday evening and there is a rolled up golf score card on my desk. It says I shot a 51 on 9. Not good. And that 51 probably included a few mulligans. But the point is, is it is rolled up because I was likely out of cash and I wanted to snort something.

This is not where I saw my life going when I was a little kid. I thought I would probably grow up to be an astronaut or a famous baseball player or something because I was like the 3rd or 4th best player on my all-star team. It all seemed very realistic at the time. But what I've realized is a Vegas hangover can really be a greater metaphor for life. It's super fucking fun, and there are some bumps along the road but the only thing that matters is you just keep fucking chugging on. I can gladly report that as of this writing, I am no longer hungover. I gave myself a haircut tonight. And I am going to go to the gym so that I look decent enough in the right cut of t shirt that girls will talk to me. And that's just what my life is now. It's a rinse and repeat.

I no longer dream about winning the lottery or marrying the perfect girl and popping out 3 perfect kids, I just know that my life is going to pretty much be me hanging out in Venice drinking on the weekends, feeling shitty on Mondays but plowing through it.

And the cool thing is, those endorphines start to come back eventually and you start to remember, hey if I just stick around long enough and keep not giving up I'll be a tv writer some day, some day not too far away maybe. And then I'll make like 8,000 dollars a week and I can buy all that shit that I could've bought with the money I spent partying.

But I did spend that money partying.

And it was fucking awesome.

And while a rationale person may think I'm devolving, I think my evolution is just beginning. If you keep pressing on everything always works out, that's like the first thing I learned in Kindergarten. In hindsight I should've just dropped the mic and started living my life at that moment. So while my Vegas hangover story is largely fictionalized and it's structure is blatantly obvious (you're supposed to feel sad and bleak in the beginning like you would in a hangover and then be jacked up by my positivity at the end, I could've been a fucking English major) just remember that Monday is always going to end, and you can dry clean that vomit off of your suit.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

The 7 People you meet in LA

Man, it's been a fucking minute since I've written a blog. I feel like so much has happened since May 31st. I've been to Vegas, I've had my heart crushed, got a new job, 4th of July, 17 black outs, about $2000 dollars on drugs and i got a new pink swim suit from the Nordstrom Rack. It is Polo with a 3 inch inseam and has a bright blue horse. I am going to wear it to the beach every fucking day this summer and just be swimming in pussy. Nothing turns a girl on like a tall guy with pasty legs wearing short polo trunks the color of her sopping wet gash.

Ok too much? Let's pull it back a bit. But to be honest, I've missed doing this, so don't fault me for being a tad over eager, I just took an SK energy shot and feel like 50 cent doing sit ups on a pull up bar for no particular reason. So let's just skip the pleasantries and get right to the veiled references to naughty activities and just assume that we're all having great summers. (Summer is like the one time of the year I can't brag about how much better LA is than wherever you are because you have boats and lake houses and shit...but you also probably have a wedding every other weekend so instead of bombing off rope swings, you're sweating your ass off in a suit at an adult reception with kids...so fuck you anyway)

That said, wait did I say it, or do things in perentheses not count...whatever. LA is both the greatest and the worse place in the world. Geographically it is perfect, it is always summer, there is beach, mountains, desert, whatever the fuck you want, you can find it within an hour. There is a hot band playing every night at some sceney club and now that I am an NBC employee I can literally ride the Mummy at Universal every day for free. But the people are the worst in the world. I titled this post after that book the 5 people you meet in heaven, I could have easily named this the 7 people you meet in hell and the content would not really have changed. So without further arrogant droll from a 26 year old assistant that makes 10 dollars an hour (15 after 8 and 20 after 12!!!) onto the list.

1. The trust fund kid
These little cunts are everywhere in the city of angels although they tend to hover on the northern part of LA's west side. You would think that Hollywood producer must be the most common occupation in America with how many mail room whores read their scripts at the Bel-Air Bay Club on the weekends.  This particular demographic singlehandedly put scores of south central drug dealers' kids through college. Originally matriculating at Crossroads or a private west side high school near you, these kids will likely spend the next 4 years on the row at USC likely in Kappa, Tri Delt, SAE or Phi Psi and spending thousands of dollars at the 9-0h the one shitty bar on campus. Yay! Fight on! After hoovering every last amphetamine in University Park these kids usually go to a big 4 talent agency where they stick around just long enough so that they can say they "made it on their own" before daddy's golf buddy finds them a koosh job at a production company or a studio gig. What makes these people so awful? Nothing, I'm just really fucking jealous to be honest. My dad is a stock broker in Indiana. The only studio job he could get me is slanging residential singles on the North side of Indy.

2. The Bro
Oh these motherfuckers, where to start. I guess I'll start by classifying myself in this list. I am one, and yes I realize I am adding to the problem. The "Bro" originated from somewhere other than LA because he was interested in "the biz" he probably originates from the midwest or somewhere "back east" (back east is the vaguest fucking term in the world, but everyone uses it. It's as if they are certain California people didn't take 2nd grade Geography. If you're from New Jersey say so, Boston is also a city that people have heard of. I can understand if you're from Pennsylvania, no one knows shit about that state, but unless you're from Philly you're not ever a real east coaster) So these out of towners maybe got their parents to take a reverse mortgage on their summer home to actually send them to USC or UCLA, or maybe they went to their shitty state/liberal arts school and then moved here after. These shitheads know absolutely NOTHING about what they want to do, except they all watched Entourage and generally agree that Ari was a pretty cool dude. You can find these trashdicks most days conspiring to buy a bottle at noon at American Junkie, because "Bro how fucking baller would that be!" And in all likelihood if one of them has some molly there is some south bay slut that will indulge him in a blowjob later anyway, thus encouraging the behavior. You'll find these douche bags working a PA job, or maybe tending bar while trying to be an actor...they're likely going nowhere but it doesn't matter because they've still got plenty of time to slam beers and gun chicks on their 5 year college victory lap. Selling insurance in Highland Park will still be there after its no longer socially acceptable to finger girls on the dance floor.

3. The Hipster
Unfiltered cigarettes at 8 in the morning on sunset boulevard, but not the cool part...the part way the fuck east, where it hooks down and leads you right toward Dodger Stadium. You'll see these fuckwits reading the New Yorker and talking about how unjust it is that the Chavez Ravine projects were town down in 1960 to make room for a baseball park. Oh by the way, a great new gluten free vegan place opened up in Silverlake. "Oh, they take American Express, I hear a guy who worked at American Express called his buddy a "fag" once, so I can't support American Express or a restaurant that would honor such a payment method...by the way who is playing at the Echo tonight?"
I'm sure that once upon a time, there were people who believed in original thought, and liked the fit of pants that were a bit more slimming and possibly enjoyed the ambiant noise that comes along with spinning vinyl. But all those who emulate this lifestyle now are just fucking nerds. Dying your hair purple is not cool, being averse to deodorant and body grooming/shaving is just making you look homeless...and not in an ironic way. And I'll make a bold statement, mustaches are dumb. They're fucking stupid and the fad needs to die just like Alexander McQueen did 2 years ago, get over it. If you want to write your memoir move to New York and take the link to your black and white reel off of your resume, you're not fucking Woody Allen.

4. The Bitter Local/Valley Kid
You're just crowding their freeways man and jacking up their rent. See the bitter local has lived here their whole life and they are not happy to have you. But where the bitter local differs from the trust fund kid, is the trust fund kid is largely oblivious to your existence. (S)he lives in a nice gated community in Bel Air and doesn't routinely have to deal with the plebeians. But the bitter local lived in Venice for 25 years and now has had to move east of Lincoln into Mar Vista because you fucking bros and hipsters are gentrifying the area and causing the rent to skyrocket. Venice is literally about to explode into a race way because people you meet in LA (1-3) have essentially taken over. Similarly the valley kids hate everyone that moves to LA because when people get here they immediately move to Hollywood or Santa Monica and start shitting on the valley. Not only do these kids have to deal with 110 degree summer days, they are the quintessential red headed step child. The worst part is they were probably on the verge of some sort of economic break through to the other side when the Northridge earthquake of 94 took everything from them...because god forbid mother nature take a shit on something beautiful like Beverly Hills.

5. The guy that is full of shit.
"Ya, I've got a few things in development. I actually just sold a pitch to an independent production company, we're going into production soon," says the stupid cumstain who has been an unpaid intern at BenderSpink for the last 2 years. Any one of the prior mentioned people can also be this guy, like every bro thinks he is a writer now because websites like Bro Bible and TFM are hot and HEY I GOT DRUNK IN COLLEGE TOO. But it takes a special brand of asshole to run around shooting his mouth about how he has "sold a script" when in all actuality he got 100 bucks from his best friend's mom on Kickstarter. Like this doesn't even work on chicks, you tell some LA broad you're a film producer, that hoe is going to IMDB your ass on the spot and if you REALLY did meet with Appian Way about your Jaws on Mars script, you better be able to present Leo's number on the spot.

6. The club guy
So I'm going to take care of you ok? Just bring 72 girls to AV Friday night at 6pm and buy 2 bottles for 2000 each, I'll throw the 3rd in for free? You got me! I'm a douchey club promoter. The Hollywood scene is fucking awful, it is dominated by Persians and swarthy motherfuckers who must've come into family money by running cash only dry cleaners are something, but I can almost get on board with these dudes because I firmly believe that they realize they are a parody of themselves. It's the music managers that I just want to toss in front of somewhat quickly moving Prius. Just because one of your buddies had their World of Warcraft account suspended once and learned how to use Pro Tools, doesn't mean they are the sickest DJ in the world and need you to come on tour with them to manage their entourage full of lame high school friends. These people are just the scum of the Earth, and I am occasionally forced to be in their presence, they are more pathetic that a hip hop hype man, at least you know one of those n*ggas would shoot a motherfucker for you and hide the body, a DJ manager? He probably wouldn't even put hide your blow in his asshole.

7. The dude that is kinda sorta almost famous.
LA is full of people that were in that one thing once and every group of friends has their token guy. Maybe he did a somewhat memorable commercial spot, or had a supporting role in an Indie movie that one slightly more famous person was in. He gets recognized by 1 or 2 people like every 7th time you guys go out together, but he is still riding that minute amount of fame. Trying to score a free bottle at the club, seeing if he and 7 homeys can get on the list at the Emma Stone party. This will work maybe once annually, but the truth is, this guy is closer to being homeless and working in a coffee shop than he is to being VIP on a Playboy Mansion party.

8...Oh wait it was supposed to be 7...I have to do this last one though...but first how about a few that didn't quite make the cut.

-The person NOT in entertainment and hates when everyone else talks about it
- The PR girl
- The Stand up/Sketch comedy guy that thinks they're going to SNL
- The writer that doesn't write

8. The Struggling Artist
This guy has been gaffing non union shorts for the last 3 years to buy a 5D, hoping he'll be able to shoot some time soon, but just when he gets the money, the new model comes out, making his camera obsolete. He shoots EVERYTHING. But also paints, writes poetry sees himself as a REAL ARTIST. Maybe he'll go into documentary film making because like hey, it's not where the money is, but that's where REAL STORIES and REAL PASSION live. Did you see his film school final project? It won an award at the Beverlywood International film festival. Oh you didn't know Beverlywood had an international film festival??? Oh you didn't know it was a city...well it's not really, it's just a census diagnosed place south of Fox. Big Orthodox Jew population there. But the struggling artist doesn't care, because that is VALIDATION. That his years researching the underground performance art scene in downtown LA has been worth his blood sweat and tears. In fact there is an art walk this Thursday. Better believe he is taking ads out on craigslist looking for a crew that will work for free (Copy and credit tho bro and SOME CRAFTY will be provided) When he's all done, he's going to edit that shit himself. He'll probably shoot in black and white...naw fuck that, Sepia.