The L.A. Complex

When I heard that there was a show coming to the CW named “The LA Complex” I assumed it would be an awesome new show about twentysomethings that have this common mental affliction that is some sort of fomo. Alas I was mistaken it is literally a tv show about a bunch of LA kids living in a nice apartment building. It looks like it might be the Palazzo on 3^rd. I haven’t watched it but I think they are going for a super pretentious “Friends” with beautiful models/first time actors. The experiment failed because, surprise, middle America doesn’t want to know how awesome it is to live in a $4000 a month apartment and go out to a thousand dollar dinner on a Tuesday night. It makes them jealous. The show actually turned in the worst ratings ever for a network drama. This pleased me.

But then I thought about what my version of the show would have been, where you use “complex” like they use it with Herpes not to mean a physical structure. Wait, what’s that, it’s Herpes Simplex? Does complex never mean like “a situation?” Whatever, fuck it I’m rolling with it.

The thing is, Los Angeles chews people up and spits them out. I have a fairly stressful job in which I have to ask people to do something every day that they don’t want to do. I am highly non-confrontational (sober) so it stresses me out to do this. Most people think that the worst job in the world would be digging ditches or removing splattered possums from the asphalt but I would gladly do that over maybe being one of those unicef or Red Cross people that walks around “HEY HOW ARE YA? CAN I TALK TO YOU FOR A MINUTE ABOUT POVERTY? SIGN ON THIS LINE AND TEN DOLLARS WILL BE DEDUCTED EVERY MONTH TO MAKE THE WORLD A BETTER PLACE!” Fuck you and your cause. I’ve had to change my natural route so many times to avoid those situations. But there are a million people out here doing something that they don’t necessarily want to do. Waitresses that go home after a slow night with their shitty tips and have to look for something to sell to be able to make rent, stand-ups that have to beg the club they tell jokes at for free food from the kitchen because they simply can’t palate pasta one more time.

Conversely there is always something to do to blow off steam. I can’t tell you how blessed I am that I can just say fuck it and bike down to Hermosa Beach and challenge a group of kids to volleyball, or I can get my inner 12 year old on and go body surfing down by the Venice pier, it’s amazing. I’m going to see Tosh tonight because he records his show 2 miles away from me and I know someone that works there. Nowhere else in the world am I afforded these opportunities.

But then there is the flip side of this, it’s not like LA is a big city park offering free fun activities for all…in fact all the parks are full of homelessness so I avoid to pretend that there is nothing wrong with the world. No, LA is a big fucking rat race and there is so much pressure to keep up. Go out to drinks, meet this person that can further your career at some club, god forbid you take someone out to dinner because they want to help you with your resume. Last time I went out to drinks I spent easily 100 bucks, and it was a Tuesday. Tuesday are my $30 budget days, so I can have $400 weekend. That subsequent Friday I had to cook dinner, and go to a shitty dive based on alcohol prices instead of just doing what I wanted to do.

It’s the most expensive city in the country, yet everyone is too broke to live this way, but in a society where image is everything, people just deal with the consequences later. I’m sure the tears of underemployed 20 year olds the week before rent is do in LA could give all of Africa clean water for the next 50 years. I wonder if there is a spike in average calls home during that time period.

I read an interesting Huff Po article today, check it out. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tamara-shayne-kagel/privilege_b_1476705.html?ref=career--money

Usually articles written in this tone are just so pathetic, and remind me of that fat bitch from Girls, and when people whine about how they are going to pay the bills when they are aspiring writers, it literally makes me vomit. But this article was different.

The thing is, if you are an aspiring writer, you are probably going to come out to LA, inconvenience your friends and fail. This city will chew you up and spit you out like it has millions before you, and will millions after you. It’s time to find something else you are at least decent at. Don’t give up on your dream, but just learn how to pour coffee. It can’t be that hard. Stay in on a Tuesday and scratch down 5000 words…it’s not that hard. If you did that twice a week for 2 months you would have 100,000 words. Boom that’s like novel length homey.

I know it’s fucking hard. It’s as hard as going to the gym, or answering work emails when it’s so much easier to just watch reruns of Sunny. But if you learn to appreciate the taste of 2 buck Chuck’s cab, it’s not too bad. There are days when I literally cannot wait to get home from work and lock myself in my room and write. It’s usually when I think I have an amazing idea. And then I get a text that there is something interesting going on and I have to choose. What will ultimately define your success or lack there of in LA is what decision you make.

Glowfest: A Beautiful Disaster

Right now I’m somewhere over Arizona en route back home to LA. I am sitting next to the cover model of this month’s Playboy and she is editing a video she made for some random old man in Texas. “It’s a fetish video, he is very specific about what he wants. No nudity, heavily orally fixated and it has to involve candy.” The funny part is she shot this video Saturday night while we were pregaming before dinner. She is literally rolling around on the floor on the La Quinta Inn, sucking on a Blow Pop while I am 5 feet away laughing my ass off in the corner ripping shots of vodka. For this 10 minute video she is getting paid $1,500.

That hasn’t even been the most interesting part of my ride so far. The first hour we spent looking through her entire nude catalogue, she showed me the progression of her four breast enhancement surgeries and asked which hair color I preferred. This is one of the characters on our new pilot.

I must say, I fucked up this weekend. I was given one real responsibility…blog the experience, reflect on what was happening. However, like I often do, I started boozing Friday afternoon at the airport, and I haven’t yet stopped. Gin and tonics are only $4 on Southwest this month so you can hardly blame me. But although I failed as a writer I’m sure you will all soon see that I was perfectly able to encapsulate the exaggerated degenerate version of myself on film. However, in an effort to redeem myself slightly, I will attempt to give those interested a general recap of the weekends’ events. I won’t be able to remember all details due to how much happened and my general state of intoxication so I encourage you all to follow our tv show once it eventually gets picked up. But for those of you who enjoy brevity, let me sum it up in one sentence. It was a fucking disaster.

I’ve written, deleted and rewritten this post a thousand times. It’s now Wednesday, I’m not on the plane anymore, and my hangover has subsided. The first iterations of this draft had a breakdown by day of exactly what we did while in Denver. I read it a few times and it was fucking boring. Suffice to say, we were extremely debaucherous the entire trip.

I think I understand now why reality stars are portrayed so poorly when the show goes to air. For example, we shot 100 hours of footage this weekend. That will get trimmed down to 22 minutes. You can cut those 100 hours anyway you like, to tell any story you want. So what story should we tell, should we tell the story of 7 fame whores that threw a concert and filmed it so they could experience their 15 minutes of fame? Should we show 22 minutes of me shirking my responsibilities and getting drunk instead because it’s so much easier? Perhaps we just show 22 minutes of Sydney dancing on tables, flashing her tits and screaming “Google me bitch.” All the stories are moderately entertaining, and hopefully you will see a piece of all of this in our finished product.

But the only story I can tell you is my story. 7 days ago I had a barbecue with the 7 misfits who I was traveling to Denver with. Each person is remarkable in their own way. We have our token bimbo, we have the more serious introspective brunette. I play the bro, we have our nerdy virgin, our token Jew and a couple of budding entrepreneurs who are supposed to give aspiring small business owners at home hope. It’s funny really, I’m sure each character on the show has a demographic that will root for them. Maybe that’s what we’re going for.

So instead of this massive set-up why don’t I just tell you what happened? Well the first 2 days we were pretty much horrible, unlikable people. I did nothing but drink, I quit promoting Friday night when I found a bar with 2 dollar shots of Jim Beam and blacked out harder than any college kid at the bar. Saturday we went downtown and decided to take a bike ride which quickly turned into a side mission to score some herb.

All of us were behaving selfishly because those were the reasons we came on this trip. I thought that if our show got picked up I could be the next Tucker Max. Our playboy bunny probably thinks this could provide solid exposure for her modeling career. The virgin and the Jew write…a screenplay from notable reality TV stars would have an easier time selling than 2 nobodies. Our brunette is trying to further her music career and for the two guys running GlowFest this is a back door to get more publicity for the concerts themselves.

After leaving a crack house of an after party at 5am on Saturday night we all realized that we were just shooting a glorified Jersey Shore. In the Real World or any spin-off of the like, the cast is usually given some punky insignificant job. Sell t-shirts on the boardwalk, do marketing for SXSW. We were actually throwing a concert, with thousands of dollars on the line. It’s not a joke anymore, it’s not just a platform to get fucked up and talk shit about each other. Maybe that’s the drama that sparks good reality ratings, but it should be us vs. the world, not vs. each other. 

Day of show arrives and we make our way to the venue for the first time. Our responsibilities were overwhelming. All of the prep work that we should have been doing the first two days, we spent fucking around and this really put us behind the 8 ball. Around noon we found out we had to get our artist a new hotel room, because apparently the presidential suite at the downtown Loewes Hotel smelled like urine. Aside from that, the artist’s tour manager made it known that he was very unhappy about the production value of the show and the ticket sales. It’s funny how much you cross your fingers and hope when you are putting on a concert. The artist can pretty much walk at any time and still collect his paycheck. So you have to believe me that when I tell you that when the third opening act was coming to a close, we had no idea if the headliner would come on at all.

He went on stage…for 19 minutes. “Please stop throwing glow sticks at my fucking face.” Those were his last words before he stormed off stage, like the Swedish pussy that he is. With 1200 e’d out DU students I thought a riot would surely follow. Instead, the opening act, a fresh mash-up DJ named Kap Slap, went on for another 2 hours and burned the house down.

At some point, I went down to Ingrosso’s green room and stole his untouched alcohol and started raging backstage. I realized that everything was fucked. GlowFest would never touch Swedish House ever again, the show was probably $25,000 in the red, but when I looked out into the crowd I realized everyone was having a good time. And sure concert promoters are in the business of making money, but there was nothing that we could really do. It was a strange type of acceptance. I’m sure before this is all said and done there will be nasty lawsuits and I may even get served to appear. But at that specific moment I didn’t care, and I still don’t.

After the show one of the cameramen totaled our rental car…no insurance. That will be a bitch, but there was no way you were going to bring anyone down. We did it, and maybe we failed but it’s over. I was a part of something that most people will talk about their whole lives and never try…and it’s on film. My image, if this show ever sees the light of day, ruined. Half the shots of me include me chugging some sort of alcohol or making politically incorrect statements.

Looking back on it, it was the best time I’ve ever had. Sure we were doing everything on a bare bones budget, and when you are tightly packed with a group of people like that you feel like you are going to rip someone’s throat out. But I also felt like a fucking star. Cutting lines everywhere, people asking what movie we were shooting, my ego swelled to an unhealthy high.

Now that it’s a few days later, I miss the crew, I miss the people. I miss Denver. Now I’m back to my boring life, doing boring things and I already miss the spotlight, even if this was just an amateur school project. But if it does come to fruition, that one network exec thinks that this eccentric group of gen Y’ers might just be ridiculous enough for America to root for, I promise I’ll drop everything and be right back on tour. Because let’s be honest, I’m much better at acting like a moron than doing anything that actually contributes to society.

Mile Highjinks

One of the stars of our show. He's not the Playboy model.

Is there really a greater weekend all year than this one? Few things are as American as ironically wearing a confederate swim-suit in an empty lot full of 10,000 other idiots and blasting some random chick in the family tent at night. Memorial Day weekend represents everything that I believe in…excessive drinking, the beginning of summer, the end of school, a day off from work and the Indianapolis 500.  Even though, I won’t be attending this year it brings a smile to my face to recollect on some of the fondest memories I’ve had in that coke lot. I’ve set couches on fire, watch someone cut their intestines open while slip n sliding over a broken glass bottle, I’ve seen people collapse of heat stroke and I’ve seen a 65 year old woman’s tits. Welcome to Indiana.

Though the crew dwindled every year, I always looked forward to hijinks at the Speedway, and after a sweltering 2010 even I packed it in last year and just took a party bus to the track. Alas I won’t even be making it to the race this year, but I did want to give some quick advice to those who might be making their first pilgrimage to the track.

-       It’s going to be 95 degrees on Sunday. Bring at least 3 gallons of water per person. Bring sunscreen, 40 pounds of ice, lots of food…and 30 beers per person…you will run out.

-       Benny Benassi is playing the Snake Pit before the race on Sunday. Listening to Cinema on molly might sound good in theory, but I assure you that the last thing you want to do in 95 degree weather in the beating sun and during a 5 hour race is to further your body’s dehydration.

-       Go out in Broad Ripple Friday night, hang out at a pool all day Saturday, aspire to have your tent pitched downtown by 5pm…make sure setting up the tent is the first thing you do, it’s not an activity that is enjoyable while blacked out.

-       Stop drinking after lap 150 if you want to have a chance of driving home.

-       The coke lot is fucking huge, don’t waste your entire Saturday night/Sunday morning wandering around looking for people, join someone’s epic set up contribute some tailgating games and have people come to you.

Have fun everyone, I wish I could be there…but I’m going on a little trip a mile high to become famous, in fact let’s have a little chat about that.

Last time I went to Denver I went to go on a ski trip with a bunch of friends and 2 chicks. Said chicks misinterpreted how we advertised our version of a ski trip. In the kingdom of bro, “ski trip” means…ski from 8am-4pm. Drink from 5pm-5am, get your 3 hours of rest, rinse and repeat. Some people can’t handle that lifestyle.

This time we are going to film a tv show and throw an edm concert. We got 2 new chicks, a playboy bunny and a DJ. I was very, very transparent on the type of things that we would be getting into this trip. We even had a party on a Wednesday night as an audition to make sure these girls were on board with late night raging and belligerent antics, they passed. (Note: I did not clear this with the La Quinta Inn Cherry Creek, so if you live in Denver and you get a call from me at 5am this weekend, it most likely means we have been evicted and I need to sleep on your couch.)

So what the fuck are we doing in Denver? What is my involvement and why am I writing about it now? My roommate throws shows…more specifically college ragers with DJ’s. This Sunday specifically he is taking Sebastian Ingrosso of Swedish House Mafia to University of Denver. Furthermore, we are filming a television pilot of a reality show that chronicles the Glowfest production team and myself as we tour the universities of the country throwing concerts and exploring our surroundings accordingly. It may not be the highest concept show competing for airtime, but it’s a fuck ton better than storage wars.

My role is to chronicle the whole thing the way I know best, by writing. With little other responsibility on the road, I expect to be quite the wild card and to often get in trouble. I don’t really know much about music but I’ll be focusing more on what else every city offers. Famous bars, sweet rivers to white water raft, cool bridges to bungee jump…that’s my shit. What we have is a mash up of Anthony Bourdain, Real World and Behind the Music. Check back often while I’m on trips with the tour to see what’s happening in real time, or follow me on Twitter to find out what’s good on the road.

Every drunk guy that has ever been over-confident has said something along the lines of: “dude we should totally film our lives. We’re so awesome.” I’m not awesome (well, I’m pretty cool,) but I also know that when you see a car stalled on the tracks get smoked by a speeding train, it’s hard to look away. Often times, that’s what life on the road can be akin to. 

And even if our pilot doesn’t sell it will be evidence some day that one time, long ago we fucking nutted up and did one of those ideas you come up when you are super loose at 4 in the morning. And there is obviously the possibility that I will completely ruin my image by doing this, but let’s be honest I have enough skeletons in my closet that running for public office is highly unlikely. In fact I’m pretty sure I’m on Bloomington’s Most Wanted list, even though I routinely cruise into town leave it in pieces and hop on a flight back to the west coast laughing. For those of you that are around this weekend, we would love to see you and rage…maybe you’ll get a cameo in episode 1 and have all your long lost friends and relatives write on your Facebook wall like I did last week. And remember, no MDMA this weekend at the track.

Next stop: Denver.

Insanity Defense

Some people define insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  If that is indeed the definition of insane, then I have a pretty bad problem. Perhaps I’m just uncreative, but I wake up every Saturday at about noon (This can be adjusted to as late as 3pm based on the epicness of the night before) Usually I’m not too hungover on Saturdays. This is of course because, even if I start drinking as soon as I get home from work and stay up until 5 in the morning, I am limited to a maximum of 12 hours of consecutive drinking. 

Most Saturdays I will walk to Subway, devour a meatball foot long in under 45 seconds and then start drinking. It’s not necessarily because I have a drinking problem, I just don’t know what else to do. But it’s beautiful in California, you live on the beach. Ah yes, of course. Go to the beach on a Saturday. Well, you see I do. But when you’re 25 years old you don’t build sand castles or fly kites anymore. I either go to a beer garden and start drinking pitchers of German beer or I play beach volleyball drinking vodka out of water bottles.

Of course no one forces me to drink all day Saturday, I could play volleyball sober and yell at my teammates when they fuck up, or I could choose to get drunk and not care. I think I drink for the same reason that 12 year olds in small towns fuck each other and do heroin and shit, they just can’t think of anything better to do. And sure I go surfing and it’s fairly difficult to imbibe when you are in the middle of the ocean, but since I spend all week at the gym working out my glam muscles I rarely have more than an hour in me when I’m out there.

Another issue I am running into is visitors. If you live in South Dakota, you may not have a constant influx of people coming to visit you. I am not self-absorbed enough to think that people actually come to LA to see me, they come to LA to fucking rage and I have a nice couch. But when every weekend turns into a 48 hour bender, my life becomes that of a permanent host, so I am living every weekend as if it is the only weekend I will ever spend in Los Angeles my entire life, because that’s the tour a visitor wants. And visitors like to party when they are on vacation…I’m literally on the 5^th consecutive hosting tour and I’m literally falling apart. These last two specifically took a lot out of me, but I am more than happy to do it.

Saturday I woke up after a fairly calm Friday night. I felt decent, and felt even better after my shower beer. Knock down a few more pints at breakfast while watching the Chelsea game (I just can’t do bloodies) and I was sufficiently lubricated by our 2pm volleyball match. The next 12 hours I spent drinking in various venues across western Los Angeles, stayed up super late and then found myself watching Saturday Night Live drinking a personal bottle of wine at 4:30 in the morning.

This is where most people call it a weekend. Go to a pool tomorrow, maybe take a hike. Read a book in a park, play golf…not wake up 6 hours later and go to a block party sponsored by a bar…right? But your buddy has the red-eye home…last day in LA…ok fuck it, let’s go grab a few Lokos at the 7-11 and check out this party .

Holy fucking shit…the Hudson block party was the most epic street fair I have ever experienced. Every girl there was under 120 pounds and had the jappiest most awesome sunglasses and short shorts. I’m not usually into that look, but yesterday I had a constant tummy tuck just looking at all the exposed midriffs and revealing tank tops. 2 bands playing at any given time and about 500 females wearing their sluttiest darty outfits from their sorority days at USC. West Hollywood isn’t my thing, but there hasn’t been talent like that assembled since the 1927 Yankees.

You can see where this is going obviously. Playing injured (after a hard day partying in the 90 degree sun, the last thing I needed to do was throw on a tank top and do my best 21 year old frat boy impression) I put on a Michael Jordan with the flu-esque performance and housed 20-30 beers on a Sunday. If I wasn’t so tall and prime for solid weight distribution I have to imagine I would be super fucking fat. And what was my reward for raging all day with a couple crazy Australians and my visitor from back home? That’s right, a total fucking eclipse. A fitting ending to an outstanding weekend.

So what are the takeaways to this tale? There has to be some moral here, else I could have just said, I got drunk Saturday…and Sunday too. Well the moral is this, blacking out on a Sunday has a silver lining, I don’t remember anything from Mad Men or Game of Thrones last night forcing me to re-watch this evening, thus giving me something to do. The second takeaway, I need to stop drinking like a fucking asshat and expecting differing results. I woke up in a cold sweat at 5 AM today and sat in the shower for 2 hours shivering like a meth head. It’s pretty much how every Sunday night/Monday morning ends up for me. So I either need to cut down on my drinking, people need to stop visiting, or I just need to accept my plight that I’m just never going to feel good on a Monday. I can compound my Sunday hangovers to Monday hangovers, but I don’t know if the future value of my physical health, is worth the 24 hour deferral as it usually makes it worse. Conclusion, I am insane.

I wonder if I ever committed some heinous crime if I could point out to the judge my reckless behavior and convince him of an insanity defense. I live my life like a watered down Dorian Grey (hedonist, fucked a lot of chicks, drank a lot, never aged...kind of a villainous Peter Pan) and I suppose you have to take the good with the bad. Living this lifestyle is fun, but it's taking it's toll. Although instead of a portrait that I keep hidden in the attic, I'm sure my liver bears the evidence of my insanity. But I must be doing something endearing because I literally had gay guys hitting on me like all weekend. It's kinda awkward, not flattering like I thought it would be...I should stop putting so much emphasis on working out my triceps, I think they are super into that and perhaps I need to stop playing “Call Me Maybe” during pregames, that's probably sending a mixed message.

A Star is Born

As you have no doubt heard, yours truly made an appearance on the show Off Their Rockers last night. I'm finally famous. No not really, other than being stopped by a couple kids at USC today and some wall posts and tweets life continued on as normal. My general take away from the whole experience is I can't believe the whole world saw me wearing a fucking Hollister shirt. Honestly, I'm burning that as soon as I get hope. Those pink shorts are legit, and I'm glad I got to rep IU, but christ, sitting on a park bench wearing an Abercrombie spin-off brand marketed to 12 year old wannabe surfers? Unacceptable. On any other day I could have been wearing a fresh horse with a half pop or a frat tank, but no...they caught me in the one Hollister shirt I own.

Keep in mind that was shot 8 months ago, I was new to LA and living on a couch, doing laundry wasn't near the top of my to-do list. When that guy offered me $460 for the sandals you have no idea how drastically that could have improved my life. I was thinking, yay I'm going to cash this check and move into an apartment today. I'm going to have a non-ramen meal tonight! Alas when that jackass walked away and some doofus revealed that his stroller was actually a hidden camera, I blindly signed the release form and stormed off in a fit of rage. I assumed of course that it would never air, the show sounded stupid, oh Betty White and a bunch of old people acting zany...watch out! But then ironically while hosting a bbq for the cast of my new tv show my Facebook wall and Twitter feed start blowing up...holy shit bro, you're on tv. I would like to thank everyone for bringing it to my attention, I recorded it and had a drunken viewing with everyone that came to the party. Hollister and a Blackberry, what a douche.

Making things even more interesting was when I checked my email later a buddy of mine had told me that he could get me a staff writer job on this Betty White show with old people, it's like Venus was in retrograde or some shit and this was all a fucking sign. More likely that not though whether I start writing for Betty White's Off Their Rockers, whether the pilot I shoot next week sells to a major network, I will probably never make another appearance on prime time television. I'm not an actor, I'm not going to win any awards, I had my 45 seconds of screen time (your boy actually looked decent in HD) and it's over, but I continue to dream. Some of you may wonder why I spend so much of my time writing a blog full of worthless drivel and conjecture. The simple answer is: I love it.

I was never great at anything growing up, I peaked athletically at 12 and was a member of a handful of teams in high school and after but I was like a second string kinda dude. And that was ok, I mean being on the team was cool, the road trips were fun, and due to my tall and athletic build I looked the part, and that was all that really mattered to me back then. Writing was the first thing that I realized I was better at than other people. I mean I can fuck most people up in foosball and I have a higher pension for partying than most, but unfortunately one can't really make a career of either unless you go on to be the "party douche" on a reality tv show. But writing is something I can actually do, I can unlock so many chambers of my imagination and create worlds where the rules we live by don't matter and it's just fucking awesome.

And I realize that this blog will not make me rich or famous. It's not outrageous enough to be Tucker Max, there is no schtick, it's just a middle class white kid being moderately funny while being outrageously racist and sexist. But it is real I suppose. I don't do this blog for that though, I do this for me, to keep me inspired, to keep me going. Sure I share it with the world, or the 200 or so of you that read it, but this is what excites me when I wake up every day...when I'm out drinking, oh shit I've got such a great idea for a blog post. It's hard to write a screenplay or a manuscript it takes fucking forever, there is no recognition and after like 12 months of work that shit probably won't sell and it will feel like an epic waste of time. At least with this I get a Facebook "like" or something, and that means the fucking world to me. It validates what I'm doing as relevant, someone out there appreciates what I'm doing. But if not even for that the fact that I can click POST and I know that I have completed something, something very fucking small and seemingly insignificant, but I did it. It's there, it will be there forever. Anywhere you go with an internet connection you can find out how mad I am at myself for wearing a stupid fucking Hollister shirt in Westwood that one time I was on a hidden camera show.

So that's what's up. Right now I'm getting ready to star in a pilot about college music touring. I will play an exaggerated version of myself and probably pretty quickly be typecast as the party douche...I've actually put a lot of thought into it. Like even if this show is a breakout hit, it probably has about 3 seasons in it before people get bored by the premise and then it's either become an MTV VJ or I don't know make Spring Break appearances until I'm 35. I used to think, "I would never go on a reality tv show, it would ruin any career I have afterward. Nothing worse than a 40 year old washed up reality star." But what I have come to realize is, 'who fucking cares?' I would rather be a 40 year old washed up reality star than a mid level manager who wears a tie every day. Fuck it, I'll write a reality show about washed up former reality stars. The premise will be, "I sell insurance now, because it's a commodity but people buy from me because they want to know if i ACTUALLY fucked Tina in the ass." No, fuck that selling insurance would be awful but you catch my point.

I can never give it up, my fingers tell my story and hopefully the story has just began. And I'm sure I've got a long way to go before my passion actually nets me a single dime, I'll probably have my next 3 novels and screenplays rejected as being 'too sophomoric' or 'lacking a sophisticated edge' but some day I'll get there. I actually find it the most fascinating thing about being here in LA. Say what you will about this place, it's full of shallow horrible people, a crooked industry and miserable urban sprawl. But people out here fucking go for it, and it's the coolest thing in the world. I rag on struggling actors, wannabe models and even starving writers and comedians. But the thing is, a few of them will pop off, and maybe I'll be one. Maybe my roommate will or that guy I went to college with, or that chick I banged that one time. It's the fear and excitement of the unknown. And a lot of people will crash and burn and maybe move back home, or maybe they'll buy a surf board and sell necklaces on the Venice boardwalk and live in a tent behind Mao's Kitchen, but they will never say they didn't try.

I often use this blog as an outlet for my hedonistic fantasies that I would always be too insecure to speak, but feel much more confident writing. Often I will rant about people that are unlike myself because I'm a human and I fear what is different. But I hope what you always take away from this place when you visit is that I am a big proponent of fucking going for it. I feel like if I wrap my message in a clever formula of hate and humor I might be able to sneak it by without sounding like a Tony Robbinsesque "Carpe diem" banner. But that really is my only life belief. So I'll keep going, I'll write because I love it. It will consistently be above average, and hopefully some day it will turn excellent, and maybe just maybe I'll write something important some day and I'll be interviewed. In the interview they might even play that clip from that time I was on a hidden camera show...and I'll still be wearing that fucking Hollister shirt...but at least I'll partially redeem myself with the pink shorts.

SoCal Face-off Venice vs WeHo

There are two types of family vacations when you're growing up. You either have the dad that goes on vacation and takes his family with him or you have the family vacation. The former is a middle aged man who takes the breaks in his children's school schedule to head to Florida and get get loaded and kick it on the beach for a few days. If he is smart, he hits up the parents of his kids friends and suggests that they all go to the same destination so all the adults can party together and the kids can go fuck off by the pool or something. The family vacation is where a father takes the opportunity of going somewhere new to spend quality bonding family time. This type of trip includes rigorous schedules and pretty much no alone time for anyone.

I was fortunate enough to grow up in a family that took many many vacations, and my parents were even cool enough to sync up with where my friends were going. Unfortunately, when I wanted my dad to go get fucked up in the sun with his contemporaries, he was more likely to take me and Drew Storen to a random baseball field inland to take some batting practice when all I wanted to do was walk to the sand bar and look for some fucking sand dollars. As I grew older my family vacations became more and more isolated, they would roll their eyes when I asked if we could drive 30 minutes down the Florida coast to go visit a friend's condo and my dad would stress that these trips were about family time.

Don't get me wrong, kicking it in Florida, golfing, going on day cruises, fishing, is all sweet...but I got to a certain age where I would come back and hear stories about finger blasting random girls from Omaha in the hot tub, and I just didn't have the confidence to do that on my own. Mind you my little brother was about 11 during these years so he was worthless to me. At this point (8th grade and beyond) I learned that the secret was to have my parents toss a friends' parents a couple gs and send me with that family. Oh these high school trips were epic. Panama City at 14...are you fucking kidding me, I think i still have the original tally sheet of all 102 sets of tits we saw. Gulf Shores at 15...here's a little anecdote about that trip, if you are going to burn a confederate flag in Alabama, it's a good idea to have stolen a taser from a military outlet store earlier in the day (hint I did and used it) and Senior year I went to the Bahamas sans parents and got into all sorts of drunken debauchery.

My Junior year of high school though I went on my last school era family spring break. We had a time share in Bonita Springs and it was sweet we had a private beach, a golf course, lazy river...all the great shit you want at a resort, but late night I would find myself kicking it in the hot tub alone, just waiting for some female in a similar mindset to come on down. Then my dad would come out and be like "come to bed it's midnight" and I would just want to say "go away, I'm waiting for a chick as lonely as I am to come down and ask me if I want to go play doctor in that swamp over there" but instead I would say some shit like "I can't sleep." Anyway, no one would ever come and I would just sit there and scheme the lies I would tell to my friends when I got back to school about how I had a threesome in the steam room.

So anyway (this is the longest intro I have ever written I'm sorry it really should have been it's own post) I get back to my room of the condo and flip on the tv and for whatever reason it's on Discovery (at 16 I am NOT into that shit) but instead of some boring doc about global warming I see a simulation of a crocodile fighting a great white shark and I became acquainted with the greatest television show ever, Animal face off. I spent the next 6 hours watching teams of nerds recreate epic battles of nature using science statistics, robot replicas and then build out an entire computer recreation of how a battle between two of nature's fiercest competitors would go down. It was extremely violent and always ended with one victorious the other in pieces. Tiger v Lion Elephant vs Rhino were a couple of my favorites, but in a society of reboots, this is the series that drastically needs to be brought back. In the spirit of Animal Face-Off I am going to start a new series that pits two neighborhoods against each other in a 3 round fight. I will use scientific measurements as well as subjective judgment of intangibles. I can't do the "in my projects" segment anymore because there are too many neighborhoods in LA...but I can't battle royale them all fucking day...so let's start with a bang shall we? West vs. East. Venice vs. West Hollywood.

PRE FIGHT: Let's meet the competitors.
Mike lives at Speedyway and Rose, inches from the Venice Boardwalk. He is in outside sales and never schedules a meeting before 10 AM so he can wake up every day and surf. He has a 3 bedroom with his buddies from college, a state school in the SEC and they party hard and are all making mid 50's.

Erin lives in a 2 bedroom just north of Sunset and Crescent Heights with her best friend Angie, who is in fashion. Erin is a junior manager at a boutique management firm and tells a lot of her friends that she lives in Laurel Canyon, even though she really just has a cookie cutter apartment in WeHo.

Let's flash back to what each of the fighters had to say at the pre-fight press conference.
Mike: Venice is the greatest place in America, I can wake up in the morning and surf, ride my bike down to the South Bay to get a bite to eat, play some beach volley on the way home and then still hit a bonfire at Dockweiler before I go to happy hour. West Hollywood is full of pretentious nobodies and gays, neither of which I am fond of. Venice also is a bit rough around the edges, there is a good mix of people here, it's not just a bunch of rich white jews working in the industry, we have diversity. There is a great local flavor, fun vibes and amazing night life.


Erin: I really love how you praised the diversity and then made two offensive stereotypes about West Hollywood in the same breath? Which is it do you hate gays and Jews or do you love diversity? Or were you just trying to say 'Venice has black people and that makes me feel cultured.' West Hollywood is an amazing mix of art, culture, food and life. I am close to anywhere I need to go. We are bordered by Beverly Hills and Hollywood so if I want to go out to sceney club I can, but I'm also only 10 minutes away from my beautiful nail salon on Rodeo. Most importantly West Hollywood makes me feel safe, that's more than I can say about Ghost town over there...do you know why they called it that? Because so many people were murdered on those streets that people assume some of them must still be roaming around.


Whoa no love los there...let's just get to the fight, shall we?

Round 1: Dinner

Erin: So, today I had a client (and my old roommate) sell a script so we are out celebrating! The story is about this really like independent woman, who is balancing life as a twenty something year old writer in Los Angeles while also going through the daily challenges of growing up in such a crazy city. Her dad's production company bought it, but he like totally wasn't involved, it's just a coincidence. So we're going to her favorite restaurant tonight, STK on La Cienega and then we are meeting more friends for sake bombing before we go out, it's going to be PERFECT. We have a table at several places later so we'll see what happens. Yay so excited! Oh and did I say my friend is a client? Expense account!


Mike: Yo, can I get a Red Bull? No this is your fault, I fucked off work after my noon meeting to meet you for 'a drink' at the Erwin. 17 cocktails and $300 later, I hope you enjoyed that fucking sunset. Oh ya, this is my mate Max, he's in town from Atlanta, so we have to show him a good time tonight. I don't fucking know where we're going to dinner...we're supposed to pregame here from 8-12 and it's already 7:30. Hold on a sec, I think I just heard someone. Yo Mark is that you? Mark and Nick are my other two roomies. Oh fuck ya, Mark and Nick picked up steaks at Whole Foods, fire up the grill boys. Oh shit, and you got beer? You guys are legends. So, ya we have this deck on the roof with a grill and shit, it's cool to kind of overlook the boardwalk as the crazies are coming out and the high tide comes in. Sometimes fighter pilots will do tricks and shit or helicopters will catch a couple people catching a shag on the beach, it's quite entertaining.


Erin: So dinner was amaze...and now we are finishing up, oh wait. Sake Sake BOMB! Um, this...and we are going to the Churchill at The Orlando next, we have a table reserved upstairs, one of my guy friends was in this pilot with Channing Tatum and he might show up, oh my god he is like so hot.


Mike: Chug it you little fag! Now shots! Oh hey there, ya, it's kinda rocking here, we don't have much of a plan at this point. I'd say there's 40 people here 20 chicks, 7 I'd fuck. Max is about to pass out, Nick just gave him some uppers to snort but he might be past the point of saving. I don't really know where we're off to next, walk to Townhouse I suppose?


* DING DING DING *


Round 1 goes to Mike. While a free expensive meal is always a good time and sake bombing rarely disappoints, Mike managed to do a hotel rooftop in a non douchey way, throw a banging house party and eat some Whole Foods (the most epic Whole foods in the nation resides in Venice) steaks. It was a close round, but Mike takes it barely.

Round 2: Early night
Mike: Shit we're all out of beer? Jesus Nick play something else, that's the 7th fucking time I've heard 'Levels' tonight. Oh score, the tequila fifth, unopened! It doesn't appear we have any chaser, but whatever, we're men. Anyway, the party has thinned out a bit, a few people went to O'Briens, some went to Nikki's but I think we're heading to Circle Bar because a few of these bitches want to dance. Max isn't making it out, but Mark's 3 co-workers are still hanging out and they are dressed like absolute sluts, I wouldn't be shocked if we paired off here before we even left for the bar.


Erin: Churchill is so great tonight, and the bartender is making me these martinis that are like a little dirty but still smooth and I think I've had 5. My friend, the one that sold the screenplay, oh her name is Liz, well she is talking to Ryan Reynolds' brother and I think I saw them kiss. The only shitty thing is that my ex-boyfriend might be coming here so I might leave and go to Rage with my gay friend Chad in a minute, it's super awesome though because the dance floor is amazing and I still don't have to pay for drinks! Oh...um, sure, I'll come with you....Oh. My. God. Ryan Reynolds is buying me a drink.


Mike: Ya we're still here. The girls left, I don't even know where. Nick ordered some molly though and now we have to wait for his drug dealer to get here. It's like almost one and I'm shitfaced, I could go to sleep right now...right next to little Maxie over there, but I can't give up on the weekend. Tomorrow is Sunday, I'll probably wake up just long enough to watch Game of Thrones and Mad Men, and then the next thing I have to look forward to is that fucking 8 AM Monday Morning meeting.


Erin: Holy fuck Lady Gaga is playing an impromptu mini-set tonight, and Ryan Reynolds took my number, this is the greatest night ever. Chad's on again off again is a bouncer here too and he gave us V.I.P. wristbands and a table with a bottle. Greatest night ever? Oh, I kinda feel like a bitch though because I left Liz at Churchill, whatever, I'm sure she'll figure it out. I heard they were heading to Palihouse for a night cap, maybe I'll meet them later.


*DING DING DING*


A near knockout for Erin. One of the plagues of the pregame/house party is getting trapped. This is Not New York/Chicago...it's game over at 2, there are no second chances. Erin meanwhile is killing it. She met a celebrity and is dancing her face off at a Lady Gaga concert right now, probably drinking straight from the bottle while standing on a table. Meanwhile Mike is moving a plastic bin in front of his bro Max's mouth. It's going to take a strong round from Mike to bring this home for the west side or a colossal meltdown from Erin.

Round 3: Late night
Erin: Chad, I have to get out of here, I'm pretty drunk. Can you get me a cab? Oh, you're making out with bouncer guy, nevermind, I'm a big girl, I'll do it myself. Excuse me driver, can you take me to Palihouse? I don't give a fuck that it's closing in 20 minutes...take me there! So, Rage was awesome, but I need to go find a boy that doesn't like boys...speaking of which I should text Liz. No you know what, fuck that bitch, she should have come with me. I should text my ex-bf Eric, why the fuck did he come to Churchill and crash my Ryan Reynolds party. What a dick!


Mike: This is where we fucking thrive baby! WOOOOO I am on top of the world, this place is called the Victorian and this band is like, the fucking spirit child of the Beatles and the Stones if like one of them was a chick and the collective power of one of the band's had a dick and fucked the other one's vagina. I can literally see every note that this dude plays, it's like fucking Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. And look at these 3 lovely ladies we met, this is Amanda, Maggie and what's your name...Liz! They were out east doing some bullshit at a hotel earlier and they came here because they heard this Australian band or whatever was playing...oh that's these guys? Yes they do rock! Oh what? That was the last song? We just got here...ah fuck the lights are on. Mark, do you have anything in your emergency stash?


Erin: Thank you for stopping at D'Amore's sir. Um, muchas gracias por stoppingo at el pizza place-o. Oh, you're not Mexican? Togo where the fuck is that, I thought that was a frat party thing. Oh you're from Africa? Oh...well ya, I don't speak African. Sorry. You're nice, what's your name? Oh, you aren't talking to me? It's a blue tooth....ohhhhhh...Well ya, so Palihouse was closed, but I got pizza!!! Yeeeeya bitches. Haha, *hiccup* this is the greatest night ever...Ga Ga ra ra ra Want your bad Romaaaaance...I don't know where the fuck that whore Liz went. Probably sucking Ryan Reynolds' brothers dick. I would fuck a Canadian I guess. Um turn left up here sir, home sweet home...Laurel Canyon...oh fuck where are my keys, wait where's my purse?


Mike: Mark you fucking devil dog. You never fail to impress. Line up 6 shots Nick. Should we play a little drinking game ladies? Never have I ever stayed up late enough to watch the sun rise. Everyone drink because we're doing it tonight. Nick throw your iPod back on, that dumb cunt downstairs is out of town. After parties are the best, this shit only happens on the west side. I'm going down to the kitchen does anyone need anything? Ah fuck I think we're out of ice. Oh, Liz do you need something? Oh you're wondering where my room is...well I assure you there's nothing that awaits you in there except for my passed out friend and presumably a bucket of his vomit. But why don't I show you Mark's room, he has an excellent collection of abstract art that you might find interesting...


The ref steps in and calls the fight...TKO for Mike!!!


You know, it's hard to say I didn't see this coming. Erin had a strong first couple rounds, but I feel she just didn't have the stamina to hang in there for the later rounds. Some may say that Mike is guilty of using performance enhancing drugs, but we don't do testing here in the SoCal Face-Off. Erin still had a pretty cool night, it's just that Mike outpaced her and eventually fucked her friend, and we don't even know if Erin made it safely back into her apartment. Some may also attest the win to Mike having a stronger supporting cast, and he was probably also helped by the close proximity to everything in Venice, he was on foot the whole time, not at the mercy of cab drivers.

That does it for the inaugural So-Cal Face-Off. Check back often, and feel free to make suggestions for the next fight, maybe we'll even do a Los Feliz v Hollywood undercard or something next time. For now, the belt remains on the west side and Erin remains hungover. Until we meet again my friends, this has been SoCal Face-Off.

Absolute Value

Note: When I refer to $5 foot longs in this post, I am referring to the delicious sandwich. I value dicks at at least $6.

This morning I went to an event called LA Demo Day. It was basically a giant orgasm party for people that are in to the whole entrepreneurship thing, which I suppose I am a part of. The set up of the show was similar to the TV show Shark Tank, a bunch of nerds pitched their IT/mobile start up and asked some richer nerds for money. These motherfuckers were smart. Some guy has taken LSAT prep classes and put them on the iPad more or less cutting off Kaplan's big swinging dick, another dude invented a $1000 a month all you can fly airline, and another dude is licensing original photography off of instagram and selling it off as art, which he then prints on canvas, laptop covers, iphone cases etc.

Needless to say, I was out of my league. I could picture myself going up there and being like "well my app is a social media, geolocation game that incentivizes users to share with their friends and collect tangible rewards." That actually sounds pretty smart, I'm impressed with the sentence I just wrote. However, these rich nerd judge/panelists whatever the fuck they were got to ask questions and they shredded some of the shittier start-ups to bits. They always asked something like, "there are a thousand other people doing this, what makes you better?" Lots of people bullshitted around this question because they didn't know their own competitive advantage. I think I would have said something like "um, because we're marketing to frat guys...and frat guys are the coolest kids on the planet." In a room full of nerds I wonder how that would have played, they probably would have all had unpleasant flashback memories and reached for their inhalers. But among lots of words like valuation, and blue ocean and exit strategy, I picked up on one other fascinating question, "What would you do if I gave your company 2 million dollars?"

Now that's interesting, would you spend it on advertising, r&d, onboarding more employees? I would probably piss it all away on personal travel expenses and write it off as research, at the end of the day my company would go under and no investor would ever give me another penny, but I would travel the world on 2 million dollars of someone else's money and have those memories. I'm not trying to flip a billion dollar company, I'm just trying to fuck around all over the planet, preferably with someone else's coin. You may call it unambitious, I call it realistic.

But it's fascinating when you start thinking of money in terms of items and not necessarily dollars and cents. For example, I look at 5 dollars at a foot long meatball marinara from Subway on garlic herbs and cheese bread. Often times I will be at a bar and be contemplating one more beer, but then I will weigh whether or not I really think that the additional ten minutes I will buy myself at the bar will be as satisfying as the chipotle southwest sauce dripping off my cheek the following afternoon. That is because I think in terms of a broke bro. But there are absolutely millions of these scenarios. Any monetary number you throw out there to a group of people will instantly metabolize a different vision in each individual's mind. Let's take 10 subgroups of types of people we probably know and logically estimate what they would do with $50.

A responsible adult - Tank of gas
A thirty year old city dweller - Trader Joe's
A college student - a BIG night out
A chick - the sales tax on her Tory Birch order
A hipster - Thrift store skinny jeans
A music buff - one concert ticket
A bro - a bottle of goose for the pregame
A stoner - a bag
A rager - a bag
A raver - 1/4 a bag

The above chart doesn't indicate what that person always spends $50 on, but if you handed them a crisp bill and said go spend this now, that's what I'm guessing each sub-category is likely to purchase. For example, even though I have nothing in my refrigerator I would either go buy some booze with it or perhaps 10 foot longs (surprisingly they keep. When I do on the rare occasion spend $50 at Trader Joe's I wonder if I would have been better served buying 10 foot longs and putting 9...maybe 8.5 in the refrigerator.)

And the whole concept scales way up too. Think of tax refunds for example. I usually get about $1000 or so back. The responsible thing to do would be to pay off some credit card, pay a parking ticket, maybe make an investment, or put it towards a home improvement or auto project. Fuck that nonsense, I usually book a flight to see some ex girlfriend I've been wanting to fuck or go on some bro vacation and go absolutely insane, because that's what you do when you are in your 20's and are given a lump sum.

That is just how we are programmed to think. I'm sure someone else might think "shopping spree at nordys!" But if you're that person don't for one second think you're fucking better than me, your $400 jeans are no better an investment that the table I chipped in for in Vegas. Yes your jeans will keep better, but my memory of Vegas will be intact even after I gain 10 pounds. Boom!

But as we grow older those ideas will change. We'll no longer see dollar amounts in terms of bar tabs and festival tickets will give way to health insurance premiums and diapers. I'll stop complaining about the fact that a gallon of milk costs 4 bucks even though a 1 oz shot of liquor at a bar costs 9. It's a maturing outlook in regards to one's own personal finances. I suppose we all hope to get to a point fiscally when we no longer look at price tags. The whole thing is fucked, we need more money when we're younger and we want to...we NEED to party hard. I need to get it out of my system now so I don't subconsciously hate my wife when I grow older for tying me down too soon. When I'm 40 I won't want shit, I'll be one of those curmudgeons who just wants to come home, drink a beer and watch SportsCenter...and a boat, I'll need a boat too but that's it.

But whatever, until I get rich or tragically die poor before my true fame and value add to society is realized, I'll be operating under my Subway currency and evaluating every decision I make based solely on this flawed system...running out of gas with $300 worth of alcohol in the trunk.

A History of Sexting

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The Bicycle Thief

Get on your bikes and ride!

I recently acquired a bike. It is now my favorite possession. It is actually the second bike I have acquired in so many months. Would you like to hear the story of how I came about each? Of course you would.

When I moved to Venice from Encino it became painfully obvious that I needed a bike. I fucking hate driving, I hate traffic, I hate my mom’s car, I hate that my ghetto fabulous Grand Am was sold without my approval, I hate the crank windows, I hate running out of gas in the middle of Pico because my fucking gas gauge doesn’t work. Alas, the less time in that piece of shit the better. I started scouring Craigslist day and night, and what I found was the later it gets in the month the more price sensitive I can become as a buyer.

As a gainfully employed man who views certain things as a want as opposed to a need, I am in a position of power when it comes to bargaining. All these unemployed fucks in LA need to pay rent and the closer it gets to the first, the more they are willing to let you rape them of their possessions. I set a price of $20 I was willing to pay for a used mountain bike. Unfortunately, being a tall, muscular German, very few bikes fit me. In fact, it appears that the average bike is made for someone who is about 5 foot 7. I unsuccessfully tested about 10 bikes until a 12 year old Mexican child in the valley showed me a large mountain bike. It was perfect, it was his older brother’s and his older brother was out of town. He was going to use the 20 bucks I gave him to buy marijuana and then tell his bro that someone stole it.

Fuck ya I deal in grey market goods. I will also buy things made in sweat shops if it lowers the cost because I have no compassion.

Needless to say, when I got home with my brand new mountain bike I realized that the brakes, the gear shift and most importantly, the chain were all broken. The tires were flat, it was completely worthless. I suppose the frame was intact and for a mere $200 a bike shop probably would have tuned it up for me, but I just chalked it up as a loss. I got hustled by a Mexican child in Tarzana, I didn’t even try to get my money back, the kid won. Immigrant 1, me 0.

Months go by. One of my roommates gets a brand new fixie, the other restores his old mountain bike, they go on nightly adventures together of which I am excluded. They start a biker gang and brag about going off jumps and riding with no hands, 10 year old fomo consumes me.  In this time I fail to acquire a Coachella ticket on Craigslist and no one responds to my bicycle inquiries anymore, I almost give up and have my mom ship me my old roller blades.

Then one day I see a posting from a little black boy in south central post about his 21” frame 26” wheel green mountain bike that is “ready to ride” for $30. I figured I would drive out there, offer him 20 and then he could go around the block shoot dice for an hour and turn it into 40.

And I thought I had seen poverty…I show up on a dilapidated block of east 54^th street, it was like one of those lots with the abandoned pick up trucks with no tires and dolls that had their eyes poked out and a basketball hoop with no rim. There were also rabid dogs barking at me, it no lie looked like the setting of a fucking DMX music video. When the kid wheeled out the bike I handed him $30 and then ran. As I started loading it into my car a homeless man offered to help. Usually I tell homeless men to go fuck themselves, but I have a feeling that homeless guys in the hood probably still pack heat. I accepted his help and tipped him accordingly.

I made it back to Venice with my brand new, well new to me, bicycle. I decided to take it on a test ride, that test ride took me all the way down the coast of California to Manhattan beach. Past mansions, past beach bonfires, past a hot surfer lagoon, it was magical. Along the bike path I gave the friendly biker wave to all who passed. I was now part of the club, I had a fucking bike.

I arrived in Manhattan beach feeling like a regular Lance Armstrong. Look at this motherfucker, I just biked from LA to the South Bay (Ok so it’s only like 12 miles, but I haven’t exercised in a minute) then I realized, oh great I don’t have a fucking bike lock. Whatever, I biked right into a bar and demanded a slice of pizza and their hoppiest IPA. I looked retarded but whatever, I earned it. At this point sitting on a bar stool, I started to realize that my ass was in serious pain. I had always heard the bike team guys talk about this affliction in college but I never really understood why. I lived on my bike when I was a kid, I used to fucking bomb down hills in my buddy’s backyard and do backflips into Geist. I used to go off 12 foot jumps and fall and bleed all over the place, because that’s just what you do when you’re a kid. Back then I recall no such rectal affliction. But now I seriously felt as though I had been ass fucked…also on the list of things to get, a softer seat. Honestly why the fuck do they even make hard seats? Is there a market for people who really appreciate glut pain?

I made my way back to Venice and it was much less enjoyable than the ride there. The sun was going down, all the attractive people were gone and I found myself vacillating between gears 1 and 2 because my calves felt like I had spent the better part of an hour doing star jumps.

I started timidly trying to ride with no hands, and I finally figured it out. I gave the “what’s up nod” to cute girls that would ride or jog by, like “Ya…I can ride with no hands, n*gga aks (sic) about me.” I even stopped at an ice cream truck on the way home and got the Spiderman popsicle, the one with the gum balls for eyes.

I could taste the salt in my mouth when I finally arrived home, and I could still see the waves crashing against the shore when I laid down to go to sleep that night. One thing was now for certain, if anything is in a 5 mile radius of me, I am biking that bitch. Not because I’m socially conscious or any of that bull shit…in fact if I could make my bike give out emissions I would, just because I am that apathetic about the green movement. I want to live on Earth at its peak, I don’t want a better life for my children, I’d be jealous if they had it better than me.

I’ve only had the bike now for 5 days…and I got a nice little lock for it, and I’ve been tearing Venice to shreds. I have a biker gang of my own now and I pity the man that I catch trying to steal my bike. I was a fucking nerd back in the day, and I stayed inside and played lots and lots of violent video games, I have been fantasizing for years to be given the chance to murder the fuck out of someone. I dare you crackhead…please try to be my bicycle thief, I’ll press forward, down, forward, Y and rip out your fucking spine. Fatality bitch. (This is interesting, this is what happens when I blog at a bar. This was a nice piece about how much I enjoy the ocean and biking along it and then 5 beers later it is quickly turning into a violent fantasy…but really I just wanted to make a Mortal Kombat reference)

I do look forward to using my bike more and more and pressing the limits of riding under the influence. I have heard rumors of DUI’s from bicycling, but then again I have also heard rumors of the boating under the influence and if I’m floating I’m operating at a .3 minimum, I’ll just buy a helmet and call it a wash. People of California, buy yourself a used bike off Craigslist from the ghetto and join my gang, I may even make custom embroidered jerseys.