Streets of Fire

Health Questions

Over the weekend I managed to cozy up to a patch of poison ivy. Not on purpose; that would be dumb. Though I’ve always wanted to try what they do in deep African countries where the natives attempt to build up a resistance to poisonous plants by rubbing their bodies with them, but I’ve never really gotten up the nerve. Anyway, I could see the rash forming on my right arm and hand during the past couple days, and with a long weekend and a major vacation on the very near horizon (hold on to your Instagrams) I decided to take steps to clear up this issue immediately. So I went to one of those walk-in medical centers because I don’t have a primary care physician (why get a doctor if they regularly bring bad news?) and I needed a fast treatment. Here are two series of actual exchanges that arose during the visit.

Check-in lady: [sitting in front of me] ”Last four of your social?”
Me: “5555.”
Check-in lady: “Do you consider yourself Hispanic or non-Hispanic?”
Me: [long pause] “I’m told I am a non.”

The second came when the doctor prescribed a steroid to stop the itching and spread of the poison ivy.

Me: “Are there any side effects?”
Doctor: “Yes. Some people get a lot of energy and become very hungry, so if you eat you may see some weight gain.”
Me: “Okay. I guess what I was asking is ‘Can I still drink?’” 
Doctor: “Yes. Have fun on your trip.” 

Concordia movie (a synopsis)

Here’s what I’ve got thus far on my script for Concordia, the movie about the doomed cruise liner in Italy, due out Summer 2013.

So this dude, Giampiero Consigliere, is just nailing this hot chick. This goes on for about seven minutes before the opening credits start. There is graphic nudity. “Walt Disney Pictures Presents.” We see flashbacks to the attractive couple drinking wine and eating huge platefuls of spaghetti and breadsticks, and now they are back in his room just going at it, hard. “A John Lasseter film.” We then see that the couple is on a boat called the Costa Condordia (the camera pans out of the room, off the deck, and into the sky to reveal the ship’s name and movie title). “Condordia.” Consigliere is like 35, tall, has olive-colored skin and sort of looks like a younger George Clooney. Maybe the door to the deck is open and a breeze is flowing in and blowing the curtains all around as they make love, but I haven’t really thought about those details. There is a bottle of red wine on the bedside table, a mirror on the ceiling and the girl he’s banging is Scarlett Johansson or at least a very close lookalike. And I mean the guy is just absolutely crushing her. January Jones is also considered for this role, as is Giada.

The camera then cuts to Armando Rigatoni sitting in his condo, which overlooks the Roman Colosseum and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. He is a man in his late 50s or early 60s, but still super good looking, like George Clooney but slightly older. His job is an Italian cruise ship crash investigator, and you can tell because he’s reading through a case currently under investigation and there are pictures of crashed ships all over his apartment, and plus you could totally tell from the previews. The phone rings as he is lifting a forkful of spaghetti to his mouth. He picks up the phone and on the line is Benicio Serafino, Rigatoni’s boss. “There has been an accident,” says Serafino, played by George Clooney. “You have to get down here right away.” Rigatoni puts on a black fedora, a really cool jacket, shuts off the light to his apartment and opens his door to the hallway, so that all you see is the silhouette of him and his fedora and sweet jacket set against the white glow of the hall. The entire scene just looks rad. Mysterious music plays. He lights a cigarette and heads down into the street (raining of course), jumps onto his parked Ducati and heads for the beach to hop on his speedboat and speed off to the crash scene on the island of Giglio. He’d hoped to retire this week. But those plans have been called off. As has the dinner date he had tomorrow with his daughter, but that’s a subplot that alludes to his strained family relationships and isn’t as interesting but does serve to develop Rigatoni as a central character.

We then flash back to a few hours prior, when everyone was partying on the ship as it is headed straight for the rocks, there’s a huge crash scene with tons of explosions and the captain is drunk off vodka and falls off the ship into a giant bowl of spaghetti, some fighter jets fly in and bomb the bad guys who are trying to steal some gold treasure hidden deep inside the ship’s vault, there’s a helicopter fight and a beach invasion to capture and kill the cowardly captain scene, and slow-motion rappelling down the side of an overturned boat, horses, dogs, lots and lots and lots more graphic nudity (full frontal of everyone in the film, including director John Lasseter), and Rigatoni solves the case and ends up with Scarlett Johansson because the dude she was nailing at the beginning dies in the flamethrower battle scene.

Gwyneth and Heads

We recently rented the movie Contagion and while I’ll say that it was rather slow and uninteresting (a pity rental), I was curious on why Gwyneth Paltrow chose to do this film. I’m not giving anything away by saying she dies because her death comes at the beginning, but there is a scene where, lying dead on a table, the autopsy-doer pulls her scalp down over her face to reveal her brain. It was super gross.

But then I remembered back to that movie Seven, and how Gwyneth’s head winds up in a box at the end, and I started to wonder: Why would such a great, pretty actress agree to doing another role where they have to cut into her head and face? I’m sure it hurt something awful when Kevin Spacey chopped off her head in Seven (not to mention he probably just nonchalantly tossed it in a box, so double ouch), so if I were her, in every new movie I was thinking of doing, I’d ask the obvious question of whether my head was subject to getting cut into or, worse, off.

Maybe the actors union has worked out a sweet getting-your-head-sliced-into/off bonus, but I’m not aware of one or what an actors union does in general (food related?). Taking a role that far must take a lot of dedication as an actor, but I guess some will go to great lengths for art. By the way, a diseased pig that indirectly touches Gwyneth is responsible for the global outbreak in Contagion and her scalp getting cut off. Sorry to ruin the stupid art for you.

Tim’s Shirts

A buddy and I recently developed a business concept that we think is going places. It’s kind of hard to explain but I’ll dumb it down: you visit our website and buy a shirt, and then we’ll give a second shirt to a person in need in Africa or Mexico or someplace. Right now we are calling the business Tim’s Shirts. Neither of us is named Tim, or knows a Tim. It’s just the name of the company, kind of like how there was never a person named Nike, IBM, or Walt Disney.

Regular-neck, V-neck, Hawaiian or wife beater: you pick the type of shirt you want, then we’ll sell it to you and give one away to a poor person if we remember to do so. This aspect of the business will probably require setting a reminder on our phone or jotting down a note like “Send shirt to China or Africa” on a napkin or Post-It, as neither one of us is organized enough to keep track of that crap or enjoys doing charity things.

I also need to Google the addresses for China and Africa, and maybe Nebraska if that place has poor people who need shirts.

Also, before they are even considered, potential recipients of the free shirt will be asked to fill out an application with their name, address, annual household income and social security number so that we can make sure these people legitimately cannot afford to buy a shirt for themselves. They’ll also be asked to consider making a donation to Tim’s Shirts LLC as a thank you for our generosity.

Shipping fees will not be covered for the free shirt, so the recipient will need to pay for that. It’s probably only twenty or thirty bucks, so not like it’ll break the bank unless they are a complete loser or something.

Either way, the key thing to remember is that whenever you buy a Tim’s Shirt, someone, somewhere has a high probability of receiving a free shirt so long as they meet our requirements and aren’t like overly poor.

To get started, you can visit www.timsshits.com. We forgot the “R” when we were registering the domain and realized the error after it was too late. We’d have bought another URL but that would have cost more money, and plus I don’t remember the fucking login or password.

Perhaps, once the ball gets rolling, we’ll run a special sale where, say, you buy five shirts and we give away six. Such a promotion would need to be done in a way whereby we still make money even if we give away that extra shirt, because this is America and America wasn’t built on giving things away for free. While I’m at it I should also mention that any shirt you buy from Tim’s Shirts will be approximately double the price of a shirt you’d purchase elsewhere, as we have to cover the cost of a shirt that we might give to a kid we’ve never met in a place we’ve never been.

But when I sit down and really think about it, does anyone really not own a shirt? Not one? Plus, it’s not as if you actually need a shirt to cover your upper body. A blanket will do fine if it’s cold, or just go shirtless in warmer climates. Heck, an extra pair of pants will work if you get creative and tie them around your torso. People can live without a shirt.

We’ve actually run into this problem before as we were developing a similar business model, only with shoes. We were about to launch the business when we realized that everyone in the world already has at least six pairs in their closet, so why even bother with such a stupid idea?

Barefoot

Shoes, socks, bare feet. When I walk into someone’s home and don’t know their domestic habits, my eyes turn to their feet. If they’re wearing shoes, I’ve just stepped into a nightmare.

A shoed homeowner means I need to keep my shoes on while indoors, too. To seem polite. “Make yourself at home,” they’ll say, Reeboks hogtied snug around their feet as they prance into the kitchen. “Can I get you anything?”

“Permission to take off my shoes?” is how I want to reply. But of course, I just say, “I’m great, thanks.” And then we proceed to catch up in the kitchen for half an hour, standing up on our fully shoed feet, juiceless and crackerless because I was too bashful to ask for anything. And we aren’t even cooking or doing anything food-related. We’re just standing there in the kitchen, talking about weather or someone’s sick aunt, while the sofa and ottoman in the nearby living room taunt me from afar. “Sit down and rub on us with your bare feet,” they seem to say. And I want to rub my bare feet on them. I really do.

I enjoy being barefoot indoors whenever possible. Hot or cold. It maybe goes back to being born, and how, for most people, you aren’t wearing shoes or socks when that happens. That would be weird if people were. “It’s a boy,” the doctor says, “and he came with the new Air Jordans.”

Close friends understand my shoes-off practice. I’ll slip off my slip-ons (I hate laces) at their front door, even if they are partial to keeping their shoes on inside. If my friend is really close, after I remove my shoes I’ll take it upon myself to turn off all the harsh overhead lighting within my immediate vicinity and turn on the softer lamps, in order to truly make myself feel at home. I’d want the same for them, and overhead lighting is something I despise more than being forced to wear shoes indoors. Particularly if that lighting is in a kitchen, and we are standing around in it talking but not cooking, without juice or crackers, while wearing shoes - all this, despite the living room and its more conversational and relaxing sofa-based setup nearby.

Speaking of sofas, let me tell you another aspect of your house that I don’t like: a couch that is arranged perpendicular fashion to the television, such that your head must be cocked to the left or right in order to watch it. It’s alarming to imagine a scenario where I’d have to watch the Kardashians in such a manner, especially if I was also forced to keep my shoes on my feet at the time, as an overhead light grated my eyes. And what if this person also didn’t have a high-definition TV, or a coffee table or ottoman to rest my already-uncomfortable shoed feet on, or didn’t naturally make juice and crackers available to guests, or only watched cake shows or Lifetime or soccer? I trust I’ll never be friends with someone who makes me live through that. 

“Why no socks?” people ask as they point to my toes, wiggling around freely without any unnatural encumbrances. “Don’t your feet get cold?”

“No, I’m fine,” I reply. But if I really wanted to get into it with them I could ask why, if they wear socks or shoes indoors, they don’t wear gloves, too. But I wouldn’t want to seem rude.

Next Time I’ll Warn People Before Bringing A Manatee Into The Office

Live and learn, that’s what my grandfather always used to say. I tend to be one of those people who has to learn through experience, and sometimes, that means learning the hard way. When I was a kid, I put my hand on a stove burner and quickly grasped the concept of “hot.” It took a speeding ticket - 62 in a 25 - before I quit driving like a bat out of hell. And then last week, when I abruptly showed up at the office dragging a manatee in behind me on a dolly, well, let’s just say I’ll give people a heads up the next time I plan to do such a thing. I will definitely warn people before bringing a manatee or other marine creature into our office.

Hindsight is 20/20, though. And I believe it was a Frenchman who coined the term faux pas, specifically for incidents such as this one.

The funny part of all this is that - despite the weird looks I’ve been getting since I brought the sea cow into work - people don’t understand that I never make the same mistake twice. I remember, as if it were yesterday, the searing pain from that burning hot stove on my hand back in 1985, and that awful feeling in my gut when I knew the police officer had caught me going way too fast in ‘98. And I will always - forever - vividly recall the shrieks of co-workers as they watched me pull a 1,100-pound aquatic mammal into our office building the other day, shouting things at me like, “What the hell?” or “What is that?” and “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Whoops, my bad. Should have given people a heads up. Poor judgement call on my part.

Don’t get me wrong though: I plan to bring more sea mammals into work more often just so they can see what life is like outside of the water. But before I do, I’ll let people know my intentions.

Add this one to the blooper reel of life.

Without these little life lessons, what would we become? Our adult lives are built upon the paths we take and the decisions we make. Sometimes, the decision can be as simple as, say, which deli meats to put upon a sub sandwich. Then you have more difficult considerations, such as keeping the sideburns or letting them flourish. And then other times, you wrongfully decide to tell absolutely no one that you plan to lug a 10-foot herbivorous ocean beast straight into the halls of your workplace, slopping water and mucous all over the floor and walls as it flops around, and groans, grunts and barks audibly in a futile attempt to send signals to the rest of its herd, which, unfortunately, are still moping around the warm waters of the south Atlantic somewhere.

All this, apparently, to the chagrin of your bosses. Um, hello? I don’t recall anything in my contract that said we couldn’t bring marine mammals into work. Not totally my fault here, though I will take a majority of the blame on this one.

Minivan or SUV? French fries or potato salad? Notify coworkers that you plan to bring a helpless endangered species into the office - or don’t?

Apparently, I chose wrong. It is but a minor snafu on this journey we call life. And In the end, I’ve learned a valuable lesson: People don’t like being surprised by manatees, but hopefully they’ll be more accepting of the conjoined dugongs I’m hauling in next week.

On Set

Out of nowhere this week, I managed to snag a role as a Union soldier the set of Steven Spielberg’s new Abraham Lincoln movie. This was, apparently, payoff for the gobs of cash that Cristin and I have mercilessly blown into the stratosphere while eating and drinking at higher-end bars and restaurants around town, all in what has been a fruitless attempt to land a celebrity sighting in the big town of Richmond, Virginia. Production wrapped the other day in Richmond, so I figured it was over, my chances of a spotting were crushed. But the shoot itself wasn’t done; it moved 30 minutes south to Petersburg, then an inside tip came my way, and less than a day later I found myself on the set of an 1860s cityscape dressed as a Yankee. I didn’t really know what to expect going in as an extra, but I started thinking: what if I got there and they looked at me and were like, “Whoa, Ryan Gosling, why are you here? We didn’t realize you were in this movie. But here’s a uniform, so put it on and go over there and say something on camera and flex your rippling chest muscles.” And then I’d do that, and continuously get mistaken for Ryan Gosling, and get tons of hot babes, and make millions as an actor and get humorous blogs made about me. It wasn’t really that glamorous, in reality. In fact, as an extra, you are essentially the lowest form of human being on a movie set, herded around like cattle by a few guys who are paid to be complete dicks to you, though you aren’t “you”; you are a face in a crowd. Just do what we say, don’t look at the camera, and don’t any of you shit-pieces fucking touch a goddamn thing. I will write more about the experience at a later time, because I think you can get sued or something if you talk about it publicly (I didn’t read the contract just like I don’t read iTunes agreements). Needless to say I did get in some major, up-close star sightings of [WARNING: I’m about to do some heavy name dropping] Daniel Day-Lewis in full Abe Lincoln, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Steven Spielberg. It was an experience of a lifetime but quite honestly after the first couple hours I was done, and then I had 10 more to go and plus it was hard to pee while wearing that costume.

StockWatch: Wayne Enterprises (WEP)

$15.47 (-$0.08)(-0.51%) Photos of a bruised Bruce Wayne have led many investors to fear the conglomerate’s CEO is suffering from lymphoma.

-The Onion’s “StockWatch” featurette

Catalog

I’d traveled to the suburban office building to hand-deliver a package. The guy who was to receive it was out at the time, so I left it at the front desk.

Not one to leave a package behind without a note, I asked the the receptionist for a Post-It. Obliging, she tore off a yellow square and slapped it onto the counter. I began to write my note, but the pen seemed to be out of ink. As one does with a pen seemingly on the fritz, I shook it before picking up a second ballpoint. But it, too, seemed to have run dry. I tried a third, but no luck.

As I attempted the classic last-ditch pen tip-lick-then-shake maneuver, the receptionist - a sweet older lady in her 60s or so - handed me a copy of the latest Victoria’s Secret catalog. The cover featured a photograph of a blonde woman in a state of undress that I would describe as extremely to very-extremely attractive with, if I had to guess, huge breasts. Her face was also along the lines of one of the better faces I’ve ever seen. But why a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and why now? Did the receptionist think I was going to wait around for the guy I needed to see, and would need some reading and browsing material? Did she receive an extra copy that she didn’t want? Did she want me to pick something out for her?

Did I appear lonely?

“Oh, thanks,” I said jokingly, ”but I think we already have a copy of that one at home.”

As I started to explain my preference for black lace or reddish hues (though specifically not burgundy), the receptionist, without saying a word, pointed at the Post-It and my pen.

The lingerie catalog worked as a writing pad, though I still prefer it for the pictures.