Monday is trash day.  And my dog, understandably, is terrified of garbage trucks.  She is most concerned with the large extending claw that reaches out and picks up the cans two at at time.  Again, this makes sense:  it’s at her eye level, it thrusts from seemingly nowhere, and on grumpier mornings I’ve told her that, if she doesn’t stop sniffing, I’m going to let the claw take her away.  Perhaps the pound should have done a more thorough investigation into my post-smoking temperament.

Today, however, I tried something new.  We were walking parallel to the truck, and she was cowering.  I noticed the garbage man was going to make a left after the claw was fully retracted, so I stopped and sternly told the truck to “go away.”  And it did.  It turned left.  My dog looked at me with her big dog eyes.  If she had more of a developed frontal cortex and less of an understanding of species differentiation, I assume she would have thought, “Thanks, Dad…you’re my hero.”

This imagined exchange made me feel warm inside.  And I realized an infrequently-discussed benefit of being a parent:  it’s a great way for something stupider than you to make you feel more important than you really are.  I get it now.  I can’t wait until my wife gets home to tell her the exciting news.

Location:  The corner of Cahuenga and Hollywood, 11AM Saturday morning.

You:  Mid-70’s gray haired minx wearing knee high patent leather boots and a white tube top.  Though blood was pouring out of the place where your eye should have been, you seemed non-plussed.  Funky handbag.

Me:  Early-30’s brown haired male wearing a white vneck and jeans.  No recent facial wounds.   Meet for coffee or sutures?

While waiting at a stop light, I watched an older gentlemen in the Albertson’s parking lot back his $325,000 Bentley Azure into a homeless man’s shopping cart full of wares.  He then got out and screamed, “do you know how much this car costs?”  The homeless guy responded by throwing what appeared to be an apple core at the Bentley’s rear window.

I think that was the correct answer.

1.  The only way the street two blocks over can smell that strongly of marijuana is if there is a grow house on it.  Given the dealer that lives right next to me, I figure I’m right near the epicenter of the West Los Angeles pot trade.  It’s nice to feel like you’re part of something.

2.  The Craft service person from “Scrubs” is either storing her boxes of cookies and candy bars in a dumpster-like box, or had thrown away what amounted to several hundred dollars in unopened snacks.  Regardless, they are now inedible, as I absentmindedly  threw a bag of my dog’s poop atop the numerous 100 calorie packs of Pecan Sandies sitting inside the container.  Sorry.

1.  On Sunday, I got home at 1:30 AM to find my landlord, hose in hand, watering his front yard.  This went on for at least twenty minutes.  I know this because I found it so strange that I went out right before going to bed to see if he was still doing it.  He was.

2.  Today, while it was pouring in LA, my landlord’s wife took out the hose and washed off the driveway.  This is a semi-weekly occurrence.  Given the downpour, however, I thought she’d let it slide.  I was incorrect.

I think I have found the source of Southern California’s water shortage.  It’s an adorbale, older couple from Oaxaca.

1.    My neighbor has decorated his house for Halloween by hanging a real, rusted scythe from his front door, and gluing a blood-soaked mannequin head to the steps below.  And all this time I thought he was just a harmless pot dealer.

2.  If I keep enthusiastically praising my dog every time she goes to the bathroom, she’s never going to have the motivation to achieve anything greater.  Her next pee will be greeted with a, “Yeah, yeah…pretty good.  But what else you got?”

I’ve been looking to buy a bike helmet for several years now.  Oddly enough, I don’t own a bike.  I do, however, own rollerblades.  And while they sell a helmet specifically for rollerblading, purchasing the skates was embarrassing enough.  I don’t want the sales people to know that I am now looking to accessorize.

I always tell myself that I am delaying the helmet purchase because of cost.  It just doesn’t seem prudent to spend money on something so frivolous when my supply of deep cut v-necks is running dangerously low.  Still, I know I should own one.  So about once a month I find myself in a Sports Chalet, carting stacks of helmets to a distant mirror, testing them for comfort.

“No, this chin strap is too tight.”
“Close, but the padding is just a hint too thick.”
“A hundred dollars?  Please.  That’s three bottles of good bourbon, and ten of the stuff I bring to dinner parties.”

There is always an excuse, and always a vow, as I start my car and attempt to fix my over-producted hair in the rearview, that next time I’ll buy one regardless of price or comfort.  Yeah, next time for sure.

The real reason, of course, has nothing to with price or comfort.  Helmets look ridiculous.  Bulbous, jagged, and frequently Ed Hardy-ed up with garish designs, they can’t help but face-smack your vanity.  Granted, they aren’t intended for style.  They’re intended to keep you from having to spend 4 months relearning how to say “toothbrush”.  But as a substitute I had in middle school once told me, “You’ll never be successful if you’re both ugly and mean.”  Yet helmets are both.  Undoubtedly ugly and arguably mean (expensive), they don’t have much going for them.  Especially when American Apparel has so much stuff that’s both cheaper and more form-fitting.

But the other day at Target, as I turned over a sympathy card (sympathy card!) to see show much it cost, I realized that perhaps my convenient thriftiness was getting out of hand.  This wasn’t an “every second is precious” moment, but rather a realization that I already do plenty of things to destroy my image.  I drive a tan Ford Focus, carry a puffy green lunch bag, and have far too many Lady Gaga songs on my iPod.  And whenever I get the chance, I take that cavalcade of humility down to Playa Del Rey and rollerblade (rollerblade!) by the ocean.  I might as well own a helmet, and a bejeweled one at that.

So, along with the card, I bought one.  It’s white, and awkward, and has the highest safety rating.  If I fall, hopefully it will keep me alive long enough to hear others make fun of me as I struggle to take Just Dance off repeat. 

First off, the heat wave is over.  I think your body can tolerate the walk from your Nissan Xterra to the front entrance covered by some sort of breathable fabric.  Secondly, you’re not that big.  Sure, you’re in good shape.  But you’re walking into a gym.  The gym for people who are too poor for 24 Fitness and too homophobic for the Y.  The gym where Westside gang members tag the bathrooms in between sets of prison tat-expanding preacher curls.  Wake up, you chest-waxing douche:  You’re no longer the prettiest pony in the stable.

Now look, I’m sure you were the best tight end at your D3 college (second most receptions your sophomore season?  Date rapetastic!).  I’m sure you’ve found the perfect balance of protein, carbs and rage.  I’m also sure that you get a twitter of a boner each time you glimpse your obliques in the mirror.  Unfortunately, I don’t.  So let’s try keeping your plump delts locked in their cotton prison until you get to the locker room, okay?

P.S.  Was that 311 I heard blaring from your Nano?  Nice, bro.  NIIIICE!

Regardless of the time of day, every traffic update in Los Angeles involves an accident large enough to warrant news coverage.  The 101 has a seven car pile-up in the left lane near Barham Boulevard, and/or the 405 is backed up from the 605 because of a collision involving a big rig and a motorcycle.  I know that everyone has places to go and no one likes being delayed.  Still, there is a glaring lack of sympathy for those most directly affected.  How come they never tell you if the people involved in the crash are okay?  Obviously, sometimes they aren’t.  But just once I want to hear, “The 10 East is slow and go because of a multi-car accident at Rosemead…but as your staring at the wall of break lights ahead of you, find comfort in the fact that everyone involved, while a bit shaken up, is doing just fine.”  That’s the kind of good news that I don’t mind sitting in traffic for.

Stop it.  Stop making me tear up.  All I’m trying to do is take my dog for a nice long walk and then you start with some tale of families reuniting or seemingly-naïve inner-city school reform and I’m sobbing like a Sicilian widow.  I have no idea why a story about Ukrainian college students working at a Thruway rest stop makes me overwhelmingly sad with both joy and regret, but it does.  Should Scott Polakoff’s confession that the OTS was the bank regulator primarily responsible for the financial crisis make me shudder (shudder!) in front of an oncoming jogger?  I don’t think so.  Though she’s too polite to admit it, I’m pretty sure my dog is embarrassed to be seen with me in public.

Ira, nobody appreciates having his irony shell pierced by a guy who looks remarkably like Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s.  At least not in public.  Admittedly you provide a sincerity counterbalance necessary to prevent spinning off into an oblivion of sarcasm, but others don’t really need to see my Lake Wobegon moments.  This has nothing to do with masculinity.  This is about sanity.  I’m tired of having to cover up my shakey voice when my wife gets home from work and finds me wet-eyed and making dinner. 

“Are you okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. Of course.” I reply.

(Pause)

“It’s just, you know, Sarah Vowell’s adorable lisp…”