My Life

On Sunday night we had dinner at The Lodge Steakhouse on La Cienega in Beverly Hills. The place was almost empty and for the better part of the night we had the entire large dining room to ourselves. For some strange reason this dark, rustic, wood-grained, hunting-outpost-themed restaurant was blasting hair-band hits of the late 70s and early 80s from a speaker inconveniently situated directly above our table. Aside from that oddity, though, the meal was delicious and the service was good. I’ll assume that there were so few other diners because of the holiday, because the steaks were perfect, it wasn’t that expensive, and it’s in a great location. Give it a shot if you’re looking for a nice New York strip.

Note: Just before chocolate desserts arrived in the nearly-deserted room, the hostess sat a party at the table right next to us. It was — coincidentally — the former neighbors of my fiancée’s parents: Hilary and Haylie Duff, along with Kevin Connolly (”E” from Entourage).

According to bonkworld’s Amazing Days Calculator, “This is day number 12,386 for people born on June 26, 1973.” I’m mildly irritated that I didn’t do something special for my 10,000^th day on November 10, 2000. Must make a mental note to celebrate my 15,000^th on July 20, 2014. Hopefully by then I’ll be able to zip over to Maui with my jetpack.

The “assisted living facility” where my grandmother lived — Indigo Manor in Daytona Beach, Florida — just sent my mom and uncle an automated form letter. It was something along the lines of, “Please tell us how satisfied you are in the care we gave your loved one.” They’re really not very bright over there.

If my mom and uncle are still too upset to do so, I’m going to be the one sending them a reply: “We were completely satisfied … right up until the day you dropped her and broke her femur, then allowed her to spend over 36 hours in agony before telling anyone what had happened. Y’know. Right before she died because of complications from the emergency surgery. Aside from that, though, you were terrific.”

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Major bummer: The Samsonite® Black Canyon 22″ Wheeled Duffel that I ordered last week is out of stock and won’t arrive for at least two more weeks. My dad’s got one of these and I’ve been hunting for it online since early last year. I finally found one and was hoping it would be here in time for Memorial Day. We’re going to a friend’s wedding in the Ojai Valley. Now it looks like I’ll have to use my old craptacular bag. Damn.

A few days ago a friend from a long, long time ago recently reinstalled AIM and contacted me out of the blue. While we were chatting I started to mention something about a road trip I’d taken in another life. I was going to say that I had once gotten lost in Washington D.C. on my way to Philly via I-95. What I found interesting was that — after years of living in Los Angeles — I almost referred to the East coast’s massive superhighway as “the” 95. My brain caught my fingers before I’d typed it that way, but it started niggling at me. In LA we honor all of the highways with the definite article. It’s not just 405. It’s the 405. You’d never tell someone, “Take 101.” You tell someone, “Take the 101.” Nobody — afaik — on the East coast refers to “the 95″. The only highway in Florida that gets a the is The Turnpike. In LA every highway gets a the.

And how about this? In Florida if you’re telling someone how to get from Jacksonville to Tallahassee you would say, “Take I-10 West until you smell the Seminoles.” But in California if you’re explaining how to get from Century City to Santa Monica you would say, “Take the 10 west until it ends.” Same road.

Anyone else ever notice that?

Last night we celebrated the birthdays of Aly & AJ with a big bash at Les Deux in Hollywood. My girlfriend fiancée and her cohorts planned the whole thing and it was pretty rad. The girls made a grand entrance on a caravan of roaring motorcycles, the Plain White T’s performed, and I spent most of the time eating sushi from the Geisha House and visiting with Frankie and Becky. MTV was there filming for “SuperSweet 16: The Movie” (debuts July 8 on MTV), so the paparazzi was out in full force. (I posted some photos to my flickr account, but there are a ton more at wireimage.)

I saw this sign on A1A in Daytona Beach while driving back from my grandmother’s wake. It’s the kind of thing she would have thought was pretty damn funny.

I really can’t think of a better name for a “gentlemen’s club” on the ocean.

“The cheap stuff” in LA right now is creeping up to $4.00/gal. It’s ridiculous.
17.478 gal x $3.65⁹/gal = $63.95

Anna S. Albanese
10/28/1920 - 05/04/2007

My grandmother passed away died this afternoon. I hate “passed away”. It’s so … passive. Nana was not a passive person. She was incredibly, astoundingly active. She’d been pretty limited for the last few years, but that’s not really how I’ll remember her. When I was in elementary school I used to be very proud that she was the president of the local Italian American Association. She could crochet like a mother#$@*; she was an amazing cook; she was in all sorts of women’s clubs; she had a full-time job for a long, long time after she should have been … I don’t know. She just didn’t “pass away”.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. But I hate the thought of seeing the obituary in the paper when I get to Florida. I remember when my grandfather died I hated the obituary. Hated it. My uncle (or someone) had a bunch of them laminated and made into bookmarks and I just hated the idea that a life could be summarized in two or three column inches like that. So here goes …

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Friday Five: Things Through Which I Drove on My Way to Work This Morning

1. The Sepulveda Pass
2. a story about wind farms off the coast of Delaware on NPR’s Climate Connections series
3. the I-405/US101 construction zone
4. the red light at the bottom of the Hayvenhurst off ramp
5. what appeared to be a freshly made bowl of puffed cream of wheat in the parking lot of 7-11

I uploaded some gnarly photos — of the sudden, random eye infection I got this morning — to my Flickr page. I’m fine now, thanks.

On my desk right now is a football-shaped bowl of Willy Wonka’s Everlasting Gobstoppers. I poured three entire boxes into the bowl a few days ago and am now in trouble. You see, I’ve been methodically eating them by color. I started with red and then went to orange. The problem is that now there are only purple, yellow, and green remaining. I had been planning on eating the green ones next. If I do that, though, then there will only be LSU colors left in the bowl. They are an SEC rival, so I just can’t do that. I can try to think of them as the Lakers, but I just don’t care enough about basketball … and the Tigers will still be in the back of my mind. I can’t eat the purple ones because that would leave yellow and green and that’s just hideous. I can’t eat the yellow ones because then there will only be green and purple and that’s even worse. I’m thinking that the best course of action in this situation is to just put the whole bowl on Molly’s desk.

At the top of a tall, round building casting a shadow on the highway — right where Sunset meets the 405 — is a restaurant called West. I ate there Friday night with my girlfriend fiancée and her mom. The view of the city is just incredible and the bone-in New York strip was one of the top ten steaks I’ve ever had.

At some point in your life, you’re going to be asked to find a bat stretcher. This is a terrific story.

I’ve gone through this experience myself, so I know the feeling. It happened to me while I was loading trucks on the midnight-to-ten shift for Old Dominion Freight Lines. One of the dock managers told me that I had about 30 feet worth of furniture to load onto a 28-foot trailer, and that I’d better find a trailer stretcher in time to get the truck on the road.

I’m also ashamed to admit that I’ve done this to every new guy at almost every place I’ve ever worked. At Infosearch Media we told junior tech support guys to find a cable stretcher. When I worked for Regeneration Technologies we told fresh meat that we had to find bone stretchers. When I rowed for Florida Crew we told the rookies that the only way they’d get to sit in a boat was if they found a rigger stretcher. Even at Subway we used to tell kids that the sandwiches were too short and they had to go grab a bread stretcher.