Virtual Confetti

One of the plagues of having perfect hair (well, any hair at my age) is having to maintain it.  I go through hair products like a fat kid in Baskin Robbins goes through those little pink taster spoons.  This gel is too wet.  That gel is just right, but doesn’t hold. This pomade feels like Crisco. That pomade smells like bacon. I have a shelf in my bathroom that looks like a spice rack of hair products, and I admit to having resorted to using a pinch of this and a dab of that in order to get the perfect result.  Every day my hair turns out slightly different, and I’m still looking for the perfect product or combination of products that gives me “the look” ™.  It’s much like gunpowder… too much sulfur, and it smokes too much. Too much charcoal and it won’t explode. But when the right ingredients come together in the right proportions, you can be sure Mom will come chasing after you at some point, with the wooden spoon in hand.

So when the coupon came in the mail for one of those expensive specialty foo-foo beauty shops, I jumped on the chance to have an expert sell me an overpriced tub of “the look.” As I entered Foo-Foo, I was immediately greeted by the teenage expert with the awkward, yet familiar, “you’re a man and you don’t belong here” smile.  We soon became friends by the time we passed the curling irons, once she realized I had rudimentary knowledge of hair care products and wasn’t merely purchasing a gift card. After we talked shop about body, volume, sheen, and hold, she settled on the perfect product, which was a type of wax.  It wasn’t too glossy and it wouldn’t dry out, flake, or melt in the heat. Wrap it up!

At this time, I should probably mention that while I was playing in the Disneyland of mop tops, I completely forgot about my own personal Merlin that I regularly see at Sleeping Beauty’s Castle:  Lisa.  I drive 75 miles to see my stylist. She’s THAT good. But she wouldn’t recommend the products they carried at her salon, so I was on my own to find something drier than a gel and less glossy than a pomade. She recommended a cross between a wax and a gel. The product that Foo-Foo girl recommended seemed to fit that bill.

It was a new day in the bathroom. The sun was shining as I unscrewed the lid of this new waxy wonder.  It went on perfectly, not too wet, not too dry, and not too glossy.  Hurrah! Until I washed off the residue from my hands.  Or at least tried to.  Oops.  My stylist warned me to get something “water based,” which I happened to forget when Foo-Foo Tinkerbell was flying through the sky amidst the fireworks.  Main ingredient: petrolatum – aka “BP in a jar.” It didn’t wash off.

That day, I had perfect hair. And that evening, after I showered, shampooed, and shampooed again, I still had perfect hair. I went to bed with perfect hair and woke up with perfect hair. My pillow was smoking a cigarette. For a couple of days, I functioned on a “tease and go” principle, simply tweaking my hair into form without effort.  It eventually did wash out.  I miss the convenience of “tease and go,” but my hair felt nappy, like someone was going to crack a couple of eggs on my head and sizzle up some breakfast.  Come to think of it, I should have mixed it with the pomade that smelled like bacon.

Lunch is a fascinating time to people watch.  I think most people try to make it a social experience… a little food, a little discussion, a little looking around to comment on other people doing the same.  As a writer, it’s common for me to visit my favorite hashery, escorted only by my journal and Pigma Micron pens.  I, therefore, do more surveillance than most of the other patrons.  It can be both an enlightening and amusing experience.

As I delicately sliced off a scrap of my medium-rare tri-tip roast, my attention was distracted by a nearby couple, certainly not delicately slicing anything but my nerves.  It was actually a woman and her young daughter.  A thin, white cord connected Mom’s earphones to her phone, and every few minutes, she entertained a new call.  Social calls, not necessarily between bites.  She stared straight ahead at Daughter, who was entertaining herself with a coloring book.  Between calls, she’d talk to Daughter, and they appeared to have a normal conversation… for about three minutes at a time.  What I found interesting was that the daughter could tell when the call stopped, even though Mom remained in her comatose, forward-looking pose.  It was difficult for me to identify the segues, but somehow Daughter was all too familiar with the behavior.  I found it sad that this was probably considered “quality time” between Mom and Daughter.  At least it wasn’t McDonald’s.

I haven’t been to Blockbuster in years.  Not because I don’t watch movies, but because I’ve switched to Netflix, HBO, and Cinemax.  They’ve closed down several stores in my area, and the one that remains is not well stocked.  But when you need a movie for a film study, and Netflix doesn’t have it instantly online, then you make due with the resources that are available to you.  Rummaging through the glove box and center console of my car, I found the little key-fob card thing with my Blockbuster bar code.  It will have to do.

I’m not sure why I dread Blockbuster so much, but I do.  Every time I go in, I feel like I’m walking through a Goodwill thrift store wearing a tuxedo, and someone I know will point and say, “Haha! You’re RENTING! Go back to 1988, VHS Boy!” It just seems so dirty to me.  Unethical. So non-vogue.  Besides that, they never have the actual movie you’re looking for, unless you’re into farting, burping, teen starlet comedies, of which they have several copies of each.  I refuse to rent them, not only because they’re mind-numbingly atrocious, but because they reek of teen farts and burps.

The movie in question was Rope, which is more than a mere classic from Alfred Hitchcock.  Hitchcock was known for producing some low budget films that didn’t look low budget.  35mm film stock comes in reels of 1000 feet.  At 90 feet per minute, this gives the director approximately eleven minutes of film per reel.  The way the story goes, Hitchcock ran each reel to its full eleven minutes so as to avoid having a few seconds of unused (wasted) film at the end.  Every eleven minutes, he either faded to black at calculated moments or deliberately placed black objects in the camera’s path so as to allow the next reel to seamlessly splice in and pick right up.  Genius, considering the precision timing involved.

Blockbuster? Oh, they didn’t have Rope.  But they did have another Hitchcock classic, Lifeboat. There I stood, waiting in line next to parents holding farting, burping comedies for their teens who, incidentally, were still at home, too embarrassed to be seen in a Blockbuster with their parents.  Years ago, I would be hiding my passé movie selection from the others, dodging random snickers.  Classics?  Grandpa’s movies? This was business, though, which now takes on a “cooler” context.  And that’s when the sales droid amused me…

DROID:  Oh, your card is expired.  For fifteen dollars, I can renew it for a year.  Actually, for ten, since this first one is free!

ME: Yeah, I only come in once a year.  Renew? Can’t I just rent it without the big renewal thing?

DROID: Yes, for $5.47, but you can renew it for ten.  And it’s good all year!

ME: Look, I’m a producer and just need to watch it for a film study. And you didn’t have the exact movie I needed anyway, so this one will have to do.  Normally I’d get it mailed from Netflix, but I need to watch it this weekend.  I only come in once a year, so I don’t need a subscription.  And I already feel dirty for coming here. And old. And unloved.

DROID: But it’s only four dollars more.

*crickets*

ME: Here’s six dollars. Knock yourself out.

This explains why they’ve closed the other Blockbusters, and why this one survives only as a backup to depleted garage sale inventory.

Ever had to kill time because you were waiting for something? I had to pick up my car from the shop today, driving into the Valley. Rather than sit in rush hour traffic, I thought I’d stop off for dinner first. Not long enough. Starbucks was next door, so I killed an hour there. Still not long enough. So here I am, in a parked car, writing about how I’ve wasted the past two hours.

As a writer, I always carry a pen around, so I’m easily able to scribble whenever I have free time like this. As a disorganized writer, I hadn’t thought of taking my current screenplay with me for editing. I improvise with napkins, making sure to tear off the bottom half-inch that bears the Starbucks copyright statement.

Ahh, the world is my napkin, and I am but a felt pen, bleeding into the papercloth. Rorschach would be proud.

Let me start by saying I despise telemarketers.  So when the opportunity arises to exploit their deficiencies and incompetence, I consider it both an art and a hobby to disrupt their industry as much as a single individual is able.

I have friends who smoke.  Being one who frequents Las Vegas, the smoker’s mecca, I’ve grown accustomed to being around smoke on occasion.  I’ve yet to encounter a rude smoker who deliberately wishes to offend me by smoking; smoke is just a byproduct of a nasty habit.  (Their words, not mine.)  When walking down the street, on occasion, I’ll catch a whiff of smoke from a passerby.  Mildly offensive, but tolerable, and certainly not worth the effort to dwell on the incident.  I’m guilty, on occasion, of emitting my own offensive odors.  It’s just something we all tolerate as living in a diverse society.  Now imagine walking down that street, but there’s a person facing you while walking backwards, blowing billowing smoke from a cigar directly in your face, forcing filth into your lungs.  That would be a telemarketer.

So I receive a call at work; the Caller ID denotes a toll-free number, and anyone calling my workplace from a toll-free number is going to be a telemarketer.  Instead of getting the usual monotone droid on the line, the discussion went something like this:

Me: Hello?
Droid: <long pause>
Me: Hello?
Droid: Uhh… hi.  It’s not coming up.
Me: What?
Droid: My computer is supposed to come up but it crashed.
Me: Who are you?
Droid: It won’t even tell me who I called. I’m not sure–
Me: <now panicking> Oh.  Oh no!
Droid: Can you wait for a sec–
Me: Oh no!!  This is bad.  Really bad. What do I do?
Droid: I’m sorry sir.
Me: Oh no! It’s broken?  What do we do? I don’t know what to do!
Droid: I’ll have to call back.
Me: Help!! Help!! Oh no!
<click>

I actually might have been in the mood to buy something that day, too.