Category: Interesting, no?

So, I don’t know if anyone else has the weirdest dreams in
the world—not only do I have super weird and detailed dreams, but they always
have a narrative structure, and I can remember all of them, and they are very
psychedelic, like I’m on drugs, which I am usually not.  The only catch is that I’m like, an even more
neurotic version of myself in the dreams, so I’m the ultimate buzzkill, going “THAT’S
ILLEGAL” or “PEOPLE WILL BE WORRIED ABOUT THIS,” or “YOU SHOULD STOP DOING
THAT.”  For instance, over the weekend I
had a particularly strange one that involved an alligator that had been cut in
half, and how I was encouraging a total stranger to pick up this alligator, and
then use it to get a free Subway sandwich. 
 See–surreal, then totally
practical, like I’m on Salvador Dali’s shoulder going “hey, you know—that clock
isn’t going to be able to tell you the right time if it’s dripping like that,
man.  Paint it again!”

This all makes perfect sense, right?  Half an alligator will always get you free
stuff at Subway.  I also like how I’m still
frugal in the dream, even though it’s a dream, and I could be the Emperor of
Dreamville and be a Dream Money millionaire. 
I swear, sometimes in the middle of the dream, my mind goes all meta and
I’m like “you know—you could be flying right now, and instead you’re in Subway
trying to use an alligator to get a free turkey sub. That is stupid”    And
right there, I laugh at myself.  Then
again, Stephan told me recently that he had a dream he switched his bank
account to Chase, and in the dream he was like “oh my God—this is so
convenient!  There are so many more ATMS
in the Chase network!” So maybe I’m not alone in this one.

Here is a sampling:  when I was in grad school, I had this recurring dream where
I was reading books, and in the dream I was like “oh my God, this is so great—I
am totally going to finish the reading assignment before seminar!”   I was always disappointed when I woke up from
that one. Years ago I had one that I was in the middle of the ocean, and Oprah
Winfrey was there, and she was making Polynesian boys jump off a pier but there
was no way to swim back, and I was like “Hey Oprah, just because you’re Oprah
doesn’t mean you can just send those Polynesian boys off the end of that pier
with no way to get back.  That’s not
right.” 

Because Oprah listens to me in my dreams, ok?  That is how practical I am.    Also,
I am totally sure that a psychologist is going to end up reading this post one
day and will leave a comment like “dreams like this mean you are crazy.”   Speaking of psychologists, let’s see what
Shannon has to say to this post.

Actually, I brought this up because I am actually very
interested to see what other people dream about.  What are dreams for, anyway?  Does everyone remember their dreams?   Please, use the comments to enlighten me, or
to tell me that half-alligator dreams mean I’m mental.  Either will do.

Hey look!  I'm catching up on everything!  Here are a few pop culture related items I actually wrote
down over the past couple of weeks:

n 
What, what, WHAT the hell with Jesse James and
that woman with the tattoo on her face, and with the other whores and strippers
with whom he apparently cheated on Sandra Bullock?   When I mentioned this to Stephan, he said “why
does this surprise you—that guy seems like such a White Trash bubba, I can’t
imagine why he WOULDN’T be a neo-Nazi.”   
So, there’s that.   My thing is—
he goes from the lovely, smart, and successful Sandra Bullock to the very
bottom of the barrel?   He could do
better, right?  I mean, don’t cheat on
Sandra Bullock in the first place, but if you do it, could you not pick someone
better looking and more respectable?  Yuuuuck.

n 
Not that this makes any difference, but I have
never watched “Dancing With the Stars,” or “American Idol,” or any show that
involves performance, because I totally hate watching people be uncomfortable
and/ or embarrassed.  Can’t STAND
IT.   Also couldn’t watch “Borat,” or some
parts of “The Office,” or “Da Ali G show.” 
So…incredibly…uncomfortable.  I
hate it!   I was going to make an
exception to see if Kate Gosselin fell down on Dancing With the Stars last
night, but as soon as I tried to turn it on, my skin started to crawl.   Nope—my loathing of Kate Gosselin could not
overcome this feeling.   Speaking of Jon
and Kate, who knew they’d both become so unlikable, right?  I don’t know who to root for anymore.

n 
I must be old, because until he appeared on
Saturday Night Live, I had absolutely no idea who Justin Bieber was or why I
should care about him.  Here was the
conversation between me and the kid who works in my grocery store over the
weekend:

o  
Me:  “Who’s
Justin Bieber?”

o  
Store guy: 
“Some gay singer.”

As an addendum, I will say that I
watched him on Saturday Night Live, and I was not impressed AT ALL.   I do not think that kid is that talented,
and I don’t care whose eight-year old I offend with this opinion.  All I can say is, I hope Justin Bieber’s
people are investing well.

Toyota has been getting a lot of bad press lately, so I will combine an update as to where I’ve been for the past few weeks with a plug for my Toyota Prius, which I think has now been deemed The Greatest Car I Have Ever Owned.  I don’t care what the media says—I am going to keep driving that car forever, because that’s how much I love it.

And why this love affair with the Prius, you might ask?  Oh, it might have something to do with the fact that yesterday we arrived on the east coast, where we have relocated for at least the next year, and for the past ten days or so, I have been driving, in the Prius, WITH THE DOG, in the winter, across America.  That’s right.  3,000 miles.  In a Toyota.  In winter.  We are here, we are alive, and when I tally up the total that we spent on gas, you will laugh. 

First, the reason:  this move has been a long time in coming, as you may or may not know.  We originally moved to Los Angeles in 2004 for what was supposed to be a year, and ended up staying there for six.  Now, I know some people are all “pro Los Angeles” and they love the weather and would never dream of leaving, but for some reason it just really didn’t work for us, so we started thinking about making a change at the end of last year, and then things kind of fell into place finally, and then—BLAMMO!  I was on the road with a 75 pound arthritic dog.   

In case you’re wondering why we don’t just fly the dog, he’s big, and old, and very sensitive, and because of his size he would have to fly in the cargo hold of the plane, and ….that just really wasn’t going to work for me.  We actually drove him out to California when we moved there in ’04, and he did fine.  So, I knew it could be done, but now he’s even older, and it’s winter, and that is really a lot of factors to factor in when you’re trying to work, and drive, and make sure the dog doesn’t freeze while you run in to get a sandwich.  You know what I’m saying?

“Road trip with large dog during winter”—sounds like the elevator pitch for a wacky comedy where “chaos ensues,” right?  Mostly he does well in the car, sleeping for long periods of time, but I have to say it is very hard to sneak a large dog into a hotel during the winter—most of the nicer chains have a 45 pound weight limit for dogs, so I was forced to become very inventive.    Let’s just say that at one point I covered him up with a Burberry scarf and rushed him out the freight elevator.  No, I am not making this up.  This trip was so long, I have to do the recap in installments, so I will start with the first few days.

So, where did I go?  From Los Angeles I went to San Diego, where I visited friends, saw clients, and tried to recover from moving all the stuff out of my house during a pouring rain storm in Los Angeles, where I got wet, and the movers got wet, and the dog got wet, and I’m not going to lie, there was some crying.  Did you know that you will never be able to accurately estimate the amount of stuff you have left versus the amount of space in your car?  Well, you won’t.  You will have to throw things away at the last minute so that the dog can lay down in the back seat.  That is the law.   So, thank you to Dan and Sarah, and Matt and Jared, and sorry I was so late for dinner.  Did I mention there was a rainstorm and a traffic jam?  Yeah, good times.

Next I moved east to Palm Desert, where I am from and where I wanted to hang out a little before beginning the epic journey.  I ended up staying a few days in my friend Brook’s guesthouse, and I swear I was about to become her Kato Kaelin that place is so nice.   There I saw high school friends, enjoyed the weather, and plotted out the great Toyota Across America trip.

Next installment:  I go to Santa Fe New Mexico and have dinner with a famous person.  You’re dying to know, aren’t you?

I have been looking at real estate here in Los Angeles for several months now, in search of the perfect “no one will bother us” piece of property.   If you’re wondering why I’m doing this, I can only explain that we bought our place to be an investment property (not to be the place we were going to live forever) and it’s now ready to become that at any time, I just need to find us a new place to live.   

This is turning out to be more challenging than I thought, unless one of you has a helicopter that Stephan can use to get to work from the top of the mountain where I would like to construct a UNABOMBER-like cabin, because this is what it’s going to take for me to get some peace and quiet in the greater Los Angeles area.   In case you’re wondering, yes, I’ve looked in Calabasas, yes, I’ve looked in Topanga, and yes, I’ve looked in Malibu, and I have been unable to locate something that fulfills everyone’s needs and still enables Stephan to not have a two hour long commute.  Anyone have any ideas?  I would like to live someplace that is like Carmel and has fruit trees, and where I'm not so close to my neighbors I can hear them answering the phone and taking a shower.  Is that asking too much?  

I don’t know why this is taking so long, with the possible exception of the fact that this is Los Angeles, and so everything is still very overpriced and usually comes with some kind of catch, like a celebrity lives next door (NOT A GOOD THING, BECAUSE CELEBRITIES HAVE NO REGARD FOR THE LAW), or the owners of the house request that you move in and that they live in a “guest apartment” in the basement where they promise not to bother you, or some other nonsense that probably sounds just fine when they come up with it, but that makes you roll your eyes and wonder why you even bothered to drive all the way out to look at it in the first place. 

Yes, I know this makes me sound cynical.  But, I DID just say I was looking in Los Angeles, right? Capital of cynicism and douchebaggery and the loud cellphone conversation?    Sometimes, literally, the “catch” is such a catch that I find myself laughing out loud, right there in someone’s living room.

Here are some examples of this phenomenon.  I’m going to try to stay out of trouble by not describing the properties themselves, only the “catches.” 

1.     “Oh, didn’t I mention that our next door neighbors have a kennel?”

2.    “The owner is friends with Olivia Newton John, and when she moved, he bought her bathroom and had it reassembled in his house, piece by piece.”

Note:  I believe that someone needs to tell this realtor (and possibly this owner) that ONJ’s bathroom is NOT a selling point, and in fact, might be a detractor.  But, I am just reporting the facts as I observed them).

3.     Me:  “Wow, that garden is nice.”

The Realtor:    “Oh, that’s actually the neighbor’s garden.  No one ever sees him, but he’s really obsessive about the garden, so the gardener lives on site.”

Me:  “On site like in the house?”

The Realtor:  “No, on site like in the garden.

(I look out the bathroom window to find I am two feet away from the face of the gardener.  He waves.)

4.     Realtor:  “This house used to be owned by a member of the Jackson Family.”

Me:  “You….don’t…..say.”

5.     Realtor:  “The owner is going through a divorce, and so she’s letting her dogs poop in the yard and not cleaning it up on purpose.  You have to try to see past the poop.  And watch your step.”

Because I swagger like that, today I am the guest blogger over at Where’s My Damn Answer, where I will be discussing how I love absurd things, and how, perhaps because I have a blog called “Funny Strange,” people say weird stuff to me all the time.

Go on over, won’t you?  I think you'll find today's R2D2 related musings to your liking. 

A couple of years ago I was driving somewhere on a Sunday night and happened to catch an episode of that show Offramp, on KPCC.  If you don't live in Los Angeles, you've probably never heard of it– they do these profiles and segments on "interesting things you probably didn't know about L.A.," and it was the first time I'd ever heard it in my years of living here, so I let it play.

Only, and I'm sure this is already going to start you laughing (at me), this particular night's episode was all about the HISTORY OF THE HEALTH DEPARTMENT'S RESTAURANT GRADING SYSTEM, like why they get A's, and B's, and C's, and how they get shut down, and how before they started this system, the health department was totally on the take and the restaurants were all dirty, and listen, I know I should've turned it off, because like, I don't need another reason not to go to restaurants, ok?   In case you don't know what I'm talking about, I think you should go read this article I wrote a few years ago for Common Ties, all about how I am afraid of food.

But I couldn't.  It was totally, morbidly fascinating to me.  It was all about this investigative journalist Joel Grover, and how he changed the whole system so that it's all open now, and he got all these dirty health inspectors fired, and totally made the world a better place.    It was so fascinating that I listened to the whole thing, THEN I went to the website of the L.A. County Department of Health, just to make sure all the places I like to go got an "A."    Because, just from listening to the report, I got all scared about how awful the place would have to be to get a B rating, and then I started grossing out in retrospect from "B" rated restaurants where I ate before I knew about the rating system.   Like, the La Salsa on the Third Street Promenade got a "B," and I didn't realize it until I was in the middle of eating a burrito one night, and right there, I almost started crying.  This is the power of public radio, people. 

But, back to the website, where they catalog the infractions.  It's actually not as detailed as you might want it to be (for instance, it doesn't say EXACTLY why they got the bad rating, but it does give you a category (like, the restaurant leaves food out too long, or the counters are unsanitary, or the ceiling is leaking RAINWATER INTO THE FOOD, OR THE HEALTH INSPECTOR FOUND A FOREIGN OBJECT OR BUG IN THE FOOD, OR THEIR SEWAGE SYSTEM IS BACKED UP INTO THE FOOD PREPARATION AREA, OR THEY LEAVE SEAFOOD OUT FOR TOO LONG.

<pause for screaming>

Yeah, that's about how long I last on the website before I'm all tweaky, like "Oh my GOD, what did they do, specifically?" so I know if I should avoid the place forever, or just until they get re-inspected.  Also, I'm very on the fence about a place that has an "A" rating, but they got a score of 90.  That's one point from a "B," ok, and as I'm sure you've probably gleaned from my previous writing about my obsession with food germs, now I won't even WALK IN THE DOOR of a place that doesn't have an "A."  Another example, we went to the Laemmle Theater in Santa Monica to see "Slumdog Millionaire," and for some reason their concession stand (where you buy the popcorn) has a "B."  Not only did I refuse to buy anything, even a soda, from that concession stand, but I seriously was staring at the four guys behind the counter thinking "Why are you all not cleaning every available surface right now, with bleach, in case I am the health inspector?"    I told all this to Stephan, and he told me that usually he tries to eat at places with A's or B's, but that once, when he was volunteering for the last presidential election (the one in 2004), he ate downtown at a place that had a "C," and he didn't notice until he was on the way out.

I think you can only imagine the rapid pace at which I would have driven myself to the hospital if this situation had happened to me.    Apparently they won't even GIVE you a grade if you score below 70.  So, "C" is really the lowest you can go before you're just about out of business. 

I know, I should have turned it off.  And, I DEFINITELY shouldn't have gone to the website.  On the bright side, now there are a few places (a very few) that I feel totally comfortable eating because they got such high grades, and a few places that I know never to go into, under any circumstances.