How our recent San Diego trip nearly killed us.

The whole trip in itself started out innocently enough. Knowing that sometime in the near future that we'd have to visit family out in California, She-Ra found quite the deal for a downtown San Diego hotel on Groupon.

Called the Porto Vista hotel, near the famous stretch of whats known as “Little Italy”, just a hop skip and jump from the ocean, it seemed like the perfect getaway after spending the day with She-Ra's sister, brother in law and their two kids. So she bought the Groupon and we tentatively made arrangements to not only pass through Palm Springs to see my dads but to hit San Diego and check in with Erin, Jay, Nick, and Natty.

Then, a rather bad thing happened. On the eve of the Super Bowl, while doing work on the computer, the phone rang and on the other end was the co-owner and manager of the restaurant I was kitchen managing for. It didn't take long for her to make it clear that my services were no longer needed and my position was made redundant. Since then it has been a daily struggle to find a decent job here in Tucson and plans were put on hold to drive to the Golden State and enjoy the company of our loving, yet completely insane, family.

Then one day She-Ra had made a discovery. The Groupon for that hotel in San Diego was going to expire soon and eating a hundred bucks didn't seem fun or feasible. So after some much delegation we both said “Fxxk it! We need some time away from her job and my job worries. We have some money saved up. My government benefits had finally started kicking in. Let's take off for a few days and bask in the sun and let our toes run deep into beach sand!", a near fetish for my lady if you must know.

Our plan was to leave first thing Monday morning and return late Wednesday night. Boom, boom. Quick and painless. Easy in and easy out. Or...so we had thought.

Monday morning rolled around and our garden was covered in sleet and hail. Flurries were coming in from the west and the winds blew mighty gusts nearly tearing the canopy off our patio, sending hanging plants to their near doom. To say the least, we were delayed. Luckily a break in the weather gave us enough time to load up the car and consider hitting the road. The family wanted us there for dinner at 5:00. It was well past noon. It was going to be close. Very close.

After grabbing a snack and rolling on to the I-10, all was clear and it looked as if our trip was going to be on time and just fine. We hit the mountainous overpass that leads you into the San Diego valley and were delighted to find that it had transformed into a winter wonderland. Snow was everywhere, covering rocky plains and pine trees, enough that you might be tranced into believing a man in a thick red coat was scurrying off in the distance with a pack of reindeer. It was that magical. I tried to take a picture of it, but we were moving much too fast.

Then...we hit the decent.

At first I just thought it was the rough road below us, but the face of She-Ra told a different story. Apparently everytime she applied the brakes, the entire rig would rattle as if to incite complete destruction of the Chevy. It was harrowing. We white knuckled the entirely too long drift downward and when we finally made it to flat territory, She-Ra made the call to her sister.

Luckily Erin and her husband Jay and military so we know we could get a smoking deal on some new brakes if we just dropped the car off on the base's auto lot. Erin assured us that would be no problem. Then asked us if we wanted to go to Sea World.

We said yes.

Finding the hotel was easy enough as it was right off of the I-8, but parking would turn out to be a problem. Apparently the Porto Vista hotel wants to charge $25 a night for parking. That's outrageous, even if I had the cash. Luckily for me, spending over 12 years in San Francisco, it gave me an advantage to seek out and locate street parking. My skills of yore had not faded and we got a tight spot just a half block from the lobby. It's like riding a bike I suppose, except back in SF your bike is a full sized car and you spend endless hours at night circling your neighborhood just to find a spot. Sometimes, they don't come. Sometimes, the city wins and you end up a mile away having to hail a cab to make it safely back to your flat.

Checking in was easy enough, but after getting into the elevator, hitting floor 4, turning right and heading towards the second building as instructed by the desk clerk, we ran into yet another snag.

The two separate buildings that make up the Porto Vista hotel is not connected by mere hallways. Oh no. They align by the thinnest of catwalk bridges that are fully exposed to the elements. I immediately did a double take seeing the vertigo inspiring sight and all She-Ra could muster was a “Oh hell no!” Now, I'm not afraid of heights, I just don't like them, but this, my friends, was like a scene from Temple of Doom when they have to cross that narrow and flimsy rope bridge overlooking a deep chasm below. The only reason I made it across the bridge was because I had to pee really bad. She-Ra on the other hand, completely in tears, made a bee-line to the lobby to try and plead her case for a more non-phobic soliciting room.


(this picture gives the terror no justice but...you get the idea)

After doing my duty and running as fast as I could to avoid hitting a seagull and getting blown off of the catwalk from sturdy ocean breezes, I made it to the lobby where She-Ra was in deep negotiation with the front desk clerk.

“Happens all the time,” he said nonchalant. “This building is kind of weird.”

“Weird?” I said. “The architect is the weird one. Why would anyone design a place that causes panic in people? Who is this maniac?”

The man just shrugged and handed us a room card, one that was right above us and nowhere near those vile gangplanks of death.

The rooms themselves were nothing fancy, but an odd curio of the place is the inclusion of images of thin white people doing activities on the walls in the rooms and elevator. Are they trying to be LA metro? Artsy? It came off as a bad interior design student flaw in a final so after cleaning up we headed out to get that well needed complimentary cocktail.



Included with the room was what was described as a “Welcome Cocktail” in the top floor's bar and bistro. Walking in there, I was immediately struck as a grubby invader of their swank little happy hour soiree. The bartender seemed to disapprove of us as well. No matter though, we handed over a voucher, ordered two vodkas with a Jager back. The ratio to soda and vodka was like 90 to 10 and the Jager shots came in glass thimbles. Just getting the shot to my face was hard enough though. After a harrowing day, heck, a harrowing two months, I seemed to have developed a bit of a shake and I had to handle the small shot glass with both hands to insure it got to my mouth. The trip was off to a rocky start.


(the view from my side of the bed. Ugh...)

That's when She-Ra called her sister to inform them that we just got in and would not make it for dinner. On the other end, I could hear chaos. The kids, staying up long past their bedtimes and not getting a chance to see Auntie Roo (that’s what they call her) and Uncle Mark sent them into a series of shrieks and moans. We felt bad, but, what could we do? So after finishing our “cocktail” we left the Porto Vista to take a well needed calming stroll around Little Italy and the bay.

This part of the trip went right. It was a cool evening, a mellow dining crowd was either over packing one restaurant or completely ignoring another. This was a strange didactic that we really couldn't figure out. We found a good English style pub and had a pint with a sous chef who told us of another “better” bar, a real dive he called it when we made it known we were visiting from Tucson, so after our pints we headed out to find this place.

It wasn't a dive at all. In fact, here in the T-dizzle, it's what we might call a “douchey crap hole”. Sure it had fun stuff on the wall and was kind of dark but the clientele deemed it otherwise. So we quickly downed our drinks and went in search of mixers for the bottle we had packed before we left.

Here's a tip for all you drinkers that want to visit downtown San Diego and enjoy drinks in your room: Come fully prepared! They can't legally sell booze to go for some odd reason the guy at the 7-11 gave us, and mixers are tiny and overpriced. Why I forgot the soda water and 7Up is beyond me, but we made due with what we found and crawled in to call it a day.

The following day we met up with Erin and drove the car out to the base. What might cost us a few hundred dollars out in the real world would only run us a few bucks here. In fact, the original estimate for fixing the brakes was less that $40. Score.

Luckily the kids had a half day so after gathering them up from school, we headed out to Sea World.



Now, I'm not going to bore you with a “We had so much fun at Sea World!” montage of tales (which we did), but here's a few shots of the day with some captions. The only thing missing is the photos and tale of the two kids and myself riding the roaring rapids ride four times in a row. It was that slow at the park and after what we've just been through and what I've been going through, getting absolutely soaking wet and screaming your heads off sounded like a good idea. At the time. It was pretty miserable trying to maneuver throughout the day with clothes that weighed a ton and some indiscreet chafing going on down below.

Enjoy!


Erin, NIck, Natty and Auntie Roo about to get Shamu splashed.


And....spalsh!



These fish beggars were soooo loud!


Yay!


Even our favorite motorcycle video game was there. Alright!


About to get soaked again...


Toward the end of the day Erin received a phone call that garnered some concerned looks on her face. Thinking that it just might be a problem with the current school the kids are in because, well, apparently there's some kind of teacher/student discrepancy and they might have to relocate the two to a more suitable institution. After hanging up, Erin pulled me aside.

“Mark,” she said in a whisper, “I don't want to freak Roo out but....it's about the car.” She-Ra was a good league away from us walking with the kids so I felt our conversation would be privatized.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Well...it's a lot worse than we thought.”

“How worse?”

“Like...two grand worth.”

My jaw dropped. My heart sank. And I felt the pangs of poverty swipe over me.

“Well,” I tried to muster a sentence, “well...what's wrong with it?”

“Everything,” she assured. “It's not only the brakes but you have two cracked axles and a cracked manifold. Literally, your engine is fxxked.”

I didn't know what to say. What could I say? There was nothing to say? I guess I could go into the robbing of convenience stores but after watching a few episodes of Worlds Dumbest, I know I would get pinched and be featured on a future episode.

“Don't worry about it,” Erin said. “I went ahead and authorized the whole thing. We can work something out.”

The rest of the day was spent in relative shock. Back at the hotel room, we were too dazed to sleep so at 1am, we left the room to find the only bar open was that douchey place that sous chef told us about. It had been a long time since we closed a bar. We did whatever we could to ignore the horror of knowing that the trip coming into San Diego could have been met with much more disastrous results. Luckily we would pick up the car tomorrow and head back home. She has to work on Thursday and I had a big phone interview with the Reid Park Zoo at 3pm. At this point, we just wanted to be back home.

That's when things got more tense.

The next day as we were packing up Erin called to say that the car would not be done until Thursday. So we made frantic phone calls to try and get her shift covered and my phone interview redirected to her cell phone. She got her shift covered rather easily and I called all of the zoo contacts I had to be sure they called the cell. Now, all we could do was wait.

That night we played with the kids and picked at our dinner. This “vacation” was turning into an anxious account of ones own ability to embrace what obstacles life gives you and be thankful for the support and love of family.

The only question was, would we ever make it home?

The following day, Thursday, we checked out and waited at Erin's for not only the garage to call but the zoo as well. The garage closed promptly at 6pm and the zoo said they would call at 3. So we waited. And waited. A minute would become and eternity. Erin's phone would ring and we would spring up thinking it was the garage but, it never was. By 2:30pm, we thought that I might have to stay another night and pick it up on Friday and send her home in a rental car. We tried to read our books but our eyes just glanced over the words, making very little sense of what was really going on.

3pm. No phone call. 3:10. Nothing. That's it I thought, I blew the big interview. But at 3:15 She-Ra's cell rang and on the other end was the zoo. At least one thing went right.

I went into the office and sat down. They asked a series of questions and I thought that I had actually nailed it. In reality, I probably sounded like a warbling gibbon set for dumb. I tried to get the words out as best I could but each syllable was a struggle. At the end I thanked them and exited the office.

That's when it hit. I broke down. Now, I am not afraid to say that I cry in movies and have a good amount of estrogen flowing through my system, so in front of She-Ra's sister and her Marine drill instructor husband, I wept. Was it because of my current job situation? Was it because I really wanted to work at the zoo? Was it the fact that I'd have to stay yet another night in San Diego and drive that long drive home alone? Who knows. Point is I let it all out and in the end I felt a little better.

4pm rolls around and Erin's phone rings.

“Oh it is? Oh great. We'll be there soon!”

The car was done! We could go pick it up! We could go home!

Thing is, we had no way to get out there.

Jay had the van and was picking up the kids from school. 4:30 comes. No Jay, no kids. Maybe you should call him She-Ra suggested. When Erin did, apparently Jay was in an impromptu “meeting” with a teacher. The sweat began to pour off of our palms.

Finally around 5:15 (mind you, the garage closes right at 6pm and we still have to navigate the San Diego freeway to get there) Jay arrives with the kids. We don't think, we pile our stuff into the van and crawl in.

“I forgot I have to get a haircut and pick up my uniform for tomorrow,” Jay says. “remember I have that big interview?”

I begin to shake even more now.

Seeing the gravity of the situation, Jay acclimates and just has us drop him off at a barber nearby and he'll walk the kids back home when he's done. We quickly say our goodbyes and speed off onto the highway.

It's 5:30pm on a central Southern California freeway...so guess what we run into? Wall to wall traffic.

Erin is making rapid calls to the garage, giving credit card information as she drives.

“Just hold the car till we get there!,” she instructs. “We're almost there.”

The traffic begins to move, we round the edge of the residential area, we start to see large helicopters, are those barracks? Yes. It's the base and the clock now reads 5:50pm.

We pull into the base, make a quick right turn and, blammo, we see the garage. At first sight we see all of the repair depots locked up for the night but see that the office is still open. In the distance, beyond the gray surface of a well worn parking lot, is our little Chevy Impala.

What started out as a fun retreat had developed into one of the tensest days of my career as a human. What started off as a $36 fix it, turned into a three page, it took the guy a full ten minutes just to ring up all the repair work that had to be done, over $1,500 worth of parts and labor, epic event. And here all we wanted was to go to the beach.

No time for that now.

We then transferred all of our stuff from the van into our car and fueled up on base. When folks in San Diego found out that we here in Tucson still have gas prices in the late $3 rage, everyone was shocked. In California, it's nearly $5. On the base? Back to Tucson prices. Much thanks to the US military for saving our asses...in more ways than one.

We hugged and thanked Erin and then got in the car, which jumped the minute She-Ra hit the accelerator because of the newly installed power, and was soon on the freeway. We were on our way. I never thought I'd miss the dog so much.

The first length of the drive was in relative silence, seeing as we were still in shock and awe about what just happened. But once we got on that flat, long and dreary stretch towards Arizona, She-Ra made a fun suggestion.

“Since we didn't bring any audiobooks and the DVD player is in the trunk, what don't you read your book out loud?”

I was re-reading The Hunger Games seeing as the movie had just come out and I was about 75% of the way through. Seeing as she has already read the entire series three times, I could just pick up where I was and she'd know exactly where I was.

So I grabbed the book, turned on the little rear view mirror light and glanced out into the speeding darkness to find a sign that indicated Tucson was a good 200 miles away. So I tucked in and began reading.

Now, here is the power of reading and reading a good book. What I thought would take a good three hours to get to Tucson, felt as if it'd taken ten minutes. Before I knew it she was turning off into Miracle Mile and heading towards home. I couldn't believe it. I had completely lost track of time. Thank you Suzanne Collins for the awesome words. And thanks of all be to She-Ra for making the suggestion. And, before I knew it, we were turning into the parking lot for Nancy's Pub where our good friend Tank was bartending and a few random pals were scattered about.

We regaled them with our terse fable of what we just went through and shots were being bought all around. Real ones. Not those hoity pen caps they served it up in back at that dumb hotel. Afterward we had to get She-Ra back home and in bed. She had to be up early the next day. While I just had a ton of laundry and praying to do.

A few days later I found out that I did not get the job at the zoo. Well, to be honest with you, I kinda didn't think I would anyway, but I was honored just as much to have the opportunity to even get an interview. So I must be doing something right.

Oh, and the car runs like a dream. It's like we have a new car only...it's the same car. So thank you She-Ra's family for coming through for us. And thank you Tim for taking care of the place and dog while we were gone. We owe you big.

One last thing. We found this downtown near that douchey bar we closed out. Ah, San Diego. It really does mean a “whale's vagina”.





Thanks for reading.

An ode to my cooler!

I was deep in my very early career as a San Francisco resident when I found it. Or rather, it found me. It must have been about late 1995, a good chill swept through the savvy city by the bay, and my good friends and I were pillaging an abandoned basement apartment under an Edwardian flat a sort of friend was renting. Apparently the landlord, who lived in the neither reaches of China, kept the basement settlement as a storage unit for all of her crap. Boxes of financial files, old clothes and documents in both Mandarin and English were everywhere. After consuming much cheap beer and fine herbal weed just delivered from Humboldt, we decided it was a good idea to break in and take a peek.

The area felt haunted, deserted and even a bit sad. Somewhere in the center of all the mess piles and debris, a band had set up camp with a makeshift practice space. Good use of the living room I thought. We left the instruments and worn amplifiers alone and continued our flashlight illuminated search for absolutely nothing in particular.

Scaling through mountains of bankers boxes, heaps of moldy outdated clothes that even the cheekiest of thrift store adviser would turn away due to the reek of 1970's gloom held its pace; I found something that would somehow change my life.

No, let's say, make my life a bit more complete.

It was a cooler. A mid-sized red one, with a white top and an emblazoned Arrowhead Water sticker proudly regaling on the front. It looked new but felt, like much of the other scattered remains of the place, old. Quickly seizing the moment, I snatched the thing up and took it home with me.



Once it made its presence known and accepted, the cooler would be much more than just a container for ice and beer. In my room, in several rented rooms across San Francisco, it would be a chair, a table, a shelf and even a balance beam for a strange act of whoopee I engaged in one night. The cooler now had a memory, one that I could not erase, even if it did have an actual brain.

This cooler, which I gave the nickname “The Red Rider”, not only for its obvious color, would soon be my companion on many trips and excursions. It has seen horrors I dare not mention in Las Vegas, it nearly saved my life one night in Reno, it helped solve mysteries in Tahoe and every time I went to Austin, TX for the big SXSW festival, it would become a therapist, a close friend when I needed one and was a good desk as I typed away my daily adventures on my old Underwood writer.


My cooler survived a house fire. In mid-1999 I was invited to participate in an internet showcase for this new webcam hosting company called Spotlife. Myself and six others lived online, 24 hours a day, surrounded by orbital cameras and streamed whatever we did, even the unthinkable, on the rapidly growing world wide web. It was fun while it lasted, but later that year the house caught fire and nearly everything inside it was destroyed. Except, now here’s the funny part, most of the stuff in my room. I was away the night the place went up, sleeping at my then girlfriend’s apartment. When I got the frantic call early that morning I went over to the house to see that it was gutted and charred. I climbed the smoldered staircase up to my room only to find it was the one space in the house that still had white walls. Apparently with the door and windows closed the fire did not have a chance with such little oxygen, so I packed up my things and moved out.

There, under my fireman soaked poster of the Spice Girls next to my thankfully spared Castle Grayskull, was the cooler. The Red Rider now had magical properties.



That same year I would embark on a journey to some big event I was sent out to cover for a magazine called Burning Man. My cooler, of course, was my brave and earnest companion. That first trip to the playa, that week in 1999 would change me forever. It was really hard to go back to a desk job after having that kind of experience be thrust upon you. I did Burning Man for five years in a row and when I decided that I was finished with it and it was done with me, I sat on the esplanade, drinking ice cold beer, listening to Black Sabbath, on my old lawn chair with my feet resting on the cooler. It was a mighty tribute to a good run and I don’t regret a thing.



The cooler would see several girlfriends come and go, old and close friends get married and move away, and various apartments and roommates across the city. It was with me when I made a valiant attempt to move to Los Angeles and start a new life and would be next to me on that long ride home when my efforts failed. It saw me in the best of times and the worse. My cooler was always by my side. And I couldn’t that it any more than I am now.

In late 2005 my cooler was back at the apartment when three girls from Arizona bellied up to the bar where I worked. One in particular caught my eye. She was cute, chain smoking, heckling the guy playing guitar on the little stage, drinking massive amounts of beer and I knew I was smitten. I confided in my cooler that true love had finally caught up with me and I knew something drastic was about to happen.



In early February of 2006, I pared down my belongings to the bare essentials, throwing the rest of the crap out on Columbus Avenue with a sign that said “Take!” and selling the rest, rented a midsized car, stuffed it with the aforementioned essentials, and drove fourteen hours to get to Tucson, AZ, to get to the one lady I knew I would be with for the rest of my life.

My cooler, obviously, was one of those essentials, along with Castle Grayskull and my fog machine. I’ve been living in Arizona, with my lady She-Ra, for seven years now and the Red Rider continues to amaze me. Sure, it’s a bit worn down and, yes, it’s getting a little older, but my cooler is staying with me to the end. Heck, it’ll probably be the vessel that I keep my ashes in when the day Metal Mark has to split and go onto the next adventure. It’ll keep me safe from being blown around in the winds. Just as much as I saved it, my cooler saved me.

Thank you Red Rider. You my bestest friend…

"Beyond the 99%"

As I type this I am now entering my third week as an unemployed person. This is something I have not experienced, voluntarily, in quite some time. The last time I was “fired” (for unknowingly insulting the wife of the Grateful Dead's Phil Lesh, who was a major investor, it turned out, in the restaurant I was a host and bartender for) I remained on the schedule for over a month and it was me who had to ask the chef and owner to take me off so I could try something new. Even my last job in San Francisco slowly took me off the schedule when word got out that I might be moving to Tucson, AZ. Big whoop. The owner was an alcoholic asshole who kept threatening me because I had long-ish hair. About a week or two after I was completely removed from the schedule, I packed up a rental car and drove over fourteen hours to be with the girl I had fallen in love with.

We've been engaged now for over seven years.

Finding work for me in a completely new town was rough. I even spent two nights as a disc jockey at a high end strip club but couldn't take it for several reasons. One, I was a DJ in a strip club and, Two, when I saw little baggies of undisclosed white powder being sneakily handed around, I knew I had to get out quick. I managed a kid's dinosaur and science museum for a while but the owners were complete idiots and ran that place straight into the ground. Desperate for just “work” my lady, She-Ra, hooked me up with a kitchen job at the restaurant where she bartended.

It wasn't a bad gig, making pizzas and flippin' burgs for a decent wage and corporate benefits, but after four years of being stuck back there, with no room for growth, I knew I needed a change. That's when I went to cook with a popular chef here in Tucson at some fancy resort. It was cool for a while, I learned a lot, but it became pretty obvious that they don't teach you interpersonal management at the Culinary Institute. The day after a particularly horrific shift (I'm talking flooding, dishwasher exploding, hundreds of tickets just flying out of the machine, managers and servers yelling at us, all that good stuff...) the chef sat me down and told me I was on my final warning. Shocked, I was all “Um, what were my other infractions?” He informed me of a few and I told him it was his responsibility to let me know if I'm getting written up. After that, he hired a guy, a really cool guy unfortunately, at nearly $2 less an hour than me and slashed my hours. As I began trolling the internet job posts I came across a small but busy family run bar and grill that needed a kitchen manager. I soon jumped ship from the fancy resort and chef to got to work with ex-cons and chain smoking servers.

Basically they needed help with their disaster of a kitchen system and service problems. Having some corporate training behind me, I pretty much implemented a whole new system, organized everything, set up efficient stations and was there, every day, to try and make the place run a little smoother.

Then I got a raise. Then my hours were cut in half but my workload had doubled.

One night I was scheduled to close the kitchen with just one other guy and we got hit like nobody’s business. Tickets just wouldn't stop coming out of the machine, the servers were out of control, we were literally just throwing food into the window and when it was all over with, it took us almost two hours to restock and shut down that tiny little kitchen.

The next day, as I'm doing my taxes online, the phone rings. It was the manager on the other end and she told me that I obviously performed “Less than effective” last night that I was “Obviously not happy” with my job and let me go right then and there. No warning, no sit down conversation about my abilities or performance, nothing.

I sat there in shock. Once the realization hit of what just happened, all I could think of was “Are you serious? They used me to fix their restaurant then just plain got rid of me. Assholes!”

Turns out that the owner of the place was a former manager at the corporate restaurant I worked at for four years, stole a bunch of recipes then opened a “similar” place on the other side of town. I always wondered why the pizzas looked familiar and the peperoni filled dough rollups were almost an exact match to the ones I made at my former employer's.

Huh. Once a thief, always a thief.

Then the deep seated doom thought quickly washed over me. I would no longer be getting a regular paycheck. Sure I’ve had my struggles in the past, but once I was seriously out on my own and grown up a bit, I have always had a steady job to coincide with all of the other dumb stuff I like to get into. Being 41 years old, in a committed relationship, planning for the future, planning to own our own business with bills coming in, the idea of being unemployed really didn’t feel too hot. In fact, the feeling just plain sucked.

That first week without a job I literally was machine gunning my resumes out into the ether. Managing a tea shop, supervising a sandwich place, selling toilets at the Home Depot, managing a burger joint, shelving books at the library, writing for an Aerospace newsletter, admin for the Nature Conservancy, sushi chef, garde manger for a French bistro, etc etc etc… Nothing. Not one call back. Actually, that’s not true, I did get a few calls but they arrived literally minutes after I submitted my resume and the last time I took them up on their offer, well, let’s just say I got canned over the phone.

Here’s a tip: If you are job hunting and someone calls you back like within minutes of your submission – do not take that job! It’s obvious they are super desperate and are willing to give you crappy money for crappy work so let the real jobs take their time. This chain of sandwich shops, Jimmy John’s, which has the reputation for being the fastest made and delivered sandwiches (and they are!) anywhere called me back less than an hour after they got my resume for manager. Nope, no thank you. Not to mention I’m 41, a little chunky and pretty mellow so being in an overly kinetic environment five to six days a week for eight to ten hours a day starting at $9 an hour really didn’t seem like a good option.

The best one was getting a call back from Panda Express, to manage one of their stores, who phoned, you got it, minutes after I sent the resume to their website. On the other end was a lady with, and I am not kidding or being racist here, one of the thickest Chinese accents I have come across. And I used to live a few blocks away from Chinatown back in San Francisco! This lady was almost impossible to make out.

“Why you like work fo Pan-na Eh-spress”, she said. Look, I am not joking here. This lady, who obviously has something to do with the hiring process, sounded as if she just landed in the US from her native country after studying English for maybe a week before doing so. I was pretty confused.

“Oh. Well. Um…” I then gave her the spiel about how great the company is, how amazing the product (even though I hate Panda Express) is, how talented and competent I am, blah blah blah. After this went on for a while, she then asked me what I made at my last job. When I told her she gasped.

“How come you leave lass job when you make so much money?”

Er, I really didn’t make that much money which indicated to me that they even start managers at a dishwasher’s salary. Pass.

I started to get frustrated. By the end of the week, I was pretty spent. Luckily for me I have an amazing support system with She-Ra, who is my lady for you that may not know, and a bit of savings so the situation was dire but not that desperate.

I exited week one on an angry note. Week two of being unemployed, I was pretty threadbare and forlorn. If you know me at all, I’m a pretty sensitive guy, so when the phone continued to not ring and my emails not filled with job offers, I started to get worried that my only option at this point was to pack up my knives, put the old chef’s coat back on and get behind the line once again. This is something I know I could do but really wanted to break away from for a while. My time at Old Chicago was great. My time at Lodge on the Desert cooking with Ryan Clark was amazing. Going to Brooklyn’s was a step back, but at least I was a manager. I figured that if I could make the same amount as a cook or chef without having to run around like crazy, be “in the weeds” all the time, face down in fire and grease while dealing with annoying servers and managers, sounded like a much better option to me. I mean, some people just crave that lifestyle, life for it, love it. Not me. Sure I love to cook but at my own pace. Standing for over eight hours with nonstop tickets coming at you all day, trying to juggle meat, sides, salads, appetizers, deserts, creff thrown in the fryalators and trying to get them all out on time and temped just right was starting to get to me. I don’t strive for that kind of action on a regular basis. It’s not really me anymore. Time to move on.





Week two slowed down for me job hunting wise as I took to watching TV more, taking long naps, puttering around the house, Facebooking way too much, and all that good stuff of the woe-is-me section of unemployment. I started to have weird dreams at night, that is if I slept at all, and poor She-Ra had to deal with me and my newfound blah-ness. Good ‘ol peppy Metal Mark had taken a backseat to poopy ol’ Misery Mark. And this was only week two! Man do I like to spread on the drama.



This really didn’t last too long at all. Because I remembered something.

Unemployment benefits.

Man, the last time I filed for unemployment was when I did production work that first year or two I lived in San Francisco. A job would end, I’d file my claim and, boom!, free money. That was over fifteen years ago and I hadn’t been anything but a good boy to Uncle Sam since. So I went online, filed my claim and found out I would be making only slightly less a week than I would if I stepped back into my chef clogs and began sautéing once again.

Week three was more of the “acceptance” stage of me being without work. Luckily I got paid two days after getting the shaft so I was stretching that as far as I could. About a week before me losing my job, She-Ra and I started this program for ourselves where we actually plan our dinners, shopping only once a week, utilizing an organic produce co-op and making sure we eat as frugally and healthily as possible. So meals were pretty much taken care of. Not to mention we stopped going to the bars like by more than half and good things it’s late winter, early spring because the heat/cold hasn’t clicked on in quite a while leaving us with livable energy bills.



So, all in all, it’s kind of the perfect time for me to be without a job. Even though I really really want to get back to work. I like working. I mean, if you like what you’re doing it’s not really a “job” then is it? It’s more like stepping away from your house for a few hours, having fun, making some money and when you do get home you can appreciate it all the more.

So week three started off great. I would wake up in the morning and take nice long walks around our neighborhood. I even found a quaint tea shop, some artist kiosk and an aviary and koi pond run by a bunch of Krishnas. I then set a schedule for myself. Research jobs that are actually available and would be something that I not only would want to do but could actually do them. Send out a few resumes and contact those jobs. Set a list of chores and keep the house nice and clean and organized. Write. Read my book. All that good stuff.

See, the thing is, what I’ve learned most about being unemployed right now is patience. I kinda have that “can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel” thing when times seem grim. But you have to wait for something really good to come your way. Luckily I have lots of friends out there willing to help and a lot of random experience behind me so I know something, eventually, will come my way. And, hey, if I do have to step back on the line and cook professionally again, a little break from it was good and I can appreciate it all the more.

Until things get too crazy. Then I’ll wish I had gotten that degree in library science.

So for all of my jobless pals and readers out there, do as the good book says, and by good book I mean “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, and that’s don’t panic. There’s a lot of us out there right now so if you’re sinking in a lonely hole of ‘what the heck am I gonna do’, just know that there are millions of others out there in that same hole. So don’t despair my little pavement pounding pals! There is hope for us all and all good things come to those who wait.

But if it doesn’t, we can always pull panties over our heads and rob the local Gas ‘n Sip.

There is always an option.

Angst Giving

“Angst Giving”

11.30.2008





What I like to refer to as a “nice snack between Halloween and Christmas”, Thanksgiving is the seminal ushering in of the holiday season and the bellowing hell ship that is the arrival of family bearing casseroles. As depicted in the amazing movie directed by Jodie Foster and starring Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr., Home For The Holidays seems to encapsulate the essence of what it means to have to “deal” with those you grew up with and are forced to interact with as they are stapled to you with the moniker: Family.

I grew up quite different. My parents divorced when I was 4 and being basically brought up by my dad, Thanksgiving was usually spent with his old theater and art buddies in a large home in Carmel CA. My father and his friends openly drank, smoked pot, cursed and played music before and after the feast, all the while with some football game or parade twinkling on the television. I’ve only heard tales of horror and tension from others with their families and now that I am in a loving and committed relationship those tales are beginning to ring true.

But it has nothing to do with her family. Oh no. We get along famously. They accept my eccentricities because they seem to put up with their daughter’s. Coming from a military and political right family, my lady has somehow broken out and become a freewheelin’, life lovin’, three degrees in art havin’ independent woman. Now that she nabbed a heavy metal worshippin’, only child weirdness exhibitin’, freelance writer and Muppet Movie watchin’ man (that would be me) they’ve surreptitiously thrown up their hands and welcomed me into the family. Thanks guys!

Here’s the thing. Most Thanksgivings of the past have come and gone with little or no incident. In my almost 38 years here on Earth (gosh, has it been that long?) my experience with the holiday has been pleasant. You get time away from school or work, you cook and eat yummy food, you hang out with friends or family all day and what could be better than watching old man Kringle caboose a huge parade filled with huge balloons of forgotten cartoon characters and vapid boy bands?

She-Ra (that’s my lady) and I only received 2 full days off for Thanksgiving. Work would essentially shut down if we took any more time off so we dealt with it. That was the first snag.

We live in Tucson, AZ and her parents live up in Scottsdale which is about a 2 hour drive. We spent last Thanksgiving in San Diego, at her sister and brother-in-law’s place. Because they have two young kids and were dealing with Jay, her brother-in-law, leaving for Iraq (he’s a commanding Drill Sergeant) they wanted to keep it close to home. That meant She-Ra and myself would have to cook (that’s right, we’re the cooks, always trust in the chubby kids to put on a fantastic dinner) in a tiny kitchen with no counter tops, thermostat set for “3rd level of Hell” and eating on a traveling picnic table in the kids’ play room. They threatened to do the same this year and we threatened to not show up. So, thankfully, we ended back up in Scottsdale with a huge kitchen, counter space, two ovens and parents that are thrifty so the thermostat is set for “Off”, which equals a fairly non-sweaty environment.

We left early on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, because not only did we have a long drive ahead of us but we had some last minute errands to run. As we are driving up to our bank we are witness to a huge several car pile up right in front. It starts, I thought. Holiday drivers are the worst. Not only are they somehow in a big hurry to get to the big headache, but they are juggling cell phones, road maps and screaming kids all at the same time. It was barely 10am and already some people were doomed.

After the errands we finally get on the road and are on our way. We stop by a Sonic for some grub and tots and the lady at the drive thru window is so taken by our dog, Deacon, a pure bred Siberian Husky with ice blue eyes and a reddish coat, that she gives the guy some tots. The dog is so excited to not only be in the car but that some strange lady is giving him treats. Within seconds of ingesting the deep fried miracles, after pulling out and getting on the road, the dog vomits all over the backseat. It’s not much and, yes, we cover the backseat when we take him on trips because he is quite the hairy beast, but still. There is was, bright yellow dog sick on a bright sunny afternoon.

Just as we get onto the highway we are witness to accident #2. This one wasn’t so bad. Just a fender bender but the portly man who got rear ended looked quite upset at the small Asian lady who was on her cell phone. Ah, the magic of the holidays.

After the BBQ chicken sandwiches and tots are devoured, not 10 miles out of Tucson, what do we see? You got it, accident #3.

“You gotta be kidding me,” I said. “This is an omen!”

That gave pause to She-Ra who was driving, so she put the car’s cruise control to “Grandma” and we gently sped to our destination.

Twenty miles later...accident #4. This time I just slapped my forehead with disbelief.

As we reached the midway point, a curious and common occurrence took hold. See, Highway 10, west bound from Tucson to Phoenix/Scottsdale, is essentially just 2 lanes. The right lane is for huge 18 wheel trucks and stoners in VW bugs to chug along in, so the left lane is open game for everyone else. The posted speed limit reads 70, so She-Ra takes us off cruise and jams it up 75. The 5 mile window is of no concern to the police. It’s when you get over theat 10 mile mark that they start to take notice.
It didn’t take long for us to be a magnet for a dick nozzled tailgater.

It was a new white car, a Lincoln if memory serves me, but I couldn’t get the front license plate because it had disappeared into the trunk of our Impala. Other cars behind this guy, when the opportunity arose, drove around and passed us. We were doing the speed limit, more so in fact, and this guy was bent on riding us like a cheap Brazilian whore. We figured that maybe after a mile or two the guy would secede from his idiocy and pass us. But no. He kept on our bumper as if playing a game of chicken. He was so close, his windshield touched the top of our trunk. It was maddening.

“Tap the brake,” I said. “That always gets them.”

“No way,” insisted She-Ra. “This guy is going down!”

That’s when I noticed the speedometer dropping. She took us from 75 to 70. Then 70 to 65. Nothing. The maniac relented. 65 slowly became 60. People were passing us all over the place but the moron in the white sedan didn’t get the clue. In fact, I think it only fueled his hellish intentions. Maybe he wants to ram us I thought. Perhaps the sight of a Husky drooling out of the rear left window sets him off. Bad memories perhaps. But when our car dropped to 55, almost 15 miles since we picked up the jackass, he finally got the hint and got into the right lane.

As he sped up next to my window, we were in hysterics. The fact that someone was so dense and dedicated to the craft of tailgating made us laugh with a combo of disbelief along the proof element of the human micro-brain. When he passed we both pointed and laughed right at him. He was a young guy, somewhere in the 20s, standard looking, who tried to gaze at us with intimidation but soon turned head when he saw us calling him out on his own crapiness. To make things even better, or worse, when he dodged in front of us and sped off like a cork stuck in the barrel of a cartoon shotgun, we saw three Greek letters signifying that he was indeed a brother in the fraternal order of Pi Alpha Douche.

And there, just a few miles up the road, was accident #5. This was a big one. At least six cars had crushed each other in what was probably a chain reaction. There was a pickup truck, an SUV with screaming kids crying in every direction, a decrepit Oldsmobile and...what’s that? Can it be? It is! Holy crap, it was the guy that was tailing us for the last 20 miles! You have got to be kidding me! Right there, in the middle of the debacle, was our little butt lovin’ frat boy. Oh boy. Our car erupted in laughter.

“You have to pull over,” I said. “I wanna be the witness that the guy was a jerkoff and help get him off the road for good.”

The notion was vetoed as we had a family and friends deadline to meet.

Once we hit the Phoenix area, accident #6. Once we pulled into Scottsdale, accident #7. Seven. Count them, 7 frikkin accidents. This has got to be a record. It just has to be.

Knowing that we’d be shacked up with She-Ra’s sister, brother in law, their 2 kids and huge baby Dane dog, not to mention her parents, we opted to stay at a Motel 6, the greatest gift to thrifty travelers. This place is not only cheap, always boasting a vacancy and everywhere, but offers two things that we can seriously wrap our arms around.

They allow pets and there’s always a bottle opener next to the bathroom sink.

We check in with no problems but once we drive around to see where our room is we begin to giggle. Our room, all kidding aside, is literally a few steps away from the front entrance to a Dillard’s. As we unpacked the car and got the dog settled, folks were exiting the department store with sacks of retail goodness and hopping into their cars in the vast expanse of the neighboring parking lot. It was good because I had forgotten to pack a nice pair of shoes so after everything was in the room we just walked in, found a pair of low top black Chuck’s, got ‘em and moved on. Don’t you just love this age of modern industry?

It was a cold and grey day so I was craving coffee. The nearest place, big shocker, was a Starbucks. Mind you, I have no objection to this place at all. That is if you’re just getting coffee and you’re not in the center of yuppie and golf playing retirees hell. Which we were. The line was almost out the door and dorky middle aged Lands End catalog addicted Bluetooth wearing zombies were ordering the most outlandish crap. It was almost out of a bad comedy, those people. I held back my laughter as Brad and Dakota ordered half caff light foam nonfat touch of mocha sprinkle of cinnamon what the fxxks all over the place. Even She-Ra got caught up in the action and ordered some caramel concoction. Me? I just got a large coffee. Oh sorry, a “venti”. Venti means 20. 20 ounces. Clever...

She-Ra’s folks live in a nice, quiet yet very typical suburban area of Scottsdale. Once we arrive and see the chaos of the children and pre-Thanksgiving preparation, we thank the gods of intuition that we got that room.

Seeing as we can’t leave Deacon in that room (which was tiny) alone and that her folks have a big backyard, we threw caution in the wind and hoped the dogs would get along. It didn’t take but a second for the back door to open up for Cooper, the Dane, to come tearing across the lawn and get our dog by the throat. I wanted to help but was so shocked and carrying the coffee drinks that all I could do was step back and let my lady and the drill sargent take control. After a lot of barred teeth and growls, the dogs were separated. Cooper went into seclusion in the downstairs bathroom and deacon roamed free in the back forty. All was calm.

Now to deal with the kids.

Nick, who is 4, has quelled his obsession to punch me in the balls down to a dull roar. He comes close, but now he insists on pulling on my pants or shirt to get my attention. Natalie is 2 and is already showing flair to be a future Carrie Bradshaw. She is shoe and fashion focused and is always drawing me pictures. Mind you, they are hard scribbles done in crayon but still.

Turns out, deacon had torn a hole through Cooper’s floppy ear. This upset She-Ra’s sister, Erin, to no degree. Now the “fight” had become the fault of our dog. Time for beer #1.

I get along fine with her family, but seeing as we are both the “black sheep” the relative distance (no pun intended) is always there. They know about my dad’s, they know about my mom and that I haven’t seen her in almost a decade and they know I used to be a heavy metal DJ and just finished my first book about my kooky adventures in San Francisco, so the conversation deals more with Erin and Jay and the kids and so forth. I’m nervous of their reaction to the book once, or if, they read it. Yes, the guy that wants to marry your daughter had a serious cocaine problem and dated many insane women at one point. Oh yeah, I watched porn with Lemmy of Motorhead too. That should put a golden nail in my awaiting coffin.

After our visit we went to see her friend’s Jenny and Justin who just had their second baby. Catholic twins as we like to say: 9 months apart. Justin had been drinking all day and wanted to get into it about our Barack supporting, they being financial consulting Republicans. I just plugged my ears and drank the liver exploding cocktail he made for me. The babies were cute though. As we sat on the back porch talking to Jenny, Justin went to feed the oldest. After a while we wondered if everything was okay. He had passed out giving her a bottle. We hugged Jenny and took off.

Around 2am, after crashing around midnight, I heard a strange noise coming from outside. What sounded like announcements from a near by football field, I ignored it thinking it was just the mall next door getting ready for Black Friday. But the sound continued and I thought I had heard the words “we have you surrounded”. I couldn’t be sure due to the wall fan and white noise machine I always take with me were both purring away, muffling the voice. So I got up, looked out the window and let out a “holy crap”.

There were at least five cop cars, all with their flashers on, and a paddy wagon in the motel parking lot just a few doors down from us. So I went to the front door and peeked. Cops were out with guns drawn. The guy actually said, “we have the place surrounded. Come out with your hands up!”

This woke She-Ra up and she didn’t look pleased.

“It’s a raid,” I said. “We don’t have any drugs or stolen equipment on us do we?”

She just went back to sleep.

The next morning, Thanksgiving, as She-Ra showered and I took the dog for a walk (on the Dillard’s grassy front area thank you very much, he pooped in style) I spotted a guy coming out of his room that was right next door to the police scuffle last night. I then noticed a handy man nailing in boards over a broken front window.

“Excuse me sir,” I said. “Do you know what happened?”

“Some nut,” he said, “obviously on something, was screaming and tearing up the place. I went over there to see what was the matter and to tell him to stop or I’d call the cops. He apologized and was quiet for a few minutes. Then it was more screaming, more cursing and then, crash!, the guy throws a desk through the window. I called 911 and he was arrested. He wouldn’t come out of his room so the police had to storm the place.”

“Gee whiz,” I uttered. “Happy Thanksgiving huh?”

“And we’re in Scottsdale for crying out loud!” said the man. “What do you think this is? Tucson?”

I kept quiet.

Back at the house, we started cooking. All of our great recipes for garlicky mashed skin-on potatoes, bacon-y green bean casserole and a few others were nixed seeing as the kids wont eat anything that’s not super bland or microwaved. This coming from a mom that put a microwave lasagna in the oven and couldn’t understand why her gravy wasn’t cooking. The stove was off. So we obliged and cooked up a decent, yet safe, dinner.

After the Macy’s parade comes, of course, football.

“What team are you lookin’ at this year?” Jay asks me.

“Huh?” I chirped. “Um...football? I, uh...I don’t know.”

“Saints are lookin’ good. Cardinals have a strong defense.”

“Uh...yeah. Cardinals.” Then I had to think, is that baseball or football? Oh wait, the cardinals is the Arizona team. Right. I’ll go with that. “They look...good.”

Sure I’m a man, sure I like metal, sure I’m heterosexual...that doesn’t mean I know anything about sports. There’s a ball, they wear tight pants, there’s a lot of bending over and ass slapping then in the end they pour Gatorade on the coach. Bingo! There’s my extent of knowledge. I never go up to guys and say “Hey, who do you think will take the wing eating contest this year? Joey Chestnut? I’m hoping it’ll be Bertoletti. He’s got nimble fingers and has been training pretty good this year.”

The rest of the trip went by fairly easy. No more dog fights, no more arrests, no more severe car accidents, although we were happy to be home as a vacation from the vacation was in order. Isn’t that always the way?

I think for Christmas we’re keeping it on the down low and staying home.

But that’s another story...