Friday, April 30, 2010

Overheard In Bako


"My brother is going to be a little late - he's impregnating a heifer."

Let's hope he's a vet.

Bon Appetit


I saw online that they'd just announced the list of 50 best restaurants in the world.

Not a single Bako restaurant made the cut.

Not even The Olive Garden.

I think it probably has something to do with the local palate.

In trying to understand the situation, I've created the helpful graphic above.

Maybe it's just a language thing. You can't help but notice most of the restaurants on the list are European. Perhaps if we switched to French?

"Thon casserole de nouilles, à base de crème de champignons et de fromage fondu."*

That sounds good, right?

I'd give that five stars.

Or maybe they should go the fusion route. It's all the rage in the big cities. Only make it their own. Thai/Tot fusion? Indian/Helper?

They'll have to figure it out on their own. I'm just the idea guy.


*Tuna noodle casserole, made with cream of mushroom soup and processed cheese.

Yippee-Kay-Yay-Motherf.....


The Rodeo is in town.

Thursday, April 29, 2010

(Too) Up Close And Personal



I'm not a big believer in plastic surgery. Unlike my partner.

He LOVES plastic surgery, even though he's years away from even considering it. His favorite show of all time was a short lived reality show,"The Swan", that plucked two butt-ugly women from across the country, subjected them to months of excruciating cosmetic procedures and then made them face off in a beauty pageant duel. Even I have to admit it was nothing short of awesome.

My problem with plastic surgery is there's just so many bad results running around, even here in Bako. I always assumed the goal was to shave a year or ten off your age, not look like an inflatable pool toy. And fame and fortune are no guarantee you won't look like you were pressed out of a mold. Just look at Meg Ryan and Mickey Rourke - she now looks like Howard the Duck and he looks vaguely Asian. And shiny.

But occasionally special cases crop up that really cry out for some cosmetic attention,and I came upon one such case just the other day.

Roz.

It pains me to say this, but she looks haggard.

Merle Haggard.

I'd never gotten closer than maybe 50 feet to her. But as I was walking the dogs near her condo the other day, I rounded the corner and suddenly found myself face to face with her.

And it wasn't pretty.

After a certain age, distance is your friend, and in her case it's her Best Friend Forever. She was still rocking the poodle doo and wearing some ridiculous outfit that involved leggings and a duster, but I hardly noticed. My attention was riveted on her face. Her tanned, leathery skin was deeply creased and it looked like her jowls had jowls. All those years as a groupie had taken their toll and she looked "rode hard", as they say. I began to think all the 80's fashions were less of a statement and more of a distraction to divert attention away from the fact she looked like a dried apple head doll.

If anyone every cried out for a cosmetic intervention, it was Roz. But I fear there isn't enough Botox in the world to even make a dent in her dents. That woman requires some massive heavy lifting, the kind usually reserved for burn victims. I have to admit I was a little stunned. I'd only ever really seen her in motion, tooling around the neighborhood behind the wheel of her badass Vette, exuding a certain cougarish joie de vivre. But in reality she was Grandma Walton.

That wasn't the only illusion that was shattered that afternoon. She'd backed the Vette out and I got a good look at Lil' Roz too. Perched on the dash she looked threadbare and worn, like she'd been plucked from the dump. And her little Fender guitar was nothing more than cardboard covered with tin foil.

I was crushed.

I wish I could take it all back, that I hadn't seen what I'd seen.

If only I'd left the house five minutes later.

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Hot Summer Nights


So much for Spring - the temperature soared to 90 yesterday, a harbinger of the blast furnace summer soon to come. You too can play along at home and create your own "Summer in Bakersfield" - just take a plate of manure and stick it in the microwave for several minutes.

Making things worse was the shrimp.

Much worse.

The boyfriend decided to cook an extravagant Thai meal Saturday night, so I was duly dispatched to the market with a list. Make that "markets", plural. I'm constantly amazed at how limited the resources are here, even as you're surrounded by millions of acres of fresh produce. It took trips to three different stores just to find cilantro.

Among the ingredients on the list was a dozen raw shrimp. After my unfortunate sushi experience, I'm leery of buying seafood so far from the sea. But I do as I'm told and picked them up.

The boyfriend started cooking Saturday afternoon and soon amazing aromas were drifting out of the kitchen. Several hours into it he turned to me and asked...

"Where's the shrimp?"

It was nowhere to be found and I thought it must have gotten lost in the car, but a cursory check turned up no shrimp. I assumed it never got bagged, left at the checkout and probably packed up with groceries of the housewife behind me in line. I pictured her unpacking her bags at home, aghast that fresh food had gotten mixed up with her Velveeta and Cream of Mushroom soup.

The boyfriend assured me it wasn't a big deal and he's such a good cook he can easily work around such obstacles. The meal went off without another hitch and was spectacular, as usual. The missing shrimp were forgotten.

Until yesterday.

Turns out they were in the car after all, wedged behind the passenger seat.

The problem was, we used my partner's car on Sunday, and I ended up working from home yesterday with no need to leave the house. So the shrimp had been sitting in the car for three days as the mercury continued to rise.

Rotting.

At 90 degrees, you figure the temperature inside an unventilated car has to hit around 110 or 120.

At any rate, we discovered all this once the boyfriend came home. He found a coupon for a neighborhood Mexican restaurant in a circular left at the door. We decided to treat ourselves to a Margarita or two and decided to take my car.

Or not. The smell was overwhelming and nauseating. And I have a sneaking suspicion it aint going anywhere anytime soon.

We ended up walking to the restaurant. You know it's bad if you're walking in Bako. All I can say is it took more than two margaritas to wash away that smell.

On the bright side, the air in Bakersfield doesn't smell so bad anymore, all things considered.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

We'll Leave The Light On For Ya

Kinfolk comin' to stay a spell? Don't wanna muss up the guest room and have to move all those HSN boxes? Just do what my neighbors do... run a cord out.


Saturday, April 24, 2010

That Sinking Feeling

They say a massive sink hole opened up just down the road from us. My only question is, how could they tell? The whole city is one big sinkhole as far as I'm concerned.

They say it's because of the "torrential" rains we've received.

We've had just over 5 inches in 6 months.

These people need to get a clue.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Where Every Day Is The Fourth Of July

One thing you never have to worry about in Bako - waking up one morning not knowing what country you live in.










That's just on our morning walk around the block, and it's only a small sample. There are a lot more. A LOT. But I was afraid of someone going all Second Amendment on my ass for taking pictures.

The ironic thing is they announced last week they were canceling the annual Fourth of July Fireworks Extravaganza, held at the college stadium. It seems that, contrary to all the bumper stickers I see around town, Freedom is in fact Free-last year almost no one actually paid to attend, choosing instead to view the aerial display from a safe, cheap distance. And none of the Uber Patriots of Bakersfield have stepped up to defray the costs. So it's been cancelled... maybe.

I think it's a ploy, an attempt to extort someone to bail it out. After all, a Fourth of July in Bako without fireworks would be like a day without roaches... never gonna happen. My guess is someone with business before the city will figure out a quid pro quo - pay for the show in exchange for permission to drill, dump or spray something. That's the way things work here... the American Way.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Age Before Beauty


One of the first things you notice after you move to Bakersfield, after the smell, is... there sure are a lot of old people here.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Lord knows I'm not that far behind, so I'm in no position to bitch about it. Even back in LA I was already getting "pre-need" applications from Forest Lawn. And lately I've been getting e-mail promotions for Hoverounds and Boniva. All the same, you do get the impression you're living in a Del Webb retirement community. If I have one complaint it's that these aren't the kindly Mrs. Butterworth variety of old people, these are the you-damn-kids-get-off-the-lawn kind. These people are cranky.

Can't say I blame them - I've only lived here six months and I'm always angry. Imagine what living an entire life here would do to you.

But upon closer inspection, you realize it's not so much that there are a lot of old people, it's that there's almost no young people. It's as if the entire generation between the ages of 18 and 35 has been abducted by aliens. You have school age kids, and old people, with a giant donut hole in the middle.

It's not that great a mystery, really. There is nothing for younger people here. Once they hit 18, the smarter ones get the hell out, off to college. Even the dimmer ones probably join the carnival circuit for a chance at some sort of future. Anyone too stupid to leave is left here to propagate the species.

I really do feel for the kids here. What a miserable existence. I saw a bunch of them just hanging out, being kids, snacking, texting, doing what kids do... doing it on the grassy median in the parking lot of the supermarket. Hanging out between the bumpers of F150's. I guess that's what passes for a park here.

But by far the sorriest thing I've seen since I've been here was actually in the supermarket. I was on yet another joyless shopping trip when I turned down the aisle to pick up some paper towels and was taken aback to find two little lovebirds, canoodling... in the shelves. They'd carved out a little loveseat on top of the Bounty. The boy was sitting cross legged, the girl splayed out, resting her head in his lap. They both were texting, oblivious to anyone passing by. I felt like I was intruding and quickly rolled by. I hoped they were just hanging out, waiting for a parent. But 30 minutes later I was ready to leave and I still needed my paper towels. So back I went and there they were. I was embarrassed as I reached over their heads to grab the no name towels.

We're on a budget.

I left the store feeling sad for the kids. What a pathetic childhood. I'd get the hell out of town too if the best place I could find for some quality time with my girlfriend was on top of the Quicker Picker Upper.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

April Showers


We had a refreshing Spring storm move through yesterday, which in and of itself is a slight miracle since this place gets about as much rain as Death Valley. The nicest part about it was the fact it tamped down the pervasive stench of fertilizer and pesticide that envelopes this city when it gets warm.

They say things will be back to "normal" today.

Pity.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Leave The Driving To Us

Way back in August, as the house in LA went into escrow and the train for Bakersfield appeared to be leaving the station, I figured I'd better hop to it and see if I could wrangle up some work in Hooterville. I Googled "ad agencies Bakersfield" and started cold calling the handful of listings that came up, blindly e-mailing in samples of my work.

So imagine my surprise when, within 30 minutes, one of the larger agencies e-mailed me back, anxious to set up a meeting. We set it up for the next day, and I schlepped into town to show my work. They loved what they saw and said they had the perfect job for me... re-designing and branding the regional bus system, Golden Empire Transit, or "GET" for short. It's kind of a dream job for a graphic designer, designing the look for a transit system, even one in the middle of nowhere.

But there was a catch.

They'd pretty much already blown through the budget, and all they had to offer was $500. They'd shown the client several rounds of logos, and the client was, shall we say, unhappy. They then showed me the work they'd presented and I was appalled. I had doodled more professional looking logos on my Peachy folders back in Junior High. So even though the money sucked, it was going to be relatively easy to blow them away, and besides, I had nothing going on that week. So I accepted.

Over the next two days I really got into the project and designed them 16 logos. They were thrilled with the results, as was the client. Within two days they had selected one of my logos, the very first one I had done. And for a brief shining moment I allowed myself to think that maybe there was a future here. That this was the start of a beautiful professional relationship. That Bakersfield was so off anyone's radar, perhaps I could bigfoot my way into town and be a rock star.

Or not.

I never heard from the agency again. It was a one night stand. Wham bam thank you ma'am. Even though I had saved their bacon with one of their biggest clients, every phone call and e-mail after that was met with a chilly "Don't call us, we'll call you".

And so I moved on, or tried to. Totally forgot about the job.

Until two weeks ago.

So I was watching "Judge Judy", which leads into the local news, and up popped a teaser for...

THE NEW BUSSES!

It was the headline breaking news!

The new busses are here! The new busses are here!

They even got the corrupt mayor on camera singing the praises of the new look. That couldn't have been cheap.

Just to give you a little perspective, this is what the old busses looked like...

"Next stop... the Third Reich."

Seriously, the first time I saw them I thought 'Nazi propaganda".

Having lived here six months, I'm not so sure that was accidental.

And now, the brand spanking new look...



Cool, clean, refreshing, no?

Like a Prozac on wheels.

I tried to get photos of the bus, but they are so elusive here I've actually only seen one on the street once in two weeks, so I had to settle for screen caps.

I'm probably blowing my cover by posting this, but I don't care. At least not now. I can always delete it.

But still, I was bursting with pride. Like I'd just given birth. To a bus.

They look just as I imagined.

Except I thought they would be much shorter.

Monday, April 19, 2010

R.I.P. 2003-2010


The TV is dead, long live the TV.

We figured it was too good to be true, but still...
right before the finale to Project Runway?

Haven't we suffered enough?

Saturday, April 17, 2010

What's In A Name


So there was this guy named Baker.

And he had a field.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is how Bakersfield got it's name.

Seriously, there's nothing more to it than that.

These are simple, no nonsense people. Back before the developers wrested control and started naming everything after air fresheners (Sagepoint, Laurelglen, Windsong...), what you saw was what you got.

Where does the county end?

County Line Rd.

Where's the University?

University Avenue.

Where's the old river?

Old River Road.

What about oil?

Oildale.

Fruit?

Fruitdale.

Actually, that Dale fellow really got around - Rosedale, Stockdale, This-dale, That-dale.

Three guesses what you'll see out on Weedpatch Highway.

Or maybe it was just laziness. All the streets downtown are named "A" through "V", all 22 letters of the alphabet. See? Laziness. They couldn't even be bothered to finish the alphabet.

The only exception is there's no "I" Street.

Instead it's... Eye Street.

Either someone had a wicked sense of humor, or the people who lived here were even more dense than the current population.

Which brings up another thing. What exactly do you call the people who live here? There's nothing obvious, like "San Franciscan" or "New Yorker". Nothing vaguely romantic like "Angeleno". Or whimsical like "Seattleite".

"Bakersfieldian" is a nonstarter. Try saying that three times fast.

I was kind of partial to "Bakerputians" when we first moved here. Or "Bakerpudlians".

"Bakeoids"? "Bakeholes"?

Nothing seemed to strike a chord.

At the end of the day, I realized I needed to just go with my gut, ditch the whole "Bako" prefix and use what worked best.

Fucktards.

Harsh? Sure. But if you lived here, you'd know it's the right choice.

And after all, it could be worse. The neighboring city to the South, Taft, was once known as... Moron.

It would appear that over time, all the Morons moved here.

Friday, April 16, 2010

The Tribe Has Spoken


The boyfriend and I have turned into quite the homebodies. It wasn't always the case. Once upon a time we were quite the party boys, but by the time we met, our club days were already waning. The scene and the people had become predictable and boring and as we had gotten older the allure had faded. Then the boyfriend landed a job with truly onerous hours, and an even worse commute and soon our nightlife was limited to weekends, if at all. Once the dogs came along we cut back even more since they had they ability to make leaving them alone feel like child abuse. The move to Bakersfield was the final straw, and for all intents and purposes, we're shut-ins.

And addicts.

We're addicted to TV.

Reality TV.

There's almost nothing we won't watch as long as someone is voted out at the end.

We make occasional exceptions for "Hoarders", or my partner's obsession with "Trauma:Life in the ER", but beyond that, if someone doesn't go by the end of the hour we don't watch it.

And then, on Tuesday, suddenly, without warning...

The TV died.

I was watching the local news and suddenly the screen went black. I could still hear the TV, since the audio is routed through the stereo, but onscreen... nothing. Don't panic, I thought, it's the local news. On a good day it's like watching a high school production of "Broadcast News", they're incompetent, someone probably just threw the wrong switch.

But 15 minutes later, still nothing.

Soon the boyfriend arrived home and I figured everything would be fine. He's MacGyver - he can fix anything, create anything out of common household items. Given enough time he could create a bazooka out of toilet paper rolls and the contents of our junk drawer.

He gave it look, pulled it away from the wall, spent time fiddling with the wires and switches on the back. When that didn't work, he took the high tech approach and gave it a whack. Hard. Repeatedly.

Still nothing.

We sat on the couch, contemplating our future. Fixing it didn't appear to be an option. Back when we had money, we had been early adopters, trend setters, and had bought one of the first generation flatscreens. Obviously they hadn't yet worked out the bugs. The company that made it had gone out of business years ago.

We thought about running to WalMart and buying a cheap one, but we were two days away from writing a check to the IRS and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't accept the excuse that we couldn't pay them because we couldn't miss "RuPaul's Drag Race".

So we sat there in silence. Compounding the situation was the fact that just days earlier we'd lost all the lights in the kitchen. No idea why. Like the TV, they just stopped working. The property management company showed about as much concern as they had for the roach infestation, and my partner had been reduced to cooking by candlelight. We were slowly regressing back to "Little House on the Prairie" and we wondered what was next to go. The internet? Indoor plumbing? At the rate we were going, by this time next week we'd be churning butter.

We tried to look on the bright side. We didn't NEED television. We weren't a slave to it, right? Besides, there were things to do, laundry to be folded and roaches to be disposed of. We'd be productive. We busied ourselves with chores and were pretty proud of ourselves for accomplishing so much. When we were finished my boyfriend looked and me and said "So.... ready for bed?

It was 8:45.

Night number two, the withdrawals started to kick in. We were missing "America's Next Top Model". We realized we still had audio and figured we could at least listen to it, but it became quickly obvious that Tyra Banks just doesn't work as Ye Olde Time Radio Hour.

Thursday night promised to be more than depressing. We were missing "Survivor" AND "Project Runway". I was laying on the floor, playing with the dogs, trying to convince myself that throwing a tennis ball against the wall was just as exciting as watching Michael Kors and Nina Garcia. The boyfriend came home, and as he was passing the TV, he gave a huge whack, out of spite.

And it came on!

It was a miracle! A TV miracle! Like ShamWow!

And just in time. We were afraid to touch it for fear of disturbing whatever juju had brought it back from the dead. We watched our shows, and as we shut it off for the night, it was with the knowledge that it may have been a fluke and it may not come back on again. But this morning, up popped "Good Morning Kern County", in all it's stupid glory.

There's really no explanation for it. It's a complete mystery.

To paraphrase Heidi Klum, "Somedays you are on, and the next, you're auf".

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Now You See It, Now You Don't


Forget Criss Angel or David Copperfield, if you really want to see an astounding illusionist you should swing by my accountant's office while he's doing my taxes. I don't know how he does it, and I don't want to know. I'm afraid if I look through the gory details I'll get queasy. This is the closest I've ever cut it, the tax returns delivered by FedEx last night.

The high powered, high priced CPA was the one luxury I allowed myself to hang onto from my former life and I'm thanking my lucky stars I did. And luck had something to do with it as he normally doesn't deal with riff raff like me, which is what I've become since my income dropped to a fraction of what I once made. But for old time's sake, and a hefty fee, he agreed to keep me on.

All I know is a few weeks ago I owed tens of thousands of dollars to the IRS and today I owe not much more than I now owe him. And he's worth every penny of it.

And a huge shout out to the dysfunctional State of California, which just last week temporarily changed state law to stop taxing the debt forgiven in a Short Sale. When you do a Short Sale, like we had to do on the house in LA, you sell the house for less than is owed on it and the bank agrees to "forgive" the difference. Up until last Thursday, California considered that "income" and taxed it. And in my case, the banks forgave a lot... I could buy a house with a pool in Bako for what they forgave. Last Wednesday I owed the State so much money that selling both kidneys wouldn't even cover it. Today I'm getting a refund.

If that's not magical, I don't know what is.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Remain Calm


The town is all a twitter!

Literally.

There's a rumor sweeping Bakersfield, via email/text/twitter/Facebook, that the USGS has predicted an 8.4 magnitude earthquake will hit Bako in the next 24 hours!

Everyone is in a panic.

One frantic woman was interviewed on the morning news and expressed her fear that an earthquake that big would make Bakersfield unlivable.

Honey, I hate to break it to you, but it already is.

Let me see if I'm understanding this correctly. In the past 60 days, massive earthquakes have rocked Haiti, Chile, Mexico, and just this morning, China. Unpredicted. And in every instance, the nice people at Caltech have trotted out to tell everyone they didn't predict them, they don't have the science to predict them, and they possibly never will be able to predict them.

And yet, the simpletons here seem to think this is a new skill, developed in the last week, and it's going to be test driven on Bakersfield.

The consensus view seems to be that an 8.4 earthquake here would be a bad thing. I'm not so sure. If I've learned nothing over the past two days it's that sometimes, when something isn't working, it's just best to wipe the slate clean and start over from scrath.

That applies to movie posters as well as mid sized American cities.

That's EnterTorment


I had a long history of working in the entertainment business, and there are days I really miss working on film and television projects.

And then you get one in.

Man, I had forgotten how crazy-making and soul-crushing that business had become. I hadn't had a Hollywood project in months, and like all traumatic experiences, you tend to block out the bad and only remember the good, if there is any. And there usually isn't much good to remember anymore.

It wasn't always that way. It used to be a really fun, really creative business. And even though you were pretty far down the Hollywood totem pole, there was still enough glitz and glamour to go around. Jetting around the world doing photo shoots, rubbing elbows with the "A-List". And money! Six figure salaries for everyone!

But then the suits took control and sucked every ounce of enjoyment out of it. And the money with it. What was once a highly sought after career has been reduced to assembly line drone work at slave wages, leaving those of us veterans cashing in the 401k's and raiding the kids college funds to try and keep the house.

At any rate, a call came in from an agency I hadn't worked for in over a year. It was a job! As with everything else in Hollywood, it sounded too good to be true - two days of work, for really great money. And even better, there was no thinking involved. They had an idea, they had already shot all the components, they just needed someone with my "skill" and "artistry" to put it all together. Like Tinkertoys.

Since I hadn't worked on a Hollywood project in awhile, I had kind of forgotten the ins and outs and rules of the business. And rule #1 is, whenever people start flattering you, you're fucked. That's actually the standard way you get fired...

"You are SO creative and talented... you'll have no problem finding another job."

So I took the job and lived to regret it.

The job seemed pretty cut and dried. I can't mention the project, lest they actually print this piece of shit and it gets traced back to me. It was a poster, set in a courtroom. We're standing at the back of a courtroom. Our lead actress, an intense, driven lawyer (are there ever any other kinds?) is storming out of the courtroom, down the center aisle, right at camera, flinging all matter of court documents into the air. The stunned onlookers, the supporting cast, are all seated in the courtroom gallery, facing forward, but looking over their shoulders at the spectacle.

They had shot a bunch of body doubles for the onlookers, shot in courtroom chairs, looking over their shoulders. They had shot all of the supporting cast separately. Assignment one... strip in the cast's heads on the double's bodies.

Sounds easy enough.

Only they had shot all actors looking directly at camera. The doubles were shot from behind. It is physically impossible to rotate your head 180 degrees. Unless you're an owl. This was a problem. I called the account executive handling the project, who six months ago was a receptionist, to discuss. She was having none of it.

"JUST MAKE IT WORK!!!"

Evidently buried far down in the creative brief, in the fine print, was "Overcome the inherent limitations of human anatomy".

The problems piled up from there... perspective from another dimension, people lit from all different angles, missing arms and legs. I did my best, but there was no rescuing the hot mess it had become.

The saving grace, if you could call it that, is that changes in the business and the dominance of PhotoShop have displaced all the people of vision and creativity with the worst kind of anal-retentives, people for whom there is no "big picture", just millions of little ones, which they focus on like a laser.

So I turned in my poster, the one with the incredible rubber-necked owl people in the Twilight Zone, fearing the worst, dreading the comments to come.

And when they did, these were her only comments:

"On Actress A, she seems to have some flyaway hairs - please remove. And can we add a wristwatch to Actor B?"

That was it.

The whole poster looked surreal, with grotesquely twisted humans, warped perspective, and she was accessorizing.

So there went two days of my life I'll never get back. I hope they pay.

Never again.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Our Modern World


This isn't an old man rant about the damn Computer Age - I'm all for it. It allows me to work from home, write this blog anonymously and maintain the charade that I still live in LA. What's not to love?

It is an old man rant about the obliteration of the concept of the "work day". The idea that there may in fact be "non working hours" is apparently a relic of a bygone era. As my income has steadily fallen over the past couple of years, the hours I'm expected to be available now rival that of an on-call trauma surgeon.

I check my e-mail when I get up around 5:30 am and there will be notes and revisions sent at 10 the previous night, with angry follow-up e-mails around 11 wondering why they haven't seen anything yet. Changes get sent late at night on Saturday with a thoughtful note telling me to "take my time and show me something on Sunday". I get calls on my cell wondering why I haven't responded to an e-mail and when I explain that I'm at dinner or, I don't know, SLEEPING, it's met with a silence that implies "So...?"

I do have one conscientious client. He always sends me his notes and revisions at the start of the business day and doesn't ask to see anything until the end of his day.

He's in Sydney.

The start of his business day is 4pm my time. So he doesn't need to see anything until 2am.

And the texting... oy. One client sends all her comments through text, and I usually respond with e-mail. Why? Because I'm sitting at a computer using a full sized, human scaled keyboard the way God intended, and not some scaled down, munchkin sized "virtual" keyboard on my iPhone. If I had to stop what I was doing, whip out the phone and try and text her back with my limited texting skills every time she had a crisis, I'd never get anything done.

"Really, you need to respond with text. I'm never in my office and retrieving e-mail is a hassle for me."


Well, I never leave my office because I'm here WORKING. On your shit.

She's usually getting her hair done, or a mani/pedi.

Bitch.

It must be wonderful for the clients, being so mobile. I get notes from Disneyland, revisions from a boat off of Malibu, a "change of direction" between the appetizer and the main course. And it affords them the ultimate "Get Out Jail" card when things go awry...

"Well, it didn't look like that on my phone!"

Imagine that! The 16 page medical brochure for the Indian doctors, full of unpronounceable names and paragraphs of dense medical jargon, the one you approved on your 2 inch Blackberry screen, has typos!

Add in the fact that most of my clients are under the impression I now have a drive-thru window.

"Hey, I need an ad created from the six photos I've attached, a collage that's stylish and sophisticated. I don't have any copy so you'll have to write something. It's for a 10am meeting..."

It was 9:20.

At any rate, I just had to vent. I've been sitting near a computer for two days, waiting for a client to send me photography for a project that's due tomorrow. She's a very busy lady, what with the softball games, dinner with friends and packing for her vacation which starts tomorrow. She swears I'll get it. Probably around 11pm.

I can sympathize. I remember how hectic it was before I took my last vacation.

In 2005.

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Roachapalooza


Imagine if you will, it's Poland, 1939, and you are under siege. Only instead of invading Nazis, its...

Cockroaches.

That's pretty much how we've felt the past week.

We moved here in late summer, and as bad as it seemed, little did we know the roach high season had already been winding down for awhile. They had evidently been moving out for weeks to wherever they "winter".

Probably Boca.

Within a few weeks the weather turned cold and damp and the roaches seemingly vanished. Not completely - we'd find an occasional straggler, a night watchman left behind to keep an eye on the place over the winter. But we quickly were lulled by their absence into a state of complacency.

But that's now shattered.

It started about a month ago when the weather suddenly turned warm and immediately they were "baaaack."

Every morning you'd wake up and find them.

Dead.

Always dead.

At first it was only one or two, conspicuously located in the center of the kitchen or bathroom on the "Fine Imported Italian Tile", like a roach mob hit, left as a warning.

It quickly escalated, and most mornings you'd find half a dozen or more little carcasses, like stumbling upon the aftermath of roach gang drive-by. Maybe we lived on disputed turf and the little roach Crips were settling a score with the little roach Bloods.

We'd occasionally find them in the carpet, but for weeks all the action was centered around the "Fine Imported Italian Tile".

Maybe that was the problem.

I remembered reading an article years ago about a cement plant in Mexico that was putting out product that was just "slightly" radioactive.

Hmmm...

Our tile may in fact be imported, but maybe it's from South of the Border and it's nuclear? Lord knows the lax building codes of Kern County would allow it. Conventional wisdom is that the only thing to survive nuclear Armageddon would be the cockroaches, but perhaps they aren't so impervious to radiation after all.

But before we had a chance to really ponder the possibility, the next wave hit, and this time they were LIVE.

We still wake up every day to the dead ones, now in greater numbers. The house looks like a roach minefield most mornings. But for the past week we've had to content with the lives ones, practicing their ninja moves in the unlikeliest places. I found one in the crotch of clean underwear, in a drawer. And I almost had a heart attack one night as I went to brush my teeth. As I turned on the tap, a leviathan one crawled out of the drain. They saunter across the floors, taunting us, knowing there's really nothing we can do.

But the worst is at night, in bed. We've both been jolted awake as they skitter across bare arms and legs, or the worst, your face. I felt one in my hair as I tried to drift off to sleep a few days ago. I went to make the bed one morning and they scurried out from under the sheets.

We've complained to the management company repeatedly and they don't care. Why should they? They know what we evidently fail to comprehend... it isn't the property, it's the city.

Bakersfield is roach nirvana. That they can thrive in a city that's perpetually coated in a layer of aerial pesticide is an impressive feat. If anything, it's probably making them stronger.

We're not even a month into Spring, and it's only going to get worse. Much worse. The only thing getting us through the ordeal is the slight hope that we can somehow use the roach infestation to break the lease and get out of this hellhole sooner rather than later.

Maybe everything does happen for a reason.

Maybe the roaches are our ticket out of here.

Friday, April 9, 2010

The Unwashed Masses


Now there's something you don't see every day... a Christian laundromat.

I'm a little unclear on the concept. Do they use Holy Water? Do you have to be Born Again to use it? How do they check? Is there a secret handshake? If you aren't, do they baptize you? And if so, on what cycle?

Sorry - that's way more than I want to think about while I'm doing my delicates.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

BREAKING NEWS... BREAKING NEWS... BREAKING NEWS...


THIS JUST IN TO THE NEWSROOM! New dishes at Panda Express........ Let's go LIVE.........


........ Honey Walnut Shrimp..........




........the owner assures us it's "Mouse Watering"...........


........ back to you in the Newsroom.

I'm not sure what's more pathetic - that this is considered headline news, or that I'm sitting here taking pictures of it at 6:00am.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

“Bakersfield: City Of Righteousness®”


I read that on a bumper sticker, so it must be true, right? Although personally, I would have gone with a longer sticker and gotten the "Self" in there too. But that's just me art directing.

The Righteous of Bakersfield seem to practice a curious form of Born Again Christianity, an abridged, Cliff notes version. Imagine, if you will, that the Bible has a Spa Menu. Here there are only really 7 commandments, 8 if you count the one about killing, but really, that's more a suggestion than a hard and fast rule. Gone is all that nonsense about adultery and coveting of wives, left on the cutting room floor, trimmed for time.

Because if there's one thing I've observed about the Righteous of Bakersfield in my seven months here, its that they're horny as hell.

In all my dealings with the locals, you can't help but notice almost everyone is divorced or in the process of getting there. The Cougar population is unchecked and they seem to be constantly on the prowl. A woman I work for hasn't even bothered to wait to finalize her divorce before picking up a strapping boytoy. She says he's a "horseman", and I hope to God that means he works with horses and she isn't alluding to something else. Most days she disappears for a nooner while the kids are in school. I design the publications for her church.

The plastic surgery business here is booming, with dueling surgeons advertising weekly specials. For the ladies there are Mommy Makeovers and more, a little tune up to make sure that engine is purring like a kitten. And don't forget about the menfolk! Just this week they started advertising specials on Male Breast Reductions.

But what about the children?

One woman I work for is an anomaly, happily married. She's one of the most pious people I've met, and after months she finally warmed up to me, despite my Sodomite tendencies. I stopped by the office one Monday morning and she was positively beaming. "What's up?" I asked, and she explained how her 18 year old daughter had gotten engaged over the weekend. "Congratulations!" I said, to which she replied..

"Well she kinda had to... she's knocked up."

Seeing the momentary shock on my face, she quickly added...

"It happens a lot around here."

And then there's this: On the news the other night they had a special report about the appalling rise in sexually transmitted diseases in the county...

among the Seniors!

They aren't talking High School seniors, they mean Grandma has crabs.

My takeaway from all this is that, if you're straight, pretty much anything goes. Judging by the people I've met, I'd guess it's all pretty vanilla. But for all I know, there could be a steamy underside to Bako, a world of B&D and S&M and hidden dungeons where Mistress Ellie Mae finds creative uses for all that farm equipment. Or who knows, maybe even Furries. I mean, once you start talking Horsemen it's a slippery slope.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Gojira!


That would be the proper Japanese name for Godzilla.

When you think about it, this area would be perfect for a monster movie. We have the massive, secretive military installations to the east (Edwards Air Force Base and China Lake, California's answer to Area 51) and we have the ecological disaster that is Bakersfield proper. I'm surprised no one has thought to exploit that for a film. Of course if anyone were to think of it, they'd more than likely move the location to someplace a bit more scenic. I mean, who wants to look at Bako for two hours on screen?

The reason I thought of any of this this morning is I was watching the local weather report this morning...


Doesn't it look like he's about to come over the ridge and start stomping the hell out of Bakersfield?

I'd pay to see that.

Even pay extra to see it in 3D.

Monday, April 5, 2010

A Very Berry Easter


Another all too brief visit home. I've really come to cherish our trips back to my folks. They've lived in the same home for almost 50 years, and once upon a time I couldn't wait to get the hell out of there. Now it's become something of a sanctuary for us. Chalk it up to age and wisdom and having your life collapse in on itself like a cheap card table from WalMart.

My parents have adopted my partner as their own, and for my Mom he's the daughter she wishes she had, instead of the frosty one she's currently saddled with. When we're there we end up sleeping in separate rooms, not so much as a bow to their sense of propriety, but as an acceptance of the futility of trying to fit two grown men and two dogs into a full sized bed. I remember as a kid going to visit my grandparents and having to sleep on a 30 year old mattress that was so soft and worn that it engulfed you and turned you into a human taco. At my folks, it's the opposite. While the mattresses are also 30 years old, they are mysteriously hard as a sheet of plywood. They've lost all their lateral support, so you end up swaying slightly side to side and back and forth. It's like sleeping on a skateboard. But for some reason I don't mind.

We had our big Easter dinner on Saturday to accommodate our travel plans. My partner cooked a gourmet meal, as usual. My sister and her family arrived, and she was uncharacteristically pleasant, which is never a good sign.

Something was up.

It didn't take long to discover what that was. They weren't there more than 15 minutes before my sister cornered me in the backyard, where I'd snuck out for a smoke. I hadn't seen her since Thanksgiving, or spoken to her. We don't really talk anymore. She'd never asked for our new phone number once we had moved, and it never occurred to me to offer it to her since she hadn't used the old phone number to return any calls in years.

"I want to talk to you..." she said.

The wind up, aaaaaand... the pitch.

Turns out she and her husband had joined a cult, a multi-level marketing scheme selling the latest offering in snake oil... "Mona Vie", some cure-all elixir made from the Brazilian Acai berry.

"I haven't told Mom and Dad, and I'd like to keep it our secret".

Well I don't blame you... if you told them, they'd think you were a moron. I sure did.

I told her I was familiar with the product and she seemed a little shocked.

She cut to the chase, bypassing any talk about the actual product or it's alleged benefits.

"We already have 9 people under us, and if we get two more, we start making money..."

So there it was. Over the past year and a half, as my partner and I lost our jobs, our home and most of our prized possessions, as we were exiled to the wasteland of Bakersfield, she'd shown not the slightest interest or concern. Not a word of sympathy or encouragement or hope.

But now there was money to be made and she wanted to talk. I wasn't a brother to her anymore, simply an easy mark to skewer on the top of some pyramid scheme.

She said LA and Orange County were an "untapped market" and they were all going to get rich and she merely wanted to share the wealth, to get us "in on the ground floor" before it really took off.

I just wanted to end the conversation, so I lied. I told her that, of course, we would be absolutely interested. The problem was we didn't plan on staying in Bakersfield and it didn't seem wise to launch what promised to be a spectacularly successful franchise here only to abandon it in a few months. We'd talk later when we knew where we were going.

She always was gullible.

What I chose not to share with her was the reason I was already familiar with the product. Los Angeles and Orange County are "untapped markets" for a reason - those people aren't stupid. Not so in Bakersfield, where Mona Vie hucksters are as common as cockroaches. The rubes here have bought into it hook, line and sinker, even though few of them actually know how to pronounce "acai". My partner has been shaken down at work, and a few of my local clients have tried to do the same to me. You see cars all over town with huge "Mona Vie" decals on the back window. Each bottle costs $30 and to get the "full health benefits" you need to buy a bottle a week. Or so they say.

In a moment of weakness, my partner actually bought a bottle. It's like drinking motor oil. The only thing I could compare it to was drinking barium before an upper GI. We dumped it out.

For the rest of their visit, she'd catch my eye and give me a knowing look, a sly smile, a subtle acknowledgment of "our little secret".

Although it's not much of secret... my sister is an idiot.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Great Friday

I think I pulled a muscle writing all those nice things about Bako yesterday. Good thing there's little chance of that happening again any time soon.

So, it's Good Friday, in more ways than one - we'll be leaving town later today to spend Easter with family. I think of it as "Reverse Space Tourism"... instead of blasting off from civilization and heading into an endless void of darkness, a vacuum of nothingness, we'll be doing the opposite.

Sadly, it'll be a round trip, so we'll be back in the void on Sunday.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Seeing The Light


I had an epiphany of sorts last night. Maybe it was because being angry and depressed all the time just ultimately wears you out. As I was lying awake in bed, unable to sleep, I couldn't stop thinking that there had to be a reason we were here, some reason that fate had stuck us in the last place on earth we'd ever think to live. And then I realized that maybe all my negative energy and bitterness were blocking my ability to see the possibilities, to see the reason why we're here. Maybe by focusing so relentlessly on what we had lost, I wasn't able to see everything we had gained.

I know what some of you may be thinking...

"He's high..."

"He's had some sort of psychotic break..."


But no. It's just the realization that I've expended so much energy focusing on the glass half empty that I haven't been able to see the glass half full. There is actually a lot of opportunity here, if only I would take the time to look for it. And when you really think about the things that are important in life, Bakersfield really isn't that bad a place to live.

There are probably people out there who think this couldn't possibly be genuine, that there was no way I could have undergone such a change of heart. And all I can say to those naysayers is,
check the date.