How to Make It in Life

Hey, here are some pictures from the Dodgers/Angels game I saw on Saturday. The Angels won 7 to 5 and two of my favorite players, Garrett Anderson and Francisco Rodriguez, played rather awesomely. Anderson hit two home runs and Rodriguez, aka K-Rod, got the save.


This arrows shows the approximate location of where we were sitting, except on the opposite side. Don't worry, it's not as far as it looks. Not for the fifty bucks I spent it wasn't!


They started a wave. Yay! Probably to cool everyone off cuz it was so hot and sunny. I got a tan on the right side of my face and my kneecaps. Next time I'll wear longer shorts.


K-Rod in the midst of striking some fool out. Really, we're not that far away.


My peanut shells in my frozen lemonade cup. Sorry, beer was seven dollars a bottle!

I hope I don't get in trouble because I don't have the express written consent of Major League Baseball to post these pictures. Do I even need it? So how would you go about getting it? Oh screw them, they're rich enough!

I'm off to my very first Dodgers game, and incidentally, my very first Angels game. I don't know what's taken me so long, since I've been here four years and I watch either team on TV whenever I can. So I'm killing two birds with one stone, or in my case, watching two baseball teams at the same time...

I've only been to one major league baseball game before, and that was in Philadelphia when I was in the 6th grade. I remember Craig James hit a home run and Will Clark almost hit me with a foul ball. It was nice, and I hope today is nice too! Be back with pictures hopefully.

Since there's so much nature outside my window, from squirrels to spiders to mockingbirds to woodpeckers, it's understandable to think that I live out in the countryside somewhere, milking cows and making love to my beautiful sheep. But in reality I live about a mile from LAX, which is one of the busiest airports in the world -- not exactly a vast expanse of pristine wilderness.

So where do all these animals come from? Well, they were probably here way before us humans came in with our paved roads and giant machines and transformed their habitat. So they had to adapt, and now we have woodpeckers pecking on telephone poles, mockingbirds imitating cell phones, and squirrels chattering angrily at me from telephone wires.

Oh, but I admire them for that, for I could never adapt to their natural habitat, being far too entrenched in civilization as I am -- the clothes, the showers, the toilet paper, the Doritos, the Regis and Kelly.

But most of all, I could no longer do without the drone of jet engines, the one that lulls me to sleep at night -- like a big robot mama humming a love song for her boy, as he dreams of beautiful, well-fluffed sheep in the next room.

So much for relaxing on the weekend. I worked today and I work tomorrow. And then I work Monday. But it's all good. Money money money!

So today I woke up to what sounded like a ball peen hammer being jackhammered against a block of iron. I went outside to see what it was, and it turned out to be a woodpecker pecking on the telephone pole outside my house.



I don't know if you can see it, the photo's kinda grainy. I tried to enhance it, with the spot shadow and all, but oh well, trust me, it's there. Anyway, what makes him a strange little woodpecker is not that he's pecking on a telephone pole, because hey, it sorta looks like a tree, but if you look closely, you can see that he's pecking on the metal brace attached to the telephone pole.

How heartbreaking is that? Poor retarded woodpecker.

I had a fun time in Arizona and Nevada. We went to Laughlin, which is like a mini-Vegas, and I won $10 on roulette. Then I lost $70 on video poker. Some ass next to me won $500.

Then I rode a jetski for the first time. It was quite fun, except when I fell off going 30 mph and water went rushing into my brain.

And then we swam in mildly stagnant river water, which was nice, except for the stench and the probable leptospirosis infection.

And then as soon as I came back, I had to work a 12 hour day, so I needs another vacation!

But I'm not complaining. I just don't have time to actually veg, which is one thing I'm looking forward to this weekend!

I'm off to the Colorado River for the weekend, to swim and get a tan. I heard the water is dirty though. But then again, so am I. Rrrrrowrrr!

I really should be working, but I really don't care at this point. Actually I do, but I need to de-stress, as evidenced by my recent bitterness. Dammit, I just remembered I gotta wash some clothes. *#%@&$!!!

400 dollars for a cleaning? Does that come with a happy ending? Hmmm? I know you said it was a special cleaning -- and by "special" you probably meant "painful", rather than "includes happy ending" -- but I don't see why you want me to have it, other than to help buy you a new big screen TV! You suck! You suck big time!

So I went to the dentist the other day, and they want me to pay $400 for a cleaning plus another $300 to fill three cavities. And that's with insurance. I swear, I should just work somewhere that provides full coverage, or live in a society that doesn't mind if you look like a Jack-O-Lantern. So I will find a new dentist, and hopefully this one won't mistake me for a fool!

So I had a lot of work to do this past week, but I came down with influen-- errr, a 24-hour cold, cough cough, and so I was able to get a day off and take my cousin to Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure so I could recuperate.

And we were able to get in for free because I got some connections... let's just say that I once "tossed Goofy's salad," if you know what I mean. Is that so wrong? He's brought joy and happiness to millions of people, after all. And Disneyland tickets are fifty bucks each!

So we got in for free, but alas, those punks at Disney still somehow manage to wring the money out of you, what with parking ($9), lunch ($22), drinks ($5) and snacks ($6). It didn't help that my cousin didn't have cash on him, but oh well, I was the host after all, goddammit.

We went on a lot of rides, including Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, which I can't imagine being anything but disturbing for little kids, as it chronicles Mr. Toad's descent into hell.

And then on the Pinocchio ride, there was some stereotypical Chinaman in a cage for some reason, complete with slanted eyes and rice farmer hat. Maybe that guy was in the original movie, I don't know, but that certainly doesn't make it right! You dig? Zippity doo da!

And in California Adventure, we watched A Bug's Life 3D movie/interactive stage show, which was really cool, but was also extremely frightening to the kids. Huge black widow spiders descend from the ceiling at one point, accompanied by loud and scary sound effects, and after they leave and it quiets back down, you can hear all the kids sobbing, being comforted by their parents.

And then we saw Kobe Bryant there -- no, not the interactive stage show -- the actual guy, accompanied by his wife and her gigantic $4 million dollar diamond apology ring. It looked like a giant piece of rock candy, and it looked absolutely delicious. But I had to get my cousin away from them, because he was talking really loudly about Kobe's trial, trying to cause trouble, and I didn't want us to get beaten up by the bodyguards.

Though that probably would've made for a funny story!