July 2007 Archives

I love my little section of Los Angeles. West Hollywood may not be perfect, but I have a great apartment, a clean neighborhood, and although the Sunset Strip is within earshot, I rarely have to deal with noisy/drunk people so much that it affects me. Sure, every now and then you hear a fight outside, or some people who had a little too much to drink celebrating the end of their night, but it's usually only a few minutes on the weekend and I fall back asleep.

That doesn't mean I have noise problems, of course. In my case, most of the noise is coming from my building. I really don't want to sound like an old man, because I used to throw a rowdy party every now and then, but the parties were on the weekend.

The major noise in my building comes from one person, who I think is a bartender, who comes home and needs to unwind. His methods of unwinding vary from drinking a lot can screaming on the balcony, to drinking a lot, playing loud muse, screaming on the balcony, slamming lawn furniture against his balcony, and all sorts of other things.

I wouldn't really care but, you know, he does get back from work at like 3 or 4 AM, and he doesn't limit his rantings to the weekend. There is nothing worse than waking up at 4AM, listening to somebody making noise, and wondering if you are going to be able to fall asleep before your alarm wakes you up again.

One of these days, I will stop complaining and just call the cops, but sometimes my bed is just too comfortable to get up and deal with the 5-0. Besides, I figure the odds that the po-po will drive by when this guy is going all nuts and shit and take care of the problem themselves.

This morning, as I am returning from my morning run (about 7:30 AM), I pass by my building where the cops are talking to somebody about a noise complaint! Reason to be excited, right?

WRONG!

The cops were talking to the two dudes that come by and do landscaping on our property. Somebody was upset at a hearing a leaf blower or something at 6AM or whatever (PS, great response time Sheriffs!). Gas leaf blowers have been banned, which is fine, but it means that electric leaf blowers are legal. Besides, these guys are paid to be here by our building management. If they get there too early, blame the management! And I've heard the leaf blowers; they are not as loud as this guy playing his awful death metal at 4:30 AM!

If any of you are still reading, you are probably wondering if I have a point. And yes, there is a point. If you are going to nark on somebody, at least do it effectively. And even if it is not going to be effective, at least make it passive aggressive in some way. If you can't accomplish either one of these tasks, please just stay in bed.

So, I am still blogging at Gridskipper, at the grueling pace of one post per week. If you haven't looked in a while, you are missing such insightful posts as the Posh and Becks Tour of Los Angeles and my take on the Yogur Wars going on in Los Angeles.

Update: Yes, that should read yogurt wars, thanks for being so understanding and tender LQ.

As you know, I gave in and joined myspace.com a little while ago. I've decided that all of my attempts to insulate myself from social networking take more effort than actually being in social networking. Faux anonymity be damned! I'm going all in. This probably means facebook, flickr, and any other number of Web 2.0 (or 3.0) efforts out there. One thing I do like is twitter because it requires little effort and I can update using a text message from any cell phone. If you have any social networking recommendations, please feel free to leave a comment. If you ever need to send me an e-mail the address is mokers@ my domain name.

I usually don't post too many videos from youtube because I figure that everybody else has already seen them and I don't want to demonstrate my lack of pop trendiness to the masses. But I'll break all rules for the Obama Girl.

After the hit I Have a Crush on Obama, the minds behind Obama Girl have released Obama Girl vs. Giuliani Girl. Some may see these videos as silly, but I really think that this type of video really speaks to a part of the population that has been difficult to reach with any sort of debate. It really begins a conversation on the subjects that really matter: Which candidate has supporters who look the best wearing hot pants?

So who wins? Obama girl has the curves, but Giuliani Girl has the more natural figure. Advantage: Giuliani Girl (unless Obama Girl wasn't enhanced). Then again, Giuliani Girl has that Scar Spice ca. 1997 hair and Obama Girl has the sort of raven locks that have always turned me on. Advantage: Obama Girl. Finally Obama Girl loves the half-black guy, and Giuliani Girl wants to jump on the bones of somebody who is losing his hair. Advantage: Push - I clearly have an interest in both camps.

I guess I'll vote for...more videos with girls in hot pants!

I've joined myspace. At this pace, I'll be on facebook by 2010 or so.

Mokers on myspace.com

Please forgive me...and be my friend.

So, I was at a wedding in Cape Cod this weekend and got to spend some time in Boston. I went to school in New England, but kind of think Boston sucks, even though I do love the Celtics (which makes me one of the few Yankees-Celtics fans out there). Actually, I don't love the Celtics so much lately after all of the insanely stupid shit Danny Ainge has pulled since he took the helm, but you get the idea.

First, I would love to give a shout out to the new couple, Mr. and Mrs. Andrew and Angela Hoey. They are the cutest couple ever and they read their own vows, which had everybody choked up by the end, including yours truly who likes to consider himself Mr. Stoic. In fact, I am probably going to steal one of Andy's particularly good lines for myself. I don't think there were any girls from LA from the wedding, and I can say it with a straight face, so I think I will be OK. And I would be amiss if I didn't give a shout out to Andy's mom Betsy, who was one of TVgasm's biggest fans since the early days. Yay! (Wedding picture of me and some of the college boys after the jump)

However, I couldn't leave a post about Boston without disparaging Logan Airport. What the hell is going on with that place? You think that with all the cost overruns of the big dig, somebody could have found someway to funnel funds into improving Loganl; perhaps Teddy's price was a little too high. Anyway, I was doing the self check-in thing, and then I was going into security. Inside security, there was a separate line for coach (me) and first/business class. This is bullshit. I understand why you would want to give the people that you charge extra money for better access when checking in, but the TSA is paid by taxes, ie YOU and ME. In otherwords, part of my hard-earned wages were going to help American Airlines pamper its first-class passengers. WTF? Is this even allowed? I feel like I need to complain, or at least be given some perks to shut me up.

PS I am waiting here typing at a restaurant at the Killian's Boston pub, waiting for the waitress to come around so I can wrangle another Cuba libré, and there are a group of really annoying guys right next to me. At least one of them has BO and they are trying to impress anybody who will listen about getting kicked off of a golf course because it was too crowded. Verdict: THEY SUCK. Of course, my flight is delayed and I have nothing better to do than get loaded at an airport bar, so maybe I am the biggest idiot after all.

PPS Now I am on the plane. The girl next to meet is cute, but there are two babies in front of me and another on the left. I love kids, but babies on a plane are bad news if you are trying to sleep. Luckily, I have the middle seat so sleep is not an option. Hopefully the cute girl is interested in touching the iPhone.

PPPS By the way, my last three flights on American. Coming from Miami - delayed, changed planes, four hours late. Going to Boston, cancelled, put on another flight (non-direct). Coming back from Boston, delayed three hours. Why am I still giving them money?

I posted a couple of weeks ago how I was going to buy an iPhone. I believed that there would be plenty in stock and that I wouldn't have to be one of those idiots waiting in line. As it started to get closer to the time when the iPhone was going to be on sale, I started to get nervous. I needed to get somebody to wait in line for me, just in case.

When you are paying somebody to wait in line for you, they need to be somebody who doesn't have anything better to do and won't charge you an arm and a leg. Obviously, I called B-side, who isn't exactly doing nothing because he is constantly working on things now that he is doing the full-time screenwriter thing, but he actually prefers to work into the wee hours. I would ask him to wait a couple of hours in the afternoon, meaning it wouldn't harm his schedule.

So, B-side waited in line for a couple of hours for me, and I took over at around 5:30. The people in line around me were really nice and I had my two iPhones (I bought one for another friend who also didn't want to wait in line) in hand before 7PM.

The phone has been everything that I wanted. My only problems are that it doesn't do MMS, meaning I can't send pictures I take on the phone via text message. It also can't send text messages to multiple people, which is crazy. Finally, I can't wait until somebody hacks the thing so I can customize the ring tones and other alerts, etc.

Other than those minor quibbles, the phone rocks, and people are constantly asking to touch it. Whenever I pull it out, people want to look and touch. The battery life is good, especially if you turn off WiFi, and using it just as an iPod (in Airplane mode with all data service turned off) can go on forever. Eventually, the allure will wear off and nobody will be impressed at how I wasted that much money on a cell phone, but I love it so I don't care. I have never been one to buy a new computer, laptop, iPod or cell phone just because a slightly newer one came out, but I am not sure if I can resist with this one.