A Painter Makes Good on Her Promise

Annie's laughin',
Lappin up,
The milk I left
Inside my cup.

Oh, Anna!
How you giggle so,
When I reveal
The wiggle toe.

The Blog is Writing Itself

Regarding the request posted below, yes, I do take requests, but you may have to be patient. There will definitely be many posts on that and related topics. As for now...

The Best Thing I've Seen in the Past 24 Hours
7/28/05, Near the corner of Gailey and Lindbrook, Westwood Village, approximately 6:30 p.m.

Middle-aged woman in a cheap, purple pants-suit and dark glasses gets out of her car to feed the meter. She inserts some change, then leans down, squinting to look closer at it, before shaking it desperately. She looks around to see if anyone's watching, and without warning, shows the parking meter her teeth and cold clocks it with a serious round-house right. While the parking meter appears unfazed, the woman shakes her head and grimaces in pain and self-disgust, now holding her fist with her other hand. She looks around again to make sure no one's watching, and walks away quickly like nothing happened.

The Best/Most Useless Conversation I've Paid Money to Have in the Past 24 Hours
7/29/05, Wilshire Blvd, Santa Monica, approximately 9:15 a.m.
Doctor, appx. 6'5", Thin, Healthy, Tan, Authoritative

Doctor: Have you had any bloodwork done?
David: Not recently.
Doctor: You should really get some bloodwork done.
David: To test for what?
Doctor: Well, mostly for amemia.
David (surprised): Really? Do I seem anemic?!?
Doctor: No, it's just something everyone has to do.
David: But doesn't anemia usually have symptoms?
Doctor: One feels very tired and low on energy all the time.
David: Hmmm...but I don't feel tired or low on energy at all.
Doctor (distracted): Ok...Well, would you like me to refer you to a lab where you can get that bloodwork done?
David (confused): Ummm...how bout I just get back to you on that?

Most Important Research I've Done in the Past 24 Hours (excerpted from an e-mail with a good friend)

on 7/28/05 6:01 PM, mikal, ---------@hotmail.com wrote:

....also, is it possible for the USA to go into some small country and steal up every single last t-shirt that exists in that small country? -mikal

on 7/28/05 11:43 PM, dave, ---------@hotmail.com wrote:

Dear Mike,

I've done some research on question #2 and I believe there is only one country in the world where the cost of such an operation might be worth the benefit. The one I found is small enough in area and population, has very accomodating terrain, and has few residents who regularly wear t-shirts.

It is Vatican City.

Yes, this is a country, the world's smallest in fact. It's area is only 2/10 of a square mile, it's population just 770. My recommendation would be that we deploy 77 armed soldiers. The operation would take appx. 2 weeks. Each soldier would be equipped with a semi-automatic handgun and a list of ten names of people from whom they must collect all owned t-shirts. This should take no more than 2 days and 2 nights. On days 3-5 the 77 soldiers would conduct meticulous searches of every home, business, structure of antiquity etc., collecting hidden, lost and stray t-shirts. Lastly, days 6-14 would be spent unearthing the entire city to search for t-shirts that may have been buried with corpses or by dogs (though I admit that it is unlikely that corpses in Vatican City would be buried wearing t-shirts, I feel this last gruesome step is critical, as it would endow us with certitude that the entire country has been rid of t-shirts).

The next smallest country in the world is the Principality of Monaco, formerly known as the Kingdom of Monaco. Incredibly, this country of just 7/10 of a square mile has 32,000 residents! This is far too many residents to account for, and exponentially increases the number of variables, potential for tactical error, and subsequently, disaster, regardless of the size and skill of our battalion.

If I had to choose a second country to invade for the purpose of seizing all of it's t-shirts, it would be either Nauru or Tuvalu, the third and fourth smallest countries in the world, respectively. Both these tiny islands are located in the Pacific Ocean, have less than 13,000 residents, and are less than 9 square miles in area (1/10 the size of Washington D.C.). Neither has an elevation of more than 60 meters above sea level at any point, so the terrain would not be a problem. Nauru might be a better choice then Tuvalu, only because it's weather is moderate in the summer months, while Tuvalu's can be stormy and unpredictable. I can provide a preliminary tactical/logistical plan for either invasion if necessary.

I hope the above satisfies your request. Feel free to e-mail me any further inquiries.

Regards,
Dave

Reunification at the Indian Buffet

My friend Claire, who I really love, who lives in San Diego, who is moving back to New York in a month, who I haven't seen in over a year, who didn't know really where I work or what I'd be doing, calls me up at 1:15 p.m. this afternoon and is like "I'm in LA, I'm not sure what part. I was just at the French Consulate renewing my passport. You want to meet up for lunch?"

I'm like, "Well...LA's pretty large, but maybe you can come to Westwood? Give me the cross streets where you are. I'll Mapquest it."

She's all "hmmmm....Gailey and Weyburn. There's a Chevron station coming up."

"Gailey and Weyburn?? What the heck?!?"

So I look out my window and there is Claire's infamously turquoise '96 Camaro that her father-in-law bought during his mid-life crisis a few years ago, but gave to Claire and her husband Ben because he was too embarrassed to keep it.

"Holy shit! I can see you! There's a bicycle passing in front of your car?"

"Yeah! You can see me? Where are you??"

"Pull into the Chevron station. Wanna go get some Indian buffet?"

True Story.

Why I'll Miss My Low-Cost Doctor

Before I got my new job last month, I had no health insurance. For 2 1/2 years I've been visiting a Ukrainian clinic in Glendale for all my health concerns. The first visit was $35. Each additional visit, for life, is $20. That $20 includes seeing a doctor and all prescriptions you need that are available in their own small pharmacy.

I have no idea how they pull this off, but needless to say I was very grateful. Everytime I went they would provide me with a 60-day supply of Singulair, my asthma medication. If I bought a 60-day supply of Singulair at Rite Aid with no insurance, it would cost about $150.

Though the chemical composition of the prescriptions seemed to be standard, the competence and decorum of the doctors was most certainly not. That said, I will never forget my low-cost doctor. Here are thirteen reasons why:

1) Her name is Dr. Linsay Van Litz and she always reminded me to call her simply, "Litz"

2) She seems really immature.

3) When I say "I'm here for Dr. Van Litz," the receptionist will invariably roll her eyes and say something that sounds sarcastic and derogatory, in Ukrainian, to whomever is in the immediate vicinity.

4) Lint always says: "You must be a weirdo, cuz I only remember the weird ones."

5) Despite my protests, she took my temperature anally because: "It's more accurate."

6) Her smile is so nice.

7) Once she took my blood pressure. It took her 4 tries to get a reading, then she said it was really low. I asked "Is that something to be concerned about?" She replied: "Well its not necessarily a bad thing...but then again I wouldn't want my blood pressure to be that low."

8) All the other doctors, nurses, receptionists, pharmacists, and most of the patients are Ukrainian and all speak to each other in Ukrainian. Litz doesn't speak a word of Ukrainian and remarked once, "These Ukrainians have really bad style, huh?"

9) Last time, she weighed me right out of the waiting room with my coat, sweatshirt, a t-shirt, jeans and shoes on...when before getting on the scale I offered to remove some layers she said, "Dude, you're worse than the girls."

10) She flirts with me.

11) I've seen no proof that she's a real doctor.

12) When I called one morning the receptionist said there was no appointment before 4:30 p.m., so I asked to speak to Dr. Van Litz. Lint said "Nah, come in whenever you want."

13) She once said my infection was viral, then prescribed me antibiotics.

Oh, Nostalgia

This blog is dedicated to my good friend Nicole. It wouldn't exist without her. The only reason I even have a blog is because I had to make an account to post a response to one of Nicole's entries on her page (to post responses to my blog you don't need an account).

Nicole's dad is Black and her mom is Jewish, just like me. She grew up in Philadelphia where her father is still a pretty successful painter. Now she lives in South Korea and is either 16 hours ahead of California or 8 hours behind. I just know it's about 2 a.m. there.

Last night I was in a nostalgic mood and started Friendstering and Myspacing everyone I knew in HS and college. I ended up on a string of Friendster that yielded almost the entire 9th floor of Rubin Hall (1998-1999), where Nicole and I met during my sophomore year at NYU. First I was curious, then regretful, then sad.

That was definitely a strange year. I wanted to take another crack at being a freshman because I saw my first year of college as a failure. So I lived in a mostly freshman dorm, two blocks from Washington Square, and hung out with a lot of freshman. I went to Africa between semesters and quickly changed my major from Philosophy to Cultural Anthropology. I started dating my first serious girlfriend and she cheated on me within a week or so. She ended up having to leave school towards the end of April for personal reasons. That October I would visit her twice a day in the psychiatric ward of the NYU hospital. We continued problematically dating through the fall of 2001 and a bit into early 2002. We even tried to get an apartment together right before we finally broke up for good that January.

Ever since I graduated from NYU (May 2001) I've wanted to get back onto a college campus. Sometimes I've wanted to pursue a Master's degree, sometimes law, a couple times I've considered business, or even just to work as a full-time employee at a college. I now find myself with a job at UCLA Extension, taking classes in Film Scoring, and living in Westwood, CA.

On the average day, my job is a pretty good place to write in a blog.