The alarm went off around 5:45 am.
I reached across the bed for Lauren but she wasn't there.
Still at the hospital.
I hope.
It was dark and dumb.
I called Lauren on the way out the door.
She answered.
Oh good.
She's still alive then.
"..I'm ... -cab- ... - ... soon- ..."
Cellphones.
They really are just truly amazing.
I can't wait until they figure out how to get one to work properly.
The History of Modern Communication
by Dr. Tony Mendoza
College Dropout
Before cellphones, telephone conversations were conducted on a contraption known as the telephone.
They were around the size of a comically large prop cellphone and came in a variety of colors.
The telephone we had in our home was yellow.
They stayed inside the home mostly.
What they lacked in portability they made up for in higher fidelity.
The sounds were warmer and clearer.
There was more bass.
You could discern a hard "c" from a "t".
And each vowel had its own unique sound.
When you talked on a telephone, it felt like you were communicating with someone who currently resided on the same planet as you.
Sometime around 9/11 someone invented all of the cellphones.
At first they were only used by assholes and important assholes.
But then it was decided that everyone should be an asshole.
"Cellphones are like assholes.
Everyone's got one."
- CrAZyBItCh, myspace 2005
When Osama bin Laden invented the cellphone, he eliminated all of the bass tones and raised the treble to its highest possible level.
Then he added quirks like random squelching and frequent disconnection.
Sentences spoken into cellphones have become vague puzzles of vowels and consonants that the recipient must decipher while driving or shopping or simultaneously listening to low quality mp3's.
When you talk on a cellphone, it feels like you are miscommunicating with a deaf, shitty astronaut that you may or may not know.
Take a listen to this conversation I heard recently on a bus.
CELLPHONE CONVERSATIONALIST: Wha? I can('t) hear you. You gotta speak up or sumpin'. I said WHA? I CAN('T) HEAR YOU! I CAN('T) HEAR YOU!!!
Now to be fair, this caller had her own personal issues with pronouncing "t"'s in the first place. But that's because she was an asshole.
Don't get me wrong.
Cellphones really are just truly amazing.
Tonight I'm going to watch dog pornography on the toilet while I take a shit and then post about it on Facebook.
All from my cellphone!
But ultimately, as a society we have sacrificed quality of life for convenience.
Verdict for Mankind: Loss
Anyway, we aborted our cellphone conversation.
Lauren thought she would see me briefly.
But I was already in the van.
As I pulled out of the parking space I saw her cab pull up in the distance of the rear view mirror.
So we missed each other.
The good news was that she's okay.
And that she'll be asleep for most of the day.
Luckily for me, today's commercial was for coffee.
My PA pal Ned referred to the shoot as a "tabletop".
"Is there any talent on this?" I asked.
Ned pointed to the coffee maker.
"That's the talent."
It was a little camera.
It used actual film.
The DP put it on a triangular spirograph of adjustable wheels.
"Let's brew it!" said the AD.
The art department pressed the brew button on the coffee maker.
The coffee maker was indeed talented.
The DP panned the camera on a steady arc.
I held its cable for the majority of the day.
And drank coffee like Dave Dudley.
Instead of lunch I went into a back room and napped under a pinball machine.
When the alarm went off I wolfed down a London broil as fast as I could.
The second half of the day dragged.
Coffee stopped working.
For both the shoot and me.
It just went on.
Brew after brew.
The clients hemmed and hawed.
Ultimately they wanted steam.
I wanted dream.
It had to end sometime.
But it never did.
Then it did.
When it did, everyone played ping pong.
I delivered the film to some surly film developers.
They hated film.
The medium had betrayed them.
Back on set it continued to take forever to get out of there.
More ping pong.
I tried to have a dialogue with a producer but it just turned into his monologue followed by a video resume on his laptop.
An endless stream of "cool"s and "that's awesome"s.
I gave Ned a ride home.
It was 8pm.
I was beyond exhausted.
I ate a burrito and lied down for twenty minutes.
Then it was time to go to work.
This time at the bar.
I wrote just to keep myself awake:
Sleep 10 minutes in van
Right now these three obnoxious guys
are making an unwanted racket.
At first I didn't mind them.
But they've had 2 rounds + haven't tipped
Kim once. And they're scre
And they've screamed along to LA WOMAN
in its entirety. They're playing Tom Petty
sloppy pointless pool.
"Oh bartender" – they couldnt find the
cue ball. Kim found it for them.
One of them won the game.
They had a long fierce handshake.Oh I get it.
They want to fuck each other but feel
like that isn't accepted by society.
IT DOESN'T GET BETTER
IF YOU DON'T COME OUT.
Earlier tonight a Bohemian girl with a
burly figure retrieved a T-shirt from her
car – parked just outside the bar window.
She was chop topless.
working? They seem to be funny – they're laughing –
they're having a good time. Maybe it's the violent
undertones – + the disregard for others –
I guess it comes down to the tip – they didnt tip.
They haven't earned the right to act like they own the place.
For some reason these guys really like
"HANG ON SLOOPY." They're jumping + running
with the cues + having brief stick fights.
The guy w/ the crippling limp wa ssinging akey
in a low the lower regions of offkey.
They just asked me where they could score some blow
in this town. One of them tried to sneak a
beer on the way out.
Kim had to put her dog to sleep.
HARDEST WORKING
MAN IN
NO – BUSINESS
Verdict: Loss
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