So I took last week off. It was bound to happen. I don’t mean that I just took the week off from blogging, I mean I took the week off from pretty much all things consequential. First time I’ve taken off since I got back out here to Hollywood, so I guess it all balances out. And it was a holiday week anyway.
Funny how you get out of practice quick, though. In fact it wasn’t until last night, when I was guesting on someone else’s podcast, that I was reminded of just how much is going on and just how swiftly some of it is coming up. We talked about the 3G iPhone, which launches uh, yeah, this week. We talked about New Media Expo, which takes place next month and there’ll be something expo-related on the agenda pretty much every week between now and then. And we talked about some other things which I can’t remember…I took some notes on it…okay so at this point it would appear that there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle when it comes to the continued evaporation of my short-term memory skills. Oh well, can’t have it all.
I’m not saying last week wasn’t productive. Took some long slow walks around town and remembered how much I enjoy doing so. Spent some time at some Hollywood bars and remembered how much I don’t enjoy sitting around trying to make small-talk with random drunk people I’ll never see again – but I digress. Saw the Fourth of July fireworks at the Hollywood Bowl, now that was a show. And now here I am on Monday, cranking away all day, well most of the day anyway, and getting back into the swing of things. I’ve gotta admit, though, that parts of it felt like sketch comedy.
I decided to go eat lunch at Popeye’s today, haven’t been there in awhile. As I was walking down Hollywood Boulevard I noticed there were quite a number of fire trucks gathered in one location, and once I got where I was going I knew why: the Popeye’s I was planning on eating lunch in had been on fire as recently as a few minutes ago, and while the fire was already out, a portion of the restaurant’s front wall was laying in a pile of broken pieces just inside the dining room. If someone’s trying to get me to stop eating at fast food restaurants, setting them on fire minutes before I attempt to dine there is an interesting way of going about it.
On the way home from not eating lunch at the Popeye’s that had just been on fire, I stopped at the store to grab a few small items and as I was checking out I remembered that I needed a dollar’s worth of quarters. Here’s how you don’t go about doing that: purchase $4.77 worth of items, pay with a twenty dollar bill (smallest in my wallet), and ask for a dollar’s worth of quarters. See, the math just doesn’t work there. I mean it does, for you and me maybe, but not for this particular cashier and not on the kind of day in which the restaurants you’re trying to eat at are on fire. First she gives me the twenty-three cents, then a ten and a five, then she realizes she can’t give me any quarters in place of a one dollar bill because there were no one dollar bills involved, so she asks for the five dollar bill back and proceeds to give me three one dollar bills and four quarters, then realizes she’s not doing it right and asks for the ten dollar bill back, at which point I’m afraid to hand it over because who knows what she’ll give me in return for the ten. Being the genius that I am, I grab a pack of gum from the rack and toss it on the counter so that my total will now be a little more than five dollars, ensuring that there will be some one dollar bills coming back in my direction, one of which she can safely exchange for some quarters. Only after I see the look of horror on her face do I realize that the pack of gum was an idea that would have been good only if I’d thought of it beforehand, but at this late point in the transaction was merely motivating her to want to set her store on fire. So I put the gum back, take whatever she’s offering me in the way of change at that point (got my quarters), and head on my merry way. I’m pretty sure I got left a dollar short, but in hindsight I think it was a rather small price to pay to see the look on her face when she momentarily thought she was going to have to re-do the entire transaction over again.
So I’m not saying it was a smooth first day back to work, but it have its comical moments. There was a fire, there was an SAT math question involved, and now I’ve got a jones for Popeye’s chicken that I won’t be able to satisfy until the place rebuilds and re-opens for business (how exactly does a restaurant catch on fire such that part of the front wall of the building needs to be knocked down but nothing else?). But as far as actual work, the day was productive enough. Finish up this week’s issue tomorrow, meeting Wednesday, something on Thursday that I can’t recall (don’t worry, I wrote it down somewhere), and then Friday is iPhone launch day. Word just came down that the 3G iPhone will in fact go on sale at Apple Stores at eight in the morning on Friday, which I don’t care how lazy it makes me sound, is the middle of the night for me. And I don’t think The Grove even lets people on the premises until nine, so that’ll be interesting. But we’ll deal with that on Friday morning. Or as I like to think of it, really late Thursday night.
And I just got an email from Richard Cheese. Yeah, that Richard Cheese. No, really. See, I don’t make this stuff up, because I don’t have to. These crazy blog posts just write themselves.
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