Jackson Blogs!

Reason no. 132 why we're moving

Yesterday, while I was at work in Palo Alto and Tiersa was in Campbell attending to her ailing grandmother, we received a notification from our realtor that some documents had been overnighted to our apartment for us to review. Since we wouldn't be home to accept the package, it was going to wind up being delivered to the office.

At most apartment complexes, this probably isn't a big deal -- it's just part of the whole routine. But at The Presidio in Fremont, it's always an ordeal. The inattentive primates hired to staff the manager's office are challenged by even the most basic of tasks, such as "standing there while a guy in a brown uniform hands you an envelope." They lose packages at about the same rate as this year's Giants team loses games, and they also make themselves as unaccessible as possible to tenants, especially those who work. Their office is supposedly open until 6 p.m. on weekdays, but their door is locked and the lights are off every day by 5:40. (In fairness, they make no claim that they remain open until 6 p.m. local time. Apparently, once the clocks strike 6 in Omaha, it's time to close up shop at The Presidio.) If a package intended for us goes to the office, it's generally staying there at least until the weekend -- unless management "accidentally" gives it to someone else first.

Because these documents need to be reviewed quickly, and because we didn't have a valid tracking number to check whether the package had already been delivered, Tiersa called Presidio management from Campbell to see if anything addressed to us had arrived. One would think this would be a relatively easy query to handle. One would be wrong.

"We don't do that," said Martha, the rude Presidio beast. "Too many people ask."

Tiersa politely said she understood and that she didn't mean to be difficult. She pointed out that in the six years she's lived there, she's never called to ask something like this. She explained the importance of the package, and added that she wouldn't even consider asking if it weren't such an important circumstance. If the package is there, she added, she'd have to leave her ailing grandmother and rush home in order to pick it up before they close for the day. Thinking that it would probably enrage the beast, Tiersa left out any comments about how if they'd just stay open until 6 like they say they do, this wouldn't even be an issue.

"I will not do that right now," snapped Martha. "I'm with a client."

Now, I don't know much about the whole apartment-rental business. What I do know is that in the six years we've lived there, we have handed these money-grubbing lice more than $100,000 in rent. They have never received a late payment from us; they get each payment before it's due. No neighbor has ever complained about us, or at least we've never heard from management or security if they had. We don't grow pot or raise goats in our apartment. We don't start fires in our apartment, except for those confined to the fireplace. We don't play our stereo too loud, primarily because we don't own a stereo. We don't dump rocks down the garbage disposal. We've never tried to flush anything down the toilet that doesn't belong in a toilet in the first place.

I'm not sure if all of that qualifies us as ideal tenants or not, but I'd imagine it puts us in that ballpark. What I do know after yesterday, though, is that we are certainly not considered to be "clients." I would guess a "client" would be any unlucky bastard who stops in after thinking, "I guess these apartments wouldn't be all that bad." Because of the typical turnover among renters, it's unlikely that any "client" is going to stay there as long as we have, putting up with verbally abusive management, stinky neighbors and higher-than-market rents.

There's really little need to get irritated with Martha. She'll likely be replaced in a couple of months with someone just as unpleasant and just as inept. In the six years we've lived there, I don't think there's been a single on-site manager who has been there for more than a year. Not that we've ever really noticed, because they all have sucked. Martha is just the latest untrained, unqualified imbecile to collect a paycheck in exchange for scratching her ass and being rude to tenants.

For what it's worth, a whole lot of other people seem to agree with me about The Presidio and how far it has sunk. Notice the number people who complain specifically about management. Gee, you think there might be a trend?

The Worthless Word

I see that Our National Nightmare is now pretending like people don't write down the things he says, no matter how mind-numbingly stupid they are.

Here was our President back in 2003:

"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."

Here was Scott McClellan, the Officially Authorized Presidential Mouthpiece™, also in 2003:

"If anyone in this administration was involved in (the improper disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity), they would no longer be in this administration."

And here is what Bush said today:

"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

In other words, members of the Bush administration can leak whatever classified information they want -- as long as they don't get caught.

One thing I will never understand about these Bush Republicans -- not all Republicans, mind you, but these zealots who seem to think the sun rises and shines straight out of Bush's ass -- is why they've devoted so much of their lives to convincing themselves that Bush is but one step from God. As someone who lives in the reality-based world, I can easily see Bush's myriad inconsistencies. For five years, I've heard from these people that one reason that Bush is great is that he's a man of his word. Well, his word in 2003 appears to now be worthless, because his word in 2003 would mean Karl Rove should be on his way out the door right about now.

A real man would live up to his promises, but no ranch is big enough to turn the soft-handed Connecticut boy Bush into someone who's tough, someone who's strong, someone who exudes integrity. Someone's always there to bail out the half-wit, whether it's daddy, Karl Rove, or some speechwriter.

At least the media is paying attention this time. It sure took them long enough to start sharing with the American public about how our president is nothing more than an ethically challenged weasel who cares more about protecting his friends than he does about protecting American citizens.

Belly Dancing and a Free Kabob

Because we're filled with enthusiasm regarding our upcoming move into our large mortgage, Tiersa and I had dinner in downtown San Jose on Saturday night. Downtown San Jose is in many regards an odd place in that it is loaded with numerous little eateries, British-style pubs and other interesting little destinations, only nobody seems to go to any of them until the businesses shift into club-mode at around 10 p.m. or so. At 7 p.m. on a Saturday, you can park anywhere. By 11 p.m., it'll take you a half hour to drive 100 feet.

Anyway, we settled on a place serving Middle Eastern cuisine. More accurately, it settled on us. They had some girl standing outside the place, handing out free menus and promising buy-one-get-one-free entrees. We're suckers for little places like this, and the idea that this place sent someone out to the streets to drum up business worked on us. It didn't work on us enough to turn down that 2-for-1 offer, though. We may be suckers, but we're cheap suckers.

In order to get to this restaurant, we had to walk through another restaurant. One would think this would be bad for business, which probably explains the girl outside. We told her we were interested, and she became our private little eatery Sherpa, guiding us through the other (and seemingly much nicer) restaurant until we reached our little slice of the Middle East. Actually, this slice of the Middle East looked nothing like the Middle East; the European-style posters on the wall, the closed-for-quite-some-time oyster bar, and the patio tables complete with tavern-issue Heinkenen umbrellas told us much more about the previous establishment than it ever could have about this one.

We chose a patio seat, studied the menu for a bit, and placed our order. We had the appetizer plate -- which included hummus (decent), tabbouleh (very good), dolma (just damn nasty), falafel (average), and some olives -- and a couple of kabobs with rice. Kabob is a fun word to say, which might be why we ordered them. One beef kabob, one chicken kabob. Sideshow Kabob was not on the menu. All in all, everything was OK, although I certainly wasn't disappointed that one of the kabobs was a free kabob.

Dessert was really odd. I ordered baklava, which was pretty good. We also got this bizarre ice-cream creation which featured rose water ice cream (mmm ... the richness of ice cream with the unmistakeable flavor of bath soap) with a big block of frozen noodles on top. And when I say frozen noodles, I'm not doing the dish any justice. They took some rice noodles, hydrated them, put them in some sort of custard cup, and stuck the whole thing in the freezer. There was a big ice block atop our ice cream, and inside this ice block was noodles. Eating it made me feel like a really bad archaeologist. "What is behind this layer of ice? Might it be a mastodon? Nope. Just more noodles. Criminy."

The best thing about a dish like soap-with-block-of-frozen-noodles is that someone invented it. At some point in history, some demented chef determined that cooking noodles made them an entree, but freezing them in a solid block of ice like a noodlesicle made them a dessert. It's not like any flavoring was added. It was ice-flavored.

As we chisled our way through the noodles, the waiter came up to us. "Big treat soon," he said. "The show begin in less than 10 minutes. You like."

As promised, 10 minutes later our waiter goes into this little shed-like structure on the patio. All of the sudden, we start to hear Middle Eastern music piping out of a boombox. Then, right there in the middle of the frozen-noodle course, a belly dancer appears smack dab in the middle of the patio and starts, well, belly dancing. (What did you expect?)

When you're sitting under a Heineken umbrella on a patio in downtown San Jose, trying to rescue noodles from their frozen tomb, few things seem more out of place than a belly dancer shaking her business six inches in front of your face. What's more, I really have no idea what I'm supposed to do in the presence of a belly dancer. I figured with Tiersa sitting directly to my right, it probably wasn't the best idea to stare at any of the belly dancer's exposed parts -- and, mind you, this belly dancer was primarily made up of exposed parts. I didn't really want to look the belly dancer in the eye, either, lest she think to herself, "His eye contact must serve as an endorsement that I should continue to shake my business in his face for several more minutes."

We then entered the subtle-hint part of the show. She danced from one table to another, then she danced over to a waiter who knowingly tucked a dollar bill inside her bra strap. Suddenly, this place started to feel a lot less like a quaint restaurant and a lot more like a strip club. This brought on a whole new set of problems -- if I don't pay her for shaking her business in front of me, that certainly seems rude. But if I suddenly reward such behavior with cash and prizes, I really might be headed down a slippery slope. The last thing I wanted was to have a "you know, you could have refused the lap dance" conversation on the way back to the apartment.

Making matters worse, at least psychologically, for me was how I couldn't shake the mental image of my only other exposure to a belly dancer throughout my lifetime -- that episode of "Happy Days" where Marion dresses up like a belly dancer to attract the attention of her seemingly sexually disinterested husband, Howard "Mr. C" Cunningham. Not paying the belly dancer would be one degree of rudeness. Laughing at her because I half-expect Fonzie to walk in the restaurant would be quite another.

Fortunately, there's always a table of inebriated sales guys willing and able to come to the rescue. Another table of patrons started waving paper currency at the dancer, performing the Caucasian mating call ("Wooooooo!"). That was the last I had to deal with her. Thank you, drunken sales guys. And no, I'm not in the market for a Kia.

We paid our bill and left before any second showing started. I really didn't want to spend the rest of my night watching some chick dance with an anaconda draped over her shoulders. No kabob is worth that.

A summer rerun

Stop me if you've heard this before, but Tiersa and I bought a house.

Yeah, I know. I said the same thing a little more than a year ago, and then all of the sudden I said, umm, no we didn't. We decided against buying that house. It happens. That said, we do not expect to decide against buying this house, mainly because we like this place more.

Technically, I guess this new place is not a house. It is a townhouse. Being in the Bay Area, it certainly costs as much as a house. Fortunately, at over 1,800 square feet it's also certainly big enough to be a house, so we have that to ease our minds. (We found numerous stand-alone houses that were just over half the size for right around the same price.) However, since it shares a wall with a neighbor and has no backyard, it's a townhouse. We are nothing without our little labels.

Anyway, our new home-to-be (barring some unforeseen oddity) is in San Jose, within walking distance of HP Pavillion or Compaq Center or the San Jose Arena or whatever they're calling it these days. (You remember the Arena, right? They used to play hockey there.) It's also about a five-minute walk from our front door to the Caltrain platform, making it a great place from a commute standpoint. All commutes suck, but this one will suck less than, say, a daily commute to my job in Palo Alto from the house we almost bought last year in Tracy.

I really don't know diddly squat about architecture, but I will tell you that these townhomes remind me an awful lot of the row houses one would find in London or on the east coast. I don't have any decent pictures of our exact townhome, but you can get a pretty good feel for the place by visiting www.summerhillhomes.com, clicking on the link that says Georgetown, and then poking through the photo gallery. (Ours is plan 3 in the photo gallery and "The Princeton" in the floorplan section.)

We've actually enjoyed this particular community for over a year. Somewhere around the time we went to Europe last year, we stumbled upon this neighborhood and fell in love with the way these units looked. We happened to be in the neighborhood again (looking at a different property), and we spotted the for-sale sign in front of this townhouse within moments of it being posted. They accepted our offer about a week later, and that's where we are today.

Escrow closes on July 29, so I'm told there are still plenty of things that can go wrong. However, everything's looking promising as of right now. Because the couple who is selling the townhome is renting it back from us for a month, we hope to move in by the beginning of September. We will not miss our stinky neighbors downstairs, who have actually managed to become even stinkier in recent weeks. We will probably move out before their whole clan succumbs to lung cancer, although I wouldn't put money on it. Boy, were they ever pungent over the weekend. I think they'll smoke anything that smolders. Lawn clippings, cat hair, you name it. Put it in front of them, and they'll light it on fire and inhale the fumes.

So they won't be invited to the housewarming is what I'm saying.

The Golden (Rickey) Baseball League

I posted this as a comment earlier today on the mjlewis' Journal, a blog compiled by the ever-funny Mike Lewis, in response to a post in which he referenced the Golden Baseball League. The Golden Baseball League is a rag-tag operation that is primarily notable because it is the current -- and likely final -- baseball home of Rickey Henderson.

Spent some quality time on the Golden Baseball League site this morning. Some casual observations:

* They sure do have a lot of known major leaguers serving as managers in this league. It's amusing to me how many of them are actually younger than Rickey Henderson, star geriatric outfielder of the San Diego Surf Dawgs. Rickey, by the way, is 322 in Surf Dawg years.

* The Mesa Miners are having a "Meet Rickey Henderson" promotion when the Surf Dawgs come to town. It would be far more amusing if they were to change that to "Touch Rickey Henderson." I think it would be great to see a line of fans waiting patiently to touch Rickey Henderson. "Rickey don't like to be touched there," he'd say.

* The person writing content for the Long Beach Armada ("Look at that beach armada! It sure is long!") has an apostrophe fetish. In his one-paragraph bio, manager Darrell Evans is referred to as "Evans" zero times -- but as "Evan's" four times. I don't know who this Evan guy is, but he seems to own a lot of Darrell Evans's stuff.

* In the same bio, Darrell Evan's is referred to as "the premier third baseman in Major League Baseball." Memo to Hall of Famers Mike Schmidt and George Brett: Fuck you both. You have a problem with it? Take it up with Evan.

* To this day, the hitting coach of the Surprise Fightin' Falcons still has one of the finest names in French baseball history: Pete LaCock.

* The Fullerton Flyers list team mascot "Coal Train," who appears to be a guy in a coyote suit, as a member of the team's front-office staff. "Yes, that's a marvelous promotional idea, but we first must run it by the guy in the coyote suit. He makes all the final decisions." Odd.

Even gigolos have bills to pay

"I'm just a gigolo, and everywhere I go, people know the part I'm playin'."

From the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction department:

David Lee Roth to replace Howard Stern

Imagine how crushed DaveTV is going to be when Sammy Hagar replaces him at this gig.

Looking past the obvious humor of the article is this hidden gem: David Lee Roth is performing on July 29 in Redding, Calif. This must be the biggest piece of musical news to hit Redding since three members of Sha Na Na ordered off the late-night menu at the Denny's there. ("Yeah, baby, Bowzer will have the french dip and some mozzarella sticks.") Presumably, tickets are still available. Many, many tickets.

Dave is not necessarily committed to the July 29 date. He'll perform whenever you can get there.

My Best Date Ever

My friend Mike Lewis recently left an amusing post on his blog about a date of his that didn't go so well. It’s a great story that’s worth reading, as is the rest of the blog since Mike is probably the funniest person I know. Anyway, his latest post reminded me of my single days, when every date seemed like some bastardized hybrid of Russian roulette and "Fear Factor."

His post refreshed my memory about the all-time worst date I ever had. I can't remember her name, which is probably for the best in case I'm ever subpoenaed. I met her at the land of love itself, the Emil Villa's Hick'ry Pit in my adopted hometown of Fremont. Either that particular establishment is now under new management or Emil Villa is a Chinese guy, because that restaurant is now an all-you-can-eat Mandarin buffet.

Anyway, I was enjoying a barbecue dinner with my old friend Jerry, and I couldn't help but notice that the cute waitress with the Southern accent kept flirting with me. Well, at first I really didn't notice it. I figured that maybe I'd spilled some sauce on my shirt. I've always had a way with the ladies.

As it would turn out, my shirt was sauce-free. She was indeed flirting with me, so I flirted back. In layman's terms, that means I adjusted my humor output meter from "be an asshole" to "be endearing." That seemed to work. We exchanged numbers, and we talked on the phone a handful of times over the next several days. If nothing else, she seemed normal. We made plans for our first date, which we would eventually agree upon as dinner at an undisclosed location that was not Emil Villa's Hick'ry Pit.

A few days later, I picked her up for our first date. I asked her where she'd like to have dinner. She said she wanted to go to the Pizza Hut. A gourmand, I thought to myself. Further, she commented that she didn't think we should go "someplace fancy," identifying Sizzler as such a place. As a wise man once wrote, nothing is fancier than all-you-can-eat fried shrimp served on a lettuce leaf.

I was not ignorant to the fact that different people can come from different economic classes, and this particular girl was from a very small and very poor part of Louisiana. This was before I'd spent a few months living in that sewage-scented humidifier, and I ignorantly opined to myself that it indeed was possible that places like Sizzler and Pizza Hut would be considered suitable quasi-romantic dining-out destinations in lesser-developed parts of the world like Afghanistan, Ethiopia, and Shreveport. Pizza Hut it was.

We pulled up at the Pizza Hut only to discover that this particular hut only delivered pizza. There would be no actual dining taking place in this hut. I suggested that we go to a hut with seats and tables, but she disagreed. "Nah," she said. "We can just take it back to my place."

As a guy in my early 20s, all I heard her say was "blah blah blah blah blah my place." I thought it was a wonderful idea.

I finished placing my takeout order with the hutmeister, and she looked me in the eyes and said those words that all men long to hear. "Goddamn," she said, "I gotta piss like a racehorse." She could set the mood like no other.

I looked at Hut Boy. "Excuse me," I said to him, "could she please use your restroom?" No dice, said he. Restrooms were for employees only. Asked if there was any way he could make an exception, he looked at me as if I were a Chinese-speaking Emil Villa. There would be no peeing -- at least no legal peeing -- at this Hut.

"Fine," she said. "We'll find somewhere else." What spunk she had. While I was busy trying to reason with this pizza-making human zit, she had accurately determined we should go elsewhere. She was a problem-solver, this one. Oh, what fun we could have together, solving the world's most pressing issues while sharing a stuffed-crust feast with each other.

Silently assessing the situation as she looked left and right, she honed in on the Safeway. "There," she said. "Let's go."

It never even occurred to me that a Safeway had restrooms. This girl had lived, man. "I'll be right back," she said as I lingered in the aisles. I stood there, killing time as I made a mental note of how many types of bad candy Brach's seemed to manufacture, when she approached. She grabbed me by the arm. "Let's go," she commanded. We left the Safeway and were on our way back to the Pizza Hut when she stopped me.

"Hey," she said, her face alive with zeal. "Check this out." She then opened up her jacket and pulled out an industrial-sized can of Glade air freshener.

Proving that I will never embark on a successful life of crime, I actually remember thinking to myself, "Gee, I don't remember seeing her buy that industrial-sized can of Glade air freshener." On the other hand, I knew it was unlikely she'd been walking around with it the whole time. Still, my brain simply couldn't register the idea that my date had actually stolen an industrial-sized can of Glade air freshener from the Safeway bathroom.

Fearing her response, I asked anyway. "Where'd you get that?" I asked.

She laughed. "From the bathroom, silly." Silly. She had stolen an industrial-sized can of Glade air freshener from a supermarket bathroom, yet I was somehow the silly one. Life had never seemed more fair.

It still wasn't adding up, so I simply had to ask. "Why did you do that?" I asked. It's been over 10 years since that night, and I can still hear her response as if it happened yesterday afternoon:

"I liked the smell."

It all made so much sense to her. I've often wondered if "I liked the smell" could be used as a criminal defense. "Your honor, my client isn't a bank robber. He simply couldn't control the fact that he liked the smell of money. Don't you get it, your honor? He liked the smell!" Case dismissed.

To my credit, I realized at that point that I did not like the smell of how that date was headed. We picked up the pizza and drove back to her apartment. We each quietly ate a slice. Her face was beaming. She was having fun. At no point did she ever mention -- or spray her apartment with -- the Glade. I told her I hated to cut things short but that I had to run. She seemed disappointed, but she couldn't have been too troubled by the whole ordeal. After all, she got a free pizza and a can of air freshener out of the evening.

I never called her again. About a month later, she called me at work. Fortunately, I was out to lunch at the time. When I returned to the office, I saw the little pink "phone message while you were out" slip on my desk. She wanted me to call her back, and the message was: "Being evicted. Need help moving." I chose not to return her call. I didn't want to get roped into helping her move what was probably several industrial-sized cans of Glade air freshener from one crappy apartment to another.

Why Bush will replace O'Connor with a moderate

The huddled masses seemed to enjoy this post I did over at The Daily Kos earlier today, so I figured I'd also share it with you here:

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. This isn't necessarily an unexpected day, but it is a sad one. Sandra Day O'Connor, the "swing vote" who put Bush in the White House in the first place, no longer wants to wear that big black robe of justice. At age 75, she'd rather lounge around her condo naked, smoking cigars and watching Nick At Nite. Who can blame her?

"Who's going to replace the swing vote on the Big Court?" It's the kind of question that makes us progressives sweat bullets. Alberto the Torture King? Brother Jeb? John Ashcroft? Katherine Harris? John Bolton? Prince Bandar? The guy who shows up at all those funerals with the "God Hates Fags" sign? The possibilities are endless. After all, this is Dubya we're talking about. At this point, I wouldn't totally rule out Sean Hannity or Toby Keith.

But worry not, fellow progressives. BushCo will definitely appoint a moderate. It's in the bag. Here's why.

I know BushCo is going to appoint a moderate to fill O'Connor's spot on the Supreme Court because I just signed a petition demanding that he do so! Yes, that's right. I just added my name to a petition sent to me by Nancy Pelosi herself, "urging President Bush to nominate a moderate, consensus candidate that all Americans can support." She sure must be busy today, e-mailing petitions to people like me.

Seriously, how could he say no? After all, I've signed a whole mess of these petitions. The fact that BushCo has ignored every goddamn one of them doesn't mean he's going to ignore this one too, right?

Right? Hello?

I've also received five separate e-mails over the last three hours from five different organizations requesting various donations. Deb Callahan of the League of Conservation Voters, for example, wrote to tell me, "Please make a gift to help ensure that Justice O'Connor's replacement does not become the swing vote that undermines our environmental laws." What kind of gift should I send? Perhaps a nice fruit basket? Everybody loves a good fruit basket. Surely that would be better than cash, since giving cash never quite seems to ensure anything — except, of course, another e-mail asking for more cash.

See, everyone? There's nothing to worry about! We have splinter groups soliciting money! We have petitions to sign! We're all set! Our plan is in motion!

Heavy sigh.