Hollywood Lucky

I'd been smelling gas for four days.  Why, you ask, didn't I do something about it sooner?  Well, because my apartment manager had been working on my heater, and after it was fixed, my rudimentary brain  figured "oh, it's just some 'residual fumes' floating around," never noticing that the smell was coming from the kitchen, not the hallway where the heater is located.

Yesterday I took a break from my steady diet of the various fats and sugars which can only be found at gas stations and drive-thrus, and went to Trader Joe's.  Returning home with my Tarte d'Alsace, I was in anticipatory glee.  I'd also bought a box of those frozen chocolate chip cookies, and in a wild move,  milk! (I never buy bread, milk or butter - I feel these items are cliche).

So I turned the oven on to 450 and waited.  And nothing happened.

Because the pilot light was out.

Because for the three years my heater had been broken, I'd been using a combination of space heaters plus the oven to heat my apartment.   And there's no point using an oven to heat your apartment if you're going to leave the oven door closed.  So obviously, some horrible sudden wind had blown in and extinguished my pilot light.

So I called the gas company yesterday.  I was told someone would come out by 8:00 to keep me from dying.  But nobody came.  So I called back and they said that the call had been marked as "complete."

Because the "technician" hadn't been able to figure out how to get in the building.  This was clearly a lie, and besides, as I explained to the petulant Gas Company employee, if the so-called technician really couldn't get past the high-tech security protocols of the Crap Shack Apartments, is it really accurate to mark the call as "complete?"

No, I told her.  No, it's not.

So I called again this morning (Sunday) and was told someone would be out before 8 pm, by which time, presumably, I'd likely be dead on the floor and thus no longer an impediment to the clumsy fiddlings of whichever confused lummox was to be banging around on my pipes.

Now, I'm no scaredy-cat.  Of course I tried lighting the pilot light myself.  But these things are rarely marked with an arrow, or an international symbol of some sort.  You have to know.  You have to have been the beneficiary of a type of knowledge which is doubtless passed down via oral history, around a campfire somewhere.

So I was unsuccessful.  

Until I tried the internet, a wonderful tool invented by the team of the Baby Jesus and Al Gore.

And I figured it out!  Once I found the blackened and corroded "reset" button, that is.

So I called the Gas Company back and haughtily explained that I would not be needing their lackluster service after all, as I had conquered the problem myself.  It was I, sooty and trembling, who saved myself (and the other tenants of the Crap Shack Apartments) from certain doom.

"Well, call us if it gives you any more trouble," she said, barely masking her hatred.  Yes, Gas Company representative, I have trumped you!  I don't need you!  I don't need anyone!

And that is how I almost died. 

I am embarrassed to admit this because it's so damned gay, but I love the Fergie video for "Clumsy."  Love it.  It's going right on the 6 gig card in my phone, so it can stream through my Bluespoon Spider headphones should I ever again decide to darken the doors of Crunch or 24-Hour Fitness.

It's really hard for me to overlook Fergie's crimes.  I mean, for starters there's the godawful fashions she's assaulted us with over the years.  And then there's the caked on orange makeup, the misspelling of "Dutchess" (really - did all the editorial proofers get laid off over at Interscope?)

But this video...it's so...perfect.  Now, I admit this is partly due to:

• The cool low-rider segment and
• The sampling of "Girl Can't Help It" by Little Richard, a song which was first introduced to me by the movie Pink Flamingos in a montage where Divine offends the sensibilities of 1972 suburbia (remember when she throws the toilet paper on the lawn?)
• The excellent Nancy Sinatra-esque hairdo

It's also a really decent pop song.  In past years, I would NEVER admit my love for this video.  If someone popped by unexpectedly, I would most certainly have turned off the TV in a panic and cued up a song by the Pandoras or the Cramps.

But this is the new, honest, take-me-as-I-am, me.  So for now, Fergie, you get a pass.

Just don't screw it up by wearing a pound of orange makeup and a ruffled turquoise dress again.

I'm done.  Seriously.  I'm over it.  What am I talking about?  The fact that in 2007, here in the Jetsons-esque 21st century, a time when most of us have:

• a home phone number
• a work phone number
• at least one cell number (and often more)
• at least one email address (and often more)

I can't fucking get ahold of anybody!  Seriously.  I suppose I should get the message that if I try someone's work number, home number, and cell number and they don't answer, maybe they just don't have time to speak with me.  Maybe they're getting their knob gobbled or having "the Shocker" applied to their hoo-hoo.  But then there's the unreturned phone calls.

I should take a page from Yaatso's book.  In the area of you-call-me and I-call-you, Yaatso demands absolute equity.  One for one.  And although I once scoffed at his black-and-white thinking in this regard (along with his unsettling insistence on pronouncing the "t" in "often"), I now see that in some small way, this rigid phone equity policy affords a person at least the teenciest kernal of self-respect.

Now for the question of why this is happening.  It seems to me that a few years ago, I was juggling phone calls - too many to return, too many to answer, happy conversations that went chugging along for hours.  I suppose I should be thankful that all that thirty-something busywork is no longer necessary.  Still, it leaves me curious as to why I have become such a telephonic pariah.

Here are some possibilities:

• I am (again) inventing a past that did not exist, and nobody ever really liked talking to me all that much.
• We are all getting older and are therefore bored with each others' stories, lies, self-deceptions, romantic dramas (shudder), excuses, wild-eyed schemes and veiled threats.
• I live in Los Angeles, and in Los Angeles the sentence "I'll call you (tonight, later, as soon as I'm done with my pitch meeting, etc)" is devoid of any actual commitment or intent to do so.
• I am getting karmic payback for spending several years happily ensconced in a beer-induced alternate reality.  During that time I was mostly unwilling and sometimes unable to answer the phone.  Now that I'm sober for five seconds, my friends have conspired to give me a taste of my own medicine.
• I am not nearly as likeable as I believe myself to be, and in fact am growing into quite an unpleasant person in my middle age.
• People don't like to talk to the overweight and/or poorly groomed, even if they can't see them.

I am the type of person who, if I'm expecting a phone call, will have an anxiety pang if I have to go downstairs to get the laundry or if, driven by a variety of pungent odors, I am forced to get in the shower where I won't hear the phone ring. 

I am getting the distinct impression that others do not share my committed (desperate?) relationship with the ringing phone.

So I'm done.  I give up.  If I am so troublesome to speak with, if I am so boring or contentious a person that even when we do speak you must be typing or doing Pilates at the same time, then you can fuck right off.

That's right.  You heard me.  And while you're at it, you can suck my left one. 

I admit this sassy new attitude may leave me entirely friendless, but at this point it may be worth it.

I named her Belinda, because she's big and bouncy and retro.  She's four years old and a real mover. 

The thing about cars is that they are super-great.  The thing about this car is that it's a custom '04 Pacific Coast Roadster T-Bird, which means I will never need anything else to make me happy.

Occasionally I think about getting a kitten, if only to irritate the obese and resentful cat who has enslaved me for the past fourteen years.

But, as I pointed out to a friend, if history has taught us anything it's that my next boyfriend will be allergic, like all the others.  So I'm putting the new cat idea on hold until I find my next boning victim.

The friend said, "But what if the guy you date doesn't like your car?"

Well that's easy.  Any homo who thinks I should have, let's say, a BMW instead of a Pacific Coast Roadster T-bird is not just a victim of clone-thinking, but is also clearly a terrorist and an enemy of the principles upon which this country was founded.

But I will still allow him to sit on my schween.  Then I will notify the authorities.

Love me, love my car.