A Busy Saturday 4:37pm
Let me preface. I just got off a shift at the JOB-THAT-WON'T-BE-NAMED, and sat on a chair outside of Robek's Juice debating whether I should have eaten that burrito with the chicken substitute for the applewood smoked bacon and kept the black beans, are have gone with the my usual subs of ham for bacon, spinach for beans... look, it doesn't really matter. So I saw the most haggard looking dude... kinda hobo looking but somehow dignified, professional looking... I dunno... there was just something really striking about him. And you know, there are a finite amount of weirdos, in this town full of freaks and randoms, that deserve a second look.
He was sitting there with a coffee from THE-PLACE-ETC... (funny thing is, I don't remember him ever coming in) and he was glaring my way as if I was wearing a Michael Buble' Live in Concert shirt.
I get weirded out and turn around to finish my phone call with my friend the pole vaulter turn accountant. I'd be getting some money back this year, but damn you Californian I.O.U!!!
By the time I turn back to see if he was there, he was gone. I don' t think shit of it and go looking for my car. It was an early morning when I parked and I swear I can’t remember the ride over. (Last time that happened was New Years Eve, and I got towed for blocking some asshole’s driveway. And yes, he IS an asshole, I don’t care about the logic, towing sucks and I hope someone padlocks his garage or a bird shits on him seconds before he walks into the most important meeting of his life, this is a my belligerence in full bloom.)
I don’t mean it.
I walk for 47 minutes looking and cursing, searching for the busted tail light that has been taped up, listening for the beep of my car alarm, whishing I hadn’t quit smoking. I walk across where “Captain Hobo” was sitting and noticed a brown paper bag. I would have left it alone except for the big black letter written across it:
GOOD, READ.
What?
I open it carefully, fearing dog crap in a bag, barf, bombs, week old bologne (how do you spell that?) and inside was a book:
Save the Whales Please
Saturday 8:15pm
The cover looks cool. It’s like a dramatic shot of a whale breaching amidst sea spray and profundity, a large boat looms in the background and a tiny skiff is approaching it… must be the Green Peace-ers. Which reminds me: I opted to donate a cool $21.00 to Greenpeace because the girl with the clipboard outside of the Border’s was rejected by like 10 people, rudely and despite that she was ridiculously optimistic. I listened to her spiel, asked her a bunch of hard questions, challenged her to produce proof that my credit card was being stolen etc… She was good, extremely well informed, and earnest. And cute. I signed up for $21.00 and ever since that day, every month Green Peace takes 21 bucks out of my account. Sometimes I lament this because I think, “Damnit, I’m poor. The orangutan’s in Borneo can wait till gas prices go down (Summer 2008 joke, remember those days, yeah, suck-sicle dribbling down your clean white sleeves). That I didn’t completely agree with banning whaling. I love whales, I respect life, but I hate outside/Western/extra governmental agencies dictating culture. Even so, I am aware there is a black market, profiteers hide behind the guise of culture to get rich, not every whaler is an Eskimo that has been doing for generations. And those big lugs are endangered. Still gas prices…)
The cover. I should read this…. mystery book. Do you… have you ever found a CD on the ground and picked up and put it on? I mean 9 times outta 10 its terrible hip hop or ska or jammy stuff that is 78 minutes long and reeeeeally deep. And this book, it could be a preachy book about whales. But I’m curious. I’m gonna read ten pages and if it gets all Robert Redford “I Love Earth”-y, I’m putting it in a brown bag and writing:
Kindling
Saturday 9:01pm
Not bad…
Monday 11:10am
I didn’t get a chance to read “Whale Book” due to work and birthday parties, but I thought about something: I’m gonna Twitter/Facebook status, excerpts from pages from the book. Casue honestly, most peoples Facebook status updates and Tweets are banal/uninspiring/”who-gives-a-shit-y”. Then again… those 25 note things are amazing. I can’t stop reading it. I did one. They should have one where you write 25 things about another person, that way you get a counter balance to all the shit that people want you to know who they are. I’m listening to My Bloody Valentines “Soft as Snow (But Warm Inside) right now. What an amazing mess! Well, maybe my idea is no better, but heck, I’m gonna do it. Every day. It will get me to read. Cause I always say I should read more.
Monday 12:17pm
This book is not what I thought it would be. It read like an action adventure… first lady as some kind of eco crusader the first couple… gosh, I just keep drawing comparisons somewhere between the Obamas and the FBI boss Larry Moss from 24, with the first lady played by that delicious Annie Wersching… HOT. The booked is paced really well, the chapters (if you can call them that) are more like location changes, like Law and Order.
Monday 1:30pm
Grenade tipped harpoons. Jeez… and I only hope it’s fiction. It’s probably not.
Tuesday 2:03pm
I really gotta read more. So I looked up this book online and it turns out there’s a website. I send what I presume the staff or the two authors an email saying, “Yo, I got your book, if you wanna see it again I want a brown tube sock filled grape flavored Big League Chew a roll of quarters (never a bad thing to have in LA).” Really, they were happy the book was recovered as it was the uncorrected galley of it, which for the rest of us non-book industry people, means the almost-ready-for-the-public copy (it comes out April 1st… I think on Amazon?) Anyways, I ask if they need it back right away cause I was really into it. They said it’s alright just not to sell it. I say, or leave it in a bag that says: Good, Read. They say, “What?” I say (see entry #1). They say, “No way…” I say “Quite ‘Way’.” They say, “That’s so odd.” I say, “Hey, I’m an online marketer I can pitch this book for you.”
Conversations happen, I convince that I am (ummm… aren’t we all?) and they say ok, you can hold onto it.
Hey, anything for a “good, read”.
Wednesday 10:04 pm
I’m trying to write about all that I’ve read. I’m getting pretty into it. The scenes where they talk about how the whalers wound the baby Sperm whales so they come to the surface thus luring the mother to the surface to console/protect them only to be shot with a harpoon grenade is really… grim. The first lady of the United States (Jan) is on a submarine now about to sink the ship… things are getting intense. I don’t wanna write anymore. I gotta read. Plus…. crap, I’m starving, I gotta eat something.
-Guy who likes to read.
PS: You might not want to make your username and password so easy to figure out.
PPS: I'll give you your book back as soon as I finish it. Don't worry, I'm half way.
PPPS: I have been screening your calls, sorry, it's just that you seem really upset. Relax, I'm not going to do anything to your book, I just want to read it. Nice webpage btw.
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