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Farenheit 9/11 and Tijuana Jones

2004-07-01 - 3:40 p.m.

Farenheit 9/11 -- 25th of June

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I'd known about this tidbit of a trip a week or so in advance. I was over at Gran's to do yardwork and go to my dentist appointment on saturday, and The Captain lives right by where she is, so getting prepared and leaving didn't seem like a problem. He was s'posed to come at 11:30, so I figured we'd have enough time to eat..being that the movie was at 1 or so.

It started when I was watching John Kerry on C-SPAN 2 giving a speech about the tech industry, lounging around naked (since I forgot my robes at home), enjoying a clear, gorgeous view of some tree-lines in the back. Somewhere between revitalizing tech. initiatives and throwing on a black button-down, I heard The Captain's car pull up. I checked the clock. It was 12:15. My first thought was something like "I'm not going to get to eat, am I?" I had hope, though, as we drove along the 101 and hit Santa Monica Blvd. with 15 minutes to spare. There was one major problem neither of us expected, though, which should have been obvious. Y'see, LA County has this fucked up priority list of infrastructure crap that needs to be done. Santa Monica Blvd. over in Westwood has two separate sets of streets blocked off by this huge divide of undeveloped land. It's taken the city almost a decade to do anything with it--but they finally gave it their all and started working on the all the land, and decided to add a hill-ramp for the right section that joins with an overpass, and decided to do some work on the part beneath the overpass...all at the same time.

And all that means two words: traffic jam.

While we were in that mess, The Captain was busily doing recon cell-phone calls with Nat every 5 minutes, taking up and sacking plans left and right so we could get good seats. Somewhere around taking a right to head down the overpass and to the completely full parking lot, I knew and The Captain confirmed it: I'd have to eat theatre food. Some might say I'm a snob for that attitude, but pig lips and horse ass in a thick hot dog ain't my idea of brunch.

But as we joined a few other fellows from the Harry Potter geek theatre trek (which I haven't gotten around to writing about yet), I decided just to stomach it--so I stood in line and waited. This line would not move; none of the lines really did. It was almost like a sitcom situation: one newish guy not knowing how to work the register, hearing people bitch in front and to the side of me, and finally--just when I was actually looking forward to eating--they tell me that the hot dogs won't be ready for another 6 minutes, even though I'd seen them on the grill for about the last quarter hour. The guy in front of me had been pissed, and I was pretty miffed myself. I hadn't had a soft drink in 6 months, but only caffeine would smack the hunger into a coma, so I grabbed that and sat down.

And then the movie began, and all the crap leading up to that moment was flooded out. I was enthralled in a tasty labyrinth of satirical, hard-hitting humor and factual commentary, all the meanwhile loving the active (and obviously Democratic) audience clapping in all the right places. The movie pulled no punches about what it was about or how to get to the point. I highly suggest the film to people who support or hate Bush, since the perspective and especially the factual information aren't readily available in a condensed (and entertaining) format like that. I mean for the love of fuck: one part-time highway patrolman is all we have as homeland security for the state of Oregon? 150 miles of coastland with major highway access? That's just fucked up. I think America has been spending too much time in airports.

So with the movie ending and everyone in high spirits, what would a group of guys do when most of them think drinking sucks (of which I am not one; hell, hell no)? Their asses go to eat, yessum, so I convinced The Captain and Nat to head over to a Jack-in-the-Box on Santa Monica that I'd passed by. I was fucking curious: I'd only passed the place 3 times a week for 14 months. I mean I'd obviously been to a Jack's before, but it's like that haunted house freaky voodoo shit deal: you just gotta see what's inside.

We ate, we talked about things that most young guys with some geek in them talk about, then went our separate ways after 4 hours of saying alot, not saying much, and enjoying it for both reasons.

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But there were other plans in the mix. The Captain's brother, Tijuana de los Pantalones, was spending a last night in Los Angeles before going on a 4 week trip through most of South America, and a dinner was planned for him at his aunt's place in Beverly Hills. I knew by that look in The Captain's eyes that the old goat could use some company in his time of need--and if you knew his father, the closet republican who sawed off a tree branch he'd been standing on, you would know why.

I had nothing to lose, so I agreed. Getting there was most of the fun in terms of doing a K-turn in downtown traffic, trying to look for Jon*than's salon from the Br*vo show 'Bl*w Out', and ragging on the area in general with The Captain. I found it kinda amusing that we passed this one triple-decker mall a few times, seeing as how I'd spent alot of time around it way back in the day with ex-girlfriend #4, or 'stupid but hot Swede girl'.

The whole dinner thing was part bleh and part kick-ass. The bleh part mostly involved being introduced to your typical horde of teenage boys doing teenage boy things in a teenage boy room. Dinner was more or less par for the course as well. It was one of those dishes where I guess you had to grow up with it, kinda like gritz or babies or something. I'd remembered meals like that from eating over at my old friend Adi's place, and I knew rule #1: accept the offer for having seconds or you get the pout face. I think the aunt found me charming.

The highlight of all that was going over Tijuana de los Pantalones' (i.e. the brother') entire South American get-away plan. It made me wish that I'd had the money to travel overseas, or to Canada, or to Mexico. I guess the Midwest counts as a separate country in some states, though. Anyway, after all that, Tijuana de los Pantalones needed some tips on how to use The Captain's digital camera. At first I left that to the owner, but he somehow snagged me into figuring out the camera and explaining it expertly at the same time. I think we prepared Tijuana for some good times with that little digital bastard.

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So, that only leaves my time with The Captain over at Selene's place. I'll get to that in the next entry.

In conclusion, amazingly, I have events to write about! Not so amazingly, I'm still working on my latest shot, 'The Long Road Goodbye', and haven't gotten my gallery website up yet, and Elvis still can't be summoned using a bucket of black magick KFC. Cthulu and Colonel Sanders just don't have enough juice...

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