I first became aware of Tez when I met Fraz for the third time during Starve Theatre at El Campo Ruse. She played guitar and performed backing vocals as part of a duo with Leaz, the organizer of the monthly open mic event. She was thin, had long, dark hair and a cute, round face. She appeared to be in her late 20s/early 30s. I didn't talk to her that night because I was concentrating on my contribution to the open mic and getting to know Fraz more.
A couple of weeks later, Fraz and I were hanging out and she told me about a party taking place at Leaz' apartment. We went over there and hung out. I saw Tez there. It took me a minute to remember where I'd seen her before. After this, I started getting more and more involved in Leaz' other poetry and art events. Tez was usually at these. We started talking to each other more. It was during this time that she revealed that she was in her late 40s. I was shocked!
I started getting the idea that maybe she liked me, but I was nervous about bringing it up in conversation. I called Leaz and left a message for her asking if she could give me Tez' number. She called and left a message on my voice mail, informing me that Tez had a boyfriend who was a jazz musician. Leaz said that guys would frequently develop crushes on her and ALWAYS ask her for Tez' phone number. But she said that she would give my phone number to Tez and we'd see where it went from there.
Fraz told me that Leaz griped to her about me asking for Tez' phone number. Fraz said something to the effect of, "Don't take this the wrong way, but she's really disappointed that you did that." Take what the wrong way? Was Leaz interested in me like that? Maybe I was interested in Leaz, but I guess I just blew my chance at that. At any rate, I never did get a phone call from Tez.
In February of 2000, I was taking part in another of Leaz' poetry and music events at Lestat's. I knew Tez was going to be there, so I brought these Valentines to give to both of them. Tez said, "Wow! This is great! This is probably the only Valentine I'm going to get this year!" I was expecting that she would follow that up with, "That scumbag I call a boyfriend never gives me Valentines." But she did not say that. I saw this as a good sign.
Shortly after that, I had acquired tickets to see "Phantom of the Opera." I asked Tez to go with me and she agreed to go. I asked her if Leaz had given her my number. She said she had, so I told her to call me if something came up. The afternoon of the performance, I hadn't received a phone call from her. I decided to check the voice mail for my Ogolon Records business. She left a message saying she couldn't make it. THAT DAMN LEAZ! She gave Tez my voice mail number instead of my actual phone number. She didn't want her to actually make contact with me. This was how I wound up taking my ex-girlfriend instead and got a traffic ticket.
On the bright side, Tez actually left her phone number on the message. I called her the next day. She said she was sorry about cancelling and she also said, "Oh, and I want you to know I have a boyfriend." I said, "That's okay. I understand he's a jazz musician." "Yes, he is!" And that's how I ended up in the Friend Zone.
We continued to be friends and hang out after that. I learned a lot about her. She enjoyed folk music and wrote a lot of songs about silkies. Even though she looked fine, she actually had a large number of health issues. While she did not have the face of someone her age, if she wore something that exposed her arms, her age was quite apparent. She told me that she had a twin sister, but she smoked and looked considerably older.
The strange thing is that I never saw her boyfriend. I knew his first name and that he was in his 60s, but I didn't know who he performed with. And he certainly never came to any of the events that Tez played at. What I was aware of is that Tez had A LOT of guys in the Friend Zone. I even met a few of them. I always wondered how she felt, being that age and having so many men desire her.
We did get to go on an actual date (by my definition, anyway). I had bought two tickets to a concert featuring a well-known group from the 80s. (This was one of the shows that I wanted Molz to attend with me.) I thought I would give Leaz that shot and told her I was going to see that group. I thought she would say something like, "Hey, I'd like to go see them." But her reaction was that she never liked that group. There was no point in asking her. I then went to Tez, told her I had the tickets and invited her to go with me. She agreed to. I guess that she figured I wasn't going to try any funny stuff, so she didn't have a problem doing something with me.
And she did not cancel on me. We went to the show at 4th and B in Downtown San Diego. We both got something to drink and sat down at a table. When the show was about to start, we separated. I went close to the stage and she went into the back where the seats were. I had paid for standing room on the floor, but everyone was on the floor, including those who had paid for seats. She just sat down in a seat and no one bothered her during the show.
Tez and I were able to find each other afterward and drive home. She enjoyed the performance, even though it wasn't her kind of music. Just before we got to her apartment, I guess I had cut in front of another car and the driver honked the horn at me. The next thing I knew, the car was right behind me and took the same turn I did. "Shoot! He's following us!" Tez got a little freaked out. I made a couple more turns and the other driver finally went another direction. I guess that person wasn't following us after all. Whew!
I had later gone to a concert by myself at the Sports Arena. I found out later she was also at that concert because one of the other guys had invited her. (But I paid more than $100 for my ticket, so I knew there was no way I was going to buy another seat "just in case.")
I don't know what has happened to her. She doesn't really have much of a presence on the Internet. Leaz once shared a old photo of the two of them on Facebook. What little I found amounts to an obituary of her father who passed away in 2007. It showed her as a surviving child at the time. I also came across something that seemed to indicate that someone with a name close to hers had passed away not long after that. I can tell you that I'm not about to ask Leaz to find out. I have no desire to rip that wound open again. (UPDATE: I have confirmed that Tez did pass away. It does sadden me that I'll never see her again.)
However, we did get to go on another date, and that led to me meeting another woman. I'll go into detail about that in a future post.
Monday, September 24, 2018
Friday, September 21, 2018
Things go whizzing past!
Sometimes, I'll be out with my son and he'll remind me of what it was like to be a kid.
I wonder how long he'll continue to be excited about things like this.
I wonder how long he'll continue to be excited about things like this.
Thursday, September 20, 2018
Loyd comes for another visit, Part 2
Loyd and I had just spent a couple of quality weeks together. He had his own money to spend, so it wasn't costing me a lot of money. We were having a good time hanging out and doing things together.
The only bad thing for Loyd not being someplace permanent was that he wasn't able to vote in the 2000 Presidential election. I thought maybe there was a chance Loyd might be able to vote if election materials had been sent to the previous resident. (He had passed away, which was how I was able to move into the apartment. I should note that he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, not in the apartment.) There was a chance his name hadn't been removed from the rolls, and if it hadn't, we were considering committing a little election fraud. However, I guess the San Diego County Registrar of Voters was on top of things and received proper notice that he had died. We never did receive those election materials.
On Election Day, I was able to go out and vote. On Election Night, I took Loyd to the biggest free party in town! It was Election Central at Golden Hall in Downtown San Diego. I always loved going there. All the important people are gathered in one place. TV and radio stations are there doing live broadcasts. There are all types of activists there from every level of the political spectrum. Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and other fierce independents. People were marching around with signs and these elaborate puppets. Everybody does whatever they can to get on TV and push their agendas. In addition, there's free food all over the place. They say nobody goes hungry on Thanksgiving? Well, Election Night is a warm up to that!
But that was nothing compared to what happened in the Presidential election. We weren't prepared for not knowing who won right away. It just felt like Election Night never ended, except we didn't get any more free food. Every day was an exercise in frustration as we couldn't get any solid news about who was supposed to be our next President. And it got worse when it started becoming apparent that Bush was going to beat Gore. I never imagined that happening.
Loyd's money ran out and we were starting to get on each other's nerves. We knew that the time had come for him to go back to New Mexico. Even though he had taken out a want ad in the newspaper, he still wasn't able to sell the trailer. That meant he was going to have to take it with him. That was going to burn up more gas.
We had to wait until my next payday so I could give him some money to get home on. Even though I had a decent job at the time and was making a good amount of money, this still created a little bit of a hardship for me. But it was something I knew I could live through
He went to put gas in the car, but there was a problem. Since his car had been rear-ended a while back, he had never opened the trunk. He knew that if he opened the trunk, he wasn't going to get it close again. When he went to fill up with gas, he thought he was pulling the lever for the gas tank. He wasn't. He pulled the lever for the trunk and it popped open. Sure enough, he couldn't get it to close. This meant he was going to have to find a way to tie it down so it wouldn't come open while he was driving on the highway.
He did manage to do that and was about ready to leave. But it was raining very heavily that day. As much as I was ready for him to leave, I did not want him to drive in unsafe conditions. I had him stay one more night. The weather cleared up and he was able to leave the next day.
But the Presidential election took longer than that to clear up. In fact, I don't even think it ever cleared up.
The only bad thing for Loyd not being someplace permanent was that he wasn't able to vote in the 2000 Presidential election. I thought maybe there was a chance Loyd might be able to vote if election materials had been sent to the previous resident. (He had passed away, which was how I was able to move into the apartment. I should note that he died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, not in the apartment.) There was a chance his name hadn't been removed from the rolls, and if it hadn't, we were considering committing a little election fraud. However, I guess the San Diego County Registrar of Voters was on top of things and received proper notice that he had died. We never did receive those election materials.
On Election Day, I was able to go out and vote. On Election Night, I took Loyd to the biggest free party in town! It was Election Central at Golden Hall in Downtown San Diego. I always loved going there. All the important people are gathered in one place. TV and radio stations are there doing live broadcasts. There are all types of activists there from every level of the political spectrum. Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Libertarians and other fierce independents. People were marching around with signs and these elaborate puppets. Everybody does whatever they can to get on TV and push their agendas. In addition, there's free food all over the place. They say nobody goes hungry on Thanksgiving? Well, Election Night is a warm up to that!
But that was nothing compared to what happened in the Presidential election. We weren't prepared for not knowing who won right away. It just felt like Election Night never ended, except we didn't get any more free food. Every day was an exercise in frustration as we couldn't get any solid news about who was supposed to be our next President. And it got worse when it started becoming apparent that Bush was going to beat Gore. I never imagined that happening.
Loyd's money ran out and we were starting to get on each other's nerves. We knew that the time had come for him to go back to New Mexico. Even though he had taken out a want ad in the newspaper, he still wasn't able to sell the trailer. That meant he was going to have to take it with him. That was going to burn up more gas.
We had to wait until my next payday so I could give him some money to get home on. Even though I had a decent job at the time and was making a good amount of money, this still created a little bit of a hardship for me. But it was something I knew I could live through
He went to put gas in the car, but there was a problem. Since his car had been rear-ended a while back, he had never opened the trunk. He knew that if he opened the trunk, he wasn't going to get it close again. When he went to fill up with gas, he thought he was pulling the lever for the gas tank. He wasn't. He pulled the lever for the trunk and it popped open. Sure enough, he couldn't get it to close. This meant he was going to have to find a way to tie it down so it wouldn't come open while he was driving on the highway.
He did manage to do that and was about ready to leave. But it was raining very heavily that day. As much as I was ready for him to leave, I did not want him to drive in unsafe conditions. I had him stay one more night. The weather cleared up and he was able to leave the next day.
But the Presidential election took longer than that to clear up. In fact, I don't even think it ever cleared up.
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Loyd comes for another visit, Part 1
It had been seven years since my brother Loyd had come out to stay with me. He had stopped to see me a couple of times since then, but they were usually quick visits. October of 2000 was the first time I'd seen him since his heart attack. He was moving back to New Mexico and had some spare time on his hands.
Things had changed a lot for me since his last extended visit. I had a well-paying job, my own apartment and a properly working vehicle. He had none of those. I mean, his car worked okay, but he was always concerned it could give out any minute and it had been rear-ended in an accident. He also had all his belongings on a trailer. One thing he had that I didn't was a laptop computer.
One of his goals during the visit was to have a yard sale and get some money for a lot of his stuff. But my apartment complex didn't really have a yard. I figured that the next best thing to do was to rent space at a swap meet. They had the Kobey's Swap Meet every weekend in the Sports Arena parking lot. I'd always despised that swap meet, because if I wanted to go to Tower Records on the weekend while it was going on, there were no parking spaces available.
Getting in was relatively easy. We just went to their office, which was a few blocks away from the Sports Arena, fill out the paperwork and pay about $30. We were then given specific instructions on what time to arrive and where to go.
I had never been to this swap meet, so I did not know what to expect. I thought we were going to park in the main parking lot and have to carry everything he wanted to sell to our assigned space. We got there at 6:30am. We got to drive his car and his trailer directly to our space. I wasn't expecting this, but it was great because it meant we weren't going to have to carry a lot of stuff back and forth.
Our designated area was actually two consecutive parking spaces. We parked the car in one and put the trailer in the other. We started unpacking stuff. (I should add that we did not organize beforehand. There were things on the trailer he wanted to sell and other stuff he wanted to keep, but we didn't think about sorting this out.) Suddenly, about 20 people came up, grabbed things out of the trailer and asked us how much we were selling them for. The swap meet hadn't even opened to the public yet. We were NOT expecting this. Loyd had to quickly determine how much he wanted to see each item for, because this was also not planned ahead of time. We're still trying to unload everything. Loyd didn't want to waste these opportunities to suddenly sell his stuff, so he catered as much as he could to everyone.
I wish we had known this was going to happen. I didn't realize at the time that the people who swarmed us were other sellers, looking to take advantage of our (apparently obvious) naivete. They likely bought stuff from us and then sold them at their spaces to make quick profits. A little foresight would have helped us tell everyone to back off because we weren't ready yet.
Things got a lot calmer after that. We were able to unload and organize the rest of the stuff. Loyd was hoping to clear at least a couple of hundred dollars that day. He was also hoping that someone would be interested in buying the trailer and taking it off his hands. He really did not want to drive all the way to New Mexico with that.
Throughout the morning, we would have occasional visitors to our space, taking a look at our "selection." Loyd would play his guitar and sing to help attract attention. (He wasn't selling the guitar, but several people asked about it.) Around 11am, Loyd decided he'd made as much money as he was capable of and we decided to leave. This was even though there were four hours left in the swap meet. When we started setting up the trailer to drive off, other sellers told us we shouldn't leave yet. We still left, but we had to drive very slowly out of the parking lot so we didn't hit anybody in the crowd. It was weird to drive around where there's supposed to be strictly pedestrian traffic.
We wound up in a bit of a routine the next few weeks. I would go to work, come home, take a nap. Then we'd watch my favorite TV shows and often go out and see live local music performances. We also found other activities to take part in.
On Halloween, I thought I was going to take part in a poetry reading at Lestat's, but it was canceled without me being notified. I was shocked to arrive to see a country-folk band setting up. We then went over to Claire de Lune to take part in their open mic poetry reading. What I was going to read at Lestat's was going to take about 20 minutes for me to get through. But the slots were only 10 minutes each. I asked Loyd if he would follow me and read the second half of my presentation. He said he wanted to do his own material. I hadn't brought any of my other poems to read, so we just left. (At any rate, we were so far down the list that we probably wouldn't have gotten to do anything because they cut off at a certain time. It was better that we didn't wait to find out we weren't going to get to go on stage.) I don't remember exactly what we did the rest of the evening. I just know we didn't go back home because we'd run out of candy for trick-or-treaters.
But the most unusual thing we did involved the 2000 Presidential election. I'll get into that tomorrow.
Things had changed a lot for me since his last extended visit. I had a well-paying job, my own apartment and a properly working vehicle. He had none of those. I mean, his car worked okay, but he was always concerned it could give out any minute and it had been rear-ended in an accident. He also had all his belongings on a trailer. One thing he had that I didn't was a laptop computer.
One of his goals during the visit was to have a yard sale and get some money for a lot of his stuff. But my apartment complex didn't really have a yard. I figured that the next best thing to do was to rent space at a swap meet. They had the Kobey's Swap Meet every weekend in the Sports Arena parking lot. I'd always despised that swap meet, because if I wanted to go to Tower Records on the weekend while it was going on, there were no parking spaces available.
Getting in was relatively easy. We just went to their office, which was a few blocks away from the Sports Arena, fill out the paperwork and pay about $30. We were then given specific instructions on what time to arrive and where to go.
I had never been to this swap meet, so I did not know what to expect. I thought we were going to park in the main parking lot and have to carry everything he wanted to sell to our assigned space. We got there at 6:30am. We got to drive his car and his trailer directly to our space. I wasn't expecting this, but it was great because it meant we weren't going to have to carry a lot of stuff back and forth.
Our designated area was actually two consecutive parking spaces. We parked the car in one and put the trailer in the other. We started unpacking stuff. (I should add that we did not organize beforehand. There were things on the trailer he wanted to sell and other stuff he wanted to keep, but we didn't think about sorting this out.) Suddenly, about 20 people came up, grabbed things out of the trailer and asked us how much we were selling them for. The swap meet hadn't even opened to the public yet. We were NOT expecting this. Loyd had to quickly determine how much he wanted to see each item for, because this was also not planned ahead of time. We're still trying to unload everything. Loyd didn't want to waste these opportunities to suddenly sell his stuff, so he catered as much as he could to everyone.
I wish we had known this was going to happen. I didn't realize at the time that the people who swarmed us were other sellers, looking to take advantage of our (apparently obvious) naivete. They likely bought stuff from us and then sold them at their spaces to make quick profits. A little foresight would have helped us tell everyone to back off because we weren't ready yet.
Things got a lot calmer after that. We were able to unload and organize the rest of the stuff. Loyd was hoping to clear at least a couple of hundred dollars that day. He was also hoping that someone would be interested in buying the trailer and taking it off his hands. He really did not want to drive all the way to New Mexico with that.
Throughout the morning, we would have occasional visitors to our space, taking a look at our "selection." Loyd would play his guitar and sing to help attract attention. (He wasn't selling the guitar, but several people asked about it.) Around 11am, Loyd decided he'd made as much money as he was capable of and we decided to leave. This was even though there were four hours left in the swap meet. When we started setting up the trailer to drive off, other sellers told us we shouldn't leave yet. We still left, but we had to drive very slowly out of the parking lot so we didn't hit anybody in the crowd. It was weird to drive around where there's supposed to be strictly pedestrian traffic.
We wound up in a bit of a routine the next few weeks. I would go to work, come home, take a nap. Then we'd watch my favorite TV shows and often go out and see live local music performances. We also found other activities to take part in.
On Halloween, I thought I was going to take part in a poetry reading at Lestat's, but it was canceled without me being notified. I was shocked to arrive to see a country-folk band setting up. We then went over to Claire de Lune to take part in their open mic poetry reading. What I was going to read at Lestat's was going to take about 20 minutes for me to get through. But the slots were only 10 minutes each. I asked Loyd if he would follow me and read the second half of my presentation. He said he wanted to do his own material. I hadn't brought any of my other poems to read, so we just left. (At any rate, we were so far down the list that we probably wouldn't have gotten to do anything because they cut off at a certain time. It was better that we didn't wait to find out we weren't going to get to go on stage.) I don't remember exactly what we did the rest of the evening. I just know we didn't go back home because we'd run out of candy for trick-or-treaters.
But the most unusual thing we did involved the 2000 Presidential election. I'll get into that tomorrow.
Tuesday, September 18, 2018
Going Green
Prior to 2000, I'd never felt the need to get involved in Presidential elections. In 1996, I had gotten fed up with the direction the Democrats and Republicans were heading and voted for Ralph Nader, who was running as the Green Party candidate that year. I didn't think much of it, and it really didn't matter, because all of the Electoral College votes were going to go to Bill Clinton anyway. Even Ralph Nader didn't actively campaign for President that year. The Green Party just wanted a name to stick on the ballot. And it was a name good enough for me to vote for.
In 2000, things changed. Because Clinton was wrapping up his second term, the USA was going to get a new President. All of a sudden, Nader wanted to be an active participant. He traveled across the country, challenging the major party candidates. But he was never allowed to take part in the debates. Everything was strictly grass roots for him.
Abed and I were totally backing him. We'd gotten word that he was going to hold a rally in San Diego and made plans to go. It was held at a community center. There were at least 200 people there. (Yeah, it wasn't a large crowd, but it was standing room only.) I arrived before Abed and Qued got there. I saw them come in a little later. A local folk/new age ensemble performed music before he took the stage. I could also see representatives of San Diego media in the room.
His entrance was welcomed by a lot of applause. He came out and made a few generic comments. One of the things he did was start griping about the local news media. First, it started with him having watched the weather and getting upset because they were talking a lot of conditions without stating what the weather was going to do that day. He was trying to come across as humorous and light-hearted about it. Then, he started digging into how the media doesn't really focus a lot on the positive aspects of what is going on locally. This wasn't enough to dissuade me from voting for him, but my first thought was that he hadn't done any research before making that statement. I could tell you from six years of monitoring local TV news that the stations did cover how a lot of people and organizations were trying to help their community to grow.
He spent the rest of the rally criticizing how politics worked in Washington, DC. I'm pretty certain he knew at the time he didn't stand a chance, but it was nice to see him put so much effort into it.
A few months later, Abed told me he had been asked to MC a Green Party rally that was going to be held outside Horton Plaza a couple of weeks before the election. He said it was going to involve a few people carrying a casket that would signify the death of democracy. And then, the signs were going to be removed from the coffin to reveal the words "Two Party System." They were going to march around Horton Plaza with the coffin.
I attended the rally, which was in the plaza area outside Planet Hollywood. Abed came up and introduced a few speakers. Then some guys came up, carrying the casket. After Abed talked about the death of democracy, they took the casket away. I figured they were going to remove the signs later in the rally.
While this was going on, an older woman came up and asked me if I knew if Ralph Nader was going to be at the rally. I told her that he wasn't. This was just a local demonstration. She was there to give Nader a piece of her mind and try to get him to pull out of the race. She was worried about George W. Bush winning. I told her she probably didn't had much to worry about. (Even though I was voting for Nader, I felt there was NO WAY Bush was going to become President.)
While the speeches were going on, someone approached me and asked me to be a pallbearer. I guess one of the other guys had to go home, so they needed to quickly recruit someone. Since I was already all dressed in black, I must have looked like a suitable replacement.
I went over to the coffin and took my place at the front. No one seemed to bat an eye that I wasn't there for the original presentation. I was told that I would have to remove the sign on the outside on a given cue. We started marching into the center of the rally. Abed was surprised to see me get involved like that.
As instructed, we removed the outer signs from the coffin. There was a lot of cheering and we started marching with the coffin. There were TV news crews there covering us. One cameraman got in front of us and crouched down. He stayed there while the coffin went overhead.
We then turned right and marched down the street on the back side of Horton Plaza. This part didn't seem very well planned out. The sidewalk was narrow and there were only a few cars coming our direction in the middle of the Saturday afternoon. But we continued to carry the coffin and chant while a crowd of people from the rally followed us. After we turned the corned and walked in front of the shopping center, we were finally seen by the people who were out doing their shopping. I remember a lot of people didn't seem to like us promoting a candidate who stood no chance of winning. But we didn't care.
And then, after we started dispersing, a small group of Gore supporters showed up and started chanting, "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush!" But everytime they said "Bush," we would chant "Nader!" We had far more people than they did. Anybody nearby listening likely would have just heard people chanting "Nader" once every five seconds.
I watched the local news that night. I did see the rally covered on a couple of channels. And there was one that used a shot of me in the tease. We felt like we had accomplished something that day.
But all we accomplished was being able to get on TV. We had no impact on the election, whatsoever. Gore got all of California's electoral votes, but it wasn't enough to help him win. None of us had any regrets about who we supported. But a lot of other people across the country didn't feel that way and still blame Nader for Bush winning.
And the two-party system didn't die. But neither did democracy.
In 2000, things changed. Because Clinton was wrapping up his second term, the USA was going to get a new President. All of a sudden, Nader wanted to be an active participant. He traveled across the country, challenging the major party candidates. But he was never allowed to take part in the debates. Everything was strictly grass roots for him.
Abed and I were totally backing him. We'd gotten word that he was going to hold a rally in San Diego and made plans to go. It was held at a community center. There were at least 200 people there. (Yeah, it wasn't a large crowd, but it was standing room only.) I arrived before Abed and Qued got there. I saw them come in a little later. A local folk/new age ensemble performed music before he took the stage. I could also see representatives of San Diego media in the room.
His entrance was welcomed by a lot of applause. He came out and made a few generic comments. One of the things he did was start griping about the local news media. First, it started with him having watched the weather and getting upset because they were talking a lot of conditions without stating what the weather was going to do that day. He was trying to come across as humorous and light-hearted about it. Then, he started digging into how the media doesn't really focus a lot on the positive aspects of what is going on locally. This wasn't enough to dissuade me from voting for him, but my first thought was that he hadn't done any research before making that statement. I could tell you from six years of monitoring local TV news that the stations did cover how a lot of people and organizations were trying to help their community to grow.
He spent the rest of the rally criticizing how politics worked in Washington, DC. I'm pretty certain he knew at the time he didn't stand a chance, but it was nice to see him put so much effort into it.
A few months later, Abed told me he had been asked to MC a Green Party rally that was going to be held outside Horton Plaza a couple of weeks before the election. He said it was going to involve a few people carrying a casket that would signify the death of democracy. And then, the signs were going to be removed from the coffin to reveal the words "Two Party System." They were going to march around Horton Plaza with the coffin.
I attended the rally, which was in the plaza area outside Planet Hollywood. Abed came up and introduced a few speakers. Then some guys came up, carrying the casket. After Abed talked about the death of democracy, they took the casket away. I figured they were going to remove the signs later in the rally.
While this was going on, an older woman came up and asked me if I knew if Ralph Nader was going to be at the rally. I told her that he wasn't. This was just a local demonstration. She was there to give Nader a piece of her mind and try to get him to pull out of the race. She was worried about George W. Bush winning. I told her she probably didn't had much to worry about. (Even though I was voting for Nader, I felt there was NO WAY Bush was going to become President.)
While the speeches were going on, someone approached me and asked me to be a pallbearer. I guess one of the other guys had to go home, so they needed to quickly recruit someone. Since I was already all dressed in black, I must have looked like a suitable replacement.
I went over to the coffin and took my place at the front. No one seemed to bat an eye that I wasn't there for the original presentation. I was told that I would have to remove the sign on the outside on a given cue. We started marching into the center of the rally. Abed was surprised to see me get involved like that.
As instructed, we removed the outer signs from the coffin. There was a lot of cheering and we started marching with the coffin. There were TV news crews there covering us. One cameraman got in front of us and crouched down. He stayed there while the coffin went overhead.
We then turned right and marched down the street on the back side of Horton Plaza. This part didn't seem very well planned out. The sidewalk was narrow and there were only a few cars coming our direction in the middle of the Saturday afternoon. But we continued to carry the coffin and chant while a crowd of people from the rally followed us. After we turned the corned and walked in front of the shopping center, we were finally seen by the people who were out doing their shopping. I remember a lot of people didn't seem to like us promoting a candidate who stood no chance of winning. But we didn't care.
And then, after we started dispersing, a small group of Gore supporters showed up and started chanting, "A vote for Nader is a vote for Bush!" But everytime they said "Bush," we would chant "Nader!" We had far more people than they did. Anybody nearby listening likely would have just heard people chanting "Nader" once every five seconds.
I watched the local news that night. I did see the rally covered on a couple of channels. And there was one that used a shot of me in the tease. We felt like we had accomplished something that day.
But all we accomplished was being able to get on TV. We had no impact on the election, whatsoever. Gore got all of California's electoral votes, but it wasn't enough to help him win. None of us had any regrets about who we supported. But a lot of other people across the country didn't feel that way and still blame Nader for Bush winning.
And the two-party system didn't die. But neither did democracy.
Monday, September 17, 2018
A real distraction
One of the things I wasn't used to in my previous workplaces was the presence of so many women. I had several that I dealt with on a regular basis when I worked for Landmark Theatres, but NDC was like college all over again. There were so many beautiful women and I developed so many crushes. It was probably worse than college because I didn't get to date any of them.
I did try, though. When I was an LDA, there was a woman named Lilz from another team at Balboa. She seemed to like spending time talking to me when she was on her break. She had made indications that she would have liked for me to have been the LDA for her team because she didn't care much for hers, whom she would snarkily refer to as "Mr. Personality." I got the idea that maybe she had a crush on me. She told me that she spent Saturday mornings at the Mission cafe in Mission Beach getting breakfast with her friends. It almost seemed like she was inviting me. But I wasn't just going to show up and see if she'd let me join her.
I decided to see how much she liked me. Abed and I were going to do a show at Lestat's one night. I thought that if she really liked me, she'd come see me play. (But I don't think she was going to be really impressed with the music.) The day of the show, I suggested she come check it out. She said, "I can't. I have plans with my friends. Please let me know in advance next time." Hmmm... I know that most women, if they're into a guy, would gladly ditch their friends to see him play. I guess these were pretty solid plans. Or maybe she'd gotten cynical about guys.
So the next time we did a show, I told her about it two weeks in advance. She still couldn't make it. Dang it! Being a musician is supposed to make it easier to get dates! (But that's what this blog is all about.)
Her name is rather common, so I don't know what happened to her. I did see her a couple of other times after I stopped working at NDC, but that's going to come up in another post.
But Lilz was someone I was pretty sure liked me. Almost all the other women I liked didn't even know I existed. This was especially true when I was a regular dispatch agent. But then again, I had little contact with anyone else, male or female. I had a tendency to be a little stalker-ish. If there was someone I was attracted to, I would make it a point to walk by whichever cubicle they happened to be working at. I didn't know if they could tell I was doing that on purpose.
And sometimes, they could surprise me. I started noticing Mitz when everyone at Chesapeake had to work at Balboa for the weekend. She was in the cubicle next to me and we talked back and forth a little bit. I know she had a kid and was probably married, but she was really cute and had a great voice. We didn't talk much after that. I would see her from time to time. Once I was leaving at 7am and saw her in a car with her husband.
When I was training to be an LDA, she came up and talked to the person working with me. She asked a couple of questions of him. That was the closest I'd ever been to her. On Labor Day Monday, when I had to work, I was in the break room. She was in there talking to someone. Suddenly, she turned to me and said, "Hey, Fayd! Congratulations on becoming LDA! I know you'll be really good!" I was rather stunned. Wasn't she aware I was kind of creeping around her every once in a while? I guess not. In the end, it didn't matter. She stopped working for NDC soon after that and I never saw her again.
I have found her Facebook profile. She still lives in San Diego. It looks like she got married to someone else. And she's really into her pug. One thing I notice about her now is that she doesn't wear a lot of make up. By that, I mean she doesn't seem to use foundation. I don't recall if she had the natural look back then, but it's really apparent now.
At one point, my regular cubicle (and no one had assigned cubicles at Chesapeake) was right next to one that seemed to magically get better calls on it. (This was an odd thing at Chesapeake. There was a weird algorithm in which some stations didn't get all the calls. I remember that there was one prompt that always came up on a regular basis, but if I sat in a different row, I would never get that prompt.) There were these two really cute women who would try to sit next to me. I enjoyed this (even though I couldn't get up the nerve to talk to them). However, there was this guy who discovered the magic cubicle. He came in before them. He was loud and smelly. I didn't like him sitting next to me. I wanted the cute women. So I started putting up a sign that indicated the user was at lunch. He would come, see the sign and then look elsewhere. Then, after he found another cubicle and started taking calls, I would take the sign away and wait for one of the women to appear. Eventually, he figured out that no one was sitting there, removed the sign and started taking calls. (And I don't think he knew that I put it there.) I would then see either of the women coming in and look disappointed that the cubicle was taken. (My cubicle was also magical, and I was not giving it up.)
One of the women I had regular contact with because she also became a LDA. Sometime later, I ran into the other woman. I referred to her by name. She didn't remember me. "You used to sit in the cubicle next to me!" She still didn't remember. That hurt.
So for me, working at NDC was not a very good resource for meeting women. I mean, I met them. I just couldn't socialize with them. But there was one I thought I had a real chance with after I no longer worked there. As usual, she will be the subject of another post way later in the future.
I did try, though. When I was an LDA, there was a woman named Lilz from another team at Balboa. She seemed to like spending time talking to me when she was on her break. She had made indications that she would have liked for me to have been the LDA for her team because she didn't care much for hers, whom she would snarkily refer to as "Mr. Personality." I got the idea that maybe she had a crush on me. She told me that she spent Saturday mornings at the Mission cafe in Mission Beach getting breakfast with her friends. It almost seemed like she was inviting me. But I wasn't just going to show up and see if she'd let me join her.
I decided to see how much she liked me. Abed and I were going to do a show at Lestat's one night. I thought that if she really liked me, she'd come see me play. (But I don't think she was going to be really impressed with the music.) The day of the show, I suggested she come check it out. She said, "I can't. I have plans with my friends. Please let me know in advance next time." Hmmm... I know that most women, if they're into a guy, would gladly ditch their friends to see him play. I guess these were pretty solid plans. Or maybe she'd gotten cynical about guys.
So the next time we did a show, I told her about it two weeks in advance. She still couldn't make it. Dang it! Being a musician is supposed to make it easier to get dates! (But that's what this blog is all about.)
Her name is rather common, so I don't know what happened to her. I did see her a couple of other times after I stopped working at NDC, but that's going to come up in another post.
But Lilz was someone I was pretty sure liked me. Almost all the other women I liked didn't even know I existed. This was especially true when I was a regular dispatch agent. But then again, I had little contact with anyone else, male or female. I had a tendency to be a little stalker-ish. If there was someone I was attracted to, I would make it a point to walk by whichever cubicle they happened to be working at. I didn't know if they could tell I was doing that on purpose.
And sometimes, they could surprise me. I started noticing Mitz when everyone at Chesapeake had to work at Balboa for the weekend. She was in the cubicle next to me and we talked back and forth a little bit. I know she had a kid and was probably married, but she was really cute and had a great voice. We didn't talk much after that. I would see her from time to time. Once I was leaving at 7am and saw her in a car with her husband.
When I was training to be an LDA, she came up and talked to the person working with me. She asked a couple of questions of him. That was the closest I'd ever been to her. On Labor Day Monday, when I had to work, I was in the break room. She was in there talking to someone. Suddenly, she turned to me and said, "Hey, Fayd! Congratulations on becoming LDA! I know you'll be really good!" I was rather stunned. Wasn't she aware I was kind of creeping around her every once in a while? I guess not. In the end, it didn't matter. She stopped working for NDC soon after that and I never saw her again.
I have found her Facebook profile. She still lives in San Diego. It looks like she got married to someone else. And she's really into her pug. One thing I notice about her now is that she doesn't wear a lot of make up. By that, I mean she doesn't seem to use foundation. I don't recall if she had the natural look back then, but it's really apparent now.
At one point, my regular cubicle (and no one had assigned cubicles at Chesapeake) was right next to one that seemed to magically get better calls on it. (This was an odd thing at Chesapeake. There was a weird algorithm in which some stations didn't get all the calls. I remember that there was one prompt that always came up on a regular basis, but if I sat in a different row, I would never get that prompt.) There were these two really cute women who would try to sit next to me. I enjoyed this (even though I couldn't get up the nerve to talk to them). However, there was this guy who discovered the magic cubicle. He came in before them. He was loud and smelly. I didn't like him sitting next to me. I wanted the cute women. So I started putting up a sign that indicated the user was at lunch. He would come, see the sign and then look elsewhere. Then, after he found another cubicle and started taking calls, I would take the sign away and wait for one of the women to appear. Eventually, he figured out that no one was sitting there, removed the sign and started taking calls. (And I don't think he knew that I put it there.) I would then see either of the women coming in and look disappointed that the cubicle was taken. (My cubicle was also magical, and I was not giving it up.)
One of the women I had regular contact with because she also became a LDA. Sometime later, I ran into the other woman. I referred to her by name. She didn't remember me. "You used to sit in the cubicle next to me!" She still didn't remember. That hurt.
So for me, working at NDC was not a very good resource for meeting women. I mean, I met them. I just couldn't socialize with them. But there was one I thought I had a real chance with after I no longer worked there. As usual, she will be the subject of another post way later in the future.
Friday, September 14, 2018
Another of life's LOUD moments
Sometimes, you have to look pretty hard to figure out where a sound is coming from. This happened outside the Walmart in Morgan Hill, CA.
My next-door neighbor works at the Walmart. I ran into him inside. He could hear it all the way in there. But I never did find out what was going on.
My next-door neighbor works at the Walmart. I ran into him inside. He could hear it all the way in there. But I never did find out what was going on.
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