Blood Moon

          I hiked to Kite Hill to get a good look at the blood moon. It's a hilltop with a panoramic view of the city. It wasn't exactly an original idea. There were people parked and waiting for the eclipse when I got there. Some people were sitting on lounge chairs and others were sitting on the hoods of their cars. There was a lot of activity. There were the sounds of radios and people talking loudly. I overheard a woman tell her friend, "I don't want to make love, I want to fuck and have a baby." A part of me wanted to stand next to her, but I looked toward Pasadena instead. 

          More and more people were showing up and I was getting overstimulated, so I decided to find a new spot. I walked down the hill some and found a spot that had a view of downtown and the moon. I heard a mockingbird singing in the valley and there was a gentle wind blowing. There was nobody around but me. I had the whole moon to myself. 

Marlon Brando

          I frequent an establishment where the proprietor is a mumbler. I'm a mumbler too, so you can imagine the conversations we have. I was talking to the proprietor the other day and I realized I had no idea what he was saying. You can't ask a mumbler to repeat every sentence. If you do, they tend to freeze up and get irritated. So I pretended to understand what the mumbler was saying.                   
          Somehow we got on the topic of mustaches, but to what extent I didn't know. The proprietor seemed to be saying that he could use his mustache as a weapon. I wasn't sure how to respond. If I guessed wrong and was off topic, he'd be offended. I just laughed and waited for more clues. 
          The proprietor became more animated. I still wasn't sure what he was saying. I studied him while he talked. He was smiling. He was telling a joke of some kind. He started to laugh. I laughed and put my arms up in the air as if I was holding the handlebars to a chopper. I made the sound of a motorcycle. Vroom-vroom! The proprietor had a confused look on his face, but laughed anyway. 

The House Next Door

            The house next door is being worked on. There's a scraggly looking older guy who comes in the morning. He sits in his car until his boss shows up. I've seen him sit there for hours. It's not the best use of time, but it's none of my business. When the boss shows up, that's when the work begins. The men have taken four weeks to do a two week job. The job's winding down now. The older man with the scraggily hair is gone and now it's just the boss that shows up.
            It's quiet now that the job is over. There's an eerie silence and it gives me an empty feeling inside. I got used to the sound of the men working, the hammering and the sawing.
            The boss came by later in the afternoon to finish things up. He worked into the night. I heard a huge racket. He was cutting something with a saw in the dark. It started to bother me. Then it dawned on me, the boss liked it here too. 

The Actor Problem

            A friend of mine is an independent filmmaker. He was approached by a woman who wanted to be in one of his movies. She was a persistent young actress without a hint of name recognition. She downright pestered my friend until he finally relented and gave her a small part. It was a simple scene; a conversation with Hitler.
            They shot the scene and all indications were that she was excited to do it. But a few days after the shoot my friend received a call from the actress. She demanded to be removed from the movie. My friend asked why? The actress said it was because the industry was run by Jews and she didn't want to ruin her career. My friend told her he couldn't re-shoot the scene, but that he'd change her name in the credits if that made her happy. The actress didn't go for that; she wanted to be removed completely. Fifty-three emails later and the threat of a lawsuit, the issue was finally resolved, with the actress somehow remaining in the film. 
            I'm having trouble remembering the punch line to this one, or the moral to this story. Maybe it's be careful what you ask for, you just might end up in a movie with Hitler. 

The Confidence Artist

 Victor Lustig sold the Eiffel Tower to a scrap metal dealer, twice.

Here's a set of instructions known as the "Ten Commandments for Con Men" attributed to Lustig:

• Be a patient listener (it is this, not fast talking, that gets a con man his coups).
• Never look bored.
• Wait for the other person to reveal any political opinions, then agree with them.
• Let the other person reveal religious views, then have the same ones.
• Hint at sex talk, but don't follow it up unless the other person shows a strong interest.
• Never discuss illness, unless some special concern is shown.
• Never pry into a person's personal circumstances (they'll tell you all eventually).
• Never boast - just let your importance be quietly obvious.
• Never be untidy.
• Never get drunk.

These techniques are remarkably similar to those I've employed over the years as a writer, with the exception of "never get drunk."

Get a Pair

            I was starting to feel kind of ordinary. I couldn't put a finger on it. I was blending in a bit too much, and frankly, I'm not used to that. I want to blend in when I want to blend in, but I don't want to blend in because people blend me in, and people were blending me in. I was practically invisible.
           Through a series of events, none of which were all that interesting, I found myself buying shoes at a high-end department store. I bought a pair of black Italian shoes that were on sale for forty-five dollars. The shoes have changed my standing in life considerably. I look a lot nicer. And between you and me, people notice. "Nice shoes," are words I'm becoming familiar with. Now, when I walk into a room people look down at my feet, and when you look at someone's feet there's a good chance you'll notice the rest of them on the way up.
           And that's what's happening to me. I'm wearing the same clothes, just different shoes. The shoes are magic. I highly recommend a pair of nice shoes if you're going unnoticed. The results have been astounding.

Andy The Baller

            I met Andy years ago at the neighborhood basketball court. I was there to practice my shot and Andy came up to me and asked if I wanted to play a game. It was a two on two, or a three on three. I can't recall.

            We were about a minute into the game when Andy started to mouth off. "What are you laughing at?" He said to me.

            Who is this guy? I wondered. He was obnoxious. I wanted to punch him. 
            Eventually, Andy and I became friends and as it turned out he was only obnoxious in competitive situations. 

            I was with Andy the other day when he turned to me and asked, "did I ever tell you the story about how I met Rasta Lenny?"

            "No."

            "He came up to the court to play and he started throwing his elbows around. I told him, hey man watch the elbows! We were jawing back and forth. I started to slap his elbows away when he threw them. After the game Lenny walked up to me and said, "okay Andy, you throw the first punch and after that I'm going wrap your balls around your neck!" My brother was there and he stepped in and Rasta Lenny told him, "I'll do the same to you."   Well, we Flanagans, we're not fighters, we're talkers and instigators. I can't fight and I know for sure my brother can't fight."

            "Isn't Rasta Lenny a black belt in karate?" I asked.
            "We didn't know that at the time."
            "What did you do?" 

            "We did what we Flanagans do best. We talked our way out of it."