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."

            

ATM

            I pulled into a gas station. It was an Arco station with a communal ATM on the pillar. I wasn't familiar with it. I'm used to using ATM's that are on the pump. It took me a second to figure out how to slide the card in. I studied the picture example and stuck the card in the slot. The ATM snatched the card from my hand, ran the numbers, and spit the card out. Then it asked for my PIN number. I punched it in. Select a pump number was its next directive. I selected the pump number.
            Too late it said.
            What?
            Select pump! it demanded.
            I typed the pump number in again.
            Too late, it said.
            Huh? I tried it again.
            This time when it said select pump I punched in the number as fast as I could.
            Too late!
            Is this a joke? Am I being punked? I started talking to myself as I wrestled with the machine. I just wanted gas. I contemplated giving up and paying with cash. No, I can do this.
            I figured I'd cancel the transaction and start over. Maybe if the machine thought I was someone else it would quit messing with me. It worked. I got past the select pump number directive. I was relieved. Then the machine prompted its next message. A thirty-five cent fee will be added to this transaction.. accept or decline. 
            I accept! You son of a bitch! 

Colors

           My friend lives near the border of two rival street gangs. Every few months or so the gangs will tag a garage across the street that straddles their territories. One gang will tag the garage to stake a claim to it and the other gang will come along and cross it out. It's a turf war, a battle for land they don't own.
           Usually, one gang sprays the garage with black paint, and the other gang retaliates with red paint. And then somebody calls the city and the city paints the garage back to white. 
           I paid a visit to my friend the other day and I noticed that the garage had been tagged, but in this instance, one gang used yellow paint, and the other gang crossed it out in a baby blue color. Soft colors, I said to myself. Hardly menacing. How did that happen? I wondered if there was a conversation about the paint.
            "Yellow? What happened to black?"
            I created a picture in my mind of a gang banger pulling up to the garage and getting out of a car while his friend waited with the engine running. I pictured him crossing out the yellow tag with the baby blue paint, then getting back into the car to have his friend say, "What kind of paint is that? Where's the red?"
           The city sent two young men and a truck full of paint to the scene. The men looked like they could have had possible past associations with the gang life. They were standing by the truck and it looked to me like they were scrutinizing the tag. I detected some disappointment on their faces. I watched them spray paint the garage back to white. I wouldn't be surprised if they called the taggers afterwards and said, "Hey homie, what's with the paint? Caught you slipping."