Tuesday, March 23, 2004

who's there? I do all my blogging in my office at the back of my house.  At night I feel like I'm in a kind of fish bowl because there are windows on three sides of me with no curtains or blinds on them.  I see nothing but pitch black in the windows and yet I know that I'm perfectly visible from all around. Because I shun yard work at all costs, my back yard is covered in dry leaves that have fallen from the oaks over the past year. Almost everynight as I'm back here writing, I will hear the sound of footsteps crunching in the dry leaves outside of my pitch black windows.  The footsteps will start faintly from far away, but they crunch closer and closer to me.  Usually, I stop writing and cock my head to the side and listen.  Sometimes the footsteps sound very light, like maybe that of a cat or a racoon.  Other times they sound distinctly heavy and lumbering, like a person. Sometimes, the heavy, crunching footsteps get closer and closer until they sound just a few feet away, and then they just stop.  At this point I look out into the blackened windows but I can see nothing but my own reflection. I feel the urge to call out and say, "who's there?!" But I never do.  I'm not sure I'd like to hear the answer. 10:33:16 PM    comment []

another payday for bob bandit Estimated time to earn it: about 12 minutes. Monday morning I was pretty confident I was going to make some big money.  I had some good leads from people with nice houses, a lot of trees and a real interest in getting work. I took Bob Bandit to three of these leads in the span of about ten minutes and they all fell through.  No one was home and no one answered their cell phones.  The money magic was not on my side.  In the meantime, my rival, Larry was trying to get Bob over to his lead.  If I didn't get Bob to a live person soon I was going to lose the day. But I remembered a couple more people I'd talked to that were nearby.  They hadn't exactly asked for an estimate, but they had trees and money.  Usually that's enough for Bob. So I turned down this dirt road to my back-up leads.  As we rolled along slowly past some low-rent looking places, Bob zeroed in on this gravel driveway that disappeared back into some woods.  "What about that?" Bob said.  I had actually been to that house at the end of the mysterious gravel driveway.  It was a tree trimmer's wet dream--a million dollar house set in the midst of an overgrown forrest of oaks and palms and every imaginable type of Florida tree.  But no one was home when I knocked on the door last week. "Yeah, its a great place.  Nice house.  Tons of trees. You wanna go there?"  "Hell yeah," Bob said. I pulled into the driveway and snaked around left and right through the jungle until  the house came into view.  It looked just like when I saw it before.  There was just a cheap, little, gold Nissan parked under a car port that couldn't possibly belong to the owner (maybe a maid, or a daughter perhaps.)  I figured nobody was home still, so when we got to the end of the driveway I just sat there. In that moment's hesistation, Bob got out, walked up the sidewalk and knocked on the door himself.  To my horror, a middle aged looking woman in a bathroom appeared and Bob started his sales pitch. "I've got a situation that could possibly help us both out," he began as always.  "I've got a dozen men standing around up the road that look like damn city workers..." "Well, why don't you come inside so my cat doesn't get out," the lady in the bathrobe said. At that moment I knew I had really fucked up.  Bob will get any lady that would let him into her house like that while still wearing a bathrobe. I sat there and fidgeted with the radio and looked at the newspaper.  But the longer Bob was in there, the more sure I was he was getting a big job. Finally, he came around from the back yard.  He pulled open my passenger side door, plopped down and said, "nine thousand."  Bob had just sold the bathrobe lady a nine-thousand dollar tree trimming job. If I had gotten off my ass and knocked on that door, I would have gotten ten percent of that, or nine hundred dollars.  Instead, I would have to make do with my daily minimum. In my business, he who hesitates is dearly cost. (The cash pictured above is actually Bob's cut of that tree job.  I scanned the money before hand delivering it to him at the Dan Marino's up the street.  He was sitting there, toasted as always with his new girlfriend and the Groper). 5:29:37 PM    comment []

we won't tell nobody The other night I took my skateboard for a spin around the neighborhood.  My board is kind of a souvenir from my fling with Whitney, so it remains to be seen whether it will become sort of new hobby, or just a relic gathering dust in the conrner. The thing about skating at night is that its kind of dark of course, and as you approach each crack in the sidewalk, its hard to tell whether its a little crack or a big gap.  But I was cruising along pretty smoothly, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, down a slight slope toward the waterfront. Pretty soon I approached the exact spot where I took my first hard fall on the board a couple weeks ago.  That time there was a waiter or valet or something getting off work at the Vinoy.  Just after I passed him, I hit this big gap and went down.  My skateboard shot straight back at the waiter guy and my face went straight towards the sidewalk.  Fortunately, I caught myself with my right wrist just before I ate concrete.  Unfortunately, my writst absorbed all the shock and it hurt for weeks after.  In fact, the ache seemed just about gone by the time of this post Whitney skateboard adventure. My stomach tightned a little as I passed the fall zone.  I scrutinized the cracks in the sidewalk as I went over them, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump.  Then there was this bigger ba-BUMP, which I figured must have been the crack-culprit.  My stomach loosened as I as skated past without incident, and I rolled toward downtown. But just fifty yards ahead was a new worry--three shadow pedestrians approaching side by side.  It was hard to make them out exactly, but chances were they were nocturnal, no-goodniks.  Heading towards them presented an immediate dilemma.  Did I continue to skate right past them, squeaking by them on the narrow sidewalk and straining my limited boarding skills?  To do so would risk impact and some sort of confrontation with the presumed no-goodniks.  (Their stereotype was fulfulling itself as I began to see jangling chain wallets and ski hats with menacing skull patches, flopping baggy shorts, etc.) But to stop and walk by would show fear, letting them no I was some sort of skater imposter who didn't know a half-pipe from a hatpin (which of  course I am).  It would have increased the suspense dramatically as I slowed the process of confrontation down to echoing footsteps under the street lamp.  And still they came, chains dangling, baggy shorts flopping, skull patches flashing. As I stressed over this dilemma, a new alternative suddenly presented itself. My skateboard hit a bump and shot backwards while I got flung face down on the concrete.  The floppy shorts kid laughed heartily.  "We won't tell nobody," he said.  "WE WON'T TELL NO-BODY!" he shouted to the city at large. 8:31:07 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Mark Michaels. Last update: 4/1/2004; 8:13:56 AM.