Tuesday, January 11, 2005

some pretty exciting discoveries Rachel made some pretty exciting discoveries today.  She discovered the Gandy bridge, key lime pie, and my nude picture on adult friend finder dot com. Rachel tried her first piece of key lime pie at a bar-b-que place on Gandy called Kojaks.  We were supposed to get together for some sort of light lunch fare like fallafels(?) or bean sprouts salads (since I felt gorged and disgusting from too much eating in the last 12 hours) but somehow the bar-b-que place just jumped out and pulled us in. Besides the pie, Rachel had a glass of sangria while I ordered a bar-b-que beef sandwich and beans--taking my self-revulsion to an entirely new level. When we first sat down the place was slammed and we were free to jabber in the relative anonymity of a large, boisterous crowd.  But then suddenly the dining room cleared out, and there was just this coast guard guy in a blue jump suit sitting not 30" from our table.  In the relative solitude, I felt like he was eavesdropping on everything we were saying, especially the earshot topics, like masturbation that Rachel was blabbing about.    I found myself mumbling and talking into my shirt, especially when talking about my legal troubles and the evolution of my tsunami art project. I'm beginning to see the tsunami art as a complete survival kit.  The centerpiece will be one of those ten dollar styro-foam surfboards you can play with for an afternoon until it either cracks in half when you hit a wave, or it turns your belly and thighs totally raw from the synthetic abrasion. But the tsunami survival kit will have many important accessories, like three or for boxes of preservative laden Lunchables, that have turkey sandwiches and pizzas the size of oreo cookies, and a capri sun, and maybe an oreo cookie too. Also, there will be a cell phone in a zip locked bag with an unlimited minute plan for about seven days.  Then maybe a book of crossword puzzles to kill the time and some mini bottles of vodka.  (Oh and perhaps even some nautical charts and a compass, and some printouts from the internet about how to ward off sharks). Anyway, I wasn't comfortable at all with the Coast Guard dude sitting there absorbing all of my nonsense, so we settled the check and went for a walk on Bayshore Blvd.  On Bayshore we discovered a plaque commemorating the construction of the landmark Bayshore seawall, and noted that is was a much more common practice back in the day to simply use you initials in leiu of your first and second name. Walking a little further we found a little mangrove habitat with ducks hiding their heads in their wings and black crows sitting upon a gnarled tree skeleton.  We visualized the mighty Trump Tower Tampa that is supposed to burst upon the Tampa skyline in the near future and mused that God must like rich people the best because he lavishes them with such rich and wonderful things. Then Rachel and I made out by the seawall near all the ducks with their heads hidden in their beaks, and somewhere in the back of my mind I was noting the similarity of Rachels contemporary parachute pants and the Coast Guard dudes blue jump suit (all the the while waitiing for someone to give us the "hey get a room" honk). On the way back to our cars we trespassed through these marvelously hip and sexy condos that have sprung up on the corner of Bayshore and Gandy and fantasized about having nightly cocktail parties there.  The four story, industrial stairs alone are worth the downpayment, and in fact there is only unit left. (The picture above is from the Bank of America Lobby on Manhattan ave.  This lady departed the bank on a rickety old bicycle.  When I departed the Bank the giant stalk of bamboo in my truck bed swung from one side to the other, but it didn't fall out). (Oh yeah: Rachel really loved her first taste of key lime pie, almost as much as bacon). 4:34:04 PM    comment [] freedom life I had a health insurance salesman come to my house last night to try to sell me on a plan.  At thirty-four years of age I guess I should face the fact that I will someday need real medical care.  (Or maybe not?  The last real medical problem I had was getting my appendix out at 16.  I haven't been to a doctor since.) The weird thing about salesman--and I know because I am one--is that they create this presumption that because they made a trip across town and made a 15 minute pitch to you, you owe them a sale, a big closing.  Otherwise you're some sort of despicable consumer tease.  You get the salesguy in the zone by nodding to all of his leading, loaded questions, and then at the last minute you say something lame like, well, I really need to think about this.  Then the guy skulks away with a case of salesman's blue balls, made all the worse by the fact that they depart gracefully, with a joke and a smile, as if they're not thinking about kicking your face in with their wingtips while grabbing that flask they have hidden under their front seat. Well, anyway, that's what I did to this health insurance salesman.  I was actually ready to bite the bullet and write a check if the salespitch seemed kind of exciting and had the right legitimate vibe. But things started to go sour when he started pushing this "A-rated" company (freedom life???) , whose speciality was normally life insurance, but still had the perfect health plan for me. He took out a notepad and a golden salesman pen and started to sketch out the benefits, using a hospitalization as a hypothetical. "First of all, you'll just have a $2,500 dollar deductible." "Okay." "Then you'll pay 50% of the next five thousand dollars." "Um, okay." Then after that, Freedom life would pay 100% of my $100,000 hospital bill.  But (I thought) if they're already paying 95% of my bill, why don't they just go ahead and pay the whole 100%.  I mean, I don't think I've ever scraped together $5,000 in my life.  Basically, this guy was saying that once I had spent all my personal savings on my deductibles, and then borrowed some money on a credit card to pay the rest, then my insurance company would cover me. (These are questions I should have posed to the salesman, probably). (maybe I'll finish this later, maybe not) 8:24:38 AM    comment [] another side of bob If you've read my blog throughout the past  year or so, you know I've written a lot of stories about a real life character named Bob Bandit who happens to be my boss.  For the most part, Bob Bandit is a real man's man kind of guy who spends his time drinking, and playing poker, and deep sea fishing, starting fights, etc.  You can be around Bob from morning till night and rarely will you encounter any emotion like tenderness, or sentimentality with him. But since I've been working at his house at night these past couple weeks painting his ceiling  (a stony, mediteranean faux with traces of gold) I've caught some odd glimpses of him, especially with respect to his choice of movies.  For instance, the other day I  thought it was kind of odd that Bob and girlfriend sat through two hours of a Flinstone movie. It wasn't even the one with John Goodman as Fred (there was one with John Goodman right?).  I mean, this was a really lame and silly flick that tried to tell the story of how Fred and Barnie met their wives with the help of that little flying alien, Kazoo, or Gazoo(?).  (Apparently Wilma was originally courted by a sinister rich guy before she met Fred.  Once Wilma falls for Fred, the evil rich guy frames Fred and makes it look like he stole her signature pearl necklace to pay off a gambling debt.  Powerful stuff.   But then I figured, Bob and his girl are smoking some really good pot and all the bright, crazy colors, and slapstick gags might seem kind of neat when you're totally baked ( especially on three plasma widescreens, with surround sound.) But tonight I was totally stunned at this movie Bob Bandit and his girlfriend subjected themselves to.  It was a flick that was obviously  targeted toward adolescent girls.  Pretty much all of the characters in the movie were 13 and 14 year old girls that were having slumber parties, and borrowing their mom's make-up, and learning how to drive a car, etc. The plot revolved around this group of girls that sneaks out their house from a slumber party and has a big adventure doing big people stuff, while there mom and dad thinks their still in their room.  The girls go on a scavenger hunt against a rival clique from their highschool (to settle who's the most popular).  Then the girls go to a real "big people" dance club (wher they see one of their professors, and one of their moms.  The biggest moment comes where one of the girls almost gets a kiss from the school hunk at the senior prom.  All the while, one of their nerdy brothers is helping to keep their secret by fooling their dad that the girls are still in their room--for this he extorts his little sister for a month's worth of laundry.  The girls get home just in the nick of time and pretend to be sleeping when their mom and dad finally checks on them. I tried to make fun of Bob's movie, saying I should have brought my 9 year old girl over to watch it, but Bob didn't really seem to get my sarcasm.  He just sat there and watched the movie till the  the final hokie ending (where the one girl cries because her bestest friend is moving to another town, but then she goes out in her tree fort and finds the hunky guy from the prom, and they kiss and he puts the prom tiara on her. That must be some really, really, reallllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllly good pot Bob is smoking. 12:24:34 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Mark Michaels. Last update: 2/1/2005; 7:53:29 AM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.