Here we go again

My latest recap is up on TVGasm.

And speaking of recaps, The Hills starts up again tonight (squee!) so look for my Hills recap sometime in the next few days.

Last night, in preparation for tonight's Hills premiere, I watched this special on MTV titled The 10 Most Memorable Hills Moments Ever (or something like that). Cast members, tabloid writers, and washed up actors (The daughter from 8 Simple Rules? Really?) discussed the monumental moments from the last three seasons.

Maybe I'm getting dumb these days, but listening to the way they described everything, the show actually seemed like it may not be as fake as I thought it was. I know, I know. It's very naive of me.

After that, I watched the first half hour of The Hills: Uncut (or something like that), which was basically just like the first show, but with members of the crew instead of the tabloid peeps. What does the Director of Photography have to say about the show? Who cares?!

So I went to bed and dreamed dreams of Lauren and Heidi.

My decent into madness resumes tonight.

Along came a spider AGAIN

I'll admit it. I'm afraid of a great many things. Most of my fears involve people and the horrid things they're capable of.

But I'm also afraid of a spiders. I mentioned this in a recent post. Specifically, I'm afraid of black widows. Because they are creepy looking. And BECAUSE THEY CAN KILL YOU.

While I've been afraid of them since I was a kid, I'd never come face to little evil face with one until my aforementioned encounter with one in my laundry room a few months ago.

Well, it turns out that writing about that damn spider was a bad idea. Apparently the little asshole reads my blog and interpreted my post as a challenge. Because this past weekend, it showed up once again to taunt me.

It was Saturday and I was just on my way out to see a friend in Santa Monica. I walked out of my front door and felt compelled, for some reason, to look over to my right at the little patio area outside of our front window.

Immediately, my focus went to a large black spider, suspended from a web connected to a chair and our air conditioning unit.

This was the scene:



I held my breath and tiptoed over to the spider to get a closer look. There, on its abdomen, was the tell tale mark a black widow. A distinct red hourglass shape.

EEEP!

I ran back inside to grab the bottle of hairspray and use it to suffocate the little bugger with sticky goo. Or give its tiny hairs some much needed style and volume.

Devin was sitting on the couch when I ran through the door, and seeing him made me switch to damsel in distress mode. "Ohmigod ohmigod ohmigod," I whined while hopping from foot to foot like a toddler who needs to potty.

"What?"

"There's a black widow. Out there!"

Devin came outside with me to investigate.

"How do you know it's a black widow?"

"Because..." Then, "Do something!"

He leaned in closer and moved the blue chair. This stirred the apparently sleeping spider, causing it to run along its web and into the air conditioner.

Fantastic. I could've killed/styled the little shit by now if I'd just gone with the hairspray plan. But I decided to make it a team effort instead of seizing the opportunity. And now it was hiding in my air conditioner.

I was glad that I'd be gone the rest of the day and out of harm's way.

While I was out, Devin sprayed the air conditioner with a power washer and then sprayed a bunch of Raid inside for good measure.

When I got home later that night, he assured me the spider was dead. Although, much to my dissatisfaction, he could not produce a spider carcass as evidence of this fact.

Though still entirely creeped out, I rested easy that night.

The following day, I decided to do some further investigating into the spider situation. I went outside, knelt down, and peered inside the air conditioner. From my distance of about 5 feet away, I couldn't actually get a good look inside, but I wasn't about to get any closer. I stood up, put my hands on my hips and continued to stare at the A/C. I was willing to wait for the spider to make an appearance. It had the gaul to show it's ugly mug twice now. This meant war.

When the spider did not, as I'd envisioned, crawl out from inside the air conditioner and shake its little fist at me, I gave up.

But not before kicking the A/C to try to get its attention.

I went back inside my apartment to examine the A/C from the other side. I bent down and looked between the vents. While doing this I noticed, to my horror, a beam of light shining through. A hole! A small space. A connection to the outside world. A security breach!

The spider could've gone through that little space at any point in time. Perhaps, if it was smart, before Devin came after it with all of his weaponry.

Damn it!

I spent the next 10 minutes perched on the edge of my couch, researching black widow spiders on Wikipedia. Apparently, the deadly ones with the big butts and the red markings are the female of the species. And here I'd been calling it a "he."

I've been on the lookout for that little cunt ever since. She might be dead, but I'm not sure I buy it. She's far too sneaky. And she's out to get me.

Digging Deeper

Perhaps I shouldn't have opened my big fat mouth about the lull in the construction project next door because now there is some real loud, awful work happening. I should have just been pleased with the empty dirt lot. I should not have wrinkled my nose at the guy watering down the dirt heap.

Because starting last week, all of the big monster construction equipment started back up. Bulldozers bulldozing. And diggers digging. And all the noise noise noise. And since then, I've woken up all morning to rumblings so loud that I can literally feel the vibrations.

And they get so close to our property that it's scary. Look at the sight of things this morning.



VROOM VROOM

These things are about to knock down our wall. Or dump rocks on someone's head.

Until such a catastrophe occurs, they'll be satisfied just dumping heaps of dirt in our courtyard and into the pool. Every time that stupid beast comes up close, it's little scooper extends over onto our property and chunks of dirt start falling off of it. It's making an unholy mess. So much so that this morning Devin marched over to the construction site and demanded that someone come clean up after themselves.

And you'd think that after 10 days of this shoveling, digging, bulldozing big machine business, the ground would, at last, be prepped to begin some building.

But in reality, there is nothing happening over that wall but a lot of dirt shuffling. They seem to just push it back and forth and back and forth. The ground looks exactly the same as it did before they started back up.

I may have been wrong with my theory that this big production was all to create the correct environment to grow a giant tree from the dirt heap. I'm thinking now that the lot next door is actually just being used as a training facility for new bulldozer drivers.

The Little Rascals In "The Trouble With Money"

See what happens when $5000 goes missing.

It's my latest Buzzin recap. Check it out.

The Note Writing Bandit

On Wednesday night I, along with my sister and  Anne, went to Kristen's house for one of our regular poker nights.  These are nights of wine-drinking, carb-eating, and not-playing-pokering.

And while the recent poker night was fun, it was also sad because it is the last one Anne will be able to attend since she's moving to Brooklyn this weekend to go to law school.  Boo. 

When the night was over, my sister and I, nicely wine buzzed, walked out to my car parked on the street.  It was not until I was safely buckled in that I noticed a note taped to my driver's side window.


I was, as you can imagine, alarmed.   I specifically remember that I did not hit a car when I parked here a few hours earlier.   How do I remember that? Because, you see, you don't forget when the car you are driving collides with another car. And furthermore, if you do hit a car while you are parking, you don't just remain parked behind said car so that it's owner can see his banged up car, then your banged up car, put 2 and 2 together, and then leave you a well-deserved note.

"What the hell is this?" I said to get my sister's attention. I unfastened my seatbelt and got back out of my car to investigate. The note was written on a 3 x 5 index card and taped to my window. Also, there was another message on the reverse side of the card.



So I guess that had I read the note in the sequence that its author intended, first as I approached my car, and then later as I sat down inside of it, the whole message would have been.

DON'T EVER PARK CLOSE TO MY CAR AGAIN...YOU HIT MY CAR YOU WILL PAY FOR IT

What sort of twisted fuck makes these complex, two part, ellipses, front to back notes?

With the complete message sinking in, I looked at my parking situation. I was not close to any car. I had not hit any car. There was no damage to either my front or rear bumper. What had I done to merit such a threat?

I'm also left to wonder about the wording of this whole thing. "Don't ever park close to my car again" Does this person know me? How does he/she (probably a he, girls don't pull this nonsense) intend on monitoring my future parking jobs?

"You hit my car you will pay for it." Is this meant to be IF you hit my car you will pay for it? Which would imply that the author of the note is still parked in front of me? He is warning me not to hit his car as I pull away from the curb, I suppose. 

Or does this clearly delusional individual believe I have, some how, hit his car and now he is telling me that I will pay for it. It's very hard to decipher this brief message. Though I guess with only one index card to write on, there isn't a lot of space for elaboration.

I suppose the interpretation of the message depends on the order of events. Either the guy got to his car, noticed my apparently abhorrent parking job, and so he wrote me a note before he drove off. Or, he was standing inside of his apartment, noticed my car parked dangerously close to his, and came outside with a note.

I'm learning towards the latter option as the note was written on an index card that was SCOTCH TAPED to my window. If this note was written by someone who'd just arrived at the scene and had to gather note writing materials from his car, then this man would have to drive around with a whole office in his glove compartment. Now, I don't know about you, but if I were forced to come up with note writing supplies from the contents of my car, I'd end up writing a message on an old starbucks receipt with a wad of gum stuck on one corner, using an uncapped, nearly out of ink ball point pen found under my seat. I'd then shove the note under the windshield wiper of the message recipient's car, and hope it doesn't blow away before he reads it.

I suppose there is a third, even more depressing option. That the man arrived at his car, saw that my car was practically humping his bumper, retreated back to his house to prepare a note, and then returned to tape it to my window. Which means that during that whole production he never lost interest in this endeavor.  He was that upset.  

And what if he went through several drafts of the note before arriving at his final masterpiece? Sick.

So before I left my parking spot on Wednesday, I debated what action I should take. My sister called the cop she is dating to see if anyone could, in fact, legally get me in trouble. I don't see how someone could accomplish that since I hadn't actually DONE anything and since there was no evidence or witnesses or anything.  The Cop confirmed my beliefs.

There was no car parked behind me at this point. Which meant that perhaps the owner of that long-gone car was the note writer. And in front of me there was a Lexus SUV. The sort of car that would be driven by an ill-tempered maniac who would write a misguided and unduly threatening note. But I couldn't remember if it was parked in front of me when I arrived earlier that evening.  Or if this was some new person who'd parked there while I was inside Kristen's apartment.  And I didn't want to go leaving a retaliatory note for some other unsuspecting citizen, thereby perpetuating the cycle of hate.

Not that I know what I'd write in my note anyway.

"Douchebag."

"What is WRONG with you?"

"Scotch tape? Index cards? Seriously?"

And so, in the end, I did nothing but toss the index card onto my console and drive off into the night. I can only hope that the mysterious note writer encounters this blog and reads this post. And says to himself, "Wow, I suck at life."

Along came a spider

The other day, I was taking a shower when I looked over and saw a spider, just hanging out. In my confined shower space. Lurking dangerously close to my mesh shower poof. He wasn't that big, but he was of the big-butted variety that I don't trust. Those ones that just look poisonous.

As a big-butted creature myself, I know this isn't terribly fair of me. He could just have a big butt and be a totally harmless spider. But on this particular occasion I couldn't afford to take chances. He was about to get all tangled in my shower poof!

I knew I had no choice but to kill the poor bastard. I don't like to kill any little critters, really. Especially since spiders are some of the more complex and interesting bugs of the world. Unlike cockroaches, who exist solely to breed and make more of themselves while contributing nothing to the planet (sort of like humans). I have no problem squishing cockroaches into little green-gray goo puddles. Spiders, on the other hand, mean well. They just want to eat flies and mind their own business. I think.

Still, they've always creeped me the fuck out. They just seem so evil. With all of their tip-toeing little legs. And their fangs. And the way they just ease down from the ceiling, suspended on invisible thread and then BAM, they're right in your face.

The last time I saw an uncomfortably large spider I was in my building's laundry room. I was tossing some clothes in the dryer when I peered up to see a monstrous being clinging to the wall. It looked, I was certain, like a black widow.


The worst spider of them all! The one you learn about in playground chit-chat in like 4th grade and then are forever petrified of. I watched this Discovery Channel special about black widows once. There was this woman on it who was bit on her toe when she slipped her foot into one of her shoes, unaware that the wee beast was lurking inside. What the hell!? Since then I often think of that before I put on a pair of shoes I haven't worn in a while. I shake them around, waiting for spiders to fall out. I may sound crazy, but you just wait. You'll be doing it too now.

But back to the laundry room. I finished loading my clothes in the dryer, never taking my eyes off the spider. It didn't move. When I slammed the dryer door shut, it lifted up one of its legs. I gasped. My heart raced. I'm going to die!

I knew I should probably kill it, lest it live forever in the dark, filthy corners of the laundry room, just waiting to crawl into a basket of clean clothes. But I had nothing to kill it with. I was only wearing flip flops, which would be too light-weight to do any damage. I'd just end up smacking it, thereby pissing it off, prompting it to fly from the wall and directly into my eye where it would eat my brain.

So I fled the room and hoped it was just some black widow look-a-like. When I told my friend Ryan about this incident he said it is illegal not to kill it. It's my civic duty to protect other people from its harm. I think that's probably not true.

And yet, I probably endangered myself by leaving it alone. I was determined not to make that mistake again, as I stared face to face with the much smaller, and not entirely frightening spider in my shower. But what would I kill it with? I was certainly not wearing shoes.

Then, from the depths of my brain, I recalled another thing that spider-bitten woman said on the Discovery Channel special. Now that she is completely vengeful towards the critters, whenever she sees one, she sprays it with hairspray. It doesn't immediately kill them, it just makes their legs all sticky and clogs up their air-holes (wherever those are). And so they die a horrible, slow death.

I didn't want this little guy to die a horrible, slow death. I just wanted him away from me and my shower poof. And hairspray was the only accessible weapon in my bathroom. So I hopped out of the shower, grabbed the bottle, and then hopped back in. I squirted maniacally in his direction, waiting for him to react. He fell down and squirmed. I felt awful and began splashing water on him to drown him and speed up his demise. All the while, still squirting the hair spray. "Oh I'm sorry I'm sorry!" Splash splash. "It's not you, it's just...it's just..." Squirt squirt. Splash.

Eventually he got caught in the stream of water heading for the drain. In seconds, he was gone.

I felt safe. But at what cost?

Buzzah! Buzzah! Buzzah!

Do you ever wonder what happened to Dave Navarro?  Me neither.  But I can tell ya that he turns up on last week's Buzzin.

Check out my recap on TVGasm.com.