I Found My Christmas Joy 2024 in a North Hollywood Diner...

Christmas morning. I thought I would sleep in and grab a few extra winks of REM sleep. I thought wrong.

Those LA clowns from Sanitation didn't get the memo. No Christmas Collections. Whatever. Wham! Bam! No thank you Ma'am.

As I negotiated down the fire escape I could see those Sanitation dudes had had a few up-and-down mechanical hiccups and had left a debris field of pizza boxes, broken beer bottles, coffee grounds and sundry flotsum glistening in the alley behind my digs. 

I borrowed a broom from a just-awakening homeless guy and swept up the fallen trash. My good deed. My mitzvah for the day. Gosh maybe for the year. OMG. It's the least I could do on this special day.

I peeled the "Not an abandoned car" sticker off my car windshield and headed out for a Christmas breakfast.

North Hollywood Diner. Christmas chow at its best. 24/7. Sourdough toast and eggs over greasy. Some Java to wash it all down. The coffee creamers were disappointing.

Some corporate honcho loser removed that hot Native American goddess that used to be on the cover. She was kneeling in front of some mountains. 

I confided to the waitress that when I looked at the old creamer logo, I used to imagine those hot knees were breasts. Hey, I'm a guy. She gave me a smile and a thumbs up. My kind of woman. 

As I inhaled another cup or two of Joe, I noticed a couple of locals walking by the restaurant. A couple of SAG actors I haven't seen in a while. Hope to see you at, and in, the movies again real soon. Happy Holidays Guys. 

The diner atmosphere was a great place to rifle through the latest Esquire and read that awesome article about Denzel. There is a God. Looks like there will be an Equalizer 4 and 5. 

Christmas. A great breakfast. A few texts. A few phone calls. A movie. Another movie.  A creamer fantasy. An amazing day.

A day to remember. A day to remember that famous Tiny Tim line that closes the last scene in A Christmas Carol.

"...and God bless us everyone."

But, enough about me.

I Give Thanks For My New Favorite Word: Expunge!

It was a special day yesterday. It was Thanksgiving. Yes, it was the day our Founding Fathers, those awesome dudes seen on all the dollar bills, gave thanks for arriving and surviving in the New World.

It was like when I rode the grey dog (Greyhound) from Cleveland and arrived in L.A. I celebrated my arrival and survival and that trip from hell with a late lunch of vending machine Twinkies and a Diet Pepsi. Good times. 

Good times and bad times, it's all about words.

Thanksgiving words like Turkey, Cranberry Sauce, Coffee, Pumpkin Pie and I'm sad to say, in my case, Kaopectate.

This Thanksgiving I have a new word to add to all the holiday words. No, it's not Zelle. Well, maybe like Zelle, when I hear the word, I smile. The magic word is Expunge.

It's like Etch-a-Sketch for all your past mistakes, and God knows I've had my share. Waking up half-naked in that laundromat back in Cleveland. That arrest here in L.A. at the homeless encampment in Long Beach way back when. 

I was working as a background extra on Dexter and I showed up at the wrong work location. My GPS was on a coffee break for God's sake. I only realized I was at a real homeless encampment when I noticed there were no cameras or movie lights, like normal. God bless Central Casting. They still paid me and that included overtime. 

Expunge. Don't know where it came from but I'm glad it arrived. My court records seem to have been erased. Maybe it was a hiccup with those dudes in Sacramento. Maybe it was voted in a couple of weeks back on election day. I ain't asking. 

I feel like a new man now. My horizon is promising once again.  Things are looking up.

But, enough about me.

Happy Holidays!

2024: 26 Grueling Miles to Glory...

Yes, I did it. I did the 26 Miles. It was an ordeal. A nightmare. But, I did it.

It was hard to sleep the night before. Those weird dreams started again. You know, the dreams where nobody knows or wants to know your name. And you are naked. It's dark. Just after Midnight. In a word, bleak. 

You manage to find some clown clothes in a Hollywood dumpster. You run down an alley and find an abandoned old car that someone forgot to lock. You crawl in the back seat. Suddenly, you realize you're in a Film Noir 40's cable black and white movie and things are grime and getting grimmer. Then you wake up and realize that today's the day.

The day when you are going to go 26 miles. Not for money. Not for glory. Just because you can. I guess I broke training, but I did a quick breakfast at Philippe's in Chinatown.

Carb up is what they say. An obscene Cheddar-Cheese omelette and Sourdough toast. A couple of cups of Java. As I left, I dropped a couple of scarred quarters on the scarred counter and picked up two grease rings some would call plain donuts. Fuel for those last few miles.

The Main Event was ready. Was I? Was I fit enough? Could I go the extra mile? Or should we say any extra miles?

Yes, I don't normally drive 26 miles but I did. 

It was a heck of a ride. Pasadena to Culver City and back. The 110 South and then the 10 West. Sunday traffic was lighter than light. On the way back to my man cave, I stopped at a 7-11 and snagged a pizza that tasted like cardboard from a long abandoned land-fill Monopoly game, but it calmed my gut, as I knew it would.

But enough about me...