Monthly Archive for September, 2008

In honor of Caroline’s birthday, I’ve decided to devote this entry on the blog to some of my fondest memories of my big sister. They are listed in no particular order, just things that occur to me as I look back in my memory. I’ve been known to remember things with a slightly different perspective than HooGirl, so maybe she will contest some of my mental authorship here, but with that in mind, let us move forward!

-The first thing I always remember is when Caroline and I were at the lake house (sniffle sniffle, I miss that lake), and I was holding her out over the edge of the water by her lifejacket strap. We were standing on a firm but slippery wooden dock, and my sister was attempting something that I can’t really remember now. She was leaning all the way over, dangling precariously above the flat, cool embrace of Smith Mountain Lake, with only my hand to keep her safe. Of course, I let go. In the single moment before she impacted the smooth surface of the water, she had time to shout one thing: “IAN!”

In a moment of panic and frustration, I became indistinguishable in her mind from her close friend and my frequent partner in crime, Ian Weise. I only bring this story up because it demonstrates my sister’s strange preference for surrounding herself with troublesome, immature people (no offense Ian), in spite of the fact that she herself is legendary for her restraint and maturity. I think the reason she does this is because Caroline has one thing in common with us scoundrels: mischievousness. She loves to affectionately tease and harass her loved ones, always searching for clever, or at least utterly confusing, ways to do so. I remember one night on a family cruise, Caroline snatched Brady and Holly’s room service order from their doorknob and added 12 rounds of prune juice. You could practically hear the bafflement from down the hall the next morning.

-Speaking of the cruise, I also remember being forced to pose as my sister’s boyfriend when she got the urge to go dancing at night. I always thought this was an overreaction, until I slipped away to use the restroom and came back to find her cornered into a booth by three different would-be suitors. I shouldn’t need to explain the point of that story.

-Every Allen knows a simple rule of life: you do not play “Monopoly” with Caroline. You don’t do it, it’s punishment from God. I’ll never forget the look on her face as she sat across the board from me on the orange carpet in our basement, counting the hefty load of flimsy, Monopoly-money she had just extracted from me through a verbal agreement to give her ownership of the railroads. My plan had been to appease her with this trade, and then when I needed Park Place, which she would invariably land on and have no use for, she would be receptive to an agreement. Two or three turns later, she did indeed acquire this property, but my confident, almost lazy assurance that we could come to an “understanding” was met with a stone-faced “No thank you.”

What? “But…but I traded with you!”
“So?”

Mom, of course, cut in and attempted to make her daughter negotiate, but my mother’s fanatical desire to see all of her children do equally well at everything borders on Communism, and Caroline wasn’t having it. She wasn’t rude, or even forceful, just…firm. A few turns later, I acquired St. James Place, which my sister greatly desired in order to complete the L-shaped “Death Alley” of hotels she was setting up on her side of the board. She offered a trade, and I really savored laughing uproariously at her, but the way that she shrugged off my refusal bothered me. After I wiped the tears of joy from my eyes, she looked…unbothered.

“What were you going to trade for it?” I asked nonchalantly.
She shrugged.
“Tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter now, you don’t want to trade.”
“No, I know, I’m just wondering.”
“Why would I tell you?”
“What does it matter?”
“Exactly, so let’s move on.”
“Was it something good?”
Caroline smiled wickedly, “Oh yeah.”
“What was it?”
“Your turn, mom.”
“No! C’mon, Caroline! Just tell me!”

Ten minutes later, I found myself agreeing to a trade of St. James Place for the “mystery box.” I’m not going to recite to you how that happened, because I myself do not remember. No Allen can tell you how Caroline acquires a thing from you, she just gets it. She never yells, never gets emotional; trying to fight her is like arguing with gravity. Caroline Allen is simply a master tactician, a cunning manipulator, always playing the Chess game of life two moves ahead of you.

Oh, by the way, the “mystery box” was a dollar.

-I’m sure she doesn’t remember this, but once Caroline and I were walking along a beach when I was very young, somewhere around 10. Most older sisters would be obsessed with ignoring and persecuting a brother this much her junior, but Caroline is a person with an enormous heart, and she took upon herself the responsibility of helping to steer young “Rew” in the right direction whenever it was necessary. I don’t remember what we were talking about, but I specifically recall that it was about my life, and all the ridiculous interpersonal conflicts that an elementary school student spends time mulling over.

Of course, Caroline knew that because I was a young boy, I looked more towards my father and older brother as role models, and her advice, though infinitely wise and carefully constructed, was sometimes unfairly discarded. So as I continued to rant, she must have had some idea that her response was not being eagerly anticipated, but she forgave this and waited for her moment anyway. I was half-way through condemning an old friend as a permanently wasted human being, doomed to an entire life of idiocy and annoying-ness (as young boys do), when Caroline cleared her throat to make a statement.

“In the real world, Andrew, things are usually not black and white.”

Even at that age, the response stunned me. I know her answer seems trite, but it wasn’t. The Devil knows no better shield to prevent the digestion of truth than to make it a cliche, but the tone of my sister’s voice, the look in her eyes, stung me deeply. Very few statements from any human being in my life have ever continued to hammer my heart and mind so rigorously. To this day, that one sentence is at war with me, pushing me to try and see every side of a thing before I talk about it.

That is Caroline’s imprint upon me as a person: emotional maturity (not that I’ve mastered it). She is the one who forced me to call into question my emotions, second-guess the things I would like so much to believe for selfish reasons, and demand the highest standard of honesty from my thoughts. So many people are content to paint the world the way they’d like to see it, but that has never been good enough for my sister. She wants to see the world as it is, and her example has been a guiding light for me ever since.

I love you, Caroline. Happy birthday!

       I consider myself somewhat up-to-date on the video gaming circuit, so whenever I miss something big, it normally comes around for me fairly quickly. I have missed “World of Warcraft,” which (for those of you who don’t know) is a gigantic, online role-playing game in a style somewhat like Lord of the Rings where thousands of players create characters, then attempt to make them stronger and better equipped. This is done by other players in groups that may be as small as 3 or as huge as 50, as temporary as a single night or as permanent as years, and going on quests which may range from item recovery to enemy-slaying.

         I’ve always known it was popular. When the Chinese government decided to put a legal limit on how much one could play the damned thing per day, I came to understand it was something more. It’s a living creature, spawning an entire subculture. Don’t believe me? Tell me if you can understand this:

“Oh no! I raid-wiped by drawing aggro from the MT with DOTs. Everyone was yelling ‘L2P, nub!’ I think I’m going to have to PUG it out at meeting stones for awhile, which sucks, because the drop-rate on that raid was massive.”

         It didn’t make any sense, did it? I know what you’re thinking (Corelyn): “Who cares? It’s all stupid gamer crap.” Well, yes and no. Recently I had a several-hour-long conversation with my good friend Brendan, who went into detail explaining what that one little blurb meant. 

You must be curious. Let me break it down for you. When I’m done, you may see that you are transported into an entirely new, incredibly complex, realm of human interaction.

Let’s start easy, with “Raid-Wipe.” These are very bad. As you recall, WoW (acronym for World of Warcraft) is about teamwork, so most people are completing objectives and moving through the game in teams. These teams have many names, depending on their size and permanence (”guild” is a common term for a long-standing organization), but regardless of this, any expedition to complete an objective as a group is called a “raid.” Therefore, a “raid wipe” is when every single member of the expedition dies. Death, of course, happens frequently in WoW, and the result is that you are rendered a ghost and required to track down your corpse to re-inhabit it. Everyone dying is not the end of the world, but it’s a huge nuisance, and it can cost you dearly.

“Drawing Aggro.” Ah, here’s a fun one. There are hundreds of computer-controlled enemies in WoW, some of them gigantic and terrifying, some of them meek and/or hilarious. Killing them, and then “looting” their remains, is one of the main ways to gain experience, gold and equipment (don’t worry, they’re all hideous monsters). Now different kinds of baddies behave uniquely; some are designed to attack you on-site, others will leave you alone until you hit them. In either case, when a computer-controlled creature feels threatened and decides they’re going to attack you, they focus their energy on you, and it is said that you have “aggro-ed” them. They’re pissed off, they’re coming at you. 

But here’s the thing: everyone in WoW can only target one opponent at a time, because the game is turn-based (in other words, during any fight, there is a time you are allowed to attack, and a time you must receive an attack). So if you are in a group of three people, and all of you are taking shots at an A.I. adversary, that adversary must pick one of you to hit each turn. Some spells may do damage in an area that affects all of you, and they may target each of you one at a time if they choose, but at the end of the day, the game forces you to aim your sights at one thing at a time.

So, in that same situation, three humans are attacking one computer, and most likely the A.I. is going to decide which of you is the most dangerous, or which one is annoying it the most, and focus itself on them. WoW players know this, and they plan their attacks very carefully, deciding beforehand who is going to receive the brunt of the attacks. To “draw aggro,” therefore, is to hit the opponent with enough ferocity that you make it change its mind and turn its attacks on you. Normally, this is a very bad thing to do, because, as I mentioned before, guilds pick the person who aggros very carefully, and if you draw the fire away from him or her, the tactics of the battle fall apart.

“MT.” This means “main tank.” We’ve talked about this guy before, this is whatever player in your party is going to take the brunt of the damage from an enemy (normally computer-controlled). It’s useful to think of the members of a raid as a football team; each of them picks their position carefully and develops their character with their role in mind. In any role-playing game, you receive points for playing well which can be distributed to your attack, defense, luck, charm, or any other attributes, but the amount of these points you may receive is incredibly finite. You have to budget.

Here’s where MTs come in. Eschewing almost anything else, they pile their level-up points into anything defensive. They have a huge amount of life, lots of defense, strong armor, etc. The trade-off is, the strength of their attacks is incredibly low. But that’s okay, there are other players designed to do the attacking, and more still who are working to heal the MT as he takes damage. The teamwork on display here is extremely intricate.

You’re now getting a picture of how a group of WoW players might take on a boss who is dramatically stronger than them: their MT attacks directly, drawing the enemy’s attention to him/herself and keeping it there, while the rest of the team wears away at the boss and heals their tank. But they have to be careful: attack too hard, the boss will decide you’re his biggest threat and turn on you. Your team isn’t ready for that, and after the baddie invariably wipes you out, that’s one less attacker they can count on while the MT continues to take a beating. Depending on the battle, one player dying might make the whole operation fall down like a house of cards.

So there you have it: the MT is a damage sponge, a red cape designed to keep the metaphorical bull pissed off and looking at him/her while the rest of the team finishes it off.

“DOT.” Pretty straightforward, this is a spell whose effect sinks in over time, hence “Damage Over Time.” They’re nasty things, very effective when employed by a player who favors magical abilities over blunt weapons and more physical combat. It’s like poisoning your enemy, and in fact many DOTs are poisonous in name or nature. The satisfying thing about them is that you only have to cast them once, and then they continue to chip away a set amount of damage for a set amount of time. It’s easy to accidentally draw aggro from an MT with these things, because if you lose track of how many you’ve got active, the cumulative damage from them and a physical attack may be too much, and the boss will be compelled to turn on you. 

“L2P.” It means “learn to play.” Very serious insult, typically reserved for people who really blow an operation. Make no mistake, World of Warcraft is a very simple interface: you click something if you want to attack it, and press a few buttons to move around. Aside from inventory management, that’s about it for buttons. When someone yells “L2P,” they don’t mean “go check the owner’s manual,” they’re telling you to learn the strategies employed by seasoned WoW players. As I’ve mentioned many times, this game is about teamwork, and the strategies employed by these teams have taken years to be formulated. Someone who doesn’t play their role sticks out like a sore thumb.

“PUG.” An acronym which stands for “pick up ground raids.” In other words, you have to join a raid largely populated by total strangers. This may not seem like a big deal, but communities are tight-knit in WoW, and jumping into a new one is literally as difficult as stepping into a foreign social circle in real-life, if not more so. These groups exist with purpose, they have a way of going about things, and new members rarely grasp this. Most WoW players have to PUG it out from time to time, but it’s not the ideal way to play.

“Meeting Stone.” One name for general population areas where players meet each other, deal with A.I. controlled merchants and vendors, and assemble for quests. These are relative safe-zones (excluding servers where gamers may attack each other at will), where one is physically barred from combat. These can be anything from town centers to geographic landmarks that the game designers designate. 

“Drop Rate.” You’re not going to believe this one. “Drop rate” refers to the statistical odds that, in a given place, if you kill an enemy, they drop something. These rates are item specific: there are gold drop rates, essence drop rates, gear drop rates, and so on. But how does anyone know a drop rate to a number as specific as, say “1.5 percent,” you ask? 

Well, there are numerous websites who keep track. As gamers kill enemies and loot the remains, they report back on the number of times they got a certain thing, and this is compiled against the number of enemies killed total, and a drop rate is created. One such website is “Wowhead.com.” 

Drop rates lead to a phenomenon called “farming,” which generally is finding an area with a rich supply of disposable A.I. enemies and killing (literally) hundreds of them, if not thousands, and looting the results. Now of course, such tiny enemies will only produce a few pieces of gold (which are used to buy things from vendors), but if you kill enough of them, that adds up.

Chinese “gold farmers” are notorious in the WoW universe, as they are employed by real-world companies and assigned exhaustive shifts of 12 hours or more a day, just farming. Why? Check eBay, things acquired in WoW have legitimate dollar value in the real-world. Extremely powerful characters can sell for hundreds of actual dollars, as can incredibly rare items. So if a Chinese company wants to make some money, they employ a workforce of gold farmers to accrue a wealth of online gold, buy up valuable items from vendors, and sell them for actual money to WoW players. I think you can begin to see why the government over there is imposing such strict regulations.

And so we arrive at our translation. Let’s see the sentence one more time:

“Oh no! I raid-wiped by drawing aggro from the MT with DOTs. Everyone was yelling ‘L2P, nub!’ I think I’m going to have to PUG it out at meeting stones for awhile, which sucks, because the drop-rate on that raid was massive.”

Which translates to…

“Oh no! I got my entire team killed by drawing enemy attacks onto myself instead of the guy we had assigned to take such beatings, and I did so by using too many spells whose damages accumulates over time. People were yelling that I needed to learn to play the game correctly, and now I’ll have to go join some other group comprised of people I don’t know. It’s too bad, too, because we were in an extremely lucrative area.”

Whew.

Exhausted yet?

*ahem* This entry is the first in a series of what I will henceforth dub “Pontifications.” It will be nothing more than list of things which have occurred to me, ranked in an order either completely random or so cryptic it’s not worth trying to decode. As a person who spends a lot of time mulling over strong, declarative statements that no one feels like listening to, this medium will be rendered to function as a kind of pressure-release valve for me.

I make no apologies. This kind of arrogant, “I see it this way” crap is why all of you love me in the first place. It’s sad, but you know it’s true. Also, at any given time, I’m anywhere from 100 to 30 percent serious. This is intended to be entertaining, you don’t have to take it to the bank all the time.

Let us begin “Pontifications!”

ONE: THERE ARE ONLY TWO GOOD “EMO” BANDS. Emo, as many of you know, is a breed of post-punk rock and roll which is characterized by lyrical fascination with dysfunctional romantic relationships, high-pitched male vocals, and (sometimes) slightly unconventional song structures. Or, put a different way, it’s a bunch of squealing whining with no hooks. Now I would *like* to come down on the second version of that statement, but if any one band takes this musical medium and pummels something worthwhile out of it, I am forced to pause. If two bands do it, that is just barely enough interference to force grumbling concession from me. I cannot write off the entire musical style as a whole, I can only report that it tends to fail.

The first of these good bands is the better of the two: Fall Out Boy. On the eve of releasing their fourth major album sometime this fall, this infuriating four-man squadron of teenage angst cannot seem to release an album that doesn’t, as they say, “drop bombs on your moms.” Every time these jerks hit the studio, they come back with a CD full of potential “singles.” They take that feeling you get from the catchiest song on an album and, against all laws of musical physics, spread it out over the entire running time. This is distressing for several reasons: 1) It throws into sharp relief how inconsistent all the other CDs you own are, and destroys your tolerance for this fact, 2) it takes “emo” and creates something actually great with it. Not tolerable, not even above-par, but freaking awesome.

That’s just not right. Emo is not allowed to be “great;” it’s one of the lamest breeds of music ever concocted. The proof of Fall Out Boy’s wonderfulness lies in the fact that emo purists thumb their noses at them, much the same way, they would have you believe, as a Rage Against the Machine fan might do at Limp Bizkit. Don’t be put-off by these people if they tell you, “FOB is not good emo, it’s corporate stuff. I know emo, I’ll find you some good emo.” When someone tells you this, replace the word “emo” with “feces” as they speak, and you will understand why what they’re telling you is ridiculous. These “purists” are in love with a genre of music that is absolute human waste, so of course they don’t like it when someone makes it sound good.

You know who does tend to like Fall Out Boy? Rappers. Jay-Z does the “intro” on their last album, “Infinity on High.” Now we can debate the artistic integrity of a lot of hip-hop today, but there is one thing rappers understand better than anyone: hooks. Commercial hip-hop has to get its audience shaking what their mommas gave them in ten seconds flat or someone else will, so they understand “catchy” better than anyone alive. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that more than a few of them are giant FOB fans, and will confess this fact in interviews with little regret.

Anyway, the point here is simple: Fall Out Boy is a classic band. They are the luminaries of a genre which I hate to admit even has luminaries. And it’s not just their stunning, album-for-album consistency either; their lead singer, Patrick Stump, has a soaring range and nails his notes pitch-perfect. In a live setting, the band throws themselves at the audience with reckless abandon, letting the polish slip on their performance a little but upping the vigor considerably–that’s how it should be. And while the lyrics, courtesy of bassist Pete Wentz, can fall down into standard emo fare quite often, Stump is always there to save the band, finding just the right bittersweet, acidic, brutal musical expression of Wentz’s pent-up immaturity.

Worst of all, for reasons that elude me, the damned thing has shelf-life. You can crack open “Take This to Your Grave” anytime and still get a rush from it, and that’s no less true for “From Under the Cork Tree” and “Infinity on High.” Most hook-y music dies off, but much like Run-DMC back in the 80s, FOB create a weird breed of catchy that keeps you coming back for more.

Yes, Pete Wentz is kind of a tool in real life, but the band is aware of this fact. Did you know Patrick once punched him in the face while they were in the studio? Anyway, I don’t know why people are still clinging to the illusion that people with artistic ability enough to make them world-famous are somehow also balanced, likable people. The math on that just never ads up, but we keep acting surprised when great musicians are alcoholic, self-absorbed attention whores. We need to make peace with this reality, folks.

The other good emo band is The Get Up Kids. A much more friendly choice to the emo elite, they give their woebegone genre a much-needed lift by mixing it with a homespun, “your-best-friend’s-awesome-band” earnestness. They sound like guys who rehearsed in your basement on Saturdays and got really good doing it. If Hootie and the Blowfish were a “bar band,” then these guys are a “basement band.” Yes, the lead singer loves his nasal style of singing ever so much, and he’s not as spot-on with the pitch as Patrick Stump, but he means every last word. I can practically hear his diaphragm spasming with agony at the end of each song, and I respect that.

TWO: JAIL TIME FOR THOSE CAUGHT SMOKING WEED NEEDS A DOWNGRADE

Come on. Weed? Don’t get me wrong, it shouldn’t be legal, and the practice of “getting high” is for the weak and/or stupid, but there is no way on God’s green earth that the punishment fits the crime here. Marijuana is ridiculous, but it’s not exactly 8-ball heroin, people. Its danger as a gateway drug can be effectively neutralized by better parenting and tougher regulations on harder drugs, but people are always going to smoke it, and we’re going to have to make peace with that on some level, much the same way we make peace with going five to ten over the speed limit. By all means, if you catch someone with weed, let’s fine the crap out of them and stick it on their record, or even better let’s stick them in community service, but I don’t think an orange jumpsuit is quite justified.

Meantime, there are some other things that I think could use an upgrade in/introduction to jail-esque punishment:

1. Sexual assault. Hit ‘em harder. I’m not going to come down on hazy, uncertain stuff where alcohol is involved, but if we’ve got ourselves assault and battery with a side of sexual coercion, I say the jail time and the permanent damage to one’s record need to skyrocket. I don’t see why the jail time for such an act should be anything less than crippling.

2. People who talk in movies. Now this is not a group of people we’ve been putting in the clinker, but I propose we start. How can anyone be so self-absorbed? How can anyone care so little for the basic comfort and enjoyment of their fellow man? Now we’ve all maybe made a little too much ruckus in a theater before, but the difference between a movie-talker and the rest of humanity is that when you tell a decent person they’re being loud, they shut the hell up. Movie-talkers actually get angry at you for pointing out their incredible insensitivity. Why? Because they can’t deal with it. They’re the stars of their own little movies in their heads, and the script doesn’t call for a hard dose of reality. Their crushingly inconsiderate natures don’t compute with the “fiction” filters they affix permanently in front of their senses before they perceive what’s going on around them, so they block them out. I want these people out of the gene pool, post haste.

3. People who hate reading. What? You hate reading? You have active distaste for the foundation of organized society and culture? Do you also dislike music? How about happiness, do you hate that too? No, these people need professional help. Jail is probably not for them, let’s just get some kind of…rehab program or something. Whatever causes this malfunction, I think we can safely assume it needs to be nipped in the bud. You show me a great politician, a timeless artist, or a world-renowned philanthropist that doesn’t effing love to read and I’ll show you a pig that flies. And I’m not picky here, you don’t have to be into Shakespeare or Lord Byron, just some kind of literature. Poetry? Great. Short stories? Bring it. Comic books? Go for it. Hell, get into the Sports section of the newspaper if that’s what you like, but goodness gracious, find something! If you’re reading this, and you hate reading, I have three words for you: go fix it.

4. People who love “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” Look, we’ve all been thinking it, I’m just going to be the guy who says it: there’s something really wrong with you all, and I think you need to spend some time in solitary confinement or something. First of all, that movie is awful. Secondly, rabid fans of the thing just behave…wrongly. I mean, we rag on Trekkies a lot, but they’re harmless, and they love the sense of wonder and possibility afforded them by space exploration, even in the abstract. I can respect that. Same thing for comic book geeks; I mean, have you ever read “Watchmen” or “Batman: The Long Halloween”? That is some serious, three-dimensional drama going on there, and rabid obsession with compelling storytelling is fine by me. But “Rocky Horror” is like a convention of wanna-be vampires, it’s just creepy. They congregate in smelly, run-down movie theaters at midnight in outfits that suggest repressed childhood trauma, sing music that is utterly terrible, and participate in the weirdest, most disturbing sexual innuendo ever witnessed in Western culture. Ugh. Again, maybe therapy is the best thing for this group.

THREE: LED ZEPPELIN IS AWESOME. Seriously, they are. It’s just not up for debate.

FOUR: NO MATTER HOW MUCH GEORGE LUCAS HURTS US, WE CAN’T STOP LOVING HIM. Yeah, yeah, I know, we all pretended “Episode III” was pretty good, and it kind of was, but when you sleep off that special giddiness that only “Star Wars” can give…you know it didn’t quite make it. The level of disappointment we all had to go through over the past couple of years was nothing short of massive. Now we gamers had the incredible “Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic,” whose story rivaled the original trilogy for greatness, but I don’t know how the rest of you have survived. It’s been a hard road.

But we’re going to let it go. Don’t act like you’re pissed off and you’ll never forgive him, you will. You have to, he’s George Lucas. He single-handedly erected the most compelling persistent science fiction universe ever made. And my gosh, were the first three good; even “Return of the Jedi” with its dumb little Ewoks still rocked the casbah. The simple fact is, he’s just given us too much, we’re never going to be able to hold it against him, no matter how many times he kind of lets us down.

And it’s not like Episodes I-III were awful, they just weren’t good enough. By far, the worst was Episode I, even in spite of how bangin’ Darth Maul was, because little Anakin was just that bad, and Jar Jar Binks was…well, he was Jar Jar Binks. Remember the space fight at the end? No? Exactly. It sucked, that’s why you don’t remember it. I almost want to give them an award for finding a way to make dogfighting in outer space mundane. Episode II was actually okay, but the lightsaber stuff didn’t measure up, and then Episode III came the closest to really belonging in the “Star Wars” canon. Maybe it even just made it. But even if all three of them had been as offensive to God as the fanboys were screaming they were, we’d all still forgive him. It’s just not in our power not to.

A cheerful hello there from your Los Angeles connection. It’s been a busy week so far for us, as much as that’s possible when you’re setting down roots on the other side of the country, gazing around with a bewildered look on your face. Corelyn and I are both hot on the tail of promising job opportunities, her with a very prestigious legal-specific temp agency that specializes in “temp to hire” (in other words, temp jobs with clients who are looking to permanently employ the person if they like them), and myself with a really neat post-production company that operates out of the Paramount Studios Lot (very exciting!) I had a meeting with the guy who runs this enterprise today, and he seemed sharp as a tack, and we got along well. He had years of industry experience that I can already tell I’ll really benefit from if I get the gig. My particular role would be as a sales rep, pounding the phone and stirring up interest with new clients. Sounds good to me.

Some of you may know that my beloved big sister Caroline was in town tonight. Some of you may not know that one of my favorite directors, David Cronenberg, was also in town tonight. Those same people may continue in their habit of unawareness concerning the fact that the aforementioned cinema auteur was screening one of his masterpieces at the Arclight Theater, as well as taking questions from the audience. Naturally, because God likes to punish me, this screening, which I had long since purchased tickets for, happened at the exact moment that Caroline’s flight arrived. Sigh.

I chose Caroline. She seemed appreciate, but I’m not sure she actually grasped how badly I had wanted to meet this guy, so I’m complaining about it to you, dear reader. Now I stand by my decision any day, family comes first of course, but my heart is aching at the fact that these two events had to happen at the same exact moment.

Good news, though, Caroline graciously took Cor and I out to dinner with an old Tuck buddy of hers, who my wife and I agreed was a total winner of a guy; smart, funny, gracious, etc. I discovered, much to my delight, that whatever perverse malfunction in this poor man’s brain that made him find an Allen funny and charming seemed to carry over from Caroline to myself. Good times.

Man, I tell you what, driving in Los Angeles is a whole other experience. People here do not kid around. Let me list for you some of the crazy things about being behind the wheel here:

1. You have to steal left turns. Remember that nice green arrow you East Coasters are so used to? They haven’t heard of that crap out here. You want to make a left, you have to make a left, ain’t nobody gonna hand it to you. The method for procuring this rare phenomenon tends to be speeding across the intersection as the light turns yellow, or blasting off the line as the light turns green before the guys going the opposite way have a chance to get going. Or you just run a red light, I see that one a lot. Honestly, I once saw a left so desperate, that one dude ran a red, and then a second one tailgated him as he did it. Now that decision is somewhat tactical in a scenario where the person you’re following has right of way, but what exactly is the advantage of “getting in on” someone else breaking the rules? 

2. Freeways have identity crises. There is not a single major road in this town that is not struggling with multiple personality disorder. Where I come from, my work ends after choosing the correct ramp, but here, no highway remains itself for very long. You get on the 110? Two minutes later, three of its five lanes have become the 405. And of course, the signs only warn you of this as the change is happening. 

3. You have to change lanes like you might stab a person. Changing lanes on the East Coast is like breaking up with the lane; you’ve been on it forever, you’ve been through a lot together, and now it’s time to signal and move on. Out here, every road relationship is an emotionally caustic one-night-stand, and if you don’t literally throw your car into the area you’re aiming for, the rest of the traffic pattern will flow around you like a stream around a rock. I’m amazed that hitting your turn signal is still required by law in this state, because absolutely no one cares when you do. It does not affect the behavior of a single car in your midst. You sit there, meekly blinking your stupid little light, while giant Hummers blast by, seeming to say, “And people in hell want ice water, son!” It’s brutal stuff.