movie with the housemate crew - Friday September 1 2000    

For lunch I went out with colleagues Linda and Julian to a place in Ocean Park (the coastal business district between Venice and Santa Monica). It was funky little coffee shop called Wednesday's Café, a cozy informal dimly-lit hangout with random found objects stapled to the ceiling. I don't know how the café pulled this off, but it had been certified with an "A" health rating in the wake of its last inspection.

Evidently Julian's Housemate is a frequenter of Wednesday's Café he was the only customer there when we arrived. He was playing some sort of winnings-free gambling machine and harassing the hapless guy behind the counter. He joined us at our table while we ate our makeshift lunch of bagels smothered with cheese and pizza sauce. (Wednesday's Café is more of a coffee shop than a restaurant.)

When we'd last visited Julian at his place in Park La Brea, Linda had warned me about Julian's Housemate. "He can be kind of annoying," had been her heads-up. But this, of course, had done nothing but excite my curiosity. Perhaps Julian's Housemate was some sort of Dan Reitman worthy of detailed psychological analysis. Unfortunately, though, he hadn't turned up that night. But here he was at Wednesday's Café brimming over with a confrontational vibe rare in human beings. I've only ever seen it developed to this extent in two other people: Alex Guldbeck's friend Gian Pierre and Eric "the Huffanator" Huffman. Thankfully, in the case of Julian's Housemate, the vibe was more of the conversational non-Nazi variety. But it was equally relentless.

Julian's Housemate (to Julian): So what does he do at [name of my company]?

Julian: I think he's a developer.

Me: Yeah, I'm a developer.

Julian's Housemate (to me): What do you 'develop'?

Me (anticipating a hard time): Trouble. (Pause) But I mostly play Tetris all day.

Julian's Housemate: What's your salary?

Me: $20,000.

Julian's Housemate: Geez, that's not very much. Is it true that you play Tetris all day?

Me: Oh yes; I pretend to work and they pretend to pay me.

Julian's Housemate: What did you make at your last job?

Me: Oh, I made more. I took a pay cut to come work at [name of my company].

Julian's Housemate: Why did you do that?

Linda (playing along): Gus really likes music. (Pause) Gus knows Evan [Goddess Corynna's old boyfriend].

Julian's Housemate: Evan ____! Did he get you this job?

Me: Yes, he hooked me up.

Julian's Housemate: How do you know him?

Me: Through Goddesstemple.

Julian's Housemate (laughing hysterically): Goddesstemple! What, were you a client?

Me: No, my erstwhile girlfriend was a goddess.

Julian's Housemate: You know, I once met Cor-Cory-

Me: Corynna

Julian's Housemate: Yeah, Corynna. And I had to ask myself, "How does a guy who looks like Evan end up with a woman who looks like that? There must be some kind of cash arrangement or something!"

At this point Julian's Housemate got up and walked out. I asked Julian where he found this guy. "Oh, he worked at [name of our company]," he said. It turns out that Julian's Housemate used to work with Evan in the media assets department. Like Evan, Julian's Housemate is also involved in the Landmark Forum self-improvement group, a semi-evangelical organization that gets together every so often to help each other work their way out of the troubles in which they have a propensity to find themselves. I don't really understand what happens in Landmark and have no interest in finding out. I only know that Evan is among the more evangelical of its members.

When he returned from his brief absence, Julian's Housemate discussed the Landmark Forum. At first he was denying he was a member, especially after I dismissed Landmark by saying "I'm not into coercive ideologies." But eventually he came around to saying something which Linda characterized as "the soft sell."

Also during lunch, Julian introduced me to a microbrew soft drink called "Black Lemonade." It's a black carbonated fluid that comes in a clear bottle decorated with a comic skull and crossbones. Unlike regular lemonade, black lemonade is chock full of a wide diversity of ingredients including echinacea. This accounts for the tingle the stuff gives to your throat.

In the evening I hung out with my housemate's crew: his sister, his friend Fernando from Sherman Oaks, Sharon from Seattle, and Chun. We drove to a place in Westwood near UCLA and ate at a cheap Japanese cafeteria. Unfortunately the place didn't have any beer, something John and I were craving. "You're really going out on a limb, suggesting a restaurant like this," John had chided on the way over. "If it's a complete fiasco, you'll never live it down." Well, when it turned out the Japanese cafeteria didn't have beer, John started jokingly characterizing tonight's outing as a "debacle."

Earlier I'd been snacking on a concoction consisting of black beans, sliced cactus and corn chips, so I wasn't hungry at all. But I bought a dinner anyway, just because it was so cheap. After eating the expensive part, the shrimp, I had no interest in the rice and lettuce remaining. Dinner conversation consisted of all sorts of random but thoroughly amusing talk, including John sister's chastisement of John for mistreating her best friend on a date years and years ago. There was also more talk about my girlfriend and how very tall she is, a sort of inflation-by-legend that began with Sharon's puzzlingly inaccurate statement on the matter yesterday.

As if one extraneous meal wasn't enough, Fernando dragged us to a cookie shop he frequents for their cut-rate day-old items. (If there's one thing I like about this new crew, it's their fondness for inexpensive pleasures.) On the way we passed a restaurant where patrons puffed on hookahs at outdoor tables. It looked very decadent, except they were, of course, only smoking tobacco.

We ended up seeing a movie directed by Spike Lee called Kings of Comedy (with such a young-looking crowd, I got in at the student rate). Kings of Comedy was nothing more than a filmed series of standup comedy routines done by a crew of hilarious black comedians before a large, mostly black audience somewhere in North Carolina. Common threads through all the routines included:

• Unlike white people (as portrayed in such movies as Titanic), it's awfully hard to kill a bunch of black people at any one time. They tend to disperse, resourcefully at times, from trouble. White people, on the other hand, tend to congregate around it. Similarly, murders perpetrated by black people normally only claim one victim, whereas when white people go postal, they usually take lots of other white people with them.
• Unlike white people, black people are frugal and don't waste things unnecessarily. When, for example, someone assaults someone with a full beer, the attacker is invariably white.
• "Old School" music is superior to hip hop because it addresses the most important of all human issues: love. I hadn't considered this issue before, but I think it's true. There are no hip hop love songs!
• "Motherfucker" has a rich history as a word in Black English and it's not going away, so why fight it?
• "Big Mama," the overweight female ancestor in a floral dress, was an important force throughout most of African-American history. The problem with black kids these days is that there's no more Big Mama and thus none of her harsh discipline.