So You're Painting a Chair, Hey?

In my neighborhood, everyone's got a little patch of land between the sidewalk and the street, which is technically city property, but something that the homeowners are responsible for. And ours is a blight. I am literally mortified by its state, and I actually have such a major complex that I believe my neighbors look at it from their porches and scowl. They hate me because I don't know what to do with St. Augustine grass. I will only work on that public section of my yard during low-traffic hours in order to avoid conversations. And if a neighbor does come along? Well, I've got my iPod in, and...oh, I'm so involved in pulling out this weed! Or...oh! Boy, my peripheral vision isn't as good as yours, so I just didn't see you there!

Finally, this bustling Saturday afternoon, I bit my lip I transformed it into what you see above. That's about a ton of Desert Rose rock. I kept my head down, I didn't talk to the dogs, I didn't wave at the babies. Then, as I'm spreading this rock around the space, a shadow comes over me. I can't play it off. I have to look up, and I prepare myself for some kind of scorn. I know, I know, I should have planted these cacti further from the sidewalk...

"Hey, um, do you think you have a moment of your time?" Asked a chubby kid who looked a little like the lightsaber viral-video guy. He squinted so hard from the sun that it pulled on his upper lip.

"Well, I'm pretty busy."

"I just wanted to know...where'd you get this rock?"

Oh, I thought he was going to sell me magazines. Now I feel bad. "I got it at Home Depot. There's, like, a ton here." Oh, he likes that.

"Um, can I have one?"

"Oh, sure!" I pick a small, rose-colored stone out and hand it to him.

"No, um, that one." He points to a ten-pound granite boulder I have, one of a few I've got decorating the area.

Now, is it a bad idea to give a kid a big rock? It's in that grey area between gun and scissors. I feel like this is a test. Like those neighbors are pulling a prank on me, or if it isn't a prank, that it's some kind of initiation test. They've got their binoculars focused on my perplexed face. "Did he pass the rock test?" they'll all be whispering. No one will come to our house for Halloween. Dogs will shit in my rose rock garden.

I say, "Yeah, take it."

He scoops it up, says thank you, and walks it over to a landscaping truck. The boulder is handed to the driver of the truck. They both get in and drive away.

I don't know what to think, but I'm spending the rest of the day inside.

What's in the box?

I finally cleaned out our garage yesterday. I had been avoiding the work because for one, it's a spider sanctuary--including many a black widow--and two, because since we moved in 5 months ago, we've heard strange rustling sounds coming from one dark corner.

The mysterious corner, in fact the whole garage, contains years of home-improvement leftovers. Twenty cans of paint, stains, sealers, and one large box of shingles. The sound was definitely coming from the shingles. I hadn't prepared myself for what was in that shingle box...

A dozen black widows wasn't even the scariest part, even though they scurried very close to my juicy fingertips when I peeled back their shingle front door. The cardboard top to the shingle box turned out to be an inedible wall for a colony of termites. Thousands of termites. With the top gone, it was like looking at...well, an ant farm. These termites had almost entirely devoured a bag of shingles. That's like 70 pounds! And I thought shingles were made of tar! Rock! Asphalt! Well, the box was nearly empty. The sound that we'd been hearing for months was that box of shingles caving in on itself.

After I disposed of the box like it was a bio-hazard (shovel, long gloves, lotsa termite poison), I called K to tell her we were safe now. She was very afraid that I had been bitten by a black widow, but hadn't realized it yet.

Like a zombie.

God, can that happen?

Soliciti-zing!

A guy knocked on my door this afternoon:

Zach: Hi!
Guy: (out of breath) Ima...membera...organiz...(nonsense, nonsense) LA Times...
Zach: Slow down, dude.
Guy: Ima...neighbor...selling...subscrip...(totally incoherent)...subscrip...shuns...
Zach: Do you want to come inside? You look hot...
Guy: (paying no attention to me) Remehehehe...muhmuhmuh...
Zach: Like, would a glass of water help?
Guy: Forty dollars.
Zach: Ok, forty dollars...
Guy: Twenty Sundays.... muhmuhmuh...
Zach: Are you asking me if I'd like twenty issues of the Sunday LA Times for $40?
Guy: uh huh.
Zach: Well, I used to get the paper and I didn't read it as much as I should...
Guy: Okay, thank you!

And the guy BOUNDS off my porch and SPRINTS to my neighbor's house, like an out-of-shape Batman.

I love that I have a front door.

Something against Toyota

This morning I discovered that my car was tagged. But (I'm not so sure how to make this clear) it wasn't done in spray paint, or keyed into my paint. Much less permanent. Not permanent at all, actually. In fact, writing it in soap would have been more competent. The dude tagged my car with his FINGER in the morning dew stuck to my WINDSHIELD.

And not even where it'd bother me--up in the right corner, away from my eyeline. A very tasteful "TFL(squiggly)" deftly signed by the...artist? I'm hip enough to know that the first part is "Thug for Life" (thank you, public school education). The rest just looks like a bunch of arrows and sevens.

I didn't even wipe it away. Maybe he/she(?) signed my car because he thinks I'm cool, like when someone TP's your house? The guy was like "Hey, this cat here drives a Rav4. That's very sensible of him. Oh, look! He's also overinflated his tires to save on gas. Man, I sure love the environment, too. Mad props, yo." And he signed it. Maybe the arrows and sevens translate to "This guy's great," or "Two thumbs up!" or "Carry on my wayward son."

Then I remembered that I don't trust the youth of today. I started thinking like KIDS think. Now I'm almost certain that this is some kind of mark that "gangs" put on things they're going to fuck up in the FUTURE. Like when snipers hit targets with a laser to show the gunships where to unload carnage. Or maybe there's some REAL destruction somewhere else on my car and that this tag is just there to distract me from leaking brake fluid. Have they mistaken me for someone else? Someone else who's in a rival gang? I've been told I look like Seth MacFarlane. Oh God! Seth MacFarlane's in trouble! This is how The Big Lebowski started. My windshield really ties my car together.

I should have purchased their door-to-door candy bars and supported their "sports uniform" drive. I must be on a list.

So many people in the neighborhood

I don't know if they're very good people.

A couple nights ago, I went for an evening walk around the block only to be halted by police tape and the news that someone was shot in the face outside our local convenience store. All the hipsters came down from their lofts to gawk. What happened? Can anyone see anything? Are you still guest DJing at the bike shop tonight? Last I heard, it was gang related. I don't know if I should find comfort in that. I imagine gangbangers (white-kid language for people who have those long shorts/short pants) don't shoot so well, holding their gats like they do. I often find myself uncomfortably close to stray bullets.

Like the first time I hung out in Echo Park. I was FEET away from a drive-by. Again, another gang shooting. The guy got shot in the ass, and the victim did a good job of moaning, and writhing, and taking off his pants to gain a moderate following. What happened? Did anyone see who did it? Is that bullet in his ass? Who's the guest DJ tonight?

So only two bullet stories and they both take place less than a mile from each other and very close to our new home. Fortunately, we live on the top of a hill--just steep enough for only the most determined can collectors to find aluminum/plastic gold in our bins. Surely, bullets can't make it THIS far. It's hard to shoot UP, right? That's why tall people are never murdered. Never.