It's So Hard To Type With A Gun In My Mouth (5 page)

It's now 7 p.m. and the doorbell rings. It's Estelle and her husband.  They enter the house and want the tour. Jews always want the tour, "This is the master bath, this is the guest room, this is where the dogs sleep".  It gives the guests something to talk about on the way home, "What a shit hole they live in." So, I give the tour and we sit in the living room and talk and talk and talk.... way over an hour.  Finally I say, "Are you hungry?" and head for the kitchen where I learn I have set the oven incorrectly. This marvel of electronic wizardry did not shut off at seven. God is NOT good.  From a six-pound brisket, I'm left with about one pound of shriveled, blackened, shoe leather. Estelle walks in and looks over my shoulder, "We'll make do. We have rice and veggies".  I insist we can salvage the meat and put it on a platter. On that huge platter the brisket looked like a refugee raft floating in from Cuba. I get the meat to the table and Estelle says, " I smell burning plastic."  I had forgotten to put water in the steamer and the steamer has melted... more like fused itself to the burner.   I pull out some untouched veggies and throw them in the microwave. They come out like petrified wood. The entire meal is now a science project.

Back at the table Estelle's husband is attempting to cut the brisket. "No No... Allow me." I make the first cut; the knife slips and a piece of meat shoots across the table into Estelle's lap. I get all the food on the plates and watch as Estelle pushes it around like its radioactive..., which at this point I'm not sure it isn't.  "The rice is good." she says pulling a hair from her teeth. We make small talk, "So, wanna go out and get something to eat after this?"  Their faces smile; their eyes tell a different story....  they just want to flee for their lives.

As if things weren't bad enough the dogs have opened the bedroom door and joined us. They take their position in the corner of the dining room, hovering like vultures. Within three minutes Estelle covers her nose with a napkin, "What the hell is THAT? Did your cow die?"  Apparently oatmeal and the dog's digestive system don't mix. They are farting up a storm to beat the band, long, deep, farts that linger in the air and will not dissipate.  I turn on the a/c. Estelle is freezing. I shut it off. It's smells like the pound.  Estelle and her husband are truly good, wonderful people and make the best of a horrific situation.  Then, suddenly, a huge crash from the kitchen. What now? A porcelain turkey platter has fallen off the shelf and shattered into a million pieces. "What was that?", Estelle shouts from the other room. "The dishes are committing suicide. " is all I could get out.

I won't even tell you about the dessert but suffice it to say it entailed sprinkling paprika on vanilla pudding instead of cinnamon. And to this day, whenever I'm with Estelle, no matter whom we are with, no matter where we are she'll turn to the person next to me and say, "Did you ever eat dinner at his house? NO? God is Good."

9:29 P.M.

The rain has been pounding on the roof for hours. I used to love that sound but, since the muds
lide one year ago last week, it now petrifies me. I've already moved this year's tax receipts and the more expensive art pieces out of my office and onto higher ground.  I have a rash on my hands, a knot in my stomach and a brown spot in my underwear.  Guess what. I have posttraumatic distress disorder. It's not enough you go into shock when the mountain starts flowing through your house.... a year later you get to relive the fear when the rains come.  Think of it as a gift with purchase. I would have preferred a wallet.

Did I ever tell you what happened the day of the slide? I had been sitting at my desk when I got up to pace.  The rain had been making me very nervous. My neighbors were building an Ark.  I walked down the hall, about six feet from my desk when I heard a loud explosion, like someone had dumped a load of gravel on the roof.  I turned and I was standing in the garden. The whole back of the house was gone.  However, I did have a waterfall in the bathroom.

I run to the phones to dial 911. The phones are dead. I try my cell but I know if I call 911 on my cell I'll get highway patrol, so I dial the Bel Air fire house on Sunset. "Bel Air Fire." "You have got to come to my house. I just had a mudslide the whole back of my house is gone.!!!!!" Long pause... "How did you get this number?" I then have to beg them to come to my house.  When they arrive all cool and collected I am in full panic mode,  "Can you guys do something to divert the water?"(them) "No." (me) "NO?" (them) "It's dangerous back there." (me with attitude)

"
Don't you guys run into burning buildings?" (them) "Yes, but not mud." (Me with huge fricken' 'tude), "Should I set the house on fire? Would that help?" About this time the guy with the big white hat comes up to me. "Sir, when you have an emergency you should really dial 911." (Me) "My phones were dead." "But sir, you should dial 911."  "But I couldn't reach you on my cell so I dialed you directly" "Sir, that's why we have 911."  And I hit the effing roof. "I HAVE A EFFING RIVER FLOWING THROUGH MY HOUSE. THERE IS MUD UP TO MY ASS. YOU GUYS WON'T HELP AND NOW I GET A LECTURE ON HOW TO DIAL 9-1-1.  GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HOUSE!!!!!"  And I throw the fire department out! Literally ... I threw them out of the house.

My neighbors began collecting at the front door... they start a bucket brigade.  I call my best friend, my brother, plastic surgeon Michael Churukian.  It's his day off; he's here in 20 minutes and gives me Botox.  He runs to the back yard and jumps waist high into the mud... so I have a plastic surgeon, a guitar designer, two attorneys, a jeweler and a medical staffer digging out the back of my house, while the fire department went to Starbucks for a Latte. OH!  They did shut the gas, the electricity and phones before they yellow tagged my house. It shouldn't be a total loss for them. I'm homeless their day is complete... this is my greatest fear... no home and two dogs. I can see myself pushing a shopping cart through Beverly Hills.  I spend the night on a friend's sofa and begin six months of pure hell dealing with the city pencil pushers.... or as I call them Morons Anonymous.  Rash on my hands????  I'm lucky I didn't get shingles on my prostate.

The house is all back together thanks to State Farm and Guatemala. However, when it rains like it is tonight, it all comes back and I make ca-ca in my pants. Oh God, you're so strict!

MARCH 1, 2006  -
I MADE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT

I have made it through the night. The mountain held, the stomach held, the bowels held. The accountant comes at 10 to do the taxes. That's right I have an accountant that makes house calls; ya wanna make something out of it? Taxes this year should be fun since half my paperwork is in a landfill in Pomona.  I smell an audit. My only problem this a.m. is winter skin and constipation. The constipation is one of the gifts of I. B. S.  When I finally go I think I'll pass some of my Bar Mitzvah cake.   The dry skin comes from my father.
HE
gave me this skin, which looks like I've been herding sheep in Montana.  I remember as a child him bringing home five pounds of sheep fat to boil. Why? Lanolin.  He was starting a lanolin farm.  Have you ever-smelled boiling lamb fat? Have you ever been to a murder scene where the bodies have been allowed to rot in the sun? That's perfume in comparison.  I can still hear my mother trying to reason with him, " You moron. Do you think THAT will help? I'll tell you what will help... lie down in the street maybe a truck will run over you."  She was so supportive.  They divorced about 45 years ago and he died about 10 years ago.  About six months ago I was with her and friends. She was ranting about my father and left the room. My friend turned to me, "I thought your father had passed away." To which I replied, "He did." "Then why is your mother going on like that about him?" (Beat) I grin because I have thought of the ultimate reply..."He's not dead enough for her."

10:10 PM - 
GEARY'S  SALE
.

I'm writing tomorrow's chapter tonight because I'm anal and because tomorrow is the Geary's of Beverly Hills annual sale. They do it once a year... it's a big event... every year I buy shit I won't use and can't give as gifts because "It's too good for them. " Unless you've been to this sale you cannot even imagine what it's like. Picture Ruta Lee mud wrestling an Iranian woman for a candelabra. It's the most insane group of people you have ever seen. Last year I put my hand down on the counter... a Russian woman bought it. When I told her it was mine she demanded I give it to her because.... "I haf von jest like."

Let me try to set the stage for you. The store is piss elegant. It's filled with Steuben, Waterford crystal, Lalique, sterling silver tea sets from England, Linens from Ireland and Jews from New York.  You can't shit in that store for under 200 dollars.  But... when they have the sale the center of the store is removed and replaced by one huge mother fucker of a table filled with markdowns. Picture a bargain basement at Windsor Castle.

So the first two days of last year's sale are invitation only. Yours truly is invited and I think it's going to be rich Beverly Hills types shopping with their maids. What was there was an Ellis Island reunion. No one spoke English and everyone looked like a suicide bomber.  And the smell. How can I describe it... Chanel #5 and scrotum. So I'm pushing my way through the crowd, I feel like a salmon trying to spawn.  I see a bowl and I reach out for it. At the same time a hand with 126 bracelets and 9 clean fingernails grabs the same bowl. Our eyes meet and she knows my last name ends in "stein". She ain't giving up. "I saw it first." I bleat and she spits in the bowl. "OK, maybe you saw it first."

I've kicked and scratched my way through a sea of Burkas of Louis Vuitton. I've come up with one item... a picture frame.  I take it to the counter where the line extends back to 1847. I'm at the end of the line; people are churning butter behind me. After about an hour I get to the register... hand the girl, who is crying, my credit card and the register begins to print out my receipt.... tick.........tick... tick. It's the dot matrix printer that Edison used in his experiments to invent the light bulb.  I have never seen a printer print so slowly. It took so long; half way through I needed to shave.  It finally finishes and I sign the check but where's my package? Gone. Evaporated. They search the counter; it's crossed over into the fifth dimension. Now I need a refund. tick.... tick..... tick... tick. "Here's your package!" The sales clerk shouts. I want to shove knitting needles in my eyes and we start the process all over again. I HOLD THE PACKAGE THIS TIME.

I get to my car, my pants are ripped, I'm bleeding and I need drugs. Any drugs. I'll take Pamprin at this point.  But I got my 500-dollar bowl for 250 dollars.  Tomorrow there will be no morning gym. I will be at Geary's... kneepads, hardhat.... gun. I wouldn't miss that sale for the world.

March 2, 2006 -
HOME DEPOT

I just walked in the door from HOME DEPOT.  Somebody get me a Valium. God does not want us shopping for doorknobs in a warehouse bigger than Houston. OH....  MY... GOD!  I've never see a place filled with employees who don't want to help.  Who runs the place, Al Qaeda?

I needed a fence post so I go to lumber where there are skeletons of customers who have died waiting for service. I see an orange vest and a mullet... it's either an employee or a friend of Ellen DeGeneres’. "Can you help me?" I shout.  They avoid eye contact like if they see me they'll turn to a pillar of salt. I go up the next aisle and standing in front of me is the biggest Home Depot employee I have every seen in my life, maybe he's 450 pounds. He looks like someone Maury Povich should be interviewing. "Can you help me?", "Sure!" he says with sweat dripping off his nose, "What do you want?" (Me) "Fence posts."  And he says, "They’re right over there by McDonalds."  Ok now I think he's on crack but low and behold... there is a McDonalds inside Home Depot. I grabbed a roll of masking tape and taped my mouth shut, otherwise something like, "Is that YOUR McDonalds or can anyone use it?" will come spewing out like some comedy suicide bomber.

He waddles me over to the fence posts. It's 25 feet; he has to sit sixteen times. I'm refreshing C.P.R. in my mind as I watch him squeeze down the 50 foot aisle. " Do you want me to carry this to the register for you?" "No", I wanted to say." Just lay down on a flat bed truck and let me push you to Weight Watchers."

Then I remember other sales people I have seen there. Once a dwarf in the ladder department helped me. I kept thinking, "Does anyone else see the humor here?" There was a guy in a wheel chair in hardware and a blind man in lighting. Who does the hiring at Home Depot, Tim Burton?

I get the fence post to my car it's too big to fit into the Lexus. By now 3500 illegal aliens have gathered to watch me try to get the fucker into my back seat. "Gringo... ju need help?" I roll the windows down and stick the post out the side of the car.  I look like I'm about to joust with an Infiniti. I get the post home and reflect on my shopping experience... Costco, Home Depot, Office Depot, it made me wonder how many of these depot stores there are. I did a Google Search.... here's the funniest one I found. Enjoy.      http://www.edepot.com/buddha.html  Can anyone install a fence?