Some years before 9/11, when life was simple and you could board a plane with your shoes on, I had my worst run-in with airport security. I've read a lot of post-2001 horror stories, but few of them approach the magnitude of what happened to me on a rainy night in 1995 Los Angeles. I wasn't even trying to get on a plane.
Rewind about 16 years: in 1979, I was a freshman in college; the basketball team went to Anaheim, California, for the PCAA tournament, and the band went along. We of course went to Disneyland for a day. While I was there, I bought this absolutely gorgeous rubber lizard, which I still have. It's maybe 18 inches long, has glass eyes, and a charming yet realistic paint job. It looks enough like the real thing to have provoked screams a few times when covertly left on someone's chair. I went back the next year intending to buy several of them, but the quality had sadly declined. Clyde, my lizard, was the last of a breed. He now bears a long strip of velcro on his underside, and has spent some years adhering to the walls of my cubicle at various jobs.
In the spring of '95, I was working at The Film Company That Knows All About Interactive Entertainment (Just Ask Us) and violating Rule #4 of The Code Of The North, which is "you don't shit where you eat." Which is to say, I was dating a young lady who also worked there. This was kept a dark, dark secret from all colleagues except my roommate, who worked there too. I'll call her Ivy (not her real name).
Before coming to L.A., Ivy had lived in Chicago, and on that particular weekend one of her girlfriends was coming to visit. Ivy had something else going on that evening, and couldn't meet the plane. She was talking on the phone with her friend, trying to figure out some way to hook up, when I had an idea about how to score some points and told her I'd meet her friend.
The trick was neither I nor her friend had any idea what the other looked like. The inevitable question came up: "How will she know it's you?" I thought about it for a moment, then my eye lit on Clyde, stuck to the wall of my cube. "Tell her," I said, "that I'll be the one holding the lizard."
Her plane came in at six, as I remember. It was a Friday night in Los Angeles, which means traffic sucked. To top it off, it was raining lightly, which means traffic really sucked. It was only six miles or so down Lincoln from Santa Monica to LAX, which isn't bad except on rainy Friday nights, and I allowed some extra time to get there. Still, it was about time for the plane to land when I finally slammed the two-seater into short-term parking, threw the lizard into my bag, and headed for the concourse.
You of course had to go through security whether you were getting on a plane or not. I breezed through the metal detector and threw my bag onto the x-ray conveyor belt. Headed up to the other end, and waited. The monitors showed the flight as "arrived."
And waited.
And was just starting to wonder why I was waiting so long, when I noticed a crowd of Professional Security Personnel gathered around the x-ray monitor. Oh, my.
One of them, a heavyset sister, called out: "Hey -- you got a pet in deah?" Oh, my.
"No. No, it's a toy! It's rubber! A rubber toy!"
"Ah saw it move!" Situation rapidly deteriorating.
A security type started asking me about what flight I was getting on, and I tried to explain I was just meeting a plane (WHICH WAS ALREADY IN THANK YOU) and not getting on a flight, and he acted like he'd never heard of such a thing. Two huge dudes materialized and stood on either side of my bag, which was now sitting on the conveyor. I was like "Look! Lemme show you! It's just a rubber toy!"
"Sir, just wait here until someone arrives from downstairs."
I'd had enough and lunged between them, unzipped my bag, pulled out the lizard and started waving it at them, wiggling it in a most realistic manner. One of them started to laugh. The other one didn't.
"Sir, you'll have to take that downstairs and check it."
BUT I'M NOT GETTING ON A SILLY AIRPLANE -- I didn't mention that it wasn't radioactive, under pressure, had a blade more than three inches long, flammable, or any of the other things their sign said you couldn't take on a plane because it seemed counterproductive at that point and the ding-dong flight had landed a LONG TIME AGO so I practically threw Clyde at the guy in the kiosk and said "hang on to this!" He looked at me like I was from Mars or something and started to tell me why he wasn't going to, but I told him "just HANG ON TO IT, I'll be right back!" and headed for the gate.
To meet someone I didn't know and had no idea what they looked like, who was looking for someone they didn't know either, holding a rubber lizard, which I wasn't. At least I was moving.
Luckily the gate wasn't far. There was an immense crowd of people streaming off the 747; I looked frantically around the crowd, not knowing what for, but looking frantically seemed like the best option at the time. Then someone said "Repo!" (or rather, she said my real name, but "Repo" will do for purposes of this narrative) -- I had thoughtfully worn my shirt with the logo from The Film Company That Knows All About Interactive Entertainment (Just Ask Us) on the breast, and she'd seen it.
"I thought you were going to be carrying a lizard." Don't ask.
We headed towards the exits, but instead of taking the escalator down to bag claim, I steered her back towards security. She wondered what was going on, but you know, don't ask. We got to the guy at the kiosk and I reclaimed my lizard. When he handed it back to me, I told him, "you know, there's a real problem with these things -- kids play with them, and the cops don't know they're not real, and they shoot the kids." He totally did not get it, but I totally did not care. Down to bag claim and out into the rainy Los Angeles night.
Friday, December 19, 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
1987 - The Worst Thanksgiving
In '87, I'd been married a little over four years. It was pretty rocky. I used to blame myself entirely until time gave me a little perspective on it and I realized just how tweaked Ann was, and how I'd lived with things that no sane person would even believe, let alone put up with. It kind of drove me into myself in a lot of wrong ways -- I still heartily know and acknowledge how badly I screwed things up, but I had plenty of help. One difference between me and her, and I can state this with some confidence, is that she will never admit her own failings to anyone, including herself. But that's not part of the story. All that's important is that we were having a somewhat difficult time.
Ann was real close to her mom, and hated her father. I don't blame her; the dude was a 24-carat asshole. He was an engineer, and made decent money, but there wasn't an appliance or stick of furniture in the place newer than 25 years old; same goes for the carpets, drapes, and everything else. A dishwasher was out of the question. Cars were bought from junkyards and induced to run with a bit of work; the guy was good mechanically, but he'd spend four days trying to get a starter core from one car he'd found wrecked by the side of the road (so the starter was free) to fit inside a housing from another model instead of paying fifteen bucks for a refurbished part (true story). That sort of thing. The basement went unheated in the winter.
Ann and I had a nice little house in Redondo Beach, and we were going to spend Thanksgiving in California rather than make our way back to Utah. I had a bit of a commute home from Santa Monica -- the house's location being chosen because it was close to her job, naturally -- so she got home from work before I did. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving I arrived at home in the evening, and Ann was sitting on the couch, holding the phone and crying a little. She said she wanted to go back to Utah for the holiday if that was OK with me. I told her, sure.
From Rendondo Beach to her folks' place in Bountiful is around 750 miles. In those days of the 55-mph limit (not that anyone paid all that much attention to it through Nevada, but speeds were not what they are now) it was around a 12-hour drive, even in our lovely '85 RX-7. I left work around noon the next day, and we were on the road by two; rolled into her parent's place about 2 AM. Shirley, her mom, was still up for some unaccountable reason. We said hello, unloaded our stuff into Ann's old bedroom in the (unheated) basement, and crashed. Before I dropped off, I could hear her mom pacing the floor above.
We had two Thanksgivings; one in the afternoon at my parent's new house (it was the first time I saw it -- it's pretty cool, I'll post about it sometime) in Brigham City, about forty miles north, then again in the evening with her family. Ann's little brother, a college student, was there with his girlfriend, and one of her older sisters, a surgical nurse at a hospital in Salt Lake, came too with her boyfriend. It was a pretty good day. Ann had one more sister, the oldest, who was married and taught college (she was a nutritionist) in Grand Forks, ND, but she of course wasn't there.
There was a brief power outage a couple of hours after dinner, probably around ten o' clock. I opened the curtains in the kitchen to get a little light in the place so we could find a candle; Ann's dad barked at me because he didn't want the heat escaping through the open curtain. He calmed down when I explained why I'd done it. We got the candle lit and a few minutes later the power came back on. It was pretty typical of him. He never allowed an open curtain in that house because the heat would leak in, in summertime, or leak out, in the winter.
Ann's mom paced the floors again late into the night. (She and her husband had slept in separate bedrooms for years, so he never knew and probably wouldn't have cared if he had.)
We bounced around town Friday. I think we went to a movie. I remember talking to Ann in our car at her sister's condo when we were leaving to go back to her folks' place that night. We were both worried about her mom. Her brother's girlfriend had brought it up with us, too. Her mom was obviously depressed and something had to be done, but nobody had any idea what.
Our plans were to stay in Utah Saturday, maybe drive down to my parents' place for a while, then make the long drive back to Los Angeles on Sunday. I heard her mom pacing the floors again that night before I fell asleep.
We were awakened just after six AM by her dad screaming at us to come upstairs. I pulled on some shorts and a shirt and was right behind Ann on the way up. Her mom had taken a knife and stabbed herself several times, and was unconscious and didn't seem to be breathing. There was a huge pool of blood all over the bed and the floor. I went back to the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and called 911 for the first time in my life. They had me stay on the line until the ambulance got there, which was about thirty seconds later. Ann's dad was trying to do CPR but backed off and let the ambulance crew have at her; the house started to fill up with cops. A neighbor lady who was out walking saw all the excitement and started freaking out when she saw Shirley on the stretcher being taken out to the ambulance.
One of the cops asked me, "did she drink at all?" I told him no, not so far as I knew. About ten seconds later, another cop came out of the bedroom holding an empty vodka bottle. Shows how much I know, I guess.
I called Ann's sister and brother. They both got there while the police were still taking pictures and talking to everybody. Shirley (Ann's mother) had taken nearly all the kitchen knives into her bedroom and hidden them around. All the knives were cheap and old, of course. There was everything from little flimsy serrated paring knives to steak knives to table knives. They were under the bed, under the mattress, in the drawers, under the pillows. There must have been twenty or more. It was a big chef's knife she finally used. She'd slashed her wrists of course, which didn't amount to anything, and made a bunch of other fairly superficial wounds all over before finally opening up a leg artery.
Everyone got together and left for the hospital. There were still a few cops around so I hung out to deal with them. After a while, all of them but one had left, so he and I were the only people in the house. He very tactfully said we should sit down and talk for a second.
He was a really nice guy and knew what everybody was going through. As gently as could be done, he suggested to me that everyone would be coming back from the hospital in an hour or two, things were tough enough as they were -- and nobody should really have to see the mess in the next room. I saw his point, though I hadn't thought about it before then. He left, and I went to the nearby grocery store.
It was a beautiful day in northern Utah. Unseasonably warm, with a gorgeous blue sky. The remaining leaves had turned, and the mountains were a beautiful orange and red. People were buying beer, ice, soda pop, charcoal, barbequeables, all sort of good Saturday things. I picked up a load of paper towels, garbage bags, sponges, cleanser, disinfectant, bleach, and stuff like that. I got to the checkout and the cashier said something like "cleaning up a little today, I see?" Why, yes. Yes, I am.
The amount of blood was insane. She'd lost about three quarts (over half her blood supply -- is quarts right, or am I thinking pints?) but it seemed more like three gallons. It had thoroughly soaked the bedding, the mattress, the carpet, the pad beneath, and into the flooring. It was on the walls. It was everywhere. I just turned off my mind and scrubbed. Stuffed all the sheets, blankets, and pillows into garbage bags and hauled them outside. Hauled the mattress into the backyard and sprayed it off with the hose. Went back in and scrubbed some more.
I found a couple more knives buried under everything. I called the cop (he'd given me his card) and asked if he thought there was any point in me holding them for him. He thought about it and said, yeah, I'll be right over, don't clean up any more until I get there. He showed up right away, took a picture of where they were, and left with them. Back to sponging.
About halfway through, Ann's little brother's girlfriend Penny showed up. She said she knew something was up from the way he'd left her place; she was a nurse, too, and wasn't shocked by the bloody scene. She jumped right in and started sponging up blood with me, bless her heart.
Eventually, some semblance of order was restored. As much as could be.
I called Ann's oldest sister, the one in North Dakota, told her what had happened, and told her to get thyself to Bountiful. She was understandably freaked out. She and her husband were unable to get pregnant, were saving up money to adopt and couldn't afford to fly out. So they drove.
Penny and I went to the hospital and rejoined the family. I took one look at Shirley and had to leave the ICU and sit down on the floor of the hall. A machine was breathing for her, and she was a mass of tubes and bandages. She had a heartbeat -- barely -- and blood pressure -- barely -- but they couldn't get a brainwave. The doctor was optimistic, saying it was probably due to the narcotics they had her on.
When we got back, her dad naturally couldn't stand the thought of all that perfectly good bedding going to waste (not to mention the mattress!) so he brought it all in, washed it carefully, made the bed with the same sheets, and put everything away. I was so angry I had to leave before I said something I'd regret, or just cold-cocked the son of a bitch. Your wife tried to commit suicide on those very sheets, asshole, go wild and buy some new ones.
Obviously, we weren't going to make it back to L.A. the next day.
Shirley hung on for a while; on Sunday, her doctor told us he thought she was probably braindead but they wanted to keep her alive a while longer to be sure.
Ann's sister and her husband made it in from North Dakota on Sunday night about one minute after the hospital called to tell us Shirley had died.
The rest is pretty much standard; what happens after someone dies, happened. I told my parents what happened in person when I went back to their house with Ann's brother-in-law the next night, or maybe the night after. I told my boss over the phone that her mom had had a heart attack -- I still don't know why I did that, I told him the truth when I got back to work the next week.
Ann's dad continued to be an asshole, funeral arrangements were made, Shirley was cremated in accordance with her wishes, and she was buried near where she came from, in the small town of Ephraim, Utah the following Wednesday.
Ann got stranger than she already was in some ways over the next year, although I'm sure she doesn't realize or admit it; we split up 13 months after it happened.
Two years later was what I still look back on as the Best Thanksgiving Ever, so things were still things and life went on. I have no reason to ever be in that part of the world again, but if I ever find myself in Sanpete County, Utah, I fully intend to visit Shirley's grave.
This of course hardly begins to tell the story of what went on in those times. Maybe I'll add to it, but I probably won't.
Ann was real close to her mom, and hated her father. I don't blame her; the dude was a 24-carat asshole. He was an engineer, and made decent money, but there wasn't an appliance or stick of furniture in the place newer than 25 years old; same goes for the carpets, drapes, and everything else. A dishwasher was out of the question. Cars were bought from junkyards and induced to run with a bit of work; the guy was good mechanically, but he'd spend four days trying to get a starter core from one car he'd found wrecked by the side of the road (so the starter was free) to fit inside a housing from another model instead of paying fifteen bucks for a refurbished part (true story). That sort of thing. The basement went unheated in the winter.
Ann and I had a nice little house in Redondo Beach, and we were going to spend Thanksgiving in California rather than make our way back to Utah. I had a bit of a commute home from Santa Monica -- the house's location being chosen because it was close to her job, naturally -- so she got home from work before I did. The Tuesday before Thanksgiving I arrived at home in the evening, and Ann was sitting on the couch, holding the phone and crying a little. She said she wanted to go back to Utah for the holiday if that was OK with me. I told her, sure.
From Rendondo Beach to her folks' place in Bountiful is around 750 miles. In those days of the 55-mph limit (not that anyone paid all that much attention to it through Nevada, but speeds were not what they are now) it was around a 12-hour drive, even in our lovely '85 RX-7. I left work around noon the next day, and we were on the road by two; rolled into her parent's place about 2 AM. Shirley, her mom, was still up for some unaccountable reason. We said hello, unloaded our stuff into Ann's old bedroom in the (unheated) basement, and crashed. Before I dropped off, I could hear her mom pacing the floor above.
We had two Thanksgivings; one in the afternoon at my parent's new house (it was the first time I saw it -- it's pretty cool, I'll post about it sometime) in Brigham City, about forty miles north, then again in the evening with her family. Ann's little brother, a college student, was there with his girlfriend, and one of her older sisters, a surgical nurse at a hospital in Salt Lake, came too with her boyfriend. It was a pretty good day. Ann had one more sister, the oldest, who was married and taught college (she was a nutritionist) in Grand Forks, ND, but she of course wasn't there.
There was a brief power outage a couple of hours after dinner, probably around ten o' clock. I opened the curtains in the kitchen to get a little light in the place so we could find a candle; Ann's dad barked at me because he didn't want the heat escaping through the open curtain. He calmed down when I explained why I'd done it. We got the candle lit and a few minutes later the power came back on. It was pretty typical of him. He never allowed an open curtain in that house because the heat would leak in, in summertime, or leak out, in the winter.
Ann's mom paced the floors again late into the night. (She and her husband had slept in separate bedrooms for years, so he never knew and probably wouldn't have cared if he had.)
We bounced around town Friday. I think we went to a movie. I remember talking to Ann in our car at her sister's condo when we were leaving to go back to her folks' place that night. We were both worried about her mom. Her brother's girlfriend had brought it up with us, too. Her mom was obviously depressed and something had to be done, but nobody had any idea what.
Our plans were to stay in Utah Saturday, maybe drive down to my parents' place for a while, then make the long drive back to Los Angeles on Sunday. I heard her mom pacing the floors again that night before I fell asleep.
We were awakened just after six AM by her dad screaming at us to come upstairs. I pulled on some shorts and a shirt and was right behind Ann on the way up. Her mom had taken a knife and stabbed herself several times, and was unconscious and didn't seem to be breathing. There was a huge pool of blood all over the bed and the floor. I went back to the kitchen, grabbed the phone, and called 911 for the first time in my life. They had me stay on the line until the ambulance got there, which was about thirty seconds later. Ann's dad was trying to do CPR but backed off and let the ambulance crew have at her; the house started to fill up with cops. A neighbor lady who was out walking saw all the excitement and started freaking out when she saw Shirley on the stretcher being taken out to the ambulance.
One of the cops asked me, "did she drink at all?" I told him no, not so far as I knew. About ten seconds later, another cop came out of the bedroom holding an empty vodka bottle. Shows how much I know, I guess.
I called Ann's sister and brother. They both got there while the police were still taking pictures and talking to everybody. Shirley (Ann's mother) had taken nearly all the kitchen knives into her bedroom and hidden them around. All the knives were cheap and old, of course. There was everything from little flimsy serrated paring knives to steak knives to table knives. They were under the bed, under the mattress, in the drawers, under the pillows. There must have been twenty or more. It was a big chef's knife she finally used. She'd slashed her wrists of course, which didn't amount to anything, and made a bunch of other fairly superficial wounds all over before finally opening up a leg artery.
Everyone got together and left for the hospital. There were still a few cops around so I hung out to deal with them. After a while, all of them but one had left, so he and I were the only people in the house. He very tactfully said we should sit down and talk for a second.
He was a really nice guy and knew what everybody was going through. As gently as could be done, he suggested to me that everyone would be coming back from the hospital in an hour or two, things were tough enough as they were -- and nobody should really have to see the mess in the next room. I saw his point, though I hadn't thought about it before then. He left, and I went to the nearby grocery store.
It was a beautiful day in northern Utah. Unseasonably warm, with a gorgeous blue sky. The remaining leaves had turned, and the mountains were a beautiful orange and red. People were buying beer, ice, soda pop, charcoal, barbequeables, all sort of good Saturday things. I picked up a load of paper towels, garbage bags, sponges, cleanser, disinfectant, bleach, and stuff like that. I got to the checkout and the cashier said something like "cleaning up a little today, I see?" Why, yes. Yes, I am.
The amount of blood was insane. She'd lost about three quarts (over half her blood supply -- is quarts right, or am I thinking pints?) but it seemed more like three gallons. It had thoroughly soaked the bedding, the mattress, the carpet, the pad beneath, and into the flooring. It was on the walls. It was everywhere. I just turned off my mind and scrubbed. Stuffed all the sheets, blankets, and pillows into garbage bags and hauled them outside. Hauled the mattress into the backyard and sprayed it off with the hose. Went back in and scrubbed some more.
I found a couple more knives buried under everything. I called the cop (he'd given me his card) and asked if he thought there was any point in me holding them for him. He thought about it and said, yeah, I'll be right over, don't clean up any more until I get there. He showed up right away, took a picture of where they were, and left with them. Back to sponging.
About halfway through, Ann's little brother's girlfriend Penny showed up. She said she knew something was up from the way he'd left her place; she was a nurse, too, and wasn't shocked by the bloody scene. She jumped right in and started sponging up blood with me, bless her heart.
Eventually, some semblance of order was restored. As much as could be.
I called Ann's oldest sister, the one in North Dakota, told her what had happened, and told her to get thyself to Bountiful. She was understandably freaked out. She and her husband were unable to get pregnant, were saving up money to adopt and couldn't afford to fly out. So they drove.
Penny and I went to the hospital and rejoined the family. I took one look at Shirley and had to leave the ICU and sit down on the floor of the hall. A machine was breathing for her, and she was a mass of tubes and bandages. She had a heartbeat -- barely -- and blood pressure -- barely -- but they couldn't get a brainwave. The doctor was optimistic, saying it was probably due to the narcotics they had her on.
When we got back, her dad naturally couldn't stand the thought of all that perfectly good bedding going to waste (not to mention the mattress!) so he brought it all in, washed it carefully, made the bed with the same sheets, and put everything away. I was so angry I had to leave before I said something I'd regret, or just cold-cocked the son of a bitch. Your wife tried to commit suicide on those very sheets, asshole, go wild and buy some new ones.
Obviously, we weren't going to make it back to L.A. the next day.
Shirley hung on for a while; on Sunday, her doctor told us he thought she was probably braindead but they wanted to keep her alive a while longer to be sure.
Ann's sister and her husband made it in from North Dakota on Sunday night about one minute after the hospital called to tell us Shirley had died.
The rest is pretty much standard; what happens after someone dies, happened. I told my parents what happened in person when I went back to their house with Ann's brother-in-law the next night, or maybe the night after. I told my boss over the phone that her mom had had a heart attack -- I still don't know why I did that, I told him the truth when I got back to work the next week.
Ann's dad continued to be an asshole, funeral arrangements were made, Shirley was cremated in accordance with her wishes, and she was buried near where she came from, in the small town of Ephraim, Utah the following Wednesday.
Ann got stranger than she already was in some ways over the next year, although I'm sure she doesn't realize or admit it; we split up 13 months after it happened.
Two years later was what I still look back on as the Best Thanksgiving Ever, so things were still things and life went on. I have no reason to ever be in that part of the world again, but if I ever find myself in Sanpete County, Utah, I fully intend to visit Shirley's grave.
This of course hardly begins to tell the story of what went on in those times. Maybe I'll add to it, but I probably won't.
Three Thanksgivings
More specifically, three immediately-after-Thanksgiving stories will follow Real Soon Now™. The first, 1987, is about The Worst Thanksgiving and will be by far the longest. The second, 1989, is The Best Thanksgiving and is going to be pretty short because there's just not much to it, but it was the most fun. The last, 2005, is The Weirdest Thanksgiving and in a lot of ways it's not over yet. It'll take me a few days to finish, but it's not like anyone is reading any of this anyway.
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Captain Picard
A former roomdog of mine went to Cal Arts. One of his friends was Patrick Stewart's son. One of his other friends (and mine too) was a gentleman named Ken, who had an absolutely enormous loft in the warehouse district of downtown Los Angeles. Real bad neighbohood, but I could pull my car straight into the freight elevator and park it in the loft. He had a gigantic slot-car track and a pool table.
Ken had a job answering Patrick Stewart's mail, which mainly consisted of stuffing envelopes with autographed pictures.
At the time, I was violating Rule #4 of The Code Of The North, which is "you don't shit where you eat". That is to say, I had become involved with a young lady where I worked, whom I'll call Ivy. This was kept a deep secret from all colleagues. Except for maybe once; she lived in Venice a few blocks from my producer. He saw me leaving her apartment early one morning, and raised a quizzical eyebrow, but never said anything.
(Aside, and Pro Tip: do not strike up a relationship with someone ten years younger than you. It don't work.)
Ivy had one of those lifesize cardboard standup things of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. She used to decorate it with Post-It notes of moustaches, lipstick, necklaces, earrings, and things like that.
Roomdog and I got the brilliant idea of abducting him, getting him signed by Mr. Stewart, and returning him the next day. Ken and his roomdog Skippy came by one night and did the deed.
Unfortunately, the cast of ST:TNG went to London for something or another the next day, so the cutout stayed absent for a long time.
She asked me point-blank if I had taken him, to which I was able to truthfully answer "no", because I hadn't. Ken and Skip did. At the time of his kidnapping, he was adorned with a Post-It Hitler-esque moustache.
After about three weeks, Ivy got really fed up. She asked me if I knew anything about Captain Picard, to which I was forced to answer "yes", and she was furious. She claimed I lied to her the first time, so I pointed out that she'd asked if I'd taken him, which I hadn't, not if I knew anything about it, which I did. She wasn't buying any of it, and told me he'd better be back in one hour or I'd be nooky-starved for the rest of my life.
Forty-five minutes later, in the nick of time, enter Ken and Skip, carrying Captain Picard, signed and dedicated to her by Patrick Stewart with a gold pen. She burst into tears.
I snickered all the way back to her place.
Mr. Stewart called the next day to say hello to roomdog, and I talked to him briefly. Imagine the Jean-Luc Picard voice saying "That bloody moustache made me look like Hitler!"
Ken had a job answering Patrick Stewart's mail, which mainly consisted of stuffing envelopes with autographed pictures.
At the time, I was violating Rule #4 of The Code Of The North, which is "you don't shit where you eat". That is to say, I had become involved with a young lady where I worked, whom I'll call Ivy. This was kept a deep secret from all colleagues. Except for maybe once; she lived in Venice a few blocks from my producer. He saw me leaving her apartment early one morning, and raised a quizzical eyebrow, but never said anything.
(Aside, and Pro Tip: do not strike up a relationship with someone ten years younger than you. It don't work.)
Ivy had one of those lifesize cardboard standup things of Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard. She used to decorate it with Post-It notes of moustaches, lipstick, necklaces, earrings, and things like that.
Roomdog and I got the brilliant idea of abducting him, getting him signed by Mr. Stewart, and returning him the next day. Ken and his roomdog Skippy came by one night and did the deed.
Unfortunately, the cast of ST:TNG went to London for something or another the next day, so the cutout stayed absent for a long time.
She asked me point-blank if I had taken him, to which I was able to truthfully answer "no", because I hadn't. Ken and Skip did. At the time of his kidnapping, he was adorned with a Post-It Hitler-esque moustache.
After about three weeks, Ivy got really fed up. She asked me if I knew anything about Captain Picard, to which I was forced to answer "yes", and she was furious. She claimed I lied to her the first time, so I pointed out that she'd asked if I'd taken him, which I hadn't, not if I knew anything about it, which I did. She wasn't buying any of it, and told me he'd better be back in one hour or I'd be nooky-starved for the rest of my life.
Forty-five minutes later, in the nick of time, enter Ken and Skip, carrying Captain Picard, signed and dedicated to her by Patrick Stewart with a gold pen. She burst into tears.
I snickered all the way back to her place.
Mr. Stewart called the next day to say hello to roomdog, and I talked to him briefly. Imagine the Jean-Luc Picard voice saying "That bloody moustache made me look like Hitler!"
The Legend of Crazy Dave
ATC Flight Simulator Co. was my second job out of college; I worked there more than seven years. From '84 through '90 or so, ATC was in the "old building", at 1650 19th St., in Santa Monica, kind of a semi-rundown light industrial area which has since gone upscale. Next door, to the north, was a two-story red brick industrial sort-of affair that was so nondescript, it was practically invisible. The only marking was a sign that read "DATAL" in metal letters.
From time to time a car would be parked out front, and occasionally we'd see the owner coming or going. He was as unremarkable as his building - just a somewhat tubby middle-aged guy. Eventually I found out his name was David Tallmadge ("datal", get it?), and he was rich. (Turns out he was an heir to the Schlitz beer-brewing fortune.) The building was just a place for him to putter around with his hobbies - whatever they were. Barry, my boss, had chatted with him a couple times, and described him as "extremely security-conscious." Once a couple of us helped him push a trailer-mounted diesel generator into place on the back deck; inside the building was a well-equipped machine shop. The generator was rigged to power the entire building in case of emergency; what kind of emergency he anticipated, I have no idea. We speculated that he was some kind of survivalist nut, but nobody knew for sure.
After a while - probably in early '86 - he hired an "assistant." She was a very pretty girl, around 15. No one knew what he actually did over there, so no one knew what he needed an assistant for -- but hey. Occasionally we'd see her outside, washing his car or sweeping up.
A little while later, he hired another. And another. This went on until there were around ten girls "working" for him - none older than 16, and all quite pretty. One of my friends had talked to a couple of them, during our morning coffee break. They told him that Dave was always trying to get them to sleep with him, and any girl that did got fat rewards. The girls we talked to were mildly disgusted by those of their friends that had, but apparently there was no pressure, Dave never tried to force himself on any of them. The regarded him as slightly perverted, and a little annoying, but harmless. We started referring to him as "Crazy Dave".
One day, the cops came. 19th Street between Olympic and Colorado was blocked off on both ends all afternoon; there must have been fifteen cop cars. I don't think Dave was anywhere around at the time, but wherever he was, they busted him. It turns out that Dave owned property (a lakefront house, and some land) in Wisconsin, and while back there had persuaded some teenaged girl to run away to California with him. Her family took a dim view of all this, and the Law crashed down. (I don't remember the details, but it was along those basic lines.) Dave eventually got about ten months in the jug. It might have been a year -- I don't remember exactly -- but no more than that.
While Dave was incarcerated, all his mail was delivered to ATC. It'd stack up in front, and once a week or so a guy would come pick it up. I talked to him a couple times; his name was Doug Payne, and he was a private investigator Dave had hired to look after his affairs. Doug was pretty cool - a very mellow guy. I saw into the back of his van once; there was a periscope rig and a bunch of gear back there. The name of some probably-ficticious winery (Schlumberger?) was painted on the outside.
Crazy Dave got a ton of mail and packages. One time, somebody sent him a machine gun - the box was torn, and it was obvious what was inside. It looked like a WWII-vintage model, tripod-mounted and chain-fed; a big, heavy thing. I later found out that he was (among other things) some kind of small-time arms dealer.
It didn't take long for the gang in the back of the shop to realize that the bulk of Dave's mail was porn (in plain brown wrappers!) and to start pilfering it. The guy subscribed to more porn than I ever knew existed; probably forty magazines a month, or more. All of it was sleaze, too; nothing a nice as Playboy or Penthouse, mainly back-alley rags no one had ever heard of. Hustler was about as classy as it got. Under one of the workbenches at ATC was a stack of porn mags two feet high; it was amazing. I don't know how they got away with it, unless Dave wasn't in a position to complain (being in prison, and all). Maybe the authorities wouldn't let him have porn anyway, so he never knew, or something.
Time passed, and he eventually got out. One of the terms of his probation was that he refrain from hiring teenaged girls, but it was business as usual over there before very long. One, then two, then several of them would be outside in the mornings, washing his car and doing odd jobs, so it didn't surprise anyone when Dave disappeared again. This time, the building went vacant, and the sign was taken down. He'd only been out a few months. I saw something in the local paper about him getting busted again for statutory rape, or molestation, or whatever it was, but there weren't any details. Never saw or heard of him again.
Until one day about fifteen years later, when I was bored, surfing around, and decided to see if the Web knew anything about him. It took me a while to dredge his name out of my memory banks, but it only took Google an instant. I'll just reproduce the best item here:
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) -- A Schlitz Brewing heir convicted of sexually assaulting two girls in California, has lost his appeal, paving the way for his victims to lay claim to more than $1.5 million in property he owns in Oconomowoc Lake.
At least two $1 million offers have been made to buy W. David Tallmadge' s lakefront property.
A second parcel owed by Tallmadge that includes commercial frontage on Wisconsin Avenue has had offers of about $500, 000, said Matt Linn, an attorney representing one of the victims.
Interested buyers are waiting for the green light from Waukesha County Circuit Judge Patrick Snyder, who has ruled that proceeds of the sales will go to the two sexual assault victims.
The victims, now ages 10 and 21, sued Tallmadge in California and won a $14.1 million judgment in April 1998, but they have not received any money yet.
Tallmadge' s attorney, Jonathan Smith, convinced Snyder to wait to liquidate Tallmadge' s real estate during Tallmadge' s appeal.
A California jury found Tallmadge, the great-grandson of former Schlitz Brewery President Henry Uihlein, guilty in June 17, 1997, of 15 felony sexual abuse charges.
Tallmadge, now 67, is serving a 265-year sentence in a California prison for sexually abusing two children at his former home there.
Tallmadge has lost his appeals. A California appellate court recently denied his request that his convictions be dismissed because of errors during his trial.
A hearing to address sales issues has been scheduled for Sept. 2.
Even if the parcels are sold for more than their $1.5 million fair market value, the sale will represent only a small fraction of the $14.1 million Tallmadge owes.
Attorneys have said they believe Tallmadge has about $14 million in other assets available in two trusts. But Linn said he did not know whether any money could be tapped from the trusts.
Before the victims can get any money, other creditors are ahead of them, including Waukesha County for real estate taxes Tallmadge owes and a trust that holds a mortgage on one of the parcels.
Two hundred sixty-five years. Wow.
Google (search for "David Tallmadge", in quotes) says that he raped his own 4-year-old daughter. Ho-lee shit. Hope you had fun, you fat fuck.
On a side note, I found out that during the time he was picking up Dave's mail, Doug Payne, the PI, won a million dollars in the California lottery. (I even saw him on a TV commercial for the lottery!) That explains a long vacation he took. Not as long as the vacation Crazy Dave is on, but more fun.
From time to time a car would be parked out front, and occasionally we'd see the owner coming or going. He was as unremarkable as his building - just a somewhat tubby middle-aged guy. Eventually I found out his name was David Tallmadge ("datal", get it?), and he was rich. (Turns out he was an heir to the Schlitz beer-brewing fortune.) The building was just a place for him to putter around with his hobbies - whatever they were. Barry, my boss, had chatted with him a couple times, and described him as "extremely security-conscious." Once a couple of us helped him push a trailer-mounted diesel generator into place on the back deck; inside the building was a well-equipped machine shop. The generator was rigged to power the entire building in case of emergency; what kind of emergency he anticipated, I have no idea. We speculated that he was some kind of survivalist nut, but nobody knew for sure.
After a while - probably in early '86 - he hired an "assistant." She was a very pretty girl, around 15. No one knew what he actually did over there, so no one knew what he needed an assistant for -- but hey. Occasionally we'd see her outside, washing his car or sweeping up.
A little while later, he hired another. And another. This went on until there were around ten girls "working" for him - none older than 16, and all quite pretty. One of my friends had talked to a couple of them, during our morning coffee break. They told him that Dave was always trying to get them to sleep with him, and any girl that did got fat rewards. The girls we talked to were mildly disgusted by those of their friends that had, but apparently there was no pressure, Dave never tried to force himself on any of them. The regarded him as slightly perverted, and a little annoying, but harmless. We started referring to him as "Crazy Dave".
One day, the cops came. 19th Street between Olympic and Colorado was blocked off on both ends all afternoon; there must have been fifteen cop cars. I don't think Dave was anywhere around at the time, but wherever he was, they busted him. It turns out that Dave owned property (a lakefront house, and some land) in Wisconsin, and while back there had persuaded some teenaged girl to run away to California with him. Her family took a dim view of all this, and the Law crashed down. (I don't remember the details, but it was along those basic lines.) Dave eventually got about ten months in the jug. It might have been a year -- I don't remember exactly -- but no more than that.
While Dave was incarcerated, all his mail was delivered to ATC. It'd stack up in front, and once a week or so a guy would come pick it up. I talked to him a couple times; his name was Doug Payne, and he was a private investigator Dave had hired to look after his affairs. Doug was pretty cool - a very mellow guy. I saw into the back of his van once; there was a periscope rig and a bunch of gear back there. The name of some probably-ficticious winery (Schlumberger?) was painted on the outside.
Crazy Dave got a ton of mail and packages. One time, somebody sent him a machine gun - the box was torn, and it was obvious what was inside. It looked like a WWII-vintage model, tripod-mounted and chain-fed; a big, heavy thing. I later found out that he was (among other things) some kind of small-time arms dealer.
It didn't take long for the gang in the back of the shop to realize that the bulk of Dave's mail was porn (in plain brown wrappers!) and to start pilfering it. The guy subscribed to more porn than I ever knew existed; probably forty magazines a month, or more. All of it was sleaze, too; nothing a nice as Playboy or Penthouse, mainly back-alley rags no one had ever heard of. Hustler was about as classy as it got. Under one of the workbenches at ATC was a stack of porn mags two feet high; it was amazing. I don't know how they got away with it, unless Dave wasn't in a position to complain (being in prison, and all). Maybe the authorities wouldn't let him have porn anyway, so he never knew, or something.
Time passed, and he eventually got out. One of the terms of his probation was that he refrain from hiring teenaged girls, but it was business as usual over there before very long. One, then two, then several of them would be outside in the mornings, washing his car and doing odd jobs, so it didn't surprise anyone when Dave disappeared again. This time, the building went vacant, and the sign was taken down. He'd only been out a few months. I saw something in the local paper about him getting busted again for statutory rape, or molestation, or whatever it was, but there weren't any details. Never saw or heard of him again.
Until one day about fifteen years later, when I was bored, surfing around, and decided to see if the Web knew anything about him. It took me a while to dredge his name out of my memory banks, but it only took Google an instant. I'll just reproduce the best item here:
WAUKESHA, Wis. (AP) -- A Schlitz Brewing heir convicted of sexually assaulting two girls in California, has lost his appeal, paving the way for his victims to lay claim to more than $1.5 million in property he owns in Oconomowoc Lake.
At least two $1 million offers have been made to buy W. David Tallmadge' s lakefront property.
A second parcel owed by Tallmadge that includes commercial frontage on Wisconsin Avenue has had offers of about $500, 000, said Matt Linn, an attorney representing one of the victims.
Interested buyers are waiting for the green light from Waukesha County Circuit Judge Patrick Snyder, who has ruled that proceeds of the sales will go to the two sexual assault victims.
The victims, now ages 10 and 21, sued Tallmadge in California and won a $14.1 million judgment in April 1998, but they have not received any money yet.
Tallmadge' s attorney, Jonathan Smith, convinced Snyder to wait to liquidate Tallmadge' s real estate during Tallmadge' s appeal.
A California jury found Tallmadge, the great-grandson of former Schlitz Brewery President Henry Uihlein, guilty in June 17, 1997, of 15 felony sexual abuse charges.
Tallmadge, now 67, is serving a 265-year sentence in a California prison for sexually abusing two children at his former home there.
Tallmadge has lost his appeals. A California appellate court recently denied his request that his convictions be dismissed because of errors during his trial.
A hearing to address sales issues has been scheduled for Sept. 2.
Even if the parcels are sold for more than their $1.5 million fair market value, the sale will represent only a small fraction of the $14.1 million Tallmadge owes.
Attorneys have said they believe Tallmadge has about $14 million in other assets available in two trusts. But Linn said he did not know whether any money could be tapped from the trusts.
Before the victims can get any money, other creditors are ahead of them, including Waukesha County for real estate taxes Tallmadge owes and a trust that holds a mortgage on one of the parcels.
Two hundred sixty-five years. Wow.
Google (search for "David Tallmadge", in quotes) says that he raped his own 4-year-old daughter. Ho-lee shit. Hope you had fun, you fat fuck.
On a side note, I found out that during the time he was picking up Dave's mail, Doug Payne, the PI, won a million dollars in the California lottery. (I even saw him on a TV commercial for the lottery!) That explains a long vacation he took. Not as long as the vacation Crazy Dave is on, but more fun.
Greetings, programs!
I have a bunch of crap I want to write down, and a lot I want to repost before it gets too late; one place a lot of it is hosted is not long for this world, another has been truncated and much has been already lost.
There are a bunch of weird, disjointed anecdotes from my weird, disjointed experiences to be recounted, and if I figure out how to make a separate "thread", as it were, I'll put down my MechWarrior 2 memoirs. Some of it was put on Portal of Evil News, but it was lost when everything before 1/2007 got deleted there. I never finished it anyway, so I'd like to do that here, rather than there, and finally put the whole bizarre story to bed.
So. I'm not going to publicize this thing, really, 'cause I don't care so much who reads it as that it gets written. I'm going through some hard, strange times which ain't over yet and may not ever be.
I'll probably start the spew tomorrow. I solemnly promise that it won't be any more interesting nor important than anything else put out there on the world weird interwebs. It's not going to be a diary, at least I hope not, but rather a collection of curiosities guaranteed not to appeal to anyone in particular, but that I hope will be occasionally interesting to some, sometimes. If it's coherence you're after, you are bound to be sorely disappointed.
There are a bunch of weird, disjointed anecdotes from my weird, disjointed experiences to be recounted, and if I figure out how to make a separate "thread", as it were, I'll put down my MechWarrior 2 memoirs. Some of it was put on Portal of Evil News, but it was lost when everything before 1/2007 got deleted there. I never finished it anyway, so I'd like to do that here, rather than there, and finally put the whole bizarre story to bed.
So. I'm not going to publicize this thing, really, 'cause I don't care so much who reads it as that it gets written. I'm going through some hard, strange times which ain't over yet and may not ever be.
I'll probably start the spew tomorrow. I solemnly promise that it won't be any more interesting nor important than anything else put out there on the world weird interwebs. It's not going to be a diary, at least I hope not, but rather a collection of curiosities guaranteed not to appeal to anyone in particular, but that I hope will be occasionally interesting to some, sometimes. If it's coherence you're after, you are bound to be sorely disappointed.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
