Stories that sucked at the time but are now funny when I tell them.

I don't write a lot because I only want to post entertaining stories. Sure, I could sign on every day and tell you I bought Aquafresh at the dollar store or that after running my ass sweat turned the white to pink on my checkered boxers, but I'd rather hold off on that stuff and only record moments and anecdotes that mean something. In the words of the Huckabee's girl, "It's not quantity not quality!"

With that said, there is a new Walgreens in North Hollywood that I will never be going to again. On Friday, they called me to tell me that they were out of my prescription and the soonest I could get it would be Monday. Sure sure, that's fine. I can wait. Patience is a virtue, you know, and since I'm not modest, honest, friendly, or good looking, the only way I can get people to like me is if I really hold my fucking horses. So I'm-a gon' wait till Monday. No biggie. Now, Monday after work, I head right over to the CBS Radford lot because Virginia Madsen is meeting with all of the Semester in LA students from 2007 and giving us a little lecture and Q&A time. Pretty cool, huh? She was very nice, totally down to earth, and somewhat inspiring. I use the word "somewhat" because after an entire five-week intensive course of people saying "you can do what you put your mind to! Don't give up! Stay true to yourself and good things will happen!" the whole spiel starts to lose its luster, even if the person saying it did star in "Firewall" with Harrison Ford. All the same, Virginia was very cool. And she looked great.

*Small side note before getting back to the Walgreens story. Consider this a tangent of a tangent, if you will. I was unsure of using the word "luster" and so I was going to check a thesaurus and see if I could find something better, but Stephen King says that any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. Remember that.

Monday night's event doesn't bring about any concern, since it ends at nine and the Walgreens website clearly states that their pharmacy closes at ten. I get there at 9:05, and guess what? Closed. Closedy closed closed closed. I'm pretty perturbed about this. On any other day I would have shrugged, taken a chocolate tootsie pop out of my car's CD holder and sang along to "Oil and Water" by Incubus on the way home, but not this day. You see, Monday morning started off with me taking over two hours to get to work, due to a horrible accident on the 101. Not only was the 101 a parking lot, but every street within two miles was just as bad. I was still walking distance from my apartment 45 minutes after leaving. As I tried to figure out who to bother with my patented "I'm stuck in traffic, entertain me" phone calls, I thought to myself how I really hoped that this terrible morning was not going to be an indicator of the rest of my day. Ohhh, but it was. When I finally got in, I had to go pick up a cake from some dog bakery in Pasadena for our accountant's dog's 1st birthday party, as well as cupcakes for the people to eat. I go get the cake, and stop at PetCo for some birthday presents for Rambo, and then head up the street to the cupcake bakery. Turns out the cupcake bakery only takes Visa and Mastercard. The corporate card we use is American Express. I had to go all the way back to the office, trade the card for petty cash, and go all the way back out to Pasadena. For cupcakes. For a dog's birthday party. The rest of my day was filled with similar debacles that I don't feel like getting into on account of I have a lot more stuff to cover and I still haven't said why I hate this Walgreens.

I hate this Walgreens because when I returned the next morning, half of the parking lot was being taken up by a giant tent, podium, and buffet tables. This was the grand opening ceremony. Are you fucking kidding me?! A grand opening for a Walgreens?! What the fuck is there to celebrate? That this is the sixth one in a two mile radius? Who the fuck needs to speak? Who would even attend this? Am I really going to have to put off getting my prescription a third time because there is nowhere to park due to an OPENING DAY CEREMONY FOR A FUCKING WALGREENS? And the store was open the night before! It wasn't even opening day! From now on, I only shop at pharmacies that don't celebrate.

In case you were wondering, I double parked and ran in. Due to my job, double parking has become second nature. Sometimes I have to deliver something to a place with no lot and nothing available on the street. When that happens, I think that it is my God-given right to park wherever I need to in order to get my job done. As if the police or meter maids are going to accept Manifest Destiny as an acceptable excuse and let me go without a ticket.

Today my boss asked if I wanted to go on a run to Venice to pick up some props for one of our shows. I didn't mine. My Focus gets such good mileage that when they reimburse me for gas money, I actually make a decent profit, so I never turn down a run, especially if it's going to kill a lot of time. A little while later, she receives an email with my instructions. I will now repeat to you exactly what I was told to do in order to procure the props, which were old vinyl records.

"...his place is unlocked. you have to jump the fence via the alley. The alley is behind the house."

So, yeah. I'm basically going to this guys house, jumping a fence and walking right inside. Sounds crazy, right? That's not even the half of it. A few things that they could have mentioned before sending me off to break and enter...

-The guy whose place I'm breaking into? It's not even his property. He rents the guest house. That means I'm climbing into some stranger's yard. This makes me slightly uncomfortable.
-The fence I'm supposed to climb is not some hip-length chain link fence that you can easily jump over. It is taller than me and although it is still chain link, it has wooden boards up against it. These boards were probably attached in order to keep people from seeing into their yard...or...I dunno....CLIMBING?
-I laugh it off and decide to just go for it and climb the damn 7 foot tall fence into a complete strangers back yard. I enter this guys house and find the vinyls. Three tall stacks of them. Now, how the HELL am I supposed to get 100 records over this fence? I ended up sliding them (two by two) through the small crack between the (locked) gate and the fence. It was not ideal. When I got them all through and climbed to the other side, I had to go through and put them all back together into piles.

I finally get back to the office with all of these stupid vinyls, and the guy who was supposed to take them to Ventura has already left.

I wasn't pissed though. It was fun.