Why I Moved to LA

Most people come to Los Angeles to act. I didn’t. I came here to get off heroin.

Needless to say, this fact makes for awkward moments in conversation when people ask me why I moved here. I have lived in Los Angeles for seven years and I still don’t quite know how to answer that question.

Sure, I could lie and say that I came here to be an actor. I mean, after I got off heroin that’s what I ended up doing. I became an actor, a writer and a comedian. No one would blame me if I just left the whole heroin part out of the equation. But for some reason I just can’t seem to let the words “I came here to act” come out of my mouth. In fact, I would rather say, “I’m a heroin addict,” than say “I’m an actor.”

I think at some point during my childhood, the seed must have been planted in my head that acting was a fine hobby, but not an acceptable life goal. Although, apparently the seed about not doing heroin was left in its package, because my say no to drugs tree never grew, while my don’t be an actor tree flourished.

Then there is the fact that everyone and their sister, and their sister’s kid, is an actor in this town, so being an actor just doesn’t seem so special. Whereas, how many ex-junkies can you honestly say that you know?

[Ed. note: All the ex-junkies I know are writers for this site.]

I know it’s not really the sort of thing you are supposed to take pride in and it’s a lot to digest for someone you’ve just met. So I have found myself saying things like “I moved here for the weather,” but sunshine just seems so lame in comparison to hard-core heroin abuse.

Lately my reaction has been to get embarrassed and say, “Oh, it’s a long story.” However, this answer only seems to solicit guesses. “Did you move here for a boyfriend?” is a common one. “No…” I say, dangling the ellipsis like a carrot.

I haven’t used heroin in seven years though, so I guess you can say that my LA dream has come true. How many people can really say that?

Not That Good At It

Even though my crappy office job is so menial that for most of my waking hours I basically exist as an answering machine that occasionally needs to get up and piss, I still manage to somehow be pretty horrible at it.

This hit me during one of the more physically undignified poses that I’m routinely forced to strike during a typical workday. I was squatting like an ape over a large filing cabinet with a clutch of time clock reports, lunch violations, vacation request forms, the patchwork quilt of modern office tedium, when suddenly I became aware that I was having to mentally sing the alphabet song to myself between every shuffle and file.

The file that I was holding began with an “L”. I had to start the song right from the top, at “A”.

Then, at some point in the “F” neighborhood, I got lost. I had to start over. I wish I were making this up.

I spend at least a quarter of the day, every day, on this activity. You’d think that after that kind of grinding repetition I would be able to work that cabinet with the sightless finesse of Stevie Wonder doing a standing #1 in a public bathroom stall. No. They might as well hire a six-year-old to do it the way I do. At least the song would be fresher in his memory.

Slinking back to my desk, I took stock of all the other mundane facets of the job that I exhibit a total lack of aptitude for. I drop messages, I forget supply re-orders. I stick a payroll stub in the copier, the phone rings, and some unlucky fuck doesn’t get his check that week. After 15 minutes of frantic searching five days later, the stub is discovered still in the copier. I once made this Russian delivery guy so late picking up a package from us that his Turkish dispatcher cut off one of his thumbs.

Back before I had this kind of job, when I was steadily failing to get one in interview after interview, I used to piss and moan about how unfair it was that I kept getting passed up for bitches who are so bubbly it’s contributing to global warming. Now I finally get that they’re exactly the candidates you’d want for this type of shit . They spent all of high school training for this job just by remembering friends’ birthdays and talking on the telephone.

My skill-building regimen in high school was basically alternating bouts of video games and manually induced orgasms. I’m not likely to find a market for those skills anywhere, not unless I’m willing to shave my balls and move to Thailand.

I guess for now I’ll just keep showing up, and leave my diploma right where it is: on my bathroom wall just above the toilet.

I Mistook an Actual Blazing Inferno for a Movie Shoot

As I was getting off the 101 at Vine last week, I saw that the street had been completely blocked off and that there were about 10 fire trucks shooting hoses at a building on the west side of the street. I was enraged.

There are constantly street closures in this part of Hollywood for movie premieres and film shoots, so I naturally assumed this debacle was an inconsiderate production unit shooting an action sequence.

I mean, how can you just shut down one of the biggest intersections in the country during morning rush hour? Does ANYONE give a flying fuck about the non-famous citizens of this town anymore?

I cursed these douches for not properly announcing the street closures and got all pissed off that I was 15 minutes late to work. I even went out of my way to take a picture with my phone so I could complain to all my co-workers about how these studios never take the common man into account when shutting down major commuter traffic. And all this in the name of a more convenient shooting schedule? Fuck these guys.

It wasn't until I flipped on the news an hour later that I realized what I'd seen was not a shoot for the new Will Smith vehicle, but in fact a Hollywood historical monument, the old building that houses the Basque nightclub, burning to the ground.

These Cardboard Boxes Smell Like Failure

I’m stacking furniture and re-arranging boxes of old scripts and movie posters in a place so depressing I want to forget that I’m nearly 30 and, at one time, had a promising career and a sense of dignity.

Not only am I in the fucking basement of a development company doing manual labor for free, I’m in a mouse-infested storage area literally called, “The Cage,” where the Important Producer keeps his broken Bowflex and old promotional material featuring Tom Cruise with hair extensions.

It’s a fitting example of the profound indignity of trying to weasel your way into a Hollywood career from the bottom, a degrading process that encourages you to wallow in the sleaze under the idiotic hope that somehow, one day, an Important Producer will see your work and say something like, “Man that guy can re-arrange moldy boxes of outdated crew lists, I should hire him to write a major summer blockbuster.”

The retarded logic only becomes more stark when you are in a fetid basement enclosure surrounded by chain-link fence, re-piling crates of someone’s long-lost copies of “Once and Again” scripts and inhaling mouse feces. With every box I stack I get more and more fucking furious at Hollywood in general, and the assholes who told me to do this job specifically. Internships, we have been told, are one way to get a hand into the Teflon vault of Big Entertainment, but what they don’t say is that there’s no way that’s going to happen by doing chores you wouldn’t perform as a favor to your paralytic father.

On top of all that, there’s a distinct, rancid odor coming from all these boxes, and it smells like one specific thing: Failure.

I Would Do Anything for Love…But No Way In Hell Can I Do That

I met my ex-boyfriend at an audition for this horror short about a haunted movie theater that kills people by (among other ways) boiling them in popcorn butter. He was the writer, and I noticed him immediately because he was poster-boy Caucasian, and that kind of blond perfection just gets me off.

So we started dating and things were going well except for…my ex-boyfriend wasn’t getting what he needed from me sexually. And I struggled with that. This had never been an issue previously and I was doing what I felt I could.

I was fucking him AND sucking his cock. A LOT.

That’s when he offered to make me a porn tape off all his favorite porn moments. I was into it: this was going to be sexy. Being somewhat of an editor, he’d pulled all of his favorite porn clips off various internet sites but was unable to get the appropriate sound. So he set the tape to a song: Meatloaf’s “I Would Do Anything for Love.”

The tape was filled with girls sucking cock, girls getting fucked from behind, girls with boobs bouncing all around. One thing all the clips had in common: each of the girls was Latina. Not a Caucasian in the bunch. The most telling clip was probably the segment where a Latina “babysitter” took a bib and a rattle from a full grown-man, and then had him sit on HER lap while they acrobatically fucked in this oversized high-chair.

Suddenly the pieces began to fall in place. Things like his obsession with the Spanish language. I mean he doesn’t SPEAK Spanish, but he is obsessed with those Rosetta Stone Spanish commercials AND he loves the taco truck next to Von's in Echo Park (who doesn’t?), but I also remember that he’d told me he spent a lot of time with his housekeeper Maria growing up. Fetishes get started early and in a flash I was pretty clear on what I’d have to do to get him off sexually: be reincarnated Latina.

That’d have to wait for another lifetime.

Visitor Info Flash Drive Disappears at San Quentin

I have no connections in Hollywood. I don't know the chick at the Thai massage parlor who beats off Brett Ratner. I do have connections that can get me into San Quentin with the assurance that I can leave when I want to, which tends to be the right way to see a prison. So I took a field trip to the maximum security penitentiary...

San Quentin is a level 4 prison which really means that your chances of getting shanked are 4 out of 4. I recognized the guard at the main gate as the guy who told Metallica that there's a no hostage policy in their bullshit St. Anger video. I figured if a bitch like Lars can do it, so can I. No one actually tells you about the hostage policy. You have to read a sign to learn that.

I was among a small number of non-prisoners who sat in on an experimental therapy session. Free people seeing other free people in a maximum security prison is weirder than being the only white guy at a Sista Souljah concert.

All were invited to attend unless they were on death row or in the hole. We sat with the prisoners in a large misshapen circle. In fact, we were tightly packed because 60 inmates, 45 of whom were down for murder, showed up. Being seated knee-to-knee with convicted murderers in a prison rec room with no guards and no direct line line-of-sight with the nearest guard tower is a bit disconcerting.

The session ran for 5 hours, and I grew fond of the place. During breaks I chatted with some inmates. In the fountain opposite death row some ducks landed and playfully splashed one another. I almost said, "Now this is the place for me!" The inmates were nicer than my co-workers and twice as polite as the fuck-asses driving on Sunset.

I left eager to return because I didn't leave with a weaponized toothbrush protruding from my neck. I spoke affectionately of the experience not knowing that the personal info I submitted for the security clearance was on a flash drive secreted in an inmate's ass, on its way to the street.

Commercial Directors are a Pain in the Ass

It’s true, they are.

I spent over two years working in production companies where my chief objective was to help the director reps get these butt-wads work. As an aspiring director myself, this is a lot like wanting to race cars and having to give the drivers enemas instead.

Back in the early to mid-nineties anyone who had a video camera and a possie of idiot skater friends that could do a kick-flip got signed to shoot commercials, music videos (when this was still a viable occupation), and films. Thus began the fortunate careers of Spike Jonze, Mike Mills and every other tool who had any connection whatsoever to the Coppolas.

Unfortunately for me, that time has passed. Aspiring directors with reels that are slicker’n shit must content themselves with the grunt work of the dying commercial industry as we know it.

Most commercial directors who make a living at it have been on the job for the past 10 years; some of them over 20. A general rule applies to these people: the longer they sit in the director’s chair, the more incompetent and entitled they become. They know as much about directing as the security guard at the mall knows about DNA analysis.

One of the directors at a company I worked for had issues, as so many of them do. He was prone to flashing his favorite two guys in production (as well as, on occasion, the entire office) his dick, balls and ass. No one knew from whence he cultivated these proclivities, though prolonged exposure to Greek life in college was the suspected environmental culprit. Anyway, one day he came in and, without further ado, dropped his drawers, deposited a phat load into theses guys’ waste paper basket, pulled up his pants (without wiping!), politely handed them his spoils and went about his day.

It wasn’t until jokes about defecation of character circulated throughout the building that he was deemed a risky liability and let go.

The moral of the story? Don’t put up with directors’ shit unless you want it in your goddamned lap.

The Lorenzo Lamas Stare Down

The day I became a man.

For those of you who don’t know who Lorenzo Lamas is, he broke into the industry as the cougar spank bank for a soap opera called Falcon’s Crest, which started before I was born and cancelled just in time for me not to acknowledge its existence. His most famous role was Reno Raines on the “crime drama” Renegade which you probably remember watching on the USA network when you stayed home sick from middle school. He’s tried reviving his career as an asshole on Are You Hot? pointing out cellulite with a laser pointer but for the most part he was out of my life. That is, until I saw him at Souplantation in Brentwood.

I was with my girlfriend and one of her friends she met at school in Illinois. I was cramming ranch dressing soaked iceberg lettuce and clam chowder in my mouth like Kim Kardashian on a dick bender (read: the weekend), until a dark figure caught the corner of my eye. There he was: Lorenzo Lamas no more than 50 feet away from me. Clad in all black and standing with his arms crossed, scanning the room for potential threats. I suspect he was watching over his harem of ridiculously hot daughters.

I shrugged it off and continued to scarf like a Jewish refugee on V-E Day until my girlfriend’s friend took notice and started to gush for 15 minutes about how she used to love Renegade. She asked if it would be appropriate to go up and ask him for his autograph. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and blurted out louder than I expected, “Who the fuck cares if it’s appropriate? It’s Lorenzo fucking Lamas.”

Uh Oh.

I knew he must have heard me. I was regretting looking up until I thought to myself, “Hey, listen to your own advice. Who the fuck cares? It’s Lorenzo Lamas.”

He was staring directly into my soul like St. Peter himself.

My first inclination was to look away, but no. Fuck that guy. Even if I never make it big, I’m still better than a soap opera star. So I stared back with the intensity of a coked out Robert Downey Jr. on the set of Less Than Zero. Our eyes were locked into a stare down the likes Souplantation has never and will never see again. It was picturesque, as time seemed to slow to a crawl and a bead of sweat dripped down my cheek like we were two gunslingers dueling at dawn. We were both completely motionless and speechless for what seemed like hours, but was only seconds.

Then all of a sudden, his youngest daughter came out of nowhere and blindsided him with a hug to the leg. He immediately tried to regain his dogging foothold, but the battle was lost and my eyes now silently gleamed with victory. He nodded ever so slightly, acknowledging my fortitude. We both eventually left the epic battleground that is The Souplantation, both having a little bit more respect for each other.

Also, I’m pretty sure I’m entitled to one of his daughters. Hopefully one birthed by Debbie Gibson.

Redundant

Old People Have a Social Obligation to Not Publicly Discuss Sexual Affairs

It's just plain gross, Barbara Walters.

After three decades of keeping mum, Barbara Walters has revealed that she had an affair with married U.S. Senator Edward Brooke, whom she remembers as "exciting" and "brilliant." I understand old people are people too, and that one day I'll be old, and that every old person was once my age, blah blah blah. But c'mon, keep this stuff to yourself, old people.

It's an issue of courtesy. No young person can hear an old person talk about sex without having to forcefully fight off visions of such a horrendous act. I personally won't be able to watch a Barbara Walters Special again without envisioning what an 80 year old woman's naked, gyrating ass looks like.

I know she wasn't even old when she was doin' the nasty with that senator dude. But the fact that the IDEA of a sexually active Barbara Walters has crossed my mind is upsetting enough. I mean... what does that even look like? And you know she's a freak dude. Just looking at her I can tell she's all about the dirty talk. You know I'm right.

Oh God, I'm thinking about it now. Alright, c'mon Johnny, focus. Just take your mind off Barbara Walters' nude figure... her liver-spotted prune-like skin, her breasts like deflated party balloons a week after the fact, her face and lips craggy beyond belief, hands like those of Skeletor himself. She probably wears her glasses while she's gettin' down because she's dignified like that. Ugh, I bet she even likes it when you put your...

I just threw up on my keyboard.

Florida to Ban Truck Nutz

I lived in Florida for a few years before moving here to Los Angeles, and it seems like I escaped just in time. The Florida legislature is cracking down on the most sacred form of self expression: Fake testicles you can hang on your trailer hitch.

They are called Truck Nutz. Well, that’s slightly inaccurate. There are lots of brands, but Truck Nutz somehow got their name to represent an entire industry. They’re like the Kleenex of fake testicles. I don’t know Truck Nutz’ marketing team pulled if off, when Bumper Nuts have the added feature of uneven testicle length, and Bulls Balls feature sturdier construction and can come in a camo pattern.

Whatever the name, the fascists in the Florida Legislature want to ban them, forcing truck owners to drive around in castrated, humiliated trucks. Barely trucks at all. They say they have to do this because Truck Nutz look indecent. You know what’s really indecent? Taking away our right to express yourself. With nuts.

Thankfully, here in the Golden Sate, our politicians know better. We aren’t going to freak out when we spot a plastic scroat or two dangling off the back of a Hummer.

“But what about the Children?” you might ask if you were a whiney bitch, “Shouldn’t we protect them from the sight of dangly rubber genitalia?”

Well I’m no psychologist, but I bet seeing that dangly rubber genitalia is good for kids for some reason. Probably for learning

California is already a leader in Environmental issues. Why not take the lead on genital-related freedom of speech issues? Not only should we embrace the freedom to hang our Truck Nutz where we please, we should make it a point of pride.

Hell, put a pair of Truck Nutz your Prius. Let people know that not only can you drive in the carpool lane, you’re more of a man when you’re doing it.

Put a pair on your Vespa. On your rollerblades.

But why stop there? Why not just get the West Hollywood Fire Department to design their hoses so they look like massive dicks? Now there’s a cause we can all get behind.

[Apparently, the resolution didn't pass because one of the Senators had Truck Nutz himself. Freedom wins again!]