Give him an inch, he'll take a foot...

Ahh…Poisson D’Avril
So as background, just over a week ago, my wonderful cousin Robin walked to Valley Faire with Cera and I from our house, which would have been nice, except she’s a New Yorker, and turned a leisurely afternoon stroll into a powerwalk.
In sandals.
So my left foot has been sore since then.
Diving this past weekend didn’t help it one bit.
Which brings me to today.
Sitting in Shakespeare in Performance class, talking with my classmates, I realized that it was April 1, and realized that – since I had forgotten – it was a pretty damn good chance Cera had too.
So instead of telling her I had “a surprise” for her and then picking up a bag of dog food on the way home – as I had originally intended – I decided that I was going to tell her I had broken my foot.
Why my foot?












Well, I had been bitching like a little girl already about it, so the seed was planted, and what’s more random than that? I could have faked the pregnancy, or pretended her car had been towed, or pretended her aunt had died, but those have all been done before.
So by coincidence, I ran into Cera on campus just before noon, and – realizing that she didn’t see me walk up to her – I told her that I had hobbled, and that – after stepping on a stair wrong – I think my foot was really broken, and that I would be hobbling or hopping to the health center to get it X-Rayed.
--NOTE: not even sure if they do that, but I do have the insurance, so if they do, I could have—
So I hobbled off, or at least until I could see that she wasn’t looking, then I walked normally.
When I picked her up, I told her I had good news and bad news and bad news, the bad news and bad news being that I had broken my foot (in “the bone above my arch”) and that, unfortunately, due to a problem with medical records, they wouldn’t be able to cast it.
I even told her that the doctor at the health center (not even sure if there are actual doctors there) told me that usually broken bones like this are followed by low-level nausea, which I had also been complaining about for several days. Score one for outside info points!
Unbeknownst to me, but beknownst to my Horse AIDS-expert friend Susan, sometimes they don’t put a cast on immediately, to let swelling subside.
So Cera – easily the most loving, caring woman in the world – went into motherly mode, and helped me limp/hop/hobble into the house, helped me take off my shoe – complete with mock pain when she obeyed by whimper to “just yank the shoe off, quick, go go AHHH!!!”
She got me my homework, she rolled up a towel to elevate my foot and made me dinner. She even felt really bad when she bumped my foot as she walked by, all the while letting me watch Terminator III: Rise of the Machines, something she’d never let me do otherwise.
I even had her help me skipopble back to my car to go to school, and then had Susan text message her offering crutches, but she never checked her phone.
I sat through class, headed home (to the sounds of the Sharks winning) and wrote “April Fools !!” on my foot in black Sharpie before hopibblipping back into the house and into our bedroom, with Cera offering to pamper me more.
I told her to come see “something gross” and look at my foot, and when she did, with a look of care in her eye, she read the message.
She ended up beating me with a pillow in retaliation, and I have to take her to dinner this week, but she admits it was AWESOME.

THIS...IS....SPARTA(n territory)!!!

Well, seeing as how I’m no longer writing everyday for work, I’ve found myself wanting to write for fun again (at least for my enjoyment, if not for the enjoyment of others) so I’m hopefully going to start writing more.
That being said, I’m 4 days into my second round of college education, and while I could go on and on about people I’ve seen and met, I’ll reduce it to a collection of thoughts, which is pretty much how my days go by as I walk around campus.

Short booty shorts in the middle of winter…check.
Knee-high striped athletic socks to match the booty shorts…check
…under a pair of bring pink Crocs…give my fucking checks back

Unlike the mall, where I’m constantly assaulted with metrosexuals who want to spray me with something from a tube meant to make me more attractive, I’m somehow able to walk through the quad completely unharassed by the multitude of frats out trawling.
What, sure my hair is thinning a bit, but don’t I look like the kind of guy just aching to be saddled with some homoerotic nickname like “Hot Rod” or “Rocket” and power-slam blackberry brandy until my eyes explode?

On the topic of frats, one of them has a midget as their main spokesman, he’s out in the quad passing out buttons and inviting people to BBQs. No lie, I almost walked into the little bastard as I looked up to get raindrops on my tongue yesterday. He needs one of those little flags I had on my bike as a kid so people in trucks could see me as I rode past their driveway.

Listen you pompous fuck, I don’t care that you think your Liberal Arts/Art double major is the shit’s tits, you don’t need to “reveal” to us the secret that most mainstream literature is dumbed down for the masses, you don’t need to ask all of us to re-spell the email address we put on the sheet because you can’t tell the difference between a 1 (written just like that, with the little hat and the base) and an L, although no one in their right fucking mind writes their lowercase l in the same way my computer just did. When you get out of this class and school (and – for fucks sake – shave that stupid beard you’re attempting to grow, you look like a near-sighted scrotum).

There’s a “Listening Corner,” in the Student Union, where a kind old lady sits just about all day, and from what I can tell, she’s just there to listen to students. I think I may have to start sitting down and (a) making up problems or (b) telling very long, very drawn out jokes.

Speaking of jokes, today in my Shakespeare and Performance class, I read Sonnet #19 in what was supposed to be an Australian accent in honor of Heath Ledger (and his Shakespearean body of work – 10 Things I Hate About You) but ended up sounded very snooty and very English, bugger…

To the overly-PC Ethnicity in American Literature class: First of all, saying “American by immigration” is not a point of pride or a sensitive statement, it’s a fucking redundancy. On a long enough timeline, we’re ALL Americans by immigration, even the “Native” Americans who came to this continent from what is now Asia. And although I agree that if I see a black guy, I can’t assume he was born and raised in Africa, only brought over a week ago, but I can damn-well assume that SOMEWHERE in his lineage, SOMEONE was from Africa, because people with dark skin and those features originated there. Just as I can assume that someone who looks Asian (unless they’re Bjork) is from SOMEWHERE in Asia. That’s not a value judgment, its not a statement of “they should just be that thing, or just identify that way,” it’s a statement of genetic fact.

Does chocolate feel pain?

Hot damn it’s been a long time since I wrote on this thing. Not that I haven’t been out pestering strangers, I just haven’t been writing about it.

Two weeks ago, I was asked by my editor to interview Khaled Hosseini, the Afghanistan-born author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Hosseini gained prominence for being the first best-selling Afghan writer in the Western world, having put his book out during a time when most Americans thought Afghan meant either “footrest” or “crazy terrorist.”
Both books are sold in Starbucks, and Kite Runner is now a movie that spawned outrage in Afghanistan over the sodomizing of a young boy in one portion of the movie.
So I had to interview the guy for the Examiner’s 3-Minute Interview, a section that takes 30 minutes to interview for, 20 minutes to right and about 30 seconds to read. And we call it the 3-Minute Interview.
I had to keep them generic because I haven’t read the book, despite the fact that the Hosseini and I are both Independence High School graduates. So I led with…
“I read in news reports that you recently invited current Independence students to a screening of Kite Runner, what was it like being able to do that for your old school?”
“I did what?”
“I read that you had given a screening of Kite Runner to IHS students?”
“Not that I know of…”
“Oh, nevermind then…”
Strike one

Also, interesting note, my computer kept changing IHS to HIS (see, tried to do it there again), as if I were writing about Jesus. Screw him, his birthday was yesterday, today he’s just another schmuck on a stick.

I followed with some (safer) questions about working with screenwriters, seeing your product on the big screen, blah blah blah.
Then I asked my first funny question.
“The screenwriter who wrote Kite Runner, David Benioff, also wrote Troy and is working on the Wolverine spin-off, were you ever intimidated that your story didn’t involve warriors in leather?”
“Was I intimidated or was David?”
“No, like, did you ever want to add a super-warrior in leather to your story to match the others?”
“No, he didn’t say I needed to really add anything…”
“No, its like, a joke, you know, cause he writes such varied things?”
“Oh, I guess I don’t get it…”
Strike 2

We kept talking for a bit, and for some reason, I kept coming back to David Benioff. And – come to think of it – I’ve read 25th Hour, seen it, seen Troy, plan to see Wolverine. I should have been interviewing David Benioff.
I had one funny question left, hoping to end on a high note, when on my 2nd to last question, I hear him turn (he had literally just arrived home from traveling, and his family was going crazy) to what I assume is a child and say “You’re what fell out? Your TOOTH fell out?! Oh, hold on…”
Almost Strike 3, but I manage to foul it off and get another shot.
“Ok, so I’ll let you go, I have just one last question. If you could be any kind of breakfast pastry, what kind of breakfast pastry would you chose to be?”
“Breakfast pastry?”
Here comes the pitch, it looks like another fastball, Jason has been missing those today…
“Yeah, any sort of breakfast pastry, and why?”
He stands stoic in the batter’s box, unflinching as what is likely strike 3 barrels in on him…
“Oh, I’d be a pain au chocolate, the French chocolate croissant (which I know because I took French, have been to France, and live with a chocoholic) because I had one of those guys everyday as I walked to school in Paris, and they’re the best in the world!”
And he hits it out of the park ladies and gentlemen!! Not only was the hit funny, but it was topical, and added information about the author once living in France! Heft him on your shoulders boys, he came through in the clutch.

Several college friends were emailed links to the story and laughed. You see, in Journalism 60, Dr. Nordstrom, in one of the first days of class, was talking about interviewing, and he said “ask me a question, anything, someone…” and my hand shot up. He pointed, likely expecting a stupid question from a beginning reporter. He got a stupid question, but a intentionally stupid question.
And the breakfast pastry question was born…

PUNishing WordPlay

What happens on a Friday when reporters are bored...
As background, I wrote about an attack by bees at a nearby school

Adam Martin: Dude, I hate you
Jason : I love you too
Adam Martin: I am soooooooooooo jealous
Jason : of what?
Adam Martin: bee attack?
Adam Martin: ARe you kidding me?
Jason : hahaha
Adam Martin: That's the best story ever
Jason : I know, I hear it has good buzz
Adam Martin: oh, no you didn't
Adam Martin: That one really stung
Jason : did I just bogart your overly-setup punchline?
Adam Martin: no prob, honey, I've got tons
Jason : bahdumpdump
Jason : you didnt happen to read our edition today did you? the smoking ordinance story?
Adam Martin: no
Jason : check out the lede
Jason : For almost six months, Belmont's efforts to curb secondhand smoke exposure in town have hung like a cloud over the city, sparking international discussion, claims of incendiary human rights violations and countless smoking puns.
Adam Martin: I've been in the car until just now
Adam Martin: oh, snap!
Adam Martin: Hat's off to you, sir
Adam Martin: You're really on fire
Jason : thank you, I was like "is this too tongue-in-cheek for us?"
Jason : but apparently not
Adam Martin: no, perfect. Smokin, even
Jason Goldman-Hall: I thought so
Adam Martin: Yeah, you lit that one up
Jason : stop stop, you're just blowing smoke up my ass now
Adam Martin: DAAAAANNNNNGGGG
Jason : its like word-geek ping-pong
Adam Martin: totally
Jason : part scrabble, part wizard's duel
Adam Martin: All guaranteed to never get you laid
Jason : funny too, because it just so happens my gf is on a roadtrip right now.. so you're kind of right
Adam Martin: ha!
Adam Martin: see?
Adam Martin: Some night you two were probably eating dessert and you were all, "that's the way the cookie crumbles," and she was like, "oh, guess what, I've got a road trip to go on right now."

Are you calling my squinty?

Of course, all this happens when I’m shopping alone (as opposed to shopping with the one-woman “she broke it, I bought it” wonder that is Cera).
I went to Safeway to get some milk, fruit, bread (and assorted other things straight off the 3rd grade grammar class shopping list) and as I shopped, I discovered that 12 packs of coke were on sale, for buy 2 get 2 free! So I bought 2 of both coke and diet coke. Fuck Coke Zero, I hear that stuff is made with mongoose hair and old jugs of windex (which yes, comes in jugs).
So as I went to check out, mind you, in the express line, 1 item over the 15 item express limit, there were to young Asian children in front of me, bumping 2 watermelons against one another on the rubber conveyor belt, throwing packets of gum at each other and generally carrying on like mongeese (its been a riki tiki tavi kinda night…).
The woman working the counter turned to me, and in a very disgusted tone – as I put my cereal up to pay for – “Excuse me sir, are these your children?”
I ended up saying “umm… no ma’am,” but this is what ran through my head, in no particular order.
1) Yes, did you like me in Se7en?
2) I was about to ask you the same thing, African-American woman.
3) Yes, would you like me to hit them?
4) No, pets…
5) Yes, they have their mother’s eyes
6) and hair
7) and general body shape
8) and ethnic background
9) and clothing style…

She later apologized for accusing me of being their parent (because they were rowdy, not – I don’t think – because they were asian) and sold me my goods, which I saved nearly $20 thanks to the red card of courage.

Be fooled...

I find it sad that no matter how many rocks I ever do or don't "got," I will never be (never be) Jason from the block...

I'll take Door # 2!

Around 3 yesterday, my coworker was running downstairs (or actually walking, I dont think she was hungry enough to justify running in her weird shoes) to get lunch, and I needed a soda, so I followed.
As I stepped out of the office, a few paces behind her, I saw her hopping on the elevator to head down to the lobby, so I called out "Hold the Door!"
Oddly enough, the kind Asian man walking into the single-person (as in "no stall," "one toilet," "if there are two people inside, one of them is seeing parts that ain't his") held the door to the bathroom for me, even giving me a "here you go sir!" look.
As I scooted past him, creeped out, I politely told him "Whoa, yeah, not THAT door," and hopped in the elevator infinitely more confused about bathroom etiquette than I had been just minutes earlier.
Part of me wonders if I should have just gone into the bathroom, I mean, he was holding the door for me...