Taxes
 My colleague Wayne and I were lamenting what it's like to be independent contractors around tax time. I said that taxes are difficult for me because I have to report income from about 20 different sources.
"All my friends have 9-to-5 jobs," he said, "and they're all happy about the refund they're going to get."
"I have a friend who's buying a plasma TV with her refund," I said.
"I'm going to have to sell my plasma," he said.
 I created a short film for a production of suicide playwright Sarah Kane's "4:48 Psychosis" for Theatre of NOTE in Hollywood.
The transformative power of Art which inhabited me in the hours of this film's creation is still so present in me, so visceral, that I'd appreciate your not blogging about it, or telling anyone.
Words cannot express my brilliance in the realms of music and imagery, so I will leave it to History.
View it here.
Master of the Unwashable
 Because I am an industrial-strength person, I recently acquired a weapons-grade washing machine.
The device has an interesting pedigree.
It once belonged to Siegfried and Roy before the latter was savaged by a white tiger. While this washing machine is very good with colors, apparently it is not good separating whites from Roy.
Our pal Robyn, a costume designer for cats and Christians as well as Siegfried and Roy, parted with it. I also married Robyn at one time.
Did you know that the magicians were collectively known as "SARMOTI" - which means "Siegfried and Roy: Masters of the Impossible"?
I will have my name legally changed to MBMOTU. That way I can also appear credible when I reply to Nigerian Internet scams.
 Boy, am I glad I didn't spend that $3500 I had lying around on a new MacBook.
Future Badasses of America
 The following conversation did not happen:
Me: Don't look at me that way. I'm your father.
ACI: How am I looking at you?
Me: Like you're some Peter Frampton-era punk kid with a trust fund and a bad attitude.
ACI: Is that so?
Me: Yes, that's so.
ACI: Whatever.
Me: Fine.
ACI: Good.
Me: Fine.
ACI: I'll eat some more rocks.
Me: You do that.
Camel Claus
 This is Dave. He is a neighbor who is one of the hardest-working Santas in Los Angeles starting as early as October. He keeps the beard and girth throughout the year.
It was sad to see him smoking while he was waiting for the bus. I tried to shield my daughter's eyes but was too late.
"Back in Nazareth, Jesus would normally kick babies and set them on fire," I told her, but it didn't make her feel any better.
"Smells like funk in here."
 Today is my brother Andy's birthday. Click here for a message from Metrolink.
Role conflict
 I don't go out on too many auditions, but I recently got called back for a commercial that would air nationally (conflicts: Cookies). I believe I knocked the audition out of the park, but alas I was not right for the role, and the casting director called to tell me so.
In the same paragraph in which I was informed I'd need to find some other source of a year's worth of health care and car payments he told me his father had died yesterday. I hope I handled the quick transition from Sorry for Myself to Sorry for Him adequately.
Musicale
 I will be performing the improvised comedy Musicale again tonight, this time at the Upright Citizen's Brigade theatre at 5919 Franklin, right across from the Scientology Celebrity Center in case you need an audit or Thetan extraction before the show.
In comparison with some of the other excellent musicians and performers, I am only moderately fantastically talented, so you should have something to eat and drink at that bar next door, browse in the used book store on the other side, get Clear, pat Katie Holmes' non-baby, and enjoy the show.
That theatre, by the way, is the location of the Frank Langella acting class in HBO's awful "Unscripted".
The show starts at 9:30 and costs five bucks.
The Prince of Ides, or: Stopping by Brutus on a Snowy Evening
 Whose corpse this is I think I know
My heart is in the coffin though
A crown we did present him thrice
Ambitionless, the man said "No."
Julius C. sure thought it queer
To die with Pompey's statue near
Holes we counted 42
In racy tunic tight and sheer
He gives the dinner bell a shake
Like Banquo's Ghost at a clambake
Uneasy dead will make such sounds
And noble Brutus'd better quake
The wounds are jagged, dark and deep
But I've revenge I've yet to reap
And with the fishes B. will sleep
And with the fishes B. will sleep
For your edification and moral uplift, here is Antony's funeral oration from Julius Caesar (with many thanks to Sheila Hallissy, sophomore English teacher extraordinaire):
Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones;
So let it be with Caesar. The noble Brutus
Hath told you Caesar was ambitious:
If it were so, it was a grievous fault,
And grievously hath Caesar answer'd it.
Here, under leave of Brutus and the rest--
For Brutus is an honourable man;
So are they all, all honourable men--
Come I to speak in Caesar's funeral.
He was my friend, faithful and just to me:
But Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
He hath brought many captives home to Rome
Whose ransoms did the general coffers fill:
Did this in Caesar seem ambitious?
When that the poor have cried, Caesar hath wept:
Ambition should be made of sterner stuff:
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And Brutus is an honourable man.
You all did see that on the Lupercal
I thrice presented him a kingly crown,
Which he did thrice refuse: was this ambition?
Yet Brutus says he was ambitious;
And, sure, he is an honourable man.
I speak not to disprove what Brutus spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know.
You all did love him once, not without cause:
What cause withholds you then, to mourn for him?
O judgment! thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me;
My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar,
And I must pause till it come back to me.
"I've got a beverage here."
 Last weekend I attended LebowskiFest West, two evenings of events dedicated exclusively to The Big Lebowski.
My level of movie fandom extends to:
1. Going to the LebowskiFest
2. Wanting to have gone to JawsFest (but not making it) on Martha's Vineyard (but writing a musical about it)
3. Asking a San Fernando Valley Congressman where the Martini's New House scene from It's A Wonderful Life was shot.
The first night of LebowskiFest was a concert at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood, and the second night was a bowling event in Torrance or somewhere south. I didn't make the second evening, but one night of fans of anything was enough.
Several bands played, including a takeoff on Autobahn, who were three guys dressed like the album cover in the movie, equipped with large scissors and playing Kraftwerk-style loops while repeating lines from the movie, unsynchronized. The concept was better than the execution but they were pretty funny.
Songs included "Cut off Your Johnson" and "We Believe in Nothing".
Another band was like the B-52s-meets-X with a blond siren frontwoman and a bass player dresssed as Hitler. I liked them a lot. They were called the Neu Tickles ("a force that emerges when people come together & take off their metaphorical pants of imprisonment") and said they were from Germany, but I doubt it. I think I will follow this band.
I ordered some food and drinks and around that time, somewhere in the world or perhaps right there, my credit card number was stolen and about $800 in debits began accruing on my bank account from locations in Moscow. I didn't find this out until the following Monday. I had a good time otherwise.
 One of the interesting parts of the show was the appearance of Jeff Dowd, who was the inspiration for The Dude. He was a little more Hollywood than I would have liked. He did a lot of name dropping. I wondered later if I was just disappointed that he wasn't sympathetic like Jeff Bridges' character or if I would not have liked him anyway. Alas, I think it is Option 2.
Other celebrities in attendance were the guy who played Liam, Jesus' bowling partner, the checkout clerk who accepted Lebowski's check for a buck and change for half and half at Ralph's on September 11, the waitress who counseled Walter to keep his voice down in the "I can get you a toe" scene, and the guy whose new Corvette Walter smashed.
Each said a few words to the audience and each had to deal with some guy in the balcony screaming at them to say "their line".
I am sad to say this, but the geek in me was embarrassed.
Finally, the move started playing at 11:30. Everyone cheered and it was great to see it with 500 people. But I was a little sick so I left early and went to the House of Pies.
 I went to Ensenada for the beginning of Carnaval last weekend. Ensanada is in Baja California, which means a trip south on the 5 through San Diego and Tijuana. I drove down with my compadre Alx and two people he knew from his job, who happened to be Norwegian. It is rare that I am not the whitest person in the room, pigmentally.
I have never driven to Mexico, only flown to Cabo San Lucas, at Baja's tip. So I was looking forward to rolling through the border, guns blazing.
This was my first non-working vacation since September, 2002 when I went up to Big Bear. I didn't know how to act with all the free time. I thought that drinking might help.
It took us two hours to leave Los Angeles on Friday afternoon. We traveled 25 miles in two hours. We got to the border in about six hours (it might take three hours, or less, with no traffic).
Just before we got to the border, we passed through San Ysidro.
San Ysidro was the location of the McDonald's massacre of 1984. There is now no longer a McDonald's where James Huberty opened fire and killed 21 people, but there is one about 100 yards away. I was having a fight with my father that summer and as I left the room he opened up the Lowell Sun and said, "Huberty". I thought he was attributing whatever indignation I was feeling to my pubescence, so I turned around and said, "Senility."
"A Drinking Weekend in Mexico" would not have been on my list of things to do as an adult back in 1984, but I remember reading that article and looking up San Ysidro on a map, thinking there would never be a reason for me to go there. It was odd seeing where that happened.
The road after the border was a big difference from the one that preceded it. There was a big anti-sex tourism billboard in English with a photograph of a dark-skinned child that read "I am not a tourist attraction". Chilling.
 I didn't care to stop in Tijuana, regardless of my respect and admiration for Herb Alpert. It was interesting to be able to see Tijuana on one end of the border and look across the walls and ravines at San Ysidro in the United States.
The highway through Tijuana did not reveal the city in its best light. Just as in California, though, the nicer houses were up in the hills (as opposed to South American cities in which the hills are where the poor live).
We passed through La Fonda, Rosarita Beach, and CantaMar, where there is a palm tree farm (palm trees are not native to the Californias, but CantaMar's developer was never able to sell his young palm trees so there is a forest of them along the side of the road).
Arriving in Ensenada around 11 p.m., we first traveled through the downtown area. One town is very like another when your head's down over your pieces, brother. Our destination was Alx' parents' neighborhood, which looked like certain sections of Los Angeles.
"This place is teeming with Mexicans," I said. I wished I could swap the population of my current neighborhood for the population of this one.
After unpacking, we took a cab back downtown, which was packed with locals, families, and street bands. It was good to see people walking in the street who are doing it by choice. I don't really see that here.
I was looking forward to getting some Mexican Coca Cola. In Mexico and Central and South America, Coke is made with cane sugar and just tastes better. In America it is made with corn syrup or a similar high volume sweetener. We stopped in at a tacqueria and I ordered a Coke with my three tacos. It was American.
 Compounding this dilemma was the place we spent most of the rest of the night. Papas and Beer is a big, American-style tourist bar. While I wasn't bent on going native, I didn't see a single Mexican in that place. Even the people behind the bar were American. It was like being in an Orange County bar, except there are still more Mexicans in Orange County bars. It was disappointing.
On the drive down Alx had told me that in Mexico (when Alx talks about Mexico, the X becomes an H, his moustache becomes pencil thin, and tears fill his eyes), margaritas are served strong in margarita glasses.
"Damn right," I said.
At Papas and Beer, I ordered a margarita at the bar and turned around to watch the general Wild On! action. When I turned back, there was a big cauldron of a frou frou margarita there ina very fancy glass with a straw. For the first time in my life, I almost said, "I can't drink this." But I did. I did, it was weak, and I am still embarrassed about it.
Afterward we went to a bar called Anthony's that featured a Mexican band that was playing Creedence Clearwater Revival. Our waiter looked like a better-preserved Ozzy Osbourne. We ordered drinks and were also giveen a free bottle of tequila that was free because it tasted like feet.
Turns out that Anthony's was a bar frequented by prostitutes. The process by which they could be acquired was explained to me by Mexican Ozzy. There was even a sign. But at no time would it have been clear that this place was anything but a great bar where you could hang out with your friends. There were old couples and groups of guys and men with their wives at the tables around us. At no time did one of the ladies pay any attention to any of the four fantastically wealthy Americans sitting in the corner booth.
We finished our drinks and left. It sounds like I'm spending a lot of time explaining something that never happened but my point is that I can hardly go to church in the United States without a hooker sitting on my lap. Hookers drive the buses here and sell pretzels in the park. I've got dead hookers in my trunk, for God's sake. I go to what turns out to be a Mexican whorehouse? Nothing.
The next morning, Saturday, we ordered empanadas from a bakery. A lady brought a box of 24 of them. We ate them with salad and Mexican Coke. Though Alx' parents were very gracious, I gladly would have killed them in order to eat the whole box myself, but my rigid moral code prevented me. I also didn't know how to drive back.
 That day we went into town and visited various landmarks, like the port and the old casino that faced it. The casino building is gorgeous; it seems like a good placee for my daughter to have her fifteenth birthday party, or quinceanera. I will start saving now.
Each weekend, two cruise ships dock in Ensenada's natural harbor and disgorge thousands of tourists, who break on the first few streets of the city and buy trinkets and drink.
 The tourist areas are canvassed by small groups of Oaxacans who will sell gum and hammocks and plastic flowers, or will just beg. I was told several times to not buy things from them, because they are in fact kept by businesssmen and outfitted with cheap stuff to sell, selling more to people like me because I feel bad. This story is hard to believe because it is so cynical. That is what then makes it easy to believe, and a sadder story.
The homeless or beggars of any city have remained the constant ethical dilemma of my life, even as my other values rise and plummet according to my whims or the fashion to which, as you know, I am a slave. It is difficult to ignore a beggar who looks to be six months older than my daughter; she doesn't know she's being manipulated - she's just being told what an adult tells her to do.
What's more, they have no other kind of gum than blueberry. Don't they care about my veneers?
I'd been told that Papas and Beers was different during the day, because the cruise ship people got really wild. I didn't care to see more drunk tourists (and, again, not that I have anything against them but if I wanted to see drunk Americans I would only need to look in the mirror.
 But there we were again, this time in broad daylight, and the scene was much more like a frat party, except older. I asked for a margarita again, and specified a non-ridiculous glass and more tequila. This time the waiter just didn't bring me anything.
The American DJ said there was to be a wet t-shirt contest soon, and I spotted the likely participants. I moved to another part of the bar because I didn't want my t-shirt getting wet (I'd only brought one).
I saw people disappearing into a room guarded by an employee. This sort of thing always intrigues me. I got out two business cards. I held up one and handed the other to the employee and walked into the room (try it - it works). It was the wet t-shirt contest staging area. I thought about leaving but I thought better of it.
I've been to some wild events, but what was going on in the back room of Papas and Beers was desperate. Contest participants and their red-faced, backwards-capped male handlers were sort of standing around taking pictures of each other with camera phones. I think the only pictures that can be taken with a camera phone that don't make the photographer look like an idiot are 1.) disputed parking tickets and 2.) where your car is located in a big garage or parking lot. Looking at girls - or Metallica - on a camera phone is dumb.
But the peroxided and augmented ladies were dead serious. You have to change shirts to be in a wet t-shirt contest, so while the changing was going on the camera phones were going off. Various employees strolled around - what an interesting job - and manhandled the netertainment in a way that seemed to be predicated on the valid assumption that everyone was drunk, it was vacation time, and the atmosphere allowed it. The women really wanted Papas and Beers hats and apparel. What would they do for a Klondike Bar?
The contest wasn't a contest and no liquid was apparent, except for beer fumes and a pervasive melon body spray mist. When the women walked onto the stage area it appeared a riot would break out. It was fun to watch, but it seemed forced. I would leave thhat sort of thing to professionals each time. I walked outside.
 During the festivities upstairs, outside the streets were packed with people and the Carnaval parade was going by. This was the real entertainment. I watched that for a while and then joined my companions at Hussong's, which was a bar founded the same year (1892) as Doyle's in Boston, and seemed to be the south of the border equivalent thereof.
The bar was a big wooden room with high ceilings and simple, solid carpentry. We stayed there for about six hours, eating several pounds of peanuts each and drinking a lot. I got my shoes shined for three dollars by a guy sitting on a stool on the sawdust-covered bar floor.
It was one of the rare and almost-forgotten occasions when I would enter a bar in bright daylight and then look up for my first bathroom break and it was full darkness outside and the bar was packed. Alx spent about a hundred bucks on mariachis and became as maudlin as I would at Christmas with the Pogues on a jukebox. I made my way to the restroom.
 "Fucking goddamn logs in there," someone said from a nearby stall. I was again thankful for my tremendous retentive capabilities.
Someone went next door and brought back tacos. Some drunk cruise ship ladies in their early 40s were sitting at our table. I talked with one of them. She managed car insurance for an AAA office in Oxnard, she said. She kept falling off her seat. Her friend sat down next to her.
"You sound like you are from Oxnard, California," I said. She stared at me.
The first woman readjusted herself on her chair. "She thinks you're a wizard," she said.
We left and wandered the streets. I went on a roller coaster and didn't die, though the bar would not lock over my legs. I held on very tightly. We got several thousand pesos out of a bank machine. We were solicited for various pharmaceuticals and other contraband, but we ate hot dogs wrapped in bacon instead. We wound up back at Anthony's and we talked to an ex-Navy guy and his wife who manage an assisted living complex in Ensenada. It turned out the guy had a son who was a month older than me. The man called me his step-son all night and introduced us to the owner.
 I like vacations.
The next day we bought some trinkets and drove home, buying bags of fresh churros on the road through Tijuana. It took us several hours in traffic through Customs, but our car was not given a second glance. I wished we'd brought back some cigars.
There is a gallery here.
Sickness
 I have just begun to overcome a flu-like malaise, in which my hair ached and I could sense where my skin attached to my massive frame. It was great. I learned a lot about myself, especially the flaws in my connective tissue.
ACI was brought in to stare at me.
"Your mighty father has been brought low by the caprices of jealous gods," I said.
"Yah," she said.
In a week or so, I will teach her to say, "How can there be a G-d in a world in which my father is ill?"
My body was very sensitive. It hurt to yawn. When I couldn't sleep, I read parts of Joan Didion's "The Year of Magical Thinking" which manifested itself in my house after this post. Note to readers: this book might not be a good one to peruse when you're sick.
I was less tolerant. I brought some alcohol to my neighbor's Oscar party. I asked if I could make him a drink.
"No," he said, "but you can have one."
Really? I can have some of the liquor that I brought and it would be OK with you? Should I have brought my own chair or can I use one of yours?
Normally I speak in unspoken italics all the time, because I'm surrounded by fools. Instead, I said something I regret:
"No kidding."
I'm sorry I offended you, dummy.
This morning I woke up feeling much better, though I still feel kind of an otherworldly buzzing in my skin that is not unpleasant.
 A shout out to my cat, Frampton, who sat by my side throughout my sickness. We have known each other for almost ten years, and I'm sure that when I drop dead she knows what parts of me to start eating.
In that, as a journalist, I am often accused of "burying the lead" (which means that the main point of the story is not in the first paragraph where it belongs but somewhere else entirely, if it is present, in my stories, at all) I feel that Frampton is a perfect representation of my writing style. She is a right-side-up triangle rather than an inverted one.
I think I might still be delirious.
There is a good chance I no longer exist. My evidence is as follows:
- The mavervorl.com domain name was stolen
- Increased occurences of people "dropping" my name (when people drop your name it only benefits them)
- Frampton's deathwatch
- This weekend my identity was stolen as I lay in bed. Some Moscow banking institution reported about $850 worth of ATM transactions on my debit card. The same thing happened in "The Master And Margarita". When I called my bank to report this I told them I felt that I'd really arrived.
"Whatever you say," the lady said.
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