I stopped in a cell phone store the other day to ask the guy behind the counter some questions, as I am thinking of getting a new phone- an Android. I was disappointed to find out that the Android I'd been looking at, on sale at $79, had gone up 20 bucks to $99 in the several days that I'd put off going in and actually buying it. I had been hesitant, complacent, afraid of making the purchase, even though I knew it was a damn good deal- SO damn good, evidently, that my provider realized this and jacked up the price. They thought: "Screw these assholes who are too cheap to pay our regular low prices,and double-screw these even bigger assholes who, seeing our obviously insanely low SALE prices, decide THAT'S too expensive and don't buy anything anyway!" In my imaginary scenario, my cell phone company swears like a pool hall delinquent and talks specifically about ME. Anyway, I asked the guy when the phones might go on sale again, and he thought and then said that the company tends to have discount sales on holidays, and then searched his mind for upcoming holidays. "They'll probably have a sale for Easter." He said. The only problem is, Easter was already more than 2 weeks in the past. It had come and gone with all of the customary, accompanying fanfare.  A lot of people can forget a lot of things, and Lord knows I forget some weird stuff now and then, but this guy was Latino- which means at least nominally Christian- so how the hell does he forget EASTER? It's not like he forgot that we'd already passed Advent or St. Aloysius' Day, he forgot a HUGE, FAMOUS HOLIDAY, surrounded by one to two weeks off of school for kids, massive church services everywhere, and Easter egg hunts, brunches and dinners even for the atheistic and non-Christian. This guy had to be either out of his mind high on weed or just majorly preoccupied by whatever is rattling around in his brain. But I was delighted to witness such a slip, because I myself have done as bad- maybe worse. 

 Years ago I was talking on the phone with one of my oldest childhood friends, Ben, who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife who had given birth to a son named Hugo several years before.  I was somewhat out of the loop and hazy on which friends and family had had what kids in what years, exactly how many kids this one had and that one had, and I asked Ben if there was a second one expected soon for he and his wife. He said that they had in fact already had the second child. I then instantaneously asked- with a straight face, and not kidding around at all, if they knew the gender of the child. Somehow the words that Ben had uttered had not properly been absorbed as information by my neurons, axons, synapses or whatever they're called.  Ben replied, with a very even keel, and an obvious grin that came through in his voice "Um, dude, yeah we know the gender of the child. He's here. He's already been born." I then laughed and Ben laughed and I quickly explained that I'd somehow had a brain misfire, that I just didn't correctly process the necessary bits of basic logic to make that very simple and obvious leap, that I guess I'd been burnt out or distracted or just out of my brain. He's known me a long time and he didn't take any offense because, as anyone who really knows me would know, no offense was meant. I will never ever again forget that my friend Ben has two kids, both boys.  

Today I was driving to meet with my friend Jeremy in East Hollywood- we're working on a screenplay together- and my car ran out of gas. I usually get a LOT of miles when it says 'empty' but I took it too close to the wire and the car sputtered and choked out after only a couple of acceleration bursts. I totally know the drill- yeah, I've run out of gas several times before because I'm a risk junkie and/or idiot- and I switched off between rolling in neutral to allow maximum distance with my established momentum, and putting it back in forward gear to squeeze bursts of motorized acceleration from whatever last clouds of fumes were in the tank. It crapped out and came to stop on the 101 Freeway, across from Universal, a 10 min walk to the next exit. I parked in the far right shoulder lane, put on my emergency reds, got my plastic gas tank out of the trunk and walked down to the exit, where, luckily, there was a gas station. If you've never walked on the side of an LA freeway, these roadways are vastly different when you're right on their edge and not inside a vehicle. Speeds that seem casual and normal when one is in traffic become excessive and intimidating when you're a stationary and unprotected human being just a few feet away. Cars, SUV's, trucks and motorcycles become loud, hostile, potential killing machines and even their motorized roar harbors a cold meanness. I walked along with my gas can, pushing the thought of grotesque, near-instant death out of my mind, and took in the scrubby, shrubby terrain next to the asphalt. Multiple small lizards darted away as we crossed paths. Random garbage dotted the strange embankment landscape. And then I came across an object for which I had to do a double take. It was a very large brown dildo- the realistic kind, shaped like an actual penis, except bigger than probably 99% of real ones. It had the abridged, bottom-flattened attached "balls",  was lying on it's side and appeared to be made out of rubber or even some speckled waxy substance. Why was this extra large brown dildo abandoned on the side of the 101? And who throws such a thing out a car window?  Perhaps non-automobile-owning pedestrians in the embankment/shoulder area were responsible for the sadly neglected sex toy and this scrubby, fringey terrain was their playroom. I successfully got my gas, walked back to the car and got out of there, safely. Some mysteries are better left alone, and far back beyond the receding horizon of the rear view mirror.