Palmslife

Regular reader and highly entertaining blogger Horsey made an eye-opening comment on this post earlier today. I had mentioned something in the post about writing screenplays, and he remarked that he hadn't previously known I write screenplays, despite reading my blog nearly every day (so far as I can tell).

It made me realize that, though I yammer on at my readers all the time about any number of topics, I don't often talk about the actual details of my life, the reality of my day-to-day existance as it were. Outside of being a guy who likes a lot of movies and dislikes a lot of world religions, I suppose my blog-self remains kind of enigmatic. It's unintenional.

I live in Palms, California, a small corner of West Los Angeles famed for its proximity to interesting and/or notable places (such as Venice Beach, Santa Monica and Brentwood) despite being itself neither interesting or notable. Palms is a thin stretch of concrete separating the parking lot that is Culver City, California from the congested suburban enclave of Rancho Park. It has no outside identity of its own, and has more 7-11's per quarter mile than any other neighborhood I have visited in my life, ever.

Why do I live in a place for which I obviously have so much contempt? Because it's cheap. My roommate Nathan has been living in this apartment for 4 years, an eternity in Los Angeles flophouse time, so our rent is considerably low for a three-bedroom. Plus, I'm totally lazy, I went to college here, and I aspire to one day work as a screenwriter, so the location is right.

Okay, let's move on to the roommates. Nathan plays poker online for a living. He hasn't had a real job in quite some time. He also hasn't had a working car in a while, so he spends a good deal of time apartment-bound. In the screenplay I've recently written based on our living situation, he inspired an agoraphobic character.

I don't want to harp on the guy, but one more factoid I'll mention that influences my life a surprisingly good deal. Nathan loves games - poker, obviously, but also chess, Trivial Pursuit, pool, darts, televised sports, you name it...even game shows. So whenever I have recorded something on our DVR in our living room, to get to it I have to sift through dozens of hours of game shows.

At this point, by his own admission, he has seen every episode of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" ever filmed. Folks, sometimes he'll watch an episode over again that he's already seen.

My other roommate, Chris, used to work at a hotel, until he quit the job to...you guessed it...play poker online for a living. He and Nathan have this whole system set up, a system I'm constantly on the cusp of understanding but that I never have fully understood, wherein poker websites provide them with cash bonuses that they proceed to "work off" and then collect after a set time to buy rent and food and whatnot.

It's all very complicated. Far more complicated than working at a video store, but then again, it doesn't require putting on socks or driving up the street or having a boss or shaving. Plus, they both always seem to have more money than I do.

That's another thing I should mention. Working at a video store has its perks. For example, after I'm done typing this, I can watch Sin City on DVD, even though it totally doesn't come out in stores until Tuesday...in your face...But it also has its downside, such as the fact that I could earn more money panhandling outside of the store than working within.

My woeful finances are one of the many reasons I don't actually get out much. Or ever. Unless you could going to the art house movie theater as "getting out," which no one does. One of the reasons is that I hate going out, because it's expensive and stupid and loud. So very very loud. Why are all the popular bars and clubs so dark and loud? Why is it that more dark and more loud equals cooler.

I once went to a bar in Manhattan that had a reputation for being hip, and the place was so dark and so loud that I thought I was getting the Ludovico Treatment. It was like trying to enjoy a conversation and a cocktail in a powerless bunker beneath Fallujah.

I'm also not much of a bar guy. I mean, there are some bars I like, such as Culver City's own Cozy Inn and Jumbo's Clown Room. But I find it hard to meet people in bars, so I usually wind up hanging out with friends and drinking heavily, and sometimes playing darts. I suck horribly at darts, as I do at all activities that require hand-eye coordination.

It's hard for me to imagine that some people are actually good at things like darts. I could no more master darts just by hanging out in bars than I could master brain surgery by chugging beers in the St. Joseph's ER. I'm also terrible at the following activities:

-team sports
-video games
-dancing
-heavy lifting
-miniature golf
-table tennis
-bowling
-Jenga
-using fax machines
-changing printer cartridges
-packing boxes
-lighter tricks
-juggling
-jumping rope
-running without looking like a fag

Not to mention, most of my really good friends don't live in Los Angeles any more. Oh, sure, Nathan and Chris are here, and some of my college friends and my brother Jonathan and my childhood friend Cory. And I've worked with some great people at this job and my last one, with whom I still watch movies or see the occasional indie rock show.

So it's not like I'm really lonely. But my social network has spread out across the nation. You've got Dave and Half in Santa Cruz, Chuck and Gohlke holding it down in the Bay Area, Brooke attempting not to mess too hard with Texas, Matt and Tim in Chi-town, another Matt and Aaron in The Apple...Sigh...

So, yeah, I hang out and watch movies a lot. Hence the massive list of reviews on the side of the page. In fact, I'm about to log off and watch something right now. Maybe one of the old "Muppet Show" episodes on the Season 1 DVD I just bought. Or William Devane in Rolling Thunder (only available on laserdiscs, suckers!) The possibilities are endless.