Only Four More Days ’Til Friday

It’s a few minutes after 7 p.m. and it’s time to get the hell out of Dodge, or in my case a deeply depressing section of downtown Los Angeles. I pack up my laptop and like Fred Flintstone sliding down the back of his dina-crane as his boss — Mr. Slate — yanks the tail of the steam whistle bird, I leave the office lickety-split. The elevator takes myself and a few other LA Center Studio inmates to the bowels of the building that is a labyrinth of underground parking and a who’s who of reserved spots for acclaimed writers, producers, directors, and executives. But honestly? Fuck ’em. I’m another two parking levels down and in a hurry so let’s maybe not hold the elevator door for the host of Cupcake Wars.

As I recollect, there weren’t too many open spots when I arrived early this morning. So, as you’d expect, I took the first I saw — smack dab in-between a white Prius with a “Bernie or Bust” bumper sticker and a yellow Hummer with two right wing fan favorites. The first being a “Hillary for Prison” decal in the window and the second… Trump mud flaps.

Yesiree, folks, political mud flaps. For the distinguished driver who prefers their presidential candidate covered in all sorts of dirt and debris, but not so much their car.

Other than being at complete opposite extremes in every possible way, there’s just something about these two types of vehicles that make me very uneasy. I don’t know what it is specifically, but — Eh, that’s not true at all. I know exactly what it is and if I was the returning champion on Jeopardy and the category was”douchiest drivers on the road” I’d ring in right away using my hand-held device and say “who are Prius and Hummer drivers?”

“Yes, indeed. That is correct,” a delightful Alex Trebek would say to me, the studio audience, and everyone watching at home. I love Alex Trebek.

Needless to say, I’m currently not a returning champion on any game show, but instead just someone who wants to go home and maybe fall asleep while watching one. I see my car off in the distance and this, my friends, is precisely when I freeze mid footstep and metaphorically soil my shorts in outright indignation.

Disregard everything I just said about Prius and Hummer drivers. I was wrong. Like Antonie van Leeuwenhoek and Charles Darwin before me, I’ve discovered an entirely new class of douchebag driver that evolutionary biologists will study for many years to come.

Forget for a moment that it’s a huge kick in the crotch to Euclid and Pythagoras and centuries of geometric reasoning. Forget the only way I’ll be able to enter my car is through the moonroof I forgot to close. What’s crucial to remember here is that driving requires a seamless interaction between various cognitive abilities. You know the little things like concentration… psychomotor skills… split second decision-making. Without any one of these critical capabilities, we might as well all be paying for groceries with a personal check and living in Florida!

Ahh, for fucksakes! Are you kidding me?! Bye-bye “Bernie or Bust” Prius. Hello spatially challenged fucktard!

After many minutes of uninterrupted staring with my jaw hanging wide open I begin to pace and mull my limited options. But given my grave circumstance I rapidly go from mulling options to marveling at the human mind’s innate ability to involuntarily generate so many variations on the “F” word when confronted with such a predicament.

“Who parks a fucking car like this?!” I ask no one in particular in my most outside and thoroughly unhinged voice. “I really want to know! Asshole! Asshole! Asshole!” I keep repeating this out loud until I’m unexpectedly interrupted.

“Ohmigod, dude! Sorry… Sorry… I’m the asshole. That’s me. I am so sorry.”I quickly turn around and from behind one of the cement pillars located everywhere down here I see a guy carrying what looks like a pink pastry box moving towards me.”I’m a gigantic ass,” he continues.

I am by no means someone who advocates torture of any kind. But if sleepaway camp taught me one thing when I was a kid it’s that most stupid behavior can be quickly curbed by an abrupt uncomfortable tightening of the underpants between the buttocks — also known throughout the summer camp community as a wedgie.

But I can’t do it. Not that I don’t want to. I do! But I see there are security cameras everywhere and lucky for this goofus the last thing I need is another video of me on You Tube demonstrating wedgie justice.

“Please accept my apology. I’m so sorry, man.” He moves under the fluorescent light above and I instantly realize the so-called “spatially challenged goofus fucktard” is none other than America’s favorite outpatient, Andy Dick.

He stops in front of me and examines the jam sandwich that is his parking performance art. “Wow, that’s awful. I’m like a total bonehead,” he admits and snorts out a laugh. “Holy moly, I’m so sorry, man. I was beyond late for my meeting for Celebrity Cupcake Wars and there were like no other spots and wow… wow… I suck!”

At this point, it’s quite obvious I agree and all I want to do is to get in my car and go home.

“Hey, you like cupcakes?” he asks. “Honestly, if I eat one more I’m going to spew cream cheese frosting all over the place so please take them far and away from me.”

“Seriously?” Moments ago I was a hand grenade wrapped in TNT and dipped in gasoline. Now I am sneaking a peak into a pink pastry box for a long-drawn-out whiff.

“My gift to you because I’m a total Magoo. I’m so sorry, man.” He gets into his car and slowly backs out so as not to graze my car. But before he drives off he lowers his window and points to the yellow Hummer next to me. “Holy shit! Are those Trump mud flaps?”he asks incredulously.

I can only nod and shrug.

“Now that’s an asshole!” Andy Dick snorts out another laugh and as he speeds off I hear him shout “Bitches get shit done! All the way with Hilla-ray!”

I am undecided. Not about the upcoming election but about whether this episode should go down as one of the oddest for me and/or whether there’s some sort of veiled life lesson to be taken away. I suppose something to think about for the next hour as I sit in a nonsensical traffic jam on the 101 Freeway. I get in my car, start the engine, open the windows, and put the car in reverse. As I slowly back out, I glance over at the cupcakes in the passenger seat.

Oh, I really want one.

Oh, I shouldn’t.

Should I?

I have dinner waiting at home.

Just have half.

I’m so fat.

Oh, I smell chocolatey goodness.

I’m not that fat.

I’m starving.

This is the inner monologue I’m having as I roll back and suddenly hear the most horrific sound of my right back fender being introduced to one of the cement pillars holding up this pile of architectural misery.

In every respect this is precisely what is meant when someone says I’m having one of those days. I get out and look. It’s bad. I’m talking broken tail light and major dent bad.

I’ve already cursed a lot. I now want to cry. But I don’t. Instead, in an effort to condense the five stages of grief — denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance — into something I can quickly digest, I get right back in my car and reach for a cupcake.

I just caused about twelve hundred bucks worth of damage to my car and I feel I most definitely deserve a brief moment not to think about it. My teeth sink deep into its chocolatey essence.

Tastebuds… Take me away…

“Hey, buddy… I heard that smack bam boom from over by elevator. That’s a pretty heinous ding you picked up.” I look up from my cream-filled break from reality and see America’s other favorite outpatient, Gary Busey, climbing into the yellow Hummer next to me.”If you ask me that cement pillar was one hundred percent at fault,” he continues.” Those things perpetrate evil and are everywhere because insurance companies want us to hit ’em so they can raise rates. The system is totally rigged, my friend.”

“You’re Gary Busey.” I say like a perfect schmuck who just hit a cement pole and now has cream cheese frosting on his face.

“I am. Absolutely. That’s me. Thank you. Yes,” he responds and gets out of the Hummer. “The one and only. Hey, is that a chocolate cupcake?”

“It is. Yeah…”

“Those things will kill you,” he warns. “Don’t get me wrong. I know they’re delicious. But that’s what they want you to think and next thing you know you have Type 2 Diabetes and some type of terminal cancer too. You know cancer loves sugar, right?”

“I…”

“Put it down! Put it down!” he instructs me with a uniquely bizarre authority. “The cupcake! Down!”

I’m not sure why, but I comply with his demands and put it down.

“Good job, my friend. You’re a very smart man.” He reaches through my car window and takes the box of cupcakes off the seat, including the one I already started on. “You’ll thank me later.” Then — I swear I didn’t see this coming — he scoffs down my half-eaten cupcake, gets in his Hummer with Andy Dick’s peace offering to me and just like that he and his Trump mud flaps are gone.

If the last forty minutes were emblematic of a heavyweight bout on pay-per-view the referee and ringside doctor would probably be heading over to my corner right about now to see if I could continue.

But I must. I still need to make my way home.

As I back out of thespot I pulled into fifteen hours ago, the bell dings on my iPhone. It’s a text from my assistant.

“CALL ME!!!”

What? Fuck! No! Seriously?!

More often than not “call me” is never good. The last time she texted “call me” I was told one venti iced caramel macchiato spilled out onto a flash card containing an entire days worth of footage we just shot. Granted it was for a WE tv series and should probably never’ve been recorded in the first place, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is it’s now half past eight and seeing “call me” on my cellphone — on top of everything else that just occurred — gives me severe chest pains.

I pop two Tums and then do what any person totally devoted to his or her career would do — I feign no cell service and toss my phone onto the seat next to me. I figure whatever problem exists at the office can wait until I’m home — pants off and legs up. I know myself and I problem solve much better when wearing only boxers and sipping a bourbon.

I started out this piece describing my downright desire to leave the office lickety-split. That was my intention and, frankly, it had much to do with getting home to binge watch the last three episodes of Downton Abbey. But as I finally exit the multi-level garage and notice the big beautiful full moon in the night sky I realize something that sill leaves me — to this day — bowled over in shock. So much so I abruptly pull to the side of the road.

I brought my dog to work with me today. I did not leave work with my dog!

I make a U-Turn so fast and so forceful that I imagine NASA might want to talk to me about conducting a few centrifuge training classes on my days off. I’ve read stories about parents leaving a child behind. Forgotten baby syndrome — Oh my God — Am I that person?

As I’m about to re-enter the garage I’ve tried so hard to leave I hear a high-pitched “whoop-whoop.”

No. Seriously? What in fucks name is happening tonight?!

I look in the rearview mirror and see I’m being pulled over by the LAPD.

Holy Christ!

“Officer I’m so sorry,” I blurt out as I lower my window. “I made a U-Turn because — ”

“License and registration, please.” I present him with both and apologize again for making a reckless U-Turn. “I don’t know anything about a U-Turn. I pulled you over because of a broken tail light.”

“Oh! Right! Yes! It just happened in the garage.” I tell him the story I just told you and hearing myself retell the tale I realize it sounds pretty “pulled from my ass” preposterous. So much so I’d never believe me if I was in his or even your shoes.

“So, just so I’m clear — Andy Dick gave you cupcakes and Gary Busey took them?”

“Yes. And he ate one right in front of me,” I add.

“That’s pretty messed up,”the officer says. Do you want to file a report?”

“Seriously?”

“No, I’m joking. The officer hands me back my license and registration. “I do have a dozen donut holes in the car if you’re interested. They just give ’em to you with coffee when you’re a cop and I’m doing Slim-Fast. You want?”

“No, thanks. I’m good,” I insist as I get another text from my assistant with a picture attachment.

“FORGET SOMETHING?”

There are — as you know — five vital organs in the human body that are essential for survival. So when one has cause to melt away due to “acute cuteness” you have to be prepared to think about something else at the drop of a hat — old baseball players — Zikka — Trump.

“Holy moly, that’s a sweet-looking doggie,” the officer says looking over my shoulder.

“I left her inside. She’s at my desk. I feel terrible.”

“Eh, don’t. It happens. I once left my mother-in-law at a Chevron in San Diego and didn’t realize she went to use the restroom until we were in Long Beach.”

“Holy crap.”

“Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. Dogs are great. Mother-in-laws…. let’s just say she definitely wasn’t jumping up and down and giving kisses when we returned for her.”

“I can imagine.” I text my assistant back: “Still here at office. Haven’t left.” Of course, you and I both know is this is a half-truth designed to a make myself look less like a scatterbrained dipstick.

“Alright, Mr. Marlin. Don’t stress about the broken tail light. You’ve had enough mishegas for one night.

Did the five-O just say mishegas?

“But don’t wait too long. Here’s my card in case you get pulled over again and just remember one thing — Only four more days ’til Friday.”

He’s right. It’s so important to maintain a positive attitude and always see the glass as half-full. I’ve heard it a gazillion times. I’ve read it in countless books and things. I’ve even encouraged friends and family to stay positive when the hot and steamy stuff hits the fan. But — I have to be perfectly honest — when push comes to shove — if you haven’t gotten the memo yet — I invariably see the glass as half-empty.

I know this for certain now because the first thing that crossed my mind when he said “only four more days ’til Friday” is “I cant believe it’s only fucking Monday.”

“You have a great rest of your evening,” the officer says to me as he heads back to his vehicle.

With that, I raise my window and back into the underground garage I go.

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