I once left for Paris, but ended up in the desert talking to a man dressed like Captain Jack Sparrow who wanted to sell me a knife.
I bought the knife and moved to Hollywood to make my fame and fortune and flip weekends with weeks so I could eat brunch more frequently and work less. I promised myself I wouldn’t buy a black three or five series BMW, but I got to the dealership and that’s all they sold. This was before the Prius. I’m showing my age.
After Hollywood, but before San Francisco I relocated to Mexico City. Kidnapping was all the rage. This was shortly after that Denzel Washington film where the black guy gets killed for the little white girl who likes to swim. In Mexico City, there was nothing to kidnap. My taxi, which was airport certified, took me to a part of Mexico City that looked like every financial district in the world. Some people were skinny. Others were fat. They all wore ill-fitting suits and sweat when they walked, but it was summer so I reserved judgment—about the sweat.
With nothing to kidnap in all of Mexico, I went back to the airport where I ate totopos. Totopos are chips. I also drank a beer. Then I got on a flight to San Francisco. On the flight I drank many more beers. All of them were Heineken, which is from Holland and notably popular among African American men.
Once in Holland, before San Francisco and Mexico City, I bought a bike for ten euros at three in the morning somewhere in between the red light district and the Van Gogh museum. The Van Gogh Museum is not worth visiting. I rode the bike to my hotel, left it outside and it was gone when I woke up. This came as a surprise although it shouldn’t have.
I landed in San Francisco, worse for a few Heinekens—Heinekens that I didn’t enjoy but drank anyway in protest of red wine and liquor. As you may have heard, San Francisco has many hills. To avoid them take a cab. I took a cab to Nob Hill. There was nothing in Nob Hill so I left.
I rented a U-Haul in the Mission. The Mission is home to many coffee shops and many connoisseurs of coffee. In the Mission, people only talk about coffee and micro-brewed beer and how there used to be a lot of Mexicans in the Mission. I can only assume all the Mexicans moved out of the Mission because they didn’t want to talk about coffee. I rented the U-Haul and I bought a coffee. It was 4.5 ounces and cost $7.23, but it was worth every penny because the barista was dressed like an extra from “Boardwalk Empire.”
In the U-Haul, I pumped up the a/c and drove south on the I-5. On the I-5, it’s almost impossible to know where you are because it all looks the same. I stopped for gas. I went into a market and looked at mini-powdered donuts, which always seem to be available in the middle of nowhere, but I’ve never seen anyone buy one. Donut-less, I left the middle of nowhere because my tank was full.
On the freeway, I kept my eye on my phone because there was nothing to look at on the road. I watched YouTube videos about an Asian casting director in NYC. Some were funny. Life on the road is hard and boring. Don’t believe anything Jack Kerouac said. There are no drugs on the road, or at least none that are as readily available as powdered donuts. And there are no poetry readings. Unless you count Drake. I listened to a lot of Drake. He spends a great deal of time talking about modesty or false modesty. I wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that he’s Canadian. Canadians wear practical clothing and love “outdoor” things. I would live in Canada, but I don’t like buying my clothes at R.E.I.
I drove through various counties and past a lake. Eventually, I had to stop. Now, I’m back in Hollywood. The plan, as it always was and always will be, is to flop my weeks with my weekends. In order to do this, I must invent an app or TV show or a TV show loosely based on an app. If it gets syndicated then I’ll be set. Syndication for a TV show is kind of like a savings account or a CD only instead of making $11 a year in interest on something already own, you make about $750,000. Which isn’t that much when you consider how expensive it’s going to be to eat brunch five days a week now that I’m famous.
Exchanging Pleasantries 