Silence of the Hams

Hey-diddly ho, neighborinos!

Guess what? I got nothing. Nothing happened. No celebrity sightings, no weird adventures, no pirate auditions, nada. Zip, zilch, zero. So how am I going to distract you from your busy, hectic work day? How am I going to take up an hour of your time reading my crap? I don't know. Could this actually be the long-awaited *short* update? Probably. On a side note, I promise I won't put the answers to the movie quote trivia somewhere in the update. I just thought it would be funny to do it once.

9/9 - The day I sent out the last update there was actually something fairly exciting. As you may know, L.A. is plagued by wildfires the way that Houston is plagued by flooding, and I finally got to experience one first-hand. The mountain behind my apartment caught on fire. Well, maybe it's not a mountain, could be a hill. I don't know. Growing up in Houston, a hill was a 20 foot rise in the ground. But around here, mountains are the ones with snow on top, and hills are all the rest. Anyway, it was on fire. I couldn't quite see the flames from where I live, but there was plenty of smoke (though the smoke was kinda hard to see through the smog). A five-minute trip in my car, though, and I got around to the other side of it. It's pretty amazing to see the whole side of a mountain/hill on fire. They put it out fairly quickly, and it was an empty part of the mountain. No one was hurt and no houses were damaged, so I feel comfortable saying it was pretty cool.

Two uneventful weeks pass--

9/22 - I finally made it out to the beach. I've been out there before, actually, but this time I was able to do beach-like stuff like lay out and get burned and stare at bikini-clad women. Usually it's about 15 to 20 degrees colder at the beach than at my apartment, so I had been waiting until it got really hot before I went. It was very nice, far different from the beaches at Galveston for sure. Did you know that ocean water is actually clear? It's also *extremely* cold. Talk about shrinkage. I didn't rent a surfboard this time, so I don't even have any good wipe out stories. I walked along Venice beach and saw all the street vendors with the same crap you see everywhere. I saw a bunch of guys doing something called Batuque, which is a Brazilian dance/fighting thing. A bunch of people gather in a circle around two guys in the center. While everyone is singing and chanting, the two in the middle go at each other with judo-like moves, making sure not to hit each other. The moves are random, but each guy knows the move and its response so it's like sparring. I'm not doing it justice through my lame description, but it was very cool.

See? That's all I got. Extremely lame. So how else can I eat up space?

Let's talk about where I live. L.A. is huge. With 15 million people, it's the second (or third, I forget) largest city in the US. What's even more amazing is there's always talk about the Burbank area seceding from the city because they don't like paying for the rest of the city's problems. If they did successfully become they're own city, the way they're mapping it out now the new city would be the eighth largest, and knock L.A. proper down to only fifth. L.A. is huge. There's a section of L.A. called "Little Armenia" where a lot of Armenians have come to settle. Why do I mention this? Because Little Armenia actually has more Armenians in it than the real Armenia. L.A. is huge.

The specific place where I live is in Glendale, just 5 minutes from Burbank. It's a nice place I guess, if you like retirement communities. We're definitely not in the "hip" section of L.A. Fortunately, our friends are forgiving and will hang out with us anyway.

Okay, that's it. Very short this time. Why even bother? I don't know, it's my duty I guess. However, next time I promise it'll be back to an amazingly large and hopefully entertaining update because in two days I'm going to Germany for Oktoberfest! Woo hoo! Wish me luck, and root for the Rams tonight.

Greg

Movie Quote Challenge:

Number 1: "You mean I'm gonna stay this color?"

Number 2: "Come out to the coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs..."

Good luck!

Movie Quote Answers:

Congratulations to Mary Felder for correctly identifying this update's quotes:

Number 1: The Jerk, by Steve Martin and Carl Gottlieb

Number 2: Die Hard, by Jeb Stuart

Thanks for playing, see you next time!

Greg

Sorry to bug you guys with a frivolous additional update, but I just have to vent my frustration.

I just got a call from the casting director for Pirates of the Caribbean, and they wanted to hire me! Yay, right? No. I have to start tomorrow, continuing through December. But because I'm going to Germany, I can't start until October 6th. This means I don't get the job.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

I could've been a pirate!!!!!!!!! They can't hold the job for me until I get back because they're sending everybody to "pirate boot camp" (that's what she called it, I swear). I could've gone to pirate school!!!!!!!!!!!

This is going to put huge demands on my vacation to Germany to really really be a good time.

Greg

Okay folks, last time to bother you for a while, I promise.

Thanks to encouragement from many of you, I decided to cancel the trip to Germany in favor of being a pirate. However, the specific part they wanted me for, Marine, was changed. The director changed his mind just this afternoon and decided he now wanted short-haired marines. Therefore, I am no longer needed (as yet). So, it looks as though the trip to Germany is back on. I also learned an old Hollywood adage today that I have certainly experienced enough to vouch for: If you want to get the part, make flight plans.

Thanks sincerely to all of you for sending me your "two cents worth." Because of you, I now have enough money to buy another beer at Oktoberfest!

Greg