The Occasional Blog of Jonah Weiland

“I’d like a small Diet Coke, please.”

“Would you like to make it a medium for only 25 cents more?”

“No, thank you.”

“Are you sure? It’s only 25 cents more for the medium and the large is just an additional 50 cents!”

“No, I would not like to upsize my drink and since you’ve bugged me about it twice now I’ll tell you why.

“See, the small drink is the perfect size for a two hour movie viewing experience. While the film may only be about ninety-minutes long, with previews and various theater branding you guys throw in front of me, my time spent inside your lovely stadium-seating style theater will be closer to two hours.

“Now, if I were to get the medium or large sized drink like you suggested it would necessarily fill my bladder, requiring me to relieve myself at some point. For me to relieve myself would necessitate the removal of my person from the theater. This would mean that I would get up from my seat and leave said theater in the middle of the film that I’ve come here to enjoy. By removing myself from the theater that would mean I’d miss a small portion of the film, probably a critical moment because in the past I always seem to have picked the worst time to pay my respects to the porcelain Gods. This leaving of the theater would then lead to a diminished viewing experience. Isn’t the goal of any movie theater to make sure that my experience, while watching a piece of cinematic brilliance, is the most satisfactory so as to maximize my enjoyment of the movie? In this instance, upsizing my drink would not add to my enjoyment, rather it would be a detriment.

“So, in conclusion, to answer your question again, I would not be interested in making my drink medium-sized for an extra 25 cents.”

“That’s fine, sir. Would you like any popcorn?”

Happy Thanksgiving.

Okay, so a number of weeks back I proclaimed I was done being a fat ass. At that point I began working out regularly, mostly walking with some jogging thrown in. Unfortunately, I took it too hard too quickly and gave myself shin splits. Typical. I get into something, don’t research it enough, and end up hurting myself in the process. Sounds like my dating life! At any rate, I had to slow down considerably on the walking and began to concentrate on the free weights.

My goal was to loose 13 pounds in seven weeks. A bit aggressive. With having to curb the walking and concentrating on free weights instead, that goal wasn’t entirely met, but I have lost weight. In those seven weeks I went from 223 to 218, feel better and can feel muscle growth on my body. In fact I can see it, too. So, while I’ve lost some weight, I’ve also gained muscle. I’m not slim by a long shot, nor do I look like what I’d like to, but I have seen progress in just seven weeks time and I’ll continue. I’m no longer pushing the outer limits of my shirt. I’ve even lost all this weight without changing my diet one bit. I assure you if I cut down on the fast food and candy I’d be much further along (I’m currently addicted to Twizzler’s Cherry Nibs.). I’m going to begin focusing on making food at home more often, which should help accelerate the process a bit.

This hasn’t been easy, and some days getting myself to exercise is a challenge, but the after-effects are phenomenal. Don’t put it off. Do it. It’s goodness.

Well, Saturday I turned 31. I recall when I was a young shit I thought 31 was so far away and really old. I still feel that it’s old, but it’s here which bothers me greatly. So, instead, I’ll just do my 30th year over again. Let’s call it a do-over.

30 was a relatively good year for me personally, although nothing terribly exciting happened. I lived life a bit more than usual, trying out new things and experiences more than the year before. As I get older I find a need to make sure I don’t miss anything, so I find myself more engaged, tackling new challenges. I will admit that in my early twenties I felt by age thirty I’d be married, living in a house planning on my first child. It’s odd how very far from that I am.

For my thirtieth birthday my parents gave me a pair K2 Flight ALX inline skates. I’ve been wanting to try this out for a long time. I figure as I get older and my bones more brittle, this is the perfect time to give them a try.

Late Saturday afternoon I got back to my apartment and called my neighbor down to have a good laugh and watch me fall on my ass repeatedly. I laced up the skates, while sitting in my car, and stood up. Within just two feet of gliding I fell quickly on my ass. Hard. My ass hurt. I got back up and remembered the only advice I’ve ever heard about inline skating, which is learn forward. So, I did, and skated around for about 10 minutes.

I’ve never been so damn scared in my life.

I stopped then, not wanting to hurt myself further before going out that evening. Thankfully Jacob and Kimmy bought me the appropriate safety gear as a birthday present. It occurred to me how important safety gear would be after that first glide.

That night I got a large group of friends together for drinks. We started at The Bigfoot Lodge in Los Feliz. Aliah, soon to be of New Yawk City, recommended it. It’s a funky bar with a hunting lodge style theme, but it’s not overdone. If it were in Hollywood it would just be annoying, but somehow it being in Los Feliz just made it kinda funky. The boozing began there.

I decided on splitting the night between two different locations. I wanted to hit a place with dancing, but I knew a large number of my friends wouldn’t be interested. So, that’s why we started at the Bigfoot.

Around 11:15 or so we left the Bigfoot to head over to The Short Stop. On the edge of Silverlake/Los Feliz, this funky former cop bar is always packed. There’s a main bar, a room with a dance floor and a back room with pool tables. With blaring music, mostly ’80s themed with some current shit thrown in for spice, and a dance floor so crowded fired codes are most certainly being broken, the Short Stop is a place where you can get swallowed up the atmosphere. That I did. Of course being royally shit-fucked helped that (God bless Jack and Coke! Why does no one in Los Angeles carry Dickel Whiskey? Ugh.). The folks who made it over there were exactly the friends I thought would go. I had my dancing shoes on.

It’s funny. Four, five years ago this never would have happened. I “hated” dancing, feeling terribly self-conscious about the idea. Something happened two or three years ago where I got over that completely. Now, I love it! How can you go wrong dancing on a crowded dance floor with beautiful women everyone practically slamming into you because it’s too fucking crowded? That doesn’t suck at all.

At some point during the evening some customer got into a fight with one of the bartenders. Tracy and Kimmy witnessed the guy who got hit (had quite the fucked up eye afterwards) harassing and annoying the bartended as he tried to help 22 people at the same time, but still, no one deserves a black eye quite like this guy had. His face puffed up like a damn melon. He and his friends hung out outside waiting for the cops and paramedics. There was much drama and I found it all very amusing. When the paramedics showed up the lights on the trucks were blaring so everytime some drunk bastards came out of the bar they were greeted by a red flashing light storm. That’ll wake your shit up from a drunken stupor quickly. Cops came, took statements from melon boy and the bartended, all the while people were boozing it up inside.

Finally, the evening came to an end close to two o’clock in the morning. The DJ played “Highway to Hell” for his last song. Interesting choice. It seemed to go over well with the kids. After the song was over I made my way outside with some friends to find most of the group out there. Someone was eating a Tamale and I flipped! There’s this guy who goes from various bars on Friday and Saturday nights in Los Feliz selling home made tamales for two bucks each! When you’re fucked, these are the greatest tamales ever. I think seven or eight in our group ended up getting them. Tamale man is my savior.

Thanks to everyone who showed up. I think everyone had a good time and were amused by the drunken bar fights and my bad dancing. Somehow I woke up on Sunday morning without any trace of a hangover. Guess this old body can still take some good shaking.

Oh, and to anyone who attended, I apologize for the red pants.

Spent some time discussing this whole Pentagon tracking the purchase of condom’s thing with Crozier tonight and he mentioned a great editorial in the NY Times about their plans by William Safire. The column can be found here. I found it enlightening.

Weird thing. So, as some of you know, I’ve been a Clippers season ticket holder for the last three years (for those of you outside of the U.S., they’re Los Angeles’ other Pro-Basketball team. Yes, we have two.). In that time I’ve taken a number of friends in place of either Mike (current season ticket buddy) or Mark (who was a season ticket buddy the last two years) when they couldn’t make it to a game. In those three years I’ve taken a variety of different female friends. Something VERY odd has happened though. EVERY time I’ve taken a girl to the game, the Clippers loose.

Seriously. They loose.

There’s not been a SINGLE game where a girl I took to the game attended and the team won. In fact, during the time that Mark routinely brought his girlfriend to the game the team lost.

Let’s see now. Doing some memory math here. There’ve been 8 different women. Every single one of them saw a Clippers loosing effort. One of them even saw multiple losses.

Tonight I took a lady to the Clippers game. They lost to the Sacramento Kings. Granted, the Kings are one of the elite teams, but this always happens. She also happened to be a big time Kings fan, which made it worse. The company was pleasant, but the loss was painful.

That’s it. No more ladies at Staples Center.

On another note, here’s a hillarious story involving Charles Barkley. Apparently Charles will PHYSICALLY kiss the posterior of Kenny Smith on NBA Tonight Thursday on TNT. Charles don’t reneg on no bets, he says. That’s good news for TNT. The TiVo will be recording lots of TNT on Thursday night.

Okay, if anyone wonders why contempt grows exponentially towards the US Government, both domestically and internationally, you have to look no further than this article. Can you say overkill? I especiall love this part:

Rear Adm. John Poindexter, former national security adviser to President Reagan, is developing the database under the Total Information Awareness Program. Poindexter was convicted on five counts of misleading Congress and making false statements during the Iran-Contra investigation. Those convictions were later overturned, but critics note that his is a dubious resume for someone entrusted with so sensitive a task.

Oh goody. As if we don’t have enough morons sailing this ship.

Since 9/11 so often we’ve been told that we need to sacrifice certain liberties to ensure our nation’s security. Yes, changes to our infrastructure necessarily need to be made, but there’s a point where we have to ask ourselves when is it all too much? The Republicans are the party of “smaller government,” but since 9/11 we’ve seen the Republican party push for more beauracracy than ever before. The Federal Government has become larger and that much more powerful since.

This is the same leadership that THUROUGHLY fucked up our activities in Afghanistan and is on a witch-hunt now in Iraq. Sure, Hussein is not to be trusted, nor is he to be allowed any leeway, but it would be nice if some attention was paid to the US economy. In case you’ve all been snow-blinded by the leaderships “War On Terrorism,” the economy is shit, retail sales are expected to be very low this holiday season and it’ll get worse before it gets better.

Apparently it’s the “Day of Funny Flash Stuff.” Was sent this today. If you spend any appreciable time surfing the net checking out what new artists are doing in flash, this will hit home.

Skip Into indeed. Fucking splash pages.