The Occasional Blog of Jonah Weiland

Recently a handfull of people wrote me to ask how my father’s been doing. I generally don’t go on about my personal life much here, as it just doesn’t seem right for me to go on about my life in front of the Internet. But tonight I’ll make an exception.

It was an interesting day. Today for lunch I met a friend at Barone’s in Sherman Oaks. It’s probably my father’s favorite Italian place in the world and it’s been around for ages. It’s known for it’s ultra-thin crust, rectangular pizzas. They’re unbelievably good, although quite greasy. It was a good lunch, good conversation, but I kept flashing back to memories of going there with my parents when I was younger, or the surprise 65th birthday party we threw for my Dad 18 years ago. I have very distinct memories of my father one Saturday night getting a craving for Barone’s, so we ordered pizza, drove the 25 minutes from my child hood home there, picked up the pizza and drove all the way back. Yeah, he’d drive an hour round trip for take out for their pizza.

After I left I thought to myself, how ironic it would be if something bad were to happen to my Dad on this day of all days, sort of some kind of message from my Dad saying I shouldn’t go to Barone’s without him.

Sure enough, tonight my father was rushed to the hospital from his care center. His breathing was labored, to say the least. My father’s led a life long battle with asthma and was having a rather massive attack. There was concern early on that he may have pneumonia, too, but that turned out to be false, thankfully.

He’s been admitted and will stay there until things stabilize. He was much better when I left there late tonight.

My father’s current condition isn’t well. He’s never been in great health, but starting three months ago when he had surgery he began deteriorating rapidly. He was going in to renal failure, so the doctors did some surgery hoping they could slow the deterioration. It appears it did little good and probably hastened his condition. Following the surgery we believe he started having a multitude of minor strokes, generally unnoticeable, but the damage began to add up. He has his good days and bad days. Some days he’s pretty lucid, but those are the days he’s most sad as he realizes what’s going on around him. Other days he hallucinates a lot and suffers from a lot of dementia, but he’s generally happy on those days, imagining it’s 20, 30, sometimes 40 years earlier, a happier time.

This is an agonizing process and my heart goes out to anyone who’s gone through it. There’s nothing I can do but talk to him and hopefully occupy his mind a bit. Tonight, while we were in the ER waiting to be transferred, I told him how I had gone to Barone’s today and thought about all the good times we had there. It made him smile … it also made him hungry. I had planned on seeing him tonight and bringing him the left over pizza from lunch. Maybe I’ll bring it to him tomorrow.

I’m gonna stop now.

So the Boston Red Sox just won the World Series. If this isn’t cause for the greatest riot to hit Boston ever, I’ll be very, very disappointed.

The other day I walked into ye old Panda Express (my favorite crap chinese food place) for some grub and playing in the background was Cher’s “Do you believe in life after love?” It’s definitely on my list of The Top 10 Most Shit Songs of All Time, but it also has the odd disctinction of having made it to my list of The Top 10 Songs I Can’t Get Out Of My Head. The instant I hear the song player, or even the mere mention of the song, and I’m humming it for the rest of the day in distinctly Cher style. “Do YOU be-leeeeieviveieve in life aftah love, (softer) aftah love, (more softer) aftah love, (more more softer) aftah love…”

We should pass a law stating the song can’t be played in open spaces or over broadcast airwaves. It also shouldn’t be played in mini-vans, BMWs or Ford Trucks. Well, let’s just extend the ban to all cars and call it even.

So, Thursday for lunch I decided to go to Henry’s Taco, a local taco stand in North Hollywood that makes excellent American style tacos and burritos. I walked up to the window, placed my order, and while I waited for them to make the deliciousness, I listened in to a conversation going on at one of the near by tables. A rather skinny gentleman was talking to a woman, who appeared to be feigning interest, about the Boston Red Sox win in game seven of the American League Championship series. He was going on about how it was a historic event (which it was), how there had never been as great a comeback in Major League Baseball (which is true) and how finally the Curse of the Gambino had been broked.

I stopped. I looked. He actually repeated it a second time. The Curse of the Gambino had been broken.

My first instinct was to correct him. My second instinct was to take his taco, throw it on the ground, stomp it flat, point to it and proclaim “That taco has more brains than you, even after I stepped on it.” My third instinct was to laugh inside, take my tacos home with me and enjoy them while watching something my TiVo had nicely recorded for me.

I went with option numero tres.

It still cracks the shit outta me, though. Curse of the Gambino, indeed.

So I’m watching the TV tonight and saw a commercial for Jeep. It opens with a Volcano violently errupting in the background. Slowly rock and volcano shit start dropping onto the bit of land the camera is now focused on. Suddenly a Jeep vehicle lands safely in the foreground. And at that very moment across the bottom of the screen in little tiny type are the words:

“Dropping a vehicle is only safe in commercials.”

If I was a praying man, right now I’d get down on my knees and pray to he-who-is that we’re not so stupid as a nation that the above sentene is actually required by law and not some silly joke.

Why is it the overwhelming majority of postal workers I come in contact with are some of the most sour, angry and downright rude people I’ve ever met? Some I’d label as the definition of asshole.

There’s a couple of post offices near my home, which I go to about once every two weeks. I’ve been going to these same places for aobut 6 years now and they’re all getting worse. If you send a book media mail, they pracitcally read you your rights before allowing you to send it. Today I actually had a guy open up my package because the return address on it said “Comic Book Resources.”

“If it’s a comic book, it’s not allowed. It’s got advertising and that’s not allowed in media mail.”

“Okay, but these are graphic novels and books I’m shipping out, not comic books. They don’t contain any advertising.”

“Graphic novels are just a fancy name for comic books,” says Post Employee ShitFuck.

At this point he opened the package, looked through the graphic novel page-by-page, searching in vain for an advertisement where there wasn’t one. He then tried shoving the book back in the shipping envelope in a way it just wasn’t going to go. I had to actually yell at him to stop, because he was easily going to destroy the damned thing.

I felt like mentioning to him movies like “From Hell,” “Ghost World” and “Road to Perdition” were all based on graphic novels, but then I realized he probably hasn’t seen any movies that didn’t star The Rock.

It’s clear the Post Office is trying to crack down on people shipping items media mail that aren’t, but the way the window employees act about it I get the feeling that their jobs are actually on the line if too much product shipped through them is sent media mail. Very odd.

And it’s not just this incident. Generally, I find most postal employees regard everyone they come into contact with as the stupidest people they’ve ever encountered. Sure, I’ve seen my fair share of complete morons at the post office, but it’s certainly not the majority of people. I’ve got a feeling this attitude stems from a decided lack of sexual stimulation.

It’s no wonder why UPS, FedEx and DHL are taking more and more business away from the USPS. Who wants to deal with a bunch of assholes?