My story about my bus ride (see entry below) was featured on SFist.com’s “Day Around the Bay” yesterday.
I’m kind of a Bay Area celebrity.
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I recently met up with a friend who lives in Pac Heights and we decided to head down to the Ferry Building for some food and shopping. We got on the 1 at the corner of Fillmore and Sacramento and it was already pretty packed. I got on first and ended up pushing my way to the back of the bus where I stood near those groups of chairs facing each other. My friend couldn’t make it as far back and was closer to the rear door.
We were riding along a few blocks, approaching the point when the bus turns left at Gough and then down Clay for the rest of the trip, when all of a sudden a woman started screaming.
“Get out of that seat you piece of shit!” came from this little woman in her forties or fifties.
Immediate silence falls over the bus.
“You heard me,” she continued, “get up so the old man can have a seat. What kind of lazy sack of shit are you? You are the laziest fuck I’ve ever seen.”
We all look toward the supposed “old man” who doesn’t really seem to care if he’s sitting. He looks just as confused as everyone.
Although the dude that was being yelled at looked extremely uncomfortable (with a twinge of nervous smiling) as she continued to berate him for the next five minutes, he never talked back. He just sat there in silence as she kept screaming. The woman finally got off the bus at a stop in Nob Hill. She walked down the back steps, and while the doors were still opened, screamed from the street “I hope a bus runs you over and you DIE.”
Bus door closes. Uncomfortable laugther ensues. Uncontrollable laughter from my friend I keep us connected even though strangers continued to keep us apart.
I have this horrible habit of blurring the reality of my past experiences with my perception of how they occurred. I suppose it’s the story-teller in me; I embellish the juicy details, I elongate time when it benefits my need for suspense, and I’ll convienently forget the presence of certain individuals or add those who I wish were part of the plot. My stretching of the truth, my palpable examples that change over time… they slowly take place over months and years. Let’s take the story of when I met Tony Danza on my 10th birthday. There are a slew of events I accurately recall.
I remember Barbara Cahn, my frenemy Michael’s mother, coming up to us and saying that Tony Danza was at the batting cages. I remember eating cheese pizza (I didn’t eat pepperoni until my early teens when someone dared me at a Chuck-E-Cheese with the hefty reward of one gold token). I remember there being friends from school and the JCC present but beside from Michael’s mom, I can’t name specific people (I’m not even sure if Michael was there).
Yet when I tell this story, I mention that Barbara Cahn brought me to Tony Danza and told him that it was my birthday. He asked me how old I was turning and when I said “ten,” he replied with a typically male and wonderfully brief “happy birthday, kid.” If I had to make a bet, I would wager money that this actually happened; yet I have my doubts. I’ve been saying this part of the story for so long that I can’t remember if I made it up once and kept to those lines for consistency until the point that I believed it actually happened. Or maybe Tony Danza said something and I’ve just gotten a few lines misquoted along the way.
It seems I am living proof of truthiness. I create my own reality based on what I think my life has been. My imagination has always gotten me into trouble and it’s hard to tell where the facts end and make believe begins.
But despite my inaccuracy with small details and my need for life to be like a plot from a coming-of-age novel, I find this to be one of my favorite qualities about myself. Everything in my life happens for a reason and daily disasters become a source for symbolism. I see myself as a character in my own life, watching from a third-person perspective. Because of this, I often let life happen to me rather than the other way around. But by no means am I a push-over; I just see myself as a bystander reading the story of my existence. I don’t get too upset over unfortunate events because I know the plot will eventually take a turn for the better. I know love will come when it’s meant to arrive and it will be magical.
I have created a world where fact meets fiction and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be.
I wish I had known my grandfather when he wasn’t insane.
The majority of my memories are sad and pathetic. I remember my grandpa as a man who always complained about his health. He taught me the word hypochondriac before I began studying for my SATs. He was balding, had a huge gut and barely knew how to take care of himself.
He was scared of anything and everything. The first time my brother and I ever experienced a thunderstorm was in 1989 in Los Angeles. My parents left to go food shopping at Vons and the storm came while the old man was watching us. We were frightened because it was the first time we heard thunder, but my grandpa’s intense screaming only made it worse. He had us huddled in a corner of a room, waiting for the storm to pass. Fortunately, my parents knew this would happen so they immediately left the supermarket and saved us from his anxiety.
My grandpa followed us almost everywhere we moved. We briefly lived with him in New York City for two years before we headed to Los Angeles. My grandpa moved out shortly and stayed in the same house as us for years until my father neared a mental breakdown and forced him to get an apartment. When we moved to Delaware in 1994, my grandpa moved out a year or so later.
We were afraid to ask him how he was doing because it always leaded into a diatribe about incompetent doctors, medicines not working, and problems that only he knew about and physicians seemed to ignore.
But I do have a few fond memories. When I was 5 years old, Poppy (as he made us call him) insisted on giving me art lessons. He taught me how to draw shapes. He instructed on how a face should be illustrated and how shading can make something seem real. When I got older, he bought me watercolors and let me paint on paper plates and the old printer paper that had the edges with circles that you had to rip off. I didn’t care much for it at the time, but I really wish I had paid more attention. I have a love for art now and I wish my interest would have been sparked earlier. Maybe I could have pursued it as a career.
The man’s story is intriguing. A blond haired, blue eyed Jew who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina (clearly, I got none of his genes); he wasn’t the tallest of men, but he had a way with words. He married a young Jewish lady from New York City and moved up north. He came from a family of gamblers. His father had owned one of the only liquor stores in North Carolina immediately after the 18th Amendment was appealed in 1933. His family became instantly rich, but gambled it all away. My grandfather received these genes, unfortunately, and gambled his savings away at casinos, lottos, races and games. He was a risk-taking man but always ended up on the sad side of defeat. The world was against him, he’d say. Maybe he was right.
I wish I would have known him when he was younger and was a Drum Major for Duke. He never went to college, but somehow weaseled himself into marching with the Duke band. He was always proud of my musical talent and probably wish I had taken it seriously. Sometimes I wish I had taken it seriously too.
So maybe I’m giving the old man a bad rap. He had some good points… but they were muddled by crazy. When I look back on our relationship together before he passed away in 2001, the highlights were those art lessons. We sat at a table in our backyard in Los Angeles. He’d bring the materials, I would just copy whatever he did. I’m sure my drawings were a disgrace to the lead company that created the pencils, but he made me feel like I was on the right track to being the next Picasso. He kept saying how much potential I had and that I should really practice more. “If you practice,” he’d say, “no one can stop you.”
Twenty years later, I’m practicing again. I’ve taken up drawing and painting and I can get lost for hours and days when I have a brush in my hand and acrylics in reach. It’s one of the only things I can do for extended periods of time without getting bored or restless.
I may not always be the best listener, but your message will eventually sink in. Despite his anxiety and fears and conspiracy theories, I am grateful that he took the time to give me those lessons. They were brief and often erratic and I mostly didn’t understand why I was the one who had do them instead of swimming, swinging or salivating in front of the tv. But now I get it. And I can’t wait until I get the chance to teach someone else how to draw crooked noses and ungodly large foreheads.
Although I am a huge fan of Obama’s style of leadership, respect and open-mindedness, I have to admit something. The one I’m secretly obsessed with is his wife. I mean, c’mon folks… look at her! And look at them. Are they not the cutest couple in the world? Watch the way they interact and talk about each other and compare that to John and Cindy McCain. Ms. McCain looks like she just stepped off the store front of Ann Taylor and is using her arms for the first time when waving to a crowd. She seems lifeless and devoid of personality and opinion; that is when she’s not calling this campaign the dirtiest campaign ever.
Hey Cindy- don’t you remember when your husband tried running for President in 2000 and George Bush’s team spread rumors that your adopted child was actually half-black and born out of an affair? Please tell me how this campaign is dirtier than that.
Anyway, Cindy McCain is the antithesis of who Obama is trying to represent: the working person and middle class. She’s had a business and millions handed to her, she has more houses and cars than she knows what to do with, and she slings around words without understanding what she’s saying. She recently said that Obama voting against funding our troops put a shiver down her spine and with her having two kids in the military, she would love for Obama to walk in her shoes and then see about his decision.
(Good thing it wasn’t her husband who voted to put them there in the first place… oh wait…). When reading an article about this, people were making comments like “I’d love to walk in her shoes too! I can’t even imagine how many she owns.” And didn’t she start fooling around with McCain while he was still married, leaving his other wife for her? I’m just saying.
Now compare her with Michelle Obama. A woman who also came from little means and worked as hard as she could to get in the best schools possible. A woman who is extremely intelligent, who repeatedly says she’s Barack’s biggest critic and tells him when he needs to get in shape, who puts her role as a mother as top priority, and has the best fashion sense of a first lady since Jackie O. She really is the second-coming of Jackie O. But to be honest, and this may be a generational difference, I think she’s way hotter. Not only is she physically beautiful, but her ability to speak her mind, her balance of fairness and kindness, and her perseverance to make the most of her life is so attractive.
When I see Barack and Michelle interact, I truly believe they love each other. Not in a “this is my trophy wife” kind of way, but as a true partnership… exactly what marriage should be. They are each other’s central support system and their fist pounds are adorable.
My only criticism of my secret lover is that I know she’s biting her tongue at times and I wish she would let the guard down every now and then. But if you asked me if I preferred my fiancee taking the high road and talking about how she respects the McCains versus making lines about John McCain not caring about her daughters because he voted against alternative energy spending?
I think Sarah Palin would join me in saying “you betcha.”
Check out the email I received this evening:
Subject: You Clearly Rock Jared
“And…those fingers of yours write some super detailed, funny, tip givin’ and informative reviews! Seriously, your reviews have been some of the best we’ve read from the Bay area and that’s why we come to your inbox today, to make ya an offer ya can’t refuse. Well we guess you can, but where’s the fun in that!! So here goes…
We’d officially like to invite you to join the Yelp SF(Bay area) Elite Squad!
*insert crowd roar here*”
This has been my goal since May. See kids, if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.
YELP ME: http://hapfrap57.yelp.com
I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why we want a President and Vice-President who are ”just like us” and how this criteria is acceptable in our culture. Sure, it’s great to have someone to whom we can relate. Although I’m not the #1 Obama fan in the world, his story is compelling and relatable: someone who’s bi-racial, doesn’t really know his father, grows up with the support of his grandparents in Hawaii. He’s not your average, rich white kid from the east coast. He is more representative of my generation than any Presidential nominee before. His identity and history falls somewhere in the middle, just like many of us do now (and have in the past). It makes me want to listen and hear what he has to say.
But if Obama was dumb as shit, I could give a rat’s ass if his story sounded inspiring. Sure, he’d make a great role model, someone to help me reach my own potential and realize I can make my dreams happen too. But luckily, he does have the experience of being either a state representative or senator for the past 12 years; plus… dare I say it… his years as a community organizor. His speeches are insightful, his rhetoric is inspiring, he has gotten the youth excited for the first time in my lifetime, and if you can count the way he’s run his campaign as a measure of success, I feel pretty confident in his ability to work with a large organization that is greater than himself.
But I don’t want to talk about Obama. I want to talk about my arch-nemesis, Sarah Palin, and why her popularity is directly correlated to the success of American Idol, America’s Next Top Model, and other reality competition shows.
In this new era of television that began in 1999/2000 with Survivor and Temptation Island, two competitions simultaneously occur during each reality show that comes our way. There is Competition #1, the competition that is the purpose of the show. Eating dead worms, posing for Nigel Barker on a sandy lagoon, losing 15lbs by the next weigh-in, and getting Japanese people to draw a mustache on your face with a Sharpie marker. These are the plots that drive the shows and are used to differentiate one from another.
But Competition #2 is often more powerful than the purpose of the show; this is the race to see with whom America will fall in love with the most. We love stories we can relate to: the person who lost a parent and is competing in their memory; the person who had a skin disease that cleared up only recently and inspired them to model; the person who is on welfare while supporting a child and has the voice of ten Ella Fitzgeralds put together; the person who acquired AIDS but hides the disease so he isn’t treated differently by his cast-mates. These stories are what end up selling the show, and many times, choosing a winner.
We are a country founded, created and surving by underdogs. We are annoyed when someone, who thinks they deserve what they want, gets it. We want to see people work hard, make sacrafices and overcome obstacles. We want to know they are not robots and have feelings. We want them to represent obscure towns in obscure states. We want them to be just like your neighbor, brother, sister, niece or nephew, teacher or partner.
And this mentality for reality television, this concept that the winner doesn’t have to be the best at the competition as long as they win our hearts, is exactly why Sarah Palin is still in this race. We can no longer discern between celebrities: reality tv stars, Hollywood actors and politicians. All are being held by the same principles as reality television characters. It doesn’t matter if the person sincerely is the most qualified for the job; what matters is if you can relate to them as a contestant/applicant/leader.
Soon as we start focusing on Competition #1 again, people will realize Sarah Palin is not cut out for the job. If you received the job description for the Vice President and 2 resumes without names, I’m pretty sure most people would choose Biden. But Sarah Palin is purposely representing every “hockey mom” and “kid with special needs” to get those votes for people who stay tuned from Tuesday night to Wednesday to see if their favorite contestant was kicked off American Idol.
Sarah Palin is the Sanjaya of American politics and it’s time for her to go.
This election has clearly turned into one where people no longer care for substance. My evidence? The selection and support of Governor Sarah Palin.
People– are you even LISTENING when she speaks? She talks in circles, she completely disregards questions she doesn’t understand and brings them back to topics that she has limited information on in the first place, and she is trying to sucker people in by using honky colloquialisms in her over-pronounced Alaskan accent that sounds even more folksy than it did at the RNC.
I won’t even begin to start on my rant about her “community organizer” statement from last month. I’ve never been more infuriated by a politician’s comment in my life. I will mention that I am more annoyed with Americans and their positive response to Sarah Palin by saying things like “she seems real” and “she tells me straight up.”
1) How are Joe Biden or Obama not “real” and not “telling you things straight up?”
2) Does the VP give weekly reports to the American people about the state of the country? Is this person running for Miss Congeniality? And how does one candidate seem real and the other doesn’t? Joe Biden comes from a similar background and made more of a success out of tragedy in his life. What’s more real about her?
The role of the Vice President is to preside over the Senate and take the place of President in case anything happens to that person. Lets be honest: I don’t want the President or VP to be “just like me.” I want them to be smarter and more saavy when it comes to the workings of our economy and our place in the global marketplace. I want these people to be persons I can look up to so I can improve my life, not someone who I see as an equal. You are the fucking President of the United States of the America, not Homecoming King in high school. You NEED to be better than I am. Otherwise, why am I not running this country?
Furthermore, I have no clue where this whole concept of Obama being an elitist came from. Is it because he went to Columbia and Harvard? I’m willing to bet 75% or more of our Presidents went to Ivy League schools, and our current one is the benefactor of years of privilege and elitism. Is it because he speaks intelligently? God forbid someone actually doesn’t dumb down everything for us. Is it because he was top of his class at Harvard, where John McCain was in the lowest 99% of his graduating class and Sarah Palin went to 6 colleges and changed schools for erratic reasons? Why is it bad to be someone who worked hard to get where they are despite being a minority in a country that believes you only succeeded because of affirmative action?
Someone please tell me how Obama is an elitist? Is it the whole owning one car and one house things versus not knowing how many you own? Is it growing up in a single-family biracial home with 2 strikes against you before you even worry about dealing with everyday matters? Is it not being old enough to be in war and having 2 young daughters who clearly couldn’t have enlisted yet? Is it having a wife who (dare I say) speak her mind and not be a lame-duck trophy First Wife?
Anyway- back to Sarah Palin. She is crazy. But I’m more saddened by the people who believe in her. That’s fine if you relate to her and think she’s awesome. She would probably make a good friend or role model for you. But give me CONCRETE EXAMPLES on how that makes her qualified to be the Vice President of our country. Don’t believe in her because you say “she’s re-energized our party.” How? Making snide remarks and ridiculing the democratic process at the RNC? That hardly counts.
I’ve always said if that you can defend your answers with examples, I will leave you alone. If you can say to me “I believe in her economic policy (whatever that may be), or her stance on gay marraige or her philosophy on drilling in the Artic Refuge”… then I will shut up. But don’t say you like her because she seems real.
Need I remind you George W. Bush ran on the notion of being real and telling us things straight up. And see what happened when we went for flavor over substance? Please don’t let it happen again.
