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This is all stuff I’ve been meaning to mention but haven’t gotten around to doing so yet.
-I saw “The Wrestler” a couple of weeks ago. It was my favorite movie I’ve seen in quite a while, maybe even since Under Siege: 2, and I think it’s a must-see. If you’re put off by the fact that it’s about a professional wrestler just get over it: Mickey Rourke is as good as all the critics are saying and his character is one of the more compelling characters in recent movie history.
-I saw “Gran Torino” and it was kind of lame. Clint Eastwood was awesome in it but the other actors were all decidedly sub-par and the basic premise of the story (hardass old fart turns friendly) was both cliched and executed poorly.
-I went to “Osteria Mozza” in Los Angeles. Easily my favorite meal I’ve ever had. Even with a disappointing main course (the beef brassato), the dinner was amazing. Everything was great but the ricotta raviolo with browned butter, which our waiter brought out for us for free because we were full but he insisted was too good to not have, was exceptionally good. If you’re ever in L.A., you have to go there.
-With everybody talking about Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, it’s worth going to Wikipedia and reading about what Ponzi’s scheme was. It’s actually fascinating how he was claiming to arbitrage millions of dollars worth of coupons when there weren’t enough ever printed to even come close to making his claims feasible, yet nobody bothered noticing.
-I finally finished reading “Nixonland.” I’d recommend the first 100 pages to most people just as a taste, and after that you can figure out whether you want to read the next 650 pages.
-Two things that made my downswing even worse: one was being woken up at 8:00 a.m. California time by my New York doctor after my first big losing day. I managed to wake up and find the phone just in time to answer the phone and have him tell me that the MRI is back and I definitely have a torn labrum.
The second thing was day 2 of the 2-day downswing. I’ve just lost about 150k and I’m supposed to go to a friend’s house (we’ll call her Amanda since I don’t know anybody named Amanada) in Beverly Hills to watch the sun set (no homo, she just has a ridiculous view of the city). But as I’m getting ready to leave, my brother tells me he might need a ride to the airport since his ride might not be able to pick him up. So I enter the airport into google maps on my iPhone to see how far away it is and realize it’s prohibitively far and I can’t give my brother a ride.
Then I enter my friend’s address into my phone and realize I have to haul ass because I’m going to be late. So I’m driving along, making good time, and what a coincidence! The exit that I have to take to get to Amanda’s house also takes you to the airport. I start to have thoughts such as “hmm, I wonder how far away from the airport Amanda’s place is?” and “That’s weird, Amanda supposedly lives in the bomb neighborhood, I thought being by an airport brings down property values.”
All the pieces of this not-particularly-tough puzzle started coming together when, following my google maps directions, I turned onto World Way, which according to my phone, was the end of my trip. Oddly enough, World Way did not lead to the top of Beverly Hills and there was no great view of the city. Instead, World Way is the road that takes you to all the airport terminals at LAX. As I drove by Terminal 1 I realized what had just happened.
Somehow, I must have calculated the route to LAX on my phone instead of to Amanda’s place. I guess I looked up Amanda’s place to see how far it is on my computer or something, because it wasn’t even in my search history on my phone.
So yeah, I guess I could have taken my brother to the airport after all, given that I went there anyway. I google maps Amanda’s place to see how far away it is, and it’s 20 miles away. And I’m in Los Angeles in rush hour. In an old Acura (had just returned the rental car, was using my cousin’s car). And I’m half an hour removed from losing 150k. And then, as I start flooring it to make it to Amanda’s less egregiously late than I’m going to be anyway, my iPhone warns me that it’s on 10% juice. There’s simply no way it’ll make it all the way to Amanda’s. Now I have to start committing the complicated directions to memory or else I’ll be lost in a strange city with no means of communicating with anybody. Panic starts to set in.
By some miracle I manage to keep the phone alive by exiting google maps and quickly checking the next step of my trip at the end of each step just long enough to make it to Amanda’s. At this point I’ve panic-driven basically all across Los Angeles in record time, and I managed to make it just in time to miss the sunset. My friends ask me why I was so late and, too embarrassed to explain to them what happened, I just tell them that I had to take my brother to the airport. Close enough to the truth right?
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