At this stage of life… babies, home, hair, career, car, weight, and weight of the wife, all seem to be salient variables, which, when calculated by a complex psychological algorithm… aka. quantum denial, create validation for each of us to feel good about our lives, and still leave enough room to be happy for our friends.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends, I’m a very cliquey person, so content with my social circle, I find it very unnecessary to branch out and meet new people. My friends know me, and they know exactly how many cocktails it will take before I say or do something, that inevitably ends up on a t-shirt, or stuck in the minds of some very angry wives on their drive home. I’m sure many a friend has had to calm their wife down, and at the same time, come to my quasi-defense by saying, “It’s Max, need I say more?” In fact, many a morning, I’ve heard my own wife on the phone saying just that.

This is what I’m getting at… I don’t want to lose my friends; more to the point, I don’t want to lose the way I interact with them. You could imply I’m merely trying to say I don’t want to grow up, but I would respond, I don’t want to be guarded and deal with shallow pretenses. I refuse to get in a pissing contest about the percentile of my child, or the square footage of my lot. So let me just spill it, that way, at the next function, we don’t have to worry about impressing each other…

I shop at Target for most things, sometimes have to buy shirts in XXL, usually shower once on the weekends, take medication to keep my hair, and would rather own two cheap Hondas than pay my ridiculous car leases. I ate a large cheese steak pizza and an order of hot wings from Dominos by myself the other night. I have two mortgages, not ashamed about residing North of the boulevard, and have no idea how people afford to send their kids to private school for 20k a year. I used Elmer’s rubber cement to patch the ceiling drywall tape in my living room, and I often contemplate redoing my house’s exterior, to the point I get severely distraught. Bill Maher, Bill O’Reilly, and John Stewart are all similar comedian partisan pundits, so don’t be shocked if I don’t watch your favorite one; furthermore, don’t give me hard time because I don’t watch Lost, House, Sopranos and/or your other favorite hour-long go-nowhere drama. I enjoy watching the dodgers (almost as much as eating at the park), but lack knowledge of baseball fundamentals and statistics. Worst of all, I really suffered by having those drinks last night, because I was up till 1am feeding the baby. If you don’t like it, tough sh*t, and I’ll see you at our next get together.

Love,
Max

I know most ALL of my posts have centered around things that annoy me. Well, this post is no exception, but it happened in Sherman Oaks. I’ll get right to it… the bastards who run the Sav-On (now CVS) Pharmacy on Ventura (just East of Willis) should be tossed out on the street. I waited 45 minutes to pick up my dad’s order, only to find they hadn’t even started filling it… this was over 3 hours after it was promised. I have a lot of patience, I’m not the guy who complains for no reason, I don’t send my food back unless it’s absolutely terrible. Nonetheless, I lost it, I threw a fit, and told pierced putz at the counter they should lose their license.

I should have suspected something since the line was conveniently setup far from the pick up windows (as to not disturb the pharmacists). Of course, it stretched to the back across the store (about 25 people in line). They had 10 pharmacists filling prescriptions, 4 people running 2 “drop-off” windows (people moved through that line with no problem), and 2 poor souls to man the 3 “pick-up” windows. I can confirm this as fact, because I had another 45 minutes once I made it to a pick-up window to count everyone.

At least put a sign out saying “hey, we’re behind 5-8 hours on filling orders” so we’ll come back later! Instead, each person who camped out in line shared my pain, patrons practically caused a riot. I overheard customers shouting “this happens every time I come here!” I don’t understand why they come back, I had no choice, my dad was home from the hospital, needed his medicine, and that’s where my mother called it in.

If you value your time and your sanity, I suggest you find a smaller drugstore, or at least a different chain (RiteAid blows as well).

It starts with the 5am newscast on a local station. 5:01am: “I’m Bob So-and-So sitting in for Steve Whosey-Whatsy, and this is local news at 5am.” Dude, it’s 5am, I don’t care who you are, and I never noticed who the other anchor was. Nonetheless EVERY newscaster feels it’s imperative to tell you when they’re sitting in for someone else. Is that so we can keep track of how often they’re on location, perhaps on a golf course? When did any of these “newscasters” become celebrities in their own rites? Has the 24 hour news channel sent journalists into a psychotic self-exploitative era, due to the lack of actual stories to fill the time? Do they need to write a book every time they’re on location in the Middle East for more than 3 weeks? Must we be bombarded with weeks of celebrated highlights as news anchors leave their job, only to be inundated with trailers and promos for the same people starting jobs in new timeslots? Why are news reporters the big story? Why are the newscasters so full of themselves? Did they forget they have an earpiece with a team of people in a back room feeding them lines, and telling them what questions to ask? What about these shows themselves? Do we need to celebrate 25 years of individual local newscasts? Do they forget you could calculate weeks of their past 25 years being spent on waiting for a panda to give birth at a local zoo? Is that journalistic excellence?

Since I’ve been using RSS feeds to view news/blogs online, I would say a good portion of every newscast, local or national picks up news from the Internet. For example, GMA’s “YouTube” segment each morning, or the “odd” news stories that regularly appear from major blogs like boingboing.net the previous week. I’m beginning to think journalists in the field are sitting at their desk waiting for a blogger to write their next story, while they’re busy IM’ing their friends they actually met Charles Gibson, or the fat guy that does the weather (take your pick of them).

Would the old guard appreciate this? I felt bad for Peter Jennings when he died, he had a good presence, wasn’t offensive, and wasn’t the story. I bet he’d be pissed if he knew at his death the news wasn’t reported; rather his life was made public, and exploited with ongoing news specials. I didn’t care when Dan Rather left, but Katie Couric has obviously been a partner in the huge campaign to let the world know she’s the big story... and why? Sad to say, but Network news has become a lackluster set of rehashed spoon-fed press releases from the Whitehouse, strung together with terrifying commercials for drugs to help you pee, stop restless leg syndrome, and control your cholesterol. Did everyone forget the top 25 stories that the media has turned a blind eye to?

Lastly, lets not forget our friends in the 24 hour news business, CNN, Fox, MSNBC. The list of CNN news anchors becoming famous because they were on location or on the air during the time of a crisis is comical. No doubt, this has become the easiest way to hit stardom, from Bernard Shaw/Wolf Blitzer (Iraq War 1990), Paula Zhan (9/11), to Anderson Cooper (Iraq War….).

Good night, and good luck!

Everybody uses Google these days, but when the Internet was first blooming, I did some searching using the online white pages. I came across another person with my exact name, and was thrilled; someone else has my odd name, an old guy living in Boca Raton… so I called him. Humorously, I asked him if Max was there, he said yes, and I said, no this is Max. That was the extent of the call, and I’ve always felt a connection to him. Here’s the scary part, googling this morning, I found Max is no longer with us. He died in 1999, and for some reason our government releases his social security information to be published on commercial sites…. I will admit I find this a bit troubling, with all the identity theft, people can just go on this site and look up a dead person, bada bing, new life. I found deceased relatives, and that concerns me. The upside for me, I guess if I ever get in trouble, this means I can just assume his identity without having to doctor records.... ok ok, just for you readers, I'm sure you can use this site to find a place for sale on my street rather than the MLS.... doh!!

It's always a good day when you find out another country music radio station goes bye-bye! Of course, now it's a top 40 station, which is why I usually listen to AM radio!
LA Observed: No more country at KZLA

From Sherman Oaks (1927- )

With a new Sherman Oaks blog that I found out about today, I thought I’d focus on recent attempts to beautify our neighborhood. Let’s start a few years ago, when they ripped up the crosswalks around Ventura/Van Nuys Boulevard. I was excited, thinking we’d get the brick or cobble stone crosswalk treatment, but was disheartened to witness the never seen before, cheap looking decorative asphalt. I’ve never seen anyone try and beautify asphalt, and now I know why, it doesn’t work! Anyone who sees it most likely chuckles to themselves, wondering how much public funding was squandered for that mess in the intersections. To re-launch this newly pinstriped-asphalt-crosswalk epicenter, they renamed it, “The Village at Sherman Oaks.”

Fast forward to a few weeks ago… I noticed short poles with 2 hanging plants off of each one, running up and down Ventura and Van Nuys Boulevard (up to the 101 on/off ramps). You can’t really see them on Ventura Blvd. with all the other trees, and light poles which begs the question… why? They look completely out of place on Van Nuys Blvd., where people have already had the brilliant idea of taking a few of the plants.

My only thought while I gazed upon these sad poles, with just a smidge of life hanging off them… how the hell do these plants get watered? Overall, it looks like a feeble attempt to “warm up” a major thoroughfare, and makes me wonder how anyone thought this looked good.

If I wanted to live in Irvine where everything has a sponge painted faux-Tuscan finish, I would. My advice to the beautification people… embrace and build on the unique character of Sherman Oaks, from the nostalgic stone faced retail stores from the 60’s, to the shag style apartment buildings.

I will end on a happy note, I do like the new bus benches, in “the village” and wish we could get them to replace the horrible ad-benches over the rest of our neighborhood. Let’s be honest, has anybody ever picked a real estate agent because they saw their name on a bus bench? I also like the tree plantings that took place on Ventura/Woodman a few years back. Lastly, I think they should bring the foliage filled island divider which looks so good just East of Ventura & Van Nuys to Ventura & Woodman.

That's my opinion and I'm sticking to it... unless you give me a shoebox full of $20's.

NBC: Disagreement over timing of arrests - Lisa Myers & the NBC Investigative Unit - MSNBC.com

NBC News discovered "...British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence, while American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner."

I would say this validates my earlier post about Bush's need to distract the public from the political fallout of Lieberman's loss in the primary. Typical Bush administration minor conspiracy.

MaxTiki - Link to "Loose Change 2nd Edition"

I learned how to play chess in junior high. I wasn’t very good at it, but I could always beat my stepfather, who is a very smart man, a lawyer, trained to catch the smallest details. My strategy was simple… I’d simply focus intently on the opposite side of the board from where I might be exposed, or be waiting to pounce on one of his pawns should he not see it. A simple strategy, that didn’t have anything to do with strategy of the game; nevertheless, the results were the same, I’d win and he never figured it out.

Two days ago Joe Lieberman lost a huge primary election to a nobody. His loss was prime evidence of the lack of support for the American occupation of Iraq. You can read more about his loss on any political blog, but I want to focus on something else.

Within hours of his loss, every major international news outlet touted it as a major public movement to get out of Iraq. Across the chessboard, British police stormed the homes of 21 men, and subsequently created a huge international panic, shifting headlines from “Americans want to pull out of Iraq,” back to "massive terrorist threat." Call it a coincidence, AGAIN? I have noticed several times during Afghanistan, and Iraq occupations, as soon as support waned, we’d conveniently capture an “HVT” or “high-value target”. I’m not saying these people weren’t plotting, or that I disbelieve all the hard work people are doing to insure our safety. I am saying the timing for the new threat seems conveniently enacted. I am saying that I have a hard time believing that it was necessary for agents to act yesterday, today, or even tomorrow. I am saying that I believe Britain/American politicians answer to the same multi-national corporate bosses, who benefit from the economics of war. Bottom line, I believe the government keeps tabs on several cells, available for a quick and easy capture, to create panic, and distract the public, whenever support for the war on terror (which now includes Iraq) wanes. I’ve just seen too many coincidences.

I love conspiracy theories, like the one in Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear” or Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” movie. An even more out there one is the documentary called “Loose Change 2^nd Edition” which was made by a 22 year old Dylan Avery.

Like anyone else who has spoken up in defiance of the foreign policy of late, I'll probably be audited by the IRS, or brought in for questioning, or shot by the time you read this, by some unidentified man in a black suit. Even worse, I may get a guest shot on Geraldo and forced to converse with that jackass. Until that time, ask yourself… is it really so hard to believe that “spinning” a situation has turned into “creating” a new situation, to distract and promote the agenda?