In the Land of Make-Believe…

There’s a Persian rug store in West LA called Moghaddam Rugs. Every time I see it, this scenario plays in my head:

A delivery truck pulls up in the back.

DELIVERY GUY: Here’s this week’s shipment, sir.
OWNER: What?! You kiddin’ me?! MO’ GODDAMN RUGS!!

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I could not be an actor. When you really think about it, as an actor, your whole livelihood depends on your ability to lie. Your ability to pretend to be someone you’re not and, in most cases, an imaginary person. You practice and practice being this imaginary person for weeks on end. Then, you have to prove your ability to pretend to a panel of people who you’ve never met before. These people, like you, insist that they are the foremost experts on the imaginary life of this imaginary person who you’re pretending to be, and they have been given the responsibility of sifting through people like you who are also lying and pretending in order to find out who is the best and/or most suitable for the job. Now, you may act/pretend your ass off and be the best pretender the panel’s ever seen, but there’s always a possibility that you may not get the role because the panel may say that you don’t fit the “type” or “look” of what they envision this imaginary person should look, act, be, smell, feel, and sound like…in their imaginations. Imagine living like that. Kudos to actors everywhere. Well, until you get to the point where you’re so respected, famous, rich, and/or powerful that you don’t even need to audition for parts anymore. You don’t need my kudos then.

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I grew up in the Bible Belt where going to church is a sewn deep into the fabric of Southern living. Church is serious stuff there, and people take it very earnestly. However, there are times when the seriousness erodes away to surrealism:

It was 103 degrees outside. It felt like 206 degrees inside. I was in this church in the Deep South. Everyone was sweating buckets and fanning themselves with offering envelopes and anything paper. One person was just fine, though. Standing in the pulpit, cool as cucumber, was the preacher…with the only industrial-sized electric fan in the whole joint pointed directly at him. He’s up there preaching about going to hell…umm, excuse me, Mr. Preacher Man, we’re sitting in hell right now! It’s so hot I’m crying out sweat and sweating out tears. My body’s confused and is having a heatstroke.

They always say that the “doors of the church are always open,” which means anyone’s welcome to come in, worship, seek counsel, and/or receive the gospel. This is true…most of the time…unless that person comes in with a gun. Then the doors of the church are closed until further notice. Haaa! True story. I saw it happen. My man came in waving a gun, spitting out some gibberish. The older men of the church had to talk him down and made him leave. Some of us were scared. The rest of us were laughing. He had some toilet paper stuck to his shoe.

I went to a wedding back in the day. After the wedding ceremony, the wedding party asked all the guests to walk with them across the parking lot to the adjacent reception hall. So as we were walking, we noticed that the preacher got into his pimped-out Caddy and drove about 100 feet to the reception hall. Yeah, that happened. Heaven forbid he get a flat tire on the way there. He probably would’ve called AAA to tow his car. Terrible.

During the same wedding ceremony, I noticed that this same preacher had at least one ring on each finger (I’m counting thumbs, too). Some fingers had two rings on them. I scanned the groomsmen and bridesmaids. I shook my head in shame. The preacher had on more rings than the bride, groom, bridesmaids, and groomsmen combined. I was thinking that we could take all those rings of his, melt them down into the form of a golden calf, sit back, and watch Moses smack him over the head with the Ten Commandments. Or, we could be less biblical, and just rob him and fence the rings.

I run camera occasionally for a church that just recently moved into a historic LA church. One day I was looking through the lens and noticed that the pulpit’s backdrop design looked like a series of pitchforks. Now, of course, they’re not actually pitchforks, but they sure the hell do look like ’em. Looks a little eerie up there behind a clergyman in the middle of a sermon. LOL. This is what I saw. At Christmas time, it was even worse. The blue lighting that you see accenting the pitchforks was red.

Just saw a commercial where a bunch of bodybuilders were running through the streets to a spray tanning shop. One of the bodybuilders was black. He was one of the first ones to arrive at the tanning shop. I’m sorry, but does this brotha know that he doesn’t need a tan?
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One day I will jump into a Checker Cab and challenge the driver to a game of checkers. Put that business name to the test.

When Nature calls, listen to her and obey. You can’t cover up your ears because the pee isn’t going to come from there.

American Apparel had a sign in the window that read, “Shop: Kids and Baby Inside.” Why would I want those kids? It’s obvious someone left them there. And it’s obvious someone left them there for a reason. A good reason. They’re probably little rapscallions. They’ve probably already reproduced through ways we can’t understand yet and have eaten their young’s young several times over.

I have AT&T. I don’t have a problem with them. Not at all. But I know people who declare that AT&T’s the devil. While that theory is definitely up for debate, I think the AT&T building in my neighborhood provides substantial evidence of their argument.  Profound proof, I’d say.

The other day I had the grave misfortune of having to run. It was a harrowing and petrifiyingly ghastly experience. I am really out of shape. I caught myself having to take several breaths just to take a breath. I tried to raise my arm to turn on the ceiling fan, thought it was too hard to do, and just started blowing on myself. Havent’t tied my shoes in three years. I just slip my feet into my shoes every day. Feels like I’m being ripped in two when I yawn and stretch. Blinking my eyes gives me a migraine…in my groin.

Is it me or is getting harder and harder to tell Beyonce and Shakira apart?