Unstuck

Letting go. It's never easy.

Case in point: a week ago, thanks to the record-setting stock market (Bidenomics bitch!), I was able to sell some shares and treat myself to my first brand new car in seventeen years. German car, expensive to maintain, expensive to repair, ridiculously expensive to own.

What the hell. I'm not taking it with me. And as the wife said, "Life is short. Buy the car."

The point is in purchasing my new wheels, I have to let go of my old ones, a fourteen-year old Lexus ES350 with over 155,000 miles on it. While I was initially thrilled at jettisoning the Lexus, I started thinking about all the times of my life that car has been a part of.

Driving the kids to school.

To rehearsals.

To game practice.

Nights out with the wife.

Emergency trips to urgent care or the ER. Fortunately not many of those.

I'm not gonna lie: thinking about the outgoing car in that light got me more than a little misty. It shouldn't come as a surprise. If you know anything about me, and if you don't by now then I just don't know where we go from here, you know I'm a sap.

I cry at Hallmark commercials. I never had a chance.

Because I have a new car, and a new windshield, I also have to say goodbye to something else I've been holding onto for the last two cars I've owned. My Chiat/Day parking sticker.

I always loved the Chiat sticker. The pirate culture it represented. The skull and crossbones shadow it made at high noon on the dash. The bragging rights it gave me. And the fact I could visit Chiat weeks after I was done freelancing there, park unnoticed amongst them, and sneak upstairs for one of their great breakfast burritos from the in-house restaurant.

I'm not proud. But on a stack of bibles, it was a pretty fuckin' great burrito.

When I was still working at agencies, before finding the most awesome client side job ever, that little blue sticker was also proof positive, tangible evidence, something I could point to whenever I'd play the Chiat card.

Which almost everyone who works or worked there does at one time or another.

The sticker's faded now, and years of sunlight exposure have given it a little curling around the edges. And just like the velcro strips that hold my FasTrak transponder, or the Magic Castle member parking discount sticker, the time has come to lower the pirate flag, and let go of the Chiat sticker.

All to say that if you want to sneak in for a breakfast burrito, we're going to have to take your car.

I can run but I cannot hide

You'd think I'd learn by now, but some lessons you just have to keep learning.

Let's start here. For years I went without a flu shot. The reason wasn't some protest against big pharma, some wildly allergic reaction or an irrational fear of CVS nurses wielding hypodermic needles. The reason was I never got the flu.

That all changed four or five years ago when "Is it cold in here? I have the chills." turned into "Oh my God, I'm dying! Hold that thought I'm going to the bathroom. Again." I came down with the flu from hell. Ever since, I've gotten my annual flu shot right at the start of the season. I don't care if it doesn't protect against all the strains. At least I'm not getting the ones it covers.

But, come to find out, a flu shot isn't a guarantee.

I was feeling pretty good about not having gotten sick, even though people around me at the office were dropping like overworked, underpaid flies. Then a funny thing happened. My throat got sore, my nose got runny and my sleep got sneezy. Still, because I'd taken today as a paid day off, thinking I'd get around to errands I didn't do over the holidays, I refused to entertain the thought I was going down for the count.

My thinking changed this morning when I got full on chills. Started making bathroom runs faster than Carl Lewis. And blew through (pun intended) boxes of tissues with the usual cold symptoms.

The good news, and I hate to jinx it but I'm going to say it anyway, is I haven't had any fever. And, as anyone who knows me will tell you, it'll take more than a few rogue germs to kill my appetite.

The bad news is I'm taking my daughter who's home from college and her friend to brunch at the Magic Castle tomorrow. They took a few planes to get here, and they've been looking forward to this for awhile. Disappointing them is not an option.

So I'll be mixing a little magic potion of my own in the morning, starting with a Coricidin omelette and a DayQuill chaser to get me through the day.

Then, it's back home and to bed until this thing runs its course.

I'm trying to think of a snappy line to end this post. A flu-related joke that'll leave you laughing. Alright, smiling. Okay, not tossing the laptop across the room.

But I got nothing. So instead, I think I'll go back to bed and binge a television show about a meth kingpin named Walter White.

That always makes me feel better.

Suit yourself

There are several ways to tell it’s not me in the picture. Let’s see if we can name them all.

First, the suit isn’t black. Complete giveaway. Next, the model is thin. Shut up. Then, my hair, although once that color, isn’t anymore (my dad went gray at 25 - I never had a chance). Finally, it's been a while since I stood in a spaceship, Frank Gehry building, stage or wherever the hell he is with a 50 Shades Of You Know What Happens Next look on my face. But in my rich fantasy life, that’s exactly how I look in a nicely tailored suit.

Which brings me to my next point: I need a suit. A real suit. A grown up suit.

I don’t have much occasion to wear one, although I have been going to more funerals than I’d like the past few years. Part of the problem is I work in advertising, an industry which lets me dress like a fifteen-year boy old most of the time. On the rare occasion I have a reason to dress up at work, it just means tucking my shirt in my jeans, and wearing the black New Balance sneakers instead of the yellow ones.

However, besides the funerals, there've also been some weddings as of late. Or as I like to call them, a waste of a perfectly good Saturday. Plus, I’m also a member of the Magic Castle, which, in its quaint, throwback ways still maintains a dress code. And while I’ve managed to get away with wearing an old suit I have, it’s so long out of style I may as well be dressed for my bar mitzvah.

By the way, the jacket I wore to my bar mitzvah was blue. At the age of thirteen, I hadn’t developed my affinity for a black wardrobe yet. I also hadn’t developed any affinity for Hebrew school, but did that stop my parents from sending me there? No it did not.

Anyway, the point is I can’t keep wearing the same out-of-style suit to functions and venues that require one. I need a new suit.

The ones I’ve always liked are made by Hugo Boss. I remember years ago, there used to be an advertising awards show in Southern California called the Beldings, and early on they used to be black-tie. I’d go out, rent a tuxedo and show up looking quite snazzy while I was losing in every category.

Nothing feels quite as good as losing in rented clothes.

This one time, as I was trying on my tux at Gary’s Tuxedo in Santa Monica, I noticed one of the mannequins wearing a Hugo Boss tuxedo. You know you’re in trouble when the mannequin looks better in a tux than you do. Why not – he had the nicer tux.

I asked how much it was, and at the time it was around $1700. So I did some cypherin’ and figured out if I rented a tux at a hundred bucks a shot seventeen times, I could own that Hugo Boss (alright, so the math wasn’t that hard).

Well, you know how this story ends. At the time I didn’t have the foresight to see how I’d ever have seventeen occasions to dress up, so I didn’t pull the trigger on the purchase. Of course I’ve needed one many more times than that in the intervening years.

Which brings me back to my point: I need a suit. My strategy is to lose a little weight first (which has been my strategy since 1985), then go out and buy myself a stylish little Hugo Boss number.

Can you guess what color I'll get?

It's empty in here

As anyone who blogs will tell you, the challenge is constantly coming up with things to write about. In fact, there are more than a few people who read this blog who would say that I rarely meet the challenge.

Anyway, I don't post every day, but once in awhile I get a rush of confidence and a false sense of my abilities and go on a writing/posting jag. I'm in the middle of one now, which makes it even harder to keep coming up with things to post about. People more prolific than me don't seem to have a problem with it (I'm looking at you Round Seventeen).

All to say today I've hit the blogpost wall. I wrote about it way back in the days of aught '10 (yes, that's the correct spelling of aught - writer, hello?) in a post called Nothing Is Something.

The wall is a moving target, and can be made up of anything from "I don't feel like doing it right now." to "Don't know what to talk about." to "Squirrel!"

Here's the thing: it's Sunday, it's warm out and I'm tired. I didn't get home from the Magic Castle until after 2 a.m Saturday morning, and I just got home from seeing Kingsman: The Secret Service, which was about an hour too long.

But I do recognize the responsibility I have to my five readers, so I apologize for the lack of captivating reading today. I absolutely promise I'll do better tomorrow.

No, my fingers aren't crossed behind my back. Why do you ask?