Where cars go to die

Let me give you a gift, my own cautionary tale about why you should never buy a car at Carmax. It doesn't originate from buying one there. It comes from selling one.

I used to drive an Audi A6. Of all the cars I've owned, it was my favorite (my least favorite was my first - a 1965 Plymouth Fury, don't get me started). I'd get behind the wheel of my A6 and hit the curved freeway onramp by my house at 70 mph. It stuck like glue. After all, it was a car built for the autobahn. I’ve since tried it with my Lexus ES350, not exactly the same experience. (The picture below is an actual picture of both cars - can you tell there's a certain look I go for? I know it's hard..)

Anyway, one day I was on my way to work at Dentsu in Brea to work on Suzuki (remember my motto: the checks clear). While I was stuck in gridlocked, rush-hour traffic, I looked to my left to see a ton of white smoke billowing up. My first thought was I wonder if the car next to me knows that’s coming from her car. Then I looked forward, and saw more smoke coming from under the hood of my Audi. Fortunately I was close enough to an off-ramp to get off the freeway quickly.

It’s amazing how fast traffic will let you through when they think you’re on fire.

Come to find out I wasn't actually on fire: I was on fire adjacent. There was highly flammable transmission fluid leaking onto the catalytic converter, which runs at about 1500 degrees.

I managed to get the A6 back to my independent Audi mechanic in Long Beach, who told me the only reason I made it without catching fire is my speed was blowing the fluid off the bottom of my car. Long story short (if that’s even possible at this point), it cost me $3500 for them to fix the transmission well enough to get my car to run without the “check engine” light long enough to get it over to Carmax.

Now, here’s the thing with Carmax. Before they make an offer, they do a thorough inspection and test drive of your car. Apparently, mine passed with flying colors. That in itself may be all you need to know about Carmax.

So how much did they offer me? You got it. $3500. I broke even, which, just like when I'm in Vegas, I consider a win.

I miss the A6 often - usually when I'm hitting that onramp in the Lexus - and I hope Carmax just took the car for parts and didn’t sell it to anyone. However it is comforting to know they're there if you have to unload a car fast and get it off your hands.

And by the way, they don't carry very many hard-to-find makes and models. I'm telling you this because if you're at Carmax in the next couple of weeks, and you see a '97 Saab Turbo you think you might be interested in, do yourself a favor and pass on it.

It's not important how I know. Trust me.

The early signs

When my son was younger, much younger, I gave him a set of children's story books my parents had given me. Bound and colorful (the books, not my son), they were filled with the classic stories we've all grown up with. The set of books sits on his dresser, which is what he happened to be cleaning last night as he decided to attack the living ecosystem that is his room.

Going through the books, tucked between Little Red Riding Hood and Jack The Giant Killer, he discovered a couple of handwritten pages. The big surprise is that they were handwritten by me, a long time ago in a galaxy far away.

When he brought them out to me, there are two things I noticed right away. First, not bad handwriting for a 5th or 6th grader. And second, that short, clever, memorable headline that brings a smile to your face and tells the whole story in six carefully chosen words:

Pitcher Throws Himself Out of Baseball

I have some vague recollection of writing for my elementary school newspaper. And because, once again God proves he has a sense of humor, I was assigned to write about sports. In this case, the self-imposed retirement of Sandy Koufax.

It's hard to pinpoint when we first display a knack for what we'll be doing later on in our adult life. Whether it's growing up to be a fireman, doctor, politician or Dexter, the early signs may go undetected until the potential is realized.

Also, I never set out to be a writer. I was a Hollywood kid - I wanted to be an actor. I just didn't want it enough.

But it's funny where we wind up, and interesting to look back and see that even then, maybe, I had a bit of a knack for it.

The other thing I like about it is my son now has a bit of dad history as keepsake. It's not digital. He can hold it in his hands.

Perhaps years from now, after I'm long gone, late at night when he's thinking about me, he'll take it out, slowly read it, and with a slight smile on his face and a tear on deck, sigh deeply and think the only thought he can have about his old man after reading it.

"I can't believe they wanted him to write about sports."

What goes down must come up

Funny thing about food poisoning. If it's a good meal, you enjoy getting it even though you don’t know you’re getting it. It's only about eight hours later - when it decides to wake up and kick in - that you really sit down and re-evaluate your dining choices.

And you’ll be doing plenty of sitting down.

Last Tuesday I ate at The Counter in Hermosa Beach for lunch. If you haven't been there, and my guess is after reading this you won't be going anytime soon, it’s basically an upscale burger place. When you walk in, you’re greeted by the surprisingly uninviting, sparse, cold and unwelcoming décor. Once seated, you’re given a clipboard with choices of meats, toppings, buns and dressings, and basically get to build your burger. I’ve eaten at a few different locations in the chain, and always had a good burger there. In fact, the one I had last Tuesday was great.

Then, later that night…

About 10 pm I started to feel a little nauseous. About 10:10 pm, it had escalated severely and I began what turned out to be an eight-hour, home improvement extreme makeover from master bathroom into vomitorium. When there was a break in the action, I ran – and I do mean ran – to the kitchen to get a bucket, and then back to the bathroom.

Why the bucket? Well, remember the part about sitting down. Yeah, so that happened. I didn’t know I’d ordered the two-for-one special, if you get my drift.

Wednesday morning, after a completely sleepless night, I was wrecked. My throat was raw and raspy as could be, and when I tried to talk I sounded like Demi Moore in A Few Good Men. My ribs and abs hadn’t had that kind of workout in years. They’re still screaming at me not to do it again.

Also, because of that, I can’t find a comfortable position to lay down, so, no good sleep for the last three days.

I don’t remember checking any of this on the clipboard.

Yesterday, my wife called The Counter in Hermosa to speak with the manager and let her know what happened – not to get anything from them, just to let them know so they could check their food and make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else.

And guess what? The manager was very defensive. I know, I’m as shocked as you are.

“Where else did he eat?”

Nowhere.

“We’re very careful with how we handle the food.”

I’m sure you are.

“What toppings did he have?”

Whatever they were I’m sure he didn’t order the e coli.

Here’s the thing: I’m not 8 and I’m not 80. I was pretty much done with it in 36 hours. But is it really good corporate policy to act snotty and defensive when one of your customers is trying to tell you something that might actually help you – even if you don’t want to hear it? I promise you it’s not.

I might’ve been willing to write it off as a fluke if the manager’s attitude had been a little more appropriate. And their burger didn't make me feel like I was dying for the last couple of days.

But now, as I go down my list of burger places to eat at with my family and friends, there's definitely one box I won’t be checking.

On our Mark

For many people, this time of year kicks off a certain kind of joy. It’s the exciting and festive start of the holiday season, with at least one major celebration a month from now until the end of the year. The air is thick with anticipation.

But for me, October brings something a little darker now – a little more Woody Allen in attitude.

It's a reminder the year is running out of time. The days get shorter, the night comes earlier, the chill lasts longer. Also, every October is one more year my lifelong friend Mark Geldman has been gone.

Mark died of cancer in October 2007, but not before living a wild, full and adventurous life. Not only was he one of my very best friends, he was also an artist, a poet, a writer, an activist, an entrepreneur and a ladies man. He was married four times. Some people just never learn.

In high school, there were three of us: me, Mark and Sandy Frey. We were inseparable and unstoppable. Together, we stole our parents cars before we could legally drive (note to my kids: don’t even think it). We organized a political demonstration that shut down our junior high school for a few days. At the time, Mark was a member of the Young Socialist Alliance, and his parents belonged to the Socialist Workers Party. If I heard one lecture about Eugene Debs I heard a hundred. (As a side note, years later when I asked Mark if he was still a socialist, he told me he worked in Hollywood, where everyone including him was a devout capitalist).

Anyway, like friendships that have been so close for so long sometimes do, we went our different ways after high school.

About 14 years ago, I was reading the Calendar section of the L.A. Times. It was some article about Mickey Rourke and how impossible he was being (I know, I was as shocked as you are) with a project he was involved in. The article listed the screenwriter as Mark Geldman. I hadn’t seen or heard Mark’s name in a very long time, and wondered whether it was the same one. So I called 411, asked for his number, and got it. Then I called him.

I think our first conversation was two hours – two wonderful hours catching up on the years that’d gone by.

I wound up reconnecting for a short time with Mark. My wife and I had dinner at his house. We met his wife and kids. They came to our house. It was a great time. The thing about knowing someone so long and well is they can fill in the blanks for you. Among other things, Mark reminded me of a dinner we'd had years earlier at an Indian restaurant in New York called Nirvana (I didn't even remember being in New York). And of the Tribeca apartment he could've signed a 20-year lease on for $300 a month.

It’s easy for me to recall the last time I saw Mark because I have a good milestone to remember it. It was the night before my daughter was born. Together with our wives, we had dinner at L’Opera in downtown Long Beach. It was a drizzly Sunday night, and we were sitting by the large windows looking out at the Metro Blue Line as it came and went. It was all very east coast, and it felt right.

And then he was gone. I never spoke to him again.

Fast forward to the end of September, beginning of October 2007. I got a call from Mark’s high school girlfriend and fourth wife, Jodi. When I answered, in tears she said, “We lost Mark.” When I told my wife Mark had died, the first words out of her mouth were, “You have to tell Sandy.”

I couldn’t even remember the last time I talked to Sandy, so I took to the interwebs and Googled him. Turns out Sandy was a partner in a prestigious law firm in downtown L.A. Come to find out in what I now refer to as the lost years, he done good.

I emailed him about Mark passing away, and I now know when he got the email he was in a client meeting and had to step outside because of the tears in his eyes.

When Jodi let me know the date of the memorial service, Sandy and I got together beforehand for a reunion of our own. Even though Mark wasn’t there, he couldn’t have been more present. As Mark and I had done, Sandy and I spent the time we had before the service filling in the blanks for each other, rekindling both memories and a friendship that had never really been gone, just dormant.

At the service, although we didn’t speak, we were spoken about. People talked about Mark’s friends Sandy and Jeff because they’d heard about us from Mark.

While a lot of that day is a blur, the thing I remember most is after the service and get together at his cousins house, Sandy and I were walking to our cars with Ron Yanover, Mark’s writing partner. He told us how often Mark had spoken of us over the years. Then, he stopped for a minute and said, “We had the best of him.”

What brought all this on is now, every year since Mark's service, Sandy and I get together around October 8th, Mark’s birthday, to have dinner at Blair’s in Silverlake and raise a glass to Mark. Then we have dessert at Pazzo Gelato, the shop Mark opened with his neice and nephew.

I think it’s strange yet comforting Mark managed to bring Sandy and I back together. The three of us were always, and I mean always, together. When Sandy and I are together, it feels like we still are. We both have a fierce determination never to let the years slip away again. At least we know we’ll always see each other one night a year.

Next Wednesday night, you’ll find Sandy and me at Blair’s, talking about ourselves, our work, our lives and Mark.

And remembering we had the best of him.

Darrin did good

At every agency I’ve ever worked at, someone somewhere has a picture in their office of Dick York as bumbling adman Darrin Stephens from the 1960's television show Bewitched. I suppose it’s always around because they can point to it and say that character is nothing like what they - real life advertising people - are like (in most cases).

The funny thing is, the character is also a million miles removed from what Dick York was really like.

By the time he was hired for Bewitched, he was an accomplished actor with several prestige projects on his resume, including a co-starring role with Spencer Tracy in Inherit The Wind. Unknown to Bewitched producers, he also was an addict, hooked on painkillers as a result of a back injury he got filming 1959’s They Came To Cordura, starring Gary Cooper. Eventually his injury forced him to leave the series after the fifth season.

He never regained his career after that, and along with his wife was forced into homelessness for years due to his inability to work. Eventually, when her mother died, they stayed in her house, with Dick as a shut-in now having been diagnosed with emphysema.

But from that house, he found a way to give to others and bring meaning to his life which he knew was coming to an end.

Their residence became a clearing house for organizations nationwide that helped the homeless and needy. Thanks to Dick York, people who would’ve had to go without food, clothing and shelter didn't.

It’s easy to get caught up in the knit-cap, tattoo, hipster attitude of agency life. It's even easier to laugh at a character from a time long past that’s nothing like you are.

Well, for all the people with the picture of Darrin Stephens hanging in their office, here’s another way you're not like him.

He did something that mattered and made a difference in people’s lives.

Yum Kippur

Quick, how many Jews does it take to blog about Yom Kippur? All of 'em.

Not that the internet needed another blogpost about it, what with this fine post at Round Seventeen, and this swell one at Ad-Aged. But I thought what the hell, I'm just sitting here: I may as well write one. After all, we're not supposed to eat today, but apparently typing is still on the table (see what I did there?).

As I've posted before, I'm not really much of a practicing Jew. I don't know if it's because of four long years of Hebrew school and being bar mitzvah'd, or in spite of it. But as a result, whether I want to be or not, I'm still hard-wired to recognize the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. And because Catholics, despite what they think, have never had the market on guilt cornered, I can't help feeling like I should be more of a participant in the customs and traditions of this day. But here's the thing: for me, actually observing it would be a bit hypocritical. Somewhat akin to all the Jews who, since they're not supposed to drive today, make a proud point of walking all the way to the synagogue.

From the parking lot.

Yom Kippur is the one day we're supposed to reflect on and atone for our sins of the past year. I'm not bragging, but I think we both know it's going to take more than one day.

Besides, there isn't a day that goes by that I'm not constantly thinking about my sins. Since we're supposed to be fasting on this holy day, each year Yom Kippur only serves to narrow down the sin I should be focusing on most.

Gluttony.

Til death do you part? Good luck with that

I’m not sure, but I think 2000 is the crown-of-diamonds anniversary.

Last week, a piece of papyrus was discovered. On it, Jesus is quoted as saying the words “My wife…” But then, the paper cuts off.

Cue the media frenzy.

“Was Jesus married?” the pundits were asking. Or even worse, stating as fact.

The answer of course is no, he wasn’t. So I hope you kept the receipt for that crock pot.

The fabric it’s written on, much less the statement itself, strike more than a few theological investigators as suspicious since this “discovery” just came to light. The truth is, as Jon Stewart showed last week, Jesus could’ve been saying virtually anything:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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But I think to discover the real reason Jesus wasn't married, you have to turn to a preacher. Or former one. That's why I think Sam Kinison has the real reason - by the way, this clip is NOT suitable for younger viewers (surprise!):

And if it turns out he was married, all I can say is I hope she gets along with the in-laws.