Upon sitting down to reflect on 2013, I couldn’t help but
return to my disappointment that I discontinued posting blog updates about my
Italian adventures. Some intended future entries included my date with an
Italian bartender that ended in an apartment she shared with her ex-boyfriend
and a weekend in Venice that featured a blizzard, a nearly broken knee and one
of the top ten worst floods in the city’s history. Considering that both caused
me physical pain, it’s probably best that you didn’t vicariously experience
them.
Picking up where I left off almost a full year later, my
most recent adventure brings me to San Jose, California. While there I will be working
on the creative team for the recruitment marketing agency CKR Interactive, of
which my uncle is President/CEO. Nepotism
aside, I will also be living in his house.
I’m looking forward to the opportunity to learn more about
marketing and to be on my own again in the big bad world. Not that it wasn’t wonderful
to spend six weeks at home with limited car access, but watching American
Pickers and poring over Andy Kaufman’s Wikipedia page could only entertain me
for so long.
It’s on to bigger and more adult-ish things.
– Brief writing interlude to compulsively stare at
my nails like a degenerate meth addict in the middle of the airport; I stopped
biting them three weeks ago and have somehow been developing itches all over my
body just so I can scratch myself. –
I’ve been recently inspired by Marc Maron’s podcast “WTF”
(you should check it out if I have yet to bully you into doing so) in which
Maron – a comedian who hit the scene around the same time as Sarah Silverman
and Louis C.K. – interviews famous creative powerhouses like Robin Williams,
Judd Apatow and 400 others about their thoughts on their craft and what choices
they made in their lives and careers to earn their success. The podcast is
altogether honest, brutal, hilarious and poignant.
I’m hoping to take some of what I’ve learned from Maron’s
interviews to inspire my time in San Francisco; I need to figure out what I
want out of my twenties and I hope to emerge a more creative, engaging person
with a tangible business sense and exploit my relationship with my uncle to
learn more about my mom in her heyday.
I guess it’s either that or Wolf of Wall Street into an underworld of hookers and a cocaine
addiction.
Nothing particularly noteworthy has happened as of yet, so
I’ll fill space with some stories from the last week of break:
1. I passed out from getting my blood drawn. This has never
happened to me, nor even come close to happening. I’d say my worst previous
run-in with veins and pumping blood came when I had to walk out of ninth grade
health class because my teacher pointed out the mitral valve on a black and
white heart diagram.
So this time I sat in the chair and immediately said to the
kindly nurse, “Look. I hate this. I am going to be an awful patient. You seem
very nice and I do not look forward to ruining your day.” She assured me that
she has bad patients all the time and proceeded to jam her six-inch-thick
death-stick into my left arm’s pumping-blood snake. I slowly started to gray
out while muttering variations of, “Fuck this,” etc. After they smelling-salted
me back to health, I chugged a bottle of orange juice and ducked out of the office
as soon as I could, pale as a ghost and full of shame. I had walked in
intending to come off like this guy:
But ended up a lot more like this:
2. I had dinner with my grandfather*, his psychopath of a
girlfriend, my dad and Carol (my stepmom). I understand the characterization of
“psychopath” may seem shockingly unfair for an old woman I had just met, but I
think the term is generous. From the second she stepped out of the car, her
eyes said Annie Wilkes a lot more than they did Dorothy Gale (those were good
references that you should Google if you’re under 40). Not only would she look
at me and giggle as she sipped her second glass of wine through a straw, but
she claimed to be fluent in Italian and instead of speaking Italian to me (which
I tried to avoid at all costs) she burst forth with a mixture of gibberish and
bullshit in an Italian accent. She also name-dropped her friendship with Woody
Allen for no reason; I like to think that it was one of her unstable neurons vaguely
associating his and my Jewy anxiety. Grandpa, I give her a solid C– despite her
young face and large boobies.
*My dad’s dad has been dating consistently since my
biological grandmother died when I was one. His J-Date profile has gotten him
more old woman ass than a seat in the rear orchestra of Carnegie Hall.
3. I went to Sawgrass Mills Mall to shop for new clothes,
hoping that I could magically transform my wardrobe from unfoundedly-sexually-confident-preppy-South-Florida-Jew
to HAIM-listening-San-Francisco-hemp-chic. Upon entering MSG Food Court, I
noticed something peculiar; there were bright lights flashing from red sensors
all over the walls and a robotic voice warning hurrying mall patrons of
something I couldn’t quite hear. After all, the voice was competing with this type of a scene:
Curious, I approached one of the speakers, out of which the
robotic voice was explaining, “Attention mall patrons: there is a situation in
the mall that is being handled by the proper authorities. Please leave through
the nearest possible exit. Do not panic.” Shocked, I looked around again to see
that not only was I the only person listening but that I was also the only
person who bothered to look up from my iPhone in the face of what could have
been grave danger; heaven forbid there should have been a fire spreading or a
gunman rampaging. This convinced me that my generation was the last useful one, which in turn inspired me to take advantage of the world around me before my
successors inevitably fucked it up.
Since writing these stories, I arrived in San Francisco and
spent a much-needed day with my cousin whom I had not seen in some time. It was
during this time that I had my first run-in with a true California native:
4. My cousin and I were walking down to the beach when
suddenly we saw a woman casually sit on the ground and then tumble over. She
looked quintessentially Californian, the product of 40 some-odd years of
desserts sweetened with dates and burgers made of soy and nuts. Think a
middle-aged Professor Trelawney who carried herself with alcoholic grace. I
rushed up to her and asked if she was okay, to which she admitted to, “Having
too much vodka for being in my forties in the afternoon” and trustingly took my
hand. I walked her to a friend’s nearby minivan and she assured me she would
await said friend’s return.
After my first Californian beach excursion (California
beaches are just like Florida beaches, in that they have sand that leads to
water), my cousin and I returned to where we had left our new friend. The
minivan remained and but was nowhere to be found.
I’d say a pitiful alcoholic who couldn’t stay in one place
long enough for her friend to find her is the perfect metaphor for what I
expect out of my stay here in the country’s longest state.
All hail the Beach Boys,
Luke (no name-change needed for my California persona)
If you liked these musings, check out the twice-a-week
intern blog I’ve been writing for my company. My first entry is called “Wood
Floors:”
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