Who is on the phone?

My dear friend Angela is coming to see me this week all the way from Nashville!  I am so excited and in honor of this, I would like to share a story regarding our similar cases of mistaken phone identities. 

When we were in college, Angela used to get calls in the middle of the night of people asking for Cash, who was apparently also a person or drug dealer or both.  This happened repeatedly until one night she answered and the person on the other line said, "Yo, is this Cash?" and Angela said, no, this is not Cash.  The rest of the conversation was pretty one-sided and went something like this:

"Who is on the phone?  WHO IS ON THE PHONE? (then, to someone else) Man, I don't know who the f*ck I got on the phone."

She has a different number now, but we still laugh about that line.  Then when I moved to LA and changed to a local number, I started getting calls from someone named T-Bone's assistant.  They would always come in during business hours, and at the time I was working a normal office job and could never answer and say it was the wrong number.  But despite the fact that my voicemail stated my full name, this T-Bone person's rather dimwitted assistant always left desperate messages for whoever to call T-Bone back.  Finally one day I got a text from T-Bone himself telling me he was running late for our meeting, and I so wish I had just texted back to ask the address so I could meet this T-Bone in person.  Instead, I texted to tell him he had the wrong number.  That was the end of that.

Fast forward to last night when I was reading US Weekly (hold your judgment), specifically an article about Reese Witherspoon's wedding to CAA agent Jim Toth. (Coincidentally, the office job I was working during the era of T-Bone phone calls was at CAA.)  There I was, mindlessly glancing over details about decor, flowers, and food, when I came across this paragraph:

"Inside, producer T Bone Burnett's pals, rockabilly band the Americans, played during dinner. 'Reese and Jim . . . thanked T Bone for the band.'"

Como what?  I sat up straight.  Somehow, I knew this had to be the same guy.  How many T-Bones or T Bones could there be working in Los Angeles who have frazzled assistants that call about how their boss is late for meetings?  I always assumed T-Bone was some kind of gangsta rapper name, but maybe I wasn't that far off if T Bone apparently is this music producer legend. 

Who is on the phone, indeed.

Excerpt from "California Plush"

The only thing I miss about Los Angeles

is the Hollywood Freeway at midnight, windows down and
radio blaring
bearing right into the center of the city, the Capitol Tower
on the right, and beyond it, Hollywood Boulevard
blazing

--pimps, surplus stores, footprints of the stars

--descending through the city
fast as the law would allow

through the lights, then rising to the stack
out of the city
to the stack where lanes are stacked six deep

and you on top; the air
now clean, for a moment weightless

without memories, or
need for a past.

-Frank Bidart

The power of the internets

Well, this is the one hundredth post on this blog.  It seemed kind of momentous to me, so I wanted to wait until I had something spectacular to say before I got around to writing it.  Luckily, something spectacular happened yesterday.

Maybe you'll remember a few months back when I wrote about receiving someone else's subscription to Entertainment Weekly magazine?  That person was named Marcus Mungiole.  I was wondering why we were receiving his magazine every week, suddenly, after living in that apartment for 3 1/2 years.  I gave him the old half-hearted Google search, which turned up nothing, so that was that.  Well, whom should I get an email from this weekend but Mr. Mungiole himself! 

It seems he stumbled upon the post I wrote about him, and it made him laugh.  I couldn't believe it!  Fortunately, he was not upset about the fact that I went on and on questioning his identity for three paragraphs.  He verified that he was a previous tenant in our old apartment about 10 years ago, and would you believe that the SAME harpy neighbor was yelling at him even way back then?  Amazing!  So Marcus and I are now email buddies, and he was kind enough to forgive me for not following through with my promise to turn over back issues of his magazines since they were recycled during The Great Move of 2010.

That, my friends, is the power of the internets!  And in honor of this auspicious occasion, I would like to leave you with one of my favorite poems.  You all know it- just be impressed I was able to refrain from posting it this long.

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

-Robert Frost

Pale Blue Dot

I was cleaning out my hard drive and came across this picture, which blows my mind every time I look at it:

That is called the Pale Blue Dot.  It was taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 spacecraft.  The "dot" is Earth, depicted against the vastness of space.  It looks so lonely; it's hard to imagine how teeming with life the planet is.  The best part of the picture, for me, is that it looks like Earth is caught in a shaft of light.  Really it's not a beam of light shining on it directly but a refraction of sunlight in the Voyager's camera optics.  But look at how tiny we are!  Earth is taking up less than a pixel of this photograph. 

Carl Sagan wrote a book called Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space.  In it, he references the photograph, saying,

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds . . . It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."


Sir, Say no More

Sir, say no more.
Within me ’t is as if
The green and climbing eyesight of a cat
Crawled near my mind’s poor birds.

-Trumbull Stickney