[sic]

The kind comment of the LA Fire Department’s Brian Humphrey calling me courageous in response to yesterday’s post about the last few months of my job search is greatly appreciated, but it takes a different kind of bravery to post a photo of me I found this morning while looking for my map of Death Valley. You’ll have to check it out after the jump because I’m too chicken to put it up ffront here, but first some background info to help soften the ridiculousness of the shot.

It was taken 17 years ago in September of 1990 in what I would hyperbolize as the prime of my resurrected life. I was about eight months separated from my first wife (and my then less-than-one-year-old daughter Katie). I had an apartment in the south of Glendale and a good enough job with Sparkletts with a route that included parts of Eagle Rock, Glassell Park, Atwater Village and Glendale. In addition the physical rigors of the job had helped me to drop about 40 pounds, aided by the fact that the bulk of my diet no longer consisted of delivery pizza and bags of Reese’s peanut butter cups. As a bonus I enjoyed an increased social life. In short it was a time for me to feel my oats.

Having said all that, hindsight is not kindsight… especially when it comes to the fashions of the past, which ryhmes with aghast which is how I feel seeing the then-me now. So without further delay hence, let the pointing and laughing commence:

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Warning. I’m going to attempt to describe a sit-com scene I goofily created last night that almost decidedly will not translate from improv to keystrokes, but I’m going to anyway and if you don’t think it funny well fine then.

My beloved Susan does not give up her laughter cheaply. Not that she doesn’t have a marvelous sense of humor, it’s just that she is not necessarily prone to giggles or guffaws and where my efforts to produce them are concerned I’m pretty much chuckle material. With the occasional snort.

Last night after dinner and during a break in “On The Lot” I cleared the coffee table of the plates and flatware. After one of the knives clattered off the plate and onto the glass of the table top, I ran with that and let another piece slide off as I picked up the fallen knife, then letting that knife fall as I picked up that one and on and on and on most of the time with Susan sighing and chuckling and saying things like “Oh no!” and “Stop!” and “Stop it!” and “Ooooookaaaaaay now!” at which point I knew the slapstick had run its course and I corralled all the cutlery onto the plates and set the stack of stuff down on the table, extracting a napkin to wipe up the bits of dinner that had been showered onto the table during my showcase.

Of course I then set to scrubbing the surface area with increasing and meticulous vigor, and Susan enabled my efforts by pointing out spots I’d missed. When I’d finished to our mutual satisfaction with me feigning exhaustion I carefully put the napkin back on the dishes, picked it up and of course I poured all the forks and knives off the plates to spill noisily back onto the table, and I finished things off by totally ignoring them and deadpan walking the plates to the kitchen where I was surprised to hear that my antics caught Susan by the funny bone and she was laughing the loudest and longest I’d heard her do so in awhile, be it at/with me or a paid professional.

She was still going strong by the time I returned to clean up the aftermath and I have to say it pleased me to no end.

Good grief, but the good and fine folks over at Found Magazine move at their own languid pace. More than two years ago Susan and I volunteered to do some grafitti and litter clean-up along the river and in Los Feliz and as we wrapped up the morning’s efforts picking up trash around Marshall High School, I found a funny note from some wanna-be loverboy to the girl with whom he was smitten. As a bonus the piece of paper also contained her door-slam of a reply.

Instantly recognizing its potential as a Found item, I brought it home and scanned it and e-shipped it off for their consideration… and heard nothing in reply other than perhaps a “thanks for the submission.” Time passed and I’d long ago given any thought to the thing until this arrived in my inbox on June 21:

Hello to our all-star finders! Guess what? We totally love your find. We love it so much, in fact, that we’ve put it on our website for the whole world to love and to cherish. Congratulations! Woooo!!!

Rather than a link directly to where the find could be found online, the note goes on to give instructions on how to track it down by heading over to the website and plugging in my name. Sure enough up pops the page with the image:

Along with my comments about how I came upon it. Well it’s about time.