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So I did route sign posting for today’s L.A. River Ride with my good friend Stephen yesterday and afterwards we met Susan for lunch  who was waiting for us at Blue Star and then after that we scooted over to bike around enjoying the West Adams House/Art tour. On our way home we stopped at a 7-11 local to us because I was craving a Coke Slurpee, and while we were there Susan picked up a half-gallon of milk.

Later on that evening after watching “It’s Complicated” (which would have been more appropriately titled “It’s Almost Embarrassingly Stupid”) and while washing up the dinner dishes, Susan cracked open the milk and took a quick chug and immediately rushed to the bathroom to spit it out.

How decomposed was the cow juice?

Pretty damn so: the “Best Used By” date read 05/19/2010. As in 2.5 weeks ago. How the fuck does that happen?

Susan, like me, is not in the habit of ignoring dates of foodstuffs that can go bad. But in this case she misread the 5 as a 6, which is a relatively easy thing to do.

Fortunately she suffered nothing more than psychological ill effects from the encounter and this morning I brought the carton back to the 7-11, where I set it on the counter and told the lady behind the cash register that I had purchased the milk yesterday afternoon, that it was rotten, and that I’d like to exchange it, preferably for a carton with a date that’s somewhere in the future.

“Do you have the receipt?” she asked.

I smiled because I had a feeling that question was coming.

“No, I was not given a receipt.”

And the lady shook her head while trying to find the least idiotic way to use that as a ridiculous reason why they couldn’t accord me my entirely reasonable request.

“Are you seriously about to tell me no?”

“I’m sorry,” she started, and I stopped her.

“Because if you do that, I’m going to pour this crap all over your store, then I’m going to file complaints with the police, the  city attorney’s office, Knudsen, the Better Business Bureau, 7-11 headquarters, and the California Milk Advisory Board!”

That last one just kinda snuck out… I’m not at all sure I would’ve contacted them or if they would’ve given a damn.

The lady quickly grabs the carton off the counter and looks at the date. She doesn’t say anything but her eyes go wide.

“May 19!?” I say.

Then she asks the next stupid question: “Do you remember who was at the register?”

That amazes me, because it implies she thinks I’m trying to rip them off.  That I’ve either bought this milk elsewhere — or worse, that I’ve actually held on to this carton of milk for 18 days.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I ask. Pointedly.

She just stares at me, waiting an answer.

“Male. Had a beard. Mumbled his speech.” That last part is true, it took three tries for me to get him to say the total clearly enough for me to give him the proper amount of cash.

So now she calls out to someone in whatever her native tongue is and in response a young man who was not the fellow I had described steps out from one of the aisles, crosses to her and the two engage in a conversation until the young man finally asks me in English  if all I want to do is exchange.

The look I give him is the equivalent of DUH!? “Yes, that’s all I want.”

And so he takes the carton from the lady, his eyes going wide also when he looks at the date. Then he sets it down and escorts me to the dairy section, pulling out a carton whose “Best Used By” date is 06/11/2010.

“Perfect!” I say.

My good man Jason DeFillippo, Metblogs cofounder and most decidedly one who does not mince words harshly took me to task after I tweeted who won “Survivor” following the finale’s conclusion a couple Sundays ago:

“Posting spoilers is like fucking someone’s kitten. You just don’t do it.”

And he was right to do so.

In my defense, I did the deed after the result was aired on the west coast, but still. It was an important reminder that beyond timezone differences we’re in an age of DVRs and delayed viewing. And it’s simply good and considerate practice to keep the beans unspilled. For how long? I don’t know that answer. I don’t care about that answer.

Fast forward to last night and I’m watching “American Idol.” Early on in the typically interminable finale, shortly after the Bee Gees sang “How Deep Is Your Love” with a couple of this season’s Top-10 finishers, I tweeted how seeing the surviving Brothers Gibb perform, made me smile. Sincerely so.

Not long thereafter came a response from a bike-minded enthusiast I follow whose Twitter name is cyclingnirvana:

“Yes, me too! But the power grab from Janet Jackson made me sick.”

Wondering what he was talking about, I tweeted back:

“Hmmmmm, I think I missed that… Or it hasn’t happened yet?”

And he came back with:

Sorry, it happens late in the show.

Ah, so now the two of us realize two things. I know he’s in a timezone east of me (turns out  way ahead of me in Florida), and he knows I’m in one behind him somewhere. I fleetingly toy with the idea of requesting that he keep any news of the winner to himself but give him the benefit of the doubt that he wouldn’t do such a silly thing.

Not more than a few minutes later while I’m transfixed by Christina Aguilera’s performance, he does:

“Really would have liked to see Crystal Bowersox win. She has an awesome voice and style. But I’m sure she’ll do well.”

I toyed with several harsh replies, such as a replay of Jason’s aforementioned reality check and  “Really would have liked to see you STFU,” but instead because I’m sure he’s a decent fellow who was just tweeting what happening around him I just admonished him with an entirely expletive- and animalporn-free:

“Dood. Way to spoil it for those of us who aren’t in your timezone.”

Which the guy completely ignored. Nirvana? More like some nerve.

UPDATE (11:52 a.m.): Strike that part about him ignoring me. I got a direct message from him this morning apologizing.

There’s a movie whose arrival is imminent that you may have heard of called The Karate Kid. It features an elderly man who happens to be a secret martial arts master who teaches a young punk transplanted far from home how to protect himself from big bad bullies at school who aren’t really down with him — and especially with him getting all  smitten with a pretty young classmate. Life lessons ensue,  a cross-generational friendship is forged, skills get honed, and it all ends up at a competition where the kid kicks ass.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. Who hasn’t seen the wonderful original from 1984 with Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio (or its sequels — yes even that last silly one with Hilary Swank).

But here’s the thing, and by “thing” I mean Idiocy That Pisses Me Off.  This version of the film should not be called The Karate Kid. It should be called The Kung Fu Kid since it takes place in China where that is the indigenous martial art — and indeed according to the film’s summary on IMDB is what the elderly gent (played this time by Jackie Chan) teaches the punk (played by Wil Smith’s kid Jaden).

But  everyone who made the movie seemed less intent on basic factual truth in titling and instead more desperately intent on greedily making bank by piggybacking on the franchise, which at a quarter century in age is old enough to engender nostalgia in those 30-somethings who were kids and teens during its originally release. Sure, the filmmakers could argue that they didn’t want any confusion/connection between this film and the far more recent Kung Fu Panda, but that’s just a buncha silly sauce. You want silly? I’ll argue that there should be a statute of limitations invoked prohibiting remakes of any kind — properly titled or not — from being made for a minimum of 40 years after the original’s theatrical release.

But since that day will never come, and nothing’s sacred, I’ve decided instead to offer up the following  list of films the studios should consider remaking (or in some cases re-remaking) under their original titles while also brainlessly changing crucial elements — the more the better:

Waterworld — The earth is covered by water sand. The remaining people travel the oceans deserts, in search of survival led over endless dunes by a uselessly gilled guy called Mariner for no reason.

Lawrence of Arabia — T.E. Lawrence Balthazar blazes his way to glory in the Arabian desert post-Katrina New Orleans.

Gone With The Wind — The epic tale of a woman’s life before, during and after the Civil War Woodstock, which she didn’t attend but said she did.

Goodfellas — The lowly, violent blue-collar side of New York’s Elvis Presley’s Italian Memphis mafia.

Nightmare on Elm Street — On Elm Street Maple Drive, a group of teens aging boy band members are tormented in their dreams during lunch by a clawed six-fingered killer nursing home janitor named Freddy Krueger Skippy Gunderson.

Jaws — A shark marmot makes a resort coal-mining town its private public feeding breeding grounds.

Towering Inferno — A skyscraper jumbo jet catches fire lands safely due to poor wiring an uneventful flight and competent pilots.

Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! — Three wild women congressmen in fast cars on Segways take time off from stripping in clubs budget negotiations to go on a murder tax-and-spend rampage.

3:10 To Yuma — A rancher agrees to hold a captured outlaw who’s awaiting the 4:25 train to go to court in Yuma Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

The Matrix — A computer phonebook hacker deliveryman learns about ignores the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against the controllers of it.

Citizen Kane — Following the death of an aged publishing tycoon astronomer, reporters colleagues scramble to discover hide the meaning proper spelling of his final utterance, “Beetlegeuse.” Or is it “Beetlejuice?” Or is it “Beetleguese?” “Beetlegoose,” maybe? No, Beetlegeese!”

Memento — A man, suffering from unaware of his short-term memory loss, uses notes smoke signals and tattoos disappearing ink to hunt for never find the man he thinks killed his wife his wallet, which is in his back pocket the whole fucking time.

Or as told in the film’s unique reverse timeline:

To hunt for never find the man he thinks killed his wife his wallet, which is in his back pocket the whole fucking time, a man uses notes smoke signals and tattoos disappearing ink  while suffering from unaware of his short term memory loss.

It’s A Wonderful Life — An angel out-of-work Angels Stadium groundskeeper prevents a compassionate heartless but despairingly frustrated and sociopathically fraudulent mortgage company executive from seeing what how much better everything would have been if he never existed.

The Man Who Knew Too Much — An American doctor idiot savant vacationing in Morocco accidentally stumbles onto an assassination plot.

The Poseidon Adventure — A group of passengers chefs struggle to survive serve dinner when their ocean liner Gordon Ramsay capsizes berates them at sea Ocean, a new eatery having its soft-open in Culver City with rumors that food writer Jonathon Gold is coming.

Plenty more where those come from, but I’d better quit while I’m behind.

Or make your own Madlib style:

Armageddon: When a giant asteroid [adjective] [noun] the size of  Texas [celebrity's name; possessive] [thing or things] is discovered headed for Earth [place], hope for survival rests on the success of a misfit [adjective] team of deep-core drillers [specialized group of people or animals] sent to space [place] on a suicide mission [adjective] [noun] to nuke [verb] it.

I love Google ads.  Lovelovelove ‘em! It’s almost endearing how they can be so hamfistedly incorrect in their arrival, like the one above, showing up uninvited and unwanted on the YouTube page hosting my timelapse video of the LA Bike Tour –  not unlike (for want of a better metaphor) the way “Animal House’s” Bluto Blutarski might barge into an otherwise gentile social gathering hosted by the uptights at Omega House and grab a comfy chair with a belch and a smile near the finger sammiches. After spiking the punch. And then drinking all of it. From the bowl.

Because you know, given my sliiiiiiiiight predilection for pure pedal power, pretty much the last thing I’d promote in any way, shape, or form is some sort of goddam after-market internal combustion powerplant that can somehow be mounted to a perfectly good bicycle so that not only does it consume fossil fuels and emit noxious emissions, but it probably pollutes the air with something that sounds eerily like a lawn mower.

In short, I appreciate Google bringing BikeBerry.com to my attention as the LAST place on the world wide inturnip I’ll ever go shopping.

I’m not often prone to political snarkage here, but I can’t turn around in the blogosphere lately without having to STFU and read diatribes from apopleptic people who are ready to kick Barack Obama to the curb because he apparently signed off on whoever in his inauguration committee picked Pastor Rick Warren to say a few religious words at the president-elect’s big day.

From the venom and outrage and yowls of betrayal and FAIL being shoveled around the internest you’d think Obama had tapped Duhbya as our next energy secretary, or Osama Bin Laden to head up the defense department… not some conservative evangelical pastor from Orange County to give an invocation.

And this comes too quickly on the heels of all the misdirected hate-filled lameness after Proposition 8, which passed not because the No On 8 campaign put up so little of a pre-election fight thinking they had it in the bag, but apparently because  a mormon lady working at  El Coyote gave a hundie to the Yes side when her church told her to. Who knew!

But just as I mostly kept my mouth shut through that tumult, so did I keep clammed up when the Warren news broke and the liberals starting harmonizing their choruses of outrage.

But now I’m reading there’s going to be anti-Warren protests this weekend in Hollywood and Silver Lake and frankly I’m  sick of these big whiny battles being waged over such meaningless machinations — and don’t start with all the scary talk about how this selection portends an evangelical shift in Obama’s religious leanings. Even if that’s true: So. The. Hell. What.

I don’t know who frustrates me more: righteous rightwingers or lock-step lefties. I think I despise them both equally.

The irony is that many of the protesters that will be out there feeling ripped off and disappointed and sporting “Impeach Obama” signs spent good parts of his campaign nodding wistfully every one of the 12 million times Our Next President said sincerely that you better expect him to reach across aisles in an effort to bring the country together.

Guess that’s only okeedookee until Obama actual goes and does it.

Look: I get the anger and in fact I don’t agree with the greenlight given to Warren. He’s anti gay and pro-life. He probably thinks the earth is only a few thousand years old and it’s all intelligently designed and for Obama be it directly or indirectly to give a fella like that a soapbox from which to proselytize is questionably suspect.

But that’s about it.

On a pretty good level I operate by the rule of never writing something I wouldn’t be willing to say in public. Be it here or in a comment on another’s blog, I try always to moderate my mental excretions.

So when in response to this LA Metblogs post yesterday by Jason Burns about the tragedy of Wanda Dunn, a commenter who goes by the telling moniker of “bmayhem”  let loose with a truly heinous fusillade of insults and opinions against the Pasadena homeowner facing foreclosure and eviction who allegedly set her house on fire and then killed herself, it disturbed me. Deeply.  Among other things this “bmayhem” called her an “asshole” and “childish,” all under the righteously indignant belief that it was obviously within her power to make the right decisions instead of the wrong ones.

Such assumptions are easy ones to make and vomit into the ether — especially from the far-removed corners that surround such omniscient keyboard pounders.

To say I was appalled at such abject rancor and venom would be terrifically understated. Enraged would better define how I feel. But not so blinded that I feel this “bmayhem” isn’t certainly entitled to an opinion. Of course he or she is. Despite it going so harshly against the way I roll both morally and philosophically, I understand not everyone is like me and I respect anyone’s right to freely express themselves. It may always be the better choice to just shut up in my world, but in another’s not so much. At the same time I can hope it’s not too much to request that they would at least think about whether they’d be able to say something so soulless sitting near someone like me who might take offense.

Because if you’re as fundamentally crass in public as “bmayhem” is isolated in the glow of a computer monitor; if you abnormally lack common decency enough to spout off something in public so vile then you’d be unfortunately obligated to either kick my ass or have it arrested and prosecuted for assault because I’d be unable to prevent myself from shoving yours out of your chair or from flinging the nearest drink at your face to douse the noxiously tactless and obtusely flammable gases emanating from it.

It may not be readily evident, given my frivolous rants about Dodger Fan Douchebags and finally heeding Susan’s call to get my photos from our fantastic Mexico vacation up on Flickr, but these past few days I’ve been pretty beaten up by a combo of things: exhaustion and overload from the longest presidential campaign ever; continuing uncertainty (or rather a shortage of willing optimism) over how the election will end up; anxiety over the economy; the total helplessness that accompanies raging Southern California wildfires that choke the air with smoke and ash; and lastly the death of John McGraham, the homeless man who was murdered late Thursday evening on 3rd Street (less than 1.5 miles — as the crow flies — from our front door) by person or persons unknown who decided that it was perfectly acceptable to extinguish a human life by pouring flammable liquid on him and igniting it.

I can deal with all the other crap mentioned above. The fires will evenutally be contained. The votes will be counted. The markets will go up and down and up and down. I can muddle through all that. But not so quick can I get beyond being shown indisputable proof of our capacity for evil and as a consequence I pretty much spent the weekend on my ass in a fine foul funk.

Monday morning on my way in to work I visited the shrine erected in John’s memory by grief-stricken family members and outraged residents, and I was drawn somewhat reluctantly to revisit it after dark on the way home that night. I lost track of time standing before it with other members of the more immediate community. I read and reread the cards and letters that had been posted. I took stock of the items that had been left. A bottle of Dr. Pepper. A can of Coca-Cola. Two cigarettes. A box of matches. A meal in a plastic bag. Flowers. Stuffed animals. Candles, candles and more candles. Was there irony in those flames flickering in tribute to a man burned to death? I didn’t know.

I was too busy standing there in silence alternating between sorrow and seething hatred and praying for the power to see what soulless beast could do such a thing. Just show me God. Just point me to where such demons scurry and I will seek out the monsters and be no better and far less merciless.

Of course, nothing.

Ridiculous though it may seem, I even entertained the idea of confessing to the crime. I had feelings of literally wanting to be punished because of the guilt by association I felt at being a member of a species that can commit such base acts of ultra violence and depravity. But then my better, less martyr-minded half took control and led me to a more proactive mission: to put good in the world. Not in some monumentally impossible effort to cancel out such badness — because there is no canceling it. But rather to respond to such evil by by being more accepting and helpful and tolerant and considerate and respectful and assisting in my everyday life.

Evil may have its inevitable place in this world, but my response is to kill it with a thousand kindnesses.

To the person who left the still-cold, three-quarters-full, 40-ounce bottle of Cobra Malt Liquor that I found in the plastic bag on the walkway below our porch, I’m pretty sure — or at least hoping — that you probably knew our deceased tenant Joe and perhaps stopped by this morning or sometime during the night to mourn his loss and remember the good times when he was alive.

Since most other empty beer containers found are regularly left by inconsiderate public drinkers down by the curb or in the ivy or behind our mailbox, that’s pretty much the only reason I can come up with that you’d blatantly trespass onto our property with a large bottle of alcohol like it’s not our house, but yours — or Joe’s.

Point in fact, it’s not yours, nor Joe’s.

Putting aside the general creepiness of some stranger so out of it as to not even think twice about coming to our house to pour one out for the dearly departed and then leave the bottle and the remaining disgusting beverage for me to dispose of, I’ve tried hard to craft the following request while remaining aware of your loss and considerate of your feelings in such a time of sorrow:

KEEP THE FUCK OUT, PLEASE

At the end of March I wrote a post detailing a pair of stupid cyclists I encountered one morning on 4th Street. The first one was surly and despite being a slowpoke had no patience for the long red light at Wilton Place, and the second one was overdressed and jumped a four-way stop a few blocks later in front of a truck that I’d stopped for and had the right of way and almost hit him.

Guess which one I encountered this morning? That would be Stupid Cyclist No. 2. And guess what happened? Yeah he was still overdressed and this time almost ran into me because he was following me too close and not paying attention when I came to a stop for the northbound cross traffic at Rossmore. He missed me by inches with a breathless “Whoa!” and then instead of stopping continued on across the intersection despite the passing vehicles, forcing the nearest car to slam on its brakes. What a dick!

After the intersection cleared I proceeded across and caught up with the retard a block further up. If you read my post about that first encounter you might recall last time I restricted expressing my distaste to firing a warning loogie across his bow. This time I decided to be a bit more vocal.

“Dude,” I yelled. “You’re a fucking menace.” He peeled the huge headphones he was wearing from his ears and said ” Eh? No unnerstan.”

I repeated my fact-based analysis of him and advised that since this was now the second time out of two that he’s proven to be a two-wheeled retard around me, should there be any unfortunate future opportunities for us to be on the road together, it would be in everyone’s best interest and especially his if he stayed as far the hell away from me as possible.

“Oh,” he said. “OK.”

“OK? Yeah well, just so we’re clear: stay the fuck away from me,” I called to him a couple arm lengths away. Indicating the distance between us I said, “If you ever get as close to me as you are now, I’m gonna put you on the ground, comprende asshole?”

“Oooooh!” was all he said, but wide-eyed he immediately backed-off and stayed a good half-block behind me until he had no choice but to pass me stopped at La Brea to make a right and go north.

This first commercial from Farmers Insurance posted below left the urban cyclist in me wanting to bike over to the company’s Wilshire Boulevard headquarters and egg the building. The next one from State Farm just makes me twitch:

But beneath the arrogant humiliation of cyclists and cycling that’s being promoted in those spots, there’s a bit of desperation to these campaigns. These companies derive a substantial portion of their revenue from the premiums people pay to protect the cars they own and drive, so it’s no surprise that they’ll employ such ludicrous tactics as more and more people start looking at ways to go about their lives without them.

Shame on them.