really bad day

My coworker Adrienne and I took a break from work to try out a new bakery down the street from our office. The place was basically someone’s apartment, with all kinds of delicious looking baked goods on display in the kitchen. Before we put in our order, we tried to find a seat on one of the couches in the living room, but it was already filled to capacity with the extended family of a grumpy patriarch with a terminal illness.

The old man’s children appeared to be arguing over his will. He was threatening to disown the whole lot of them and give all his money to some more deserving cause, like the Humane Society or his hot young girlfriend, also present. We decided to get our baked goods to go.

I ordered some strawberry bedtime loaf (a large thick cake intended to be eaten right before you go to bed) and a bear claw. Instead, the pastry chef gave my bear claw to the old man’s angry old wife, who gulped it down in a single bite before demanding to be shown to the bathroom. The chef led her off, tossing me a single plain croissant as he went. It was tasteless and dry. I looked longingly at the cases full of raspberry tarts and brownies and truffles, but it was time to go.

The rain was coming down outside. Adrienne and I opened our umbrellas and parted ways, and I fell into step with a group of super douchey bankers who were comparing the sizes of their recent deals. At some point they decided I was one of them, and the weakest member of their tribe at that, so they started mocking my inadequate dealmaking powers.

It was crazy windy out, and my umbrella almost blew away several times on the way to the parking lot, where my new friends and I had left our fancy banker cars. They all had Porsches and Lamborghinis and Maybachs and whatever other cars bankers drive these days. I had my old Dodge minivan from 1994.

The alpha-asshole of the group pointed at my car and laughed in my face, just as I finally did lose my umbrella. It flew up in the air and landed handle-first on the asshole’s shiny tank-like car, making an unpleasant scratching noise. Whoops. I tried to get in my van, but it was too late. The head jerk was already in his car and heading right for me, steam pouring from his nostrils and ears. He smashed into my van as hard as he could, and I figured that would be it, but he was actually just trying to plow the van out of his way so he could run me over personally.

So I started running, realizing it was one of those days when I just couldn’t win. This guy was going to run me over and then back up over my body until I was nothing but a bloody stain on the pavement. And then he would probably spit on me for getting his tires dirty. He was just that kind of asshole.

car + car

Oh, right. This blog. So my friend Adam and I were walking down Marcy, and instead of the Marcy Playground on our left, there was a big parking lot with a few broken-down old cars rusting miserably, fenced in with barbed wire. Then all of a sudden this VW van driving down the street next to us sprouts wings, bounces over the fence into the parking lot, and leaves a bouquet of roses on the front fender of one of the cars before flying off into the Brooklyn sky. I turned to Adam and said, "If you weren't here, I would have sworn I just dreamt that." He said, "I know, right?"

the worst

In a horrible twist of fate, George W. Bush was re-instated as the president elect. He was also my brother. As he waited for the 2009 inauguration, he made me take a trip with him down to Mexico to put our parents into a cheap retirement home. I was unhappy with all aspects of this situation.

We got in a fight in the parking lot outside the Mexico City Costco. I made the mistake of asking him about his plans for his next four years of the presidency.

"Leave me alone!" he screamed. "I don't fucking want to think about it. I'm just gonna do it, okay?" The tires of our SUV squealed as he pulled into a parking spot that was much too small. We had to crawl out through the back door because there was no room on the sides.

"But you must have some kind of plan, right?" I was having trouble getting my knee over the back headrest. "There's a lot of stuff you have to fix."

"Whatever," he said. He jumped out and left me tangled in the seats.

I caught up with him in the electronics section, where we struggled to figure out the current exchange rate for the peso. W was convinced we should be getting 23 pesos on the dollar.

"But what about inflation?" I asked him.

"Fuck you," he said. He flipped me off and headed for the vegetables.

stolen cars, road trips, bad paint jobs

My friend roped me into helping him hand out fliers for a new local restaurant outside the long-established local homeless shelter. I spent about two hours standing there in the cold and snow, only to discover that my friend had been sitting inside the restaurant the whole time.

He felt really bad about the whole thing, so he stole and hot wired a really shitty car for me. "It's all yours!" he said, and I putt-putted off into the night.

For some reason, driving a stolen car made me really uncomfortable. The first chance I got, I ditched it on a suburban street and wandered around until I was totally lost and would never be able to find it again. Then I found myself an equally shitty bike and rode it to my soccer game in Golden Gate state park.

After that I had to go on a road trip with my family. We got stuck in traffic just outside Detroit, so we got out of the car and sat down in the median with a large group of German exchange students. They were singing boisterous German national anthems, and it drove us nuts.

Eventually we managed to make our way to our actual destination, a very small political convention at my parents' neighbors' house. The neighbors made us dinner and pulled out the sofa bed for us. The next morning, my grandfather and I spent about half an hour trying to figure out how to put the couch back together. Then I had to repaint all the walls in their family room. I chose tar black, and came up with the brilliant idea of pouring it on really thick at the top and letting it drip down. Unfortunately, it didn't stop dripping when it hit the bottom of the wall. It leaked over onto the floor and formed strange goopy paint formations. I crawled around on my knees, trying to scoop up the extra paint with a spoon before it could dry. Everyone else was in the kitchen eating breakfast. It sounded delicious.