Yes, I’m cranky. Maybe I’m getting that way with age. Or maybe I was always that way and now that I’ve mellowed some I’m less so. No, that doesn’t sound right. I think I inherited the crankiness gene from my colorful parents, each of whom came equipped with an effective crap detector that, to my way of thinking, ripened with age. I will attempt to channel them in this piece. I’ll try to watch my language.
I hate those (g.d.) e-cards. Unlike a card in the mail, they’re an annoyance. I’m always busy either kissing the cat or composing the Great American Sentence and usually too preoccupied to stop everything and attempt to open a card on my four-year-old computer, which is slower than Sanskrit, from a company called jacquielawson.com. And if I don’t, the e-card people from jacquie will soon remind me: Hey, you haven’t opened your e-card from so-and-so yet, you ungrateful s.o.b. Get to it or we’ll clutter up your e-mail with reminder after reminder. There is a final solution, they say, at the bottom of the scroll that suggests I “click here” if I don’t want to receive anymore e-cards ever again, but I know from bitter experience that the most effective way to stay hooked for a lifetime to a site you abhor is to “unsubscribe.” And in the second place, I don’t want to appear ungrateful to my friends who insist on behaving electronically, so I avoid that option and stew for a while, then eventually feel duty-bound to open the (g.d.) card and submit to a maudlin panorama of assorted animals celebrating the holiday season with astounding acumen: “Click on the bird.” Please, friends, drop me something from the heart in a plain white envelope; I’ll open it at my leisure without prompting. Better yet, give me a call. A voice in the ear works nicely.
And while we’re in cyberspace, please save me from cute animal attachments: a cocker spaniel nursing an armadillo is no longer a scenario that melts my Jell-O. I especially resent animals dressed as people. I maintain a standard poodle in pipe and slippers is as unnatural as a litter of kittens talking baby talk. Animals were meant to bark, to meow and to live naked.
Allow me to get local.
Don’t you love what they’re doing with the old Malibu Lumber site? Lots of concrete and glass. Beachy, no? Please, find us an architect who notices that Malibu has an ocean on one side and a mountain range on the other and design accordingly.
If I get one more “courtesy call” from some charity we donated 20 bucks to in a moment of weakness back when we had the 20 to spare … I don’t know, rip my phone from the wall? Probably not. The “courtesy call” is a moronic euphemism for Send Us More Now. Wells Fargo Bank calls twice a week to thank me for maintaining a checking account that teeters around 300 dollars. “And how would you rate our personnel? And by the way, we’re now in the insurance business …”
Suzy the Significant insists I’m a dreadful curmudgeon. Often I’m awash in negativity, but to please her I’m determined to stabilize as this piece winds down. I hereby endeavor to say something nice.
I’ve finally stopped resenting Coogies for attempting to replace the irreplaceable Colony Coffee Shop. The servers are delightful and helpful. And the food is generally good. Do you know that Coogies is the only restaurant in Malibu since the old-timey Moonshadows where you can get a baked potato? The size of the Graf Zeppelin, but still. And one of the few places where you can actually get a piece of chicken, skin-on and bone-in. Like a real restaurant. A local “executive chef” informed me that the reason his particular kitchen serves only white, skinless, boneless chicken that tastes like Kleenex is that they could get sued if somebody accidentally chokes on a bone. Say what? If you folks buy that nonsense I have a piece of bottomland in the Himalayas for sale. Musso & Frank has been serving it bone-in since 1919 and nary a lawsuit. In any case, Coogies has-due in part to ugly circumstances-become our coffee shop of choice. The prices are reasonable and the breakfast potatoes are unrivaled.
You won’t believe this. My doorbell just this minute rang. When I opened the door, an ashen young townie (if you’ve lived in paradise a while you can tell at a glance) I’d never seen before began carrying on about getting sent to a youth camp. The last time we helped a brazen boy get to camp we got a mailbox full of magazines we’re still recycling. As pleasantly as possible I said, “We don’t need anymore magazines.” He actually countered with: “We’re selling personality this year.”
“No, thanks, like it or not, I’ve already got one.”