August 26th, 2009 01:33pm
charlie
Well, hey. I got my Internet connection working for a little while. Surprising how well these freebie AohWell net service CDs still mount up after being used as coasters. Times got a little tough — okay, a lot tough. When the economy goes in the tank, so does the tourism industry. Fortunately for me, we’re a hop, skip, and a really long jump from Santa Barbara, so some judicious advertising and making a friend in a travel agency kept me up and running, but just barely. And I had to shut down my connection to the outside world for awhile, but I’ve got entries in a paper journal somewheres, for what it’s worth.
But y’know, business is business. Life is life. And I don’t always think about how the two are independent. I’ve got dreams, sure. But I don’t chase ‘em because I’ve got responsibilities. My father left me the motel, ya see, and what that it’s a national landmark, I think I’ve got to follow up on its legacy. But there’s nobody left t’run the place after I go — and so I’m stuck here instead of trying to start my movie career. That’s the headspace — that whole ‘you are in charge until properly relieved’ attitude of honor and loyalty to a fella who’s gone to dust some time ago.
Life is about living it. As best we can. With whom we choose to associate with, and without the folks who cause us grief. But grief is a part of life just as much, and when we choose to feel grief, it is itself an emotion, helpful even as it may harm. Pain is a reminder that you ain’t dead yet.
But I digress, and I don’t have a lot of time on this AohWell account. This one’s for The Rancourt.
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October 1st, 2008 02:12pm
charlie
Howdy, folks. Long time no write. Last time I served up a slice of life here in San Paolo was so long ago that a pizza of that persuasion would not only be dried and stale, but have interesting mushrooms that weren’t ordered with the sausage and pepperoni.
Big buzz around town is ’so who are you voting for?’ Truth be told I’m not sure I like either of ‘em. The funny thing is I remember when we had to elect a class president back when I was in high school, it was a big thing to promise much amidst pomp and circumstance, and when the votes were tallied and done, one would survive and the other would fade out into the sunset. But circumstances would always arise to jump the newly-minted school Prez so that they weren’t much more than a figurehead and something to put on a resume for working at the shops on Main Street. Which I’ll get back to, natch. But leadership qualifications are the traits that can only be proven and disproved in hindsight, and even that’s up to interpretation. We make decisions in a present, like ‘I want chicken for dinner’, and we never think about the consequences of those decisions earlier down the line. Like whether or not my like of chicken means 2200 less eggs come five years from now. (Don’t ask me how many eggs a chicken lays a day or a month. I’m not a farmer, and I’m allergic to eggs.)
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April 30th, 2008 03:11pm
charlie
Ah, patriotism. A friend of mine likes to say that if you exhibit certain traits, you’re a Commie and can’t be trusted, nay, run out of town on a rail. But it’s not the -theory- of Communism that’s the problem, really — it’s the stigma of the label. Thank you, McCarthy.
My father , when he was in the movie business, wasn’t one of the people blacklisted, thank God, nor was my mother by her associations with friends. In a lot of ways, no matter where you go, there will be cliques; we are gregarious by nature, many of us, anyways, and one person’s strong views can influence others.
It doesn’t hafta be this way. What you do behind closed doors is your business up until a point. I don’t care much if you have wild, rampant sex in one of my hotel rooms, just as long as you keep it down after ten and clean up after yourself when you’re done. (Because I will send you a cleaning bill — I have your credit card number, Mister James McFitzen of Tulo, Arizona…)
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January 23rd, 2008 08:55pm
charlie
Those who do not heed the past are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not see the signs of what is to come will succumb to inevitability.
He who hesitates is lost, but he who rushes in blindly sometimes falls off the edge of a cliff.
Those who believe the shiny sign and fail to read the fine print… are going to be in for a rude surprise later on down the line.
430% increase in mortgage foreclosures in California, past quarter, versus last year.
Those folks who managed to make the right decisions are in good shape, whether it was to buy when the deals were good, or not buy and wait for this day to happen.
Those folks who got hit up by predatory lenders and are now losing their home — or worse — I wish you the best of luck.
It’s funny, really, this whole owning of land thing; we all need someplace to live, and it’s just whether or not we can afford to call the parcel of sand and dirt and bugs ‘ours’ versus ‘rented’. There’s that possessive need, and the want to be able to control your space — remodeling, et cetera, and to be able to comfortably retire from the rat race without having to pay exorbitant rents.
Me, I’m lucky enough to have inherited a place. The efforts of my parents paid for the place Mom lives in, and the place I run and generate my own income from. But there was a guy staying in #9 the other night who talked about how he’d bought an ‘investment property’ only to be stuck holding the bag when his interest rate went up a scant few years later. And he was losing not only the place he’d bought, but his own home as well. Back to renting for the once-and-future vending machine repairman.
I didn’t cut him a break on his hotel bill, but I did give him an extra danish. It was either that, or I was gonna eat it with lunch.
Everyone’s got an opinion as to why things are bad right now; I got one simple one.
Too many people living beyond their means, and too many people willing to take advantage of that.
I grew up poor. I learned how to get by. When I first got the deed to the Oceanside Nuys, I was also working part time evenings in a bowling alley behind the bar, and as a handyman during the day. Some months it was pretty lean pickings, other months, I had a lot of work and a lot of cash as a result. Amazin’ how people never repair their fences until it falls down. Little preventative things save you lots of money later.
Speaking of which… when was the last time you had a visit to the doctor? Got the oil changed on your car? Eh?
Life’s short, but it’s shorter when you make the wrong choice.
August 29th, 2007 09:16pm
charlie
FADE IN: SLOW MOTION, a baseball, rising and falling in the heatshimmer of a really hot day, a paved two-lane road winding away in the distance. The thrower is not visible.
Was listening to the radio on a hot fall afternoon, and they tell me that the kid who caught Barry Bonds’s record breaking home run ball has to sell it. Why? Because he’d be taxed on it as if he’d sold it for its appraised value, and since he can’t afford the tax, he has to get rid of it.
Somethin’ very wrong about that. Piece of history like that? One in a billion shot, kid visiting a friend on his vacation, and they catch a Giants game, and boom, he’s got a ball that’s worth half a million. But half a million dollars taxed again, mind, and you don’t get to keep that piece of history. Some rich person does. Maybe it’s someone in baseball, maybe not. Maybe someone who hates Bonds buys the ball and tosses it in his fishtank.
McCovey Cove, it aint.
I mean, if the ball landed in the drink, nobody caught it, it’s fish kibble. Because someone catches it, now it’s a liability to the ‘lucky bastard’.
He donates it to a museum? Other people get to enjoy it, and he gets the notoriety of being the one to give it up, and he gets visitation rights. But it’s still not his.
Winning the lottery? Exchange of cash for cash multiplied. Having -the- ball in your hands but not being able to keep it? Sad.
Maybe someone will buy it for him. But I doubt anyone’s that altruistic — and hell, it was his to begin with. You broke it, you bought it. Why not ‘you caught it, you keep it’?
Perceived value.
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August 28th, 2007 04:48pm
charlie
STILL PHOTO: Two coyotes in their early twenties, leaning on each other personably, with a younger coyfox sitting at their feet with a large yellow Tonka truck to occupy his attention.
My Uncle John and I, we don’t talk much. Less so since my dad passed away and left me the Oceanside Nuys, but occasionally he calls up to see how business is going and whether or not I have any projects I’d like his help on. Maybe it’s his way of extending an olive branch, but…. I always tell him no.
FADE IN: Still photo of one of the Nuys motel rooms, through an open door, rug turned up and Charlie, tacking down new padding underneath to repair a section, waving at the photographer.
I have a fix-it list in the Nuys that’s on two sheets of yellow notepad paper. Little things, like ‘re-sand kitchenette in #8′, or ‘bug bomb #2; bad cheese aura’, and big things, like ‘call for contractor to replace plumbing under bathroom vanity in #11.’
There’s never not something to be done in keeping this place in tip-top shape, but I don’t always get to it right away, because, well, most of the time I’m not full up. This, however, is the tourist season, so at any point any one of my motel rooms could be pressed into service. It’s also why I haven’t been writin’ much of late.
In my line of work — innkeeper — the appearance of health in a place is what makes people come back to stay. Though to be honest, I’m the only game in town, and I could afford to let things slip, but I don’t.
The Nuys is a California state landmark. A legacy that my father entrusted to me, and as such, I’ve an obligation to keep it up if I’m going to keep it.
Besides. I like the fact that if people come ta town, I’m where they lay their weary head to rest. As the song goes.
Uncle John would have run the place into the ground years ago.
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July 23rd, 2007 05:37pm
charlie
I’ll get back to finishing off the mystery of the wayward breadloaf in the future. Today’s journal entry is a social commentary about the world we live in.
FADE IN: Still montage of shots of battlefields past, starting with daguerreotypes of the Civil War and ending with images from the current Iraq operations theatre.
It used to be that you could win a war just by taking down a governmental head and installing your own. Or so it would appear by tactics pursued by generals past and present.
War ain’t chess.
You don’t win by checkmating the king, because while that ends the match in chess, there’ll always be elements of resistance leftover. It’d be like the rest of the pieces chomping down on your exposed flanks on the board after you’ve walked away from the table.
Sure, you can kick off the other pieces, one by one, but add the element that new pieces get promoted pretty easily, and someone keeps slipping the other side more pieces (I played bughouse chess a few times in a park in Anaheim — it’s lots of fun), which we can’t seem to prevent.
I won’t talk more about the Iraq stuff; it’s kinda depressin’, even if I’m too old to be shipped over (for now), it’s on lots of people’s minds, even in our little township of San Paolo.
What I am going to talk about is the notion of governance.
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July 20th, 2007 07:21pm
charlie
Hey folks. My computer had an accident — it fell out of a window. There’s an old joke from the eighties that the only way to accelerate your chipset on some old machines was to toss it out a window. That’s how you achieve ‘terminal’ velocity, anyway. I guess that’s what I get for trying to put it up on the windowsill to increase the ventillation.
I suppose I could’ve used the kiosks down at Visions, but I find I don’t think so well on my feet when it’s damned hot out there and inside as well. Charlena took to offering iced tea instead of hot tea or sun tea, and I doubt even Sun Tzu himself would march in this kind of weather. But then, you didn’t ask about the price of tea in Chai, na?
I finally scraped together the cash to buy a new computer — it’s a used IBM Thinkpad laptop. So, hiya and all that lovely ’tis me again’ bits.
Last weekend I had an anonymous gift delivered to my doorstep — or rather, the front desk of the Nuys. Someone had rung the front desk bell, and by the time I got out to the office from my little project in #12, they were gone, but there was something about the size of a head wrapped in a towel.
Tom would have called the bomb disposal squad. (more…)
May 23rd, 2007 07:45pm
charlie
LOW ANGLE SHOT: A baseball, dirty, well ‘loved’, lying in the dirt.
Spring’s here. And some of us are doing cleaning, others of us are out playing.
Pan up to a fellow in jeans, a faded T-shirt, and a baseball cap worn backwards, sounding out a few hesitant riffs on what’s probably a harmonica by the sound. Not very expertly played, either.
“We’ve got music in our hearts if we listen; lyrics in our head if we remember the words, and when the words are the kind that give a body stage fright, the song of your youth will never see the light of day.”
FOLLOWING SHOT AS: The narrator pockets the harmonica, walking from left to right — the tracking stops abruptly as something locks up in the camera, such that while Charlie talks off-screen, his tail is still in frame.
“I’m trying this video diary thing, just for kicks — borrowed a camera from the film department down at UCLA. Figured it’d be a change of pace from my scripts. Practice my blocking.”
The tailtip flicks. “The silver screen has always fascinated me — the Palladio drive-in movie theatre was where I used to spend all my pocket money, even though I didn’t have a car. Oh, sure, I could have just climbed up the slope past the drive-in with a radio, but that would be thievin’. And that’s one thing that the people of our little town have that keeps us together — a distinct lack of crime. ”
The tail swishes out of sight, replaced by Charlie, walking from right to left, and then crouching so that only half his head is in frame. “The last time somethin’ resemblin’ a drug dealer snaked his way into our watering hole, he left town tarred and feathered. And I don’t mean figuratively, either. Go down to the Town Hall, and check out the ‘Great Chicken Scare of ‘02′ on the Wall of Fame.” That’s the fella.
“We got a nice insular little group here. Families who grew up here, and anyone new who comes into town gets a serious lookin’ over. None of that FBI thing, ‘have you ever been a member of the Communist Party’ kinda fifth degree, but more like, ‘howdy, what’s your business, you ever have family here, got any kids, an’ kin I see pictures of ‘em?”
“You can tell a lot about a dog by when he flinches at a stranger; you can tell a lot about a stranger when he flinches at a dogged set of questions. ”
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May 9th, 2007 08:36pm
charlie
SMASH CUT: A middle-aged coyfox looking in the mirror, a little bleary-eyed from either just waking up or insomnia.
When you wake up in the morning and stare your own nose in the face, and you ask yourself, ‘What am I really here fer?’ You wonder if your life is worth it.
My name is Charlie. I don’t run a detective agency with sexy future models at my beck and call, let alone martial artists hidden in a storage closet.
OUTDOOR SHOT: Pink square structures in a Westernish-Adobe theme, attached garages next to each. Pan slowly left to a fifties era sign: ‘Oceanside Nuys — 100% Refrigerated Air’ in blue.
I run a motel, as ya might have already learned by reading the earlier postings. It was left to me by my father — my mother got the big house and a lot of money; I got his blood, sweat, and tears — and a whole bunch of insurance payments.
Life is about work. Some work is good. Some is not so fun. Some requires sitting on yer arse and waiting for interesting things to happen to you.
Right now? I’m watching wallpaper cure in Number 3.
See, when you stay in a hotel room, you know it’s not home. You don’t notice when everything looks decent, but you sure do notice it when the wallpaper’s torn and peeling off the walls, or there’s dust on the windowsills — but damnit, you can’t prevent dust from settling. It’s gravity, and inertia.
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