An odd Drive-Thru

A few weeks back I found myself in Baldwin Park. Meh. Not my type of city but it's there regardless. As I waited at a stop light I found my eyes wandering and looking at the buildings surrounding the intersection. There was a gas station and a fast food place but what really caught my eye was what was directly to my right.

I looked at a plain-looking building and saw a driveway. Only this ran right next to the windows of the building. I looked harder and saw that at the driveway entrance was a Starbucks drive-thru order window. It's what came after the order window that really caught my eye.

Picture this: You drive up and order your coffee (does anyone really order just coffee anymore? I mean people order non-fat double shot espresso with almond vanilla milk - or whatever else they put in coffee - but you get the idea) and then on the driver side are windows to several other stores. You look and see a giant pink "T" for T-mobile and see the inside of the store and wonder if anyone really uses T-mobile anymore because the main carriers are Verizon and AT&T so you see T-mobile as being somewhat falling by the wayside.

You pull up and then you see something odd, but you don't know it's odd until you look deeper. You see an Indian woman (as in from India) smiling at you and then you read the caption on the photo: Eyebrow Threading. Eyebrow Threading? What the hell is that? If you take it literally, which you do, you would think that someone literally threads eyebrows into your face for cosmetic reasons. You shudder at the thought and then pull up to get your coffee and leave.

All the way home, or to work, you think about Eyebrow Threading and you have to know exactly what it is or else you'll go crazy. When you get home, or work, you pop on your computer and do a search. You see that what you originally thought was not true, in fact it's a process of removing single eyebrows by using thread. You then think: Can't they just use tweezers? You then make a decision to never go back through that drive-thru because that original image of Eyebrow Threading is ingrained in your brain and to see it again would trigger those thoughts so you say to yourself "We'll just avoid that odd drive-thru." And you do.

And I've never seen that drive-thru again.

Things I Don't Understand

There are some things that exist in this life that I cannot for the life of me figure out why they were even thought of in the first place. These are things that irk, perturb and disturb me to such a degree that they border on the inane and idiotic and make me wonder what the future holds for humanity when there are people in this world who are willing to create/imagine/execute such ideas. I’ll give you an answer now: it looks pretty damn bleak.

Mohawk Motorcycle Helmets: Great. Just what d-bags needed: another excuse for a Mohawk – already a poor fashion choice now emphasized by the fact that if you ride a motorcycle (aka crotch rocket) you can wear a helmet with a Mohawk attached. They come in all sorts of colors: neon green, red, blue, and you can even get studs or points in place of the fanciful follicles. What statement are you trying to make? I hope as you ride under a low-lying bridge those Technicolor tresses get caught in one of the cracks and pulls you right off your bike – but you remain unharmed, thus learning a lesson in stupidity and d-baggery.

No Music during a Music Video: For starters, I don’t know how a music video can be profitable. You can now watch them online, for free, or ignore them completely. I tend to ignore most of them on account of TRL being cancelled (although I stopped watching long before that). But it really bugs me when music videos don’t play music. In the middle of Mariah Carey’s “Heartbreaker” she gets into a fight with herself in the women’s bathroom – and they added some cheesy fight music (I get that it’s cheesy, but play the damn song during the fight). This got me even more perplexed when I tried to watch Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro”, I couldn’t. It took a little over two minutes for the musical intro to even start. I sat at my desk waiting for the video to start and nothing happened, and when the music did start I was so put off that I just closed the video page. It’s a music video, play the song with some visuals and be done with it.

Stickers on Hats: Apparently it’s now cool to leave the stickers on your hat, as well as leave the brim flat (ugh). How is it cool to see that it looks like you just bought that hat yesterday? It seems to me that you’re driving the bandwagon wearing your Tampa Bay Rays hat with the black and gold 59fity logo emblazoned on the top of the brim. Just like the motorcycle helmets: what statement are you trying to make? I guess you care more about your appearance than representing your favorite team, or else you’d leave the sticker off completely. Do you see Albert Pujols or Ichiro leaving the stickers on their hats? No and neither should you.

TMZ: The gossip rags aren't my thing and I really could not care less if Britney Spears was seen walking out of a Starbucks. It's just not my thing. But have you ever watched the TMZ show? It looks like it was put together by an ADD riddled speed addict who also took some shrooms and decided it would be a good idea to exploit celebrities by finding photos and video of them in situations that they would not normally be put in if were not for the camera people in front of them. The show tries to be funny (very very hard) but falls flat on its face at every attempt. The "reporters" dictate exactly what they just showed in a video and describe every detail in each photo - great journalism a work. I truly don't understand why this show is popular, then again I'm not it's target demographic: I don't care about celebrity gossip.

Zeljko Ivanek: I remember seeing this guy accept an Emmy for his work on "Damages", a show I've never watched, and then all of a sudden seeing him pop up everywhere on all of my favorite shows. He showed up in "Heroes", "Big Love", "True Blood" and one episode of "House". All the while I noticed that he's just playing the same brooding character in all of those shows. He's the tough guy with a no-nonsense attitude and aggressive tendencies that others find excessive but he finds necessary. His agent needs to get him some other work, because playing the same character only gets you so far. It just bugs the hell out of me seeing him everywhere and it's something I can't quite put my finger on why he's everywhere. Now he's all over NBC for "The Event" where he seems to be playing another power hungry individual who needs to control the situation at all costs. It's hard for me to say if he's a good actor or not because I haven't seen much range from him and until I see that range (ie a comedic role) then he will be one of those things I just don't understand.

Life and Times in the Inland Empire

My job takes me to various exotic locales. Places the likes of which you have only seen in the movies or in your dreams. Where the plains are vast and at times expansive and the very air you breathe feels like you could be drinking water instead of breathing because it’s so humid. Places where a once proud business is now a vacant building or an empty plot of land unused and untouched by human hands in more than a decade, where the weeds have turned brown and have been ground into dust and the lone speck of green is from a wrapper from the Green Burrito. At times there is hope, as it does spring eternal (or so they say) as a majestic oak rises out of the barren dust bowl-like parking lot that was once connected to a grocery store. But more often than not, the cracks in the asphalt signal what has truly become of the neighborhood. Unfilled, and spreading further and further apart by the day. Shopping carts are left on the side of the road or in empty parking lots. Cars are abandoned next to the train tracks, windows rolled down so you can get a better look at that blue vinyl interior. A moon bounce sits unused behind a warehouse. It’s red and yellows contrast with the tope and beige walls filled with streaking cracks. Men, and sometimes women, wait in front of the Home Depot waiting for a job that may never come. Then, further down the road the streets are clean, the asphalt is fresh and the paint is just getting dry. Where the houses are gated and the cul-de-sacs are a plenty and the sidewalks are filled with verdant life that creates actual shade. The homes are many and the cracks are few. Empty plots don’t last long here, as someone is bound to snatch it up for another housing development. It's a part of life, it's a part of community, it's a part of a whole damn mess of things that don't seem to make sense. It's night and day, rich and poor, love and hate, Napster and Metallica, The Bride and Bill - opposition. It will always exist.

I see this and much more as I journey through the Inland Empire, as it’s called. I see this in Pomona, Chino, Ontario, Rancho Cucamonga and Upland. It’s a strange part of the world this San Bernadino County because I’ve usually never spent more than five minutes there before my job – on account that I had no reason to go out there, ever. My Thomas Guide didn’t help me because it was only Los Angeles and Orange county so every street I had to find I basically guessed and asked my way to, and it was a pain in the ass. I don’t know why so many people live out there, they’re secluded, backed up into the hills and mountains like the people of Rohan at Helms Deep – and we all know how that turned out. It’s hotter than just about anywhere else – except for the desert communities and places further inland and the stores I go into have storm doors. Storm doors? Really? You know the kind where you walk in and there’s a space in between you and the next door that actually lets you into the store. The only reason I see it as being necessary is to keep out the smell of the nearby horses and dairy cows. Yes, the smell is so pungent you can smell it through your car fans. Why does Chino smell like the aftermath of the Rose Parade? They do have a prison nearby so I guess it’s a good way to keep the inmates inside but for the regular people, it’s got to suck.

I can’t say I hate the place but I can say it’s never truly been boring. I accidentally ran a red light I thought was green and went through about eight lanes of traffic – luckily no cars were coming at me and I survived. Other than that I tend to pass the time by listening to the radio while I drive and thinking about what I’m going to do once the day is over – and I’m out of the Inland Empire. I’ve seen some strange and not so strange things during my travels but I wouldn’t count it out for having a few more surprises in store for me as I venture deeper and deeper into the heart of the Inland Empire.