Deep Dark Thoughts – Deep Dark Thoughts

Too Good to be True

Many bargains, deals, offerings, and opportunities that come about in life are just too good to be true. Meaning that there’s a catch. Either the item you are getting is not as good as promised, or the price is inflated by additional, previously undisclosed costs and fees. Usually, if you are surprised at what a great deal you are getting, it is because there is information that you are missing.

The best example of something too good to be true (or at least, too good to last) happened to me when I was a teenager. I grew up in a little suburb of San Jose, called Willow Glen. It was a nice residential area of the city that had a small but active downtown business area. We had a movie theater, fast food joints, shops, restaurants, and even a comic book shop that I frequented at least a couple times every month.

As much as I enjoyed my comic books, the downtown location that I loved the most was a tiny, hole in the wall, pizza shop called Willow’s Pizza. I loved pizza as a kid (still do, actually), and I thought that Willow’s Pizza was the best pizza in the world.

San Jose has literally hundreds of pizza places, most of them chain restaurants, but a few family owned placed as well. All of them made good pizza. It’s actually difficult to make bad pizza, honestly. Bread, sauce, and cheese is a difficult combination to screw up. A few places have managed it (I’m looking at you, Pizza Hut) but for the most part, I can get pizza anywhere and enjoy it.

Willow’s pizza was different. Willow’s pizza was special.

Willow’s had a soft, pillowy, bready crust that I loved. It was firm and thin through the middle of the pizza, then puffed up large and chewy around the edges to form a sort of bowl. The bowl shape was intentional so the pizza could hold an enormous amount of toppings. Willow’s put more cheese, meat, and other toppings on their pizza than any pizza joint I have found before, or since. No one even comes close.

A large Willow’s pizza would hold pounds, not ounces, of toppings, and provided enough food to feed a family of four, and leave leftovers for everyone to have lunch the next day.

And the leftovers the next day, were the best part. For some reason, Willow’s pizza was just as good cold as it was hot out of the oven. There was nothing about this pie that I didn’t consider gustatorial perfection.

Enough about the taste. Let’s talk about price. Willow’s pizza was about half the cost of any other competitor within a 50-mile radius of their restaurant. Nobody could even come close. Other shops were charging about $10 to $15 for a large pizza (remember, this was the 1980’s). Willow’s would charge six or seven bucks for a pizza that was the same size, but had three times the toppings.

There were days I wondered how Willow’s could even stay in business. How did they make money when they sold so much food at such ridiculously low prices? I figured they just did so much business all day long that they could manage to keep running despite the small profits they made on any individual pizza.

My friends and family ate there all the time. At that price, why not? You could order a pizza to go, or you could eat at the restaurant. It was a small shop and it only had a few tables. If you were lucky, you might find a table open, otherwise you and your friends could take a pizza across the street and eat at one of the outdoor tables that Jack in the Box had in their parking lot. The managers at the burger joint didn’t like it, but if you bought a soda from them before you sat down, they would leave you alone.

The soda at Jack in the Box cost almost as much as my share of the pizza, but if you didn’t want to eat while standing around on the sidewalk, that was the cost of sitting down.

Even though I no longer live in San Jose, I would still be driving 150 miles occasionally to get a Willow’s pizza except for one small problem. Willow’s Pizza closed down in 1983.

Apparently, Willow’s didn’t make a profit because they had so many customers. That fantasy was too good to be true. You can’t put five dollars-worth of food on a seven-dollar pizza and make enough money to pay your staff and operating expenses. It doesn’t matter how many pizzas you sell. It was all just too good to be true.

One day, several friends and I went to Willow’s to get a pizza, but the doors were closed and police tape surrounding the building.

Apparently, the owners of Willow’s Pizza had been selling drugs in a back room of the shop as their main source of income. The pizza part of the deal was just a cover to launder their money. The police had caught on to what was going on and arrested the owners. The shop was closed down as a crime scene.

The dream was over.

They say that crime doesn’t pay, and ultimately, in this case, I suppose that’s true.

But it sure made one hell of a pizza.

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It’s Cat O’Clock

I don’t wake up in the morning to an alarm clock anymore. I wake up to a cat.

Sometimes it’s just one cat, but sometimes it’s as many as all three. They all decide they want to fight, chase each other, and bang into the walls at about seven o’clock each morning. I wake up to the sound of growling, and little claws trying to find purchase on the hardwood floor as the cats run as fast as they can down the hallway until they slam into the bathroom door at the far end.

This skittering and scratching is often followed by loud crashes as the cats take their disagreement up onto the bathroom counter. Hairdryers, toothbrushes, and makeup bottles all get tossed to the floor during the tumult, and I find myself lying awake in bed and wondering why I haven’t already relegated those hairy alarm clocks to the great outdoors.

They can run around all they like out in the yard without disturbing my slumber.

It doesn’t really seem fair to me that an animal that sleeps 23 hours every day is responsible for keeping me awake so frequently. The only time they seem to move is when they get up to eat, or when they decide to chase and wrestle with one another. And the wrestling always seems to coincide with me trying to go to sleep at night or early in the morning about an hour before my alarm clock is about to go off.

It’s like they plan it that way.

Can cats tell time?

During the day, when I am already awake, I can always find the cats in the exact same place: Willow and Scout generally sleep under the bed, or in the living room cat tree, and Sukoshi is curled up on the couch’s ottoman. If I pick one of them up or pet them, they open their eyes and glare at me like they haven’t just been asleep for the last twelve hours straight. It seems a bit hypocritical to me. That’s all I’m saying.

If I move them, they immediately return to whatever spot they had been occupying and go back to sleep. It’s like trying to rouse a coma patient. On the bright side, picking them up is extremely easy since they hang in my arms motionless like some kind of sand-filled pillow as I carry them around. It must be a sort of superpower that allows a cat to sleep so much even when everyone else in the house is up and moving around.

For the most part, I just leave the cats alone when they’re sleeping. Unless, of course, Willow (the fat one) has curled up on the couch in the spot where I like to sit. Then I have to shove the furry lump of dough aside to make room for myself. This is usually when I get one eye open, a brief meow of annoyance, and maybe a quick grooming of mussed fur to demonstrate her dislike of having been touched. Within a few seconds, she is back asleep with her tongue still out of her mouth and a string of drool trailing from her chin to the couch cushion.

Then, when the sun sets, something magical (or demonic) happens. My wife and I crawl into bed and say goodnight, and the cats are suddenly possessed of more internal energy than they know what to do with. One cat will jump onto the bed and attack my feet under the covers, another leaps onto the dresser and decides to push everything there to the floor. The third cat (usually Sukoshi) will wait patiently in the bathroom until one of her partners gets tired and decides to tag her into the ring. That’s when Sukoshi springs to action, vaulting into the litter box and attempting to toss every last bit of litter from the box onto the bathroom floor.

If I get out of bed to yell at them, they all race from the bedroom into the kitchen. This is followed by several bangs and yowls as they knock over the garbage can or try to clear the kitchen counters of whatever pots and pans are still in the drying rack.

When playtime is over, they all slink back into the bedroom and crawl under the bed to catch a few hours of sleep and rest up for the following morning’s activities. This is about the time I can finally fall asleep.

The following day, they sneak out from beneath the bed and plan their morning chaos. I’m not sure if one cat is tasked with watching the clock and waking the others at the assigned time, or if they simply have an innate sense of the best time to startle me awake to guarantee I will be groggy and in a foul mood the rest of the morning, but about an hour before my alarm normally goes off, they are on the prowl again.

Willow and Scout run circles in the bedroom that include constant laps across the top of the bed and over my head. They occasionally pause to claw at the carpet or jump on top of each other. Sukoshi bolts for the litter box to remove all the sand that I had to replace the night before.

When I finally give up trying to sleep and crawl out of bed, all three cats will look at me, yawn, then decide that it really is too early to be up. They make their morning migration to the living room to curl up and snooze the day away.

Resting up for their fifteen minutes of crazy later that night.

It apparently takes a lot of energy to empty a litter box.

Getting On Track

I get motion sick. I know this. I have known this for a long time. Yet it constantly surprises me how often I place myself in situations that I know can only end badly for me.

I thought it was as bad as it could get a few years ago when I let a friend of mine talk me into going fishing in a small, chartered boat off the coast of Bodega Bay. That was hours of nauseated pain and torment that I will never forget. (For anyone curious about this trip, I blogged about it at the time. You can find it here).

Despite how bad that experience was, I believe I have finally topped it.

A few months ago, I was talking to a friend of mine. His name is Mike, and I have known him for several years. He told me that he had been taking his new car (a 2019 Mustang Bullitt in case anyone was wondering) out to a local racetrack. I told him I thought that was really cool.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have sounded so enthusiastic. He then went on to say that he had recently been certified by the track administrators to take passengers with him when he drove. I saw the light go on in his eyes, and I saw the question coming before it was even out of his mouth.

I tried to think quickly. Knowing that I can get carsick on a thirty-minute drive in the country through gently rolling hills, I was not keen on an entire day of quick accelerations, sudden stops, and out-of-control slides through hairpin turns. It sounded like the literal definition of Hell to someone like me.

I looked at Mike, smiled, and said, “Yeah. Sounds like fun.”

I know. I’m an idiot. Regardless, I had put my foot in my mouth, and I was stuck with that answer.

On the day we agreed to go, I woke up that morning with an upset stomach. Maybe it was nerves, or maybe it was something else, but I wasn’t feeling very well. I did not want to call Mike at the last minute and tell him I was sick and couldn’t go, however. That felt too much like running away. Instead, I pulled up my big boy pants, took a couple swigs from the Pepto Bismol bottle we keep in the medicine cabinet, and headed out the door.

I’m sure we can all see where this is going but try not to get ahead of me.

We arrived at the track and signed in. I was issued a helmet. Mike and I were both given wristbands, although I noticed they were different colors. I tried not to think too hard about that, but I couldn’t help wondering if it was in case the car crashed. When we were ejected from the metal wreckage, was it so the track staff could easily tell which mangled corpse on the dirt shoulder was the driver? Blue means driver. Orange means the guy too stupid not to get in the car’s passenger seat.

The official said, “Drink plenty of water today. It’s going to be almost a hundred and thirteen degrees out there by this afternoon.”

I looked at Mike and told him, “It’s a good thing your car has air conditioning.”

He just laughed. “Oh yeah. I forgot to mention. I don’t use the air conditioning. I don’t want the car to overheat. Don’t worry. I’ll keep the windows down for you.”

This day was just getting better and better.

After signing in, we had two hours before our first time on the track. Mike suggested we get a bite to eat at the concession stand. I agreed and proceeded to order the greasiest egg sandwich I have ever seen in my life. One bad decision followed by another; I ate the thing.

Mike’s car, fortunately parked near the first aid station

I won’t go into much detail, but I will say that I missed a large portion of the morning orientation speech as I was having a prolonged sit-down in the bathroom.

I staggered out of the bathroom, weak and dizzy, just in time to climb into Mike’s car and head for the racetrack. I buckled my seatbelt then felt my head smack the car door frame as we lurched out onto the first turn and merged with the existing traffic already moving.

Ten minutes later and I was already beginning to feel the first twinges of motion sickness. I was sweating and still a bit dizzy from my earlier adventures. I might have been a bit pale at the time because Mike glanced at me and asked if I was doing okay.

Unable to open my mouth for fear of something popping up from the depths of my intestinal tract, I simply held up my left thumb. I was attempting to show Mike the finger I would be using to plug whichever orifice on my person that began to eject bodily fluids first. He must have misunderstood the gesture since he immediately stomped on the accelerator.

I survived our first run. Barely. When we pulled into the pits to rest before our second time period on the track, I ripped off my helmet and ran for the nearest bathroom. Something was coming out, I just wasn’t sure yet which end it would be coming from.

I made it with seconds to spare.

When I could stagger back outside, I found Mike standing beside his car. I apologized for disappearing then told him that I was not going to be riding with him anymore that day. I didn’t want to stain his nice leather upholstery.

“But I’ll be fine watching from the side. Don’t let me…”

I was going to say, “ruin the rest of your day,” but Mike had already jumped back in the car and burned rubber back to the track. He left me standing there in a cloud of exhaust. Clearly, he had no intention of letting me get in the way, and I don’t blame him.

The rest of the day was spent in a lounge chair, listening to fast cars zip around the racetrack and trying not to let anything still inside of me escape to the outside.

I think that will probably be my last time out at that track. Not because I wouldn’t agree to go riding again. I know that I am fully stupid enough to say yes if Mike asks.

I just don’t think Mike has any plans to ask. The leather seats in his car are really nice. There is no reason for him to let me put them at risk again.

The Bigger They Are

Back in 1999, I was working for the Sacramento Sheriff’s Office, assigned to work at the Rio Cosumnes Correctional Center (known colloquially to the workers as RCCC, or simply, “the branch). I had been working at the RCCC since moving to Sacramento about a year earlier.

On one particular day, I was assigned to be one of the shift escorts. Jail escorts are very different from the kind of escorts you call on the phone and pay money so they come visit you late at night. That is a whole different kind of escort. Being the jail escort means that I was the person that had to walk all over the jail moving inmates from their cells to doctor appointments, dental appointments, study rooms, then when it was over, escort them back to their original cell.

That last part is really important. They need to go back to the same cell they came out of. A lot of the deputies would get real upset at me if I put the wrong guy in the wrong cell. I figured as long as the numbers were right, what was the big deal? But not everyone saw it the same way. So, I did my best to put them back where I found them.

Anyway, I digress.

I was the assigned escort for the day. I got a radio call that an inmate needed to be brought out of one of our high security pods and taken to the nurse’s station so that staff could do a blood draw on him. I showed up at the secure facility and told the deputy working the control panel why I was there. The door in front of me buzzed, and I entered the building.

I gave the control deputy the name of the guy I was supposed to escort to the nurse. The deputy pointed toward a wall and said, “That’s him. He’s all yours.”

Let me just clarify that when I say wall, I don’t mean the inmate was standing next to a wall when the deputy pointed him out. The guy was the wall. He was probably a foot and a half taller than me and big enough that he looked like he could pick me up and carry me around in one hand. I briefly debated requesting seven more deputies to assist with the escort, but then figured even that probably wouldn’t be enough if the guy decided to pick a fight. I decided the best course was to be nice to him and as non-threatening as possible.

“Come with me, please,” I said, with a big emphasis on the word “please.”

He nodded and followed me out of the building.

As we walked, he looked around nervously, as if he was afraid someone nearby might overhear him, then he leaned toward me and said, “Hey, deputy.”

“Yeah?” I asked, hoping his next words weren’t going to be “Today is a good day to die.”

They weren’t. Instead, he said, “I really don’t like needles. Do we have to do this?”

I told him that we did. A judge had ordered the blood draw and I didn’t have the authority to ignore the order. His face got tense and I saw him flex his chest and shoulders.

“I really don’t like needles,” he said again.

“Sorry about that,” I told him, rethinking my decision not to ask for more help getting him to the nurse.

At the nurse’s station, I had him sit down on a bench in front of a table. Across the table, sitting on another bench was the jail nurse. She held a needle and had several empty vials lined up in front of her. The inmate looked at me again as he sat down.

“I don’t want to do this, man. I really don’t.”

“Sorry,” I said again, trying to sound more sympathetic and a little less terrified of what might happen next. I placed my hands on his shoulders so if he tried to jump up from the table, I could react to his movements a little faster.

To give everyone a picture, the guy was sitting on a low bench in front of me, but he was still so big that my hands were level with my face when I put them on his shoulders. This was a big guy.

The nurse popped the cap off the needle and asked him to extend his arm. The guy went tense and placed his hands on the table. I leaned on him, preparing to try to keep him seated. If he succeeded in standing up, the fight was already over.

The next second, I was lying on the ground with three hundred and fifty pounds of orange-suited inmate on top of me.

He wasn’t moving, however.

The inmate had passed out at the sight of the needle, fallen backward and crashed to the ground with me underneath him. He had been too heavy to catch, so I ended up being little more than a mattress to cushion his fall.

The nurse rushed around the table to help. I shook my head and gasped, “Just get the blood sample before he wakes up. I really don’t want to do this when he’s awake.”

The nurse got her sample. The inmate woke a few seconds later and, when the nurse gave him the green light, I returned him to his cell.

He seemed much more relaxed and calm on the way back. Which made sense. He had survived the needle stick and had even gotten a nice little nap. Before we got back to the secure building where he was housed, he asked if I would be so kind as to not tell anyone that he had passed out in front of the nurse.

Because I am such a nice guy, and because he was three times my size, I agreed to never say a word.

And I kept that promise.

Until today.

Back to the Movies

For the first time in almost eighteen months, I went to see a movie in an actual movie theater. I was one of only about ten people brave enough for the outing in a theater built to hold about ninety. That just made the experience all the more fun, because there is nothing I love more than to watch a movie on a large screen in a theater that is almost completely empty. It’s private and public all at the same time. I can pretend that I’m doing something social, while simultaneously avoiding eye contact and conversation with others.

I used to go the movies all the time. It was one of my favorite activities and I took advantage of having free afternoons as often as possible. I even joined my local movie theater’s membership plan. I was a “diamond” member, which meant that I was watching more than 20 movies every year. Not a difficult level to achieve, given that I was going to the theater at least twice a month, every month.

Being a diamond member didn’t get me anything special. There weren’t any major discounts or special deals that went along with it. But it was kind of cool that when I opened the digital ap on my phone, there was a big glittery diamond under my name.

Regardless, that all changed last year. One week, I was sitting in a dark theater, watching the trailers for upcoming movies and trying to decide which ones I wanted to go see, the next week everything closed up and I was stuck on a steady diet of Netflix and HBO Max on my own couch for a year and a half.

It just wasn’t the same.

So, recently, when I saw the announcement that my favorite place was opening back up and showing first run movies again, I decided it was time to venture back out.

I was curious to see, after a year and a half of being closed, what sort of changes had occurred while the building was unoccupied. I was anticipating some renovations: new carpet, updated concessions stand, fancy lighting, or maybe a fresh coat of paint on the walls. Something. But nope. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. Exactly.

The carpet, walls, and lighting were unchanged. The walls remained decorated with the same red and yellow swoops of color that went out of style in the seventies. Even the bathrooms were identical. You would think the owners would make use of the down time to make a few repairs and clean some stuff up, but it appears they had more important things to do than maintain their facilities. I went into one of the bathrooms and found the same damaged tiles, non-working paper towel dispensers, and rude (though sometimes humorous) graffiti that had been in there two years ago.

I mean, come on. How many times do I need to stare at the same penis and hairy balls drawn on the wall before I finally get to view some new artwork? And I already knew that “Bill is a dick.” How about a few more recent updates on Bill’s character flaws?

That wasn’t all, either. The pre-movie ads were the same ads I had seen in March, 2020. The music piped in through the overhead speakers was the same. For all I know, the candy and popcorn being sold in the concessions stand was the exact same stuff I had seen on display all those months ago. It had just been packed away into some storage room in the back and dusted off later when it was time to re-open. When I tasted the popcorn I purchased during my outing, it seemed to strongly support this particular theory.

At least the movie was new.

Sort of. I mean, it was actually a sequel to a movie I had seen several years ago, and it used a lot of the same story lines, characters, and plot twists. But some of the dialog was new, so I guess that counts.

The only thing that was truly new about my trip to the movies, was the prices. Ticket costs and concessions prices were all slightly higher than I remembered them being last year. Not a lot higher, but enough to be noticed, and an extra buck or so on every item you purchase can add up quickly.

I wonder if this is eventually going to hurt their business. Especially since most movies currently being released in the theater are also being simultaneously released on various streaming services directly to home viewers. Why pay $16 for a ticket to see a movie that you can watch at home for free?

And I can make my own popcorn at home in the microwave for about 80 cents a bag that doesn’t taste like Styrofoam packaging peanuts out of a three-year-old box.

I’m not sure if I will be going out to see more movies in the near future, or if this was just a momentary nostalgic visit to see an old friend. I will have to wait and see how it goes. As much as I love seeing movies in a movie theater, I also love having money in my pocket. The two seem to be mutually exclusive at the moment.

For now, I may have to go back to downloading movies from the comfort of my own home for a while longer. It’s cheaper and more convenient, doesn’t require me to drive anywhere, and the graffiti in the bathroom gets changed more frequently.

I will miss that glittery diamond under my name, though.

Vegetarian by Accident

I don’t consider myself a chef by any stretch of the imagination, but I do like to prepare nice meals for my family. That does not mean, of course, that I’m unwilling to accept a little help when it comes to searching for recipes and purchasing the necessary items to prepare them.

I periodically receive packages from a company called Blue Apron. Blue Apron selects all the food, measures the amounts that I will need, and includes a recipe with step-by-step instructions for how to prepare the meal in question. I have made several dinners with their recipes that have been absolutely wonderful. I have also had a few disasters as well. To be fair, I will not blame Blue Apron for these events. It may simply be the recipe itself wasn’t something I was going to like, the ingredients were not to my taste, or (as is most likely) I completely f**ked up the meal as I was cooking it.

Or maybe a combination of the three.

The most disappointing meals I have had from this company came a few months ago. This, however, was most definitely not their fault. There were a few problems that occurred that caused the food to be something less than satisfying.

Let me back up and start from the beginning.

One Friday, we received a large box with blue lettering on the side that said, “Blue Apron.” We were expecting this box to arrive. We had paid money for it, so actually would have been disappointed if it hadn’t shown up.

I was on my way out of the house when I saw the box, so I dragged it inside, placed it on the counter in our kitchen and yelled for EM1 to turn off the K-pop video she was watching and help me. About the third time I shouted her name, EM1 turned around on the couch and told me she couldn’t hear me because the music was too loud.

I told her to turn down the music.

She said, “What? I can’t hear you. The music is still too loud.”

I will spare you the ensuing Abbott and Costello routine that followed.

With the television turned off, I asked EM1 to take the food out of the Blue Apron box and pack it in the refrigerator. I needed to go and did not have time to do it, and I didn’t want the food to just wait in the box until I came back home.

She agreed to help.

I went about my errands and returned about two hours later. The box was no longer on the counter. When I asked EM1, she said she put all the food in the fridge, then threw the box into the recycling bin outside. I thanked her for her help and went about the rest of my day.

The following night, I decided to cook one of the pre-planned meals that came in the Blue Apron box. It was a lovely dish with vegetables in rice that went alongside pan-seared, New York cut steaks. While reading the list on the recipe, I dug through the refrigerator and pulled out the ingredients.

Zucchini, bell peppers, jasmine rice, garlic, shallot, steaks…

Steaks?

Where the hell were the steaks?

I asked EM1 where she put the steaks when she emptied the box. Her immediate response made me very sad.

“What steaks? I didn’t see any steaks?”

I looked at the other recipe from the box. It was a chicken dish that required two filleted chicken breasts. I told EM1 the steaks should have been right next to the chicken.

She replied, “What chicken?”

My heart sank.

“Where did you throw away the box?” I asked.

I went out to the recycling bins and located the box in question. I grabbed it and lifted it out of the plastic receptacle where it lay. It was dishearteningly heavier than it should have been. I opened the box and looked inside. At the bottom was a thin icepack that usually is placed on top of any meat items in a Blue Apron shipment. The typical arrangement is meat on the bottom, icepack, all other ingredients on the top.

The icepack was warm and melted by now. It had been sitting outside in a recycling bin for over 24 hours so that was no surprise. I lifted the pack and found underneath a pouch of chicken breasts and two vacuum-packed New York strip steaks.

None of it was safe to eat any longer. I threw the packaged meat into the garbage and returned the (now) empty box to the recycling.

That night we enjoyed our meal of rice with vegetables (no steak). The following evening, we had a nice salad with a side of carrots (no chicken).

I don’t mind occasional vegetarian meals. I don’t have to eat meat every day to reaffirm my carnivore nature. But when I know that the meal I am eating is inherently incomplete, and that a cow died needlessly so I could eat only rice and vegetables, I feel like the world has let me down.

Well, maybe not the whole world. I can’t blame everyone and everything on the entire planet for this disaster.

I can promise you, however, that EM1 will never be allowed to unpack another box without close and careful supervision.