American Snapshots

2005-12-12T11:22:00.000-08:00

Early morning in a crowded office-building elevator. The doors are about to close on the lobby level when a young man in an expensive suit skips up and squeezes in. He recognizes a friend in the back of the elevator car: a guy in a his early 20s, dressed in medical scrubs, with heavily gelled, spiky black hair with frosted tips. The man in the suit looks him over.

Suit guy: "You changed your hair."

Scrubs guy: "Yeah, I decided to try out the gay homo look."

Suit guy: "You mean all the gel?"

Scrubs guy: "Yeah, the gel... the whole thing. It's just the gay homo look."

Suit guy: "Looks good."

Scrubs guy: "Well, I don't know if it looks good, but I know I haven't had this much physical affection from women in years. Seriously. It's just been CRAZY."

Suit guy: "Ha."

Doors open on the 6th floor, guy in suit leaves.

2005-11-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

At the intersection of Fountain and Vine, in the middle of the rush hour commute through Hollywood, a twenty-something woman in a man's suit is banging on the hood of her broken down Toyota Tercel, which has the words "I sell laptops, $300" painted on the driver-side door. The car blocks a very busy turning intersection, and about 3 out of 4 drivers who are able to weave around the woman manage some combination of honk and obscene gesture as they pass. Each time, the woman cups her hands and shouts the same mantra at each speeding-away car: "I know, I know, I shoulda bought the Lexus... whatever!," followed by an elaborate and horrifying forced cackle.

2005-11-28T15:38:00.000-08:00

On the courtesy shuttle bringing passengers from the long-term parking lot to Orange County's John Wayne Airport, a middle-aged couple are going over the details of their Thanksgiving travel. The radio plays "Imagine," and the woman turns to her husband, who is absent-mindedly humming along.

"Is this Lennon or McCartney?," the woman asks.

"Neither," he answers.

Suddenly, the woman dramatically clutches at her chest.

"Oh, God. I forgot my lucky flying medallion!," she shouts.

2005-11-08T12:36:00.000-08:00

Back in the (latex safe) Kaiser Permanente Urgent Care Center, a middle-aged African American man answers his cell phone. His long grey t-shirt features the Warner Brothers logo - a cartoonish gold shield emblazoned with "WB" - in the center, with text wrapped around the graphic, reading: "If You See The Po-lice Coming, WARN-A-BROTHER!"

He screams into the cell phone: "Hello? (Pause). No, it turns out it was a zit. No, no, a ZIT. Like a pimple."

2005-11-08T12:35:00.000-08:00

2005-10-30T09:22:00.000-08:00

In Waiting Room B of the Kaiser Permanente Urgent Care Center, a small, seemingly teenaged nurse appears every couple minutes from behind a frosted door that leads to the important part of the hospital. Inititally, she calls out names of patients who are ready to be seen, then guides them back into another (more exclusive?) waiting room. A few minutes later, she comes out to tape a series of xeroxed Halloween fliers around the room that awkwardly compare donating blood to vampire attacks. After a lengtheir pause, she appears again with her clipboard and calls out "Abraham Lincoln" to the unresponsive room. "Abraham Lincoln," she asks again. The only response comes from a 10-year-old Asian boy who has been beating a pair of drumsticks against the chair next to his. "Abraham Lincoln," the nurse states plainly. The boy snickers, and his mother slaps his arm, tsking him, without ever looking up from the issue of "Jet" magazine that she has been reading intently. The nurse gives up and retreats behind the frosted door.

2005-10-29T09:48:00.000-07:00

In the parking lot of Stoney's Pawn Shop, across from the Golden Nugget Hotel & Casino on Fremont Street in downtown Las Vegas, at 10:45am, a woman in a tie-dyed t-shirt/dress is sobbing, sitting cross-legged on the roof of a black Ford Grenada. Glen Frey's "The Heat is On" blares over an outdoor sound system, so loud it's distorted. A passing pedestrian, carrying a neon green cocktail in a skinny, three-foot-long plastic cup that hangs past his knees, calls out to the woman: "You okay, sweetheart?" She shouts back to him, over the ripping guitar solo, "my slut sister stole my fuckin' car keys!"

2005-10-19T17:34:00.000-07:00

Outside of the New Beverly Cinema revival-house movie theater, just West of La Brea on Beverly in Los Angeles, a middle-aged Hasidic Jewish man in an enormous coat and a streimel hat is staring, for several minutes, at a poster advertising an upcoming engagement of the film "Nine Songs," the poster for which contains the tagline "the most sexually extreme mainstream rock movie ever!"

The man contemplates the poster in silence until another Hasidim walks up and breaks the first man's concentration. The second man looks at the poster for a moment and then speaks to his friend.

"Did you hurt your knee?," he asks. The first man shakes his head "no," and the duo walk off down the street in silence.

2005-10-17T15:32:00.000-07:00

You should probably spend some time over at:
http://jscreekbed.blogspot.com

2005-10-13T12:21:00.000-07:00

In line for a haunted house at Knott's Scary Farm in Buena Park, California, a group of teenagers roughhouse and call each other names. When the line reaches a curve near a snack bar, one of the teens - a girl in a sequined sweatshirt with "The Joy That Bling Brings" spelled out in sparkly cubic zirconia - reads the eatery's menu, which is painted on the wall of the shack, aloud:
"Cotton Candy, Hot Dogs... wait, what are American Fries? Are those like curly fries?"

Her spiky-haired boyfriend shakes his head and says: "No, they're the same as regular fries. They changed the name a long time ago because of a war we had with France."

2005-09-29T08:48:00.000-07:00

Ralph's Grocery Store, corner of Doheny and Beverly in West Hollywood, California. The "Express" 15-items-or-less lane.

A 40-something man in all black pays for some cat food, then asks the cashier:

Man: "Do you guys sell stickers?"
Cashier: "Stickers?"
Man: "Yes, stickers. With pictures on them, or designs?"
Cashier: "I don't know."
Man: "How can you not know?"
Cashier: "I don't know."

Moderate pause; Man leaves with no further discussion.

The next customer, an elderly woman buying produce, begins to write a check for her purchases.

Cashier: "Paper or plastic?"
Woman: "What?"
Cashier: "Would you like paper bags or plastic?"
Woman: "Are there any other choices?"

Extremely long pause, until a bagger appears at the end of the conveyor belt and begins to put the items in a plastic bag, with no comment from the older woman.

2005-09-26T17:05:00.000-07:00

These contributions come courtesy of Speakingcorpse. I will confess to not understanding exactly what happened in the first one, but it's so vivid - to paraphrase Tom Waits, he "gave that story a zip code" - it feels as though I am almost there, amongst the curvy academics, drunken bluebloods, and ruddy Irishmen.

1) Outside of a bar in the East Village last night, I was talking to two friends, one of whom happened to be an attractive, voluptuous woman. The other was a young man. My two friends were smoking cigarettes. A short, semi-fat guy marched past us. He was wearing a knit pullover and a white collared shirt, blue jeans, and loafers. He seemed to be a resident either of the Upper East Side, or of the Connecticut suburbs. He turned around and said, with unnecessary assertiveness, "I need a light." As my male friend reached over and lit his cigarette, the guy began to sing, to the tune of the Guns 'N' Roses hit, "Take me down to the Alphabet City, where the grass is green..." He then paused, pulled on his cigarette, pointed at my female friend, and completed the verse: "...and the girls are pretty." He then spun around and walked off.

As my companions finished their cigarettes, we began to chat about academic matters--literary theory, Biblical allusion in Romantic poetry, etc. A severely inebriated man then approached us quickly, and asked if we knew about "Hans John Gammagrodhldjez." The guy was fatter than the first guy, obviously Irish, with a pockmarked face and an expensive but too-big collared shirt stuffed into loose jeans, which were tightly pulled around his belly by a leather belt. He swayed a bit as he spoke.

"Do you mean Hans-Georg Gadamer?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said.

"No," I replied.

He nodded and walked on.

2) Seen on the announcements board outside of a Baptist Church on 6th Ave. in Park Slope Brooklyn: Can't sleep at night? Try counting your blessings.

2005-09-22T14:24:00.000-07:00

At 7:45 in the morning, at a 7/11 on Hollywood Boulevard at the entrance to the 101 North Freeway, a middle-aged man in a sleeveless flannel shirt with a gingham pattern taps his foot impatiently as he waits his turn in line. He holds an empty, massive 64 ounce cup, and huffs a series of irritated sighs, as the transaction before his plays out very slowly. Finally it's his turn, and the older employee running the register offers a polite "How are you, sir?" The man in flannel slams the empty cup on the countertop, and seems to summon a great deal of righteous anger as he actually bellows:

"I'd be doing a helluva lot better if the dispenser on the goddamned Wild Cherry Slurpee machine was working!"

As the employee goes to fix the machine, the thirsty customer appears to be shaking and shuddering.

2005-09-16T17:34:00.000-07:00

Scats also submitted these; some 'Rejected Snapshots' that didn't quite make the grade. Think of them as a sort of "DVD extra" for the blog, if you will.

1) While waiting in an elevator in the Conde Nast building I noticed this exchange take place, much to my amusement:

"Could you, um..."

"Sure, which floor?"

"Five."

"No problem."

(He pressed the fifth floor button)

"Thanks."

"Have a good one."

"You too."

(Exits on the fifth floor.)

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2) Standing outside my local bodega was a bearded man handing out flyers saying, "Did you vote today?"

A pedestrian stopped, looked at him and said, "Yes. I did."

The bearded man replied, "Ok. Take care."

The pedestrian resumed walking.

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3) Overheard at the local coffee shop:

Woman: "Did you see 'Brothers Grimm' yet?"

Man: "No, I want to but just haven't gotten around to it."

Woman: "Oh, well check it out if you have a chance. Its better than it looks in the trailer."

Man: "That's what I heard."

Woman: "So how's everything else going?"

Man: proceeds to relate recent events in his life.

2005-09-16T17:32:00.000-07:00

Submission courtesy Scats:

In the local video store the other day I asked the owner if he was carrying the new "21 Jumpstreet" DVD. He immediately retorted with irritation bordering on anger:

"No! I mean, where would it end?!?!"

"Excuse me?"

"Where would it END?! I mean, TELEVISION!? I'd have to get a whole 'nother store!"

"But you have 'Six Feet Under' and 'The Sopranos' on DVD." I pointed out."

"Well, sure. Some cable shows maybe. But television! It would never end. No."

Uncomprehending, I observed that even stocking only movies he could still easily have more than would fit in his closet sized store.

"No. I'm not doing that. No. No television. No. It would never end."

2005-09-12T00:04:00.000-07:00

Outisde the Glendale Galleria shopping mall in suburban Los Angeles, a bright-eyed early 20-something mans a Honda kiosk in the shadow of the mall's food court. As an average-looking 40-year-old guy carrying an "Abercrombie & Fitch" bag starts to walk past the display, the kid launches into his spiel: "Sir, if you test drive a Honda today, we'll give you 2 free movie tickets to any AMC theater..." The older man cuts him off, saying: "I got my license suspended for drunk driving." The younger man looks absolutely shattered, and visibly gulps. "I see," he says quietly, as the older man continues on.

2005-09-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

In the crowded men's restroom of the Laemmle Sunset 5 theater in West Hollywood, following a screening of "Grizzly Man," a 60-something man in high-waisted khakis and a pastel pink polo shirt leans into a urinal, propping himself up with an extended left arm against the wall. He alternates at least 5 loud, pained declarations of "Jesus fucking Christ" with an equal number of breathy, rubbery farts, shaking his head the whole time in apparent mournful disappointment.

2005-09-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

Submission courtesy Speakingcorpse:

A used bookstore on the North Side of Chicago, mid-August. The previous day, I had been browsing there, and I had found a book in which I was interested, on the history of the modern papacy. I ended up not buying the book because I was short on cash and didn't have time to go to the bank. I asked the clerk to hold the book for me. Now, I returned to the store and went to the counter. "Hi," I said to the clerk, "do you still have that book on the papacy?" At this point, a short, stocky, moustached man, resembling one of the sausage-eating Bears fans in the old SNL sketches, walked past me. Without looking at me, and with a straight face, using an inscrutable tone of voice that seemed to combine contempt and conspiratorial knowledge, he yelled out, to no one in particular, "The papacy!?! Spoken like a true Jew!"

2005-09-05T12:58:00.000-07:00

Coffee shop patio, Los Feliz, CA:

A group of 5 or 6 men and women of varying ages eat scones and leaf through the newspaper, gathered around a single table. One of the men (in a t-shirt reading "If hell freezes over... I'll ski that too!") discusses his life's ambitions with one of the women at the table:

Man: "I would love to see all of the 8 wonders of the world before I die."

Woman: "Aren't there just 7?"

Man: "I don't know... the Taj Mahal... the Grand Canyon... is the Eiffel Tower one? What's the 8th?"

One of the other men at the table lowers his newspaper and offers: "Barbara Streisand?"

Cue UPROARIOUS, table-slapping hysterics, including another woman at the table spraying coffee through her nose, and everyone repeating the punchline at least six times.

2005-09-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

Submission courtesy Alwswrite:

On a flight from D.C. to Boston, I opened my backpack to look for a snack. My 17-year-old brother, unschooled in the ways of women, spotted my baggie of tampons and asked if he could have some of my string cheese.

2005-09-03T13:06:00.000-07:00

Westwood, California. At a newsstand about 10 paces from a Rite Aid, An elderly couple approaches a 20-something man who is talking loudly on his cell phone about purchasing a house boat. The older man interrupts:

Older man: "Do you know where the Aid is?"

Young man: "The Aid?"

Older man's wife: "It's called Rite Aids, Don."

(young man thinks)

Young man: "I think that's just an East Coast thing."

Older man's wife: "Oh dear."

(happy ending: the couple eventually found the place after asking the security guard standing within the automated doors of Rite Aid if he knew where Rite Aid was)

2005-09-01T09:25:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles City Bus, heading East on Hollywood past Orange, August 31st.

2005-08-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

Please note that American Snapshots gladly accepts all submissions. Just email them to fiestasandsiestas@yahoo.com.

2005-08-29T13:47:00.000-07:00

Las Vegas Nevada, the "Shutters" bar within the Rio Hotel & Casino, 5:30am early Sunday morning:

Two extremely drunk 20something men sip $6 beers and discuss the fact that they both have flights out of Las Vegas coming up in the next few hours.

Man #1: "Dude, this flight is going to be so fucking painful.
Man #2: "The flight out of Vegas always sucks ass."
Man #1: "I wish there was some kind of, like, magical powder you could take where you could just wake up in a different place and have no memory of how you got there."
(long pause)
Man #2: "There is. It's called crystal!"

(laughter; high five)

2005-08-29T13:46:00.000-07:00

Submission courtesy Scats:

In the magazine/cigarette shop one morning a tall, lanky, silver- haired, disheveled but not homeless looking man frantically waves a tattered copy of the NY Times, outraged and shouting:"Where's all the news that's fit to print?! Huh! I mean where the hell is it!?! Huh? HUH!?!"

2005-08-25T14:40:00.000-07:00

The intersection of La Cienega Boulevard and Century Boulevard, 9:45am. A large middle aged man in a "Breast Cancer Awareness" t-shirt stands on the concrete island dividing the North and Southbound lanes of traffic, holding a fistful of long plastic tubes filled with colored sugar. "Pixie Stix, bitches!" He shouts at cars stopped for the red light. "Two for one Pixie Stix!" As the light turns green and I begin to pull away, I see a woman in a black sedan extend her arm out her window and begin waving a five dollar bill at the man, who rushes into traffic to complete the sale.

2005-08-23T09:24:00.000-07:00

Submission courtesy Blicero:

Matterhorn Lounge, Seven Springs. 1:15 a.m. Rock 'n' roll cover band (name unknown) playing to an audience of about 5. The following "banter" occurs between the lead singer/guitarist (a middle-aged man) and the keyboardist/backup singer (a woman in her late 30s).

Singer: I grew up on a farm. Raised chickens. We had this friend, one time we were out in the chicken coop, he dropped his chewing gum. Took him three tries to pick it up. (Laughs.)

Keyboardist: That went over my head.

Singer: After that we named him "Chicken Pud."

Keyboardist: I still don't get it. You're going to have to explain that one to me.

(Silence)

Keyboardist: (Laughs uncomfortably.) I don't get it. I'm a city girl.

(Buzz of feedback.)

2005-08-22T01:40:00.000-07:00

Agoura Hills, California.
Transaction at the register of a Mini Mart at a 76 gas station.

Customer: "Pack of Marlboro Reds."
Cashier: $5.15, please."
Customer: "Oh, and a book of matches."
Cashier: "We don't have matches, but lighters are only .50 cents."
Customer: "But matches are free."
Cashier: "But most places charge a dollar for a lighter."
Customer: "Okay, fine, a blue lighter."
Cashier: "The blue ones are a dollar."

2005-08-16T11:17:00.000-07:00

In one of the men's rooms of Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, somewhere between United gate B7 and an "Altitunes" shop, one might find a stall featuring the words "Columbine Ass Faggot" carved into the wall in large, rusty type.

2005-08-16T10:38:00.000-07:00

August 14 - On a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles, I am jolted awake as the plane falls into a mini-tailspin. It's more than typical turbulence; the lights flicker, like in a disaster movie, and people begin screaming. A few of the overhead compartments fly open, which I fixate on as the roller-coaster sensation of gut-to-gullet kicks in (how in the hell did those open? Aren't they mechanically latched?). The whole thing lasts two seconds, tops, and we level off. The guy next to me, who is wearing a "Got Freedom?" t-shirt, turns on his cell phone and tries dialing a number. The pilot comes on and apologizes, saying that our plane crossed into the wake of another flight that they hadn't been made aware of. The last half-hour of the flight passes in complete silence, with the exception of a few sniffles and sobs from some traumatized passengers.
As the plane lands and begins to taxi, an impossibly perky stewardess grabs the p.a. and begins to speak:
"No extra charge for that fancy flying back there, as we welcome you to Los Angeles International Airport...," she says. Her speech is cut off abruptly, as a woman in the back of the plane hysterically screams "FUCK YOU!" at the top of her lungs. The chirpy flight attendant calmly puts the p.a. mic back in its cradle and sits down.