'Bred Crumbs

Today's Lunch Special: One Soggy Orange and the Last Bud Light

Low energy, Friday morning. Need a nice, bacony breakfast sandwich on wheat from our sad excuse for a cafeteria.

I enter.

Not-So-Bright Server: Breakfast sandwich?

Me: Please.

NSB: Would you like light rye or sliced French bread?

Me: There's no wheat?

NSB: I'm sorry, no. [perkily] Rye is good.

Me: Not to me.

And so I pass. This happens all the time, this not having basic food elements for the cafeteria. One day, they didn't even have butter or margarine, and NSB offered up some strange flavored butter substitute that she brought from home.

It's like trying to run a cafeteria out of a bachelor's refrigerator.

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You Must Remember This (Bitch)

It looks like we have a "Play it again, Sam" for the Aughts, and it's "This is how we do it in the O.C., bitch." It's derived from the pilot episode of The O.C., Fox's missable but watchable new prime-time soap, and already people are understandably spreading and spoofing the line's multifaceted delights.

But like Bogey's famously unuttered request, the new catchphrase is being immortalized incorrectly. The real line was: "Welcome to the O.C., bitch. This is how it's done in Orange County." Why not say it right? It's still as full of fun as Peter Gallagher's eyebrows.

Whatever you do, don't get the two misremembered lines mixed up, or you'll wind up saying something really ridiculous like "Play it again, bitch. This is how we do it in the C.B."

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I'm Looking Over, Oh, Some of That Interchange-shaped Grass

One thing I struggle with when attempting storytelling-style writing is detailing the surroundings. Especially if flora are involved. I know some standout trees – eucalyptus with its fragrance and vertical hangings, maple thanks to the Canadian worship of its leaf. But trying to distinguish the IKEA shelf-color trees (oak, beech, birch) leaves me stumped <rimshot />, and the best I can do on nature's handhelds is to identify them as "those rubbery things" or "you know, the pointy one." I spent all weekend at a big house filled inside and out with dangling greenery in every configuration, bushes in a wide range of girths, and flowers to fill a Web-safe color palette, but I can't name a single one.*

My thumb is no greener than my tongue. I inherited a few balcony plants from the prior resident of my place, and neglect inevitably set in. But thanks I'm sure to the San Francisco fog, a couple of them survive in spite of me, like the rubbery thing, and the flowers I was very surprised to see back in bloom this year, given their frail stalk and weedy planter.

They're, you know, those pink ones.

·  ·  ·

* Ask? Please. I'm male.

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Aqua Clean Odor Force

Spent a long weekend in my hometown in Kentucky, one of those backwater places where they have reliable electricity. There was some family drama, (sorry, no details), but there was also relaxation, and this was what helped the latter overcome the former:

Chlorine.

I didn't get to go to swimming pools much as a kid, so whenever the unmistakable smell of water purification wafted in from afar on a summer breeze and punched me in the nose, I instantly longed to submerge myself in a pool of water even though I couldn't really swim. Now, the occasional errant whiff of chlorine translates into a broader longing – sure, for the simple carefree days of childhood yada yada etc., but more specifically for summer itself: ninety-plus degrees, sweat-wringing humid, etc. In Kentucky this weekend, there was that summer, and an available pool to go with that smell, and comrades to share it all, and bobbing and floating in the gently lapping coolness-beneath-warmth washed away troubles every bit as much as the beaches of Maui.

But the beaches of Maui don't have a distinctive pungent aroma, do they? Take that, paradise.

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