Dear Residents of 'Beverly Crest'

Dear Residents of Beverly Crest:

I'm all for an engaged citizenry, a concerned neighborhood association, but this level of specificity takes things to an entirely different plane:

To the best of my understanding, this neighborhood (that is, "the scenic masterpiece... on the FRONT... of the foothills... FACING Beverly Hills") includes a klatch of streets north of Doheny Drive and east of Coldwater Canyon.... and part of the larger Bel Air-Beverly Crest Neighborhood association at large. The houses, as is the case across Beverly Hills, and Los Angeles in general, are hugely variegated, as Woody Allen iconically and crankily pointed out in Annie Hall: "There's French next to Spanish next to Tudor next to Japanese..." that remains as true as it was in 1978. And it certainly remains true in the neighborhood of Beverly Crest:

It certainly took a great feat of civic organization to get this signage erected, and I can only assume that the effort was ring-led by the obviously hugely anal-retentive owner of this:

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Adriana (of Adriana's Insurance)

Dear Adriana's Insurance:

In the cut-throat world of female eponymous Insurance Companies, there has emerged a new impresario:

State Farm? Please. Geico? Surely you jest. And Farmers? Bum ba dum ba dum bum bum?! Forget about it! Adriana's Insurance is here to give the good people of Southern California not only its advertised "Lowest Rates", but far more come-hither billboard tableaux than any of those other, lamer corporations could ever muster up. After all, nothing says "affordable insurance premiums and quality customer service" quite like a woman in a red dress. Named Adriana!

What galls me, Adriana, (if indeed, you're even a real person!) is how fundamentally low your marketing campaign shoots. You're not even trying to appeal to the rational mind of your customer base! In no way are you attempting to draw any connection between your proffered advertising and the piece of mind quality insurance coverage can bring! No clever tree-falling-on-car scenarios, no old ladies scraping the shit out of their fenders backing out of the garage. Because really, how does a picture of one heavily made-up lady, who, let's be honest, doesn't exactly look like she has a Harvard MBA, and the enthusiastic phrase "lowest rates!" rationally draw customers? Even the stupidest person out there has to understand that these things don't go hand in hand.

But, perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps the reason that you, Adriana, run the "fastest growing insurance company in California" (according to your website) is because your campaign is working. Perhaps this simple, pared down fantasy that this woman, this "Adriana", will step off the billboard, giant hooters and all, and show up behind the desk that one must sit in front of to negotiate the inevitable premium increase after receiving a DUI is enough to get people give up their boring, asexual Mercury policy.

I'm going to go out on a live and say that all these new customers, this ever-increasing number of Souther Californians switching to you, Adriana's Insurance, are mostly men. I can only hope for their duped sakes you deliver on your promise of "full service."

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Freakishly Thin, be-Plasticked Women of Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, Etc:

One of your denizens, legion as they are, was spotted recently at a local caffeiene-erie:

Madame, you are a Gorey-esque trainwreck; a terrifying rebuke of Wallis Simpson's adage - it is in fact possible for one to be too rich or too thin. Or too magenta-haired. In an orgiastic attempt to achieve attractiveness, you have gone 'round the horn and are making your way back up the wrong coast of grotesqueness.

Just look at those biceps. Like Madonna, only older. *Shudder*

Yamahama.

Why do women think starving their bodies to this degree of emaciation and level of flab-removal makes them look good? This is not to say that men don't make stupid decisions about their appearance (indeed, generally decisions that reflect an entire lack of decision-making: "do these flip flops make me look fat? No? OK."), but, women, often the more masterfully aesthetic gender, you should know better. Having work done that is CLEARLY visible makes you look OLDER, not younger... when you see a forty-year old woman whose nose could cut glass, whose forehead is translucent and looks like it's trying to make a daring escape northward from her eyeballs... this is not, in a word, attractive.

Perhaps a step in the right direction would be to not take your dinner at Starbucks, which seemed to be what was happening at the time. Go home and have some spaghetti. No one will regret it.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

PS. Ma'am, none of this is personal - I'm sure you're a very nice woman. XO.

Dear, Well, LA:

Los Angeles, occasionally, you can surprise. Charm. Delight, even. I just can't imagine the denizens of St. Louis or Omaha or Tucson mustering up the unique blend of awe/trepidation/warm fuzzies/frustration that LA can induce on any given day. With your overwhelming geographical variegation (not to mention the large protuberance of a mountain range in your center), hugely diverse populous of Hollywood douchebags, east side Armenian drug dealers, westside Beverly Hills science projects, poseurs, queers, and Angelyne, you can certainly have your moments.

Precipitously perched on the ocean, on the brink of structure, order, decency - all easily wiped clean with one earthquake, one accident on the 405 - the individual reigns; an Ayn Rand-tastic self-interested narcissism easily triumphing over any kind of collective impetus. Never was there a city whose narrative was so singularly focused around one mass-mythic history, such uniformity of aspiration, to the point of representing an extremely universal ideal - so easily summed up by merely glancing upwards and seeing the Hollywood sign in its nestle, its siren call easily international, if not, by this point, intergalactic.

Why this rhapsodizing, you ask? Who can say. Resignation. Adaptation. Perhaps even contentment. Or possibly, quite simply, the fact that there's been nothing to crab about of late. What unexpected enlightenment.

But, I'm sure it'll just be a matter of time.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Inflammatory Billboard

Dear Billboard,

Filed under 'E' for "Ever, Gayest Thing" - this billboard in West Hollywood is hard to miss:

I have many thoughts about this, but I think I'll leave many of them alone, with the exception of this:

In a very conservative, anti-abortion, bible-thumping endroit, would this billboard in fact read "Life-ENDER" ???

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Ice Milk

Dear Ice Milk

Allow me to present another installment in the never-ending saga of my ability to be stymied by the unusual vanity plate choices of my fellow Angelenos. Spied on a Mustang by the Hollywood Bowl:

Are you the heir to a vast ice milk fortune? Is it an ironic Top Gun Val Kilmer reference? Or is it a sort of fratty nickname thing? "Hey, it's Ice Milk!" "Ice Milk IN DA HOUUUUSE!" If that's the case, what what a stupid fucking nickname. Do you really want to advertise that someone saw fit to bestow you with the sobriquet of a frozen dessert with less than 10 percent milkfat and the same sweetener content as ice cream, although priced lower and typically sold as a generic product?

Let's take a look at some vanity plates that are acceptable:

Civic pride. Can't beat it.

Vulgar, but amusing. You know those Minnesotans.

This is funny, although a strange predilection to share so openly, and presumably awkward at times. Do you drive your grandmother to dinner in that car?

Self-deprecation. I like it. This of course wins the trifecta, as this person has chosen an amusing, coherent message to display AND gone out of the way to explain it for all the stupids on the road. Plus it's a Volvo.

So, Ice Milk, as I told this person and this person, you should take the advice of a good citizen of Washington State, and do this:

Best Regards,
Dear Crabby

Dear Gay Mini

Dear Driver of Gay Mini:

I encountered you last night at the intersection of Fairfax and Sunset:



Inanimate objects, as the saying goes, do not have a sexual orientation. (At least, this is what what you're supposed to say to idiots spouting ignorant vitriol in a high school-tastic "That's GAY" situation.) But let's proceed with the assumption that in this case the license plate is a reflection of the you, the driver rather than your car's predilection to have the tow hitch of a burly Ford F-350 inserted into its tailpipe.

First off, do we, your fellow drivers, need to contemplate who you might be boinking while we're driving behind you? Is that an interruption in our collective traffic-induced reverie that you've earned the right to mandate? Part of me thinks not. And second, I have mixed feelings about this level of self-promotion, indeed, self-proclamation. For isn't that what this is? This feather boa of license plates, this last Sunday in June celebrated at intersections across the city all year long? At best, Gay Mini Driver, your license plate is a dash of whimsy that might make a few people chuckle. At worst, a wanton bellow of unsolicited in-your-face sexual hubris rearing its head.

And, Gay Mini, haven't we moved beyond this era of assertive self-expression, at least on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood? Is this still a battle for exposure and acceptance we're fighting? And if that's not your goal, why EVER get a license plate that expressly identifies your gayness?

Maybe if you were a sassy, Broadway-bound 16-year old in Dubuque, emboldened by the It Gets Better campaign, phlying your phreak phlag saddling your grandmother's inherited LeSabre with "GAYBUIK" hammered out in GSA-tastic splendor courtesy of one of Iowa's citizens doing hard time, I could understand. But, Driver of the Gay Mini, you're not that. You're a middle-aged man - evidenced by the gray in your temples I can see reflected in your rearview mirror. And presumably this isn't a holdover from a more youthful era, as they haven't made Mini Coopers for that long.

Here in Los Angeles, that hearts and minds battle for gay acceptance has been won. Indeed, won long ago. So what's left to be found in this gesture? One last gasping "hey HEY hey" of attempted relevance as you fade into leather-skinned middle age? Or merely tasteless attention-mongering?

An HRC sticker implies a civic march forward, a rainbow sticker is quaint. GAY MINI is just too much.

And besides... a Mini, when driven by a man with buzzed hair in a tank top... we pretty much already get the idea.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

PS. Happy Gay Pride month.

Dear Cal State Northridge Student

Oh, I'm sorry, where did you go to school?



Again, I'm sorry. It's just unclear to me where you went to school.



Oh. That's where you went to school.



Thanks for clearing that up.

While I appreciate your pride in having attended the 81st-best "Regional University - West" according to U.S. News & World Report (tied with the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond, OK), one rear-window decal would have sufficed.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear High-Handed License Plate Owner

Dear License Plate Owner:

You're playing a dangerous game when you get preachy:



What are your fellow drivers supposed to infer from this high-handed directive? You, as the owner of a roughly 15-year old Subaru Forester, have not settled? You're urging your fellow motorists not to settle? Or some unknown third option? Your intent is, to say the least, unclear.

It's easy, especially on the dystopic roads of Los Angeles, choked as they are with dippy, new-age Californians deeply in touch with their chakras, to serve as a sign. Indeed, we Angelenos traverse our daily lives searching for them; some staunch applicable force of portent in a sea of medical marijuana dispensaries and Carl's Jr. hamburgeries sufficiently universal and bland to apply to our own unique tsuris. Do you, High-Handed License Plate Owner, want to shoulder this fate-altering responsibility? Do you want to own your role as sayer of sooth, determiner of actions, unintentionally calling people to quit their jobs, end their relationships, buy things they can't afford? All because they saw a license plate on a car most likely driven by a heavy-set librarian from Mar Vista? (Look elsewhere for lesbians in Subarus jokes, folks... fish in a barrel.)

I caution, no! No indeed That's a burden you don't want to shoulder, as you have no idea how wide your ripple can be. Leave the advice giving to mothers and therapists, and take your $75 a year charge for a vanity plate and use it to save the whales. Let the sheep wander, let us find our signs elsewhere - and take your self-righteousness and shove it up your tailpipe. Leave the poor inmate that had to hammer that out that custom of metal alone.

Or, at least, put that license plate on a car that doesn't invalidate its potency quite so thoroughly. It really is kind of a crappy car.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Vehicle Adorners

Dear People Who Put Shit On Their Cars:

Your car says something about you, to be sure. Some, however, feel a need to convey something further to their fellow drivers; and there are of course a multitude of ways to do so. From bumper stickers to license plate brackets to those magnet-y things you can stick on the back, there are a multitude of ways to proclaim everything from your support of the troops to you affinity for non-cancer-ridden breasts.

I find acceptable, (as does, in general, The Official Preppy Handbook released in 1980) the following items with which to adorn the outside of your car:

- School Decals. You (or your parents, or dead grandparents) paid six figures for this privilege - why not flaunt it? But only if you are under 30 or if it's for a school your children attend.
- Sports team /athletic affiliation. Home team REPRESENT!
- Those white ovals with black lettering suggesting an affiliation with a specific locus (but only if you actually HAVE an affiliation with it, i.e. property or family with property or a frequency of visitation there - not just that you went there once).
- Something about breast cancer. Normally I'm against references to boobs in traffic, but how can one not rally around support of breast cancer research?!

And THAT'S IT. With the exception of the bumper sticker that says "My other car is a broomstick" - because that one just makes me laugh.

Some examples of INAPPROPRIATE vehicle adornment:

- Any national political candidates. Political discourse need not happen at traffic lights. (Local elections, however, are the exception as they usually smack of a gentler, Lesley Knope-esque quality.)

- Rainbows. Come on, what are you trying to prove? Why don't you just put a sticker on your car that says "I suck dick".

- Supporting of the troops. We all support the troops. Nobody DOESN'T support the troops. They're just doing their thing. Even the people against the war support the troops. End of story.

And this one pisses me off. "I'm going to be tolerant because a Dodge Grand Caravan's dented ASS told me to be:


Some non-traditional examples of adornment no-no's:

Disgusting:


Trashy / Don't get it:


Kitschy / Ridiculous / Driver most likely has a stalk of straw between what few teeth he has:


And The Official Preppy Handbook LA and I agree, you should never hang anything from your rearview mirror, ever. You never want to have anything to do with anyone who hangs something from their rearview mirrors.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with your mama.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Puke Green Ottoman

Dear Puke Green Ottoman,

You appeared, biblically, on my front lawn last week; a latter-day Moses-esque relic from the 70s drifting down the Nile of rainwater in the gullies of my street. I don't know if you accidentally fell off a truck bound for the Salvation Army store, or were maliciously cast-off, abandoned and scorned, by a neighbor of mine who no longer required your foot-resting services. I contemplated a course of action. While as a child we opened our home to an adorable kitten who'd had this same fate befall her, somehow I didn't feel that you, Puke Green Ottoman were going to seamlessly blend into the household to the same extent that the cat did, happily dozing and shedding on the guest room bed for the next ten years.



You were pretty generic, puke green ottoman - ripped and stained, the black, scratchy fabric ubiquitously underneath all pieces of furniture torn to shreds. At first I hoped you might just go back from wherever you came, your owner having experienced a change of heart; and in hopes of this, I left you untouched for a couple days, but sadly, you were not reclaimed. Trash day rolled around, and I thought perhaps the benevolent operators of the seemingly five trash trucks rumbling past our house at 6:45am might have disposed of you, perched so expectantly as you were on the curb, so clearly out of place on a front lawn. No luck there either.

Days passed, and you grew increasingly waterlogged, not only from the several hours of pelting rain we experienced on Sunday, but also from the daily drenching you received by our sprinkler system, one of the heads of which I'm pretty sure you were perched immediately on top of. As it purified your nether regions like some sort of some furniture-based douche, I was beside myself, Puke Green Ottoman, concerned that you would soon become a toadstool colony and attract klatches of roving lawn gnomes to dwell in your shadow.

I weighed the options. I thought of donating you to the local homeless hoarder who lives in the bus stop at the foot of the street, but given that he so frequently patrols the neighborhood with his overflowing shopping cart, I assumed he must have already decided against claiming you for his own needs. This to me was foolish on his part, as even as mildewed as you were, he could've at least used you to put his feet up in front of the bus bench. But when even the addled homeless person who occasionally walks around with his butt crack exposed doesn't want it, you know it's no good.

Dedicated followers of this blog will already be familiar with my across-the-street neighbors, the dumpy Orthodox Jews, many generations of which reside in the same 1313 Mockingbird Lane-esque dwelling, in addition to their giant van / rolling storage unit which resides in the street and is moved only once a week on street-sweeping day. After a weekend of listening to their screaming children and Yiddish hollered on the sidewalk in front of their house, not to mention an ever-growing number of close calls when backing out of the driveway (our reversing cars hidden to by their giant van parked at the curb), my patience with them has grown thin.

Monday night I was in a terrible mood. And as I drove up and spied you once more, Puke Green Ottoman, my frustration with you somehow aligned in my head with my frustration at my aggressively shabby neighbors. Somehow you were THEIR fault - I was sure of it. So I picked you up, walked you across the street, in all your waterlogged splendor, and dropped you on the Jews' front lawn, their giant van now conveniently shielding you from view.

While this thumb in the eye of my neighbors was obviously as Quixotic as it was terrible, I chose to look beyond that. As I also was able to justify it as a request for their assistance, indeed, a cry for help. "Please, help me dispose of this unwanted piece of furniture, kind neighbors!" As people who seem to have no other occupation other than actively trading in junk and crap, they seemed somehow better equipped than yours truly to deal with an errant stool... either the location of a local dumpster, the proper number to call to have it hauled away, or perhaps some extra space in the back of their van full of shit in which to place it. Or, I even thought, perhaps some pathological hoarding impetus might kick in with them and they'd take it to some great, holy Hebrew hassock mikvah and rehabilitate it to is once great splendor, giving it a place of honor in their living room right under the menorah so all the young Moishes and Shoshanahs could play on it. Inside. Quietly. And if not, at the very least, it was off my fucking lawn. For the time being.

"I've dealt with the ottoman situation," I told my roommate when I walked inside.

"What'd you do with it?" He asked.

"The less you know, the better."

Imagine my frustration the next night when I returned home, and, the ottoman was in fact back EXACTLY where it had been! Clearly the Jews had not seen my gesture as the polite request for assistance that I had intended it to be, but more as the slightly drunken, rage-fueled act that it had in actuality been.

"How the FUCK is the ottoman back?" My roommate asked when he got home.

"I'm dealing with it!" I shouted.

"I don't understand how this happened," he very legitimately said.

"It was the damn Jews," I responded through gritted teeth.

"Right. The Jews." He shook his head and walked away.

I'll deal with you later, Orthodox Jews... I'll figure out how to bust you and your giant van full of shit yet. Meanwhile, Puke Green Ottoman, our date with destiny continues to elude us.

I ruminated on my options. I though of just putting the ottoman into the middle of the street, rendering it the city of Los Angeles's problem. Or better yet, dousing it in lighter fluid, setting it on fire, then putting it in the middle of the street, and making an anonymous phone call to the police. "There's a flaming ottoman in the street, and the people who put it there had peyas!"

Another trash day rolled around, and I tried actually placing you, Puke Green Ottoman, on TOP of the trash barrels the night before, rendering you unmissable by the waste professionals. But when I walked into the living room this morning, there you were, still on the lawn, they had just knocked you off the top and left you on your side, a clear referendum that this Rasputin of a footrest wasn't trash, but was indeed, something more: it was my own, personal Golem - fiendish, otherworldly, doomed to haunt both me and my lawn forever more.



So I did what I had been avoiding doing, but what I should have done when you first appeared. I put on some rubber gloves, put you in the car, drove you to the closest dumpster I could find, and PITCHED you the FUCK in. I'm sure I violated all sorts of private property dumpster-dumping laws by doing this, however this particular dumpster happened to be behind a local American Apparel, so I wouldn't be surprised if some enterprising, be-headbanded 87 lb. hipster employee stumbles on it and decides to haul it inside and use it to display their spring Casio watch collection, or a series of coffee table books about mullets. Ironically. Regardless, I hope that if they do have security cameras out back that captured footage of me ditching the ottoman, both my face and license plate number highly visible, the very apathy they feign when you ask them a question while shopping in their store will prevent them from making the effort to take any legal action.



It's been a wild ride, Puke Green Ottoman. We have traveled an epic, indeed, biblical, path together - but now I can only hope our journey has drawn to a close. I hope to never meet the chair or any part of the living room set from which you sprung. I won't be held responsible for my actions if I do.

Best Regards,
Dear Crabby

Dear ABC Network

Dear ABC Network:

Los Angeles's vast network of bus stops (primarily used as low, nay, lowest income housing - or at least the one at the bottom of my street is), and the busses themselves are screaming advertisements for your newest show, GCB. Krtstin Chenoweth and her leering visage lord over the city; her shapely legs stretched out of her skimpy, be-crucifixed choir robe. Many a morning I've almost had an accident caused by the sun reflecting off the sparkly logo of the rooftop billboard at the corner of Fountain and LaBrea, nearly blinding drivers and causing them to run off the road and crash into a bus stop, ironically, with another ad for GCB in it - quite literally adding insult to injury.



ABC, I'm here to tell you that, unless steeped in the entertainment industry, next to NOBODY knows what your new show is, or what its title refers to. One needs to have followed the progression of the title of the script from the original GOOD CHRISTIAN BITCHES to the watered-down GOOD CHRISTIAN BELLES to the opaque and essentially meaningless GCB, its logo complete with drooping crucifix, to understand its eventual title. Is the strategy of the good people of the ABC marketing department to merely lure viewers to the show so they can find out what its title actually refers to, driving them bonkers with confusion in the meantime? Or does the ambiguous title and (admittedly slutty) Christianity displayed aspire to snag some wholesome red-staters? And frankly, unless you clearly spy the alphabet logo at the bottom right of the billboard, you might not essentially infer that the picture of the leggy woman in the come-hither pose with the phrase "love thy neighbor" over it even necessarily refers to a television show! This has undoubtedly caused some horny, commuting men across America to frantically Google the new strip club in town and find out what road out by the airport it's located on.

Clearly, ABC, between GCB and DON'T TRUST THE B- IN APARTMENT 23 (also premiering soon), you're flirting with disaster. Having a mid-season programming slate where multiple shows have an obfuscated version of the word 'bitch' in the title is a dangerous game. (And yet, conversely, what an age we live in that this is the case... No doubt Norman Lear is turning over in his grave.) (Correction: upon further investigation, Norman Lear, in fact, not dead.) But between those two titles, you're dangerously close to having yourselves dragged through the muck as "bitch network." Regardless, good luck entrapping the unsuspecting with your covert "ambiguous name" scheme, ABC... between that and the crucfix, you just might snag some Good Christian Viewership.



Poor name aside, for any show written by Robert Harling, the screenwriter of Steel Magnolias, Soapdish and The First Wives Club, I may just have to tune in. In the meantime, I'll spread the gospel of what the show's title actually means... that is if I'm not blinded by a billboard for it.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Hollywood Tourists

Dear Tourists in Hollywood:

I see you, some weekday mornings, making your way down Highland Avenue from the Renaissance, or, more often the Holiday Inn, excited for your day on the town; Hollywood, USA! "HOOray for HOLLywood..." (as my late grandfather used to greet me after my Angeleno relocation).

Hollywood isn't the shithole that it used to be, but it's not exactly the newly PG, Giuliani-ized Times Square either. I always feel bad for the tourists who don't understand this, don't know what they're getting into - the good folks who have come from somewhere in the Republican Party's "real" America - Missouri or Oklahoma, bringing their high-waisted, light blue denim and oversized t-shirts with them, expecting glitz, magic, sparkle - or at least NOT a recently shuttered Borders and the BCBG at the Hollywood and Highland mall as its flagship attractions. What they encounter, sadly, is dinge. Dinge and smut - not necessarily of the pornographic kind, but of the cheap, touristy kind - capitalizing on an image that is as stale as the bread at the still-chugging Musso and Frank's.



What must you think of us, Real Americans? As you troll the boulevard, yearning for your Shape Ups to tone your sizable behinds? You probably have some conception that celebrities aren't going to just be out walking on the street, but what you don't know is that no celebrities will ever actually BE in Hollywood proper - other than for the Oscars - as it is essentially one of the dingiest, non-ghetto neighborhoods in the city. They are squirreled away in Brentwood or Santa Monica or Ojai - not out for a quick trip to the Chick-Fli-A at Sunset and La Brea.

What you just might be able to tap into in Hollywood is the energy. In a city where so many want so much and so few will attain it, the yearning and the posturing is as potent today as it was in the days of the Locust - and although Hollywood might not be the nexus of showbiz anymore, it will forever be an emblem of it. The truth is, Hollywood is a state of mind; a moveable feast - But a difficult one to access while wearing Skechers.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby

Dear Shoeless Man At The Movies

Dear Shoeless Man,

It's Saturday night! Meryl Streep has her teeth askew and her hair in a huge bouffant! I don't know about you, but this calls for a trip to the cinema for a good old-fashioned moving picture.

The Landmark Theater feels that is the pinnacle of the civilized movie-going experience, which must be why they have an employee "introduce" the movie. Does anybody else HATE that they do this? "If you have any questions or concerns during the movie, please find one of us in the burgundy shirts." My CONCERN is that you won't shut the hell up! People have been going to the movies chaperone-free for a century, no help is requrired from the living embodiment of the warbling, be-pimpled retail clerk from The Simpsons. The worst part is the few abject morons in the audience who always applaud when they're done with their announcement. "Now sit back, and enjoy "The Iron Lady." What are we applauding this pinhead for? He didn't do anything other than get a job at a movie theater and point to the exit signs as his paunchy gut strains the buttons on his burgundy shirt.

Although frankly, I would have taken the Landmark employees actually sitting down in the audience next to us in lieu of the two dunderheads who sat there instead. This middle-aged man and his wife had, in addition to stopping at the concessions stand AND a Coffee Bean, brought the majority of their pantry with them, and proceeded to chomp on popcorn, candy bars, and trail mix.

"That jacket makes you look like a Nazi," the wife said. "Everyone says that to me," the husband responds. "That's always the first thing people say to me when they see this jacket." I don't see you with the jacket on, so I'm not sure exactly what they mean, these "everyone".

"Where'd you get it?" the wife asks? "Century City," he says. "Ko-Han? Kohan? I don't remember the name of the store. Ironic though, right?"

The wife looks at the label. "Cole HAAN," she says. "Oh, yeah, that's it," he says back. This conversation could NOT have been made up.

Then, this happens:


I mean, Wow. This is pretty unabashed. The temptation to lean over and just say "I'm so sorry, can you help me? I think I'm lost. I've suddenly wound up in your living room" tugs mightily at my vocal chords.

The man then proceeds to snuffle and snort and clear his throat and readjust his position every thrity-seven goddamned seconds for the next two hours, interrupting his routine occasionally to shush his wife when she asks, as she did multiple times, a question about the movie at full volume. I shoot them death glares so virulent I think Meryl Streep might interrupt her drag queen-esque performance of Margaret Thatcher and give a diplomatic address on this husband and wife - as the movie continues I begin to contemplate planting a bomb in their car and blaming it on the IRA.

Shoeless man, have you no decency?! Never mind the fact that I purchased senior tickets for the $3 discount, and never mind that I will also occasionally take my shoes off in a movie theater, but not in the front row! And certainly not while the lights are on! We are living in a society, people! Keep your shoes on accordingly. And if you don't, I hope the same thing happens to you as it did to Margaret Thatcher's fleet in the Falkland Islands. Meanwhile, I have some socks to darn - I'm going to the movies later and sitting in the back.

Sincerely,
Dear Crabby