More Spidermobile

So where did we leave off? Ah yes, the spider in the purse. A few days passed, and the spider was forgotten. I don't know what ended up happening to the purse. I drove back to Chicago thinking there was just three of us in the car. It wasn't until a week later when I was driving somewhere - the trauma of the experience has erased my destination from my mind - that it revealed itself. Hanging onto the ceiling by the shotgun oh shit handle. Jackass. And of course, once I noticed it I was totally able to focus completely on driving and not watching that little asshole to make sure it wasn't going to launch an attack on my face. It could happen.

Everything was fine until it started crawling along sunroof towards the backseat. "Oh, hell no." I thought and grabbed the only smoosh weapon I had on hand: a granola bar wrapper. I went to smoosh and missed. On my second attempt, the little bastard fell between the seats. Great. Now I knew there was a spider in the car but couldn't see it, and it was most likely angry since I had tried to smoosh him with a granola bar wrapper. Fantastic. Abandoning my car on the side of the road seemed a very real and appealing option at this point.

Spider has made one more appearance since, in the dark on Halloween night. Fell on a friend, which is appropriate for the holiday I guess but still awful. He may be dead now, but I have no proof. I won't feel safe in there again until I see his crispy, dead body. Until then, have you any idea how many spider-sized holes and crevices are in your average Corolla? A LOT. I know this because I now notice them all. Small holes in the console, seams in the light above my head, the entire damn lining of the sunroof... the little bastard has so many options he could live in a new home every day.

My plan now is to carry a dustbuster to the car each time I use it, only entering after I ensure that the ceiling doesn't harbor any hitchhikers. Ugh, this whole post is just making me paranoid about spiders - I just thought I saw one on the wall behind my screen. Otherwise I guess it will starve to death eventually but I don't know exactly how long that will take. Anyone have any data on spider starvation? I removed the granola bar wrapper and all its invisible spider-sized nutrients if that helps your calculations. The only other food in there is another granola bar that expired in 2007. Good friggin' luck, Spider. Your days are numbered.

Birth of Spidermobile

There is a spider loose in my car. I know this, because when I was driving with one of my sisters, she suddenly spazzed out and screeched "SPIDER!!!!" while flapping her arms and slapping at herself. You're an elegant lady, Jenna. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Anyway, I managed to keep the car on the road as she threw her purse to the floor. "It's in my purse. No, no. It's in there. It was on my neck and now it's in my purse." I saw this as moderate containment of the spider situation; she saw it as the complete and utter ruin of her purse and all the items it contained. Potato, potatoh.

"Well how big was it?" I asked. I have a very specific formula I use to calculate how much I hate/respect/fear spiders. Size factors very heavily into this formula as do hairiness, leg thickness, color and whether or not I have just walked into its web. Ugh. It's a pretty simple formula to use, as no matter what you input the answer is always 100% of possible spider hatred. Still, it's good to know one's enemy.

"I don't know."
"Well, it was on your neck, you have to have some idea. Dime? Fingernail? Quarter? WAS IT QUARTER SIZED?!?"
"I don't know! It was smaller than a tarantula."
"Okay, well thank you for narrowing it down."

Jenna spent the rest of the drive staring fearfully at her purse while I spent the rest of the drive looking for skittery movement out of my peripheral vision. Once we hit the driveway, she leapt from the car holding her purse at arm's length. She then found a clear spot and then dumped out the bag and began kicking through her belongings. When an item was found to be spider-free, it was transferred to her jacket pocket. My job was to hold the purse upside down, its lining all barfed out, while watching Jenna kick epipens and tampons around the front yard. Pretty effective strategy, really. I kept an eye on the purse I was holding in case the crafty spider was hanging in it. It was at this point that I noticed that the lining was torn in several places.

"You know, Jenn- there's holes in this lining. He could have crawled in there and be setting up shop right now. He could live happily for quite some time in your purse and you'd never even know it."

"No!" she wailed. "I love that purse!"

I forget what happened next because I got bored holding the purse and went inside. The next time I saw the purse it was on the kitchen table, which in my opinion is a crappy place for a potential spider house. Jenna was planning on making my mom sew up the lining of the purse, sealing the spider within a satiny, faux-leather grave like some kind of tiny, postmodern twist on The Cask of Amontillado or however you spell it. We both assumed that the spider was in the purse.

But you know what they say happens when you assume. You end up with a damn rogue spider in your car, and do you even KNOW how many hiding places for a spider there are in your average car? Way more than in a stupid purse, that's for sure. Ugh. We'll have to get into that tomorrow.

More Tales from Hollywood

On the sidewalk in front of the Chinese Theater, a shifting cast of wannabe actors mill around dressed as movie characters. Passersby can have their pictures taken with the character of their choice, most likely for a small fee. A trick I will not be falling for again, after some stupid FAKE gladiators outside the Colosseum in Rome got me to take a picture with them and then bilked me out of whatever the lira-equivalent of five dollars is, which, yeah, five dollars but it was one picture with costumed idiots and I can’t even look at it and enjoy the memory without getting pissed and wishing I had castrated that idiot with his stupid plastic sword for tricking me. So I scoffed at the tourists partaking in these photo sessions. One woman we saw, though, took it to a whole new level.

As we were walking around, we kept seeing a reasonable facsimile of Captain Jack Sparrow foppishly running to and fro in front of the theater. With a woman following him with a camcorder. All while shouting at him to keep running. Um, what? On and on they ran, weaving through the crowds, and were quickly out of sight. An hour later, this craziness mostly forgotten, we were confronted with it again, head-on. While walking down the sidewalk, we heard the voice of the amateur director behind us.

Sparrow, in front of blue polo shirt guy; Camerawoman in red hat; Zorro, obvious.

“Keep running! Run through those girls! Run through the middle of them!” Oh, hell no. I was not going to be a part of this foolishness. I stepped to the side and glared as Captain Sparrow flounced by, carefully followed by the camerawoman. And let me tell you, a half hour of running around Los Angeles mid-day did not do anything for their aromas. Phew. Also, there had been some casting additions since the portion of the storyline we had seen earlier.

The story now also involved Zorro sauntering behind Sparrow, absently hitting on people he passed. Now, I was only seeing some chase scene segment of the movie, but I am really getting the sense that this is a movie I would not like to be forced to watch. Because you know she’s going home to splice her hours of footage together on her iMac with her collection of instrumental soundtrack MP3s, burn off some DVDs and then lure her unsuspecting friends over to force them to watch her cinematic catastrophe. Those poor fools.

Someone please tell Zorro that he has to be IN FRONT of the camera to be in the movie?

I never did find out what Sparrow was running from or how Zorro factored in. Maybe she was reshooting the end of Pirates of the Caribbean: People Are Still Paying to See This Nonsense So Let’s Make a Third Movie, because that was one suck-tastically terrible ending. Seven years of single motherhood punctuated with one day of barnacle encrusted visitation rights? Bullshit. I agree: let the Z-man pick up some of the slack. Sure, he may step out on Keira Knightley’s anorexic ass for Catherine Zeta Jones every once in a while, but at least he’s bringing in some income by slashing Zs into stuff. My knowledge of Zorro comes pretty much exclusively from a trailer I saw ten years ago, but I think that’s a pretty accurate assessment of his persona. But for serious, the end of that Pirates movie sucked hard. They should have had the whole trilogy end and then cut away to Robin and Spongebob discussing the ethics of piracy. That would have been more satisfying ending. Or, I just had this picture I wanted to use again because it cracks me up.

Robin and Spongebob offer unique perspectives on piracy. Unfortunately, no one listens.

To whom it may concern: If you are secretly in love with Jack Sparrow, Zorro, Keira Knightley, Catherine Zeta Jones, gladiators, barnacles, Robin or Spongebob and feel that I have slighted them, been flippant with their good names or offended you, please know that I don’t care. Please also know that these people are fictional, not people at all and/or not interested in you. K thanks bye.

Mysteries from the Past

At one point, I knew what everything on this list meant. I wrote down each word for a reason and then carefully tucked it away in a hidden pocket of an old wallet, where I found it this past weekend.

Alcohol transform slutty… rapping. It’s just cryptic enough to sound vaguely profound. Like something that would be needle pointed on a pillow in the sitting room of a drug-addled poet to curb his homicidal tendencies. Or encourage them. I’m not sure.

And then there’s the question of the Target shopping list. C sub 1 W sub 1? I’ve been thinking about this since I found the note, and… apparently I needed to purchase a Star Wars robot. I don’t have any robots, so I must never have made it to Target.

PS - YOU'RE WELCOME for the free advertising, Bonar Group.