Le maudit Mo D.

maudit california follow-up

A few things I wrote about months ago:

PINKBERRY. I read that article in the NYTimes about Asianish biflavored yogurt w/fruit operation Pinkberry last February and swore to my ancestors that the next time I passed through LaLaLand, I would pay an exorbitant amount of money to park the car so I could sample "the flavor that generated a thousand parking tickets." On the way to the chop-socky pre-op at Screamers-Sinai, my mom and I stopped in Westwood Village and found the place. The line was only moderately long. I had a brief altercation with the UCLA undergrad manning the cash register. I only wanted two fruits (blackberry, mango) on my yogurt. "Usually we put three," she said, her fingers resisting the input of my order. "But I only want two fruits (blackberry, mango)." She sighed. Clearly, its in the Pinkberry employee handbook, "if they want less than three fruits, CUT THE CUSTOMER DOWN. Make them feel dumb and then force fruit on them they don't want. It's good for them!" I told her that my three fruits then would be blackberry, mango, and more mango, and that she could live with. Mom wanted green tea yogurt devoid of fruit and that was clearly lame-as-fuck but they gave it to her anyway.

Honestly, I wasn't all that impressed. I was expected a more dairy-rich yogurt experience and the consistency of the yogurt was more ice-milky/icy/watery. Very little cow went into its production, probably to better serve the self-starvation community of Greater Los Angeles. Lest a fat gram find its way into the yogurt, those Ugg boot wearing hos would start to cry and ruin their makeup and holy shit if a casting agent happened to walk by...

In sum, the Pinkberry experience was just another reason for me to hate L.A.: a lot of hype over something disappointing and artificial.

FORMER DRAMA TEACHER. Apparently, FDT cornered my little bro and asked him point blank what I've said about him. "Did she tell you I was the worst drama teacher ever?" he said to my brother, perhaps in jest, perhaps in truth. I don't care. My mom also reported that FDT managed to name drop one of the good-looking male classmates of mine that he behaved skeevily towards BITD during a conversation that was supposed to be about Little Bro's progress in his class. He made it sound like the two are still in constant contact. "And he has a girlfriend," FDT managed to work into the conversation.

First of all, as I will tell anyone who will listen to me, all of my other C-Juana H.S. teachers have been eclipsed, memorywise, by O Captain My Captain Neil, who I will continue to romanticize until I die. I realize that's unfair to the good number of hardworking educators who lacked his charisma and brazen videotaping of Tecate drinking, but that's just the way the mop flops. Second, whether or not FDT was a good teacher is so not the point of anything. I can't remember or assess his pedagogy fairly because he was such an inappropriate blabbermouth with no boundaries and no shame that whether or not he was behind my inspired portrayal of General Matilda in Guys and Dolls just doesn't matter. However, the fact that little, if anything, has changed about him in fifteen years should give me cause to be charitable towards the guy. That, and I saw his picture in the yearbook and the ravages of time have been cruel.

Posted by Zerd at June 12, 2007 12:27 AM