Dead Man's Honda

• Not very many people have ever washed a seatbelt—the research literature is very slim.
• I guess that’s because not many people have gotten gasoline all over their seatbelt and clothes. I'm not even sure how I did it.
• Smell the armpits of shirts before you buy them. Otherwise, you might unwittingly wind up wearing someone else’s B.O.
• The above sentence is one of the most disgusting experiences known to humankind.
• Apparently voice impersonators and comedians have a market for funerals. I know this because a guy at work advertises such services for funerals on the back of his car.
• Throwing your cell phone in the trash is a bad idea. Especially if done at night.
• Having a toilet rupture all over you can make other people's day even if it causes you some nausea.
• Kosovo is still in jeopardy and ruins.

• Our cat has thoroughly earned the first name “damn”.
• Using paper towel as a match can result in far more flame than needed.
• Friends and friendly security guards make all the difference.
• Having eight beverage containers at your work desk is considered strange.
• Some people decorate graves with enormous balls of tinsel.
• Contrary to what the guys at my work thought, Amanda Peet DOES drive a Toyota.
• People can protest torture at Guantanamo, but make no noise about torture occurring elsewhere.
• Ending “I love” with “ya” totally ruins it.
• People changing drastically to being unrecognizable, is,(in its own awful way), a death.
• Laundry, Christmas gifts, and other items do not put themselves away.

Anyone who says Yoga is relaxing, is either lying or in complete denial. Or they’re inbred or they’ve been given rubber bands for muscles.

But apparently you don’t always need muscles for Yoga. Sometimes you simply need your skeleton.

“Now just let your muscles collapse and hold yourself up using ONLY your skeleton. Don’t use your muscles,” said tonight’s Yoga teacher (I named her Matilda) as she hissed into her headset.

Is that even possible, I wonder? How does one stop using ones muscles to remain upright?

Ten seconds into the class I realized a short-shorted, hairy-legged man’s butt was incredibly close to my face. I tried not to inhale at that proximity but Matilda had moved on to the cobra which requires some level of oxygen inhalation. The next thing I knew I was nose-to-heel with the guy’s foot and nearly gagged. Ok, Leis, just move back and relax…this is Yoga, remember? I coached myself as I scooted back on my mat.

Just as I was beginning to feel relaxed Matilda had us jump to our feet and stick our foot into our inner thigh while we stood with our arms above our heads. No problem, I thought, Ballet for twenty one years, taught Pilates for five, this should be a cinch.

But I couldn’t stand there and concentrate on the pose because: I spotted a humorous character at the front of the class, snorted a laugh and fell over.

The man I spotted looked somewhat like a bowling ball and a steroid had mated with a ballerina. What I mean by that is he was short with large, bulging arm muscles, a protruding beer gut, and an effeminacy that would make my eight-year-old, pink-wearing neighbor, Desiray, look like a man. Instead of tucking his foot into his inner thigh he dangled it near his ankle while he stuck his hip out like a cheerleader pouting. Then he tried to get those large arms over his head for the pose but only succeeded in squishing the sides of his face between his biceps. Best of all, his tank top stretched up above his stomach making it look like he was wearing a sports bra and suffocating himself with his own arms.

I tried to keep myself focused after that—ignoring the Hairy Man and Twinkle Toes and instead trying my darndest to get relaxed and stay balanced in my poses.

I couldn’t enjoy this for long because Matilda began growling into her microphone about getting back into Chataranga pose. Before I could get into Chataranga she yelled “plank” as I hit plank she yelled “Chataranga” just as my back was arched in Chataranga she yelled again “plank!”

Good god woman, pick a pose!

As we were forced into the downward facing dog Matilda started talking out of her butt. Ok, she didn’t literally—but what she said made absolutely no sense:

“Now this is the part where our blood decides to re-organize itself….” She cooed.

Re-organize itself? Do our blood cells collect at the knees, hold a meeting, yell “break” and then disperse to newer locations than those they previously held?

Meanwhile my brain began to lose all of its brain cells from the pose—I started to see spots just as she instructed us to get to a new pose on the floor. This was a great idea because I would have hit the floor anyway. Her non-sensical discussion continued:

“Now here we want to take our kidneys, which are located in the lower back, and force them forward toward our thighs…” Our legs were up and our lower backs straight—but no WAY my kidneys were doing any of this.

“Now just focus on moving those kidneys forward.”

Did she have kidney stones? Why did she pick THAT organ as an analogy to get us to push our lower backs in the direction of our thighs?

She didn’t stop talking about the kidneys until we were on our backs for the (finally!) relaxation time.

As we lay there Matilda babbled about sending our breath to various locations our bodies…

Ok toes…watch out…here comes a big gust of air!

And then she said it—the most bizarre sentence I have ever heard:

“Now make your brain go back into your body.”

No prob., Matilda, no prob.

Considering it's already in there.

This picture was captured by my friend Josh's cell phone as the flames came treacherously close to my former and his current school. Too bad I didn't get to see THAT up close.

Our screams echoed briefly off of the walls before we stared at each other in stunned silence—mouths open. Did that honestly just happen?

After our Sunday ritual of having brunch at the Farmer’s Market (crepes, coffee and weirdos—oh my!) Lindsey and I rushed into the Starbucks (yes the buggers popped up there too) to use the bathroom. They had the typical large one-person bathroom, but since we were in a rush we did our usual go-in-there-together thing. It’s faster and you can keep talking without missing a beat.

I shut the door and locked it only to discover the entire interior of the bathroom was soaking wet. The floors were damp, which is not unusual but so were the walls, the toilet paper was wrinkled with spots of water….everything.

“Could someone honestly pee all over a bathroom like this?” I asked Lindsey. We had to go so badly though, we didn’t care. “This is disgusting, if so.” I said.

“I don’t think someone could pee all over the place like this,” she said. But what else could have happened? Someone apparently had a big, big, problem.

When we finished and had washed our hands I used my foot to push down the lever.

What happened next is the stuff of movies, not real life.

The toilet exploded.

And I don’t mean it overflowed, leaked, sprouted a fountain or grumbled.

I mean, the thing exploded.

It literally lifted up off of the ground Gooney-style, spraying water and who-knows-what from every nook and cranny of its structure while screaming with a sound only an exploding toilet or a small grenade could make.

“HOLY SHIT!” I screamed out loud, and immediately felt guilty for yelling an expletive. For a moment the room was FILLED with water. I looked at Lindsey who had finished her scream (with no expletives) and now stood—soaked—with her mouth dropped open in horror and shock. I was damp from the left shoulder down. Lindsey was not so lucky.

She was sopping wet from head to toe—with drops of water glinting off of her chest, her hair, her….ew…mouth.

How we didn’t end up vomiting all over ourselves right after that, I don’t know. Perhaps we were too distracted with someone trying to get into the bathroom by rattling the handle and banging on the door. Who the hell would want to get in here?

Turned out it was the staff trying to “rescue” us.

What I really wanted was not to be rescued, but to be given a horse-pill-sized Xanax and to be put through a car-wash spraying only biological weapon-grade, anti-bacterial, nothing-could possibly- live-once-it has- been-hit-with-this-stuff-Lysol.

But all we could really do is laugh. It’s not every day you flush a toilet and it turns into a micro-natural disaster. If we die in our sleep tonight from some horrible disease--you'll know why.

Glaring lights poured through the back window as I pinched my cell phone against my ear with my shoulder.

“Oh Josh, thanks for the directions…but uh… I gotta go—I’m getting pulled over.” I said as I coasted my car the curb with slight panic sticking to the back of my throat. Lindsey and I were on our way to a going away party for my dear friend Brittany when I suddenly saw the awful lights of a police car in my rear view mirror.

What could be wrong? I thought for a second. I wasn’t speeding. I stopped at the light. I hadn’t changed lanes without a signal…..Then I remembered—my tags were five days overdue. Five days. What happened to a grace period?

I rolled down my window as the cop walked up and shined his flashlight in my eyes. Squinting into the beam I asked him (after he asked for my license and registration) “Uh, what’s the problem?”

“Your registration has expired and your right rear brake light is out,” he answered dismissively while flashing the light into the back seat and trunk several times.

“What brings you to Thousand Oaks tonight?” He then asked as I looked for my license and registration.

Wait a minute, I thought. What does that have to do with anything? How does he know I don’t live here? I didn’t ask that, but told him what we were doing as I handed him my information.

He took my license and registration and examined them under the light.

“So you live in Pasadena now?” he asked. My license says my residence is in Bakersfield.

“Yes,” I answered, becoming irritated at this point. If you want to give me a fix-it ticket, do it already, I thought.

“Have you ever committed a crime?” he asked seriously.

Oh my freaking gosh—do I LOOK like I’ve committed a crime? I’m actually dressed up tonight! Maybe when I’m grubby, yeah, I could pass for having spent time in juvenile hall, but not tonight! You’ve got to be kidding me—is this a joke?

I genuinely wondered if he was kidding, but his face belied no sense of humor whatsoever. He kept flashing the light into the back seat and asking a battery of questions:

“Is your license expired?”

“Have you ever been arrested?”

“Have you ever gone to jail?”

Uh….no, no, and no, a-hole...I mean, officer, I thought. And so what if I had? Would that make him more likely to give me a fix-it ticket? Would he arrest me based simply on precedent?

As he walked back to his car I looked at Lindsey with an expression of severe agitation.

“He pulled me over because I’m driving a crappy car in one of the ritziest areas of L.A., didn’t he?” I asked. Lindsey nodded. There could be no other reason for his interest in my (non existent) criminal record other than an assumption that someone driving my kind of car could only be in Thousand Oaks/Westlake to engage in some sort of mayhem.

Oh, you caught me officer. I’m here in Thousand Oaks to rob a couple wealthy families and stash the body we got in Westlake trying to rob an Origins boutique.

I was incensed. I was livid. Do they honestly regulate who can come in and out of this type of neighborhood based on the appearance of economic status?

I am not denying that the officer had reason to pull me over—certainly my registration was expired. But he had no other reason to ask me those questions than to discover whether or not I was the type of person who belonged in that neighborhood.

Just like the last time I was pulled over, the officer’s face showed a glimmer of surprise when I rolled down my window. I don’t seem, from the way I dress, speak, act and perhaps because I am Caucasian, like I should be the driver of a car like mine.

My car fits in my neighborhood where the police are preoccupied with the multiple drug lords supplying countless people with illicit narcotics, gang activities and regular shootings that occur on our street. I know this because, despite the expired tags and broken brake light—I had three police cars drive directly behind me in my neighborhood over the last day and a half---and I wasn’t pulled over.

Anecdotal evidence? Sure. Could I be reading into it too much? Yeah, maybe. But when I arrived at the party and told my friend’s dad what had happened he laughed and said:

“I’ve been riding around here with a broken tail light for forever and haven’t been pulled over.” My face fell.

Because the saddest thing that came to my mind as I drove back across the imaginary “tracks” to where I live—is that had I not looked, acted and spoken like someone who really did have a friend in that neighborhood—would the cop have finished the incident the way he did?

As I braced myself for a fat ticket the cop walked up to my window, handed my information back to me with a “here you go,” and walked away with only a “have a good night.”

I have a disgusting feeling that the answer to the above the question is no—he wouldn’t have. There is more than just racial profiling. There's economic profiling too.