Call Me Fed Up

In the classic Buffalo Springfield song, “For What It’s Worth” the band sang, “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Now, I don’t know if whatever’s happening is only happening at my house or throughout the entire Crescenta Valley. It could be happening all across L.A. County and even Southern California, for all I know. But what’s exactly clear is, I’ve had enough.

For the past couple of months, we’ve been deluged with unsolicited, unwanted and unwelcome sales calls to our unlisted home phone number. Unbelievable. We’re getting at least one, if not two or three of these calls every day and they’re all very similar in nature. Why, it’s almost as if the callers are reading from the same script. Nah, ya think?

Although there are two basic versions of the calls, each one begins identically. My phone rings, I pick it up and say hello. There’s a silent pause with some static. After I say hello one or two times more and am just about to hang up, I hear background babble of other voices making outbound calls from what I assume are countless cubicles filled with soulless headset-wearing telephone marketers. Within seconds, the soulless headset-wearing telephone marketer assigned to my number wakes up, and in a fake-friendly voice says, “James?”

Okay, there are only two people in my life who have ever called me James. One was my dear departed Father, who often preceded my given name with a choice expletive or two, followed by a detailed description of how I’d screwed something up beyond all repair or redemption. The other person is a great friend who calls every so often just to catch up. Ray called me this morning as I was writing this, in fact. When I hear his voice say “Well, James …” I know I’m in for a wonderful time of fellowship and reconnection. When I hear anyone else use my proper name, however, I know a sales pitch is coming.

In pitch version number one, the caller is someone who supposedly talked to me “back in January” about possible remodeling or roofing or painting or plumbing or landscaping, or ... well, I didn’t have any work for them at the time, but I supposedly asked them to call me back at the end of summer. Right. Sure I did.

In the second version, the caller excitedly explains that their company is finishing up working on one of my neighbors’ homes and only going to be in the neighborhood another couple of days, but because I’m fortunate to be in the same neighborhood, they’d like to give me a free estimate for any possible remodeling or roofing or painting or plumbing or ... you get the idea.

The first dozen or so of these calls I simply said “no thank you” and hung up. Then I just hung up. Eventually, I began telling my telephonic tormentors that I had already heard the exact same words dozens of times. Now they hang up on me.

This past Sunday as my wife and I were discussing an inspirational morning at church, our phone rang. You guessed it, Pitch Number One. I asked the pleasant sounding woman who interrupted our Sunday calm why she was telling me something that simply wasn’t true. Her tone instantly flipped from friendly to snarky and she actually said, “What am I supposed to say, ‘I lost my dog and want to come over and look for it in your yard?’” Then she hung up.

You’re probably thinking, why doesn’t he just let the phone ring? Yeah, why not? Well, as I’ll most likely write about another time, there’s an overwhelming, Pavlovian-like strand of my DNA that absolutely, positively must answer a ringing phone if at all possible. In other words, I’m a telemarketer’s dream. Unfortunately, it looks like they’ve found me.

I’ll see you ‘round town.

The beast within

If you’re a fan of scary movies, you’ve likely hunkered down in your seat as a familiar scene plays out on the screen. You know the one; where unsuspecting merchant seamen or long-haul truckers are transporting a huge and not nearly secure-enough enclosure with some unknown “thing” inside. They only know that something live – and very large – inside wants to get out. As these doomed workers move the crate, jostling whatever is trapped (for the moment at least) within, an occasional grunt or bellow or even primal scream emerges from within. Cut to extreme close ups of frightened peasant eyes, nervously glancing at the suddenly flimsy plywood – the only barrier between their very lives and the gnashing, snarling, slobbering beast within.

What does this cinematic cliché have to do with this column? I thought you’d never ask. During my recent two month-long, self-imposed hiatus from writing the column, “My Thoughts, Exactly”, I’ve had many recurring instances where ideas for possible columns would “grunt and growl” at me from deep within the dark and mysterious recesses of my mind, wanting desperately to get out and roam among the unsuspecting populace of these foothills. Occasionally, column topics would loudly shake their confines, roaring for release. (While not a life-threatening condition, it can be a noisy and raucous one for sure – just ask my longsuffering wife.)

Every time something happened at my house, or a news story would be reported that I digested with more than the usual amazement, I would feel the beast of a column stir within. For example, a voter’s guide arrived last month printed in Korean, Farsi, Spanish and, oh yeah – English, wasting who knows how much money and paper. Why not Japanese, Chinese, Hungarian or Egyptian? After all, I know local residents who are fluent in those languages, too. Growl, scratch, thump.

Also in March, a once-in-eighteen-years opportunity to witness a overly large “perigee moon” in our nighttime skies was wasted due to unseasonably thick cloud cover. Snarl, slobber, bump.

Charlie Sheen made frequent moronic, sad and tragic pronouncements in his downward rush towards obscurity and has-been status. Winning! Even worse, the media covered it ad nauseam while simultaneously obscuring our nation’s continued loss of credibility and relevance throughout Europe and the Middle East. Roar, slash, crash!

Repeated and very much unwanted calls to my unlisted home phone were made by “retired Glendale area school teachers” virtually demanding to know if I will or will not vote in favor of school bond Measure “S” on the April 5 ballot. The only way they could have gotten my number is by poaching it from the emergency phone forms filled out when I still had kids in the local public school system. Whether or not the particular ballot measure is worthy of support, the tactics used to pressure voters into supporting it were annoying if not borderline intimidating. Howl, bellow, shatter!

I even felt compelled to discuss the media-induced hysteria about the possible likelihood of potentially detecting trace amounts of Japanese nuke dust in our west coast air, dairy cows and vegetable crops. No wait, maybe that was the fugitive New York Zoo cobra I should’ve been panicked about. I’m easily confused, you know.

Thankfully (for my sake, at least), after two months away from writing a weekly column, I’m back! So I no longer need to keep my most dangerous thoughts harmless and confined. Be afraid. Be very afraid.  

I can’t wrap up my first column back without thanking the many valued readers of the CV Weekly newspaper for the notes you’ve sent to both myself and to editor/publisher Robin Goldsworthy. Your kind words were encouraging in ways I can’t begin to express. By the nature of the profession, writers tend to work in deep solitude – which makes it even more reassuring to know that so many of you missed my weekly musings and mutterings enough to say as much and to ask when I would be returning to these pages.

It’s good to be back. And once again, I’ll see you ‘round town.

(AUTHOR’S NOTE: This post is a revised version of a column first published in the 4.7.11 edition of the CV Weekly newspaper.)

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