Urbzen

An open letter to everyone at the Trader Joe’s on Sepulveda last night around 5:30:

Hi there. I feel like we might have gotten off on the wrong foot yesterday, when you were shouting into your cell phone, blocking two aisles and apparently convening the goddam UN Security Council to discuss the merits of organic asparagus while I was wishing under my breath that you would fall into a deep, deep pit and stay there, with Dick Cheney, for eternity.

So, I just want to propose a few ground rules so that we can all play nice and nobody has to get stabbed, m’kay?

• The express lane items limit is neither a suggestion, a minimum, nor an average. I don’t care if you’re “in a hurry,” “just going to be real quick” or “suffering massive internal bleeding.” Get in a different line.
• If you leave the checkout line for whatever reason, you automatically lose your spot. Yes, it sucks, but everyone’s not just going to stand around while you spend five solid minutes pondering the exactly ideal shade of banana. Go to the back of the line.
• The ratio of employees to shoppers at 5:30 on a weekday is approximately 1 billion to one.. Don’t wait until you get to the front of the checkout line to ask if they’re out of vegetable frittatas. If the vegetable frittata shelf is empty then yeah, they’re out. Come back later.
• In the parking lot: Do not put your car in reverse, honk furiously and expect me to back up three car lengths because you see a spot about to open up. You missed it. Better luck next time.
• A personal check? Seriously?
• And to the woman whose high-decibel cell phone conversation included, “Well of COURSE he has to have a colostomy, it was so close to his rectum!” please consider Peapod.com.

See you all next week!

Love,

Me

Good news for fraternity brothers, Von Dutch enthusiests and Nickleback fans across America: Unilever has announced plans to release Axe Dark Temptation, a body spray that drives women wild because it smells like chocolate, in the US next month. The Dark Temptation Chocolate Man marketing campaign, which has already raised eyebrows in India and elsewhere, released it’s first US commercial online last month.

This isn’t the first time Unilever has taken some flack for its Axe marketing efforts. Still, there’s something vaguely unsettling about this particular campaign. Something about all of those nice girls… overcome by the ‘dark temptation’… of the chocolate man… whipped into a frenzy of desire… by his big, powerful… fragrance?

Yeah, it’s probably nothing. Anyway, I hear it’s huge in the Netherlands.

I don’t think I’m breaking any news here when I say that air travel has become a pretty miserable goddam experience lately.  

Between the delays, the fees, the lost bags and the troubling proximity to “other people” it’s tempting to give the whole industry a hearty “Up Yours,” but really, most of the time, what can you do? A couple of months back I needed to go to Portland for work. What was I going to do? Walk? 

But I think we have a choice more often than we realize.

Recently I was getting set to book my ticket home for the holidays / LittleSister’s Elaborate Wedding Extravaganza. Fortunately, Christmas and the EWE fall close enough together that I’ll be able to roll it all into one trip, and it was looking like I’d be able to score a pretty reasonable fare.

Not so fast.

When I travel, my so-called “personal item” is often a scruffy little 16-lb terrier named Mr. Henry, who travels in a soft-sided carrier under the seat in front of me and is pretty much always passed out before takeoff. For this privilege, United wants to charge me $175. Each. Way.

So, United, up yours. You’ve finally nickle and dimed me to the point where I’m just going to say, Fuck it. I’m driving, from Los Angeles to Denver. Happy goddam holidays.