Whole lotta shakin'

Welcome, and what a glorious Friday it is over here at UOPTA central. Today is my one and only mother's birthday, and since she recently won the completely made-up Commenter of the Year award, her birthday totally deserves first paragraph status. Happy Birthday, Mom. I won't tell the readers what number you turned today, but let's just say it rhymes with "meally meally mold."

Hey, guess what happened in this past week. The earth kind of moved a little for us. Or to coin a phrase that I hope not to use very often: it quoke. Being a native Californian, this was not my first experience with the entire world around me jolting. Oh no, friends, there have been several by now, and I've developed my own internal sense of magnitude, comparative duration, etc. I guess you could say I have...quadar. (I'm coining phrases left and right this morning!) This particular quake was different for me for one particular reason: Comedy! Here's what transpired:

I was sitting in my boss's office chatting with him, when I cocked my head like our dog does when she thinks we said "walk" or "treat." For me, it meant, "Is that the earth moving?" Our office tends to creak and shake a bit if someone runs down the hall or if there's a particularly large truck outside, so usually that head motion of mine is for no good reason. After a second though, a co-worker said, "Do you guys feel that?" "Yeah," we replied, and we sat there for another two seconds or so while it kept shaking. During that time, I was thinking, "Should I stand up and move to the doorway? My boss isn't moving at all, so would that make me look like a wimp? It's still going, so maybe I should. Yeah, I guess I will." I then stood up and took the four or five steps over to the door of his office. I looked down the hallway and saw the big potted plant in the lobby swaying back and forth. "Huh, this one's pretty strong," I thought, quickly comparing it to my previous experiences. My boss then spoke up, saying, "Wow, this is long." "That's what she said," I responded. He laughed. As the shaking finally subsided, I said, "Let the record show that I just made a 'That's what she said' joke during an earthquake." He smiled, and I'm just going to assume that meant that he was impressed.

My boss turned on the news, and after hearing a few reports about fun words like "magnitude" and "epicenter," we went back to work. I emailed my lovely wife to make sure everything was fine over at her work, and that was that. Life in L.A., ladies and gentlemen. I awoke, it quoke, we spoke, and you must acquit. Wait, that last part didn't work.

I just remembered another brief earthquake story that involved a little humor as well. Let's keep the theme alive! I was working at UCSB, and as I'm likely to do a couple of times a day, I went to the restroom. I stood at the urinal for a little bit, and upon completing my task, I flushed and turned around to walk toward the sink. As I took that first step, I felt like I suddenly got very dizzy. My first thought was, "Did I stand up too quickly? No, I was standing the whole time." As I was washing my hands, I wondered if I peed so much that it made my blood pressure drop or something like that. Before I could fully grasp the absurdity of that hypothesis, I heard lots of voices out in the hall. I stepped out, and sure enough, they were all discussing the quick jolt of an earthquake we'd all just experienced. "Ah, that makes much more sense," I thought to myself. Much like that time I thought a cat was speaking to me, I probably should've gathered a little more information before leaping to nonsensical conclusions. (The Nonsensical Conclusions could be a band name, eh? They sound like they'd be either from Berkeley or Scotland to me, but that might just be an illogical association. And yes, the Illogical Associations are from Philly.)

That leads us to the granddaddy of them all (to date...knock on wood): The Northridge Quake. And come to think of it, there ended up being comedy related to this one as well. That's interesting. Anyway, I was 16 years old back in January of '94, and I spent the night at my friend Dusty's house. Our friend Jon slept there that night as well, and the thing we all remember when going to bed was Jon making some strange pun relating the word "derriere" to a cow's "dairy area." Oh how we laughed. We fell asleep, and everything was going just dandy until a television landed about a foot from Jon's head. Yeah, Earth did that. Jon and Dusty sprung to their feet and ran to the doorway. Being a rule follower, I was busy lying on the ground, with one arm on my forehead and the other covering the back of my neck. This is precisely what we were instructed to do if unable to get under a desk. "Peter, get up!" they yelled. "I'm making a head sandwich!" I yelled back. They reached down and pulled me to my feet, and I joined them in one of the nearby doorways.

The shaking eventually stopped, and we spent the next little while sitting in doorways, chatting with Dusty's dad and his now-wife, and commenting on the noticeable aftershocks. At one point, one of us ventured downstairs to assess the damage and get some cans of Sprite. A glass broke, but that was about it. A little bit later, figuring that the drama was over, we went back to sleep. Shortly thereafter, the house phone rang, and it was my parents. They were shocked and a little upset that I hadn't called them, but more prominent was their wonder at the fact that we went back to sleep. What I hadn't realized until that point was that Dusty's dad's house was cushioned by the hills on which it was built. My parents' house (and the house my lovely wife grew up in, I later learned) didn't have that luxury and the damage was extensive. When I got home later that morning, I understood why they thought I should've called. Everything that had been in a cupboard was now broken and on the floor, there were cracks in walls, and all sorts of damage. "A glass broke at Dusty's," I said, but no one found that juxtaposition of havoc as interesting as I did.

Here's where the comedy comes into this story (unless you found the "head sandwich" part humorous): later that year, Dusty, Jon, and I acted out that entire scene during a practice session for our improvisational comedy team. We were playing a game in which people are doing a scene, a fellow teammate watching the scene yells, "Freeze!" and then takes the place of one of the actors. He or she is to take the exact position of the person who was released, and then change the scene to something else. I don't remember if it was Jon or Dusty, but one of them tagged in, and then said, "Oh my god, it's an earthquake!" We spent the next half-hour acting out everything that happened that early-morning, and a whole bunch of stuff that never happened. The rest of the teammates were enjoying it so much that no one yelled "Freeze!" to interrupt us or stop the scene. They just let us keep going, and so we did for a long, long time. Ah, isn't it great when natural disasters can yield laughter? (Hint: The answer is yes.)

Ok, this is getting long (that's what she said), so I'm going to jump right into this week's fantabulous edition of...Car Watch!

I saw a license plate frame on the freeway this week that said, "After 40...Life is Good." Does that mean that life totally sucked for that woman for the first 39 years? Or was life excellent before and now it's just...good? If this were a word problem in a math class, I'd look for the "Not enough information" answer. You know what I'm talking about, right? They'd always throw something in there like, "Bobby is taller than Billy. Sheila is taller than Sally. Billy is taller than Sally. Who is the tallest one of the group?" The answers would be Bobby, Billy, Sheila, Sally, and Not Enough Information. If Billy were taller than Sheila, then we'd know for sure, but nothing tells us how Bobby and Sheila compare to each other. It would help if they said it was in sixth grade, because then I'd choose Sheila every time.

Not to veer too far off course, but sometimes those types of questions would be laughable. Something as obvious as: "If Ricardo can make ten free throws in thirty seconds, how long does it take him to eat a roast beef sandwich?" And you just know some kids read that and think, "Well, let's see...ten free throws in thirty seconds...roast beef...probably about 90 seconds." I like those kids; they made my percentiles higher.

My homey Rockabye saw this plate and sent it over to me: "SML 4ME." Granted, it's probably a photographer or maybe a dentist. However, there's nothing there that makes "smile" any more represented by those letters than "smell" would be. If I were driving past that person, I'd either sniff around like a drug- or bomb-detecting pooch or I'd raise one arm, sniff my armpit, and give the dude a thumbs-up. "I did it for you man!" I'd manage to convey.

Last but certainly not least, I was a couple of cars away from a truck that had a peculiar license plate frame. On the bottom, it said "Paris Hilton." And on the top...I don't know. I couldn't catch up to it and it turned before I could see the beginning of the thought. Naturally, it was killing me. What could that have said? "I want to be?" "God hates?" "Honk if you're?" "My other ride is?" Any thoughts on this, friends? If so, fire away in comments section and let your voice be heard (or more appropriately, let your words be seen).

Ok people, that's it for me. Since I know a lot of you are current or former Angelinos, feel free to share any earthquake stories you have in the comments section - preferably ones with some sort of humor. (I'm looking at you, my favorite brother Kevin.) Or if anything else comes to mind about any subject whatsoever, ptklein@gmail.com is there for you to sound off. I want to once again wish my mom a very happy birthday today. I've also got some other happies going out to our friend Scott M's birthday tomorrow, our friend Kareem's half-birthday tomorrow as well, and my old colleague and friend Leslie's birthday on Monday. Have a happy and healthy weekend and week, friends, and I'll see you here next Friday.