Daylight Savings Time

One of the helpful monkeys I have trained to wake you at 1:45 to reset your clocks.

1. Daylight Savings Time, which begins this Sunday at 2:00 am. I consider it vital to be up at 2:00 a.m. to set the clocks ahead one hour, and in the past I have performed the public service of driving past many of your homes with an air horn in the middle of the night to ensure that you would be up in time to adjust your timepieces. Some of the heavier sleepers among you have resisted that wake-up call, so I made my rounds last year with a bucket of ice water to wake you people so that you can get to church on time on Sunday to receive the moral counseling that you so desperately need. But there were a handful of trouble-makers on my route who foolishly invested in security systems that prevented me from rousing them in time to reset their clocks. So this year, I will be dispatching trained helper monkeys to perform the service. They can effortlessly climb the highest parapet to get to your sleep chamber where they will wake you at 1:45 by softly ringing a bell. If that fails to do the trick, they have been trained to savagely attack your eyes and groin until you wake in agonizing pain, and will continue their assault until they see you reset the clocks. Only then will the monkeys vacate the premises, leaving you free to contact emergency medical personnel to minister to your bloody wounds. This is a free service that I provide to my friends to ensure their punctuality. Don’t bother to thank me – just leave a banana or two to compensate the monkeys for their time.

Sheeler & Sheeler

2. Karen Sheeler, who was my Facebook-assigned Best Friend for the Day (BFD) yesterday, Karen and I were in the improv group The Ids in college, a group who took aim at contemporary themes like The A-Team and the Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln attraction at Disneyland. The Ids evolved into the comedy group The Left Fielders after college. The evolutionary step they took to make this leap was to drop me from the cast, which made the group headliners at the Laugh Factory in Hollywood for a long time. Karen’s next move on the way up was to jettison everybody except her husband Wade from the act as they became Sheeler & Sheeler with the radio hit Car Phone, a hilarious ditty about the then-latest cutting edge technology of satellite phones (which is an indication of how long ago Sheeler & Sheeler recorded Car Phone). Karen was too fond of Wade to make the next logical step of cutting him out of the act and being known simply as “Sheeler”, and that’s a damned shame because it denied us the memory of side-splitting routines about such timely topics as Motorola computers and America’s Funniest Home Videos. Time marches on.

Birthday Boy Ben thinking back on the highlights of his year.

3. The deeply-troubled Ben Rovner, who celebrates a birthday tomorrow. I have no idea how old young Ben is – he looks about 12 to me, but I am a very old man and just about everybody looks 12 to me with the possible exception of my annoying co-worker “Biff” Wellington, who looks about 87. Ben had a fine year in which he appeared in a series of promos for the USA network as a character named “Roadie Jack”, a slightly less drug-addled version of Ben Rovner. But the highlight of Ben’s year was meeting me when he supported my starring performance in The Apple Tree and my giving him the approving paternal handshake that turned his life around. I’ve been trying to think what Ben can do for me tomorrow for giving him the great gift of knowing me, and I’ve decided that an appropriate tribute would be for him to serve me breakfast in bed (melba toast, a soft-boiled egg and Sanka) and then to take me to the movies (while I’m inside the theatre watching the movie, he can be off washing my car). After the movie, we can drive up to Santa Barbara (Ben will be happy to discover that I have a spacious and airy trunk) where he can buy me a lavish dinner and then go off to purchase me some rich trinket as a memento while I’m eating it. It will be an expensive day for young Ben but he’s anxious to show me his gratitude and he has all that “Roadie Jack” money coming in, so the price is no object. After all, you’re only 12 once.

A man in uniform.

4. My co-worker Diana Mueller, who read my listing about workplace attire and thought back longingly to the brief period when she wore a school uniform. We discussed the idea of uniforms at work and how simple it would make our lives by not having to devote five or six hours to selecting our ensemble for the day. I have had positions that required me to wear a uniform, and while those jobs forced me to sling hash to an ungrateful public for minimum wage, it was nice to not have to put any thought towards the rags I threw on my back. But then I thought of the people who I work with, and I reconsidered. It’s bad enough to have to look at my annoying co-worker “Biff” Wellington every day as it is, but the thought of him in a school tie and matching beanie is too much for even the strongest stomach.

Mara Marini: What is her secret?

5. The lovely Mara Marini who posted “Awwww. A boy left a note in my windshield wipers. Cute.” As someone who only receives notes on his windshield in the form of parking tickets and flyers for hardware stores, I want to know what Mara’s secret is. And it can’t simply be the obvious that she is smokin’ hot because there is no one hotter than I am and the last communication I was sent by a woman was a restraining order. I would go digging through Mara’s garbage to find the secret of her mysterious allure except that the restraining order was from Mara so I’m not allowed to go within 1500 feet of her trash any more. I have my operatives (some of whom are Vulcans) working on it though, and as soon as we uncover the mystery my windshield will be littered with notes from hot chicks who want to throw themselves at me, too. But I will say that the last meter maid who gave me a ticket really seemed to dig me.