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It’s $15.50 now, an over 200% price increase from 20 years ago. I still like it, and if it were available locally, would probably add it to my lunch menu (as I’ve tried with 짜장면, though parking at the plaza is a deterrent) because the “teppan” alternatives exceed the $20-mark. Used to come with minestrone-style soup, too.

The “just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in” line actually comes from the third and mostly awful Godfather movie, which I still also look back at for its portrayal of the way I least want to die, but that fucker who I had been watching for the past few weeks pushed me over the edge by letting Lae’zel die while simping Shadowheart as his “RP” love interest. So much for my console abstinence—which was hardly a show of principle if I’m to be honest, and more stubbornness to remount the gear treadmill, both in-game and out.

…for good, really, our latest road trip there lets me cross it off places I’m likely ever to return to, which is kind of a good feeling, despite the reason of course being that little time’s left for it to change, similar to how I have fewer things left to eat. Speaking of which, a single Nathan’s Famous chili dog at one of the New York, New York exits (next to a woman manning an oxygen station who told her fellow booth operator that Christmas Day was the worst she’d had yet) now costs nearly ten dollars with tax and no longer even offers the snapping skin. Surprisingly cheaper box of fish & chips at Gordon Ramsay’s place, though factor in the wait, the lack of seating, then the fight through the crowds to get it back to your room warm, and the none of this seems worth the trouble. Bring back the original Star Trek Experience and maybe? I kept thinking of the drive I made once to meet a friend I no longer have and missed an item on the auction house in a game I no longer play, might that have been the wrong life-altering decision? At least the weather cooperated at the Cajon Pass and I didn’t crash the car as I have been in the dreams leading up to and during the trip.

Missing the $10-off deal at Target somehow Even-Steven’d itself when the Amazon support lady was able to defy the information online and swap the music service to the new device (or the fortuitous price drop on the Katana Mini), but watching the boy casually request a rundown of his flitting favorites starting with Len’s “Steal My Sunshine”, which must have made its way back to him on Spotify after a brief run as one in the small pool of tracks in the car’s 90’s Electronic set, without so much as the press of a button, reminded me again how far we’ve come. There are volume controls on top to accommodate his restless fingers, of course, though nothing like camping the radio with them on Play and Record, or waiting on the Space: 1999 end theme only to realize you’ve hummed through it, a story that shall surely be included in Chris’s eulogy for me.

I was hanging around with a group of friends, hoping one of them would give me a lift home; seems no app can overcome this subconscious weakness after a lifetime of unreliable transportation. Really, however, I was waiting on my love interest to return and give me the opportunity to end the night with her in the driver’s seat. In the meantime, I was preoccupied producing crumpled currency from my mouth, like that gag with the eggs, surprisingly dry and pocketed each wad for as long as they came. A ten-dollar bill I had found earlier was left in a bowl of dirty plumbing water, ordinarily a questionable place for paper with any intention of reuse, but I presumed it could be dried; when I retrieved it, the ink ran and the color was reduced to an almost transparent outline. (Reminded me of the counterfeit plot at the beginning of the 살인자의 쇼핑목록 drama I’ve been watching; it’s no Koo—then again, neither was the finale of Killing Eve—but there’s a bevy of cuties including AOA alumnus Seolhyun.) Inside the bathroom the door opened and there she was… my wife, hair tied back and makeup-less, sorrow in her large eyes that she was delayed by being invited to the Beatles concert, which I then realized was the reasonable explanation that had eluded me. In my self-absorbed distress, I had failed to appreciate her.

[Title and meme from this new track for old people like us.] Actually, I’m quite enjoying my daily visits to the am/pm down the street, where I would stop on my way to work 9-10 years ago for that refill of crunch ice and Mountain Dew on dispenser lines that must be corroded with just the right chemical buildup it’s borderline toxic and intoxicating. The rewards app helps, and I can’t help be amused that I’m charged 3¢ for tax on my free drink.

Another recurring dream I have is coming across stashes of loose change, sometimes on the street, one coin becomes two and more, quarters are followed by larger mint I assume to be half dollars or greater, and there’s always a moment before fully waking when the reality that I can’t bring them with me hasn’t sunk in, that blissful state of delusion when somehow beautiful young women are alright with you and your wife is with them. And I don’t buy the notion that this foretells riches, unless I’m meant to understand that happiness comes in small denominations and is limited to approximately $23.50. This morning’s haul came at an arcade, where at the foot of unmanned retro games I would pick up a quarter or two, occasionally coming across coins smaller than the 10-cent one from Hong Kong I still keep in my wallet and some the size of coasters. I continued my collection upstairs but was stopped by a kid who looked like that pathetic James on Ricky Gervais’ After Life series, which is the case with all its characters, sure, but it’s still good for laughs at their expense. He explained the quarters were left as tips for the repairmen, so I felt obliged to make up for my transgression, but all I had was a single dollar bill and fives, stupid cashless post-COVID economy. It was then that it occurred to me they might have me on video pilfering all those machines, camera technology being ubiqitous nowadays.

Not so much the fear of seeing rocks, feeling them, petting them nor even being pelted or crushed by them, but walking across them, as we saw this morning: I was part of a team that seemed to consist of co-workers from both current and previous jobs wrapping up an onsite client visit to a warehouse. The manager there offered me one of their uniforms for me to wear next time, so I waited for him to fetch it for me while my party left for the car, and surprisingly through all the commotion at the end of day (as well as typical disappointment from my dreams), he came back with a new green/navy reversible down vest. It was cold outside and I put it on over my own coat, which was probably the hooded Uniqlo one I’ve been wearing around the house this month. My wallet and phone were in my back pockets, too, also unexpected since I usually lose them. The parking lot was way off in the distance from the building exit, past a ravine-like field which had to be crossed by rock formations along the edges. People were still coming and going, and to avoid one oncoming fellow I opted for a lower path to his left that I soon realized wasn’t going to get me to the other side as all the jagged boulders ran out and sank into the dark pool below. I leaped to an abutment to the side but it wasn’t stable enough to support my weight, gave way like rock shouldn’t and I had to grab hold of one flimsy attachment after another. Onlookers gasped while I relied on my pull-up strength to stay above water, but as I inevitably felt my butt submerge—no wonder I was left with my things—the lesson of this short segment dawned upon me, always to take the high road.

After the bathroom break, I was driving the XTerra again and exited off a freeway intersection into an elongated entrance to one of our gated communities. (Last I swear I saw Sylvilagus was along this path to CPE on an early lockdown run before the Asics mask, but surely my two signature bandanas was a giveaway…?) I asked John Chen if he wanted to be picked up, but he wasn’t interested, no surprise.

Update: Rained like it does here once a year today and during whatever is the opposite of sleight of hand that happens getting into the car (namely, the transfer of the contents of my back pockets to my front rather than sit on them, hindered by anything I’m already carrying, in this case a wet umbrella mid-collapse), my wallet fell into a puddle as premonitioned earlier. I picked it up out of the water quickly enough that the last of the paper inside would be unscathed, maybe because I knew I was better off it dropping than my phone, there was no pause for misery. It was almost comical, too, the first time ever in the drought-stricken Southland when I remember driving through Texas torrents that made the windshield look like aquarium glass, like the surfeit of silly storylines on this season of Curb that required suspension of disbelief in our annual precipitation.

My “Bits and Pieces” post was growing a tad unwieldy, which presented itself as an opportunity to organize my dreams, even the ones with little in the way of context, much less length, and make them searchable for future reference, but then what’d be the difference writing them up as they occur in their own posts? The other night I was walking down an empty city street with an acoustic guitar playing “Wish You Were Here” (hopefully doing it at least as much justice as the kid once did) and crying through the lyrics. On the roof of one of the brick residential buildings was a floating sorting hat decoration.At an unlikely gathering of neighborhood moms—its likelihood naught due to my participation—one told the group at a table outside a restaurant in a local shopping center about her car being replaced with another model by the manufacturer without her knowledge. Despite the real world legal ramifications, I actually found this plausible after my experience back in college when Jeanette’s MR2 was impounded out of their gated condo parking garage by police for title impropriety during my watch. And wouldn’t you know it, it happened again before our very eyes: her dark gray Scion hatchback (didn’t L&L BBQ girl Kristen have one of those) disappeared and in its place was parked a big blue pickup with a matching belt holding down its running hood, like one of John Steed’s Bentleys. Update: I forgot the epilogue where I realized I left my wallet on the table and ran back to see a short Latina receive it and everyone else’s from her even smaller child, trained to collect them deftly from underneath, while the waitress watched.