Dude, where's my car?

How was your morning? Mine? Glad you asked! I got up, got ready for work, said goodbye to the cat, and walked out to my car. Or, to the place where I had last seen my car. My car! Was gone! Snatched from our street!

I stopped short, looked at the spot I thought I'd left the car, turned around, looked behind me, looked across the street, and back to the original spot. But, nope, it was gone! Then I thought, "Well, I've been kind of brain-muddled lately, so maybe I actually parked it down there." I ended up walking up and down the entire block holding my car remote’s "panic" button to try to locate the sucker, but it was gone! Stolen!

I ran into my landlord on my way back to the apartment to call the police. He said he’d seen a "funny-looking" guy around the neighborhood, and a few days ago his son’s car’s window had been smashed. He was very nice and seemed way more upset than I was about the whole thing, saying his day was ruined!

On my way up the stairs, I went through all the scenarios about it being vanished for good, about it being found but trashed (remind me to tell you my other story about that happening to me when I was 17!), about all my stuff being stolen from the inside, about what kind of new car I was gonna get, etc.

When I called the police to report the incident, I gave them my license plate number. The lady on the other end said, "Oh, that car was towed." Towed?! That lady couldn’t tell me why, but said that it was towed off our very block! When I called the impound lot, they said it was towed because it was parked in front of a driveway. What the?? I know I didn't do that! So N and I came up with all these scenarios: Someone took it for a joyride and then dropped it back off on our street! Someone crashed into my car and pushed it into a driveway! I left the car in neutral and it rolled down the block!

At the impound lot, we got a copy of the report. My car was towed two hours after I'd come home from work because a neighbor had reported it was blocking 90 percent of his driveway. Well, two hours after work—in daylight—didn't seem like enough time for someone to steal and replace my car, so the only thing that could've happened would've been an accident, right? Right? Well, no, it turns out. My car was perfectly intact, no scratches, no dents, not a hair on the inside touched, down to my trusty The Club still on the wheel, and the shred of ribbon on the floor from some long-forgotten present. Huh.

After much thinking about it, I think I'm just retarded. I seem to remember an unusual lack of parking when I got home last night, so when I saw a guy vacating a spot, I did a quick U and pulled into it (I remember distinctly having to do some fancy parallel parking, so I know for sure that I was between two cars). I also remember walking past a spot closer to our apartment on my way there and thinking, "Hmmm, that one would've been better." Now that's where something should've clicked. Duh, if there was no parking and I was making a U to grab someone’s spot, that was the spot! Not the one I took! The one in front of someone’s driveway! The even dumber part is that I passed by my car twice before the time it was towed when I left for and returned from an evening walk. Lame!!

Rockin' the free world

So, remember my wildly popular Neil Young post? Well, I suppose this is a follow up to that, because last night N and I went to the Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young concert at the Hollywood Bowl. As N said, there’s nothing quite like hearing thousands of people singing "Let's Impeach the President"! It was a very anti-Bush, anti-war show, and it was filled with aging hippies rocking their grey-haired heads off! I went into the show only knowing a few CSNY songs (but all the Neil Young "Living with War" songs, obviously), and left with the desire to chill out and become a hippie myself. Perhaps it was the contact high (even Mr. Crosby said, "Gee, it sure smells gooooood in here!"), but I left there really wanting to help and love my fellow man. Peace, man.

Except! There was this guy sitting next to me, and if you’ve sat on the benches at the Bowl, you’ll be able to picture this. He was practically right on top of me, with his smelly burrito, smellier armpits, gross tobacco dip or chew or whatever you call it and spitting cup, loud, chatty-ass girlfriend who made cell-phone calls DURING the show, and stupid feet he propped up on the bench in front of us and picked at. I left there vowing to love my fellow man except for that guy. And the jerks who kept walking back and forth in front of us during the show so we had to keep getting up to let them out. They can eff off. Oh, and fuck you, Mel Gibson.