I caught you a delicious bass

Why does everybody hate the name "Baby?"

Colonel Rhombus just said, "I have a blog with your real names in it and pictures and I talk about how much I hate you, and the president reads it."

This is the first time I've ever "blogged" from a coffee shop. I had a request from my brother to tell everybody out there in internetland about the gentleman with whom I dropped off some stuff that I trucked across the country, whom I'll call Martin. Because that's his first name. The plan was to meet Martin at his trailer park in Riverside, which is about 45 minutes from Pasadena. I had talked to Martin on the phone many times, and I had a mental image of him as a strapping 20-something man who was slightly taller than me. I imagined that he was pretty clean-cut and played tennis or possibly ran for fun.

Long story short, I got to the trailer park (which was in the middle of the city, by the way) long before Martin and loaded the stuff into his trailer. I was waiting in Col. Rhombus's Jetta when a slight, bald woman pulled up behind me in a Geo Metro. She was accompanied by two large 30-year-old men. I got out of the Jetta, thinking that Martin must be one of the men, but then the woman gets out and I realize that she's TOPLESS, but it's kind of OK because she doesn't really have breasts. She reaches out her hand and says, in Martin's voice, "Hi, I'm Martin."

Martin is probably five feet tall, and weighs about 85 pounds. He's covered in tatoos, and has many body piercings. The hard part about telling this story is explaining why I thought he was a woman, and may actually have been a woman. He had a feminine face and wide hips, but the most obious womanly characteristic was his huge nipples. Now, I know there are some men out there with big nips, but disembodied, nobody would ever mistake them for a woman's. Martin's were definitely a woman's.

After I met Martin, the whole exchange got a lot more sketchy. He took about five minutes to count the $150 he was giving me (seven 20's and two fives), and he kept alternating between staring at me and avoiding eye contact. Anyway, I don't think I've done the awkwardness of the situation justice, so suffice it to say that it was a little bit weird.

This combined with the agressive solicitation from a 50-year-old prostitute that I received at about 9:00 this morning and numerous encounters I've had with street folk and juvenile delinquents today, and it's amazing that I'm enjoying L.A. as much as I am.

P.S.: Watch "Napoleon Dynamite" as soon as you can. It's flippin' sweet.