Flatiron Food Truck: The Los Angeles Caterer Who Forgot My Wedding

That headline... Yeah, it really happened.

This has been an incredibly exciting and satisfying year, culminating with a gorgeous wedding on August 11th. Both my wife, Lauren, and I have been married before, and when we decided that this was the partnership and marriage that we'd always wanted, we also found that we had similar views on what kind of a wedding we wanted: unique, filled with personal touch, and devoid of many of the usual wedding trappings.

After rejecting a number of wedding venues, we decided to have a small backyard wedding, as our house was the perfect space. The quickest and easiest decision we made was to hire a Los Angeles food truck to cater the dinner, as LA features a large variety of upscale, classy meals on wheels that don't come close to being described as "roach coaches".

It didn't take long for us to find the food truck of our dreams, called the Flatiron Truck, owned by Timothy Mark Abell. He makes fantastic tri-tip and truffled Mac & Cheese and even came up with a great kids menu that featured mini chocolate shakes, with a finishing touch of grilled donut holes (which every kid at the wedding was looking forward to). He helped figure out the arrangement of the backyard, and we excitedly signed a contract in February.

Everything was set, and we stayed in contact throughout the year. Two weeks before the wedding, we paid our 50% deposit. In fact, to make life easier, I gave him 65%. A week prior to the event, we submitted our final headcount. A couple of days later, I apologized and said we had a change of two people - was it too late to change the headcount? No, that's fine, his wife Heather (who handles communication and scheduling) insisted. Two days before the wedding, I sent more emails, and said, "Can't wait to see you at 2 on Saturday!".

Fast-forward to Saturday at 2. The house is empty, Lauren is off doing wedding prep, and I'm rehearsing my vows. Timothy isn't there at 2. Or 2:30. The ceremony isn't until 6:30, and Timothy said two weeks earlier that he wanted to be there extra early, but I wasn't concerned. But at 3, I had a strange feeling. So I called Timothy.

"Hi, it's Dan. Are you going to be here soon?"

Silence.

"What are you talking about? Are you fucking with me?"

Now it's my turn to be silent.

"No, I'm not fucking with you. Are you fucking with ME?!"

Timothy freaks out, says that he goes off his Google Calendar and that he'll call me back. He doesn't for five minutes, as I start to sweat profusely. When I get him back on the phone, he says he is...

AT ANOTHER WEDDING

My heart absolutely stops. Timothy apologetically explains that he and Heather somehow, inadvertently DOUBLE-BOOKED WEDDINGS. He was in the middle of serving, and yes, I'm now fucked. I stay calm, and tell Timothy that I am holding it together, but I want him to know in no uncertain terms that he just fucked my wedding.

I hang up, and in perhaps the worst decision I made that day, I call Lauren, who's on her way home. "Lauren, you know how much I love you, and this is going to be the best weekend of our lives. But we've encountered the second obstacle of the weekend..." (our had been hit yesterday by an elderly gentleman the day before while parked at LAX!) .

"Timothy isn't coming. He double booked weddings".

Lauren took this news MUCH worse than she took the car accident news. In fact, she fucking freaks out. By the time she rolls in, she's hyperventilating and crying profusely, unable to stop.

But I'm on the horn, calling my amazing sister Kate, saying we need to find food... and a staff... in less than 3 hours for 75 people. For a wedding, no less.

Kate works nights as the manager of the Circle Bar in Santa Monica, so she knows waitstaff. She calls 3 people and gets us a bartender within the hour. We tag team calling every restaurant in a 10 mile radius. In a moment I'll never forget, Kate says, "Dan, I know this is a bad idea, but I know it's an option and they can get it done... CPK". From the other room, Lauren overhears this and shrieks between hyperventilating sobs, "I am NOT eating pizza at my fucking wedding!!!".

This is not going well.

Major panic is ensuing, as we are less than 2 hours from a ceremony, Lauren's hair is ruined and makeup unapplied... and we have no food. But Kate reaches Piknic in Playa Del Rely, and they calmly say they can handle the task. We work out a wedding menu on the fly, for a bill around $2K. After paying for the bartender, we may have saved $150 on not having the Flatiron Truck. Which, of course, isn't relevant to the issue.

Timothy's wife, Heather, finally reaches me. She claimed she had been calling over and over, but that's funny... I didn't have any messages on my phone. She's crying. She feels incredibly badly, which is understandable - I would expect that. She wants to help, but she hadn't solved our food problem for us. A real way to handle the situation would have been, "Sorry, Dan. We totally fucked up, but we're going to have food there in 2 hours for you." That didn't happen. I point out that we now have no waitstaff, and they've ruined that for us too, so she says she'll get people there for the event. I get off the phone with her, and start calling as many guests as I can, asking them to bring serving platters from their house.

Who has ever done that? Called your wedding guests 90 minutes before a ceremony, asking for DISHES?!? That's what I'm doing.

Lauren's now got it together, but is pacing and nervously cleaning (this is what she does when she's nervous, after all). I feel so badly for her - this vision that we worked so hard to achieve is now crumbling before our eyes. And even though a restaurant claims they're bringing food (hopefully around 7 PM), we have no idea if this is going to work, who is going to serve the food, and our nerves are completely, horribly frazzled.

Yeah, that's the kind of mental attitude you want to take into the biggest decision you'll ever make. Fortunately, we pulled it together for a ceremony that was filled with heart, emotion and sweetness.

Flash forward to dinner.

Heather had sent her mother and two family friends (I think) to help serve. This is thoughtful, of course, but the absolute least they could do. The three were well-meaning, and did the best they could, but things were ramshackle and a mess. There was no rhyme or reason, and food came out in random order. This isn't Heather's mom's & co's. fault, of course, but none of us should have been in this situation. My sister spent the entire night doing what she does best - arranging, managing, and controlling the situation. She wasn't enjoying the wedding, which makes me heartsick.

Amazingly, the food was really good. Piknic did a great job at the last minute, giving us pumpkin ravioli, chicken piccata and calamari. There were numerous snafus, of course, and we heard just this week that one whole table never got any food. But, for the most part, people had food, and we got through the night. The wedding was a blast, because ultimately, it's about the coming together of two ecstatically happy people coming together. It's not the food. It's this:

But a wedding is also a party. And the food is pretty damn important. Probably the most important thing.

And our caterer didn't show up.

If I wouldn't have called him - if he wouldn't have answered - we never would have KNOWN.

I woke up the next morning, angry. I should've been cuddling with my new wife, grinning ear to ear... but I was now pissed off again. I had a contract with the Flatiron Truck, and they didn't honor it. They didn't fix it - and sending family to help serve the food doesn't count as fixing it. Getting food there without us panicking for hours, and having MY OWN FAMILY help arrange and facilitate the meal, isn't fixing it.

I demanded that the Flatiron Truck make it right, and pay for the food we didn't want.

They were apologetic. They said they tried to help find us a meal (which they didn't nor did they pay for it). They insist they gave us back our deposit (of COURSE they would!) and bemoaned that this meant lost income for them. REALLY?!? Is that an argument?

They pointed out that people liked the food. That the food was cheaper. These points are NOT RELEVANT. We didn't plan for Italian, we didn't plan to be eating chips being randomly passed around from table to table. Kids were promised a kids' meal. We didn't plan for this horrible stress. The fact that I saved $150 doesn't mean anything to me.

They offered to cater a lunch for 30 people for us. Why on earth would we want that? Oh, should we discuss menus and time tables again?! No, I never want to see these people again.

Most people believed we should sue them. I even started an online poll on a wedding board, and more than 70% of respondents said that was the best approach. I was very tempted, but I didn't want to be dragged into a long, bitter fight when there weren't financial damages. The fact that they practically ruined our wedding, which was only saved by our whole family coming together to solve it, isn't easy to argue in court.

We decided what was only fair was to write them negative reviews online. After all, that's what places like Yelp are for - to determine if a service or business is deserving for patronage or hire. In my opinion, though the Flatiron Truck makes great food (that's why we hired them!), they are not worthy of our patronage, and other people should know that they were so careless as to DOUBLE-BOOK WEDDINGS. Here is my Flatiron Truck Yelp review (along with a positive review of the amazing Piknic, to whom we will always be grateful).

Would you want to risk your wedding hiring a business who could do that?

We wouldn't. But that's exactly what happened to us.

No Longer Just a Little Person: Synecodoche, New York, Two Years Later

I started my online diary three years ago. I pretentiously resist the term "blog", because I was never looking for people to seek it out to read. It was always just for me, and was hugely therapeutic in getting through a divorce, and settling into post-married-single-father life.

During the lowest point of 2008 (the closest I personally have ever been to depression,though never settled into), I was hugely impacted by the Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, New York, which dealt with themes of post-divorce life, while also chronicling how one may feel miniscule and purposeless in a vast universe of misunderstanding and selfishness amidst the never-ending creep towards our own mortality.

In Kaufman's view, there is no such thing as solace or peace, and even if you are lucky enough to find your soulmate, you will be kept apart by your own obsessive need to lionize - or destroy - any semblance of self, preventing true, meaningful engagement with other people. Which leads to the inevitable question you grapple with day in, day out:

The Question: Are we all destined to be lonely forever?

When your spouse leaves and you're wondering whether or not you'll ever ever date again, much less find your soul mate, these were hugely impactful themes and ideas, and there wasn't much of a positive spin to put on any of it.

The impact of the movie was best captured in the painfully gorgeous, "Little Person", whose lyrics chronicle a protagonist caught in a sea of solitude, left only to "eat my little meals, miss my little kid and wife".

After posting how I felt like "just a little person", I was surprised to find that my secret-little-blog-I-wanted-no-one-to-know-about suddenly started garnering minor amounts of traffic from random places across the globe. With this being my most emotionally naked blog post, I was disquieted, to say the least. Was I revealing too much of myself?

But as an online marketer, I became fascinated, and suddenly started poring over geographic maps (the Ukraine, really?!) of where people who found the post were from, those who were equally drawn by Charlie Kaufman's painful but intensely human rumination on what it means to be human.

Being someone not intrinsically drawn to online self-exposure (and who now, ironically, must dive into it every day in my professional career), this was confusing. I didn't want to be sucked into that living-life-online vortex, but for a period it somehow made the lonely nights a little less lonely. Some messages shared with others led me to realize this film impacted lonely others out there - were we all in the same adrift boat, yearning for rescue? There's that question again: "are we all destined to be lonely forever"?

Fast forward two years later, to the question's answer:

No, we're not

Not long after wallowing in Synecdoche-magnified self-pity, I met the love of my life. The woman that I am matched with in every way. Our rhythms are perfectly suited for each other; with no disrespect to my ex-wife, we were just never on the same rhythm. We may have wanted ourselves to, but we simply were not meant to have been life partners. I think the post-marriage grieving period was more over the loss of an idea than anything else; this is probably true for both of us.

But I found another little person who wanted to come out and play.

And play we did, and play we continue to do. We endlessly have a ridiculous amount of fun, whether it's weekends away, hanging out with my son, long nights of wine drinking and laying on the floor listening to music, grabbing coffees and glances, or even (gasp) shopping together. There's absolutely nothing that we don't do together, and even less we don't do well together. She's truly been a blessing.

Certainly, the omniscient narrator/Millicent Weems would take a dim view of this turn of events, arguing that it's all a big nothing anyway, both in the beginning, the middle and the end of our time on earth. Talking quietly in his ear - and ours - she says:

"As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time."

I choose not to believe that.

That doesn't mean that I believe in an afterlife, or God, or anything else that suggests a higher consciousness than where we stand in the here and now. But I do believe there is meaning in this life, if you are lucky enough to find it, or choose to embrace it. I do think there is someone out there for most people. Sometimes you'll find them early, sometimes late; in some cases, not at all. I've been truly lucky to find mine, and hope for others to do the same.

Caden Cotard's journey through Synecdoche is one of futility, hypochondriac neuroses and pain, but it's marked by a genuine searching and yearning - the belief that there is something out there that may be found. Something or someone that makes it better. Makes it what you believed it could be. Caden whispers into the phone:

"I know how to do the play now. It will all take place over the course of one day. And that day will be the day before you died. That day was the happiest day of my life. Then I'll be able to live it forever. See you soon."

I believe I've found my way to live forever. For this time on earth, the time that it actually matters.

For so long it was those first few verses that rattled sweet and painfully in my brain, but all that resonates now are the final stanzas:

I know you
You're the one I've waited for.
Let's have some fun.

Life is precious every minute,
and more precious with you in it,
so let's have some fun

We'll take a road trip way out west. You're the one I like the best.
I'm glad I've found you,
Like being around you
You're the one I like the best.

Somewhere, maybe someday,
Maybe somewhere far away,
I'll meet a second little person
And we'll go out and play.

I am not just a little person, and never will I be. Hopefully none of us will be.

Prince at the Troubadour: May 11th, 2011

Part 2 of of our 2011 musical journey with Prince didn't take place the LA Forum, like the other concerts. Rather, this took place in the legendary 300 person club in West Hollywood, called The Troubadour. After Prince-insider Dr. Funkenberry led us on an entertaining but fruitless wild-goose chase for a secret show on Tuesday night, official word hit on Wednesday at 2pm, moments after more shows at the Forum went on sale:

Prince. 2 shows at the Troubadour. $100 each.

L was in a team planning meeting, and it was our night with Z, but this didn't stop me from instantaneously clicking buy on the two tickets I was able to grab for the early, 7 pm show.

True Prince fans know that an "aftershow" in a small club is the nirvana of Prince. I've seen two of these before, and bored people endlessly with the huge impact it had on me. This was about to top that.

After waiting patiently with a bunch of other gracious, good-humored Prince fans in line, we got into the club, and 10 feet from the stage. Prince came on late, as always, but after opening with aftershow standard "Stratus", it was like he reached into L's brain and started extracting every song she wanted to hear. And he wasn't just playing these songs in his alligator-toned suit - he was living them, he was breathing them, all the while giving his bandmates chances to shine. Smiling, loving the vibe, and clearly relishing the impact he was having on his devoted crowd.

The show can best be described as a love/sex/jazz/rock set. It wasn't as guitar heavy as his second show was reputed to be, but he pulled out more rarities, and slowed them down in a way that L and I would never have traded shows for the world. This was guaranteed out the gate, as Prince announced that they were Prince and the Power Fantastic. He then kicked into this revered, little-known B-side from the Miles Davis album, the house lights blue. We swooned. It was only the first time among many that L turned to me and practically cried, "This isn't really happening!".

Yes, yes it was. Prince turned songs into astonishing jams, none of them lasting less than 8 minutes. Knowing that L wanted to hear "Shhh", John Blackwell beat into it. When Prince changed it up midway into a completely different song, L moaned, "this doesn't count". When he brought it back around to the big finish, replete with possibly the best Prince guitar solo this side of Purple Rain, she shrieked, "Yes, this counts!". He kept hitting L's sweet spots with "Colonized Mind" and a sultry new song called "When She Comes" (which was not an euphemism).

Prince was in rare form, with a band that more than met his match. He played for 2 1/2 hours, pulling out Joni Mitchell's "A Case of U", a hopping version of "Controversy", while pointing out people trying to snap his picture, who were summarily ripped out of the crowd by aggressive security. When Prince started into Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On", I almost groaned at the cliche nature of it, but after Mike Phillip's sax and a glorious vocal treatment by the stunning Andy Allo, I decided it was the greatest version of "Let's Get it On" that's ever been done. Yes, it was that good.

He left us gasping, and practically stumbling out of the club. We spent the next two days on a complete high that didn't let up until... we saw him again.

Feel free to read Part 1 of our Journey with Prince if you missed it.

Click here to see a deduped list of all 66 unique songs we heard over the course of 5 shows.

Prince Songs We Heard Over 5 Shows

Over the course of 5 shows in LA (April 14-May 13), we heard a total of 66 different songs. Most by Prince, along with more than a few covers. Four of the shows were at the LA Forum, and one was at the Troubadour (early show).

1999

A Case Of U (Joni Mitchell cover)

A Love Bizarre

Adore

Alphabet St

Baby I'm a Star

Beggin' Woman Blues

Boom (Instrumental)

Colonized Mind

Controversy

Cool

Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough

Cream

D.M.S.R.

Dance (Disco Heat)

Delirious

Dreamer

Endorphinmachine

Everyday People (with Larry Graham)

Extraordinary

Future Soul Song

Hot Thing

I I Was Your Girlfriend

I Would Die 4 U

Inglewood Swinging

Insatiable

Instrumental Jam with Mike Phillips

Kiss

Laydown

Let's Go Crazy

Let's Work

Little Red Corvette

Make You Feel My Love (with Cassandra Wilson)

Misty Blue (Shelby J.)

Mountains

Musicology

Nothing Compares 2 U

Peach

Play That Funky Music

Pop Life

Power Fantastic

Prince & The Band

Purple Rain

Question Of You (instrumental)

Raspberry Beret

Scandalous

She's Always In My Hair

Shh/U Will Be There

Sign O The Times

Sometimes It Snows In April

Somewhere Here On Earth

Stand Up (Shelby )

Stratus (Billy Cobham cover)

Superstition (with Stevie Wonder)

Sweet Thing (with Chaka Khan)

Take Me With U (duet with Janelle Mone)

Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (with Larry Graham)

The Beautiful Ones

The Glamorous Life (Sheila E)

The One

U Got the Look

Uptown

Welcome 2 America

When Doves Cry

When She Comes

You're The One For Me (Shelby )

Our Journey with Prince Pt. 1 - The Welcome to America at the LA Forum 2011

I never would have thought I would meet the love of my life because of the musical love of my life. But, sure enough, I met L almost three years ago over a shared appreciation of the much-maligned Prince. At a company poker game, she announced her belief that Prince hadn't recorded anything worthwhile after 2000, and I set out to prove her. Sure, he hasn't put together a complete album since, perhaps, 1994's The Gold Experience... but there has been some amazing tracks over the past 15 years on albums such as The Rainbow Children, LotusFlow3r, Musicology, 3121.... it doesn't reach the peaks, but there have been more than only valleys.

Anyway... we bonded over Prince's live version of "Joy in Repetition", and the last 2+ years has featured bemoaning and cajoling over our inability to see our mutual musical legend together. We missed two high-profile opportunities, at the Avalon post-Oscar show and the Nokia Theater, and started to wonder if we'd get another. Prince's enigmatic performance choices didn't make it any more certain we'd ever get the chance, especially since he spent much of the 2000s in LA, but had appeared to have quietly fled the LA scene. When he announced his Welcome 2 America tour in NY, and then proceeded to not announce a national tour, we thought another opportunity would pass by.

But in Prince's inimitably inexplicable manner, he announced he was coming to LA. Not for one show, but for 21 of them at the LA Forum, the crumbling arena that was the site of so many famed concerts, but now was largely used for the occasional rock show and frequent religious revivals. Needless to say, we jumped at the opportunity. When Prince further announced that 85% of the tickets would sell for $25, we knew this wouldn't be an one-time affair. It was a chance to make up for lost time.

We didn't know then that our love of Prince would lead to 5 shows in 4 weeks, one of them in the most intimate of settings imaginable.

We started on April 14th at opening night. My fast trigger finger on the hateful Ticketmaster left us with riser seats just off the tip of his glyph-symbol stage. Though we sat next to two extraordinarily stoned young hipsters, one of whom threw up over our whole row midway through the show, it was everything we could've possibly wanted - and twice as much as we could have imagined. Prince put tickets on sale two days before the show, and it was only 2/3rds full. This allowed us to wander wherever we wanted during the show - our view got better and better throughout.

But more notably, Prince was in salesman mode. Not by pitching the other shows, but by knowing that word-of-mouth is the best way to generate crowds. How do you do that? By playing a 4 hour show with 6 encores, that never seemed to end. It just went on and on, and L and I spent the final 90 minutes of the show standing right next to the stage, underneath Prince as he played guitar on a heartbreaking version of "Sometimes it Snows in April", because launching into a blistering version of "Laydown", one of those tracks that proves that Prince can take a mediocre recorded cut and turn in into a live classic with astonishing ease.

After four exhausting hours, we were hooked. We talked the show up to everyone who would listen, and waited with itchy mouse fingers on Ticketmaster for the next show.

I decided that taking Z to the next show was essential. Not because a 6-year-old loves Prince that much, but out of that selfish paternal need - I wanted to be that cool dad who took his kid to a hip, cool show, and have him look back 10 years from now and be able to tell his friends, "Yeah, my dad took me to see Prince when I was six". He may not appreciate it now, but that will make for some great cocktail conversations later in life.

Z loved the experience - the walking with the crowd, the being out late, the energy. The music itself was a little overwhelming, and he spent the first half of the show with his hands over his earplug-filled ears, but then he loosened up, amazed at Sheila E's powerful drum solos. When Sheila kicked over her cymbal, Z curiously asked why, and I had to respond "Because she KILLED it!". His mind was sufficiently blown. Show #2 in the books.

Show #3 was with my best friend P, and another close friend that I've bonded with Prince over for the past 10 years.

Show #4 at the Forum started with dance pit tickets, but we moved to prime seats just off the side of the stage. Janelle Monae was the opener, and while I had been dying to see her, it doesn't seem like her material is best served by an arena. In a club she'd probably be mind-blowing, but her high-energy, insanely ambitious stage show came off a little flat in the cavernous arena.

While the length and freshness of the April 14th show wasn't quite matched (and that show is already becoming known as "legendary" among Prince fans), it was nonetheless a stunning show. Prince was perhaps the most high-energy of any of the Forum shows, and we were treated to an intense version of "Shhh", and a non-stop display of guitar theatrics and Prince moves that left the audience shrieking like teenagers. Prince had the audience in his hand, and he knew it.

The show closed more than three hours after it started, but not before Prince brought out a special guest: Stevie Wonder. It was Stevie's birthday, and no matter how old he may be, the audience graciously appreciated the appearannce, and were treated to "Superstition", with Prince taking the side of the stage on rhythm guitar, as Stevie played harmonica and then keyboards. It was a true treat, and again reconfirmed just how special these shows have continued to be.

The LA Forum set lists mostly had a similar template each time though some skewed a more guitar-heavy (such as playing the B-side "She's Always In My Hair") as the second track of a Friday show. Prince would play covers with more regularity than his own tracks, with "Hollywood Swinging" becoming a nightly dance-party on stage, appearing more frequently even than "Let's Go Crazy".

"Glamourous Life" with an ageless, sexy-as-all-hell Sheila E appeared more frequently than "Sign O The Times", and was never a remote disappointment. In fact, it was a regular highlight, leaving the audience nearly as sweaty as Sheila herself.

One of the more surprising aspects of the shows was how some of the least expected tracks could be have the biggest impact, such as the aforementioned "Laydown" or a mind-blowing version of "The One" on May 13th. Dedicated Prince fans know better than to complain about his song performance choices though. How can a fan possibly have all your wishes granted when he has at least 200 songs he could justifiably play - not even counting the 20% of the songs that are covers. You get what you get, and you can expect that you'll love it. All of it.

Here's a list of all 66 different songs we heard over 5 separate shows. Yes, 66. Not counting samples.

Of all the big-venue shows I've seen Prince put on (the Bowl, Staples, Nokia, etc.), the Forum shows have far and away been the best he's put on. It's been pure joy - both for Prince and the audience. Sharing these concerts with L have been the greatest musical experiences I could imagine.

The dedication and enthusiasm we brought to these shows as a couple were only outdone by the enthusiasm, energy and grandiose perfectionism that Prince brought to the stage every night.

But even these amazing performances at the Forum weren't the peak of our Prince musical journey this month. The peak came somewhere else entirely...

Next Up: The Troubadour

If you want some more official, published reviews, here's some reactions to the LA Forum shows.

OCReloaded

LAList

The Owl Mag

Rolling Stone

Appetite for Deconstruction

The Live and Loud

New Houses and New Beginnings

Feels like it's been a long time coming, but L and I have finally moved into a house together. We discovered the most perfect not-so-little three bedroom in Westchester, CA, a tiny residential community where kids ride their bikes all the time, and you have expect a neighbor to bring you a freshly baked apple pie. There aren't many communities in LA like that.

We instantly made the house our own, despite the fact that it's only previous resident was a 90 year old woman we've named "Dorothy", who owned the house since 1948. I presume that she raised her family there, and we are now renting the house through a management company. Everything is original and impeccably maintained, and amazingly solid. They really knew how to make things in the 1940s. We are putting our touches on it, from shelves on the walls to searching for a new dining room pendant lamp, but we instantly felt at home.

One of the most satisfying things was seeing how much Z loved it. He's an urban city dweller, and has spent his scant lifetime in condos and apartments. I hadn't yet had the opportunity to give him grass and green, and now I do. We went to Home Depot, bought a board and some nice climbing rope and built a homemade swing in the backyard. He helped sand the board and keep the rope straight while Dad was working. When it was all put together, the smile on his face was utterly captivating.

The smile on L's face when she comes in each day is equally captivating, and she's adored making use of our rather over-sized kitchen, which even fits her beloved leather couch. We had our second Thanksgiving together, and are making a home. A home that we hope to be in for a long, long time.

It's where we are meant to be.

Dream Journal - Suburban Houses of Mirrors

For the last 6 months or so, I have been having a ridiculous amount of dreams. Almost nightly I will have 3 or 4 separate dreams which, like most people, fritter away and disappear the moments after I wake up. Sometimes I piece together my oblique, highly detailed narratives for my girlfriend though, who marvels at the bizarre crap that comes out of my subconscious. My dreams are heavily populated by characters, locales, and incident, though little of it has any direct connection with my daily life.

Like last night, for instance.

I was at the edge of the street down the block from my house in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin (I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee). A row of non-descript suburban houses that you'll find anywhere. Not unlike below.

I know exactly what block this is, and it looks exactly the same, and completely different. Because instead of the usual 10 feet between houses, they are all packed close together. What's more striking is that every house is pristine white. The sideboards, the roofs, everything. It's a giant line of medicinal blahness, and you wonder why on earth anyone on this block would agree to turn their street into an IRS hallway.

Until I move down it. Quickly. Maybe in a car, maybe a bike. Suddenly I'm hit by an explosion of light passing each house, a kaliedescope of colors. It turns out that all of the front doors are set into a recessed, exterior foyer about 10-15 feet back from the front of the house itself. Each door on the block is a different color - red, blue, purple, yellow, etc. And coming out from each door is a V-shaped structure leading to the house's edge, splaying outward, and the V's are entirely lined with glass. Which causes a house of mirrors effect with the front door, reflecting and radiating the light in all different directions. An absolute explosion of color that completely changes your perception of this drab, white, antiseptic street.

It's kind of a crazy carnival of colors, and not what one would consider "classy". However, it's so genuine and full of life that it can't help but be inspiring. It's just oozing life and energy, like a Tim Burton movie where you don't understand how these people live, but you respect their utter dedication to the process.

But why this particular suburban block, that I have no actual affinity or connection to? I haven't thought of it in years, and nothing notable ever happened to me on that stretch of pavement. Maybe my subconscious is just suffused with the Arcade Fire's remarkable album, "The Suburbs". Each day or week I seem to be alternatingly obsessed with a new track. Currently, I adore the near-closing track, "The Sprawl 1 Flatland lyrics, which reminds me of a Spielberg version of the suburbs, circa "E.T.". Visions of kids on their bikes late at night:

Cops showing their lights
On the reflectors of our bikes
Said, do you kids know what time it is?
Well sir, it's the first time I've felt like something is mine
Like I have something to give

The idea of finally having ownership of something... your life itself, as a kid is something that you typically think of as a college psychology. However, those lyrics perfectly capture what it feels like the first time you get out of your house, staying out past your bedtime. Doing nothing, but it's still the most important thing in the world to you, at that moment.

We will see what moments my next dreams bring.

Lucky to Be a Failed Screenwriter

I sit with my glass of wine (the charmingly labeled bottle, Pinot Evil), my 5 year old sleeping in the next room. Watching the documentary TALES FROM THE SCRIPT, I consider how unbelievably lucky I am to be a failed screenwriter.

It's gratifying to listen to successful, (sometimes) famous screenwriters, discuss their craft, and hear that they view the profession and the process in exactly the same way that I did. They managed to make it work. I, however, did not. "The price of getting into the film business... is figuring out your path... How are you going to get over that wall?". I guess I never had the wherewithal to build the right kind of ladder to get over the wall, though I scrambled and scrabbled to varying degrees of recognition and rejection. "Nobody wants your stuff", William Goldman says.

I never got over that wall, and I eventually had the good luck to get a copywriting job. The irony is that screenwriting is the economy of style - it's architecture and structure, rather than florid prose. It's not poetry. It's mechanics with style. I ended up writing online marketing ads that show up every day when you search for Google, which makes the notion of screenwriting as economy almost absurd. It's 70 characters, all in. No story. Little creativity.

But it turns out it was creative. Creative in the way that it causes you to work with people, learn new skills, and discover talents you didn't know you have. My career has since flourished, and while I do some writing in my job, here and there, I'm no longer a writer.

The energy that entertainment has is, of course, undeniable. I was getting gas today next to Sony studios, looking at the water tank, and remembering the naive enthusiasm I had the first time I walked on that lot for an internship... "Oh my god, I'm in Hollywood. This is where IT happens".

Or it's where it doesn't happen. And even if it does happen, it goes through so many twists and turns, and ups and downs, that it leaves you hollowed, not remembering where you began - or why you began - to begin with.

But, yeah, whatever, you fucking whiner. Go back to Iowa. That's the message of the guy who didn't get it done. The failure. The one who walked way.

Yeah. All very true. And I'm not crying in my soup, and I'm probably making more money now than if I actually did turn into a "working screenwriter" (unless you make that million dollar sale kind of thing, etc.). And I don't want anyone to whine for me, because I love not having that feeling like you're chasing it every day. Chasing down people to like you, to validate you, to invite you in the room. To make you feel like that phone call is the most important thing in your day, in your life.

And listening to old screenwriters in a documentary... successful, impressive writers, that story doesn't change. Granted, I'll have to worry about ageism (as in Hollywood), unemployment, companies failing, etc, etc, etc. But when I walked away, I realized that I didn't want to spend every day in my life begging for that one phone call each day that makes me feel like a validated human being. "You have to get a hit EVERY time you're up to bat".

I've validated that for myself just fine, thank you, and I don't regret it at all. In fact, I barely miss it. Barely.

I just wish I had a good movie idea to write...

Worth the Effort

You think should be easy, but they aren't. Even something as seemingly simple as a vacation can be exceptionally complicated. There's travel issues, like spending 180 minutes in a Days Inn in Dublin, Georgia, which was 179 minutes too long. There are family issues, such as an unneeded drama between siblings that drags in my wonderful girlfriend. There is the frequent social ineptness of family members, such as a mother who wants to talk about nothing but my ex to my girlfriend - not exactly a way to engender a feeling of togetherness or connectedness. Suddenly what is supposed to be relaxing becomes fraught with drama and emotion. Not exactly the way you envisioned things going.

But somehow life is always like that.

Life is hard. Challenges are waiting for you every day when you wake up, and they're still lurking under the bed when you drift off to sleep. But that doesn't mean life is like a box of chocolates. Rather, it's like this:

A mango.

One of the most time-consuming pieces of fruit to eat. The peeling process is a pain in the ass, and it usually takes at least a minute, if not two, to successfully strip it of its rubbery shell. When you do, it's often overly juicy, which makes it hard to hold onto during those final swipes of your peeler. I have had more than one mango squirt out of my grasp into the garbage can below. Nothing that a little water can't solve.

Then you have to cut the mango. It never cuts very easily. When you see the Mexican fruit vendors do it, you start to suspect they might be using lightsabers rather than knives - it's never been that easy for me. You usually get a decent amount of fruit from two sides, but then you hone in on the others, and the whole thing kind of collapses around you, juice dribbling off the cutting board, yielding few treasures. You start to wonder why you bother. A banana's sitting over there, and by now it would've been eaten.

Then the mango's cut, but you're a pulpy, juicy mess, and you still need to get it all into a bowl. Do you wash your hands before grabbing a bowl, knowing that you'll get the bowl sticky? Or do you take the time to wash your hands and then fill up the bowl with that orange-yellow goodness? You choose the latter, but then you're inevitably going to get messy again, swiping the fruit into the bowl with the knife that's covered in goo. Then, if you want the mango to be really perfect, you need to put the whole thing into the fridge for awhile - chilled is better than room temperature.

Goddamn, getting to eat a fucking mango is a giant pain in my ass.

While it's already a piss-poor analogy, life is similar to the the preparation of a mango - it's filled with all the preparation, all the mind-numbing details you don't want to deal with, challenges that you don't anticipate when you first start, and there's frequently a sense of delayed gratification.

But then you eat it. And holy shit, all of the effort that goes into it is forgotten. It's all worth it. Because that mango is filled with flavor, texture. It warms everything about you, and makes any meal that you're eating all the more enjoyable.

And when you share that mango with the person that you adore, who you love in ways you can't even describe, it's the difference between just eating the mango, and savoring it. The challenges that got through to reach that point still exist, and they're still there, but they seem negligible, and they don't detract from the pleasure of that mango. Because you're eating it together. You both understand what it means to have gotten to that point, and to be in that place. Even if some of the mango juice dribbles down your chin.