8 Heads in a Duffel Blog

Today is Friday, the 13th. However, it was yesterday that didn't go that well for me. I was in no blogging mood, thus the absence of an entry until now. A few things that pissed me off about yesterday:

• There is a quote from the New Haven Register Article on us that goes like this: " Gulyas is following up on another possible "in" at a production company. He says his sister knows someone whose cousin is a production assistant in L.A. "A lot of it is who you know," he says." Right. And my friend's father-in-law's niece's landlord's step-sister's fifth cousin's professor's gimp's pet snake's former owner says that just made me look like an asshole in front of New Haven County.
  
• A friend called me up after seeing the picture in the paper and said, and I quote, "Gees, you need to get some sun, Paul." I laughed and said, "I know!" Then as soon as I hung up the phone I ripped off my shirt, layed out on the deck, and lit myself on fire.
• I received an e-mail yesterday from my former boss at Laurel House, Inc., which I quit a week before moving out here. It said this:
  
  "paul - when you came to me that sad dark day to give me your notice - you fed me a story about "establishing residency in Cali so you can go to grad school and be that clinician you always dreamed of being..." So I wrote you a nice recommendation letter, gave you some leads of people to contact for jobs in clubhouses/human services, and sent you on your way with my best wishes.....
  
  
  but now, just today... I'm reading an article in the local Milford newspaper where a guy named Paul Gulyas - (who looks remarkably like you) is trying to break into "the business" as a screen writer. Is it true? Am I really that much of an ice queen that you couldn't just tell me that straight up? Did ya think I wouldn't be happy for you regardless?" Woah, that's funny, I feel like an asshole again! Deja Vu!
• My shades are still inexplicably not up.

But today has been better. It was a slow start this morning, but eventually I got Pat and Jorge to drive me to some car dealerships to check out cars. The first one we hit was a Chevy Dealer, where I checked out a Cobalt and some other more expensive car I forget the name of. They didn't look like bad deals, but I wanted to shop around. We next went to a Honda place which was ginormous. I looked at an Accord and a Civic. If you couldn't guess by what cars I'm looking at, I'm looking for the cheapest thing I can lease. I don't need power locks, GPS, a CD changer, a time machine in the glove compartment, and an Automated Road Head Simulator (ARHS). I just need an engine, four wheels, and something to steer it with. It doesn't even have to be a wheel, it can be like the stuffed head of an ox or something. Althought that would probably be more expensive than the wheel, I suppose.

So anyway, the Accord looked like a pretty good deal, so I wanted to get some figures written down so I could mull it over for a while and shop around town. Jose Cruz took me to his desk and sat me, Pat, and Jorge down across from him. He said before he could give me any quotes he needed to know about my credit. So he had me fill out this huge form which included my name, D.O.B, driver's license number, social security, screen name, and MySpace page (just kidding about the last two). I also had to fill out my present employer. But, as most of you know, I am not presently employed so I just left that blank. All this info was to do an instant credit check to see what the bank would offer me. So he took my papers and left the three of us sitting at his desk.

Suddenly, Howie Mandell climbed out of the hatchback next to us and took a seat at the desk. I was like "What the hell is going on!" He just smiled and looked at me and said "He is scared. He. Is. Scared." He was pointing when he said this, so I looked to where he was pointing to see this dimly lit room with the sillhouette of a man inside. I turned around to see Howie staring at me intently. I was like "Howie, seriously. The hatchback.... How?" Without warning, a phone on Jose Cruz's desk rang. Howie Mandell picked it up, nodded a little bit, then hung up. "He is ready to make you an offer," he says. "That offer is, since you don't have a job, we can not let you lease a car.... Deal?..... Or no deal?" Instantly the crowd of hundreds of Latino car salesmen were screaming insanely at me. I looked at Pat and Jorge. This was gonna be a tough one. Pat was telling me "NO DEAL" while Jorge was eagerly exclaiming "DEAL! DEAL!" The Latino car salesmen seemed about evenly split. Finally, I realized what I had to do. I looked at the red button in the glass case before me. "NO DEAL, HOWIE!!!!" The Latino car salesmen unhappy with this decision groaned as if they had just watched a matador get shanked by the bull's horns. Jorge looked like he wanted to hit me. I turned around to see the silhouette of the banker giving me the finger with both of his hands.

Then the actual real car salesman guy (not Jose Cruz, some Philipino guy named Ed who I think thought he was black) came back and told me he needed somebody with a job and good credit to co-sign or else I couldn't get a car there. So we left.