Tao of Pauly

Five Block Radius

By Pauly
Los Angeles,CA

I watched a hipster chick do a face plant in the street, just off of Olympic Blvd. I snickered and didn't offer to help her up.

She was too busy texting while walking from the sidewalk to a double parked black Prius, driven by one of your prototypical L.A. Douchebags with too much hair gel blasting the latest Kings of Leon album. As she crossed the street, she was preoccupied with writing a text, maybe even a Tweet, and tripped on a piece of cracked pavement.

Her iPhone flew a few feet in front of her and slid underneath a parked car, she fell on her side and jumped right back up. I was surprised that she didn't stay on the ground and start crying. That's what I would have done. I think she was going on a date or something and she didn't want to be embarrassed by her lack of coordination. Her date jumped out of the car and freaked out.

ER doctors are experiencing a wave of injuries caused by people texting and doing other things. The most fatal antics include driving and texting. The most routine injuries? Falling down while texting. A couple of years ago, one famous poker player tore his kneee up pretty badly when he tripped down a flight of stairs in his own house while trying to answer an email on his BlackBerry. He didn't watch his step and BAM!

Of course, that wasn't the oddest thing I saw all week while walking around my neighborhood. That would be the dudes with the rug.

I can't really explain what I saw. but these two guys were driving down the street in a green pick up truck. They looked like construction workers. The young guy was white and the older guy was black. They stopped about a half a block away from me so I watched this go down as I approached them. Both guys jumped out of the truck and pulled a rug out of the back. It was wrapped up with one of those bungee chords. They plopped it on a patch of grass next to a palm tree. The young guy said something and the black guy started screaming at him. The young kid pulled out his cell phone and dialed the phone. As he put the phone to his ear, the black guy bitch -slapped him. He surprisingly did not drop the phone.

I decided to cross the street just in case one of them pulled out a gun. Both guys yelled at each other for about fifteen seconds, then they abruptly stopped. They didn't say another word and bent over to pick up the rug. They threw it in the back of their pick up and drove off.

Sometimes I see the same homeless guy wandering down Pico Blvd. I've seen him plenty of times before by the post office or in front of the Jack in the Box. He looks like he's in his 60s with a weathered face like an old catcher's mitt. He wears dirty jeans and an old courdory blazer, the one with patches on the sleeves. He looks like he could have been a college professor in the 1970s and lost his job and wandered around the streets of L.A. ever since while wearing the exact clothes he used to teach in.

As I stood on the corner and waited for the light to change, traffic sped past us and he peered into a trash can at the bus stop. He rummaged around for a few seconds before he pulled out a newspaper and a box of Jack in the Box fries. It was 85% full, too. I have no idea how old they were, but he stumbled upon a major food score in the trash.

I ran out of printer paper and made a run to Staples as soon as they opened up in the morning. I forgot that it was a Saturday on a holiday weekend just a round the time kids went back to school. Yeah, Staples was flooded with kids running amuck in search of school supplies. All I wanted was paper and a hole puncher. I also bought a binder and a pack of red pens and waited in line which seemed like an eternity since there was only one cashier ringing up a store full of shoppers.

There were three women standing in line in front of me but they had a total of 15 children and no less than half of them were little ones darting in and out of the line and screaming and crying that they wanted whatever items they say in front of them. We were in prime "impulse buy" territory and since the line didn't move, we were stuck in between two rows of random office supplies and candy. The kids were going apeshit and I wish that I smoked more pot before I wandered into Staples on a Saturday morning.