There is a los angeles institution called Zankou Chicken - beloved by locals and immortalized in a Beck song. Occasionally I’ll go there for a quick and delicious dinner. And there’s a couple of guys in the too-tight parking lot who will “help” you park, mostly by motioning wildly towards an empty spot. They’re friendly and I usually try to give them some change when I come out.

Tonight, one asked me for a couple of bucks for dinner, and I stood there carrying a dinner in my hand. So I gave him a couple of bucks and my dinner. I figured I could go without dinner for one night; this guy probably does it all the time. Sure, call it liberal bleeding heart guilt, or just call it empathy, but it was an easy and rewarding new thing.

But I’m going back tomorrow for more Zankou, and you can bet your ass I’m eating it this time.

Today’s all new thing: Attend a dual lecture on Entomology and Etymology. The fine people at Machine Project (quickly becoming my favorite place in Los Angeles) decided to host talks about both Entomology (bugs) and Etymology (language) simply because the words sounded familiar. To complete the theme, they served Edamame and Ennteman’s donuts.

I arrived a little peeved, as the friend who was supposed to have accompanied me dropped out at the last minute. After last night’s bar debacle, my morale was low, and I skulked in a corner, reluctant to even partake in the free donuts. Then I noticed somebody familiar.

There is an odd and new sensation with the rise of the Me Internet 3.0 - a web full of people posting videos, writing, and photos of themselves. It is when you recognize somebody simply because they are a friend-of-a-friend. This is what happened when I noticed Daniel, who is all over my friends’ flickr streams. He had the same look in his eye - are we friends, or do we just play them on the internet. We said hello, asked how long it had been since we had last seen one another. I wasn’t completely certain that we ever had. But given the choice I’d rather pretend to have a friend than have none (which explains my legion of imaginary friends in my childhood) so i sat next to Daniel and his girlfriend Zoe. They might be the cutest couple in the universe: Hip, funny, friendly, outgoing, and the sort of impossibly attractive people that I’d usually hold a grudge against if they weren’t being so nice to me.

Daniel and Zoe were great companions to the lively discussion that followed. Eve Tulbert from UCLA gave a spirited talk about language, how it changes, how it evolves, and how we control it. Particularly of interest: Dictionaries only started coming into existence when large governments needed everybody to agree on the definitions of words so that taxes and levies could accurately be collected. Before we started writing it all down, language was a fluid thing, and Eve argued that it should remain that way.

Also of note: this is the long-winded, full title of the first English dictionary:

In the end Eve ripped pages from a dictionary and set them aflame, partially to show us that we can escape from the tyrrany of pre-defined language, partially because fire is way cool. She then doused the flames, fished out a few letters, and used them to create a new word: Timverly. What does it mean? Whatever we wanted it to.

I personally thought Timverly sounded like a stripper’s name. I didn’t mention that just yesterday, I invented the word “hermitty” in a post. I also wondered to myself what Ms. Tulbert’s take on our president would be. In her anarcho-linguistic theory, his mangling of the English language would just be an evolution. As would those damn punk kids nowadays with their truncated idiot-savant txt-speech.

As a writer, I like words having set meanings, so I’m not sure I fully subscribe to her theory. After all, if we all didn’t agree on what the word “theory” meant in the previous sentence, it may seem to various people I was talking about her dog, her toe, or her fried-onion recipe.

Next up was Entomology, and the speaker was Brent Karner, who actually ran the Bug Faire at the Natural History Museum that was one of my new things lo those many months ago. His talk was very energetic and spirited, and he brought with him many examples of the bugs he was talking about. I’m sure he imparted many bits of wisdom, but mostly it was a show-and-tell of creepy-crawlies, and fun to watch the room either lean forward to look closer, and lean back in fear.

Interesting facts learned:

No spiders are “poisonous” - that word means it will poison you if you eat them. Some spider are, however, “venomous”

Peanut Butter and Ketchup have the highest amount of bug parts in them. The reason Ketchup bottles have a paper label at the top is to keep you from seeing what may have floated to the surface.

The government doesn’t expect food producers to have no bugs in their product. They just have a percentage of bug parts food manufacturers need to keep under.

There are hundreds of reports of brown recluse spider bites in California a year. But there are no brown recluse spiders here. Doctors mis-diagnose things all the time.

Our fear of spiders comes from the middle ages, when the plague would kill whole families. When those families were found weeks later, the bodies had attracted flies, and those flies had attracted spiders.

Scientists were often puzzled how vegetarians and vegans got the appropriate levels of protein in their diets. Now studies show that it may be from their accidental eating of bugs in food.

I started All New Year in an attempt to try new things - to bust out of my fairly intellectual shell and explore the non-nerdy worlds of faith, extreme sports, and severe public humiliation. But as I go on, I discover the things I enjoy most are those nerdy pursuits. It’s the sort of pointless yet gratifying academic wheel-spinning that I don’t get to do enough of since college was over. Let’s talk about the meaning of meanings of words! Let’s discuss bugs as a viable food source! Let’s do it all while eating donuts and soybeans!

It may not sound exciting. But it’s the sort of thing I hope I continue to explore when the All New Year project is over. I may never skydive again, or take another trapeze lesson, and I’m pretty certain I won’t drive naked or pee in an adult diaper, but if you asked me to attend a lecture about bugs and words, well, shiver me timverly - I’m there.

Today, with infinite thanks to my friend Russ, I wrote and recorded a “Nerdcore Rap” track. Russ is a fixture in the Nerdcore scene with his awesome group Dead Circuits. Nerdcore is exactly what it sounds like - nerds, rapping about nerdy things. It seemed to fit me.

My hip-hop name was MC Snugglebunny, and Russ concocted the beat under his nom-du-sythm Amoebafingers. He did all the hard work; I just laid down the mad rhymes. Please enjoy the hip-hop masterpiece that is “Force Quit”.

Right click to save to your hard drive, add it to your ipod, and blast it from your maserati.

Force Quit!

(Lyrics in the comment section for anybody who is interested)

Tonight we had an office get-together at one of my favorite L.A. bars, the Smogcutter. This is the sort of joint where regulars are seemingly bolted to their stools at the end of the bar, the grafiti in the bathroom changes more often than the toilet paper roll, and the rude thai bartenders yell, “Why you no tip me more!?!” and will often grab your ass. I sorta love it.

I had never, though, had the signature drink of the Smogcutter, which was called, of course, The Smogcutter. It is made by putting Kaluha, Vodka, Anger, Virgin’s Blood and The Tears of a Newborn Child in a shot glass (I may be fuzzy on the recipe). Then the whole shebang is set on fire, for my all new thing: A flaming drink.

I got one for Hank as well, a sturdy and brilliant young P.A. who was leaving our show for greener pastures. I figured buying him a drink which was on fire would endear me to him when, in five years, he is running Hollywood with a coke habit and a six-picture deal.

Not being used to the ettiquette for the flaming drink, I reached to take mine from the bar. “No, no, no!” the surly bartender cried, and I brought my hand back. But apparently I had upset the delicate balance of the shot enough to slosh a tiny bit of the liquid onto my finger, which was now on fire. I did not have time to think that this was a bad thing. I merely said, “Hey. My finger’s on fire.” and then casually blew it out. So having a flaming finger is a second new thing.

The bartender put out the flames on our shots and Hank and I downed them like the champs we are. They were sweet and surprisingly warm. With less than a month left in the All New Year, let’s hope this is the only time I’ll have to have a body part aflame.

Today, I celebrate the Japanese holiday of Setsubun.

Thanks to my brother-in-law, who made this suggestion, today I celebrated National Wear Red Day, a day in which people wear red in order to symbolize women and heart disease. Or else they wear red because it’s just what they picked out that day. Personally, I chose a bright red tie and wore it with pride, but as a social movement it didn’t really change any lives. Nobody even asked. If it was “National Wear A Slowly Defrosting Turkey On Your Head Day”, perhaps I would have gotten a few questions, and then I could have answered, “Oh, it’s for Women and Heart Disease. Where’s your Slowly Defrosting Turkey? Am I to take it that you hate women and hope they all get heart disease?” As it was, I just had a red tie on, and nobody gave a rat’s ass.

Although I like to think that because I wore red, some woman did not die of heart disease. I’m sure I have that sort of cosmic impact.

As suggested by my friend Mike Lynch, today I decided to email a complete stranger. I chose “Joesmith@(evilcorporationhere).com” Here is the note I sent him.

Hey Joe!

How are you? It’s been ages. I really miss you. Sometimes I wonder whatever happened to that old man we left on the train… what was his name? Nickels?

Listen, I hate to be a jerk, but I need that shirt back. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot but it means something to me. I looked on ebay; they don’t sell those anymore, they were for fan club members of the Stretch Armstrong Club only so they’re really rare so if you could send it to me that would be awesome. I’ll send you the postage.

Every time I pass a fire hydrant I think of you… and your $175 ticket! LOL! Hope to hear from you soon!

–opus

I’ll let you know if Joe Smith replies, and if I get that Stretch Armstrong Fan Club T-shirt back.

–opus