L.A. Boondoggle

I’ve never really talked much about where I’m currently living other than to say that I’m somewhere in Hollywood. I did this for a couple reasons, mainly because I’m too lazy to write in general but also because I didn’t want to give away any clues to my legions of fans that would ultimately try and find me. Seeing as how no one looks at this page and even if by some fluke the site actually garnered some sort of popularity, it’d still take months for that to happen and I’ll be long gone by then. So, without further adieu, I’d like to talk about Crazy Guy.

My neighbors call him “The Demon” and claim to have all rights to naming him since they moved in a month before I did but I think with careful enough campaigning I can make the name “Crazy Guy” stick. Crazy Guy, or CG as I’ll refer to him in this bit, is a man who lives in the apartment complex next door. He can often be heard screaming through the windows of the bedrooms adjacent to his building. CG doesn’t just scream randomly though, he seems to be trying to convey and actual message. When I first heard him he said something like, “BURY THE DOG IN THE CESS POOL!!!!!”. I didn’t really see that one coming so it both scared the shit out of me and intrigued me and the same time. This was followed by weird high pitched chipmunk noises, heavy panting, and him using a spray bottle of some sort. As weird as that all sounds, withing a few days I realized that it was par for the course for Hollywood living, I got used to it.

After a few weeks I noticed that crazy guy started branching out and started to address issues that didn’t concern dogs or cess pools. He once said “WAKE UP YOU TROGLODYTES!!!!!”, I’m not too sure why on that one but I was impressed with his vocabulary, “troglodyte” isn’t a word that you hear every day. Another time he said “DEPORT THAT BABY!!!” when our Guatemalan apartment manager’s baby was crying in the morning. As the variety of his phrases increased, so did their frequency. It seemed as if CG was preparing for something big, something newer and crazier that would blow us all away. Finally one day we heard. . . nothing.

It one point I could hear crazy guy nearly every 20-30 minutes, now the winter had come and I didn’t hear so much as one dog pant or a single spray of the spray bottle. Everyone in the complex seemed to have their own theories for CG’s silence. Some thought that he might have been hauled away finally, others thought he might have moved. My own personal theory was that it was too cold outside so he kept the window closed and that’s why we couldn’t hear him. The months went by and the winter grew colder and as the tourism season faded, so faded the voice of our beloved Crazy Guy.

Finally one day in early March I came home from school and went to my bed to relax a little and waste some time on the laptop. I hadn’t opened my window in a while but the weather was warming up so I figured I’d give it a try. Upon opening the window I heard a voice that I hadn’t heard before. The voice, in a raspy whisper, said “It’s a dog shit city!” and some other gibberish that I couldn’t make out. Traditionally crazy guy has always used a booming throaty scream to voice is statements, this was something new. After CG finished ranting about the dogshit city he finished off with the spray bottle and a loud slam of the window, thus confirming that the cold of winter was gone and he was now back in action.

Since then I haven’t heard too much variety, most of the ranting I hear is about the dogshit city. Apparently it has to do with the people who live across from him who don’t pick up their dogshit that often. You can tell when there’s quite a buildup because CG will shout out with all his might, “PICK UP YOUR DOGSHIT, ASSHOOOLE!!!!”.  Sometimes I think the guy is completely crazy but there’s those other times when I’m not so sure. Those times, like right now, when I get a whiff of something that’s either dogshit, weed, or a combination of both that make me wonder if we’re dealing with a sane man who screams a lot and we’re the crazy ones for putting up with the madness that we’ve so gotten used to.