Lost Years Part Deux

After taking a degree in Comparative Mendacity at UNC, I took a three-week class at
Planned Parenthood of Orange County and received a certificate in family planning. Once I got to California, I managed to convince a number of key people that my family planning certificate was actually a license to practice family therapy. That is how I became a Hollywood marriage counselor. I took a job at a big marriage counseling firm called Goldman, Sachsen, Bosch and Gauche. I was part of the team that worked on the Tom Cruise/Nicole Kidman file. That was our biggest case for a while and we put a lot of resources into it. I remember many late nights, scarfing Chinese take-out, and brain storming with some of the sharpest minds in the business in an all-out effort to keep Tom and Nicole together. The work was so intense that we went on teamwork and leadership retreats every couple of months or so. It was like the Manhattan Project, with a black budget and everything. As the scope of the project went spiraling out of control, the folks at corporate came to their senses. They farmed it out to another firm and broke up the team. I was demoted to deputy secretary of Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie. I was supposed to convince members of Angelina’s family to convince Angelina not to adopt that Cambodian baby, as that, we all knew, would run Billy Bob off for good. Well, we all know how that turned out. Shortly after that debacle I left counseling and went to work in Las Vegas.

Step Four

I have reached step four in my recovery process: (Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves) and my therapist advised me to skip it. Actually what he did was lean way back in his chair and say something like “oooooh boy, let’s hold off on that one for a while,” then, later in the session, he explained that some people are just exceptional people and can skip steps altogether and still have valid recovery. So if anyone is ready for step four I’ve got one, totally unused. I haven’t touched it, although I was getting pretty geared up to take it on (I have done some really nasty shit), I ended up just jumping on to step five (admit to God, ourselves and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs) because I have been given a pass on step four. Of course, without step four, I don’t have a whole lot of work to do here with step five, but Mister Therapist says, don’t worry, there’s plenty just in the air around me. Therapist has indicated also that when it comes to the whole can of worms known as steps eight and nine (make a list of all the people we have harmed then make direct amends to such people, except when to do so would injure them or others) that we will in all likelihood just blow through them as well, and so I will soon be offering them too.

The Lost Years

Many of you have been asking me what I was doing during the lost years. Many stories abound, some true, some not so true. I did, in fact, spend several months of the first half of this decade as an endangered white tiger in Siegfried and Roy's acclaimed magic act at the Mirage in Las Vegas. What, you thought those were real tigers? No, look closely, those are people in tiger suits. I used to be one of them. And let me tell you, that is no easy way to earn a dollar. I played a tiger called Mantra. And before you ask, no, I was not the one that nearly bit Roy Horn's head off on October 3rd, 2003. That cat was one crazy MF named Marty Banks. He was a wildman. I often wondered how he ever got hired in the first place. He played a lot of pranks backstage, most of which involved various objects bursting into flame or even exploding. No one suspected that he was going to try to bite the bossman's head off. He just about succeeded. It was a real show stopper. Everyone was fired when the show went on hiatus. They've hired a whole new crew now, and a new HR person. I've heard it's much different now.

A Great Man

My father Sam Gray passed along to me a belief in the importance of both intellectual curiosity and hard physical labor. He could contemplate the cosmos in a deeply reverential manner and at the same time interact with others in way that was shockingly irreverent and sarcastic. He raised me from a pup and could improvise a bedtime story on the spot. Although it is true of everyone, with him it seems to really mean something to say that there will never be another one like him. At some point he inhaled a bacteria that laid inside him for a time then proceeded to wreck most of the systems that kept his body alive. He is no longer physically with us but most who knew him will carry along part of who he was for a good long while. Hopefully not the dangerous bacteria part.

Worst pruning job, continued

One of the strangest things this guy did was to take the top completely off this beautiful weeping yaupon. It almost reached the roofline before he got to it. Nobody told him to do this. The homeowner was pretty upset.

Below is an Otto Luyken laurel that was given a flat-top with some gas-powered hedge shears. So much for this year's bloom!
It took about a half an hour to remove all the damage:
All-in-all I spent seven hours here, generating an invoice for $315. If you think that is expensive, you can call the guy with the gas-powered shears. He's much faster! I couldn't get this homeowner to tell me who it was, however...

The above picture shows some stubs and even a dead branch that the guy left. Below is what it looked like after I cleaned it up. The sad thing is that this was a beautiful, mature crapemyrtle.

Worst pruning job ever

I am often called when people are unhappy with bad pruning jobs done by others. I have seen some bad pruning habits in the past but nothing like this. Whover did this broke just about every pruning guideline in the book. Maybe he was pretending that it was "opposite day." He cut healthy branches and left dead ones. He cut large branches that were growing out and left those growing inward and rubbing. He left big stubs everywhere. It looks like he was using a chainsaw.