Uber U

P IS FOR PHARMACIST

I drive.

Always have, always will, till they rip the windshield from my cold, cataracted eyes.

And now I get paid for it.

I drive for Uber, that radical company that believes people should be able to move people from place to place in cars that aren't yellow and metered. Get the app, click, pay, ride. Simple.

Except every city they try to go into fights them. Taxi companies have formidable lobbyists.

Thing is, in every city, Uber wins. Eventually.

So I drive.

And I write. Did that professionally for 30 years in Hollywood, till somebody fresh out of the Draw-The-Doggie-On-This-Matchbook Film School decided I was too old.   So I moved to another part of the country, found this, and started doing one of the other things I always wanted to do.

Hear about someone else's life on a daily basis.

And...

You know that old cliche, "Everybody has a story"?

Cliches are born in reality.

So I figured I'd take the only two skills I have on this earth and put them together. Learn stuff in the car and tell you what I find out. Is it TAXICAB CONFESSIONS? No, because I'm not a taxi driver and I haven't had a beautiful rider go down on me yet. It's more what the internet can be at its best:   a tool for learning things you didn't know you didn't know.

So, herewith...

Today's rider was a Pharmacist. Picked him up outside a major drug store and took him to his hotel. Turns out he was on loan from a big city 150 miles away.   That's right, you can be a substitute teacher (er, pharmacist) from that far away. Came down for one day.

But it gets more interesting. This was his last day before he moved across country to take a job in Buffalo.

Think about it. You're schlepping your entire life 3000 miles away, and the day before you go, you have to take a quick little 300 mile roundtrip.

All things considered, he was in remarkably good spirits.

Things I learned:

Some drug treatments can cost more than you ever imagined. A new drug for Hepatitis C? $1000 a dose, twice a day, 12 weeks. $168K. Does insurance cover it? Roll the dice.

Pharmacists get more respect from doctors than they do from their colleagues. Why? Well, doctors need the real world feedback pharmacists can give them. But many pharmacists started out wanting to be doctors, then couldn't hack med school. Hence, they brought all that arrogance to their new profession.

This guy is going to work for the VA. He says they're giving him a solid wage, AND THEY'RE PAYING OFF HIS COLLEGE LOANS! Yes, he said, that was the decider, even for Buffalo.

He went into pharmacy because he wanted to do research. A few months of 12 hour days with only rats for company convinced him that little Egbert's runny nose was a lot more interesting.

And, oh, that drug expense? It gets worse. Some treatment courses are a million dollars. Covered? See above.

*********************

I'm going to file these items a couple three times a week, or as often as someone interesting climbs in the car . Some will be long, some short. Some will be some slap-yourself-in-the-forehead brilliant, some boy-he-had-to-fill-space-today crap. But whatever, there's a whole buttloada learning to do out there. I can't do all the heavy lifting myself. Come along with me. In the immortal words of Oat Willie...

"Onward through the fog..."

P IS FOR PIERCER

I know, I know, it's been forever since we talked. And I've already contradicted my first headline.

Point one: check out how many one post blogs there are on this site. It's easy to get cranked the first time. Then you have to get it up again and again.

Point two: sue me. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Or, in this case, inconsistency. By which I mean, I HAVE consistency in the headline, which I don't want, but I was trying for INconsistency, which means not using P, but... oh, never mind.

Double your subscription price back if you're dissatisfied.

Today's rider was a piercing expert. A young woman with one small nose stud. But upon careful examination, I also found two earlobe extenders (forgive me if my terminology is wrong) and a distinct hole in her columella.

Let's just pause there for a moment. "Columella: the tissue that links the nasal tip to the nasal base, and separates the nares." Did I tell you you'd learn stuff here?

Anyway, she had a hole there.

Things I learned:

She's visiting here from Indianapolis, which has recently taken away the title from Chicago as Murder Capital of the USA. "We're... number... UNNHHHH..."

She often drives the four hours to Chicago for "a little peace and quiet."

Mall piercers are the bane of her industry. She says not only do they use unsanitary equipment, but their implants are often made with cheap metal instead of surgical stainless steel. Major culprits among the trash metals include nickel and gold plate.

It takes as much as 8 years of anatomical study to be a piercing expert. Note that I didn't say "certified". She says there is no certification in her profession... something she laments. Her estimate is that she'll take about four years of classes and apprentice for four years.

Most piercers don't have their own shops. They travel from place to place like the old medicine show purveyors... albeit with (hopefully) more quality.

She doesn't think piercing is a fad. After all, she's about 25 and in this for her life's work. Piercings hot in the year 2050? Not bloody likely, according to me, but I've found being argumentative from the driver's seat can be a pain in the ass for riders.

Or the nose. Or the tongue. Or the nipple....

*****************************

Big Labor Day weekend. I'm hoping for some laborers. If we ever create a Drinker's Day, I'm golden. A big thank you to the sots who hire me instead of driving drunk. Somebody's family is deeply grateful. And so is my checking account.

Onward through the fog...

K IS FOR KUMORICON

OK, so first I use the same letter leading off a headline twice.

Then I go completely sideways and use an event instead of a job in the headline.

You know what? I have two choices here. I can hew to a mindless law, or I can let fly. My blog, my rules. Or, more precisely, my rules to make up as I go along.

Blarp. There. I just invented a word and put it in here for no earthly reason other than my own whim. God, creativity is fun.

But, as someone much smarter and just about as directionless as I once said... I digress.

So this weekend in our fair burg a little extravaganza called Kumoricon took over. It happens every year, and you know it's underway when all these cartoon characters come to life and populate our town square like rats in a John Carpenter movie. But cuter. WAY cuter.

Oops, did I say cartoon? My faux paws. This is ANIME, dammit, and don't you forget it.

Except for all the Supermen and Doctor Whos and Indiana Joneses that showed up, but you know what I think of mindless uniformity.

So, braving the torrents of minivans, driven by parents, spewing out these little Japanese characters... I set forth to drop a little uber on the premises.

One of today's riders was a participant. I wish I could tell you who he was portraying, but all I remember is "soldier in a very dark storyline." But this was one damned informative soldier.

What I learned:

The convention was based on anime alone, but people were very acceptive of any fantasy character you wanted to doll up as. (Literally... some of them looked like dolls. And some of those were actual girls.)

For a show to be anime, it has to be made in Japan. But anime is made all over the world. They just don't call it anime. Or aren't supposed to. But they do anyway. Kind of like champagne.

The girls often dress up as VERY sexually provocative characters, which, given the boys'... uh... social skills... translates extremely literally to them. Problem is, the girls aren't selling what the boys think they're advertising. The boys touch... the girls scream... and controversy ensues.

Anime and gaming are so closely wedded, you'd have to look long and hard to find someone at Kumoricon that isn't into both. So we started talking about gaming, and that's where things got really interesting.

For one thing, more and more girls are getting into gaming, especially online. Which sets them up perfectly as targets for boys' hostility (see: social skills.) So the irony is, in these fantasy worlds that mostly feature universal acceptance and tolerance... the Y chromosomes are still trashing the X's unmercifully.

But that's not stopping the girls. 48% of gamers are now female. And the average gamer is... wait for it... a woman about 35.

Games take an average of three years to build, and then are sent out with known bugs (HELLO, MICROSOFT.) Then on day one, people start reporting the hinky parts, and the crew goes back to work fixing them. If memory serves, he told me that World of Warcraft released in 2004, and they're still finding and repairing bugs.

(I started finding bugs in our script at the world premiere of one of our movies. Nobody ever went back and fixed them.)

His favorite game is one called PAPERS PLEASE. In it, you play a customs agent servicing a line of arriving passengers. That's it. But he says who you stop, who you don't, why, makes it absolutely fascinating. At least to him.

So was the whole world of the convention as a matter of fact. So I dropped him off and headed back into stuffed-animal-for-real land.

******************

So how we doing so far. Feeling exulted? Cheated? Feeling at all?

I'd like to hear about it. Write me at sonicironic@gmail.com.

Onward through the fog...

W IS FOR WINE BROKER

Yes, she was, but that's by far the least interesting part of her story.

I picked her up at her house overlooking the Columbia River. Big mansion, spectacular views.

And she was hot. VERY hot.

When I complimented her home, she responded graciously, saying she'd been there two years and had spent most of that time decorating it top to bottom according to her precise desires. As we headed for the airport, she told me she was a wine broker and was flying to Canada on business. And was looking forward to a champagne tasting that afternoon.

OK, I thought, letting my demons get the better of me for a moment. I was looking for someone to be droolmouth jealous of this morning, and she's my girl.

Until.

Until we talked a little longer.

And she told me how heartbroken she was to be selling the house. Nasty, nasty divorce.

And how depressed she couldn't help being, moving into a little two bedroom condo.

And how she was having trouble explaining it all to her developmentally disabled nine year old daughter.

And even as we barreled down the freeway in lighter-than-usual traffic, I could hear the tires squealing in my head. My psyche just fishtailed to a stop.

Here I was, doing precisely what I wanted, fabulous wife, nice home, income to live comfortably forever... and I was just about to go green-eyed monster on this woman...

... whose life was held together by paper clips and chewing gum.. .which she probably couldn't afford to buy at the same time.

What a cement head.

Don't judge a book by it's cover, walk a mile in my shoes, blah blah blah. I know, you've heard the story a million times. But living it, seeing it, being an intimate part of it for a few minutes... I knew that's what I had to write about today.

What I learned:

Come on. You know. Easy as 1, 2, 3.

1. I have this today.

2. I have that today.

3. I have the other thing today.

Easy to count... hard to make yourself stop in the middle of the day and just for five seconds, say, "Here's all the good stuff in my life. Here's how much worse it could be. Here's why I'm phenomenally lucky. Thank you."

So... maybe... try it? I did. And I felt... good.

Onward through the fog...

S IS FOR STRIPPER

Or E is for exotic dancer. Or A is for adult entertainer. Or O is for Oh hell, who cares?

I hit the jackpot.

Actually, let me be a bit more specific. I hit the jackpot as in one dollar scratchoff, not Powerball. THAT would have been a blog entry. Sadly, this is not... that.

We talked.

What I learned:

No, no, before we get started, let's take a pause here. These girls are not in the sex business. They're in the lying business. Everything they do from clock in to clock out is bullshit. It's like they work in a restaurant where you pay them to show you the food and then take it away. So the only stuff I'm reporting to you is what seemed to me to hold logical water.

Portland has a larger number of strippers per capita than any city in America. And yes, Las Vegas is a city, and yes, we can tits-and-ass them under the table.

Although no one has done a scientific survey, this particular young lady is convinced Portland has more tattooed strippers than any city in America, PERIOD. She was among them.

Strippers are not all from bad homes or child slavers. Some are actually... the C word.

Capitalists.

This young woman, for example, goes to business school in the daytime and dances at night. And... the coolest thing she told me... she asks her ringsiders what they do for a living, and, if it involves business, she gets their cards. Tells them she'll be calling when she graduates.

Now you may be thinking to yourself, if I'm in a strip club, and someone asks me my FIRST INITIAL, I'm gonna lie. No way in Hades I'm giving out my card.

Well, about a hundred of your closest associates disagree, at least to hear her tell it. That's how many cards she's gotten since she started dancing seven months ago. And she showed me maybe a dozen, in her purse from the last couple of nights.

On the other end of the spectrum, of course, are the Lost Girls. That's what she called them, with (my) apologies to JM Barrie. Confused, desperate, stopping for awhile in the latest of dead end jobs. But she claimed they aren't the majority, and that each of them she's known has told her about better jobs she's had... and much worse.

And another girl she identified as a 21st century hippie, living in her car and making money to buy food and dope. Next stop... who knows?

And yes, the money is great. She wouldn't be specific, but she says she makes three times what she did in her last straight job.

And she doesn't have sex with the customers.

I see that knowing wink. But I believe her, maybe less because I'm a gullible schmuck and more because she explained herself. Interestingly enough, she compared it to Vegas, and why the casinos never cheat you. They're making too much money legally to jeopardize that cash cow. Same with the clubs, she says. She's worked three establishments, and at each, the management has told her if she's caught turning tricks, she's fired. The City frowns on that... and they've pulled clubs' licenses.

Sadly, the ride came to an end all too soon. She offered me a comp door charge. I passed. But tomorrow night... who knows?

Onward through the fog...

R IS FOR RAP FANS

OK, it's official. I have the greatest job in the world.

You like yours? Yeah? When was the last time people chanted your name?

It had been a long day. Four trips, the last up north to a rap concert featuring Lil Wayne and Drake. Now I yield to no man in my total indifference to... nay, repulsion for... rap. Combine an urban experience with which I have little or nothing in common, with blatant sexism, violent posing and repetitive, unoriginal obscenity... and I'm out.

However...

... When I came back to town I got a fifth call. Cool. Bonus $ time. (Oh, wait a minute. Money is a rap trope. So maybe I'm not so alien to the culture. Dig me.)

Anyway, I picked up four guys downtown, and that's when the fun began.

Sarcasm not intended.

As is my wont, I asked them where they were going. The concert, they said. To see a couple of guys I wouldn't know anything about.

My response: "You mean Drake and Lil Wayne?"

(Parenthetical: despite my aversion to rap, I pride myself on eclectic tastes. Which is to say, I can bullshit anybody on any subject for five minutes or so.)

The car erupted in cheers. From one young man: "See? Never assume."

From another: "OK, I know it's early. But you're the leading candidate for my favorite uber driver."

From me: "Let's see if we can lock that down."

I mentioned that Lil Wayne had the home field advantage, because he's American and Drake is from Canada. (The extent of my knowledge of these two individuals.)

More whoops.

One guy held up his cell phone "You mind if we listen?" I said no problem, but I'm not sure if I can activate the Bluetooth. So I turned on Sirius.

Semi-orgasmic shouts. "He's got SIRIUS!!!"

Original guy: "That nails it. You're going down as my favorite driver EVER!"

They turned on a rap station. Began dancing in place.

What the hell, I thought. Let's close this deal.

I turned it up.

A moment of shocked silence. Then, almost as one, they yelled, "HE TURNED IT UP! HE TURNED IT UP!!"

And that's when it happened. The car rocked with the sound of it.

"CHRIS! CHRIS! CHRIS! CHRIS! CHRIS! CHRIS! CHRIS! CHRIS! "

Suddenly, I was Peyton Manning after his sixth TD pass.

And then we were there. They clambered out of the car. One forced a few bucks on me, despite the fact that tipping is unnecessary.

And they were gone, all of us agreeing wordlessly that we'd had one hell of a good time. And not one of them realized how far across the chasm I'd reached.

And I couldn't have given a mother******* sh** less.

Onward through the fog...

E IS FOR EDUCATIONAL CONSULTANT

Yeah, me neither.

I mean, what does he do, tell you how to pound erasers?

Uh... no. And that's the genesis of this column, remember? I told you I was here to get educated and pass that knowledge on to you. Well, behold.

The first false notion of which he disabused me is that he dealt with kids. Nope. Adults. People who want to go back to school and change their lives.

And there are whole lot more of them than you would imagine.

Which was, by far, my smallest surprise of the trip.

The largest? How about GO TO HARVARD FOR FREE?

I know, I know, it sounds like one of those "Attend my art school and become Picasso" come ons. It's not. (However, we will get to that aspect of things in a minute.)

No, what he told me is that any adult over 24 can go to college for free. ANY university. Meaning Podunk Community College to... yes... Harvard.

A couple of steps.

You have to be financially independent of your parents.

And you have to qualify for admission.

That's it, at least the way he tells it. According to this expert, if you have a low enough income as determined by that formula you might remember from college admissions the first time around, THE UNIVERSITY HAS TO MAKE UP THE DIFFERENCE.

Stunning, huh? Yes, according to him, you could theoretically go to Harvard for free.

So why do people eschew that to attend the Supercalifragilisticexpialedocious Institute for Teachingyoueverythingquick?

It's a scam.

Schools like the University of Phoenix, the Culinary Arts Institute, ITT Tech, etc etc etc are in existence for one reason. To separate you from your money. They qualify to get federal student loan funds just like the big boys.. .and something like 85% of their income derives from that.

Maybe $35k a year. Per student.

And what do you get for that?

He told me a recent graduating class from one of these con jobs numbered 127 (in nine months for a four year degree. Quick AND expensive!)

And of those...

2 got jobs.

Now full disclosure. As always, I'm reporting what he told me. And this was over the course of 3 rides.

Still.

My guy took me to school. Maybe you too, huh?

Onward through the fog..