Holy the Stall

I wanted to tell you about my job. I wanted to give you an insight into my day-to-day life working in Beverly Hills at a film financing company because I realize it's sort of an unusual niche in the entertainment industry. But every time I tried, I stumbled across a name of a company, person, or movie that I couldn't say. As of September 2, 2005, I'm bound to confidentiality by a Non-Disclosure Agreement.

So I decided I'd tell you about the ins and outs of my administrative duties. But telling you that I assembled 18 binders, bought shelves, or entered box office numbers in an excel spreadsheet didn't seem that interesting. So I finally settled on something I could talk about, something sufficiently interesting: the Women's Bathroom's at the end of our hall.

For the past week a light has been flickering in the second stall from the right. Each stall has it's own circular light, and for the last several days stall #2 has had it's own strobe. Every time I stepped in and closed the door, I either felt like busting a Saturday Night Fever move, or throwing myself on the floor in an epileptic fit.

That all changed today, when I walked out of the bathroom and found Victor, the electrician, standing outside of the door with a walkie-talkie and a ladder. "Can we go now, David?" he said holding the walkie-talkie to his mouth. Later, I made my way back to the restroom and found that Victor and David had replaced the blinking light. Only the new bulb was several watts brighter and whiter than the mellow lighting in the rest of the bathroom. So now, stall #2 looks like someone's getting beamed to the Mother Ship, or a Saint of public restrooms has descended between it's walls.

I made sure to use stall number 2. I’ll probably use it every single time. You just can’t walk away from an opportunity like that!

Ariel Sharon, Pat Robertson, and Free Association

Ariel Sharon, Pat Robertson, and Free Association

Wednesday
I read the "Jerusalem Journal" an e-journal written by an acquaintance who lives in Israel. She writes about Ariel Sharon, his stroke, and the stress it's causing in her country.

Thursday
I'm sitting in San Sai waiting on an order of California Rolls and teriyaki chicken. On the wall a flat screen TV streams CNN news muted. A thin band of words roll across the bottom of the screen. I see Ariel Sharon's name. A few minutes later, a man with white hair speaks to the camera.
"I know him," I say to myself studying his low brow-line and round nose. Suddenly, a name pops into my head -- Pat Robertson.

Saturday
As I'm cooking breakfast, Dwayne sits on the living room floor leafing through the LA Times. He hollers into the kitchen, "Christin, do you know who Pat Robertson is?"
"Yeah."
"Do you know who Ariel Sharon is?"
"Yeah,"
"Well, Pat Robertson's saying he's had his stroke because God's punishing him for dividing God's land."
Later, I read Robertson's exact words on CNN: "He was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations or the United States of America...God says, 'This land belongs to me, you'd better leave it alone.'"

Wednesday (Three weeks earlier)
I'm sitting in a seminar about children's literature. Next to me, Amy, my modern orthodox (Jewish) friend, clicks away on her laptop. The class is having a discussion about high school reading lists. We're discussing _Lord of the Flies_, _The Great Gatsby_, and other 9th Grade classics.
One woman with red hair raises her hand. "We recently had to remove _Catcher and the Rye_ from our 9th grade reading list because a group of Christian parents boycotted it."
The room hums in disappointment. I'm disappointed too.
"Those are your people," Amy says shouldering me with a wink, but when she sees I'm disappointment she pauses. She looks thoughtfully for a moment then says, "But that's not how their supposed to be, right?"