frequenting franchised theme-restaurants with artificial, possessive-case names like McTuckey's or O'Dooligan's. He knows all variations and
nuances of tassel loafers. ("I could never wear your shoes, Andy. They've got moccasin stitching. Far too casual.")
Not surprisingly, he's a control freak and considers himself in-formed. He likes to make jokes about paving Alaska and nuking Iran.
To borrow a phrase from a popular song, he's loyal to the Bank of
A merica. He's thrown something away and he's m e a n .
But then Tobias also has circus freak show good looks, so Dag and
I are envious. Tobias could stand on a downtown corner at midnight and cause a traffic gridlock. It's too depressing for normal looking Joes.
"He'll never have to work a day in his life if he doesn't want to," says Dag. "Life is not fair." Something about Tobias always extracts the phrase, 'life's not fair' from people.
He and Claire met at Brandon's apartment in West Hollywood a
BREAD AND CIRCUITS:
The electronic era tendency to
few months ago. As a trio, they were all going to go to a Wall of Voodoo view party politics as corny —no
concert, but Tobias and Claire never made it, ending up instead at the longer relevant or meaningful or
useful to modern societal
Java coffee house, where Tobias talked and Claire stared for the night.
issues, and in many cases
Later on, Tobias kicked Brandon out of his own apartment. "Didn't hear dangerous.
a w o r d T o b i a s s a i d t h e e n t i r e e v e n i n g , " C l a i r e s a y s , " H e c o u l d h a v e been reading the menu backward for all I know. His profile, I tell you, it's VOTER'S BLOCK: The
attempt, however futile, to
deadly."
register dissent with the
They spent that night together, and the next morning Tobias waltzed current political system by
simply not voting.
into the bedroom with one hundred long-stemmed roses, and he woke
Claire up by gently lobbing them into her face, one by one. Then once she was fully awake, he heaped blood red Niagaras of stem and petal onto her body, and when Claire told Dag and me about this, even we
h a d t o c o n c e d e t h a t i t w a s a w o n d e r f u l g e s t u r e o n h i s p a r t .
"It had to be the most romantic moment of my life," said Claire,
"I mean is it possible to die from roses? From pleasure? Anyhow, later that morning we were in the car driving over to the farmer's market at Fairfax for brunch and to do the L.A. Times crossword puzzle with the pigeons and tourists in the outdoor area. Then on La Cienega Boulevard I saw this huge plywood sign with the words 700 Roses only $9.95 spray
painted on it, and my heart just sank like a corpse wrapped in steel and tossed into the Hudson River. Tobias slunk down in his seat really low.
Then things got worse. There was a red light and the guy from the booth comes over to the car and says something like, 'Mr. Tobias! My best customer! You're some lucky young lady to always be getting flowers from Mr. Tobias here!' As you can imagine, there was a pall over
breakfast."
Okay okay. I'm being one-sided here. But it's fun to trash Tobias.
It's easy. He embodies to me all of the people of my own generation who used all that was good in themselves just to make money; who use their votes for short -term gain. Who ended up blissful in the bottom-feeding jobs—marketing, land flipping, ambulance chasing, and money b r o k e r i n g . S u c h s m u g n e s s . T h e y saw themselves as eagles building mighty nests of oak branches and bullrushes, when instead they were really more like the eagles here in California, the ones who built their nests from tufts of abandoned auto parts looking like sprouts picked off a sandwich—rusted colonic mufflers and herniated fan belts—gnarls of freeway flotsam from the bleached grass meridians of the Santa Monica freeway: plastic lawn chairs, Styrofoam cooler lids, and broken skis —cheap, vulgar, toxic items that will either decompose in minutes or
nuances of tassel loafers. ("I could never wear your shoes, Andy. They've got moccasin stitching. Far too casual.")
Not surprisingly, he's a control freak and considers himself in-formed. He likes to make jokes about paving Alaska and nuking Iran.
To borrow a phrase from a popular song, he's loyal to the Bank of
A merica. He's thrown something away and he's m e a n .
But then Tobias also has circus freak show good looks, so Dag and
I are envious. Tobias could stand on a downtown corner at midnight and cause a traffic gridlock. It's too depressing for normal looking Joes.
"He'll never have to work a day in his life if he doesn't want to," says Dag. "Life is not fair." Something about Tobias always extracts the phrase, 'life's not fair' from people.
He and Claire met at Brandon's apartment in West Hollywood a
BREAD AND CIRCUITS:
The electronic era tendency to
few months ago. As a trio, they were all going to go to a Wall of Voodoo view party politics as corny —no
concert, but Tobias and Claire never made it, ending up instead at the longer relevant or meaningful or
useful to modern societal
Java coffee house, where Tobias talked and Claire stared for the night.
issues, and in many cases
Later on, Tobias kicked Brandon out of his own apartment. "Didn't hear dangerous.
a w o r d T o b i a s s a i d t h e e n t i r e e v e n i n g , " C l a i r e s a y s , " H e c o u l d h a v e been reading the menu backward for all I know. His profile, I tell you, it's VOTER'S BLOCK: The
attempt, however futile, to
deadly."
register dissent with the
They spent that night together, and the next morning Tobias waltzed current political system by
simply not voting.
into the bedroom with one hundred long-stemmed roses, and he woke
Claire up by gently lobbing them into her face, one by one. Then once she was fully awake, he heaped blood red Niagaras of stem and petal onto her body, and when Claire told Dag and me about this, even we
h a d t o c o n c e d e t h a t i t w a s a w o n d e r f u l g e s t u r e o n h i s p a r t .
"It had to be the most romantic moment of my life," said Claire,
"I mean is it possible to die from roses? From pleasure? Anyhow, later that morning we were in the car driving over to the farmer's market at Fairfax for brunch and to do the L.A. Times crossword puzzle with the pigeons and tourists in the outdoor area. Then on La Cienega Boulevard I saw this huge plywood sign with the words 700 Roses only $9.95 spray
painted on it, and my heart just sank like a corpse wrapped in steel and tossed into the Hudson River. Tobias slunk down in his seat really low.
Then things got worse. There was a red light and the guy from the booth comes over to the car and says something like, 'Mr. Tobias! My best customer! You're some lucky young lady to always be getting flowers from Mr. Tobias here!' As you can imagine, there was a pall over
breakfast."
Okay okay. I'm being one-sided here. But it's fun to trash Tobias.
It's easy. He embodies to me all of the people of my own generation who used all that was good in themselves just to make money; who use their votes for short -term gain. Who ended up blissful in the bottom-feeding jobs—marketing, land flipping, ambulance chasing, and money b r o k e r i n g . S u c h s m u g n e s s . T h e y saw themselves as eagles building mighty nests of oak branches and bullrushes, when instead they were really more like the eagles here in California, the ones who built their nests from tufts of abandoned auto parts looking like sprouts picked off a sandwich—rusted colonic mufflers and herniated fan belts—gnarls of freeway flotsam from the bleached grass meridians of the Santa Monica freeway: plastic lawn chairs, Styrofoam cooler lids, and broken skis —cheap, vulgar, toxic items that will either decompose in minutes or
Similar Books
In the Court of the Yellow King
Tim Curran, Cody Goodfellow, Gary McMahon, C.J. Henderson, William Meikle, T.E. Grau, Laurel Halbany, Christine Morgan, Edward Morris
