YEAR SIXTEEN

WHERE....?

Oooookay.

This is a story better told than read.  So I advise you to call me right now and I'll tell you the story.  But until you find my phone number.....

When I moved to LA, I had no car.  (Or job or apartment or friends or money or clothes, or...... but that's another story.)  I had to take the Metro.  I was living in Koreatown and I took the Metro subway downtown to go to the library.  (I had no TV or computer either so my days were: take the bus to work at Rizzoli's Bookstore in Beverly Hills, then come home and read all of Shakespeare's plays as I listened to the books-on-tape productions that I rented from the downtown Library.)

In New York, you swipe a MetroCard or put in a token, go through the turnstiles and voila: subway ride.  In Los Angeles, you bought your ticket at a kiosk which apparently gives you one-way or roundtrip tickets.  And these tickets expire.  So I bought a one-way (I was broke and bought the cheapest one, not really getting that I should BUY a roundtrip) and went downtown.  On the way back, some policemen walked through the subway checking tickets.  They checked mine, said it was expired and charged me $75.

I couldn't pay $75.  That was insane.  So they told me I could take it to traffic court.  Which I did.

I went downtown early in the morning and was ushered into traffic court with five hundred other people.  I sat down in this sea of humanity and the bailiff stands up and says "All rise, Judge (I Have No Idea What His Name Was) presiding."  Into the courtroom comes this nebbish, balding, very Jewish guy in his late forties with a look on his face that just screams "Kill me now what has my life come to?"  He sits down and starts to take these traffic court tickets.

A long time passes.

A case ends and he looks down at the next case.  Staring at the card he say, "Jose Luis Rodriguez?" (or something)  A Mexican guy stands up, takes off his hat and holds it in front of his chest as he looks up at the judge.

The judge looks at the ticket.

He looks over the bench down at the Jose.

He looks back at the ticket.

Staring at the ticket he says:

"And where are the chickens now?"



I don't remember anything else.  I was practically stabbing myself to keep from laughing.  To this day, it makes me laugh.

Well, I apparently hadn't told this story to my family.

So years later, I told them.  And they laughed until they cried.

And the next year, this was the Snakespoon:

Short of the chickens, this is exactly what he looked like.  The head is even at the perfect angle.  I also appreciate that he doesn't have eyes.  It just makes the look.