Michael Jackson on unemployment

Since I gave up the 9-to-5 lifestyle to write a book, my free time has become much less valuable. I’ve been doing questionable things like listening to Catholic radio and watching YouTube videos of sports bloopers. I really should focus on writing, because my money and time are running out, but I took Monday off anyway to see This Is It, the new documentary about Michael Jackson’s last concert.

Going to the movies alone is fine, but there’s something slimy about seeing a Michael Jackson concert documentary by yourself. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s that I wore a leather jacket; actually, a pleather jacket. I feel like I should alert my neighbors that I just moved into their neighborhood.

But let’s get this straight: I’m above M.J. pedophile jokes. And how played out are the “M.J. used to be black” jokes? (They haven’t been funny since M.J. was black.)

So I got in my car and drove to Natomas. (Here’s a fun fact: In Spanish, I think the word Natomas means “I beat my wife and neglect my children but give my Hummer nightly sponge baths.”)

The movie theater was pretty much empty, except for a young couple sitting up front and an elderly lady with a Christmas-themed sweater in the middle row. As I went toward the back, she pointed to all the empty seats and said, “This is it!”

“Yup. It’s pretty empty,” I responded. And then I walked up to the very back row so the crazy old lady wouldn’t talk to me anymore.

To be honest, I can’t review the movie because I fell asleep. When I woke up, there was a lady on the screen, saying, “If you don’t have that goo, that ooze coming out of you, you’re not going to get the job.”

As intrigued as I was, I fell back asleep and woke up at the end, as the credits rolled.

Hungry from sleep, I walked over to the Hooters which, at 1:30 p.m. on a Monday, was full of real men—the kind of people who cut you off on the freeway and then follow you home to beat the shit out of you after you flip them off. And then go to Hooters. It took all my sensibility to not cross my legs as I sat at the wooden booth.

My waitress was either deaf, Russian or on some sort of Quaaludes, because she mumbled incoherently and I seriously couldn’t understand a word she said. I ordered the Buffalo chicken wings, smiled and nodded until she went away.

The Buffalo chicken wings were tasty, but it was awkward sitting in Hooters by myself, trying to avoid my deaf waitress. Just as I finished my last wing, it dawned on me: The lady in the movie theater with the Christmas sweater was making a pun. She pointed to the empty theater and said, “This is it,” which was the name of the movie we were going to watch. I laughed out loud with chicken bits flying out of my face. I couldn’t stop, even as three Hooters girls stood at the cash register, staring at me like they wanted to vomit and then call the police.