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I buy bad things
By Lawrence | February 19, 2008
my wife just told me ‘you buy bad things.’ this was in response to wanting to buy, for $2.95, a 30 day trial of derek gehl’s Insider Secrets Marketing Program. Wow. the ISMP, that is.
Lawrence: “It’s only $2.95 for a month, and then at the end, if you want to continue, just $212 more!”
Gitta: “You buy bad things.”
Lawrence (face now ashen): ‘…hmmm’ “Hey wait a minute! Stop telling me that! I buy good things too!”
Gitta: “Okay.”
so we decided that before i would buy it, i would call the 800 number tomorrow (its past midnight now), and find out their exact cancellation policy. If the CP mandates an Iranian postcard with invisible ink, then it will obviously become a draconian, kafkaesque carnival of pure joy to free my slender, shiny, silver credit card digits from their clutching, hissing Corporate snake mouths.
But I really don’t expect anything of the sort. However, there is one problem- the special deal only applies to the first 300 customers! OMG, OMG! I hope, between, now and then, that 300, well even 299 people calling in ahead would present problems, what if I can’t get to the phone…
In all seriousness, though, two years ago, in Miami, I was seriously considering joining Shaq’s gym on the spot because of a similar promotion. I think they had the magic 300 number also, maybe it was the first 250 customers. This was right after Shaq’s LA trade, during that first year, when the Heat got as far as Detroit but Wade the Flash tore an abdominal muscle in game 5, I believe. The Heat lost in seven games that year but had a sweet championship parade for the Greater South American Metropolitan Capital the next year.
So Shaq was opening up this gym in Coconut Grove, which is probably second only to Miami Beach itself for a desirable place to hangout or reside. I lived very near this area actually. But ha ha, I lived in the Black Grove, just a stone’s throw away from the rich Grove, but the difference was literally night and day in just a few block’s walk. Grand Avenue, home of the annual Goombay (sp?) festival, where they probably long since torn down the concrete block apartment buildings in which I lived, and widened the street to make room for condos and high rises. That, at least, was the hubbub when we moved out of the area. They were pretty much going to redo the entire street to make it Miami Vice pretty and push everybody back. There was not really a football field’s worth of uninhibited nature in Miami. There were gigantic cranes all along the marina, hoisting I Beams into place for new high rises. Of course, there were beautiful parks and goreous causeways looking out onto the crashing oceans, and that was extraordinary. But not enough room to roam.
I lived in the Black Grove, in a $450 a month apartment, but I found work by the mall. First, just a little pizza place job (the graveyard shift) to pay rent. We had just exhausted our pile of junk car driving down from Twin Oaks Community, which is another story for another day, as the saying goes. We laid our last $900 down to cover first and last or whatever, and moved into a 14 unit apartment complex just a hair’s breadth away from ghetto central. Real hardcore ghetto was West down Grand Ave 7 or 8 blocks. There, while (IDIOTICALLY! STUPIDLY!) walking through the ghetto to the bus station with luggage, we were nearly mugged (the luggage was for a movie extra gig, and everyone had to show up with some luggage b/c it was being filmed at an airport). I say nearly mugged b/c while a gun was flashed, it was not fully drawn, and while our attention was engaged, we were not spellbound or rooted to the spot. We hemmed and hawed and retreated and he threatened, until God sent a ‘random’ car down the street to break up the encounter, at which he ducked away for a moment, and we ran away, screaming our heads off!
The corner near where I lived was merely a crack dealing pavillion. It even had tables and chairs inside of a large fenced in area, like it was some kind of community rec area. I am white so I obviously never went in there, so my memory is fuzzy.
No one ever threatened to kill me because I was white. One time an old crackhead lady tried to mug me because I pulled out nearly $200 at midnight on the street, one block away from aforementioned crack dealership. You see, one of my buddies, a street hustler named I don’t know what, someone I used to hand out some leftover pizza slices to when I went home from that job, had come up to me and asked me for a dollar. I had had a pretty good night at the rickshaw (I didn’t get to this part yet, be patient), making nearly $200, so I was in a plenty charitable mood. Problem was, I didn’t have small change on me in another pocket. So I pulled out the whole wad in a sort of mini wallet with a string neck-chain, and this wobbling, twitching, charming woman sauntered on up and grabbed hold of the string!
I still have hold of the money purse, of course, so I start screaming my head off, yelling HELP, HELP!, and my friend the hustler just kind of laughed and backed off, he didn’t want any part of robbing me but wasn’t really going to help me either. In fairness, he probably saw the wobbly crackhead far more than he ever encountered me.
One of the large black women from the building came out onto the common balcony, but they were all sort of nonplussed too, I think ( I was very focused on my $200, so again, sketch memory), they were trying not to burst into outright, uproarious laughter, out of respect for me, but it was a near thing.
Eventually the string broke or she let go or something, and I had the money. She was real nasty afterward and reached into her pants and started threatening like she had a piece. I immediately backed off and went into the building. Even as I was retreating and she was advancing, however, I suddenly sprang forward, like I was going to charge her, but didn’t. And she backed off for that instant. But I still respected the possibility of the gun, even though logically that was an absurdity. If she had really possessed the gun, of course, she would long since have robbed me blind. But in that kind of fast paced situation, you react on habit and instinct, not conscious thought.
We called the police but of course she just lurched away and blended in amongst the greater army of the drugged undead. It is a really sick, sad thing that crack does- it looks like the entire nervous system is shortcircuited, and the tendons make normal human facial expressions into grotesque caricatures. She did come back later that night to thump menacingly against the building until 3 or 4 in the morning (I am not kidding.) And I was too scared to go out and do anything.
One of the young guys in the building suggested that I should not have hesitated to hit her square smack in the face. Far from hesitating, this thought actually never even occured to me, for some reason. I was more in the screaming for help mode, even though I was a hulking, gleaming rickshaw driver that outweigh…well, she was a crackhead, so you get the picture. But I never thought to hit her, I guess I more just wanted her to disappear…
If it was a man, I would have kicked his arse no problem, of course. That goes without saying.
So anyway, I was running the rickshaw after I quit the pizza place. A rickshaw is pretty much the same as in China, It has two wheel with a seating carriage on top and two bars that extend forward for the runner to grab hold of. Our rickshaws were all metal, and the bar went all the way around the driver (i.e. there were bars to the side and they were connected by a bar in front). This was important, because we were expected to do tricks.
The tricks involved the simple jump, a brief, uplifting thrill for the passengers in back, or a more elaborate run, gently tilt and gather sideways momentum, jump and maintain a spin for as long as possible. The end of this move would involve the metal back of the rickshaw scraping against the pavement, the bars (and driver) perpendicular to the ground, while the driver stands on the passenger’s footbar and looks down on the uplooking riders. Then, the driver can pretend to step or fall on them, all the while holding onto the bars, but the kids in the rickshaw don’t see that, they only see the feet!
Other moves were spider man, which was the same as the jump and spin except running and using the feet against a wall to complete the turn. Superman was putting the bar of the rickshaw down, stepping outside of the cage entirely, then going to the front of the rickshaw and picking up just the front bar. You would pick up the bar, all the while looking at the passengers, threatening to simply throw the bar up and drop them straight backwards (you don’t ever actually do that b/c they would hit the ground too hard). But you threaten it, then throw the bar up and allow the rickshaw to pick YOU up, and forward, while you swing your feet in the air, directly above and in front of the faces of the passengers. While this is a straight drop to the ground for the riders, it is not hard b/c the driver’s weight is balanced against the carriage weight. To bring them back up, just step on the passenger foot bar, grab the main front bar, and swing forward!
So I was running this rickshaw and almost signed up for Shaq’s gym, it was just opening, and there was a special deal but I had to sign up for a whole year. The guy had a table out front, and on it were only 300 spots for signatures! I was mighty tempted, but what saved me from a foolish purchase, from a ‘bought bad thing,’ according to Gitta, was the lack in the gym of a sauna. I need a sauna in a gym, like my ascendancy over street hooligans (male), that also goes without saying.
So I didn’t sign up. It was pretty ridiculous anyway, a rickshaw runner signing up for a gym. If you made $150 in a night, you probably did 7 rides. Each ride is 10 to 15 minutes of the most extraordinary kind of exercise I have ever experienced, and will never experience again! I think I put on 20 lbs of muscle just in my legs. We weren’t bulky though, more like chiseled, bordering on wiry (we were alot better paid and probably fed I’m guessing than our Oriential counterparts). I built some strength in my arms from that but really not that much. During the year that I ran the contraption I had about the best endurance that a human can. Ultimately, I acquired some injuries that forced me to quit and start doing some work at which I can sit down. It took me a couple of years to heal from the injuries fully (nagging muscle tears and such)- while the experience was worth it, I DO NOT recommend rickshaw running as a viable commercial venture. Unless you are Arnold.
Topics: Personal |
February 19th, 2008 at 10:09 pm
I bought Derek’s course today- and got his new online tool to go with it.
I haven’t heard anyone ever say anything bad about his course.. I guess that’s why its survived so many years.
Looking at the others out there- most are asking thousands for a lot less- so I am very hopeful that I finally get something that works.
wishing you luck
Dave