P.S.

Oh, and that sweet gay guy that got 18 days for riding his bicycle on the sidewalk? Someone else told me that he'd been busted with pot (marijuana,weed) at the same time. Which is none of my beeswax except he actually said "Can you believe they gave me 18 days for riding my bike on the sidewalk?"
Last year when I did this I kind of lost interest in listening to people's stories of how they got in trouble because you always end up hearing an additional twist from someone else who'd worked with them. So I prefer to keep the conversation light and preferably entertaining. I want you to make me laugh, or say nothing at all.
Which is not how my day went today, since I was with the same guy as yesterday. At first I thought I might get lucky as he seemed more subdued for the first, oh, 15 minutes. Yesterday, it was right off the bat and nonstop for 3 hours, mostly about how he's not guilty (yea, you and half the other guys), and that his ex-wife wrote a somewhat successful screenplay 30 years ago.
I can't remember where it started today, but this guy has experience in everything from horses and Arlo Guthrie to speaking 3 languages and world travel. He pointed out the corner where Sal Mineo died and Gary Busey busted his head open crashing his motorcycle, and oh, he was a teacher for 40 years and thinks maybe the old in-school spanking system wasn't such a bad idea. He reminded me of that Jon Lovitz character on SNL, the one that has a new lie for every topic? Yea, that's the ticket.
I am not a fan of cocktail parties, and today reminded me of why. At least at a party I could escape.
An interesting small world tidbit though - he's talking about his ex who was raised in Bel-Air and made a few dollars on that screenplay and became an animal rescuer. She fell in love with teacup chihuahuas and had one named yo-yo. Then he said the woman's name, and I thought, OMG, I adopted my dog from that lady. She'd seemed a little different to me, but a lot of animal rescue people do, to me. Sure enough, a spoiled little rich girl who left Hollywood for the farm. Or something.
It made me miss my buddy Lance. Not the small world thing but working with this guy. Lance had to do this last year and we got partnered a lot. I don't think many people liked Lance. He made me look very balanced, which is when I know I've got a doosie (word?) on my hands. Maybe he was a little crazy. But if I wasn't in the mood to talk to him when we worked, he would do or say something so silly it would crack me up. And he'd tell me he was just trying to improve my day, or something.