I'm Not Gonna Lie (17 page)

“This was a stupid idea,” I said.

“Not as stupid as giving him a thumbs-up,” RJ said.

“Yeah, well, when you run, you get light-headed and you don't think right. So we're blowing this off, right?” I said.

“Hell, yeah. Blowing off running forever,” RJ said.

“Absolutely. Unless we're being chased.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, so, cool, I'll just wait here while you get the car.”

RJ didn't say anything. He didn't have to. He just waited for me to speak.

“Worth a try,” I said.

Next on the list.

“Learn a language.”

Finally. Something that I would definitely do. I would like to learn French.

Because the French are assholes, and I want to know what they're saying.

Also it's a prestigious-sounding language, which might impress some people and help me get a better table or hotel room or a better spot in line if I'm waiting to get into somewhere in France that's sophisticated and cosmopolitan, like Euro Disney.

By the way, knowing Spanish does not give you an edge when it comes to learning French. I've been to Paris, and my Spanish didn't help me a bit. I've been to
Spain
and my Spanish didn't help me a bit. I wonder if my Spanish is the problem. Maybe the Spanish I grew up with in the San Fernando Valley is different from the Spanish people speak in fancy places like Spain.

Forget it. I'm changing my mind. No on learning a language. After fifty, it's too hard. In fact, if the idea is to finally do what you've always wanted to do, then what I would do is stay home and watch TV. I not only love watching TV; I'm really good at it. I consider myself an expert, especially when it comes to commercials. You know why?

They lie.

As we've established, I'm the best at spotting a lie.

Let's start with all those beer commercials. They all meld together because they don't make any sense.

It's a hot day in the city. People are leaving work. Guys are wearing jackets and ties, and women are wearing pantsuits and dresses. Everybody's sweating and miserable. All of a sudden a train goes by and somebody pops open a cold beer and the people all freeze and there's ice everywhere. Then music plays and a party starts and there's a deejay and everybody's wearing swimsuits and dancing and drinking beer. Insane. And you know what? I've drunk a lot of beer in my life, and not once has an interracial couple come over and put up a volleyball net. And the Dog Whisperer could work with my dog every day for a month and he'll never train him to fetch me a six-pack.

The stupidest beer commercial is the one where the puppy gets lost. The whole neighborhood rallies around this poor little girl who's lost her puppy, and then everybody goes off to look for the dog. That would never happen. People are so nervous and afraid these days that if you went to the park and asked, “Have you seen my puppy?” every single person in the park would spray you in the face with some stuff. But in the commercial some dude finds the puppy and everybody cheers and another party breaks out and everybody's drinking beer and laughing and the puppy rolls a beer over to a bunch of hot girls in bikinis and the interracial couple is playing volleyball in the pool.

You know who's missing in these commercials? You know who you never see?

Latinos.

We don't exist. We are absent from American life. Apparently we don't drink beer or dance or party or care about a little girl's lost puppy. People from India appear in more commercials than Latinos. It's true. We're getting lapped by people from
India
. The stupid gecko gets more camera time than any Latino actor.

But you know what I do see in these commercials?

Racism.

It's subtle at first, but it becomes obvious if you pay attention.

For example. Every commercial includes one African-American person. Every white guy has at least one African-American friend. Sometimes two. Never more than two, though. They come over. One guy brings milk. The other guy has a cookie. They barbecue and clink beer bottles. Then you go inside and all the guys are watching a game together—three white guys and their one African-American buddy—and they're leaping off the sofa and high-fiving one another and they're all wearing jerseys and eating DiGiorno. Then they make a mess and spill their crap all over and the hard-assed African-American wife makes them all get down on the floor and clean up the carpet, together, as one, in harmony.

The most blatant example of subtle racism I've seen, the one that gets me absolutely crazy, is the commercial for Golden Corral buffet restaurants.

Two couples are in a car driving to dinner. A white couple sits in the front, a black couple in the back. I know. Right. As if. Hang in there. Okay, the white woman starts describing the new high-end restaurant they're going to. She's so excited. She's going on and on about how hard it is to get a reservation. The place is so fabulous and popular and she hopes the new chef is there because he's amazing, blah, blah, blah . . .

Then they pass a Golden Corral restaurant and the black couple in the backseat gets all worked up. They look at each other and grin and then—get this—
they throw themselves out of the car and run over to the Golden Corral restaurant.
Yes. They obviously prefer the inexpensive all-you-can-eat buffet to the exclusive, expensive, fancy restaurant. More their style, I guess, more appropriate. More
them.
So much so that to eat there they will throw themselves out of a moving
car
.

Really?

First, why do the people who make TV commercials insist on creating a world in which white people always hang out with their two black friends?

And second, you know this commercial is fake because in real life, regardless of race, creed, or color, the dudes would be sitting up front and the women in the back.

Okay, I'm glad I got that off my chest.

You know what?

Forget a bucket list. Seriously.

I just clicked away from that Web site.

At fifty, I'm happy just staying right where I am, working, playing golf when I can, and watching TV and sorting my golf tees and ball markers when I need to chill out.

Maybe it's not as exciting as riding a camel, but so what?

It's who I am.

COMING HOME

I'M
not gonna lie.

I've had a good life.

Sure, like everyone, I've had my share of ups and downs.

I enjoyed one successful TV series that ran for six years and lasted more than a hundred episodes, and I saw the painful demise of my late-night talk show that flamed out in less than two years.

I survived kidney disease and divorce. One caused me intense and constant pain in my side and nearly took my life. The other was kidney disease.

I met and became friends with some incredible people. I got to play on the same bill with the immortal Carlos Santana, who's become a close friend and spiritual adviser.

I fell in love with golf, traveled all over the country—all over the
world
—and played the most beautiful courses you could ever imagine, sometimes playing with golf legends, such as the incomparable Lee Trevino.

Over the years, golf has taught me some of the most important lessons I've learned in my life, such as to get out of trouble as quickly as you can; don't be a hotshot and make things worse. Golf also taught me how to be patient and persistent when things get tough, and to not be an asshole and let things get to me, and to make sure my clothes match when I leave the house. Also—major lesson—very few people look good in knickers, and I'm not one of them.

I've been fortunate to have earned a good living doing what I love, which is something I wish for everyone. I know what it's like to be poor, and I don't ever want to be poor again, and I don't wish that on anyone.

But sometimes I wonder if I've lost the values my grandparents instilled in me when they raised me in that tract house in the Mission Hills section of L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. I wonder if I've gotten soft.

I started thinking about that house, the one I grew up in, and those days, forty years ago, when I was a kid, trying to figure it out, trying to find my way. Seems so long ago, and yet . . .

There's a trend now that when people go on vacation they want to spend their time living like a “regular person.” They don't want to be a tourist. They don't want to stay in a hotel or take in the usual tourist attractions or eat in fancy, touristy restaurants. They want to stay in a typical apartment or bunk with a local family and eat where the locals eat. Sometimes these people even want to get a job for a week or two to really experience the place they've chosen to go on vacation.

To me, that's going too far. If I'm going away on a vacation for the purpose of getting away from work, why would I want to go to work? But people are doing it. Mindless work, too. Stuff like washing dishes, or making up hotel rooms and cleaning bathrooms, or working as an executive at TBS.

But then I thought, you know what, I sort of see their point. Living like a local actually sounds interesting and even challenging. I do think I have gotten spoiled.

I wonder what it would be like to go back to my roots, to my old neighborhood, and live the way I did when I was a kid, when I was poor.

I thought about this one day while I sat having a pot of tea in one of my favorite spots, the comfortable lobby of a famous old Hollywood hotel.

I leaned back in my cushy, overstuffed couch in that hotel lobby and I thought, “How would I do it? Is it insane? Could I disappear for a month and blend in somewhere?”

As I thought about this, a woman wearing a pink polka-dot sundress, a big floppy hat, and oversize sunglasses came out of the lush greenery of the outside patio/restaurant walking her dog on a leash. Yes, this restaurant takes dogs. The woman looked perturbed. She located the hostess, waved at her, then walked up to her and got right in her face.

“We're leaving,” the woman said. She nodded at her dog. “Daisy didn't like the food.”

“Oh.” The hostess, whom I know, looked concerned. “I'm so sorry.”

“Well, she ate it, but I can tell she wasn't happy.”

I thought, “Sure, she ate it. She's a dog. They eat anything. They eat dog shit. She probably had the thirty-dollar meat loaf.”

“You should've sent it back,” the hostess said. “We would have brought you—I mean Daisy—something else.”

“Don't worry,” the woman said, sniffing the air. “We won't be coming back.”

“Wow,” I said. “I hope the dog doesn't work for Zagat.”

As I watched the woman lead her dog out of the hotel, I thought, “Did I just dream that? This woman was upset because her
dog
didn't like her meal here? Really?”

I decided right then that I needed a break from people who bring their dogs to hotel restaurants and complain about the food. I knew what I would do: I would move into my grandmother's house for a month, alone.

To pull this off, I'd have to make compromises.

First, no cell phone. That meant no texting, no e-mail, no Instagrams, no Twitter, no Facebook, and no apps. No games on my phone, no Draw Me, no Words with Friends, nothing like that.

In fact, no Internet at all.

I would like that.

I know a guy whose Internet went down and his kids went insane. They acted like drug addicts going into withdrawal. They started scratching and hugging each other. They huddled into a corner, holding on to each other tight. Their noses ran and they could barely talk.

“Hey, when's it gonna come back up? How much more of this? How come we haven't gotten it fixed?”

The dad said, “You know what? If this is how you guys are gonna act, maybe I won't get it fixed at all.”

“What?”

“You heard me. Maybe I won't get the Internet fixed. That way you'll have to learn to read a book.”

His daughter glared at him. “That's mean. You're
mean.
”

The more I thought about moving into my grandmother's house, the more the idea intrigued me. I wanted to go back in time, when things seemed to be simpler, more basic, and with no frills. Starting with . . .

No smartphone. I would allow myself a landline, an old rotary phone that I would put on a table in the hallway. A basic phone, black, with a plastic neck rest like the one that my grandfather snapped onto it. One phone number, one line. No call waiting and no voice mail. And no annoying answering machine.

I wouldn't take a computer, either. I'd bring a notebook and some pens. If I had an idea, I'd jot it down. Or maybe I'd just let it go. If an idea was worth anything, it would stick with me and still be a good idea a month later.

I would hook up a TV, but I wouldn't get cable or DIRECTV. We never had cable growing up. We got the local stations, channels two through thirteen, and that was it. I'd be able to pick up the Dodgers and the Lakers and, if I timed it right, a big golf tournament. I would miss the movie channels, but if I got lucky, to make up for it, maybe there would be a good high-speed police chase on channel nine.

I would need a car, just in case, but not the Porsche or the Beemer or the Escalade. I'd bring one of the less conspicuous ones. Or maybe I'd go to a used-car lot and pick up some clunker. I'd need something that didn't stand out in the neighborhood and wouldn't get stripped within the first half hour.

As for clothes, I'd pack maybe one bag. Depending on the weather, I'd bring a few changes and an umbrella if I needed one, but I would do my own laundry, so I'd always have plenty of fresh underwear and socks. Oh, and my robe. I can't go anywhere without my robe. I wouldn't send anything out, which means no dry cleaner's. And if I got bored and felt an overwhelming urge to go clothes shopping, I'd have to quash that feeling. No shopping. In fact, I would bring only a small amount of cash. And no black card. I'd leave my black card and my other platinum cards at home.

If I felt like a snack or I needed toothpaste or toilet paper, I'd do what I did as a kid: I'd walk to the gas station. And I would do everything myself. I couldn't send anybody. No assistants. Man, we were talking about totally roughing it.

Wait.

No assistants?

Who would schedule my meetings?

That's right. I don't have meetings.

I could do this. I really could. It would require a lot of sacrifice, but I know I could do it. I'd have to check on one thing before I committed to it: I'd have to make sure that the liquor store near the old house was still there. I always stopped in there after school to pick up a snack. They didn't carry a lot of food, but I could always get some candy or a soda, and they carried a display of my favorite right up front: Slim Jims. And if I rummaged way in the back of their refrigerator foods, I might score the last package of bologna, which was almost like real food.

I think about how kids are set up today and it amazes me. It's so different from how I grew up. They have a pantry full of food, a million choices. I didn't have any choices. We didn't have a pantry. We had a shelf. Now everybody has a little separate room loaded with shelves packed with every kind of food imaginable: breads and cakes and all different kinds of snacks, including ten variations of popcorn—kettle corn, caramel corn, salted, unsalted, popcorn with sugar, hickory-smoked, maple syrup corn, jalapeño corn, you name it—and a variety of chips, cookies, crackers, and drinks, juice boxes, and every type of soda made. In the kitchen they have walk-in refrigerators filled with lunch meats, cheeses, five different kinds of milk, and a million types of yogurt. The freezer is packed with pizza pockets, pita pockets, macaroni and cheese, Klondike bars, Popsicles, Creamsicles, pints of Häagen-Dazs, all sorts of frozen delights.

We had a small refrigerator with a tiny freezer. You'd open the freezer and there was a fish that somebody caught that nobody wanted to eat. No matter how nasty it looked, my grandmother would not throw that fish away. Then you'd poke around and find some tamales from, like, 1972, and some steaks that had turned green and looked like they'd begun to grow legs.

I'd get a job, too. One thing for sure: I wouldn't get the same job I had in high school. I worked at a fish-and-chips restaurant in San Fernando. No way I'd do that again.

My job was to cook the fish, which was a sort of whitefish that we called cod. First, I made the batter. Then I cut the fish, dipped it into the batter, fried it, pulled it out, and served it. My boss, this thin old guy I'll call Joe, would yell at me if I dropped any of the batter on the floor or tossed away the excess. He called the batter the “crispies.”

“Hey, you crazy? Don't throw the crispies away. Some customers like it.”

If they ordered it, I'd give those customers the batter—just the batter—with no fish in it and charge them half price. I put the plate in front of them, they'd pick up the crispies with their fingers, and I swear I could see their arteries clogging up.

I started the job at the fish-and-chips place the week before I began tenth grade. The first day of school I sat down in homeroom and the kid in front of me said, “Anybody smell anything? It smells like fish in here.”

The kid sniffed the air and then he turned around and sniffed me.

“It's you,” he said. “You smell like a fish. It's disgusting. From now on, I'm calling you Gilligan.”

For the rest of the day, every time I said hello to anybody in the hall or in class, they would say, “What's up, Gilligan?” or “How's it going, Skipper?”

After school I went into the fish-and-chips place and found Joe. “I'm quitting,” I told him.

“You know what?” Joe said. “You kids all quit.”

“Wanna know why? We smell like fish.”

“So what? I smell like fish, too.”

“Yeah, but you're not in high school.”

“The hell with high school. I didn't finish high school and look how I ended up.”

That was all he needed to say. I was out of there.

So, yes, I would definitely get a job, but I'd work as a salesclerk. I'd go to work at Walgreens, or maybe Kmart, or Target. Or maybe I could convince the guy at the liquor store to hire me. I'd fill out an application. I'd hope he'd hire me, because then I could walk to work and maybe he'd give me an employee discount. I wouldn't love wearing a uniform, but I'd adjust. That's another thing: Kids don't have to wear uniforms to work. They can dress up any way they want. All the jobs I'm talking about, you need to wear a uniform. I'd like that.

Not only would I do this; I think everybody should. Especially kids. I look back at my life and I feel a lot of gratitude, even for just making it to fifty. I'm not sure that kids understand that concept: gratitude. I know that they're too young to appreciate how good a lot of them have it. I hope that they will someday, way before they turn fifty.

I think it has to do with their parents having a lot of money and not allowing their kids to know what it feels like to
want
. Growing up, I wanted a lot. I wanted to go to places, and I wanted to buy things. I'd ask my grandparents, but they invariably would not give me the stuff I wanted. They weren't trying to be mean or teach me a lesson. They just didn't have the money.

I learned to entertain myself, which I didn't mind. Give me a rubber ball and my baseball glove and I could lose myself for hours.

My baseball glove was my absolute favorite possession. I got it at Kmart, not at Big 5 or some fancy sporting goods store, but it didn't matter, because I knew that when I got through working it, my glove would have the best pocket of any glove in the neighborhood. As soon as I got home with it, I dunked the glove in a bucket of water. Then I put a baseball in the pocket and wrapped one of my belts around the glove as tight as I could. I left it like that overnight. In the morning, I took off the belt, took out the ball, and oiled the pocket with hand lotion. Then I put the glove on and pounded my fist in the pocket—or used the baseball—for an entire week. I never stopped smacking the pocket of my glove. I'd spit in it, rub in the saliva, then bend it, twist it, fold it, put it under the couch and sit on it. Finally, the pocket in that glove was so flexible and so soft that any baseball hit or thrown at me would nestle right in there—
swack
—like it had gone back inside its rawhide womb.