So Basically I Have a Mullet

…No time for preamble today, there’s too much good stuff, so let’s get to it!

-New Warden-
The biggest piece of updatedness I have for you is that Friday, May 2nd will officially be my last day at UCLA Medical. And no, I’m not simply predicting the day that my boss will finally fire me for “one too many herpes jokes,” I actually have another (much better, for me) job lined up to replace this one. Starting the first week of May and continuing on until I get fired for making “one too many herpes jokes,” I will be working for LA-based restaurateur Benjamin Ford (Harrison Ford’s son) at his upscale Culver City restaurant, Ford’s Filling Station. You don’t have to be Dr. Phil to realize that even though the lovely folks at UCLA Medical were wonderful people, that job was simply not an ideal fit for me or my schedule. Working at Ford’s will not only pay better, but will also offer me better hours and much more flexibility and fun compared to the more rigid world of corporate health care. The people there are awesome, the food is amazing (and expensive…I’m glad I don’t have to pay to eat there), the location is ideal, and my boss is a total hottie. I’m pretty pumped to get back to my roots as the no-responsibility ass-clown that people know me for being.

-Movin’ On Up, to the…Westside?-
In other news, our landlady is losing her house (either to foreclosure or some overkill Vegas betting) at the end of May, which means that my roommates and I have to find a new place to live starting June 1st. This kind of sucks for our landlady, but is actually pretty ideal for the roomies and I, since we were all looking for someplace better, cleaner, and closer to the beach to live starting in the summer. The only slight downside is that now, instead of us trying to find a new place by June, we HAVE to find a new place by June — so it adds a little pressure, but I’m not really worried. We don’t really know how things are gonna shakedown yet, except for that we all want to live with people we know and be somewhere on the Westside of town (near the beach, preferably). I’ll keep you posted as our options reveal themselves.

-What Happens in Vegas, Stains in Vegas-
If you checked my facebook at all over the weekend, or were any of the hundreds of people I called to kill time on the five-and-a-half hour drive home, you know I spent the past few days visiting a friend in Vegas. I’ll spare you the gory details, but I came out even on the trip, had a lot of fun doing normal Vegas things (getting dressed up, hitting the strip, etc.), and had an equal amount of fun doing more abnormal Vegas things (hiking in Lake Mead and Red Rock Canyon, relaxing, etc.). But the most fun was spending the weekend with a friend from back in the Midwest, and getting to just kick back and catch up with an old buddy. An old buddy who made about $500 more than I did on the trip. Jerk.

-This Guy Loves the Wine…and Gold-
I like the Cleveland Cavaliers. I mean, really like. You could even say that I LIKE like them. But even though I’ve been to several Cavs games live and in-person at Quicken Loans Arena (aka The Q…and the namesake of the house me and the fellas used to share on Quail Hollow Dr. in Hilliard, Ohio), acquired plenty of Cavaliers swag, ogled the Cavs Girls on numerous occasions, and watched the Wine-and-Gold on TV countless times; I realized that my fandom had hit a new (and potentially unhealthy) level of addiction when I found myself cheering on the Cavs from the bar of a Las Vegas-based Chili’s at 9:30am on a Saturday morning. Even in the face of what will almost certainly be a second-round elimination from the playoffs (maybe third if we’re really lucky and the Pistons keep laying eggs like they did against the Sixers this weekend), I couldn’t help but get way too excited about LBJ & Co. laying the smackdown on a weaker (dare I say, overrated, Deshawn Stevenson?) Washington Wizards team. Seeing the Wiz lose by 30 tonight was even awesomer as King James pretty much put on a clinic on how to shut down a D.C.-based pro basketball team. A fortnight from now, my favorite small forward and his posse might be hanging up their jerseys until next season, but that’s what makes the playoffs so great: right now, in this moment, the Cavs are in the hunt for a championship just as much as Boston or LA; and as a fan, that’s all you should ever need to get excited about your team (…unless you’re a Bengals fan, in which case I’d settle for just ending the season above .500 for once).

-Credit Where Credit is Due-
A few posts ago, I relayed my thoughts on defining relationships via facebook as a guide to the clueless masses (that’s you). Now, not even twelve days later, almost a dozen of my friends have gone from “single” or “hidden” to “in a relationship.” Obviously I can’t take full credit (my good friends Cupid and Jack Daniels helped quite a bit, too), but I just want to take a second and give myself some serious props for hooking my peeps up with the pertinent information they needed to make mature, well-informed decisions about who to love. Great job, me. You guys can all buy me a round next time we go out (or at the very least name your first child after me. No? Well how about middle name, then? No one cares about those anyway, and “Dustin” goes with just about any other name — guy or girl! Don’t make up your mind yet, just think about it and get back to me). So with that in mind, I’d like to offer up a toast. A toast to me. As the famous poet/philosopher Sir William Smith once said:

“Let’s make a toast to never lie, steal, cheat or drink.
But if you must lie, lie about your age (it almost always helps your situation to be a few years older or younger than you actually are).
If you must steal, steal from your family, friends and acquaintances…they’ll be less likely to press charges if you get caught.
If you must cheat, cheat the blind, the homeless or any other sect of people who would have difficulty identifying you in a police lineup.
And if you must drink, drink tequila. No sense destroying your liver and/or your future just you can knock back a few Mike’s Hard Lemonades, right? You don’t want people to think you’re a wuss, after all. On second thought, better make it a double.”

…With insights like that at his disposal, it’s no wonder they crowned him the Prince of all Bel-Air.

Cheers to me,
Dustin


Not a bad place for a vacation, says I.