My Long Lost Brother

So, I'm resting in LA for a week, staying at the chateau (always feels like home-mostly because my full size fridge here is stocked with nothing but alcohol and red bull...just like home) and sleeping until 3 everyday, trying to gear up for the next six weeks on the road. I love to spend my evenings here just sitting out on the patio people watching while I work my way through a bottle of wine, which is exactly what I was doing when I met my long lost brother the other night.

I was on my fourth glass of wine when two of the four guys at the table next to me started chatting with me and shortly thereafter asked me what my plans were for my week in LA. Now, whenever guys start chatting me up, I always immediately put something out there about being gay so I'm not wasting anybody's time. So, I replied jokingly that I had a tentative line item on my LA agenda to hook up with Lindsay Lohan if the opportunity presented itself, but other than that my agenda was pretty open. They both burst out laughing and exchanged a knowing glance, whereupon one of the guys asked me if I knew who he was. I told him I didn't, but based on the fact that the four guys were all wearing matching ensembles, my money was on them being some boy band. Turns out the boy band imposters were Tyler Shields (the guy who took the picture of Lindsay with the gun in her mouth) and his posse. Tyler is very smart and intense and immediately started drilling me about whether I really want to hook up with Lindsay, if she's my type, etc. Now, my "type" can be a long and complicated topic (though the short version is that I do tend to date ridiculously beautiful closet cases who I want to save in some way), so I invited them to join me at my table. After we talked about girls for a while (most of which I promised Tyler I wouldn't blog about), I told them about my trip and the conversation quickly turned to Tyler and I one upping each other in the bad behavior department.

After going back and forth for a few rounds, Tyler finally upped the ante with "have you ever been in a police chase?" Resigning myself to the fact that I was going to lose this bad behavior battle, I settled back into my chair for the following story (though I have to leave out some of the details to protect the innocent and not-so-innocent). Tyler (who used to do a fair amount of racing when he was younger-from motorcross to F1) was hanging out one night with 2 of the top 3 executives at a big household name public company a while back when he was too young to even have a license. One of the execs was so drunk and coked up that night that he told Tyler (who doesn't drink or do drugs) that Tyler was going to have to drive his Dodge Viper because he couldn't. The other exec had a low end ferrari and a lot to prove. So, they left where they were partying and a little road racing ensued, with Tyler (a young kid in an American car) running circles around the guy in the ferrari, making said ferrari guy very angry. Finally they pull up at a light and ferrari guy, enraged by the humiliation, starts insisting (shouting, screaming, etc.) that they drag race out of the light (this was the first indication of what an idiot ferrari guy was because his car didn't stand a chance against the viper, but I digress).

Knowing the viper will easily crush the ferrari, Tyler agrees and puts it in second to start, so when he pops into third, it'll be game over. They take off and rocket through the next intersection doing around 130 and all of the sudden (he tells this story just like I tell my Marfa story-siren sound effect accompanied by swiveling index finger) one cop is tearing down the road after them and then a second cop joins the chase. At this point, ferrari guy pulls up next to Tyler and starts waving frantically that they should turn onto a side street to get away from the cops. Tyler, knowing he can outrun them easily, refuses and just stomps on it. This is when dumb as a box of rocks ferrari guy decides to try to make a 90 degree turn at 130+. The next thing Tyler sees is the front end of the ferrari flying past his passenger side window prompting him to look in his rearview mirror just in time for a quick glimpse of one of the cop cars t-boning the ferrari. At this point I had to interrupt and ask if it occurred to him to just pull over and talk his way out of it (I mean, if I wasn't so charming, my Marfa story could have been a police chase story too-I just decided to cut my losses once I got in the multiple felony zone instead of piling more felonies on top, but I guess this is one of those things about which reasonable minds can differ). Tyler just shook his head and explained that between the totaled police cruiser and all the coke that the passed out guy next to him had on him, pulling over was not an option.

Now, back when the viper first came out it was the fastest street legal car out there, capable of 250, which Tyler knew. What he didn't know was that there was a governor at 180 which made his plan to outrun the cop much more challenging because he couldn't just leave him in the dust, though he was putting distance between himself and the cop who was doing about 120. When he hit 180 on this highway out in the desert with the next exit about 30 miles away and the car wouldn't go any faster, he realized his initial plan wasn't going to work because they would have time to have cops down the road waiting for him before he could exit. So, he turned off all the lights and, having put some serious distance between himself and the cop, turned on the next dirt road he saw that took him out into the middle of the desert. Needless to say, there was a whole lot of bottoming out going on and pieces of the viper were flying off left and right as he raced down this dirt road as fast as he could. Eventually, he got far enough out into the desert that he thought the cop wouldn't be able to see him and he turned off everything and just sat there in the dark trying to figure out his next move. After over an hour had gone by without the cops or a helicopter making an appearance, he realized he was probably in the clear...except that he somehow had to explain what had happened to the owner of the pretty much destroyed viper, who was still completely passed out next to him.  Or not...

Brilliant (slightly evil) Tyler picked the guy up, moved him into the driver's seat, woke him up and started berating him for almost killing poor little Tyler with his police chase shenanigans. By the time he was done, this guy was totally wracked with guilt and apologizing over and over for endangering Tyler's life. Of course, the truth came out later when this guy bailed his fellow exec out of jail, but by then Tyler was long gone...

Love that story and Mr. Tyler Shields. By the time we were done talking, I was pretty much convinced that we had been separated at birth and reunited not a minute too soon, because I never heard from Leisha (I've heard since that she has a gfriend and the woman she was having dinner with did stalk off as we were chatting, so I'm thinking that might have something to do with me not hearing from her ;-)) and still need someone in LA who will bail me out as necessary. It occurred to me that maybe Tyler isn't the best person to have on call to bail me out since the odds are very good that if I end up in jail, he'll be there with me, but then I remembered his boy band and I'm sure one of them will come get us, so I'm feeling like I have a pretty good bail out system in place.

Latest development on the what I'm going to do with the rest of my life front: Jamaica did get me pretty excited about the idea of being "a commander," but last night Tyler texted me around 11 about still being stuck at work...bullwhipping a supermodel...and I'm thinking the bullwhipping supermodels gig might be an even better fit for me. Now, I'm pretty sure that Tyler thinks he has the bullwhipping supermodels market locked down at the moment, but let's just say that I think the market might shift very quickly when these girls learn about all the body shaping and hair styling techniques (see below) that I can share with them if they start playing for my team. Just sayin'...