Last summer, the guy in town that has me do odd jobs for him now and then had a simple task during a weekday, and could I help out(?)
He’s a realtor, and his clients are always in need of someone to come help with that pesky finishing punch list before they bug out of Dodge and into their new lives.
Dump runs are consistently on the menu. The relocation or disposal of big-ticket items and “do you know anyone who needs a mattress” also come standard.
Usually, I can take on this stuff because I’ve sort of found out who needs what or who takes care of things in the area. If you ever really want to get under the skin of a place, find the firewood guy and start there—he knows all the secrets and who’s hauling what over to whom. Need a non-op Kiss pinball machine and a ‘78 Ford Light Silver Metallic Lincoln Mark V; he's your man.
Anyway, the morning's task was to unhook a fridge from a young(ish) widow’s recently sold home, move it, and set it up at one of his renters’ places. No prob.
It involved me and another guy, an Iraq/Afghanistan vet, and what should’ve been a less-than-an-hour move turned into seven hours of having to basically take this entire fridge apart (it was a newer model and not meant to be taken apart, or at least not meant to be put back together.)
The problem was it didn’t fit through the doorway of the apartment, so the doors had to come off, but along with the doors, the ice maker and water pourer thing in the front had to be disconnected (and therefore, eventually reassembled.)
The backplate had to come off too because it still didn’t fit even after we’d gotten it down to a thousand useless pieces strewn about the empty garage. And that was BEFORE the hinge assembly had to come off—that contained 500 additional tiny parts made god-knows-where by folks or machines which DEFINITELY did so with the intention of it never coming back together but for an act of the universe that somehow in three billion years’ time would randomly have it reassembled in a dimension that our little minds can’t fathom.
...But we didn’t have that kind of time, or the tools.
So what started as a little aside turned into an exercise in both frustration and futility—and eventually an existential slog.
The vet who by his own admission constantly works through war PTSD and tries to just do right one step at a time was having a really rough go.
Me working through bad boss PTSD (I’m not going to pretend they’re in the same league, but my inability to separate my hard and good work from someone coming in and shitting all over it for no reason but for the fact that they had nothing else to do that day or needed to—further—assert power) made us a terribly sad and helpless-looking little pair.
At one point, standing outside the apartment plotting to see whether we could just put the old fridge back and call it a day, he turned to me and said, “Hey man, this is torture, but I’m glad you’re here.”
And that’s it. That’s everything, right?
I realized that it all boils down to drudgery. Really it does. You’re either the Chalamet knock-off saying I do to an oil heiress in her “legendary” grandmothers’ jewels or you’re the Rest of Us left behind. Damage on top of the damage. Wounds both seen and unseen. Just trying to keep it together long enough to put this thing in that thing and connect that thing in that other thing and hope when you plug it in and it works so someone can keep their food cold and you can go home.
It’s all mundane tasks.
It’s all an exercise in nothing of futility.
As the sun set, we finally got the fridge in and reassembled and miraculously working—ice maker and water dispenser and all. I have no idea how it happened. The vet and I made haste from the scene.
Both of us had a child care situation going on that we were neglecting in order to finish this job. Both of us probably should’ve walked about five hours earlier. The guy we were working for came out and caught us at the bottom of the driveway, “Guys,” he said, “I need you to get rid of the old one.”
Warriors vs. Bulls
The Chicago Bulls are the most athletic, most dynamic team in the league right now, which—because sports evolve and things are constantly changing and all that—make them, at the moment, the most athletic and dynamic team in history.
The Golden State Warriors, with some small and strange but now-making-sense-on-court offseason additions, including the long-awaited return of Andre Iguodala—the nucleus in the Warriors’ dynastic run of the mid-teens, and the surprising reality that Gary Payton II is actually a player who was created in NBA Y2K22 and then somehow brought to life in the offseason Weird Science-style, have set these two franchises on an early-season winning spree that shows signs of being a potential finals matchup.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. It’s still November, and tonight’s matchup in San Francisco might be overshadowed by the Warriors missing two of their standouts.
Draymond Green, who has benefitted mightily (leads the team in rebounds and assists) from his “big brother” Iguodala returning to the team this season, is no longer trying to do everything—which means absolutely more is getting done.
Green may be sidelined after suffering a right thigh contusion in the third quarter of Wednesday night’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Prior to that, the Warriors' rebounds and assists leader had a typical and nice go with seven points, five rebounds, six assists, one block, and one steal in 21 minutes.
Damion Lee, who’s been more of a role player but a strong contributor on both offenses and defense, missed Wednesday’s game with left hip soreness. This means GPII will probably get even more minutes to pack his early season highlight reel.
The 10-1 Warriors are coming to the end of an eight-game homestand and only have a single loss to show for it (in overtime vs. Memphis.) Since that game, they’ve had a half dozen straight double-digit wins, outscoring their opponents by an average of 20.7 points.
But they haven’t come across a team like the surging Bulls with DeMar DeRozan and Zach Lavine all keyed up by point guard Lonzo Ball. These three suddenly-back-to-life veterans all have SoCal hoops pedigrees. DeRozan is USC by way of Compton High School. LaVine is UCLA by way of Bothell (WA). And Lonzo is also UCLA by way of Chino Hills.
Of course, those who even take more than a glance at the game recognize this roster as standouts in the Drew League and at the men’s gym at UCLA every offseason, where elites go to ball and kick it before lunch and basically fuck around and show their stuff.
Someone in the Bulls FO must’ve caught the trio and their summertime rolls chemistry as they started to reach their waning star status and decided maybe it’d be cool to have that fast and loose SoCal feel in the United Center.
It’s netted (so far) a sort of run-and-gun Showtime 2.0 offense that runs counter to the league’s last-decade three-point frenzy. The Bulls are actually last in the league in threes attempted, by comparison the Warriors are second.
Bulls center Nikola Vucevic (who also went to SC) is a notable scratch for Friday. For all their new-school ways, Vucevic, averaging 13.6 points and 10.9 rebounds per game, has been playing a very capable five and will be missed down low especially in the second half where both teams are known to surge.
Chicago has won and covered four of its past six games, with the only two losses coming in a home-and-away with the Philadelphia 76ers. Both teams are ready to run to see which version of West Coast hoop gets over tonight, and I think it stays close till the end; that’s why...
Take the Bulls +5.5 vs. the Warriors