Not Again, Amy!

My morning meditation often resembles sleeping, and I was deep in The Zone when the phone rang, shattering the fragile peace. By the time I emerged, there was a message from Island Irv, wondering why I wasn't at Luna Cafe.

When I arrived, Lily was waiting at the counter, radiating boredom. "Where's the Islander?" I asked. She shrugged, grabbed a mug, and asked a silent question with one raised eyebrow. I nodded: the usual."

"I wouldn’t know what old men do with their time," she finally said, pushing my latte along the polished wood countertop. "They never do anything sensible."

She placed my latte on the counter. "He’s probably feeding ducks at the riverwalk. That’s what a lot of old men do. At night, they watch television, and during the day, they feed the ducks.”

I could have simply said thanks and walked away, but Lily's a good egg, and I wanted to get her out of her negative mood. But she spoke before I could think of something sufficiently witty.

"How was your drive?" she asked. "Any traffic?"

"None to speak of," I said. "It's been a pretty good morning, so far. I haven’t run over anyone, and my car managed to avoid the curbs. How's your morning?”

“About the same.”

I suddenly thought of the perfect remark to make my exit: "Lily, I'm on my way to Carolina Beach to document the filming of RJ Decker. It’s based on a Carl Hiassen novel—it’ll be like the Coen Brothers come to Carolina Beach."

"Oh, that will be fun," she said. "I wish I could go with you."

"Maybe next time," I said, and I waved a finger in response to her bon voyage. Once behind the wheel of Wind Horse, I took a breath and punched the starter button.

"Maybe I should come with you," Amy said, materialising in the passenger seat of my car. "Skinny runt like you shouldn't be sneaking around a secure film set all by yourself."

"I appreciate your offer," I told her, "but riding shotgun isn't part of your job description."

"Don't think I got much of a job description," Amy countered. "Seems to me I do whatever's got to be done, and right now I've got nothing else to do except sweep the floor."

Her talk of sweeping floors made no sense for a figment of my imagination. I considered rebutting her remarks, but that never works with her, so I gave it a miss.

"Amy, this is photo documentary work," I heard myself say. You don't know anything about that."

"I know other kinds of stuff," she replied, "and besides, I don't think you know very much about documentary work, either."

I was too offended to make an immediate reply.

"Don't get me wrong," she continued, "I'm a firm believer in denial. I mean, why deal with unpleasantness today when you might get hit by a bus tomorrow? But you, Genome, you can't rely on denial alone."

"What are you rambling about now, if anything?"

"It's because you're visually challenged," Amy said.

"You're wrong there, sister. I'm a visionary! If I were visually challenged, would I have created the Artist's Journey podcast?"

"Genome," she sighed. "When I say visually challenged, I mean ugly. When are you going to get that nose fixed?"

I stared out the windshield toward the riverfront six blocks away, wondering if driving into the Cape Fear River would help me feel better.

"Stop!" I said with perhaps a little too much topspin. "We'll both pretend we know something about documentaries."

"Now you're talking," Amy said. "I'm fired up. It's going to be hilarious watching you screw this up again. Talk about entertainment!"

"Yeah, well, let's just focus on getting some usable video. I've got to have a victory today, even a small one; my reputation is getting thrashed by all the failures we've had lately."

"See, that’s the problem with you,” Amy said. “You’re a glass-half-empty person. One of my outstanding qualities is my positive personality. You’ve got to learn to think ahead, like you should have gotten t-shirts printed with Fire Marshall on the back. That'll get you in anywhere.”

"Oh, right," I said in a stinging way, "that's a great idea, and I know one place it will definitely get you, and in a hurry."

"Oh that’s nothing to what I’m capable of, Baby," Amy said, warming to the topic. "Wait till you see me at Carolina Beach being an assistant video documentarian. I'm going to kick butt in that department."

She talks tough, but the truth is, she and I are both pretty wimpy when it comes to actual butt kicking.

"Right," I said as I started the engine. "Let's go pretend to know something about video documentaries."

“Well, you can’t go on site like that,” Amy said. “You’ve got to lose those shoes," Amy insisted. "Never gonna get away with infiltrating the film set with your head and wearing those shoes."

My blood pressure was rising again. "What do you mean by that crack? Ms. Wonder once compared my head to the dome of St. Mary's."

"Isn't she sweet?" said Amy.

And from that point on, the day went steadily downhill. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. It wasn't as bad as it's been in the past. But it wasn't good.

“No disrespect,” Amy said to me when the filming wrapped up and we were back in the car, “but you’ve done better.”

She was right, again. I once drove my mom's Toyota Avalon to Starbucks and got hit by someone who ran a stoplight as I crossed Fayetteville Street. The Avalon got t-boned, knocked into the next lane of traffic, headed in the opposite direction it should have been going. Hard to top that.

On odd days of the month, Amy wakes up wanting to work with me rather than boss me around. I only want to work with her on even days of the month. So, as we left Carolina Beach, the only documented thing was the utter failure of a documentary, but hey, at least I didn't run over anybody, and Wind Horse mostly avoided the curbs. 

That counts as a victory in my thinking, and it’s a definite improvement on the great Avalon incident. Not getting t-boned is something to be grateful for. Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go have a lie-down for some deep meditation.

Rogue Algorithms

I've recently been tormented unmercifully by a spate of heinous pranks that could have come only from the Sewer Harpy sisters. I'm talking about those frustrations that seem too minor for therapy, yet too overwhelming for sanity. 

 My worst challenge this past week, came from malfunctioning technology. I struggled with the recommended image size for the header on my Printify pop-up websites—the instructions specified 1200 by 400 pixels.

That’s not a standard image size, in case you’re unfamiliar with these things. Nevertheless, I carefully followed the instructions—down to the pixel. But when I checked the mobile version, it only displayed the middle third of my carefully designed image. 

It was like presenting a beautifully framed pet portrait masterpiece, only to see it cropped into a close-up of a dog’s ear. No offense to the charm of dogs—I just want my whole design to show.

After going to a lot of time and trouble to create an image with that weird format, I had to then go through a random, trial-and-error design competition against an algorithm that clearly despises me.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg of frustrations. On Friday, I was forced to contend with a rogue garbage truck, which, after months of reliably rolling through in the late afternoon, decided to make an unscheduled 9 AM attack run, when my full can of garbage was standing mournfully on the drive, waiting for me to come out and guide it to the curb.

Now I have a garbage can full of evidence, sitting there like a domestic witness protection unit, waiting in smelly suspense for another seven agonisingly long days.

To add insult to injury, if that's the term I want, the deluge of scam texts has become so constant and so aggressive—begging for money, offering me non-existent prizes, or trying to sell me a warranty for a car I don't own—that I've accidentally overlooked important messages.

I even filed one communication from my bank under "Obvious Financial Fraud" because it was sandwiched between a plea from a Nigerian Prince and a text informing me I’d won a lifetime supply of artisanal yogurt.

This week’s torment by the digital demons and inconvenient schedules can make even the smallest frustrations feel like a coordinated, personal assault—especially when your life coach is a spoiled little brat of a princess.

These minor battles—from algorithm-driven design competitions to surprise early morning ambushes by normally faithful city employees are simply the cost of navigating the 21st Century, if we can believe that’s its real name.

Thankfully, I have help from that modern wonder worker I call Ms. Wonder to help me sort it all out. It’s what I call the witless protection program.

Mining for Information

Thank goodness last week is over. If ever there was a week that tried my patience to an absurd extreme, it was that one. It's as if the universe decided I needed a dose of character-building whether I wanted it or not.

It all began when Ms. Wonder asked me to compare dental insurance plans with the intent of choosing the one best suited for us. Our current plan, while offering everything we desire in a dental insurance policy, is asking ransom prices for renewal.

I approached the task of finding new coverage with the discipline of a seasoned intelligence analyst. Lesser men might have simply skimmed the plan summaries and picked a plan by gut or a coin toss, but not me. I dug deep—information mining at its best. With the nuggets I discovered, I crafted the ultimate comparison spreadsheet, a monument to fiscal responsibility and what passes with me for adulting.

My spreadsheet was a thing of beauty: columns aligned with the precision of a military parade, rainbow-coded, and featuring four major providers: let's call them The Four Horsemen of Preventive Care—standing ready for final, rational assessment.

My initial assumption was simple, almost childlike in its innocence: a PPO is a PPO. Co-pay means co-pay across all providers. Out-of-pocket maximums are just what they sound like: the most you'll pay in a given year. 

I was as naive as a seventh-grader, attending their first school dance, convinced that everyone else had it all figured out. 

As I began the column-by-column comparison, reality crashed over me like a tidal wave of frigid enlightenment. It wasn't a simple comparison spreadsheet. I'd accidentally compiled the Rosetta Stone of insurance gobbledygook.

Every provider had taken basic terms—words that normal human beings use to communicate simple concepts—and warped them into completely unique, often contradictory definitions. It was as though the insurance executives had gathered in a smoke-filled back room and agreed that standard terminology would be bad for business.

Provider A defined "Out-of-Pocket Maximum" as the absolute limit you might pay in a year, assuming the stars aligned and you filed everything correctly.

Provider B defined the same term as "a friendly suggestion" subject to change at any time for any reason. 

Provider C had gone rogue and invented a term called "Annual Contingency Adjustments," which, according to the fine print, seemed to cover whatever was required by quarterly profit projections or the demands of the Fate sisters. 

Every time I thought I had finally nailed down a definition, I was met with a linguistic footnote—an arcane rune that made it abundantly clear that "Comprehensive Coverage" was just marketing-speak for "the bare minimum required to keep you from suing us, plus a free toothbrush."

I spent three hours staring at a column labeled "Deductible," trying to determine if it represented a fixed number, a random variable, or possibly a mythological creature that only appears during leap years when Mercury is in retrograde.

By hour four, I'd developed a theory that insurance plan documents are generated by an AI trained exclusively on legal disclaimers, abstract poetry, and the fever dreams of medieval monks.

"How's it going?" Ms. Wonder asked, passing through the room where I sat surrounded by printouts like a detective investigating a particularly boring crime.

"I've discovered that Provider D offers something called 'Preferred Network Flexibility, meaning you can see any dentist you want, as long as they're in network, accepting new patients, and haven't offended the insurance gods by charging reasonable rates."

"So... it's going well?"

"I've learned that a 'Clean Bill of Health' is the insurance provider's way of saying, 'We sincerely hope you never need to use this coverage.'"

She patted my shoulder with the sympathy of someone who's watched me spiral into obsessive research projects before. "Maybe just pick the cheapest one?"

"The cheapest one defines 'routine cleaning' as 'any dental procedure that doesn't require general anesthesia or a priest.'"

"So which one are we going with?" Ms. Wonder asked the next morning, finding me still staring at my spreadsheet like it might suddenly make sense if I just looked hard enough.

"Provider B," I said. "They're the only ones who didn't use the phrase 'catastrophic dental event' in their literature. I don't need that kind of negativity."

She smiled, kissed the top of my head, and walked away, leaving me to close my monument to fiscal confusion and accept that some battles against chaos are not winnable.

Princess Amy had been silent during most of my analysis, having grown bored with the whole affair somewhere in the first hour. Now she broke her silence. 

"You spent six hours to save maybe twenty dollars a month, right?"

"It's the principle of the thing," I said. "Responsible adults make informed decisions."

"You literally just said you chose Provider B based on marketing schpiel."

I closed my laptop with the dignity of a man who knows he's been defeated but refuses to admit it. 

"We're done here, Amy."

"Oh, we're definitely done," she agreed, "until next year when you do this all over again."

The universe indeed has a sense of humor. I just wish it wasn't always at my expense. 

Sunday Morning Coming Down

Luna Cafe is my Sunday morning sanctuary. On this particular morning, the air was rich with the scent of roasted beans, and the atmosphere shimmered with goodwill to all. I was blissfully entombed in a podcast about the geopolitical history of competitive cat herding. I never knew that cats had such strong opinions about being herded. 

It was the calm before the storm—a moment of peace so fragile, you could hear the distant clink of a teaspoon.

Then, the silence was not just broken; it was vandalized!

A voice erupted, a deafening, gravelly baritone like a drill sergeant auditioning for a heavy metal band. I immediately located the source: a gentleman on the sofa, clearly listening to his smartphone's audio at a volume that could reach low-earth orbit. 

My previous tranquility was detonated with an energy level measured in megatons! Princess Amy immediately took advantage of my vulnerability and encouraged me to ratchet up my moral superiority to eleven. But who could fault her for that? The nerve of the audio heathen! The utter, complete, and terrifying lack of musical grace!

My blood pressure spiked, and I instinctively knew what I had to do; the mothers of Shady Grove trained their sons well. I fixed my gaze past the innocent couple sitting between me and the reprobate sofa-sitter and delivered my most potent weapon: The Look.

It was my signature, high-voltage look meant to imply: "Seriously! Some people don't deserve the privilege of entering a shared public space." 

At that moment, the couple sitting at the table between us caught my eye. It was obvious they had seen The Look, and I expected them to silently nod in agreement, forming a brief, sacred pact of civilized folk against the barbarians. But no! 

"What?" the man demanded, his voice laced with the kind of aggression usually reserved for parking disputes.

My superior, judgmental facade crumbled into fine powder. I’d been tragically misunderstood. I tried to explain, "Oh, sorry," I said. "I was judging that guy over there, the one with his phaser set to disrupt."

Just as I was melting into a puddle of shame and espresso, a drum machine accompanied by electric guitar kicked in. The gravelly voice I’d judged so ruthlessly finished its declaration—"and now, the newest hit from The Decaf Disasters!"—and the cafe’s sound system blasted a shockingly loud 80s synth-pop song.

The voice I'd heard was the pre-recorded intro for the cafe’s music track. The quiet man on the sofa was just sitting there, sipping his latte. The only inconsiderate person in the entire room was me. 

I had publicly accused a volume button of a crime it didn't commit, and now I was embedded in a room with a couple who thought I was just shy of dangerous.

As I gathered my things to leave—staying felt about as comfortable as a pair of skinny-legged jeans—Princess Amy spoke again. 

"Well done, cowboy. You've managed to publicly shame an innocent man, wage war against a sound system, and demonstrate exactly why hermits choose to live in caves rather than cafes." 

She wasn't wrong, even though my performance was partly her fault. I'd entered Luna Cafe to be safe from the slings and arrows and daily life, and I was walking out having learned that sometimes the barbarian at the gates is actually just me, armed with righteous indignation and a catastrophically misdirected glare. 

As Shakespeare might have said, "Judge not the volume of others, lest ye be judged for the selections in your own Spotify playlist."

Maybe not worded in a way the Bard would have appreciated, but I'm certain he would’ve agreed with the sentiment. 

I made a mental note to make amends to the couple on my next visit, though I suspect they've already added me to their mental catalogue of "Reasons We Should Make Coffee at Home."

RJ Decker, On Deck

Princess Amy materialized in my passenger seat this morning as I sat in the Cinespace Studios parking lot on 23rd Street, studying the building where the "RJ Decker" production has set up its offices.

"Reconnaissance," I explained. "I'm being proactive this time."

"You're sitting in a parking lot staring at an empty building," she said, adjusting her imaginary tiara. "This is the kind of activity that will put your name on a restraining order."

"It's called preparation," I countered. "I'm learning from my mistakes."

"Oh, good," she said, settling in with fake enthusiasm,  "Because you have so many to learn from. The most recent one is that you were supposed to be outside the county courthouse today filming the reshoot of scenes from the RJ Decker pilot episode."

She wasn't wrong. My track record of documenting film productions around town reads like a masterclass in what not to do. But with ABC's "RJ Decker" starting production soon, I've decided it's time to step up my game.

A Catalog of Catastrophes

"Let's look at the record, starting with 'The Runarounds,'" Amy said, getting ready to tick items off on her imaginary fingers. Amy is the avatar for my erratic emotions; she doesn’t actually have fingers.

"Where do I even begin with that one?" she asked. It was a rhetorical question, but I interrupted anyway, hoping to stop the barrage of criticism that I knew was coming.

"I managed to wrangle some good video footage," I offered.

"You got footage of the production crew on lunch break," she corrected. "And you coached a local extra with his one line until he overthought it so badly they fired him."

"That's not what happened," I protested. "He asked me to hear him do his lines, and I advised him to speak up, proper elocution being of the essence. Everyone knows that."

"By the way, how's he doing?" she asked. "Have you spoken to him?"

"I think he's coming around. His eyes are focused, and he's breathing normally now."

Hoping to steer our her discussion into a positive direction, I asked, "How about we consider things we’ve learned over the past year?" 

"Really?" she said. "You want to go there? Well, let's see, we learned that craft services is not a networking event, and 'just act natural' is not a valid security strategy. Let me see what else? Oh, yeah, you arrived at Flaming Amy's Taco Bar to film a production crew that was filming on-site at High Tide Tiki Bar on Pleasure Island."

"The internet said they were filming there,” I reminded her.

"The internet is seldom trustworthy," she said.

"Lesson learned," I admitted.

The Turning Point

“Oh, all right," she said. "It's fun to see you squirm, but it doesn't accomplish anything. Let's get to my suggestions for the RJ Decker project. Now pay attention."

The mental image of her counting on her fingers reappeared.

"From here on out," she began, "we double-check dates. We obey traffic laws even at set locations. And not everyone wearing a headset is a crew member."

"You're right," I admitted. "If not for bad luck, there'd be no luck."

"Bad luck?" she said through her laughter, "Genome, you're like a Swiss watch of failure—precise, predictable, and consistent.”

“That's harsh."

"You once tried to interview your own reflection in a store window."

"That was a life-like reflection and only momentary confusion, and you know it. Anyone could have made that mistake."

The New Plan

"So what's your brilliant strategy this time?” Her tone suggested she already knew the answer would disappoint her.

“Well,” I began, hoping to regain some of the credibility I’d lost. “I’ve subscribed to local media outlets, set up Google alerts, and I'm following the casting agent on social media responsible for recruiting extras for the production.”

"That’s actually sensible," Amy admitted grudgingly.

"Thank you!"

"And I'm guessing, since we're sitting outside Cinespace Studios, that you plan to visit possible set locations before filming even starts?" 

"Reconnaissance missions," I corrected. "Like I'm doing now."

"You're sitting in an empty parking lot.”

The New Approach

“Instead of trying to infiltrate restricted areas, I'm focusing on legitimate public viewing opportunities."

"Promising," said the princess.

"The New Hanover County Courthouse is a public building. Carolina Beach has public access. Churchill Drive has public sidewalks. I can document from outside security perimeters, and maybe not create traffic hazards this time.

"This is the first thing you've said that doesn't make me worried for public safety," Amy said.

"Really?"

"Don't get excited. The bar was extremely low."

A moment of silence passed as I waited to see what she was going to say next.

The Final Statement

"Genome," she said.

"Still here, old girl," I said.

"I have a suggestion that you should seriously consider. It’s so obvious, you should have thought of it yourself."

"Sweeten up, princess."

"You have Ms. Wonder in your life, you blockhead. She often takes you by the hand and leads you safely to wherever it is you should go."

"That's true,” I admitted.

"Wonder has completed the documentary studies program at Duke University. She’s the perfect source to help you with your strategy if you only ask. Promise me you'll do that."

"I promise," I said solemnly."

A Confident Conclusion

On November 24th, the curtain went up on the first day of filming for RJ Decker. The cameras rolled. Security was tight. And I wasn’t there, due to several failures, the primary one being that the filming location was Carolina Beach when I was convinced it was downtown.

They have 8 episodes to film for the first season, so the next few weeks are going to be enlightening or entertaining; definitely one or the other. Maybe both.