OpEdNews - Diary: This Week at Ralph's

March 8, 2009 at 22:49:32 Permalink
This Week at Ralph's

Diary Entry by John Little (about the author)

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a weekly look at the Ralphs in Hollyweird.

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Weird transvestites aside, Ralph's seemed pretty timid and devoid of its Hollyweird roots when I went through the plate glass doors this week. I did discover one thing, however, about those nondescript entry doors. If you grab a cart and arrive at those doors in the exact second they fully close, you're sol. All you can do is decelerate from brisk walk to dead stop in the span of two nanoseconds.

If not, you'll just crash into the doors, make a huge, crashing sound that envelopes the store, the parking lot, and most of the boom-boxes in a five mile radius, and become the instant idiot du jour for all to gawk at. Trust me on this one, I know, I really know. It gets really sad when even the guy down the street mugging a little old lady stops for a second and stares at you. And then she stares too. I don't think this was what Andy Warhol had in mind when he said that we will all have our 15 minutes of fame someday. If it is, then I've only got about 12 minutes left.

I usually enter on the opposite side of the store from Wells Fargo. It's not that I want to avoid the weirdos in line at the ATM machines, it's just that I don't want to wander into a line of bank customers that make the Harvey Korman line of thugs from the movie, "Blazing Saddles," look like nothing more than girl scouts trying to sell their cookies.

Two aisles into the quest, I spot a guy with a hat on, a bowler. Well, after last week, I wasn't going to go out on a limb about his/her gender until I had concrete proof. I remember I was thinking, "You're not supposed to wear a hat inside the store."

A few aisles later, I came face to face with bowlerman. It was a guy dressed as Charlie Chaplin complete with torn up shoes and mustache, and bowler. I looked around and noticed that absolutely no one was paying this guy very much attention. I guess repeated use builds up a tolerance in people. I stood there for a second staring at him and I guess I was the only one who had done so that morning because he was staring back at me. I wanted to say, "Aren't you supposed to be dead?" but decided against it for fear that others would just look at me and say, "'Stupid tourists."

And if there's one thing in Hollyweird that can be the death knell of anyone's social life, it's having the nickname "Stupid tourist." After that, everytime you go out, be it to the store, to a restaurant or to a party, people will inevitably come up to you and say, "Aren't you that stupid tourist from Ralphs?"

"Uh, it's a role I'm playing in the upcoming MGM film, 'The Stupid Tourists of Hollywood.'"

54 year old Californian male, born on the third planet revolving Sirius, no seriously - I've lived in three different countries, USA, Switzerland, Mexico - speak three languages fluently, English, French, Spanish - part-time journalist for (more...)

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