but theyre not

the sounds inside sound like moans.

but alas.

drove a young lady last night from USC to LAX via Uber X because i was foolishly going for a $100 bonus and i netted $14.

when you go from one side of LA to the other you should get at least $20.

people will happily pay that.

for years they paid that for Super Shuttle, a hapless extended van that requires you zig zag through town picking up other strangers.

but you get tony pierce in a benz across town and tony only gets $14?

i had just washed and vacuumed my ride.

after LAX i thought about getting a snack at Kanpai but i got a ping at the Custom Hotel.

three asian college kids probably from the nearby art school

they were going to Gardena for some Taiwanese Hot Pot.

they spoke foreign languages to each other. laughing. ignoring me.

all while i said to myself, never chase that bonus again, its a fools game. just work on premium rides. you know better. why are you such a sucker?

dropped them off in this super crowded strip mall which i’ll have to go back to because all the asian delicacies seemed delicious. thus the crowds.

got back on the 110 to DTLA when i got a phone call 20 minutes after i had left Gardena.

“my girlfriend left her wallet in your car.”

um

“it’s pink. can you return it.”

the whole time i was thinking: how do you not know for 20 minutes that you left your pink wallet in the back seat of a car?

“i’ll pay you $20.”

so i turned around.

cursing myself. hating my life. thinking about the Churches Chicken i passed twice.

knowing i wouldnt pass it a third without stopping.

this dude told sam jackson

hey, pose how you really feel about this right now.

last night i had to hit the number so i went out to usc to get it done

because creativity is so subjective, it’s nice to have a few elements in life that are

all scoreboard.

so on certain things, like number of trips in three days,

it’s irresistible to have some goals out there.

the goal was 35 in 3 days, which is easy if youre a full time driver

and not so easy if you have a real job and you wanna do it in, say, 10 hours.

went over there on wednesday night, did 22 rides, so i had to do 13 yesterday, nbd, right? but the word has gotten out with uber drivers that if you’re not doing so well, head over to sc on the last day of the bonus and finish the job

so there were waaaay more drivers than kids so after two hours i was not even close to finishing.

and it was windy, and it was weird.

the devil santa ana winds whippin dirt and dust and giant hardened palm fronds itching to scratch a nice car that has no business being there in south central

playing a fools game.

so i thought like a fool, and drove the other way.

it’s true i dont do things like everyone

but very few have the numbers i have.

last night i did my 4,000th lifetime trip to hit the goal.

4.98 driver rating

and i think about that .02

constantly.

with that same exact

sam jackson face.

fucked up and took an uber x ping while 6 rides short of the goal

i figured, how far could this ride from the freshman dorm be?

how about brentwood?

good news, it turned out to be three of the sweetest sorority girls ever who were making the half hour trip to get some frozen yogurt for one of their sisters who lost a house election.

apparently the Bigg Chill on olympic is magic.

took a nice jewish lady from a passover party to her moms house by the fox hills mall

then headed to the 10 so i could get back over to sc but made a pit stop at the jack in the box to get a deep fried chicken guacamole bacon sandwich with curly fries and a coke. did i mention i went to the doc this morning for my check up and ive lost like 8 pounds lately.

pretty girl today asked why i never work out.

i said if the xbi knows youre in shape they’ll trick you into working for them.

picked up three rich ladies in culver city, uber select. all moms talking about their kids and what they’ll eat, how they shower, what to do about book bags (pack them for them, sigh)

about 10 years ago they started building houses in these hills above brentwood and across the 405 near bel air. i dont know why they never built any houses there before but for some reason LA never figured it out until recently.

id never been up in there. gated community. way more houses than i expected. close together. huge trees everywhere though. dropped off one of the ladies and the other two talked to each other about food.

one was saying how she and her husband were vegans before having kids and now theyre at the mercy of them. theyve begun eating way too much red meat, she said. one of the kids doesnt like chicken. and fish you gotta be careful about. especially from japan. and shrimp, forget about it. and who can trust tofu?

she wants to get them way more into beans.

i could smell the remaining half of my jack in the box wafting from the trunk.

like a captive, quietly knocking

eat me

eat

me

some of them it only works in the sack

some of them only works at work

some of them on virtually

some,

never.

but the ones i find the most interesting are the ones where you both sorta hate each other

and yet you end up together for years.

uber does this thing where they lie to you. they lie at you, specifically. frankly, and it happens so often that you dont even know when theyre telling the truth, to the point that sometimes you end up with someone telling you the straight up truth and it seems so weird that you dont believe it. literally you dont believe it.

the other day someone wrote me after i wrote them and they basically said, oh no, we are INTENDING to rip you drivers off.

because it was clearly from someone who understood the situation perfectly and because none of the lines were preprogrammed cookie cutter like 99% of the correspondences i get from them, my reaction was “oh”

instead of WTF

but now we have to go back to the pretend game that they didnt say what they did, which is sad, because if there was an actual person on the end of my monthly emails to them, theyd probably stop.

they are one of those companies that you say to yourself, if they last thru 2020 i’ll be shocked

the pretty girls will stop coming over

and doing pretty girl things.

the hits will dry up.

all my hair will fall out.

and i’ll stop learning.

but last night one thing led to another and i was able to rid my bedroom of cats for just long enough, to do what i have been studying all these many years.

and when it was over, i gave her a pillow shaped as a poo emoji and i sat on my couch and said, great, now what?

it was then i decided to move my car from a block away to in front of my house.

and then i realized i was hungry. and then i realized it was friday night and all the other ubers were probs in coachella, maybe i should fill the void and ubes around LA with a funny little smile on my face.

and so i did. i didnt really need to get a weekend bonus. it was so small, why bother, but then i figured, it’s there, if i can get it in 3 hours then perfect. otherwise who cares.

so i drove and i was very close to getting it. i was two rides away. but i was getting sleepy.

the passenger had purple hair. she told me about where we were headed, Koreatown. she had moved here from Ohio with her black boyfriend. important because in ohio she said they were discriminated against.

here they were treated just as badly as anyone else in her apartment and she loved that but did not love: the cockroaches, the fact that she never gets hot water in the shower, or the fact that an upstairs neighbor dumped urine out the window and the building manager did nothing.

dropped her off and i only had one more to go. K Town was about 15 minutes from my house. Let’s hope for a short one. When it came it was something on Wilshire. I was tempted to do the Bad Driver trick of accepting the ride and starting it before the passenger got into the car to check to see where the destination was — and then cancelling if it was too far — but i’m a good boy and good things always seem to come to me when i am good, so i found the woman, who seemed to be stumbling in the streets and allowed her into my car.

come to find out she was headed to Pacific Palisades: a good half hour to the west. It would be an hour roundtrip, all for $18. but i did it. why not. i love the beach. i love LA. she didnt barf. she fell asleep a half dozen times. we didnt talk. i played 80s music. the roads were empty. it was 1am. Sunset all the way home. no one was out.

note to self: if anyone wants to vacation in LA, find a weekend when Easter, Passover and Coachella are all going down, not only is there little traffic, but i bet every hotel has a vacant room or two.

and i am the worlds biggest sinner about certain things.

for example: im probably the greatest uber driver ever.

and there are a lot of uber drivers.

you dont need a tray of candy, condoms and mints.

you dont need a lot of bottles of water.

you need to be a good driver, and love people.

if you know a little too much about the surroundings, thats a bonus.

if you are genuinely curious about the world and the people who live there, even better.

and i will say, it helps to have been around the block a few times.

after a strange day at work it was really nice to drive the kids of usc

around their weird campus in south central.

one beautiful asian girl, after i asked her if she lives with her boyfriend said,

“no because sometimes i like to get naked, put self tanner on, and stand with my arms out, eating grapes as i watch youtube videos. i dont need some man making fun.”

got hit by this allergy attack yesterday probs due to the super bloom.

on any other day i woulda called in sick but i had to go to this meeting which determines the whole next week.  runny nose, sneezing, general ickiness. the benedryl makes me feel sick.

so driving around usc i had run out of kleenex and i got a ping from a young lady at the Taco Bell down from the 9-0.

so i texted back “be right there, can you pick me up some napkins?”

got there, she had the napkins, and i drove her and her friends to this cool taco joint + bar.

we took a selfie by the curb

got 15 rides in 3 hours for my $45 bonus.

one dude said, do you know you look just like tom morello.

and while going home i got a regular uber x ping. i said fine, why not.

turned out to be two of the most beautiful young nurses you ever saw

right outside of the natural history museum

i was all, omg i guess its first friday, which it was and it had just let out.

the ladies, one of them scandalously exposing her midriff, giggled, buzzed

no clue who had just performed

told me some wonderful stories about working at childrens hospital

we drove to where the johnny rockets used to be on melrose

somehow i only made $8 on the 8-mile ride

but they were such a delight.

let me tell you.

i asked them about what college they went to.

they said they met at this christian college in san berdue

i said shut your mouth, the only thing i love more than the cubs is talking about the bible!

whats your favorite story

and the one told me about the story of Esther

and she told it so well and so colorfully that we all clapped when she was done.

it’s 2:20am. if i had an electric car i would still be out there.

do i know whats going on? nope.

drove around USC last night hoping to get 15 rides but my secret is out and the place was flooded with Uber cars and I barely got 8. i’ll have to go back tomorrow.

drove a professor to his apartment downtown. had a ride with three dudes one of em stunk.

but the funniest was these two sorority girls who i picked up at a liquor store and took em to The Row. thats where all the frat and sorority houses are.  Half way there they realized they didnt have a place to store their booze. The original plan was to put it in the trunk of the car of one of their sisters, but they found out that she was caught up and couldn’t make it for a while.

So on the way to the house they brainstormed:

We could hide it in the bushes under the airconditioner behind the house.

We could ask one of the frat dudes to hold it for us.

We could try to sneak it in [the bottles were clanking as they said this]

Finally we got to the sorority house and they got out, bottles still making bottle noises, they got out, super tight shorts, perfume that smelled of vanilla, and they looked around for a friendly face.

And I drove away realizing exactly which women voted for Trump last November.

drove a fancy dj girl around a little today

she told me she had gotten food poisoning from Cafe Gratitude

probably because they dont cook anything over there.

she asked, what are you playing?

i said, its the day after St. Paddys so i figured something chill

incase you had a hangover

she asked what is it what is it?

i said Wes Montgomery from his Blue Note era.

she said i love Wes Montgomery

so i turned it up a little.