No More Mr. Nice Guy Today

 

If you were expecting 700 words of nice this morning, read no further because I’m in a Stuck-In-Gridlock-On-The-George-Washington-Bridge kind of mood and I don’t care who is responsible for the closed lanes or why. Honk! Honkkkk!

 

You want nice? Watch an old Tom Hanks movie. Speaking of which, I’m steamed that Hanks was not nominated for an Oscar for either his lead role in “Captain Phillips” or his supporting performance in “Saving Mr. Banks.”

 

It has now been 13 years since “Cast Away” when Hanks – a back-to-back Academy Award winner in 1994 and 1995 for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump” – was last nominated for the gold statue.

 

Suddenly Hollywood’s Nice Guy seems like an Oscar castoff.

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            You want nice? Curl up with a warm chocolate chip cookie. I’m as steamed as a chef who has just cracked a rotten egg into the soufflé batter.

 

            Speaking of rotten eggs, do we really need to spend valuable Los Angeles County sheriff resources sending deputies with a felony search warrant to raid Bieber’s mansion and seize his cell phone and home security camera system looking for clues about who egged the next-door house (albeit causing an estimated $20,000 in damage)?

 

            How about this for quick justice: let the neighbor throw eggs until his arm grows tired at Bieber’s home.

 

            And speaking of swift justice and throwing, how about if a judge finally throws the book at Bieber after Miami police charged the 19-year-old foul-mouthed pop star with drunken driving, resisting arrest and driving without a valid license at 4 a.m. Thursday morning?

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            You want nice? Put on a Bieber love song. I’m in a Bieber-cursing-out-the-police kind of rage.

 

            The L.A. Dodgers just signed pitcher Clayton Kershaw to a $215 million, seven-year contract, which works out to $30.7 million per season or roughly $1 million per game he pitches (if he remains healthy); or about $1.5 million per victory in a 20-win season; or $1.9 million if he wins 16 games as he did last season.

 

             But what has me Dodger Blue-in-the-face mad is that on top of an annual salary of about 90 teachers combined, Kershaw will receive a $1 million bonus for winning the Cy Young Award and $500,000 for any second- or third-place finish.

 

            For $30 million annually, shouldn’t he have to GIVE BACK $1 million if he doesn’t win the Cy Young Award?

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            Speaking of wasted money, I am HOT under the collar about the Ventura County Transportation Commission recently approving the expenditure of $111,000 to hire a consultant to do a feasibility study for adding 31 miles of HOT – High Occupancy Toll – lanes in both directions on Highway 101 from the Los Angeles County line to Highway 33 in Ventura.

 

            Kudos, and good rush-hour karma, to Linda Parks who was the only commissioner to see the value in putting $111,000 to better use.

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            You want nice? Go watch a Southern California sunset.

 

            Which is another thing I am ticked off about – locals posting photographs of our spectacular Gold Coast beach sunsets on Facebook and Instagram for everyone in the country suffering through the Arctic vortex to see and get jealous and angry at us about.

 

            Heck, Monet would have gazed at our recent evening skies and set down his paintbrush in resignation, knowing full well he could not do the scene justice.

 

            I am reminded of a winter trip we took with my wife’s family to a beautiful resort in Mexico. Each evening at Happy Hour everyone would sit on the beach and marvel as the sun gently dipped into the ocean’s horizon.

 

            “Ooooh!” and “aaaah!” the others said, while my much-better-half and I had a reaction of “ho-hum.” There were no clouds to become ablaze; no distant islands to frame the vision.

 

            We felt like Norma Desmond, the faded silent movie star in “Sunset Boulevard” who dreams of making a triumphant return to the screen, when she says: “We didn’t need dialogue. We had faces. There just aren’t any faces like that anymore.”

 

            There just aren’t sunsets anywhere like here. Suddenly, I’m in a nice mood again.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for the Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. His new memoir WOODEN & ME is available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com and Amazon.com.