Yeah, that is me, clowning around over at David Janss’ place in Tarzana, CA. Robyn took this picture, of the bathroom. I just happened to get in the line of fire. The deal was that David had decided to spend some exorbitant amount of cash to redo that nothing bathroom in special Mexican tile. I mean, we are talking something like $8,000 just for the tiles. Of course, he is also the guy who drove a 1962 Buick that the city kept citing for pollution violations. I rode in it once, and it was pretty bad. Clouds of blue-black smoke vomiting out until it warmed up. Strangers would pull up beside us and give is the finger.
Still feeling bad [from the flu]. Living on chicken soup and milk. I drove over to Franks’ at 2:00 p.m. but he wasn’t in. That means he is working. Yet, it does no good money-wise—because when Frank works overtime, he gets sick the following week to the amount of extra dollars he made.[Author’s note: the following was not part of the original journal entry.]
On January 1, 2001, my buddy, Frank, and I decided to count to a million. Frank wanted to start a dollar store and I informed him he would need around $100,000 to stock the shelves and at that price, it “might as well be a million”.
After a year of trying, and failing, to find a true display of one million, and a considerable amount of planning, we decided to count 10,000 toothpicks just to see what parameters we were up against. Toothpicks turned out to be an inspired choice. It is nigh impossible to know why until you personally have counted to 50,000 at least. They are clean, light, and just heavy enough to stay in place where you set them.
The tale is very well-documented elsewhere, still here are the finer points. We met up for coffee three times a week at the IHOP of Biscayne and around 20th St. North. Each session was around two and a half hours and I defy anyone who says they counted for longer in one day. Just over 8-1/2 months later, we had the million. This eventually took us to California, the Del Mar County Fair 2003. By early 2002 I was a very seasoned counter and could hit around 2,900 – 3,000 per hour, Frank around 70% of that.
[Author's note 2017: this is, I believe the first mention of the 1,000,000 toothpick count that took us to California. It was one thing a year ago to talk of the million, but another year to decide what to count. Pennies? Heavy and filthy. There is no space here to record all the items considered, some of which failed simply because nobody would sell you a million of the. Toothpicks came about by accident. We had a planning meeting at IHOP and the rest is history. That history is deeply buried in this still indexless blog, if you care to go looking for it. I still have the million toothpicks and am awaiting the time to redo the display. I hope to have it ready by the time I turn 65, as a supplement to my retirement. Frank, my sort-of partner, has long since disappeared.]
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