Glenn Gaslin's Astonishing Tales of Danger & Wonder

Update: Dropping Pizza Guy Statue Found!

Okay, they found him. The 80-year-old statue of a '49er panning for gold, which was stolen last week from an intersection near my place, has found in a scrap yard, cut in two. It's worth nearly $125,000 as a work of art and L.A. history, but a gang of statue thieves (for real) sold the 500-pound bronze hunk as raw materials for $900.

Anyway, two guys have been arrested, and the miner, who actually looked like some guy dropping a huge pizze on the ground, should be back on his rock in Carthay Circle in a few months. Whew.

Some Jerkoff Steals My Favorite Statue

There was this wonderfully strange and out-of-place statue near my place, of a man holding a giant flat pan and looking down. You don't see a lot of statues in Los Angeles, and it took a few days to even notice this one was missing.

Zev described him as a guy dropping a pizza. He was dropping pizza guy. T here would always be a story, as we drove by, about how, oops, I dropped my pizza! Right here on this tiny, totally inaccessible park wedged between these two very busy streets! (Apparently, I learn now, guy was a gold miner. Been there 80 years.

Anyway, dropping pizza guy is gone. Somebody took him . Assholes.

Dean Karnazes, Please, For the Love of God, Why Can't You Leave Me Alone?

During the last few weeks, as I've decided to ramp up my running routine and take it seriously, as I battle an unrelenting series of colds and flus and infections that keep from doing so, Dean Karnazes has been—I swear—stalking me.

You probably know this guy. He's the ultramarathon man. Or rather, The Ultramarathon Man. He just finished running 50 marathons, in 50 states, in 50 days. He thinks nothing of running for hundreds of miles, for days on end. And then he blogs about it. He sleeps four hours a night. He gets up at 4 a.m., runs 20-25 miles—and then takes his kids to school. He makes it look easy. So easy.

And there he is in my WIRED magazine, talking about how we mistake comfort for happiness, and we can't truly be happy unless we push ourselves more and more and more, and that's just not comfortable and you're going to have to deal with it. And there he is in the one issue of Outside magazine I buy a year, going on about how he eats grilled salmon every night but gorges on fast food while running his marathons. And there he is on the back of my flax-soy-dried blueberry granola box, looking all lean and sweaty, running right at me. He will not leave me alone, this guy.

Dean, listen. You can stop hounding me. I get it. I'm on it. Starting Monday, I'll see you out there.

Two Boys and Their Dog

On the morning walk, South Carthay, Los Angeles.

Bad Sweater Explosion

Our buddy Kevin (aka Bad Sweater Guy) is milking the season of dubious knit garments for all it's worth.

He's getting quoted by actual Big Media types as an "expert" on bad fashion (Men's Health, USA Today just in the past couple of week), and his site's been relaunched as a daily blog, now with an original comic strip, user-submitted bad sweater pics and more bad-sweater news than, well, anywhere.

What's next, his own screaming-head news hour on FOX? A book? A movie? Something. Something has to be next.

The Mini Has a Bad Day

My Lunch with Turtle

Forgot to mention this, but a really good sighting last week. Well, really good for cable: Ate what they’re calling a Premium Crispy Chicken Sandwich meal, at the counter in the Miracle Mile McDonald’s with: Turtle and Drama from ‘Entourage.’ Mayrav wrote it up over on Fishbowl LA.

I'M NOT READY YET, but when I am: ninja school.

I GREW UP IN A SOLAR SYSTEM with only nine planets. My son will know a galactic neighborhood, if the International Astronomical Union adopts new definitions of celestial objects being debated right now, with twelve. Or maybe twenty-four. Or, less likely, hundreds. Of planets. Now that's what The Future is supposed to look like.

BEEMER MOVIE NEWS, right here:

Video director Adam Levite, also known as Associates in Science, or AiS, is teaming with "The Hebrew Hammer" writer-director Jon Kesselman to adapt Glenn Gaslin's satirical novel "Beemer." Levite has optioned the book and is writing the script with Kesselman. Published in 2003, Gaslin's novel is a surreal suburban thriller that sends up SoCal life, pop culture, youth and advertising. The story centers on Beemer Minutia, a young man with big ideas who is coerced by his girlfriend to join an ad agency and enter "real life." He finds that life to be stranger than he imagined when he runs afoul of domestic terrorists, a boy band comprised of eunuchs, a crafty teen nemesis and a crazed suburban mom running a homeowners association militia. (Borys Kit)