From the spoils of human tragedy...

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My job this week is for a show in production called AUCTIONEERS$$ about a new thriving business in America. When people lose their homes or businesses, I guess banks and insurance companies seize everything, business equipment. Then the Auctioneers aucion it off and a lot of people make a lot of money thanks to that family losing their home.

Also when people put their belongings in a storage facility and then can't pay the bill for two months in a row, they lose their belongings. It goes to the auctionners.

The Auctioneers$$ are the savvy capitalists who stand between the loser and buyer in these human catastrophes. They sell the contents of a storage facility without opening it, so it's like a party when after the sale is made, they pore over family pictures and such looking for hidden treasures they can later sell at whopping profits.

The same company that makes this show also produced Accidental Fortunes, where people find a thing in a trash bin, take it home and clean it up, and end up selling it at Sotheby's for half million dollars later. And that was a cool funny show, but it's a year later now and...

Now it's a show about people who sell the spoils of human tragedy... yee, it's getting a little weird. One box even contained teeth with gold fillings that someone's grandpa brought home from some war, 'nuff said.

I remember when Lizzy and I had all our stuff at Public Storage on Santa Monica and La Brea. (Highland?) On santa monica boulevard. We put our stuff there November 2003 because first month was only a dollar, and we knew it would only be a few weeks tops before we got into another home. It ended up being two years.

Meanwhile there were several times we came within hours of not making that payment on time and losing everything we owned except what was crammed into our car. The photographs, file cabinets, (I'm a writer and everything used to be only on paper so I have file cabinets.) not to mention clothes and those damn gold coins that I still to this day have never found...

Anyway

Often when we would go to visit the storage facility, as we were digging through boxes, tearing through bags, it was such a wreck in there after a few months- often when we went we'd hear the cries.

People wailing, calling out Pleeeease pleeease.

It would echo through the steel corridors of storage bins.

"Those are my family albums, just let me take those, please, please don't take everything, no one wants my family albums, pleeeeeeese pleeeeese"

Then you would hear the soft-spoken practiced corporate voice of the Public Storage guy, in an accent of indefinable country of origin, explaining, "No ma'am, this is our policy, if you do not pay by midnight on the date payment is due, you no longer own the contents of your unit."

"Pleeeeese pleeeease!"

Lizzie and I would shudder. We'd stop digging in the boxes and listen and shudder, especially after the first time we almost didn't make our monthly payment on time. It was something like 75 dollars a month and ... that's how bad it gets when you're homeless and your job requires you to work out of your home.

At least I kept my work equipment in the car as we'd carry a television with a VCR in it and my desktop computer and monitor up and down the stairs and into motel rooms when we could, where I'd work for a week, then we'd pay for two more weeks, then we'd run out of cash and sleep in the car for a week. It went on like that for 6 months then we got into a shelter, where we lived 11 months, then a transitional shelter for 6 months, then this apartment in a neighborhood where a lot of people have spent years of their lives in the same kind of chaos.

I fit in here. My clothes do not look shabby compared to my neighbors' clothes. This is the part of town where people who don't even hear about one-year window opportunities for lawsuits live, they are too busy working 12 hours a day and taking care of sick family or whatever to pay that much attention to the news.

I fit in here.

None of my neighbors have a full mouth of teeth unless they spent a year and a half with an empty mouth and then got Medi-Cal dentures. I don't think Medi-Cal does dentures anymore...

Oh yeah, the TV show I'm working on this week. Just another reality filler between commercials on a cable channel, nothing to get excited about. Pays the rent for a dozen or so people in L.A. who get income out of it.

Works for me.

***********

(A few hours later)

Wow, just when I was about to give up on Humankind, this is the story I ended up working on today for the show "Accidental Fotunes." . I'm not allowed to tell what I learn on these shows that hasn't been in the media yet, but this story has blown me away today even renewed by faith in ... in ... in something.

With One Swing (of the Gavel), Ruth's Bat Hits $1.26 Million - Los ...
Babe Ruth's bat -- A photo caption with an article in Friday's Section A about the ... Stadium misidentified a man holding the bat as a worker at Sotheby's.

What was Babe Ruth's bat nicknamed? Answerbag
Dec 26, 2008 ... What was Babe Ruth's bat nicknamed? Darlin' is the most famous. ... wood bat sold for $1.26 million at a Sotheby's auction in December 2004, ...www.answerbag.com..

SportsCards Plus & Sotheby's To Sell Babe Ruth's Storied Bat - PSA ...
Professional Sports Authenticator (PSA) is the world's largest third-party sportscard authentication service -- the experts in grading cards, .

Sportsview: Babe Ruth Bat a Treasure - Wire Services - Baseball ...
The greatest worry about the auction of the bat Babe Ruth swung to hit the ... as Sotheby's and SportsCards Plus believe it will at their joint auction in ...

Wait until you see this story in full in the show I'm working on now, Accidental Fortunes. I may rebound faster than I expected.

Not because of the amount she got for the bat, but for who she was and how she held onto it, amazing story. As I go through the file and hear the details, rushes of endorphins are flushes all over my body... thanks, nudges, for sending some respite.