Bring out your dead.

As a cop, I work closely with several types of people that the general population never has the opportunity to meet. Whenever I respond to a crime scene or conduct a substantial investigation, I work alongside a wide array of individuals with very interesting professions. At first glance, they might seem unremarkable, but I've found that they tend to be very interesting once you get to know them.

Night watch doctors are very interesting because they never act how you might expect. On TV, doctors are always good looking, poignant, intelligent, and above all, good at what they do. In real life, the doctors I meet often seem to be only slightly more medicinally qualified than me.



Last week, I was at a small local hospital (which will remain nameless) guarding a gang member who had been shot multiple times and later proved to be mortally wounded from his injuries. The gangster was being attended to by four scared nurses and one crusty old doctor who had apparently just woken up. He had a good three-days beard growth on his face and the hair on the back of his head was matted down, indicating that he had just finished a delightful nap in an unused examination room. Had I been doing a traffic stop on the good doctor, a Breathalyzer test would have been in order.

The doctor spotted me while he was working on the soon-to-be-dead gangster. He suddenly abandoned his post and walked over to inform me of the situation. Removing his bloody gloves, he said in an alarmingly calm voice, "Ya know, it doesn't look very promising." Had I been thinking, I would have asked to see his credentials to make sure he wasn't just some guy who was staying at the local Holiday Inn Express. Minutes later, I saw my partner in the hospital lobby. I told him, "Dude, if I get shot standing right here, I want you to throw me in the black & white and drive me to another hospital."

Of all the people I come into contact with, coroners are by far the most colorful. Not only do they have the best stories, but they also tend to have the best sense of humor. Any coroner will tell you, the worst calls we get are when we have to respond to a senior care facility. Those are the worst because there will usually be a room full of old people lying in beds (think Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) but only one of them is dead. Upon arrival, our job is to examine and make sure said dead person is in fact dead and that there is no evidence of foul play.



If I happen to arrive during scheduled nap time it's even more complicated, because everyone in the room is asleep or dead, and I'm supposed to know which is which. There's nothing quite like walking over to what you expect to be a lifeless body when, without warning, said body sits up and asks you to turn up the volume on Matlock. I've decided the best thing to do from now on is to, upon entering the room, hit my baton against the door frame of the room as hard as I can and look to see who flinches and who doesn't.

One day, I responded to the scene of a suicide. The deceased lived in small, multiple level home, not uncommon in the San Fernando Valley. By the time I was done with my investigation, the family of the departed had gathered outside of her home. Part of my job is to assist the coroners with a swift removal of the body before the family gets too grief stricken and needs to be physically restrained. The coroner who responded was so small and weak, I could tell that I would be doing most of the heavy lifting to get the body out of the house and down the stairs.

The coroner and I wrapped the body discretely into a body bag. We put it onto a gurney and made our way out the front door. As we neared the top of the complex flight of stairs in front of the house, the experienced coroner stopped and looked around to assess the situation. She told me: "Listen, the whole family is standing around watching us. I'm not gonna lie, there's a good chance that you and me are going to drop this body." I was shocked at her complete lack of confidence. Then she said, "If it starts to fall, let it fall. Trust me, I've been doing this for years, it's much better to drop the body and pick it back up than to play hot potato with it on the stairs in front of the family." Fortunately, we made it down the stairs and into the County van without incident.

How to hold a purse without compromising your dude-hood

We've all been there.

Well, maybe we haven't. Guys, if you've ever had a girlfriend or are currently married, you've probably been there. You're out in public—maybe at church, maybe shopping—and both of your lady's arms are occupied, leaving you with the embarrassing task of having to hold her purse. Such is the inescapable and horrifying lot of the boyfriend.

Some guys try to ignore their perfectly natural and justifiable feelings of discomfort when presented with this dubious task. To compensate, they often embrace the purse; sometimes going so far as to sling it over one shoulder. I think the theory behind this is that if you look like it doesn't bother you, it won't bother anyone else.

Well they're wrong. It bothers me. It should bother everyone. There is simply no excuse for a guy cradling a purse.

It seems like there is no way out of this predicament. We can't refuse to hold the purse. That would make us look like we're uncaring, selfish lugs who think only of ourselves.

That, of course, is true, but we don't want to let on.

I, Pecadillo, have discovered a way out, and it is surprisingly simple. You don't hold the purse like a football; you don't sling it over a shoulder. You hold it like a bomb—a bomb that could go off at any moment. Because that's what it is.

Holding it this way will surely draw attention to the purse and your current obligation as keeper of the purse.

This approach goes against our natural instincts of attempting to hide the fact that we're holding a purse. But trust me, it's the only way.

All too often guys will try to hide it under their arm or keep it out of sight in some way. The major flaw to this approach is that, to the untrained eye, you look like you are in possession of something that you are 1. comfortable holding and 2. accustomed to holding. Both of which should not be true.

Instead, the boyfriend should draw as much attention to the purse as possible in an uncomfortable and truly awkward way. Think of the way C-3PO would look holding a purse. One or both arms should be fully extended, drawing attention to the fact that you don't feel right about holding it. Handle the purse with only the tips of your fingers. Never, EVER clutch it or palm it. Pretend your woman found the purse in the street and you don't know where it's been. While in possession of a purse, every movement you make should be unnatural and unsettling, proving to anyone who notices, that you are not a purse-holding fancy-boy.

I have been fortunate. In my brief and limited experience at boyfriend-hood, I have only rarely been put in such an awkward and undesirable position. However, I have had many a friend suffer the humiliation of the girlfriend's purse.

It's not pretty.

Worst Christmas Ever.

Warning: the story you are about to read is extremely troubling, and not suitable for small children. But I think it's a good cautionary tale about the dangers of excess.

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The day after Christmas 1998, I witnessed one of the most disturbing things imaginable. It was late morning, around 9:00 AM, when I decided to eat a baked potato for breakfast, a meal I would soon regret. As I stood in my kitchen, I heard the unmistakable sound of a woman screaming. You can always tell the difference between a playful scream and a genuine scream; the sound a little girl makes while playing is far different than the scream that emits from a woman who has, say, discovered she's run out of canned pineapple while she's halfway through a Jello® recipe.

This lady was clearly in trouble. Her incoherent cries seemed to be coming from the direction of the community swimming pool. (We lived in a condominium development, and the pool was located right across the street from our unit.) When I looked out the upper window, I saw the screaming lady standing over the jacuzzi, too much in shock to move. I instructed my mom to call 9-1-1 as I started downstairs to see what was going on. Upon arrival, I immediately wished I had stayed inside. The woman had found the body of a dead man floating in the jacuzzi.

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..."

The dead guy—let's call him . . . "Stu"—had just been released from prison a day or two earlier, and had pretty much been drinking ever since. Stu decided that (in the spirit of Christmas) he would spend Boxing Day drinking in the jacuzzi. Although this was a particularly warm holiday season, Jack Frost was most assuredly "nipping at his nose," if you know what I mean. So the new parolee set out to enjoy his first days of freedom with copious amounts of the most unnecessary pool accessory of all—a case of hootch.

Worst of all, at some point during a long night of boozing in the jacuzzi, our hero decided the next best way to celebrate the holiday was to release himself from the uncomfortable bindings of his bathing suit. Now, I don't want to be judgmental, and he was, after all, a new parolee enjoying real freedom for the first time in who knows how long, but I think getting naked and drunk while flying solo in a community jacuzzi right under the warning sign would have been enough to guarantee Stu a lump of coal next Christmas anyway.



Anyhoo, sometime in the early morning hours, with the combined effects of so much alcohol and steaming hot, foaming jacuzzi-water, Stu experienced exactly what the large, red-lettered warning sign next to the jacuzzi said would happen.

Intoxication combined with excessive heat plays havoc with a person's blood presure. Stu had apparently passed out and subsequently drowned.

Poor Stu's corpse must have simmered a few hours before the neighbor-lady located him. And that's how I came to be standing over his ghostly-white, naked, lifeless body—with a piece of my baked potato still in my mouth and Stu's ghetto blaster still pumping out the poignant strains of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird."

Merry Christmas indeed.