It Does Make A Fiery Ring

This is my last work day for the year 2006. For some, that would be celebration enough. But not for me, I'm a whiny bitch. There are outside forces keeping me from doing a celebratory song and dance routine, complete with powder blue top hat and cane... Showgirl style kicks....

Outside forces - how I hate you.

I would like to be feeling a huge, flaming force of love; a giant, face melting sense of accomplishment for the last year and excitement for the year to come.

I would like for this moment to be like a hot kernel of flaming love, like a molten lava love flame in kernel form. I want for it to be like when you're plowing through a bowl of popcorn (and I mean good popcorn with lots of real butter and fancy seasoning and maybe parmesan), and you get to those hard corn kernels at the bottom that didn't get popped. But since you've eaten the popcorn so damn fast, that kernel's still hot and it burns your mouth when you shovel it in there with the last dregs of the bowl.

Except this kernel is flaming lava hot, so it hurts. It starts burning a hole in your mouth, through your tongue and eventually through your jaw. Because seriously, your face is made up of just flesh you know, that can't hold up to burning hot flaming magma love. And while, shit yeah, it hurts, it also kind of feels good because you're being singed and burned and mutilated by love.


Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: I Should Have Known Better by Yo La Tengo. In fact, I feel I should recommend the entire new album, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass, even if for the title alone.

Nothing More Than Feelings

It's pretty much a given, almost ridiculously so, that I'm not crazy about my job. My dislike stems from a variety of reasons, none of them interesting or novel. So instead of sitting here beneath the buzzing fluorescents and the odd grinding noise coming from the "voltage hasardeux" ducts above my head and stewing in contagious anger, I want to think about things that I do like.

I like beer and tots.
I like folks that make a point of spending time with me.
I like that Bif, with limited time and ability, went out and got me gifts.
I like that there's 3 discs of Tom Waits waiting for me at home that I haven't heard.
I like that Nikki got me cookbooks.
I like that I don't associate with anyone who would question my manhood for being excited about the cookbooks.
I like big butts, and I cannot lie.
I like that Jason and Mandy came straight from the airport.
I like a layered shot of Kahlua, Bailey's and Rumplemintz.
I would like a good name for that shot.
I like that despite an overwhelming aversion to peppermint, Jason drank 'em.
I like that the first few times she had said shots, Mandy had to plug her nose. Now she requests 'em.
I like that for the moment I'm waltzing around that anger and not playing in it.
I like feeling excited about getting home to see Riley.

Three Six (And Rising)

Realized something fairly interesting this morning; that even if I were able to relieve myself of lamentable human drama as I have wanted (and having your primary focus be a 4 week old baby really helps in that), I'd miss it a little bit.

I thought of the gentle and sensitive man who taught a room full of ruffian fathers-to-be how to diaper a doll, and how he said that when an infant gets past that near-constant screaming and shrieking stage, you will kind of miss it. I mentally called bullshit at the time, but now I think I kind of get it.

I miss waking up to presents to open, I miss angel food cake and Skate King parties possibly called off for snow. But then I think that I'm okay, and I just want to miss them.

This year I did not wake up with an "ah-ha" moment, with a complete understanding of myself and my place in the world.

Maybe next year.

Drive By Christmas

Quick like bunny - work is kicking my ass today.

It was sort of a strange, transitional Christmas this year; a whirlwind Christmas caught between different family traditions and a time to make our own. It feels like we were given a little breathing room this year, that folks stepped back and allowed us to take in the still calm of the eye of the hurricane of Christmas chaos that will tear into our lives from here on out.

We hit Bremerton for Christmas Eve, much as I have every year before that I have spent that particular day in Washington. The ferry trip over was Riley's first boat trip, and he spent it in the car nursing. It was sort of relaxing though, listening to his contented noises while the Puget Sound rushed past the car's window. We got to Grandma's, all the aunts took their turns holding the baby and I roamed around talking to cousins. It felt a little strange to not have my parents or my brother there with us, but it was comfortable nonetheless.

One of my cousins brought a tape of Christmas Eve celebrations from 1987 and 88. It was a trip to see my family once again from nearly 20 years ago. It was heartwarming to again see Aunt Betty laughing and Uncle Bud playing his guitar, it made me catch my breath to again see Grandpa alive for a brief second, strong and wily. And all those kids running around - all those kids that are now in college, or having kids of their own. I could feel it, it all sang a verse of a song of transition.

I took Riley up on deck for the return trip. The cold blast of the front proved to be too much for him, so we headed to the aft where it was almost warm. I stood at the rail with him, listening to the dark water below and watching the Christmas lights on the shore drift by.

We took our time getting Christmas Day started, there were only gifts for Riley anyway and he was passed out while we opened them. We listened to the poor weekend guys who had to man the posts at KEXP for the holiday. I was pleasantly surprised to hear them play Alan Parsons In A Winter Wonderland by Grandaddy. But I was dismayed to hear that James Brown, the hardest working man in show business, had passed away - but then it did seem appropriate somehow that the man would shuffle off on what for most is the biggest day of the year.

Thank you James Brown, your music made me also want to get on the scene, like a sex machine. You will be missed.

We went over to Mandy's (sans Jason) for dinner for another delightful festive-type feast of turkey and dressing and potatoes and what-nots. Good stuff, good times, but still this strange hovering feeling of transitions and new traditions. I thought about the family we had made for ourselves, Bif and I. Not just the baby, but the amazing friends we have surrounding and protecting us; the beautiful ones who were so excited for us even when we were terrified, the ones who believed in our abilities when we couldn't. I gotta tell you, I was tired and beat, but it felt good. It felt like the sort of great Christmas present that you get that you never even asked for.

American Cream

I was going to bring up something about the walk in this morning, about the fizzy wave of comfort falling with Girlfriend Is Better on the headphones and pre-dawn industrial lights sparking faded memories. Something about the grid work atop the baseball stadium brought back something about the permanent orange glow that is Southern California at night and my stumbling around grimly through its industrial parks.

But then Gorgeous brought up how she had at one time had a problem with dipping fries in ranch dressing. This seemingly innocuous statement sent all sorts of memories tumbling of days in Santa Barbara.

When Greta May and I were both living in Santa Barbara, both attending UCSB and both relatively miserable, we used to spend many evenings at JK Frimples. Frimples was one of those restaurants from another era, a diner of sorts that was open twenty-four hours and was filled with comfy booths. Frimples was on State Street, in Santa Barbara proper and not over by the campus, so it attracted little in the way of student traffic. Frimples had been built around an enormous tree that still grew in the center of the restaurant.

Greta May and I would go sit in a booth, me drinking mug after mug of coffee, and play Spite and Malice with two worn decks of cards. If one of us had some extra money, we would order cheese fries and a side of ranch - standard.

We would talk about the things that excited us to talk about, developing personal jokes and a language that would mutate and change over the years. This was back when I was sure we would be wandering, drunken writers together. It seems funny to think back to a time when there was no Chris in the picture, when I didn't know who Bif was. To think back to a time when neither of us had any idea that one day we would run off together with our significant others and marry together in a blurry, scotch-fueled haze in Reno. It's odd to think back to a time before there was no Built to Spill in our lives, back when we had no idea we would visit Prague and Venice and Greece together.

It seems sort of innocent and charming to think back on it, and not as turgid and desperate as it seemed at the time.

We were kids, playing at being adults and trying to figure out who the hell we were. She had just had her resilient heart shattered and I was in a perpetual state of being in the wrong place and thinking massive amounts of Jack Daniel's would fix it. I remember her being upset a lot, trying so hard to figure shit out, and I remember feeling as though I had wandered into a prison that was so nice I didn't realize it was a prison. I remember a vague frustration constantly floating around me.

Honestly, I remember a lot of difficult times, but I like to remember is a bright spot in all of it filled with genuine laughter and calm and cheese fries with ranch.

Oh, and hey, sort of related, but not at all: We were in Greece together when the four of us found chips that were "American Cream" flavored. We thought that was so funny and couldn't wait to find out what American Cream tastes like. Tastes like ranch. Turns out Europeans have no idea what the hell "ranch" is.

Big Night Out

Last night, Biff and I went out on our first solo date since Riley bounded into our lives. The grandparents took charge of baby duties and we went and had us dinner and beers. We talked about the same stuff that we used to, I at one point started singing Janie Jones by The Clash because I couldn't stop singing Most Wonderful Time of the Year the way Will Ferrell did in a SNL sketch, and we discussed short distance plans.

At one point, Bif mentioned, sort of dismayed, that she kept waiting to feel like this major shift would happen to her, that one day she would suddenly feel like a mom. I knew what she meant, while the evidence is right in front of me a lot of the time, I don't yet really feel like a dad. In fact, it feels a little weird to type the words 'I'm a dad'. I told her that I think a lot of people go into parenthood with this certain image of what a parent is and try to fit themselves into that mold. I felt like we were taking this on in much the same way as our marriage, in that we were not different people on the other side of a particularly amazing day. I'm still a dopey dreamer, she's still this beautiful woman who makes me smile when she laughs at the stupid things I say, only now we have this amazing little boy to be with us in all of it.

Coincidentally, we ran into kay-see at dinner and met her parents. It was coincidental enough, being one of many restaurants in a major city, but what's really eerie is that earlier in the day I had asked kay-see that if I were the one who had to break the news of her dad's death to her, would she want me to do it in knock-knock joke form.

I also worried for a second about keeping up the potency of kay-see ‘your mom’ jokes after actually meeting the woman, but I feel there is nothing to worry about.

We jokingly told her parents that we had put the baby in a box and the cats were watching him, which made me think of the great proliferation of abandoned child movies.

Do you realize that both Home Alone and Baby's Day Out are the 'children' of John "The Breakfast Club" Hughes? What is it with this guy? What about a child left to their own devices when criminally negligent parents leave them seems like a good idea for a movie to this guy? C'mon, he wrote the immortal line, "you look good wearing my future".

And while I haven't seen it, I have to imagine that Unaccompanied Minors, a delightful romp with a pre-pubescent mob left to their own devices in an airport, is some kind of crappy.

And while I have no idea how anyone can help me with this, but: There's a movie coming out called Bridge to Terabithia, and man I KNOW this title but I cannot place it. It's based on a book, but I'm pretty sure I haven't read it. Why are there alarm bells ringing from the memory halls of my childhood in regards to this title? WHY?

Okay, snap out of it Badgley. I love you all, make it a great one out there.

I Heart I Heart Huckabees

I can't say what it is necessarily, maybe it's the fundamental understanding of questioning of self and the desire for an existential detective, but I love it all.

The performances all seem a little stylized, but somehow work. The script seems to bite off a bit more than can be chewed, but I admire the over-reach terribly. There is something wonderfully philosophical going on there, but I laugh hysterically every time I watch it - usually at completely different things than the last time I watched it.

There is an understanding that is achieved towards the center of the movie, that you can reach this Zen state of "pure being", but will inevitably be pulled back into the bullshit of human drama. Ain't it the truth?

This mad love is probably not helped by the fact that I seem to have taken on one of the character's obsession with the dangers of petroleum. But seriously, car emissions are more unhealthy for you than the secondhand smoke so many are ranting about, those emissions are literally destroying our planet, and they only reason we are involved in the wholesale slaughter of human beings in the Middle East is because we willfully refuse to let up on our gas consumption.

And while I'm ranting here for a second: There has been a wave of power outages up here in Washington due to trees blowing over in a storm and knocking out power lines. Somehow, this turned into a run on gas stations, with people waiting in lines for fear that they would run out of gas. Um? What does one have to do with the other, a rational person might ask. Well there are the people who are using gas fueled generators, and in areas where the power is out, as stations are unable to pump gas without electricity, but the lack of electricity does not at all hamper the tanker trucks bringing gas over our plentiful highways. And, if you need gas so damned bad, there is more than likely a working gas station within 20 minutes of where you are. It all smacks of people's gullibility into hording this precious, precious resource in the face of already manufactured price gauging. We're awesome...

Anyways, I Heart Huckabees, on my list of favorites. Marky Mark gives an unusually good performance, and there is a lot going on here that is worth getting to if you take the time. For some reason, Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin repeating, "How am I not myself?" to Jude Law over and over again makes me laugh, and breaks my heart all at the same time.


Song Stuck in My Head Right Now: You Make Me Feel Like A Whore by Everclear


Confidential to "Betrayed in Kansas City": As the mighty Bono once said, "it's no secret that a liar won't believe anyone else". Consider it a gift.

Codename: Tea Wrecks

When you're at work, typing away on your keyboard, do you ever pretend that you’re hacking a particularly difficult computer mainframe?

Do you pretend that your whiles, your intelligence, your skills will get you past the network security systems and into that particular file which will give you the information that you need, the information that may very well save the world?

Do you then pretend that the security forces are after you and the only way to cover up your tracks is to win a game of solitaire to throw them off of your trail?

And when you have that necessary information, do you fantasize about transferring it to some innocuous item to transfer it out of the building? Like maybe downloading it to a Rubik's cube? And then you can mess up the Rubik's cube and the only way to get the information out is to solve said Rubik's cube - in the safety of your underground location.

And then you can take the information to the proper authorities and bring down the awful corporation responsible for the murder of children and puppies, responsible for the degradation of the American way of life. But then you find out that the people you yourself work for have sold off the information that you have struggled for so that they could have a larger slice of the pie, and that they have caused an influx of bad corporate music, hackneyed and formulaic romantic comedies and a proliferation of feminine hygiene products?

Do you then begin gathering and arming your rag tag forces, training them into a skilled army, high on fumes of righteous indignation and household cleaners in an attempt to begin Armageddon?

Me either.

Frustration

If frustration could be rated by awful ice cream flavors, today was broken glass in vomit flavor; dog vomit after said dog had eaten its own poo. If frustration was a serial killer, today was Hannibal Lecter being raped by Ted Bundy.

It didn’t help that the day started off with disappointing news. And then things just began to pile up, like all of those cars I passed on the walk home locked up in stop; all of those people willingly ignoring their responsibility for the melting ice caps.

Know what else didn’t help? The Zen mantra voice, telling me that I am the perceiver, meaning that I’m the one perceiving the day as frustrating, that didn’t help.

If frustration were a voice, it would be my prissy, Zen mantra voice.

Oh, and coworkers who willingly neglect the work they’re supposed to do which conveniently leaves it to me to take care of tomorrow? Yup, another glass and dog vomit sundae.

But sitting here at home, downing my Brother Thelonius Belgian style ale from North Coast Brewery and listening the Riley make his little monkey chirps, well it’s a little easier to shrug it off.

And talking to Greta May for about five minutes at the end of the work day made it seem not that bad. There was that easy give and take that made us feel as close as cousins, thick as thieves. She was tired, I was tired, I could hear it in our voices. But we were okay; we were golden.

I knew it was okay when I was crossing the street, coming back from the store with Riley strapped to my chest in a sling, and some hyper aggressive freak tried to run me down in the crosswalk. Their enormous, bright yellow (because the sheer size of the vehicle wasn’t attention grabbing enough) truck blocked off a busy lane of traffic while I insisted on taking my pedestrian’s right of way. This lady then felt it necessary to flip me, my wife, and my two week old son the bird. Where normally, after a day of frustration building like magma below a volcano’s peak, I would have felt the need to scream obscenities until I ran out of breath, I just slowly shook my head and rubbed my sons back.

I’m looking at you Tomorrow, let’s make it better.

Magic Bus

It seemed like a good idea at the time. There was the whole neo-hippy fantasy of a VW bus after a number of years without a car to our names. Biff found a guy in Santa Cruz selling his, for like a grand, and so we got it. It was green and looked like this:


Oh yeah, it also once had a camper top which had been removed and the hole covered up with a removable piece of fiberglass. The previous owner had lost the keys at Reggae on the River or something, and so the ignition was destroyed and jury-rigged back together. It was painted with house paint. Oh and hey, right before leaving, the guy mentioned that quite often the throttle will stick, making the engine rev and rev, so you have to pull over, open up the engine compartment and manually un-stick it.

But I was able to overlook all of it. It looked so sweet sitting there next to the Pan Handle of Golden Gate Park. Bif and I used to just sit in there, light a candle and drink beer. Once, when we had too many guests at our place, we slept in it. We called it the "Bus Bus" and I would often sing, "bus bus, magic bus".

I overlooked the negative things about it until I had to drive the thing anywhere. That jury-rigged ignition could come detached at any moment, killing the engine even if you're doing a flash speedy 53 mph down the 101. Any gust of wind would hit that 10 pound box of sheet metal like a sail, pushing you all over the freeway. It always smelled vaguely of a lawnmower in there, and the trip to San Luis Obispo, which would take about 3 hours in a normal mode of transportation, took near 6 hours.

On said trip to San Luis Obispo, I had forgotten all about the insanely steep incline to the freeway just before it drops down into SLO town. I used to have stress dreams that involved driving up hills that became more and more inclined as I progressed; the dream had come alive. I was doing a robust 3mph, being passed by semis, wind tossing me around the lane and me holding onto the wheel with a grip that rivaled that of a chronic masturbator. How could this get any worse?

Well thick, thick fog, of course.

We reached the destination, and after many relaxing beers and glasses of scotch, I put it behind me as over and done with. When we then blew a tire around King City on the way home, and then realized that the Bus Bus came without a jack, and then realized after walking a couple miles to an auto parts store to get a jack that the lug nuts were fused to the bus, I believe I realized that my brief love affair with the VW bus was over.

While we ended up donating it to get rid of it, I sort of wish I had caused this:


I do though have fond memories of sitting in the darkness within, drinking beer and laughing with Bif. I do have that.

Drawn To Love

All of the Christmas time cartoon specials have reminded of something. Was it the uncharacteristic turning of children in "A Charlie Brown Christmas" to helping ol' Chuck make his loser tree into a thing of glory? No. Was it the Grinch realizing the true meaning of Christmas when he heard the Whos singing, even without their toys?

It wasn't, but this the made me think of The Who singing Magic Bus even though their presents were stolen. Never mind.

It was seeing a portion of "Frosty The Snowman" and remembering that I had a huge crush on the little girl, Karen.

Seriously, I was madly in love with a cartoon character; I always had a thing for blonds. And when the forest animals band together at Frosty's bidding to build a fire for her, not only did I wish I could be the one to build her a fire, but I was highly suspect of rabbits and squirrels and deer building a fire in a forest; it seemed a little unsafe.

Karen, I used to mutter, I can make you far happier than Frosty ever could. Let me assuage your fears; let me take care of you. You're just a little girl, and I'm just a little boy, and it's a little weird that you're hanging out with a pile of frozen rain, brought magically to life. I don't care if he has a happy, jolly soul or not, let me take you away from all of this.

Oh the longing I had...

This sort of embarrassing behavior continued when I watched The Little Mermaid when I was in college. I fell in love with Ariel; with sexy, sexy Ariel. It was the shot where she finishes singing Part of Your World and leaps up onto a rock while an orgasmic wave crashes up behind her. Man...

At least this time I was logical enough to realize that it was impossible to be in love with a cartoon character, that it would never work out. She was a princess, I was a poor film major. She was from the sea, I was from the real world. She was drawn with pens and inks, I was ridiculously high.

I don't even want to bring up the first time I watched Toy Story.

Suffice it to say... Woody.

12 Shopping Days Left

Do you realize that Christmas is right around the corner?

Well, I'm sure that you do, you've always been far more organized than me. I remember that one time I was all, "hey, isn't Doc Robert's birthday next week sometime?" and you whipped out your planner/address book and let me know that I was 2 1/2 months late; plus an extra year as he had died the July prior.

By the way, I’m sorry about that DRo. Hope you were able to kick the nitrous demons in heaven better than you did here.

Seriously though, Christmas is so close to being around the corner that if you were being chased down the street by an angry panther, you may not run smashing into Christmas upon hitting that intersection, but you would definitely see it trundling its tinsel soaked self up the avenue.

I guess that I've just been so hyper-focused elsewhere, primarily on the marriage and subsequent celebrations of Tom and Katie, that the calendar has become this sort of slippery, time warp kind of thing. It is seriously making my mind hurt to meditate on how close Christmas is. All of the cartoon Christmas specials on TV didn't even clue me in.

I think my mind is adjusting to some sort of "dad brain". In trying to adjust to focusing on a child on top of the areas in life I’m already focused on, the brain is sort shutting down a bit. It's sort of like when I started taking a French class in college after a number of years of high school German. The teacher would ask a question in French, I'd translate the question to German in my mind, formulate the answer in German and once again translate, this time to English. It took me twenty minutes to answer "what color is your pencil?”

Actually, this "dad brain" thing is nothing like that story. I apologize.

I’m beginning to think that I may actually be having a very slow stroke. Every time that I pass by a certain area of the work floor, I smell Fruit Loops. And as far as I know, this is not a scent that people are choosing to apply to themselves. But then again, I've heard whispers of rumors that Jessica Simpson, or some other sadly untalented celebrity, has something like this on the market.

Which would make a nice Christmas gift for yours truly.

Like how I brought that full circle?

Sheep Boy Comes Alive

I got an email from Stephen today. I know Stephen from the grand DG days and I never hear from him, so I got that heady mix of excited and apprehensive when I saw his name there among those emails.

This may not tell you anything about Stephen, but the first time we shared words was when I walked into the audio room and in response to someone else's comment, I quoted Pee Wee's Big Adventure. "There are thousands of uses for corn, all of which I'm going to tell you about right now," said I. Stephen quickly spun in his chair and said, "how much do I love you right now?" I looked at him questioningly for a second and stammered, "I don't know".

Anyway, Stephen sent me this picture:


I am sort of jealous of this young man's full, bushy hair. I am sort of jealous of his slim physique. I'm even vaguely jealous of his apparent self confidence and the unlit cigarette in his hand. But I am not jealous of the sheep.

As many know, I have this same sheep. It makes a sheep sound if you apply pressure to the nose area.

I once wore said sheep to a party at Hellby's. The party degenerated, as they usually did, to nudity and abuse. I may be mixing up the abuser here, but if I remember correctly, Dougie P was whipping my sheep with a riding crop in order to make it "baah". And when I put a stop to it, as the whistling arc of a leather riding crop was striking my barely covered penis, Mercedes derided me as being a baby.

People in other states began calling me sheep boy.

It's been quite some time since I have slipped on the sheep, but it now sits in my desk, googly eyes and all. If you are a little rough in opening the top, center drawer you will occasionally be rewarded with that "baah".

Thank you Stephen. Oh the memories.

Second Best Laid

Oh yeah, I also wanted to start a religion.

Something nice and new, something inclusive. Something based on a philosophy of self respect and being non-judgmental. Something that helped people to love themselves and taught that not only was sex not evil, it was a wonderful art-form and pretty damn cool. Something that didn't insidiously pay for politicians, but did attract enough followers that law makers had to keep us in mind. Something that felt like a natural extension of our life experience and not force pushing us into a mold.

But then I saw the tide turning.

People get greedy, people want more power. People not raised in a culture of moderation are bound to push it too far. People will still tend to unburden their responsibility onto others. People will still flock to a popular idea without individual thought.

And oh yeah, the backlash…

There would be splinter groups. There would be Billyanity Reformists, Billyanity Protestants. There would be an as yet unnamed Martin Luther, tacking his doctrine to the barroom door. There would be bloody crusades, with followers twisting my wonderful ideas to their own desires. There would be cult turf wars. There would be religious excuses to steal others' natural resources.

And sure, good or bad, I'd dig the tax exempt status - but all that paperwork would be a bitch.

Best Laid

Oh the plans that I had. I was going to be a wandering, mendicant poet, traveling the deserted back roads of America, blowing the minds of the children and inducing quiet revolt. I was going to be a rock star.

My band would be named after an inside joke, cryptic to the point of catching the imagination of the jaded music press. We were going to release an EP that NME would rave about, but sales would be pretty lackluster. Interest in the band would begin to spread after a particularly fiery appearance on the "Arsenio Hall Show" where Tommy, the lead guitarist, would make like he was going to smash his knock off Les Paul only to savagely yank it back and toss off a roaring solo.

It would be after rumors of strange sex rites and rampant abuse of "mood elevators" on the Killing You Kindly tour that the band would become a hit. Our breakthrough video would be a dark, completely surreal (read: nonsensical) bit of four minutes, directed by a young, up and comer just out of film school. Our look and sound would attract the disenfranchised youth like ants to sugar water, and we would re-release the first EP (with a couple of previously unreleased outtakes and live cuts) to tremendous sales.

The wild stories of drug use and groupie abuse would be nothing compared to the internal struggle within the band. The drunken fights would destroy thousands of dollars worth of gear and end up burning down our newly built recording studio. The full on brawl that would occur onstage during a stadium show on the Soul Glue tour would be a staple of MTV and talk shows for weeks, but would unfortunately rip the band asunder.

I would embark on a solo tour, full of myself with the knowledge that I didn't need the rest of the band, with minor success. The venues would become increasingly smaller and dingier. To protect my self esteem, I would blame the lagging interest on the fact that the audience just didn't get what I was doing.

I would age gracelessly in a fog of cheap scotch and Whip-Its, writing a tell all book titled quite cleverly from one of the band's popular songs. This would spark a very brief interest in the band again. A song would be used on a soundtrack and would be played on a radio station serving those addicted to nostalgia. This would bring me enough royalty money to keep me in frozen pizzas until I died a completely unnoticed death at the age of 62 - a drunken, accidental drowning in the kiddy pool placed in the courtyard of the apartment complex.

Man, what the hell happened...

Life Lessons

Wow, that was a quick week. That was a week from another dimension. And being back at work, well it's a slice of awesome with a side of ranch.

Again, trying to keep this from being all baby all the time - but a quick update:
Baby and mom are doing great. Biff's still recovering, but nursing like a champion
Riley is now pooping real poop.
Riley likes car rides, being sung to, long walks on the beach and rainy weekends at home with a book and a nice, jammy zin.

Oh and here's a picture (thanks to Mandy for the pictures):


Okay, back to the nonsense. Let's talk tacos!

When I was a kid, I loved me some tacos. It was part of my triumvirate of pizza, spaghetti and the above mentioned tacos. My mom made tacos with hamburger and an envelope of taco seasoning mix. Meat went into crispy taco shells with shredded cheddar and iceburg lettuce.

Oh and hey, do any of you remember Taco flavored Doritos? Dammit, they were good. Not very popular apparently, but good.

One time I went over to Kenny's house for play time and dinner. Here are some interesting things about Kenny:
Kenny wore thick, black framed glasses - the same sort that my dad wore when he was in Vietnam.
Kenny was extremely smart, which unfortunately made him fairly unpopular with the general public.
Kenny had one of those boxes of little drawers that guys usually use to keep their screws and nails separated, but his was filled with little plastic guns from the original run of Star Wars action figures. He had apparently written to Kenner about a lost light saber or something, and they sent him this arsenal.

Kenny's mom, who wore the same kind of glasses that he did, made tacos for dinner. Shit yes! Tacos dude, I love tacos. How many did I want, she asked. I will take three of them Kenny's mom.

Problem. I don't know what Kenny's mom did to the tacos she made but they tasted like poop; spicy, sort of vaguely sweet poop. It took all my will to finish the first one, and I could not bring myself to get into the others. If I remember correctly, Kenny's mom really sort of let me have it for not eating the other tacos that I requested.

Lesson learned with this experience: If someone you're not used to is making you tacos - start out with one as a tester.