366 Days

So, a year ago I walked out of a hospital room while nurses did some statistical type data gathering on a newborn boy and into the cold, snow smelling air. I walked a couple blocks away and stood atop a hill looking towards downtown. I stared at the Smith Tower, a building that I had been infatuated with since I was a wee lad, and focused on the green light on top.

“It all changes now,” I told myself.

I remember knowing that. I remember that bitter cold air stinging my face, my eyes. I remember that sort of rush that comes with heading face first into the unknown and would like to imagine that I looked down on ol’ Smith Tower with a cocky grin (but I imagine it was more a panic stricken look somewhere between realizing that it was now time to jump out of the plane and that of realizing you had just crapped your drawers).

Some things that I have learned in the last year:

You can function on a lot less sleep than you think you need.

There are some deep stores of patience I was unaware had been buried.

I am actually able to look outside of myself for awhile, realize that there are bigger things than me out there.

How fragile life can be, but paradoxically how damn strong it is.

The laughter of my child rivals even the most soul stirring song in terms of joy it brings me; that smile is better than money.

It hurts my heart sometimes how beautiful the world can be.

All the roads I’ve taken led me to this unexpected place, and now there’s a whole new journey I couldn’t have predicted.

I get a chance to show my father how much amazement there is in having a baby son, something he himself was possibly too afraid to know.

The fears that I had, that I wasn’t going to know how to do it, were unnecessary. I should’ve spent more time eating dinner out.

So, here’s to keeping the Kickers alive a year, to not fleeing to Costa Rica, to doing our damndest to keep a little style and vulgarity in our parental lives.


Thanks for a great year buddy, here’s to so many more.

Life Will Find A Way

Down here in the drab, gray, industrial part of the city; in the low slung buildings, train track choked area of town, I passed a torn apart car.

It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary on these streets and avenues, there are plenty of grime covered campers and station wagons made when Journey was top of the pops (complete with tarpaulin curtains for that extra homey touch) that stay permanently parked down here. This car looked as if it had taken a good hit to the backside, there was no bumper, no rear lights and no trunk lid. The trunk was still there, a gaping hole where there was once probably a spare tire, maybe an umbrella, bottled water if the auto owner was earthquake safety conscious; but no lid. Reaching from the carnage and up towards the dark and cloudy sky, with what felt like an anger at the violence played out here, were the spindly, metal arms that once kept said lid in place.

I walked past, looking in to the uncovered trunk, maybe they left a flashlight or a roll of fruit leather behind, and thought, “Wow, it looks like a T. Rex took a bite out of that car.”

That’s the dinosaur, not the band. Marc Bolan was a powerful man in his time, but I doubt he had the wherewithal to rip apart an older model Nissan with his teeth, even if he was all kinds of coked up.

Then that image began to run rampant as, from what I understand, T. Rex’s are wont to do. I imagined how difficult the commute into work would be had dinosaurs survived. I would definitely consider the bus option if I had to add velociraptors to the list of things to keep my eyes open for (topping the list of potential muggers and random puddles of bodily fluids).

I imagined pterodactyls swooping out of the cloud cover to snatch up slow and unarmed pedestrians, homeless folks. I imagined those spiky armadillo looking dinosaurs with the club tails chasing automobiles and smashing in store fronts with their… club tails. I imagined a triceratops asleep in a parking lot, I guess I just hate to think of a triceratops mauling business people and reeking havoc on our socio-economic foundations.

Then I started to think about how if dinosaurs survived, our work climate would be considerably different. We would probably be living in even more centralized cities, walled cities, perhaps with netting over the top to keep out the swooping of afore mentioned pterodactyls. There probably wouldn’t be a lot of customer call center gigs as people would have bigger problems to deal with then how some poor wage salve didn’t put up with their abuse and derision with the amount of grace one would like; problems like body parts being eaten by giant predatory lizards.

I imagined there would be a lot of people set to the task of defending our walled and caged cities, developing new technologies and weaponry. There would be legions of foodies coming up with recipes for allosaurus with blueberry compote. There would be plenty of people for the ethical treatment of dinosaurs. There would be a blockbuster movie about an amusement park gone awry when scientists clone prehistoric marmots that were selected out when the dinosaurs survived.

Girls Rock Your Boys

I remember this kid from my 7th grade gym class, Andy. We lined up by alphabetical order and his last name started with an A. Otherwise I would never have spoken to him as we ran in pretty different circles. I can still see him in his gym shorts and T-shirt. He had Hessian hair, wore a denim jacket and his eyes were permanently lidded with cannabis weights. He spoke like Spicoli and while doing warm up stretches would occasionally bust out in a high Gedde Lee voice some heavy metal lyric or other.

It was through Andy that I learned of the wonder of Quiet Riot.

Today, the Riot has been made even more quiet as lead wailer Kevin DuBrow has passed on, found dead in Vegas like any respecting heavy metal singer should be.

I remember my cousin Michelle being into the Riot, listening to Metal Health on her cassette Walkman – the kind that in order to rewind the tape you had to flip it and fast forward. I remember being skeptical, I mean heavy metal? Plus Michelle was in with that rough and tumble, smoking, roller rink crowd. I remember listening to her copy on her crappy Walkman. I remember being pretty instantly taken by “Bang Your Head” and by “Slick Black Cadillac”. I remember feeling a little dirty at their suggestive spelling of “Cum On Feel The Noize” – I liked the Z. I remember being both a bit bothered and excited by the album’s cover.

Shiny satin straight jackets do that to me.

And I mean, cum on, they’re right: metal health will drive you mad.

So, good journey to you Kevin. I can’t say that you have made a huge impact in my world, but I will say that your cover of someone else’s song made me happy for a couple of days.

T Day

Thanksgiving was spent with the family this year which pales significantly in comparison to the ones I’ve been lucky enough to spend with friends, or running around the empty streets of San Francisco trying to catch 3 movies before a luxurious feast of turkey burritos. I’d complain about the family, the walls, the lack of honest communication (from me as well), but why bother. I’ve got it pretty lucky in the family department, if all I can complain about is surface stuff then I end up sounding like a spoiled little douche.

However, I will say that having not seen my father in a number of months, and he having not seen his grandson in the same amount of time, his decision to spend 6+ hours locked in a reclining chair watching football was disappointing. My memories of my grandfather are filled with nothing but an old man sitting in a chair and ignoring everyone else. I’m hoping that my father wants more for his grandson.

Moving on. Some things I’m thankful for you ask? Well, I’m glad you did:

I’m thankful for irresponsibly sleeping in an extra half hour this morning. I was able to walk into work as the sun was cresting this part of the world and it was one of those glorious winter mornings where the sun is so pale and fragile you think that crystalline cold air is going to break it.

I’m thankful for a heater in the apartment that works.

I’m thankful for being surrounded by some pretty damn amazing friends.

I’m thankful for a happy and healthy son who makes me smile more than I have any right to.

I’m thankful for a wife who, after all this time and after the added stress of being first time parents, can still make me laugh and feel right and who I can call my best friend.

I’m thankful for Cuba Gooding Jr. but I am unclear as to why.

I’m thankful for whisky, and pizza, and for Arrested Development on DVD.

I’m thankful for the feeling that I can follow my own voice, and more often than not that it’s saying, “screw you if you can’t take a joke.”

I’m thankful for a pretty good year of getting to do my thing on stage and film.

I’m thankful for T. Rex.

It's Been Travelling Twenty-Two Years To Get Here

I love me some Coen Brothers. If pressed to make a list of my favorite 50 movies, most of their stuff would be high on that list, especially Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink and naturally The Big Lebowski. I do have to say though, that of late my opinion of Joel and Ethan’s talents has been a bit tarnished. Intolerable Cruelty is a pretty funny movie, but seems to lack that Coen Brothers’ sparkle. The Ladykillers was awful, it pained me to get through it. So, I went into their new one with more than a little trepidation.

I will say that No Country For Old Men is, in my opinion, one of the best films they have ever made.

Much like Blood Simple, it is for the most part an exercise in tension. It opens with an off screen, dry Texas drawl over wide pictures of dry Texas landscapes. You are calmly introduced into this world, but in a moment the story is off and running and you are at its mercy until its end. The basic line of story is a Texas hunter stumbles upon millions when he stumbles upon a drug bust gone bad. He is soon being tracked by a psychotic killer with his own form of morals and a can of compressed air. Soon there enters in an elder country sheriff who sets about in his stoic way to make sense of what has happened and what continues to happen. In the film worlds of Joel and Ethan Coen, all bets are off. There are no guarantees that the good guy will prevail, or that the bad guy will prevail for that matter. There’s no guarantee that the good guy is the good guy.

Tommy Lee Jones plays the sheriff precisely as It needs to be played, with a heartbreaking intensity just below the resigned, old Texan. And Javier Bardem, playing the obviously dressed man in black to Jones’ sheriff’s whites and looking like Emo Phillips gone way, way wrong, is so effectively creepy as to make you nervous just knowing he’s in the scene. He’s not a typically over the top psycho, he has a rationality that grounds him and makes him that much more frightening. He is a man with a strong work ethic, it’s just that his job is tracking people down and fucking them up.

Underneath the tightly constructed Western/Caper Gone Wrong film, beneath the chases and the shootouts and country logic, is a primary idea of how the roads you take lead you to where you are. Visually throughout the film there are roads, and the dialogue subtly points this out a number of times, all without banging you over the head with the idea.

Ultimately, I was enthralled with this film from beginning to end, even during the slower moments of simple character dialogue. I feel that the Coen’s have remembered something that many filmmakers forget; there is sublime drama in simply listening to, and watching, people talk. The film ends like a meaningful whisper in your ear. When the credits came up I felt this whirlwind of emotions and a realization that I was not breathing, I was on the brink of crying, of laughing, of giving a loud cheer for the realization that film is not dead.

I cannot recommend this film highly enough.

The Crowd Screamed "Sacrifice The Liver"

So this bar that I’ve mentioned before, a bar where things can turn evil in fairly quick clip, a bar that on first glance seems to be an odd mix of David Lynch and Bukowski coughed up to life in a cloud of generic cigarette smoke and bar brand gin fumes is officially one of my favorite places.

The Baranof is not necessarily a dive bar, it’s crusty to be sure, but dive implies to me a dark and dingy, “no way out” feeling that isn’t here. There’s a vitality and passion to the Baranof. It’s easy to dive on into that working class vibe and feel that by proxy you’re living the Bukowski life, but that’s not the right way to go into the Baranof. I think that the right way would be to man up, shut up, drink up – maybe do some karaoke if you’re not too drunk to stand.

As we sat down on Friday night, already obviously out of place with the rest, we witnessed what was about to become a bar fight. The bar stool kicked back, one man grabbed the other and warned him of leaving in a body bag, and the fifty-something barmaid came around the bar to put a cooling hand on the instigator saying in warning tone over and over again, “Joe, Joe, Joe.” These two guys were more than likely in their seventies.

Our waitress looked as though she had recently been on the losing end of a fist fight. She also appeared to be more than a little bit drunk and forgot that I had ordered a Philly Cheese Steak. A damned good Philly Cheese Steak and some pretty tasty fries when it finally did arrive.

There was this ancient Asian woman perched on a seat near the door that leads to the smoking patio, eating something out of a Styrofoam cup and apparently unable to form understandable words. This would be excellently highlighted when she went up to karaoke “Groovin’”, shaking her hips and smiling as if everything good in her life boiled down to this moment.

And I feel like I’m walking this weird line, like I’m presenting the clientele of the Baranof as a show that they most certainly do not want to be. I want to set the scene a bit, let you know what is surrounding me, and also let you know that it is this backdrop that made me feel more comfortable in this bar than I have ever felt in any other “classier” place.

Human drama and human life, unadorned and unafraid; I love it. I didn’t feel superior to it, I felt lucky to be witness to it and all the sadness and humor and love that goes along with the package. Like Cheryl, I know Cheryl, I have been Cheryl. Cheryl was watered up to the eyeballs on house chardonnay and was having no problem expressing her love to people in the group I was with. Cheryl, who nicely grabbed my ass in passing, taught us all the secret Cheryl handshake and told one Sarah she was tabloid beautiful and another Sarah that she was Mademoiselle beautiful – a difference only Cheryl understood. There was a struggle to get Cheryl out of the bar. One man was doing his damnedest to pull her away from a random dance partner while a woman followed in a tight circle relentlessly offering a carnation. Cheryl simply didn’t want the evening to end, and man have I been there, my own prolonged goodbyes a record to reckoned with.

I left after 4 Makers, a pint and a sans pants version of Fred Schneider’s parts of “Love Shack” on the karaoke stage. I finagled about 9 people to come outside and wait with me a long wait for a cab, and as I climbed into the backseat I remember thinking, “I wish I could live there.”

I'm Afraid Of Americans

I think it’s generally well known that most people in other countries hate Americans. I don’t really blame them; if said people are in say Iraq or Afghanistan, to quote Camper Van Beethoven, “shit blows up when we’re around.” There are Americans who get angry over the fact that people in other counties hate us, but this is more than likely because they are the type of people that make Americans look bad.

It seems that many Americans, those with enough money to do some traveling, have a habit of behaving like arrogant pricks who believe that whatever country they’re visiting should be Americanized enough to make them feel comfortable while they’re abroad.

What brings this up? Well, I had a 25 minute, fairly unpleasant conversation with an older and affluent woman from the Palm Springs area of California who had had her purse stolen in Barcelona. She went to this American restaurant because, “it reminded us of home, and Europeans don’t make good coffee.” Already I was fed up. I read this as it’s impossible to get a high fat, coffee flavored Slurpee anywhere in Europe, therefore their coffee is awful.

She was also extremely put out that the people assisting her, assisting her in Barcelona Spain mind you, did not speak English. She began to rant about some more vaguely racist things when I cut her off with, “so that I’m clear, you’re service expectations are that in a store in Spain, employees should be speaking English?” I was told that yes, as “all those people over there” take English in school, and as this is an area frequented by many American tourists and businessmen, they should be speaking English.

There were also the expectations that people would be rude in France, but she was surprised by how rude people were in Spain. There was the assumption her purse was taken by Romanians. There were the constant reminders that she was staying in a very exclusive part of the city, in a very exclusive hotel. It really nailed it in to me how “exclusive” is a form of “to exclude”.

While she was going through her litany of missing and expensive gadgets, she let slide that she had so much shit that she couldn’t lock it all in the hotel safe. And the reason she had to take it with her is that the maids will steal it if she leaves it in the room. She again pointed out the exclusive street the restaurant is on as it has neighbors the likes of Chanel and Gucci and Cartier and blah blah and pretentious talking and who fucking cares. It took every ounce of self control, and I don’t have a lot of it, to not blurt out, “why do you even travel?”

Seriously. If you are made uncomfortable by anything you cannot find in the strip malls that surround your home, why would you go to a foreign country? Isn’t the point of travel to explore a place you’ve never been? To see and hear and taste and live things you’ve never seen, heard, tasted or lived? Isn’t the point of traveling to learn something about other places and peoples, to learn something about yourself?

I remember traveling through sections of Europe a few years back and seeing a lot of Canadian flags on backpacks. It was an easy way to make it known that though they look like us, they’re not Americans – don’t hate us. Not a bad idea at all.

And speaking of Canadians: There are a lot more complaints’ coming from our neighbors to the north since the Canadian currency is now worth more than American. We’re hearing from all sorts of angry Canucks about how that US/Canada pricing is now unfair. One thing that I love about Canadians is that even if they’re livid pissed, they remain polite and fairly rational.

I saw a news report recently of a restaurateur letting the local news folks know that she could no longer accept American dollars in her Canadian establishment as she couldn’t afford it. It seemed a bit silly to me as I highly doubt she was accepting American currency to begin with, so I laughed at the funny little point she was trying to make to a Seattle news team. I laughed at how our oil based economy is sliding into dire straights (not the band), and in knowing that I had nothing to do with letting an ignorant and murderous man into the White House so he could slowly sell off our country to his rich acquaintances.

God bless us…

Body Functions

Do you ever sometimes get all wrapped up in doing something, and you know you have to pee, but you keep pushing it off? Like work, let’s say you’re in the middle of doing some menial work task and you have the sort of mental wherewithal to ignore the natural pangs your body is producing. So, when you finally go to the bathroom, probably a good hour or so after you should have to begin with, you pee hard and long. And here’s where the question part comes in. While having one of those long, feels good in an immense release of pressure kind of pees, do you ever wonder for a second if you’re not actually having one of those dreams where you have to pee so damn bad and you’re rushing around to find a toilet in your dream and when you finally find one that release of pee feels so good until something in your mind says, “hey dude, you’re dreaming – you may actually be pissing in your bed right now”?

I think I sneezed out a sesame seed the other day. It reminded me of those weird days in the early 90’s when I was snorting a lot of California rolls.

There are things about getting older I’m not a fan of. The larger number of vague aches and pains that occur as my body continues to slowly shut down is on the list, as is the much longer recovery time that now comes with a night of abuse that my twenty-something body could shrug off. One new thing that I find equally annoying and fascinating is the sprouting of what I call Jeff Goldblum Fly hairs from the sides of my ears. They sprout along the edge of my ear occasionally, not where hair should be anyway, and they seem to be made out of some plastic-nylon polymer that would be manufactured by a company that the Bush’s hold major portions of stock in. It’s fun to think that all of the processed food I ate as a child could be partially responsible for this.

When I got out of bed this morning – at 3:30am – I felt as though I was not only lacking water, but had unknowingly eaten a herd of tiny sponge animals which had gone to work pulling water out of me. It was as though the cat, ala that pretty awful Drew Barrymore movie, had gotten too lazy to shuffle out to the water bowl and mystically yanked my water supply. I attempted to remedy this by chugging two glasses of water, which only managed to make me feel a little “sloshy” when I walked.

This is coming off a little complainy, I’m sorry. I will say that it was an amazing sunrise this morning in this part of the world. And if you have to walk through a city at 4 in the morning, you could do worse than to listen to the Black Francis album; much worse.

Waiting For The Flood

Sometimes I’m disappointed with how the job keeps me from posting as regularly as I would like. I realize that I’m not being paid to write blog content. I also realize that I could do some at home, but honestly I’m reticent to jump on the computer after spending a lot of my work day doing the same.

Had me a good weekend where not a lot went on. Had some drinkies, had some nap time, baked a little bread… I watched my favorite weatherman, eyes shining with a methamphetamine intensity, tell me about the ensuing storm I would be facing come wake up time. While he did mention the chance for rain later in the day, he saved his satanic energies for the catastrophic winds that would be coming our way – winds that would rip the roofs off of buildings, send cars careening to their dooms, sail small farm animals so far and fast as to beak the space time continuum. I was excited, I like me a good blustery day. But there was rain Walter, there was rain.

It’s possible that I have been made wetter on my travels through the city, but I don’t remember it. It’s like that same sort of phenomenon where memories of high school are painted a sweet and nostalgic sepia tone, my mind remembering those happy days of innocence, when I logically know that I would rather hack off my right foot, by removing and sharpening the left one, and then eating it.

So yes, wet, fantastically wet, but I really didn’t mind it. I was remembering the days when Captian MIA and myself would head out to the beach when we knew a good storm was coming. We’d sit on the beach, smoking and talking nonsense, reeling in the excitement that came with those heavy black clouds rolling in over the Pacific. Hopefully, we could withstand the cold and wind long enough for the deluge that is Southern California rain to pelt our upturned faces and we would return to the car and our ramshackle apartment feeling as though we were witness to something still impressive.

I also remembered one evening as I child where my neighbor and I set up lawn chairs in the middle of the street during a fairly spectacular lightning storm. There’s something about sitting in the street in patio furniture that seems so excitingly rebellious, the same sort of thrill I’m sure that surrealists got out of their activities. Add to that this odd feeling of peace that comes to me with being absolutely enveloped in pounding rain; I would assign the tired metaphor of the rain baptizing me anew, but I don’t think that’s it – I think there’s a calm in submitting to nature. Add to that thunder and lightning that, had I experienced it at that time, I would have said rivaled Laser Floyd as show stopper.

A few minutes into this street audience, my mother came shrieking out of the house calling me all sorts of ignorant and telling me to come inside. I thought about what I would do if a few years down the road I saw my son doing the same; camped out on the Avenue, soaked to the bone and wide eyes to the sky. I would probably smile a knowing smile.

Then I’d run out and tell him get the hell in the house. I would tell him that not only is sitting in the middle of street, when cars can barely see as it is, less than bright, but lightning likes little better than aluminum patio furniture.

Fun With Four AM

We're doing this fun new thing at work where... I'm not going to go too heavily into it, it bores me and it's my life it effects. Suffice it to say, today I have to come in at 5AM. This means, what with walking into the office, I need to leave my house at 4AM.

And if you're keeping up, and I know you are, you're a smart bunch, that means I get out of bed round abouts 3:30ish. Yeah, I know, things could be worse; I could be the daughter of Courtney Love.

And just for an extra kick in the dick, it was raining.

I realized this morning that I have this internal programming that tells my body it's insane to be walking city streets at 4AM, unless I'm five types of drunk and stumbling around with a partner in crime; more than likely looking for a place to pee and craving some form of pizza.

I also realized, four lines ago, that fun is a pretty subjective term. Think about the Verizon Wireless "Can you hear me now" guy. Go ahead, think about him. I'm guessing that when he started that gig he thought, "Yeah, it'll be fun to do a commercial - get this acting thing rolling." Now forever this guy will be the Can You Hear Me Now Guy. I'm sure he's constantly being approached by oh so clever people who oh so cleverly manage to slip a "Can you hear me now" into their conversation. I'm sure his hearing impaired Great Aunt Gladys is a hoot squawking out the famous catch phrase at family reunions. Can you imagine this guy showing up on *pick a crappy sitcom* as anything other than a not so sly nod to his commercials?

This poor guy may never work again. Unless he goes without the glasses and changes his hair; maybe a chestnut brown with bold highlights.

I'm tired.

Creek Of Consciousness

Speaking of cheese – yesterday I did, c’mon good people – I’m always slightly disturbed by the fact that Velveeta can be stored, in its original state, on a shelf with no refrigeration. It keeps me up at nights. Not for long, I mean I’m a hard working man, but still… Disturbing. Also, I have this vague uncomfortable feeling about how colby, swiss and cheddar – blended all together – can be formed into a wobbly substance that looks like it could be used to caulk tile.

Is it just me, or is anyone who grew up watching the Bugs Bunny/Tom and Jerry variety of cartoons slightly scarred by the idea of Limburger cheese? In the cartoon universe it’s the stinkiest substance known to animal kind, powerful enough to stop a pursuer in their tracks and turn them all variety of colors. I like me some cheese, but I’m honestly a little frightened by Limburger.

“Fat Lady of Limbourg” off of Brian Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) is all kinds of awesome. Nice sinister tone to some bordering on ridiculous lyrics. I first heard it as a background song in Velvet Goldmine and had forgotten about it until recently.

I almost had a knock down, drag out fight with someone over how flippin’ awesome Velvet Goldmine is. This person had the audacity to try to argue that it was an awful film. I could have come back with how it perfectly encapsulated how disposable glam rock was intended to be, how glam was about the shiny, gaudy veneer - perfectly fucking illustrated by the tacky Citizen Kane references used to showcase a “mystery” loosely based around the larger than life images of Bowie, Iggy and Eno. I could have said that the soundtrack kicks ass, let’s not forget the T. Rex, God bless ya. But I instead fought that argument with a, “you’re wrong” as I walked away.

There’s also the nice memory of lazing around and watching Velvet Goldmine with kc! one weekend when Bif went out of town. Velvet Goldmine and The Matrix… These are the good times.

Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune

Persistent bad mood is… Well, persisting.

Winter blues kicking in? Possibly. No show for creative outlet? More than likely. Daylight savings? Piss off, and take any standard daylight savings complaints with you.

I was walking into downtown thinking about things to write today, and all of them were fairly complainy – which made me want to complain some more. I switched up the route this morning, feeling like I needed to switch something up. I walked past some subsidized housing, windows all dark at just past 6 AM, expect for one. I glanced in through sheer curtains to an older man sitting alone at a small table, eating breakfast to the light thrown from a naked bulb. Nothing life shattering or altering to be sure, but it changed my mind set a bit.

Until I got to work.

Just another aggravating day, again nothing life shattering or altering, but sort of a mouse trap carefully laid to start the domino chain rolling again. I’m not one of those persons who bemoans having to work for a living; I would rather do some menial task for the man than toil for sustenance for my family in a mud field. It’s aggravating, it’s soul crushing, but it’s also nobody’s fault but mine that I’m not doing something more fulfilling with my time. So it’s a bit boring to complain about the job (customers do not fall into that boredom category however). But sometimes you just have those days where you wanna poop on someone’s desk and walk out with pants down and head raised high.

Ironically, it took this day to remind me of something that had popped into my mind on the walk earlier. I’ve been blessed recently by visitations and contacts from people that I’ve been slacking on getting into contact with. You know the people who as you drift off to sleep you think, “crap, I need to call/email/stalk so and so tomorrow, I keep forgetting”? And then you continue to forget some more. I’ve had a number of these people in my mind of late.

Teri, one of the most amazing scene partners I’ve ever had, shows up from Alaska for 6 hours before catching a flight to Thailand. She’s as generous, passionate and loving as always. Erik calls and leaves a message, man I’ve been thinking about him for weeks. Also as I try to remember to catch up with Matty about his move to LA, he beats me to the email punch. It’s good to be reminded of the awesome people you have in your life, so sweet when they come to you as if they knew you needed it.

I was also thinking about how macaroni is the perfect deployment mechanism for cheese.


Song stuck in my head right now: “Call of the West” by Wall of Voodoo. Particularly the “conflict” bridge to the song and the lines: “found himself peering down the muzzle of a weapon held by a drunken liquor store owner, ‘There’s a conflict,’ he said. ‘There’s a conflict between land and people… The people have to go.’”

Pet Peeves

Something that drives me crazy? Something that makes me practically shake with rage as if I were prone to seizures, or blowing a load in my pants? Something I feel I must vent into the ether rather than carry around today like an anger tumor, growing larger as the hours go until I am finally forced to hit something with something else; preferably something with serrated edges (the hitter, not the hitee)?

People’s sense of self entitlement.

Case in point: I am listening to some recorded customer calls, scoring customer relations reps, on graduated scale, on the amount of fake empathy in their voices when I come across this woman. I’ve spoken to this woman before, thousands of times. I don’t mean literally of course, but she shares a voice and attitude with way too many Americans who feel it necessary to dial that 1 (800) number that most consumers would spend their lives ignoring. She sounds like she has been smoking Pall Mall’s since about the age of 3, she sounds like if she could fuck sarcasm she would, she sounds like someone whom you would reserve the C word for – and this time C is not for cookie, thank you very much Mr. Monster comma Cookie. So this woman, whose ilk I’ve been forced to listen to way too many times, is complaining about being told that she couldn’t bring her puppy into a store.

Bringing a dog into a video store, where they supply treats, sure I’ll go for it. But dogs do not belong in a restaurant. I don’t wanna hear about how clean your dog is, I do not care to discuss how much a part of your family this animal is, it’s against health codes and if you feel that your dog has to go wherever you do, than you have bigger issues than the way people ask you not to enter a store with your dog.

I’m sure there are dog owners out there who disagree with me and I’m going to have to say I don’t give a rat’s ass; I do not bring my screaming infant to see Saw IV, or walk him into a bar – it’s not appropriate!

And this woman, this tar clogged, self righteous whore has the right to actually say the words, “I feel entitled to free” dot, dot, dot. A person was standing up to your inappropriate behavior, enforcing the health code, and you feel like you entitled to free stuff.

And I guess what really makes me furious is that I’m in a position to supervise the coddling of these retards.

Hell truly is other people.