My Surreal Life

Aaargh! I have a splitting headache brought about from way too much beer and not nearly enough food. Why do I do this to myself? I'm 34, not 24. Anyway...

With a pounding headache in full effect, I'm off to my cousin (well, Erica's cousin so mine by marriage) Marilyn's 60th birthday party. Normally, 60 isn't much of a milestone, although right this second it feels like one for me personally. However, Marilyn has downs syndrome and alot of time, they don't live past 40. But Marilyn is one cool chick and she's still got it together at 60!

As cool as that is, she's super into all things Latin of late. She works and spends her money at the Mexican market buying candy and music. So, she decided to have a fiesta for her birthday. We got a pinata and a super funny "Romantic Mexican Singer" to perform. Plus, there'll be beer and food...it should be great. But I'm not going to lie and say the thought of over 20 retarded people at a Mexican fiesta isn't going to be a total trip. Yes, I am an asshole. But if you can keep a straight face while a retarded person swings at a pinata, you're either lobotomized or a better person than me.

Story in progress....

Official Stupid Celebrations Week Wrap-Up

I was up at the in-laws all weekend so I couldn't post, but last week was the week of stupid celebrations. First off, last week marked the 100 year anniversary of the San Francisco Earthquake. We Bay Area residents were regaled all week with threatening news stories saying how when the next big one hits (not "if" cuz it's definitely coming) we'll likely suffer the same fate as those in the area did in 1906. That wasn't even the worst part. For me, I couldn't figure out why there was a celebration of a disaster.

People dressed up like 1906ers and celebrated from dawn till dusk on Tuesday morning. Why?? I mean sure, some people just own the old style clothes and want to wear them for anyone who isn't one of their 17 cats, but is this really cause for celebration? It must be because San Francisco went all out to put a rather neat looking light show on at the ferry building and the entire month seems to be dedicated to survivors of the earthquake....90% of whom (and there's only like, 8) were younger than 2 years old! I'm sorry, but that does not count. I mean, technically it counts but that's like saying your mom was a hippy and gave birth to you at Woodstock so you were "there." Come on. The "survivors" even threw out the first pitch at Giants opening day! I not-so-secretly hoped for a broken limb. No such luck.



The other, more annoying celebration, was that of April 20th, or as it's commonly known to self-medicating skeevy stoners, 4-20 DUUUUUDE!!II If you still don't know what I mean, every April 20 (or 4/20) is the day where pot heads get to flash everyone the illegal smile in honor of the day that is synonymous with the number of chemicals found in marijuana. Wheee! Stoners are so lame. I was reminded of how lame several times but most notably at the store where I went to get dinner after having some beers at Dempsey's. As I waited in line (with more beer), some dying to be hip mom in a beret was regaling the checker with stories of her 4-20 celebration and how her son is at Humboldt State and you could "see clouds of smoke" all over town. The checker, who was black and had an eyebrow piercing so she must care, listened politely as she rang up my beer. The woman continued to talk loudly, wanting people to join in her insider knowledge. She finally looked at me smiling and I said, "pot is lame. Why is there even a day to celebrate it. Plus, it's illegal." The checker laughed and said, "totally! I hate weed!" Thus the plot to show how cool a 40 year old ex-hippie can be was foiled.

I mean, some on. I love beer but I don't subscribe to "Drunk Times" magazine or like, post pictures of myself drunk as hell and showing my belly off. Well, not much anyway. But stoners have no less than 5 pot magazines to choose from and love to show of pixx of themselves baked to high heaven. Pot magazines are the worst, too. I mean, they have these erotic pictures of weed. Where's my beer magazine so I can drool over barley and hops? Answer: We don't want one because only morons are fascinated by pot or even their choice of chemical. Where's "Cokeheads Weekly?" Where's "Heroin Fancy?" If you wanna smoke it and you're into it, good for you. But sharing it with the world with your lame magazines, your glass bong and pipe collection and various pot-head bumper stickers is just silly. Grow up.

Thus ends my rant and officially caps the end of Stupid Celebration week. Until next year that is...

The other side of Faux political T.V.

This season is the first time I've been able to watch "24" since season one. I guess I had other stuff to do. The show is AWESOME this season. Man, the death count is through the roof with several series regulars biting the big one. Plus, Peter Weller, William Devane and Ray Wise are on the show! It's like the heroes and villains of my youth ("Robocop," "Bad News Bears Breaking Training" and Leland Palmer from "Twin Peaks," respectively) have been brought back from career death. Plus, the dude who started out being the bad guy this season (before Julian Sands slit his throat) was our old next door neighbor in Sherman Oaks!! It was funny, I yelled to Erica..."Hey, did I tell you Mark is the new bad guy on '24'?" She goes, "yeah...you told me." Then he got whacked and I yelled, "wait, Mark isn't the bad guy any more." But I digress.

Again, if you're Tivoing or planning to rent the DVD later, you might want to skip the next part....

Per my last blog entry regarding the jingoistic tendencies of "Lost," I've noticed "24" seems to be taking an extremely liberal (ie; paranoid...hah!) view of politics. It doesn't take a genius to figure out President Logan is representing logical, free thinking people's views of G.W. Bush. Logan engineered a terrorist attack in order to keep gas prices low and strike fear into the general public. There's something else developing too, but they haven't said what it is yet. The funny thing about the show is, with a 30%ish approval rating, I think even the staunchest Neo-Cons know something is rotten in Denmark, but like a good team player, they don't dare say it aloud. "24" almost feels like what they're thinking, but not saying.

Anyway, President Logan as well as the Devane characters defense of covering up the "terror attack" as well as the assassination of President Palmer is that "the truth would irreparably hurt the American people's psyche," or something like that. And as much as I know the war in Iraq was undertaken under false pretenses, I also think we'll never know the truth because a knock of that caliber to the American political system would lead to a freeking riot. Then again, maybe that's what we need to wake up.

My main point to this is that I find it funny ABC and "Lost" are doing the "rah-rah" jingoism thing saying that sometimes you have to torture human beings to get somewhere...and then build a nice big CatholicChurch so you can feel o.k. for sinning while FOX is pretty deftly calling out the Bush Administration for their crimes. I'd expect FOX to continue on with the whole "if you're not with us, you're against us" thing but it looks like ABC and Disney have taken the bullshit torch. Alas, both are entertaining and I would be remiss if I couldn't seperate politics from damned good entertainment.

At the old Ballgame....

Bob Dylan!

I'm seeing Bob Dylan at 8:00 tonight! I can't wait!! I've never seen him live and have been a fan for a long time. About a month and a half ago, I heard he was playing in Santa Rosa which is the "big" town next to Petaluma. It's not a big town by any metropolitan standards though and Mr. Zimmermans appearance there is odd and unusual.

Even more unusual was how flipping easy it was to score tickets. The company putting the show on is a competitor of Clear Channel and I wholly support that. As such, I'm on their mailing list and get early access to tickets. For me, Dylan went on sale 4 days early and it literally took me FOUR MINUTES to score 4 tickets. I've never had an experience getting tickets on the net go that smoothly.

I had them on will call and just went to pick them up so I could get back here and hitch a ride back to Santa Rosa with my mom and uncle. I pulled up to the fairgrounds (where the show is) parked right in front, walked up to the ticket booth and got my tickets in like, 30 seconds. I wish it was always this easy!! Look for a full report tomorrow!!