More Mu-Fugging Updates for the Peanut Gallery

One day into my 27th year and it's just what I thought. A lot of hope, a good deal of accomplishment and a great deal of trauma. That's right kiddos, my birthday was the 18th. Not that you should feel bad about missing it, but if you want a cheap way of making me feel good, write it down somewhere and then surprise me next year with a gift. Particularly a taxidermied head of a rhino or a wildebeast. That would please me to no end.

On the plus column of my life, I'm shooting a video this weekend and a video for Irving is in the works in Early June. I just got the track from Alex, the bass player in Irving and it's really brilliant. I saw them open for Mates of State on Monday and they tore shit up. Apparently there were technical difficulties, the kind that the audience never notices but the band freaks out about and profusely apologizes for. The show was decent until they hit L-O-V-E the greatest single in 30 years. Then they played The Curious Thing About Leather and I melted. That song is so good. It's nice to work with bands that you really feel a kinship with, and an affinity for. Plus, I get to work with Max again on the vid so even better.

On the minus column of my life, I recieved the annual bad news report from my family. My dad is having eye surgery on one eye. His lens crapped out and he needs another one. I also heard that my Grandpa Ralph's prostate cancer has come back. I heard a rumor of five years to live at the maximum. Which I don't believe, but where the fuck would someone get that figure and seminate it without some splinter of experience? I seriously have no idea what to do with this information. I'm paralyzed. He's been the type of guy that's talked about his death for a good decade or so, but the fact that it's on it's way is just too much. I can't help but think that it's been brought on by his own apathy. That whole side of the family, my father's side, is a wreck. Seems like every branch on that end of the family tree has it's own awful story of drunkedness, death and deceit.

As Andrea put it, in her very sensible way, I have to decide what I'm going to do about these next few years. How I will spend them.

But how do I want to spend them, I wonder? I kind of want to drain him of stories. Or document them on tape, just to have. I really don't know much about the man. I know that he was in WWII, that he was a plumber, and that at some point he had a picture taken with Hawaiian women that he's embarassed for his grandchildren to see. I also know that he sneaks into movies every Saturday and that he's the funniest man I've ever known. It's probably physically impossible for him to go two sentences without cracking a joke. Also that he didn't read much as a young man, but got hooked on Western novels as a retiree. And that he tried pot once from one of his Mexican plumber's assistants.

Hopefully I'll deal with this when I come out to Denver in a week. It's tough, though because I think about him dying, and my dad dying, dayly. Whenever the phone rings, I think it's someone calling to tell me they've died. It's sort of like when my first dog Willy died. I used to sleep next to him on the floor crying every night, knowing that he was old and was going to die soon. Then, when my dad put him to sleep, I didn't cry and my brother thought me callous. I'm afraid that when they do die, I won't cry, because I mourn them daily. Which is really screwed up, I guess. I feel like I've abandoned my family by living out here, but I really don't think anything would be different if I was at home.

Anyway, I need to sleep. I'm up way too late. I have a crazy story about how I thought I killed a guy on my birthday and geekfest that is E3, but that'll have to wait.

In any event, you've gotta check out http://www.livejournal.com/users/chrisone65 for the latest in podcast goodness. If Chris ran the airwaves, cancer would be cured, ugly people would stop mating and math would be fun again. Long live the Nerd Patrol.

P.S. I have a sneaking suspicion that my friend Ben never reads this. If so, he's a ranch guzzling Barenaked Ladies fan with a penchant for non-woodfired pizza. If not, thanks for reading, B-dawg.

EYES: The Castle That Dripped Blood.
EARS: N.E.R.D. Patrol Episode 6