floorpie

I’m sure every person with a semi-regular blog in the world is posting about Michael Jackson’s death today. I’m no different. I grew up in the 80’s, I listened to the music, I had that poster, I wore my Thriller tape out, I did my poor version of the moonwalk in the scorching Texas summer sun.

Today I don’t care about the scandals, or the surgeries, or the weirdness and eccentricities. MJ meant a lot to me for a good long part of my life, and I still can’t help but dance or sing along when I hear the familiar beats. I wanna rock with you…all night.

It sucks losing your icons.

A rockstar friend of mine just met Michael a few weeks ago. It was amazing. It was transcendent. And, in today’s light, it was even a little more weird.

How many sparkle gloves will be worn on Halloween this year? How many will be in honor, and how many will be in jest?

No matter the personal life, this reporter still contends: too soon.

I’m not the greatest of sons lately. Well, maybe that’s not true, but I’m not the greatest in terms of gift-giving. For the past few years, I’ve only been able to muster a call on father’s/mother’s day and no gift or card. I’m a bad son.

I attribute this to work. I’m so overwhelmed wih stuff that I don’t have time to take care of myself, let one go out shopping for cards. If Hallmark wad OpenDoc until 2am, it might be a different story.

I wonder if I’LL ever celebrare father’s day? Did anyone else just feel that shudder?

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a dead body for the first time outside of a mortuary. Yesterday there was a fatal gang shooting across the street from the studio…which also sadly ended in death.

I had my DSLR with me, and went up to the roof and took a grip load of pictures. Capturing the guy bleeding on the sidewalk, the police and paramedics, the ambulances, the crowds, the scene. At the time, it was OK for me to be so seemingly callous, because he wasn’t dead. He was definitely in a bad way, his friend was standing over him covered in his blood, but they loaded him into an ambulance instead of covering him with a sheet and leaving him on the street to cool.

Today though, it turns out he didn’t make it. And that changes the picture taking. Being right across the street I was the first person in the area with any kind of significant camera. By the time the press got there, the victim was already on the way to the hospital. So, without exaggeration, I may have the last pictures of this guy alive.

Weird.

Way back in the late 20th century, when I was still in school, History was my absolute least favorite subject. Even less so than math, which is why I became an engineer…wait, what?

It’s not that I was bad at it or anything, I just really found it boring. A bunch of dead people went somewhere and talked a lot, wrote down some things, and then died because they were cold. And these fascinating occurrences happened from this month and year to this later one. Annnd test.

It always just seemed like brute memorization to me, which therefore sucked all the fun out of it. You know, like religion.

Now though, it seems like 90% of what I watch is on the History Channel. I find this odd. Is this because the delivery is better or because I’m not staring at Kate Bartells as much (cheerleader, blond, Friend, endlessly frustrating while never being aware of it…you know what I’m saying fellas)?

I have a bunch of completed and near-completed stories on my harddrive. Where by a “bunch” I really mean like ten. I’ve written stories on and off my whole life, but i have no idea where they are. I don’t know if that’s because I find them disposable, or I just don’t do a good job of keeping track of them…either way, I was looking for something and ran across this small snippet that I have no recollection of writing whatsoever. I must have done so within the last 5 years or so, but I can’t recall under what circumstances.

You’ll also notice that it’s really more of a blog post than a story, observations being the kinds of things I usually post.

I’m not sure why I just said that. At any rate:

There are too many people in Los Angeles.

There are two ways you walk by a stranger in Los Angeles.
1. With your head down
2. With your eyes straight ahead and a don’t-fuck-with-me look on your face.

What does that tell you about Los Angeles? It tells you that there’s such a surplus of people here that you can afford to either ignore them or beat them. Consider time past, let’s go with Colonial when we were still exploring this vast land of purple mountains, majesty. Imagine yourself in your deer-skin cap and tattered boots. The last of your hardtack begrudgingly digesting in your stomach. Murky water stored in an animal hide your only relief from the hot sun. When, in the distance, you see a small wagon train shimmering on the horizon. You bet your ass you’re going to roll up and say “hi”.

I have a love/hate relationship with flickr. I love it because I can put my pictures up and feel like I have a pretty good eye and have some measurable kind of skill.

But then, as is inevitable, my eye starts to wander and I see humbling work by jd and jimbo, and get reminded that I have a long way to go. Humbling inspiration can be a great motivator.

OK, that’s a reason to love flickr, too.

I’m falling apart, America. The eyes are going fast, the hair is on its way out, the fat is stacking up…It’s a sad sight.

I can’t help but think that it has a lot to do with the 50-60 hour work weeks and the stress that comes with that; and I’m starting to think that it has even more to do with internalizing the trauma of my own little personal tragedies. If I might self-aggrandize a bit, I dealt with my fire, the repeated car accidents, and now the loss of 10 years worth of pictures with an uncharacteristic calm. I’ve gotten compliments on that calm and told that I’m great under pressure, results-driven, blah, blah, blah.

But lately, as I fall to pieces in the mirror, I wonder if that’s really all that good of a thing. Maybe I’m not so much dealing with these situations as burying them, and it’s manifesting itself in my faltering body.

Or maybe I’m just getting older.

Also, I’ve just been watching “I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!” on Hulu, so clearly my mind is also going.

I dunno.

Got an invite to Blogger Prom 2009…which is awesome though also weird as I have a spectacularly unpopular blog; and, over the last year or so I’ve updated less and less.

Even so, I’ve been doing this since early 2000. I was there at almost the beginning, met Ev a couple of times though it’s doubtful he remembers, was good friends with Mighty Girl and some of the other titans of this new-fangled blogging thing. But I was never especially popular, maybe getting to at most 500 hits a day in my heyday. Now it’s more like a dozen. But that’s OK, I do it for me and the ideal reader. You. I don’t need the crowd.

At any rate, low readership but legit credentials I think. Enough so that I can dress up in a tux and hold my own in a crowd of the glitterati of the blogesphere. But what to wear? Strangely, that’s the biggest source of stress at the moment.

That and that I need a date.

As an addendum to yesterday’s post about my mini-tragedies in threes, everyone that I’ve mentioned my string of bad-ish luck to has, to a man, gasped the loudest, had the deepest sighs, and choked back their streaming tears when I mention that my TV is on the way out.

Semi-serious car accident: mild interest
Harddrive crash and loss of precious memories: slight batting of eyelash…could be the wind
TV is going out: heartfelt screams and lamentations, whipping of flesh, self-immolation

For TV. TV! And I can’t really disagree. Society, as a whole, dissolved into Twinkie wrappers and NASCAR.

My life is not that hard. There are people that are much worse off by far.

However comma, I could do without my back-up harddrive failing and taking years of pictures and documents with it, my TV failing, and getting T-boned by a girl running a red light…all in the same week.

But again, not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. I have a roof over my head, food whenever I want it, a job…but I’ll be damned if I miss an episode of The Hills.