floorpie

We all know that St. Patrick’s Day is just an excuse to drink for those of age, and an excuse to pinch the hell out of people when you’re not (though that does carry on into the teen years when that one cheerleader you have a crush on forgot to wear green).

I still make it a point to wear green, but the whole process seems tired nowadays. I somehow doubt that the X-Box generation approaches the day with the same kind of gusto as we of the Generation X once did, and that’s fine with me… though, it turns out there actually was a Saint Patrick (with the rampant commercialism surrounding the “holiday”, I was sure it was manufactured). Of course, why we choose to celebrate one particular saint is beyond me. I mean, look at all of these opportunities to get wasted:

St. Quadragesimus St. Quadratus St. Quadratus St. Quaratus St. Quintus St. Quentin St. Quinidius St. Quintian St. Irenaeus St. Quintilis St. Quintius St. Quintus St. Quiriacus St. Quiriacus St. Julitta St. Quirinus St. Quiteria

And that’s just the Q’s

Due to “popular” (read: narcissistic) demand, I have added a site feed (see the link on the left) for those of you without three seconds to waste in clicking bookmarks.

Watched the Lakers play like the Showtime Lakers (eventually) last night as the beat the Magic in overtime. My excitement was tempered somewhat when I realized that Orlando is in second-to-last place in the Eastern Conference.

But, in the words of every junior high P.E. coach in existence, past or present, “A W’s a W.”

Which makes it all the more painful remembering the summer league I played in while in Junior High. I don’t remember the name, but the uniforms were pretty snazzy, and we got to play in actual gyms as opposed to the blacktop of the playground that we were used to. Our team was comprised of the best players in the school, having been brought together by some political cheating (the teams were supposed to be completely random throughout the school district). The roster consisted of the same people I played with or against every day at lunch. I’d make my may way to the courts and battle it out for a good 30 minutes with the same group of people every time. It was always my team against the other David’s team. They were the bad guys we were the good guys. I was our point guard, he was their point guard. And throughout the week we would trade wins back and forth, neither team ever really having a dominant advantage. It was quite the dynasty.

At any rate, the other David’s dad happened to be a coach for a summer league team and he was able to jockey in position enough to bring us all together. We were the best of the best and we were going to be unstoppable.

I really shouldn’t have crossed out “going to be”.

We won exactly zero out of fourteen games. Which, I might add, is something of a spectacular failure if I do say so myself. For whatever reason, we just didn’t gel together as a team. Great apart. Terrible together. Which is my lame analogy for the way the Lakers have been looking lately. Just because you throw a bunch of superstars together doesn’t a championship make. But that’s what the best coach (after Pat, of course) is paid for, to bring the people together. We’ll get there, Los Angeles. Never you worry.

Verbatim excerpt from an e-mail sent to me from American Express:

Dear ,

This e-mail is designed exclusively for you, to help you get the most value from your American Express(R) Card membership.
We hope you enjoy it.

It’s the personal touches that mean the most.

Caution: Mullets may become entangled during ball retrieval. 80’s hipsters proceed with extreme care.

The end of an era

El Vuato has driven off into the sunset. Here he is after safely driving ADG and me some 2177 miles to Baja and back.

I had that truck for a very very long time… 12 years at my best estimation, and it always served me well. It was fun to drive, convenient, exceedingly useful, easy to work on, and obviously incredibly stylin’. El Vuato had no air conditioning and a tape deck with no reverse… stock. Towards the end of it’s life (with me), it had stripes on only one side and the “chrome” was beginning to bubble on the door handles.

The windshield got cracked and replaced at least four times.

By now you’ve probably done the math and realized that I had that truck in High School, meaning that it was probably my first car as well, which it was. Most people you know my age have probably had two or three cars by now; but my philosophy has always been to keep driving it ’till it don’t drive no more. To hell with the critics. It was never a question of money, or prestige, or even comfort in most cases. I could throw my bike or skis in the back and head up to the mountains. I could stuff it to the gills when I had to move.

El Vuato helped me move 11 times.

El Vuato helped other people move at least 6 times.

It drove me to more life experiences than I can count and never once let me down. If I wasn’t with ADG, I’d tell you how many girls have been in that truck.. because I am that number is one (insert winking emoticon).

Fare thee well, El Vuato. I barely knew ye.

This entire war on “indecency” predicated by the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction makes me ill. The wardrobe malfunction inciting an avalanche of criticism in the form of 200,000 complaints to the FCC.

There were 140 million Super Bowl viewers.

>200,000 complaints.

(200,000/140,000,000)X100= 0.14%

And for that 0.14%, our freedom of speech rights are being questioned, an organization of appointees with no ruling authority now has the power to decide what we can or can not see or listen to, and things seem to be generally progressing towards a new-McCarthyism.

These are scary times, my virtual friends, and they highlight more than ever why we need to vote, now more than ever, for someone other than George. Whatever your feelings about the leading Democratic candidate (and as a true open-minded liberal, I personally vote all around the political party spectrum), speeches like this have to give you pause:

My administration is also committed to defending the most basic institutions and values of this country. We’re working to build a culture of life.¹ We took an important step last November when I signed a law to end the brutal practice of partial-birth abortion. We will vigorously defend this. We will vigorously defend this law against any attempt to overturn it in the courts. I will also continue to support crisis pregnancy centers, and adoption, and parental notification laws. I proposed doubling federal funding for abstinence programs in schools and community-based programs.

In the past two years I have been proud to sign the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act and legislation supporting maternity group homes. I strongly support the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, and call upon the United States Congress to send it to my desk. I oppose the use of federal funds for the destruction of human embryos for stem cell research.² I will work with Congress and I will work with Congress to pass a comprehensive and effective ban on human cloning. Human life is a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man.³

I will defend the sanctity of marriage against activist courts and local officials who want to redefine marriage. The union of a man and woman is the most enduring human institution, honored and encouraged in cultures and by every religious faith. Ages of experience have taught humanity that the commitment of a husband and wife to love and to serve one another promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society. And government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.⁴ It is for that reason I support a constitutional amendment to protect marriage as the union of a man and a woman.

¹ It is not the job of government to develop a culture of life. It is certainly not the mission of one administration to mold the country in his personal image. Democrat, Republican, Rainbow Coalition, whatever… stay out of the way I live.
² Stem cell research has the potential of ending the suffering of countless human beings. How can you President Bush deny us this based on his personal religious morals? How can anyone do so? This is not just mixing church and state, this is defining state by church. Can a modern day Inquisition be too far away?
³ To be clear, our beliefs are our own. My taking umbrage at this quote does not even imply that I disagree with him on a personal level… but that’s not the point. The point is that our government should not be saying things anywhere near this. Our government should remember why we separated church and state to begin with.
⁴ All of us, that is, except for anyone with an alternative lifestyle. And the thought of passing a Constitutional Amendment designed to deny a wonderful portion of humanity of their rights is mind-boggling to me.

President Bush, your beliefs are your own, and I respect your right to have them… but don’t tread on me.

Skipping breakfast is one kind of sin.

Having half a dozen Samoas Girl Scout cookies is a whole other kind of wrong entirely.

In 1974 President Nixon resigned the U.S. presidency in a reverberating cloud of scandal. Embarrassingly unknown-to-me-writer, Harry Martinson, won 1/2 the Nobel Prize in Literature “for writings that catch the dewdrop and reflect the cosmos”; I’ll have to check him out. On April 3rd-4th, 148 tornadoes touched down in 13 states killing 330 people, and injuring 5,484 others, creating the most catastrophic super-tornado episode in recorded history. Jefferson Starship, in a brilliant marketing scheme, rose from the still-warm corpse of Jefferson Airplane. Gillette invented the disposable plastic razor, setting a new bar for anti-razor burn technology. Tiffany Brissette, of Small Wonder fame?/Infamy?/Legend? was born. And, though not as yet notable, David Kleeman was brought perhaps kicking, but unlikely screaming in St. Louis, Missouri. David Kleeman saved his screaming for later in life.

I bet you didn’t know that, that I was born in St. Louis, Missouri; or, in fact, that I was born at all, or why you should care. But I was. And now you know. And knowing is half the battle. But that’s the beginning of the story. The part where soon after the requisite details were filled in. The ones with Play-Doh stories you could identify with, school cafeteria fights, simplistic views on my simplistic, limited existence that extended almost, but not quite to the 4th house down the block in either direction. Memories and events that ended, almost without exception with:

“Yeah… race you!” And then the laughing.

The truly interesting stuff, the laughs, the loves, the tears and the broken hearts that you can perhaps identify with in that you recognize them, but that you nevertheless can never truly claim to have experienced, happened towards the end. As in towards “today”. “Today” being any day you choose in my or your existence as long as it’s the present. You see? It is possible for someone to write a novel for the Ages other than God and his 40 Mighty Ghost Writers. Granted, mine will have less sodomy.

So the good stuff happened at the end, just in time for me to miss it the most.