Monday, August 23, 2010

well it's been a minute

since i last posted. i need to stop this right now. neglecting to write is a bad habit i'm not going to tolerate this time. 


it's been hot as balls the last couple days. one bad thing about the super mild "summer" we'd been having is that when it does decide to show up for a week or so, it really kicks our ass. it's not as bad the last couple days of one of these spells, because i start getting used to it. but the first four or five really kick my ass. 


i've lost some weight. mostly because it's too damned hot for coke, so i've been drinking ice water a lot during the day. that and i've been eating cold stuff for dinner. insalata caprese last friday. ah... insalata caprese. it makes me long for enough dirt to grow some tomatoes and basil. if either of my readers has a plant or 6, make one when the tomato is still a little warm from the sun. i swear, there's nothing better to eat in this world. 


ahh... so wendell and i have been amusing ourselves figuring out what we're going to do when we win the megamillions. we haven't yet. we're going to tomorrow. *lol* anyhoo... i need to get a passport, and i bet that takes a minute these days, and i need to shed a ton or 2... a year based in florence. k.. i need to digress... when we got the dyson air multiplier, we got a ps3 game called assassin's creed 2. it's set in italy. florence and the tuscan countryside, a town in emilia-romagna called forli, venice, rome. and it's just a damn game but it looks sick. then we made the mistake of watching this show on cooking channel called la dolce vita... and the dude just happened to be in florence (!) and in one segment, he and his pals were playing soccer in front of santa maria de fiore... in the piazza del duomo(!!!11!1) 


so yeah, our wee pea brains are like totally blown. the megamillions is worth $115 million tomorrow. cash value's something like $65 million. i don't think an apartment between santa croce and il duomo would tap us if we won. :) and look, i know toscana is so 10 years ago and shit, but there's a reason it blew up with tourists. and one could see a lot of italy based there. lazio, umbria, emilia-romagna. *le sigh* and wendell and i would both be speaking good italian in a year's time. 


good news today. wen'ls unemployment extension is a go. being broke sucks. but i think i'm developing some good habits because of it. i think a lot of people around my age are going to be like my grandparents' generation. they all were at an age during the depression where it colored their thinking about money for the rest of their lives. it's making me think twice about throwing things out. if i can fix it (like i fixed a hole in some shorts today), i do. if it's something i can repurpose, i do. and even if i did when the lottery, i'd live smaller than one would think. if i ever bought a house, it would be small. i watch "top gear", but i'd never drive a lamborghini (even if i could get my ass in and out of one!). experiences are something i'd splurge on if i had even a bit of money.


k, brain dump done. y'all have a good evening, and smoke em if you got em. 

Friday, August 13, 2010

there's a lake of stew and of whiskey too...

you can paddle all around them in a big canoe. 


yeah, it's that time of the day, kids. time for my daily assault on your senses. i've just smoked a wee bit of the trees, not enough to make myself ramble i think. i hope!


yeah, so i got reminded of the harry mcclintock classic, "the big rock candy mountains". damn ll bean. that isn't exactly a feel good song, you know? it's about hobos. something we may be seeing more of if the goddamn gubmint don't pull its collective head out of its collective tuchas. as it is, i think people who grow fruit and veg in their yards have the right idea. i know if i had a yard (like i owned it!) i'd yank out the lawn and the landscape. my crops could be arranged in such a way as to be attractive. i'd want it to look good. and make anyone who walked past hungry. :)


yeah. good idea. it's money you don't have to spend on food. 


yeah... buzz is still kinda sneaking up on me. so i might ramble a bit. 


megamillions is worth $75 millions tonight. i wonder what one would get after taxes. i know if i won it i'd buy an older, smaller house on a fairly good sized lot over in bluff park or belmont heights. something i could work with but needed love. and i'd rip my landscape out and make some raised beds of herbs in the front yard. thyme and chives are particularly lovely when they bloom. and the whole front of my house would smell good, no? and it would serve to help cover up the smell of the herb superb wafting out the windows. lol


i would live well below my means. i feel shellshocked from being so damn broke. wendell is still looking for a job. we're still living on his unemployment. i praise the psm our rent is as low as it is. and the other day i got my second gas bill since may with a negative balance. even though it would only be like $10 if i got one, i *love* getting to skip a bill. 


the whole experience has made me tight with a buck. i think i always will be, no matter what our financial future looks like. well, this and seeing what a shambles my dad made of his finances. i do not want to be in the boat he got himself into... fucking scary. so it isn't a bad thing, right? i mean, i want to enjoy my life a bit more than i am right now, but if i walk away from this hellishness knowing it's better to be thoughtful, even overly so, with my money i've learned far more than my dad ever did. 


yeah... and julianne was in bawlmer! you know about my "the wire" fixation. i know it's a beat to hell town, but i think i'd dig getting to have blue crab cakes and getting called "hon". :)

Thursday, August 12, 2010

river is deep - yeah i'm swimming

k so here i am. i have 2 things sitting in my drafts folder. one of them explains the origins of the name of this blog. the other, i forget. as i told kona on le facebook, marijuana is a powerful drug. 


so i strapped on the ipod, fired up the third of a spliff i found earlier this afternoon (in a candleholder - votive - that i was going to put spent sunflower seeds in). finding joint remnants you'd forgotten about is kind of like finding a $10 bill in the pocket of a pair of jeans you haven't worn in awhile. "eleanor rigby". *sigh*


i remember where i was when john was killed. does that mean i'm old? i was 11. i cried. moms loved the beatles. saw them at the hollywood bowl (bitch!! lol). i heard em a lot growing up. i probably felt something like she felt on december 8th, 1980 when joe strummer died. shit. i guess that's what really means i'm old. i liked the clash when there still was the clash. like sandinista and shit. 


no joke. i had awesome taste in music when i was a kid. not only did the folks expose me to some really good music (dad was at a led zep show when mom went to the hospital to have my brother. dick! no lol. lol), but the radio didn't suck ass back then and i actually got exposed to good stuff. like the first time i ever heard tom petty and the heartbreakers, it was on KROQ.  -- if you read this kona, you'll know they weren't playing him on KROQ then. lol -- 


i get a wee bit wistful that i won't have a minion who grows up thinking that the police rool and stewart copeland is the best rock drummer *ever*. few other things too, but they certainly don't amount to a reason to have one. yeah... like wendell's seed would find any purchase in my 41 yo innards if i wanted to actually birth the minion. and ick. babies are parasites, no? i was one, a long time ago. moms was pregs with me 42 years ago. 


she was pregs again about 2 and a half years later. with my brother. my brother who turns 39 on saturday. yeah, so old. my little brother's dirty thirties are about to come to an end. that makes me a fucking relic. 


anyhoo, he's a good brother. usually see him about twice a month. he lives in long beach too, over in bluff park. right around the fucking corner from dexter morgan! a triplex, with off street parking. lucky bastard. gawd i'm rambling. we've always been pretty tight. i know, for me, that growing up it was good having someone along for the ride. it would have been a lot of damn nonsense to go through by oneself. i'm glad it didn't make bad people of either of us. 


i used to right better stoned. i mean better than while sober. lol

Thursday, August 5, 2010

nerve

hey. i know that over in the about me section over there it says living in the wrigley is working my last nerve. only certain things about living here work my nerves. they're humdingers though. parking around here is a joke. if i have errands to run i have to be home by 3:00 or i'll be parking on eucalyptus and hill. socializing on the weekend is done at one's own peril, and realizing you'll be walking 4 blocks home drunk, or hi, or both. keep in mind i live 2 blocks from a police substation and that they don't have anything better to do than drive around the neighborhood. 


the more irritating situation is the psycho hosebeast that lives in apartment no. 2... and her even more lunatic mother. yeah, the cops have been called. they responded in large numbers. i am 100% positive they will be back. they were just on the lam for a few days and it was the quietest this place has been in the full four months we've lived here. she was making noise about disappearing (like, for good). i hope that's still an option. 


and the place is but wee. really. we had to chuck so much shit when we moved in here. just abandoned several rooms worth of furniture. shit i tried to sell on craigslist and had no luck. well, i sold a sideboard-y looking thing, the fridge and a graphing calculator. but 2 dining tables + chairs, a couch and chair... all kinds of shit. and going through the dregs of my parents' 38 year marriage. but i am free of all that now, and by extension free of him. i will never have enough money to give him any! even if we both had a gig that paid for shit. never. 


but i LOVE it. i live in a for fucking real city for the first time since i was 10. there's thai restaurants AND thai people around here. there's a supermercado 2 blocks from here, and i wouldn't think of buying the fixins for carne asada anywhere else. i don't eat much fast food anymore. mostly cuz i'd have to give up a tits parking spot to go get it. and park on eucalyptus and hill when i got back. lol


the neighborhood is pretty cool. lots of old (for here anyway!) apartment buildings, duplexes and small single family homes. this building was put up in 1928. the ceilings are 10' high. the floors are wood. the walls are lath and plaster and thick. i hear the people on the other side of the building a lot better than i hear the people right around me. and, it stays cooler inside because of those walls and their thermal mass. 


we'll probably move when our lease is up (this place is just too damn small), but i'm staying in long beach.


now, for an unsolicited and totally gratuitous plug... wendell had cisco rewards points he had to use by the 31st of july or lose forever. we ordered a 10" dyson air multiplier. the thing fucking rocks. now, they go for $249. i would never pay that for a fan. but i'll pay the income tax on $249 for it. and it just kicks all conceivable ass. it's small. it has a small footprint. that's huge around here, believe me. and it's way quieter than a bladed fan that puts out that much air. it isn't all choppy like a fan usually is. and it tilts and oscillates. 


lol. the companies that should be paying me are legion.


tomorrow i will share the story of how this blog got its name. nite kids.

... and all the pieces matter.

so the 101 is showing "the wire" in its entirety on sunday nights. wendell never saw the first several seasons, so when i found out it was being rebroadcast, that joint went in the *manage recordings* file toot sweet. (yes, i know it's tout de suite. bite me!)

sitting here smoking a fat, tasteeeee spleeeeef of the purple moonshine, listening to "the fall" on repeat. heart is indeed breaking. lester freamon, greggs, marlo, omar, bunk, stringer bell... d'angelo barksdale... bubbles. especially bubs. *le sigh* even jimmy, manufacturing whole cases not just evidence, sticking random pussy and out on the tiles. i miss them all. 

i am not a young black man, obvs. i wouldn't pretend to know the experiences of one from west bawlmer, so i don't know if it's as realistic as it seems. but i do know it was the most unvarnished look at life anywhere in the united states that i've ever seen in something that's obstensibly entertainment. the best show ever broadcast. 

everything about the show was perfection.

 the way things developed slowly, seemingly in real time. it demanded that you pay (fucking!) attention, even as it knew you'd be watching it again to pick up on all the shit you missed the first time. the shit you missed the first time when you were sprawled out on your couch, slackjawed. "did i just fucking see that?! on TELEVISION?!?!?" 

the characters, "good" and "bad". all of them were both. there was jimmy and his shenanigans, all five seasons worth. a good pOlice who was indeed a bastard. and d'angelo barksdale. a drug dealing, murdering thug, who in some ways was the fucking conscience of the first series. him teaching the thugs beneath him in the pecking order in the pit how to play chess was one of the most sublime parts of the superlative first season.

the music. the blind boys of alabama are doing their version of the tom waits classic "down in the hole" this season. the music, score and pre-recorded stuff both, are the work of one hell of a music director. the man who wrote the song i'm listening to. this song is everything it should be for a show like this. it's inspiring. it's sentimental. it makes my head go back and forth, eyes closed. (oh and hey... my hair's starting to get pretty long!). it definitely has a groove.

the cast. omG! i watched every season of it, and i swear, i never saw someone miscast. and the regular players were all just jawdroppingly good. wendell (HA!) pierce has been one of my favorite actors for a long time. i liked him in the shit he made before "the wire", but fuck. he was born to play bunk moreland. and i REALLY fucking dig it that so many people from so many of the david simon/ed burns joints were on the show. (like wendell pierce had a huge role on the next of simon's projects, the kick-ass "treme", and so did clarke peters, who played lester freamon).

sorry. it's not hard for me to get all purple and squeeeee about that show. i'd totally have 10,000 of "the wire" 's babies. praise the PSM for HBO for making it.