The party… part 4… (Or): Even more pictures of people you probably don’t know!

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Unless, of course, you have been following this blog for a while, in which case you should remember that Big Johnny is a friend of my wife from way back in middle school days, and he was the best man at our wedding, and I have been madly in love with him since I met him back in the mid 80’s…

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Oh, and of course he is also the father of Willie, to whom my wife and I are godparents.

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And there is Eva, John’s wife, mother of Willie, and good, all-around human being!

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And speaking of human beings, did I mention that I met some awesome human beings at this party?

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It was a fun day.

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And we were there to celebrate a great guy.

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And it ain’t over yet.

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The party… part 3… (Or): Ain’t no party like a Bay Area party… (Or): I know, there is nothing you like better than looking at pictures of people you don’t know having fun in a place you have never been to…

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Drunk guys! Okay, the funny thing about this picture is that I am in it… over on the right, making my manly muscles… and I have no recollection of handing my camera to somebody else and having them take that picture…

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Or maybe it isn’t that funny, because, there they were the next morning, on my camera’s memory card, like a gift from the photo fairy. And this was pretty early in a long day, and I wasn’t that drunk… yet. Strangely, I remember almost all of what happened that afternoon and that night, so I didn’t have to call Big Johnny and ask if there was anyone I needed to apologize to… yay, me.

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I know, you don’t really care about most of this.

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Oh look, Johnny is getting ready to do his kung fu ninja back flip over a bar stool! Too bad you missed that.

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As I said, this is probably pretty boring for you. You don’t know any of these people.

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But this blog is about me sharing my whole life with whoever cares, good, bad or whatever. And sometimes, I do this for myself as much as I do it for you. I like to go back and read my own blog now and then, just scroll through it to remind myself of how many crazy things I have done.

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And this is just one more day in that adventure. Oh, and remember the cute little guy in the front and center of this picture… because he was there with Big Johnny and I for another adventure… after this party ended.

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The party… part 2… (Or): He is officially old now, even though he is still younger than me…

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Yup, Big Johnny turned 50. There he is with his lovely wife, Eva. If you don’t know them, or at least know about them, don’t panic. I will get to all that soon enough… just not today… when my hangover goes away.

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Uh, yeah… this seems like a good place to throw a party.

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I guess these are what you call establishing shots.

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We’re number two!!!

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Open bar… check!

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All you can eat tacos, delivered to your door… check!

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Tacos…

 

 

 

 

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The party… part 1… (Or):Yeah, I’m a little hungover today… (Or): This guy!!!

There is a reason I drove 500 miles North and am now sitting in my mom’s house nursing a hangover. And the reason is this guy…

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Now, some of you who have been here for a while will recognize Big Johnny. As for the rest of you, be patient. The story will come out over a series of posts as I sort through the pictures from last night. But suffice it to say, that gesture is by no means insulting, given the circumstances, and is a sign of great respect and love.

That being said, if you ever find yourself, in a bar, on the receiving end of that gesture from that particular guy, and you don’t know him as well as I do, you might want to start stammering apologies and backpedaling.

No… just kidding, he wouldn’t hurt a fly… unless that fly seriously needed some hurting… and then, just stay out of the way.

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I love this guy in ways that I don’t have words to explain, and I do words for a living.

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But for now, let’s just say that my head was foggier than the Bay Area when I woke up this morning.

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You are the sun… (Or): What goes on in my head when I am alone in a car on a long drive: The crack squirrel chronicles… the final chapter…

The sun tints the sky, setting fire to the heavens. It careens with wild, child-like abandon through a drop of dew on the tip of a rose petal and shoots off in new directions and colors. The sun is all the beauty of nature. Our eyes are adapted to the light of this sun, our sun. Everything we see, every color and reflection, every dappled shadow and soaring rainbow, only exist in our perception because we are the sun that we grew up under. We are made of the same stuff, as is all that is around us. We are the sun, and the sun is us.

There is a reason that most early people worshiped the great ball of fire in the sky, the giver of life and warmth, majestic in its stately progress across the vault of the sky. It was our timekeeper before we invented the concept of time. It is the seasons, it is what keeps the darkness at bay. Before we knew what the sun was, we knew that there could be no more terrible cataclysm that could befall us than to have its light extinguished.

The sun is you, and you are the sun. Cast your light into the dark recesses of the world. Lift someone out of the darkness. Expose what is hidden. Radiate light and warmth wherever you go, because all the light and warmth of the sun is within you, an unquenchable, timeless, seething core of energy, feeding on an inner heart even while sending its rays out in all directions.

Be the sun.

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I hope you enjoyed this series of posts. It is a small peek into the way my crack-squirrel infested brain works… because these are the kinds of things that are bouncing around in there all the time. This was a random sampling of perhaps two hours of my life when I was sitting in a car driving North, waiting for the sun to come up, alone with my thoughts… and squirrels. And these are just the thoughts that I found worthy of jotting down because they struck me as funny enough to share or worth delving into. Most of the rest of what was going on in my cranium was just the sounds of the squirrels chewing on the wiring and that weird, rubbery, squishy sound their feet make when they scramble around on my cerebral cortex. I have to try to sort through the background clutter and pick the few useful tidbits out of the chatter of all those squeaky little voices… all day… every day… and when I try to go to sleep it’s even worse.

Welcome to my life.

 

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We get it, it isn’t the 1950’s anymore… (Or): What goes on in my head when I am alone in a car on a long drive: The crack squirrel chronicles… part 9…

On the other hand, it isn’t the 1850’s either… when, the odds are, your own relatives were being treated like crap when they showed up in America… so stop whining.

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Hold on, I am making a cup of tea… (Or): What goes on in my head when I am alone in a car on a long drive: The crack squirrel chronicles… part 8…

Hand holding tea bag

Oh, yeah!

Also, be careful if you ever need to search the web for images of ‘tea bags’… just sayin’…

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Thank you, child-molesting priests, gay-hating ministers, greedy televangelists, and Trump-supporting fundamentalists … (Or): What goes on in my head when I am alone in a car on a long drive: The crack squirrel chronicles… part 7…

Thank you! Thank you for reminding me that being good and decent and moral has nothing to do with religion. Now, if we can just keep religion from having anything to do with politics…

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We get it, you are not of this world, but could you drive like you are? … (Or): What goes on in my head when I am alone in a car on a long drive: The crack squirrel chronicles… part 6…

Dear guy in the car ahead of me with the…

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window decal,

I know, you have a special relationship with your lord and savior, and you are letting him steer your life… but I don’t think he is actually steering your car. I mean, it’s five in the morning, the sun isn’t up yet, and here we are, on the Los Angeles freeway system, traffic already getting very heavy, and… oh… you are texting too? Let me guess… you are texting your friend Jesus. I hope it is a prayer… or a last will and testament… because, whichever of you is driving is doing a really bad job, and you will probably be meeting face to face before too much longer.

Say hi for me, but please, don’t take me with you.

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A rap remix of ‘Baby Got Back’… (Or): What goes on in my head when I am alone in a car on a long drive: The crack squirrel chronicles… part 5…

I hate truck nuts and I can not lie

Those danglin’ balls, they just ain’t fly

When a Chevy goes by with a pair hangin’ there

I say “stick it up your own tail pipe”

Yeah, just get lost, that’s enough

In short, you can go get stuffed

You think those balls can make you cool

But you ended up lookin’ like a goddam fool

You got them hangin’ from your own rear

That might make you sexy to some poor steer

When you were young did you have bicycles

Decorated with small plastic testicles?

Maybe you could hang a pair from your own derriere

By tying them to your belt…

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Anyway, that’s about as far as I got with that, in my crack squirrel-filled head… in my car… on that long drive…

 

 

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