Pirate's Favorite

Oh, I meant to add this post the other day. This is largely to annoy Skye.

What is a pirate's favorite new addition to the website? Why, it's the Complete Photo Arrrrrr-chive!

I'm very sorry.

O Dentist, My Dentist

This morning, for the first time in four years, I went to the dentist. The lovely and patient hygienist used that pointy metal thing to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that I am a less-than-consistent flosser, but she said that it didn't reflect too much upon my character. I asked her if she had ever cleaned the teeth of one of her friends, and she said yes. Then I asked her if cleaning a friend's teeth had ever led to a change in their relationship, like, "After what I just saw, we can't be as close as we used to be." She said not yet.

No cavities, an admonition to floss daily, and a CSI-like approach which proved my marathon pre-appointment flossing regiment was pointless. I guess that's a good day at the dentist. Now that I'm getting a little older, I think this daily flossing thing is something I'm actually going to try. We'll see how it goes.

If I were Andy Rooney...

...I'd begin this entry by saying, "You know what I can't stand?" I can't stand it when one friend hurts another's feelings without any provocation whatsoever. I have a friend that did this very thing to me this week, somewhere around Thursday.

Now I am personally responsible for most all of the cuts and bruises I receive, mind you -- I'm very rarely an innocent bystander who gets hurt. As a matter of fact, I usually have lots and lots of fun leading up to the point that someone decides to break a beer bottle over my head or something. This is different, though. In this case I have a friend who repeatedly draws me closer to her when she wants someone around and then is nowhere to be found when she wants to be alone -- no big deal, really. But she goes a little further: when we hang out, she has fun and decides that we should spend more time together. Then she starts building up something in her head, having some ideas (I guess) about maybe taking a step towards having a romantic relationship with me (never mind that I don't want one or that she mentions none of this to me). Then she decides that it could never work, that she doesn't have those feelings for me -- and this is what she decides to share with me. So I get to be rejected without ever wanting to be involved in the first place! I mean, it's one thing to put yourself out there and make yourself vulnerable and have someone not see eye-to-eye with you; it's no fun, but it's real and honest and whatever. It's another thing altogether to have someone call you out of the blue and say, "Hey, you're not good enough!" I just think it's a lousy, shitty way to treat a friend, and I have no more time for behavior like that. Grow up. I don't go around calling any of my female friends just to tell them that I wouldn't want to go out with them.

This next phrase may not seem to fit, but... this weekend was fun. I made a new surfing buddy Saturday morning. The surfing was slow, but we had a great time talking and then going for breakfast. She was very cool, and also a fellow writer, so I'm sure we'll find other occasions to hang out. And tonight (Sunday) the LLC had a meeting, which is always fun even when we are feeling a little tired. Skye got a new job this week, so she's adjusting to all the new stimuli and the new schedule. I had some breathing trouble this weekend and had to sleep a lot (full nights plus full afternoons, but I feel somewhat replenished now), and that pretty much brings everything up to date.

Oh, wait, there is more... I'm performing this Wednesday night at Brennan's, and after the 4th weekend Michelle and I are going to start cranking on the music front. Between the music and writing projects that I have laid out for the summer, I may have to just quit my day job. Those projects need to start paying more so I can do that! The LLC will be planning a writing/camping trip soon, so maybe we can get up in the mountains somewhere and just churn out some good work. It's all about making the time.

Did I overlook something?

OK, so I guess that once I mentioned Kelly I forgot to mention the band I went to see. The band is Cowspace, and they are well worth the sleep I am currently lacking.

Feelin' Endorse-y

Wow, what a nice Wednesday night this one was. There's so much... let's see...

First of all, I cooked a fine dinner tonight. My very close personal friend Karen came over and shared it with me, which was a nice treat for me. I also did laundry. This is so exciting that I'm shocked the Times hasn't called for an update.

Secondly, the first band I went to hear tonight (I got to the first band's show at 11:15) is called "Just Listen," and they are incredible. Kate Higgins sings with the band -- that's my connection and why I drove all the way to Studio City to see them -- but it was worth every mile (19.1) and every penny (500 penny cover charge, as opposed to 1000 if I'd been on time). Just Listen is like the Sugarcubes if the Sugarcubes were American and if someone in addition to Bjork had been tremendously talented. I'd link a website if I could find one but I can't. Maybe they're at MP3.com or something.

Thirdish, I then went to hear another band at Brennan's Pub. This band gives me another chance to reference Kelly, because she would love them -- they are a mix of a Dead cover band (one which has the spirit) and an original jam band which you wouldn't mind listening to for several hours. Kelly has revamped her site; all Kelly fans will be glad to know that there's an actual way to keep up with her now, and maybe eventually something besides farm equipment and weird English porn will show up when you search her full name.

Fourthly (if one can say that), I set some stuff in motion for a huge Matt and Merrill Show on Labor Day Weekend, my 30th Birthday. Matt's coming in from Bogota during the week leading up to the big three oh, and I may even have a backing band set up for our traditional show. More to come on that one.

Lastishly, after this weekend there will be a new site hosted here at Crazy Bus Records, the Matthew Johnson Diplomacy site. As soon as it is ready, the link will magically appear. By the way, I believe that Crazy Bus Records turns 10 this year... I'll check on that and let you know.

Happy surfing,
-Merrill

A Week Without Bleeding, Plus: Hmmmm, a Child!

Today absolutely rocked. It all started at 8:40 in the morning, late by weekday standards but early by my cloudy Sunday standards. I went over to my friend Christopher's place to pick up Harper, Christopher & Chloe's 2 year-old. Chloe gave birth 12 days ago to Harper's new brother Simon, and this past week offered me a couple of opportunities to spend extended time with Harper. It's an amazing experience which taps into a really strong paternal/family desire that I have going lately, and Harper is either really bringing this out in me or filling that need for me. We'll see which.

Chloe mentioned that when she first had the "time to be a mom" feeling, she got a dog. Apparently, a Corgie makes a decent placebo for a while. The idea of people who are "parenty" getting pets makes sense when I think of some people I know, one of whom (I just read today) now has six pets. I've seen her with kids, long ago, and she's such a natural with children that the pet thing makes sense in that light.

Anyway, since Chloe has tiny Simon on her hands (among the other things he's on), she can't care for Harper all by herself, and Christopher had an engagement this morning. So we strapped the carseat into the back seat of my car and Harper and I took off for a little adventure which included dropping Christopher off in West Hollywood and then going to visit Harper's church buddies at what he calls "Park Eglise." He speaks a combination of French, Spanish, English, and Baby.

Along the way, we talked about fire trucks and tractors, we made animal noises, we made up brand new songs which prominently featured Harper's name, we made guesses as to what the original form was of the trash we found on the backseat floorboard ("Hmmm, Harper... maybe that was a Chinese Restaurant menu which got a Starburst wrapper stuck to it and then had a Diet Coke spilled on it"). After he had visited with his friends and ridden on my shoulders and said goodbye to everyone in sight, we went back to the car, and the image of a child seat in the back of my car is something which, I must admit, resonated with something inside of me.

A few days before, I kept him at his house so the parents could go out to dinner, and we talked about birds and airplanes (he calls them "Avi," a Harper/French thing), we talked about his new little brother and about the still-present Corgie, and then, as we did this afternoon, I fed him his bottle and put him in his crib to sleep. It made me wish I could be around Campbell, my nephew in New Orleans, every single day.

So who knows, maybe Harper is helping me more than I'm helping his folks. Either way, he's a cool kid, and I love the chances I get to hang out with him.

OK, then we move on to What Happened Next: I got free good tickets to the Dodger game this afternoon. The tickets happened to land in my lap at the same moment my friend Amy was walking by, so we agreed to meet at the Martins after I took Harper home and go to the game, albeit three innings late. This reminded me of the first Dodger game I went to, which was in the summer of 1999 with Kelly. She had a neighbor who had kick-ass season tickets and couldn't go to that day's game, so he offered them to her for free and she took me. It started my Dodger addiction, and I still keep up almost daily during the season. Anyway, hot dogs and beer entered my system today, and when you're at a ballpark you don't worry about how tender you feel from last week's food poisoning. It's a Dodger Dog, for crying out loud. It will kill anything, good or bad, that may be lurking in there.

The day ended with me trying to find the most-recently-purchased bottle of Hydrogen Peroxide. I bashed and skinned my knee in Chicago the other week, and, well, you know how you have to rip scabs off and all? Well, I finished the job tonight and felt it would probably be a good idea to clean it up. The first bottle I found was from Harco Drug, which was a drugstore in Tuscaloosa until 1997 or so when Rite-Aid bought them out. So I'm wondering: what happens to Hydrogen Peroxide over time? I mean, certainly it's still OK, right? It can't possibly gain another Hydrogen and become water, can it?

In the end, these questions went unanswered as I found the Von's brand bottle which I bought three years ago. Nice.

Green Eggs and Ham
Every once in a while, something -- either nature or some force inside of yourself -- causes you to slow down. Since returning from wonderful Chicago and the chain-restauranty, whitebread, frightening suburban midwest area that surrounds it, here's the score:

Woo-Hoo!: Green food coloring on a rainy day; the LLC, which grows monumentally in strength and power every single moment it exists; last-second trips to the chicken and waffle place; writing, writing, writing; biking to work and not getting run over in the process.
Hmmmm, not feeling so well: Food poisoning, over-committing.

The food poisoning came courtesy of that restaurant in Brentwood that lawyers like -- you know, the one on the corner of Wilshire and Barrington, the one with no soul? And I'm not saying lawyers have no soul, just that they tend to like restaurants that have no soul. I can't explain it. Anyway, 10 days ago I ate the French Dip there. Never again. As I get food poisoning relatively easily, so I'm not exactly blaming them totally -- it's like 95% them, 5% me -- but a week of near-constant dehydration and discomfort can certainly cramp one's style.

You see, when I returned from the central time zone I decided to stay on CDT. I woke up every day at 5:30 or so and wrote for a couple of hours in the morning before trekking to work. The wisdom of this becomes more and more apparent each day that I *don't* do it, because over-exposure to people and under-exposure to personally important work wears me out. And since nobody's awake at 5:30 in the morning, I had plenty of alone time.

Food poisoning will fix that. First of all, the initial onset kept me up until about 4:45, so waking up at 5:30 was out of the question. Then it's hard to get a full night's sleep at all, so you wake up as late as you can and still make it to work on time(-ish). Then you find yourself awake only during the most crowded times of the day, and there's no chance of getting good work done then -- as a matter of fact, it's like being awake only when you are needed, then going to sleep to try to recover. And living a life of only filling need is no fun.

So now I'm back to trying to carve time out again. I have realized that I'm always going to struggle with the fact that liking people so much is at odds with my genuinely antisocial style, and I find my only so-called "quiet" time is actually very, very noisy and dangerous as it's the bicycle ride to work (yes, it's that time of year again!). In the next day or so I'll place the betting charts up here, the ones where you get to guess where I will meet my untimely and gruesome death.

After surviving the Beverly Drive and Venice Blvd. accidents early last year -- not to mention having an enormous tree limb fall on my head while biking up Motor Avenue near the end of last summer -- will I be able to survive the next impact? Be ready to vote soon.

What did I miss? Oh, here's something to try: instead of syrup, try gravy on your waffles. It's not good for you at all, but, woo!

Stalking Val Kilmer

A few weeks ago, the Professional Drinking Association went on a journey to find Val Kilmer. The idea was to go from bar to bar, claiming to be looking for Val. There's no real point to the game other than to drink -- if you happened to run into Val Kilmer in the process, all the better. Anyway, I'm attaching a photo of someone else who is also looking for Val.

She was waiting for the man next to her at a park in Beverly Hills for about two minutes. What luck getting the photo! Only the two people gave me dirty, dangerous looks when they saw me with a camera. I followed the advice given during the sniper attacks in Washington and walked away in a comical zig-zag pattern.

Student ID
My friend Shawn recently posted a photo of her student ID which she described as "awful." I dug around and found mine from my freshman year at university.

To contrast, here's a photo booth strip from the other night.

From Chicago:
In Chicago this week for a conference, having a wonderful time. Wish I could find my cousin's real telephone number (the one I have is old), that way he could take me on one of his (patent pending) Chicago Pub Crawls. I plan on posting a whole hell of a lot of stuff when I get back as much has changed lately. It's been a wonderful, difficult period of transition. Life rocks. Plus, I've got a lot of writing to do -- Skye and I have been fairly productive with creative ideas lately. Can't wait!

Woo-Hoo!: Liz Phair, Flaming Lips, pita bread, Jane the soccer star, Zankou Chicken's garlic sauce, screenwriting meetings, In-n-Out for lunch, people dressed in big furry costumes, having rules to live by, occasionally breaking those rules (or at least finding the loopholes: if you aren't going to do something all day Saturday, can the day end at 5? You bet!)
Boooooo!: Microsoft Windows 98. Computer at home is completely unusable right now, unless I decide to use it for its mass.