Picking up

Well, the non-verdict came down in the Inglewood police trial, and people were either too apathetic or genuinely too confused to say much about it. Basically, the jury couldn't decide if the "roughing up" the kid received was against the law, so they'll retry the cop later. It's a difficult call since a videotape of the end of an arrest doesn't necessarily tell the whole story; also, do you end up making it harder for the cops to do their jobs, or are you giving cops a blank check to do whatever they want? I think I'll watch The Simpsons instead of the news for the rest of the week.

Last night, picked up Garrard et al at the airport. That place was a zoo. The security is so tight that you're hardly allowed to press your brake pedal. I remember flying 2 weeks after the September 11 hijackings when the airport was closed to all traffic except buses, shuttles, and cabs (and, well, planes); I liked it. Of course, I'm a proponent of taking the bus to the airport.

Blah, blah, blah. I'll write later when I have words in my head.

...nor any drop to drink

Woke up this mornin'
dah-DAH-deh-DUH-dum
walls makin' a sound
dah-DAH-deh-DUH-dum
throw on my glasses
dah-DAH-deh-DUH-dum
see water tricklin' down

eh, anyway... AC went out this morning and left the carpet all wet. Had to hang around the apartment until people showed up to fix it. Water, water everywhere.

The coyote's after you



Wow, exciting and varied days! Let's time-travel backwards, and then aimlessly...


Sunday: Well, if Sunday taught us anything, it's that you can still buy candy cigarettes. The LLC made a run into the desert after I had breakfast with my friend Dave (his 27th birthday). Along the way, we trespassed onto an out-of-season ski slope, made ourselves at home in a village pizza pub, hit a sugarshack / ice cream parlor, accidentally harassed a patriotic minivan driver, gleaned valuable information from a clue-free security guard, and chewed on hayseeds. In the desert, we went on a dangerous and entertaining high-speed ride on roadrunner- and rock-infested bumpy desert "roads," riding over a drop-off at one point and, at some other point, losing a wheel cover:



So sad, an additional $60 or so when I get the 5000 mile service. Which I'm bound to do by the time I hit 10000 miles.

We left LA around noon and got back by about 8:30 or 9. It was a great day. And oh, we also got stuck in soft desert sand, which was bonus fun! We're a good team.

Saturday: Well, we canceled surfing just to give us time to relax from Michelle's head injury thing, which was needed. I had a series of days of way too little sleep (almost none Thursday night, 5 hours Wednesday, and so forth), so sleeping in Saturday morning was a treat. Nicole brought birthday cake by, and later I had a quick lunch with Jane after which we picked up her dog at the groomer. Michelle and I had all sorts of tentative rehearsal plans, maybe to combine with camping... but in the end she got free tickets to the Dave Matthews Band in Carson, so we went to that instead. It was fun, and a good concert, especially considering that I don't follow them at all. The crowd was comprised mostly of Frat guys and their sorority counterparts, which was an entirely different vibe than what I'm used to at concerts.

Friday: Nearly didn't make it. Did not sleep on Thursday night. Work was difficult. Went home to take a quick nap, then went with Jane to Nicole's birthday party at Cafe Metropol. After dinner, a small chunk of us went to Carbon in Culver City. I was very happy for the nap as it helped me enjoy the evening tremendously, and we all chatted and I flirted with one of Nicole's friends and we all had a good time at the bar. Then I went home and slept like a monkey.

Thursday: Thursday will get its own post soon. Instead, I will post here beautiful pictures of both the ocean and the desert. Enjoy!

Oh, I forgot Monday: Woke up yesterday and hit the water with Michelle. A mostly triumphant return to the waves. After being in the water for about 20 minutes, I realized that we were being fairly tentative. To fight this, I became determined to catch good rides no matter the conditions. I faced a couple of fears (yes, I even took a slight knock to the head), but once I got through that everything was good. After work, Brian and I played tennis and then watched To Kill a Mockingbird. While watching the movie, I realized that I'd read the book twice but never seen the film. It was a good DVD club purchase, I must say. All the exercise caught up with me, and I fell asleep on the sofa during a rare summer rainstorm. I woke up all crunched up on the sofa this morning, but it was the best sleep I'd had in a while.

OK, Thursday and more later...

-M

Man Out of Time

Thought I'd have time for a big update today, but no such luck! We'll pick this up over the weekend.

Debilitating Brain Injury Update

Survey Says... Concussion!

Michelle called to say she ended up with a good ol' concussion from this morning's events. She says the enormous bump on her head is now merely a not-as-enormous bump.

All of this offers us an opportunity to reflect upon Hasim Rachman's little bump on his head after Evander Holyfield rammed it with his own repeatedly. I'm sure everyone will enjoy this little trip down memory lane. If you find yourself disturbed:

1. me, too; and
2. scroll down and look at cute Campbell photos.

-M



p.s. Michelle looked exactly like this.

Floating peacefully, waving at the dolphin...

Woke up extra-early this morning to run Garrard and Co. to the airport for a trip to Dothan. Made me miss the place (as do all of these great photos of Campbell that Laura sends me, even though Campbell is in New Orleans). After the LAX trip, Michelle and I met at Ocean Park Beach and got in some pre-work surfing. It started off as "Lake Santa Monica," water so calm you could hardly see a ripple. Heading out was like paddling a canoe in a pond. A dolphin winked at us.

By 8 AM, though, it almost turned into a disaster as Michelle got clocked in the forehead by her board's fin. This thing appeared on her head and knotted up as I watched. After we decided she looked like a mutant, she went into work and was OK for a while (she held a freezer-cold tequila bottle against her head all morning, which sounds just about right for an entertainment office in LA), but as the day wore on she started to get a bit dizzy. Dizziness increased, and she went to the local ER. I'm waiting to hear back from her now. And though it would account for the dizziness, I'm assuming that she didn't drink any of the tequila.


In the next few days -- even as soon as today, I suppose -- we should get a verdict in the Inglewood Police trial. This is the deal where the Inglewood police officer slammed a kid against his patrol car and, I don't know, probably peed on him or something. Hopefully, there won't be any violence after the verdict from either side. I say this because "Not Guilty" could result in either:

- street protests that turn violent, or
- police officers who realize they can get away with all sorts of behavior.

Who do they think they are, sports stars?

The following photo has nothing to do with any of this, but I love it. Thanks to Laura for sending it on over!

Don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys...

Just wanted to post these photos Laura sent me yesterday of little cowboy Campbell.

Next, he's working on hog-tying the dogs.

Just adorable. And when you see your kids or your sisters playing dress-up with dolls, don't think it ends there!

Easy Like Monday Morning

OK, I need to start sleeping again. Saturday night I had the most unusual feeling, as if I'd never been so sleepy while actually remaining awake. How did things get to that point? It all began on a day much like today; I remember it as if it were only a week or so ago...

After work on Wednesday (after the last posting), Michelle and I met and went to grab an enormous cookie for Jeff Cleveland's birthday. Jeff has the band Cowspace and runs the shows at Brennan's on Wednesdays. Michelle and I agreed to meet at Brennan's at 11, so I went to the gym around 8:30 and then went to pick up Amy at 10:30 to take her to the airport. Amy gave me the traditional "I'll be five minutes" at 10:30 and then came out of her apartment at 10:50, giving me 10 minutes to take her to LAX from Westwood and then make it to Marina Del Rey. You can officially set your watch by it: five minutes equals twenty minutes, and make yourself comfortable because you won't be getting any updates during that time.

It all worked out fine as Michelle and I arrived just a few minutes apart. As soon as midnight struck, it was Jeff's birthday, and we put the candles on the cookie and sang the song and so forth. I hopped up onstage during "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues" and harmonized on a couple of verses. Got home at 2, asleep by 3.

Thursday: woke up sleepy. Went to my office which has no air conditioning, so I became sleepier and more pointless as the day wore on. It's been unusually hot and humid here in LA. Anyway, after work met my friend Carol for tea and to chat, then at 8:30 went to the Santa Monica Pier concert series. Met Karen there, we decided we'd get a beer afterwards, and anyway got home by about 11, asleep by 1. Not going to sleep until 1 was a bad idea, because...

Friday: woke up at 5:45 and met Brian and Michelle at the beach for surfing. We met a little extra early so we could wax the boards, and surfing first thing in the morning helped the day tremendously. The office was still stuffy and stale, but I didn't care, I'd already been up 3 and a half hours and had a great morning. Friday after work I went home and made comments during Kobe's press conference on TV (I kept waiting for him to say he had an extra-marital affair because he wanted "to be more like Mike"), went and bought a rashguard (which makes me temporarily look like a superhero), and Jane and I went to Harvelle's to watch the blues band Cafe R&B, possibly the worst name for anything since I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. I was out until 2, asleep by 3:45, which was a bad idea because...

Saturday: woke up at 5:45 to go surfing. We piled into the clean-again Matrix, tossed the boards on the roof, and drove to Port Hueneme, the usually clean and pristine beach with perfect waves and slightly-colder-but-still-bearable water. We get there after satisfying a group desire inspired by Michelle for us all to experience the McGriddle together, and the water looked like a river had just emptied into it. It was full of sediment and branches and seaweed, but we had driven a good distance and wanted to surf, so we paddled out. I looked at Brian at one point and his face was covered in little black dots of dirt. I laughed until I realized mine was, too. After 20 minutes, we figured we'd drive down the coast until we found a good and clean spot, but before we did that we had a wonderful white-trash moment as we all showered in the sprinklers. Yep, just put the rainbird in the front yard and you have yourself a party.

A little aside: As we're both from the south (Brian's from Texas, I'm from Alabama), Brian and I find it hysterical every time we go home that grown human beings seem to worship NASCAR drivers as if they are religious figures (the worship of religious figures being funny enough as it is). A few weeks ago, I saw a cereal at the store called 43s, a special-edition Cheerios cereal celebrating the career of Richard Petty. I thought this was so funny that I bought a box each for me and Brian, and wooo, would we have a laugh over this one! So all this time the boxes have been sitting around, and I figured they were just full of regular-tasting Cheerios in the shape of 4s and 3s. I WAS SO WRONG. They are wonderful! The three of us inhaled 75% of the box as we drove; the whole time that we're making fun of the stuff, we're cramming our hands into the box and wolfing it down. I hoped to find an informative and hysterical website about them, but instead I found this Cheerios History Timeline, which comically notes important cultural events alongside advances in the Cheerios brand. My favorite is how they note the disputed Presidential election from 2000, then they mention that reality TV gains in popularity, and then, most importantly, Cheerios introduces Berry Burst!

Back to our story: Turns out the best beach of the day is Santa Monica, which is where we always go and is about 50 feet from Michelle's apartment. It took us close to 4 hours to get there due to our trip up north. After surfing, Michelle came over to the apartment and we played music and ate unusually unhealthy food, even for us. As if our Burger King lunch wasn't enough, we also baked chocolate chip cookies. Then we went to her neighborhood and hung out in a park until 7 or so. Note that there were no naps mentioned.

I went home at 7 and took a quick shower as Skye and I were heading to Silverlake for a party. We got there and descended on the free (and actually healthy) food which was thankfully plentiful. By about 10:30, I started to realize that everything was catching up with me and that I needed some sleep. Add a few smokers in a non-circulating-air environment to the lack of sleep, and it's "Hello Asthma, My Old Friend," so I went from back patio to front porch to chill for a while and a few folks congregated out there. By 1, I was astonished that I was awake at all, and I was seeing things.

Oh, I should mention that I drove.

So anyway, Skye and I finally leave by about 1:30, and we hit heavy traffic on the way home and don't get to her boat until after 2. To keep me awake, she had me singing "99 bottles of beer on the wall" and other such hits.

Finally I made it home, asleep by 3. Slept until 11:30 on Sunday, then did nothing but play guitar all day long. Last night I couldn't get to sleep until 2:30, and of course this morning Michelle and I met at 6:40 and surfed. I went home, made a huge breakfast, and drove on in to work. Today is "no caffeine day," and I will sleep like a monkey tonight.

Anesthesia

Yesterday, I learned a valuable lesson: if you want to be a productive person at work, don't start the day off by having Novocain injected into your head. Before I knew it, it was 4 pm (I hardly remember entering anything on this site yesterday), and I suddenly became alert. I scanned through my "sent mail" folder the way one scans through their cell phone's "outgoing calls" list after a night of heavy drinking.

E-mails:
These don't look all too embarassing, actually. Sent Michelle this photo from our board-stripping session, and to Michelle and Brian I sent this rare photo of the Duck, Dale Jr, and the Couch all relatively free of wax. Laura wrote me a funny e-mail about dental care, and I think I may have replied twice. Then I e-mailed the girl I met last weekend, but it looks pretty harmless and like it was all part of a larger conversation, so no worries there. Then some highly ineffective work-related e-mail. That's it.

Postings at Friends' Sites:
This can be problematic. Luckily, I think I forgot to hit "post" a couple of times. I had a real funny one for Nicole's site, but I knew there was no way to word it so that it didn't sound a little mean. I should just e-mail that one to Nicole herself. She'll get a kick out of it -- it was just a silly joke based on something she had written, something about having dreams about babies.

Actual Work:
Man, I sucked yesterday. I could hardly walk from office to office. I fell asleep. Thank goodness I didn't ride my bike to work, or I'd be dead now.

Other Stuff:
I mentioned the rearrangement of the living room. I've discovered it can be tough to take photos of an entire room when your digital camera won't pull back to something like an SLR's 17mm lens, but here are two shots (1, 2) of the new room. Lovely, isn't it? And I can now attest that it's great for watching movies as Jane and I watched Punch Drunk Love last night. I've yet to dislike a P. T. Anderson movie.
Also, last night I made my first foray into what may turn into some sort of lifelong problem, buying several bottles of wine and shooting for "higher quality" over "OK quality but higher quantity." I am test-driving 2 French & 2 Italian Reds, and I bought a couple good bottles of white which I discovered at Amy's party last week. While it's still tough to beat a good Red Hook ESB right now, I'm trying to broaden the horizon. My friend Christopher is mostly responsible for this as he has some crazy wine humidor-like thing at his house, so I've been tasting the good stuff.
Matt is in transit to DC today, and next week I'll be running Garrard to the airport as he visits home. Michelle and I are talking up a camp/surf trip for later this month, and we are about to start rehearsals for the recording of her demo CD. There's more happening, but lunch is quickly coming to an end, so I'll write more soon.

-M

Plus, I Like Coffee and Bananas

Turns out I'm as much Costa Rica as Thailand...

Costa Rica!

You're about as peaceful as anyone on the planet, a real dyed-in-the-wool pacifist. And why not? No one really poses much of a threat to you and everything seems to work out, no matter how much violence and insanity rages all around you. So you relax and appreciate nature and culture while the rest of the world carries on their petty disagreements. If only everyone could follow your example...
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

Mumph awwr garaggHHHHHHH

Went to the dentist this morning to get two fillings replaced. Apparently, the fillings they gave out when I was a kid were only "gag fillings," designed to chip and break and eventually fall out of your head. Instead of waiting for all of this to happen, my new dentist decided to drill out the old ones (which were broken, by the way) and put new ones in. In this process, I discovered a thing or two:

- at the dentist, I produce about 40 times more saliva than normal.
- I make the "p" sound with the right portion of my upper lip, which means that right now I do not make the "p" sound.
- if you closed your mouth around that suction thingie for long enough, you would probably clear your sinuses.

The numby stuff worked on most of the first tooth, although one section of it wasn't numb-like at all. I had been instructed to raise my hand if I felt anything, and after I wasted two alerts on "trepidation" and "sleepiness," he didn't take me seriously when I felt actual pain. The second tooth went much smoother.

Sleep? HAHAHAhahaha

As usual, life is great. Enjoyed some GREAT surfing on Saturday -- the water was warm and the waves were perfect in the morning, which is good because we went out at 6:30 am. By afternoon it had flattened out a good deal. Also, I rode Michelle's board most of the day (it's the 7'2" board), and I had a blast! When I switched back to mine (8'), it seemed so big. The sensation was that of going from riding a motorcycle to driving a bus. Anyway, the waves weren't walling out too much, so we were catching rides at will. We also gave all of our boards names and then stripped the wax off of them so we can clean them up and put new wax on. Isn't this how one learns karate also?

Took part in two parties this weekend:

Friday: Amy's "Girl, You'll Be a Lawyer Soon" party. Went to what turned out to be a fantastic restaurant on the Santa Monica Promenade called Bravo Cucina (it's across from Johnny Rocket's and next to George's Bistro for all you locals). We ate and ate and drank many bottles of wine and had a wonderful time. Amy was the queen of the night, which she totally deserved. We then went to a bar and anyway, I went to sleep at 3:45 and woke up at 6:05 for the aforementioned surfing. Woo!

Saturday: Skye's birthday party at Mamma's Pizza in Palms. We started at the old neighborhood pizza joint (sadly, James wasn't working, so we couldn't play the gender-guessing game) and afterwards went to Boardwalk 11, a nice bar with big tables and booths that happened to be doing a fancy karaoke night. Skye has some wonderful pictures from the party here. I whipped out what may have been the most terrible version of my Tina Turner impression (lesson: drink MORE before trying), but nobody tried to take my life, so it was OK after all. At the end of the night, I saw one of those few people out there in the world who is just automatically appealing to me, and I made an innocent enough comment about her to Priya (something like, "Isn't she gorgeous?"); a moment later, I was more than a little surprised to see Priya fetching her from the other side of the bar and bringing her over to meet me. We spoke easily and she was funny and kind (two big pluses), and I think we'll be grabbing coffee sometime soon. So way to go, Priya! Humorously, I was up again until 3, which effectively canceled Sunday surfing for me. Skye and I spoke until 2, which was the perfect way to end the evening, hanging out with Skye. I made it to sleep an hour later, and when I woke I managed to remember my new friend's e-mail address. I dropped her a line and heard back from her today.

By the end of the weekend, I wanted to do nothing more than rearrange the furniture in my apartment and relax, and so it was. You should see the place now; I bet you wouldn't even recognize it.

This week starts like they usually do, full but full of stuff I love to do. Tonight: jam with Michelle and strip her surfboard. Tuesday night: writing group meets, I think at an IHOP. This is good as I need to get back to concentrating on the screenplays. Wednesday: weekly visit with Cowspace.

I'll try to update by then, though.

-M

Well, Thailand and I do have the same GDP

Here is my result from the Country Quiz. Nicole posted a link to this quiz on her site and I gave it a shot. If I were a country, I would be...

Thailand!

Calmer and more staunchly independent than almost all those around you, you have a long history of rising above adversity.  Recent adversity has led to questions about your sexual promiscuity and the threat of disease, but you still manage to attract a number of tourists and admirers.  And despite any setbacks, you can really cook a good meal whenever it's called for.  Good enough to make people cry.
Take the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid

I am so punk rock

So rather than go to the guy's house to have him cut my hair, I decided to be bold with the clippers and scissors and finished giving myself a kick-ass haircut last night. Of course, I'm hopeful that in a few days all the weird parts will have grown in...

You gotta know when to hold 'em

Well, today started with me riding my bike to work and realizing that this couldn't happen much longer without me fixing the bike up some. The back wheel is so warped from the general abuse (and probably from the last wreck I had last year) that now it can't freely spin around once -- it rubs against the brake pads and stops. Needless to say, this makes the Motor Avenue incline quite difficult. My solution this morning wasn't to drive; no, it was to disengage the rear brakes so that they wouldn't interfere with the spinning of the warped wheel! As if the ride isn't dangerous enough. Luckily (I guess), the brake cable would get tangled in the rear wheel if the brake was disengaged, so I had to put it back together and ride with both brakes intact. In the process, I got a metal shaving in my finger without realizing it.

I get to work and realize, Hey, I'm getting twice the workout due to this bike problem. I should market this! And as I'm signing the sign-in sheet (late again!), the entire phone system goes dead. Since I generally fill the role of trying to figure out what the hell went wrong when it hits the fan, I went into the basement to check out the phone system's brains. Turns out a power backup unit was trying to start a small electrical fire.

The smell was awful. I rerouted everything attached to this power supply to another one and unplugged the machine. Then I realized that the thing had a battery inside and could still be cooking wires in there, so I took it outside and put it on the ground. Sure, we'd hate for someone to run off with it, but I'd hate even more for the building to burn down and everyone die.

Now there's something you need to know about me: many times I've held certain jobs only to realize that the real reason I had the job was to save somebody's life. This is not fun, fulfilling, or pleasant. The most extreme example was when I was holding a dead kid in my arms at a hotel, only a few minutes later he came back.

Part of me wants to let this incident count as my "I saved all your lives, this must be why I had this job" thing. It's not that I want to work somewhere else or anything -- unless they pay a normal rate -- it's just, you know, I wouldn't have to worry about the whole "somebody's about to die" thing in the future as it would already be behind me.

I so saved their lives.

In return for saving everyone's life, I got very little else done today. I think I wrote a letter or two, updated a web page... not much. And when I left at the end of the day, I realized I had the metal shaving in my finger. Liz helped me dig it out of my finger before I hopped on the bike and rode home.

When I got home, I wanted to veg out and watch some Simpsons or something before Skye and I went to dinner. Instead, there was a car chase on TV... so I decided to try to give myself a haircut. Not necessarily a good idea! It's not bad, really, but I pretty much have to go get it cut anyway at the crazy guy's house. The job I did just won't do, and he'll have to cut it short due to a couple slips of the clippers today. Oops.

Every hand's a winner: Wetsuit-free weekend surfing is back!
Every hand's a loser: Not being able to see the back of your own head.

Do Ghosts Get Breakfast?

I've decided that dying in your sleep is A-OK. I'd rather die in my sleep 1 million times than die in real life once.

I went to see Cowspace again tonight, a nice chance for me to head out on my own and listen to music. It's becoming my Wednesday thing. Also today, I wrote an e-mail to a stranger, played the part of a "consultant" and was therefore provided a nice free lunch in the Palisades, came up with a revolutionary idea that may or may not slightly change the world, and had a beer or two. Mmmmmmmmmm.... beer. Spent the balance of the night convincing Garrard and Rebecca that we need to go eat breakfast at S&W Country Diner on Sunday. Graaaaaaaaaavvvvvyyyyyyy.....

Intimations of Mortality

Wow, I had some amazing and harrowing dreams last night. Every once in a while, I have a dream in which I die, but last night's was brutal beyond the usual. It was a situation where I knew I was going to die for a period of time which was just too long to be "quick" but not long enough to do anything about it or to communicate with anyone. (Details are sketchy... I woke up at 4 am from this one.)

I'm not sure if this sort of thing is part of the normal process of getting older or if this is a wake-up call of sorts about how I am spending much of my time. I've been writing less lately, playing music some but not enough, and I do a lot of treading water in relationships. Maybe it's time to clean some stuff out, to get a move on, to take some chances.

Thing is, my baseline way of living is to take chances, so maybe I need to take huge, ridiculous-seeming risks. Or maybe that's precisely the wrong interpretation...

Or maybe it's just a dream. Those kind of dreams are freaky, though.

-----------------

In other news, the 4th weekend was fun. Brian Willems and I went surfing Friday morning and then went to the party in Playa Del Rey until 9 or 10 o'clock. For some reason, when we left the party I deemed it necessary to take a bag of Barbecue Lays Chips with us for the ride home. Classy. Anyway, we were so messed up from all the beer and hamburgers when we got home that we pulled out the sofa bed and Brian crashed there. This worked out well as it made it easier to get up and jump in the truck and head down to Manhattan Beach to surf in the morning, and we stayed on the beach all day. I then went to a movie Saturday night and fell asleep before the previews were done. I woke up intermittently throughout the movie (The Italian Job), and it really seemed to suck.

This week and weekend are packed as usual. Thursday night the LLC meets to discuss getting back on track with the scripts; I'm organizing a party Friday night for my friend Amy who passed the bar; Saturday night is Skye's birthday at Mamma's Pizza. Sunday is, I suppose, a day of rest.

Music and Friends

Played a show last night at good ol' Brennan's, and it went very well. 5 wonderful friends showed up to listen even though I did zero promotion, and the rest of the crowd was unusually present for Brennan's. Then I ate a burger and had 3 pints of Bass. Yes! Next up is a 4th of July party in Playa Del Rey -- play for an hour or two, then hit the water.

Update: I spoke with the friend I was so upset with last week, and we made up. She's cool.

Equatorial-ish

The "baby" version of Matt Johnson's Diplomacy site is up and running. All of his old posts are archived (and with great pain to make it look like a regular Blogger archive even though it isn't), and most of the photos are up. Soon we'll have the guest page and counter and all that visible. It will be undergoing many changes soon, but go on and check it out now!