Two things-

1)I have seen the future of TV and it's name is "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia." It's kind of Kevin Smith meets Larry David, a slacker "Curb." So far, they've made jokes about old people, terrorists, child molestors, and Nazis. And in tonight's episode, the cast members all pretended to be crippled as a way to party with strippers.

The show gets bonus points to for referencing WaWa and filming a scene at the "Mall," otherwise known as the King of Prussia Shopping Mall

2)So the Republicans are up to their usual tricks and busting out all the "cultural" issues out of desperation. Out comes gay marriage, flag burning, and NY Times bashing. As they have since, God, like forever. And as usual, it always kind of works as the Democrats just kind of cower in a corner, don't put up much a fight and wind up getting their butts kicked. You would figure after awhile that it would stop working with the American Public, but, well nevermind. You would also figure out that after having this happen to them for at least twenty years, the Democrats would figure out a way of not looking bad in all of this. It's pretty much like the Republicans are saying "hey, we're going to pass the ball on this play just like we did the past five plays" and the Democrats still defend against the run. Yeah, for some reason, the Democrats seem to think that if they got up there and spoke logically and about laws and facts and Bill of Rights and all that, it would work, but that never works.

So what to do? Put up a fight, try and debate. Or they could do a little jujuitsu and say "okay, let's amend the Constitution" and freak out all the Republicans who are really doing it for political purposes. But no, that might not work. So in my head, my little fantasy goes like this: the debate starts up on flag burning and one by one, all the Democrats just march out of the Senate and pretty much tell everyone that they're not going to hang out there and play all the Republicans stupid games no more. Then they give some huge press conference where they list all the things they'd rather talk about (health care, the war, pretty much everything).

Yeah, kind of weenie and lame, but what else is there to do?

Driving home tonight from seeing Fast & Furious 3: Tokyo Drift (that's a shout out to my homies), I noticed that I had trouble seeing what was going on around me due to those stupid halogen lights that cars don't have. For instance, I'd look behind me to see if there is a car coming in the lane next to me (I'm such a careful driver) but can't really tell because there's this huge spotlight going right into my eyes. Not only am I blinded, but I can't tell how far they are because the lights are so bright it looks like thery're right in back of me.

And it occured to me, those halogen lights pretty much sum our country up. First off, the main reason people get them isn't necessarily because they're good, but because it's a new fangled car gadget. It's headlights, but up to 11. People love their new fangled car gadgets, even if they aren't necessary. That way Joe Bob can say, "yep, and it came with halogen lamps."

But mainly it's because they're bad for almost every other car out there. But people use them because it allgedly makes it safer for the rider. So, in essence, it's basically a bunch of people who drive them saying this maybe bad for you, but it's good for me so screw you. Et viola, our economic, environmental, and foreign policy.

And continuing on the theme of what a crazy city...

Left my apartment Saturday night to go meet a friend for dinner. As I got onto Valencia Street, Dykes on Bikes rode by. The minute they started honking and whooping and hollering, every lesbian in the area-- which was a lot considering it was Pink Saturday-- dropped what they were doing to check them out. I'm serious, it was a little scary, actually. Wee ha!! Fat, naked, mohawked clad lesbian ta-tas! (And let me just say that was even less attractive than I made it sound. Which I think is kind of the point, but still).

Then went to dinner at a middle eastern place and sat next to a Moslem lady wearing the Moslem head gear.

God love living in a world-class city.

What an amazing day today is, one of those days that makes you love living in a city like San Francisco. In the foreground, I can see a pink triangle on top of Twin Peaks in honor of this being Pride weekend. In the distance, I can heear honking horns and the cries of "Ole!" as Mexico and Argentina play in a nail biter of a World Cup game. The gays are celebrating, the Mexicans are celebrating and the sounds of it are everywhere.

In other words, it's a Republican nightmare, come true.

For various reasons, I came home from work today with an extra salami sandwhich. My boss, who ordered it for me, told me I should have it dinner. I wasn't that hungry. So when I parked my car in the garage across the street from me, I decided to give it to a homeless person. Walking out of the garage, I see some whacked out lady sitting across the alleway from me with an even more whacked out dude lying next to her. I give her the sandwhich.

Yay me.

But then, as I give her the sandwhich, she starts trying to talk to me. To tell me she's not like this and in fact, better than this. Now here's the thing, as much as I want to give her the sandwhich, I also don't want to talk to her. I, in fact, just want to give her the food and walk on my merry way. I do not want to engage the homeless person in conversation. She is engaging me in conversation. The thing is too that I'm not exactly scared of the homeless person or freaked out (well, maybe a little) it's just that I want to get home and not spend my precious time hanging out in a grungy alley way talking to two drugged out bums. And it is also obvious that the person I gave the sandwhich too is coming down off of something. I might be willing, actually, to talk to someone if they were up for interesting and fun conversation, but she is full blown coming down off probably crack or heroin. Her partner is half-asleep and lying down. I do not think this is going to be the kind of conversation that one reads in a New Yorker short story. I want to go home.

I mean, what am I going to say? Talk to her about the Giants? See what she thought of last week's "Deadwood?" To be polite in this situation, one is supposed to ask how one is doing. I know how she's doing, she's on drugs and sleeping on the streets. I do not want to know more. What am I supposed to say if she tells me how she's doing "oh, that's great." Or "oh, that sucks, I'm sorry," which I guess would be more okay to say except for the fact she's the one who put herself into that position in a way and while I'm sorry she's in that situation, my sympathy isn't all that.

But then she proceeds to tell me exactly how she's doing. She grew up in Baton Rouge. She's 39 and used to be a nurse. And she's got five children. Ages 22-13.

Now I really want to get out of there. I do not want to know anymore. I do not like hearing heartbreaking stories about some poor family of children whose mother is excited to be handed a half-day old salami sandwhich from a kind-hearted but a little freaked out high-tech worker in an alley off 16th & Mission.

Oh, and one more thing. How does one exactly get out of a conversation with a drugged out homeless person? "Oh, I gotta go meet a friend? You know, one whose not nodding off next to you?" Or "Geez, I gotta meet my friend and get some nice expensive dinner that you'll never afford because even if you got the money, you'd spend it on smack?"

But I figure a way out and slowly, not without a few curtain call comebacks, make my way out of the alleyway.

Oh, one more thing.,, as I was leaving she asked me for money.

Brought in all my loose spare change that's been collecting for years today. Total amount back to me? $120.

It's like winning in blackjack. All over again.

And here's what I said earlier about the big loss today:

"I hate to say it, but as much as it sucked to see the U.S. lose, you have to be happy at least it was to Ghana. Basically any country that throws national holidays for winning a World Cup match probably deserves it more than we, the country that actually has something called NASCAR Nation, does. And it’s not like they have much of anything else going for them and I don’t mean that in a snotty kind of way, I just mean that it’s not like Bono is running around trying to save our asses."


And yeah, the bummer of it is that a lot of the mainstream, old school sports guys, the one's who only care about the World Cup when America is in it will go back to ignoring it and making snide comments about soccer when they're completely missing the absolute fun that the rest of the Cup has been.

I'm not going to say anything for fear I might jinx tomorrow's big soccer match (which is probably over by the time you've read this) so let's just say this....

Go Ghana.

Note- this is because if I said the opposite, will then the opposite would happen. Unless, of course, I've just overthrought this and double-jinxed myself in such a way what I just asked for will come true, in which case, ooops

So you know the problem with the President hitting 29% approval is that there's no way to get back from that. Right now he's still at around 37% and even though months ago, that would have made me happy, that's now nothing but disappointing. Of course, the reality is he should be around -5% but I don't think that's stastically impossible.

It's especially problematic in that the new storyline is the whole "Bush is having a good week" thing, as if all the things that are going on in the world are all only about Bush's popularity. I'm sure the people in New Orleans and Baghdad are thrilled the President is having a good week. And you still here it despite the fact he's gone from like 36% to 37%.

I think basically that this whole Bush era is like one big, long nightmare, the kind of nightmare where you see things happen and feel completely powerless to stop it. That's where we are, the country is broken and there's nothing anyone can do about it.

I have seen the Rolling Stones do "You Can't Always Get What You Want" live in concert. I have also seen GnR do "Sweet Child o Mine." You can also add to that list U2 doing "Streets" and "One" and you name the classic U2 song. I can also claim to have Radiohead doing "Fake Plastic Trees" and the Dead doing "Truckin'" and motherf----- Rush do "Tom Sawyer."

But on Saturday, I saw the one thing to top them all... Mickey Thomas's Starship do "We Built This Rock."

And you know what? They were strangely rocking at the North Beach Festival. Just sloppy enough to be good, although I have no idea whether they were sloppy on purpose or sloppy because how often does Mickey Thomas and Starship play anymore?

Also, the sad thing was I knew all eight songs that he song, all from those somewhat horrific early 80's Starship albums. Hell, at one point, I even owned one of them. Hell, I even have one of them downloaded onto my computer.

And yes, I have soccer fever. This weekend I've watched about ten hours of it, six hours of it today (all done while mainly in my bed recovering from a hangover). Yesterday, I went to North Beach yesterday morning to watch the Italy/US game and met up with friends at Gino & Carlo's and settled in to watch the game. It was one of the most epic, enjoyable, dramatic games I've been a part of watching (up there, actually with the England/Argentina game in '98), I mean, it had it all- a comeback, a clear-cut villian (the Italians), several dramatic plot twists, and then the killer- Beasley's disallowed goal. When that ball went in, everyone was jumping around and high-fiving and right in the middle of it, I noticed the Beasley was looking totally distraught and I remember turning to my friend and asking him if he scored did he look so upset? And then the 2 that was on the screen turned back to 1, and well, that's how it stayed. I've seen a lot of sports (a lot) but I've never had that sense of a bunch of people putting themselves on the line as much as the Americans did. That's the thing about soccer, it's all pretty much laid out there for everyone to see. No time-outs to break things up, no endless stops in the play-- it's just running and running and chasing and tightly wound faces.

The other thing about the match is that when you think about it, we, as Americans, or at least globally conscious Americans, don't really get that much of an opportunity to actually root for our country in anything. In every other sport, we're pretty much the 100 pound gorilla. It's either our sport (baseball or basketball) or we have million dollar programs backing the players up. Oh, and the best drugs money can buy. And then, of course, on a global level, it's hard to root for anything we do because, well, we kind of suck on a global level right now. But not in soccer. We are plucky underdogs. We are not annoying. We are something it's easy to get behind and root for. Sure, at some point it'll be inevitable that we'll turn into 100 pound soccer gorillas (too much money in the country and too many immigrants coming into the country), and the rest of the world kind of knows it, but right now, it's fun to root for us. It's maybe the only thing we could do that makes you say "America, fuck yeah" and not feel like a moron.

And the fact that most of the country doesn't care...well, we do suck as a country right now, don't we?

PS- so yeah, there was a "great" NBA final game tonight. The dudes across the way, the one's who always keep me up because of their partying, wheeled a TV outside and watched it in the courtyard. And you know what? Bleh. Whatever. Do that game over, except have one team be down a player for half the game. And one of the teams be a bunch of whiny divas who flop everytime somebody breathes to close to them. And do it without time outs or TV timeouts and so they final five minutes don't take half an hour to play.

Quick hits from the weekend

-Because I'm about to turn 38, it totally makes sense that I spent a large part of this night downloading Iron Maiden tunes. And speaking of which what does it say that while in the store shopping, a song came on the radio and I knew instantly that it was Christina Aguilera?

-Being on a hot streak while playing black jack turns out to be a bit more stressful than I thought it would be. Every time I won, while happy, I kept on thinking that this hot streak has to end at some point. The more I won, the more I amazed I was and the more sure I was that the bottom was about to fall out.

-Yes, I do have World Cup fever. I love the World Cup even if for the first time in like twelve years, I am actually working at the time of the World Cup (although it's looking like I'll have take a day off to cover it for Deadspin). In fact, the scary thing about all this is I was actually doing this blog in '02 the last time there was a World Cup and for whatever reason, that BLOWS MY MIND.

Anyways, today's defeat by the Americans blow for all sorts of reasons. It's not like I expected them to win, nobody did, but it would have been nice to put a nice showing together. Among other things, it makes it harder to get into the team if they suck. Plus, wasn't this supposed to be the best American team ever? Aren't we supposed to be plucky and hard working? We most definately were not.

-I have become fascinated with the new Real World/Road Rules Challenge. In this version, "alumni" of the shows, meaning the biggest camera ho's in the RW/RR Challenge world compete against "fresh meat." "Fresh meat" are basically people who so desperately wanted to be on one of these things that they tried out to appear on it. In other words, you know how people watch say baseball games and dream of being in a game and hitting a hugely important home run or doing any other sort of thing baseball players do? Well, these people have the same dream. Except their dream is to be on an MTV reality show. And not just any reality show. After all, one could make a case that there is something understable to being on a dating show or "Made" or, hell, even the "Real World" (well, mainly the early seasons when there was at least a half-hearted attempt to show people having normal existences). But these people want to appear on the Challenge. These are people who are really excited about the idea of seeing Tonya or Theo. Or "hooking up" on camera. Or getting in all of those little nasty fights that often appear on the show. These people want to get tangled up with Coral or exchange crazy-ness with Tonya. And may we even add that for whatever reason, these are people deemed not good enough to appear on "the Real World" so they get shunted off to the challenge show.

It goes without saying these people need to be sent to Iraq.

So how is your Tuesday night going? Having a lot of fun? Doing a lot of interesting things?

You know what I'm doing? I accidently deleted over half of my mp3s over the weekend. That's a little over 500 songs. So I'm basically spending all of my time re-uploading everything.

And it's not as easy as you think. See a bunch of my mp3s I got through the magic of iTunes. Some of them are based off of cds that I have. And a lot of them, my creme de la creme of mp3s I got through, well, let's just say non iTunes methods. And these are some of my favorite songs too. Stuff like Rush's "Working Man" or "Ain't Talking Bout Love" the Quad City DJ's "Come on Ride the Train" (!). All gone.

And while some of it's easy to get back, a lot of what I had were pretty obscure. You know the songs that just randomly pop up every once in awhile, bootleg type stuff. Like, say, Zeppelin from a '69 music festival.

All gone.

d'oh.

Yes, I stole this idea, but....

National Review's attempts at coming up with 50 Conservatives has pretty much changed how I look at music. Things that I didn't know were conservative, such as the Sex Pistols "Bodies" suddenly appear in a whole new light. It's just a new matter of how I look at things.

So I began to think, maybe even some of my favorite songs are actually conservative in nature. Maybe my favorite songs aren't soulful songs bespeaking the progessive heart, but actually reactionary tunes calling for family values! So I opened up my iPod and hit the first 10 songs I heard and, OH MY GOD, they are conservative! It's all in how you look at it.

Here they are, with my new interpretation. I'm pretty sure my membership to the Young Republic Party should be fairly forthcoming.

The Police- Everything She Does is Magic
Notice this song definately does not say "Everything He Does is Magic." That's because love can only truly be between a man and a woman.

The Beatles- Let It Be
Everyone thinks that "Revolution" is the great anti-revolutionary tract, but this song really is. See, in it's simple plea of letting things be, what Paul McCartney is singing about is the desire for things to be left alone and not to be changed by activist judges.

Primus- Too Many Puppies
You want to know why there's too many puppies? Because who would want to abort puppies? There might be too many puppies, but too many puppies is so much more preferable than too many aborted puppy fetuses.

NWA Straight Out of Compton-
See liberals would make you believe that the only way out of Compton is thorugh big government and racial recriminations. But as this song shows, the only way out of Compton is to work hard, save, adhere to traditional values and lower capital gains taxes.

Ratt- Lay It Down
Listen to these lyrics: "I know you only want romance/I'll give you all that I can/If you'll give me just one chance/To prove myself and my love". You know what this song is really about? Abstinence. What do you think they mean when they say "romance?"

Tool- Hooker With a Penis
I can't figure this one out and why it would be conservative. Maybe because it's about Anne Coulter.

Montel Jordan This is How We Do It
Cut taxes, bash gays and Mexicans, invade foreign countries without international support....this is how WE do it.

Cake- Mr. Mastadon Farm
Evolutionists would say that Mastadon's lived in a time very long ago when man was barely evolved. But if that was true, how could there be a Mastadon farm? The only way there could have been a farm would have been if the world was created by God in six days.

99 Problems Jay-Z
You want to know why Jay has 99 problems but his bitch aint' one of them? Because by having a wife and a family, he is truly living up to God's blessing and showing correct family values.

Soundgarden Blow Up the Outisde World
I don't think there's ever a better to song to describe our proper response if somebody hates our freedoms.

I went river rafting on the South Fork of the American River over the weekend and had a little adventure. And it goes something like this....

We hit this rapid called Satan's Cesspool, one of the rougher rapids on the river, maybe the roughest of them. So much so, the guides all talked about it before-hand as if it was a major challenge and something we absolutely, positively, had to nail just right or bad things would happen.

Whatever. I wasn't really that scared or worried because I've done that particular rapid about five times before and haven't had any problems with it. The only time I've fallen out, "gone swimming" as they say, was at another rapid and I don't particularly remember it being that scary. Scary to my dad and the river guide, but not me.

Anyways, I'm on a boat with seven rowers and one guide. I'm on the back of the boat, on the right side. We hit the main part of the rapid and pretty much make it free and clear and as we pass the rock in which the photographer is stationed, I silently give a "phew" and relax a bit, knowing the worst part of it was over and it was just a matter of bouncing off a few waves from here on out. Later, everyone tells me they thought the same thing.

We were wrong. I'm not exactly sure what happened next or what caused it all-- nobody on the boat could figure it out and everyone has different recollections of what happened-- but I remember we came off a wave while a bit on our side-- nothing too terribly off-- when it felt like we just stopped and the right side of the boat began to rise up out of the water.

What we think happened was that we hit an eddy on the way down and it was like being stopped in mid motion. Picture a skier sailing down a hill only to hit a branch or a root or something that makes them come to a complete standstill and figure out the physics of it all. So our boat started to rise on up to the right side as the left side started to get lower and lower into the water. People behind us said that it looked like just, out of nowhere, we just popped out of the boat.

Now I'm on the back side of the boat and on the side that's rising up out of the water. And I see all of this happening in slo mo as it were. As we go up, the first thought in my head is "huh, this is kind of weird. We shouldn’t be flipping.” My second thought, which comes to me as the boat is now almost on it's side, is that it was like in "Titanic" where the boat starts sinking and everything starts flying towards the water because at this point I start seeing things fly from my side of the boat into the water. Including the guy sitting in front of me and a few people on my left. I mean, I literally did see the guy who was sitting in front of me just fly out of his seat and land in the water.

It is at this point where I realized that I'm about to go in myself.

Boom, I go, into the water, and go under.

Now I have a life vest on and I'm not in that deep, but once I try to begin my ascent back up, at this point completely calm, I realize I can't necessarily go back up. I try to push myself up a few times but get nowhere. The eddy is holding me down.

Huh.

My thoughts when I realized I wasn't going to be able to go back up? "Huh, shouldn’t I be able to swim back up?"

After what felt like a few seconds and was probably a lot less, I finally manage to come up and try to get my first big breath after being under the water. But as I start to take a breath in, a huge wave came and slams into me so that I wind up swallowing as much water as air. I try and gain my bearings only to realize that I'm pretty much still in the shit as it were and all I could see coming at me was wave after wave after wave. I can't really see anything other than the waves-- no boat, no shore, no nothing-- and I can only really hear the rush of the rapids. To make matters worse, I'm starting to realize that it's going to be hard to breathe in all of this because water is flying everywhere and the one thing I don't want to do is swallow a wave. Now I start to feel a bit panicky.

I flutter around a bit in the rapids, trying to get into position (on your back, feet first) but not being really successful at it as the current is pushing me everywhere. And I'm having catching my breath not just because the water is splashing everywhere, but because the water is also butt cold-- we were given wet suits before starting in fact. I am not a happy camper.

Then I see it, a kayak. One of the rescue kayaks in fact, used by the rafting company to fish people out of the water in case people need to be fished out. Holding onto one side of the kayak is one of the guys on my boat, the person on the center left. Either he calls to me or the kayak dude does but once I see it, I start swimming for it, knowing that this is pretty much my rescue.

I approach the kayak only to get a little confused as what to do next. The kayak isn't that big and one guy is already on one side so I start to go to the other side. The kayaker, however, sees this, and starts yelling at me to go to the back. I don't. It's a friggin' kayak, what is the front and what is the back? I swim to the wrong side and the kayaker pretty much grabs me and shoves me to the other side where I see a rope attached to the back and hold on. That makes two people hanging on.

Somebody else from the boat floats by, a tiny Chinese woman who looks kind of like the famous Scream figure from the Munch painting, all shock and freezing cold. The other guy who is holding on reaches out and grabs onto her. So there are now three people holding onto the kayak.

I am not sure the kayak is supposed to have three people holding onto it. There is no room for the three of us. I find myself drifting away from the back towards the side, something I am told not to do by the kayaker, but I can't help it. As this is going on, however, a huge wave hits the kayak, followed quickly by another, bigger wave. The wave lifts up the kayak and starts pushing it onto it's side and I hear the kayaker yell out "I'm going to flip!"

Now I was a little scared up til this point. Now I am really scared. After all, if the person who is coming to rescue you suddenly finds themself needing to be rescued, what does that do the people who needed rescuing in the first place? If the kayaker goes over, I'm thinking not necessarily that I'm fucked, but more like it's now up to Plan B and I have no friggin clue what Plan B would be.

But somehow, the kayak steadies. He doesn't get flipped. And as we all breath a sigh of relief, the kayaker finally feels steady enough to push out and he starts paddling us out of the rapids. At the end of them, he sees another one of our boats and heads over to them. As we get close, I let go of the kayak and swim up to the raft where a group of hands reach out to pull me in. I want to help them, to try and push myself up, to be strong, but I can't. I have nothing left. I surrender to what's going on and let them pull me up.

I am safe.

The raft quickly heads to shore and a bunch of concerned faces look over me asking me if I'm allright. One of the guys on the raft later tells me the look on my face was somewhere along the lines of "had just seen God." I also see the Chinese woman on the other side of the raft, still in shock, pale white and wide-open mouth. The people on the raft not taking care of me are holding onto her, hugging her, trying to get her to snap out of it. I finally sit up as we approach the shore and catch my breath. The second we hit sand, I fly off the boat, take off my helmet, and plop myself in the sun, trying to dry myself.

Now, I know "swimming" while rafting isn't that uncommon. Out of six boats that went down the rapids at the point, three of them lost people. Carnage, they call it. One boat lost everyone but one rower, the poor lady finding herself the only person on a raft still shooting through the rapids with the guide still in the water trying to get back to the boat. And some people, even on my boat, had a fairly easy time of it. They quickly found another raft and hopped on in. But not me. I went under, lost my breath, got rescued by a kayak, almost lost the kayak, and then was lifted into another raft.

Pretty hairball, as they say.

Now this is what you call a Hemingway moment, a moment to show the biggest thing of them all, Grace Under Pressure. I would like to say that in my Hemingway moment, I exuded nothing but Grace Under Pressure. But I did not. I didn't get into proper swimming position. I got grabbed by the kayaker because I went to the wrong side. And I was partially responsible for the almost losing of the kayak. All this in comparison to another guy on my raft, the one who grabbed the Chinese woman and helped steady the kayak. I showed no Grace Under Pressure.

But on the other hand, I am here, typing this now. And isn't grace under pressure, when it comes down to it, merely surviving? I mean, I lived, so whatever I did, I must have done something right because I made it through.

And not only that, the next morning I got up and rafted again. Scared shitless enough to seriously think about bailing and going home. But I did it. And after a few bits of white knuckling through white water, somewhere around the time we hit the hole we shouldn't have hit and almost got thrown again if it weren't for emergency measures we had to take and which made it so we got through the rapids, I got my mojo back. I want to do it again. Except hopefully this time, there will be no swimming.

Okay, so you discover that your Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather was Jesus. What do you do? Do you just keep it quiet and try to live a normal life, all the while knowing that you hold like the biggest secret in the history of the world? Try not telling that secret when your drunk. And how do you go back to the real world if you know that. Just imagine being at work and totally hating your job and getting bitched at by your boss. You gotta be thinking "Fuck that, I'm a descendant of Jesus. I'm outta here."

Or do you do the full Oprah, reality show, party circuit thing? That's gotta be fun, but imagine the pressure. Get caught drunk on camera or snogging some dude and it's "Mary Magdaline's Grand Daughter is a Tramp" headlines. Imagine the crazies coming out of nowhere asking to be healed or blessed or endorsement for political office. Wouldn't you want to call up all the people who screwed you over in some ways and lord it over them too? You know, like the boss who fired you at Starbucks? "Yeah, hello, Jenna? Well, guess what. I'm the daughter of Christ. Yep, that's right. And you know what? Your going to hell." Wouldn't that be fun?

Either way, you got major pressure on you to have children. And considering that people are trying to off the blood line, lots of children. You basically gotta start spawning as fast as you can. That's pressure right there. And what about all the ex-boyfriends? You'd think they'd be all stoked, you know, like "dude, I nailed Jesus' granddaughter" but, instead, they'd probably be thinking "oh dear, God, I am so going to hell for doing that with her and that night in the backseat of the limo? Totally fried." Or imagine if you were the ex-boyfriend and you cheated on her. Imagine the guilt about that. And don't even get me started if you had an "experimental phase" in college. That's so going to cause problems with the Vatican.

Yes, I just saw "The Da Vinci Code," why do you ask?

Is it wrong that when I was at Safeway this evening buying groceries, I got into what looked like a pretty short line and seeing that the person in front of me was a feeble, very old lady, got out of the line and went searching for any other line that wasn't too long and not holding feeble, old people?

Unfortunately, I couldn't find another lane so went back into the lane and, yes, it did take forever.

So last week, our congress held hearing on a gay marriage ban, voted to make English the official language of America, decided to build a wall on the border, while in another hearing, somebody who is responsible for illeagally monitoring our phone messages announced he couldn't talk about any of it and got thumbs up from Republicans who couldn't care less.

In other words, it had to be one of our finer moments as a democracy.

I was kept up til 4 this morning because my courtyard neighbors decided to throw a party in the courtyard, which they've done a few times. It occured to me last night as I was being blasted by stereo speakers that sounded as if they were parked right outside my window, that most people who throw parties make at least a half-hearted attempt to not be noisy. They have it inside, for instance so they can at least say that there was some buffer between stereo and neighbors and party-goers are not quite outside where noises tend to echo and echo around. Out in the courtyard, as there's no buffer, there's not even the pretense of trying to not be noisy. And then I started to think about everyone else in my apartment building and the one next door and the ones next door to the apartment complex that held the party (it had to be the complex itself because the people in the rest of the complex had to have agreed to it) and the two buildings that are to the left and right of the courtyard also were pretty much deluged with noise and music and crowd noise too and were probably lying in bed too and wondering just who the genius was who followed up a bunch of Motown tunes with Lou Reed tunes on the party playlist.

Now, I've been to my fair share of parties. And I've thrown a few myself. I consider myself as somebody pretty allowing of neighbor's to have their occasional fun. I am also one of those people who hates people who complain about city noise, like trains or bells or clubs, and feel that if you live in the city, you have to expect a certain level of noise. But was last night's party a bit, umm, too excessive?

Or am I turning into an ever crankier old man?

More quick takes from somebody who hasn't been feeling the blogging lately

-Between Margie getting in trouble with Nikki, poor Vito on "the Sopranos" and the last fifteen minutes or so of "the Office," it's been one long, week of cringe on TV. I actually couldn't watch part of "the Office," the bit when Michael's two dates ran into each other, and the last five minutes or so, woo-hee.

I need to start watching something less stressful. Like "24".

-So yes, so far while driving I've cursed out my first fellow driver (for tail gaiting on a completely empty four-lane highway at 12:30 at night), gotten cursed at (for sort of crossing while yellow, but it had just turned yellow and it wasn't fair for me to get it considering three cars followed me across), been honked at for a near miss (totally my fault-- I totally missed seeing someone while merging onto an off-ramp), and had my first heart pumping "what the hell?" moment when some car in front of me on the 101 couldn't decide which lane to go into and went to and fro two lanes without signaling. The thing I'm waiting for most hasn't happened yet (well, other than being stranded on the 101 while waiting for AAA) is to get yelled at by a biker. I know that's coming at some point because those suckers do appear out of nowhere. And I really don't want that to happen because as somebody who used to bike to work, I was the one who was getting cut off by drivrers. I don't want to be that driver.

-Jaywalkers really piss me off. It's not just that some of them kind of lollygag across the street as if there's nothing at all wrong or dangerous about walking across the street right into upcoming traffic, it's the one dude who instead of running across the street, decided to stand in the middle of traffic and play traffic cop so as not to be hit. Dude, if you don't want to not be hit, don't stand there and try and make eye contact-- RUN.

-I was at the cafeteria at work and it became apparent that one of those co-workers who I don't talk to that much (my bad, not them) and I were about to get in line together to ring up the cash register. But when it became apparent, they ambled over to the fridge and pretended to look inside for a drink. In other words, they totally dawdled so as to not get stuck in the line together and make small talk. How do I know they did that? Because that's MY move.

-I know I harsh on "Lost" a lot and I shouldn't considering how great it's been lately and how much fun it is to read through people's Web sites in which they dissect the clues, but here's one more thing that I wish the show did better- trippiness. Considering how much weird things happen on the show, it should be totally whacked out and surreal. But it's not. It needs to be more "Twin Peaks" and it's not. If there was anything "Twin Peaks" did better than anything, was make your jaw drop and bring the goose bumps because it was so well done in it's surrealness. It was trippy as all hell. That's what "Lost" needs to be like.

Or maybe it was because "Twin Peaks" aired while I was in college and more susceptible to trippiness?

-Yesterday was one of those beautiful, cloudless, warm days we rarely get, the kind of day that reminds you that you actually do live in California and this is the way it's supposed to be. The reason why California is what it is. I went with a friend to meet up with other friends to go to the Giants game, a game they won by scoring 4 runs in the ninth inning to beat the hated Dodgers. Afterwards, we spilled out to a new bar partially owned by Sammy Hagar himself to drink margarita's, and then headed off to Gordon Biersch where we managed to somehow score a table in the outdoor patio. Safely ensconced there, we hung out for four hours or so, until dark where we sat and watched the Kaboom from the comfort of our own seats. While the Bay Bridge obscured our view, we were still close enough that the fireworks almost looked directly above us. And from our cozy little seats, there's something more dramatic about the fireworks when it's obscured like that. From where we sat, we saw people who were milling about, stop what they were doing to watch. We watched as the N Judah continued on with it's run right underneath the explosions and cars above on the bridge drive past. And then, towards ten or so, almost twelve hours from when I set out, I made it home.

Everyone once in awhile, you get a day like that, one in beautiful weather and a large collection of friends and something special like a Giants game and fireworks show and you realize once again what an amazing place San Francisco is and just what a great gem of a place it is.