You can't be a dilettante with the Internet before you

Let me stress this, I still know more about football, though.

So I sez to the Missus, to the Missus I sez, "he is 'Procrastinator, the Younger' and I am 'Procrastinator, the Elder."

Right? "Since he technically isn't a 'Jr.' if I split hairs and I'm playing on 'Pliny, the Elder' who did the painting of 'The Tower of Babel' that is represented in that completed jigsaw puzzle in the lobby of my doctor's office."

She says, "no, that's a Bosch painting."

I say, "no, it's Pliny and I'll settle this because I have Google right here." It turns out that it's "Brueghel the Elder" http://www.answers.com/topic/pieter-brueghel-the-elder
who definitely had a Bosch influence as they were both contemporaries and acquaintences. Of course, I'm off by centuries as Pliny was not of the Renaissance, but of the Roman Empire during the age of Christ http://www.livius.org/pi-pm/pliny/pliny_e.html

So you cannot be a dilettante with the Internet at your fingertips, just a shade above that lowly status unless you have to run off to work.

So who is the all time leader in touchdowns in the NFL, Mrs. Smart "Missus?" Huh? Huh?

Sandwich

First of all, some porn is good. To all the ladies, before you head down to the corner of Apoplectic Way and Outrage Boulevard to tap-dance on my head, read the whole post. Pervs looking for kink, it ain't gonna be that kind of a post. At any rate, it's shameless MasterCard ad rip-off time…

One 16oz. Berry Blitz at Jamba Juice
Cost : $3.95

A crab roll at “Fish”
Cost: $18.00

2.25 gallons of gas
Cost: $5.34

Bridge toll back across the Golden Gate
Cost: $5

Vacation away from self, priceless.

So everything is not love and happiness in the Procrastinator household, such is the case when you live with someone like me who has more issues than the back catalog of National Geographic and Time combined. What’s the remedy? Talking things over the Missus and the kid? Naw, too easy.

So I decided that in the immortal words of the Offspring, “I gotta get away from me.” I thought I would do it old school like my family did back in the day with the lower middle class version of a vacation. Drive up or down the coast, grab some food and stare at the beach. We used to go Hazel’s in Half Moon Bay and they made literally the largest crab sandwiches that you’ve ever seen.

Filled with crab and as big as hamburgers look like in print ads. I mean huge and if you went somewhere else for your crab sandwiches, you would go Michael Douglas out of “Falling Down” on them and say, “all I want is the sandwich just like the one in the picture.” So reminiscing put sandwiches on my brain and I’m sure that if there is some form of porn that we can agree about, sandwich porn is the best.

A friend at work turned me on to this DVD, “Sandwiches That You Will Like.”
http://www.shoppbs.org/product/index.jsp?productId=1403005

You’ll have to click the link to see just how many that they cover because I’m getting too hungry as is. Let’s just say that they go over just about everything served on bread in America.

One in particular that fascinated me was the lobster roll. Ex-Bostonian and current San Francisco cartoonist Keith Knight did a comic on this wonderful creation that I had yet to sample. Then the San Francisco Chronicle did an article almost a year ago on the Philly cheese steak and the lobster roll, including a nice recipe at the end for the latter.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/02/FDGV9B0QLC1.DTL

So I thought that I would grab a lobster roll at whichever of the two nearest restaurants in that article happened to be open along the way. Then I would hightail it to Stinson Beach.

I went down to Café Maritime on Lombard and called them up after I found parking. They were unfortunately closed, they are a dinner only-type of place or at least on Sundays. Not a problem, I went to Jamba Juice on Chestnut so at least I would have something healthy to drink.

Next on the list was Fish restaurant in the small upscale town of Sausalito just north of the Golden Gate bridge in Marin County. www.331fish.com It’s a nice little restaurant that believes in serving only sustainable seafood which is a nice antidote to over fishing the oceans. They had just opened up for lunch, I was the third customer through the door, I was all stoked, and…”lobster roll? We don’t serve lobster rolls.”

Thank you very much San F(expletive) Chronicle. But did they have a consolation prize? Hell yeah! A crab roll. We’re talking a fresh French roll, minced green onions and lots, and I mean lots, of crab. As much as Hazel’s once did, only not served on Wonder Bread. They didn’t have mayonnaise like Hazel’s either and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it could have been nice just to have a touch. Or maybe some fresh aioli, but that’s just me.

So they hooked it up quick in about the same time I contemplated whether fish complain about having to eat sushi all the time and "would they like us to drop a little lemon or tartar sauce overboard?" I’m all set and I just have to find my way out of Sausalito and over to Stinson Beach.

Sausalito hasn’t changed much since I've been there last, but it’s changed enough that I got lost and wound up in Marin City. I took Bridge Blvd. when I should’ve gone toward the 101 using Shoreline Highway. This took long enough that I decided to go to Muir Beach instead because I didn’t want the crab roll sitting there too long and spoiling next to the hot fries.

What a drive through Mill Valley and over the hill, and there’s nothing like an open sunroof and Nikka Costa to take you there. She’s kind of like Prince, kind of like Macy Gray without the cigarette and whiskey gravel, but she kicks ass in her own unique way. If you still haven’t listened to the album “Everybody Got Their Something,” you’re missing more than you’ll ever know.

Just at the apex of the ridge, there is a sign that says “Golden Gate National Area” and a doe was standing right next to it in broad daylight! Mount Tamalpais is one of the few places in the San Francisco Bay Area where the deer casually take their time fleeing all other creatures.

Muir Beach is nice little town and an even nicer beach, it would probably be named “Muir Cove” if it was in New England or some Native American cussword that they give to towns that only the locals can pronounce, like so many towns are christened in the Northeast. I’m not sure Muir Beach was in “Basic Instinct,” but it looks just like the area surrounding Sharon Stone’s pad. Monterrey pines, grass and moss-covered cliffs, purple and green hills, and the surf crashing on the rocks.

It’s just south of Stinson Beach where so many sharks nibble on surfers in the summer and contemplate why the seals there taste like human

The Duane Swierczynki Top Seven

We should all be Duane Swierczynski. Seriously, everything would be done and the word “incomplete” would be a distant memory. "To-do lists" would spontaneously combust. I wouldn't be "Write Procrastinator" anymore, I'd just be "Write" for a change and the Missus would finally stop arguing with...never mind, bad wordplay.

Duane is my role model and when I told him so, he didn’t believe me for a second. I have a fairly easy blue collar union job that requires little or no thought, but I can’t write for more than five hours a day or my head literally melts like that particular R. Crumb poster. If two people talk in the same room that I am writing in and it interrupts my flow, I duct tape them to the ceiling.

Duane edits a paper http://www.citypaper.net/ and before you tell me the paper is a weekly as opposed to a daily, I will tell you that editing any paper is difficult because you are still dealing with scores of egos, personalities, unique problems, deadlines, etc... Plus you have to tune out all that noise that comes with a newsroom, too much damn noise for me.

He researches and writes novels, not the crap that best selling authors crank out in their sleep or have the maid ghostwrite because they’d rather be up at their condo in Aspen. I mean thought-provoking, well thought out, well written novels and non-fiction.

Books on beer...
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=NJ7WOTxBv6&isbn=1931686491&itm=1

Scams and scam artists...
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=NJ7WOTxBv6&isbn=0028644158&itm=3


Neo-noir...
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=NJ7WOTxBv6&isbn=0312343779&itm=2

Office espionage...
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=NJ7WOTxBv6&isbn=1931686602&itm=4

Hell, he wrote a book on bank robbery and it has been said that the would-be robber was arrested with a copy on his person.
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=NJ7WOTxBv6&isbn=0028643445&itm=10

He hustles harder than all those who sell Amway, Mark Kay, Girl Scout Cookies, and four-packs of tube socks for five dollars, put together. By that, I mean book tours and signings everywhere and anywhere.

He’s a devoted parent and husband, and somehow he still finds time to paint the town red. As well as white and blue ‘cause we are talking Philadelphia. On tops of all this...he blogs, damn, HE blogs. http://secretdead.blogspot.com/

I need at least five and a half hours of sleep that I spread out over three shifts of slumber or I can’t write. Thomas Alva Edison needed only four to five hours a day with catnap here or there. Duane doesn’t sleep at all; it consumes too much valuable time that could be spent writing or researching future novels. I can’t compose a top thirty for Duane Swierczynski because only Duane is capable of such feats by himself, but I can do a top seven:

One time Duane fell asleep for a full fifteen minutes. As penance, he pulled a semi-truck using just a rope and his teeth, all the way to Manhattan. Where he then wrote and edited the Sunday edition of the New York Times entirely by himself while he did an impromptu book signing and sampled all the fine pilsners of Czechoslovakia that the city had to offer.

You cannot approach Duane with a cocktail in hand nor does he pump his own gas anymore or open his eyes at gas stations. Tired of his hands cramping through book signings after book signings, Duane had his eyes outfitted with lasers so that he could etch his salutations and signature onto most any surface.

In 2005: 1) Grade point averages went up throughout the entire of city of Philadelphia. 2) Everyone under eighteen passed English, including the most recently arrived immigrants. 3) Intelligent children walked the streets without fear of being beaten up and they had that much more time to devote to SAT preparation. 4) The high school graduation rate hit an all time high. 5) The acne and stress levels of all of the aforementioned had decreased by 80%. This was all because Duane was bored for an hour and did all their homework. If you can’t get into Temple or Rutgers, blame Duane.

The QWERTY typing system has wrongly been attributed to being invented as a way to keep typewriters from jamming from over-exuberant typists. It was actually created to keep Duane under 1,000 words-per-minute.

Gravity does not exist. This effect is merely the constant aftershock created by Duane’s typing and we should all pray that he never decides to stop, because everything will go flying into space.

Superman is weaker than Duane simply by virtue of the fact that kryptonite can affect Superman and Duane has NO weaknesses.

When Duane finishes his time machine and not if: 1) He will go back to the beginning of time and create the world in four days. 2) He will create beer and bars on the fifth day. 3) And he will (I imagine, respectfully) chastise God on the sixth day for taking six days the first time out. 4) Duane will create the printing press and book binding processes on the seventh because Duane just doesn’t take days off, even at the beginning of time.

Superman Wears Jack Bauer Pajamas

Is this from the same people that created those wonderful bits about Seagal and Chuck Norris?

http://www.notrly.com/jackbauer/index.php?topthirty

You don't have to be a hardcore "24" fan to enjoy this list, I bailed out right around the first season because a certain TV critic (I'm looking your way Tim "Cranky Pants" Goodman!) gave away all the prominent spoilers before I could watch the taped episodes and for some reason, I never regained interest.

I lifted this link from http://tequilashots.blogspot.com/

The Vertical Limit

Procrastinator Junior an' meself went to see "Hoodwinked," brilliant film, that. The animation was a little low-fi and the shading was extremely mediocre, but you get used to it because the writing was excellent and the jokes kept coming. Anne Hathaway, Glen Close and David Ogden Stiers (channeling Kenneth Branagh) were all outstanding. Andy Dick nearly stole the entire movie and Jim Belushi was actually funny on purpose.

It's a Rashômon-thing that any adult will be able to figure out within the first ten minutes, but I can accept that because you want a mystery that every kid in the audience will get and they had to keep the red herrings to a minimum. Definitely one of the best non-Pixar, non-Miyazaki, non-Wallace & Grommit animated films that I've seen in awhile. And yes, my nose managed to stay popcorn free unlike the last time...

http://writeprocrastinator.blogspot.com/2005/11/disney-give-pixar-what-they-want.html

The one improvement of today's multi-plexes over the theaters of old is the fact that the front row seats no longer give you the same neck strain. The show was over-sold and we were lucky that I bought the tickets ahead of time on Fandango or we would've been begging each row to scoot over like two dozen other people were forced to do. Still, we were stuck in the second row and the improved viewing angle meant just a smidgen of neck strain.

CROSSWORDS AND THE WRATH OF FAWN

Crossword Jones
I got a Crossword Jones
Got a Crossword Jones, oh baby, oo-oo-ooo

See, it doesn’t have quite the same effect, does it? It’s not quite as catchy. Up until I started this blog, the two things that have helped me keep my sanity so-to-speak were screenwriting and crossword puzzles. I am not exactly addicted to either per se, I can stop any time I want...yeah, sure any time. No I can’t. I can even go six or seven days without either one, but after day ten?

Screenplays and crossword puzzles have a lot in common with me, I haven’t completely finished one in a while. Plus I start my lesser screenplays and crosswords in the same manner:

By going as far as I can in the beginning, then I go to the end and try to work my way back. I fill in the names, all the things that I already know and hopefully the middle with come together.

Everybody has their pet peeve, their bugaboo, their bête noire. Mine is, or I should say mine was these shirts that say “Frisco.” It’s “San Francisco,” the “City” or even “Fog Town” if you old enough to remember that, not “Frisco.” As an example, a Manhattanite or even someone from Long Island will not call New York City, “The Big Apple.” They wouldn’t, it’s absurd.

Still, I let it go. Why compound my high blood pressure? Why froth at the mouth like a neocon would at Sponge Bob or rap music?

Getting back to crossword puzzles. I’ve learned such clues as Enid (a city in Oklahoma), samovar and Uta Hagen. I’m not too familiar with the works of Uta and Eero Saarinen, but I sure as hell can fill their names in. Ah, I just Googled Eero and I see that he designed JFK. The fact that I couldn’t remember Enid inspired me to look it up on Yahoo Maps and I wound up basing a screenplay around a town a few miles east of it.

As to pet peeves? I do something that is going to infuriate most of you and change your opinion of me for the worse...I do my crossword puzzles in pen. You over there, put down the pitchfork and torch. You over there, stop honing the machete and allow me to finish my story. Or at least put down the pitchfork or the torch, you’re liable to hurt yourself more than me if you insist on holding both at the same time.

The very thing that touched this post off happened a couple of weeks ago, I was doing my crossword puzzle on the way into work when I again, became the recipient of the glare. It’s always directed first at me, then the pen. I nodded and turned around, the eyes still followed me all the way down the subway platform.

This triggered the memory of the Medusa of all glares at a pen and crossword puzzle together. Almost fourteen years ago I was on my way to a job in Oakland, contemplating just what the Sam Hill is “lac” when I felt the glare for the first time.

I felt these eyes stuck on me and I looked up to see this Fawn Hall-clone staring at me. I could tell it wasn’t a love at first sight-thing because she was looking at me with equal parts pain and confusion. She asked me “what are you doing?”

Her tone didn't sound rhetorical, so I answered “I’m doing a crossword puzzle.”

She pointedly looked at my pen and said, “seriously, what are you doing?”

“I’m doing a crossword puzzle.”

Three words later and she was still staring. With a sigh, I glanced up.

“But what if you make a mistake?”

“I, um, write over it.”

The look on her face...an equal mixture of awe and horror. “You’re serious?”

I gave her a half-shrug, half-nod and went back to my puzzle. Was what I was doing defying the laws of God and nature? I could literally feel her eyes on me, she gave me the kind of glare that you only see on Court TV or on the news that the family of a victim of some monstrous crime casts at the accused.

Yes, it’s the glare or in this case, “The Wrath of Fawn” because she looked like Fawn and because back then professional women tended to sport only three hairstyles:

1) “The Fawn.” http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/j/msnbc/Components/Photos/
040720/040720_hall_bcol_930p.small.jpg Along with its variations of Julia Louise Dreyfuss or Rosie O’Donnell when she was first on VH1.
2) “The Kathie Lee Gifford.” With the hair cut just above the shoulders and shellacked to the sides giving the appearance of dog ears or that Afghan hound-effect. I can’t find a picture of this hair style and I’m not surprised. Any photos of Kathie Lee or any other women sporting this hairstyle have been burned and any corroborating evidence destroyed like President Shrub’s real National Guard files.
3) “The Sandy Duncan” http://us.imdb.com/gallery/mptv/1294/Mptv/1294/2313_0117.
jpg?path=pgallery&path_key=Duncan,%20Sandy or as I like to call it, the “deflator.” Remember ladies, androgyny kills. Viva la difference. No hate mail, I'm half-kidding and all things being equal, I had a mullet all the way up until 1998.

So, “Fawn” was making me uncomfortable to the point that I moved down one car marker, but I still felt her cold green eyes trying to turn me to stone. The train finally arrived and I moved further down to enjoy my puzzle in relative peace. The train went through the Transbay Tube and oddly enough, I felt the gaze again. I looked up and there she was! She had opened the doors between the BART train which was not easy because you have to be able to lift about sixty pounds to do so and was she was stalking me from about fifteen feet away.

Was she trying to psychically force me to drop the pen? Was she going to take me out like Rambo did his adversaries? Was she going to spout bad Stallone dialogue like, “you’re the disease and I’m the cure?” Mind you, this predated “Speed” and I was thinking along the lines of “The Taking of Pellham 1,2,3” gone wrong. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, no pencil to ease her wrath.

If I got off at West Oakland, would she follow? Obviously, I had managed to escape or I wouldn’t be here to tell the story, though let’s just say my pen and puzzle weren’t so lucky and...I can’t even talk about that. And every time I go across the Transbay Tube and have a crossword puzzle in hand, I have my head on a swivel.

Linkage

The links have been slightly updated. Post or email me if you have any complaints, requests, etc...

Never Been...

To play with a Drew Barrymore title...I've been kissed, but I've never been tagged. http://funjoel.blogspot.com/2006/01/memetics.html#links

My favorite authors, you can pick any from the five on the right, below the links column. As good as Crais is though, he would not figure into my three all-time favorites.

That's as far as I'll go on that meme and moving on to Scott the Reader's challenge @http://alligatorsinahelicopter.blogspot.com/

"WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LINE OF DIALOGUE YOU HAVE EVER WRITTEN?I don't even want context. Just throw the line out, here or in your blog."

FAITH (V.O.)
I would say...better than
shopping...not quite as good as sex.


That's me second favorite line, the other I covet entirely too damn much and only three people have seen it.

Dirty Words

This Christmas was just the best until I had to contend with one of Procrastinator Junior’s presents. The three most dreaded words to a parent’s ears around Christmas were “some assembly required.” Now they are “plug and play.”

The Missus already had an iPod Nano and I set iTunes as the default player to her desktop. So she bought a Nano for Junior this X-mas, I loaded up the CD that comes with the thing and guess what? That’s right, software conflicts galore. Thank you Mister Gates and Mister Jobs because you two gave my family the worst connotation of your surnames.

Speaking of getting jobbed, "one knee equals two feet." Congrats to the Steelers and a big "better luck next time" to the mighty Colts who almost pulled it out. I was rooting for the Steelers just a little more than the Colts but I wouldn't have felt entirely bad if they won because I feel for Tony Dungy.

As far as the officiating? Why do they consistently invent the rules as they go? "One knee equals two feet." It's not just the title of a John Madden book, it's part of the NFL's criteria for the completion of a catch or an interception.

Today's incident is right up there with the "tuck rule," which rhymes with what?

R.M.B.A.S. #2

Picture one of those Frank Frazetta paintings. You know, like the one that has Conan fighting off three-score of vikings or barbarians? He’s at the top of the pile and he just barely has the upper-hand as it seems the horde is on the verge of engulfing him? Yeah, well, go to the Costco in San Francisco and I’m Conan.

Against my wishes, the Missus bought a pepper-grinder from said store that’s smaller than the one in restaurants but only just. I hate to see food go to waste so to forewarn all the neighbors, don’t be surprised when you’re having dinner and you see me standing over you. You will get fresh pepper in your salad whether you want it or not.

Harvest Home http://harvesthome.blogspot.com/ stirred up a pseudo-zen koan in my head because I've never heard of "Moving Men Furniture Sliders" though I don't doubt her for a second that they actually exist.

So if something isn't actually seen on TV, is it actually "as seen on TV?"

THE KING HAS BEEN NAMED, LONG LIVE THE PERSONA

I didn’t even want to address this but I have to nip this in the bud because the rumors are getting way out of hand.



I am not, nor have I ever been, J.T. Leroy.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/10/MNGBHGL0F61.DTL


Whew, glad I’ve got that out of the way, aren’t you?

I do see that we have the same city in common as well as our punctation problems, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/01/10/MNGBHGL0E81.DTL but that’s about it.



There’s always been speculation in San Francisco as to that author’s real identity. Out of left field stuff from such as that it was Chris Van Allsburg all the way up through Amy Tan or David Sedaris. Everybody except Danielle Steele and Colonel Mustard in the library.

My guess was that J.T. was Danielle Steele but I based that on the few paragraphs of both that I’ve read in Chronicle book review section and a glass of red wine I had last week that was on the verge of turning to vinegar (ek, still woozy).

I have my pen name all lined up more or less, am still uncertain as to which surname to go with. Yet other than the usual online handle to make it slightly harder for the filberts and macadamias of the world to bother me, I’ve never seen the point to such an elaborate ruse. How could someone have so little faith in the quality of their work or in themselves that they have to immerse themselves completely into this publicity stunt just to be read (says the man who flogs t-shirts ever other chance he gets)?

I don’t think I could. My desire is to write fiction, not become it. My goal is to enjoy both writing and having as many people as possible enjoy it too, instead of being more famous for my public persona. But that’s just me and besides, Wynonna Ryder and Billy Corrigan won’t return my phone calls.

Random Musings, Bruisings & Aloe-scented Soothings

This used to be “a forum on how to avoid writing OR the blank page.” While I wasn’t aspiring to be an Artful Writer http://artfulwriter.com/ or a Fun Joel
http://funjoel.blogspot.com/ I still needed a little more interaction for the discussions I had in mind.

So, no problem. I’ve changed the blog description as if it was test marketed in Canoga Park. I've retooled, changed the paradigm, thought both inside and outside the box, added non-styrofoam peanuts, hired on the same firm that CNN uses to poll, etc, etc...

Onward and upward or, sideways as the case may be:

To borrow a down-home phrase, women are harder than Chinese arithmetic. Except in theory, I could comprehend both Chinese and arithmetic in this lifetime.

I don’t want to walk the seven feet necessary to grab the Bartlett’s and look this up verbatim (BAD, BAD, LAZY WRITER!), but isn’t it “youth is wasted on the young?” They do not study the classics because I can remember a time not too long ago when even a bad Mars Blackmon-impression at least warranted a grin.

You’ve been forewarned, Black & Decker is trying to do away with husbands. They now have a device that opens jars http://www.blackanddeckerappliances.com/category-207.html.

You’re thinking, “so?” So? So think about it. All the other contraptions that they’ve invented that can replace you in the, er,....boudoir. Then couple that with the fact that even as we speak, they are probably inventing a machine that will both lift heavy things AND furniture. You’re out on your ass come Christmas of 2007, pal! I can cook and do my own laundry, so I’m two steps ahead of you.

No, you cannot stay with me.

Question!

The Writer's Guild of America has announced the "nominees for outstanding achievement in writing for the screen during the 2005 season."

http://www.wga.org/subpage_newsevents.aspx?id=1537

I'm just curious and I'm not entirely certain that I'm the first to ask this, but let me ask screenwriters and non-screenwriters...

"which award would you rather receive, a WGA award or the Oscar?" That is to say, your peers who respect and understand all that is involved with writing or the prestige and money that comes with an Oscar.

Rhyme And Punishment

First the phat-est rhymes.

It's "Lazy Sunday" and these guys can flow...
http://www.youtube.com/?v=zLElfJ9YCh0

...and now for the punishment. All the women of the world, thank Katie Schwartz and lavish her with gifts because she took a bullet for you and them some... http://katieschwartz.blogspot.com/2005/12/suit-daddy-of-doom.html
I mean it, she did a service for womankind. Ladies, if you don't ever read another link that I post, read this one and learn.

Comedians complain about playing in tough rooms or about rough audiences. Do you think Jake and Elwood had it tough at that country & western bar? Do you think that Johnny Cash had it rough at his Folsom gig? Those gigs were pieces of chocolate cake because it's much easier to win them over with music, do a gig like Jane Godley and then you will earn my machismo respect... http://janeygodley.iblog.com/index.php?op=ViewArticle&articleId=4623


Then Al http://albertsworldofartsyfun.blogspot.com/ complained that this blog ain't gay enough. Fine, be that way. I take requests at this blog so long as you promise to buy a shirt from my store within the year, yet I'll only accommodate everyone but so far because it is my blog... http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/12/28/DDASMUSSENBR.DTL There Dude, even in pink. Are you happy? I want to see some hetero-stuff at your blog, 'kay?

Happy New Year

Let me run this past you first...

"When people say, 'I don't understand your music,' I say, 'Don't try to understand it: just try to feel it."

-Dizzy Gillespie

I cribbed that from a book review of Studs Turkel interviewing musical greats and watch me contradict myself throughout this post. Many things get lost in both blogging and posting, mostly tone. This why I know I have a long way to go as a writer because I do not always get my tone across and I will rarely resort to emoticons because they do not convey the variations in emotions and I find them a little...silly, for lack of an expletive.

Now, I can be something of a curmudgeon and unfortunately it comes across too strong sometimes in this medium. My mother was the type of person that either she liked you or she didn't, period. My father and most of that side of the family are of the Don Rickles school, don't say something nice unless you can say two hurtful things to compensate for that slip-up or a least one mean aside just loud enough for the complimentee to hear.

So when I say something a little gruff or come across a little too agro, I don't mean it that way. That is not where my heart is and unfortunately only the Missus seems to realize that. I am Prometheus with sandals soaked in gasoline, I burn every bridge I cross whether I want to or not.

So when I say I want every one to have a prosperous New Year, I actually mean that even though most would or should doubt that from my previous behavior. For those who don't have love in their lives? May you experience it and find twice as much as you found lacking the previous year. To those who have love in their lives, just as much if not more.

Health? A lot of bad things have happened to my co-workers, friends, family, and a bout of pneumonia ruined my family's summer and humbled me. My mother-in-law, her sister and the second to youngest sister-in-law have all escaped cancer within last sixteen months. So I've always wished good health to everyone, but on this New Year's Day? Even more so.

Prosperity. I want every one to be prosperous but especially those in the creative community because I believe the world is built on dreams to a larger degree and there is enough money to go around despite whatever a certain political party cries or what pundits say.

And if you don't believe me about dreams, go back to the cave and turn away from the light. Every facet of your life was created by a dream before it came to fruition including the spark between your parents that brought you into this world.

Happy New Year!