Like a Train Wreck

I think I've figured something out... and it's kind of sad.

I... I... I think I'm growing up.

That's not necessarily a good thing, either. I mean, yes, I'm mumble mumble years old and I'm a good provider and fantastic breeding stock and many, many, if not all women find me incredibly attractive to the point of distraction and even, in some cases, tragic results. But those are just facts, and growing up, well... When you grow up you live in facts.

What I mean is that I used to be able to take flights of fancy, to daydream, to imagine. Now I can't. Well, maybe I could, but I don't. I don't play. I don't dream, I don't lie. I just don't. And it's no fun.

I can't even get into someone else's daydream. And that sucks too. Take for instance this movie called "Patterson". It looked cool. It looked like the kind of thing that I would have love, love, loved when I was younger. But I couldn't even sit through the whole goddam trailer. I couldn't because I figured out the punchline as soon as I saw who directed it (Jim Jarmusch). Like I said, I would have flipped out over this movie just a short time ago.

My problem is that when I watch movies like this I can read the daydreams of the director. This is the romantic version of ME screams Jarmusch's id. My brain says, "yeah, yeah, I saw a movie where this kid moved rocks with his brain." And that's sad.

Because in the technicolor bullshit cartoon movies that I can stomach now nothing realistic happens. I can't daydream that I'm some writer of sordid novellas who nonetheless can afford to live un-subsidized in a loft in Tribeca and drink top-shelf liquor and do hyper expensive drugs with my incredibly hot and smart and successful and doomed friends at super cool dive bars who witnesses the murder of an under aged prostitute by the Mayor's girlfriend and his bodyguard during a drug-fueled blood orgy and ends up blackmailing said mayor via anonymous letter into hiring myself to be his PR guy who accidentally falls inexplicably in love with the poisonously decadent and self destructive mistress who committed the murder and together we spend three and a half movie hours plotting to pin it on the Mayor who manages to turn the snake back on the two of us, but really just me and so I have to be the one to drown the mistress murderer in the tub during a wild election night party because we need a fall guy and the bodyguard can't be implicated because he has a special needs kid, so I do it for the promise of a McArthur-type grant because as much as I love the junky bimbo I love my dream of being a writer more. I just can't. But I can be entertained watching a giant lizard beating the shit out of the NYPD, even if no one but one old man and a cabbie die in the whole damn movie.

Why? Because that would never happen. The director of the giant lizard movie isn't putting himself in place of the heroic little girl who kung-fu's the immense geko back to the hell he spawned from.

But Jim Jarmusch wants to believe that he could have been a fucking bus driving poet. He even wants to believe people still care about poets. It stinks up the movie. It's LESS believable than a giant lizard dry-humping the Empire State building. And that's just a fact.

It's good when things get back to normal. I'm back on an even keel. Home for a week (thanks for cancelling my meetings assholes) and I'm feeling generally upbeat. It's nice when the biggest complaint I can muster is that my computer won't make a PDF from the scanner.

Seriously, it won't. It's been chugging away for an hour. It's a goddam receipt. What the fuck. I can stream movies that haven't even been filmed yet to my phone in a moving car but I can't create a PDF of my $8.99 salad receipt? What gives? Will we be riding horses to the fucking apple store now?

Last Saturday my son, the prince, graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point and was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the United States Army. So ends a journey that began when he was in sixth grade and decided that he wanted to be in the Army.

I'm not sure if he would do it again the same way if he had to do it all over, but he picked it. And despite having the opportunity to back out with no penalty during those first two miserable years, he didn't and has now joined an extremely select group of men and women. Probably THE most select group of men and women in this country.

I am extremely proud of him. You all will be too.

I was having an interesting conversation with my family last night. The Beast has just had his wisdom teeth out; of course that makes me feel not at all old and decrepit, a little rusty, and probably impotent, and we were trying to figure out what to do about the stitches. Then I noticed. None of my kids have ever had stitches unless it was part of a procedure. Seriously. They've busted teeth, got black eyes, and almost hanged themselves, but they've never had a "friend" jam a hockey stick through the front spokes of their bicycle and go face first into the pavement. None of my kids have ever broken their nose. I don't think any of them have seen a glass topped table, never mind headbutting one. They haven't walked through sliding glass doors, ridden their bikes into lit barbeque grills, walked into open locker doors, fallen down stairs, jumped head first onto open dresser drawers, or even ever had to tell the ambulance guy "I dun't remember how it happened, don't tell my mom."

My kids have had broken bones, both real and imaginary, but they've never been hit in the face on a dare with the side of a tennis racquet. I don't know if that's good or bad. Really.

I'm a little afraid of what will happen the first time they see a huge pool of their own blood. Will they freak out? I know I did the first time... and the second.. and third... then it got a little routine. Still hurt, but I wasn't afraid of bleeding to death.

I really can't tell you how often I've had stitches. I have a scar on the top of my head from a car trunk lid (I got the My First Concussion playset for Christmas), one above my right eye from God only knows, a good ol' frankenstein right in the middle of my forehead, a small one over my lip from the tennis racquet fiasco, two on my chin, and one on my right ear where they sewed it back on. I have a smallish bump on my nose from a walking issue and scars all over my legs, knees, and hands. It got so bad that my father used to keep a suture set and Novocaine in the refrigerator.

I'm not saying my kids have never really hurt themselves, they've all busted teeth for example, and like I've said, broken bones. But the scars aren't there. And that's what worries me. How will they know that their kid will survive that long walk through the closed sliding glass door of life?

First things first. As much as they deny it now, back in the day, the jackasses who decided to step thousands of years into the past and worship nature Gods picked this asshole to be their Dr facto spokesman. When you spend your time dreaming of the extinction of the human race, what's one hippy chick, more or less?

Remember folks, I'm an environmentalist. I hate litter and pollution. But not at the expense of people. So give a hoot, don't pollute, but also don't murder your girlfriend and go into hiding and mooch off of gullible and stupid rock stars and artists for twenty years. It's a bad look.

And speaking of nuts, Robert Pirsig died. He wrote about going nuts in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Sort of. He had a schizophrenic break as a young man and wrote this book, I think, to make some sense out of it. There really is no sense to be made, and the book depressed me when I read it.

I wonder if there's some kind of genetic incompatibility between western people and eastern thought that can give rise to serious mental illness? Maybe it's the meditation or intense concentration it takes to really understand eastern thinking. I don't know, but I once had the idea that a civilization based on reason and experimentation (the idea that you can understand nature by putting smaller and smaller pieces of it into a box and observing it to understand how it works), didn't jive well with meditation without action. At any rate, it seems that occidentals who get deep into eastern philosophy go nuts at a higher rate. Or at least that's how it seems to me, but it may be a personality thing, at any rate, I threw away my copy of the Bhagavad Gita, lost my copy of the Vedas and didn't like this book. RIP Robert.

There is a difference between a "button-up" shirt and a "button-down" shirt. Learn it.

Forget it. I'll learn it for you.

A "button-down" shirt has little buttons to fasten down the collar. As opposed to; a tab that buttons under the tie, plastic or metal collar stays that get shoved in the corners of the collar and lost in the wash, or nothing at all except for a strong belief in the wearers own moral superiority. A "button-up" shirt has buttons on the front that hold it closed. As opposed to studs or, God forbid, a shirtfront. You would never have a button-down collar on a shirt that isn't a button-up, but you MAY have a button-up shirt that is not a button-down.

Got it?

In other news, the "Today" show? A bunch of fucking idiots.

I am back down to where I should be. I'm wearing my favorite pants again. It's been 5 years. 5. That's insane, I know. Who keeps pants that don't fit for five years? maddad. That's who. They fit now. and are even a bit big. Now I still can't lift what I could five years ago, but my endurance is better. I could probably stand to lose another ten pounds, if I'm honest, but given where I store my flab, I don't think my pants size will change any more than it has.

I will probably attempt to get rid of those 10 extra pounds before I have to have shoulder surgery in the fall, just as a precaution.

I'll probably up my big lifts over the next month or so and keep riding 50 miles a week. Maybe more if I can get outside.

So there. This, plus the fact that I quit smoking almost fifteen years ago makes me better than you.