LATE SUNDAY NIGHT

Not much going on, which makes me wonder why I'm typing...

No Lakers tonight? 6:30 Lakers games are a tradition.

I'm leaving for Europe in about 60 hours. I would be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. Or scared. Or excited. All of the above and then some. I've had a gnarly pain in my gut since last Monday night. I think it's the trip.

A friend came over and my talked blogs. Real exciting, I know. He told me about a site (that I'm absolutely not linking to or mentioning their name) that is like Google for people's addresses and phone numbers. I'm not on there (yet), but my girlfriend is. Thing is, they got all her old apartments and not the new one. Now that I say this, I'm sure it'll be on before I got to bed just so someone can spite me. Creepy? Very. I found the name of a girl I dated right out of high school. Victoria M. We saw The Full Monty and kissed in my truck in the parking lot of her condo complex. Anyway...people think I'm crazy for not registering to vote, or having a credit card, or a cell phone, or signing petitions, but my name's not on there, so who's laughing now?

I wrote two poems tonight. Both are good and might be posted here later. Like anyone cares.

Linking to the District and writing about Scientology can really boost a guy's blog stat counter. It's taught me a thing or two about this blogging world and how to go about it. Turns out I should be writing about shit people might want to hear about. I always though the minutiae in my brain was interesting enough. Maybe I'm wrong?

Flight leaves Wed. morning from LAX at 11 a.m. That means I've got to get up early because normally I'm up no earlier than 11:30. I've been going to bed earlier the past few nights to get adjusted. But I'm killing that streak tonight.

Now for something relevant...Two more teens killed in Long Beach last night. I know, I read LBReport.com. There's been an unreal amount of killings in Long Beach during the first 20 days of this month. I'd be great to say the right thing, but I'm afraid that doesn't exist. There's no silver lining in two kids gunned down by alleged party crashers. Whether it was random or not makes no difference, there's just nothing to say, nothing to do to make that go away. I won't pretend to know what the people involved are feeling. I wake up every morning (or afternoon) and have some coffee. I read my newspaper and get some writing done. Very casual. Very dull. But that coulda been me. I coulda been hit this Friday at the Reno Room or last Friday, ironically enough, at the Reno Room. It coulda been someone I know, someone I love. Reincarnation sounds wonderful, but I can't live this life hoping to hear the opening bell of round two. Life is a first-round knockout so let's come out swinging and get ours before it's too late, before someone takes ours and makes it theirs. These kids, fuck, who knows? I didn't know any of them, but I can safely say they were taken far too soon. My high school days weren't the best days of my life, but they probably weren't the worst either (that was middle school). I'm just getting good. It took a long while, but I'm almost there and I'm 28. Let's hope these kids got there before I did and did something with themselves while they were here. I try not to be a pessimist, but it's hard to keep a positive mental attitude when there are a small percentage of people who fuck it up for the rest of us. Most humans are decent, I'm convinced of this. But decent people don't make headlines. Assholes do. It's the assholes, fuckers, jerks, idiots, rude asses, dipshits, morons, theives, liars, killers, rapists, predators and stupid we've got to watch out for.

WHOOPS!

I caught the tail end of the Lakers game last night after a fine vegetarian taco salad (with tofu!) at the Reno Room last night. The Lakers won, which is always a good thing, but the best part was the post-game interview with Andrew Bynum. If you didn't know, Bynum's a 20 year-old 7-footer who's starting to play like a superstar. Last night he seemed to come out of his shell for the post-victory interview that just so-happened to be on live TV. Some guy asks him the reasons behind the Lakers success. He lists a few things, ("Kobe's being Kobe," etc.) then says, "and LO (Lamar Odom)'s getting all the FUCKING...WHOOPS....He recovered and was grinning from ear to ear for the remainder of the interview. Maybe it was the three Fat Tires, but I couldn't stop laughing. I was amazed, stupefied. Rarely do I laugh out loud at things and almost never do I laugh for an extended period of time. This was the exception. I was in tears after the interview was over. In fact, I'm laughing as I'm typing this. In all my years and watching professional sports, I've caught one of the seven words a few times, far too few for my virgin ears. Way to go Bynum! I've been hyping you up and telling fairweather Lakers fans to watch out for you. So far you've proved me right. Your game is improving and you're dropping f-bombs on live tv. Fucking awesome. Bynum's slip reminds me why sports can be a drag and how much more fun they could be. Ditch the family shit. These are grown men, let's hear them talk like grown men talk. Football is the worst. These guys bash the hell outta each other. Finally one of them does something interesting and gets a flag thrown for celebrating. During one of the recent bowl games, a USC player was flagged after doing a flip into the end zone. This is a kid. He's scoring a touchdown in a bowl game. Basically, the highlight of the young man's life. Let him have some fun. The other team can take it. And so can the fans. Rock stars are worshipped because they have personalities. But for some dumb reason, athletes aren't afforded this. Speaking of Lamar Odom, he got busted a few times for smoking weed when he was on the Clippers. Stuff like this makes me like him even more. Ricky Williams of the Miami Dolphins. Probably seen this guy run, maybe four times in my life. But he's my favorite football player because he gets high. Why does MLB think we're so stupid not to realize how many boozers are on those teams? Open up, let's start to have some fun. Bring back the days when Red Auerbach would smoke a cigar BEFORE the game was officially over. I'm tired of pretending that, all of a sudden, jocks grow up and learn the finer points of life once they turn pro. They don't. That's why they play kids games. I hope the strong arm of the law doesn't come down on Bynum. It's just a word, one we've all heard before and one we'll all hear again. Even more importantly, as long as LO keeps getting those fucking rebounds, we'll let just about everything else slide.