End of April

I know it's been a week or so since my last post, about an American film shot in Germany starring a Boer based on a cartoon by a Korean-American (did that long clause constitute "coming full cirlce"?).

Tony's visiting again, and between work and visiting, posting has obviously been light.

I will have some pictures soon. I've been trying to keep up with this dealy better recently, and am satisfied up until a week ago or so.

I'm going to share with the few of you readers the nature of the strange mall/city-within-a-city place where my work is located. I hear it's like an episode of "Sliders" I never saw, where they slid into a world where everyone lives at the mall. There's also somethings I'd like to say about the Guyton Ranchette, and a discussion about wildflowers, as in, is a pretty bloom the only thing that makes a weed a wildflower?

Also, Corrie took some good pictures at Eeyore's Birthday last week. I'll explain what that hippie-fest is later.

In Defense of the "Aeon Flux" Film

I was a big fan of Peter Chung's short animated features on MTV's "Liquid Television" that he called "Aeon Flux." There was very little dialogue, a whole lot of action, and the recurring death of the main character, Aeon Flux herself, a busty/leggy femme fatale, in every single short episode. Peter Chung has described it as aggressively anti-continuous, and deliberately so.

After the success of "Beavis and Butthead", another "Liquid Television"-launched program, MTV thought that there might be legs in the action cartoon with that chick, Aeon Flux.

Then Peter Chung had to flush out a world and create a continuity and a storyline for an entity that wasn't supposed to have anything like that, for an exercise in blowing off steam for an animator that worked primarily on "Rugrats". A structured Aeon Flux project is a corruption of a purely action/anti-continuity series of short features.

That being said, the show did have an interesting premise, storyline, characters, and plotting devices, and mostly entertained the fans of the original short features, at least those who stuck around and watched them all (honestly, I'm not included in that group).

So, years later, they decide to make a live action feature film of Aeon Flux, starring Charlize Theron, and the fans were aghast, or at least held the entire project in contempt. It opened to poor reviews, and closed soon after.

I recently saw the film, and watched some of the special features on the dvd copy that I'm borrowing. One thing I thought that was totally lost on any prospective fan of the film was that the movie wasn't ever supposed to be a strict storyline from the cartoon, but was constructed to exist in conjunction with the Aeon Flux world. It was always meant to be a companion piece, not a live-action retelling of some of the cartoons. That misperception could have been the fault of the marketing department.

If you know nothing about the animated shorts and later the animated series, and you watch the film, what you get is a rare humanist sci-fi film, and what's more, an actually serviceable sci-fi film. It's not totally horrible. Calling it great would be a stretch, but serviceable? Sure. It's a rare thing when you get a humanist, futuristic-clone storyline, where weapons and the technological innovations are all along organic lines of progression.

Plus, the locations in the film were all found in and around Berlin, and are marvelous at least. Seeing the film and realizing how few scenes are in a sound-stage, how many wild and crazy locations they found to imitate a planned and created futuristic city will blow your mind.

Like my brother Dan told me before seeing "Avatar", "If you leave your science hat at home, you'll be entertained," I think that if viewers leave behind their love and knowledge of the animated Aeon Flux universe, and watch the film with an open mind, they probably won't hate what they see.

Did You Know...

A random fact for my few readers...

Did you know that since the Revolution, a law has been on the books--and remains so--that stipulates that if an American citizen is bestowed a title or knighted by the UK that they either have to rescind the title or their US citizenship?

Hug a Book Today

Today, April 23rd, is the fifteenth celebration of the World Book and Copyright Day, or as it's sometimes known, the International Day of the Book. I heard about it today for the very first time. Learnin' something everyday...

So, the origins of the Day of the Book, and the reason books are celebrated on April 23rd and not, say, August 7th or May 20th (those happen to be the birthdays of people close to me, so I celebrate anyway), is that the events and creation of the "day" was first held in Spain, in 1995, and April 23rd is the day Miguel de Cervantes died. In Spain they rolled the idea into the annual St. George's Day celebration, which is held on St. George's Day (also 4/23). Since medieval times men have given their lovers a rose on this day, and since 1925 the women have responded with the gift of a book.

Now, April 23rd is also observed as the day that Shakespeare died, and in some corners of the globe, 4/23 is claimed to have been a day of loss of two of literature's biggies, but this isn't totally accurate. Cervantes died on April 23rd on the Gregorian calendar, which we use today, while Shakespeare died on April 23rd in the Julian calendar, making it ten days behind what we consider the "real" calendar. [Aside for Norm: there's an interesting section of Pynchon's M&D where Mason relays to Dixon that when England switched from the Julian to the Gregorian, instead of going to bed on September 1st and waking up the 11th, like everyone else, he lived those ten days by himself, lonely, terrified, then passively waiting...]

Now, don't get World Book and Copyright Day confused with Monday's day: April 26th marks World Intellectual Property Day. Seriously, I couldn't make this up if I tried.

A Note for Norm: Part 2

When we moved into the house in Austin, there were bookshelves already here, and the collection of books had been assembled by our roommates, Rachel and Stephanie, and an assortment of their friends and family.

There's a cool collection of comic books from the late fifties, mostly Disney, Archie, and later the girly model comics.

But, the tiny note that makes this post "a note for Norm" is one book Corrie saw early when we moved in. She held up a book I'd heard of before (I'm familiar with the film also, but haven't seen it) and said, "Check this out...the blurb on the front is written by Pynchon."

The quote of praise on the books cover was indeed written--or supplied in some manner--by Thomas Pynchon.

The book is Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, by Tom Robbins, a near contemporary of TP. I've started reading it while sitting in the bathroom. After reading the first few chapters, which take about three pages each, I realized that the story was the kind of story that I would write. It's esoteric, quirky, funny, and sexy. The characters are like I would create, and the action is similar. The details specific to ...Cowgirls... I wouldn't have come up with, but the manner in which they are presented is similar to mine.

One criteria for me when I write stories is, "Would I like to read this?" So I thought it was kinda neat when I find a book that sounds to me like me, being praised by my favorite writer.

Poor Big Ben

Boo-hoo. Let's all shed a tear for Ben Roethlisberger, two-time Super Bowl champion quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. Poor Big Ben has been suspended for six games by the Sheriff--er, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell.

Why, you might ask, since the qb hasn't been charged with any crimes?

Maybe because he's a dirtbag rapist? But, he may not be a dirtbag rapist, he may just be a dirtbag.

See, for anyone who doesn't care about football, a lady who worked in a Tahoe hotel is suing Ben Roethlisberger in a civil case for sexual assault stemming from an incident that occurred almost two years before the suit. Naturally the alleged victim was savaged in the media for being a gold-digger, out to besmirch a good-boy's name and image, and dang, have you seen her? and dang why didn't she go to the cops? and dang, dang, dang.

I wonder if anyone actually read her statement. I did. Before reading it I had a generally positive feelings about Big Ben; I'm not a Steeler fan, but I didn't have a touch of the Hate like with, say, a Steve Young or a Troy Aikmen. After reading her statement, I thought, well that incident might have gone down just like she said. It wasn't sensational, it wasn't cinematic, it was a lady doing her job and delivering some crap to a drunken football superstar and him forcing himself on her, he most likely confident that she wants it, and she saying no.

A quote I read about being a rape victim that I found enlightening is that "it's like diarrhea on your soul." Knowing that, maybe it's understandable why it might take a while to build up the courage to call out an attacker.

The lady is also suing the hotel for trying to cover it up. Doesn't sound so implausible. Maybe Ben was just caught in a bad situation; maybe he called her the c-word and she's getting him back, but that sounds quite sociopathic. In any case, Ben pretty much got a pass from the media and fans who were willing to get behind their MVP.

Unfortunately, this was Big Ben's first run-in with sexual assault allegations. This is not the incident for which he was suspended.

I thought about how shitty it's got to be to be so big and famous that you have to worry all the time about being accused of sexual assault if you like to have a few drinks in a bar or nightclub.

Then I thought about Derek Jeter, New York City sports king, richest and most famous eligible bachelor, and he never gets in the tabloid headlines, never has been accused of anything naughty or illegal, and still curries oodles of public good will. He must have figured something out.

Apparently Ben is still learning. This past March he went to a club in a college town thirty miles from his ranch in Georgia. He gets good and toasted, all the while getting shots for numerous ladies (who all turn out to be underage, but it is an 18+ club with wristbands, however laxly enforced they might be). If you want the not-so-sensational details from the accuser, you can read them here, which is a link to the NFL's own web-site. It sounds, though, if you read it, like it fits the same profile as his earlier incident. Drunken superstar, sure the girl wants it, forces himself on her.

Only this time, her and her friends went immediately to the first cop they could find outside the bar, then to the hospital, and two days later Ben Roethlisberger had hired the most expensive and powerful lawyer in Georgia. That lawyer put together a dream-team of forensic scientists, shrinks, legal scholars, and even spies to snoop around the university's campus trying to dig up dirt on the accuser.

Ben was eventually not charged for lack of evidence. He was suspended for six games by the hard-nosed commissioner of football, and the Steelers, one of the NFL's oldest and classiest organizations, the one that's won the most Super Bowls, is trying to trade him. It looks like the Oakland Raiders might be his only suitor.

Possible exile to Al Davis' Raiders. Poor Ben indeed.

Happy 420!

To all my erstwhile and current heads, I'd like to wish a happy and hearty 420!

My arrangements and habits may have changed, but I'm still part of a culture that accepts and celebrates the Earth and her planty gifts.

While living in San Luis Obispo my roommates and I would sit around and debate whether the phrase should be "Happy 420" or "Merry 420", and judging by the numerous mass texts I've received, "Happy" has won out easily.

Take care and be safe on the Head's Holy Day!

Local News

When we lived in New York it seemed that our local news became national news. I remember having a conversation with my friend Ryan--who lives in the SLO-town bubble--about Sean Bell, a young black unarmed groom in Queens getting blasted by a hale of fifty bullets from cops early in the morning of his wedding day.

But now, being in a "small" town (most everything is small compared to NYC), the local news is precious, but no less real and nearly "catastrophic" to its local community. And barely anybody here is paying attention, let alone people in other cities.

Right now I'm talking about the Cap Metro. This is Austin's light-rail/subway authority. Corrie says she remembers the discussions for the installation of the first line, the Red Line, before her family left Austin in 1995. It just opened on March 22nd of this year. Fifteen years to get that working? Okay...voters rejected more funding in 2000, which pushed back construction timetables, and that kind of thing happens in towns that want to view themselves as hippy-type places but also really like their big cars.

One of the pieces of legislation that was passed to help get the Cap Metro the funds to finish the project, known as the Quarter Cent Program, was ultimately going to generate money for the city. But now, because the train runs rarely and irregularly and hasn't generated the kind of revenue originally forecasted, Austin is facing a fifty-one million dollar shortfall.

The city council is quickly drawing to vote a bond measure to put on this November's ballot to try and raise some cash for thirsty programs that will be needing an infusion probably before then.

You can read more about it here.

419?

When I was in the dorms at Cal Poly, an aggie and an engineering school, I had friends in all sorts of engineering programs, and there were entertaining classes that were most likely based in Material Engineering discipline, like metal works, plastic works, and engravings of all sorts.

Tony came back to the dorms once with a plastic high-relief spooky looking clown sculpture. Another friend of ours, a fella named Gabe (he might have been Filipino), after taking a plastic engraving course, had twenty identical keychains to hand out to us. These were about three inches long, black plastic with white words. Gabe's teacher was plugged in a little closer to the head culture, and there were plenty of phrases and words that weren't allowed...you might be able to guess at some of them.

So Gabe returned to the steps that day with keychains that read "419?", like the question mark was him trying to see if the teacher knew about the 420 lingo/code meaning. Oh, how we loved the 419? symbology. It was an inside joke for about fifty wasters in the dorms.

I think guys once even took sheets to the P and changed it to say "419?" on April 19th, after years of having efforts to change it to "420" had been repeatedly thwarted.

Campbell's Hole

My job was gracious enough to give me Friday and Saturday off (I didn't exactly ask for both days, but I appreciated it).

Friday was the ballgame for my birthday, and Saturday they took us to Campbell's Hole, a recreational zone in the Green Belt, an area of natural beauty set aside for recreation and preservation with spring fed creeks and pools.

It was crowded but beautiful, and we relaxed with a few beers, got our feet wet (the water was cold and shallow) and I even took a nap. Here's some photo action. Maybe later I'll have some of the history of the place for my few loyal readers.

It Went Up to 11

For my birthday Corrie took me out for some Texas BBQ and a ballgame, the UT Longhorns versus the Kansas Jayhawks.

When we arrived at the ballpark and saw all the little kids running around the slow-walking elders, we realized quickly that there would be no beer sales at this event. That's not the worst thing ever, of course, but a little beer helps Corrie forget how little she cares for watching baseball (she'd rather be playing something than watching it), and overall makes the game go by faster.

But, this was a college game, not subject to the same strategy of the pros, with their bad habits of replacing pitchers every other batter late in the game, which drastically slows the pace and makes it, uh, even more boring?

Plus, we had some good pitchers in this game. The UT starter, Jungmann, pitched a hell of a game, giving up two runs on six hits in 7 and a third innings, which is great. His counterpart though, who's name I can't remember but he started for Kansas, had only given up two hits through eight innings--he did give up an unearned run in the seventh inning though--when he came out to pitch the ninth inning in hopes of completing his game.

He gave up one more run but finished the inning. He left to a tie game, pitching a full nine innings (I'm pretty sure), and the game was pushed into extra innings.

In the bottom of the eleventh, with one out a Longhorn crushed a gapper to right-center and went for third after rounding second, an aggressive move that could backfire if he gets thrown out. He just beat the throw.

I told Corrie, "Doesn't matter that this is college, no way you waste a one-out triple in the bottom of the 11th."

The next batter got hit on the knee, the next guy walked, loading the bases, and the next guy hit a pop-up to left. The runner tagged up from third and beat the throw home. Sac-fly wins the game. Good, fundamental, exciting baseball.

Good, exciting birthday.

Here's some pictures. The second is of a strange Texas chant or fight-song, but everyone has their "horns" in the air, like Metallica fans head-banging at a junior-high dance, but here they're singing. (I know it's blurry; my old camera has a hard time with night pictures.)

PacNorWest Trilogy: Part 3-Colton Harris-Moore

The initial topic that got me interested for a an hour or two in the Pacific Northwest was reading about a kid named Colton Harris-Moore.

For people who haven't heard of him, Colt is a tall youngster who had an older pal who got them into lots of trouble. Colt wound up in juvie for too long, leaving him short a diploma, which is a bummer, since by most accounts he's pretty damn smart if not brilliant.

He wasn't released from juvenile hall, though, he escaped. Barefoot. He stole a Benz, was chased, ditched it on foot into the pacific northwest forest and hasn't been apprehended since, for about two years now.

Not the most interesting or dramatic thing, until you hear that they're charging him with theft...of an airplane. I guess he stole a plane. Flew it right off the ground, over some mountains three hundred miles away, crash landed it in a not-so-severe manner, since he walked away, and then did it again.

Reports are that Colt's stolen and crash landed four airplanes, as well as one boat and a smattering of automobiles.

Before the first plane thievery, he'd never even been in a plane before. With a laptop and a love of all things aeroplane, he learned all you could possibly learn about Cessnas without taking a lesson, and then went and jacked one.

Right now he's still on the run, but it's believed that he's safe in a house, being harbored (his dad is out of the picture and his mom's trailer is well-watched by the policia), but he's got a rapidly growing cult following of Internet fans which he monitors from his lappy, amused. He's considered a hero; sticking it to the man, stealing airplanes (daring!), and getting away with it...

He grew up in the vicinity of Seattle, and it was mentioned that the whole area is a little weird anyway, the Pacific Northwest...

PacNorWest Trilogy: Part 2-Jefferson State

If the last entry was about a new country, this one is in the same vein but with a smaller scope, and closer to home.

After the Louisiana Purchase, President Jefferson mentioned that it would make sense (to him) if the land around the pacific coast unified and called itself the Republic of the Pacific, possibly suggesting a name for something he figured would eventually happen naturally.

Cut to the late nineteen-thirties: while talk on the east coast of the US is about "What to do with this jerk Adolf", thirty-two-hundred miles away talk is heated but different. Dignitaries are convinced secession is the only way. High ranking county officials are in agreement and the lawyers have found a loophole in the US Constitution that allows them to begin the paperwork. Everyone in the area is tired of being jerked around by not just one, but two capitals. The first serious attempt to change the outlines of two states and create a third was a few weeks away from discussion on the Senate floor when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The movement hasn't had that strength since...

The two capitals I refer to are Salem and Sacramento, the area that was going to call itself the state of Jefferson is currently counties in southern Oregon and northern California, and the name--Jefferson--was the result of a contest, but the inspiration is believed to come from Jefferson's comments about the Republic of the Pacific and the fact he has no state named after him.

Here's a prospective flag and state outline.





The two Xs represent the "dual double-crosses" from the state capitals of Sac and Salem. That cracks me up...should it? As you can see, Tehama County is safely tucked away here as well. (Tehama County is where Mill Creek and our cabin reside.)

Another spot to claim...and they sell tiny flag-patches, which is neat if you collect those things...

PacNorWest Trilogy: Part 1-Cascadia

Something sparked my interest in what will turn out to be three posts on this blog.

Around Texas anyway one hears plenty of idiotic blathering about tea-bagging (wow, seriously, those republicans really needed just fifteen seconds on Urban Dictionary to choose a new name for their movement, right?) and secession that the fact there's a different and older secessionist movement going on in a different area of North America might get obscured.

And I'm not talking about Quebec, which is getting closer and closer to dissolving their ties with Canada.

But Canada is involved.



This is one of the many flags of the prospective Republic of Cascadia, named for the backbone of the region, the Cascade Mountain Range. The most conservative outlines of Cascadia's borders always seem to include Oregon, Washington State, and British Columbia, and more generous outlines contain northern Californian counties as well as portions of Idaho, Montana, Yukon and southern Alaska.

I believe, from what I've read, that this secessionist movement is far less vitriolic and partisan than some of the others. The folks who support it feel that society from Eureka to Vancouver to Missoula is closer to itself that anything really American or Canadian, even if the area is populated by ostensibly Americans and Canadians. Supporters also like to mention that with both Boeing and Microsoft nestled deep in Cascadia, and with the flourishing high-tech industry, the mineral deposits, and the timber, Cascadia would be a world player. If the area was it's own country, it'd have the world's 20th largest economy (California alone would have the fifth largest).

Tehama County was included on one map, so I felt that I could say I had a connection to (at least) Southern Cascadia ("It's not northern California, it southern Cascadia!").

In any case, if the Republic of Cascadia were successful in secession (never happen), it could rank as one of the most beautiful countries on earth.

Thirty-Five Hours in Louisiana

While Corrie was working in Guatemala building houses, I somehow got two days off in a row, and decided to visit Tony in Louisiana. It was the kind of trip that only we could put together.

I left directly after work, around 1:30 in the morning, still wearing my scrubs. I got pulled over at 3:30 by a THP and given an "Official Warning" about my intermittently working license plate light (no fine; pretty cool). I made it to Tony's before seven and immediately crashed (still wearing my scrubs).

We both sorta woke up around noon, and found some cool nature stuff to occupy us for the day. There is quite an array of bird sanctuaries, nature trails, official preserves and the like that surprises someone researching the topic on a lappy. Even more so if you have experience driving and walking around the area, since it doesn't really strike you as that beautiful or interesting.

A wetland ecosystem--swampy marsh--may be an incredible hotbed of critters and such, but there aren't any trees or mountains, and barely anyplace to walk. But, aha, but once you get out into it, on that rare spot where you can walk, well, your tune might change.

Out on that lonely spit of packed-down gravel on loam, the wind a constant element, the rustling reedy grass adds to the singing cicadas and you become part of it.

Tony and I left the path for a moment (we couldn't believe it was as short as it turned out to be) and walked a tiny distance to a "beach". The body of water that the Blue Goose nature trail exists on is called a lake, at at the spot I'm describing, tiny waves were lapping up onto a pile of oyster-shells that constituted the beginning of dry-land. It was all pretty crazy.

We had a few beers that night, pushed Tony's car to an honest mechanic down the street, went on a walk of the town, and both of us woke up the next morning mysteriously covered in mud...well, not exactly, but it sounds funnier that way.

We ate breakfast at a diner in Lake Charles, watched a movie, and I headed home.

If anyone has the ability or memory, see what Steve Harvey says about "white people have wonderful weekends"

SXSW-Barback POV

Just in case, "POV" means "point of view".

As I mentioned earlier, South-by-Southwest is an internationally known music and film festival that rolls through Austin usually in mid-March, and the city is inundated with hipsters. And here I thought Brooklyn was lousy with hipsters...sheesh...

The single-day or multi-day passes are financially a little out of my league, but since I don't know new music really at all, the fact that hipsters priced working stiffs like me out doesn't really bother me (having a car with a radio and only one speaker means I've rediscovered radio, and my favorite station plays "oldies"--equal parts Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Zeppelin, and Pink Floyd).

While I may be a square when it comes to music, I would have looked into the film events a little closer had I any nights off during the festival. In fact, I did have a night off, but I spent it working as a barback at a bar called the Rusty Spur. The Spur is, on any given non-SXSW night, one of Austin's gay bars, and the night I worked the managers were scrambling to hide a poster that was missed in the week-long effort to hetero the place up. The poster was a collage of pornographic scenes, with the explicit stuff artfully subtracted, and the twice repeated phrase "Are you a pitcher or a catcher?" glued over like a header and footer in seventies-style font. It was in a urinal and had gone unnoticed.

During SXSW, every bar is straight.

Working that night kinda zoomed by in a loud blur of moving from venue to venue picking up glasses and sweeping up butts, replenishing beer and liquor and taking out garbage. The Rusty Spur as a bar has two sides separated by a wall, and connected by a large back patio area with its own bar, so as a venue, they were able to have three acts going simultaneously. Until it got too crowded, you could just walk around from inside to inside through the outdoor area, and every time I went that way, among the constant cloud of tobacco smoke that drifted over the zone permeated the thick smell of ganja, as people were blazing joints regularly without apparent fear of repercussions. It almost made me miss it. Almost.

Money-wise, I would have been better off going to work and picking up the overtime that was offered, but this was about more than that. I wouldn't have seen any music in that case, and this way, I got paid for being around music.

But, while the only band I remember--Shinobi Ninja--was pretty cool, it's not like I got to watch anything. Shinobi though had an interesting hip-hop/funk/rock/soul thing happening, and were quite entertaining. The next night I came and helped Corrie close down the place (I worked for one day, she worked for the next three) and the last band that night sounded like Led Zeppelin, but was a jam band, and the musicians were all wild-gray-haired-and-bearded Japanese guys. Seriously, a circle of gray hair surrounded their face in a wild aura, and they sounded like Godzilla ate the Dead and Zeppelin, absorbed their music abilities, then shrunk to human form. I'd never seen anything like it. Nobody who worked at the Spur even knew who they were.

That's how it is at venues.

One final quick note about hipsters...listening to my radio station through my one speaker I heard the jockey mention a theory he has concerning hipsters: he said, out there there are musicians, who are basically lazy, disheveled artists, who wear a certain kind of clothing (usually a rock and roll staple, like tight jeans), and make music. This music becomes loved by hipsters, your educated and intellectual young people with too much money, who spend gobs of their money on looking disheveled, poor, lazy, and, probably most importantly, on the music they love--on downloads and actual physical cds and records, helping along the industry, keeping bands alive, discovering other bands, and making things like the SXSW festival possible. So that's not so bad, I guess.

Happy Birthday to me...

Today marks my thirty-first birthday.

My brother left me a nice long message last year, my favorite line of which was, "Now you're thirty years closer to death." Classic.

After twenty-three everything just flies by.

I think I started this blog on the 8th of April last year, so I've been at it for a year, but not quite hitting my goal of 365 posts in a calendar year (only 250+).

Today Corrie and I are heading to the UT vs Kansas baseball game, which should be cool, since I haven't really had a chance to check out campus (large enough to support an amount of students that eclipses the amount of people in San Luis), and I like baseball.

I'm still working on getting some things up here, so for my regular readers, please bear with me.

No Foolin': Happy Birthday Tony!

April 1st marks the classic April Fool's Day "holiday", a day when for me the idea of pranks always seemed cooler than actually doing anything. I would get caught up in trying to plan out elaborate pranks to pull on the entirety of Lichen Elementary, but of course that kind of nonsense would take months of planning and of course I would start thinking about it while walking to school on April Fool's Day, not many people were ever really pranked by me.

But since I met Anthony Formosa April 1st has taken on a new meaning, as 4/1 is the birthday of my friend Tony. Tony is one of me best friends, a finalist for my best-man, and in some strange ways I used to feel like he was a Sicilian version of me, or I was an Irish version of him.

Entire conversations we would have while working at Hudson's were conducted in a mumbly sound-blur, understood by probably only the two of us and our roommate Ryan in the entire world. Our boss Dave would just shake his head, "I couldn't understand a single damn word..."

Happy Birthday Tony! Maybe next time I'll allot more time to this kind of entry and come up with a better anecdote...

Love you, bro.