Friday Night and other nonsense.

FRIDAY NIGHT
My wife and I went out for sushi and it was my first time. While I admittedly chickened out and had a “traditional” dinner, I nonetheless tried my wife's sushi (if you know what I'm saying) and it was really, really good. What’s more, I used chopsticks for the duration of the meal (with a “backup” fork handy, just in case), and though it was a struggle and my wife will probably be ashamed to be seen there with me again, I still managed to eat every scrap of food using just two sticks.

We capped it off at Starbucks, each having a coffee with steamed milk. This is a drink we enjoy periodically to remind us of our trip to San Francisco a couple years ago. We drank coffee at a café called Café Trieste which was the best part of our trip. That trip might very well be deemed a “bust” because nearly everything we attempted went awry; it didn’t feel like a vacation. In hindsight, it struck us that the reason it felt rather ordinary was because we could picture ourselves living there.

We may well become Californians someday after I finish college. In the meantime we’ll continue drinking coffee with steamed milk and pretend.

ORIGINS
One day I care about Origins/Evolution/Creation/Intelligent Design, the next I don’t. I do know damned well that people reading this don’t care a whit about my incessant rants wondering “Why are we here?” Most of you (rightly) say "We are here, just deal with it." I think my best course of action will be to hold my tongue until I finish two books. The first is the one I’ve been reading called “The Blind Watchmaker” by Richard Dawkins, and yesterday I picked up a used (but pristine) copy of “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin. Please don’t tell my mom, because she believes the only book on Origins a person needs is the Bible. My life would be much easier if I believed the same.

SCORE
At the same used book store we stumbled across a couple of real gems. There were stacks and stacks of Life Magazines arranged by year and we are now the proud owners of the following issues:

May 12, 1967: The cover features the banner headline “In Cold Blood is filmed on scene of the crime: Nightmare Revisited.” The photograph is of author Truman Capote standing alongside the two actors who portrayed the murderers of the Clutter family in the original film adaptation of “In Cold Blood.” My wife and I love the recent movie made about the subject and thus this magazine was a wonderful find, however that’s not the irony: What is terribly ironic is that one of the actors pictured is none other than Robert Blake, best-known as television’s Baretta and as real-life’s “White O.J.,” a clumsy but charmed wife-murderer.

When we buy our house—hopefully this fall, cross your fingers—we’re hoping to dedicate a small room to memorabilia and this will be proudly displayed.

August 1, 1969: The photograph depicts a handsome, impeccably well-dressed, clearly well-to-do young man gazing wistfully towards the water at Hyannis Port. The man? Teddy Kennedy. The subject? “The Fateful Turn for Ted Kennedy: Grave questions about his midnight car accident.” That’s right; we got the Chappaquiddick edition of Life Magazine.

Last night I turned to my wife and said “We may have just found ourselves a hobby.” It’s such an awesome feeling holding a piece of history in your hands; not that the magazines themselves are historical, but they’re a tangible record of the times and it’s a humbling—and almost eerie—feeling to thumb through the pages.

There are numerous advertisements in the magazines, by the way, that feature tear-off cards to purchase products. As a gag I’m considering filling out the Life Magazine subscription card from 1967—25 weeks for $2.95—just to see if they honor the price. There is no expiration date.

LOSS OF A LIFETIME
In the same vein as above, once I was antique shopping in Stillwater, Minnesota and stumbled upon a Time Magazine on which Charles Schulz, creator of Peanuts and my hero, was proclaimed “Man of the Year.” I passed it up, probably because it cost more than Mr. Frugal was willing to pay; likely a staggering sum of ten dollars or so.

Anyway, the next week he died and I wanted to vomit. Methinks the price probably went up a bit after that.

IS THERE A GOD OR MERELY COINCIDENCE?
Don’t worry. This is NOT an Origins rant!

My pal Tu wrote about pot smoking yesterday and it got me thinking about one of the times in my life (there have been two or three) when either the existence of God was graphically illustrated or I experienced very improbable coincidences.

One of those times was during my band daze (sic) in Lincoln, Nebraska. I was 19 years old and playing a sorority party in the basement of a hotel. It was as exciting as it sounds; for some reason, back in the late 80’s, fraternity and sorority parties were big business for bands. We would show up, play a couple hours’ worth of brutal punk rock songs no one but us had heard before, and the frat boys and sorority girls would gingerly sip beer and then disappear to propagate in the rooms upstairs.

Anyway, this gig was particularly depressing. The crowd was dead and the room was uninspiring; it was nothing more than a small, gray room normally used for businesspeople to discuss pie charts and workload projections. This was before the days of PowerPoint, so before we showed up the most exciting thing to occur there was likely an overhead projector presentation.

In-between sets we went to the parking ramp where the drummer fashioned a bong out of an empty Coke can. The drummer’s name was Pat and he was the MacGyver of marijuana; he could figure out a way to toke up under any circumstances. Pat could have been snorkeling along the Great Barrier Reef and still managed to stay high.

Anyway, we smoked some pot which was not unheard of in my life then. I didn’t smoke pot regularly by any stretch. I can say a couple things about my drug experiences and you can believe them or not. First, I never purchased pot: I always relied on the generosity of friends (and sometimes strangers, which was stupid). Second, I didn't do it often; there were no weekends of pot-fueled debauchery written in pen in my Day Planner. Once in a blue moon I would enjoy a joint or a bong with friends, but very rarely. Finally, I never got much out of pot. Try as I might, going so far as to suck on the bong ‘til the smoke was so thick it could be sliced with a Ginsu knife, I never really felt “high.” I loved the smell though, so I did it anyway.

The night of this gig the effects of the marijuana seemed to be no different. We returned to the dank room and began playing again. The first song of the set was “Trash” by the New York Dolls, and about midway through the song I started feeling…funny. My heart began racing, my brain suddenly became extremely paranoid, and the lights and sounds around me became exaggerated; every sound deafening, each light blinding. I felt I was losing my mind and I knew that I couldn’t finish the song, let alone the whole set, without things becoming embarrassing for me and my musical comrades.

I recall very vividly that during my last second of coherence, I silently prayed the following:

"God, please get me out of this and I will never smoke pot again.”

And a circuit breaker blew.

Yes, at that precise moment, the breaker supplying electricity to our amps and P.A. system blew leaving us in silence. Not in darkness, mind you; the only power to be lost was that fueling our music.

I ran from the room into the parking lot and gulped in fresh air (as fresh as air could be on a sub-sub-level of a parking garage). Power was restored and I managed to regain enough composure to return to the stage and finish the night though I remember very little about it. The next day, a Sunday, I remember sitting on a recliner in the basement of my parents’ home feeling lethargic, and I was scared to death at the fact that my legs underwent periodic paralysis throughout the day. It’s as if the nerves sending signals from my brain to my extremities had been damaged.

Thankfully I regained full use of my limbs and learned later that the pot in question may very well have been laced with Angel Dust; an ironically named substance. If that’s what angels are smoking, hopefully I’ll spend the afterlife in Hell playing Bridge with the demons.

I’ve had opportunities—some very recent—to indulge in pot-smoking again and in all honesty it was tempting. As I mentioned, even though I never really got the “buzz,” I love the smell. However, I remember that vow I made not to touch the stuff again “If you get me out of this,” and whether I made that promise to a Higher Power or the laws of random chance, nonetheless someone or something got me out of a hell of a bind and now I in turn feel bound by that promise.