happy birthday dear blog

home alone, really

welcome to a slice of rare life. hold on while i pinch myself to see if this is indeed a moment in real time and space.

set the scene? sure...

radiohead's in rainbows blares from the bose ipod dock in a dark corner of the room. thom yorke's ethereal wails deliver an ironic sense of hope to the place. a faint trail of smoke lingers. RG sits at the table in the dimly lit dining room, the glow of the laptop - meiwah's sushi page on the screen - causes him to squint slightly, taddling on the modest beginnings of crow's feet in the corners of his eyes, and he's contemplating a cigarette. earlier he spotted an old pack of smokes on a shelf in the basement. god knows how old they are?

scattered about the stainless steel tabletop are the following, in no particular order:

• work files on some media company ceo RG's meeting tomorrow AM
• phones - cell and land line
• amex card
• half glass of red wine - debating whether 1/2 empty or 1/2 full
• diet coke can given a makeover, now a makeshift device
• 3 lighters, 2 of which are dead
• nalgene bottle of water, full
• netflix dvds - halloween (rob zombie remake), live free or die hard, 30 days of night
• paste magazine

missing from this picture are wifey and kids, all swayze on this particular night. mommy and cole are in FLA, and the jackal is doing a PJ party at the nanny's.

terrible, ruby-red welt on his right arm, a hell of a pinch. he looks around the room to verify.

yes - it's true. he's home alone (and apparently referring to himself in the 3rd person tonight). the netflix selection might have given away the fact that he premeditated this.

of course he misses them terribly. still, how many times in his lifetime (at least the next 20 years) will he have the entire house alone with zero responsibility?

delivery guy at the door, time to get after it. probably the toughest question he might face tonight is over which flick to watch first. life's hard.

the healing power of laughter

as i mentioned yesterday, i've basically been residing under a rock with a man cold. probably everyone has already seen these videos, but i'm posting them anyway. i can attest to the healing power of laughter after watching these. i'll take any remedy i can get.

first - sarah silverman's confession to jimmy kimmel that she's fucking matt damon:



then - kimmel's revenge. turns out he's fucking ben affleck. ben's best acting job in years...

sick and tired of being sick and tired

for the past two weeks i've felt like a cast member in one of george romero's zombie flicks. not one of those bullshit fast zombies you find in more recent stabs at the genre. (i still can't believe the remake of romero's dawn of the dead pushed fast zombies on us.) no, whatever the hell knocked me out left me listless and worthless. i was a tried and true slow-ass zombie who more than once wished some hero would deliver me a fatal head shot and cue the closing credits.

in the beginning of what i often felt was my end, my wife and i sort of laughed it off. she even posted a video clip to poke some fun. incidentally (for those of you who don't enjoy zombie flicks and never find yourself, i don't know, daydreaming about being perched in your attic window with a high powered rifle, eating tuna straight from a can, and staving off a charge of walking dead with bullets to the brain), the british actor in that clip, ed frost, plays the hysterical sidekick in shaun of the dead -- a fantastic zombie spoof that happens to remain true to the slow zombie theme.

as time passed and one week of illness gave way to a second, it became a real drag. suddenly i was half-assing every aspect of my life -- work, parenting, being a husband. to say i half-assed blogging would be an understatement. i straight up bailed on this. not a critical component of my life though, so no regrets. i started thinking about a post from last year in which i debated my ability to care for my sick spouse, and wondered if the same thoughts might be going through wifey's head. she's extremely nurturing and grounded, so i doubt it. if she did though, i would not blame her.

it appears that i am on the mend now, though i shiver superstitiously just typing such a bold statement. a week ago i thought i was better then found myself on the floor with muscle aches and confusion over the whereabouts of the truck that ran me over. at least i am on antibiotics now with a round of steroids waiting in the wings in case i need the reinforcements. the doctor told me last week i might have a case of walking pneumonia. good times..

i have a big guys' weekend coming up, so i'm determined to be healthy. mommy and cole are headed to FLA for a long weekend with family and to attend a wedding for one of her old friends. that means the jackal and i are going to be on the loose, infecting the nation's capital with our good old smarmy ways. fast zombies won't have shit on us.

so, got any plans after the match?

not the highest quality video, to be sure, but the amy winehouse celebration conveys well...

jocking brady, again

i think my criticism of tom brady came off as too bitter yesterday so i figured i'd waste more virtual space with some sort of follow-up piece. i caught an article by jemele hill that brought me back to this topic. it was an interesting take on what i broached yesterday and intriguing to hear a woman's perspective. the fact that she's a sports journalist in a field dominated by men with yellow armpits, beef jerky breath, and fantasies of channeling hunter s. thompson is not lost on me.

so, brady...clearly i don't know the cat, so i can't give any real account as to the kind of guy he is. for all i know, he could be a contagious person who you can't get enough of. as a sports fan, i am tired of him for the same reason people tired of aikman and the dallas cowboys in the 90s -- they win so much that it becomes a bore to watch, but i know that's sort of shallow. as a father, i'm just not so impressed by him due to the fact that he gets a pass for having no relationship with his kid just because he can read a defense or loft air balls to randy moss. sure, on some levels i envy the level of success and accomplishment the guy has attained. who wouldn't? but when i soak up my kids and drizzle occasional tears of joy over the fact that they are in my life, i feel like maybe the guy is short-changing himself.

my father evaporated from my life when i was around 10 years old. he hasn't a clue as to where i am or what's happening with me. it's part of my fabric, and at this stage i would not alter that back story even slightly. to do so would be to redefine who i am, to alter the hue and fit of my own skin. no thanks...the skin fits just fine and i can't afford an exorbitant shrink bill now that i have college funds to build up. still, now that i have kids, i can't even begin to fathom some point in my life where i would not know a single thing about either of my kids. it's incomprehensible, yet it happens.

the good thing is that we're all humans and with that comes hope. sometimes we get the chance to alter the course of time and space to make things right. i suspect tom brady will do that somewhere down the line.

in the meantime, let's gooooooooooo giaaaaants!!!!

confessions of a convalescent mind

greetings from mount percocet. that's where i've spent the last 4 days, shirking responsibility for my words and actions. hernia surgery turned out to be a bigger bitch than i expected, but i think i'm almost out of the woods in terms of recovery. in terms of fogged mind, however, one foot remains in the woods, which is not so bad.

compared to how i usually spend this very same weekend, or for at least the past five years, the situation could not have been more different. usually this weekend i'm up to my waist in fresh utah powder, an ear-to-ear grin on my wind-burned face, as i bomb snowbird's mineral basin. the closest i've gotten to that passion is watching the winter x games on espn. i'm hitting mount snow in vermont with some friends in 6 weeks just to get some turns in and to validate my toleration of yet another winter. it should be a good test for my bionic groin.

in the meantime, here are a few blurred snippets of what i can remember from the experience...

violation - i woke up from surgery to discover that my pubes had been shaved. i guess i should have figured this would happen since i knew they'd be operating in my downtown area, but it still threw me off when i first noticed it. then i got to thinking - that has to fall on the list of world's worst jobs, right? think about if you punched a clock each day (maybe you even got great 401k benefits for it) and spent your day shaving pubes. someone's gotta do it...

threat of violation (unrealized, thank god) - my mother-in-law came to town this weekend to see the baby and to assist with managing the house while was out of commission. potential gross-out alert...the nurses told me that percocet and other pain killing narcotics can cause constipation. as someone who carries around a gigantic bag of bathroom issues on his back, this is the last thing i needed to hear. that first night, high as hell, i remember sharing this with wifey and her mom. it was probably at some inappropriate time. in fact, i am sure it was during dinner. well, my mother-in-law is a nurse, so she already knew this and suggested to my wife, right in front of me, that we might want to give him an enema tomorrow. this did not happen in the end...whew!

life imitating what? - wifey equipped me with a couple of trashy magazines, people and us, which i eventually consumed in small doses. what deep words of wisdom did a glean? let's see. oh, trista lost 30 pounds in 5 months after giving birth and feels sexy again. thank jesus because i was losing so much fucking sleep over this. i guess the mags are running out of new ways to rephrase the same concept of brittney being fucked up, so now they're enticing us with exclusives on irrelevant reality television stars losing pregnancy weight. could there be any more delicious news than this?

bunch of brady - i totally bought into the superbowl hype machine. i'm embarrassed to admit how much of this recycled and sensationalized content i have absorbed via the internet and several sports channels the past few days. the following is going to sound self-righteous, but i don't care. this hit me when i was putting the jackal to bed...brushing errant strands of hair from his forehead, planting kisses on him, and telling him i love him so much. i am sick of tom brady and how the media jocks him and the patriots. aside from the fact that they have won enough and that their bit is tired, i suppose i have a bit of an issue with that guy and perhaps an even deeper issue with the machine that promotes him as this golden boy. for me it boils down to his relationship, or lack thereof, with his son. (in case you live under a rock, brady left bridget moynihan to be with gisele bundchen. moynihan had a baby boy, brady's, not too long after, and she's raising the kid on her own...) at the end of the day, no matter how many super bowl rings he rocks, no matter how many quarterback records he holds, and no matter how often he makes sweet country love to gisele, he still has nada with his estranged baby boy. for someone with what would seem like an overflowing cup, it looks kind of empty to me. but don't expect that side of his story to get much ink. the other day, watching a press conference with him, i wondered if any reporter in the room would get the balls to broach the topic. i think i dozed off at some point, but i doubt anyone did.

house call - i think it was sometime saturday morning that my cell phone rang, and the number did not register in my phone book. since i felt like a feather, i rolled the dice and answered. surprisingly i heard my psychologist on the other end of the line. (back story: he and i had played some phone tag over the previous few weeks of the new year in an attempt to arrange a sit-down. basically i want a mental/emotional check-up before committing to certain paths this year and had yet to nail down a date.) here's how it went:

hello?

RG, it's doctor lincoln.

hey there.

how are you?

i'm high on percocet. you?

oh, why is that? (voice smacks of real concern)

i had surgery the other day. nothing to worry about.

good, because i've heard some stories.

i bet. (giggle...almost lose control)

yeah, so be careful with that.

no problem. i don't really like it. (lying...almost giggle again)

that's good. (seeing through the lie) so when can we get together?