Thursday, March 30, 2006

it's been a minute...

bolthouse farms perfectly protein mocha cappuccino. get it.

i've not been around much lately, but it's not like anyone really reads this on the regular anyhow, so i don't feel that bad. it's finally getting warmer out and this makes taking the dog out at 6AM not such a terrible thing.
work is stupid, so we shall dispense with any further mention.
my son (finally) got his own computer so i have mine all to myself. now i can find & trash all his hidden porn stuff!! haha. i bet he DOES have some, too. he's going to be 21 in june - not that that has anything to do with him downloading porn, but it just sorta hit me. thank god i'm not getting any older. (c'mon, play along, dammit!)
i watched the Situation Room with wolf blitzer last night. his guests were lou dobbs and jorge ramos (of telemundo) and they were squaring off about the proposed immigration bills by the senate and the house. nothing was actually said because the two were so antagonistic towards one another that all that happened was interrupted yelling. so much for a calm debate about important issues . then i watched the chapelle show and that was WAY more entertaining. i have a list of books but i'm too lazy to list them right now. i will recommend christopher moore's newest book called A Dirty Job - A Novel. as always it was HI-larious and seriously fun.

well, time to feed el perro.
more later...



i just saw this this morning and couldn't stop laughing. so read and enjoy! Aussie thieves try to steal a koala to sell for drug money

Saturday, March 11, 2006

books and reunions

1. italo svevo’s Confessions of Zeno
2. hartley goodweather’s DreadfulWater Shows Up
3. barry crimmins’s Never Shake Hands with a War Criminal
4. luis alberto urrea’s By the Lake of Sleeping Children
5. wally lamb’s Couldn’t Keep it to Myself
6. jason deparle’s American Dream: 3 Women, 10 Kids, and a Nation’s Drive to End Welfare
7. donovan webster’s The Burma Road
8. jonathan shay’s Achilles in Vietnam
9. roger bonair-agard, stephen colman, guy lecharles gonzalez, alix olson and lynne procope’s Burning Down the House
10. jonathan lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude


so my trip to sarasota (fla) to visit my father after 10 years of not seeing him. yeah. all in all a good trip. he picked me up from the tampa airport, and since i hadn’t seen him in so long, i was really worried that i’d walk right by him. and guess what? i would have had he not said my name. the years have shortened him! he used to be 5’11 or so and now – my height. 5’7. and his eye disease – the same one onassis had – changed the shape of his face a bit, although as soon as i really looked at him he was my father the way i remembered him. i stayed at his house, which is a very nice 2 bedroom condo. nice grounds, nice pool. he is the president of the tenant’s association, so he screens potential applicants – you can rent or buy a place – i think he’s stacked the deck with attractive younger people – especially women –
some things never change, i guess, even when you’re 73. we went out to chili’s for a quick dinner and then came back and talked the night away. i wanted to know more about the history of my family and the relationships that formed my childhood. he had plenty of stories. he was always a good storyteller. it’s quite amazing how many names he remembers from the past and instances that barely made a blip on my radar screen. he kept asking if i remembered this or that and i had to say no to a fair amount of them. my memory has these blank spaces and doesn’t become a solid bunch of recollections until year 11 for me. anyhow, we had a good talk, ate chocolate ice cream and cookies and called it a night at around 1:30am. i got into bed to read. i put my headphones on – i hadn’t listened to any music all night and that’s a rare thing – the orisha’s were calling me – and i settled into luis alberto urrea’s 2nd book about life in tijuana. when out of the corner of my eye i sense movement. now i know florida is big on insects. BIG insects, so i thought it was a june bug or some other obnoxious flying, walking, creepy thing. nope. i was wrong. it was a gi-normous brown fuzzy tarantula looking spider. i don’t remember breathing. just slipping out of bed, tip-toeing to where my shoes were, creeping like a ninja to where it was and whacking the shit out of it with the shoe. my NEW shoe. well, i hadn’t anticipated the guts of the thing to be as...substantial as they were. i just ruined my father’s beige carpet. shit. i slipped out of the room – thankfully he seemed to be asleep – went into the kitchen and found (what luck) and canister of resolve carpet cleaner. spider guts obliterated from said carpet. whew! saturday we were having brunch at a great place (i was assured) called The Boathouse at the Hiatt hotel with my cousin Mark. really lovely. good food too. Mark never showed. asshole. i haven’t seen the man in a zillion years – probably since his bar mitzvah - he’s 50 now -. then i got to drive the camaro over to Longboat Key which is where all the people with money (and there are A LOT of those) hang out. then out to Siesta Key which is where all the artist’s hang out. which Key did i like better? you don’t even have to ask. Siesta is a beautiful little hamlet. walked on the beach awhile – dad stayed near the bar – he doesn’t drink anymore though – he just feels more comfortable there i guess. dinner was at a fancy italian restaurant – cafe baci, i think. nice place. more talk. no more spiders. back to tampa airport sunday for my 12:30pm flight home. next time around, he’s going to come here and visit.

well, i guess that’s it. tomorrow is the orchid show at the Botannical Gardens.