Masuimi Max. Grabbing my bum.

*sigh*

Holymotherfuck!

Tenacious D just threw me a fansign. Somebody pinch me.

That's right. I'm braggin'...

Weeeeeeeeeeeee!



That's my Evangenital guitarist Brettsky hookin' it up with his girl. God bless this land. I love LA.

There will be sweet dreams tonight!

Holy craps, am I ever sick.

on Sunday the scourge was cast upon me.

after a week of profound - yet jolly - overextension, I crashed hard on Saturday night, opting to stay in for the evening and watch a couple of Orpheus-themed films, by Robert Wilson and Cocteau. In the morning, all was lost. The first time I threw up was the worst, as I had nothing in my stomach, so it was all dry heaving and bile.

I had a mild fever, kept puking periodically throughout the day, terrible cough, and could only find respite when under the coma-inducing effects of NyQuil.

there were so many things I had intended to blog about last week, and alas, the week was too busy, and then the season of the sickness was back upon me.

some of the past weeks events included:
- seeing the midnight movie of King Kong with Brettsky and Sunny Jim.
- Sunny Jim getting his Toyota Prius Hybrid
- attending the Trainwreck show at the Scene in Glendale and getting the official introduction to Kyle Gass, of Tenacious D fame.... Which reminds me, I need to inform KevSlider of this.

however, I am sick, and it is difficult to relay any of this information with anything resembling enthusiasm.

jimmy's christmas present finally got here, right after myself and amazon.com became convinced it was lost and they gave me a refund. Now I am in the moral quandary... Do I tell them it came? OF COURSE I DO!

don't be silly.

What in the world? WHAT in the WORLD? What in the WORLD is THAT?

I don't know. I'm tired.

I am so tired I feel all prickly and blue. My voice is crackling (I like that part)... I sound all smokey and seductive. Or sick. I suppose it's all in how you feel about crackly voices.

Even though I'm very tired, work is very insane, and I have a rehearsal tonight and work early in the morning, I am STILL going to see the midnight showing debut edition of the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA tonight with my main man of the moment, Jimmy Big Toes Supreme.

All sorts of shit is shaking loose in the life of J. Crockett, my friends. I've been in a weird, weird rinse cycle for a few seasons, and now I'm finally coming through the cleaners. Something like that. I don't really know what in the heck is going on anymore, and somehow I choose to think that is a good thing.

I know that I play in this band, I live with this man, I'm directing a play, I'll write books some day, I like to eat peaches, I give great speeches, I'm staying in school, I think skateboarding is cool, in the winter I get cold, and my old cheese grows mold.

My back is very sore. My shoulder still hurts. Computers are everywhere. I thought that I might be radiating myself when I rested my weary head against the microwave oven whilst making my pre-packaged lunch from the fine folks at Tasty Bite nice and warm.

It is late. I'm still at work. It's time to go.

There is so much love in my heart, and so much good going on right now. Tranny's are skateboarding on Sunset Boulevard, my friends. All is well! All is WELL!

Hi there everybody, whomever you may be.

How are you? How are you feeling?

Are you feeling free and breezy, or stuffed up and stuck?

Do you believe in a world of infinite possibilities, or is the daily grind tethering your mind to a limited vision of "good enough"?

Let's fly away together. Actually, fuck flying away... let's fly right here. Let's fly through the aisles of the grocery stores. Through the traffic. Through our days at work.

Let's smile big smiles and cry big tears. Let's point at the people who hurt our feelings and yell "OUCH!" in the moment, rather than when we get home or 10 weeks later.

Let us dance through our days. Let us move, feel, speak, and look around with ease. With ease!

Let us play, motherfuckers. Let us play.

Whatever happened to play?

My momma told me, "there is absolutely nothing frivolous about play."

God bless that wise woman.

Let us no longer sit in uncomfortable rooms filled with worry, suspicion, and fear. Let us smile in the teeth of the lie. Move forward through the mulch of decay.

As that fabulous bastard Unamuno said:

If you come across a liar shout in his face: Liar! And forward!
If you meet a thief shout at him: Thief! And forward!
And if you come across someone who talks nonsense, someone everybody listens to speechless, shout at them: Fools! And forward!
Always forward!

The time has come for action and more action. No longer must we crumple under the weight of a thought that does not serve us. No longer must we see the world which is put before our eyes. There is something above, beyond, through, inside, in front of, permeating, sublimating, transubstantiating all of this. All of me. All of you.

Happy, joyous and free.
Anything else is the lie.
Choose.

Marvin Gaye said it and I'll say it again... What's going on?

What's going on?

I don't know. I've been a bit o the mess lately. Just hurting. Not just sissy hurting, either. Bones hurting, muscles hurting, head hurting, hands hurting, chest hurting. Aches and pangs.

Pain is the touchstone of growth and change gives me the willies, both ways: good and bad. I'm very excited about all the new developments, but I'm all tired and sore so I can necessarily show it, or feel it half the time.

I talked to my sister on the phone this morning and I rarely do that. She's out in North Carolina living in a Yert with her 40+ year old boyfriend who has no job, fears people, and smokes pot all the time. He's an artist. So is she, however, she has been working double shifts as a waitress for the past 5 years to support the both of them. The whole relationship started out on a bad karmic note, in my opinion, as part of his "wooing package" was the lofty promise of a very, very rich grandfather of his dying soon and leaving them buckets of ducets.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your moral fiber, the Grandfather is still going strong and steady, showing no signs of kicking the proverbial bucket anytime soon. My sister, in the meantime, is spot in the center of a mini mid-life crisis, wondering just what the hell she's gotten herself into.

Now is the time to pray for the salvation of her soul, my friends, for she is right smack in the middle of the fence as far as what sort of soul she may turn out to be after all. Part of her is filled with idealistic cravings to save some thing that she calls "the world" from a grave peril that she sees going down all around. The other part of her, perverted by years of serving the extremely rich and incredibly rude of North Carolina, feels that if they can not be beaten, they must be joined.

She's considering starting law school. Anything to get the money. She said something about Donald Rumsfeld being the major stockholder for the company producing the cure to the bird flu, and how he wasn't born a monster. She spoke of Hitler being an environmentalist and a vegetarian. The best of intentions. She was very angry and hurting in all the ways, sissy and non.

I, for my part, have been working hard to neither damn nor deify what the O'Jays so smoothly called the Almighty Dollar.

In other news, I'm working on new methods of communication and new planes of intimacy with the Significant Other, considering going to hypnotherapy (expect a full report on that one!), and will be doing my first session with a "prayer therapist" and "metaphysical counselor" this weekend. I suspect that it may be either a)an incredible and spiritually enlightened experience, or b)totally give me the jeebs.

Whatever way the cookie crumbles, I shall be back here soon enough, pouring out my soul excavations for you to mine for the nuggets of sweet somethings that can be applicable to your own search and experience mission.

That is my aim, and my aim is true.*

*actually, to be perfectly honest and more forthcoming than I ought, my AIM is actually "juliachrista" ;-)

Till then, I return to working on my Evangenitals' style cover of Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone.

Yeah, yeah, yeah... I'm not the first, of course. Who cares? It was a special request from Steve Diet Goedde (a big fan of the Genitals), and how the heck am I supposed to turn down a friggin' legend?

why don't you come out to the lava lounge tonight at midnight and let me make sweet love to you with my vocal chords?

all the info is here: www.evangenitals.com/calendar.html

i love you.
juli

The more I think about it, or don't think about it, the more I am convinced that we are all dragged down our particular paths, one way or another.

Back in the days of my youth, I lived in a place called St. Petersburg, Florida for a spell. Nearby in Tampa, Florida, USA there was a water park called Adventure Island. In this water park, there was a waterway that went round the whole thingamajig. All you had to do was get in, at any of the many available entry points, with or without a flotation device, and the current created by the multiple water jets would take you round the whole park. Swimming in the opposite direction was possible, albeit a pain in the arse. Especially for one so small as I was then.

Unlike the Adventure Island waterway, I don't know if it is actually possible to swim opposite the drag of life, as sometimes I think that even the supposed opposition we often feel, when willing our lives opposite the supposed flow, is part of the almighty drag. I doubt it is possible to know. I don't think I'm talking about destiny. I think I am talking about the amazing human ability of interpretation.

I know a guy who attributes meaning to everything. Every single goddamn thing. Every gesture, breath, hesitation, movement, occurrence, speck, fly, happening, newscast, event, non-event, plan, potentiality, and stain. MEANING.

Fascinating? Perhaps. Entertaining/engaging/mind occupying? Perhaps.

Useful? Lord only knows.

Me, I'm growing dumber everyday, I fear. Not sure if this is a good or bad thing. Not really thinking about it. Dumbness? Perhaps. Zen? Buddha only knows.

I had a friend once who called Gandhi "nigga Gandhi". I thought that was funny as hell. That guy got hooked on crystal meth and joined the army after his mom died to help him kick, spurred on by 9-11. He was one of the best musicians and funniest kids I knew. Now he has developed a real love of killing people and carrying a weapon, and refuses to take any job in which he doesn't get to carry a loaded pistol. Destiny? Perhaps. Interesting docu-biopic? To be sure.

In the end, my friend, all good things come round the bend.

The weather is getting me down.

I have a friend who loves this dreary, cold, gray weather. It makes her depressed, just like everybody else, and yet she claims to love this dreary, bland, blah, gray, poop, spittle, dribble, crappola weather. Does she truly love the weather? Perhaps. Does she love all sorts of things that make her sad and miserable? Perhaps. Is this destiny? Only nigga Gandhi knows.

Yesterday was our dear left handed genital Brett P. Lydacus Extremicus' Birthday, day of the natal passing into the reverse-void known as the material world. Welcome, Brett. Welcome some more.

Word on the streets was that he had a fine little joint-b-day shindig in a park in Pasadena, California, USA. EvanJunkie Alan also had a birthing round bout the same day-o-the-month as Brett, so they jointly celebrated and were celebrated, in that delightful reciprocity that comes with all kinds of parties focused around people and their achievements, be they living or doing.

So, I didn't go to the party. This was do to a working agreement that I have with my significant other, in which I record Saturday afternoon College Football whilst he works hard for his money. I then give him no indication of how the games went, and he watches them at night when he gets home. At first I thought this obsession with College Football was simply ridiculous, however, after watching yesterday's USC/Notre Dame game, my conversion to USC football enthusiasm is complete.

Having imbibed two Rockstar Energy Drinks during the game and consumed some spicy chicken wings, I was in a terrible state by the end. On the verge of crying, in shock, overly excited, heart racing, sick to my stomach, and screaming like a frightened monkey. Complete insanity.

If you saw the game, you know what I'm talking on. Whatever side you were rooting for, that was the single-most exciting and insane ending of any football game ever (I put that out there with my incredibly limited knowledge of football games past, of course, but holy crappants... That was intense!)

So here I am today. Feeling emotionally spent (I watched the game AGAIN with the SO when he got home, engaging myself emotionally once more, as if I'd never seen it), feeling kind of like an ass for not going to Brett's party (he did make the day at my Chuck E Cheese birthday celebration by bringing the THING crusher hands), and getting ready to go off to some meetings about all things theatrical, and then reporting to the rehearsal studio at 8 for the Evangenitals practice extra-ordinare.

I paid a guy $100 to take care of my lawn today. He's my neighbor, and has the single most cute and wondrous lawn care skills I have ever seen. Our lawn, on the other hand, was overgrown and hideous, with trash in the yard (from construction, etc) and some strange corn-like plants starting to sprout. Weeds were overtaking the front door. Madness. Though I know there are cheaper ways to conquer the mess, I was willing to pay the price of convenience (split the price of convenience, I should say, with Senor SO).

My dog is sleeping on the bed, and I'm going to leave him in the house even though nobody is home because it is raining and it's too cold and rainy to put him outside. He fell in the pool last night while we were watching the game. 5 minutes left in the fourth quarter, and David's sister starts screaming that the dog is in the pool. There he was, clinging to the side, splashing in the freezing water. Goddamn. What if he falls in when we're not here? Goddamn.

Time to fly. There's my jibba jabba. Mumbo jumbo.

Keep the faith, yo.
julio

i was just instant messaging with a friend of mine who is living in the basement of a house in Missouri, working on his graphic novel that we hope to make a feature film out of some day. he hasn't been getting out in the sunlight too much, and has been celibate for the past 16 months.

from where he's sitting, my life sounds like a shining shining success. what's funny is, a lot of folks think that, and on good days, i myself think that as well. what's also funny, is that i don't have enough money to put gas in my car or buy any food. tomorrow, however, is a new day. everything is going to be different tomorrow. why? because tomorrow is pay day.

i made brownies for my man this evening. i though it would be cool if he came home to brownies. unfortunately, i didn't really know what time he was coming home, and now they've been sitting in the oven "cooling" for almost two hours. i'm afraid they may be kind of hard. hard brownies, still, are better than no brownies, methinks.

i'm very excited about some upcoming theatrical ventures. it looks like i'm going to be collaborating with christine from smartgals.org on her christmas project, and in turn she's going to be the furies in my upcoming orpheus and eurydice piece at the 24th street theater.

i'm very excited about a lot of things, these days.

these days.

sometimes it feels like every other blog is an apology for not blogging enough. what a vicious circle!

how is life today? life is good. i am tired and broke and have a slight cough, however, my dog sleeps soundly by my feet, so how bad could it be?

i have a dog. doggie dog dog dog. i think i could pass most of the day at the dog park if there weren't the needs/desires to make money, eat, create. it is highly entertaining, very satisfying stuff.

my dog has a good temperament, which was a score, considering we rescued him from the Baldwin Park animal control, and he had been there for quite some time. he is big and energetic and super playful, which could irritate a lot of folks. fortunately, i am big and energetic and super playful as well.

he has not yet tried to hump me whilst playing, and for that i am grateful. for i have a pretty well known phobia about dogs with penises and their sexual advances. it's a long story, which i summarized in a series of very short stories that i will try to locate. they deserve another run of publication.

as far as the band goes, our rhythm seems to be kinda off lately. ever since i got back from school, things have been going at an awkward tempo. first brett left the sex emporium, then lisa, then brett started school, now lisa is in school. sean sullivan died, jeff jones broke his hand... and now we're playing a show without him. weird. just odd.

i was thinking this morning that if the band weren't so magical and special and meant to be, it could really just drift into memory. luckily, brett, lisa, jones, and myself have the philosophy of keeping coming back. back to the source. return. yes yes yes. sometimes a week goes by and we don't get together. sometimes somebody is not in the mood. our rhythm is off. we don't feel the magic. yet, we abide. we come back and try it again. we accept each others oddness and awkwardness. and somehow, we play.

it's important that it's called PLAYING in a band. that should always be the case.

my house is a mess. well, hell... it's not really my house. my boyfriend's sisters house is a mess. there's been renovations going on since June... white chalk dust everywhere, no kitchen, the fridge is in the living room, and the pool is green because the pump got turned off for over a week. it's finally back on, and today is cleaning day. i cleaned the pool and put chemicals in it, but the magic hasn't happened yet and it's still green. i stepped in dog poop taking out the garbage. it wasn't my dog's poop. my shoes are drying outside. i need to clean... REALLY clean, yet it's hard to get it up to do it, considering that everything will be dirty again, with a thick layer of chalky dust, by tomorrow morning. but still, i need to clean. i promised david i would do it.

i got a promotion at work, but no word of a raise yet. can it really be called a "promotion" if there is no raise? wouldn't that just be a lateral move if the pay is the same? when oh when will the capitalist regime end?

i want a hybrid car. my inner hippie is about to leap out of my bowels with a tommy gun. the world is freaking me out. apathy makes me furious. all the people who think it's too late to save the world and stop the madness can eat my ass. better yet, they can eat the dog poo out of my front yard.

i wish noam chomsky and the dude that wrote "cradle-to-cradle" would get together and make a to-do list. which reminds me, i gotta buy that book "plan b". david promised me he'd read it.

wow. that was a ramble.
ramble on ramble on.

Haiku for Mindi Chiu

what in the shitfuck
is going on with the world?
(that is the question)

Our good friend Sean Michael Sullivan, man-about-town and sunshine spirit, creator of Ben the Canary (www.benthecanary.com) and other amazing spectacles, was taken from this earth by a couple of really beautiful angels on August 20th 2005, while playing with friends on the Kern River in Kern County, California.

Before he left us, we wrote a song for him.
It's called "The Sun is Shining in My Eyes"

It goes:

I can't tell left from right
I can't find the same place twice
I don't hear what they say
But I know it doesn't matter anyway

Because the Sun is Shining in My Eyes...

I don't know what's in front of me
I open up my eyes but all that I can see
Everything is light
And anything that happens, baby, it's alright

Because the Sun is Shining in My Eyes...

Sean will be greatly missed, many more songs shall surely be inspired by his smile and singular gait, and The Evangenitals have decided to release an EP of all of the songs we were writing for Sean's Ben the Canary project, that we had the honor of playing for him before he was sublimated into 100% pure golden soul.

Thank you, Sean.

We
Fall
Down

alright i admit it. i want to be rich.

perhaps what i really mean is that i want to be famous, or a rockstar, or something along those lines.

i want to be willie nelson without the beard and the bankruptcy.

i want to buy a van, travel the nation, play shows with my band, and have enough people come to the shows that we continue to get gigs and travel and eat food and have places to stay and sell albums and we can support ourselves with muzak, sweet muzak.

i want to have a kid at some point, and be able to take it with me on the road. i want my hubby to be able to chill in the tour RV with the kid whilst i play. that's teamwork, man.

i want to take guitar lessons, buy more guitars, have more time to practice.

christ, this is a bad way to blog, because i want a lot of things.

i want to play a show with tenacious d. i want to play the drums. i want tenacious d to make another friggin' album. when does the next ween album come out?

i want the renovations of the new house to be finished. i want 2 dogs from the pound that do not have terrible psychological problems.

i want a pony.

hehe.

man... this weekend was dope. housewarming madness. and let me tell ya, the houses are WARM, my friends!

the genitals played two housewarming parties, for our producer-friend Blair (who is responsible for the quality tracks Gasoline, Never Again, and QueeQueg on the WE ARE THE EVANGENITALS album) and an extra special house was warmed for our dear left-handed genital BRETTSKY BRETT P. LYDIUS LYDA (so fresh and so clean) cool breeze, esq, the third. i love the guy. i love how he's growing and changing and spreading his wings and flapping like a hairless chicken. it's gorgeous.

now it's monday morning and i'm tired. all this rain, or all the dust from renovations at both home and work, or something, has given me allergies for the first time in my life. sneezing is fun, but the itchy, dribbly nose and scratchy throat action isn't so grand. nope.

i joined netflix not too long ago, after my boyfriend bought a plasma screen wall-mount television, and i've been catching up on all the films that I should have seen but didn't, for one reason or another. in the past few weeks i've seen spellbound, napoleon dynamite, memento, rashamon, DIG!, donnie brasco, garden state, the office (the british one, season 1), arrested development (season 1), dogtown and z-boys, apocalypse now, i heart huckabees, and some more stuff that i can't remember right now. it's been good, cause i love movies, and it's a miracle that i'm actually able to sit down and watch 'em.

i have this panic disorder thingy (not really, but kinda) wherein i find it hard to commit to sitting down to a movie. i think it's fear of death, with a hint of commitment phobia. though i love movies so, i can't help but feeling that there's something else i should be doing. like reading a book, practicing the guitar, writing a play, exercising, something.

more heinous is that i've recently gotten into playing video games. i blame psychonauts. it's just too friggin' cool. and now i'm tweaking on katamari damaci. rolling a gravity thing-collecting ball around is fun. i never knew. the good news is that the evangenitals are absolutely going to cover the theme song to this game. it is bad ass. with a capital b... but i'm trying to lay off the capitals today. i used 'em all up on brett's name game.

so that's the news from my tired ass. i'm excited as all hell about the Derby show on Wednesday. we're breaking out a bunch of new tunes, and the set is pretty well balanced, old and new, rocking and mellow.... i'm stoked. we're playing with amazing people (pink mochi, ukefink's eddie french, natural disasters) so, what more could a girl ask for?

Today marks the 30 year anniversary of me, Juli Crockett.

Some feel it to be a most heinous egoism to celebrate the day of birth, (such as the Witnesses of Jehovah) a relic of ancient false religions. False idols. Perhaps, perhaps. Today, however, I will celebrate the Miracle of Miracles: I am still alive.

There is a great absurdity surrounding this particular age-leap. Thirty is already 3 years past my life-expectancy.* Never did I think I would BE this person. I woke up this morning in a suburb of Los Angeles, made coffee at home (in order to “beat the system” and bypass Starbucks), and I carpooled to work with my boyfriend in a white Toyota Camry. Just the other day I was called by a local college to interview for a teaching position. What happened?

It is horrifying, yet exciting; a threshold/crossroads/turning point marking the transition to another dimension; the day after yesterday, the day before tomorrow, just another day in the life. No big deal, yet something special. Good lord I wish I could say something profound and poetic about this whole thing. Unfortunately, I’m feeling a lot simpler than that about it. Like a kid at Christmas, I’m giddy with the knowledge that at least one of my friends has reported that they have gotten me an actual present. How cool is that? PRESENTS!!! Simply for not dying, yet.

For the first time in a great, great many years I am having a birthday party. Returning to the last joint where it felt right. The party will go down at Chuck E Cheese's, that glorious hole in which a kid can still be a kid. At my dear friend Steve Diet Goedde's 40th Birthday Bash I maxed out the scoring capabilities of Whack-a-Mole. I am hoping not to disappoint tonight, for in the intoxicating grip of Hubris I have challenged many a pal to a contest. Skee-Ball has never been one of my strengths; however, I do plan to roll those wooden balls. My fingers are crossed that they have air-hockey & the photo ride with the Chuck E. replica is working. It is only a quarter for a digital picture with the infamous rat. What a deal!

It is always easy to see the things that I don’t have. Every birthday brings a pang of remorse that I wasn’t born a child prodigy, that I have not yet created a recognized masterpiece, and that I do not possess the perfect body. Ah, well. Fortunately, today, I don’t want to BE that person, either, whoever that mentally projected ideal of me may be. I am content with there here/now me. My life is a candy store, and I’m in it, eating up the sweet life three years after I thought it’d be over. I’m grateful for all the possibilities, all the progress, all the unknowns.

In other news, on Friday my band I’m blessed to be in, The Evangenitals, has been hired to play for the local Leisure Club organization. As far as we’re concerned, this is the coolest gig a band could be asked to perform, and we’re giving it the mad photo/film coverage. With any luck, we’ll be able to salvage a music video from the event. Who knows when on earth will we ever have the opportunity to play for a room full of senior citizens? Hells bells, if this goes well, we hope to get recommended to Leisure Clubs nationwide so we can do a tour of banquet halls, chapels, and bingo joints.

*I always said I would drink myself to death by 27 years of age.
Miraculously, at 26, I stopped drinking, and thusly I live on today.
Glory be.

Did you know that I have a brother? It's true!

He's my older brother. 4 years older to be exact. And today is his birthday.

He's one of the most talented people I've ever met in my life. An amazing visual artist: painting, drawing, photography, whatever. And he's funny. He can get you rolling for hours.

His photography has taken him up to Parson's in New York City for Graduate School. We Alabama Crockett's have come a long, long way, my friends.

For his birthday... I thought I'd share his art with you. As a gift, I'd like you guys to barrage this site's message board and tell them what you think of his work.

Here's the linky: http://www.sixfingerrecords.com/art/crockett/

So, Happy Birthday to Big J the Monkey Foot Hustler.

I love you, bro.

Hot Coffee.

Gad dang it I want that patch!

GTASA... Julio's dirty little secret. ;-)

NEW PLAN FOR THE B DAY!

My 30th birthday is starting to feel alot like my high school prom... regarding which my mother claimed if I didn't attend I may regret it forever.

And because I'd rather regret something that I did, rather than something I did not do...

I have decided to officially celebrate the actual day of my birthing 30 years ago in the old fashioned way... at Chuck E Cheese's pizza parlor and party town in Pasadena!

If you live anywhere near there, your presence is humbly requested.

(Formal attire is optional)

PLEASE COME AND WHACK-A-MOLE FOR MY BIRTHDAY!

It will be short and relatively painless. If you could make it, that would be cool. Feel free to bring a friend and the spirit of skee-ball.

When:
Monday Aug 1st 2005
at 7:30 PM

Where:
Chuck E Cheese's
3737 E Foothill
Pasadena, CA 91107

Last years birthday pic:
Waffle House. 4am. Somewhere in Ohio, I think.

My birthday is coming.

Strange as it may sound, I'm turning 30.

On August 1st I will be as old as Jesus -- 3 1/2 years before he died.

It feels weird. Just another day, but not really, because I have WAY outlived my life expectancy. Never did I really think that I would some day be 30. It feels like a big deal, and it doesn't. It feels like I should do something to "honor" this day, this self, in some way... but I just want to sleep in and hide.

Luckily I have some friends on the other side. Folks who I see coming into their self-ness and walking with the strut of confident becoming. It looks lovely. I hear good news about the 30's. My mom insists that the 40's are even better than that. With every decade shedding the gawky adolescence of the previous becoming. Thank God for process oriented living.

August 1st is a popular day for birthdays. Myself, Lisa's boyfriend, Addi the Balloon Guy, Herman Melville, Jerry Garcia, Francis Scott Key, uh... Dom DeLuise... fucking Tom Leykis of all people.

My boyfriend's mother also shares the August 1st birthday. Weird, eh? Same day, 40 years later, her potential daughter-in-law (if she has her way!) was born. She's turning 70, I'm turning 30. Nemecia. Her dream house is finally finished -- atop a hill out in Fallbrook, on a 5 acre ranch filled with avocado trees and honey bees. She's having a housewarming party on the 30th, which she intends to serve as a joint birthday party for the two of us as well. She wants me to invite my friends.

Now, I'm not feeling too enthusiastic about trying to get my friends to come down to Fallbrook. Maybe it's low self esteem and not wanting to be too much trouble. Maybe I'm just not the birthday type. Hell, I love presents as much as anybody and possibly more, however, receiving them makes me feel weird and embarrassed. Conflict. There's a permanent kid at Christmas inside of me, always excited on each new day for the potential bounty that it could bring... always seeking buried treasure.... always looking at the ass-end of rainbows for something shiny. I have rubbed genie-lamp lookin' teapots. I have tried to make contact with the spirit and alien worlds. I did a lot of drugs. I think it's all the same impulse for me. There search for something else. Something amazing, I guess. I'm happy as heck that I'm still alive, but the self promotion that goes into birthday parties makes me feel like an asshole.

So here's the birthday pitch: The good news is, in Fallbrook it's beautiful and there's gonna be really good food. Mexican style. Bad news is that gas is expensive and it's far. Like Temecula far.
If you feel like a mini-vacation, let me know and I'll give you directions. We can even make carpools happen. Caravans.

You're all invited, and you're all excused.
How's that for low pressure?