When I was a kid, I remember seeing people on TV shows who cried when they were happy. I remember thinking that was really weird. Somewhere along the line, and I don't know when or how, I became one of those people. This morning, Oge said Danilo was walking around by himself carrying three things in his hands. This makes me very happy.

The cats blame me for the rain.

I was thinking about my nephew's former neurologist last night and how her misdiagnosis had us believing D. might end up permanently blind, deaf, and physically and mentally disabled and led to a lack of treatment for another year after the first hospital's misdiagnosis. I know it would be illegal to make a threat such as, "I'm going to blow your head off." But how about, "I feel like blowing your fucking head off"? Is that okay?

Aren't you glad Mun Mun doesn't own guns? (In reality Mun Mun doesn't advocate violence)

I've spent the last few days writing a paper about strategic planning for a management class I'm taking. It gives me the idea of hiring a corporate facilitator to come to my birthday party and have everybody do SWOT analysis and strategic planning for their lives. Maybe I'll make the facilitator wear a clown nose. I wonder how much a facilitator costs.

It's my nephew's second day on injected medication to treat his opsoclonus myoclonus syndrome. Poor Oge has to practice plunging a syringe into a potato.

Grad school is really cutting into my reality TV viewing. However, I did catch The Apprentice this week. After years of reading Spy Magazine's monthly trashing of Donald Trump, my attitude towards the guy was pretty negative.

Around 1989 or 1990 I had the most delightful experience ice skating at the outdoor Wollman Rink in Central Park. Instrumental George Gershwin music was playing and the skates had great ankle support (unlike the crappy 50 year old skates they rent in Culver City.) It turns out it was Donald Trump who restored the rink sometime in the 80's and runs it. It is now my (barely informed) opinion that Donald Trump is the Bomb. I also like how he doesn't accept rudeness on that TV show. I still think Trump Tower looks like one of Saddam Hussein's tacky palaces with all that pink marble. Oh, well. You can't win 'em all.

This one's an oldie, but an okayie circa 1993. Boy, was I ever wrong about the second line...

Grandma's Dogs

Have another cinammon imperial.
Grandma's dogs' deaths don't affect me like they used to.
Probably because I've grown not to love them.
Penny was the one she put to sleep for fighting with Sony.
She was a fat half dalmation that could climb a seven foot fence.
Did my mother keep it a secret from me for a while, I can't remember? Yes, I overheard her somehow and cried for a week.
Pip. That was my sister's hamster that my mother replaced with another when he suddenly died of shock. I remember his frozen body lying outside the cage. We thought maybe he escaped and the cats scared him to death. Margaret was not fooled by the switcheroo.

I was a little happy when my Grandma picked me up from Westwood elementary on Fridays because she would bring two or three of her five glamorous dogs that all the kids who were not my friends yearned to pet before she brought me home and followed my mother around our house, helping her make the bed and talking at her as my mother did housework and said Mm hm.

In my entire twenty five years as an Angeleno I've never been a victim of crime except once when someone stole my magnifying glass from my Seventh Grade English display about Sherlock Holmes mysteries.
Not my best friend, Stephanie, nor the two bitchy girls who came to see what was the matter could understand why I had become hysterical.

My family. We have so, so little.We can't take such losses and my mother knows it all too well.

Every single good thing that could happen to a black man is happening tomorrow
I've been dreaming about good things coming to Los Angeles: snow, Monty Python, but that's nothing in comparison
We'll start by collecting the tiger butter from the base of the tree and putting it on our pancakes
You'll walk through Westwood alone without being stopped once by the cops
And when you exit stores, you'll have to announce, "I'm through shopping everyone!" or no one will notice.
Those purple blotches on your back will go away and the bank will give you a loan to produce a jazz CD
Your unbelievably dysfunctional family will transform into clean & sober, non child-molesting Puritans with a penchant for book learning
They'll have lost all spirituality and rhythm, but you can live without that

I guess the slavery-poverty-discrimination chicken came first before the egg
But damnit you're a brand new egg
and the chicken is being slaughtered tomorrow

I wonder how it would feel to realize you've been shortsheeting your own bed for years
But then I remember I don't need to wonder. I know.
There'd be a sense of freedom
mixed with grief over all those nights of kicking the blankets

Has anyone else noticed that whenever they play "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" on commercial television, they cut out all the sex scenes and insert an upsetting abortion scene that wasn't in the theatrical version? Just wondering.

Tonight I'm having dinner with Michael Dukakis...along with 30 other people. My favorite quote from Dukakis during the 1988 presidential campaign was,

"They say I'm dispassionate. That doesn't effect me one way or the other. They say I'm arrogant. But I know better. They say I'm a technocrat. But only 15%!"

I thought he should have gotten elected based on his skill at hiring joke-writers alone. But then again, I also love Belgian Endive.

Went to see my former jiu jitsu teacher, Vitor Belfort, fight in the UFC in Las Vegas. It was possibly the shortest fight in UFC history because Vitor landed a punch that cut Randy Couture's lower eyelid. The referee stopped the fight because of the blood in his eye. So, Vitor won.

I was sad to read on the web that the T-shirt Vitor was wearing had a picture of his sister because she's gone missing in Brazil.

I think I need jiu jitsu in my life again.