Resolutions are for fat people.........

Well.............we made it, sports fans. 2009. The year of the jackrabbit. Obama is in, autotune is out (I pray to the ceiling), and Ghostface Killah is still out there somewhere fuckin' fans as we speak. I'm fully aware that this is usually the point where any self-respecting cool (read: cynical) writer would shit on the previous year and focus on it's failings, but I gotta admit.........2008 was pretty fuckin' awesome for me personally. It was great. Then again, I have a habit of judging every year based on how good I'm doing compared to my friends from the neighborhood who are either dead or locked up for 40+ years, but still, on it's own merits last year was undeniably a hallmark of memorable moments in the life of me. Let's go down the list real quick.............

1. Daughter was born on January 16th. Amani. The most beautiful girl I've ever laid eyes on. Don't know if I'm ready for those teenage years, I feel sorry for any pimple-face pud puller that knocks on my door to take her out for a date. I'm just gonna start swingin'.

2. Performed at SXSW music festival for the 2nd year in a row. Shoutout to Matt Sonzala, a cat that truly inspires me everyday. Keep doing what you do, and a million thanks for puttin' us down once again. It was an honor. We'll cross paths again.

3. Joined the US Navy. Signed the dotted line and swore to protect and obey the president. And this is Bush we're talking about since it was still 2008. The things a man will do for his kids. I'm sure I'll be making a shitload of positive and negative remarks about this particular year in my twilight for this alone.

4. I finished not one, but two full albums that I'm really proud of.

5. I didn't get buried alive. That's my biggest fear, however irrational since I don't practice voodoo and I'm not Uma Thurman, but still..........any year I don't get ambushed and forcefully locked in a coffin and covered in dirt is a great year in my book.

6. Barack Obama was elected president, and I voted for him. As much as I may disagree with many of his individual platform issues, I can forever look my mixed-race children in the eyes and say, you too can be president, you can be whatever you set your mind to, we live in America the greatest nation on earth, for all it's faults, in capitalism the greatest system man has yet invented, for all it's faults, where your success is directly measured by your drive and ambition. You have no idea how much that means to me.

7. Gnarls Barkley "The Odd Couple" dropped, one of the best albums of my generation. You really think I give a fuck if you agree? Ha! See how far that gets you. These are two real life geniuses in the flesh we're talkin' about.

8. I'm alive, and so are you.

"New Year's Day is every man's birthday".
- Charles Lamb

Get drunk and get naked. Peace.

The Bible had singing animals too, didn't it?

Earlier today wifey took the kids to Chucky Jesus. That's what my son calls Chucky Cheese's, which needless to say makes me nervous everytime he says it because........well.........I think we all know there haven't been too many scenarios involving christians and toddlers in the last decade that haven't ended in new laws named after little girls. No offense to anyone, I just don't want my son to be the first male with a rape law named after him, just because some pizza-pushin' pedo priest asked him if he wanted to go "play in the tunnels". And it doesn't end there, then we'll have to deal with the ripped-from-the-headlines Law and Order episode. They'll have the dude with the creepy huge muppet eyebrows grillin' some curly head Italian child actor playing my son, since they still don't allow mixed race people to get SAG cards in hollywood. It'll just be a big mess.

Matter fact..........I figure if I can just get this kid to 18 without him becoming a case study of ANY kind for pre-law undergrads, I should get a big A+ on my daddy report card. That's your job description as a father. Don't let your kids set any precedents.

I know, I should write a parenting book. You're welcome for the free words of wisdom. Each one, teach one, that's what I always say.

I never say that.

Cuban Miss Crisis

So today I decided to go down to the Jacksonville Public Library and get myself a card so I can do me some book-learnin', and I pretty much just ended up sittin' at a table by myself reading Spin magazine for an hour because M.I.A. was on the cover with two colors of lipstick on. I'm easily distracted, what can I say. We could spend the rest of this post psychoanalyzing the fact that I didn't lose interest even after realizing she was pregnant in all her photo-spreads, but I don't feel like being judged by nerds who read blogs all day, so let's get back to the story I wanna tell. DO YOU MIND?!!

Okay, so I fully expected to get distracted by a female at the library, real or in print. Honestly I expect that regardless, anywhere I go. But what I didn't expect to happen was for one of the best things I've ever seen at a public library to unfold right in front of my eyes. Not the best, mind you. That honor still goes to the time I saw a dirty ass homeless dude with no shirt on reading Marques De Sade in a downtown Austin library. But one of the best, definitely.

So I'm just sittin' at the table, minding my own business, reading some incredibly hilarious graduate student/Spin editor yap about how wrinkled and irrelevant Madonna is these days. Yeah.......kinda like your own writing career, right Studs Urkel? I'm sure his parents get a free Spin subscription every month and use it to wrap fish patties. Anyway, where was I........oh yeah, so I'm sittin' there when this older hispanic lady comes and sits at the table in front of mine (I was gonna say Mexican, but I forgot I'm not in Texas anymore. Fun fact: Cubans will fight you for calling them Mexicans, don't ask me how I learned that). So she sits down, pulls out her cell phone, and apparently calls her husband's divorce attorney because the conversation that proceeds is one of the loudest, most spiteful, curse-filled tirade I've ever heard. Not just in the middle of a library, but anywhere. The fact that it was in a library is what took it from slightly uncomfortable to high comedy.

She's screeching about how her "crazy fucking" daughter needs counseling, and how her "dumb dick" husband isn't gonna get anywhere near either of them ever again, or she's gonna call the police so he can "get fucked daily in prison like he's fucked me every day for the last 7 miserable years."

After like 4 long and hilarious minutes of this, a security guard finally stops laughing for long enough to get up and tell her, very politely, to take her phone call outside. The lady stops mid-sentence, stares at the security guard like she just crawled through her bedroom window to tell her to stop talking so loud, and she just says........no, let me put this a different way, I don't think I'm doing it justice..........she doesn't just say this, she yells it. All at the same pitch, no breaks or breaths or punctuation. She goes:

"CAN YOU PLEASE GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY FACE I'M HAVING A SERIOUS DISCUSSION HERE THANK YOU!!!"

The security guard tries to keep herself composed, and now she's asking her to leave. The lady's trying to continue her phone call. The guard asks again nicely. The lady walks five feet over to a rack of romance novels, picks one up and hurls it at the security guard's face. It just barely misses.

I lost it. My sides were hurtin'.

The security guard didn't find it as funny as me, she definitely had to remind herself real quick she was a library employee and not Layla Ali, cuz I saw the fire in her eyes. The old lady woulda got molly-wopped in the home & gardening aisle for real, she had no reach and I'm pretty sure she was on some kinda pills. Sadly there was no fight though, instead the security guard just sat back down, calmly picked up the phone and called the police. But at this point the lady has her back turned, so she's still goin' on with her conversation like nothing happened. Then, I swear to god, she looks up right at me and gives me this look like "Can you believe some people? Geez", like she just stood up to a schoolyard bully or some shit. Like we're all on her side. I gave her a look back like, "bitch this ain't the mighty ducks, why are you acting like the cops aren't coming? I hope you ain't on that pretty pink iphone pissing off the only lawyer you know right now."

Fast forward to 10 minutes later, Jacksonville's finest are in front of the library. She walks up to the front to give her side of the story, but they ain't wasting any time, just start escorting her out and to the car, and she's doing the famous let-go-of-me-I-can-do-it-myself move that old white ladies seem to love to bust out whenever the cops come. She's trying to tell the cops something, but they're not listening. She's telling them she left her purse at the table. I didn't even notice. I looked over, and there it is.

And there it goes.

Some kid just walks by and grabs it all nonchalant, looks at me with a big ass grin on his face. Got himself a new pink Iphone.

I bet Twain ate some fried ox tail............

Well I officially live in Jacksonville Florida now. That magical land of dreadlocks and intolerance, where every mall is the "hood mall" and all the restaurants seem to be competing for which one can have the most passive-agressively racist name (actual sign a block away from the Navy base: "Ying's Chinee Takee Outee").

If you ever feel the need to make the 15 hour drive from Texas to Florida in a moving truck through the land that time forgot (or more likely, left on a doorstep crying and wrapped in newspaper) called the South, hey how about this, first try chopping off a finger. And if you're still conscious and haven't had enough self-inflicted suffering after that, here's some quick tips to help you on your journey.

1. Don't drink and drive. You'll lose the competition you didn't even know was happening, and it's the semi-finals.

2. Don't be an interracial couple. It just confuses people. Bathroom breaks in Mississippi mostly just brought me and my wife the kinda looks that say "wow, he sure does give his slave girl nice clothes."

3. If you lose your mapquest directions, don't worry. You'll know you're halfway there when the only radio station (FM or AM) that isn't a re-broadcasted church sermon from 1973, is a "classic rock" station that seems to only play "Copperhead Road" on repeat all day long. It's all downhill from there!

As easy as it would be to spend the rest of this post making fun of Alabama, it really is like steppin' into an alternate universe. It's like David Lynch meets Deliverance meets a Bosch painting in some places, and by some places I mean anyplace that isn't a cemetary or a book section, and even those can get kinda..............Left Behind-ish (you decide which one I meant). We stopped in Birmingham to get some gas, and some random 30-year old black dude with an eyepatch a fur coat came up to me and said, "You from Birmingham?"

"No."

"................Are you lost?"

I said no, but in retrospect the correct response was probably, "aren't we all?" Just a weird philisophical moment in Alabama, from a guy who I might add seconds later walked off to fill up a 2 gallon gas can and took it into a nearby Waffle House, presumably to light himself on fire like a tibetan monk in the name of some righteous intangible truth in evidence of human freedom, or because he was high on meth.

As a bonus, at the very same gas station this festive christmas ad was on the wall above the pisser:

Nothin' out of the ordinary about that. No sir. Perfectly fine christmas present for loved ones of all ages. Why, I remember as a young kid, I couldn't even sleep on christmas eve I was so damn excited from the smell of deisel fuel coming from under the tree. It was the only thing I asked Santa for in my letters. If I listened close enough...........I could swear I even heard hooves dancing on the rooftop and a sleigh taking off into the night. With "Copperhead Road" playin' in the background.

I'm really not just trying to pick on Alabama here. I mean, it's a weird fuckin' place, but Texas ain't exactly the stuff of Jane Austen novels either. I always love goin' North past Dallas and driving through the great town of Fate, Texas, just to see the big sign on the highway lettin' you know the next exit takes you to "Bass Pro Drive".

Ahh Bass Pro drive..........the lifeline of a bustling metropolis. As Rue Saint Louis en l'Ile is to Paris, so Bass Pro Drive lays in the midst of the cultural hub of the western world, Fate Texas. Where the socialites drink the tallest of tall boys and the sculptures are mullets.

Hey, I also saw this somewhere:

And I don't doubt for a second that it did. But when I woke my son up at 2 in the morning to tell him this hilarious story, I don't think he fully appreciated the sarcasm.

That's about it. Nothing else exciting happened on the road. Nope. Nothing at all EXCEPT THAT SOME BRAVE SOUL FINALLY CAPTURED AND KILLED SASQUATCH!!!!

It's true. Now, you may be the skeptical type. You may be wondering why such a legendary creature, after being wrestled and killed, would be left sitting on top of a Ms. Pacman machine in rural Georgia. Allow me to answer that question with another question. Are you lost?