Ventura Highway in the Sunshine

Made the mad dash up to Napa on the 101 on Saturday, sadly too late to have dinner with my friend D. but ingested some mediocre machaca with his lovely southern bride at a Mexican diner. Drove up to see the wedding of T. & S. who, each, are undertaking their first walk down the primrose path. And it really was a path strewn with rose petals. So much for the imagination.

Nice wedding, both the officiant and the co-officiant were funny and seemed mostly familiar with the bride and groom. Which is better than the alternative. And the ceremony was short-ish. Not Vegas short, but still short enough.

But after the ceremony, family & friends toasted the couple and that is when I was somehow transported into a Henry Jaglom movie. I had to leave at that point, as being in that particular director's movies brings out the worst in me. I really felt as if a group of actors were improvising toasts, working on their craft.

This is why I do not take hallucinogens. How could I tell when they wore off?

To placate my friends who insist that the 5 freeway is faster than the 101 [and also to avoid daytime traffic in San Jose, Santa Barbara and Ventura, all of which are INSANE these days], I took the 5 home today and made it in under 6 hours. It's just about the same length either way - about 410 miles. If you want to listen to more Heart on FM radio, take the 5. The 101 stations are somewhat better overall.

Finished reading "Grub" by my author friend Elise Blackwell. I started really caring about the characters [after initially being overwhelmed by the sheer number of characters that you do have to really follow and remember important and defining traits - as I read, I made a list of them with notes!] about a third of the way in, and then I couldn't put it down. And I found the characters very compelling, their psychological make up - their sociological DNA, as it were. As it [properly] reserves moral judgment [mostly], it does seem to be either a cynical book, or perhaps designedly unwilling to judge the fates of the various protagonists. So, to borrow from Gatsby, there is no Nick, and no eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg are looking down, but there are plenty of ash heaps. So the question "How do you feel about all these people and their various works and fates?" is left to the reader. And what role could be more fitting when reading a book about writing.

So in the end, she has written a book about reading? [Many of the writers comment on how their works will be read, who will read them, how the work will be perceived. Very modernistic!] I would say so. It is a very fine book [and ARCs are already for sale on eBay and Half.com and so forth] so buy it.

All for now.

Hope is a Weed

Hope is a kind of mischief, a sort of all-purpose promiscuity. I have a couple of friends who are optimists - that rarest of breeds - and they work tirelessly to prop up this holey umbrella and ignore the drops, and this tireless work is intermittently rewarded. And so they remain slightly wet and optimistic. It is the most beautiful of things.

I, on the other hand, am a realist, committed to the scientific dissection of things both general and specific. I love science, economics [the bitter science?], and the vivisecting of art and commerce. Most personal talk bores me because most behaviors are so transparent and endlessly repeated.

A woman at work was talking about her granddaughter. The fat daughter was criticizing her six-year old daughter for being fat, etc. etc. It just got worse and worse. I was thinking that some people insist on visiting their unhappiness on the people around them that they love and despise, that some people are incapable of love, that the noises that buzz and hum that create such anxiety will never be drowned out, that some people, to mis-paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, are born to ruin.

It's true. The one thing that I think informs most human behavior is perversity. I want love, so I am going to punch you hard.

The Bird Don't Lie

We all have songs that we cannot get out of our heads. Mine is "Alabama Chicken" by Sean Hayes. "Look you in the eye, the bird don't lie." Just look at that bird. She don't lie.

I was thinking about musical duos. Simon & Garfu*kel. The Indigo Girls. Wham! Hall & Oates. Is it always true that one half of the duo does 97% of the work, and the other half does 3%? What prompts these people to start duos, anyways? What were Paul Simon, Emily Saliers, Andrew Ridgeley and Daryl Hall thinking, anyways?

Not to mention the Righteous Brothers. Actually, they were fairly evenly matched, compared to the above wipeouts.

And really, let's not ignore reality any longer: the Beatles were a duo. And Paul could never get over his control-freak jealous nature. It wasn't Yoko, it was Paul and his OCD freakazoid nature that broke that duo up. And please, he tried to get the song credits for his songs changed to "McCartney & Lennon"? That just proves it.

Who cares, however. The Beatles haven't been relevent nor taken seriously since 1978.

I have identified the saddest web site on the Internets: Howard's Tribute Band Heaven I warn you, this page is not for the faint of heart. If this man ever gets laid, there is something seriously wrong with the cosmos.

I am re-reading "Gatsby" and I thought it was great before, and its greatness keeps re-revealing itself to me with each successive re-reading. I don't care if it is a cliché: it's a great, near-perfect book.

I should write about my South Carolina trip. Soon, soon I will.