Barf

I’m reminded of better times one night as I was driving home from a family thing. Inside the car were my aunts and my mom. Everyone had a bit too much to drink this night, especially one of my aunts who was sitting shotgun. During the trip home they were all sleeping like babies. About a mile and a half from home, my aunt that had too much woke up, opened the window and started getting the hiccups. I didn’t pay much attention to it until the hiccups, or what I thought was hiccups, got worse and lost the sound. I’ve seen that happen too much, even to me, to know what that is. I immediately pulled over but it was too late. She had already chucked a good part of her dinner on her clothes and on the seat.

When I got home, I thought a lot of the times I’ve had to unload my excess alcohol. Not the typical “kneeling in front of the crapper” stuff. I’m talking about the wild ones, the weird ones. The ones you think back to and say “What the hell??” And it all came flooding back.

The time I was driving home from my birthday celebration. I had one too much punyetas that night, not hard to do when the tab was picked up b my girlfriends dad. That’s a whole ‘nother story. Anyway’s, I was in the car with my girl and her best friend. I was going to take both of them home; in my present state. A couple blocks from my girlfriends place and I felt my dinner wanting out. Not good. All I could think about was “No kiss tonight, no kiss tonight…”. 5 houses away from her place and my dinner just won’t be denied. Panicked, I turned away from them while they yammer about and chucked it into my mouth. Then I swallowed. She turns to me and says, “You alright?” not realizing I had just had dinner twice “yeah I’m fine”. I dropped her off without so much as a peck in the cheek and sped off. About a mile past her house and I felt you know what again. I was not about to have three dinners in one night. I turned to her best friend and, with my best cool drunk voice said, “Do you mind if I do something real quick?” Her eyes bugged out and she tried to keep her cool “Yeah sure”. I quickly pulled over under a bridge, opened the door and unloaded on the sidewalk. I didn’t even bother to get out of the car.

Then there was this one time in High School where I puked in a restaurant. It was almost the end of school and there was a house party for everyone in the batch. We had a ton but this was my most memorable one. I got to the party pissed off for some reason. I can’t remember now but I’m pretty sure a girl was involved. Getting pissed before a party is never good, because it almost always leads to doing stupid stuff, like drinking shots of tequila and chasing it down with beer on an empty stomach. You know the feeling. After a bottle I sort of remember spilling my guts out to the class dork, who only got invited because it’s her house. Sadly the party had to end and I got picked up by my driver. For some reason they brought two cars, which prompted my friends to take advantage of me and ask for rides. I can’t even remember now how many we took home. I do remember sitting at the back of a pick-up truck with about 5 of my friends and stopping at a Goodah to eat. Hilarity ensued. I proudly announced that I kicked all their butts in drinking on an empty stomach and someone had to pay for my food because I was taking them home, all while looking down at the table. So after a few minutes of staring, food suddenly appeared in front of me. 2 sips of soup and I was done. I barely got to the door before the two sips of soup came rushing out, along with every ounce of tequila, beer and some food I ate 2 days ago. Somehow I managed to stumble to the outside and finish it off on the plants. I come back and everyone is just too drunk to be in shock. I didn’t even get one ounce of heckling that night. Only when we got back to school. I plop down on my seat, hungry from all the action I’ve done, to find my soup look like the toilet bowl after you’ve barfed all over it. Which made me run out to the plants all over again. Good times.

I miss those times. I’ve got more but I’d rather hear from my friends. What’s the best barf story you’ve got?

LA Drama

The city of LA is known for it's on-screen stars and plenty of drama, made-up or real. Yesterday the place did not disappoint, gluing residents of California for a good hour and a half as we watched a Jet Blue airline circle around LAX with its front landing gear damaged. The pictures in the link don't do the scene justice when it finally landed after what seemed like an eternity circling around. I'm sure that's what the passengers felt. Everyone I talked to while it was circling said the metal above the tire had no chance of staying in one piece when it has to help keep the plane upright on landing. When the plane finally came on it's descent, everyone in the bar waited with baited breath at the TV. I hate to say great TV, as I certainly am sensitive to what the people inside the plane must have gone through. Circling around LA for four hours with a busted tire, not knowing what's going to happen isn't a great way to spend the afternoon. And yet, there we all were in that bar, talking about what might happen, one eye on the person talking, the other watching a plane circle around the air. As the two back tires touched ground, everyone was silent. Still traveling fast, the nose lowered and you could smoke coming from the tire. Everyone, I mean everyone, stopped breathing for 2 seconds. When it finally stopped with only a burned out tire to show as damage, everyone cheered and applauded. Here I echo the sentiments of everyone that night, along with mine:

Good job, pilot.

Draft

I thought about something over the weekend. Your typical blogs on the net are personal accounts by the author about whatever. But a lot of times, they have basic themes. An identity, if you will. I’ve been doing this blog thing for almost a year now and it got to me how this blog of mine is so random in content and vanilla in presentation. Any given time, they style of delivery and content of words is different. On the one hand, I’ve never written so much stuff in a year. Sometimes I’d crank out stuff back to back, which I’d never done in the past. It’s always been, get one story done and then take a break. Sometimes it takes year for the next one. Anyway I bring all this stuff up because I just got an idea.

I’m sure most of you have books you keep with all kinds of notes for stories, poems, songs, whatever. Well I do to and it’s maybe a quarter full with a couple of stories and weird stuff in there. I thought that instead of keeping a book, Word Playground would become my little book of ideas. That way, all these ideas become permanent record, and not only do I get to remember and critic them, others can too.

So that’s that for the intro. Here’s the first of (hopefully) many more notebooks to come.

You know how you wake up sometimes from a real kick ass dream, wishing you had remembered all the details so you can tell everybody about it? Some people I know remember theirs so vividly hours after the fact. I wish I could do that. I got my wish, sort of a couple of months ago. It was the weirdest thing and as soon as I woke up, I took out the notebook and jotted everything I could remember, before it would go away. A couple of days after I reread it again and I still couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was so surreal yet so down to earth. Should I go through with it?. As I write this, I take a couple of glances at the notes, trying to piece it to something that makes sense.

As I remember it, the environment wasn’t your typical city surroundings. The best way to describe it is one of the planets in those old Star Trek shows. Civilized, with buildings but different. The people in the planet look human. There’s two main characters, one is a teenage boy who happens on a rundown building. The other is a character he meets in the place. I’m trying to picture it so it makes sense in words. The exact quote on my notebook is “Midget with the heart of a child” but that sounds like an oompa-loompa. “Retarded midget” is very un-PC. “Mentally challenged small person” should work. Remember that this is an alien planet. So he meets this thing and they become buds and he promises to hang out there and play with him. So they hang out but only at this place and only after school. They eventually become best friends and he tells him all these promises, how he’d take him away from the place and show him the world. He didn’t tell his friends about it because he didn’t know what they’d say when they find out he hangs with these kind of people. BTW, I haven’t figured out yet what that something special is about the house or these small people but there is something; there always is. One day, one of the kids from school finds the place too and tells the other kids and they start mercilessly picking on these guys. Bullies have nothing on these guys. There’s nothing worse than when kids start picking on another kid. Our lead guy finds out about it and finds out what these guys are. He races back to the place and finds out his buddy just killed himself because he felt betrayed. My last notes are, and I quote” At the funeral, he remained standing, hugging another little person, crying ‘I’m sorry’”.

Looking back, I’ve a few problems with this. I’m not even going to mention the overall stupidity of the thing. The ending, for some reason, struck a chord with me, albeit very depressing. The image of the special people from my dream isn’t going to work. Too weird. Actually, the whole thing is too weird it’s stupid. Sort of like Star Trek making a buddy comedy, save for the ending. There are some stuff I might use in the future. I could use the ending. It’s about the only thing I really like from it. And I like the theme, how we judge things without knowing. But I could probably tell something like this without the alien world. Will it be as interesting though?

Believe it or not, I even thought of making this bigger than a short story just to be able to get the feel of the environment and put more things in perspective. But now that I spend time on it, I’m not sure this is going to work. Seemed like a good idea at the time.

Back

It took me almost a month to update this space. To think that my last words were “more chiro stories tomorrow”. “Tomorrow” doesn’t mean no updates for a month. I’ll try my best to not make such promises when I plan on not updating for a month. Anyway, I’m here and to make up, this’ll be a long one.

It’s been almost a month since I’ve started going to a chiropractor and my back feels great. I get more sleep and I don’t wake up in the middle of the night anymore. My back holds up when I play golf, even when I go to the range on back-to-back nights. What I love most is that they sell themselves as an alternative to drug healing. Ever since I was small I hated drinking medicine. Back then it was because of the taste. Now it’s just trying to stay away from putting as much chemicals in my body as I can. Now, let me just say that I have nothing against drugs. My Dad works in the pharmaceutical industry and I have no qualms drinking his stuff, unless absolutely necessary. Or someone points a gun to my head, whichever comes first. Even when I have a cold, I stick to OJ and lots of water. So this works real well for me. Now I go twice a week and get my back, neck and right hand cracked and I can’t go without it.

A couple of weeks ago, the doctor took x-rays of my entire spine and found that most of my spinal column is tilted to the right, causing my left foot to be higher than my right and my bad posture. She also saw the disk bulge in my lower back (which doesn’t hurt anymore, BTW). It’s going to be along process but hopefully it pays off. I feel the positives already. I rarely get tired at all (which is a symptom of severe spinal deficiencies), in every day work and on the golf course.

Last thing about the chiro therapies. The doctor was telling me how someone can accumulate spinal decay over time and she said that it can be cause by physical stress (that’s why I’m here), chemical stress (in spades) and emotional stress (who doesn’t?). I said yes to all of that and she said, “This is going to be a long process”.

Theme for today’s post is “back”, so let’s give props to someone that just came “back”. To Barry Bonds, welcome back! As I write this, the Giants just one the game 3-4, with Bonds going 1-4 with a double that should have been a home run if not for some idiot fan. Great to have you back and, in the nicest way possible since, it’s about freakin’ time.

This past week, not only did I come back with this post, not only did Bonds come back to play some baseball, but the NFL is BACK baby!!! You know what that means. The return of the Niner notes! I was all about to start but then I thought I just wanted to enjoy this one without worrying about what to write, being a new season and a new era and all. My thoughts on the new team will come next week, while they get trashed by the Eagles. For now, I thought I’ll just enjoy this one and wouldn’t you know it, they put up a great, exciting win against the rival St. Louis Rams 28-25. QB played efficient, the running game was still anemic but it was the defense that saved the day, intercepting the last gasp pass from the Rams QB Marc Bulger. Note to self: as soon as they sign outside linebacker Julian Peterson to a long term contract, get his jersey ASAP. Great win for the faithful.

Slightly off topic, but as you know Sunday was the 4th anniversary of 9/11. All around the country, people paid they’re respects to the people that died on that faithful day 4 years ago at the hands of the cowards that took over those planes. As it happens, the day fell right on opening day of the NFL and I just heard today that some talking heads questioned why the NFL would go ahead with opening day on the anniversary of opening day. To which I say, bullshit. Not because I’m a biased fan of football, but because you just had to see the faces of the 50,000 that were in the stands that day in Candlestick Park, and all around the stadiums. At its heart, sports provide a distraction from the everyday problems that us normal folks go to. And, there’s not a greater showing that we will continue our normal lives, without fear from you cowards than to enjoy a game that is as American as apple pie.

I hope you said a prayer on Sunday and to never forget what that day means to you and to every American that had to live through it, and to everyone that died today. I also hope that you continue living your life to the fullest, and to live everyday like it’s the last. Cheesier words have never been spoken, but at the same time, truer words have never been spoken.

Finally, if you haven’t given in any way shape or form to the Hurricane Katrina aid, please to do so. Here’s the link to the red cross web page were you can donate monetarily, or your time to the relief effort (I thought about it). At the very very least, it’ll make you and some person in New Orleans very very happy. I know this means little but I just want to share something. To anyone that doesn’t believe what I said above, they showed on ESPN on Sunday a clip of refugees displaced at the Houston Astrodome, where they live in small sleeping bags, not knowing when they might be able to go home, if ever. When the New Orleans Saints football team (displaced themselves, since their home the Superdome was used for the initial housing of the refugees) scored that last minute field goal to win, on the road against a very good Carolina Panthers team, the place just erupted with cheers. Read that last sentence again and let it sink in for a minute. These people have no home and have been treated badly for the past couple of weeks (don’t get me started on that), and yet when the local pro football team pulls out a win that no one thought they’d be able to accomplish (and rightfully so), they all cheer and celebrate the win. Amazing. And let me just say, for the record, that you will not hear me whine or moan or rant about my life. Nobody should. Compare to what these people had to go through, we have it made.

In time, the city will rebuild and be back, hopefully better than ever and, more importantly better prepared to withstand another hurricane. For now, we have to do our part to make sure they get to that point. But I have no doubt that they will, and can.

Back for more tomorrow. Promise.