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The marble clock has stopped. The curtained sun
Burns on: the room grows hot. There, it appears,
A vase of flowers has spilt, and soaked away.
The only sound heard is the sound of tears.

So, I’m going to London in March. I don’t know precisely, when, and I won’t know until Suede announces the date of their one-off reunion concert. That’s right, my favorite band is reuniting for one show at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

Sadly, Bernard Butler won’t be a part of this. The other three original members will be on stage, as well as Neil Codling and Richard Oakes, who joined the band after Butler’s departure.

I am excited beyond description, even more so than when I planned a trip to Paris around Jarvis Cocker’s first solo gig. That wasn’t Pulp, my other favorite band, it was just Cocker; this is the actual Suede, a band I have never had the chance to see live. Attending a Suede reunion show has long been my dream, and it seems about to become a reality.

I’d be remiss if I did not note that the proceeds from the show are being donated to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

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Me trying to explain my party to an out-of-state friend, via a series of text messages:

the party is getting out of control, but in a good way

so many people came that by 11:00 PM they wouldn’t all fit in my place and so the party has spilled out into the hallways of all 4 floors of the building and into the street

guests are launching flaming pumpkins off the roof

someone tagged graffiti on my bathroom wall

a completely naked girl is hanging out the window peeing…

an entire bar full of people migrated to my party at 2 am when the bar closed.

around 3am bar staff from various bars started showing up. at 5 am the staff of Blakes showed up.

the guests didn’t all leave until 4:30 am Monday (today) over 30 hours after the party started

all day yesterday there were still people here, which was good in a way because they helped clean up on Sunday night

we demolished my place and basically the entire building and really an entire city block…

they made us clean up Adeline Street on Sunday.

my neighbors all hate me, the rest of west oakland loves me

the landlord posted letters all over the building basically yelling at me in bold faced all caps, threatening to evict me if i ever have such a party again

it was my best party ever.

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Sometimes I wish I could freeze a certain moment and save it to relive it again in the future. I do my best to relish the good stuff while it’s happening, but you can only savor something so much, and once it’s gone, it’s gone. In an attempt to preserve such a moment for future savoring, I will now relate a tale from my life.

On Tuesday night I went out with four friends, Chris, Teddie, Barrett. We were in Berkeley, moving from bar to bar, drinking, talking, dancing, and generally making merry. We eventually made our way to Manny’s Tap Room in Berkeley, which is an unusual destination for us, but we were on a shuffleboard kick and they have a table. While playing, we heard the bartender ring a bell, and turned to see a guy standing on the bar chugging a glass of beer. Except he couldn’t do it. He stopped a few times, before finally finishing. Twice more, the bell went off, and other guys tried, and failed, to pound a pint.

Later, while out front, we were laughing at the fact that the guys couldn’t even chug one glass of beer, and I said something to the effect of, “I ought to get up on the bar and show them how to do it.” Teddie scoffed, insinuating that I couldn’t do it, so I told him I could drink a glass of beer faster than him. He hesitated for a moment, then backed down from my challenge, and instead said “I know you can’t drink faster than Chris.”

Now, Chris drinks a lot. I mean, a LOT. And he’s from Michigan, so… I wasn’t sure if I could drink faster than him, but I said I thought that I probably could. Now that it wasn’t me vs. Teddie, Teddie was of course all about getting us up there, so we approached the bartender. He informed us that if it is someone’s birthday they have to stand on the bar and chug, but when we explained there had been a challenge, he agreed to let us try. Up onto the bar we went.

Everyone stared as the two of us climbed onto the bar and picked up our pints of Guinness. The bell rang, we chugged. I finished, turned to see Chris still getting the last sip down, and raised my glass into the air in victory. The entire bar was cheering, and I leapt down from the bar, landing directly in front of this Miss Unnamed, whom I did not even know was at the bar, and on whom I currently have a big crush. She was smiling at having seen my glorious victory, and silly though it sounds, for that moment I have to say I felt pretty damn awesome. Sure, I was chugging a beer on a bar, not saving the whales or curing cancer, but whatever. Ferris Bueller’s got nothing on me.

I’m telling you, it’s those little moments in life that mean so much.

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So I have a Twitter. I update it rarely, but there it is. The point of this blog, however, is not to advertise my Twitter. Instead it is to express wonder at someone else’s Twitter. Looks kinda’ familiar, doesn’t it?

What the hell?

That’s my name, photograph, and city. But it isn’t me! Worse, that person is far better at updating, or “tweeting,” than I am. Look at all the interesting things he (she?) has to share! Note also that this peasprout has way more followers than me.

It is with some chagrin that I must admit– my impostor is doing a better job of being me than I am.

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Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

I don’t know if I have ever blogged merely to link to another blog, but that’s sort of where today’s post is going. I’ve been trying for six days now to think of what to write about John Hughes’ death, but haven’t been able to craft anything worth sharing. Then today I read this blog and I realized why John Hughes mattered to me. It wasn’t merely that he created so many great films; he was a genuinely great guy.

I tend to ignore celebrity-related news and issues, and certainly don’t blog about them. I can’t bring myself to care. Michael Jackson’s recent death felt like such a non-issue to me, and the resultant hysteria was mystifying and disappointing to me. But last week John Hughes died, and, like I suppose most Americans my age, I took notice. Here’s an artist who actually contributed something lasting to our culture.

There is little I can offer that likely hasn’t been said before. The Breakfast Club certainly presaged the era of reality television, and the first film I’m aware of that dealt with teen issues in such a starkly real way. It is also a rarity in that it cast actual teens as teens. Weird Science is on some level a starkly realistic insight into the psyche of the teen male, as well as a too-real depiction of life for two uncool guys.

Hughes’ true masterpiece, however, as far as I’m concerned, is Ferris Beuller’s Day Off. I’ll spare you a long-winded exposition on why Generation X made the world a better place, despite the efforts of the Baby Boomers that came before them, and the OMG’ers that came after. Instead I’ll offer Ferris as the Gen-X everyman. From his day off you can glean most everything you need to know about the topic. Consider– he spent his day off attending a Cubs game, visiting the Chicago Institute of Art, watching a parade, and eating a nice lunch. Think about that for awhile, then get back to me.

As the trip to the museum is one of my favorite of all moments cinematic, I am including it in today’s post.

Finally, as a teen, and even still as an adult, I wondered– did the popular kids, portrayed in such unflattering light in his films, also like John Hughes? How could they? How dare they? Those movies were made for me… and Alison.

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I just took Dr. Drew’s Narcissistic Personality Inventory, but only scored an 8. The average person scores 15.3. While on one hand this is something of a silly, throw-away quiz, I must admit that it is fairly indicative of my personality. I do think I lack a certain sort of self-confidence. Which is not to say I hate myself. It’s more that I seldom make a fuss about myself, or stand up for myself. Conversely, I’ve always been very good at standing up for other people, even strangers; just not myself.

I wonder if fixing this is as simple as doing the opposite of what I said I’d do in the quiz?

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Tonight I went to the movies, and saw an entertaining and powerful, film. It tells the story of a man who started with nothing, but went on to became a huge figure in his community, and then the world. He achieved great fame seemingly overnight, and did his part to change the world, before he was tragically gunned down. It reminded me of another such film I saw last month– Milk. I suppose tonight’s film could perhaps be called Chocolate Milk, but instead it is called Notorious, and tells the story of Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G., the greatest rapper of all-time. I saw it in South Central Los Angeles, hardly a place you’d expect to extol the praises of an East Coast hip hop legend, but it played to a packed house.

Peace out, Biggie. The world still misses you.

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Yesterday I was walking about Westwood in search of a place to sit and read. As I walked past a dry cleaner’s shop, out walked Bob Newhart, clean shirts in hand. I did a double-take, and stared for a moment. He had a “yeah, it’s me,” look on his face.

I didn’t know what to say, so I said, “you’re Bob Newhart.”

“Yes, I am,” was his reply. At which point he offered his hand. And I shook it.

I shook Bob Newhart’s hand!

After that, I wasn’t sure where else things could go, so I quickly informed him that I’ve only recently moved to Los Angeles, and he is the first celebrity I’ve truly met, and walked away. I had a huge smile on my face for at least five minutes.

I didn’t mention my encounter with Tim Roth, during which I pretended to mistake him for a store clerk, or the time I randomly sat next to Alia Shawkat (Maebe Funke on Arrested Development) and Ellen Page (Juno in Juno) (who knew they were friends?) at a midnight showing of Harold and Maude, because I didn’t really meet those folks.

Naturally, I texted all my friends immediately afterwards. The few replies I received were either “who is Bob Newhart?” or “isn’t he dead?” So sad. True, he’s before my time, and I only know him because he was one of my mother’s favorite comedians, but come on. He’s an icon! Recently, he played the daddy Elf in Elf, but in the ’60s he was huge. His album of comedy won the 1961 Grammy for album of the year. That’s some Michael Jackson / U2 type action there.

Which makes me realize– no matter how famous you get, you can eventually be forgotten. I bet if I asked random passerby who Rutherford B. Hayes or Zack Taylor were, many of them wouldn’t even know, and they are former leaders of the free world.

That’s it. I’m starting up the Franklin Pierce Fan Club for reals.

Also, Bob Newhart is magical. I have some sort of infection in my right ear, and for a week now it has been swollen shut, but a moment after shaking Bob’s hand, the ear popped open and stayed open for about an hour. It closed back up, but clearly the handshake did more for me than the drops my doctor gave me. I’m going to have to stake out that dry cleaner and hope Bob’s a messy eater.

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Right now I’m at a motel in Wyoming, a few miles from the South Dakota border. A couple hours ago I was sitting on the bed reading when movement on the floor caught my eye. I looked up and saw what I first took to be a mouse walking in front of the desk. Once my eyes focused on it, I realized it was not a mouse at all. It was a huge, fuzzy, brown spider! My first instinct should have been to pounce on it, but instead I was so amazed by its size that I wanted to take a picture of it. As I reached for my camera, it scurried behind the television stand. I moved furniture around, but could not find it.

Shit.

I passed some time researching “giant spider wyoming” on Google. It seemed that I most likely am rooming with a Hobo Spider tonight. Great. Is it poisonous? Let’s see… oh yay! Its bite induces necrotic arachnidism. There is even a picture of its bite here. Lovely.

Two hours later, I’d resigned myself to sharing a room with the thing, and was trying to knit my way to sleep when I spied it perched on the wall. Again, my photographic instinct won out, but I kept my eye on it this time, and managed to snap a picture:

Do you see how large it is? Do you realize that its eye is so big it reflects the camera’s flash like a cat’s might? Sooooo wrong… spiders are scary enough. They should not be allowed to grow to such a size.

In any event, now that I’d snapped its picture, I had to kill the beast. But how? I thought about stepping on it, but a glance at my foot, still clad in shoes from the earlier hunt,

and a glance back at the spider gave me pause. It was tucked neatly into that corner. I had visions of being unable to crush it, and instead allowing it to creep up my leg. No thanks.

I looked back to the bed. My knitting needle could do the trick!

Somehow even that did not seem large enough to do the job. I felt like I’d have to grip it high up to stay out of harm’s way, and in doing so lose the leverage I’d need to pierce that bastard.

Then I thought of the perfect weapon.

I keep this stick in my trunk, and use it to stoke fires when I camp. I dashed out to my car and grabbed it.

At last, it was time to get it on.

I stabbed the spider. It parried the blow and leapt to the floor. It was trying to run behind the desk, but I whacked it. Unfazed it turned and headed straight at me! Ack! I knew I only had one more chance before I’d have to flee screaming like a little girl. I raised my staff like Moses (or at the very least Charlton Heston) when he was about to part the Red Sea, brought it down, and smote that hell-spawned arachnid with all my might.

I cleaved it clean in half. And there it lies still, for I am too afraid to go near it. I trust that it’s dead, but am unconvinced that it doesn’t have one last ounce of reserved strength in its jaws just waiting for me to come in for a closer examination.

I am undoubtedly going to have horrific nightmares tonight.

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I dreamed she came back. It was as though nothing had ever happened. We stood outdoors in the moonlight and the Harry James Orchestra played behind us. Kitty Kallen sang to us.

Kiss me once and kiss me twice and kiss me once again,
It’s been a long, long time.
Haven’t felt like this, my dear, since can’t remember when,
It’s been a long, long time.
You’ll never know how many dreams I dreamed about you,
Or just how empty they all seemed without you.
So kiss me once and kiss me twice and kiss me once again,
It’s been a long, long time.

And we kissed.

Then I awoke. Alone. And the dream became a nightmare.