The Ballad Of Ben and Yoko

Yesterday, I got my many blond hairs cut ... well actually just the ones on my head. That meant I got to go to the barber shop and visit Yoko - the wonderful, sweet woman from Japan who cuts my hair. She is always so funny and nice, it's impossible to leave that place without a smile on your face. She talks machine-gun fast, with an ecstatic, squeaky voice and lots of hand motions and body emphasis. Often, her rants include numerous quotes, like a story. For example (while vigorously imitating someone shaking a parental index finger): "And then my mother, she says to me, "Now look here, my little Yoko, you come back to Japan and visit your mama before she dies in a typhoon!'".

She earns generous tips.

Afterwards, I went to the Witchy Woods for a time. I hiked the trails and spotted all the places with the names I gave them. That was very nice. I had not done this in ages. It was a luke warm day and all the ground was covered with leaves.

I came home and kept trying to sleep, but it just wasn't working out. So I made the most of my day; called the folks and Aunt Sally. There's a job available with the Plano Public Libraries, so I may go and apply for that.

I want to be successful. So I'll have to define what success means to me before I can achieve it.

After a few hours of alternately deep and disturbed napping*, I travelled (with baggy eyes and slurred words) to Barnes & Noble to visit Lisa. A number of familiar faces were still around, like Nick, James, and Scott. Lisa and I sat back in the kids department at one of the hobbit-sized tables where we talked for a lengthy period about a subject of some importance. I may offer details later, but not for now.

Speaking of Barnes & Noble, the mysterious object pictured at the end of my previous entry is actually the punch clock from the days at B&N. They were going to throw it away when the system was updated, but I snatched it from the jaws of the trash compactor (in the nick of time), and brought it home as a memento. Everybody's social security numbers are still in it and, if you plug it into a regular electrical socket, you can still punch in and out. Unfortunately, nobody pays you for your time.

Last night I ran five miles -- far from my best, but not bad considering I haven't hit the trails in months. I felt I could do quite a lot more, but I like to ease my aging joints into the longer distances, so they don't start creaking like an old boat.

And while I push for change and growth, I can still say this:

Days off are precious.

* I had disturbing dreams about Lisa, JCP, Jordan & Amanda, Junkill, both Suzi and Suzy, my parents, Rerun, Mara, Aunt Sally, Dani, and the girls of Flying Pig Produtions. And there was something about a half bull, half camel monster that loped out of a copse of trees and picked a territorial battle with me as I was taking a shortcut (on foot) across the back acres of the Haggard ranch near my house (which would be trespassing and I would never do it in waking life). I was, somehow, armed with a crowbar and ready to defend myself. The weird creature raised up on its hind legs as a way of asserting its dominance in this region (it was very tall that way), but I stood my ground, thinking that fear or flight on my part would give it courage. However, when it started bellowing and then charged me, I woke up in a fright! In several of my dreams, however, I managed to take control and actually utter the words, "This is just a dream" thus disempowering several would-be nightmares (or daymares, actually).

Relics

I have used the same bookmark for 25 years. I got it from the old Taylors Books at Preston Center when I bought my first copies of Tolkien's holy trilogy and The Hobbit. I travelled there on a bicycle - to the sanctuary of my youth. They had a corner shop, facing north over Loop 12, positioned across a parking lot from a monstrous church with a Brobdignanian clock in its steeple. The church is still there and it still boasts a large bell that chimes so loudly it can be heard from miles away. The noise used to travel a league's distance to my bedroom window on Stefani Drive. I always found it to be a pleasant and comforting sound.

Taylors Books has long since disappeared, but I still have that old bookmark. The phrase Bookfest '82! is emblazoned across it - along with the dates November 15-20, phone numbers from before the area code addendum, and an address with the same zipcode as the neighborhood where I grew up; old Preston Hollow.

Cryptic scribbling adorns the back of it; directions of some kind, written in my sloppy teenage scrawl. I have no idea what event was taking place; if, in fact, the destination in question still exists; or at what precise point in the past quarter century I would have needed this information. I know only that, by that time, I was most certainly able to drive (judging by the distance to be travelled) and that something was afoot at the corners of Jupiter Road and LBJ Freeway.

All I had to do was take the exit, pass a gas station, drive 50 feet, turn right, and look for a sign that read "LBJ Hotel". Apparently, I had some sort of business in Room #105. Once again, there's a phone number without an area code, meaning that, whatever might have happened, it took place before the decree of the mid-1990's.

So now my life has spawned relics. Maybe I can open my own museum. I can hire Enormous John Junkill or Suzi as the curator. Aunt Sally and Joel the Groovy Old Hippie can be tour guides. All my artist friends can show their wares. We'll have such wonderful fun.

The image below presents yet another arcane artifact that might be exhibited at the Museum of Massive History. An explanation is soon to come.

I CHANGED A FEW THINGS AND DECIDED TO SHARE THIS

1. So far, who did you talk to the most today? Suzy F.
2. What is the best name for a butler? Frederic
3. What is the thing you are picked on most about?
Just being so damn wonderful.
4. What was your last weird encounter?
People on myspace who think they're my soulmate (or some such thing) even though we have never met or spoken.
5. Do you remember the part from Bambi when Bambi learns to say bear?
Nope. I only ever watch the part where Godzilla steps on Bambi.
6. How many good friends do you have?
I have always been blessed with just the right number of remarkable friends
7. What’s the weirdest thing you have ever eaten?
Doodle bugs (when I was a little boy)
8. What color are your socks today? Grey
9. What is your favorite word that starts with the letter G?
gloaming
10. Who do you blame for your mood today?
I'm in a good mood (for the first time in a while) and I give all the credit to myself, a day off from work, Rerun, Joel, Chris, Sally, and Suzy.
12. What is something scientists need to invent?
A pill to cure all diseases, so that we can live long, worry-free lives with no fear of sickness. And transporters (i.e. Star Trek) in every home and building, so nobody will ever have an excuse for being late to wherever they are going. And cars with the power of independent thought ... which, come to think of it, would be made obsolete by the transporters, but auto enthusiasts would love them, anyway.
13. What is the closest object to your left foot?
Part of my desk
14. Who is your favortite President?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
15. Do you have an inside joke that has to do with numbers?
No, actually, I don't
16. What is the longest amount of hours you have slept in a row? Tweleve-ish
17. What story do you tell most often?
Either "Night of the Naked Norsemen" or "Snowstorm the Shapeshifting Panhandler" (both autobiographical adventures)
18. How do ugly people make you feel?
One sees so many faces, while working in retail, that either everybody or nobody starts to appear ugly (depending on your outlook)
21. What are the posters on your walls?
I have lots of things in frames (like maps, and artwork by Amanda and my mom), but I do have a huge Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire promo I got from Borders.
22. Say two words that rhyme: pterodactyl and ... er, um
23.Do you use online terms in real life?
No. That would be obnoxious and sad.
25. Do you think this year will be better than the last?
I hope it will, but I am making no prohecies; just plans.
26. Who is the 1st person on your incoming call list? Suzy F.
27. Do you know who Salad Fingers Is? Nope. Is that a rapper or something?
28. What is the stupidest thing you have ever done?
I bet $500 on a football game when I was young and foolish. It was the first and last time. Might I add: Place kickers should be shot!
29. What is your favorite commercial of the moment?
I don't watch a lot of commercials.
30. What are you looking forward to?
Lots of things. My next meal, Christmas lights, climbing Wheeler Peak with Jordan, visiting Yosemite with Lisa, the next Harry Potter book release (and the inevitable party), getting back into school, fencing with Kelly, the life and times of Zephyr Rainey, Dani completing her transition, the next time I get a chance to go walking on my favorite trails, seeing people I love again, a fair and balanced senate.
33. What do you like to do when you are alone?
Never you mind about that!
34. Who are your 2 favorite characters on Coupling (the British version)? Jeff Murdoch and Susan Walker.
35. What is missing from your life?
A job I actually like, a college degree, fun
36. Would you be ashamed if you wore hippie clothes? No.
37. Grab the closest book, what is the 7th sentence on the 23rd page? "It's a very fine line between fearless and foolhardy".
38. When was the last time you slept with a stuffed animal?
What are you suggesting; that I'm some kind of pathetic teddy bear hugging infant? And, incidentally, it was last night.
39. If it was your last day on earth, what shoes would you wear?
My knee high goth boots.
40. Do you own a Super Nintendo? HA! no
41. What do you think of Law and Order?
It's a worthy goal, within reason
42. Can you name all 7 dwarfs?
No, but Kelly, who sent this to me, can and, according to her, they are as follows: happy, sleepy, sneezey, dopey, doc, bashful, grumpy
43. Have you ever pretended to be Jewish?
No, but I pretended to be Methodist for quite a long time.
44. What was the last thing you thought you lost?
My glasses (found 'em!)
45. What were you doing at midnight last night?
Drudgery at work.
46. If you had a ball of clay what would you mold it into?
The first thing the vast majority of men would make out of a ball of clay is a penis. I have never seen this fail. So I am going to be unique and say that the first thing for me would be a pair of testicles.
47. Do you have any famous relatives?
I am related to R.L. Thornton, who has a freeway named after him in Dallas; and, I think, distantly to William Wallace, who mooned the English.
48. Have you ever been cool enough to:
Press all the buttons on an elevator?
No. But I will now.
Bake with an easy bake oven? No
Gone to school when you didn’t remember you had the day off?
HA! As if! I would never forget a day off!
Ever owned a Spirograph? Yes.
What was the last....TV show you watched? Wire in the ... Blood.
Thing you bought? Gas
Person that spent the night at your house? My parents
Song you sang out loud?
"Is She Really Going Out With Him?" by Joe Jackson
Time you ate ice cream? Tonight at Aunt Sally's ... with apple crisp

ROCK AND OR ROLL

My All-time Fave Guitar Riff: Van Halen's "Unchained". It has been for years. Truth be told, I'm not the biggest Van Halen fan in the world. That title belongs to my old high school buddy, Big Daddy K-Bone, who used to play Edward Van Halen in a band of air-guitaring, lip synching imitators. But, never mind the song, itself; it's the hook that matters, and this is one propulsive, gut-wrenching instance of high energy, clean and technical (and yet heavy with grunge) bad boy bombardment (he says like a music critic). Whenever I hear it, I can't sit still. I want to get up and start prancing and preening like David Lee Roth, licking the microphone (usually a telephone or TV remote) and shaking my ass for the fans (usually just Rerun - who doesn't seem impressed).

"Come on, Dave, give me a break," says a canned voice. "Hey, hey, hey!" drawls Diamond Dave. "One break comin' up!" Cue Eddie, and that wicked riff!

That's rock 'n' roll baby!!!!

I'll never forget the first time I heard it. It was fair day at my old high school. The place was abuzz with talk of the Van Halen album that was to come out that day. We were all out in a big field, performing various circus acts for each other's amusement, when some ambient guy went strolling past with a boom box on his shoulder, turned up really LOUD. Suddenly this monstrous guitar noise from hell came blaring out of it - like someone firing up a cranky hot rod and letting it roar . We all stopped, stood still and listened. I think a guy who was in the egg toss competition got smacked in the face with an egg.

Everybody knew it had to be the new Van Halen. That sound deserved a patent. Heck, I wasn't really a fan of theirs at the time, but that changed in an instant. I was blown away. We all were. I'll still take that hook over any other in rock history, be it old school like "Satisfaction", "Whole Lotta Love" or "Purple Haze" -- or whatever it is the kids call rock 'n' roll these days. If you ask me, most of the guitarists in modern bands are too downtrodden by society or confused and/or intimidated by their newly independent girlfriends to risk a little showing off. Come on guys, says Benny, have some fun. Rock out a little. It's like Tom Sawyer when he tiptoed across a pickett fence to impress Becky Thatcher; a little self-mocking machismo -- just for the hell of it (and to impress the ladies); it can be a very good thing for the soul. Don't be such a downer, all you emo boys. I really don't think this is what Chuck Berry intended when he said, "Go, Johnny, go!"

So for ol' Chuck's sake (and Jimi's and Eric's and Eddie's and all the rest) --- ROCK OUT!!!!!!!

P.S. Girls can do it, too. And I, for one, have always been impressed with the girls who do. I think they're muy macho.

And, yes I know, Eddie can be a jerk and Dave can be obnoxious, and their huge egos eventually broke up the band. But I'll always remember them for that one amazing moment.

Note: There's a scene in a movie called "The Wedding Singer" (set back in the 1980's) where Adam "Erratically Amusing" Sandler's ex-girlfriend shows up at his house wearing a Van Halen tee-shirt. He tells her: "Take that off! You're gonna curse the band and they'll break up, just like us!"

Very funny.

GILDEROY LOCKHART IS DROP DEAD SEXY!!!

Okay. So I've gotten into this roleplaying thing on the dreaded Myspace hullabaloo. It 's based on the Harry Potterverse, so naturally I am masquerading as Gilderoy Lockhart. Right? At first, it was all very nice. My buddy list included all the usual folks: Snape, Dumbledore, Hermione, Ron, and Harry. Their profile pictures featured the actors from the movies, and they all seemed to be playing their parts convincingly. Then, suddenly, there appeared hordes of scantily clad girls claiming to be Harry's long lost cousin or the grown up version of Ginny or one of the Patil twins; all of whom - based on the pictures used - developed into supermodels and eschewed the modest Hogwarts attire in favor of teeny weeny bikinis and extremely exciting underwear. They have also forgotten how to act like proper English boarding school lasses and seem more interested in describing all the different ways in which they would like to jump Professor Lockhart's bones. All of them claim to be at least 18 years old, which is good, but I feel weird flirting with them. I mean, I had a lovely romance with Madame Rosmerta, and apparently, Narcissa Malfoy (who looks just like Michelle Pfeiffer) wants to make my lips fall off and my tongue turn into ash. All of which is very nice, of course. But, I mean, I have yet to go adventuring with Snape or Hagrid. Or battle with You Know Who. It's all sexy girls who want to have their way with poor old Professor Lockhart! I got into this thing for fun and adventure, and a few laughs at dumb old Gilderoy's expense. But now, the bumbling clothes horse has become a sex symbol, and I am not sure how seriously some of these young ladies are taking the game.
I mean, I'm not Gilderoy. I'm me.
Maybe I should just relax and enjoy the roleplaying. But I have to draw the line when they start offering to have sex with Lockhart. I'm fine with carriage rides in the moonlight and drinks at the Three Broomsticks, but it gets a little too extreme when they start talking about how they'd like to teach the professor a thing or two and/or what they'd like to do with my magic wand. Which means, in essence, they want to engage in kinky cyber chat with the character created by JK Rowling and Kenneth Branagh. For all I know, they could be dirty old men posing as lovely teenage girls as a means of getting their rocks off with the likes of Snape and Gilderoy (not to mention young Harry, Draco, and Ron). Or they could really be horny teenage girls who want to lose their cyber-innocence to a handsome Hogwarts authority figure. Which would make me a dirty old man. And could get me thrown into Azkaban!
What's a wizard to do?

LET'S PARTY!!!!!!!!

WASHINGTON - Obese mice on a high-fat diet got the benefits of being thin - living healthier, longer lives - without the pain of dieting when they consumed huge doses of red wine extract, according to a landmark new study.
It's far too early to know if this would work in people, scientists said. But several were excited by the findings, calling it promising and even "spectacular."
The study by the Harvard Medical School and the National Institute on Aging shows that heavy doses of the red wine ingredient, resveratrol, lowers the rate of diabetes, liver problems and other fat-related ill effects in obese mice.
Fat-related deaths dropped 31 percent for obese mice on the supplement, compared to fat mice that got no treatment. The mice that got the wine extract also lived longer than expected, the study showed.
And astoundingly, the organs of the treated fat mice looked normal when they shouldn't have, said study lead author Dr. David Sinclair of Harvard Medical School.
"They're chubby but inside they look great," Sinclair said Wednesday afternoon. "You have to pinch yourself to make sure that this is all real, but the study involved 27 different researchers each of whom had a Eureka moment."
Sinclair said other preliminary work still under way shows the wine ingredient has promise in extending the lives of normal-sized mice, too.
Sinclair has a financial stake in the research. He is co-founder of a pharmaceutical firm, Sirtris Pharmaceuticals Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., which is testing to see if the extract can safely be used to treat people with diabetes.
For years, red wine has been linked to numerous health benefits. But the new study, published online in the journal Nature on Thursday, shows that mammals given ultrahigh doses of resveratrol can get the good effects of cutting calories without actually doing it.
"If we're right about this, it would mean you could have the benefit of restricting calories without having to feel hungry," Sinclair said. "It's the Holy Grail of aging research."
Even though he called the work "tantalizing," Dr. Howard Eisenson, director of the Duke University Diet and Fitness Center urged people not to get too excited.
"All of us who practice medicine have learned that we can't leap from studies in the lab - particularly in lab animals - to what will happen in humans," Eisenson said.
Resveratrol, produced when plants are under stress, is found in the skin of grapes and in other plants, including peanuts and some berries.
The 55 resveratrol-treated obese mice were on a high-calorie diet - what one scientist called a "McDonald's diet." Not only were they about as healthy as normal mice, they were also as agile and active on exercise equipment as their lean cousins, demonstrating a normal quality of life that was unexpected for such obese creatures, said study co-author Rafael de Cabo of the Institute on Aging.
"These fat old mice can perform as well on this skill test as young lean mice," Sinclair said.
The only major body measurement that didn't improve - aside from weight - was cholesterol, and that didn't seem to matter in the overall health of the mice, Sinclair said.
The study is so promising that the aging institute this week is strongly considering a repeat of the same experiment with rhesus monkeys, a closer match to humans, said institute director Dr. Richard Hodes.
Hodes cautions that it's too early for people to start taking non-regulated resveratrol supplements because safety issues haven't been adequately addressed.
Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is working on a high-dose resveratrol pill that unlike unregulated supplements on the market now, would be used as a drug and require Food and Drug Administration approval, said company chief executive officer Dr. Christoph Westphal. And that development and federal approval is about five years away, he said.
Sirtris is aiming the research at diseases of aging, which includes diabetes.
Sinclair's results are so promising that he rushed the study into the science journal while the obese mice are still alive, not waiting several more weeks or months until they die. That raises some issues, including specific figures about mortality, but is understandable, said outside experts. The obese mice still lived past the median age for mice of their weight.
Even would-be competitors are praising the study.
"It's a fairly spectacular result," said University of Wisconsin medical professor Dr. Richard Weindruch, who co-founded another biotech company that looks at the genetics of aging and drugs that could expand life spans. "People will go to McDonald's and afterwards they'll do super-sized resveratrol."
"This is fantastic," said Brown University molecular biology professor Stephen Helfand, who was the first reviewer for the journal Nature and not part of the team. "This is a historic landmark contribution."
Helfand said he won't be taking red wine extract supplements - but he has put his elderly parents on them. Such supplements are available at health food stores and on-line, but not at dose levels equivalent to what the mice in the experiment got - roughly equal to 100 bottles of wine a day in humans.
Mice, he said, are good initial test subjects for human drugs because their bodies function similarly to humans in many ways. However, the differences between mouse and man can prove crucial, he noted.
Sinclair said he takes resveratrol supplements, but doesn't recommend it for others.
Resveratrol works by spurring activity and regrowth in cells' mitochondria, which Sinclair called "the energy powerhouses of the cell."
Some scientists, such as Weindruch and Hodes, worry that the research may encourage people to forget about their diets and wait for a red wine cure-all that may never come.
"It's not an excuse to overeat," Sinclair said. But he added that for mice at least, this shows you can be "fat, happy, healthy and vigorous."

O.K. Go

These guys are cool. Thanks, J.C.P.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5933733973682128992&q=%22ok+go%22&hl=en