Havlicek stole the pillow
 So what if I only watch sports during playoffs? It's better than when I was younger, when the type of people who played sports were the type of people I avoided, along with people who drank. Now my life has changed, and I actively distrust people who don't drink.
Here is Harrison after the Celtics' 131 to 92 rout of the Lakers. The kid's exhausted.
I don't know what to do with my free time now that the Finals and Battlestar Galactica are over. I think I'll have to replace that reading lamp I broke with a golf club when I was drunk.
See also: "Havlicek stole the ball"Labels: boston, los angeles, sports, tot
Big Brown to help decide NBA Finals
 Because we are the same height, people often mistake me for Kobe Bryant. I have decided that I will root for the Lakers when they are in town and for the Celtics when they are at the Garden; this is the only way to keep from going nuts, and this means that the Celtics will win it in Boston.
I found the following poem scrawled on the subway wall:
I managed a frown when Big Brown let me down
Coming in very last place
That Seattle Slew was the last of the few
To've won every Triple Crown race
When Barbaro died I felt nothing inside
I erected no shrine to Eight Belles
I'm open for bets that they're doing their next
Mile and a quarter in Hell
And I have no regrets that, in three brutal sets
Federer got stomped in the clay
We hoi polloi find it hard to enjoy
Sports with a dress code to play
But in the case of Celtics v. Lakers
My loyalties go either way
Would Big Brown prefer that the banner hang down
Over rapists or over parquet?
(I might have scrawled it.)Labels: boston, los angeles, poetry, sports
Hard questions for the guy at Albertson's
 "Did you build this display?"
"No, the guys from Pepsi did."
"How long did it take, and when did they do it?"
"It took three guys about four hours to do it last Friday."
"Do you think the Patriots will be harried and hindered to the point that the brilliance of the last 18 games will be obscured for most of the Superbowl, save for some clearheadedness in the fourth quarter, and the dream no one thought to have just one year ago will be dashed by a team from, of all hated places, New York?"
"I don't watch soccer."Labels: boston, grief, hard questions, sports
Predictable drinker, perennial favorite
 Once I directed a pub crawl version of Sean O'Casey's "The Plough And the Stars" in Boston. Plays performed in bars are an Irish tradition, and the scene from O'Casey's play about the 1916 Easter Rising was even more appropriate because it took place in a bar while the uprising commenced outside.
Anyway, I cast an elderly gentleman for the role of Peter, an ineffectual loudmouth and "lemon-whiskered oul' swine". He was about 70. I don't know why he wanted to schlep all around the city doing plays in bars for not much money, but it might have had something to do with the fact that there were four or five 22-year-old women in the cast playing spirited agitators, bar wenches, and prostitutes. He must have thought, "Good odds."
One night as reheasal was breaking up he tried to get the young ladies to go home with him. They politely declined, and he said:
"I have alcohol."
...and they politely declined again. I filed the exchange away. Did he think that alcohol would tip the scales?
The other night I had my annual Los Angeles birthday dinner at the Irish bar Tom Bergin's in Los Angeles. One by one, my friends came bearing gifts of alcohol, particularly Jagermeister. I got three bottles of Jager, which is my biggest birthday haul of the substance to date.
"I thought, 'I could be original or I could get you something you'd use'," one friend said. Indeed, we killed two of the bottles right there at the table as the long-suffering waitstaff rejoiced that it would be a year before they saw me again. (We tipped the living shit out of them.)
I also had Jagermeister at my 20th birthday on Martha's Vineyard. A lot of it. I threw up most of it. But I was poorer then and I was drinking it without any food. The other night we were able to drink it with dinner, and I didn't have a hangover the next day. In this world the poor are even denied vices.
Here is my friend Gabriela with the evening's take, which included a bottle of wine in a Chinese suit. I consider myself lucky because I think my friends and family would have shown up even if there had been no alcohol.
(I could be wrong about this - I'm no longer a 22-year-old woman.)
See also: Full. Metal. JagermeisterLabels: alcohol, boston, food, los angeles, martha'svineyard, performance, personal history
Lucky seven
 Today marks the seventh anniversary of my departing Boston for Los Angeles. I left that city a broken man, my arm having been clipped by a UPS truck while I was riding my bike to work in my last months there.
Less than a year after crossing the Colorado River into California (we drove), my relationship with the person I'd traveled here with ended. I don't know many relationships that have survived westward expansion. I am told that Lewis returned from their travels feeling that Clark was a "douchebag".
 We took west four cats, two mine and two hers. I know that one (Roswell, staring from the background) is dead and I think at least two more might be (at least the one in the foreground, if there is any justice). Frampton (seen there in the middle) is still going strong, and just wrote her first novel.
I came out here to be a writer for television and film, and to perform comedy on stage. I have done all those things, but I think I should have been more specific in my plans, such as "I want to write for television shows that aren't cancelled almost immediately". But I guess saying that prior to leaving would have seemed too obvious to me then.
 I am going to spend my remaining time in Los Angeles (I have an exit strategy) being more obvious.
Also, when I first moved here, I spent a lot of time riding my bike on the beach. I don't do that anymore. I've been to the beach once in the last year. This disgusts me. It's like living in Bogue Chitto and not eating at the truck stop every day.Labels: boston, los angeles, personal history, philosophy, travel
 I am very proud of my friend David Coleman, who was musical director for many of the shows I did in Boston. He is now the choral director of the Dana Hall School in Wellesley, MA, living a "World According to Garp" existence with his family on campus. He recently brought his students to Fenway Park to sing the National Anthem.
His is a great arrangement, free of crotch-grabbing (at least on camera), and you can hear the tribute to his gospel choir roots in "red glare".
Watch the video here.
I worked with David on and off for more than ten years, with Guilty Children, my old improv group, through the Orange Show in Boston (not to be confused with the one in San Bernardino with which it had nothing in common), and many solo shows. There would be at least two points in every show in which David would laugh so hard he would cry, slam the keys on his piano, and threaten to quit the show.
Oddly enough, the musical director for "All That Jaws", Tyrone Merriner, would threaten to leave the show "in a snit" each day of rehearsals. "I am going to have a snit and leave," he would say. I didn't know until recently how common among keyboard players this behavior was.
See also: I would never expect this from a Canadian; David Coleman
Labels: boston, friends
Nomah
 I went t'tha Dodgaz game tuhnight. Theyuh wa fawty thousand people thayuh but the place still looked empty, even though it was 8,000 mowah people than could fit in Fenway kid.
I was talkin tuh this kid about Spaceman Bill Lee 'n' Cahlt'n Fisk. I was like, "I was at tha fuckin' ayuhpaht in San Francisco 'n' they gut a section 'a' chayuhs dedicated tuh Eck."
I hadn't seen Nomah Gahciaparrar since he was with the Red Sox, an' it was good to see that his OCD had abated.
 Dodga Stadium is awesome, but it's no Fenway. Pahkin' cost 15 bucks, seven Dodga Dogs cost $38.50, fowah beeyaz 'n' two Cokes cost $49, an' ah tickets in left field wuh 40 bucks each chief fuh me 'n' this kid Brian 'n' this Spanish kid Alx 'n' this kid Eric. Altogetha it was about $260 ta watch the Dodgaz stomp the Rockies on theyuh secind home game.
When th' announcah called First Base I was like "FUCKIN' NOMAH" and everybody in the stands stahted wavin' theyuh Dodga dishtowels. It was weeyud.Labels: boston, los angeles
|
Below is the only pornographic image you will find on this site. Sorry, I can't be all things to all people.
The
links below may, and often do, contain objectionable material. Go ahead.
Wreck your life.
|
