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I have spent a lot of time this year off the grid… off the radar… out of social circles… close to home…

Since I get bored very easily… very bored… I often find it necessary to entertain myself.

These past few months, I have been experimenting and shaving my face into various FBI Witness Protection Program disguises. I am not sure why, but it really is amusing and fun. The Cowboy Sagebrush. The Hitler. The Hells Angel Motorcycle Handlebar. The Salvador Dali. The 1920s sideburn-connected-to-the-mustache. The Fu Manchu. The Jesus. So much wholesome fun and quality goodness.

Last night, I made a venture out into public to try to kick out the doldrums and to try NOT to work… made my way into large gatherings around town… saw some friends I hadn’t seen in awhile, old and new.

5 or 6 times, I would stand 10 inches in front of someone, shaking hands or saying hello, and I could see by their glazed over faces, for 30 seconds or so, they had no idea who I was. My FBI Witness Protection Program Disguise was acting like a slow motion, hypnotizing tractor beam… until finally they recognized me… “Whoah – what??” and they eventually saw through my face.

The first couple times were entertaining. But by the end of the night and repeated “stranger” encounters, I had HAD IT, and I decided I would go home and shave off everything.

It was 2am… I started back to my car… walked out onto the sidewalk… stood on the corner at a stoplight, waiting for the light to change… a couple of lovers walked by, and then the girl yelled, “Hey! Nice mustache!” as she traced her own imaginary mustache on her face with her fingers.

1) I was startled and happy. Is THIS what all dudes feel about their mustaches?

2) Do people really say this to strangers? A compliment and praise for someone’s facial hair? I don’t think I have ever had the urge or have ever noticed that someone’s mustache was so amazing that I had to comment out loud.

It did make me reconsider shaving it off for awhile, though. And now I walk a little more upright. And I’m still trying out new, homegrown disguises.

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Sometimes I miss “summer vacation.” Or rather, the “feeling” of summer vacation. That break in time and space when I got a clean, fresh slate… the perception of having no responsibility in no-man’s land… no goal-line in sight… no clocks, no weekends, no gravity to hold me down… just free-floating timelessness…

The only things that still come close are the occasional glimmers of the same sensation… simple pleasures that pleasure simply…

– a big fat unexpected check deposited in the bank that might only last for a few days, but I feel like I am floating on a mountainous, lottery cloud of hope and feathers…

– a new pair of sunglasses that makes me want to go outside in the daylight (!) just to show the world how hot-ass they are…

– finding a $20 dollar bill in a pair of pants that had been buried in a pile of forgotten mysteries for over a month…

– 3 days at Disneyland…

– a random act of kindness from a total stranger…

– a new flavor of anything when I thought I had tried them all…

– the ingenious invention of the “foam” soap dispenser…

– the first few days in a new country…

– “closing time” anywhere, and I have to be kicked out after I have lost track of all time…

– the silent middle-of-the-night while standing at the edge of the ocean at the crack of dawn…

It’s not exactly the same, but I can still have that same feeling… in short, blinding, dizzying bursts.

Happy summer vacation!

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In my dream last night, I was visiting an old, elementary school chum-friend in his high-rise, penthouse suite apartment. After some good catchup, feel-good conversation, I wandered over to the giant, double-door window to check out the killer view across the city and countryside.

Far off in the distance, the sky was strangely turning muddy and grey, washing out the sun into dusk (in the middle of the day). A big, faded watercolor wash, swallowing up the next town over.

At the horizon line, coming down the hills and shooting out of the grey wall, like a lone surfer coming out of an Endless Summer tube, a tiny orange sliver appeared. It looked like a moving lava stream. It was so far away and it was a slow trickle, at first.

It took a minute of staring and refocusing and curiosity and awe… to realize it was actually a huge fire storm racing towards us… a giant wall of fire… at cataclysmic, tsunami speed… ripping through everything in its path…

I yelled to my friend (who was in the back bedroom) that we had to run… get out… NOW… immediately… I frantically scrambled to his kitchen, grabbed my guitar case, and bolted out the door into the hallway… running down the hall and down the fire escape stairwell, the circular hallway of cement steps. I could hear the crackling firestorm approaching outside, getting closer, closer.

Stop.
I was suddenly shaken out of my sleep.
It didn’t occur to me until later that there might have been a real fire that I should have been up checking around the entire house. I just went back to sleep (it turns out, there was no real fire)… but I am sure it all meant something… symbolically… sub-conciously… something important that I should be paying close attention to…

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I have been peeing giant bowling balls of fire, covered in shards of glass and needles… the lithotripsy operation was a success… and I am just trying to lay still and not feel anything…

The kidney stone doctor thought he was clever and funny today when he started singing this Neil Sedaka song… actually, it was clever and funny. He was surprised and amazed that I knew who Neil Sedaka was and I told him some fun facts about Sedaka that he had never heard before… and then I had to one-up him, and I sang George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass.” He said he had never thought of that song, and that he was excited to add it to his repertoire.

It is a good feeling… being able to make your doctor laugh… and knowing you can touch people’s lives… one fiery flaming bowling ball at a time…

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the time has come… after twenty years of luck and grace, mother nature has returned… and i have been revisited by the kidney stone gods… to punish me for all my sins… the doctors say it is common and that so many people pass stones (sometimes daily) without ever knowing it… until one gets too big or too jagged… please add me to your prayer list that this will miraculously work itself out… sooner than later…

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My poor rug… sucked up so much flood water and gunk… a total mess…

Before it can be picked up and cleaned, it has to be dried out. You are supposed to get it in the sunlight as quickly as possible, lay it out flat (never hang it over a wall, or the colors will run), and flip it from front to back every couple hours.

Yesterday, I gave the rug a full day of tender, loving, drying care, and laid it out in a neighbor’s empty parking space across from mine because the sun lasts longer there. When he returned home, he drove his giant day-laborer’s truck right onto it to make a point that I should not have put it there. We both pretended it was an accident, and I got him to pull out and I retrieved my rug.

Today, instead I pulled my car straight back into his space and laid the rug in my own space.

All day long, I kept a sharp eye out for the neighbor so I could move my car as soon as he got home. He finally pulled in, and I ran out within 10 seconds, waved a friendly wave, said “hi,” and started to get into my car to move it.

Cranky Man: “Get out of my space!”

Me: “Haha, hey how’s it going?”

Cranky Man: “I said, get out of my space!”

It then occurred to me he was not joking around. I walked over to his truck, up to his open window, started to explain and remind him of yesterday’s “magic carpet” story (when he drove over it), how my place got flooded, and that I was carefully looking out for him all day as the rug dried.

Cranky Man: “I don’t care, get out of my F@#$%ing space NOW!”

I was incredulous. “Wow… I am… sorry if you had a bad day at work today. I was just…”

Cranky Man: “Get out of my space. I don’t F@#$%ing care. You wanna go there? I’ll go there!” and he started to get out of his truck like he wanted to fight.

In that split second, I had a flashback of all the “David Carradine – Kung Fu” episodes I had digested in my youth… remembered something about trying to avoid violence at all cost… and I abruptly and silently turned and walked away. Shut off all conversation and just walked away. Got into my car. Pulled out of his space, and went back in my house.

For the next 10 minutes, I could hear him down the street, ranting and yelling in his house. “Bark bark bark f@#$ bark f@#$$king red carpet!! Bark bark f#$%k MY space!! Bark bark…”

I started to think about how unhappy he must be with his life… I was still a little rattled and was mulling over the near-fatal incident… thinking about how it could have gone further south with me ending up lying on my back in the parking lot…

The neighborhood was now silent again. I looked up, and standing there in my doorway was Cranky Man! He came all the way back. I wasn’t sure if he was going to finish the job, beat me up, tear into me again, yell some more…

Then… quietly… soft-spokenly… he spent the next five minutes apologizing, telling me how sorry he was. It was actually very touching… such a hardened, macho man… swallowing and eating his pride. We chatted for awhile, exchanged names and our histories of living in the neighborhood. He then held out his hand. We shook… and became friends.

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3:30 am… in the middle of a suspenseful, secret agent dream (I think I was running from someone through caverns and waterfalls and a maze of dark corridors), there was a repetitive, time-clock ticking steadily, like an endless faucet… “click-click-click…” pushing and rushing me along… “click-click-click…”

Slowly, the clicking sound in the dream started to seem more and more real… the dream faded away… and I became aware and awake… and the clicking was still clicking…

It was the pilot light on my stove in the kitchen… the pilot light was clicking (not lighting) and would not shut up… and was mixing together with a splashy, gushing sound… of water…

I jumped out of bed, ran into the kitchen to find… the sink was overflowing and spilling out into the rest of the house… about an inch deep in some places… I ran for a bucket and began filling and dumping the water outside into the back alley… trip after trip… until the water finally stopped. There was black gunk everywhere and it took me the next couple hours to mop and clean the floors.

Thankfully, the only real damage was to my persian rug in the living room… that soaked up all the water… dreadful… I stayed up the rest of the night cleaning… and watching the sink, waiting to see if there would be any more water (and black gunk) coming up… no more.

The plumber came first thing in the morning and cleared the pipes and made everything right. Thank you Mr. Plumber. The Gas Man came to check the gas. Thank you Gas Man. I jumped back in bed for a few hours. Thank you bed.

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While eating my lunch, minding my own American business, taking on a plate of pedestrian ravioli, suddenly a bright flash caught my eye.

A group of well dressed Italian gentlemen were standing in line near our table to order their food. One of them had an unfortunate case of “Italian Open-Fly.” His pants’ zipper was wide open, broadcasting a free and unhindered shot of his blaring, white underwear.

The first thing that hit my curious mind was, “Can’t he feel the freezing Italian air? Is he wearing an Italian football protective cup? Is this what the Italian bambinas love?” All these burning questions…

Most important, though, and overriding all other concerns, was my humanitarian charity and empathy. “I MUST warn him!” I thought. It was my international civil duty. A chance to be a true ambassador for peace. A chance to touch someone’s life and make a difference in a foreign land.

I approached him and interrupted his conversation, leaned into him like I had a secret to tell, and quietly, discreetly whispered, “Sir, your zipper is open.”

He spoke no English and had no idea what I was saying. After a long, awkward, blank stare between us, I repeated in my pathetic and broken Italian (but with the perfect whiny, melodious cadence), “Mi scusi, Signore… I pantalone… buco pericoloso…” and then signaled and darted my secret agent eyes down at his crotch. He looked at me with confusion, then finally realized what I was trying to tell him.

Apparently, it wasn’t that big of a deal. He waited to get his food order, finished a chat with the sandwich maker, and walked outside and down the sidewalk before he finally zipped his pants back up. Viva l’Italia!

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I keep getting scolded. Scold, scold, scold. Here a scold, there a scold, everywhere a scold scold. Stewardesses. Waitresses. Train conductors. Bus drivers. Hotel clerks. Metro security. Priests. Passport checkers. Polizia. Gypsies. Currency exchange tellers. Mothers. Scooter kamikazes. Buskers. Beggars. Butchers. Gelato scoopers. Water taxi captains. Museum shushers. Each scold with a melodic, singable Italian whine.