Holy of holies… I got to see Butch and David play tonight… from the front… they’re back out with Lucinda Williams this month for a short Los Angeles tour (genius, actually, touring in one city). It occurred to me while I was busy getting hypnotized, this is the first time I’ve SEEN them playing, in years… that is, without my back to them… I thought it was quite a revelation… how I only really HEAR them, and rarely SEE them… plus, it was gigantically refreshing to get to enjoy a show without having to worry about any details or sound issues or getting tuned or anyone else’s experience but my own… a night to sit back and relax and not have to bother with anything… weightless… just enjoy… they are so dreamy…

Every year, my brother and his family make a 10 hour pilgrimage to get to Disneyland. It has been their annual tradition for years and years. The best part of it all, of course, is that I get to spend one of their days loving my nephews, riding rides, standing in lines, grading the rides, judging the “cast members,” discussing important life issues like who my favorite Avenger is… what would I do if there was no gravity… what kind of scientific discoveries we need to make to help mankind… It’s a big deal… and a giant blast… and I guess, now it has become MY annual tradition…

Today was our day, as well as Walt Disney’s birthday… near the end of the night, however, we missed whatever extra birthday celebration activities might have been going on, in exchange for riding Splash Mountain… I was extra proud of my brother for negotiating the deal so they would let us keep going around and around without having to get out of the floating log… we made it four times in a row… a real record… each time around, singing new harmonies with the robots and the Brear Rabbit Soul Singers… each time, scoring and rating the final drop into the water… it was a huge thrill for my nephews… and a painful, aching trauma for me, as I had to pee soooo bad… “Can you hold it one more time, Uncle Mikey??” “Come on, Uncle Mikey! Hold it!”

Afterwards, we bolted straight for the bathrooms… mostly in silence, and with a shared, unspoken bond from our newly-achieved, life record and the pressing urgent mission at hand…

Finally, while standing in the stall, releasing the pressure valve and letting it all out… I knew it was all worth it… the waiting and holding… for Walt on his birthday… for my awesome nephews… as I boldly exclaimed “Ahhhhh oohhhhhh urghhhaagghh, Uncle Mikey just released his own Splash Mountain!” and my nephews cheered with Disney delight at my magical pun…

My neighbor, apparently, can’t stop believin’ and loves Journey so much he needs to share it with the world. For two hours, he had to play his entire collection at full throttle decibels. I tried closing all my windows, but I couldn’t keep the sound out. For the first few songs, as each one ended, a little silence broke through as the track was changing. I kept opening my window and yelling, “Headphones, man! Use headphones!” but the pounding barrage of incoming soul poison kept pouring in to my house. When he ran out of his Journey, Bon Jovi came on and that was the straw that broke my camel’s back. This was too much punishment, and I broke down and called the police. I don’t mind confrontation and have had many face-offs or community building exchanges, but this particular neighbor has left me with a sense that he might be unstable – I am unfortunately privy to some of his life adventures, and know some things from his candid conversations with neighbors in the open air… and I know he owns a gun…

Within 7 minutes, the music stopped. I could hear the ocean again.

Later in the afternoon, my neighbor began tending his garden just outside my bedroom window. He started singing, as if it was to himself, but knowing my windows were wide open… “You should not have called the police, La la la” and “You should have come talked to me la la, f#$^%ing pussy, la la la.”

I’m not sure why he thought his message should be delivered in song, but more and more epithets spilled out of him in tuneless melodies… however, not tuneless enough to erase the damage that had been done. Some melodies take years and years to forget, and now I have to start all over with the recovery program.

I wanted to yell back at him that he was lucky he didn’t get hauled away in handcuffs for having bad taste or put away for violating me, a soul rape… he should get 10 years to life for that… there should be a Three Strikes law for playing bad music…

I have never had a personal encounter with (or a burning for) exhibitionism. Growing up, as a kid, I remember hearing stories of supposed trench coat flashers, and crazy streakers, and bizarre, cult nudist colonies… but in my whole life, I never witnessed any in action, first hand. The idea of someone exposing him or herself in public, maybe as an uncontrollable urge or necessary exciting thrill or act of artful expression… seemed like such a science fiction wonder to me.

This weekend, I took my usual stroll through the farmers market to refill my strawberry tank and perpetuate my addiction…. saw some of the same faces that I regularly see – the migrant entrepreneurs, the scary balloon clowns, the hobo buskers working their magic on the people….

All the strange sun and familiar ocean air and wind beating the boats’ sails in the distance… along with the plates and plates of freshly cut samples stabbed with toothpicks… it’s easy to get hypnotized… reminiscing about all the outdoor souks and otherworldly barker’s voodoo that I miss so dearly…

By the time I finally got home, I was exhausted and happily filled with my dose of open air and social interaction…

I unloaded the watermelon and strawberry pallet, along with the bundled clumps of fresh mint … kicked off my shoes… locked up the car… headed back in to the house… when all of the sudden, as I started to unbutton my shirt and peel it away… I looked down… to find… that my important zipper had been UN-zipped the entire morning…

Not that it’s such a horrible thing (and maybe the ocean air is the true elixir and secret fountain of youth)… but this is the third time this has happened to me in the last week and a half… completely unintentional and unplanned… and each time, I have to retrace my steps in my head, wondering who I might have passed or if anyone could have possibly noticed…

I want to believe this is not the beginning stages or early signs of dementia or of me losing my mind… but rather, simply another example of my carefree, hippy state of being…. so lost in thought and dreams that I can’t be bothered by such minor details… I keep telling myself it’s more evidence that I am a true free soul, living free and detached from the constraints of normal daily drudgery and even time itself… untethered from the conventional ways of the world. Right on, brother, right on.

Commando for the people…

A couple nights ago, I told my nephews (just before they went to bed) that we would be going on an adventure when they woke up in the morning… a secret mission. Since we had just watched the movie, Octopussy – James Bond, they were extra excited at the sound of those words, and could hardly contain their little bodies from jumping and trembling with delight.

Morning came… and I finally revealed the mission… we would spend the day spreading random acts of kindness.

After their crinkled faces of disappointment faded away, they decided to trust and believe that, if I said it, then it must be something cool… and they would jump in head first, even if their initial gut reaction was suspicious, puzzled curiosity….

While we ate our bowls of Sugar Pops and Apple Jacks, we carefully and seriously brainstormed a list of as many things as we could think of. Each new idea, more genius than the previous, lit up their faces like a sunbeam rainbow rocket (?)… and they totally got into it…

Hand-drawn cards to send to each of their grandparents. More fancy cards to send to their playmate friends (who live directly across the street). “Uncle Mikey, why are we going to use a stamp to send a card across the street??”

Some classics, like putting quarters in parking meters, hiding money and change in the sandbox of the nearby neighborhood park’s playground for other kids to find. Happy-thought, have-a-nice-day, fortune-cookie-style notes to sneak into their neighbor’s mailboxes. Picking a bowl of fresh blackberries off their backyard blackberry bush, and hand delivering to an unsuspecting next door neighbor. Dropping cut-out coupons in the aisles of the grocery store next to the respective sale items.

We were on a roll and had come up with quite a nice lengthy list.

After the drawing part was over, we addressed all the cards, packed up our box of “kindness-bombs” and hit the street… went through a restaurant’s drive-thru window and paid for the car behind us. “Uncle Mikey, what if they have a family with 15 kids and order a giant amount of food?” Me: “That’s the risk we take. Kindness will not be stopped!”

We took our lunch to the park and had a grande time talking about thoughtfulness and kindness and why they’re so cool. Afterwards, we scoured the entire park, picking up trash. There was another kid playing on the playground while his parents watched, so we had to be stealthy ninjas as we slyly dropped coins around the slide and the swings…

At the post office, while waiting in line, one of my nephews whispered, “Uncle Mikey, how about if we let that person go in front of us?” Excellent.
We then bought a few extra stamps, and sneakily placed them around the self-help stamp dispenser area, as a surprise for someone to find in their time of urgent need.

Everywhere we went, they handed out their “happy-thought” notes… to strangers on the street, to the postman on his route, to anyone we thought needed some happiness… they kept trying to think of new kind acts along the way…. our day’s secret mission was a successful blast…

A couple days later, they were so excited to tell me about their own new random acts of kindness… and how they gave a bottle of water to a homeless guy because it was hot outside… and to the gardening crew… and how they wanted their mom to buy a case of bottled water to keep in the car so they could give them out to any thirsty people they might see…