Monday Mad Science

Been kind of a slow Monday.  With neither urgent deadlines nor super-important races in my near future, I’ve had some time to think.  Here’s some of what’s going through my head.

·         We’re auctioning my mom’s house and some of her stuff this weekend.  Sally and I won’t be there—which is good—but it still reminds me that my mother is dead, that in fact, both of my parents are dead, and thus Sally and the girls are pretty much all I have left in this world.  Thank God for Sally.

·         Kung Fu Panda 2 was pretty good.  In fact, I liked it better than the original.

·          I find myself wondering at times what I could have done differently in my life that would have made my parents’ lives better.  They both died so young and largely of self-inflicted causes.  Could I have changed that?  But then take the other side of that argument.  How?  What could I have done to change my parents’ lives?  Move to Tennessee?  How would that have helped?  It wouldn’t have stopped my mother from smoking nor my father from drinking.  My parents died of physical causes.  Self inflicted perhaps, but still real.  Could I have made my mother live longer?  No.  In reality, she lived six weeks longer than she should have; those last weeks were nothing but pain and misery.  Her body fell apart.  That was not my doing.  There was nothing I could have done to prevent that.  I begged her to stop smoking from the time I was a boy, but she refused and hid the depth of her addiction.  I took Dad to an AA meeting, but he didn’t want to stop drinking.  He wanted to drink.  What more is there to say about that?  They went down, and that’s sad.  But I’m still here, still standing on my own two feet.  Maybe my life isn’t what they would have wanted it to be, but it’s a good life, a happy life.  They made bad choices, and they died.  But those were their choices.  I have my own choices to make.  I’ve always had my own choices to make.

·         Say what you want to about all the superhero movies this summer, the movie that I’m really looking forward to is Transformers 3.  I LOVED those Transformers movies.  I even liked that last one—the one with the Matrix of Leadership.  It was awesome.  No, it was super-awesome.  Seriously.  I loved it.  Loved, loved, LOVED it.  Giant fighting robots?  Decepticons hiding in the Smithsonian?  What more could you ask for?  I could watch that shit every single day.  Hell, I even loved the animated Transformers movie from the 80s.  That movie was great.  And it had the Matrix of Leadership in it, too.

·         Fucking Michael Bay.  You made a movie, Mike, for better or worse.  Why can’t you stand by it?  As Brian Michael Bendis says, once the work is out there, it has to stand on its own.  You can’t go back and try to change it or somehow put it in context.  It is what it is.  Once it’s out there, it belongs to the audience.

·         My friend wants to go to Six Flags: Great Adventure this weekend.  I remember going to Busch Gardens with this girl I was seeing back in Tampa.  It was the middle of summer.  We went to the bridge over the log flume and stood there kissing while the water splashed over us.  That was a nice day.  One of the best dates I’ve ever been on.

·         If I had to make a list of the best dates I’ve ever been on, it would run something like this (in no particular order):

o   That day at Busch Gardens.

o   The night before Misty and I broke up.  We went to that really nice place in downtown Savannah, and she wore that little black dress that I got her for some Army formal.  We pretended that night that everything was okay.  And for just that one night, it was.

o   That morning that Sally and I went for that “long run” in the rain.  I knew that she liked me then because who the Hell shows up for a running date in the rain?  Afterwards, we went to that little place near my apartment in Hoboken and had breakfast.  And then we spent the rest of the weekend together.  We went to Pier A and the little juice bar by the PATH station and watched the skate punks.  After that, I think we both knew.  It all happened that one day in the rain.

o   A couple of weeks later, Sally and I went to this cheesy little redneck amusement park in the Middle of Nowhere, New Jersey.  They had a water slide.  They might’ve even had a little wave pool.  Sally wore this awesome bikini top with Daisy Duke cut-offs, and I realized—as if thunderstruck—what enormous knockers she has.  That was a great day, too.  And not just because of Sally’s boobs.

·         Fucking Green Lantern.  Who the Hell wants to see Green Lantern?  I want to see Transformers!  I wish it was that weekend this weekend.

·         I confess that I want to see the new Conan movie, too.  I’m afraid it’s gonna suck a high hard one though.  I have visions of The Beastmaster, only with more CGI.

·         Looking at that list of best dates, I’m wondering if maybe I shouldn’t have married that girl from Busch Gardens, too.  I can’t even remember her name now.  I remember that she had black hair, lived someplace like Plant, and that we didn’t have much to talk about.  We kissed a lot.  That was back when kissing was a big deal—at least to me.

·         Ah, poor Misty.  It wasn’t really her fault.  There were a lot of reasons why we didn’t work together, but most of them boiled down to immaturity.  Mine.  Hers.  Our parents’.  I heard that Misty married a guy who beats her after I left, but I hope that that’s not true.  It probably is, but I hope it’s not.  We had a good marriage, and we were happy, but there’s a lot more to life than sex and pro-wrestling even when you’re young.  Still, I have fond memories of her, and that’s the way I’d like to keep it.

·         That said, I’ll bet she’s big as a house by now.  That could be me, married to her.  I don’t think I’d be happy.  At all.  As I was telling Sally over the weekend, I need a wife who knows who Nicholas Sarkozy is.  Who wants to go running, even when it’s raining.  I’m lucky I found somebody like that.  They’re hard to find.

·         It’s beautiful outside.  Man, you can’t beat New York in June.

·         Last thought: we’ve got about two weeks ‘til the start of the Tour de France.  Yeah!