Nine Lives, and One Fake One

Top Nine Weird Events From My Life I Use to Keep Conversations Going, and One That I Just Made Up Even Though It Isn’t True:

10. I went to seminary with a guy who was Axel Rose’s personal assistant.
9. I have been swimming in the pool of a sunken cruise ship, 136 feet under water.
8. I have looked into the crater of three different volcanoes, only one of which was dormant.
7. I have played basketball in an outdoor swimming pool while it was snowing in the middle of Colorado.
6. I have been allergic to egg-plant, camel hair jackets, and colas (Coke, Pepsi, RC, etc.) since I was a child, which made going to Italian restaurants, men’s shops, and birthday parties really awkward.
5. I spent the summer after my senior year of high school as a roadie for Michael W. Smith.
4. I once danced with street children in the middle of the night in the town square of Carazo, Nicaragua.
3. I saw Guns and Roses live when they were still an opening act.
2. I went to high school with Terrell Owens, and have absolutely no recollection whatsoever of having seen him play football.
1. I was a late night disc jockey at a light rock radio station which targeted women between the ages of 25 and 49, many of whom would call to flirt with me while wallowing drunkenly in their man-free existence.

Yes, but it isn't just the humidity

It’s hot in Mobile. Hot. Like, I mean, I went jogging at 6:45 this morning and stopped sweating at, like, 8:34 tonight. And that’s only because I decided to have my 8-olive-martini in the bath tub. Have I mentioned I like olives?

Right. So, I was discussing how hot it is. See, it isn’t just that it is hot. I drive a black car. That adds a bit. And I wear suits to work. And who’s freaking idea was this? Men, who are always burning up are clothed in layers year round, while women, who we all know are cold as a penguin’s bum until they hit the “change” get to run about in degrees of revealing attire. So, the secretaries gripe about how cold it is in the office while wearing spaghetti straps and mini-skirts while the senior partners sweat through their freshly starched dress shirts. Do you have any idea how much it costs to dry clean a suit! Sheesh, it’s hot. So, like, God forbid anything ever happen to my lovely bride, I’m gonna find me a woman just hitting menopause, and we’re gonna live out our days together, paying exorbitant power bills, shivering happily ‘neath a 56,000 BTU window unit in a 100 square foot room, singing Christmas carols and eating Otter pops. I love the Gulf Coast. But man, it is hot.

The Tie That Binds

I had most of today by myself. No papers to write. A bit of laundry to catch up on. But mostly, a day to myself. So, naturally, I took my copy of the Sunday Mobile Register with me to Starbucks. You may not believe me on this one, but I don’t make it to the ‘Bucks very much down here. That’s because my “real” ‘Bucks is on Airport Blvd. For the uninitiated to Mobile, that the is the main drag where fabulous amounts of petroleum are expended on paying homage to the all-powerful traffic light. Starbucks was rather full, but I managed to snag a table between the merchandise wall and a middle aged lady doing the cross word puzzle. I read an editorial written by a Chicago journalism professor who lamented the current exodus of men from the evangelical black church. He was lamenting, not to chastise black men into going back to church (for he no longer goes himself), but to call the church to turn back to black men. It was a powerful piece. Personally moved, I went home, put on a tie, and went to church.

OK, one of the hardest questions I answer with some regularity is how it is I came to leave the ministry to enter the practice of law. Harder still is the remaining question: “Do you know of a good church around here?” Whether that question is asked in Mobile or Birmingham is usually irrelevant. I say to my shame and that of the larger Christian community, “No, not really.” I won’t claim to have visited every church in both cities in my quest, but I will make the unpopular claim that such an exercise is largely unwarranted. I know ‘em. I’m not the guy who pisses and moans about all those hypocrites who populate churches. And even though I have in fact been “burned” by a church experience, no, that is not the reason I am so infrequently a pew warmer. My heart is broken for the modern church. My life the past three years has been fed with a steady stream of people who desperately miss the fellowship, worship, and restoration of a good church home, but are no longer willing to subject themselves to the “usual.” The usual being: Music that is either ancient and dry or modern and vacuous. Preaching that is somewhere between a browbeating on one extreme to spiritual masturbation on the other. Fellowship that is so program driven that there is something for everyone, provided you have zero interest in spiritual depth or making a difference in this country. Mission work? We go to third world countries for that. And there’s plenty of them. Somewhere between churches with a physical plant that dictates the clientele necessary to support them and the concept-church teetering on the brink of solvency, a good many of my generation have opted out. I do not profess to have the solution. But I do profess to be heartbroken over it. I never wanted to leave the church. I still don’t. My main comfort in my situation is that the New Testament never really seems to indicate that Jesus had a ‘membership’ at any particular synagogue. It looks much more like wherever he went, he found believers, or at least people who wanted desperately to believe, who were hungry for something other than tradition, cultural religion, and soul-leaching demands on an already taxed spirit. I still find those believers. We’re out there. We’re hungry. And we may be lonely but we are never Alone.

Cheers

Ok, this post could be mistaken as sappy. Don’t care if it is. No apologies.

Today was a day I’ll remember. I wasn’t handed anything that I’ll frame. I took no pictures of grouped friends with staged smiles fighting not to be the one guy in the picture who blinked. And to be honest, I’ll probably eventually merge this night into some other memory, and tell it all wrong one day. Irrelevant. I’ve come to recognize nights like this as if by scent. They fall into the following category of nights:

In high school, I had no greater joy than to water ski on Lake Martin. Best feeling on earth: driving home at twilight, mildly sunburned, tight skin, muscles sore from pulling against the ski rope. My motorcycle hummed beneath me. I was young, immortal, and was convinced that nothing but good was ahead of me in life. No pictures. No diplomas. But I remember it like it was today.

In college, I had no greater joy than to take my girlfriend and my discount card to the McDonalds in Saraland, Alabama. Kim and I learned about each other across the table, across a pile of fries and ketchup. Both our moms were nurses named Carol. Her sister: Dana Marie. Mine? Donna Marie. The first night I asked Kim out, I went back to my dorm and thumped my radio on. The first words out of the radio were, “Go west, young man, find a heart that’s golden.” I did. Kim’s maiden name was West. A few pictures, a couple of college diplomas. And I remember it like it was today.

When Kim was in her last semester of med school in St. Vincent, I got an email from home. I had applied to seminary in New Jersey, knowing we were about to be back in America after two years of living in the Caribbean. The email said that I could attend Princeton Theological Seminary on scholarship. I sat on the railing of the veranda of our house overlooking Young Island and the island’s western view of the Eastern Caribbean. I smoked a Cuban cigar, sipped a bit of Grenadian rum, and knew that that moment was beautiful and transient. It was both. I have no pictures of that moment. I have two diplomas from the seminary. And I remember it like it was today.

At seminary, every Thursday, me and anywhere from 3 to 30 of my closest friends would walk down the street to a hotel bar and grill. Snow? No problem. DUI? Nope. Nobody drove. A guy named Keith played cover tunes behind the bar. Guinness was $2 a pint. Theology, politics, sex, morality, sports, and our futures were discussed as if the stream of Thursdays would never end. But they did. Pictures? I can’t find any. Diplomas? Uh, I’ve already covered that. But I do have several stolen beer glasses in my freezer from that bar, up to this very day.

Today. I took lunch from work and ate left over pizza in my own house. My home. I went out to a young lawyers’ bash at a local bar after work. I ate huge shrimp. My wife showed up in scrubs. My friend from Cumberland came and made me laugh. You know who you are. I dropped my cell phone. I drank Coronas. And I made a deposit into the bank of memories for which pictures are impotent, diplomas are inappropriate, and of which life is constructed. I care little what tomorrow holds. I’ll let tomorrow worry about itself. Tonight, I’m OK.

. . . and I Feel Fine.

I should carry a note pad with me through the day. I don’t. Here’s what I can remember from what I kept thinking I should tell you:

-Headline on front page of Mobile Register last week: “Officials Plug Sex Offender Loophole”
Is it just me, or is that intentionally suggestive (keeping in mind that I live in the King James Version of the Bible Belt)?
-Seen on beach at Gulf Shores this weekend: Dude with a mullet and a Morey Boogie Board with a Confederate Flag on it. His consort also sported a mullet. “This is my south.”
-Overheard from a friendly “associate” in canned meat aisle at the Super Wal-Mart just before Hurricane Dennis took a big piss on the Gulf Coast: “NO! We are out of Vienna sausages! Potted meat is gone, too. Check the end-cap, we may have a little spam left.”
-Thought I had after seeing preview for the movie “Devil’s Rejects”: You can’t be serious? Somebody gave Rob Zombie some money to make another movie while still being even vaguely aware that he is the brainchild behind the churning bucket of putrescent monkey mucus that is “House of 1000 Corpses”? No, this can’t be happening. If this is where free enterprise gets us, I’m through believing in capitalism. Bring on Kerry, Ms. Clinton, Howard Dean, and the rest of the neo-socialists. Next thing you know, you’ll be trying to tell me that Alanis Morrisette is now an American citizen.
-Reaction of the actor who originally played “Cooter” in the TV version of the Dukes of Hazzard: “Don’t see it.”

Maybe I was too harsh on Jenkins and LaHaye. We are WAY overdue for a good apocalypse.

No recuerdo nada, pero, todo me duele. Todo.

OK, so my casenote is written, postmarked, and out of my hands. Best case scenario, I made law review. Worst case scenario: there’s some punk wanna-be 1L out there this summer, gonna work too hard next year, claw his way to the top 15% of the top 1% of society, get invited to write for law review, and I won’t have to grade his self-important, overworked, intellectually masturbatory, ladder-climbing casenote because I made one-too-many boo-boos on my bluebooking. But I am not worried about it tonight. My therapist, Jose Cuervo, has told me to tell you the following message of hope: “No me importa. No nescesito nada de nadie! No me importa NADA, PUTAS!” Thanks, Jose. Muchas gracias.

Tropical Depression

Hurricanes suck. Or swirl. Or something. We’re fine. House is fine. Law clerk job is fine. And as soon as I mail off my casenote for law review on Friday, I’ll be fine. And immediately after I become fine, I intend on using whatever chemical means prove necessary to not care exactly how fine I am. Until Monday. When I’ll go back to being fine with being a law clerk. Which is fine.

Rock you like a hurricane

The problem with not blogging for a few days is that it brews the temptation to attempt some sort of blitzkrieg update. I don’t think I can pull it off this time. Instead, here is a nice little stream of consciousness sentence, since that is how the past few weeks have felt. Sure I have that memo since IV painkillers are the only way to numb kidney stone pain associated with having family in town over a holiday weekend celebrating my inability to get up on one ski when everyone knows I’ll need two or three trips to the pharmacy to keep from feeling like I was hit with a double-decker bus with a bomb on it but my friends are OK so let’s hunt the miserable bombing bastards and torture them and refuse to apologize for feeling like law review writing assignments could not have come at a better worse time to kill, time to heal, time to not realize I switched law firms, wardrobes, and musical tastes which will soon rock you like a hurricane. Let me off, or I promise I’ll puke.

Right. So, after the way this summer has gone, I’m kind of looking forward to the brain-shearing monotony of impending doom that comes along with the gentle daily flogging that is law school. At least at law school, you have advance notice of when you will be tested. For you will be tested. Be safe, all. I’ll blog again once Dennis passes.