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Those damn things have been keeping me very busy.
So how has it been shakin'? This winter has been a bitch hasn't it?! Sucks to be a hobo.
Coming home from the studio the other day, I passed one of our town's lovable urine scented hobos standing near the freeway entrance ramp with a tattered cardboard sign that read "truly homless hard worker any help needed god bless". Of course I drove by without even looking in my cup holder to see how much spare change I had. Fuck 'em. Coldest day of the goddam year and this asshole is standing on a street corner begging for spare change? Really?! I freeze my ass off everyday in an unheated art studio making art that no one buys so I can give what ever cash I have to some dirty hobo on a street corner? That shit wont fly in my book.
When I got home, I my hobo encounter got the old gears turning. I couldn't help but to think about what life choices we both made to place us where we where in life. You know, those specific points in our lives, when we make a simple decision and it irrevocably alters, for better or worse ,our journey through this mortal world.
For example, if I created enough art that people actually wanted to buy, I could have heat in the winter. Or, if the panhandling hobo had never tasted the sweet intoxicating nectar that is gin, he may have very well been a United States senator that help write a law that gives every voting American exactly what they want for the rest of their lives. The dude would have been a fucking king if he had never placed that clear glass bottle of gin to his lips. Well, shit happens.
That night, in front of a warm fire and with a fresh bottle of booze, I began to draw out a short list of things I have done that changed my life the most.
It's time to share my candy....
1: Loudly calling my son's Cub Scout den mother a "FUCKING CUNT" during a den meeting. Boy, there really is no coming back from that. The look in my son's eyes the next week when I had to tell him that we were not welcome in the Cub Scouts and that daddy had to give back his little kerchief and hat pretty much laid the foundation for his hatred for me during his pre-teen years.
2: Surrendering to peer pressure and trying that rope swing at Murray's Lake. The sunken log got the best of me that day. It's been over 30 years, five surgeries and I still can't maintain a full erection for more than four and a half minutes.
3: Proposing to my first wife at PF Chang's. Her fortune cookie that night said 'You will find disappointment in new adventures'. Eight months later, I found a used condom on the floor of our living room. It was one of those Magnum condoms for guys with really big wangs.
4: Not learning how to tell time. I know, it's stupid but true. Way back in like third grade we all took a class on how to read a clock. I just remember joking around the whole time with a group of really cool fourth graders at my table. I didn't learn a goddam thing and to this day I can only tell time from a digital clock.
5: The three separate times I used the phrase 'YOUR MAMA' to end what I thought was a harmless confrontation with an urban Detroit local after a Red Wings hockey game. You would have thought I had learned my lesson the first time I got my head kicked in. It took two more times for me to come to the conclusion that 'YOUR MAMA' is an 'inside your head' word.
Well, those are the first five I could think of. Let me know what yours are.
