I am heading out tomorrow on a two-week journey, my usual January journey up the coast, the final stop being the Unified Grape Symposium in Sacramento, a trade show overrun with not only winemakers but also cellar rats and vineyard workers. One of the coolest thing about this show is, some of the seminars are presented in Spanish, because, hello, who do you think tends the vines in this great State?

First though, I am spending the weekend in Arcadia, and hitting the Santa Anita racetrack for two whole days with my friend Nancy. She has never been to the races before. I LOVE Santa Anita… it’s a world-class track. This weekend, it’ll be clear skies, we’ll be able to see the normally smog-obscured mountains, and drink some overpriced Pinot Grigio at the Uber-bar there. Someone won the pick-six today, so there is no carryover, but heck, who am I kidding? I’ll be lucky to win one race.

My grandparents saw Seabiscuit run on one of their first dates. My mom told Nancy, never bet on a sweaty horse. I will always bet on the horse with a foodie name. Learned my lesson at Del Mar last summer when a longshot, Habanero, came in and I didn’t bet on her. That was (in a long history of racing fuck-ups) the stupidest bet I didn’t make.

I am a little bummed I am not going to see the Arcade Fire in one of their many SoCal shows this weekend. Especially because I listen to their record constantly, and dream their music when I am asleep. But oh well. Nancy, the Golden Globes, and a take-out pizza will make me forget what I am missing (hopefully.)

It’s going to be a riotous weekend, and from there I hit the road and head to the Central Coast, working all day and then at 4:00, having a taste or two. Working up there doesn’t suck.

Next weekend, am taking a class with the famous Diva up in Sonoma. After that there will be a Slowtrav party, always a good time. I’m heading down to my hometown after, will chill with my brother Jay and his wife for a day, then start working again.

The weather is fantastic. I am hoping for no more rain. I am SICK OF RAIN. No more rain, please. For awhile there, it was reminding me of Venice, where in March 2001 it rained every single day. Only here, palm fronds might fall on your head, instead of decaying plaster.

I’ll try to write from the wine-soaked road.

I’m having a little bit of a hard time, er, moving into the new year. It’s already January 4th and before we know it it will be Valentine’s Day and then Bastille Day and then Halloween and then, it will be this day again.

I don’t remember it being like this last year. I think it is this heaviness that is covering the whole world. I remember when Princess Di and Mother Teresa died like the same day or same week or something, and right after I was feeling uber-crappy, and my mom said it was because half the world was in mourning for those two women and that energy was affecting everyone. This feeling is like that feeling, times 800.

The ocean, eating people. I think the earth is really pissed off at us right now, and who can blame her?

I’m not one of those people who jumps on the diet and exercise bandwagon January 2nd and this year, I seem to have even gone in the other direction. I am stuffing my face with whatever is around, trying to drink all the wine and eat all the chocolate at once instead of saving some for tomorrow. If I don’t watch it I’m not going to get that mystery guitar player I’ve been wanting (it’s even a mystery to me, so don’t start guessing quite yet.)

Everything moves on though, so maybe I will finish all the candy tonight, and tomorrow the sun will come out and I can walk up the hill, and look down at the ocean and still love it. We’ll see.

The past few days I have been totally bombarded by spammers who post ?comments, which are really ads, on my blog. Man, they are fast. When one hits, if you can’t catch it (the asshole spammer) in time, there might be ten comments, in just a couple of minutes. I am pretty fast and I immediately delete the comment/ad and also, ban the ISP that it came from (I get an email notification every time someone posts a comment on my blog.) But these it-creatures seem to have a trillion ISP addresses.

These spammers have fake email addresses. YO, BOB DURRELL. Go fuck yourself and take your Texas Holdems with you! Hey Tom from cheapchristmas.com.uk – your awe-inspiring comments make me want to go shopping, on your site, even though I live on another continent! Yeah, right, you wanker.

But today I got hit with the worst ? spam from websites about rape and torture. I am almost too disgusted to even tell jlkkjkjkjljjl@jkfdsjfskljfdks.com to fuck off.

But here is a little message for all you dickhead spammers – you can post, but I will just delete. Go ahead and waste lots of time. I am way too anal to let even one of your nasty-ass comments remain on my blog. And just to let you know, rape, torture, and harassment are ALL Really Bad Karma.

It has been a week of births and deaths. While some beings are pushing themselves screaming into the world, other beings are quietly leaving.

Doesn’t it seem like crazy things happen in November? Things like Jim Jones and Guyana and Dan White shooting up the San Francisco City Hall. I guess that was a long time ago, but for some reason it seems like crazy shit just happens in the month numbered eleven. And for me, the day of eleven eleven can be even more hectic. I was happy that eleven eleven passed with no major personal craziness this year.

I am listening to Wilco live on KCRW’s Morning Becomes Electric, they were there this morning. And in two days I will see them live in L.A. I must say, listening to this radio interview, I forgot how totally nerdy Jeff Tweedy is. Not that it matters. Most of my favorite people are nerds. I won’t name them here, because they might read this. In fact I can only think of two friends that aren’t nerds that might be reading this and they are Laurie Bushman and Lisa Wood. If your name is not listed here, sorry you are probably a nerd. But that is OK, for reasons stated above.

So there is half of this crazy month left. I’ve got nothing to do on Thanksgiving. Maybe I will go to the beach and drink white wine and read Vanity Fair like I do on the weekend. I could bring a turkey sandwich! Or maybe I will be totally anti and eat a Stouffer’s Mac and Cheese dinner on Thanksgiving. Before you scoff, you should try one of those things. I’ve been curing hangovers with them for years.

Between the time you push yourself out and the time you leave, quietly, you’ve got the crazy months and the boring months; the Thanksgivings with 20 nerdy friends and the Thanksgivings alone. You might have two hangovers, maybe 2000. There will be some picnics, a few coincidences, a couple of lovers you are glad didn’t work out. There will be songs that make you let out a heavy sigh, and days when you walk around with a furrowed brow. There will be random moments of pure joy. How we can absorb it all is a mystery to me.

When I was in college, I had an algebra tutor. Algebra was something I just couldn’t understand. I couldn’t figure out why 2 over 5 equals x over z or whatever the hell they try to do there. I mean, it seriously just didn’t compute in my brain, not in those days, and it wouldn’t in these days, either. I was, and remain, mathematically challenged.

So when I was in college I got this Chinese tutor, and she spent an hour with me going over and over the whole x over y = whatever thing. I was totally baffled but she kept on until, all of a sudden, I got it. A godly note from a Casio keyboard sounded (this being the eighties) and a pink light shined down on me. I really got it! For one second, because when the session with my tutor was over, I totally lost whatever I had, forever. Frustrated, I quit algebra and took statistics, which I would have failed except everyone else in the class failed worse than me so I got a B.

Anyway, I guess the point I am eventually going to try to make is there are some things I will never, ever understand, even if I try really hard and maybe even listen to people who seem to know what they are talking about. Such as:

That freaky red state/blue state county-by-county who-voted-for-who map of the USA. I keep staring at this thing and I must say, I am totally baffled. I won’t even go into how many red counties there are. The freaky thing is the whole composition if you look at it with a baffled mind. The patterns and non-patterns of blue; an oasis of blue in a trillion miles of red desert; large clumps of blue in weird places, like West Texas. What’s down there in West Texas that I don’t know about? Also, how come 90% of Washington D.C. voted for Kerry? Almost every county on the Mississippi River is blue, from the top of Minnesota to New Orleans, Louisiana, while everything around it is red. Isn’t that like, just a little weird?

I was shocked, and baffled, to find that I live in a red county. I guess I was living in a La La Land here in OB, which is as pretty far from red as one can go. If they showed OB as a county on this map, it would be blue, maybe in a sea of red, sort of like Louisville, Kentucky. But then lots of cities are tiny blue dots in seas of red. I guess I’m not so baffled about that one, but it is weird to see it so spelled out on a map.

I guess I don’t really understand the whole Democrat/Republican thing, either. Why should a person be one or the other, and why do these parties even exist? What purpose does it all serve? Also, do the people who label others, and themselves, even know what those labels mean? Maybe they are all like me, with the algebra. At least the Communist party in Italy has cool festivals with cheap wine, fried squid, and Beatles cover bands who sing in bad English; the D’s and R’s here – at least the serious ones, have pretty much forgotten a) how to have fun and b) how to get people to get into it on a regular basis.

But me being a Democrat (which I’m not, as I don’t really understand what the hell that means, it’s just the, uh, thing I’ve been labeled with and the road I’m forced to follow, since the Italian Communist Party doesn’t exist here) I do find some Republican behaviors even more baffling than my own. Such as:

Today, driving up to another Republican county, on a highway I travel often and with an assortment of people too usually the same (asshole, SUV driving, cell-phone talking, tailgating morons) I noticed an slight exception from the norm. A guy drove up right behind me, in a giant white pick-up truck, got right on my bumper, then made a quick lane change to the right and started on his whole weaving/riding the guy-in-front’s-bumper-then-brake/weaving some more/then exiting at the next exit procedure. He probably wouldn’t have been a blip on my radar since there are so many of them out there, had it not been for his two bumper stickers. One bumper sticker said one word: REPUBLICAN. The other said, REAL MEN LOVE JESUS.

OK. Excuse me, while I barf now. What the hell is going on here? I really don’t understand. For one thing, homie in his hot white truck looked about as far from a political guy as you can get; like Homer Simpson canvassing for the Green Party. Also, what is this shit about Jesus and men? Has homie ever really thought about the teachings of Jesus? Er, would Jesus exclude a fairly huge part of the world’s population from being Real Men just because they don’t believe in him? Wouldn’t Jesus be like, uh, dude, it takes a little more than that bumper sticker, believing wise? Also, would Jesus advocate that kind of driving? That kind of driving is not loving thy neighbor, that kind of driving is saying fuck you get off my road to thy neighbor. I wonder what kind of car Jesus would have? Probably a used Volvo, or a Vanagon. Probably an old Vanagon that only goes 50 miles an hour that asshole Republican truck drivers would harass! Now that is something I can understand! Hallefuckinglujah.

A Sound of Thunder

Everyone sure does seem all agro-ed out and stressed these days. It is because Summer is over, or is it because of the election? Is it because no one feels they can do anything about anything or because things seem to be totally out of control?

Maybe Mercury is in Retrograde, hadn’t even thought about that one.

Friday night I found a palm frond that looks like a witches broom and I started beating the trunk of a palm tree with it pretending it was my neighbor I was beating. I accidentally hit Mark in the thigh with the handle end, barely missing a very important area. So I sort of got my agro out early and was then able to just view all the other stress from a fairly calm standpoint. The feeling at the beach was a lot different than the beginning of the Summer. I watched some kids litter pretty badly and their mom just ignored them because she was having a fight with her boyfriend. I found myself getting agro but then a guy sitting in front of me picked up the litter when he left. Another woman started screaming at her husband because he was letting their daughter eat drumsticks for breakfast. I am not sure if she was talking about the ice cream drumsticks, or turkey drumsticks. But the woman wanted the daughter to eat cereal.

Then there were middle fingers on the freeway and arguments in the bars. I watched it all trying not to let it affect me.

Last night a kid got hit on his bike right down the street from my house. I was just getting home and was looking for parking and could see the kid’s bike all mangled and people all around, helping the kid who I was really scared might be dead or crippled or something. He wasn’t, but I’ve never seen that in my neighborhood before (though the way people ride their bikes around here combined with the driving habits of others, that is pretty shocking.)

Anyway I hope things get a little calmer soon. And absentee ballots are a good way to go, folks.

Even though Summer is not officially over for a couple more weeks, it seems like it is done, here at the beach. It is hot outside, and the Summer fog seems to be gone, replaced by Indian Summer, almost overnight. Last night the light was different and at sunset the clouds turned pink and stretched across the sky instead of rolling in low and gray off the ocean. Everything was colored rose and yellow and all the kids in the ‘hood sat outside drinking beer because now, everything changes. School starts, the days get shorter, and the tourists go away. It becomes our beach town again. Some youngsters who lived next door to me all Summer are gone. Just like that, that apartment is empty and no trace of them remains.

What happened to this Summer? It went by so fast this year. It seems just yesterday we had our street fair and 4th of July, but that was two months ago. And now the best part of the Summer, the races at Del Mar, are over too. I always love the first day I go to Del Mar to bet on the ponies, and I usually go every weekend for all six weeks, but this year I couldn?t, because life got in the way.

We went to the track yesterday. It is always bittersweet, that last day at the races, knowing you won’t be able to go again for almost a year. Last year I won an exacta on the last race, by choosing two random numbers. I didn’t have that kind of luck yesterday, probably because we bought a racing form and that always screws me up. Blind luck is better than too much information at the races, at least for me. Or choosing any jockey that wears pink is another good way to win. Oh well, there is always Santa Anita in the wintertime if I need a fix before Del Mar starts up again.

I guess today is the real, official last day of Summer. I am going out into the heat to sit by the ocean and watch the tourists one last time until next June rolls around.

2005 is coming fast. Get ready to party like it’s 2009.

I’m sitting here trying to figure out how to write about all those kids dying in that school in Russia. And I am telling you, it is hard. I’m scared that my ignorance will come through, or that someone will tell me to fuck off or something. Which would be OK, I guess. I don’t have a very thick skin and that is probably why I move through life blissfully unaware of what is going on in the world. I don’t read the paper and I don’t watch the news. The only way I find out about stuff is when I load up my homepage and Yahoo news comes up.

Like everyone I was totally saddened and horrified about the events that unfolded at that school. Like everyone I thought “why, oh why would they target children?” But for once I knew I needed to understand what was really going on over there, and why the Chechens would do something that would make everyone hate them really, really bad.

Well, I still don’t understand too much, but I do know a little more about the Chechens. How Russia declared war on them in 1994, and how Russia has been killing thousands of THEIR children and raping their women. How young Chechen men are taken away for no reason, never to return. How the Russians hate them and won’t give the Chechens who live in Russia jobs or respect. How the Russians pretty much went in Chechnya and leveled much of it and killed a lot of people who were normal people, not “terrorists.”

So, the Chechen fighters (I’m not sure I want to say terrorists, because isn’t this a war they are fighting against a big, nasty invader?) must have thought they might get some attention by taking over a school. And I, for one, know a little more about the situation and the plight of those people now.

I hate it that all those surviving kids and parents will have these events and images to haunt them for the rest of their lives. And I hate that desperation drove the Chechen fighters in to try to make their stand, and I hate that Russian soldiers stormed it and there was all kinds of gunfire with kids in the middle. And I hate it that it took something of this magnitude to get my lazy brain off my own trivial thoughts.

Blast away at me if you must, but I think there are two sides to this story.

Everything has caught up with me and this has affected the one part of my life I thought would never change. Live music – going to shows – used to be the most important thing. It still is, but life is getting in the way.

I had P.J. Harvey tickets for tomorrow night, at the Belly Up in Solana Beach, a tiny place for her to be playing. But, I am working all weekend and I just know how I am at shows so, I sold the tickets. I know I am going to regret this. At least I sold them to a really cool guy who met his girlfriend at a P.J. show three years ago and is surprising her with these tickets, which sold out in a flash.

Me: That place is so small you’ll be able to lick P.J.’s shoe!
Him: I am ready for some shoe licking!

He deserves the tickets.

I also have tickets for the Curiosa festival a week from Tuesday, but I get home from my brother’s shotgun wedding in Hawaii on the Monday morning before (after that gawdawful night flight, how I hate that flight) and have to leave for a work trip on the Central Coast the day after. How can I possibly go to a concert that starts at 5:00 P.M. forty-five minutes away from here? Not to mention, driving 300 miles the next day in who knows what condition.

A year ago, even six months ago, I would have figured out a way. I really want to see Mogwai and Interpol bad, and the Cure are so awesome live, and they are all playing at that festival. Plus my seats are fantastic. But I feel a scary edge coming on and that edge, to me, means nervous breakdown. As in, I cannot do it all anymore. I’ve got to sell these tickets. I’ve got a sinking feeling, just thinking about it.