God Dream It!

I'm not an atheist. For me, the jury's out when it comes to the whole 'God' thing. I've always found that every argument is equally compelling for and against His existence, and I'm not really going to go into either, except one.

A little over a week ago, I had a dream that God proved He existed.

Okay, you're saying. That's fine. But how did he prove it? Well, it was basically the plot of the movie Pi, but more personal because it was inside my head. The short of it is that mathematically, things that can be proven and infinite are God's way of saying 'Hello!' Like how Pi is an infinite expression and it's this one perfect imperfect number that makes a perfect shape, a shape that is undoubtedly replicated naturally everywhere just like other patterns and shapes are replicated infinitely in nature (a blood stream resembles tree branches in the winter that resemble the delta of even our most impressive rivers...).

I've thought about this before, so it wasn't a new concept from me. Kind of like in Animal House when Pinto realizes that an atom resembles the solar system when he's high - it's not exactly a religion, but it does get the mind goin'.

So I had this dream, right? And I woke up thinking that from this point I had two explanations for myself.

1) God exists. And He just sent me a personal message proving this or

2) Random synapses were firing in my brain, triggering my own emotional past and a bunch of shit from movies I've seen a few too many times.

If the former is true, and Heaven and Hell and Noah and the Ark exist, then I'll try to be all like "yeah, I believed after that dream, I just didn't wanna get all 'preachy'" but they'll know the truth, 'cause they're angels and shit. So I'll end up in Hell, listening to Kenny G and eating poop burgers for eternity.

If the latter is true, then who gives a shit! I'll be dead and it won't matter.

So I guess I should believe in God for now, until proven otherwise. I don't know if He's as into Us as We are into Him. In my opinion, if there is a God, He doesn't really care all that much about us either way. I put it like this once to Marissa. God is like the inventor of the pretzel. The guy who invented the pretzel just put a knot in some bread, salted it and called it a day. The pretzels today resemble that prototype, and in a way, many of them are almost exact. But then there are other types that are classified as pretzels that more closely resemble chicken wings or cardboard. Or puke.

What I'm saying is that God may have started this whole 'creation' thing, and that would be a reasonable explanation for how everything got here, but the 'why' may have just been an accident, and He may not have even noticed we're here yet, evolving into the terrible beings we have become.

That might be why come 2012, the Mayans predict the world will end. God would look down and be all "Holy shit, where'd all this come from? Sorry about that, Earth. Fuckin' Devil and his pointy tail and horns. I'll fix this." And then the oceans will swallow the sky and that will be that.

The Greatest Show on Earth

I'm not one for professional sports. Or, for that matter, sports at all. I plan on having a quiet night at home on Superbowl Sunday and sports might play a part inasmuch as the cats might wrestle or something. That would be nice.

This whole Superbowl thing. I mean, I don't even see the merit in "watching it for the commercials" any more. I'm not the only person who won't be watching The Big Game, of course. There's homeless people, hipsters, foreigners and the mentally-challenged, to name a few. We non-Bowlies also probably don't go head-over-heels for other culturally-defining events like, the State of the Union Address or American Idol, but I digress. I would say the homosexuals aren't into the game, but come on. This is a huge spectacle, Christina Aguilera is singing the Star-Spangled Banner, there's going to be a half-time show with the Black Eyed Peas and to top it off, Football is just about the gayest sport out there (just close your eyes and listen to the announcers for ten minutes and TRY not to think of it with homoerotic undertones).

But really, what AM I trying to say?

I meant to segue from 'I don't like sports' to 'The Harlem Globetrotters put on one hell of a show.' So let's just assume I did just that and move on.

I took the wife to see the famed comedy/basketball team last night and, well... It. Was. AMAZING. I surprised her with tickets after taking her out for sushi and we both loved every minute. Not because it was the best thing we'd ever seen, but in the same way you just have to appreciate the movie 'Blade.' Is it the best movie ever? No. Will you ever forget Wesley Snipes delivering the line "Some mothafuckas always be tryin' to ice-skate uphill" for no apparent reason? Also no.

So let's backtrack for a second. When the wife and I were just boyfriend and girlfriend, we were in line at the Bagel Grove and saw the next month's list of Utica events on a calendar. I asked, "If you had to, which of these would you want to see if you could only pick one?" Almost immediately, she replied 'The Harlem Globetrotters,' and then added that she also was pretty unfamiliar with what she answered. I told her a little about the event and she was very interested. Unfortunately, this was six years ago and for one reason or another, we had never gotten a chance to see the self-proclaimed 'World Famous' basketball team.

So last night, I surprised her. We were both very, very excited when we got to the Utica Memorial Auditorium and even happier when we saw that our seats were fucking PRIMO.

If you have never seen the Globetrotters, put it on your 'life list.' If you don't have a 'life list,' get a piece of paper and a pen, write 'LIFE LIST' on the top and then in the left-hand margin (your left, not the paper's) write the number one. Circle that number. Then to the right of that number just write 'Harlem Globetrotters.' Now underline it. You may repeat that last step for emphasis. Don't worry, when you find this list later, you'll know precisely what it means.

Okay, I don't want to spoil it for you Globetrotter virgins, but let me tell you, these guys can play some fucking basketball! And what showmanship! What I liked most about it as an adult was noticing the subtle actions by the refs, the team managers, and most of all, the Washington Generals. How embarrassing it must be to be a General. Getting booed all night, every night, and never winning a game. Oh well, they should probably just fire their coach. It was his fault we were booing them. The nerve of him accurately describing the condition of our fair city - comparing it to a toilet and saying we should be embarrassed to live here. Yeah it's true, but it's like he wasn't even trying to get on our good side. I'm glad they lost. They played like shit anyway. All the 'Trotters (I'm allowed to use that word because I've seen them) literally dribbled circles around them. I'm surprised how close the game ended up though.

The best part of all was the complete disregard for every basketball rule I had ever learned. And right in the middle of a play, there would be 'bits,' like the "steal-the-purse-from-a-spectator" bit and the "skip-across-the-court-with-a-little-girl" bit that I remember from when I was a kid, but what I appreciated most was a prize. See, during one of the longer breaks from the action, this man came up and if he succeeded in making a lay-up, a free-throw, and a three-pointer, he would win....

A ticket to ANYWHERE in the Continental United States...

on a Greyhound bus.

I don't know about you, but that sounds like a pretty inconvenient prize. I mean, if it were me, I would probably just take it to Albany or something. I don't really want to be on a bus, even a nice bus, for too long. Do people even still take the bus? Not that there's anything wrong with taking the bus, but at least give this guy a headband or something. But he made the shots. Surprisingly enough, the one he had the most trouble with was the lay-up.

Is that how you type 'lay-up'? I mean, that's what I've been writing, but that doesn't necessarily make it so. I didn't look it up, and 'layup' just looks wrong.

So on to the moral of this story. Just go see the World Famous Harlem Globetrotters some day and experience it for yourself. I mean, what else are you going to do on a Wednesday night during a blizzard on Groundhog's Day?

The Music of the Masses

I just went to lunch at Nola's Cafe in Clinton. It was delicious.

Being married, I haven't had the opportunity to sit alone and have lunch all that much. It's always expected of me to go with the wife, you know, out of common courtesy and all that. I love going out with my wife. We love each other and she's just a pleasant human being to have lunch with. But lately I haven't had the time to dine alone and I forgot how much I enjoy it.

There have been periods of my life which I was utterly alone, and being alone for most of the time makes you not appreciate the times when it's just delightful. When you live alone, go to the movies alone, drive to work alone, have no one to talk to and eat alone, it's not that special. Yes, of course there are friends - I don't mean to say that I wasn't surrounded by friends and family when I wanted, but I didn't notice how swell loneliness can be when I was utterly consumed by it.

What struck me today was, for the first time in a while, I heard people as an orchestra surrounding me, and I haven't heard that in a long time.

Let me explain.

When I first started going out, drinking and, naturally, smoking a bit of weed, I would just sit on a leather couch on the second floor of Space 26 (Utica's most non-'Utica' bar and because of that, Utica's most 'Utica' bar too) and listen to the crowd. Above the dance music the conversations of a room of 50 sounded like a song of its own. The women pitched low and high with whatever story they felt compelled to shout to one another blended with the men loudly requesting another drink from the bartender, all with greetings and introductions of friends to make one seemingly endless verse with no chorus.

It wasn't exactly something you could tap your toes to, but all this nonsense was certainly something that passed the time. And it only worked when I didn't focus in on any words in particular. If I recognized or heard one sentence or conversation above the others, it just didn't sound right. This wasn't a concerto; it was a symphony.

Anyway, this was something I would do when I just wanted to be away from all the stories I'd heard ten times before or avoiding that person from High School who's name I forgot. It was something that was mine that I could half-drunkenly stumble to and smirk about alone on the couch. I explained this to one of my friends once and after she laughed at me, I saw in her eyes that she recognized what I had heard. I think people always assumed I was depressed up there, but in actuality I was happier than I was at most times. It was a discovery of mine, but like most discoveries of the 21st Century, it's probably already been discovered a number of times.

I never forgot about this real-life orchestra, but it moved behind all the other stuff I've concerned myself with throughout the years.

Today, I heard it again while I was enjoying a book at Nola's. At first it was the usual eavesdropping of inane conversations, like "You just wouldn't believe what my Shawn can do now..." and "It's pretty cold out, huh?..." and so on. When I got into my book, the words around me blended together and I heard the unintended music.

Well, I have to get to work.

I would not have published this blog, but perhaps your standards aren't quite as high as mine. And I told myself that this year I would post more often, because I won't improve my writing unless I actually write something that's not an e-mail.

Was there more to this story? Did I leave any loose ends?

It doesn't matter. What matters is I posted, and I feel damn good about it.

And yeah, I admit to smoking weed for a period of time in my life. I can talk about it now though, because I can pass a drug test, and because smoking weed now just gives me the inspiration to clean my apartment to the point where I'm not stoned any more. And that's not very fun so I stopped.

I usually try to wrap up these posts with something that brings in the story full-circle. Guess that's not going to happen. I'm really out of practice.