wish you were here

I hope people act right tonight. It would suck if they don’t.

It’s actually raining outside.

I get asked a lot why I like Vegas so much, and I say it’s because it’s good to see rain every once in awhile. Living in the desert, you appreciate it more. When I was in England for 6 months, I didn’t see the sun all that much, except in backpacking on the continent. At first I was so excited to see clouds and drizzle and fog and moody weather.

Then after about a month of not seeing the sun, I got over that really quickly.

I’m a desert rat who likes it warm. As cool as England was (literally), I realized soon enough that it was a great place to visit, but six months was plenty for my ass. It did make the idea of pub crawling more sensible, however: how better to make oneself an alcoholic than clouds and rain just about every day?

But it makes Ireland really really green, which is pretty damn cool in itself.

Yeah.

Yo, man. Word to the mother.

Freddy Vs. Jason was actually pretty cool. So was Pirates of the Carribean last night.

Tomorrow will be Tori, then First Friday.

Then The Album Leaf on Saturday. Their album One Day I’ll Be On Time was one of the first records I reviewed that first year I was working at CityLife that I actually wanted to keep afterwards. I saw them open up for Sigur Rós a few months ago and realized how good they actually were. It’ll be nice to see them at a smaller place like Roma.

Then an open mic at Noreen’s on Sunday, and we leave on Monday night after after that open mic.

I’m so excited.

I was going to type something, but nevermind.

I was going to work out today, but considering I felt like I was going to die this morning– you don’t want to know– I’m just going to skip today and take a lot of Advil instead.

Oh, and this is pretty ticklish: I ran into Brandon at Roma earlier today. He was talking something about making City, then State– I have no idea what he was talking about, since he didn’t get all that specific. I was assuming bowling.

Oddly enough, he wasn’t very talkative otherwise, and I’m not sure if it was because I could see right past his bullshit story and showing that by not even commenting on it or because his life sucks so bad he didn’t have anything to brag about.

My shoulders hurt really really bad.

Our room in Chicago is booked. This makes us happy. We have a kitchen.

Feeling good about this week already. Had a kickass workout this morning and have been pretty busy all day.

I just hope to write a lot before I leave.

Fonzie just stole my pen. Poophead.

I wrote a new poem this past weekend, but it’s a complete 180 from the humor I’ve been trying to write again lately.

I think with my uncle being in town this week, and him being my dad’s brother, it’s like having dad around a little bit for a few days. My Uncle Bobby is nothing like my dad in personality, but they have a lot of the same mannerisms and of course the same Picksburgh accent (dahntahn, hahse, and arahnd are all part of the vernacular.)

I want to write a slam piece about dad, but it’s not in me right now to force out. You can’t squeeze wine from apples, as Tori would probably say. Like most of the pieces that people like of mine, they just come. if I was a frog was a one-shot, as was part 2. Ireland was a two-shot, with lots of moments of just looking at it, not being able to see the next line, and going to the next blank page and writing something else.

Anyway, it was about dad, and it’s going to have to do until something better comes. I tend to have that weird tendency to write the same thing in different ways until it all makes sense and sounds good. It’s kind of like drafting, except using more paper and pretending that I’m actually writing more poems.

I just kept thinking of the look on this girl Tara’s face, when I was down at Roma on Wednesday, when I was telling her about my parents. That “They’re both gone?” look that makes me realize that I’m one of the few people my age who’s gone through that experience. Sometimes I forget that I’m still mourning, that I’ll always be mourning in some way.

Just have to keep going.