"America Online customers are upset because the company has decided to allow advertising in its chat rooms. I can see why: You got computer sex, you can download pornography, people are making dates with 10 year-olds.
Hey, what's this? A Pepsi ad?
They're ruining the integrity of the internet!"

~Jay Leno

Sometimes when I look back at my life, certain times strike me as profoundly significant. Time and distance allows for this perspective although the memory is seen through a flowing gossamer curtain.
So it is with life and ironically, so it is with the writing of it.

I’ve thought about one particular night with a curiosity that won’t allow me to let it go.
I wonder if the final writing of the words will somehow change my point of view.
Probably not.

It was many years ago, if I were to hazard a guess I’d say 40 years.
We were staying in a beach house on the shores of Cape Cod Bay.
Never having stayed right on the beach, I was fascinated by the sheer mystery of it.
It was a modest house, a glorified camp actually, adorned with more cliché knickknacks associated with the Cape than you could ever possibly dream about.
There were signature clam shell ashtrays on every table, barnacled frames on pictures and a sign in the bathroom that read: In the land of sun and fun, we never flush for number one!

A steady sea breeze crept its way through every open window subtly scenting the entire house with a moist brackish tinge.
I don’t remember much of the vacation itself but I vividly recall the night of the storm.
I was roused from a deep sleep by a thwack of thunder and a shimmer of light.
Jumping from my bed, I headed towards the screened-in front porch that looked out over the bay.
Sitting in the front window was my mother.
She loved storms and in her way taught me to love their awesome beauty.

She saw me standing in the doorway and motioned for me to sit.

After a few minutes she said, “It’s beautiful. Isn’t it?”
In the dark of the porch I could see she was smiling.

I said, “Yeah,” as I watched the wide expanse of the beach light up like someone was flipping a light switch.
There was a clap of thunder and the skies lit up as I saw a lone seagull flying underneath the bruised thunderheads; fearless, I thought.
It was only seconds later that I noticed a second gull appear out of nowhere.
We watched the storm in silence, my mom and I, trapped in our own thoughts.

I thought about my twin sister sleeping soundly a few rooms away and had an epiphany of sorts. The storm seemed an apt and epic metaphor to our birth and subsequent adoption.
I’ve never told her about the storm but I think she’ll understand where it is that I’m calling from.
Like the two gulls I saw nearly 40 years ago, my sister and I have since flown through many a storm.
It seems somewhat bittersweet that my mom was teaching me about life even then.
And I think I now have a better understanding as to why she so loved storms.
lym…

~m

I think we're all beginning to lose it.
Maybe it's global warming frying the hell out of people's brains or maybe it's the new Coke Black, maybe it's just something in the water but people are cracking.
Just keep me far away from Boise, Idaho.
Check THIS out…
Ever seen the movie "Fargo"?
I thought Snotsucker would've posted this by now…

~m

A hug to the man that gave me more than he will ever know.
Here's to curveballs and the many summer nights when we used to play catch in the backyard; just you and me.
You made the world a better place for me, Dad, just by being there.
I pray the grass in the outfield where you stand is soft and green.
You know I love ya…

~Michael

Guess what I'm doing tonight?

~m

Did you ever get a song stuck in your head and can’t get it out
no matter how hard you try?
You can think of naked fat women, old ladies yelling Bingo! and exploding heads, sometimes it just doesn’t matter.
The stupid song is still there, humming softly.
Why can’t it ever be a cool song? Todd Rundgren or Sting or
Bon Jovi (just kidding, no really, just kidding) would do nicely.
Maybe some obscure Monk, Miles or Bill Evans song; almost anything other than what’s currently on cranial repeat, ad naseum.

Alright, I’ll come clean.
Would you like to know what is schwas?
I’ll tell you what it schwas.
You rrready, baby?

Alright…

It was “My Melody of Love” by Bobby F’N Vinton!
I hate Bobby Vinton.
I don’t even like people that like people that like Bobby Vinton.

You would think that after listening to the Miles Davis “Kind of Blue” album a gazillion times something off that album would have schtuck.
But nooooo….good ole’ BV.

Reminds me of a joke:

A guy goes to the doctor and complains that the song “The Green, Green Grass of Home” keeps playing in his head and it’s driving him nuts.
The doctor says, “Oh, it sounds like a case of Tom Jones Disease.”
“Oh, my God, “says the guy, “I’ve never heard of it before. Is it common?”
“Well,” says the doctor, “It’s not unusual…” (ba-dum-bum)

~m 

This is a piece of Flash Fiction (short, short) that I wrote over five years ago.
I attribute the inspiration to post it to Deb Woehr.
If you've yet to visit Deb, you're missing out on some very cool stuff.

I found this story interesting in that it closely mirrored the overall plot of a story written by Katherine Vaz called "Blue Flamingo looks at Red Water".
I wrote the short piece in October of 2001. Flamingo was published in Spring of 2002.
If you have an hour sometime (yeah, right) read the Vaz story.
It is simply stunning. Oh, to write that well.

It all began the day she disappeared.
I’d lost Molly in the powerful tide of my self-absorbed life; unaware of its consuming undertow. Jaime would never forgive me for taking my eyes off Molly for that one second because when I did, she was taken by a stranger to another place and time.
I’ve no idea where to even start looking.
It was at a baseball game of all places; a small field out in the middle of nowhere.
It seemed safe enough.

There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide unless you were fast enough to reach the wood’s edge with prey in your hands. All I can see now is red.

One dream in particular replays itself over and over like an endlessly skipping stone on a glass lake. In the dream, I’m walking through a forest when I get the sensation that I’m not alone. Someone is breathing down the back of my neck and I can feel the warmth of their humid breath leaving droplets of moisture that run down the middle of my back. I turn, not wanting to see who’s there when my heart stops: it’s Molly wearing the same outfit she was wearing the day she disappeared—blue jeans with an elastic waist and an orange t-shirt from Old Navy.
The oddest part is that she’s floating a foot off the ground rotating very slowly.
While she’s spinning I hear her whispering to me, “Remember… my face. Remember… my face.”
The disembodied voice is so unlike hers.
I begin to cry in this twilight netherworld until Jaime wakes me up and I look out to see the sun steadily burning in the red mourning sky.

~m

I was reading a local paper the other day when I came upon the Entertainment section.

I immediately noticed two words: DJ and Karaoke.

Oh, my. You know where I’m going with this don’t you?

In disgust, I read most of the listings and found that a fair number of clubs I used to play at now feature DJ’s and Karaoke.

God, that sucks. I feel ill.

A person with an IQ of 10 could be a DJ.
Hell, you could teach an orangutan to put a disk in a player (and it would probably be more entertaining too).

Do people really enjoy watching inebriated assholes grab a microphone and try to be George Michael?
How about Alanis Morrisette?
Or Barbara Streisand?
Truth be told, I can’t even stand watching Babs be Babs.
And I won’t even touch the severely “dog-faced” Morrisette.

My opinion, though.

This music business used to be wonderful.
Gigs were everywhere.
Money, too.

Now look at what’s happened.

I’m a bitter and incredibly cynical musician these days.
And I can’t for the life of me figure out a way to change my tune.
I just keep singing the same old song.

But I wonder; if I stopped singing, would anyone really miss me anyway?

~m

found this online and thought, cool…

~m 

“…However hopelessly we stumble, it’s by the grace of God that we endure.”

~Michael McDonald, from the song “East of Eden”.

This is purely a personal observation but the grace of God is something I’ve seriously questioned over the past decade.
With each and every passing hour, day and year I find myself looking back over my shoulder hoping to glean a shred of understanding in regards to the real meaning of my life; a vast wasteland sometimes, IMHO.

If you know me personally, you know that I’m a complex and mysterious individual.
I’m prone to many dark moods which I interpret as a type of defense mechanism acquired to cope, to endure, to ultimately survive.

My good friend Kelly, from Australia, recently mentioned humankind's concept of belief in a recent post regarding Greek Mythology.

She said, “As humans we need something to believe in…”

While I see that sentence as the honest truth I found it to be, for me, a part of the total equation. In order to believe there must first be faith—in whatever or whomever you need to believe in.
The alchemic equivalent of faith and belief equals grace, the main concept of this post. There are still days when I wonder what the hell I believe in.
I think they’re called Mondays.

I waited on a gentleman today that was buying several very nice pipes for his dad for Father’s Day. His dad is eighty years old and still loves to smoke a pipe.
In a way, I was envious. He was so lucky and didn't know it.

I thought immediately of my dad sitting in the rec room on the hill staring vacantly out the window.

I thought about how nice it would be to give him something special this Sunday.

In a perfect world, he would smile and maybe shake my hand, maybe say, “Thank you, Michael.”

As I said, in a perfect world…

The past decade has been one big ‘stumble’ for me and I attribute my survival to one simple word: grace.

Had it not been present in my life I may have joined a carnival by now, probably running Mister Mick’s House of Smoke and Mirrors.

Personally, I’d much rather be blogging.