Today I had banana pudding.

Today I had banana pudding. My friend suggested it. I ate my share. And I'm here to provide to her a full report on my thoughts.

As a fan of the banana, it's difficult to do it injustice. It's simply perfect in just about anything, pudding not excluded.

This pudding in particular sees it's origins in a quaint Memphis bbq establishment in Santa Monica California named Baby Blues. Baby Blues not only knows bbq, it knows pudding.

My banana pudding, from the first cracking of the container, explodes with a full sensory experience. It's coloring, yellow easy on the eyes. It's texture, plump and squishy with rolling valleys of banana chunks. It's smell – it takes one to an entire pasture of freshly ripened organic bananas. Tasting it was only just one last bit of pleasure of the banana pudding experience.

Today I had banana pudding.

A weekly series entitled: today is thursday

Today is Thursday. It isn't better, or worse, than any of the other days. There was a real force behind the "Thursday is the new Friday" movement. But in the end, we all knew, Thursday is Thursday and Friday is Friday. Just as Saturday is Saturday and not Sunday. And less is not more. Less is less. If less was more, can you imagine the chaos in our school system? Less is not more any more than more is less. In the same way losers think winning isn't the point. Because if it wasn't the point, losing would to the point, and losing would be winning and still winning would be the point. The point is to win. And to have more when more is more and less is less. And this has been brought to you by the proud weekly makers of the day, Thursday.

My inevitable crushing by powerful ocean waves

I tried today to sign up for a writing class at the local college here. Goal being to give myself some direction in my writing, and eventually get published. After I hit next half a dozen times filling out the online form, and answered such a broad range of questions as when I became a California citizen (um, 1979? – I don't remember I was a fetus and connected by an umbilical cord), the color of my skin (a golden tan thank you), my personal views on the designated hitter rule in major league baseball (it's a shitty rule) – I discovered going to school, getting your degree, it isn't about academics at all. It's a Survivor style test of who can persevere the forms and applications, the paper and the mouse strokes. After a good hour, I'm not even clear how I enroll in this one class. I, unlike others, don't encourage younger generations to go to college. So you can become more qualified, smarter, and more efficient at the job that I do? So that in a few years I will need to again take classes at the local college to remain relevant? No thank you. Which got me thinking about how completely against the grain almost everything I think is. Firstly, I think it's alright to end a sentence in is. I don't think women have any place in sports. Sweating and grunting and falling all over yourself isn't cute. Mia Hamm didn't make it ok for you. Global warming isn't the end of the world. Ok, so it is. But I'll get to wear a mini skirt in February and for a brief while before my inevitable crushing by powerful ocean waves, it will bring the beach closer to my modest little apartment in the valley. Where I am sure I will simultaneously be filling out yet another form.

oh COME on!

I read what under normal conditions, on any normal day, by someone who was normal – to be tragic. A one eyed gator, in Venice Florida, pulling a golfer in a pond while he was trying to retrieve his ball. No one was seriously hurt, including the handicapped gator and twice now handicapped golfer (get it, golf, handicapped?). Christ, I thought it was funny, get off my back.
The golfer's name? Bruce Burger.
I'm no advocate of gators attacking humans, but being one eyed, with a name like Burger, creeping on his pond, all I'm saying is I can see the confusion. He probably seemed just too delicious to resist. That's like naming someone Sally Sirloin - or Dan Dodgerdog, as is my case. It was a tragedy just waiting to happen.
Today all I ask is that you view life through the lens of a one eyed gator. When naming children, avoid those names that sound appetizing to an awaiting alligator.
Bruce Burger, oh COME on!

Class Is In Session

Class Is In Session

You know the commercials. The parents pushing the cart merrily down the aisle, throwing in supplies with wild abandonment. The kids painfully and unwillingly – under severe duress, follow behind. They feel the dread, the parents the elation, the ecstasy, the joyful exultation, of that time that comes around every early fall…

Time to go back to school.

As a grown up, in the absence of school, life no longer holds the same static cycles. Springs mesh with summer. And in a town where winters feel little change from fall, it's not hard to feel a monotonous rolling on of life with no start – and no close. So we clutch on to everything that is reminiscent of the starts and stops.

Like clicking the refresh on our browser bar of life.


There are the birthdays, the reveling in new love, the anniversaries, new babies, promotions, the first house, summer vacations. It stops the world and launches it in to a spin once again.

Among 37 reasons, people love sports for one because it gives us that same cyclical feeling.

The start of baseball is my start. And every eve of the new season I allow myself one big baseball shopping spree. Back to baseball shopping. Last year it was my jacket – now riddled in nacho cheese, ketchup stains, and dirt. I enjoy this more than I remember back to school shopping, mostly because baseball is way cooler than school ever was. This year I upped the proverbial ante and got not one, but two super cute new get fit for the season getups – an embroidered tracksuit and Swarovski crystal ornamented hat. It bling, blangs, and looks fly - real fly.

I'd say that without any unexpected, unauthorized delays or interruptions, I am hereby ready to commence the baseball season two thousand seven.

Class is in session.

Mexico, My Mother, And All Things In Between

I will never (over my dead body as long as I shall live ever ever ever) go as far as to say my mom has ever been right about anything, ever. But I'm beginning to think she wasn't entirely out of her mind when she nixed my plans in high school to head south of the border for underage spring break fun. Maybe she knew something I didn't. Maybe she knew Rebecca is just a girl who can't be trusted outside of the San Fernando valley . Maybe she watches too much investigative journalism. I don't know. We could sit here and hypothesize all day, but this story isn't going to tell itself.

Saturday I traveled south to Rosarito , Mexico . I drank tequila, sipped on margaritas, encountered various suspicious looking individuals who tried to sell me things I was not interested in purchasing, and basked in the warm Mexican golden sunshine. All in all a good day. Making my very best attempt at grown up adult responsibility, I brought only the necessities in my pocket – minimal cash, a California ID, and one debit card. Several times throughout the day I noticed my things slipping out of my pockets. Certainly not enough concern to put them anywhere else - just enough concern to complain about it. Later that afternoon (in another attempt at grownup adult responsibility) I decided to pursue admittance back in to the United States before dark. I'd enjoyed my stay, but it was time to bid Mehico a very fair adieu.

It could have been the booze talking, but I felt lighter, airier, freeer. Or it could have been the things missing from my pockets. One of those.

Well, when is a legal form of identification important? I was done drinking for the day.

Oh yes, and getting back in to the country. There would be that. Of course.

Shit.

It was ok, I had a plan. At the border when asked for identification I'd provide the friendly, helpful customs border agent with my school ID. I would also only ask the questions I was asked. I wouldn't give over information. I would be calm and collected. I would charm my way back in to the US. I'd have this under control. That was the plan.

As I waited in line at the border for the two hours it takes to get to the front I proceeded to get more nervous. I searched for the silver lining. If denied admittance in to my home country I'd take up residence in Mexico . I'd be ok. I'd scout full-time Mexican baseball players. I'd sip margaritas and sell things to tourists they didn't want. But by the time I got to the front of the line and it was my turn, I didn't want that at all. I just wanted to get back in and sing Toby Keith songs. I'd vote every election, I'd kiss babies, I'd eat apple pie, wave flags - I was desperate.

That friendly, helpful customs border agent...he wasn't so friendly or helpful. And all the sass, all the cleavage in the world, was not going to make that man my friend. "Where are you from? Why were you here? What are you hiding in this car? What are you trying to bring back? Where are you a citizen of? Where were you born? Who are you?" I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Maybe this would be the time to mention just months ago I was involved in a US presidential campaign. Or not.

It was an ordeal. And after quite the interrogation, I made my first steps back to the good ol US of A. Yes, that's right, I was back. Back to blog another day. Back to get the lecture drafted a decade ago.

The next day I called my mom. I don't know what I expected. I did think the lecture was the most likely. I don't think she even paused after I was done telling the story when she started speaking:

"So I had a date today", she says.
"Oh really, that's, um, great."
(Had she heard anything I'd said?)
"Halfway through the date he said, 'I like your tits'," she says.
"Oh my gosh Mom that's awful."
"It gets worse."
"Worse?"

"Yes."
"How so?"
"He walked me to my car and…"
"Oh no…"
"And told me…he's Catholic!!"

Nevermind my father who she was married to for 25 years was Catholic. Nevermind she would much rather be objectified by a dirt bag than date a Catholic man. What really gets me is this is prime cut-top of the line-top shelf-hand crafted-as good as it gets-Mom material. I was careless, I lost my ID, and I was temporarily trapped in Mexico . Isn't this what Moms live for?

"So there's going to be no lecture?"
"Did you hear me Rebecca, Cathlolic!!"
Click.

Which way to the moon?

I have this unshakable sense that I'm falling. Instead of the proverbial metaphoric off a cliff hanging for your life I'm standing on solid ground but I can't keep my balance. And in an instinctual knee jerk reaction, in a desperate attempt to save my own life, I'm grasping for anything to hold on to. I discover that it's just me on this concrete plank that extends for infinite miles and valleys and I'm all alone, I am all by myself, and I'm grabbing at the concrete just so I can stand. And I know the concrete is going to provide me no support, it's going to help me none, but it's all I have. So I bloody my hands and my fingernails become frayed and my knuckles go raw, but it doesn't stop me from trying. The less chance I have of holding on the more inspired I become, the more desperate I realize I already am. Because all I really want to do is not fall down. And even if I can't stand I just don't want to fall. I really really don't want to fall.

The silence becomes deafening on the concrete plank. It causes an unforgivable ringing that beats at my drums and its beats and it beats and it beats and it pounds and I scream for it to stop but nothing can be heard above the silence that has insulated me in my new concrete home. And I am again reminded by my screaming that I am alone. All. Alone. So instead I look away from the concrete landscape that traps me to the moon which looks especially close on this particular day and remarkably homelike, and I chart the distance because when you can't do the most simplest of chores like standing or speaking, something like getting to the moon without even the most modest of means, say a rocketship, sounds within reasonable effort.

I don't really want to go to the moon. I have made a home of this earthly place. But the planning takes my mind off of the mess I've made of my hands.