Radical Transparency

Word from my Facebook wall is that I am Mr. Blue Sky.



Not sure I've ever been called a character in a song before.  Flattering for sure.  I mean I am now one step closer to becoming a rockstar.

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I don't know Slightly Stoopid or G. Love well enough to confidently confirm by sight or sound that the people in this video are actually Slightly Stoopid and G. Love and not cruel social video rockstar impostors.

But the music's good (and the video's been watched almost 200k times on YouTube).  So I'm pretty sure they are.  Are actually the real rockstars, that is.

Though I guess it doesn't matter.  Whether or not they're real.  Still good music (that lots of people have watched on YouTube).

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Ran into The Spinto Band on a sidewalk by a big blue mailbox in the mushroom capital of the world today.  They were eating pastries and looking at recording studio space.  It was funny asking questions and having six people respond, rarely more than two voices at a time, gracefully, coherently.  They looked more like rockstars than I'd ever seen them.

This is the song they played to close out last summer's music festival.  It's not on an album.  I stole it from here.

Click here to download:

Give Me Just a Little More Time.mp3 (3353 KB)

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At 10:45 pm EST tonight, I got a text:

U watch the debate?  Palin is so dumb.  But she gives me a boner.

Crazy world we have on our hands these days.

To be fair, however, the man that sent me that text is something of an extreme case.  He's a womanizer lunatic.  I can't help but absolutely adore him.  And he's someone about whom I wrote one of my favorite emails ever. 

It all happened about a year ago.  I was doing my back and forth between China and the USA thing.  I landed in Beijing.  I walked in on some drama.  I loved the story.  And I wrote it and sent it.  To a girl.  Hoping to impress her.

Names changed to protect the guilty...

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The doorhandle was broken and the lock had been changed when I got back to the Beijing apartment the other night.  Robbie came to the door in a brand new white bathrobe and hotel slippers and told me the broken door was one of the objects and people least damaged by Michael's most recent dive into total insanity. 

I'd heard some grumblings over email from Robbie while back in the USA, and even Michael himself had a bit to say about a relapse a few of the times we talked on Skype, but it's hard to tell what's serious and what's dramatized when you're that far away.

I walked in, put my stuff down, the cat cruised up to say hi, and Robbie and I started exchanging stories.  We were meeting Jerry for dinner, and we had a few minutes to kill. 

Michael walked out of the shower.  He was originally a part of the dinner plan; he was certainly part of the on the road from the airport text message planning; but it's pretty par for the course to lose him to a girl last minute.  What surprised me was to which girl we'd lost him.  It was THE ex-girlfriend.  The one with whom he used to live.  The one with the car he'd steal and drive off on drunken infidelity binges.  The only one with whom the sex felt real.  The one that threw knives at him.  The one he loved.

He was gonna make it work.  He'd realized how crazy it'd been for him to run from something so intense (run to the refuge of our apartment and a free place to stay for the past 5 months).  He'd changed.  Again.  But it was for real this time.

Jerry called.  Robbie and I went off to have dinner.  The food was great.  We discussed Jerry's plan to get clippers and other agricultural simple machines manufactured and shipped to Mendocino County medical marijuana farms.  We paid the bill, walked home, and continued the discussion.

Robbie paused as we were sitting down in the living room and announced that, if it was ok with everyone, he'd be telling The Westin Story.  Groovy, said Jerry...

Last night Michael and the girlfriend had had another big fight.  Things were not happy.  Echoes of the last time they'd gotten back together.  Echoes of the time before that.  Echoes of every time they were ever together. 

So Michael did what's natural and called the last girl with whom he'd started to get "serious."  It had taken her about 3 weeks to sleep with him, and during those three weeks, homeboy was a saint.  He'd been giving me the rundown daily over email and Skype in fact.  All was so perfect.  She was smart, cute, fun to talk to.  Damn.  His days of crazy girls were over.  But the problem was that she did eventually sleep with him, and that was pretty much the end of that.  Or was it?  The old gf had been back for a while.  Things obviously weren't right there.  The nice girl still liked him.  Or was willing to see him at least.  He was to meet her for dinner in an hour.

On with the cologne, in with the earrings, and out the door he went.

Problem was it was raining, and problem was there were no cabs anywhere.  There was, however, a woman with a big umbrella that looked as though she might be willing to share.  When Michael got under there, he found out she was Japanese, in town on business, and going just about exactly where he was going.  Sweet.  He'd pay for her cab ride to thank her for the umbrella. 

They got to her stop.  They said goodbye.  And she invited him up.  Up to her room in the Westin. 

He did not call the nice girl.  He did not call the old girlfriend.  He did, however, wake up early the next morning, leave the Japanese businesswoman sleeping peacefully, go for a swim in the Westin pool, pack a bathrobe and a pair of slippers into his backpack, eat a beautiful breakfast, charge it to her room, and come home.

Robbie wrapped the robe tighter around his shoulders and flashed the embroidered seal.  The Westin.

That was last night?, Jerry and I confirmed.  Last night, said Robbie, Unbelievable, eh?

The door opened.  Michael.  And, yep, you guessed it, the old girlfriend.  They went straight to his room.

We giggled. 

The crashes, bangs, and screams began.  We listened, concerned for a moment.  But all was well: screams of pleasure.

We laughed.  And laughed.

And, doubled over and shaking my head in disbelief, I noticed the embroidery on Robbie's slippers.  The Westin...

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The fake names belong originally to rock stars.  I chose them purposefully.  They're not obvious, but, if you know me, and you know the story, you can figure it out.  If you get all three on your first try, you win a prize.

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