Multiply 365 Day 170 - Autobiography of a Weekend

 

So the birthday weekend is just starting to wrap up around here, and it was a pretty awesome weekend if I do say so myself. But before I reveal more weekend awesomeness that will surely make you jealous, there has been something on my mind for a couple of days now. It first occurred to me on Friday while hanging out at Barnes & Noble and has just kind of hung there in the distance, waiting for me to say something and I have been failing is said opportunity to address it. Not because I didn't want to, but because things I would view as far bigger and better (namely me and my weekend) took center stage. But as I sit here with nothing on the TV and nothing on the radio (I haven't started Pandora, yet) and there is ample time, I think I am going to spend a few moments addressing this thing that is bothering me.

As I said a couple of days ago, from a strictly most enjoyable part of my Friday perspective, the trip to B&N was it. Now a lot of that had to do with the disappointing service at dinner and the just disappointment that was Green Lantern. When set against those two things, the bar is incredibly low to climb over when it comes to best thing I did Friday night. Now had my plans Friday night been go to B&N, get drunk, and masturbate to internet porn then maybe B&N comes in third in that trifecta. But that wasn't the cards I was dealt, or at least the ones I opted for so instead it became the evening's highlight.

Anyway, as I am pawing my way through B&N, trying to find something that is both affordable and something I might want to actually read, I came across the cheapie racks. Now I like the cheapie racks because there are a few authors I like that end up there, Robert Parker and Tim Dorsey to name two, and if I can get a book in hardback as opposed to paperback, that is what I prefer. As luck would have it, I didn't see any Tim Dorsey, and the Robert Parker's in that section were ones I have already read or not of the Spenser series variety. Not that I have anything against Parker's other series, I have just not gotten into them nearly as much as the Spenser series. So with those out of the way, I decided to look into the cheap non fiction stuff because I also like a good non fiction book (as my list on Shelfari can attest) and that is when my discomfort began.

In the cheapie section was a autobiography by Captain Chelsey Sullenberger. If the name rings a bell it is because Captain Sullenberger was the pilot who managed a successful crash landing of an Airbus A320 on the Hudson River, thereby saving the lives of everyone onboard that day. On the scale of heroic shit to do, that is way up there on my list of things. But that doesn't mean I want to read about Captain Sullenberger's life story. He did what he was trained to do that day, sure he did it without panicking and the result was a most positive one, but that doesn't mean I need to or want to know his whole life story. I just don't care. People do heroic shit every day, firemen go into burning buildings, policemen are faced with armed felons, doctors bring people back to life from the doorsteps of death. I commend them all, but I don't want to read a book about it each time they do. I don't need to know if they grew up in a middle class home, or if they were picked on in school, or if pizza is their favorite food. It just isn't autobiography worthy.

But the point to useless memoirs got hammered home later in my trip, when I continued to walk about the store and see the autobiography of Miley Cyrus. Excuse me? Someone who has been on this planet like 30 seconds feels it is important to give us their life story? Tell you what, when you actually live a little, get back to me and then we will determine whether or not there is a story there. I am betting against it, but who knows, maybe she will land an Airbus on the Hudson River also.

That being said, this silly notion of useless autobiographies might have slipped my mind entirely had I not hopped online on Saturday. See, I have my homepage set to Igoogle, and it is still laid out in the same manner that it was when I worked in radio, so there is plenty of current events on the page, as well as some sports news and even a feeder for People magazine, because it is always good to have a fall back option in talk radio and if the sun is shining, rest assured someone Hollywood related did something stupid that I could get at least 15 minutes or radio out of. So as I am on my homepage, looking to see if there is anything new in my email when my eye goes to the bottom of the page and the People magazine feed and I see that Bristol Palin is calling her baby daddy a “gnat” in her upcoming memoir. My curiosity is piqued so I go ahead and read the article where she make the comments about the ex boyfriend, including something like “yuck” or something when asked about Levi Johnston's Playgirl photo shoot. Now excuse me, this just about violates every level of common sense known to mankind. The only reason that you are even writing a book, and being asked any questions whatsoever is because you fucked that yucky guy and squeezed out a kid by him. Otherwise you are a nobody. Yucky or not, you opted to let him lay on top of you and play a game of inverted “Whack A Mole” with your vagina, so your complaints ring quite hollow at best and the fact that you can comment about his Playgirl photos just shows that you viewed them to begin with. And all of this trailer park drama still doesn't add up to a book, I am sorry. Maybe a movie, if Bruce Willis plays your dad, we could do a parody on “The Sixth Sense” and you could walk around saying “I fuck stupid people, all the time” but beyond that, there really is nothing to see here.

Okay, rant ended. Just needed to get that off of my chest. Also I needed to create a little space and that provided me with more than enough words to do so. See, when I get updates of this blog posted on Facebook, usually the first few lines of text pop up with the update and because what I am going to write has to remain on the down lo (working on my street cred) for another week or so, I didn't want to lead off with that piece of information, lest it be read by people who shouldn't read it. I feel safe in getting into it this far down the page because no one will venture this far, save for people that regularly read the blog. And if some unknown parties were to start reading the blog I am sure the masturbation comment probably scared them away.

I talked to my mom on the phone last night. In part because she called me, though I had planned on calling her after I finished my blog entry (she called in the middle of it) for a couple of reasons. One being to thank her for my birthday card, where she sent me a musical card with the gopher from “Caddyshack” and inside the card was $50, which is way more than she needs to be sending me for my birthday, so I wanted to say thanks and also because of what is coming this upcoming weekend. My uncle Bud turned 60 in Feb, but because of everything that was going on and the fact at least one of his daughters, Melanie, couldn't be around, his wife Carrie decided to wait and throw a surprise party for him when the weather was better and Melanie could be around, so the end of June was chosen. In part because they always plan a family trip to DelGrosso Park for the last weekend of June, so everyone would definitely be around.

That being said, I think it would be safe to say that things with the family for the past year have been tense to say the least. The whole nonsense of my grandmother's estate hanging over everything (Bud drew the unfortunate short straw of being the executor) has been enough that certain family members had gotten to the point of almost forming cliques so they could talk about each other behind each other's backs. I need not remind you of the Easter dinner disaster I sat through. So with that in mind I wanted to see if my mom would be going to said surprise party. Because I didn't want to make the trip home this coming weekend only to find out she wasn't going, but have them chauffeur me around like an invalid. I would rather not have went than create the same situation that happened Christmas Eve, where my mom didn't want to do anything beyond the most immediate of family, so she didn't go to Christmas Eve at my aunt's house, but they took me because I wanted to go, thus creating more of an issue than if I had just stayed home and caught a bus there from my place. So I am talking to my mom and I ask about the party, seeing if she is going or not. In my mind I was already betting on a no, and trying to work out how I would attend without them, but she says, yes she is in fact going. Not only that, but for a change she said everyone apparently is attending, the war may officially be over. Talk about birthday presents. That right there might be the best ever. This will actually be the first time the entire family has been in one place since my grandmother's funeral, and thankfully under much better circumstances.

With news like that, suffice it to say my weekend is designated as awesome. I told you early on this would not be “The Summer of My Discontent V2.0” and so far I have been proven right and right.

Well I am going to put a wrap on this, now you know and knowing is half the battle (“GI Joe!!!”). Besides I have some other things I need to address, and those things can't be addressed here.