April 4, 2006*********************I LOVE RAIN BLOG!!!!!!!!! Aw gosh, how I love the rain so much. It's absolutely blissful. Remember last year's winter here in LA when it rained everyday for months on end? Now that was stupendous. I felt like god was smiling down on me. Not like I believe in any of that hogwash, but you know what I'm saying. So, I enjoyed the rain but, I did get really, really, really wet, and bummed lots of rides and took the bus a lot. And I hate all those things, so I invested 30 bucks this year on some heavy duty rain gear. I got this big, ugly yellow overall pants things (15 dollars) And then a big ugly yellow long raincoat. I'm indestructible on my bike. And the outfit is very warm too. I don't even need to wear a jacket or sweater underneath. It's very fun to ride your bike in the rain when you can stay dry and warm. Today, it's been raining all day. Gosh it's nice. I was noticing that there was a bunch of fog rolling around Griffith Observatory, so I took a used car ('04 Mustang. One of the stupidest cars ever made) on a, ahem, road test up there high in Griffith Park. It was so beautiful. You couldn't see much further than 8 feet or so, and then, what you did see was blanketed by this rolling mist. It made me feel so good. I felt like I was on the set of a horror movie. And then, there was this coyote that was just standing by the road, and I stopped the car and we stared at each other for five minutes or so until I started howling just to see what he would do, but he got scared so I decided to leave him alone. I mean, his life is probably rough enough living in Griffith Park. That was a nice little outing, and I was on the clock too, ha-ha! Anyway, I was watching this travel show a couple or years ago, and they had this little bit of trivia before a commercial break: Which of these parks is biggest? a) Golden Gate Park b) Central Park c) Griffith Park What do you think the answer was? I was thinking it was Golden Gate Park because that's a pretty damn big park, but it ended up being Griffith Park. Everybody I tell this to doesn't believe me. I'm sure you (or I for that matter) could figure this out with a little bit of Internet research. Maybe later. I'm too busy. So, back to my love of the rain. As much as I love rain, I hate sunny weather. When somebody refers to sunny weather as being "nice" or it's a "pretty day". It's "nice outside" or any of those things, it just pisses me off so bad. I can't understand what's so nice about it. Oh yeah, I love squinting, getting sun burnt, and sweating. I mean, don't get me wrong, I love getting skin cancer just as much as the next guy, but gee whiz, this is ridiculous. For some reason, when people act like they enjoy sunny weather, it's like a slap in the face. I know this is unreasonable. They don't have any part in causing sunny weather, but for some reason their whole presence on this planet threatens me. Can you believe I lived in San Diego for three years? They can shove their 360 days a year of sunshine up their asses. And whenever I mention my love of rain, people always suggest that I move to the pacific northwest, but the thing about that is that I don't like cold weather, and plus I couldn't ever bear to leave LA. It's just perfect here. Of course, there's some things that I don't like about it, mainly the cars, but no place is perfect. Anyway, I have much more stuff that I've been meaning to write about, but I'm going to let this blog/ bulletin be just about the rain and its adversary, sunshine except for this: Check out this funny link. It's all of these Steel Reserve lovers writing in with praise for the beer to end all beers: http://www.steelbrewing.com/cgi-bin/Process.cgi?act=FEEDBACK: Oh, yeah and it's Sam's birthday. Happy Birthday, Sam. 4-5-6 **************************HEROIN OVERDOSES The subject for today's blog is heroin overdose. Whether or not the person truly intended to die from that shot, it was suicide all the same because doing hard drugs is suicidal behavior. If you really cared about your life you wouldn't be doing it. And I'm not trying to say that you should really care about your life. If you'ld like to kill yourself, be my guest. You might be wondering why I chose to write on this topic today. It's because I was just informed by my dear old friend Bry Garcia that a friend of our's, Chris Bozeman overdosed in New Orleans a couple of weeks ago. I'm assuming he was there for Mardi Gras. How wonderfully morbid that he should die at the first Mardi Gras after Hurricane Katrina. I wanted to go to that one too. Too bad. Maybe I could've seen ol' Bozeman one last time before the great leap into the unknown and presumably vacant land of death. The Great Nothingness. After so many years of heavy drinking, I don't fully remember from exactly where I know Bozeman. I think we may've gone to Lanier Middle School together for a brief stretch (before I got kicked out), but I'm not sure. That was nineteen years ago, after all. You can't expect me to remember back that far. I know for sure, we used to hang out with the same group of party-hoppers in Austin during the mid-nineties. His ex-girlfriend, Brydie lived in this apartment for a while that I ended up living in for two years. One time, I went with him, Jay Van Hoy, and a few other guys to Enchanted Rock. Bozeman had a vial of liquid LSD, and Jay Van Hoy and I tripped so hard that we got lost out on the rock all night. There was too many colors, we couldn't see anything. So, we laid down on this cold-as-fuck rock all night 'til the sun came up, and then found our way to camp. I remember getting in the car before we left for the trip and everybody thought it was hilarious that all I was bringing was a twelve pack of beer. Well, I didn't know we were staying overnight. So, rest in peace Bozeman. Too bad I didn't get to see you one last time. Who knows? Maybe he didn't intend to kill himself. Maybe he was really drunk and somebody offered him a shot so he took it, and it killed him because he was mixing it with alcohol. That's very dangerous mixing alcohol with heroin. I should know I overdosed from doing that twice. One time, I was at the same apartment that I mentioned earlier that Bozeman's girlfriend used to live at. I was about 20. This was in Austin. I was hanging out all day drinking, and sometime in the evening, this gutter punk young woman came over because she needed a place to shoot up. The deal at my place was anybody could come over to get high there, but they had to share their drugs with me. Anyway, she made me this huuuuugggee shot and she was like, "Tomatoes, I don't think you can handle it. Maybe you should only do a portion of this." but I wouldn't have it. And especially since it was free, I wanted to take advantage of it. "No way." I said, taking the syringe from her hand. I cleaned off the tip, tied myself off, and easily found a vein. It did end up being way too much. I couldn't see straight or nothing. I needed to get my composure, so I went out to my porch and sat in this patio chair to smoke a cigarette. I remember looking around having a lot of trouble keeping my eyes open, and then the next thing I knew, I woke up naked laying down in my shower and there was cold water spraying all over my nude (and very sexy) body. I didn't know what was happening at first. All I knew was that that was the highest and best heroin buzz that I had ever had in my entire life. For some reason the chair that normally sat on my porch was in the bathroom, but I didn't care. I sprang out of the shower, turned it off, and put my clothes on. When I walked out of the bathroom, I announced to everybody that that was the best feeling that I had ever experienced in my whole life. They were all looking at me like they just saw a ghost. They looked very spooked. "Oh my gosh, Tomatoes! We thought you were dying! You wouldn't wake up we had to carry you and the chair all the way to the bathroom." Apparently, instead of taking me out of the chair, they had marched me through my apartment with me sitting on the chair as if I was some sort of king. A king overdosing on heroin. "We've been sitting here for the last ten minutes wondering whether or not to call the cops." "Well, I'm fine." I sat down and smoked a cigarette. I felt so fucking, damn good. I didn't even care that I had almost died. That incident repeated itself one more time except it was in somebody else's home and they didn't bother carrying me with the chair. After that incident, I still didn't care. One time, I went out from doing too much methadone too. I write about that in my book, so you'll have to wait for that story. Anyway, I don't do heroin anymore. It gives me this condition called pancreatitus. It's extremely painful. You can't do anything but lie there and cry for days at a time. It's an inflammation of the pancreas. It releases digestive enzymes into your whole abdominal cavity. Very painful like I said. I got hospitalized for that four times in four different cities (Houston, Austin, San Diego, Los Angeles) until I finally realized it was the heroin so I stopped. Easy solution. As long as I can keep drinking. That's the important thing. And you can't drink when you're in the throes of pancreatitus, so it was an easy choice. Anyway, who else died from heroin? hmmm, let me think. Oh yeah, this guy named Bogey died from it. He had some othr middle eastern name, but I forget that right now. When I was sixteen, I was sitting in my room tripping on mushrooms when Marty (I've mentioned him in other blogs. He's the one who went christian) calls. They wanted to pretend to be in a band to open up for this band called the Fuck Emos. They came and picked me up and we went to this club in downtown. I played the saxophone, Marty the drums, and Bogey the guitar and singing. We were called Pinche. We got kicked off the stage after 5 minutes. I geuss we didn't sound so hot. Afterwards, Marty told me that my girlfriend at the time had fucked at least four other guys while off at college. I was devastated. The singer of the Fuck Emo's gave me a copy of their first demo (the only thing they had out at the time) and comforted me. Fuck Emo's ended up being one of my favorite bands and Bogey died about two years later from a heroin overdose. My ex-girlfriend, Michelle's boyfriend died from it too. It was very traumatic for her. I saw a picture of him. I didn't like his haircut, . . . just kidding Michelle if you're reading this. Anyway, there's lots of stories of people fucking their lives up from heroin, but I'm reserving this blog just for overdoses. It's long enough as it is, sheez. For now, I can't remember anymore. My old friend from the sixth grade (and coincidentally, Marty's ex-girlfriend), Natalie and my ex-girlfriend, Shanti were both murdered in two different incidents. In both instances, at first, I just assumed that they had died from heroin overdoses because they were both heavily into it, but then I found out that it was murder. Natalie had even gone sober before she was murdered. And here's another interesting thing that I just thought of: Shanti was who introduced heroin to me, and I was the person who first introduced it to Natalie. hmmm, whadayaknow? So, in conclusion, I'ld just like to say that I am not at all anti-heroin. Do whatever you wanna do, I don't really care. This world and life does suck, so cope with it however you feel fit. You could even kill some people or yourself if that would make you happy. This is a free country after all. Oh, and check out this link in case you need more advice. It's illustrated directions on killing yourself: http://suicidemethods.net/pix/listpix.htm 4/6/6 ****************************** The Dreaded Bicycle Curse This morning, I woke up horribly hungover. I drank some Steel Reserve, had sex twice, and felt a little better. I was riding my bike east down Santa Monica near Santa Monica on my way to work when, wait wait wait, you're never gonna believe what happened. I bet you're on the edge of your seat waiting in expectation of what an interesting, unprecedented bicycle incident that I'm fixing to unveil. Or maybe you're not even bothering to read this build-up. Maybe you've already scrolled down to read further, skipping over this unnecessary presentation. Well here goes, are you ready? : . . . . . A CAR HIT ME AGAIN!!!!!!!!! Yeah, that's right. You're shocked, huh? You've never heard of such a thing, have you? So that makes it 6 times getting hit by vehicles in LA. It was an old, white Ranger, and yet again he wanted to go by without being cautious of me and without slowing down. It bent his mirror in and scared the hell out of me. He kept driving too, the asshole. At first, I was in disbelief. My bike wasn't hurt. My body was OK. It hurt my elbow a little which is still hurting from the last time that something like this happened, but it's nothing to go to the hospital about or anything. I was still minimalizing the situation, milling it over when I realized that I was going to catch him at the next traffic light, . . . the one at Western and Santa Monica right in front of the Metro station. He was the first one at the light. I pulled in front of his truck and put on my most enraged face, and started screaming in an extremely agro voice, "GET YOUR FUCKING ASS OUT OF THE CAR RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!! GET THE FUCK OUT!!!!!!!!!!" I'm not going to repeat everything that I was yelling because I don't remember it all, and plus, there's no need, but the important thing to understand here is that I was completely scaring the shit out of him. It was a latino man and woman. Very attractive woman, The man was wearing one of those hats where the brim goes all the way around. Like a fishing hat or something, and some goofy-ass looking expensive sunglasses. They were making motions like they were going to pull over or something. I walked with my bike over to his window, and started screaming and yelling at him. I was pointing in his face. I turned red in the face I'm sure. I was so angry I was shaking. I came close to hitting him. very close. I'm so glad I didn't. "WATCH THE FUCK OUT!!!!" I said. "IF YOU SEE A BICYCLE, SLOW DOWN AND PASS BY CAUTIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!" "But man, you were all over the road." "I DON'T GIVE A FUCK!!!!!!! LA MUNICIPAL CODE I CAN TAKE THE WHOLE FUCKING LANE UP IF I WANT TO!!!!!!!!!!! YOU NEED TO BE CAREFUL!!!!!!!!! YOU THINK YOU'RE SO IMPORTANT THAT YOU DON'T EVEN NEED TO VALUE MY SAFETY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, WELL FUCK YOU!!!!!!!" I was intentionally avoiding personal insults. I had no problem with him other then the hitting me with his car thing. At some point, someone yelled, "Asshole!" at me from a car that was driving by. I was holding up traffic and I didn't give a fuck. He was claiming that he didn't even know that he hit me, and I screamed at him some more and finally let him drive off. I was about to knock his stupid looking hat off. I'm glad I didn't. I'ld feel even more ashamed of myself than I do already. I feel really bad about the whole thing now. It probably fucked up his whole day. I feel bad for the woman too. God, I'm a dick. Anyway, the subject of today's blog is how dangerous bike-riding is. We think it's not, but it really is. Of the six times that I've been hit by cars in LA, I was only drunk one of those times, but still it's important to be very cautious when riding a bike drunk even though you can easily get into an accident sober too. When I was 19 in Austin, I got really drunk, hit a parked car, broke my jaw in two places, and it inevitably lead to me dropping out of school. I had to have my jaws wired shut for two weeks. I'm not going to go into that too much because it's in my book. Two weeks ago, my girlfriend broke her leg drunk. She was out with a girlfriend to see a show at the Knitting Factory. I went to Top Model, came home around 11, and went to sleep. Around 1, there was a knock on the door. It was her friend. "Sarah fell off her bike, and then was just laying there, and she wouldn't get up, so I just left." the thing that you have to understand about my girlfriend is that when she gets drunk she kind of goes insane and loses touch with reality. She turns a little zombie-like. She'll go wandering around by herself in the middle of the night, or she'll start punching herself in the face, she'll disappear, accept rides from strangers. All kinds of stuff, and she won't listen to reason. I was assuming that her friend just didn't feel like dealing with her stubborn craziness and left her there. I didn't blame her. Anyway, so we both went to sleep and around 2:30, I got a call on the phone. It was a man saying that she was down in the street in front of our place and she couldn't move. So, I went down there, and sure enough, she was down there sitting on the sidewalk with her legs in front of her. I tried to get her up to our room (we live on the fourth floor) but it wouldn't work. She fell down some stairs. So finally I decided to take her seriously and we went to the hospital. We ended up taking an ambulance ride because no taxis would take us. Sure enough: broken leg. The last two weeks have been really hard. She hasn't been able to work, so money's tight. I went to LAC USC with her and ended up spending 10 hours there. The whole thing's been a big drag. She doesn't even remember what happened exactly, but she says it might've been the brakes (that I myself supposedly fixed at the Bicycle Kitchen a couple of weeks before the incident in question) Anyway, I didn't want this to go on too long. What else? A couple of years ago, I was having sex with this woman and I was really into her and we were planning on riding bikes around the Salton Sea, but she blew me of. I'm not sure why. I guess she just didn't like me. I don't know. Anyway, I was suspicious that she dabbled in witchcraft because I started seeing another woman and we were going up to the Salton Sea with our bicycles on the back of her car, and somebody rear ended us and totaled my bike thus preventing me from fulfilling a fantasy of riding bikes around the Salton Sea with a romantic interest. It seemed as if she was jealous even though it was her who blew me off not the other way. I think it backfired on her though because she ended up breaking a leg from a bike accident. Ha! Serves her right. Not like I believe in witchcraft or anything, just saying. But, the bike curse lives on. About a year after that, a car hit me really bad in downtown totaling yet another bike and injuring me so that I couldn't work for a whole two weeks. My recent favorite bike broke. The pole right above the bottom bracket completely snapped and I haven't been able to find anyone to weld it. I bought another bike at the Bicycle Kitchen. A really heavy bike that was used for industrial purposes by Warner Bros. Somebody stole that the other day off the street. They kept on hitting the lock with a brick until it broke. It looked time consuming. That must've taken place at night besides it's very busy in front of my building. They were probably drunk to waste so much time and effort on such a crappy bike. I've been using Sarah's bike since she's been stuck up in our apartment. My friend Cassidy was in a coma for six weeks after a drunk, bike accident and another friend Betty got into a terrible stoned bike collision, had to be hospitalized for weeks. Her brain was swelling. Geez that sounds bad. I think they may've had to drill a hole in her skull to let the swelling go down, but I may just be making that up because it sounds cool. So, in conclusion I'ld like to say that bike riding can be very dangerous, so we should all be careful. I'm not saying to wear a helmet or anything, but if you're really drunk, you probably shouldn't ride. At least not in this city. And if you're driving a car, please be very careful for bicyclists on the road. Thank you very much and have a pleasant day. Oh yeah, and tonight is the debut practice of my new band, Sexy Transmitted Diseases. We don't have any songs written, so it's just going to be me screaming and yelling and Dave Andrews playing the drums. It oughta be spectacular. Barnsdall Art Park, watch out! Oh yeah, and check out this super neat website that makes anagrams out of your name. There was a million for mine including "mates too" and "taste moo". Let me know of some neat ones that it comes up for you. www.anagramsite.com