7/1/04 3:59 AM: "You have failed to remember the great lesson of modern life: In front of every car is another car." -- Jon Carroll

HIYO, SILVER: So I bought a silver 1995 Chevy Lumina from a kind of hippie couple in Eagle Rock. It has some foibles -- it runs hot, which makes me nervous. The passenger door lock doesn't respond to the "unlock all locks" commands. There's dog hair almost everywhere, and when I got in it Wednesday (I bought it Tuesday) it smelled powerfully of dog. I hate dogs. There's even a mess of spilled dog food in the spare tire well. I bought some Deep Cleaning Febreeze and doused the interior before I locked it up. Oh, and the in-dash Delco CD player sucks, getting errors a lot and having virtually no anti-skip protection (even from closing the glove compartment).

On the other hand, it feels good. I love the fact it doesn't have daytime running lights (which I hated). It handles like a dream. It has a rear defrost, less important in summer but a big issue for me in the winter. It's cool and reserved and serious, while still being able to be fun. Like me. I'm happy overall, just gotta deal with some issues.

Funny enough, my old co-worker Bronwyn is also in a new-to-her car. Interesting times, these.

Oh, and this is kind of what my car looks like. I'm not crazy enough, nor have enough free time, to post the real thing (at least without a Decepticon sticker on it, heh).

THE NERVE OF THIS GUY ...: So on Tuesday, after catching the wrong bus and ending up in Pasadena on my way to Eagle Rock to get the new car (which feels like a girl, but I don't know what to name it ... see poll above), I drive to Hollywood to give up the title to the old Monte Carlo (which I got to see for one last time, poor old thing). The guy is running his business out of his apartment (very close to where my dawg Eliot lives, strangely enough) and he says, "can you help me out any on the cost? With storage, and the engine mounts started acting up ..." I was polite, but I was insulted. He'd already dropped down from $800 to $300. No way was I going lower than that. He finally paid up after pressuring me for ten minutes (I've lived in Washington state, I've been married, I've gone to USC -- hell holds no fear for me) he paid up and I left, fighting rush hour traffic.

THAT'S ALARMING: So I need an alarm. I go to Al & Ed's Autosound, who so hooked me up on the Monte Carlo, and suddenly they're mad expensive, making me leave a $50 deposit to male a freakin' appointment. They want $315 for a really basic alarm with trunk release. Ow. So I find this place on San Vicente and La Brea that'll do the exact same for a hundred less. I'm like "sweet." So that's my afternoon tomorrow -- haircut, get my money back from Al & Ed's and get the new alarm installed, so I can have a small amount of peace of mind. After the truck break-in thing, still, I'm mad leary about leaving anything in a car.

WE BUILT THIS CITY ON ROCK & ROLL: As noted, I don't like the CD player in the car. It's touchy and unpredictable, which makes me unhappy. My iPod has yet to show up, and I don't even have my 100 GB drive to make CDs from decently (it stopped being recognized on desktops via Firewire out of the blue after a big backup, my dawg R/Kain Blaze is working on it). So I'm remixing my music listening -- checking websites for what new songs are out, listening to the home stereo more, etc. I don't like it. Car music was a great joy of mine. I was rocking to this Blink 182 single "I Miss You" today, which I adore so much right now for some reason. I'm getting my own new status quo together, slowly but surely.

I DID IT EBAY: Despite the fact I've spent $300 in the last 31 days there (minus the $50 donated by a high school friend), I adore that site. Car stereos? Right this way. iPods? Yes, sir, right over here. Replacement karaoke CDs? Not a problem. I finally received the replacement CD with Maxwell's "Suitelady" on it (which I will sing Thursday night, damn the torpedoes) ... eBay is one of the few almost perfect things in my life. Time, patience, skill and hard work and I can do almost anything there.

KEEP ON TRUCKIN': Oh, I also gotta drive Pete's truck back to his place tomorrow (around 6PM it looks like) and catch the bus back to my place. I'm gonna give him $250 from the rental reimbursement and $500 to cover the damages. In retrospect, it would have cost about as much to rent a car. Argh. Still, it was a really nice gesture. I tried to get an oil change gift certificate, but the place he likes (EZ Lube) is insanely goofy, and didn't have any (nor can you buy them on the web site). I gotta try and get some tuber roses for his wife, who told me she likes them (or gardenias). Busy day tomorrow, I wanna finish this up soon.

CINEMATIC: Watched Denzel Washington in Man on Fire recently. The fast-cut, ADD direction messed up an otherwise interesting story, and I see what people meant about Denzel being a "better Punisher" than Thomas Jane, in terms of brutality and body count. Still, the jagged direction took away from it, even as Denzel marching through a motorcade of guards with just a handgun was so freakin' cool.

TELEVISED REVOLUTIONS: Method & Red are funny while being corny, damn the critics. I've been taping the show, and while it's a bit hamfisted with its moral posturing, and even a bit much with Redman as the buffoon, it's funny as hell. Sadly, my VCR tapes are starting to stack up, from taping Kids WB cartoons and Soul Train ...

THAT BUSINESS WITH EPSON: I almost never print in color. I don't care that the color ink was out. But the printer made me blow thirty bucks on a new color cartridge before it'd print anymore. Even simple black and white text documents. Blah. That vexed me. Still, I got my new poem workshopped and will have changes up soon.

EX-FILES: Saturday at work, I got some mail from my ex-wife. I asked her to mail the title to my Monte Carlo, which she'd held on to for more than a year, to Inpu's house. Instead, she sent it to my job. I first asked her for the title on June 14, actually having an awkward conversation about it on the 17th. She finally mailed it, according to the postmark, on June 24th. I believe the reports of her not handling this all that well are probably true.

I'm strangely okay with that. I always enjoyed the suffering of other people. The fact that she's the dumbest choice I ever made, possibly the worst single thing to ever happen to me, makes it all the funnier. Zany old life.

At Wal-Mart, getting the Febreeze and some lint brushes (which didn't work -- dog hair is tenacious), I just missed bumping into a really nice woman i broke up with last year named Shonda. Shonda was the hub of a really involved, really insular group of friends that I didn't wanna be part of, and the more I dated her, the more they tried to force me in. I didn't want that, said so, and left. Anyway, Shonda was getting film developed, and I skirted behind her to the escalator without a word. That was a surprise.

Then, as I was getting in the car in the parking lot, my second most dangerous ex Charmaine popped up, driving a silver Dodge. I got out to say hi as she beeped, but she just drove off. I was okay with that, but a little weirded out. I drove home as fast as I could, worried what else would happen on a full moon night. (nothing, luckily, I came home, screwed around and then worked).

WEB SPINNING: My job at CBR comes with free web hosting. That'd save me $25 a month. However, they've had some downtime issues, and the mail servers are choked with virii. I haven't taken the site off of XO yet because I've been busy ... and because I'm not sure the new hosting would be good. No online control panel to screw with stuff. Have to email in new email addresses for the domain. Meh. No idea how that will play out.

WHAT AM I FORGETTING HERE?: In the whole car rush, I missed a chance to meet Bootsy Collins on Monday, have yet to arrange the karaoke event at the San Diego Comic Con, haven't done any work on "The Pie Song" in weeks, nor began organizing the mess of my house. These things and probably a host of others are casualties of these Days of Thunder, but at least the columns and the karaoke hosting and the newspaper are all on point. Business before pleasure and all that.

Oh, and Mikey's dad backed out of funding his karaoke empire. Mmm. Well, off to sleep, got much to do tomorrow ... well, later today ...

"Walking toward the fear is always a good idea. You're bigger than it is; you just don't know it yet." -- Jon Carroll (whose quotes seem very apropos in my life these days ...)