Why am I standing in the middle of the street in front of our house, holding a plate of deviled eggs in this photo? I honestly don't remember. That was last fall.

The thing that bothers me the most, aside from the fact that I look vaguely retarded in this picture, is how fat I look. And not the jolly kind of overall fat...I'm turning into the "middle-age-real-bignfat-in-the-belly-but-skinny-in-the-arms-and-legs" kind of fat. Yikes. That has happened in the past 2 years.

Somewhere along the past 2 years, I've taken on the shape of a grandaddy-long-legs spider. I sorta look like one of those potatoes that my mom used to stick 4 toothpicks in, so you could suspend it on the rim of a glass of water to sprout potato roots on the kitchen window sill.



And it's not just the potato/toothpick thing that's bothering me. I've neglected a lot of things over the past couple of years while trying to get the business off the ground.

The gardens that I worked on so hard and diligently for 5 years before 2006 look like shit because of the neglect. It's ridulous. The perennial border is full of weeds, two monstrously gigantic rosemary bushes and a huge ass Lady Banks Rose shrub have taken over the front yard. My front yard looks like The Addams Family has moved in.

And I've been neglecting my friends and family. Chanda said something in passing last night before the show that caused me to pause. She said "Do you realize that the last time we hung out was Thanksgiving???" Ouch.

And add to that the fact that I haven't written anything remotely interesting or funny for months here on BStream or visited any of my awesome pals here.

Soooooo...basically I need to rec-0-nize and get some priorities back. The biz is doing good. The store and the website are cranking now. Marc and I are blessed enough to have found 4 amazing and remarkably talented and creative people that are helping us now. (It's hard for me to call them "employees".) Me thinks that I'm at a point now that I'm realizing that I don't have to think about Heliotrope every waking minute and need to take care of some personal stuff.

Here's my short term plan...

1) Get back into the gym. My big ol' potato/toothpick/granddaddylongleg ass needs to be at Core Fitness at dawn at least every other morning
2) Spend the next two days weeding and trimming and pruning and transplanting and dividing in the gardens to transform the gardens and borders into something that my idol Martha Stewart would look at and say "it's a good thing".
3) Communicate and spend more time with my best friends and my family.
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Random Thing...

You know the taped music that they play between the opening act and the headliner at concerts? I gotta say that the stuff they played last night was as good as the concert itself. Marc and I were talking about it. He said it was all basically marketing...ie...if you liked The Cure back in the day, you probably would have liked these artists and these tunes as well.

I just sat there blissfully listening in this big hugantic modern ampitheater with the killer sound system as they played Kate Bush, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Joan Armatrading, The Smiths, David Bowie...etc etc etc...all stuff from my library of favs back then. Awesome.

Finally a concert where I won't feel like one of the creepy old guys in the crowd. Granted, after a couple of beers and a couple of tunes, that feeling usually goes away.

(Ok...so there was a smattering of people my age at The Chemical Brothers show last month, but not many.) Wait...Did I really just use the word "smattering"?? That's not even a word in my normal vocabulary. Next, I suppose, I'll be using the phrase "a smidge".

Ok so anyways...The Cure. They were such icons and Rock n Roll heroes to me back in the day. The Cure, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Nick Cave, even The Cramps...they were all my heroes for a what now seems like a fleeting moment in rock history.



This will be fun. From the reviews and from the bloggers that have posted the setlists from their shows in other cities, it looks like the show is going to be phenominal. At the very least, chances are I'll get to party with other people that also once swooned over... and can at least talk about... The Cure, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Nick Cave, and even the Cramps.



T

I think I just found a news source that explains why I can't remember shit anymore.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080609200428.xd0z9kn5&show_article=1

(CNN) -- The California Supreme Court struck down the state's ban on same-sex marriage Thursday, saying sexual orientation, like race or gender, "does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights."

In a 4-3 120-page ruling issue, the justices wrote that "responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation."

"We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples," Chief Justice Ronald George wrote for the majority.

The ruling takes effect in 30 days.

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I went on a tangent looking at maps of the US states based on social reform and legislation. Take a look at these maps. There is a strange similarity to them all.

Have some states just always been progressive and nice and decent, and some just plain really mean and bigoted? I know that sounds pretty naive and silly. But. Hey.

This fight for justice and equality will be just as hard as any fight for justice and equality has ever been during the history of The United States.