Information Blues.

My how San Diego is expanding. Near my house they’re building eight lane traffic arteries, giant intersections modulated by super computer, where once stood flower fields. They stopped planting the flower fields some time in elementary school, but a few gladiolas would still pop up every year. That was handy if you were a broke romantic and it was the proper season, but then they levelled the whole damned thing, gutted the wacky trailer park, and razed the Lienzo Charro (a rogue Mexican rodeo!)

They did this so they could expand the brands that seem to dominate and create culture in Southern California. Chains! Encinitas requires a Target Greatlands, and a few megalo book marts. The cement plazas have expanded, breeding supermarkets; I think there are now ten within a mile here? And all of the hottest new designer fast food chains: chain bagels, chain donuts, chain tacos.

The malls are just too big here. It takes a lot of hit points to ford a three mile mall jam. And then when you get to the other side, where once stood sandstone hills covered in sage and cholla, now lay hectares of glowing green grass with rows of stucco palaces, three feet in between them. Then another mall.

I’m reactionary, I’m anti corporate. I wish people would ride their bicycles more. I hate cars. The problem with this is that kids grow up here, imprint on strip malls, think this is normal. I sound like a cheap Michael Moore.

I took a plane to San Diego yesterday. There was a ten year old kid on my flight wearing a footlong hotdog hat. Before we boarded he sat in the phone booth, rattling the coin door and practicing a ghastly type of yoga. I stared at him, smiled as if to say, “I know what you’re doing”, and he rattled the coin door more intensely, exhaled on the key pad.

I’m back in my homeland, the place of my high school experience. This evening I boarded my parents’ recumbent stationary bicycle and rode thirty minutes of the “rolling hills” simulation at Level 5 intensity. My Dad said, “Ha ha ha, you’re strong, you get Level Five.” Cresting the steepest peak I generated 130 watts. Maybe next time I’ll race the computer opponent.

My friend Lara’s family is Jewish, and they’ve been lampooning xmas as “Yorkmass”. That’s like goy-mass, whitey mass, San Diegan mass.

Whenever I go home I get nostalgic; everything here weeps memories. I look up and can remember a girlfriend sneaking through the window. I attend the local strip mall and fondly recall my first car chase. Today I drove the car I piloted to the goddamn prom! There are syrupy thoughts attached to everything, moulted time that no longer fits.

I found myself in my nostalgia drawer and pulled out an AFI 7″ I bought from Davey Havoc my first year of college. Apparently it’s selling for $250 on ebay?? Well, Rolling Balls is a good song.

This winter Billy Beane got gutsy, grabbed his crotch like Michael Jackson and traded away Hudson and Mulder, two of the best pitchers the A’s ever had. It was a surgical, unfeeling kind of move, but I understand it: this offseason the market for players has been frenzied. There haven’t been many excellent starting pitchers available, and those that have signed were grossly overpaid. I don’t think Billy could resist trying to leverage that shark pool to his advantage.

So the A’s are taking a bold stance: they’re rebuilding before the house has truly collapsed. Hopefully this will make for a quick turnaround: a cheap, young castle built on new pitching.

But it still smarts. I know it’s absurd to an outside viewer, but it’s possible to bond closer than you’d expect with baseball players. My favorite players are pitchers, and some of my favorite pitchers have been Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder. They threw for Oakland with precision and mojo. When they got into trouble they got tougher, they bent back the momentum of the game like mentalists do spoons. They threw baseballs around bats, they confused with finesse and power.

And so they were minorly heroic to me, and I’m going to miss them. Look at them, they’re cornballs, they’re angels. They’re great.

Celebrating my birthday this year was a riddle. People said to me, your 30th is important; don’t let it pass you by! It seemed to be conventional wisdom that I should stage some sort of club event. I should explode myself in a volley of fireworks or emerge speeding from a cannon.

This wisdom is absurd, yet somewhat true. It sunk into me. But the thing is that I don’t generally consider myself a circus act. These things run counter to who I am right now. My life has been in a down cycle for the last year, and now this intangible landmark day arrives, and I don’t feel I’m in the position to carve it the statue it somehow requires. How to rationalize this, and what type of edifice to create, became a tug of war between perspectives.

On the left side of the ring, weighing in at a modest quarter pound, we have… a new born dove. And on the right side, tipping the device past its logical bounds, we have… some sort of pinche gorilla.

Since striking out on my own and trying to reassemble my life, a good part of me still feels like a small, new bird. This side shies from loud noises and wonders when I’ll be whole again. However the pinche gorilla represents the forces of tradition and impatience. The gorilla tells me to get on with it, to produce results instead of ghostly abstractions.

As my birthday approached the gorilla, instead of fighting the dove, gestured kindly and offered to snuggle it against its chest and protect it. The dove shivered but accepted the offer.

The next thing I knew I was wearing a dusty sombrero at Juan’s Place and the whole restaurant was staring wildly at me, eyes full of candle light. The next night I was running the pool table at the company holiday party and puking alcohol. That day would be ruined, but the night would find me in Vallejo, buying a crude Teeter’s Bar t-shirt (with front pocket and elaborate bikini girl) from a goat eyed Harley woman.

So in the end, I don’t know what kind of landmark the pinche gorilla constructed, but it was a memorable process. And that seems like all I can ask for, except what the hell did you do with the dove you bastard?

My eyes snapped open this morning at 7am. My alarm hadn’t sounded, but I was wide awake.

Just before I’d been dreaming I was on vacation in Mexico. I was sitting on a white sand beach with my parents and sister. Five Mexicanos were stationed around us with what looked like digital SLRs. They were perpetually snapping photos, then trying to sell them to us.

The first thing I noticed when my eyes opened was that the wall was pink. I jumped up and peered out the window to see the sun rising with a glowing, melon colored wall of fog. The whole room was filled with blush colored sunlight. It had all of the color and impact of an inverse sunset, which was disorienting. It looked new.

I didn’t think about it at the time, but I was born at 7:30am, December 16th, 1974. December 16th 2004 7am I was sitting up in bed, gazing out the window at the sunset sunrise. It was an orange, circular moment.