After driving almost 200 miles in the past two days, I have shown my parents Los Angeles. We saw almost all of it. From the downtown area to the coastline, we saw it all. And I reunited them with my father's old medical school study partner who they hadn't seen in 27 years. I sometimes really wish I had a better relationship with my father, but it seems that every time he has something to say to me, it's about how horribly I'm running my life and how I need to make all these sweeping changes to do things better. But there's sometimes when I find things out that really surprise me about him. Like the fact that one night while he was working at the Emergency Room in the late '80s (Dad was an ER doctor for over a decade), a guy who was in a motorcycle accident came in, bleeding all over the place. His blood got all over the operating room, all over Dad, all over the ambulance that brought him in, all over the nurses. Then about two hours after he was operated on, news came into the ER that the guy was not only HIV-positive, but he also had full-blown AIDS. And my father, due to his work, had to wash his hands a lot, so due to the dry winter, cracks had formed in his fingertips around his nails. As he said tonight, there was a six-month period where he was terrified that he was going to die. But this is the first I've ever heard about it, and I wish I'd known about these kinds of things earlier. It's the kind of stories that make a son really respect his father and worship the work he's done. I'm going to sleep soon. Tomorrow, I have to get up early and take my Powerbook in for some service, so my online time will be limited over the next few days. Feel free to still send me e-mails, though. I love e-mail.

Okay, here's some quick ones for you... - Closure is a good thing. Hearing from her that she wasn't interested in more than friendship seems to have broken the spell. So much so that it gave me the courage to ask for a woman's number tonight. Shall I quote James Brown when he was talking about how good he feels, like he knew that he would? - Another thing contributing to the whole goodness of being is that not one, but two co-workers told me today that they think I have great "ears" (industry-speak for saying that I can pick out good songs) and that they think I'd rock hard if I were to run my own radio station. This makes me very, very happy. - Drinking makes me want to sing. There is an undeniable connection between alcohol and my musical expression. - My parents, as much as I make fun of them and as much as I kind of dreaded their visit to Los Angeles, are great parents. I look forward to spending the next couple of days with them, and I especially look forward to reuniting them with an old friend who lives here in L.A. and who they haven't seen in over 25 years. - Eve is quite a spectacle when she's drunk. The trick is putting a single drink in her and then watching her run around telling everyone that she can't feel her face anymore. I feel honored that I was privy to seeing her in this particular... uhhhh... idiom. - Rawk. I just felt like saying that again. Even though I'm exhausted and need to get up early tomorrow to entertain the parental units, I would absolutely love to go clubbing for the next three hours, provided the DJ played kick-ass music. - I can still crack my mom up when I imitate Dobby from Harry Potter & The Chamber of Secrets. - Never underestimate the comedic value of blintzes.

Dan: ...On to the injury reports, and it's a doozy of a day out there! Casey: That's right, Dan, at the top of the list is Keith, who was unfortunately placed on the FL today. After playing as a free agent for a while now, he had hoped he'd officially be signed with this girl for a bit of an arrangement, but word came down this evening that he'd be denied that chance as well. Dan: Mmm, Casey, The Word is: put on that special woman's Friends List. There's nothing harder than getting out of that penalty box. Rumor has it that Keith has rented a steam-cleaner and has gotten himself some industrial-strength bleach and cleansers. This chain of events will undoubtedly touch off a cleaning spree the likes of which we've never seen. Casey: On top of all that, the brand new glasses Keith picked up on Thursday have busted and need extensive readjustment, which he'll have to take care of during his super-busy day tomorrow, but he's got to wear his old ones in the meantime, making him go through that "adjusting-to-a-different-prescription" headache all over again. Life's just not being all that kind to our boy today, is it? Dan: No, I think not. Someone, please... give our man some lovin'? He deserves it.

So, the women-cleaning stress link is still active, I woke up this morning and cleaned the bathroom and then vacuumed the whole damn apartment. Yeah. So then I finished the cleaning this morning and went to work, where Corey Feldman came and visited us today. Unfortunately, the only digital camera in the house was my co-worker's cell phone-camera thing, which takes the Smallest Photos Known to Man. Thankfully, Eve is a whiz at this whole digital photography thing, and she whipped up this little graphic that makes it look like we had our photos taken in one of those mall booths. Don't we make a cute couple? (Yeah, I know the picture makes me look bad. It's not a great photo of me at all.) He was all decked out in his Run-D.M.C. "Crown Royal" hat, looking all ghetto. Dan: "You know, sometimes it's worth it -- taking all the pies in the face. Sometimes, you come through it feeling good." Casey: "Yes." Dan: "And how was your day?" Casey: "Sometimes, you just stand there... hip-deep in pie." -- Josh Charles & Peter Krause, Sports Night I'll be taking orders in case someone wants some of the banana cream, apple and lemon meringue pie remnants clustered around my lower extremities.

Okay, this scares the SHEE-AT out of me. Excerpt: ALBANY, N.Y. - A man was charged with trespassing in a mall after he refused to take off a T-shirt that said "Peace on Earth" and "Give peace a chance." Mall security approached Stephen Downs, 61, and his 31-year-old son, Roger, on Monday night after they were spotted wearing the T-shirts at Crossgates Mall in a suburb of Albany, the men said. The two said they were asked to remove the shirts made at a store there, or leave the mall. They refused. The guards returned with a police officer who repeated the ultimatum. The son took his T-shirt off, but the father refused. "'I said, `All right then, arrest me if you have to,'" Downs said. "So that's what they did. They put the handcuffs on and took me away." Hold on where I check which country I'm living in, since I didn't think I was living in Iraq, where it's a crime to express a differing opinion from the rabidly hawkish government -- but they're the bad guys and we're trying to bring freedom and democracy to them, right? And we're supposed to lead by example, right? Excuse me? Since when was it a crime to wear a t-shirt in public? They weren't causing a disturbance, they weren't organizing a gathering, they weren't protesting anything. They were walking around, wearing a shirt that was sold in the mall where they were at when they were thrown out. Regardless of whether or not the mall is private property, it's designed as a public gathering area for commerce, and you can't deny someone shopping rights because they're wearing a t-shirt that was as innocuous as that. Whether or not the mall management agreed or disagreed with their t-shirts' sentiment, it wasn't something incendiary or profane like "fuck the police" or "kill whitey" or something like that. On top of that, if the mall management was so opposed to someone wearing that shirt, they shouldn't have allowed the store to sell it within their mall in the first place! Did the mall management go to the music stores within its property and tell them to throw out all the John Lennon CDs they had in stock? This opens up a huge can of worms in terms of civil liberties and the First Amendment. I seriously hope this guy gets himself a good lawyer and sues the hell out of the mall management. Next thing you know, we'll be asked to leave stores because our outfits don't match the color of the alert level of that day.

One of the perks of working where I do is that recording artists come by the office to perform their songs for us every now and then. I have a picture in my cubicle of me with Def Leppard (they brought us beer!) and there's an entire wall in our conference room that's covered in autographed artist photos from when they came by (there's a plethora of big names in there, most of whom I can't recall who they are right now, but Britney Spears is among them -- unfortunately she came in before my time with the company). So I received this e-mail this morning... To: LA Staff From: Ted Next Wednesday the 5th at 1:00, Corey Feldman will be in the office to perform for us. Yes, Corey Feldman of Stand By Me, Lost Boys and The Surreal Life -- he is promoting his new album, Former Child Actor. -- As if my day could get any more strange after starting out that way?

So, I was listening to the executive producer of FOX's Married by America be interviewed on KROQ this morning. And basically, he said that he can justify his show with this argument: In societies where arranged marriages are the "done thing," marriage success rates equal -- and sometimes exceed -- those in the U.S. where we can choose who we marry. So Married by America is like an arranged marriage, except millions of people are arranging the marriage instead of a few. I thought about this. I thought it actually made sense. And it almost justified it for me to the point where I actually seriously thought about watching the show tonight. But the bottom line is... it's FOX. I just can't take the show seriously despite that logical, well-made argument because, well, it's on FOX.

New opinion poll: So, we have the bastard inconsiderate fuckwad neighbors who continually play their godforsaken rap music loud enough that I can hear it over my own music or the TV in my room. The walls occasionally shake. And last night, they woke me up at 1:30am with their damned rap music. It's not that I don't like rap. I like rap a fair amount. I just don't like hearing it from the other side of the wall, especially when I specifically tried to get to sleep early. And this is not the first time this has happened. I've tried banging on their door. I've tried banging on the wall. I've tried kicking the wall. I've tried filing noise complaints with the police (who invariably show up about three minutes after they've already turned off their music). I've tried filing complaints with our building management company. I've tried turning my own speakers towards the wall and blasting incredibly hard music by bands like Anthrax and Ministry at them. They just don't seem to get the point! So I'm asking: At what point am I justified to go into the laundry room, where the master power switches are to the various apartments in our building, and cutting the power to their apartment? Post answers in the comments.

"And in that moment, Dan was reminded once again why he wanted to write in the first place. It's for the same reason anybody does anything: to impress women." -- Josh Malina as "Jeremy Goodwin" in Sports Night

Reflections on the occurrences of tonight: - I had no idea you could Irish step-dance to Tom Petty's "American Girls." Some women at the bar proved it was possible. - Six degrees of separation really do exist. To a scary extent. I invited a bunch of people to this thing tonight, expecting that none of them would know each other. I was looking forward to meeting Jenn for the first time in realtime, especially since we'd been chatting online for months. As it turned out, her boyfriend did a show with one of my college friends, who also came tonight. And she is good friends with someone my roommate's girlfriend went to school with. - I'm thoroughly disappointed that some of the people who said they were coming didn't show up. You know who you are. Jenn was looking forward to meeting you too. - My roommate pulled a nice little party trick on me: he left the bar after I did, and despite the fact that I was literally doing about 90 on the 405 on my way home (Quarashi and Underworld do such things to me when I play them in the car), he still beat me back to our apartment. - This line from George Carlin has been cracking me up for days now: "And now, a message from the National Pancake Association: Fuck waffles!!!" - I'm still feeling down from last night, but at least I finished writing the article that was due before the week was out. I'm considering calling her tomorrow.

Tired to the point of exhaustion, worn out, burning out, disappointed in and confused about the ending of my date tonight. Going to sleep because I don't think anything else can go wrong today. I want to hibernate until April. I want to get the hell away from things for a while.