It's Memorial Day weekend, where, in many parts of the country, summer is unofficially beginning. Here in Southern California, the weather's been pretty much the same for the past month, so the East Coast rituals I grew up with of barbeques and beach visits are pretty much meaningless out here -- except to the transplants like me. But I wanted to leave you with a few... interesting... gems to enjoy. First, the reading: Man Commits Suicide After Sex With Hen The best part is the last line: "The hen was slaughtered after the incident." And now, the listening. Right-click and save as, people: - PartyBen presents Beyoncé vs. Alphaville: Beyoncaville - Crazy in Japan - DJ Z-Trip presents Yes vs. Sir Mix-a-Lot: Owner of a Lovely Butt - Soulwax presents Skee-Lo vs. Survivor vs. The Breeders: 2 Many DJs - I Wish Have a great weekend. Peace out, homeslices.

Ladies and gentlemen, I just had to share something so completely absurd that it just embodies everything that is running amuck in America today. Note the gorgeous backup dancers and rampant fireworks and the silk shirt. From the recent Zootopia concert thrown by New York's Z100, attended by thousands -- including Donald Trump.

Tag! You're it!

Okay, here's an idea to help snap me out of my funk, and I'm hoping people might play along. Post one thing in your life that brings you silly, stupid joy, like the kind of thing that would make you smile, laugh and clap your hands together as if you were two years old again. It's all about the simple pleasures, baby. For me, I think life could use a little more cowbell. Here's some more cowbell for you: Loverboy - Working for the Weekend Right-click and save as, s'il vous plait...

So, I was rejected by another woman tonight -- someone who I went out with on Saturday, who was very cute and who I thought I got along well with. She said -- get this -- I wasn't Jewish enough for her. I guess, all things considered, she's probably right... I really am pretty lax in my practices. Though it's still a disappointment, especially since she seemed interested. And today I also found out that the health of someone I love and am very close to is beginning to fail. The problem is that it could be months, it could be years... we just don't know. And people who know me know that I just don't like not knowing. Bad things happen in threes, don't they? So maybe the terrorists who are planning to strike this summer will hit Los Angeles? Though I suppose there is some good news today... The cast of Family Guy will perform at a comedy festival in Montreal in July. The show really is coming back!

The days are starting to run together again. The music is all starting to run together again. Bad signs. Losing track of time means I worry that I've missed something or haven't accomplished something or let something important slide. I'm going away for Memorial Day weekend, and I have to keep reminding myself what day it is in order to prepare to leave and to make sure I remember when I have to be at the airport. The music's all starting to run together to the point where nothing on the radio interests me much. I've become Radio A.D.D. Boy where I'll flip literally through 15 stations trying to find something to listen to, find nothing, then go to the CD player only to find that there's nothing on the disc that interests me either. 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer tonight -- first time back to the gym in 2 weeks. 30 minutes, 450 calories. Suffice it to say there was a lot coming out in that session... I guess that's why I feel so empty right now.

Thud.

Last night, my car's odometer passed 100,000 miles. I feel like having a celebration of some kind. Is that wrong?

I saw this at Joelle's. And then I had to do it myself. And Good Lord... to think that I actually volunteered last week to ferry a family friend's car from Connecticut to California next summer -- coast-to-coast, five days, by myself. Yeah, I really am a road warrior.
Make your own map of all the states you've been in. UPDATE: Since there has been much questioning about how I managed to "miss" Colorado, I'll explain: While driving on a cross-country trip, I took I-80 on one route -- which runs through Nebraska into Wyoming and then to Utah and gets so close to the Wyoming/Colorado border that on the map, I-80 looks like it touches the state line... but never actually crosses it.

Bad idea: Staying up late to watch a movie on a night when I'm tired, should go to bed early and need to be rested for work in the morning. Worse idea: Staying up late to watch 28 Days Later for the first time, alone in my own apartment with my active imagination on a night when I'm I was tired, should go to bed early and need to be rested for work in the morning. Yeah. You can just rock me to sleep tonight...

Work has eaten me alive. As some of you know, I collaborate with a co-worker on a weekly column for our newspaper and our daily humor news fax. Well, my co-worker's in New York, so I'm doing the whole damn thing myself (and, on a side note, it's hard to be funny on command! This stuff just usually comes naturally to me) -- but I guess it's kind of like his revenge, since I was away in New York for longer than he's away. As a result, I'm pretty tapped out at the moment for personal crap... I think I stole this from Bill once upon a time...

So, Dad was generous and bought the soundtracks for all the shows we saw last week in New York, then had Amazon ship the CDs to me at work. Naturally, I opened a few of them and was listening to them while I worked today, which, I'm sure, freaked out a couple of my co-workers who are used to hearing loud rock music coming from my cubicle. It was interesting to see people walk past my cube, hear them stop, then hear them take a few steps back, peek their heads around my cube wall and ask, "WHAT are you LISTENING to?"

Friendster has erased my entire network of friends-of-friends. I still have my friends, but any time I try to see who my friends' friends are, it tells me they have none. This either makes me the most popular person in my little cadre, or that "scheduled maintenance" completely screwed the system over. BTW, did anyone else see that the "scheduled maintenance" was supposed to take place on "Wednesday, May 16"? Someone should've told them that May 16 won't be a Wednesday for another few years. Maybe that's why the system is so screwed up. I leave you now with a couple choice words from Lewis Black's HBO standup special that aired on Saturday night: "They shouldn't have put in that color-code system for Homeland Security, because then they have to explain what the colors mean. Simplify, simplify. The three levels should be named 'Jesus Christ,' 'Goddammit' and 'Fuck Me!'"

So I kicked off the day by driving down to San Diego to meet up with Kathy, who was in from Pennsylvania for the weekend, along with Fran, Wendy, Joelle, Mikey, Yvonne and Becky. I'm sure we all came across as the proper, refined people that we are... especially considering Joelle & I yelled out "COCK COCK COCK" at one point and we were all taking pictures of each other taking pictures at another point. Joelle getting her hair re-adjusted by Mikey. Joelle's salad and its fluorescent dressing. Me & Fran, who has begun work as Fidel Castro's body double. Me & Becky. Me & the fabulous Kathy. Me & Mikey, who's in one of his usual poses. After I drove back to Los Angeles, I met up with Kacy and her Boyfriend™ for dinner. I can tell Greg liked me because I caught all of his obscure cultural references. All in all, a blogger-intensive day... but definitely enjoyable.

"...with liberty and justice for all." "We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..." In a particular turn of events, when I was in Boston on Thursday, I met the couple whose landmark case is driving the effort for same-sex marriages in Massachusetts -- turns out one of the partners is my mom's best friend's sister. They're getting married on Monday after having been a couple for over 20 years and, as their daughter said in an interview with CNN that will air Monday morning, "They've been together longer than any of my married friends' parents." Personally, I still don't understand why people are trying to block gay marriage. You'd think that people -- especially in Massachusetts, a liberal state -- would remember the anguish this country went through in the past with suffrage and the civil rights movements, and they'd realize that those fights shouldn't have happened -- not here. Not here in the United States where our country was founded on the principles of all men being created equal (though note the use of the word "men" and not "people") with the right to pursue their own happiness; not here in the United States where every morning, millions of schoolchildren around the country pledge allegiance to a flag that stands for a country that gives liberty and justice "to all." Let's change those wordings then, if it's not for all. I think the Declaration of Independence might sound better if we changed it to say, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all white, heterosexual, middle- to upper-class Christian males are created equal." And the Pledge of Allegiance might have a nice ring if you end it by saying "with liberty and justice for some." The hypocrisy is astounding when people are fighting for civil rights for themselves and try to deny them to others. And the thing that really gets me is that some people are still trying to paint homosexuality as a moral sin and get gay marriage banned on those grounds. Well, isn't a moral sin open for interpretation -- and, more importantly, isn't that definition of a moral sin based in religion? And aren't we supposed to keep church and state separate? Some woman in Boston, during a rally opposing gay marriage, said, "I know the best, safest place for a child to be raised is in a stable home with one mother and one father." I wonder how many studies she did on that to arrive at that stunning conclusion. I wonder how many stable homes of gay partners she went to and then went and visited houses of married couples where there was domestic abuse or alcoholism or neglect. Just because you're straight, it doesn't make you a good parent or an honest and upstanding person.