Sandra Bullock used to be a man

My senior year of high school, I inherited my folks' 1984 Buick LeSabre from my brother, Marquis. Man, that thing was a boat. It had the loudest horn I've ever heard. Because I was a poor student, and my parents were too stingy to give me any gas money, the fuel guage was perpetually on empty. One wintry day in late March, I was in my last class of the day (communications) and knew that with the snow coming down as hard as it was, there was no way I'd manage to drive "The Boat" home, because the drive was 2km uphill, and my car's tires were very, very bald. So I asked my teacher, Mr. Van Dyke, if I could cut out early before the snowfall really started to accumulate, seeing as how my video assignment was finished and all. "No way," he told me. "If you get in an accident and something happens, I'm liable." Not sure how that works, I told him. I was 18 at the time. As a slight digression, I always found it amusing that, being 18, I had to write my own notes whenever I returned from an illness. I couldn't just say "Mr. Yorke, I missed class yesterday because I had a high fever and was throwing up, due, I think, to some undercooked tandoori chicken." No, I had to write a note. Fucking Canadian high schools are first-class bureaucracies.

Anyway, I managed to sneak out 10 minutes before the bell. The snow was piling pretty high, and on top of that the car's defrost mechanism (sorry to get all technical here) was on the fritz. I could barely see where I was going, and I had so little traction that, at the front of the intersection at one stop light, the signal went from red to green and I was the only car in my lane to make it through before it turned back to red. The jerks behind me were not happy, let me tell you.

The point of all this? There is none. I just figured it was as good an introduction as any to begin these random thoughts and musings.

1) Here's the 2nd excerpt from my untitled novel. This is the first few paragraphs of chapter 10, titled I See a Red Door and I Want it to Turn Penelope Cruz:

Last Night I dreamt I went to Taco Bell again. It seemed to to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive-thru, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the manager, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the restaurant was uninhabited.

No guacamole or re-fried beans odor came from the place, and the little sliding window gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The restaurant's kitchen's bowels wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was clean and sparkling, not the narrow and unkept dive that we had known. The urinal pucks in the bathrooms were as white as linen; the floor was so clean I could eat off of it with my feet.

But alas, not a soul stirred within. Who in Christ's name was going to make me a 1/2 pound Bean N' Cheese burrito?

2) I caught the Celtics/Lakers game today. Fairly uneventful save for the final minutes. Besides that, the only incidences of note were watching Smush Parker's awesome dunk and hearing the Korean commentators refer to Dyan Cannon as Jim Carrey's wife (Carrey and Cannon were sitting next to each other). Shit, she's almost 70 years old! I know she's had quite a bit of work done, but come on. I think Jim could do a little better than that.

3) I'm going to try to post a Spring Cleaning review of Wong Kar Wai(is the sky blue, Wai is water wet?)'s 2046 tomorrow. I know nobody really cares, but writing that I'm going to write something is motivation for me to actually do it, especially when it concerns my (slowly shrinking, like wool in tepid water) list of unwatched DVDs. Sometime in 2007 I think we'll be nearing the home stretch.


4) The "1,2 Punch" list of the top 3 hip-hop singles and subsequent remixes is as follows:

1) Blahzay Blahzay's When The East Is In The House
2) Black Moon's I Got Cha Opin
3) Biggie's One More Chance

I'm probably forgetting some great ones that would no doubt prompt me to amend that list. I don't think I have to remind you that that is why lists are stupid.