Vacation Blog (Part I)

Day -1:

Just called to place a Vacation Hold on our paper delivery for while we’re gone, and was unable to reach a human being. I was going to be required to play thumbsies with my fucking telephone keypad for 15 minutes or that paper was going to keep on a-comin’.

The piece of paper with the Vacation Hold phone number on it on the fridge had our address from 3 moves ago scrawled in the margin – so I didn’t blank when the person on the phone asked me for my address – but the resource it directed me to no longer contained any actual human beings for me to embarrass myself in front of, just machines to waste my fucking time.

What this means is, this task will get contracted out to The Missus or it won’t happen. We’re only gonna be gone for a couple days.

Day 1:

Got lots of sleep and TV watching in. Good stuff. The ideal vacation day for a married-with-children character like myself. Watched what I thought was going to be the “Director’s Cut” of Peter Jackson’s “King Kong,” but it turns out the 40 minutes of extra scenes aren’t weaved into the film like they are on the director’s cuts of the Lord of the Rings movies. They’re loose, on disc three, which kinda pisses me off. I just re-watched the same goddamned movie I’d already seen, and I still haven’t seen the extra scenes.

[On a sidebar, however, I was finally able to make it through the true director’s cut of Ridley Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven,” which really kicks ass in the third act. Orlando Bloom is off-screen for like the first half-hour of the second disc, where things really begin to pick up. Lesson learned? A pretty face does not necessarily a convincing leading man make. They shouldn’t have killed off Liam Neeson’s character in the first act!]

No biggie though. The real challenge starts tomorrow when I begin 3 sleepless nights and uncomfortable days crashing at the in-laws’ pad for a family wedding. Stress-central, no place for me to get away to and be by myself and then there’s the sleep-deprivation that always accompanies trying to catch zzzzs in the in-laws’ alabaster monument to obsessive cleanliness.

The Man Cub elected to begin the sleep-deprivation process a day ahead of time by getting me up at 5 am this morning. It’s really a shame this had to happen. Today marks two weeks since my last melt-down, and I can already begin to feel it all slipping away.

Future posts may be filed by medical professionals specializing in mental disorders.

Day 3:

Yesterday was travel, travel, travel to SoCal to prep for my sister-in-law’s wedding. The Man Cub spent most of the short plane ride on my lap where we played games that involved eating food, spitting food, trying to put his whole hand down my mouth and many more such infantile diversions. We loved it, while I think The Missus was happy to be sitting across the aisle from us, where she could at least claim plausible deniability.

Met the future relations for a big dinner at the in-laws’, after which I felt like Mr. Creosote all night. Didn’t sleep well and woke up in a funk this morning, stomach still full and facing the prospect of a giant home-cooked breakfast. Got past that somehow without exploding my swollen gut all over the kitchen area, but man, I just can’t eat like I used to since I destroyed my metabolism with all that meth back in the ’80s. We’re having left-overs and no company for dinner tonight, so I think I can get away with passing on dinner. Let the chips fall where they may! After the wedding tomorrow, we’re going to the swankiest dump in town for the reception (the same place where I proposed to The Missus) so I’m sure tomorrow night will be another gastronomical abomination of shitty sleep followed directly by a mad dash to the airport the next morning to fly back to Christmas Island (where, after dropping the family off at home, I’ll have to race into town to arrange a new credit card, having misplaced mine for the second time this year yesterday).

Thank god I took the vacation days or I’d be fucked but good.

Anyhow, The Missus and I had a long talk this a.m. about what my head was doing buried so many miles up my ass, and we decided since there were no heavy wedding-related events to attend to, today would be an ideal ‘private-time’ day for me. (Why does she put up with me? Honestly, I have no clue.) Toward that end, I slipped out to catch a movie: “Mr. Brooks,” with Kevin Costner. This one had sneaked in under my radar somehow; all I knew going in was that Costner was playing a serial killer who was trying to quit killing people by going to AA meetings. Since my own experience with AA meetings had actually made me want to go out on a killing spree, I decided this would be a perfect spur-of-the-moment movie to go see by myself.

I can take or leave Costner. If he’s playing a baseball player, I’m there, man. I love his sports flicks. On the other hand, we have “The Postman,” one of the absolute worst major studio motion pictures ever to disgrace the silver screen. “The Postman” makes “Waterworld” look like Citizen Kane by comparison. So going to see “Mr. Brooks” (or any post-“Postman” Costner film) could definitely be considered a leap of faith.

In brief, I was wicked pleasantly surprised. Even Demi Moore’s appearance (me out loud in the almost-empty matinee screening: “Ugh!”) didn’t ruin it for me. Used to like her, as far back as her stint on General Hospital, but when she got her fake boobies for the stripper flick she did a decade or so back, she lost me. Thank god we’ll always have her perky topless scenes in “Blame It On Rio.”

But I digress…

William Hurt also has an excellent role, along the same lines as the one he played in the outstanding “A History of Violence” a couple years ago, playing Costner’s invisible id, egging him on to keep killing. Hurt’s performance is thing of malevolent, lip-smacking glee.

Since I never reveal plot points in my reviews, suffice it to say that “Mr. Brooks” was smart, funny and had some cool conceits and twists, and I hope they do make the trilogy out of it that one review suggested the filmmakers had in mind.

Of course, they said the same thing about M. Night Whateverthefuck’s “Unbreakable,” and I’m still blue in the face from holding my breath waiting for the second flick in that alleged series.

Finally, I’m actually reading a book, too! “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead,” the authorized story of the ‘dirty life and times’ of Warren Zevon, in the words of his family and closest friends including Jackson Browne, Billy Bob Thornton, Stephen King, Bruce Springsteen and others. This is a warts-and-all telling of the artist’s life that is creepily like reading portions of my own obituary, except for the passages that detail elements regarding fame, fortune and talent. What a magnificent bastard Warren was. This book, while celebrating his life and accomplishments, is still like peeling a not-quite-healed scab off my heart. I miss looking forward to the man’s next album.

Hopefully, nothing else will happen today. I don’t take vacation days lightly, and when I do, I damned sure don’t want to spend them doing anything other than doing nothing.

Day 4:

Today started out as bad as it gets. Checked my email and learned that a friend’s brother was killed in Iraq last Thursday. I’m tempted to take this opportunity to rant and rave some more about Bush’s bullshit faked-up war, etc., but this kid believed in what he was doing over there, and I don’t want to take anything away from his sacrifice by using his death as a platform for my well-worn prosthelitizing.

His name was Ray Spencer. He was only 23 years old, and my thoughts are with his sister Sarah, her family and their friends today.


Fuck it. As long as I’m depressed already, let’s run down some of today’s headlines, shall we? And seriously, these are only this morning's headlines:

Deadly blast hits Iraq peace talks

Accused terror leader: More blood will flow

Kidnapped BBC reporter wears suicide vest on video

Supreme Court ruling limits students’ free speech rights

Supreme Court permits White House outreach to religious charities

Supreme Court sweeps aside part of campaign finance law dealing with “issue ads”

…and Bush is reportedly worried about leaving a legacy? Pshaw. The man’s too modest. Mission accomplished, dude. You have indeed succeeded in bringing it on.