Sublime was sublime.

I went to see Sublime with Rome on 4/20 in Hollywood, at the Palladium.

4/20.

Nuff said.

Michael told me I owed it to myself to enjoy a concert fully sober. Which I totally agreed with--I wouldn't want to be caught in a precarious state if Jesus chose to come back, nawmean? I have a long history of going to concerts and being anything but sober. But that was a lifetime ago. I no longer feel the need to be faded off my behind with a tingling scalp to enjoy some live music.

Unfortunately, not many people agree with that statement.

Walking into the Palladium was like swimming through bong water. It was smoky, hazy, murky. There was absolutely no fresh air. People were laid out. I just knew I wouldn't be getting out of that place without some sort of secondhand smoke contact high.

We were hot boxing and the Palladium was the box.

But that wasn't what necessarily threw me off, because I've always found pot smokers to be a pretty mellow bunch (um...duh).

It was all the drunk people!

Ugh.

There is nothing worse than to be surrounded by drunk people when you are stone cold sober. And of course, of course, every sloppy, drunk, foul-mouthed, glassy-eyed, fool wanted to stand right beside me at the concert.

While they grope their girlfriend.
While they slur all the lyrics.
While they dance and sway without any rhythm all the while bumping into you.
While they wipe their sweat on you.
While they rub against your butt.
While they breathe their cotton-mouth breath on you.
While they yell and scream and raise their ($10!) beers in the air, which is just seconds from tipping all over you. $10!!

I found the worst offenders to be the women. They were the ones screaming and cursing and tossing their beers at people. I think they were free to behave that way because they all came with a posse of dudes.

Sigh.

I have a pretty good idea of how it would have gone, had I not been fully-100%-dry-as-a-bone sober.

And that's all I have to say about that, said in a Forrest Gump voice.

I chose to ignore all of them and enjoy Sublime. Finally, able to hear their music live after listening to them over and over all these years. They sang most of my faves, 40 oz. to Freedom, Jailhouse, Don't Push, Garden Grove, Scarlet Begonias, Santeria, Wrong Way, Ebin, and Badfish. Yeh, there was no Bradley Nowell (rest in peace) but Rome did the music much justice with his chubby, smiling face.

It was cool. Glad I was there.

And the tingling scalp....dude, do I remember that feeling.

Squeezers vs. Non Squeezers. What are you?

In my very humble opinion, people fall into one of two categories.

The kind that enjoying popping and squeezing other people's skin afflictions, the squeezers, if you will.
And those who don't, the non-squeezers.

Thankfully, I fall into the second category.

Yep, I am a non-squeezing fool.

I have picked, scooped, wiped, scrubbed and dabbed the chil'rens mouths, noses and booties with the best of 'em. I have plucked live food chunks of vomit off of bedsheets. I've scrubbed poop off of furniture. That's what mamas do. I have exchanged bodily fluids with Michael. That's what wives do. Nawmean?

However, I draw the line at popping other people's zits, boils, bumps, pimples. Nope. No way. Regardless of its location--nose, forehead, back, etc.--I'm just not gonna do it.

My mom, however, is one of the squeezers.

And I just don't get it.

Because obviously...it's disgusting.

I will never understand what perverse thrill a squeezer gets from squeezing. I have no desire to discover what kind of junk comes out.

It's nasty. Plain and simple.

I saw this a few months ago. Don't be scurrred, its a clip of someone popping a boil on their friend's back. But it is like four minutes and thirty-eight minutes of pure filth. When I saw it, I had to resist the urge to puke. I think I did, a little, in my mouth. My brother saw it and wanted to puke. My sister couldn't even see it. She didn't even want to hear it in the background, she was so freaked out by it. But not my mama. She's gangsta.

She sat there and watched the entire thing, without pausing. She didn't flinch. She didn't recoil. She didn't wince. She didn't make any noises that would suggest revulsion or disgust. Even when the boil/zit/thing exploded into a mass of cottage cheese-looking stuff, she didn't even bat an eyelash! She just sat there with an amused look on her face.

Gangsta, I tell you.

I will give her the sun.

One of my dearest friends A, is an artist, too. I don't know if this is what draws us together and makes us such good friends, or because I simply find the artist in her so entertaining. I have a feeling we would've still been homies even if we weren't artists and had so much in common.

Did that make any sense?

She is just a very cool person to hang out with.

And she makes me laugh. Like belly jiggling, tears rolling, sides aching laughs.

I mean, she doesn't even have to say much...she can just make a certain face and I start giggling.

Our birthdays happen to be exactly one month apart. So we always plan on going out for sushi to celebrate ("Without kids!" and "Without husbands!"), but we never seem to. So we usually create some artwork for one another. Not that it ever gets done in the proper time frame.

But hey, we're artists. It comes with the territory.

She wanted me to paint her a sun. Like two years ago. Heh. So I had every intention of painting her something. But then I went to this art show this weekend and I saw a bunch of black and white pieces and I was inspired.

Actually, I've been feeling the transition from color to black and white for a while now. So it felt good, in my soul, to put this down on paper.

Hope she likes it. I know I do.

The happy ending.

I am a fool for massages. Rub, squeeze or knead my neck, shoulders, arms, legs, feet and I will love you forever.

I'm serious.

I got a massage once, while on vacation in San Diego. I spent the first half hour very self-conscious of being neekid under a sheet, of the beach sand still encrusted on my feet and the fact that the masseuse's hands were creeping higher and higher up my inner thigh.

The second half of my massage was discovering--at the very end--when the masseuse quietly whispered that my session was over, that my head had become discombobulated from my body.

It was that amazing.

Let me wipe the drool from my chin.

Sadly, a massage isn't high on the budget and priority list for a mama of six chil'rens. Its right after paid vacations, sick leave and pedicures.

So whenever someone graces me with a massage, I am both wildly elated and grief stricken. Wildly elated that I am getting my muscles rubbed and grief stricken because I know, at some point, they will have to stop.

This is one of the reasons why I decided to have six chil'rens. So I can always be assured I will have someone available to massage my feet. When one gets tired, another one can step up and take their place. Like a relay race, six times over. Then its time to start from the top.

Foolproof, right?

But hands down, my favorite masseuse is my husband, Michael.

He has magic hands.

When he massages me, I know to keep my moaning and groaning and drooling and sighing and carrying on to a minimum, or else he'll stop. He thinks I'm being overly dramatic, but I'm not. It just feels that good. But, like most husbands, his massages always come with a few demands.

Wives, you know what I mean.

Occasionally, I'll return the favor. The massage part, I mean. But its pretty rare. For a big girl, I have really petite hands. And I also have carpal tunnel. I can't massage to save my life. So we usually settle on back-scratching.

But today, after church, he was laid out on the bed "watching" Gremlins with the chil'rens. In all truth, the only thing he was watching were his eyelids. Cuz in our house, "watching a movie with the kids" is code for ZZzzzZZzzZzzzZZZzzzzZZZZZzzzzZzZzzzzzzzz.

I started to massage his calves, his ankles, his feet. He was in his bliss, and already slurring his words.

"Aaaaaaaaahhhhhhh. Now if I could only get a happy ending with this."

Now, ain't that just like a man.

"All that scratching is making me itch..."

This is gonna give away my age big time, not that I've ever tried to hide it. But while ya'll wear still getting your butt wiped by your mama and sucking down a bottle of Similac, I was plopping my butt down in front of the tv with my little bro Eric to watch Video One with Richard Blade. I think it was '83 or '84. Those of us who didn't have cable--no MTV--watched Video One on channel 5. They played all my favorite videos--The Cure, Bow Wow Wow, Depeche Mode, Culture Club, The Clash, to name a few.

One of my all-time faves was "Buffalo Gals' by Malcolm McLaren. He passed away today, so hearing the news just took me back to this video. I loved the Rock Steady Crew, the graffiti, the 80's style...such fond memories.

R.I.P Malcolm McLaren (1946-2010)

I have no title for this post, but its about pee (just wanted you to know).

A few nights ago, we took the chil'rens to the park. Because I have heard way too many horror/personal tragedy stories, I would continually scan my eyes around the empty park and adjacent baseball field for bums, gangsters, hoodlums, pedophiles and basically anyone who was looking particularly suspicious. After around 45 minutes or so or playtime, the park lights shut off.

I was like, "Wrap it up! Let's go! Time to get in the car!"

Me and Sol got a head start. I yelled out, "The last one to the van's gonna be a rotten egg!"

Since I had my running shoes on, I took off. Sol, amused and partly amazed that his mother was actually running, took off after me. But sadly, after a few paces, I discovered something.

My bladder was leaking.

And I say that nicely, with whatever dignity I have left.

Seriously, people, I was peeing.

And for the life of me, I could not make the stream stop, no matter how much I tried to stop it.

Dang those useless kegels!

When I stopped running, the peeing mercifully stopped. I was so relieved. I was praising those panty liners that I dutifully wear like nobody's business.

Praise be to Kotex!