The beginning of Love Actually is stirring because it's home video of a bunch of real people greeting their loved ones in airport terminals. Real emotion, elation, relief, and love. Kissing and hugging that's sloppy and authentic. And Hugh Grant's Brittishtastical voice comes in over top talking about how everyone always talks about how bad the world is, how full of hate; but that if you look hard enough you'll find that

love, actually is all around us.

And then Jimmy comes home looking like this...



Jimmy doesn't normally look like this. That's what Jimmy looks like after getting jumped by three guys after closing time in downtown SoNo. And that's just his face, not even his jeans, that looked as though he'd fallen in a puddle of blood.

They asked him for a cigarette. He gave them a cigarette. They asked if he could spare a buck, he gave them a dollar. Then they said, "How bout you give us all your money?"

He said something like- fuck you cocksuckers -and one of them jacked him in the bridge of his nose. Layed it open like a fish. He must have had a ring on. That's when Jimmy started swinging. Coulda been thirty seconds, or five minutes, It was all a blur. When it was over he was dazed, buzzed and bloodied. They had taken off down the street.

"And those cocksuckers didn't get but a cigarette and a dollar from me." He was holding three, four hundred, because look at him, Jimmy is the kinda guy who would have three or four hundred dollars cash in his pocket. A pack of cigarettes in his sock. And still, "those fucking cocksuckers didn't get but a cigarette, and a dollar outta me."

And those guys really were cocksuckers. And I don't mean they suck cock, I mean they're fucking cocksuckers. And I honestly don't think that cocksuckers, should get to live. We're overcrowded anyway. If someone can punch someone they don't know, in the face, because taking someone's money would be easier than earning their own...I'm cool with killing that person. If Jonathon Swift were alive he'd agree. Population problem? Don't eat the babies, kill the cocksuckers. (Well, we can still eat some of the babies) If they could create a supertiny nano-bug that sought out and stung cocksuckers with a deadly poison, I would be willing to live in constant fear that the cutting edge nanotechnology had been rushed and could at any time go haywire and swarm down upon the land and the people, stinging indiscriminately and decimating not just the cocksucker population, but also the normal people population. The people who don't hurt people, to get stuff. That, to me, is a more noble fear than worrying if the guy ambling up to you on the street is going to sucker-punch your face or stab you or worse.

So I guess, Mr. Hugh Grant, that though I am with you, though I do believe that,

love, actually is all around us.

Hate, actually is all around us as well.


But those cocksuckers didn't get but a cigarette and a dollar out of him.

I sit on my stool. I think my thoughts. How sad to be sad that it's Friday again. That it's Saturday tomorrow. How dreadful to have five hours alone with my own mind. Unintoxicated, forced to dawdle and dwell and daydream, sober. Tonight, when it finally got dark, and then finally got to nine, I half considered- in fact started -counting to 3,600. The total amount of time I had left on the stool, in seconds. I got into the thirties before I had to "hello" someone, had to "have a good night" them.



All night I was asking Snakeboy who he was. What about him was tortured. What does he do and why does he do it? Just an open conversation with an imaginary character. The way I remember from my childhood someone asking a piece of paper what it wanted written on it. The way Michelangelo's David was already in the block of marble, and he just chipped away the pieces that weren't part of him. Just how much of an antihero are you Snakeboy? How important are the snakes to you, outside of their use as a teenage aphrodisiac? Do you really make a mean Rattlesnake Chilli? How much does your family play a role in who you are now? Should we even dig that deep? Should the audience know what you're thinking via V.O.? Or is better that you're seen rather than heard? If you are relatively famous locally- what with your commercials and the 800 number -how do you get away with seducing high school girls all the time? Snakeboy wasn't much of a talker tonight, which ironically, is the direction I've been leaning with him. Make him more reserved, quiet. More introspective. I wish he would let me know. But, rather than be a civil fake person and talk to me, he instead flooded my subconscious with vivid frames from some future-finished-film. I could see the aquariums stacked to the ceiling. I knew every piece of flotsam and jetsam that was strewn around his trailer. The Snake Pit. I saw what he had in his refrigerator. Saw the genius work of carpentry that was the sliding system of wood boxes out back where he raises his own rats. Saw that he sleeps on a foldout couch-bed in the living room because the master bedroom was turned into a giant cobra enclosure. I can see what is tantalizing about it all. I know that the snakes make him sexy, the way wit or football or a guitar makes people sexy. I'm seeing this guy, his priorities, his passions. I'm just not hearing him yet.

Maybe he'll talk to me tomorrow. I've got five more hours on the stool.

This picture proves one thing. That through the teachings of Christian Stella, anyone can put a picture on their blog.

It also proves how silly one can look at the exact moment a snake strikes their face.

p.s. --the blogadillo is back

p.p.s.-I'm the blogadillo.

Tonight, Randy Johnson, the 6 foot 10 inch, 40 year-old, 100mph fireball hurling southpaw for the Arizona Diamondbacks pitched a perfect game. Became the oldest pitcher in history to do it. Only the 17th perfect game ever. Did I mention that it was against my Braves? First time the Atlanta Braves have ever been on the shit end of a perfect game. They haven't even been no-hit since '79. He K'd 13 batters and had the Atlanta crowd cheering for him by the ninth.

Congratulations Mr. Johnson.

p.s.-- Christian is a surgeon, his hands deep in the electronic organs of my computer. Something is way wrong with it, has been for days, which is why my posts and posting schedule have been scrambled eggs as of late.

I'll be back on track soon. I have much faith in the good doctor.

Travis is this loopy gorilla of a man. A drunken tycoon with a straw hat, slip-on shoes and a flask in the pocket of his Bermuda shorts. He'll be 48 next Sunday. He scratches constantly at the salt&pepper scruff on his throat while he tells me his tales. How he used to know a waitress at a country club in Greensboro, North Carolina, and she used to steal tons of pick&peel shrimp and champagne for them. They would drive around in her boat of a buick, "nigger-lipping" a bottle of bubbly and chomping shrimp cocktails. One time, they ran out of gas on the way to Raleigh. They hitched a ride in an 18-wheeler, but his waitress friend had to gobble cock for the ride. That was his grabbing life by the balls, the way his grandma always told him to.

"Have you been to the Maritime Aquarium yet?," he asks. Not yet. "OHhhh. My favorite is the jellyfish tank. I popped three hits of ecstasy and went down there... I smoked a little weed too. And they've got this 48inch diameter tank that goes from the floor to the ceiling with at least 100 jellyfish in there. And I just watched them move around, it was awesome."

Travis's grandmother said, "Life is lived forward and understood backward. "

This guy is a drunkard strunkard. He has ended up at the Brewhouse because he walked out of Van Helsing ten minutes in. Got bored of it, decided he'd come over and work on his buzz. From my stool his buzz is good and worked on, and on top of oohing and ahhing every car that goes by --because he's auto shopping-- he also makes lewd remarks about every woman behind every wheel. Be her short tall skinny fat young or old, Travis, with his light fluffy voice and his big washed-up movie mogul-lookin head, has something to say about her. About what he'd like to do to her. He's kind enough, but an obnoxious drunk, which is the kind I'd like to flatten. He points and yells at everyone pulling in, talking over me doing my stupid job, confusing people and making an ass of himself. The cherry to top the ass-cake is when he goes to physically stop a car pulling into the parking lot, and clomps a huge leathery foot right down on top of my glass of tea, shattering it into a puddle and a thousand slivers underneath me.

He tells me he's thinking about getting a Vespa, because he drinks a lot and he doesn't want to drive drunk. He says he likes to be discreet about what he does for a living, and then tells me that he designs clothes for Elton John. For Prince, and some other people he can't really say. He says even their measurements are contractually top secret. He says Elton's a good friend, and that he'll be going out on a boat with him for his birthday next Sunday.

Happy Birthday Travis the Drunken Liar.

His grandmother always told him to go after something in life that he cared enough about to do for free.

Travis the Drunkard Strunkard Tycoon's grandma, was cool.