2002-05-17 - 4:11 p.m.

I'm mere minutes away from meeting up with Karl, my main burrito of the western lands. He's got the financing skills to pay the bills plus the acumen to bring all it back again. We're planning some dinner and some drinks, nothing special on the surface but these types of things morph and ramp up exponentially in ways that boggle the mind.

In many ways this week has been the calm before the storm. I'm getting pretty good at dicking around at work for a few hours, doing an hour of solid work, dicking, working, etc. to fill up days with an unbelievable quickness. But next week the copy flood reaches my back door and I only hope my bailing buckets are sound of build.

Last night Nami and I plus the whole gang of idjits took in a DIAMONDS concert. Generally, I am loathe to perpetuate this overwhelmingly marketing-driven propensity to CAPITALIZE EVERY SINGLE LETTER in a given entity, be it product or band (is the latter not the former?). But in this case I make an exception because it brings back some goodtime daytime TV-watchin' memories for me. Specifically, that 1-800-DIAMOND commercial where the stentorian voice talent singsongingly (as much as his stent will allow) cants the spelling of the phone number, "DEE eye AY, em-oh-en DEE." Just in case the home-at-2pm viewer thought it was spelled "diemond" or "dimints." Hadta be there.

At any rate, the band really rocked it right in certain blissful sequences. In this Electric Mayhem, Tim is Animal to Morgan's decidedly "anti" Doctor Teeth. Much too hard on themselves are those lads! They sounded like a balls-out version of Duran F'in Duran - a compliment indeed.

Ted and his partner in crime recreated a Dreamhouse-type atmosphere with some warm, thick and furry keyboard and guitar noodling, couching a tastily lazy rendition of "Now I Wanna Be Yr D-g."

Nami told me this story from work the other day. She tutors first- and second-graders in reading at a public school in Flatbush. She asked one young Christopher Jones (a first grader) if he had done his homework the night before. Christopher has been known to run through the halls waving his arms wildly and screaming "AHHH! Monsters!" or "Dogs are coming after me!" Terrifying things of that nature that usually precipitate a visit to the school psychologist.

Indeed, he had not done his homework. So she nicely offered to help him do it as part of his private tutor time with her. The assignment was to write about what he'd learned in first grade. Nami asked Christopher what those things were so she could help him write them down.

What useful skills and bits of knowledge did Christopher learn in first grade?

"Monsters are not SCARY, monsters are not COMING, there's more than one kind of monster...."

Peace to the planet. Hello weekend.