happy fifth of july!!

yesterday, i celebrated 18th yrs without booze. wow! a whole lifetime without booze, nearly. james kept asking me what kind of cake i wanted & i couldn't tell him, so he got me a beautiful tres leches cake. one time after practice at tony l's, we stopped in a mexican market cause james loves markets & there we purchased a warm, juicy, moist, creamy hunk of tres leches, which james'd never had... yesterday's cake was as delicious bc it was from him...

"aliens over LBC" - line9blues

i don't like fireworks time in southern california, i realized. spent most of my life in a place much quieter (tho the air would kill you especially on that day, i now recall)... even still, it was gratifying to observe jamesjr & his young friend set off fireworks & make cynical jokes w/his father... this likely will be the last yr son is w/father on this date or many others, for that matter, so it was important to complete the ritual. their relationship is only about me as far as how i can support it. "what can i do to be useful?" as a human, i'm always best off when that's the  focus... fireworks are the proper use of explosives, in my view as a person who's never been in combat & therefore never has had to know the vital necessity of having firepower... it's heartbreaking & confusing to me to consider how explosives have to great degree allowed me (and you?) to sit where i am, relatively free, the gandhis & mandelas & other pacifist activists of the world notwithstanding... anyway, i'm going off on a weird tangent, as usual. here also are pix from line nine blues review of their 4th of july sights at long beach harbor. now THESE are the kind i can love, mostly cause the explosions are far away, allowing time to cover one's ears. plus the sight of flowers (& UFOs) unfolding across the night sky: now THAT is something wondrous... one time i was in a convent in rome & pulled back the curtains to see fireworks framed perfectly in the window as if just for me, tho i knew they weren't... blablablablablab... i have many other firework show memories, but that's the best one, i think... so anyways, today we got to san pedro & we can't wait. san pedro+the greatest living blues showman=what a great day for which to be grateful...go to whiteboyjamesdotcom to see show details...