Fool, 'Cause it's Friday

"He's bout hard as Darth Vader
In his sweat shirt, khakis and Chuck Taylors
Just see him in the driveway
Gettin beat like a smoka, fool 'cuz it's Friday"
--Friday, Ice Cube

Hmm, oh yeah, Darth Vader. Gotta pick up my ticket this afternoon to make sure I can get into next Tuesday night's screening of that there Episode III flick. Nice. Now I've mentioned this before, but it's nice that Friday has finally earned distinction in my life, separating itself from Monday through Thursday and actually signifying the beginning of the weekend. In my former life, weekends were no different, Sundays actually representing the biggest workday of the week, and weekdays consisting of 10 a.m. wake-up times, trips to the gym and occasional trips to the office. And even though I do work on the weekend about eight months out of the year, Friday is still a wonderful feeling.
I'm trying to figure out why people do certain things, things I'll never understand. Like parking your car and covering two spots. In a lot like ours, which is totally full every day (even requiring valet parking in the aisles for dozens of cars), how could somebody walk away from their car after seeing its location, straddling the lines meant to provide a border between two vehicles? On a crowded street, against a curb with plenty of room for two cars between a pair of driveways, how on earth does someone park their Explorer (no offense to Explorer drivers) firmly in the middle, leaving no room for anybody else in front or behind? How are you that oblivious to the outside world? Who has so little regard for everyone else trying to do exactly what they're doing at that moment? Psychology and sociology are fascinating subjects (I kinda wish I'd tried to learn something about them at some point in school), because it's so hard to put yourself in someone else's shoes (figuratively) and figure out their corresponding actions. If I had cared to study a bit more, perhaps I'd have some more insight, but who knows. I doubt that any of us will ever understand what possesses someone to just go shoot another cat on the freeway, something that seems to have become commonplace here in the Southland.
So I was reading this baseball blog site yesterday and there was a survey on there about which American cities fit you best. I'm not usually one to click on these things (wandering around the internet is about as effective a time-waster as one can find), but this one intrigued me, so I filled out a few questions, and here are the results:
American Cities That Best Fit You:
80% Honolulu
75% Austin
75% Denver
70% Atlanta
65% San Diego
I can say with a great deal of confidence that I won't be living in Austin or Atlanta anytime soon (and Honolulu seems pretty remote too, even if it is a good fit), so I think my future destinations might have to be Denver (or somewhere in Colorado) or San Diego (which has pretty much always been choice number one. If SD had anywhere near the television work that LA has, I'd already be there. Maybe someday.
Okay, so you know how there's a thin line between love and hate? Well that line was in full effect last night at a little place called the Gas Lite, a smallish establishment on Wilshire in Santa Monica, the focus of which is a thing we like to call karaoke. I've been to a few karaoke places before, but all of them had heretofore been of the Korean variety (two in LA and one in Seoul), so this was a relatively new experience. The love part comes in when attractive girls with good voices do good songs ("Son of a Preacher Man" and "Fever" come to mind). The hate portion would be "Bad Medicine," done by six drunk guys, none of whom have ever even considered carrying a tune in their respective twenty-something year histories. I really hope that song hasn't been permanently damaged for me, but it's highly possible. Other ruined songs from last night include anything by Stone Temple Pilots, anything done in the Spanish language (quick side note: this dude sang Spanish songs five times while I was there, and, curious about the lack of words on the screen during his performances, we asked the waitress to give us the scoop. He evidently pays the host to perform, in attempts to promote his CD--he gives the DJ the instrumental tracks, and then puts on a little concert, one song at a time, five songs over the span of a few hours, interrupted by countless other singers. Sounds like a great gig to me there, Raul. I'm not in the advertising business, but I'm of the opinion that Raul needs a new marketing plan--like Sandler kept saying in that Seinfeld SNL sketch with the stand-up comic game show: "Who were the ad wizards that came up with this one?"
As I begin my work day, I'm attempting to come to grips with the fact that my blog has become a physics discussion board. If I were to predict the topic that would spark the most animated and prolific discussion, I would have placed terminal velocity (and the relative acceleration of objects) somewhere between favorite co-host on "The View" and best song on Pink's new album, but hey, whatever brings in the readers, right?
Still holding out hope for a Padres game or two this weekend--the possibility was re-awakened this morning--but Jimmy Eat World isn't a bad fallback...peace