I Need to Have a Sleep Bender

Subtitled: Followed by an exercise bender and then another round of sleep.

I feel like I could roll up into a blanket burrito and sleep for 24 hours straight. Then I would like to get up, eat a hearty breakfast, let the food settle, and have this rip-roaring workout where I sweat a lot. And then follow that by a big bottle of Gatorade and then another sleep. I don’t really know why I have such a peculiar and specific set of cravings. I think most of it is being tired, mentally drained and wishing to just detox the body of everything and start from scratch. The combo of sweat, shower and sleep is nature’s way of making it happen.

On a similar note, I am so ready for my vacation in March. I have big plans and I’m sure everything will come together for a noteworthy story when it’s all said and done. More on that later. If my crappy Dell laptop had not stopped working inexplicably, I would take it down there and document the adventure night-by-night. Unfortunately, I think if I do that, I will be relegated to old school pen-and-paper. Oh well, it wouldn’t kill me.

So let’s talk for a moment about this jacked up Oklahoma weather. Mmmkay. Yesterday, the sun was shining and it was 80 degrees outside. Beautiful. I rode home with the sunroof open, loving life. Then everything went to hell. It was rainy and windy overnight with booming thunderstorms this morning. The temp has now dropped to 39 (with a wind chill closer to 30) and it’s cold, wet and nasty outside. WTF. There’s a potential for light snow tonight and it’s going to be several days before it’s warm again. I hate this back and forth crap. I’m tired of the cold weather at this stage of the game and I’m just ready to have mild weather for a change.

I dunno if you’ve been watching Paranormal State on A&E but if not, you should. I would say of the many paranormal-oriented shows I’ve seen (and believe me, I am a connoisseur), it’s one of the best. The first two episodes made me leave the lamp on until I nodded off enough to fall asleep. And as someone whose scholarship involves Mephistopheles and the role of Satan in film, I don’t scare easy. Last night’s ep involves a haunted piano that a married couple found, brace yourself, for FREE on Craigslist. Now, call me crazy, but if someone is giving away an antique piano on the net for free, I would avoid it like the plague. People don’t give shit like that away unless something is markedly wrong. Caveat emptor x100. So the people get this piano home and within a day, they are freaked out by it. They move it onto the front porch and still feel uneasy. The woman purportedly received a message on a deactivated cell phone in the house that read 666. Yet again, if I bring an object home and anything even remotely resembling a demonic act occurs, it’s 3, 2, 1, gone. I would say the creepiest episodes to me are the ones where kids are seeing ghosts and when the team checks out the story, everything matches up. The first episode they aired involved a little boy who could see a dead man and he knew things beyond what any small child would know. He could even identify the man from a photo and he knew the man always wore a Walkman. Creeeeepy.

Last Friday, E-$ and I ate at Senor Tequila’s and were accosted by a mariachi band. Our senses were also assaulted by the epidemic of “boots with the furrrr.” (Thanks for that one, Flo Rida.) Just because something sounds cool in a song doesn’t mean you should attempt it. Especially if you are 10 years old, 70 years old and/or 500 lbs. Meanwhile, it was 20 degrees outside and some chick we called “the whore Eskimo” was walking around in a miniskirt, cowboy boots, a tank top and a large Eskimo parka pulled over the top of it. In a family restaurant. E and I are trying to talk as I am swilling down one orange martini after the next and every five minutes or so, the wall we are next to sounds like it is either going to collapse or that rats are gnawing through the other side of it. Out of nowhere emerges this motley mariachi band with one member who looked exactly like Richard Dreyfus. He kept wanting to stand right up Ericka’s ass and at numerous points in the night, he very nearly swung his guitar into her head. He was *that* close. About the time they burst into “La Bamba,” E asked me, “How stereotypical can you be?” Touché, friend, touché. They even played that song—I don’t know the title, but it’s in The Heartbreak Kid with Ben Stiller—that’s like, “Duh-duh-duh-duh. Duh-duh-duh-duh.” Aaaaah! No one wants to hear that. It would have only been worse if they’d played “La Cucaracha.” They disappeared for a few minutes here and there and E said, “If they are still playing in here and we can’t hear them, they must have walked out by 1-44 and started playing music on the highway.” If only . . . We also saw a wide variety of odd groupings. There was a table behind us of yuppies, one of whom Ericka called “a wannabe Ving Rhames.” He flexed anytime he thought someone looked at him but, sadly, his muscles were not as big as he imagined. There was an old lady out with a group of young children. I’m going to assume they were her grandkids even though they looked nothing like her. She was so focused on her food that she puckered her bottom lip outward like Alfred Hitchcock. It was hard not to stare. There was a large group of people young, old, gay, straight and E concluded they had to be part of a church group. I don’t know if that phenomenon is unique to Oklahoma or if it happens everywhere. But around here, odd groups like that in family establishments usually connote church group. The bathroom was hot, stuffy and smelled like the sketchy motel E and I stayed at when we went to the Dierks Bentley show. There was a hole punched in the wall and someone had simply left it there to avoid another hole being punched by the doorknob. On the way out, Richard Dreyfus made it a point to say goodnight and goodbye to us. For whatever reason.

If you get bored today, reminisce on this little jewel. Not many people remember the full video with the cornball director who says, “Places, people, places.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__eI4u_tQD8