It's Friday...and you aint got sh*t to do!

Woo-hoo! It's Friday!

I have to admit I'm feeling a bit peaked after a Thursday night brimmed with free Angelina Jolie butt crack and good beer Keystone Light. But it's Friday nonetheless, so I'm giddy by default. Back to Angelina. A friend and (peace-loving) neighbor of mine managed to snag 7:30 advance-screening tickets for "Wanted" (featuring James McAvoy and the pregnant half of the "Brangelina" Internet monster).

If you mix one part "The Matrix", two parts "Fight Club", toss in a pinch of "Shoot em' Up" and top the bloodletting off with a Star Wars-esque cherry, you've pretty much got "Wanted." Derivative? Yup. Implausible? You better believe it. Enjoyable if you can check all logic at the door? Absolutely. Plus Angelina shows off her anorexic buns, which amazingly managed to look like something slightly more substantial than legs connecting directly into a lower back. But not by much.

The distraction fueled by Angie's "please buy me a Six Dollar Burger" frame aside - I enjoyed Wanted for the big, ridiculously over-the-top, cheesy action spectacle it is. Three-and-a-half out of five stars .

It's amazing that I could possibly be in a halfway decent mood considering I only got about four hours of sleep last night (That's where the beer came in). I guess that's the power of Friday. How awesome are Fridays? Don't try to answer that, it was rhetorical.

Anyhow, Fridays were discovered by hungry bar-goers in late 19th century California - apparently only three skips away from Ruby Tuesdays [[ba-da-ting!]] Ahem. Its English form stems from the German word "Freitag" which translates to "Dude! Where are we going for happy hour?"

Interesting fact, huh?

In honor of Friday I present...

Aubrey's Top Ten Reasons You Gotta Love Friday

10. Your boss is too busy haggling for a Saturday morning tee time over the phone to notice you coming in late.

9. Everyone at work is on the same page: the one titled "Unproductive".

8. Two Words: happy...hour.

7. No matter what date is written on your birth certificate, every birthday is really on Friday.

6. Unless you provide some sort of valuable public service, such as firefighting, soldiering or working the register at Cinnabon, you're probably off the next day.

5. People are in a better mood throughout the day...at least until Happy Hour ends.

4. People that are still in a good mood after Happy Hour are much more likely to make whoopee with you just because.

3. If you don't have a job, Friday is extra cool because Chris Tucker will eventually show up at your porch with a doobie.

2. Sex is 82.4% better on Fridays in comparison to Mondays. Look it up...it's science!

And the #1. reason you gotta love Fridays...

You don't need to bother blowing gas money at a strip club, it's "dress down" day at your local Hooters!

Merry Friday to all! And to all a great Happy Hour!

Love Thy Neighbor

I'm going to try to keep this blog fair and mood-balanced if I can help it, but it's time for a balls-out rant. Here's my issue...

I hate my neighbors. And I am in no way being euphemistic. I unequivocally abhor, detest, loath and flat-out want to murder my neighbors. As you can undoubtedly deduce, I didn't quite ace the "Ten Commandments" quiz in my childhood Sunday school. It's not that I'm any more cantankerous, evil-tempered, or crotchety than the next person living within the poverty cutoff. These people are just...well, how do I put this nicely? OK, they're obnoxiously loud, utterly oblivious asshats that should be sterilized immediately.

It's technically too late for spaying and neutering already, as both sets of offending dwellers have already spawned. Their offspring have merged to form a cohesive racket-making unit whose skateboards, portable basketball hoop and sheer vocal firepower make up a small fraction of a quiet-killing arsenal used to drive me batshit. And of course, they come from the absolute finest in noisemaker stock.

One child, an almost certain future drill instructor who wears his hair in cornrows, lives directly across the street with his mother, father, and the rest of their aurally offensive brood. His accomplice, a tow-headed, blue-eyed shrieker from two doors down, never knew a sunrise that wasn't perfect for ceaselessly clanging a basketball off that rickety hoop. This winner lives with his parents and apparently popular teenage brother, who handles the night shift portion of their "so help me god" sworn duty to deprive me of sleep.

If it weren't enough that these spawn of the damned perform untimely yodels, launch sunrise-beating three-point shots, and have marijuana-fueled roundtable discussions by the pale moonlight-their parents all but encourage it.

Little Sergeant Shouter no doubt became library-ready on account of his mother's example, which by the way, leads me to believe she's legally deaf. As far as I'm concerned, this woman's "volume" knob has only two settings:

1. LOUD

and

2. JUST IN CASE THEY CAN'T HEAR ME IN TUNISIA

She yells when she's calling the Sarge in for the night. She screams her daughter's name out of the car window over-and-over (all the while honking the horn like a New York cabbie) when she's waiting to give her a ride. She echoes throughout the neighborhood at night when she comes home elated after doing whatever it is overweight, tonally-challenged black women do. I've dated every kind of woman under the sun except a shouter, and my mom never yells, so for lack of reference, I'll assume the night ruckus is just buffet afterglow.

Little Larry (Bird) and his pothead brother have a mother that is exactly the opposite-you never hear or see her. I swear I've seen this woman once the entire year I've lived here. And when I said "hi" she acted like she didn't hear me. No wonder this kid is out shooting hoops in the middle of the street at 4:30 a.m. - he's waiting for mom to return from the ear doctor. About 11 p.m. Sunday through Thursday, her older son and his esteemed associates gather in the family driveway to laugh like hyenas while pondering the mysteries of the universe. I'd give my left testicle for sniper skills and an up-to-date family tree.

Sigh...Maybe I've just forgotten what it was like to be young and carefree-without a worry in the world to temper life's excitement. Perhaps I'm just a cane-waving, rocking-chair-ridden cliché deep down in my admittedly cynical soul. But, I love an open-window breeze, and besides...if I'm the one that's so damned old, why the hell is everybody else doing all the yelling?

Capital Croon

A strange thing happened today.

While peering out my office window at the incessant Arden Way mechanized rat race and admiring Sacramento's current monochromatic, toxic soup skyline (which no doubt foreshadows the coming Apocalypse), I suddenly burst into song...

~Ode To Sacramento~

Crystallized meth dens and hobos with kittens~

Crack whores that beckon, pretending they're smitten~

Red-necks and racists and biker drug rings~

Sac Town has all of my faaaavorite things!

Pot holes and craters in most of the freeways~

Where oversized pick-ups and giant Humvees play~

Huge 'No Fear' stickers and children with bling~

Sac Town has all of my faaaavorite things!

Wannabe gangsters with stagecoach-sized tires~

Our poo-filled rivers and smog from the fires~

Capital city, your praises I sing!

Cause' you have all of my faaavorite things!

Sac Town has all of my fa-vor-ite thi-iiiings!

Blogless-Will Work For Food

Well, it seems there has been an unacceptable lapse in time since my last entry. I'm gonna blame this one on my job, which has been the source of much soul-sucking dismay as-of-late.

If you don't already know, I'm a radio anchor for a teensie-tiny, itty-bitty radio wire service. I read supposedly up-to-date news, traffic and weather reports on A.M. stations that the average person wouldn't know existed. As a matter-of-fact, I just finished reading reports for a hip-hop gospel station we provide news for. Yes, hip-hop...gospel. Despite my best efforts, I just can't seem to "get it crunk in the name of the lord up in here," as one the (admittedly talented) artists suggests on a nearly daily basis. I just don't get...crunk all that often these days.

If I were to, it would likely be in the name of scotch (no offense meant to any unspecified deity that might be watching me with an index finger at the ready on a lightning bolt button). Yup, I'd get crunk...with Johnnie Walker as my witness. So, for me at least, if drunk=crunk, and I'm aiming to get crunk in the lord's name, then crunk in the lord's name=drunk in the lord's name, which I'm not altogether sure is a balanced equation. I got my degree in journalism, not mathematics.

But I digress...this was supposed to be an explanation of my blatant absenteeism on the blog front. Candidly, I hate my job, and have been spending my evenings scouring the Web for anything sweet in a realm reeking of a foul new fragrance named "Recession."

This whole malcontent thing has been brewing daily, much like the coffee I'm paid with. I mean shit, I essentially recycle news reports from sources that employ real reporters, who actually go out and...well, report. For example: John Q. Reporter wrote a story for today's Sacramento Bee about the upcoming mayoral runoff that I need. I take the information supplied in the story and trim it, re-arrange the words, descriptions, information and so forth, until...Shazam! I've got a shiny-new, radio-ized version of what somebody else already wrote.

Anybody that goes to school starts out an idealist-no exceptions. I mean, yeah, every journalism student is told early on that there's "no money in the business." Every prospective Ed Murrow or Diane Sawyer gets skull-fucked through the ear hole with the "it's a labor of love" rant early on, but nobody, I repeat, NOBODY graduates college thinking, "Finally, I can get out there and start not having money!"

I believe every person that goes to college truly believes that their education is going to wing them to the land of milk and honey...at first. But, over this past year I've come to think success in life really is all about attrition. Can you "wait it out" in order to get to your dreams? Can you persevere, all the while feeling weak from nourishment-lacking Top Ramen?

I'm trying to stay positive. I really do want get professionally crunk...in the name of journalism. But I'm drenched in Recession...and all the job hunting is starving my poor little blog.

Possibly Public Purgatory

As I walked through the automatic doorway, a middle-aged, somewhat unkempt fellow walked out with a look that made me wonder if he had just evacuated his bladder after three days of waiting. This pudgy, scruffy gent shot me some sort of sly, rotten-pumpkin-tooth grin as I passed. "What the hell are you smiling about, Sir Yuckmouth?" I thought to myself-nearing the inner door. As I walked in, I was greeted by the symphony of the damned- sniffles, coughs, cellular ring tones and baby screams. I was truly in hell.

A word to the wise from the apparently dumb-as-dog poo: Renew your driver's license good and early-preferably on the Internet.

I walked smack dab into a queue of les miserables (apparently in the DMV Dimension, there's always a line for the line) and noticed that the woman at the front looked slightly more unhappy than the nine or ten poor souls behind her. I couldn't for the life of me determine what this woman (who obviously couldn't afford combs, lotion, and most especially, manners) was so pissed off about. So back-and-forth went Miss Congeniality 08' and a rather unamused-looking young man at the info desk...

"...Well, I aint waitin' in no damn line, I told yo ass already."

"I'm sorry miss, but you're going to have to wait in line like all these other people."

"Fo dis? {Holding up document} Are you serious? That don't make no got-damned sense."

"I'm sorry mam, but I've done all I can do."

"Mana-juh..."

"Excuse me?"

"Mana-GER!"

Apparently, acting like a horse's ass in public is not without its benefits. The manager and her charges took care of Suzy Sunshine's issue so expeditiously and ran her out of the building so fast, I couldn't be completely sure that she wasn't some sort of blissfully-unaware, undignified-dignitary. Maybe DMV workers feel the flames too-but they don't want us to remind them of where they are, I'm sure.

Finally, I got to the counter and received my renewal paperwork and a line number. The ticket read "G596". "Oh goody," I huffed while shuffling toward a corner seat. Then I heard...it. That flat, soul-less, mechanized, she-voice of evil that narrates GPS directions by day, and car drivers' nightmares by night...

"NOW-SER-VING...F...THREE-ONE-FOUR..."

"NOW-SER-VING...B...FOUR-SEVEN-TWO..."

"NOW-SER-VING...G...FIVE-FIVE-ONE..."

I thought I was going to faint. Five-five-one? FIVE-FIVE-ONE!? !? My number was FORTY-FIVE-FUCKING-FREAKS AWAY!!!

Resigned to my fate, I took a chair as far away from the surrounding freak show as possible. Sitting in a DMV is like visiting in an urban bio-refuge. I spent the next hour-and-twenty documenting the wildlife.

-Crazy dead eyes hippie demonstrating police submission maneuvers on a random woman's son (woman laughs).

-Marginally obese woman in what must be a lime-green, plastic dress that accentuates fat rolls, complete with matching strappy sandals that tie nearly up to her knees. Toe nail polish is also lime-green.

"NOW-SER-VING...G...FIVE-SIX-EIGHT..."

-Somewhat cute baby boy with faux-hawk that won't stop staring at me. Mother asks him if he's making new friends in baby voice. Baby releases drool rope and continues staring.

-Hells Angels-esque old timer in wheelchair and wearing "P.O.W./M.I.A." jacket tells attendant he didn't renew his registration sooner because of "all the stupid people here."

-Man in seat across allows chihuahua-like lap dog to lick inside his mouth.

"NOW-SER-VING...G...FIVE-NINE-SIX..." "Oh, my god." "Thank you Mr. Jesus."

"Yes, I'd be more than happy to pay 30 dollars to renew my license." "You take ATM?" "Great." "Yeah, tomorrow's my birthday...gettin' old, I know." "That's it?" "Awesome." "Thank you so much."

Practically skipping out, I looked back at that cursed room-"Yup...absolutely as bad as they say."

On the way out the front door I came across a younger man wearing a T-shirt, jeans and a baseball cap pulled down that almost covered eyes that were widened in anticipation. His face showed purpose...and hurry.

As we passed I acknowledged the youngster...

with a nod most sincere...

and a grin most wicked.