After spending most of this 9/11 with ice-water in my veins all over again, I was sort of coming up short on ways to make myself feel a little more, oh, September 10th-ish.
Us SF residents just seem to love potholes. There are so many of them I can't think of any other explanation. When they feel like we're just having too much fun with them, The City uses one of three methods to fix a pothole;
1. Ignore it and hope it goes away.
2. Turn it into a speedbump.
3. Get a can of bright orange spray paint and spray a jaunty outline around it.
Sometimes I'll be driving along and see one of these craters approaching. Either the slalom games begin, or I see it too late and nail it. I used to get really annoyed when the latter happened, and then I just stumbled across this little cure:
When you see that unavoidable pothole coming, wait until you hit it, and then yell "POTHOLE!" at the top of your lungs. I did it by accident, I'm sure meaning to precede it by some expletive or another. But I just ended up cracking myself up, because it's one of those words that gets funnier the louder you say it. Like 'rubbish!'
My tires hate it though...
Some of you may remember a short-lived band I played drums in (with Jesse Tomaino of Suenteus Po) in '01-'02 called Excuse I. We were a reggae/ska type of affair, 5-piece, and I was by far the oldest geezer in the band. It was a ton of fun. Allen Whitman came up with the name.
Alas, the band imploded in 2002 for any number of reasons, or all the usual reasons, as bands will. They aren't built to last, after all.
Young people, on the other hand, are generally built to last. So I am very sad to have to write that Gilbert Shih, our young trumpet player, took his own life last Thursday. He had booked some time with an instructor at a shooting range in San Rafael, had spent a couple hours shooting at targets, and then just turned the revolver on himself without any warning. He was 28.
We are very sad and shocked, and none of us know any details as to why. I suppose one rarely does. But Jesse and I have put up a little myspace page with the only 4 songs we ever recorded, and we hope you'll go and listen to some of Gilbert's trumpet playing. They were recorded at GetReel Productions by Robert Preston, so you know they sound good.
myspace.com/excusei
He also had his own myspace page.
myspace.com/gilbertshih
Be well, everybody, and hang on tight.