Driving home from Williamsburg yesterday. ..

...drove past this lot where Kate and Jame learned to drive a stick...and where Jo pretended to learn to drive a stick...brought back a lot of amusing and frustrating memories.  All good ones. 

In our new Nazi-fied America, if you do anything any criminal ever did anywhere anytime you can now be thrown in jail

Seriously,  felonious mask-wearing is a crime? 

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/06/19/clown-masked-movie-goers-sentenced-to-30-days-in-jail/

Dangerously close to minor league baseball

Happy Father's Day!

Ok, for some reason this just really tickled me

Looking down on Columbus Circle from the Manhattan Mandarin Oriental

Horrible,  horrible 24-hour period.  New York never easy. But usually not this hard. Weather sucks.

Naturally, flight cancelled

Paul and I trying to get the bags back.

This is why I'm probably going to have trouble getting to New York today.

Five minutes ago it was sunny.  Moving fast. 

Birthday Lunch!

C treated me to a delicious Hard Times Cafe chili mac today.  Spaghetti, amply drowned in dark, Texas-style chili, topped with cheese and onions.  I have been jonesing for this FOREVER.  Damn that's good. Ah...now to lay on my ass and digest.  Love you guys!

Plus my batteries came in!  Charging all them suckers up now.

(And, no, I don't know why they call it Chili Mac, when they don't use macaroni. Which would also be delicious.  It should technically be called Chili Ghetti, I reckon. Or maybe SpaChili, though that sounds like something disgusting they'd find at the bottom of the whirlpool at a less-than-luxury health resort. Enough!)

On a sort of happier note...

The sort of is because my poor phone's charging jack is loose and my phone will no longer charge.  It has no juice whatsoever, so I won't be able to talk to anyone on the phone tomorrow, probably.  Sorry!  Fixing it is too pricey, and a wall charger cost a lot, too.  Here in the states, anyway.  So I ordered a wall charger and three extra batts from China and they MIGHT be here tomorrow.  I have dealt with this guy before for other phone chargers and he is fast, cheap, and his stuff always works. So, fingers crossed. Maybe I can talk to you guys on my birthday after all.  :)

Also, can't take a picture obviously, but got your package.  I opened the card....thank you thank you thank you.  Not opening the box until tomorrow. Have to have a present to open!  But your other gift goes most of the way to paying for the present I got myself:  a new TV.  Well, a refurbished TV, anyway.  But it's a large Smart TV so I can watch YouTube and Netflix and all that stuff I've been watching on my phone for the last year. Jamie Zemarel, a notoriously obsessed shopper and deal-finder found me a great deal. Also, if this one falls on my head, despite its size, I'll barely notice. Love y'all!

American Hero

I would just skip this read and go away, frankly, everyone.  Seriously. It's ranty.

This is the CIA whistle-blower.  He knows our giant, scary, illegal security machine is going to come get him and render him (maybe with a little torture, just to please the boys back home) and turn him into some sort of demonized "traitor" for having the temerity to point out to the world what a disgusting pack of control-drunken, fascist, intrusive asswipes our government has become --and thanks for that, Obama, by the way. Am I ever sorry I worked for you on election night. 

No doubt some sort of jury-rigged "evidence" will emerge that shows him to be a child molester or rapist or something.  Not like I would believe ONE WORD coming out of the Land of the Free anymore.  Free of Honesty.  Free of Representation. And coming soon: Free of Freedom!

But this guy knows the shitstorm is coming for him and he doesn't care. Thought about it. Planned ahead for it. Gave up his normal cool American life in Hawaii so that people everywhere could get at least a glimpse of the insane, destructive, paranoid, greedy, controlling apparatus America has become. I wish him all the luck in the world.  I hope Hong Kong denies extradition forever.

I also hope whatever Federal scumbag is reading this email gets terminal, hideously painful ear cancer from their eavesdropping devices.  I wish I believed in Hell, cause then I'd know that at least someday you'd get what you deserve.

Well, my thyroid is dandy, it seems

So I left another few gallons of juice for Dr. Lin. I'd cross my fingers but that would probably make me lightheaded at this point. 

Do have these things everywhere too?

Or is it just around here? 

Things that fall on my head

A giant,  ancient 32-inch tube tv. It fell so hard it scratched the screen.  Which is hard to do.  It destroyed a Nintendo system on its descent.  Thank God,  since that was all that cushioned my skull. Which still hurts.  Duh duh dumb, that's me.

OK, it's getting hot, it was time...

Pre...

 

And post....

Pretty American way to spend Memorial Day

At a baseball game, eating hamburgers, in the Nation's Capitol.  Click on the picture, it's a bigger landscape shot I just learned how to take. Badly. Sold out ballpark, 41, 500: Nats versus Orioles. They kicked our asses. America!

The very same clown vomiting me out of its scary-ass mouth

Pretty great and almost worth the sunburn.

The scary clown that stares at us all day and night

Since I see all my nice big picture shows bounced and never made it on the blog,  I'll do them one at a time

Mom, you would be loving it here

Epcot has this crazy flower and garden show.  Will put up more pics later

There are early signs the flight home from San Francisco might not be nightmarish.

But I'm probably wrong. 

Endless wind farms between Modesto and San Francisco

Minnie actually IS mini

This little bundle of energy is Russi Taylor.  She came to our show at CalTech with the Disney people. On her birthday!  We all sang to her afterward. She is about as Disney as you can get.  She is this amazing voice actor who has done about a billion characters over the years.  Most notably, though, she has been the official voice of Minnie Mouse since the mid-80s.  She was married to the official Mickey voice until he died a few years back. She has worked with Dawes Butler and all the classic voice artist of the last 50 years. She has three recurring characters on the Simpsons, plus a slew of one-shots; she was on The Critic back in the day...tons and tons of voice work. She's Baby Gonzo, for God's sake. So not only is her voice unusual, but she can sing, in pitch, beautiful and harmonically IN CHARACTER. Hard to do. Her voice is musical, high-pitched and sounds like little bells ringing or glass tinkling.  She sounds like a coked-up, hyper-active, very-high-pitched excited little kid on Christmas morning all the time. It's almost impossible not to listen when she speaks: her voice is that naturally amusing and entertaining.  The difference between someone with a 'good' voice and someone with a 'talented' voice and some one with a ludicrous, inimitable, natural comical instrument were never so evident to me as when I talked with her.  It is literally impossible to imagine that she would be anything other than a cartoon voice.  Very, very entertaining evening again, courtesy of our pal, Howard Green, seen here doing the dueling Howards thing with Howard, our pianist.

As for me, I was pleased because the Simpson's most prolific director, Mark Kirland, who comes to see us every year, told me every time he comes, he loves my voice more and more. I told him, well, use it, baby!  Anytime!  Hell, I'll fly out to YOU!  A fella can dream, can't he?  :)   Also, his wiki entry isn't up to date. He just directed his 75th Simpson's episode.

Also...Manson tour!

Here we have the 10000 block of Cielo Drive; up this little private drive to the right Manson's minions crept in on Mom's birthday,  1969, and murdered Sharon Tate and everyone else on the premises. 

The next night they stopped at this house up on the right and killed a wealthy grocer and his wife. I have been reading about both of these places since jr. high and neither looked the way I had imagined it. Weird. 

Driving about LA today

Saw... the Hollywood sign; the famous Beverly Hills Hotel; the tiny dressing room at CalTech I have been changing in for 20+ years. 

City Hall, Pasadena

Seen from the delightful Westin on Los Robles. This, I believe,  is my 20th yearly stay here.  Nice.

TSA Dulles

The usual theatrical security effort has been redoubled.  People are acting even more frowny and serious.  But still a useless charade. Off to California!