Click images for desktop size: "Merry Christmas" I know a guy.
He was the sort of guy who shaves everyday with a straight razor.
He told me that, for two years he started each day staring in the mirror, waiting for the soap to soften his beard, He ran a little mantra over and over in his head: "I hate my life and I hate my wife."
For two years . . .
He called me Christmas Eve 1986. He said he was out getting the final touches for Christmas and he couldn't face the idea of going home again.
I don't know why he called me. I listened and said what you'd be expected to say to a crying man on Christmas Eve.
He didn't go home.
I saw him again.
Boxing Day 1996, in the Cologne Valley. We were at an American Football Tournament.
He recognized me. I wouldn't have known him. He'd put on 30 pounds and had a scraggly beard.
The wife he left was a blonde with perfectly manufactured breasts and blonde hair that seemed to be made of rayon. She was 28 but to me she looked like she was 42 trying to look 22.
We get a lot like that in LA. I think its the sun and the fear and the worlds most physically attractive flocking in every day.
Anyway, he introduced me to his new wife. She was polynesian and had one of those names out of a boggle box, "Just call me Wren."
Wren was about 5'2" and weighed about 200 pounds. She looked solid as a nose tackle. She made me laugh.
This guy didn't ask me about my life. He still had a lot of the straight razor shaver in him. He told me how happy he was now.
He did look happier.
He said he'd be in touch. But I never heard from him. I didn't expect to.
We were different people.
All we had left in common between us was a Christmas from a period both if us wanted to forget.

The year before the black Christmas my friend and hair stylist played Power Golf. For the last time my little family had done Christmas morning and they'd gone back to bed. So I did a Christmas Morning Surf Trek. It was a sloppy day. Three foot and choppy, but it still felt good to hit the waves. It made for a cool Yulesville.

Click images for desktop size: "Christmas Card -2006" After that I met my buddy at the golf course. We were insane, you see.
Its kind of funny we were even friends. He used to run with the Billionaire Boys Club crowd and I, I was just a surfer. We were friends though.
We were well known for our slogan, "we wish of all of our friends success. (a beat) So they won't borrow money from us.
Its not as cynical as it first seems, the assumption should be that we'd loan you the money.
Anyway we needed to play golf for business. We liked the game but found it slow so we invented our own rules.
Basically you carried your clubs on your back and ran to the ball after each stroke. There were penalties for being the last to sink your putt.
We made quite a sight I'd guess, on a sunny Christmas day, running all over the green fairways stopping just long enough to smash the ball and then pursuing it again.
That was the day my buddy asked me to be the best man at his wedding.

I gave my puppy a bath today.
She hates baths. She's always so good but she still lets you know how she feels.
I like that and everything else about her.

This doesn't have anything to do with the holiday.
I'm very happy with the new host. For one thing everything works. I did discover something alarming.
25,000 times a day various websites (mainly myspace and hi5) were hot linking to the images here. In the 6 days we've been on the new site we've used nearly 3 gig of bandwidth with a third of that going to people hot linking to here. I had to stop it because some of the sites I found to be alarming and I really don't want anyone to think I approved.
Some of the sites were just dead.
I put up an error message, if they bother to look, so that when the image comes back as forbidden, they can see instructions on how to put the picture up on there site without forcing me to pay for extra bandwidth.
It seems petty of me but . . .