Urban Onramps

I’m getting closer. But it’s usually a bad sign if you like a section of what you’ve written a lot, yet you are nowhere close to done writing. What you like may impede your progress, cuz you will work around it, trying to preserve that piece you like, and suffocate the “story.” THAT, my friends, is the best piece of advice I got from undergrad. There’s another great piece of advice I got during college, but I can’t remember it right now.

Bruce Hansen. Just gotta say your name. Keep up the good work, bro.

Yes, I like HBO’s Entourage. Yes, DJ, I downloaded Hell’s Bells. What an opening riff! I wish old Martin Luther had taken THAT music and slapped some Christian lyrics on it. Can you imagine that?

Some heds:

• Global Trade Talks Collapse Over Farm Aid: Not good… keep an eye on this.
• Believing in Blair High School: Working hard to develop one Pasadena’s public schools
• Is SETI Barking up the Wrong Tree?: This is the project where they’ve been searching for signs of life, radio signals, from space. In 46 years they’ve found… jack squat. Ain’t nuthin out there, friends, even if the Vatican’s astronomer thus speculates. This guy thinks so, too: Alone in the Universe.
• August 16 - this is gonna be good: HBO Presents: When the Levees Broke, A Spike Lee Film

I dig the International Music Feed. It’s what I wish MTV would have become, instead of what it is.

Max Torres is the new program director at Bayshore Christian Ministries in East Palo Alto. Good for them. Max, among other things, will preach a great sermon at your church that appeals to all ages, if you invite him. Years back, Max was the one who told me I was late to my sit-down with Dubya, and got me there on time. Glad you are so close, bro.

This just in: French scouring country for someone sick enough to win Tour (de France): Mark-in-Mexico sez, “Lance Armstrong is a brain cancer survivor once given only a 5-10 percent chance to survive. Floyd Landis cannot walk without severe pain and must undergo hip replacement surgery before riding in another race. Neither has ever failed a drug test and they have been subjected to hundreds, if not thousands. Armstrong won 7 straight tours and, upon his retirement after last year’s victory, Landis limped in on his bum hip to keep the 2006 yellow jersey on American soil, or soiled by Americans, depending on your point of view. The French and the other Europeans must find some people sick enough to compete with the Americans.”

More Gaming The System: How I subscribe to the Wall Street Journal for free: I had some airline miles on some other airline (not American or United). I used some of those miles to get a free subscription to the Wall Street Journal wherein they deliver the paper to my house. Anyone who ever visits my house knows these papers tend to stack up in my driveway. But I digress. So because of airline miles, I’m getting Adventures-in-Capitalism for free. But wait! There’s more! I go online and look at the online subscription requirement. Basically, you just need to punch in your newspaper subscription ID and you get FREE ACCESS TO THE WSJ ONLINE, since I’m already a print subscriber. Bonus! So, look, even if you only fly once in a while, on different airlines, go on and sign up for their frequent flyer program. I started flying with John Perkins back in October 1990, so it takes years for things to accrue. But accrue they will. Sign up, even if it’s San Gabriel Valley Airlines or Trashcanistan Express. Who knows, they may merge, like TWA and American, or USAirways and America West, and then you’ll be sitting on… on… on enough miles to subscribe to Rolling Stone or something.