lost myself there (a flashback)

so, in exactly one week i turn thirty-one…the birthday that, as a child (and i mean a real one…that’s not a reference to my occasional child-like playfulness) i wondered if on your 31st birthday you could wander into a baskin & robbins and get ANYTHING you wanted since the number was so significant to them. this year i may get to find out…

but today, while the REST of me might be thirty-one in a week, i SWEAR my right knee will be celebrating a birthday in it’s upper fifties. or at least that’s the way it feels today. quite early into yesterday’s game of hoops with the guys from the office, i noticed a peculiar, eerily familiar feeling in my right knee (tore it up internally pretty bad a skater kid when i was in my teens)…which was odd, ’cause it was my LEFT knee that had giving me a bit of issue lately. but now it had switched sides, and gotten worse. MUCH worse.

it was a bit troubling yesterday, as i alluded to in the piece i did last night, but it was bad enough to wake me up last night, and is making me walk funny today. i’m wondering if a trip to the gym is a good idea…i’m thinking if i don’t push it too hard, do light weight and lots of reps, maybe it’ll work the kinks out, as it were.

all i know is, i sleep better when the room is cold; but last night i had to pull my knee up under a blanket and warm it up so i could go to sleep, and that kinda spooked me…and made me feel old. real old. damn old. like kramer’s age kinda old….(sorry, that was cruel, wasn’t it “pops”?)

and ya’ know, i’m not a violent man, nor do i try to encourage violence in others. but if you ever, ever, EVER wanted to wipe some people off of the face of the earth that really kinda need to go, i think i’ve found your time and place; and it’s sad ’cause it’s one of my favorite places in austin…

the paramount theatre.

it’s a great place, and has a lot of history for both me personally and the city of austin. it’s seen great vaudeville acts, classic movies, killer comedy and popular stage productions; both local and national. it was where i bought my first ticket to see my first live performance; sam kinison (rip), live on the paramount stage, june 19th, 1987; my sixteenth birthday…and to show how long my friendships last, bret (the guy i hung out with in dallas) and jim (as in my “sister” kathi’s older brother) were both with me at the time.

but now that sacred ground is being tainted. soiled. possibly beyond repair. and it can be summed up in the title line of the ticket you have to buy to get in…

“grease sing-a-long”

never have three little words and a letter sent such a shiver down my spine. they did it earlier this summer with the sound of music, which was bad enough, but we can chalk that up as a classic, right? i mean hell, my mom, who would have been sixty-two this year, owned the soundtrack to that. they show a sub-titled version of the flick, hand out lyric sheets, and ask everyone to sing a long.

but a whole theatre full of people ALL singing greased lightening? welcome to sean’s personal definition of purgatory, folks…and i DON’T mean the ski resort.