It's three am and I'm slightly tired, why not blog a bit? Couldn't hurt. Today was nice, and it provided a valuable message. That message was: America is a media cannon, ready to assault the eyes, ears, and basically every orifice of the American consumer in an all out effort to win their heart, soul, money, time and attention. And I say that not only because I smoked a bowl and watched t.v. for a couple of hours which included possibly the best soundbite ever from some guy on 'Cribs', but also because I went to the Warriors game tonight (with my boy Zach props for the courtside seats). The Warriors, for those who don't know, are occasionally considered an American basketball team. Five African-American competitors or "ballers" from their squadron oppose five African-American "ballers" from the rival squadron, in tonight's case the Phoenix Suns. They then engage in a generally riveting tete-a-tete which can really only be appreciated if you keep your eyes on the game, thus disregarding the 10 million other ridiculous distractions at the stadium which include a remote-controlled miniature propeller zepplin (if you will), milling about around the cheap seats, 20 trashy Warrior girls dancing their hearts out to the booty bass sounds of contemporary Miami club music, and a mascot in a blue rubber suit (the aptly-named Thunder) exhorting the fans by rhythmically clapping his massive rubber hands and then launching t-shirts from an air gun at unsuspecting heart-attack candidates (RIP Maude Simpson). A hidden camera man uses a fishbowl lens and films people in the arena, whose images are then projected on the bigscreen, where they are distorted and engorged by the lens, much to the delight of the crowd. As is usually the case with putting fans on camera at sporting events, fat people are the victim of choice, and really who can blame the cameramen? The people know what they like, and they like dehumanizing fat people. There is also a live house band, who are allotted 1 and half minutes every timeout to belt out some awful bastardized tune or another. It's great when the game starts back up again after a commercial break or something and they just cut all the power to the band's microphones and equipment. Of course there is also the airport pricing, and the fact that you can't bring your own food and drink into the stadium, as well the whiney (spelling?) children who come to the game to eat rather than watch these magnificent African-Americans at work. All in all a good game despite this bizarre external phenomena, and although the good guys lost I did manage to shock and awe my neighbor by chiding Jason Richardson (the shooting guard of our squadron) about his girlfriend-beating tendencies off the court. Hey you might as well heckle while you watch. If he hadn't thrown his girlfriend through a wall, there would be no problem lady. It was his own doing. Anyway, I enjoyed my adventure, gave me some distance from my own "Crib" which is not nearly as posh as the one I saw right before the Britney Spears programming began on MTV, but it's charming enough. Tomorrow we celebrate my mom's birthday which, if everything goes well, should be awkward and foreign. Possibly fun, depending on the alcohol situation. Speaking of posh cribs, I visited my father in his new apartment yesterday afternoon, and it is nothing short of bling-blinging out of control. He lives in Pacific Heights (The name says it all doesn't it?), the neighborhood that demands to be egged on Halloweens when nobody is having a party there. The neighborhood that you love to hate when you grow up anywhere else. The neighborhood that Michael Douglass made a movie about (The aptly named "Pacific Heights'). After the years of living in slightly dilapidated apartments way out in the avenues with my dad, I never thought I would see it happen, but more power to him and his meteoric, George Jeffersonian moving-on-up-to-the-East-side rise to prominence in the new neighborhood. And I'll stop there. But who is a fan of my prolific blogging? I know I am.