Richmond, CA gang rape. . . WHAT THE FUCK

The fact that a 15-year old girl was gang raped for hours while people watched is just. . . a tragedy beyond words.

The San Francisco Chronicle featured an article with a most embarrassing and ridiculous title: Richmond Gang Rape Seen As Nearly Inevitable.

What?! Since when is gang rape inevitable?

Read the article. I found it to be both interesting and completely ludicrous.

National Hellenic Museum

Tonight I am going to the National Hellenic Museum's fall gala. I go every year, and plan to support the museum's efforts for as long as possible. Anything to spread knowledge of the motherland's culture and its wealth of new talent is a priority for me.

Plus, it's always fun to get dressed in black tie, and last year I met an awesome guy.

This year, however, I may spend significant chunks of time in the Ritz Carlton bar with several cigar-smoking, middle-aged men who also want to watch the Chicago Bears slaughter the Atlanta Falcons.

Speaking of birthday sex. . .

In an ideal world, here is what I would get for my birthday, which is Thanksgiving weekend:

(1) NCIS Special Agent Tony DiNozzo. Yum.

(2) Every single thing in the Chanel 2010 resort collection.

(3) A night out with the Chicago Bears in VIP at a great club. I'm thinking dozens of bottles of champagne, great music, and 8 hours of dancing.

(4) Dinner at a Michelin 3-star restaurant.

I know. Champagne tastes and a Spam bank account. Oh well.

Jeremih hilarious video

So even though this song is on the radio about 72 times a day, and I will likely get sick of it soon, I still really like it. I thought it was another trite top 40-type song, but then I saw the video and now I think Jeremih is official.

Also, he's kinda hot, and the slow version of Birthday Sex makes me feel kinda funny inside.

Sweet house in Greece

Reason #938493848 why Greece is the best place on Earth.

Check out this sweet-ass house.

What an amazing display of art, environment, imagination, function, and beauty.

Scarface

So. . . Some of you may already know this, but I am kind of obsessed with Scarface and the Geto Boys. I blame it on Honey Pie.

Imagine my delight when I stumbled upon this.

Just when I thought I was the only person outside of Houston (or under the age of 35) who still listens to Mind Playing Tricks on Me (and every other song that Scarface and/or the Geto Boys ever made) on a daily basis.

President Barack Obama and the Nobel Peace Prize

What an incredible moment in time for the United States of America. The last time a sitting American president won the Nobel Peace Prize was in motherfucking 1919.

I think that this award, for this man, at this period in history, indicates, on a global level, a collective sense of lightness. It feels like the world is basking in this odd glow of unfettered hope and faith.

It's interesting because hope and faith are, by their nature, neither rooted in logic nor traceable to any specific actions. They're just. . . Feelings. It is so odd that this global sense of calm is both wide-reaching and so elementary in it nature. It's lack of a rational basis is oddly. . . Comforting.

Of course, with our president's prestigious Nobel Peace Prize comes the ubiquitous chorus of haters. And, if speaking from a place of pure logic and reason, the kind untempered by perspective, the haters are absolutely right. President Obama has done nothing like the other two sitting American presidents who received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Theodore Roosevelt was awarded the Peace Prize in 1906 after he successfully brokered peace between Japan and Russia. Woodrow Wilson (one of my top three favorite presidents, along with Bill Clinton and FDR) received the Peace Prize in 1919 after he created the League of Nations.

These were huge fucking fetes. What has President Obama accomplished? We're still at war. He has not brokered peace in the Middle East. We're possibly sending even more troops to Afghanistan. The world is, unquestionably, still a shitshow.

The haters' reliance on these cold, hard, and true facts, without any concern for the beautiful emotion that's taken control of the global psyche, is not only damaging to that emotion but also incredibly petty. It's like hating on your family, or your partner in crime.

Maybe in the face of such a shitshow world, people need something illogical and unfounded on which to rely. Maybe the world needs some hope and faith. Maybe President Obama gives us just that: something that, without reason, makes us feel at peace.

Or maybe I am a hater too, and President Obama really has affected practical change like Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

Either way, hating on President Obama's honor is bogus as hell.

Miami via Carbondale, Illinois

TBP just bought Bone a ticket to visit him in Carbondale and I couldn't be more excited.

It's going to be just like Miami. I mean, like a midwestern Miami filled with corn fields, cheap beer, Amish people, and 20-year old degenerates.

Michael Franti & Spearhead - Say Hey (I Love You)

This song is dope too and always makes me smile and groove.

TRP featuring Bossman - B4lt1more

This video and song are so dope.

oh. happiness check.

Aaaaaaand in the last three minutes my job has managed to fuck me yet again.

Here's the tally:

(1) I worked on a county-wide day off that even the younger hiring class all got to take off.

(2) I work with idiots.

(3) After spending a year researching and writing for my office and watching, literally, every single person I know get to prepare and argue before the higher court, I get one of my two biggest cases taken away from me to be argued by someone else. Not because my boss doesn't like me or because I'm dumb, but just because... I don't even know.

(4) Finally, just in case that rusty screw wasn't wedged far enough up my ass, one of my coworkers who has already gotten the opportunity to argue before that higher court gets to argue his case again, per our boss... The same boss who didn't return my calls when I begged him to allow me to come back to argue my case.

Just when I thought that perfect fall weather and my perfect cocktail and my as-close-to-tolerant-as-possible workweek would carry me through, I find out that my love, my job, has fucked me again.

Anyway, I still have hope and I am still of the opinion that "Who cares?" is the best attitude to have when it comes to your career and I am not completely shutting out my autumn afterglow.

Back to my regularly scheduled vodka.

Fall came out of nowhere and it feels like fire

After a long break for no real reason I am going to start writing again with a vengeance. Fall is here and it feels like how spring is described in literature.

Lest this sound lamely poetic I must inform you that I am still 100% sex, biggie, vodka, and thunderstorms. The only thing I judge nowadays is my best friend Lil' Mama, who made the inhuman leap from age 30 to 56 and gleans her excitement from religion and once-a-month nookie with her husband and the occasional joint as opposed to daily nookie with her boyfriend punctuated by drunk driving through the south side after making runs to buy weed from an ex-boyfriend that we share.

I've come dangerously close to that fucked up I'm-a-nun-and-I-don't-endanger-myself-or-others type of life (I told you I judged) but I have an excuse! A good one! I am fucking broke as a joke. I get paid Friday and I'm overdrawn by Saturday, after having purchased only dry cleaning, groceries, and one tank of gas. It's a revolving door of self-pity, guilt, fear, and an intense drive to partake in activities other than those of the relatively free couch and tv variety.

So where does that leave us? Well, I'm drinking vodka and watching NCIS and feeling intensely grateful for tomorrow's day at work, which, like the rest of this blessed week, finds me solo and intellectually challenged as opposed to the usual misery that is defined by ignorance of the extreme variety and a total lack of intellectual stimuli.

Yeah, I said it. I'm smarter than 90% of the people with and around whom I work and it is fucking taxing and that's why I relish weeks like this one where I don't have to work with partners and I don't have to work on stupid shit. Kind of like some senior citizens lose brain mass because they do not exercise their minds as often as do younger folk, so is my brain withering away in the least challenging position I've ever held.

Oh, right. Back to my point. It's fall and the weather's awesome and NCIS is awesome and so is vodka and so I will be writing a lot more.

"We drink and we die and continue to drink."

Benders are cool.

The worst blogger in history

So I haven't written anything in a long time, due to two major happenings in my life.

(1) The return of an old friend who we'll call the Jolly Green Giant. JGG takes up a lot of my time, and I'm not upset about it, but I am a little worse for the wear.

(2) The crushing depression of my new, crappy job. If I write it'll either be miserable or just plain boring.

I can't dredge up even one minutely entertaining fucking sentence or paragraph because it's like my thought process is blocked by a big fucking wall called "Bone's life in 2009."

The wall isn't made of brick; it's made of something akin to a giant black ball of really dense goo, immovable to the extent that although malleable, it's consistency and ickiness cause it to just stick and spread like a disease.

I guess there is one upside to all this. I've decided that "cunt" is the only word appropriate to describe the fine young(ish) women with whom I work, and have therefore created very clever pseudonyms for them. CQ1 and CQ2. That stands for Cunt Queen 1 and Cunt Queen 2. It's usually hard for me to think up nicknames, so my limited creativity here has made me happy.

If any other bloggers, writers, strangers, and/or freaks have any advice as to how I can regain my ability to think about things other than death wishes, evil spells, or just plain going 'hood on someone's ass, please let me know.

Rabbit shit

Greece. Sometime in the late 90's or early 2000's. Travelling from Athens to a small town near Olympia. My fantastic mother and me were with her best friend Litsa, and were going to drive the few hours to stay at a fabulous hotel where our room overlooked the Ionian Sea and had it's own swiminng pool.

I didn't know the room would be so luxurious. It probably wouldn't have been, had it not been for the shitapalooza that day.

See, Litsa drove a two-door Mazda convertible. She and my mother decided they would drive together in that car, since it had air conditioning and they were older. I was to drive with Litsa's oldest daughter Popi, and Popi's husband, daughter, and son, in their non-air conditioned car.

The temperature in Athens was 110 degrees.

I sat in the backseat, in between the two kids.

Oh yeah - Popi's daughter also brought her pet rabbit. It was a cute bunny in a metal cage, that she held in her lap.

It was pretty brutal. 110 degrees, no air conditioning, a tiny European car with vinyl seats, two small children... Popi also smoked, so every now and then she would open the front passenger window to flick ash outside, which only served to fill the car with furnace-like blowing air as well as ash. To make matters worse, a road trip with two children meant a 30-minute delay for a stop halfway, even though the drive was only a few hours.

Then it got worse.

See, bunny rabbits need rest stops too.

Popi's childrens' bunny rabbit took several epic shits in her cage. Actually, I have no way of telling whether it was one shit or many, all I can say is that the ratio of animal to shit in that cage was roughly 3 lbs. to 11 lbs.

Popi's daughter decided to remove the bunny from its cage, at which point Peter Shittontail proceeded to shake its fur free of hot, melted poop and pieces of grass stuck to its underside.

She kept the bunny out of its cage for the remainder of the trip, it's shit dripping and smudging on every free space in the back seat of that tiny, vinyl, scorching car.

Then it got worse.

My fantastic mother and the equally fantastic Litsa neglected to mention that we were making a pit stop in Litsa's son-in-law's hometown, a small village outside of Olympia, where his parents lived in their newly-remodeled home. Just when I think that I am that much closer to a shower and a shot of morphine...

We stop at the house and I see my mother and Litsa, who had obviously arrived about an hour earlier, due to their swift Mazda and lack of evil sadistic child passengers. They looked so happy! Refreshed! Excited to meet the grandparents and see the new house! What fun! They even had the nerve to say that the drive was unbearably hot, even with their air conditioning. Oh. My. God.

I was spewing shitty, sweaty, unbridled, venomous hate. The grandparents offered me a shower. Because the home was being remodeled, there was no door to the bathroom. I didn't give a fuck. They knew to stay away from me, and they're lucky I didn't smear bunny shit all over their damn beautiful home.

At some point we met up with Litsa's husband Harry. He, along with Litsa and my mother, took great joy in laughing at my plight. They laughed because they knew how bad it was, and that's what Greeks do in the face of true tragedy. They mock.

Harry felt so bad that he upgraded our room at the hotel in Olympia. He literally spent thousands of dollars to make me as comfortable as possible when I got there.

The moral of the story? Bathe in shit and ye shall be bathed in luxury.

Some most memorable in no particular order

(1) That night on the baseball field at Emory University. Started in the dugout, ended in the middle of the field. Nighttime. Springtime. Awesometime.

(2) World Cup 1994. I cried when I walked to my seats. It was The Motherland vs. Bulgaria and we got our asses kicked.

(3) Hanging with Zoe and David in Ibiza. They were drag queens and they took me under their wings. My parents and I would have drinks at the port, then at some point they'd go to the hotel and I'd stay out by myself. Zoe and David chatted me up one night and we became instant friends. We had lots of great conversations, we shared cigarettes, we shared drinks, we partied, they got me free admission into the greatest clubs in the world, and Zoe even brought me backstage at one of the clubs to hang out.

(4) My weekend with Scott in Savannah. We both went there broke. We visited Tybee Island, a pirate stronghold. Literally, real pirates still live there. We drank Budweisers, we walked on the beach, we ate seafood, we laughed at townie pirates. We slept on the beach because we did not have money for a room. Then we slept in my car, where he left the a/c on, which left us with a dead battery the following morning as well as a parking ticket. We listened to live music. We ended up in a seedy motel (I overdrafted to charge the $35) where, one bright sunny morning, I met a recently parolled woman while smoking a cigarette on the front porch. We were so in love (Scott and I).

(5) North Atlanta Trade Center, November 1999. Possibly the most memorable night ever. It lasted a couple days, and it involved the kindness of strangers, unparalleled connections with friends, and waking up one morning sitting Indian-style on the bathroom floor, not knowing how I got there. Later, I discovered that I had split my lip when I fell/sat on the floor. I hope I never forget that night, because I will never live another one like it.

(6) Car crash on Mason Mill Road, Atlanta. Going about 75 down a curvy, dark, hilly road. Tires blow out. We go right, left, right, end up facing the wrong direction at the bottom of a hill facing up. Cops come. Buy the excuse of a squirrel having crossed the road, causing us to swerve. Pieces of rim and wheel are 1/4 mile away. Life flashed before my eyes.

(7) Five hours lost on a drive from Athens to Atlanta. It was normally a 2.5 hour drive. Somehow I left at 3 pm, arrived at 8 pm, and lost my passengers along the way. I had also lost my cell phone. And my memory. Glad I got home, that's for sure. One of my passengers hasn't talked to me since.

(8) Backing into a ditch in Greece. Jeep Cherokee, no lights, country road, deep trenches, Valiums. My friend was driving. We thought we had passed my hotel, so she pulled a u-turn in the middle of the road. We ended up in a ditch. It was so deep I had to hold onto the wheel well to climb out. My shoe broke. A carful of three strapping young men luckily drove by about 20 minutes later and pushed our Cherokee up and out. Saved!

(9) A drive to Kentucky with three college friends when I was in high school. Actually, we only just met before that road trip. That made it all the more awesome, the random grouping and comfort of it all. There was lots of Sublime and Lauren Hill played on the CD player. I was a senior, and it was just a long weekend, but it was fucking awesome. After we came back to Chicago, we continued to hang out. Lots of crazy stories ensued from this group of friends in later years. They involved K-Swiss, Cinco de Mayo, Northwestern University, a man named Sparky, and some ridiculous car rides.

(10) Visit to Emory University my senior year of high school. Oh. My. God. My friend from high school was a freshman when I came to visit. My dad took us out to dinner, then went to the hotel, and admonished me to "be careful" before I went out. My friend, the freshman, took me out with his friends, who were the exact brand of deviant I came to know and love. I actually became really close with these guys. One of them tragically died the following fall, when I was a freshman. The rest shared some really interesting and ridiculous memories with me. We all remember, without a doubt, one very hilarious moment. One that I will certainly never live down, but continue to laugh about.

There's probably more, but I'm sick of thinking. And, honestly, if something didn't pop into my head by now (or if something popped into my head but was highly inappropriate for mass consumption) it probably shouldn't be written.

Art is the shit

Architect Richard Blender, some cool graffiti, and designs by Bottega Veneta and Alberta Ferretti. I think the proportions, lines, and simplicity of each of these is amazing.

Battery, 2006

January 2006. Winter break, first year of law school.

Most of my classmates spent time with boyfriends and families, went on vacations, got drunk at Irish bars with girlfriends.

I hung out at Sweet Maybelline's. Every night. Just like during the school year.

It was a late January night, soon before school would start up again. I was at the bar with Tony Montana, my friend Deebo, and our friend Travis Bickle, who tended bar for Sweet Maybelline. Lots of substances, lots of Bad Bad Whiskey playing on the jukebox.

There is a local ordinance that shuts most bars down at 2 a.m., with the exception of a smattering of "late-nite" bars, which are for some reason allowed to stay open until 4 or 5 a.m. Sweet Maybelline's shut down at 2. It as common for whoever tended bar on any given night to kick everyone out (except me, Tony, and maybe one or two others) at close, lock up the bar, and continue the party under the radar of the frequently-passing police.

The way we got around the police was by keeping our drinks off the bar.

Seriously. If police passed by and saw alcoholic beverages on the bar after 2 a.m., the bar could get fined. If there were people inside but their drinks were on other surfaces, cool beans.

So on this one night in January 2006, Tony, me, Travis Bickle, and Deebo were hanging out at Sweet Maybelline's after hours in what can only be described as a fantastic fucking psychological clusterfuck clinical study of mankind at its craziest.

For some reason, Travis Bickle got angry.

Actually, the reason was likely the eight-ball of cocaine he had put up his nose that night along with the copious amounts of liquor he had consumed while ostensibly tending bar.

Anyway, Bickle went nuts. He took his arm and swept it across the back of the bar, knocking every single bottle and glass to the ground. He threw bottles. He had complete disregard for the blood oozing from his arm and his fingers.

At some point, Deebo and Bickle got into it. The details of "The Fight" are pretty hazy to me now, but I know that Deebo and Bickle threw either bottles or fists at each other (this may be worth contacting Tony for details, since I know the ridiculousness of this night's events stood out even to my blessed little substance-abuser).

I stood by the jukebox unsure of what to do with two men well over six feet hurtling glass bottles at each other.

Tony, bless his heart, was doing his best to separate them.

At some point, Bickle called the cops on Deebo.

Then Bickle went into the women's bathroom and was sobbing while clutching the porcelain sink, which, under his dead weight, was torn from the wall onto the ground.

The police arrived at around 4:30 a.m. and Tony, Bickle and myself stood right outside the doors of the bar in an effort to mask the fact that we had been in there.

Save for the blood splatters, broken bottles, overturned chairs, and sobbing bartender, we may have been convincing.

The cops took Deebo away on Bickle's charge of battery, and for some reason did not ask Tony or I any questions about what had happened.

Of course Sweet Maybelline was called to the bar around 4:45 a.m. since, as owner, she had to account for why her bartender and friends were in a blood-filled, glass-ridden bar after close. She wasn't too mad at us.

I received a blood stain on my favorite jacket from that night.

I returned to law school the following Monday, internally amused at the nonsense into which I had gotten myself, happy that I had not been questioned by police while I was in what can only be described as a less-than-aware state of mind.

Breasts and beach

A day in the life of a member of the Bone family. . .

So my sister was on the phone with our fabulous mother who has been in Greece since June. My enormous-hearted father was to meet my mother in Mykonos, Greece a few days after this phone call.

My mom asked my sister if she could go to Old Navy to buy her a new bathing suit to send with our father. After all, my mother has been in Greece for a month and a half and her bathing suits are tattered.

She told my sister to look for "a pink bikini, the kind with the strings that tie."

Our mother is 71.

Not that she's gross - to the contrary, she looks not a day over 50 and actually has a 6-pack. Still funny though.

My sister goes to Old Navy, but can't find a pink string bikini in our mother's size (medium). She goes to Loehmann's, can't find anything there either.

She talks to mom on the phone again, tells her she can't find the pink string bikini.

"That's okay. I'll be topless the whole time anyway," mom replies.

True story.

China