Sloe Joe is a height sensitive, musky coloured mid-westerner walking around like he's high on sloe berries. I'd even say the man is related to the plum, or at least the plum's gas giving byproduct, the prune.

The man is a chimney, if there isn't ciggy smoke expelling from his grill, one shouldn't be shocked to see his eyes shutting after he takes a big hit of his purp. In the short time I've known him, there is already a tradition forming when we hang out. No more than 3-4 minutes after greeting him, he extracts his paraphernalia from one pocket or the other. Almost as if hanging out with me produces on urge so far infused in his being that it has become mandatory to infuse his herb with any further conversation. His timing is funny, and I have actually turned him down occasionally, but that Sloe Joe is a character.

Mostly, Sloe is a hard working guy. He got a job at Benihana, a Los Angeles eatery (actually the restaurant was started in New York in 1964...) that I thought had lost it's zest since it's 1980's commercial appeal. Actually, according to Slow, this is not the case. He served "some guy on a television show" a couple days ago.

Poor guy is sleeping in his car most nights, and I have to say, he's got guts. He uses public bathrooms, (he prefers the Culver City public showers,) and keeps his laundry clean, so my hat goes off to him and his adventure.

Perhaps the final frontier for Kobe Bryant's mandingo is a Mars polar cap. He'll have to wait his turn (Sam Cassell has dibs anyway) while NASA's Phoenix Lander (lander, NOT rover) makes a final trajectory alignment and approach of the red planet for this Sunday's (5/25/08) landing.

I thought I'd pass along to you the NASA schedule so you can also follow along.

May 24, Saturday

3 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - Landing Preview - JPL (Public and Media Channels)



May 25, Sunday

3 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - JPL (Public and Media Channels)

6 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Landing Coverage - JPL (Media Channel)

6:30 - 8:45 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Landing Coverage - JPL (Public Channel)

9:30 p.m. - Mars Phoenix Lander Briefing - First Downlink of Data - JPL (Public and Media Channels)

Scientists and most of the stories I have read about the landing talk about the 7 minutes prior to landing as being the toughest part. As of today, Friday the 23rd, Phoenix Lander is still over 2 million miles out. Follow along! It's a 422-million mile journey with prior landers only sticking the landing successfully about 45% of the time, so nothing is certain.

There is a good blog to find more information. A ticker to landing time is also on the site.

Could we be prepping to pay 20 bucks a gallon for gas? Ooops, I just crapped my pants.

I hate to say this, but it's pretty shitty to think about the reality of this shocking new strategy we find for ourselves when we go to the gas station. The old days are gone and gas prices will never stoop lower than what they are right now.

Looking at the numbers, it should not come as a shock. Perhaps it is the the fact we still only pay about 30-40% of what most of the world pays for gas... yeah, you're talking about the equivalent of paying $10/gallon in parts of the UK and in Asia, where it costs about 2.50/liter. With inflation figured in, Americans paid the equivalent of about $3.10/gallon back in 1922! That means in nearly 90 years of filling our tank, we are only paying about 20% more for gas than we did back then.

Of course when you observe the quick timeframe for these fee hikes they are astronomical, if not detrimental, to those relying on gas to get to work... most likely you have not been given a raise in your income level (that is if you can find a job) that match this large gap.

I wrote a story about gas prices in my travels in Asia in 2003. It astonished me at the time to realize the people were driving in cars filled with gas that was alreay over 6 or 7 bucks a gallon. No big surprise that we'd catch up to those numbers considering the demand we have have here at home.

Of course it would have been nice to have gradual increases like most things we depend on... imagine if drinking water *knock on expensive wood* shot up in price to 4 bucks a gallon in a years time.

Eh - Thanks (I think) to all the morons who landed here by search engine results.

The following is a list of ways crazy folks linked to my site this week. All I can say is there are a bunch of dumb people out there:

train your 6th sense
new way to train
kim dong-sung arm injury
Ill land
pussy cow pussy cow lyrics
Ira fistell
Joe johnson new tattoo wrists
80s jangle radio
24yrs old - this little firecracker fucked me every which way she could
chin up hoops
Jada Priscilla
flamin groovies blogspot
john ziegler leaves kfi
the alarm rain in the summertime
Granada skver train
Marilyn Hochheiser
what happenned to john zigler
ebbs
70's dj's
Honorary jew
pickup basketball blog


These were all searches that linked to my site this week; I am a little scared.

If you want a little explanation of these, allow me to elaborate a little. I know nothing about Joe Johnson's tattoos. Nor do I care. This is a "training" blog, welcome to the show. Marilyn is an old friend of my mum, she wrote a bunch of really great poems and I'll be sure to add more in the future. Zig used to be a night-time DJ who left his job from KFI last year and has been MIA ever since, probably still trying to make it on the LPGA tour. DJs in the 70's were bomb, and I usually give out an Honorary Jew award to goyem I meet at work on a monthly basis. It's difficult to achieve Mensch status like me, but I award good efforts.

In fact, I was described as a Mensch (a man who fills his life with good deeds. I'm sort of a modern day martyr...) TWO times this week, so it's good to know I've trained myself the right way. Menschdom comes with little monetary reward and often times gets mocked or trivialized in our crazy society. It's not necessarily a religious title, it's just about living with certain moral codes that require a certain type of gratitude. Again, it's not for the money grubbers. It's not for everyone. Life is tough and bringing good into your life can take many shapes.

And every time I say "no more mr. nice guy" there comes an opportunity to do more good - without concrete reward... intrinsic value, a different type of reward that doesn't always translate... It's sort of like being an unfrozen caveman, and when it's time to get mine it sometimes requires decisions that can come off as contradictions to other actions.

Which is usually picked up by others as weird or unpopular. Sometimes, just being called a Mensch is reward enough, and it's happened to me for as long as I have understood the concept going back to my Hebrew school days so long ago.

I still make a vat of mistakes, but things have leveled out over time thanks to my good deeds.

Holla back NYC is a great site calling out perverts on the streets of NYC. Is there one of these in LA? I better be careful.

... But only because I've been not drinking tea and the world is coming to an end. China, Myanmar, cyclones here in the states and Drew Barrymore's career have all been screwing things up royal.

It's still early in the week, so anything is still possible...

My head has been so damn cluttered by the events IN my life - roommates, work, car, building the new site, fewer drinking nights (NIHHH!), less basketball, and a few blown opportunities I can still salvage if I pretend to care enough. . .

There is a blog for everything but I'm starting to think I should be at work - so off I go.