<p>Sinner’s Alley is that place where if you don’t want to be found you cannot be found. So you can have the tangerine bar, or the sawdust pile under the bar over there, or I bet slugg will move over and let you sit in the hottub out back with the IV line for margaritas or what you will…</p>
<p>Thank you…Thank you very much.</p>
<p>I feel beaucoup better knowing I’ll just tell the guys I’m off to my Happy Place…er Hour.</p>
<p>was [this](<a href=“http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/breaking_news/15127493.htm”>Super Bowl: Bettor uses phone app to bet $1.1 million on Atlanta Falcons) the concert you missed?</p>
<p>You can still get tix for them at the White River ampitheatre for tommorow</p>
<p>Oh, Mootie…blame it on the heat. If it’s any consolation, here’s what was going on at the slugghouse last night.</p>
<p>Sluggdad and buggson had tickets to see Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young. Okay, these are rock icons, music gods actually. The opening lyrics of any CSNY song will trigger an immediate state of transcendental meditation in nine out of ten boomers. Well, this summer sluggdad and buggson have been going to concerts together. It started with Bonnaroo the week after graduation. I warned sluggdad that too much of a good thing spoils the primordial soup, or something like that. But, this was a sluggman bonding thing like hunting mastodon, and so far, the buggson seemed to be appreciating their time together. </p>
<p>I’d rather stick bamboo shish-kabob sticks into my eyeballs than stand around in a stadium full of glassy-eyed fifty-year-olds waving my arms in the air and singing, “…Teach your children well, their father’s Hell did slowly go by!” In 1974, these were meaningless lyrics to the average Southern Nevada high school senior, and I was perfectly happy to lie on my fake fur bedspread and groove along with whatever it was they were trying to say. But, now…I’d have to throw down my purse and go off on an irate tangent about how they are damn right about a good education and a father’s Hell, and what about a mother’s Hell?! And, talk about slowly going by! If my kids and I had to spend 19 minutes a day together when they were teenagers, we would all consider ourselves in Hell. </p>
<p>Another reason why I cannot attend CSNY concerts is because most of their songs are in my personal archive of misunderstood lyrics. Guinnevere has green eyes, not blue ones. “Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,” not ten soldiers and X-Men coming. “Teach your children well,” not keep them in a pumpkin shell, and it’s “helplessly hoping,” not helplessly humming. I have pretty much slaughtered every CSNY song there is. </p>
<p>And, if some asshat started to sing, “I’ll light the fire, while you place the flowers in the vahz,” (apparently, deliriously happy hippies used Oxford English pronunciation when referring to mayonnaise jars) I’d have to pummel him or her because I remember freezing our sluggbutts off in a converted garage apartment while that song was being played constantly on FM radio. Because of that song, we ended up adopting two cats who clawed every screen in our house non-stop for 18 years.</p>
<p>So, I was not included in the concert plans, but sluggdad was looking forward to it. When he walked in from work with steam coming out of his ears, I knew it wasn’t because of the weather. Buggson called him in the car and announced that he had other plans. I would have gone except that it was 100 degrees outside, and sluggs shrivel up and get cranky in the heat. So, we stayed home and strengthened our resolve to be more like our own parents who went whole days without even thinking about us when we were in college! </p>
<p>Mootie, your tickets will turn up. In the meantime, I’ll buy you a rootbeer float. :)</p>
<p>Oh no–I think I trump when it comes to social faux pax.</p>
<p>When we moved to our new house in our new country, I invited the neighbors to a dinner party. I sent out lovely hand made invites. Unfortunately, when I put the date, I neglected to add “Saturday” to ‘February 23rd at 7 pm’. Has I done that, the neighbors would have realized that I was looking at the wrong calender year when I made th invitations.</p>
<p>Come Friday night, as H and I are heading out to a black tie dinner–the door knocker goes and there are a few neighbors on our porch looking like hungry cats. Naturally I scolded them for getting the date wrong until I realized my invite error. I would have hit the kitchen running, but I didn’t even have the food for the dinner so I made apologies, put a note on the door explaining the date mix-up for the rest of the partygoers begging them to come the following night–and hurried to our black tie thingy.</p>
<p>The next night, there were a few no-shows. A number of neighbors had hired babysitters to come the previous night. </p>
<p>Eventually, I managed to make it up to all but one set of neighbors. My name must have been dragged through the mud for months afterwards! Those American buffoons! How can they be so colossally thick? :eek:</p>
<p>we went to see [PearlJam</a>]( <a href=“http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/278553_pearl23ww.html]PearlJam”>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/pop/278553_pearl23ww.html) this past weekend
I think it was about 110 degrees-
a little hot for me- which was why I stayed at our campsite until a few hours before the concert.
Unfortunately the management of the venue, had printer issues and the line I was in- for club people who just had to pick up their preprinted tickets was merged with another line that was at a standstill waiting for tickets to be printed.
So we missed a good part of the show, even though it was delayed.
Puh
BUt we had seats right in front & Eddie not only sang from teh sound stage roof right next to our seats, but pointed at my H when he was over at the fence by himself, which kinda freaked him out ( Eddie often comes down off the stage, and shares his bottles etc with the crowd)
It was a great show & even though this was only the 2nd time H has seen PJ live, he said it knocked the time we saw Ella Fitzgerald/Oscar PEterson/Count Basie and Joe Pass from teh 3rd row at the Paramount theatre, so I guess he liked it
He even offered to go to Hawaii to see U2 & PJ on Dec 9th!</p>
<p>Glass half empty - mootie has lost her tickets and shan’t know where to find them :(</p>
<p>Glass half full - mootie’s loss inspires a Sinner’s Alley spate of top-notch stories with each denizen outdoing the last in faux pas, significance of concert missed… :p</p>
<p>I, for one, am staying tuned :D</p>
<p><em>where is mootie? hope she didn’t jump off a cliff</em></p>
<p>I am here, enjoying all the faux pas!</p>
<p>Actually there’s more to the story from yesterday: my orthopedist informed me in the early afternoon that my ankle fracture had not healed yet and what was I doing out of my walking boot-cast anyway? Two more weeks in the black boot, sigh. Then this evening, I ran out of gas on the highway. Luckily I drive a hybrid, and the electric motor battery kicked in solo and, while the car was on a slow and steady diminishing speed track as the battery drained, S#1 and I were able to pull off the highway, through a <em>red</em> light (blaring my horn and flashing my lights), and into a cheezy gas station that never looked so good. The battery putted out just as I pulled to the pump. I am glad to report that with $20 worth of gas, it’s a happy hybrid again, and thank goodness for that electric battery! Go Toyota!</p>
<p>And oh yeah, the timing was important 'cause S#1 is out with H right now, driving to inspect and pay for his first car: a '78 VW bus, the car of his dreams. Heaven help us.</p>
<p>(The concert for which I lost the tix is [this</a> one](<a href=“http://www.steelydan.com%5Dthis”>www.steelydan.com), btw. Sigh.)</p>
<p>Mootmom, you need a vacation, in some very safe place (padded walls) where you can just sit back and sip (or gulp) your favorite SA libation brought to you by winged creatures waiting on you hand-and-(broken)-foot. </p>
<p>Sorry about the concert and everything else.</p>
<p>MOOTIE! SOUL SISTER!!</p>
<p>Huge Steely Dan & Doobie Bros fan-- and I loved all those great Aja backups by M.M.</p>
<p>HOW SAD!!! </p>
<p>amgdmom:
was a LOL for me. SO TRUE.</p>
<p>Slugg, your CSN riff needs to be printed and mailed to everyone I know as my 2006 Christmas Letter! So funny I nearly spilled the scotch I walked in here with…</p>
<p>SA is back, baby!</p>
<p>Amdgmom, there’s a Jacuzzi jet in here with your name on it. Come join me on the “island” where I live with the parrots and the monkeys and the pretty, pretty flowers… :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Buggson announced about two hours ago that he has quit his summer job, is going to LA tomorrow to stay with his jackass band friends for a couple of weeks or days (we’re not exactly sure), and will be traveling for the rest of the summer. He will <em>think about</em> attending Davis in the Fall, or he may move to New York City and go to junior college. Oh, and there’s nothing we can do about it, and he is “suffocating” in this house --the house where he has lived his whole life-- and he doesn’t want to go to a college in California where he’ll be “stuck” for four years, and then graduate, and then end up spending his whole life in California! </p>
<p>Barkeep, we’ll have a couple of absinthe shooters over here. I need a counseling session with the Green Fairy. 
</p>
<p>Yet another twist in the buggson saga, my goodness. Here’s an idea, slugg, bring the party over here: there’s enough room on the oriental rugs that line the inside floor of S#1’s newly-acquired VW van (parked in our driveway and taking up about 2/3 of it: who knew a VW could be so LONG?!) for all of us to light a campfire and hold hands and sway and sing Kumbaya and then pass around the bottle of absinthe. I’ll be out on the front step getting a head start…</p>
<p>Give him space,Slugg. It’s just venting and anxiety about the big move coming up.</p>
<p>I always go right along with the fantasies… comments like, “oh really?” “sounds good to me” and my favorite, “that’s great, I won’t have to pay all that tuition money” … </p>
<p>Anyway, it spoils the fantasy for the kids if they can’t get a rise out of mom. They just go off in a huff somewhere, grumbling…</p>
<p>Sluggbugg –</p>
<p>Just time for a quick note before heading out.</p>
<p>Major flashback to 2002 when S1 moved out after HS grad – 90 days of fresh air was about all the adventure he could afford & did go to college that fall. Grudgingly.</p>
<p>2003-2006: Little drama, a little school (not as much as we had paid for), a little reality (kitchen work in franchises, rent to be paid, sick family member, etc.).</p>
<p>2006: He’s on hiatus from school, working in a bar near a local college. After returning from 10,000 Lakes Festival (couldn’t do that & Bonnaroo this year), he called to jubilantly tell me he’s landed a second job so he can save $ to head back to school in January. His last semester of 2005 was a disaster, and H & I decided that the next semester would be on S1’s dime.</p>
<p>Relations are good, conversations always with “I love you,” and he’s self-supporting, except for the occasional grocery bags. </p>
<p>Smart kid, little common sense, and a real slow learner. What most of us would read about and think, “I’d never want to go through that,” he has to experience 2 or 3 times before he decides it’s not a good idea. His initial reaction is usually more like, “That wasn’t so terrible. Nobody died.”</p>
<p>Hope Sluggson is faster learner – 4 weeks may not be enough to tire of the open road. But Calmom may be right, and he’s just venting, and college is a new experience outside those suffocating walls, too. </p>
<p>Here’s to the kids who keep us humble! Oh, those hot tub bubbles feed good!</p>
<p>Wow. Sluggson just won’t give up, will he. Man. One determined character. I agree. Pretend you don’t care if he goes or not - on the surface, so he knows that underneath you care but he can’t get that rise.</p>
<p>Kids do keep us humble, each in their own way.</p>
<p>NEWS FLASH: The SFS (Sophomore From Space) got a 96 in his college class this summer.</p>
<p>In his honor, I will be buying the next 96 rounds.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>
I agree, so after her 96 rounds are history, I will buy the next.</p>
<p>Slugg, come over here and sit by me. The seat is still warm from last year’s parents being clued in to the jackass plan developed by their son. S’s best friend announced around this time last year that he was joining the Marines. The Marines! Instead of going to college. Anxiety is what I think is at the root of it all. More sleepless nights for parents - why exactly do colleges not award “hook” points for kids who are outstanding in their ability to drive parents to drink?</p>
<p>Said BF headed off to college at the appointed hour.</p>
<p>Hi Slugg–maybe the heat wave affected your S? I felt like I was suffocating too, until yesterday!</p>
<p>Wow, that SluggJr. keeps you guessing, doesn’t he? Well, here’s a toast to “mothers of interesting sons!”</p>
<p>As the Chinese say, “May you live in interesting times.” Well, “May you have an interesting son is the parallel…”</p>
<p>Not that I think sluggson is heading in the same direction-- but I want to tell a tale about an academic slacker I know… my sister.</p>
<p>My sister climbed out every possible window during HS, & was a master at coasting down the driveway in neutral so as not to wake parents. She ingested many substances. She was a hellion. She was a liar. </p>
<p>She was also a lackluster student in HS and barely/never graduated (I think she had a missing required PE class, but a counselor who had LOVED me saved her with a stroke of a pen, allowing her to attend the ceremony when she promised to take Jazzercize over the summer!). She couldn’t get in <em>anywhere</em> so she enrolled in jr college in San Diego-- but she convinced my clueless parents that she had, indeed, been admitted to SDSU. (I will never understand how she pulled this off but she did; they think to this day that she was at SDSU).</p>
<p>A terrible student, she could not muster up decent performance at the CC and ultimately dropped out after 2 or 3 years there. Further compounding the problem, during this time she had a horrific head injury and it all but obliterated her short term memory capability. </p>
<p>HOWEVER, while at the CC, she did get an internship at a radio station that grabbed her & carried her on a fast upwards track-- ultimately to head of promotions for that station, then another in LA, then VP an indie record label, then VP at Sony, & yadda yadda… she now owns her own company & has perhaps 500K in the bank!</p>
<p>My sister is the stand-in Buddha I visualize when I am ooohhhming my way to serenity over DS/SFS. Of course, I would prefer my S conquer the world after conquering a decent college!.. but there are many routes to success and people with big dreams, winning personalities, and boundless energy tend to find one.</p>
<p>But I bet he goes to Davis too. 
Ohhhhmmmmmm…</p>