While I try to suppress the nerd part of my personality, it will erupt in splendid glory when I attend the San Diego Comic-Con this Saturday.  It's an interesting place to people watch and actually quite inspiring to see so many people do what they love.  A lot of great artwork, too.  I didn't go last year, but two years ago I met Paget Brewster (from Friends fame).

I consider myself to be an intelligent guy.  Okay, I'm borderline über-genius.  But for every part smart, I'm also a part dumb.  I like artichokes.  I've had them in two different forms: boiled whole, where you pull off a leaf and dip it into a mayonnaise concoction, or the hearts all chopped up and part of another entree.  But I've never followed one form into the other -- whole to heart.  Last night I thought I'd boil an artichoke for an ambiguously healthy snack (while an artichoke is a vegetable, its healthy benefit is probably negated by dipping its leaves into mayonnaise).  After peeling off the last leaf, I was left with the bare stem and base.  My thought was that the heart was simply the part underneath, but it seems like I need an artichoke anatomy book because after disassembling the damn thing I was left with nothing that appeared edible.  Where did the heart go?  There were bits of  'choke dispersed all over my plate, looking like it exploded, but I saw nothing that resembled a core.  I'll require some diagrams with a cross-section view.  I may need to run one through a cat-scan machine.

Went to see local band, Berkley Hart, play at Lestat's.  They had a running theme: duo night.  Not only did they play their own originals, but also performed songs by famous duos.  Among my favorite covers were Hall and Oates', Rich Girl, and Loggins and Messina's, Danny's Song.  They sounded great -- fantastic arrangments.  It was a fun show.  Catch them if you get a chance.

I spent the 4th of July weekend in Chicago.  It's a great city.  I spent an afternoon at the Art Institute of Chicago museum.  Out of all of the museums I've visited, I think that it's my favorite.  Its collection is so diverse and comprehensive, and the museum is arranged wonderfully.  On the other side of the spectrum, I also wandered over to the Museum of Contemporary Art and was disappointed.  Last year they had an amazing exhibit featuring the paintings of John Currin, but this season they displayed mostly conceptual art.  One display involved a piece of wood sitting in the middle of the floor.  My mind just isn't tuned to that type of art.  If a piece of artwork can mean anything, it equivalently also represents nothing. I just didn't feel engaged.  I need to find a connection.  One of the coolest activities in Chicago was taking an architectural boat tour of the city.  The boat meandered along the Chicago River with a tour guide providing information about the passing buildings.  Much like George Costanza, I felt myself wishing I was an architect.  The tour maintained a fascinating balance between art, history, and science.  Good stuff.

I’m notorious for procrastinating. I frequently rely on deadlines to force me to complete projects. Without a due date, I would have never finished college essays. Without the newspaper deadline, I may still be ironing out thoughts for my opinion columns. And sadly, without the threat of death, I would never address issues with my health.

A week and a half ago I felt numbness in my left arm. A short time later the numbness descended down my hand. It was followed by tightness in my chest. Then it all faded, only to appear the next day. I thought I may have slept on my arm wrong and the circulation was poor. It continued. Perhaps it was poor ergonomics at work. I changed chairs and setups. It continued. The tightness in the left side of my chest sidled my left arm numbness. Could it be due to stress? I reflected on my life and realized that the only anxiety inducing element to my life was my guitar being out of tune. It didn't seem like stress was the cause.

It continued for a few more days until last Tuesday when the pain grew intense. The muscles on the left side of my chest clamped down like an old lady on her bingo cards. It felt like my heart was being crushed and rebar driven through it. Despite my condition, I felt the need to drive home first and grab my health insurance card before continuing onto my doctor. I loathe melodrama. With that being said, sitting at a traffic light, I genuinely thought I was going to die. I wouldn't have time to see my doctor. I needed to visit the hospital. Somehow, I still retrieved my insurance card thinking that having to deal with the hospital without this card would be worse than actual death. At my home, I pondered calling an ambulance, but not wanting to make a spectacle, I drove myself to Scripps Hospital in La Jolla.

I walked into the reception area and upon telling the receptionist about my chest pains he instantly directed me to an adjacent room where two nurses waited. I told them about my condition and they took my vitals. The nurse asked me questions about my history. Do you smoke? No. Are you diabetic? No. Are you allergic to anything? No. Have you ever freebased with Motley Crue? Once.

After this initial examination the nurse walked me over to a curtain separated bay with a bed and told me to change into a hospital gown. She returned a few minutes later and stuck electrodes all over my body and hooked the many strands of wire to a machine on the wall. Another nurse entered and placed an IV into my arm. She took four vials of blood and then attached a solution bag suspended from the ceiling. I was now tethered. The final touch was a glycerine patch placed on my chest.

A series of technicians entered my bay with equipment and took an EKG reading. Later, two guys wheeled in a machine, propped me up, and took a chest x-ray. The doctor came in and asked what I was feeling. I always hate this moment. Regardless of my condition, I always feel like it's my job to convince the doctor that I'm feeling what I'm feeling and be able to articulate this pain into terms that generate an immediate diagnosis from him. I could enter the hospital impaled with a spear, have both ends of it sticking out of me, and still feel this innate vulnerability that he'll think I'm faking it.

I've described all of this in staccato fashion, but the elapsed time at this point is about three hours. And I need to pee. I inform a passing nurse of my predicament and she returns with what is dubbed, "a urinal." It's a water bottle with the opening tilted at a forty-five degree angle. As simple as it looked, I didn't quite understand the subtlety of how to use it. In the spirit of the NBA finals, should I sit it at the edge of the bed and just aim for the rim? Do I stand it upright and mount it like zebras mating in the Serengeti? I had limited mobility due to the combination of electrodes and IV. In addition, when the nurse exited my bay, she didn't fully close the curtain, and therefore left a foot wide gap of open space where busy, sullen, sad, and sometimes crying people passed continuously. Somehow I managed with grace and what I'll admit to be a bit of style. You're probably asking, what could enhance my hospital experience?

How about an earthquake?

A magnitude 5.2 earthquake shook the hospital. Laying in the wobbly bed, I was in an optimal position to experience it. I felt the bed shake and saw lights, equipment, and the IV bag swing recklessly. A nurse stopped by to make sure I was okay.

Around 3:30pm a technician came down to my bed and brought my chest x-ray. She tucked it into the side of my bed and told me that I'd need it for my transfer. She vanished before I could ask her what she meant. The doctor returned to see me. He told me that my tests had come back negative for a heart-attack. My EKG had shown that there was stress to the left side of my heart but it wasn't an alarming reading -- no person's EKG looked textbook perfect he explained. But due to various factors, he thought that I should spend the night in the hospital. Although since my health insurance preferred a different locale, I wouldn't be spending the night in this particular hospital. He informed me that an ambulance would pick me up at 4:20pm to transfer me to Sharp Memorial. If one is fortunate, they get to experience both an ambulance ride and an earthquake over a lifetime. I combined it all into one day.

The ambulance arrived. They took my vitals and whisked me away. Driving south on Highway 163 the ambulence driver slammed on the brakes, tossing both EMTs and their loose equipment forward. I lifted my head enough to see out the back window. Cars skidded to either side to avoid hitting us. My ambulance almost needed to be rescued by another.

At Sharp Memorial I was placed in a staging room. My blood was taken every eight hours and my heart was constantly monitored by machine. When I was transferred to my room in the evening I was given a battery powered machine that I could take with me.

The nurses and doctors I encountered during my twenty-four hour stay were wonderful. Although all of the nurses commented on my hairy chest when they hopelessly applied the electrodes, wanting them to stick.

I tried to get to sleep but the IV in my arm kept me from bending it and was very uncomfortable. A man born in 1908 lied in the bed across from me, and caddy-corner was a man whose large and noisy family visited him until 1am. At 3am a nurse woke me up to take blood.

The next morning a woman looked at my heart with an ultrasound machine. Later, a man injected me with radioactive isotopes and placed me in a cat-scan like machine. I would repeat the isotope/machine process a short time later after having run on a treadmill for ten minutes (it's a heart-stress test).

Before being discharged the doctor told me that all of my heart-related tests came back negative. My heart looked in good shape. He believed that my episode was stomach related -- that I had bad problems that needed to be addressed (he said that it looked like acid reflux -- if John Elway has that problem it puts me in cool company). He added that if someone came to him with my symptoms, that he couldn't determine whether it's heart related or stomach related. The symptoms are so similar that they mask each other. He gave me some stomach medication and I was discharged.

While my hospital stay lasted twenty-six hours, it genuinely felt like weeks. Hospitals aren't fun. The hard part is the waiting. There's a lot of it, and while the doctors and nurses did a wonderful job of informing me what came next, it's still tough to wait. On the other side, it's an interesting place to be a voyeur. I have a belief that the only two places where everyone has a story are hospitals and airports.

I haven't been to a hospital since I had my tonsils taken out eighteen years ago. I hope it's another eighteen until I return. I'm glad that my heart is okay.

I returned late last night from a Memorial Day weekend spent in Colorado. I kept busy.

Kim and I journeyed into the mountains on Saturday and had an adventurous day. We passed through Boulder and Estes Park to venture into Rocky Mountain National Park and across Trail Ridge Road -- the highest continuous highway in North America. As we ascended the pass, hovering near the edge of the mountain, snow blanketed everything as it fell. Kim would point in a direction and say, "Usually there's a huge mountain right there," where we could only see a white wall. Upon nearing the top, we were turned around by the state patrol who said that it was white-out conditions past that point.


We retreated and drove through Rocky Mountain National Park, and in a short span we encountered a wide array of wildlife. A herd of elk chewed grass near the side of the road, and located at an address further along, a group of bighorn sheep played along the mountain side. They were beautiful to watch as they glided across rocks, and occasionally one would stand mightily on his hind legs. One of the coolest sights came unexpectedly. I was looking out onto a flood plain area when I saw movement. I told Kim to stop the car. We pulled over onto the side of the road and watched a coyote approach us. It strolled in front of our car, and upon nearing the road, it looked both ways before crossing.





Exiting RMNP, we descended into Estes Park to grab some grub at the Estes Park Brewery. After eating way too much stuff that had been deep fried, we eyed the nearby Estes Park Aerial Tram with curious apprehension. It rose from Estes Park to the summit of Mount Prospect. The wind had been gusting all day, a scary element when suspended from a cable, but curiosity won over apprehension, and we took the tram to the top. It offered spectacular views including the city of Estes Park and its infamous Stanley Hotel.



Kim and I spent other days dipping down into Colorado Springs to see my family and attending the Colorado Arts Festival in downtown Denver.

In Dallas the water tastes like a swamp. It’s horrible and inescapable. When you take a shower or wash your face, you can smell the water. One of my rules regarding tap water – and I have few – is that it shouldn’t have perceptible odor. And it most definitely shouldn’t have an aftertaste. This unbearable taste creates a problem when you go to a restaurant – deciding on a beverage becomes an impossible task. You can’t drink the water, so you look for other options. You soon realize the invasiveness of the problem. It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. You know that your neighbor is a pod person. You escape him thinking that you’re safe, only to discover that he influenced others and now everyone surrounding you is a pod person too, and they all approach with their menacing, unrelenting saunter. You obviously can’t drink iced tea or lemonade. Oh, I’ll go with soda, you say? Nope. They water down the soda with the Satan-spawn H2O. Mixed drinks? Not if they’re made with ice. So what does that leave?

Beer.

Aaaah, beer. Sitting in a Bennigan’s at the Galeria Mall, the kind waitress that called me dear, honey, and sweetheart throughout my meal asked what I wanted to drink. “I’ll have a Guiness, please.” She asked me if I had a Unicard. No, I replied. She then explained to me that since this area of Dallas was a dry county that she couldn’t technically serve alcohol, but there was a loophole that allowed me to drink if I filled out a Unicard permit and had it on record. She brought me the form and said that the restaurant would pay the application fee. Yes, in order to drink beer in Dallas as to escape the wretched water, I had to fill out paperwork.

I have neither a sensitive nor picky palette, but I just couldn’t deal with the taste. It astounded me that there wasn’t a revolt in the city over the water. I was curious if I was the only one aware of it. I went online and did a few searches. I found a recipe that said if you were making this recipe in Dallas during the summer months, you needed to use bottled water due to the “off taste” the water acquired.

The reason the water acquired this taste? During the summer months the algae levels in the lakes grew dramatically.

Dallas… it’s called a filter.

Last night I returned from a four day business trip in Dallas. I flew out early Sunday morning so that I could arrive in time to visit the Dallas Museum of Art. I have a fancy membership to the San Diego Museum of Art that allows me to visit seventeen other art museums in the Western U.S for free. The irony is that it would actually be cheaper to just pay the normal admission fee to each museum then what the fancy membership costs. Anyway, to alleviate the magnitude of my poor accounting practices, I feel a deep need to visit the museums when I can.

The Dallas Museum of Art had some great stuff and an interesting layout. It had five floors arranged in a cascading stair-step pattern where one flowed down onto the next. I say this with reluctance -- since I'm an artist I feel inclined to embrace all art forms -- but I hate square paintings. I loathe them. Every time I see a Mark Rothko painting with a description hanging nearby about its deep symbolism and metaphor I have a visceral reaction that makes me want to shake museum directors worldwide and tell them how they all have had the wool pulled over their eyes. The one exception to the square paintings comes from the artist Piet Mondrian. I enjoy his squares. However I seem to enjoy them more upon seeing his wonderful landscape and figurative work that preceeded the squares. The DMA had a nice collection of both.

Across the street I visited the Nasher Sculpture Center. The entrance fee was $10, which for an art museum is on the very high side, but upon entering I found that it was definitely worth it. The featured exhibit was Picasso: The Cubist Portraits of Fernande Olivier. A great collection. I'm not very good at internalizing sculpture, but the museum had so many engaging pieces laid out wonderfully in internal galleries and an outside garden that it made the attraction easy and instantenous. They also had some Giacometti sculptures which are always whimsical and intriguing. He's one of my faves.

Been keeping busy. I've been painting, drawing, and writing a lot. I recently purchased some toys that have enabled my creative productivity. I bought the scriptwriting software, Final Draft, whose slick instant formatting have made the flow from head to typing hands run without pause. Due to the odd death of my old printer, I picked up a new one that I love. It's a Canon i860 and it's been helpful in printing out digital photos that allows me to use them as a reference for paintings and drawings. I've never had a printer that could create photo-lab equivalent 4x6" pictures, and now having that ability has opened up a floodgate.

Kim visited over Easter weekend and along with friends, we went and saw Anya Marina give a great show at Lestat's Coffee house. Since we arrived early, we decided to visit a nearby bar beforehand, The Ould Sod. Sitting in a lounge semi-circle booth, we talked about possibly hitting a karaoke bar at the end of the evening. Almost on cue, the music grew louder and a woman's voice was heard on a microphone announcing the start of karaoke. It was all very serendipitous. After hearing an impressive rendition of Jack and Diane, we returned to Lestat's to hear Anya perform.

In the times between painting and events, I've attended different art gallery openings in the area. A lot of good art is happening out there.

I just finished reading Eric Schlosser's book, Fast Food Nation. Incredible and fascinating book. I may never eat meat again. Hello, tofu.

I have a new obsession. But fortunately, this one is reasonably safe, and won't involve a restraining order. It's Netflix, an online service that allows you to rent DVD's through the mail -- an online video store if you will. On their website, you place movies you want to see in a queue (up to 500), and they send you movies from the top of this list. You can have up to three out at a time, and keep them as long as you want. No worries about late fees. They give you envelopes with the postage already paid, and once you're finished with a movie you simply slide it into the prepaid sleeve and stick in the mail. In a few days you get the latest movie from your queue.

The queue is where my obsession lies. It becomes a storage space for desires, a reclamation of childhood, a visible beacon of wanting to have lived in a different era. I add recent movies that I want to see. I add movies that I should have seen growing up but never did. And I add classic movies that I've heard about but never had the chance to see. But perhaps even more so, the queue becomes a device to test your memory. In your head you have an internal queue of books you want to read. But what happens when you walk inside a bookstore? The queue is immediately flushed and you can't remember a single title you wanted. You hover by the Dr. Seuess children's books hoping that the list returns. And then appears the Netflix queue. When you log onto that page you soon forget that internal list inside your head of those titles that you want to see. I've recently been like the guy from Memento who writes stuff down on sticky notes in fear of thoughts being forever lost. Scrap paper and yellow sticky notes sit across my apartment and in sketchbooks when I'm away. A movie title that spontaneously pops into my head. I jot it down since I know it will vanish otherwise. And thus I have slowly built up my queue to the number it stands at today.

96 movies. Or as I like to think of it: a list of movies for the next 3 1/2 years.

What began as the Summer of Bry, and seamlessly expanded into my two year self-imposed sabbatical is officially over. Yep, I decided to grow up and finally get a job. On February 2nd, I begin work at Texas Instruments in San Diego.

It's been a good run. Starting the day sipping coffee at the beach, writing in my journal, while others scramble to get to work on time. Drawing naked college coeds on Wednesday mornings. Trips to Las Vegas, Chicago, and Los Angeles. Nine visits to Colorado. And two highly memorable travels to Europe. These past two years have truly been a charmed life.

I recently returned from Denver and had a wonderful time. Kim and I went to a professional lacrosse game at the Pepsi Center where we watched our beloved Colorado Mammoth beat the Phoenix Sting in overtime. It was an absolute blast. The action is fast paced, the scoring abundant, and they beat the crap out of each other while music blares during play. And then you have the Wild Bunch dancers providing entertainment during the breaks. One person described their appearance as being one step above a stripper's. Upon seeing them, there was the tendency to recklessly whip out dollar bills.

One day we took a trip up to Boulder and walked around my beloved Pearl Street. We then proceeded over to The Hill, and sat in Buchanan's Coffee Pub. I was drawing Kim's portrait when huge flakes poured heavily down from the sky. We decided to pack up and return to Denver, hoping that dropping down in elevation would reduce the amount of snow we encountered. It only grew more dense. And for the first time in a long time, I was in the middle of a snow storm. In a few hours, we received five inches of snow. It created a beautiful scene.

Happy New Year!

I spent a fun holiday season among family and friends in Colorado.

It began in unique fashion. I attended a trial Kim prosecuted. It was a double homicide. A man had shot and killed his two friends. Point blank. In the head. Blood everywhere. The crime scene photos were disconcerting and jarring. And very sad. The trial lasted a week and a half. On December 23rd, the day before Christmas Eve, at 5pm, the jury returned with a verdict. Guilty. It felt great that justice had been served. What created additional intrigue to the case was that the defendant had confessed to the crime in a taped interview, however his confession was supressed by the judge since he had exercised his rights just before admitting the crime. As a result, the prosecution had to rely solely on circumstancial evidence. They did an amazing job. In an odd irony, the defendant's birthday -- the man who shot his two friends and was now sentenced to life in prison -- is December 25th.

After attending the trial, I descended south to Colorado Springs to spend Christmas time with my family. It had been three years since I had last spent holiday time in Colorado, so it was nice, despite not having a white Christmas (you expect those romantic notions when visiting Colorado over Christmas, especially while living in San Diego).

Following the holidays I returned to Denver, and Kim and I went to two Avalanche games and a Nuggets game. For a period of four days we lived at the Pepsi Center. Had a great time. We spent New Year's in understated fashion. Playing Scrabble and popping out onto her balcony to watch the downtown fireworks at midnight.

I spent this evening finding potential magazine homes for two short stories and five poems. It's always a difficult task, metaphorically like finding a couple to adopt your baby. You want them to be accepting, nurturing, and to cherish the beauty in the baby. Tomorrow I'll make my ceremonial visit to the Pacific Beach post office. I'm sending the short story Boxes to the Threepenny Review, the short story Threes to the Idaho Review, the two poems Air Hole and Where We Are to the Crab Orchard Review, and the three poems The Cost of an Electric Toothbrush, Words, and Two Beds to Purdue's Sycamore Review. Let's wish them each luck and a happy journey.