It’s my birthday, and I’ll blog if I want to

So far, I’ve had a pretty good birthday. Linette and Clementine made me panna cotta and presented me with a new, smaller, faster computer. Lots of friends and family called and wrote. And, most importantly, I haven’t been visited by the death bear.

Oh, and I had lunch with my friend Pete at my favorite lunch place, which was nice. We’d had plans to eat with one another today, but he called and canceled on me at the last minute, saying something about how he’d brought some tofu with him from home that he wanted to eat instead. I said OK, and set out to eat by myself, but, on the way, bumped into him. He was on his way to the comic book store. I guess it was fate. He’d already eaten his tofu, but, once he found out that it was my birthday, he wouldn’t let me eat alone. He went with with me to the Indian buffet, and just sat there, staring at me, while I shoveled in heaping fork-fulls of butter chicken into my mouth. I don’t remember if we talked. I suspect that we probably did. All I can remember, though, is his face, staring at me… Someday, I’ll tell you more about Pete. I think I met him in 1991, at a Laughing Hyenas / Jesus Lizard show. If I remember correctly, he was barefoot, shirtless, and wearing overalls. And I thought that he looked like a goat.

Anyway, I’m home now. And Linette’s too busy with work to help me celebrate, so I’m sitting here at the computer, watching an old episode of Spider Man that my father sent to me this morning. I don’t know if my dad will remember it, but I have a very vivid memory of asking him to draw Spider Man for me when I was a kid. I think we were living in Columbia, South Carolina at the time. I must have been about six years old. And I remembered being completely impressed by what he produced. I also remember staying up way too late with him one night, around that same time, watching Muhammad Ali fight.

Oh, and I realized today that Glenn Beck and I almost share a birthday… Check this out:

Glenn Beck – February 10
Mark Maynard – February 11
Charles Darwin – February 12
Jerry Springer – February 13

I like it… It’s like Darwin and I are the meat in some kind of crazy bread sandwich.