Man, I'm soooo not going to go into the nightmare about how my flight was delayed two fucking days and they lost my luggage and then found it and whatever. Flying sucks; end of story.

I am in West Virginia. It is Christmastime. It has been extraordinarily surreal. Most of this time has been spent shooting the shit with my father over beers and cigars.

I flew in on Christmas Eve and I've been out drinking with crews from my high school years every night since (save tonight). It's been fun - words I would not have thought leave my lips a year ago.



cheezaddict and I have been hanging out a lot. I ate a Christmas dinner with her family (after one with my own family, so I was very fat and happy). It was good hanging out with her parents; I like them lots.

Last night we went to Jim's Spaghetti House - which is a bit of a Huntington tradition - with her parents. I was singled out by a diminutive woman with silver-grey hair who called herself the "spaghetti nazi" for extra special attention while we waited in line for a table. Eventually we got one, and I was sitting in John F. Kennedy's old chair (I moved for the photo, courtesy of Jenny).



Later, she and went to see Doubt at the theaters in Pullman Square. While waiting for the show to start, we saw an enslaved horse.



I thought about touching it, just to set it free.

This evening my father and I watched Pulp Fiction together. He had never seen it. It was quite entertaining to watch his reactions.

I have located what I think is a vintage 1957 Fender Stratocaster. It is on sale for about two thousand dollars. I'm not sure how authentic it is; I am going to go down there this week and check its serial number against a pattern I know that helps to determine age. I may pick it up.

I had plans to go to West Virginia today. In fact, I should have just started on the second leg of my trip (from Las Vegas to Charlotte). Obviously, I'm not on that plane.

My flight out of SFO was originally scheduled for 7 a.m. Around three a.m., I got an automated phone call telling me the flight had been delayed until 9:15. I dutifully arrived two hours early, and then spent two hours standing in line to check in.

I was finally "checked in" to the flight at 9:09 - just as someone called to say that they had closed the door on the plane. Analysis: screwed. There is a great deal more of delicious drama, irritation, and incompetence to this - I was getting the run around from someone, and then from someone else, and then finally I got to talk with the supervisor.

We tried to find an alternative route. The first "offer" was "Leave SFO at 5:30 PM tonight; have a 20 hour layover in Philadelphia, and then finally show up in Huntington at 3:00 PM tomorrow." Obviously, that was sub-optimal, so we did some more work.

Now I leave here on the 24th and return on the 31st (still a week). Only this time, I'm flying first class both ways.

Everyone I know is having problems with flights today. I ran into my friend Ming who was in the same line as I was (only about a half mile behind me).

Lover mine
Get your coat and come outside
I wanna take you for a ride
On into town

This past week and a half has been a roller-coaster of surreality. There was my father's heart problems, an evening of drinking heavily with my friends I. and T., Thanksgiving, my birthday, the Cthulhu game, work craziness, a party for I.'s birthday (read: another hangover), a lot of music writing, sushi with gnat23, and another evening with I. and T.

I even trimmed the wizard 'stache.

Last night I was exhausted so I just climbed into bed early to read comic books while drinking tea.

Gnat made me a big tub of my favorite dish, wasabi beef with noodles. Mine, all mine. Nom nom nom.

Lover fair
We'll be looking sharp, I swear
I want them all to stop and stare
When we take 'em down

Thursday night, Maynard and KBK and I played a game of James Ernst's Totally Renamed Spy Game, which was a hell of a lot of fun, even though I lost all but one hand.

(I suggested we play Rummikub, but there is apparently a permanent moratorium on anyone I know playing that game with me, no matter what handicaps I start with. I'm a pretty brutal player; it tweaks well into what eideteker talents I have. I am undefeated for at least 15 years of playing.)

Afterwards, Maynard and I sketched out the beginnings of a song. What we wrote requires two bass guitars to play, though: we had a "standard" bass line that we liked, and I had written a nice rhythm guitar part. But then I convinced Maynard to try using a pick and palm muting on the bass, and we translated the rhythm to the bass, where it sounded really good.

So I am now working on the lead guitar part. He is supposedly coming over later this afternoon and we'll flesh it out some more.

It feels good to be creating again.

Goin' to town, burn it down, turn around
And get your stroll on, baby
I'll get the car
You get the match
And gasoline

I've been playing a lot of Left 4 Dead lately. It is, as I feared, a complete time suck.

Yesterday afternoon I hopped in a game around noon, intending to only play for an hour or so (which is how long a campaign usually takes). It was a good group; we were playing on "expert", which is hellaciously hard, and the session was filled with all manner of humorous events (usually involving one of us leaving the others to die in a fire while they raced to a safe house just to complete the chapter, only to get taken down feet from the door).

Five hours later, we all had to give up the ghost with a capital-F Failure due to other commitments. By the end we were working as a well-oiled machine, but the sheer number of zombies just continually overwhelmed us. We all friended each other with the intent to try again at some point in the future.

And as we ride
Away into the countryside
I feel as though I must confide
There is a cost
When you say, "Now we got Hell to pay"
Don't worry, baby, that's okay -
I know the boss

Tickets have been purchased for me to travel to West-By-God-Virginia for the holidays (December 22 - 29). I haven't been home in probably five years, and I am missing the mountains something fierce. Jenny will also be home at the same time, so we'll probably hang out a lot and see cheap movies while avoiding familial responsibilities.

So much has changed in my life (and my family's) since the last time I was there I don't know what is going to happen. My brother has had two children (bringing the total to nine) since I last graced the chemical valley with my presence, for example, and I think his eldest is probably about to graduate high school.

I've been in contact with a lot of people from high school (mostly through Facebook); I have no idea if any of them will be in town at the same time or not but for the first time in, oh, twenty years I am interested in seeing some of them.

I don't even know what Huntington is looks like anymore. I read and hear about a ton of changes - places being built, others torn down, shops opening, others closing. I don't even know what people do there anymore.

Friday night my wife and I attended the opening of the movie We are Marshall.

The film is about a plane crash that took place on November 14, 1970 in Huntington, WV. All aboard were killed - 75 people total, including almost all of the Marshall University football team (there were a few who were not on the plane).

It shattered the town, which has a population of less than 50,000 in the entire metropolitan area, and, as David Strathairn said, "people there are two degrees from one another - not six."

The movie chronicles how Jack Lengyel and Red Dawson put the team back together and helped the town move on (Red Dawson was the assistant coach at the time and was supposed to be on the plane but instead traded seats with someone who needed to get back to town earlier - an act that pretty much fucked him for life with survivor guilt).

Now. Why this is important.

I grew up in Huntington, WV. I went to Marshall University, as did my parents, and my brother, and my sister.

I lived up *down the street* from Red Dawson. I went to school with his kids and played Dungeons and Dragons in his basement. My parents were *in the same diner* as the president of the university, Donald Dedmon, when he was informed of the tragedy. The lore of this event has been steeped in my bones from the day I was born - one cannot live in Huntington and not feel the impact of the crash, even thirty-five years later.

I cannot possibly impress how deep this history runs within me, what it means.

So to say I was apprehensive about how the subject would be treated is an understatement.

The film opens with a sweeping shot of a fountain that appears to have been sculpted from nails - coffin nails, actually - one for each person lost. I must have spent five hours a day sitting on the edge of that fountain for several years, playing chess, smoking cigarettes, talking philosophy and art. It was pretty central to my college years.

I like the film a great deal, but I also recognize that I am not in a position to review the film objectively. It was handled with a lot of taste, which was good, because it could so easily have been a trainwreck. It's been savaged by reviewers, calling certain elements cliched or what not - but I can tell you that even though some things are cliched, they were *true* and *actually happened*. The members of WVU *did* paint green crosses on the back of their helmets and the head coach of WVU did give them his playbook.

Matthew McConaughey pretty much nailed Lengyel, and I *know* Red Dawson, and Matthew Fox had down several of his ticks. It was creepy.

I have no idea what I'm trying to say here, other than I think it is a film worth watching.