Gee Whiz

Well, my birthday was awesome. I managed to make it last from exactly 12 AM to about 5 AM the next day. I got a lot of toys, a lot of cupcakes, and a lot of booze. Enjoying them all at once is a pretty awesome thing to do.

Now I'm just sitting here reading an AWFUL script that I'm gong to audition for when I really should be reading "Cat's Cradle." Kurt Vonnegut died today, so I'm going to re-read it, and then read one of his that I haven't yet. Suggestions are welcome.

There's really only two kinds of things that I read anymore: comic books and stuff by Vonnegut or Hunter Thompson. Now that both of them are gone, I suppose I'll have to slow down on reading their stuff so that I can still be reading books of theirs for the first time five years from now. I mean, re-reading things is fun too, but nothing beats discovering new prose by one of the old masters for the first time, and I want to still be doing that in my thirties.

It sucks that now both he and Hunter Thompson are gone. I know they both started their careers in their youth, and I've read their early stuff and it was great, but they became these awesome cantankerous geniuses as they aged. My grandfather Jerry was the same way (without the copious amounts of booze, drugs and cigarettes), and he's gone too. The world is running out of coots. Crazy old men are so much more interesting than crazy young men, and I can't wait until I become the former. I'd better start toning down the latter so I can get there.

R.I.P. Mr. Vonnegut.