Damn! I was in a great mood today--the sun is out, it's Friday, and many other minor things that add up to general happiness, when I got a text message from Al, in Tucson, telling me that TMCP--that's The Mighty Chuck Prophet--whom I revere and adore in a strictly musical sense was in town to play a show. The Congress Hotel is having a big anniversary party there, featuring one thousand of Tucson bands (comprising, largely, the same eight people), and TMCP is part of the entertainment. A subsequent message from Al clarified that TMCP will be sitting in with the great, rarely seen Gila Bend, a band Al also plays in, and I am so jealous that I can't stand it. I have turned fluorescent with jealousy. See? Well, you can't see, but I am glowing. (But not in a "pregnant" kind of way.)

I'd considered going to Tucson for the weekend, as I did last Labor Day, but I'm scheduled to finish the big mural I've been working on, and as we speak, the scaffolding is going up, so I can't just blow out of town, a fact that blows in its own right.

I guess I'm just going to stay in town by myself like a loser, up on the scaffolding, painting all alone, celebrating my own kind of one-year anniversary, namely: the last time I went out of town for more than 24 hours, and also the one-year anniversary of starting this journal. Yee. Haw.

In honor of the anniversary, I will paraphrase a quote from my friend, Handsome Actor Don Wood, and say that inevitable and justified are sometimes mutually exclusive, as evidenced by my great (i.e., not great) new Cafe Press store, also called Spark and Foam.

At last, you can own your own shirt bearing the following fabulous image, an artistic recreation of the sign I made and wore at school in the fourth grade, to highlight my pride in my heritage:

You know, or not.

But either way, if you are near Tucson this weekend, go to the Congress and absorb the love. I'll be standing twenty feet in the air, rabidly trying to finish the mural before the scaffolding has to be back.

All things considered, there are much worse places to be.

Star of the day. . .TMCP