Wednesday, Jan. 08, 2003 - 8:39 a.m.
I bet you didn't have as much fun as I did last night. Most of the evening after work was pretty uneventful. I naturally watched Access Hollywood and Extra. I fell asleep at various points during these shows which in turn forced me to have really weird dreams involving very disjointed combinations of celebritites. I vaguely remember sipping martinis at a table with Tommy Lee, Kelly Clarkson, and Cher. I woke up in time for Frasier and was just about to fall asleep when I heard a familiar voice that wasn't either of the Crane brothers. It was the incomparable Hal Sparks, who had a guest appearance as the concierge at a swanky resort.
Someday I will describe to you the wonder that is Hal Sparks. For now, I will pay homage to his greatness with a moment of silence. Shh!
*silent*
*silent*
*silent*
Yes, he is worth three concurrent moments of silence.
So, I continued riding the NBC wave to Dateline NBC, which looked for the first 20 minutes to be a very responsible, factual, non-judgmental account of Jeremy Gettman, a teenager who had planned a Columbine-esque attack on his school but was caught before he could do any damage. I was getting into the story until the Dateline crew started pulling their usual sensationalistic bullshit. They started flashing images of Marilyn Manson and Metallica. They interviewed the kid's church youth group leader, who first suspected something was wrong when he "showed sympathy for the Columbine killers." Rather than focusing on the guy's home life and the ridicule he dealt with from classmates (which was briefly touched upon in the first ten minutes), they turned it into yet another "evil teenager who listened to evil music and rejected religious guidance" story, which really turned my stomach.
Just as I was getting fed up and started yelling at Stone Phillips to shut his piehole, Shelley called to invite me to the lesbian bar for Lesbian Nachos, the tastiest nachos known to man (or woman, in this case). I eagerly accepted the invitation and in ten minutes I was in the warmth and comfort of the bar, with warm nachos and a cold Rolling Rock. It turns out Shelley had seen the same story on TV and was just as outraged by it, which made me feel much better. I certainly don't condone Jeremy Gettman's plan for mowing down his classmates, but I can understand where he's coming from. In many ways, he was a victim, as were the many other school killers that seemed to be in vogue a couple of years ago. That doesn't mean that I'm planning on going on a murderous rampage in the near future. Sympathy is not directly correlated with violence.
The rest of our conversation was decidedly more lighthearted. The beer buzz was nice, too. After two beers, I'm sufficiently loosened up to have a fun, animated conversation without getting drunk. I should probably try that more often, because Shelley and I concluded that I probably could've acquired digits from the waiter, with my wit and charm and whatnot.
But he was wearing a gold chain necklace. That's just wrong.
