May 20, 2013
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The Daily News
You wanna make God laugh, tell him about your plans.
--Some movie that was glaring at me yesterday morning.
1 I had to laugh.
2 It was on yesterday morning. It was on Dad's teevee. He doesn't often watch an entire move. He channel surfs whenever you aren't looking.
3 I may never know the author of that quote, but it certainly sums up the end of my school year.
4 Sometimes someone says something on teevee or radio that makes perfect sense, and you never catch who said it.
5 I remember one time years ago when I was a bartender in a cheap bowling alley in Chico.
6 The bar was called The Alibi Room. Gotta love it. One thing I found out about being a bartender: you get more respect than you do as a teacher.
7 Just sayin'. Anyway, one slow evening I found myself washing glasses and listening to music on the juke box. I looked over just as this old guy with twinkling eyes came in, and we engaged in a delightful conversation about life and love and aging and all.
8 At one point he looked me right in the eye and said, "Meaningful people come into your life and leave you with words of wisdom. They come into your life for a reason, and then you never see them again." He smiled. We talked on for a while, and then he bade me well and left. Being a young man, I found myself enchanted by the entire encounter.
9 Now that I am older, I think a part of me thinks he was an angel, like Clarence.
10 I also think that the writer of the above-mentioned quote was also an angel, and that it is a movie that I probably will never see again.
11 Moving on, Part One: You know how I always talk about Heidi the ghost, and all the coincidences she brings every time I hear her name mentioned?
12 It is no exaggeration. In the past couple of years the coincidences have increased beyond anything that could be construed as coincidences.
13 It is a bit similar to Bill Murray's experiences as Phil Conners in Groundhog Day.
14 He tries to tell people that a really strange thing happens to him all the time, but nobody gets it.
15 He lives the same day over and over.
16 On the surface, that film is a pretty pedestrian concept. It isn't that deep, but sometimes our worlds do seem to repeat on a daily basis, sometimes to the point of pure lunacy.
17 What occurred to me when I first saw that film was that a person could have something absolutely astonishing happening to them, talk about it to others, and have the world either ignore it, or look at the person as though he were a lunatic.
18 And I GET that. For the record, I haven't had too many coincidences recently. They usually occur when I am either under extreme stress, or when extreme emotional things happen in my life.
19 They often happen publicly. For example, earlier this year in my Disney class I was grading a student's paper and wrote of his introduction, "Nice hook." At that exact second a girl who sits right in front of me blurted out, "I LOVE Peter Pan!" That coincidence coincided with other coincidences involving Robin Williams, all of which I reported here when it went down. Recently I have had a series of occurrences that have completely destroyed my lesson plans for the past three weeks. That's why I smiled when I heard that quote yesterday. These weren't so much coincidences as simply life interrupting all my plans.
20 Brilliant quote.
21 I think Woody Allen said it.
22 Don't quote me on that.
23 I didn't have the internet this weekend, so I Googled the quote in the two a.m. last night. Some low-rent website credited the quote to Woody Allen. Should I have gone Bing?
24 Keep in mind that I wrote most of this yesterday at my Dad's house, and there was no internet.
25 So I couldn't Google it.
26 Nor could I Bing it.
27 No internet.
28 Heavens.
29 All this technology.
30 Useless.
31 Moving on, Part Two: I am loyal to Google. It never forced itself on me as did Bing.
32 Bing was like some rude bully coming in and telling me that it was doing my searching from now on.
33 So I am personally boycotting Bing.
34 Anybody looking?
35 In the middle of writing all this useless garbage last night, I got off on my numbering. I jumped from item 28 or something to item 33.
36 Something.
37 Happens.
38 aafjdfkdaljffd;sfjsd;sjj;kj;
39 Moving on, Part Three: Is it REALLY Monday?
40 Yesterday I awakened late.
41 I was having this dream that I was in a bar and some piano player was playing really idiotic oldies.
42 I was lying on my stomach with a couple of other people. I was younger, so I could get away with lying on my stomach.
43 The guy was making references to things so old that I didn't even get them.
44 I remember that my sister Gayle was on my left.
45 This guy was singing obscure songs from the fifties and sixties.
46 He really thought he was good.
47 I looked at Gayle, smiled, and said, "If this guy sings In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida I'm outta here."
48 Google it.
49 Or Bing it, if you are a traitor.
50 At its time, that was the longest song in rock history.
51 I even have a coincidence surrounding that song.
52 I was driving home from YB one fine afternoon, and turning the corner at King and Story, the legendary storybook streets during San Jose's gangsta heyday.
53 I turned left on King and headed for 280. That's a freeway, for those of you not into the Nor Cal jingo.
54 I thought to myself, "I want to hear the long version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, right now!" Iron Butterfly. Almost a joke song.
55 For the record, the odds of hearing a seventeen-minute song even in its heyday were off the charts. The shortened version used to be under three or four minutes so it would receive airplay. The long version was rarely played on the radio.
56 I pushed the on button and right on cue, the long version of that epic tune blasted me in the eyeballs.
57 Maybe that's what started all this nonsense with coincidences.
58 Just may be.
59 I'm now well into the two a.m.
60 Star light, star bright...
61 I think I'm going to say a few prayers for people and get some sleep.
62 I'm going to tell God my new plans.
63 Right about now I'm guessing He could use a few laughs.
64 It's outta control.
65 Have a GREAT Monday. Fly low.
66 See you again.
67 Peace.
~H~
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