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hangover & impeachment
Saturday, December 19 1998
The weather was threatening rain but rather warm, so Kim and I walked Sophie the Schnauzer down to the beach. The surf was up, the waves were good, and the water was crowded with surfers in rubber body suits. A lifeguard saw us walking our dog on the beach, and he drove over in his orange truck and very politely suggested we retreat to Dog Beach. Everybody is mellow in San Diego, even the enforcers of law.
We headed south more or less along the beach until we came upon a strange scene. A rectangular wall of haybails had been set up on a grassy knoll above the beach, and a team of snowmakers with a snowmaking machine were slowly filling the enclosure with artificial snow. As pathetic as it was, it was the only way anyone was going to experience anything like a white Christmas in San Diego. Still, it was a dramatic spectacle, not so much for the noisy snowmaking machine and the pathetic corral of fake snow, but for the audience who had gathered to watch. All the sunburned bums who'd been panhandling on Newport and sleeping on the beach were standing around in the spitting rain, dulled by hangover, wordlessly watching the snow being made. One of them wore a filthy old Santa Claus hat. A pleasant little family came along and stopped to watch the snowmaking. They lovingly took snapshots of their children looking on in awe, completely oblivious to the far more interesting spectacle of the gathering of indigents.
We found ourselves on Newport Street, eating a large Greek pizza on the front patio of Theo's, the place known for its excellent food and terrible service. It was only 10:00am, so our pizza orgy made for a bit of a spectacle to passersby. One hippie gutterpunk kid came up to us and, in an obvious attempt to randomly shock us, asked Kim, "Why do you hate me?" Without missing a beat, she responded, "Because you sucked me last night. But it wasn't very good." He walked away being much more disturbed than he'd intended on making us.
When I paid for my pizza, the cook asked if perhaps I was Greek. For some reason, it really struck him as weird that I'd ordered a big Greek pizza at this time of the day. I assured him that I wasn't Greek, but that I really liked the pizza.
We definitely regretted our big greasy breakfast. It sat heavy in our stomachs, feeling like it needed to come right back out, by hook, crook or abortion. The pizza dough had been a little undercooked and it felt like it might still be rising in our digestive systems.
Kim and I lay around all day watching television, smoking pot and slowly recovering from our hangovers and that regrettable Greek pizza. It was one of the most surreal news days in American history. Our "smart weapons" were pouring death and destruction into Iraq while Clinton was being impeached for lying about getting his dick sucked. With ever article of impeachment, the anti-aircraft gunners in Baghdad would celebrate with gunfire. Then, the most surreal thing of all happened. Bob Livingston, the would-be Speaker of the House from shadesville New Orleans, suggested before his august body that Bill Clinton resign. To these words, the Democrats were heard hooting like the primates from the beginning of 2001, a sound I have never heard from any of our white souless institutions. Then Livingston said he would resign. If he'd committed suicide too it wouldn't have been that much weirder.
The day gradually became more and more miserable. By sundown a cold spitting rain fell lethargically from low clouds streaming in off the bleakly churning Pacific Ocean. It was a great day for teevee in San Diego.
After I wearied of the news, I watched a sequence of Discovery Channel shows about natural disasters. One of them left me feeling kind of nervous about the potential for a tsunami, especially if a huge loosening piece of the largest of the Hawaiian Islands ever breaks free and slumps into the Pacific.
In the evening, I suffered from a spate of heart palpitations that distracted me from my thoughts and the things I needed to do. I used to have palpitations all the time back in 1994, but for the past few years they'd almost disappeared. Despite how unnerving they are, I've read that they aren't really evidence of a serious medical condition. Still, the beating of your heart is definitely something you come to take for granted. When it starts getting funky with its rhythym, it definitely doesn't come across as a refreshing manifestation of creativity.
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