Alien Nation
by G-Rob
Remember that movie, they turned it into a TV Series, about the alien guys who had bald spotted heads? I don't remember if the movie had the same central conceit, but the series was about an alien cop and his human partner. Essentially it was just another Hill Street Blues but with bald spotted heads.
Anyway, I apologize if my posts here become less useful and more introspective but as the Larry tells Owen, "Write what you know".
Alienation
I've mentioned the change at work a few times. It means I report to the office at 4AM on weekdays and I'm usually in bed by 7. The good news, besides missing all that damn prime time TV, is I'm spending a lot more time with the wife and kids. I think by spending more time at the house I've realized just how little I was there over the past two years. Turns out, I enjoy my family. That, again, is the good news.
The unfortunate side effect of the early slumber and the renewed domestic fervor is a sort of distance from my very good friends. I ping BadBlood on the girly online message device sometimes but it's usually so early he hasn't logged on as yet. I haven't played at the depot with Mark in a while. I've sent Otis some phone and text messages but he hasn't replied to any. It's as if I've reunited with one family and shed it's surrogate.
THE ALIEN PLANET
I think that's why I enjoyed my last poker game so damn much. I wasn't with my good friends because of vacations and lakes and Vegas but at least I was with a bunch of interest-sharing oddballs. That's my favorite kind of person. As my close friend Uncle Ted (Who has moved to Boston so, alas, I never see him either) said at Bonnaroo, "Thank God for creative ridiculous people"!
There's one dealer who can drink a jaeger bomb every 5 minutes and never show a buzz. I've seen the same guy get hammered after about 4 beers. Who gets more drunk off of beer? See? That's odd.
There's this guy named "Slow" who I wrote about before. On Saturday he moved his stack over to table 1, my table, then went to play pool for a solid 3 hours. I left before he ever played a hand. One interesting thing about Slow, he has no concept of that invisible personal space. If Slow has something to say, he'll likely say it 2 inches from your nose.
The host of the game, Mr. Gaelic, has built this automobile cockpit in front a giant plasma TV. He's got the pedals and the wheel and the gears and all for some racing video game. I particularly enjoyed watching one 60+ year old woman drive her Caddilac in circles for a solid 20 minutes.
I'm not sure I'm really "friends" with any of those folks, I don't know any of them well away from the felt. But it's nice to have wierdos to visit.
ALIEN NATION
By the way, until I started the title of this post, it never occured to me that the show "Alien Nation" was a BLATANTLY obvious play on "alienation". I mean how incredibly freakishly obvious is that?
I think I may be stupid.
On the bright side, I've met a lot of very happy...very stupid people.
I can live with that.
