Birthday Roundup - Part I

Hey kids, just your humble author popping in to regale you with tales of my birthday weekend.

The actual anniversary of my birth was Thursday, April 19th, and the day passed with not a lot of fanfare. My grandmother was nice enough to call me....at 7:15 a.m. I hadn't spoken with her in a some time and she's a nice lady so I let the wake up slide.

It did segue nicely into a breakfast in bed treat courtesy of the Lovely Brook. She had made an early morning run to Panera and come back with a pecan roll (which I love) and a Chai Latte (also loved). Brook's main present to me was my tickets to the Beale Street Music Festival (a.k.a. Memphis in May) I had known about this gift for some time, but she wanted to surprise me with something on my actual birthday so she added to the prize package the following items:

• one bag Blow-Pops (my candy of choice)
• a Time magazine sort of Century in Review thing which has some pretty cool photography
• a book I'd been wanting (details to follow)

The book is Joan Cheever's Back From The Dead. Ms. Cheever is both a journalist and one-time attorney who lost the only death penalty case of her career. Haunted by the unjust murder she could not prevent she took it upon herself to fulfill a daunting task....

You see, in the summer of 1972 the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Furman v Georgia, ruled the application of the death penalty to be not equitable and therefore unconstitutional. The decision set aside death sentences for 589 human beings in these "United" States and ensured no one would be executed for nearly 5 more years.

Ms. Cheever, in examining said case, took it upon herself to find out what happened to the more than 200 men who, their lives having been spared, earned paroles in the subsequent years. Did they attempt to slip anonymously into society? Did they become advocates of death penalty abolition? Did they return to a life of crime? Did they kill again?

These are questions I'm assuming Ms. Cheever will answer. I'm not finished with the book yet, but I'm about halfway through so I'll let you know.

And that for the most part was my actual birthday. I did finally see Grindhouse. Tarantino's half rocked. Robert Rodriguez's was okay, but I'm a big fan/aficionado of zombie films so it was gonna be hard to really impress me.

Now the actual social gathering in celebration of my birthday was the following evening/into the subsequent morning. There is way too much to say to include it all in this post, so I will instead end with a recap of my other birthday gifts and bring you Today's Motherfucker.

Gifts:

• a DVD-rom drive from my folks
• tickets to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah from my boy JoNathan (whose quite good blog is linked from this very site
• a nice little canvas bag featuring a portrait of Chairman Mao from my good pal Liz
• a 2006 World Series hanky/towel from Mr. Tippit
• funding from Grams put toward a new digital camera
• mix cd's from the fabulous Anne
• good company, numerous intoxicants and a nice little after party at the home of Liz, Anne and Amy

Okay, that was the good. But for every Yin there's a Yang. So we bring you Today's Motherfucker.

It was bound to happen and it finally has. Today's Motherfucker is someone with whom I am personally acquainted. As such it's important for me remind everyone that just because one is named a Today's Motherfucker it does not put them on the same plane of life as all recipients.

With that said Today's Motherfucker is Mark David Snow. Now I'm not sure if anyone who reads this blog outside Mr. Hicks is familiar with Mark, but allow me outrage you...

Mark and I have birthdays just one day apart. In fact, six years ago we had a joint party to celebrate his 21st and my 24th. The party took place at the house of a mutual friend where I had just signed on to move into. Well let me just tell you what happened. Mark and his twin brother, who of course was also celebrating a 21st birthday, hijacked the entire thing! Mark got fucked up and wrote this famed quote on the toilet:

Fuck this fucking shit! It's my fucking birthday!

He wrote that on the toilet. Not on the wall near the toilet but actually on the toilet.

Now I admit....that's pretty funny. But he and his brother still hijacked the party and left me as an afterthought. Now fast forward 6 six years.

Mark lives in Texas now, but I did send him a Facebook invite to my party just to remind him of the proximity of our birthdays. He RSVP'ed as not attending and left it at that. No message. No birthday wish. Just a not attending.

Hmmm....curious.

Now I did leave him a Happy Birthday greeting on his Facebook wall, but received nothing back! And I know he's checked his account because he's one of those that leaves updates every hour or so letting everyone now exactly what's he doing.

10:23 a.m. - Mark Snow is eating Cheerios

10:37 a.m. - Mark Snow is in the bathroom

Forever and a day - Mark Snow is Today's Motherfucker!!!!!

Maybe I'm playing the diva, but I think a Happy Birthday would not have been out of line. This is what it would have taken:

• Once logging on to let us know at 11:14 a.m. you logged onto Facebook you click on my name after reading my comment left on your wall, this advances you to my profile.
• You click in the box for leaving a comment on my wall.
• You type the letters h-a-p-p-y
• Hit the space bar once
• You type the letters b-i-r-t-h-d-a-y
• You click the little blue box that reads "Post."

For those not counting that's two clicks, 14 keystrokes and another click. I'm not even asking for a capital "h" or "b" or any punctuation at all!

Screw you Snow. Oh, and screw you too Eli! Everyone else....I love you.

JeffRey