My new monitor was suddenly not working this morning. I called some I.T.-knowledgeable friends and tried everything I could think of. But the final conclusion was that something's wrong with my monitor. Fortunately, my dad keeps receipts for everything.

Speaking of parents, visiting them for Xmas was fun and all, but DRIVING with them is another story. I'm sure I'm not the only person who dislikes driving with their parents in the car with them. "Watch the black ice!" "Turn right here." Um, I grew up in this neighborhood, so I do know where I'm going. "Oh, I see the black ice! Watch out for the black ice." "Slow down, watch out!" That's what brakes are for. "You know that this part of the highway has a 50 mph speed limit?" You know that this thing on my dashboard is a radar detector? "Uh...sometimes they don't use radar." Did I mention that it detects laser too?

I know it's "a parent thing", but I'm still amused by this compulsive need some have to just...worry. Even when somebody's watching something on TV, my dad seems to feel prompted to say something. "I'm uh...putting the milk away up here in the kitchen." Thanks for the announcement. Now please let me get back to the climatic last 3 minutes of this 2 hour movie. Thank you.

But anyway, one nice thing about family getherings is that your moved-away friends are sometimes back in town for at least a week. Such was the case with Mike tonight. I hung out at his parents' place with him, his wife, Ken, and his girlfriend.

We mainly talked about the old band days. Through my college years and most of my time in high school, I was in one band or another with these guys. And not surprisingly, a number of "young dumb & stupid" anecdotes came up. Mike will never forgive Ken for that night at the battle-of-the-bands, where Ken decided to announce our closing instrumental song as "Bong Jam".

Actually, if I had to make an analogy here, Mike was the band's Moe. I suppose that would make Ken and Jal the Larry and Curly. But Mike was definitely the Moe. He just always got away with making fun of Ken or Jal, for whatever reason. It was very rare though that he made jabs at ME. Maybe it was because I was the band's "quiet one", so my antics were unnoticed. Or that I comparitively took everything from anybody a whole lot more personally back then. Or maybe it was subliminally related to the fact that Mike was an only child, Ken and Jal had older brothers, and I had no older siblings. Who knows.

I don't know if there are underlying sado-masochistic personalities operating on some level, but a number of bands (or other forms of teams) seem to have a member that becomes the joking punching bag. Bill Ward from Black Sabbath is a perfect example of this. I read interviews where he said he was even set on fire on occasions.

More band nostalgia to follow, I'm sure...