Difficult Music

I celebrated my 40th birthday last weekend with Fancy and friends, a lot of cake and a lot of beer. I've been reeling from the fun and the assault of complex sugars on my system ever since. I can't say I'm worrying too much about the age milestone. That stuff is for people who have regrets and amends to make. I mainly worry about how long my stretch as the luckiest person alive is going to last.

Super Robertson recently called me a fucking son of a bitch (I was being a smartass in his blog comments), and that's okay, although I'd like to amend his slur to fucking lucky son of a bitch.

I got lots of birthday presents; everyone's way too nice to me. I got some Tetley's beer glasses, gift certificates to Happy Bats Cinema and A&B Sound (I sense a haul coming on), the Mist King Urth LP by Lifeguards (Pollard and Gillard from GBV), the Criterion Withnail and I DVD (Fancy rolls her eyes), and season 2 of Reno 911.

And from Fancy, the little belter that she is... How do I describe this? She took my stash of concert ticket stubs (99 of them) and had them arranged and mounted inside a shadow box. It's beautiful. From Scorpions/Iron Maiden/Girlschool in July 1982 to Judas Priest last October, there's my goddamn life. Not a lot of personal and aesthetic growth there, but I've enjoyed it.