I feeeeeel good...

First of all, favorite news story of the weekend...James Brown, who is still not buried as far as I know, has dozens, and I mean DOZENS, of people lined up who say they are his children. These people range in age from 45 on down. So far testing has confirmed that two of them are actually his children. Scientists are working daily to find out how many more of these dozens match the godfather of soul's DNA. (Now there's an important job for a scientist. My son went to Harvard and now he works with James Brown's DNA. I think I'd ask for my money back.) I'm thinking this is a great contest. Maybe a game show Drew Carey might host. Welcome to...Are You a Child of James Brown? For ten thousand dollars and a velvet cape... "Hi, my name is Julie and I'm 43 years old and my mother slept with James Brown in 1964 in a red Buick in Chicago Illinois..." Truth or just another golddigger?...You be the judge. No wonder that guy felt so good.

I'm not sure cancer was the catalyst for this, maybe it was just getting older, but I find that there are certain people that I have known for years that I must, at any cost, avoid. They are, for want of a better word, toxic. Negative. They make me want to shoot myself or them after I have spoken with them for about thirty seconds. There is one person in particular that I am thinking of and there are three words that one should never...EVER...utter in this person's persence and those words are..."How are you?" The last time I saw this person I was in one of those unavoidable situations where we were standing in a line and we locked eyes and no matter how I tried to distort my face and become someone else, it was quite obvious that it was me and that we had made contact. So this person comes up to me and there are lots of "Wow, hey, hi!! How cool." And I blurted out without thinking, "How are you?" Mistake of the century.
"You didn't hear about so and so?" "I don't know so and so." "Yes you do. He's the half brother in law of you know who and he's married to whatyacallit's cousin." "...Aha..." "Well, this is so awful I almost don't want to talk about it..." (Oh, please don't. Please don't.) "He lost his foot in an unfortunate cooking accident."
I do not even know this so and so nor do I know his cousin or anyone involved in this story but this person went on and on as if this was all happening to her even though she really had no idea who these people were either. Some people just scour the earth everday for horrible stories. They cannot live without them. If there is a kidnapping in Virginia, a state they have never even been NEAR, they take a very personal interest in the story as if it somehow has something to do with them. And then they have to make sure you get involved too because you never know if it's one of those Kevin Bacon things and everybody is related to everybody else, including you.
Anyway, this is all to say that there are certain people I will cross the street and leave the state to avoid because they are just downers. Not that I avoid all the sadness in the world, I am quite aware but do I really have to know about somebody that I don't even know and the loss of their foot?

When you know the world is not what it seemed...Ingmar Bergman just died and Max Von Sydow is co-starring in Rush Hour 3. You think Max ever sits there watching Jackie Chan fall from a skyscraper wondering if Liv Ullman could do that? I wonder if Liv Ullman could that.

Poppa's got a brand new bag...Indeed.