On my days off I enjoy a pleasant sit, followed by a nice little nap and then, maybe, a jolly lay down.  If I’m feeling particularly active, I might play some video-game baseball.  This past week, however, I had plenty of stuff to do.  And some of it might be of interest to you so I’ll relate it here.

My weekend started like all busy weekends: With a trip to a lawyer’s office.  I’m sponsoring my wife while she tries to immigrate to Canada so I had to fill out some forms, answer some questions, pass some papers to him and have him pass some to me.  I was given a list of chores.

I’ve been living my life for a while so it seems completely normal.  Apparently, it’s not.  Answering those questions I realized that the government has a template for a normal upstanding citizen and a template for normal romantic life.  I don’t fit either of those very well.

The lawyer told me I was”straightforward.”  That probably means I should either lie more or be ashamed of things I don’t really think about.  Either way, I’m not sure it’s a compliment.

On Thursday, when I was just settling into doing nothing, I got an email from an old friend, Jeff Lemire, asking if I wanted to meet up.  Since it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to see each other, I said sure.

Jeff and I used to work together.  Then he became a rich and famous comic book guy.  He also has a kid now and, as you can imagine, his time is at a premium.  He’s off to Poland shortly for a show.

What makes it worse is that bastard deserves all of it.  I remember seeing his very early work and thinking:  Wow.  This guy is actually good. Anyone who has ever looked at the work of a friend knows how rare that is.

We met up at the back of La Hacienda and he hit me with a bag full of comic swag.  We talked the same old shit and some new shit too.  We all had fresh material.  That’s a good thing about not seeing someone for a while.

The Chairman, who had organized it, was also there and said some pretty wise shit that stuck with me:  “When you get to my age you realize that gatherings with people who are meaningful to you are not to be taken for granted.  They don’t happen every day and you must enjoy them when they do.” Those are some true words.  Getting truer every day.

There’s not any pics from that night.  I prefer it that way.  Funny how photography now seems to cheapen an event.

The wife is a basketball fan.  On Saturday we attended the Harlem Globetrotter game.  It was great.  But I had run out of coffee a couple days before and was too busy to buy some.  This resulted in a splitting headache.

Not wanting my night to be wrecked, I decided that I should be.  I medicated myself with some, well, lets put it this way, some rather strong medication.  It may have been a a bit of overkill for a headache.  Something like a shotgun used on a fly.  But effective. Very effective.

I sat stupored and calm in my seat, watching the action while the globetrotters watched me. The wife got a picture of one gawking.  I was oblivious.

Ate a hotdog, cheered for and booed both teams and had a great time.  The kids really seemed to like the fart jokes.  So did I.  Fart jokes are funny.

I did, however, lose $4000 betting against the Globetrotters.  That’s not so funny.

Right after the game, we jumped into a cab and headed to the Buy Design Spring Social.  I’d been used in the extensive ad campaign and thought people might recognize me.  Recognition often leads to conversation.

Just thinking about that gave me another headache.  So I took more –a lot more– of my medication and put on a lavender wig to match my shirt.  I now felt like Courtney Love on any Tuesday morning.

Fashion events are much more pleasant if you’re out of your mind on drugs and if you can follow the Blue Jays game on Twitter.

I was in a warm exclusion zone.  Disguised to the casual eye, too strange looking for strangers to talk to and a pleasant fuzzy barrier between me and everything/everyone else.  They might have been playing Lady Gaga but all I could hear was Comfortably Numb.

And I actually had a good time.  Seems that all I need to do to have fun at these things is to be obliterated.  It’s a good thing that having fun at these events is not terribly important to me, nor do I often attend them.  Otherwise, there would be a problem here.  I’m prone to them.

The lawyer has asked for pictures of my wife and I to show the government.  I only hope that something like this is what he’s looking for.

We got a big bag of swag at the end.  Toiletries, as per normal.

After it ended –pretty early if you ask me– my wife, Anita and The Oracle headed to a gay bar.  Drugs always seem to end in a trip to a gay bar.

Does anyone know what the etiquette for these places is?  That is, if you’re straight and not interested in fucking men?  Do you immediately announce it to save everyone’s time or do you let them make advances?  I don’t want to be a cocktease.

It was nice to see that my wife — who looked absolutely radiant and beautiful, even if I couldn’t understand a word she said all night– was as jealous of men hitting on me as she is of women.  It’s good to know her irrational jealously is really, really, really irrational.  And I learned to never tell a drunk American to chill out.

Never!

We cabbed it home where I was suddenly hit with the comedown.  Pallid, shaky and sweaty as any junkie, I ate some steak and went to sleep.