Going bald and simultaneously growing hair everywhere else on my body (yes, fucker, even the bottom of my feet) has given me a certain gracefulness about aging, which is to say I don't care much. I am still able to drink, piss, eat and as Shakespeare said, "make the beast with two backs"--and that's all the matters more or less. This year, as I have for the past three years, I had my birthday at Manhattan Beach's Pollywog Park Sunday Concert. This week's band was a local Reggae outfit, so the stars were aligned. My wife, as usual, took care of most of the particulars, which she manages to do with a smile. I need birthdays and they don't depress me as much as they allow me to act like my inner child for one day. For one day, I can drink as much as I want, say whatever comes to mind (which gets to be a bit much even for me) and dance like a fool. I was surrounded by friends, family and a whole park full of reasonably happy people--and I smiled. My friends, Brad and Natalie, bought me a shirt with the picture of the baby that Zack Galifianakas had strapped to his chest in The Hangover on the front. The shirt elicited more comments from random strangers than anything I have ever worn. I walked through the crowd, as drunk as 10,000 men (thanks Ed Gillespie) wearing my shirt and a shit-eating, glad-to-be-alive look on my face. It doesn't suck to get old, it just hurts a bit more after a hard workout and a bit less after a personal setback--trade off.
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