I woke up this morning bright and early, hopped out of bed, and took a nice, deep New England drink of air. I shit you not, the air is *wet* and it's not even raining. This whole "Ocean State" thing must be an atmospheric rather than a topographic reference.

Yeah, I'll admit it. I waited in my car for Bon Jovi's "Livin' on a Prayer" to end. But I am still ashamed.

I imagine Clinton's talk last night was going to be the best of the night last night. Last night we learned what it was like to be a real leader of a divided nation. Tonight Ted Kennedy and Howard Dean learned that they don't have what it takes.

Teresa, however, is welcome to the dance any time.

DNC is coming up and Southern New England is already shitting itself with traffic despair. On the commute home on Friday traffic was backed up because of a sign indicating that the event that the Convention is next week. Allegedly 60 miles of Boston roads are going to be closed for the event, and apparently Rhode Island is going to be footing a better part of that excess. They're talking about traffic on I-95 is going to be backed up to Connecticut, which is certainly more than enough starch to blow my mind.

I talked with my Grandma yesterday as I'm wont to do when the time is right and the mood is conducive to listen to an old woman cry because I'm not home. Generally speaking these conversations are pleasant and enjoyable, but yesterday I felt like I caught her on a bad day. I was telling her about the skydiving trip and some other fun stuff I've had the good luck to fall into, and her reaction didn't possess the usual amount of pride she takes in such stories.

I didn't call her before I went skydiving because I was afraid she was going to worry, and though she's not the type that is necessarily prone to worry-induced heart attack, it's better to be safe than sorry. However, she didn't come back from the news with the stereotypical "Rob, are you out of your fucking mind?" response. Instead she got kind of quiet and admitted that ever since she was 30 it was something that she's always wanted to do.

She said to me, "You're 23 Rob and you've done more than I've ever done in my life."

I didn't feel very proud. I just felt guilty for a life I feel like I've stolen from someone more deserving.

What we got here is bad news. Now instead of five different Britney clones, we'll be looking at four. Teen magazines everywhere are weeping.

The new TMBG record kind of sucks ass. I like to think that I'm a big fan of even the most inaccessible tune sin the vast Linnell/Flansburgh catalog, but The Spine is just hard to listen to. This, however, does not mitigate the total punk rock radness of their new download store - entirely artist owned and operated. If anyone big was going to do it first, you know it'd have to be our Long Tall Weekend boys. Now, if they would just produce the kickass album they should have been working on instead of The Spine, we'd be all set.

Went on a recon mission to Cats the other night in anticipation of our rapidly approaching Shaft show with A Burning Fashion How hard is it going to rock you ask? I've already got a list above 12 of shit I can jump off of during the show.

Never look down.

I feel like I haven't slept in a week. Fortunately, the feeling is justified as I'm reasonably close. For seven days I've been trying to write a decent retrospective of the perspective changing experience of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to comically little avail. The best I got is just to tell you how it went down.

Joining a crew from my dayjob, we set out in the early morning from Providence to a municipal airport near Worchester, Mass (pronounced by locals as "WOO-ster"). A-train and I already late, we blazed down to find that the other folks were similarly delayed, thus giving us the opportunity to scarf down some eggs and fried potatoes on the company dime. This last decision before departure was probably a mistake given the order of the day.

The seven of us hopped in a van driven by one of our boys in Texas Daymond Decker, who proved to me finally and completely that Texans drive as though they have all the space in the world. This may work on the open range, but in the Ocean State it made for likely the most dangerous part of our day. We exchanged some concerns and talked with skydiving veteran (and programmer, go figure) Danimal about some of the things we should speak with our respective tandem instructors about. My primary concern was expanding the distance between his package and my rear exit which was met with a little disdain and a couple accusations of homophobia, to which I responded snappily that decelerating from 180 miles per hour via parachute may result in the application of 200 lbs of unneeded pressure on the gentleman's junk; a level of discomfort I would prefer not to subject a man who would be the only thing between me and a rather sharp end as a human lawn dart. This proved to be an impossibility however, and I could only apologize in advance for any ball smashing that might commence as the result of our unique commericial transaction.

We arrived at JumpTown to be greeted by the blue-haired master of customer service Sheila, who with her Dropkick Murphys shirt, plaid skirt, and punk rock fishnet hosery demonstrated under no uncertain terms that this establishment was nothing but professional. She promptly took us to the classroom where we would fill out the 12 page waiver form that would effectively indemnify the airport, the airplane, the pilot, the tandem instructor, parachute manufacturer, Sheila, Sheila's illegitimate offspring, and any individual who has breathed in a 12 mile radius of the place of any litigation following a lawn darting. Though these are the sorts of documents that wrongful death lawyers laugh at before throwing a flurry of lawsuits at a skydive facility, we happily filled them out making careful note of the large notices indicating that skydiving was a "HYPERHAZARDOUS," "extremely dangerous," and "probably needless risk."

The singlemost shocking thing about the entire experience was how simple the training was. I was expecting three hours of safety training that would introduce me intimately with the inner workings of a parachute and emphasize the need to refrain from panicking should you begin a flat spin towards your ultimate doom. What we received however was a fifteen minute talk where we were told to 1) breathe, 2) arch, and 3) pull the ripcord (optional).

Jumping out of an airplane, as it turns out, is a pretty fucking simple thing to do.

I met my tandem instructor, Kev-man, outside. I can't tell you how comforting it is to skydive with a fifty year old man. His age alone suggests a level of professional self-preservation that far outweighed any concern for the proximity of his unit to my corn hole. Joining him for his 1,936th skydive (and his 948th tandem), he gave me some suspiciously familiar advice about the jump. We would 1) breathe, 2) arch, and 3) pull the ripcord (again, optional). He pointed out the gear I would be jumping in and the umpteen thousands of pounds that its rated to hold up, meaning my fat ass was in little danger of floating any significant distance from his pillcase. Once in the gear I marveled at how incredibily important I felt. Feeling like Solid Snake or some shit, I staved off some nervousness by jumping around and attempting to assault some of my fellow jumpers Splinter Cell style, who responded with the mild tolerance that comes from knowing me for more than a couple minutes.

The plane showed up shortly thereafter. Everyone lined up and hopped on board. I was a little concerned, because apparently my tandem instructor was "hurrying" to make the load with the rest of the crew.

I mentioned that I would seriously prefer that no one "hurry" on this particular enterprise. But, then again the dude didn't make it to fifty from eating broccoli, so I was probably alright.

We headed up and it so happened that I was second in line out the door. It took about 20 minutes to get up to 13,700 feet, which is more than enough time to reconsider the chain of events that led one to such a precipitous circumstance. A couple bumps jumped the jitters, but by that time I had pretty much confirmed that my existence so far was nothing but a set of dumb strokes of luck and if I was going to buy a early boat ride on the River Styx, I probably wouldn't have made it through high school. For the last few thousand feet, I was amped to a degree I've never felt before. I wasn't nervous so much as charged. My mind was operating at an insane level of efficiency, no doubt fed by an endocrine system that just figured out what the fuck we were about to do and was none to pleased.

The door was open most of the way, so we were saved the drama of the final opening of the hatch. However, there were single parachutists who were jumping out before us (including the ringleader of our little Family Circus Daniel) that gave us some hearty thumbs up before rather quickly disappearing. The first of the tandems, Ariel, went without so much of a peep. Next up was me.

The biggest problem just turned out to be getting to the fucking door. The total height of the aircraft was 5 feet, making walking to the door with Kev-man strapped to my ass next to impossible. Leaving the aircraft, in stark contrast, proved to be a lot easier.

The next 14 minutes were among the most humbling in my life. We had 67 seconds of freefall which, with the notable stomach sink on exit, felt nothing like falling at all. I was amazed by the view but more so the feeling of spatial awareness. When we moved faster I could tell distinctly how we were moving through space. When we moved left and right, I could feel where we were in the gorgeous Massachusetts sky.

The chute opened and suddenly the world was quiet.

A quiet, enormous expanse laying softly below me littered with the collective work of the same race of animals that gave me the opportunity to see our little ant farm from up here. Nothing laid between me and the whole world but the overwhelming rush of gratitude for being a small, insignificant part of this beautiful machine.

Me and Kevin didn't speak much on the way down.
The Earth was too deafeningly silent.

I am alive and had an amazing time skydiving. I'll add more as soon as I recover from the enormous adrenaline crash.

Tomorrow I'm jumping out of a plane.

If you don't hear from me for a while, I might be a spot of grease on the Massachusetts landscape.

In either case, should make for a good story.

And I got 8 miles a gallon...

I'm in line to get some ice cream with T-dub and his family when his little girl, Aurora, starts to box. Being three times her size and four times her age I, of course, relished the opportunity to stand victorious in physical combat, if only over a 6 year old girl. When exchanged a couple blows back and forth in the Ben and Jerry's lobby when she suddenly stops.

"Look, there's someone behind you."

As we were in Provincetown and there were a number of people in strange getups, I turned around abruptly to see what she was pointing at.

With sadistic timing, Aurora planted a right cross as hard as her little hand could throw right in the pills.

It might not have been David and Goliath, but I felt a lot smaller for the rest of the day.

Edwards comes as no big surprise, but I sincerely fear that the Democratic campaign might be headed for a terminal case of Dukakis syndrome. Two legislative nominees on the same ticket don't have the best track record and in such a tight, polarized race any downsides can spell demise. Edwards is no slouch, however, both in campaign management and fund raising; his addition to the campaign is a bright, fresh face of optimism in a campaign that is already mired is muckraking and negative advertising. Plus, this announcement should hold a headline for at least another week or so, giving a good segueway to the National Convention.

Though I did see Fahrenheit 9/11 opening night, I only got around to catching Spider-Man 2 today. What kind of self-respecting geek does that make me? I had to look myself in the mirror this morning and say, "Hey. Gimme a break. It's an election year."

I spent my independence holiday with T-dub and his family on the very tip of America in Provincetown on Cape Cod. Navigating the strange surface called "beach" and encountering the likes of Owen the Walking Souvenir Shop, you might well say that I was occupying another world; one of the sort that makes a mere country boy marvel at the magical circumstances that gave a guy like him the opportunities like this.

Awesome, genuine love is a difficult thing to give and a difficult thing to take. Are the kind of choir of angels sing-song slaphappy love lullabies a dream we recite to ourselves to find purpose and meaning, or are they breathing things that we have to deny politely with an askance eye and watch fade and die. One doesn't make movies about watching sparkles fade.