hella weird.

kid's got pride. whoever he is.

i woke up the other day and realized i had forgotten all about this little epiphany i had on st patty’s day.

probably it’s because of all the supermint and george’s, and maybe because i spent most of my mental energy the next day trying not to vom.

i was sitting at the beer garden with chels and bailey, and i said something in passing like “dude, that’s hella ridiculous.”

three out of four of those words could, at one point in my life, be described as the most overused words in my vocabulary.

as the word hella came out of my throat and headed for the opening in my face, i choked on it a little. i thought, don’t… don’t say that. is that even a word? listen to yourself.

what’s the big deal?

what’s the big deal?!

i’m from the bay area. that’s the big deal.

the use of the word hella has been a distinction and a point of pride for bay locs since the word was born there in the early ninties. it causes a devious little smile every time we meet someone from LA or sanDiego, and they hit us with a condescending, “ugh… you say hella?”

the south has ya’ll, hawaii has dakine, newEngland has wicked, snoop has –izzle, and the bay has hella.

i realized that i probably hadn’t said the word in ten months, and suddenly i had heard what i sounded like to every soCali that’s ever been lumped in with us hella norCalis by the uninformed masses across the rest of the US, and i wasn’t loving what i heard.

what happened?

have i grown up?

am i a real person now?

do i have to act all sophisticated and junk?

doubt it.

i doubt that i’ll ever grow up. who would want to?

and i will likely never grow tired of northern california. who could?

but i think it’s entirely possible that i’ve outgrown hella.

it’s hella over.

who’da thunk it?

* * * *

stay tuned for our next episode:

jesus is my homeboy, but he just ain’t my messiah.

* * * *

reading assignment: third world america : arianna huffington

a eulogy for america’s middle class by everyone’s favorite self loathing one percenter. written in an authorial style that can best be described as “english as a second language” and “reads too much huffington post”, she answers a lot of questions plaguing america these last many years, but fails to answer a few big ones like, who the fuck is arianna huffington anyway? why does she get to reprimand the economic elite from her gold plated ivory tower? and where does get off chastising modern media for sensationalism, and overhyping when she runs the g-d huffpo (cough, ahem-kim kardashian’s new bikini body is not headline news-cough. what? nothing.), which was bad enough before it was purchased by aol (cough cough-abc disney time warner cnn!!-cough, ahem. oh, excuse me. must be all this smoke inhalation from roasting coffee). but if you can forget all those things, it’s a brilliant and optimistic book. read it, man.