johnnyhongkong says…

We were in San Francisco for the past few days for a conference and also to visit mammy and pappy hong kong. It was eventful to say the least here are the highlights:

***NCAA POOL***

Yes, my brackets fell apart too when Memphis and Connecticut lost. Even in the one bid where I have LSU and Villanova in the finals, bitch ass Villanova had to go and lose which puts me out of contention. Who the hell names a school Villanova?

***”WILL YOU BUCKLE MY SEATBELT?”***

A woman on the plane asked Mary Milan to buckle her seatbelt. She found it weird when the woman refused to help as Mary fumbled around her bathing suit area looking for the buckle.

The woman kept making weird entreaties at conversation with Mary Milan which Mary skillfully parried. Mary Milan whispered to me, “Hahaha. Is ‘Will you buckle my seatbelt some kind of pick up line? Did you see me digging in her crotchal area? Hahaha. I bet you she’s totally axis-two.”

When the woman finally beat down Mary Milan’s defenses and they started talking, it turned out that the woman had cancer and lost her arm. Mary Milan was appropriately chastened.

***PRAY FOR OUR KIDS***

While we were at Fisherman’s Wharf looking for the supra-ironic “I got crabs at Fisherman’s Wharf” t-shirt, we saw this little kid who looked like Ralphie from A Christmas Story, except with fifty more pounds of baby fat and a set of thick Coke bottle glasses that made him look cross eyed. He stood in the middle of this sea of passing people all four feet of him, with his chest puffed out, looking around, seeming distressed.

As we passed him, Mary Milan said, “Did you see that kid? How cute. Hahahaha. He looks like a bumblebee. Hahahahah.”

“I think that kid is in trouble. We should go help him,” I said.

We rolled over to him and Mary Milan bent down to his eye level and asked, “Hey there. Are you okay?”

“No. I fink. I loss Fank.” he said, in his little kid voice. His tongue still hadn’t figured out its way around some letter combinations. Well hot damn! This was this kidâ€™s lucky day because of all of the bitches at Fisherman’s Wharf, he was talking to none other than Mary Milan who has an auditory processing deficit.

“What?â€

“Fank. Ee’er goin to basroom.”

“What?”

“Fank. Fank…I loss Fank en basroom.”

“WHAT?”

“FANK!!!”

This was when Mary Milan’s maternal instincts kicked in. “I don’t understand what the hell he’s saying. Fate? Fake? Face? Crazy kid.”

I bent down and asked, “Hey there buddy, who are you looking for?”

“FANK!!!”

“Frank?”

He nodded, finally feeling like he had been listened to.

Mary Milan, who earlier in the day had been proposing a Netflix like service except with kids, had just about enough and was ready to send him back if she could to the nearest Kidlet processing center. I, on the other hand, was ready to buy the kid a beer before we set off to search the Wharf for this â€œFrankâ€ (as an aside, Iâ€™d like for everyone to say a prayer for our kids).

Anyway, much to everybody’s relief, the kidâ€™s mom found us talking to him and though worried sick, they had a happy reunion.

***DETOXIFYING HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY***

And finally, as part of the conference, we saw a great lecture by David Spiegel about psychosocial interventions in cancer treatment and the need for community in modern living. Particularly interesting were his remarks about helping cancer patients detoxify death and how some great research in the field of health psychology gets caught in the scientific/scientistic crossfire and consequently very useful knowledge gets lost or goes unreported. Just an hour before, rifling through the Summer collection at H&M, I had totally said all the stuff that he said except in a much more remedial, stupid way. I believe it had something to do with, “academics…research…fuck those bitches…” or something.

More about him and his work here.