Home again

Hope you got to relax on the 4th.

I went to visit my dad - had a shot of soju with him to celebrate my birthday and the beginning of my 9 year journey through the tumultuous 20s. To think... marriage, salaries, independence, all lie ahead. Its frightening because all of those things seem so beyond my control. Another possibility is not having any of those things. I've never worried about anything in my life. We'll see how that philosophy plays out when I'm alone, confused, and poor.

Friday night, I celebrated the 4th at the Hollywood Bowl with my mom and my sister. This year the Bowl decided to celebrate the Dodgers 50th anniversary. Tommy Lasorda came on stage halfway through the concert - told some wild jokes, rallied an applause for the U.S. troops, asked us to pray for him and the team, and then led the crowd through "Take Me Out To the Ballgame". He was patriotic I guess, in a rambunctious, catholic-fevered way. I thought he was going to start blabbering. At one point he said "Isn't this great! I got the philharmonica behind me..." I was hoping he'd start cursing the Giants or something but sadly he left the stage and then Randy Newman came on.

Each of us enjoyed the night for different reasons. My mom will only buy Bowl tickets if there are fireworks at the end. Last summer we sat through Gladys Knight all for the sake of fireworks GG umma. My sister loved the night because she just loves music I guess. She knows stuff about the L.A. Phil. I don't know anything. I enjoyed the night because, well, I believe American tradition exists, and it was good to celebrate it- American music (Copland, Gershwin), baseball (They played a recording of Vin Scully's play-by-play of Kirk Gibson's gamewinning homerun), film (Field of Dreams, and whatever the Robert Redford movie was. Robert Redford is just an American icon period).

There were a lot of Jewish families there. I know that I was surrounded by them in my section. I'm glad Jews love their country.

As for me, I could never put my nationality over my ethnicity, but I probably love America more than you. We can have a U.S. history battle to prove it. Or I'll give you a rundown of all the presidential races since Kennedy. Primaries and all.

One thing for certain is that you love the Dodgers more than me. But I know that since I'm from LA and since I call myself an American, I should at least get excited about them. At least I recognized Tommy Lasorda when he stomped onto the stage and at least I recognized Vin Scully's famous world series announcing.

I'm going to the Dodger game this Wednesday. At least I know that since the Padres beat the Diamondbacks today, the Dodgers have a good shot at taking the lead.

As for the players names?
I'm more interested in the season-ending sale at Banana Republic.