Monday musings-Week of Oct. 9

Howdy party people!
I have discovered the coolest little coffee shop in North Long Beach (well, the coolest one until I start my own). Cafe Young and Lazy is small, yet comfy. The Organic coffee is rich and robust (hehe...I said robust...never mind) and most importantly, it's just me, so I get to hog all the WiFi. Hahahaha!
I am making another attempt at studying on this fine Monday. Lots and lots of projects are coming up, plus I have to decide what classes I want to take for the spring (and also decide if I want to return, but that's neither here nor there.)
I was fortunate to check out the Grand Ave. Festival in downtown L.A. this past Saturday. A free performance by Dakah, a hip-hop orchestra in the Disney Concert Hall (which is exceptionally cool), free admission to MOCA and lots of other goodies was highlighted by a free concert by Kinky. My friend Lys has sworn on their greatness since I first met her, so I was lucky to check out the goodness for myself. Frankly, they put on one hell of a show. Great energy, fantastic musical sound (even though the lead singer's mic wasn't on that much) and an overall superb time. I highly recommend their music if you see it at a local Tower Records (which is going out of business this week, so all CDs are 10% off.)

REDCAT (I forget what it stands for, but it's the CalArts Theater right near the Concert hall) showed a series of animated shorts by students and alumni. One short stood out for this musing's purposes.

A fisherman was trying to catch fish in a pond, and was coming up short. Across the lake, he sees a fellow fisherman using "cheese marshmallows: the next great American bait." Realizing the success the other dude is having, he rushes off and comes back with cheese marshmallows. Casting into the lake anticipating great success, he ends up reeling in a crab that is particularly crabby.
Undaunted, the fisherman sees another fellow using the "fishmaster 3000" a high-quality apparatus that gets fish, puts them in the cooler and leaves enough time to grill on the side. The other fisherman looked like Fred Flintstone, so surely he must be cool. So, our friend purchases one of these machines, and proceeds to get a whole lotta nothing.
Defeated and nearly flat (well, he is a cartoon), our hero sees a bear run into the lake, grab a bundle of fish with its bear (yes, that pun is intended) hands and takes dinner home to the family. So, the fisherman gets a bear costume, runs into the lake, scoops up, and discovers that in his possession is a large mermaid. Terrified, he drops her, only to quickly realize that she is what the French call a "hot mermaid" and she's got the hots for him. So they start macking out in the lake, as his cheese marshmallow and fishmaster buds run into the lake with their own bear costume.

The moral of the story: If you're in a bear costume in a lake trying to get some fish and you instead get a hot mermaid, you can officially consider yourself "a product of God's grace." Everyone else gets to say, "but for the grace of God go I..."