This dude in the elevator is looking at me. Who does that?

Last night, I was having dinner with some people at the greatest margarita in Tulsa…wait, no. I was having dinner at El Tequila which serves the greatest margaritas in Tulsa. Yes, that’s right. But one of the people there having dinner with us was Christopher Tyler(?) Cleveland! How crazy is that? It’s weird when you see these people in music videos on yahoo! Entertainment or you hear their songs playing on sweet shows like MTV’s the Real World, and then you find yourself one night just kickin it with them. Haha little bit of sarcasm there but also a little bit of not sarcasm. Either way, Chris Cleveland is a tight dude and we were sitting there eatin our burritos straight from bomb.com when the conversation turns towards Chris’ new living situation. He’s living with a dude whose name, I believe, is Bong. Now I may have heard that wrong, but every time people say his name, that is what I hear. Thus, that is what I assume his name is. But the main part of this convo that I want to focus on was what he said next.

Here's Chris Cleveland by the way...HOTT haha:

Apparently, Bong is a cat guy. He has two cats that live with Chris and him. I’m not gonna lie, that kinda weirds me out a little bit. I’m trying to stay open-minded but you just don’t meet guys between the ages of 20 and 30 who are into cats. So anyways, it’s beside the point but I definitely have a weird mental image of this Bong guy. At the same time though, I like him. And this brings us to what I hope you will agree is the climax of this story. I don’t remember one of his cats’ names because I didn’t care about it. I just know that the other one had the greatest cat name I’ve ever heard. What was it? “Gray Kitty” !!HAHA!! I love it! Seriously I started dying laughing. You can ask Chris if you want. I really did. Or if you don’t have the ballsticles to go up to the lead singer of Pop-rock band Stars Go Dim and ask him whether I thought that cat’s name was funny, you can also ask Rachel Read. She was sitting right there as well and witnessed the whole thing. Or you can just trust me..

So this flippin awesome kitty name has got me thinkin. It’s hard for me right here because the name “Gray Kitty” sends my mind simultaneously down two different tracks. I know that eventually, I will take you down both of them with me but right now I’m trying to decide which to go with first…

So what exactly is the deal with grEy and grAy. Like what is the difference? I’m sure it’s one of those things that I could find out if I would just take two seconds and google it but I think that I’ll throw out some of my own hypotheses first before I do that. Ok, here are the facts that I know. I know that there is a singer-songwriter named David GRAY. I know that Dave Matthews wrote a song and called it GREY Street. I know that there is a TV show called GREY’s anatomy. I know that, to my eyes, the word GRAY looks more natural than the word GREY. I know that Crayola has chosen to label it’s Crayon GRAY. And the last fact that I know is that there is a major bus line called Greyhound buses. That is pretty much the extent of facts that I know.

Let’s evaluate. OK, the biggest puzzle for me here is that I’ve always thought the Dave Matthews song was referring to the color of the street. As in he was making a poetic reference to the street being dull and GREY. However, then Crayola (a pretty reliable source when it comes to colors I would think) goes with GRAY (I know because I’ve looked before and wondered). That’s confusing for me. However, I guess that Dave could have been referring to the actual name of the street. Like someone might live on GREY street or something. Definite possibility. But then there’s also the question of whether one of them is typically a name? Because we have both a Meredith (sp?) GREY and a David GRAY. So clearly both can be used there as well.

So the only thing that I can think of is that maybe there really is no correct or incorrect use of either one. I find no evidence that says that one is used over the other. So possibly nobody knows why there are multiple spellings of a the same word. Now I shall go to google and see if I’m wrong. Un momento…

Well, apparently, it’s a regional thing. I guess that GREY is the standard British spelling of the word but then there are a lot of places in America that spell the word GRAY. So I’m going to say that my hypothesis was almost fully true. There is a little bit of reason to the different spellings but I think that, in general, you can pretty much spell it however you’d like and the words are interchangeable.

I spoke of another road I might travel earlier but I think I’ll skip that road.

….hmmm. This morning I was supposed to take a shower. That didn’t happen. The night before, a shower in the morning sounds just amazing. Then my alarm goes off (clip from Skinny Love by Bon Iver) at 7 something and I’m like HELL NO I’m not getting up just to take a shower. So I lie in bed absolutely as long as possible and usually end up waiting too long to get up and I barely have time to even get dressed before I go to work.

So I’ve pretty much got my morning routine down to an art. Everything is a race. I deodorize with one hand while givin myself a little bit of the ol’ cologne with the other hand at the same time. I fly through brushing my teeth. Like I think part of the reason that my brushing is so effective is that the friction buildup between my toothbrush and teeth literally incinerates the evil that tries to destroy my teeth. (Don’t worry though, I am still thorough) anyways, etc. etc. I am quick with my morning routine. Then I hit this one point at the very end of my routine. I like to use this stuff:

I used to use the minty kind because just the thought of citrus mouthwash sounded wrong and disgusting. Having finally tried it though, I can tell you that if you ever felt the same way I did, flippin try the citrus. It’s awesome.

Anyways though, there is a big decision that I have to make the instant that I put that stuff into my mouth. Once it’s in there you really only have about a minute of having it in your mouth before it begins to burn more than you can take. The first option is to stand there with it in my mouth while I’m at the sink, wait out the minute, and then spit. This is the safer option but it does force me to basically waste an entire minute…and minutes are valuable when you play the last minute game that I play in the mornings. The second option though is to put it in my mouth, and then fly through the house trying to grab all the things I need for the day in time that I can be out the door and can spit into the yard on my way to the car. This is more dangerous because if there is even one little hic up in the move from the bathroom to the yard, you can end up with an extra 20 seconds of mouthwash time which is excruciating. The other issue is that sometimes my mother is sitting out in the living room and wants to say bye or something. Then I have to make some awkward noise that sounds like a goodbye and run out quickly. (part of the game is to not let her know that I have mouthwash in my mouth) Anyways, today I didn’t have the guts to go for it and I ended up just standing in front of the mirror wasting an entire minute of day.

This brings us to your last question for the moment. Does liking this man make you old?

That, my friends, is Louis Armstrong in case you didn’t know. This man’s music puts off one of the classiest vibes I’ve ever heard from music. Like I flipped on a little bit of the Louis yesterday and was like “dang, I feel underdressed for this.” This music sounds so legit that it almost seems wrong to have an electric copy of it. It should only be able to be played either through an old busted radio or from a vinyl record. Either way though, that doesn’t answer our question. The question was whether liking this guy makes you old.

I was talking about this with a young lady that I work with yesterday and I think, in the end, it depends on what else you listen to. Take for instance, if you’re 22 and you go from listening to Loius to listening to Sinatra to listening to Pink Floyd to listening to Pete Townshend to listening to James Brown, then yes. You are old and you need to join the rest of us 22 year olds in generation Y. However, if you go from listening to (insert cool, hip band name here) to listening to Louis Armstrong to listening to (insert cool, hip band name here) to listening to (insert cool, hip band name here), then I think the addition of Louis to your repertoire just bumps you up a notch on the scale of class and of the eclectic. So if you’re 22, by all means get in there and let Louis do his thing for your ears. But just mix it up a bit so that you don’t end up turning into an old fogey too quickly. That’s all. Louis Armstrong IS legit though. Right now I’m listening to the song Blueberry Hill by him and it’s changing my day into something beautiful.

I’ve gotta stop at this point. However, I do have a couple final requests. A of all, you should start a blog because I want to read about the random stuff you think about too. It’s only fair. B of all, I was going to request that everyone leave a comment so that I know who reads this but forget it. You just do your thing. C of all, get some Louis Armstrong and let him show you what’s up.

Peace out.