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NEW ORLEANS - I appreciated the nice e-mail I got from the lady in the Pacific Northwest who said I shouldn't freak out too much about this birthday. This year it fell on Palm Sunday. ("Falls", as I write this. I'm not quite 50 yet, though I shall be by the time I complete this installment of my online diaries and you read it.
By then it will be The Day After for both of us. If you have a mobile device, you will have pre-viewed the wireless version of this wired magazine and maybe even dashed me off a quick e-mail about how I can improve upon the Beta.
Right now things seem to have turned in my favor. The gods and goddesses smile upon their little fool (Last week's word was "tool," wasn't it?) and have decided to screw around with someone else's fate for a while. That person has my sympathies. Those capricious celestials can be cruel in seeking their amusement from our lives.
I've asked my boss for a raise, which I want to believe I'll get by this birthday, seeing as how I'm as faithful to this company as the day is long and they'll be getting me on the cheap even after the raise. But this is Nawlins. Anything can happen.
I'm waiting to hear that IREX has wired me the grant funds for the next part of my project as Virtual (Visiting) lecturer for the school of journalism in Yugoslavia. I want to buy a bed, a prerequisite for cultivating a new girlfriend.
My friend Barbara's significant other, Rich, joked today that on the Saturday night before my B-day I should pick up two 25 year olds. Hardee-har-har-har!!! Next year, he continued, I'll have to settle for three seventeen year olds. At that rate I'd not only be a cradle-robber (something I was accused of a couple of times in my actual youth) but also a felon. I don't think so.
I've started this rumination a week earlier in the hope that this time we'll (I'll) get the magazine out on schedule.
That depends on my multiple commitments. I'd like to believe, now that it's My Time, I'll get the chance to work on what I love. But I don't take anything for granted. You shouldn't, either.
24 March ‚ It's the last half hour (I want to believe) before my roomie Carlos gets back and takes his three dogs over to his Dad's so that I can finish cleaning house so that our place will be presentable to my (expected) guests for this afternoon's barbecue. For number 50 I decided to harken back to the old Rod, the entertainer, who Terry jibed, "Use to collect people around you like satellites around the Sun." He'll be happy to know that something of that old Rod has returned for this scarey anniversary of my birth.
There's something slightly sad about a man having to throw his own 50th birthday party, but I've felt it better than not to dwell on that.
Instead I've decided that ‚ with all the well-chornicled (mostly sexual) mistakes of my past, the shame and guilt that drove me into almost a decade of celibacy ‚ it's quarter past time that I was able to "forgive" myself, as the pop pscyh gurus insist.
So it seems like a good idea to write to you before whatever happens to me on my 50th birthday. I've put all the ingredients in place:
Now I'll simply stir and simmer. The results s/b (should be) be amusing.
Before it all begins, though, I thought I'd share a couple of (relatively) lucid thoughts with you.
You see, I won't actually be 50 until 4:00 p.m. Central Time (our standard time here in Nawlins.) I keep thinking it just won't happen. At 3:59 p.m. "Poof!" I'll magically disappear. I'll be a memory. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Well, that didn't happen, Rod. -- Ed.]I'm still scared shitless.
I mean, come on! I'm the guy who didn't plan anything past the age of 36! I've been improvising ever since. Some of that improvisation was not only badly executed, it gave me this grey beard years before I deserve it. I look like a Black version of Hemingway at 60, except I don't have a paunch. I've been running around too much during the last year. Too much Scotch, Serbian brandy, late night rants, walking, walking, walking around the world --- did I ever share with you that transcript of Felicity's party in London? Darn! I knew I'd forgotten something. (It's a hoot!)
24 March, 6:30 p.m.: The party was a bust, of course. I know lots of people looking for free food who can't even bring over a six pack of beer. They drank my beer and ate my food and then decided it was time to watch the basketball game. Well, I wasn't AT ALL down with that.
So, after the landlord pinned a dollar on my chest --- (a New Orleans tradition that Carlos, born and raised here, seems not to know about)‚ I went down to the local neighborhood bar for a Scotch and to be with you again.
Ted, the bartender, bought me a Scotch. Robin, a grad student at UNO and a former news writer for CNN, gave me a kiss and a hug and a pound of crawfish.
Barbara and Rich sent me a cordless, digital phone for my birthday. I was floored. When I saw the box, at first, I thought it was one of those joke boxes. But it was the real thing. I'm supposed to be in the modern world. I guess that was the message. But I'm not good at interpreting messages.
Matt, my ex-roomie, showed up at the bar, the Parkview Tavern, near City Park, with Keith and Stevan from San Francisco. Keith, Matt and I used to be co-workers in San Francisco. They came over for the birthday party that wasn't.
Matt figured, after a bit of reflection, that I would be at the bar.
Duh.
Keith and Stevan ate the crawfish Robin had saved for me and then took off to the Quarter with Matt.
(See what I mean?) It would have been out of character for Matt to give something, instead of looking for something to take. And if Keith and Stevan had not eating all of my gift from Robin it would not be New Orleans, now would it. When I got back to the apartment, Carlos said: "Damn, man! Those Dudes were starving! Did you tell them this was only about the food?"
I had no answer. How could I. I've lived in New Orleans (and known Matt) long enough to know what to expect. Use and abuse.
Lots of my co-workers from my Day Job said they would stop by ... But I already know about The New Orleans Way, as you should from reading about it from me by now. He who say don't do, he who do don't need to say.
Tiffany, the photographer from the Times-Picayune and stringer for the Associated Press, bought me a double Scotch. I'll see if she wants to toss a few darts ...
25 March, 2002: Kep Mo sings that he's gonnah make his world better by making himself a better man. Hmmn... Seems like something I've been trying to do.
It's just a problem fanning off the vultures and emotional vampires. (Oops! Strike that! Sounds too much like self-pity.)
What I meant to say was: I find myself getting more accustomed to what people are like in New Orleans and what to expect of them. I am learning the city. (Much better!)
"Cry on my shoulder about Love..."The publisher is supposed to end on a Grace Note. I've been looking for that all day.
I constantly get complimented on the music I find on the jukeboxes at bars.
I've been called generous to a fault, even as I go deeper and deeper into debt.
I have one friend who has, unfailingly, shown her love and appreciation of me over twenty years.
I have accumulated a number of people who think my name is "That Bastard Rod."
I am now 50. Couldn't dodge the bullet.
Now what I am supposed to do with my life?
"Work like you don't need the money,
"Love like you've never been hurt,
"Dance like no one is watching..."
Rod
Rod was a columnist for the Andover News Network, where he wrote over two hundred articles on web design and development issues. He was also principal writer and Editor for IT Manager's Journal, where he reviewed technology issues weekly, producing 383 editorials. He became the Managing Editor for Electronic Mail/Newsletter Publications at Andover.net at the end of February, 2000, and left in September of the same year. He was a contributing writer for ACCESS magazine, which appears both on- and offline for 10 million readers in 100 newspapers like the San Francisco Chronicle, New York Post, Boston Herald, Austin American-Statesman, Denver Post and Orlando Sentinel, among others. Rod was the US reporter for Silicon.com, a division of Network Multimedia Television in London, UK, reaching 3.5 million European readers, until May, 2001.
This year he's working as Assistant to the General Manager of a Big Easy company that does restaurants and nightclubs. (Think: The Boy.) Oh yeah, Rod's designing Web sites for other people. And he's the instructor in Editing for Internet Publications at the Novi Sad School of Journalism in Yugoslavia. In his spare time, he chases women. 
Rod lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, right now. The new home of the magazine. He wants to live somewhere civilized when he grows up. Wish him Luck.
He continues to be committed to integrity, chastity and a dose of humility.
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