The Internet is in danger of turning into CB Radio at this point, all Vietnamese bandit cabs and truckers with 100 watt footwarmer amps. Bleah!

Apologies to those on the feed list who got all of CGH at once again because of RSS silly.

Pouss has been probably the best relationship of my life, but we both want to see other people and it’s clear that we’re going to be better off as friends. Dating a younger person hasn’t bothered me, but she really has a very different life to lead than I do, and there are major social and cultural differences between us.

With all this in mind, I am seriously looking for a woman to spend time with. It doesn’t have to be a sexually intimate relationship (cross-species issues prevented anything of this kind with Pouss), but I do like physical closeness, shared time together, and a lot of communication. For any of the ladies who might be interested, here are some of the things I’ve come to like and dislike over the last couple of years.

* It’s great that you like it when I kiss you on top of the head and hold your hand. I like sharing those things.

* I understand that when you lick my elbow for 20 minutes that you are showing affection, but please don’t. It leaves a red spot on my arm.

* Mealtimes should be a shared joy. I know that food is important to a lot of people, and so is punctuality, but my own enjoyment of our time together isn’t enhanced when you yowl for 20 minutes before you’re fed.

* I do like a woman who is warm and pleasant to the touch, but maybe next time less facial hair would be a plus.

* Although I am sensitive to the problem of eating disorders in society and I do not wish to be cold and rejecting about someone’s pain, it has struck me as odd that someone would eat that much and then insist on wolfing down half the lawn and vomiting on the couch. I think I’d like a less dramatic approach to food in my next gal.

* If you communicate with me that you like having your belly rubbed, I’ll do that for you. But you have to listen to me when I ask you not to stand on my neck.

* I’m a responsive and sensitive person, and I will attend your needs. There is no need to jump on the table, or to rustle plastic bags in the night. Just tell me, and I’ll talk to you.

* No matter how much you knead my breasts, I cannot produce milk. The whole thing is painful for both of us; just drop it.

* It’s totally ok in the relationship if you need, in the deepest darkest hours of the early morning, to run about the house screaming and clutching a stuffed catnip-filled duck in your mouth. I’m used to it.

So, I’m on the market again. I feed you, I know where you want to be scratched, and I’m good to fall asleep on. I hope I’ve been honest and forthright about my issues and needs, and I hope to find that special someone soon.

1. I read years ago that some of the sharpest increase in tobacco abuse was in children using smokeless tobacco. Obviously this is a social ill we must strive to defeat, and the private sector is the place to do it. My solution: kid-friendly, fun nicotine patches for kids who need to quit the habit. Flintstones vitamins, Yu Gi Oh characters, Disney stuff. Make the patch fun, and you’ll remove that childish hunger for chaw!
   
2. Firearms ownership isn’t nearly as popular as it should be in this great country. Especially the younger set are left out; they think it’s boring just because they’ve never experienced the raw joy of a .357 bucking and sparking in your hand as it fills a target with lead. My solution: A new, hip gun magazine for young people on the move. I want to call it BANG!. Sort of a Details or Maxim vibe, celebs, cute girls, emphasis on fun. It’s a huge win.
   
3. Jack Daniels Fruit Rollups.
   
4. Blue Velvet: The Musical.. ON ICE!. Just imagine. The ice is quiet and empty as the theme music slowly swells. Then, out of one corner comes a bloody ear on skates. How can anyone resist?
   
5. “Steps”, the bar for AA people. It’ll be crowded, smoky, full of red-faced jerks, and sell overpriced drinks in bottles. Just no alcohol. I figure I can franchise this in any town that has a TGI Fridays or a Bennigan’s.

No need to pay me for these. Just remember: I was the spark that started your flame.

• Brazilian jazz

• 60s Motown hits
• Generic “oldies” (usually I can’t stand this stuff)
• Classical piano, especially Satie and Mozart
• Older, slower ska (no 90s stuff please)
• Spanish guitar music

What’s your list? What’s summer music? I’m interested.

One night I was there at about midnight, waiting for the last #560 to Westwood. The bus stop was in front of a shoe store with the appealing name of “Shoes for Sale”, a discount outlet that sold athletic shoes to the local gang members.

One of these guys, a stereotypical hairnet-and-white-T-shirt Mexican gangbanger, was waiting with me for the bus. He was peering in the shoe store window as I listened to my Walkman. Finally I noticed that he was trying to get my attention. I took off the headphones.

“Hey man,” he said, “come check this out.”

I tried to ignore him. I didn’t want to get rolled at the bus stop; this had happened before and it wasn’t fun. And this guy was a tough character for sure.

“No really, you got to see this. C’mere, man. ” He had an urgency to his voice and was looking pretty genuine. I decided to take the risk and walk over to him.

Cholo guy pointed into the shoe store.

“That is fucked-up man. Check that shit OUT.”

He was right. The display window was full of rats. Happy, playful rats. They were rushing about playfighting, crashing into things, and gnawing at the shoes in an ecstacy of rodential play. There were at least five of them that I could see immediately, and undoubtedly many more.

“I ain’t never buyin’ no shoes there, man,” said Cholo Guy. “That is just wrong.”

“Yeah,” I said. “You’re right, that’s a lot of rats. Really a lot of rats. That is seriously messed up.” We were both quiet and bonded a bit while watching the verminous riot inside Shoes for Sale.

Then the bus arrived and we both boarded, glad to be saved by the RTD from the Kingdom of the Rats.

A hangout has certain features. It’s open long hours, or always. It is semi-public; maybe anyone can be there, but generally a known group is there. It’s a place where you can do something if you want, or do nothing. It should also be a place where you can have a function if you want, such as working there or helping out in some way. And it should be a place where arriving and leaving are easy, without a lot of explanation.

I pretty well trashed my education at the college radio station. When that task was complete, I left to become a music critic and journalist, and the newspaper became my hangout as well as my employer. I was there from the start of the day until the last bus back home over the hill.

My next few hangouts have been a series of coffee houses. I had already been a regular at the college coffee house, and the arrival of lots of these places en masse in the 90′s made it easy to find congenial haunts. There were a couple in West L.A. that I haunted, and made some casual friends at, but never really hit the mark. They were open late and I could socialize or not, as the specification above demanded, but I never clicked with the people there. Partly this was because my main hangout turned out to be almost entirely full of people in 12-step recovery from substance abuse, which isn’t my situation.

When I moved back to Orange County ten years ago, I pretty quickly found my current hangout, a branch of the local coffeehouse chain. It’s an expansive place, open from early morning until late evening, with a patio outside. People come and go like sitcom characters, and no particular reason is required for entering or leaving. Some work there, some work next door, some just hang out there. The crowd changes periodically as another group of young people matures for a few years there and moves out to other things. I’ve been there fairly constantly at least since 1996.

As much as I enjoy having a hangout, I think it’s symptomatic of some nasty neuroses. I like to bail out of social situation when they make me nervous, which is way too often. I’m afraid of progress in my life, so a nice static place suits me. I’m socially passive, so having a stream of people who know me drifting past is comforting, like a warm bath.

Probably if I was a more normal social type, I’d have done the bar scene or some other typical activity and found my mate by now, and had 1.5 children and a mortgage. I still can’t decide whether it was a good or a bad thing that I slipped into hangout mode at age 18 and have stayed there for 20 years. I look at the older men sitting around the patio, smoking and talking, occasionally chatting up the younger kids, and I think: me in 10 years? Is that what’s up?

Was David Byrne right when he sang “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens”?