3-28-09

For many years, I've been noticing strange coincidences in my life. When one pops up, my girlfriend Brigette never fails to respond "It's your life, babe." But I think there may be something to it. And so, I've decided to create this blog tracking these weird coincidences.

With time, I'm hoping others will share similar coincidences from their own life.

Anyhow, my latest brush with "Hmmm, weird" came just today. Last night, while watching the Johnny Depp movie The Ninth Gate on cable, I noticed that his character, an expert on rare books, was named Dean Corso. This sounded vaguely familiar. I then realized that the writer of the story was having a bit of fun, and that the character's name was a combination of Dean, as in Dean Moriarty, a character from the most famous work of beat fiction, Jack Kerouac's On the Road, and Corso, as in beat poet Gregory Corso. I pointed this out to Brigette, and commented that I hadn't thought of Gregory Corso in many years.

Well, today, after having breakfast with some friends, I suggested we go to a bookstore. Even though I meant to suggest we head for a book store in Burbank, California, Brigette intuitively headed for the nearest cool book store to the restaurant, the Iliad Bookstore in North Hollywood. This turned out to be a brilliant bit of mis-communication. Once I realized where we were headed, I thought "what the heck, why not."  

Well, once inside, two strange things happened. First, while looking through a book on baby names, Brigette looked up the name Fitzgerald, which I'd recently suggested as a middle name for our baby about to be. Now I'd suggested this as an homage to both F. Scott Fitzgerald and John Fitzgerald Kennedy. But the book gave us another reason. The book said Fitzgerald meant "son of the Spearmighty". My last name, of course, is Speer, a variant of spear. Now what are the odds?

Anyhow, a few minutes later, I noticed a book at the top of a shelf that I thought might be interesting. While it proved to be no big deal, when I climbed up the ladder to get a good look at it I noticed an interesting book on the shelf just below. This book was entitled "The Autobiography of Jack Black." I thought "Now this can't be THE Jack Black, could it?" Of course it was not THAT Jack Black. But when I opened up the book I nevertheless received a surprise. The inner page had three handwritten words..."GREGORY CORSO'S BOOK." Someone at the bookstore, furthermore, had added "Autographed by the poet Gregory Corso" and had marked it up to 25 dollars.  Needless to say, my mind was blown. I immediately told Brigette. Her response was, no surprise, "It's your life, babe!"

Anyhow, I think we've got a middle name for our son.  Fitzgerald. We wouldn't want to mess with the coincidence gods, now would we?

And no, I didn't buy the book.

4-24-09

On 10-29-08 I was reading an email with the TV on in the background. In the email, the writer, Moses Avalon, was writing about the demise of the record industry. Out of the blue, he noted that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world will come in 2012. JUST as I read that, however, the voice on the TV, on a program that had come on after the program I'd been watching had ended, said "2012." I couldn't believe my ears. I immediately replayed the TV (we have Tivo) and sure enough the program was talking about the Mayan calendar, and the end of the world coming in 2012. It noted that, according to Mayan prophecy, greed will bring about this downfall and that "for half there will be food, for others misfortunes. A time for the end of the world of God. A time for uniting for a cause." Now, the odds of me randomly reading "2012" just as I randomly heard "2012" would have to have been one in a hundred million, right? It made me start to wonder if I was receiving some sort of message. 

I then realized that my six-year old nephew had died exactly 10 years earlier. 10 years to the day, within the hour. This led me to wonder if someway somehow my nephew was trying to communicate with me from some other world. This feeling lasted about a day.

I've had an even stranger experience. In January 1998, I was working as a buyer in the record industry. This means I was taken to lunch. A lot. In my case it also means I ate chinese food. A lot. So much so that I became well-acquainted with the fortunes one was likely to find in a fortune cookie. Well, one day I received what for me was a quite unusual fortune. It read "You will soon witness a miracle." I thought it so unusual I brought it back from lunch and showed it to a few co-workers. I thought it was kind of funny. But, then the next day, which I believe was a Friday, things started to get weird. At a different chinese restaurant, but in my very next fortune cookie, I received an even stranger fortune, which seemed to confirm that I would soon witness a miracle. It read "Something amazing will happen on Monday." I was like, "Wow, I'm gonna witness a miracle on Monday." I made a big joke of it. I asked people to predict what miracle I was gonna witness, etc.

By Monday, however, I'd almost forgotten about it. I did my work and went to lunch (no Chinese this time) but nothing unusual happened. Come late afternoon, my friend Deborah dropped off a large mail tub in my office and asked me the status of my miracle-watch. I opened my mail as I explained to her my slight sense of disappointment. As I opened one package--a promo CD of the artist Kristen Hersh's album Strange Angels, however, something caught Deborah's eye. It was a little metal angel. Deborah asked if she could have it. I said, "Yeah, sure," figuring it could only bring me luck. Deborah took the envelope containing the angel and returned to her office. As she did so, however, I reached back in the tub containing 20-30 packages and opened the next one. It was...a promo CD of the artist Kristen Hersh's album Strange Angels. Someone from the label (Rykodisc) had screwed up and sent me two packages. It occurred to me that this was the miracle. As soon as I gave something away, it had been returned. I thought of the Beatles' album Abbey Road, and their song "The End," and its lyrics "And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make." 

I went into Deborah's office. She was sitting down behind her desk with a strange look on her face. I started to tell her that I thought my getting a second strange angel as soon as I gave her the first one was the miracle I'd been waiting for. No response. I started to apologize for sounding like a freak. She said something like "No, I totally believe you" and handed me back the angel I'd given her. She then handed me a short slip of paper that had come with the angel in the envelope, but which I had not read. The slip explained that in South America small metal angels like the ones I was holding were nailed on church walls, and that they represented prayers. The slip said further that these angels are known as Milagros...Spanish for...MIRACLES. 

A fortune said I would soon witness a miracle. A second fortune said something amazing would happen on Monday. And on Monday, I received not one but two miracles in the mail, one replacing the other as soon as I gave it away.

Now what are the odds of that? A billion to one? A hundred billion to one? You tell me. I was so unnerved by this coincidence that I spent months trying to figure out its meaning. I thought for a time it had something to do with a female friend who had an angel painting at her house. This led me to tell her I approved of her dating a guy I otherwise knew little about. They soon got married. I thought the glory of their love was somehow connected to the miracle I'd witnessed.

I ran into her a few years later, however, and she told me they were now divorced. So much for miracles... Or at least our understanding of them.

12-07-10

One night, about a year ago, I dreamt a ray of light was slowly flowing from my forehead, down along my body, and across the room to my son's crib. JUST as the ray of light touched my son's forehead, however, he screamed out in real life, and woke me from my dream... Needless to say, this scared me a little. The next morning, by the light of day, moreover, I noticed a small red mark in the middle of his forehead. This led me to do some reading, whereby I discovered that psychics consider the middle of the forehead "The Mind's Eye." This got me thinking maybe I was psychic or something.

That feeling didn't last long. 

Unfortunately, however, that feeling returned today. Last night, while putting my son to bed, I started thinking about famous people who've died of cancer. This led me to think a series of thoughts that went something like this: "Huh, I wonder how Elizabeth Edwards is doing. Oh crap. I haven't heard much about her lately. Maybe this means she's gonna die soon. Tomorrow. She's gonna die tomorrow. Well, how do I know this? I don't know. I feel this. I have this really strong feeling she's gonna die tomorrow. Geez, should I go out and predict her death to my mom and sisters, waiting for me in the living room? No, that would be tacky. Besides, I'll probably be wrong and look really really stupid."

She died today.

7-13-11

On 7-10-11 my father died in Everett, Washington. While at lunch the next day in Seattle, while awaiting our flight back to Los Angeles, my brother and I talked about the fairly awful experience we'd just been through--flying up to Washington at the spur of the moment when we heard our dad was in the hospital with bleeding ulcers, only to watch him slowly bleed to death when we discovered no one was willing to operate on a man in such poor health. 

Anyhow, somewhere in this conversation I got sidetracked into telling one of the many amusing anecdotes I'd saved up from my days in the record industry. I told my brother how, while having dinner awaiting a musician's performance at a nightclub, the musician's wife started singing to me from across the table. This serenade came without a warning, and was essentially an a cappella rendering of a medley of TV show themes--first the theme from Gilligan's Island, and then the theme from the Brady Bunch. Needless to say, I was puzzled as hell. Well, at the end of this medley, which seemed to go on forever, my questions were answered--the musician's wife, now somewhat embarrassed, explained that she was the daughter of TV producer Sherwood Schwartz, and that she'd grown up on the sets of Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch. We ended up talking for an hour or more.

There was one part of the story I couldn't recall, however, and that was the name of this wonderful woman. I tried a few on for size for my brother, but they didn't sound right, and so I left her name a blank.

Well, the next day I received a call. As I picked up the phone I heard two words "Hope Juber." It was my brother's voice. I thought "what the heck is he talking about?" He then repeated the words "Hope Juber" and explained "that's the name of Sherwood Schwartz's daughter." I replied "You're right! That's it" and then asked him how he'd found out.

He told me he'd turned on his TV. She was up there on the screen. She was being interviewed. Her father had just died.

4-5-13

Here's another head-scratcher. My son is now almost 4 years-old. He's really interested in animals, especially birds. Like most little boys, however, he just loves to watch dogs, and makes a point of following them around when we're visiting someone who has one. So far, in his life, he's had multiple visits with seven different dogs. In descending order, based upon the number of days he's spent watching them and following them around, these dogs are Pixie (his Aunt Ninette's dog), Boone, Sadie, and Puppy (his Aunt Rhonda's dogs), Bailey (his Uncle Mike's dog), Bella (his Aunt Judy's dog), and Schotzie (his Uncle Darren's dog). Well, last fall things started falling apart, and a number of the dogs required medical attention. Pixie had to have surgery. Bella was sick. And then this year, things got even worse. Sadie was in a bad way. Bailey had to get a pacemaker. It became increasingly harder for Puppy to get up from the floor. It's not all that surprising, then, that, so far this year, four of the seven dogs my son has come to know have been put down. Sadie died a few months back. She was followed by three others. What's surprising, however, is not that three more have died, but which three died, and when. Two of the sickest dogs--dogs that could barely walk as of a few weeks ago, Puppy and Bailey, are still alive--for now. But we received notice last week that Bella was to be put down on Monday, April 1. And we received word on Monday April 1 that Boone was put down earlier that day. And then that night--the night of April 1--we received word that Pixie was put down that day as well. Three dead dogs. Three different cities, hundreds of miles apart. Three different owners, whose only connection to each other was through us. I mean, what are the odds my son would know six dogs, and have three of them put down on the same day? A billion to one, right?

The poor health of Puppy and Bailey, of course, adds another element to this tragedy. Assuming they don't make it through the year--which is not remotely a stretch at this point--it would mean that the six dogs my son knows best, and heck, that I know best, all died within a year. Pretty freaky. 

P.S. On April 17, Puppy was put down. And then there were two...