G-Man + M.I.A. = A Happy BDAY 15

G-Man backstage with M.I.A.'s dancers

Grady spent the night of his fifteenth birthday trolling the grounds of the Coachella music festival with Jo Ann and Polly. Coachella was part of his bday present from us (the other part is still a secret). He's been going to New Orleans Jazz Fest and Mardi Gras since he was a baby, so he's a veteran in the art of sailing through a hundred thousand people and eating overpriced salted soft pretzels between sets.

Last night, Grady had an access all areas pass, so he ran from stage to stage checkin out his favorite bands, hitting the backstage areas for a closer look when he had time. The main act he wanted to see Saturday night was the British / Sri Lankan rapper M.I.A. He saw her, and tried to jump onstage with her when she invited the crowd to join her under the lights. His attempt to get next to her was foiled by security. Before the show, he hung with her day-glo dancers—and Jo Ann, hipster baby mama extraordinaire, documented the moment in the pic above. I'd bet Jo Ann couldn't have predicted the events of last night 15 years ago in the birthing room at Cedars-Sanai.

Michael's house is cleaned and we're packed. We're gonna hit Coachella one last time before heading back to LA. Grady's first spring break of high school is over. Pablo's first post-chemo GFR (radioactive kidney test) is tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. And tomorrow afternoon, I have to leap head first (haha) into medi-land myself. I'll take the CT scan disc from the hospital and my banged up body to an osteopath in Beverly Hills and find out exactly what's going on and how the path to recovery will look.

Jo Ann and I drove to the crash scene today to take pictures. We found a part of my bike 20 yards down from the crash site. We saw the bottle cap from the water that one of the good Samaritan first-responders gave me (I am going to call and thank the three people who stopped to help, if their info is in the police report). It was pretty harrowing to stand there and look at that location: pitch of the road, the rocks—scary s**t. So grateful to see it from the perspective of, like, being alive—and being alive without a wheelchair.