on the DL

My old buddy D.L. was in town for a few days to do his opera thing: Lieder Alive

We went to a party on Friday night and it was really fun. I wanted to hang out more but he was busy doing opera fund raising types of things. I found out he missed his flight home on Sunday morning and so hopped on my bike and rode it (and walked it partways) to the Marina where he was staying. This in itself was an adventure. The weather was amazing and I saw parts and aspects of San Francisco that maybe I never have before...sure the Marina area is full of frat and sorority throw-backs, but that doesn't change how lovely it is.

We took a walk and smoked a joint. We went around the SF Yacht club parking lot to the wave organ

I guess it was low tide though because we couldn't hear much through the pipes. Still I liked the walk and I think D. thought it was pretty cool. It's a nice spot. I went there last year and then afterwards we all got sandwiches and ate them near this putting green and an old dude harassed us and started saying how he missed his daughter and we felt bad for him sort of but still wanted him to just leave.

Afterwards we went to some bars and started acting like we were back to 18 and 19 saying things like, "dude I am really fucked up."

Later, I rode my bike on the sidewalk of Van Ness Ave. for most of the way home. When I passed the Matterhorn I longed once again for the day that I may eat the fondue that they offer.

When I got home I watched an episode of The Real Housewives of New Jersey and went to sleep.

It's awesome that D.L. and I are still friends after all of these years. He even pointed out how we're probably family by now. And I think that we probably are.

Have I told you lately...

that I am not EVEN givin a fuck? Well, that's the case. I went to the movies this past Sunday and saw Star Trek (my dad used to call it "Star Drek"). I thought it was pretty ok, but the smugness of Kirk put me off again. As it always has. I guess it isn't entirely William Shatner's fault - it's the character. This after I saw the actor who plays Kirk this time in a magazine photo spread where he had donned a white summer suit and I think maybe even some seersucker (both majorly awesome). After Star Trek, my movie-going hunger was not satiated, so I suggested we see Drag Me to Hell knowing full well that my squeamish self cannot handle that shit. Suffice to say - I was terrified by that movie; it's really good. I will not be viewing another horror movie until the 20's. This was only my 2nd one of the aughts (the first was The Ring which I saw with Anna Luckey at the multiplex in Long Island City and which kept me up all night and caused me to move the VCR to another part of the living room farthest from my bedroom door). All I can say is that the shadows and the goat in DMTH tore me up.

In other news, I have moved to a new apartment in the Castro district. I am very pleased to have moved away from my former roommates - those self-serving sanctimonious bitchez - and to be more centrally located. There are many uncharted sandwiches to sample. I will bravely and proudly explore.

Dan Fogelberg

Such hits! Run for the Roses, Leader of the Band - these are seminal favorites...but Dan Fogelberg inspires a certain amount of ambivalence in me. I remember his jams piping through my parents' car speakers on epic drives we'd take when I was a kid. The radio was always tuned to an easy listening station. I long railed against this "easy listening" tag as many of the "songs" they play on such stations are actually quite difficult to listen to.

this started out to be a post about my ambivalence toward Dan Fogelberg, but it isn't that anymore. Now it's about how I have 900 things to do at work and lack the focus to accomplish even 90 of them. about how I feel estranged from friends. and about how beautiful the weather is here in San Francisco right now. about how even with a linksys update my computer keeps dislodging itself from the internet.

about how I went to karaoke on Monday night and shared a moment with my friend S. about the Eagles' song "I Can't Tell You Why" and how it's amazing and totally the best Eagles song by far. or the heat wave and the park and how everyone went. even me. I sat down and ate a burrito with a group of strangers (friends you've just not met yet - actually friends of a friend) while they shot the shit. about the cops and how they said the park was "closed down" and we should move on.

about my sanctimonious housemate about the stars I saw right before the end of 2008 about time I had a place to lay my head without worry and without trouble and about time I changed my shoes.

big lunch

I was fantasizing earlier about eating spaghetti and layer cake and having movie marathon. This may have led to my having eaten a real big lunch. I had some cauliflower dahl soup, two chicken tenders, some brown rice and one deviled egg.

I am about to bust and I feel dizzy.

Predelictions for predictions

I always thought the weather forecast was the best part of the late newscast when I was growing up. Five day forecast. and weather.com has a ten day forecast. And then I check my horoscope fairly frequently, particularly when I am feeling sort of out of sorts for no specific reason. Like tonight. so I just checked that shit and the shit is freaky. I mean it is bringing up things like I have to not waste my energies now because I will need the strength in a few years and how I need to work diligently now to convince my employers and everyone that I am "worthwile" now, so that later when I am "challenged" things will go smoother for me. I mean I just want a regular horoscope. Just tell me something like: AM clouds, PM sun. Or 67% humidity or triple H's (hazy, hot, humid) or tell me about the wind chill, the bitter cold, the scorcher, the downpour, the t-storms, even the motherfucking wintry mix.

Thinking too far into the future has never gotten me very far, neither has concentrating on the minutia of the moment. Where is my present tense? It's in this headache and this vague feeling of wrongness and the 60 people who were bombed in Islamabad and I don't know what else.

I think I need to work out some interdimensional travel soon. Hopefully those hallucinogens will come through in time for my trip to the forest, or whatever's left of the forest. I will have to see the charred remains for the trees I suppose.

I am I said

is what I'm listening to right now while I am typing this. Earlier I watched the fantastic Paul Mazurksy movie, An Unmarried Woman starring Jill Clayburgh and Alan Bates. That movie is so 70s, so laughably emotional, so emotionally engaging, and, in the end, for me, joyous. So good. I've only seen it once or twice before. It came in great handy today after a terrible telephone debacle with my father in the early afternoon. I won't go into details because it was pretty horrible, but at one point he said, "Now don't get emotional..."

But, basically, I am not even givin' a fuck about that. Not now, not while I'm killing this bottle of rum from Puerto Rico. I am prepping myself to go to my friend's karaoke birthday party. It's being held at an establishment in Japantown. The last time I went there it was six months ago. This time I will wear a hat.

I cannot change from the Neil Diamond pocket my mp3 player has landed in. I am prepared to walk to Japantown from here in the Noe Valley/Outer Mission hinterland. I am preparing myself mentally everyday of my life to go to Benihana Japanese steakhouse one of these days. Benihana is like Greece or Spain to me at this point. I can imagine going, I can taste it, but I will have to step through some real? imagined? perceptional or dimensional skein to actually make myself physically and mentally there. You know? Shilo is playing now. "Young child with dreams, dream every dream on your own. When children play, seems like you end up alone..."

a weekend

It's been such nice weather in San Francisco - the summer, the indian summer, two months of pure delightfulness and then the cold backlash of damp rain that never pours just envelops. But later for that shit. I took a walk around Noe Valley on Saturday just to get out of the house. I considered heading to Ocean Beach, but didn't feel up to the bike ride that would've entailed and I didn't really want to take a streetcar all that way either. So I walked up Church St. to 24th and turned left and walked to Castro St. where I took another left and started climbing up into the hills. Around a corner after the first steep crest I saw these flowers. I've never seen anything like them. I continued on, getting winded from the hot still-winded day. It seemed to me that I was in one of those snow globes, except if the atmosphere shook, there'd be no kind of precipitation results, just the same blue bright stillness. I made it to a couple scenic vistas that were very satisfying. I called my grandmother from one of them and fielded her "so, when are you getting married?" questions for at least the twenty-thousandth time of my life. I let her know that I like my job now. She seemed satisfied with that and then started paying me a bunch of compliments, saying, "you come from a good background..." and so paying herself a compliment or two in the process. I love my grandmother. She's what they call formidable.

Eventually I made it to an art opening and then to Dolores Park for a bit before calling it a night.

Today I woke up late, made breakfast and had a coffee, rode my bike to the store to buy flour and nutritional yeast, went to Atlas Cafe and read some of Point Counter Point, the Aldous Huxley novel I'm reading, until these two ladies at the table next to mine on the sidewalk started raising their voices during the emotional squabble they were apparently having. Eventually, it became too much to endure, but not before I heard snippets of a quarrel about somebody's step-father and choosing not to continue friendships with people who one never got along with in the first place. To keep things short, it was a mess of third rate dross laid out by some typical-looking early-middle-aged ladies of the very tan, very much skin showing in mid-afternoon variety. I left to come back to the apartment and make Basil Pot gravy. I then feasted on 1 1/2 bowls of gravy, gomasio, red onion, tomato and shredded white cheddar cheese.

Full, satisfied, and fresh from reading an article about the mystery of who blew up the Los Angeles Times builing in 1910, I retired to my bedroom to make a mix tape for Mixing People is Meeting People - a monthly mix tape swap and dj nite that I think is an excellent idea. I'll head over there in about an hour I suppose. and that will be the end of the weekend. good night.