Moved to Tahiti
At Bruno's when you forget to punch out you have enter your times manually. So you swipe your manager card and type in your Time In and Time Out, and then the computer asks you your reasons for not punching out. There are 3 options to choose from: Forgot to punch, Open Checks, Moved to Tahiti. I've always chosen the last reason.
I was going to write this long thing about exactly what I was bringing, lists, rationale etc. But who really cares, I don't even care. So tonight I'm off to LA, to eat dinner with Rob and Mandy.
The Onion, truly our finest news source. This one, fellow bloggers, will make you blush.
Link
Folsom blues
I forgot about the Folsom St. Fair and walked to REI to buy some socks for NZ. It's really pretty amazing I've made it this far, in life I mean. Natural selection be damned.
The Pixies Realized
Last minute I was able to trade 2 tickets and sell 2. Best case scenario, that doesn’t happen often.
Catherine came over at 4 after her latest job interview and we took the BART over to Berkeley to see the Pixies at the Greek Theatre on beautiful UC Berkeley’s campus. We had some time before the show so we went to Blake’s and had meatball sandwiches with Tom and watched the Yankees clobber the Red Sox. Nobody was routing for the Yankees at least, and the guy at the table to our left kept yelling, “Hit a dinga!” at the TV, so that was cool. I was having a very Boston evening, Tom (M’head), Catherine (Go Newton!), watching the Sox on the way to see the Pixies (U-Mass). Catherine and I left Blake’s, Tom went to Moes to look at books, and walked through campus in search of the Greek. We only had to turn around once, I’m happy to say. The Greek is a great outdoor amphitheater, big Doric columns on stage, tiered concrete seating for 8,000 (according to the site). We found some concrete slab space about 40 rows back from the stage and watched the last two songs of the first opening band. The Thrills. I didn’t love them, and let’s be honest; you can’t rock out in a skirt. It’s like trying to look tough in a sweater set. Maybe they meant the band name to be ironical. After The Thrills stopped the roadies started roaming around on stage and the pony tailed man on the slab in front and below us who earlier had turned to us and said, “Were you smart enough to bring any weed?” said to his girlfriend “The next band’s called Fear.”
“FEAR?!” I said.
“Yeah Fear.” He said.
Then sure enough there was Lee Ving wandering around on stage wearing jackboots and jeans plugging in all his own shit. For those of you who’ve never had this conversation with me it’s my contention that FEAR’s, “The Record” is the best punk rock album of all time. It’s everything punk wanted to be and seldom was. It was smart and crass and in your face and rude and political and silly and rocking, all at once. I was introduced to FEAR in Montana by a crazy man who did back flips off the Marshal stacks at a show in Bozeman, into the pit, and insisted we listen to FEAR all the way back to Big Sky as he drank a bottle of rotgut rum and screamed out the window, scaring the elk. Lee Ving, FEAR’s front man, was reportedly very close to John Belucci and a cult figure all by himself. He’s the dead guy in “Clue, the movie” the 80’s movie based on the board game. He’s also the bad guy in “Streets of Fire.” Needless to say I was very excited about Lee Ving on the stage, right there, holy shit. I never thought I’d get to see FEAR; FEAR’s “The Record” came out in 1979, when I was 4. Nobody around me had ever heard of them. FEAR’s other albums include: “FEAR, More Beer” and “Have Another Beer With FEAR.” It was everything I could have hoped for. They opened with “I Love Living in the City” and proceeded to play, “Beef bologna”, “More Beer”, “I Don’t Want No Satisfaction, I Just Wanna Get Some Action”, and “Let’s Start a War” (which includes the prescient lyric, “Let’s have a war, we’ll sell the rights to the network.”), among others. I yelled lyrics into the Berkley evening, those around me chuckled, it was awesome.
FEAR stopped after about a half hour and the roadies put the stage together for the Pixies. Catherine went in search of coffee but came back with beer. I will say this about the Pixies; they didn’t come to play fuck-around. They didn’t say anything at all to the crowd until the show was almost over. Black Francis is fat, bald, and fantastic. Kim is the not only the cutest rock star out there, but also the most casual. She stands with her feat not even shoulder width apart, no rocker stance for her, and plays her bass, which is more than half the size of her, in a decidedly shy manner. In fact the only Pixie to say anything to us before the end of the show was Kim who occasionally would grin into her mic and say, “Thanks!” I had the feeling she really meant it, no really, it was a sincere “Thanks.” The Pixies seemed generally surprised and appreciative the whole time. Maybe I was projecting this but that’s the feeling I had. They were never a band that could sell out an 8,000-seat amphitheater 3 nights in a row before they broke up for 14 years. For those of you who’d like to recreate last night’s show in your own home here’s the play list. Note: not all of the song names are correct, but it’s the best I can do.
1. In Heaven
2. Wave of Mutilation
3. Where is My Mind
4. Winterlong
5. Here Comes Your Man
6. Is She Weird
7. Subbaculta
8. Bone Machine
9. Ride the Tide? (not sure about the song name)
10. Dead
11. Send it to me? (ditto)
12. I Bleed
13. Crackity Jones
14. Debaser
15. U-Mass
16. Come On Pilgrim
17. Caribou
18. Gouge Away
19. Broken Face
20. Something Against You?
21. Tame
22. (a song in Spanish, I don’t have this album)
23. Hey
24. Monkey Gone To Heaven
25. Mr. Grieves
26. Valoria
27. Your Proud Son
28. Holiday Song
29. Vamos
30. (insert loud clapping/yelling/whistling to catalyze encore here)
31. Wave of Mutilation (again, weird)
32. Gigantic
33. Into the Light
I also wanted to write about the strange view Catherine and I had of the crowd, or at least of their heads. And about the camera-phones and the puffs of smoke and about how the Pixies really only had one special effect, which was a smoke machine behind the amps. This effect engulfed the drummer in smoke and basically made it look as if the amps were on fire the whole show.
It’s two now, and there’s more. Check back soon and I’ll finish it up.
The Pixies
I bought tickets, in March I think for the Pixies show on Sat night. Then Rob bought them for Friday night. We were going to make groupies of ourselves and go two nights in a row. Then Rob had to cancel and tried to sell his tickets, but couldn't. Then I told Todd I'd work for him on the 25'th, not realizing it was the same Sat for which I had the tickets. I told Todd I couldn't work, which screwed him but we both tried to scramble and work it out. Todd couldn't get anyone else to cover the shift. So I told Rob to send me his tickets for Fri and I'd sell mine for Sat and go Fri and give him the money. So he did, except when I got them they were for Sat. So now I have 4 tickets for Sat, none of which I can use. Trying to sell 2 and trade 2 for Fri or Sun. Or just sell 2 and give 2 to Cat who I promised I'd take. Scheduling, I'm not good at this.
The Beastie Boys
Friday Dylan came to town with 5 of his smoke jumper crew mates and we all went to see The Beastie Boys at the Civic Center. I haven't seen them since '94 which was, and this may be obvious to you but it came as quite a shock to me, 10 years ago. They still have the ability to make me jump up and down. This time they all played their instuments for about 5 songs, which I've never seen or heard of them doing. The rest of the time they were three MC's and one DJ, Mix Master Mike to be precise. I kept waiting for them to be political, I think of them as a fairly political band. They saved it for the last song, which was "Sabotage" and dedicated to "George W. Bush". The place erupted, 10,000 people put their hands in the air. It made me smile. I thought, "Now these are my people."
So who's your favorite B Boy? I'm going with MCA, he's also the most grey. MMM as a close second.
I've been reading somewhere about how revenge is hardwired into the human psyche. Tony Scott shoots a beautiful movie. Some may say cheesy, ham fisted, but undeniably beautiful.
Link
The Stretching Guy
Saturday night JJ and I were upstairs talking about happy hour and how he’s going to sublet my apt while I’m traveling and The Man With The Little Arms. It was a fairly long conversation; we were in the office for a half hour or so. By the time I got back downstairs the bar had filled up a bit and Kaiya was picking mint and laughing to herself. She told me to check out the guy against the wall stretching. Sure enough there was indeed a man, late 40’s, 6’1”, salt and pepper beard, thin, stretching.
Now I’ve stretched in public. At the park for instance, after a run, at the bottom of the Grand Canyon there in front of God and everyone I’ve stretched it out, lifted a leg up behind me, attempted to touch the toes. I’ve even been the guy off to the side of the airport gate stretching before the flight or the back of the plane next to the bathroom. Guilty as charged, I’m a little strange too. I’m pro-stretching. I think everyone should stretch, everyday. But this guy, well this guy had decided to drink mediocre blended scotch and stretch at Bruno’s, for 7 hours.
This is remarkable, not just because drunk stretching is a bad, potentially dangerous idea, but because this was no discreet toe touching in the corner. No this was Downward Facing Dog, in the middle of the bar among 65 or so of his fellow bar-goers, at 11 on Sat night. I’m making 3 mojitos and Stretching Guy is crouched, back to the wall, left leg extended, weight over his left crooked leg, then left leg in right leg out. I’m opening beer and he’s got his hands on his lower back and his face to the ceiling bent over backward. I’m shaking cucumber gimlets and he’s got a hand palm down on the bar and is contorting his body and neck away from the hand, making stretching specific noises. He’s also playing the air piano and switching barstools whenever a new one becomes available. By the time last call rolled around he was really starting to freak me out. He left the bar around 1:45, the most limber drunk man in all of California.
This week
I've been trying to figure out what to post and what not to post, and as is usually the case, I end up posting nothing at all. Everything's flawed or boring or pedantic or hysterical. Then I think, "Well it's my blog, so I can put whatever I want on it." I go round and round and well I still haven't figured it out. So let's just say that the only thing I did this week besides go to work and watch Ken Burns' "The Civil War" (which is 12 hours long or something, and totally amazing. Netflix kids put that on your que.) was on Wed I went and saw Ari Fleisher speak in San Mateo. He was acutely aware that the conservatives in the room were drastically out-numbered and so was disarming and funny and threw the "even though we disagree we're all patriots here and God bless America . . .” rap at us. Nothing that remarkable about his speech. He mostly talked about what a great guy W is. What I, and most of the people there, wanted to hear about was what a lousy President W is. But every time that got brought up he made a joke or answered some other portion of the question. He drilled home that he felt his job was to speak for the President, and by doing so relieved himself (Ari) of any direct responsibility for the ridiculous things we've all heard him say. I came away somehow liking Ari Fleisher much more than when I entered the room. On a disheartening note I was the youngest person there by at least 20 years, enough so that I caught a number of people double taking on me in the giant San Mateo High school Center for the Performing Arts. It felt a lot like being in Florida.
Wow, imagine someone who looked like this winning an election, any election, in America.
Link
Rob at Fenway/Lost T Shirt update
Rob at Fenway
.
For those of you who thought maybe I was kidding, or crazy, here's Mr. Delaney in front of homeplate. Come on, how cool is that.
Lost T Shirt update-
This just in from brother Dan,
"Hey, I just flew back from France yesterday after spending a week and a half over there. Oddly when I opened my suitcase I found a red T-shirt. Not sure if it's yours."
It's always the last place you look; France.
