More wacky marchers
More wacky marchers
Originally uploaded by AlexH/lumpy Okay, sweet! It works! I don't know how to blog more than one photo at a time, yet, but I'm sure I'll figure it out. Anyway, I'm at my desk at work right now, and as usual, I have nothing important to do (except BLOG PHOTOS!) so, I should bring everyone on my odessey through the Bay Area. I was wondering if I should start by photoblogging the shots from last summer's road trip out here, but I should probably take the time to be literate before performing such a herculean task. Long story short.. Memphis, OK City, Grand Canyon, Deserts, San Joaquin Valley, boom boom, West Coast. Go to Flickr, look at the pretty pictures.
Here's how I spent my St. Patrick's Day:
A couple of years ago, I came out here to visit my cousin Rainbow, a Berkeley student at the time, and the first time I went into the city, I saw the St Patrick's Day Parade. I remember that it was cold and wet out, and pretty crowded. That's about it, really.
So this year, and I'm going to assume due to global warming, it wasn't so cold or wet. And also, less crowds, so I could see all the marching bands and everything. Where I was standing, there were a group of middle-aged ladies sitting in fold-out chairs with Big-Gulp sized cups of, I'm only guessing, Jameson with a touch of Bailey's, all dressed in green. They were completely shit-faced drunk, and hollering at everybody to get out of their damn way so they could see the fire trucks. They were harmless because, let's face it, are you really threatened by anyone who doesn't actually get out of their chair to scream at you? But, they were definitely loud, so nobody wanted to mess with them and find out if they would, in fact, get up. On the other side of me, there was this weird British guy who kept yammering about how there's a parade everytime he visits San Francisco. "This one looks just like the gay parade!", he kept saying. Well, duh. Parades are inherently gay, everybody knows that!
I had enough of the festivities after about a half hour, and decided it was time to be really Irish and find a restaurant in town that served up some Pho. Before coming out, I printed out a Google map that will conveniently dot out any requested place of business, and in this case, Vietnamese restaurants.
This weekend, I acquired a bike map of all the routes in SF, and I love it because it will tell you exactly where the hills are. I wish Google would point out on their little maps things like "BY THE WAY THIS IS A SHITTY NEIGHBORHOOD AND HOMELESS PEOPLE WILL ANNOY YOU!", but alas, I had to find out on my own. I wasn't sure which streets and intersections make up the Tenderloin area, but I'm pretty sure I know now. It's not like Atlanta doesn't have it's share of homeless.. they're all over downtown, and in NYC, everybody's pretty much homeless, but out here, it's just weird. I don't know if I've seen where one block is full of lawyers and bankers and whatnot and the next block over, you have such a huge concentration of aggressive, smelly, pants-shtting people lined up with nasty toothless hookers. Also, every restaurant I went to wouldn't take a check card for payment, go figure, so I got kind of pissed off and walked up Nob Hill to some Thai restaurant where I had some mediocre noodle bowl and grumbled to myself.
Oh my god, this was a pretty bad day, now that I remember! I spent a bunch of time looking for a stinking BoA ATM so I could get change to ride the MUNI down to the SFSU area to see a movie and eventually meet up with Elena to check out her school play. Well, I walked down Van Ness Ave, where I saw all the government buildings for the first time. Nice gold dome on the City Hall there. "Boy, does our city have a lot of money! Too bad we can't afford to ship all our stinky homeless people off to L.A. where they belong!" (Okay, I'm kidding, really, I wish the local charaties would get more help, but, say la vee)
I was in a pissy mood when I got on the MUNI, all packed in with hundreds of people who should be staying home on a Saturday, and got to Stonestown Mall, where I walked the entire length of the mall twice looking for the theatre before coming to the conclusion that it was on the other side of the parking lot out back. And boy, was it crowded! And by crowded, I mean, there was nobody there. I really don't mind that, especially since the movie I was going to see, "Funny Games", wasn't supposed to be the kind of crowdpleasing flick where it's better in a group. No, this movie, in fact, is probably better if you never watch it at all, ever. And if it's currently on your netflix queue, take it off, because it's the most wretched movie you'd ever have the misfortune of watching. I won't even review it here, I'll just give you the basic plot points: A well-off couple and their kid goes to their summer home in Long Island, where they greeted by two college-aged guys wearing tennis outfits. They come to borrow some eggs, but they beat the couple's golden retriever to death with a golf club instead. Also with said golf club, they immobilize husband Tim Roth, and then torment him and and his wife, Naomi Watts until they blow away their kid with a shotgun, then kill Roth with a shotgun, then tie up Watts and drown her in the lake, and end the movie by going to a new house to kill more people. I think the director was trying to make the "violence is bad and we should stop glorifying it!" statement, but the movie was so boring and plodding and dull that it's only going to appeal to a certain demographic of arthouse snobs who don't watch mainstream violence in the first place. In any case, I know Violence is Bad, thats why I generally don't advocate it. But you can't accuse the whole of society of not being able to tell the difference between cinema and reality just because we enjoy comic cinematic violence topped off with one-liners and comeuppance! I also know Porn Isn't Real, but that doesn't keep me from downloading it. On an hourly basis.
Anyway, so that movie sucked and it sure didn't help my mood. After that, Elena met me at the mall for dinner. A good way to start off your low-calorie diet is to have a big plate of pasta at The Olive Garden. Yeah, SFSU isn't exactly in the midst of college-town cuisine. It's even too bad there wasn't an Applebee's around.
So, the meal was decent, and the first act of the play I saw was delightfully comprehensible. I can't say the same for the second act because I drifted the crappy day away into a nice bout of slumber. I will say, the actors and story were good and it was mostly entertaining, but I think i was pretty damn tired by then. I have to say this because I know Elena reads my blog. She did hear me snore, though.