Hold onto your butts...
well, I've fully assimilated back into my berkeley life. pretty amazing really, how you can go from seemingly one life to another, within the blink of an eye. seems like just yesterday I was coming home for summer....
sunday and monday I was with carlos in sebastopol, his home town. its a little ex-hippy now current yuppie town. it was founded on apple orchards and grape vineyards. fairly wealthy. its about an hour north of berkeley. its amazing how many stars you could see. sometimes I forget how many there are. we spent the night at his friend conor's, watching layer cake and looking at their old yearbooks. monday morning was spent on some secluded beach shooting potatoes with his potato bazooka. we used gasoline for the fuel, and it worked remarkably well. we ended up sticking feathers we had found into the back end of the potatoes, to make them fly true. they were like graceful, chubby, little birds.
wednesday was a fun day. We made it up to lake Anza in Tilden park and swam around. berto and I dove off rocks. I need to work on my form. then we followed some friends up to el cerrito and took a short hike down a steep slippery trail to the biggest rope swing I've ever seen. also it was nearly pitch black. It immediately made me miss the one that was in the bolsa chica wetlands so long ago. though this one was considerably larger and more intense. quite a rush of adrenaline swinging 30 feet through the night air. good fun.
thursday was an even better day. berto, max, carlos and I made our bike trip that we tentatively planned 5 days prior. we started in berkeley and made it to west oakland bart station. barted across to the embarcadero and biked along the bay around fisherman's wharf, through the presidio and up to the golden gate bridge. biked across the bridge and then down into sausalito, following the bay. then we diverged slightly, going into the tiburon peninsula to find some food with the help of two absurdly friendly locals, then back up along the coast towards corte madera. then we made our way to the richmond bridge, right next to san quentin only to find that bicycles aren't allowed on the bridge. just after this, we accidentally made our way into the parking lot of the marin county rod and gun club, where some awful woman in camo's threatened us, told to fuck off, and said unsavory things about carlos's mom en espagnol. that was weird. but we had planned for not being able to take the bridge and we biked north to san rafael to the bus station to catch a ride to richmond. after getting off at the first stop back in the east bay, we biked through richmond, incidentally one of the roughest parts of the bay area I've ever seen. extremely impoverished. pretty eye opening in some ways. we headed south back through richmond, el cerrito and albany to berkeley, getting home around 8 pm. thoroughly exhausted. we watched del toro's "the devil's backbone." essentially "pan's labyrinth" in many ways. enjoyable but nothing amazing.
last night was a sort of end-of-the-summer bash. also good fun. an appropriate way to top off a fine summer. now I have to get that portfolio finished up, and tonight I work the beastie boys show at the greek. that should be really good.
also, carlos gave me rights to one of the queue's on netflix. here's my top 23 thus far: "notre musique", "yojimbo", "inland empire", "badlands", "aguirre: the wrath of god", "little dieter needs to fly", "barry lyndon", "one flew over the cuckoo's nest", "space is the place", "the lives of others", "viridiana", "that obscure object of desire", "belle de jour", "bagdad cafe", "the passenger", "the proposition", "the magnificent seven", "a fistful of dollars", "for a few dollars more", "the good, the bad, and the ugly", "cool hand luke", "akira kurosawa's dreams", "the squid and the whale". the list goes on, but it includes stuff like "mortal kombat: the movie" and "poison ivy" (some erotic thriller berto recommended). so I gave you the more interesting ones.
anyways, that fills you in the last week. hope you're well
oh, and my watching recommendation. go see "high and low" by Kurosawa. superb.
sunday and monday I was with carlos in sebastopol, his home town. its a little ex-hippy now current yuppie town. it was founded on apple orchards and grape vineyards. fairly wealthy. its about an hour north of berkeley. its amazing how many stars you could see. sometimes I forget how many there are. we spent the night at his friend conor's, watching layer cake and looking at their old yearbooks. monday morning was spent on some secluded beach shooting potatoes with his potato bazooka. we used gasoline for the fuel, and it worked remarkably well. we ended up sticking feathers we had found into the back end of the potatoes, to make them fly true. they were like graceful, chubby, little birds.
wednesday was a fun day. We made it up to lake Anza in Tilden park and swam around. berto and I dove off rocks. I need to work on my form. then we followed some friends up to el cerrito and took a short hike down a steep slippery trail to the biggest rope swing I've ever seen. also it was nearly pitch black. It immediately made me miss the one that was in the bolsa chica wetlands so long ago. though this one was considerably larger and more intense. quite a rush of adrenaline swinging 30 feet through the night air. good fun.
thursday was an even better day. berto, max, carlos and I made our bike trip that we tentatively planned 5 days prior. we started in berkeley and made it to west oakland bart station. barted across to the embarcadero and biked along the bay around fisherman's wharf, through the presidio and up to the golden gate bridge. biked across the bridge and then down into sausalito, following the bay. then we diverged slightly, going into the tiburon peninsula to find some food with the help of two absurdly friendly locals, then back up along the coast towards corte madera. then we made our way to the richmond bridge, right next to san quentin only to find that bicycles aren't allowed on the bridge. just after this, we accidentally made our way into the parking lot of the marin county rod and gun club, where some awful woman in camo's threatened us, told to fuck off, and said unsavory things about carlos's mom en espagnol. that was weird. but we had planned for not being able to take the bridge and we biked north to san rafael to the bus station to catch a ride to richmond. after getting off at the first stop back in the east bay, we biked through richmond, incidentally one of the roughest parts of the bay area I've ever seen. extremely impoverished. pretty eye opening in some ways. we headed south back through richmond, el cerrito and albany to berkeley, getting home around 8 pm. thoroughly exhausted. we watched del toro's "the devil's backbone." essentially "pan's labyrinth" in many ways. enjoyable but nothing amazing.
last night was a sort of end-of-the-summer bash. also good fun. an appropriate way to top off a fine summer. now I have to get that portfolio finished up, and tonight I work the beastie boys show at the greek. that should be really good.
also, carlos gave me rights to one of the queue's on netflix. here's my top 23 thus far: "notre musique", "yojimbo", "inland empire", "badlands", "aguirre: the wrath of god", "little dieter needs to fly", "barry lyndon", "one flew over the cuckoo's nest", "space is the place", "the lives of others", "viridiana", "that obscure object of desire", "belle de jour", "bagdad cafe", "the passenger", "the proposition", "the magnificent seven", "a fistful of dollars", "for a few dollars more", "the good, the bad, and the ugly", "cool hand luke", "akira kurosawa's dreams", "the squid and the whale". the list goes on, but it includes stuff like "mortal kombat: the movie" and "poison ivy" (some erotic thriller berto recommended). so I gave you the more interesting ones.
anyways, that fills you in the last week. hope you're well
oh, and my watching recommendation. go see "high and low" by Kurosawa. superb.