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SWEET DANGO
ANOTHER SET OF WORDS FOR YOU TO READ -/THEY QUALIFY AS LEAF AND BRANCH AND SEED...
Friday, June 30, 2006
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...and, to continue this cavalcade of precise details of my life and times: managed to make the two roll allotment of toilet paper the hotel provides last all month, this besides using at times for other than the intended purpose, like wiping something off the floor, or letting a guest to my room have some to blow a nose…
…and thought of a line for a fiction, some prose: “In the absence of the presence of women, there are any number of ports of call beyond the one called Desperation.” Such a line I consider different from this blog verbiage, a bit more poetic, perhaps, more worked upon. The blog abides by that Beatnik “first thought, best thought” spontaneous prose idea, basically…
…and before I had to let off listening to the O. Henry audio book, managed to secure biographical information about the man, former English major that I am. Birth name, William Sydney Porter, born in 1852 in North Carolina…at an early age, before all the writing, was an accomplished sketch artist who could render people he knew in a very agreeable manner…
…and was taking trash out of my room a few days ago – I have a little woven bamboo basket under the sink for it – and there in the hallway out popped a little stowaway, a mouse. Felt pity for the frightened creature, who certainly didn’t enjoy being so exposed, as it bounded away for security…
…and, after a visit for blogging to a nearby Tenderloin computer center, passed the Cadillac Hotel, where a once-a-week food giveaway happens – potatoes, vegetables, staples like that. But I’d missed it. I’m not giving food all that much priority in my life…
…and in the hotel lobby, free bread – from Safeway, with the name “Artisan” given to the line…I’m not a big bread-eating kinda guy but I took a loaf of the French, and over the next few days ate it, enjoying the crust in particular, my favorite part of any loaf. Written on the bag, words: “Appreciate the Difference”, “Natural Fermentation”, “Hand Crafted Loaves”. It wasn’t cosmic twelve-grain hippie bread, tho’…
And immediately after this helped Berniece, a lady in the hotel, bring up two packages to her room…they were kinduv big, but light. She gave me a very new ‘People’ magazine for the trouble, and told me she wasn’t feeling very
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well and was just gonna go back to bed…
…and hotel friend K., who had been at the computer center with me earlier – called him to see if he wanted to borrow my hot plate – he’d dropped a hint about that at the center. But he said no…and: earlier that day, needed something to flavor potatoes I’d had and had called him to see if he had any ketchup – he did, and told me to go to his room, where there he turned me on to a partial bottle of the stuff, and that was very welcome…
…and yet another recent failed hot plate creation by yours truly, a mix of mashed potato flakes and couscous. Had to toss it out – a waste of calories, but I just couldn’t eat it…
…and very often Odd Fellow brother P. calls me, saying he’s got a little job for me to do, but sometimes I’m doing my blog and tell him I can’t make it – I give it a priority over making the money that P. offers me…
…and had that ‘People’ to get to…it can be fun looking at the celebrity photos…glanced through it for anything I could get into…the index…perhaps Britney Spears in her summer bikini? In the “StarTracks” section, a Santa Monica photo, June 16th, new couple Jim Carrey and Jenny McCarthy boarding a helicopter. Well, Carrey was looking really good – long hair, dark glasses, no tie, shirt open at the collar – bet his shoes alone cost more than I’ve spent on clothes in the last 5 years, or maybe even 10…
…and continued going page-by-page through the ‘People’ – liked the flip-flops on Mary-Kate Olsen – what ‘I’ myself wear 99% of the time – she was in Brentwood, June 19th, heading to a Starbucks. The caption said she was in “a really big dress”…reference, I spoze, to her eating disorder – she’d wear something large and loose to disguise her excessive thinness. The pressures of being rich and famous…
…and there’s a pleasing photo of tabloid-uber-staple Angelina Jolie, looking very attractive, actually, even, like, ‘saintly’, at a Namibia press conference – some of these celebs kinda get to me, but she’s usually not one of them…and then a little photo of Paul McCartney – just turned 64…broken up, says the caption, over his break-up with wife Heather…his grandchildren had presented him with a parody version of “When I’m 64”…
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…have been listening more lately to KQED radio as a source of intelligent voices – am living by myself and people talking on the radio waves is, I spoze, the next best thing to having an actual person there…still no action regarding having a woman to share my paisley-covered bed…
…and early one morning on the radio, virtual world visionary Jaron Lanier…he was talking about the value of what he called “aggregate thinking” of many people versus the value of the individual voice, especially in tems of what’s happening with the Internet…
…and about blogs, of which there are so many now, the interviewer was critical of them in that many are just full of the tedious minutiae a person’s life: “Here’s my blog! Hey, here’s what I had for breakfast…” Of course, this one here ‘never’ has such tedious details, except, of course, half the time, such as…
It was a recent 2am, me in bed alone, pretty wakeful, since I hadn’t had any wine that day to intoxicate me into more sleep – but not for lack of wanting, but for lack of the coin at month’s end – just had a single canned pint of King Cobra malt liquor, and that about 12 hours previously…
…well, it’ll be a new month tomorrow, and have the inclination to drink less of the Carlo Rossi sweet and red and get into more healthful actual foods, get to Rainbow, get the hijiki seaweed and bulk buckwheat, drink kombucha and rejuvelac on a daily basis, drink yerba mate tea, buy fruits and vegetables at the farmers’ market. Whether this actually happens is another matter…tho’ for sure I will at least partially fulfill this course of action…
…and that early morning, some time after midnight, a floorboard creak outside my door…made me consider the Poe-like aspects of living in the Tenderloin hotel I’m in…recalled ‘The Tell-Tale Heart” where the narrator is planning to murder the rich old man and goes about it very slowly, in the dark, barely pushing the door open to the man’s room…but my door’s pretty secure, would be a job for even someone strong to kick it in…
…and have been getting movies on tape for a guy in the hotel with mobility issues – he’s got a big TV with a VCR and I supply him with six at a time…so I’ve been scanning through the collection at the library regularly sweetdango@hotmail.com #498 (2 of 2) starplane.blogspot.com
recently…saw Polanski’s ‘Repulsion’ available – not sure if I’m gonna get
that to him, too weird a flick – he prefers Westerns, and comedies…remember seeing it at a Berkeley repertory cinema on Gilman Street when I lived in that own. Well, I’m bringing the guy a good selection of classics and fun ones, films he hasn’t been exposed to yet…
…and recently took out for myself an audio book of O. Henry stories, an author liked by my Former Lady Roommate. Not familiar with anything by him except for “The Gift of the Magi”. Was really liking the tales, read well by several actors, with sound effects even – characters walk into a restaurant and there’s the background buzz of diners – but unfortunately the quality of sound was so poor, rising and falling, so I couldn’t continue listening. There was one story that was very like that “Magi” one – a young couple again makes a certain sacrifice – not sure if that one came before or after the more famous story…
…and to Carm, whom (who?) I knew in my young teen years, sent an e-mail about “voluntary simplicity”, since she’d mentioned in an e-mail that she was interested in simplifying her life. She hasn’t responded…I might like her to go to the upcoming high school reunion with me, unless she’s made other arrangements, or would find my company agreeable at all…
…and, more minutiae: at a corner market the guy behind the counter let me get a dollar can of King Cobra recently for 92 cents – but I’m always buying jugs of wine and incense there, so that may be the reason for the indulgence…yeah, incense, wine…I’ve gotten candles there as well, so that’s the trinity mentioned in “Super Freak”, the Rick James song: “…when I get there she’s got incense, wine and candles,/it’s such a freaky scene…”
…and headed to the hotel with the King Cobra, which I’d hidden inside my shirt, and it was further hidden by putting the O. Henry audio book on top of that – there are two or four people who, upon seeing me with anything to drink, deem it my duty to share…so this strategy worked well that day, since out there was D., the guy I get those movies for, sitting in his walker with three people next to him. Looked like he was jonesing for a drink, but I think he suspected nothing about what I was carrying…he introduced me to one fairly young woman who appeared drug-worn, losing her looks…she put away her crack pipe and seemed apologetic, a bit, for having one…
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
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…and so drank up my kombucha at the market on 8th near Howard…decided to take a little bicycle ride…down an alley, the one just south of Minna…poster for the new Uma Thurman movie, ‘My Super Ex-Girlfriend’…rode to Powell, up to Geary, then exerted myself a little bit going up Geary, a good workout for where I’m at now, that slight incline from Powell up to Hyde…
…and into the hotel, feeling good from the released (or created) endorphins, happy to have broken a sweat…the desired potatoes in the aluminum tray were still there, and I found a tray discarded on the top of the trash and got myself a six. The manager’s daughter, Chanel, was still there, and Keeta was holding down the front desk also – funnily, Chanel, 22, was singing the old Huey Lewis song “If This Is It”…I mentioned my surprise to her as I passed…
…and back in my room, back flat on the bed, to the Amy Wallace book describing her life as the lover and student in sorcery of Carlos Castaneda. She used the word “gaslighting” a coupla times, but I wasn’t sure just was that meant…related to the Ingrid Bergman movie ‘Gaslight’, I figured…and Steely Dan had a recent song called “Gaslighting Abbie’. Just Googled, got this: “A common form of brainwashing in which an abuser tries falsely convince the victim that the victim is defective, for any purpose whatsoever, such as making the victim more pliable and easily controlled…” She felt that this was a method of Castaneda’s…
And another term I wasn’t exactly sure of that Amy uses, “cognitive dissonance” – which is used as the name of a bar in William Gibson’s ‘Virtual Light’. It means: “the perception of incompatibility between two cognitions, which can be defined as any element of knowledge, including attitude, emotion, belief, or behavior.” Pretty heavy – class over…at least in terms of definitions of words…
And continuing in the same vein, about the way Castaneda behaved, Amy writes: “Increasingly I came to believe that Carlos made everything up as he went. It was the only fitting explanation.” Hmmm, didn’t Indiana Jones say the same thing? And more by her about being in the guy’s inner circle: “…I saw spirits crushed, particularly by public humiliation; I saw malevolence, breakdowns, illness, and anguish.” Sounds like a whole lotta fun… sweetdango@hotmail.com #497 (2 of 2) starplane.blogspot.com
…and – class back in session – Amy quotes from ‘The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power’, by Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, as it relates to the methods of Castaneda: “Sexuality with disciples sets up hierarchies of preference where disciples compete for status through who is attracting the guru more. If covert, it also creates lies and secrecy among disciples.”
And more from the same book: “…what a daughter needs from her father is a sense of self-worth not specifically linked to her sexuality.” And: found interesting Amy Wallace’s wealthy life in Berkeley, very different from my own when I’d lived there…for example, when she was preparing to leave a luxurious home she’d lived in for many years in order to move down to L.A., one of her prized possessions was a rare bottle of wine, a 1945 Margaux…and, seems that ‘some’ drugs were okay with Carlos, others not – okay was something like Vicodin, but he really disliked Prozac…
…and back to details of my own life…a coupla nights ago listened to a Sam Kinison stand-up comedy disc from the library – it’s time was up and had to get it back…really funny stuff, but not for the easily-offended…I’ve also got a collection of Romantic poets on disc – Wordsworth, Keats, guys like those – have not been listening to that…preferring to spend the double A battery power – don’t have a CD wall plug - on the wildly hilarious Kinison…
…and in recent radio news on KQED, billionaire Warren Buffett will begin giving a billion-and-a-half bucks year to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, for humanitarian purposes…made me think of a Charles McCabe column I’d read recently in which he said that most millionaires are ashamed of what they had to do to make that first million. Not sure if that would apply to Gates or Buffett…
…and: it’s the 50th anniversary of the 50s Eisenhower plan to expand highways in the U.S. He’d been in Germany and seen how effective the ‘Autobahn’ was, so he wanted to create the same for America…and speaking of big numbers, Americans drive a combined three ‘trillion’ miles a year on the roads…and more big numbers: that new Superman flick? Cost Warner Brothers over 350 million to make…KQED radio said CNN profit paid for a lot of that, and warned about “the corporatization of news”…and in closing, about 1am one morning, really loud noise on the street, trash being collected from the big apartment building across the street…
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…then back in the hotel room, took a shower, felt refreshed…had to decide whether to take the easier or more strenuous choice: just get a can of beer at a Tenderloin corner market, or get on my bicycle and ride a mile, South of Market, to get containers of rejuvelac and kombucha, which woulda been the far healthier choice…eventually decided on the healthier…
…and back to the Amy Wallace book about her time with her guru and lover Carlos Castaneda. At one point he told her that she had reversed the effects of her youthful drug use, which he felt had adversely affected her aura. She adds parenthetically that some of this was because she’d been inspired by the drug use in his books. But in his defense, his own teacher, Don Juan, had had Carlos do the mushrooms and datura and whatever because he’d been so trained and brainwashed into a Western world view that something strong had been needed to get him to change his mind. But this had stopped at a certain early point in their relationship…
…and about this time someone had left a box of Trader Joe’s couscous at my door – possibly hotel friend D., who might’ve knocked earlier, tho’ I didn’t answer. At least he didn’t ‘pound’ on the door as he’s done in the past. High in iron…but when I make it, seems it doesn’t get nice and fluffy as it does in restaurants…too much water, not enough heat…
…and there was an interesting suggestion from Castaneda – when depressed or nervous, eat ants! Supposedly certain African tribes, said Wallace, ate them to calm the nerves. And Western science has discovered that the tiny insects contain a chemical similar to lithium…and something else: the man said beds should never point toward the west, but worst was to the north, “the direction of death”…and also: mirrors should be covered, since they encourage over-focusing on the self…
…and: Castaneda was obsessed with the weight of his students…he liked ‘em as thin as possible. One of the women said he was worse than Balanchine, who was noted for wanting his dancers to be really, really skinny. Wallace said after this comment, it was the first time she could recall that Castaneda was stopped in his tracks out of embarrassment…
…and: once Castaneda told Amy about shaving her pubic hair – “This is of
the utmost sorceric importance – you must shave the lower half of your
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‘conchita’; it will allow the energy to flow smoothly, and make you less
human.” As noted in a previous posting, he wanted his students to be ‘sorcerors’, not merely human…
…and as said, decided to get on my bicycle and ride to get the kombucha and rejuvelac…in the lobby, Keeta at the front desk, with the manager’s daughter, Chanel, there as well. And also there were the remnants of the food that had been delivered into the hotel – didn’t know about that, or else I woulda gone down to get some…maybe that was where the couscous had come from. But there was still an aluminum tray of cooked potatoes…as I went out the door hoped that there would be some left when I got back...and outside, a homeless young lady I’m sort of friendly with dancing around on the sidewalk – she asked when I was coming back, but I just shrugged and rode down the street…and up Leavenworth on the sidewalk, since I was riding against traffic – nearly got hit by an opening apartment building door, but swerved with inches to spare…’my’ bad…
…and made the journey south of Market to the Urban Harvest Market on 8th near Howard, sister (or brother) to the Urban Market up on Market towards the Castro…they didn’t have the small, eight-ouncers of kombucha and rejuvelac made by a San Francisco company I was seeking, but was happy enough with a kombucha out of Portland, for a buck 89 plus tax…a bit too sweet with added organic sugar, but I was satisfied…
…and fairly cute Spanish-speaking young woman at the check-out – accented in that language, very…and liked a nice touch on the receipt, a quote from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Genevan Enlightenment philosopher, “whose political ideas influenced the French Revolution” – thanks to Google and Wikipedia for that brief sum-up of the dude. The quote went: “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Pretty heavy stuff for a supermarket receipt, eh? But I spoze better than what’s on a Safeway one, like: “Thanks for shopping here – please come again! Have a good day!”
And the size of the kombucha was good for a single serving, eight-and-a-half ounces – some are too big…and liked the wording on the label: “…others told of its energy-enhancing properties on the battlefield.” And also: “Discover new serenity, endurance and clarity.” And “Share it. True believers drink daily.” Yeah, I second that emotion…
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…and back to what I found notable in the Amy Wallace memoir about her time with Carlos Castaneda, called ‘Sorceror’s Apprentice’: one time he told her to never eat onions. He explained: “Sorcerors don’t touch them because they resemble the human form, layer upon layer. Eating onions will reinforce your humanity.” He had that idea of layers of energy. Also, he felt that his disciples should strive to be more than human – he considered humanity, she said, not better than “apes with clothes”…
…and there’s a photograph of the Wilshire Motel, a dump, basically, in Los Angeles, where she and Castaneda has sex for the first time…
…and in the glossary in back, a long list of insults, which apparently Castaneda specialized in. Learned that ‘pendejo’ (or ‘pendeja’) is translated as “stupid or foolish”…well, knew a guy in L.A. who said it was a , very very bad thing to say to any Spanish speaker – “foolish” doesn’t seem that bad. But just Googled - turns out it means, literally, “pubic hair” – so that explains it…and another curse word ‘en espanol’ is ‘culo’, “asshole”. And ‘sietes culos’ is “seven assholes”, an extremer form, meaning “fat or lazy”…
…and there’s the “Tensegrity” concept in Castaneda – a series of exercises designed to improve one’s physical and spiritual energy. Learned in the Wallace book that at the end of his life Buckminster Fuller, who also used that term a lot in his geodesic system, actually filed a lawsuit against Casteneda because of his use of it. Just Googled…in the Wikipedia, it’s defined as a combination into one term of the phrase “tensional integrity”, which “refers to the integrity of structures as being based in a synergy between balanced tension and compression components”. The Wikipedia entry goes on and on…but I’m curious whether there was any validity to the lawsuit…says in the entry that it was coined by Fuller, and I’m going with that…when I first heard that Castaneda used it for his exercise system, was surprised, and immediately thought of “Bucky”…
…and when once Wallace visited Castaneda’s home, there was a “two-pronged rubber dildo” – also known as a double-headed dildo – on the man’s writing desk, used as a holder for his eyeglasses…not without humor, that…
…and about this time, Odd Fellow brother P. called and wanted to know if I had any information about his friend Charlie – he’d heard a rumor that the
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dude was dead. I’d only been with the guy twice – once meeting him at the
Club Room in the lodge hall with his friend Travis – now back in jail on a heroin charge, I believe – and once when leaving a St. Anthony’s free lunch about a month ago. P. said he’d pay me twenty bucks to find out more on this, if it was true or not, but I didn’t have a clue where to begin, even when P. gave me the guy’s last name…and I’m, like, no private detective, and didn’t particularly wanna go snooping around, especially regarding Charlie’s possible demise. Sam Spade I am not…
And I asked P. about a recent visit to City Hall regarding clean-up of the 7th Street area around the lodge hall…said it was inconclusive, nothing much done…he doesn’t like Supervisor Chris Daly, whose district the building is in…he said Daly likes to help the homeless, and probably would take their side and the side of those who hang around outside the lodge hall, the very ones who are often the nemesis of P., who is the building administrator and wants all of them to go somewhere else, preferably Hell…
…and learned something about Amy Wallace’s father, Irving…know of him as the successful best-selling author…seems he took powerful amphetamines for weight control, and then strong drink in the wee hours of the morning alone to counteract the effect of the drugs…
…and Wallace in passing mentions how Los Angeles was devastated by a quake in ’94…was there at the time, but don’t remember it. But for darn sure I remember the riots and fires and looting two years earlier. Never saw anything like what happened then…
…and Castaneda believed the drug use among some of his disciples had damaged their aura…and: she uses this phrase: “…other planes, free of distasteful human emotions.” Which is what her guru and lover Castaneda was offering her and the others under the man’s spell. Relatedly, she said these were like the worlds depicted in her favorite childhood comic book, Marvel’s ‘Dr. Strange’…which, by the way, is a real favorite of mine as well, perhaps ‘my’ absolute favorite…’Silver Surfer” I also like a lot…
…and there’s a bit of untranslated Nahautl, the language of the Aztecs…though it was funny that just about every other letter in the words was an “x”…
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…and have very nearly finished ‘Sorceror’s Apprentice’ by Amy Wallace, about her very close relationship, and I mean ‘very’ close, to Carlos Castaneda. I have over 40 books and audio books out from the library, and it’s not often that I go through any particular one as fast as I did this woman’s book. A back cover blurb uses the “I just could not put it down” over-used phrase, but in this case, I would agree on that assessment…one thing I feel close to her about is our ages – she’s just 2 years older than me…
…and you get a lotta facts about the personal life of Castaneda – in 1951, he arrived in San Francisco after leaving his home in Peru. (Which reminds me: something about writers – a friend, I think it was Cathead700 – said, or quoted someone about how it’s important to focus on the ‘work’ of writers, not their actual lives, since the writing is the main thing…but with a cat like Carlos Castaneda the details of his life itself have some interest, I think…)
…and liked the reproduction of the title page of ‘A Separate Reality’ – from a gift book given by “Carlos” – I’ll go with that familiar designation, since I’ve have been a fan of his work since at least the early 80s, if not earlier – he inscribed: “The way to freedom is sometimes a whisper in the ear.”
And interesting to me as well, the meeting Carlos had with Alan Watts, and his disappointment with the Sage of Sausalito. He felt Watts didn’t really “walk his talk”…and that he got rip-roaring drunk – Carlos, from what I gather, wasn’t much of a drinker. And he says Watts made a homosexual pass at him…is this possible? Carlos has been known to make things up…
…and liked the Berkeley connection for Amy Wallace – she lived there about the same time I did, ‘round about 1980…
…and back to details about my own life…was sitting outside with hotel friend D. for a while, sipping a pint of King Cobra in a can, the both of us watching the passing Tenderloin freak show – don’t think the stuff comes in pint bottles, tho’ it’s available in glass in 40-ouncers, and 32s, I believe…and my seat was a discarded wooden crate, a well-made one, from a dumpster in front of the hotel……and when I left to go back upstairs to continue the Amy Wallace memoir, D. asks if I had a buck for more beer. Well, I had it, but told him I didn’t…he’s really greedy around drinking and I don’t need to help him with
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that…
…and there’s a good glossary in the Wallace book – a “nagual”, for instance, which is what Carlos was, is: “the unknown; a title for one who represents the unknown”. A much more expanded definition is available through Wikipedia.org, the charms of which I’m beginning to appreciate…there it’s defined in part as “one facile with words”…and it’s pronounced NAW-hal, not NAG-wal, as I’d been saying it…
…liked this quote from Florinda Donner – yeah, like the ill-fated party – one of the main women in Castaneda’s inner circle, called a “witch” – spoken at a lecture at Gaia Books in Berkeley: “Women fail to understand what the sorcerors know – that our wombs are ‘a second brain’, the womb has a double function! The more often we allow men entrance to our wombs, the more we damage this second brain.” Food for thought, isn’t it?
And another thing about Carlos: apparently, says Wallace, he could, like Edgar Cayce supposedly could, access texts just by sleeping on them, absorbing the information without reading. Thought it was funny that for heavy books, he had to use his abdomen, but with newspapers, well, they could just go beneath his feet…
…and about this time Odd Fellow bro’ P. called – said he was headed to a City Hall meeting in order to put in his opinion about neighborhood clean-up – the people standing around on 7th in front of the lodge hall are a constant nuisance to him…he said I could go along, but told him that was during my limited computer time for blogging, and he understood that…and about this time also found, in the back of one of my milk crate shelves, a bottle of Boone’s Farm wine with water in it – forgot that I had planned to fill more of these with boiled water just so I’d have H20 on hand…gotta get ‘round to that little task…
…and also, have begun using colors on the blog pages, a function available through Blogger.com…I think it adds something…and…glad that Soul Food City, across from the hotel, continues to be open…but any extra money is going these days for cheap, red, sweet wine…more power to them, tho’…I like their food, like their name…will have money in less than two days and perhaps then I’ll get over there and buy some soulful catfish…
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
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…and friend in the hotel Pat called…said he was avoiding the Gay Pride event, as he did all crowds, since he was around in 1984 at the Democratic National Convention, with punks facing off against the club-wielding police – he had no desire to be in the middle of that confrontation…and asked him to get this Paul Bragg health book I’d loaned him back to me at some point, and he did that immediately. And I gave him a dollar coin to get something to drink…he didn’t stick around long, off to get a can of something at a corner store…
And about this time fretted a bit about the middle fingers I’d given recently to drivers of big vehicles in the Union Square area, me on my bicycle. Didn’t want any of the drivers or passengers to remember and identify me subsequently and give me a two-fisted lesson in road manners…
And to sleep, then waking…weird vivid dream of me in a sleeping bag on the sidewalk of a busy street – a little girl came up to my face and offered money and talked to me…then someone set the bag on fire…
And turned on KQED radio – have been doing that lately – don’t have really good audio books lately I can get into, and am pretty much by myself a lot, sleeping by myself for certain, don’t have a woman to talk to – plenty of guys, but their conversational and sexual uses are, at least for me, fairly limited…anyway, story of a woman who jumped from the 42nd floor of a downtown San Francisco apartment complex…some connection for her to the University of California system…geez, she couldn’t have known that she would not have landed on top of someone…
And later at the library…kung fu books for hotel desk man Vic, ‘Sorceror’s Apprentice’ for me, by Amy Wallace, an account by one of Carlos Casteneda’s innermost circle about what the guy was really like…and also for me Colin Wilson’s ‘The Outsider’. And for hotel friend D., four movies: ‘The Sunshine Boys’, ‘Open Range’ (a cowboy flick with Kevin Costner and Robert Duvall), ‘Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome’, and ‘Key Largo’ (D. expressed
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a major interest in anything with Bogie…)
Then about a quarter after 11 one day, done with a library blog posting, 2 hours ‘til St. Anthony’s, 3 ‘til the other computer place I go to opened so I could add to the blog. And still had a few bucks left…figured to spend that on rejuvelac and kombucha, for my health, instead of the easier, closer option of more cheap wine…
And to the New Princess corner market for a quarter package of instant noodles – Wa’il, the owner, was there behind the counter – owe him thirty bucks around the first for credit jugs of Carlo Rossi wine. Had a stack of books and videos from the library – maybe that registered with him, that at least I’m somewhat literate and not just some dumb drunk…and in the store as well was a fellow named Ulysses, one of the Brown Jug bartenders, one that likes me, which I can’t say for all who mixologize bar at that joint…
…and back in the room, enjoying a repeated listening of the Steve Miller cassette of ‘The Joker’ album I’d bought for 50 cents – a real classic, every song good…and put 2 hard boiled eggs into my sauce pan, with the noodles, and extra water so I could cook rice with flavor in it later. Plus added additional salt (as if instant noodle powder really needs more sodium), pepper, and soy sauce, the only seasonings I’ve got. I like mustard, garlic powder also…
…and also had some of a jar of peanut butter I’d got cheap from a guy on the street – but it wasn’t the groovy organic hippie cosmic kind like at Rainbow, no – it contains dextrose, hydrogenated vegetable oil (a very big pet peeve of my Former Lady Roommate) – and it was cottonseed and/or rapeseed oil, geez…outta Texas, with 70 percent of the calories coming from fat…yum-mee…
…and from a nice little Honduran cigar box I’d found recently, took out additional flavor – mustard packets, and a ketchup one…also have a few hard little candies in there, like an A&W root beer one, but my teeth don’t need those…then kicked back on my bed and got into the Amy Wallace Castaneda book…which I eventually read all the way through, a rare occurrence…
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…and in the hotel lobby, after my run to the store, there was Denise, who lives in the building – asked her if she was having fun on the special Gay Pride Day and immediately realized I’d made a ‘faux pas’ – my comment made it seem like I thought she was gay, which I didn’t really think she was…well, she didn’t seem to notice, said that she had other things to do, and wasn’t bi or gay anyway…
…and had a vegetable and rice concoction in my sauce pan and broke four eggs on top of it. Whole lotta cholesterol, sure, but I don’t eat so many eggs every day so I was gonna go for it, poultry ovo-wise…
And got into the latest ‘Rolling Stone’ – full-page obituary for Billy Preston, dead at 59…took voice notes on musical facts of his life: electric piano on “Get Back”…got credited on the single for that – “The Beatles with Billy Preston”…his mother used to call George Harrison “her paler son”…in the Seventies he co-wrote “You Are So Beautiful”, the Joe Cocker hit…and also had a number one solo with “Will It Go Round in Circles”…and he also played on several Stones albums…
…and Preston also did the organ on Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord” in 1970 – which was the first single, by the way, by an ex-Beatle to reach first place on the charts…
And got through a long article on Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam in the same issue – can’t say the same about the long one on James Brown, tho’…liked the Plasmatics shirt on Vedder in a photo, featuring lead singer Wendy O. Williams, and the Mead composition notebook in his hand, what he always uses to write ideas into…and also liked the bottle of some expensive alcohol held loosely in his other hand, possibly red French wine…
…I recall, memorably, appearances of Wendy O. Williams on Tom Snyder’s old really late night/early morning talk show…I think I saw the one where she took a chain saw to a television set…and…really don’t know much about Vedder – wasn’t into
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Pearl Jam when they were big in the early Nineties, when I was in
L.A., tho’ I remember hearing about them – for a living for over seven years I was monitoring news from the Los Angeles tube, including ‘MTV News’, sometimes, and the band was always mentioned there…really, couldn’t mention a single song by them, don’t think I’ve heard one. I believe they’ve got a new one with an image on the cover I like, a half of a luscious avocado…
And liked learning that when Pearl Jam earned a Grammy for some album, he said: “I don’t think it means anything.” Kinda like Brando sending up Sacheen Littlefeather to accept his Oscar…
…and ‘bout this time, after eating the first four eggs, added four more to my sauce pan, really going for it, and had at the time drank about half the Boone’s Farm Sangria I’d purchased with the twelve eggs…and having finished the ‘Rolling Stone’ article on Pearl Jam, didn’t make me wanna go out and listen to any of it, really…and turned on the audio book of ‘The Man in the High Castle’…a helicopter outside…it was 5pm…coulda been for the Pride event still happening, TV news coverage…
…and got back into the Lester Bangs biography…mention of a trip made by him to the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco, and Romeo Void, with lead singer Debora Iyall…recalled a guy I worked with at a bookstore in the Eighties who was into the band, liking their song “Never Say Never”...
And got to the end of the Bangs bio – died pretty young, early thirties, possibly of a Darvon overdose…made me think of the “Darvon and apple juice” joke made by Woody Allen in ‘Play It Again, Sam”. (Geez, just Googled on this to see if it would come up – did “darvon apple juice allen” and sure enough, up comes the entire section of dialogue…)
…and all during this exciting interval in my life, had incense burning, and the smoke was partly clouding up the room, but couldn’t even smell it…love the fragrance, tho’, said to enhance the everyday spiritual…
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…riding my bicycle back from the Haight Sunday, two days ago…passing through the set-up for the Gay Pride Parade in the Civic Center – for, I guess, actually, the big milling crowd scene afterwards…notable was the smoke in abundance from vendors cooking meat, big clouds causing a breathing hazard…the streets were closed off for a several block area…
…and up Hyde was “Leather Alley” – big sign indicating this. Didn’t particularly care to see the particulars of just what this meant. A big enough presence to have a whole street devoted to its devotees…I think the Folsom Street Fair is more specifically involved with this group, the guys in chaps without the seat…
And rode north up Leavenworth, a long stretch of it for the dozens of parked motorcycles, a major component of some gay life – straight life too – this and the entire spectacle ending at Turk…
…and into the hotel – there was Chanel in the lobby, twenty-something daughter of hotel manager Brian. Back from visiting family in Puerto Rico – I’d ventured that she’d been to Venezuela, but she corrected me…nice young lady. Sometimes I give her sticks of the incense I use, since she expressed a liking for it…
And into the room – the whole Pride thing, avoided the spectacle, not my thing…I maintain I’m festive, not gay, which word has been completely taken over by homosexuals – used to be a word straight people could use…with pride…
…and missed my man Clark at the Red Victorian bed and breakfast on Haight – said he’d be there that day with data entry work for me…perhaps he was punishing me for not appearing “business casual” enough a previous time we’d set to meet…that’s okay. Anyway, met Sami Sunchild, the lady who runs the place…
…and got back into the Jim DeRogatis biography of rock music critic Lester Bangs. I was interested in the description of Billy Gibbons, of ZZ Top: “Beneath the image of a burly, bearded boogie monster, he was an erudite aesthet
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…and a recent “acquisition” to my “vast” holdings, traded for on the street, a live War concert tape, from Turlock, in the Eighties. Goes good with some sweet red wine…tho’ in the middle of it the lead singer noticeably advertises, blatantly, Coors – must’ve been the tour sponsors…didn’t mind that, tho’…it’s like one of those concert recordings done by Deadheads, has that raw quality, a lotta crowd sound, so I suspect it’s not available on CD or vinyl at ‘any’ cost…
…and had actually cooked up something in my sauce pan that I ate, vegetable broth from simmered vegetables, their essence…lotta minerals in it…gotta make certain to get more fruits and vegetables in my diet…
…and recently have taken out from the library a biography of one Ina Coolbrith, a major literary figure of the 19th century in San Francisco…the first poet laureate of California she was…and had a salon on Taylor Street – but not, I suspect, on the Tenderloin part of that street - a gathering place of the literati of the time…considered one of “the Golden Gate Trinity”, along with Bret Harte and Charles Stoddard (a new name to me)…and the book is also, interestingly, a ‘Mormon’ publication, put out by Brigham Young University Press…
And a sample of lines from a poem by Coolbrith, called “Bohemia”, from 1893: “…the sparkling jest, the laughing lip,/the royal, genial fellowship -/of these thy wealth, Bohemia.” And Ambrose Bierce, who liked very few, had kind words for the woman. He said: “If for every ten thousand Susan B. Anthonys, there could be one Ina Coolbrith the world would be a better place.”
…and, have been receiving ‘Rolling Stone’ again because my friend Cathead700 resubscribed me again at a bargain rate – 50 cents an issue, I think – the cover price is about 4 bucks, or more…so carefully went through the last issue, with cover guy Eddie Vedder. Wasn’t into Pearl Jam when they were big in the early Nineties but managed to get through the entire article about him and his band now…and liked a photo in the “Random Notes” section of delectable Czech model Petra Nemcova in a bikini, at the beach with some fortunate musician dude…
…and at the Red Victorian bed and breakfast a few days ago, waiting on my man Clark, who said he’d be there with work for me…turns out he never showed up – talked to him on the phone, said it was a “false alarm” that day, whatever that means…but spent a very pleasant hour there with a glass of iced tea anyway, enjoying the peaceful ambience, and the good folks – Dylan on the sound system – woulda preferred something else, but it was okay, appropriate, since owner Sami Sunchild has a distinct hippie Bohemian vibe happening there …well, should get this together with Clark one of these days – could really use the cash to, for one thing, pay off some of my credit card debt before it gets too big due to monthly fees…
…well, Sami has got what she calls her “prose posters” up on the walls – her calligraphy and words, I gather…nice work…spent the time waiting for Clark, before he called to say he wasn’t
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gonna be there, doing a similar work of my own, handwriting notes from my digital voice recorder onto sheets of paper while sipping on my iced tea…and also did a bit of people watching the people walking along Haight Street, sitting as I was right at a window…
…and when Clark called to say it was a no go that day, we chatted a bit…he asked if I was going to the Gay Pride Parade happening that day – told him it wasn’t my thing, and he said the same. And he wanted to know if I wanted to go to a club later…told him I didn’t have a card – thought it was a cannabis club, since he’s into pot activism in a big way, but he meant a ‘dancing’ sort of club…told him dancing wasn’t my thing either, really, but that I’d join him and hang out. But he didn’t call, and hasn’t in the several intervening days…but this should happen soon…and wanted to mention the discussion group at the Red Victorian that Sunday morning as well, led by Sami – pronounced SAW-me…nice scene…
…then out the door, onto my bicycle, east on Haight…lotta boutiques along there, certainly “groovy”, straight outta the Sixties…and stopped at an area yard sale to check out the music cassettes for sale at half a buck each – spent 15 minutes organizing the several dozen tapes and selecting – finally picked a Guns N’ Roses collection, and the original tape of Steve Miller’s ‘The Joker’…only wanted to spend a buck, but nearly went for another 50 on the second Eagles best of collection…and the lady at the sale explained that she had so many cassettes ‘cause at one time she had a Karmann Ghia whose sound system only accepted those…judging by the vintage of the tapes, this mighta been in the late Seventies…
…and asked her if the Guns N’ Roses was indeed live as the handwritten song list said – she went upstairs to ask her husband, “Fabrice”, if this actually was so…he said yes, so that decided it…and there was a little boy child at the yard sale sitting around, the lady’s son, I guess – took up a magnifying glass, one of those Sherlock Holmes ones, and put it to my eye as I looked at him through it, saying, like, “Oh, I see…” He failed to find this very humorous – he probably thought it was just weird…
And also passed on a tape of early Police, ‘Ghost in the Machine’, the one with “Spirits in the Material World” as the first track – or rather, ‘song’…tracks are for vinyl, of course…
And got on my way down from the elevations of that part of down towards the Civic Center…was missing also the higher quality of lodgings and general environment there…and noted that the sun was beginning to come out, to smile upon the parade. Had checked the sky earlier and really felt it was gonna be a gray day…and flashed back to the Red Victorian, me in the bathroom there…liked how I felt the mirror in there flattered me…and there was a sign about not flushing feminine products down the toilet, with “feminine” spelled wrong – surely it wasn’t prose poster artist Sami who’d made that mistake…
And further down to the flatlands…the crowds and vendors were gathering…a big stage beside City Hall, and someone was adjusting the sound, doing that “check, check, check” thing…
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…and at the artisan market at U.N. Plaza a few days ago – asked the “Gemcense” vendor – it’s alternative to incense, and a convenient form of aromatherapy – why they hadn’t responded to my e-mail about their product – had bought six bucks worth of it and sent a message – seemed like not the best business policy – can’t believe they have all ‘that’ many customers…
And leaving the Plaza…caught in the very direct gaze of a drug dealer who wanted to know what I wanted. Just shrugged and walked on…then to a Tenderloin corner store and began spending some of the 22 and a half bucks I’d earned that day: a package of Indian incense and a bottle of Boone’s Farm Sangria, potatoes…
…then later, maybe even the next day – when my voice recorder’s full there are gaps in this supposed narrative…Odd Fellow brother P. called to say he had an exclusive ticket for an October art show for me…
…and again at the artisan market…a lady was selling the African shea butter I like for my skin, but told her another vendor there was selling a larger amount for the same price – this didn’t bother her…it’s something like avocadoes that can be both eaten and used for cosmetic, on-the-skin health purposes. Read somewhere that, in fact, one shouldn’t put on the skin anything that you couldn’t eat and enjoy…
…and also liked that day at the artisan market, a two-by-two foot Warhol “Marilyn”, for eight bucks, printed in Dusseldorf. Could easily find a place for that…
..and a bit later, saw people running for a bus that was right in front of me – I waved to the driver and he stopped – if I hadn’t taken action they mighta missed it – another good deed done by yours truly for people of San Francisco…
…and thought of a phrase ‘Faux Show’…pronounced as is the ebonic phrase “fo’ sho’” – “for sure”…
And on the street, what looked like a full plastic bottle of something – picked it up, examined it, tasted it – wasn’t what was on the label, but it wasn’t offensive. Left it for someone else…
And then to St. Anthony’s – on the menu that day, a chicken and white bean “cassoulet” – which is, according to Wikipedia: “a rich, slow-cooked bean stew or casserole originating in the Southwest of France…” “Tony’s” strives sometimes for the gourmet…
And my dining partner across from me was really into B-movies – and he had the bulging eyes of a crack user. Well, he goes into descriptions of scenes from movies he likes, like ‘Reptilicus’, from ’61 – he described how part of the tail of a prehistoric killer reptile is found, which subsequently regenerates into the entire beast itself, with the expected result. A clue as to what this is: Reptilicus doesn’t kick back with a pleasant cup of chamomile tea to
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discuss the nuances of Elizabethan poetry, okay? And another one my dining part liked, ‘Hard to Die’ – he talked about how a woman is shot repeatedly with a massive gun, falls down, then heals very quickly, picking up the gun to then inflict leaden vengeance…
…then out of the free lunch venue, down to Market, past the former Hibernia Bank, now a pigeon sanctuary…found a discarded but quite clean ‘New York Times’ secreted behind a trash can and selected relevant sections…and got myself a can of suds at the liquor store on 7th near the Odd Fellows Hall – and somewhere secured a plastic soda bottle, whereafter I transferred said suds, this in order to disguise them…reminded of an ejaculating penis when the foam overflowed from the plastic bottle’s mouth…could be used as symbolism in a movie scene…
…then up into the lodge…Brother P. then gave me then the aforementioned exclusive art show ticket – an event in October in honor of Stanlee Gotti, a San Francisco luminary, some kind of “Artists’ Ball”…frankly, seems like the sort of event where I, by my sheer clothing alone, my aggressive lack of defined grooming, would be turned away at the door, possession of exclusive ticket or no…to be held at the Yerba Buena Gardens complex…well, it’s still a ways away – maybe I’ll just go and ‘cause a scene, a ‘nice’ one, if necessary, until they show me the door. Told P. I’d not reveal from whence I’d obtained the ticket…
And up Market…on the way to the post office to mail an envelope of papers Brother P. had given me…and a guy near the library was leaving a bunch of books he’d tried to sell – went through ‘em, organizing them somewhat as I went, as is my custom – nothing particularly noteworthy, according to ‘my’ literary standards, except a biography of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, the diminutive but nonetheless fantastic French artist, which I kept…and as I did this, another guy comes up, curious about the goods – he checks them out and takes a Latin text book, saying it was the very one he’d used himself in high school, amazingly enough…
...and done with the post office assignment, into the library – selected movies on tape for D. in the hotel, the first ‘Mission: Impossible’ and the Gable/Colbert classic, a true classic, ‘It Happened One Night’, and two Wing Chun gung fu martial arts books for night hotel desk man Vic…and that day a few days ago the Gay Pride Parade vendors were setting up in front of the library on Grove…noted the trash can with an ad on the side for personal lubricants…and there were stacks and stacks of the glossy free magazine that is given away each year…
…and this was about eleven in the morning…headed back to the hotel – there was a fence around the U.N. Plaza fountain, I guess to keep out the assembled throng of parade goers the next day…and police barricades were stacked and ready to keep the crowds in order…
Then to the room…one of the gung fu books was written by one Yip Chun, the son of Yip Man, the first instructor of Bruce Lee…then…the narrative slipping here again, but what the heck…wanted to note that Odd Fellow brother P. had a few days ago given me, in lieu of cash payment, and gladly on my part, a full bottle of vermouth, the kind of sweet red wine I enjoy…
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…and back a few days, on another job for Odd Fellow brother P., waiting on a free southbound bus ride at 7th and Mission, in front of the new Federal Building construction – free ‘cause it was a “Spare the Air Day” on Muni and BART – car riders were being encouraged to get out of their vehicles and take public transportation…yeah, like that’s really gonna happen to any significant extent. Maybe another oil embargo will come along…
The job: take a check to the Discount Builders Supply store at Otis and Mission – another of P.’s guys, Pete, was waiting there with material needed for the Odd Fellows building…and along comes a #26, not the expected 14…hadn’t been on a bus in months, literally – ‘every’ day ‘I’ spare the air, geez…in general, I enact ecological principles on a daily basis…
…then off the bus, heading down Duboce…there’s the Zeitgeist “downscale” bar – that is, an establishment “relating to low-income consumers”, which would be me…said to be popular with bicyclists – and also read that pot’s openly smoked there…just Googled on the place, a very terse user review says: “Trendy: no”, “Romantic: no”, “Good dancing: no”, “Good social scene: yes”, “Good happy hour: yes”. Sounds like ‘my’ kinda dive…
And there’s the Lo-Fi Customs place at their new address around the corner from their previous one – sorta attracted to it – a lot of art work there, customized bicycles…the signs says: “Local Art, Bikes, Clothing”…bought a cassette tape once there, when I lived up in the Mission, with a guy who was actively against the encroachment of Yuppies, or their current incarnation, displacing the lower-income locals. I recall the dude had particularly venom for the Tokyo Go Go sushi place on 16th near Valencia…
So got to the supply store, hard by the freeway overhead…have passed it hundreds and hundreds of time over the years, but I’m not the handiest with hammers and saws and such (understatement of all time since the Big Bang) and had never been in before…and there’s a very difficult few yards to cross between the little Muni bus stop island and the main sidewalk due to the offcoming freeway traffic…a fairly never-ending stream of cars and trucks – a pedestrian has to be aggressive to make it to the other side in decent time, geez…
…and there was Pete relaxing on his big handcart, eyes closed, reclining…pulled out the check, and we went in…the clerk – a 27-year employee, said her name plate – that’d be since 1979 – didn’t immediately accept the check since I didn’t have I.D. – had to get the manager involved, had to call Brother P. on my cell – finally got it resolved in a quarter of an hour…
And Pete for some reason wanted to haul the goods, long light fixtures, back by hand – well, he didn’t think they’d be safe from harm on a bus. I told him ‘I’ was taking the free Muni back – only had to carry a light little bag of metal fittings…across the street, the CitiCenter building – once did some mandatory volunteering there – but that would be an oxymoron, “a figure of speech that combines two normally contradictory terms” – thanks Wikipedia and Google…the first of which even quotes poet John Donne from his ‘Devotions on Emergent Occasions’ for an
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example: “O miserable abundance, O beggarly riches!”
..and that mandatory volunteering, when I was still on a San Francisco general assistance program – it was at an AIDS non-profit called Project Inform, basically staffed entirely by gay men, about a dozen plus, and there ‘I’ was, festive enough, but not gay. Peculiar situation, but I went with it…was pretty turned on by two of the young interns there, one Alicia Dithmart from, I believe, Iowa, and one Diana Fischer, from New York…a bit of a fiasco there for me: Alicia had declared her same sex tendencies to me, and I spoze the same went for Diana…
…and so waited on the little cement island at the Muni stop for a ride back to the lodge with the tiny metal conduits…bugged by the ambient city noise: an ambulance, an idiot on a really loud motorcycle gunning his engine…couldn’t wait to get out of there – relieved when a 14 went south down Mission – this usually meant another was coming in the other direction…
…and bided time seeking some slim amusement in signs at the builder supply store: Delta and Glidden were sponsors for the store, logos included on the place’s big sign – but Delta was a plastics company, not the airline…and the slim amusement part is this, a name of a person who might work there, I conjured: Miss Delta Glidden – yeah, slim, as I said…
…and up comes not the desired 14, but a 49, which would take me only as far as Van Ness – took it anyway and walked the rest of the way to the lodge…passed the Goodwill outlet – did mandatory volunteering there as well as part of a city program – liked the look of how they are currently organizing their books, a plentiful supply well-displayed on large shelves…
…and my luck turned then – a 14 was coming in the direction I wanted and stopped across the street just at the right time…it was a limited bus, not making each stop, but it made the one I wanted at 7th…and then back to the lodge hall - Pete there before me, and he made something of how that had happened, me on a bus and him hauling a load…then the both of us to Washington Mutual with the check from Brother P., me getting 22 bucks and a half from that…
…and after that had to re-mail a package that was returned to P. – the clerk at the Fox Plaza post office joked to me, about the disheveled condition of the package: “Don’t mail no ugly stuff.” And she also fingered it and wondered if a bulge wasn’t a book, which woulda cost more. Then the other clerk chimed in to the effect that there was even writing on the back – I had done calculations about postage. I found this amusing, and later thought of more I coulda said, like: “Geez, does the Postal Service pay you extra for these jokes? ‘cause I gotta tell you, they’re overpaying…” And the final thing, the clerk gave me a nice new envelope and told me to use ‘that’ next time. I nodded and smiled, and very soon subsequently tossed it...
…then to Burger King for one of their 11 cent cups of ice, which I consider one of the best deals for anything in a town where good deals can be rare…then back towards the hotel. Near the U.N. Plaza artisan market, the magnetism of the bracelets I like drew me to them…
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…new vendor noticed a few days ago at the U.N. Plaza artisan market, a guy with distinctive signs he’d made himself, such as “DRAMA QUEEN”, “FABULOUS”, and “KISSES”…chatted with him a bit – now, I’m totally straight, but for a hetero guy I think my “gaydar” is pretty on target, and this guy was that – I suppose signs like the above might give that away as well. And this was a bit before the Gay Pride Parade took basically took over the Civic Center area, so that would make sense of his new presence…
…and checked out the movies on tape a guy was selling – a Tanya Roberts movie, ‘Men in Black’ – my double feature choice…Roberts was pretty darn hot at the time of her zenith in the media, fabulous bod. Recently, she introduced segments of a cable softcore porn series – the premise was that she was the host of a radio show where callers would describe sexual episodes – then cut to actors portraying these…well, the videos were 2 for 5, decent price – the street price in the Tenderloin from sellers on the sidewalk is about a buck each, and for good material – Bruce Lee’s ‘The Chinese Connection’, for example, I saw recently for sale, original tape and original box...in the era of DVDs the taped movies go for less. And: the artisan market guy was, when I was walking by, hanging a Keith Haring poster…
…and did a little bit of my own laundry the other day in my hotel room, to save the cost of a machine and dryer – got my pail, boiled water, added soap powder, and by hand did my tank top with “FUCKIN’ ROCK ‘N’ ROLL” and a skull on it. Washed, let it dry in the sun, the natural, costless way…
…and really passed on an audio cassette at the corner thrift store at Leavenworth and Eddy, which has a basket of audio tapes out front: Jimmy Swaggart singing, of all things, including sure-to-be-snappy tune by the name of “The Old Account Was Settled”. Not exactly sure what the title refers to – some sort of Jesus-settles-your-sins melody. Or perhaps it’s in homage to his accountant for saving him from jail for swindling his flock…
…and am leery, Tim, of buying any of the tapes from there which have handwritten labels. Paid 50 cents recently for one marked as being rock hits of the Seventies, but that wasn’t on there, tho’ I am much fond of tunes from that area and was a bit disappointed…bring on “One Tin Soldier”!
…and was heading to the lodge since Odd Fellow brother P.S. had work for
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me that day ‘bout a week ago…pausing at an intersection, noted the Old Navy shirt on Nike sandals on a little kid, maybe a one year old…already a corporate sign the tyke was, geez…he was being led along with a few other little kids, each of their hands looped in a connecting rope held by their minders. Always fun to see these really little ones being walked around, in daycare I guess, a frequent pleasant sight amid Tenderloin squalor…
…and at the time was still thinking about the violent move made upon my person – my shirt, actually – by the hotel guy at the library – this described a few blogs ago. Learned not to even pat his arm lightly in jest…sheesh, whatta grouch…
…and, will be getting a cash download into my B of A account in less than three days, looking forward to that…several bills that I must definitely pay for sure this time…and a list of life essentials, including a tub of African shea butter from the artisan market to protect my skin from the sun – exposing more flesh these days and I need to mind the solar radiation...
…and down to the lodge at 7th and Market – three of us showed up simultaneously (and also at the same time) to see main man P.S. He saw a guy on a really tricked-out bicycle first, told me he’d see me in 15 minutes, and told the third he’d be after that…while waiting, heard another Odd Fellow brother, Sam, talking to P.S. – decided against going up to say hello to him – don’t think he likes me overmuch, and I don’t need to burden myself on someone if they’re not welcoming…
…and eventually P.S. got ‘round to me – the job was putting stamps on a hundred-and-20 envelopes for the Odd Fellows lodge newsletter, and also folding copies of the newsletter and stuffing ‘em…I’m pretty efficient at work like that, and got most of it done before something else came up…and also, P.S. handed me an large envelope that the Post Office had returned – it was over 16 ounces, and due to heightened national security that size must be handed to a P.O. clerk – I’d just slipped it into a slot…
…and wanted to mention that the day described was a “Spare the Air Day”, meaning BART and Muni were free for that 24 hours, this in order to encourage citizens to leave their cars at home and decrease pollutants. Geez, ‘every’ day is that for me, as much as I’m on foot and on bicycle…
Monday, June 26, 2006
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…and a bud of grass, that is, pot, also known as marijuana – a small bud of it I’d bought recently from a lady in the hotel for a buck and thirty cents in change, had that sitting around for days before I smoked it…not into that happy just now, tho’ have been in years and years gone by. Sweet red wine for me these days…
…and another detail in the audio book of the Philip K. Dick novel ‘The Man in the High Castle’ I liked, a mention of someone dealing in a copy of ‘Tip Top Comics’ from the Thirties – just Googled on this – actual real comic book from the time. The character with this is a dealer in Americana…and Dick also mentions a rickshaw on Montgomery Street – the beginning of the novel, from ’62, is set in San Francisco…
…and from KQED radio recently, learned that in fact German kids love carrot flavor a lot, ask for it – there was a recent global survey of tastes and this was found out. Y’know, in America, your average child isn’t gonna be asking for that on his or her taste buds…but turns out, no big surprise, perhaps, that Coca-Cola and vanilla ice cream sell well just about anywhere on Earth…sugar sure isn’t prejudiced…
…and a recent culinary monstrosity – I mean, superlative meal – of mine, with carrots, small squashes, and onions – well, just tossed it out next day. There was no oil, no fat of any kind, so it wasn’t as slimy as it otherwise woulda been, and it was very easy to clean the sauce pan it had been perpetrated in…
…and neighbor S. next door to me, with a friend, watching the tube, door open, which it usually isn’t. Passing by, I said: “Du-u-u-u-des!” and just walked on…
…and been getting into some Ambrose Bierce recently – from 1870, a short piece critical of Mark Twain for marrying rich – called the author of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ a “pig”, in fact. No one escaped the acerbic pen of Bierce…
…and also on KQED radio recently – I listen to this very
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intermittently – not really, currently, into many current events – a Marine talking about the benefits of “taking” a house from the top down…makes sense…land on the roof and make use gravity…and also about how, in Iraq, “insurgents” are distinguished from civilians…
…and the next morning, had a cup of instant noodles that had been sitting all night – I prefer food on the room temp side anyway…hadn’t turned on the Philip K. Dick science fiction novel – didn’t feel the need for anything too weird to affect dreaming…and ate those noodles too fast without enough chewing, hadda swallow water to get a clump down. Learned that sometimes helpful trick from my Former Lady Roommate…
…and on the radio, high heat and low humidity combining down in the L.A. area to create the usual yearly forest fires…lived there for over seven years, was paid to monitor the TV news, so I am familiar with this phenomenon of the area – mudslides also happen a lot down there, at least in places like Malibu – often those homes of the wealthy are covered instantly in a sliding wall of thousands of pounds of wet dirt…
…and noticed, when requesting library kung fu books for Vic at the hotel front desk, that many of these are missing – meaning, stolen…one volume was called ‘Shaolin Chin Na: the Seizing Art of Kung Fu’, which is certainly one Vic woulda wanted to see…and took out for hotel friend D. recently four movies: ‘Stardust Memories’, ‘Goldfinger’, ‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’, and Jackie Chan’s ‘The Legend of Drunken Master’…
…and incident I coulda done without – me leaving the library, in comes guy from the hotel, one that is into stealing things from the library. I joked, patting him lightly on his shoulder, saying I wondered what he was there for, and that he need not bother asking me to be his accomplice like I’d been before. Well, the guy has little humor, guess he doesn’t like being touched at all, and he grabs my shirt fairly roughly. Not an individual to trifle with, which doesn’t say much about ‘his’ character…
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…and thought of a “Dumb Blonde” or “Dumb Whatever” joke: “…he/she was so dumb he/she thought a bar exam was reading the drink list at a tavern…” And I say, tapping the microphone: “I know you’re out there, I can hear you breathing…”
…and had a bag of Nestle Toll House Semi-Sweet Morsels in my possession recently – can’t remember where I found ‘em, but it was sealed, intact – didn’t want ‘em – neighbor S. didn’t want ‘em…took ‘em downstairs and front desk guy Vic wanted ‘em…and have been bringing him a lotta kung fu books from the library recently, since he requested ‘em. He is a serious student of the martial arts, and it’s no problem to carry these the few blocks from the library…got several on order and will be getting these to him as they come in, to help him meaningfully pass the time during his evening shift guarding the hotel’s gate…
…and on the way to the library, at the two-twenty-two Club at that number of Hyde near Eddy, a three hour “Happy Hour” from six to 9 in the evening…quite the elongation of time there…and some sort of art exhibit in there as well, one in a series of these, in the downstairs portion, very, tres subterranean, in the Kerouac sense, y’know…really recommended destination in the Tenderloin for those venturing within…
And have also been bringing to another person in the hotel, D., movies on videocassette – ‘Lolita’ and ‘Deliverance’, as mentioned before, was a recent double feature I brought the man…
And for myself at the library, the audio book of Philip K. Dick’s early Sixties novel ‘The Man in the High Castle’…and for Vic Bruce Lee’s text on his Jeet Kune Do martial arts method – or ‘non-‘method might be better, since he believed in spontaneity and not the mere repetition of the routine, and a book about ninjutsu, the Japanese art of stealth. And ordered for Vic through the electronic catalog several kung fu books, kept mostly at the Chinatown branch, which is appropriate…he says he’s not as much into karate, but maybe when he’s gone through the kung fu
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volumes he might change his mind…
…and ‘some’ kids in the Tenderloin have it pretty good – little boy was riding, low and slow riding, in a big motorized jeep-like thing, his daddy keeping him safe from a few feet behind…
…and haven’t been wearing glitter lately, but noticed a shard of the red kind I’d been wearing before at eye level near the door of the elevator of the floor I’m on…
…and Vic was pleased with the ninjutsu book – thought it was the best alternative since there weren’t many kung fu books at the main branch…he’s got long hair in a tight pony tail, so that’s a martial arts thing, perhaps in emulation of guys in Chinese martial arts flicks…
…and to the New Princess corner market for iced tea in a can – they didn’t have it…stood there for about a minute riveted by dancing on a TV screen, black dancers, black choreographer, truly amazing moves…and got into that Phil Dick audio book – the premise is that the U.S. is occupied by Nazi Germany and Japan, which in the guy’s alternate future won World War II…
…and smiled at a detail in ‘The Man in the High Castle’ – guy fires up a legal marijuana cigarette, and the brand name is “Land o’ Smiles”…
…and was getting into the second of the three instant noodle cups I’d gotten at a recent hotel Bingo game…geez, enough sodium in one to tide me over ‘til next month…but perhaps it balances all the sugar in the red, sweet wine I tend to drink. Yeah, that’s it…
…and recently the 25th anniversary of the U.N. Plaza farmers’ market had been held…a food sculptor dude was there, Supervisor Aaron Peskin had made a speech – missed that…and special food and health advice was given – there was a spinning wheel which provided dietary advice, used to give away free plastic water bottles…
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…one morning recently, a few days ago – had a certain “hungover” feeling, but it wasn’t unpleasant, no headache, just a body feeling – most likely from quantities of cheap, red, sweet wine I’d had the previous day. And turned on some live James Taylor on cassette…his “Sweet Baby James” cowboy song, “Handyman”…been reading the James DeRogatis biography of rock music critic Lester Bangs recently – in fact, read ‘the entire thing’, which I don’t usually do with most books – and learned that Bangs didn’t care at all for Taylor. Well, that’s where Lester and I must differ…yeah, all that early Seventies L.A. country rock, including the Eagles, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, the early Linda Ronstadt – yeah, love that…
…and must praise hotel friend Pat for paying for our mutual hotel friend D.’s Odd Fellows dues – 26 bucks for the year – as well as for carrying a case of 24 Guinness bottles, a gift from Odd Fellow brother P.S. to D. for the membership, all the way from the lodge at 7th and Market to the hotel on Eddy near Hyde. Offered my help but Pat endured that intense burden all by himself…and D. shared a few bottles with us as well…
…and thought of a name for a woman, Terry Romper – from the front picture on some sort of catalog of gifts someone had left in the hotel lobby…the Terry from “terry cloth”, and romper from that type of one-piece garment…cute lady model wearing one…and the romper came in various colors, so as to designate different individuals: Terry Mint, Terry Romper Pink, Terry Romper Lime, Terry Romper Lemon…this meant, of course, in a humorous manner, not in some demeaning, anti-feminist manner, James Bond villain manner…
And last week played some Bingo in the social lounge in the basement of the hotel, led by Priscilla, a social worker. Just three of us took part besides her, and each of us won little gift bags, winning or not…traded hotel friend K. the candies I got for his instant noodle cups – I sure don’t need more sugar - and I kept the disposable razors. I in fact won the first game played, tho’ I didn’t think that’d happen…
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…and am continuing to gather signatures on the abovementioned D.’s birthday card, which day is happening at the end of next month…
…and up to my room – neighbor S. had his door open and offered me a Tecate, which I took…and also had another free Tecate a few days previously from Mad Dog of the Merchants of the New Bizarre at their show at the five-zero-nine Cultural Center at that address on Ellis near Leavenworth…
…and began fixing vegetable soup for myself in my sauce pan on my hot place, with onions, several carrots, and little yellow squashes…and was reading in a book about Bruce Lee, how he would always, day in, day out, eat the same dish when he went to restaurants, namely, oyster beef over rice, with root beer. Waiters didn’t even hafta give him a menu…
And fun typographical error in that book, called ‘The Dragon and the Tiger’: “A broad crossed Bruce’s face.” A previous reader had written a question mark beside this. Well, it hasta be a “grin” or “smile” between “broad” and “crossed”, but it kinda works the way it is…
And also this detail about the dude’s life, from ’62, on his birthday, his 21st – he and friends went to a Seattle movie theater to see a double feature, the then-new Akira Kurosawa samurai flick ‘Yojimbo’, paired with ‘The Seven Samurai’, from a few years earlier. And I’m thinking that’s quite a lot of movie time – just Googled on the length of the second one – nearly three hours and a half. And the first clocks in at nearly two…
And a recent dilemma for me that was resolved: on the same day, same time, a party at the hotel for its 100th anniversary, and a rare trip by the Odd Fellows lodge to the one in Berkeley…decided for the second when Odd Fellow brother P. told me the members in Berkeley were teetotalers, and I had that day already gotten well into a bottle of Boone’s Farm Sangria. Well, for me, that was a long trip on BART – I like to stay really local…
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…and recently on a little job for Odd Fellow brother P.S. – taking a Manila envelope to his certified public accountant at the historic – because designed by noted architect Willis Polk – Hobart Building on Market. Took BART over – decided against rummaging through the discarded newspapers in a recycling container – just wanted the Datebook for movie and arts news…
…then down the stairs to the BART level – did a few stair steps in an exaggerated ballet-like movement – been reading a bit about Nureyev and Balanchine lately. And also, the presence of the San Francisco Dance Center in the Odd Fellow Hall building is affecting – plenty of dedicated dance students. Not that I wanna take dance lessons myself, or yoga, or martial arts – riding a bicycle in the city combines those for me to a certain extent…
…and an interesting incident of synchronicity – just as I was entering the BART train, there out comes Pat from the hotel – who has also been doing work for P.S. in the lodge building. Now, what are the chances of that happening? Told him that P.S. had told me to tell him that there was money waiting for him for work done…
…and furthermore, had boarded the wrong BART train, one heading south, to Daly City. Figured something was amiss when the ride to the next station, which shoulda been Powell, seemed way longer than it shoulda been – so disembarked at 16th and immediately got one going north again…
And got back out of the subterranean near the Virgin Megastore – there are any number of discs, new ones, I wanna get – my music of late is just off cassettes – yesterday bought for 50 cents each at a yard sale near the Haight a copy of Steve Miller’s ‘The Joker’ and a Guns N’ Roses selection…the first is very listenable, but began thinking about Axl Rose’s heroin thing when I had the second on, and that didn’t sit that well with me…
And the Megastore had some kind of Eighties CD sale on, starting at eight-ninety-nine…and: it occurred to me then, heading east up Market, just how big the BART station was there, taking up, like, two blocks and more, looked like…incredible engineering to have built that transit system…
And passing the Thrifty’s on Market – I remember, and it wasn’t that long ago, when a scoop of their ice cream was ridiculously cheap, stunningly so –
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this down in L.A., in the early Nieties, at the one next to MacArthur Park – was it actually 29 cents? Now, it’s 99 for a single, not much of a deal…especially when considering that the butterfat content of their product isn’t anywhere near that of Haagen-Dazs at a whole pint for about three…
…and passed by a homeless guy with two orange cats sleeping peacefully on top of his shopping cart, as if they were lounging in the penthouse of the Fairmont Hotel…and was surprised as always by the immense size of the weight gain powder displayed at GNC – six pounders for about 40 bucks, including tax…and at One Post Plaza, the congregated bicycle messengers sitting on the stone steps…and moving to the Hobart Building, guy walking and talking on a cell phone used this techno speak phrase, which I liked: “…incredible underlying functionality…” – perhaps about his girlfriend…
…and into the famed San Francisco building, up eight floors, easy delivery to the CPA’s secretary. Examined details of the place – still had the old school mail drops between floors…and then it was the long walk back to Odd Fellow brother P.S. at the building on 7th – he only gave me enough for a one-way ride…and had an idea for a character, male, named Sancho Villa…with his woman companion in the Don Quixote role…he might be sort of a shady character: Sancho, villain…
…then a gap in this supposed narrative – my digital recorder was full…things happened, tho’…next note, in my room listening to a ZZ Top best of cassette I’d purchased on the street, expressing delight at the straight ahead Texas rock – in the interval since then, have given it away to Rosalinda, who supervises at the computer center I go to near the hotel, along with a balancing tape, a Bangles one…she’d played in a band not long ago…and also in the gift package, one of the magnetic bracelets I like much, and a small bottle of glitter someone had given me…
…and later that day, about a week ago, a young lady in the hotel exchanged a small bud of pot for a buck-30 in change. Kept that for several days before finally smoking it on a makeshift device made from an empty aluminum can with the middle pressed down slightly, small holes punctured into that indentation…and one final note this posting – was with P.S. in his office at the lodge hall building and he asked me how “accommodate” was spelled – told him wrong, that it had only one “m”…I needed to see it on the page…
Saturday, June 24, 2006
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…and back a few days, me with my bicycle in Washington Square Park in North Beach, drinking a kombucha I’d bought South of Market – I can get around pretty well on those two wheels…pulled the label off the glass bottle and attached it to the down tube of my ride – the previous owner of the machine had festooned it, and I mean ‘festooned’, with all kinds of stickers – a whole lotta skull ones, for some personal reason. Put the kombucha label over one of the skulls and a tequila one…
…and sat and sipped the enzymes and probiotics and watched as the street fair was being set up, the food and beer vendors…when I was ready to go I motioned and smiled towards an elderly Chinese couple that the seat was quite available…I mean, I’ve been accused of being, like, abusive and insulting, but I have my moments of consideration, really, really I do…
…then a ride north on Columbus, to the Tower Records – sign on the side of the building: “THE DIFFERENCE IS SELECTION”…passed the big Grateful Dead billboard, advertising new remasterings of ten of their albums…have “Jack Straw” on my mind lately – have got it on a cassette song compilation I have…really wanna get back into that, get a boom box with a cassette and more CDs, new ones, and dub them onto a tape…
…then back up Columbus, going south – a good workout for me – the inclination isn’t too steep, but I can feel it…then into the Financial District – there was the location of a B. Dalton’s that is now some stupid clothing outlet or something – another bookstore bit it in San Francisco, a shame…
…and up Geary to Hyde, another slight inclination of the street that’s a great workout…and into the hotel – saw friend D. – had given him a VCR that I’d bought on the street for five bucks, and he’d hooked it up to his big TV, and he wanted me to bring him movie tapes from the library. Have been doing this regularly – just brought back this morning my choice for a double feature: ‘Deliverance’ and ‘Lolita’. Eclectic I can pretty much do…
…and was in D.’s room for a while, watching one of my own tapes, ‘Blue Car’, with the quite cute Agnes Bruckner. Wondered what happened to her – she got good reviews for this one…just Googled – guess she’s working – she’s in ‘Peaceful Warrior’, the Dan Millman story…born in Hollywood, in ’85…well, D.’s room window was open and I was getting a bit chilled –
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told him this but he didn’t wanna shut it. Great host…
…then outside on the street – met T., the son of one of the women who lives in the hotel – it was Father’s Day, he said he was a father – tho’ he’s very young…I was out to get a jug of wine on credit, and T. wants me to get him a drink and chips on credit as well, but told him I wasn’t gonna do that…and he told me that one of his kids was dead. I mean, T.’s barely twenty himself, if that…
…and my man Wa’il wasn’t the guy tending the Tenderloin corner store, so no credit Carlo Rossi for me that day…well, I’m already up to 5 jugs this month, anyway, so that’s my limit. Then up to my room…had empty bottles of Carlo Rossi and there were small amounts of wine left in each, so I poured these into a cup – a small mouthful of the ‘vino’…
…and learned about then that Walgreen’s was having a sale of the double A batteries that I use for my digital voice recorder…gotta stock up on these…the best deal is at Costco, tho’ – hafta buy 11 dollars worth but it comes out to, like, 3 of ‘em for a buck. I’m usually paying a dollar each…
…and was listening to some Bangles recently. In “Manic Monday”, noted the reference to “kissing Valentino” – geez, that goes back a ways…his cinematic charisma still exerts itself on some, like Susanna Hoffs…
…and in that Lester Bangs biography…Bangs had problems with ‘Rolling Stone’ publisher Jann Wenner, who apparently changed music reviews Bangs had written, and only took “stuffed shirts” seriously. And Bangs was pretty far from that, a truly irreverent individual. Well, at some point Bangs could take no more and thereafter wrote famously for ‘Creem’, which allowed him a full range for his irreverence and wildness of mind…
…then out again, down to the U.N. Plaza farmers’ market, a Sunday, a very busy day for the farm folks – the Jagad Guru folks weren’t there at the Bolivar statue…had gotten a call from a lady called Kalavati about perhaps taking some meditation classes…then got myself a sample of cilantro chutney, yummy…then found one of the Jagad Guru people at the other end of the market – an intensely focused guy playing a guitar with a Hindu name ending in –das…he told me Kalavati had gone to the Rainbow Gathering…
Friday, June 23, 2006
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…bird song outside my hotel window is one of the really nice things about where I’m living – this even in the middle of a very concrete area of San Francisco…guess the flying ones have a nest on the roof of the building…
…and called to the front desk one Sunday morning, wondering if night shift dude J.J. was there – wanted to know what was happening with the single copy of blog pages I’d given him. He says he had gotten addicted to them…guess he’s got ‘em, maybe took ‘em home to read all the way through…
…and made at call to the Harvest Urban Market on 8th South of Market to see when they opened – still had enough on me to get single eight-ouncers of kombucha and rejuvelac…easily could’ve bought, like, a Boone’s Farm with that cash, but I still pay attention to more healthier practices than just drinking wine…
…and managed to go through a stack of papers – mostly articles pulled from magazines and newspapers – really gotta do that more, organize, avoid clutter – most of what I have consists of stacks of papers…and found a copy of the glossy S.F. high society rag ‘Papercity’, scanned through that while taking a dump, and left it in the hallway for the enjoyment of others…
…and outside, a moving van was parked, inloading some of hotel manager Brian Samuel’s belongings – asked him about this – said he’s moving…yeah, guess his tenure’s about up – heard he’s going into business for himself, and that’s good…got paid pretty well, I think, to manage the hotel, and the many crazies within…
…and down by bicycle to the Sunday farmers’ market at U.N. Plaza – looks like the ‘balut’ sellers are doing well – a super long line…guess that’s what they were there for, the fertilized eggs with partially-developed ducklings…they couldn’t pay me to eat that, but for some it’s a delicacy…gross…gag me with a spoon…
…which phrase reminds me how much I enjoy the song “Valley Girl”, with Frank’s daughter Moon (Unit) on vocals…like, oh-my-god! Totally! And was heading to get the kombucha and rejuvelac at the Urban Harvest Market…not much exertion South of Market when on a bicycle, at least
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heading south – the incline portion is when one is going north…
…and got an e-mail from former junior high and high school class mate Carm…lately she hasn’t sent me anything, but this morning she e-mailed me “The Penis Song” from ‘The Sweetest Thing’…what to make of that? Hotmailed her back about how much I just totally love that movie…
…and, at the market – didn’t have the sizes I wanted, so got instead a large bottle of kombucha alone, made in Middletown, California, near Harbin Hot Springs – honeysweetdrinks.com is the address to inquire…
…the label says: “The tea that tastes like wine.” Paid for it – the young lady at the check-out gave me a dime back instead of the correct nickel – informed her of this - then went outside to drink – the seats out front were still in the shade, so I crossed 8th to stand in the sun to imbibe…another reason for crossing was some dude that seemed to hover nearer around me – didn’t want any interaction with him…
…then on my bicycle, the undrunk part of the kombucha managing to fit in a back jeans pocket…up to the farmers’ market, this day described being a Sunday – enjoyed fruit samples from a farm in Sanger, pesticide-free…and rode past the Warfield – “Zappa Plays Zappa” is a scheduled concert for the end of July – and oddly enough, mentioned Zappa earlier in this very blog…and thought to myself – geez, there’s nothing else happening then until the end of July? It’s just near the end of June now…
…and rode through the Union Square area up into Chinatown…went through two alleys, Wentworth and Beckett – normally woulda just gone straight down Grant to Columbus, but had an undesired interaction with people in a van so I veered off to avoid them…
…and the North Beach street fair was setting up, second day – this along Upper Grant, and also at Washington Square Park, which was my destination – there, “Sausage Paradise” was one of the vendors in tents which filled the place…and sat after parking my bicycle on a bench in the sun – reminded of the sniper in ‘Dirty Harry’, how he targeted those sitting in that very park…and: big Samuel Adams beer presence, lotta signs, like “Rich, Smooth, Impeccably Balanced” – well, isn’t that special…
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