Wipe Off That Grin, I Know Where You’ve Been

I did my part to conserve oil and natural resources today by taking San Francisco & Oakland’s public transportation, called the BART. It stands for, you guessed it, Bay Area Rapid Transit and is the only subway I’ve ever been on that is carpeted. No idea why. My guess is that they have to replace it a couple times per year, although they don’t really have winter here, so maybe it doesn’t get that bad. Can you imagine a carpeted MBTA in Boston? Even worse, can you imagine how it would smell? Yeeesh.

Anyway, I was on my way to work this morning, sitting in carpeted, muffled acoustic glory on the BART, when it occured to me that this is the 20th anniversary of my first trip to San Francisco, which was back when I was, ahem, 13 years old. It was during our February school vacation and I was in 8th grade, hopelessly in love with and “dating” Tracy Pirro and thinking I was really the shit because I had given her the “Naughty Naughty” 7-inch single by John Parr. Man, I loved that song. I gave it to her as a “going-away” gift because I was leaving for San Francisco for an entire week with my family. I remember lamenting that being away for a week was simply way too long to be seperated from her. She apparantly believed the same thing, as we’ll find out later.

Anyway, it was my first time on a plane and also, I believe, my first time out of New England. Since that time, San Francisco remains my favorite “non-home” city to be in.

I mention all this because that week brought another personal first: the very first time I had heard of and seen a compact disc. Why I remember this now, I have no idea, but it is as clear to me as what I did last night. The fam and I were walking around San Francisco and night had fallen. For some crazy-ass reason, we sauntered into an audio store and were poking around when a guy in a suit, a salesman, asked us if we had ever heard a compact disc. All of us said no and gathered around as the salesman dropped a Phil Collins disc into the $1000 dollar CD-player and blew our collective mind. Not because it was a good song, either. I can assure you it was probably an embarassing song, in fact, but I would venture to guess it was no more embarassing than “Naughty Naughty.”

There you go. I wonder if anyone in my family remembers this otherwise forgettable stop in the audio store? Why do I? Most importantly, what the hell happened to twenty years? It often stops me in my tracks when I think about the passage of time and that my own parents were only in their late 30s when we made this trip – an age I am rapidly approaching. Stunning.

In a sort of sick sidenote, I came back after that vacation to find out that our science teacher had been arrested for child molestation while I was gone. Of course, he was the teacher that all us kids really liked. Funny guy, good teacher, etc. It was horrible – and naturally, the talk of the school. I also came home to find out that my glorious four weeks with Miss Pirro was kaput. Over. I should have asked for the damned John Parr record back. I’d bet you anything I’d still have it.

Go Ask Alice, I Think She’ll Know

So I’m sitting here, exhausted, with a million thoughts just bouncing like those ping-pong balls in the lottery machine on the 11:00 news.

At this moment (roughly 9:15pm), I’m sitting in my hotel room in San Francisco at The Argent Hotel, perched on the 31st floor half-staring at my laptop, but mostly staring directly out in front of me, over my laptop screen, at a sprawling view of the San Francisco skyline. Through the glass, my eyes scan the darkened city and despite the daily transformation from bright to black, the sounds all remain the same. Sirens. Horns. Life. Just how I like it. Buildings stick up out of the ground and people live their lives in each of the little lights which shine out from each little window. They all have their own story to tell. Dots of light. I’m simply one of thousands upon thousands of boring, mundane dots of light tonight. Singularly, most of us have nothing compelling to say at this time. Aggregately, a fascinating novel could be written about what’s gone on in our little dots in the last 2 hours alone. It’s why I love cities.

Before I left to come out here last week, Stephanie and I had seen a documentary about one Alice Waters, a counter-culturer from the Berkeley of the 1960s. She isn’t well known for extreme or even wacky politics, as most of the characters out of that area were most asscoiated with at the time. She simply owns a restaurant and has made her name via her “philosophy of always using the highest quality, fresh, seasonal ingredients, grown and harvested in an ecologically sound manner.”

I became convinced that the timing of the documentary was a message – when I get to SF, go to Berkeley and check out Chez Panisse. Well, better luck next time, Jeff. I called at 2pm today just to see if I could get into the Cafe (not even the dining room) and was told that the next available time they have for the Cafe was 10:45 tonight. Looks like I’ll plan a little more in advance next time.

My trip to Los Angeles, as most of my trips to Los Angeles have been, was bizarre. In short, it involved almost meeting Ryan Seacrest, a cab ride which turned out to be one hour and $70, having a Filet Mignon lunch at Morton’s steakhouse at 11:45am and a stroll through the hideously offensive Universal Studios Citywalk. It all happened a little too quickly and it was quite a blur.

The most amusing part of the L.A. jaunt, however, was my call to Expedia to cancel my L.A. to S.F. flight due to a meeting going long. Bear with me here. My original flight was scheduled for 3:15. Our meeting went late and the place we were was, as I mentioned before, a one hour cab ride to LAX (because of traffic volume, not mileage). So on the recommendation of a local, I booked a flight out of Burbank Airport, or, as it’s called now, Bob Hope Airport. Anyway, I call Expedia at about 1:30pm and I explain to them that I need to cancel my LAX flight at 3:15. The woman on the other line says to me, “I can’t do that, sir, that flight is already in the air.”

Now I’m perplexed. I look around to make sure that I’m actually on the planet Earth and I confirm it is, indeed, 1:35pm right now. I tell the woman that the plane cannot possibly be in the air because it’s 1:30 and the flight is scheduled to depart at 3:15. She says “I’m looking at the clock, sir, and it’s 3:36 right now so that flight is an active flight.”

Once I found out she was located in the Central Time Zone, it all became clear to me. I then made things clear for her……can you believe it?

I barely realize Easter is tomorrow.

I went and had dinner tonight at The Thirsty Bear Brewery on the recommendation of the concierge at the hotel. It was so-so. Remind me to never again drink a beer that has slight vanilla flavoring. Thanks. Anyway, give these folks credit – they don’t just serve crap pub food, they offer a variety of Spanish-infused meals, served as tapas. Maybe I just picked the wrong ones, but it was take-it-or-leave it.

Anyway, the point, Jeff. I did a lot of driving today (more on that when I get home and post the pictures) and I’ve barely uttered a word to a single person other than myself today. That can drive any human crazy, so I’m sitting at dinner and all kinds of strange thoughts are going through my head. I finish up my dinner, pay up and start progressing towards the door. I stop to grab a mint there at the front and the very instant after I say “have a good night” to the host at the front, all the lights in the place just go dead. Complete blackout. I smile at the host and walk out. It felt very X-Files and my imagination went wild. What if I made the lights go out with my mind? That would be sweet.

Apparantly there a Mexican soccer team staying here at the hotel, because outside the hotel’s doors, seemingly at all times of the day, are soccer fans wearing the uniform of the Mexican footballers, lugging posters of players and actually waving flags. They swarm anyone associated with the team as they walk in or out. This morning I thought I’d dress “athletically” and wear some Adidas striped gym pants and a gray striped fleece to see if I could fool them and have them swarm me, just to see what it’s like. And what the hell, I’d sign some shit for ’em. Alas, no swarm. Just another dot of light.

This Is Highly Irregular, Michael

A day of days. I was supposed to leave Boston this morning on an early-morning flight to Los Angeles, but as many of you know in the northeast, you can’t plan anything this winter because it snows every day. I woke up at 5:30 and called in to find out my flight was cancelled and that they had re-booked me on a 10:30am flight with a stop in Newark. Fine. The good news: I went back to bed. The bad news: I had a layover in Newark.

So I’m sitting in the airport in what is, quite possibly, America’s worst city and I have a two hour layover. So what do I do? I turn on my cell phone and start poking around at my options. I changed the font color. I changed the wallpaper. I found all kinds of shit I didn’t even know existed on my cell phone. I had previously set my ringtone to be The Clash’s “London Calling,” but after scrolling through some recent Modtones offering, I got my discovery of the day – a Knight Rider ringtone. Now, whenever you call me, I’ll get that synthesizer-laden Knight Rider theme music from the early 1980s. Sweet, yo.

The flight to Los Angeles? Largely uneventful, other than the fact that it turned out to be a twelve hour travel day and I had to sit next to two teeny-bopper cheerleaders, which, at first glance, might sound like not such a bad thing to a red-blooded American male, right? But after an hour of listening to giggling, gossiping and endless talk about makeup, it got old. Fast. Especially when they interrupted me not once, but twice, during the movie just to ask me what time it was.

The movie, by the way, was After The Sunset, featuring Woody Harrelson, Pierce Brosnan and Salma Hayek. As far as airplane movies go, not so bad. Tomorrow: another flight, this time to San Francisco.

Terry Schiavo: please just let her go.

Hands Across America

The original intent of my post today comes further down. But when I was thinking about that subject line for today, I remembered back to Hands Across America. This was an event which took place in May of 1986 and involved five million people joining hands and forming a line which ended up stretching 4,152 miles. Back then, I was fifteen and probably more preoccupied with things like pizza. Regardless, this was a charity event intended to help feed the hungry and combat homelessness. It clearly didn’t work, but that’s beside the point. Realistically, you can’t expect one event to change the world. But in the 1980s, a lot of people sure tried.

What I mean is this: whatever happened to the “huge event for a cause?” Oh sure, we had several charity events after 9/11 and a couple after the tsunami last winter, but how come in the last 20 years or so it takes a tragedy of epic proportions before someone puts together a massive one-day movement? How come Live Aid only happened once? Why don’t we hear about the AIDS quilt anymore (1987)? Did acid rain just go away? Are musicians still “not gonna play Sun City?” OK, that last one is a reach. But do we care as much these days?

Anyway, I shudder to think about a simple question: where have people’s hands been? When scanning a random blog post about germs the other day, I realized that I don’t think it’s so wierd now when I bunch up my sleeve and use it to open bathroom doors when I exit the bathroom. When given the opportunity to dry my hands with a cloth or a paper towel, I’m going paper towel every time, dudes. Every time. I’m definitely NOT one of those people who totally freaks out and obsesses about germs, either, as my wife might attest. I just try to be aware, that’s all, especially in public bathrooms. The CDC recently did a study and the results were that one in three people don’t wash their hands after using the bathroom. How many of those folks participated in Hands Across America, I wonder?

Recently played via Pod:
Anders Parker – “Come On Now”
Buttercup – “Deal With The Devil”
Drive-By Truckers – “Daddy’s Cup”
Elton John – “Levon”
Sloan – “Backstabbin'”
Sixteen Horsepower – “Redneck Reel”
The Clash – “I’m So Bored With The U.S.A.”
Eddie Fontaine – “Nothing Shaking (But The Leaves On The Trees)”