Poultry, Absurdity, Assbags, Street Slides, And More...

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Quite a lot has happened in the last two days (-ish). Tuesday was quite packed and there was no wireless all yesterday, so sadly, no new entries.

Several days worth of wonderful conversation, all seemingly in line with the themes that seems to be continuously running through this trip.

I spent the early part of the day carrying on with Holly. She just came back to the US after spending two years in China. She's now fluent in Mandarin and is setting up her own non-profit business helping facilitate placing individuals in volunteer positions in China, helping out (Golden Bridges). She's quite self-motivated. It'd be great to have my own business up and running at this point (not that I would have any idea what that would be), but the thought of all the work involved in really getting something like that up and running is mind-boggling. Right now Holly is trying to find a Board of Directors she can put in place. These people would be responsible for firing her if she screws up... her own business.

We discussed her time in China over some Garlic and Kung Pao Chicken from the restaurant downstairs. There is a buzzer that allows only hostel residents into the long walk upstairs to the hostel. However, the Chinese restaurant downstairs fills both the first and second floor. And you can only get to the second floor by walking up the hostel stairs to a door on the second floor. Anyway, we stepped in the second floor and had lunch there. Plenty of conversation about traveling the world and religions.

Later in the day I went to a the Museum of Modern Art with Chris. We checked out the Joseph Cornell exhibit, which was a massive display of this very eccentric artist's work.



His work was amazing and much like wandering through a dream. It was intense. He worked with found materials and amassed all these collections. He made shadow boxes, collages, and lots of clippings. Very surreal stuff, even if he tried to avoid that term himself. I couldn't get pictures to turn out due to the glass cases, but I stole plenty of pictures from the internet.





He seemed to have a fixation with the color blue and birds. For a stretch of time he constructed a newsletter called "Poultry Pages," committed entirely to, you guessed it, nothing but poultry. This entry was about the sad drowning of a duck hunter... the sad part being that several turkey sandwiches were lost in the tragic event. Oddball stuff.



While viewing this exhibit, I was overcome with the desire to see certain films like Science of Sleep, Amelie, any Terry Gilliam animations, Neco z Alenky by Svankmajer, and similar otherworldly tales. Again - it was intense. We checked out some of his films afterward, which were difficult views, for a variety of reasons. The main reason being that the projector was giving me a headache. Every time my eyes darted around, I saw bursts of blue, red, and green. Thanks to Fat Jeff, I knew that this was because a certain percentage of people see these colors combining... thank God I'm one of them and sometimes can't tolerate watching something as simple as a movie.

It was a great experience. The museum also had this great piece in the lobby. It was just the top of a fan attached to a cable, whizzing around, randomly changing direction as the fan blew. And just missing the tops of peoples' heads.



Afterward, we went to a coffee shop in the Mission and I enjoyed some great bread pudding. We had this exciting conversation about, well, pretty much everything. We talked about religion, philosophy, personal issues, relationships... the whole gamut.

Chris is a good guy and very excited about life. The best part of the conversation was discussing laughing about the absurdity of life. I've enjoyed doing that lately. Everything cracks me up. And why not? Life is absurd and ridiculous and unfair and hilarious.

That night there was a lot of discussion about This American Life and I talked about the episode "Shoulda Been Dead," a big inspiration to this trip. I found out that Dave, the hostel manager, listens to that episode every week. Apparently a big inspiration to him as well.

People have been concerned about my safety on this trip. But at least I'm not in that Pit of Depravity known as Bloomington. Unbelievable. Nothing bad has happened on this trip so far, except that asshole running into the back of my car and taking off. But I sent my camera equipment to Bloomington so that Snow Bros. Productions could help with an independent film. And within 8 hours of it showing, equipment was stolen by some assbag. Bummer. Everything is covered, but still. Ridiculous.

The next morning, after listening to several dozen messages from Tom apologizing for this unfortunate event, pleading with me for his life and promising his first born (Lilly's a good kid and should net me a fair sum on the black market), I decided I wanted to get going with my day. So, I started the excitement - by heading across town to move my car.

It was quite an adventure.

But later in the day I became very pumped about checking out these slides on Seward Street. There are these giant concrete slides installed in a neighborhood. And they looked like a blast on the site I heard mentioning them online.

And no one wanted to go. What a shame.

This girl Ashley was interested though and it was on. We headed out to check out this place Vesuvio's, an old Kerouac hangout. It was a cool place.



We began the trek to find the slides. We made it to the neighborhood but weren't sure where the slides were. A couple was walking out of a house and I yelled out, "Where are the slides?"

The guy looked very bored, sighed a little, and pointed us in the right direction. Apparently he had heard this question before... and probably around this time of night.

There they were. Let the funhaving begin.

But first, a warning, of course.



The slides were even bigger than I expected. And there were cardboard boxes left around everywhere to facilitate said funhaving.









So much fun. Being a kid again is great.

The rest of the night was spent wandering around with an early attempt to find some jazz.

And once again, the last one to sleep.

Today was very slow. Everyone kept talking about how cold it was.

It was 58 degrees.

At one point some of us ventured out and wandered a little. Now I'm back and writing for all of you. Which is slow going.

De La Soul has a surprise show tonight. Definitely checking that out.

With nothing else to report, here's a few random pictures from the past couple days.







Here's some movie posters for you, Tom.



Oh yeah.

One more quick thing.

I'm staying in San Fran until February.