Ravi Shankar said an amazing thing at this concert I just attended. He said “The first time I was in San Francisco to play music was 1933.”
1933! It seems impossible that the same guy I saw tear it up on sitar last Thursday was doing the same thing in the year that construction started on the Golden Gate Bridge and Hitler came to power in Germany.
Recently, I picked up a girl at a play and we went on a road trip through our country’s northern territories. These are the three things I learned in our attempt to connect with the land:
1 Hens can lay an egg every day.
2. Sea cucumbers breathe out of their assholes.
3. Honey is the only foodstuff that doesn’t spoil.
Should I be embarrassed that the highlights of our twenty-five day quest for enlightenment are essentially the results of a one minute Google session?
Probably.
Is there a point in clicking the link to check out some post cards that we sent from the road, made with found materials and Mod Podge?
Probably not.
But if you notice that one is addressed to you, then you really should come and get it–for reasons too boring to get in to, they are all at my house in San Francisco.
Guess which day in April To-Shi-O linked to feather2pixels in his eco-tip at work? I will give you a hint:
This show on Friday night made me realize what all awful stand up comedy has in common: it makes you feel like you are in Los Angeles.
I want my fucking $29 back.
My internet goal of the week is to update feather2pixels every day. Today’s contribution to that heroic task resulted in a seventy minute quest to find the funniest picture on the internet. The first thing this mission taught me is that Googling “funniest picture on the internet” gets you nowhere. The second thing I learned is that my friend Louise was right: the world wide web is permanently cemented in a foundation of cat multimedia. I didn’t really learn anything after that, but I did find what I believe to be the funniest picture on the internet. Perhaps in light of the dynamic and seemingly boundless scope of the internet, it surprises you that I, 
, discovered its funniest picture. But I did. If you can find a funnier picture (that isn’t one of my rejected high school senior portait proofs) email me. The first person to succeed will get a free set of Kid Monster postcards. But do not get ahead of yourself. Before you begin your false quest for the funniest picture on the internet, you need to witness the true funniest picture on the internet And now behold. The funniest picture on the internet.
Wednesday nights: lose at softball, drink with pirates.
The upside down bear can only mean one thing. *sigh* Summer is over.
Socializing has become less natural for me every year since college. Given a long enough exchange, meeting new people now requires me to confess that I work at a maritime academy in Vallejo. I have been experimenting with methods that prevent this from ending conversations.
On a cool night last week over cheap beer at some Mission District bar, I was doing my 2008 version of socializing with someone. The Academy eventually came up and this time it led to an inventory of nautical tattoos: she had two Popeye-style forearm anchors, a lobster on the bicep, something forgettable inside the lower lip, and a bunch of underwater stuff under her clothes. Then an 800 pound dog or something distracted me and that was that. Later, though, as is my custom, I let the episode get inside my head. When your life-changing decisions are another people’s personal aesthetics, is it time to find a new bar?
Instead of taking any kind of positive action, I think I’ll just keep screen printing useless postcards. Here’s the latest set, about San Francisco fast food, currently available at this place for approximately 1/500th of the cost required to make them.
On Thursday night I found myself holding hands with thirty-five tired educators in a circle, blessing each other. This could only mean one thing: teaching in Berkeley is over.
There were two last days, actually. That’s because there were two of everything this summer: two class sections, two talent shows, two Creative Geometry teachers, two closing ceremonies. In our final hours, we treated our kids to a final exam, a field trip to the Berkeley Art Museum and individual awards that Adrienne and I sewed out of fancy paper and ribbon. Awards like “Most likely to become the Warriors’ mascot and move in to Oracle Arena” were a cover for our secret that we really loved those kids. They seemed amused.
We all reconvened for the closing ceremony, which featured us trying to sound intelligent in front of parents and accepting thank you cards we urged students to write for us. Then there was a convocation featuring student speakers on the verge of shitting themselves with nervousness. If that’s what one is going for, this is the pinnacle of cute high school assemblies. You can’t manufacture that kind of earnestness, you can only force it.
Then I was suddenly at Triple Rock Brewery, drinking a microbrew that was all malt, shouting in someone’s ear about fathers. Asian fathers like to gamble, apparently. On some other level of consciousness, I was writing the last six weeks in the books as a success. It was hard and frustrating and I usually wanted to be doing something else. There were so many things I would have done differently. In some ways we even failed. But I got to do it with Adrienne, we noticed a glimmer of actualization in a few students’ eyes, and I’m reminded why I am a teacher: it is a thing that is impossible to do perfectly and in this way it is an honest human endeavor.
After 539 pages of final exams, 72 end of year emails, and too much Excel wrangling for a grad school dropout, the 2007/2008 CMA school year is done. In the final classroom for the final final on the last day, there was a bubbling surprise waiting for me in the middle of the room.
My very own novelty fish tank!
Fisch tank.
And now I am going to Cleveland.
The annual Academy career fair took place yesterday. There were so many companies in attendance that the event overflowed from the gymnasium to the student center. That’s basically all the room we have here. Dressed in my steadily downgrading work clothes (jeans and homemade Willie Nelson tee-shirt for this non-teaching day), I took a few minutes after lunch to check it out.
It turned out to be one of those moments, like graduation or our arrival in Kobe last summer, that made me feel love for my job and the people involved with it. I found most of my seniors moseying around, dressed fancy, looking slightly uneasy. Here, in their quest for maritime employment between two Division III basketball nets, they suddenly seemed young. For a few moments, I was struck by the idea that I might be doing something here beyond amusing myself for twelve hours a week. And they all seemed very happy to see me.
Then, I walked to my office and read celebrity gossip on Yahoo.
At one point the city was my best friend. We spent a lot time alone, made each other feel good, and I have many memories of being intoxicated with her beauty. (I think I almost got her pregnant back in the spring of 2004). Now I wake up at five to spend my days in Vallejo and there is the sense that SF and I have drifted apart a little. But it was a sunny weekend of wandering around town around and it felt good to remember that old, mischievous spark.
[flv:http://www.feather2pixels.com/blog/post_video/beach.flv 320 240]
And then, while I was wading along Ocean Beach, two tall guys from Amsterdam asked permission to photograph me for their Dutch design magazine. “We take pictures of people in the park,” they said. They had bad teeth. For fifteen minutes I posed.
And then we surprised A-kik-o (trivia team: general knowledge, handicrafts, geography).
[flv:http://www.feather2pixels.com/blog/post_video/surprise.flv 320 240]
And then Joe and Ana arrived in town for the final leg of their honeymoon.
And then I skipped my open studio show completely because who cares about a bunch of postcards?
