The Streets

The Streets right before I crashed my bike

party at my house then off to 111 Minna to dance to Biz Markie’s deejay set
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Sorry that I’ve been apathetic about updates here. This past Saturday, there was a big soapbox derby at Dolores Park. It was a surreal dorkfest of epic proportions. 75,000 people came out to my neighborhood for this - that’s almost two ballparks worth of people. I’m lucky we got there early enough to secure a nice place on the grass to sit and watch the big screen. I’m amazed something like this was pulled off successfully. So much fun, comedy and action in one place, not to mention a beautiful day out. I really am in love with this city.

There were over 30 crafts that participated and each team did a little skit to music prior to pushing their craft down the top of the hill on Dolores Street. Gerardo Sandoval was the first one to go down Dolores as sort of a sacrificial lamb. It’s not too often you see a City Hall supervisor wearing a speed racer helmet going down in tiny box with wheels. I love that politicians in my city can embrace their inner dork. There was Bond’s 756th homerun ball with orange smoke trailing it, a rubiks cube (that solved itself in real time while on its run!), a giant boom box, hammerhead shark, giant squid, deathstar, a donut, Gene Simmons’s tongue, taco truck, and many more I can’t remember. Sheila E was one of the judges and she either gave everyone a 1 or a 10. She’s crazy.

las vegas, bingo, more county fairin, eating drinking, beach housing (right arrow to advance)

this is almost too embarassing to share but it also makes me laugh like a maniac in my head. i was on my friend’s roof the other nite to enjoy some fresh air which unintentionally turned into us “playing Rear Window”. we noticed that there was a quiet party in one of the windows directly across and in a half drawn shaded window next door, 2 sets of extremely large bare calves in athletic ankle socks were pacing around the floor closely, possibly about to get down. lights out, no action. we kept talking about how these were the biggest calves we’d ever seen and tried to figure out which ones belonged to a man or a woman, or whether they were same-sex calves. i proceed to take pictures of a few buildings because the lighting is ethereal at that hour in cameraland.

anyway, the next day i take a look at the pictures and in one of them, something seems a little off.

i’m getting a weird vibe looking at it. i zoom in closer, and oh my god! i think there is a guy in there.

and oh my god, he’s staring right at me. looking all retired porno actor in a robe with nothing underneath? could it be? this dude is MY personal Raymond Burr. and it was around 1:30am so it seemed a majority of the neighbors were asleep. seemed.

haha! just when you think you’re alone, there is a naked dude in a robe quietly staring at you.

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yesterday i had lunch with coworkers outside the ferry building. somehow pirates came up in the conversation and i mentioned there are pirates today still but they sport ak-47s instead of swords. i had to leave early to get back to work and on the walk back, i see a freaking PIRATE SHIP in the bay. On top of that, i heard explosions that sounded like cannons.

back at the office, i told everyone that i saw a pirate ship firing cannons in the bay and NOBODY believe me. “audrey i think you had too much wine” “sure there was a pirate ship”. i barely even had one glass of wine.

so this morning one of my coworkers comes by with the SF Chronicle and lo and behold, my “imaginary” pirate ship is on the front page of the paper with a caption about it firing cannons.

VINDICATED, BITCHES!

it’s sunday morning and i’m doing what i do every sunday morning - drinking coffee at my computer while browsing the interweb and listening to albums i haven’t played in a while before heading out to breakfast. my internal alarm clock goes off at 8am no matter what. not complaining, i love being an early riser cause no one is up when i am.

anyway, i need a late pass because i just discovered this site Passive Aggressive Notes which is a site where people submit hilarious hostile notes people leave. i’m cracking up reading some of these to the Black Caesar soundtrack. In the 10 years of shared housing experience i have, i am lucky i have never had to deal with a roommate who left notes.

i am having the most random week where money is coming to me out of nowhere. this past weekend, a jacket i tried on at one of those overpriced vintage stores had $20 in the pocket. it’s mine now suckers!! then i got a $50 prepaid debit card from my health insurance to thank me for logging in my exercise activity every week and then they are going to put another $50 in the card at the end of the week. wtf? okay i’ll take that. then today i got a check for $70 because i forgot i was eligible to get settlement money for a class action suit at a temp agency i worked at for 5 months almost 10 years ago. double wtf? usually the settlement checks are pennies but i guess a lot of folks didn’t respond which made my slice of the pie bigger. you snooze you lose batches!! okay, i am so gonna get that zildjian armand ride now there are no more excuses. i put that stimulus check into my savings to resist my normal urges to spend it on shoes or other impulsive crud and now the man upstairs is rewarding me for my penny pinching and giving me a sign that he wants me to spend some money. i’ve put up with a string of mediocre sounding ride cymbals for long enough. it’s time to get super serious about annoying my neighbors.

she’s so pretty!

the ramones, cheap champagne and digital pictures of my friends and fam is what is standing between me and super sulker mode this neglected bingo night. folks who criticize the ramones for being idiot savants (who only talked about hamburgers and male prostitution) end up underestimating their power to make anyone, even Debbie Downer, stupid pumped for retarded behavior. Stupid pumped like you were a toddler who just ate a box of donuts. I love The Clash but they couldn’t make me escape quite like the Ramones. Ay Romeo! I don’t wanna go down to the basement

today your love, tomorrow the world

havana affair

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ugh, i drank a bunch of miller high life last nite at the neighborhood bar and remembered this morning why i kinda hate drinking. may 2008 = best gift my liver has ever received.

i’m off to this place this weekend and i am super excited because i just found out tomorrow is Free Fishing Day in Cali which means I don’t have to buy a fishing license. young rented a patio boat for us! man i freaking love camping

young got a pair of rats as pets. yeah…wtf

(11:26:35 AM) audrey: where is your rat sleeping
(11:26:43 AM) Young: in their cage in the middle of my apt
(11:27:02 AM) Young: i’m gonna bring them over and have them play on your bed
(11:28:43 AM) audrey: i’ll put down a trail of cheese leading to my toilet bowl
(11:29:03 AM) audrey: and then they’re getting flushed…bigtime
(11:29:36 AM) Young: you’re rude!
(11:29:46 AM) Young: n o brulee for you!
(11:30:21 AM) audrey: rats
(11:31:10 AM) Young: rude and not funny
(11:32:32 AM) audrey: once i flush your rats they can meet Splinter and learn martial arts
(11:32:44 AM) audrey: in the sewer
(11:32:52 AM) Young: and come back and kick your ass for flushing them down the toilet
(11:33:02 AM) audrey: i don’t think so
(11:33:11 AM) Young: big time
(11:33:35 AM) audrey: TMNT are fictional, you spend too much time on the internet

Lydia, Brandon and I are going to cash in on this recession and make an escapist game called Virtual Baller for the Wii. for the bonus round after each level ends, you have to strut into the clurb and make it rain with your wii remotes. we also decided there could be different levels of balling such as a gambling high roller to thuggy rap mogul who starts his own telecommunications company. brandon suggested a hipster baller role where $20 could take you a long way. i wish i knew how to make video games.

bingo winnings





my new old toy

i bought another pack of weird socks in one of those mission dollar stores.

this one has a garbage truck on it and says DUMP. um, okay. and then there is this one
it is of a bikini wearing bear that is rock climbing i think. and it’s sporting my favorite look, no pants

i also picked up some cool fabric:

young was jealous of my dia de los muertos find and tried to guilt me into giving it to him cause he claimed that i “wasn’t going to do anything with it anyway.” bitch. to prove him wrong i spent about 7 hours today making an unflattering tanktop out of it.

man, my sewing is so fucked up. fits like wrapping paper. i really don’t know how to sew anything outside of pillow cases which might explain why it’s so boxy. oh well, at least i didn’t give him the satisfaction. and today wasn’t a complete waste, my drum teacher taught me how to play some fun missy elliot sounding shhh…

here is where i realized i was wearing 3 different shades of brown

squaresville is kinda awesome. i’ve noticed im in a better mood these days and have more energy. last night i went to the knockout for bingo night with friends and the bartender gave me the gasface when i asked for cranberry juice. haha. our table was the winners circle, conceit one twice, mary once, rachel once and i won the blackout round so i got double prizes (plants) and 2 drink tix which i gave to conceit.

at the beginning of may i told myself i would wait till june to drink again, but now i don’t care either way. everyone was drunk last night except me and i still had fun. the last time i went to the knockout there was this awesome drunk dude wearing an ipod who was singing with crazy enthusiasm and doing all sorts of fist pumping and knee bending. here is a picture that ej took of him:

i wanted to imagine that he was listening to that peter cetera song from karate kid, the one about fighting for my/your honor. he seemed like someone from that era of inspirational teen movies to me.

anyway, i made more rings from railroad pins. seems like i’ve replaced my biggest vice with little compulsions such as ring making and nonstop green and white tea drinking. i also watched 5 harry potter movies in a week 1/2 span because young made me watch that last one in the theater and i remembered that i couldn’t follow it, so i started with the first and kept watching one after another.

san diegan, kansas cityan, wp, illinois central railroad, brooklyn locomotive works

this one i couldn’t mess with though

pic: youngi biked to work with young this morning and i got a bunch of free stuff in addition to a bunch of allergens in my eyes. now it is blind at work day. also this morning i found out that my building’s garage freight elevator looks like the kind of freight elevator that people go into and never come out of, like in the horror movies. if there was an award for Scary Freight Elevator this one would win first prize.