Sunday, September 27, 2009
National Pastime
Ahh, baseball. America’s national pastime that hasn’t been taken seriously for at least two decades now. The playoffs haven’t even started yet and I already don’t see any suitable outcomes; as today marked both the Cardinals (whom I abhor) and the Yankees (who use the playoffs like cheap prostitutes just about every season) clinching playoff spots, while the Cubs are 8.5 games back in the NL central, and the Brewers are another 4.5 games behind that. Even the Giants, who I started rooting for because I live in the bay area and certainly can’t root for the A’s, did a great job of blowing a wildcard chance, and now have a great chance of ending their season in predictable, mediocre fashion. Really the only high points for me this season are that the White Sox almost certainly won’t make the playoffs, while the Red Sox almost certainly will (unless they keep playing like they did this weekend). Baseball makes me sad.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Berkeley Is Weird
I would have to take off my shoes to count the number of times in the past few weeks that I have been completely dumbfounded by shit that has happened in this city. I feel like almost once a day I am either stopped dead in my tracks or made to literally laugh out loud by something that I overheard or oversaw completely in passing. The other night, I went to the bodega down the street from my house, and upon entering, found that a borderline drunken woman was cursing out the clerk, saying some shit that would have made Mamet blush. The coup de grace of the tirade was, "You better put a skirt on 'cause you actin' like a bitch. Go put some pumps on, ho, and suck my dick motherfucker." I can’t make this shit up – nobody can really – and that’s the beauty of it. It’s raw, unrestricted human interaction in it’s truest form.
The problem is, I don’t even know where to begin in describing some of this stuff – I can only tell the same “I heard/saw a homeless man/woman say/do something really funny/sad” so many times. But that’s only the beginning. A lot of people will tell you that New York City is the place where you can do anything and not stand out, but I’ve been to New York, and that claim is false. There is a lot of crazy shit going on in NYC, and to be fair, their bars are (sadly) open much later than ours, but Berkeley is really the place to come for balls to the walls, unencumbered weirdness.
For example, the other night, as I was waiting downtown for the late Fremont train after seeing a movie with a friend, I happened to stumble into a conversation (I use “conversation” in it’s loosest sense) with a few girls from St. Mary’s college. The conversation started by virtue of the fact that they were drunk and had no idea how to get back to their school by train, and then centered on (drunkenly swerved around) how one of the girls was from Chicago and I was from Milwaukee (tri-staters have a bond in California), and we both like the Deftones. As a side note, apparently I don’t look like I just moved here because everyone asks me directions to places. Almost every time I take the train, someone asks me how to get to San Francisco. It’s unreal, because I don’t really live here, but I know the transit system better than people who do.
Regardless, midway through this conversation we were approached by a woman who, in addition to having the physical appearance of someone on the tail end of a weeks long meth binge, was clearly either blazed out of her mind or wasted on acid. Now, if you’ve ever been to NYC, you know that getting approached by anyone at a subway station let alone someone looking like the physical embodiment of slow death wearing a bed sheet for a skirt and hand painted sneakers would, at best, be received with a “go fuck yourself” and a halfhearted wave. But no. One of these girls actually summoned her over to ask about her shoes. When I used the words “hand painted,” I of course meant that they were splotched with fabric paint in a drug-addled haze, not actually painted with any semblance of clarity or meaning, but she asked nonetheless. The woman came over and talked for a minute – I don’t really remember what she said; I was too busy being stunned at how high she must have been – and after she left, the girl who started talking to her in the first place simply said, “Damn, she must’ve been smoking those trees. Like four or five of them.” I was laughing for days, and she just shrugged it off like that kind of shit happens every day. Which it basically does.
Moral? I don’t really know how to respond to Northern California. People have asked how I like it here and I never quite know how to respond. It can be such an all-encompassing question; I don’t really feel like I can address it in passing. “The weather’s gorgeous all the time, but everybody’s fucking psychotic” is usually what I end up saying, but that’s not necessarily all the way true. The best way of articulating this is that Berkeley – much more so than many other places I’ve lived – is a state of mind, rather than just simply a location. I just haven’t quite got the mindset down all the way yet…
The problem is, I don’t even know where to begin in describing some of this stuff – I can only tell the same “I heard/saw a homeless man/woman say/do something really funny/sad” so many times. But that’s only the beginning. A lot of people will tell you that New York City is the place where you can do anything and not stand out, but I’ve been to New York, and that claim is false. There is a lot of crazy shit going on in NYC, and to be fair, their bars are (sadly) open much later than ours, but Berkeley is really the place to come for balls to the walls, unencumbered weirdness.
For example, the other night, as I was waiting downtown for the late Fremont train after seeing a movie with a friend, I happened to stumble into a conversation (I use “conversation” in it’s loosest sense) with a few girls from St. Mary’s college. The conversation started by virtue of the fact that they were drunk and had no idea how to get back to their school by train, and then centered on (drunkenly swerved around) how one of the girls was from Chicago and I was from Milwaukee (tri-staters have a bond in California), and we both like the Deftones. As a side note, apparently I don’t look like I just moved here because everyone asks me directions to places. Almost every time I take the train, someone asks me how to get to San Francisco. It’s unreal, because I don’t really live here, but I know the transit system better than people who do.
Regardless, midway through this conversation we were approached by a woman who, in addition to having the physical appearance of someone on the tail end of a weeks long meth binge, was clearly either blazed out of her mind or wasted on acid. Now, if you’ve ever been to NYC, you know that getting approached by anyone at a subway station let alone someone looking like the physical embodiment of slow death wearing a bed sheet for a skirt and hand painted sneakers would, at best, be received with a “go fuck yourself” and a halfhearted wave. But no. One of these girls actually summoned her over to ask about her shoes. When I used the words “hand painted,” I of course meant that they were splotched with fabric paint in a drug-addled haze, not actually painted with any semblance of clarity or meaning, but she asked nonetheless. The woman came over and talked for a minute – I don’t really remember what she said; I was too busy being stunned at how high she must have been – and after she left, the girl who started talking to her in the first place simply said, “Damn, she must’ve been smoking those trees. Like four or five of them.” I was laughing for days, and she just shrugged it off like that kind of shit happens every day. Which it basically does.
Moral? I don’t really know how to respond to Northern California. People have asked how I like it here and I never quite know how to respond. It can be such an all-encompassing question; I don’t really feel like I can address it in passing. “The weather’s gorgeous all the time, but everybody’s fucking psychotic” is usually what I end up saying, but that’s not necessarily all the way true. The best way of articulating this is that Berkeley – much more so than many other places I’ve lived – is a state of mind, rather than just simply a location. I just haven’t quite got the mindset down all the way yet…
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
An Open Letter
Dear Hipsters who live in my apartment building:
Do you think it is cool to throw parties on two consecutive WEEK NIGHTS? Do you think it’s cool to ride your fixie to a party in south Berkeley and then stand around outside on the sidewalk drinking 40s out of paper bags and listening to Massive Attack with the system on blast? It’s not. It makes you look like douche bags. You’re making everything smell like pot and sound like angst. I’m sorry your parents didn’t love you enough, but seriously cut it out. Some people actually have the wherewithal to hold down steady jobs, and those same people have to be at work at nine o’clock in the fucking morning tomorrow. Knock it the fuck off.
Sincerely,
Your hate filled, job holding, upstairs neighbor.
Note 1: Karma, bitch that she is, is apparently paying me back for all the times I partied recklessly on weeknights during college.
Note 2: I seriously just looked out my window, and I have a laundry list of stereotypes:
3 fixies
2 girls wearing flannel shirts, knit hats, and horn rimmed glasses
3 guys wearing skinny jeans
4 40s of steel reserve
1 douchebag moustache
I’ve never even met these people, and yet I hate them with the burning fury of a million fiery suns.
Do you think it is cool to throw parties on two consecutive WEEK NIGHTS? Do you think it’s cool to ride your fixie to a party in south Berkeley and then stand around outside on the sidewalk drinking 40s out of paper bags and listening to Massive Attack with the system on blast? It’s not. It makes you look like douche bags. You’re making everything smell like pot and sound like angst. I’m sorry your parents didn’t love you enough, but seriously cut it out. Some people actually have the wherewithal to hold down steady jobs, and those same people have to be at work at nine o’clock in the fucking morning tomorrow. Knock it the fuck off.
Sincerely,
Your hate filled, job holding, upstairs neighbor.
***
Note 1: Karma, bitch that she is, is apparently paying me back for all the times I partied recklessly on weeknights during college.
Note 2: I seriously just looked out my window, and I have a laundry list of stereotypes:
3 fixies
2 girls wearing flannel shirts, knit hats, and horn rimmed glasses
3 guys wearing skinny jeans
4 40s of steel reserve
1 douchebag moustache
I’ve never even met these people, and yet I hate them with the burning fury of a million fiery suns.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Summer '09: What a Letdown
Dude. What a shitty summer. As far as I can tell, the people who received the most publicity this summer can be grouped into three categories. And those are:
1. Saying stupid shit at bad times (See also: Gates, Obama, Williams, Wilson, West).
2. Good tennis players sucking at the US Open (See also: Roddick, Murray, Federer, Nadal, Williams).
3. Dying: (See also: Jackson, Mays, Kennedy, Fawcett, Swayze).
Yup.
1. Saying stupid shit at bad times (See also: Gates, Obama, Williams, Wilson, West).
2. Good tennis players sucking at the US Open (See also: Roddick, Murray, Federer, Nadal, Williams).
3. Dying: (See also: Jackson, Mays, Kennedy, Fawcett, Swayze).
Yup.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Green Day’s American Idiot World Premire: A Comprehensive Analysis
REDACTED.
Front office at BRT has specifically asked the entire staff, due to the number of premiers and works in progress, to refrain from disseminating information regarding American Idiot, or any other shows in the upcoming season. This is - to say the least - understandable, and because I like my job, I've decided to comply. Until further notice, all information regarding this and all other shows can be found at berkeleyrep.org. This original post may be back once American Idiot has opened, but for now, I have never seen the show, nor do I know anything about it.
Apologies...
-MPA
Front office at BRT has specifically asked the entire staff, due to the number of premiers and works in progress, to refrain from disseminating information regarding American Idiot, or any other shows in the upcoming season. This is - to say the least - understandable, and because I like my job, I've decided to comply. Until further notice, all information regarding this and all other shows can be found at berkeleyrep.org. This original post may be back once American Idiot has opened, but for now, I have never seen the show, nor do I know anything about it.
Apologies...
-MPA
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