Flamk’s Neighborhood

This music video!  The layering, the golden 70's hue, the GOATS!  Streaming all over the screen!  Why?  Who cares?  LOVE LOVE LOVE.

I've been a little obsessed with the idea of seeing Okay live lately, and last weekend I missed seeing them at the Hemlock because I was in a shitty mood all weekend and decided on Sunday night that I would rather lock myself in my apartment and stare at the ceiling instead of going to the show.  But anyway.  I was therefore very pleased to discover that Okay were going to be at the Great American Music Hall on Saturday night, along with Deerhoof.  The best part was that Andrew likes Deerhoof, so I didn't have to drag him along kicking and screaming.  So, Saturday started out pretty well; I got some laundry done and went to the bank so I felt like I accomplished something.  The giant spazz-out known as the Love Fest was going on at Civic Center, so I decided to finally take myself to Ocean Beach, which I always kinda want to do but it usually feels like too much of a hassle.  And, as it turns out, I was right!  I had to wait about ten years for the Geary bus, then when it arrived it was packed so much that the driver wouldn't even open the forward door.  I had to squeeze in the back door and stand in the stairwell.  It was worth it,

though, for the moment when I started walking down the hill and the ocean came into view, with reflected sunlight blinding me and the wind blowing in my face and seagulls and pelicans circling all over.  I walked down to the old Sutro Baths and stood and stared at the water, completely mesmerized.  A pelican swooped down right over my head.  It was fantastic. 
I didn't spent too long down there, since I was going to meet Andrew downtown between 6:30 and 7.  I walked along the beach to Judah, so I could catch the N.  Which was going great, until the N broke down at 9th avenue.  Seriously, is Muni ever capable of getting all the way across the city without breaking down?  By the time I got downtown on the 6 Parnassus, it was almost 8 and Andrew was hungry and cranky.  As was I, especially after having to wade through the throngs of assholes left over from Love Fest.  Luckily for us, some mexican food and beer helped cure our mood problem.  Also, a fabulous little custard that Andrew got me for my birthday (which was actually the only birthday cake I had this year!) which he even stuck little candles in for me to blow out.  Aw. 
Anyway, the show was very good, Okay was a little anticlimactic because their music was maybe a little too subdued for the crowd, which really just wanted Deerhoof, and also they only played one song I recognized!  And I have three of their albums!  Where were these other songs coming from?  Andrew suggested that maybe they haven't learned the new songs yet.  The best part of their set was when the guy playing the xylophone hit it so hard that his stick broke in half and flew up into the balcony above the stage.  Hilarious.  And, of course, Deerhoof was fucking amazing.  I don't know their music as well as Andrew does, but I loved every minute of their set.  Even though I couldn't see much of anything.  Being short at a concert blows.   

I was brewing/bottling kombucha today when I made a discovery... THIS THING:

...growing in the jar of KT I was about to bottle!  You should have seen my face when I took the paper towel off the top of the jar and saw this monster scoby (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast).  My jaw actually dropped, and I may have gasped out loud.  See, when I started that jar a month ago the scoby was 1/4 inch thick at the most, and had a huge hole in the middle.  Actually, you can kind of see the old one stuck to the bottom of the monster scoby:
My scobys have looked kind of anemic for months, which I attribute to the coolness of my apartment.  I have a heating pad to keep the jars warm, but I often forget to turn it on.  Did I just have it on more this past month?  I mean, good lord, just look at the thickness of that thing!  I tasted the kombucha in the jar before bottling it, and it was very tart, meaning that all the sugar in the tea had been consumed by the bacteria.  No surprises there!  Jeez, I can't get over it, I could cut that thing in half and have two very healthy sized scobys.  It was so heavy that it wouldn't even float at the top of the jar when I had refilled it with freshly brewed tea, as you can see.  It floated about 2/3 of the way up for a few seconds, then sank to the bottom of the jar:
I can't wait to see how my other jar is doing, and next month I'll be very eager to see if this beast has spawned another fat scoby.  I may have to add more sugar to the tea, I'll have to wait and see.  Yay for bacteria! 

I have been reading Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare on and off for the past week or so, which is a book I hadn't touched since high school.  But for my birthday my mom gave me the complete series of "Slings & Arrows," a Canadian TV series about a Shakespearean theater company.  It's a good series, and my long dormant and short-lived interest in Shakespeare was revived a little bit.
The thing I like about Asimov is that he goes into great historical detail in explaining every obscure line, pointing out anachronisms and references that would have made sense to an Elizabethan audience but don't really anymore.  There's a lot of interesting information, but I just read something that I found especially fascinating:

  The mention of Normandy is not an anachronism.  While the Danish raids were laying England prostrate, similar raids were devastating the northern coast of France.  In 911, nearly a century and a half before the time of the events in Hamlet, a Viking raider named Hrolf had forced the French King, Charles III (the Fat), to cede a district on the Channel coast to himself and his followers.  This became known as Nortmannia ("Northman-land") and then Normandy.
  In 1050, at the time of the events in Hamlet, Normandy was a powerful, centralized, well-governed duchy under the remarkable Duke William II (the Bastard).  Normandy was then a great power, for its Duke was stronger than the King of France and at least on a par with the King of Denmark.  (Sixteen years later, in fact, William was to conquer England and become King William I, the Conqueror.)
  The Normans in the century and a half since Hrolf's time had been completely absorbed into Frence civilization and now spoke a French dialect.  Their Viking origins were virtually forgotten...

Now, this is the kind of thing that I'm sure I wouldn't give two shits about if I had read it in a history textbook, but having come upon it unexpectedly it just seems so neat to know about.  I'm a nerd, I know.  Interesting, though, right?  Besides, hee hee, they have funny names!

Why pollute the earth with more superfluous Obama buttons?  The old ones from his 2004 Senate campaign work just as well:

Sure, the Illinois part is wrong, but that's nothing a sharpie can't fix. 
My mom sent me this button four years ago, around the time that the whole country was super enthused about Obama following his speech to the 2004 DNC.  Sure, neither of us were living in Illinois at the time, but my mom grew up in Chicago and my grandma still lived there, so there was at least some connection.  Anyway, come on!  You know those buttons aren't biodegradable!  Recycle for god's sake!

Which is weird, since I haven't driven anything in about five years.  Actually, I'm kind of terrified of driving.  I used to like it, but I feel like I've forgotten how.  In my dream I retrieved the ignition key from the bed of the truck, then hopped in and took off.  I seemed to be going smoothly, despite the fact that the truck was a stick shift and I wasn't hitting the clutch correctly.  Probably because in real life I can't remember which pedal is which.  It was fun, though, in the dream.  I recall thinking, Jeez, I should just keep this and keep going forever!  Kind of cheesy, even for a dream.  Oh well.

I walked down to meet Andrew for lunch today, incredibly making it out of the house at the very early hour of noon.  I met him at Van Ness & Market, and on the way down there I caught a bit of the Minutemen protest going on at City Hall.  There were a lot of counter protesters, as to be expected.

People are so fucking stupid sometimes.
Anyway, we couldn't think of anything to eat in Civic Center (Ananda Fuara didn't even cross our minds for some reason, but they were most likely closed) so we ended up at the Westfield mall food court.  It wasn't bad.  Then he headed back to work and I started wandering back to my apartment, stopping on the way to take a closer look at the bus shelter by the Asian Art Museum.  I heard a couple of weeks ago that a "living roof" had been installed on certain bus shelters to promote the opening of the Academy of Sciences, and Gavin even did some ditsy photo op thing about it.  But, I had not yet managed to check it out myself.  And... it was kinda funny, just a bunch of plants in burlap sacks piled on top of the bus shelter.  Cute. 
Oh, and btw, Andrew, that was a Culture Bus driving by in the background!  And there were a few people on it!

Uh oh, my green-juice-drinking way of life is threatened!  My trusty JuiceMan blender has been sounding kind of like a rusty engine for a while now, and yesterday one of the blender jars broke.  Well, not the jar, but the blades are completely stuck and will not turn.  I tried a little bit to unwedge them, but I was afraid of cutting my fingers.  But they seemed pretty well stuck.  Don't really know what happened there.  I have another blender jar that I can use, but the blades are duller and my green juice ends up with little stray chunks of fruit, which I HATE.  My mom is bringing me her old Vita Mix when she visits next month, thank goodness.  So I only have to endure one month of chunky juice.  It's just as well; the JuiceMan has been nice but I think a Vita Mix is really more appropriate for all the blending I do.  And this is the second one I've been through, as my first one broke down when I tried to juice carrot greens in it!  So... there you go.

They just keep getting better!  Turns out my Nana didn't forget about me after all, seems like there won't be any more fallout from last weekend, and I get to see the new California Academy of Sciences on Tuesday!  I still need to patch things up with my dad, who holds onto a grudge just as hard as I do.  But... somehow I feel like it's gonna blow over.

I mean the big ones, not those tiny little things that my cat eats.  I was changing my sheets today and SOMEHOW a large dead moth appeared on one of my pillowcases!  Luckily not one that I sleep on, rather one of the decorative ones.  But still.  I don't know if it was my paranoid brain or a stray breeze from the kitchen window, but I swear it looked like one of the antennae was twitching, so I threw an upside-down shopping bag on it and then spent a few paralyzed minutes trying to decide what to do... Leave it there and deal with it later when I'm feeling braver?  Could I maneuver the bag so as to scoop the moth up and then get the window open and toss it out?  Was it alive after all?  Because if I tried to trap it in the bag and it ended up flying out (right into my face, probably!) I might just lose it completely.  I think the last time one of those big moths got into my apartment I almost destroyed my totally cute (& glass) bedside lamp with my wild flailing around, trying to swat it.  And this also isn't the first time a dead moth has shown up in my apartment; several months ago I went to open one of my windows and put my hand right on a dead moth that was up on the sill.  I may have screamed, I can't remember. 
So anyway, I finally braced myself and peeked under the bag, and sure enough the moth was dead.  I wadded it up in a paper towel and took it directly to the garbage bins in my building's basement... you can never be too sure of what a dead moth might do to exact revenge. 
Also, it has to be said: I am afraid of butterflies, too.