In SF

This weekend I'm in SF, CA, someplace I haven't been since the 90's. The advent of the internet and the bags of money which came with it have definitely changed the face of this town. San Jose airport, which I flew into, now has a private jet area, although the rest of the airport is unremarkable.

I like SF and California in general for visiting, but it's not so much my kind of place for living. Everything is sort of taken with a breezy unseriousness that I find unsettling. I am going on a houseboat trip this weekend at Lake Shasta for a friends birthday, and decided to come in on Weds to see as many old friends as possible. I'm staying with a close family friend who left academics for the Real World Job and its giving me the willies. But her place is cool and there are literally cable car trolleys outside her window. I feel like some Rice-A-Roni. What is that stuff anyhow?

Weds I met some friends who work at eBay, at an internet startup, and an Asian PE fund down closer to San Jose. Thursday I went to the startup's office, which included a windowless soundproof meditation room left over from the bubble days. In the evening, I met a friend from school who works at a biotech firm and her husband who works in the wine industry. After that I met up with a friend in Berkeley who worked in public health and was married to an environmentalist. To be sure, I've covered nearly every stereotypical Bay Area profession and managed to catch up with a ton of folks.

People here talk of the halcyon Bubble days in such vivid terms, it sounded like a Roman party. Everyone has a story of how much X was done, who sold the most companies and for how much, and the excessive childishness of office environments. Those that "got out at the right time" are now largely taking lifestyle jobs and often times doing nothing at all and those who didn't are now in regular jobs at large tech companies.

I definitely consider myself a liberal although in this part of the country, I find myself telling hippies to get a job and scoffing at the number of raw/vegan restaurants, herbal healing stores, and shaman drum outlets. It is, however, super easy to get great vegetarian food. Additionally, no one really seems to have grown up here - everyone moved here from someplace else, giving it a very transitory feeling. Also, people speak about how great it is and how much I should move here in eerily cultish terms.

Like I said, a great place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live here.

Mandela?

 

Instead of doing a solid job describing the country of South Africa, I'll drop some photos representative of how fucked up people get when you institutionally implement racism.

For example, at one of the nicest restaurants in Capetown, for some reason, this dude in a Mandela mask comes in and freaks everyone the fuck out. Just to clarify, the other two people who came to our table to "entertain" us were a belly dancer and a coked-up cigar girl. 

Toaster Ovens

This space is normally reserved for photos and ruminations, and theres a lot of requests for South Africa recaps from people who read this for some reason, but tough shit for you, Reader. Instead I post this great chat regarding kitchen appliances I had this morning. (SA stuff will come soon)

9:09 AM Emily: I saw this:
http://www.posewithyourtoaster.com/
and thought of you, for some reason.

me: thats sweet
i have no idea what to make of that association, but I appreciate it

9:10 AM Emily: Just kind of random, I suppose.
It kind of makes me want to get all gothed out and take a pic,
but unfortunately my toaster is white.

me: you could be angry at your toaster
i don't even own one. I have a toaster oven.

9:11 AM Emily: I'm not sure if that counts...

me: i don't think I've ever owned a toaster
i wouldn't count it

Emily: I only have one because my parents got one free when they bought the breadmaker ages ago, and they didn't need it.

9:12 AM me: i use mine to heat up all kinds of pizza and its easier for toasting bagels

Emily: I've wondered whether it's worth getting one - a toaster oven, I mean.
Seeing as I already have both a toaster and an oven, it's hard to justify.

9:13 AM me: having a toaster is sort of classic, but the toaster oven sort of takes over a different space than the conventional oven. Its for quick use - none of this pre-heating - but when you don't want something microwaved

Emily: It definitely makes sense for heating up pizza.
9:14 AM I'm not really happy with the results of microwave or oven for that.

9:15 AM me: thats what I'm saying. The microwave is really only good for beverages, popcorn, and leftovers already covered in plastic wrap. Lets face it - the microwave isn't the revolutionary item it was promised to be. You could do just as well with a tea kettle, some jiffy pop, and the stove

Emily: I never thought of it that way.
Talk about a product really failing to live up to the hype.
9:16 AM I imagine the aging, disillusioned fifties housewives,

me: And the oven is just excessive, energy wise. Who wants to wait 15 minutes to heat up your oven? This is where the toaster oven bridges the gap between microwave and oven.
I'm not sure if you're old enough to remember, but the original microwaves were actually made to look like conventional ovens for some reason. If it were up to me, I would have made them look like teleportation devices

9:17 AM Emily: With lots of chrome, and led flashy lights?

me: Yeah, and they're heavy as fuck for some reason. I had a small one from the 80's and it must have weighed 35 lbs. I never figured it out and eventually gave it away in anger

9:18 AM Emily: Good call.
My parents actually had a nice one for ~20 years...
...it even had wood panelling that matched the kitchen cabinets.
It was permanently mounted above the oven, though, so portability wasn't an issue.

9:19 AM me: what was the fascination with making things look like they were made of wood using paneling? I never got that. We had it all over our house. Are we supposed to be in some sort of log-cabin?

9:20 AM Emily: It was some very bizarre appeal to fashion, I think,
as though cars from the Flintstones were still hip.

me: in closing, think about the toaster oven. I think it'll do a lot for you and ask very little in return.

Emily: I wonder why woodgrain-print fabric never caught on.

me: thats even less plausible

9:21 AM Emily: True. A few strategically placed knotholes and you're a laughingstock.
But yeah, I'll think about a toaster oven.

Madrid

For whatever reason, I have a 16 hour layover in Madrid on the way to Johannessburg in each direction, but who am I to complain? After arriving, I took the subway to the city center, enjoyed the local cuisine including Manchego cheese and Galicia Estrella. I´ve never been to Spain (but I sure do like the music) and I definitely think I´m going to return. the weather here is great, the women are amazing, and the pace of life is pretty chill. There is a great mix of modernity and history, where people will wear current fashions but throw in a toreador hat or use a folding fan.

Across Europe, the formation of the EU has led to much immigration from all parts of the world, but it seems as if English are streaming here at a marathon pace. I asked one of them why and they said "the weather, duh". Closely following them are the Americans, who all apparently use their High School Spanish, much to the dismay of the locals. (I do the same, I have to admit) The fastest growing group is apparently the Chinese, who have established a Chinatown here in Madrid. For some reason, that blows my mind. I only saw one Indian dude and he was at the Indian restaurant, so I don´t think that counts.

I made a friend on the plane who comes every year for the bullfighting season (May-July) as part of his retirement and to remind himself of his youth in Mexico City. Since I had nothing but time on my hands, I took him up on his offer to see a bullfight in the evening. I spent the afternoon walking around, taking pictures, and trying to practice Spanish with whomever would respond. As far as cities go, Madrid is clean and well managed. The transit system here is impeccable and even the street cleaning staff is populated with blonde lithe chicas. Definitely worth a more substantial visit.

The bullfighting was interesting, as a part of the national history, and pretty much everyone in town goes to watch. This version had toreadors on horses, which is a more unusual variation, but its still bullfighting, and without much more judgement, lets say I´m probably not going to go again anytime soon. Its not really a sport so much, since the bull seems to lose every time. There is clearly a lot of skill involved in not getting your ass run over by a half-ton pissed off animal, and I see how it´s impressive.

I think on the return trip I´ll do less sleeping and more museuming. I´m off to hit my 11 hour flight to Johannesburg.

Operation Paster Blaster

Okay, this is a little strange so bear with me. Back in 1993, two friends of mine (Mark/Harry) buried a time capsule in Mark's parent's front lawn. The contents are largely forgotten to them but Lord they have not stopped yapping about it since the put it in the hole. Anyhow, Mark's parents are moving so we had an "Emergency Time Capsule Removal" scheduled for this weekend.

Mark came from S. Carolina and Harry from Boston, so we met up with our friends the night before and had a few beers.



Harry's superpower is that he sweats profusely if he even eats one medium-spicy hot wing. It's amazing.



We took in some bowling, darts, and jokes. It was good to see the guys again - its remarkable that most people largely look the same as they did in high school. We discussed the possible contents of the capsule and talked about planting another one to be opened when we're 50 and what we'd put inside it. Mostly, we were giddy with anticipation.

Saturday morning, I got the call and arrived on the scene of an already growing trench in the front lawn.



We carefully peeled back the grass and began to dig around in the area where we thought the corrugated metal sealed pod was. The problem being that the two geniuses who planted it had largely forgotten where it was, so we dug around the whole area, cheered on by Mark's parents (maybe the only parents to encourage their son to ruin their lawn) some guy with a metal detector (which was the most useless piece of equipment we had) and various neighbors.



We dug and dug. Then we speculated about where it could be, better places to dig, better digging methods, etc. The great thing about digging an enormous hole in the ground is that everyone is curious and has some sort of opinion about the right way to go about looking for a time capsule. The guy with the metal detector was actually just someone from the neighborhood who was walking around, became curious, and then hung around waiting for the result for about 3 hours.

Soon our morale began to flag. We hadn't found anything but a bunch of rocks, some broken glass, and lots of worms. Also, it was raining the entire time, so we became not only completely covered in dirt, but we were wet and cold as well. The Parents brought us subs, tea, and encouraging words. Later on we got goofy and took some zombie pictures:



Sadly, in the end we gave up and realized that it was not where it had been left. There was some speculation of whether the cable company dug it up while laying line in that area. Additionally, we thought about another time to have a go at digging it up. We replaced all of the dirt and rearranged the sod the best we could. It looked terrible. Luckily, The Parents were great about it and even thanked us for entertaining them for the day. Sometimes, parents rule.



After replacing the dirt, we spread grass seed on the top in what was the most bizarrely cathartic moment of all of the dirty labor. We laughed and were glad we were still friends after all these years. If you decide to bury a time capsule, learn from our mistakes:

1) Do not bury it too deep. Remember, you will be older and out of shape when you dig it up

2) Take pictures of the original dig site with geographical markers in the frame.

3) Make some sort of map.

4) Use rocks to point the future you in the right direction.

5) Get lots of people to help and make sure you have a post-digging tool.

Friends with Money

NY Times article

New York State of Mind

I'm in the NYC looking for apts (I found a cool one in Soho) and as usual all kinds of weird shit is happening all around me. Here are some pics from the last few days:



This is a guy on the subway singing "Jealous Guy" while sharing the bench with a passed out guy with his pants around his ankles.




This is a street in the financial district which takes advantage of the deserted nature after hours and puts tables in the middle of the street where all of the restaurants serve food. Eating in the middle of the street sounds kind of strange but its one of the coolest places I've ever seen - like a street fair but at night and more of a diner.