Do not tailgate Jesus

2 observations about modern air travel:

1. Tommy Bahama shirts have achieved full market penetration.
2. The Memphis airport smells like fried food.

So I'm at my Dad's place near Nashville. As predicted, it's pretty fucking hot - like 94 right now or something - but it was actually kinda cool last night.

Unfortunately, technical problems have prevented me from posting any pixx from here, so you're just going to have to wait. I can tell you that I just saw a car with two bumper stickers, one that said "Are you following JESUS this close?" and one that said, "Help stop AIDS, get married and be faithful." So there you go.

To say that it's relaxing here would be a ridiculous understatement. What we do is (1) plan meals, (2) go to the grocery store (sometimes two or three times in a day), (3) make and eat meals, (4) sit outside on the patio and drink beer, and (5) go to bed. Then repeat that the next day. Although tonight step (4) will be augmented with some St. Supery sauvignon blanc I brought from home.

Hope everything's good back in SF. Don't do anything fun without me.

My Blog is All-Powerful.

Ready for some weird-ass coincidence? Here goes.

On Thursday, I wrote about this guy who wouldn't give up his seat on Muni for an old lady. I'm not going to link to it; just look down. It's the next post right below this one.

Well, guess what? When I got on the train today, there he was! In almost the same seat, even.

So at the same time I get on, I'm followed by a youngish Mom carrying her child. Now guess what happens. Dockers SPRINGS UP LIKE A RABBIT ON CRACK and gives Mom the seat.

Swear to God.

Now, this means one of two things happened betwixt Thursday and today: (1) Dockers realized on his own that he should be giving up his seat, or (2) Dockers reads my blog! If so, Dockers, sorry for sending Hate Waves at your brain. Hope you're OK! Anyway, thanks for getting with the program and giving up your seat.

Pretty fucking unbelievable either way, right?

Moving on, yesterday Super Hot Irish Girlfriend and I took a drive up the coast.

This is the very beginning of Tomales Bay. Actually, this was about the only part of the drive when it wasn't totally overcast. I like taking drives. Since I never drive anymore, it's like an adventure.

Nothing really exciting happened, though.

The next time I post it'll be from Music City. My intelligence indicates that it's normal summer weather there, which means about 115 degrees during the day with 400 percent humidity and people literally dropping dead from heat exhaustion in the streets everywhere you go.

For me and The Sister, it means drinking beer on my Dad's patio at 11 p.m. when it's cooled down to a reasonable 95. See you from there!

P.S. One other thing - I kinda had a slip-up on Saturday and sort of maybe fell off the wagon a little bit. I don't want to make a big deal about it.

Urban etiquette: an occasional series

Today's topic: Bad Muni behavior

I'm a little hesitant to get into this area, especially since there's another site dedicated specifically to this, but I just gotta say something.

Guys, if you see an older woman standing on the bus or train and you're sitting down, GIVE UP YOUR GODDAM SEAT.

Just today, riding the train, I was standing in front of this guy who was sitting down. Mid-20's, Dockers-clad, fake diving watch, checking emails on his Blackberry, when this woman who looks to be on the far end of 70 and is struggling with a couple of bags gets on the crowded train. The other seats are occupied by similarly-aged oldsters and a blind guy with a dog and another middle-aged woman. Dockers sits there impassively and stares straight ahead.

Finally, the middle-aged woman next to him gets up and offers Granny her seat. Dockers goes back to sending vitally important emails.

Dockers may currently be suffering from a brain tumor-like headache, because I was focusing intense Hate Waves at his balding head. The other people around just stared at him. Dockers better have two artificial legs or Lou Gehrig's disease, or there's no goddam excuse.

OK, here's the rule. If you're a guy, and you have the capability of walking, you give up your seat for any woman who appears older than you*, any woman who's pregnant or holding a small child, and any man who looks like he could have voted for FDR.

Easy, right? Let's try and look out for our fellow hapless Muni travelers, shall we?

*The reason I say "older than you" is because giving up your seat for a younger woman seems kinda flirty. If the chick's cute, use your best judgment.

I feel so alive!

I’m not drinking right now. No, there wasn’t any big thing like the first chapter of Augusten Burroughs’ "Dry” or anything like that. It was just that I felt kind of saturated after the holiday weekend and just needed a little time off.

And I do mean “a little.” I’m just taking off until my trip back to the ancestral homeland next week.

Like I’ve said before, it’s no big deal. I’m not craving alcohol or anything. It’s just boring. What it makes you realize (and by “you,” I mean “me”) is how much of your social life involves alcohol in one way or another. Going out to dinner means a bottle of wine (and, more often than not, going to a bar afterwards). Band practice means PBR. And then maybe going to a bar afterwards. Nice weather means Zeitgeist. Meeting up with friends? Bar. Cooking dinner at home? Wine. And then before you know it, you’re drinking 4 or 5 nights a week.

The thing is, drinking is fun. Remember the old awning over Shanghai Kelly’s on Polk? It said “Drinking Makes You Witty.” It’s kinda true. There’s a fun social aspect to drinking that can’t be denied. And, as everyone who lives here knows, San Francisco is a drinking city. Always been that way. One of the best things about living here is the ability to go out and not have to worry about driving, since there’s always Muni or cabs and it’s a fairly compact city.

So don’t mourn for me, my friends. I’ll be OK. Super Hot Irish Girlfriend (who, BTW, is also on board) and I will watch movies and take walks and do whatever it is you do when you’re not drinking.

I promise you, I will not post any “I really got in touch with myself” bullshit. Just don’t expect the blog posts to be as interesting for the next week or so.

So that happened

Hope everyone had a nice holiday and you didn't become grievously injured by fireworks. I spent the actual 4th at the Giants game (watching them lose, like every game I go to this year) and later at The Dubliner.

- Had dinner Thursday night at Incanto on Church. Now, I'm not a food blogger by any stretch, but I sorta know when something's good, and this was really, really good. A+++++++ WILL DO BUSINESS AGAIN.

One humorous note - the couple that sat next to us were unintentionally hilarious. After first telling the waitress 5 or 6 times that he was a vegetarian, he asked her if they had a "chopped salad." She told him, as she already had once, that everything they had was on the menu. So he says - I hope you're sitting down - "Can the chef chop up the salad for me?" Do you also want your wine in a sippy cup, cowboy? Grow the fuck up.

- I had the recent misfortune of reading The Raw Shark Texts, which I gather has attained some kind of cult following, probably due to its bullshit dime-store mysticism and faux veneer of Deep Thought. It's actually a carefully constructed screen of apparent meaning concealing nothing. The plot is far too abstruse to describe in a few sentences, but essentially a guy wakes up with amnesia and then slowly learns that he's being chased by a metaphysical shark that feeds on thoughts. God, it's painful just typing that. Avoid. Avoid.

- We were over at Vintage Microwave World HQ in the East Bay with Stephen and Jessica on Saturday and man, was it ever nice over there. Anyway, they're dogsitting Daisy, who's maybe one of the cutest best smartest most attractive dogs ever. It made me yearn to get a dog. But the problem is, I don't want just any dog. I want that specific dog. Alas, she already has an owner.

Oh, also, Jessica's enchiladas? Kickass.

- New Locked Up Abroad tonight! Oh, wait, it's about a guy who gets kidnapped by some rebel group in Colombia. That's no good. I only like the drug-smuggling backpack kids who get suckered into taking 5 keys of blow from Hong Kong to Bangkok. Drag.

Happy Sunday

The Douchebag Index

This guy Mark Ecko bought Barry Bonds' record-breaking 756th home run ball at auction for $752,467. Fine, however you want to spend your money.

So then this douchelord takes the ball and fucking defaces it by having an asterisk cut into its surface as some kind of statement about the allegations that Bonds used steroids during parts of his career. Look at this:

Stupid, huh? It's like some hockey team taking the Stanley Cup and engraving "HOSERS" over the Maple Leafs on the trophy. Or something like that, maybe. I don't know anything about hockey, so I'm just guessing.

Anyway, then Mr. Publicity Whore gets into this big thing with the Baseball Hall of Fame because he wants to "loan" them the ball he just defaced and they don't take "loans." You either donate something or you don't.

In the end, Jackass folded and donated it.

So this idiot who became a millionaire making clothes beloved by mallrats and suburban faux-gangstas everywhere fucked up a one-of-a-kind piece of baseball history just to feed his obviously desperate need for attention. Way to go, jackass. Happy now?

But the Douchebag Index is by no means limited to classless media whore "clothing" designers. In this corner, we have "Dumpster Muffin," one of the Berkeley tree-sitters who've been camping out in a couple of trees on the UC Berkeley campus to protect them from being cut down or something. Humorously, this ancient old-growth forest they're trying to protect was planted in 1923.

Anyway, Dumpster Muffin came down out of her tree and was promptly taken away for medical attention and a good jailin'.

This story has been pretty extensively covered and there's not much more to add except to say that these people are douchebags.