The English major in me derives a twisted joy from entire articles devoted to a single item of punctuation. And while this particular article may be the closest thing there is to sensationalist punctuation journalism, it’s all worth it when you read this sentence near the end of the story:
The semicolon allows woozy clauses to lean on each other like drunks for support.
If there was ever a way to describe my style of writing, that’s it.
If you’ll allow me to take a trip down nostalgia alley, I’d like to share one of my very favorite Daily Show segments of all time. This one dates back to June of 2001, a time when the world was a more innocent place and the biggest of our concerns was a vaguely homoerotic commercial featuring Popeye and Bluto. Well, at least to the individual skewered in this Daily Show clip. It shows a pre-Colbert Report Stephen Colbert interviewing a family values advocate incensed over a Minute Maid commercial that portrays Popeye and Bluto as enemies-turned-friends, all this thanks to the magical qualities of that particular brand of orange juice.
My favorite part of this clip is the use of the phrase ‘pirate smoker’, perhaps the most hilarious pretend slang of all time. The phrase managed to catch on among my circle of friends during my freshman year of college, but eventually petered out as most people had no idea what the hell it meant when used in the open world. But still: pirate smoker. An awesome, nonsensical insult that really needs to make its way into the common lexicon.
Here’ the clip:
I’ve been on a bit of a Hemingway kick lately. Within the past couple weeks, I’ve read A Moveable Feast, The Sun Also Rises, and tread knee-deep into For Whom the Bell Tolls. Besides the cripplingly embarrassing fact that I’d never read a book of his before, it’s sort of an odd confluence of factors that have plunged me into this reading marathon.
For one, I’ve been planning my next trip to Europe, so reading about an American’s adventures overseas has suddenly become a very appealing theme for me. I traveled there for about 2 months shortly after graduating from UW in 2006, but now I’ve got the overwhelming urge to go back. I’m hoping to make it out to Germany a week early in August, when I’ll be heading to cover the Leipzig Games Convention for work. That should give me a fun little opportunity to explore a country I loved when I visited Munich. But that’s just the appetizer for later this year, when I’m hoping to extend the 2-week break we get in December into something a bit more sizable. A solid 3 or 4 weeks should give me the opportunity to see a lot of the places I didn’t get to visit the first time I went. It’s a bit tough to plan with the dollar in the state it’s currently in, but life, they say, is short.
Then there’s Hemingway the excercise routine. Lately I’ve been slacking a bit on my reading habits. The last book I read was A Confederacy of Dunces. A hilarious book I enjoyed immensely, but because I kept getting distracted by slightly more active media, it took me a month to make it through what was only a 400-page book. Hemingway books are easy to plow through because of his signature brief, terse sentences. You don’t feel like you’re trudging through literary mud while reading him. Now, don’t get me wrong–I’m an English major. I love literary mud. But when you’ve been slacking as much as I have, getting through two books in a week and a half is the perfect way to re-establish a good reading routine.
As an added benefit, reading The Sun Also Rises gave me the energy to read an entire 6-page article on the Times site about the state of bullfighting in Spain. It’s interesting going from a book published in the 1920s which paints the picture of a Pamplona overrun by aficianados to an article about the conflict between Spanish traditionalists struggling to maintain control of a controversial sport most young people either don’t care about or outright despise.
One of the nice things about the place I work is that it’s within walking distance of AT&T Park, home of the San Francisco Giants. It’s not the team that makes it such a nice sell. The team is abysmal. In fact, their inability to grasp concepts of statistical analysis developed after 1902 is matched only by my beloved Seattle Mariners. No, no–it’s the park itself.
AT&T is a beautiful place to catch a baseball game. It gets a little chilly at night, what with it sitting right on the San Francisco Bay, but the architecture, food and atmosphere makes for a very welcoming experience. I went last night with my pal Chris and his two friends. One of his friends happens to be a Mets fan and made sure to arrive dressed in full Mets gear. So I figured, screw it, I’ll root for the Mets this game. And so I did.
It didn’t seem like the best idea when the Mets’ starting pitcher Oliver Perez proceeded to give up six runs in the first inning. But it became fun when our cheers turned toward sarcasm. The lethargic round of applause we gave David Wright when he struck out and made it to first on a passed ball may have been the highlight of the evening. Because really, the best time you can have at a game is when your team is getting drilled. Fans of the winning team think of you as harmless little scamps just trying to vent a little, so they let you say pretty much anything you please. I got a few looks from Giants fans when I shouted “Barry’s on the hill tomorrow! 24 hours and a Zito start can do a lot to fix those winning smiles!” but no outright rebuttals. So being able to act like idiots in such a nice park made for a pretty fun evening.
The only bad part is that I wound up getting home pretty late. Not a good idea since I had to wake up this morning at the unfriendly time of 5:30 AM. This was so I could fly to LA, check out a game for work, and fly back. Seeing the game was a lot of fun, and I discovered that if I squint just enough while going through Santa Monica I feel like I might be in SF’s Outer Sunset neighborhood and not actually in greater Los Angeles. But at any rate, I was only there for about 10 hours. Even I’d consider that a perfectly bearable amount of time to spend in LA. The optical illusions are just an added benefit.
People in San Francisco love to drink. They also love to dress in costume. These are two facts I’ve learned quite well since moving here from Seattle. Today only cemented that knowledge as I watched a parade of drunks stumble though the Haight in a marathon of excess called Bay to Breakers.
Bay to Breakers is an odd event. It’s two things, really. For one, it’s a legitimate marathon where earlybirds gather on a Sunday morning to run the width of San Francisco–Downtown to Ocean Beach. Once the real runners take off, the madness starts. A swarm of people collect and amble forth in the best and worst costumes they can cobble together. No theme is necessary, just a haphazard mixture of clothing they probably wouldn’t have worn on that day.
Then there’s the alcohol. The water bottles of the runners are replaced with green Mickey’s bottles, silver cans of Coors Light, or plastic jugs of vodka. It seems early morning debauchery and fine spirits aren’t a natural combination. But that doesn’t mean people aren’t giving it their best. Some of my favorite costumes were ones that integrated the person’s outfit with cheap beer. At one point I saw someone dressed as Superman pushing a phone booth mounted to a wheeled cart. As he walked by, someone came up to him and asked him to open the booth. Superman happily obliged, revealing a full-sized keg of beer housed within. The only changing this Superman planned to do in his booth was go from sober to unsafe-to-fly by the time he reached Ocean Beach. My second favorite was more of a parade float; it was an entire fake deck built at least six feet high, where people had set up giant beer bongs for anyone who was brave enough to chug a foamy Bud Light at three miles per hour.
For all the insanity I bore witness to today, I was worried at one point that I would miss all of it. I heard from my friend Corinne that they would be setting up in the Panhandle right near Fell and Masonic. This message was sent at 8 in the morning, while I was still sleeping. I managed to get up a couple hours later, pick up some breakfast, and realize it was already 10:30. This was my first Bay to Breakers and I wasn’t sure how much longer it would be going on. Traffic outside my apartment was stuttering sadly with the increased traffic, so I decided to walk. This wouldn’t have taken more than 25 minutes, but I gave in and hopped on the first bus that came by.
The bus was oddly crammed with people. It seemed the increased numbers were all runners returning from the beach. This was easy to tell thanks to their outfits and the fact that they smelled like they had just ran across a major metropolitan city. I couldn’t help but think these were the last remaining runners.
I was wrong. I got there while there were still a swarm of people streaming westward along Fell–the second, entertaining swarm. The first pair of things I noticed was an ambulance and an old woman scolding a young but very drunk kid for urinating on the stoop of her house. So this is going to be an interesting day, I thought to myself. I managed to cross the street and find the pink umbrella Corinne set up to shield the group from the sun. With the overcast sky, it worked much better as a beacon to help the likes of myself. The group of us had Irish coffees with an astonishing amount of Jameson as we watched the parade stumble by for the next few hours.
During this time we saw a variety of hilarious and disturbing costumes. The most disturbing ones weren’t costumes at all; there were more naked people than I care to remember. However, I do have to give credit to the naked guy who tried to jump onto a moving firetruck. He sadly tumbled off but saved himself by doing the best (and only) naked combat roll I have ever seen. Any makeshift costume you might think of was represented there, but the most common one seemed to be 70s joggers in tight shorts and hight, striped socks.
This all managed to be very entertaining in a way quite like staring a car crash. But eventually it was time to leave. The walk back to the car, through the Panhandle, may have been even scarier. Once you moved away from the big crowds, you began to see smaller pockets of people collecting near all the trees and buses in the park. With no bathrooms nearby and plenty of booze coursing through their system, they gave in to nature’s urges by urinating quite publicly. I’ve never seen so many girls peeing in public.
Corinne, Erik and I finally got back to the car–slightly more emotionally scarred than when we left–and took off for the Mission, where the sun was sure to be out. We got some burritos from a local taqueria and headed over to Delores Park to enjoy the sun. We spent the rest of the day relaxing in the park, watching the fog overtake everything in sight but us.
(I finished the day by foolishly leaving my camera in Corinne’s car. I’ll be sure to edit this entry to include photos of the day when I get it back.)