Meet Sam Fredcisco

I tried to start writing this last night, but I was plied with beer, sake, and a movie away from the computer. The beer and sake were very good. The movie (Lucky Number Slevin) was very not. There were large sections that were awesome, but in such a way that I could not tell if the filmmakers understood why what they were doing was awesome. I believe they were trying to be clever, and were instead unintentionally ridiculous. And whenever the movie was not unintentionally ridiculous, it was merely stupid.

Anyway, here's what I started to write and then what I'm writing now. Bet you can't tell where one ends and the other begins!

Our first day in San Francisco went well, despite getting off to a mildly rocky start. Our plan was to head down to the Asian Art Museum, look around for a couple of hours, and then meet a friend of mine downtown. My friend is a native Franciscan and we were looking forward to getting the inside scoop. Just as we reached the museum, however, we received the bad news: my friend was called to an emergency meeting in Berkeley, and wouldn't be able to meet up with us at all. We were on our own.

After discovering that the Asian Art Museum was cheaper after 5 PM, we decided to ad-lib a trip around town as best we could. We made our way to Golden Gate Park, where we looked at but did not enter the Japanese Tea Garden. Then we walked through the park and exited at at the notorious Haight St., finding ourselves right next to Amoeba Records, which I'd been told not to miss. We each proceeded to spend way too much time and money in Amoeba Records, which was overwhelming in both its size and its attention to both good and alternative music (and movies). Leaving Amoeba Records we happened upon a test-drive booth for the Toyota Scion, so we took a test-drive. We were rewarded for our efforts with a $15 Gift Certificate...to Amoeba Records. So we went back in and bought more stuff. Good little consumers are we.

After Amoeba our wallets went into anemic shock and we decided to just walk for a long time. We headed down Haight St., crossing Ashbury, where Trefor and I had to explain to Jim the significance of Haight-Ashbury, because his high school history classes apparently ended with JFK's assassination. We decided to hoof it all the way back to the Asian Art Musuem, but crossing Divisadero I realized that we were only a block away from Comix Experience, a comic book store of great renown that I'd been wanting to visit for ages. So we went, and I bought a few comic books, and to thank Trefor and Jim for indulging me I bought them each a comic as well. Yay comics!

The Asian Art Museum had two special exhibits: one on the woodblock prints of 19th century artist Yoshitoshi, and the other on 20th century manga genius Osamu Tezuka. The Tezuka exhibit was very good, but my favorite by far was the Yoshitoshi, in which I had my breath taken away at least thrice by the stunning beauty of the compositions and the elegance of the colors (which have resisted fading very well over the last century or so). I lusted for the two books of prints the museum had, but they were around $100 apiece and I could not justify that expense. Oh, but I tried. I tried so hard. There was also an amazing Tezuka "Astro Boy" wallet design, but the wallet was poorly constructed, so I did not buy anything. Which is fine, because I buy too much stuff.

Dinner was on Trefor's brother, who took us for sushi, which was delicious. Then the aforementioned beer and sake and craptastic movie. And then sleeping, which I woke from to a phone call to say that my car's alternator has apparently died, and the car will not start. Which is a bummer, because Lucy and Laura were supposed to take it to the beach today. Sorry girls!

Off we go now, to a late start of another day in San-Fran. I'm going to try and let California soothe my worries about dealing with my stupid car when I get home. Maybe we'll go look at the Pacific Ocean.