Too funny. Terilyn Joe – a local anchorwoman who's cut a wide swath through Bay Area news with her über-bouffant 'dos over the years – might be facing a misdemeanor for pelting chainsaw-wielding tree surgeons with produce outside her apartment on Memorial Day. No truth to the rumor that she then immobilized the chainsaws with her keg of industrial-strength Aqua Net.

I always swear I'm going to lie low during these kinds of holiday weekends, when everyone is on the road and partying like grouchy lemmings. But damned if I didn't. Went to the local Greek festival yesterday to get my annual fill of homemade Greek grub and honey-and-phyllo-and-nuts orgasmic pastry. Today I ventured into S.F. to check out the Carnaval parade and street fair. Any parade in S.F. is usually a deviant blast, and this was no exception. Fun to see so many different body shapes in the parade, free and proud and grooving.

After I parked in downtown S.F., I had time to kill before catching BART to the Mission, so I grabbed a mocha in a café at Powell and Sutter. I looked around and saw all the people enjoying a Sunday breakfast, and had a flashback to childhood. My father ran a drugstore / lunch counter at the Hilton at Mason and O'Farrell for about 10 years. On the occasional weekend when we'd be at the drugstore, he'd take me and my sister to breakfast on Nob Hill – sometimes the Fairmont, sometimes the Mark Hopkins, sometimes Sears Fine Food down the hill on Powell, which has been serving silver dollar pancakes and the like for about three millennia now. French toast with powdered sugar, sausage links, fresh orange juice (de-pulped, because I was a picky and spoiled child), and my dad. It was a long time since I thought about those things. The acting class I took recently was at a space a block down from the Hilton. I'd walk by the hotel every night after class, dimly remembering things as they were. The drugstore is now a Krispy Kreme outpost. To everything, turn turn turn...

After Carnaval, me and my date made it up to SF MOMA – my first time there, uncultured heathen that I am. We parted company afterwards and I drove out of the city through the Stockton tunnel, the cacophony of Chinatown, the moneyed mellowness of North Beach and Russian Hill, left on Bay, along the Marina Green, into the fog and over the Waldo Grade to suburbia.

Monday is time to sit down and formulate concrete goals for the short-term – moving, acting, writing, etc. Tuesday I'll be working from home, the first day in a few weeks where I'm not juggling two to three big projects concurrently. Wednesday night I'm in Vegas again, hanging with friends, relaxing, gambling and drinking, and of course people-watching and inhaling the persistent aroma of human desperation so prevalent on the Strip.

Work is kicking my ass so hard. Just needed to say that. Too tired to say any more.

Last night, me and my friend Mark gorged on sushi at 9th & Irving, staggered through Golden Gate Park buzzed on cold unfiltered sake and unsure how to get to Geary & Arguello, but damned if we didn't get there eventually to wait in line for Star Wars: Episode Deux. The movie was thoroughly mediocre, but it was one of those great evenings you can usually only have in the city. If I could get my figurative shit together, I'd move there. All I'd need is a nice studio/1BR with a parking spot for, oh, under $1100/mo. Gee, can you tell I'm a suburbanite in denial?

More random shit:

We put a CD player in the kitchen, so I got to make my breakfast this morning – Tofutti soy blintzes – to the strains of the Super Fly soundtrack. "I'm your mama, I'm your daddy, I'm that vegan in the alley... I'm your pushermensch..."

When class war erupts, the lumpenproletariat employed at Cold Stone Creamery will be the ones most prone to snapping and shedding mass quantities of blood. I visited Cold Stone for the first time on Saturday – it's the newest of the chains to creep into Marin – and it's good ice cream and a neat idea, but I'd hate to be a wage slave there. Instead of scooping the ice cream with a traditional spherical implement, they're forced to use two metal spatulas, which has to produce the most horrific carpal-tunnel forearm trauma I can imagine. Then they have to use said spatulas to fold in whatever extras the customer wants. Everything in the place is hyperbolically labeled with the adjective "little" – the container for used sample spoons says "Little Dirty Spoons Here," the door to the employees-only area says "Little Ice Cream Makers Only," ad little fucking nauseum. As a coup de grace of soul-killing employment, the tip jar says "If you fling one, we will sing one." Essentially, when someone tips a buck, the staff has to sing a song specially written by the Compulsory Mirth-Making Department back at Cold Stone Corporate HQ – you know, like the "Here's a cheesy birthday song we wrote since we'd have to pay royalties on 'Happy Birthday to You' and we'd rather use the dough for R&D on new fruity cocktails" experience at TGI Friday's. Between the crush of suburban yupsters coming into the place, the inevitable bouts of tendinitis and human freezer burn, and the saccharine tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It" with new super-banal corporate lyrics ringing in their ears, I give 'em 3 weeks before they start rioting in the well-groomed streets. But goddamn, the ice cream is tasty. It's just the mental aftertaste that hits me funny.

A couple of random bits of info:

Poring over my log files, lots of people have gotten here from search results for a couple of random things that have absolutely nothing to do with my measly life. So as a public service, I'll answer a couple of the implied questions for the search terms that come up most often.

What's the name of the song in the GM commercial – you know, the one that goes "naaaa na-na-na-naaaa, etc." – and who sings it?
"Land of 1000 Dances" by the wicked Wilson Pickett.

Where can I find a Brazilian bikini wax in [your city here]?
Hell if I know, but I find it relatively funny, to say the least, that so many searches for this lead to my blog. Best of luck finding a salon that will fulfill your need, and feel free to send "before" and "after" photos.

So I got an email soliciting studio audience members for the next rousing edition of Celebrity Boxing on FOX. Two of the three fights that have been signed: Joey "Statuatory Rapist" Buttafuoco vs. John Wayne "Frankenpenis" Bobbitt and William "The Refrigerator" Perry vs. Manute Bol, the 7'7" Sudanese beanstalk also known as one of a million Golden State Warriors washouts over the last 15 years. Just downright frightening. I'm setting my VCR now.

OK, I'm over the other day. Had a very nice date on Sunday. Who knows if I'm good boyfriend material, but I can be an entertaining date when I put my mind to it.

Brian Wilson sang it simply on Pet Sounds: "Sometimes I feel very sad."

Today is one of those times for me. Don't know why – I was cranky yesterday, and I'm blue today. I happened to stumble across a new personals ad from the woman who dumped me in an email. In it, she mentioned what she wasn't looking for in a guy, and it was a dead-on slam against me. And for some reason, it just hit me in the gut. I felt like a poster boy for relationship failure. How can I help but take it personally? Times like these I wonder if I'm relationship material, or if I'll ever be. Fuck.