crazy crazy weekend for hungry hungry hippos
here's the new and improved version, just for you:

Friday - went home and drove right back into the city (gotta love living in the east bay!) to get dinner at this place in Hayes Valley that i can't recall the name. oh yes, it was a Brazilian place. We were there to say goodbye to one of Tina B's co-workers who was a intern from Brazil (Sao Paulo). The place was quite good actually. I had the flattened steak, which came highly recommended. It wasn't quite as flattened as i expected and contained a good many herbs, spices and other indistinguishable flavorings. I'm not a big steak eater (though i was back in the day...you know, that day), but this was a fine slab of meat. my only problem was that i ordered the damn thing medium well in an attempt to circumvent potential bloodiness but instead it was more like medium rare. But i declined to push it because the chef looked quite perturbed back there in the kitchen. He was in some argument with the host. Plus i had already had a number of glasses of Sangria (i.e. Kool-Aid) and a tall frosty Hoegarden (i'm sure that spelling is incorrect but fuck it), so i was feeling too happy. Confrontation is not my specialty, except for when i'm pissed. :)
The people at the dinner with the Brazilians were a virtual cornucopia, including a guy from Australia, one guy from Colombia, one person originally from Taiwan and now lives in Hawaii, one from Germany, and then Tina and I. They were predominantly tech people, so the conversation got a little boring at times. Everybody was very nice, but this one couple...you know you're in for a long night when the second question they ask is "What do you do?" and then pre-judge you based on what you "do," as if that defines your entire being. Tina discussed this and she decided she's going not going to answer that question anymore...well, obviously it'll depend on the circumstance, but if some non-personality tech dolt is quizzing her, it's not going to be pretty. I can't wait. Anyway, the tech couple were blathering on and on about target markets, business plans and other "exciting" fodder. I decided to tune them out.
After dinner, we hooked up with an old pal from my days in Michigan, Timofee. Mr. T likes his music especially dark (i.e. goth/industrial) and so he was hanging out at one of his old haunts in SF, the Cat Club. Well lo and behold, I've never been there, so ms. Tina B and I opted for a go-round at the ol' Cat Club. Suffice to say, it was an enjoyable, albeit enlightening, experience. I felt like I was in some weird timewarp in which it was 1990 again. Very odd. Tina B was one of the few people there sporting something other than black (her dress was a mixture of black and white). I was the other, wearing my Indie Rock-looking brown denim jacket.
There were all kinds of odd lunatics cavorting around the place, doing the ho-hum dance to their favorite industrial tunes. Of course, a night like this wouldn't be complete without a rendition of Nitzer Ebb's "Join In The Chant." Jesus, do we really need to hear that song anymore? Why does everyone feel the need to run songs into the ground like that? It's the total industrial cliche, if there is such a thing. Other industrial cliches include: Siousxie and the Banshees, Sisters Of Mercy, KMFDM, New Order and/or Joy Division (especially "Blue Monday") and Ministry (especially "Every Day Is Halloween," though we didn't hear it that night, thankfully. Instead, it was worse -- "Twitch"-era Ministry, when Al Jourgensen decided to use a fake English accent and sing atop cheesy synth pop tunes).
We also were told that DJ Fernando is the "most popular DJ in San Francisco" by one of Mr. T's pals. My response was "Who?" This guy has to be seen to be truly appreciated. You know you're in trouble when the guy is sporting a ponytail from the 7-10 hairs still left on the top of his head. It's like "Dude, do you really think you're fooling anyone?" Maybe the esteemed Fernando doesn't care, but he really didn't have to take his fucking shirt off in the DJ booth too. Jesus.
On the other hand, I highly recommend attending said gathering for the People Watching factor alone. Awesome. The whole time, i was thinking "what cave did these people crawl out from?"

Saturday - Worked about the house and related craziness. Our phone line wasn't working thanks to our lovely building manager, so i had to go to Tina's work to file a couple of stories that were due for Flyer mag. Actually, just a couple of blurbs but they took forever. so i was in the city by 5 p.m. or so. did i mention it was pouring rain all fucking day? of course, an hour after i got into tina's work, the phone lines were fixed. but i was already in the city at that point. my car was parked in the mission and everything. so after i did my work, i found out the power went out at home and ended up being off till midnight, so it's a good thing i left. i went back to the mission and hit pakwan for some fine pakistani food. good stuff there, that's for sure. the counter help is always very surly. kind of funny. so i left there about 9:55 p.m. and met up with Beano, who rode the bart.
then it was off to Kelly's Mission Rock for the Radiance party, featuring Wendella and Ty spinning at virtually the same time, early in the evening. We hooked up with our pals and cruised in to the event.
radiance was fun. lots of good peeps hanging out from burning man, which is always nice. silencefiction and LadyMo were there, as was Mollygolightly and her boy, T. oodles of fun time. The music was iffy in some parts, but the vibe was nice and friendly. I wandered around more than I danced, though. They had this cool photo booth that was free, so we took lots of fun photos. What a great idea!
stayed there and rocked till 5, then went with Wendella and Fandango to this dude fredness' pad and hung with the red melon crew for a bit, and watched the sun rise, which was totally gorgeous. cool cool.
then it was to the endup's sunday morning t-dance, which opens at 6. that was wacko. all kinds end up there..all the tweakers that stayed up all night. hilarious. good dancing and all that freaky stuff. stayed till 10 then headed back to the east bay.
of course, i didn't get to sleep much because . . .

SUNDAY - . . . was another day. We went to go see the theatre premiere of DJ Qbert's "Wave Twisters" flick, which was totally messed up. but awesome. there was a huge line for it at the Castro Theatre.
After that, breakfast at this cool place that i can never remember its name, but it's on like Guerrero and 22nd or something.
that was a fine meal. we stayed till 3:15, then headed back over to mr. R's place for some R&R of the kindly sort.
finally left at around 5:30 on the BART, where we encountered many strange folk coming home from the 49ers game. ugh.
the BART was jam-packed but luckily we got on early enough to snag a seat.
There was this strange man yelling things about Jesus and money and other odd things. Ms. Tina B. was kind enough to write them down, which will be thrown up soon (along with my remaining top 12-25, which i still needs to do).
i crashed that night before 7:30 p.m. and slept till about 9 a.m. yesterday morning.

MONDAY- yay, no work for me thanks to veteran's day. yep. did lots o work at home relating to the writing variety and then we tried to see "From Hell" last night but the damn line was so long, we missed our show. apparently the computer was down yet they only had one person to wait on all these people and sell the tickets by hand.
madness. so we rented "hannibal" instead, which wasn't as gross as everyone said it was going to be (though it was fairly sick in some parts).
and then last night my computer wouldn't send. and still wouldn't this morning.
and here we are.
eat vanilla cake tomorrow.