hanging out in the mall.

hung out the whole afternoon in the mall, like a buncha high schoolers. it was pretty fun. place gallery is in pioneer place and it’s, well, a gallery, that was donated by the mall because some of the shops closed down. hung out there because abe and gabe were conducting interviews. johnny met me downtown cause we were going to do “talk to us” — and we did, for a second or something, and it went alright and we had a couple brief encounters which were fun — but i ended up getting him interviewed, and then his friend showed up, and he got interviewed, and then jamie showed up, and she got interviewed, and then rose showed up, and she got interviewed… and basically we were in the mall all day, asides from taking a stroll to saturday (or sunday) market to get johnny a burrito (which turned out to be gross). then rose and i got chipotle. long live the chipotle. viva la fucking chipotle. chipotle my face. i’m too cheap to buy it these days (and it’s a bit far, and people dont like you buying chipotle), but i’m going to say it loud and clear, people: CHIPOTLE IS FUCKING DELICIOUS…!!!!

quick recap of people who actually did talk to us:
- dad with kid who was mostly talking to be polite but didn’t have too much to say. nice of him, though.
- lady saying, “what do you want to talk about? i’m getting hot flashes!” and then started to walk away, and i was like, “wait! what about them?” and she’s like, “you don’t want to know!” but we were like, “but we dooooooooooooooooooooooo…” as she was walking away.
- mexican dudes, one with a kid, who approached johnny and said, “what do you wanna talk about, nigga?” and ignored me completely, but it’s fine. they had dude time, talking about how the dudes were waiting for their wives, who were shopping, and johnny being like, “ahh yeah i know what that’s like, etc. etc.” snarf. dude time.

oh right and then we got back to the place gallery and were waiting for people to be interviewed, and i decided to write on a piece of paper, “what’s up? ** insert some other stuff i forget ** (—> there’s a pen)” and left a pen outside these locked glass doors. people could totally see inside and see us, and we could see them, but it was just a kind of fun project. a couple came by and the guy noticed the sign and said, “did you see that sign?” and they discussed it while walking away and then came back. they ended up asking us, “what should we eat for dinner?” and rose wrote back, “sunset on the beach,” and the guy wrote back, “is that a restaurant?” and johnny wrote, “pizza party,” and they said, “thanks, that helps.” although i’m not sure if it did. in any case, the other people in the room kind of judged them for being happy hour people, or said that they were the kind of people who would ask a question like that… but it’s weird. i’m not saying i’m completely without judgment, but those things didn’t cross my mind. nothing about, “this is the type of person i think they are…” crossed my mind whatsoever. i just simply took their answers at their complete face value… it’s interesting, anyway. the difference.

oh right, and the interview. i guess i’ll post the results here sometime soon, but it was some talk about growth, reliance on self, work, whether your 15-year-old self would be happy with your self at this present moment, whether present moment self is happy with your present moment self, and, in my case, how i respond to affection in public settings.

word.

by the way, i wanted to give a quick recap of the art i’ve been posting on create or die, since there’s stuff i’ve been more or less proud of.

installation in my backyard?

tape designs for cole’s band, holy zombi.

“what’re you thinking about?”

today, in capitol hill, with daniel riday.

—

we began with a sign that said, “what do you think about…” with an arrow pointing at other words.

the first incarnation was “shadows”, because danny had recently went on a vision quest and talked to a “shadowy man” who was in charge of all things bad in the world, including fear, but he only did that so he could ultimately link people together through fear… and so, he was basically both a positive and negative person.

(1) lady: i think she thought the sign was referring to danny, not “shadows”, and said, “i don’t know what i think about him,” as a total passer-by comment in-between having a talk with her friend.

we then gave people a choice between “shadows” and “elvis”, because we found a poster from pike’s place fish fry that had elvis on it.

(2) lady: chose shadows; “i like shadows”; then talked about elvis, saying that the girls were tying up elvis and looking pretty in their vintage swimsuits like they had “nothing better to do”.
(3) dude: “elvis was a cool guy”; “ain’t nothing bad to say about him cept he took too many drugs”.
(4) dude: “how are you?”; we responded with, “good, how are you?”; he said, “blessed, everyday.”

we then decided to just retire the choices and just made a new sign that says, “what’re you thinking about?”

(5) lady: “is this a study?” “getting a new house”.
(6) negative dude from haiti, jean-claude: “if i told you everything on my mind, you’d want to kill me.”; “christians killing the muslims and coming home and praising the lord.”; [politician said] “haitians making a pact with the devil.”; “[americans? westerners?] steal everything”; talk about karma and “this shit isn’t going to last forever”; talk about how all the natural disasters (including earthquake in haiti) aren’t really natural disasters and “i know better”; “wait until jah comes down that ladder”; people will make eye contact when famine finally hits; “nobody knows the hour except the person who forms and molds you”.
(7) dude: “peace”.
(8) cynical seattle veteran whose relatives came in the 1800s, and now he’s moving to thailand: decline of seattle and how everyone used to hang out downtown and now nobody does; talk about how he rarely goes outside of ballard now because he just likes his neighborhood; cops shooting up the totem-pole carver; being hit two times by dogs who are jogging by; refugees taking all the money and getting free schooling so that tuition rates are really expensive for natives.
(9) don’t remember: “good.”
(10-11) two guys, joining our conversation: began with guy two saying that he needed to pee; asked us what we were thinking, and i told them about the seattle conversation we’d just had; they said we probably would’ve had better luck in san francisco; guy one says: “people in seattle are too intellectual,” guy two says, “or they think they are,” and guy one says, “they’re thinking too much, but they’re not feeling.” deep. chatted a little bit til jean-claude started firing up his theories of negativity again, and then they left.
(12) asian-ish dude: walked by and looked at the sign the entire time, then finally said, “i don’t know.”
(13-14) lady with kid: “i’m thinking my ice cream is really good”; i responded with, “lucky”; she responded with, “the samples are free.”
(15) girl: “the sunshine feels nice.”
(16-18) punk rock parents with kid: they had originally passed by and were slightly angry-face because a driver didn’t stop for them while they were crossing the road, but when they came back, they were quite cheery and dad started off by saying, “i’m thinking about what you’re thinking,” and i told him i was thinking about how it was interesting that some people started off by talking about really serious topics and other people said fairly superficial stuff like, “the sunshine feels nice.” (little to my knowledge, sunshine girl was right next to us, on a bench.) danny commented that he thought the parents were probably good parents because the kid liked dad enough to have a similar haircut.
(19) dude: we asked him, “deep thoughts?” and he responded, “usually pretty superficial.” i responded with, “aah, deep thought in a superficial comment!” and he nodded.
(20) woman: the slow pan with no response…
(21) dude: squinted hard at sign and then said, “that’s a good question.”; “wish i hadn’t gotten stoned.”
(22) dude: “food”; smile.
(23) dude: after long thought process, “huskies game”.
(24) chick: smiled, and then we asked her what she was listening to, and she said, “arcade fire,” and i asked her if she’d seen the new awesome video.
(25) lady: “ice cream” (molly moon’s was right across the street).
(26-27) lady with kid: we had just moved down on the sidewalk because we were chasing the sunshine. she had been sitting in a different part of the park for a while, but finally answered our question when we scooted over next to her, with, “truth”; i asked her what kind of truth; she said, “joseph campbell said truth without compassion is violence.”; she studied toltic? shamanism, and told us that a lot of it was emptying yourself out, basically, to make yourself a good vessel for good deeds; “can’t do good for the world without doing good for yourself.”
(28) old lady: had come by previously and then came by again, and this time answered our question, asking if we were doing a school project; we said it was a personal project; she said she was thinking about how she’d just noticed these trees on the roof of this white building; we said we’d just noticed it for the first time, too. jean-claude said that he could tell when people were bullshitting and not telling their true thoughts; i got in an argument with him about whether the old woman was telling her true thoughts or not, because jean-claude’s interpretation of a true thought seemed to be the stuff he talked about, as in, global conspiracy and government failures and stuff, and i said that i thought what the lady had to say was just as much a true thought because she obviously didn’t just pull that out of nowhere; then he asked me what i thought, saying that i hadn’t contributed, and i told him what i was just thinking about the old lady, and he seemed to think my answer wasn’t good enough, either; i then told him that i thought he was extremely judgmental, and that that was my thought at the time.
(29-32) group of four high-schoolers: kind of just busted out random words they were thinking about at the time, including “immaculate conception”; talked to them for a while, partly about the “seattle freeze”; they said they wanted to go to school for an array of things, like art and design, fashion, writing or journalism, and photojournalism.
(33) money dude: pulled out money instantly — which was like, four coins — and *then* read our sign and just held onto his money and didn’t quite answer our sign; i called after him, “were you going to give us money?”; he said, “give you money?”; i said, “were you going to give us money?”; he said, “yes.”
(34) dude: “eating”; we asked, “where are you going?”; he said, “food, probably.”
(35-39) asian guy with kids: asian guy with accent and like, four kids; he encouraged the kids to answer the question; one kid finally said, “oh, i know! soccer game!”; brief comment from asian guy and danny about “living in the now”; the only asian person to stop the entire time.
(40) chick with lay’s chips: “moving”; “bay area”; “going to school at stanford”.
(41) dude: “do you know where i can get some shit at?”; “crystal”.
(42) chick: “nothing”; i asked, “is that good or bad?”; she said, “it’s a good thing.”
(43) dude: “hamburgers”; i asked, “where are you going?”; he said, “dick’s”; i pointed at rachel and said, “she likes dick’s” — but it came out wrong and dirty-sounding, obviously.
(44) drive-by comment: she wasn’t talking to us, but we eavesdropped on a girl that said, “i just found a book of mr. t and chuck norris jokes at work yesterday.”
(45) persian (?) dude: “how beautiful it is today.”
(46) dude: “gotta get to work”.
(47-48) dad with kid: i asked, “you again??” cause it was the third time they’d passed by, and the first time, he told his kid to say hi to us; he said, “we’re keeping our eyes peeled for peoples”; later returned with a whole family of people, including some guy who was pretty much santa claus. pretty much.
(49) older mexican dude: walked by us once and smiled, then pulled out money, then asked me what our sign said cause he couldn’t see that well, and i told him what it said, and then asked him if he was italian; he said he was mexican and came from a small town; danny said he was going to mexico next year, to morelia, to work on a sustainable living farm and then spread it across south america; dude was very skeptical, saying, “what do you have to bring to the table?” and “are you an agronomist?”; danny said that he would just go and figure it out; dude said that he didn’t want to discourage, but that danny had better start learning spanish and such, but he still wished us (guess he thought we were going together) the best of luck and said that you can try these things when you’re young; i ended by talking to him a little bit in spanish… nothing significant, though.
(50) chick: “peace”.

today i didn’t even have to use my AK.

^ guess the song lyric. ^

anyhow. today was a really awesome day. went downtown with danny (who i met last time i was talking “talk to us” with lenny downtown in seattle center during folk life) to do “talk to us”… and we weren’t sure it was going to be particularly fruitful because we weren’t sure that there were festivities going on in the park today, but it turned out to be fucking E P I C. details to come. super crazy awesome!!!!

folk life 2009!

Folk Life is always the best place to do “Talk To Us,” because people are generally just so godamn friendly. Here’s this year’s Folk Life chatting with people adventure.

SIGN:
TALK TO US! (TALKING IS BETTER THAN GIVING HUGS SOMETIMES)

NOTES:
- vegan pamphlet redhead
- two guys with maracas / language discussion
- bilo? 4 family/videotapes
- banjo (4 kinds) tuned on fifths
- steel guitar
- german/australian (foto)
- momiya camera guy
- moss agate guy funny
- guy analyzing signs = monetization of money?
- lady walks in from sf, kinda confused, wondering about diff between sf and sea
- language tattoo guy
- water conservation friend
- tattoo artist
- hempfest
- beer $ olympians

sxsw 2009, austin, day four.

I’m so tired of writing these journal entries, but they must be written, dammit. After I write these, I can FINALLY move onto writing the proper REDEFINE articles about SxSW, hopefully.

This particular morning, Jeanette had to go see M. Ward — indie stuff I don’t think I really care for (though I haven’t given him the HUGEST chance, but hey, I’m listening now right as I’m writing, and I’m pretty much convinced that I wouldn’t have been interested). While she did that, I walked the mile and a half to Red River St. & 12th St., the corner of Waterloo Park, where I’d be interviewing the dudes from The Everyday Visuals and then Death Is Not A Joyride. Both were very cool, although I think the Death Is Not A Joyride. one was perhaps slightly more comfortable because they had a good place to sit still, whereas for The Everyday Visuals we were kinda moving around, trying to find a place where we could fit all five of them in comfortably. They were also not quite as good at answering questions. After the interview, I had them sing some stuff. Check out these videos below to get an idea of the interview and the ditty afterwards… sorry for the terrible, terrible camerawork. I was GOING to buy a tripod beforehand, but they were simply too big to bring along :/ By the way, I don’t know if I mentioned this, but I only had a backpack and a sling bag and all the other girls had SO MUCH SHIT.

I was hella dehydrated by the time the guys showed up, and there was no water anywhere close, so I took a swig of Christopher, the lead singer’s Fiji water bottle luckily or I would have died. I told him (via text message) that he would need to give me some water as a tax for their being late to our interview.

After the interview, I walked a bit to get a much-needed bottle of water. The whole trip I was so super dehydrated. When I finally got back, the Death Is Not A Joyride. interview happened, and since they were local to Austin, they found a quieter spot for us to do the interview. Strangely also, there were some people wearing like, marathon badge numbers, doing a scavenger hunt, and they asked Joseph of Death Is Not A Joyride. if he had any CDs he was giving out, cause that was one of the items on the scavenger hunt sheet, I guess. See the video below…

So after those interviews, I headed into the Mess With Texas festival and walked around for a wee bit. I don’t honestly quite remember. Jeanette showed up soon after. I’d waited in line to get a wrist band, only to find out I didn’t need a wristband. I’d walked out of the hotel that morning forgetting to charge my phone and forgetting to bring these CDs I had brought to give to my writer Judy Nelson, so I’d called Jeanette prior to the interviews asking her to bring my charger and the CDs, and THANK GOD, because it turned out I desperately needed to use my telephone.

The crowd at Mess With Texas.

Thao Nguyen with the Get Down Stay Down.

So, Jeanette finally met up with me — my phone was dead by then — and then we walked in to catch the latter half of Cursive’s set, and of course, I also saw the Aussie! We kinda pointed at each other open-mouthed and then moved on. Cursive was okay, but I don’t know their music SUPER well, so I wasn’t in love with the set.

Following them was Thao Nguyen with the Get Down Stay Down, but by then I had confused my schedule (because I was basing my schedule off photos I’d taken on my camera of my computer screen in the morning). I thought Thao Nguyen was the Vivian Girls, and it was confusing, because I’d listened to the Vivian Girls prior to coming to SxSW, and thought it was a French-ish dude singing their songs. Which is why Thao Nguyen was surprising. She gave a really energetic performance, but I left partway to go to the side stage to see Japanther, even though I’d mistakenly thought I was seeing The Bronx. SO confused, and my times were SO off.

Japanther.

Trash Talk.

After Japanther, we went back to the main stage, and this time the Vivian Girls really WERE on (but still not French dudes… they were still women), and my mind was boggled. I thought they sucked balls, laid down on the grass for a while, and then got up and went back to the other stage, where I thought The Bronx was playing. They were not of course. Trash Talk was playing, and I was further confused because the Trash Talk singer kept saying, “The Bronx are up next,” and I thought he was being funny in some way, because weren’t they The Bronx? But nOo, they were not, and the Bronx WAS up next. Trash Talk was okay metal shit with a singer who ended up bleeding somehow. I was confused, but eventually found a flyer, and it answered some questions; the side stage was behind by half an hour!! The Bronx came up next, and they were pretty solid in my book, probably cause they are a bit more accessible, and the singer was actually kinda funny for a metal thrashy dude.

We had to leave halfway through their set cause I needed to go meet my writer Karla at the Hilton so we could conduct an interview with the Spanish artist, Hyperpotamus. I was PISSED cause I’d been itching to see Crystal Antlers all day, but since the side stage was pushed back half an hour-ish, I had to leave before Crystal Antlers went on. SUCK.

Jeanette walked with me back to the Convention Center area, cause she had to go there to eat some expensive dinner for free with some guy involved with ReadyMade Magazine. I did the interview at Hilton with Hyperpotamus… at least, I video’d while Karla asked the questions. I charged my phone desperately while this was going on, and we initially started the interview inside the hotel, but it was loud, so we later moved it outside. The interview went well. After we did it, it was around 6:30pm, and I found out he was playing a show at the Hilton at 7:00pm, and so I stuck around to see it, since I didn’t actually have anything I was dying to see at that time anyway. His set blew my fucking MIND. It was SO GOOD. It was one dude, a loopstation, and four mics creating music live, and dancing like a maniac in between his beats, and singing… he was like a one man band, and it was amazing. The Hilton was also the perfect spot for him to perform because there was a lot of traffic flowing by, so a lot of people stopped here and there to witness the spectacular event that is a Hyperpotamus performance.

Hyperpotamus in action.

After that, Karla and I walked back towards Waterloo Park and she stopped by Club DeVille while I went back to the park. Freaking Circle Jerks were playing the main stage, which I didn’t care for, but I met up with Judy and chatted her up for a while. Her boyfriend, this scrawny kinda engineer looking dude, was totally into punk and was all up in the mosh pit, and later came back blindly (as he wasn’t wearing his glasses), saying that Austin punks were the nicest punks ever, and that they didn’t want to punch you in the face like NYC punks, but that they wanted to help you up when you fell. Haha.

After that, I left, and was mega fucking hungry, so I stopped by a taco truck for some subpar chicken tacos and struck up conversation with some dude whose band was closing out SxSW. Didn’t seem like the stuff I’d REALLY listen to but I told him I might try to stop by. I chowed down real quick and went to the Mohawk. On the way, I noticed this homeless shelter they have in the downtown area that has like open glass windows and you can look in and see all the homeless people sleeping on mats. Interesting. Not sure why that is.

Past Lives.

Saw Past Lives at the Mohawk and talked to the main singer of Past Lives briefly after to give him my card, just because they seem SO nice as a band, even being formerly of the Blood Brothers and all… so, so, SO nice. They have an interesting, really friendly stage presence. Clipd Beaks was on next, and they were interesting. Not sure quite what to make of them. By this time, it was around 10:15pm, and I wanted to stay to watch HEALTH at 12:00am, but Jeanette wanted to see the Silversun Pickups and they were at a faraway venue — the same venue DeVotchKa and Constantines played last year — but by the time we got there, there was this line already, and while the line wasn’t all that super big, they weren’t letting many people in — particularly not wristbanded people. So we waited for like, an hour and a half for no reason. But the Silversun Pickups suck live anyway, so really, it’s all good.

Tara and Stephanie showed up to wait with us partway through our waiting process, and they had badges but chose to wait outside with us. When the band started playing and we still weren’t in, we decided to try going to the Used show, but that was full as a MOTHERFUCKER, and then went to some ghetto sports bar because they really wanted to get a drink. That was okay. After that, we went to a shot bar, and I drank some gross Oatmeal Cookie shot that was initially good but then made me feel pretty sick. Everyone else got pretty tossed. I was sober-ish. I’d been trying to get people to go to an electronic show since MSTRKRFT and Pendulum were playing, but no one really wanted to do anything except for get drunk, which is fine. The sports bar was super boring cause they were all taking about work, but after that was fine.

The nighttime crowd.

Obligatory group photo.

Obligatory nasty food.

Obligatory Jeanette-sits-in-the-middle-of-the-crowd photo.

Then Tara bought me a hot dog, and we waited in line for a while, but it was hilarious, because the hot dog cooking guy was inside this little booth with grills on either side of him, and he kept burning himself. It was really actually quite amusing… and quite gross… but whatever. The hot dogs were DELICIOUS even though it was a bit TOO spicy for my tastes. Shoulda known, considering the booth was called DIABLO DOGS!!! HAIL YESSSS.

BTW, this whole time in Austin, allergies were DEATH.

Afterwards, we sat down on a curb to eat the hot dogs and met some random people. One guy was really sad and really wanted a hot dog, but we jumped in line RIGHT before the line got really long, and after that the line was absurd, I guess. He came, talked, left, and came back to tell us he was unable to find a suitable hot dog with a short line. Turned out he was from Portland or lived there for a while, so there was some chatting about that. I gave him a business card and he IMMEDIATELY folded it up and crumpled it into a square, which is cool, because I do that too, but I was like, “WTF!” and he’s like, “You weren’t supposed to see that!” and tried to uncrease it back… but that never works. Jeanette tried to feed him her old pizza crust but he wouldn’t have it.

After he left, some dudes came and Jeanette tried throwing pizza crusts into their mouths. They were all bout it, although none of the pieces actually made it INTO their mouths. One guy asked me for my number, but I said it didn’t matter since I lived in Seattle, and he said, “It’s cool, I’ll drive to see you,” and I’m like, “Oh please,” and he’s like, “What? You don’t believe me?” and I’m not sure how the rest of that panned out but he left in good spirits.

Afterwards, I briefly held up a “Talk To Us” sign, scrawled on an old paper plate. No one really stopped other than these three people, two of which turned out to work for a radio station. They were both writers and one gave me his card and told me to email him because he was looking for a good publication to write for. I did email him, but haven’t heard back yet. :[

Oh so some guy had a mini bike, one of those really tiny bikes… and Jeanette tried riding that for a while. It was cool. The guy was trying to lead us to some bar or something with free drinks, but Jeanette left early because she wasn’t feeling good. She said she’d try and make it back on her own. Which is too bad because the guy pretty much was leading us because he’d made friends with her and had gotten her phone number for when he went to California for Coachella… or some shit.

When she left, we were still following the dude, but soon the dude saw someone he knew and went to talk to her, and Stephanie and Tara were like, “We want to go, too!” so they quickly hooked arms and walked away, and the guy was left to do whatever. Not sure when or if he noticed. We walked a few blocks together but then had to part ways.

I headed back to the hotel on my own, and on the way was hit on by some Mexican dude who pronounced his H’s, as in, “Hi,” really coarsely. I’m not sure why. But I heard him speaking Spanish, and then he turned over and said, “Hi,” to me, and I instinctively said, “Hola,” and he was confused and was like, “Hola or hi?” and I said, “Hi.” He tried to pester me forever into giving him my phone number but I said it was useless since I was from Seattle, but he kept trying, and I said no, and then he asked for my MySpace, so I said okay, so he tried to type it into his phone, but he was too drunk or didn’t know how to operate his phone or something. It took him FOREVER to type it in, and when he’d typed it in, it still didn’t work, so I said nevermind and he kept saying, “Give me your MySpace! We can talk!” and I was just like, “It’s okay,” and, “It’s okay,” is pretty much my rejection line ALWAYS because I don’t know how to reject people. It’s always like… “What’s your phone number?” “Nah, it’s okay.” Haha.

Then I walked home more of the way by myself, stopped and saw some street performers, and was in a fucking great mood. Saw a woman in a yellowish cape on the way, and it was of course Jeanette, trying to catch a cab with another girl, so I was like, “Jeanette! We’re like two blocks away from the hotel!” so she’s like, “I know,” and got up and walked with me the rest of the way (which wasn’t that far). She was dying though, I guess, and I later found out she had her eyes? closed? the whole time we were walking back. YESSS.

sometimes, life feels legitimately good.

Like right now!

I was a bit skeptical about hanging around in the Bay Area for an extra three days, but since my parents seemed like they really wanted me to hang around and paid for the additional $60 Southwest Airlines ticket for me to return to Seattle on Monday morning instead of Friday morning, I just said, OK. And you know what? I’m surprisingly glad I did hang around. As a result of hanging around, I have managed to accomplish the following (instead of sitting at home on my ass, even though sitting at home on my ass also probably would have meant playing some muthafuckin’ Left4Dead!!!):

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 23RD, 2008

DOING JACK SHIT!
Yeah! Arrive in SF. I don’t know what the fuck I did today. What the fuck did I do? Probably NOTHING.

***

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 24TH, 2008

DOING JACK SHIT!
Yeah! Arrive in SF. I don’t know what the fuck I did today. What the fuck did I do? Probably NOTHING.

***

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25TH, 2008

MEETING UP WITH ALLEN MA!
Since I had a car this day as my dad was out of town, I drove into San Francisco to eat dinner with Allen Ma. But he had a deadline, as he works at a cellphone game company, so I had to wait like an hour and a half before he actually got off work. I attempted to pay for meters but holy shit. 25 cents for FIVE MINUTES. Can you believe that?!!! CAN YOU REALLY?!!! It’s positively insane! I ended up going to Border’s and spending a little bit of money buying Christmas presents and crap. BLARGHHHH!!!

EATING AT THE FANCIEST SUSHI KAITEN RESTAURANT EVER!
We went to Japantown for sushi when he was off work and there are a million sushi restaurants there, but we finally decided on Isobune. Isobune is the finest kaiten restaurant dining experience I’ve experienced. Wow. ~__~ Great sentence. It’s sushi boats, but they’re like… really good cuts of fish. For good reason, I suppose, because you’re paying regular restaurant prices. Not cheap restaurant prices, either. The minimum plate I think was $2.25? Maybe? Not cheap at all. But delicious. I had ama ebi and some other crap and they were all delicious. The king crab nigiri cost I think $8.00!?!! Holy.

PLAYING FUN IPHONE GAMES!
We went back to Allen’s apartment and I pretty much played his phone games for an hour. The games his company makes for iPhone, that is. I forget the names. But they were fooking amazing. Really fun ~__~ Makes me want to have an iPhone… almost.

GOING TO A DRAG SHOW!
I picked Jeanette up from the Oakland airport when it was time, and we headed over to the Stud in San Francisco to see their weekly Tuesday night drag show. It was awesome! Let me recall the acts. They were ALL trannies btw, in various stages of transexualness, but Allen and Jeanette would scarcely believe it. LOL. Here they were in order-ish.

1) Larger guy in woman’s business suit type attire. Funny but pretty boring. Good personality, though, and looking at his jolly ass face made me jolly.
2) Host, who I loved. Goth/industrial type styled crossdressing dude who was pretty much hot as a man and as a woman. Right up my alley. Some corny jokes, but amusing enough. Sang, pretty well, but melancholy.
3) One that totally looked like a woman, who Allen and Jeanette still maintain was a woman, but that makes ZERO sense. Also doubled up as a host. She did a silent act, with a chair and a cigarette. Good facial expressions.
4) My favorite, a dude dressed up as a woman with this long rainbowish dress and long hair in two brown buns on the top of the head. Really messy. Really dude-ish. Did this really awesome lipsync that was perfectly synced with the music and was about snakes or something. At some point pulled out a box of dog food and chomped it down, spraying food and lipsyncing… IT WAS SO AWESOME. I wished Jeanette had gotten a video of it it was so so so great. But unfortunately not. I am sad about this. It was seriously so great.
5) Another one that totally looked like a woman, tall and black, with a really good female-ish voice. Really fucking hot. I am a fan. REALLY hot.
6) Another crossdressing dude. Lipsyncing act. I don’t really remember this part, unfortunately.
7) Fully surgerized guest who Jeanette and Allen thought was a woman. Totally was a man, though, and a really hot man. Lipsynced and danced around for a really long mixtape session. Got kinda boring, but she was pretty fucking hot. Woulda been a hot man as well.

When in San Francisco!

***

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 27TH, 2008

EATING HOT POT WITH THE PARENTALS!
That’s about it, really. Roxanne and Phil came over. We ate hot pot. We watched a weird ass super artsy Chinese movie. Very artsy but made ABSOLUTELY no sense. Haha.

***

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH, 2008

GOING BLACK FRIDAY SHOPPING? HELLZ YEARER! FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, IT WAS EXCITING!
I woke up at 9:00am and went shopping with my mother on Black Friday and receive $115~ worth of free clothing. I was certainly prepared to pay for the stuff (and I would have bought less stuff), but my mom was like, “When you go shopping with me, I’ll pay for it!” and I said, “HAIL YEAH!” Of the aforementioned $115~ of clothing is: 1) A pair of black corduroy-ish black pants for $19.99; 2) A pair of grey and black leopard print pants for $19.99; 3) A grey and black zebra-print (I really like patterns) zip-up sweater — I mean literal knit sweater — with hood, by Fox, with neon yellow trim that is pretty much my new favorite article of clothing ever for $49.99; 4) A super warm quilted Hurley plaid purple and grey hoodie, like a Matix Asher hoodie, that I had really wanted to purchase before when it was $65.00, which I deemed to be too expensive, but now it was on sale for just $30.00!!!!; and 5) A dark green and black plaid mini skirt from H&M that I have wanted for a while for $19.99 (this I paid for myself).

During this excursion, I discovered that, WOW, MALL FASHION HAS FINALLY ALIGNED WITH MY TASTES IN CLOTHING! I had actually previously thought it a terrible thing that my tastes in clothing NEVER aligned with mall fashion, cause there was never any way for me to find clothing I actually liked. But now that it actually lines up, the dilemma, as stated by Alex, is this: maybe before I had my unique fashion style going on, at the cost of not being able to find clothes I like in most stores… but now I just look like everyone else. Shit. Dilemmas.

MEETING NEW PEOPLE, SEEING OLD PEOPLE, AND LISTENING TO BANDS IN SAN FRANCISCO!
On Friday evening, I picked up Xinlei and Isabel from Xinlei’s house so we could go to San Francisco. I left the house at 8:00pm, and my parents were amazingly receptive and non-questioning of this behavior. It’s like shit! They finally see me as a somewhat grown up. Well, maybe a little bit only. But still! Holy shit! I haven’t seen Isabel since high school, literally, and we were never really close in high school anyway (maybe just a couple sentences), so that was most interesting fo sho. We drove, and got slightly lost, but thankfully Xinlei’s phone’s GPS saved us, and we got to this dive bar in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District called the Hemlock Tavern. A really good dive bar, in fact, and quite populated with humans, AND WITH A FREE JUKEBOX!!!!! Unfortunately, I did not get to make use of this free jukebox Failure!! Mr. Allen Ma met us there. Hoorah.

Our primary reason for going to the Hemlock was to see Mr. Jesse Dienner’s band, Room For A Ghost, play. It was a double perk for me, as I have never met Jesse, despite the fact that he has written for me for REDEFINE for probably more than a year now. Apparently he was going to attempt to greet Nick (see below)’s girlfriend with a British accent, and he would have done the same to me, but he didn’t know that I was going til it was quite obviously too late! His band was actually really REALLY good, though, and the way they worked their song transitions into one another made the show definitely more cohesive and epic. It was good. I had the feeling like I had when I was watching Battles. Maybe I don’t see bands like this enough, but I was fully captivated by their live show. Absolutely. The recordings I’m not sure about yet, but the live show definitely had me HOOKED, which is a great sign considering it was the first time I’d ever heard them. It was also REALLY obvious that all of them were amazingly good musicians, and Jesse had really freaking good stage presence. Haha. Interesting movements haha.

Anyway, I also met Nick Hubbard’s girlfriend there, if only briefly! I guess I could have maybe eventually done this in Seattle as he and she live there, but maybe not. It was just interesting seeing him in California considering, well, I usually only see him in Seattle?!

As for the two other bands who played with Jesse’s band… they were interesting. The second band, Aunt Dracula, according to my notes, had a song that reminded me of “galloping cowboys” — although with a spastic, kind of retardedly strange vocalist. I hated the music, but rather enjoyed the performance because it was so bizarro world. It was amazing to me that there were four guys who saw eye-to-eye on that kind of strange, strange, hard to fathom music.

The third band, Her Three Eyes, was initially my bag of chips, at least in the way that it reminds me of Neon Blonde and Duchess Says. I had high expectations for them, and all that, but they quickly turned to shit throughout their set. It was a downwards spiral. By the middle of the first song, I was thoroughly all bout it. By the last song, I could hardly stand them. Redundancy galore, both in vocals and in music. BORING. Even despite the fact that the type of music they play should NEVER be considered BORING. UNFORTUNATE-O!!

One of Jesse’s friends who was there, named Josh Hug (literally, his last name is hug), turned out to be quite similar to me in terms of liking to do weird people interaction type stuff, so I told him to join me in my “Talk To Us” project, and then we made time to DO SO!!!! He said the coolest thing he and his friend had done was to challenge random groups of strangers to play TABOO! (one of the best board games ever), and I guess that worked out well well well and he had done it three times but only been rejected once every time before finding a group of 2-4 that was willing to play with them. Coolio.

EATING AT MEL’S DINER AND NEARLY DYING DUE TO FOGGINESS!
After the show, Isabel, Xinlei, Allen, and briefly Josh went to Mel’s Diner, where stuff was REALLY WEIRDLY PRICED! Their menu had like prices like $1.66 and $3.28, etc. etc. Initially Xinlei thought that maybe it was cause shit included tax in it, but it turned out it didn’t, so we were all very confused as to why that was. The conclusion was that it was done on purpose to confuse consumers into purchasing more expensive things. YEAH. The food was American diner food. AKA lamesauce. Oh well. Isabel paid $7.00 for a fucking grilled cheese sandwich and a couple of fries. Haha!

The trip back with Xinlei and Isabel was interesting, with Isabel giving a monologue about true love. I found it to be a bit idealistic, but I’m cynical when it comes to that whole love thing (cynical and still somewhat a believer), so I was rendered pretty speechless. Not to mention it was late. And REALLY fucking foggy. Like REALLY foggy. At some points we could NOT see more than like, thirty feet in front of us. Or less. I’d say less. Practically like ten. It was crazy!!! Luckily we all made it home okay. And pretty much once I got into Livermore city limits — and I’m not exaggerating really — the fog cleared up magically, 100-freaking-%.

***

(On a side note, it’s currently 2:05am on Sunday night, November 30th, and Kyle Parsons just called me. He’s one of my writers from Southern California who’s this like total scene / MySpace kid kinda. Very amusing, though, because for some reason he always calls me when he’s drunk and relates these random ass stories to me. Haha.)

(Lately, I’ve been talking on the phone a lot more, too, and man, I miss it. I like talking on the phone quite a bit. I’d forgotten.)

(I’m going to finish this post tomorrow. More later. )

***

Hey, I’m finishing this post, like a week later, but that’s okay, right?!

***

I’m listening to… These Arms Are Snakes’ Easter album. Their show is next Friday. Hollllllllar.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29TH, 2008

BEING STRANDED WITHOUT A CAR IN LIVE-NO-MORE!
I woke up this morning without a vehicle because my dad’s vehicle had been taken to the Lexus dealership to be fix0red and my mom was driving him somewhere or they went somewhere and they had to use the CRV that I usually drive. Oh wells. Jesse and Josh texted me early in the morning and I was like, “Whoa, I like need to go and do stuff with them but I don’t have a car,” and then I remembered that Xinlei was going to the city for the day and wondered, was she still going? Could she take me? Turned out she was going to laze out and was no longer going to go, but she agreed to pick me up in my backassbackwards house location anyway and she brought me to the BART station, like a good ol’ sugar mommy. So I got to the BART station and continued to pass the fuck out until I arrived in Oakland (with the exception of the time between one transfer because Pleasanton BART only goes to San Francisco and not Berkeley or Oakland). I was supposed to meet Josh in Berkeley, formerly known as Berzerkeley, but decided to meet him in Oakland’s 12th Street exit instead because…

RIDING A MUTHAFUCKIN MOPED FOR THA FIRST MUTHAFUCKIN TIME, YO!
I was going to ride on Josh’s muthafuckin moped! After I hopped on and declined to wear the helmet that covered the entire face — because it felt claustrophobic — and instead going for the one that a soldier might wear, although not quite, it’s just that it’s half the head, we took off! Initially, it was a little scary and I was holding on for almost dear life. Well, I mean, not that extreme, but both hands were definitely feeling the need to hold onto something. But that soon passed and over time 25mph no longer felt like 80mph and moving on with life felt easier. I mean it probably woulda been faster had I just taken the BART to Berkeley, but I thought, hey, why not, this is my chance to ride a moped. Of course, after I hopped on the moped, Josh casually remarked that he didn’t have his license, nor insurance, oh BOY! Sounds great! That made things so much more funner!!!

As we were riding down Telegraph, we passed a candy store, and this Asian boy outside was waving around a sign that said, “FREE CHOCOLATES” and he was occasionally quietly yelling (yes, quietly yelling, seriously) “free chocolates”. We passed him and decided to bust a U, which turned out to be an ultra long U-busting as it was actually three right turns around a city block, and then, six speedbumps later, we fell into the arms of the McDonald’s parking lot which was next door to the chocolate place. We hopped off, locked up, and headed into the land of free chocolates. Josh was first, and he asked the Asian kid what the password was to get free chocolates, and the kid said something which I forget. He opened the door to go inside the shop, but he didn’t hold the door for me, and had the dude who was coming out of the shop not caught it for me, evidently it would have slammed into my face! The black lady working in the chocolate shop was none too fond of this, and when Josh said the “password” to her, she was like, “What the fuck?” because to anyone who had not heard his conversation with the Asian kid, it wouldn’t have made any sense. She then continued to rebuke him for not holding the door open for me (I’m not sure if it was because I am a woman or because people should just hold doors open for one another, but I assume the former). He didn’t understand the argument, though, and proceeded to talk to her about how he thought that the door was a good door and that it seemed like the type that would stay open on its hinge rather than the type that would close immediately. He in fact said, “good door,” in those exact words, I believe. The lady then told me I should move to Seattle, where people, I assume, are gentlemen. I said, “Fancy that, I live in Seattle!” Well, maybe I didn’t say, “Fancy that,” but if I didn’t, I should have. But after being rebuked, we talked about the awesome wallpaper the place had, that the lady pointed out wasn’t actually wallpaper, but paint with sand blasted vintage Victorian designs. The wall was original, from the 1930s, and evidently the place had originally been a ice cream parlor. A confectionery, for all these years! Fantasmic! That being said, I can’t remember for the life of me the name of the place, and with those free places, it’s always scary because you feel bad for not buying anything even though you’re taking their candy… especially when you know the place is just a small mom and pop shop, or something similar to that… :[

On a side note, I am feeling quite humorous and I quite enjoy this current rambling style. D:

TALKING TO RANDOM HUMAN BEINGS AT THE ENTRANCE OF UC BERKELEY!
Last time I did "Talk To Us" in Berkeley, I was with Mr. Aaron Bruner, and a lot of the questions we got were, "How do you know each other?" We did not get it this time. In fact, this time was quite unlike any other time I've done "Talk To Us," I think primarily because Josh himself talks a lot and therefore the people we talked to talked LESS. I don't know. It was interesting because usually there's an equal amount of give and take, it seems, but not this time. Usually there is also at least a couple really interesting folk, but this time there was maybe one that was more interesting, but everyone else was... I wouldn't say run-of-the-mill but certainly not SUPER interesting. :/ But more about the "Talk To Us" session in a later post. I need to put up my social experimentation website ASA-FUCKING-P! I am slacking on writing up my "Talk To Us" sessions. Writing just seems to take too much time lately, even though I type tons of words per minute. Godamnit.

MEETING UP WITH NICK AND GRETA AND JESSE!
So Nick, Greta, and Jesse went to breakfast/lunch that morning and then went to Amoeba records, where Nick and Greta purchased probably a million records. Then they met up with us at the entrance of the UC Berkeley Campus and hung out for a wee bit, but then they had to move on to bigger and maybe better things, like unloading band equipment at a coffee shop, yay?!

EATING REALLY CHEAP INDIAN FOOD THAT WAS PRETTY DELICIOUS!
Josh suggested we eat at this one Indian restaurant that was on Telegraph not too far away. We walked there and he walked his moped on the sidewalk, receiving a couple of weird glances from jackasses, but for the most part, it was a-OK. By the time we got there, Jesse, who was the only one meeting us for dinner, had not yet finished unloading. He stopped by, picked us up, and brought us to the coffee shop where his bandmate Mike worked and where they practiced. They practiced in a grungy old basement with mold spores, yay! Making rock n' roll HAPPEN, sons! Mike knew my name for some reason. He was like, "Vi... vian...?" and I was like, "M... att? Wait... Mike?" Oops! Not like I'd met him, though. Helped unload equipment and then we went off to get Indian food! I ordered some Palak Paneer, mmm! For $4.99!!! So cheaps! Although the naan to go with it was $1.00 or something. But still a good godamn deal.

PLAYING TABOO WITH A RANDOM STRANGER!
As we were eating, I asked Josh if he'd brought Taboo like he said he would the previous night, because he likes challenging random people to play Taboo. He said, "I did!" and proceeded to bust it out, and we saw this girl on the table behind me / across from Jesse and Josh, and invited her over to our table, yarr. She was eating by herself. Her name was... Lisa? Crap, I forget. She was youngish, I think a Sophomore in college, religious but not religious. She had a class ring from her Catholic high school which looked dope, it was this Victorian looking ring of the purple sacred heart or whatever. Much better looking than those godamn ugly ass football ring type shits. She said she wanted to move to some Mennonite community at some point or something? She currently lives on a hippie farm? Interesting. She didn't come off as a hippie whatsoever, but she wanted to live in yurts and things in case of an apocalypse. Interesting. It's funny, cause everyone kept talking about themselves, and they would say what they did for a living, and I'd say what I did for a living, and I'd always forget to bring up REDEFINE, and Jesse and Josh would always be like, "What about REDEFINE? That's the most interesting first impression type thing you could say," and I'm like. Hmm, good point, why have I not thought of this?!

Anyway, we ate dinner and shot the shit and then decided to finally play Taboo. Josh and Lisa? were on the same team and Jesse and I were on the same team. It's funny, playing Taboo, cause it really gives you a good idea of how people's brains work. Well I mean, at least a little. People just describe things so differently. Jesse and I worked together pretty well I think, and towards the end we would average 4-5 points per round consistently, I think, even though initial rounds were kinda mediocre. I think I am quite pro at Taboo actually, or at least I was that evening... at least for the describing part, not for the guessing part. I suck at that. Josh and Lisa? were interesting because they would describe things in such a roundabout fashion. Guess brains just have to sync up or something. I don't know. I was looking at Lisa?'s cards and some of them I could come up with ways to describe stuff really easily and she would use words and thought directions that I'd never even thought of, or she'd be at a loss for words. QUE INTERESANTE. Anyway. I'm rambling.

Josh then received a phone call from some friends who wanted to play some game where you have blank New Yorker cartoons and you have to fill in the captions and a judge judges who came up with the best captions. He and Lisa? went. On his moped. Without his license. Without his insurance. At least there were helmets (turns out the one I wore was found... somewhere).

BEING DRIVEN HOME BY JESSE AND CHECKING OUT HIS PAD!
Mr. Jesse offered to drive me home and I did not refuse because otherwise it woulda been a bitch anyway. There was Poker Night going on at my brother's house and I was carless, so someone -- my brother or Roxanne -- woulda have had to pick me up anyway. I stopped by his place because he had to pick up some stuff before we headed back. He has a NICE ass apartment. I was extremely impressed. He lives by himself and there's a million things to look at and it's spotless and every room has "alternative lighting" which he just rigged up... either you can use the regular lighting or use like, red lights, or blue lights... he has a basketweave Victorian kissing chair, which is kinda shaped like an S, where the two seats face opposite directions so both people can turn to their lefts and kiss each other. Also a buncha interesting posters and a fancy office space and fancy bedroom with red velvet curtain things. Wow, what a home. Jealous! It's like $1,200 a month or something, though. Holy crap. He also pulled out some mixtapes from really old when he pretended to be a radio DJ and spoke in between every song hahaha. Unfortunately, I didn't get to listen to them, but it sounds amazing.

Anyway, Jesse and I talked about a lotta crap on the way back, largely related to music. It's funny cause the other night Isabel and him found out they have the same taste in music and like the same bands and she was quite quite stoked on that shit! Jesse and I have quite divergent tastes I believe so we will be mailing each other care packages with music and seeing how the shit matches up. I'm interested in seeing. Haha. I think we will hate each other's music. Or at least just find it mediocre. Oh well. Nice of him to drive me, though. I also found out he does part-time promotions for Live 105.5 -- WHAT DA FECK? And that he's met all these famous people like Franz Ferdinand dudes and Nada Surf dudes and a buncha other dudes... and that he drove Moby around for a day. Da feck? Good times. My writers or bust.

PWNING NOOBS AT POKER!
So there were 10 people at my brother's for Poker Night, and I hadn't realized it, but they had totally been waiting for me to start and I was an hour+ late! Oh wells!!! Whatever! It was long long long games and not that humorous asides from the hands themselves. But there were allowed two buy-ins, with third place getting their money back, second place getting 20% of the remaining pot, and first place getting 80% of the remaining pot. I made it to the last three godamnit, but got in third place. SADFACE. But better than other things. At least there were no bigot ass dudes this time who got mad cause a girl was beating them (like happened at Lewis' apartment one time). I would have liked to win some money, though, but at least I didn't lose any money, I guess, and I didn't buy in either! I got some lucky breaks, but man. There was one hand I folded on when I should have played because I would have gotten a Full House, but I folded because I was playing conservative even though I was chip leader. After I lost that hand, I felt my luck shift, and I was thinking, "I fucked it up. I'm not going to win another hand." And I was right. I don't think I won another hand and from there I got into third. BOO URNS. By then it was much too long anyway. I don't even want to play the last three places. It was me, Robert, and some other dude who looked Viet but turned out to be Chinese. I beat his Chinese girlfriend to get into the top three. HOLLAR! Everyone else was talking mad shite the whole time, primarily to Robert, but they lost way early. Haha. Noobs.

CONNING ABEROO INTO DRIVING ME HOME!
My brother and Roxanne were feeling too lazy to drive me home even though I was stranded, so I told my brother to ask Abe if Abe would drive me home. He conceded and we chatted, yarr. Abe is my game-playing buddy even though I guess he is my brother's friend first and foremost. He is Diablo master. But now he's playing Lord of the Rings Online and I guess addicted to it. LAME!!! I like Abe... we just can't talk about anything exceedingly opinionated (at least as far as politics and ethics goes) because we differ quite a bit. But as far as regular conversation, we get along quite well. He is the only cop I really know, though! HOLLAR. Enuf.

***

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 30th, 2008

MEETING JEANETTE, SHERRY, AND TIN-WIN FOR A JOLLY GOOD TIME!
We met up at Regal, of course, because we humans in the Tri-Valley area are lame as shite. Shot the shit. Went to Best Buy. Went to Barnes N Noble. Sherry, Tin-Win, and I had plans to meet Phil [N] for lunch, but Jeanette and Tin-Win were hungry, so we went to eat dim sum. Ran into Fontaine and Bonnie and her parents there. Fontaine’s mom thought I was there with my parents and was like, “Your mom didn’t go to church?” and I was like, “She did,” and she was like, “You didn’t go to church?” and I was like, “No,” and her dad was like, “Want to join us?” and I was like, “My friends are over there,” and then he said okay, and then I fleeeeeeeeeeeed. Continued to eat some dim sum, which I pretty much hate, but everyone else likes for some godforsaken reason. Then we went to Old Navy, and ran into Stephanie Gray. Last time I saw her, she was like… 4″ tall. Now she’s like. 6″ tall and beautiful and a woman. And it’s like. WTF. I FEEL OLD. WTF. YOU’RE GORGEOUS. Jeanette and I were like :0 (Sherry and Tin-Win see her sometimes).

TALKING TO PHIL [N] IS THE SAME OL SAME OL!
Then Phil [N] showed up and we decided to go to Fuddrucker’s because well, bitches didn’t want to eat a meal at a fancier place since we’d just eaten. I picked at Sherry’s salad the whole time and we also put some almonds into her fork towards the end of the meal so that all three of the holes between the prongs were filled halfway with almonds. IT WAS AWESOME!!!! Like, really awesome. Um, yeah. Phil [N] is the same ol awesomeness and his girlfriend sounds hilarious based off the stories he told about her. There were only three, but still. Twas nice to see him and to see that he is still the same good guy as before!

BEING SLIGHTED BY MY PARENTS!
So every time I go home, I try to eat meals at home as much as possible since that’s pretty much the only bonding time my parents and I share, pathetic as that sounds. But then they pull this shit. I came home at like 5:00pm and said I was going to nap FOR A LITTLE WHILE. And I wake up half an hour later and they’ve already eaten without me! WHAT THE FUCK! They always do that kinda shit. I’ll make a special effort to come home or say I’ll almost be home for dinner and they’ll have already eaten. Bastards.

And thus pretty much concludes me trip to the Bay Area. ZZZ!

“talk to us” in portland!

I did this with Micah one day in Portland, Oregon’s Pioneer Square area.

THE LADY IN THE WHEELCHAIR.
She wanted to stop, but she was being pushed and didn’t have much to say. Kind of awkward conversation.

THE YOUNG FOOD STAMPS DUDE.
Young dude named Kyle who was living off of food stamps, yet probably perfectly capable of getting a job. Must have been around 18-24. Forget the rest.

THE YOUNG DUDE WALKING IN CIRCLES.
This guy told us he had been walking around in circles, for two and a half hours, trying to scrounge money from people. Through panhandling, he discovered that $0.75 is the magic number that will get people to give you money more often than if you asked for another amount.

THE THREESOME.
Three kids. One had a jawharp, which is some kind of Thai instrument that sounds kinda bizarre, like a mini harp, only you play it with your jaw?!! They talked about going to Austin together in their van and kept trying to convince Micah to join them on the adventure. Eventually, these people doing a cell phone / text-messaging while driving study come by and ask them if they will take a survey. They say yes, put handkerchiefs so that they’re covering up their faces completely, and proceed to give (what seemed like) bullshit answers about how text-messaging and driving are bad. Their names are Zipper, Icarus, and Band-Aid. Zipper is a girl with a lip piercing and gap between her teeth; at 21 or so, she is the oldest. Icarus is the only male, and he is very goofy, young (at around 17), and seems to love Micah. Band-Aid is a larger blonde girl with dyed hair, and I think she’s probably 16 or 17. I don’t know how these kids are out on their own when they’re so young, but whatever. Not my problem. They talk about how they will be in Pioneer Square the next day, giving out free haircuts, and I briefly entertain the thought, although I will have to go down there by myself because Micah’s working the next day.

THE SPARE A HANDSHAKE GUY.
This black guy rather likes our idea, because he’s a bit of an experimental man himself. He likes to ask people if they can, “Spare a handshake,” just to hear their reactions, simply because people hear, “Spare a…” and automatically say no, with little concern as to what words the sentence is finished with.

THE GUY FROM EUGENE.
There is a guy from Eugene, Oregon, who wants to start an Artifakt-type project there. I gave him my business card, and he e-mailed me. I should probably follow-up on that at some point.

talk to us – part seven – seattle, wa – westlake center.

i found a new “talk to us” friend! rachel and i went to westlake center today to hold up a sign saying “talk to us.” we went around 6, and initially, people were reluctant. i take it because it was rush hour.

THE TWO BLACK GUYS I COULDN’T REALLY UNDERSTAND.
the first two people to talk to us stopped by and talked to us but it was an awkward convo. one was wearing one of those handkerchiefs around his face and didn’t talk. the other one was friendly, but he was a little odd. he said he was going to stand on the street corner to be a “living, breathing stereotype,” and he was going to be the “angry black guy standing on the corner.” a little random and kind of funny. but kinda very random.

THE DUDE FROM LOUISIANA.
this guy was nice, nice. he walked by us at first (after giving us a smile), but came back right after. he asked us how many people had talked to us and we said not many. he said, “that’s seattle for ya!” and i said, “usually it’s a lot better than this.” and he said that if we were in lousiana, where he’s from, everyone would stop and talk to us and ask what we were doing and invite us over to their homes. kewl. he didn’t have much to say as he was meeting up with his friend, but just wanted to say that he thought things like this were great because they make people stop and think and make people understand that other people exist.

THE GUY I ARGUED WITH.
i forget this guy’s name but he was half-awesome and half-annoying. he had an extremely interesting way of looking at things. 4/4 on black male stopping to talk to us. anyway. he asked me if i was a citizen. i said i was. he asked how i knew. i said because they told me i was. then he said, “i don’t know if i’m a citizen sometimes,” and i asked him why. he said, “because i’m black.” and then i said… “well, at least you have some rights.” that brought a tear to his eye, cause he thought i meant that black people don’t have all the rights. i don’t necessarily think that, but i said some because i figured he was thinking that if he said he didn’t know sometimes if he was a citizen because he was black. bleh. some other stuff transpired, and then he asked me if i was in school. i said i’d graduated and that i was a sociology major. he asked me what the solution to the world’s problems were. i said i didn’t know. he said i had a sociology degree but i didn’t know? and then he proceeded to tell me i was a clone because i had a sociology degree — that having a degree and going to college made people clones. i said, “what if i didn’t think it was necessary?” and he said, “it’s too late. you’re already indoctrinated.” he went off about how no one wants to solve the problems in the world because then they would be without a job… that sociologists would go on to become social workers but they would only social work enough to solve the problem a little but not enough to solve the problem 100%, because they simply wanted to keep their own jobs under wraps, and solving the problem of homelessness or of the poor would mean that their jobs would be eradicated. i didn’t know how to argue with that. at some point while he was bitching and crying i kind of started to yell at him and i said, “you don’t like rich people. you don’t like people with degrees because you think they’re clones. you don’t like social workers because you don’t believe they’re really trying to make a difference. who do you like then? it’s not like poor people aren’t trying to be not poor anymore.” he didn’t have anything to say about that. sat there for a while, silently. and then after a while, i said, “nothing to say?” and he said, “popcorn that’s put in a pan is still popcorn if it doesn’t explode,” or something like that. i didn’t understand. then he said something about how martin luther king was once asked why he was looking melancholy, and he said he was looking melancholy because he was thought he was trying to integrate his people into a burning house. and he said some crap about how fire changes things and that for change to be made, america must burn. i was all a little confused by this.

at some point a few people interrupted — who knew him — and would come by. one large black dude and his? wife? came by and were yammering on about god. they asked the guy i was arguing with if he’d spread the word about god yet to me, and he said he was getting there. and the god guy said, “well, i’ll leave you to it, then,” and left. well the guy never did share anything about god, thank god, but if you’re going to talk to me about clones, what about religious clones?? TALK ABOUT CLONES. anyway.

THE HOMELESS LADY WHO WAS CONFUSING.
another lady came by, staring at our signs for a long, long time and not saying much. she finally came by and asked if we were in school or something and the guy i was arguing with (who knew the lady) said that i had a sociology degree. apparently they knew each other from a soup kitchen or something, and she asked me if i knew where that soup kitchen was. i said yes. she asked if i’d been there, and i said no. and then the guy i was arguing with said, “she wouldn’t ever be going there. she has a sociology degree.” bitter much? that’s pretty much the gist of it.

THE COUCHSURFER FROM FINLAND.
unfortnately, i didn’t get to talk to this guy because i was too busy arguing with the one guy and rachel was talking to him… this guy was from finland and was basically just couchsurfing across the united states (which is funny, cause i just signed up for that site yesterday…) and had just used rideshare to get a ride to seattle from wyoming or something. more details from rachel hopefully, since i cannot relay it, since i didn’t get to talk to him. which really sucks. because i want to couchsurf and i’d love to pick his brain about it T__T i actually juuuust looked him up on couchsurfing, though, and it’s pretty funny. i looked for people traveling in the seattle area and he was the third person on the list!! too easy!!

at some point here the security guards came by and shooed us away because we were sitting on westlake property and no one was supposed to loiter there (we’d long seen the signs but ignored them!). another homeless guy who had a sign asking for $20 was trying to save us, telling them that we didn’t want money and that we just wanted to talk to people, but we ended up getting shooed away anyway. nice of him. we just went to the planters across the walkway from where we were, and that worked out fine.

THE GAME PRODUCER FROM MASSACHUSETTS.
this guy was pretty much just trying to kill time while his friend was doing something else. he was here for a microsoft meeting and had just moved to boston. he was a producer? for lord of the rings online. didn’t talk to him that much… mostly just small talk. upper middle class white guy. he said it was cool that he goes into meetings and just discusses hit points all day. haha.

THE “JESUS LOVES YOU” LADY.
she asked us, “what do you want to talk about?” and we said, “anything.” she said, “did you know that jesus loves you?” and the massachusetts guy was still here — obviously uninterested when she came by. we answered in the negatory. she continued by saying that god would show himself to me sometime. i said, “i hope he does, because if he doesn’t, i will never believe him.” she left on that note.

THE CASUAL GAME AND TOY CREATOR FROM LOS ANGELES.
this guy’s name was ferad or something. he said he had tried to make up a story for his name before, since no one had actually heard of that name. he said he used to make up stories about where the name was from but that he’d forgotten it. i said he should say something about the fact that he is a prince, and he said it was something similar to that. lol. anyway. this guy was pretty laid back but still kinda cool. he was a freelance casual game designer and was just up here to crash some conference or something. he had bought an eyemask from daiso. i asked why. he said christmas. whatever that means. *__* he was very patient… when the christian guy (see next guy) was babbling on and on and on, he was obviously uninterested but still stuck around until the guy was finished. *__*

THE “JESUS LOVES YOU” MAN.
clones much? as if his wife asking us, “did you know that jesus loves you?” wasn’t enough, he comes by and says, “talk to you about what?” and we say, “anything.” he responds by saying, “did you know that jesus loves you?” i mean come on guy. nice thoughts but you’re a bit too um… clone-like. except whereas his wife backed off really fast, this guy shared personal stories for muuuch too long. there was the massachusetts guy still hanging around and ferad, and everyone was stuck listening to how he used to be an alcoholic but was no longer one and that jesus saved him blahblahblah. he told us that if we had a bible, we should read john 3:16, and i mean, come on. pick a better verse. any fool off the street can tell us to read that verse (and they do). he was nice and jolly though so i can’t fault him too much, and they didn’t argue about no one being interested in jesus… they mostly just spread positive vibes despite the fact that they were preaching, so i’m kinda mostly okay with it even though it was just a little boring. as they were leaving the wife regaled a story about how one of her friends got shot in the head and got in two accidents on the way to the hospital, and that he died and went to hell, and when he came back, he knew he didn’t want to go back to hell so he changed his life. she said he was a bad man prior to that. well, that’s certainly interesting. i thought she was going to say something about how he got shot and then started believing in god but at least this story has slightly more weight to it. then they went on their merry ways. they were, though, in my long times of doing this, the first couple that actually straight out preached to us. other people have given pamphlets or done run-by, “jesus loooves yoooooouuuu!”‘s but they were the first ones that actually stopped and TRIED to make a difference, so kudos to them on that, although their plights fell on deaf years. the lady before she left also kept saying, “he’s going to make a difference in your life,” to me in particular, and she also said at some point that she wished she could witness it when it happened. if she were a little more um, not fanatical about christianity, i’d mighta’d give’d her my info or gotten hers to see if it ever happened. but no. no thanks.

THE FRIEND OF THE LOTR GUY.
the friend of the lotr guy had been buying a drink in starbucks and when he came out, he got me and rachel drinks (this all while the couple was preaching). he said, “you must be tired after listening to this guy yammer on!” and we thought it was very kind of him, even though the drink was sick as shit.

THE GROUP OF KIDS FROM BELLINGHAM.
this group of kids who had just graduated from high school — despite the fact that they looked older than rachel and i — stopped by after two of the guys, donovan and paul, noticed us and came by. their friends stood a ways away watching until they realized that donovan and paul were talking to us just fine and that we weren’t terrifying… and then it was all good even though the fact that we were surrounded by a wall of kids was kinda scary. *__* they were like this:

- girl 1 – guy who looked like john lennon – girl 2 – paul – girl 3 – donovan -

wow, now that i realize it, they were in perfect changing order. even though john lennon guy looked a little bit like a woman. initially, at least ;0 those kids had driven down two hours from bellingham or whatever JUST to watch “dark knight” in imax. that’s dedication right there. they all loved it. who doesn’t love that movie? pretty much everyone loves it. donovan works at colophon cafe (or at least i think that’s the right one) in bellingham. he told me to look him up if i went there this weekend — which i am going to. so i’m going to! this all because paul said bellingham was kinda hippie and that people would DEFINITELY talk to us there, and why not… i’ve never explored bellingham at all so i’d love the opportunity this weekend (sunday) to explore the place! anyway, when they first walked up, paul was mentioning that people did “free hugs” in bellingham and i said that wasn’t intimate enough, and the girl to the left of him said, “can i get a hug, though?” and i said yes, and we exchanged huggles. and then we talked a bit about donovan’s totally mangled shoes that were orange and green and looked like they had been destroyed, and they had been signed by flogging molly. he was also wearing red and blue socks. AWESOME. apparently paul’s shoes had been set on fire seven times — which i wanted to ask him about, but there was way too much conversation going on. all in all cool kids, and they asked us if there was anywhere in the westlake area to eat that was cheap. we said no and told them to walk ten blocks east to capitol hill to find something to eat. i gave them a redefine card telling them to check it out since they obviously liked music (at least, liked flogging molly). that was all after i said that people always thought we were selling things when we weren’t… but they said it was okay since this time the selling of things came after the talking and that it was an effective method of selling things. and off they went. i shall try to contact them this weekend. or something.

and that’s it for now. still have to recap on talk to us part six. i’ll try to do that another time *__* but now yay! rachel loves it and she will participate with me in such events in the future. finally, someone that actually likes it.

talk to us, part five – seattle, wa – folk life.

um, can i just start this off by saying… I LOVE FOLK LIFE? i’ve never been to the damned thing before. the only thing i knew about it was that it was a “hippie” fest but i am so into it. i guess i am partly hippie, maybe that contributes to the sentiment that folk life is AMAZING.

alright so, after circling around queen anne for a long while, completely unable to find parking, i decided that i should just park at the spaghetti factory since i have a pass to park there. and so i did. and i checked on this piece of paper i stuck on the pole near the sculpture park last friday, and it was full, so i took it down.

the point of that piece of paper was to tell people to contribute one thing to the drawing to build off of what was there before it. woot. i’ll have the results up sometime soon.

walked up to the space needle and it was like, five blocks or so. put up another sheet of paper right near the space needle. then walked into folk life.

upon first going in, this guy! and he had a “free hugs” sign so i gave him one. WOOT. the first of many. he had these little stuffed lions framing him. haha. they had tiaras… one had a tiara that was a tambourine. how cute.

there was another folk band with accordion and washboard… these things are all the rage nowadays, that’s for sure.

then there was this guy with a whiteboard… on it had the word “who’s right?” and below that were other words, like “athiests”, “jews”, “christians”, etc. um, he was doing a lot of screaming and not a huge amount of dispelling anything interesting, really. he asked this question… “who thinks they are a good person?” and someone responded that he said he was. and the sign guy said, “have you ever lied?” and the good person says, yes, and somehow the sign guy took that to mean that he wasn’t really good, because he’d lied before. blahblah. then he got bored so he pointed to lenny and asked lenny who he thought was right, off the people on his board. lenny said, “i think all of them have good qualities,” and the sign guy said, “i agree with that,” and moved on. some guy to our left said, “hinduism? there’s something right about hinduism? they have a multi-armed monkey man picking his nose… something something bullshit bullshit,” and i said, “it doesn’t mean that’s the part that is the good part,” and he did this kind of pompous knowing scoff/laugh and said something about else along those lines. and i said, “you don’t have to be religious — i’m not religious — to think that religions have something good to offer,” and he couldn’t even say a godamned thing. nor did he try. he just gave another knowing laugh. and i said, “yeah, that’s a good answer.” and i was like mad, lol, and turned around. what a fucker. can’t even give reasons for why he thinks no religion has anything good about it… can only press his opinion that is worth shit. FUCKTARD.

anyway.

there were some other guys with jesus signs (pictured) and these three guys wearing all black walked by and like said “BAAA BAAAA BAAAAAAA!” in their faces. it was really quite quite hilarious. shoulda videotaped. oh well, at least i have this photo. ahha. i mean. it’s an asshole thing to do. but it’s still hilarious. unfortunately i caught him in pic too late so he’s not screaming in this pic :{

walked around a bit. ran into lenny’s friend. it was kinda awkward. but interesting! because her husband had the exact same camera and exact same lens as i did! he had a lens hood… that was the only difference.

found some cardboard in a recycle bin (after lenny gave $1 to this guy who had a sign that said, “i bet you $1 that you will read this sign”), haha. genius. ripped apart the cardboard in preparation for sign-making. never a shortage of cardboard, i guess.

borrowed a marker from the vendor that lenny bought a nature photograph from, and wrote a sign that said, “talk to us (about anything) we don’t want money, we just want conversation.” (i wrote that last part because there were SO many people begging for money at folk life, albeit rather creatively.)

there was this DOPE balloon guy. he did some things i’ve never seen a balloon maker do. he would pinch off sections of balloon without popping it… i don’t really understand how. he also got water into the balloon after blowing it up with this little cup-like gadget. he was trippy. his hat said, “NO WEAPONS,” and he said he only made things that were “helpful”. which is soo awesome. this is his helpful thing for this kid… it’s a fire-fighting airplane… hence the water on the bottom of it (can’t really see :[):

drum n’ bass… with a TUBA? fucking awesome. someone said this was a french horn. it is a tuba, isn’t it? i don’t know. too lazy to look it up. oh god. no i have to. no, it’s totally a tuba. i win. asshole.

got a smoothie and went to find a spot. there was this great spot on a corner but this band took it, so we found another spot near the main path that didn’t have seating or nothing… we just sat on the ground. werd.

and so, the adventure begineth.

***

THE FOLK LIFE STAFF GUY, IAN.
we’d seen this guy talking with the “who’s right” guy. he came down and sat down by lenny. ian and i talked about where vee and i were from and what we do for a living. he mentioned that he was leaving seattle soon and that folklife was like his goodbye seattle thing.

THE GIRL WHO WE KEPT IGNORING (AND FRIENDS).
so this blonde girl comes with two of her friends — a guy and a gal — and tries making conversation with us but we keep getting distracted and kind of ignoring her. she asks what our best conversation with people has been and i fail to answer because all these other people come by… (see below…)

THE 14 YEAR OLD RAVER GIRL.
so i saw that this girl was wearing a ton of candy and asked her about raving a bit. she said that this was her first time coming to folk life sober or some shit. i was like, what?? and she said that she had just popped an ecstasy pill (wtf!) and so i was like, whaaat! and i asked her how old she was and she said she was 14, and i asked her how many times she’d done it, and she said she’d lost count. i said, what? like 100? and she said, no, more like 23 or something. i was like, wtf, that’s more than me and i’m 24! and yeahhhhh. *__* she’s too young for that shit z0mg. her friend was on the phone, refusing to talk to us. i didnt talk to this girl but i talked to ian about them. i was like raver chix lul and he was like “hahaha”

THE GROUP OF 13 AND 14 YEAR OLDS.
initially spurned forth by two of them — sam and this other guy whose name i don’t know — these two thirteen and fourteen year olds sat down next to us. the asian kid with glasses asked us what we thought about marijuana. i said it should be legalized. i had forgotten who i was talking to. then that kid said that he agreed. sam was surprised. then asian kid said something about how marijuana was less dangerous than alcohol. i said, yes! but then lenny asked the kid if he’d done those things before. he said that he had not gotten drunk but had tried marijuana. so lenny said, then how do you know? and he didn’t seem to have an answer, really. meanwhile their group of friends came by but didn’t much say anything. when the 8th graders were talking to us about what we were up to i mentioned that ian was getting paid while doing this at the same time! sweeeet. i got the vibe that the asian kid with glasses was trying to act cooler than he was as a means to impress his lady friends. more power to him. go, asian kid. the girls in the group were quiet, they seemed like they wanted to talk but seemed like they were used to staying quiet. i wanted to hear what they had to say, but oh well.

THE ARMY GUY.
this guy came out of nowhere. i didn’t see him coming, but he gave his opinion of marijuana, and that was that it was not only a gateway drug but much, much more. he seemed to think that being in the military almost gave him credit to say this or something. so like this guy was just sitting there for a while next to ian listening to our conversation. so i saw him and said hey whats up. when we started talking about drugs i wanted to help him join in on the conversation so i was like “hey do you have any words of wisdom for these youngins?” and he was like haha i like how you turn to the oldest looking guy in the group, so i was like yea with age comes wisdom! lets hear it! so he started talking about how marijuana was more than a gateway drug and that he’s seen people’s lives ruined by it and he used to be a dealer down in cali but never did it. he started talking about how a joint was way worse than smoking a cigarette then the asian kid with glasses was like “do you smoke?” and he was like yea, and the asian kid was like you spend 3000 dollars a month on cigarettes, and the army guy was like dude i spent 3000 dollars in the past two days, and we were like wow on what? and he was like hahaha i dont wanna say so we all just assumed it was on hookers or something.

THE FOLK LIFE STAFF GUY, IAN.
ian interjected by saying that he was 25 and from his personal experience he felt that people did marijuana but outgrew it. oh yea this is where ian interjected with his personal experiences and that only people who have addictive personalities have a problem with marijuana, and that marijuana itself isnt bad, its just that the people who are gonna get addicted to something anyways happen to get addicted to marijuana

THE ARMY GUY.
got a phone call and left after not really agreeing with ian. so yea he was just like preaching about how drugs were bad and stuff and then he started talking about how his job is way more dangerous than smoking and that he was a soldier… anyways he ended up leaving and it was like woa

THE FOLK LIFE STAFF GUY, IAN.
ian tells lenny some stuff. (lenny?)

THE GIRL WHO WE KEPT IGNORING (AND FRIENDS).
the girl tries to continue that conversation and tries to ask us what our favorite conversation in other times we did this was. on the spot, i can think of NOTHING. now i can think of a buncha things i coulda told her, but at the time nothing seemed all that appropriate or interesting :{ suckage. they leave after a bit. sorry, gal.

THE HUGS RAVER KID.
this kid was dressed up totaly awesome, raver-style, and kinda femme, with lots of pink and purple mixed with black. he had purple/black hair, i think. totally etarded, i’m pretty sure. he was talking about how he had scammed some “dirka dirkas” into buying his broken ipod and that they owed him $10. and he was totally looking to get that $10 even though he had scammed those guys and sold them a broken ipod that was stuck on the same one song. wtfs. those people hadn’t even checked it!!!! and he was asking if we’d seen the arabs and iraqis and we said no. he went to go look for them. he kept yelling dirka dirka! im lookin for some dirkadirkastan guy!! when he walked over i was like lawl this is gonna be interesting

THE GROUP OF 13 AND 14 YEAR OLDS.
leave and promise to come back. before they leave, i tell them, that if they’re going to do drugs, to make sure NOT to do meth, crack cocaine, or heroine. ahahhaha.

THE LESBIANS WITH A KID FROM KAZAKHSTAN.
or at least i thought they were lesbian. they were nice and middle-aged, with a cute asian-ish looking kid who they had gotten from kazakhstan. one was saying that she was talking to her partner about the trip to kazakhstan and how vacations like that were so relaxing and nothing much mattered on vacation. she said that what we were doing with our sign was probably like a mini vacation. the other woman had other thoughts to add… and that was that as she was getting older, she felt like she was talking to people less and less because she had no real interest in speaking with them, and that perhaps she should do something like this, too. they tried getting the kid to say hi to us but he had just awoken from a nappy nap.

THE PEOPLE FROM REDMOND.
this mom, with her two kids and… boyfriend? stop by. she’s the only one who talks but she loves the idea. there’s some generic talk. we talk about the delicious-looking donuts her youngest son has. they’re from redmond, as the younger son baseball’s tshirt says (redmond west).

THE POETRY GIRLS.
so some girls were walking by and told us to contribute one line to their poem. i told the main chick that she should go contribute to the paper that i posted up, and she said, “oh? that was you?” and it’s pretty cool that she’d seen it! i gave her my card and told her to send me the poems she got. the line i wrote in her poem was “they then searched in vain for the fuse” oh yes! my line was something about “penguins marching in line to the ______” here’s one of the poems they got that people contributed to:

THE SHORTEST POEM IN THE WORLD GUY.
this guy waited until the group left and then approached lenny and apologized if he talked funny… i guess he’d suffered a stroke before. he then said he used to know the guy who wrote the shortest poem in the world and recited the poem. it was something about how a day is just from dawn to dawn. and lenny said, “that’s a very straightforward poem.” this guy was pretty cool i could see him standing behind everyone eagerly awaiting to talk to me so i kept saying hello to him to get him to join the group conversation. he seemed perfectly content and i could tell he wanted to wait till other people were done. i commented about the card around his neck and he said it was an indian reservation card or something, then he was like i suffered a stroke so please forgive me if im slow with this, so i was like oh ok and he said he used to know the guy who wrote the worlds shortest poem, and i was like oh cool lets hear it! and he was like oh man and got nervous and forgot the poem and was like forgive me im nervous, but then he remembered it and told it to me, it was something like “i yawn until dawn”, and was like oh thats very short and straight forward, nice!

THE FLY-BY KONICHIWA MAN.
some elderly man walked by and was like, “konichiwa,” and i said, “i’m not japanese, but okay.” don’t think he heard cause he’d said konichiwa without really caring if we responded, methinks.

THE CRAZY LADY WITH THE SUNFLOWER SEEDS.
this partially crazy lady with a bag of sunflower seeds came by. her first question to us was, “how come orientals don’t talk to people?” and we were like whaaa? cause how the fuck do you answer that? lenny said something about how it was probably cultural. she would sit there listening to his answer and not saying anything… picking at her bag of sunflower seeds. and then lenny would offer forth some other idea and she would continue doing the same. no real answer-giving. and then because it was so awkward, lenny would keep saying stuff about how he thought it was cultural that asians don’t talk to people as much blahblah, and also mixed in a lot of “i don’t know”‘s because, well, she wasn’t responding and made everyone feel uncomfortable. finally she spoke and said that she thought it was all a front that asians don’t talk to other people and that there was nothing cultural about it. she was weird. and ignant. she walked away. lenny and i were giving funny looks to the air as she walked away and i guess she kept turning around and seeing those. i didn’t see her reaction but lenny said she looked like she wanted to kill. this lady was thoroughly disappointing, but good thing she showed up because she gave us something to talk about afterwards: her. anyways… i kept offering answers to her like well its mainly the older generation that is old fashioned and more reserved, but the younger generation is more outgoing and she was still mean muggin the whole time. so these two asian kids (see below!) sat down and i was like hey you guys why do you think asians in general are less social than most people?? the asian kids were like what ?? asian people are the most talkative in my class, (although one did say asian girls were more quiet!) so i was like oh no i mean the older 1st gen people, your parents are asian right? and they were like yea haha it sux and i was like lawl azn parents. so i keep talking to the old lady trying to convince her that its not a defect in asian genes, its a cultural learned thing but she was just not having any of it. she started talking about how when asian people dance they have no feeling and its all just robotic, and i was like again thats cultural. and then she started talking about how she doesnt like how people blame it on culture and that thats just a front to cover up their own inadequacies.. anyways i started showing disinterest in her and she got the idea and walked away. as she walked away i gave the two kids this funny look and she saw me and glared at me and i started laughing and she kept turning around to look at me as she walked away, owned! im sure i didnt help fix the image of asians in her head.

THE TWO OTHER ASIAN KIDS.
so while crazy lady was there, two other kids sat down — one mixed, one not. we filled them in on what the conversation was about and they agreed with OUR ideas about it, but again, they too were scared by crazy lady. as soon as crazy lady left, the mixed one said, “i wasn’t talking because she was there.”

THE HUGS RAVER KID.
he comes back and tells us that he found the iraqi guy he was looking for, and that the guy gave him his $10. a bit shady. lol. oh well. then he saw some guy walking by with a free hugs sign and ran after the dude and was like growl-screaming, “GIVE ME A HUGGGG!” (so wish i’d gotten it on video.) after he’d hugged that group of people, he came back, and i saw another, and i was like, “ZOMG FREE HUG!! GO GO GO!” and again, he growl-screaming, “GIVE ME A HUGGGGGG” and went flying after those people. ahhahaha. man. shoulda definitely taken a video after setting him up like that. damn. :{ We were talking to those two other kids when he came back and i had to give them the backstory on this guy and why he got 10 dollars and stuff, they were like ohhh ic one of those two asian kids complemented raver kid on his totally flaming outfit. awesome.

(see that guy with his arms raised? that’s our raver kid who growl-screams for hugs.)

THE SPOKEN WORD GUY.
this one guy, raajni, stopped by, and he was a spoken word artist. he had a buncha cds with him and had sold eight today. lenny bought one from him for $7, although the suggested price was $10. he liked what we were doing, and said that he was trying to spread dialogue just like we were. he gave us a little taste of his spoken word / rap, and it was basically along the lines of how there is no more democracy in america and that everything is a lie. i said, “i agree,” and he said, “she concurs,” and gave me a pound (fist pound). there was a lot of fist pounding and he was pretty much awesome. and in all honesty, his spoken word was not at all bad! his spoken word was suprisingly good it had a good message about the state of our country and where its heading

THE TWO GIRLS?
they don’t get a better description, unfortunately. one just asked me about my lip ring and said she was thinking about getting one later today. i said it just felt like getting your ear pierced. i don’t even know if they’re old enough to get that shit. don’t you have to be 18?!!!?!

THE PSYCHOLOGIST GIRL.
so, people with signs are DEFINITELY attracted to other people with signs. this lady stopped by and she had a “psychiatric help, 5 cents (suggested donation)” sign. she was with a guy who didn’t really say a damned thing. she talked about how she had earned $1.25 or so from four people, but that only one of those people had actually talked to her about an actual problem and that everyone else just wanted a diagnosis but didn’t want to share a problem. so this couple was pretty funny, i talked to them about how portland is a vortex of unfun and how it was good for them to get out of that horrible city. talked to them also about various stuff and she said alot of people asked her what her qualifications were and she was like “look im offering help for a nickle! do i need qualifications?” and i was like lawl, talked about peanuts and how she needed a booth.

THE SALMON GUY.
so i don’t know if this guy came by because the psychologist girl was there but he said something about, “what do you think about this problem? no more salmon fishing for this year,” or some shit. and we were like, surprised, both by the idea of it and by his statement, i guess, since it was so random! this was obviously very much on his mind. haha. this guy was funny, he was appalled that they cancelled the chinook salmon season, and i was equally apalled because i love salmon, and he was like at least the silver salmon season is still on, and i was like oh jea silver salmon is my favorite salmon! his wife then came to talk to us about what we were doing and how it was awesome

THE HIP-HOP TEACHER.
this black lady came by and lenny talked to her a bit about the marijuana convo we’d had with the kids. i didn’t listen to that entire conversation but did catch that she worked at a middle school for a rotation program… those schools had hip-hop dance, i guess, not squaredancing shit like we used to. she said she saw a few of the kids she saw at the middle schools and that they would stop swearing as soon as she walked by. haha. she seemed cool but again, i didn’t talk to her that much. oh yeah, and she asked us what star signs we were and was surprised that we were sagittarius and cancer… she thought that we’d be aquarius and gemini. keke. then she asked us if we knew where we could pick up a program. we weren’t so helpful in answering that one.

THE OLD GUY WITH THE HAT AND GLASSES.
he was a cute older guy who sat next to lenny. i’m not sure what he talked about. i forget T__T

THE ASIAN LADIES WITH THE ANIMALS.
a couple of asian ladies came by and one was silent while the other one asked us questions like, “what animal would you be?” i answered that i would be a sloth. (i wanted to insert the awesome fact that sloths could swim well but i didn’t.) lenny said he’d be a flying squirrel. as she was leaving, she told me that next time she thought of a sloth she’d think of me. lol? when vivian said a sloth i was like DUDE A SLOTH’S HEAD IS LIKE ABNORMALLY TINY <– cute old guy, above, thought that was hilarious. i wanted to say my half favorite fact that sloths can swim really well but there wasn’t a good place to insert that in. darn!!

THE MEDICAL MARIJUANA GUY.
he was just passing out flyers. guess he didn’t really want to chat!

THE POT-WANTING GUY.
this guy was a total bum and talked to us briefly about how he likes making signs too, and that once he made a sign saying “potless”. then he asked us if we had pot. lol.

THE GUY WHO WORKED AT UW.
this man and his wife — who had funky fake teeth — stopped by. he worked at uw for biostatistics and we talked about how the building was far away and stuff for a while. along with tons of other people, they asked us if it was a school project. it’s funny, people are searching for reasons, and after i say that i was a sociology major then everyone is like, AAAH. as if all the pieces finally come together and it actually makes sense now. haha.

THE LADY AND SON IN RED.
both of them were in red, yes. i was talking to someone else when they came by but the lady seemed really cool and nice. she liked the idea. the son didn’t say much. we talked to the lady about the scary lady who was kind of racist and she said, “it seems like she is the one who didn’t really like talking,” since scary lady would say stuff and then like not really respond to our answers. lenny talked to her more. the lady liked what we were doing and asked how often we do it and the types of people we talk to and if we got anyone freakish so i mentioned racist lady. as they were leaving i told em they should try “talk to us” sometime

THE JAPAN-LIVING GUY, MICHAEL.
i didn’t talk to this guy much, but he had a blonde mustache with one tip (right side) that was white hair. it was quite interesting. quite interesting indeed. this guy had lived in japan for a while when he was 18 and was pretty fluent in japanese, i think. he said he’d been the only white guy there so everyone knew his name was michael but he didn’t really ever know what most of their names were. haha. he’d spent a recent year in china and picked up some chinese. i put him on the spot and had him try to speak some but i think he was a bit bashful about it. this guy was pretty cool, very chill and laidback, he looked kinda goofy but i liked that about him. he was the kind of person that i can get along with easily he was in seattle for a few months on his break from this neat study abroad program he was in for school he just got back from china and was gonna go to japan next and then 2 other countries which i forget. the thing i liked about michael was that we could talk about the people vivian was talking to and it was fun like that, he stayed for a while and we had many a conversation.

THE WELSH ACCENT GUY.
this guy had some musical wooden sticks. he sat down and he said, “nihonjin desuka?” i said, “no,” as i always do when people ask that question haha. and lenny said, “iie, chugokujin desu.” whatever. people always ask that shit and i always try not to humor them haha. i always answer with a blunt “no”. it’s almost weird that they say that right away because they’re expecting that you’re japanese and asking you in japanese — probably to show off their limited shitty japanese skills — but if you’re not japanese… and you didn’t know any japanese… then you’d just be like, “what on earth are you saying?” and it’s just a bit odd to ask that in another language, i think. just my opinion because it happens to me so much, though, i guess. i talked to him for a while as lenny was talking to michael. i mentioned that he had an accent and asked him if he was irish, and he said no, but i had a keen ear, and that irish accents are similar to welsh accents, and maybe that’s why. um, he told me this joke… something about how people who speak three languages are trilingual, people who speak two are bilingual, and people who speak one are american. we then talked about how it sucked that in america you learn another language when you’re in like, middle school and high school, and not elementary school, and by then, you can’t learn languages as easily. he said he used to tutor vietnamese kids and that the older kid would learn english fine but never could really get rid of his accent, whereas the younger kids learned the same amount of english over the same amount of time but were able to get rid of their accents. interesting point.

THE BEST IDEA GUY.
this guy asked us what we would do when we were out of good ideas. i think lenny said something about how we wouldn’t run out of good ideas, and i said something about how we’d just keep using this idea. i don’t know. then he asked us if this was our best idea and lenny said sushimonsters was his best idea. yeaaar. so this guy was like ‘this is a neat idea what other ideas have you come up with’ and i was like ummm and then he was like ‘whats the best idea youve ever had’ and i was like ‘this one!’ and he was like ‘haha’ and he was like ‘ what will you do when you run out of ideas’ and i was like ‘cry, ill cry’ and then i was like ‘ no just kidding i wont run out of ideas’ and then i mentioned sushimonsters.com and then michael was like ‘so what are you some kind of good idea guy?’ that was funny.

THE TIT GUY.
this guy was the only one to come over out of his group of four. he was baked, i guess. came over and lifted up his shirt and said, “tit?” and then said, “talk to you about anything, huh?” and i said, “yeah, anything, but i don’t want to talk about your tit,” or something, and he said, “do you want anything?” and looked at me, and i was like, “uhh no,” and he’s like, “don’t get shy on me now, you don’t seem shy,” and i was like yeahhhhhhhh. felt a little awkward haha. after the tit thing and intense look… not really sure why :0 he just bumbled on a little and then apologized for being really high.

THE 14 YEAR OLD FREE HUGS GIRL.
this younger girl had a free hugs sign so i called her over and gave her a hug. i pretty much gave a hug to everyone who i saw with that sign that looked our way, haha. she was wearing a tegan and sara shirt and i mentioned that redefine had had a tegan and sara interview recently, and she said, “oh no way!” so i wrote down the address of the website for her, along with the redefine myspace site. she told me some story about how she went to go see tegan and sara in bellingham and almost passed out because she was anxious since they were four hours late getting there or something. i don’t really know. she also said that her friends and her were starting up a screenprinting clothing site and was going to launch into something about how we should work together but then caught herself and said nevermind. she asked me what my lip ring felt like and i told her just like a ear piercing, really.

THE GROUP OF 13 AND 14 YEAR OLDS.
they came back. sam was first and said that he kept his promise. i said something about how he loved us and was like, “right?” and he was like, “yeah.” haha. he was this cute little black? maybe mixed? kid with basketball shorts on. they had a crew of like 8 kids — guys and girls — their age. i don’t know the names of any of the rest but we talked to them for a good freaking while. this time we talked about a lot of things.

for starters, myspace, and how their parents wouldn’t let most of them have them. apparently those kids had taken sexual predator classes in school hahahaha. weird. and i said, “we never had those,” and lenny said, “because it wasn’t a problem when we were kids,” and i guess that’s true. sam asked if we’d watched “to catch a predator” before and i said, yeah, and that he should be able to have a myspace because don’t predators usually target girls? and this taller boy with massive calves (i guess he “had hops” hahaha) and a basketball t-shirt on said that he had been approached by older men before. the first story was that he was at a basketball court playing basketball and some guy approached him and asked if he wanted to play, and he said okay, and played with the guy for twenty minutes. and he got really sweaty. and then the guy said that they should go to his house to shower. hahahaha. and this kid told him to fuck off. and he said that it was easy because these predators who had approached him were way shorter and smaller than him (he was pretty tall). this other predator came up jogging behind him when he was running around greenlake. again, he was sweaty. the guy said that later they should go skinny-dipping in the lake at midnight. hahahaha. the kid again told this guy to fuck off. and lenny told him, “maybe you should stop getting sweaty, then,” and he said that he got sweaty from doing nothing. SO FUNNY. we continued talking to the kids about what they termed as chimo’s (child molestors) and four of the kids (two being brother and sister) had a sex offender living in their neighborhood. this chubbyish kid said that there was one living two houses down from him and that that guy would always be staring at him. haha. that kid was cute too. quite rotund.

this one girl had a really cool necklace with legos on it, and i guess all four of the girls there had one of those and they’d made them together. they looked DOPE. i want one. anyway, one girl (after being asked by lenny) suggested that we talk about how young kids have cellphones. she said she was 14 and had just gotten hers and thought it was ridiculous that some 8 year olds are walking around text-messaging on their cellphones. interesting stuff… i got my cell when i was 16 so it’s not too far off. interesting, the generation gap.

we asked them if they had people in their school that smoked pot. one girl said only one kid did. her friend said, “yeah, but there’s only 19 people in our class,” and she said, “true.”

after that we got to talking about the rules they have at their catholic school, since all of them went to catholic school. something about how girls aren’t allowed to wear nailpolish… and then there was talk of uniforms and all that jazz. and how they got in trouble more than we could ever imagine. sounds like a pain. i went to catholic school… i don’t remember it being that strict since i was third grade and under, but as a high schooler or middle schooler, i’m sure it’s a bitch.

at some point talking to all these kids got overwhelming. there were just SO MANY of them and all of them had something to say, which was really kinda cute. they were really open and cool kids.

THE PREACHER LADY.
as we were talking to this group of kids, stupid lady came by and handed us this piece of paper. she said, “this is a good discussion topic.” the paper said on it something like “make peace with god.” further inspection made us realize that it was some advertisement for billy graham. ahha. i said, “no, we are not talking about this,” and stashed it away. lol. kid who had been approached by elderly men said something negatory about those christian word-spreaders (of which there were a LOT LOT LOT at folk life).

THE COOL-LOOKING KIDS.
again, some emo-ish looking kids… four of them… one with a banged up hand drum. talked to them briefly about how — and this is kinda weird of me — they were the coolest-looking people to stop by and that other people who “looked cool” didn’t really stop and talk. and one of the kids said, “guess they aren’t really that cool, then.” touche. his other friends were rather silent, however. i dont remember that conversation at all and didnt notice that they looked cool , i did comment about how their drum was neat though

THE OLD CHINESE MAN.
lenny talked to this guy a little and then told me to speak to him in chinese. bah. putting on the spot. such badness. i spoke to him a little about what we were doing there and he asked if we were practicing english and i said no, that we were born here in america, and he got a bit uninterested at that haha. and i asked him if he was playing his instrument, since he was carrying a case, and he said he was taking a break, and then said bye and left. ok so this guy was mad grinning at me, he was standing to my left when we were talking to people and i noticed him and was like have tharr!!! and he was like are you chineeese! and i as like im half , are you chinese? and he wwas like yea, and i was like do you speak mandarin? and he was like ya, and i was like so does she! you can speak to her!!!

THE SPANISH SPEAKING GUY.
some guy came by and said, “hablas espanol?” and i said, “poco,” and he said something really fast, and i said, “lentamente, por favor,” and he said something about, “yo quiero ir al bano?” and i said, “no,” not that that even makes sense. but he left and as he was leaving, said to his friend, “they said to talk to them about anything.”

THE RAINBOW CAMP PEOPLE.
two folks, unique? and mike, came by and gave us some flyers for this event in wyoming that is like burning man but FREE. sounds interesting. i am actually kind of interested. welcomehome.org is one of the websites. i don’t remember the other off the top of my head. she said that she thought we would love it and it was for weeks or months at a time. i don’t think i’m that much of a hippie haha but she said that it would involve just going into the woods, having giant bonfires, playing music, doing drugs — and she kept stressing we didn’t need to do drugs but that we could — and other fun ol’ hippie stuff. sounds like a jolly good time, i’d say. they said they were getting there a week early so they could get the best hallucinogens but again stressed that we didn’t need to. unique? said that if we went they would for sure see us. she was crouched talking to us and three dirty guys threw water down her pants and said, “it was getting hot down there,” and she stepped up and smiled and they were like, “ohhh she likes it!” and i don’t know if they knew her but it was fairly amusing.

THE INSTRUMENT KIDS.
three kids with various stringed instruments in their cases. asked them what kinda music they played, and they said, “kinda like folk.” i said, “oh yeah. duh. it’s folk life,” and they said, “yeah.” asked them how much money they’d made over the weekend, and they’d made like $120 or so. not bad, not bad. they were young. again, probably 16 or under. cute kids. one was silent. the other two kinda talked.

THE CAMERA GIRLS.
we were walking to sushiland and had to walk through fun forest, and i saw some emo kid with a “free hugs” sign so i went to go hug him. he asked me what my sign said and i showed him, and his two female friends started talking to me about my camera, and one had just gotten a film minolta camera from her grandma and wanted to invest in a digital rebel next. ah yes more 16 and under year olds who are friendly. it’s fucking weird.

THE FACTORY MUSIC GUYS.
so, at every local seattle event… or maybe washington event… there are these tribal guys who play music. they were at all the days of folk life, of course. one of the guys saw our sign and started talking to us after we said hi to him. just asked him if they’d sold a lotta cds and they said today was slow but sunday went very well. interesting!!

***

OBSERVATIONS:
1) people our age (21-30) barely talked to us. the primarily age groups of people who did talk to us were 16 and under and hmm, probably over 45 or so. very interesting.
2) some people seem to assume that “talk to us about anything” means that we have the answers to everything… no… it really just means talk to us. lol.

***

i shall end with photo of little girl crying. haw haw. this is totally NOT in focus but look at her awesome (and scary) balloon. she was unfortunately no longer in the throes of anguish, either. she was totally crying a second ago. :[

adventures with homelessness part 3

i’m feeling… cool.
i’m listening to… rocky votolato – she was only in it for the rain, ted leo and the pharmacists – where have all the rude boys gone, ted leo and the pharmacists – the high life, the blood brothers – red-blooded american girls, bright eyes – touch, bright eyes – haligh, haligh, a lie, a lie, against me! – miami.

12:24 am — what a day!!!

woke up at 8:30am and went to meet aaron and sandy @ 10 at the san ramon marriott. went to denny’s. it was gross. sandy told us stories about how he broke a guy’s kneecap playing soccer. and it was the THIRD TIME HE HAD DONE IT. holy moses. he also told us about how he was eating dinner at his brother’s house, and his fiance made lasagna and it had way too much cheese and his dad kept making fun of her and she ended up crying AHAHA. terrible sandy that high-maintenance hoe! i write this knowing he will be reading it. so hi, sandy. he made me retake his photo 3 times cause it wasn’t good enough for his tastes, and then here is a sample convo:

sandy: don’t drop me off!
me: then come to berkeley!
sandy: i cannnn’t. let’s go to a lan center!
aaron: okay, look one up at the marriott.
sandy: no wait, i can’t. i shouldn’t.
aaron and i: okay. *go to drop off sandy
sandy: noooo! don’t drop me off!!!!

and so it goes. rofls. eventually we had to let him off and it was a heart-breaking, tear-dripping goodbye.

—

onwards to berkeley. aaron and i WERE planning to go to sf, but because berkeley was the closer (and less tasty) alternative, we went to berkeley instead. it started off slow, but ended up pretty well worth the interestingness.

where to begin. rofls. i guess i will begin with some stats. these are not at ALL accurate. they do not take into account at all the number of people who passed by. i did have tallies for IGNORE, but i think those are way too high and inaccurate to take into account, so i’m not even going to bother.

[NEGATIVE RESPONSES: ANGRY LOOKS OR WHATEVER]
05: white males
02: white females
02: hispanic males
01: hispanic females
01: asian males
01: asian females

[HALF RESPONSES: WAVES, SMILES, HEAD NODS]
22: white males
11: white females
06: black males
05: asian females
02: asian males

[FULL RESPONSES]
08: white males
02: black females
01: white females
01: black males
01: hispanic males
01: asian females

[OTHER NOTABLE RESPONSES]
- one guy who said, “that sure is a desperate cry for attention.” asshole.
- indian dad who walked by a few times but would not acknowledge me waving at him. he did, however, keep pointing at us to his son. wonder what he was saying.

[PROGRESSION OF OUR SIGNS]
- “come tell us a story or talk to us about stuff.” (this failed greatly)
- “talk to us.”
- “talk to us (for more than 3 words).”
- “talk to us (for more than 13 words).”
- “talk to us (for more than 137 words).”
- “talk to and enlighten us.”

—

“COME TELL US A STORY OR TALK TO US ABOUT STUFF”
BEAD LADY
no real responses. first person to give us even close to a positive response was a lady who was bringing out some signs. she ran a bead shop, and she claims she would have talked to us but she had to go back to manage her shop. maybe when her worker came, she said, but she didn’t ever come back (although at some point she passed by and asked if we had talked to anyone, and we said yep, cause jason was talking to us.)

THE HISPANIC DUDE WITH SUNGLASSES
this guy stopped by and his friend was next to him but didn’t talk to us. he was going somewhere. but he basically just asked us why we were doing this and he was surprised he was the first one to really actively engage in conversation with us. yup. he left, but wished us good luck. was friendly! we didn’t talk much of anything of substance, but there seemed to be too short of time for that.

THE BREATHING DUDE
this guy and his friend walked by and they seemed like they wanted to talk MAYBE but had nothing to say. college student age. the taller guy said, i’ll tell you something — “breath is the bridge between the mind and the body.” and kind of left it at that. he seemed a LITTLE antagonistic, like he couldn’t understand why we were doing what we were doing, but yeah.

“TALK TO US (FOR MORE THAN 3 WORDS)”
THE MR. JASON FROM ALABAMA
jason was probably the highlight of our conversations, actually. being that… he was the one who connected us on the most realistic level. it was kinda like talking to an old friend, as opposed to being interrogated or having just one layer removed from. jason… is from alabama. had just moved to san francisco because he had gotten a job at a game company in emeryville. he was a video game environment designer. working on a shooter that is to come out for xbox 360 and computer. he didn’t know much about what he was working on, asides from the fact that the game had squad-based play. what else. he was 24. had just graduated from school. double major in cs and art. he almost lived in seattle, but he got the offer from a place in cali before he got an offer from a place in seattle, so he felt bad not taking the offer in cali. so he took it, and there he was. he liked the pacific northwest, though. he was pretty liberal, especially for being in alabama. he said that he really just needed to get away and that his parents were still there but he wanted to eventually have his brother come out to live with him. he said that he did abstract type painting when he lived in alabama because no one was really doing that kind of thing. everyone was just doing same ol same ol crap. landscapes, and face portraits. and he said they were really good, but that’s all they knew and everything just kind of looked the same. he also said that people there were really nice and stuff, but they were all just kind of the same and cookie cutter — they wouldn’t know bands or art or anything until it became super popular, like they wouldn’t know the postal service until people heard it on tv commercials and then suddenly everyone liked it. but he kept saying and making sure we knew that they weren’t bad people, it just had no culture. and he said atlanta was ghetto and to never go there. and that there was music there, but it was mostly solo artists playing piano or guitar by themselves. he said the street he lived on had like, 20 churches, in that 3 mile section, and that that was scary. lol. it’s funny cause he kept saying, “not to offend you, but…” yeah. oh by the way, he had passed us by when he first saw our sign, but then came back and talked to us because he honestly felt bad for passing us up. that’s pretty fucking awesome if i do say so myself. i asked him about people’s opinions about bush there, and he said that they were obviously pro-bush, but he felt like a lot of people were confused… like they worked on military bases cause a lot of those jobs were military jobs, yet working for a military base doesn’t necessarily mean you’re pro-bush or pro-war… you don’t have to always agree. he also didn’t really know that the west coast wasn’t ALL liberal. (btw, he eventually sat on the ground with us, and thank god, because it was getting painful to look up to him and talk!) he had the notion that the berkeley area and seattle area were liberal, so all of california and all of washington were liberal. we told him that wasn’t true, especially when you get to more suburban areas, and that definitely surprised him, and he said it was scary that people’s opinions about things change with the amount of money they make. it’s true, and it’s kind of fucked he wanted to know what i thought about microsoft, and i said i’d never work there because of all the bureaucracy, and he said he’d heard about that. and then we discussed how bill gates donates a lot but he makes so much so he kind of HAS to because what are you going to do with all of that money? he also talked about some conferences like e3, but more geeky, so that there are yachts rented out by companies and all that jazz, but essentially everyone there just geeks the fuck out and talks about geeky software and game shit lol. amusing. yeah. that’s the gist of it, even though we talked to him for like, an hour. it was cool. a good way to start us off, that’s for sure, cause he was def one of the coolest people we talked to there. i pimped redefine to him, so let’s see if he e-mails! he was pretty cute. and i don’t even like facial hair.

after jason was leaving, aaron and i decided to switch spots. it seemed like a good time. we got some bubble tea (i got a red bean bubble tea which was made TERRIBLY!! it was more like green bean soup than red bean milkshake. the beans were still like, whole basically. fucking nasty, man. so depressing!)… and then headed more towards campus. went pee. the campus internet center was funny cause it was dominated by homeless. why not, i guess. there was some fashion show going on too. anyhow. we sat down on a space near the main entrance to the campus, under some tree. let the adventures re-begin.

THE GUITAR GUY WHO WAS SCOTTISH
this guy was half incomprehendable, but oh well. he said a lot of things about scottishness. we were sitting on the corner with no sun, talking to jason, and he said we should sit somewhere with more sun. i said i don’t like sun. i said i live in seattle. he said, “you like scottish sun then — it’s not hot.” i said, “exactly.” and then he talked about how he liked portland and had been kicked out of tons of bars in portland, and how he almost got in a fight with some scottish person in portland, but then he mentioned something about being from scotland, and the people couldn’t tell, so they were like, “holy shit, maybe he is scottish,” and for some reason left him alone (?!) hahaha oh yeah this guy totally said i was like, ugly, cause i was saying i don’t like sun and he was saying, some people purposely don’t get tans to make themselves ugly so that guys won’t like them or they won’t get attention or something. HAHA. amusing.

“TALK TO US (FOR MORE THAN 3 WORDS)”
THE PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT THEY WERE WITTY
aaron and i had to make a seperate category for people who thought they were witty. there were just too godamn many of them. they would say, “how are you doing?” and laugh to themselves, run away, and never care what you had to say. in this category there was one asian woman and one little white kid. they were both retarded.

THE YOUTH GROUP LADY
this lady was the leader of a youth group. her kids were these asian girls and boys. yep. she talked about how she thought it was interesting because her task for her kids was finding random acts of kindness and basically doing them. and she was thinking that on her way towards where we were (which was away from where her kids were) — that perhaps the key to being kind was just establishing interconnected relationships with one another. and the fact that we were sitting there kind of… went together wtih her thoughts on that. she had lived in palestine for a year and mentioned that people there seemed a lot happier because they just lived life in close proximity to one anther, interacted with each other a lot, and really knew each other. it felt like one big community. yup. so eventually, she was going to ‘test’ her girls to see if they’d talk to us. so, she watched us from a little far away and would just see if her girls would stop and talk to us as they were going back to meet her. they failed the test, as they said no more than just “hello”. haha it was funny, cause she was basically kind of yelling over to us, saying, “THEY FAILED THE TEST!!!!” it woulda been better had she literally jumped out of a tree, but yeah.

THE FOUR ASIAN GIRLS FROM YOUTH GROUP
four high school girls from youth group, who were being led by that lady. i don’t know her name. anyway, they came over to talk to us after she said they failed. only one seemed super engaged. two didn’t really talk at all. one to the right seemed like the gang leader of the two in the middle, rofls. she did all the talking and would barely address me. every time i would say something she would basically be like, “what?” and then go back to talking to aaron. it was quite interesting. didn’t really look at anyone else, as she was doing all the talking. one girl to the left who was shorter and a lot less um, high-maintenance looking… was a lot more friendly although she seemed kind of shy too. her random act of kindness (and, she was the ONLY one out of the 4 who revealed her random act of kindness) was talking to street vendors about how long they had been doing what they did and what not. que interesante. she seemed cool. said she was thinking about going to UW and stuff, so yeah. yup.

THE LADY HAILING FROM ATLANTA
black lady from atlanta who had a lot of kids with her. she was there for her sister, because her sister was in the aforementioned fashion show. she was friendly. just made very simple, polite conversation with us, but it was definitely nice.

“TALK TO US (FOR MORE THAN 13 WORDS)”
THE CONTACT JUGGLING DUDES
there were some dudes dressed in a top hat and a trench coat of fur kind of thing, and one just wearing other black clothes. the one without the top hat had a ball, and he was just kind of rolling it around on his hands. i asked him what it was for, and he said, “contact juggling.” i dunno. but the ball looked heavy even though it was super duper light. anyway, the guy in the top hat was commenting on how it was hot and i said he was wearing a lot of clothes, and he mentioned something about the shade we were sitting under. i think he woulda probably talked to us for a long time had it been just himself, cause he definitely looked willing to talk. his friend was one of those who was counting to see how many words he had said. yup. but yeah, i touched their ball to see if it was heavy and then the friend got kinda testy and was really abruptly just saying they had to go and they kind of sped off.

THE LANGUAGE GUY
he asked us what we were to talk to him about, and we said, anything, and he said, in what language? and we said, whatever… and he’s like, you won’t understand it! and then went away laughing really super loudly like HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!! some light-skinned black dude i think.

“TALK TO US (FOR MORE THAN 137 WORDS)”
THE COUPLE NAMED JAMIE AND JANE OF THE JUNGLE
jamie and jane. jane didn’t really talk much. jamie was just basically making small talk until he thought he got to 137 words. not much exciting there. polisci student. had some mediterranean food. boring.

THE HIP-HOP DUDE
didn’t think this guy would talk, at least not at length… particularly cause had headphones on, but he took them off and everything. young black guy — looked really quite young, but i think he was def older than he looked. was wearing headphones and a hat with interesting shiny sequiny shit on it and was really friendly. LOOKED really nice. you know, how some people just have that look. unfortunately, i forgot this guy’s name because he introduced himself towards the end of our convo. hopefully aaron remembers. this guy was one of my faves… him, jason, and linguistics guy. and maybe old jewish guy. anyway, he was going to his friend’s house to return a dvd called “the secret”… he had borrowed the movie from his friend’s mom and mailed it back, but she’d never received it, so he had to buy another copy to bring to her. i tried looking this movie up on imdb — it’s some documentary, he said — but i couldn’t find it. he was cool because he directed questions at both aaron and i, and from guys, that’s quite appreciated. he mentioned how he used to be big into music and how he used to go to davis to drink with his friends and did some crazy shit there. i think i like his attitude. i mentioned how not that many people are friendly, so thanks for talking to us, and he said, “it is what it is.” interesting. why interesting, i’m not so sure.

THE GUITAR HERO GUY
this guy was a bit awkward. wearing sunglasses, pretty tall. grew up in albany. he was a little bothered by the fact that his house was 6 miles away and that berkeley was cool standalone, but he wanted to go somewhere else to live for college. maybe for grad school. he was a cs major, i think. he said he was going to go to his friend’s house to play guitar. i asked him how long he’d been playing guitar, and then he said, “guitar hero. it’s a game like dance dance revolution,” and i’m like, “yeah, i know that guitar hero is.” sucka. but yeah, that was a little awkward, def, but it was nice that he stopped to talk. for sheez. didn’t really catch on right away why 137 words, but he got over it.

THE BELLIGERENT NICE GUY
this guy was quite the interesting. he was like, belligerent, but nice. first thing he asked was, “do you guys want money or something?” we said no. “you want to sell something?” we said no — do you see any money on the sign? then he tried to make some small talk but he seemed like, angry, but then not. he was double majoring in polisci and law or something. future lawyer i guess? but yeah, interesting to talk to, albeit a bit strange. this guy didn’t really catch on for the longest time why 137… seems like that number catches people off guard. people see a number and become instantly infatuated with it?

THE LINGUIST MAN
oh man this guy was interesting. one of my faves too. kind of nerdy looking guy from santa cruz. glasses. black shirt. super motherfucking spazzy. like crazy spazzy. like, i dunno what’s wrong with you spazzy, but i really kind of enjoy your excitement spazzy. he asked us why 137 words. we said, dunno, and explained the gradual progression — how when we wrote 3, people would say 4 words… how when we wrote 13, people would say 14, and so we picked a larger number. he said, “but how will you know when they reach 137? that number is so specific…” so i said, “then give us 1,000, and we’ll know for sure.” he seemed to like that answer. he told us he was at a conference in berkeley for linguistics. i said i wanted to do linguistics at some point but it was too hard. he said it can get there but it soon envelops you and you enjoy studying all the little quirks of language. interesting. so i asked him what he thought the most interesting thing, from a linguistics standpoint. he cited some german guy’s study where he was talking about the meaning of numbers, and how people use numbers like 100 and 50 and whatever to describe things usually, because that’s what we’re used to. we’re used to that from looking at scales or measures or whatever. and he said, a number like 137 implies specificity, and it makes people think there is some greater importance. so i asked him, had the number been 100 and not 137, would you have thought twice about talking to us? and he said, DEFINITELY. so fucking fascinating… the little changes that took place with our sign seemed to make large changes overall. but maybe what he said kind of explained why people were so fucking obsessed with a NUMBER on our sign. it was, like aaron said, as though the number were italicized and bolded, and nothing else on our sign was (which is only the case figuratively).

THE JEWISH ASSHOLE
this guy was really interesting. he was 65. he paid no attention to the 137 number. thank god. he basically said he really really liked our idea and appreciated that we were doing it, because he took classes at berkeley (degree from stanford) and found that people didn’t really talk to one another. evreyone was so closed off with phones and ipods that it was easy to ignore one another and not talk to each other at all. he asked me what i wanted to get out of doing this. i said, i liked to do it because i like seeing who talks and what they have to say… and it makes me think that people are not complete assholes if they come and stop and talk to you. and he said, “the unfortunate part about that is that i can stop and talk to you but i might be a complete asshole in other parts of my life,” and that’s pretty damn interesting. true, but i still don’t think complete assholes would not stop and talk to you. but i dunno, what do i know. he also hypothesized that younger people wuold be more willing to talk to people because life had not burdened them down and stuff. he was super interested — and he made pardons for saying this because he was from a small town in the midwest — that aaron’s this blonde haired kid and i’m asian, and as he would say, “we draw from vastly different genetic pools,” and yet we were together doing this and i guess, breaking those boundaries? and he thought that was really cool, i guess. i liked him. interesting.

“TALK TO US”
THE UNITARIAN MAN
i had a smiley face that kind of looked like a U with two dots in the middle on my sign. this guy didn’t have much to say except that i should change that smiley face around, because it kind of looks like a symbol for SOMETHING that wasn’t a smliey face… and that maybe people would think it was universalist or unitarian or something. heh. so i changed it. and before he left, he was like, “did i talk to you?” and we said, yeah, thanks.

“TALK TO AND ENLIGHTEN US”
THE HARE KRISHNA GUY
this guy came over and wanted us to chant some chants with him. he had some bells — they’re not bells, but i dunno what they’re called… they’re like castanets but make sounds more similar to bells (although not really). he said they were donated by some friends since his bag got stolen. i think it’s very very fucking interesting that he came by after we added “enlighten” to our sign. suddenly, i just saw him come out of the woodwork. it’s like, where did he come from? i dunno, but that’s awfully strange! anyway, he wanted us to chant with him. i still have the card. the chant is… “hare krishna hare krishna krishna krishna hare hare hare rama hare rama hare rama rama rama hare hare.” he said some verses in sanskrit that were pretty dope once he translated them. one was about how… basically, as the body passes from young to middle-age to old age… the transition is similar to how an enlightened person passes on after death to their soul… they don’t even notice or are surprised by the change. that is pretty godamn interesting of a thought. i know nothing about hare krishna, but i guess they believe in reincarnation, vegetarianism, and lots about gathering together in love to worship god. i dunno, that’s cool, i’m down with that. he was interesting — he held aaron’s gaze very intensely for a very long tme. not like, staring, but it was just a strong gaze. he went off on some tangents too. but it was interesting — he seemed like he was preaching to us, but not really. it was more like, just informing us about his religion. it was more like he had not found it all that long ago himself. but i’m not sure if that’s true or not. but it didn’t feel pushy — and just informative (a little TOO informative, i’d say, as he never truly asked us questions and more just ranted). so it was interesting, i guess. more about him to come.

THE SOLE HOMELESS GUY
so, this guy… he was kind of crazy. very long white hair. very deep forehead wrinkles (like, 4 rows of them), and very white beard and mustache. really kind of crazy. he started saying some negative things to mr. hare krishna, so mr. hare krishna asked if we could move. he said he wanted to respect this guy from far away but didn’t really want to talk to us in an environment of negativity. we didn’t really move. the homeless guy wanted to talk, so while he was talking to aaron about lord knows what, i talked to the hare krishna guy. he said he was taking lessons on counseling and learning how to listen better because he wasn’t much of a listener. he was taking classes from one of his friends who was a convert as well but also a very big advocate for homeless people, and his friend was helping work with the mayor and large people on homelessness and trying to find housing or living arrangements for those people. interesting. at some point mr. homeless got a bit too belligerent and was practically screaming at aaron. so i tried to butt in, and at this point…

THE BLACK LADY WHO COULD LAY THE SMACKDOWN ON MR. HOMELESS
truly this is a terrible title for her, but unfortunately, i didn’t get too much a chance to talk to her because the homeless guy was too busy wreaking havok. so she came over to ask us what we were doing, and aaron kind of answered her, so mr. homeless got mad and was screaming at him, saying aaron wouldn’t talk to him. and aaron said he was talking to him… but i guess halfway through aaron talking to him the guy just trailed off and never finished what he was saying. and then he got mad that aaron didn’t keep talking to him even though he was incapable of keeping conversation. he was saying things like, “you just want to throw me away?!” and “oh talk to her but don’t talk to me!” and stuff… it was kind of creepy. so i tried to intersect and he wouldn’t talk to me and was like, “i wasn’t talking to you! i was talking to him!” and he’d be like to aaron, “what, i can’t touch you?” and aaron’s like, “no,” and he’s like, “then why are you touching me?!” and aaron’s like, “i’m not!’ it was quite strange. ahahah so while this guy was ranting, lay the smack down lady was like, “where are the doctors? where are the medical professionals?” lol. she was funny. anyway, then i managed to get mr. homeless to talk to me briefly, and he’s like, “what do you want to talk about?” and i’m like, “anything. you tell me,” and he’d get all impatient and be like, “well, what do you want to talk about?” and i’d be like, “what’s your name,” and he’d say, “what’s yours?” and then i’d be like, ‘vivian,” and then he like, started using my name against me, rofls. saying, “what do you DO, vivian,” and i’d be like, “uhhhhhhhh… i’m from seattle. visiting here,” and he said, “how did you get here?” and i said, “uhhhh… plane,” and he was like, “UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH…” and i was like, “why are you making fun of me,” and he’s like, “do you practice that?” and i said, “yeah, i practice that in the mirror every day.” what a freak! he said to me, “you are a piece of shit,” and aaron said something to him about how he shouldn’t say that and then he got belligerent with aaron, and then the lay the smackdown lady was so funny man she was like, “hey, hey hold up excuse me, i have to ask my classmate a question here, we go to the same school.” and she’s like, “what grade are you in?” to aaron, and he said soph, and she said her too, and then he was like, “er, actually, i go to davis,” (which totally blew that lie but that other guy was too crazy to know the difference anyway), and she hated davis for some reason i didn’t catch. but man, funny. eventually, we decided we should go elsewhere, and ms. smackdown got our e-mail addresses cause she was interested in finding out our results (she will probably read this? rofls)… but yeah, she left after that, and homeless guy gave me a bag, and he told me to give it to some homeless person, and i said, “what’s this?” and he got mad and was like, “you ain’t ever been homeless, have you?” and screamed that for a good 80,000 years (more like 5 minutes) after we had left and gone back to bathroom toilet central. before we left he also re-started ranting about hoe we weren’t talking to him, and i said, purposely in a really whiny voice, “but you called me a piece of shit. that wasn’t nice.” and for a second he did kind of soften, or so it seemed, and he was like, “i didn’t say that.” and i said, “yeah, you didm” and he said, “well you ARE a piece of shit.” rofls.

back to mr. hare krishna. he talked to us a bit more before we left. basically saying that he respected people like that homeless guy, but like, he couldn’t help them anymore. all he could do was associate with people who shared similar beliefs, such as vegetarianism, and try to come together with a common belief. he’d been a vegetarian for 40 years, i guess. insert some other stuff. he mentioned some speaker who was coming to town and gave us a flyer, saying that speaker was super famous and had enlightened a lot of people during the 60s and 70s (the dude was dead now), and that last time he talked to someone, that someone knew the “enlightening dude”. i dunno. i’m super confusing myself. uh yeah. interesting. but he talked a bit about reincarnation again — oh yeah he also said yoga means to like, be in congregation with your god or something — not the meditation exercise crap it is now. but yeah. aaron said he “super had to go to the bathroom,” and that guy said, “you super better go then,” and he was elsewhere by the time he got out, talking to someone else, so we kind of sneaked away and went back to our car to pay 18 MOTHERFUCKING DOLLARS for parking 4 1/2 hours. WHAT THE HELLHOLE.

interesting note… there weren’t really many homeless people who talked to us. only that solitary insane one. VERY STRANGE. berkeley has so many homeless. where are they?

AARON’S VERSION (in a conversation with joe tran)
this hare krishna guy came and talked to usand rambled on about spiritual stuff and then this bum came and he was really crazy. he’d tell you something and then say he didn’t say it and then get super belligerent about how you weren’t talking to him. and then you’d talk to him and he’d be like, “don’t talk to me. you fucking asshole. what the fuck,” and stuff like that. he was sitting next to me for like 10 min while the hare krishna dude was there. and the hare krishna guy kept trying to get us to go and talk in a quiet place so he could convert us. and we’re like, “nahhhh, it’s cool, we like this bum guy who was totally annoying.” and i kept having to tell him to stop telling vee to shut up, yeah they kinda fought a little — not physically, but w/ words, cuz the guy would be like, “VIVIAN, YOU’RE AN ASSHOLE,” and i’d be like, “dude don’t say that,” and i’d have to like calm him down. the rest of the time it was pretty normal. that was just at the end. we sat on this corner on telegraph for a while and no one talked to us. we’d be like, “heyyy, hows it gion, where are you off to,” and try to talk topeople and shit but they’d just say hi or ignore us, and finally this one dude came back and felt bad for not talking to us, and he ended up sitting down and chatting for like 1 hour. his name was jason; he was from alabama, and he just moved out here for a job. just out of college and all. video game designer. but it was his like 2nd day here and he didn’t have a place to live or anything. he was just rooming w/ someone at the company and didn’t know anything about the area and all. he was a really interesting guy. he was the most interesting. yeh, it was tight… if you (joe) ever do it, make sure you have at least 3 people (2 preferrably girls), make 2 signs, go during afternoon (not morning), and make sure your signs ask like specific questions that will get people involved but they shouldn’t be questions on like an Issue. but irecommend it. esp if you’re with vee cuz shes coo. plus when people ignore you, you can just talk about it and how its funny. its tight.

kure’s response: lol maybe, but i dont think i’m the kind of person to just go out and talk to people, shrug

aaron’s response: see, i’m not either, but it’s not hard. i really am not; i was totally scared going in. it helps to have someone who’s kinda outgoing, plus vivian had done it before but i mean i started talking a lot or i felt like i was anyway cuz it doesn’t really matter and you just say hi to everyone and laugh at them if they ignore you or smile awkwardly and some people actually have some interesting things to say… not a whole lot but a few. you should make fun of vee though cuz she likes red bean boba. it tasted horrible. my passion fruit icee was much better. i kinda wish she lived close so we could hang out more; shes pretty interesting. i’m always surprised about how equal opportunity she is, if you get what i mean. for the most part she’s very non-judgmental of people. i mean no one is completely non-judgmental but she’s very accepting of most stuff… just how she talks about stuff, she’s never like anti something and she’s not really negative about anything… i mean she might say oh that was messed up of some person or blah blah but she doesn’t take offense. i dunno. i mean 10:00:35 PM someone you meet online and hang out w/ for like 6 hours w/o being super awkward must be pretty cool. i was way nervous about that. sandy kept asking us to go to a lan center like after breakfast. well he had to go drive home at like 1 or something so he’d be like lets go do something and then change his mind and be like well…. i can’t tho. he always does that. whenever anyone would ask how we met i’d say something about mutual friend which is you. you would have done fine cuz i’m crazy shy. i don’t ever talk to anyone. this one old jewish dude with a moustache and hat talked to us about how no one talks to people anymore. he was saying how he took a bunch of lcasses at berkeley and everyone’s always on their phone or listening to their ipod and he never really talked to people taht much and talked about human interaction for about a million years but he seemed cool and nice

(jason’s response on my blog:)
Sounds like you guys had a blast for the most part of the day. I’m glad I stopped by to talk to you both. Made for a great 2nd day in California.
-Jason