Oh sven you're my biggest fan! JUmping ahead to the last night in Cali my brother his wife and I drove over to China Stix in Santa Clara for some take out... the egg foo young omelets there are as big as your head! delish too! Of course there is a heavy Asian influence in this entire area & thru my travels around I was beginning to notice these altars set up near the door ways of every shop or restaurant I entered... some huge and ornate while others were quite modest... for example at the Old Shanghai gift shop on Grant Ave in Chinatown there sat a huge meditating Buddha at the entrance with a great sand filled bowl sitting in front of him where dozens of burned out joss sticks stood up... the Buddha himself was adorned with dollar bills and change of all sorts... at the Asian super market in Milpitas there was a standing Buddha and at his feet stood these neat little pyramids made of apples and oranges... and so at China Stix I noticed behind the counter a small Buddha statue adorned with browning bananas... finally my curiousity got the best of me and I asked the man taking orders what all this meant and basically it is an old tradition to have the Buddha near the doorway of your place of business or home and even the gateway into a village where joss sticks are burned and offerings are made for good luck and wealth.. and as the man explained with a giggle and a shrug, "we offer fruit and vegetables because most of the gods and goddesses are vegetarian"... "Everyday?" I asked as we both glanced at the browning bananas and he shrugged giggling again, "Oh not everday but everyday would be good!" 

@sven: i have been hand writing my "memoirs" of the trip in a journal so as to not forget everything: however hard to believe that just yesterday 08/11/11 marked one month ago discovering Sausalito... what i wouldn't do to be sitting on the back deck of that little Italian restaurant overlooking the ferry slip gazing across the bay to watch the San Francisco city lights blinking on at dusk... today a month ago i was sitting in my brother's van nursing an infected tooth while the rest of the group were in a greenhouse buying wholesale orchids... the van was parked in front of a small wooden shack that advertised teak wood items open on weekends only naturally.. a huge sitting stone Buddha guarded the front entrance... it was foggy misty cold and i didn't feel so good right then but got out of the van walked over and touched the Buddha on his shoulder.. solid and strong... somone had lain a brilliant purple colored flower in the Buddha's upturned hand in a pose of meditation... I walked back to the van got in shivering... and was so spaced out forgot to take a pic of the great Buddha... next year I will be the one who lays the flower in the Buddha's hand....

and now onto more weighty matters: in an article in the most recent issure of Surfing magazine JFC is named as one of the prime slanderers of surfing! WTF! don't worry... this weekend i am writing a letter lambasting this little punk ass son of a bitch whoever he is... any insights or opinions anyone might want to contribute to my planned rant would be cheerfully accepted... Shaka!   ;)

@skor: it really has nothing to do with age; case in point: Fourth of July weekend 1965 I failed to negoitiate Dead Man's Curve at a high rate of speed on wet pavement lost control of the 59 Dodge I was driving crossed the lane just barely missing a head on collision hit a huge tree bounced off the tree went thru a fence and almost wound up in someone's living room... my buddy in the back seat got thrown from the car upon impact, he was maybe 16 years of age at the time.. on the way out ripped his hip on the back door wall after the car door had flung open... result? hip replacement sometime in his 20s after developing arthiritis in the bone... shit happens sistah!  so don't feel so old it can happen at any age..  ;)

@skor: lets see what Mystery Woman has to say for herself...  ::)  but I'm game!  ;)

@skor: now that's gotta hurt! she's a slippery one that svennie but i have my ways... I've dealt with elusive women before and nothing i like more than a challenge yeah!  :-*  a few highlights: got to meet Jeff Clark who pioneered big wave surfing at Mavericks at Half Moon Bay... he moved his shop to a more visible accessible location but i sure did like the other place... yep hard to find cozy but i understand in these hard economic times ya do what ya gotta do to survive... Jeff is a really cool guy.. a freaking legend in his own time and i felt like i'd known him my whole life when i spoke with him... i'll try to post a pic soon!  found out why the Chinese burn joss sticks to the great Buddha... funny story behind that actually.. more later... monday monday can't trust that day!!  :P  and yes we should all renedvous in SF next year it would be a rip!!

thanks skor! first day back to work yesterday ugh! well at least its friday today!! next time you me and svennie make it  to san fran! whaddya say?  8) the city will never be the same guaranteed!!  ;D

oh svennie baby you're my biggest fan!  :-* there's more wait til i get home 2day on the big bird! send me some good vibes  8)

http://www.citylights.com/bookstore/

see my ramblings below and check out that logo! look familiar?  ;D

i'm gonna "hold you" to that....  :-* okay made it to city lights bookstore for the first time since 1975 i guess they've gone a little commercial but wow have u ever noticed how similiar the logo for city lights is to the JFC logo? blew me away! browsed thru the beat poetry and lit section most of which i already own or have read but darn missed the Naked Women Eating exposition last weekend now that would've been interesting! stumbled across Jack Kerouac alley this time out of sheer exhaustion not b/c i had my pot goggles on like 40 years ago & walked into Vesuvios a great little bar with two floors... i guess i must've been really high last time i was there b/c it seemed huge to me then but its really just a hole in the wall... cozy... i bellied up to the bar and ordered a pepsi on the rocks with a twist... noticing a shot of absinthe was eight bucks... hmmmm.... maybe when i'm diagnosed w/ a life threatening disease i'll come over here and get totally wasted on 26 straight shots of absinthe a la dylan thomas and go to meet my maker totally stoned! i was having the time of my life but unfortunately the people i was with walked thru north beach like they were on a tour of auschwitz! nevertheless they changed the marquee on big al's from a showgirl to al capone and it is now closed having relocated to Kearny street... a few doors down was the Beat Museum... i walked in and it was 5 dollar admission to the actual museum... so i gotta pay five bucks to see the life i arleady lived? no thanks! browsed the old paperbacks all of which i once owned and bought for a quarter or thirty five cents when i was an aspiring beatnik and are now worth hundreds of dollars!! well to a collector anyway...  i found something out about myself on this trip... I guess i'm a city boy at heart... oh sure in the late 60s early 70s i was into this back to the land stuff and i did finally wind up doing that owned chickens and a goat and a horse and planted a huge garden and primed a well and all of that and it was damn hard work! but deep down inside i'm city thru and thru... i get off on the grunge and the weirdos and the panhandlers and the hustlers and the woman at the end of the bar nursing a drink talking into the air or the young girl on the 2nd floor with her feet propped up on a chair with a bemused smile on her face reading a book of poetry.. i dig the crowds and the young italian girls on grant street greeting you with a jolly bonjourno trying to lure you into their restaurant for dinner i dig the sex shops and theatres advertising totally topless girls 24 hrs a day... i dig the marijuana grow shop right across the street from washington square park with the statue of benjamin franklin that was on the cover of Trout Fishing in America.. i dig the crowded streets in Chinatown with these five old chinese guys playing traditional instruments like they were the Chinese Grateful Dead... i dig it all.. bring it on.... i got pavement running in these veins!  8)

svennie baby name the time and place and i'll be there with flowers and candy!   :-*

only in Frisco right?  :P

On my way to San Francisco tomorrow  8) !! yippee! Not sure about any of those flicks Skor...

@ Svennie: hmmm I'll wait for that waterfall scene! haven't seen Nicole in the altogether since Eyes Wide Shut whew! BTW pickup on Mao's Last Dancer! wow! excellent film! Bruce Greenwood as the gay ballet director (not that there's anything wrong with that!) Billy Bathouse is this something new??

Bad Teacher: oh believe me there's a few things they couldn't put in the trailers that are worth the watch believe me!

what beach or shouldn't i ask? i spent my weekend at the ghetto white trash piss pool sigh! but July 8 take off for a week and a half in San Francisco! yeah like that!  :-*

July 2: wow saw two flicks on Friday one good one excellent! As part of a prize our team won for meeting over 98% service levels we all got to go to the movies courtesy of the company... I'm dumb as a fox I guess and picked Friday to go see Bad Teacher with a few workmates and my Director who of course is young enough to be my daughter.. nevertheless Cameron Diaz plays the part very well but I'd wait til it comes out on DVD... yep cursing crude sexual jokes bare titties drug use and the car washing scene alone is worth the price of admission! (Well for a overly sexed senior citizen like myself anyway!) OK now the serious stuff: Barney's Version which is on DVD at Redbox... what a film... Paul Giamatti is absolutely excellent and Bruce Greenwood has a small part as well... I'm almost ashamed to say I saw myself in Paul's character "Barney" Dustin Hoffman puts in a great performance as well... all in all three thumbs up! OK now where the hell is everybody!!??   ::)

Hey where'd everybody go?? anybody alive out there?? now I'm reading Let the Right One In and only a few pages into the book and I'm already memerized by it... and it never fails... I reserved two books from the interlibrary loan system and of course they both come in at the same time! older books one being the bio of Keith Richards by Victor Bockris and having just read Keef's own memoir it is of course familiar territory but Bockris uses a lot of quotes from all the major players and then some so that makes it all the more interesting; the second which i find much more interesting is Robert Greenfield's book covering the Rolling Stones 1972 STP Tour which is written in a kind of Tom Wolfe/Hunter S Thompson style... jesus how'd i miss that? oh yeah i was bumming around the country then... wound up sitting on the nudie beach in Santa Barbara with this little artist girl i met that's how i missed that! sigh! for god's sake somebody tune in let me know you're alive eh??  ;)