So, Chris, Athena, Dode, Ann, Rob, Rob, and Penny went to see the Swingin’ Utters play at Slim’s in San Francisco last night. We missed the first opening band (Youth Gone Wild I think) but we did see The Forgotten (some good stuff, I’m not a huge fan of theirs, but the stuff I have on comps is all good) and the the Utters. Slim’s is a really good place to go see shows. They have a nice geriatric section where you can see all of the stage. The Utters, while a good show, just didn’t seem to have as much energy as at previous shows. They also did some instrument changes and damn if it didn’t take a while to swap them out (acoustic guitar, accordion). I mean, they could learn something from the Dropkick Murphys in that respect. Anyway, overall I’m glad I got to see them, but I wasn’t impressed with the show that much. The best part of the evening was when I was in the restroom. After finishing my business I turned around and there was Fat Mike. Crazy, and yet another reason I like living in San Francisco, I get to see my idols at a regular old punk rock show.

I’ve had it three times now. Each time is just as good as the first. Zante’s is excellent. You take the bread that would normally be Nan, make it pizza sized, spread a nice vegetarian mix with some sauce and then cheese and bam. So delicious. I’m glad we only eat it every so often though, too much would make it not as special.

So, at work there are two ways to get up to the floor I work on: Stairs or Elevator. Generally I just take the stairs. It’s quicker and it’s better for me in the long run. Well, for the last month there has been this stench from the bottom of the stairs. It was thought that something had crawled under the stairs and died. In some genius fashion the space under the stairs was sealed up, no access. Great, so the facilities crew has been leaving the door to the roof open to air out the stairwell. It helps some, but it’s still pretty bad sometimes. Today at lunch time I found out from another employee that it’s the vent for the buildings sewage system. Generally these things are supposed to be on the roof, and this one was, but no one put the pipe from the first floor to the roof. Now they’re going to fix it, but there’s no telling how long that will take. Until then I’ll just carry a clothes-pin in my pocket. Peee eeeew!

Hmmm, I think I saw this web site a while back (but that was long ago in a place called New York :) but I thank my friend KP for reminding me about the Illegal Art Exhibit. It’s actually here at the SFMOMA through July 26. I may have to go and check it out.

Wow! Science Magazine is reporting on a crow that made a tool to get to food: In the experiments, a captive female crow, confronted with a task that required a curved tool (retrieving a food-containing bucket from a vertical pipe), spontaneously bent a piece of straight wire into a hooked shape – and then repeated the behavior in nine out of ten subsequent trials. That is just too cool. There’s even a video of the event that is amazing to watch.
[as seen on boingboing and Hivelogic]

I went out to dinner last night with Chris, Athena, and Jan. We met up at Manora’s Thai Cuisine on Folsom @ 12th street. The food and service were great, the company was even better. I know I’m going to be going back to Manora’s again, did I mention the food was great. After we dined we walked down the street to a bar, one of Jan’s favorites apparently (and on that I’ll have to trust him, he’s got a great taste in bars). Well, okay, it was good. Not too crowded (and on a Monday I should hope not) and it was comfortable enough. I’ll have to head down there some more too. Enough blathering, more work to do.

So, on Saturday at the Whitney Street House Andre and I were discussing cake. Somehow it came about that a great epitaph for Andre would be “I love cake!” because, well, he does (he also brings the greatest cakes to parties, but that’s a story for another time). Then it gets around to me and Andre mentions that he’s always seen mine as being just one word: Music. No name, no date, just the word “Rawk.” Now, not to be morbid, but I actually like this idea because it fits right into the plan in my head. I’ve always envisioned just a block of beautiful pink granite from Texas, say about two feet on a side. There would be one polished rectangle with whatever I wanted written in there. I now want that polished area to just say “Rawk”, nothing more, nothing less. Some people have objected to the no name and no date thing, and at some point I might see that argument, but if I did have them it would probably be some laser engraved thing that is very tiny along with the sentence “Thank you for reading this line.” Of course I’m going to be donated to science and then burnt to a crisp, so maybe this will just be a monument to hold what’s left of my pinky toe or something.

Ugh, I have no idea where they’ve come from, but I’ve got hives. It’s not too bad, they don’t spread, but they do itch like mad. I can only wonder what the allergy is that has triggered them. They seem to be going away a bit, so that’s good. I just have to keep telling myself ”Don’t Scratch! Don’t Scratch!”. Well, I guess this means no new ink for me this week, I’m not going to even think about messing with that while I’ve got hives.

So I picked up Chris and Athena at the airport on Saturday. Man it was good to see them again. We went by my house and then went over to the Whitney house for a bid of food (pulled pork, my potato salad, corn, etc), drinks (mojitos being the specialty of the day), and friends (both ex-Blue Sky and others). Andre brought over Hero so we watched that. It’s a beautiful film with an interesting story (although Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was a little better in the story department you can compare the two). All in all it was a fun time, and Keith’s mojitos are getting better with time :). (note: it helps if you actually publish the entry rather than just letting it sit around. *sigh*)

There’s nothing like getting up early to cook some potatoes so that you can make potato salad for this afternoon. Why didn’t I do it last night you might ask? Well, when you stay at work and play Unreal Tournament 2003 for 2 hours you tend to get home later and stuff. Oh well, that won’t be happening for a while as the studio is now in a crunch until September. Such is life.