No Sleep 'Til San Francisco

As many people know, the official Two Girls One Car cross country road trip ended earlier this month after rousing success. We called it quits in Santa Fe, New Mexico, spilled a forty for a homey, and sent British Waffle Pizza Pete back to L.A in the car while we flew home because we were so goddamn tired of driving.

But the adventuring never stops! In fact, just this weekend, two girls and one car were back on the road, headed towards San Francisco.

The trip kicked off with my brilliant idea to take the 101 up to Ventura and have dinner on the sea before heading inland and up the 5. Now, some of you familiar with this route right now are asking yourselves what kind of moron I am. The best kind! We dined at a pub nowhere near the sea and then got stuck for an hour on a road towards the five which dumped us back at Magic Mountain, at which time if we were at all smart, we would have called it a day, gone home, and tried again on Friday.

But nay, we continued on our merry adventure, past the foul aroma of death, brussel sprouts, and meat as we encountered Slaughter Row, the infamous meat packing plants along the 5. Or as I like to refer to it, the Vegan Blackmail Highway. At 2, we got in to the city, exhausted, and headed over to the lower Haight, where my lovely friend Brian was kind enough to donate his wee bedroom to us for the weekend. Upon getting in, we realized the bed was actually on a loft about eight feet up, which meant I had to conquer my fear of ladders. Seriously, it's bad. Once I went hiking with my mom and encountered a ladder on our route back. I was about to turn around go back the entire way I came, when a three-year-old scooted past my shaking, sobbing form and darted down the ladder. So then I was shamed into climbing down. Anyway, in the loft bed we were terrified of rolling out, so we slept in the corner like baby animals in a cage.

The next day, we met up with my awesome friend Melissa and her mother at the Fisherman's Wharf. Now, I tend to avoid doing touristy things anywhere, and the Wharf certainly qualifies as a horrendous tourist attraction. First of all, Linda's iPhone directed us to a recycling plant instead of the restaurant. Then we paid for parking in the totally wrong spot. Finally, we found them and had a nice lunch that cryptically charged us for 'health tax' because we sat by a window. WTF, SF. Oh, and by the way...despite weather.com assuring me it was going to be a cool 69 degrees, it was actually about 100.

After lunch, we stopped to visit the piles of sea lions on barges off the pier. They were fighting and rolling around on each other and the area generally smelled like shit, but that wasn't stopping people from staring at them for hours. It stopped us, though. We quickly moved on after agreeing that it's stupid to not put more barges out for them. Note my disgust and eye-rolling contempt, San Francisco.



On the recommendation of Adam Bronstein, we stopped and visited the Musee Mecanique, which is the one thing worth wading through piles of tourists and horrible stores full of garbage only Michael Jackson could love. It's located on Pier 45 and features a huge collection of antique and modern slot games, pin ball machines, fortune tellers, and other automated devices. Very cool, totally free.




Afterwards, we met up with our friends Mia and Kellen for dinner at The Monk's Kettle, which is an excellent restaurant and definitely a can't-be-missed spot for beer drinkers. The menu boasts over 100 beers, with several on tap. Some of the beers are so rare they cost almost $70 a bottle. And the food was great, too, for a very reasonable price. My Jewish blood demands I note that.

We wandered around the Mission area hoping for a respite from the heat, and ended up in a bar where we were accosted by a giant man who aggressively wanted to do nice things for us. After that, Mia and Kellen called it a night but Linda and I continued, stopping at a bar near Brian's apartment to have one last drink and play a round of photo hunt. Oh, and did I mention the average cost for a drink was $4? Amazing.

Saturday, we waked alllll the way across the Haight (it remembers a lot better than it is, now that I'm not a gutter retard anymore) and across Golden Gate Park to see the Academy of Sciences Museum. See, the museum was built to be totally green, and it's incredibly cool. Once we got there, we wanted to go in but were put off by the steep entry fee ($25). Fortunately, the nicest people ever were there and talked us into buying a student pass ($20) and then getting an additional three dollars off for not using a car to get there. I guess our exhausted faces and stinky shoes were enough proof that we walked.

It was worth every penny. There's an extensive aquarium on the bottom floor, and a swamp with an albino alligator and snapping turtles, which are modern day dinosaurs. Every exhibit flowed organically into the next. The rainforest had butterflies flapping around and at one point a woman described a frog as a 'tree fart' without even realizing it. Plus, the roof is this super crazy grassy knoll with wild flowers growing on it. It's proof that you can have unique and beautiful architecture using environmentally friendly tactics, which has been one of the major thorns in green living. And anyone who knows me knows I'm not really a tree-hugging hippie. I think white people with dred locks should be rounded up and shorn.

Check this guy out.

Heyyyy

We took like ten pictures and this was the best one.

Butterfarts.
Finally, we met up with Brian and Aviva and had a delicious dinner on 19th and Valencia at an incredibly cheap Italian place that served ridiculous portions. At some point we went out with some other friends and tried to hit up a nineties dance party in a bar that charged me five dollars to basically shove me in a cattle car, which was terrible. After waiting in a bathroom line for forty minutes and downing three drinks as fast as possible, I was ready to call it a night, so we went back to the house, got drunker, and Brian and Aviva were subjected to my boring and strange rambling about World War I, which is odd since I in no way consider myself a WWI aficionado.

The next day, we drove around looking for a decent brunch place and ended up at Pork Shop in the Mission, which was surprisingly vegan-friendly for its name. Then we hit the road after I fought it out with my stupid tape deck about accepting the ipod converter.

As we drove back into L.A, we could see all the fires in the hills. Insane. I've never seen them so close. It was strangely beautiful and terrible. Reminded me of Mordor.

I'm going to try and update this more often, maybe write about more mundane non-travel related things.

Viva Las Memphis!

(Pictured above, Elvis "The Pelvis" Presley)

Throughout this trip the name Jackson has been following us.  First we stayed in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.  Then we visited the Jackson homestead (Minnesotan home of Lili and AJ Jackson and their lovely parents).  Then we found out Michael Jackson died.  Then we drove through Jackson, Tennessee where we found out Lorretta Lynn had a greasy, greasy, greasy, divey, greasy, did I say greasy? Spoon.  In the middle of nowhere.  Now, we are on our way out of Memphis, Tennesse through, that's right, Jackson, Mississippi.

In between all of those Jackson's is a Presley.  A Presley who fathered a Presley who would both marry and divorce a Jackson.

In order to understand how I felt at Elvis Presley's mansion home called Graceland this afternoon, first read his daughter's statement on Michael Jackson's death.  A statement she posted a little less than a month ago on her Myspace.

Lisa Marie's Blog

So, when we entered Graceland, the sadness of a short life of gargantuan fame really sunk in. I've said this before and I'll say it again - obviously I didn't know MJ or Elvis, but that's what's so amazing about both of them.  You didn't have to know them to feel like you did.  It was the music that connected you.

At the 1970 Ten Outstanding Young Men of the Nation Awards, Elvis accepted his award by saying this:

"When I was a child, ladies and gentlemen, I was a dreamer. I read comic books, and I was the hero of the comic book. I saw movies, and I was the hero in the movie. So every dream I ever dreamed has come true a hundred times . . . I learned very early in life that "Without a song, the day would never end; without a song, a man ain't got a friend; without a song, the road would never bend - without a song". So I keep singing a song. Goodnight. Thank you."

Who doesn't feel like that when they're a kid?  When they're an adult?  Whenever?!  The real question is, who actually succeeds at becoming that dream?  Not many people.  And how many of them end tragically.  Fuck prescription drugs.

When you walk through Graceland, some dude who's name doesn't matter and who no one knows narrates your tour.  As you walk from room to room he describes specific photos, pieces of furniture and knick-knacks - and their historical and emotional importance to Elvis' life.  Intermittently a clip from one of Elvis' songs would play in the background.  And very occasionally, Lisa Marie would talk about her dad.

The last stop on the tour is the "Meditation Garden" where Elvis Presley, his parents and his grandmother Minnie Mae (who lived to 89!) are all laid to rest.  (There's also a memorial for Elvis' twin brother, Jesse Garon, who died at birth).  Lisa Marie was only nine when he died.

The tour made me sad.  Sad that his house has become an epicenter of consumerism (there are probably 400,057 million giftshops).  Sad that Elvis' life was cut short because, even after "making it big," he still needed to take prescription drugs.  Sad that both he and MJ came from poverty, financially helped everyone in their families from parents to second, third, fourth, bazillionith cousins - only to die alone.  Sad that you can't have it all.  Just plain sad.

So Elvis, thank you for arranging, adapting, recording and producing so many awesome songs.  Thank you for singing.  Thank you for jiggling.  I hope you are jiggling somewhere up there in the Big Rock Candy Mountain.  And... maybe, MJ is up there with you, doing some kind of jiggly Moonwalk.  

Noodles Float. People Don't. Unless They's Dead.

I will require you read the book I authored, "On the Necessity of The Necessary Noodle"

Dawgie!  Also, this guy and his possibly mom, possibly girlfriend, possibly someone he did not know, totally had noodles and floaties and that cool dawgie.  They were prepared.

Two Girls, Three Dudes, Some Beers, A Cabbie, Theater Students and a Waffle

So, imagine this like one of those Axe commercials - where - it quickly cuts between stuff happening, hot chicks, something crazy, then a dude in the shower with Axe bodywash, more stuff happens, things get crazy, more hot chicks, more Axe bodywash.  This was not at all like that.  There were three dudes.  Look at them!  Loooook at them!

Just kidding, that stuff did happen.  Hot chicks and Axe bodywash galore! 

Sabrina skipped over a very important, interesting and obviously sausage-festy evening between Jenks, Katie and Mabel "Butt-rub"'s home and the ad interim Winston-Salem home of one, Isaac Tate "The Mafia Accuser" Klein (which, incidentally, was also home to some other dudes).

We played some nerdy sit around and drink wine and nerd-out party games at this dude's house (are you counting all the sausages?)   Then we went to a second party, a celebration of some dudes' birth (sausage!)  Then we met an amazing cab driver, who never took more than 47 seconds to pick us up (I'm pretty sure he was from the future/had teleporting power).  Then we went out to this brewery bar which had 30 people in it (25 of which were the last legs of a wedding party... I bet you are wondering if the bride was there... yes, yes she was).  The dudes, which included Isaac  Tate "The Beer Drinker" Klein, his friend/co-director/writer of a musical they are directing down in Winston-Salem Matt "The Cat" Party Hat, and Waffle Pete, all had beers.  The ladies, Sabrina and I, had our standard alcoholic mixies.  Then the bar closed.  (Did you read that as if you were watching an Axe commercial?  Can you, in fact, smell the clean?)

Then we went back to Isaac Tate "The I live in Winston-Salem for a couple of weeks in order to direct a musical I wrote" Klein's house and met his other roomie CJ.  Then we all hung out on the back porch and giggled for a couple of hours.  Then Waffle Pete "Street Beat" got stressed out about all of the giggle and wandered off to bed.  Then we giggled at Waffle Pete's stressing and continued to giggle until we were so giggled out that we wandered off to bed too.

Sleep.  Wake-up.  Shower.  Change.  Brush teeth.  

Then................ we went out to a yummy breakfast and took the above photos (from left to right: Isaac Tate "I got a 'stache" Poopshoot Klein, Waffle Pete "Nerd Alert" Shinglewood, and CJ "Two-Breakfasts" Stripes.

Then we left. 

End.

Big Love

Savannah! The land of Spanish moss, southern gentility, pirates, and well-behaved kids. In short, everything good. We arrived on...I have no idea, as I have lost track of space and time. But we got in and checked into a hotel called...something, I don't remember and I wasn't paying attention. It was owned by two lovely people who I thought hated me at first but were just good weirdoes. They had an awesome cat that they referred to as their child, and the gentleman collected toy cars, which made me nostalgic and slightly sad for my step-dad, Kevin, who inevitably would have spent the entire trip, had he been there, discussing said cars with him.

Granted, there were two enormous dead cockroaches in the hotel room, but I've been told that's just a given in Georgia, like we should feel ripped off if they weren't there. And everything interior in the south is freezing. Just ridiculous. It's ninety outside and three degrees inside. Get some moderation, South. The first night, we meandered through town as bugs continued their assault on my legs, moving up and venturing to new and exciting spots such as my butt and arms to feast upon. We ended up at The Pirate House, which, guess what, was once a house of pirates. And stuff. And now it's a really tacky, overpriced theme restaurant, which is like eating at the Pirates of The Caribbean at Disneyland, except you can't chuck rolls at people on the boats going through the ride. Midway through our meal, which was forgettable sans my discovery that if you put crab in something, I will eat it, a pirate of indeterminate gender started avasting and whatnot to the huge number of kids who were there. Oh, and the people at the table behind us who were celebrating their eight thousandth wedding anniversary kept talking to us because they were so fucking sick of each other after all those years of marriage. So this pirate is going on and on about the history of the restaurant and pirates, all of which completely contradicted a rather Obama-hope-esque white-washing of pirates Linda and I read about at a Chicago museum. (pirates are the ultimate socialists, was that message). This was more skull and crossbones, one 'fact' being that 60% of Savannah's dirt contains human bones. Neato! The kids, because they are good, well-behaved Southern kids, were awed by this. Then came the ghost pictures, aka, fool tourists into thinking they're taking pictures of ghosts by instructing them to take pictures of glass windows with flashes on and then pointing out orbs. As much as I actually DO believe in ghosts, I was like whoa come on now.

Afterwards, we tried to find a good bar and wandered into one featuring one of those chicks who's like 'well, I hate Savannah because I moved to the mecca of sophistication that is Florida and now I've tasted liberty and can't go back but still weirdly did move back and think I'm a huge outcast cos I have a tattoo.' So we wandered on to a pub, where we met an awesome bartender named Laurie who introduced Linda to sweet tea vodka. If you are her parents, stop reading now. Okay. Anyway, we also met Colin, who is going to be me and Linda's polygamist husband when polygamy inevitably becomes legal due to the complete collapse of morality that will be brought about if gay marriage occurs, right after humans are then allowed to wed toasters and miniature horses. I, personally, am pumped, that is if armageddon doesn't occur RIGHT AFTERWARDS. What's that, you say? Iowa, Massachussets, umm some other really shamefully redneck state that is STILL somehow more forward thinking and fair minded than California haven't all turned to pillars of salt? Well, have you tried licking anyone from that state lately? SALTY. Anyway, Colin enjoys laughing at people as much as we do, and has some job we can't talk about, which duh he's in the CIA, kay.

The next day, we toured the Mercer Mansion. I'm not sure how much this will make sense because I could write an entire blog on its own about Midnight In The Garden of Good and Evil but instead I just say read the book, it has some really interesting insight into Southern culture and Savannah high society. So before the Mercer Mansion, we toured the Bonaventure Cemetery, which is where the cream of Savannah are buried. Linda may have barfed up a little sweet tea vodka there. Maybe.

Anyway back to the Mercer House. Let me provide some background: the house was owned by the flamboyant (translation: so, so gay) Jim Williams, who is essentially singlehandedly responsible for the resurrection and restoration of historic Savannah. So for a city full of history-loving southerners with extensive love and pride for their home, his 'eccentricities' (GAY GAY GAY) were overlooked and possibly even down-right tolerated. To the extent that when he killed a kind of skeazy lover of his who was essentially blackmailing him, the community totally sided with his claim of self-defense, even though by his own admission, it was primarily an 'emotional' self defense. ('He was insultin' mah pride' in Bill Compton Voice) We were told no questions would be answered about the crime itself, but our tour guide, who was a robot, incidentally, and was fond of telling us what he 'truly believed' Jim Williams would have done had he been there to guide us (he died from a heart attack in the early nineties) requested we ask whatever we pleased. BTW, from what I've read about Williams, I am pretty sure he would have let me and Linda tour the house based on liking our style, followed by him forgetting to collect money from us because he was drunk, giving us sweet tea vodka, and then sitting with us on the veranda while we all made fun of ugly people. SO. The tour guide completely referred to the murder as an 'incident' which is what I love about the South. No one can ever just call something what it is, they have to come up with a polite euphemism for it.

Then we went to Paula Deen's restaurant, Lady and Sons, where we essentially ate sticks of butter. And then went drinking. Again. With Colin and this time, bartender Laurie! She took us to a local dive bar which I will say is my first time drinking anywhere with a confederate flag and I won't lie, it made me uncomfortable. The jukebox ate our money, I somehow spent forty bucks, and a long haired guy who looked like he was in Los Lobos kept asking me what my favorite Depeche Mode song was.

The next day, we had lunch at a place called the Gryphon, which was delicious and gave me a free cookie. We perused the SCAD kids' art, which was FAR better than most art school stuff, I will admit. Then we went to a wildlife reserve where we saw almost no animals, I squealed over baby alligators for about ten minutes before realizing they were rubber, and ended up way behind schedule.

In other words, it was fucking awesome.

Dragonfly sex

So we waved goodbye to New York, and after getting stuck on the west side highway, were more than ready to get the fuck out of the city. After a few hours and a second round of Cracker Barrel, Linda and I, plus our newest addition, British Waffle Pete, headed to Weems, Virginia, current residence of Linda's friend James. A bromance immediately sparked between Waffle Pete and James, one that led us ladies to respect their privacy as they exchanged tales of action and adventure in resonant voices at early hours of the day. We ate at a car wash, went to Colonial Williamsburg, and debated purchasing tin flutes and drums. This ended with us passing, much like I made the decision to not buy Deliverance: the novel, which I planned to read aloud to Linda when we were in the darkest, scariest parts of the South.
Then we packed up and left, heading towards Chapel Hill, where the wonderful Katie Fafani had food ready for us when we turned up, starving, tired from a busy day of sitting at a beach in Virginia full of wonderful levels of white trash. A chick covered in confederate flag and white pride tattoos frolics naively with her friend's interracial child. Magical! Does she know or does she just think the kid is really tan? We also got to watch teenagers chase each other with jellyfish on a stick, flinging it in disgusted glee at one another. Oh, youth.
But anyway, Chapel Hill. Good vintage, fun people, great food, and of course, quarry swimming. Something I've never done. I've had a lifelong pussy relationship with bodies of water that aren't swimming pools. And I'm sort of hesitant about swimming pools because people pee in them. I hate people. And pee. So I was nervous about the quarry. But it all worked out wonderfully, despite us wandering off the wrong path because we were following people who thought we knew where we were, and then not having a noodle. See, I have often bemoaned the uselessness of noodles. I hate when people bring them over because they're basically bigger than the pool and suck. BUT when you're floating around a 65 foot deep quarry, they're useful.
I ended up swimming almost the entire length of the quarry in a desperate bid for exercise after all the sitting in a car I've been doing. It was exhausting. And awesome. And I probably have a swamp disease in my arm because I swam with my newly completed and healing tattoo, which is totally against the rules and a bad plan and do not follow my example.
Then we bid a sad goodbye to Katie, Jenkins and Mabel, who will miss rubbing her ass on Linda's leg. But subconsciously, Linda longed for Mabel's rubbing so much that she left her credit card at a bar and we had to come back. It was timely because we passed a bunch of buzzards eating a deer, which was gross and awesome and great and gross again.
Now we're in Charleston, which is beautiful and quiet and full of BBQ. We ate at the BBQ where Steve Colbert launched his presidential campaign, which lasted like a week. What you have to love about the south is all the antiquity and history, and enormous paintings of Steven Colbert.

New York, I love you, but you're bringing me down.

We made. We made it half way through this here trip around them country stuffs. Last week, we landed in New York, and I say landed because everyone seems very confused about us having a car, and also make humorous assumptions like how we'll just fly back from here, because, fuck, after you've been to NYC, where else is there to go?

I love this place because I lived here so long, and because I adore my friends, but honestly there's something that reflects the spirit of the city where all anyone asks me about is how weird and horrible the people must have been everywhere else and weren't we scared to be nowhere and etc. Leave New York, everyone. Just for a long weekend. There's a lot of stuff out there.

I could turn this into a disparaging commentary on the decline of my once favorite place on earth, a city that felt like a living, breathing entity that's now a hologram of itself, a place that flatlined but was never informed it was dead, but I'll try to limit myself by just suggesting every 'artist' in the area, every liberal arts student who finds everything so boring and are so frustrated by how boring is in and so they have to be bored but really it's not fun to find the irony in everything, should read the Handbook For The Recently Deceased. It'll explain a lot. Oh, and ladies? Give the tom boy look back to the twinks, and then your boyfriends can shave their grungy, patchy beards off and embrace their masculinity in a less desperate fashion.

What happened to the LES? It was never the Desperately Seeking Susan nightilfe I wanted, more like pro skaters and guys from Interpol doing coke in the back of Dark Room, but it wasn't a haven for bridge and tunnel popped collars who think eight bucks for a bottom shelf drink is a steal. LAME. Club after club full of people 'slumming' and drinking overpriced cocktails. But I don't come for the strangers, I come for my friends, and they are all still overwhelmingly full of awesome. I'd rather catch an STD in Mars Bar with Jacquellyn any day than be forced to pretend to dance to the same motown shit in every bar. Which, incidentally, I dread when that trend hits L.A.

Everyone I know here is so wonderful, smart, and sick of this place that I think there's only one solution: we all move to some amazing new place, where the rent is filthy cheap and we can occupy entire city blocks, open our own galleries, make our own art, and not spend days developing a pricey drinking problem in response to the twenty three year old anorexic aspiring model who looks like a boy in a sports bra who thinks she's the fucking shit and dances for the mirror and an imagined audience, and will go on to some undeserved position of power at Tribeca Films because her daddy runs a segment of it.