Today, a day of complete freedom – boyfriend gone for the day and night, nowhere to be, nothing to do. So what did I do? Clean out my closet, and mop my floors, in the early part of the day, while it was still foggy. Somehow, even with two huge garbage bags of clothes and shoes ready for the Goodwill, my closet is still full. I can’t figure it out. I’m not really a clothes buyer. How come I have all these evening dresses? It’s fairly bizarre.

Getting back to the cleaning, though, to help me on my way, I popped a bootleg of Radiohead’s South Park concert into my CD player, and this was the soundtrack of my Sunday journey. Even if I am cleaning, I am listening, at the same time, to a truly stellar show. Life in 2004 = pretty damn good.

The Radiohead South Park show was on July 7, 2001. South Park is in Oxford, England, Radiohead’s hometown. The band had taken a long break from touring, and this was their first show in Oxford in a long time, and the show was a huge deal to the local fans who had followed Radiohead since the beginning. And about 45,000 of those local fans turned up. 45,000!

I’d already seen Radiohead twice in the months before the Oxford show – once in L.A. when they played only three concerts in the Fall of 2000 (Toronto, New York & L.A.) and again in Verona, at the Verona Arena in May 2001. So I knew how fantastic it was all going to be before I heard this bootleg of the Oxford show. Radiohead in the studio makes music that you listen to lying on your couch, stoned, entranced. Radiohead on stage reaches out, grabs your spinal cord, and makes you jump around like a deranged puppet.

But this Oxford show is beyond fantastic. It is more like orgasm. Radiohead comes home, plays a hometown gig, before 45,000 screaming, ecstatic people. It is heart crushing for someone like me, who is just way too into it to begin with.

The South Park bootleg is two CDs, an hour long each. Two hours of bliss, but at the end, the final song, something happens that always makes me cry. No, not cry but totally break down. That is how powerful this moment is.

In 1993, Radiohead got their big break with the single “Creep.” People who don’t know who Radiohead is (like many of the people reading this right now) would probably recognize this song. It made Radiohead into the radio star, but the band got sick of drunken frat boys screaming “play ‘Creep!'” at shows and after a while, refused to play it anymore. (Even though it is a really GREAT song.)

Fast forward to the South Park show, when after the two hours of bliss, the band were about to depart with a song called “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” a mellow, sweet love song. After ten seconds, they stop and Thom Yorke, the lead singer, yells “Fuck It!” After a minute, they launch into “Creep.” After years of not playing it.

Those 45,000 people go Totally Insane. The noise is like the roar of a thousand lions on Ecstasy. It is an incredibly beautiful sound – 45,000 people, all so totally happy. At that point, it was raining on them, but they could not have cared less.

And they were singing. They sing along all the way through the show, but they are louder here than ever – it’s as though Thom Yorke doesn’t even need to bother. They – the mass of people and the band – sing together:

I wish I were special
You’re so fucking special

But I’m a creep, I’m a weirdo.
What the hell am I doing here?
I don’t belong here.

But they all DO belong where they are at that moment. Sharing an evening of bliss with a LOT of other people, with a band who really cares. I had to sit down on the floor once again at the end of the CD and cry.

The house clean, and my tears dried, I went down to the beach and watched the ocean in silence for awhile. Thinking about the noise of the crowd, the whole time.

I am not one of those people whose name or number is always drawn out of the hat. I mean, raffles, bingo, the California State Lottery. I am OK at games of skill like video poker and betting on the ponies, but if it has anything to do with randomness, my number won’t be pulled.

On the first Wednesday of every month, there is a raffle at my local farmers market, with giveaways of gourmet salsa and smoked fish, and every time I say “why do I want to stand there and be cheated, once again, out of that bag of blood oranges.” Still, every time, I go. I never win. There is one woman there every week, who drives around the neighborhood in a pink dune buggy thing with her bouffant white hair-do blowing in the wind. She always wins. Always! She is one of those people whose number always gets picked out of the hat.

OK, I did win once, on a rainy day when no one else was there. I won a bratwurst on the very day I had started a diet.

Sometimes the not winning is a big fat plus. Like today. My number did not get pulled out of the hat. But today, I had jury duty, and walked away from that lottery with a big smile on my face.

Jury duty is weird. You are stuck with all these people in a big room for most of the day, and once in a while someone gets on the loudspeaker and calls off names and you can see everyone get nervous. After the third or so calling-of-the-names, all the people left waiting look at each other uncomfortably, because the chance of getting selected out of the sixty remaining people is a lot higher than it was in the morning when there were 200 people there.

It’s also so trippy to watch people, hour after hour. For instance, the cell phone people. These are the people who really can’t stop talking, ever. Why is it that people who talk constantly on cell phones are more obnoxious than most? Is it because they talk louder, or what they talk about (nothing?) When I talk on my cell phone, I hide my face and lower my voice and am furtive, if not slightly embarrassed. To me, talking on a cell phone is right up there with getting caught with a Rick Steves book somewhere.

Anyway, today at jury duty, there was a woman who, I swear, called eighty people while in the Juror’s Lounge, one after the other. Occasionally she’d get through. Mostly, she left a lot of messages. I was trying to read my “Story of Spain” book. So this is the scenario. I am reading:

After about 40,000 BC or so something profound was happening to human culture, not only in things like tool-making but the probable invention of language, which allowed cultural transmission on an unprecedented scale. INTERRUPTION. “HELLO. Gail? This is JOANIE! I’m at JURY DUTY! Can you BELIEVE? I’m REALLY bored! Oh? You’re at WORK? You can’t TALK? OK then, BYE!”

I take a breath, read some more:

In contrast to the painfully slow development of the Old Stone Age- INTERRUPTION. “Hi Brandi! This is JOANIE! I’m at JURY DUTY! Where are YOU? I’m SO BORED!” the innovations of the new era arrived at breakneck speed “COURTNEEEYYY! This is JOAAANNIIEEE! I’m at JURY DUTTEEE!!!!” within the span of three millennia, the blink of “AMY!” an “DEBBIE!” eye in prehistoric “LINDIE!!!” time.

Thankfully, my number did not get called and then at 11:30 they let us out for a two hour lunch. Upon returning, we sat for one half hour and then were let go. Joanie did not get on her phone again (perhaps the battery was dead, or she was out of time). As much as I say I’d be willing to sit on a jury, I am always glad for the escape, and it is at these times I am happy not to be a winner of the lottery.

It’s not even 5:00 P.M. and I am already exhausted. The good times are killing me – again. I am cooking a chicken and I am going to make a pot-pie, then I am going to pass out.

Yesterday there were something like five million people here. On the beach, you couldn’t even take a step without kicking someone in the head. It was a weird day. I was in a weird mood, my boyfriend was in a weird mood. It’s a holiday thing I think. We went to his sisters house, and hung out by the pool with sister, sister’s girlfriend, brother, brother’s wife and rugrats, and Shelly & Missy, happeners upon happenstance. I was feeling beyond pissy, but managed to cope, and then we all decided to walk down to the beach.

The next event was significant in many ways. What was the event? It’s sort of freaky, sort of embarrassing, and sort of totally pissed me off. Basically, I got hassled by the cops. And this is the second time in Two Weeks that this has happened to me. Three, if you count getting pulled over for doing 31 MPH in a 25 MPH zone, but that was a few months ago.

We were walking, and it is true, I had a cocktail in my hand. But this is freaking Ocean Beach, where I have seen guys carrying signs that say “I have pot for sale.” The cops saw us, all carrying drinks, and walked right up to me. Me! Why not someone else? I used to be a geek-magnet – now I am a cop-magnet. There was a tall, skinny guy cop and a short, slender, blond chick cop.

Man, thinking back now I am so lucky nothing truly bad happened, because I immediately had a chip on my shoulder and so did Mizz Blond Thing. I am so lucky, because they have the power to take me down, and in other parts of the country they would have done it.

But I am sorry – I have total respect for our police force but they pissed me off. For one thing, carrying a drink on the street seems to me to be a bit of an awkward offense. Who cares? Also, MBT starting shouting “got ID? got ID?” at everybody, but then when we said, uh, sure, she didn’t look at it. Furthermore, after I looked her straight in the eye, told her I lived here, and what the fuck??? she told me one of our party was drunk (doy – like the other 8.99999 million people in OB) and was I going to take care of the drunk one? Then, after I stupidly Touched Her Shoulder, assuring her no more wrong would be done, both of the cops went into Fucking Starbucks. Starbucks! No more donuts, only maple scones.

The cool thing about this incident was I was so annoyed about the intrusion that I forgot about what a bad mood I was in, and the rest of the day was great. Fireworks over the ocean, a bottle of incredible wine (because it is legal to drink it on the beach – just not on the street)…

Today was a rough day and I was very careful not to get into any potentially hazardous situations. Some pot-pie should cure my physical ills, but I’m not sure I’ll recover from Getting Busted so rapidly.

Once, after I had been living in Venice for some months, I ran into a Venetian friend on a cold winter day. I was wearing a beanie, and I guess some other items that made me stand out, because my friend said “Shannon, you look so American today.”

I said to him, “I AM an American.” Which I was then, and I am now. And I’ll forever be. Because you can’t change what you are, and even if I could I wouldn’t want to.

I feel so lucky sometimes, to have been born and brought up in California, because it is beautiful here, and I grew up loving the land. I know I have been blessed, to be born in America, if only because there is opportunity here, and if you work hard, you can make a good life for yourself. I know this is not the only country where this is possible, but it is all I have known. It is a lot easier for an Italian to come here, and to work and to live and even to own a business, than it is for me to even get a visa to live in Italy for a few months.

Lots of things about America frighten me. Our power, the way we toss it around. The right wing, and sometimes the left wing. The fact that we are not One Nation any more, but a nation of those who believe vs. those who don’t. The cost of health care and education. The fact that there are a gazillion Americans who don’t have enough to eat. I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth, and in fact have gone hungry before, and I can tell you, it really sucks.

But what do I do about any of it? I was donating money to some homeless shelter here until I found out they made people read the Bible in order to eat. Now I do nothing. NOTHING. And I always tell myself, pretty soon I am going to start doing something.

So, on this day of celebration, I’ll tell myself again, and maybe this time, I actually will do something to give back to the place that has given me so much.

I saw a bumper sticker today, that said “The Older I Get, the Better I Was.”

Better? Maybe not. But after seeing that, I tried to sort out all the things I once was. What was I before, and what am I now?

Getting older really sucks when you start to think about this shit. Lots of people say, “oh, I am so much happier now that I am older.” OK, sure, but what do you lose, and what do you gain, beyond the losing of the looks/figure and gaining the experience/resume? I, for one, am sorely pissed about the one-chocolate-candy-adding-a-pound-to-my-tummy-problem. But I am way, way more upset, even to the point of tears sometimes, about the loss of my wide-eyedness. The loss of my innocence, if there ever was such a thing.

I sometimes talk myself into that “I am so much happier” thing. So yeah, age can cure you of anxiety and desperation (according to some people.) Maybe, you just stop caring about being emotional all the time. But the bottom line is, there is no such thing as happiness. There are only temporary cures for unhappiness.

Mi dio, how did this all come from a stupid bumper sticker? To be totally honest, this (the there is no such thing as happiness thing) is something I have believed all along. I was never wide-eyed or innocent – I was always old. It all comes down to less stamina and more hangovers. That is the root of the real problem. I’ve got to face that, and move on. Still asking the question, what was I before, and what am I now?

Oh my, what a weekend. Such a perfect day, glad that I spent it with you (yes, I watched Trainspotting the other day.)

Street fair. Hooked up with my boyfriend’s sister and her girlfriend – the sky was half cloudy and half sunny, making me & Mark’s sun/no sun bet a toss up. “Yo-” I ask Robin. “Is it foggy, or sunny?”

“I read your blog.” (This being like, 30 minutes after I wrote it.) “I have to say, it is sunny.”

Traitor! Blog reader! Fucker-upper! I should have lost the bet right then and there but, the fog continued to come in, and in the end we had to declare a push.

The rest of the day was very nice. I had a couple of conversations that I remember. One was with some dude when I was commenting on how a $5 beer in the beer garden was, well, sort of a lot of money for a beer.

“Control.” He said. ” If the beers are $5, you’ll drink fewer beers, thereby making the world better for everyody.”

Now, at the time, that made total sense to me. Yes, more expensive beers, less beers, less drunk people! But then I thought about how many $10 glasses of wine I have been known to inbibe, and also, I thought about how one could leave the beer garden and go into the nearest bar and drink a beer for like, $4.50.

Whatever. This is way too much to be thinking about on post-streetfair day. I did have another conversation that will be with me till my dying day.

While watching Wise Monkey Orchestra, a truly kick-ass funk band, a girl approched me. She wanted to know how I got my fuschia hair to stay fuschia. Because fuschia is hard to keep going. I explained how I slaved and worked in order to keep the pink and purple to last. We talked hair products.

She told me about some hair product from Nexus. “I’m a mortician. And this shit rocks.” She said.

I looked at her. “Er.” I said. “Do you mean, you do dead people’s hair?”

“Yep,” she said.

“Er.” I said. “What is it like, fussing with Dead People hair?”

“Well,” she said. “It probably doesn’t pay as much as it should.”

We left it at that.

Today, a foggy sky and a cold wind… yesterday was exceptional, in terms of beach weather. Today, it is back to June Gloom. And I, today, for the first time, kicked major ass at Bocce Ball (consistently – not randomly) and whooped some boot-hey at Shuffleboard. How do I explain this new Kick-Yo-Assed-Ness?” Can’t explain it. Could be summer is here, or my new Fitness Program is kicking in. Whatever.

Today is the day of Ocean Beach’s annual street fair. There are booths all up and down Newport Street, and live music, and the streets will be full of drunk people by, well, let’s say two o’clock.

This is a party town by nature anyway, so street fair day is an especially partysome day. We have our first appointment at 11:30.

It has been foggy for most of June. June Gloom, without a break, pretty much. So yesterday I made a bet with my boyfriend that it would be foggy most of the day, with maybe a little break in the late afternoon. He said that it would be sunny all day. We bet the first two rounds of drinks at the fair since betting one round wouldn’t make a lot of sense. I should have known better though, since at the time he was totally fleecing me at poker and, one should know when you are on a losing streak, one should not bet on other things.

Well. 9:00 A.M. and the sun comes out! Color me shocked. It’s as though the collective consciousness of the entire community was so into the sun coming out on this very special day, that it burned right through all the fog.

So now we have sun for the first time in days, and I don’t even care about losing the bet. Well I do, but he just cleaned all the windows in the house and that is worth something, right there.

It’s pretty fantastic out there right now, let me tell you. And we have a ticket to party. What could be better than that?

I’ve become a sort-of slave to my blog. That is, I feel I need to write in it every two or three days, to keep it going, to keep me going. This is all fine and good when there are things going on to write about. But what of those days when you are in Valium mode? When you’ve got no visions popping into your head that you could write about?

So I just sit here and write. It’s possible that I am all written out, as I am trying to finish various projects before a certain June 30 deadline. I am way behind, bit off more than I can chew, and also, am worried that it all will be lame. I live in fear of being boring.

So now I’m in the In-Between. In between scattered and grounded, in between flying and bedridden. In between planning and doing. In between words pouring out, and words hiding. Somewhere in there, is where I am at.

I’m not on Valium – I wish I had some though.

On a happier note, yes, it is true, Wilco’s “A Ghost is Born” is the #1 seller in the amazon.com CD department. Yes, it is true, it is a brilliant record. Everyone else I listen to is turning out less than stellar albums. But Wilco… thank you for making 2004 a better place to visit.

Bill Clinton has the #1 book, Wilco the #1 CD. So fantastically American! It makes me very happy that this completely deserving, incredibly talented band is getting the recognition they deserve.

It’s the only place I’m not In-Between. “A Ghost is Born” is my church right now, and the guitar solo in the song “Muzzle of Bees” is the sermon. I pray that these moments continue to lift me.

I am ecstatic, because today the new Wilco record was released and now I am listening to it on my CD player, not my computer like I have been doing for two months now.

Sounds that pierce me, rhythms that resonate within me. This record is definitely the best I’ve heard so far this year. There is something oh, so satisfying about that first listening on your player, loud, and the knowing that indeed, this is music that you are going to play over and over and love for a very long time. Music that will make you look up from whatever mundane task you are doing and make you think, as long as sounds can make me feel this way, life is worth living.

It’s true I love to eat, and drink, and to travel. But I must admit, if there is one thing I could not live without, it is music, and especially these nights of discovery, where I am buried in sound, and sound that I can bury myself in over and over. It is a clean addiction, one that won’t kill me, or break me financially. So bury me in sound, and make it really, really loud. No, louder, please.

How do you write about New York City? Sometimes I forget how incredible New York City is. New York is our Barcelona, our Paris, but also, so very American. I love Chicago, and New Orleans, and Hollywood. I used to love San Francisco, and now love San Diego. Portland and Seattle have their charms. But there ain’t any city in this country that is as wacky, vibrant, raw, and inebriating as New York City. New York is a giant cement body, the streets are arteries split open wide, and people are the blood spilling out. New York is a screaming monster, a manipulative mother, and the best chef in the world making all the food you can eat, if you can afford it.

I arrived on Friday night and got into Sister Rita, the reggae singer’s, cab. There is something very special about that first New York cab ride after a couple of years away. New Yorkers drive with their front bumper, like Italians do. There is that speed factor. And the getting very close to other cars factor. Rita handled her cab as though she had eyes on both sides of her head as well as in the back, like most New York cabbies do.

I had a dilemma. Should I drop my bag at the cheap Times Square Hotel I had booked and then cab down to the restaurant where the party had already begun? Or should I go straight to the party, bag in tow? Rita thought I should drop the bag first, and I agreed, until we got stuck in a little traffic jam that delayed us for a few minutes. “I’ve changed my mind,” I told Rita. “I’ll go straight to the restaurant.” Rita grunted yes.

Finally we got to a point under the East River where we came to a V in the highway that would take us to either Greenwich Village, where the restaurant was, or Midtown, where the hotel was. A half second before we reached the split, Rita, barely hesitating, said “are you sure you want to carry your bag with you to your party?” “No! No!” I screamed. “Take me to the hotel first!” She veered to the right, barely missing the giant cement partition thing, and we went on our way towards Times Square.

Rita dropped me at the hotel and I checked into the cheapest hotel in NYC, the Portland Square. It’s a good thing I am not squeamish. Bullet-proof (I think) glass separates you from the desk guy. There is a line for the payphone in the lobby. The vending machine is empty except for a few random tubes of Certs. It is not glamorous, in fact it is pretty much a total dive. My room was tiny, with a single bed and a sink, but had a large TV with satellite reception. I dropped my bag and got out of there.

Now it was 10:00 P.M. on a New York Friday night. Outside it was warm and smelled like anticipation, if there is such a smell. I walked to 5th Avenue and got a cab downtown. I met with old friends and new in a loud, hot space. We ate pizza and gelato and drank wine. Later, some of us would drink warm beer in a lame pub, and then went back uptown, where the search for a bar that served expensive cocktails was unfruitful. 1:00 A.M., and they were all closed! Dorothy Parker is turning in her grave. Down at Times Square, the teeming mass wore tank tops and short skirts, but I didn’t want to drink at TGI Fridays, I wanted to drink at the Algonquin Hotel.

Everyone retired, and I went back to my room and stayed up until 4:00 A.M. watching “Secretary” with Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader. I can’t imagine a better place to watch a twisted movie than a cheap hotel room in Midtown Manhattan.

Saturday in New York. Sunny, beautiful, really exceptional. Who could not want to pack up and move to New York when the sky is so blue and everything seems so clean and the streets and cafes and shops are all filled with people? I want to move to Manhattan and spend my Saturdays sunbathing at Battery Park. We walked around and went into shops where there were millions of people shopping for millions of items. Eventually (thankfully) we got to a cafe and had a glass of wine. I think this is the first Saturday in about 10 years where it was 3 P.M. before my first glass of wine. It was like being on the weekday plan.

Saturday night was the big to-do for the 3rd Anniversary of SlowTrav.com, the kick-ass web site for travel freaks and wanna-be travel freaks and occasionally, just freaks. There was drinks first, and then dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown. Some of these people have become great friends, and all because of the Internet. Some of these people I have never seen before, and possibly will never see again. There was a lady with a finger puppet she passed off as a living creature (I am so clueless I fell for it.) There was untouched Sprite and Coke on our table and several empty bottles of wine and beer at dinner’s end. There were large platters of jellyfish and fried quail. I think I stopped eating after the 5th course. We had the most raucous table and it was a lot of fun.

After dinner we went to some bar and drank cocktails, then went back uptown. I had to get up at 8:00 to get to the airport; otherwise I would have been sorely tempted to go to a club. I didn’t want to New York weekend to end. It was a small taste, but I think it was enough that I want to get back very soon, and for longer, the next time.