Colour Revolt: 5/2/08

So, San Francisco rules, right? Certainly, but I’m getting ahead of myself. When we landed blissful and exhausted in San Diego, our first move was to hit up the world-famous San Diego Zoo. Incredible. We saw a polar bear try his damndest to retrieve a red ball lodged in an underwater crevice in his tank. I watched him for maybe 15 minutes, his huge paw swiping at the unreachable ball with all the tenacity of a 12-year-old hurling his dad’s tennis racket at the football stuck in the uppermost branch of a front-yard magnolia. The koalas, the baby panda asleep perched high in the tree, his little Ewok legs dangling—it was almost too much. And, oh God, the camels. Let me tell you something about camels: they’re huge. Massive. All regal in their gold fur and boredom. They gave us sideways glances with all the celebrity disdain of the privileged. They might as well have been ashing their cigarettes in our faces. Also, a llama sneezed on Jesse, which was hilarious. And we saw two endangered bears boofing. The female didn’t seem too into it, but what can you do when you’re the last of your species? It’s called “captive breeding,” and God bless it.

What else? We ran barefoot in the Pacific, all of our first time to touch it, the worldwide water. It was massive and beautiful, and we got one hell of a sunset. And San Francisco, where homeless comedians crack bad Michael Jackson jokes for change and pelt you with drugs and you have to sprint to get away from them, where we saw the marvelous Breeders do an in-store at Amoeba Records and later caught the new Romero flick at this tiny theatre where the seats were church pews and the PA was ragged and dangling from chains.

Geez, and our buddy David Long works at Google, and he happened to mention that we should come by his workplace for a tour and a free meal. As we are broke, we were delighted to take up the offer. It was like this multicultural technology Willy Wonka world where they dished out grilled Mahi Mahi and Ben and Jerry’s instead of Everlasting Gobstoppers. The folks at the Google homestead were kind and generous, and, after making use of the public bikes (baby blue! with bright orange flags!), I have to say I left smiling.

That’s about it for now. I’m listening to Tom Petty, and I just got off the phone with my little brother, who rules. I got my three tour necessities: Airships by Barry Hannah, The Complete W.B. Yeats, and one of many Calvin and Hobbes collections. I never go on tour without them. Just started The Quiet American. Anybody read that? I got it from these two kindheared, gnomey booksellers outside the venue. We’re on a night drive to Vegas which would probably be way more fun if we had money to blow once we got there. But! Music to play, good times to be had. I can’t wait.