Tag Archives: Berkeley

Fun Times at the Starry Plough Open Mic

The Starry Plough in Berkeley has been around for quite some time—one of my dad’s friends says she used to play there in the ‘70s. When I was going to community college in 2001, one of my music classes had their final project at the Starry Plough open mic, but of course, I had something “more important” to do, and didn’t go.

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Last night was my third time performing there.

The list is long to sign up for Tuesday night open mic. It starts with a lottery; everyone’s name goes in a beer pitcher at 8 p.m. (Not there to sign up? Sorry! SOL.) Then, one at a time, a name is called and voila, you now get to sign up on the sheet thing.

 

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What if We All Just Started Creating Stuff?

Everything you’re doing is wrong. You don’t need that. Whatever you’re currently using is stupid. Get this instead. You’re not (thin, fit, happy) enough. Try it our way – for $29.99 – instead.

Everyday, we are surrounded by adverts, signs, bumper stickers, magazines, newspapers, stores telling us what to buy, think or do. How can a person even be themselves any more? How do we even know what our self, as a concept, the eternal “I”, is?

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Stephanie Plum, Lingering Thursdays, Books and a Schizo Red dog

Today is a long meandering day. Thursdays linger so long. It’s so strange how time can stop while you’re at work and then just chug on like a barreling train when you’re not.

Just trying to find some stability in this new world I’ve created. Some routines, traditions, relaxations.

Lately, books call to me. Books, books and more books. Fitting, since I’m interning at a book-publishing company filled with the types of books I like to read & write. Books I’d like to read and write but am not reading and writing.

My life instead has fallen into the hands of Mystery novel writer Janet Evanovich. My life waits on hold as I count the minutes until I can go pick up a copy of To the Nines, the next book in her hilarious rote series about Stephanie Plum, a completely incompetent bounty hunter, wooed at times by two separate men, one of which she loves, one of which she lusts after…endlessly…story after story, and of course, each book ends with a teaser to reel you into the next book. But they all start with enough info that you can pick up any book in the series and be clued in, or you can read them in order, which I prefer.

Of course, being a bestseller, it follows certain uniformities, but I can deal with that. Sometimes I get tired of “literature”. Sometimes I just want brain muck. Some way to spend all this free time I have to ponder my existence.

Hell, it makes me wonder what I used to do for fun! Cooking? Cleaning? Doing the Laundry? All those things got done, but I wouldn’t exactly call them fun.

What did I used to do for fun!! I have drawn the most euphemistic blank.

Moving to a new location brings with it certain adjustments like where do I hike? Where should I wash my laundry? I actually have to take my laundry to a laundromat? Is it cool to walk around the block late at night? Where do I grocery shop? Eat? See movies?

I tend to go back to my old neighborhoods. Berkeley can be infamously expensive. Oakland and Emeryville less so. And I liked my old hiking trails up in the Oakland Hills, but Tilden park is alright as well. That’s where I’ve been going as of late. Except not enough. Because this morning my dog was going completely berserk. She hauled each of her toys out of her crate and took them to the yard to desecrate their very existence, whipping her head back and forth and pouncing, running like a jackrabbit with a wolf on it’s tail, squatting like a big clown in order to pounce suddenly. Nothing was free from her antics. Not gardening gloves. Not the used-to-be-a garden. And certainly not her squeaky stuffed toy frog.

I’m not doing her justice by being such a homebody; I don’t want to walk anywhere or go anywhere or drive anywhere cause gas is to expensive and I check the odometer every second I’m on the road lately.

Oh yes. And the fridge has been empty for weeks! Domestic? ME?

Bonafied Berkeleyite?

My computer has been down for a while again (monitor gave out, waiting for new one to come.) and everything I own (books, cd’s, dvd’s, clothes, who knows what else) is in boxes. Then there’s this family funeral thing, starting two new jobs (and maybe another internship, I still don’t know) and I am completely lacking in the cool topics on my blog department.

I reminisce to the month of November when I was so bored at my job that I could come up with some new and engaging rant on a daily basis – whether it was eating bananas in front of my coworkers to sippin syrup. As I don’t have the old job or health care for that matter, neither of those topics are relishing at this point.

In other news, Berkeley is a trip. You just don’t know until you’ve lived here. There are so many overgrown yards, gray-haired activists, crazy bike riders, Obama posters as big as cars and extremely overpriced grocery stores I just can’t keep up.

Every other week there are people protesting in trees, with the police building barricades around the trees for the sake of who? The people in the trees? The people outside of the trees? Is everyone in Berzerkeley just up in the trees? Egads. I don’t know.

My dog loves the neighborhood. So many places to defecate. So many cats to sniff. So many bicycles to be afraid of. So many randomly barking dogs tied to the front steps while their owners are gardening who jump at us only to be choked to death and spun backwards by the leash while their owners hold their jaws closed and go tsk tsk Foo Foo!

We found out the windows in our apartment had been painted shut, along with the beautiful brass hinges from the original doors. Luckily my Father had a trusty pocket knife and his handy screwdriver “Big Bertha”. We were able to open a couple of the windows. Not that we necessarily want them open. Because of all the greenery there are more varieties of mice and spiders than I ever saw in the valley.

If I come back as a spider I am surely in trouble. I have smashed a brown one, a black and red one, some daddy long-legs (oh and please, save me from the pest-rights people who are going to come banging down my door as soon as this goes live) and amply sprayed a very large ugly brown something until it finally backed away from the window. I think it would have helped more if I had an amplifier. “BACK AWAY FROM THE WINDOW SPIDER! I CAN SEE WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND I DO NOT APPROVE!”

The former tenant was growing eggplant, edamame, peppers and long japanese cucumber, none of which have survived. There are surrounded on all sides by Milk Thistle and my dog. I could find more use for the Milk Thistle than I could for the defunct rotting vegetables my dog keeps hacking up on the carpet.

We plan on growing stuff – as soon as we obtain a rake and a spade and all that gardening stuff. I want to grow cherry tomatoes and some cool herbs. For cooking. Not for the other stuff those Berkeley people smoke. Na-uh. I’m wack enough as it is.