Another One Goes By
While I didn't tell a soul that it was my birthday yesterday, preferring to be under the radar, secretly I planned on having a fun day. Luckily, I choose a good time to take off, in that the weather was gorgeous - like 80 degrees and sunny - and we were coming off a show Saturday night, so there was naturally a bit of a letdown at the gallery, a changing of the gears, if you will, as we transition into the next exhibit. My plan was to get up early, read the paper at the cafe around the corner, and then come home and finish a story I've been working on forever, one that's four weeks late and driving me insane. I figured I could do this in three hours.
Unfortunately, I was feeling good, and just didn't want to ruin things by trying to write, so I instead made some design changes here and listened to A.) The Best of Blur B.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Show Your Bones c.) the 2nd side of The Kinks' Ultimate Collection (all three in their entirety) which had me in a upbeat mood, visual work and good music having this effect on me.
Around 1:00 pm I took off for the SFMOMA, thinking the Bruce Nauman exhibit was still up. (Don’t ask me why I didn't look this information up beforehand.) However, I decided about half way there to stop for a drink, just to kick start the afternoon. For some reason I was drawn to this dive bar that I had once spent a New Year's at, probably twelve years ago now, where my buddy was shooting dice with the bartender for fifteen-dollar shots, and he got struck, bad - I mean he ended up dropping a hundred bucks in less than a half-hour - and stumbled out of there as faded as I've ever seen someone (she felt guilty for taking his money so every time he bought her a drink she reciprocated and gave him a free one), where he then proceeded to find a shopping cart and, before we knew what happened, hop inside and drive down Powell (one of the steepest streets in the city), weaving in and out of traffic at like forty miles an hour, in a fuckin' shopping cart, and man, from where we were standing I thought he was done for.
Anyway, for some reason I decided to go to this same bar, planning just one cocktail, but low and behold, the most adorable Filipino girl was behind the counter, and there were only like two or three other people in there, so right away we started talking and hitting it off, and when she learned it was my birthday she started buying me shots, and then I started buying her shots, just because her smile was so adorable, and before long she had busted out her fiddle and was playing these old Irish folk songs for me, and at a certain point it felt like we were in a Scorsese soundtrack, and I was so touched and inspired and stoked. It was that nice of a moment.
To make a long story short, I didn't leave until 5:00 pm and had just enough time to see the lame Matisse sculptures at the MOMA, wander through the same old permanent collection I've seen at least a dozen times now, and then leave in disgust a half-hour later, really only jazzed about the CCA design posters on the 2nd floor, which was partially out of pride for having gone there.
So instead of my big day writing, an afternoon relaxing at the MOMA, a late lunch at the Embarcadero with some Chicken Katsu, and then a screening of Ocean's Thirteen, which was the list I had written out the night before, I ended up drinking most of the day, making a new friend in the process, and then stumbling home for a Royal Tenenbaums / BottleRocket double-feature in bed, where I was most comfortable, and where the absurdity of failing at every task hadn’t fully registered yet.
Now that I think about it, though, it was a fun day - I can't argue that - and if there's a pattern in my life it's this: nothing ever goes as expected, and when it does, I don't know how to recognize it anyway.
But you know what? I wouldn't change a thing.
(Well, that's a lie, but it sounded good, so please pretend that's how this piece ended.)
Unfortunately, I was feeling good, and just didn't want to ruin things by trying to write, so I instead made some design changes here and listened to A.) The Best of Blur B.) Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Show Your Bones c.) the 2nd side of The Kinks' Ultimate Collection (all three in their entirety) which had me in a upbeat mood, visual work and good music having this effect on me.
Around 1:00 pm I took off for the SFMOMA, thinking the Bruce Nauman exhibit was still up. (Don’t ask me why I didn't look this information up beforehand.) However, I decided about half way there to stop for a drink, just to kick start the afternoon. For some reason I was drawn to this dive bar that I had once spent a New Year's at, probably twelve years ago now, where my buddy was shooting dice with the bartender for fifteen-dollar shots, and he got struck, bad - I mean he ended up dropping a hundred bucks in less than a half-hour - and stumbled out of there as faded as I've ever seen someone (she felt guilty for taking his money so every time he bought her a drink she reciprocated and gave him a free one), where he then proceeded to find a shopping cart and, before we knew what happened, hop inside and drive down Powell (one of the steepest streets in the city), weaving in and out of traffic at like forty miles an hour, in a fuckin' shopping cart, and man, from where we were standing I thought he was done for.
Anyway, for some reason I decided to go to this same bar, planning just one cocktail, but low and behold, the most adorable Filipino girl was behind the counter, and there were only like two or three other people in there, so right away we started talking and hitting it off, and when she learned it was my birthday she started buying me shots, and then I started buying her shots, just because her smile was so adorable, and before long she had busted out her fiddle and was playing these old Irish folk songs for me, and at a certain point it felt like we were in a Scorsese soundtrack, and I was so touched and inspired and stoked. It was that nice of a moment.
To make a long story short, I didn't leave until 5:00 pm and had just enough time to see the lame Matisse sculptures at the MOMA, wander through the same old permanent collection I've seen at least a dozen times now, and then leave in disgust a half-hour later, really only jazzed about the CCA design posters on the 2nd floor, which was partially out of pride for having gone there.
So instead of my big day writing, an afternoon relaxing at the MOMA, a late lunch at the Embarcadero with some Chicken Katsu, and then a screening of Ocean's Thirteen, which was the list I had written out the night before, I ended up drinking most of the day, making a new friend in the process, and then stumbling home for a Royal Tenenbaums / BottleRocket double-feature in bed, where I was most comfortable, and where the absurdity of failing at every task hadn’t fully registered yet.
Now that I think about it, though, it was a fun day - I can't argue that - and if there's a pattern in my life it's this: nothing ever goes as expected, and when it does, I don't know how to recognize it anyway.
But you know what? I wouldn't change a thing.
(Well, that's a lie, but it sounded good, so please pretend that's how this piece ended.)
posted by Rob Simons at 7:35 PM
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