E & G's house

So yesterday Andrew and I stopped by the Roxie theater to see Ralph Nader and Matt Gonzalez speak, along with Cindy Sheehan and a few other progressives I hadn't heard of (the Mayor of Richmond?  really?).  We didn't sign anything, but I did find myself agreeing with a lot of what was said.  I didn't completely forget about being mad at Ralph Nader (ahem) but I just can't be mad at Matt Gonzalez... I just love that guy too much!  AND get this: he smiled at me and said "Hey" after his speech!  He was walking down the aisle toward the back of the theater, and Andrew and I were sitting on the aisle.  As he passed I was staring at him with a big dumb grin on my face, and he smiled back at me and whispered, "Hey."  YAYYYY!!!!  There was another very funny moment when Ralph Nader was introducing Matt Gonzalez and said, "I'm sure he will be Governor of California one day."  Matt Gonzalez took the mic and said, "I thought I was going to be Vice President!"  Ha.

So I was innocently Googling my name today, when I stumbled upon this weird-ass German rat website.  At first glance it seemed like some guy showing off his rats, but then I looked more closely at it and it seems to have a lot of photos of rats having sex.  Like, every other photo!  Um... I translated it into English but have not received any answers, as the translation comes out with stuff like:

Unfortunately I could not the two at their pleasure photograph that it presents itself as the place under the extreme corner sofa showing.

Well, I guess I can figure out what that means.  Anyway, the part I liked the best was about "Rusty," a Russian Blue Self, who "still slumbers peacefully and he dreams of Evita."  But wait, scroll down and you learn "But then he found favor in Evita."  There's a seemingly derogatory remark about Evita: "quite broad, this fur ball," and then you learn that "Evita has 8 healthy puppies."  Aw.
Nordsternchens-Rattennest (translated version)

Okay, so this is a little late, but I just now figured out how to upload photos from my cell phone to my computer.  Don't laugh, I am slowly catching up with the rest of civilization.  Anyway, these are a couple of photos from last Thursday, ie May Day, ie International Workers Day.  I met up with Andrew and a couple of his classmates on Muni, where a large group of SFSU students had swarmed and taken over an entire train. 

I'm just glad I knew what was going on, because if I had innocently been taking Muni and all of a sudden a mob of students pounding drums and chanting "Si se puede!" had appeared, I might have found it mildly irritating.  But as it was, it was pretty fun to be caught up in the excitement.  We (our little group, not the entire mob) stopped in the Castro for a couple of beers before the rally in Dolores Park, and then joined the march to Civic Center before everyone wandered off in different directions.  I'm not the most political person, so for me the best part was just being out in the sun.  But like I mentioned already it was easy to get caught up in everyone else's enthusiasm, which made the whole thing pretty fun in the end.

I'm so pleased by the trend of these little yogurt stands popping up all over the place.  I don't care if every celebrity in Hollywood is on this bandwagon, because that stuff is goddamn delicious.  I stopped at the Metreon yesterday while out running errands and treated myself to a yogurt with peanuts and chocolate chips.  When I was in Italy my favorite combination at the gelaterias was a scoop of yogurt with a scoop of chocolate, but this place only sold plain and mango flavors.  I guess because they bill themselves as "healthy."  Whatevs.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!  Plus, it came with this tiny little sugar cone perched on top like a top hat.  Adorable!  Unfortunately it was not the warmest day outside so I kinda froze to death while I ate out in Yerba Buena Gardens, but it was well worth it!

I did another batch of Kombucha yesterday, which is starting to be more routine since I have done it so many times now.  Funny that the first few times I made it I had to anxiously check the recipe every few minutes, and now I hardly think about it as I'm doing it.  Yesterday, however, I had to improvise a bit when I discovered that I was completely out of sugar (I'm sure I made a mental note to buy more the last time I brewed and used it all up, but apparently that note didn't make it out of my brain in time).  I decided instead of running to the store quickly (hey, I was still in my jammies) to use brown sugar, which was just sitting there in the cabinet wasting away.  I'm sure the recipe will still work, as I read on a KT website that any sweetened beverage can be used to brew Kombucha, but I'm a little nervous about the flavor in the end result.  Will just have to wait and see...

...because I will be working at the book store 5 days this week.  The families I work for are both out of town (Hawaii and England, respectively) so I foolishly volunteered to take on "some" extra hours at the store.  "Some" apparently translated to my manager as roughly 25 extra hours.  I'm not upset about it, really, since I can definitely use the money.  But still, ugh, the thought of being a full time retail worker again, even if only for one week, is not too appealing.  And it doesn't help that we recently got a new GM who loves nothing more than cracking the whip on upselling.  I'm sorry, but I just refuse to try to pressure people into buying more stuff than they want!  Hopefully I'll be able to stay under the radar this week and then go quietly back to my 15 hours a week. 
Enough about work though, let's hear a couple of songs I've been enjoying lately:

I'm pretty crazy about those Black Kids.  Still pissed that I missed them at Mezzanine, especially when I found out that one of my coworkers was there.  Apparently the show was crazy packed (the headliner was Simian Mobile Disco).  Maybe they'll come back around again after their full length comes out...  Anyway, this song was stuck in my head all day today, and actually I don't know if I would have made it through the entire day without this song to pep me up.  Not that I got peppy at any point, of course.

Okay, as far as Islands' "Arm's Way", I admit that I only downloaded this album because of the crazy weird album art.  I mean, WTF.  Really.  Anyway, I missed Islands' first album, so I had no idea what to expect.  So I was very pleasantly surprised.  It's a little weird, but not even a tenth of how weird I expected it to be based on that cover!

Despite being out and about early this morning, today was another one of those where no matter how hard I tried to motivate myself I just couldn't seem to get anything done.  Not even a free Ben & Jerry's cone could tantalize me out of the house today!  Wow.

So, overall the MGMT show was a lot of fun.  I showed up at Andrew's at about 5, we hung out for a bit and ate at Harvey's before heading off to Slim's.  The night was almost ruined when I was ticketed on Muni for not having a transfer, and issued a $50 fine.  The best part is, I had paid the fare!  I actually lost my transfer somehow, probably for the first time ever in my days taking Muni, and it was the day that the ticket inspectors were out.  Complete bullshit.  I may have made a bit of a scene, but hey, getting a ticket is very upsetting!  Anyway, there was another slight delay when we arrived at Slim's and I was told I had to dump out the rest of my green juice in the gutter before entering.  Fine, I get the rules, but the bag check girl (who I used to work with a million years ago at the book store) didn't have to hate on my green juice!  Whatev, she was the kind of person who considered a submarine sandwich to be a complete serving of vegetables.  ANYway, we got in and had a couple of drinks, and it wasn't too long before the opening act came on.  A very jammy 70's kind of band called Howling Rain.  Pretty good, but the crowd was definitely ravenous for MGMT.  Oh, the crowd.  There were so many young kids, mostly girls, crowding the floor!  Andrew and I managed to insert ourselves into a good spot near the front, but all sorts of giggling high school girls with MGMT shoelaces tied around their heads (I'm guessing in imitation of Andrew VanWyngarden, who was not actually wearing a headband for the show) kept shoving in front of us.  Whatever bitches.  Aside from the crowd, though, the show was good.  I had heard that some songs (specifically Electric Feel) didn't translate well live, but I thought it sounded great.  They pretty much played the whole album, and the more proggy songs sounded especially good live.  I was a little let down that they didn't play anything from the Time To Pretend EP, but the surprise second encore in which they sang "Brown Eyed Girl" was pretty sweet.  My only other problem was that they didn't really interact with the audience, but maybe in a few years when they have more touring experience they'll improve on that. 
Now I only have to wait a month until Beirut, which hopefully will attract a less douche-y crowd!

I know I need to write about the MGMT show, but first I have to post some YouTube vids I came across.... it seems the guy who was filming the Patrick show Andrew and I attended last year has finally uploaded more footage of the concert!  I am busily trying to rip them to my iTunes, but for now I'll just post the YouTube links:

A snapshot from our day of no activity: