Super Kittens!!!

Weez in ur boarding house, saving you from fiyerz

Jersey City- We CAN have nice things.

Last night, I went to see Blade Runner at the Loew's in Journal Square, which is, if you believe Nancy Sinatra, where her father decided he could be a singer after watching a Bing Crosby performance.   It is an amazing place.  Every surface is marble or velvet or gilded or carved or gilded and carved marble. The lobby is breathtaking... 

The place has had a rough go of it- it was converted into a tri-plex at one point and still bears the scars.  It was about to be knocked down for a parking garage or something before a bunch of concerned citizens started a non-profit to restore it to what it must of looked like in the 30s, when a skinny kid from Hoboken sat in the audience and realized he could be a star.

They're showing King Kong in June.  See you there.

What I did On My Spring Vacation, Part Two

After I left San Francisco,  I headed up the coast.  My main destination was Arcata, CA- home of the hippies, but I made a side trip to Bandon, Oregon- a town with a Radio Hut, and some shoppes selling fudge and pirate-themed tchotchkes.  And a lovely coastline:

Then it was back on the 101 and down to Arcata.  What a great drive.  The road would run along the ocean, and then into a grove of redwoods, and then back to the ocean, and then through the mountains...   A-mazing.   

The next five days were spent in Arcata, just hanging out with my friend Jodie, her boyfriend, Jhon, and their daughter, Lillian.  There were trips to the redwoods:

And to the beach:

One afternoon, I was alone in their apartment and suddenly a feeling of vertigo came over me.  My first reaction was "Damn, my blood sugar's dropping.  I should eat something."  Then I got scared for a moment, then the feeling passed.  A few minutes later, it happened again.   I decided it was time to get out of the house and find Jodie.  I met her on the street a few blocks away and she asked if I had felt the earthquake.   Suddenly, the confusion & dizziness made much more sense.   4.0 on the Richter Scale.  

We went to the Humboldt Bay Coffee Company, where we saw beans being roasted and I bought the most delicious Peruvian blend:

Then it was time to drive back to San Francisco for my flight home.  Again, the 101 is an amazing drive- more redwood forests, wine country, Marin County, and then the Bay:

After the quickest check in I've ever experienced (seriously, I checked my bag and made it through security in 5 minutes), I settled in with an Entertainment Weekly to wait for my flight. A few minutes later, my friend Evan sat down next to me.  Turns out he was in San Francisco on business.  No matter where I go, I always find someone from New Jersey.  And that's the way I like it.

Everybody Loves the Sunshine.

While I'm getting my vacation recap together, I'd like to direct you over to my other blog, where you will surely delight to early-90s footage of Alice in Chains cavorting at my former place of employment.

What I Did On My Spring Vacation, A Photo Essay in Several Parts

First stop, San Francisco, where I met the Larges:

We rode the cable cars and took the BART over to Oakland to see the Warriors get their asses handed to them by the Sonics.  

We went to Haight-Ashbury, where I bought a bunch of used CDs at Amoeba and eavesdropped on record store clerks geeking out over whatever record store clerks geek out over these days:

And can I say, I'm really proud of the fact that I don't care that I didn't know what the hell they were talking about.  I just marched up to the counter with Madonna's first album & Randy Newman's Little Criminals.  I also bought the new Magnetic Fields and an older Bonnie Prince Billy, lest you think I've gone soft.  Oh, and Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend, which I had on cassette and lost sometime in the mid-90s.   I think the clerk must have taken a shine to me, because there was an extra Bonnie Prince Billy CD in my bag.  Awesome.  Thanks, record store dude.  You were cute, in that record store dude way.

The line to get into the Trader Joe's in San Francisco is just as long as the one on 14th Street in NYC, except you wait in your car, rather than on the sidewalk:

Then we watched the sunset from the top of the Bank of America building:

Wow.  Pretty sweet, huh?   The next morning, I headed north.  I'll get to that tomorrow, since Blogger's being a pain in the ass with the image uploading.  Stupid Blogger.

Weekend Tourist Fun

I love when my extended family comes to visit, because they're fun and I don't get to see them very often. And because it gives me an excuse to do touristy things that I normally wouldn't, like go to Top of the Rock. Here's the view to the north:

And to the south:

Step aside, Empire State Building, got to make room for Jersey in the photo. I also enjoyed the room with the motion-activated, light-up walls, which answered the age-old question, "What if Tron was sponsored by Target?"

Then I bought a Battlestar Galactica coffee mug in the NBC Universal gift shop. Because I am a geek.


Thanks to my awesome cousin Pam, who totally hooked us up with tickets. That's the great thing about being a tourist in your own town- someone can usually get you on the list. And Aunt Maggie, Aunt Mary Ellen, Becky, Lyn, Ainsley, Beth, Carlin, Amanda and Eliza? I love you all and it was great to spend the afternoon with you.

RIP Jules Dassin

In honor of his passing, I was going to link to Rififi's amazing jewel heist scene, which is so realistic & detailed that the filmed was banned in Mexico because thieves were using it as a burglary primer. I guess the Mexican government wrested control of YouTube from the Chinese, because I can't find it. Go rent the movie, you won't be sorry. As a consolation, here's the nightclub scene: