People Watch

. . . this weekend in Golden Gate Park. For Free!!!! Bless the rich mutha who died and donated the money to keep this going every year with the best acts in Bluegrass from around the world . . . for free to all.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on Friday. YEA!!!!!
I’m going to miss Richard Thompson, Nick Lowe, and Three Girls & Their Buddy (Emmylou Harris, Patty Griffin, Shawn Colvin & Buddy Miller) ... whatever that will be like … to go to a wedding reception . . . but maybe I’ll sneak over for some of it.

Then Sunday … Earl Scruggs, Riders in the Sky, Elvis Costello, Gogolo Bordello (on the gypsy/punk theatrics tip), Ricky Skaggs, Emylou Harris.

Should be good people watchin’. Good eatin’ too.

It really helps you think, and if you’re having a bad day…criticize their clothes (in a playful way)! It’ll make you feel better.

Oh how I wish I had been in Trafalgar Square for this event.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PupR5V9aE2s

Although, I was there when hundreds of Nekkid Bikers breezed by and a near soccer riot broke out!

It has been an uber-element of people watching for me for months and I like a distanced 43’er have not been reporting a single fact.

My aplogies on being busy and feeling some animosity towards internet socialabilty. However:

Worked A Grammy’s In The Schools Event – that was both horrific and at moments saved by some talented young singers. The entire San Francisco Symphony Balet did show up to perform with a dozen or so high school students for some damn good symphonic pieces.

Worked the Alexander String Quartet event. They are internationally know and just as internationally difficult to deal with in sound checks.

Worked three Cinema Festivals in a row . . . that will need there own post . . .

The entire Westminster Dog show circus has always been something I follow much like watching a Soap Opera train wreck of horrrific proportions . . . but then I just heard that a BEAGLE won this year and well my heart melted. Beagles are my favorite dog. Well, my favorite along with black & white collies and basset hounds but still they hold an incredibly important part in my heart. What can I say but . . .

Beagle Wins!!!!!! bout time.

My friend Kate loves to People Watch – she’s especially into looking at ring fingers to see if someone is married or not. She’s gonna get me hooked on doing that as well I think.

I was driving slowly around campus looking for a parking space last week and I was stopped at a red light behind another car to turn right. In California, we’re allowed to turn right on red (unless otherwise noted on a sign) so I was ready to go, but the car ahead of me wasn’t. That car pulled up to the curb and I thought the passenger was going to get dropped off because his side of the door opened and the passenger was about to step out. He went back in the car though and started throwing several hard punches at the driver! The driver just tried to defend himself, although it seemed like he was having a hard time controlling the vehicle and blocking punches being thrown at him at the same time! I was getting nervous for them and I didn’t have enough room to go around their car. They did seem to settle things and it looked like the driver convinced the passenger to just stay in the car and they later drove away. You can never really know what goes on in other people’s vehicles!

As I was walking by the grassy knoll area of campus the skateboarding ukelele player was flying by followed by a group of his skater pals.

Yes, there is a guy who rides his skate board around campus and frequently plays the ukelele. Not just holding the Ukelele, but strumming it with about as much musical talent as the Sex Pistols. Do not ask me why he does this, I know not. I mean does he get a following of girls who sigh and text each other “I talked to the Ukelele boy today . . . hott!!!” or is it some sort of spreading of the Irie vibe like a lone steel drummer on the beach, who knows.

Anyway , the Ukelele skater dude flys by weaving in and out of students at a high speed and this blind guy besides me who was about my age, suddenly stops and says really loud, “What the Fuck was that?”

Made my day. I mean what was he picturing? This floating Ukelele sound floating through the air at a rapid speed. A Hawaiian ice cream truck? Got me.

There must be some sort of planetary allignment going on today. I was walking to class this morning and these two asian girls who were identical twins walked by and they both had on these lime green shirts, and then hours later I was walking through the halls and these two blacks girls who were identical twins walked by and they were both wearing lime green tank tops.

The thing was that I was wearing a green sweatshirt of almost the exact same sublime green color as the two sets of twins. You think this is some message from the gods? But which god or gods? Zues, Apollo, Dionysus, . . . Aphrodite?

I love watching people, it is on my top most favorite thing to do.
When I had more time and I thought I had more life too I would just sit there on a bench in the middle of downtown Guadalajara (Mexico) and watch people, sometimes draw people, or even engage into conversations with people.

My friends and I would sit and talk about the people for hours, we would invent stories, where they were going and where they came from and all kinds of things, sometimes we weren’t very kind, specially the guys; they would sit there with their score cards and flash them at girls passing by. I was too shy to show mine to the guys passing by but I would show the score to my friends and then giggle…

Good things happened to us from drawing people, and bad things too.
Some of the native Mexican people don’t like to have their image either on paper or photographed, so they would cover their faces or even get mad, and tell me to stop drawing, i would show them a picture of some building close by but then I was usually too shy to finish.

But one time a group of bell ringers from the cathedral invited us to ring the bells at 12 because I was making their portrait during breakfast at the coffee shop.

I love people, 43 is like people watching sometimes in a different kind of way if I just sit there and read my subscriptions…