o hand in hand

(...my vacation was totally fantastic...)

10. the window seat, and its quick peeks at that sprawling geo-quilt we call a landscape... the distancing jolt of apprehension and the not-quite-real acknowledgement that you are, indeed, hundreds of feet in the air...

9. a delicious and nostalgic veggie burrito from pokez, with chips and salsa, of course...

8. gabe's house, which is enormous and charming. huge rooms with fancy woodwork (a la west philadelphia) and a pervasive 70's bachelor pad sort of vibe (a la ron burgundy). it offset the near-complete suburbanization of the rest of san diego (ho hum... golden hill is down for the count)...

7. oaxacan food in los angeles with justin and his charming friends, upping the ante on my already-dear love of mexican food. most of my vacations focus on eating and drinking. apologies if you're bored.

6. galleries in chinatown. i know i should feel more ambivalence about the inevitable gentrification that accompanies this phenomenon, but it's just such a cool part of town. emblematic of what i find so charming about LA-- the way everything just sort of butts up against everything else. the scramble keeps me on my toes, i guess. and yes-- i am saying that LA is (occasionally) charming...

5. the desert and the impulse to strip naked and run off into it singing "we are the champions" at the top of my lungs. i feel this way whenever i drive through it, which i had the pleasure of doing en route to berkeley.



4. discovering that erin knows all the words to songs by squeeze. and not just "tempted by the fruit of another" either... she means business.

3. the bay area now exhibition at the yerba buena center for the arts, which was thankfully light on the juxztapoz magazine-type nonsense. i particularly liked josephine taylor's drawings, which combined magic and terror in an evocative way.

2. interacting with strangers without a goddamn computer in front of me (no offense, y'all), and seeing the cartoon wallflower i often paint myself out to be proven (at least partially) false. of course, it helps that i met a wide variety of nice people as well...

1. finishing the trip with a screening of apichatpong weerasethakul's tropical malady, one of the most moving films i've seen all year (and i've seen some doosies)... it merits consideration as the most effectively optimistic movie i've ever seen, exploring the outer limits of desire through courtesy, performative artifice, left-field eroticism and very intense reverence-- all with a mastery deserving a far more detailed post (to say the least). i'll write that one when my jet-lag (sp?) is gone. a pleasurable, thoughtful film to end a pleasurable, thoughtful trip.