I'm kinda all over the place on this one

Last night I kicked it with my homegirl Lace. I hadn't seen Lace in a minute—not since waaaay back in May¹—and being with her puts me in a good mood. She keeps things in perspective. Earlier this year, I got jumped by two guys who snapped my ring-finger at the joint, after which, jacked-up on adrenaline and not feeling a thing, I further destroyed the bones in my hand by punching one of the guys a few times, and I needed surgery and then surgery again² and it was my boy Andrew Machado who helped me keep my head on straight, helped me keep things in perspective. Kinda like Lace. Anyway, today Andrew (aka Pelechati aka Bald Beauty aka Shadow Machado aka Mr. Mortgage) started his new job at Apture. Big ups to Andrew. I'm not sure I've ever worked with someone who works harder than him. His work ethic is ridiculous.

Also ridiculous?

The fact that a pitchman dies—basically nothing more than a lackey to consumerism—and it's the top story on CNN.com not once but twice over the course of three days. Don't get me wrong. It's sad when most anyone³ dies. But it's not newsworthy unless we as a culture allow it to be newsworthy, and that's what I think is ridiculous—pathetic even—that consumerism is such an overwhelming force in America that it overshadows, um, important things.

Stay tuned for the Hypocrite Alert.

Today I bought the video-capable iPhone (16 GB white) and Beats By Dre earbuds. The Beats By Dre sound is great and I love that the wires are tangle-free. They're 100% Beast Mode.

Ed. note: I can't wait to rock my new theme song on Beats By Dre. Big ups Cobra Deezy on the find.



1: Completely random side note—for real, super super super random and tangential: One of my favorite literary characters in recent memory is named May. May Kasahara from the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Haruki Murakami). Is it possible to develop a crush on a fictional character? Rhetorical question. Because I did. I kinda developed a crush on May. Of course nothing happened—she is only 16 years old in the book—plus there's that whole not-really-existing thing. I know what you're thinking: "Sixteen? That's creepy." But keep in mind what my boy Cobra Deezy pointed out: "Murakami wrote the book fifteen years ago, when you were only fifteen, so in a way it's like you fell for an older woman," and strangely enough the whole awkward concept of falling for someone who exists in a different time period, that actually plays itself out in a separate Murakami book, Kafka on the Shore, which has nothing to do with Frank Kafka but which does feature a main character named Kafka, who falls in love with the 15-year-old version of a 50-year-old woman who he meets in quote-unquote real life. He meets the 15-year-old version of her in dreams and/or visions. Is the 15-year-old version of the older woman a living-spirit, a la Tale of Genji? I don't know. It's confusing. But if you find it at all interesting, check out Márquezakami, which is a book club Cobra Deezy and I started. We meet in San Francisco monthly to discuss Murakami and also Gabriel García Márquez. Our next meeting is July 26: One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel García Márquez (432 pages). Oh, and the whole crush-on-a-literary-character thing? That was basically a thinly velied excuse to segue-to and hype the book club. Or maybe the book club and living-spirit talk was a thinly veiled excuse to distract y'all from the fact that I developed a crush on a 16-year-old fictional character? Seriously, though, read the book. May Kasahara is 100% Beast Mode.
2: Don't click the link if you're not prepared to see a few "awful" post-op photos.
3: Cough-cough Bernie.

When tying your shoes is too much (and Velcro isn't available)

Cop a pair of New Balance 574 with 45-inch fat laces¹ double-knotted up top and you'll never have to tie your shoes again. I got four pairs of fresh sneaks today: three pairs of New Balance and a pair of ALIFE hightops. Super cheap via the Internet. You ever heard of the Internet? It's on computers now.

1: 574s + 45-inch laces is an exact recipe. Tried. Tested. Not to be altered. This isn't stir-fry, son. You can't just go around substituting ingredients all willy-nilly like there won't be consequences. Serious ones.

I ♥ San Francisco Public Library

It's been a minute¹ or more.

Two things you should know about me you definitely don't need to know but are true anyway: I love to read and I love to walk around the City. I walk basically everywhere. Unless it's more than an hour on foot. If it's more than an hour, chances are more than decent I'll just go somewhere else instead. But yesterday my two loves did not play together nicely in the sandbox.

Why not?

It's a mystery! Stay tuned!

The San Francisco Public Library is holding an awesome book sale down in the Mission² this weekend. I definitely don't need any more books. Not a single one. If you waste 15 seconds of your life and visit my Goodreads page, you'll see there are 101 books on my to-read shelf. These aren't just books pulled out of thin air. These are books already sitting on my bookshelf³ and waiting to be read.

Yesterday I made the mistake of buying 16 books^3A at once: Thomas Pynchon (x2), Frank Kafka, Don DeLillo, James Clavell (x5), Yukio Mishima, Gregory David Roberts, Colson Whitehead, Joseph Heller, Peter Carey, Yasunari Kawabata and Philip Roth. Actually, that wasn't my mistake. All 16 books together cost only $24, and because the San Francisco Public Library is a non-profit, you don't even have to pay tax. My mistake⁴ was buying too many hardcovers, which are noticeably heavier, particularly those of Clavell and Pynchon, both of whom think 400-page books are for babies, so why not tack on a few hundred more pages, all of which is to say (drumroll): I bought so many books I couldn't even walk home. I had to take BART. Hence the escalator. How many of you figured out that mystery ahead of time? What a terrible story, right?

1: I was in D.C. for two weeks taking pictures of gay stuffed-animal horses (etc.) and hanging out with my brother plus a couple of Brazilian women who made it quite clear that I am light years away from being able to speak properly even a single sentence of Portuguese. One of the Brazilians is my brother's wife, Nara, who also speaks Japanese. If you've always assumed Portuguese is like Spanish but a little more difficult, you're wrong. It's like Spanish, but instead of being manageable, it's fucking impossible. I didn't even bother trying to speak anything in Japanese. My intellectual self-esteem was already rock bottom and ready for recovery.

2: Mission & 20th or thereabouts. Actually it's on 20th about three blocks east of Mission. Maybe Harrison? I don't remember exactly. It's huge and you can't miss it, and although I'm certainly able to look it up real quick and find the exact address for you, do it yourself and take pride in the fact that you're not a lazy bum like me.

3: One of the side effects from my hand surgery. While I was out of work and recovering, I had too much time on my hands—I'm clever with puns!—and I visited used bookstores four or five times a week, walking all over the City and usually buying two or three books per visit. Now I can't stop. Fortunately my boy Davy is equally addicted: Yesterday alone he bought 24 books.

3A [Ed. note]: Two days later I returned and bought 35 more books. For real, I have a problem. But what was I supposed to do? On Sunday every single book was a dollar, and they had tons of Updike and Roth and Pynchon and Smiley and McEwan and two or three noteworthy Japanese authors whose names I won't attempt but if you scroll through my Goodreads bookshelf you'll find 'em.

4: My second mistake was wearing my ugly purple sneakers, but that was more of a personal shout-out and inside joke between me and Davy.