2003-02-10 - 10:21 p.m.
Had a nice long phone conversation with Krapsnart this weekend. She assures me that, thanks to my minions' tireless efforts, a growing number of people throughout the U.S. and Canada are now unable to see Wolf Blitzer on teevee without snickering and making rude noises.
That's only part of my master plan, however. The next step is to sneak a tape recorder into the Justice Department's restroom and record the relieved grunting sounds John Ashcroft makes whenever he takes a piss. Any volunteers?
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Not much else to report on this past weekend. On Sunday I did attend the grand opening of a friend's coffeehouse in another part of town. The ordeal he had to go through to get the place open for business is a vivid illustration of how fucked-up zoning issues are in this city. He also co-owns the bar next door--an establishment dating back to the 1940s which had been closed for something like 10 years--and when he and the other two owners set about buying and refurbishing the place, the city bureaucracy gave them no shit at all because it was located in what is euphemistically called an "emerging" neighborhood. Basically, anything that would spruce the area up a bit and chase the crackwhores away was OK by them. Well, fast-forward a couple of years: The neighborhood is a lot less scary than it was (although a lone guy driving a van through it at night is still likely to be approached at stoplights by one or more toothless and emaciated hags croaking, "Hey, ya lookin' for a date?") and is drawing a lot of affluent bobos to buy its funky historic homes, and so now, anyone who tries to open a business in the area is made to jump through one silly hoop after another. If these people ever played SimCity I bet their towns would collapse within a matter of days.
But anyway. The opening was fun, and the place is fabulous--it's a converted Craftsman house with a huge deck for lounging about on, and the food is great. Next time I just need to remember one thing: It's not a bar and I don't need to down one mocha after another to justify my continued presence there. I was hopping around and buzzing like the Featured Item in the latest Good Vibrations catalogue for the rest of the day. Not to mention the rebound headache in the evening. Ow.
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Just finished: Them: Adventures With Extremists, by Jon Ronson. Now reading: The Real Frank Zappa Book, by, um, Frank Zappa. Books are my friends.
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