Here's my 40th Post

I'm a little obsessed with numbers recently.

Here's me at 20. It was 1986'. I think I'm wearing a pinky ring! I'm really trying to pull off that androgynous thing.

I pulled this one out to compare to 'me' 20 years later.

I think my brother still has that guitar. I think I might still have that sweater... Favorite music to listen to back then was Throwing Muses, The Runaways, Cocteau Twins, Black Flag, The Smiths and the Stooges. And lots of David Bowie, Bob Marley and Led Zepplin.

They never found that armed guy they were looking for in my neighborhood..But I'm not worried because with the current dog we're sitting that makes 5 dogs that live here with me. I'm hoping that keeps armed men and Former home dwelling, singer, junky, murderer parolees away.

Art and Soul / Richard and Jimi

Yesterday I spent some time at this festival. While there I spotted many a sexy Oaklander donning his or her favorite summer t-shirt. Three T-shirt themes stand out...They numbered the most of what I saw..Here they are in order of shear numbers...
1. Jimi Hendrix
2. Richard Pryor
3. Taxidermy
I'm not sure what to think of the later.
Comments??
We also saw Rickie Lee Jones who still has a sweet piercing voice.
Chuckies in Love!!!

Tower of Power

Today while I was outside in the driveway talking to Kimm this guy walks by. He says "Hey did you know that Rick Stevens used to live there?" "You know, the singer from Tower of Power?" "I've lived in this neighborhood since 1964 and he used to have the guys over and practice there all the time."
I'm like..."Cool". I didn't really know whether or not to believe him since it looked like maybe he'd just smoked a tower of crack.
But what if it's true? My house is less than 1000 square feet and the thought of a large horn section in the living room is hard to imagine.
Rick Stevens was one of the first singers for the band and sang the song "Your still a young man" which has always been one of my favorites of theirs.
He was arrested in 1976 for the murder of two people. He's currently housed in the California Prison System.

OPD

Tonite when Kimm and I were coming home around 8:30 PM from meeting with a client we see this OPD car blocking the street we usually turn on to go home. We thought we'd turn onto the next street but it also was blocked off by the OPD. We went down one more street and were finally able to get up to our road. We back tracked and saw that the last block of our street was blocked off with like 20 cop cars and dozens of cops crouched behind them.
They told us to leave.
We have this police scanner that we've never used and we found all the AA batteries in the house to make it work (10).
Nothing came in on any channel. What the hell, it has 40 channels!
Our neightborhood has a Yahoo group where you can post or find out about crimes in the area. It's really a great idea. I know where any problem houses are. I know what cars to be on the look out for. And usually I can find out what's going on when something like this happens.
This time I was the first one to post. Since then I've seen two other posts similar to mine but one of them added that the police told him to stay inside because they were looking for someone who is armed.
I guess that answers my question. But why aren't they telling us ALL to stay inside? And have they caught him?
More on this later when I find out what the hell happened!

Jasper

Here's Jasper.
Isn't he cute?
This morning I awoke to him puking on my arm.

We walked the dogs in the neighborhood tonite because my allergies have been too horrible to take them to the park.

We walked him, Monroe, Gabe and Mills thru the neighborhood. Smiling at all the neighbors. Talking to the kids riding bikes. Marveling at the different plants in peoples yards. Glancing furtively into their windows. While the sun set over the bay. Then as we looked down an embankment off the side of our road we saw a GIANT safe. With it's door clearly pried open by a crowbar. Obviously stolen, ransacked and dumped.
And no, there was no money inside.

Cockroaches

Listening to the blues

Cockroaches--Not good. In Hawaii there are lots of big ass cockroaches. As I sat on a couch in the living room of our rented house last week one such animal tried to kill me. It was night. Kimm, Claudette (mom), Emily (graduating sister) and myself sit down in living room to relax after a physically exhausting day spent shopping. Out of the corner of my eye I spy a small cat--oh no that's a COCKROACH! I jump up like a little princess bitch onto the couch. Kimm smacks Emily on her fresh sunburn. "GET IT!" Emily the family Buddhist cries, "NO I can't kill it!" She promptly grabs a flip flop off the floor and aggressively runs toward the cockroach. She smacks it! It runs under the couch where I'm swooning. Claudette begins to laugh hysterically. I shriek "AGGGGHHHHH get it you guys!!! Kimm pulls back the couch with one hand. Emily smacks the beast again and it heads towards the stairs. She jumps from one stair to the next like a small frog beating the roach as she goes. It continues to run like hell. Kimm runs down the stairs like a bear on speed "EMILY----OUTTA THE WAY!!" She grabs Emily by the shoulder and yanks her back as she barrels down the stairway. Emily yells out in pain...HHEEEEYYYY! As Kimm slams herself down at the bottom of the stairs she lets out a primal scream and stomps on the vile monster! DEAD MOTHAFUCKA!!

This happens in some fashion over and over nearly every night.

Otherwise the vacation was sweett.

ALOHA

Here's the house we stayed in. It's in a little town called Kane'ohe on the island of Oahu. It was great aside from someone stealing my sisters dress from our room and cockroach incidents. We snorkeled, ATE, smoked, DRANK, celebrated and generally had a wonderful time.
While there my allergies acted up and now I have a fun sinus infection. Nothing worse than getting sick on vacation. Luckily I only felt really bad thru one dinner. I'm much more sick now since I've been home--could it be because vacations over??

Hawaii vacation awaits...

Headin' off for Honolulu Hawaii tomorrow. For eight days! Going to see this one graduate from University of Hawaii. Traveling with the family. Including grandparents! Should be exciting and slow moving which is fine for Kimm and I right now. We finished two jobs this week and are straight exhausted! Well maybe not straight...
Hope to snorkel a lot. Drink, eat and smoke a lot! Maybe get lucky this time and see a turtle!
This is our first vacation in about a year and a half. Hawaii is beautiful and I love the food--except the spam.

Butthole Birthdays

Here's the lovely Butthole Surfers. It's J's birthday today and we share a deep love for this band.
Happy Birthday J!
Hope you like this picture.
See you on thursday at the Nostalgic's!

By the way --your little naked man was a hit at our party!

Animal Collecting

Here's my kitty Yuki. As you can see she has two different colored eyes and she's all white. She's also all bitch. My neighbor tells me white cats are the worst. I don't know if anyone else knows this cat fact. She's been a MAD bitch from the day she crawled out from under a car to beg us to take her home. We were living in this bad neighborhood. We stayed in a horrible apt. Underneith us was an equally horrible natural gas leak coming from the rotting water heater.It was raining that night. We were walking our doberman Isabelle so she could poop. Yuki crawled out from under this car parked on the side of the road. She had a grey patch on her head from oil pan. She ran up to Isabelle my dog and said. "Hey, take me the fuck home. I love dogs." She was desperate and we could see it. She was a teenage cat. Not fully grown.
We took her home and she's been our's ever since.
Days later we found out that she had previously belonged to our crack smoking neighbors who had kept her in a bathroom for the first 8 months of her life. On the same night we found her they had decided to get rid of her. S'pose the glamour worn off. They threw her outside in the rain to fend for herself. I guess that seemed reasonable to them in their cracked out state to throw a kitten out into a storm who had only known cold dirty tile her whole short life.
I really hate people most of the time.
Just today I went to buy dog food and saw rows upon rows of sweet kitties up for adoption. I wanted to take all of them. Even if they turned out to be mean and sadistic like my cat.
I can't look at animals up for adoption. It's too upsetting.
I could go on and on about this but I'll stop now.
My proof that I am NOT an animal collector.

No Underware!!!

Isn't this picture fantastic!!!! This adorable little man pranced naked around our Anniversary party nearly the entire time. I just love when parents will let their kids run around naked. I'm MORE than sure my mom never let me do that. In my Mormon family it was against the law to be seen in your underware-religious or otherwise.

Balloons

Let me say there is nothing better than watching a baby play with a fake boob balloon. The wonder in their eyes when they finally grab ahold of it. To the look of horror after they lock on to the fake nipple and taste that squeaky rubber.
It can't be beat!

10th Anniversary Party

Here's our beautiful neighbor dancing the 'candle dance' at our 10th anniversary party last Sunday. Too bad we didn't get our friends naked son in this shot. He was standing on top of the hot tub dancing along with her.
From what I could tell it was fun for all. It was for Kimm and I anyway. Lots of drinking and delicious food courtsey of Janel our good friend who quickly grabbed the bbq utensils away from me and took over cooking. Jenel I thank you endlessly!
About 40 people in total. Including my Mom Claudette and her husband Dave. Our good friend Mark and his hot boyfriend Paul from the Sierra foothills, My cousin Meg who left for Africa the day after the party. Our SF friends, Our East Bay friends, neighbor friends...Good Times..Good Times. This anniversary party was long over due.
We worked feverishly up to the last minute before the party fixing doors, landscaping, shoving things in closets. Then yesterday we crashed like zombies when everyone left. After planning this party for the last couple of months, now that it's over I feel like someone's moved out.

Painting + 100 degree temps = EEWWWWW

We just finished painting the exterior of this house last week during the start of our heat wave here in CA. This is a 'before' picture by the way. I can't find any of the 'after' pictures to show the true superiority of our work. It's been HOT. But I s'pose everyone is feelin it these days if you live out here in the west. Now we are painting the interior of another house and the heat is worse inside! Especially if you are down on your knees painting behind the toilet. Sometimes I can't believe the little girl in me who at 4 threw away all the silverware in the house when dinner was done because it was 'dirty' can crouch behind a toilet for 1/2 an hour with sweat dripping from her nose as she carefully paints a line.
Now THAT was a run on sentence!

So TIRED..I miss Weed.

Here's a very bad picture of the very beautiful Mt Shasta. It's taken from my uncle Jamie's side yard. He's got a big spread out in Weed (yes Weed). It is absolutely gorgeous. Lots of acres with horses and flowers. And they look out on Mt. Shasta. Not bad. This is what I'd normally be doing in July. Sitting with Kimm on my uncle's swing with under the deck with somewhere near 10 dogs milling around (4 of them ours). The tempatures rising into the 100's. Sipping on a beer. Looking at Mt. Shasta. Watching the space ships fly in and out of the secret portal in the mountain. Good Times.

Unfortunately, Kimm and I are working our asses off to get our house ready for our big 10th anniversary party next weekend. We're going to have close to 50 people over here and we still don't have a working front door. That's just one of our GIANT problems we have to deal with before the party.

And summer is slowly slipping away...

Shorty

Kids really like me for some reason. I think it's because I tend to ignore them.
Such was the case with "Shorty". I never did ask him his real name. He told me his friends called him "Shorty" or "Killa" as nicknames. I chose to call him Shorty. It seemed more fitting for an 8 year old.
He was at the property Kimm and I are currently painting. He came with his dad who was doing landscaping work in the back yard.
I was painting the front deck in the direct sun so I was a little crazy from the heat and not in much of a mood to chit chat. Shorty started asking me questions. "How much do you make for painting?" "Where do you live?"
Then he asks me my favorite question and one I will remember forever..
"Do you have any famous rappers in your family?"
!!!!??????? I put down my brush and looked at him for the first time.
No, do you?
"Yeah. Do you know who Too Short is?"
YES!
"He's my uncle."
WOW! That's some uncle you got there kid.
Too Short is the most famous of rappers to come from Oakland. East Oakland in fact-where Shorty and I live. He's widely known for being the first west coast rap star. He's recorded over 30 albums with songs like "fuck face" and "pimp the ho". It doesn't get more gold teeth than Too Short and that's saying a lot.
Shorty told me that back in the day his famous uncle used to "put food on his mama's table". But now that Too Short is too famous his "mama has to put food on her own table". I guess sometimes success can ruin a good thing.

Woody

So I watched the KQED American Masters doc on Woody Guthrie. It was so depressing. He died at 55 of Huntington's disease. I woke up in the middle of the night and grieved for him.
I'm so weird.
Rock and Roll wouldn't have been the same without him.
Hail Woody!

Devendra Banhart

I really haven't been interested in anyone musically for awhile.
Except for this guy Devendra Banhart. I was given a copy of his CD Cripple Crow and I LOVE every song on it.
He's just all over the place on this CD. Plus he looks all Charles Manson so it's intriguing. He just doesn't sound like anyone else and I find that SO REFRESHING....
Plus I'm a sucker for that lo-fi sound.
Highly Recommended..

Jan, Joe and Zoe

Here we go again... More of our friends leaving the Bay Area to live out of state in large suburban areas dominated by cheaper housing and better schools.
I don't ask why anymore...
If I was a parent I'd do the same thing.
Jan, Joe and Zoe of all the BBQ's, bio-diesel, Punk Rock Music mix CD's, adoptees, wine and whine and flag girls.

They hailed from our neighborhood one street down. They understood.

They left on Monday July 3rd to live in Portland, Oregon. Summer time BBQ's will never evah be the same.

They will be missed..

Cassie

Here she is in all her glory at one of our shows. I think we were still calling ourselves Hoegarden back then. In fact...this may have been our very first show. It was at this space called the Accordian on Bayshore in SF. Kind of a scary place to park your car. But as I remember...no one was hurt or robbed.

This was before babies and all. Well, Jamie was pregnant with Miles. So she didn't play drums for us at this show.

Cassie and her husband Kaveh and their two beautiful kids left SF last weekend to live in Chicago where apparently it's less expensive.

It's never going to be the same here without Cassie. She of all the songs, gossip, parties, dinners, camping trips, clothes with animal print's.

She sang for three of my bands. Yusakuta, Might Tight and Hoegarden/Hazy. Cassie definately had that loud punk rock girl voice I LOVE SO!!!

I'll really miss you Cassie