28.09.00 - 16:29:54

"THE FIRST RULE OF FIGHT CLUB IS, YOU HAVE TO PAY $3 TO GET INTO FIGHT CLUB."

Yesterday I left work early. I kind of snuck out-- felt like I was playing hooky. (Is that the right word? Skipping class is what I'm getting at.) I felt guilty but good. It's cool to be outside during working hours because you see uniquely daytime stuff. Like, on the bus to Haight (I went record shopping at Amoeba) there was this weathered hustler with a cardboard box on his lap, dealing 3 card monte. I'd seen it on TV before but never in real life. I'm always amazed that anyone could be so stupid that they'd fall for a 3 card monte hustle, but sure enough, there were a couple of tourists laying down $20. I scrutinized his hands as closely as I could, but I didn't see anything up his sleeves. Yet somehow the tourists always lost. He kept up a coarse but compelling stream of banter-- "Lay down $20 right now, take a guess, come on you see the cards right here, come on now, what am I doing, look at my hands am I sneakin somethin, naw, it's all right there, come on $20, make it $40 just like that..."

At Amoeba I picked up some new hip hop. Prince Paul's "Prince Among Thieves" is great, although it's so much like a movie that once you've heard it once you don't want to hear it as much again. But the songs are all good, and Breeze from the Juggaknots is a consummate storyteller. It's cool to hear an MC so subtle and gifted that you have to spin it back again and again, concentrating real hard, to understand. But when you do, it's amazing-- like a Magic Eyegram popping into focus.

Later in the day I got lifted and went over to Angi's. We cooked some stir fry and watched the actors on "Friends" try their hardest to emote. (I used to hate sitcoms that try to be serious and funny at the same time. But the actors on "Friends" are so bad that when they're serious, it's actually funnier than when they're funny.) We also watched the season premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She briefly falls under the quote-unquote "thrall" of "Dracula", who turns out to be a greenish pale trenchcoat wearing cad who talked like he almost drowned as a child and suffered irreversable brain damage. "I... wanth... your... blood"

Later Angi & I went to this bar whose name I forget. Ostensibly they were having a night called 'fight club', where they set up video game systems and have DJ battles and it's free. This was not, strictly speaking, an accurate description of what actually was going on (which was NO video game systems and NO dj battles and NOT free). But it was ok-- we played Bubble Trouble (or Puzzle Bobble or Puzzle Bubble or something like that) and I had a Blue Hawaiian. Towards the end of the night a surprisingly tolerable post-rock band started jamming. My eyes were very heavy though and we cut out early.

Back home I crawled into bed and tried to dream of a balloon lost in a cave...