pictures of bowling

























I'm still getting a hang of this blogger photo trick. It's cool, which is better than the old way of manually linking to my picasa albums, but you can only do 4 pictures at once, which is still a major pain. Flickr is shitty too, as far as the upload tool is concerned. I would happily pay more to to able to easily upload and link to images, but nothing seems to be that effective so far.



more video goodness

this looks really cool and fits the song well.





that's all pitchfork had to say, if pitchfork wasn't the arch douchelord of too many words.

either a lace ascot or a house $!#*@$!

ok, I usually try and dress on the plain side, but after tonight I think I need to start rocking some sort of accessories. Perhaps a scarf, or more belts than I need to wear, or some ink or something. either way it's just time to look less more adorned.

I remember a few years ago auditioning for a production of west side story and everyone thought I came dressed for the part, but no,I wasn't. Maybe just some patterns, maybe that's all I need.

ooh! pointy toed man shoes! I'll need to lose weight and get more art faggy, but I think I could pull it off.

the end is the end is the beggining

click play to use either of these as a soundtrack for this last post on san francisco.



To finish what was begun before:

So tuesday night after we stopped taking pictures we drove back into town and were looking for a night on the town on the wrong side of the tracks. We went back to the phonebooth and had drinks. I had one to many which meant I had 3. We wandered around looking for clubs but found we were in the most definitely wrong part of town that night, and what had been vibrant on sunday now felt sleepy. We wandered and had pizza and I couldn't stop talking. We didn't find any clubs or bars really, and I developed a very good impression of Marky Mark Whalberg that consists entirely of me lifting my shirt and showing my unpretty stomach to girls and singing everybody dance now by c+c music factory. at the time I thought it was hilarious, but then when we couldn't find the car and walked nearly 15 blocks in the wrong direction we all got pretty angry. That was the closest we came to strangling each other, and the whole thing felt like kind of a wash. It made me wish I had a laptop. Again, you could count on talking to people to find out where the cool stuff is, but in my eyes it's easier to just research things online, like for example, what street to be on to find a good club. oh well.

Wednesday morning we awoke with more purpose. This was our last day and we had some things that still needed doing. Thing one was to go to the beach and chill in the morning, just lay in the sun and contemplate the california of it all. to be zen. that was all I really wanted from the day, but we also wanted to go to the sfmoma (san francisco museum of modern art), do a bit of shopping, and to a gallery the fecal face guys were presenting a show at. The gallery was apperantly home to one of the cities better hipster fucksplosions on wednesday night, so the initial plan had been to go and make that our blowout, but as that would make getting an early start to get home on thursday harder that plan was abandoned. We started the day in the city instead, with a giant mexican food breakfast, then we walked to the sfmoma to culture up.




The sfmoma is closed every wednesday it seems, another casualty of our lack of information. Getting a laptop is now a primary concern of mine. Macbook. base model. for sure. This was the lobby, and so we went to the giftstore for a long time, as our day was now wide open.

we decided to just wander around the downtown, and to mostly split up, since we all wanted some time alone.

Tyler and Greg got free etch a sketches as we discussed out plan.



holy god we all wanted to fuck her. It's rude to take pictures of people on the street without asking, but she was just riding by on her bike and I couldn't help it.



These guys rode past laughing like beautiful people laugh in print ads where they are being overwhelmed by fun. I need, I need, I NEED to get a girlfriend. This kind of thing kind of sweetness is what I live for.

I took very few "tourist" photos on this trip, and the ones I did take were half-assed.which I regret in retrospect.

So I bought a coat at h+m. and a sweater vest and a cardigan.


And then we went to the beach and tyler wore my new coat and looked quite like a sailor.



And as we got closer I felt better about everything. The beach is like chemo therapy for the cancer of the mind and I plan to go more often now.









soundtrack change


So totally happy right now.

my heart soars. you can't see it but it's soaring.

it was like all my favourite songs that have that just after the adventure and victory and coming home kinda feel. I think that typer of feeling in a song is best exemplified by the song one headlight by the wallflowers or white surf style 5 by supercar.

I rolled up my pants to splash around in the pacific. This afternoon was my moment, my triumph. I don't want to spoil it with too many words, so all I'll say is that as I stepped into the water everything became everything and life was perfect.




joy. unrestrained joy.


I forgot to bring beach clothes from the camp site. So I was running around in a cashmere sweater and nice jeans. I fell in the ocean.



and then it got even more fun.

And in the morning the sun rose and we left new men. a turning point of sorts. Greg goes back to school to be a teacher, Tyler goes back for one more year to digital animation, and I go back to whatever I want, my options are the same as before but I've never felt free like this. I am free from myself now, when I'm happy now I'm sincere, and the possibilities seem endless now. 13 months in six minutes. I love life.



Love, Grant.

i heart her so bad.

If like me, you already had an otherworldly crush on St. Vincent, this really won't help.



this way by these guys is good too.

I left my lungs in San Francisco

We got a really late start on Tuesday. After waking up in the nice cabin after a good talk and some good sleep we had move to a tent site. The tent site we got was right next to a cow pasture, and occasionally smelled like it. We set up the tent-mahal.


Tyler thought he'd be less likely to pass out while blowing this up if he just started lying down.


Greg didn't bring an air mattress, so he had to sleep on an inflatable pool floatie.




it was a really nice morning.


this is on the campsite. this is the most "camping" I could ever imagine doing.



then drove into the city around lunch time. I drove in, but since Greg was here now, I didn't have to drive back. We set out for amoeba records, which is supposed to be the biggest and best independent record store in pretty much the world, in the heart of Haight Astbury.

Tyler had his cigarettes, Greg had his inscrutable calm and the car keys, and I had this thing



full of jack and coke. We wandered up Haight st. ,passing more living cliches than I ever thought I'd see in one place. Lot's of street kids. Street kids in street trendy areas always seems moronic to me, but I'm sure most of them escaped from small towns inland and this is living the dream by their standards. We went to a store called Kid Robot, which I think boing boing talks about all the time. They sell awesome toys and japanese shit, and if you always had like, 40 dollars extra to blow on slightly awesome but awesomely pointless stuff, it's a great place to go. Then we went to Amoeba.



Amoeba is maybe technically the largest record store I have been in, but if so then Everyday Music in Seattle is definitely a close close second. Amoeba is a big warehouse, all sort of whitewashed and unfinished, with aisle after aisle of stuff. It's loud, it's busy, and while they have a lot and it's well organized, they don't have everything. I was really jazzed to see they had a Japanese indie-rock section, but they had no supercar stuff, and I don't know enough about Japanese indie-rock to justify risking $12.99 on a totally unknown band. The prices weren't that good either. Things were generally more expensive than at Everyday, especially used stuff. On top of that, the staff sucked. The clerks seemed just as douchy as they are at Zulu records, but here they were also a little menacing. All in all, even with all it's issues, I walked out with $200 worth of stuff, cause there were three new cds I wanted to get anyway, and a ton of comedy dvd's I couldn't find back here or at everyday. So score one for Amoeba, great comedy dvd section. Score all other points to Everyday Music.

Tyler and I finished first, so we waited outside for Greg, I sort of unwittingly pounded what was left of my pan galactic gargle blaster, and we met these street kids.





They gave Tyler an idea for a video game. He's going to make millions. Thanks underclass!

After that we had awesome mexican food (official food of the trip) and I was super drunk, so I just wandered after the guys and took random pictures.






The designer toy market is booming. I get it, I want a bunch of these, I just can't justify 40-80 bucks a pop for crap that has almost no cultural significance to me. Like, if they make a walking dead action figure, or maybe a cartoony version of jack black in the school angus young costume, or his heat vision and jack outfit, I'd get that. This panda guy looks awesome. but all he is to me is awesome looking.

that being said, this guy means nothing either, but looks so cool I'd happily pay hundreds. ok, hundred. ish.





how is it that so many used book store owners get away with being such dickbags? Like, ok. Your store is poorly organized, massively overpriced, you have no guarantee that you will have the book I am looking for, and you treat everyone who comes in like either a theif or an idiot. I'd like to say this was the first time I've come across a store like this, but it's really not, there seem to be a few in every major city you visit. I supposed they can make enough selling the occasional rare books at crazy markup, but for average stuff of well known books every part of the shopping experience is more pleasant at the big chain book stores. Everyone always complains about chapters and barnes and nobles, but I don't get it. Sure, monopolies are bad, sure, the staff don't know everything about everything, but they are friendly, bright, spacious places to shop, and they make book buying and reading more palatable and just more fun to the general public. In my mind that is worth forcing assholes like this out of business.



This was by far the gayest thing we saw the whole trip.



the houses all looked cool.

Then we drove through the rich part of town to china beach and it was religious.

the peace I had lacked for so long seemed to flood back in as we walked down the long stairway to the beach.






















halfway between buddy holly and bob dylan, and super useful for shooting on sunny days, I thought these glasses were awesome. however, I apparently looked like an idiot.












before