The area "A" Residential Parking Permit adventure.

I never thought I would be one of those frustrated people you see running around looking like they don't know what they're doing, but there I was last Wednesday afternoon at Frank Ogawa Plaza in downtown Oakland looking for the offices of the Transportation Division. And because two different security guards could only take their best guesses as to where I could get a parking permit, I was sent to two different buildings that didn't have what I was looking for. Bitches.

I'll backtrack a little bit: With my new job in San Francisco, I've been leaving my car in Oakland; but because of the parking restrictions on my street (you have to move your car every two hours during the day) I had to leave my car about three blocks away. But I could pay to get a residential permit for my area so that the two hour restriction wouldn't apply. So I headed to City Hall downtown, which unfortunately seemed to consist of EVERY BUILDING in Frank Ogawa Plaza. WTF?

Finally I found the information center and asked the clerk where I could get a parking permit. She gave me a building number, but at that point I was so frustrated I made her physically walk with me out to the plaza and point to where I needed to go.

When I got to that building another security guard stopped me and asked me what I needed. I told him a parking permit and he had me sign in and directed me to go through some double doors. The doors read "Parking Citations" --I looked back at the guard and said, "...there? I need to BUY A PERMIT." He just nodded and said, "that's it."

I walked into the next room and saw a bunch of chairs for people to wait in and some teller windows. Hey, whaddayaknow? Maybe this was the right place. I sat down and waited to be called. When I got up to the cashier window I told the lady I needed to buy a Residential Parking Permit for area "A".

She looked right at me and said, "You don't get that here. That's up on 6, but they're already closed at 4:30."

It was 4:45. My head almost exploded.

I stormed out of there and glared at the security guard. I wasted almost an hour on a wild goose chase and came away only with a seething hatred for Oakland's governmental beaucracy.

Two days later I returned for another attempt at getting that damn permit. This time the security guard was much more competent, "...head up to the 6th floor, I'll call and let them know you're coming." ...wow. Where was this guy the other day? I guess they stick all the dumdums on the night shift.

And EVEN BETTER, when I went to the offices to apply for the permit, the clerk told me the permit for my area was FREE. She just copied my info, gave me a sticker, and I was on my way. The whole process took less than ten minutes. How easy was that? Crazy.

In search of the Black Dahlia.

Black Dhalia was the nickname for Elizabeth Short, a woman brutally murdered back in 1947. She was cut in half and her killer (killers?) were never caught. Here's the Wikipedia entry about her life, infamous murder, and sensationalized murder investigation.

Anyway, it turns out she's buried in Piedmont at Mountain View Cemetery (along with some other notable people). I've been to the cemetery many times for walks, it's actually designed with lots of trails like a park, but this time a group of us were on a quest to find the Black Dahlia.

Roll call: Me, Big Cherry, Specs, The Writer, and Croms (who brought the Black Dahlia to our attention).

We all stumbled to meet at the cemetery gates around noon--which was as early as any of us were going to show up anywhere on a Saturday morning--and made our way past the mausoleums and up the hill towards "Millionaire's Row," where some of the aforementioned notables are buried.

When we made our way to the top, Specs and The Writer pointed out how a lot of the monument tombs had symbols of Illuminati on them (the photo above features C.O.G. Miller's pyramid mausoleum). A good amount of our time after that was spent looking for other Illuminati symbolism on tombs and gravestones--eagles, snakes, pyramids, floating eyes, statues of a woman pointing up, etc.

On the way back down we began our hunt for the Black Dahlia. After a little online search the night before, Croms found out Elizabeth Short was buried in plot #6. Unfortunately the plots jump around without any sense of reason, from 12 to 13 to 37. And each plot had anywhere from 16 to 60 graves. The search was coming up fruitless and some of the crew needed to bail.

It was up to me and Croms to wander around one of the back corners of the cemetery for the elusive plot #6. One of the legends of Black Dahlia is that the groundskeepers move her grave around from time to time within the cemetery to prevent crowds of people converging on her grave. We finally found plot #6 and split up to read tombstones--unfortunately, no Elizabeth Short.

We wrapped up our quest and headed back out towards the main gate. Maybe next time I'll try to find the grave of Mac Dre (seriously...check that link of notable people).

Champion of the Day: Great Clips for Hair Lady

So I was getting a haircut at the usual place when some blonde lady walked in and asked, "Where are your clips?"

The vietnamese lady cutting my hair stopped and said, "...what do you mean? Hair clippers? You want clippers?"

The blonde lady answered, "Hair clips," and pointed to a sign --you could feel the embarassment fill her body as she realized GREAT CLIPS FOR HAIR was the NAME OF THE SHOP and you couldn't buy hair clips there.

Shangri-La? At least the next best thing.

I've left the comfortable confines of the music-technology magazines to venture into the world of video games as the new Assistant Art Director on a big-name video game magazine.

It wasn't easy saying goodbye to my familiar job of magazine layout, illustration, and the occasional special project, but the chance to influence the look of a major magazine (especially one so entrenched in pop culture) was too good to pass up.

Even better is the chance to work in downtown SF. My offices are RIGHT THERE. The area during the day is very bustling and you feel a lot of energy just walking around. It makes you want to throw your hat...


Finally, the new work environment isn't your typical corporate office, either. Every writer in the bullpen has their own flat screen and different consoles to test/play games. What is this place??? I kindly backed down from a challenge on Soul Caliber 3 so as not to be virtually emasculated on my first day.

The evil that men do.

You don't really expect me to divulge that information in a blog, do you? Vegas secrets are "to the grave." But don't worry, after I die, my tombstone will come equipped with speakers and my secrets will play in an endless loop.

So the reason Son of Gigan and I hopped an America West flight to Las Vegas? To catch the rematch between Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales. But that's another story. This one's about the awesome Aladdin Hotel we stayed at and the hundreds of miles we walked.

The first hundred or so miles were after we touched down at McCarran International. Going on foot from the gate to the baggage claim/transportation area is almost enough to wear away the excitement of being in Sin City. Almost, but not quite.

When we were checking out the taxi area, some dude came up to us and asked, "Towncar? Take a towncar to where you need to go." He then told us it would be $35 to take us to the Aladdin. Sorry gypsy-cab, we don't roll that way. We're much cheaper. SoG and I headed to the shuttle bus area, plopped down our $6 and we were on our way to the strip.

At the hotel registration area we were told some bad news. We caught a late flight, so it was about 11:30 when we tried to check-in and the clerk told us that there were no more rooms with two beds. So he'd HAVE to upgrade us to a two-bed suite at no additional charge. How lucky is that? We should have dropped our bags right there and ran for the casino. The reason why the regular rooms filled up? The MISS AMERICA pageant was going on at the hotel that weekend. Surreal.

After checking out our giant suite -- seriously, the bathroom was as big as my bedroom. We made our way downstairs to grab some grub. At the restaurant we noticed that there was a special Planet Hollywood menu as part of the regular menu--that's when we figured out that the Aladdin was eventually going to change into the Planet Hollywood Hotel and Casino. Which made sense of the Basic Instinct ice pick on display in our suite (no joke). SO surreal.

I'll mention here that every few seconds, mine and SoG's heads were on heavy swivel because of all the hot women flittering around. So as you read this, please realize that, yes, we were checkin' out the ladies--but since they were EVERYWHERE, this story would be much longer if I called out every instance of maximum-bettys.

I will say that we did share an elevator with Miss Hawaii. She's about this tall (holding hand to chest level) and cute as hell. All the Miss America contestants just looked like regular cuties when they weren't all glammed out.


Anyway, we also took advantage of the free spa time we were allowed. Like a couple of meatheads we hit the gym (on vacation), but checked out the rest of the awesome spa. We also visited some of the other casinos on the strip -- this is where we logged all our frequent pavement miles. Only in Vegas can you walk towards a casino but actually have it move farther away from you.

So that's a little of the Vegas adventure - to read about the Pacquiao/Morales fight, check out my entry at Your Opinion Doesn't Count.

The power mai tai.

There's a new tiki bar called Kona Club on Piedmont. It took the place of the old King's X bar which had been there for years. The King's X had the medieval decor thing going and was one of the more "surly" bars in the neighborhood. There are four bars on the Piedmont strip - King's X, The Kerry House (the hip dive bar), Cato's (beers, ale, and bar food), and Egbert Souse's (the streetsmart surly bar - as in, you'd hear a record scratch if I walked in there). Anyway, this tiki place is so new, they don't even have a sign yet. It still says "King's X" on the outside with a giant cardboard handwritten open sign on the door.

When I was there last week with Big Cherry they really didn't have a menu of tiki drinks yet, so I let the bartender choose some sort of tropical-style drink. I should probably mention here that my friend and I were already a little drunk from drinking at my place earlier, so ending up at a tiki bar was a result of that buzz.

Ok, back to the drink -- the bartender whipped up a mai tai, but she warned me that all they had was 150-proof rum so I should drink slow. Halfway through our drinks we were drunk-calling people with the MOST HILARIOUS prank calls EVER.

Oddly enough, the next day the people we called said they couldn't understand one word we were saying.

The not-delayed delayed flight.

Monday night saw me traveling back home from San Diego. I was flying Southwest so the boarding procedure was the "group system". I printed out my boarding pass the night before, so I got to stand in the "A" line. In front of me was a woman, probably in her 50s, who was talking loudly on her cel phone. She sort of reminded me of Dame Judi Dench, only not British.


Not-Dame Judi also kept fidgeting with her two bags that she could never seem to balance correctly. I wondered why she insisted on keeping them stacked together as opposed to letting them lie on the ground separately while we waited to board.

But it wasn't her bag-fidgetiness that bothered me, it was more the fact that she really had no consideration for the people around her as she yapped away loudly on her phone. I don't know who she was talking to, but when she told the person on the other line, "...my flight has been delayed about a half hour," my hatred for her was sealed.

Of course the flight wasn't delayed. She was staring right at the sign on the gate that said "Flight 979, 8:25pm, ON TIME."

What a freakin' LIAR. She stayed on the phone with the person up until we boarded the plane and then finished her call with, "...gotta go, I'm getting on the plane now." What? Didn't you just tell the person your flight was delayed a half hour?

I can only hope the people she was supposed to be visiting weren't too jazzed about seeing her anyway.

Champion of the Day: Circuit Breaker Dude

There's a new 24 Hour Fitness Lite on Piedmont Ave. That name is deceiving -- this is one of those circuit training gyms and there's nothing "lite" about constantly moving from station to station in non-stop intervals. The gym itself is pretty small, just workout equipment, a bathroom, and lockers. No pool, aerobics, weights, or locker rooms. You just show up, work the circuit and leave.

First you start by warming up on a treadmill or elliptical machine, then after about seven minutes you move on to the equipment. There are machines that work every part of your body -- I really hate the bosu ball, by the way.


So the object is to move from station to station and go all out at each machine for about a minute. A chime goes off on the overhead loudspeaker to let you know when to move on to the next exercise. I've done this a couple of times already and it kicks your ass pretty good. So last night, I was getting into the swing of the circuit when all of a sudden there's this guy sitting at the bench press machine and he wasn't moving. He was doing regular sets of presses. I was like, "...umm...excuse me, are you doing the circuit?"

And he goes, "...nah...the place is pretty empty so I figured..."

Figured what? You'd just screw up everyone else's workout by doing whatever the hell you want? Nice, jerk. I just moved past him to the next machine and watched the other people get annoyed when they came up on this guy using random machines. Finally an employee went up to the guy to set him straight. Dummy.

Clever boy.

One of the regular occurences on Piedmont Avenue is seeing people asking for donations. Not panhandling (but there's plenty of that, too), but people looking for you to contribute to whatever cause they're out there for. It's admirable work, but hitting up Piedmont Avenue is like shooting fish in a barrel considering all the richie rich and bleeding hearts walking around (not a knock, just an observation). I however, am just a man trying to make it in the universe (just like Jango), so my most important worthy causes include rent and groceries.


Last week on a grocery run, I stopped on a corner where some high-school kid was signing people up for something. He saw me getting ready to cross the street and said, "Excuse me sir, can I talk to you for a little bit?"

I looked at him and threw out, "I have to get going, sorry," and then started to cross the street. I got about halfway across when I heard him say just loud enough for me to hear, "...sorry people help."

Wow. He hit me with that like a pro. Well-timed and well-delivered. I wonder how many people actually turned back from the guilt and gave him money?

The dead-neighbor scare adventure.

I was sitting at my computer waiting for my laundry to finish when there was a knock at my door. It was CanadaGirl from the apartment upstairs. She explained she needed my help to check on the elderly woman next door to her. The old woman had left her keys in her door and they'd been there for two days. CanadaGirl called the building manager and he asked her to check what was going on, but to bring someone with her.

So I put on my beanie and my jacket and headed upstairs in my pajamas with CanadaGirl. As I made my way to the door I could see the keys in the deadbolt. CanadaGirl threw out a warning, "...watch out for the spider." She wasn't kidding. Hanging down from above the front of the door was a GIANT SPIDER. Kind of like Kumonga, the spider on Monster Island that spit out all that random webbing into the air and somehow managed to trap Godzilla.


We acutally had to duck under Kumonga's web to get to the door. So there we were stuck between two horrors. A giant spider behind us and a possibly very dead neighbor in front of us. So not cool.

CanadaGirl had made an attempt earlier at knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell, but got no answer. It was my turn to do that, too, and I got the same results. Next I nervously turned the key in the deadbolt to unlock it. I pulled out the key trying to make as much noise as possible with the hope that if anyone was alive on the other side that they'd come and answer the door--or we would stupidly get shot for breaking in to someone's apartment.

After moving the key to the doorknob and unlocking it, I turned the knob and threw out a "Hello?" into the open crack. I quickly found that I couldn't open the door all the way because as CanadaGirl put it, "...THERE'S SOMETHING ON THE GROUND BLOCKING THE DOOR..."

I just about pooped my pants.

It was at that point we both started yelling into the apartment to make sure somebody was in there, and I slowly kept pushing the door open to move whatever was on the ground--and really really hoping an arm or a leg didn't plop down on the floor.

I let out a huge sigh of relief when I saw the old woman come shuffling down her hallway from inside the apartment towards us. CanadaGirl let out a huge, "There you are! We were so worried!" And we saw that it was a bag of groceries that was blocking the door. After some apologies, we gave the old woman her keys and I headed back down to my place--just in time to catch the beginning of the Lex-mas episode of Smallville.