Weird California

California is weird. I remember growing up, my dad would always say: "You're going to end up in California; you're a California guy."

Then I would get mad and be like "No, no. I'm going to be on the East Coast!" I imagined myself in Boston or New York. In my mind I was going to go to Harvard or one of those schools and then become a roller coaster designer. That was my dream job for most of my childhood: a roller coaster designer.

Needless to say, life turned out differently. Here I am, in California, which I love, by the way, but which I also must note is a bit weird.

The weekend started off typically weird in California, with some very strange men holding a press conference in Palo Alto about their "Bigfoot" discovery. They preempted the meeting by releasing some strange looking photos of a Bigfoot carcass they said they had preserved on ice:



Unfortunately for us Bigfoot enthusiasts, they offered no evidence whatsoever at the meeting, and were quickly thereafter revealed to have staged Bigfoot hoaxes in the past. An online costume company also made a statement saying the photo looked suspiciously similar to a Bigfoot body costume they sold on their website...

My friend Matt said it best: why would you even stage that? It's like literally you get your 15 minutes, but its not even 15 minutes of something good, it's like 15 minutes of you being an idiot, and then people remember you as a douche bag for the rest of your life.

I'm still holding out for proof of Bigfoot.

Then, earlier this weekend, in busy downtown San Francisco, people found an adult manta ray flapping around Market Street, which finally died in the hot sun:


I don't really know what to think about this. I assume someone put the manta ray there, although whom or for what reason....? Maybe someone just threw it out their car while driving, discarding it like one would a cigarette butt. But I wouldn't get to close to it, I mean, next month is the two-year anniversary of the late Steve Irwin's untimely death by stingray. I, for one, do not trust these animals.

Anyhow I thought that was weird.

Then on Saturday evening, in Southern California (Orange County) some famous pastor, Rick Warren, who runs the nation's largest Evangelical church, also in California, hosted a live forum between pres. contenders Barack Obama and John McCain.

Obama spent Sunday in San Francisco, I believe.

interjection: George Bush has never visited San Francisco as president. He will be the first modern president never to have visited the city. San Franciscans will vote on an official measure to rename its municipal sewage plant the "George W. Bush Sewage Plant" in November.

Anyhow, I didn't watch this televised forum but I heard that Obama underperformed. Anyone who has been watching his campaign lately knows that he's been stumbling. I'll hold off on too much criticism and just hope the convention helps him out a bit. McCain apparently came off as something of a war-czar...and he has been more and more pro-war seeming lately. He made some particularly belligerent comments about Russia last week...

Grampa's gonna have to calm down unless he wants a time out.

In other political news it was revealed today, Sunday, that the LDS Church has decited to mobolize for the passage of California's Proposition 8, which would ban gay marriage in California. The LDS is a hugely moneyed and deeply organized machine so this could potentially be pretty important.

It's weird, I find myself defending Mormons more often then not. I feel like they get picked on for their eccentricities while many other Christians get a free ride. They're somewhat of an easy target.

But you must fight fire with fire. This Prop. 8 business is going to get ugly, and if the Mormons want a fight, they will get one. I mean, a Missionary vs. a Bulldyke, I think we all know who would win there.

Hey Mormons: If you want to play hardball, I'm game!

Meanwhile the Bay Area was taken over by the mammoth Hip-Hop Festival Rock the Bells. I missed it but I'm sure it was amazing. One of my friends ran into Mos Def at a gallery earlier today, and apparently they were both wearing the same Member's Only jacket!! Sooo awesome!

So yeah it's weird here but it's exciting and stimulating and inspiring too. They say San Francisco is the City on the Edge of the World...and as we all know I like living on the edge. ZIIIIIIIINNNNGGG!!!