The Final Weekend
This past weekend, I didn’t have any exciting events planned for myself. I’ve been drinking too much and spending too much money, so I thought I’d get back to the basics: get some sun, exercise, and relax.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
I took a bike tour of Santa Monica with StimpPimp. We met up at the cusp of Brentwood, at Federal and Wilshire, and rode four miles on San Vicente to The Steps on Channel Road in Santa Monica. The Steps are two sets of stairs, one wooden and one concrete, that connect the lower part of Channel Road to the higher part of Adelaide Drive in an expensive neighborhood of Santa Monica. Usually the Steps are packed with middle-aged people getting into shape and young people in phenomenal shape. I went once at 6:30AM on a weekday and it wasn’t as crowded as it usually was on the weekends. We ran up the wooden ones and walked down the concrete ones. StimpPimp counted 84 steps on the top half of the wooden steps. The hardest part was to keep running while trying to pass the walkers. The Steps are very narrow and sometimes there’s a bottleneck of people who are trying to pass the walkers either on the way up or the way down. We endured four rounds before we succumbed to the desire to rest our burning legs and lungs. Later we grabbed lunch at Panera Bread. We both got the Frontega Chicken Panini which was kind of greasy and unhealthy considering we had just worked out, but it was irresistibly delicious. Then we went our separate ways to our respective apartments.
Later that night I drove around looking for a late night spot to chill at, found nothing, and ended up going to the donut store across the street from my apartment and hung out there with my laptop until 3:30AM. Another place that I’ve driven by countless times but had never gone in before. I hope to exhaust every donut shop, coffee shop, sandwich shop, bakery, bar, and restaurant in my neighborhood of West LA by the time I’m eighty.
Sunday, August 27, 2006
GuitarHero, StimpPimp and I went to the Rock the Beach event in Venice Beach. We didn’t pick up trash like those treehugging volunteers did, we were just there for the music. First up was Johnny Lang, a blues rocker who looks surprisingly young and made ugly John Mayer faces the whole time. StimpPimp enjoyed the Lang but GuitarHero thought his stuff was too simple and repetitive. I had no opinion because I am musically uneducated. Next up was the real reason why we were there, Jurassic 5. Once they hit the stage, the crowd suddenly became twice as packed. They played a bunch of their old school songs and were awesome like usual. Akil said Motherfuck George Bush to a chorus of cheers while a little ten year old boy was dancing his ass off on stage. Chali 2na is a hugely charismatic stage performer. I guess it helps that he’s like 6 foot 5. After the show we went boogie boarding. I tried to body surf for a while too but didn’t fare that well. When walking to the car through the shop areas and the small Venice streets, I had my shirt off, which is something I never do. I have a very pronounced farmer's tan, making me ridiculously sexy when my nipples are exposed, and thus I am not a big fan of self-nudity. But no one cared, except for the dog that tried to bite my feet thinking that I had socks on.
At night, when I realized the weekend was over already, I was disappointed. I said “Motherfucker!” and went to bed, thinking about the upcoming completion of Thirty Day LA.
