18 posts tagged “friends”
Like I said, breakfast is the best way to start the day... especially when visitors are in town. So when Nuk came out to visit a couple of weekends ago we took him to one of our favorite joints, the 101 Coffee Shop:
My friend Monica just e-mailed me some pictures from back in the day. And she would probably kill me if she knew I was going to post them anywhere on the internet.
Including an old friend/teacher
(visiting from Germany)
who introduced us to Atlas Shrugged
and directed us in many a play
back in our high school days.
Off to see
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
by the Dwtn. Repertory Theater.
(Originally directed Off-Broadway by Philip Seymour Hoffman
My grandma would wash that play's mouth out with soap-
not recommended to be performed by your local church youth group.)
We sat in a parking garage
in 95 degree heat
on bleachers
our butt cheeks were numb
after 3.5 hours.
Nukala said he wanted some good American food-
Hamburgers.
We took him to the Wurstkuche
instead.
(Like he doesn't get enough Bratwurst back home.)
Their menu included:
(exotic sausages)
Buffalo, Beef, & Pork and Chipotle Peppers
Duck & Bacon with Jalepeno Peppers
Rabbit, Veal & Pork Seasoned with White Wine
Alligator & Pork
Rattlesnake & Rabbit
WURST OVERLOAD.
My friend Jane and I went on daily strolls in her Oakland neighborhood during my visit a couple of weeks ago. She had a backyard that she was very excited to show me... a secret backyard. We snuck around the house, because the neighbors once told Jane that the owner didn't mind visitors. This is just a little of what we found:
I didn't do all of my growing up in Michigan, but I like this poem nonetheless. I've spent enough time (and was born) in Michigan to think of her as a very good friend.
A Primer
by Bob Hicok
I remember Michigan fondly as the place I go
to be in Michigan. The right hand of America
waving from maps or the left
pressing into clay a mold to take home
from kindergarten to Mother. I lived in Michigan
forty-three years. The state bird
is a chained factory gate. The state flower
is Lake Superior, which sounds egotistical
though it is merely cold and deep as truth.
A Midwesterner can use the word "truth,"
can sincerely use the word "sincere."
In truth the Midwest is not mid or west.
When I go back to Michigan I drive through Ohio.
There is off I-75 in Ohio a mosque, so life
goes corn corn corn mosque, I wave at Islam,
which we're not getting along with
on account of the Towers as I pass.
Then Ohio goes corn corn corn
billboard, goodbye, Islam. You never forget
how to be from Michigan when you're from Michigan.
It's like riding a bike of ice and fly fishing.
The Upper Peninsula is a spare state
in case Michigan goes flat. I live now
in Virginia, which has no backup plan
but is named the same as my mother,
I live in my mother again, which is creepy
but so is what the skin under my chin is doing,
suddenly there's a pouch like marsupials
are needed. The state joy is spring.
"Osiris, we beseech thee, rise and give us baseball"
is how we might sound were we Egyptian in April,
when February hasn't ended. February
is thirteen months long in Michigan.
We are a people who by February
want to kill the sky for being so gray
and angry at us. "What did we do?"
is the state motto. There's a day in May
when we're all tumblers, gymnastics
is everywhere, and daffodils are asked
by young men to be their wives. When a man elopes
with a daffodil, you know where he's from.
In this way I have given you a primer.
Let us all be from somewhere.
Let us tell each other everything we can.
Whenever I visit my friend Jamie in Albuquerque I make sure we stop by her mom's house to visit Salvadore.
I have not been to Chuck E. Cheese's since I was a wee little one. So when I heard my friend Bonnie was celebrating her little girl Jazlynn's 5th birthday with the Cheese I begged to be invited. When I got there it was pure insanity. Children were running amok, I lost a shoe because the floors were so sticky, and Chuck looked like he was going to eat the little children he was singing Happy Birthday to. But, I wouldn't have traded it for anything else on a Saturday night because it was Jazzy's birthday and she was the prettiest little girl in the joint!
Last night we went out for our friend Wes' birthday. He decided that there is no better way to celebrate turning mid to late twenties then by getting a group of people together to play laser tag. Since we couldn't take a camera in there with us, this picture pretty much sums up what a blast we had. (No pun intended!)
My Red Team came in last place. I ranked 34 out of 43. I need to hone my laser tag skills.
We had more fun around the corner not too long after Austria...Dan and Jane came for their first visit to L.A. to celebrate their 10 year anniversary. One of the first things Jane said she wanted to do while visiting was spot a celebrity. Now, as you all know, I have many celebrity friends out here but none of them were available to chill with me and my posse this weekend. So we'd have to see one the old fashioned way- stalking.
Our first stop for breakfast was the 101 Coffee Shop. Anytime someone comes from out of town it's a great excuse for Tim and I to go to the 101. We take everyone there. That and the creme puff pastry place on Hollywood and Highland. The 101 was featured on the movie Swingers, and Jane and Dan just happened to love Swingers when they were in high school. I love the coffee and Tim loves the milkshakes. I kept reminding Jane to keep her eyes peeled, we might "bump" into a celebrity at any moment. Sometimes they pop out from behind mailboxes or jump out from bushes. They are tricky little buggers and you have to constantly be on your toes!
So these kids were excited it was 10 degrees warmer in Los Angeles then in Oakland so the next stop was Venice Beach for a little photo session and fun in the sun. Jane swears she spotted Sally Struthers driving by in her car and I spotted someone way across the beach walking their little French Bulldog. I sprinted as fast as I could to get a picture of him, but I just didn't make it in time...au revoir my little Frenchie!
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