busy friends and 80s nostalgia

Monday, jul. 21, 2003   |   0 comments

Went to a total coolpatrol party with Adrienne on Friday, where crazily mainstream 80s songs like We Got the Beat, Come on Eileen, and Don’t You (Forget About Me) were played with true gusto and irony, but without (and this totally threw me until I figured out what was missing) any meaningful nostalgia. Those twenty-cutes bobbed their heads along to I Confess thinking, “oh man, the eighties!” while thirty-wee me mused, “jesus christ, I lot my virginity to this song.” Experiencing a highly specific memory while dancing in a field of youth who are celebrating the nostalgia of a song in only the most distant, general way is disconcerting. It also, apparently, makes you drink a great deal of beer?

I didn’t manage to get out of bed in any significant way until about three the next day (I had to watch Cocoon from beginning to bitter end before I could even consider standing up). After about three rounds of “are you up?” “I don’t know, are you up?” phone calls, Adrienne convinced me to get vaguely dressed and scrape on some weird hat and walk slowly up to pinball master Levon’s St. Francis Fountain, which is now serving real, big-girl food on top of all that fine ice cream, and I had possibly the best hangover meal ever: turkey club on toasted sourdough (no tomatoes), french fries, and a chocolate shake with a shot of espresso and a banana. I know.

Sunday I had a sunny, California-good-time AIDS-walking with Leisa and Cash. (How is it that after six miles of sunblock and sweat and sticky, orange-eating hands, Leisa still manages to look fine? Fine!) The route, which circled around Golden Gate Park, from the greenhouse palace to the buffalo, was peppered with performers that were so insanely San Francisco — The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence waving pom poms, a pride of belly dancers, a marching band with Greatful Dead sculls painted in the bells of their tubas, a mildly alternative band playing barefoot — that the whole day felt like floating down a slowly moving San Francisco theme ride, like “It’s a Small World” only limited to the Northern California Experience.

In other news, my friends are totally making it happen (MIHing). Besides Levon’s big leap with getting the kitchen up and running at the Saint Francis (you should totally go! only maybe not all at once? so it’s not too, too crowded when I want to go? oh man.), Pamie‘s novel, Why Girls Are Weird, has officially hit the shelves (and she’ll be in town for a reading at Barnes and Nobel in Oakland on July 31), as has June’s The Unusually Useful Web Book. Kari got her first piece published, “The Teen Gene.” Liz Dunn’s bakery, Miette (little crumb!), got its sign well hung at its spot in the Ferry Building and should be open super soon. Jill is in Italy for a month’s worth of phenomenology (huh?). Adrienne has a new job tracking down sensational crime-solvers and flirtatious 21-year-old demolition derby drivers. Meanwhile I … stitched up another cute top.