BART Adventures: Grown Men Slapping Each Other

Yesterday morning, while sitting on the BART (my favorite mode of public transportation in the city due to its usual speediness, lack of tourists peering at San Francisco maps, and its number of available seats), I witnessed my first ever BART fight.

The fight began, as all things worth fighting over do, with a heated discussion over WHO REACHED THE LAST AVAILABLE SEAT FIRST. The aggressor, a man who looked as though he worked in an auto shop, began by pushing and yelling at the unfortunate businessman who had chosen to cross him, "What the fuck!? What do you think you're doing, man?" The businessman, who was equally incensed over the situation, screamed repeatedly, "You're crazy! You're crazy! I'm calling 911 on you!" The lame verbal argument degenerated into a physical fight, complete with both men windmilling their arms and slapping at each other in the manner of two teenage girls.

Meanwhile, we other passengers on the train reacted to this impressive show of bravado in either one of two ways - by 1) moving away from the crazy windmilling arms and giving these two idiots ample space to slap each other, or 2) stalwartly staying put and refusing to give up our seats. I, of course, refused to move from my seat, and responded to the aggressive bitch slapping by cowering slightly and pretending I did not exist (this is a very successful tactic; also highly recommended for when an elderly person attempts to steal your seat. The key is to not make eye contact).

You would think the most amusing part of the fight was the bitch slapping, but no. The best part of the entire thing was when BOTH men pulled out their cell phones and called 911 to report the other AT THE SAME TIME.

The adventure (well, for me anyway) ended at the Montgomery station, where the businessman tried to escape, while on the phone with 911, only to have the auto shop man follow him. I do not know the eventual outcome, but I do know that I learned a valuable lesson: Never underestimate the power of an available seat on the BART (particular on Monday mornings).

Love and Hate: Terrific Thursday Edition

For reasons I am hesitant to talk about (you never know who may be stalking me reading this blog), I have dubbed Wednesday "Wonderful Wednesday." This week, however, was NOT-so-wonderful Wednesday, and I was disturbed to such an unnatural degree that I was thrown into a sad lethargic state that lasted pretty much the entire day. TODAY, however, the universe has realigned itself, and I feel a deep desire to update my readerless blog. But about what? My life has been very small lately, mostly consisting of me creating important projects for myself, like making a long list of clothing items I need to exist or else I will die, and then ranking said clothing items in order of life-or-death importance. Out of necessity, then, I came up with a way to impart my small adventures of the day AND contain them in handy list format.

It goes a little something like this…

Love: The fact that I played the word "terrific" in Scrabble today on Terrific Thursday.

Hate: I went to Trader Joe's earlier today and they had neither my 100 calorie oatmeal chocolate chip cookies NOR Pink Lady apples, and I had very disappointing Gala apples from TJ's just last week, and I think it is obvious to all that the entire TJ's trip was just very upsetting.

Love: Due to choosing the 100 calorie cookies over the less crunchy and more delicious fattening ones, I have lost enough weight to require a trip to the tailor's to take in some of my pants. Hurrah!

Hate: Apparently, even though I am smaller than I was, I am still not that small: This morning as I tried to make myself invisible and stand inconsequentially aside as people exited the F train (a stupid mode of transportation to which I could devote an entire hate post), I was apparently BLOCKING SOME IMPORTANT GUY'S WAY, and he was so bothered by my presence that he loudly muttered "Get away!"

Love: The fact that Sarah Palin's disapproval rating is skyrocketing this week.

Hate: The fact that 40% of Americans still inexplicably approve of her.

Love: How a co-worker shamelessly watched It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia yesterday while munching loudly on snacks, as though he was in a movie theater and not a depressing study hall-like room that is always cold.

Hate: That no one reads my blog. I've really gotta advertise.

Love: That I don't work tomorrow, so tonight my weekend officially begins!

Intro Post

After much procrastination and making of excuses, I have decided to start this blog to document some of the particularly hilarious moments that I have experienced while living here in San Francisco. It's probable that I won't live here forever, and I would like to preserve some of these special times for posterity. What if, years from now, I manage to erase from my mind the time that I went to do my laundry and opened up the washer, only to find that a homeless person had taken a ginormous crap in it? I think we can all agree that that would just not do.

Also, I'm not gonna lie about it, sometimes I just really have a lot of time on my hands. During the day time. In particular, during working hours.

So, without further ado, I present an entry that was really just inappropriate for the communal blog it was published in...my encounter with Dirt Nasty, aka Simon Rex.

Random "Celebrity" Sightings: Simon Rex

Recently, I found myself at Fluid nightclub. Whilst importantly placing my name on the guest list and perusing Fluid's site the day before, I knew that there was an "event" going on the night I would be there, though as I am not really up on what the kids are listening to these days, I paid little attention.

After entering the club, one of the first things I noticed was the presence of a velvet rope with an elite few standing behind it, away from the intoxicated gyrating bedazzled masses. The elite few consisted of a DJ, a couple bleary-eyed blondes in halter tops, a man with a Christmas tree-shaped afro, and a nondescript white guy in a white t-shirt. My friend had heard that the white t-shirted man was a celebrity, and asked me who it was. Peering at him urgently, I had to admit that I did not know. We later found out that he was Simon Rex, best known for his MTV VJ work back in the '90s.

Now, though I am an admitted Us Weekly whore, the fact that Simon Rex was standing behind a velvet rope in Fluid impressed me not at all. In fact, I was shocked that he was actually allowed behind the velvet rope. At this point, I was not fully inebriated yet and was still feeling smug.

A couple drinks later, my tune changed. Turning to my friend, I admitted to an insane desire to touch Simon Rex. After all, he was very hot back when I was in 8th grade, and here he was practically standing right in front of me and when was I ever going to have the opportunity to touch a D-list celebrity of my 8th grade dreams ever again?! Luckily, she had as little pride as I did, so we charged to the front of the club and stood pathetically at the velvet rope.

Unfortunately, SR could probably sense our pitifulness, because he chose that moment to escape out the back door to get stoned, as a fellow groupie informed us. We settled in to wait. During this time, we made good friends with a girl who proudly showed us a picture she and her husband had taken with Simon Rex. At this point, I did feel just a tiny bit lame, but that did not stop me from telling her "That is awesome!" really enthusiastically.

When SR reappeared, he was wearing a black Warriors jacket and some shades. Then, much to my surprise, he stepped up on a little black box, and proceeded to rap in a manner that I am sad to say was reminiscent of Vanilla Ice. Did you know SR has an alter ego named Dirt Nasty? Oh, he does. The first song went a little like this: "Something something something something CRAY-ZAY! Something something something something CRAY-ZAY!" There was much fist-pumping in the audience. The man with the Christmas tree-shaped afro (who I have now learned is Dirt Nasty's partner, Andre Legacy) waved his hands in the air.

At this point, I felt a lot lame but we had committed to our current situation, and we weren't going anywhere. Until…the lowest point of the night happened.

Dirt Nasty launched into a little ditty entitled "Baby Dick." Not only that, but he and Andre Legacy performed hand motions to accompany the clever lyrics (example: "Baby Dick!/ Itty bitty tiny little/Baby Dick!"). These hand motions consisted of holding up a pinkie finger and waving it in time to the music. What was even better about the entire experience was the enthusiasm with which the audience was imitating the hand motions and shouting the lyrics. For an idea of what it felt like to be there, I suggest you check out this YouTube link. Please take note of the waving pinkie fingers. Also, note the very cool sunglasses Dirt Nasty is sporting.

Halfway through this song, at this point, words cannot even describe the degree of lameness that I felt. I turned to my friend and we decided to high-tail it out of there. No 8th Grade Dream D-List Celebrity Touching could be worth the humiliation of waving one's pinkie in the air while aggressively shouting "Baby Dick!" Therefore, we left and comforted ourselves with greasy food at Mel's. And that was most definitely the high point of the evening.