This Whole Town is Fucking Nuts, Example 15,643
It was a long week. I live literally five minutes from work, but have been staying in town with my special lady friend which, between skate time to the train station and the train ride itself, adds up to about a 40 minute commute to work every day. Actually… this information is irrelevant; I don’t need a goddamn excuse. I FUCKING HATE GETTING UP IN THE MORNING. I’ve been braindead since I started work, and I just can’t seem to catch up on sleep. I’m sure you can understand my excitement to go to bed early on Saturday and basically sleep all day Sunday (which is my only day off til training is finished up).
I had peacefully been sleeping for about 45 minutes when I was awoken by something between a ruckus and a hullabaloo. I heard…whooping. Groggy but exceedingly curious, I sat up in bed and parted the blinds, looking down on Burnside from my sixth-story vantage point. I am currently the world record holder for “takes” for a single experience. I did a thirty-seven take, I’m pretty sure.
*Cue Wicked Witch of the West theme music*
The streets were filled with hundreds…no, thousands of cyclists… all completely naked. I was confused at first, until I remembered I now live in Portland and nothing has to make any fucking sense in this town. I had my camera, but didn’t think this could possibly last long enough for me to throw on clothes and take the elevator down to the street, but as I kept watching it became clear it wasn’t going to end any time soon. At first I thought maybe a couple hundred people were just circling the block but, again, this is Portland and sometimes you just gotta put your brain on cruise control and accept what you’re seeing. This was definitely a streaking cyclist procession of biblical proportion. I hurriedly got dressed to head downstairs cuz, you know, boobies and stuff.
Still groggy, I reached street level a short few minutes later where Cameron (he lives in the same building now, remember) had also come out to investigate. This nude bike run held up traffic for, no hyperbole, at least 20 minutes. I was so completely out of my head that I didn’t even realize I was shooting my camera in full manual mode without actually operating any of the buttons (…?), and I’m really surprised I got anything to turn out at all, since by all rights none of these should have exposed properly.
After they passed, Cameron and I headed to his apartment to have a beer until the cyclists’ slightly less enthusiastic return trip. We returned to the sidewalk with all the other spectator creeps where Cameron gave both his beer and a cigarette to one of the participants. There was something understandably surreal about watching your friend give a sweaty naked guy on a ten-speed a light. I shot Cameron a look that conveyed either “What the fuck” or “What…the fuck.” I was tired, so I don’t really remember.
“What?” He shrugged, “I can’t say no to a naked man.”
C-ron in P-town
Here’s some fuckin pictures I took of Cameron, his first week in the Land of Ports (the pictures are a little old).
Be tee doubleyoo, Cameron has started some fancy-schmancy artfag blog. Because that’s what you do when you live in Portland.
3 Comments »Metacologne
I’m going to create a cologne called “Restraint,” which will cost like $300 an ounce. The purpose of this cologne and hence, allure, will be to NOT use it. Here is the commercial I envision:
Scene: A posh social gathering. A well-dressed woman hastily pulls a well-dressed man out onto the back patio, closing the sliding glass door behind them. He pushes her against the wall and they begin passionately making out. She buries her head in his chest and pulls back. They pause.
Woman: Are you using…Restraint?
Man: *Gazes into her eyes* No.They return to making out.
I’m basically a marketing genius.
5 Comments »A Few Things
I am alive and well, though busy. You know how it goes; full-time job, full-time GF… Yahoo’s training schedule is especially rigorous at nine hours a day/six days a week for three weeks (which, after seven months of unemployment, has goddamn killed me), but as soon as I’m on my regular work schedule I’m sure I’ll be finding time to get back to blogging.
Yahoo is pretty sweet so far. They really take care of their employees, and it’s not just the good pay and insane benefits. It’s really close to my apartment (two train stops) so I can get there in, literally, about five minutes. There’s also lots of silly little perks like discounts on public transit and wireless plans (I’m replacing my aging Razr with a Blackberry Pearl soon), a free coffee shop right on campus, free vending, etc etc. Plus you have to carry a thick plastic identification badge that you have to wave in front of doors in order to open them. This is so radical I consider it a perk — I’m sure you would agree. Word in class is that the cafeteria has a pretty good menu, but I can’t afford things like “food” until I get my first paycheck. I’m so far beyond completely broke, I’ve pretty much lived on free lattes and Cup Noodles for the past week. Thanks, Yahoo.
If any of the Casper folk didn’t get the net and are wondering where Cameron is, he moved to Portland. He even got an apartment in my special lady friend’s building, giving him plenty of opportunities to be third wheel. I’m sure he loves it. The rest of you are welcome to move out here at any time.
I’ve also finally updated Wordpress to the latest version — a project that has been on indefinite “put off until something horrible happens” until something horrible happened and its status was upgraded to “Ugh, I guess I’ll update” — so if anything on the site is acting goofy, please let me know so I can fix it two months from now.
15 Comments »Just in Case Anybody Is Curious…
Yes, I start my new job at Yahoo in about six hours and no, I cannot sleep.
5 Comments »Dumb and Hummer
The other day I saw an actual Hummer downtown — the original, boxy Hummer. It looked very out of place in a city like Portland, but when he came to a stop sign right next to me, I could see a “Biodiesel” sticker prominently displayed on the side. A statement? Or just clever camouflage to deter militant greens?
Today I saw an H2, also with an interesting sticker:
The only way my brain can process this is as the ultimate in hipster irony.
5 Comments »The Curse of Faith
What I wouldn’t give to be able to speak my mind as eloquently yet bitingly sarcastically as this guy. Maybe I should get me one of those new-fangled British accents.
11 Comments »Pork & Beans Video
So good.
3 Comments »Sunburned for Change Part II
Mom to Me May 21 (1 day ago)
My friend, who has been sick since March and has just had her tonsils out in an attempt to get at whatever is wrong with her (have I pulled on your heartstrings yet?) is DYING to see your Obama photos. Please help make her recuperation easier by getting them posted.
NOW.
You people are vultures!
So the special lady friend and I thought we’d be clever on Sunday and show up an hour before doors were supposed to open for the Obama rally at Waterfront Park. But when we got downtown we hit an enormous line of people, the problem being that we were still about 15 blocks from the park. Instead of getting in line, however, we headed to the gates as we had arranged to meet her parents at that intersection. Her parents, somehow oblivious to the fact that there was a giant snaking river of people behind them, were just standing right by the entrance. Being the type to seize opportunities when we see them, we blended in with them and when the gates opened, just casually walked in with the first couple hundred people (that had been hanging out since about 7 in the morning). Unfair I know, but goddammit I have a really nice camera. That should get me something, right?
We staked out an area about 20 feet away from the podium, which ensured we would not be able to watch The Decemberists when they played as they were on a different stage. Bumming off the better-prepared people around us, we slathered ourselves in two or three different brands of sunscreen and got busy standing around for three hours. Every time I looked around at the crowd and thought they couldn’t POSSIBLY squeeze more people in, they’d pack another couple thousand in. Finally when conditions were sufficiently sardine-like they quit admitting, but people were not deterred and an additional 15,000 gathered outside the gates hoping to hear the speech.
After the band finished, an hour of O-BA-MA chanting and a couple introductions later, the Obamas finally took the stage for that weird public family hugging thing politicians do and he started his speech. I’ve heard the basic speech a zillion times by this point, save for a couple Portland-related flourishes (you should have heard the bike cult EXPLODE when he mentioned that the rest of America could learn from Portland’s progressive approach to alternative transportation), so I was free to focus on taking photos rather than get inspired (not that I wasn’t inspired; hearing him speak in person was incredible).
He must have only spoke for about 45 minutes then made the quick round of handshakes, which we were stampeded out of taking advantage of. Afterwards this OCEAN of people spilled into the streets like some epic zombie movie, halting traffic for at least the next 30 minutes. It was pretty surreal, and the mild sunburns we received were more than worth it.
Two days later we voted (yeah, I’m an Oregon registered voter now — weird, eh?), and Obama beat out whats-her-name by an embarrassing margin.
Sunburned for Change
I spent the better part of the day today getting all political-like with the special lady friend, as we met up with a couple other Portlanders to hear Barack Obama speak. Unlike when we went to go see Bill Clinton speak, I’m not kicking myself for forgetting my camera; we stood in the blazing sun at the waterfront for a good four hours in order to secure decent spots from which to take pictures. We were lucky to get as close as we did, as I just read on MSNBC that Portland scored a record turnout for the campaign with an estimated 75,000 attendees. It was just insane, I’m exhausted and I have about 200 photos to sort through, the best of which I will be posting as soon as I get back on my real computer (she has a goddamn Mac and it’s driving me nuts).
Full report and pictures coming when I can.
