7.4.01

the MUNI Freak of the Week returns! for one week only!

since i was in sf last week, and completely at the mercy of public transportation, naturally i had plenty of candidates for my Freak of the Week contest (see earlier entries). i think the winner has to be the guy with the mole-goatee. he had one of those tiny, long stringy goatees, the kind that you sometimes see on the chin of an elderly asian man, pencil-thin and about 6 inches long, all scraggly and coarse. well, this guy had one, only all the hair was growing out of the mole on his neck. i kid you not. i couldn’t stop staring. he had this big but not offensively huge mole on his neck, a little off center at adam’s apple height, and a six-inch bundle of hair, about as thick as a pencil, growing out of it. i mean, what would possess you to cultivate a thing like that?

so it’s the fourth. mccall has a nice sort of small-town style fourth of july celebration. this evening they set off fireworks over the lake, and everyone in the area gathered along the shore to watch. hundreds of boats were out in the lake as well, their starboard and larboard lights twinkling like christmas lights. little kids ran about madly, jumping in and out of the lake, sparklers in each hand. i absolutely love fireworks. there is nothing in this world that can still make me feel like a child – small and overwhelmed and delighted – like fireworks can. by the time the grand finale begins, i always find myself clapping and grinning and giggling like a kid. the combination of the sparks raining down over my head, and the big chest-thumping booms create this sort of sensory-overload in which all traces of i’m-too-jaded-too-like-this-stuff are completely obliterated, at least for the duration of the show.