I fiddled with the title of this post, opting not to go with the cutesy, pretentious “weekend des Walsh.” They ain’t French after all, and they ain’t from the French-speaking part of Boston, which I guess might be Au Bon Pain.

I think we hosted fairly well the Northern Cali transplant show and tell. Golden Gate, China Town, hiking a bit in the nature and M. picking out all the food. I’ll say this about having guy friends and a live-in beau as compared to hanging with the fairer sex, food time is pretty easy. It’s more of a volume proposition, I think.

In a vaguely maternal, no, fuck that, older sister-like, nurturing moment, I did kick in some fresh fruit from the farmers’ market. A fiber and nutrient-rich antidote to a wide variety of cooked flesh.

Best of all, we ended the weekend and their visit in a full-circle gesture. (Yes, tear in one eye while my cheek is dampened with the trail of another, the Brothers head south manana.)

Anyway, not long after meeting M., maybe a month or two, I tried to entice him to join the roving band of zombies who ended up watching a midnight show in Boston. He was skeptical of the cinematic joy that was 28 Days Later. We caught up the next day.

While the Walsh Brothers organized that original zombie field trip, this time around we took them to our neighborhood theater to see 28 Weeks Later.

Yeah. Zombies.

For Dot, here’s my album covers (front and back) for the next boy band:

For bourbon lovers, here’s today’s wild turkey:

For a full glance at the Walsh visit, I, of course, took way to fucking many pictures, which are here, and here.

Please feel free to comment or question any of the photos.

I could write more, but I should sleep to go to work tomorrow.

But, I’m awake. Why? Because there’re some special boys in the house. The Walsh Fellas, or somesuch.

Seriously, the Walsh Brothers have FINALLY made it to the opposite side of the country. Maybe you’ll read about it here, where they better not write no ‘blog posts about me. I’ll sue, I tell you what.

I’m letting these people into M.’s home.

I seriously don’t know when exactly our collective national soul eased back into the U.S. of A. circa 1925, when Clarence Darrow mostly convinced some foks that Darwin was onto something.

If it’s the mid-1920s, I’m gonna get me some bathtub gin to ease myself into senselessness. Why the fuck not drink the moonshine and risk the brain damage, given the state of the world.

Of course, I’m referring to the Republican presidential debate of the other day, when Senator Sam Brownback, Governor Mike Huckabee and Representative Tom Tancredo raised their goddamn hands to salute their lack of faith in reality.

For me, I ain’t actually looking for a president of any kind of faith. Someone with some planning, leadership, basic civics skills, now that would be a nice change of pace.

If I’m like open-minded or something, and someone with some religiousity is going to have the job of leader of the free world, I would be cool as long as they could comprehend what should be basic junior high science. They, and by they, I mean right-thinking people everywhere, call it the THEORY of evolution, because it’s science talk. Like the theory of relativity. Rhetoric, ya dig?

Scientists have this thing where they like postulate and junk and test against a theory. Some theories get a lot more tests over time and, what with scientists lacking the crystal clarity of faith, they never really get around to declaring ultimate truths. It’s actually what I like about the scientific method.

It was a pretty safe bet that I wouldn’t be voting for a Republican. But, jesus fucking hell in a handbasket, I can’t even consider it remotely viable. I’m about one rifle and a Che Guaevara T-shirt from calling for a revolution.

After a couple of days on the new bike, I have only one thing to say. My ass (actually the top of my thighs right before they connect on the place where a Barbie doll has smoothness and leg holes) is fucking sore.

I spent part of the evening searching out saddle bruising. Google brings back a link to Lesbian Life at About.com. I figured SCORE, I shall learn from athletic young women peddling before me. For the life of me, I can’t find the words I search, though. I dd learn about some lesbian dating etiquette, though, so there’s that.

Hopefully, my sensitive, tender and unbelievably sweet ass will adjust. The bike shop did adjust it a bit today.

My commuting fantasy is enriched by the speed and lightness of my new steed. But, the butt pain has got to end.

M. and I picked ourselves up some new convertibles.

Sweet.

Here are the bullet points:

Work, tiring.
Conan, interesting.
John Bon Jovi singing to Larry King on 50 years of Kingness, bizarre.
M. and my getting new bikes, exciting.
(My other bike getting stolen, frustrating.)
M. training for a “duathlon” in his mind, amusing.
M. buying helmet today before buying bike tomorrow, amusing.
M. buying new biking outfits, see above.
The amount of bikes and lycra spandex in our current ‘hood, frightening.

This week would have been a crazy one at work without any extra juice. But, juice we had. With folks out of the office, other folks communicating according to what I might be calling the “Brubaker Principle,” as in what we have here is a failure to communicate, and prep going on for our thrice a year pre-board jam, it’s just been a laugh-fucking riot.

My real stress was trying to get the document I needed to get done, done, so I could take tomorrow off with impugnity. Tomorrow is all about the priorities.

Conan O’Brien is visiting the City by the Bay, or some other suck travelogue name for San Francisco. Soon as I heard, I got my fingers walking on over to the website to try to score me the tickets.

Tomorrow, I’ll be queuing up with my golden ticket like email at the Orpheum Theater and waiting to see if I get nosebleed or floor. Don’t really mind either way.

The important part is I won’t be working, and I’ll be catching some live telebision taping and comedy.

I’m happy we’ll be catching Patton Oswald on the big show. Better than yesterday’s “comedian” Robin Williams. I know folks who like him, but he annoys the shit out of me, and that was before comedy stories taught me that he is kind of a dick and a half, stealing and other bad comedy mojo.

Best of all, I’ll get to catch a bit of the kind of mythology that still gooses me a bit when I stroll through San Francisco. Bob Weir, as in one of the founders of a little known band called the Grateful Dead, will be the musical performer with his band RATDOG.

I’ll be one of the old farts thinking back on youth going to quite a few Dead shows or Weir’s other band, Bobby and the Midnights, wearing Indian print, wrap around skirts and practicing the best technique for the biggest hit from various bongs.

The details are foggy, but I know the evil psycho chick I lived with post-college but new from junior high loomed large in the stories and the Dead years. I’m also pretty sure she lost her virginity to one of her older brother’s inappropriately attentive, hippie-esque, faux-Eastern philosophical buddies.

Even at 15, I had a pretty heightened radar for creepy lechers, and the buddy fit the bill, pseudo-spiritual spouting or no. Seriously, dude, if you’re 20 and you got a couple of 15 year olds listening to albums on your hi-fi stereo equipment, it ain’t rocket science to read the signs.

Gratefully (get it, pun on the band, ha ha), greatfully, I dug the free pot and vodka drinks over the manly overtures.

Better yet, I dug the irony. The psycho girl’s hateful mother, truly a hateful woman, often dropped hints that I, what with my single mom and all, was leading her angel astray. Not fucking likely. She spawned the whore, and Pat, my mom, raised a painfully shy nerd with a late-blooming sex drive and nothing to particularly prove.

Back to the present day, I did learn life skills back then that still serve me well. Last weekend, after walking around in shorts all day, I needed a quick change of costume to eat in a nice restaurant in the chill night air of San Francisco. M. doubted my ability to succeed in the quick change.

Days spent at the beach before concert nights at the steamy, sweaty, torturous Cape Cod Coliseum taught me well. If I could slip off a wet, sandy bathing suit and switch to underwear and tight jeans in the bucket seat of a ’69 Ford Maverick, while drunk, you can imagine the cool, dry, well-fitting change in M.’s car was easy

I came to Cali in search of a new “lifestyle” ‘cuz I heard they had those here. The new me, the reinvented life, was to include a low-stress, work-a-day life. The kind of bill-paying, day gig that keeps groceries and rent and shit like birth control off the welfare dime but fails to rob the soul through fatigue and burning pressure.

So, why, oh why, oh, woe is me, why did I bring work home tonight? Granted the task tilted toward the editing, writing, formatting shit I don’t suck at. But, still and all work, it was grind bespoiling the home ‘puter.

I’ll be needing some white sage and a purifying ceremony to bring the creative writing mojo back to the MacBook.

‘Tis done, and now I shall sleep. ‘Tis done, and I will get paid a bit for my troubles.

I must also remind myself it is a temporary glitch to the overall plan. You see, my extra work is directly proportional to a colleague’s need to scuba dive in Latin America. My day will come and payback is certain.

For now, I whine, winge and weep.

I swear I had one of those conversations with M. that made me think about something to write. But, somewhere between doing shit and less than shit all day, and not to get too scatological, actually shitting, I plum forgot.

Here’s all I know right now. We live near a regular farmer’s market and warm from sunshine, picked yesterday, stems still on, organiic strawberries are damn fine. Tasty and fine.

Other than that, check out the various pictures below from hanging near the Bay in the city of San Francisco the other day.