"The year was 1925. Every morning, Professor Ueno Eizaburo walked to Shibuya station accompanied by his loyal dog, Hachi, nicknamed Hachiko. Hachiko didn't accompany his master to his teaching job at the Imperial University (now known as Tokyo University), but when Professor Ueno returned every day at 3pm, the dog was always at the station waiting for him. However, on May 21 of that year, Ueno died of a stroke while at the university. Hachiko went to Shibuya as always to meet his master, but 3 o'clock came and went, and the professor didn't arrive. So Hachiko waited. And waited.

The Akita must have known something was wrong, but nonetheless he returned to the station every day at 3 o'clock to meet the train. Soon people began to notice the loyal dog's trips made in vain to meet his master. Ueno's former gardener, the Shibuya stationmaster, and others began feeding Hachiko and giving him shelter. Word of his unaltered routine spread across the nation, and he was held up as a shining example of loyalty. People travelled to Shibuya simply to see Hachiko, feed him, and gently touch his head for luck.

The months turned to years, and still Hachiko returned to Shibuya station daily at 3pm, even as arthritis and aging took their toll. Finally, on March 7, 1934 - nearly ten years after last seeing Professor Ueno - the 12-year-old Akita was found dead on the same spot outside the station where he had spent so many hours waiting for his master."

There's a life size statue of Hachiko sitting in the station now. There are benches around it for people to sit on while they wait for their friends to arrive on the train.

For Lori, who is not allowed to talk to her fans while at work. And she's always at work.

It is my belief that the difference between a successful person and a mediocre one is a matter of self worth. I think this is true across all walks of life.

For anyone, including artists like you, we must keep in mind the most admirable and remembered people were the ones who demanded appreciation, who were defiant enough to disregard the belittling of their critics and their sponsors and scream to the world that they were doing something good.

The meekly loyal, the unquestioningly dedicated, and the uninhibitedly generous are in the most danger of being trampled upon. Talent gives a person the ability to make beautiful things, but it takes self worth to demand they be looked at and that they be valued.

The Japanese say that the nail that sticks out is the one that gets hammered, and we in America say the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

Both are true.

No one should be afraid of sticking out and squeaking a bit, because whether a person gets hammered or lubed is up to the world, and the only other option is to rust away to worthlessness, unnoticed at best, a nuisance at worst.

There are always people who would devalue you and what you make. The ones among us who will be admired are the ones who put them in their place. And I know you've got it in you, because what is LiveJournal but a grandly narcissistic and remarkably public collection of squeaks?

And now kids it's almost beer o'clock, which means it's time for yours truly to quit with the pontificatin' and head to the bar to get hammered AND lubed!

I just don't get it when people say, "You can ask me anything, I'm not ashamed of anything."

How the hell do you reach the age of 30 without being ashamed of something? It makes me think that a person is either a psychopath who feels no remorse for the bad things they've done, or they're the second person to walk the earth who has done no wrong.

I might be wrong but I think shame is a good thing. I'm ashamed of a lot of things. At the age of six I told my parents that I hated them. I destroyed a nice man's super nintendo by throwing up a belly full of tequila on it. I like Laura Branigan's "Gloria." And far, far worse.

Shame motivates me every bit as much as any amount of pride. And those of you who I'm close to know I've got more than my fair share of that. I don't want to be ashamed when I look back on how I treated my girlfriends. So I love them. I don't want to be ashamed of my work, so I'm constantly trying to learn about it. I don't want to be embarrassed about my sex life, so I always go down before hitting that shit.

I don't want to be ashamed when someone asks me what I'm doing with my life, so I try to do things that are wonderful.

I think that maybe someone who claims to have no shame is insecure. Too fragile to admit that there are apologies they need to make. I've got a list of sorrys I still need to say. It's a heavy bird to wear around my neck, but claiming it isn't there doesn't make it any lighter.

It's not often I am paused by someone's looks. However, the woman at the Greek restaurant certainly was worth stopping for.

Probably more Turkish than Greek, she was about 50 years old and easily the most exotic looking woman I've seen in a long time. Long streaks of gray in that feathery, curly hair that women from the eastern Mediterranean are blessed with, pulled back and bound loosely with a gold hairpin. Huge almond shaped eyes outlined in thick black. Gold bracelets on her arms.

She was a whirling dervish of deep brown skin, sparkling gold, and soft black tresses. Most importantly, she had the slightly cynical and amused bearing that comes with being an incredibly attractive older woman who knows she just gobsmacked a boy half her age.

The only ugly thing about her was the ring on her finger ;)

Also, you know, the Turkish lived in Fairy Chimneys. And those are pretty cool. If you don't know what they are, here's a picture.

I'm going back and finishing up some those quick garbage projects I seem to always start and never finish. Those ones I never finish even though they only take a few hours total to make.

This was supposed to remind me of going to SFMOMA a couple of months ago. Enjoy.

http://www.revisioneight.com/kandinsky/

I am eternally grateful to the cooking of the western Mediterranean for so many things. To the French for convincing me that the only thing you need for a sauce is the fond and a liquid. To the Italians for codifying the process stove top cooking into three words, the battuto, the soffrito, and the insaporire. To the Spanish for making the olive and the orange my best friends. To the Moroccans for their tangines, without which my adoration for cardamom and clove might never have surfaced.

But for a small eastern European boy like myself, when you're sick, you want the food grandma cooked. And that means one thing tonight. Pierogi. Sorry Italy.

A simple dough wrapped around potato and cheese and then fried in butter with sauteed onions. As delicious and as natural as sin. Though they don't have the fanbase that my chicken and dumplings in sour cream sauce have, pierogi will always be first in my heart from my people.

That episode of "Mad Men" still gives me the wigs, even now.

The ad exec says, "Do you want to know why you've never felt that feeling you're describing as love? Why you've never felt that lightning bolt to the chest? Why you've never spent every waking minute thinking about that certain someone? Because that feeling doesn't exist. That feeling was made up, by men like me, to sell you pantyhose."

I'm not sure. Love might be a creation of Madison Ave.

I'll be the first to admit it, if it is an illusion as fake as Brittany Spears drinking a Pepsi, I've been sold on it. I'll watch any movie and read any book that tells me there's such a thing as all consuming love. I don't really need to admit it, just about everyone I know has caught me secretly watching cheap romantic comedies.

I wonder, are the people writing these stories of great and tragic loves manipulating me for their benefit, or have they too been drawn into this grand illusion? Are they as unaware of the lie as I am? If that's the case, should I share in this pleasant simulacrum with them?

I think that like so many other things in my life, I prefer to live futilely hoping for this fantasy, rather than being resigned to the common.

I like being the underdog. These people who've taken my 9 dollars at the ticket booth are welcome to it, they've given me more than they think. One more thing to try to beat the odds at. If I do, if any single person does, then they've all lost. Or at least one of us has won way more they have.

Wouldn't it be great if it turns out that some creative director somewhere who plies this notion actually ends up reifying it? For myself or for any of us.

Also it was pretty cool when he said, "No. A marketing genius is the guy who came up with 99 cents. You're no genius."

"I was just driving back from buying beer for the night so I was as sober as a preacher on Sunday. And I swear to god I see this dark circle on the horizon. It's night so I can only barely make out the outline of a dark, perfect circle silhouetted against the dark night sky. I probably wouldn't have seen it but there were two rings of lights inside the dark circle."

"So you know what I'm thinking. Great, this is how it fucking happens. Tomorrow when I wake up I'm gonna be wondering where I was last night for 6 hours after they blank out my memory to protect the secrets of their alien technology and to erase the apparently necessary sexually demeaning violation they're gonna gleefully put me through."

"But that's when it happened, I'm staring at this flying saucer, practically about to drive off the road, and the huge disc turns around on it's side and it turns out to be the fucking Starship Enterprise. Like, I had only been seeing the saucer section silhouette and once it turned towards me I could see that little radar dish on the bottom part all lit up and shit and the rest of the thing came into view."

"And it flies right fucking over me."

"Now here's what I figure. You know how they're always saying how much popular science fiction influences engineers and physicists and shit. Well what if Star Trek's influence sculpts invention in the future in such subtle but strong ways that we just end up making space ships that look like fucking Star Trek in the future?"

"And supposing that happens, if one of those ships manages to come back in time, and they were hitting a fucking temporal anomaly every other week on the show anyway, and someone saw it, it would be exactly the experience I just had. Think about it."

"I will."

I always make a point to ask my girlfriends, "hey what's up with all these 'Curves' places opening up everywhere?"

The fact that I always get the same answer, "oh it's just for women who want to work out without there being guys around looking at them," makes me suspicious. It's like they've all been told to say exactly those words. Like they got a memo or are on some mailing list that says, "If you're asked about 'Curves' the preferred response, to avoid suspicion, is this . . . "

Apparently the first rule of 'Curves' is that you do not fucking talk about 'Curves.'

Well I don't believe the lies and I'm sure something devilish is going on behind those doors.

Men, I'll remind you that the American Revolution was started in bars and free-houses where Americans could escape the watchful eyes of the British and freely discuss their politics, their plans, and the beer wench's titties without fear of retaliation from their oppressors.

Now I'm not saying there aren't women working out in 'Curves.' In fact, I'm sure physical training and strength conditioning are probably an important part of the preparation for whatever shit is about to go down.

And I don't know what the goals of the 'Curves' women are, probably equal pay or something else every bit as nefarious, but whatever they are, I suspect they're no good for me.

I don't plan to be the first up against the wall when the women bust out of those doors and start hanging the colonial governors. This is the call out to the faithful, and a warning to the traitorous. The resistance begins with me.

If they ever decide to execute me, and it's looking more and more likely these days, my last meal is gonna be wine and cheese. Maybe a Fuji apple to go with. I'm gonna take a bottle of good Barbaresco and wheel of Edam, Brie, Comte, and Parmesan.

Everyone wins in this situation, because I get exactly what I want for my last meal and I'll be the only guy they've ever executed who doesn't poop himself.

Bartender: What do you want?
Me: I don't fucking know, what do you want man?
Bartender: Sharapova on my face. (Tennis was on the TV)
Me: We should invent that.
Bartender: What do you think would go into that?
Me: Where's she from?
Bartender: Russia.
Me: It's obviously a white russian made with cherry vodka. Given her red dress and all. I'll take a "Sharapova on My Face."

You'd think that'd be really good, but I've had things on my face that were better.

Notes on San Francisco.

Chinatown exists on a moebius strip where the laws of physics do not apply. It is possible to park at the bottom of it, travel upward and upward and upward, buy a deliciously tacky black silk robe with sparkly red dragons all over it, travel upward some more, and return to your car having never walked downward.

DO NOT wear Doc Martens if you are going to walk through Chinatown.

The Mayan restaurant, despite what we know about the Mayans, does not serve guinea pig. This is now utmost on my mind. I want to put a guinea pig in my mouth. I don't know why, but it seems a shame to have traveled to a foreign land and not have eaten something wildly unusual.

This leads me to hope that I can somehow find an underground culture of foodies who specialize in the procurement and preparation of things unusual.

I want to find the dark mirror version of the farmer's market. A farmer's market that is only open long after night falls, and never opens in the same place twice. Where one can walk down rows of stands between unpasteurized cheeses and vendors yelling, "I've got tapir," and, "fresh pelican for sale."

Cioppino is served best staring across the harbor to Alcatraz, watching the men on the dock hauling in cages of crabs just like the one you're eating.

Let us hope, should the right people be reading, that the picture of me wearing a bib with a crab on it, wildly spraying crab and squid bits everywhere never sees the light of the internet.

I ate at Mario Batali's restaurant, where I ordered a bolognese sauce that I use his recipe for when I make it for myself. My experience confirmed that not only is text completely inadequate for communicating something like making food, but that I have no gift for fresh pasta. However, my ragu bolognese is better.

The modern art museum is a fantastic place. Where they correctly place Braque in higher visibility than that shameless thief Picasso. Where they criminally confine Jasper Johns behind glass. And where they organize Matisse's sculpture in order, so that you can walk through it backwards and watch the heads reconstruct themselves.

Thanks to Flee for giving me a place to crash.

Thanks to Rob for coming out to see us in what time he was allowed.

And thanks to Alicia for making time for Plan C. ;)

Next stop is Portland for Bo's marathon. If Pete is reading, I'll be looking for ya. I'm gonna need your help throwing a brick through someone's car window.

I'll get in on the HP mania.

I just watched the new Harry Potter movie. So this mean old lady who's been put in charge of the school fires the teacher who teaches the kids all about seeing the future and how to use crystal balls and such. The one played by Emma Thompson and a pair of ridiculously thick glasses. She acts all upset and surprised that she's been fired.

Shouldn't she have seen it coming?

I've fashioned a fort facing the door in my new office that hides me from all passers-by. This is the view from the new castle Shawn. My iron curtain is not as intimidating as fortress Bo, but it'll do.

Discussing the imminenet release of the "Monster Squad" DVD:

Shawn: it was also the movie that made me really think about how to kill a werewolf . . . because at some point they explode him with dynamite and all the bits and pieces move back together

thats when I came up with using my own gastro intestinal track as a werewolf killing device

Fredrick: wtf....

Shawn: well think about it . . . if you ate a werewolf . . . and converted some portion of his mass into energy and the rest into waste matter . . . even if he did come back . . . he'd be smaller . . .

and made of something much squishier

Fredrick: lol

The Paris Hilton deal has made me realize something. I'd have really loved the French Revolution.

I'd have brought a lawn chair and parasol and set up camp right in front of the gallows for the daily aristocratic head choppings.

I think that after an impassioned plea for mercy from an innocent heiress on her way to the chopping block, I would have been that guy who throws the first tomato at her head.

It was strange to me when one newscaster was explaining why people get early releases and said, "The sheriff picks the offenders least dangerous to society for early release to make room in the prisons for serious criminals, and obviously Paris Hilton is the least dangerous person to society at large."

I don't think that chump could be more wrong.

I'm glad it all happened. I've contemplated the nature of populist uprisings and have decided that apart from the cultural revolution in China, they get a big thumbs up from me.

And I've relearned that I love the French, whose favorite past times are smoking, fucking, eating steak, and cutting the heads off the aristocracy.

Randy met his last wife in jail. He got her name tattooed on his arm.

"Not many people will do that ya know," he said to me.

Three days after they got married he caught her getting naughty with some guy in the parking lot of the bar they were at.

Randy promptly went home, turned his oven on, and burned her name off his arm with it.

Randy has a vicious scar on his arm around which are the remaining tattooed flowers and vines.

He introduced me to George and Mary. Mary read my palm and told me I will die young and then kissed my hand.

Interestingly enough, her husband George has at least 3 women's names on his arm, none of which are Mary.

She convinced me to go to another bar where they sing karaoke. So I went and danced with Mary twice.

It was all downhill from there.

Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKSVXp03Ytk

When was the last time you recommended something to someone without reservation? Without apology?

When was the last time you said, "you'll like this movie, everyone should like this movie," rather than, "you'll like this movie if you can just forget about the story and enjoy the special effects?"

Reservation seems to be a hallmark of my age group.

"You'll like this movie if you just want a simple good time without thinking," or, "you'll like this cd if you can get past the pop production sheen and simple song construction," or, "you'll like this book if you can disregard the flat and stereotypical qualities of the characters and concentrate on the lush descriptions."

Is it an indicator that people are tailoring their opinion of something based on their relationship with another person? Or is it an indicator of some kind of shame we have when we love something that is flawed? Is it an acknowledgment that something I might consider a virtue is something you would consider an unforgivable sin? Or is it as simple as leaving yourself an out because someone may feel compelled to make considerations about you based on your remarkably bad taste?

I don't feel like leaving myself outs anymore. Not only do I want to recommend things without reservation and revel in the glory of loving something entirely, I want to save my breath.

You'd like me.

As long as you can deal with infectious and debilitating cynicism.