Information Blues.

Memorial Day had me questing for a torque wrench. I deformed the middle ring on my road bike grinding up too much ten percent.

After eyeing a few $6 wrenches on the net I decided that was too shaky and deferred for the (Old) Craftsman route. The Sears in downtown Oakland was sold out so I trekked to the Southland Mall in Hayward.

It’s been so long since I shopped in a mall. It sounds naive, but I was completely overwhelmed. First off, The Southland Mall is totally ghetto. I nearly got run over by a plateless burgundy Skylark in the parking lot; the driver saw me crossing, but my presence was willfully disregarded. I think she actually sped up. There seems to be a trend in urban traffic culture for inverting laws that’s filled me with analysis for a few months now. It involves behaving in traffic exactly the opposite of how you’re culturally informed to. Ie as a pedestrian you saunter into the middle of a busy intersection against the light, seeming to disregard the presence of traffic. You make the world move at your time. Or as a driver you joust people out of the crosswalk in the mall. Both are everyday displays of power for those who may have none.

So the Southland Mall put me in total American Studies mode. I was analyzing everything, navigating a maze rich with data. It’s a worn out 60’s mall; you can see it in the details. Walking wideeyed through Sears I noted how every surface seemed to hold ten coats of paint, was uniquely textured, ground down under years of browsing. Walls had been transformed over and over, leaving bits of plexiglass and mirror at odd spots.

I found my torque wrench and it was on sale, but I was too curious; I walked the rest of the mall. Business was booming, trends were selling. I stuck out wildly as the tall gringo in the faded army shorts, thrifted Cambodian tourist souvenir tshirt. Actual Cambodians pointed at me and giggled. The crowd in general rebuked me for missing Rocawear, no Nikes, lack of rhinestones. The cultural chasm was striking. There I was, a white boy who dressed like he had approximately nothing, surrounded with a rainbow of people who dressed like they had everything, like they were getting ready to make a music video. It seems like that must be my racial privelege, that I don’t have to repre-zent?

I was overflowing with analysis, I felt like I was making first contact, exploring strange consumer ruins. Yes, I was caffeinated. I bought my torque wrench from a guy younger than me with a big pot belly who told me he had kids and was going to school.

Buffets confuse me. I can’t say I’ve ever had a satisfying venture into an all you can eat situation, mostly because there’s no closure and the food is likely lukewarm. Then there’s also the possibilty of scatteration: wanting to taste everything, you actually taste nothing. You end up eating salted gruel.

Yet I’ve recently experienced a new buffet sensation, induced by señor drtboi.

We rode our bicycles 50 miles into the hills. I was off the front, trying to tire out his friend the metal drummer/ex bike messenger. He was wearing black jeans and a backpack but that didn’t seem to slow him down as he gleefully urged me to crank it up Tunnel Road. I got the feeling he wanted to see just what we could do. So we passed at least ten other cyclists on the way to the top, all different kinds, probably stunned that this denim viking and haole with the world champion rainbow jersey were hauling so much ass.

A few more inclines, a food bar and a shot of energy gel later the plan was to hit Priya’s lunch buffet in West Berkeley. I’ve been there once before, and it definitely seemed like the cream of the buffet crops, though standard criticisms still applied in degrees. But maybe buffeting after a bike ride would be different: I’d be really hungry. And really ready. Perhaps it would be the perfect union.

Well, what it was was the perfect way to get messed up. I ate everything. Daal saag korma. (Aloo) gobi gobi. Saag korma daal. What was I thinking: I ate the rice pudding? And the sunset orange dessert bricks?

I should have eaten a bag of cement instead. All I wanted to do was lie down, take my cement belly and make like a sidewalk.

I sidewalked for a while, a few hours which felt like minutes, but I had a party to go to. A geeky gathering involving a household’s debut of the Eyetoy. So: Look at the cement man, he’s on the tv screen, popping fireworks in a legume haze.

Today was perfect weather. When still it was balmy, like a luke warm tub, then when you hopped on your bicycle the wind was fresh.

It’s dating weather I guess. As I strode through Berkeley Bowl in my orange helmet it received two sets of compliments. I bought peaches and pixie tangerines, 20oz of the new Lagunitas seasonal beer called #10. (The beer was nice, a golden hoppy Belgian-inspired yet still very much [Northern] Californian brew. Just what you’d hope and expect: sunny.) Then I sauteed asparagus and portabellas with tofu.

In accordance with the weather I went on a date over the weekend and the pinnacle occurred when she traced the prototype for a do-it-yourself tandoor oven in ghee on a napkin. We had a conceptual disagreement over how a tandoor cooks, and believe me, I’ve spent some time pondering the tandoor, and not that it matters but I was right. I just like it that she was tracing with ghee.

I don’t know why, but this spring to summer all of the asparagus I cook tastes harsh, like asafetida to use an Indian cooking simile, it has a onionlike edge.

It’s dating weather and I like girls in skirts. Girls riding bicycles in their skirts with cowboy boots. It’s urban cowgirl weather and the asparagus tastes strange.

On Sunday I crashed my mountain bike in Joaquin Miller Park. I rounded a corner to catch my handlebar in a noose of bent anise. I overcorrected, escaped the noose to go head over the handlebars into a gulf of bushes. It was a laughing cartoon crash; it’s too bad nobody saw me, because I’m sure they would have been entertained. But I yanked the bent licorice trap out of the ground. Then I passed two punk girls lying on a blanket in the meadow grass amongst miniature daisies, me covered in sweat and dirt, barbed seeds, and I just wanted to lie down with them, to spend some time with their pyramid belts and cute skirts.

No, I rode up the trail back to the car.

I decided to document my new orchids.

The first is a mini phalaenopsis. I was attracted to its snow white blossoms, melon green cheeks, and elaborate bee hugging mechanism. I like to imagine some guy flying in for a sniff then getting clutched by the bloom. I imagine the embrace to be rather clinical though, as if the bee had happened into an impromptu physical. What a crafty flower.

The cattleya hadn’t opened when I bought it, but I enjoyed the surprise. It was alleged to be red, but looks more like purple and yellow to me. All of the blooms opened simultaneously (an explosion!) as opposed to the phal which bloomed sequentially, like a rising zipper. The orchid society lady told me it wouldn’t have any scent either, but today it smells vaguely tropical, a hint of blooming ginger.

These two gals reside on top of my refrigerator, along with their two not currently blooming step sisters. They enjoy it when I boil water for tea, and perpetually look forward to Saturdays when they’re lowered into the sink for refreshment.

in the world of baseball.” Ron Washington, 3rd base coach for the A’s, just said this on the radio. I like Wash–he’s a skinny ass cadillac daddy. He has a pencil mustache (and pencil limbs.) He’s a gambler: he loves to send runners round third when he smells opportunity, and he’s usually right. He’s an easy guy to like.

But yes, it’s so true: things work strange in baseball. It’s crazy, it’s unquantifiable, it’s a complex thing. There’s truly no saying what will happen. There’s a real temptation to believe what will happen, there are numbers to help you estimate, but they’re only a vague checksum, an end that describes nothing about the means that produced them.

The A’s are flopping around right now, hazed in a collective stress funk. They’re losing faith in their checksums, they’re wondering how they’ll ever live up to their norms.

I’m still fascinated by the concept of truly seeing, understanding, taking in a game of baseball. And I’m magnetized to the failure. You hear it so often, a baseball cliche, the players say, “What other thing can you succeed at 3 times out of every 10 and be considered great?” It’s sort of true, but at the same time it’s false: a .300 hitter isn’t nearly so predictable. He’ll go 0 for 20 and then 10 for 10 on his way to his average. He’ll bounce up and down, side to side, he’ll revel in chaos and luck and fortune, so many external factors converging and swirling around him.

So I keep looking at baseball for life lessons. I admire so much the determination of baseball players. Baseball players are never perfect, and success in the game is never absolute. Pitchers always give up runs, batters always strike out. But they hold their resolve, they have a mystic fountain of confidence, they always believe their next appearance will result in a home run or a shut out. I’m struck by how opposite this runs to typical human behavior, how life’s losses actually tend to resonate for a while in your belly, linger to affect you, change you. But baseball players are forward thinkers with a shortened, padded memory. The run on spirit. They adventure in a maddening, shifting environment, with only the light of their own resolve.